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Word in the Wild is a one year Bible adventure with friends. Join from anywhere and enjoy a fun, rewarding, and doable 12-month journey through the Bible where you read it from cover to cover and understand it. It’s not a devotional or recap. It’s a guide by your side through God’s Word. With support from a weekly podcast and an online community of fellow travelers, this is the year when you finally explore the Bible in its own words and on its own terms for yourself.
INTRO
This is Word and the Wild...a one year Bible adventure with friends. My name is Owen. I'm your host and your guide, and together we are on a 12 month journey as a podcast plus community...where we read the Bible for ourselves, but not by ourselves.
It's WEEK FOUR, gang! We are about to jump into the reading in our chrono Bibles marked January 22-28...
This week... A dark element inters the story as we learn something new about God. God has an enemy. And that enemy calls into question some of what we have seen so far about the Creator God.
So... hello and welcome in. And, a special welcome to our Word and the Wild PLUS community members. Their support of this non-profit endeavor is making space for all of us on this Bible reading adventure... and their contributions inside our dedicated online community are making it fun! We had an especially lively livestream Q&A last week talking about the story of Joseph. If you'd like to jump into those conversations as well as enjoy other member benefits like our daily reading tracker, nerdy background articles, and other bonus content, then the Word and the Wild PLUS community might be your jam. Learn more in the show notes or over at wordandthewild.com
Now... more about God, his enemy, and the questions he raises in the book of Job in a few moments. But first, let's pick up the story where we left it last week.
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Last week, spent most of our time with Joseph. It's a story about love, loyalty, and betrayal. It's a great story. A real page-turner. But, if you really want to feel the story and not just skim it, then you have to open up your own mental vault and bring to the front of your mind the kind of memory we usually lock away.
Remember... enter back into a time when you yourself felt the sting of betrayal. When someone sold you out...stabbed your back...and you find yourself in a situation you didn't want to be in.
These are the kind of moments in our past that instinct tells us to leave behind. To box up, lock up, and leave up in the attic of our memories.
These are the parts of our past most of us either minimize or try to medicate to forget. Or, on the other end of the spectrum, the kind of experiences that become our identity.
But, Joseph handled the painful parts of his path differently.
When I replay Joseph's story, I get these reassuring reminders of how God can walk with his friends through long, hard seasons of betrayal and grief.
And, I learn from Joseph's example how find resilience, endurance, and spiritual and emotional survival in framing up my present inside God's past and future.
By that, I mean that God has established his plan in the past. God is moving forward with purpose toward the future where his plan happens. And, the path God walks through history toward that purpose runs right through my present situation.
That was Joseph's outlook. He said exactly that but with so much more simplicity and elegance when he finally found himself alone with his brothers as Pharaoh's right-hand man in Egypt. What a moment. All-time great dramatic moment. The big reveal.
“I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into slavery in Egypt.
But don’t be upset, and don’t be angry with yourselves for selling me to this place.
It was God who sent me here ahead of you to preserve your lives. This famine that has ravaged the land for two years will last five more years, and there will be neither plowing nor harvesting.
God has sent me ahead of you to keep you and your families alive and to preserve many survivors. So it was God who sent me here, not you!”
(Genesis 45:4–8...page 63)
Three times Joseph says, "God has sent me." Now, he doesn't minimize the betrayal of the past. The brothers did him dirty. But, Joseph is able to say, "You sold me... and God sent me."
If ever there were a playbook how to deal with betrayal, grief, and suffering that's it. Joseph gives us a pattern. Face your past... embrace your present...place your future in the hands of the powerful, purposeful, personal creator God.
God walks with those who walk with him. Today means something and tomorrow is filled with hope because God walks with those who walk with him. Even when the path takes us through the darkest of valleys.
That's the "HOW" of enduring hard times. Thanks to Joseph. His endurance through suffering trickles downstream to us today.
That's the HOW. By, what about the "WHY"? Why in the world do good people go through hard times at all?
And that's where Job comes in.
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This is no trivial question. It's a key question. Not only for our own curiosity but because it's a key to understanding God, the main character of this epic story.
Let's get real for a minute. This is one of those questions where we analyze this God character to understand what category he goes into. Hero or villain? Good guy? Bad guy? Benevolent Ruler of the Universe, friend of humankind? Embattled and vulnerable force for good? Cruel and twisted overlord?
If the Bible were some kind of PR puff-piece to paint God shining light, Job would not have made the final cut. PR campaigns don't complicate the portrait of the person they promote. They simplify things. And airbrush out anything that could be misinterpreted.
We don't get that from Job. It's not an airbrushed promo poster. It's not a slick bio pic. It's a raw and real behind the scenes look into how the sausage of suffering gets made.
Which is as gross and juicy as it sounds.
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If God is all-powerful and good, then why do good people suffer?
That question is the heart of Job's story. The goodness of God is on trial. Everyone wrestles with the question. Job. Job's wife. Job's friends.
Job and his world is somewhat of mystery. Job is a mystery and his story is about a mystery. It's all poetic in a way.
Job drops into our movie here because we're following the story in chronological order and based on some of the historical references in Job's episode, he seems to fit here.
From a story perspective, we can think of Job kind of like a spin-off mini-series to the main movie. There are only two characters from the Bible's story universe that cross over from the main story -- God and Satan. Job and all the other characters are all self-contained inside this mini-series.
God and Satan spin-off into this story to give us some extra detail about these two characters and their relationship.
Job gets callbacks in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, but his story doesn't advance. He's here to show us how the drama between God and Satan behind the scenes plays out and affects human life and the human experience.
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The headliners in the story are Job, Satan, and... our main character, God.
We don't know much about Job. We are going to learn much more about Job's inner life and thoughts than his surroundings. He has a wife, seven sons, and three daughters. He's a wealthy rancher / herder in a an area called Uz. Job makes maintaining a respectful relationship with God a high priority. A word that comes up often to describe Job is "integrity." The word means simple, uncomplicated, straightforward and direct. Job's priorities don't shift with what's easy or convenient. For Job, his with God and his children are the most important thing in his life and he stays that course.
Job's integrity and love for God and family will be the battleground in this story.
Then, we have Satan. We use "Satan" as a proper name, but's actually just a word that means "accuser" and "adversary." It's here in Job that we first understand that God and humans have enemy. Satan is that enemy.
We have seen Satan briefly but he hasn't been mentioned by name. We learn much later in the story that Satan was the one behind the Serpent's temptation and instigation in the Garden of Eden. The forbidden fruit. The lies and underhanded way he instigated doubt in Eve's mind about God's word and God's heart there at the foot of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil... That's Satan's M-O:
1. Assassinate God's character in the minds of God's beloved humans who He created for companionship and to represent him in the world God made.
2. Point out the flaws, sins, and missteps of humans to God to bring hurt and pain to his Enemy.
God and Satan aren't locked in a battle between equals. This is not an armwrestling match of strength against strength. No, Satan is a terrorist who could never win a heads-up confrontation with God. So, instead, he uses love and loyalty as a weapon to incite bitterness and betrayal. His goal is to inflict pain by inciting conflict and drama.
Whether Satan was in serpent form or the Serpent embodied Satan or some other evil arrangement, we know for a fact that a Snake was the perfect representation of Satan. That's exactly what he is... a snake in the grass.
And then, there's God. Our main character. He notices Job. Enjoys Job. Is proud of Job and his relationship with him. This is the God who the Bible has portrayed as the Creator and Arbiter of the world. Powerful. Personal. Purposeful. The God who has a plan to love and rescue his creation while preserving their freedom to choose to join his path or walk away.
And, right there on the knife edge between God's good and rule over all and God's desire for love and the freedom of choice that love requires... Satan sees an opportunity for pain.
In Job 1:8-11, Satan makes this devastating accusation:
“Then the LORD asked Satan, “Have you noticed my servant Job? He is the finest man in all the earth. He is blameless—a man of complete integrity. He fears God and stays away from evil.”
Satan replied to the LORD, “Yes, but Job has good reason to fear God. You have always put a wall of protection around him and his home and his property. You have made him prosper in everything he does. Look how rich he is! But reach out and take away everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face!””
(Job 1:8–11 NLT)
Notice the power dynamic between God and Satan in the story of Job. On one hand it's encouraging. On the other, it's disturbing. Satan has to get permission from God to test out Job's love and loyalty to God. Any attack has to come from God. God's the gatekeeper. That's comforting. But, God grants permission. And that's less comforting.
We'll have to see where the story takes us on this. While it's Job's integrity that is the pretext for the story. It's really God's integrity that's on trial.
Are God's motives as pure as they seem. What does God really want out of all this?
That's what's at the heart of Satan's accusation in effect he says to God:
You are only worth knowing and loving because of the benefits that come with friendship with you. God, you aren't valuable or worthy of respect from humans on your own merit. You buy their love. If Job's wealth and comfort disappears, his relationship with You will vanish with it.
His relationship isn't love. It's transactional. A mutually beneficial arrangement.
Bottom line: God, you want love and friendship with people. But, you don't get what you want. Your plan to create a universe where real love is possible falls short. No one chooses you. No one loves you for you. You have to buy their love.
And so, the drama unfolds.
Can Job maintain his integrity? Will the pressure get to him?
Is God as good as he presents himself? Is he himself worth knowing and loving?
Will Satan drive a wedge between God and Job? Will the Enemy prove in court that there is not such thing as love? That selfishness and betrayal are the real powers at work in the universe?
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As you read, notice what Job, his friends, Satan, and God himself all have to say about God and how humans relate to him. That's where the drama plays out. And, not everything every character says is true.
That's your key to Job. Remember that the Bible truly records the words and thoughts of the characters in the story.... But not everything they say and think are true.
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And now, let's head out on the trail... in the Wild of life and God's Word together.
Word and the Wild is a one year Bible adventure with friends.
All your Word and the Wild PLUS community members, I'll be seeing you in THE WILD... our private online community space. Everyone else, don't be a stranger. Subscribe to this podcast and follow Word and the Wild on Facebook for some interaction there.
Word and the Wild is a LineHouse Community. It's part of the LineHouse Community Network, a nonprofit organization with a mission to bring neighbors together to promote awareness, appreciation, and understanding of the Bible.
Because friendship and God's Word change lives and change cities.
And... presented by the LumaVoz podcast network.
And with that, we're out. I'm Owen, I'm your host and your guide. Until next time, I'll see you out there on the trail in the Word and the Wild.