4. School for Pastors
We pray that you may grant, in accor-
dance with the riches of your glory, that
we may be strengthened in our inner
being with power through your Spirit.
5. School for Pastors
We pray that you will dwell in our
hearts by faith, as we are established
and grounded in your love.
6. School for Pastors
We pray that we may have the power to
comprehend, with all the saints, the
breadth and length and height and
depth of your love: to know this love
that surpasses knowledge.
16. Saving Job
Job 1:3
He had seven thousand sheep, three
thousand camels, five hundred yoke of
oxen, five hundred donkeys,
17. Saving Job
Job 1:3
and very many servants, so that this
man was the greatest of all the people
of the east.
18. Saving Job
Job 1:4
His sons used to go and hold feasts in
one another’s houses in turn; and they
would send and invite their three
sisters to eat and drink with them.
19. Saving Job
Job 1:5
And when the feast days had run their
course, Job would send and sanctify
them,
20. Saving Job
Job 1:5
and he would rise early in the morning
and offer burnt offerings according to
the number of them all;
21. Saving Job
Job 1:5
for Job said, “It may be that my
children have sinned, and cursed God
in their hearts.”
30. Saving Job
How often do Job’s children have
family feasts?
They rotate through 7 houses
31. Saving Job
How often do Job’s children have
family feasts?
They rotate through 7 houses
Once a month?
32. Saving Job
How often do Job’s children have
family feasts?
They rotate through 7 houses
Once a week?
33. Saving Job
How often do Job’s children have
family feasts?
They rotate through 7 houses
Every evening?
34. Saving Job
How often do Job’s children have
family feasts?
They rotate through 7 houses
There is a pattern of 7, which makes
us think of another pattern of 7
35. Saving Job
How is it that Job offered burnt
offerings on behalf of his children?
36. Saving Job
How is it that Job offered burnt
offerings on behalf of his children?
At the end of the cycle of 7
37. Saving Job
How is it that Job offered burnt
offerings on behalf of his children?
On the Sabbath?
38. Saving Job
How is it that Job offered burnt
offerings on behalf of his children?
Wait, can Job do that?
39. Saving Job
How is it that Job offered burnt
offerings on behalf of his children?
Can’t just male descendants of
Aaron offer burnt offerings?
40. Saving Job
How is it that Job offered burnt
offerings on behalf of his children?
What about Korah, Dathan, and
Abiram? (Numbers 16)
62. Saving Job
So the Temanites would be the
descendants of Teman, and many
generations later a boy born in that
tribe might be named Eliphaz the
Temanite
83. Saving Job
The land where the descendants of Uz
lived might end up being called Uz
84. Saving Job
The land where the descendants of
Midian lived might end up being called
Midian
85. Saving Job
The land where the descendants of
Canaan lived might end up being called
Canaan
86. Saving Job
The land where the descendants of
Israel lived might end up being called
Israel
87. Saving Job
Job lives in a place, Uz, that has the
same name as one of Abraham’s
nephews.
88. Saving Job
Job’s friend Elihu is descended from
someone, Buz, who has the same name
as another of Abraham’s nephews.
89. Saving Job
Job’s friend Bildad is descended from
someone, Shuah, who has the same
name as Abraham’s sixth son by
Keturah.
90. Saving Job
Job’s friend Eliphaz is descended from
someone, Teman, who has the same
name as the grandson of Abraham’s
grandson Esau.
91. Saving Job
The story of Job and friends is about
people who are distantly related to “us”
– they are our cousins, but not in the
direct Abraham - Isaac - Jacob line
92. Saving Job
When would the people of Israel
compose and compile, perform and
treasure a story like Job?
93. Saving Job
Time of the Patriarchs
ca 1900 – 1800 BC
Time of the Exodus
ca 1350 BC
94. Saving Job
Time of the Patriarchs
ca 1900 – 1800 BC
Where are the stories
from this in-between time?
Time of the Exodus
ca 1350 BC
95. Saving Job
Time of the Patriarchs
ca 1900 – 1800 BC
The midwives Shiphrah & Puah
(Exodus 1)
Time of the Exodus
ca 1350 BC
96. Saving Job
Time of the Patriarchs
ca 1900 – 1800 BC
Generations who taught their children
God was faithful
Time of the Exodus
ca 1350 BC
97. Saving Job
Time of the Patriarchs
ca 1900 – 1800 BC
Generations who taught their children
God would redeem them
Time of the Exodus
ca 1350 BC
98. Saving Job
Time of the Patriarchs
ca 1900 – 1800 BC
Generations who taught their children
God had not forgotten them
Time of the Exodus
ca 1350 BC
99. Saving Job
Time of the Patriarchs
ca 1900 – 1800 BC
Generations who taught their children
to believe: despite appearances
Time of the Exodus
ca 1350 BC
100. Saving Job
Time of the Patriarchs
ca 1900 – 1800 BC
Generations suffering in painful
bondage, but still believing
Time of the Exodus
ca 1350 BC
101. Saving Job
Time of the Patriarchs
ca 1900 – 1800 BC
Generations suffering because
God was silent
Time of the Exodus
ca 1350 BC
102. Saving Job
Time of the Patriarchs
ca 1900 – 1800 BC
Generations suffering in fear that
it might be all their fault
Time of the Exodus
ca 1350 BC
103. Saving Job
Time of the Patriarchs
ca 1900 – 1800 BC
Generations that needed to hear
a story like Job
Time of the Exodus
ca 1350 BC
107. Saving Job
Job 1:10
“Have you not put a fence around him
and his house and all that he has, on
every side?
108. Saving Job
Job 1:10
“You have blessed the work of his
hands, and his possessions have
increased in the land.
109. Saving Job
Job 1:11
“But stretch out your hand now, and
touch all that he has, and he will curse
you to your face.”
110. Saving Job
Job 1:12
The Lord said to the Satan, “Very well,
all that he has is in your power; only do
not stretch out your hand against him.”
111. Saving Job
The book of Job turns on the fact that
God and the Satan have a bet going
112. Saving Job
The book of Job, Theory 1:
A poetical exploration of the Problem of
Evil; the narrative in chapters 1-2 and
42 is a later addition by an editor who
didn’t get the point of the poetry.
114. Saving Job
The book of Job, Theory 2:
A narrative exploration of the Problem
of God and Humanity;
115. Saving Job
The book of Job, Theory 2:
(most of) the poetry in chapters 3-41 is
a rhetorical device, pointing in the
wrong direction to build suspense
116. Saving Job
Job 3:23
Why is light given to one who cannot
see the way, whom God has fenced in?
117. Saving Job
Job 4:8-9
Those who plow iniquity and sow
trouble reap the same. By the breath of
God they perish.
125. Saving Job
The children of Israel, suffering in
slavery in Egypt, could say that:
You have turned cruel to me; with the
might of your hand you persecute me.
126. Saving Job
The children of Israel, suffering in
slavery in Egypt, could say that:
I cry to you and you do not answer me;
I stand, and you merely look at me.
127. Saving Job
The children of Israel, suffering in
slavery in Egypt, could say that:
He has cast me into the mire, and I
have become like dust and ashes.
128. Saving Job
The children of Israel would identify
with Job’s feeling of being cast off: I’m
nothing more than dust and ashes,
blown away by God
136. Saving Job
Job 38:5 – 39:30
The natural order is way cool.
Look at the constellations!
137. Saving Job
Job 38:5 – 39:30
The natural order is way cool.
Look at the constellations!
How ’bout them mountain goats?
138. Saving Job
Job 38:5 – 39:30
The natural order is way cool.
Look at the constellations!
How ’bout them mountain goats?
Ostriches, horses, and hawks, oh my!
150. Saving Job
Job 40:7
“Gird up your loins like a man; I will
question you, and you will declare to
me.
151. Saving Job
Part of the essence of humanity is to do
question-and-answer with God
152. Saving Job
Job’s intention to keep silent before
God gets firmly rebuked:
“Gird up your loins like a man; I will
question you, and you will declare to
me.
153. Saving Job
Job 40:8
“Will you even put me in the wrong?
Will you condemn me that you may be
justified?
186. Saving Job
Job 30:19
The relationship between God and a
human like me is this: I am nothing but
dust and ashes, blown away by God
187. Saving Job
Job 42:6
I retract my previous analysis; I’ve
changed my mind about ‘humans are
nothing more than dust and ashes’
188. Saving Job
One of the stories we remember from
the heritage of Israel:
To be human isn’t simply to be silent in
the face of God’s inscrutable power.
Job 40:4-5
189. Saving Job
One of the stories we remember from
the heritage of Israel:
To be human is to be called into
conversation with God.
Job 40:7
190. Saving Job
One of the stories we remember from
the heritage of Israel:
No matter how much distress the Satan
might create, God is betting on Job.
Job 1:8-12
191. Saving Job
One of the stories we remember from
the heritage of Israel:
In the end God will restore all things.
Job 42:10-17
192. Saving Job
One of the stories we remember from
the heritage of Israel:
Job’s prayers will save Eliphaz, Bildad,
and Zophar, even though they had
misunderstood the ways of God.
Job 42:7-9
193. Saving Job
One of the stories we remember from
the heritage of Israel:
We are not just dust and ashes.
Job 42:6
194. Saving Job
Deep in their time of bondage in Egypt,
this is a message that would have
resonated with the people of Israel
195. Saving Job
God is betting that we will be faithful,
despite all the trials and suffering we
experience
196. Saving Job
We are invited to be deep in question-
and-answer with God: to be fully
human is to interact with God about our
hardest situations
198. Saving Job
And in the meantime, perhaps our
prayers will save those who have never
quite understood.
199. Saving Job
What do we learn, about God and about
ourselves, from hearing the story of
God betting on Job?
200. Saving Job
What do we learn, about God and about
ourselves, from the story of Job
learning he isn’t just dust and ashes,
he’s God’s conversation partner?