Tough Times.
You plan a vacation and get sick the day before you’re supposed to leave. Your grandma gets cancer, and even though you pray hard, she dies. Your dad, a good person, loses his job and can’t find work. Do you ever wonder why God lets bad things happen to good people?
Job wondered too. He was a good person, but one day he lost all his wealth, all his children and his health. Job’s friends said God must be punishing him for secret sins. Job knew he’d been faithful to God, but he couldn’t explain why God was letting him suffer.
Satan Allowed to Torment Job
• God removes protection, story in Job 1:8–12
Friends Agree, Job Has Sinned
• Accusation hurts the sufferer, see Job 8:1–7
Job Claims He’s Innocent
• Job’s testimony recorded in Job 31
Elihu: God’s Too Big to Understand
• Younger man breaks impasse, report in Job 33
God Visits Job, Restores Him
• Blessings follow test of faith, see Job 42
Preview
• God calls Job “blameless and upright” (Job 1:8).
• Job’s suffering isn’t punishment for sin—but the reason isn’t fully explained. Like Job, we sometimes have to simply trust God in our hard times.
• Job probably lived around the time of Abraham.
As Job struggles with suffering, Canaanite tribes settle in the Holy Land. • Egyptians discover how to make paper from papyrus and develop an alphabet of 24 signs. • The earliest pottery is fired in South America.