When God finally addresses Job’s lamentation, he has harsh words for Job’s friends. They had come to mourn with him and to chastise him, but the Lord charges them to ask Job to make sacrifices on their behalf. Job plays this role of mediator after great suffering, and in so doing points us toward Christ, who suffered for the sake of becoming our mediator.

We will be taking a break from Sermon Discussion for the remainder of the summer. While there will be a generic study guide posted each week, we encourage you to use this opportunity to rest as a group. What that rest looks like is up to you—feel free to do social events, find service projects around your neighborhood or even take the entire month off.

To some degree, everyone you care about will suffer. When that happens, you’ll be left you to wonder how to best be a comfort to them. When Job lost everything, his friends left their homes and their lives to travel to him and sit with him in his grief. However, their example can teach us as much about what not to do to comfort a grieving heart as about what’s best to do.

We will be taking a break from Sermon Discussion for the remainder of the summer. While there will be a generic study guide posted each week, we encourage you to use this opportunity to rest as a group. What that rest looks like is up to you—feel free to do social events, find service projects around your neighborhood or even take the entire month off.

Suffering is both universal and specific: While there has probably never been a human being who hasn’t suffered to some degree, the actual experience of suffering is both deeply personal and personally indelible. In the idea of lamentation, the Bible gives us a way to suffer honestly and constructively, and in Job it gives us a window into what that might look like. And in the cross, God has given us a tool for suffering that not even Job had.

We will be taking a break from Sermon Discussion for the remainder of the summer. While there will be a generic study guide posted each week, we encourage you to use this opportunity to rest as a group. What that rest looks like is up to you—feel free to do social events, find service projects around your neighborhood or even take the entire month off.

There appeared to be no justice in Job’s suffering—he didn’t “get what he deserved.” Instead, his suffering came after a lifetime of generosity that affirmed the essential humanity of not just his friends, but his subordinates, as well. In fact, looking at the way Job treated those of lower social classes and professional standings gives us cause to assess the way our own hearts treat money and power. Once we do, the cross gives us the strength to be honest about what we find.

We will be taking a break from Sermon Discussion for the remainder of the summer. While there will be a generic study guide posted each week, we encourage you to use this opportunity to rest as
a group. What that rest looks like is up to you—feel free to do social events, find service projects around your neighborhood or even take the entire month off.

By any measure, Job was wildly successful as a business man, a family man and a man of faith. But we don’t know him for his successes: We know him for the story of his fortunes reversing. Untold generations of readers, artists and scholars have looked at Job’s life falling apart and been challenged by his response. The book begins with a simple question: Does Job love God, or does Job just consider God a means to an end? It’s a question we also have to ask of ourselves.

We will be taking a break from Sermon Discussion for the remainder of the summer. While there will be a generic study guide posted each week, we encourage you to use this opportunity to rest as
a group. What that rest looks like is up to you—feel free to do social events, find service projects around your neighborhood or even take the entire month off.