Wisdom in the Eye of the Storm

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Sermon Follow Up

Summary

Chapter 28 is a calm in the storm during which Job has a chance to reflect on what God is doing in his life. Although Job still has no specific answers to his questions and although God still seems distant, Job recognizes that God uses “life storms” to make good men even better just as men use mining and refining to make good metals even better. Job is reassured that God’s good end of creating deep wisdom in him will be well worth the destructive storm used to do it. Job isn’t out of the storm yet, but this moment of defiant hope strengthens him to endure to the end.

The author of Job used a chiastic literary structure for the book to highlight Chapter 28’s wisdom poem as central to the book’s overall message. We included a figure of that macro- structure of Job in a previous sermon follow-up post here. Moreover, Chapter 28 itself also has a chiastic structure shown in the figure below. In these structures, the paired units (Units A and A’; Units B and B’) inform each other and together point us to the central, emphasized unit. The central unit of Chapter 28 describes the all-surpassing worth of wisdom, the very wisdom that God is working into Job in the storm. While we may wish that God would use less destructive means to grow us in wisdom, we can remember that God the Son himself came in the person of Christ and willingly undertook the greatest storm of all in order to ultimately bring all his people out of storms in this fallen world and into his everlasting peace. In Christ, we know that the God of the storm is for us, always.

The Structure of Job 28

A- Men searching out and refining good metals through fire (vv. 1–11)

B- Where is wisdom found? (vv. 12–14)

C- The supreme value of wisdom, greater than gold (vv. 15–19)

B’- Where is wisdom found? (vv. 20–22)

B’- God searching out and refining wisdom in good men through storms (vv. 23–28)

Discussion/Reflection Questions

1- What storms have you experienced in life? Can you recall any experiences of calm and reassurance (despite lack of resolution) during them like what Job experienced in Job 28?

2- Job 28 describes the all-surpassing value of wisdom. The end of the poem describes wisdom as “the fear of the Lord,” such that at the heart of wisdom is a right relationship with God. How do severe “life storms” shape or deepen our lived-out relationship with God?

3- Read Job 28:20-22. Death’s statement that it has “heard a rumor of” wisdom implies that  close encounters with our own or others’ deaths may help lead us to wisdom. Why do you think that is?

4- At times, it may be difficult for us to rightly discern whether we are suffering (at least in part) because of our own sin, or whether we are in a Job-like scenario in which God has given us suffering simply to make us even greater than we are. How can the input of mature Christians outside of our immediate household who know and care about us help us to navigate these issues?

4- The understanding of the book of Job, and Chapter 28 in particular, presented in the sermon relied heavily on an analysis of literary structures in the book. How does such an approach to Scripture strike you? Does it feel unsettlingly foreign or academic and make you wary, or does it encourage and intrigue you to consider that high levels of literary style may be present in the text? How does reflecting on the Holy Spirit being the ultimate author of Scripture impact your response?

Family-friendly Version

Big Idea: Sometimes God gives you great suffering because you’re a great person, and God wants to make you even greater.

Talk About It: In the book of Job, what does it mean for Job to be a “great” person? When we experience bad or sad things, it may be as a consequence for our sin, or it may be something God gives us simply to make us greater—more like Jesus. Who are the people you could talk with to help you understand why God has given you any bad or sad things in life?