John Goldingay

The Way We Were and the Way I Thought We Would Be Job 29: 1-25 They say that if your spouse dies after a time of illness and/or gradual decline, initially your memories are dominated by the nature of those last months, but that eventually older memories come to reassert themselve…

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Job for Everyone - Insight Lies in Submission to the Lord

by SPCK - John Goldingay

Insight Lies in Submission to the Lord Job 28: 1-28 In two weeks I have to preach at the seminary’s baccalaureate service (a kind of commissioning service, I could call it for U.K. readers). Each year as I have listened appreciatively to the baccalaureate sermon, I have wondered …

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Job for Everyone - I Hate the People Who Hate You

by SPCK - John Goldingay

I Hate the People Who Hate You Job 27: 1-23 When I have taken part in “quiet days” for reflection and prayer, three favorite Old Testament texts have been the one about the still, small voice that I mentioned in connection with Job 25–26, the “Be still and know that I am God” of …

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Job for Everyone - A Whimper and a Whisper

by SPCK - John Goldingay

A Whimper and a Whisper Job for Everyone Job 25: 1- 26: 14 1 Bildad the Shuhite replied: 2 Rule and awe are with him; he brings about peace in his heights. 3 Is there any numbering of his troops, or on whom does his light not shine? 4 Or how can a mortal be right with God; how ca…

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Job for Everyone - Why Are Times Not Kept by Shadday?

by SPCK - John Goldingay

Why Are Times Not Kept By Shadday? Job 24: 1-25 Some time ago I used to follow a set of daily scriptural readings called Daily Light on the Daily Path that included verses on different topics for each morning and evening. The verses were printed on the main body of the page, and …

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Job for Everyone - Who Moved?

by SPCK - John Goldingay

Who Moved? Job 23: 1-17 A notice that sometimes appears on church bulletin boards says, “If God seems far away, guess who moved?” There’s obviously some truth in the point it makes about our relationship with God, but the notice rather tempts me to deface it. I have known times w…

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Job for Everyone - Eliphaz Rewrites Job's Life Rather Than revise His Own Theology

by SPCK - John Goldingay

Eliphaz rewrites Jo’s Life Rather Than Revise His Own Theology Job 22: 1-30 My early years of teaching coincided with a time when many churches were rediscovering the possibility of praying for sick people to be healed and of finding that many were healed. It was an exciting redi…

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Job for Everyone - If Only Wickedness Did Get Its Reward

by SPCK - John Goldingay

If Only Wickedness Did Get Its Reward! Job 21: 1-34 Two or three years before I write, the United States and the Western world as a whole experienced a “great financial meltdown,” with a significant factor in the crisis being the way financial institutions lent money for mortgage…

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Job for Everyone - How Wickedness Gets Its Reward

by SPCK - John Goldingay

How Wickedness Gets Its Reward Job 20: 1-29 A pastor in the United States has just published a book that begins by questioning whether people who have not believed in Christ will go to hell. The pastor is someone with his finger on the pulse of U.S. culture, and he has been able …

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Job for Everyone - I Know That My Restorer Lives

by SPCK - John Goldingay

I Know That My Restorer Lives Job 19: 1- 29 In spring 1741 over a period of twenty-four days, George Frideric Handel set to music a compilation of scriptural texts, mostly from the Old Testament, that had been made by a landowner and patron of the arts called Charles Jennens. In …

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Job for Everyone - Does Job Dispute the Moral Foundation of the World?

by SPCK - John Goldingay

Does Job Dispute the Moral Foundation of the world? Job 18: 1- 21 Last night we were watching the great movie Dogma, which is full of bad language, violence, and scatological humor. It is not a movie for the sensitive or fainthearted or squeamish, but it is one of the most theolo…

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Job for Everyone - A Witness in the Heavens?

by SPCK - John Goldingay

A Witness in the Heavens? Job 16: 18- 17: 16 When I was a young assistant pastor in London (what would now be called a youth pastor, but youth pastors hadn’t been invented yet), one of the prize members of our largely middleclass youth group was a teenager from the local projects…

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Job for Everyone - Comforters? More like Troublemakers

by SPCK - John Goldingay

Comforters? More like Troublemakers Job 16: 1-17 When I take students through the book of Job in classes, I invite them to let me know the questions it raises for them, and usually someone asks, “So when we are ministering to people who are suffering like Job, what do we say to t…

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Job for Everyone - Eliphaz Tries Again

by SPCK - John Goldingay

Eliphaz Tries Again Job 15: 1-35 Today’s newspaper contains a long excerpt from a book about a gigantic fraud that brought about the collapse of a Wall Street financial empire during the financial crisis of the first decade of the twenty-first century. The head of the business in…

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Job for Everyone - In the Midst of Life We Are in Death

by SPCK - John Goldingay

In the Midst of Life We Are in Death Job 14: 1-22 As a pastor, I have been used to reading words from the beginning of Job 14 at funerals, and specifically as the burial party arrives at the grave with the coffin. The traditional prayer-book version reads,..

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Job for Everyone - Will You Just Listen?

by SPCK - John Goldingay

Will You Just Listen? Job 13: 1-28 This afternoon I was on the phone with a friend who had moved to another city because he believed he had a call to go and work in a tough area there. He had joined a tiny church and had started a coffee bar that might be a meeting place for peop…

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Job for Everyone - Sovereignty without Principle?

by SPCK - John Goldingay

Sovereignty without Principle? Job 12: 1-25 My wife and I were talking about Job the other day, and she told me about two different people in a church to which she had belonged who had given up their Christian faith and left the church when they went through the horrific experien…

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Job for Everyone - Same Old, Same Old

by SPCK - John Goldingay

Same Old, Same Old Job 11: 1-20 As I write it is Holy Week, and last Sunday we read the passion story from Matthew with its exotic account of tombs opening in Jerusalem so that people came out and wandered around after Jesus’ death and in anticipation of his resurrection. It’s an…

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