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Job for Everyone - Introduction
Job for Everyone - Introduction
by SPCK - John Goldingay
INTRODUCTION As far as Jesus and the New Testament writers were concerned, the Jewish Scriptures that Christians call the “Old Testament” were the Scriptures. In saying that, I cut corners a bit, as the New Testament never gives us a list of these Scriptures, but the body of writ…
Job for Everyone - Is God Not Good or Not Sovereign?
Job for Everyone - Is God Not Good or Not Sovereign?
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Is God Not Good or Not Sovereign? Job 34 1-30 A student has been blowing fuses to me about having to read books that are full of words like eschatology and pneumatology and sentences about God’s “ontological revelatory self-communication and self-transcendence” or about “supralap…
Job for Everyone - Leviathan
Job for Everyone - Leviathan
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Leviathan Job 41:1- 34 My wife is a bit apprehensive about monsters and can occasionally be scared for a moment by a shadow that might be some strange creature. For our honeymoon she was nevertheless keen to go to Scotland, from where her ancestors came, even though Scotland is a…
Job for Everyone - On Accepting Your Ignorance
Job for Everyone - On Accepting Your Ignorance
by SPCK - John Goldingay
On Accepting Your Ignorance Job 38 16-38 In my seminary in England we once produced a dramatic version of the story of Job; I was the screenwriter, and one of my colleagues was the director. She wanted to have God appearing on stage during the dialogues between Job and his friend…
Job for Everyone - On Birth and Death
Job for Everyone - On Birth and Death
by SPCK - John Goldingay
On Birth and Death Job 10: 1-22 Yesterday a girl in her twenties was telling me about the death of her grandmother a day or two before. Like many people of her generation, she was very close to her grandmother, and the loss is a significant one. And yesterday another young woman …
Job for Everyone - On Learning From the Past
Job for Everyone - On Learning From the Past
by SPCK - John Goldingay
On Learning from the Past Job 8: 1-22 The other Saturday we were sitting in a restaurant by the ocean, and a woman came to talk to us who is a student at the seminary. This particular beach is an hour away, so I asked her if she lived nearby. She explained that she came here on S…
Job for Everyone - Pastoral Care That Makes the Sufferer's Position Worse
Job for Everyone - Pastoral Care That Makes the Sufferer's Position Worse
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Pastoral Care That Makes the Sufferer’s Position Worse Job 33 1-33 A woman came to see me a little while ago to talk about an occasion when she had been given pastoral care by some people, and she said the occasion had left her disturbed for years. I knew her to be an intelligent…
Job for Everyone - Perish the Day I Was Born
Job for Everyone - Perish the Day I Was Born
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Perish the Day I was Born Job 3: 1-26 I never knew my Uncle Billy, my mother’s younger brother. The year I was born, he was killed in combat in the Second World War in North Africa. I did know my Uncle Ray, the husband of my mother’s older sister, who was also a combat soldier in…
Job for Everyone - Same Old, Same Old
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…
Job for Everyone - Skin for Skin
Job for Everyone - Skin for Skin
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Skin for Skin Job 2: 1-8 My first wife lived with multiple sclerosis for forty-three years. It was after about the first third of this period that the illness started having a lasting effect on her. She found it harder to walk, and she had a tough time working things out and reme…
Job for Everyone - Sovereignty without Principle?
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…
Job for Everyone - Tested to the Limit
Job for Everyone - Tested to the Limit
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Tested to the Limit Job 34 31- 35: 16 One aspect of the forty-two years during which my first wife had multiple sclerosis was that it was a time of periodic testing, or even of continuous testing (but it was also joyful). As she got to be recurrently tired, or could no longer do …
Job for Everyone - The Angry Young Man
Job for Everyone - The Angry Young Man
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Angry Young Man Job 32 1-22 I was a “word child.” Indeed, I probably still am, though I am also a music child and a people child. A Word Child is a novel by Iris Murdoch about a man for whom words are the means of his redemption or happiness. Words save him. For me, that was …
Job for Everyone - The Awe-Inspiring Creator
Job for Everyone - The Awe-Inspiring Creator
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Awe-Inspiring Creator Job 36 26-37: 24 The window by my desk looks out over our patio, where I can see geraniums starting to bloom, blue jays coming to bathe in the fountain, and squirrels trying to remember where they stored their nuts. A plant of basil sits on a table and w…
Job for Everyone - The God of Wrath
Job for Everyone - The God of Wrath
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The God of Wrath Job 9: 1-35 We were preparing dinner for people in a homeless shelter on Friday when out of the blue my pastor asked me, “What do you say when people ask you why the God of the Old Testament is so different from the God of the New Testament?” Quick as a flash I r…
Job for Everyone - The God Who Commands the Dawn
Job for Everyone - The God Who Commands the Dawn
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The God Who Commands the Dawn Job 38 1-15 On some people’s calculations, the world is due to end today. If you are reading this book, it didn’t end, or, alternatively, you and I were left behind. I am pretty confident it won’t end, though the basis for my confidence is different …
Job for Everyone - The God Who Whispers in Our Ears
Job for Everyone - The God Who Whispers in Our Ears
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The God Who Whispers in Our Ears Job 36 1-25 A young man comes to see me from time to time to discuss what is going on between him and God. He used to seem depressed, but the depression lifted when he came to acknowledge that he was attracted to other men rather than to women. He…
Job for Everyone - The Man of Integrity