Feb. 15, 2026
The Gospel According to Job 4
The Gospel According to Job 4
Welcome to Gospel Rant!
Dr. Bill is going to suggest that a helpful way to look at the book of Job is a dual sting, a two way con. Satan is trying to con God using Job—but in a bigger sense God is conning Satan—using Job. Messy? Yep. Unnerving? Yep—not the way we usually think of God, and yet…It makes a lot of sense. What do you think?
And now, it’s your turn…
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Transcript
00:00:06
Speaker 1: Sure the Book of Job has unnerved, frightened and confused Christians for millennia. I wonder, maybe, just maybe, if we get the core message, you just may be surprised.
00:00:18
Speaker 2: We'll talk about it. Welcome to Gospel Rant podcast and Doctor Bill Senor YouTube channel. I'm your host, Doctor Bill Senor. We are free wherever you get good podcasts, of course on YouTube as well, so please subscribe. As always, one of the fastest ways you can help us grow is by leaving your comments below. Thank you sincerely for that, and thanks for making Gospel Rant Podcasts one of the top ten percent podcasts in the world. Thank you for listening every week. We hope that it helps you regularly hear about God's love for the unlovable, love the unlovely, the unworthy, and the unlikely. And that's all of us on any given day. If we were just a little bit honest, I want to get right into job. After this brief word from our sponsors, we'll be right back. The Sting nineteen seventy three is one of the best movies of all time. The movie won seven Oscars, including Best Picture. One of the more memorable scenes in the movie was the smoky poker game pitting the angry gangster boss Doyle Lonnigan Robert Shaw against the legendary con man Henry Gondorf played by Paul Newman. The con man is conned by his apparent mark. That's the sting. Job is a grand sting. So imagine with me that the brief disturbing conversation between God and Satan in Heaven Right Job chapter one six to twelve was in fact the celestial sting about to go down. And what's the wager? Who's the mark? Consider the following fictional rendition of the events leading up to Job's demise. Satan, Yahweh, forgive me for seeing this, but none of your loyal agents will dare say it, at least to your face. Your real problem is not with me or my followers. Oh no, not at all, With all due respect, the real embarrassment is from the race of human kind. You've invested so much into them, your reputation is tied up with them. It's time to cut your losses. Certainly, the all seeing one can see that they have a fatal flaw that was created in them. They cannot truly be faithful. Yahweh? Is that so dust crawler, Satan, clearly it is so with all due respect. Are you too far removed to unobjective to clearly see? I am sorry to raise my voice, but really, your holiness, are you so blind? Everyone else can see what it is happening on earth? What is it in humanity that you still cling to? Do? I need to remind you about Eve or Adam, or Cain or Noah. Look at the violence, the deceit, the self serving? What is it with you? Deities? Name one who is truly faithful? Even one in every con The hook must be set. Satan brilliantly continued, I would bet that if you stopped underwriting them, they would also stop worshiping you. They're animals, They only worship themselves. They will come to your table and flatter you as long as you feed them, as long as you stroke their fur, they will pretend faithfulness. But if the gravy train ends, they will quickly find another God. Satan smirks. Yahweh pauses, apparently considering the challenge from the deceiver, and bites down hard on the bait, takes it, hook line and sinker, so it would appear. God, serpent, have you seen my faithful servant, job he is what I'm talking about. You have always been such a disappointment. Really, but job Ah, he is heroic in his devotion to me. Look, snake, see how he loves me in the way that only humans truly can. He not only preaches it, he walks the walk. I can trust him explicitly. There is nothing that he loves more than me. Satan is about to wet himself. He is so excited. Yahweh has indeed taken the bait, eaten it whole, licking his chops. He only needed now to tie up all the loose ends. There must be no escape this time, Satan Jobe impressive record of devotion, even for humans. But honestly, look how you have singularly blessed him. Is that what you have to do to earn worshipers? Anyone would love you if you gave them the richest glory and power that you gave job That's no trick, really, that is what I'm saying. Humans will only love if they get something out of it. There is no unconditional love or faithfulness in the race. They are worshipers. They are innately self centered, selfish to the core. Narcissists really maybe they are in your image. After all, God beware less you cross the line, old foolish creature. You have felt my anger once before. Nevertheless, I am intrigued at your challenge. What is it you have in mind, Satan? Well, here's the wager. I will, with your permission, remove Job from all the things that he is using you for. His wealth has comfort, his family, oh, in his reputation. Then everyone will see what is really in his heart. Mark my words. He will turn on you. He will not just accuse you of unfaithfulness, but he will take the next step of publicly condemning you legally for it. God done, Satan, Not so fast to make a fair job can't know what's going on. Even humans can put up with a lot if they know that it's temporary and will eventually be restored. He must be in the dark. That's the only reasonable test of his heart. Will he remain covenantly true to you when bad things happen to him unfairly that is off the justice grid? Or will he curse you to your face? Injustice? Real injustice has that way of clearing the head and exposing the heart. No matter what, you can't step in and explain the trial to Job, he must finish the trial on his own agreed. God agreed, and the wager Satan. If indeed, the faithful Job legally and publicly condemns you as unfaithful, then you must also publicly admit that your plan for mankind is an abysmal failure, and that you can see that there is no good in your highly touted image bearer. The so called seat of the Woman that you spoke about a while back will have been proven to be a failed experiment. God, and if I win, Satan in a slight chance that Job remains faithful to you, and by that we mean that he chooses to not publicly condemn you as guilty of unfaithfulness, then hmm, I will publicly admit my failure. I will admit the possibility of humanity's potential glory. God, let it be so, Heilbider, only you have no permission to kill Job, Satan. Of course, there are far worse things well there. It is Job, because of his faithfulness, is being rewarded by being driven into the primordial battle over the very universe. Remember Genesis three point fifteen. God says that I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers, he will crush your head and you will strike his heel. And so here we see the battle lines drawn between Satan and the seat of the woman. And in this case Job and Job's the ideal candidate narratively for both God and Satan. Job reflects the ideal character of fallen man, faithful, pious, righteous, selfless. He loves and fears God. Even God says so, if Job is exposed to be fair weather, a fair weather God fearer, then let's face it, none of us have any op. The hungry lion goes after the weakest of the herd. To make a very bold point, Satan is going after the strongest. So if Job's faith is not based on anything beyond the things that God gives him, if his love is so conditional and retributive, then there can be no real love from the soul of man for God. God picks Job for the same reason. Job is God's man. He is a true predecessor of God's only other faithful son, the perfectly faithless son Jesus. So the sting is set. But hear this from Job's point of view, this sting doesn't feel glorious. At all. It feels like a great injustice. And why because it is That's the nature of the sting. Job cannot know what the quest is all about. I mean, is that that what really gets to us? Why do bad things happen to good people? How could God, a good God, allow innocence to perish in covid or in the mud slides in Southeast Asia? How could God be good and just if he doesn't prevent such things. Job is a troubling and frightening story about an innocent man both God and Satan agree they rarely do. He's subjected to harsh, unjust treatment agreed to by God himself, who yuck. The bad things that happened to Job did not occur because Job was unethical or sinful, but because he was innocent. And that is how we, the readers, are supposed to read the book. Are you still with me? I told you this was going to be unnerving and troubling, but also wonderful. You'll see what I mean. For this sting to be real, our innocent hero Job must be subjected to true injustices without any explanation from God, meaning God must be silent. This goes against everything that the attributive principle stands for one. Commentator Robert Sutherland is very helpful here. He says, if human beings know with certainty that God rewards those who love him, they will serve God to what they can get from God. Undeserved evil is morally necessary. Undeserved evil such testing is morally necessary in order to bring the existence of God into doubt and to sever any connection between righteousness and reward. Boy, that's crazy andsightful. You probably don't want to hear it. I don't either. The losses must be real and felt by Job. But and this is the important Because God is the god of the living and the dead, there are no permanent losses, only permanent glory God. A wisdom can see that God's economy is based upon a higher heaven sourced faithfulness innate only to God. It is innate to It is not innate to us, It is not in our dna. It clings to God's goodness even in the presence of injustices. Right. Remember the Cross was the perfect example of that. So in other words, there is no celestial victory for soldiers of fortune or mercenaries to pull off the sting, which Job can't know anything about. He must remain faithful without clear assurance of payback or preservation or justice or explanation and restoration consolation. Right, he must really trust God and accept the loss to be victorious. And God must remain silence. Wow, God cannot disclose to Job, no matter how hard he prays. Right that he is in the midst of this thing. If he let Job know somehow Satan is going to win, he would be admitting that Job couldn't love him for who he is versus what he does for Job. This test tests for real faith, a heaven born faith, a faith that's pure spirit, born as from the being of God, versus the faith that is a function of circumstances, something that we choose. Boy, that's just weak. There's no power behind it. Not really. Have you ever been in long seasons of injustice or lost or violation and your sense was that God was silent or against you or has turned his back. I think that one of my greatest complaints to God is that he is silent when I most need him. But what if, like Job, he can't answer that question at that particular time. What if I'm being tested for the sake of glory? Well, who wins the level. If Job legally curses God to his faith, Satan wins, and if Job does not, God wins. Job can accuse God of injustice until he's blue the face. He can vent complain and cry out mourn, but to formally charge God with being in his very being unjust is this thing? And think with the other ramplifications. If the judge is unjust, there is no real trial. It can only be a fair trial if the judge is just. Injustices can be dealt with, but not an unjust trial or an unjust judge. Humanity's hope is that the universe and God is ultimately just. He may use injustice to accomplish his ends, and by the way he often does again the cross, but in the end there will be only justice because of the very innate nature of God. If God is not just, there is no moral universe, no hope for man period. You can pray all you want. How can we survive such a level? Particularly if God is silent and cannot speak into our suffering? We have a huge advantage over Job. We have his story before us, and writing we know there is really a hope even in the midst of gross suffering, obvious suffering, and we can ask God for that compositive faith from him, from his hands, through his spirit and his inter being, the fruit of the spirit and wisdom, through his spirit and our inner being, we can during those times, but He may not give us answers. I get it. In the end, I'm going to answer these questions hopefully to our satisfactions. And yeah, we're gonna get back into it on the next podcast. One more message from our sponsors, and I'll give you some thoughtful questions that you can use to process this amazing book and this unnerving message. Right we're going to be right back. So a few questions for study. If you're anything like me, this raises all kind of asky questions. How is it kosher for a good God to do games like this? Would Job, even after it was all over, think that this was a good thing? Was this? Would he have thought this was a reward for his faithfulness? What about his family? We're gonna talk about that. I mean, would they think that God is just or good? You know, if you went to anyone and said I've got this, it was all a big sting by God's job's loss of wealth, family status, comfort, isn't that fantastic. You would be surprised at the looks you would get. Yeah, so discuss those things and you know, let me know what you think. Bill at Gospel dash app dot com. Also check out my new teen fantasy book, shadow Bound. It's available on Amazon and Kendall. It is P. S. Lewis fantasy, but it is also an allegory the Book of Job. And my hope is that it's in sync with these podcasts that I'm doing and the YouTube and adults are loving it as well. Get it for your church's youth ministry. Yeah, sorry, take our child of God. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 1: Sure the Book of Job has unnerved, frightened and confused Christians for millennia. I wonder, maybe, just maybe, if we get the core message, you just may be surprised.
00:00:18
Speaker 2: We'll talk about it. Welcome to Gospel Rant podcast and Doctor Bill Senor YouTube channel. I'm your host, Doctor Bill Senor. We are free wherever you get good podcasts, of course on YouTube as well, so please subscribe. As always, one of the fastest ways you can help us grow is by leaving your comments below. Thank you sincerely for that, and thanks for making Gospel Rant Podcasts one of the top ten percent podcasts in the world. Thank you for listening every week. We hope that it helps you regularly hear about God's love for the unlovable, love the unlovely, the unworthy, and the unlikely. And that's all of us on any given day. If we were just a little bit honest, I want to get right into job. After this brief word from our sponsors, we'll be right back. The Sting nineteen seventy three is one of the best movies of all time. The movie won seven Oscars, including Best Picture. One of the more memorable scenes in the movie was the smoky poker game pitting the angry gangster boss Doyle Lonnigan Robert Shaw against the legendary con man Henry Gondorf played by Paul Newman. The con man is conned by his apparent mark. That's the sting. Job is a grand sting. So imagine with me that the brief disturbing conversation between God and Satan in Heaven Right Job chapter one six to twelve was in fact the celestial sting about to go down. And what's the wager? Who's the mark? Consider the following fictional rendition of the events leading up to Job's demise. Satan, Yahweh, forgive me for seeing this, but none of your loyal agents will dare say it, at least to your face. Your real problem is not with me or my followers. Oh no, not at all, With all due respect, the real embarrassment is from the race of human kind. You've invested so much into them, your reputation is tied up with them. It's time to cut your losses. Certainly, the all seeing one can see that they have a fatal flaw that was created in them. They cannot truly be faithful. Yahweh? Is that so dust crawler, Satan, clearly it is so with all due respect. Are you too far removed to unobjective to clearly see? I am sorry to raise my voice, but really, your holiness, are you so blind? Everyone else can see what it is happening on earth? What is it in humanity that you still cling to? Do? I need to remind you about Eve or Adam, or Cain or Noah. Look at the violence, the deceit, the self serving? What is it with you? Deities? Name one who is truly faithful? Even one in every con The hook must be set. Satan brilliantly continued, I would bet that if you stopped underwriting them, they would also stop worshiping you. They're animals, They only worship themselves. They will come to your table and flatter you as long as you feed them, as long as you stroke their fur, they will pretend faithfulness. But if the gravy train ends, they will quickly find another God. Satan smirks. Yahweh pauses, apparently considering the challenge from the deceiver, and bites down hard on the bait, takes it, hook line and sinker, so it would appear. God, serpent, have you seen my faithful servant, job he is what I'm talking about. You have always been such a disappointment. Really, but job Ah, he is heroic in his devotion to me. Look, snake, see how he loves me in the way that only humans truly can. He not only preaches it, he walks the walk. I can trust him explicitly. There is nothing that he loves more than me. Satan is about to wet himself. He is so excited. Yahweh has indeed taken the bait, eaten it whole, licking his chops. He only needed now to tie up all the loose ends. There must be no escape this time, Satan Jobe impressive record of devotion, even for humans. But honestly, look how you have singularly blessed him. Is that what you have to do to earn worshipers? Anyone would love you if you gave them the richest glory and power that you gave job That's no trick, really, that is what I'm saying. Humans will only love if they get something out of it. There is no unconditional love or faithfulness in the race. They are worshipers. They are innately self centered, selfish to the core. Narcissists really maybe they are in your image. After all, God beware less you cross the line, old foolish creature. You have felt my anger once before. Nevertheless, I am intrigued at your challenge. What is it you have in mind, Satan? Well, here's the wager. I will, with your permission, remove Job from all the things that he is using you for. His wealth has comfort, his family, oh, in his reputation. Then everyone will see what is really in his heart. Mark my words. He will turn on you. He will not just accuse you of unfaithfulness, but he will take the next step of publicly condemning you legally for it. God done, Satan, Not so fast to make a fair job can't know what's going on. Even humans can put up with a lot if they know that it's temporary and will eventually be restored. He must be in the dark. That's the only reasonable test of his heart. Will he remain covenantly true to you when bad things happen to him unfairly that is off the justice grid? Or will he curse you to your face? Injustice? Real injustice has that way of clearing the head and exposing the heart. No matter what, you can't step in and explain the trial to Job, he must finish the trial on his own agreed. God agreed, and the wager Satan. If indeed, the faithful Job legally and publicly condemns you as unfaithful, then you must also publicly admit that your plan for mankind is an abysmal failure, and that you can see that there is no good in your highly touted image bearer. The so called seat of the Woman that you spoke about a while back will have been proven to be a failed experiment. God, and if I win, Satan in a slight chance that Job remains faithful to you, and by that we mean that he chooses to not publicly condemn you as guilty of unfaithfulness, then hmm, I will publicly admit my failure. I will admit the possibility of humanity's potential glory. God, let it be so, Heilbider, only you have no permission to kill Job, Satan. Of course, there are far worse things well there. It is Job, because of his faithfulness, is being rewarded by being driven into the primordial battle over the very universe. Remember Genesis three point fifteen. God says that I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers, he will crush your head and you will strike his heel. And so here we see the battle lines drawn between Satan and the seat of the woman. And in this case Job and Job's the ideal candidate narratively for both God and Satan. Job reflects the ideal character of fallen man, faithful, pious, righteous, selfless. He loves and fears God. Even God says so, if Job is exposed to be fair weather, a fair weather God fearer, then let's face it, none of us have any op. The hungry lion goes after the weakest of the herd. To make a very bold point, Satan is going after the strongest. So if Job's faith is not based on anything beyond the things that God gives him, if his love is so conditional and retributive, then there can be no real love from the soul of man for God. God picks Job for the same reason. Job is God's man. He is a true predecessor of God's only other faithful son, the perfectly faithless son Jesus. So the sting is set. But hear this from Job's point of view, this sting doesn't feel glorious. At all. It feels like a great injustice. And why because it is That's the nature of the sting. Job cannot know what the quest is all about. I mean, is that that what really gets to us? Why do bad things happen to good people? How could God, a good God, allow innocence to perish in covid or in the mud slides in Southeast Asia? How could God be good and just if he doesn't prevent such things. Job is a troubling and frightening story about an innocent man both God and Satan agree they rarely do. He's subjected to harsh, unjust treatment agreed to by God himself, who yuck. The bad things that happened to Job did not occur because Job was unethical or sinful, but because he was innocent. And that is how we, the readers, are supposed to read the book. Are you still with me? I told you this was going to be unnerving and troubling, but also wonderful. You'll see what I mean. For this sting to be real, our innocent hero Job must be subjected to true injustices without any explanation from God, meaning God must be silent. This goes against everything that the attributive principle stands for one. Commentator Robert Sutherland is very helpful here. He says, if human beings know with certainty that God rewards those who love him, they will serve God to what they can get from God. Undeserved evil is morally necessary. Undeserved evil such testing is morally necessary in order to bring the existence of God into doubt and to sever any connection between righteousness and reward. Boy, that's crazy andsightful. You probably don't want to hear it. I don't either. The losses must be real and felt by Job. But and this is the important Because God is the god of the living and the dead, there are no permanent losses, only permanent glory God. A wisdom can see that God's economy is based upon a higher heaven sourced faithfulness innate only to God. It is innate to It is not innate to us, It is not in our dna. It clings to God's goodness even in the presence of injustices. Right. Remember the Cross was the perfect example of that. So in other words, there is no celestial victory for soldiers of fortune or mercenaries to pull off the sting, which Job can't know anything about. He must remain faithful without clear assurance of payback or preservation or justice or explanation and restoration consolation. Right, he must really trust God and accept the loss to be victorious. And God must remain silence. Wow, God cannot disclose to Job, no matter how hard he prays. Right that he is in the midst of this thing. If he let Job know somehow Satan is going to win, he would be admitting that Job couldn't love him for who he is versus what he does for Job. This test tests for real faith, a heaven born faith, a faith that's pure spirit, born as from the being of God, versus the faith that is a function of circumstances, something that we choose. Boy, that's just weak. There's no power behind it. Not really. Have you ever been in long seasons of injustice or lost or violation and your sense was that God was silent or against you or has turned his back. I think that one of my greatest complaints to God is that he is silent when I most need him. But what if, like Job, he can't answer that question at that particular time. What if I'm being tested for the sake of glory? Well, who wins the level. If Job legally curses God to his faith, Satan wins, and if Job does not, God wins. Job can accuse God of injustice until he's blue the face. He can vent complain and cry out mourn, but to formally charge God with being in his very being unjust is this thing? And think with the other ramplifications. If the judge is unjust, there is no real trial. It can only be a fair trial if the judge is just. Injustices can be dealt with, but not an unjust trial or an unjust judge. Humanity's hope is that the universe and God is ultimately just. He may use injustice to accomplish his ends, and by the way he often does again the cross, but in the end there will be only justice because of the very innate nature of God. If God is not just, there is no moral universe, no hope for man period. You can pray all you want. How can we survive such a level? Particularly if God is silent and cannot speak into our suffering? We have a huge advantage over Job. We have his story before us, and writing we know there is really a hope even in the midst of gross suffering, obvious suffering, and we can ask God for that compositive faith from him, from his hands, through his spirit and his inter being, the fruit of the spirit and wisdom, through his spirit and our inner being, we can during those times, but He may not give us answers. I get it. In the end, I'm going to answer these questions hopefully to our satisfactions. And yeah, we're gonna get back into it on the next podcast. One more message from our sponsors, and I'll give you some thoughtful questions that you can use to process this amazing book and this unnerving message. Right we're going to be right back. So a few questions for study. If you're anything like me, this raises all kind of asky questions. How is it kosher for a good God to do games like this? Would Job, even after it was all over, think that this was a good thing? Was this? Would he have thought this was a reward for his faithfulness? What about his family? We're gonna talk about that. I mean, would they think that God is just or good? You know, if you went to anyone and said I've got this, it was all a big sting by God's job's loss of wealth, family status, comfort, isn't that fantastic. You would be surprised at the looks you would get. Yeah, so discuss those things and you know, let me know what you think. Bill at Gospel dash app dot com. Also check out my new teen fantasy book, shadow Bound. It's available on Amazon and Kendall. It is P. S. Lewis fantasy, but it is also an allegory the Book of Job. And my hope is that it's in sync with these podcasts that I'm doing and the YouTube and adults are loving it as well. Get it for your church's youth ministry. Yeah, sorry, take our child of God. We'll see you next time.
