Job and the Suffering of The Righteous One: Leading into Holy Week with Tim Mackie and Bridgetown Church

Great lecture from Tim Mackie (from The Bible Project). Perfect for heading into Holy Week.

He speaks on the book of Job, setting Job within the larger context of the Hebrew scriptures in order to capture the archetypal patterns that both help frame the book and as well Jesus’ employment of the book as he articlates the nature of his own coming suffering.

I loved the part where he points out that Job, in its employment of the righteous one, is not a story about the shared suffering of humanity (although we do each share space within a suffering world) but rather stands in line with this pattern of figures set apart to tell a story of a suffering world being liberated and redeemed. The story of Job stands in line with the Christ story. If the Hebrew scriptures were ilke a song, we find the most important structure within the repeated notes of these stories beginning with Adam and playing through Noah, Jacob, Isaac, Abraham, Moses, David, Job ect..The song then comes most fully together in Jesus.

But then also importantly, the song continues to play through our stories with Christ as the song structure. As Holy Week approaches Mackie reminds me that in Job, as we see in Jesus, we see in the righteous one a righteous anger being point towards, in sufferings most honest expression, towards evil itself as it gives the suffering it redemptive force through the way of the Cross.

This link also includes the animated video by The Bible Project on Job along with audio of the teaching

https://bridgetown.church/teaching/in-this-world/lecture-a-god-of-love-a-world-of-suffering/