Job: The Mystery of Suffering and God's Sovereignty

by Richard P. Belcher Jr.

Is God worthy of worship only because He blesses us? How should we respond to God when suffering comes into our lives? At the heart of the book of Job is a question about the character of God - and about how we should respond to Him. In this most recent title of the extensive Focus on the Bible series, Richard Belcher expertly deals with the difficult themes of this practical book, showing how it is still acutely applicable to the lives of believers.

Genres: Old Testament, Faith

352 pages, Paperback

Published June 2, 2017

About the author

Dr. Belcher is the Professor of Old Testament. He is an ordained minister in the PCA and pastored an urban nondenominational church in Rochester, NY for ten years before pursuing the Ph. D. This pastoral experience in an unusual and challenging setting gives him great insight into the practical, modern issues that will be faced by future pastors studying with him at RTS. He graduated from Covenant College and received his M. Div from Covenant Seminary. He also received an S.T.M. from Concordia Theological Seminary, and his Ph. D. is from Westminster Theological Seminary. He has served as stated supply for numerous churches in the area since coming to RTS Charlotte in 1995.

Reviews

[Gary · Rating 1 out of 5]

I truly wanted to like this book. It seemed that Belcher had some good insights into Job, and even though he felt the need to throw in a story of parents struggling with a dying premature baby to explain the Word of God, I continued. To page 39, that is. That's because on page 34, Belcher says this: "Leviathan is a mythological sea monster." Truly, this belief of his (he references a book by Fyall for this statement), is not a salvific issue, BUT if you mythologize one portion of Job, what other parts will you dismiss as untrue. This is the inspired Word of God. If Job describes a creature you have never seen, rather that say it is unreal, can we not simply say this creature is something for which we have no modern reference and leave it at that? More than likely, Leviathan was a dinosaur or dragon, but I can live with not knowing for sure rather than mythologize God's Word. For this reason, I have to dismiss the entire book as not worthy to be finished. By the way, Belcher ends each chapter with the continuing saga of the premature baby. I can understand using the book of Job to help a parent understand suffering in this life, but I can not understand using human suffering to exegete the book of Job!