Scottish Baptist Lay Preachers Association

Job: A lesson in patience and trust.
When we meet Job he is classed as a good and upright member of society. A member of the Wise. He has all that he appears to desire as far as the world is concerned; family, wealth, land, servants etc. He lives his life in a way that he assumes is pleasing to God.
Unknown to him he is the subject of discussion in the Heavenly realms. God holds him up as an example to Satan who mocks and argues that Job is only like this because of his privileged position. God gives Satan permission to test him by removing his family and wealth. This in turn causes Job to lose his social position as his social circle sees him as cursed and throw him out of town.
Job suffers greatly but is joined by friends who sit with him on the dung heap trying to figure out what has gone wrong in Job’s life to warrant such suffering. Even his wife tells him to curse God and die.
Through the understanding or misunderstanding of God that the people have at the time, Job’s friends argue that he must have done something real bad to upset God so bad, but through the arguments and discussions that he has with his friends Job comes to the realisation that God is so far beyond the limited comprehension that the people have of Him that he comes to understand that there needs to be a mediator between man and God. Job 9:32-35.
Why use Job as an example of a trailblazer though? Well through the book of Job as I have mentioned above he comes to the realisation that God is so far beyond the realms of our limited understanding that there needs to be a mediator, later in the book he makes the great statement in 19:25-27 “For I know that my Redeemer lives and He shall stand at last on the earth; and after my skin is destroyed, this I know that in my flesh I shall see God”.
Job is a great example of someone on a journey, with preconceived ideas, in his case with regard to his religion and God, and coming to the realisation that God has not acted as all the theory and Job’s earlier experiences of God demanded that he should. From his early years Job’s life has been built on this theory of God’s justice meaning that goodness and prosperity were given in measure. Job has been on a journey of self-justification and he finally realises that he is on the wrong track. When he realises who God is he knows he has to abandon this quest for self-justification and learn to look to God.
Job is a trailblazer because he goes in search of truth and discovers that God will always act fairly even if His ways are not always easily understood by simple humans like us. He repents of his unbelief and of any bitterness and worships God, the same as we need to.