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Welcome to 5 -Minute Bible, your daily guide for your daily reading. Today is
January 8th and we'll be reading Job 17 -20. Now today's reading continues the first dialogue cycle in the
Book of Job, but it does so by pushing the argument to its theological edge. Job 17 -20 remains firmly in the patriarchal world before laws and priesthoods and sacrifices and temples, and yet something in these chapters have shifted.
Job is no longer primarily asking why he suffers, but now he's asking where the final judgment is going to take place.
His friends continue to appeal from earthly wisdom outward, but Job begins to appeal from earth to heaven.
In chapter 17, Job admits that death feels imminent to him and that any hope tied to this life has pretty much collapsed.
His future on earth is gone, yet even as his body shrivels and decays, Job insists that hope still has to exist, because God exists.
Chapter 18 brings Bildad's second speech, where he confidently describes the downfall of the wicked and insists that suffering always proves guilt.
Chapter 19 marks a turning point. Job responds by lifting his eyes beyond the human courtroom that he apparently is in and declares that his
Redeemer lives and that he himself will one day see God, so Job is admitting that he believes that there's going to be a resurrection.
Chapter 20 closes this section with Zophar's reply, which doubles down on the same tired claim that his friends have been offering, that the wicked may prosper briefly, but judgment always comes quickly, leaving no room for delayed justice and no room for Job's resurrection hope.
They're arguing that because Job is suffering, he will never see
God. Now as you read today, I want you to ask this question, where does final justice actually occur?
Does it occur on earth, as his friends are suggesting, with annihilation, or is it before God himself?
Job's friends assume that justice is going to be immediate and visible and that it always is correlated to your status with God, your soul, and how much or how little you sin.
Job's experience, however, contradicts that assumption, and the question is now not whether God is just, but whether God's justice must always be executed in this life, or does his justice sometimes wait until after death?
The central tension in Job 17 through 20 is the clash between the false certainty of his friends and the resiliency of his hope in the midst of extraordinary pain.
Job's friends are confident, they're articulate, they're consistent, but they're wrong. Their theology leaves no space for mystery, nothing at all for delayed vindication or what life has maybe for Job beyond the grave.
Job, by contrast, has lost everything that once grounded him in this world.
His health is failing, his reputation is destroyed, his family is gone, his friends have condemned him, and yet, instead of surrendering hope,
Job relocates it. As earthly hope dies, heavenly hope comes into focus, and the friends who cling to a system of reality that cannot explain things fully watch
Job cling to nothing but God himself. Job's declaration in chapter 19 that his
Redeemer lives is one of the clearest anticipations of Jesus Christ in all of the Old Testament. Job speaks better than he fully understands.
He knows that justice cannot end at the grave when you have a holy God and a living
Redeemer who will surely vindicate his people. What Job sees dimly,
Christ fulfills perfectly. Jesus is that living Redeemer who entered into history, and like Job, he stood around a group of people who were falsely accusing him of sin.
And Jesus, like Job, suffered, not because of his wrongdoing, but unlike Job, Jesus was perfect, and unlike Job, Jesus conquered death.
Where Job hopes to see God after death, he's clinging to that hope. Christ makes that vision possible by reconciling sinners to the
Father. Job's hope in that sense is not speculation, but it's prophetic agony.
It finds its fulfillment, its clarity, and its certainty in Christ and Christ alone.
So as you read Job 17 through 20 today, listen for the moment when Job stops arguing his case before men and begins appealing directly to heaven.
Watch how the dialogue hardens, not because truth is fading, but because his friend's theology can't survive under the weight of who
God is. The conversation, from Job's perspective, is moving towards exhaustion, but it's preparing the way for God himself to come and speak himself in the book of Job.
And with that, read your Bible carefully, devotionally and joyfully, and may the
Lord use his word to sanctify you completely, and we will continue our journey tomorrow.