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hope in the LORD

Job 16:1-22 (JDV)

Job 16:1 Then Job answered and said:
Job 16:2 I have heard many things like these. You are all working hard to comfort me.
Job 16:3 Is there no end to your windy words? What provokes you that you continue answering?
Job 16:4 I could also talk like you if you were in my place, I could string words together against you and shake my head at you.
Job 16:5 Instead, I would encourage you with my mouth, and the consolation from my lips would bring relief.
Job 16:6 If I speak, my suffering is not relieved, and if I hold back, does any of it leave me?
Job 16:7 Surely, he has now exhausted me. You have devastated my entire family.
Job 16:8 You have shrivelled me up — it has become a witness; my frailty rises up against me and testifies to my face.
Job 16:9 His anger tears at me, and he harasses me. He gnashes his teeth at me. My enemy pierces me with his eyes.
Job 16:10 They open their mouths against me and strike my cheeks with contempt; they join themselves together against me.
Job 16:11 God hands me over to the unjust; he throws me to the wicked.
Job 16:12 I was at ease, but he shattered me; he seized me by the scruff of the neck and smashed me to pieces. He set me up as his target;
Job 16:13 his archers surround me. He pierces my kidneys without mercy and pours my bile on the ground.
Job 16:14 He breaks through my defences again and again; he charges at me like a warrior.
Job 16:15 I have sewn sackcloth over my skin; I have buried my horn in the dust.
Job 16:16 My face has grown red with weeping, and darkness covers my eyes,
Job 16:17 although my hands are free from violence and my prayer is pure.
Job 16:18 Ground, do not cover my blood; may my cry for help find no resting place.
Job 16:19 Even now my witness is in the sky, and my advocate is in the heights!
Job 16:20 My friends scoff at me as I weep before God.
Job 16:21 I wish that a healthy man might argue with God just as any son of Adam would for a friend.
Job 16:22 For only a few years will pass before I go the way of no return.

Job knew that he was going to die. If he did not die of his present illness, at least in a few years he would succumb to the inevitable (Job 16:22). So, he asks a very important question, a question that much of the world still gets wrong. He asks where his hope is. Is it in death? No, death is going to Sheol and darkness and decay (the worm). Death is not Job’s hope. Job’s hope is the LORD.

Martha told Jesus that she knew her dead brother would rise on resurrection day.

“Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”” John 11:24

Jesus told Martha that he would be the one to raise Lazarus (and every other believer)from the dead on that day:

“Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life.1 Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”” John 11:25-26

Job, by faith looked beyond the reality of his own death, and held to a hope in God. He did not know Jesus’ name, but he trusted him just the same.

LORD, give us the wisdom to – like Job –put our hope not in death, but in your resurrection.