This is Spoken Gospel.

We’re dedicated to seeing
Jesus in all of scripture.

In each episode, we see what’s
happening in a Biblical text,

and how it sheds light
on Jesus and his gospel.

Let’s jump in.

Job’s friends are growing
increasingly frustrated with Job.

So, they spend most of their time
implicating Job in the fates of wicked people.

Bildad describes the consequences of rejecting
God in ways that mirror Job’s own suffering.

And then he writes Job
off for not knowing God.

Zophar then does the same and says Job’s
sufferings prove that God is angry at him.

But Job does know God.

And we know that God is not angry with him.

Job’s friends are drawing illegitimate conclusions
about Job because they had taken a piece
of biblical truth too far.

The book of Proverbs talks extensively about the way
that God rewards the upright and punishes the wicked.

Now, as a description of
God’s justice, that’s true.

But the Bible never takes the leap that
Bildad, Eliphaz, and Zophar do with Job.

The Bible never says that everyone who suffers is wicked.
The Bible never says that health and wealth
are irrefutable signs of good behavior.

This is why Job spends all of chapter 21 detailing
the ways the wicked—and not the upright—prosper.

Bad people constantly live free
from fear and surrounded by wealth.

Job points out that his friend’s ideas
about God and justice are broken.

Their worldview doesn’t allow for the real and self-evident
categories of innocent suffering and evil prosperity.

But this doesn’t mean Job
understands God and suffering either.

Job compares God to a merciless predator.

He accuses God of lashing
out in anger at him.

He also insinuates that
God is failing to judge evil.

As Job intensifies his language against God, so do
his cries for someone to represent him before God.

Job wants someone to prove that it’s possible
to be both innocent and still suffer.

Job firmly believes that a redeemer, or an
advocate, will stand with him in his suffering,

represent his case before God, and help him
understand why all this has happened to him.

Some of us suffer all of the time,
and all of us suffer some of the time.

And when we suffer, it’s easy to absorb the non-biblical idea that all
suffering is due to sin, and all success
is due to our obedience.

That makes it even easier to blame ourselves.

We believe, like Job’s friends kept insisting,
that we’re the reason for our suffering.

Now, that logic makes a cruel kind of sense.

It makes sense to blame
our poverty on our laziness.

Or to think God is finally getting back at
us for all the stupid things we did as teenagers.

It’s easy for those of us who are chronically
ill to ask: “What did I do to deserve this?”

It’s easy to wonder, as you watch other people get ahead
faster than you, that God must love them more than you.

When our minds, our world, and our friends blame us
for our innocent suffering, we need an advocate
to remind us of our innocence.

We need a redeemer to salvage our reputation,
even if it’s just from the voice in our head.

And that Redeemer is Jesus.

Jesus calls us innocent when we trust in him.

Jesus does battle against every thought and
friend who uses our suffering against us
to prove their theological point.

If God gave up his own son to include us in
his family, how will he not also give us everything

we needed to salvage our
reputation from our accusers?

There is no accusation of blame that can stand and no suffering
is ever proof that we are separated from the love of Jesus.

So, may the Holy Spirit open your eyes to see the God
who rewards the upright and punishes the wicked.

And may you see Jesus as the Redeemer
who lives and gives us our day in court.