Daily Dose of Hope

March 19, 2025

Day 4 of Week 51

Scripture:  Job 21-23; Psalm 101; Revelation 16

Welcome back to the Daily Dose of Hope, the devotional and podcast that complements the daily Bible reading plan at New Hope Church in Brandon, Florida.  It’s Wednesday but we DO NOT have Recharge tonight.  It was canceled due to Hillsborough County Spring Break.  So take this time to do something fun!  Now, we move to our Scripture reading.

For our Old Testament reading, we are back in Job.  These continue to be hard chapters with more back and forth between Job and his so-called friends. Neither Job nor his friends understood God’s ways. But there were significant differences between how Job and his friends approached Job’s situation. First, his friends confidently and arrogantly asserted that they did understand God’s ways, claiming that God punishes the evil and blesses the righteous. Job, on the other hand, admits his confusion and frustration, citing many examples of evil and sinful people living good lives and escaping calamity just fine. Second, for Job’s friends, these were somewhat abstract questions of moral theory and interesting discussion topics; for the seriously suffering Job, these were questions with real-life application that affected how he processed the world and his faith in God. 

In the midst of really hard life experiences, have you ever met someone who seemed to “understand” just what God was doing in your life?  I haven’t commented a lot on what Job’s friends are doing but I can’t help but at least say something.  The reality is that because of the pervasiveness of sin, we live in a very broken world. Bad stuff happens and there isn’t always a reason. Often, we have more questions for God than answers. And how God works in the midst of it all is much more complex than we can dare to comprehend. What we can trust in is that God is loving, trustworthy, and always good. He does not cause bad things to occur in our lives. In fact, he often takes the bad and uses it for his good in some way. The hard part is we may not see or understand this for a long, long time. As Christians, let’s try to NOT look anything like Job’s friends but simply be willing to listen and love as our family and friends experience hardship and heartache. 

Our New Testament reading is Revelation 16.  It’s getting ugly. God has assured his people that they are safe but really no one else is. God’s wrath is about to be poured out on those who were marked by the beast, aka the evil one. Throughout the chapter, we read about the cups of God’s wrath being poured out. I don’t know about you, but I find it very hard to read. While I don’t think these images in Revelation are meant to all be taken literally, we do have to come to terms with the fact that Jesus will return and he will judge us. Those who belong to him will be safe and protected. Those who don’t belong to him will face the wrath of God. Will that mean boils and fire? Probably not, but these cups of wrath do represent something real, something we don’t understand.

I want to highlight verse 15 today, “Look, I come like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake and remains clothed, so as not to go naked and be shamefully exposed. Think back to the teachings of Jesus. Matthew 24:42-44, “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

Jesus, in his earthly ministry, made many references to being ready for the coming reign of God. As much as it makes us feel uncomfortable, he also spoke of being ready for the coming judgment. Notice how now, in Rev. 16:15 , the resurrected Lord is saying that he will come like a thief; blessed is the one who stays awake and remain clothed. I think we need to stop and reflect on this issue of being ready. Some people may say that we’ve been waiting for Jesus so long, he will never come. But the Bible clearly says he will. Certainly, we aren’t to sit around and be scared, nor are we to watch the clouds and wait (as many of the early Christians did.) We are to simply do life, expanding his Kingdom, living as he called us to live. But there is something to this whole idea of readiness. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Spend some time in prayer about this today.

Blessings,

Pastor Vicki