Insight for Today
A Daily Devotional by Pastor Chuck Swindoll

Job's Longing

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“Oh, that my words could be recorded. Oh, that they could be inscribed on a monument,

carved with an iron chisel and filled with lead, engraved forever in the rock. (Job 19:23–24)

Job longed for his words of woe to be etched into granite so that people through time could enter into all the things he was enduring. He thought his words would be forgotten. He had no idea that his words would survive him. Yet, think of it, God chose to include them in His eternal Word! Along with Scriptures like Genesis 1, Psalm 23, Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 13, and Revelation 22, we call to mind Job 19:25–27 to this day!

As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will take His stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God; whom I myself shall behold, and whom my eyes will see and not another. My heart faints within me! (Job 19:25–27)

Thanks to Handel's Magnum Opus, every Christmas season we hear that message over and over again. Little did Job realize in his dreadful anguish that his Lord would honor his name by preserving his words for all the world to hear and sing!

I need to pause right here and speak to you whose God is distant and silent. And, perhaps (like Job), your friends have begun to turn against you. There is a future that is brighter than your wildest dreams! As Job will one day experience, justice will win out, God will replace evil, and right will eclipse wrong. In the end, God wins. And so will we. Job will be vindicated and remembered and respected. And all the Zophars, Bildads, and Eliphazes will be judged, silenced, and forgotten. "Then be afraid of the sword for yourselves, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, so that you may know there is judgment" (Job 19:29).

In all his misery, Job had not lost sight of who was right and who was wrong. He reminded all three men that "judgment and punishment are not coming my way; they're coming yours."

Focus on the future!