PSA Bible Reading Challenge 2025-2026

In chapter 22 the words of one of Job’s friends caught my attention. He specifically accused Job of demanding money from his family, not clothing the naked, not given water to drink or food to eat to those who needed it, and he sent away the widow who was in need empty handed. These are very specific charges that echo in many respects the Matthew 25 parable which Jesus uses much later. We never see Job respond to these very, very specific charges, and it is a bit disturbing. I had always seen Job as being wrongfully accused.

The accusations against Job had always been generalized for me and his answers always revolved around the Providence of God and how that Providence can be translated into fickleness. Who are we, just the clay in the potter’s hand. Who are we, just the creatures who are at the whim of the creation. This is where his defense came from, a defense of generalities which didn’t really have to respond to specific charges. I had never seen, or thought about as I was reading, that these could be specific charges. This changes things a bit for me and reminds me that we are all sinners in the hands of a loving God. Even the most righteous demonstrates a callousness that maybe we didn’t think existed in them.

The back and forth between Job and his friends continues. At one point Job states, I am not really arguing with you, but I am actually arguing with God. He is the one who has placed me in this condition. He points out how the unjust are the ones who die at an old age and those around them who judge them say that their children will be judged as a result. Job says, what do they care if their children are judged, they seemed to have gotten away with disobedience and sin and are able to enjoy all that they want without any skin off their back.

Paul finishes up Romans with a greetings to all the churches. Remember, we are pretty sure that Paul has never had the chance to see this church and meet its people in Rome. He loves them but does not actually know them first hand. It is not a church that he had started.

We find Job defends himself this time not in a conversation with God, but rather with a conversation with his friends, telling them that he too could accuse them and show them how bad they are if they were in his position. But he insists that they do not know him and that he is innocent of what they accuse him of: inevitable sin as a result of the life in which he is currently living. He must not have been involved in clean living since he is in the current state the he finds himself.

Romans gives us again some great theological truths. Chapter 12, especially from verses 9-21 contain some of the verses that I try to point to when I am preaching. It even includes the words that I use in the benediction: return no one evil for evil. Paul understands that the way to salvation has been opened by the disobedience of Israel, but it also remains open for the people of Israel as well as the gentiles, that would be us.

There is nothing new in Job’s defense of himself, and nothing new in the accusations of his friends. Job agrees with his friends that it is God who is causing this to happen, but disagrees with them that it is a result of Job’s wrongdoings that God is making this happen. Job portrays God as a bit more capricious than his friends do. Job even states that God makes calamity fall on both the just and the unjust, very similar to how in Matthew Jesus states that the rain falls on both the righteous and the unrighteous. In Romans we see that we are all unrighteous and so we all deserve to be condemned. Thanks be to God that we don’t get what we deserve!

There is a nice synchronicity between the Job and the Romans Scriptures. Romans reminds us that nothing can separate us from God, and I mean absolutely nothing. Job has once again another friend accuse him of doing evil, which has to be why he is suffering and Job defending himself and daring anyone to put him on trial to see what wrongdoing he may have committed. As a reminder, it is important for us to know that we are sinners and that the wages of sin are death, as we read in Romans. So in a sense we do all stand accused. But Job was living under the law and there was a real cause and effect going on with him. When Job sins he asks for forgiveness and offers a sacrifice and all is forgiven. But without that act, nothing is forgiven. For us under the new covenant, and in Christ, we choose to whom we are slaves, sin or Jesus. If we are slaves to Christ then no longer is there a need for continual sacrifice for Jesus was that sacrifice once and for all.

We have to believe that Romans finds itself at the core of our theological understanding. In 5 we read about how we are justified in Jesus Christ, while in Adam we were condemned. It is important to understand how we were made and who we are today. We were all made in the image of God and so we need a Savior not because of any original sin that Adam had committee and as a result we come under judgment. No, we are under judgment because of the sin that we have committed and because we have decided to not be reconciled with God.

In Job we read about his “friends” who come to visit him and plead with him to confess his wrongdoing, after all, it must have been something that he had done in order for him to find himself in this position. But Job responds and pleads with God to answer for him to his friend, or it is not his righteousness that is at stake, as we will see later, but rather potentially God’s actions which might come under trial.

Red Bortzfield has entered hospice and he told me that he could relate to Job and the suffering that his body has undergone. There is a puzzling relationship between God and Satan where God almost wants to prove to Satan that no matter how far you push Job, he will always remain faithful, and he does. Even when he loses his property, his children, and his health, he remains faithful and loves the Lord with all of his heart mind and strength.

Paul in Romans also undergoes a whole variety of hardships, and yet remains the champion of the faith. He gives us the foundation of our faith as we read that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of the Lord. He lays out clearly for us that we are all in need of a Savior. Nothing can take the place of Jesus when it comes to salvation, not our efforts or our works, but only the blood of Jesus. Of this, he says, he is not ashamed to proclaim. He is not ashamed to declare that Jesus is Savior and that we are all in need of a Savior. Good way to start off the morning.

I was going to speak about the Gospel of Joy, which Philippians is described as, even though it is a letter from Paul. I was going to speak about the second chapter and the kenosis witnessed in Jesus emptying himself for our sake, allowing himself to suffer, even to the point of death on a cross. I was going to speak about Psalm 42 and the very well known psalm of lament that asks God where he is in the midst of suffering. But then Proverbs 20:30 caught my attention and distracted me. All of those other Scriptures are much more significant, they are words from God to live by, but vs.30 didn’t make any sense to me, in fact it was a bit of a bummer for me: “Blows that wound cleanse away evil; beatings make clean the innermost parts.”

I know that we are in the Old Testament and everything has to be taken within context, but it is still disturbing and not something that I would ever recommend that we pass on from generation to generation. How I make sense of it is this Proverb is all about discipline and how those who are undisciplined, and even disobedient, are not able to glean from what is harvested. There are repercussions to disobedience. This author reminds us that sometimes those repercussions reveal themselves in the physical. Let’s go with that.

Let’s consider who wrote Proverbs and who the Psalms. Solomon is attributed to writing Proverbs, which is a good thing because he was considered the wisest man who ever lived. God gave him a dose of wisdom because he asked for it, and so his sayings are true and worth considering. His sayings, as mentioned previously, contain the clear dualism between good and evil, correct action and false or harmful actions. It is important as we read Proverbs to recognize that there is nothing scandalous in these words, but there are truths that we often do not follow. This is especially true with wealth, which tends to be our, the Western world’s, golden calf. We worship wealth, we tend to pursue wealth at all costs.

The Psalms were written by the father of Solomon, so they would have been written before Proverbs, and this was King David. Now, many of them were written after he was anointed but before he entered into Jerusalem as the rightful king. Many were written while the king on the throne, Saul, was pursuing him, and God would deliver him time after time. But we see not just the poetry of the psalms, but also the stark honesty, and the bitter laments as David is known to be one who was a sinner, like the rest of us. Just that his sin becomes very public and has a deep impact upon his family and upon his future and the future of his family. We don’t see quite the same for Solomon, as it seems that he follows the Lord’s will without these times of sin that are so public and so egregious.

We bring the book of Nehemiah to a close and in it we find the people of God rediscover the law and have it read to them. At the reading the people say “Amen” and from there they begin to observe the religious festival days that had been relegated to history. Nehemiah also insists, and much of this book is written in the first person, that the people of God obey the Sabbath. So much so that when he sees merchants around Jerusalem selling goods he closes the city gates at the start of the Sabbath and does not open them until the Sabbath is completely over. I have often thought what it would look like to not shop for anything, on line or in person, on a Sunday. Nehemiah commands the people that they should have a walk with the Lord unlike that which their ancestors had, which led to them being in slavery.