December 15-19
[M] Job 12-14; Psalm 100; Revelation 13
[T] Job 15-17; Revelation 14
[W] Job 18-20; Psalm 141; Revelation 15
[T] Job 21-23; Psalm 101; Revelation 16
[F] Job 24-27; Revelation 17
Dwell Plan Day 251-255 | CSB | Digital PDF | Printable PDF
Notes from Jon & Chris
Monday
Job 12:3; 13:2 | “I am not inferior to you.” | You could translate this as “stop talking down to me!” This repeated comment gives you an insight into the tone and tension of this conversation. Job is written in an exalted poetic style, not in the way that folks just naturally talk, but it still has the attitudes and sentiments that are in ordinary conversations! “Stop talking to me like I’m an idiot” is something we’ve all felt, even if we haven’t said it out loud. But this points out a real pitfall in helping folks that are suffering: don’t teach them or talk down to them like they really need your advice. That attitude happens way too much when “nice people” are trying to help out. Beware of this in your own heart or practice. Folks who are suffering badly do not often need your advice or insight, and even if they do need it, they don’t want it in the middle of their affliction. Well meaning friends can be devastatingly unhelpful at times. To be humble before someone who is suffering is much harder to do, but is the only attitude and posture that can ever bring healing.
Job 13:15 | Job’s words capture the deep tension of real faith. He’s saying, “Even if God lets my life fall apart, I’m still holding on to Him. And I’m still bringing Him my questions.” This isn’t a quiet, polished confidence; it’s the gritty trust of someone who refuses to walk away even when he doesn’t understand what God is doing. Job hopes in God while also arguing his case before Him. It’s honest, raw, fully human faith—a faith that clings to God in the dark and trusts His character even when His ways feel hidden.
And this kind of faith finds its ultimate anchor in the death of Christ. At the cross, God Himself stepped into our suffering, taking on the worst evil and injustice the world could offer. Jesus was “slain,” yet in that very moment He secured our hope forever. The cross shows us that God doesn’t abandon His people in their pain; He enters it, bears it, and transforms it. So when we echo Job’s words, we’re not grasping for a distant God. We’re holding on to the One who suffered for us, loves us, and promises that even the darkest valleys cannot separate us from His mercy.
Job 14 | Job’s reflections on the brevity of life remind us that wise, gospel-shaped people think often and honestly about their own death. Jonathan Edwards even resolved to “think much on all occasions of my own dying,” not morbidly, but so he could live with clarity, humility, and hope. Christians aren’t meant to avoid the thought of their death; we’re meant to see it in light of Christ’s victory. That’s why we can hold both thoughts in a way that sounds so strange to the world: “I don’t want to die, but I can’t wait to be dead.” There’s something deeply Christian in that tension. We’re not eager for pain, but we are eager for the presence of Jesus. Thinking about death isn’t fear for the believer—it becomes fuel for living faithfully, gratefully, and eternally minded right now.
And this is exactly the kind of heartbeat Paul shows in Philippians when he says he longs “to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better,” yet remains gladly in the work God has given him. Christians live right in that space: fully present, fully engaged in this world, yet quietly longing for the day when all sorrow is healed and all joy is made whole. Job’s longing, Edwards’s resolution, Paul’s tension—they all point us to a life anchored in resurrection hope. We don’t rush death and we don’t fear it. We walk toward it one day at a time knowing that on the other side stands the One who defeated it. And that hope—steady, eternal, unshakeable—frees us to live today with courage, peace, and open hands.
Revelation 13:10; 14:12 | Both of these verses use the expression of a “call for endurance” to the saints. It’s the application note in the middle of the vision, giving us an immediate practical use for all of this imagery and prophesy: learn to wait and endure the crazy. And the crazy is being described in horrific and mysterious detail. But what’s the point of the specific numbers and durations and imaginative descriptions? Our God knows we have vivid imaginations, He made us that way. So why does God include this jumble of word pictures and numbers?
One thing to remember is something Christ taught us about how God reveals things: sometimes God obscures things intentionally. He has purposes in it, purposes to frustrate smart people who think they can figure everything out, purposes for His own glory, and purposes that will become clearer at the time of prophetic fulfillment.
But it’s the stated purpose that we have to be mindful of: So that you can endure. So that you make it through. So that after all the chips fall you’re still the one standing. And if you’re not standing, it’s not because you gave up, it’s because you’re with Him. The crazy is coming, that’s one thing we know for certain when we read these chapters. It’s coming, you can count on it. And what are all of these wild predictions and visualizations? Just what the text says they are: a call for the endurance of the saints.
Revelation 13:18 | For a long time, the number 666 has been turned into a kind of Christian jumpscare. People have pointed to presidents, popes, credit cards, microchips—almost anything—to try to prove the “end” was right around the corner. But this is exactly the kind of fear-based reading Revelation warns us against. John invites Christians to respond with wisdom, not panic. The number isn’t meant to terrify believers but to help them see what beastly, anti-God allegiance looks like in every age. When 666 is ripped out of its context and treated like a superstition, we lose sight of what Revelation was really given for: not to spook the church, but to steady it.
And when you look closely at John’s world, the most likely interpretation becomes clear. The number 666 functions as an anti-Shema—a twisted parody of Israel’s daily prayer that called God’s people to love the Lord with all their heart and bind His commands on their hands and foreheads. Instead of loyal love for God, the beast demands loyalty to its violent, self-exalting kingdom. And the number itself likely points to Nero Caesar, whose name in Hebrew letters adds up to 666. Nero embodied everything the beast represents—brutality, ego, and a counterfeit claim to divine authority.
The encouragement for us? Revelation isn’t warning you to fear a number. It’s reminding you that every empire built on pride and coercion eventually collapses. But those who follow the Lamb—those sealed with His name—belong to a kingdom that cannot be shaken. Stay close to Him. Let His mark—His mercy, His humility, His presence—shape your hands and your heart today.
Tuesday
Job 15–21 | This is the second cycle of speeches, where the conversation between Job and his three friends becomes sharper and more entrenched. This time, the friends repeat the same basic argument but with greater intensity: they insist that the world works on a simple principle (good things happen to the righteous and suffering happens to the wicked) so Job must be hiding some sin. Their tone grows more accusatory, even harsh. Job responds with equal honesty, pushing back harder and insisting that their neat moral formulas don’t match reality. He knows he has not committed the kind of evil they’re accusing him of, yet he can’t explain why God has allowed such devastation. As the cycle progresses, you can feel the breakdown in the dialogue: the friends stop listening, Job becomes more anguished, and the gap between them widens. Reading these chapters helps us see the limits of human wisdom—how easy it is to speak truth wrongly, to try to defend God with oversimplifications, and to wound people who are suffering.
Revelation 13:16-14:1 | The mark of the beast! Is it a QR code? Is it a tattoo? Is it a surgically implanted chip? This is such a well known biblical meme that it’s a modern cultural artifact. In the 1980’s there was a scare in the Christian world, a fear that gripped the church so much they came up with a name for it: the satanic panic. Pretty catchy. There were stories, which were later discovered to be made up, about covens sacrificing children all across America. Those sorts of things do happen, people are as wicked as the Scripture says they are and they aren’t showing any signs of stopping. But there really wasn’t any widespread ritualistic satanism in every suburban neighborhood. It was fearmongering for money. It sold books and speaking junkets for years. But here’s the problem with many interpretations of Revelation, and many other texts as well, they don’t read context. They don’t read one sentence into the next chapter. The saved people get QR codes/tattoos/implanted chips too, except theirs are the name of the Lamb and His Father. Everyone gets marked. Everyone—it’s just a question of which mark you get. So this “mark of the beast” meme is all wrong. It isn’t about figuring out the special “brand” or logo or number that the beast is going to use, it’s about whether you have God’s mark or evil’s mark all over your life. It’s about the binary choice of eternity, and how that choice becomes visibly distinguishable as history unfolds and your life is lived. As we were told by Jesus: by their fruit you will know who they are.
Revelation 14:1–5 | In this scene, the 144,000 aren’t a literal headcount of elite believers or a spiritual “cutoff number” for heaven the way some groups teach. Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, claim this refers to a fixed group of 144,000 who alone will be with God in heaven—an idea the passage itself doesn’t support. Others teach that this number represents a future group of ethnically Jewish believers sealed during a specific period of history. But Revelation is saturated with symbolic numbers pulled from the Old Testament, and in that world 12×12×1000 is a picture of completeness—the full people of God, the redeemed family of the Lamb. As the Bible Project video explains, John hears the number (144,000) but then sees the multitude standing with the Lamb later, showing that the number is symbolic of all who belong to Jesus, marked by His name and shaped by His faithfulness. The picture isn’t about exclusivity or scarcity—it’s about the security, purity, and joy of God’s whole rescued people, standing with Christ as the new creation dawns.
Wednesday
Job 19:25–26 | Some scholars argue that the Hebrew Scriptures have little or nothing to say about life after death, as if Israel’s hope were limited to this world alone. But Job is widely considered the oldest book in the Hebrew Bible, and here—right in the middle of Job’s deep suffering—we find one of the clearest, boldest statements of resurrection hope anywhere in scripture. Job expects to see God “in my flesh,” even after his skin has been destroyed. His confidence reaches beyond the grave, beyond decay, beyond everything that has been taken from him. Whatever uncertainties Job wrestles with, his deepest confession is that his Redeemer is alive, and that death itself will not keep him from standing before God. This alone is enough to overturn the claim that early Israelite faith had no category for real life beyond death, because right here, at the very beginning of the biblical story, Job is clinging to it.
And for us, these words open straight into the heart of the gospel. The Redeemer Job longed for is the Redeemer who came, who stood upon the earth, entered our suffering, and then rose bodily from the grave. Because Jesus lives, Job’s hope becomes our hope: a real physical resurrection, a restored body, and the joy of seeing Christ face-to-face. That’s why Christians can stare down the hardest parts of life without collapsing. Our Redeemer lives. He will stand again upon the earth. And in our own resurrected flesh—renewed, healed, whole—we will see Him with our own eyes. This is not wishful thinking. It is the beating heart of Christian hope.
Job 20 | Zophar’s speech shows a worldview that looks a lot like karma: you get what you deserve, good or bad, and life always pays people back in neat predictable ways. But that kind of universe is ultimately hopeless—because who among us could ever bear the weight of getting exactly what we deserve? Grace has no place in a world like Zophar’s. But the gospel tells a completely different story. Instead of karma, we live under the mercy of a God who doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve and who stepped into our brokenness to bear the judgment we could never carry. When the world feels unfair, or when suffering doesn’t make sense, the answer isn’t to tighten our grip on formulas that promise control. It’s to rest in the God who loves sinners, carries sufferers, and rewrites our story with unearned kindness. In Christ, we don’t get what we deserve—we get what He deserves.
Thursday
Job 21:22 | Job’s question exposes a sin that is everywhere in our modern world: the assumption that we stand above God, that our instincts, desires, and judgments are more trustworthy than His. We elevate the individual so highly that we start to believe we can correct God, revise Him, or sit in judgment over His ways. But Job reminds us how absurd that is: the God who judges the highest beings doesn’t need our instruction. And here’s the grace-filled twist: God’s ways are infinitely better than ours. If we were in charge, salvation would be something we earn, achieve, or prove. But God, in Christ, gives it freely to sinners who could never earn it. Instead of resenting God’s authority, we should rejoice in it. His ways are not just higher—they are kinder, wiser, and filled with mercy we would never have written into our own story.
Job 23:13–17 | In his suffering, Job begins to feel the sheer weight of God’s greatness, not in an abstract theological way, but in the raw, trembling nearness of a God who cannot be controlled or cornered. Job realizes that God’s purposes stand, that nothing can ultimately turn His hand, and the thought overwhelms him. Yet this fear is not the fear of running from God; it’s the fear of someone who is beginning to grasp just how vast, sovereign, and holy God truly is. Suffering has stripped away Job’s illusions of control, leaving him face-to-face with the God whose plans reach far beyond his understanding. And strangely, this is grace. Because the more we sense God’s awesomeness, the more we’re freed from the crushing burden of trying to run our own universe. The God who feels overwhelming is also the God who holds us, sees us, and bends all His sovereign purposes toward our good.
Revelation 16:7 | Here we are given a glimpse into something our modern world rarely reflects on: the righteous judgments of God. When the heavenly altar proclaims that God’s judgments are true and just, it’s not celebrating cruelty—it’s celebrating goodness. Scripture shows that the wrath of God is not an outburst or divine irritation. It is His steady holy opposition to all that corrupts, destroys, and dehumanizes His creation. If God truly loves what is good, He must stand against what is evil. A God who shrugs at injustice or brushes aside wickedness would not be loving; He would be indifferent. Revelation reminds us that God is anything but indifferent.
And while the idea of God’s wrath can feel unsettling, it is actually a profound source of hope for believers. In a world where abuse, violence, oppression, and cruelty often go unanswered, the wrath of God means that evil will not have the last word. God takes seriously what we would prefer to ignore. His justice is not cold or mechanical; it is moral, holy, and rooted in His character. The worship of heaven affirms God’s judgments because He is finally putting the world right. Without divine wrath, darkness would win. With it, goodness prevails.
But the gospel reveals something even deeper: the God whose judgments are true and just is the same God who stepped into history to bear His own judgment on our behalf. On the cross, Jesus absorbed the wrath our sin deserved, standing in our place so that we could stand before God forgiven and free. This is where justice and mercy meet—God satisfies righteousness while pouring out undeserved grace on sinners. Jesus received what we deserved so that we might receive what He deserved. This is the heart of redemption.
And this is why removing the wrath of God in an attempt to make Him “more loving” actually erases the most loving act that has ever occurred: the cross. If there is no wrath, then Jesus bore nothing for us. There is no substitute, no atonement, no rescue. The cross becomes inspiration rather than salvation. But when we hold Revelation 16:7 alongside the cross, we see the full beauty of the gospel: the God whose judgments are perfectly just is the same God who justifies the ungodly through the self-giving sacrifice of His Son. The wrath of God is not the part of Christianity we hide—it is the backdrop that makes the mercy of Christ shine all the brighter.
Friday
Job 25 | Bildad’s final speech is strikingly brief, almost as if he has run out of arguments. His whole point boils down to this: in comparison to God’s majesty and purity, humans are insignificant and morally polluted, like maggots or worms. And while there’s a grain of truth in what he says, it’s twisted by the same mistake the friends have made throughout the book. Bildad uses God’s greatness not to comfort Job but to condemn him, leaving no room for compassion, relationship, or grace. He reduces humanity to nothing and leaves Job without hope. What he misses (and what the rest of Scripture makes clear) is that God’s greatness doesn’t erase His love; it magnifies it. The God whose holiness dwarfs all creation is the same God who draws near to the brokenhearted, restores the suffering, and lifts the dust-bound sinner into dignity, forgiveness, and eternal life.
Job 26–31 | These chapters form Job’s final extended speech before Elihu enters in chapter 32. Here Job responds to his friends one last time, rejecting their rigid belief that suffering must always be the direct result of personal sin. He reflects on God’s majesty, laments the injustice he sees in the world, remembers the goodness he once knew, and ultimately declares his integrity before God. Job is not claiming perfection; he is insisting that the friends’ simplistic formula cannot explain the depth of his suffering. This literary unit shows Job at his most honest, humbled, frustrated, reverent, and hopeful, opening his heart before God and preparing the reader for God’s answer.
Job’s speech contains several movements: in chapter 26, Job rebukes his friends’ empty counsel and celebrates God’s greatness and the mysteries of creation. In chapter 27, he holds firmly to his integrity while acknowledging the ultimate judgment of the wicked. Chapter 28 breaks into a poetic hymn on the nature of true wisdom—wisdom hidden from human effort but known to God alone. In chapters 29 and 30, Job contrasts the honor and blessing he once experienced with the humiliation and suffering he now endures. He closes in chapter 31 with a series of solemn oaths, calling down curses on himself if he has committed various sins, and boldly asks for a hearing before God. This structure prepares the reader for the dramatic moment when God finally speaks.
Revelation 17:6, 14 | This text shows the terrifying power of evil in the world; evil that is not just abstract but actively hostile to God’s people. The woman drunk with the blood of the saints is a picture of systems, cultures, and powers that have always opposed God’s kingdom and harmed His people. But the hope of the chapter comes in verse 14: these powers can make war on the Lamb, but they cannot defeat Him. The Lamb conquers—not by coercion or brutality, but by His sacrificial love and sovereign authority. And those who belong to Him are described as “called, chosen, and faithful,” not because they are strong enough to stand against the world’s darkness on their own, but because they are held by the One who already won. Revelation reminds us that even when evil looks overwhelming, the Lamb reigns, and all who stand with Him will share in His victory.
Revelation 17:8 | Every week we (Cross & Crown) begin worship with a song called the Gloria Patri, which means to the glory of the Father. In this ancient and short song we repeat one of the Bible’s beautiful descriptions of God’s eternal nature. We declare that as it was in the beginning, it is also now, and also ever will be. We adore our God’s nature and His immutability—He is beyond all change. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We cling to this, because what is true about our God is also true about His words and His choices.
This beautiful expression of praise becomes a horror when it describes the beast in Revelation. The whole expression is turned upside down. This is the anti-Christ spelled out for us. “The beast who was, is not, is to come.” The intrinsic nature of evil is how it empties meaning, how it is anti God. It is defined this way: it has no real definition in itself, because it cannot even make itself or sustain itself. It’s inconstant. It was something at one point. Then it was zero, just nothing at all. Then it was something that comes along. It is nothing like God.
The contrast is striking. We are the folks written in the Lamb’s book before the foundations of the world—like before the earth and the sun and the moon were even things. That’s how we’re defined, and it's a definition that rests and relies on God being who He is: unchanging and eternal.
Revelation 17:14 | A lamb wins. A lamb. It makes the beast and the whore of Babylon and the dragon all seem pretty weak and stupid. After all, they were beaten by a little lamb. Who wins wars with lambs? But that’s the wonderful comedy that sits in the text so plainly. We’ve read it enough not to chuckle at how absurd that line really is: the Lamb will win. Are you kidding me? Lambs are for butchering.
But that’s the gospel from the first words of Jesus in the New Testament: blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Christ wins when He dies, executed on a trash dump in a backwater city of an ancient empire. Folks executed on a Friday don’t have any victory to offer on a Sunday or Monday morning or another day for the rest of time. Except for the Lamb. Kings and kingdoms will wage wars and billionaires will plot takeovers. But they can’t compete with the Lamb. And we don’t have the power to stand against them or to protect ourselves from being used and victimized. Apart from the Lamb. Praise Him! For this reason we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered, and we win.