Job-A Real Man, Job 3:31-26

                                               By Pastor Rich Paradis

 

Job has “passed” the first tests of Satan. He was been stripped of his family and his possessions and concluded chapter 1 with a time of worship. In chapter 2, Job was attacked in his own body and noted that to accept good from God and not adversity was to miss the point of God’s sovereignty and reign. His friends have showed up and made an initial connection of care with him. So now what? The final scene of chapter 2 was four men sitting on the ground in silence because of the great pain inflicted on one of them. Let’s continue our look at the man Job…

 

I.                    Some Transitional Thoughts    Job 3:1a

a.       With the very first thoughts of chapter 3, we run into some very probing questions for both Job in the local context and for all believers that suffer in the greater context. Again, we have decided that to read Job as some sort of quick read without considering the pain, anguish and despair of it is to make it far less that it should be. There is incredible emotion in this account. Don’t allow yourself to miss that emotion because of the pain and personal-ness of it or you will miss something very important.

b.      Job has been sitting on the ground with 3 friends for a week now. He is covered from head to toe with boils (or one giant one!). He has said nothing to his friends and they have said nothing to him. But that doesn’t mean that nothing has been going on in Job’s head or the head of his friends.

c.       The silence will be broken now as Verse 1a opens up. What will Job say? Is Job “healed” because his friends have showed up and displayed compassion? Has “time healed all wounds”?

 

II.                 Why Was I Born…?    Job 3:1b-10

a.       We don’t have to wait long to get some answers to the questions above. Verse 1b-2 says that Job “opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth”! WOW! How could this happen? Job is the man of faith, right? Job is the one that passed the tests with flying colors, right?

b.      In this transitional chapter, we will now run into the fact that even great men like Job struggle and even more clearly we will see that God would prefer honesty to a bunch of clichés that merely try to mask the pain or “play through it”. It is important to note that while Job will curse the day of his birth, he will never curse God. Even though he will doubt God’s care, he will never doubt God’s existence. And it is also noteworthy that Job does not seem to consider ending his life. He is merely wondering and lamenting that it started at all.

c.       The desire to Satan is not to only to destroy your body and your stuff. It is to destroy your soul! To see the despair of Job at the loss of all that is precious to him is only part of the battle. Satan wants Job to see God as mean and uncaring. If he can cause that to happen, than he has “won”.

d.      There is an important distinction being made in Verses 3-10 and again at the end of the chapter. That distinction is the distinction between darkness and light. Job begins to wonder out loud about the day of both his conception and his birth. His lament is that these days would have not ever happened. He wishes that those days, instead of being days of light (life), would have been days left in the darkness. He even says that he desires that God above would not have even cared about that day.

e.       Don’t even let that day or night of my birth even be noted. Don’t even allow it to be a noted day on the calendar. There is a stated desire here that those that curse days (like perhaps Balaam in Numbers 22-24) professionally would curse “it”; that day of celebration in the lives of everyone. He even wonders in Verse 8 if Leviathan, the great creature of chaos from the sea, which itself was a boisterous deity that could be called upon to the pagan world, would devour that day from existence.

f.        Why is he speaking this way? Verse 10 tells us that the reason is because his mother’s womb had not been shut and now he is experiencing great trouble being lived out in front of him and in him. Of course, we know that there are times when we say things that are not accurate during times of hurt and things that will probably cause us regret in the future. The things that Job is saying are both theologically inaccurate and logically absurd, but for now, Job is being REAL! He knows that to have missed his own birth would have also been to miss the blessings of all that he now laments. His statement of faith in the Job 1:21 and 2:10 is unfortunately not the message that his friends are hearing at this moment…

 

III.               Since I Was Born…    Job 3:11-19

a.       Job continues the progressive logic of this lament with a second idea in Verses 11-19. That idea is “since the day of my birth did come about, why could I have not been stillborn?”

b.      Job wonders and laments the fact of his birth by asking why his mother had even received him and nourished him. If he had only been stillborn, he could have been immediately in the place of the dead. He shares that this would be a marked improvement from where he is currently staying because in that place he would be in the place of equality, a place where the king, counselors, and the miscarried children all are on equal footing. That place is a place of relief from the wicked and those that this life separates naturally from one another.

c.       Job is looking for relief. But again, we have no indication of his desire to “play God”. He is merely lamenting his birth as something he wished had never happened. And he is now carrying the logic out to the point of considered that since he did live, why it had to be for long and in such a place as he now finds himself.

 

IV.              Since I Didn’t Die…    Job 3:20-26

a.       The final portion of Job’s lament takes the progressive thinking to his own emotional place. Why was he born became since I was born why wasn’t I stillborn. Now, Job laments that since neither of these first two things happened he is in terrible despair. Verses 20-26 return to the ideas of light as life and darkness as death and separation.

b.      Job longs for death, but again doesn’t consider taking his own life. The pain of all of this comes from down in his empty stomach and he can’t stop crying. What had always been a fear and a dread has now become a reality. He is not imagining this! It really is this bad!! It has stolen his rest and his quiet. Trouble has taken over!!!

 

V.                 An Application For All Of Us

a.       Are any of you discouraged? Despairing? Worn down by life? Wishing that God would just “take you to heaven”? Looking for answers to the “whys”? Remember that we live by promises, not explanations. This is no time to “play God”, but to look to God!

b.      Strong believers sometimes get discouraged, suffer on many levels, and lose perspective. There are days and seasons when there seems to be no road back to the blessing of yesterday.

c.       If there is no tragedy in this life, than the sacrifice of Jesus is much ado about nothing. But there is tragedy and there is no “horizontal answer”, only a “vertical answer”!! His name is Jesus and He will and does come alongside the hurting and the brokenhearted.