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.
