All Sermons

Job's Initial Response to Suffering Part 3 By Andrew Davies

This evening we'll look at the section that Peter read in chapter 2 verse 11 to chapter 3 verse 26.
The book is about faith facing facts, particularly the fact of suffering, and within that parameter,
the fact of the suffering of the good and the godly. And within that parameter,
the fact of the suffering of the good and the godly to extremes, to the very extremities.
That's the theme of the book. Can faith face facts? Can faith overcome them?
Is it possible to trust God when everything around us seems to collapse?
That's a very, very important question. Job sufferings have been already described to us in the first two chapters.
They came in three distinct stages. First of all, there were a series of natural disasters and human atrocities that overwhelmed him.
Secondly, he was overcome by physical ill-health of the most severe and grotesque kind.
But then, thirdly, he had to live with the emotional fallback, the emotional effects of those realities.
And the emotional side of his sufferings went on and on without respite.
There was, first of all, the pain of bereavement, the heartache, the emptiness, the loneliness.
Then there was the anxiety that came with financial catastrophe, the awareness of being destitute, of having lost everything.
To that was added the humiliation of losing so much and of being afflicted with a loathsome disease.
And then, as if that were not enough, the deep depression and the acute anxiety that settled over his spirit as the days passed.
The situation didn't get easier or better. It seemed to get worse.
And he had to live with the long-term consequences of what had happened to him.
Financial bankruptcy, loss of family life and health, and the extended awareness of darkness.
So the pain grew more severe and the darkness deepened.
He had no explanation at all about what was happening to him.
There were no answers to his questions. There were no solutions to his problems.
He simply had to live with the questions and with the problems.
We see more than he did. We see behind the scenes.
We see the cosmic conflict going on, the challenge from God to Satan and from Satan to God.
We can understand something of the permissive will of God in Job's sufferings.
But Job knew nothing of all that.
He was simply immersed in the agony and in the distress of all that had happened to him.
So in bewilderment, almost, he went on trusting God.
It's interesting that he worshiped God.
He worshiped God when he was told about the catastrophes and when his health was taken away from him.
He still believed, though darkness seemed to veil God's face,
so it seemed to him that there was no answer to anything that was happening to him.
He still trusted God.
It was not just courage he showed or fortitude.
He trusted God. He believed God.
And he believed particularly in the goodness of God.
Now that is a wonderful and remarkable thing.
Here is a man battered, broken and bruised and bullied.
And yet he continues to trust God.
That is a remarkable thing.
Many people have told me back in Wales,
particularly when I've had to conduct the funeral services of people who weren't Christians
and who had been in the war, the Second World War particularly,
many people have told me, the families of such men,
that these men lost their faith when they went to the war.
But it wasn't faith that they had.
It wasn't real faith.
Whatever it was, it wasn't real faith.
Real faith is the faith we just sung about.
Oh, for a faith that will not shrink, though pressed by many a foe,
that will not tremble on the brink of poverty or woe,
that will not murmur or complain beneath the chastening rod,
but in the hour of grief or pain can lean upon its God.
That's the faith that the writer of the hymn was wanting, asking God for,
and we see it in measure in this man, Job.
So the great theme of the book is faith facing facts
and even overcoming the darkness that sometimes accompanies the mysteries of providence.
Now, in these verses that Peter read earlier,
you will notice that there's a new theme introduced into the story of the book.
We have from chapter 3 on through to chapter 31 a series of speeches
from both Job and from his friends, his three friends.
And in these speeches, as they're sometimes called,
these four men, the three friends and Job, struggle.
They struggle together with the problem, with a way of understanding what had happened
and possibly even coming to a solution.
Why was Job being allowed to suffer in this way?
Job maintained his own integrity, his own uprightness.
His three friends were to say to him that he was not an upright and a blameless man,
and to them he was suffering because of great sin.
Their solution to the problem was a very different one from the one that Job was struggling with.
To them it was very simple. Serious sin brought punishment.
Job was being punished for serious sin.
The punishment fits the crime. The punishment fits the crime.
That was their solution to the problem. Job knew that that was wrong.
Not that he was perfect, but he knew that that was wrong.
So they both, the three, and he struggled together to understand what is happening.
And these chapters from 3 to 31 record both their words and Job's response to them.
Let's look at the matter this evening from two perspectives.
How do we respond to the sufferings of others?
And then how are we to respond to our own sufferings?
If you like, the response here of the sympathizers and the response of the sufferer to serious suffering.
Because here were these three men looking on, here was Job in the midst of it all.
Their response and his response to what happened I think are interesting for us,
and we have some very valuable lessons I'm sure to learn from them.
Think first of all about the initial response of Job's friends, his sympathizers.
It's recorded in verses 11 to 13 where we are told that the three of them, and their names,
made an appointment to come together to meet and to mourn with Job and to comfort him.
And when they saw him from a distance, they wept, they tore their robe,
they sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven, and they sat with him on the ground seven days and nights.
And no one spoke a word to him because they saw that his grief was very great.
They sat with him, they wept with him in total silence.
What do we do when people suffer?
What do friends of ours, neighbors, colleagues expect from us when they are suffering?
Well, they clearly expect, and we ought to give genuine sympathy,
real understanding of their position and their situation.
And at first, to their credit, these three men did that. They sat in silence.
Their presence, I suppose, in a way, was itself a comfort to this man.
Maybe he didn't want to say anything to them, because very often when you're grief-stricken,
it's very difficult to speak, it's very difficult to know what to say,
and if you do, very often your emotions come immediately to the surface.
It may be that he just didn't want to say anything to them,
and they, to their credit, said nothing to him.
In a sense, words would have been inappropriate.
They simply exposed themselves to his grief and shared it.
They accepted it, and silently they sat in the midst of it with him.
Now, that's real sympathy.
We are told to weep with those who weep.
There's a sensitivity here to his condition, which I think does these men great credit.
Who was it who said that silence is golden?
We talk too much. We say too much.
And sometimes what we say and when we say it are inappropriate.
So here are three men who in silence sit with the man and share his grief.
It's part of our psychology today and part of the way in which we've been programmed psychologically
that we expect solutions to problems.
If you've ever been involved in counseling, you will have come across this idea
that there must be solutions to problems.
People today are looking for answers, for solutions.
So you have the counseling idea.
You have the concept of counseling competence and of psychiatric and psychological expertise.
Now, I'm not for one moment saying that competence in counseling
and expertise in psychiatric and psychological care are not extremely valuable.
All I am saying is that we expect solutions.
We cannot very often nowadays live with problems.
That's part of our trouble as human beings.
We don't know how to live with problems.
We must, we must have answers.
But we may have to live with problems.
And we may not know answers and may not be given answers.
There are deep valleys, there are dark forests where there is little or no light.
So that silence and tears and the sympathetic presence of another may be the right response very often.
There's a celebrated, or was a celebrated psychiatrist in England by the name of Isink, Professor Isink.
He's now dead, but he did a number of tests as a psychiatrist
in which he exposed a number of his patients to psychiatric care of different kinds,
psychiatric care through drug therapy, through electrical convulsion therapy,
and sometimes through psychoanalysis.
And then he exposed a similar number of patients simply to sympathy,
to loving, caring sympathy.
And to his amazement, he discovered that more people responded to the second than to the first.
Now I'm not saying that there isn't value in the first.
I'm simply pointing out that very often what people need is the kind of sympathy
that these three men gave to Job at the beginning, initially when his pain was overwhelming.
When they opened their mouths, the problems began and they aggravated his woe.
But at the beginning, what they did was proper and right and helpful.
There are times when that is true.
There are times when all we can do is weep together, just stand together,
just in silence together in the presence of God, acknowledge his will, acknowledge his sovereignty,
and just in a way that is perhaps more helpful than words, at an intuitive level,
share the burden of grief and suffering that another person may be carrying.
That's the initial response of the sympathizers, and there's a great deal that we can burn from it.
But then notice with me in the second place Job's initial response to his sufferings,
because in chapter 3 we have Job opening his mouth.
He's the one who opens his mouth first. Before his three friends say a word, he speaks.
And what he says, in a sense, astonishes us.
He cries out in chapter 3 in anguish of heart. He cannot hold his emotions in any longer.
There's almost a frantic note in what he's saying as he's struggling to understand God's ways.
The agony is deep, even desperate. So in verses 1 to 10 he curses the day that he was born.
And that description there of Job cursing the day of his birth is the most moving
and powerful description of the man in almost complete depression.
May the day perish on which I was born and the night in which it was said,
A male child is conceived. May that day, the day of my birth, be darkness.
May God above not seek it. May the light not shine upon it.
May darkness and the shadow of death claim it. May clouds settle on it.
May the blackness of day terrify it. And for that night, may darkness seize it.
May it not be included among the days of the year. May it not come into the number of the months.
May the stars of its morning be dark and sore. Why did I not die at birth?
Why did I not perish when I came from the womb?
He's in agony. He cries out to God and curses the day of his birth.
And then verses 11 to 19 are a cry through intense anguish of heart.
Why did the knees receive me or why the breast that I should nurse?
For now I would have lain still and been quiet. I would have been asleep.
Then I would have been at rest with kings and counselors of the earth who built ruins for themselves
or with princes with gold who filled their houses with silver.
Why wasn't I hidden like a stillborn child like infants who never saw light?
Notice the why, why, why. He's crying out. He's in anguish. Why, Lord, why?
And then he confesses his complete bewilderment and uselessness in verses 20 to 26.
Why is light given to him who is in misery and life to the bitter of soul,
who longs for death but he doesn't come and search for it more than hidden treasures,
who rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they can find the grave?
Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in?
My sighing comes before I eat. I can't even enjoy my food.
My groanings pour out like water for the thing I greatly feared has come upon me
and what I dreaded has happened to me.
I am not at ease nor am I quiet. I have no rest for trouble comes.
He feels he's lost his bearings. He's lost God even. His life is useless and meaningless.
And he's bewildered by it all and he can't find an explanation.
It's a picture of absolute and utter desolation.
And the words are hot. They're exhausted. They're desperate words.
His sanity is under attack. His faith is under attack.
He's almost immobilized by what's happening. He's restless. He's anxious.
He doesn't know where to turn. His heart is pounding within him.
This is Job's first response in words to all that has happened to him.
And we may be shocked. We may be slightly discomfited by it.
We feel that somehow this is incompatible with real faith.
How can a man of real faith speak like this? How can a man who is a real believer
curse the day he was born? How can he speak words like this?
How can he feel so utterly useless and hopeless? Where's his faith, we say?
But we are the ones who are wrong when we think like that.
And if we do think like that, then we've never been remotely near where Job was.
If we've been anywhere near to where Job was, we will understand perfectly
what he is doing here and why he is doing it.
Because faith does not mean the absence of conflict.
It doesn't mean the absence of desperation. That's not faith.
People who long for death but it does not come and search for it more than hidden treasures.
Is that faith? Well, I am not at ease, nor am I quiet.
I have no rest for trouble comes. Is that faith?
Faith has to live with great perplexity, with great anguish, and sometimes with great misery.
Peter reminded us earlier of William Cooper, the man who wrote the most explicitly beautiful
hiddenness, as well as some of the greatest poetry in the English language,
and yet who suffered all his life from a serious mental disorder.
Now that man had to live with continued mental ill health, continued psychological depression,
and yet he has given us through the hand of God some of the most beautiful
hiddenness that have ever been written.
Here is a real faith coexisting with anguish, with desperation, with chronic mental ill health.
You remember when our Lord drew near to those two disciples on the road to Emmaus
and they were very sad and cast down in heart, and he saw that.
He just simply walked with them and then asked them what was the matter,
and without the hint of chiding or scolding, he listened to them,
and they poured out their hearts to him.
Now that really is the kind of care and the kind of sympathy that we need to show to people,
and what our Lord was really doing there was seeing the people behind the words.
He was looking behind what was being said or behind what was appearing to him
to the heart of the people, to the condition of these two people,
and he went straight for that condition and sought to help them.
But he saw that faith was there.
Of course there was a great deal of unbelief too. He put his finger on it.
He spoke to them about their unbelief, but he told them that their unbelief was foolish.
He said, oh foolish men and slow of heart to believe. It was foolish it was slow of heart,
but it wasn't wicked and it wasn't hard of heart.
Wickedness and hardness of heart are one thing. Foolishness and slowness of heart are another.
Here were two people who were certainly foolish and slow of heart to believe,
but nevertheless in their heart there was that root of faith, and our Lord knew that,
and our Lord knows that even in the condition of people like us.
So we shouldn't be surprised when we discover that even men of faith like Job say things like this.
What about Elijah, the man who had rounded on those prophets of Baal
and who under God had been so gloriously used in that contest at Mount Carmel
and then just a matter of hours almost later running for his life
and going a journey into the wilderness and sitting down under a broom tree
praying that he might die and saying to the Lord, I am no better than my fathers.
The child of light walking in the darkness.
So there's a tension here, the tension of true faith coexisting with deep depression and terrible darkness.
We know God as Job knew God. We know that God is good. We know that we're in God's hands,
but it seems sometimes that God is against us, that He is our enemy.
So we are conscious of darkness, not light. We're conscious of difficulties, not answers,
and we see something which surprises us, perplexes us, and we are perplexed so much
that sometimes we can only do it as Job did, and that is to cry out to God.
We know that Job was doing something wonderful. We know that.
We know that there was something remarkable about this man and wonderful taking place.
We're aware of it. In a sense, we who read the book are given an insight into what was happening,
which was denied to Job. We've had the privilege of reading the first two chapters, so to speak.
We have a glimpse behind the scenes. We can see God and Satan in conflict,
and we can see this man Job as the one whom the Lord has chosen as the battlefield between himself and Satan,
and we can see Job in the midst of all his anguish, trusting God and thereby proving the omnipotence
of God's grace and giving the light to Satan, and so God is seen to be the great God of heaven
and the good God who loved this man. Even though everything was going wrong with him,
we can see all that, and we can understand what Job was doing, but he can't.
He's just in the middle of it all. All he can see is the frowning providence.
He cannot see the smiling face. I'm reminded of that other hymn of John Newton's,
which links with the hymn that I've just quoted earlier on or the one that we sang earlier on.
Do you remember this hymn of John Newton? He's really saying something very profound here,
and it's not a hymn that can easily be sung.
I ask the Lord that I might grow in faith and love and every grace, might more of his salvation know
and seek more earnestly his face. There's the desire of this man John Newton.
He wants to grow in grace. He wants to be more aware of God's salvation.
He wants to see more of his face, and he says,
"'Twas he who taught me thus to pray, and he I trust has answered prayer,
but it has been in such a way as almost drove me to despair."
What are you doing with me, Lord? You're answering my prayer for growth and for grace,
but what a strange way you've taken.
"'I hoped,' he says, that in some favored hour at once he'd answer my request,
and by his love's constraining power subdue my sins and give me rest.'"
That's what I wanted. I wanted the Lord to shed his love abroad in my heart,
to constrain me by his love, to subdue my sins, to give me rest.
Instead of this, he made me heal the hidden evils of my heart
and let the angry powers of hell sort my soul in every part.
Yea, more with his own hand he seemed intent to aggravate my woe,
crossed all the fair designs I schemed, blasted my goods and laid me low.
And he doesn't understand it.
"'Lord, why is this?' I trembling cried.
"'Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death?'"
He feels like a worm.
Are you pursuing this little worm to death?
Why don't you leave me alone, Lord? Why are you doing this to me?
He doesn't understand it.
"'Tis in this way,' the Lord replied,
"'I answer prayer for grace and faith.'"
This is the way I have chosen to answer your prayer.
It's not your way. It's the way I've chosen.
These inward trials I employ from self and pride to set thee free
and break thy schemes of earthly joy that thou mayst seek thy all in me.
No, that's not easy. That's difficult.
But it's really what was happening to Job.
And when darkness seems to veil his face, what do you do?
There are days like that. What do you do?
I rest on his unchanging grace.
When all around my soul gives way, what do you do?
He then is all my hope and stay.
You see, there is something about saving faith, real faith, vital faith that is unconquerable.
Faith may splutter. It may almost disappear.
It may cry out in anguish.
It may struggle with doubts and with dangers and within a turmoil.
It may look as if it's going to be extinguished altogether, but it goes on living.
Real faith will not die. It won't give in. It won't lie down.
In the face of appalling trouble, it hangs on.
That's all Job could do.
He could only hang on, hangs my helpless soul on thee.
Yes, Wesley knew what that meant.
He's hanging on. He's desperate. He will not let God go.
He continues to cling to God and slowly, in the stories we shall see,
we see him beginning to climb out of the pit of depression, and he finds his feet again.
But it was slow, and it didn't happen immediately, and there were a lot of very hot and anguished words in the middle of it all.
But real faith won't die. It can't die.
It's God's gift. It's vital. It's saving. It's divine.
And that's a great help to us, because we may wonder whether we will be able to survive in the crises of life,
and we may struggle with all sorts of questions and difficulties, and we may not have answers to problems,
and we may have our doubts and our fears, and we may be depressed and sometimes even desperate.
So will our faith hold? Will we hold our ground in the end?
Yes. When all around my soul gives way, he then is all my hope and stay.
Curse God and die, says Job's wife to him. He can't. He won't. He doesn't.
He says a lot of things to God that he shouldn't have said.
But he will not tender his trust and confidence in the goodness of God.
Real faith is unconquerable. Real faith will overcome.
This is the faith that overcomes the world, or this is the victory that overcomes the world.
Our faith is the victory, because it's God's faith, and it overcomes the world.
Whatever the world can throw at us, whatever the devil can throw at us, real faith can face the blackest hour
and go on trusting in the Savior, trusting in the merit of our beloved Savior.
And we do have Calvary, don't we? Thank God.
We know that the Lord Himself has been in this veil of tears,
that our Lord has come down into this world of ours, the perfect, holy, undefiled, innocent Son of God,
the innocent man, Jesus Christ of Nazareth. He's been the just, and He died for the unjust.
He not only bore pain and suffering and anguish and any of the psychological stresses
that are described for us in Job's experience, he not only bore all that,
but he bore in his own body our sins and the penalty of our sins
and the wrath of God against us for our sins. He bore that.
We shall never have to bear that. Thank God.
We may have to go through real pain, real suffering, real anguish,
but we shall never have to suffer the pains of hell.
We shall never have to suffer the wrath of God against our sin.
We shall never have to suffer condemnation for our iniquity, because Jesus paid it all.
So whatever we have to suffer, we cannot begin to estimate the sufferings of our Savior.
And He was just a man, but a pure and holy man, of course, but a man.
And as you look at the cross, what an insignificant, horrendous thing it is there on that cross,
a scrap of humanity, just a man, a small man, compared with the vastness of the universe,
a scrap of humanity hanging on a Roman gibbet.
But through those stripes we are healed, through those wounds we are made whole.
Through their death we escape from death.
The sufferings of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the perfect, just and holy One,
are the way in which we are to look through our sufferings to God.
And as we do that, we know that our Savior is with us.
And He is with us as the man of love, the crucified.
He still bears in heaven the wounds that He bore here on earth,
rituals yet visible above in beauty, glorified.
So when you're passing through the valley of the shadow of death, what do you know?
Well, He is with you.
It's wonderful to have the doctor and the nurse or loved ones with you, but He is with you.
And nobody but He can help you through that valley.
And it's only the valley of the shadow of death, because death cannot harm you.
It's only the shadow, so you pass through it into the light of God's eternal presence.
Job himself knew something about that, as we know from his triumphant cry of faith in chapter 19,
I know that my Redeemer liveth.
Just yesterday I was reading an article in the newspaper about Chris Patton,
who was, as you will probably know, the governor of Hong Kong,
before Hong Kong was handed back to the Chinese,
and Chris Patton was a very strong man and a very bold man and a very honest man.
But he said something in this article which I found immensely impressive.
He said, though I miss what I was doing in my life in politics,
he's now living in the south of France,
there are many things about my life that are important to me, he said,
but the most significant thing in my life is the resurrection.
Now I don't know where he stands before God,
but he understands that in his life the most important thing of all is the resurrection.
That is to say, from death our Lord Jesus Christ was raised to life again,
so that in our sufferings we know that there is a way into heaven itself,
and sometimes it may be the path of bearing.
We have not only to do, but we have to bear,
whether we are doing or whether we are bearing,
we are still, I trust, able through God's grace to put our confidence in Christ
and lean our helpless souls on Him.
That's what Job did, and we thank God for this book,
we thank God that there's an honesty and a realism about this book that helps us,
because if you've ever been through it,
if you've ever known how to curse the day of your birth,
if you've ever felt useless and helpless,
if you've ever wished to take your own life,
if you've ever had suicidal thoughts, then stand here with Job,
because Job had been in the same place,
but in the midst of it all he trusted his Savior,
and the Savior whom he trusted kept him.
So it's not the greatness of our faith, is it, that keeps us in the end,
it's the greatness of our Savior.
But even so, faith is a great thing, and it's a gift of God,
and what we are to do is to lay all our cares and all our anxieties upon Him,
who says, I care for you.
I am trusting Thee, Lord Jesus, trusting only Thee,
trusting Thee for full salvation, great and free.
enable us, Lord, to do that, to trust You, even though we do not see You.
I need Thy presence every passing hour.
What but Thy grace can foil the tempest power,
who like Thyself my guide and stay can be,
through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.
We thank You for the confidence that You will do that,
and that we shall triumph over all our enemies,
because Jesus Christ is with us.
We thank You for Him, and we pray that His grace, mercy, and peace may be with us now and always.
May the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,
and the love of God our Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,
the great Comforter and Counselor, be with us all now and forevermore.
Amen.