Job 3 "Cries From The Pit of Despair"

Do you want to ask me one more question? How does Jesus do that?

Jesus died for me. How does God write that to you? Alright.

So, if you guys want to read the answer together with me, please do. Alright. Christ executes the office of a prophet in revealing to us by his word and spirit the will of God for our salvation.

Can you reveal to us who God is and what his will is? How does he do that?

How does he reveal to us the plan of salvation by his word, by the

Bible, and by his

Holy Spirit. So, by his word and spirit, he reveals to us the will of God for our salvation.

And that's how Christ does that. Alright. Can I pray for you guys?

Here Jesus prays for you. As he said, lots of little ones come to you, lots of them come to you.

And so, hear all the little ones come to you. He prays that by his word, by his spirit, by the word of his spirit, here

I am, I am here. We are your salvation. gaining some of the inhabitants that need anything and everything to thank you for them, and that's how it is.

Amen. Mind the Christ creature.

Still one of my favorite parts of church is just seeing those kids that word catechism is those

Orthodox Christian doctrines in the form of question and answers and so that's what catechism means that's what these kids are learning is this is the foundational beliefs that each one of us should hold to as believers in Christ and so that's remarkable.

Today we're gonna be in Job chapter 3. So start making your way there today,

Job chapter 3, Job chapter 3.

As you're making your way there let us go ahead and begin with a word. I would ask

Lord as we read this text and we hear the words of a father who's lost everything or almost everything or a father that in his physical life has now lost his family, his possessions, and even his health,

Lord, in this text. Lord, when we consider this, God, I would ask that you would bring to reminding to ourselves that we have something that cannot ever be taken away from us,

Lord, and that is you as our rock of our salvation. So God, may in the solemnness of this text, may it be also turned with a hope of a future with you forever,

Lord. Let that be present on our mind as we read this text and may you be glorified in the reading and preaching, singing, and worship this day.

We ask this in your name, Jesus. Job chapter 3.

I will be completely honest with you this morning, this week as I was preparing for today and looking over Job chapter 3, my wife and I, we were sitting at our kitchen table and I got done reading the text and thinking on it and I looked up to my wife and I said,

Emily, I don't even know what I'm going to preach on with this text. And she was like,

Brayden, what do you mean by that? What do you mean when you, when you, what are you, what are you getting at? I was like, let me just read it for you.

And I read it and she said, oh, I don't know what you're gonna say on this.

You might be asking, what are you getting at? What are you getting at, Pastor Brayden? Why, why would you say that you don't know what to say on Job chapter 3?

Brothers and sisters, in my short life that I have had so far and the time of being a firefighter and a pastor, one of the most difficult and burying things to deal with is to hear the cries of loved ones who are gripping on to those who have fallen asleep.

This is a, this is a truth that many of us have seen in our lives and have felt with our own loved ones when we felt that mourning and grief of losing somebody that is near and dear to us.

And so even, even for myself to hear and see these things on a somewhat frequent and regular basis, when

I read through this text, it is one that vivid pictures of actual mourning in life come to my mind and it is a text that is beyond difficult to read.

So today what my plan to do is we're going to read this text. It's a, it's a 26 verses all in here that we're going to read and we're going to let a lot of it just sink in for what it's saying to us in here.

And I want to remind us of some things that have happened to Job. Job in the previous text, just turn to chapter two with me here shortly.

I want to remind you to what has gone on. So in the previous text in chapter two,

Job has received from Yahweh ultimately these boils on his flesh, these boils that are making him beyond just an immense pain and the, the picture of this man

Job that we have here is one of desolation of a man that is sitting in ashes, a man that is scraping himself with the clay pots that have broken and he's itching himself in this way.

You can almost imagine the grotesque picture that would be. I mean, think about it today. You, you might go into a

Fred Meyer in Twin Falls and you see the homeless man on the side of the road or something along those lines and, and, and you might see something that looks visually not appealing to us.

This is even far worse than that. This is, this is beyond that.

So you have this man sitting here scraping his sores with this pot shirt and his wife comes up to him and he says, do you still hold fast to your integrity

Job? Do you still hold fast to these things? Curse God and die. And listen to the words of Job.

He says, you speak as one of wickedly foolish women speak.

Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept calamity? In all this,

Job did not sin with his lips. So this is almost immediately after the events that have happened to him here in the previous chapters.

And here in verses 11 and on to the end of chapter 2, we see that Job has these three friends who see him in despair and in harm and they want to go and they want to assist him and be there with him in his mourning.

And so they go and they sit with him for seven days without saying a word is what the text tells us. And so that's where we are at now in chapter 3.

Seven days have gone by. You can almost think to yourself the, the gravity of what's going on in Job's life may have hit even a little bit harder, right?

It's almost like one of those scenes that you have something bad happens or something that's great that happens and you say,

I'm going to pinch myself to see if I'm not asleep right now. I, I, maybe, maybe this is just a dream.

Well, seven days have gone by and Job has not woken up from this nightmare situation that he's in. Seven days have gone by and he has not heard the joy from his son's households in the celebration that we would see in chapter 1.

They, they're no longer getting together and eating food and drinking wine together as a family. Instead, what Job has been doing in these last week as he's been continually mourning in ashes and death.

So all these things build up for us what we are about to read here in these verses. Seven days have gone by.

His three friends are, friends are near. He's gotten bad advice from his wife and he's being, he's, all these things are suffering while suffering through the affliction of having boils from head to toe.

Let's read verses 1 through 7. Again, this, just let this text sink in.

And before we even actually read this, I apologize, before we read this, I need to remind us of something. We just went through what book in the

New Testament? The book of Philippians. We went through that entire book and we saw another man who was suffering in a bad situation in his life.

Paul, right? In prison. When we look at this book of Job, I would encourage you when we read this, we understand where it was at in the

Jewish hands. It was between the book of Proverbs and the book of Ecclesiastes and this book of wisdom is what they would consider it, wisdom literature.

And so we see in this text the inner workings of a man that is grumbling, a man that is broken, a man that is hurting, a man that is questioning things.

And so you see all this that's taking place. And so when you read this text, know that chapter 3, it is the

Word of God. It is inspired. It is those things. But what Job is saying in this text is not a good thing.

What Job is going to say in here is not a good thing. Job 3 verse 1.

Afterward Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.

And Job answered and said, let the day perish on which

I was born and the night which said a man is conceived.

May that day be darkness. Let not God seek it from above nor light shine on it.

Let darkness and the shadow of death redeem it. Let a cloud dwell upon it.

Let the blackness of the day terrify it. As for that night, let thick darkness take it.

Let it not rejoice among the days of the year. Let it not come into the numbers of the months.

Behold, let that night be barren and let no joyful shout enter it.

We'll pause here for a moment to think about what these verses have just said. Before we even give any context or commentary on these verses,

I want to pray with us again right over this. Lord, God, I would ask that as we read this,

Lord, that we would place ourselves in the shoes of Job and the sandals of Job. That we would feel the boils in every step that we had.

That as we sat to rest, that we would feel the boils on our back. That when we read this text, that we would smell the salt from the tears of Job, Lord.

That as the previous text has said, that he is sitting in this love of ash, Lord God. That all these things would be brought to our remembrance and that we would consider how would we want to be comforted?

How would we want to comfort somebody else in this situation, Lord? Think through this,

Lord. Help us think through this. I ask this in your name, Jesus Christ, amen. So here in verses 1 through 7, in verse 1 again afterwards, so this is after the seven days goes on,

I want to remind us here in this chapter that Job does not directly curse God. So in what

God has said, that you can afflict him but he won't curse me, and he gives that over to Satan to do these things.

Job never directly curses God here in this chapter, but what is he cursing at in these verses?

His very own life. His own, actually his own birth is specifically what he's getting out in this text.

Let the day perish on which I was to be born, and the night which said a man conceive, may the day be darkness.

Let not God seek it from above, nor light shine upon it. Now notice in verse 4 that in these sayings that Job is still saying that,

God wouldn't it have been better that your sovereign plan would have included me not being born?

God, wouldn't that have been a better situation for me? This is a man that's fleeing from grief and mourning.

You have to remember this. But this is Job recognizing that he was born still in the sovereign plan of God, but he's trying to reconcile what he's just gone through, what he is going through.

Again, he's not going to sleep and waking up and seeing his sons or his daughters. He's continually in turmoil and pain with these things.

And so in this text, you have to see that. You have to recognize that this is a man that's trying his best to understand what is going on.

And again, this book of wisdom, these wisdom literatures that we have from Job, Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs, it goes through questions and what is just, what is injust, what is right for a man to go through, what is wrong for a man to go through.

And so this is essentially, when you look at Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, Job's life is a man that's wrestling with these principles.

And so that's what we see in this text. He's wrestling with this. May the darkness, the day of that be darkness.

So may the day that I was born out of my mother's womb and came unto the light, may that day actually have been darkness.

Let darkness and shadow of death redeem it. Just imagine being in such a place that you think the redemption that you deserve is actually that you were never even born.

That's where Job is at right now. May death redeem this terrible situation

I was in, Lord. Lord, if you could turn back the clock of time, just remove me from the picture.

Let a cloud dwell upon it. Let the blackness of the day terrify it. As for that night, let thick darkness take it.

Let it not rejoice among the days of the year. Let it not come into the number of the months.

I remind you, this is the same man that just said seven days earlier. And so you can see almost the progression of the mourning that's taking place in this text.

Just the week prior, he said, Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept calamity?

Now he's in a place in such grief and mourning with his friends nearby. All the rejoicing of my days, all the rejoicing and the prosperity that I have received in my years, may none of it have ever existed.

Because this is immensely painful for what Job is going through.

Let no joy enter it. May no one find joy. May my mother who found joy when

I was born, may she not have it. Because I wish I wasn't born. May my father who welcomed me in as a son, may he never have that moment in life.

Because this is too much for me to bear, is what Job is saying. Let's look at these next verses again.

What Job is trying to say is that there's no amount of previous joy that I've had that can lessen the hurt and the darkness that has now surrounded me.

When we read this kind of a text, what you should be seeing is that Job is in the utter pit of despair.

And you're hearing the cries from there. The cries of this man that is in this pit.

Let's look at what verse 8 to 15 says for us. Let those who curse it, curse the day who are ready to rouse

Leviathan. Let the stars of its twilight be darkened. Let it hope for light but have none.

And let it not see the breaking dawn, because it did not shut the opening of my mother's body or hide trouble from my eyes.

Why did I not die from the womb? Come forth from the womb and breathe my last.

Why did the knees receive me and why the breasts that I should suck? For now

I would have lain down and been quiet. I would have slept then.

It would have been rest to me with kings and with counselors of the earth who rebuilt waste place for themselves.

Or with princes who had gold who were filling their own house with silver.

Let's pray over this text before we look at this again. Lord God, again

Lord, remind us of the severe grief that Job is in here,

Lord. God, may, as Job is saying that death would redeem himself in this text,

Lord, may we remember and recall that we've been redeemed in your death and resurrection. Lord, I ask this in your name, the one who did die for us and rose again.

Amen. Verse 8 is an interesting verse that we just need to take note of.

There's some commentaries that would disagree with each other on what's taking place in this text. Some would say that in those days they would have professional mourners is what one commentary would say.

That at a funeral you would hire somebody to come in and make wails and cries for the family.

That it was a professional mourner. That's what one commentary said. It's an interesting thought. And so they would say in this, let those who curse it, who curse the day, that's talking about those professional mourners.

That's quite an interesting profession. That's just what one commentary said, and I thought it was an interesting thing to note.

But what Job is saying is, and then there was another one, let me say this. There's those that would say that Leviathan is this sea animal, which is totally a good reasoning in this text.

But they would say that this text here in verse 8 are those that are the sailors that would curse the

Leviathan. Those that go out on the water and are afraid of it. And so by their mourning and cursing of this

Leviathan, that actually awakens him. That's what some commentaries would say. Regardless in this text,

I would remind you of what Job is getting at. He's saying, let those who are loud in the cursing curse that day that I was born.

May they curse that day in which I was welcomed into the world, is what Job is saying in this text.

May they do it in such a loud way that they raise up this mighty animal, the

Leviathan. May they raise it up by doing so and kill the day that I was born.

May that never come about is what Job is saying. So regardless of how we take this verse 8 and who we reply, let those who curse it, just remember what

Job is trying to say in here. Let them curse the day I came into this world. Now this word

Leviathan in here, this is something that we will be addressing when we come to Job chapter 41 in a little bit more detail.

There's very much debate on what this animal is and was.

There's approaches that try to look at this as a mythological situation and some that would look at this as a naturalistic situation of the

Leviathan. There's even those that are in the Ken Ham creation camp that would say that this is a large, large crocodile, an alligator, this abnormally large alligator.

That's what we would see as a description in Job chapter 4. A whale, this large sperm whale is what it's speaking about in this text.

It talks about fish hooks in Job chapter 41.

So don't think we're ignoring it. Just know that this sea slash land animal, the

Leviathan, whatever this animal is, Job is saying let those curse the very day

I was born in this. Let the stars of its twilight be darkened. This is just Job continually going on in this.

Let the stars of its twilight be darkened. Let it hope for light but have none.

Let it not see the breaking dawn because it did not shut the opening in my mother's body or hide trouble from my eyes.

We'll see this here in a moment, but Job is saying, Lord, I wish I would have never even came out of my mother's womb alive.

Lord, you who opened and closed the womb, why didn't you close my mother's womb and make it so I was never born?

Why did you have to have me be born? And this all raises the question of does

Job know in here that God knows all things, that if he was to be born that he would have this suffering day that he's in?

Job knows these things, and that's why he's questioning it. He's like, Lord, if you knew I was going to go through this, why didn't you just shut my mother's womb?

It's these same questions that we see in Ecclesiastes. Why do these things matter? Why do the just get raised up, but then they are killed?

And the wicked, they seem to prosper. It ultimately is this havel that this life is a vapor that we have.

Why did I not die from the womb? Come from the womb and breathe my last breath.

Job is saying, maybe, Lord, you didn't close my mother's womb, but why didn't you make it so I died as soon as I came out?

Why didn't you make it so I choked on my umbilical cord as I came out? Lord, why didn't you make it so that I came out not breathing?

I think you can all rationalize now why the other day with my wife you would say, I don't know what to give commentary on this text.

The text speaks for itself in how harsh Job is thinking life is right now. Why didn't

I come out as a blue and black baby? Why did the knees receive me?

So now Job is saying, not just from the day I was born, but why is it that, Lord, I kept on progressing in life so that I could crawl on my knees.

Why did my knees make it so I could walk? Or so I could crawl, excuse me.

Why did my knees allow me to crawl in life, Lord? Why didn't I die before then? At what age does a child crawl?

I'm looking to my wife in the back. What time frame does a child start to begin to crawl? So Job's saying in six and eight months, why didn't

I die before then? Days that Job himself doesn't even remember.

Why didn't I die during those days? And why the breasts that I should suck on?

Lord, why did you make it so I kept on receiving nourishment? If you knew, Lord, that I would lose my seven sons and my three daughters, why would you allow me to continue to suck on my mother's breasts and grow,

Lord? For now,

I would have laid down and been quiet. So he's looking back and he's saying, if any of those situations had happened,

Lord, I would be laying down. I would be quiet. Right now I'm mourning and crying and weeping.

Lord, I would be quiet. I would have the sense of peace if you would just let me die then,

Lord. I would have slept then. I would have not had this bad situation come about.

And death itself, it says, it would have been rest to me. Lord, if you had made it so I died when

I came out of my mother's womb, if you had not allowed me to be born, if you had made it so I was to die before I could crawl,

Lord, if you made it so I could never receive nourishment from my mom, those things would be rest to me.

Would have been rest to me. With kings and with counselors of the earth who rebuilt waste places for themselves or with princes who had gold who were filling their house with silver.

What Job is saying here is that the kings who set up a situation that they like with the gold and the silver and they build their houses,

Lord, I seek death. That's what I wish I could have right now,

Lord. Just as the king fills up his place with gold, Lord, I would seek that death would have taken me when

I was young. That's the house I want right now. Let's read verses 16 to 19.

For why was I not like a miscarriage hidden away as infants that never saw light?

There the wicked cease from raging, and there the weary of strength are at rest.

The prisoners are at ease together. They do not hear the voice of the taskmaster.

The small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master.

Job is now saying in this text, Lord, you brought me to my knees.

You sustained me in my early years, Lord. Why was I just not killed when I was just a couple months old in my mother's womb?

A couple weeks old, Lord. Why not kill me at the hardship

I'm going through right now? Why not just remove that completely from the situation in the picture? I would remind you in verse 16 here,

I think this is truly remarkable. Does Job consider the child that's inside the womb as a human being in this text?

He does. He says, take the miscarriage away, the infant that never saw light.

An infant, a human being in the womb is what Job is saying. That's just important for us as we should and we ought to take a life for stance that's inside, or a stance for those lives that are inside the womb.

Job saw the life he had started even in the womb, not when he was born. He's saying, take that life away from me when

I was in my mother's womb. The wicked cease from raging, and there the weary of strength are at rest.

The prisoners are at ease together. They do not hear the voice of the taskmaster. The small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master.

Job is saying that those prisoners and those slaves, those workers, that when they're actually in prison,

God, they're not under the harsh hand of the taskmaster. That just like if you had taken away my life before I was born,

Lord, I would not be under the harsh hand of yourself right now, God. That the calamity that you have brought to me,

God, I would have avoided if you had just let me die. Verse 20 -26, let's read this.

Why is light given to him who is troubled, and life to the bitter soul, who long for death but there is none, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures, who are glad with joy and rejoice when they find the grave?

Why is light given to a man who is hidden, and whom

God has hedged in? For my groanings comes at the sight of my food, and my roarings pours out like water.

For the dread that I dread comes upon me, and what I am afraid of befalls me.

I am not complacent, nor am I quiet, and I am not at rest, and raging comes.

Let's pray before we look at this again. Lord God, we as Christians, Lord, you have given us a sufficient way to answer any of these questions,

Lord. In ways that maybe we don't know why, but you've given us these answers, Lord. Even in this book of Job at the end,

Lord. God, may we be reminded of these truths, and know that we have a plan that is in your

Son, Jesus Christ, today, Lord. God, we have found life in your death,

Lord. And we thank you for this, and we say this in your name. Amen.

Lord, why is the sun shining on my life that is bitter and troubled?

Why, Lord? Why is it that I long for death now, but I can't find it?

Death, if you've granted it to me before in my life, when I was young, Lord, why can't that be the case?

I seek it, I desire that, but that's not the case, Lord. There is no death there.

I dig for it. Lord, I want this more than any treasure. I dig in the hills for gold.

There's those that look for special hidden treasures in the mountains. And, Lord, I want death in my young years far more than any of those people seek for gold and treasure, who are glad with joy and rejoice when they find the grave.

Job's saying that those that are joyful, they don't rejoice when they find the grave. But, Lord, I'm rejoicing if the grave is in front of me, because I have no joy.

Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden and whom God has hedged in?

Job is saying, my life is so dark right now, Lord. Why is it that you're making it so I continue to live?

And, Lord, this life you've given to me is hedged in by you. This is, again, Job, I'm reminded and remarkably blessed by how

Job, even in the midst of his suffering and his mourning and these questions, he's still recognizing,

Lord, you didn't have me die when I came out of my mother's womb,

Lord. You didn't have it so I couldn't latch to my mother's breast. You didn't make it so I couldn't crawl. You brought me here,

Lord. You hedged me in. He still recognizes God's sovereignty, even in the midst of his crying and his distress.

Job, think about this for a minute, church. Job, just two weeks prior, spent a week seeing his son celebrate with food and wine.

He was most likely at some of those celebrations and seeing the joy in the food.

And now, who's he eating with now? An empty table.

There's no one there. His sons are gone. I see the sight of food and groanings come.

And my roarings pour out like water. Now, this could be said that Job is throwing up because of this stuff.

When he eats food, this severe distress that he's having, it's running out of him like water. His health is deteriorating in this.

He's not in good shape. Or it could just be speaking about that his mournings are just running out of him.

There's no turning off the faucet for him. There's no damning the water back. That it's just a flood of emotion for the dread that I dread comes upon me.

And what I am afraid of befalls me. The dread of dread has befallen

Job in this text. I would ask you, do you not see that here,

Church? This text, this chapter, is a place that no one ought to put themselves in, in the sense of we should not be questioning our

Creator for what the events are. It's this hard balance in life of in the previous text in chapter 1, we would see that at the loss of his family,

Job was able to worship God in his mourning. But now he's seemingly questioning the motives of why

God has brought certain things to pass. I would argue that this is a text that we should try to avoid in our own speculations as we question what's going on around us.

We shouldn't question why the Creator's sovereign hand has brought certain things to pass.

But there are ways that we can mourn the loss of loved ones and the loss of property, the loss of health, we can mourn these things in a way that worshiped

God, according to Job 1, verse 21, I believe it was. But this text, this is a man that has,

I would argue, is beyond broken in this text, it seems like. It's a man that has been kicked in the mud in some of the most dreadful ways imaginable.

Reading this text, you might say, Brayden, I thought I was coming to church today, not a funeral. Brothers and sisters, we have to ask ourselves some questions when we come to this text.

How would your response be if you lost your entire family? It's easy for us to say, ah, we're much better than Job, right?

It's easy for us to look at the life of Paul and say, ah, if Christian persecution was to come to me, I would never do anything wrong.

I would go to prison with a smile on my face. I would approach the sword with rejoicing to meet

Christ. And that should be the attitude that we ought to seek. But it's easy to say those things. It's another thing when the blade is sharpened and the prison door is unlocked and the walls are caving in on you.

It's another thing when you actually lose someone that you love. It's another thing, even in Job's case, to lose his entire family, save it be his wife.

So how would you respond? Let's ask this question. How would you as a friend of Job respond to this?

Seven days have gone by. You guys have sat there in silence, maybe some hugs, maybe a lot of tears, most likely a lot of tears.

And now there's words that are being uttered. How are you going to respond when your friend asks you this? I would encourage you, as we're going to see in Chapter 4 next week, don't respond like this next friend.

Some things he says sound great and some things not so great. And that's where they get rebuked in Job 38 -42.

They all get rebuked in their responses to Job from this chapter. So this is going to be a chapter that carries us through the entire book.

This grief and mourning and severe distress is going to carry us through in the responses of the friends and ultimately the response of God.

Brothers and sisters, this is truly the danger of us thinking that we are the creator and that we have the greatest plan in life.

If we elevate ourselves above what God's plan is and we think, God, I could do it better,

Lord. I could do it better so much so how about you just choke me in my mother's womb, Lord. I've got the better plan in this situation.

Lord, why don't you bring it about that this atrocity would happen, that my mother would be holding me dead from her womb.

Lord, that would be a better plan. Avoid this kind of thinking, and this kind of thinking typically stems from a multitude of reasons, but one of those is trying to protect the character of God when

God does not need you to protect His character. God brings us about in certain situations, in certain means, for certain purposes that you don't know ultimately.

So don't try to protect God's character in reasoning and rationalizing that, Lord, this is a terrible situation

I'm in. It would have been better if I had died in my mother's womb. And also, this is the danger of taking the snapshot in your life.

You think of the most distressful, worst situation you've ever been in, and you stop right there, pause, and you take a picture and a snapshot of that.

And I'm sure in the moment, in that snapshot of life, you would look at that and you'd say,

That is terrible. I wish that doesn't happen. It would have been better if I died.

In reasoning like Job, it's only when you hit play and you see the magnificent painting that God has painted in all of life, in all of His story, that you see, oh, the situation

I was in was actually the shadow that magnified the greatness of this painting. It was the shadow that made it so that you could see the lifting of the smiling picture here.

Don't you see that? The contours of the picture are so much greater than you and I will ever rationalize.

And God's entire creation, this entire painting, and this analogy that I'm trying to show to us, if you were just to look at one sweep of the paintbrush, you would try to question why it was there.

But it's not until you see the whole picture that you say, Lord, this is glorious. I don't know how you even brought this about,

Lord. Thank you. Praise be to You. So if Job is sitting here and he's wallowing in distress, this is the danger if he was to pause there and live there for the rest of his life.

If you were in all those things today, where would you turn? Where would you go to, church?

Where would you go about in your life? Would you be like Job here?

Would you be like Paul in Philippians? To live is Christ and to die is gain. All things are a loss of the surpassing value of knowing

Christ Jesus. Take it all from me, Lord. Maybe the greatest question that I would ask any of us in here is, what's the hope of Job in this text?

And when I ask that, I'm not asking what is Job saying his hope is, because what is Job's hope in this text that he's told us in the inspired word?

Death. Lord, you should have killed me when I was very young. That's the hope that Job has.

I want the grave, not the light to shine on this dread of this day. That's what

Job is hoping for. But what is the true hope of Job? And maybe, what is the true hope of us today being in the body of Christ?

Turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 51 through 58. This is where we will finish for today.

1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 51 through 58.

1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 51 through 58.

We're rejoicing, not leaving here in despair, feeling like this was a funeral.

I came here thinking, I should have worn maybe more black for an occasion like this today. Brothers and sisters, while the psalm of that text that we just read is very true, and it is very deep in what it cuts when we consider the words of Job, look at this text.

1 Corinthians 15, verse 51 through 58 says this. Behold, I tell you a mystery, that we will all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed.

For this corruptible must put on the incorruptible, and the moral must put on the immortality.

But when this corruptible puts on the incorruptible, and the moral puts on the immortality, then will come about the word that is written, death is swallowed up in victory.

O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?

Now the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

But thanks be to God, who gives victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, and always abounding in the work of the

Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. Let's consider what

God has revealed to us about the character of Job. Job fears Yahweh.

I will argue in Job chapter 3, we see a sinful, fallen, broken picture of a

Christian who has faith in Yahweh.

How would you be encouraged in this text? How would you encourage someone else in this text? 1

Corinthians 15, 51 through 58. Lord, it's a mystery to us.

Lord, I say, when all those that sleep, my seven sons, my three daughters, they will be resurrected at one point in life.

The death that I see with my house that has fallen on my children, the death that is there and stench has overtaken me, that death itself is swallowed up in victory.

When we think about that, how was that done? Jesus defeated death by dying and rising again.

O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? When we remember that,

Lord, I can't imagine losing my wife,

Emily, and my three children. Job has lost something even more numerically than what I can even imagine and rationalize with myself to Job.

If God was to take away my son today, I must turn to a text like this and say,

O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? Lord, I don't know why these things happen, but God, you are the potter and I am the clay.

And though I be broken right now, I know that it is for a purpose in your glorious plan. Brothers and sisters, listen to verse 58 again.

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, be movable, always abounding in the work of the

Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. Why would our labors, all the hardships, the persecutions, the loss, all of it, why would it not be in vain?

Because those things are in the Lord. Knowing that your labor is not in vain in the

Lord. Let us seek after God in all that we do and remember these words that have been spoken to us from Job and even from Paul in 1

Corinthians this day. It's no longer morning. Let us pray over this, Lord. This text in here.

Let's pray to the Lord. God, we thank you, Lord. God, the reality of death has struck

Job here, Lord. The reminder of what is awaiting all of us has perched itself on the door of Job's house,

Lord. God, as Job will be reminded in a future text,

Lord, that you have drawn where the wave will come up to. You know where the calf is birthed,

Lord. That you see the things of the most deep waters, Lord. God, we must recall from even our

Bible studies that we've been looking at, Lord, that you are our potter and we have no right as your creation to ask why have you made me like this.

Why? But Lord, let us approach this text of Job.

Let us approach our life situations with the humility of saying, Lord, you are the creator. I am the creation,

Lord. God, in this text of Job, Lord, that we would be reminded that if Job had died in his mother's womb, his original seven sons and three daughters would have not been born.

Yet to what we will see in the text, Lord, that those other seven sons and three daughters, they too would have never been born,

Lord. And so God, in all these things you have brought about a wonderful purpose, Lord.

God, in the midst of our sufferings today, may we recognize it as what it is, as the contours of this painting of your glorious picture,

Lord. God, we ask you this in your name and according to your will, let those things be done.

In Jesus' name, amen. Brothers and sisters, what we will do now is we will pray.