A Loneliness Observed

Job 2:11–3:10 ESV

Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort him. And when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him. And they raised their voices and wept, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great. After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. And Job said: “Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, ‘A man is conceived.’ Let that day be darkness! May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it. Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it. That night—let thick darkness seize it! Let it not rejoice among the days of the year; let it not come into the number of the months. Behold, let that night be barren; let no joyful cry enter it. Let those curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up Leviathan. Let the stars of its dawn be dark; let it hope for light, but have none, nor see the eyelids of the morning, because it did not shut the doors of my mother’s womb, nor hide trouble from my eyes.

Prayer

In the book, Disappointment with God, Phillip Yancey tells as story of a man named Richard.

Richard was converted to Christ while in college.

Not long after that, his parents announced they were getting a divorce.

Notwithstanding Richard’s fervent prayers for the preservation of their marriage, they split.

This was his first experience of feeling let down by God.

Every decision he made in life was preceded by prayer and Bible study.

But everything he did seemed to backfire.

A lucrative job offer was withdrawn and given to someone less qualified.

He soon found himself in debt, his fiancé left him, and he began to experience a series of physical problems.

Finally, feeling that he had reached his wit’s end, he decided to seek God in an all-night prayer vigil.

He fasted and prayed and zealously sought the Lord.

But all he heard was silence.

Nothing.

After it was over, he said: “I staked my life on God, and God let me down.”

Even in the darkest moments, lament offers a well-traveled path of faithfulness in the midst of human anguish.

Today’s message is really divided into two parts.

Part 1…

Watching Loneliness

“Observing Loneliness”

Job 2:11 (ESV)

Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite.

We will discuss these friends later on at length, but for now suffice it to say that there were three friends from three different locations.

Job 2:11 (ESV)

They made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort him.

Exemplary Friends

“You’ve Got A Friend in Me”

If you know the story of Job, its easy to think about Job’s friends as “real jerks”

But we have to understand the picture that the author is painting for us of these friends.

The same word that is used here for friends is used in other places of the Bible to describe the friendship that David and Jonathan had.

1 Samuel 18:1 (ESV)

the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.

They were not “fair-weather friends” or “Facebook friends”

They were NOT just trying to get something from Job.

These guys were NOT just three acquaintances of Job, they were deep abiding friends.

They were LOYAL friends who went to extreme lengths to be with their friend.

These friends made an “appointment” with Job to see him for two main reasons.

Job 2:11 (ESV)

They made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort him.

The intentions of the friends were to show him sympathy and comfort him.

Show Him Sympathy

This word means “to shake the head” meaning a deep sense of sympathy or condolence.

It would be the kind of sentiment that one would have when going to a viewing or funeral.

Comfort Him

They also came with a desire to “comfort” and “console” their friend.

Now comfort here is NOT the same thing as empathy.

Empathy is the entering into and experiencing of suffering with the sufferer

Empathy may be silent, but comfort must include speech.

To comfort involves speaking to the mind and heart of the sufferer in such a way as to change his or her mind and heart.

Comfort is an action, sometimes called “speaking to the heart,” that hopes and intends to bring about a change in how the sufferer thinks and feels about his or her suffering.

So these friends came with the best of intentions.

They came to support their friend.

They came to help their friend.

They came to be there for their friend.

But just because a person intends to be a “help” to someone else does not mean they will be.

Job 2:12 ESV

And when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him. And they raised their voices and wept, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven.

If we are to think about this as Christians, these friends give us a helpful pattern to understand how we should approach other sufferers.

In another place in Scripture we are called to “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”(Romans 12:15)

Weep With Those Who Weep

I want you to notice three key elements that these men did which were helpful to a friend who was suffering.

Show Up

“Attending to Suffering”

Upon arrival, they realized that their friend was far worse off than they imagined he could have been.

He was a "shell of a man" which he once was.

To the point that they could no longer recognize that Job was even their friend they formally known.

As these friends come toward Job, they see him from a distance and they are deeply disturbed.

Their friend they once knew is now a shell of his former existence.

He was once a great man of the East, now he sits upon the ash heap of the East.

They are so disturbed that they raised their voices and cried out in anguish for him.

They cried out in anguish for their friend, they tore their robes to mirror his robe tearing.

Often times, when tragedy strikes, we are afraid to be around grieving people.

In fear that we will do the wrong thing

Say the wrong thing

Just plain not know what to do

This fear DID not deter them, and it should NOT deter us either.

Gospel centered people move toward suffering.

Not AWAY from suffering.

Shut Up

“Silence before Speech”

Job 2:12–13 NET 2nd ed.

But when they gazed intently from a distance but did not recognize him, they began to weep loudly. Each of them tore his robes, and they threw dust into the air over their heads. Then they sat down with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights, yet no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his pain was very great.

These men did NOT come to be Job’s answer men.

They DIDN’T try to explain away all the suffering and pain.

They DIDN’T try to give him some happy-slappy answer.

For seven days and nights they sat in silence with their friend.

Tear Up

“Weeping with those who Weep”

They sat on the ground with him in silence.

For a week straight, they did not say a word to him.

There were no words which could fix what had happened.

Nothing could change the situation.

These friends were not trying to harm Job.

They intended to bless him.

They intended to mourn with him.

They intended to be a friend to their friend.

The narrative now shifts from silence to speech.

Does suffering have a sound?

Does suffering make noise?

The answer is “yes, it does”

And it’s the sound of lament.

I also want to qualify upfront, that if there are moments that Job sounds as though he is overstepping the bounds of faithful submission, we MUST remember that he is a type of Christ.

He IS NOT on the same level of the LORD Jesus.

[Some have suggested that] perhaps it was a social requirement for visitors that they not presume to speak until their host should begin the conversation or invite them to do so.

Job’s friends likely were waiting for him to speak.

We don’t know it yet, but they were waiting for a “confession of sin”

Listening to Loneliness

“Hearing Loneliness”

This section can be broken into three parts.

The first being The Past, The Present, and The Future

The Past

“Lamenting His Birth”

Job 3:1–3 ESV

After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. And Job said: “Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, ‘A man is conceived.’

and then later in verses 6-7

Job 3:6–7 ESV

That night—let thick darkness seize it! Let it not rejoice among the days of the year; let it not come into the number of the months. Behold, let that night be barren; let no joyful cry enter it.

Job’s anguish is not toward God.

It’s not toward other people.

It’s not even toward his situation.

It’s TOWARD the day of his birth.

Against His Birth and Conception

He is saying that the day of his birth should be cursed.

[Conception as Hope]

Now we need to remember something about the idea of birth and conception.

When a mother finds out that she has conceived and they are awaiting a child, there is great anticipation.

There is great hope for the future of the life of this child who is yet to come.

Job is essentially saying...

“I am so utterly hopeless, you should remove any idea of hope from my existence.”

“Even if you could go back and stop me from becoming a child, I would be without hope.”

Job 3:4–5 ESV

Let that day be darkness! May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it. Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it.

Job is asking to be “God forsaken”

He goes as far as to ask in verse 8…

Job 3:8 ESV

Let those curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up Leviathan.

Life is so utterly painful that Job wishes the beginnings of his existence would never have existed before God.

He is harkening back to Genesis when God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” (Genesis 1:3)

To talk about the light is to talk about the area in which God dwells.

He remembers that God created the light, and he is asking for God to undo his life.

He is asking for God to rewind the tape of creation and remove him from it.

He is asking to be “de-created”

And for Job to talk about the darkness, he is saying the area of utter chaos and disorder.

Job’s is saying that he would wish that God would uncreate him.

His desire is that God would have never created him all together.

Notice something:

Job at no point is contemplating suicide.

Although he doesn’t take his own life, he wishes that God would.

“There is NOTHING in my life worth hoping for”

“There is no future for me; would that there had been no past.”

All of the trouble that he has faced would have been much easier if he had never been born to experience it at all.

These words are coming from the lips of a blameless man.

A man who God’s says was blameless before him.

Surprised by Lament

The general thrust of this lament, a cursing of the day he was born is to show how miserable he is.

He is so miserable that he can wish that he had never been born at all.

Job is not giving us something here to be informed by.

If we hear this as simply, “Job is deeply distressed”, we will miss the point of the curses he is uttering.

Job is NOT seeking to inform us.

He is seeking to present to us the rhetoric of outrage.

Job is seeking to ignite within us anguish

We need to feel the weightiness of this.

Do you know why we struggle to know how to grieve in the body of Christ today?

Because we have stopped looking at the Bible to give us the language of lament.

Psalm 13:1–2 ESV

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

These are the words of lament.

These are the words of someone that does not sense that God is near.

Job’s experience is NOT unlike experiences from even the most Godly and faithful of believers.

Believers can be discouraged, depressed, and facing despair.

Even in the darkest moments, lament offers a well-traveled path of faithfulness in the midst of human anguish.

The Present

“Lamenting His Life”

Job 3:11–13 ESV

“Why did I not die at birth, come out from the womb and expire? Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breasts, that I should nurse? For then I would have lain down and been quiet; I would have slept; then I would have been at rest,

Job continues to ask why at any moment, God did not just stop him from existing.

Because his point is, “I would then be at peace!”

Job 3:14–19 ESV

with kings and counselors of the earth who rebuilt ruins for themselves, or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver. Or why was I not as a hidden stillborn child, as infants who never see the light? There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest. There the prisoners are at ease together; they hear not the voice of the taskmaster. The small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master.

He continues toward lamenting the fact that God did not remove him earlier.

Both kings and counselors, find their selves in the same place their prisoners and slaves do.

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

Lamenting Toward God

Notice in all of the questions he asks, there is NOT the heart of rebellion.

There is the heart of anguished confession.

There IS NO conflict between honest expression of human anguish and faithful submission to God.

These are NOT competing agendas.

Lament is the honest expression of human anguish.

And lament comes from the lips of the faithful.

Hebrews 5:7 ESV

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.

Th writer of Hebrews even knows this…

Hebrews 5:8–9 ESV

Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him,

We simply catch a glimpse of the lamenting of our Lord in the garden of Gethsemane.

Matthew 26:39 ESV

And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

Lament is the path that the Scriptures give us.

Lament is the path that Job gives us.

Lament is the path that our Savior shows us.

Saving faith is the faith that has as its content the gospel and promises of God in Christ and does not give up,

just as Jesus did not give up but chose to endure God’s plan in his own flesh, to purchase that rest for us.

When suffering strikes us, we are called to lament.

We are called to cry out from the depth of the anguish we are experiencing.

And that crying out IS NOT unfaithfulness.

It is the very heart of FAITHFULNESS that cries out in lament.

If we see from this that this was the path of Job…

And it was the path of our Lord....

Then why should we ever think it will NOT be our path as well?

Even in the darkest moments, lament offers a well-traveled path of faithfulness in the midst of human anguish.

The Future

“Questioning the Future”

Job 3:20–22 ESV

“Why is light given to him who is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, who long for death, but it comes not, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures, who rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they find the grave?

He basically is asking, “Why did God give life to these at all?”

Why did God give me all these things to take them away?

Why would God have given me all these things, take them away, and not take me with them?

Why did God bother to make the world at all?

Job 3:23 ESV

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

Job who once experienced God’s hedge of protection feels the miserable life he longs to leave.

He now is experiencing the opposite of the former hedge.

Where there was a hedge of protection, there now sits a hedging in of Job.

He is hedged in with razor wire on every side.

Not to guard Job, but to keep him in.

Job is here describing his life of being that of a prison cell, where he wishes to leave entirely.

Job is locked into his prison and God has proverbially thrown away the key…

Think about this for a minute.

When you’re a child, all you ever want to do is get out and find freedom.

You get older and that freedom gradually increases to the point that parental authority no longer has a say over you.

You live for a good many years with this kind of freedom, but then something begins to happen.

As you grow older..

Life begins to become a cramped narrowness.

from the world to the nation (no longer going abroad), from the nation to the neighborhood, from the neighborhood to the occasional walk in the garden, from the garden to being housebound, from the house to the bedroom, and from the bedroom to the coffin or casket.

This is what Job is experiencing and yet it is NOT because of age.

He is experiencing this because of the lefthanded providences he has received.

Job 3:24–26 ESV

For my sighing comes instead of my bread, and my groanings are poured out like water. For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me. I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest, but trouble comes.”

The sighing here and the groaning is something like “my shrieks”

The loud moans and wails that come to people who have been devastated.

“Roaring” and “Bellowing” is where Job finds himself.

Will Job curse God?

Will he utter a blasphemy that will make God a liar and prove Satan right?

The Question of “Why” From Jesus

The question of “why?” is not necessarily a search for an answer.

Jesus cried out from the cross, Matthew 27:46

Matthew 27:46 (ESV)

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Jesus was NOT unaware of what was happening to Him.

He knew why this was happening.

He predicted it would happen to Him.

BUT in a moment of pure agony and human anguish, He cries out, “Why have you forsaken me?”

The question “why” allows the sufferer to encapsulate all of the pain, chaos, and abandonment that is felt in that moment.

Even in the darkest moments, lament offers a well-traveled path of faithfulness in the midst of human anguish.