Sermon Tone Analysis

Prayer

A Response to Christ-Less Wisdom:

Cross-Centered Response

The Mystery of a Silhouette

Have you ever noticed that a shadow can be really weird?

I mean that a shadow only vaguely shows us what the actual form of something is.

Take a look at this first image…

What is it?

Any guesses?

It kind of looks like a piano, right?

What about this second image?

It sort of looks like a gorilla, right?

Shadows are sometimes very unclear on the actual form of an object.

A shadow can appear a certain way to our senses but we need to see the image to understand the object itself.

The book of a Job as I have continually said is really no different.

Cross-Centered Wisdom seeks to present the Greatness, Goodness, and Grace of God to Sinners and Sufferers in the face of Jesus Christ.

In these chapters of Job this week, we listen in on Job’s response to his first friend, Eliphaz the elder.

Remember, Eliphaz has hinted at Job that all this is happening to him because he sinned in some way.

He continued to appeal to Job that the innocent never suffer in this life.

The Monologue of Despair

“The Voice of Despair”

Job is responding to what Eliphaz the elder has accused him of…

In a subtle way, Eliphaz has called his friend Job a fool.

He calls him a fool because he has allowed his “grief” and “anguish” to rise up within him.

Job is saying that he wishes his “grief”, or “anguish” were weighed by God.

He wishes that his calamity, or “misery” were laid in the balances!

Now remember a couple of chapters ago, Job was NOT angry toward God.

Rather, he was expressing his deep anguish and distress before God!

But Eliphaz sees this distress as a response of a “fool”

Job on the other hand is saying that his outcry is a natural and normal response to such anguish and grief.

Listen to how Job further describes the pain he has been walking through.

Job is essentially saying here that if you were to put all of my grief and misfortune on one side of a scale, it would be heavier than all the sand of the sea!

The Cry to Weigh Suffering

“Discouragement Abounding”

I couldn’t find the origins of this, but I found it interesting…

There is a legend of a man who found the barn where Satan kept seeds to be sown in the human heart.

There were seeds of “Anger”, “Lust”, “Greed”, “Fear”, “Bitterness”,  “Jealousy”,  “Deceit”, “Violence”, “Dishonesty”, “Fear”, “Confusion”, and many, many more!

But as the man looked around the barn it quickly became obvious that most numerous seed in his arsenal were the seeds of “Discouragement”.

When he inquired as to why this was so, his guide told him it was because the seeds of “discouragement” could grow almost anywhere.

(Illustration Unknown Origin, modified from Lawson, Steven J. 2005.

Job.

What this illustration is pointing at is the fact that discouragement is one of Satan’s most potent weapons.

If Satan’s arsenal of weapons were restricted to a single one, it would be discouragement.

C. S. Lewis

It appears to be one of the last weapon’s he has for Job.

This singular weapon of discouragement attacks the very center of the person.

It leaves them as it were, without hope.

Job find himself in a hopeless position.

But listen to the reason why....

What is the heavy weight upon him?

Now in verse 4, Job gives the reason for why his anguish has been so heavy.

Job is saying this heavy misfortune has come upon him because God has struck him with arrows.

He feels that he is no longer in an I-Thou relationship with God, but in an I-It relationship.

God acts toward him as though he were merely a practice target.

Job is describing something here much like the Psalmist does in Psalm 88.

The Psalmist seems to be experiencing something similar to Job here.

It is the experience of God’s wrath resting upon him.

We don’t understand fully, but he seems to be experiencing “God’s hot, settled anger against sinners.”

(Ash)

This is why he life feels unbearable.

His life is unbearable, not because of his situation.

His life is unbearable because he is experiencing the wrath of God.

The seeming needlessness of their sufferings, the impossibility of tracing these to any cause in their past history, in a word, the mystery of the pain confounds the mind, and adds to anguish and desolation an unspeakable horror of darkness.

Rather than bringing peace to this situation, Eliphaz has merely stoked the coals.

We need to remember what Eliphaz has just said to Job…

Eliphaz has told Job that his confidence should be in his integrity and piety.

His hope should be in how good of a person he is.

Talking to himself but no doubt in response to Eliphaz, Job insists…

Job has been saying that he has been wounded by God.

And rather than bringing him comfort, his friends have brought him “unseasoned words” (Lawson)

Job is criticizing Eliphaz’s unseasoned words.

These words have been a tasteless food to him that has made him ill.

The Cry of the Tortured

“Just End It!”

Job cannot imagine anything that would relieve him than the relief that God should finish him off.

The only hope right now is that God would break his life.

But why?

Why is Job pressed to such a place?

Picture a prisoner under the torture of an enemy.

The enemy is beating him and trying to get him to break.

Like we see in the movies where the prisoner is at his wit’s end.

He’s at the end of himself and his fear is that he is going to break.

His fear is that he is going to “Curse God and die”

This prisoner who is being mercilessly tortured fears the moment he may “curse God and die”

Unlike his wife, he knew he had remained true to God.

Job had not cursed God or rejected his words, which, in essence, would have been a denial of the Lord.

So he preferred to die now, knowing he had kept the faith.

Job defended his emotional response by citing that he was at a loss for strength.

Being at the end of human resources, he was without hope and had lost all prospects to become patient in this painful and crushing ordeal.

It is in these cries for God to bring an end to his life that we see Job as the most heroic.

In this moment of utter despair in fear that he would eventually break he shines forth.

The Cry for Strength

“Utter Weakness”

Job is essentially saying that his physical strength is of no use.

His physical strength is NOT strong enough for him to wait for God’s answer.

His physical strength is GOING to collapse under the weight of his anguish.

Do you know what is most interesting in this response?

It’s not as much what he’s saying as much as what he is longing for.

It’s like the shadows in this way…

What we are seeing does not quite represent the form of the thing…