Sermon Tone Analysis

It is very humorous at times to watch children react when some kind of pain is introduced into their lives.

Now, I don’t mean when they are actually in a significant amount of pain and discomfort.

When your kids are sick, there is nothing funny about that.

I mean when something small happens to them and you know they are overreacting.

When they are really young and your baby isn’t getting his way instantly and he starts to cry sometimes that is humorous.

After five kids we are able to tell when our little ones are overreacting.

I love it when babies cry and no sound comes out of them, and you think to your self- breathe kid, breathe.

Or when your four year old stubs his toe and screams bloody murder.

They do it for a reason, because they are in an amount of pain, and they only know one way to deal with that pain.

They know nothing else that works as effectively as crying and making a fuss.

Even if it is ridiculous and ineffective it is the only way they know to deal with pain.

Sometimes, believers act in ways that are silly and ineffective in order to deal with pain, or irritation, or suffering in their lives.

We deal with difficulties in our lives in an un-biblical manner because we nothing else seems to be working, and all we can think about is getting some relief.

Job has made the progression in his argument to now viewing God as a threat in his life.

He is still in pain and suffering.

He is still in the eyes of the community an outcast, guilty of the punishment that God has devastated him with.

First, Job asked God to simply end his life.

When that did not work he asked God to vindicate him.

God has not yet done that, so now Job is taking matters into his own hands.

He is in pain, and since nothing else is working Job will now attempt to get himself out of his painful situation.

None of the solutions that his fiends offered him have been effective.

So, we are now on to round two of Job responding to bad counsel.

Unfortunately Job attempts to eliminate his pain in poor manner.

And his attempt to eliminate his pain ultimately leads him to distrust and to distance himself from God.

What are some reasons that would cause us to attempt to avoid pain or suffering in our life in an unbiblical manner?

I.

When we are no longer certain what to believe about God.

A. Job’s Previous Beliefs

Job’s previous belief is represented by Bildad in chapter 8, and is a succinct recap of retribution theology.

God always blesses righteousness in this life, and punished evil doers in this life.

This is Bildad’s (and previously was Job’s) standard of justice and righteousness that they knew God to operate by.

But now, Job is no longer certain he can believe this about God, because it no longer works with his present circumstances.

Job is a perfect or an mature believer in God, and yet God (so it seems to Job) has still cast him away.

Job is not an evil doer, yet God (so it seems to Job) will not help him.

So while Job’s friends are still absolutely certain about what they believe about God (retribution theology), Job no longer can be.

B. Job’s Present Confusion

V. 20- Though I am just (in the right, innocent)

V. 21- Though I am perfect (blameless, free of guilt), I do not care for myself, I despise my life.

The conviction of his own moral purity does not ease the deep sense of meaninglessness he feels from his anguish, fed by the lack of any sense of God’s presence or any insight into his design

Job is frustrated because he knows himself to be innocent of any sin that would warrant this kind of suffering from God.

Yet he also believes that he can never prove his innocence and regain his life, so he despises his life.

Then in vv.

22-24 Job directly contradicts retribution theology.

And in so doing, issues a serious complaint against God.

God destroys both the blameless and the wicked.

The innocent die brutally

scourge (šôṭ) means “whip” or “plague” and applies to a devastating judgment that brings widespread death

He will laugh- means that God gladly lets them vainly cry out for help as a part of their suffering.

He lets them struggle hopelessly until they die.

The wicked subdue whole lands

God gives a land or a nation into the power of the wicked.

These wicked rulers coerce and exploit for their own profit.

They dominate the law courts by threats and bribes.

It appears that God covers the faces of the judges so that they allow the mighty to exploit the poor and the weak to build their own wealth.

Then Job ends the verse with a poignant charge in the form of a question.

If not, where- the word “where” is better translated “then”

If not (he), then, who is it?

Given the fact that injustices exist throughout the land and that there is only one God, one can only conclude that God himself is the cause of these injustices.

Job’s questioning leads him to wonder if God is really just.

Illustration:

C. S. Lewis married Joy late in life.

Not long after, he watched helplessly as cancer sunk its claws into his wife’s life.

He recounted much of his internal wrestling in A Grief Observed.

The parallels between Lewis and Job are remarkable.

I tried to put some of these thoughts to C. this afternoon.

He reminded me that the same thing seems to have happened to Christ: “Why hast thou forsaken me?”

I know.

Does that make it easier to understand?

Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God.

The real danger is of coming to believe that God is far different than what I always thought.

The question I am faced with is not, “So, there is no God after all?” Rather, it is, “So, this is what God is like?”

That Lewis (like Job) later describes these doubts as “filth and nonsense” does not diminish the reality with which they press down upon the sufferer.

Not every sufferer thinks such thoughts but many have, both in and out of the Bible.

These are not thoughts to be pretended away but confronted head-on with Scriptures (a luxury Job apparently did not possess) that remind us of what God really is like despite all appearances to the contrary.

Refutation:

We must again remember who is the cause of Job’s suffering?

Satan is.

And he is cruel in his working out the suffering in Job’s life because he makes it appear that God is the one causing the suffering.

Now, God does allow the suffering in Job’s life, but Satan is the cause.

Yet God does allow Job, a blameless man, to suffer- and to suffer to a great degree, and for an extended length of time.

And now that Job is no longer certain what to believe about God, he is taking matters into his own hands in finding a way to deal with his pain.

Application:

Are you in Job’s position right now? Do you no longer know what to believe about God because of the pain that is present in your life at the moment?

These are not thoughts to be pretended away, but confronted head-on with Scriptures!

We have been going over the attributes of God on Wednesdays.

Only a high view of God- a view that sees an infinite, transcendent, eternal, immutable, omniscient, omnipotent, faithful, good, just, merciful, gracious, loving, holy, and sovereign God- will be able to carry you through the difficulties, sufferings, and pain that God allows into your life.

Confront your doubts with faith in the inspired word of God- only then can you manage difficulties they way God intended.

II.

When we believe that there is no other solution

A. I don’t have time for that

He knows his time is coming to an end quickly (25-6).

“Although the moments go by slowly, Job is also aware that his life is flying by with no apparent improvement and will soon be over.”

(Hartley, 179).

3 similes regarding the brevity of his life:

(a) As a swift runner.

(b) As a reed boat – “Made out of reeds, had wooden keels, and they were very light (cf.

Isa.

18:1-2).

They traveled so fast that they seemed to skim over the water.”

(c) Eagle/falcon – swoops down at great speed (Pope estimates 150 mph)

Job feels like his time is running out.