I stand now for the reading of God's Word, the Old Testament reading, which will also be our text, is Job 3, 20 to 26, New Testament reading, 2 Corinthians 4, 16 through 5, 10. Job 3, I'm reading from the New American Standard Version. Why is light given to him who suffers? and life to the bitter of soul, who long for death, but there is none, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures, who rejoice greatly and exult when they find the grave. Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden and whom God has hedged in? For my groaning comes at the sight of my food and my cry pours out like water. For what I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me. I'm not at ease, nor am I quiet, and I'm not at rest, but turmoil comes." And then 2 Corinthians chapter 4, beginning with verse 16. Therefore, we do not lose heart, that though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory. far beyond all comparison. While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. For we know that if the earthly tent, which is our house, is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven. And as much as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. For indeed, while we're in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed, but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life. Now he who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge. Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body, We are absent from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. We are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. Therefore, we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. Thus far the reading of God's holy word. Let us pray. We bless your name, holy, immortal, invisible God, who alone is wise. You indeed are an inscrutable God whose ways are beyond us, but a loving God who comes to us. by the Spirit through the Scriptures. And we ask now that Lord, the Spirit who inspired your holy word, will illumine our understanding and grant to us the light of your truth and cause your word to be preached in the demonstration of his own holy, piercing power. We ask this for Christ's sake. Amen. Be seated. A few weeks ago, I was at the doctor's office and in the room next to me or down the hall, there was suddenly a child wailing like I've never heard a child wail before. And I'm sitting there wondering, what in the world are they doing to this poor child? Well, as I'm leaving the doctor's office and I'm there checking out, the mother of that child, Melissa Spangler, comes out. And she had taken Michael for his shots. And Michael was wailing because he hated the shots, and they hurt him. And you boys and girls know that we have to do things sometimes that hurt you, like shots, before your well-being, but we do them because we love you. Perhaps you remember the first time you had to slap the hand of your child, and that startled look, the one who has always loved me and cared for me, just caused me to hurt. But why did they cause you to hurt? Because they love you. Or somebody in the church has chicken pox and everybody else gathers up their three, four, five-year-olds and takes them down to the house of the one with chicken pox. Exposes them to a childhood disease. Why? Because you love them. We have to hurt our children. because we love them. We hurt them out of love because we know the things that hurt are in fact good for them. And as you know, this is a proper way to think about the chasing of the Lord as the writer of the Hebrews teaches us in chapter 12. It's a loving father who disciplines us and even though it hurts, it is for our good and it comes out of his love. But you also know that no parent just continually submits their child to pain. That would be wretched. That would be torture. That would be child abuse to just continually, interminably, without stopping, hurting the child. So, how are we to think about God in those situations where his people have been brought into unrelenting, apparently non-ceasing trial, pain, and difficulty. Think about an eight-year-old in a crib, destined to be in that crib for the rest of her days because of severe handicap. or a father of five who has been in a coma for five years and there seems to be no possibility of his ever recovering from that situation. How are we to think about the role of God in those things? Does the question ever cross your mind why the interminable, unrelenting pain and pressure and trial? Sometimes are you tempted to think that God is but a malignant puppet master, pulling the strings for his own entertainment with no care for the ones who find themselves in those situations. Or like the little girl that's constantly tormenting the baby cat simply for her own pleasure. Now, you shudder to think that she was sensitive about God, but have you been tempted to think that way about God? And surely, have at least some of you asked this very hard question, why let that person live? Why does God not end his or her life? Has he not accomplished his purposes for them? Have they not suffered enough? What good can there be? This is the question that Job is asking in the end of his first speech here in Job chapter three. It's a profound question. It's a question that many of us will ask. Now, a few weeks ago, we looked at the first two thirds of this chapter, the first speech of Job. And there we saw that he responded irrationally to his trial. that he wanted to obliterate the day of his birth from the calendar. Of course, that's impossible. And then he says, well, why not just die at birth and not have to go through all of those things? And that, of course, is irrational. But as Job is wrestling with his difficulty, Now in the last seven verses of this chapter, he asks a very important question. Why does it continue when there seems to be no hope for deliverance and no light of God's countenance? As we look at Job's question, Job's complaint, I want to do so in such a way that we might then derive some lessons from Job's complaint to equip us to deal with these types of situations in life. So I want to consider three things tonight with you. A heart-wrenching complaint, a rational complaint, and an instructive complaint. Now we begin with the heart-wrenching complaint, and it's basically two questions that Job asked in verses 20 to 23. Why is light given to him who suffers, and life to the bitter of soul, who long for death, but there is none, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures, who rejoice greatly and exult when they find the grave? Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, and whom God has hedged in? It's a two-fold question. The first question is stated in verse 20. Why does God allow a person who is physically exhausted at wit's end, has suffered all that's possible to suffer, has nothing in this life to look for, why does God not take the life of that person? Why leave them? so indefinitely in the pain and misery. Job says, why is light given to him who suffers and life to the bitter of soul? We have a parallel here with light being a figure for life. And when you think about life from a positive point of view, indeed it is light. It's joy. It's full of many pleasures. And so, Job is equating life with light, but he's saying, why does life continue to the one who is in the depth of misery and suffering and to whom life is bitter? Bitter like bitter herbs. There's nothing at all that is satisfying or pleasurable. There's no redeeming factor. In fact, Why does God continue the life of a person who simply wants to die? Surely, many of you have asked that question. You've seen this person writhing in pain, and God not taking their life, and you're saying, why does God not allow this person to die, bring them to death? Because there is this longing for death in those situations. Notice the intensity, who long for death but there is none. They dig for it more than hidden treasure. Remember the parable of Christ, the person who finds that great treasure and he sells all that he might have it, relentlessly pursuing the treasure. That is the figure of the desire of death that Job himself had. Put more abstractly, the question that he's asking, when people are at wit's end, at the end of misery's rope, and they long for death, why does life continue? Now, there are proper reasons to long for death, aren't there? Isn't that really what Paul is expressing in Romans chapter 7? As he is talking about his own struggle with sin, a struggle with which we are well aware. The good that he would do, he doesn't. The things he ought not to do, he does do. So he finally cries out, verse 24, wretched man that I am, who will set me free from the body of this death or the body of death? For so much of that remnant of sin that's in us is active through our bodies. And Paul is saying, can I not be delivered? We recognize that for the believer, death is a deliverance from sin. It's a passing over into a great freedom where we no longer have the struggles against temptation and the weakness of the flesh. There's that longing for death of which we read in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 that Paul expresses in Philippians chapter 1, oh to be with Christ. to know him in his beauty and glory, and to long to be with him, and thus to have that tension. Yes, to stay is good, and there are good and noble reasons to stay, but to die is far much better, to be with Christ. And those are surely good reasons that we as Christians will at times long for that which is beyond here. Not, as Job did earlier in chapter three, idealize death merely as an end. but as a means to that which is far more glorious. But is there not the possibility of a proper longing for death of that person who is so intensely in pain that the only alleviation comes from morphine? Didn't they lose the sense of reality, the ability to commune yet with those who are left here or to reflect on the Lord and His goodness? Is it not a way you think that death is preferable to that? Or the person who's about to be tortured for his faith, and he's fearful that in the weakness of the pain that he would deny his Lord, and he longs for a quick death. And so there are proper longings for death. And the question is not wrong, is it, that Job asks, Why does God continue my life? This is all there is. But the question is actually more profound because in the next verse, 23, Job moves from his physical sufferings to that which for him was much more profoundly terrible, spiritual suffering. Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden? than God has hedged." You'll notice, at least in my version, the why is light given is in italics. It is an expression that's added by the translators, rightly picking up the flow of thought. Job is continuing the same question about life. And now he's moved from why is life given to a man in the extremity of physical pain and difficulty to why is life given to a man who is at the extremity of spiritual pain and difficulty. See, this was Job's big problem. He had sat there for seven days and he had meditated. And there was no square, no file folder. in his theology that he could place his experience. Remember Job didn't have scripture. He had revelation that had been passed on from Adam through Noah to the generations to follow. There obviously were visions. There's a vision recorded in chapter 4 from Eliphaz. But Job didn't have this wealth of of the revelation of the mysterious God that we have. So he very much was falling into the patterns of thinking of his three friends. Remember, I've called them the first health, wealth, and prosperity theologians. They really were. Because their theology had no place for a righteous man suffering the way Job was suffering. And Job, he couldn't figure it out. He knew that he was a sinner, saved by grace. He confesses his sin, but his conscience also bore witness to him of that which God himself said, that he was an upright, blameless man who feared God and was regularly turned away from evil. You see, it's not just that he's now in the physical trials, because in the midst of the physical trials, it seems that God has turned his back on Job. He is in the depth of depression because of spiritual desertion. He's walked with God. He has communed with God. He has known God. But now, in his difficulties, God is hidden. God has turned his back from him. And there's nothing, there's nothing more awful than the very simple thing that Job expresses Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden whom God has hedged in?" Remember, Satan accused God of hedging Job in with protection. And now Job is saying, God has hedged me in blackness and despair. It is awful. We find no more profound picture of it than our Savior as He hanged on Calvary's tree. He cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? As Luther exclaimed in mystery, God forsaken of God, but he was in some way. He was suffering the reality of hell. He lost the comfortable presence of God. There was no light. There was no shining presence. There was no communion. There was no overt communication of love or pleasure. He's lived under the light of his father's pleasure. Now it's all been removed. And it's in his experience that we can understand something of what Job experienced. We're also reminded of the awful reality of hell. The cry of the Savior, the cry here of Job, is in fact a little window on the reality of all those who now are in hell and all who will suffer in hell for eternity, because there'll be a complete removal of any comforting, glorious, kind presence of God. There'll be a visiting presence. There'll be the presence of a dreadful, holy judge, exacting retribution upon retribution. that there will be no comfortable presence of God in hell. I would simply say that in passing tonight, if any of you here tonight are not consciously, are in penance and faith, resting in the Lord Jesus Christ, then this is what awaits you. This little cry of Job is nothing to the cry that you will have because it would be impossible for you to die. Job could die physically. Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in? But your immortal soul will not die. And it will be unrelenting, the awful black reality of separation from the comfortable, gracious, sunshine presence of God. But while you yet are here on this side, there remains hope. And the hope is so simple. It's take hold of the Lord Jesus Christ as he's offered in the gospel. Be delivered from the coming wrath of God and from this dark separation. So Job is asking, I'm here at spiritual wit's end. I'm at the end of my tether. God has turned his back on me and all is black and bleak. Why does he continue with my life? Why not take it now?" Surely there have been those in deep depression who have lost all sense of the presence. You've got to think of a man like William Cooper. He, in his weakness, tried to take his own life. Which, as I've said before, Job did not do, and that in itself is quite a testimony to his faith. But to be in that black place, it is not a bit of light of God's presence. Well, you see the soul-searching complaint of Job. You, I trust, can feel something of the importance of the question. If you've not had to act it yourself, you have friends who have, you'll ask them on their behalf. Why does life continue to the one who is suffering so intensely under the hand of his God? I want to show you as well that Job's complaint was a rational complaint, and by that I mean he's setting forth reasons. He's not now irrationally lashing out as he does in the first two-thirds of this chapter. You'll notice that verse 24 and 25 begin with a little word for. Job now is giving the basis of this complaint. For my groaning comes at the sight of my food, and my cries pour out like water. For what I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me. I'm not at ease, nor am I quiet, and I'm not at rest. The turmoil comes. You see how he puts the two things together. He longs for death because there's no pleasure in life. There's no comfort physically. A poor man can have comfort at a little bit of food or a cup of water or wine. But he says, food causes me to groan. The very sight of food fills my body with pain. In his weariness, the cries pour out of his body like water bubbling up from an artesian well. This is why he's asking, why does this continue? It can get no worse. There's no respite. There's no satisfaction. There's no ease. Job has an incurable disease. It appears to be a fatal disease, but his life just continues to subsist in a place of absolute pain and not the slightest alleviation, not the comfort of one cold drink, of one piece of food. But the pain is so intense that his cries come out like water out of the ground. But the greater intensity is the spiritual suffering. Again, verse 25, 4, for what I fear, or the fear I fear, literally, comes upon me. And what I dread befalls me. I'm not at ease, nor am I quiet, and I'm not at rest. The turmoil comes. The confession for what I fear comes upon me, I think gives us a bit of insight into Job's heart. Though he was greatly blessed of God, he was never presumptuous. You see, he ordered his life and he walked carefully before the Lord. He didn't think that he deserved the wealth and prosperity and the fame and the power that he had. So there was in him this recognition that things could change. that he was living by God's grace. And what he's basically saying is, I guarded my heart. I did not want to lose so much of the things. I did not want to lose this comfortable presence of God. And so he says, I wasn't presumptuous. I didn't blandly sin or ignore God. But now what I fear, it has come upon me. And he said, he has no ease or quiet and no rest because turmoil comes. He's saying now that he lives in a place that I don't want to be, you don't want to be, completely removed from God, even though he guarded his heart. And this is one of those great mysteries of the ways of God. It's why I chose this confession. As it's stated in our confession of faith, various reasons a believer might lose or have their assurance weakened, negligence in preserving it, falling into some sin that wounds the conscience and grieves the spirit of vehement temptation. But notice this. by God's withdrawing the light of his countenance and suffering, even such as fear him to walk in darkness and to have no light. That, dear friends, is a spiritual reality. That God, in the inscrutableness of his divine providence, will bring different choice saints into this place where Job was, described here God's withdrawing the light of his countenance and suffering even such as fear him. You see, Job expresses his fear of God. He's been described as a God-fearer. Even those that fear him to walk in darkness and to have no light. Job said, that's where I am. I don't know why I'm here. At least you have a bit of an answer to that. That's where I am, but why does God lead me? If he's not going to restore his presence, why not just take my life? That's what I mean by a rational complaint, that he was wrestling with the awful reality of life when there is no hope physically or spiritually. Now we too should be concerned about this loss of the presence of God. On the one hand, we can forfeit the presence of God by a deliberate sin, toying with sin, neglecting the means of grace, the other reasons that we confess in our confession. And if you have, even if it is through the window of Job's experience, any any inkling of the reality of what it means to have God turn his back on you that would make you all the more jealous to guard your heart. Seek carefully to walk in the fear of the Lord, that he might spare us such an experience. And if it does come, and you cannot find any answer for it, then this is where I believe Job's complaint is instructive as well. So we've seen it's a heart-searching complaint, and we've seen that it is a rational complaint, but it's also an instructive complaint. It's not so much, as Job expresses himself, that he's modeling for us what we ought to do, but the Spirit has revealed to us this lament on Job's part for our prophet. So what is the prophet? Let me suggest some things. In the first place, when you find yourself in this situation, you're to do what Job did, and that is to pray. You see, we look at this lament, and it doesn't mention the name of God, and we kind of jump to the conclusion that it's a soliloquy or something. But no, Job's praying. There's only one person that has the control of his life. And so Job, his faith now is inching along. He's gone from this irrationality of what he said in the first part of this opening speech to at least addressing God in this lament with the why question. And the why question is not an improper question. Is it not the question the Savior asked from the cross? Why have you forsaken me? And we find many laments in scripture that will ask the why question. And so Job here is showing us, even though his question's not well put, but he's showing us exactly our first recourse when we find ourselves with the serious questions of suffering and life and blackness. There's only one place to turn, and that is to the Lord God. Turn, yes, for deliverance. It's never wrong to pray for deliverance. It's never wrong to plead with God to restore His gracious presence, but also to seek answers. Sometimes your experience is going to be a direct chastening for sin. And it won't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. If you ask why and you seek God's will, it's going to be quite obvious that the chastening is matching a particular thing, pattern, or action in your life or thoughts that God wants to correct. Other times, God will answer that question by showing the streams of mercy that are flowing out of that particular difficulty. So we look at this family with the eight-year-old in a crib and we look at their joy and their peace and their happiness and how that has radiated through a family and a congregation and a community and the testimony of God's glory and grace. We look at the man in the coma and we see how God has sustained the wife and how the church has come together to supply emotionally and physically that which that man can no longer supply. And so we can begin to trace out those ways of God in these inscrutable provinces. But you also need to be aware that God will remain silent. He doesn't owe us answers. In fact, one of the interesting things about the book of Job is God answers none of Job's questions. He doesn't owe us answers, and at times the answer is going to be silence. And you've got to be willing to accept then, in your praying, the silence of God as his answer. Which leads us to the second thing that we can profit from Job's complaint, and that is, how do you respond to the silence of God? Well, there's some responses that Job had that weren't all bad. In the first place, there was a response of, well, I know I don't deserve better. You see, when he says, that which I feared has come upon me, I said he was not being presumptuous. He knew he didn't deserve anything. Now, he didn't think he deserved what was happening, but he also recognized that God didn't owe him anything. But you take it a step further, you have to realize that the worst things that can happen to any one of us in this life is nothing in comparison to what we deserve. If you know anything about your own heart, your own sin, The worst thing that you could go through, you could be paralyzed, lying on a bed for 30 years, and that is nothing of what you deserve, the hands of a God because of sin. And so we need to get out of this mindset that we're all victims and we all deserve better. We don't deserve anything good from the hand of God. And if we can correct that notion, we then bathe in grace and revel in it. but also to see the enormity of sin. Sin as the principle that came into the world through Adam's fall. That's why we have all these things. But sin in my life and your life. It's sin that is so often at the root, not just of the broader maladies of life, but of my own calamities. A second thing that Job shows us here is a clear recognition of the sovereignty of God. You would never hear Job say, what I hear at some evangelical funerals around Greenville, when there's been some tragic accident, a family was killed in a car accident by some drunk driver, and then we hear the preacher say, God didn't intend for that to happen. I want off right now if I can live in a world where God didn't intend for it to happen. You see, Job didn't think that, did he? It's quite clear by the very lament. You know, there's only one person that's behind all of this. Yes, there are second causes, and they'll be held responsible. But ultimately, God is the sovereign, the one who is behind this. That's why I chose that concluding hymn that we'll sing in a few moments. Remarkable confession. Whatever my God ordains is right, his holy will abideth. I will be still, whate'er he doth, and follow where he guideth. He is my God, though dark my road, he holds me, but I shall not fall. Wherefore to him I leave it all." Few truths are more comforting in all of scripture than the grand sovereignty of God. Job wasn't quite resting there, but he understood the reality. You rest there, you see. You rest. But there's another aspect of God's sovereignty, a third thing that Job doesn't yet understand that we do fully well know, and that is it's not an impersonal sovereignty. It's not the sovereignty of an Allah. It's the sovereignty of a personal God who does everything out of love to his children. as Melissa had Michael have those shots, or as you spank your child, or expose them to chicken pox, whatever you do out of love, whatever it is that the triune God has done in your life, in my life, is out of love. Do I need to convince you of that? The God who so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life. The God who loved you so much as He hanged on Calvary's cross and poured out His life's juices and poured out His soul as a sacrifice for sin? The God who loved you so much that He came in the fullness of your own time and wooed you and drew you into union with the Savior and dwells in you and puts up with all manner of sin and corruption? I don't need to convince you, do I, that God loves you? and put those two things together, a sovereign God who does all things out of love. There's a fourth thing that we must keep in mind in the silence of God, and that is don't worry about tomorrow's difficulties. You can probably sketch out the scenario of the thing. I just don't know what I would do if this happened to me. Mine is being paralyzed in bed, just lying there helpless. But you see, God never brings us into a situation where he brings grace with it. Perhaps you remember the story that Corrie ten Boom tells. She was worried about how she would respond to trial and difficulty and her father who each week went up to Amsterdam to set his clock because his clock in the village was the official timepiece and she would go with him. So she was worrying about how she would respond and he said, when we go to Amsterdam, when do I give you your ticket? She says, as we get on the train. So that's what God will do. When he brings you into that difficulty, he will give you grace. always grace sufficient for the need." Evidently, Paul had the silence of God, whatever his trial was, that thorn in the flesh. He prayed three times, no apparent answer through those requests. But then, what a wonderful answer. My grace is sufficient. My grace is sufficient. In the silence of God, do not forget that His grace is sufficient. He will never put you in a place divorced from grace. Now, it's very important that you cultivate the grace of God using the means He has given to you, that you keep that tender relationship. You walk with Him in the private and family means and in corporate worship, but rest confidently that He will never leave you or forsake you. And then one more thing to keep in mind in the silence of God, and that is what Paul says, that these things really are momentary light afflictions. What? Being, having a father in bed five years with a coma, a retarded child eight years in a crib, all the things that happen, we can imagine will happen, are momentary light afflictions. They are, dear friends. We recognize every one of them as preparatory for heaven. The Father who loves us leads our lives and all of this is bringing us into this greater weight of eternal glory. When everything that's here is going to fade away, we'll behold the brightness of the triune God through the face of the Lord Jesus Christ and revel in Him. Then God will not be silent. Then we will see him revealed much more openly in the splendor of his wise, sovereign ways and deeds. And so Job's inching along. It's his first step of faith, this prayer. And it's full of error. And yet, he helps us also by the Spirit to inch along, to trust God in the midst of the silences of God. To wait on God in the midst of traumas. Now one of the ways you do that is by preparing yourself now. Just as you can't imagine how you'd respond in a certain situation, you also got to realize that God's training you and part of bringing whatever he brings into your life down the road is you're being prepared for that now. So the writer of the Hebrews talks about having our senses trained, and he uses the word of a gymnast. And a gymnast does with this body things that are unnatural for the rest of us, but because of repetition and training, the gymnast does those things naturally. And so every trial, every circumstance, it might be this little insignificant thing that happened on the way to church tonight, or something at work tomorrow, or at school, or family, or whatever. Every little difficulty, every little roadblock is part of God's training program. And we seek God's grace to respond appropriately there in those situations. The Spirit's training us so that we do encounter the heavy, grievous, weighty trials of life, we're more prepared. But above all, prepare yourself by meditating on the beauty and glory of God, of communing with Him, of having Him as your all in all. You see, if indeed God takes all the props away, And you love God because of the props. You love God because of all of the blessings. And we do love God because of the blessings. But we must love Him above the blessings. We must love Him for who He is, to commune with Him, to revel in His presence, to tarry there, to delight in Him. And God is your great source of pleasure. Then, when these awful calamities come upon you, you'll be able to respond like a backer. Though the fig tree should not blossom, and there be no fruit on the vines, though the yield of the olives should fail, and the fields produce no food, Though the flock should be cut off from the fold, and there be no cattle in the stalls, yet, yet I will exult in the Lord. I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength. He has made my feet like kind's feet and makes me walk on high places. In Christ Jesus, you cling to him and have the triune God. as your chief delight. And then you can live through the silences because you love Him and you know He loves you. Let us pray. Holy Father, Son, and Spirit, we bless your name as you have taken us into something of the depth of Job's experience. As you recorded this experience, that we might begin to learn the depth of suffering that Many of your people have and will have in this life how to conduct ourselves in those situations. We pray that your spirit indeed will teach us and equip us. And those that are here tonight that are yet in these deep waters, be gracious to them. Do not turn away from any of your people, but restore the light of your countenance upon them. We might revel in you above all. For Christ's sake, amen.