Happy Birthday Series

Job 3: 1 – 26

Happy Birthday

1 After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. 2 And Job spoke, and said: 3 “May the day perish on which I was born, and the night in which it was said, ‘A male child is conceived.’ 4 May that day be darkness; May God above not seek it, nor the light shine upon it. 5 May darkness and the shadow of death claim it; May a cloud settle on it; May the blackness of the day terrify it. 6 As for that night, may darkness seize it; May it not rejoice among the days of the year, may it not come into the number of the months. 7 Oh, may that night be barren! May no joyful shout come into it! 8 May those curse it who curse the day, those who are ready to arouse Leviathan. 9 May the stars of its morning be dark; May it look for light, but have none, and not see the dawning of the day; 10 Because it did not shut up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor hide sorrow from my eyes. 11 “Why did I not die at birth? Why did I not perish when I came from the womb? 12 Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breasts, that I should nurse? 13 For now I would have lain still and been quiet, I would have been asleep; Then I would have been at rest. 14 With kings and counselors of the earth, who built ruins for themselves, 15 Or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver. 16 Or why was I not hidden like a stillborn child, like infants who never saw light? 17 There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest. 18 There the prisoners rest together; They do not hear the voice of the oppressor. 19 The small and great are there, and the servant is free from his master. 20 “Why is light given to him who is in misery, and life to the bitter of soul, 21 Who long for death, but it does not come, and search for it more than hidden treasures; 22 Who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad when they can find the grave? 23 Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, and whom God has hedged in? 24 For my sighing comes before I eat, and my groanings pour out like water. 25 For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me. 26 I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest, for trouble comes.”

In counseling I often here people bemoan that they are not happy. Oh, really? I agree with them. If you look up the word ‘happy’ it means ‘seldom’. So, if you are ever ‘happy’ then rejoice for it will soon disappear. What’s the old saying, ‘Life stinks, and then you die.’ That pretty much sums it up wouldn’t you say? However for us this is something more. Something called hope.

We read in the book of Hebrews chapter 11 this, “1Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 2 For by it the elders obtained a good testimony.” The writer now takes up and expands on the word, ‘But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrink back, my soul has no pleasure in him,’ by outlining from Scripture the lives of those who have proved their righteousness by their faith. They were justified in God’s eyes by faith (Genesis 15.6) and they were then justified in men’s eyes by their works. They are intended to be a spur and encouragement to his readers as they consider the faith of those who have gone before, and see how it resulted in godly living.

Faith is to see as substantial fact what is hoped for on the basis of taking God’s promises seriously. It is to be assured of it, and to be convinced that what God has declared will be, seeing it as proved because He said it, even when it has not yet come about and is invisible. Thus it is to accept it as proved, on the basis of His word. Faith underpins hope in respect to what God has promised. Hope looks at what is to come with confidence; faith is satisfied that it will be so. The one who believes is satisfied that God has some better thing for him who is at present not seeable with our current eyes.

This was what believers of the past did and that is why we have a record of their lives. Faith is to hear God’s word spoken by His Spirit and to respond to it. These people did not act on a whim or a conjured up belief, but on the solid basis of revelations received from God, and of the word of God, sometimes spoken, sometimes written, as it was communicated through the prophets, Abraham, Moses, and the like. They believed God and responded accordingly.