Job 3

We have been talking about the book of JOB, which some scholars believe to be the oldest book of the bible, and written by Moses as he wandered the deserts. So far, in chapters 1 and 2, we see where Satan got permission from God to attack Job. The only stipulation was that Satan would not cause Job to lose his life.

I think it is extremely important to see that before Satan could proceed, he had to get God’s permission. That shows that God is the supreme power and that even Satan bows down to the wishes and desires of God.

Satan’s desire by attacking Job was to make Job finally curse God and reject Him. Satan just knew, in his heart of hearts, that Job would do so, but what he found was the more he attacked Job, the more Job fell back into his faith and praised God that much more! That would be something we need to do today, is to have so much faith in God that when tragedy strikes, we never ask God why it happened to us or get angry at God – but to just know God knows what He is doing and we trust Him to do it.

Today, we are going to talk about how three friends of Job’s came to sympathize and support him as he suffered. Now keep in mind that they never had cell phones or computers in those days, so for messages to be delivered, they had to be delivered by a human messenger. And since there were no highways back then, delivery service was very slow.

The friends all lived a good distance from Job and from each other. Once they each received the news about what happened to Job, they corresponded with each other and came up with a plan for them to meet and then, together, they would go see Job. Considering the distance involved, and the slowness of any communications, some scholars believe that he time between Job’s attacks and the time of his friends getting to him, could have been months, or even a year in time.

During this time, Job had also been inflicted with a terrible skin disease, and since those were very contagious, it was the practice back then to cast any person with such a disease out of the city. Job was cast out and ended up at the city dump, well outside the city walls. And there he stayed, alone, suffering and wishing he were dead or had never been born. And since there was nobody really he could talk to, he had kept that grief inside, with no way to vent it.

And then, the three friends show up. Job must have looked so terrible it caused his friends to be so shocked and stunned, they broke down in tears the moment they even saw him. Scripture says that they shared in his grief and sympathized with him. All four of them sat in complete silence for seven days!

I want you to think for a moment and go back in your memories. Think about the worst day you ever had. At the moment, did it seem to you that your life had virtually come to an end? Did you wonder why you were still alive, and maybe going through something you knew you could not handle or deal with? Now, multiply that by a large number and that is what Job was probably going through at this point in his life.

What did you do, or how did you finally handle your situation? Did you not finally begin venting your hurt to others around you? Leaning on others in this way always seems to help us as we go through terrible events. And right now, we should all thank God for giving us faithful friends who are there to listen to us as we do vent!

And in chapter 3, we see where Job finally began to vent too. He voiced a rather lengthy and poetic lament about what he was feeling and going through. In chapter 3, verses 1-6, we see that when he did began speaking, the first thing he talked about was cursing the day he was even born! He wanted that day to simply disappear as if it had never happened.

When I was a young boy, there was a comic book I liked to read. It was first published during World War II, as a way to bring humor into the lives of our service men who were on the front lines fighting the war. It was about a comically pathetic soldier named “Sad Sack.” No matter what he did, it went wrong. And, no matter where he went, there was a black cloud that was over him. Doom and gloom was the message. It is like the old song on the TV show “Hee-Haw” that said, “If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.” That song and that comic described Sad Sack and Job at this point in his life.