We are here tonight once again following the theme, Hanging in There. I want us to look at the subject, Hanging in There Through Loss. The loss of something special is always grievous.
Those who study grief have learned that grief has a pattern. At times that pattern is longer for some than it is for others. When we go through grief, there are at least 5 stages we work through.
1) First we are numb. We don’t feel anything. We just sit there with no feeling.
2) The second stage is denial. “I don’t believe this is happening to me.” We imagine that it is not real.
3) The third stage is blame. We want to blame somebody. Often we want to blame ourselves. Somehow we feel responsible for what has happened.
4) The fourth stage is anger. We are angry. We are angry that this has happened to us. In death we may find ourselves angry with the one who died ... that’s not uncommon. We may even be angry with God.
5) The fifth stage is acceptance. We simply come to terms with our loss. We accept that this has happened.
I believe the pattern is always there. When we work through grief we hit every one of those stages. There are those who never seem to get past the grief. They never seem to work through it.
The Loss of Those You Love
There are two types of loss that bring us grief. First of all, there is the loss of people whom we love and who love us. Some of us have recently experienced this. We grieve over the fact that someone we have a special relationship with has died or moved away or has separated themselves from our fellowship.
Joe Bayly, a man who lost 3 children, two of them while they were still teenagers wrote a book: A View From the Hearse. The title alone is painful. And yet he was trying to share something of what it means to pass through that grief.
John Claypool, a pastor, after seeing a daughter die of leukemia wrote a book, Tracks of a Fellow Struggler. It’s not easy to go through. But it’s helpful when someone who has shows us how. It is not always through death. Sometimes it can be in other forms of loss.
It can be loss through divorce. A child loses a parent because one of them has to move out. Sometimes even in church we know something about that kind of loss. Because of a misunderstanding, people move on. Long standing relationships that were very special suddenly were terminated. Most of us have experienced that.
When we lose someone that is meaningful to us, someone we love, then we go through loss that is painful. That is one kind of loss that’s hard to bear. Have you ever considered God’s message in the loss of those you love?
The Loss of Things You Love
Also, we lose things that are valuable to us. Such things as a job, a house. Last week, the Cattle Company restaurant burned down, and Adam Carter had to temporarily, we hope, relocate to another store. I have seen people devastated when their houses burned down. Not only do they lose their things but in many cases they lose their memories. Cherished pictures and mementos are forever lost. Sometimes we lose a dream. I think sometimes we nurture dreams all across the years and when it becomes plain that the dream is not going to materialize, that is a painful time.
It may be the loss of an arm, or the loss of some bodily function ... or the loss of our health. All of these things bring us grief.
So, how do we hang in there when they come?
Tonight, I want us to look at a man, from the Old Testament, that has some things to say to us, because he knew what it was to lose.
But by losing, he found a way to gain. I want us to look at Job.
Job lost, both persons that were special to him, and things that were special to him. Sometimes we put Job in a category apart from the rest of us. We immortalize him and glamorize him because we believe he was a man of great patience. That is what the book of James suggests. Sometimes though, if we study Job carefully, I don’t think he was all that patient. Yet, he worked through his loss and found some answers.
First, let’s consider what Job had. Before we can understand the loss we have to know what he had, what his possessions were.
Job was a man who had a beautiful home. He had 10 children, 7 boys and 3 girls. These children were very special to him. The psalmist would say children were like arrows. “Blessed is the man whose quiver is full.” Job’s quiver was full. He was a man of godliness.
When we read in vs. 1 of Job he was a man blameless, upright, fearing God, and turning away from evil. He was a godly man. You couldn’t find someone much better than Job.
He was a man of possessions. Verse 3 indicates he had 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys and very many servants. The Scripture suggests he was the greatest man of the East. Actually, the Hebrew word literally translates he was “heavy.” He was the heaviest of the heavy. It doesn’t mean he weighed a lot. It meant that he had prestige and importance.
He had a relationship with God that was quite special. You might say if I had all he had I would have a relationship with God that would be quite special. Have you ever sensed that if you had things a little better, you and God would get along better?
That is exactly what the devil said to God about Job. “The only reason he is such a good man is because you have a hedge about him and you won’t let anything bad happen to him. You have got such control over his life and destiny, you are guarding him so totally he is no ever going to fall.”
God said, “I’ll take my hand away. And we will see what kind of a good man Job is.” And it is almost as if God took his hand back and let Satan have some opportunity. And Job came through.
Let’s read about what happened to Job. Look at verse 13 (thru 19).
Let’s just see what happened and then what Job did. READ
Sometimes things happen that way. They come one right after another. What did Job do? Look at vv. 20-22. READ
He didn’t shake his fist at God and say, “You did it to me, and that will be the last time I will follow you and serve you.” What did he do? He worshiped. He had lost about everything he had and he worshiped.
Now he certainly grieved because that is what the rest of the book is about. He certainly was a realist because he dealt with some problems that were very real in his own searchings and concerns.
But he still did not sin. Then Satan got after his health.
Chapter 2:7-8 READ.
An Arabian proverb says, “He who has health has hope and he who has hope has everything.” But when your health breaks, that is the worst blow of all. What has happened to Job? Some biblical scholars have suggested that this illness that happened to Job is mentioned in Deut. 28:27. “The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured.”
Dr. Meredith Klein, an Old Testament scholar, offers this as a vivid description of Job’s illness. Modern medical opinion is not unanimous in it’s diagnosis of Job’s disease but according to the prognosis in Job’s day, it was apparently hopeless. The horrible symptoms included inflamed eruptions accompanied by intense itching, maggots and ulcers, erosion of the bone, blackening, falling off of the skin, terrifying nightmares. Though some of these may have possibly been attributed to the prolonged exposure that followed the onset of the disease, Job’s whole body was smitten with the loathsome painful symptoms.
Everything he had was taken away. He lost it. Except one thing ... he didn’t lose his wife. I have often thought that he probably wondered,“Why did she hang around? Of all the things I’ve lost, why her?” You think of what he lost and what remained, why her?
What did she say? “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9).
Who on earth needs advice like that? Bayly mentions in his book that one of the best contributions we can make to a person going through intense suffering and loss is our presence without words, not even verses of Scripture dumped into the ears of the grieving.
He said, “Don’t try to “prove” anything to a survivor. An arm around the should, a firm grip of the hand, a kiss; these are the proofs grief needs, not logical reasoning. I was sitting torn by grief. Someone came and talked to me of God’s dealings, of why it happened, of hope beyond the grave. He talked constantly, he said things I knew were true. I was unmoved, except to wish he’s go away. He finally did. Another came and sat beside me. He didn’t talk. He didn’t ask leading questions. He just sat beside me for an hour or more, listened when I said something, answered briefly, prayed simply, left. I was moved. I was comforted. I hated to see him go.”
An individual reeling from the blow of calamity has a broken heart. The soil of his soul is not ready for the implanting of the heavenly seed. He will be later, but not right away. Nor is he ready for some extreme word of counsel like, “Curse God and die!”
Incidentally, Mrs. Job is mentioned only one other time in the whole Bible. Her great contribution to Job’s life would be her counsel here in 2:9 and later in 19:17. There Job comments, “My breath is offensive to my wife.” What a peach.
God’s Great Goal
I want to read to you one of the most profound verses in the Bible. “But he said to her, ‘You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?’ In all this Job did not sin with his lips” (2:10).
Job’s God was not some gracious creature who sat on the edge of the heaven, dropping good little gifts wrapped in silver out of the sky, saying “That will make you happy. That’ll please you.” That’s not the God of heaven. The sovereign God of heaven disposes and dispenses what brings glory to Himself. He brings to us not only good, but adversity as well. Our great God isn’t obligated to make us comfortable.
Did you see that truth? “Shall we indeed accept good (oh, we’re quick to do that) and not adversity?” Are you ready to accept adversity? In the flesh, in the horizontal perspective, you’ll resent it; you’ll run from it; you’ll build up a bitterness against Him, saying, “What kind of God is that?”
But in the spiritual dimension, you will recognize that He had a right to bring the unpleasant as well as the pleasant. Without this concept, you’ll never be able to persevere through pressure. It will blow you away!
Listen, our major goal in life is not to be happy or satisfied, but to glorify God. That cuts across the grain of our Western culture. Every father’s goal for his family is that they be happy and satisfied. Very few ... precious few ... fathers have as their family’s goal that the family glorify God first. We work our fingers to the bone to the last day of our lives so that we might be happy and satisfied ... and all we have to show for it is bony fingers. No, God’s great goal for our lives is to glorify Him, as the apostle Paul said, “whether by life or by death” (Phil. 1:20).
Listen to Job’s counsel when the calamities die down: READ 5:17-22a
You see, God’s great goal for us is not that we be comfortable or satisfied, nor that we live out a “wonderful plan” of constant smiling, being happy, facing no calamity, no evil, and no difficulty. It is wrong to tell the non-Christian, “Trust God and your worries are over ... Believe in Jesus and you’ll never know what it is to be defeated again.” That’s unfair and downright unbiblical!
Instead, why not be honest and say, “Believe in Jesus Christ, and you might step into a world of testing you never knew before, because you will have become the object of Jesus Himself, and His character traits are to be formed in your life. And frankly, you can’t have them formed without fire and the loss. Since our goal is to glorify Christ, we can expect some loss.” That’s accurate.
When you suffer and lose, that does not mean you are being disobedient. In fact, it might mean you’re right in the center of His will. The path of obedience is often marked by times of suffering and loss.
Job honestly admits, “Behold, I go forward but He is not there” (23:8). Now here’s a man with a rotting, decaying body; no children; and a nagging wife. He is heavy of heart and goes out at night looking for God. He cries out: “I look, and He’s not there!”
Losses are lonely times of crisis. “Behold, I go forward but He is not there ... And backward, but I cannot perceive Him; When He acts on the left, I cannot behold Him; He turns on the right, I cannot see Him” (23:8-9). When you’ve been through times like this, you know exactly what Job is saying.
The Right Perspective
Christian, remember that God knows the way. READ 23:10-14
How marvelous! This is the hardest thing in the world to claim. When I’ve lost it all and I turn to a verse like that and it says, “He’s appointed it for me,” do you know what I have to do? I have to change my perspective. I have to force myself to see it from His point of view. What is often considered a loss now leads to a gain later. The Lord restored Job’s fortunes, and He increased all that he had ... twofold. He doubled his prosperity!
Now be careful not to make this specific situation into a general principle. It’s easy for us to think, “Okay, I had a job making $20,000 a year. Now that I’ve lost it, God’s going to give me
a $40,000-a-year job next month. Everything is going to be great!
My checkbook will always balance ... my car won’t ever break down.” That kind of thinking reduces Almighty God to Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and Aladdin’s Lamp all wrapped up into one. Our Lord’s blessings aren’t always tangible or measurable in dollars and cents.
When He rewards after loss, He builds internal character traits. He gives deep down peace. He provides things money cannot touch.
Security replaces insecurity. We receive purpose and renewed direction. We gain an understanding, compassionate heart ... along with wisdom we never had before. Isn’t it interesting how you can be involved in your own little world, your own little house, and then one day you take an airplane flight, and it changes your perspective?
The plane climbs to 15,000 .. 20,000 .. 30,000 feet ... and what do you see? You see a whole world down there! Your perspective is altered, because you are no longer looking at life from the viewpoint of one little room, nor are you worried about the color of one little drape.
That’s where He dwells. He puts it all together like a beautiful piece of tapestry. Every once in a while, you get a glimpse of the underside, and you see the knots and the crummy part of it and you think, “What in the world is wrong?” His whole view is from the other side; He sees everything at once.
Have you recently suffered a loss? Maybe the wound is still tender; maybe it’s too early to know why. Frankly, you may never know why! But through it all, believe me, God has not left you. He is there. He will never leave you.
All of you are familiar with the lines from the story “Footprints in the Sand.” Where the man was dreaming and he saw the course of his life laid out, he saw two sets of footprints. During the rugged places he saw only one set of footprints. He was confused.
He told the Lord, during the good times we were together, but during the rough times, you deserted me. And the Lord said, “Those footprints you saw were mine. I carried you during the calamities of life.” We may feel alone, forsaken, and forgotten, but we are not. In time of loss, our God picks us up and holds us close.
