WHERE IS GOD WHEN IT HURTS?
Job 3:1-7, 11-13, 16-17, 20-26
Proposition: God is present & working on our behalf sooner or later behind the scenes when we suffer hurt due to the trials and adversities we experience in living out our spiritual life.
Objective: My purpose is to help people to know that God is present & wants to help so that we face life with courage on any terrible, horrible, no good & very bad days as we live our lives.
INTRODUCTION:
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
“I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there’s gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. At breakfast Anthony found a Corvette Sting Ray car kit in his breakfast cereal box and Nick found a Junior Undercover Agent code ring in his breakfast cereal box but in my breakfast cereal box all I found was breakfast cereal. I think I’ll move to Australia.
In the car pool Mrs. Gibson let Becky have a seat by the window. Audrey and Elliott got seats by the window too. I said I was being scrunched. I said I was being smushed. I said, “If I don’t get a seat by the window I am going to be carsick.” No one even answered. I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. At school Mrs. Dickens liked Paul’s picture of the sailboat better than my picture of the invisible castle. At singing time she said I sang too loud. At counting time she said I left out sixteen. Who needs sixteen? I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. I could tell because Paul said I wasn’t his best friend anymore. He said that Philip Parker was his best fried and that Albert Moyo was his next best friend and that I was only his third best friend.
“I hope you sit on a tack,” I said to Paul. “I hope the next time you get a double-decker strawberry ice-cream cone the ice cream part falls off the cone part and lands in Australia.” There were two cupcakes in Philip Parker’s lunch bag and Albert got a Hershey bar with almonds and Paul’s mother gave him a piece of jelly roll that had coconut sprinkles on the top. Guess whose mother forgot to put in dessert? It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. That’s what it was, because after school my mom took us all to the dentist and Dr. Fields found a cavity just in me. “Come back next week and I’ll fix it,” said Dr. Fields. “Next week, I said, I’m going to Australia.”
On the way downstairs the elevator door closed on my foot and while we were waiting for my mom to get the car Anthony made me fall where it was muddy and then when I started crying because of the mud Nick said I was a crybaby and while I was punching Nick for saying crybaby my mom came back with the car and scolded me for being muddy and fighting. “I am having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day,” I told everybody. No one even answered. SO then we went to the shoe store to buy some sneakers. Anthony chose white ones with blue stripes. Nick chose red ones with white stripes. I chose blue ones with red stripes but then the shoe man said, “We’re all sold out.” They made me buy plain old white ones, but they can’t make me wear them. There were lima beans for dinner and I hate limas. There was kissing on TV and I hate kissing. My bath was too hot, I got soap in my eyes, my marble went down the drain, and I had to wear my railroad-train pajamas. I hate my railroad-train pajamas. When I went to bed Nick took back the pillow he said i could keep and the Mickey Mouse night light burned out and I bit my tongue. The cat wants to sleep with Anthony, not with me. It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. My mom says some days are like that. Even in Australia.
Job was a good man but he is also a suffering man. He has spent time on the ash heap in his pain and agony. Then his friends come to comfort him, but sit in silence for over a week. Then Job and begins to speak. Out of the depth of his suffering, Job cries out in anguish. Cursing his birth, he attests that life has lost its meaning and God has forsaken him. With words that borders on blasphemy, Job spits out his bitterness, shouts his doubts and sobs his wish for death. Who knows what went through Job’s mind during the days of his suffering on the ash heap? Then the arrival of his friends who represents “the religious wisdom and spiritual maturity” of his day brings him new hope. Surely they will answer Job’s doubt and feel his despair. He is surprised when they may have gotten up and walked away and Job may have realized that they came not to help him but to bury him. This is when all the doubt and despair that they has been building up in Job explode in a torrent of anguish and anger.
What do you say to such a person? Do we urge them "Cheer up! Pack up your troubles in your old pack-back and smile, smile, smile."? Here is Job, and he has, through the sufferings he has experienced, known the most terrible sequence of losses any man has ever known. He is bearing an awesome burden, the hedge around his life has been torn down with God’s permission. God has permitted trouble after trouble to come crashing into his life. In this chapter, Job opens his heart and he tells us how he feels. His week’s silence ends with this outpouring of grief. It is a statement of depression, utter lamentation and s a cry of anguish from the heart. It is a personal song of lament, an animal squealing in pain. Can a true child of God say the things that Job says here in the third chapter of Job? This is one of the wishes that Job expresses. He wishes that he had died at birth. Job’s friends responds and then we find other wishes.
I. DEPRESSION: A WISH TO DIE (3:1-22) “Why did I not die at birth?” v. 11 )-- The first thing that Job does is to curse the day of his birth (vvs. 1-10). That day should be characterized by wonderful joy. But not now for Job, as he contemplates his own day of birth. That day was the trigger for a life-long sequence of events whose aim was comprehensive disaster & unimaginable grief.
1. A RENOUNCING OF LIFE: LIFE IS POINTLESS NOW (v. 1-10, v. 3)- “What’s the point of life?” He was about to give up on life. “Obliterate the day I was born Blank out the night I was conceived. May the day perish on which I was born.” “ I wish that the day and night of my birth would cease to exist [perhaps like a day missing from the calendar!], because I was conceived and did not die prior to that day.”
Job doesn’t believe that anything can be done about the day of his birth, but he is saying, ’from what has happened to me it might just as well have been that a great curse fell upon me when I was born and my life - see it today! - is a result of the curse on my birth.’
Illus: In a 20th century drama entitled, "Conversation at Midnight," playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay had her character Ricardo speak these words: "Man has never been the same since God died. He has taken it very hard...He gets along pretty well, as long as it’s daylight...but it’s no use. The moment it begins to get dark, as soon as it is night, he goes out and howls over the grave of God." He thot God was dead, since there is no assistance.
2. A REFLECTION ON LIFE: : Life is not worth the fight (vvs. 11-19, v. 11) “Why did I not die at birth?” Job wishes that he had been a still-born child. The pain that he is going through is so intense that he wouldn’t wish it on his own enemy. ’Better’, he says, ’for a person suffering as I am to have died at birth.’ So in v. 11 he says, ’Why did I not perish at birth, or die as I came from the womb? Why were there knees to receive me and breasts that I might be nursed?’ Again in verse 16, ’Why was I not hidden in the ground like a stillborn child, like an infant who never saw the light of day.’ He thinks of the deliverance from a life of suffering that a stillborn child knows. Then he would have been spared a life of anguish and pain.
Illus: Dr. Drummond-Webb, a successful 45-year-old heart surgeon, took his own life with an overdose of pain killers which was on Dec. 26th which just was thirty days after a surgery. This was like medical miracle: the successful use of a miniature heart pump that kept a 14-year-old boy alive until an organ became available for transplant. He had saved 98 out of 100. Yet, he was would say, “He looked at it and said, ‘I lost two out of 100.’” The scribbled note read, “Every day my living hell!! These people don’t care. I have a gift to save babies. The world is not ready for me.” This tribute was left: “That which helped make him such a gifted surgeon was also an incredible burden; a burden that at least for a few hours one night became unbearable.”
3. A READINESS TO LEAVE: “IS LIFE WORTH THE MISERY?” (vvs. 20-26, v. 20) “Who long for day” “Why is light given to him who is in misery…Who long for death?” Here we see that Job expresses all of his inner anguish. He concludes in the last verse, "I have no peace, no rest, and my troubles never end--only turmoil." This phrase has been a comfort to other Christians passing through suffering and depression who have felt exactly like this but were afraid to say it. To find these words inspired by the Holy Spirit, and recorded here in scripture - ’I have no peace, no quietness, no rest’ - shows how God tolerates such a sense of despair. How Job pours out to God his pain and frustrations. One of the first steps to recovery is to admit our pain.
These are the things that Job says in his times of lament: firstly, he curses the day of his birth, and then he wishes he had been still born and buried as a little child, and then he expresses his raging turmoil that seems not to end. This wish is his “death wish.”
II. DESPAIR: THE WISH TO BE LEFT ALONE (7:17-21, v. 19) “Will you…let me alone”--He can’t even enjoy his misery. His argument is, If God is so great and man is so small, why does God set His heart on man like a spy by constantly watching him, visiting him and testing him?
1. THE ATTENTION (v. 17) “What is man…that You set Your heart on Him”- The idea here is, that it seems unworthy the character of so great a being as God to bestow so much time and attention on a creature so insignificant as man; and especially that man was so much importance that it was necessary for God to watch all his defects with vigilance, and take special pains to mark and punish all his offences. The point is that God makes too much of him with incessant surveillance and unforgiving scrutiny. He realizes that there is no way that he can escape God. It seems that all God is doing is punishing him rather than caring for hi.
2. THE ASSESSMENT (v. 18) “That should visit him every morning & test him every night”-- He asks with impatience why God should take pleasure in visiting him with suffering each returning day a creature like him? He asks, Why is there no intermission even for a day? Why does not God allow one morning, or one moment, to pass without inflicting pain on a creature so feeble and so frail?
3. THE AWARENESS (v. 19) “How long? Let me alone.”-Job wished that God would stop continually watching him because it meant to him only condemnation and grief. He breaks forth with frustration and sobs, “How long?” and pleads for the mighty God to turn away His face and leave him alone so that he can strangle in his spit. This is an Arabic idiom still in use today.
4. THE ACCUSATION (vvs. 20-21) “Have I sinned? What have I done to You, O watcher of men?”--Dangerously close to cursing God, taking his wife’s advice and justifying Satan, Job knows that he has gone too far. In another quick reversal, he leaves sarcasm behind and returns to the only solid ground he knows--his innocence. occasioned “Have I sinned?” he asks God. Job wanted to know what the offense that him such intense suffering. On the surface, Job’s questions sound skeptical. But, if you scratch under the skin of these same questions, you discover an unshakeable faith in the character of Job and an unbroken relationship between two friends.
You may cover up how you feel when you talk to people, but you can’t talk to God and cover it up. It seems that God would not stop bothering him and wouldn’t leave him alone.
Illus: Spurgeon quotes, "The path of sorrow, and that path alone, Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown."
Illus: Arthur Gordon writes in A Touch Of Wonder: “There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of one candle....This inscription was found on a small, new grave stone after a devastating air raid on Britain in World War II. Some thought it must be a famous quotation, but it wasn’t. The words were written by a lonely old woman whose pet had been killed by a Nazi bomb. “I have always remembered those words, not so much for their poetry and imagery as for the truth they contain. In moments of discouragement, defeat or even despair, there are always certain things to cling to. Little things, usually: remembered laughter, the face of a sleeping child, a tree in the wind—in fact, any reminder of something deeply felt or dearly loved.
No man is so poor as not to have many of these small candles. When they are lighted, darkness goes away...and a touch of wonder remains.”
III. DELIBERATION: THE WISH FOR A Mediator (vvs. 9:27-33) “Is there any mediator between us?” Job in essence says to God, “You won’t let me make a fresh start for every time I try to get up you knock me down again. Even though I may have sinned, my suffering is out of proportion to my sin. I’m not fighting in my weight class.”
1. THE PROBLEM (v. 1) “How can a man be righteous before God?”--This is not a question about salvation (How may I be justified?” but about vindication (“How can I be declared innocent?”). So Job is wandering how he can clear himself before his friends. Job was aware of what Bildad had said 8:13, “that the hypocrite would perish, but that only compounded the problem. “Why then am I suffering?”
2. THE PUNISHMENT (vvs. 10-17) “How can I answer Him?...He crushes me with a tempest” How can Job answer God’s cross-examination of him? It was like taking God to court to prove his righteousness. How does one reason with God or present one’s case before God? Job believed that he might be punished for taking his case to court. He was persuaded would If God should answer, Job would not believe it was really His voice and if Job should do or say the wrong thing, God would only inflict him more.
3. THE PERCEPTION (vvs. 21-24) “He destroys the blameless and the wicked”-- "It is all one; whether perfect or wicked--He destroys." This was the point Job maintained against his friends, that the righteous and wicked alike are afflicted, and that great sufferings here do not prove great guilt.
4. THE PROCESS (vvs. 32-33) “Nor is there any Mediator between us.” cf. 16:21: “Oh, that one might plead for a man with God;” 31:35: “Oh, that I had one to hear me! Here is my mark (signature); Oh, that the Almighty would answer me!” Clearly, Job needs an umpire, a mediator. An "Umpire" is one able to act as an arbitrator at an appointed day. The original word means "to act as umpire," or "mediator." The term implies one who hears two parties in a dispute and decides the merits of the case. The "mediator" is "a go-between" (from "middle," and "to go"), "in the middle," "middleman." He is the person who stands in the middle and brings the two estranged parties together. He is one who mediates between two parties to bring peace or fellowship. He must equally represent both parties. Job’s wish comes as he is dealing with suffering, innocent, righteousness, judgment, reward, etc. Questions come to his mind like, Why do the righteous suffer, and the sinful go free? Doesn’t God care for His people? Does suffering and adversity prove that the one suffering is wicked? Does God really care and can He show mercy? Can there be any goodness without reward? In his conflict and pain Job answered Bildad and says that he needed an umpire between he and God. The wish for a Mediator comes to pass in Jesus Christ.
Illus: Annie Johnson Flint, author of 6,000 hymns and gospel songs, was an orphan. She lived with crippling arthritis. She was stricken with cancer. Yet her faith was especially evident in this hymn:
He giveth more grace as the burdens grow greater
He sendeth more strength when the labors increase;
To added afflictions He addeth His mercy,
To multiplied trials His multiplied peace.
IV. DEJECTION: THE WISH FOR An Answer (vvs. 13:23-27) “Why do You hide Your face?” Spurgeon states, The better a man is, the more anxious is he to know the worst of his case. The more a man gets rid of sin and the more he lives above his daily faults and errors, the more does he cry "Search me, O God, and know my heart; O try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."
1. The charge (v. 23) “Make me know my transgression and my sin” Mes “How many sins have been charged against me? Show me the list--how bad is it?” Job appeals to God to show him the list of his sins that he is charged and prove his guilt. He appeals to him to show why it was done, and to make a statement of the number and the magnitude of his offences. I want to know on what account and why I am thus held to be guilty, and; why I am being punished.
2. The concern (v. 24) “Why do You hide Your face”-- To hide the face, or to turn it away, is expressive of disapproval. We turn away the face when we are offended with anyone. You are treating me like an enemy. Job had stated in v. 20, “I will not hide myself from You.” So he asks why God was hiding from him. More than that he sensed that God was not merely neutral but actively hunting him down, treating him as an enemy.
Illus: On February 15, 1947 Glenn Chambers boarded a plane bound for Quito, Ecuador to begin his ministry in missionary broadcasting. But he never arrived. In a horrible moment, the plane carrying Chambers crashed into a mountain peak and spiraled downward. Later it was learned that before leaving the Miami airport, Chambers wanted to write his mother a letter. All he could find for stationery was a page of advertising on which was written the single word "WHY?" Around that word he hastily scribbled a final note. After Chambers’ mother learned of her son’s death, his letter arrived. She opened the envelope, took out the paper, and unfolded it. Staring her in the face was the questions "WHY?" This is the question that Job asks. Many times we ask the same question.
3. The complaint (vvs. 25-27) “You were bitter against me”-- The language here is all taken from courts of justice, and Job is carrying cut the train of thought on which he had entered in regard to a trial before God. He says that the accusations which God had brought against him were of a bitter and severe character; charging him with aggravated offences, and recalling the sins of his past, and holding him responsible for them.
4. The choice (v. 15) “Though He slay me, yet I will trust Him”--A person must find a way to go on even when one does not have an answer. Job is saying, “I will take my case directly to God and prove my integrity. I know I am taking my life in my hands in approaching God, because He is able to slay me. But if He doesn’t slay me, it is proof that I am not the hypocrite you say that I am.”
The vital question to ask God in such cases is not ‘Why did You allow this?’ (to which He does not a full answer), but ‘What do You want to teach me through this?’
Illus: Marie Hutchinson was a member of a church in St. Louis who had had 20 operations and was confined at home for months. She recorded her testimony and gave it to me to listen. She stated, “Don’t ask God ‘Why?’ but ‘How can these sufferings be used for the glory of God?’”
Illus: God’s love and care for you is unchangeable. You can depend upon His faithfulness to give you strength to meet each new day with its trials and burdens - "Your strength will equal your days" (Deuteronomy 33:25).
The story is told of a hard-working man who fell on difficult days. Through no fault of his own he lost his health and savings, and at last his family faced ruin. A rich man heard of his plight and sent him an envelope of money with a note attached which read, "More to follow." After a few days another envelope arrived with a gift and a note attached with a message, "More to follow." For many days and weeks the family received such help - always with the cheering message "More to follow" - until the man and his family were back on their feet.
So it is with God’s care. He supplies sufficient strength and grace for present needs, and there is always the cheering assurance for each new day - "More to follow."
CONCLUSION: We learn,
1. Job is a good men who has personal integrity. He was willing to see things through at the risk of personal ridicule and loss of face.
2. Job is a man who suffers much, yet his adversity tries his faith and in the end his faith is strengthened. Life hurts the most when we lose something dear to us – a loved one, our health, a dream, a relationship, a job, success, freedom, confidence, hope, trust etc. When people lose something dear to them, they can become irrational to the point of even thinking God doesn’t care about them anymore. Have you ever asked yourself the question "where is God when life hurts?" "Where is he when we loose loved ones?" "Where is he when tragedies happen?" "Where is he when my dreams are dashed?" "Where is He during my loss?" Then questions like, "Did I do something wrong?" come to mind. Then cynicism, and eventually a numbness that comes from having no hope that the future is going to get better. Hope is to life what seeds are to the earth. We can’t be fruitful without it. Life is sterile without hope: Dreams can’t be produced and destinies will not be fulfilled. Every good thing produced in life is born of hope. Even faith is "the substance of things hoped for". Hebrews 11:1
Have you lost all hope that your situation is going to improve?
3. We see that in the midst of his suffering, Job displays a courageous faith. Friends do not help when they say, “No man can have these things happen to him unless God is angry with them.”
4. Job is a man of faith, who learns the hard way to continue to trust in the goodness of God. Where is God when it hurts? He is in us--not in the things that hurt--helping to transform bad into good. We can safely say that God can bring good out of evil; we cannot say that God brings about the evil in hopes of producing good.
5. If we can learn to embrace life’s disappointments, it will make us better not bitter. Someone has said if we change the "D" and replace it with an "H" and a space, we can change life’s disappointments into His appointments. If we can remember that the Bible states that it is our response to the disappointments that will make the difference. Such a response is an act of pure obedience and faith believing God no matter what we feel or what we think--no matter what our circumstances.
Illus: Someone asked C. S. Lewis, “Why do the righteous suffer?” “Why not?” he replied. “They’re the only ones who can take it.”
Illus: Philip Yancey writes in sharing about experiences of adversity and suffering, “I can’t help but think about one of the first stories I ever wrote for Campus Life magazine. It was about a 17-year-old girl from Maryland who once had hopes of competing in the Olympics. But that was before a diving accident left her paralyzed.” Her name was Joni. Listen to her telling of this experience: “One hot July afternoon in 1967, I dove into a shallow lake and my life changed forever. I suffered a spinal cord fracture that left me paralyzed from the neck down, without use of my hands and legs. Lying in my hospital bed, I tried desperately to make sense of the horrible turn of events. I begged friends to assist me in suicide. Slit my wrists, dump pills down my throat, anything to end my misery! And questions! I had so many. I believed in God, but I was angry with Him. If God is supposed to be all-loving and all-powerful, then how could what happened be a demonstration of His love and power? Surely He could have stopped it from happening. How can permanent, life long paralysis be a part of His loving plan for me? Unless I found answers, I didn’t see how this God could be worthy of my trust. Steve, a friend of mine, took on my questions. He pointed me to Christ. ‘Joni, whose will was the cross?’ he asked. All those good Sunday School lessons spun through my head and I answered, ‘God’s will, of course.’ Steve helped me see that heaven and hell participated in my accident, too. When I took the reckless dive that made me a quadriplegic, the devil probably thought, I have shipwrecked this girl’s faith and dashed all her dreams. But God’s purpose was probably to turn a stubborn kid into a woman who would reflect patience, endurance and a lively, optimistic hope of heavenly glories above. In this intensely personal tug-of-war, who gets the glory and whose motive is brought to fulfillment is entirely my choice. For example, my wheelchair used to symbolize for me alienation and confinement. But God has exchanged its meaning because I’ve trusted in Him. Today this wheelchair symbolizes my independence. It’s a choice I made, and one that anyone can make. I wouldn’t dare list 16 biblical reasons why this accident happened to me. But in the 34 years since it happened, I have discovered many good things that have come from my disability. I used to think happiness was a Friday night date, a size 12 dress, and a future with Ethan Allen furniture and 2.5 children. Today I know better. What matters is love: warm, deep, real, personal love with a neighbor, a husband, a sister, an aunt, a nurse or an attendant. It’s people who count. And I live with the heightened awareness that even better things are coming. The good things in this life are only a foreshadowing of more glorious, grand things ready to burst on the scene when we walk into the other side of eternity.” During my interview with her, she told me, "Philip, you don’t realize how incredibly humiliating this is. I can’t go to the bathroom by myself. I can’t even cry by myself. Somebody has to wipe my eyes with Kleenex. I can’t get dressed. I can’t face the rest of my life like this!" Today, many years later, people everywhere know about Joni Erickson Tada. She’s helped and inspired millions by her books, talks and artwork. Some time ago, I saw her again and she said, "Philip, I would have to say what happened when I dived into Chesapeake Bay and broke my neck was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. God used that experience to accomplish so much. The day I once wanted erased from my life was the day that paved the way to so much good." While most of us won’t experience what Joni went through, we’ll still face difficult times. What is the most important truth we should cling to when life gets hard? I’d like to begin with a question: Is God a good God and worthy of our trust? To me that’s the foundational question. If he’s not, then hang it up. If God is good and worthy of our trust, then hang on to him—even when the evidence seems stacked to the contrary.” What makes the difference between someone like him and a person like Joni Eareckson Tada? Philip Yancey describes the gradual transformation that took place in Joni’s attitude in the years after she was paralyzed in a diving accident. At first, Joni found it impossible to reconcile her condition with her belief in a loving God. . . . The turning to God was very gradual. A melting in her attitude from bitterness to trust dragged out over three years of tears and violent questioning" (pp.133,134). A turning point came the evening that a close friend, Cindy, told her, "Joni, you aren’t the only one. Jesus knows how you feel--why, He was paralyzed too." Cindy described how Jesus was fastened to the cross, paralyzed by the nails. Yancey then observed, "The thought intrigued Joni and, for a moment, took her mind off her own pain. It had never occurred to her that God might have felt the same piercing sensations that now racked her body. The realization was profoundly comforting" (p.134). Instead of continuing to search for why the devastating accident occurred, Joni has been forced to depend more heavily on the Lord and to look at life from a long-range perspective. Yancey further says about Joni, "She wrestled with God, yes, but she did not turn away from Him. . . . Joni now calls her accident a ’glorious intruder,’ and claims it was the best thing that ever happened to her. God used it to get her attention and direct her thoughts toward Him" (pp.137,138). She learned the principle that suffering can produce healthy dependence on God.” Listen to her again: “The words of this song capture the thrilling perspective that I have come to know in the years since my accident:
I rejoice with him whose pain my Savior heals.
And I weep with him who still his anguish feels.
But earthly joys and earthly tears are confined to earthly years,
And greater good, the Word of God reveals.
In this life we have a cross that we must bear.
It’s just a tiny part of Jesus’ death that we can share.
And one day we’ll lay it down, ’cause He’s promised us a crown
To which our suffering can never be compared.
That’s why Heaven is nearer to me, and at times it is all I can
see.
Sweet music I hear, coming down to my ear,
And I know that it’s playing for me.
For I am Christ the Saviour’s own bride,
And redeemed I shall stand by His side.
He will say, “Shall we dance?” and our endless romance
Will be worth all the tears I have cried.
