I turn to the book of James chapter 5 this morning. That is at least where we will be beginning. James chapter number five. We're going to begin there. We will end there this morning as well. Let me ask you as you are able to stand. Last week we began to look at the book of Job. We're going to look at it, not detailed verse by verse, but getting the big ideas and the big themes of the book. So James 5.11 is our passage this morning to read, and then we will turn our attention to Job chapter three. Verse number 11 of James, behold, we count them happy or blessed, which endure. You have heard of the patience of Job and have seen the end of the Lord, the end of the Lord, that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy. We will stop there. Let's pray this morning. We are asking you today to help us, from your divine power and wisdom to help us, your people. Help us to understand you and your ways, help us to understand ourself. And so we pray your great blessing today and we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. And you may of course be seated. I had us read from the book of James this morning to begin because I want again to mention what a significant part of the Bible story the book of Job is. We're familiar with it. We're familiar with parts of it. But we are, as Job was, a very real part of an ongoing conflict between God and Satan that is far larger and more important than we are. It is just our tendency as human beings. It is our nature as human beings that We are very important to ourselves. And our lives matter. And they do matter. But there are larger things than our lives. And Job makes us very much aware of them. And the book of Job serves as a little bit of a template for us. It is Highly unlikely that any of us will suffer as deeply or as extensively as Job will. But we will all suffer in kind as Job suffered. Because again, Job is laying the groundwork for the suffering of God's people in the world. And that is exemplified, and I'll come back to this of course at the end, exemplified by Christ, who suffered in innocence. And his sadness then is our sadness, and his perplexity is our perplexity. A very simple, and it is really a very simple, simplistic outline of the book of Job, but one that I personally find helpful, is that chapter one and most of chapter two point out to us that Job suffered in innocence. The balance of chapter 2 and chapter 3, which will be our portion this morning, reveal to us that Job suffered in isolation. And the vast majority of the remainder of the book, from chapter 4 through 42, reveal to us that Job suffered in ignorance. And it is the ignorance that is so very much trying to the people of the Lord. And that is how the book unfolds. Turn, if you would please, then to Job chapter 3. if you've not already done so. I made mention last week of a very helpful book written by Christopher Ashe, who is a pastor in England. He said on the day that he preached Job 3 in his congregation, they sang no songs. I did not think that was a path that we needed to choose, but I just thought it was an interesting perspective We're familiar again with Job 1 and 2. Job is an upright man, one that fears the Lord, one that stays away from evil, man who is a godly leader in his home, widely respected in the community with justification, a godly man, an example to his community, a testimony of God's grace and goodness, And unbeknownst to him in a conversation between God and Satan, he is singled out to receive this attack. Comes out of the blue. Well, we'll see not entirely out of the blue. In Job's three friends, who themselves are well-respected men in their own right and in their own world make an arrangement to come and see him. And you can imagine folks that in the Old Testament world that this takes a period of time. It's not instantaneous communication or transportation. Everything takes time. And when they show up to see Job after however long it was, they're completely devastated at his physical condition. And as we will read in just a moment, they just sit there with him for a week and nobody says a word. And in Job chapter three, for the first time now since all of this happened, Job speaks. And we'll just kind of read through the chapter as we go this morning. So let me call your attention to verses one and two. After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed his day. And Job said, let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, there is a man-child conceived, and I will stop there. I would like to point out to you this, first of all, this morning, that Job's words surprise us. Job's words surprise us. In Job 121, this is what Job said. Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And then God tells us in all this, Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly. And then his wife came out and suggested that he curse God and die. And in Job 210, he said unto her, thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God? Shall we not receive evil? And then God again tells us, in all this did not Job sin with his lips. And then in Job 2.13, so they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights and none spake a word unto him. For they saw that his grief was very great. And I just propose to you that verse number one is intended to take us a little bit by surprise. What would the man who rebuked his wife for her advice to curse God and die say? What would a man who so stoically and so philosophically said, naked, I came with nothing. I will leave with nothing. It all came from God. He took it all away. It is God's to do with as he wishes. If after now, however many weeks have passed of his suffering and the seven days of silence with his friends, what would we expect him to say? Were he going to speak? Would we not expect philosophical words? Understanding words? The godliest of men who has so far not sinned with his mouth. Now we come to what one commentator called the darkest chapter in the book. And after this Job opened his mouth and cursed his day. A curse. Job is, and one of the challenges, by the way, as you read through the book of Job, and we'll talk about this as we go, is sorting through the places where Job is talking to his friends, where Job is talking to the Lord, or sometimes it just seems that Job is talking to himself. These are uttered words, they are heard by everybody, but they are not necessarily directed at anybody. But out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh, and we have in chapter three the abundance of Job's heart. Let us then read verses two through 24, for this is the second portion in the chapter. Job's words, first of all, surprise us. Secondly, Job's words sober us. Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man-child conceived. Let that day be darkness. Let not God regard it from above. Neither let the light shine upon it. Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it. Let a cloud dwell upon it. Let the blackness of the day terrify it. As for that night, let darkness seize upon it. Let it not be joined unto the days of the year. Let it not come into the number of months. Lo, let that night be solitary. Let no joyful noise come from therein. Let them curse it that curse the day who are ready to raise up their morning. Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark. Let it look for light but have none. Neither let it see the dawning of the day. because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb, nor hid sorrow from mine eyes. Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly? Why did the knees prevent me, or why the breast that I should suck? For now should I have lain still and been quiet. I should have slept, then had I been at rest, with kings and counselors of the earth, which hath built desolate places for themselves. or of princes that had gold who filled their houses with silver, or as in hidden untimely birth I had not been, as infants which never saw light. There the wicked cease from trembling, and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together, they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and the great are there, and the servant is free from his master. Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery and life unto the bitter and soul? Which long for death but it cometh not and dig for it more than for hid treasures. Which rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they can find the grave. Why is light given to a man whose way is hid and whom God hath hedged in? For my sign cometh before I eat and my roarings are poured out like the waters. So in chapter three, first of all, Job's words surprise us. They are not the calm, distant, philosophical words that he has spoken so far. And secondly, they sober us. His wife encouraged him to curse God, chapter two, verse nine, which he did not do, but he does curse his day. He curses his day. A word of a little bit lesser hostility, but not much. Job wishes in chapter three, verses two through 10, if you're trying to put a little bit of a structure to it, that he had never been born. I wish that I had never been born. He's not critical of his parents, but he uses this poetic language of morning and night to carry his ideas. Oh, that the day had never happened. I wish that day had never happened. Just that I had never ever been born. And he concludes that in verse number 10 with this, because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb nor hid sorrow from mine eyes, but I was born and now my lot is suffering. These are very sobering words. And then in verses 11 through 19, after wishing that he had never been born, he wishes that he had died at birth. I wish that I'd never been born, but I was born. So why couldn't I have died at birth? Why couldn't I have had that benefit? And that's what he wishes. That's what is going on. Again, poetically in verses 11 through 16, And yet it did not happen, and so verses 17 through 19, and so here I am suffering. I wouldn't be suffering like this if I had never been born. I wouldn't be suffering like this if I had died in childbirth. And then in verses 20 through 24, he wonders why he still lives. What is the point of a life like Job's? This is the question he's asking. What is the point of a life like mine? What value is there in my life right now? In verse number 20, he asked the question this way, why do we live when all we do is suffer? Why do we live if all we're gonna do in life is suffer? And in verses 21 and 22, he asked the question this way, why do we live when all we wanna do is die? My dad's mother, and this was many years ago because my father was born in 1913, my father's mother had emphysema terribly. I remember on those times we'd go to visit her as a child and I was 11 or 12 years old and she'd have an attack of emphysema in the middle of the night and couldn't, you know, they didn't have the medicines that they have nowadays. And I remember her pacing and being unable to breathe and just going, why won't God kill me? Why won't God kill me? Job, why do we live when all we wanna do is die? And then in verse number 23, he asked the question this way, what is the advantage to God or why does God give life to a man if all he's going to do is box him in in trouble? What's the point of a life like this? These are very sobering words, folks. Again, these are not the kind of words that we would expect, necessarily expect from a man that we think is a paragon of faith. I wish I had never been born. I wish I had died at childbirth. I do not understand the point of being alive. And if all God is gonna do, again, to go back to verse number 23, why is light given to a man whose way is hid? Why do I have the light of life in darkness in whom God hath hedged in? God hath boxed me, right? I mean, you can imagine somebody laying on a sickbed connected with tubes and vents and alive. What is the point of a life like that? This is their question. These are the kind of words that if you heard somebody speak them in your face, you would be looking for the name of a suicide counselor. These are the words of despair. There is no hope in Job. There is no future for Job. And so again, Job's words, first of all, surprise us. Then they sober us. And then verses 24 through 26, they scare us. For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like the waters. For the thing which I greatly feared has come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me. I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet, yet trouble came. Job's words scare us. In verse number 24, he is simply talking about the relentlessness of his suffering. that it comes upon him like waves of hunger when he is starving, or it comes upon him like the roaring of a lion, or it comes upon him like the torrents of rain from a mountain that is thawing. The suffering just comes, it just comes, and it just keeps coming, and there appears to be no escape. And he had long dreaded something like this, verse number 25, folks. That is the point that he is making. Human beings, unique to the other animals in God's creation, have the ability to anticipate trouble. We have the ability to anticipate trouble. And we all know, we've all heard sermons and we've all read the stats, that the vast majority of things that we fear are never gonna come to pass. But some of them do, don't they? But some of them do. And so it is not uncommon, and I'm not being in any way critical of this, I'm just pointing out it is not uncommon for us to go to great lengths to take preventative measures so that bad things don't happen. We buy cars with airbags, not that you could buy one without an airbag these days. We fasten our seatbelts. We watch our diets. We live in safe neighborhoods. We run our children through all of the necessary and usual Christian activities, none of which are wrong. But if our primary agenda is protection, none of them are effective. Job 1.5, it was so when the days of their feasting were gone about that Job sent and sanctified them and rose up early in the morning and offered burnt offerings. According to the number of them all, for Job said, it may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continue. I made the point last week, I would make it again. He's not a superstitious man. He's a man who understands at a very, at a wise level, but not necessarily the wisest level. They understand how the world works. We'll get into this, we'll get into chapter four, folks, but one of the things that drives the book of Job is a big sense of retributive justice. That bad things happen to bad people, or bad things happen to people for the bad that they do. That's what drives the book. At some level, that is what drives all of Job's three friends. And at this point, folks, it's what's driving Job. I don't think my kids have done anything wrong. I don't think my kids are out of sorts with God, but you never know. And I'm going to make an offering before God for them just in the case that something has happened. Just in the chance. Why is that? Why do you have Job 1.5? You have Job 1.5, folks, because you have Job 3.25. Because you have a man who can look at the world around him and come to this conclusion that there is a God who is active in the world, who brings retribution upon disobedient people, and I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be that guy. And yet he was that guy. And this is where the suffering and ignorance comes in. He was that guy, but not for the reason that he thought. This is what I had always feared. This is how I see the world. Do right, good comes. Do wrong, God brings judgment. That's how the world works. Job knows it. Eliphaz knows it. Bildab knows it. Everybody knows it. And instead, verse number 26, all he has is suffering. And verse number 26 is a little bit of an interpretive challenge, but we have three expressions there. I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet. And it's all the same Hebrew word, not. I mean, you could read it this way, not safety, not rest, not quiet, but trouble came. Our translators are taking, and I'm not being critical of them, they're viewing it as Job kind of saying this, I wasn't going out of my way just to be safe. Don't misunderstand what I said in verse number 25. Job is being very careful here. This is not the equivalent of knocking on wood. or walking under a ladder. Job is endeavoring to be a good and godly man. That is how he sees the world, but he sees that world through a particular lens, and he believes that it's just simply this, that if you're doing right, God will bless you. Look at what I have, and if you don't do right, God will take it out on you, and then Job will go on to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out exactly what he had done wrong. So he wasn't just playing games with God. I think that is the gist of verse number 26. And here I am in turmoil. I don't want it, I wasn't looking for it, and now I can't escape it. And this is why it's scary, folks, because there is no guaranteed earthly prevention to trouble. You can't drive safely enough not to be in a car crash. You can't eat carefully enough not to have dietary problems. You can't insulate your children enough not to have them go to the world. It's just not possible. It is just not possible. Both the degree and the extent and the length of suffering are not in our hands. I hope we learned that from the book of Job. He did nothing to bring it on and he did nothing to end it. And one of the reasons that I read James chapter 5, and let me ask you to turn now to James chapter 5 again. Job is a long way from it. We can get there in a second. You have seen the end of the Lord. Job is yet to see the end of the Lord. I want now to begin reading in verse number 7 of James chapter 5. Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth and hath long patience for it until he received the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned. Behold, the judge standeth before the door. Take my brethren the prophets who have spoken in the name of the Lord for an example of suffering affliction. and of patience, behold, we count them happy, which endure. You've heard of the patience of Job and have seen the end of the Lord, that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy. You must endure until the Lord comes. That's what James says. You must endure until the Lord comes. Farmers have to wait. Farmers have to wait. They have to wait for that which they have planted to grow and mature and be harvested. Farmers have to wait, you have to wait. And do not be angry while you wait. That would be my understanding of not simply the words, but the placement. Why is verse number nine in that section? Grudge not one against another brother, unless ye be condemned, behold the judge. stand before the door. We're not all waiting the same length of time for the same thing. Don't be angry at those whose suffering is not yours. Farmers have to wait. You have to wait. Prophets had to wait. Verse number 10. Prophets had to wait. Job had to wait. Job had to wait. It is the characteristic of Christianity, folks, that we're waiting for the Lord, and while we wait, suffering may be a part of the waiting. It is not all that there is. It is not all that there was to Job's life. Don't forget that. But it is a part. It is a part. So three things in conclusion this morning. Number one, Job is an example both of how not to and of how to. Think about not just our own suffering, but the suffering of other people. Part of our mutual ministry to each other, folks, will be for some who are not suffering to have an opportunity to minister to those who are suffering. So there's much to learn from Job, and there's much to learn from Job's friends. Secondly, don't forget that Job is a model for our own suffering. Now again, we will get to this and I will stipulate to this forever. We can initiate and bring on our own suffering. Our own disobedience has consequences. But that's not the storyline of Job. That is the storyline of Job's friends. And if every time we see suffering, we go looking for the behind the scenes story of disobedience and betrayal, we are more like Job's three friends than we are like Job. Not all suffering has that characteristic. Job is a model for suffering. And then conclusion number three, right? Job is a model for suffering. The model of Christian living is While we wait, we suffer because our Savior suffered. And although I don't know that this is the place to start the book of Job, this is certainly a part of the book of Job. That the only other human being whose suffering and situation really at all resembles Job is Jesus. both in the greatness of his riches, in the depth of his humiliation, in the extent of his anguish, and in the ultimate response and outcome. Christ is a model. He is always held up as a model. And this is the way the Lord's people will live. Let's pray together this morning. Father, We all know well the sentiment of Job 3.25, that we fear bad things. And yet, Father, the suffering of the innocent is the story of our Savior and therefore the story of his people. Give to us grace, please, in our own circumstances, and give to us the grace and wisdom to be able to minister to your people in their sufferings, that we would not receive the rebuke that Job's friends received for their failure to help their friend. Grant to us this please. Strengthen us in our own faith. In Jesus' name, amen.