I can't help but think about it, Brother Jerry. You were talking about during the time of your depression, and I'm no stranger to depression. In fact, the last six months have been very, very difficult for me. I won't go into it, but very, very, very difficult. But God's good, and I was just thinking about what you just said there. It's one of the most important things to do is to keep your Bible open whenever you're going through times of stress, depression, discouragement. Just keep your Bible open and I'll just add something to that You know, I've heard many people say many times that you know They're trying to hear from the Lord and not hearing anything from the Lord, you know going through all of this Where's God and so on like that and I just asked him a question I said, well, how's your how's your personal time in God's Word? You know, are you in the Bible and are you talking to him? Are you having conversations with God and you know what a conversation with God looks like and is that God's talking to me with his open word, and I'm talking back to him about what he tells me. And it's just so important. And I'll just put it in simple terminology. When you're going through deep, dark days and you close your Bible, you shut his mouth. You really have. You've just closed His mouth. Now God can, you know, He can get your attention. He can shake you like a leaf if He wants to and drive you back into the Word. But, you know, a willingness and a willing heart to sit still and know that He is God and to open His Word and read it makes all the difference in the world. You're probably wondering, why do I have two Bibles tonight? Well, I'm going to do something tonight that I haven't done very often and won't do all the time. I'm actually going to read from a dynamic equivalence of the Bible tonight. You say, what do you mean by that? Well, I'm going to read from the New Living Translation. How many of you have a New Living Translation of the Bible? For devotions and for just reading through the Bible, I highly recommend it. When I say I don't preach from it, is I like to preach from the Word of God that is a word-for-word translation. I personally love the New King James. I study every sermon in the New American Standard, and I don't ever preach without reading the English Standard Version as well. So, I mean, I read several versions because it's very helpful. But for a devotional life, if you don't have a New Living translation of the Bible, I can highly recommend it. Tyndale and Wycliffe and Tyndale teamed up on this, and it's an absolutely fabulous, fabulous version. Many new believers, in fact, the new Bibles that we give to new believers here, the first Bible we give them at the church is a New Living. I don't know if you knew that or not. Yeah, matter of fact, there's some stacked over on both sides. And we got a bunch of them in the office, and we do give them to people. Well, thank you, Brother Jerry, for opening us up tonight. You can go ahead and turn to the book of Job, if you would, and go to Job chapter 3. Now, Brother Jerry took us through Job chapter 2 last week, and he showed some lessons that we can and should learn from. They were excellent. One lesson that we learned is that trials and trouble in life are not just one and done. You know that. How many of you just had one trial and never had another one in your life? Can anybody say that? I just had one problem, and once I got over that problem, that was it. Never had another problem. I don't think anybody can say that because sometimes this problem is just getting me ready for a bigger problem, and then that problem is getting me toughened up for a bigger problem. God sometimes is working positive things in our life even though it feels negative, and that's exactly what was going on. Job suffered an incredible loss and pain in chapter number one. what he went through. Brother Jerry taught us that section and he lost his family and he lost his wealth and he lost his possessions and he lost his servants and I mean he lost everything. Everything in his business. He just lost everything including his 10 kids, his animals, his wealth. Yet at the end of it he was still blameless. The Bible is very clear about his blameless nature even at the end of that. And so The devil, whenever he met with God again in chapter two, the devil, when the Lord said to him, says, Hey, once again, have you considered my servant, Joe, that there's none like him, that he's blameless. He fears me. He hates evil. And the devil replied to God that really. You're still protecting Job because you haven't let me do anything to him personally. Everything that happened to him happened externally, happened to other people. So really, you know, Job's problem is, as long as it doesn't bother him, it's not a big deal. As long as it's not him, he didn't care if his kids died, didn't care if his family, his servants died, didn't care if his animals died, didn't care if he, you know, he just didn't care. As long as he was okay. Well, now, you know, there are people like that in the world. Do you remember King Hezekiah? You know who that is, right? That's not a book in the Bible, that's a king. Well, King Hezekiah was one of the best kings Israel ever had, but at the end of his life, he said something and did something that was absolutely astounding. I don't know if you remember this or not. At the end of his life, and you can find this story in the Kings, but here's what happened. He asked God for a longer life. He was dying and he rolled over against the wall, cried, beat on the wall and said, oh God, I've been your servant, please give me more time. Okay, I'm gonna add 15 years to your life. And he gave him 15 years more and he lived 15 years more in which he had Manasseh as a child who became the wickedest king in Israel's history, but we won't go there. But he, what did he do? Well, he got a visit from some foreign people from Babylon and they came to see, to say how he was doing. They'd heard that he was ill and they wanted to talk to him and wish him well. And when they came to see him. He said, well, I'm just so thankful. I'm doing much better. Let me show you everything in the house. And he showed him everything. He showed him the ramparts of the city, the defenses of the city, the water systems. He showed him everything, and he showed them all of the treasures in the house of the Lord. Well, the prophet came to him and says, Isaiah came to him and says, what has happened? These men that came from far away, what did you show them? I didn't keep anything from them. He was bragging. He was proud of all of his accomplishments and he was showing them everything. And so Isaiah said to him, he says, the days will come in the life of your children and grandchildren and those very same people are going to come back and they're going to take everything you show. They're going to take every bit of the gold, the silver, the treasures. They're going to destroy this city and they're going to take your children and grandchildren. They're going to slaughter them. Do you know what he said? He said, well, thank God it's not going to happen in my day. That's what he said. That's what the devil was accusing Job of. He was saying, Job, God, that's the way Job is. Job only cares about himself. But if you strike him or you let me strike him, strike his health, he will curse you to his face. So the devil was given permission, make sure you understand that, he could never go any further than the permission God gave him. He struck him with boils and Brother Jerry showed us a picture of something that would be similar last week and it was the only thing he could do to get any relief from these itching, oozing boils was to go to the ash heap of the city outside where they burn the garbage and he sat down and picked up broken pieces of pottery and he scraped himself to let out the itching, oozing sore. I mean, just picturing that is just almost unthinkable. And so there you have Job. Well, Job had his original set of trouble, and then he had more pain after that. There was something else that Jerry brought out so well last time, and that is that God's grace does not always take our pain and suffering away. You know, I think many of us have it in our mind that if we're going through anything difficult or hard, that it is, you know, we confess whatever sins that are there, we pray to God, and then God automatically, it is His duty and our privilege to be relieved of whatever problem, suffering. In other words, that's the way it ought to work, right? I'm going through this, I'm suffering, I mean, you know, the doctor said cancer, the doctor said heart disease. or the kids are rebellious, or I've lost my job, or, I mean, we can go on down. And so now I'm going to just humble myself before the Lord and pray and say, okay, God, take this trial away, please, and restore me to where I was. And we expect that to happen immediately. Well, God's grace doesn't guarantee an answer immediately. He doesn't even guarantee that he's going to take away the problem. Remember Paul, Paul said, Lord, I've got this thorn. And I personally believe it was blindness. I think he was half blind, but I'm not going to go into that. But he had this thorn in the flesh. It bothered him. It hindered him in the ministry. And he said, Oh Lord. He asked him three times, please take it away. And what did God tell him? He said, Nope, not going to take it away. Don't ask me anymore. My what? So there's grace to endure, grace to endure, grace to endure. Say that grace to endure. Job didn't, he did not have a failure of the grace of God in his life. Job was given grace to endure, and I don't pretend to have, you know, I'm up here talking and teaching and bumping my gums, and Jerry, he's doing it. We're talking together. He's gonna talk next week. We can preach and teach, and we can talk from this passage as if we're authorities on it, but I just wanna come clear. Here's a total revelation. I have never suffered like Job did. Did anybody in here ever suffer like Job did? I've never suffered like this. But I have been in the ministry a long time, many highs, many lows, many disappointments. And I know that God's grace is the only thing that can help you endure. Now we left off Job at the end of chapter two and three friends had arrived to comfort him. Three friends. I'm going to go back to this other version here to catch that passage. So we're in Job chapter three, but I want you to look at chapter two, just the end of it. See who these fellows were. They were Job's three friends, verse 11, heard of all his adversity. They came upon him. They came each one from his own place. Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, Zophar the Diomathite. And they made an appointment together to come to sympathize with him. and to comfort him." Look at that, they made an appointment. He says, guys, Job, our friend, he's going through it. Let's get together on such and such a time. Let's go see him. And they did. They made a neighborly visit. And when they lift up their eyes at a distance and did not recognize him, they raised their voices and wept. Just the sight of him and his suffering just made them weep. And each one of them tore his robe, and they threw dust over their heads toward the sky. And they sat down on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights, with no one speaking a word to him. For they saw that his pain was very Great. He had tremendous, tremendous pain. You know, at the first they did the right thing. They sat there in silence. They mourned with him. No words, just their presence and their support. I'll pause and say I can't say how appropriate their first response was. You know, we give these three men, you know, we really give them down the river because they change everything in the next few chapters. At the beginning, they were doing the right thing. They came, they sat, they watched, they listened. They came for the purpose of comfort, and they just sat there. And they wept with him. They just sat in silence and mourned. No words, just their presence. And I can't say how appropriate that is. I've personally been at the bedside of many sick people. I've held the hands of dying people. I've been at the bedside of many sick people, and I've been there with moms and dads and husbands and wives and brothers. And sisters, and I've wept with them at the loss of their family members. And sometimes just sitting there and weeping is really the best thing to do because if you start quoting scripture, it's just not going to work at that time. It's just not. And so words are not enough. And sometimes many words are too much. Here's a really great verse that you want to write down. If I didn't, if I didn't give it to you already, Proverbs 25 and verse 20. talking about people and not being appropriate during the time of suffering. It says, like one who takes away a garment in cold weather, and like vinegar on soda, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart. You know, when somebody's in the midst of their pain, you know, putting on a nice tune or singing a song or playing them a guitar piece or something, that's probably not the right thing to do. It just rubs, it's not the good thing to do. The best thing to do is express your love, show your presence. Let them see that you care. But words, there'll be time for words. You know, there are two efforts with good intentions that we should wait to employ when a person begins to suffer, and the first one is to try to explain it to them. Let me tell you why you're going through this. You don't know why they're going through this. And it's not the best time to do that. And the second thing that you really don't want to try to do, and write this down on your sheet, is cheer them up. You can't, you know, it's not time to cheer them up. You need to wait. And mourning is part of the emotion of loss. There's going to be a time. Now we come to chapter 3. We find out that Job's pain and suffering finally get to the place that he has to let out his own personal emotions. Now, I don't believe this is just a matter of a day or two, because they came and sat with him seven days, right? So we know they had been there for seven days. How long had Bea already been sitting at the ash heap? How long had he already been out there? We don't know how long it was from the time he lost all of his family to the time that he was struck with boils. We don't know if that was immediately. I don't know how often the sons of God went before the Lord, but there was a period of time that was lapsed between the loss of all of his family and goods to the time he was struck with boils and then there was seven more days. So let's just put it this way. He'd been going through this for a while and he just kept, basically kept a cork in it. He didn't, you know, he's holding out, he's holding on. You know, sometimes when even in our own lives, when we have the initial onset of some problem, some bad news, some heartache, some trouble, some sickness, we all of a sudden get spiritual. We really rally and we really, really do good. And we just take it to the Lord. And the days go by and weeks go by and the answer doesn't come and things don't change and the pain gets greater. And so at some point, our emotions begin to take over. That's what happened to Joe. God made us with emotions. It is not wrong to express emotions. Stuffing your emotions perpetually, you've got a place to write this down, it's not reasonable and not good and it's okay to say you hurt. There's a little book in the Bible called Psalms. How many of you have ever heard of that one? And the Psalms are full of laments, full of of men and women, not women, but men speaking for women, but men admitting, especially King David. And King David went through tremendous ups and downs in his life. And so he wrote them down. So emotions are not wrong and expressing what's going on in your heart to God is not wrong. Now, I want to read this chapter. As I said, I'm going to read it from this New Living Translation, chapter three. And let me read it you guys listen at last job spoke and he cursed the day of his birth He said curse it be the day of my birth and curse be the night when I was conceived Let that day be turned to darkness. Let it be lost even to god on high and let it be shrouded in darkness. Yes Let the darkness and utter gloom claim it for its own. Let a black cloud overshadow it, and let the darkness terrify it. Let that night be blotted off the calendar, never again to be counted among the days of the year, never again to appear among the months." In other words, cancel my birthday. Let that night be barren. Let it have no joy. Let those who are experts at cursing, those who are ready to rouse the sea monster, curse that day. Let its morning stars remain dark. Let it hope for light but in vain. May it never see the morning light. Curse it for its failure to shut my mother's womb, for letting me be born to all of this trouble. Why didn't I die at birth as I came out of the womb? Why did my mother let me live? Why did she nurse me at her breast? For if I had died at birth, I would be at peace now, asleep and at rest. I would rest with the world's kings and prime ministers, famous for their great construction projects. I would rest with the wealthy princes whose palaces were filled with gold and silver. Why was I not buried like a stillborn child, like a baby who never lives to see the light? For in death, the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. Even prisoners are at ease in death. With no guards to curse them, rich and poor are there alike, and the slave is free from his master. Oh, why should light be given to the weary and life to those in misery? They long for death and it won't come. They search for death more eagerly than for hidden treasure. It is a blessed relief when they finally die and they find the grave. Why is life given to those with no future? Those destined by God to live in distress? I cannot eat for sighing. My groans pour out like water. What I always feared has happened to me. What I dreaded has come to be. I have no peace, no quietness. I have no rest. Instead, only trouble comes." Now, if that's not a cry of I don't know that I've ever heard it in my entire life. He is just basically saying, I wish I was what? We're going to look at this. This is amazing. You know what I love about the Bible? It's not just a recording of the great, victorious, wonderful stories of all the things that are positive, rosy, and beautiful, but rather it reveals everything about the people, even the best of them, even Samson. And even David at his worst moment with Bathsheba. I mean, it tells the truth. It tells you the whole story. And here's Job, upright, loved God, hated evil, was righteous in everything he did. He suffered for it. He didn't understand it. God didn't say anything to explain it. And he finally just comes to the end of himself and says, why in the world did my mother just kill me when I was born? Mm, wow. Pretty, pretty amazing, amazing stuff. Have you ever heard of Charles Haddon Spurgeon? How many of you know who I'm talking about? Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Did you know that he had fits of depression? Tremendous, tremendous fits of depression. He would stand up at the pulpit from time to time and he would preach and say, that's it, the well's dry, I've got nothing else to say unless God gives me more, you won't even see me again. He would disappear four months, five months at a time, and go off until the Lord restored his spirits. Tremendous, tremendous depression. How about Martin Luther and Adoniram Judson, John Bunyan? How about this one, Elijah? Did you ever hear of him? Elijah, what a, all of those men, and Elijah, of course, a biblical character and prophet. We think of Elijah, we think of Elijah on Mount what? Mount Carmel, and we think of him with the prophets of? Baal, and we think of him with this incredible victory. Well, it's amazing the things that happen. Elijah suffered deep depression more than once. He ran after he'd had the great victory and Jezebel said, tell you what, you're not going to live to see tomorrow if I have anything to do with it. And he ran and he hid. He just told the Lord, Lord, it's all over, won't you just take my life? I'm the last one and there's nobody else, you might as well just take my life too. So the pain of life, the loss of life has taken away hope of recovery from Job. He has no answers. He hadn't heard anything from God yet. His wife has given up hope. She even said, curse God and die. To top it all off, he'd given every effort to live righteously and it seems to no reward because he doesn't know what's going on behind the scenes in heaven. He sees no point to this suffering. What possible purpose could it serve? You know, I hear that many, many, many times in talking with people. They'll come in and just share a heartbreak or something. It's inexplicable, came out of nowhere, don't understand it. What possible purpose could this serve? I mean, what destiny is out there for me after this? How's God going to glorify himself? It's one of the most amazing things about this story is this unseen episode, this unseen drama that's going on in heaven between God Almighty and Satan himself was never revealed to Job. He never saw it. He was just the stage. He was the stage for the drama. God acted out the stage on the drama of his life. And there was this contest between God and Satan. And God, I just want to say this from the very first, God said the same thing about Job before he went through all of his trouble as he did in chapter 42. He said, once again, he's righteous in what he does. And so God didn't change his mind about Job, even though Job had lots of trouble and his emotions got the best of him. So here's three laments, three laments in this passage that he lets out, that he just has to come and let people know his friends that are sitting there that came to comfort him. They didn't speak first, he spoke first. And here's what he did. The first thing he asked was, why did I arrive? Why was I ever even born? That's verses one to 10, we read it. He cursed the day of his birth. Now, do not mistake that for cursing God. He didn't curse God or blame God. He just cursed the day. He said, wow, I don't see any point to this. Why did I ever live through childbirth? He can't imagine what the purpose of his existence was. He wailed and he cried. Why was I born? His depression is very deep. He can't think anything but negative thoughts. You've heard people say, I'm in a dark place. Well, he was in a dark, dark place. And he couldn't understand why I'm even here. He said, that's just the way it was. As recently, I've heard somebody say that my parents were just, they were on drugs and alcohol and that was pretty much my life. And boy, I mean, what did I have? Why was I here? I was just an object. And I've heard that story many, many times in my life. And so this is so very, very important for us to understand. Job says, why did I arrive? Why was I born? He's in desperation. Then he asks something else. He wonders, why did I survive? Why did I survive? Look at it in verse number 11 there. It says, why didn't I die at birth as I came from the womb? Why did my mother let me live? Why did she nurse me at her breast? What is he saying here? He says, I don't understand this. He just wanted to die. I just don't want to be here. I want to die. Why did my dad receive me? And that's actually what that means when it said, receive me on his knees. Because that was the custom of the Jews. The father would receive when the baby was born and put it on his knees. to look him over. Why didn't they see what was coming and just let me die? You know, I did something. I took a few minutes and I got on Google. And just like everybody else, if I want to know something, I get on Google and look it up. And I just Google these two words. Landfill living. Have you ever done that? Are you aware how many hundreds of thousands of people in the world have never lived outside of a public landfill? people that their children are born and live their entire lives and they don't know anything other than going through garbage day after day after day after day after day looking for enough sustenance to get them through. I thought about doing what Jerry did, bringing a few pictures in here, but I'm telling you it's so devastating to see to see little children with ramshackle swing sets swinging back and forth over just garbage under their feet, piles of garbage all around them. Imagine the stench. They've probably never taken a clean breath of air in their lives. The worst places in the world are in West Africa, in the nation of India, and most of them are in Indonesia. The most horrible living situations you could ever imagine. Houses, ramshackle houses and sheds and things built in the city dump. Nobody runs them out of there because the government say, well, the dumps are more organized because they're there. First of all, we have a lot to be thankful for. We really do. I mean, the worst of our situations is not anywhere close to being compared to that. And I got to thinking about that. I was going to show a few pics, but I can't. I found myself incredulous at what I was seeing in various places around the world. just living like that and I admit it just it broke my heart, brought tears to my eyes. I once had a friend, his name, he died and went to heaven, his name was Buddy Hoffman. Buddy's a wonderful preacher and he wanted me to go to West Africa with him and he wanted me to go and minister because he knew I spoke Spanish. He said there's a bunch of Spanish-speaking people that live at the city dump. Says I've been going over there year after year and he says, he said it's the most horrible thing that I've ever seen in my life and I'm drawn to go. And then, but he died of a brain aneurysm, but he, he invited me to go over there. And at the time he was going already had Peruvian trips scheduled. And, and, um, he, he, he sat with tears streaming down his face and he wasn't even looking at a picture of it, talking about what he had seen and the way that the people were living. You know, can you think some of those people, if they ever saw the way the rest of the world lives, do you think they would want to continue to live? You know, many of those people have never seen a television, never heard a radio. They live in these dumps and they don't know that everybody doesn't live in a dump. That's the world to them. There's something wrong with that. So here we have Job, he's saying, why did I survive? Why didn't they just kill me? Here's another one. I want to just give you a thought. He wonders, why did I survive? Another thought under that is Job's idea of death now. As he's in such pain and he's in such hurt, his idea of death is skewed. It's completely messed up. It's skewed. He had a very uninformed view of death. Now just keep in mind, he didn't enjoy owning a copy of the New Testament. In fact, at the time of Job's suffering, there wasn't even an Old Testament that was written down at the time. And his life was so miserable, he thought death had to be better. He had a theology of death, a belief in a philosophy of death. And I just want you to know that, you know, Jerry just said it just a moment ago, depression can lead a person to think that death is a better option. And that's exactly where Job was. He said, death's got to be better than this. So I've lost it all, and now I'm just sitting here suffering. I can't see any relief, can't see any answer. And he thought death was a better option. Verse 13, he thought of death as rest and sleep. Verse 19, he said the prisoners have rest in death. And his real doctrine of death is revealed in verse 17. Let's read that in verse number 17. It says, there the wicked cease from raging, and there the weary are at rest. In other words, he made the wicked and the And he made the wicked and the weary and even all people. It's the equalizer. It makes them all the same. The death's going to be the same for every people. Well, you know, he didn't have the rest of the Bible, but he was messed up at that point. Now, later on, he gets that straight, even in the book of Job. But at this point, he is just so down that he is just everything he's saying is wrong. You know, that could happen even under lesser circumstances. Do you remember Naomi and her daughter-in-law, Ruth? Do you remember that story? Naomi, who's name she changed and she said don't call me Naomi which is beautiful or princess, just call me Mara. And what does Mara mean? Bitter. Why? Because she had moved with her husband the Limelech to Moab in a time of famine to try to find a better life and when they got there to Moab which wasn't that far away physically, but it might as well have been 50,000 miles away. But she went to Moab, and when she got there, her husband Elimelech died, and then Mahan died, and then Kilian died, and all she had left was, she had Orpah and Ruth, and that's all she had was the two daughters-in-law. And she's bitter, and she's upset, and she's angry, and she's disappointed, and she's depressed, and she hears news. Sounds like the water the rains finally come back over in my homeland Maybe I can find somewhere to go and she turns to go and she says to Ruth and she says to Orphan she says just you know, go home to your parents. Maybe you'll find another husband Just go home and they said no we're gonna go with you and as they're leaving to go they come to a wayside place and they're still following Naomi and Naomi says to them look my daughters and Even if I was able to remarry and have children, would you wait for them? Would you wait for those sons to grow up? No, go home, marry, have children. Listen to this. Go home to your father's house. Go home to your gods. Do you know who the gods of the Moab were? Chemosh, Molech, child sacrifice. Do you see how In a moment of severe depression, our heads get so messed up that we give advice that's totally terrible. The worst thing we can do is give other people advice when we're in the midst of pain, depression, hurt, and tell people that's exactly what's going on here. Job is saying, well, you know, death's better. In fact, even the wicked and the righteous, they're all the same once they die. He's just not thinking. He knows better. If he didn't know better, then back in chapter 1 he would not have been offering sacrifices to make sure that his kids hadn't done something at their parties, at their birthday parties, to make sure that God was covering them during that time. At that time, he didn't know Hebrews 9.27, which teaches that everyone's got to give an account for their own sin. After time passes and more reflection, he makes an astounding statement of faith. So I don't want you to think Job stayed here. Even his thinking, even before he was healed up, he started thinking better. It says, After my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold and not another, and how my heart yearns within me." In other words, he says, in the future, I am going to see God. His theology was restored. He knew better after time. But here's the deal, he knows better but in the pain of the moment he speaks whatever comes to mind. How many times do we say in pain and depression things we know are not true and later wish we had not said? Have you ever said anything in the heat of the moment that you wish you hadn't said? Have you ever said anything under pressure? Have you ever said anything under disappointment? Have you ever said or gave advice or just really said what's the use? Under the pressure, in the moment of depression, have you ever, you know, boy, not only should the people that are coming to see us when we're just suffering not offer a lot of advice, we should not be given a lot of advice either at the time we are so depressed and so hurt. So in pain, we've got to watch that. Then he does something. He's got one more thought. He muses this. He says, why am I alive? So why did I survive at birth? Why was I ever born? Why did I survive birth? And why am I alive now? Why am I here? Why am I alive? That's verses 20 to 26. And he moves through this progression. Why can't I just die now? It would be far better. When you can't see any improvement in the future, your depression is always going to say, what's the point? The why questions come one after another. Why did I wake up and see the light? Why didn't I die in the night? I want to die more than I want to get rich. Why do I keep living when there's no way out? I'm hedged in. In other words, I've got cancer, so to speak, or I've got debilitating diabetes, or I've got MS, or I've got whatever it is. Why do I keep on going? So this is what kind of thing is going on. So Job was just suffering. But you know this, I want to tell you something. He asked a lot of whys, and sometimes we think we can't ask God why. But do you know that even Jesus said this to the Father? Why have you forsaken me? Do you know he was going through a lot of pain? I mean, what kind of pain was Jesus going through? Well, there's the obvious. What's the obvious pain that he was going through? Well, they beat him, put a crown of thorn on his head, beat him around, slapped him, beat him with a rod, beat him with a flagellum, cat-of-nine-tails, nailed him to a cross, hung him up in the air. What's that? And he's going up and down, trying to stay alive, trying to breathe. He's going up and down on the cross, going through incredible physical pain. But what else is he going through? God, Father, for the first time in eternity, the fellowship between the Father and the Son is gone because of why? Because Jesus is carrying all of our... There's incredible pain there, and so Jesus calls out, why have you forsaken me? And I just want to say this, asking why is not a sin. Asking why is not a sin, but thinking that God owes us an answer is a different story. Does God owe us anything? You know, can we just stop for a moment and think about this little small aspect of this story? This is really personal for all of us, it really is. You say, I don't have anything to do with Joe. Yeah, you do. It's never happened to me. Yeah, sure, just wait till I tell you this. Now, where did Job's very life come from? Where did his ten children come from? Where did his ability to gain wealth come from? Where did his flocks and herds and wealth and reputation and all that he had built, where did that all come from? And how long did he have it? Well, he had it long enough to have 10 kids. Now, I don't know. You do the math. But, I mean, if you just had them rapid-fire, it would still take a little time. There's probably a little gap between a few of them. So there is this little issue of, I've had all these blessings. He said it earlier. He said, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. You see, all of this stuff that I have, God has given me. When we come to these trials, troubles, heartaches, heartbreaks, and all these things in life, which they are inevitable, I mean, Jerry, you said it really well a while ago. If we hadn't already been depressed, look out, it might hit you soon. You know? I used to say that a lot of people are either just going into a nervous breakdown or in the middle of a nervous breakdown, just recovered from a nervous breakdown, and they got one planned shortly. You know what I mean? There's just always something out in front of us. But here's the deal. I have good health today. I'm 64. I'm going to be 65 soon. I've had a back operation, had appendicitis. That's my sum total of the difficulties in my life. I, oh, I had a knee operation. Forgot about that. But other than that, I mean, I can come and go. So far I can think clear. So far I can think clear. So far I can think, oh, wait a minute. But every blessing of my life, Bonnie and I have been blessed. I have a house to live in. I have a truck and a car to drive that are paid for. I mean, I have these things. I could go down the list. I'm not bragging about accomplishments. I'm just simply saying that everything that I have, God has given me. Everything that I have, God has given me. And if God took every single thing, including my health, my vehicles, my car, my house, and everything, and if I had to go live in some public housing somewhere and have to go down to the corner and beg for something to eat, I still have reason to praise God because up to this point, Do you understand what I'm saying? God is the author of everything good and every good gift that we have ever received comes down from the Father of Light with whom there is no changeableness, no shadow of turning. God's good. Jerry, God is good. Job is really going to find out how good God is by the time we get to the end of this book. Let me show you this. So, Job's asking why he's alive, and he asked why he didn't die when he was born. He feels like he's hedged in, and he's asking God why. Asking God why is not a sin. Thinking God owes us an answer is a different story. God doesn't owe us anything. He doesn't owe us life in the first place. He doesn't owe us health, wealth, fame, or family. If anybody owes anybody anything, I owe God everything. I owe Him. I've been bought with a price, and I ought to serve Him with my whole life. Now, Job, unless we think ... Jerry mentioned this a little bit earlier. Job was not thinking of suicide. He's asking God, nowhere does he say in here, I'm going to go kill myself. He could have done that at any time. He could have taken one of those things he's scraping himself with and just slid his juggler. I mean, he'd be gone. Because there wasn't anybody out there until these three friends came along. So we're not talking about suicide. He's asking why God lets him suffer and he keeps him alive so that he can suffer. His pain is terrible. His future is pointless. He has no appetite. He groans in pain all the time. He can't sleep. He has no moment of relief. And he's on the bottom rung of the ladder of depression. He's on the bottom rung of the ladder. So somebody would say, is that it? We're just going to think about Job and are we all just going to melt down into a pool of boo-hoo and crying and all of us just start talking about what's wrong with us? No, Job doesn't stay there. I'm going to give you enough just so that you know that. In chapter 13, verse 15, Job says this, "'Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.'" That's pretty bold. "'Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.'" In other words, God is trustworthy in every situation. He's doing something, I just don't know what He's doing. Boy, that ought to be what Comforts every heart that we every heart at every moment no matter what we're going through God is doing something And he knows what he's doing though. He slayed me yet. Well. I trust him this thing is wandering around my head wait a minute There we go. That's one of the things. The second thing he's going to say is in chapter 19 and verse 25, here's what he says. I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth, and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I will see God. What was he saying in that verse? He was saying what? I know that my Redeemer lives, and what about Himself? What's He going to do? He's going to live. In other words, even after his skin rots, he's going to stand. What is that a prediction of? There's a resurrection passage right in the Bible that sometimes we don't know that's what he is saying. Now, if we were to jump ahead, we will find that God himself spoke the same thing about Job before and after his trials. Job was depressed, but he didn't lose faith in God. He did not lose his trust. He had a lot of questions, but he never lost his trust. Now, in the last 10 minutes that I have, or 12 minutes that I have here, I want to examine this whole idea of depression just for a moment. A lot of Christians are afraid to admit that depression exists. It is seen to be the ultimate lack of faith. Keep in mind that at its root depression, you want to write this down, at its root depression is the embodiment of emotional suffering. It's the deep emotional suffering that takes some kind of physical ramification in our body. It is this embodiment of emotional suffering. Depression happens to people. It happens even to people of faith. Somebody described depression like this, it is the common cold of the soul and everyone is susceptible. It's depression. What do we need to do? How do we handle it? What are we supposed to do with this? Well, one, as I said earlier, don't close your Bible and don't fail to talk to God and pray. But here's the things we need to do. Number one, recognize it. When it hits, recognize it. What does it look like? Well, it can take all kinds of forms. Loss of interest in normal activities. Extraordinary and out of the ordinary feelings of guilt. Maybe feelings of worthlessness. I can't get anything right. I can't do anything right. Nothing I do or try ever works out. It's all terrible. It's all wrong. I'm worthless. Feelings of worthlessness. Hopelessness. I just don't have any hope left. There's nothing out there for me. And this is what you can imagine, Joe. Uh, maybe it's weight gain or weight loss or sleep loss or extreme moodiness, which is out of the ordinary for you or it's hyperactivity, lethargy, anxiety, crying, slowing of the thought processes. These clinical people say that if anybody exhibits four or five of any of those symptoms at the same time for a prolonged period, guess what? You're in the middle of depression. Recognize it. Number two, understand the routine of depression. Understand the routine of depression. It's like waves on the ocean. Waves on the ocean. Every high is followed by a low. You know, that's the way the ocean waves are. There's a peak and there's a fall, and there's a peak and there's a fall. There's a maritime name for that, something in y'all. I can't remember how it says, but that's what it's like. Every high is followed by a low. You remember Elijah? I talked to you about him and his journey from victory on Mount Carmel to running for his life and collapsing under a juniper tree, asking God to take his life. Depression can take over a person. It's interesting to me that, I don't know if you noticed this or not, I'm hoping that you're going to read through the book of Job during this study. I actually recommend that you read through it in one setting, if not two settings, if not three settings, but don't just read a verse in two and close it because you need to read it all to get the capture of the whole story. Now, this is so very, very important. I want you to notice something in here. You're not going to hear a peep or another word about Satan after chapter two. Where'd he go? Well, he didn't go anywhere, but he just not, he's done his stuff. He done all he needed to do. Now it's, now it's in Job's court. Totally. I mean, Job is, you know, he's, he's dealing with all of the loss and now all of the physical ailments he's dealing with that. And Satan is not even mentioned another time in the entire book of Job. Isn't that something? So we got 40 chapters in which he has nothing to do with anything. Quite an amazing, amazing thing. So he's gone, but Job's depression lasted far longer than just that. So the third thing we need to do is respond to our depression. Respond to it. Job didn't try to hide his dismay and depression. He admitted it. That goes back to number one. Recognize it and so respond. So the best way to respond is just admit it. I think I'm depressed. I think I must be depressed because so many things are out of the ordinary. I mean, I'm just not acting normal. I'm not reacting in a normal way. I mean, I can't get up. You know, somebody can tell you a joke and put a smile on your face, but they can't change the condition in your heart and the way you feel. They just can't. So it is just so incredibly important to respond to it. He admitted it and he vocalized it. He didn't hide his feelings. Like David, who cried out to the Lord in pain in Psalm 18 6. And Job will not hide his pain. Listen to Psalm, or listen to Job 7, 11, chapter 7, verse 11. Therefore, I will not restrain my mouth. I will speak in the anguish of my spirit. I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. He's just going on to say, look, I've kept, I've put a lid on this too long. I've got to just let this out and explain exactly how I feel. So respond to your depression. And it's one of those cases where the truth will set you free. The truth will set you free, but you've got to admit it and face it and declare it. And then number four, hold out hope for the good result of depression. Now this is where we get lost a lot of times. How could there be anything good going on when I am so discouraged? I am so, how could anything good come out of this? Well, Job didn't have Romans chapter 8 and verse 28, but we do. What does Romans 8, 28 say? We know that all things, what? Work together for what? Good, for those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, them He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son. What a verse. What a passage. This is so important. Hold out for the hope of a good result of depression. You know, none of us would ever raise our hand to volunteer for suffering and seasons of depression, but sometimes we can learn things about ourselves and about God in times of depression that we can learn in no other time. You know, I'm not going to call and say that Wendy and Pat are depressed. I'm not going to say that. But I'll tell you something, Wendy and Pat have been through lots of very difficult days. Crystal, you can give testimony. It's been tough, hasn't it? Dark nights, lonely nights, long nights, no sleep, can't eat. Trying to get rid of the big cancerous spot in her throat with radiation at the end of the treatment so severe that she could feel the waves of radiation. It hurt as they did it. I read a response from Pat about what they had learned. We went away looking for help and looking for victory, but we came back much wiser. much more deeply in love with the Lord. I'm thinking, oh my soul. Just amazing, amazing. Sometimes the seasons of depression, sometimes the seasons of hurt is when we can learn things about ourself and about God that we will learn at no other time. You know, Job did. Chapter 23 and verse 10 of Job, he knows the way that I take. And when he has tested me, I shall come forth as gold. And then Job 42.5, I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. Charles Spurgeon later said, after all of the fits of depression, later he said this, he said that depression always preceded a greater blessing in his ministry. He likened depression as a figure of a prophet of blessing, but in rough clothing. He said, the depression that I have, I'm always looking beyond it because I know it's getting me ready for some greater blessing. So here's a thought. God never wastes anything. He never wastes anything. He doesn't waste our hurts, our pains, our disappointments, our heartaches, or our heartbreaks. He can use them to build us, to prepare us, and to teach us that all-important commodity of patience. Joseph continues to be an amazing lesson in patience and in suffering. Joseph was destined to be the ruler in Egypt, or at least be the second man in Egypt. He was destined to save his family and all of his people. He was destined to save an entire generation from starvation. And this is what he was destined to do. But his pathway to the palace led through a dry pit. It led through Potiphar's wicked wife's schemes. It led through Pharaoh's prison. He got depressed, wondering, why all of this? And when is the dream coming true? Well, Joseph learned to be an extraordinary administrator in Potiphar's service, and an extraordinary encourager and administrator in Pharaoh's dungeon. He learned to wait and he learned to trust and he learned to do his best always in every situation. When God was done with him, he was number two in Egypt. He was given the name Asenath-Paneah and he was told, all the people of Egypt were told, whenever you see Asenath-Paneah come by, all people bow. Everyone bow at the name and at the presence of this man. Well, he went through it, but God finally elevated him and he was a great savior to his people. Here's a few lessons for us very quickly. Here's what we need to know. Depression is an emotional response to physical realities. It is an emotional response to physical realities. And here's the simple statement. It happens. Depression is not the unpardonable sin. If there's anything I would like to say to anybody here tonight and anybody that might listen to this, and I know we record these and they are available to anybody that watches them. In fact, over the last couple of days or a couple of weeks, Jerry, people have been writing in about what you and I have been saying, that we're not even here. But I want to say to everybody that When we get in these situations and life has just dealt us something that's just too hard to handle, and we get in a moment of discouragement or depression, please do not think that you have failed the Lord because you have had this emotional response to some physical stimuli that you never dreamed of or thought would ever come. You have not lost your salvation because you're suffering. You have not lost your faith because you're suffering. You have not, I mean, that doesn't mean God hates you because you're suffering. Depression is not the unpardonable sin. Next, depression must be acknowledged to be defeated. If you're ever gonna defeat it, you gotta acknowledge it. You gotta say, man, I am just not where I should be. Depression may last, And it may come and go. David is a perfect example of it. Sometimes he was just on the mountaintop. Sometimes he was at the bottom. And that's just the way it is. It comes and goes. God can get our attention when we are depressed. And this is what I want to say, and I think this is really, really, this is the most practical thing that I'm going to say. I think it's just very, very important. God can get our attention when we are depressed like no other time because we're finally at the place where we have no remedy, no recourse, and no other resource. So if anything else, the moment of depression, God can get our attention. And here's something that's a little bit short of depression, but it's very important for us to understand. We have it in our minds, especially here in America, that we're always supposed to be up. We're always supposed to be laughing. We're always supposed to be happy. We're always supposed to be on top. That if we're not, then there's a pill to take. There's an activity to get involved in. There's a trip to take. There's a boat or a cruise to get on. There's always something that is going to fix the melancholy moment. Well, I want to say this to you, melancholy moments are useful to God in our life. And if we try to turn up the radio, turn on the television, look for a bottle or a pill, then we simply tell God this, not interested. I want what I want, and I'm not interested in what you have to tell me. But in my life, God has spoken to me most loudly when everything else has been shut off. In a melancholy moment, a few moments alone, solitude, get alone with the Lord. We ought to practice that anyway. Practice moments of solitude with the Lord in devotion and prayer. But I mean in moments when God really wants to talk to you, when He really wants to get through to you. Sometimes He puts you in a situation where the things are just not working out and you've got a melancholy moment and you've come to the end of yourself. Well, I'm going to tell you something. That's when God spoke to Elijah. I mean, two times he spoke to Elijah in his life when he was at his most depressed moment. And God spoke to him, and he ended up speaking to him in a still small voice. Well, imagine Job sitting there day after day after day after day after day. He was giving us his thoughts and writing these things, and somebody was writing it for him, and they wrote it down, and now we have it. And listen, if nothing else, I don't think anybody's ever suffered like Job, so we're something short of that, and God brought him through it. He can bring us through whatever we're going through as well. For next week, I'd like you to do something to really reinforce this lesson tonight. I'd like you to read from Matthew 3, verse 13. to chapter 4 verse 2. And I would like you to meditate on this scenario and jot down a few thoughts about how God said this. He said, speaking of Jesus at His baptism, He said, this is my Son that I love and He pleases me. This is the father speaking about his son Jesus at his baptism. The heavens open. You remember, dove came down, the heavens open, a voice came out, it said, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Praise the Lord. Next chapter, first verse. It starts off with Jesus being driven by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan and hunger for 40 days and 40 nights. I want you to think about that. About was God displeased with his son Jesus? But then he still sent him into the wilderness. The spirit drove him and Satan attacked him and it went on for 40 days and 40 nights. Does it mean when we're going through difficulties that God has abandoned us, that He doesn't like us, that He's mad at us? Is that what that means? Or is God getting us ready for something?