I will read, I will take the time this evening to read the entire chapter, but we'll only look at the first 10 verses this evening for some exposition. But as I read, I want you to take note that the chapter is broken into two parts. So there's one division, two parts. As I read through it, I want you to try to take note of where that separation, where the division lies. And then I want you to ask, well, what's going on in each of those sections? Very, very important. This is Job's response to all of the pain and suffering that he is enduring. So Job chapter 3, beginning of verse 1, this is God's word. Give your careful attention to its reading. Afterward, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. And Job said, let the day perish on which I was born and the night which said, a boy is conceived. May that day be darkness. Let not God above care for it, nor light shine on it. Let darkness and black gloom claim it. Let a cloud settle on it. Let the blackness of the day terrify it. As for that night, let darkness seize it. Let it not rejoice among the days of the year. Let it not come into the number of months. Behold, let that night be barren. Let no joyful shout enter it. Let those curse it who curse the day, who are prepared to rouse Leviathan. Let the stars of its twilight be darkened. Let it wait for the light, but have none. Let it not see the breaking of dawn, because it did not shut the opening of my mother's womb, nor hide trouble from my eyes. Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb, and expire? Why did the knees receive me, and why the breasts that I should suck? For now I would have lain down and been quiet. I would have slept then. I would have been at rest with kings and with counselors of the earth who rebuilt ruins for themselves, or with princes who had gold who were filling their houses with silver. Or like a miscarriage which is discarded, I would not be as infants that never saw light. There the wicked cease from raging, and there the weary are at rest. The prisoners are at ease together, and they do not hear the voice of the taskmaster. The small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master. Why is light given to him who suffers, and life to the bitter of soul, who long for death, but there is none? Dig for it more than for hidden treasures, who rejoice greatly and exult when they find the grave. Why is light given to the man whose way is hidden, to whom God has hedged in? For my groaning comes at the sight of my food, and my cries pour out like water. For what I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me. I am not at ease, nor am I quiet, and I am not at rest, but turmoil comes." A couple of things come to mind when we look closely at this text. The first is Heidelberg Catechism. Question 124, as I was preparing for this morning's message, I noticed the explanation of the third petition, and that third petition, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And the response, the answer in the Heidelberg Catechism is this. What does the third petition mean? It means to help us and all people to renounce our own wills and without any backtalk, to obey your will. I just thought, and that's Heidelberg Catechism, without any backtalk. Obey your will. And of course, as we read through Job, and as we go through Job, and we're introduced a little bit in Chapter 3, Job is not going to follow the Heidelberg Catechism when it comes to that third petition. There will be a lot of backtalk. In fact, throughout Job, there is a lot of talk. Second thing that comes to mind, and I'm sorry for bringing this up, but it is a commercial. And it's a commercial for the prayer app. And I'm not one who tends to kind of lean in towards things that are promoted in the public that is supposedly Christian. But this particular commercial, there's a soothing baritone voice that encourages us to settle in, to get yourself cozy, to relax at bedtime. so that you might enjoy a bedtime Bible story. Now, I'm thinking when I read the Bible, there may be some very, very comforting text, but when you read the Bible, there's not a whole lot that we can cozy up to before we go to bed, relax, and think that it's going to put us to sleep with comforting dreams or whatever. The Bible is a realistic book, and it is difficult and challenging, and there are things that can be rather disturbing. In fact, many things within the Bible that can be rather disturbing. And one of those passages is before you this evening. Exceedingly disturbing. You would not cozy up. You would not relax. Don't read this before you go to bed. You may end up having nightmares of all kinds of creatures and powers of darkness creeping into your psyche. So why, why not cozy up and relax? Well, here is a soul in agony. And when we have a soul in agony, it doesn't lend itself to a coziness or to a relaxation. Job is in agony. And what he does and says in response to his trials and pain can be quite disturbing. And what he says in chapter 3 triggers the response throughout really the rest of the book, but the dialogue goes on many, many chapters. What he says in chapter three will trigger Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar in responding to him and actually rebuking him and judging him as though he were one of the wicked, calling him to repentance. What he says in chapter three is rather disturbing, and his friends respond with what we can consider orthodox wisdom. And they begin to read Job as though he were a sinner, deserving the pain that he is experiencing, especially after he talks the way he does in chapter 3. Chapter 3 is the trigger for his friends to respond to him. So this evening, and I know many of you know the first two chapters, the setting, I think it's important to review. It's the back story before we get to Chapter 3, obviously. And you know that there are two episodes of calamity that come upon Job. Those two episodes of Calamity start with Satan, and I should say it's not a name, it is really a title with the definite article. It is The Satan, The Adversary. And by the way, that title is used of human beings as well, so it's kind of interesting. It's not a human being that is going to address God. This is the courtroom of heaven where the sons of God are standing before the Lord. It's the court and God is king. And this one, this Satan, this adversary roaming the earth comes with the sons of God and approaches the Lord and begins to make accusations against Job, that Job is blameless, he's upright, he's a man of God, he serves the Lord because of the hedge that the Lord has put around him, that Job has been so protected, so blessed, that Job obviously is going to follow the Lord. The challenge is, some say the wager is, take away all of that blessing, take away all that blessing, and Job will curse you to your face. And that idea of cursing is going to come up. It's a theme in really the first three chapters. He will curse you to your face. So the Lord gives the Satan this power. And everything is taken away from Job. Everything is taken away. And it's a cycle of four things. All of his servants, all of his property, his possessions that have given him his wealth. And then what is particularly tragic and done in such a really a sophisticated, beautiful way, anticipating something is going to happen to the children, and then we find out that his seven sons and three daughters are killed in what you could consider a tragic accident within the home, having that feasting together. A whirlwind comes through, knocks out the four corners of the house, it collapses and kills the children. Everything that Job has is taken away, except for his wife. And you know Job's response to this first calamity. It's the Lord has given naked. I've come from my mother's womb and naked I shall return. The Lord has given. The Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. A tremendous response in the midst of tremendous trial and calamity. A man of faith, not sinning against God, not cursing God, but rather attributing to God that sovereign power and Job accepting God's will in this trial. But then you have that second, in chapter 2, you have a second go-around, a second episode, and the Satan, the adversary, comes before God again and says, oh, you know, skin for skin, take away all a man has, it's fine. Touch his bone and his flesh. In an interesting phrase, touch his bone and his flesh and this man will curse you to your face. And so the Lord says to Job, go ahead. Touch his body and we'll see other things. And let's see. It's like a wager. Let's see what my servant will do. And so we read that there is this horrible disease from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. There are these boils that come and he takes a pot here and he scrapes himself in tremendous physical pain. But it's interesting because the satan, the adversary says, touch his bone and his flesh. And of course we have a, that kind of echoes from Genesis. Bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. And you think right away of Job's wife, and she is introduced. And she comes with this second go-around, this second calamity, where he's now lost all of his health, his physical health. And we will see emotionally as well. And his wife comes along, unnamed. She comes along, and she says, oh, do you hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die. Curse God and die. Then, of course, you know, we'll have Chapter 3, and then the rest of the book, basically, particularly the three friends who come. We're introduced to them in the second chapter. They do come, and they see his pain, and they are overwhelmed, and they sit with him for seven days and kind of mourn with him silently. They are there, a ministry of presence. But what's interesting, After chapter 3, the three friends, in a cycle of various dialogues, begin to debate Job and really condemn him, accuse him of various things, and if you read it carefully, it's rather quite cruel. It's interesting because when the adversary says to the Lord, well, touch his bone and his flesh, the disease doesn't seem like to be touching his bone. But what you find is the bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, his wife becomes part of that calamity, curse God, and die, she says. And then further, his friends. What's interesting is covenantal language, 2 Samuel 5, describes all of Israel coming to David and saying to David, we are bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh. We are of your bone. We are of your flesh. There's such a close communion. So even his friends become part of the calamity, his friends. So he loses his physical health. He loses the alliance, the loyalty of his wife. And then he loses his friends through the course of the book itself. Indeed, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh is touched in such a way as to bring tremendous, tremendous agony, physically, emotionally, spiritually. So we come to chapter 3, and you see it is divided, verses 1 through 10, concern Job and the curse that he issues. And then verses 11 through 26 is lamentation. is crying out, why? Why this suffering? What is the Lord doing? Why do I have to face this after a life of blessing? And now it seems to be reversed. I am of the dust. I'm hardly alive. Why, Lord? Why take out life? Why let me live? Why allow me to suffer in this way? So 11 through 26 is the lamentation of Job. I want to focus on the first 10 verses. which is the curse, and this is a rather intriguing passage. So you have the curse, and of course, curse is a theme. Remember in chapter one, Job is concerned that his sons might curse God in their heart, so he offers burnt sacrifices in case they sin and curse God in their heart. He offers burnt sacrifices. It's going to be important. Secondly, it's the Satan that keeps saying, oh, do this to Job, and he'll curse you to your face twice. Curse you to your face. And then Job's wife, curse God and die. It's so pathetic. Curse God and die. Well, here now in chapter 3, the narrator continues and says, after Job opened his mouth and cursed, afterward, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. Cursed the day of his birth. And so what you'll have in verses, and Job said, verses 3 through 10, is really an incantation. Job is going to curse. He's not going to curse God. He won't curse his wife or his friends. He curses the day of his birth. Do you find that interesting? Let's look a little more closely at the text. You see verse 3, and verse 3 is an introduction to this pericope, this passage through verse 10. Let the day perish on which I was born. Listen carefully, read it carefully if you have the text. Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night which said, A boy is conceived. Now, there's parallelism, poetry, for sure. But notice the contrast, day and night. Look at what's associated with the day. It was the day he was born. What about the night? The night which said, a boy is conceived. Conception is not birth. Conception is when that new life begins within the womb. It's kind of interesting, isn't it? What you're going to begin to see is a reversal. When Job curses the day of his birth, he will also curse the night of his conception. What begins to happen is a reversal. He begins with the day and the day of birth, and then it goes back, back, back to the night he was conceived. You're going to see in this text that there are other reversals where there is an illusion, a reference back to Genesis 1, where there is the darkness that's over the deep, this darkness, this primordial darkness. And then God says, let there be light. And there's light. And God separates the light from the darkness. And the light he calls day, darkness he calls light. Well, there's a primordial darkness that is a power. That in Job's mind and in Job's world, it's just not the absence of light. There is something very ominous about this darkness. And when you read in Genesis 1 that God addresses that darkness and the water covering the earth, it is really the Lord doing battle against primordial powers that he himself has created. But he shows himself victorious over these things by virtue of the creation that he brings about in the span of six days. But what's interesting is what Job is cursing is, let that day reverse and get sucked back into the darkness. So my birth reversed back into conception and curse that day, curse that night. And then he will speak about the light of that day. Let that light be obliterated and let it be sucked back, swallowed by this primordial darkness. You see in verse 4 and verse 5, May that day be darkness. Let God not above care for it, nor light shine on it. Let darkness and black gloom claim it. This is really interesting. It's a power that Job is calling up to obliterate the day of his birth. Night of his conception, here the day of his birth. Let darkness and black gloom claim it. Let a cloud settle on it. And again, this is an ominous kind of cloud that's going to cover the earth, as it were, blot out all light. And then let the blackness of the day terrify it. What is the blackness of the day? And how can the blackness of the day terrify the day? He's calling up these tremendous powers that often we don't consider in the world, but really our universe is rather big and rich with all kinds of creatures. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible. And we often think in terms of the devil and Satan, which we should, that will come up Demons possibly yes, okay, but but but in Job's mind and truly the scripture the scripture does does testify to to these primordial powers including death itself as the Apostle Paul will say in first Corinthians that the last enemy is death itself and And it's just not that absence of life. Death is not just how we conceive it in terms of growing old and dying or having some accident and biologically we pass away. Death becomes an enemy. It's a power. It's like the darkness. It's like the sea, like the ocean. Primordial powers that really are ominous, malicious, and will take us out if God does not show the victory. Job is calling upon these to obliterate the day of his birth. Verse 5. the darkness and gloom, the cloud, the blackness of the day, terrifying it. From verses 6 through verse 9, basically, he continues to call up primordial powers. But in this particular case, he's going to curse the night. Verses 4 and 5, he's cursing the day of his birth. Now, in verses 6 through 9, he will curse the night of his conception. Imagine. As for that night, that night in which I was conceived, the night said, a boy is conceived that night. Let darkness seize it? I thought night was dark. Is there something darker that can seize the darkness of the night? In Job's mind, yes. As for then, let darkness seize it. Let it not rejoice, that is, that night. Let it not rejoice among the days of the year. Let it not come into the number of months. Behold, let that night be barren, no life. Let no joyful shout enter it. Look, verse 8, let those curse it who curse the day. Who is Job referring to here? Let those curse it who curse the day. Who's that? On the parallelism, we have a little evidence. Who are prepared to rouse Leviathan? Now, I know Job 41 is almost described as kind of this alligator or something like that. Leviathan is a primordial monster. It could be represented within creation, and that's Job 41. But it is a primordial monster. It is snake-like. It is the dragon. And we see in Revelation 12, 13, John, in that tremendous apocalyptic vision, is speaking about various beasts. There's a beast that comes out of the heaven, and it is the red dragon. Seven heads, 10 horns, seven diadems. And with his tail, he wipes out a third of the stars. There's another beast that rises out of the sea. There's another beast that rises out of the earth. What John is saying in this apocalyptic vision is he's beholding the various primordial powers that were at the dawn of creation, that God has held down in check, ultimately vanquishes in Jesus Christ. But John sees these in the vision coming out, coming out of the heavens, coming out of the sea, coming out of the earth. Well, these are the things that Job is calling up in order to do away with the day of his birth and the night of his conception. Let those curse that night who curse the day and who are prepared, who are skillful to rise. Are there more powers that can cause this dragon to rise up? Well, let them curse the night. Let the stars of its twilight be darkened. Let it wait for the light but have none. And let it not see the breaking of the dawn. Let there be continual night. And let the darkness seize that night. And let it be cursed by those who somehow skillfully work with the dragon, Leviathan. Well, this is tremendous. He's not cursing God, and this is powerful, powerful rhetoric, powerful poetry. Job cursing the day of his birth and then reversing it back, cursing the night. He's calling for even all creation to reverse from the day back into the primordial night. Why? Because of the agony, such agony, such suffering. Is there much hope held out for Job as he expresses the agony of his body, of his soul? There doesn't seem to be rest, although later in the Lamentation, he conceives Sheol, which is really a shadowland in his mind and his understanding. There's not a lot of information given biblically to someone like Job, who was possibly living in the time of Abraham, maybe even earlier than Abraham. There's not a lot of information. Sheol is a place of the dead. You really don't want to go there. It's gloomy. It's dark. It's shadowy. But in his lamentation in this chapter, he idealizes it as though, oh, this is far better than what I am going through. That's his future. A soul in agony. So, what can we take away? This indeed is a shocking response. Job is a man of God. The Lord himself says, have you considered my servant Job, blameless, righteous, fearing God, turning away from evil? Tremendous. He is, we could say in epic terms, he is a hero way, way back in the dawn of early history. He's a hero. Not part of the covenant people of God, but yet knows God. along with his friends, serves and worships God, Elohim, Eloah. And you would think, a man like this, how is he going to respond with such a trial? Well, you have a response. He's cursing the day of his birth, cursing the night of his conception. wanting in some cosmic way to have everything reversed back to primordial darkness and is calling up powers in order to obliterate that day. Futile. Without hope. triggering his friends that will enter into the dialogue for the rest of the book why they think Job is somehow needing repentance. Well, many of us don't face this kind of agony and we don't have family and friends necessarily and yet there are those times when there can be such severe trial. that it creates agony of body and soul. And there are responses that can be rather shocking. Ordinarily, we find not necessarily Job cursing the day of his birth, which is rather futile. How do you go back and do that? It is an expression of his agony. And in some ways, it's looking back, looking back, looking back. There's no hope. He doesn't look forward. As he looks forward, he just sees Sheol, shadowland. He just looks back. There's not a whole lot of hope. Over the time of this COVID, suicides have gone up in Ohio, I'm sure other places in the United States as well. Is there a situation in which people lose hope that they believe their only recourse is to take their life? Within the OPC, there have been four fairly recent suicides. One was way back, two ministers and two ministers' wives. I knew the two ministers. In fact, one was a good friend. The other, I knew well, and he was well known in the denomination. One was suffering from cancer, brain cancer, and the other one, debilitating back pain, and then fell into a horrible depression. Two ministers' wives, one we knew well. She would visit and worship with her husband here and her family. just fell into this deepest of depression that nothing, nothing could pull her out. Recently, she took her life. Another minister's wife took her life, jumped. And I knew the minister, I didn't know her. Shocking responses. I'm always shocked at these things. I think in some ways the scripture testifies, and if this could in any way be an encouragement, it testifies that there can be that kind of agony of soul that has a response that is absolutely shocking. Absolutely shocking. This is our life. And you think of ministers and ministers' wives, as well as other believers and others that we may know within our family who agonize in various ways and find no hope, except in death itself. It testifies. It testifies of the human condition. And it should, in some ways, kind of expand our empathy, our understanding, and recognize that we are going to face these things. We will have relationships that will absolutely shock us. How are we going to respond? Is it going to trigger a response like Job's friends? Secondly, and obviously, there is this profound suffering that is taking place. And it's hard to understand that we as creatures, we could suffer physically, we could suffer emotionally, we could suffer spiritually. There's all kinds of dimensions that we face. And we recognize that we can't always figure out what God is doing in our lives. There is an inscrutable mystery at times when it comes to suffering. Inscrutable mystery. Job is not told why. He'll continue to ask the question through the book, why? Why the suffering? And it's not just why suffering, but why a wise God in his wisdom, why would he take a creature like Job and give him life? In fact, bless him in such a way and then reverse that blessing to such agonizing pain What's the purpose in that? What's the wisdom in that? Why would God do something like that? He doesn't know the wager. He doesn't know the dialogue between the Satan and the Lord himself. And so there's inscrutable mystery often in trial, tribulation, adversity, and suffering. And some of us know that. I think we've rubbed shoulders with many. We have prayed for brothers and sisters who are agonizing over various, various maladies or whatever, and we figure, well, why, Lord, why? And sometimes there's not the answer. You could ask the question, when was this book written? And there's so much to this book that is so intriguing. And there's a lot of mystery to the book itself. Quite possibly, it was written by someone in the covenant community, an Israelite, and quite possibly post-exilic. And he's writing this book with the tremendous prologue and epilogue, and then the poetry of Job and his friends, and then the Lord himself. And he's possibly writing this in order to testify to the Jewish community that's gone through tremendous suffering with the exile, and now the post-exilic community, and empathizing that there can be this kind of inscrutable suffering, agony, that many Israelites face with the Assyrian exile, and then the Babylonian exile, and the destruction of Jerusalem. And I can't tell you all the horrors that can take place in a family's life when such foreign powers come and destroy a nation. And now he writes this as a testimony. There is deep suffering among us. There is deep suffering. And there are times where we don't fully understand it. Yes, you could give an easy answer about the idolatry of Israel and how she broke covenant with her covenant God. Yes, and that is true. But such suffering at times in individual lives, you might raise the question, because there's the faithful among those in the exile. Why me, Lord? And what's the wisdom of this? And up to today, we can experience that. But I have to say, and this kind of brings us around, I think, to that tremendous trajectory, a testimony, Job, his friends, the rider to the covenant community, and now the Holy Spirit to us. The Holy Spirit to us with a greater vision, deeper understanding. We recognize that there was that servant of the Lord who was truly righteous, who was truly fearing God, who did not entertain evil whatsoever, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we see an agony that is deeper than what Job experienced when Jesus goes to the cross. An agony, really, which is worthy of our meditation, even though we can't fathom the depth of it. The very Son of God, the Son of Man, taking the full brunt of God's wrath upon himself, let alone the mocking, the jeering, the spitting, hanging naked publicly, the indignity of it all, the pain of the crucifixion, but what's happening within the soul, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? We don't know the depths in the garden, praying as it were, drops of blood. If it's possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. Jesus knew what his mission was. He knew he came to save the lost. He knew he had to go to the cross. And he does. And what primordial powers did he face as the twilight so closed his eyelids and death began to swallow him up? What primordial powers, the darkness, the beast, Leviathan, the devil, Satan himself. What powers did he face? Death itself is the final enemy. What did he face in that moment when the light was going out and he was dying and then dead upon the cross? With his father putting all the sin, our sin, upon him. You see an agony that's not reversal, it's not calling for the day to be swallowed up by the night although it looks like the day is swallowed up by the night. There was darkness the ninth hour. Jesus does not curse the day of his birth or his conception but rather continues to look forward, forward. He knows. that he is Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God, who has come to do battle against those primordial powers that Job himself is calling up in order that we might be saved. in order that we might be protected, that we might be delivered from whatever influence, whatever power, whatever is out there that is set against us as our enemy, including death itself. Jesus goes to the cross, suffers tremendous agony that no human being could ever enter into or conceive in order to save us. And not with a curse, for he himself becomes the curse. Job would not curse God and die. The Lord himself comes in Jesus Christ and takes the curse upon himself as he dies upon the cross in order to lift any curse that shrouds around us and protects us. You see, in Job, there's even that testimony. When Job is offering the burnt offerings for the sake of his sons, maybe they curse God in their heart. I'll offer these burnt offerings. Job, in some sense, becomes the burnt offering. He doesn't know this. He becomes the burnt offering. And later, you know what happens at the end. The friends of Job are rebuked. And actually, the Lord will not forgive them unless Job intercedes on their behalf. Job is called upon. Job is the one who has spoken right about the Lord. The Lord says. That's his judgment. And asks Job to intercede on behalf of his friends, which he does. It's a tremendous testimony and picture of the coming true suffering servant who will not just be in his agony a burnt offering, but who will die as that sacrifice that atones for our guilt and our sin. And that one who rises again from the dead as our high priest and intercedes for us in order that we might know our God, be reconciled to him, and persevere. My friends, this is a tremendous testimony for us. And there is something about our own agony and our own pain that we see all around us, an inscrutable mystery that somehow is united to Jesus and the fellowship of his sufferings. And so nothing in vain. All of our suffering now is joining that choir of all creation groaning, we ourselves groaning, the spirit groaning within us. And that groaning is a groaning of agony, but not in futility, not looking back, but waiting eagerly, eagerly for the full redemption and liberty of you, the children of God. Take hope. Rest in your God. and all of the suffering that we might face and all the suffering that we might have to minister to, know this, that there is tremendous hope and life. We don't look back, we look forward with tremendous assurance that life is ours. Let's pray together.