You know, Job is a very dark
book in a lot of ways. Some things are very hard to
be understood. And it deals with a lot of suffering,
a lot of anguish, a lot of pain. And that's what I'll talk about
tonight is some great sufferings of Job. Let's read these first
13 verses. Now Job, Eliphaz has been talking. He started talking, and he'd
been talking the last three chapters. And now Job is gonna answer him.
Job answered. He's answering to Eliphaz now.
And said, oh, that my grief were throughly weighed, and my calamity
laid in the balances together. For now it would be heavier than
the sand of the sea. Therefore my words are swallowed
up, for the arrows of the Almighty are within me. The poison whereof
drinketh up my spirit. The terrors of God do set themselves
in array against me. Doeth the wild ass bray when
he hath grass, or lowereth the ox over his fodder? Can that
which is unsavory be eaten without salt? Or is there any taste in
the white of an egg? These things that my soul refused
to touch are as my sorrowful meat. Oh, that I might have my
request and that God would grant me the thing that I long for,
even that it would please God to destroy me, that he would
let loose his hand and cut me off. Then should I yet have comfort. Yea, I would harden myself in
sorrow. Let him not spare. For I have
not concealed the words of the Holy One. What is my strength
that I should hope, and what is mine end that I should prolong
my life? Is my strength the strength of
stone, or is my flesh the flesh of brass? Is not my help in me,
and is wisdom driven quite from me? So Job gives his reply to Eliphaz. But in all that life has said,
and you'll find that all the way through this book, and you
know those men said some wonderful things, but they did not answer
the great, great question, why a man whom God himself had pronounced
to be holy, if you consider my servant Job perfect and an upright
man, fears God and hates evil, He never could answer that question,
why someone like Job, who God said that about him, would suffer.
They think he was suffering because he had done some awful, evil
thing. And he fell to Job just cause
as to why he believed Job wasn't a good man, and why he deserved
chastisement from the hand of God. He didn't answer the question,
why did he suffer? And that's the point. Eliaphaz
failed to come to the why. And Job begins his reply. And
for the next two chapters, he starts and he starts out talking
about his great, great sufferings. But I'll read you one verse of
scripture from over in James. I marked it over here and I want
to read it to you. Job 511, I'll just read it to
you. Behold, we kept them happy, which endure. You have heard
of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord, that
the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy. So here's Job,
answering Elias has. And here's what he says, he says,
you know, said, you all do not appreciate, you do not understand,
the value, esteem, how much I'm suffering, how much grief I've
got. And that's what he says. Oh,
that my grief were thoroughly weighed, and my calamity laid
in the balances altogether. And what he's saying was, now
listen, if you've ever lost a child, ever lost a husband or ever lost
a wife, lost somebody extremely, extremely close to you, You know
something about grief, grief. I cannot imagine losing a child,
but it happens. But here's a man who had 10 children,
lost them all at one time. Here's a man who is the wealthiest
man in the East and lost all of his wealth in one day. Here's
a man who had health, great health, and he was brought to dust in
a day. in a day. So we don't have any
idea of what it would be to suffer like this man suffered. We don't
have any idea. But he said, oh, that my grief,
it could be weighed out. And my calamity would be laid
in the balances and lifted up. But he said, it's so great that
it can't do it. It's impossible to do it. And
what he's saying is, Eliaphaz has no conception of how profound
and how deep Job's sufferings were. In fact, he said if you
weighed them out and you weighed them in the balance and weighed
them out, you know how much they'd weigh? He said it'd be heavier
than the sand in the sea. He said, that's how heavy my
burden is. That's how great my grief is.
If you could weigh it, if you could put it in a balance, it's
more than all the weight of the sand in the sea. He said, that's
how heavy my burden is. That's how heavy my grief is. And then he goes on to say here,
he said, my words are swallowed up, swallowed up. And look in
the margin, look what it says in the margin. That is, I want
words to express my grief. He said, my words are swallowed
up. I ain't got words to express my grief. He said, I swallowed
them, I can't get them out. I want words to express my grief.
I want some words, I need some words. I'd like some words to
express my grief, but I don't have them. They said, they're
just swallowed. They're just swallowed up. And oh my, and
my sorrow, his whole being, his whole being was in grief, was
in grief. He suffered in his body. You
remember that Satan came the third time and smote him with
balls? He said, if I take his body,
health away from him, he'll crush you, he'll quench you. And so
he smote him from the top of his head to the sole of his foot
with corruption. And he suffered greatly in his
body. His body was hurting. His body
was in pain. His body was in awful agony. And then he suffered in his mind. Do you imagine what was going
on in his mind? I wonder how often he slept and
he couldn't sleep because his mind was in such grief. He says
there in verse four, The arrows of the Almighty are within me.
The poison drinks up my spirit. He said, God shoots me with his
arrows. And he uses flower language here.
Language that's hard to be understood. And when those arrows got poison
in them, and it poisoned and drinks up my spirit, it takes
my spirit and just dries it up. Dries it up. And he attributed
every bit of it to God Almighty, look what he said. He said, oh,
he said, the terrors of the Lord set themselves in array against
me. He turned his anguish, entraced his anguish and his grief to
the Lord. He said, the Lord set himself
array against me. The Lord did this. And this is
the difference in somebody that believes in the sovereignty of
God, And God controls everything to the dust of the air, to the
mites that's in the air, and the things that you can't see
and everything that you can see. The difference in them is that
they say the devil does this. But we say God does this. God let Satan do this, but here's
the thing about it, God was the first cause of it. And that's
the difference. People say, you know, a church
gets, a honky-tonk gets burnt down, they say, boy, thank the
Lord the devil burnt that honky-tonk down. And then a church burns
down, they say, oh my goodness, you see, the devil burnt that
church down. So you know, they get confused,
and that's what death, that's what Job does. He's not confused.
He's grief, he's hurting, he's got agony of heart, mind, and
soul, and body. But he says, the arrows of the
Lord done this. God set his army in array against
me. And all, everything that he had
planned for, everything he had hoped for, all that was involved
in his life, everything that he valued, it all, and he lost
it all just like that, so suddenly. And all of his hopes and possessions
were gone. Oh, he suffered greatly, greatly,
greatly, greatly. We watch these people, you know,
these fires go and just destroy home after home. We see tornadoes
go through and destroy, just take whole towns and houses and
just take them away. And we feel so sorry for them
people, and we grieve for them people. We see all them people
displaced from war. I watched a little tiny baby
that was home, and he said his mama got killed, and his daddy
got killed, and now this baby's an orphan. It was about two months
old. That's grief. That makes you
grieve when you see those things. But here's a man that had everything
and lost everything. And oh, you imagine how much
he suffered in his mind over his children. Our children sometimes
worry us to death. They upset us. We're concerned
for them. But he can't be concerned for
his children anymore. They're gone. He suffered in
his mind over his children. He suffered in his mind over
his relationship with God. He says, the heirs of the Almighty.
He hit me. No wonder he says my words are
swallowed up. I need words to express my grief. You know what David said? He
said, Lord, I'm so troubled. I'm so troubled that I cannot
speak. Now let me ask everybody in this
building a question. There's sometimes in your life
that you don't want to see nobody, talk to nobody, or be with anybody.
You just want to be alone with your own self and your own thoughts
and your own feelings. Everybody wants that. Wants time
by themselves to deal with their own heart, their own mind, their
own troubles. And that's what Job needed. But
he's got some comforters. And they come in, they tell Job,
I hate that you're suffering, but if you just own up to what
sin you committed, God saved you like that. They even told
him that his seed, and his seed was already gone. And he said,
what he says, oh, that my words are swallowed up. My words can't,
what words can express my feelings? What word can express my thoughts?
What words can confess my pain? And oh, their
sufferings were so great. That he couldn't, he had to let
him out. He had to let him out. Had to
let him out. Look what he says here in verse
five. Doth the wild ass bray when he
hath grasped and lowered the ox over his father? And what
he's saying here is, he says, I can't help but cry out out
of my grief. I can't help but cry out and
express my sorrow and my grief and my agony of heart and soul.
He said, as long as a wild ass got grass, he don't know. As
long as that ox got some food in front of him, he don't know.
That's natural. And so what I'm going through
is natural. It's a natural response to what
I've lost. I can't help it. He said, I can't
help feeling this way. I can't help expressing myself.
Who can be silent when there's such agony? And I tell you, man's sufferings may be unutterable sometimes.
It's beyond language. But it's not beyond groans, cries,
and moans. And why should a man like Job
suffer like this? That's the problem. That's the
problem that Eliaphaz, Bildad, and his friends are trying to
answer and they can't. And this here sufferings were
misunderstood by his friends. Look what it says here in verse
six. Can that which is unsavory be
eaten without salt? Or is there any taste in the
white of an egg? Here Job gives his impression
of Eliathas' speech to him. He said, Eliathas, what you had
to say didn't have any taste to it. It was like something
without salt. It had no flavor. It had no wisdom
in it. It had no mercy in it. It had no grace in it. No wisdom
in it. No understanding in it. And you
know it doesn't apply to me. I'm not suffering because I'm
a great sinner, as you said. I'm not suffering because I need
God to chastise me greatly. That's not why I'm suffering.
You don't understand the depths of my sufferings. Your words,
your words were without taste. Colossians 4, 6 says this. I
will find a bulletin article for it. It says, let your speech
be seasoned with grace and with salt that you may be able to
answer. Everyone. In other words, let
some seasoning be in your speech. Let some seasoning be in what
you have to say. Have a little salt, have a little
grace. First thing he said, let it be
seasoned with grace. And have a little salt in it,
so it's got some taste to it. Some taste to it. And that's
what Job was saying. He said, Eliphaz, What's your
word that had no salt in it, didn't have no flavor, didn't
have no taste in it? Like a white of an egg. And then he goes on
to say, and he said his words were truly offensive. Look what
he says there in verse seven. The things that my soul refused
to touch are my sorrowful meat. Oh my. What he said, what you
say is the loathsome to my soul as food is to my body. I'm so
sick I can't eat. They're loathsome to me as food,
what you have to say. He added agony to his sufferings,
drove a stake in his heart. Job said they're sorrowful meat,
sorrowful meat. That's what he says there in
verse seven. The things that my soul refused to touch are
now my sorrowful meat. Just sorrowful food that I have
to eat is this sorrow, this grief. And his sufferings, this is something
that, you know, I say this is a dark book and it gets better
at times and gets darker at times, but yet you got to deal with
it as we come to it. His sufferings were not only
intolerable to his friends, but they were also intolerable to
himself. And that's what he says in verse
eight. Oh, that I might have my request. Oh, that I might
have my request. Lord, what do you want? God said,
what do you want, Job? That God would grant me the thing
that I long for. What are you longing for, Job?
Tell us what you're longing for. He said, oh, that he'd give me
my expectations. And oh, and here's what he says.
And he said, I have comfort if God would do me that way, even
that it would please God to destroy me. What he's saying is that
it would just please God to go ahead and take me out of this
world. That's what he said. It'd please God for Him to go
ahead and take me. That would be wonderful for me. That'd be
great for me. And I'll make this request. And
oh, if He would do that, If he'd just let loose his hand, just
let loose his hand and say, go, I'll cut you off. I'll just let
you go. He said, oh, if he told me he'd
go do that, I'd have some comfort. That'd comfort me. If he said,
I'm going to cut you off, that'd be a great comfort to me. But
instead, my sorrow just makes me harder and harder and harder. Let him not spare. And oh, look
what he says. Though his life was unbearable,
he wouldn't take it away from himself. He said, if it would
please the Lord to do it. Life is not mine to take. Life
is not mine to give. It's in the hand of God. And
there's people that advocate suicide years and years ago,
that advocates suicide, and there were people in certain circumstances,
and they even do that today. They work to take people's lives.
But Job didn't feel like it was his life to give or to take.
His life was in the hand of his God. And that's why he said,
oh, that it would please God to do this. If it don't please
God to do it, I'm staying here. My sorrow is gonna stay in me.
Oh, if you'd just let me loose. That's why Paul meant when he
said, oh, listen, For me to depart and be with Christ is far better. For death is gain. How in the
world can death be gain? We ain't got to imagine how much
gain it is for a believer. We can't get our mind around
how wonderful it is to be for a believer. To go be with Christ. Go be with the Lord. Not have
this old body to deal with anymore. Sin to deal with. And this life
was so unbearable, one thing he didn't forget. He said, I
have a relationship with God Almighty. I have a relationship
with God. Look what he says in verse 10. For I have not concealed the
words of the Holy One. I've kept God's word. I've not
concealed it. I've not tried to hide it. And
I'm dealing with God the way He deals with me. And in the
midst of these trials, these sufferings, he said, I've not
denied his word. And you can't find where he did.
You cannot find. Oh, listen. He said, I've declared
my allegiance to God Almighty and his cause. He never blasphemed
God. He never fled from the presence
of God. He never said, I'm going to take
my marbles and go to the house. He didn't say, I'm just going
to quit talking about God. I'm going to forget his word.
He didn't become an atheist. He believed God. Who else is
he going to believe in a situation like this? His own wife said,
Job! Job! Why in the world don't you go
ahead and cuss God and die? Get this mess over with! Job said, oh, you're a fool. You're a fool of the worst kind.
My life's in God's hands. And I'm left for him to take
it. But I'm going to have to wait on him. He said, as it pleases
the Lord. Paul Mahan told me, his daddy
said every day, oh, and he told me himself, He prayed for years. He said, Lord, take me and Scott
home. Take me and Scott home. Take me and Scott home. Let us
be with you in the morning. He took Scott before he did Henry.
Henry prayed every day. Oh, Lord, let me go. And he got
to where he couldn't hear anything whatsoever. And he was shuffling
like this around his house. And he prayed and prayed, Lord,
let me go home. Take me home. Take me home. Paul told him, he said, Daddy,
you're going to have to wait. I said, you're going to have
to wait on the Lord. You can't go until it's the Lord's
time. And one day is the Lord's time. And that's what Job's saying. I'm in your hands. We may want
to go home someday so bad we can't hardly stand it. We want
to leave this world sometime so bad and just, and that's what
he said, Lord, just cut me off. But he said, if it please you,
if it please you. But if it don't please you, I'll
just stay here. I'll deal with it. He never ever blasphemed God.
God was looking who, was who he was looking to. That's who
he was looking to. His life was unbearable and he
knew it. And he knew it wasn't going to
last very long. Look what he said in verse 11. Look what he
says. What is my strength? What is
my strength? That I should hope. What he's
saying is my only strength I have is that I have hope. I do have
hope. My strength is I have hope. A
blessed hope, a glorious hope. And whether God grants my request
in His hand and cuts me off or not, What is my strength that
I should hope? And look what he says. And what
is my end? What is my end that I should
prolong my life? What I want to keep on going,
like this. And then look what he says here
next now. He says, is my strength the strength of stones? Am I
strong as stones? Am I strong as brass? So my strength, I have no strength,
is what he's saying. He said, I don't have no strength
like that. The only strength I have is hope, is my hope, is
my hope. And do you know how to listen
to what he says here? Or is my flesh of brass, is my
strength the strength of stones, or is my flesh of brass? Am I such a hard man, such a
mean man, such a hard thing that I'm a stone or brass? No, no,
he said, no, no, no, I'm not. I feel, I feel, what he's saying
is I really feel. And then look what he said. Is not my help in me? What he's
saying is, there's no help in me. Where's the help at in me? Where is any help in me? What
can I do for myself? What can I do for myself? Huh? There's no help in me. Huh? And then he says not only that,
but wisdom just walked off and left me. Wisdom's not even in
me. He said, you know, it's quite
funny, I can't figure out what's going on. I really don't know
how to figure it out. And when I tell you this, when
we're tried, and I dealt with that a little this morning, when
you're tried, when you're afflicted, when you're tempted, think of
old Job. You know the patience of Job,
the patience of Job and the tender mercies of the Lord. His friends
couldn't speak a suitable word to him. He didn't have the gospel as
we do. He didn't have the light that you and I have, yet he held
fast to God. He said, God's my hope, whatever
God pleases. And he says this, I'm gonna hold
fast to my profession. I'm going to hold fast to the
Lord. My strength is in Him, my hope's in Him, and my life's
in His hands. I'd like for Him to take me,
but I'll have to wait, whatever pleases Him. That's what's going
to happen. And here's something different
for us as believers, is that we We have one another, and we do
try to comfort one another, try to be encouragement to one another,
and try to pray for one another. Job didn't have a comforter.
Job didn't have nobody to help him. He didn't have a servant
that would come out and say, Job, let me help you. They all
stayed at the house. He didn't have nothing. His wife,
she stayed in the house. He's sitting out there in a heap
of ashes. Where you at, wife? I'm in the
house. Where's my servants at? I need
something to eat. I'm sorry for you, Joe, but we
can't help you. We can't help you. But we'll
never be in that shape. Never be in that shape. You know
why? Because we have the Lord Jesus
Christ and have one another. And Job, one of these days, we're
going to hear him say, though he slay me, I'm going to trust
him. I'm going to trust him. Our blessed Savior, oh Lord Jesus,
our Savior, our Lord, our Master, Our Redeemer, our friend. Oh,
we sung, what a friend. What a friend we have in you,
Lord Jesus. You're a friend that sticks closer
than a brother. You're touched with the feelings
of our infirmities. And that's why we can come boldly
to the throne of grace to obtain mercy and find grace to help
in the time of need. And Lord Jesus, we pray that
you'd make us conscious of one another's needs, make us conscious
of one another's burdens, make us conscious of one another's
pain and grief and sorrow, so we can pray for them, speak a
word in season, hopefully be a help, not a hindrance, hopefully
to uplift and not tear down. Help us, Lord Jesus, to honor
you, Remember our dear brethren that's not well tonight. And
remember my dear preacher brethren and the trials that they go through.
Lord, there are many, but Lord, you uphold them. You never forsook
us, never left us, always upheld us. And we bless you for that
in Christ's name. Amen. 318 in the hymn book. 318. Let's
stand together. Everybody ought to know this
one. 318. I need thee every hour, most gracious Lord. voice like thy can peace afford. I need thee, oh, I need thee. Help me, I need thee. Oh, bless me now, my Savior,
I come. I need Thee every hour. Stay Thou nearby. Temptations lose their power
when Thou art nigh. I need Thee every hour. I need thee, O bless me now my
Savior, I come to thee. Come quickly and abide where
life is vain. I need Thee. Oh, I need Thee. Every hour I need Thee. Oh, bless me now, my Savior. I know. to sing this last verse a cappella. ? I need thee every hour ? Most
holy one ? Oh make me thine indeed ? Thou blessed son Oh I need
thee. Oh, I need thee. Every moment. Every hour I need thee. Oh, Lord. Oh, bless me now I
say. I come to thee. Oh, we can't come to a
more