10. Lamentation of a Depressed Soul (2)
Hymns: RHC 327 All Things Work Out for Good; 358 What a Friend We Have In Jesus; 324 Trusting Jesus
Job 3:11-19
11Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly? 12Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts that I should suck? 13For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest, 14With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves; 15Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver: 16Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light. 17There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest. 18There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. 19The small and great are there; and the servant isfree from his master. 20Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul; 21Which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures; 22Which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave? 23Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in? 24For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like the waters. 25For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me. 26I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came. (Job 3:1-26 KJV)
Lamentation of a Depressed Soul (2)
OUTLINE
(1) Why Was I Born? (v1-10)
(2) Why Did I Not Die Earlier? (v11-19)
(3) Why Am I Still Alive? (v20-26)
C ontinue…
(2) Why Did I Not Die Earlier? (v11-19)
11Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly? 12Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts that I should suck?
He lamented in his grief with 4 questons of despondency.
(1) “Why was he not die stillborn?”
(2) “Why did he not die as an infant?”
(3) “Why was those knees receive me?”
(Swindoll observed well, “In Job’s day, a father would be given the infant and he would bless the child as the infant was placed in the father’s knee.”)
(4) “Why was I be nourished by my mother’s breast?”
In other words, why was he allowed to be nourished up and be faced with such calamity in his life now. He felt that his life journey should have been ended at the beginning for he was nourished and strengthen to confront this misery in this stage of his life. All the nourishing seemed to be a futile effort if it has to end like that for him. He was not able at this point in his life to see any hope forward. The losses he had to bear has been so tremendous!
I am reminded of the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, suffering much physical abuse, betrayed, deserted by His disciples, sentenced to crucifixion, the death penalty. When He was at Gethsemane, He prayed and cried, Luke 22:41-44 And he was withdrawn from them about a stone’s cast, and kneeled down, and prayed, Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.
It is during the time of extreme anguish that we have to pray for God’s grace to enable us to face our difficulty, whatever that may be. The angel was sent from heaven to strengthen Him.
JC Ryle has this apt comment – Let us take care that we use our Master’s remedy, if we want comfort in affliction. Whatever other means of relief we use, let us pray.The first Friend we should turn to ought to be God. The first message we should send ought to be to the throne of grace. No depression of spirits must prevent us. No crushing weight of sorrow must make us dumb. It is a prime device of Satan, to supply the afflicted man with false reasons for keeping silence before God. Let us beware of the temptation to brood sullenly over our wounds. If we can say nothing else, we can say, “I am oppressed: undertake for me.” (Isaiah. 38:14)
Notice here that Job wasn’t talking to God as he always does, but he was talking out loud the anguish that he felt in his soul.
JC Ryle further advised, “We see, secondly, in these verses, what kind of prayers a believer ought to make to God in time of trouble. Once more the Lord Jesus Himself affords a model to His people. We are told that He said, “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.” He who spoke these words, we must remember, had two distinct natures in one Person. He had a human will as well as a divine. When He said, “Not my will be done,” He meant that will which He had as a man, with a body, flesh and blood, like our own.
The language used by our blessed Master in this place shows exactly what should be the spirit of a believer’s prayer in his distress. Like Jesus, he should tell his desires openly to his heavenly Father and spread His wishes unreservedly before Him. But like Jesus, he should do it all with an entire submission of will to the will of God. He should never forget that there may be wise and good reasons for His affliction. He should carefully qualify every petition for the removal of crosses with the saving clause, “If thou be willing.” He should wind up all with the meek confession, “Not my will, but thine be done.”
For Job, perhaps he as too quick to utter his misery. He felt he needed to speak and yet we will observe also how it was misunderstood by his friends who began to lambast him hereafter.
JC Ryle explained well, “Submission of will like this is one of the brightest graces which can adorn the Christian character. It is one which a child of God ought to aim at in everything if he desires to be like Christ. But at no time is such submission of will so needful as in the day of sorrow, and in nothing does it shine so brightly as in a believer’s prayers for relief. He who can say from his heart, when a bitter cup is before him, “Not my will, but thine be done,” has reached a high position in the school of God.”
We are reminded of what Job said earlier, Job 1:20-22 “Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.” And Job’s words to his wife in Job 2:10 “But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips.” These were the initial words of this “perfect” man of God. What happened here? These words were uttered after 7 days of silence. Perhaps, his friends needed to withhold any form of judgment upon his servant. These friends were not spiritual understanding for they attacked their friend to accuse him of sinning against God when he began to utter these desponding words. Let us not be quick to utter a word when we in our finite mind may not fully understanding what has gone on in the lives of those around us. His friends certainly, like Job, did not know the conversation in heaven between Satan and God that it was trial to prove Job’s faith.
JC Ryle said well concerning the reason for our Lord’s agony as we look in hindsight, “We see, thirdly, in these verses, an example of the exceeding guilt and sinfulness of sin. We are meant to learn this in Christ’s agony and bloody sweat, and all the mysterious distress of body and mind which the passage describes. The lesson, at first sight, may not be clear to a careless reader of the Bible. But the lesson is there.
How can we account for the deep agony which our Lord underwent in the garden? What reason can we assign for the intense suffering, both mental and bodily, which He manifestly endured? There is only one satisfactory answer. It was caused by the burden of a world’s imputed sin, which then began to press upon Him in a peculiar manner. He had undertaken to be “sin for us,” to be “made a curse for us,” and to allow our iniquities to be laid on Himself. (2 Cor. 5:21; Gal. 3:13; Isaiah. 53:6) It was the enormous weight of these iniquities which made Him suffer agony. It was the sense of a world’s guilt pressing Him down which made even the eternal Son of God sweat great drops of blood, and called from Him “strong crying and tears.” The cause of Christ’s agony was man’s sin. (Heb. 5:7)”
13For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest,
He was unable to sleep, he was tossing awake in his pain and misery. It was so unbearable physically and emotionally so overwhelming, spiritually it seemed to have discomfited him.
The psalmist communed in his affliction finding comfort and strength – Psalm 25:12-18 “What man is he that feareth the LORD? him shall he teach in the way that he shall choose. His soul shall dwell at ease; and his seed shall inherit the earth. The secret of the LORD is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant. Mine eyes are ever toward the LORD; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net. Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me; for I am desolate and afflicted. The troubles of my heart are enlarged: O bring thou me out of my distresses. Look upon mine affliction and my pain; and forgive all my sins.”
He was not at ease and he was not quiet and he was not at rest but he was full of turmoil. [Swindoll]
14With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves; 15Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver:
Recall Job was the richest man in the East. He was a tycoon wielding much influence and living the high life.
Barnes said rightly, “He would have been numbered with kings and princes. Is there not here a little spice of ambition even in his sorrows and humiliation? Job had been an eminently rich man; a man greatly honoured; an emir; a magistrate; one in whose presence even princes refrained talking, and before whom nobles held their peace; Job29:9.”
16Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light.
Barnes further observed well, “Now he was stripped of his honours, and made to sit in ashes. But had he died when an infant, he would have been numbered with kings and counsellors, and would have shared their lot. Death is repulsive, but Job takes comfort in the thought that he would have been associated with the most exalted and honourable among people. There is some consolation in the idea that when an infant dies he is associated with the most honoured and exalted of the race; there is consolation in the reflection that when we die we shall lie down with the good and the great of all past times, and that though our bodies shall moulder back to dust, and be forgotten, we are sharing the same lot with the most beautiful, lovely, wise, pious, and mighty of the race. To Christians, there is the richest of all consolations in the thought that they will sleep as their Saviour did in the tomb, and that the grave, naturally so repulsive, has been made sacred and even attractive by being the place where the Redeemer reposed.”
17There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.
The grave is a silencer both for the wicked and the weary. When persecutors die they can no longer persecute. Matthew Henry illustrated well of that Herod had vexed the church, but, when he became a prey for worms, he ceased from troubling.
Had Job been at rest in his grave, he would have had no disturbance from the Sabeans and Chaldeans, none of all his enemies would have created him any trouble. [Matthew Henry]
18There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. 19The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.
There the weary are at rest.Heaven is more than a rest to the souls of the saints, but the grave is a rest to their bodies. Their pilgrimage is a weary pilgrimage; sin and the world they are weary of; their services, sufferings, and expectations, they are wearied with; but in the grave they rest from all their labours,Re14:13; Isa57:21. They are easy there, and make no complaints; there believers sleep in Jesus.
Those that were here enslaved are there at liberty. Death is the prisoner’s discharge, the relief of the oppressed, and the servant’s manumission (Job3:18): There the prisoners,though they walk not at large, yet they rest together,and are not put to work, to grind in that prison-house. They are no more insulted and trampled upon, menaced and terrified, by their cruel task-masters: They hear not the voice of the oppressor.Those that were here doomed to perpetual servitude, that could call nothing their own, no, not their own bodies, are there no longer under command or control: There the servant is free from his master,which is a good reason why those that have power should use it moderately, and those that are in subjection should bear it patiently, yet a little while. Those that were at a vast distance from others are there upon a level (Job3:19): The small and great are there,there the same, there all one, all alike free among the dead. The tedious pomp and state which attend the great are at an end there. All the inconveniences of a poor and low condition are likewise over; death and the grave know no difference. [Matthew Henry]