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Has something ever happened that you just don't understand? Has your world ever been turned upside down and you don't know why? That was Job's experience in chapter 10. Job has been hurt and confused by his circumstances, and he's going to turn to God for answers.

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Has there ever been something that's happened to you that you just don't understand? Have you ever experienced that tension when some calamity befell you, something that you did not bring upon yourself, something that just happened, maybe a diagnosis, something that upended your world, maybe caused you to think through matters of faith in ways that you had never done before? Has something ever happened that you've had trouble even now, reconciling with your expectations of God and what he should do, and yet what he did do. Most of us know that tension. We don't always own up to it, but we know that tension. Some of us might even be experiencing it right now. We know that God is good. We know that God is there. We know that he's in charge. We know the word God really means God. And if God equals God, then again we look at a circumstance, a calamity, an illness, a difficulty, maybe even a death, and we don't get it. And so the question on our lips is the same question the prophets asked and the same question Job asks. It's the question, why? Why, if you love me, has this happened? Why, oh, Lord, why? Well, if you've asked that question, perhaps if you're even asking that question this day on some level, then be encouraged to know at least this much as we start. Job asked the same thing. Job was the most righteous man on the planet. That's not a small thing to say. He was the most righteous man on planet Earth in the time that he lived. And yet he knew what it was like to experience a difficulty and try to reconcile, or have to reconcile that difficulty with the fact that God is good and Job is not alone in this. Moses, Jeremiah, David, Daniel, Paul, the list goes on. In fact, every great man or woman of faith has experienced the same moments. If God loves me, why did this terrible thing happen? Did I do something to deserve it? Am I being punished? If you've ever asked those questions, we're going to try to filter those very questions through Job's questions and see if we can come to some conclusions. All right, I'm going to go ahead and reread verses 1 through 7. Then we'll look at those verses and then work our way through the balance. The text, verse 1. This is Job speaking He says this. He says, my soul loathes my life. My soul loathes my life. I will give free course to my complaint. I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. I will say to God, do not condemn me. Show me why. This is one of many times that word why comes up. Show me why. Why you contend with me. Remember, he's standing on his righteousness. He says, I don't deserve this. Show me why you contend with me. Does it seem good to you that you should oppress? That you should despise me, the work of your hands and smile on the counsel of the wicked? Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see as man sees? Are your days like the days of a mortal man? Are your years like the days of a mighty man? That you should seek for my iniquity, search up my sin, although you know I'm not wicked. And there's no one who can deliver me from your hand. All right, let's stop there. That is a fascinating and difficult prayer to utter. Now, before I even examine that, let me say this much. God can take whatever prayers you bring to him, even if they come with hurt on your heart. God's a big enough God to sustain what you bring to him, even if what you bring to him is couched in words of grief and sorrow and lament and questions and anxieties and fears. God didn't love Job any less because he asked of the hurts of his heart. With that said, it didn't mean that everything Job says here or elsewise in the book was correct. Well, that said, in verse one, very first verse, he made a very strong statement. Specifically, he said this. He said, my soul loathes my life in the vernacular. What's he saying? He's saying, I wish I was dead. He just says, God, I wish I was dead. And if you fast forward to the end of verse 18, he's going to say the same thing in different words. Both cases. He's saying, God, it would be better off if I simply wasn't here, rather than to undergo what I'm undergoing. My soul loathes my life. The fact I'm taking another breath today gives me no comfort. Man alive, you've got to be some kind of broken, some kind of hurt to be in a position where you'd prefer death over living another day under the circumstances that you're currently living. Now, with that said, let's stop it. Is Job just being a drama queen? Is he making a mountain out of a molehill? You know, sometimes we do that. Sometimes oh, woe is me. You know, when I was younger, I remember I was a teenager, and everything that comes upon your plate, oh, the end of the world is upon me. Right? Sometimes. Sometimes we take small grievances and concerns and. And inflate them into something bigger than they really are. Is that what Job is doing here? Is he just overstating his problems? Dear heavens, no. Read the first nine chapters. You can see every bad thing that could happen happened to Job. He lost just about everything you can lose while still remaining alive. He lost loved ones and possessions and lands and forests and flocks and fields and everything. He lost his health to the degree that he's literally just sitting there in the dirt with sores of boils covering his body, scraping his sores with a broken piece of pottery in order to give himself some comfor. That's where this man was at the time that he utters these very words in chapter 10. He is a broken man who has lost virtually everything that he had. Now, as he sat there in the dirt trying to figure out what's going on, the problem that he had was that he knew he was fairly righteous. I mean, it's not a surprise to righteous people. They're righteous. They should be humble about it. It's okay to be humble if you're righteous. But he knew he was righteous and he hadn't done that which was wrong. So that really, really affected his thinking because his was that bad things happen to bad people and exclusively to bad people. His understanding was that now, if I'd done something wrong, God, I could understand your punitive hand coming down upon me. But I haven't. Show me. Show me. Show me what I've done. If I've done something, God, show me. That's what he's asking, these verses. Show me, I'm begging you. Tell me why I'm in this position. Explain it to me, God, because I don't get it. So that's what he's asking there in these verses. Now, what we're going to find in the book of Job, or at least what you'll find if you go through the book of Job, and is that he has friends who show up. And I say the word friends kind of loosely, you know, with friends like these, who needs enemies, right? You read the book of Job. You'll see his friends show up and they sit there, and after he's done speaking, they pour out their wisdom upon him. I'll use wisdom in air quotes. They pour out their wisdom upon him. The things they have to say man alive. They just do him no help. They're just the worst sort of input and advice. And part of the reason it's just terrible advice that his friends are giving him is because his friends were telling him the same thing that he was telling himself, which is bad things should only happen to bad people. If you've read the book of Job, you remember his friends come to him and they basically tell Job. They say, job, you're not being honest here. There's no way what's happened to you would have happened to you if you're not hiding some secret sins. No way. No way. Sin equal sign. Suffering. Sin equals suffering. They only understood suffering through the lens that you did something to deserve it. You did something to deserve it. Frankly, that was Job's mentality too. And he said, I didn't do anything. So they argue back and forth. His friends say, yes, you did. And he says, no, I didn't. For chapter after chapter after chapter. But his friends thought that the only reason that he could be undergoing such a thing was because he was evil, wicked or bad. I tell you, that's simply not the case. If something terrible has befallen you, it's not necessarily. Although it could be. But it's not necessarily because you've done something wrong. You think of Daniel thrown to the lion's den. Did he deserve it? Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Did they deserve to be thrown into a fiery furnace? Paul in jail, Paul whipped, Paul beaten. Paul shipwrecked, Paul martyred. Did he deserve it? No, of course not. And yet that's what his friends are insisting is true of Job, that he deserved it. All right, let's look at verses 8 through 12. Verse 8. He's still speaking out of the hurts in his heart. He says, God, your hands have made me and fashioned me an intricate utility. You can just imagine him kind of looking at his own construction. An intricate utility. And yet you would destroy me. Remember, I pray, you've made me like clay. Will you turn me into dust again? Did you not pour me out like milk. And curdle me like cheese. And clothe me with skin and flesh. And knit me together with bones and sinews? You've granted me life and favor. And your care has preserved my spirit. All right. The artist Michelangelo. Michelangelo. He had been working on one particular project, one particular piece of art, one particular piece of marble for a period of about eight years. And one day, Michelangelo gets up out of bed. He takes a mallet in his hand. He goes up to this piece of artwork, and he begins to shatter it. He begins to destroy it. And history records that those who were aware of what he was doing were shocked, dismay. How could he do this? He spent years working on this piece. He poured himself into it. He worked long into the night with candles flickering while he's carefully working on this thing. And ultimately he wakes up one day and he just decides to shatter it, just decides to break it down. The questions that Michelangelo's friends and acquaintances had with regards to what in the world Michelangelo was doing is sort of what Job is asking here of God. He says, God, God, you spent a lot of time making me the man I am. You fashioned me. You formed me. You appointed my days. Any good thing that I've done in times past was done through your volition. You've given me all these years of life to get. Thus far, you've poured yourself into me. And yet, for reasons I don't get, you're like Michelangelo destroying his own marble. You're destroying me, and I don't understand it, given how much time you committed to building me and making me the man that I am. It seemed counterintuitive, is what Job is saying. It's counterintuitive. I don't get it. I don't get how you could do such a thing. How does this work? Are you a God who changes on a dime? Because that's sort of what it's feeling like is roughly what he's saying. He doesn't understand how God could have fashioned his life so intricately and then just set it on fire, so to speak. Have you ever woken up on a similar day and felt that way? Have you ever been experiencing a life that's just going along really well? Maybe even just average, let's say average. But then something terrible happens. Whether you're going well or average or what have you, or every shade in between. You wake up one day and you get that phone call. You wake up one day and there's a car accident. You wake up one day and there's something that's happened. And your world is just shattered. And things will never be the same. It'll never be what it once was. You ever wonder, you know, how did this happen? Everything was going along so well. I've gotten to this stage of life. Everything's been moving along. God loves me. I love God. I'm trying my best here. He sees it for reasons I don't get. Here we are. And there are some things that can happen in your life that don't get reversed. Again, how do you process that? If God is good and if he's in charge, if God equals signs God, how do you process that? Well, before we try to answer that, to the degree we can answer that, let's attach now the remainder of Job's questions in verses 13 through 18, and then we'll try to package some conclusions. Verses 13 through 18. Now, God, these things you have hidden in your heart, I know that this was with you. If I sin, then you mark me. You'll not equip me in my iniquity. If I'm wicked, woe to me. Even I'm righteous then. Now I can't lift up my head, let alone if I was a sinner, even when I'm righteous. Look what's happening to me. I'm full of disgrace. See my misery. If my head is exalted. You hunt me like a fierce lion. You show yourself awesome against me. He felt like a hunted man based on what was going on in his world. You renew your witnesses against me. You increase your indignation toward me. Charges of war are ever with me. Why then have you ever brought me out of the womb? This gets back to his original point. I wish I was dead. Why have you brought me out of the womb? Why was I for born? Oh, that I had perished and no eye had ever seen me. I don't know whether you've ever experienced one of those moments. I wish I was never born. God take me home now. I don't know if you've ever experienced that. God willing, you haven't or won't. But let me tell you something. If you ever do know this much, you are in very good company with people in the pages of Scripture. And not just Job. Moses. You know, everyone loves Moses now. Like, if you go to Israel and talk about Moses, and there's a great reverence. Oh, Moses, Moses, right? Moses means everything. Moses has meant a great deal to the Jews across the centuries. But you know what's ironic? In the time in which Moses lived, no one liked him. In the time which Moses was alive, the people around Moses just couldn't stand the guy. They accused him all the time. They said, you let us out, you're left us for dead. You're doing this thing wrong. You're doing that thing wrong. He goes up the mountain a little too long. They're like, woohoo. I guess he's not coming back now. On with our regular scheduled programming. Even his own brother and sister would complain about old Moses. Remember, Miriam had the leprosy of the Hand and so forth. Moses was not terribly loved in his day. And in numbers, chapter 11, he grows tired of this. He's trying to do what God would have him do. He's desperately trying to do what God would have him do. In chapter 11 of Numbers, he says to God, he says, kill me now. Kill me now. That's exactly what it says in Numbers, chapter 11, just kill me now. Elijah. First Kings 19, similar issues. Elijah is a prophet of God. Elijah is another man who is beloved. In the present day, do you know who they leave a seat over in modern Jewish Passovers? They leave one chair open. Who's it open for? Elijah, right? Everyone. Elijah, right? But Elijah, when he was alive, no one loved Elijah. When Elijah was alive, he. Everyone despised Elijah. They treated him terribly and the like. He's just trying to do God's work. He's just trying to teach the people and the like. They could not stand Elijah. And what happens is after, after that big event on First Kings, chapter 18, the fire comes down on Mount Carmel. Elijah thinks, well, now, now that God has shown himself to be Jehovah, the God of our ancestors, and he's demonstrated that the pagan gods are worthless, now, everything's going to go right now. God has shown up, the fire has come down. We're going to get with the program here in Israel. Well, wrong. Just a couple days later, what happens? He's running for his life because Jezebel's assassins have been sent to kill him. And he ends up under a broom tree, under a sycamore tree. And he can't figure it out. He doesn't get it. He asks God, why? Why, why, why, why? You're God. These are your people. You just showed yourself powerful. You've appointed me to be a prophet to the people. I understand all these different things. And what I don't understand is why I'm here having to hide from Jezebel's assassins who are trying to kill me. If you're good and you're in charge, why is this going on? Kill me now. Kill me now. Jeremiah, Jeremiah, chapter 15. The prophet was dead tired of just standing alone. And he asked God the same question that Job asked here. He says, God, why was I ever born if this is what I've been appointed to? And it's just so miserable. I wake up and it's just. I have nightmares when I sleep. I wake up and it's more of the same, God, why was I ever born? Paul, 2nd Corinthians 1. Paul said this, that the persecution he was facing at that time, Second Corinthians, chapter one caused him and his fellow disciples to despair of life itself. Do you see a common theme? I could go on. Do you see the theme? There are many times when some of the most beloved, awesome champions of the faith in Scripture, some of the people that we revere the most, felt the way that maybe you felt last week or last month or last year, broken, hurting and asking God the question why? If it's any consolation, know this. God used those moments of why as mechanisms to refine the very people who are asking the question. When Elijah asks God why and he's crying, he's literally weeping under a sycamore tree in the desert, God sends ministering angels to him, which is cool how that works. God's not sitting there aloof and different with his arms folded to see how you do. He comes alongside you in the midst of your griefs and your hurts, ever a bit as much as Jesus came alongside those who were grieving when Lazarus died, and he weeps along them. So he sends ministering angels to Elijah. But ultimately, Elijah, he leads them to kind of a cleft in the rock, so to speak, there at Sinai, we believe he leads Elijah to this place. And then he shows his power. He shows his might, the same might that Job was talking about. Verses 8 through 12, he shows might. There's fire, there's earthquakes, there's lightning and storms and all this. So God demonstrates, yes, Elijah, I'm the God who can do anything. You're right about that. I can do anything. And if I want to do it, it will be done. Look at my power. But then, in a still, small voice, almost like a whisper in Elijah's ears, after all this shaking and tumult has occurred in the most intimate way, in a still, small voice, God whispers to Elijah. And to paraphrase, he says this. He says, elijah, you are never alone. It was never as bad as you think it is. You think you're isolated. You think that you're the only one. There's many thousands who have not bent the knee to the bales. And I am working even in this. And I have a plan. And it may not be the plan that you, like, recognize, understand or want, but trust me, it's a good plan. It's a good plan, and I'm working it out, even in the midst of the very turmoil and hurt that you're experiencing right now. If this is true of Elijah, if this is true of Jeremiah, if this is true of Moses, if this is true of David and Paul, and others, if you ever wake up one morning and your world has just been uprooted, so it seems, understand that again, you're in the greatest company. And also understand this, that God is with you as you're facing these things. And you're no more alone than Elijah was, even when he thought that God was a million miles away at that moment and indifferent to what he was going through. As we look to wrap up this morning, let me add a couple other thoughts that might encourage our hearts when we're in those moments. Like Job, when we're asking, why, why, why? Why are these things happening? Why did this one thing happen? Why did this 20 things happen? Why? Why? Why? Well, number one, remember this. Remember where you're at. Sometimes we get confused. We think that this is like the garden now or this is heaven now. And we think that somehow, in the midst of all this beauty, I mean, we look out, it's pretty nice outside. The humidity and the deer flies. It's just wonderful out here today. But we look at the world around us and we can be fooled for a moment. We say, this is pretty good, right? And then something bad happens. You leave the parking lot, your car gets hit, you run over a dog, something happens. And you're reminded, you're jolted back to reality, that maybe this world isn't as great as you thought it was. We can fool ourselves into trying to carve out utopia in the midst of a war zone, but the reminder of scripture time and time again is that it is a war zone. And because it's a war zone that you're living out your days upon, don't be surprised when you sustain battle scars. Don't be surprised when it happens, because it will, because that's a function of the very environment in which you live. However, you will not be forever. That's my second point. Life is short, but eternity is long. Whatever difficulty you're facing this week, imagine the greatest difficulty you could face happening to you on a Monday. But then imagine Jesus comes back on Tuesday. Do you think you could endure that terrible thing if you knew you only had to endure it for one day? That loss, that grievance, that heartache, that hurt. If you knew that Jesus was coming back and he's going to fix everything and wipe away every tear within 24 hours? I think we could probably steady ourselves for Monday if we knew that Tuesday was coming. Well, here's the thing. Tuesday is coming. Jesus is coming back. Whether you go to him or he comes to you, one way or another, there's a Lot of gray hair in this room. One way or another, it's happening not too far. In the distant future, a day is coming. It's been appointed in the nearest of near terms, really, by which all of the hurts and grievousness that we have will be removed from us. The tears will be wiped away, and that's not that far off when you can kind of see your life through that lens. Remember what we just sang in Amazing Grace when We've been there 10,000 years by Shining as the Sun? The idea is, if we're there 10,000 years, then we have no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun. If that's true, then if we're going to be there 10,000 years and that's but a hair's breadth of what eternity looks like, then, dear good gravy, the here and now has got to be nothing. Whatever you're facing right now, no matter how harsh it is, remember this. It will end in just moments of time, so to speak. The here and now. Even if you should live to be 100 years old, the here and now is but a drop of water. And in the comprehensive ocean of eternity. Bear that in mind when you consider the anxieties and the hurts of this day. Thirdly, remember this. You're not alone. That was Elijah's concern, is he felt alone. And yet, David, in those moments when he felt alone, he was reminded of this, that, yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Why? Because thou art with me. David had a lot of moments. There was palace intrigue going on all the time around David. People wanted to kill him to the left and to the right. It wasn't just Goliath, his own son, Absalom. Others came against him regularly. David was a hunted man, even though he was in royalty. David was a hunted man, even though he was a powerful man. And so frequently, he was walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Now, if he had to walk through that by himself, then, man, that would be no fun. Sometimes we think that we're walking through these diagnosis and this hardship and this chemo and these other things by ourselves. The truth is that although we're walking through the valley of the shadow of death, no matter how many steps we take in it, whether it's 1, 10, 12, 100, God is with us as we do so. His rod and his staff and his presence, they comfort us. And that's something to be reminded of even when our world seems to Be falling apart. That right there, God is with us. It's not like he's just right there next to us. He's literally carrying us through the midst of what we're going on. Number four, remember this. Your trials refine your faith. They're there for a reason. It's not an accident. Job, Paul, Elijah, Jeremiah, David, Moses. Guess what? They grew. Their faith grew under fire. If you had asked them whether they wanted the calamities that they faced, they would have all said no to a man. And yet, in retrospect, if they were to look back at their lives from their deathbed, I'm not sure they would have wanted anything different. Because they knew that their very trials made them the individuals that they were. Look, everything that's happened to you has not necessarily been fun or enjoyable. And yet the confluence of all the things that ever happened to you, every choice that you've made and the choices that other people have made have led you to this very day, in this very building, this very morning, to hear God's word, God's doing something in your life, using all that brokenness somehow to bring together a conductive stream in his will to something that is good, to an outcome that is better than you would otherwise choose for yourself. If you could have only had those things in your life that you really, really wanted for yourself and that you could have avoided all the hardships like you told God. Have you ever gone bowling with small kids? You take like, you know, five year old kids bowling. You remember, they have these things now. They didn't have it when I was, you know, when I was growing up, you know, back then, you know, you're a five year old, you roll the ball and it goes in the gutter and you cry, right? Well, now we don't want kids to cry. So what exists at bowling alleys? That's right, the bumpers. You push this button, boop. And these bumpers go up. And then a kid can just give the worst roll in the world. As long as it's got any momentum, it'll bang against it, eventually hit the pins, right? Sometimes that's what we want of God. Say God, put up the bumpers, put up the bumpers so that I can get through these days. With that said, sometimes falling into the gutter, so to speak, are part of what has made us the individuals that we are. It's not to say that every choice is. Has uniformly been enjoyable. But God has used the choices, good and bad, to help to make us the individuals that we are. All things come Together for good, for those who love them, or the fifth point, final point here is this. Whatever you're going through, whatever you might go through next week, next month, next year, whatever it is, no matter how horrible it is, Jesus himself can relate to it. It. God is not aloof in this sense that he created the world and he created you. And he spins you like a top, then he stands back to see how you'll do, and then he kind of judges you on the base of the outcome. Jesus, when he came to this earth, he was despised, he was rejected, he was beaten, he was mocked, he was spit upon, he was ultimately crucified. He was a man of sorrows. He was acquainted with grief. When Jesus came alongside and wept alongside those who were weeping, it was because he knew what it felt like to be hurt. The One who made you, the One who saved you, the one who even now gives breath to your lungs, knows exactly what you're going through. He doesn't just study you in order to kind of see how you do, but he can relate to you. That's what we've said in the past is the difference between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy says, I'm sorry for you, something terrible happened to you. I sympathize. Empathy says, I can relate. Whatever you might go through, the heart of Christ can relate to it. And that's encouraging to know. It's encouraging to know because it means that when I pray to him, he knows. He knows. He knows. He knows. You ever have a child who some terrible things happened, Maybe they've fallen and skinned their knee, Maybe someone was cruel to them in class, maybe there's some heartache in their heart. You pick that child up. One of the most immediate things, just say, I know. I know. Why? Because you can relate to whatever your child has faced. You face hardship and heartache and bullying and skin, knees and all that stuff. You know what it's like. And it's tender to tell your child. It's tender for the child to receive that idea that you can relate to that pain. Christ can relate to what we're going through, whether it's Job, David, Paul, Moses, Jeremiah, or you and I. One last, one last thought this morning kind of helped me understand a little bit the trajectory of my own life and ministry at times. I was driving through Wool Market, and this is not terribly long ago driving through Wool Market. I like to go by Taranto's, even if I'm not going to eat there. I just enjoy the idea that I could eat there. So I'm driving past Taranto's. And I go past, I'm going through Wool Market, it's just me driving. And I look and I see something in the road ahead. It's right sitting there on two yellow dividing lines. Look square in the middle. And I see it up ahead. And at first I don't know quite what it is and then of course I know what it is. It's kind of oval shaped, it's dark in color, it's sitting there, it moved slightly. What is it? It's a turtle. You've been anytime down here in South Mississippi. You know exactly what it is. It's a turtle. So in our. I don't know how you handle these scenarios, but in our house what we do is we get out of the car, presuming it's safe, presuming I could get run over by a semi truck, I'll pull off to the side of the road and I'll walk over and I'll pick up the turtle and move it. So that's exactly what I did. You know, it was hot and humid, but I didn't want this poor turtle to get slaughtered there in the middle of the road. And it was dead in the middle. I mean there was wherever it went, left or right, there's a good chance it, someone was going to take it up. So I got in the car, I picked this turtle up, and I'm thinking to myself, oh, what a good guy I am. Look at me taking care of this poor little turtle. I pick up this turtle, I kind of look at it and smile. Do you know what this turtle did? It gave me the hissing of a lifetime. I mean, I've been hissed at by turtles, but nothing like this. It took one look at me and it's, ah, it was all I could do not to, ah, you know, throw the turtle. So I go and I take this turtle and still hissing the whole time, and I go, put it off in the grass. I back off. This thing made more noise than any 10 turtles I've ever picked up. Now as I'm driving away, man, I'm thinking, that turtle, he sure didn't like me. And then it dawned on me. How many times has God moved me from plan A to plan B? Moved me out of the middle of a highway I didn't even know I was positioned in order to put me someplace safe. And my response was to hiss like a mad person. For a lot of us, that's. For a lot of us, we can relate to be moved from one state of affairs to another and to not like it. And to think it's the end of the world. But remember, God is good. God's in charge. All things come together for good, for those who love them. And even if you don't understand it in the moment, what he does, he does to bring good outcomes. Be a blessing to you and to those other lives that you touch. Let's pray.