Episode Transcript
Good morning.
It's 10 o'clock and let's begin our Sunday school lesson.
Got a good crowd here today.
We're in Job chapter 3 this morning.
Job chapter 3 We've already made it through two chapters and we're knocking out a third one.
Just 39 more to go.
Hey, we're in no hurry.
Not at all.
Our last study showed us how great a despair Job had for his own life because of every uh all the trauma he was going through Loss of his children, his servants, his property, just life turned upside down, him not knowing why.
And he cursed the day of his birth.
He cursed the night that he was conceived in his mother's womb.
And he went into great detail about the measures he prayed would be taken to blot out any remembrance of those days, any remembrance, any joy, any light that was associated with the glorious events of his conception and his birth.
And although it would have been sufficient for Job to simply say, I despair of my own life and all that pertains to it.
I want to point out something that was helpful to me.
I'm glad Job didn't just keep it simple When we see someone who appears to be distraught, maybe they're crying, or maybe their heads hung down, they're obviously in a state of depression.
That sometimes makes us uncomfortable.
We don't really know what to do or say.
So we may ask them, what's wrong Now you may get a variety of answers there.
Many times people say, I'm fine, I'm all right.
And they're not But what they're telling you is I don't want to talk about it right now and you need to respect that when they say that.
Now I I'm preaching to me because I'm the absolute worst.
I raised I finally figured it out I raised one wife and three girls.
And when you ask them what's wrong and they say nothing, what that means is be quiet.
There is something wrong.
And but I'm not going to tell you about it right now.
I'm still mad and I want to stay mad for a while.
And so I finally figured that out.
But you you may get that reply, I'm fine, or they may open up just a little bit and say, look, I'm going through a lot right now.
And if that's it. then you may decide to to inquire further and to not inquire further.
But those grieving, those responses that seem kind of vague to you, Are often attempts by the grieving person to avoid doing what Job did Because I'm not sure Job's friends were expecting the depth of feeling that he conveyed to them with all those words that we've read and the ones we're going to read.
And I'm not sure they were ready for the lengthy description of what was going on in his mind, how he really felt.
And remember, he'd been mourning for seven days.
And it probably built up a lot of emotions, a lot of insight about his terrible situation.
He'd probably put a lot of thought into it.
That was all that he could think about So when someone is going through something like this, and that person gives you a vague answer about what is wrong when you ask him, give him some grace.
Don't be upset with him.
It doesn't mean that he doesn't trust you.
It may mean he has a whole truckload of emotional distress and a lot of words to describe it.
And sometimes people just don't want to unload all of that on you.
You be careful when you ask someone, how are you?
You expect them to say, oh, I'm fine, how are you?
Well, I'm good.
And the fact is, one or both of you probably aren't good.
But it's just a courtesy we we extend to people.
But if you really do care about how somebody is, be ready to take some time out of your day and sit down and listen to them Well, Job unloaded it, and he's not done.
As we're going to see over the many months of study ahead of us.
And now.
We're going to turn to verse 11 in the new part of our study.
And having made several statements, Job now asks the question.
Why died I not from the womb?
So he's asking aloud Why wasn't I stillborn?
Why couldn't I have just been stillborn?
You know, the day of his birth was joyous to his parents.
And that was before they even realized what a godly man he was going to be.
I'm sure the birth of Adolf Hitler was joyous to his parents and grandparents and all around him.
They had no idea what he was going to become.
But in the eyes of Job's parents, when he was born, he was simply their precious newborn son.
But had he been stillborn, That day would have, that should have been a day of joy, would have quickly been replaced with sorrow.
Remember, Job previously wished that the night of his conception would not have been joined to the days of the year.
In other words, that it had never happened.
And if that had been the case, his parents would not have known sorrow.
It would have just been chalked up as another unsuccessful attempt to have a child.
And though there may have been some disappointment in that, it wouldn't have caused the sorrow as would the death of a child.
But in the question he asks in this verse, there is the certainty that granting this request that he be stillborn would have caused great sadness to others.
And we look at that from the outside and we say, Job, you know if that really happened.
How sad people would have been, especially your parents.
And something that his statement shows us is that when people are experiencing great sorrow, They may say things they don't realize would cause others to sorrow as well, if they were to come true A grieving person's emotions are sometimes turned inward, and Job's were.
And ours are.
It's a type of selfishness, but we understand it and we accept it for a little while, don't we?
I remember when my when I was uh fifteen years old And the hero of my life, my grandfather, passed away.
He had a sudden heart attack while he was studying the Word of God.
How about that?
That was the last thing he was doing.
He went out in the garage and had his heart attack and died.
And I was uh a grieving grandson.
And a family member who's no longer a family member, I'll leave it at that, came up to me and Said you ought to be in there uh comforting your mom.
You ought to be concerned about your mom.
She's she's upset too.
And he had no uh regard for what my emotions were.
In other words He may as well have said, quit being selfish, quit sitting out here crying being selfish.
And that wouldn't have been the time to do that.
But that's what happened.
And so if I were to lose one of my parents My employer would be quite understanding if I took a few days off work to grieve their loss.
Nobody would say, well, boy, Shepard's being selfish.
Look at him taking off like that just because his mother or his father died.
In fact, most workplaces have some sort of policy that allow you a what they call bereavement leave. or administrative leave, emergency leave for the death of immediate family members.
And our county policy allows that, up to three ought three days off paid just for that sort of circumstance.
But let's say I decided six months from now to be absent from work, just not show up.
And my supervisor called me and said, Hey, where were you yesterday?
You just failed to show up to work.
And if I were to say, well, my father died six months ago.
Well, there wouldn't be as much grace for that, would there?
I might even receive some sort of disciplinary action for not showing up to work without permission.
And I would expect that.
So we understand people need a little time to be self-centered when they're grieving.
And in such a case, if Job's question, why died I not from my mother's womb, or from the womb, If that question were answered with rebuke, then that rebuke would not be appropriate.
What if he had said what he said, and then I said, Job, you shouldn't be so selfish.
If you were stillborn, your mother and father would have been devastated, so you shouldn't say something like that.
Well, I wouldn't do that.
I'd extend him some grace.
I know that that statement is not how he really would feel after some time of cool reflection.
It's made in the moment of heavy emotional burdens.
But if those thoughts persisted for weeks and months, maybe even years, then we might say, okay, now Job is not making the adjustment.
Job's symptoms are now clinical and probably need to be addressed by a professional counselor.
But that's not where we are with him right now.
And after this question, look back in verse 11, Job continues, why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?
So this part of the question, or this question, this part of the verse is not about being stillborn, but about dying after being born alive.
The phrase give up the ghost or gave up the ghost you'll see in the Bible, in the Old and New Testament.
And it means the spirit is leaving the body.
It's a poetic way of saying the person has died.
In Genesis chapter 25, verse 8, it says, Then Abraham gave up the ghost and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.
So there's your introduction to that phrase in the Bible.
One of my daughter, Lauren's high school friends.
Later married and became pregnant with a sweet little girl named Ellie.
And Ellie was born with some very serious medical problems.
And she passed away after a few weeks.
So she was not stillborn.
She was born, but died afterward.
And this is what Job is wishing would have happened to him.
And Ellie's parents were devastated.
And her mother will never forget those painful days and weeks and even the months and years that followed the death of her little girl And thanks to the Lord's grace, she was able later to have a healthy child, which took some of the sting away.
Can't remove it, but it took some of the sting away And knowing this, we see what a serious matter it is for Job to wish that he had been born, but that he had died after birth And again, as in the statement that he made about wishing he'd been stillborn, Job was considering only how his present trauma made him feel.
He was obviously not considering how his parents and loved ones would have felt had his desire been a reality, had he really been born and then died.
Had Job been born, there would have been great joy, and he was, and there was great joy.
And had that day been replaced with the sting of death, with the empty, sorrowful feelings that it produces, then that day would have been a terrible day And as a godly man, I doubt anyone thinks Job would wish such feelings on his parents.
Again, after a time of cool reflection, if you were to ask him, you know, Job, something you said about six months ago, did you really mean that?
He'd say, no, I didn't.
I didn't mean that.
I said that out of despair.
So again, we have to give grace to a person who is sorrowing And that's why sometimes the best thing you can do is what his friends did.
And that's not say a word.
Verse 12, Job continues.
He said, Why did the knees prevent me?
Now we're not used to that expression.
It's not so plain, so let's examine it a little more closely.
How would the knees preventing him have anything to do with his birth, what what would that mean?
Now to prevent means to go before or to meet.
And we usually understand the word prevent in a more limited sense.
If I want to prevent someone from entering the building, that means I take some kind of action to keep them out.
I would probably just lock the door.
But preventing in the sense of the Hebrew word is a little broader.
It can mean that.
But it has to do with going before or meeting someone.
And let's apply this to Job's words.
If you go back to the last chapter, And continue to this chapter, you'll see that Job has broken down each of the stages of his life. particularly the beginning stages.
From his conception to birth, to survival after birth, and now to the knees preventing him.
Now, why would knees prevent him after he was born?
Well, the knees are part of what makes up a person's lap.
So if you sit down, and especially if you put your knees together, you got a lap.
If you don't put them together, you have somewhat of a lap We still, if we pick the child up and set him on one leg while we're sitting down, we might say, he's sitting in my lap.
But if you put your knees together, your lap would be secure enough for you to lay a baby on.
And I've done that hundreds of times with my children, with my grandchildren, when they're small enough.
And when a mother delivered a baby, the midwife was seated before her.
And the midwife received the baby from the mother's womb and onto her lap or her knees.
And this is the image here.
So the midwife's knees met the baby.
They prevented the baby from falling to the floor after birth When my Lauren was born, that was the I was in the delivery room for the birth of my two youngest daughters, and when Lauren was born, that was the first time I had ever been in a delivery room.
So I was a little nervous, and it's for a reason that you might not think.
I saw the distance from the delivery table to that hard concrete floor And I thought, I hope there's someone in here whose main job is to catch my child when she's born.
Because this is going to happen fast when it happens.
And there, you know, the babies are slick and all of that.
They're hard to hold.
But the doctor did a great job doing his job.
And I was relieved that his hands prevented my newborn daughter from hitting the floor And he transferred her to a nurse and then the pediatrician, and boy, it was just as smooth, almost like they'd been doing this for a living.
They were pretty good at it And Job is saying that he wished that the midwife would have just allowed him to fall to the floor rather than meeting him or preventing him with her knees.
And the presumed result of that would have been the death of baby Job.
He's born alive, he dies because he falls on the floor.
Because the midwife's knees don't prevent him or meet him.
Look back in verse 12.
The next question you asked, or why the breast that I should suck?
In other words, why should I have made it so far that I could nurse from my mother?
Now this is what happens after the knees prevent the baby who was just born.
The knees meet the baby, the cord is cut, the baby's airway is cleared, and he's placed on the mother's breast.
And that does a lot of things for both the baby and the mother, both physiologically and emotionally.
And let me tell you, if you want to dive into that, that is a fascinating study.
I listened to a neurologist break down and I don't know why uh he was the chosen one but he was a Christian and he was uh interested enough to to break down what happens in a mother's body at various stages, but particularly during birth and after the birth of a child, and how if certain things didn't happen, the woman would just bleed to death.
And that how there had to be a creator involved in the design of a woman's body.
And I'm telling you, it was absolutely fascinating, and I still marvel at it.
But it's if you're looking for something to read instead of scrolling Facebook, go look that up.
And it'll just reinforce your faith in God that God made us.
But the thing that's most relevant to our text here Is that a nursing baby is receiving nutrition to sustain his life and to help him develop normally And Job's wish here was that he would have not had access to his mother's breast to suck, and therefore He would have been deprived of the nutrition that would have sustained his life.
And then he would have died, as the next verse very strongly indicates.
So if the things in verse 12 would have been true, either the knees of the midwife would not prevent him, or he would not be able to nurse.
In verse 13 he said, For now should I have lain still and been quiet.
Now that is a very apt description of a dead body.
Still and quiet.
It neither moves nor makes a sound as it lies in the grave.
The spirit has departed And physically speaking, that body is in a peaceful state.
And perhaps you've seen the body of a loved one as she lay in the casket after Dying from a terrible long illness, maybe one that caused her great suffering, I have.
And yet in that casket She seems to be at peace.
Well, that's because her body is at peace.
There's not any more suffering.
And sometimes that thought alone comforts our minds.
She's not suffering anymore.
Sometimes that's all we have to grab on to.
And we know the loved one is no longer suffering as she did before she died.
And for Job, this peace, though it were found in death, would have been preferable to him to growing older and having kids and watching them die.
And he said, I should have slept.
For now should I have lain still and been quiet.
Next words, I should have slept, and then had I been at rest.
First, I should have slept.
In the Bible, the concept of sleep is twofold.
First, it means what we think it means.
It's something we do, hopefully, every night for several hours, or if you work nights, hopefully you are able to sleep during the days.
But from that sleep, we wake up, don't we?
We go to sleep, we wake up.
We go to sleep, we wake up.
And in fact, the greatest thing you can do for your immune system, and this is free, is sleep.
There are a lot of things you can do for your immune system, but there's not one greater than getting a good night's sleep.
Now, the second thing meant by the forms of the word sleep is death.
A dead person looks like he's asleep.
Jesus disciples were a little bit confused about what version of the word sleep Jesus was using. when he was talking about Lazarus after Lazarus died.
I'll read from John chapter 11, verses 11 through 14.
John 11, 11 through 14.
These things said he, and after that he saith unto them, this is Jesus speaking now, our friend Lazarus sleepeth.
But I go that I may awake him out of sleep.
Then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well.
Howbeit, Jesus spake of his death, but they thought that he had spoken of taking rest in sleep.
Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead Now, just as the Hebrew word for sleep or slept in the Old Testament means either taking a nap or being dead, it's the same thing in the Greek.
So the Greek word can mean either taking a nap or dead.
When Jesus awakened Lazarus from his sleep He actually awakened him from death.
He didn't wake up a man who'd been taking a nap.
Lazarus had been in the grave four days.
And what Jesus was showing is not his ability to rouse a friend from an afternoon nap.
He was showing his resurrection power.
Now applying what we just studied to Job, it's apparent that when he said, I should have slept, he meant I should have died.
Not I should have taken a nap as a newborn baby.
What difference would there be between that and any other newborn baby who goes to sleep?
And as a result of being dead, he said this next in the text there in verse 13, then had I been at rest.
The first time the Hebrew word for rest is used is in Genesis chapter 8 and verse 4.
Genesis chapter 8, verse 4, referring to Noah's Ark.
It says, and the ark rested.
In the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat So once that ark rested, it never moved after that, although the materials from which it was made The shatim wood, and then of course the pitch that was on the door, all of that, disintegrated over time, or they were broken down by natural forces.
Mount Ararat is both a volcano and it has, I believe, 11 glaciers on it.
And so those forces act to destroy things, to break things down that it comes into contact with.
Now, if Job had slept or died, as he wished he would have from birth.
And then had rest, that means his body would have gone to the grave, and from there it would not have moved.
But it would have been decomposed and returned to the earth in that way.
Now Job continued about his state, had he died and been at rest.
Look in verse 14.
With kings and counselors of the earth.
So here Job explains his understanding of the application of death to all people. both infants who have died and mighty kings and counselors who have died.
Solomon wrote about this very thing.
In Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verses 19 through 20.
Ecclesiastes 3, verses 19 through 20.
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts.
Even one thing befalleth them.
As the one dieth, so dieth the other.
Yea, they have all one breath, so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast, for all his vanity.
All go unto one place, all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.
And of these kings and counselors of the earth who have died, Job further said, look back in verse 14. which built desolate places for themselves.
And the word for desolate here is normally translated as the word waste.
In the Old Testament.
In Leviticus chapter 26, God warned the children of Israel about what he would do to them if they walked contrary to his word.
And in verses 31 through 33, you'll hear the word waste two times.
Listen for it.
It says, and I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation And I will not smell the savor of your sweet odors, and I will bring the land into desolation, and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it.
And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you, and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste.
So both times you hear the word waste. is the word for desolate in our text.
So the kings and the counselors about whom Job was speaking spent their lives building up places that were nothing more than waste.
They built sanctuaries for their own idolatrous religions, as we studied much about in the books of the Kings.
They burned sweet odors to other gods, and their lands were used for ungodly purposes.
And those kings and counselors died.
And we read about their deaths.
And he died.
And their bodies were at rest in the ground.
And Job is saying here, I may as well have died as an infant and gone to the same earthly grave as those kings and counselors.
And not only would he have lain still with these kings and counselors, but also, look in verse 15, or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver.
So another group of rich, high society men, whom we may also presume built desolate houses.
Now they had their houses full of silver and gold, but they're grouped with kings and counselors who built desolate places for themselves.
The fact that they had that these princes had gold and silver in their houses was not a sign of success or righteousness, as the world would have you believe.
1 Timothy 6, verses 9 through 10.
1 Timothy 6, verses 9 through 10.
And this describes these princes.
It also describes these kings and counselors Job is talking about.
But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.
For the love of money is the root of all evil, which, while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
Now, these rich ones, of whom Paul wrote to Pastor Timothy, were those whose will was to be rich rather than to be holy.
In the last verse of that passage in Timothy, Paul didn't write that money was the root of all evil, did he?
Money is necessary for daily living. preparing for your retirement, taking care of your financial obligations, raising your family.
It was no sin for Abraham to have great riches.
It was no sin for Solomon to be wealthy or for Job to have all that he had.
The sin is the love of money And I believe it describes the mindset of these princes who had gold and filled their houses with silver.
And with those dead princes, Job would have been at physical rest had he died as an infant.
Look at verse 16 now.
Or, as an hidden, untimely birth, I had not been, as infants which never saw light.
So here he goes back to a time when he was still in his mother's womb.
Excuse me.
An untimely birth is essentially a miscarriage or a spontaneous abortion, not the kind of abortion that women get when they go to a clinic and have their baby murdered.
A spontaneous abortion, one the body does.
And both of those cases, the miscarriage or the spontaneous abortion, however whatever you want to call it, Cause the unviable baby.
In other words, the baby that at that time could not live outside the womb.
It's not developed enough, doesn't have enough organ development and and all of that.
And so that baby would die without being fully physically formed.
Ecclesiastes chapter 6 verse 3 talks about it.
It says, if a man begat a hundred children and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good. and also that he have no burial, I say that an untimely birth is better than he.
So Solomon teaches that rather than being someone who's lived a long time and had a lot of children and whose soul is not filled with good, it would be better for his mother to have miscarried him.
It would be better for him to not make it to the day of his birth than to live a long life without filling his soul with good.
Jesus has said, better it were it for that man not to have been born.
And in our verse, the phrase.
Look at it, as infants which never saw light, clearly describes for us that the developing baby never makes it far enough to be born.
And that's what Job is saying here.
I wished I'd have just been an untimely birth.
In other words, that I would have never made it.
I would have never developed.
Now we go to what all this would do for him.
All these different times when he could have not existed or died early.
Verse 17.
There Meaning the grave.
There the wicked cease from troubling.
Now we look at what the grave does for various classes of people.
And here we start with what it does for the wicked.
The implication here is when the wicked are alive, they are troubling.
They go about troubling.
And the word for troubling means commotion.
The wicked are always creating commotion.
They're always stirring up the pot.
And that word is also translated as wrath and as fear.
When the wicked go to the grave, they stop stirring up trouble In fact, they never stir up trouble again.
They're done.
In fact, trouble in the form of wrath.
Is brought upon them when they're cast into the lake of fire.
They receive it.
They receive it manyfold.
And he continues in verse 17 that's speaking of the grave, and there the weary be at rest.
Now the weary are those who are tired.
The Old Testament has this Hebrew word only one time, and here it is.
And I think of, when I think of these people.
The weary who are at rest in the grave.
I think of the people who labor in these North Korean prison camps.
Many of them have been sent there for life, and many will die in the prison camps from the torture, the starvation, the abuse, or they'll simply be executed for no good reason Some of them are sent there for their Christian beliefs.
Because they're taught from childhood that their great leader, their dear leader, their precious leader is a God.
And they're cruelly treated and they're starved, and they eventually die in the prison camp.
They're weary and they're tired.
And death will provide them a rest from that weariness.
So the same death that causes the wicked to cease from troubling also brings rest to the weary, to the oppressed.
Death gives them rest.
Now, I don't want to rely on my physical death to give me rest.
And I don't have to.
Yes, my physical death will result in my body being at rest from whatever troubles it whenever it's put into the ground.
But Jesus told us there would be another rest for the weary.
In Matthew chapter 11, verses 28 through 29.
Matthew 11, 28 through 29, he said, Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn of me.
For I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
Hebrews chapter 4, verses 9 through 11.
Hebrews chapter 4, verses 9 through 11 says, There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.
For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.
When a person dies, Whether he's a believer or not, he ceases from his own works.
He's done.
Whatever he's done on the earth is done The difference is the only rest the unbeliever gets is a physical rest that his body enjoys in the grave.
But his spirit will have no rest.
His spirit will immediately go to hell, and then death and hell are cast into the lake of fire, and this is the second death.
And that's eternal.
The believer's body, on the other hand, not only has physical rest, but his spirit has eternal rest in the Lord Jesus Christ But for the purpose of our text here, the grave provides the weary with rest.
So it's speaking of that physical rest.
Although we may learn about that spiritual rest by looking at it.
Look at verse 18 as we begin to close today.
Speaking of the grave again, it says, there the prisoners rest together.
They hear not the voice of the oppressor.
So whether these prisoners are righteously or unrighteously imprison. . .
They all suffer at the hands of the oppressor.
And the oppressor is the taskmaster.
That's how the words translated in other places in the Old Testament.
I'll read you one of them.
In Exodus chapter 3, verses 7 through 8.
Exodus 3, verses 7 through 8.
And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt.
And have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters, same as oppressors.
For I know their sorrows And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey unto the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites, and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites.
The voice of the taskmasters in Egypt told the children of Israel to make the same amount of bricks, but to go get their own straw That was a voice of oppression.
And from this voice, God delivered his people when he delivered Israel, the children of Israel, from Egypt.
And from that voice of the oppressors, the grave delivers all prisoners.
They rest together in the grave.
And with that, we'll stop and pick up with our next verse next week.
Father, thank you for your word.
Thank you for the truth that we've learned this morning, and thank you for everyone who was hungry to hear it, for those who came in person. for those who watched online and for those who will later listen to the recorded message.
And Lord, we pray for a great worship service the next hour, for our singing, praising.
Preaching, praying all of it that it would glorify you and bring honor to your name in Jesus' name.
Amen
