Episode Transcript
But we are in Job chapter three.
Job chapter three.
And in chapter 2, we got to know a little bit more about Job's three friends.
Zophar and Eliphaz and Bildad.
And when we left them, they were sitting down with Job and mourning with him and comforting him.
And their comfort wasn't with words.
Now you might find that hard to believe that someone could comfort another person without saying anything to them.
But if you've ever been on the receiving end of a a hug, you know that that person doesn't have to say anything and it does a lot for you And so it wasn't their words that comforted Job, it was their presence, the fact that they sat down with him.
Their comfort was shown and demonstrated by the distance they traveled.
And by the fact that all three of them made an appointment, they made a plan to help their dear friend.
Even their tears, we read about, and their torn outer clothing, their mantles, showed how much they too were affected by Job's miserable condition.
And then Job finally spoke in chapter three and verse one.
And it said, after this opened Job his mouth and cursed his day.
He didn't curse God.
He didn't curse his friends.
He cursed his own day.
And we looked at the first use of that Hebrew word, translated day, and we learned that it referred to more than one thing And we looked in Genesis chapter 1 verse 5 and saw that there were two meanings of the word day there.
And the first one was when God called the light day So that was just a part of what we would call a day.
It was the light.
And the verse also taught us that the evening and the morning were the first day.
So already the word day had two meanings in one verse.
But in our text, and this is where we left off, The word day doesn't mean light.
It doesn't mean the morning and the evening.
And we can look at other places in the Bible where the word day is used in a similar fashion, and it'll help our understanding of how Job used it in our text.
I'll read to you from Ecclesiastes chapter 7 and verse 1.
Ecclesiastes chapter 7 verse 1.
A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death than the day of one's birth.
And in both of those cases, the word day refers to a time, a specific time in one's life. where the person is born and when the person dies.
On a tombstone, you'll see those days reflected as dates.
My paternal grandfather, that means the one on my father's side.
If you don't do cross-word puzzles, you don't know what paternal means.
But my paternal grandfather's tombstone reads, William Mack Shepard.
September one, nineteen oh seven, dash May sixteenth, nineteen seventy-five So those reflect two days, even though they're dates, and there is a difference, but those two dates reflect days in his life, when he was born, when he died.
And as we look further in chapter 3, we'll pretty quickly find out which of the meanings of the word day we should apply to what Job said.
We'll read verse 2 and 3.
And Job spake and said, Let the day perish wherein I was born.
Now there it is.
That helps us even more.
So the word day in verse 1 where it says, and Job cursed his day.
That word refers to the specific day on which he was born.
That would be the first date on his tombstone if they did such a thing.
His birthday, we might say.
And he said, let the day on perish.
Now why might he have said this?
Well, it's pretty simple.
Without the day of his birth, then he wouldn't have been born and be in the condition he is at the time we are studying about.
There would have been no Job, therefore there would have been no children of Job, and no children to be born unto him, and to then die as they did. back in the first chapter or two.
At the Last Supper in Mark chapter 14, verse 21.
Mark 14, verse 21.
Jesus had his disciples there.
He had the the apost what would become be known as the apostles, many of them.
And not all of them, but Judas Iscariot was there.
Now you remember Judas was the treasurer, he held the money bag, he was one of them, the twelve who went with Jesus.
All of that.
And knowing that Judas Iscariot would betray him, Jesus said this.
He said, The Son of Man indeed goeth as it is written of him.
But woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.
Good were it for that man if he had never been born.
Now that wasn't just a saying or a threat of some kind.
It was the truth.
If Judas Iscariot had never been born.
Then he would have never betrayed the Lord.
He would never have stolen money from the treasury.
Or conspired with the Jews to betray Jesus.
He wouldn't have accepted blood money in the form of 50 pieces of silver.
He wouldn't have committed suicide after doing this horrible deed.
None of it would have happened.
And that really would have been better for Judas Iscariot to have never been born than to have done any of those things.
Now Judas, Iscariot, might have had more reason to curse his day because his life was wasted.
He was one of those fake Christians.
He followed the Lord.
He was entrusted to be the keeper of the money.
He was the church treasurer, we might say.
But he was lost.
He was the son of perdition.
The Bible says he went unto his own place.
He was not a Christian.
But Job, on the other hand, here, had not betrayed the Lord.
He was a Christian.
His life was full of good works.
That's not why he was a Christian.
His life was full of good works because he was a Christian.
And the Lord spoke well of him in verses we've already read.
So God had been good to him And we already read what God said about Job's words when Job's wife foolishly came to him and told him to curse God and die.
He said, there's you're you're foolish, woman.
Shall God not give us evil with good?
And God said, in all that Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.
But we'll later find out, as we continue reading Job, that not all of his words were that sound.
Not all of those words were without error.
And this book is 42 chapters, so we're going to see quite a few words being spoken because that's what most of it is.
Words spoken by Job and his friends.
And then he said, let's read verse 3, the first part again, let the day perish wherein I was born.
And the night in which it was said there is a man-child conceived.
So there was a night.
Before Job was born, but after he was conceived in his mother's womb, so the night in which they said a man-child is conceived.
That was a glorious time.
And so Job goes back, he's already cursed the day of his birth, but now he curses the night of his conception.
He went back forty weeks from his birthday and cursed another day.
And that was the day his mother became pregnant with him.
And it was called a night, much the same way that his birthday was called a day.
God called the light day, and he called the darkness night.
Now look in verse 4.
Job said, let that day be darkness.
Now that's an interesting use of words.
The day is a time of light.
It's what we call daylight if we look at that meaning of it in the Bible.
And in a visual sense, it would be described as a bright day, wouldn't it?
The sun is bright on a hot summer day.
And we don't think of the day as being darkness.
When you walk outside at 12 o'clock noon.
On an August afternoon, well I guess it'd be 12. 01 for it to be afternoon, wouldn't it?
But you walk out at 12.
01 P.
M.
On an August day, and you look up and man, the sun is bright, you can't stare at it.
Now, when I was a little boy, we tried.
But we were told that if you stare at the sun for eight minutes you'll be blind, and I never made it eight tenths of a second.
But I'll tell you what we tried.
We tried to stare down the sun, and let me tell you it doesn't work For those of you who didn't try it yet.
But we don't think of that day being darkness.
For the day to be darkness, the sun has to be eclipsed I remember working during the solar eclipse of 2024.
And I just, we knew when it was going to happen, about how long it was going to last.
And so I pulled my patrol car to the side of the road and just let it get dark and waited for it to be over.
And I paid zero dollars.
There are people who came from all over the world to spend the night in motels along the track of that eclipse.
And of course the hotels and motels saw an opportunity to make a lot of money, so the prices went up.
I'm telling you I know that because I stayed in the Motel 6 in Corsicana, Texas the week before that, when my dad and I were down there fishing.
And brother, it's a good thing we didn't want to fish that next week because there were no rooms available.
And if you've ever seen this place, you'll understand why nobody would want to stay there in the first place But I just uh I thought that was an incredible event.
And then when it was over, I went about my duties.
And during those few minutes, the day was indeed darkness.
Because there was an absence of light.
It was because the at least I thought there was an absence of light from my perspective on this side of the sun with the the The eclipse between me and the sun, it looked like it was dark.
But the truth is that the sun never went away.
It's just that I couldn't see it for a little while.
So in wishing the day to be darkness, Job admitted that his day.
The day of his birth, the night of his conception, was viewed by many, probably even himself at one time, as a day of brightness, a day of light.
It was a glorious time.
And now he wishes for the brightness to be obscured like it was night.
And he wishes for the darkness of night, the night of his conception, to perish.
He doesn't even want there to be a remembrance of the darkness of the night in which he was conceived, because it was associated with his birth And had Job's mother not conceived, there would have been no Job, and thus none of the misery that happened to him in chapters 1 and 2.
He continues there in verse 4, speaking of that time, let not God regard it from above.
So even more profound than the absence of light for which Job wished He also wished that God would neither regard the day of his birth or the night of his conception.
And regard means to seek or to inquire or to search And if it were possible, if it were possible to make that day dark by its perishing, and if it were possible to make the night perish, then neither could hide the day nor night from God.
You can say it, well, I wish the night perished, I wish the day never happened, but you can't hide that from God.
He would still be able to search it out, as the word regard means.
He could seek it and find it So by Job's very words, it's apparent that he wished God would not even search for the day or the night of his conception He wished God would not even care enough to look for it.
Ezekiel chapter 34 verses 11 through 12.
Ezekiel 34 verses 11 through 12.
For thus saith the Lord God Behold, I, even I, will both search my sheep and seek them out.
As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day. that he is among his sheep that are scattered.
So will I seek out my sheep.
Now seek, seeketh, and seek are all from the same word that we're looking at as regard in our text.
And will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day.
What Job was asking God to do was not going to happen.
Because Job was one of God's sheep.
And God said through the prophet Ezekiel, When they're in the dark places, I'm going to go looking for them.
I'm going to search them out.
He knows where we are.
But that's what he's telling us, is you can't go to a dark enough place that God can't find you.
And I sure am glad of that because I've been in some dark places, and maybe I know you have, and maybe some of you have been in really dark places.
But everything in Job's life was important to God.
And all these things Job said were said in despair.
He'd lost some of his reasoning.
And he continues in verse 4, speaking of this darkness, the night of his conception, neither let the light shine upon it.
So that is an admission by Job that light dispels darkness.
We see it when we turn the light on and we go into a room.
Psalm chapter 18, verse 28.
Psalm 18, verse 28.
For thou wilt light my candle.
The Lord my God will enlighten my darkness.
Now Job knows that God's light dispels the darkness, or it lightens the darkness.
And God created the light when?
When the darkness was on the face of the deep.
And because of that fact.
The day of Job's birth would be a day of light, and the darkness of the night of his conception would also be light, even though it was physically dark.
Spiritually, emotionally, it was a glorious time.
And even if God granted Job's desire To perish the day of his birth and to perish the night of his conception, it would not alter what God can see.
God doesn't need a flashlight to see in the dark.
And although darkness hides things from us, like the eclipse hid the sun from my eyes, It does not affect God's view of the thing at all.
After all, God could see just fine before he created light.
The psalmist wrote this in Psalm chapter 139, verse 12.
Psalm 139 and verse 12.
Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth as the day.
The darkness and the light are both alike to thee That's as plain as it gets.
Darkness and night are the same to God, or darkness and light.
Now in my profession, when we go to work and it's dark, there are a couple pieces of equipment that we have to use, and we don't have to use them during the daylight.
One is a spotlight on our cars and one is a flashlight in our hands.
So we can see.
It's hard enough to walk in those bar ditches that are clumpy and unsteady and have dirt and pieces of rebar in them during the day.
It's hard enough when you can see what you're doing, but when it's nighttime, you better have a flashlight or you're going to fall and maybe get hurt.
But for God, it's all the same.
Verse 5, continuing to speak of that day of his birth, Job says, let darkness And the shadow of death stain it.
Boy, there's a lot there.
Now we've discussed the desire for darkness to hide the day of his birth.
But let's look at this phrase, the shadow of death, stain it.
And we'll first look at the shadow of death.
The phrase the shadow of death is from one Hebrew word.
And that word is used several times in the Old Testament.
And one of those uses occurs in the very familiar Psalm chapter 23, which is on the back of almost every funeral flyer that I've ever seen.
It's a beautiful psalm.
So it's quite familiar to most Bible students.
In Psalm chapter 23 and verse 4 says, Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
So there are three things the psalmist implies in that verse alone.
One Walking through the valley of the shadow of death would normally cause a person to fear evil.
He says, yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
So that implies that normally you would fear evil.
Two, walking in the valley of the shadow of death causes a person to feel alone.
Now you'll know what I mean if I describe this to you, even though you may not need my description But if you're walking in the valley of the shadow of death, let's say, and I know this, I've got relatives, friends who've gotten the big C diagnosis, the cancer diagnosis.
And when they get that, by and large, there's not anything you can say to them.
You just Give them a hug, sit with them.
Don't try to say, oh, well, it's God's will, or oh, it'll all be better.
You're going to be okay.
Don't say anything.
What did Job's friends do for seven days?
They didn't talk.
Good advice.
But they feel alone, even though their whole family may be there, their loved ones.
To hear that news, they feel alone.
And the third thing this psalmist implies is that walking through the valley of the shadow of death leaves a person without comfort.
Because he said, Thy rod and thy staff, they come for me.
He feels alone, but he said, For thou art with me.
He fears evil, but he said, I don't have to fear evil.
And so for the fear, the loneliness, the lack of comfort, God provides help and the psalmist teaches us that.
So it's a very fitting psalm to put on the back of a funeral flyer.
Because the survivors, the friends and the family need to see that.
This is a dark place for me, but I'm not alone.
God said he'd be with me Now, poetically, the shadow of death means darkness.
Not literal darkness, but a psychological place in which a person has reached a very low point in his life.
And I've heard it said of people, he's in a very dark place right now.
Now that's not somewhere you want to stay.
That's where every one of us were when we were lost, is in a very dark place.
But the light of the glorious gospel shone in our hearts, and we believed it.
Now that being in a very dark place doesn't mean he's in a room without lighting.
It means he's walking in the valley of the shadow of something.
And in the case of the psalmist and in the case of Job, it's the shadow of death.
That's the subject.
And when Job said, Let the shadow of death stain the day of his birth, it was like saying, Let the day of my birth be a very low place.
In my life.
Let it be as a time of great darkness.
Now the words, stain it.
He said, Let the shadow of death stain it.
Let it stain the day of his birth.
That's what it's referring to.
And the word stain Is from a Hebrew word that is normally translated as the word redeem.
You wouldn't think that, would you?
But it's also translated as the word revenger and the word avenger.
So kind of like the Hebrew word barak, which can be translated as bless or curse, depending on its context, the word for stain is also context dependent.
And when it's translated as avenger, it's always used to describe the avenger of blood in the old testament.
And just if you're not familiar with that In the Old Testament law, if a man accidentally caused the death of another person, not with malice, not a not a murder, but what we would call manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide today. accidentally caused the death of another person.
He could flee to a city of refuge.
And he had to stay in that city of refuge.
Where he was protected from the Avenger of Blood.
And the Avenger of Blood would be a family member who was trying to take revenge on the person who killed his loved one.
But the Avenger of Blood couldn't touch him if he was in the city of refuge.
And then when the death of the high priest occurred, then that grudge had to be over with.
That was God's law.
Now let's consider whether this word stain means redeem in this case If so, how would the shadow of death redeem the day of Job's birth?
Well, let's put together the things we've already learned about the day of Job's birth.
It was a day of light, not darkness.
No matter what he wished it to be, it was a day of light.
His birthday belonged to the light.
It was a glorious day, just like the day of anyone's birth would be.
You say, well, what about an illegitimate child who's given up for adoption?
I'm going to agree here with Adrian Rogers.
There is no such thing as an illegitimate child, just illegitimate parents.
And I remember I remember a lady s talking about how when she was adopted By who would be her stepfather.
She said that was just the thought of that was so special to her because that means that he chose her out of all the other children. to be his daughter.
And I thought that was a precious thing to hear.
But if that's a day of light, if the day of birth is a day of light, why would it need to be redeemed?
Well, something is redeemed when it's purchased.
And we generally think, when we think of the word redeem, We think of what Jesus did for us at the cross, where he redeemed us from sin, from the curse of the law By shedding his own blood and dying for us.
He purchased us with his own blood.
The Bible tells us that So he redeemed.
But redemption can also be an earthly transaction that's not primarily spiritual.
Leviticus chapter 25, verses 23 through 25.
Leviticus 25, verses 23 through 25, and this just speaks of land.
The land shall not be sold forever, for the land is mine, for ye are strangers and sojourners with me And in all the land of your possession, ye shall grant a redemption for the land.
If thy brother be waxen poor and hath sold away some of his possessions.
And if any of his kin come to redeem it, there's our word, then shall he redeem that which his brother sold.
So this type of redemption Same word as stain.
This word redemption here or redeem is for land, not for a person, not for someone's sins And in order for the shadow of death to redeem the day of Job's birth, the shadow of death would have to purchase or redeem or stain that day.
The shadow of death is a place of great darkness.
And the day of Job's birth was a day of great light.
And Job wished for the day of his birth to be darkness, not light.
So much so.
That he desired the shadow of death to purchase that day from the light.
If the shadow of death could purchase the day of Job's birth from the light, then the light would have no claim upon the day of Job's birth.
Now that's some pretty profound stuff right there, isn't it?
That's what I love about this book is If you want to be a Bible teacher, you teach through the Song of Solomon or Revelation or the book of Job and you'll find out whether that's your calling or not.
Because it's not easy, but it sure is rich, and it sure is rewarding.
Now Job continues, look back in your text about the the day of his birth, the night of his conception.
He said, Let a cloud dwell upon it Well, this is a little simpler.
The Hebrew word for cloud is used one time in the Old Testament, and it's right here.
Now if a cloud dwells upon or over the light of day, it makes things darker, doesn't it?
Now, just a news flash here.
My wife and I have decided That when I retire we may become tornado chasers.
So if y'all are watching the weather channel and you see my old pickup out there, it it could be me.
Not saying that's what we'll do, but we sure have Thought about it.
And the reason is we love thunderstorms.
Oh, we love now we don't like the damage that is done with the hail and the the wind and the floods and the chaos that comes with them.
There's those are some terrible side effects.
But We love to watch a thunderstorm move in.
We like to follow it on the radar.
We like to go outside on the back porch and watch the cloud.
And during all that the skies get darker fairly quickly.
Now why is that?
It's because those clouds are thick and they're water-filled And they stand between the sun's light and our eyes.
Here's the sun, here's our eyes, there are the clouds.
And when the storm passes, then the sunlight reappears in many cases and it becomes bright outside again So then we do the other thing we like to do, and you've got to have a lot of money to do this, so don't everyone try this at once.
We get in my 10-year-old pickup.
And we drive across the bridges to see if the creeks have risen.
And not everybody has enough money to do that.
And I know some of you are jealous and wish you could partake in those high society adventures.
And if you want to talk to me after church about how to make that happen, I can do that.
But if you think about what the clouds do to the sunlight.
It will help you understand the difference between our perception and God's reality.
When the sun's light is obscured by the clouds, we say it's getting dark, don't we?
But if we were on the other side of those clouds.
Or at night on the other side of the earth, then we would say, boy, it's bright outside.
That's the same day, the same arrangement. of sun and clouds and all of that, earth, angles, time.
We're just on the other side of it.
The reality is the sun never changes.
And although one day it's going to run out of energy, even the unbelieving Scientists, not all scientists are unbelievers, by the way, thank God, but the ones who are unbelievers will even admit the sun only has so much time before it is out of energy.
It cannot be self-perpetuating.
But although that's going to happen for now, the light is the same.
What changes is our perception of the light.
And in the valley of the shadow of death, we often don't see light.
We don't see it.
And because we don't see any light, because we don't see any light, we think the light's gone.
But it's not.
We just need to change our perspective.
We need to be on the other side of the cloud.
When the psalmist walked through the valley of the shadow of death There was evil to fear, but God was there, so he didn't have to fear any evil.
He said of God, for thou art with me.
1 John chapter 1 verse 5.
Little letter B.
That means it's the second part of the verse.
1 John chapter 1 verse 5.
Little letter B Lowercase B.
God is light and in him is no darkness at all.
So when our grieving, sorrowful eyes are able to spiritually see that God is with us in the valley of the shadow of death, then we are able to behold his light.
We may still be in the valley of the shadow of death, and it may appear to be dark.
But spiritually speaking, we don't have to remain in the darkness of our sorrow, of our grieving, or of our despair, because we claim the truth, for thou art with me.
And he continues, Job continues there saying, let the blackness of the day terrify it.
That means the the night of his birth, the day of his or the day of his birth, the night of his conception.
How can the day have blackness?
Now this is a little more challenging to understand.
Isn't light a characteristic of the day and not darkness, at least in one definition of the word day?
And that's where it will help you to remember the word day doesn't always mean just the daylight.
It can refer to the time period comprised of the morning and the evening and the the night, the light, the darkness.
So the use of the word day here again refers to the day of Job's birth.
I wonder how many of you were born at night.
Maybe several of you were.
Well, we don't call the anniversary of your birth your birth night, do we?
No.
We call it your birthday.
Your birth happened sometime during the 24-hour period that is comprised of the daylight and the darkness.
Then the word darkness here doesn't mean actual light.
Or actual night, I'm sorry It's used in a negative sense to describe something akin to the shadow of death.
If something is blacked out or darkened, it is obscured.
It doesn't mean it's not there.
It means you can't see it.
If they're now you you don't do this with your little grandchildren or your children, but There comes a certain point in their development where they have what's called object permanence.
That means when they see something You can hide it and they'll look around it because they know it's still back there.
Well until that develops they think it's gone And if you hide yourself from them in the house, they think you're gone.
And they start crying.
And I don't like to see my babies cry any more than they already do when they're bratty little toddlers, right?
But uh that that's something that a baby develops at some point is that object permanence And just as an eclipse obscures the sun, but we who are old enough, wise enough know the sun's still there, we just have to wait for the eclipse to be over, and the sun will be right where it was. before the eclipse happened.
We don't need to be scared about that.
But it if there's blackness in the day, it means the day has been obscured.
And just as an eclipse obscures the sun, so figurative blackness, which is what we're looking at here with the shadow of death, this figurative blackness would obscure the brightness of the day of one's birth.
And the word for blackness is used only this word for blackness is used only one time in the Old Testament, but there are other Hebrew words, different Hebrew words. that are also translated as the word blackness.
But let's look at a New Testament case where the word blackness is used And this would mean it was translated from Greek.
Jude verses 11 through 13.
It's only one chapter, so you can put Jude 1, 11 through 13, or you can just put Jude verses 11 through 13.
Now this is speaking of the evil, the unbelievers.
Woe unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain and ran greedily after the error of Balaam, and perished in the gainsaying of Korah, these are spots in your feast of charity when they feast with you.
Feeding themselves without fear, clouds they are without water, carried about of winds, trees whose fruit withereth Twice dead plucked up by the roots.
Raging waves of the sea foaming out their own shame.
Wandering stars, listen to this, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.
The blackness of darkness is blackness because darkness obscures the light.
And this means those to whom that blackness was reserved in Jude will know it and they'll be subjected to it forever.
And that is complete separation from God, who is light.
God's still there.
They will not be able to behold him.
They are completely separated from him.
And in our text of this blackness, Job said, look back in your text, let the blackness of the day terrify it.
So the assumption here.
Is that the blackness has purchased the day of Job's birth from the light?
That's what it did when it stained it.
And because it has done so, here Job prays that the blackness that purchased the day of his birth would also terrify the day of his birth.
If the blackness could purchase or redeem or stain the day of Job's birth from the light, and if that blackness could also terrify the day of light.
Then the day of light would never try to redeem that day from the darkness.
The darkness takes it.
And if the day is terrified, the day would never approach the darkness to try to take it back.
This is how much Job wanted the day of his birth to be cursed.
And in the next verse, Job turns to the night of his conception, and we will begin that verse next week.
Father, thank you for everyone who tuned in, everyone who came to Sunday school this morning.
Thank you for your word, and we pray your spirit would take the truth here, teach it to us, help us to meditate upon it.
And to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And it's in his name we pray.
Amen.
