Episode Transcript
Now I'll bet you 30 years ago, well before the cell phone, people would have been glad to have something that automatically set their clock forward or backward for time change.
Well now we have it and I can tell not everybody uh not everybody was able to Wake up and get here.
So that's all right.
They may be trickling in, but I sure am glad you're here, and I'm glad for the people who've tuned in.
We're in Job chapter 3 Job chapter 3, and we'll begin in verse 6, very shortly.
Now last week we were in some profound territory.
And if you nodded off or tuned out for a moment, you may have gotten confused.
But that's the beauty of being able to listen to the recorded version as many times as you like.
You can fill in those blank spots without my having to repeat the entire lesson today.
But just as a matter of review, We left off with Job chapter 3 verse 5, where Job said this about the day of his birth and the night of his conception.
He said, Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it.
Let a cloud dwell upon it.
Let the blackness of the day terrify it.
That darkness and the shadow of death would purchase the day of his uh birth and then the night of his conception was his request.
That was his prayer request that day.
Now that's an unusual prayer request, isn't it And that the blackness of day would also terrify the night of his conception or the day of his birth as well.
That was another prayer request.
Now we're going to dive into verse 6.
And it says, as for that night Let darkness seize upon it.
Now that's the night of his conception.
And I'll remind you of that as we go through this, because you can get a little confused sometimes if you don't remember what it's talking about.
Let darkness seize upon the night of his conception.
Now, can darkness make night any darker?
Well, if you think about the light that is available to us at night, we have the moon and the stars, and nowadays we have All kinds of lights.
You can go to some downtowns like Dallas and you won't need a flashlight.
There's light everywhere.
Biggest waste of electricity I ever saw But there it is.
We have street lights.
Now in Job's day, there would have only been light from the sun, from the moon and the stars, and fire That's it.
No electricity.
Other than what lightning produced.
And taking all those lights away, even though it's night, taking all those lights away Would make the night even darker in a physical sense.
Covering the moon and stars would make it Darker.
But the night could also be darker in a figurative sense.
And even though it's physically dark at night The events of a particular night could be joyful.
So not every, even though a night is physically dark, the night may not be dark figuratively.
It may be a wonderful time.
If a woman conceives at night, even though it's night, it's a joyous occasion, although there's very little actual light outside.
But if you physically remove all the light, whether it be the moon, the stars, and the fire, or the glory that is represented by the light, Then you could say the night was seized by darkness.
Now that Those three words seize upon it are from a single Hebrew word that's also translated as take away, carry away, or married.
Married?
Yeah, married.
That's what I said, Nilda.
Married.
And there's some other words used to describe it as well. are used to translate it as well.
And it's easy enough to understand takeaway and carry away as it pertains to darkness seizing upon the night.
But what relationship does the Hebrew word have to marriage?
How could the word marriage or married enter into this equation here Because four times in the Old Testament, the Hebrew word translated as seize upon it in our verse is translated as the word married.
So maybe we ought to learn a little bit about the word married, and that'll enrich our understanding of our text.
Deuteronomy chapter 24, verse 1.
Deuteronomy 24, verse 1.
When a man hath taken a wife, now there the words hath taken, that's our word, seize upon it.
When a man hath taken a wife and married her, And it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her, then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of the house out of his house.
We're not preaching on divorce, and that's not the reason to get a divorce.
Jesus said Moses, because of the hardness of your heart hath granted you a bill of divorcement.
And that's what he was talking about there.
But I underlined in my notes, hath taken, and the word married in that passage or in that verse, because they are from the same Hebrew word as the word seize upon it in our text.
And so the Deuteronomy verse here shows that a man who has married a woman has taken that woman away.
For his wife.
And when he takes her away for his wife, then she leaves her parents' house And goes to her husband's house.
There's a reason you build the mother-in-law house a little bit away from the main house, isn't there?
And the authority over the wife now transfers from her parents to her husband.
Now, the feminists do not like that.
I'd get a bunch of hard scowls if I were speaking to a large crowd of uh of well of anybody.
I've seen so-called Baptist wives who didn't like that either But that's what the Bible teaches.
And Ephesians chapter 5, verse 31 says, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh.
So becoming one flesh means they're no longer two people in that respect.
Yes, you have a Doug and you have a Sheila, but they're one flesh because they're married.
They're one unified couple.
And that man has seized the woman to be his wife.
Now let's apply this to our text.
When the darkness seizes upon the joyous night of Job's birth, of his conception.
Then the joyous night of his conception and the darkness would become one.
They'd become married And that would wipe away the joyous night's status as a glorious period of time.
That was supposed to be a glorious night Job's mother conceived with a man-child.
What a wonderful night.
And Job said, I want the darkness to marry that night and take the joy away. as a man would take his wife away from her parents' house.
Boy, the book of Job is really profound in Job's expressions Reveal how deep of a thinker he was.
He was a deep thinker.
I've been asked to perform a wedding next month And if y'all know me, if you know me very long, I'd rather go to a good funeral than a good wedding.
But I'll do it.
And I sent the couple the script, I mean word for word, and the verses that I was going to use.
And I said, I want you both to read these, talk about them amongst yourselves, and if you have anything in there that you don't want said, then let's talk.
And in the event either of them objects, depending on what the objection is, then I may be asked not to officiate the wedding.
Or I may ask not to officiate the wedding and just go as a parti as a uh onlooker.
And I'm okay with that, because I'd rather not do a wedding than to say something unscriptural just to make someone happy.
And after all, if you ask a Bible teacher and associate pastor to perform your wedding, then you should expect him to use the Bible.
It's not going to be a two-hour sermon, but the God is the one who instituted marriage.
And so that's the kind that I want to talk about at somebody's wedding.
Now that Job has prayed that the darkness would seize upon or take away or marry the night of his conception.
He says this about that night.
Look back in your Bible.
Let it not be joined unto the days of the year.
Now for that to happen, that day would literally have to disappear.
You know the unfortunate thing about being born on February 29th, I wasn't, but if you were, is that your birthday seems to disappear for three out of four years.
And so tradition would have it, that you'd celebrate it either March the 1st or February the 28th. during those non-leap years.
Now the Jewish year consists of months that last 29 to 30 days And they start, each of those months, start with a new moon.
And during seven out of every nineteen years, there is added a leap year as well.
It's got a name.
So the fewest days in a Jewish year may be 353, and the most would be 385, and then others have Different numbered years, different numbers of days in them between 353 and 385.
And so Job prayed. that the day of his birth, the night of his conception, would not be listed as one of the days of the year As though you could look at the calendar day, let's just say the night of his conception, you could look at that day on a on a Jewish calendar or on a Edomite calendar and just pluck it off there as though it never existed.
He would wipe away an entire day in history Just to make the day of his birth, the night of his conception, go away.
Because as we've read, he didn't want either one of them to be remembered.
He wanted them to be, he cursed them.
God did a truly miraculous thing in the book of Joshua, chapter 10, verses 12 through 14.
Joshua 10 verses 12 through 14.
Then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel.
And he said in the sight of Israel, Son, that's S-U-N, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou moon. in the valley of Agelin.
And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.
Is not this written in the book of Jasher?
So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.
And there was no day like that, before it or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of man, for the Lord fought for Israel Now in that case, God essentially added a day to the calendar.
He made the sun stand still for a whole day He can do that sort of thing, you know.
He created all things, including the sun, the moon, the stars.
In Matthew chapter 8, verse 27, Matthew chapter 8, verse 27 The disciples marveled that Jesus had calmed the storm on the sea.
They were in a boat with him and There was quite a tempest, and it was tossing that boat around, and the disciples were fretting, and Jesus was taking a nap.
And so he calmed the storm on the sea, and listen what they said about him.
It says, But the men marveled, saying, What manner of man is this?
that even the winds and sea obey him.
Well, of course they obeyed his voice.
He made them Psalm chapter 148, verses 3 through 6.
Psalm 148 Verses 3 through 6 says, Praise ye him, sun and moon, praise him all ye stars of light Praise him, ye heaven of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens.
Let them praise the name of the Lord.
For he commanded And they were created.
He hath also established them forever and ever.
He hath made a decree which shall not pass.
So already, in addition to what we already know from the book of Genesis, the first few chapters especially, We've seen God has the absolute authority over all things he created.
He has the authority and the ability to command the Son.
To stand still and not go down for a whole day.
In our way of thinking, that adds a day to the calendar.
And God also has the same authority over those celestial creations. to forbid them from shining at all.
He could do that and has and will.
Speaking of his glorious return that's yet to come Jesus said this in Matthew 24 verse 29.
Matthew 24, 29.
Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light And the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken Just as God can and has made the sun stand still for a whole day There will come a time when he will cause the sun not to give its light at all.
And not only the sun, but the moon and the stars as well And the point of these companion verses that I read you is to show us that God has the ability and the authority to add or subtract days from the calendar.
To cause light to shine or to cause light to be withheld as he pleases.
And time is the same to him.
The eldest said, I I know how you feel, brother Andy, uh because I every other Saturday night I work all night, right up to six o'clock this morning, and I can get here and I'm running on fumes, but I'm running.
And she said, I know how you feel.
I lost an hour of sleep last night.
That's what I love about my church family.
They're so sympathetic to me But although Job is speaking aloud to his three friends about what he wished would happen to the day of his birth and the night of his conception.
He's really appealing to God to do that which is in God's power.
When is the last time you thought about how powerful and how sovereign God is?
It's fascinating and awe-inspiring to think about.
And now the rest of verse 6 says.
Job says, speaking of this night of conception, the day of his birth, let it not come into the number of the months.
Now that's a very similar statement.
When you compare it to, let it not be joined unto the days of the year.
A night and a day make up a day And days make up months, and months make up years.
Don't you feel smarter already knowing that?
So to subtract a day from the months would effectively subtract that day from the year.
And this is just another way of Job emphasizing how he wishes the day of his birth and the night of his conception were cursed That phrase come into means to be counted among or to enter.
And so he didn't want the night of his conception, the day of his birth to be counted Among the months.
Look at verse 7.
Now it speaks specifically of the night of his conception here.
Lo, let that night be solitary.
Now we see the Hebrew word translated as solitary here, used three times in Job and one time in Isaiah and nowhere else in the Old Testament.
And in Isaiah, it's the word desolate.
So if you want to know what solitary is, it's desolate And in the Isaiah verse I'm going to read to you, the context of this verse is that God has promised to deliver his people from their enemies.
And speaking to Israel, God says this in Isaiah 49, 21.
Isaiah 49 and verse 21 Then shalt thou say in thine heart, Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children, and am desolate?
A captive and removing to and fro.
And who hath brought up these?
Behold, I was left alone.
These, where had they been?
Just as Job had lost his children, Israel had lost her children.
Israel meaning the nation.
And they were desolate, solitary because of that.
Job said he wanted the night of his conception to be desolate to be solitary, much like the children of Israel were when they lost their children.
And of that night Job said, look back in verse 7.
Let no joyful voice come therein.
Now a joyful voice is a triumphing voice Or a triumphant voice.
Sometimes it is a singing voice.
In order to better understand what Job is saying here, listen to how it's translated as triumphing and as singing Now, Job in chapter 20, verse 5, which is way down the road for us, Job chapter 20, verse 5, he said that the triumphing of the wicked is short.
And the joy of the hypocrite, but for a moment.
So the wicked have a song of triumph, but they're deceived because their song is really short.
I guess that means it just has one verse.
Psalm chapter 100, verses 1 through 2.
Psalm chapter 100, verses 1 through 2.
Make a joyful noise unto the Lord all ye lands.
Serve the Lord with gladness.
Come before his presence with singing.
Now that's the other use of that word that's translated as joyful voice in our text.
And because of Job's character, what God has already said about him, we know that the night of his conception would not have been a night for the wicked to sing their triumphing song.
They would, if they had known that Job was going to be a man of upright character, who f who eschewed evil, he followed God, he's the best man on the earth.
Then the wicked wouldn't have said, oh good, let's sing happy songs about Job being born.
But it would have been an occasion for people to praise the Lord and to come before his presence with singing with a joyful voice.
Those are the same thing, the singing and the joyful voice.
But Job would have that night to be without that joyful voice.
No singing.
Look in verse eight.
Let them curse it that curse the day I kind of got tickled when I figured out what that meant.
This is a different group of people to whom Job is referring.
In the prior verses, we might make the reasonable assumption that there were people who would find joy and light In the night of Job's conception and in the day of his birth, those would be the kind of people who would praise the day But there is another group of people, the ones to whom Job is referring here, and that is those people who are always ready to curse the day.
Any day.
And to those people, Job would request that while you're cursing days, why don't you just remember to curse the day of my birth?
Now how about that?
Normally, people who bless the day, people who praise the day, people who praise the great things God has done.
Don't fellowship with those who curse today, with the wicked who sing their triumphing song.
We want them to come to church to hear the gospel.
We don't want to go hang out with them on the weekend or any other time.
Until they become Christians, they begin walking with the Lord.
But sometimes that sort of thing is almost forced upon us.
But we would not regard those people except to say they're pitiful and pray for them and to pray for their salvation.
And it's not that Job fellowshipped with the unfruitful works of darkness, but in this instance he chose to express his desire.
That even those people who go about cursing today would apply their daily cursing to his otherwise glorious birthday.
So now he has tried to enlist both the joyful voice and the cursing voice to curse his day.
Back in verse eight, and he speaks of this group who are ready to curse today.
He said, Who are ready to raise up their mourning.
Now this describes the people in the first part of the verse.
It says they're ready.
That means they're prepared to curse the day.
Matthew chapter 12, verse 34.
And put the letter B, little letter B, lowercase B.
Matthew 12, 34b.
This is the second half of the verse.
Jesus is speaking of a generation of, he said, vipers.
How can ye, being evil, speak good things?
Listen to this, for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh.
When a person's heart is set on cursing and he is prepared to curse, he'll do so.
And the word curse is not just limited to talking about profanity.
Which we call cursing.
That's usually how we think of it, but we call it cussing, don't we?
And if it's really bad, we say he's cussing up a storm.
But this group of people not only cursed today, but it says their hearts are ready to raise their mourning.
And we normally think of mourning as something we do when we're sad.
And I'm not sure why the translators use the word mourning here Because in every other Old Testament case, the Hebrew word is translated as the word Leviathan.
And Leviathan describes a sea creature that's an enemy of man, whether it's a crocodile or some sort of the the sea monster that comes to your mind, I don't know.
But it Leviathan literally means twisted into folds And so the mourning here has more to do with that than it does with the crying and things that we think of associated to mourning.
And we have to understand this to understand the people who are ready to raise up their mourning or their leviathan.
Isaiah 27, verse 1.
Isaiah 27 verse 1.
In that day the Lord, with his sore and great and strong sword, shall punish Leviathan, the piercing serpent.
Even Leviathan, that crooked serpent, and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.
So Leviathan, that crooked serpent.
Now you understand what that word means, maybe, when it says it's twisted into folds, the crooked serpent, twisted into folds.
And that verse speaks of the Leviathan or the mourning as a piercing and crooked serpent.
This Leviathan therefore represents the devil in Revelation chapter 12 and verse 9.
Revelation 12 and verse 9, listen to the similar description.
And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent.
Called the devil and Satan which deceiveth the whole world.
He was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
So those who are ready to raise the morning, those who normally go about the day cursing the day The ones who are ready to raise their mourning for the day are like a piercing, crooked serpent who's ready to unleash his terror on man.
And these people to whom Job refers are not those who mourn righteously for someone who's died, or who mourn over their own sin.
These are wicked people.
Verse 9.
He said, Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark.
Now, twilight can refer, at least in the Bible, to either the dawning of the morning or the dusk So the sun's either coming up or the sun's going down, even though it it's not really moving.
We just that's our euphemism.
The earth is rotating.
And so the With the setting of the sun, you have a gradual reduction of light.
And with the coming up of the sun, you have the gradual introduction of light.
And during that time, it's a time when the stars other than the sun are a source of light.
So you can see a little bit, you've still got some sunlight, and you began to see the starlight as well on a clear night anyway.
And those stars give a very small amount of light to us when compared with the sun Because they're so far off.
The sun is about 93 million miles from the earth.
I thought it was a long way between Weatherford and Garner, my grandmother's house, but that's 93 million miles is a long way.
And the next closest star is called Proxima Centauri.
And it's 4. 3 light years away.
Now the speed of light is about 186,000 miles per second.
That's pretty quick.
And for light to travel from the sun to us takes around eight minutes.
The light we get from Proxima Centauri, by the time you see it, it's traveled 186,000 miles per second for 4. 3 years. for four years and just a few months before it reached us.
Now is the universe big or what?
God made all that But the light that travels from Proxima Centauri to the earth has to travel much further than the light from the sun.
So it barely provides any light for us at all.
Now that little bit of light that the stars provide in the twilight is the light that Job wishes to be darkened out When Job thinks about the relative darkness of the twilight compared to the noonday, where it's very bright.
He realizes that even in the twilight, even though the sun is going down or the sun is coming up, but it's not up yet, there's still some light in the twilight.
And he wants that little light to be gone when it comes to the night of his conception.
And he says back in verse 9, let it look for light, but have none.
Speaking of that night.
The word look there is translated as the word wait several times in the Old Testament.
And here's a passage where the word wait is used.
Isaiah 59 verses 9 through 10.
Isaiah 59 verses 9 through 10.
And this really captures Job's mind about what he wishes would happen.
And in the case of Isaiah, it's about what is is happening to Israel.
He said, Isaiah said, Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us.
We wait.
There's our word.
Or look for light.
But behold obscurity.
Now obscurity is darkness.
For brightness, that means we wait for brightness.
But we walk in darkness.
We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes.
We stumble at noonday as in the night.
We are in desolate places as dead men.
Isaiah is writing about Israel in their sin.
What are they waiting for?
They're waiting for light.
Or as our text says, let it look for light.
And just as Israel waits for light, but beholds obscurity, you see the nation of Israel has by and large rejected the light that came to them.
Jesus, the light of the world.
And just as Israel waits for light but sees darkness, sees obscurity, so Job wishes for the twilight to be obscure as well.
Israel didn't wish for it to be obscure.
Job does.
That no star, whether it's Proxima Centauri or the furthest star from us would give any light to the day of his birth or particularly to the night of his conception.
And he also wrote back in verse 9, Neither let it see the dawning of the day.
Now the dawning of the day would be the natural outcome of the twilight being Well, the twilight's not necessarily darkened, but the sun becomes more intense.
So you don't depend on the stars to give you light.
You depend on the sun.
One of my favorite things to do is to get up early in the morning or just to work all night and not sleep at all.
But either way, I'm up early in the morning.
And to open my back window blinds and watch the sunlight gradually appear.
The day is awakening.
The birds and the squirrels are out.
And I wish I could tell you it was very peaceful outside, but I live too close to Interstate 30 for that.
But otherwise it's just beautiful.
And when I watch the light appear and overtake the darkness, I see it happening gradually, not suddenly.
And if the light were to cease getting brighter, if it were to begin to be to appear and then to stop.
Or if it were to begin to darken once again, then I would suspect something was off.
Perhaps a Very thick rain cloud has concealed the sunrise.
So to pray that the twilight would not see the dawning of the day is essentially to pray that God would make the sun stand still on the other side of the earth.
Joshua prayed it would stand still at noonday until the Amorites were defeated And now that we've looked at these very strong feelings, these very uh intense prayer request that Job has had about the day of his birth and the night of his conception.
Let's look at verse 10.
And look at why he has such strong feelings about that time.
He says in verse 10.
Because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb.
Now this takes us back to the night of Job's conception.
This metaphor of shutting up the doors of his mother's womb is also used in 1 Samuel 1, verses 5 through 7.
1 Samuel 1 verses 5 through 7 concerning the mother of the prophet Samuel before he was born.
Been a few years since we were in 1 Samuel, but we studied it verse by verse in this very class.
And that passage says But unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion, for he loved Hannah, but the Lord had shut up her womb.
And her adversary provoked her sore for to make her fret, because the Lord had shut up her womb.
And as he did so year by year, when she went up to the house of the Lord, so she provoked her, that is the adversary.
Therefore she wept and did not eat.
Now, when a woman's womb is shut up, it means she can't get pregnant.
She's barren.
And in the case of Hannah, God did this for a purpose that she didn't yet understand.
He put her in a place where she completely depended upon him for a man child.
But in her case, she fretted, she wept, both because her womb was shut up and because her adversary, another woman who probably had kids, provoked her.
And I can't imagine what ugly things that woman said to her.
But she provoked Hannah when she went to the house of the Lord, which was even more cruel.
And when we studied 1 Samuel a few years ago, we learned that when Hannah prayed to the Lord to give her a man-child She promised in return to give him right back to the Lord.
And here's how God answered her prayer.
In 1 Samuel 1, verses 19 through 20.
1 Samuel 1 verses 19 through 20.
And they rose up in the morning early and worshiped before the Lord and returned. and came to their house to Ramah.
And El Cana knew Hannah his wife, and the Lord remembered her.
Wherefore it came to pass when the time was come about after Hannah had conceived that she bear a son, and called his name Samuel, saying, Because I have asked him of the Lord.
So the night of Samuel's conception and the day of his birth were joyful And Hannah had before mourned that her womb was shut.
But now she and her husband praised God for his faithfulness in giving them a son.
Now there was a similar light when Job's mother conceived him.
And he's made it very clear that he cursed the day of his birth.
That he wanted the joyful night or the joyful voice removed from the night of his conception.
He wanted darkness to take over.
And he wanted all of this to happen because His conception was successful.
Because his mother became pregnant with him, he cursed the very night that it happened.
And then he says, next in verse 10, after he said, Because it shut up, shut not up the doors of my mother's womb, nor hid sorrow from mine eyes.
And that's the sorrow that's overtaken him in chapters 1 and 2.
Had the doors of his mother's womb been shut up on the night of his conception?
There would have been no night of his conception.
Then there would have been no pregnancy, no birth of Job, no marriage to his wife, no bearing of children He would not have watched them grow up and then die in that storm.
By not being conceived, he could be sure to have no sorrow before his eyes And we'll leave off right there and pick up with the next verse next week.
Father, thank you for your word.
And Lord, thank you that even when the study of your word is sometimes very tedious to us and very in-depth and profound, that your spirit teaches us And thank you for the people who hunger for your word.
And I pray that you'd bless them greatly for it.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
