About this sermon
Job’s friends assume a mechanical justice, in which great suffering must mean great sin, and Bildad describes the end of the wicked to accuse him. Scripture rejects that reasoning; in a fallen world God sends common grace and trials on righteous and wicked alike. Job answers with hope beyond the grave: “I know that my Redeemer lives,” and in his flesh he will see God. Believers face suffering with the same hope, fixed on Christ, who identifies with his suffering people.
Sermon transcript
time, let us open to Job chapter 18. As you are turning to Job chapter 18, I’ll just give you a little bit of a preview of what is going to come We see we have an uninspired subtitle right there on page 378. I’ll just let you know why you’re turning to it. Bildad speaks of the wicked. Bildad is one of the counselors slash friends of Job, and he’s going to have some words for Job. He has a few things to say to him, and they’re not very nice. Here now, the word of God from Job 18. Then Bildad, the Shuhite, responded, how long will you hunt for words? Show understanding, and then we will talk. Why are we regarded as beasts, as stupid in your eyes? Oh, you who tear yourself in your anger, for your sake is the earth to be abandoned. or to be abandoned, or the rock to be moved from its place? Indeed, the light of the wicked goes out, and the flame of his fire gives no light. The light in his tent is darkness, and his lamp goes out above him.
His vigorous stride is shortened, and his own scheme brings him down. For he is thrown into the net by his own feet, and he steps on the webbing. A snare seizes him by the heel and a trap snaps shut on him. A noose for him is hidden in the ground and a trap for him on the path.
All around terrors frighten him and harry him at every step. His strength is famished, and calamity is ready at his side. His skin is devoured by disease. The firstborn of death devours his limbs. He is torn from the security of his tent, and they march him before the king of terrors.
There dwells in his tent nothing of his. Brimstone is scattered on his habitation. His roots are dried below, and his branch is cut off above. Memory of him perishes from the earth, and he has no name abroad. He is driven from light into darkness, and chased from the inhabited world. He has no offspring or posterity among his people, nor any survivor where he sojourned. Those in the West are appalled at his fate, and those in the East are seized with horror. Surely such are the dwellings of the wicked, and this is the place of him who does not know God. Amen. So ends the first reading of God’s holy, inspired, and inerrant Word.
At this time we would open to 568. 568 in the Blue Trinity. I know that my Redeemer lives and ever prays for me. A token of his love he gives. A pledge of Liberty 586. Please stand. He brings salvation near. His presence makes me free in Thee, and He will soon His will, the council of His praise in me He surely shall fulfill. He’s just my head, upon my word, myself Thou wilt return, and make me more, and to thyself receive. Amen. Amen. Please be seated.
And continuing to read in God’s wholly inspired and errant word, let us open to Job chapter 19. And as you’re turning to Job chapter 19, I would remind you of words that have already been read. Our first reading was from a discourse of Bildad, and that is one of Job’s friends, quote unquote, one of his counselors, quote unquote. He mocks Job.
With friends like this, who needs enemies? Here he is saying, why do you hunt for words? That is to say, you have nothing to say. He asks, are we stupid in your eyes? Are you so much greater than us? And he then begins to talk about the fact that Job, he’s talking somewhat in the third person, but he’s really talking about Job, and he talks about the fact that though he was in light, darkness has come upon him, traps have been set for you, Job, and the reason this is is because You are a sinner. You have secret sin that you will not repent of. So that is basically what Bildad has to say. Now hear Job’s response in God’s Word, Job 19. Hear the Word of God. Then Job responded, How long will you torment me and crush me with your words?
These ten times you have insulted me, you are not ashamed to wrong me. Even if I have truly erred, my error lodges with me. If indeed you vaunt yourselves against me and prove my disgrace to me, know then that God has wronged me and has closed His net around me.
Behold, I cry violence but i get no answer i shout for help but there is no justice he has walled up my way so that i cannot pass and he has put darkness on my paths he has stripped my honor from me and removed the crown from my head He breaks me down on every side and I am gone. And he has uprooted my hope like a tree. He has also kindled his anger against me and considered me as his enemy. His troops come together, and build up their way against me, and camp around my tent.
He has removed my brothers far from me, and my acquaintances are completely estranged from me. My relatives have failed, and my intimate friends have forgotten me, those who live in my house, and my maids consider me a stranger. I am a foreigner in their sight. I call to my servant, but he does not come. I have to implore him with my mouth.
My breath is offensive to my wife, and I am loathsome to my own brothers. Even young children despise me. I rise up, and they speak against me. All my associates abhor me, and those I love have turned against me. My bone clings to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped only by the skin of my teeth. Pity me! Pity me! O you my friends!
For the hand of God has struck me. Why do you persecute me as God does, and are not satisfied with my flesh? O that my words were written! O that they were inscribed in a book, with an iron stylus and lead, they were engraved in the rock forever. As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will take His stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God, whom I myself shall behold, and whom my eyes will see, and not another. My heart faints within me. If you say, how shall we persecute him? And what pretext for a case against him can we find? Then be afraid of the sword for yourselves, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword. so that you may know there is judgment.
Amen. That ends the second reading of God’s holy word. May it be blessed to our souls and to us fully, to our full man. Let us pray briefly. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for every word that comes out of the mouth of you, including the words of Bildad and also of Job. We ask as we look into here, how would this apply to us? How would this ancient conversation say anything that is relevant to our time?
Heavenly Father, we ask that the scriptures would be opened to us and that we might be able be able to see Jesus. What a joy it is to see Jesus in Your Word. We ask that we may see Jesus this day, crucified for us. In Jesus’ name, Amen. So we have listened to just a little bit of debate. We could call it a debate. It’s a discourse that goes back and forth between two people. One is on the side of God. And the other is on the side of God. But can they both be on the side of God? Because they both have something different to say.
We might just back up and look at the wider context of Job. Job was a godly man, he was a righteous man, and he was blessed in many, many ways. If you were to Look, if you were to just read the first couple of chapters of Job, you may see that Job has some things. He has many material possessions, but some of it might be lost on us.
Think about this. He had 7,000 sheep. He had 3,000 camels. He had 5,000 oxen. He had seven sons, and he had three daughters, a seven to be a godly number, and ten, a number of completeness. What could be meant by these numbers? What is meant by the sheep, the camels, and the oxen? Let me just ask you this.
If there are anyone who is familiar with owning of businesses, what would you think of someone who owned just two trucks in their business? Who would think of that person as a small business owner? But what if someone owned 500 trucks as part of his business?
That’s essentially what Job has as he has 500 oxen plowing in the field. What would you think of someone who has ability to transport things to the farthest reaches of his region? We would think of that person as a very wealthy man. Think about 7,000 sheep. By the estimate that I looked up, you could come up with 51,000 pounds of wool per year from that. And then from that, transport that on 3,000 camels. Job was a very, very good businessman.
Let what it talks about in the beginning of Job not be lost on us. He has extravagant wealth, not in a wrong way. He’s been blessed by God in great ways. But then what we have in the opening chapters of Job is tragedy falls upon him. And he doesn’t know why tragedy falls upon him, but we do. What we see is that God and Satan have been having a discussion. they’re going to test the faithfulness of Job. Quite a test it is.
And so, almost in one false swoop, we see that the Sabaeans come and they kill the oxen and the donkeys. And the Chaldeans come and they kill all of the camels. Many of his servants are also put to death as well. But then, something happens that’s a natural occurrence. That is to say, you could blame all of those other occurrences on the fact that wicked people have come and destroyed his business. But also, we see that his children all die. all because of strong winds that came upon them.
Now understand that Job was a man who ever lived to intercede for his sons and daughters, for they were often at drinking parties, and he was afraid that they may have sinned, so he was as a family priest to them. offering sacrifices for his sons and daughters, just in case they may have had too much to drink, just in case they had sinned in any sort of way. But after that, his body is stricken. He had sores on himself so bad that he had, he actually took pottery and scrapes them off. I would ask you, what is worse, to have sores on you, or to go through the process of scraping sores off of yourself? Surely, either option is not one that we would be envious of. What a tragic situation we have in Job.
But then, Three friends come, and their name are Eliphaz, Zophar, and Bildad. Three men who come, and it’s very interesting what they do at first. They are his counselors. They sit with him for one whole week, and they mourn with him. That is good counseling. I would ask you, don’t you get hungry after just a couple of hours? But these men sat with him for a whole entire week. What wonderful counselors these men were, up until a later point, it is at the point at which they opened their mouths when they ceased to be good counselors.
Because it is at that point that they begin to accuse Job and say, Job Your problem is that you have sinned. And if you have read through Job, you may notice that the intensity of their accusations seem to get stronger and stronger and stronger until they are outright accusing Job, you have sinned. What we see here is that these men have a mechanical view of God’s retributive justice. What I mean by a mechanical view of his justice is that they’re able to say, listen, you sinned, that sin there or some particular sin is manifested in this punishment because these men are standing up for God or at least a God that exists in their mind that they believe is true. They’re saying that there is a one-to-one correspondence between your punishment and a sin that you have committed. And I would just ask you, brothers and sisters, have you ever heard people talk like these men have before?
As I think about the situation in Haiti just, what was that, a number of months ago, maybe coming upon a year ago, I went online, I went on the internet, because I knew I was going to find something. I didn’t want to be right, but I did. I found all kinds of places where Christians were saying, you know what happened to Haiti? disaster. And you want to know why disaster happened to Haiti?
It’s because of their sin and because of their voodoo. See, many Christian believers in our time have the same understanding of automatic, mechanical, retributive justice that Job’s friends had. They were saying the sin of voodoo and all of the horrible things that go on in Haiti. And I don’t want to minimize them one bit. Those same, those sins are being punished. God is punishing the nation of Haiti. And they were cold and they were calloused. They were as calloused as these three friends of Job were.
But we must ask ourselves, is this a right way of reasoning? Is this the way that we should think as Christian believers? Well, if we were to think about this logically, and we have some people who have studied a little bit of philosophy in our midst, we might ask ourselves, is this even logical to think this way?
The sin that, or the fallacy that these men are breaking or destroying is really the fallacy of affirming the consequent. It would be understandable, at least it would be a good argument, if they knew his sin and could say, well, that sin and that punishment. But they’re not even doing that. They’re looking at the punishment. And then, reasoning from that to the sin, you see, the fact is, God does not always bring punishment upon people as a result of sins that they have committed.
If we were just to think about some places in scripture where this is not the case, Think about the place where we have the rich man and Lazarus. We don’t see in time and space where the rich man was punished. We don’t see any tragedies fall upon him. It’s not until after he dies.
We also see that Lazarus was not, some people would have looked upon him and said, that man’s a sinner, as he sits at the gates and the dogs are licking his wounds. See, that’s an instance that is a counterexample to what these men are thinking and what they are saying. In John chapter 9, and I think you all know just a little bit about the gospel of John here in this congregation. In John chapter 9, we have a blind man, and the apostles come to Jesus and they say, why is it that this man was born blind, Jesus?
Is it because he sinned? Or is it because his parents sinned? Which is it? And Jesus says it’s neither that this man sinned or that his parents sinned. This man’s blindness came upon him for the glory of God. If I might just give you one more example. In Luke chapter 13, we have people who confront Jesus with the fact that a tower fell on some people. It’s called the Tower of Siloam. This tower falls on them, and they were saying, is that God’s justice? Did God get them? Is it because of sins that they have committed? And Jesus says, no, absolutely not. You must must repent, basically. You too will likewise perish, he says. But basically what he’s saying is there’s no one-to-one correspondence between certain sins and certain punishments in this life. That is not the way that God works within our time.
See, what we understand from reading of Scripture is that we live in a time and a place of common grace. That is to say, God calls the sun to shine upon the wicked and the righteous. He calls the rain and causes both to fall upon the wicked and the righteous. And sometimes, in this time of common grace, it just is the case that the righteous suffer. And it’s also the case that many of the wicked get away with many wicked deeds in this life. To have that type of a view is to have the same kind of understanding that many Haitians have, which is a voodoo understanding that if you do bad things, the gods are going to come down and they’re going to get you.
God does not operate that way in common grace eras. God does not operate that way in common grace nations. And we live in a time of common grace and our nation is a place of common grace. The same kind of thing happened when the Twin Towers fell. Some radio and TV evangelists got on and they started blaming certain people and certain sins for this.
No. Not at all. Not in a time of common grace. Not at all. But you might ask, Brett, that doesn’t sound right, because as I read my Bible, I see many places where there seems to be a one-to-one correspondence between certain sins and a certain punishments. And I would say, you are absolutely right. In your Bible, there are very many places where this happens. Let me explain why that is.
The nation of Israel, the Hebrew people of ancient times, were a special people. and God, in one sense, suspended common grace for them. See, they took an oath as a nation, as a people, that they would be faithful to God. And if you read the end of Deuteronomy, and I think you’ll get there eventually, the end of Deuteronomy, you’ll find that They were a covenant historical nation, and what that means is that if they sin certain ways as a nation, God will bring locusts and lack of rain, and he’ll bring all kinds of people to pillage them and to plunder them, He won’t protect them. But if, as a nation, they obey God, then He will bless them, and He will give them grapes, and He’ll give them strong harvests, and He’ll give them sun, and He’ll give them rain.
What happens in Israel is like no other nation. It is unique. It’s one-of-a-kind. Let us understand that unique means one-of-a-kind. We should never qualify uniqueness. The Hebrew nation was very unique. It’s not very one-of-a-kind. The Hebrew nation is one-of-a-kind and unlike any other nation. We have a Constitution in our country.
Theirs is far different than ours is, because theirs is one where they took an oath and said, we will abide by your laws, and if not, we will accept the consequences. Though they were often warned that they may not be able to withstand the consequences and they may not be able to obey. They took that oath.
So we see within that unique nation a one-to-one correspondence. But how is it that you know that certain sins are punished by people? How is it that you know what you need is a prophet? And that’s exactly what they had in their time. They had prophets who would come to them and they would explain this sin and that consequence. They had that.
We do not have that. Why? Because the Scriptures are closed. The canon has ended, and we have the 66 books of the Bible, and that is it. There are no prophets to come along and prophesy and tell us what happened in Haiti, and to tell us what happened with the 9-11.
We ought not to think that way, brothers and sisters. That’s not the way we ought to understand things. We ought to understand that that retributive justice does happen in the Old Testament, in Israel especially, but not without prophets in our time. Job, I’ve never heard anyone try to say that Job was a Hebrew man, or that he was under that covenant historical national canopy. Nobody understands that.
Job lives during a time also like us, a time of common grace. It’s before Jesus comes, but it is the same as us. But the problem is, these friends have the same understanding Haitian voodoo people. These people have the same problem as all of those Christians who would accuse in that way. Brothers and sisters, what do we do when people are under hardship? This is the non-believing view. What are we to do? We are to be Christ to them and to seek to comfort them.
We are not to point the finger as Job’s Confronters, we might call them, did. But there they go, misunderstanding common grace for judgment. And there they are, accusing Job. Do you think that Job’s accusers just decided after they saw his difficulties that they would accuse him? Do you think that they just, hey, you know what? I’ve got an idea. Let’s go talk to Job today. I would put forth to you brothers and sisters that they have been watching Job for a long, long time. If you were to go to chapter 29 of Job, we see a whole chapter of Job looking back at how things used to be.
He’s somewhat nostalgic, thinking about when God blessed him. He says, Oh, that it were as in months gone by, as in the days when God watched over me, when his lamp shone over my head, and by his light I walked through darkness. And I was in the prime of my days when the friendship of God was over my tent.” And he continues to talk about how great it was once upon a time when God was blessing him with health and with wealth.
But I would also put forward to you, starting at 21, we see that Job was a counselor. He was a counseling minister of sorts. And he says, to me they listened and waited, and kept silent for my counsel. After my words they did not speak again, and my speech dropped on them. They waited for me as for the rain, and opened their mouth as for the spring rain. He is telling them that at one time, He was a counselor. People used to come to Him and ask Him for advice, and they would hang on His every word.
And as every single counselor came to Him, Surely the frustration and the anger of Eliphaz and Zophar and Bildad was building, because as one more after another after another comes to Job, they were not coming to them. and their jealousy and their rage came upon them that they said now is our chance now is our opportunity he has been wise for so long and we have looked foolish but now job It is our time to be wise, and you’re going to listen to us.”
And so, as they throw their flaming arrows at him, one after another, and he deflects them, and deflects them, constantly rejecting their advice and their counsel, he says, no. He says, no, you’re wrong. This is not a correspondence between some sin. obviously have been a priest to my children. Do you think I haven’t repented myself? But they have watched, and as he deflects and he deflects their arrows, they get more angry and more frustrated at Job.
They have been waiting for him. And I might put it forth to you, brothers and sisters, that as things are going well with you, many people may be silent. But as tragedy befalls you, many people, not all, many pagans and unbelievers think nothing of it. But there are those who would speak for God, thinking that they’re speaking for God. But they are not speaking for God. They are speaking for Satan.
And they would try to give you counsel. And you must go to the Word of God for your counsel. and to your minister for counsel, and not to those who would say, ah, so how is Christianity doing for you now that this difficulty has struck you, now that this calamity has befallen you? What are you going to do? Where is your Jesus now? It is at that point that we continue to press on in the things of faith, loving the Lord Jesus Christ who loved us.
So that is basically the non-believer’s perspective. I’m not sure I announced that. The non-believer’s perspective of suffering is basically the voodoo understanding and the pagan understanding. It’s non-believers, but then I would look, we would look at the believer’s perspective.
Basically, at one point, Job says, stop it. Stop it. Stop it, but they won’t stop. In Job 16, verse 2, he says, miserable counselors are you all. What pain you can feel in Job as he says, he says these words, miserable counselors are you all. It says in one translation. It’s a little bit different in ours. And then in 18.2, he says, how long will you torment me? You all are supposed to be my friends.
You know, it’s bad enough that I lose my whole business. It’s bad enough that I lose all of my servants, all of my animals. It’s really, really bad that I lose my seven sons and my three daughters. Just think about David and the way that he mourned for Absalom when he died, and he cried out, Absalom, oh Absalom, the loss of a child. What a difficulty, what a tragedy. It’s bad enough that he has that loss in his life, but then it seems as though God is against him. And these people, these ones who ought to be his friends, then they begin to accuse him.
Job understands, like few people, what it is truly to be lonely, to have nothing, and to feel as though he is nothing. Haven’t I suffered enough? But we understand from Job that Preparing to die is the first step in learning to live. And we praise God for that. But then Job says something, you can almost feel the intensity of it as he begins to talk.
He begins to say, Oh that my words were written on 23. Oh, that they were inscribed in a book with an iron stylus and lead. They were engraved in the rock forever.” Basically, what he’s saying is, what I’m about to say, I wish it could be recorded for eternity. I wish I could make it on rock, I could write it on rock, because if it were on stone, then it would never be lost. Basically, we might think, if Job could just put the next thing that he’s about to say up on Mount Rushmore, then it might just be written for all people to see.
Written in stone, just like the Ten Commandments were written in stone. Why? Because Moses understood, and God understood, that that’s how they last, because they’re written in stone. But obviously we understand, especially from this morning, that we have something more sure, which is the inspired word that we have been given.
But what Job is saying is that the next words he’s going to say are going to count. Have you ever said something that you wish you could take back? Something you said just on the tip of your tongue, and as you said it, you said, you thought, I wish I had never said that. That is not the case with Job. He wants to say, what I’m about to say, I never ever want to take back.
And that’s when he says these wonderful words, these glorious words, he says, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will take His stand on the mountain, even after my skin is destroyed. Yet from my flesh I shall see God.” And there he understands, somehow, we don’t know how, but the Messiah is coming. His Redeemer is going to come, and that is the comfort of the believer.
This is a wonderful word that he says when he talks about a redeemer. It’s a special word. The word is goel in the Hebrew, and I won’t bore you with any Hebrew pronunciation, but I will just mention this to you. When we read through the book of Ruth, When we read about Ruth and Boaz, we read about the fact that Boaz was the kinsman redeemer of Ruth. That is, he was someone close in the family, and that is the one who redeems, who paid the price for this woman.
The same kind of understanding is also in Leviticus 25.25. I’ll just read it for you. It says, if your brother becomes poor and sells part of his property, then his nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his brother has sold. Basically, if your brother goes into a large amount of debt, you as a brother and as a friend to that person, in Old Testament Israel, can come and pay his debt.
What Job wants us to understand is that he has been walking with God for his whole entire life. The one who redeems him is not someone far off. It’s not someone he does not know. The one who is going to redeem him is going to be God Himself. God asks in Jeremiah, am I a God who is far off? No, I’m not a God who is far off. I’m a God who is here with you. And we have in Jesus one who is Emmanuel, one who is God with us.
And we understand that on this side of the cross. But Job understood that his Redeemer lives. And it is because of the fact that our Redeemer lives that we are able to endure difficulty and pain and suffering. We learn patience because of the difficulties that come down upon us. We learn trust. It seems so counterintuitive to think about the fact that we learn trust from God even while we go through difficulties and hardships and pain. Can you say with the psalmist in 119, it is good for me that I was afflicted that I might learn your statutes.
Throughout all the difficulties, Job drew closer to God through his difficulty. And I would be willing to I’m not a betting man, but I would be willing to think that many of you have drawn closer to the Lord Jesus Christ all because of difficulty and pain and hard circumstances. We also learn from the believer’s perspective that with each difficulty we more and more long for heaven. with every broken nose and broken collarbone and stubbed toe, with everything that happens outside of us, financial difficulty, and all the rest, with every painful circumstance, we all the more find ourselves longing for home. And where is home?
It is where Jesus is, and that is where Job longed for. He understood that his Redeemer lived, that one was going to stand upon the earth, and he was going to see him with his own eyes. Somehow, Job seemed to understand the resurrection. He was looking forward to the resurrection when he would stand upon earth. and the anointed one would stand upon the earth and he would be able to gaze upon the lover of his soul.
May we have the believer’s perspective and with each difficulty and pain may we long for heaven all the more. We would also have our third point. We’ve looked at the non-believer’s perspective, the believer’s perspective, and our final point is Christ’s perspective. What is the Lord Jesus’ perspective on suffering?
It’s very interesting as we are plotting through our Bible, we come to Acts chapter 9, and in Acts chapter 9, We have Saul, who would later become Paul, and we have his conversion. Very interesting words are spoken to Saul slash Paul there. In Romans 9, we see, falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? This is the Lord Jesus talking, saying, why are you persecuting me? Saul wasn’t persecuting Jesus. He was persecuting the believers, the followers of Jesus, the followers of the way.
But we understand the intimate relationship that Jesus has with His church, that when His church is persecuted, He is persecuted. When His church suffers, when even one individual believer suffers, He is, in some way, as our High Priest, suffering. We also, if we were to look into our Old Testament, this is not something that we find only in the New Testament. If we were to look in the Old Testament, in Isaiah 63 verse 9, we would see God speaking and He says, in all of their afflictions, I was afflicted.
Isn’t that amazing that God condescends, comes down to suffer with us in some sort of way? Don’t misunderstand me. This is not His divine nature. God’s divine nature never changes. But as God reveals Himself to us and shows who He is as the condescended One who came down and speaks in some way, some mysterious way, He suffers with us. Basically, we are suffering in Christ.
But why is this? Why is this? In 2 Corinthians 1-2, we see, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all, who comforts us in all our afflictions, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. We can ask, why is it that believers suffer? Seemingly, sometimes, unnecessarily, why is that, God?
And we have many, oftentimes, we’re not sure why that is. But we have here in 2 Corinthians 1 the answer to that. Believers suffer so that they might comfort other people with the comfort that they have received. In John chapter 17 we see that Jesus says, I don’t pray that you take them out of the world. I pray that you would sustain them as they are in the world, as he’s in his high priestly prayer.
The Lord oftentimes does not take us out of difficulty, but he leaves us in it for his own purposes, because he is more and more conforming you to the Lord Jesus Christ. And this, even the difficulty and the pain, the affliction that comes from God, not as a result directly of sin, we live in a sin-cursed world and difficulty is always here, but we suffer for sometimes seemingly no apparent reason, because God is working with us and He is working in us.
We obviously would also be remiss to not think about the way that Jesus Christ is our High Priest. For if we are to look at Job and just meditate upon his sufferings, we may be able to say that Job may have suffered worse than many of us, maybe all of us combined. I mean, we’ve had it hard, many of us, but many of us not this hard and this bad all at once. What amazing difficulties and pain that Job went through. But we think about the Lord Jesus Christ, a man whom If we were to take all of the accumulative sufferings of all of mankind and measure them up with the sufferings of Jesus Christ, it would be incomparable.
If we were to look upon it on a graph, all of the sufferings of all people of all time, and then the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because Christ understood what it was to be lonely far more than Job. Christ understood what it was like to be abandoned by all of his friends, all of his family, and also, at the high point of the crucifixion, when he had been crucified, he had nails through him, he had all these beatings, all of the horrible things that had happened to him and abandonment, his father, in a sense, abandoned him. and poured out eternal hellfire upon him.
And he did that because he loved you. You have a high priest who is more adequate and more able to sympathize and to empathize with your pain and your suffering. And He is doing that for your glory, but He is doing so as He intercedes at the Father’s right hand for us right now. He is doing that for us. We praise Him for doing that. We praise God for Job’s amazing words. Can you say with Job, I know that my Redeemer lives. and that He ever lives to intercede for me. Praise God that we have that.
May we all be able to say that, that we have one who has undergone such woeful torments, that He might be there for us, and that we might joyfully suffer in Christ. Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, we are not those who would seek out suffering and pain, for we always want to avoid it, because we do not love pain. There is nothing in it that we would desire after or embrace. but we thank you for all the times that you have brought heartache and physical pain upon us, because it has driven us to our knees if we were able, it has driven us to the throne of grace, it has driven us once more to Jesus Christ, and we thank you that we have Jesus in us, and that we are in Jesus, and that this is the hope of glory.
The same hope of glory that Paul talked about, we can say, is the same hope of glory that Job spoke of. We thank you for the amazing power of your Word. May it never grow dull to us, but may it always and ever grow more and more dear as we go to it. Thank you that we find such comfort in it. And thank you that we have the altar of comfort, which is in Jesus Christ, our Lord. We praise you for him this day. It is his name that we would lift up. Amen.
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