n/a

my message this morning is simple. Um simple. It's a simple one, but it's complex to put into practice. So if you zone out, let me just summarize right now in the midst of tragedy, in the midst of trials, don't turn inward, turn to our Lord, jesus, christ turn to him, Talk to God, tell him exactly what you're feeling, do what we have been studying in the book of lamentations without lament. Talk to him lament to him because remember as we just saying, we stand for given at the cross, when's the last time you felt the weight of your sin? Of just how broken do you remember the first time you became a christian? The first time you being christian? Remember when you became a christian, the weight of your sin and how it was just crushing you and you almost felt like who could forgive this? Remember your salvation? And then in the midst of your trials turned to him and lament and pour out your heart to him. Sometimes life is dark, very dark and we look around and always see as chaos. All you see is trouble. It's so easy to look horizontally all the time. Is that you? Is that where you are? Is that where you're living these days? If so, turn to the Lord, tell him exactly what's going on. Don't turn inward. This is what the soldiers does. Have you ever read psalm 88? If you haven't, it's pretty dark. Read it today. You'll hear things like while it store it starts out like a normal psalm, Lord of my salvation and then it gets dark. Oh Lord! Why do you reject my soul? Why do you hide your face from me? The soul missed. He pours out his heart to the Lord. Now the Lord was still with him. But this is what he feels and he pours out his heart. Could you imagine singing this in church? Why have you rejected me? The psalmist is in despair and he tells this to the Lord and it ends, He on a down note as well, verse 18 You have removed lover and friend far from me, my acquaintances are in darkness and that's how it ends. But don't forget he is pouring his heart out to the Lord and all Israel sang this as one of their songs. God wants us to be honest with him. God wants to hear you don't turn inward, talk to him, Jeremiah, the writer of the book that we're studying in lamentations without his dark knight came in Jeremiah, chapter 19 and 20 This is a guy who's given a message and told they're not going to listen to you go preach good luck. In chapter 19 he preaches he was given a message, he was told exactly what's going to happen when Jerusalem is besieged by Nebuchadnezzar and it's so dark, it says mothers are going to eat their own Children for lack of food. And he brings this message to Israel and they, it's so reprehensible, so disgusting to him, They put him in jail, but not only that they torture him for a whole night, That's Jeremiah's Dark Knight, It was a horrible night. We can only imagine what that was like. And when he was finally let go, he composes a song In chapter 20 and he quotes Job chapter three, he curses the day of his birth. It's as if he had this memorized, is that the verse that you choose to memorize cursing the day of your birth? Well more on that later. You know, every christmas eve we watch, it's a Wonderful life. I know it's cliche, but we do um sometimes, you know, we don't finish the whole thing. So sometimes George is stuck on the bridge for another year. Um Sometimes he's left in limbo, but sometimes we make it all the way, but everyone knows there's a crisis of faith. He contemplates suicide. Um and then he decides, uh perhaps it would be better if I'd never been born. Well, let's talk about that a little later, more context on job. We all know the story of job joe had lost everything. I'm sure you have prized possessions. Um I have some of mine, every time we come back from the beach, I turn the corner to see if my house is burnt down. Uh to see if my books are still there. Um job lost everything. Um and then he lost his 10 Children and we've lost over there, he's from the engineer East, they had lots of kids. Imagine losing all of your Children. His wife lost all her Children and then he loses his health. In all likelihood. He doesn't, he doesn't know that God has spoken in chapters one and two. We know, but he doesn't know that this disease is not life threatening. In all probability. He thinks probably he's going to die humanly speaking. He thought this was the end. He doesn't know the conversation between God and satan. That satan made God a deal. He said, hey, give me job and he'll curse your name, Give me, I'll take some of his possessions away. I'll take some of his Children away. He'll curse your name. Watch and God says do your worst and he does. And jobs response in Chapter one is naked. I came from my mother's womb naked. I shall return there. The Lord gave and the Lord is taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. His wife is a mess. She's grieving as well. She tells him she sees her husband suffering and she says, oh, I don't want to see this anymore. Just joe curse God and die. And we're so hard and so quick to judge her. But she has lost everything. And now she looks and watches as she's about to become a widow. She just wants it to end. She's just curse God. Just well, who knows why he's punishing us. Just curse, curse him and died, joe. Let's get it over with joke says to her, shall we not indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity? And then the passage says in all this job did not sin with his lips, would we be the same? This is Chapter two. And so he's lost, everything is lost. Kids. His wife tells him to curse God and die. And then we come to Chapter three. His friends, Friends in the Ancient Near East. They come from all over three of them come and they want to console him. And it said, the text says they see him from afar and they're just so overwhelmed, they start weeping as they're walking toward him. And so when we come to chapter three, it's almost like a brick wall. In the Book of Job. It's an Impenetrable rampart that we approach and we just don't know how to appropriate it because it starts out and he says, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. It reverses everything he has spoken thus far. Job had not sinned. Obviously he was a center, but he had not sinned to uh, to get the punishment of the Lord, but he sins in the process. He speaks and curses the day of his birth. He says foolish things just like his wife had said. He earlier corrected her. Now he's the one speaking foolishness. But we have to temper our words while talking about joe because he has been in the midst of horrible adversity, the likes of which we've never encountered. Listen to a few verses of Chapter three, Let the day perish on which I was to be born. And the night which said, a boy is conceived, may that day be darkness. Let not God care for it, nor light shine on it. Why did I not die at birth? 1st 11. Come forth from the womb and expire verse 20. Why is light given to him who suffers in life to the bitter of soul Job is at his darkest in chapter three, he's wishing he's never had never been born or at least died at birth. He looks at his life and all it is is suffering. He wants it gone. He wants to be wiped out. And for him to say that means what it means. That he would erase all the blessing that the Lord had given him. And we know the end job, didn't know the end. But even the blessing that would come later. The blessing of having this book for us to read when we suffer as well. He said his darkest. And perhaps you've been here as well where you look at your life and it's all tragedy. It seems. You see, you can't see the blessing. You just see the curse or the effects of your own sin that it becomes so weighty and so crushing that you say, uh oh, you don't even talk to the Lord, You just say it out. I wish I'd never been born. You don't even tell him. You can tell him though. But this is what Jeremiah said in Chapter 20. It seems as though even to the prophet this message, it's so hard to see his own people be judged that he says, I wish I would have never been born. He says the same thing that job says. And Jeremiah. He's this is why he's called the weeping prophet. He's so overcome by the judgment, the impending judgment that's going to come, that he can see nothing but curse. And he was given great hope by God. He knows there's going to be blessing on the other end. But he can't see anything now except tragedy, Joe's misery is compounded Because in Chapter three, after he opens his mouth and curses the day of his birth and again to give him some grace, His three friends rebuke him for 30 some chapters. He has just lost everything. He lost his Children. And these three friends come in Chapter two, it says to console him. And now all they do is rebuke the guy. They're in the wrong. And we know that because at the end of Job, God tells us That he is angry at these three friends. But jobs misery is compounded because they further tempt him to to see God as unkind or unloving or untrustworthy. Because Job doesn't know why he's suffering. He doesn't know what's in chapter one and two, he thinks God what? He doesn't say that God is unjust, but he dances around that subject and God is silent. There's no vision, there's no dream, there's no word. All he has is his friends who have great theology, but such an unkind spirit. If one of them had just, you know, at the end of Chapter three, he curses the day of his birth, what if one of them just wrapped their hands around job, and said. I'm glad you were born. You have been a blessing to me. But that's not what he gets. They tell him that God is angry with him and that he is suffering because he's he has done something and so his friends tempt him that God has abandoned him. I don't think we understand just how profound jokes trial is because it goes way beyond losing your possessions, losing your Children. Now he is losing his God and he's being tempted to think he's not who you thought he was. This is this is jobs, trial. And this is why the chapters go on after three. Well, we have to skip a little ahead and spoil the ending. We're told in James five about the patience of job In Spite of Chapter three, You know, Chapter three, it just seems all despair. But later in the new testament, we see James says, you've heard about the endurance of joke or the patients of joke job sins in the course of his trial. He does, he says too much. And in fact, there comes a time when God speaks and and please do not use this as a paradigm for someone who is suffering. But God does finally speak. Um, and he asks a grieving job some 60 questions about birds and creation. And one of those questions is why was the hippopotamus created? Now you're not God. So do not tell this to a grieving widow. Um, but God was trying to get at something, He was trying to remind Job how great, how, how far above he is from us. The patience of Job is displayed when God does finally speak, he closes his mouth off and he says, I understand, I understand you're the God who created me. I understand you're the God who saved me. Job relents and it says he closes his mouth. He has spoken too much. Well, Chapter three is instructive to us. It tells us what not to do and not that we have to beat ourselves up because we have thoughts but poor those out to the Lord, joe wasn't pouring his thoughts out to the Lord. He was just pouring his thoughts out. Jeremiah uses jokes, words, but he sings them to the Lord. Imagine that God is not offended because we pray how we're feeling, that we tell him how truly we have failed or how truly we feel as though we failed. God wants to hear everything. He wants us to pour our hearts out to him instead of turning inward and just cursing the day of our birth, Jeremiah laments. He laments you lament lament to the Lord. Because do you know what's going to happen in time? The Lord's going to show you the tremendous blessing that your life has even been. Even even the rough stuff God turns, he can turn for his own glory. But even if you don't see it, this side of the Jordan, we have to trust because we know he is greater, far greater. Then all the rough stuff all are sent. He can use it and turn it. Look, he even turned The sins of jobs friends, and we're reading it 4000 years later.