[AI translation] You may remember that the very first time we started with the book of Job, we talked about how a truly godly person lives? We talked about Job, this dear child of God, as a truly godly man. And now, when we read here, in the third part, his painful outburst, his almost cursing: we wonder: is this what a truly godly man can be? Yes, he can! And this is what I see in the Bible, how truly it is the book of life. It does not idealize the people it presents to us, for example, but shows them as they are, with their weaknesses and faults. The saints and heroes of the Bible, such as Moses, Jeremiah, the Apostle Peter and others, are not bloodless saints, but flesh and blood people, just like us. They too have their moments of weakness, their failures, their bankruptcies of faith. Job, this truly godly man, had his moments, and if he hadn't, he wouldn't have been a real man, but some idealised, spent person. Behold, in the passage read out, bitterness bordering on anathema pours out of him in words so terrible that they are almost unfit for the pulpit! The depths into which Job has here plunged might be expressed in this way: the rebellion of the believer against his fate, or against God! This is what I want to talk about now.First, let us examine how did Job come to this? His last words, which we heard from his lips just the other day, were a testimony of quiet surrender, of believer's resignation. Now, on the contrary: with a loud wail, a volcanic outburst of desperate pain, he curses the day on which he came into this wretched world! How is this possible? Because there is a limit to human endurance, and when this limit is reached, even the slightest burden is enough to bring one down. Here again: the same man who has been able to lose his wealth and his children while praising God, the same heart that has humbly accepted an incurable disease from the hand of God, suddenly bursts out in some wild, desperate pain as soon as that limit is reached. The happy, humble, obedient child of God, who was able to praise God even in the night of suffering, now suddenly rebels against the cross that is laid upon him. The spiritual tension is resolved in a terrible outburst of inner despair.
This is very understandable from a human point of view and easy to explain from a psychological point of view. It is the same today, when someone is suddenly struck by a blow. How many times have we seen that at first one is almost unable to grasp the true significance of the grief that has befallen him. He is in a certain stupor from the blow to his soul. And it is only later that he slowly realises what suffering, what pain there is in the grief he is carrying. It is only later that he comes out of the dream-like stupor and wakes up to the sad reality that someone is gone forever! It is not only in grief, but in every ordeal, that the nerves, which have been overstretched, are loosened and the soul begins to protest against the burden that is being placed upon it. We used to say it simply that one is upset. More sensitive people have nervous breakdowns and people with high blood pressure have strokes. There is a limit in the human soul beyond which the dam bursts open and the pent-up bitterness spills out, in fact human weakness is exposed, what was for a while hidden or contained by self-discipline or the power of faith!
Just last week, a believer brother of ours, who has a very heavy cross to bear, said to me: 'You know, I often have the feeling that I can't take it any more! I'm breaking down, I'm despairing! Or I kick myself out of the harness and do something I know in advance I will regret." It is at such times that the believer is shown how wretched, how helpless, how much he is a being living in the tension between heaven and earth, angel and animal, spirit and matter. Even the most humble saint has moments of great shame - when his old man comes out again and turns everything upside down!
It is also very clear from the story of Job where this limit of human endurance lies and when man swings beyond it. We read that Job's friends, frozen by the horror, surrounded the suffering man in silence, unable to utter a word in the face of the incomprehensible suffering. In Job's soul, the sight of the friends brought back the painful memories, the happiness they had shared together in the good days. It was in their silent gaze that Job saw how happy he had been then and how miserable he was now! How great the difference between then and now. How far he had fallen! He sees his own misery and its utter hopelessness almost with the eyes of his friends, that is, with the helplessness of human sympathy. And that is when his spiritual balance is upset. His mournful tears fall at the appearance of another condoler. Job sees in the silent gazes that fall upon him only his lost fortune and his present misery, that is to say, he no longer sees the Lord, he does not look to Him in whose will he has hitherto been at rest, he does not cling with his eyes to the Lord: of course he will collapse! For hitherto his soul had no strength in himself, but in the Lord. Peter also began to sink in the waves when he turned his eyes for a moment from the power of the Lord to the greatness of the danger. It is written in one of the Psalms, "They that look unto the Lord shall be exhilarated, and their faces shall not blush." (Psalm 34:6) Well: the human capacity for bearing burdens lasts as long as I look to the Lord, and its limit is immediately there as soon as I begin to look at myself, at the perils threatening my life, at my sickness, at my troubles, as soon as I begin to see my problem from the perspective of human helplessness. At this point, even the greatest "believer" runs out of spiritual strength and his peace of mind is shattered, just like Job!
Thus we read in the sad report, "Let the day pass in which I was born, and the night pass in which it was said, 'A son is conceived.'" (Job 3:3) Curse your own birthday! The hour in which his life on earth began. And this is so terrible because life is usually seen as our most precious possession, as God's most precious gift. We would be willing to make any sacrifice to protect our lives, to sustain our lives, or to save our lives. That is why we always celebrate again the day on which our life on earth began. The joyful solemnity that pervades a birthday is in itself an expression of our acceptance of life, each new day and each new year, with gratitude, as a precious gift from the hand of God! As a time of grace and a great opportunity to live for Him, to serve Him!
But Job cannot think of the day of his own birth with joy and gratitude. He wishes that that day could be blotted out of the calendar: 'Let that day be darkness, let not God take care of it from above, and let no light shine on it.' "I wish I had never been born," he sighs bitterly! But all is in vain, for he is born! He was born, and now he carries, drags along his life, an unbearable burden! And if that is the case, then at least "Why did I not pass away as soon as I was born?" "Why was I taken up, why, to the breast, why does God give light to the wretched, why does he give life to the bitter-hearted!" Why, why? WHY?!!! Sometimes the whole life is nothing but a painful series of incomprehensible questions, of why after why! Oh, life, this great gift, but it can be a terrible burden! It can be so confusing that one can't do anything about it! It is then that one finds out that life is always, even on the good days, a great mystery: what is it for, why is it there, what is its purpose?! Because in the end there is always death! Why are we living at all? What then is the point of this dark, mysterious, perilous adventure, of a life that will inevitably end in the night of death on a sad day? What is man? What am I, what is my task, what is my destiny?
Behold, that is how far a man can lose his bearings, how far everything around him and within him becomes uncertain, as soon as he takes his eyes off the Lord and sees only his own helplessness and misery! This is always the case when we see life, or some of its problems, as if out of God's hands, whether it is our own individual destiny or the universal problems of the world! Without God, life is indeed a terrible mess, a miserable adventure, a meaningless game! That is what Job felt! The mountain of perils, the mountain of suffering before him, made him see no God, he thought he had been forgotten, abandoned, even rejected by the Lord! And as a believer he knows that without God, abandoned and rejected by God, life is not possible and not worth living!
Job is right in saying that it is better never to be born than to live separated from God! Job is right that life without God is better than death! Life, or a phase of it, always becomes an unbearable burden, unbearable, overwhelming, when I do not see God in it, when I see God abandoned! Then what do I do with His gift: life?! Yes, Job was right about that, but he was not right in thinking that he had been cast away by the Lord, that he had forgotten, that he had thought that God was not in him in this horribly messed-up phase of his life, in this suffering.
But Job did not yet know God as the One who had Himself descended into suffering, humiliation, shame, agony, damnation! Job did not yet know Jesus, and did not know that all the reasons for human torment were wrapped up in the divine reason which burst from Jesus' lips on Calvary, thus: "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?"(Mt 27,46b) Since God Himself, in the person of Jesus, descended into the deepest human misery, we have known that there is no situation, no abyss, no meaningless situation, no agonizing why, in which God is not present, in which the sunshine of divine love and grace cannot warm us. In the low points of my life, my real consolation was never that the Lord would deliver me from this, but that God is present here, Jesus is with me! He is the Lord here too!
This is how the Apostle Paul knew God! Therefore, when asked why we are alive, what is the meaning of this whole strange adventure, he answered, "For no one of us lives to himself, and no one of us dies to himself: for if we live, we live to the Lord; if we die, we are the Lord's. For for this cause Christ died and rose again and was raised again, that he might reign both over the dead and over the living."
This means, above all, to give up the fight against him! Just as one of our brothers and sisters in the faith has just done, who has refused to give in to the disease that seems to be slowly eating away at his life. He fought it, toiled in prayer for nights, and then tried to cast out the spirit of the disease in the name of Christ, until he finally realized that there was no way out, that he, like Job, was "encircled by God". He surrendered! And then he was set free! He felt a great, great liberation. He knew that if he lived, he would live for the Lord; if he died, he would die for the Lord. Both were shining with the glory, the love, the life of the same Lord.
Once, a kind-hearted man on a highway, where heavy cars were speeding along, caught sight of a frog. He went up to it, picked it up in the palm of his hand, and wanted to take it to the side of the road where it wouldn't be run over by the wheels. The little frog was frightened, looked frightened at his rescuer and tried with all his might to get out of the warm, soft palm. The man was forced to grip the silly little creature harder, so that he could feel the beating of his frightened heart between his fingers, and so he carried him out of danger, to the grass at the side of the highway.
Oh, brothers and sisters, why dare we not fall into God's saving hand?! For it is because we may spring from His grip that we ache! Surrender, give up the struggle against Him! And: take up life with Him. If a man lives his life, up and down, in good days and bad, with the question: 'What does God want from me, with me, through me?' If we live for God, then even if I die, my life has meaning! Because I will still die for the Lord! For Christ died and rose again and was raised again to reign over both the dead and the living!
Amen
Date: 14 September 1958.
Lesson
Jób 3,1-26