1. "In this fallen world we are instructed both through humor and through tragedy, through laughter and through tears. Each has its work to do in bringing us to real hope."

2. "One of the marvelous things about Christianity is it's a two-eyed religion. It sees the good and it sees the bad, and it's honest about both."

3. "Regret is somewhere in between grief and repentance. More thoughtful than simple grief, less complete and active than full repentance. It's that tragic quality of givenness by being trapped in the unchanging past. It's the kind of problem that's not solved but merely reported and felt."

4. "Do not wait until the storm comes into your life to try to learn what life is all about. Prepare in the sunny days for the days of trial. Prepare for your own challenges coming up by getting to know God today."

5. "The power of silence and sympathetic presence in mourning. Silence prevents the speech sins so many of us are given to."

6. "A truly spiritual person, according to the Psalms, knows both real praise of God and honesty about difficulties and sins."

7. "Your worst day may be when you glorify God the most. You can't wait for the sunny side of life to think that's where you're going to bring God the most glory."

8. "We should honestly tell God our struggles. We should never cross over into concluding that God is wrong. We should confess even our temptation to think that he's made a mistake. We should confess it to him, but confess it as a sin."

9. "Only those who are blind to their own problems or the problems of this world have no questions. That or they atheistically assume there's nothing God can do."

10. "Even the longest and strongest regrets we may have this morning can't change our past. Only Christ can do that."

Observation Questions

1. According to Job 3:1, what did Job curse after his seven days of silence with his friends, and what did he specifically not curse?

2. In Job 3:3-5, what does Job wish would happen to the day of his birth, and what imagery does he use to describe this wish?

3. What does Job say in Job 3:6-7 that he wants to happen to the night of his conception regarding its place among the days of the year?

4. In Job 3:8-9, who does Job call upon to curse the day, and what mythological creature does he reference in connection with this curse?

5. According to Job 3:10, what reason does Job give for cursing the day of his birth—what does he say that day failed to do?

6. Looking back at Job 2:11-13, how did Job's three friends initially respond when they came to him, and how long did they sit in silence before Job spoke?

Interpretation Questions

1. How does Job's cursing of his birthday differ from cursing God, and why is this distinction significant for understanding Job's faith even in the midst of his suffering?

2. The sermon notes that Job's language in chapter 3 reverses the creation language of Genesis 1 (calling for darkness instead of light). What does this reversal suggest about the depth and nature of Job's anguish?

3. Why does the Bible include so many laments (such as Job 3 and numerous Psalms), and what does this teach us about the relationship between honest grief and genuine faith in God?

4. The sermon explains that Job represents a category of "righteous suffering" distinct from suffering caused by one's own sin. How does this category prepare us to understand the gospel and the suffering of Christ?

5. According to the sermon, what is the difference between regret and repentance, and why does this distinction matter for how we process suffering and loss?

Application Questions

1. When you experience sudden loss or suffering, what is your typical first response—do you tend to suppress your grief, blame yourself, blame God, or bring your honest feelings to God in prayer? What would it look like to follow Job's example of honest lament without cursing God?

2. The sermon highlights the ministry of silent, sympathetic presence that Job's friends offered for seven days. Is there someone in your life right now who is suffering and might benefit from your quiet, prayerful presence rather than your words or advice? How might you practically offer that this week?

3. If you are currently struggling with regret over past decisions, failures, or things done to you, how does the truth that "only Christ can change your past" through His redemption offer you hope and freedom? What specific regret might you need to bring to God in confession and release to His grace?

4. The sermon warns against becoming a Christian merely to avoid suffering. How does this challenge or confirm your expectations of the Christian life? In what ways might you need to adjust your expectations about what following Christ will cost you?

5. How does your church community or small group currently support those who are grieving or depressed? Based on this sermon, what is one concrete way you could help create a culture where honest lament and mutual support are welcomed rather than avoided?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Psalm 88:1-18 — This psalm is one of the darkest laments in Scripture, with no resolution at the end, showing that honest cries of anguish have a place in the life of faith.

2. Jeremiah 20:7-18 — Jeremiah similarly curses the day of his birth and expresses deep anguish over his prophetic calling, paralleling Job's lament and showing that even faithful servants of God experience profound despair.

3. Galatians 3:10-14 — This passage explains how Christ became a curse for us to redeem us from the curse of the law, connecting Job's suffering to the ultimate redemptive suffering of Christ.

4. 2 Corinthians 1:3-11 — Paul describes how God comforts us in our afflictions so that we can comfort others, illustrating the sermon's point that our suffering can be used to minister to others.

5. Romans 8:18-28 — This passage addresses the groaning of creation and believers under the weight of the fall while pointing to the hope of future glory and God's sovereign purpose in all things.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Book of Job as an Unflinching Record of Human Suffering

II. What Was Job's Problem?

III. What Did Job Do?

IV. What Was Job's Curse?

V. Should We Do What Job Did?

VI. Christ as the Ultimate Answer to Suffering and Regret

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Detailed Sermon Outline

By nature, we want to avoid pain.

That strong desire can affect us in many ways. It can alter our experience of the present, shape our plans for tomorrow, and even rewrite our memories of the past.

Over the next few weeks we want to look at the difficult but important part of our human experience as we study one of the Bible's most unflinching records of human suffering, the book of Job.

Describe it that way not because of the scale of the suffering recorded, it affected only one family and especially one person. But it's striking to many because of the comprehensiveness of the record of that suffering, its suddenness, and the honesty of Job's response to it. There's a reason why even outside of Jewish and Christian circles, Job has long been one of the most treasured parts of the Bible. Frank reflection on one's own suffering has a riveting and universal quality about it. Think of Frederick Douglass's narrative of the life of an American slave or Anne Frank's diary.

And you'll see even if you've not experienced those things they've written about, there's something about the direct, honest, even raw accounts that is gripping. That's why the Psalms have so long been beloved and many of which we find not only high praise to God but also the broken lament of human souls. In this fallen world we are instructed both through humor and through tragedy, through laughter and through tears. Each has its work to do in bringing us to real hope.

In Job's book, we simply want to focus on his initial prayer in chapter 3. You'll find that in the Bibles provided on page 418. Job's book is broken into three parts. There's an initial account historically of what happened to him in chapters 1 and 2. And then there's a long dialogue between Job and his friends, begins in chapter 3 and goes on to chapter 31.

And then there's the final conclusion with God speaking.

And the resolution of the whole, chapters 38 to 42. In this series we want to go to that point in which Job has been tried and tested by loss of property and even the sudden and tragic deaths of his children and finally his own body was afflicted. His wife encouraged him to curse God and die.

Of course Job is not alone in suffering. We care about suffering because when we experience it, we're sometimes consumed by it in the same way that a small ache in a tooth can actually dominate our thoughts so our attention can easily be concentrated on one particular aspect of our lives when we're suffering in that area. And our turning inward to focus on the associated pain has a distorting influence in our life.

How are we to deal with suffering, especially that suffering that is sudden and pronounced?

As humans, we naturally try to make sense of it. Some who assume there's no sense at all to life, even in the best times, make no sense of it. So Schopenhauer, who contended that will is the relentless driving force of life, impelling people and creatures onward in an ultimately meaningless competition for existence which ends with death, he had no explanation for suffering. Really, he had no explanation for anything. He simply taught that stress, suffering, and futility are the chief experiences of this life.

And as one professor summarizes philosophy, life is miserable and pointless, pushed along by a blind will to live. The only respite, Schopenhauer said, is to escape temporarily through the arts.

Well, for others of us who believe in God and believe that He has made us and Himself and His will known, we're still uncertain what to do with suffering. Even with the additional insight He has given us, we try and try hard to avoid suffering in many ways. And yet when it comes to things beyond our power, a storm, an illness, a decision someone else makes, an attack, what are we to do? Some would say that all suffering is to be made use of by stoically hardening ourselves. Toughening up.

A lot of people in the name of one religion or another teach that suffering is meritorious with God, that our suffering sort of puts God in our debt. We earn things. We collect divine privilege by what we endure. Others teach that it's merely an illusion to be overcome by mental tricks.

None of that is what the Bible teaches. What if you're a Christian but you're not glad and happy all the day, as one old gospel song puts it? What if that's not a good summary of your experience? Well this morning we want to look at the troubles we face and how we are tempted to deal with them in part. By regret.

Some here today may have little personal experience with regret for others, it so dominates their inner lives that it's like some viper grabbing a hold of their memory and sucking hope and joy out of their souls. One of the most poignant pictures of this I remember reading is the beginning of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. In all the filmed versions I've ever seen of it, this Description has never been captured. It is a striking picture of the sharp misery of regret.

It's describing a point, Dickens, when Scrooge first encounters his late partner, Jacob Marley, in ghost form.

When they were within two paces of each other, Marley's ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped, not so much in obedience as in surprise and fear, for on the raising of the hand he became sensible of confused noises in the air, incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret, wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory.

The specter, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge and floated out upon the bleak, dark night. Scrooge followed to the window, desperate in his curiosity. He looked out. The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains.

None were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost in a white waistcoat with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant whom it saw below upon a doorstep. The misery with them all was clearly that they sought to interfere for good in human matters and had lost the power forever.

Regret. It's somewhere in between grief and repentance. More thoughtful than simple grief, less complete and active than full repentance. It's that tragic quality of givenness by being trapped in the unchanging past. It's the kind of problem that's not solved but merely reported and felt.

It's loss experienced and pain recalled and even relived, whether it's of things you've done or that have been done to you or that you failed to do or that you simply know of.

Regret is something we find clearly expressed in Job chapter 3. The whole book is relevant to the theme of suffering, of course, but our chapter is especially so. Again, Job chapter 3, you'll find it on page 418 in the Bible's provided. Let me encourage you to turn there if you haven't. Let me remind you of the setting in chapters 1 and 2.

God had actually pointed out Job to Satan for Satan's consideration. God presented Job as an example of someone who feared God. In order to confuse Satan's lying, God allowed Satan to try God's servant Job in a most amazing way. And after these trials had destroyed Job's family, his possessions, and even his own health. Well, let's see what we find.

Let's look again at the end of chapter 2, and that will lead us into chapter 3. Look at that last paragraph in chapter 2.

Beginning verse 11.

Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, They came each from his own place. Eliathas the Temanite, Bildad the Shuite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort him.

And when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him. And they raised their voices and wept. And they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights. And no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.

Seven days was the normal time of mourning for the dead.

And then our passage, Job 3:1.

After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth, and Job said, Let the day perish on which I was born. And the night that said, A man is conceived. Let that day be darkness. May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it. Let gloom and deep darkness claim it.

Let clouds dwell upon it. Let the blackness of the day terrify it. That night, let thick darkness seize it. Let it not rejoice among the days of the year. Let it not come into the number of the months.

Behold, let that night be barren. Let no joyful cry enter it.

Let those who curse it, curse the day who are ready to rouse up Leviathan. Let the star of its dawn be dark. Let it hope for light, but have none. Nor see the eyelids of the morning because It did not shut the doors of my mother's womb, nor hide trouble from my eyes.

So the poetic dialogue that characterizes the rest of the book begins right here.

And the substance of it is riveting. And it is strange to many people today. You see, according to the Bible, we live in the cursed time. You will not understand the Bible if you do not understand the special time in which we live. We live in the time the theologians will refer to as the time of the fall.

We live in the time where all people have been subjected to God's wrath in suffering in this world because of the sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve, who stood for all of us. And if that seems strange, wait till a little later when I get to the person of Jesus Christ, the second Adam, who also stood in the place of many. The way we find loss is also the way we will find eternal gain. But you must first understand the loss. You must first understand that this world is not as it should be, that all the instincts of you and so many pagan authors who have noted the horrors and terrors and small pains of this life.

Bear important testimony to part of the truth of the account of what it is to live in this world. And we stuff our ears to it in vain. I am the grandson of a very devout Christian scientist. For those of you who know about Christian science, it's neither Christian nor science. Mary Baker Eddy, a 19th century wealthy woman, married several times, wrote a kind of combination of self-hypnosis and Platonism.

I don't know how well she understood science and health was key to the scriptures. My dear grandmother made me read the whole thing when I was a teenager. And friends, it has this made-up world of imagining there's nothing negative and that the only negative things are there are in our imaginations and they're caused by malicious animal magnetism. That's the phrase she would use. Friends, there are a hundred other philosophies like that, equally untrue.

One of the marvelous things about Christianity is it's a two-eyed religion. It sees the good and it sees the bad, and it's honest about both. That's what we find when we come to this chapter. Well, it's in such a time of trouble that we want to look at this passage and ask four simple questions. If you're looking for an outline, here are the four simple questions.

One, what was Job's problem? Two, what did Job do? Three, what was Job's curse? And four, the one you really care about, should we do what Job did?

One, what was Job's problem? Two, what did Job do? Three, what was Job's curse? And four, should we do what Job did? And I realize it's this last question where you'll perk back up and listen.

But let me just let me just let you know, I don't think we can answer that as we should if we don't think well about those first three questions, making sure we've understood Job's situation and his response to it. So I pray that as we consider Job's curse this morning, you'll be blessed and you'll find a better way to deal with the suffering that you know in your own life.

First question then one, what was Job's problem?

Well, of course, our verses I just read don't tell much about it. We can tell from that last phrase in verse 10 that there is some trouble. That's what he calls it in verse 10, trouble. That's the motivating, his miserable lamentation here. And up in verse 1 we see the chapter begins with the words, After this.

Okay, so what's before that? Well, it's the two historical chapters. Job himself was a famously righteous man. In the New Testament, James in one letter could write to the early Christians, you,'ve heard of the steadfastness of Job. During the exile of Judah in Babylon, Ezekiel referred to Job along with Noah as being famous for being righteous.

Again and again in this very book, Job is described as upright. He feared God and turned away from evil. Chapter 1 tells of the sudden destruction of his family. Job responds and of his response in the last verse in chapter 1, we read, In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. Chapter 2 then tells of his suddenly being struck with illness.

And again we read Job's response evaluated in chapter 2 and verse 10. In all of this Job did not sin with his lips. And that's when his friends come and they sit and they weep and they say nothing for seven days for they saw that his suffering was very great. And then if you were to flip over to the end of the book in chapter 42, you'll see the Lord Himself refers to Job as having spoken of Him rightly in contrast to what his friends had said. And if you think, well, maybe that's only referring to what Job said right there in his confession in chapter 42.

Well, the friends didn't speak during the confession. No, he's referring to the whole book, the whole dialogue.

God says he spoke rightly of him. This is the man who had suffered so. Much suffering comes to us in our lives because of wrong things we have done. We know that. Proverbs warns us about that.

Those who rejoice in doing evil, those who love silver and gold more than wisdom, that's going to have bad effects on your life. Life. We normally suffer in this life if we ignore good teachers and sow discord or are unfaithful. We ignore wisdom to our own peril. As the shadow used to say, Crime does not pay.

Well, it's true. We know that in our lives. We experience it all the time. But Job is no criminal. And yet he suffers as if he were.

Oh, my non-Christian friend here this morning, do not become a Christian in order to avoid suffering in this life. Do not become a Christian in order to avoid suffering in this life. Ask our brothers who are Chinese pastors in prison right now.

Ask their wives. Ask so many others around the world. Many even here in this assembly. No, this is not what either Christ's teaching nor His example hold out to us. Knowing God doesn't mean no suffering in this life.

So if Proverbs presents the normal way of wisdom, Job stands for those cases in this fallen world where goodness is not immediately or visibly rewarded, but where the righteous instead suffer. We see that throughout the Bible in figures like Jeremiah or Paul or ultimately, of course, in Jesus Himself. That's also why the final judgment is so important to us in balancing the scales as they should be. For instance, a lot of theologians are just running past you quickly, but kids, let me encourage you to engage your parents on this point at lunch today. Mom, Dad, why is the final judgment so important for us knowing that God is good?

Ooh, that's a kind of good thought question. Why is the final judgment so important in us knowing that God is truly good? Well, Job's suffering had come to him, we readers know, though we don't know that Job ever knew, because God was bragging to Satan precisely about Job's goodness, about his uprightness. That's the context in which all this suffering happens. Job's children are killed by the Chaldeans.

His own health is broken. His wife possessed by some kind of satanic counsel. Joel Beeke has observed that trials help the believer bridge the gap between belief and experience by a deeper trust in God.

That may be, but it has to be said, it's not obvious. That's what's happening here in chapter 3 as we listen to Job breaking a week's silence with these words.

What about you, though? What regrets do you know this morning?

Dear Christian brother or sister, could God be using your suffering to teach endurance, even to strengthen you, finally to complete His work in you to your great blessing? He could be teaching you new sympathy for others here. Who need you by needing your sympathy, by allowing suffering in your life so that as you learn to trust Him, you may be used in the lives of others. Bill, I think of that time when you were experiencing unemployment and how you in such a typically godly fashion turned that into a blessing to others. As you were honest about the trials you knew, you thought, Right, let's start an unemployment group.

Friends, I can think of example after example in this congregation of people who have experienced serious trials in their own lives and thought, How can I use this to bless other members of this congregation? Could your sufferings be part of how God is answering that prayer for our church to mature? Even today. Job's sharp language here about the day of his birth sounds like Jesus' words about the one who would betray him. It would be better if he were never born.

But what God is doing in Job is beginning to weave into history and Scripture another reason for suffering than simply our own sin. He's beginning to establish a category different then Adam's sin and its consequences in the fall, the category of the suffering of the righteous. And as every Christian knows, that category is an especially important one for us to understand. Through that category will come the gospel. That brings us to our second question.

If that's who Job was, that was his problem, number two. What did Job do? What did Job do? Well, you look there again, verse 1, after this, so all that had happened in the first two chapters, and then you have this intervening week of silent mourning with these friends, and that intervening week, by the way, of silent mourning may be instructive for us too. The power of silence and sympathetic presence in mourning.

Silence prevents the speech sins so many of us are given to.

You want to think more about that? Read James 3. But then we read, After this, it's Job that breaks the silence. We read here in Job 3:1, Job opened his mouth. Yes.

Anticipation could be high. What would he say? Such upright man as Job. So great had been his sufferings. Would he, as Satan had predicted, and his wife even encouraged.

Would he curse God? So long he has now been silent. What would he say? We read here in verse 1 that Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. All right, let's stop right there.

In the Old Testament, cursing is usually paired with and opposed to Blessing, blessing and cursing, cursing and blessing. Cursing is speaking ill in such a way as to have the effect of what one is speaking. Remember when Jesus curses the fig tree and they come back in the city at the end of the day or out of the city and they see that it's withered? We see this in the early chapters of Genesis. It's generally God who curses.

After all, He has the power. He has the right. It was the Lord who in the fall cursed both the serpent and the ground. It is what the false prophet Balaam tried to do to God's people but could not. It's what we Christians are forbidden to do to people, even to those who persecute us.

Job is not cursing in the sense of being profane. So let's notice this, friends. When I use the word cursing in English, both cursing and swearing have very specific meanings in the Bible. But in English, we often use those words in general of kind of forbidden speech or bad language. So kids, this would be another good conversation for you to have with your parents at lunch.

Mom, Dad, what is cursing? Okay, let's say I'm not like wishing you ill. When we generally use the word curse in English, what do we mean? Are there words I shouldn't be saying? Why should I not say some words?

How do I understand what I should fill my speech with? That's a good conversation for families to have. This kind of cursing that Job is doing here is not breaking one of the Ten Commandments. He's not taking the name of the Lord in vain. We don't read of him using any obscene expletives.

There's nothing shameful in what Job is doing here. Again and again the Bible presents lament as part of godly people's speech. Jesus himself was burdened for others. He even wept in sympathy and in sorrow. I know that our world worships the happy, but the truth sometimes includes deep sorrows.

And the Bible is an honest book and Christianity is an honest religion.

The Psalms are full of communal and personal sorrow, disorientation, pain, distress, feelings of abandonment. Sometimes it's in these parts of the Psalms that the most blood-curdling curses are uttered and that the bitterest invective comes out. Did you know, really, if you look at the book of Psalms, there are more laments than any other kind of psalm. Whether it's in Toto or parts of Psalms that are laments, of the 150 Psalms, 62 of them have these kinds of laments or complaints. A quarter of those are laments of the people as a whole, three-quarters of them are just personal laments of the psalmist like Job's here.

And did you know this very afternoon you can listen for free to expositions of any of those Psalms of Lamentation, or all of them at capbap.org you can go to capbap, c-a-p-b-a-p, dot org, and find any psalm you want, and find faithful expositions, sometimes more than one, of that psalm delivered right here in this pulpit by a number of different preachers of God's Word. You know, we may sometimes feel it's more spiritual not to feel pain, or to think that if we feel it, we just won't acknowledge it. I remember reading an amusing piece once on Job meets the health and wealth preacher, where this traveling teacher rebukes Job in his suffering and just tells him to start naming and claiming his promises and start living like a king's kid. And Job is just not persuaded and not able to do it. But according to the lamentations of the Bible, from Job to the Psalms and elsewhere, it seems like a truly spiritual person can know suffering and difficulties, distress, and even something right next door to despair.

I think one of the main reasons the book of Psalms has been so helpful to people and so loved is that it's so sympathetic and so realistic. Not only in the heights it portrays, but in the depths as well. Like I say, this is one of the clues to Christianity's truth. Its eyes are open to the good and bad. So friend, if you're here and you're not a Christian, the good news is God's own son has come and lived a life fully experiencing the kind of suffering that you and I do.

The difference is we have deserved suffering, some of the suffering we have by the lives we've lived. The suffering we experience that we ourselves didn't personally deserve, our first parents have deserved.

And we've deserved worse. Christ, who deserved none of it, took on all the suffering on himself, even culminating in his death on the cross. And he did that not because he needed to, but he did that out of a desire to present himself as a propitiating sacrifice. That is, a sacrifice that would satisfy the right wrath of God against evil. And then God raised him from the dead.

He ascended to heaven and the son presented the sacrifice to the father who accepted it. He calls us all now to turn from our sins and to trust in him. Friends, this is the core of Christianity. Whatever denominational name is on the church building you might go to, that's the core message right there. If you want to know more about that, members here, certainly the pastors would love to help you understand it better.

Uh, there'll be pastors at all the doors on the way out afterwards. If you want to talk to any of us about that. There's nothing we'd rather talk to you about than understanding this good news and what it could mean in your own life. A truly spiritual person, according to the Psalms, knows both real praise of God and honesty about difficulties and sins. And that's what Job is such an amazing extended example of.

Such honest grief, I think, is evidence of true faith in God. A curse like Job's here is a pointed lamenta, a sharp regret uttered not even so much to God, though he knows God is hearing it. We'll see next week with those why questions, I think there's even more of an implication that's a kind of prayer. It's not merely a journal entry in which he's mulling over it himself, but he is offering it as a kind of malediction, an evil word spoken to the day itself, imaginatively, poetically, as if he could make the day of his birth just vanish.

By speaking ill to it. It's a kind of destructive wish about Job's own birthday. I read that Jonathan Swift used to read this chapter every year on his birthday.

Well, what did Job do? He cursed. That brings us to the third question: what was Job's curse? Well here, let's just look through the passage. It was because of this trouble, as he puts it in verse 10, that it happened back in chapters 1 and 2 that Job cursed.

But it's important for us to notice what he doesn't curse. He nowhere in this curses God. As Satan has predicted he would and his own wife had told him to do, he doesn't even curse the human instruments of Satan's ill, the Chaldeans. He nowhere curses them. No, his trouble has caused him to curse not even directly his own life.

But more indirectly and poetically, the day of his birth. The artistry here, it's kind of like the exact opposite, the mere opposite of the artistry of humor. When you start constructing things indirectly to cause a response, he's doing that, but negatively, with the day of his birth. He's saying, I think more intensifyingly as he goes on here in verses 3 and following, like verses 3 to 5, I wish it were out of sight. Verse 6, I wish it were forgotten.

Verse 7, I wish nothing had ever come of it. And verses 8 and 9, I wish it had never even been. Let's consider this specific language for just a few minutes. Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, 'A man is conceived.' There, verse 3, 'Birth and conception are used in parallel Of course, births are not random. Scripture consistently speaks of the infant in the womb as a person already made in the image of God.

How about the news this week? God protect us from politicians who would discourage doctors from using their skills to save the lives of all infants, no matter who their parents are and what their parents think. Verse 4, Let that day be darkness; may God above not seek it, nor let light shine upon it. This is really the opposite of God's creating words in Genesis 1, Let there be light. But Job is clearly in a bad place.

That which we normally celebrate, the light of day, birthdays especially, Job now decries. And more than one reader has noticed that Job's language here really reverses creation throughout this passage, most clearly here when he calls instead of light for darkness to replace it.

I also notice here, this is the only explicit mention of Job by Job of God in our verses. God had learned the truth, or rather, Job had learned the truth about God before he experienced these trials. Friend, do not wait until the storm comes into your life to try to learn what life is all about. Prepare in the sunny days for the days of trial. Prepare for your own challenges coming up by getting to know God today.

On to verse 5, Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds dwell upon it. Let the blackness of the day terrify it. That idea of deep darkness is the same thing as a shadow of death. In the 23rd Psalm.

It's a harrowing, dangerous place. Verse 6, that night let thick darkness seize it. Either that night is paralleling day, He's continuing to say the same thing, or He's being more specific in turning to the night in which He would have been conceived. Either way, it gets to the same point. Let it not rejoice among the days of the year, let it not come into the number of the months.

Job is wishing that day which brought him about would come to be uncounted, like February 29th is this year. You know, February 29th only exists in leap years. He wants his birthday to be like February 29th in all those other years. Verse 7, Behold, let that night be barren, let no joyful cry enter it. He's wishing that any such night would produce no births, certainly not his own.

Verse 8, Let those who curse it, curse the day who are ready to rouse up Leviathan. Now when he says, Let those who curse it, he doesn't just mean somebody random. The words he's using here imply a certain kind of people who, just like there were mourners that were paid, so there were cursers. And there were people who professionally cursed. It was part of what they did.

They cursed on demand. And he's using words of the sort of local mythology of the time about Leviathan, that rousing up Leviathan simply meant to make trouble, especially bringing on the end. Leviathan was a mythical sea creature which wrought havoc. And so Job is wishing for something to come and swallow up the day if it were possible. So people would know of Leviathan, the mythological Canaanite seven-headed sea dragon of chaos.

Well, Job wished this monster had done what mythology said it did and swallowed up the sun, at least the sun on his birthday.

Verses 9 and 10 are really like squeezing that last little bit of toothpaste out of the tube. It's giving that last little bit of cursing of the day. You see in verse 9, Let the star of its dawn be dark. Let it hope for light, but have none, nor see the eyelids of the morning, because it did not shut the doors of my mother's womb nor hide trouble from my eyes. Vivid picture, really, of a morning star waiting in vain for sunlight because Job here gives the reason for his curse.

And this transitions the topic more directly to his life and death that we'll think of more next week when we get to the next verses. Now, friend, you may find it surprising that we are considering such dark thoughts when you came to church this morning. The beginning of a new week. Surely this is not the right way to get your day started off. A new week kicked into gear.

Some of you beginning a new semester at school. But, friend, passages like this commend the reality of all that we're saying. After all, these verses are here for our edification, just like the rest of Scripture. We know from 2 Timothy 3:16 that all Scripture is inspired of God and profitable. This Scripture is profitable.

These truths separate us from the false positive confession teachers. And they build us up even as they give us permission to be honest about the fallenness of this world and of our experiences in it. This is Job's curse. All of this brings us to a fourth and final question, number four: Should we do what Job did? So what do you think about what Job is saying here?

Friend, are you in a really difficult position this morning? Perhaps at work? I mean, if someone so godly as Job could have This kind of suffering makes you wonder how you could suffer. Are you having conflict with a co-worker? For some reason it just seems to get to the core of your being.

Are you being asked to do things that you think are wrong?

Do you feel you're locked into your job for financial reasons but feel for other compelling reasons you just can't go on?

You may not have had all of Job's trials and yet still have suffering. This kind of intensive lamenting that we often call depression knows no ethnic or class or gender or age boundaries, does it? We can all fall prey to depression. What do you do when your husband or wife is depressed, or when one of your children is depressed? Love them.

Pray that God will help them turn outward from themselves and upward to God.

Don't give up. Sit there, if you need to, on the ground with them for seven days in silence. Letting your presence communicate your love. Listen, persevere in sharing with them the comfort of God's love for us in Christ.

And if you have more questions, ask godly friends. Talk to elders here if we can pray for you and help you. We do love you and pray for you regularly, both together in our elders meetings and in our own lives personally. Pursue one of us to be able to give you counsel and to help bear this burden in prayer. Visit the bookstall afterwards.

It's filled with books that can be useful to you on topics like these. Notice the books that again and again are given away on Sunday night. Did you notice how many copies I've given out lately of Thomas Boston's book a crook in the lot? That means about something that's not the way you would like it to be in your life and how you come to see that the Lord in His goodness has given this to you. Or the children's book we've given out, the Moon is Always Round, that one by Johnny Gibson, a professor over at Westminster.

Friends, there's so many resources for you at the Bookstall to help think about this. The most basic question we need to ask about Job in all this is, was Job sinning? Was Job sinning? And let's get more specific, maybe that'll help. Is it sin to wish you'd never been born?

It depends. You know, if it lasts and becomes a settled conclusion, then yes, I think that's a sin. But simply to mull over the question and seriously consider it? No. I think it's certainly a result of sin, though perhaps maybe not your own sin.

Okay, is it a sin to wish you were dead? Slightly different. Again, it depends. If it becomes your settled conclusion, then in many ways the answer would have to be yes, because God is sovereign and He does no wrong. He is the Lord of life and death.

And certainly to feel such a thing is the result of sin, though again, maybe not your own sin, is suicide sin? Yes. Even if it's legal?

Yes. Is it possible for Christians to commit suicide? Yes. People are sometimes confused about this because of the Roman Catholic Church's very bad teaching on this point. The Roman Catholic Church has historically divided sins into mortal and venial.

And of the mortal sins, they kill your soul spiritually and can only be dealt with by self-conscious confession and absolution, or rather, confession and contrition, doing works of penance and then being granted absolution by a priest. All of that, the Bible nowhere teaches. And all of that means when you kill yourself, you can never repent. So the Roman Catholic Church, at least before Vatican II, and therefore it exists in popular Roman Catholic piety, traditionally has understood this to be the unforgivable sin because you can't repent of it. That shows a stunning biblical ignorance of the grace of God and the depth of depravity in how Christians can sin.

Christians can commit suicide. I'm not encouraging you to it at all, but I'm telling you, and please don't misunderstand, that is a sin. And it may in fact indicate that the person who committed suicide was not a believer. All of that is true, but it is not in and of itself an unforgivable sin. And it certainly in our experience as Christians, a true Christian can despair so much they sin in almost any conceivable way, certainly.

And taking their own life.

Okay, is sadness or depression a sin?

Again, it depends. If you give into it and you let it become as it were the lord of your life, you adopt it as your identity, then it must at least begin to verge on the sinful. But as a result of sin, again, not necessarily your own sin, it's the experience of many people, probably most people, at least at some times in our lives. I think a good parallel to a more general sadness would be anger. For we know from Scripture that anger is not in and of itself necessarily sin.

You can be angry and not sin. So with sadness, it depends on how you deal with it or why you're sad. We know Jesus himself wept when he's standing there seeing the death of Lazarus and the misery of his family. Well, these are honest responses to situations that God doesn't mean us to ultimately be in. Now, if your sadness leads you to condemning God or to correcting him in your own mind or even not being able to trust him, well, then that is sin.

And depression itself is not something that you need to think is guaranteeing your humility. As if, well, I know I can't be proud at least because I'm depressed. Friends, sadly, pride can accompany almost any conceivable sin, even depression.

So, congregation, are we a church for the strong or do we confess sins to God and each other in humility? Are we aware of our own need for God and of how God uses us in our own weaknesses and each other's lives? I pray that God will forgive us for ways that we may have been self-concerned and self-contented and uninterested in those among us who are hurting. I pray that God would remind us that we had all hopelessly lost our way apart from Jesus Christ. We've gathered to praise Him today because we've realized that we have all been in situations of incredible need and weakness and even despair had it not been for Jesus Christ.

He is the great hope of our lives. That's why we've sung as we have. God didn't find us in our strength, but in our weakness. And our weaknesses can ultimately help us depend on God, can't they? Another question these verses naturally raise: Should we vent to God like Job did here?

Should we take this as a model of our prayers? And here it's very interesting. Calvin, the Puritans, some modern writers, I think Derek Thomas, feel like, no, this is a bad example. Don't do this. A lot of other more modern guys feel like, no, this is fine.

I have to say, I think the modern guys are right. I think they've understood this more biblically. The chapter is finally best understood not merely as a monologue or merely a recapitulation of events to Job's friends being recounted. This is said in front of friends, but it is also a kind of prayer. Job is saying this.

Job is speaking as one who fears the Lord, who famously fears the Lord. He's kind of talking out loud about God and to God. I think that becomes more clear as we keep going through even the chapter, certainly the book. Job honestly laments his situation. I love what one friend said to me yesterday, you, worst day may be when you glorify God the most.

Your worst day may be when you glorify God the most. It was true with Jesus, wasn't it?

And you can't wait for the sunny side of life.

To think that's where you're going to bring God the most glory. Yeah, there's definitely a kind of glory you can give to God in the midst of prosperity, but there are lots of other terrains of our experience where we refract and reflect God's glory. Here in chapter 3, Job is beginning to talk to his friends, and you wonder when you read this, is he beginning to lose the constancy and faithfulness and stoutness in following God that he had immediately Immediately in chapters 1 and 2 when the trials first happened, in cursing the day of his birth, many have suggested that he comes close to cursing God. Please notice Job was passing the test and that he did not curse God. Perhaps Job has lost some of his original numbness that he may have had as a kind of natural protection from God.

Originally, now he's beginning to process the losses that he's experienced. After all, he's had a week now to not see his children.

He can no longer testify that life is good. Indeed, he gives this fiercely emotional lament. His depression is like the one we read of in Psalm 88 or Jeremiah's in Jeremiah 20 if you want to read another one like it when Jeremiah wishes that he'd never been Whatever else this is, is the voice of authentic human anguish and suffering, or as one writer said, simply the man Job in the violence of his grief. But by enduring and not cursing God, but continuing to fear Him, Job continued to show that he knew God's love in his life even during such terrible trials. He says a little later in chapter 10, verse 12, you, have granted me life and steadfast love, and youd care has preserved my spirit.

That's Job 10:12. God allowed Job to have life at all in order to know God and to glorify God. And Job's life, just like yours and mine, is to be lived to point others toward God. Brothers and sisters, our lives are not ultimately about ourselves, but they're about God, aren't they?

Friend, if you're not a Christian, I wonder what you do in times of great grief or trouble.

Do you pray?

I wonder why you pray.

My Christian friend, what about you? Do you pray about challenge at work or in your home? Should you?

Do you pray about difficult matters in your marriage or family?

Those are often long-term prayers, aren't they?

Friends, we should honestly tell God our struggles. We should never cross over into concluding that God is wrong.

We should confess even our temptation to think that he's made a mistake. We should confess it to him, but confess it as a sin. What we want to cultivate to God is reverence, respect, worship, awe, admiration, appreciation, thanks, praise, Honest confession like Dan exampled for us earlier. We want to pray to God honestly. We want to confess to Him what we are, even as we pray about what we want to be.

Only those who are blind to their own problems or the problems of this world have no questions. That or they atheistically assume there's nothing God can do. Brothers and sisters, spend time with God in prayer. It's the main part of our work. You have no better way to begin each day of life that God gives you than to spend time in prayer.

We mean to model prayer to you in our corporate gatherings so you hear the prayers of praise and confession on Sunday morning and intercession mornings and evenings. We pray to a God who is all powerful and all good and who has revealed Himself to us in His word, but who is still mysterious to us in some of the choices that He makes. We as a church mean to grieve over our sins and to rejoice in our praises and thanks and to rely on God in our intercessions. Friends, this is some of what we learned from Job's example here in these verses. We should, without condemning God in any way, Be honest like Job.

Well, you have endured a long sermon on a difficult topic. Remember Satan's accusation to God about Job, that if God removed some of Job's blessings, Job would curse God? He was saying that Job only loved and feared God for what he could get out of Him. Satan was claiming that Job didn't really fear or love God Himself at all. And yet while Job did curse here in chapter 3, it wasn't God He cursed, but merely the day of His birth.

In fact, you'll search throughout the whole book of Job in vain to find Job ever turning away from God. If you keep reading the book this month, you'll find that Job repeatedly affirms his faith in God. So in Job 13:15 he says, referring to God, Though He slay me, I will hope in Him. Or in 27 verse 2, As God lives, who has taken away my right, and the Almighty, who has made my soul bitter, as long as my breath is in me, and the Spirit of God is in my nostrils, my lips will not speak falsehood, and my tongue will not utter deceit. Chapter 3 is the fresh depth of Job's sorrow.

In that depth of suffering, Job measures out something of the human experience of misery that Christ self-consciously came. To bear with us and for us. Because although Job knew darkness, it was merely a foreshadowing of the darkness Christ knew, who was Himself cursed for us. What do we read in Galatians 3? Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

So that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. The redemption that Christ gives us is by taking our past sins and giving us His perfect obedience. Even the longest and strongest regrets we may have this morning can't change our past.

Only Christ can do that. If you trust in Christ, then your life is hidden with Christ in God. And that which you most regret, your sin against a completely good God, is taken away as far as the East is from the West. You've been given a new birth with a new birthday. Praise God.

Let's pray together.

Lord God, we thank youk that when we look honestly even at the worst parts of our lives, We see nothing beyond the long arm of your redemption. We pray that you would give each one of us true hope in Christ today. We ask in His name. Amen.