The Story Continues - Job 14: 7-15, 19: 23-27

We started this series talking about how we can talk to God about anything, even when that means pouring our our hearts to God in pain and sorrow. Last week we talked about how we need to let people do the hard work of grief and not try to make it conform to something that makes us feel comfortable. 

How in the world do you find hope in the midst of suffering? It is an incredibly difficult question some days. Some days the pain just seems to weigh in on us like a blanket. How do we keep going, keep trusting, keep praying, keep believing in the face of sorrow. 

We are jumping back and forth between a few different chapters here, but the pieces that are in between are familiar ones. They are sections where Job’s friends are trying to convince him that he must be guilty, he must have sinned horribly, and just needs to confess before God to be free of what he is going through. 

While I hope that most of us have never known someone like Job’s friends, I’ve also been a pastor long enough to hear things like this being said to people. Things about how someone must have sinned. Things about how a lack of faith leads to a lack of healing. Absolutely hurtful things. 

But I’ve also seen folks with Job’s response. Job is going back and forth in this section between talking to himself and talking to God, and he starts to allow himself to hope again. To hope when there is zero reason that he should. 

Part of our struggle with faith is that we try to make everything logical. Well if Job is going through this thing, then he must have done something to cause it. If God wants us to hope, then God needs to show us a reason to hope. But faith isn’t logical. Faith is something that we experience. It isn’t based off of an easy formula - it’s lived, even when it doesn’t make any sense. 

Job says that there is hope. Hope that something new can spring up from what’s left of his life. Does Job have a reason for this hope. Yes - his reason is God. See we often think of faithfulness in terms of what God has blessed us with. But Job is saying that God is faithful because God is God. And maybe, just maybe God will remember him. 

Now has God forgotten Job? No. But sometimes we feel like that. Sometimes we feel overlooked or forgotten. Job is trusting that even in times like that - God will remember him. 

Job is also hoping in, trusting in, believing in, the divine compassion of God. We think of compassion as showing someone pity or concern, but really it means to suffer with. Job is calling on God to come and suffer with him. And friends, I believe that God does suffer with us. That God is with us in the midst of our heartache. That God weeps with us when our heart breaks. That God truly knows what it means to experience this world as we experience it, because Jesus came. Jesus, the incarnate word of God. Jesus, who died for us, and carried the weight of our sins. Job believes that divine compassion is possible - Jesus shows that divine compassion has come with flesh on. 

Before the section of scripture we find in chapter 19, Job collapses in his grief. Yet, even then - even when the weight of the suffering and struggle seem to much to bear, he still dares to hope. Why - because his redeemer lives. The one who will buy him back from his suffering is alive and is coming. And even if it isn’t on this side of eternity - he trusts that he will see God.

The question that comes up in the story of God is how do you approach God? How do you believe in God when it seems like all the beliefs you held before are falling apart? How to you continue to trust in God? 

You hope. 

You have the courage to hope.

Friends, if hope was rationale it would be easy. But by nature of being hope, its asks us to dare to believe. And that requires courage. In fact, what is one of the definitions of courage that we don’t talk about enough - strength in the face of pain or grief. We all too often think of courage as facing what we fear - like David faced Goliath. But courage means heart. To take heart. And we do that when we hope in the face of sorrow. 

Job has a lot of hopes. He hopes that God is a lot more compassionate and loving than his friends are being at the moment. He is hoping the tGod will come and surprise him with the unexpected. And he has a heavenly hope - that even if his prayer isn’t answered the way he wants on this side of eternity, that he will be redeemed. 

So we approach God not with reason. We approach God with hope. We approach God being honest and saying - God what I’m going through right now is a lot more than I can handle or understand. But I’m going to trust you in the face of all of that anyway. Because you are God and I am not. 

Janis Joplin has a lyric that always sticks with me “Freedoms just another word for nothing left to lose.” Well, friends, sometimes there is spiritual freedom that comes when where we are in a place like Job is. A place where everything else fades away between us and God. A place where we have the courage to hope, in the face of a world that can’t understand why we dare to do so. 

Because when everything else fades away - all that’s left is our relationship with God. Our trust. Our hope. It’s not about saying the right things. Or doing the right things. And there is freedom in that. 

Friends, how can we hope when everything around us tells us not to? How can we hope when it doesn’t make any sense? And how can we be a living testimony of that hope to the world?

Let us pray….