Despairing of Life

We are in Job chapter three, and today we're talking about a really sobering topic: the issue of suicide and how we deal with that. So, open with us to Job chapter three.

Good morning, Cross Connection Church! How many of you are grateful for the grace and freedom of the Lord today? Praise the Lord! Awesome! Would you mind standing with me this morning? If you have your Bibles, open them to the Old Testament book of Job. If you don't have a Bible, you can raise your hand, and one of our ushers will bring you one. If you turn to right about the middle of your Bible, you'll be in the Psalms. Job is the book immediately before the Psalms.

We're in Job chapter three today. If you have a question about the message or the text as we're going through it, go ahead and text your question to the phone number on the top of the screen. This week, Pastor Mark and I will answer that on the podcast, which you can find at thequestionspodcast.com.

Job chapter three, and we're actually going to begin reading one verse before that in Job 2, verse 13. There it is written: "So Job's three friends sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great."

After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. Job spoke and said, "May the day perish on which I was born, and the night in which it was said, 'A male child is conceived.' May the day be darkness; may God above not seek it, nor the light shine upon it. May darkness and the shadow of death claim it; may a cloud settle on it; may the blackness of the day terrify it. As for the night, may darkness seize it; may it not rejoice among the days of the year. May it not come into the number of the months."

"Oh, that the night be barren; may no joyful shout come to it."

Verse 11: "Why did I not die at birth? Why did I not..."

Perish when I came from the womb. Why did the knees receive me, or why the breasts that I should nurse? For now, I would have lain still and been quiet. I would have been asleep, and then I would have been at rest.

Why is light given to him who is in misery, or life to the bitter soul who longs for death but it does not come? Who searches for it more than hidden treasures? Who rejoices exceedingly and is glad when they can find the grave?

For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me. I am not at ease, nor am I quiet. I have no rest, for trouble comes.

God, we need your wisdom and grace as we come to this text, a really heavy text and a very heavy topic. I pray that you would open our minds and our hearts to receive this as your word for us. You want to speak to us through it; you want to minister by it, by your Spirit. So we pray that you would help us to see not only what is going on here in the text, but God, to understand what it is that you'd have us to learn from it. Continue the work that you are doing, we pray, in our lives of making us more like you. I pray that you would use your word to draw us nearer to you today, for we ask this in Jesus' name. And all those that agreed said, "Amen."

You may be seated.

We are orderly creatures. Now, that's not to say that each one of us here this morning is organized and neat and tidy. Just ask my wife; I'm far from that. Actually, don't ask her. I'm far from that to the point that it sometimes drives her completely crazy. But though we may not be organized, neat, and tidy, we are creatures that like orderliness. That is especially true for Westerners, and it becomes particularly clear when you have the opportunity to travel with a group of Westerners to other places in the world, especially in the Middle East.

The Far East has been a destination I have visited many times, often taking groups of people to various places around the world. In those experiences, I have noticed that orderliness may not be as high of a priority in some cultures. For example, while waiting in the airport in Istanbul with a group of people, I observed that lines don't really mean much. As we waited at the gate to board, everyone kind of crowded together. In that moment, the orderliness of Americans seemed to break down, often manifesting as anxiety when order is disrupted.

We like to think that we live in an orderly universe, and in many ways, we do. The fact that we can conduct science proves that we inhabit a fairly orderly universe. For instance, we know what the tides will do because we understand and can comprehend the phases of the Moon. We know when the seasons will change because we recognize that the Earth is tilted on its axis and its movement in relation to the Sun allows us to predict these changes.

We board a plane, a big steel tube with wings, and trust that it will fly, even at altitudes of 37,000 feet, despite my wife's belief that it's insane. This trust is rooted in our understanding of the laws of aerodynamics. Thus, we acknowledge that we do live in a fairly orderly universe.

However, there are many aspects of our cosmos that do not function as we expect. They do not operate in the way we think they should. Take, for instance, the DMV—perhaps I won't go there. When things do not function as we expect, we experience what researchers refer to as cognitive dissonance. Fascinatingly, researchers have discovered that children as young as three months old experience this sort of cognitive dissonance. Parents, you may remember when your kids were that small and how you could play little games with them that caused this reaction.

Scientists have discovered that some of the expectation we have about the world functioning in a certain way is innate; it is in us. This expectation is not only seen in small children but also in animals. You may have experienced this with your pet. For instance, if you have a dog and you throw a ball, the dog eagerly chases after it. However, if you decide to pretend to throw the ball, the dog runs off, only to find that the ball is not where it expected it to be. The dog looks back at you, bewildered, as if to say, "What on earth just happened?" The world did not function the way it was supposed to, leading to a kind of cognitive dissonance. Things did not happen as expected.

These moments of cognitive dissonance often produce viral videos on platforms like YouTube. For many years, a significant portion of content on YouTube consisted of such surprising moments. However, this kind of dissonance can also be destabilizing. We have a perception of reality and an expectation of how the world should work, but sometimes things do not function as we anticipate.

In the book of Job, we encounter a situation that exemplifies this. As we have been considering together over the last few weeks, Job was the most righteous, religious, and wealthy man of his day. Everything had been going very well for him. He had done everything the right way and was undoubtedly looked up to by those in his culture. His life was likely worthy of emulation. Yet, in a matter of days, everything in Job's life came crashing down. He lost his children, his business, his wealth, and eventually, his health.

At this point in the narrative, having gone through Job chapters one and two, we see that despite all he experienced, the scripture tells us that he maintained his integrity and did not sin with his lips.

Job 2:10 says, "He did not charge God with wrong." Job 1:22 states that, in all the things Job was going through in his life at that moment, he endured hardship patiently. He endured it in an upright way. In Job 2, we are given a heavenly insight where God boasts about how Job is handling all the things he is experiencing. He accepted the suffering he faced in a righteous sort of way.

I believe Job accepted what he was going through because he was expecting a certain outcome. Job's words at the end of chapter one indicate that he accepted his circumstances as being from God's hand. He lost everything—everything but his health. We see this in Job 1:20. When everything was lost to Job, he arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground. He worshiped God and said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

After he lost his health in Job 2, when his wife urged him to curse God and die, he responded in Job 2:10, "You speak as one of the foolish women. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?" In all of this, Job did not sin with his lips. He endured what he was going through patiently, which is phenomenal because I cannot comprehend the level of suffering that Job is depicted as experiencing in this passage. He accepted his suffering and faced it righteously, receiving it as from God.

As I have pointed out over the last several weeks, it is worth noting again that just because Job suffered in this way from the hand of God does not mean that every time someone in this world suffers, they are receiving that directly from the hand of God. We should not extrapolate.

From Job's experience, we see that this is the way the world often works. However, that is not what the Scriptures reveal. In this instance, we observe that Job is experiencing suffering that comes from the hand of God, and he is accepting it. To this point, Job endured hardship patiently and accepted suffering righteously because he recognized that the same God who had blessed him was also the God who was testing him. He expected that the same God would vindicate him.

In Job's mind, and in ours, the world operates in a certain way. Sometimes, the outcomes we expect arise because that is how the world seems to function. Job anticipated a specific outcome based on certain laws or principles established in his time. The prevailing worldview during Job's era, when this was written, was based on what is called the law of retribution. This law is essentially a principle of cause and effect, which we also tend to use to interpret the world.

We think of the principle in the New Testament of reaping and sowing: you reap what you sow, and you will harvest what you plant. This concept aligns with what we refer to as the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. We live according to this basic cause-and-effect understanding. If I do the right things, then the right things will happen to me—until it doesn't seem to work that way.

In many respects, things do work according to this principle because it reflects the way God has orchestrated the world. However, if we read the Bible, particularly in Genesis chapters one, two, and three, we see that the world is not exactly as God originally intended it to be. It is a broken world, marred by the brokenness of sin. Yet, Job endured patiently because he expected the right outcome, believing that his righteousness would lead to a favorable result.

Expected the right outcome, Job maintained his integrity. Another way of saying that is that he maintained that he was righteous. Through all the things that he had gone through and all that he had experienced, including the loss of everything, he knows himself better than other people. He knows in the integrity of his heart that he has done nothing that would be worthy of this kind of devastation. He is not deserving of what he is going through because he has this worldview of cause and effect with God—the law of retribution. He believes that he has done everything right; therefore, right things should happen to him. The things that are happening to him do not appear to be right or righteous in this situation, so he expects vindication.

The fascinating thing is that Job's three friends—Bildad, Zophar, and Eliphaz—also have the identical worldview, but they see it from a different perspective. They believe in the law of retribution and cause and effect as well. When they see all of these things happening to Job, what do they assume based on their worldview? They conclude that Job is experiencing this because he is secretly unrighteous; he is getting what he deserves. Job is going to say, "I don't deserve this," and his friends will respond, "Clearly, you do. If you would just be honest with us, with everyone else, and with yourself, everything would be fine." That is going to be their indictment against Job. They share the same worldview but interpret it from a different perspective.

Despite this, we find at the end of chapter two that Job's friends sat with him and mourned with him. They sat down with him on the ground. Verse 13 of chapter 2 says they were there for seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was great. Job had an expectation of vindication as he sat in the dust, in his pain, in silent contemplation. Seven days and seven nights of silence, seven days and seven nights of waiting, seven days and seven nights of wondering when vindication would come—and it didn't come, not yet. It just continues.

What happens when things don't happen the way that we expect or the way that we think they should? What happens when the world doesn't work the way we believe?

It's supposed to work. We have this worldview; it should follow this pattern, and it doesn't. Now we see Job's response after seven days and seven nights of silence and contemplation, thinking about everything that's going on through his worldview and trying to understand it. Your worldview is how you process the things that you're facing in this world—your core values, your core beliefs. Job is trying to figure this out, and after seven days and seven nights, he opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.

Chapter three, verse one, says that Job's unmet expectations result in an existential crisis. He is trying to process everything that he is going through in the best way that he knows how. When he gets to the end of his contemplation, he experiences this existential crisis. What is an existential crisis? Well, we turn to the compendium of human knowledge, Wikipedia. It defines this as a moment at which an individual questions if their life has meaning, purpose, or value. This seems entirely meaningless. There cannot possibly be a purpose in this. This makes no sense. What I'm going through—doesn't that exactly reflect what Job is experiencing?

In this passage, Job chapter 3 is a poem where Job is expressing his mindset in the midst of this existential crisis. What does he say? Look at verse 11: "Why did I not die at birth? Why did I not perish when I came forth from the womb? Why did the knees receive me, or why the breasts that I should nurse?" In verse 16, he asks, "Or why was I not hidden like a stillborn child, like infants who never saw the light?" In verse 20, he questions, "Why is light given to him who is in misery, and life to the bitter soul?" Finally, in verse 23, he wonders, "Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden?"

Hidden and whom God has hedged in. Why, if this is the ultimate outcome of my life, is there no purpose to it? This is absolutely meaningless. That's his frame of mind in this moment. There is no explanation for this. You can almost expect Job to speak forth the words of the preacher, many believed to be Solomon, from Ecclesiastes chapter one, verse two: "Vanities of vanities, all is vanity." Another translation renders it this way: "Utterly meaningless, everything is meaningless."

Maybe you have found yourself in a place like that before. That's where Job was. Or maybe you've been one of Job's friends, there with someone in that moment. Here in Job 3, we have Job's reaction to the total destabilization of everything in his world, and his reaction is actually a fairly common reaction. It may not be the right reaction, but it's a fairly common reaction.

What Job is experiencing in this moment, as we read the text, becomes very clear: Job was suicidal. That's what's going on. I'm not sure that there's any other way to interpret what we read in the text here in Job chapter 3.

In another couple of places in the passage, the whole poetic structure of this chapter is built upon three ideas. The first idea is Job's view that it may have been better that he was never conceived or born. Verse three states, "May the day perish on which I was born and the night in which it was said, 'A male child is conceived.'" It would have been better if I had never been conceived and had never been born.

The second framework for this chapter is his further view that if conceived, it would have been better if he had just been stillborn or died immediately after birth. Verse 11 asks, "Why did I not die at birth? Why did I not perish when I came forth from the womb?"

The third branch on which this is built is his wish that he could just die. Verse 20 questions, "Why is light given to him who is in misery and life to the bitter soul who longed for death?" Verse 21 continues, but...

It does not come and search for it more than hidden treasures. I suggest to you that this is the same sentiment of the Apostle Paul when he writes his second letter to the Corinthians. In Second Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 8, it says this: "For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of the trouble which we came into in Asia." He speaks of himself and his traveling companions, his associates, saying, "We were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves."

Point number four on your outline: Job's unresolved suffering begs for a final resolution. As he sits in the dust, he thinks about his loss—the loss of his seven sons, his three daughters, all of his wealth, his business, his health, and everything he has experienced. He goes back and forth through all these things, examining every area of his life. He contemplates, "What could I have possibly done to bring this upon myself?" As he tries to filter all that he is going through through the worldview that he has in that moment, everything seems to remain in a state of stasis at the bottom. His unresolved suffering begs for a final resolution, and in his mind, the final resolution at this point, given all that he has suffered, could only possibly be death.

Now, I don't want to in any way make light of this. I don't want to be even slightly casual about what is going on here in this passage because this is an extremely heavy topic. Our concern for being casual about it has led a number of Bible teachers and commentators to say things like, "No, Job wasn't going through a time of having suicidal thoughts. Job wasn't suicidal here in this passage at all." However, I think that we need to acknowledge what exactly is going on in this passage. I don't know any other way to read it. Suicidal thoughts are one of the things that suffering people are confronted with, whether we want to admit it or not.

Believe it or not, in 2017, the last statistics from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) indicated that suicide was the second leading cause of death among individuals ages 10 to 34 and the fourth leading cause of death among individuals 35 to 54. It's a sobering consideration.

Today is the day before Veterans Day. Every day, when I drive home from work, I live in Sam Valley. I come to the intersection at Cloverdale Road and 78, and on the hillside, there is a makeshift monument by the individual who owns the property, with 22 crosses to signify the 22 lives, on average, that are taken every day by suicide among those in the armed services.

For the last three years, life expectancy has decreased in the United States of America, in some respects due to the rise in suicide and the increase in deaths by opioid addictions, which oftentimes involve people who are deeply suicidal. This is a significant issue, and in a gathering this size, it is absolutely certain that there are some here today who have contemplated taking their own life or who have experienced the despair that Job faced.

In Job 3, we see the heaviness of his situation. Turn just a couple of pages over to Job 6 and look at verse 8. I am going to read from a different translation, so it might be a little different than what you have in your hands. The New Living Translation states, "Job says, 'Oh, that I might have my request and that God would grant my desire. Here’s my wish, here’s my prayer: Oh, that God would grant my wish.'"

In verse 9, he continues, "I wish he would crush me. I wish he would reach out his hand and kill me." Now remember, this is a righteous man, a very pious man. Righteous, religious, pious people can find themselves in a place like Job, not just Job but also Elisha, the great prophet.

The Old Testament presents a very difficult situation, which is recorded in 1 Kings chapter 19. I am reading from the New Living Translation. In 1 Kings 19, verse 4, it states, "Then Elisha went on alone into the wilderness, traveling all day. He sat down under a solitary broom tree and prayed that he might die." This is his prayer: "I have had enough, Lord. Take my life, for I am no better than my ancestors who have already died."

I hope that you are never in a place where you pray, "God, just take my life." However, let's acknowledge that it happens. That is what happened to Elisha, and it is also what is happening to Job in this situation. Unfortunately, some who desire to die make good on that desire by making an irreversible choice to end their life. I feel compelled to talk about this because I have been there, helping to pick up the pieces with families after people have taken their lives.

I don't think we can discuss suffering in a broken and fallen world without confronting this aspect of brokenness. There are times when people pray to die. How do we resolve this situation with Job? We can't simply push it aside and say, "Well, hey, it's okay because in the end everything was restored to him and everything was better, so it's going to be okay." We can't dismiss it like that because when Job expresses these feelings, he has no prospect of restoration. He has zero hope that everything is going to be okay; he has lost everything.

So, how do we resolve this situation with Job? I believe we resolve it by recognizing point number five on your outline: Job resolved to leave his life in God's hands. In the shadow of great suffering, as he declared his desire to die, he did not lose sight of that resolution.

Make the decision to die. He recognized that it was God who gave life, and it was only God who should take life. Yes, he prayed, "God, take my life," but he did not take his own life. This is an important consideration: the person who has the concept of God, even when that concept does not seem to answer the questions of why in the midst of suffering, must give themselves into the hands of God. It is your decision whether you live or die.

I think this was Paul's ultimate conclusion when he expresses that he was despairing of life in Second Corinthians. Reading again from Second Corinthians 1, verse 8: "For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of the trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, so that we should not trust in ourselves but that we would trust in God who raises the dead."

Then we would trust in God who delivered us from so great a death and does deliver us, in whom we trust that He will still deliver us. What does Paul encourage himself with? God delivered me in the past from sin and from death and from every other thing. He is delivering me right now, even though I am still suffering the weight and the burden of the things that I am going through, and He will still deliver me. That was Paul's hope; his hope was in God entirely—past, present, and future. He encouraged his heart to hope in God.

This is exactly what the psalmist does when you read in the Psalms. The psalmist talks about all of these waves and billows crashing over him. He feels like he is in a crushing storm, and the waves are just bombarding him. How does the psalmist encourage himself? He hopes in God. That is his encouragement: hope in God. I will still trust in You; I will hope in You, even when things seem hopeless. The hope of the despairing soul is the hope of the Savior, the hope of the Savior who has delivered us.

Delivering us and will still deliver us. Paul continues this thought a few chapters later, and it's interesting to see the change in the wording. A few chapters later, when we get to 2 Corinthians 4, he returns to this thought. In 1 and 2 Corinthians, he said we were burdened beyond measure and hard pressed to the point that we despaired even of life. The sentence of death was upon us.

Then he says this three chapters later in 2 Corinthians 4: "Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though the outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." While we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

He redirected his focus, as Pastor Mark was talking about about four weeks ago, to those things that are eternal, setting his mind on things above where Christ is seated. He would write to the Romans in Romans 8:18, "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us."

Job endured hardship patiently, but he had an existential crisis when things did not work out the way that he thought they should or would. However, he resolved to put his life in the hand of God. In those situations where someone is facing a similar outlook, we have to encourage our hearts and encourage their hearts to hope in God and trust in Him. We need to come alongside them, walk with them in their pain, and direct them to the Lord. This is a very necessary ministry.

On that point, I want to give some final practical thoughts. These are the same practical thoughts that I teach in my class on pastoral ministry. I teach a class at the Calvary Chapel Bible College on church planting, and part of it is on practical pastoral ministry. I talk about these very same things.

You are ministering to someone who is suffering, and they seem to have lost hope. It is necessary, in those moments, to ask some very pointed questions. I am grateful because there is someone very near to me in my life who is going through a difficult situation. Someone had the wherewithal and the understanding to ask very pointed questions like these: Have you had thoughts of harming yourself or taking your life?

I have had this conversation with at least four or five people over the years. Sometimes people say, "Well, don't ask those questions because you might trigger them to take their life." No, you need to be very clear and ask very specific questions. Have you contemplated harming yourself or taking your life?

Some people say, "Well, they're only doing this for attention." If they are doing this for attention and you take it very seriously and follow these steps, they will never do that again, I promise you. But if they are not doing it for attention, you might save their life. So, you ask them, "Have you considered harming yourself or taking your life?"

In the several times I have had this conversation with someone, it came to my mind that this person might be contemplating suicide. When I asked that question, they very quietly admitted, "Yes." The second question is, "Have you considered how you might do this?" They might respond, "Yes." Then you ask, "What is your plan?"

I have sat with several people as they have told me exactly what their plan is, and sometimes you are shocked and stunned. I cannot believe that they have thought of this and that they actually have a plan. As they tell me what their plan is, I then ask, "Have you decided when you're going to do this or done anything to work toward doing this?" If the answer is "Yes," what do you do?

I have had this happen a couple of times, sitting in an office on a Sunday morning in between services. I am praying with someone, and it becomes clear that something is not right in the way they are talking with me. I say, "Hey, let's step back into the office here," and I ask them these questions. If the indications are "Yes," this is what we do:

I say, "Listen, who's your doctor? We're going to reach out to your doctor," or we call the non-emergency number with the Escondido Police Department. It's 839-4722. There it is right there. We call the Escondido Police Department and ask, "Would you please send..."

Pert over here, what spurt? It's the Psychiatric Emergency Response Team. It's a police officer with a mental health professional who shows up in a very casual way, not with lights and sirens. They come in, and they know how to help a person in that situation.

Now, understand, you might say it can be really hard to have that kind of conversation, and I might be embarrassed to say those things. It is much easier to have that conversation than to sit with the family whose daughter or son just took their life. I've done that, and I hope that I never have to do it again, but I know that I probably will. In a gathering this large, it is very likely there are some of you who have a plan and have thought about it. If that's you, we want to be there with you to walk with you through it. That's part of the reason why we make such a big deal about prayer here at the church.

One Sunday, while we were sitting in here, one of our pastors disarmed a man who had a gun and was going to take his life at his home, in his driveway. It's real. I think one of the things that Job's situation teaches us in this passage is that it happens to religious people. Some people say all Christians don't experience this. Yes, they do. Yes, they do.

Now, I realize this is maybe the heaviest message I've given in a long time, but I think it's a message that needs to be heard. That's why, when we got to this passage, we said we have to talk about this. I spent two days this week working with the fire department, talking with every single person who's a part of the fire department to discuss these very same issues. The suicide rate among firefighters is higher than among police officers, and it's about as high as those who are coming out of military experiences with post-traumatic stress disorder. It's a big deal, and we need to acknowledge that it is a big deal. There's a way forward in the midst of it.

Would you stand with me as we close in prayer? God, I pray that you would take these words and that you would use them, even though it is a very heavy text and topic. I ask that you would help us to comprehend the suffering of those who are going through difficult times.

That you would help us to know some very practical ways to reach out and minister to them. To sit and weep with those who weep and to minister to the pain that they're going through. Father, it is clear that there are times when we can find ourselves in a place where all the ways we normally filter or process the things that are going on in our lives don't seem to work in that moment. We can become so despairing, and there is very clearly an enemy who loves death, who comes to steal, to kill, and to destroy, and has robbed many people of the life that You give.

So, God, we pray against that. We ask that You would bind the work of the enemy and that Your word of life would be an encouragement to the person who is suffering. God, would You draw near to those, just as the Scriptures say, "Draw near to those who are brokenhearted," and minister Your grace and comfort to them. We pray this in Jesus' name.