Key Truth: Job is coming to end of what this world has to offer as he is stripped of every possible comfort leaving him to hope in the only Redeemer that can restore him in his suffering.

Introduction:

Q: What brought you the most comfort during any prolonged suffering that you have endured? What have you seen bring comfort to others amid prolonged suffering?

“The voice of protest firmly believes that the Judge of all the earth will do right, but longs for reassurance that ultimately he will indeed do so, unmistakeably and visibly. In the meantime, the struggle goes on, and the protesting questions remain. That is the essence of biblical lament. It is faith struggling with vertigo over the chasm between what it knows to be true about God and the realities of what it sees or experiences in a fallen world.”

Christopher J. H. Wright, The Message of Lamentations

Job 19:1-6: Job’s Plea: Of Torment and Disgrace

“(Job) has just now accused God of persecuting him, but at the same time he knows that God is just and does not want human beings to suffer. These are the two sides of the one God. This painful, dialectical approach to God is one of the most profound messages of the Book of Job.”

Gustavo Gutierrez, On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent

Q: Have you ever been broken by the attempted comfort of others who were at a safe distance from your suffering? Have you ever heaped attempted comfort on the suffering of others from a safe distance?

Job’s Lament:

Of Being Stripped and Becoming a Stranger:

Job 19:7-22:

“Job’s problem is a common one: whenever we do not see the whole plan we tend to assume there is a fault with it.”

Derek Thomas, The Storm Breaks: Job Simply Explained

Q: Have you ever been stripped of your glory and cut off from all comfort to feel like a stranger? Did any good come from it?

Job’s Only Hope:

Of a Redeemer and Judgment:

Job 19:23-29

“In this passage Job is expressing genuine faith, for he makes an unconditional affirmation about God’s commitment to him against all circumstantial evidence to the contrary. Only by pure faith can a person believe in God’s justice amidst suffering, assured within his heart that out of his sorrow God will restore his honor.”

John E. Hartley, The Book of Job

Q: What is your ultimate hope? How do you think the story ends for you?

Application:

Job 19 teaches us that:

- our friends will break us with their words at times

-we may be stripped of all comfort leaving us to feel like a total stranger

-our ultimate hope is in God as the just Redeemer who will meet us in our suffering

“Though the full Christian meaning which (the words ‘I know that my Redeemer lives.’) hold for us today was merely a glimmer of first light before the dawn for Job, the God in whom he trusts is the God made known to us in Jesus as the Kinsman-Redeemer and Vindicator of those who trust him. How marvelous that Job could have said so much, knowing so little! What a rebuke to some of us, who know so much more of God than Job ever did, that we trust him so little.”

David Atkinson, The Message of Job

Communion

Benediction:

Romans 8:12-17