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Nov 27, 2022

Waiting is the Hardest Part

Waiting is the Hardest Part

Passage: Job 6:1-13

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: 2022 Advent: Waiting is the Hardest Part

Keywords: sin, live, struggle, renewal, wait, rise

Like an eroding patch of earth is our capacity to wait patiently. Nearly everything is faster, more readily accessible. The less we have to wait, the less we are able to. There is no following Christ without having to wait upon Him–that is to rest, trust, persevere, and hope while our struggle(s) persist. There is a greater point and practice to Advent than only looking back to the day of His first arrival, as momentous and miraculous as that was. We remember His first appearance then so that we might “practice” waiting and hoping for his reappearance in time. But let’s first be honest with ourselves: this waiting is the hardest part of faith, and especially when all the light has gone out of your world. So we begin this path through Advent listening to someone in the dark. To Job.

Readings & Scriptures

PREPARATION: Isaiah 40:28-31
LEADER: Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the LORD,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.

PEOPLE: He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.

LEADER: Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;

ALL: but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH/SCRIPTURE READING/CORPORATE PRAYER:)
LEADER: Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!
2 O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas for mercy!
3 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
4 But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared.
5 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
6 my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.
7 O Israel, hope in the Lord!
For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
and with him is plentiful redemption.
8 And he will redeem Israel
from all his iniquities

ALL: Thanks be to God.

CENTRAL TEXT: Job 6:1-13; 14:1-14
Job 6:1 Then Job answered and said:

Job 6:2 “Oh that my vexation were weighed,
and all my calamity laid in the balances!
3 For then it would be heavier than the sand of the sea;
therefore my words have been rash.
4 For the arrows of the Almighty are in me;
my spirit drinks their poison;
the terrors of God are arrayed against me.
5 Does the wild donkey bray when he has grass,
or the ox low over his fodder?
6 Can that which is tasteless be eaten without salt,
or is there any taste in the juice of the mallow?
7 My appetite refuses to touch them;
they are as food that is loathsome to me.

Job 6:8 “Oh that I might have my request,
and that God would fulfill my hope,
9 that it would please God to crush me,
that he would let loose his hand and cut me off!
10 This would be my comfort;
I would even exult in pain unsparing,
for I have not denied the words of the Holy One.
11 What is my strength, that I should wait?
And what is my end, that I should be patient?
12 Is my strength the strength of stones, or is my flesh bronze?
13 Have I any help in me,
when resource is driven from me?

Job 14:1 “Man who is born of a woman
is few of days and full of trouble.
2 He comes out like a flower and withers;
he flees like a shadow and continues not.
3 And do you open your eyes on such a one
and bring me into judgment with you?
4 Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?
There is not one.
5 Since his days are determined,
and the number of his months is with you,
and you have appointed his limits that he cannot pass,
6 look away from him and leave him alone,
that he may enjoy, like a hired hand, his day.

Job 14:7 “For there is hope for a tree,
if it be cut down, that it will sprout again,
and that its shoots will not cease.
8 Though its root grow old in the earth,
and its stump die in the soil,
9 yet at the scent of water it will bud
and put out branches like a young plant.
10 But a man dies and is laid low;
man breathes his last, and where is he?
11 As waters fail from a lake
and a river wastes away and dries up,
12 so a man lies down and rises not again;
till the heavens are no more he will not awake
or be roused out of his sleep.
13 Oh that you would hide me in Sheol,
that you would conceal me until your wrath be past,
that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me!
14 If a man dies, shall he live again?
All the days of my service I would wait,
till my renewal should come.

CONFESSION OF SIN:

ALL: We may not know the depths of Job’s grief, but we may be familiar with its shape. Like him we wonder why, as we long for an end to what is. And as we wonder we find a new temptation: to think You indifferent to our moment–or worse, with intent to harm. We look for answers we cannot have, and instead create our own. In our grief forgive us for ascribing to you less than love. Forgive us for assuming too much, while seeing so little. We are frail. This you know. Even as we despise what has overcome us, help us believe both the sufferings of your Son and the proof of love it shows.

ASSURANCE OF PARDON: 1 Peter 2:22-25

LEADER: He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

ALL: Thanks be to God.

BENEDICTION: Psalm 27:13-14

LEADER: I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the LORD
in the land of the living!
Wait for the LORD;

ALL: be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the LORD! Amen.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. The thing you ever waited for the longest–maybe still waiting for? Talk about the experience.
  2. For the sake of getting your bearings in this narrative again, what’s the context of Job? What happened? How did things get here? Who are these friends and why did they start talking after sitting silent for 7 days?
  3. More preliminaries: before we set out on this path through Advent, let’s define our terms. What do the scriptures mean by “waiting upon the Lord?” If it’s more than simply biding our time, what is it? Feel free to use a concordance and look up the numerous instances of the words translates as “waiting.” What do you learn? What synonyms might we use? 
  4. Now that you have a basic grasp of the meaning of the word, what might it look like for Job to “wait upon the Lord” in the middle of his plight?
  5. Name all his complaints. All are worth sympathy. Which are based on incomplete information? What value might there be in recognizing the incomplete understanding of your condition as we see Job’s in his?
  6. If time avails, read the final few chapters in Job–those when the Lord steps from the shadows and addresses all within earshot. From what you read in chapter 42 from Job, how would his words there “answer” his lament in the passages we read?
  7. Now, how would Job answer those laments if he knew of the One who suffered, died, and was raised? What must we hear–even preach to ourselves–in conditions even slightly similar to Job’s?

QUOTES: 

 

  • Why does it make a man feel better to read a book about a man like himself feeling bad? Walker Percy, The Message in a Bottle
  • . . .how small a part of any situation is the fragment that we see. Derek Kidner

 

  • Adverse conditions create an optimum context for reflection. Tremper Longman III
  • Advent begins in the dark. Fleming Rutledge
  • Behind lament lurks hope. Yeah, grief becomes a kind of invocation, doesn’t it? A prayer to be filled? Bono

 

  • “I speak for a sorrowful people—for the ignorant and the poor. We rise up to labour and lie down to sleep, and night is only a pause between one burden and another. Fear is our daily companion—the fear of want, the fear of war, the fear of cruel death, and of still more cruel life. But all this we could bear if we knew that we did not suffer in vain; that God was beside us in the struggle, sharing the miseries of His own world. For the riddle that torments the world is this: Shall Sorrow and Love be reconciled at last, when the promised Kingdom comes?”  Dorothy L. Sayers, The Man Born to Be King: A Play-Cycle on the Life of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ
  • . . .the religious experience awaits the devastation or a trauma, not to bring you happiness or comfort, necessarily, but to bring about an expansion of the self — the possibility to expand as a human being, rather than contract. . . .This is [my late son] Arthur’s gift to me, one of the many. It is his munificence that’s made me a different person. [My wife] Susie, too. We’ve never felt more engaged in things. I say all this with huge caution and a million caveats, but I also say it because there are those who think there is no way back from the catastrophic event. That they will never laugh again. But there is, and they will. Nick Cave
  • Tsuyu no yo
    wa tsuyu no yo
    nagara sari nagara
    [    The world of dew --
    A world of dew it is indeed,And yet, and yet . . .]
    -Kobayashi Issa, c. 19th century [source here]
  • I almost lost Christ in the waves and blasts of despair and blasphemy against God, but God was moved by the prayers of saints and began to take pity on me and rescued my soul from the lowest hell.  Martin LutherIf I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world. C.S. Lewis
  • The sages have a hundred maps to give
    That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
    They rattle reason out through many a sieve
    That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
    And all these things are less than dust to meBecause my name is Lazarus and I live.
    -G.K. Chesterton, “The Convert”
  • If the book of Job models anything, it is helplessness. It sabotages any plans for enlightenment and leaves us asking. Apart from the Gospel, it is depressing and baffling and not a likely source of comfort; but when read in conjunction with the Gospel, and the passion narratives, it finds its solution in the cross of Christ: Job isn’t the only character in the Bible forsaken by God. C.J. Green

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