Sermon Transcript
Glad to be with you all. Good morning.
Uh, Nate is never one to toot his horn, so I’m gonna say something on his behalf so that you all can know. Um, Nate, just under the radar and unbeknownst to many of you, just finished his Master of Divinity program at Seminary So, we’re excited for that, Nate.
Nate doesn’t wanna be the center of attention, but we need to celebrate, right, as a family for those things. So, we love you. This church loves you and your family. Well, I want you to imagine, friends, as we’re continuing in our sermon series on the book of Job, I want you to imagine you’ve just been informed that your company is gonna be downsizing. That you’re no longer going to have your contract.
Maybe that’s actually happened to you. Maybe that’s a real scenario for you. But as you imagine that and you try to figure out what your next step will be, imagine then a friend coming up to you and say, God surely has something better for you. Or let’s say you’ve just learned that your body is battling something that the doctors can’t quite figure out, but it’s causing you great physical pain, and sleeplessness and mental anguish and exhaustion. And so your friend says, you know, I know exactly what that’s like because I had a friend who had the exact same thing happen to them.
And then they go on to tell you all about what happened to their friend and what worked for their friend, so therefore you shouldn’t worry.
Maybe you’ve experienced a great loss and your heart is aching with grief unlike anything you’ve ever known, and someone says, cheer up, This will all turn out for your good. You know that. Or your parent is on a ventilator. Don’t worry, your friend texts. I’ve been doing some reading about your parent’s condition, and the good news is 60% of people with that same condition recover.
Your friend loses a battle with cancer, and your friend offers, he’s in a better place, you know.
These are real statements, aren’t they? These are real statements that real people have heard. From real people who are well-meaning in response to real suffering. We all know the awkwardness of trying to think of what to say in those moments when somebody is suffering. We’ve probably heard similar statements.
We may have even said similar statements ourselves. As believers in Jesus, I hope you agree with me that our calling is to walk alongside one another in times of grief. Grief and pain. I hope you agree with me on that. There’s scriptures, especially in the New Testament, that call us to mourn with those who mourn, Romans 12.
We’re to bear one another’s burdens, Galatians 6. We’re to be compassionate and gentle and patient with one another, Ephesians 4. Yet sometimes I think, and I know this from experience, in our efforts, or in my effort, to reach out to a suffering Sometimes we unwittingly hurt the very person that we wanna help. We might hurt them by what we say. We might hurt them by what we do.
We might hurt them by what we don’t say or by what we don’t do. And we know that silence is sometimes uncomfortable, so sometimes we’ll just rush in to try to fill in the silence and then maybe say something hurtful or use some sort of cliché that sounds good but then ends up hurting the person. Causing more wounds to our already— our friend’s already pierced heart. Maybe the suffering that the loved one that we’re wanting to comfort is experiencing, maybe what they’re experiencing threatens our own view of God, so maybe we’ll say something to defend that view more for our own benefit than anything else, but then what we say wounds them further. Or sometimes a friend or a loved one suffers in a way that we don’t understand.
Maybe it’s not something we’ve ever had to deal with, and so we think think we have nothing to offer them, and so we end up not saying anything at all. And then we realize, oh, not saying anything is also hurtful. So what do we do?
What do we do? How do we comfort people? What do we— what do we do when a friend or a loved one is suffering? How do we love them? How do we support them?
How do we journey with them and walk alongside them them in a way that’s encouraging, that, that, that is edifying, that builds them up, that doesn’t water down truth, but that is also just sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit? How do we do that? How do we help rather than hurt? That’s what we’ll consider today as we take a closer look at 3 guys that we’ve not really talked about in our sermon series on the book of Job yet. These are identified in Job 2 as Job’s 3 friends.
We meet a 4th friend later. We’re not going to talk about him. We’re going to talk about the 3 friends, the 3 main ones who, in Job 2, are introduced to us. We know by this point that Job, if you’ve been following with us, has lost everyone and everything that he cares about. And this is devastating also because he doesn’t deserve any of it.
Job doesn’t. God even said so. And then along come Job’s 3 friends. This is what it says in Job chapter 2, verse 11 through 13. When Job’s 3 friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite heard about all the trouble— these are guys who are non-Israelites, they’re living outside of the area— when they heard about all the trouble that had come upon Job, it says they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with their friend and to comfort him.
When they saw Job from a distance, they could hardly recognize him. Apparently the suffering had been going on now in such a way it was beginning to perhaps affect Job’s appearance. You know, you can just tell something’s weighing on somebody. It just affects their appearance, and that seems to be happening here. It says, they began to weep aloud.
They tore their robes, sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground with him for 7 days and 7 nights, and no one said a word to him because they saw how great his suffering was. Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? Isn’t it? But then a few chapters later in chapter 16, verse 2, Job says to the exact same 3 friends, you are miserable comforters, all of you.
Um, what happened? That’s a good question. What happened? How did they all of a sudden become miserable comforters? Job’s story teaches us so many things, specifically, most specifically about God’s providential control over all things.
Things and even over our suffering. But it also tells us a few lessons about how we can best respond to the suffering of others. And so today I’ve entitled this message, How Not to Be a Miserable Comforter. We’re going to consider, one, what the friends got right. It’s not going to be very long, but we’re going to cover that.
Number 2, we’re going to look at what they got wrong. And 3, we’re going to look at some big picture things that you and I always have to keep in our minds and take into whenever we encounter people who are going through suffering. This is for us helping others. That’s what this message is about. What they got right.
These 3 guys, Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar— you probably have 3 friends with that exact same name, right? I don’t. They did what great friends do at first. They were faithful at first. Bad news, you know, seems to always kind of travel fast, and so apparently they had heard from a distance about Job’s suffering.
The news spread throughout the countryside, I’m sure. And so they traveled together to go minister to their friend. Notice in chapter 2 that I just read what they did. I’ll tell you. One, they purposed together to go minister to Job.
This was picking up from wherever they were and meeting together. We’re gonna go some distance. We’re gonna inconvenience ourselves. We’re gonna go be with our friend. Number 2, 2, they experienced deep grief and compassion just upon seeing him, even from a distance.
3, they entered into mourning, it says, weeping aloud with him by tearing their robes and throwing dust on their heads. And that was customary back then. You’ll see that in Scripture. It was a way to— dust and ashes were sort of a physical reminder of what Job had experienced. Some of the suffering.
And then 4, they sat in silence as they observed Job’s immense suffering. So, these guys did what good comforters do. They did what faithful friends do. They were present physically. They were present emotionally.
They were engaged in Job’s time of grief. They joined him in his sorrow, and then they kept quiet, at least at first. The fact that they’re silent is not simply a sign of sympathy. It’s a sign that there are times when words are just inappropriate.
So these guys said nothing because, I mean, what do you even begin to say to somebody who is grieving and has experienced what Job has experienced? As I think about these parents who have gone through the hell they just went through this last week, and they’re in Uvalde, like, what do you even say to somebody like that?
You’ve probably gone through something like that, and your friends may want to say something to you, but sometimes silence is the best thing there. And so they did these things. It says for 7 days. That’s amazing. So how should we respond when others go through suffering?
Let’s start by doing what these guys did. Just be there. We often think that we need to say something important or profound or inspiring to cheer up our friends, help them look on the bright side, when sometimes the best thing we can do is just be present and not say a thing. Now, there are sometimes when our presence physically could be not helpful or not desirable, but even then, there are other ways to still communicate through your actions, your love, your desire to be with your friend in this time of need. Need.
I know that Shannon and I have experienced that in the last 11-plus years here from many of you. We’ve gone through times of grief and sorrow and lament, and many of you have walked with us. Thank you for that. I’m sure many of you could share similar stories. So you’re probably like, okay, Steve, that’s great.
Tell us some more good things that these guys did. And that’s kind of the problem, because it just sort of stops there. These guys were great friends and comforters until they weren’t. These guys show us how to respond when somebody’s going through grief and tragedy in their life, the depths of pain, and then they show us how not to do that. Because beginning in chapter 4 of Job, these guys engage in a series of speeches to Job.
The speeches from these guys, just these 3 friends— again, there’s a 4th friend later on— just these 3 guys, the speeches run from chapter 4 through chapter 25.
So think about this. Job’s actual losses take just 2 brief chapters, and then the extended sermons that these guys launch into are for 20-plus chapters. And I wonder what agonized Job more.
His initial suffering was certainly painful, but I don’t think that these extended diatribes helped either. Here’s what they got wrong. Let’s diagnose this. The second point, what they got wrong. Let’s start with Eliphaz.
We’re not going to read all the things that these guys said and did. Eliphaz is the first of the friends, so we— the fact he talks first, we assume he’s the oldest, the leader of the group. He says this in chapter 4, his first speech. Oh yeah, he did more than one speech. Okay, so Job 4, verse 1 through 8.
Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied, if someone ventures a word with you, Job, will you be impatient? But who can He’s like, okay, this silence is getting a little bit awkward, so do you mind if I just sort of talk to fill the air here? He says, think about how you have instructed many, Job. He’s buttering him up here. Think about how you’ve instructed many, how you have strengthened feeble hands.
Your words have supported those who stumbled. You have strengthened faltering knees. That’s good. But now, Job, trouble comes to you and you are discouraged. It strikes you and you are dismayed.
Should not your piety be your confidence and your blamelessness your ways your hope. Job, if you were more pious, I think you’d be feeling more confident right now. Job, if you were more blameless, I think you would feel more hopeful right now. Consider now who, being innocent, has ever perished. As I have observed, Eliphaz says, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble, they, they reap it.
And then Eliphaz continues into Job 5. He says, call if you will, but who will answer you? He’s like, okay, enough with the crying, Job. Because God’s not going to answer you. To which of the holy ones are you going to turn now?
Resentment kills the fool and envy slays the simple. Using that term fool and simple there, those terms were synonymous with calling somebody a sinner, like a pagan. So it’s a bit of an insult here. He says, I myself have seen a fool taking root, and suddenly his house was cursed. He’s talking about Job.
His children are far from safety. He’s talking about Job. Crushed in court without a Call if you will, and who will answer you? Like, what is that?
What is that? That’s miserable comfort right there. Eliphaz had heard Job cry out in his agony to God, and what Eliphaz is now saying is, okay, it’s time to turn the page, Job. It’s time to move on. God isn’t going to listen to your continual blathering, and neither will anyone else.
So, okay, combining chapters 4 and 5, Eliphaz’s first speech, as well as with what Eliphaz says in his second speech in chapter 15, and then his third speech in chapter 22— we’re not going to get into those things— Eliphaz’s point seems to be that the innocent don’t perish ever, only the guilty do. The innocent don’t suffer, only the guilty. So if you’re reaping trouble, Job, then that must mean that you were planting it. It has to mean that. If there is something going wrong in your life, stop your blubbering and your bellyaching.
Pull yourself together because you must have brought this on yourself, Job. So examine your life and what you’re not doing well or not doing enough of, and then make some amends and everything will fix itself. Easy.
At this point, Job must have felt a little bit like the knights in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a movie from which I’ve quoted before, where these knights are at the bottom of a wall and talking to a guy who’s talking at the top of the wall, and all this guy on the top of the wall is doing is taunting them repeatedly. And they’re trying to engage in a civil conversation, and it goes on and on and on, and at some point they’re just like, is there somebody else up there that I can talk to? Maybe you’ve felt like that before, where one comforter after another is not really offering much of what you’re needing. You’re like, is there anybody Anybody else here I can talk to?
Although the problem here is that there were other guys, and Bildad and Zophar weren’t really any more helpful. In Job 8, Bildad’s perspective is that Job should repent of his obvious wrongdoing. If Job repents, according to Bildad, then all of the material things he had lost would be restored. Bildad says this in chapter 8, when your children sinned against him, meaning God, he gave them over to the penalty of their sin. Hey, Job, you know your children who died, all 10 of them?
It’s their fault. But if you will seek God earnestly and plead with the Almighty, if you are pure and upright, even now he will rouse himself on your behalf, Job. He’ll restore to you your previous prosperous estate. And then Zophar jumps into the conversation beginning in chapter 11, in which he says in verse 5 and 6 of chapter 11, oh, how I wish that God would speak to you, Job, that he would open his lips against you and disclose to you the secrets of wisdom. For true wisdom has 2 sides.
Know this, Job, God has even forgotten some of your sin. The insinuation being here that, Job, you actually deserved worse than what you got, so you should be kind of grateful. And then I really like verse 12 of chapter 11, where Zophar says, the witless can no more become wise than a wild donkey’s colt can be born human. It’s the equivalent of telling Job that a sinner like him will be considered wise and innocent once pigs can fly. That’s kind of the equivalent there.
So, let’s summarize here a little bit. The 3 friends’ argument: they say that God is punishing Job so that he will repent of whatever atrocity he committed to deserve such treatment. From their perspective, Job’s children are dead because they were sinners. It’s their fault, and Job has forgotten God, so that is why these bad things are happening. Happening.
Job must be living in denial, surely, and is simply refusing to recognize it— his sin. Now, one of the biggest problems with this is the way that the 3 friends went about trying to comfort Job had a lot to do with their assumptions. Their assumptions— they were working from an enormous assumption about what God’s justice ought to look like in the world.
And it’s namely this, that every single thing in their minds that happens in the universe operates according to the strict principle of justice. So if you’re good and you’re wise and you honor God, then good things happen to you and God will reward you, right? And if you’re evil and stupid and do sinful things, then bad things happen to you, right? This type of counsel is awfully close, I need to tell you, some pastoral advice I said, this is awfully close to what you’ll hear from a lot of churches and Christian leaders today. You’ll hear them say something like, if you’re sick, it’s because you don’t have enough faith.
Or, if you’re not prospering financially, then you haven’t really totally surrendered to God. The assumption is that if someone suffers a string of disasters, contracts a terminal illness, has a crippling disease, then he or she must not be doing something right. And of course, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar far, they would have their Bible verses to back this up, wouldn’t they? These things are in the Bible. The Bible does say that we reap what we sow.
The Bible does say that God blesses the righteous, but they were overlooking something that the Bible also points out, and that is that the blessings that God gives to the righteous does not always take material form. If it did, how in the world could we explain the anguish and deprivation suffered by martyrs and apostles and faithful Christians around the world throughout the centuries? We couldn’t explain that. By the same token, adversity and calamity in this world, as we’ve seen in Job’s life, are not always a sign of God’s displeasure. So to equate disaster with God’s curse in each and every circumstance is to behave like Job’s miserable comforters who adopted this very overly simplistic approach to Job’s suffering and to how the world works, and God didn’t like it.
He clearly— God condemned their advice. He said this at the end of the book in Job 42:7, fast-forwarding on ahead. After the Lord had said these things to Job, God said to Eliphaz the Temanite, I am angry with you and with your 2 friends because you have not spoken the truth about me. You know how political candidates sometimes will, in a campaign, run a TV ad that says, I approve of this message? God did not approve of Eliphaz’s, Bildad’s, or Zophar’s message.
And so we can gloat a little and say, yeah, good, they got what was coming to them. They shouldn’t have done that. It serves them right.
It’s really easy to pile on to these guys and to ignore the dirty little secret here in this room that I’m just gonna break here for us, and that is that sometimes we have all, or can all, be like these guys on occasion, right? When a Job comes across our path, there are times when we, whether consciously or unconsciously, do the exact same kinds of things that these guys did. And I’ve done this far too many times to count, so I’m talking to you and to me at the same time. For example, have you ever assumed— I, I’ve done this— have you ever assumed that a person’s troubles are the sure sign of God’s displeasure or judgment? This person must be doing something wrong.
Like Jesus’s disciples, who in John chapter 9 encounter a man who had been born blind from birth, and here’s what the disciples asked Jesus. Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Somebody has to have sinned. That’s the only explanation here for this guy being born blind. And Jesus said, neither.
This happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. So God’s doing something else, and we’re not on that same page. We’re only thinking in a very reductionistic way. It’s got to be either this or this. It is foolish for us to try to explain all of the whys of a person’s suffering.
It’s foolish for us to try to discern God’s mind in each and every circumstance. It’s foolish to try to domesticate God, so we shouldn’t even try. We don’t know why anyone suffers. We can’t speak declaratively on God’s behalf. So the lesson for us is to not try to draw lessons for the sufferer.
Instead, offer mercy and pray for them. Them. And in fact, Job wasn’t even looking for these guys’ explanations. He didn’t need explanations. He was looking for mercy.
He says this in chapter 19, have pity on me, my friends, after a number of their speeches. Have pity on me, my friends, have pity, for the hand of God has struck me. He just needs them to be with him. So draw near to those in grace— in grief mercifully. Don’t try to draw a simple life lesson for their Instead, pray urgently and frequently for them, holding the hands of those who are suffering, and walk alongside them.
Another lesson that we need to learn from these guys is knowing when to speak and knowing when not to, right? Sometimes it’s okay to just sit in silence. Now, please don’t misunderstand me. There is a time to speak, and there are truths that the people of God need to hear during times of suffering, but we need to be sure that when we speak, we never do so in a callous way that dismisses or minimizes the person’s pain of living in a broken and fallen world. Look at Jesus’ example.
It was just talked about a moment ago during our worship. In John chapter 11, when his friend Lazarus died, Jesus comes to visit Lazarus, 2 sisters, and we learn from Jesus that there is a time to use words to point a brother or sister to important truths, and then there’s also a time to say nothing at all and to just weep with them.
And when we do speak, we should avoid giving pat or trite, neatly put together answers. I think much of what we’re taught to say in those moments, if we’re not careful, can cut a person’s grief right off at the pass. Saying he or she is in a better place about somebody who’s just died may be true, but it can also cut out the legs from the who is grieving.
It puts them in a place where now they have to almost deny their grief in order to affirm your statement.
Should avoid trite, tidy answers and platitudes and weep with those who weep. Also, we should not be too quick, or we should be careful about being quick, to point out God’s sovereignty, that that’s the answer to everything. Well, God is sovereign. God is sovereign. God is sovereign.
Yes, that’s true. The Bible clearly teaches that God is sovereign. That’s week 1 of this series. You can go back and watch it. The Bible clearly teaches in Romans 8:28 that all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to God’s purpose.
And we’re told that God can take evil and for his children he can turn it and use it for good. That’s the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis. However, just because these things are biblical doesn’t mean that it’s always tactful or helpful to say depending upon that particular moment. Let’s not forget that statement, God means this for good, was actually said by Joseph years after his suffering, not to Joseph during his suffering. Can you imagine Joseph’s angst and frustration had his brothers who threw him into a well then gathered around the well and shouted down, don’t worry, Joseph, God means this for good.
In the same way, soon after the Apostle Paul tells us God works for the good of those who love God and called according to his purpose, those who are in Christ, just a few chapters later he also admonishes us to weep with those who weep. These are all important lessons. One more practical lesson is learning about how not to be a miserable comforter is that in seeking to offer comfort, comfort to those going through grief, we should set our timelines to the side. Instead, we should walk with the grieving in their time and at their pace. Job’s friends were so worn out by how long it was taking Job to get over this loss that Bildad says at one point, how long are you going to keep hunting for words, Job?
It’s like he’s saying, could you hurry this suffering up a little bit, Job? There is no timeline to chart a friend’s grief. You and I know that. There are dear widows and widowers even here in the room, for example, who years after the loss of their spouses still tear up when they talk about the love of their lives. There are parents who have lost a child who hurt each and every day.
There’s nothing wrong with those whose grief lasts until they meet Jesus face to face. There’s nothing wrong. You may want them, I may want them to get over their grief and over their loss and get back to normal, but that might not ever come, or at least not in our timing, at least not in the same way perhaps. So we need to intentionally love them enough to say, I’m with you here for the long haul. Let them grieve at their own pace.
So we’ve looked at what the friends did right, we’ve looked at what they did wrong, we looked at how we can all be like them at times and how we can avoid those same kinds of mistakes. I want to give you 3 sort of big picture things that we have to keep in mind. These are not things that you would share with somebody who’s suffering. These are just things to file away and to cement ourselves to as a person who desires to not be a miserable comforter but to be a good comfort. The first thing we have to take into And remember, big picture is the mystery of suffering, the overall mystery of suffering.
That’s the book of Job, is it not? Sometimes answers don’t come. Suffering can be a mystery sometimes. We’ve already touched on this. We’ve talked about Joseph’s suffering, which seemed needless.
Talked about the suffering of the man born blind, and God was up to something there. The idea that you or I could, whenever we start to suffer, whenever somebody else starts to suffer, figure out precisely what God is trying to do is completely absurd and it’s presumptuous. How could we possibly know all that God has in store? Look at all the stories of suffering we see in Scripture that we see in the world every day. That’s why, when seeking to offer comfort to somebody who is hurting, it’s vital that we not just immediately launch into about how God has used your own suffering in the past and took you through that.
I know it’s human nature to relate other people’s experience to your own, to my own, but one mark of maturity is learning to genuinely enter into the world of another and not talk about yourself.
Suffering is mysterious.
A mark of maturity is to not always filter your story through and their suffering together. There are 2 reasons why this is important. First, everybody’s story is different. You may have gone through the exact same kinds of things that I’ve gone through, and yet those are 2 distinct things. And so to tell somebody, oh, I know what you’re going through, it’s not totally true.
Maybe God gave you a better home after the first one was destroyed, or maybe you’re able to see the good side now now of your friend’s betrayal who stabbed you in the back. But in a fallen and confusing world, it’s entirely possible that your suffering friend may not get there, not in this life. Perhaps some sorrows don’t mend until heaven. And second, even if our stories are similar, our suffering friend may not need to hear that right now, right? At the very least, let’s just listen carefully to the Holy spirit, into the nuances of the story of the sufferer and what they’re processing before we launch in and start talking about God’s sovereignty immediately or trying to draw comparisons with their story and our own or someone else’s that we know.
We should always take into account the profound mystery of suffering and just be in awe of God’s sovereignty and his beauty and his wisdom. And the fact that we may not always have all the answers in this life. Second, we should also take into account, big picture, the complexity of human nature. The complexity of human nature. A one-size-fits-all prescription for handling suffering is bound to fail because not only does suffering come in so many different forms, but sufferers themselves, there’s so many different kinds of temperaments and spiritual spiritual conditions.
We have to consider the complexity of human nature. For instance, if we were only, if we were only spiritual and moral beings, then the first thing you or I would try to do to help a person who is suffering or hurting or depressed would be to get out a list of things for that person to do and say, okay, have you prayed in faith? Have you confessed all your known sin? Have you rebuked the devil? Have you given thanks for God?
Thank God for everything in your life? Have you claimed all the promises of Scripture? Check, check, check. Now, all of these things are in the Bible, but we’re not only spiritual and moral beings. We’re also physical beings.
And so perhaps what a person needs is a break or time alone or a weekend away or a good night’s sleep in addition to other forms of comfort. But we’re also relational beings. So maybe we need a note of encouragement. Maybe a person needs a hug or someone to tell them that they love us, or to someone to just be present with you. Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, like many of us, tended to reduce everything just to the spiritual and the moral.
And so that’s perhaps why they launched into a series of lectures to try to explain to Job what was happening here. And again, that’s really reductionistic if you think about it, but God never reduces things like that for you and for me. He never God never does that. Why? Because he knows you and me intimately.
He knows how we’re made. He’s completely aware of how complex we are in our human nature. So the point is for us to keep near the forefront of our minds is that not every sufferer needs the exact same medicine.
Medicine that works for one may not be the exact same thing that will work for another. I can tell you, I’ve offered counsel and assistance to one person person who is going through the same, the exact same thing as somebody else, and one has worked and one is not. We will not be able to help others face suffering well unless we realize the varieties of suffering and the complexity of human nature. And lastly, the last thing we need to keep in mind, remember, forefront of our mind, is the meaning of grace and the cross. The meaning of grace and the cross, something that Eliphaz Bildad and Zophar didn’t understand.
They didn’t understand grace.
They, like some of us, perhaps see the Bible as a record of people who by living well are rewarded by God and receive his blessing and never face tragedy. In reality, you and I know better. The Bible is a record of people who are so broken and corrupted that they would have never been able to rise above love, their own brokenness and corruption and suffering as well, without the grace of God breaking into their lives, often in the form of disappointment and pain and discouragement and disaster. Job couldn’t fully answer his own questions. His friends couldn’t help him because he and they were not able to see the full picture in their day.
They didn’t know about the conversation happening in heaven in chapter 1 that we talked about between God and Satan. They didn’t know about that, but they also didn’t know about God’s grace and love that would one day be put on display when God sent Jesus to this world. As a comforter, Jesus was and is our model for all things, including how we can comfort others. He doesn’t shield us from suffering in this life, nor does he offer trite pep talks— you can do it— when you and I go through the darkness closing in. When the darkness comes, and it will come— some of you are in that moment right now— what he promises is that he will be with us.
In fact, because of his grace, we often find him most fully in our brokenheartedness and when we’re going through pain. Jesus is so close to sufferers because he is the great sufferer himself. Like Joseph, Jesus knew what it was like to be betrayed by his very brothers. Like Job, Jesus was stricken by undeserved calamity. And on the cross, Jesus took on our sins and absorbed the full sting of justice on our behalf, paying the penalty for our sins.
No one has ever suffered more than Jesus. No one will ever suffer more or could suffer more. And it is the very depth of his love and his grace that can meet our need in our moment of pain. When we’re willing to enter into the pain of another person who is suffering, we are following whose example? Following the example of Jesus, who came to bear our pain and to suffer in our place.
We may never fully understand the meaning of innocent suffering, nor will we value it in any way unless we see it only through the lens of grace and through the cross.
Everything else Everything else just gives us shallow answers, and we’re still in need of healing.
To the sufferers in our lives, may we be less like Job’s friends, and may we be more like the Great Comforter, Jesus himself. Let’s pray. Father, we see ourself in this passage, on the suffering end and on the one trying to help the suffering. We see it, and I pray that you would just remind us of these big picture things about just the mystery of suffering when our answers or when our questions don’t always have easy answers, the complexity of how you made us and made others, that we would be in awe of that, that you fearfully and wonderfully made us and that we can trust you, but most of all, the grace that you display to us us, your mercies that are new each and every day, the hope that we have because of the cross. I pray that those things would bring such great comfort to the grieving and the hurting.
We pray your peace over those in Uvalde, in that community. We pray your peace over this land. We pray your peace over what is happening around the world right now, even as we are here in this room safe. God, we pray your peace over them, and we pray your peace over each one here who is going through dark times. We pray your comfort and that we, Lord, would be the kind of comforters that Jesus has been and will continue to be to us.
Pray all these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
