Job No.9 Nostalgia

Day by day and with each passing moment, strength I find to meet my trials here. Trusting in my father's wise bestowment, I've no cause for worry or for fear. He whose heart is kind beyond all measure, gives unto each day what he deems best.

Lovingly, it's part of pain and pleasure, mingling toil with peace and rest. Every day the Lord himself is near me, with a special mercy for each hour. All my cares he fain would bear and cheer me, he whose name is counsellor and power.

The protection of his child and treasure is a charge that on himself he laid. As your days, your strength shall be in measure, this the pledge to me he made. Help me then in every tribulation, so to trust thy promises, O Lord.

That I lose not faith's sweet consolation, offered me within your holy wood. Help me, Lord, when toil and trouble meeting, e'er to take as from a father's hand. One by one, the days, the moments fleeting, till I reach the promised land.

Break thou the bread of life, dear Lord, to me, as thou didst break the bread beside the sea. Beyond the sacred page, I seek thee, Lord, my spirit longs for thee, thou living word. Verse two.

Oh, we're going to stand and sing. Let's stand. Ah, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

which was read to us from the 29th chapter of the book of Job. Let me read to you the 4th verse again and then give it to you in a different version. Job chapter 29 and verse 4, Oh, for the days when I was in my prime, perhaps a number of us are saying that.

Oh, for the days when I was in my prime, when God's intimate friendship blessed my house. Oh, listen to the Jerusalem version. Who will bring to me the months that have gone, and the days when God was my guardian? Shall I ever see my autumn days again, when God hedged round my tent? Shall I ever see my autumn days, the days of ripeness, the days of fruiting? Shall I ever see them again? We're coming towards the end of Job's speeches in this book that bears his name.

Not to the end of the book, but to his interaction with his three friends. And our reading finds us in the heart of Job's concluding retort to these men who've come a long way to see him, to sympathize with him, and to counsel him. Oh, what do you do when you're in difficulty? It seems to me that there are one of two things that you can do.

You can fantasize. I speak with tenderness of heart. I've known people do this in marital problems.

If only. If only instead of X, the situation had been Y, then I would not be in the problem that I find myself in now. Fantasy is a sort of psychological escape mechanism which brings a form of relief straight away and then proves to be a torturer because it takes you into the realm of the unreal and out for a moment from the present situation only to be plunged back into that.

Fantasizing is of little value. The second option you can have is that of nostalgia. That's a much more helpful tool.

In one sense, it has biblical authority behind it. You think of earlier days of blessedness. Not perhaps so much considering now the marital situation.

Let's just broaden it out and include us all. Thinking of times when, well, the lines had fallen on much more pleasant places in our contemporary situation. Days when the reality of God was, well, it was so wonderful.

We find ourselves perhaps singing the line of the hymn, Where was the blessedness, or where is the blessedness, I knew when first I sought the Lord. It's not wrong to engage in nostalgia, though it can be wrong and harmful to engage in fantasizing. Here is Job, and he's directing his last speech to these men who ostensibly have come to help him, but they were far more valuable to him when they actually said nothing.

They were better with their presence than with their propositions. Just to recap and to bring into mind, for those who have not been present with us during this series on the book of Job, the man's situation, the man at the center of the stage, so to speak. He's miserable.

His health is in jeopardy. A lot that he has counted of great value has been taken from him. And as far as the average individual is concerned, in the way that they've handled life, Job stands out as blameless, and yet he's seated on a rubbish tip because he feels that that's where he belongs.

Human refuse. God has rejected him. So where do you go when you're rejected? You go to the rubbish dump.

And that's where he was. And these three friends come from different lands, and they talk to him. And what they have to offer is an admixture of theology and error.

They did their best with a bit of theology that they understood. But when they went beyond what they understood, they got themselves and Job into difficulty. There's no reference at all to them ever praying.

If they had prayed, then they would have done well to have anticipated the book of common prayer, light in our darkness, O Lord. For they were very dull in their understanding concerning Job. Sometimes, as I've argued before from this pulpit, when a person is in difficulty, let the counselor be very sensitive.

Sometimes your words can do damage, whereas the most therapeutic thing is your presence, your love, your tender embrace. Well, I say here is Job. And not only are his circumstances quite severe, but his friends have come to the conclusion that one only suffers in life consequent upon one's sinfulness.

They understood in part, and they prophesied in part, that they had not lived to see the day of our blessed Lord. They'd never seen the agony in Gethsemane's garden. They'd never noted the bloody perspiration that dropped down his brow.

They never viewed him being put to the cross, nailed there. Not only innocents dying in the context of guilt, but a man who was completely free from all sin, being done to death for the consequences of the sins of others. We cannot indict these three because of an experience that they could never have had.

But what we can do is center our attention again on Job and see how this remarkable man can minister to us. And we do so with a fairly wide agenda because I want to look into the three chapters that are the last parts of his final speech. The 29th, the 30th, and the 31st.

In the 29th, he looks back to yesterday. In the 30th, he's concerned with today. And the 31st, well, that might take you into tomorrow.

You remember on one occasion Job said, the Lord has given. And then he said, the Lord has taken away. And then he adds the little aside, blessed be the name of the Lord.

I'd like to take that reaction that Job had to his misfortune and suggest that that's a grid which will help you to understand the 29th chapter, the Lord has given. The 30th chapter, the Lord has taken away. And the 31st chapter, blessed, blessed be the name of the Lord.

So to chapter 29, and you see the importance of having the Word of God in front of you. It's very difficult to understand ministry which is based on Scripture unless you have Scripture. So let me suggest that you make it a habit to bring your Bible with you each Sunday to the church.

The 29th chapter, Job's happiness is here portrayed with consummate skill. Look at verse two, how I long for the months gone by, for the days when God watched over me. Verse four, oh, can you feel the emotion? Oh, for the days when I was in my prime.

Shall I ever see my autumn days again when God hedged round my tent? Job is nothing in days gone by. If he is not what I would call a God-preserved man, look again at verse two, when God watched over me. And what did that mean, Job? Well, it meant that I was domestically happy.

Verse six, rather verse five, when the almighty El Shaddai was still with me and my children were round about me. What Campbell Morgan calls his great heart cry, the sob of a great agony, when my children were there. Oh, for the autumnal days again of domestic bliss.

But what is more, there was financial security. Verse six, oil and cream. Milk and oil are symbols in the Old Testament of prosperity.

My path was drenched with cream. The rock poured out from me streams of olive oil. The day when he was socially respected.

Verse seven, I went to the gate of the city and took my seat in the public square. The young men saw me and stepped aside and the old men rose to their feet and the chiefs refrained from speaking. I love the old commoner garden courtesy.

I am by no means a chauvinist nor a particular propounder of the support of the feminist movement. I regret the fact that men no longer stand for ladies. I regret the fact that sometimes we'll greet one another sitting down.

In one sense, I'm an old-fashioned person. I long for some of the courtesies that used to be basic in my old grammar school in days of yesteryear. It was this sort of society in which Job was reared where attention was given to proper behavior.

Where old age was recognized. Where young men were respectful. And Job especially has known the respect of his contemporaries simply because of the influence that he had and the wisdom that was distilled within him.

Verse 21, men listened to me expectantly waiting in silence for my counsel. After I'd spoken, they spoke no more. There was nothing else to say.

But those days have gone. Days when he was generous in his philanthropy. When he did good to those who were in need.

To the extent that whoever heard me spoke well of me. Verse 11, why? Because I rescued, verse 12, the poor who tried for help. The fatherless who had none to assist.

Verse 14, I put on righteousness as my clothing. Verse 15, I was eyes to the blind, feet to the lame. A father to the needy.

I took up the cause of the stranger. Job could almost have sat for a portrait to be painted of the good Samaritan. No, he's not boasting.

He's just stating fact. There is nothing laudable in denigrating yourself if there have been years in your life and maybe still are today that approximate to those of Job. Only give God the praise and the glory for enabling you to live in the way that you are or have lived.

For Job, it seemed as though justice was incarnated in himself. I put on righteousness as my clothing. Justice was my robe and my turban.

And as a result, men came to me. And I was used by God to discharge the wisdom that he had given to me. He's judiciously fair.

His smile was a tonic to those who were depressed. Verse 24, I like the musical Cats. Well, it's not perhaps the most profound statement that I've made from a pulpit, but... In that musical, which is a good one, nothing amiss with it, which makes it almost unique in London, one of the old cats comes center stage and you see her in a moth-eaten condition.

And she thinks of the day when she was a star. The lights dim. With the magic of the theater, they're put on again.

She's changed. She's back in the days of her youth. And her song gives birth to one of the more haunting refrains from that musical as she speaks of memories.

That's what Job is doing here. Nostalgic. The Lord has given.

He anticipates that his future will be blessed. They that honor God shall be honored. So it's a reasonable deduction.

Verse 18, I thought I shall die in my own house. My days as numerous as the grains of sand. My roots will reach to the water.

And the dew will lie all night on my branches. My glory will remain fresh in me. That's quite laudable.

It's what I would hope for each one of you. I speak sincerely. I've got a picture at the moment of a man who I came to love, who was an attender of the tab here when I first came.

He was a famous preacher in evangelical circles, had a church in the Midlands with a congregation of 800 or so plus every Sunday. They clamored on the buses to go and hear him. And even tired of his life, I visited him in Southland's Hospital.

The glory of the former years physically had gone. I saw him totter up and down the road, up and down the ward, holding his bottle. And I said, Lord, why? Why not the grandeur of the previous days when he was an esteemed figure? Why this? Shall not the autumnal days return for him? My friend, the fact of the matter is this.

The God who gives, hear this, because not everyone in pulpits will preach it these days. It's an unpalatable message, but it's, I believe, embedded within the Bible. The Lord who gives has equally a right to take away.

Verse chapter 30, But now they mock me, men younger than I, whose fathers I would have disdained to put with my sheepdogs. Here is a complete reversal of blessings. Here are conflicting emotions.

The ones who were contemptible hold him in contempt, and the respect that once he has, he no longer enjoys. Now, Job, how are you going to cope? But I see not Job at the beginnings of time. I see Job in the twentieth century.

I see men and women in worthing tabernacle, and this is my plea for you. And I see a mirror, and so it becomes the passion and the plea of my own soul. How do you cope when it seems as though the Lord has reversed your situation? And the respect that once you had, and the eloquence that once flowed from your lips, and the health that was once admired by others is no longer there.

Then will you retain your blamelessness? Then will you hold on to your integrity? Or then will you curse this God? Because what God wants from you and me is people who are prepared to trust Him through thick and thin. As our brother prayed a few moments ago, to be faithful to the Lord when it's difficult to trace His hand upon you. God wants you to want Him for more than you can get out of Him.

And that's the greatest praise that you can offer the Lord. Full obedience. Absolute trust in conflicting circumstances.

And that's why the book of Job will ever be a source of help and consolation for those who struggle, who can't dot the I's and cross the T's, who sometimes in their theology are led to an agnostic position that does not deny the being of God, but says, Lord, I don't understand you at this time, but I'm holding on. He has problems from without, He's got problems from within, He's got puzzles from above, and He's got perplexities from around. That's how I would summarize the 30th chapter.

Quickly, problems from without, verses 1-10. They will tell you of the sort of abuse that is now directed towards Him from these dregs of society who He would not once have put with His, He would not have put their fathers with His sheep dogs. They brayed among the bushes.

They huddled in the undergrowth. These were a base and a nameless brood. And yet now, verse 9, their sons mock me in song.

I become the byword amongst them in the music halls of the day. They speak of Job and they laugh and they mock and it hurts. Problems from without.

Precious from within. Now my life ebbs away. Verse 16 Days of suffering grip me.

Night pierces my bones. My knowing pains never rest. Problems from without.

Precious from within. Puzzles from above. Verse 11 God, God has unstrung my bow and afflicted me.

Verse 18 In His great power, God becomes like clothing to me. He binds me like the neck of my garment. He throws me into the mud.

I cry out to your God, but you do not answer. Problems from without. Precious from within.

Puzzles from above. Perplexities from around. Verse 28 through to 31 I go about blackened, not by the sun.

I stand up in the assembly and cry for help. I become a brother of jackals, a companion of owls. He looks for God to have pity on Him.

And yet it seems as though there is no respite. And He looks for men. Verse 20 He cries to God.

And then later on in the chapter He cries to men. And none grant Him help. There's a little clock in front of me.

It stopped, which is rather convenient. It's an electric one, so it's just butchered my analogy. Let's imagine that it wasn't electric.

And I took the back off. There are little wheels. There would have been.

Some wheels go around like that. And other wheels go in opposite directions. And you say to the watchmaker, you've got it wrong.

All the wheels should go in the same direction. And the watchmaker says, no, you're showing your ignorance. For this clock to function properly, some wheels go to the right, and other wheels go to the left.

Don't you see? The Lord has given. The wheels go to the right. The Lord has taken away.

The wheels go to the left. In order that the timepiece can function properly. In order that you and I can go through life with a dependence upon Him.

And the belief that we require divine help and strength at every moment. And He, because He is a good watchmaker, will tease us so that our abilities to continue to tick, so to speak, will continue during the most painful and trying times. The Lord has given, says Job in chapter 29.

And I long for those autumnal days. The Lord has taken away. Chapter 30.

And I wish, honestly, that all my wheels were going the right way. That I was in chapter 29 all the time. But no, I'm in chapter 30.

But, says Job, I will not blaspheme this God. I'm still going to hold on. I will retain my integrity.

I wrote a letter to someone who's become a very dear friend in Romania the other day. And I said, you know, integrities go cheap. You're holding on to yours.

It's the most important thing to do to hold on to your integrity and self-respect. And this is what Job was unable to do. The Lord has given.

The Lord has taken away. Okay, quickly. The 31st chapter.

Blessed be the name of the Lord. Now, it's there incipiently. What I mean is, it's tucked below the surface.

But it is there. A man who gives you such astonishing comments that I know that my Redeemer lives and that one day in my flesh I shall see God whom my eyes shall see for themselves and not through the vantage of another. The man who gives you that sort of projection in terms of his own faith and what you can experience is certainly a man who is coming very close to saying, the Lord's given.

The Lord's taken away. Blessed. Blessed.

Blessed be the name of the Lord. And so he gives us what, if you like, his agenda for life in the 31st chapter. This is what one theologian has called a priceless testament.

It's a fitting consummation to the, quote, words of Job, which you discover in the 40th verse have come to their end. The words of Job are ended. Here is, if you like, an example of ancient jurisprudence which says this.

If you are charged of something on something of which you are innocent, then you imagine the charge for a moment and say that if this is true, you will carry the curse. If X is the case, then Y will follow. And so you find Job using a lot of ifs, don't you? Look at verse 5. If I have walked in falsehood.

Verse 7. If my steps have turned from the path. Verse 9. If my heart has been enticed. Verse 13.

If. 16. If.

17. If. 19.

If. 21. If.

If I have done this, then let the curse apply. But remember, Job has walked in integrity. And therefore, he cannot believe that the curse has come upon him.

Neither can he in a cringing fashion assume responsibility for sins that he has not committed, which is basically what his three friends were saying. No. He comes to the Lord.

And he comes to Him as a very rich man. Listen. I'll sharpen the point.

Was Jesus a rich man or a poor man? Now, I was going to put that to you from the pulpit. I predetermined to do this, but I'm going to back off. I thought about that earlier this morning that I would test you.

But it's unfair because you would immediately say, No. Jesus is a poor man. And in one sense, you would be right.

But I really wanted to prove that Jesus did not die a poor man. You see, there's poverty in poverty. You know the grace of our Lord Jesus, how though He was rich, yet He became poor.

And there is a sense in which He was literally poor. He didn't have a boat to call His own. He borrowed a boat.

He borrowed a donkey. He was always borrowing in one sense. He didn't have anywhere to lay His head.

And yet, and yet, and yet, when He stands before Pilate, when He stands before Herod, you recognize that He has an authority. There is something about Him that money cannot buy. I say it's a rich man that you see in Gethsemane's garden.

I say it's a rich man that they start to nail on the cross. Why is He rich? Well, He has His integrity. He has His blamelessness.

And the moment when Jesus became absolutely poor was when He dropped that blamelessness for others to take up and put as a mantle around them. He became sin. And that is the most horrid statement in the Bible in one sense.

He became sin for you, for me. But up to that time, it is arguable that Jesus was the richest man who ever walked the streets of the villages and towns of the Promised Land. Job, he's there on his rubbish tip.

Is he a poor man? No. Because he is untainted by things that people who are ostensibly rich are tainted with. There are, if you like, the blessings of several untaintednesses if I can coin the word in this chapter.

He is untainted by immorality. I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl. He is untainted by vanity and deceit, verses 2, 5, and 6. He's untainted by thoughtlessness.

He's untainted by the gospel of getting on. He's untainted by secret hankering after idols, verses 26 and 28. He does not blow a kiss to the foreign gods.

He is untainted by bitterness towards his enemies, verses 29 and 30. He's untainted by insincerity, verses 33 and 34. Indeed, he would say that, relatively speaking, he is a blameless man.

Oh, that I had someone to hear me, verse 35. I sign now my defense. Let the Almighty answer me.

Let my accuser put his indictment in writing. Surely I would wear it like a crown. I would give an account, verse 37, of my every step.

I say, rich is that man. Listen. Listen.

Rich is that man who can contemplate walking into the presence of God and say, I could give an account for my every step. This is not presumption, incidentally, on Job's part. There is a sense in which forgiven sinners can say that.

They can come boldly before the throne of grace. Boldly. But that bespeaks having come to the cross of Christ and having had your sins cleansed.

He is a man at the beginning of time. He does not say he is sinless. But he says compared with his contemporaries, he is blameless.

These charges that have been leveled against him, they are false charges. Therefore, he retains his integrity. The Lord has given.

The Lord has taken away. But here I am, Job. I may be on my rubbish tip, but blessed, blessed be the name of the Lord.

The day will come when I will stand in His presence and I can account for those charges directed at me and demonstrate that they were utterly invalid. I could never understand as a kid the authorized versions, translations of Psalm 139. You know, the lovely words.

Don't misunderstand me. I love the authorized version. In one sense, I'd still be wedded to it.

It's only that the NIV, Shanghai, the pulpits, and so many people have the NIV, and I'm glad of that in one sense because it's easier. But when you've been reared since your mother's milk on the AV, it was quite a change to move to the NIV. But the AV talks about in Psalm 139 the Lord knowing my down-sitting and my sort of, well, He didn't say getting up-sitting, but you know, my down-sitting and my rising, my coming in and my going out.

The NIV, I think, is a little more anemic. You know when I sit and when I rise. You perceive my thoughts from afar.

You discern my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with all my ways. That's a commentary on Job.

He knows his down-sitting in the autumnal days. He knows his rising up when he's in great difficulty. He knows his coming in to blessing.

He knows his going out of seeming blessing. And the Lord's got His hand upon him. Blessed, blessed, blessed be the name of the Lord So that revered preacher from the Midlands who I saw in Southland Hospital could still look for the return of the autumnal days when the problems and pressures would be lifted, when he would be in the presence of the Lord.

And it would count for all eternity that he retained his integrity and never blasphemed God even when the material blessings had been removed. My friend, that's your challenge. This is my challenge.

The autumnal days, they will return. Perhaps in this life. Most definitely in the next.

Wisdom belongs to that man who's trusted the Lord, fears the Lord, and walks with Him down all the labyrinths, ways of this life and ultimately through into heaven beyond. Jesus Job, far greater than the Job the patriarch in the Old Testament has declared this, that because he lives we shall live. Our future is as certain as his tomb was empty and as he is in the glory so one day we shall be.

And when he returns to this earth and sets up the new heavens and the new earth where dwelleth righteousness there we shall have a place to praise and to work for him the eons that are yet to be the autumnal days they will be even greater than the earlier years when we knew him as our God and our Savior. Do you know him? Do you know this great El Shaddai? Or do you just say I'll take him when he gives but if he removes his presence if he takes away the props then I'll deny him. Or do you say with Job great, lovable, tender Job of yesteryear the Lord has given the Lord has taken away blessed blessed be the name of the Lord.

I'd like to dedicate this address to all those who've found the last years rough whether you've heard this address in the tab or by the tapes you're out on some far mission field as some of our congregation is may you know the blessings that come through this particular book and be able to duplicate in your own experience the testimony and the faithfulness of Job. Amen. I've selected a hymn that I'm not too sure we know the tune but the words fit well so we're going to listen to the melody played through and it may well be that many of us know it anyway but the words need to be sung through thoughtfully so we go to 360 let's follow the words as we sit down as the melody is played then we'll stand and sing all the verses including the first verse.

360. Oh we struggled but we made it let's go to 352 to Joseph's heart great hymn on the goodness and the faithfulness of God which most of you know without a pun by heart in any case how good is the God we adore let's come round this table on a high note of praise and expectancy we take a break in a moment or two for those who have to go but we do invite you to stay because this is part of our integral family worship, our time around the table of our Lord. Angels rise from heaven above King Peter to the shepherds call His praise shall triumph in all With praising over his God With praising for all that he loved Father that was easy to sing we'll trust him for all that's to come but help our experience of the past to sow buttress and poisons for present days and for future days we thank you for the blessings of memory but we also thank you for the even greater blessings of hope that one day we shall be with you so keep us faithful as Job was we pray and as we come many of us around the table may the bread and the wine become to us the very body and blood of our Lord granting to us the spiritual sustenance to be able to continue down the alleyways of life until that final moment when we step from this world through death itself and onto the threshold of heaven and all the people of God said Amen God bless you Amen