Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Emotion Tone
Anger
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Fear
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Joy
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Sadness
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Analytical
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Openness
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Conscientiousness
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Extraversion
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Tone of specific sentences
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Anger
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Frustration: the feeling that though a problem is not resolved, it should be
Frustration is a very real thing.
If you have kids, then you know this to be true.
Parents, how many times do you have to tell your children something before it really sinks in?
It is our children’s job to set the table.
One of the kids sets the plates and the cups, and another sets the silverware and gets the water.
This seems like pretty straightforward instructions right?
You would not believe how many meals we sit down to and guess what- no cups.
Or we have cups, but no water (By the way do you know what you call cups without any water on the table?
Decorations.)
No you would think that after telling my boys literal over 100 times that they need to put cups and water on the table for every meal that they would have gotten it down by now right?
That is frustration.
Frustration: the feeling that though a problem is not resolved, it should be
In chapter 7 we see Job falling into frustration.
Initially Job responded amazingly well to the gigantic levels of suffering he was faced with.
But now months have most likely passes since Job’s testing, and Job is still sitting in misery and his responses sound very different.
Job’s lot has now become months of vanity.
And notice Job was made to possess vanity.
Who do you suppose Job credits as the one who who made all of this happen to him?
God.
Notice also weary nights are appointed- again by God to Job (or so he feels).
Is Job wrong?
Remember God is not the cause of Job’s suffering.
Satan is the one who caused all of the things that happened in Job’s life, but God did allow it to happen.
And God has allowed it to continue for months in the life of Job.
After months of enduring emptiness and misery Job has succumb to frustration.
Here in Job chapter 7 we find two primary causes of frustration.
I.
We get frustrated when we believe things should happen according to our own timing.
A. Job’s Altered Sense of Time
Notice first that Job’s life drags by and all he can do is endure each day.
Here Job likes his experience of time to that of the hired laborer and the slave.
Both are forced to do difficult demeaning tasks- the idea is forced hard labor.
And for what?
The slave receives no wage simply the ability to rest in the cool shade at the end of the day.
The hired laborer does at least get a wage although it is a paltry sum.
The idea is that the time of the day slows down to a crawl and all the laborers can think about is the rest awaiting them at the end of the day’s work.
I can remember working at the lumber yard for a summer after I graduated from college.
We used to work 6 10 hour days.
One of the projects that they had us work on was taking apart an old rail road track.
Now imagine working in 90 to 100 degree weather all day prying and moving large pieces of hot heavy iron.
Do you think that time flew by, or did it drag on?
Days went so slowly, all I could do was just endure one hour after the other.
Look at v. 3 Job is saying I feel like that, by at least the slave gets shade and the laborer his wage.
All I get is months of vanity (emptiness) and nights of weariness.
Job has nothing to look forward to, not even a good night’s sleep.
(1) He looks forward to the end of the day when he may sleep/rest.
(2) But he cannot sleep, so he then wishes for the day.
(3) He is caught in an endless cycle of this agony (3-4).
(4) Furthermore, “the night passes so slowly that in its stillness he becomes conscious of every pain in his body.
In the morning light Job discovers that worms have bred in his sores.
Hard scabs have crusted around the sores on his skin, only to break and ooze, leaving his skin painfully raw.” (Hartley, 145).
When Jonathan does not cooperate and Sharon has to get up multiple times a night to feed him, the next morning she stares at me blurry eyed and asks, “Is it time for bed yet?”
She is longing for the end of the day so she can finally get some rest.
But have you ever gone to bed, and sleep just would not come?
So you lay there tossing and turning all night staring at the clock, and all you want is for morning to arrive.
This is were Job is at, and to make things worse in the morning he discovers worms in his sores, and painful cracking scabs on his skin.
So Job’s days and his nights drag on endlessly.
But it also seems to Job that his life is flying by too quickly.
Weaver’s shuttle- example
Nevertheless, during the slow, agonizing nights, memories of his past make him sadly aware that his days are passing far too swiftly.
The speed with which one’s life passes is similar to the rapid movement of a weaver’s shuttle as it flies back and forth across the loom.
Soon the cloth is finished and the thread (tiqwâ) is cut to separate the cloth from the loom.
Like the flying shuttle Job’s days are passing so swiftly that it seems God is nearly finished with this piece of cloth and is about to cut it from the loom.
Then there will be no cord left to weave into his life.
Cut off from this earth, he will have no more “hope” (tiqwâ) of enjoying life’s rich experiences.
So this altered sense of time, where it seems like life is endlessly dragging on, but yet all of his days are flying by too quickly that produces Job’s sense of frustration.
Job wants his suffering to end and it seems like it never will, yet he also feels like his days are flying to an end without hope of resolution.
This is frustrating.
B. Job’s Uneasy Sense of Time
Job, now addressing God Himself, gives in the imperative, a plea to remember.
God remember that my life, my time on this earth, is as a wind.
Better- a mere breath or a vapor that quickly vanishes away.
Job wants God to be mindful of the brevity that is his life.
Also, that Job is close to the limits of what his body can bear.
Job is uneasy that his time is running out, and if God does not relent then his eyes will never again see good.
Have you ever attempted a DIY remodeling project at home?
Last year dad and I redid the bathroom in the parsonage.
At the beginning of the project you think to yourself.
This won’t be too bad, we should be done in a week.
Two months later after 50 trips to Menards, multiple unforeseen problems, and still no finished bathroom- you tend to be a little frustrated.
Why?
Because things did happen according to your timetable.
The danger is when we expect God to operate on our timetable.
When we fell stuck in life, and when we feel like God is not moving as fast as He should be, we can get frustrated with God.
At some point in our lives we are going to have to accept by faith God’s timetable not our own.
Time is something best left to God, and our frustration can be an indication of our unwillingness to humbly submit to God’s timeline rather than our own.
We get frustrated when we believe things should happen in our own timing.
II.
We get frustrated when we see no hope for relief.
A. Job’s Justification
Because of the reproachful way God is treating him, he feels that it is his right to complain loudly.
For one plagued by such excruciating pain, silence is not golden.
He who laments freely has the hope that his words will touch God’s compassion, moving God to deliver him.
B. Job’s Accusation
God’s unrelenting scrutiny is unwarranted given his relative stature.
Wale is better “Sea Monster”
Who am I? I am not the sea, I am not a sea monster, but you have set a guard up around me like I am!
This might be a modern day illustration of how Job was feeling.
Further Job makes the accusation in vss.
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