23rd October 2025

23rd October 2025


Pray (ACts) 


Read (Job 10) 


Message (Scott Woodburn)


Have you ever longed for just five minutes with somebody? Five minutes to put forward your case and put them straight? Job longed for such an interaction with God. He had grown to loathe his life and wanted to speak in the midst of his bitterness to the Lord Himself (v1).


Job knew what he would say. He would tell God not to condemn him (v2) and he would ask God why He was seemingly so against Job (v2b). Furthermore, he would question God as to why it appeared that He favoured the wicked (v3). God isn’t like us, He doesn’t have our eyes, He isn’t limited by our years and He makes no mistakes (v4-7). Yet as far as Job was concerned God knew that Job was guiltless with no one to save him and still the Lord poured out punishment on Job’s head (v8).


Would the Lord forget that He had created Job (v9a)? Would the Lord undo His work and turn Job back to dust (v9b)? It was God who had shaped Job like cheese is shaped from milk (v10), it was God who had knitted Job together in his mother’s womb (v11) and it was God who had given Job life, love and care (v12). Was he going to forget all of this?


Just as a boiling pot spills over, so too did Job’s despair rise once more. If he was guilty then so be it (v15a) but he wasn’t guilty and still he couldn’t lift his head (v15b). He felt hunted (v16) with the Lord’s armies set against him (v17). Once more Job wondered why he had ever been born, as far as he was concerned it would have been better to have died in the womb (v19).


Job believed that his death was near. As he looked to the future he saw only the grave and “the land of darkness and deep shadow” (v21). What was his last earthly hope? That the Lord would leave him alone so that he might find some cheer in his final days (v20).


At times reading Job feels like reading someone’s searingly honest diary - there is nothing hidden and there is no pretence. Indeed, it reminds us that there are many days in our own lives when all we can say is “I loathe my life.” Brothers and sisters, we know so little but we know a little more than Job. We have more to hope for than just a few bright days in life before death comes. The reality of heaven is beyond our imagination and our final home will be greater than we can comprehend. Jesus has prepared that place and even if life seems bleak something greater is coming.


“For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4v17-18)


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC


Q107 What doth the conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer teach us?
The conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer, which is, For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen,” teacheth us to take our encouragement in prayer from God only, and in our prayers to praise him, ascribing kingdom, power, and glory to him; and in testimony of our desire and assurance to be heard, we say, Amen.
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