TEXT: Job 23

SUBJECT: Spiritual Depression #12: God’s Absence

For the last few months, we have spent our Sunday mornings thinking about Spiritual Depression—what it is, what causes it, and what to do about it.

The causes we’ve looked at thus far have all been on our side. I’m depressed because I’m stubbornly holding onto a known sin; you’re depressed because you’re neglecting your Bible reading and prayer; he’s depressed because he doesn’t believe his sins are forgiven; she’s depressed because she spends so little time with the Lord’s People. When we’re depressed because of these things (and others like them)—

If many of our wounds are self-inflicted, not all of them are. Satan has a hand in our depressions. No one can read the book of Job and not know this. It was he who took the man’s children, wiped out his wealth, broke his body, sent his cruel friends, and goaded his wife into counseling suicide. What a filthy and malicious spirit he is! No wonder the

This means there is more to getting out of spiritual depression than identifying our sins and repenting of them. Speaking of a demon who tortured a poor boy’s body and mind, our Lord said—

‘The work of Satan as a major cause of depression’ is an important topic, and maybe I’ll say more about it some day, but not this day. Today’s sermon is on something far more disturbing than that.

Job’s agony was not only the result of his sickness or his loss or his poverty or his false friends or his bitter wife or devil’s hate. What really tore him up was…

God.

Or, rather, God’s Absence.

This is what today’s sermon is about: God’s Absence as a Major Cause of Depression.

Let’s be clear on what I mean by ‘God’s Absence’. Of course I don’t mean ‘there is no God’ or that He ever fails to be omnipresent or that He ever breaks His Word and forsakes us. The Scripture could not be plainer. Hebrews 13:5 says—

The quote is taken from several places in the Old Testament. What makes it most interesting is that, in their original settings, the promises were made to individuals—to Jacob, to Joshua, and to Solomon. But in the New Testament, they are enlarged to all God’s People—including you and me—despite our sins and weaknesses and follies and more. In this sense, the Lord did not forsake Job nor will He ever leave us.

How then do we understand the words of Job?

His friends had a pat answer: Job was unable to find God because his sins had separated him from the Lord. They didn’t know what sin had done it, but it must have been a big one!

They were wrong. At the end of the story Job has to offer sacrifices for the three men, for God would have killed them if he hadn’t. And all because—

Did the Lord forsake Job or didn’t He? No He didn’t forsake Him, but Job thought He did. Why did he think that? Not because he was an insecure or neurotic man, but because the Lord hid Himself from Job.

Though Job’s pain was keener than most, he was not alone in feeling the Lord had left him. Psalm 13 comes to mind first. Composed by David, who was a devout man and a special servant of God, it starts off—

Moving up into Church History, others have felt the same way. The Roman Catholic mystic, St. John of the Cross, wrote a famous book describing this state of mind; it’s called

Martin Luther often spoke of the Lord as,

Deus Absconditus—the ‘hidden God’.

The Puritans were famous for dealing with this in their pastorates. They knew their people were Christians, and yet they spent a lot of their time helping them through what they called, Divine Desertions and The Winter of the Soul.

J.C. Philpott was a Baptist leader in the 19^th Century. His most famous sermon was on this subject, called—

The feeling that God has left you, that He doesn’t love you, and that He won’t answer your prayers, like other temptations, is common to man. Take heart! You’re not alone! Others have gone into this dark valley—and gotten out of it! Including your Savior, who once roared from the cross—

There is no trial outside of hell that is harder to live with than the feeling that God has left you. You cannot read the cries of Job without being deeply moved by them. He is a man who loves the Lord and appreciates God’s gift of life. Yet most of his words are more like a death rattle than a sermon.

Losing the sense of God’s being there is hard for any Christian to bear, but it is heaviest on the ones who know and love Him best. Think about it this way.

What’s true of Smiths and Jones is also true of believers and their God! The closer you are to Him, the harder you take His absence.

This means there’s a kind of glory in this grief. Any man will howl at the pain of a broken leg, but only a Christian will weep for a God he cannot find!

God’s Absence is a terrible cross to bear. Some of you may be under it right now, and others will be. Stay with it; if it did not separate Christ from the love of God, it will not separate you from His love!

Why would the Lord do this to anyone? If a good man will not leave his wife or abandon his children, or break with his friends (or pretend to) why would God do it?

The Puritans offered several reasons: He does it—they said—to humble us, to make us depend on Him, to build our faith, to make us more patient, and so on.

I think there is some truth in all these answers, and others we might give as well.

But these answers cannot be found in the Book of Job—except from his friends who were all wrong! What answer does Job give for the Lord removing His felt Presence when we need it most?

The answer may not satisfy you, but whether it does or not, it is true. Here it is: We don’t know.

Note carefully, I did not say God doesn’t know! We don’t know, and if the Lord wants to explain Himself to us, He can, but He is under no obligation to do so.

For 37 chapters, Job goes hammer and tong with his friends, but then the Lord shows up and there is no more give and take. It’s all take! The man who ‘knew it all’, found out he didn’t know nothing—

Do you remember the form God took appearing to Job? He didn’t come as an angel or a man as he often did in the Old Testament. He came as a whirlwind. You don’t make demands on a tornado, you just fall down before it and hope it doesn’t blow you to pieces!

We don’t know why the Lord withdraws from us from time to time, and we don’t need to know why. We need to know Him.

The cure for this kind of depression is not in us. It is in God, who will come back to us when He wants to. And not before or after.

This does not mean, though, that we do nothing while suffering from His absence. Or that it’s okay to quarrel with Him or blaspheme His Holy Name. Speaking of thinking ill of the Lord is never right or safe.

What we do till He comes is what Job did.

Firstly, we trust Him, v.10a—

We do not know what the Lord is doing or why He’s doing it. But He knows, and we have to believe that He knows and trust that—whatever He does—it’s the right thing to do.

If I told you this is easy, I’d be lying to you. Trusting the Lord is the hardest thing you’ll ever be called to do. And, also the most important. For—

Let the earlier words of Job be in our hearts 13:15)—

Secondly, we obey Him, vv.11-12a—

Loneliness and confusion are not sins. But the devil can often use them to make us feel exempt from simple obedience. Is it God’s will for you to, let’s say, go to church? If it is, then it’s God will for you to go to church even when you’re depressed and feel far away from God.

The same is true with loving your wife or respecting your husband or obeying your parents or taking care of your children or going to work or paying your bills of loving your neighbor or praying for your pastor. Our sadness does not dethrone our Lord and Savior.

Thirdly, we meditate on the Word of God, v.12b—

When feeling far away from God, the first thing to go is reading your Bible or—if you keep doing that—then reading it with care and intending to believe and obey it. But, by doing this, we cut ourselves off from the comfort we have. We refuse to take our medicine and then complain that God won’t heal us!

In short, the more depressed you are, the more you ought to read the Bible. Especially the Gospels, which emphasize God’s great mercy.

Finally, we fix our minds to hope, v.10b—

God’s Absence feels like a fire, and it is—a Refining Fire. At the time we’re suffering it, we do not feel purer than we used to, and maybe we’re not now. But we will be. For our trials—though we don’t know how and to say it sounds like mockery—are designed, not only for the glory of God, but for our own good.

I do not believe this most of the time, but whether I believe it or not, it is true. Because God says so. This doesn’t make our depressions in life easy, but it makes them easier, for they—like all things—