Jesus, Our True Friend in Low Places

So learn from Job's friends at their best. Be present. Sit down. Keep watch. Weep with those who weep, and trust not in your own ability to explain God. Trust in God who has explained himself in Christ Jesus. The God who weeps, the God who dies, the God who rises, and who calls you by name, your true friend in low places, that because he lives, your ashes, your grave, your grief does not get the final word. He does. [00:41:42] (45 seconds)  #WeepWithThoseWhoWeep

And this Jesus doesn't merely sit besides graves. He goes into one. The one who wept at Lazarus' tomb will soon be laid in his own. The true friend doesn't just visit the ashy. He enters it fully. And on the cross, Jesus experiences abandonment. He cries out. He descends into the deepest of suffering. He takes away not only our tears, but our sins, our death, our judgment, and he carries them into the grave. [00:36:43] (35 seconds)  #JesusEntersSuffering

Not a reason, but a redeemer. Job who will say, I know that my redeemer lives. Job spoke better than he knew. He spoke by faith because that redeemer would one day stand outside another grave and shout, Lazarus, come out. And he did. And one day too, he will stand over your grave and mine, and he will say, come out, arise, and you will because he gets the final word. [00:37:44] (31 seconds)  #RedeemerNotReason

In his supper, even this morning, we'll place his very body and blood in your mouth, not as an explanation, but as his real presence for you. In his church, the body of Christ, we do life together because life is hard. And he does not promise you'll understand all your suffering, but he does promise that you won't face it alone. [00:41:20] (23 seconds)  #NotAloneInSuffering

Jesus is what Job needed but never received. A friend who does not accuse him, who doesn't speculate, who doesn't weaponize theology, who enters into the suffering without explanation and without abandoning the truth. Jesus is that true and that better friend in low places. Job sits in the ashes. Lazarus lies in the tomb. Where is God? [00:36:02] (28 seconds)  #JesusTheBetterFriend

Tears are real. Grief is real. Ashes are real, but they are not ultimate because the one who weeps is also the one who raises the dead. And then because Christ is sat in our ashes, we too, as his followers, become those people who sit in the ashes of others. The church isn't a society of quick spiritual fixes. It's a body. [00:38:15] (24 seconds)  #SitWithTheAshes

And that tension that tension should make us uncomfortable because let's be honest, we are them. We want a fix. We want explanations. We want suffering to make sense. We want God to operate by rules that we can diagram. But the deepest suffering, it doesn't need a diagram. The deepest suffering, the deepest heartache, the deepest brokenness, it needs a friend [00:31:43] (31 seconds)  #SufferingNeedsPresence

Because starting in chapter four, they start to speak. And once they start to speak, they begin to move because they try to explain things that God has not explained. They try to fix what cannot be fixed. They try to tidy up that which is terrible, and they become what Job later calls them as worthless healers and miserable comforters. [00:31:03] (28 seconds)  #StopCheapComfort