Rev. David Holwick Book of Job series
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
July 19, 1998
Job 14:13-17
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I. Dark night of the soul.
A. What is the lowest you have ever felt?
1) Death, divorce, unemployment...
B. In our darkest hour, can there be hope?
1) Job struggles back and forth with this.
II. Hemmed in by God and circumstances.
A. Life is short and hard.
1) Few days. 14:1
a) Fast and fleeting like flowers and shadows. 14:2
2) Full of trouble.
B. We don't measure up.
1) We don't endure (=live forever). 14:2
2) We are impure, and deserving of judgment. 14:4
3) Job was pretty sure he was innocent, but before God,
who knows?
C. We must live within strict limits.
1) Life and death is beyond our control. 14:5
a) Job feels like a puppet.
b) God is in control, but determinism is dangerous.
2) God is in charge of every detail.
a) Job pleas for God to leave him alone. 14:6
1> Ironic, since his main request is to be heard out.
b) Time-clock metaphor for life.
1> Factory job while dating Celeste.
Always looking at clock.
Breaks, lunch, quitting time.
3) Job sees death as his only out.
a) He is just trying to endure, not overcome.
III. Hope for trees but not for me?
A. Cut-off trees rejuvenate, but not people. 14:7
1) Perhaps a hint that punishment may be a "pruning."
2) At any rate, he feels "cut down".
B. Sometimes life doesn't hold out much hope for us.
1) A main reason many elderly die, especially after losing
spouse.
2) They simply give up hope.
3) Trees, like my raspberries, may rejuvenate.
a) People just die. 14:10
b) We do not rise from sleep, at least in this world.
c) Archeology book with fabulous tombs.
Many kings are covered in gold, silver, jade.
But their bodies are jumbles of bones, with a
little mummified meat perhaps.
IV. Life after death?
A. If we cannot come back to this life, is there another one?
1) Posed as a question. 14:14
2) Old Testament expresses doubts about eternal life.
a) Eccl. 9:4
Anyone who is among the living has hope --
even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!
b) Isaiah 38:18
For the grave cannot praise you, death cannot sing
your praise;
those who go down to the pit cannot hope for your
faithfulness.
c) Psalm 6:5
No one remembers you when he is dead.
Who praises you from the grave?
d) Psalm 88:11-12
Is your love declared in the grave,
your faithfulness in Destruction?
Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,
or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?
3) But the Old Testament also gives glimmers of hope.
a) Psalm 16:10
You will not abandon me to the grave,
nor will you let your Holy One see decay.
b) Psalm 49:15
But God will redeem my life from the grave;
he will surely take me to himself.
c) What the Old Testament hints at, the NT makes clear.
4) Many doubt Job is hoping for heaven here.
a) Predetermined ideas about what Jews believed.
b) Also, hopeful passage is bracketed by doubts.
1> A-B-A pattern, with emphasis in middle?
c) What he hints at here, he makes explicit in 19:25.
B. All he can do is wait.
1) We don't like to wait.
Patrick Napier tells the story of three women who arrived
at the Pearly Gates at the same time.
St. Peter came but said he had some pressing business and
would they please wait.
He was gone for a long time, but finally he came back.
He called one of the women and asked her if she minded
waiting.
"No," she said, "I've looked forward to this for so long.
I love God and can't wait to meet Jesus.
I don't mind at all."
St. Peter then said, "Well I have one more question.
How do you spell 'God?'"
She said, "Capital-G-o-d."
St. Peter said, "Go right on in."
He went out and got one of the other women, told her to
come on inside, and said, "Did you mind waiting?"
She said, "Oh, no. I have been a Christian for fifty years,
and I'll spend eternity here. I didn't mind at all."
So St. Peter said, "Just one more thing.
How do you spell 'God?'"
She said, "g-o-d. No, I mean capital-G."
St. Peter said that was good and sent her on in to Heaven.
He went back out and invited the third woman in and asked
her if she minded waiting.
"Yes, I did," she said huffily.
"I've had to stand in line all my life
--at the supermarket,
when I went to school,
when I registered my children for beach passes,
when I'm going to the movies--everywhere--
And I resent having to wait in line for Heaven!"
St. Peter said, "Well that's all right for you to feel
that way.
It won't be held against you, but there is just one more
question.
How do you spell Mesopotamia [or other long word]?"
#2204
C. Heaven is worth waiting for.
1) Christians win either way.
John Owen, the great Puritan, lay on his deathbed.
His secretary wrote (in his name) to a friend,
"I am still in the land of the living."
"Stop," said Owen.
"Change that and say, I am yet in the land of the dying,
but I hope soon to be in the land of the living."
#2036
2) Christians have a hope that is more clear than Job's.
V. Hope in God makes a difference.
A. Determinism (steps) but not fatalism (forgiveness). 14:16
1) Sin covered. 14:17
B. Have hope even when their seems to be no hope.
1) In truly desperate times, God can shine for us.
In John Toland's book on the Korean War he tells the story
of Private Ed Reeves.
It was the darkest moment of the war for America.
Hundreds of thousands of Chinese communists had flooded down
the peninsula and had cut off American units.
The worst fighting took place at the Chosin Reservoir.
It was bitterly cold and Chinese were everywhere.
Colonel Faith's Task Force attempted to break out from the
trap with over 500 wounded men on November 30.
The trucks were so overloaded they tied wounded on the fenders
and hoods.
Chinese mortars and machine guns raked without mercy.
One truck broke down and was left behind.
It was Ed's truck.
Chinese soldiers surrounded it and took the able-bodied as
prisoners.
Later a Chinese officer appeared at the tailgate.
He was obviously important since he traveled alone without a
political watchdog.
He wore polished leather boots and a clean, long greatcoat.
"Good day, gentlemen," he said with a clipped British accent.
The wounded men begged for shelter, doctors, food.
The Chinese officer replied regretfully, "I am sorry I can
give you none of those things."
"If I am heard talking to you like this, I will be shot.
I stopped to say, God bless you, the Lord be with you."
He turned and walked away.
The other wounded men were angry that this Chinese officer
had not helped, but Private Ed Reeves felt that God was
telling him, "You're not alone. I know all about this."
He felt the hopelessness of being a prisoner of war.
Needing help and hope he took out his pocket New Testament,
turned to the 23rd Psalm and read it aloud.
His comrades listened quietly.
The next morning the rest of the convoy was wiped out.
Most of the trucks were burning.
Private Ed Reeves lay among the dead; he was the only survivor
on his truck.
He tried to get off the truck but fainted each time.
"God, why am I alive when everyone else is dead?
If you want me off this truck, you do it. I can't."
On December 4 the Chinese were boldly moving on the roads
and ridges in daylight.
Reeves knew help must be far away.
A group of Chinese came up to loot the GI bodies near his
truck.
They unzipped Reeves's bag.
Holding stiff, he played dead while one searched his pockets.
A fist hit his face.
The communist had felt the warmth of a live body.
They beat him, then threw him off the truck.
His prayer to God was answered.
He at last was on the ground.
But he couldn't stand no matter how much the Chinese ordered,
kicked and hit him.
They threw him onto a pile of dead bodies and began hitting him
in the head with their rifle butts.
Reeves said, "Jesus, here I come."
He played dead again and the Chinese left with their loot.
He then crawled to a tree beside the road.
Grasping the tree, he worked himself up to his feet and
tried to walk.
Three times he fell flat.
Sitting against the tree, looking at the far shore of the
reservoir, he prayed aloud in anger,
"Lord, if the mortar didn't kill me, the shooting didn't kill
me, and the beating didn't kill me, you must want me out
of here.
But I can't walk.
How can I get outa here?"
An answer came to mind. "You must crawl before you can walk."
He crept on elbows and wounded knees through snow-covered fields
toward the reservoir.
Chinese on the hills watched but didn't shoot or try to stop him.
He crossed railroad tracks and more fields.
Smooth hardness under the snow caused him to stop and clear
snow away with an elbow. Thick ice!
He was on the reservoir.
Reeves began to sing.
Over and over he repeated, "Yes, Jesus loves me!"
By now it was dark.
He started crawling across the ice and doggedly kept moving
until his strength was almost gone.
Then he forced himself to crawl.
Needing rest, he curled up in a ball with this hands under
his armpits inside the open jacket.
Just starting to doze, he heard the squeak of feet in the snow.
He rolled to his back to see, forty feet away, a Chinese with
a submachine gun moving cautiously toward him.
After all the pain and effort of escape, this Chinese would
pull the trigger once and it would be all over.
In disgust Reeves threw out his hands and shouted, "Ahh, no!"
The startled Chinese turned and ran away.
Reeves watched in amazement till the enemy disappeared into
the night.
The Chinese soldier had a gun.
Ed had no weapons, yet the Chinese had run.
Why? Wide awake now, he rolled over and crawled on.
Military cadence count didn't help him keep moving so he softly
sang songs of Vacation Bible School over and over.
"Yes, Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so,"
and "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the
world. Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious
in his sight..."
Another mile of ice was covered.
He was now moving one limb at a time.
The dawn of December 5 came.
A Marine jet spotted him and soon a jeep drove up to him.
Immediately he was placed on a medic plane that was idling.
As the plane vibrated into the air Ed thought,
"God answered me. Every time I asked God, He answered."
At the hospital the doctors wanted to amputate his arms and
legs.
He wouldn't let them.
They placed him in a special ward for the dying but he
refused to die.
God hadn't brought him this far for that.
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