Sunday Sermons
Hope
The word “hope” is a small word that we must never take for granted. Have you ever thought what the world would be like if God had never spoken and given us the Scriptures or had Jesus never died for our sins and been resurrected? In the Ephesian letter Paul spoke of the Gentiles as having in time past, “having no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). Admittedly there are people who are without hope and who do not realize it, for when times are good and prosperous a man can live on earthly hopes and dreams (Luke 12:18-19). “You had nothing to look forward to” (Phi). “Having no real hope, no objective basis of hope. Whatever the Gentiles subjectively hoped for after death had no reality, rested on air, would never be realized” (Lenski p. 434). “The Jewish view of history was essentially optimistic. On the other hand, for the Gentile, history was going nowhere. To the Stoics history was cyclic. They believed that it went on for three thousand years; then came a conflagration in which the whole universe was consumed in flames; then the whole process began all over again, and the same events and the same people exactly repeated themselves” (Barclay p. 108).
The dying words of men without hope
A while back I ran across an article that mentioned some of the dying words of people who tried to live without acknowledging God: Ingersoll: "O God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul, from hell, if there be a hell"; Caesar Borgia: "While I lived, I provided for everything but death; now I must die and am unprovided to die". Voltaire: "I am abandoned by God and man; I will give you half of what I am worth, if you will give me six month's life:" to the doctor treating him. When told it could not be done, he continued, "Then I shall die and go to hell". Sir Thomas Scott: "Until this moment I thought there was neither a God nor a hell. Now I know and feel there are both, and I am doomed to perdition by the just judgment of the Almighty."
The hopeless, honest man
In contrast to many who live and die without hope, Job was a righteous man who thought that God had become his enemy(Job 1:1; 13:24). Listen to his painful words:
14:7 “For there is hope for a tree…but man dies and lies prostrate”: Here Job makes a contrast between man and trees, which he considers to be an example of unfairness. Even a tree that has been cut down can come back to life. This is even true if the roots are old, the stump beginning to rot, yet when man is cut down, he never comes back. “Man, unlike a tree that is cut down but may spring back, just dies and is buried” (Jackson p. 44). 14:11-12 “Until the heavens are no more”: Is this a hint that when the physical universe is destroyed all the dead will be raised? (2 Peter 3:10; 1 Corinthians 15). Job believes that death is like water that evaporates and is gone for good or a sleep from which man never awakes. 14:13 At least in death, Job felt that he would be concealed from God’s anger. “Job could endure that time if God would limit it and not forget to resurrect him” (Bible Knowledge Comm. p. 736). 14:14 “If a man dies, will he live again?” Notice how the thought of the afterlife and especially the resurrection seemed to offer Job some comfort even while he was in despair, yet it still remains a question to Job. Without this thought of a life beyond this life, this life becomes completely meaningless. 14:14 “All the days of my struggle”: The term struggle means hard service, while the term “change” means “release”, and is used of one group of soldiers relieving another. “Death, with its release from the burdens of this life, would be like an honorary discharge or a changing of the guard” (Bible Knowledge Comm. p. 736).
God, not Shangri-La
“Job does not yearn for a Shangri-La existence in eternal life. Rather, he envisions conversation with God, a mutual relationship between Creator and the created being, and a time when the veil of mystery over God’s purpose will be lifted” (Job, McKenna, p. 115). Notice how a godly man longs for God Himself and not merely a future paradise. Revelation 21:8 says “He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son”. Do we really grasp what this verse is saying? If we read this verse and think of God as someone always telling us to pick up our room or when we need to be home at night, we have completely missed the point. God is talking about the kind of relationship that good fathers and sons naturally have, where a Father is eager to bless to son and where a son is eager to please his father. If God is willing to give us so many earthly blessings in this life, just think of what God wants to give us in the life to come. Also consider Moses’ attitude in Exodus 33:15 “If Your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here”. “Moses did not dare take another step without the Lord. The wilderness with the mountain of God was better than a peaceful life in Canaan if the Lord Himself did not go with them” (Gispen p. 309). I know many religions have a conception of heaven that is one of wine, women and song, or some sort of earthly paradise and yet the Bible’s view of heaven is not that at all. Heaven is an eternal loving relationship with God Himself! “Having the desire to depart and be with Christ” (Philippians 1:23); “You will make known to me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever” (Psalm 16:11). “The pleasures are presented as wholly satisfying (this is the force of fullness, from the same root as ‘satisfied’ in 17:15) and endlessly varied” (Kidner p. 86). “To the full joy of Thy presence, to the bliss of being close to Thee forever” (Mof); “At thy right hand are delights that will endure for ever” (Knox); “Unbounded joy in your presence” (Jerus). “Whereas some individuals see only death in prospect after life’s candle is snuffed out, this man sees life” (Leupold p. 152).
14:15 Here is, once again, the hope that God would summon Job, and God would long for Job who was the work of His hands. Notice that Job did not want some sort of utopia, rather what Job wanted, what was heaven to him, was a relationship with God. We should note that when God did call Job, Job was unable to answer Him (40:4-5). 14:16-17 Is this an anticipation of forgiveness or a complaint that God is watching him presently and keeps whatever sin or sins Job has supposedly committed sealed up in a bag and won’t open it for Job to see?
Worn down and crushed
14:18-19 Like all these things, so is man’s hope, which wears away as well. “Like the crushing forces of nature, hope is destroyed” (Jackson p. 45). In his present suffering, Job probably feels like a rock that is being eroded continually by his trials. 14:19 Finally death arrives even to the strongest of men, and their appearance, the flesh once flush with life, becomes pale at death.
The heartbreak of separation
14:21 Death also separates us from all that we knew and loved in his life. “In death a parent cannot see his sons honored nor can he sympathize with their problems” (Bible Knowledge Comm. p. 736). Man dies, and all knowledge of this life is veiled. Remember, this is Job’s view of death as he is suffering. If God had never spoken, if Jesus had never died on the cross for our redemption, if He had never been raised from dead, then seriously look at this verse, because this is exactly what reality would be. Death would completely cut off one generation from another, parents from children, and wives from spouses. Who could realistically handle such an existence? No wonder Paul noted that many people in the world have a completely hopeless sorrow in the face of death (1 Thessalonians 4:13 “so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope”). Various writers point out that the tombs from this time tell us the hopelessness that the ancient world felt in face of death: “Some of the pagan epitaphs say things like these: ‘Live for the present hour, since we are sure of nothing else’. ‘I lift my hands against the gods who took me away at the age of twenty though I had done no harm’. ‘Traveler, curse me not as you pass, for I am in darkness and cannot answer’” (Fields p. 112). In contrast, how wonderful the hear the words of Jesus when He describes heaven as a gathering of the faithful, as a renewing of relationships, as a regathering of the entire family of God throughout the generations, “I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 8:11).
14:22 The idea seems to be that man only knows his own misery. His pain is both physical and mental. “Job now abandons the traditional resolution more of man’s troubles, that of leaving a prosperous family behind. But Job has no family. Whether the source be Job or classical naturalistic liberals, it is not very exciting to hope only in the survival of humanity” (Strauss p. 137). How thrilled Job would have been had he been privileged to hear the words of the Lord Jesus, ‘I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he keep on living (present tense)’ (John 11:25)” (Jackson p. 45).
John 11:25
“I am the resurrection and the life”: Jesus is not only the cause of the resurrection at the last day, which will include everyone, including believers and unbelievers (5:28-29), but Jesus is the source of a greater resurrection than even the resurrection of all the physically dead. Jesus is the only source for spiritual life (John 14:6). A man or woman cannot be reborn spiritually without Him (John 3:5). One cannot deliver themselves out of a condition of spiritual death, apart from Jesus(Ephesians 2:1-9). Jesus’ claim here is very exclusive, ‘I am’. The reader should note that anytime we talk about a spiritual resurrection, one from spiritual death to spiritual life, we must always include, besides faith, repentance and baptism (Romans 6:1-5; Ephesians 2:1-6; Colossians 2:12-13).
“Believes in Me shall live even if he dies”: Shall live spiritually, even though his body dies. Clearly, physical death does not affect the believers relationship with God. Death is not the worst possible thing that could happen to us and neither is it the end of our existence, death cannot touch or end our relationship with God. “Do you believe this?”: And this is really the bottom line, “Do we really believe what Jesus is teaching?” Note: Jesus did not say, “Do other people believe this?” or, “How many other people believe this?” The faith or lack of faith on the part of others does not save me and neither does it condemn me. This question posed by Jesus was “to test Martha’s comprehension of these matters and to determine how well she was following his remarks. The matters, though eminently true, would be of no benefit to her unless she accepted them” (Woods p. 238).
Hebrews 6:19 “The anchor of the soul”
This anchor is strong enough that it will not bend or break. This hope is true, reliable, secure, and certain. “It cannot slip and it cannot break” (Amp). “In contrast to those hopes torn away, unfailing and firmly fixed, it will not betray the confidence reposed in it but will hold firm” (Gr. Ex. N.T. p. 304). In the Old Testament tabernacle and temple there was a veil that separated the holy place from the holy of holies (Matthew 27:51; Hebrews 9:3). In the Hebrew letter, the holy of holies was a symbol or type of heaven (Hebrews 9:24). Thus, our hope is attached to heaven, it is not attached to things, goals, or dreams in this life. Our hope is anchored to the very throne of God. It is where our citizenship is (Philippians 3:20), where our treasure is (Matthew 6:18-20), and where our minds are fixed (Colossians 3:1ff). “The other important thing about anchors is their placement. On a sandy bottom, for example, the anchor will drag along. The Christian’s anchor is placed in the safest place possible—it is inside the veil, that is, in heaven itself” (Reese p. 101).