Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention to Job chapter 14, the chapter
that we read, and reading from our text, verse 14. If a man dine, shall he live
again? All the days of my appointed
time will I wait till my change comes. This is a continuing in
our series on questions asked in scripture. And this question
is asked by Job, if a man dies, shall he live again? Many of you will be familiar
of Job and the history of his great tribulation. that Satan
stood up against him, accused Job that all that he did, he
did because God had put a hedge about him, and he only served
God because of the good things that God had given him. So God
gave permission to Satan to try and test Job. It is a test, a
way that many would have failed. And that is when trouble, when
affliction, when illness comes, then it is that men will turn
away and they will say, if this is what God does, if this is
what we have to endure, then we don't want anything to do
with this God. They're offended at Him. And many will have their God
in good times, but when things go wrong and they can't understand
it, then they would turn away. And so God gave Satan permission
to take many of the things away that Job had, and then also to
afflict him in his body. But dear Job, he said, the Lord
gave, and the Lord had taken away. Blessed be the name of
the Lord. He still retained his integrity. He says, though he slay me, yet
will I trust in him. Satan was proved a liar in this,
that Job served the Lord because he loved the Lord, because he
had saving faith, because he was looking beyond the grave,
not just for this time state, because he trusted the Lord in
that which he did, whether he gave or whether he took away.
And yet we have many lessons in the book of Job, many things
that come out of it. It was a great trial to Job. It was a great test. And even
his friends that came to comfort him first ended up as miserable
comforters when they misapplied the word to him. They misunderstood
his case, thought there was something great reason in Job why God had
visited these things on him. And yet we're told in the beginning
of the book that there was no reason Job served God. There was no cause why these
things came upon him. The only real cause that the
Lord was trying him and testing him and proving to Satan that
Satan was a liar and that the grace that God had given to Job
was more than a natural grace. It was more than that which just
natural man would stand. And whenever the Lord brings
his people into trials, he'll give them as he did to saw the
Tarsus, the Apostle Paul, raised to help in time of need. They
will be trials, they will be keenly felt, but he will support
and strengthen them in those trials. Though it may be like
in Psalm 107, they fell down, there was none to help. Then
they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them out
of their distresses. But in this trial, Job many times
thinks about beyond the grave. He thinks about what shall be
beyond this life, and how short life is, and what shall await
the other side of the grave. And it's a good thing when our
trials work that. There are so many that live just
for this life. And the apostle says in his letter
to the Corinthians, if in this life only we have hope in Christ,
we of all men, most miserable. But when the Lord touches the
things of this life, and then there's the thought, well, how
is it for me beyond the grave? How is my standing in Christ? How is my hope beyond the grave? And we look narrowly to that
to make sure it is a good hope, that it is well with us, that
we are eternally saved, that Christ has put away our sins. Well here then is a question
that Job asked and we may think from things that are formally
written in this chapter that why is Job asking this when he's
made other statements concerning man and his passing away. But very often when we go through
trials we can make statements of truth what we believe on one
hand and on the other hand we are questioning and even going
over in our minds whether something is actually so or not. So I want to look at the question
here and what follows in the verse by three points. Firstly, why the if is not the
question. If a man dies, shall he live
again? The if is not the question. So
we're looking at that for our first point. The second point
is five answers to the question, shall he live again? And in those answers we'll see
a no, and we'll see three yeses, and we'll see a yes and no in
one thing. And then thirdly, Job's resolve. Job resolves, all the days of
my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. But firstly the if that is not
the question. If a man die, man will die, man
shall die. Why is that? We go right back
to the fall, right back to creation when man was created perfect
and pure and upright. And God said to him, he gave
him the commandment, that of all the trees of the garden of
Eden, thou mayest eat thereof, but the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil in the midst of the garden, thou mayest not
eat thereof. In the day that thou eatest thereof,
thou shalt surely die. And so the sentence was already
prescribed upon disobedience, upon a rebellion against that
word. Under Satan's temptations, our
first parents did take of that fruit and ate thereof. They then
knew that they were naked, they were ashamed, they could not
stand before God. God met with them and asked them,
searched them out, what they had done. They were brought in
guilty. That sentence was carried out
not only on Adam and Eve, but on the whole of the human race. In the day that thou eatest thereof,
thou shalt surely die. And that death came in two parts. One was in a spiritual way, man
dying. Already he had been made as in
the image of God, that is, with an eternal soul, who is made
with a rational mind and reasoning, He was made to be able to have
communion and fellowship with God, to know God and to understand
God. But in the fall, though he retains
that image of God in many, many ways, he still has dominion over
the beasts of the field and over the earth, though every beast
rising up against him really shows his losing of that dominion. that he, although he still does,
have that reasonable soul and able to reason things, yet his
ability to have that fellowship with God, to know God, is completely
taken away. That wisdom is destroyed, is
taken away. We read of Paul's letter to Corinthians
that had pleased God by his wisdom. that in the wisdom of God, that
man through wisdom could not know God. And it is that knowledge,
that wisdom. Man is spiritually dead, that
is taken from him. The natural man receiveth not
the things of God, neither can he know them, because they are
spiritually discerned. Though in that sense, Adam and
Eve And all of the human race, they fell. We come into this
world born in sin and shaven in iniquity. We are already under
the sentence of death. We are already under condemnation. And the second part of that is,
in dying thou shalt die, that man was then to be laid in the
grave. And though Adam and those of
his contemporaries lived many hundreds of years, We read in
those early chapters of Genesis, and he died, and he died, and
he died. The only exceptions in scripture
have been Enoch, who walked with God and was not, he was taken,
and Elijah, who was taken directly up into heaven. And we are told
that when the Lord returns at the last day, that those that
are alive and remain of the Lord's people They shall be caught up
with him in the clouds, so shall we ever be with the Lord. They shall ascend like Elijah
did, or Enoch did, translated, but not dying as we know dying. But for most of mankind, the
grave awaits us. So when we read this word, if
a man die, man already is dead spiritually. It is not an if. He is dead, spiritually. And
if a man die, man is born to die. He has grave awaiting him. That is an absolute certainty. And so, this if is not actually
the question at all. Another thing we must remember
is that man was created eternal. He has a soul that shall never
ever cease to exist. And in one sense, he has a body
as well that shall never cease to exist. It does cease to exist
in the form it is in now, but we shall be given another body. We'll come to that in a moment. But the important thing to remember
is that man himself, the very person, his soul, his being,
is in a body, is in a tabernacle, is in a vessel. We have this
treasure in earthen vessels, says the Apostle Paul. And he
viewed the day of his death, absent from the body, present
with the Lord. Our Lord said to the dying thief,
this day shalt thou be with me in paradise. The dying thief's
body was on the cross, and our Lord's was laid in the tomb.
But his soul, their souls were in paradise that very day. And
so we have the eternal nature of the soul that never ceases
to exist. And the solemnity of that soul
is not redeemed, if it's not saved, what a solemn, tight judgment
day awaits, and the fearful wrath of God. against all unrighteousness
and all sin. God is just, and sin must be
punished. It must be punished eternally
in an eternal being, eternal soul. So the if is not the question. That is, a settled thing, and
however much man may not believe in God, or might not believe
the truths that are set forth, he shall die. He may fight it
to his last breath, but he shall die. No man hath power of the
Spirit to retain the Spirit. No, he cannot do so. At the time that the soul is
separated from the body, that body dies, and the Spirit returns
to God that gave it. We read in Ecclesiastes the great
difference between the beasts of the earth and of man, who
know the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth,
and the spirit of man which goeth upward. Well, if if is not the
question, what is? In our second point, we consider
the answers to the question, shall he live again? Shall he live again? Well, I want to look at this
in these five ways. Firstly, with the answer no. In the previous verses, We read
a picture of a tree that is cut down, and that at the scent of
water that it will bud and bring forth boughs like a plant, verse
9. And then, but man, in verse 10,
man dieth and wasteth away, yea, man giveth up the ghost, that's
the soul, the spirit, and where is he? As the waters fail from
the sea, and the flood decayeth and dryeth up, so man lieth down,
and riseth not, till the heavens be no more. So here is the implication
of the resurrection. They shall not awake, nor be
raised out of their sleep. O that thou wouldst hide me in
the grave, he says. So Job, he does know that man
will lie down. He will stay in the grave until
that last day when Christ shall come. And we shall look at this
in a moment. But the first answer is that
no, and that perhaps it is clearer if we turn back in Job to chapter
seven, and then in verse nine and 10. As the cloud is consumed
and vanished away, So he that goeth down to the grave shall
come up no more. He shall return no more to his
house, neither shall his place know him any more. And we know
then, it is very clear, that when we die we shall not return
to this life, to our place, to on this earth, in this time state. that is when our time on earth
is is completely finished and we shall not return to our place
so in that way yes you might say well Lazarus was raised from
the dead and the widow of Nain's son was raised from the dead
yes they were our lord raised them from the dead but they did
eventually die and so we'll all die for it's appointed unto death the judgment. That is God's
appointment. That is God's word. So no, he
shall not live again upon this earth as we know our bodies and
our place. It's a solemn thing. Very often
we hear of those in the news, sometimes they might be millionaires,
billionaires with much wealth. And they're suddenly cut off,
they suddenly die. And they cannot carry that wealth
down to the grave, they cannot enjoy it. It's all got to be
distributed. They're finished with it. There's
no difference between them and those that die as an absolute
pauper. It's a solemn reminder to us
whenever we receive money from an inheritance, But the only
reason why we've got that is because someone has died. Someone
can't use it. They've finished with it. And
remember that one day we also shall leave it to another. But the second answer is a yes. And in this one I think of what
we said about man being spiritually dead. losing the ability to have any
favour with God, shut out from God, banish from God. If a man dies, shall he live
again? Shall he live again spiritually? And the answer is yes, through
the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, man shall live
spiritually again. Our Lord said, I am come that
they might have life, that they might have it more abundantly.
I give unto them eternal life. They shall never perish, neither
shall any man pluck them out of mine hand. And that life first
begins with what our Lord insisted on in John chapter 3. Ye must be born again. Except
a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot see the
kingdom of God. There must be a new birth, a
new life, a spiritual life, giving spiritual eyes and spiritual
ears, and a new heart, a softened heart. The Lord speaks of passing
by his people and bidding them live while they are in their
sin. It's spoken of as being quickened
or made alive. Paul writes to the Ephesians
and he says, you hath he quickened? who were dead in trespasses and
sins. By grace ye are saved, through
faith that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. It is
the quickening work of our Lord to bring to spiritual life those
that were dead in trespasses and sins. And that life is in
the Lord Jesus Christ, and it is in the Reason, because the
Lord Jesus Christ has come. He has been made under the law,
the same as his people are under the law. He is taken into union
with his eternal person, the eternal Son of God, one with
the Father, one with the Spirit. He is taken into union with his
divine person, a human nature. In Hebrews it says that he took
on not in him, The nature of angels, the nature of angels
is just spirit, just spirit. He did not take on him the nature
of beasts, that is just blood, flesh and blood, but of the seed
of Abraham, that is flesh and blood and a soul. He took the
same, same being, the same as his brethren, the same as those
that he is to redeem, the soul and body are both redeemed by
the Lord Jesus Christ. on Calvary's tree. The only way
that there can be a deliverance from spiritual death is that
the debt be fully paid, and the debt required is the shedding
of blood. In the day that thou eatest thereof
thou shalt surely die, and dying thou shalt die. Without the shedding
of blood there is no remission. We have a beautiful type of this
when the children of Israel were brought out of Egyptian bondage. Nine great trials were brought,
and Pharaoh would not let the children of Israel go. But then
the Lord brought the Passover, and the blood of the Lamb was
shed, and the blood was put on the doorposts and upon the lintels. And the Lord said, when I pass
over, it was to pass over the houses that night, and all the
firstborn would be slain. But when I see the blood, I'll
pass over you. I'll not kill those that were
sheltering beneath the blood. And it beautifully sets forth
the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that he was to shed at Calvary.
So that last Passover, he said to his disciples, I have desired
to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. He was the Paschal
Lamb. He was what that sacrifice and
offering pointed to. And as soon as that blood was
shed in Egypt, then they were set free, then they were loosed. And so it is in a spiritual way.
The Lord says in John 10, I lay down my life for the sheep. I
have power to lay it down, I have power to take it again. This
commandment have I received of my Father. Most solemnly, he
says of the scribes and the Pharisees that could not receive his word,
ye are not of my sheep, therefore ye hear not my word. My sheep,
they hear my voice and they follow me. It's a wonderful token of
being one of God's blood-wrought family. Mine ear hath he opened
in the new birth, in the new gift of eternal life. He that
hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. But it is that work of our Lord
Jesus Christ on Calvary that enables Him justly and freely
and righteously to give His people eternal life. He has paid their
debt. He has borne their sin. He has
suffered in their place. He has endured the wrath of God
instead of the wrath of God falling on them. And then He gives them
eternal life. And because their lives are so
marred and stained with sin, he also gives them his own righteousness,
his own perfect life of obedience from the womb until the grave. He imputes to them or puts on
their account, puts on the account of a believer so that they will
stand faultless before God's throne. So yes, a soul that is
spiritually dead will live again through the gospel, through believing
and trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ. Through the Lord quickening
them into divine life, through the word of God, through the
preach word, it has pleased God through the foolishness of preaching
to save them that believe. And through the means of faith,
faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And it is
in that way we can say, yes. And countless souls, and there
are those of us here, that can say, yes, I once was dead, but
now I'm alive. Or like John Newton, I once was
blind, but now I see. Doubtless characters in the Word
of God that are able to point to the work of God. He which
hath begun a good work in you will perform it unto the day
of Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul says, what I
am, I am by the grace of God. And the Lord stopped him on that
Damascus road when he is persecuting men and women to death. And he
stopped him, spoke to him, revealed himself to him and gave him grace
and sent him to preach the gospel, which once he was destroying.
So it is through the gospel, the good news of salvation to
sinners. Life through the gospel. And
it begins in spiritual life. It begins with a new nature,
a new creature. It begins in the heart, the heart
work wrought by God the Holy Spirit. And it is effective and
it affects all that person's life. So yes, through the Gospel,
quickened spiritual life is given. But then there's another yes.
In the giving of that eternal life, the Apostle Paul, he speaks
of how it was with him in experience. In Romans, in the epistle of
Paul to the Romans in chapter 7, he says that, I was alive without
the law once, that when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And what he means is that he
was once a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He once did not feel he was a
sinner, did not feel he was under the wrath of God, he felt all
his works were good and righteous, and God was pleased with him.
But then the Lord showed him his sin, and it was through just
one commandment the Lord gave him thou shalt not covet. And
that commandment wrought in him, or manner of evil sexual desire,
and he was brought then in guilty before God as a guilty sinner. He describes it in that way.
When the commandment came, or when God made that commandment
powerful in my soul to convict me as a sinner, I died. Died to his former hope, died
to his hope in saving himself or his good works. And the commandment
which was ordained to life, God gave him the commandment with
the end in view it would give him spiritual life, I found to
be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the
commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. Wherefore the
law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. He says, was then that which
is good made death unto me? God forbid, but sin, that it
might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good,
that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful. So this
question, shall he live again if he die? We put it in this
way, if one is really convicted of sin, and the sin that they
see in their own heart and in their own lives, it has that
effect, And they think, however can I live? God must surely condemn
me to hell. I am lost. I am ruined. I am
undone. I am eternally damned and condemned. And that soul is brought into
death just to look for death. And the question is, one that
is dead in that sense, shall he live again? And the answer
is yes, because it is the same God that convicts of sin as that
pardons sin. It takes as much the power of
God to show a man that he is a sinner as it is to show a man
that his sins are forgiven. I know those of you who sit under
my ministry regularly will know that I often use that illustration,
that way, of Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar had a dream, but
he forgot what the dream was. And he got his magicians and
his wise men And he asked them not only to interpret the dream,
but they had to tell him what the dream was in the first place.
And they said that it was an impossible thing that he was
asking. No king would ever require that
of any man to tell them a dream that he had forgotten. And so
he commanded all the wise men to be slain, but Daniel stopped
him. And Daniel asked that he be given
time, and he had asked the God of heaven And the dream was shown
to Daniel and the interpretation. But the king said a very interesting
thing to his wise men. He said to them that he accused
them of preparing lying words, that they were just going to
make up an interpretation if they were told the dream. and
then make it for a long period of time and he'd forget and he
wouldn't realise they'd just deceived him in the answer. But
he said this to them, you show me the dream and I will know
that you can tell me the interpretation thereof. And that's a good thing. You show me where a man, a God
has shown man his sin And I'll show you the same God that can
show you the pardon and forgiveness of sin. It takes as much power
for God to show someone that he's a sinner, because it is
only those that are awakened that will see it. If we're in
a pitch black room, we can't see what's in that room until
light shines into it, and then we see what's in it. And our
fallen nature and our condition by nature is like that. We're
in such darkness and deadness until the light of the gospel
and the light of the law comes into that room. And it shows
us what our true state is. It shows us our sinship in all
what we think, in all that we say, in all that we do. There's
sin mixed with it in everything. If thou, Lord, should mark iniquity,
who should stand? There's no man that doeth good
and sinneth not. The Word of God is very clear
on that. All have sinned and come short
of the glory of God. There is not one that doeth righteousness. No, not one. And so the first sign, really,
of hope is a conviction of sin. When we die to hope in saving
ourselves, then we look to be saved by Jesus, and we look to
be saved by what He has done upon the cross, without pleading
anything that we have done, not by works of righteousness which
we have done, but in faith in what Christ has done, and Christ
alone. So that is the third, yes. Then there's a fourth one. Yes,
those that die in Christ They shall be raised, they shall live
again with new bodies. The beautiful chapter in 1 Corinthians
chapter 15 sets forth the whole of the chapter, the reality of
the resurrection. Paul is answering those that
were saying in the Corinthian church that there is no resurrection
of the dead. The Apostle says, if there is
no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not raised. And he gives all of the implications
of this. If Christ be praised that he
rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection
of the dead? But if there be no resurrection
of the dead, then is Christ not risen? If Christ be not risen,
then is our preaching vain? and your faith is also vain?
Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified
of God, that he raised up Christ, whom he raised not up, if so
be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then
is not Christ raised? If Christ be not raised, your
faith is vain, yet in your sins, and they that have fallen asleep,
or died in Christ, are perished. And so all those implications,
he is saying, establishing the resurrection of the dead, and
he's bound up with Christ's resurrection as well. Later on that chapter,
he gives all of the arguments that will be raised as to how
shall they be raised, what bodies shall they come, what shall they
look, and he says there are terrestrial bodies, there are celestial bodies,
There's an earthly body, as we are born the image of the earthly,
so we shall bear the image of the heavenly. I love it, you
know, this time of the year, I think one of the most vivid
illustrations of the Resurrection is the daffodil. Because the
daffodil bulb in itself, you look at it, is a gnarled, brown,
unattractive, dead-looking thing. And you put it in the ground,
and it comes up, it doesn't come up a chiller, It doesn't come
up a bluebell, it comes up a daffodil, exactly what the bulb was, but
it doesn't come up gnarled and brown and horrible, it comes
up beautiful and lovely. And springtime is a beautiful
illustration of the resurrection, the life from the dead, and how
different, how wonderful, how lovely it is. And the apostle
uses those illustrations here. Every seed has a body. You plant
a grain of wheat. Wheat comes up, not barley. You
plant barley, and barley comes up. And every seed has its body. And he said, this is what the
resurrection is. It's sown in natural body. It
raised the spiritual body. It's sown in corruption. It's
raised in incorruption. And the certainty of it, that
we shall And Job is like this. He said, though after my skin
worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God for
myself and not for another. It's not going to be someone
else. It's going to be Job that is raised up, shall be recognizable
as Job. What age shall we come? They
shall be as the angels in heaven. There shall not be an infant
of days nor an old man. Christ was 33 years when he died. So shall those be in the resurrection,
I believe, in the prime of life, the beauty of life, in all perfection,
no imperfection, in that new resurrection, no corruption.
What is so wonderful as well for God's people, their bodies
will not While we are here below, our
bodies, as Paul sets it forth in Romans 7, are constantly in
conflict with our soul. O wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from this body of death? Because the body just
lusts and it goes after the things of this world. But in that new
creation, the body and the soul will be in perfect harmony. There
shall not be any craving of that body for anything sinful or anything
wrong. It shall be a new creation. And
so that is the prospect. Paul, he writes to the Thessalonians
that when the Lord comes in the clouds of heaven, the dead in
Christ, they shall rise first, and we which are alive and remain,
we shall meet them in the air. So shall we ever be with the
Lord. Will a man, shall a man live
again? Yes, he shall. The apostle says,
then we shall know even as we are known. It cannot be more
of a shadow than what we are now. We can see, we can hear,
we can touch, we can smell, we can see each other. It shall
not be less than that in the resurrection. There are to be
a new heaven, a new earth. wherein dwelleth righteousness. But then we have lastly, a yes
and a no. A yes and a no. Shall he live again? We read in the prophecy of Daniel
of that last day when the Lord shall come. And many of them
that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting
life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And Paul, when he speaks
to the council in the Acts, he says that there shall be a resurrection
of the just and the unjust. Even though those that die outside
of Christ, those that shall go to eternal torments and in hell
fire, they shall also be resurrected, they shall also have a body,
but it can hardly be told that they live. Again, yes, they have
an existence, and in one sense they live, but they're eternally
dying. And so that is why I say, yes,
And no, because they do not have eternal life, but eternal misery,
eternal banishment from God, eternal separation from God,
and in a body that never consumes, that never dies, that never ceases
to exist, is most fearful to even contemplate, even think
of what it shall be to die outside of the Lord Jesus Christ. So
those are the five answers that I put before you in this question,
if a man dies, shall he live again? A no, three yeses, and
a yes and no. I want to look then lastly at
Job's resolve. He says at the end of this verse,
all the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change
come. He has a very clear view that
there was an appointed time for him upon the earth. One of her
hymns says that not a single shaft can hit till the God of
love sees fit. Plagues and deaths around me
fly till he bids I cannot die. And there's that appointed time
for man on earth. He cannot die before his time. That time is appointed by God
and we cannot put off that time when that time does come. And
Job, he knew that. In this great trial that Job
had, and we think of those most solemnly and so much you read
of it today, that they feel that their troubles are so great and
life is so hard and so painful and their afflictions are so
great. that they must put their own hand to it and take away
their own life and cut their own life short. Maybe in one
sense that is a sin against the Holy Ghost because the Spirit
is in that body and you're destroying. The Lord said, he that destroyeth
the temple of God, him shall God destroy. And our bodies are
the temple of the Holy Ghost. May it ever be kept from ever
putting forth our hands against our body. For Job here is a wonderful
example, one in tremendous trials, tremendous losses and great afflictions,
but he does never look to the root of taking away his own life. He says, all the days of my appointed
time will I wait. In this affliction, in this trial,
in this trouble, in this path, Why the Lord said, in the world
you shall have tribulation. In me you shall have peace, but
in the world you shall have tribulation. But be of good cheer, I have
overcome the world. May we always keep the Lord in
view, and keep in view that those things that we pass through do
not come by chance. They are chosen by God, appointed
by God. If the Lord was to say to us,
look, I'm going to leave it to you. You choose out what tribulation
you shall be in. You're sinners. You're under
sentence of death. You're under condemnation. I've
lengthened your days out in the day of grace. And those of you
who find the Lord, who believe in him, have eternal life, a
life beyond the grave. But you must have tribulation.
You choose what it is. What would you choose? You think
of those who have been maimed, you think of those who have terrible
illnesses, those who have troubles in their families, those who
have lost all their loved ones. You think of all the terrible
things that many people do have to go through and we wouldn't
minimise their sufferings in any way at all. How much better to leave it with
the Lord. Now David, when he numbered Israel
and he sinned in numbering Israel, the Lord gave him three choices
what to choose and the chastening that he'd have. And David said,
let me fall into the hand of the Lord. You choose. But Job here, he's waiting. All these days are my appointed
time. There is an appointed time. Lord,
give us that. waiting spirit, but waiting what
for? Job had this hope beyond the
grave. He said, I know that my redeemer
liveth and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.
He had very clear views of Christ, very clear views that he already
lived in heaven. He is the eternal God. And one
day he would come down to this earth and he'd suffer, bleed
and die for him. He knew that he would be redeemed. But he also had this resolve,
not only to wait, but to believe that his change would come. He
doesn't even use the word death here. He doesn't say that he
shall, all the days of my appointed time, will I wait till I die. He views it as a change, a change
of habitation, a change of body, to be absent, as the Apostle
Paul says, from the body, and present with the Lord. Change. His existence is still the same. I always remember, over in Australia,
going to find the grave of a dear sister in faith in a large cemetery. And as I drove along that cemetery,
the Lord dropped into my mind, just as if someone had spoken,
why seek ye the living among the dead? You know, I still went
to see that grave, but I had such a clear view. That dear
lady was in heaven, her soul was there, her existence, she
still existed, she was still alive, her body was there, her
mortal remains were there, and one day it would be quickened
and raised again. But the realization of that still
existence, now the Lord said, concerning himself and concerning
the souls of man, because the Jews were saying that Abraham
had died and the fathers had died. And the Lord said, well,
he that appeared to Moses in the bush, he said, I am the God
of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. God is
not the God of the dead, but of the living. And so he sets
forth that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, they were all living. They were
alive. They hadn't ceased to exist.
Of course, we have on the transfiguration, Elias and Moses speaking with
our Lord. The reality of the eternal soul. And here is a man in affliction
here below, waiting, waiting for that change to come. Believing
He has that interest, that hope. And how is it with us? Is it
well with us? Have we been quickened again?
Are we alive spiritually? Do we have faith in Christ and
trusting solely in Him? And are we waiting to that time
when we shall also have that change? When our bodies shall
die, we shall be laid in the tomb, but we shall be with Christ. And do we look for it? Do we
think of it? Are we like the Thessalonians
who were called to wait for his son from heaven? So may the Lord
give us to know the answer to this question and to know it
personally, not just as bystander on the race, but to know how
it is with our soul. And we know that whether we have
that spiritual life now, in the Lord Jesus Christ and live a
life of faith and prayer, a life of obedience, a life of in the
Word of God, feeding upon the Word of God, hearing the voice
of the Lord. The Apostle Paul says, when Christ
who is our life shall appear, then shall we also appear with
him, is Christ our life. May the Lord add his blessing.
Amen.