The Nature Of Life

The Nature of Life

Job 14:1-2, 5, 14

I was honored to serve as ____________ pastor for over thirty years so today I realize that you have experienced one of life’s great losses - the death of someone you love. You have lost someone very important to you, a mother, grandmother, an aunt, a friend. How do you go about processing such a thing. So, I want to share with for a few minutes today from Scrip-ture about the experience of a man who had suffered almost unimaginable loss in his life, because he offers to us insight into the nature of life. This man’s name was Job and he had it all, he had ten children, an abundance of land, a houseful of servants and substantial financial assets. But then, without warning he experienced a storm of hardship. He lost every-thing; he lost his livestock, his crops, his servants, his savings and worse of all he lost all ten of his children. And when it seemed nothing else could go wrong, he lost his health. While buried in physical and emotional pain he wrote very clearly about his feelings.

Job’s problem is not so much financial or social or medical; his central problem is theological. Job must deal with the fact that in his life, God does not act the way he always thought God would and should act. In this drama, the Book of Job is not so much a record of solutions and explanations to this problem; it is more a revelation of Job’s experience and the answers carried within his experience.

Job writes, “Man who is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. 2) He comes forth like a flower and fades away; He flees like a shadow and does not continue. ….5) Since his days are determined, The number of his months is with You; You have appointed his limits, so that he cannot pass. …. 14) If a man dies, shall he live again? …”

First, An Agitated Existence. (Job 14:1-2)

“Man who is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble.

2) He comes forth like a flower and fades away; He flees like a shadow and does not continue.

The first thing that Job touches on is - The Brevity of Life - “Man who is born of woman is of few Days’ Job compared the brevity of life to a “flower” quickly springing up and just as quickly withering away and to a “shadow” that vanishes with morning sun. Certainty the Bible teaches it –the Bible is full of warnings about the brevity of life one such is found in the book of James where we are warned “Now listen, you who say, Today of Tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year, carry on business and make money. 14) Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are (like) a mist that appears for a while and then vanishes. (James 4:14 - NIV)

And Experience Demonstrates It. How many others have we witnessed precede us in Death? The Bible says in Psalm 90:10, “The days of our lives are seventy years; And if by reason of strength they are eighty years, Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; For it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” Here we are told that 70-80 years is the general span of human life, but we all know from experience that this is not a guarantee. Some live only a very short time, others live very long lives and but there are no guarantees and no way to know how long our lives will be. Job goes on to say that life is not only brief it is filled with difficulties. Job says that our days are “few” and troubles are many; in fact we are “full” of them.

Second, An Allotted Time. (Job 14:5)

“Since his days are determined, The number of his months is with You; You have appointed his limits, so that he cannot pass.”

Each of us has an allotted time set by God. That may be a thought that is hard to accept. It is never easy, nor is it something we want to happen. What we must realize first and foremost is that we each have an appointment to keep - some far earlier in life than others.

Third, An Appointed Hour. – In the New Testament the writer of Hebrews writes "And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment." (Hebrews 9:27)

Although we cannot know the hour that will end our lives there are some things we can know.

• Death is a sure appointment.

It is sometimes said that “nothing is certain in life except death and taxes.” But that is not wholly true. A clever man with a good lawyer can find a way around most if not all of his taxes, but no one escapes death. As George Bernard Shaw remarked, “The statistics on death have not changed. One out of one person dies.”