Tues.’s Devo - The Plight of Man

Read Job. 13:12-14:22 Job pleads with his friends to stop talking and to leave him alone in his misery. Though God has chosen to harm him, he is still going to trust him and keep walking as he has with God. Job is confident in the end that God will justify him. He does ask God for 2 things: for God to stop fighting against him and for God to take away the fear Job has of him. Job wants to have a conversation with God. He asks God to show him his sins instead of hiding them from him. Surely God won’t continue to crush him. He feels totally destroyed. Then in chapter 14, he starts talking about man in general. There days are numbered and short. How can man, born of dust, ever be clean. At least trees can sprout again, after being cut down, but not man. He dies, and then what? In Job’s understanding, when a man dies, he sleeps till the heavens are no more. So Job wants to be hid in the grave till the wrath of God is accomplished on the earth and at the set time God will remember him. In verse 14 he asks, “If a man die, shall he live again?” He believes he will because he says that while he is sleeping in the grave he is waiting for his change to come. God will call him and he will answer because God will have a purpose for him. But for now his steps are numbered and God sees his sin. One day God will seal up man’s transgression and iniquity. Sin will come to an end. God will wash man’s iniquity away and man’s plans will come to naught. Judgment day will come and man will be judged.