The Question in the Dust: Waiting for the Change Text: Job 14:13-17
Introduction: The Ache of Man
We live in an age that is terrified of pain and allergic to death. Our entire culture is a frantic, noisy, and ultimately futile attempt to distract ourselves from the two great certainties of our fallen condition: we will suffer, and we will die. We have pills for our anxieties, screens for our boredom, and shallow philosophies for our dread. But when the lights go out, when the diagnosis comes, when the casket is closed, all our modern coping mechanisms are revealed to be nothing more than tissue paper shields against a hurricane.
The world has no answer for the man on the ash heap. It has no category for righteous suffering. It can only conclude, as Job's miserable comforters did, that if you are suffering, you must have done something to deserve it. Or, in its more sophisticated modern guise, it concludes that suffering is meaningless, a random twitch in a purposeless cosmos, and your pain is just your bad luck. Both are lies from the pit. Both are designed to keep you from asking the right questions of the right person.
But here, in the middle of the oldest book in the Bible, a man scraped raw by reality, sitting in the dust of his own ruin, does what the world cannot. He looks up. He argues with God, he pleads with God, he questions God, but he never turns away from God. This is the central difference between godly suffering and worldly despair. And in the midst of his lament, a shaft of light breaks through the clouds. Job asks the most important question a human being can ask, and in the same breath, he stumbles upon the only answer that matters. This passage is not the polished creed of a comfortable theologian. It is raw, desperate, grasping faith. It is the faith of a man wrestling with God in the dark and, to his astonishment, finding a handhold.
The Text
"Oh that You would conceal me in Sheol,
That You would hide me until Your anger returns to You,
That You would set a limit for me and remember me!
If a man dies, will he live again?
All the days of my labor I will wait
Until my change comes.
You will call, and I will answer You;
You will long for the work of Your hands.
For now You number my steps,
You do not keep watch over my sin.
My transgression is sealed up in a bag,
And You cover up my iniquity."
(Job 14:13-17 LSB)
A Divine Hiding Place (v. 13)
We begin with Job's desperate, paradoxical prayer:
"Oh that You would conceal me in Sheol, That You would hide me until Your anger returns to You, That You would set a limit for me and remember me!" (Job 14:13)
Job's suffering is so immense that his first request is for the grave. But we must understand what he is asking for. He asks to be concealed in Sheol. In the Old Testament, Sheol was the place of the dead, the realm of departed spirits. It was not the final hell, the lake of fire, which the New Testament calls Gehenna. For the Old Testament saints, it was a shadowy waiting room. Jacob expected to go down to Sheol mourning for his son. David was confident God would not abandon his soul to Sheol. So Job is not asking for damnation. He is asking for a reprieve. He is asking for a divine time-out.
He wants to be hidden "until Your anger returns to You." Job rightly perceives that the holiness of God is a consuming fire, and in his afflicted state, it feels directed at him. He doesn't understand the larger cosmic drama unfolding, the contest between God and the accuser. He only knows the heat. And so he prays with a staggering sort of faith. He believes that God's anger is not an eternal, static state. It is an action that will have a conclusion. He asks God to hide him, set a time limit, and then, crucially, "remember me."
This is not the prayer of an atheist. An atheist believes the grave is the end, that there is no one to remember him. Job's faith is stretched thin, but it does not snap. He believes in a God who disciplines, but who also remembers. He believes in a God who is sovereign over the grave itself. He is asking the very one whose hand feels heavy upon him to be the one to provide the shelter. This is the essence of biblical faith: running to God for refuge from God.
The Hinge of Human History (v. 14)
From this desperate prayer, Job utters the question upon which all of human hope turns.
"If a man dies, will he live again? All the days of my labor I will wait Until my change comes." (Job 14:14 LSB)
This is it. This is the question that separates the Christian worldview from every other philosophy, religion, and pagan superstition on the planet. Will death have the last word? Is the grave a final punctuation mark, a period, or is it a comma? The materialist says it is a period. The Buddhist says you get reincarnated as a sea slug if you don't get it right. The pagan Egyptians mummified their pharaohs, hoping to preserve the body for some kind of shadowy continuation. But here, Job asks the question plainly.
And then, he answers it himself, not with a philosophical proof, but with a declaration of dogged, stubborn faith. "All the days of my labor I will wait until my change comes." The word for "labor" here can also mean "warfare" or "hard service." Job sees his life as a tour of duty. And he is resolved to serve it out, to wait on his post like a sentry, until his relief arrives. That relief he calls his "change."
This is resurrection language. The Apostle Paul picks up this very theme in 1 Corinthians 15. "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump" (1 Cor. 15:51-52). Job, thousands of years before Christ, with no empty tomb to look back on, no apostolic writings to study, somehow knew that death was not the end. He knew that a great transformation was coming. He was waiting for his resurrection body. He was looking forward, through a glass very darkly, to Easter morning.
The Creator's Affection (v. 15)
Job's hope is not in some abstract force, but in a personal God who calls and who cares.
"You will call, and I will answer You; You will long for the work of Your hands." (Job 14:15 LSB)
Here the hope becomes intensely personal. The resurrection is not a natural process; it is a divine summons. "You will call." This is the voice that said, "Lazarus, come forth." It is the voice of the Son of God, which all who are in the graves will hear and come out (John 5:28-29). And Job's response is the response of every believer: "I will answer You." The creature will respond to the Creator's call.
But the reason for this call is breathtaking. "You will long for the work of Your hands." God is not a cold, detached deity who created the world and then left it to rust. He is an artist who has a deep and abiding affection for what He has made. He will have a "longing" for Job. The word carries a sense of deep desire, of yearning. God the Father will yearn for His child, His creature, the one He knit together. This demolishes the idea of God as an impassive philosophical absolute. Our God is a person, a Father, who loves what He has made. He loves His image-bearers, and He will not abandon the work of His hands to the dust. The cross is the ultimate expression of this longing, the price God was willing to pay to reclaim and restore the work of His hands.
The Present Reality and the Gospel Hope (v. 16-17)
After this soaring flight of faith, Job comes crashing back down to his present reality, and in doing so, shows us exactly why we need the gospel.
"For now You number my steps, You do not keep watch over my sin. My transgression is sealed up in a bag, And You cover up my iniquity." (Job 14:16-17 LSB)
The tone shifts. "For now..." In his current experience, it feels as though God is a meticulous prosecutor. He is numbering Job's steps, not like a loving father watching a toddler, but like a prison guard counting his paces in the yard. The second line is tricky; some translations render it "you watch over my sin." But as it stands, it presents a tension. God is numbering his steps, but not to catch him in sin. The next verse clarifies the feeling. "My transgression is sealed up in a bag, and You cover up my iniquity."
From Job's perspective, this is terrifying. It feels as though God has collected every one of his sins, put them in a bag, and sealed it shut as evidence for a future trial. The covering of iniquity feels like God is plastering it over, hiding it for now, but preserving it. This is the experience of a man standing before a holy God with only his own record. It is the terror of the law, which exposes our every fault and offers no remedy.
But the gospel takes this very image and turns it inside out. What Job feared, God has done for our salvation. God did take all our transgressions and seal them in a bag. But then, He did not hold it over our heads. He laid that bag on the shoulders of His own Son. As Paul says, God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21). Christ carried that sealed bag of our filth to the cross.
"having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross." (Colossians 2:14 LSB)
And when God "covers" our iniquity, it is not the temporary cover-up Job feared. It is the perfect, permanent covering of the blood of Christ. He removes our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west. He remembers them no more. The bag is not sealed for a future prosecution; it has been cast into the depths of the sea.
Conclusion: The Answer from the Empty Grave
Job asked the question from an ash heap, surrounded by the wreckage of his life. Two thousand years ago, God answered it from an empty tomb, surrounded by discarded grave clothes. "If a man dies, will he live again?" The answer is a thunderous YES. Yes, because Jesus Christ lives again.
Job's hope was a pinprick of light in a universe of darkness. Our hope is the blazing sun of the risen Christ. He waited for a "change," and we know that change is a guaranteed inheritance for all who are in Christ. He hoped God would long for him, and we know that God so longed for us that He gave His only Son. He feared his sins were sealed in a bag for judgment, and we know our sins were sealed in that bag and judged on the cross.
Therefore, we can wait. We can endure our own tour of duty, our own hard service. We can face suffering, not with the world's cheap distractions, but with Job's rugged hope, now made certain in the gospel. For we know that our Redeemer lives, and that in the latter day He will stand upon the earth. And though after our skin, worms destroy this body, yet in our flesh we shall see God. He will call, and we will answer. For He longs for the work of His hands.