Sermon for March 5th, 2023

Job 13:20-28; 14:1-22

13:20“Only grant two things to me;
    then I will not hide myself from your face:
21 withdraw your hand far from me,
    and do not let dread of you terrify me.
22 Then call, and I will answer;
    or let me speak, and you reply to me.
23 How many are my iniquities and my sins?
    Make me know my transgression and my sin.
24 Why do you hide your face
    and count me as your enemy?
25 Will you frighten a windblown leaf
    and pursue dry chaff?
26 For you write bitter things against me
    and make me reap[d] the iniquities of my youth.
27 You put my feet in the stocks
    and watch all my paths;
    you set a bound to the soles of my feet.
28 One wastes away like a rotten thing,
    like a garment that is moth-eaten.

14:1 “A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble,
2     comes up like a flower and withers,
    flees like a shadow and does not last.
3 Do you fix your eyes on such a one?
    Do you bring me into judgment with you?
4 Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?
    No one can.
5 Since their days are determined,
    and the number of their months is known to you,
    and you have appointed the bounds that they cannot pass,
6 look away from them and desist,[a]
    that they may enjoy, like laborers, their days.

7 “For there is hope for a tree,
    if it is cut down, that it will sprout again
    and that its shoots will not cease.
8 Though its root grows old in the earth
    and its stump dies in the ground,
9 yet at the scent of water it will bud
    and put forth branches like a young plant.
10 But mortals die and are laid low;
    humans expire, and where are they?
11 As waters fail from a lake
   and a river wastes away and dries up,
12 so mortals lie down and do not rise again;
    until the heavens are no more, they will not awake
    or be roused out of their sleep.
13 O that you would hide me in Sheol,
    that you would conceal me until your wrath is past,
    that you would appoint me a set time and remember me!
14 If mortals die, will they live again?
    All the days of my service I would wait
    until my release should come.
15 You would call, and I would answer you;
    you would long for the work of your hands.
16 For then you would not[b] number my steps;
    you would not keep watch over my sin;
17 my transgression would be sealed up in a bag,
    and you would cover over my iniquity.

18 “But the mountain falls and crumbles away,
    and the rock is removed from its place;
19 the waters wear away the stones;
    the torrents wash away the soil of the earth;
    so you destroy the hope of mortals.
20 You prevail forever against them, and they pass away;
    you change their countenance and send them away.
21 Their children come to honor, and they do not know it;
    they are brought low, and it goes unnoticed.
22 They feel only the pain of their own bodies
    and mourn only for themselves.”