Job 14:1-22 - Why Job’s Outlook Became So Dark (Session 19)

In this verse-by-verse Bible study of Job chapter 14, Reasoning Through the Bible explores how intense suffering can distort a person’s outlook on life, Scripture, and even God Himself. Job is at one of the lowest points in the book, and his pain is shaping how he sees everything around him. This session examines why that matters and how believers today can fall into the same pattern if they are not careful. 

This study also highlights Job’s question, “Who can make the clean out of the unclean?” and answers it through the larger testimony of Scripture: only God can cleanse sinners. The discussion then moves into God’s sovereignty, human agency, and why Job’s words should not be read as teaching a fatalistic worldview. It also shows how pain can bias interpretation and why suffering people need wise, mature, biblically grounded counsel. 

The latter part of the session addresses Job’s prayer for death, his hopeless imagery about life being worn away, and the doctrine of soul sleep. The study rejects soul sleep and points instead to the biblical teaching that believers are conscious with the Lord after death. Even in Job’s dark language, the session keeps the larger Christian hope in view: God remains in control, suffering does not overwhelm Him, and restoration is still possible. 

Topics in this episode include:

•  Job 14 explained 
•  suffering warps your view of God 
•  who can make the unclean clean 
•  God’s sovereignty and human agency 
•  does Job teach fatalism 
•  pain and biased Bible interpretation 
•  praying for death in suffering 
•  why soul sleep is false 
•  hope beyond despair 

Reasoning Through the Bible is a verse-by-verse Bible teaching ministry committed to careful exposition, biblical context, and faithful application.

Transcript

Job’s Suffering Warps His View

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Today on Reasoning Through the Bible, we're going to see a man whose outlook on life is very much shaded by his circumstances. He's undergoing painful circumstances, and he views all of life, including God, through the lens of his painful circumstances. And we're going to see those are a very biased viewpoint that does not reflect reality. And we're going to be able to take that and apply that to our lives because sometimes we can be guilty of some of the same things. Hi, my name's Glenn. I'm here with Steve. We are reasoning through the Bible. And today we are reasoning verse by verse through the book of Job. Open your Bibles to chapter 14 of Job. And if you've been following along with us, Job is in a pretty low valley in life. He's lost his family, he's lost his health, he's lost his money. His wife has told him to curse God and die. And now his friends try to over and over again lay the blame at his feet so that he is being blamed for all of his circumstances. At this point, he is as low as a man can go. And we're going to see how that viewpoint biases his view of the world and he gets a very skewed perspective. And we're in Job chapter 14. So, Steve, can you read the first four verses? And we're going to see Job still responding to his friend here, but he's going to respond in a way that really does not reflect the true God.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Man, who is born of woman is short-lived and full of turmoil. Like a flower, he comes out and withers. He also flees like a shadow and does not remain. You also open your eyes on him and bring him into judgment with yourself. Who can make the clean out of the unclean? No one.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

In verse 1, there he says, mankind is short-lived and full of turmoil. So the human condition really is full of a lot of turmoil. There's periods in our life where we can overcome that and convince ourselves that life is not in turmoil. But for most of the time, life is a great struggle. In verse 4, Job asks a question: who can make the clean out of the unclean? And his answer is no one. So, Steve, we know a little bit more about this from the New Testament. Who can make the clean out of the unclean?

SPEAKER_01 2:50

God can. And Jesus Christ, who is God, can do that. As it says in Isaiah, though our sins be like scarlet, they shall be white as wool. Well, only God can make that type of a transition from one to the other. So God can make someone who is unclean clean again.

Sovereignty Foreknowledge And Human Agency

SPEAKER_00 3:09

The idea of being cleansed from sin and the sin making us dirty is a concept that is replete in the New Testament. It is a common theme. Sin has made us dirty. It calls sin filthiness. The only way we can be cleansed from the stain of sin is through God and His grace. First John 1 9, quote, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous, so that he will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Titus 2.14, the Apostle Paul tells us that Christ, quote, purified for himself a people for his own possession. Faith in Christ will wash away our sins. Who can make the clean out of the unclean? Well, you can't do it yourself, but God can. As we go on in the next passage, Job is still talking about how God views man. So I'm going to read starting in verse 5 says this Since his days are determined, the number of his months is with you, and you have set his limits so that he cannot pass. Look away from him so that he may rest until he fulfills his day like a hired worker. For there is hope for a tree when it is cut down that it will sprout again, and its shoots will not fail. Though its roots grow old in the ground, and its stump dies in the dry soil, at the scent of water it will flourish and produce sprigs like a plant. But a man dies and lays prostrate. A person passes away, and where is he? As water evaporates from the sea and a river becomes parched and dried up, so a man lies down and does not rise until the heavens no longer exist. He will not awake nor bewoken from his sleep. So Steedy seems fairly negative there. What do you get from this passage?

SPEAKER_01 5:15

What I get from this is that again, it's Job laying at the feet of God, something that's not actually taking place. It's Job's perception of what is happening to him at his particular point in his life. But this is just a short period of Job's total life. And we saw how the book opened that Job had been blessed very much by God. As the book is going to close, we're going to see that God is once again going to bless Job. Although Job doesn't know that at this moment, but what we can take away from it because we know the beginning to the end of the story is that this is a short period of despair in Job's life. Therefore, it is skewing his perception of God, and it's skewing it in one that is the wrong perception.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

Again, verse 5, since his days are determined, the number of his months is with you, he says to God, and you have set his limits so that he cannot pass. So his days are determined here. God determines some things in more than one sense. It tells us in the rest of Scripture. If you follow the ages of people before and after the great flood, God changes the lengths of our lifetime. He has determined the length of mankind. Paul told the philosophers in Athens that God determines the appointed times and boundaries of nations in Acts 17, 26. In his first sermon, Peter was speaking to the Jewish leaders, and he says that Jesus dying on the cross was, quote, predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, unquote. But it was carried out by Pilate and Herod. So God does indeed predetermine and plan some things. He is sovereign. The question is that in this context here in Job, it says his days are determined. The number of months is with you. Steve, can we then conclude that life is just sort of fatalistic and God has determined everything and leaving us as a type of like a machine or an instrument that is just going through automatic motions that God has predetermined? Is that what Job is saying?

SPEAKER_01 7:39

No, I don't think that's what he's saying at all. I think he's saying is that our life is limited here on earth and God has knowledge of that. The language of predetermined or determined, just because God has knowledge of something like that doesn't mean that God is actually causing that to happen. But it's all on our own free agency. So God's omniscient knowledge to me does not mean that he's actually causing these things to happen like we're robots and he's determining everything that we do, meaning that he's causing it to happen. He can still use that language of our days have been determined just based off of his knowledge of how long and the length of our life is and how we're going to die and et cetera. So no, I don't think that he is describing a situation where God is totally controlling us in every single thing and aspect of our life. To me, that would then bring in a lot of other questions that theologians have talked and discussed for centuries as to God and who he is. I think he's just saying that God is aware of our lives and what's going to happen, and he can still bring a purpose from them and something out of those whenever we place our trust in him.

How To Lament Without Insulting God

SPEAKER_00 9:03

God indeed does determine things, but as you rightly said, Steve, it doesn't mean that it takes away our causation or our agency. Sin has separated us from God, but we are still made in his image. God's image is still in us, and as such, we have human agency. Although sin has separated us, we are still made in God's image. But we still have our actions, and that determines the path that we will take. Just because Job says our days are determined doesn't ultimately end up in some type of fatalism. If you read through this section, Job is being very open with his thoughts. He's being very honest and direct with God. And I think we can learn at least two things from the way and the manner which Job is speaking to God here. We should feel, as Christians, comfortable enough in opening our hearts to God. He is strong enough and good enough to take whatever we say to him. So we should feel comfortable talking to God, speaking very openly with what's on our hearts. That's the first thing. However, the second thing is we should also recognize that God is holy, he is high, he is majestic, and we should always treat him with honor and respect. We should not be so angry with God that we insult him. And I think that's what Job has in cases here actually crossed that line. It's one thing to be very open with God, say, God, this is how I'm feeling, and God, I have these questions. And I'm gonna be very open with you, God, this is what's on my heart. It's something else entirely to be very blunt and almost insulting with God. God is still sovereign, he's still the creator of the universe, and we need to treat him with honor and respect. We have the right as his children to go into the throne room of God, it tells us in Hebrews, but we still treat him as the high and lofty king. We speak to him with respect. In verse six, Job is still seeing God like a type of ogre that is causing pain to people. He says here in verse six, look away from him. He's talking to God about mankind. Look away from him so that he may rest until he fulfills his day like a hired worker. There's hope for a tree when it's cut down that it will sprout again. And he goes on to say that there's hope for plants and animals, but there's no hope for us. He lays his problems at the feet of God. Verses 7, 8, and 9, even a tree has a chance to re-sprout. Verses 10 through 12 talk about what happens when we die. Verse 12, quote, a man dies and does not rise, he will not awake nor be woken from sleep. So he has a very fatalistic viewpoint here. He's saying things that have a little bit crossed the line as far as laying all these things at the feet of God. He says in verse 14, quote, if a man dies, will he live again? All the days of my struggle, I will wait until change comes. I think he's just wondering out loud. He's speaking what's on his heart, which is sort of questioning God, what why are you doing this? He is making some questions. Are we ever going to make it through this? I'm going to die. Am I ever going to get past all this suffering? I think that's really all he's saying here. Don't you think, Steve?

SPEAKER_01 12:35

I believe it's very much of a nihilistic type of outlook on life, as far as why is life even worth living at this point? As I've started out this session, his outlook on God is skewed because it's based off of what he is going through at this particular time. Now, I think that's one of the things that we can also take out of this, Glenn, is that God does not change. He's immutable. His feelings and emotions don't change. Therefore, as Job is here laying at the feet of God his sufferings as to why he is going through this, God doesn't take any type of personal affront to it. God is unchanging. God is still going to be just. God is going to still have full authority. Have you pointed out many times while there's chaos going down here in Job's life, there's calm and peace. Everything is under control in heaven. Well, there's also things that are under control in the earth as well. That's just outside at this present time of Job's vision, because Job is focused on himself. He has inward introspection as to what's going on, but yet he is taking that introspection and he's projecting it back out at God's feet as to woe is me, why is life even worth living anymore? People, we come out from our mothers, we come into this world. Well, as I mentioned before, Job's life wasn't that before, and it's not going to be like that after either. So as we uh continue to go through this section, let's not us take on the same perception that Job has as to what is going on and start pulling in and putting at the feet of God certain things that don't belong with him. I think that's something that we can take in our situations that we get ourselves into. Let's stop whatever situation we're going through, whether it's small or large, let's keep who God is and his characteristics and attributes in place whenever we are reaching out to him. And as we've noted before in our previous session, is that God is going to be just in whatever he does. And our hope can only lay in him as to the outcomes that we're going to experience. Therefore, we need to approach him and we need to lay our lives down in front of him. And as James puts out in his epistle, he says, what we should be praying for at times of struggle is wisdom. Pray for God to give us the wisdom how to handle it, how to cope with it, how to go through it. James doesn't put forward that we should necessarily pray to God to take it away. He says, pray to wisdom as to how to handle and cope for times of trouble and strife that are in our life. So I think that's something we can take away as we look at Job and where his perception of God has led him at this particular point in the story and not let that overcome us whenever we come into like situations.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Again, he says here in verse 12 So a man lies down and does not rise until the heavens no longer exist, he will not awake nor be woken from his sleep. I think that we can be confident here that Job, as a overall, still believes in bodily resurrection. The same man in 1926 says, Though my skin be destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God. So here in this chapter, I think Job is merely saying that when we die, we can't live our life again. We can't go back in what we're doing until God comes back and God restores things. That's just how it's going to be. It's also possible that his suffering is causing Job to waver in his belief. I think here, at a very minimum, his suffering is causing him to interpret the scriptures and interpret God in kind of a biased way. Steve, do you think that we could be guilty of that? Do are there people today that because of their painful circumstance, it's causing them to read the scriptures or believe things about God that's in a very biased way that's biased because of the suffering?

SPEAKER_01 17:04

I think that you just brought up a good point in that we're talking about Joe's perception of God as he is going through this particular time in his life. But you just mentioned there that sometimes we can have a negative perception of the scriptures themselves, whereas we have looked at scriptures as being inspired in the true word of God. Maybe our perception whenever we go through difficult trials is, well, what good are the scriptures to me now? Believers may simultaneously feel abandoned by God and yet cling to hope in his ultimate purposes. There's nothing wrong, I think, Glenn, of sometimes wondering what is happening, what is going on. These are things that we have talked about as we go through Job and we reiterate them in each session as we go through these different parts of them, because it is Job that is continuing to lament over his condition. And I don't think there's anything wrong necessarily of lamenting of our conditions, but we shouldn't ever give up hope on God. We shouldn't ever keep the larger picture out of our mind. God has promised us what? Eternal life. Has He promised us eternal life, though, in these bodies? No, they're going to be glorified bodies. These bodies are going to be laid down at some point. We're going to have resurrected, glorified bodies. And those are the bodies that are going to be eternal with our spirit combined back with them. That's the big picture. And that is what we should always keep in mind, that that's ultimately where we're going and where we're headed. When we keep that in mind, I think it then helps us to be able to cope with whatever situation that we're going through, whether that means we're the ones that are going through the suffering and we feel for our loved ones that feel for us, or whether we're on the outside feeling for the loved ones that we have that are suffering through something as well. So questioning God from a standpoint of why things are going on, I don't think there's necessarily anything inherently wrong with that. Questioning God as to our faith and whether or not he actually cares for us, then I think we get to a point where we need to step back, look at the larger picture as to what's going on and keep all of that in the proper perspective and not necessarily let it get to the point where Job is where he's laying wrong reasons at the feet of God where they don't belong.

Praying For Death And Life’s Limits

SPEAKER_00 19:41

And that's exactly what he's doing. He's laying the cause for his problems at the feet of God, even going as far as to say God's sort of insensitive about these things. So if we ask the question, can pain and suffering cause us to view God and interpret the scriptures in a biased way, the answer is most definitely yes, simply because we see people do it all the time. This is why all of us need wise counsel from mature Christians that are not emotionally involved in the situation we're in. That way we can get interpretation from them and they can help guide us to make sure we're not viewing the scriptures from a biased way. And this is also why that we cannot have our own private interpretation, 2 Peter 1.20. We must have one that aligns with the word of God that can be independently verified by other people, not caught up in our emotional situation. I'm going to go ahead and read the next section of this. Job 14, starting in verse 13, says this: Oh, that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would conceal me until your wrath 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 struggle I will wait until my relief 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 observe my sin. My wrongdoing is sealed up in a bag, and you cover over my guilt. But the falling mountain crumbles away, and the rock moves from its place. Water wears away stones, its torrents wash away the dust of the earth. So you destroy man's hope. You forever overpower him, and he departs. You change his appearance and send him away. His sons achieve honor, but he does not know it. Or they become insignificant and he does not perceive it. However, his body pains him and his soul mourns for himself. This is again very descriptive language, very poetic language. The beginning of verse 13 Job asks God to hide me in Sheol. And of course, Sheol is the grave. He's begging God to take his life so that he can escape God's life. Wrath, Job is so miserable that he's praying for death. Steve, do we have the right to ask for our own death?

SPEAKER_01 22:08

That's a tough question to ask because again, as somebody that is going through different types of suffering, then the plea might be for God to take them. But I think that that's the plea that it should be. It should be left in God's hands and it shouldn't be left in our hands. I know that there are people that have gone through great suffering, and there have been pleas for God, just go ahead and take them. Let them go ahead and go. What benefit is taking place now? So I don't think it's wrong to ask for God to take someone when they're going through great suffering, but I don't think that we need to take it into our own hands in relation to when we leave this earth.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

And I would agree, an innocent life is not ours to decide to take. It's different when it's a state doing capital punishment against a guilty person, but we do not have the authority to take our own life. In here, we see Job blaming God for his situations. He continues to hold God responsible for causing his suffering. Job thinks that he is suffering because of God's wrath. That's the language here. He never curses God like Satan was trying to get him to do in the beginning chapters, but he does feel hopeless and helpless and lays the problems at the feet of God, saying, God's wrath is causing this, and there's nothing I can do about it. Verse 19, Job again has this very descriptive, poetic language. He says, Water wears away stones, so you destroy a man's hope. Job sees God's wrath continuing to blast him over and over and over again, just like water blasts against a stone, so that the stone is eventually worn away. A man's hope is destroyed by suffering. Job is as low as he can be, and the suffering is overwhelming him, and it is impacting his ability to see his situation from a true viewpoint. Now we know that there's times when our problems can overwhelm us. But here's the question: Is there ever a time when our problems are so great that they overwhelm the Lord? Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

And that goes to our general viewpoint of God. We know that He is in control and that He has our best interest in heart for those who love Him, that He's going to take the situations that we're in and He's going to turn it out to a situation that is going to be beneficial. So, no, we shouldn't have a skewed vision of God in that way. And that does go to what Job is depicting here in verse 19. The erosion of water on stones takes place over a long period of time and it's relentless. It's just continuing going over that stone day after day, hour after hour. Well, that's not a depiction of Job's life, as we've mentioned before, until a short time ago, he had been blessed for many years by God. Now he's going through this season of problems and issues and suffering in his life, but it's nowhere near as he's depicting here, as if a water is going through and eroding a stone. That's not Job's life at all. So this is where we get into the point where Job is just really giving a different picture of God and what he is doing and what he's done in his life. But he's talking in the third person where he says, so you destroy a man's hope. He's kind of broadening it out to not just Job himself, but he's broadening it out to God. This is what you do to other people as well. And that is just not a good depiction of God and the way that he blesses through his grace and mercy. We just need to take away from these verses of Job and that we've gone through the last couple of sessions, and just keep that in mind. When we get to the depths of our despair, we need to keep in mind who God is, keep in mind all the blessings that he has given to us, what he has done for us, the promise of salvation, everything that he has done for us, we have to keep that in the same perspective as the different suffering that we're going through at the time. We can't divorce the two from each other.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

In this passage, I think we need to cover one topic before we leave this chapter. There's a couple of these verses that have been used to support a doctrine called soul sleep. And soul sleep is something that we would not support. But the general idea is that when a person dies here on earth, then their body and their soul are in a state of alleged sleep or suspended animation, if you will. They're not conscious in their soul until much later when they're woken again. Some of the verses that are used to support this, if we look at verse 10, but a man dies and lies prostrate. And two verses later in verse 12, so a man lies down and does not rise until the heavens no longer exist. He will not awake nor be woken from his sleep. So the idea that some have taught, and again, we think incorrectly, is that a person goes to sleep, so to speak, when they die. Later at the end of time, God wakes them up. We would deny that simply because there's so many verses that say we are conscious afterward death. For example, in the New Testament, 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verses 6 through 8 say, quote, therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and be home with the Lord. So he's saying there that if we're absent with the body, we are home with the Lord. He told the thief on the cross, today you will be with me in paradise. He didn't say it's going to seem like today. He said, today. And then we we just have too many places that obviously equate the word sleep as a descriptor for actual death, but it's only a descriptor, quote, for if we believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead, so also God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep through Jesus, unquote. That's in 1 Thessalonians 4.14. So if he's bringing them with him, then they're conscious in heaven. There's too many places, are there not, Steve, that just talks about us being conscious in heaven in between the time that we die on earth and our bodily resurrection.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

Paul says to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Well, to be present in front of the Lord means that you are fully cognitive and you're aware of what's going on. So yeah, this idea of soul sleep is one that just really isn't supported by scripture.

Key Takeaways And Closing

SPEAKER_00 29:22

We have in the book of Revelation, we have the saints prior to the resurrection singing hymns to God in praise to him. So that brings us to the end of Job chapter 14, and we're going to continue the book of Job. There's such rich ground here, and we're going to see more of it next time on Reasoning Through the Bible.

SPEAKER_01 29:43

Thank you so much for watching and listening. And as always, may God bless you.