McCheyne’s Bible Reading Plan: Ge 48, Lk 1:39-80, Job 14, 1 Co 2
13Oh that you would hide me in Sheol,
that you would conceal me until your wrath be past,
that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me!
14If a man dies, shall he live again?
All the days of my service I would wait,
till my renewal should come.
15You would call, and I would answer you;
you would long for the work of your hands.
16For then you would number my steps;
you would not keep watch over my sin;
17my transgression would be sealed up in a bag,
and you would cover over my iniquity. (Job 14:13-17)
I love what Job writes here as he ponders and longs for a time when God’s wrath is passed. If he could only pass away until that time. He seems to hope against reason as he says, “You would call, and I would answer you”. How can a man answer when he is dead? There is no answer according to human wisdom. Job knows this and yet somehow he grasps that it can happen, “you would long for the work of your hands”. He sounds like Wesley in Princess Bride, “Death cannot stop true love, all it can do is delay it for a while.”
What Job could only sense, Paul now knows, since Christ has risen and sent God’s Spirit to reveal the secret things of God.
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—10these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. (1 Corinthians 2:9-13)