Priest Daniel Sysoev - Job 14

 Today we will continue to study the book of Job, which raises the question of the justice of God. Job turns to God, and says that the Lord is persecuted for sins that were in his youth, which do not correspond to heavy punishments and says further: he describes the fate of a person, says: "Have pity on a person for the sake of his nature." Further Job says:

1“Man, who is born of woman,

is short of days and full of trouble.

2Like a flower, he comes forth, then withers away;

like a fleeting shadow, he does not endure.

3Do You open Your eyes to one like this?

Will You bring him into judgment before You?

4Who can bring out clean from unclean?

No one!

5Since his days are determined

and the number of his months is with You,

and since You have set limits

that he cannot exceed,

6look away from him and let him rest,

so he can enjoy his day as a hired hand.

7For there is hope for a tree:

If it is cut down, it will sprout again,

and its tender shoots will not fail.

8If its roots grow old in the ground

and its stump dies in the soil,

9at the scent of water it will bud

and put forth twigs like a sapling.

10But a man dies and is laid low;

he breathes his last, and where is he?

11As water disappears from the sea

and a river becomes parched and dry,

12so a man lies down

and does not rise.

Until the heavens are no more,

he will not be awakened or roused from sleep.

Job describes the adversity on the part of a person, in which any person is, as such. It is said: 1 A person born of a wife is short-lived and satiated with sorrows: Life itself is a short-day phenomenon. This is really true. Many people try to be optimistic and say, "Everything is great." In fact, this is not at all the case. This is a monstrous self-deception that arises from the fact that people inspire themselves with something that does not exist in reality. For various reasons, people deceive themselves. Job says that a person born of a wife is short-lived, there are short days in him, he cannot do anything, but life can end, even reach the depths of good, there is not enough time, do you understand?

In fact, we often do not think about the thing that before the coming of the Lord, why was it impossible to reach the summit of Holiness? After death, a person goes to where God is not praised. A person leaving this land, goes to a place of eternal darkness, where there is nothing but hopeless longing, and there is not even punishment. You understand how scary! God does not even punish a person, He just kind of forgets. This is a place of complete rejection of God, where the souls of the dead lie in graves, and are in this hopeless longing, and cannot do any good deeds - they are exhausted and have no life.

Now look at people who live without God. An interesting thing is that there is such a word, the meaning of which unbaptized people categorically do not understand. When I talk with the baptized, I ask a riddle: who is virtue, how is it different from good? You know, not once from the unbaptized did he say who virtue is. The very concept of virtue is absent. They think that you can do one good deed, but in order to do good that has become a habit, so that good becomes the second nature of man, then people do not know this. People don't realize that all this is possible. As a result, people find themselves in such terrible hopelessness.

On earth they do not know virtues, in death such a time awaits the embodiment of a certain longing. A person born as a wife is short-lived and satiated with sorrows, the fact that a person has short days, he is overflowing with sorrow, grief. This is indeed the case. Look at the person. What do you and I have more sorrow or joy?

If we did not have God, then we would grieve. See how well one said, "People are deceived by false hopes, they are tormented by genuine sorrow." It is so indeed. Hope is false and sorrow is real. What's scary? That people without God, they bear sorrow to no avail, because until a person comes to God, then sorrow does not give rise to any spiritual fruit. Why is there such bitterness? One of the reasons Job speaks of here, which the Apostle Paul also speaks of, is that someone, with the help of death, kept everyone in bondage. Who is this someone? Devil.

Why with the help of death? What is the connection between physical death and God quickens whoever He wants, we know from the Scriptures that at the time of death it is not in the hands of the devil, but in the hands of God. In this sense, we cannot say that the devil is the one who inflicts death on people. But how does the devil command people with death?

There is such a phenomenon in psychology that children are immortal - this is a state of the human soul that feels that it is not normal to be separated from the body. This is an abnormal existence - without a body, even for the righteous now. Look, the soul is afraid of death, knows that after death nothing good is expected. Love came from the fact that they knew that God was more valuable than them, they forgot themselves when they saw Him. A person who turns to God could find Him then, and now can find Him. In fact, there are very few such scoundrels who do evil with great pleasure. But what's going on. A person sees that death is approaching, approaching at the level of the body: illness, thirst, and a person says that he wants to postpone death, and is ready to postpone it at any cost - this is no longer natural. He begins to fight for food, to push everything away with his hands, and from this follows an inner striving for ambition, a person wants to create an image of security, wants to create a sphere in which he will be like a lasting peace. I know people who objectively lived worse under the Soviet Union than they do now, but at the same time remember it with enthusiasm. It is because of this confidence. And it arises because of what? The desire for confidence in the future is a form of closure of the horror of death, such an internal psychological mechanism, protection from the horror of approaching death, which moves towards you, wants to devour you.

Before, when people were dying, in the villages, how was it usually buried? From all over the village, they carried a coffin, etc. Then they began to put in closed buses so that it was imperceptible, it's not only practicality, but even stealth. Then there was a tendency to hide. A person who lives without God has no hope, and the horror of death makes him do all sorts of nasty things, meanness, a desire to break through, make a career. Why a career? In order to have a sense of my own worth, and it gives the feeling that something important, valuable, and I can fence myself off from reality: “I will never die, this cannot be with me, etc.”

This arises from the fact that people begin this horror of death, which is not transformed by Sunday, not transformed by the intervention of God, it leads to the fact that these people are trying to protect themselves from this. This is where pleasure comes from. If I enjoy, then my life has not been lived in vain. This is also an attempt to hide from death. It turns out that death is perceived as a psychosis of the human masses. Do you know that there are deep psychoses? Even psychoanalysis said this, and rightly so. There is psychosis associated with birth, shock of birth, and shock of death. This is the truth, in fact. Much that is in humanity is connected with this.

A person born as a wife is short-lived and satiated with sorrows: His life is overly mournful, damned, saturated with death, and this horror of nothingness that eats away at a person, his soul, heart.

2Like a flower, he comes forth, then withers away;

like a fleeting shadow, he does not endure.

It's funny, look at people who are sad and told and inspires their children “Everything will be fine, wonderful, you must work for the good of the Motherland, descendants”, and the teenager says: “Why do I need all this? If I die and there is nothing left. If there is no source of life to God, then why is all this necessary? " Note that the immortality of the soul will not solve the problem either. Do you understand why? The value of a person still disappears, the value is the soul and body.

That is why Job says that a person is like a flower that has grown, blossomed and fallen. The shadow is gone.

3Do You open Your eyes to one like this?

Will You bring him into judgment before You?

You begin to compete with the one who disintegrates. I want to receive righteousness from you. And you are persecuting me, as if I were on a par with You. Job says:

4Who can bring out clean from unclean?

No one!

Job speaks directly about the first sin. Indeed, the very roots of human existence are poisoned. There is some other force that acts in a person, which corrupts him, makes him do evil. There is some nest of an evil entity that acts in a person. We know that a person is born with a perverted: will, mind, feelings and is infected with the most serious disease that exists in a person - fantasy, the most severe mental illness that decomposes the whole person. Instead of the real world, a person sees a region, a world that seems good to him. Fantasy makes a person do evil, taking it for good. The alcoholic believes that the glass will save him from despondency, others, which restores justice. A discouraged person says that his nerves are bad, a person who is proud, says what he demands, and fights for his dignity, etc. This is considered a deception, an illusion that frightens the mind, the will is decomposed, which is incapable and fluctuates between different types of false good, cannot find the truth. A person always dwells in such indecision or in decisiveness, which is no better than the indecision that rushes at the first person who comes across. Have you noticed such a phenomenon?

Both are completely equally erroneous. Some say, “It is better to measure seven times and cut once,” but at the same time they can cut seven times so that the first time it would be much better than everyone else. Due to objective criteria, a person takes the worst, the will hesitates and cannot find. You have to be decisive. Indecision arises from the ignorance of God, a person does not seek the will of God, but seeks his own will. The man is entangled in false mirrors. The righteous man sees the will of God and does it. Do you understand ?! A sinner, maybe decisive, break everything around like an elephant in a china shop, and not decisive - he does nothing, just sits and cries "if only ...". And as a result, he will not be able to do anything, both are diseases of the will, the hardest, which is rooted in this root, and the person feels distorted: he cannot love what he should love, but loves what he should hate and vice versa.

Remember, the apostle Paul says, "The evil that I do not want, I do, but the good I do not." We know that sin has no substance, but it has power. How can this be explained? Where does power come from if it does not have essence ?! Where does sin get its strength? The fact is that the devil usually does not give strength, his own strength is limited - do not forget, sin parasitizes on good qualities and therefore it is known that those sins that are prestigious to virtue itself are terrible. There is a revolution of mental strength to evil, and the stronger it is, the more terrible the sin. It is known that a person with a strong will is more terrible than a weak-willed person in sin. Courage is a good quality of the soul, without it nothing can be done. In a perverted form, it turns into pride. Therefore, pride is the most serious of sins. What is pride? It is self-directed love. Job is right: 

4Who can bring out clean from unclean?

No one!

All people are infected with death from the very moment of conception. Therefore, when they talk about innocent children, they are not telling the truth. And this is an objective reality. Children from infancy, they are filled with this evil force, the will that works in them. It is interesting that they are not filled equally. Whoever attended the baptism of children, then observed that there are calm children - quiet, while others scream like madness. There is a direct relationship between children and parents. Look, when a person lives alone in a family and there is one rotten, then do you think he leaves his anger only on himself? Not.

Sin corrupts everything around. Sin is distributed, in all there is, but not in all of the same power, not in all equally. We have a big mistake: we repented of great sins, and he falls into such a state: like I don’t see a sin, what should I do? It is necessary to look more closely, this is a mistake. He spends his energy on the wrong things. Do you need to do what? Fulfill the Gospel! Do good! Do not delve into yourself, but repent, because the Kingdom of God is approaching. Repented - do the Gospels, and then the internal sins that are rooted and hidden inside, they will come out. And only in this way it comes out, otherwise you will not find it. Many people can fall into madness. Formal fulfillment of the Gospel, as it is written, so do it, by letter! It leads to the fact that a person gets to know himself better and is engaged in the main thing - he is purified. A person who is engaged in self-digging does not really repent. Repentance is not about finding the maximum amount of sin, but a change in the way of thinking, the way of life. A different model of behavior. A model of life that should be positive. We repent of sins, because they prevent us from going to God, we need to be cleansed in order to be filled with life, and not just be cleansed. Job goes on to say:

5Since his days are determined

and the number of his months is with You,

and since You have set limits

that he cannot exceed,

6look away from him and let him rest,

so he can enjoy his day as a hired hand.

7For there is hope for a tree:

If it is cut down, it will sprout again,

and its tender shoots will not fail.

8If its roots grow old in the ground

and its stump dies in the soil,

9at the scent of water it will bud

and put forth twigs like a sapling.

10But a man dies and is laid low;

he breathes his last, and where is he?

11As water disappears from the sea

and a river becomes parched and dry,

12so a man lies down

and does not rise.

Until the heavens are no more,

he will not be awakened or roused from sleep.

If you read carefully, a person will lie down and will not get up until the end of heaven, he will not wake up. But why is Job not content with this Sunday? He knows that even Sunday is not the final answer. Do you know this? And if a person rises to condemnation, will Sunday help him? The answer is really in whom? Who is the source of the cure for all human ills? In the person of God! the life of the age to come is God who gives us life, and therefore we hope for eternal life. As Maxim the Confessor said: "Man in God becomes not only infinite, but also beginningless." Do you know ?! However, it can. Scripture says it has no beginning of days. How can this be? How can a person be beginningless? There is something in him that has always been in him there is the power of God Almighty, and he participates in the eternal life of God, which becomes his own life. His personality becomes involved initially, not only immortality, but also beginninglessness. This is the way out of this ocean of death, which eats away at a person.

Then Job turns to God and says:

13If only You would hide me in Sheol

and conceal me until Your anger has passed!

If only You would appoint a time for me

and then remember me!

I am ready in the underworld, but only on one condition: that you hide me there for a while, and then remember me. I do not want to be without You, I want to be with You, so that You pull me out of the underworld, so that you live with you in eternity.

Then Job asks:

14When a man dies, will he live again?

All the days of my hard service I will wait,

until my renewala comes.

15You will call, and I will answer;

You will desire the work of Your hands.

See what he's looking for? Job only needs God; he needs to find Him. He is ready to go to the underworld, so that then God pulled him out of there. Why were ancient people so afraid of death, even the righteous? There was such a king Hezekiah, and when he was dying, the prophet Isaiah comes to him and says: "Write a will that you will die." He turned to the wall, cried before the Lord and said: "Lord, remember how I served you, remember me." Isaiah did not have time to leave the palace, as the Lord told him to return and add 15 years to his life, and he would enter the temple of God again. Here we see that only God can add and subtract life. It is not that God planned it in advance and that's it. As they say, what is written to the people. Not. God is not connected by any kind, by any inscriptions. It is free, it can increase life or decrease it. Then Hezekiah thanked the Lord. For the righteous, therefore, there was a terrible death that he would not see the Lord.

15You will call, and I will answer;

You will desire the work of Your hands.

16For then You would count my steps,

but would not keep track of my sin.

17My transgression would be sealed in a bag,

and You would cover over my iniquity.

Dreams of the destruction of the lawlessness that is in all people, Job sees the evil of primordial mortality that reigns. When a person comes out of the font, you know how he is met?

Psalm 31: 1. Blessed is he to whom iniquities have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered!

This is the happiness that many do not appreciate. But if we felt, then how we would thank God that our iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered! We regard confession as a simple way of introspection, self-examination, and not the greatest boon that Job dreamed of.

18But as a mountain erodes and crumbles

and a rock is dislodged from its place,

19as water wears away the stones

and torrents wash away the soil,

so You destroy a man’s hope.

20You forever overpower him, and he passes on;

You change his countenance and send him away.

21If his sons receive honor, he does not know it;

if they are brought low, he is unaware.

22He feels only the pain of his own body

and mourns only for himself.”

He dreams that this will happen, but so far nothing like that. Sees that the decay has touched the material universe. Crumbling: mountains, valleys, cities, and people: suffering, sick. He does not know what is happening with his children, with them, his flesh is sick, his soul suffers, and there is no way out. This is the great tragedy of the human race, Job cries and dreams that God will pull a man out of this tragedy. No wonder the book of Job is read on Holy Week, do you understand why? You see, from what abyss Christ is pulling us out. We do not think about the depths in which the world is immersed. When atheists scold God, they do not see even a hundredth part of the world's pain, which is. They do not see the tragedy in the fact that people by the hands of God go to dust and have no hope on earth. Only Christ, reached this world bottom, drank this cup to the very bottom, He can give the answer.