My Redeemer Lives (2)

23 “Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! 24 Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever! 25 For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. 26 And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, 27 whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me! 28 If you say, ‘How we will pursue him!’ and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him,’ 29 be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment.”

Pray.

1. The Plight of Man (vv.23-24)

Job was suffering (v.23)

Listen to His plea for help!

Job 19:23–24 ESV

23 “Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! 24 Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever!

Job is being crushed by his affliction. He feels the weight of the crushing judgment of his friends, his family, his neighbors, even little kids that jeered at him as they saw him.

Job’s friends blamed him for what was happening

Job lived in a fallen world just like us and suffered under the effects of it

He begs to have his words permanently memorialized. Isn’t it cool that God actually did permanently preserve his words by writing them down in the Bible?

We all suffer and have a common plight of living life in this fallen, broken world.

Illustration:

Jesus encountered a man that suffered, like Job, from life in a fallen world (John 9). He was born blind and had lived his whole life that way. Can you imagine what this man had to endure?

He couldn’t take care of himself very well. He couldn’t get a normal job or provide the basic necessities. He was probably very dependent on his parents to take care of him, even as an adult while they were alive.

Jesus encounters the man along the road and the disciples asked Jesus who had sinned to make this man be born blind.

Do you see how terrible that was? They thought that this man might even be being punished by God for his parents sins!

Application:

Jesus pointed out that it wasn’t either of them. It happened so that God might be glorified in this man’s healing. Did you know that God is glorified in suffering? How you and I respond to suffering can bring glory to God.

This is what Jesus did with the suffering He endured. He went to the cross first of all to glorify God. Salvation is a work of grace that God accomplishes to bring glory to Himself. That may sound weird to you, but He is God. Who else is He going to glorify that is greater than Himself?

However, we are the beneficiaries of that glorifying, because in the process of Jesus bringing glory to God through His suffering, He is lavishing His love on us at the same time, and we are being saved by what Jesus did.

I need to explain myself for just a moment. You might not think you needed to be saved. If we go back to our passage with Job, the truth is that Job is guilty of sin and he lives in a fallen world. So do you and I.

You ask, “How do you know we’ve sinned?” God has given us His commands as a mirror to us to show us.

How many of you have ever lied? Then you are a liar.

How many of you have ever lusted? Jesus said if you lust in your heart you have committed adultery.

How many of you have stolen something, no matter how valuable or worthless it was? That makes you a thief.

How many of you have ever taken God’s name and used it as a curse word. You wouldn’t do that with your mother’s name, because it is treating it with dishonor. When you do this with God’s name, it is a sin called blasphemy. It was punishable by death in the Old Testament.

The point of all of this is that by these standards, if you are like almost every breathing person on the planet, you are a lying, thieving, adulterous, blasphemer at heart.

You have to stand before God on the day of judgment. Will you be innocent or guilty? Will you go to heaven or hell?

Job understood the plight of man and that He needed some help.

That brings us to the second point.

2. The Resurrected Redeemer (v.25)

Job says in verse 25

Job 19:25 ESV

25 For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.

He declares His faith in the midst of his brokenness. “My Redeemer, the One who will pull me out of this pit, He lives. He will stand upon the earth.

It’s clear that Job believed His redeemer was no mere man. His redeemer was none other than God Himself.

He believed he would stand upon the earth. God would come down and rescue Him.

This is faith. It is a confidence in a reality that has not yet happened for Job.

Now remember, Job is looking forward into the future with confidence. In some ways I think Old Testament saints had it tougher than we do. We get to look back at the completed work of Jesus, the Redeemer, on the cross. We don’t have to guess if He will really come or not. We can see that He did come. And, He is coming again!

Just like Job believed and it came to pass, we have a promise that our Redeemer will one day set foot on this earth again. This next time, though, He’s not coming as a Lamb to the slaughter, but as a King to the spoil. He’s coming to conquer.

Illustration:

Now, this idea of a Redeemer is actually the Hebrew word for Kinsman Redeemer. Have you ever heard the story of Ruth. Ruth married a Jewish guy whose mother’s name was Naomi. Naomi’s husband died and so did her two sons and she had tried to get her daughters-in-law to go back to their own people. One did, but not Ruth. She said, “Your God will be my God, and your people will be my people.”

She went with her back to Bethlehem and then she gleaned in the fields until one day a kinsman redeemer by the name of Boaz noticed her. The kinsman redeemer was the next closest relative that would take in a bereaved wife and care for her as a part of his family. Without the kinsman redeemer, the wife would have no one to provide for her. It would be a miserable life.

In fact, before Ruth met Boaz, Naomi, her mother-in-law, said, “Just call me Mara, which means bitter, because the Lord has dealt bitterly with me.

Well, Ruth was redeemed and Naomi with her. Ruth actually became the great-grandmother of the famous King David and way down the line of her descendants, the ultimate Kinsman Redeemer would be born, His name is Jesus Christ!

Application:

You and I are like Ruth and Naomi and Job. We are in need of a redeemer to rescue us from our sin that has separated us from God. We need a living redeemer, not a dead one. The dead man cannot help us. The living one can.

Jesus is that Redeemer and He will rescue you and redeem you if you will come to Him.

3. The Promised Resurrection (vv.26-29)

Not only was Job confident of a Redeemer that would come, but also that He would see him in the flesh

He sas in vv. 26-27

Job 19:26–27 ESV

26 And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, 27 whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!

Job believed in a personal, bodily resurrected. He believed His flesh would be changed. The old flesh was worm eaten and destroyed. The new flesh would be glorified.

Paul talked about this new flesh in 1 Corinthians.

1 Corinthians 15:50–57 ESV

50 I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” 55 “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Listen to how Spurgeon described it:

365 Days with Spurgeon (Volume 1) 16 February

There are some faint glimmerings in men of reason which teach that the soul is something so wonderful that it must endure for ever. But the resurrection of the dead is quite another doctrine, dealing not with the soul, but with the body. The doctrine is that this actual body in which I now exist is to live with my soul; that not only is the “vital spark of heavenly flame” to burn in heaven, but the very censer in which the incense of my life smokes is holy unto the Lord, and is to be preserved for ever. The spirit, every one confesses, is eternal; but how many there are who deny that the bodies of men will actually start up from their graves at the great day! Many of you believe you will have a body in heaven, but you think it will be an airy fantastic body, instead of believing that it will be a body like to this—flesh and blood (although not the same kind of flesh, for all flesh is not the same flesh), a solid, substantial body, even such as we have here. And there are yet fewer of you who believe that the wicked will have bodies in hell; for it is gaining ground everywhere that there are to be no positive torments for the damned in hell to affect their bodies, but that it is to be metaphorical fire, metaphorical brimstone, metaphorical chains, metaphorical torture. But if you were Christians as you profess to be, you would believe that every mortal man who ever existed shall not only live by the immortality of his soul, but his body shall live again, that the very flesh in which he now walks the earth is as eternal as the soul, and shall exist for ever. That is the peculiar doctrine of Christianity. The heathens never guessed or imagined such a thing.

Conclusion:

This passage may seem like an unusual passage to look at on Easter, but it is very relevant for us in this fallen and broken world we live in.

Do you believe that your Redeemer, Jesus Christ, lives? Have you put your trust in Him? Do you believe that He is coming again? Are you ready for Him?

Today, you can be. All you must do is call out to Him and be saved. If you will, God will hear you. But being saved is more than just a prayer. It is a life lived in surrender to Jesus.

We are going to close by singing a song that I’m sure many of you have heard before. Let’s sing it and mean it today. If you would like to trust Christ today as your Savior and Lord, come down to the front and we will help you do that as we sing.

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