Calvary Road Baptist Church
“MY REDEEMER LIVES”
Job 19.25-26
This morning’s message from God’s Word is found in the book of Job, that great epic poem of the man subjected to great trials of affliction by Satan to fulfill God’s purpose for his life.
Please turn to Job 19.23. When you find your place in the Bible, please stand for the reading of God’s Word:
23 Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!
24 That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!
25 For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
26 And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.
His wealth is all gone, his children are all dead, and his body is aching and throbbing in pain from the boils that cover him from head to toe. His friends, at first astonished at his suffering, have wrongly concluded that he is being punished by God for secret sins he is too proud to admit.
Job protests. With very limited information about his situation at his disposal, he clings to his faith and cries out wishing that his words were written, that they were printed in a book, that they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever!
Job’s words were heard. Job’s prayer was answered. God recorded his heart’s cry. The Spirit of God printed his claim in more than a book; He printed it in the Book! They are graven in the rock for ever.
In the midst of his unimaginable suffering, what did Job want recorded for posterity, for you? He tells us:
First, He Declares, “I HAVE A REDEEMER”
Notice, in Job 19.25, that Job makes reference to “my redeemer.”
Whatever a redeemer is, Job has one. Of that, he is confident. Of that, he is sure. There is, with him, some type of ownership, some type of possession, of his redeemer.
A little bit of study reveals, that the redeemer Job refers to here is the word found in the Hebrew Scriptures for kinsman-redeemer.[1] Do you remember what we learned in the small book of Ruth, when that Moabite widow returned with her widowed Jewish mother-in-law, Naomi, to Bethlehem after she had told her, “whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God”?[2] Once they were in
Job has his kinsman-redeemer. However, to be a qualified kinsman-redeemer one has to be of near kin, one has to be willing to redeem, and one has to be able to redeem.[3] How marvelous for him to know, in his darkest hour, that he knew he had someone who was his kinsman, that he had someone who was willing to redeem him, and that he had someone who was able to redeem him.
Next, He Declares, “HE IS ALIVE”
“For I know that my redeemer liveth.”
This surely must be a prophetic statement, since Job’s children were all dead, since he had almost certainly outlived his nearest of kinsmen, and since his situation was beyond the power of anyone we would normally think of to come to his aid.
He sits before his three friends who came to comfort him and ended up accusing him. What can they do for him? They are certainly not who he had in mind as his redeemers, for they are not his near kinsmen, and they are obviously unable to redeem him, having by now resorted to judging and criticizing him.
Therefore, Job is referring to someone else here. Whomever he refers to is alive. Thus, if this prophesy is rightly understood to be a prediction of the Lord Jesus Christ’s coming, then it must be acknowledged that more than one thousand years before His first coming by way of the virgin birth He already lives.
Thus, Job knows he has a Redeemer who can be owned, who can be embraced, who can be possessed after a fashion, who must be his kinsman (for there is no redeemer who is not a kinsman), and who lives before He will be born, making Him eternal. Is that not a sweet and precious comfort during the pitch darkness of despair? Yet, there is more.
Third, He Declares, “HE WILL STAND ON EARTH AT THE END OF HISTORY”
Our text reads, “he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.”
This must be a prophetic insight that Job declares, because he here speaks of the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in power and great glory more than a thousand years before His first advent took place.
Note that this has been done before. We see in Jude 14-15 that before the Flood, Enoch also spoke of our Lord’s second coming:
14 And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,
15 To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.
Listen, also, to what the prophet Zechariah declared:
1 Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee.
2 For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.
3 Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.
4 And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.[4]
What triumph!
What victory!
To be sure, Job suffers greatly.
To be sure, his afflictions are discouraging and debilitating.
However, quite contrary to his present distress, he knows his Redeemer is coming someday to plant His feet in conquest on this old earth, to reclaim that which is rightfully His, and to redeem His Own.
Fourth, He Declares, “I WILL
In the last phrase of verse 26, Job promises, “in my flesh shall I see God.”
Two things must come to pass for this statement to be true:
First, Job must be raised from the dead someday. As he speaks these words, be mindful that he is near death’s door. His body is racked with pain and the skin hangs loosely on his frame. He has no delusions about his immediate future, though he sees his eventual future with the eye of faith and knows that he will someday be raised from the dead.
When that great day comes, he is confident that he will see God. How is that possible, since God is a spirit, John 4.24? It is only possible in anticipation of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, when God became a man at the time Jesus was born to the virgin Mary. Thus, not only does Job anticipate his own resurrection from the dead, but he also anticipates the miracle of God clothing Himself with human flesh by means of the great miracle of the virgin birth.
Fifth, He Declares, “I
Verse 26: “And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.”
We understand that “it is appointed unto men once to die.”[5] Therefore, Job knows he will die, and his current situation would make it reasonable for him to think he will die sooner rather than later. As well, when a man dies he becomes worm food. He is already no doubt troubled by the parasites that are attacking the sores that cover his body, which he attempts to fight off with shards of pottery that he scrapes over his skin.
However, we recognize that Job looks beyond his impending death. As well, he looks beyond the grave that will hold his body for critters as a plate holds food for supper. The grave is not the end of him. Death is not the finish of him. Death no more concludes a man’s existence than a door means there is nothing beyond. Death is a door and no more, and after Job’s death takes place Job’s existence will continue. The same, of course, is true of you and me. Death is not the end of anything except life on this earth.
Finally, he Declares, “MY BODY WILL BE SO THOROUGHLY RESURRECTED THAT EVEN IF MY FLESH DECAYS, YET I SHALL BE PHYSICALLY RAISED TO
“And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.”
Even though the general disposition of humanity calls for death and decay, not every man will die. Some will remain alive at the time of Christ’s second coming. Most, however, will have lived, and died, and decayed long before Jesus comes again. What is to happen to them?
Job knew, and the Apostle Paul clearly indicated for the rest of us who know Christ, that what is sown in corruption will be raised in incorruption, First Corinthians 15.42. “It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.”[6]
When that day comes, and it will come for the blood-bought and blood-washed child of God, whose faith is firmly fixed on Jesus, we shall see our Redeemer. First John 3.2: “. . . we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” Revelation 1.7: “Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him. . . .”
Can a man can be overwhelmed with the afflictions that are associated with life as we know it? Of course. Discouragements abound, and despondency can push you to the very limits of your endurance.
For the man without a Savior, none of it makes any sense. For the Christ rejecter, all suffering is irrational and meaningless. All afflictions are cruel and unjust.
“No one should be this helpless,” the human mind cries out. On top of that, Job had accusers. They came as his friends, but they stayed and eventually they left as his accusers, indicting him of wrongdoing when he had done no wrong.
Instead of comforting his soul, they inflicted yet more pain. As if his physical pain was not enough, his “friends” applied to his wounded heart the pain of betrayal and emotional abandonment.
No matter. Job was God’s child and no unbeliever. He had a Redeemer, for he was no Christ rejecter. He embraced the Savior, and did not think himself above the need of salvation.
Good thing, too, for the day came when sore afflictions fell upon him like a drop hammer. Unexpected and taking him completely off guard, he was attacked by Satan, bereft of his children, betrayed by his wife, his reputation besmirched by his friends, and left completely alone.
Nevertheless, in his darkest hour, that great Object of his weak faith comforted him:
25 For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
26 And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.
Though he could not have put the truth into words as we can with the bright illumination of New Testament scripture, Job owned a Savior, eternal in existence, coming not once but twice, Who became a man by means of the virgin birth so He could be our kinsman-redeemer, Who would be put to death for our sins that He might redeem us from our sins, and Who would not only rise from the dead but raise us up from the dead so that He might be seen by us and so we might see Him in our flesh, He is very God.
Do you know Him today?
Is He yours?
Do you own Him by faith believing?
And can your anticipation of His raising you some day sustain you through the darkest hours of your life?
If not, consider the claims of Jesus Christ. Consider the testimony of Job. Embrace the Savior today.
[1] Francis Brown, S. R. Driver & Charles A. Briggs, The New Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius Hebrew And English Lexicon, (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1979), page 145.
[2] Ruth 1.16
[3] Ruth 3.12
[4] Zechariah 14.1-5
[5] Hebrews 9.27
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Pastor@CalvaryRoadBaptist.Church