Job chapter 19 and reading from
verse 1. Then Job answered and said, How
long will ye vex my soul and break me in pieces with words? These ten times have ye reproached
me. Ye are not ashamed that ye make
yourselves strange to me. And be it indeed that I have
erred, mine error remaineth with myself. if indeed ye will magnify
yourselves against me and plead against me my reproach. Know now that God hath overthrown
me and hath compassed me with his net. Behold, I cry out of
wrong, but I am not heard. I cry aloud, but there is no
judgment. He hath fenced up my way that
I cannot pass, and he hath set darkness in my paths. He hath
stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. He hath destroyed me on every
side, and I am gone, and mine hope hath he removed like a tree. He hath also kindled his wrath
against me, and he counteth me unto him as one of his enemies. His troops come together and
raise up their way against me, and encamp round about my tabernacle. He hath put my brethren far from
me, and mine acquaintance are verily estranged from me. My kinsfolk have failed, and
my familiar friends have forgotten me. They that dwell in mine house
and my maids count me for a stranger. I am an alien in their sight. I called my servant and he gave
me no answer. I entreated him with my mouth.
My breath is strange to my wife, though I entreated for the children's
sake of mine own body. Yea, young children, despise
me, I arose and they spake against me. All my inward friends abhorred
me, and they whom I loved are turned against me. My bone cleaveth
to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of
my teeth. Have pity upon me, have pity
upon me, O ye my friends, for the hand of God hath touched
me. Why do ye persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with
my flesh? O that my words were now written,
O that they were printed in a book, that they were graven with an
iron pen, and led in the rock for ever. For I know that my
Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day
upon the earth. And though after my skin worms
destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God, whom I
shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another,
though my reins be consumed within me. But ye should say, why persecute
we him, seeing the root of the matter is found in me? Be ye
afraid of the sword, for wrath bringeth the punishments of the
sword, that ye may know there is a judgment. Amen. May the Lord bless to us this
reading from his word. Sometimes when we preach from
a passage, Our sermons are like standing on the top of a hill,
looking at a panorama, looking at a wide vista, a broad horizon,
and picking out high points and features here and there that
point to the Saviour and arrest our attention before we move
on to the next part or the next section. And other times, a sermon
might take a single verse, even a word within a verse, or a phrase,
and examine it like a precious jewel, endeavouring to shine
a light on it so that its brilliance can be more readily seen and
admired. And I suppose today's thoughts
are more like this. I'm just plucking a single verse
from a wider context to meditate on it for a few moments as we
share some thoughts together. This is a lovely passage in the
book of Job, and the verse that I have in mind, or a couple of
verses really, verse 25 and 26, speaks to us of Job's understanding
of his Redeemer. But what we can tell from the
wider passage that we read together is that Job has experienced a
lot of trials. And really that catalogue that's
there is probably a severe list of troubles that any person has
ever encountered. His friends have largely forsaken
him and they've aggravated his suffering with uncaring criticism
and with self-righteous reasoning. The people of his own home, his
own family have rejected him and they despise his suffering
and even the very contrariness of these erstwhile friends shows
the severity of the experience that job has been brought into. And yet these couple of verses
show us that Job is a spiritual man, a man with faith in God. He's a believer through all of
these troubles. He is a believer in divine mercy
and in redemption and in deliverance. Despite all of his outward pains,
everything that he has experienced, and there were many of them,
and notwithstanding all the inward hurts that he has endured, something
deep down in his soul remains intact. Something deep down in
the very core of his being is fixed upon the faithfulness of
God and is convinced of salvation by God's grace. We are blessed
indeed if we can begin to share in a small way with Job in such
an attitude. Job is considered to be amongst
the earliest books of the Bible and Job therefore a very early
worshipper of the Lord. And the Lord, later in scriptures
in the book of Ezekiel, calls Job a righteous man. But Job's hope, as we see from
this verse, was not in his own righteousness, but in a derived
righteousness. His hope was in a redeemer. His hope was in the redemption
that would come from Christ and his righteousness, his acceptance,
his justification was founded upon Christ, his Redeemer. And it's this that I want to
try and shine a light on today. So that the first thing to notice
is Job's knowledge of Christ and his faith in the Redeemer. He says, I know that my Redeemer
liveth. And what a blessed gift faith
is. Faith is God's gift to his elect
people by which they discover their interest in Christ and
the privileges of mercy and grace that he bestows. Now there are
lots of people who imagine that they have faith of a sort. and they might say that they
believe in God or they might say that they are affiliated
to a particular church or a particular denomination. They might say
that they read the Bible or that they pray and they have this
idea that that is equivalent to faith. But true faith, the
Bible teaches, is the faith that has a firm foundation. It is the faith that rests upon
the faithfulness of God and the accomplishments of Christ. True faith requires knowledge
and it involves teaching by God the Holy Spirit and an awareness
of God's Gospel. Job says, I know my Redeemer. He had a knowledge of his Redeemer. He's making an informed statement. And it's very interesting, I
think, that the earliest scriptures, in the writings of Moses and
in the history of Abraham, these men understood the need for a
redemptive work for salvation. And they taught blood redemption. The presence of blood in every
interaction with God was an essential element of their understanding,
both of their sin and their natural state and its requirement in
approaching God. And Job knows this. And we've
got to know it too. I don't just mean us here in
this little gathering, but I mean the world has to know that. That
is the way. It's not faith if it's not founded
upon the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ and his precious
blood. Job knew it and we must know
it. If we are to be redeemed from
sin, it must be by blood redemption and the laying down of a life. And Paul speaks about learning
Christ. and the Gospel of Christ is a
message to be heard and a message to be understood. Divine truth
is to be received. It's a revelation to be discovered
and believed. And this is what Job is saying. He is saying, I know my Redeemer. I know Him. It's a profession
of personal knowledge and it is also a profession of personal
interest in Christ. Job is telling us what he personally
knows and believes. Job had received this revelation
and he believed it. I don't know because we're not
told how Christ had revealed himself to Job. But in the absence
of that knowledge, we can tell that Job knew both the person
of the saviour and the relationship in which he stood to his saviour. There's certainty and confidence
in Job's words. In fact, Job's desire is that
these very words, the words of these verses, be written down
in a book. He says, I would like to have
them chiselled into a rock and embossed with lead to fix them
as an enduring testimony. That's pretty much what we do
with a headstone in a graveyard. We chisel a testimony into a
piece of rock because we imagine that that in some way is durable,
that it will last a long time. The headstone in a graveyard
is simply the way of somebody saying they want to be remembered
as long as possible. But the fact that Job is saying
this with respect to his testimony proves how definite he is about
recording his personal confidence in Christ. And he calls this
one in whom he trusts, my Redeemer. Job's faith was in God, who works
deliverance And yet there's a distinction made here because it's not God
the Father who is the Redeemer. It is not God the Father who
stands upon earth, but it is God the Son. And the word that
is rendered Redeemer here in this verse is interesting because
it's the same word as is used in the book of Ruth. and it means
a kinsman redeemer, a close relative redeemer. And we find that exemplified
by Boaz redeeming and marrying Ruth as her near kinsman redeemer. The significance of the kinsman
redeemer standing upon earth is its reference to the humanity
of the redeemer. and of the Redeemer Jesus Christ.
So here we're not seeing God the Father, but we are concentrating
on a kinsman Redeemer, someone of our same flesh, who is yet
God. This is God's Son. So that here
is Job with a clear apprehension of a distinction within the persons
of the Godhead and he understands that Jesus Christ, God's son,
will stand upon the earth physically in our humanity. So that Christ
as both God and man is implied in Job's testimony. And I've
mentioned numerous times as we've been going through Isaiah how
much the Old Testament saints knew about the coming Messiah. And I think this is simply reinforced
here again. A little bit later in the book
of Job, in chapter 33 and verse 24, we're going to read, well,
we're not going to read it, but let me tell you what it is. We
could read this verse. Then he is gracious unto me,
and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit, I have found
a ransom. So in that little verse, we've
got grace mentioned. We've got God speaking to man
about grace. We have the declaration, deliver
him from going down to the pit, down to hell. For this reason,
I have found a ransom. A ransom has been paid. and ransom
and redemption is the language of Job, even so early in the
Scriptures. It's pure gospel and it shows
that Christ the Messiah was known about by the Old Testament remnant
just as well and just as much as the New Testament church now
looks back upon the work of Christ. And this Redeemer is Job's own
Redeemer. I know that my Redeemer liveth. It's not enough to know that
there is such a Redeemer. it is necessary to know Christ
as my Redeemer. And it is faith that leads us
to hope in such a personal saviour, who not only died to save his
people from their sins, but who has saved me from my sins and
has ransomed me, body and soul, and delivered me from hell and
from going down into the pit. A third thing I just want to
mention. Job knew his saviour to be living and able to save. His redeemer was living then
and he would stand upon the earth physically in the last day. And that's what Christ did when
he came in his incarnation. It is what he did when he ransomed
his people with his blood and redeemed all for whom he died. And it is what he shall do again
when he returns to gather his church at the end of time. We often speak of the living
God and rightly so because all life derives from God and all
things were created by him and exist from him. and in him, in
Christ, is all spiritual and eternal life. It is our testimony
that being in Christ, we have that life that he gives and we
shall never die. Now it is true that this old
body shall wear out and give up and be laid down for a little
while. But we, our soul, our spirit
shall live on in the presence of our Saviour forevermore. Job was a man whose body was
brought very low. He said in verse 20, we read
it, my bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh and I am escaped
with the skin of my teeth. And yet here he is in this physically
degraded state rejoicing in the prospect of everlasting life
with the saviour he both knew and trusted and loved and in
whom he hoped. And this leads me to my final
thought. Christ is our hope of glory. He says in verse 26, Job
says in verse 26, and though after my skin worms destroy this
body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. Job was nothing if he was
not graphic. It was not enough for Job to
say that he would go to his grave. He had to tell us as well that
worms would destroy his body. And yet, and yet, and yet, he
tells us, in my flesh shall I see God. Now I find that quite amazing. It's quite astonishing to hear
him speak thus. and quite a prospect to consider
how he, how Job, could conceive that all the atoms and all the
elements that comprise the body, his body and the body of believers,
will be numbered and safeguarded and preserved and reconstituted. My, even if we have been a worm's
dinner. We'll dwell bodily with Jesus
in our perfect spiritual bodies made like his body. We shall
see God in our flesh, we shall see God in our nature, and we
shall be holy like him. There are those that think that
perhaps Job was one of those whose graves were opened at the
time of the Lord's death and who entered into the city of
Jerusalem and were seen of many. And that may well be so. But
whether or not this old saint's hope was in his saviour, And
the prospect of his own death and physical corruption did not
diminish his hope of eternal life, nor his belief in it as
real, physical and actual. And he writes this for our encouragement. We should be no less assured. We have the same faithful God,
we have the same Redeemer, we have been ransomed with the same
blood, though we were guilty of the same crimes and the same
sins. And all that Job looked forward
to and anticipated because of his faith in the sufficiency
of his Saviour belongs to us as well. It is ours too, ours
to have, to hold, to look forward to as we wait upon the grace
and look forward to the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ. May
the Lord bless these thoughts to us. Amen.