“And as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will take His stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25f.).
Job, the patriarch of Uz, was told by Bildad, his fast friend, that the memory of Job would perish from the earth due to his wickedness (Job 18:17; Prov. 10:7). Job responded to Bildad with holy indignation. Job premised his retort upon his relationship with his eternal Redeemer who still lives, for He is not the God of the dead but of the living.
Job did not allow his trust in his holy God to be spoiled by his physical and emotional suffering, his wife’s admonishment or his friends’ indictments. You cannot allow your circumstances, your health challenges, your financial reverses or any other temporal situation to spoil your eternal peace. Never take your eye off your Christ.
Job knew what he knew, and would not allow what he knew in the light to be affected by mysterious darkness. What do you know? What is an absolute certainty? God’s apostle declared, “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life” (I Jn. 5:13).
Job must trust in the God he could not see (Heb. 11:1; 12:26). Job had the very knowledge your world scorns. Your society considers Christian certainty as prideful bigotry rather than the secure surety of the revelational God. Job knew because he had received divine teaching (Gen. 3:15).
Job trusted in a personal Redeemer who as Goel had purchased Job out of death. Job appropriated to himself the yet-to-be incarnated Christ, and he was satisfied with his Redeemer. Job knew that his Redeemer had the power of life and death and would destroy death (Heb. 2:14). He knew the pre-incarnate Christ as his own personal vindicator, defender, refuge, champion, strengthener and enabler.
Does your redeemer (small “r” if he is not Christ) presently live and will he (small “h”) always live? Job lives because his Redeemer still lives. Job is claiming that Jesus even lived in his own time – the same claim Jesus made though He was thought dead (Rev. 1:8, 18). Only a living Redeemer can comfort a man whose children are dead, possessions taken away and is the brunt of scorn by his remaining associates. Only a living Redeemer, who also gives life to His beloved, can be a comfort in a dying world to a dying man.
Job casts his trust forward to an anticipated era. He foresaw a Kinsman-Redeemer, Advocate, Avenger standing in his stead and making all matters right (I Jn. 2:1f.). He envisioned Jesus taking up his cause and pleading His righteousness before the God of holiness (Zech. 3:1-5).
When Job says, “He will take His stand on the earth,” he visualizes a battle with carcasses strewn throughout the sands of time. Nonetheless, one Divine Warrior, one Gladiator, one Guardian of men’s souls, one Victor over death remains immovable, steadfast. This is Christ’s revelation of the mystery of godliness: “He who was revealed in the flesh, was vindicated in the Spirit, beheld by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory” (I Ti. 3:16).
The Prince of Glory is not ashamed to call you brother, to take your sin to Himself and to mold you into His own holy image (II Cor. 5:21; 3:18, respectively). The celestial Redeemer voluntarily became your next of kin so that He might rob your death of its sting and your grave of its contents.
Job knew his skin would be destroyed; his body would be divorced from his soul; worms would attack his flesh removing his likeness to man. He would no more boast of his handsomeness, his intellect or his accomplishments. The clothing of his earthly vessel would be decimated – dust-to-dust (Gen. 3:19).
Why is the skin destroyed? “For the wages of sin is death” (Ro. 6:23). Death only takes from you what is rightfully the property of death, for in the day that you sinned, you did surely die (Gen. 2:17). All that the first Adam forfeited for you, the last Adam shall restore for His beloved (I Cor. 15:20ff.).
Job makes a declaration: “Yet from my flesh I shall see God.” Will you? Are you included in Paul’s description of God’s elect? (I Cor. 15:50ff.). Is your moving passion to behold the one true God – not resurrected saints, not gates of pearl, not streets of gold or walls of jasper or jeweled crowns or harmonious harps, but seeing your Redeemer?
John Bunyan placed Beulah Land at the close of his pilgrimage. Only through the telescope of trust can you see across the Jordan, beyond the gold, frankincense and myrrh of the magi to the glory of Jesus. Joseph’s bones were brought into the Promised Land – will your bones dwell in the land of promise?
Christ is only bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh if He enters into your daily trials and battles, victories and defeats. Man’s lone Redeemer has the ability to dress you with Himself in His Beulah Land when you have crossed the Jordan of life. The life the Lord gives is immune from death, untouched by the worm that never dies.
The conversation between God and Ezekiel is most enlightening:
“‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ And I answered, ‘O Lord God,
Thou knowest.’ Again He said to me, ‘Prophesy over these bones,
and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.’ Thus
says the Lord God to these bones, ‘Behold, I will cause breath to enter…
I will put sinews…cover you with skin…and you will know that I
am the Lord’ (Eze. 37: 3-6).
Has God caused breath to enter you? Has He put sinews upon you, covered you with skin and do you know that Jesus is LORD? If not, your soul boasts of little sweetness.
The sacred is not for sale because God is holy. Will you abandon what is holy for sight, for impatience, for conformity or for yesterday’s ornaments? (Ex. 32f.).
Perhaps your race is nearly run and you know it – or your race is already run and you do not know it. What will you do? The day will come when the earth is silent, but not the voice of a redeemed man. What if your closing words expressed the heart of Job, the most tried, suffering, hurt man the world has known?
These words from the heart of a wounded man have been repeated myriads of times over the past thousands of years over the open graves of men whose eternity is decided. With each rehearsal of these words, the adopters proclaim the death of a defeated devil and the life of a risen Savior. The grave of the faithful deceased is robbed of its contents because the person situated therein has an imperishable immortal soul.
Job could see his last estate. Can you? His tomb was empty. Will yours be emptied of you because you have been filled with Job’s Christ?
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