CERTAIN IN UNCERTAINTY

OPEN YOUR BIBLES TO JOB 19:23-27

Job 19:23–27 NASB95

23 “Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! 24 “That with an iron stylus and lead They were engraved in the rock forever! 25 “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, And at the last He will take His stand on the earth. 26 “Even after my skin is destroyed, Yet from my flesh I shall see God; 27 Whom I myself shall behold, And whom my eyes will see and not another. My heart faints within me!

REDEMPTION NEEDED

In 2004, a made for television movie aired that told the story of an inmate in the California Department of Corrections who was sitting on death roll awaiting his impending execution; He was confined to the San Quentin State Prison. The prisoner was a man named Stanley “Tookie” Williams. This man was incarcerated and sentenced to death by lethal injection not solely because of his involvement in the creation and organization of the infamous and notorious Los Angeles street gang known as the Crips, but also because he was accused of and charged with 4 murder cases. The movie depicted him as a reformed man who had own his wrongness and who had repented and was seeking atone for them by making positive contributions to society in hopes of obtaining “redemption.” In fact, the name of the movie, starring Jamie Foxx as Stanley Tookie Williams was titled “Redemption.”

We have before us this afternoon another man. Unlike this first man, he had committed no crime; on the contrary, he had the testimony of God Almighty that if there were ever a perfect man, it was this man. But yet we find him shut up in a dungeon of despair as the subject of severe suffering and struggle; this man’s name is Job. Although these two men have totally different cases, what they have in common is that they both need “redemption.”

The message that the Lord seeks to teach is that suffering is not something that only the wicked experience. if you have lived any amount of time you can testify that sometimes “bad things do happen to good people.” Such as in the case where a believing couple has a child who grows up to be bi-polar or schizophrenic, or a single-mother who trusts God with her whole heart but loses her job because her company decided to reorganize. What about that person who abstained from smoking, drinking, and drugs only to be diagnosed with lung cancer of some other life threatening disease. Whenever people are in these kinds of situations what they long for is redemption.

REDEMPTION DEFINED

The New Bible Dictionary 3rd Edition says:

Redemption means deliverance from some evil by payment of a price. It is more than simple deliverance. Thus prisoners of war might be released on payment of a price which was called a ‘ransom’ (Gk. lytron). The word-group based on lytron was formed specifically to convey this idea of release on payment of ransom. In this circle of ideas Christ’s death may be regarded as ‘a ransom for many’ (Mk. 10:45). In other words there can be no redemption without someone to pay the ransom (i.e., a Redeemer).

The truth is that the redemption cannot come from the hand of man, it must come from God (See Psalm 49:7).

Psalm 49:7 NASB95

7 No man can by any means redeem his brother Or give to God a ransom for him—

CENTRAL IDEA

WE, LIKE JOB, ALTHOUGH WE MAY BE UNCERTAIN ABOUT EVERYTHING ELSE MUST ALWAYS MAINTAIN HOPE IN A LIVING REDEEMER.

UNCERTAIN OF WHY WE SUFFERING

Opening Up Job Sharing in Christ’s Sufferings

Reading chapter 19 cannot but remind the Christian of the sufferings and sorrow which our Saviour went through. Without realizing it, Job was sharing in Christ’s sufferings. He did not know that this was ordained for him as a believer; all he knew was that he had faith in God, so why was he suffering like he was? Was God angry with him? We know that people can become very low and depressed in times of sorrow, yet God permits this to happen to them. Charles H. Spurgeon, commenting on Exodus 3:7 (‘And the LORD said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows” ’), remarked,

If you are in the dark, if your spirits are sunk in gloom, do not despair, for the Lord Jesus was there. If you have fallen into misery, do not give up because the Father’s well-beloved passed through deeper darkness … if you are under a cloud … trust Him, and He will cause his light to shine on you.

All that the people of God go through and endure while here on earth comes to them in fellowship with their Saviour. They cannot escape this. It is not possible to live the Christian life and not share in the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings. This is God’s plan for his people, and their mystical union with Christ makes it inevitable (2 Cor. 1:7; 1 Peter 4:12–13). The fellowship of Christ’s sufferings means sharing in the reproach, rejection, hostility and hatred that follow on from identification with Jesus Christ and bearing witness to him.

UNCERTAIN OF RELATIONSHIPS

See Job 19:13-21

Job 19:13–21 NASB95

13 “He has removed my brothers far from me, And my acquaintances are completely estranged from me. 14 “My relatives have failed, And my intimate friends have forgotten me. 15 “Those who live in my house and my maids consider me a stranger. I am a foreigner in their sight. 16 “I call to my servant, but he does not answer; I have to implore him with my mouth. 17 “My breath is offensive to my wife, And I am loathsome to my own brothers. 18 “Even young children despise me; I rise up and they speak against me. 19 “All my associates abhor me, And those I love have turned against me. 20 “My bone clings to my skin and my flesh, And I have escaped only by the skin of my teeth. 21 “Pity me, pity me, O you my friends, For the hand of God has struck me.

The Bible Knowledge Commentary c. The Animosity of His Relatives and Others (19:13–22)

The animosity of his relatives and others (19:13–22)

19:13–17. The sufferer’s plaint was also nurtured by loneliness. Brothers (perhaps comrades, not blood relatives), acquaintances.… kinsmen … friends, and guests abhorred and forsook Job—including even the three men who, though with him physically, abandoned him emotionally. Speaking of his household, Job then listed maidservants, his own personal servant, and even his wife and brothers among those who rejected him. His personal attendant refused to respond to him and his wife (this is the only mention of her apart from 2:9–10) stayed away because of his disease-caused halitosis.

19:18–20. Youngsters made fun of Job instead of showing the customary respect due to elders (cf. 30:1, 9–10). Job then lumped with the children those who had been his intimate friends—probably meaning “Eliphaz and Company”—and those he loved. Job lacked even the solace that normally comes from friends and loved ones in times of affliction.

Besides all that, his physical pain did not subside. He continued to lose weight (he was only skin and bones; cf. 18:13), and he had barely eluded death (escaped with only the skin of his teeth). If, as some suggest, “the skin of my teeth” meant his gums (NIV marg.) then he was saying his body was so run down that even his teeth had fallen out and only his gums were unaffected. However, the more common interpretation seems preferable.

19:21–22. In a poignant plea Job then begged his friends, probably sarcastically, to pity him. It was enough for God to have struck him (on God’s hand; cf. 1:11; 2:5; 6:9; 12:9; 13:21); why did they need to be ruthless too, like animals after his flesh?

UNCERTAIN OF DURATION AND ABILITY TO PERSEVERE

A number of years ago researchers performed an experiment to see the effect hope has on those undergoing hardship. Two sets of laboratory rats were placed in separate tubs of water. The researchers left one set in the water and found that within an hour they had all drowned. The other rats were periodically lifted out of the water and then returned. When that happened, the second set of rats swam for over 24 hours. Why? Not because they were given a rest, but because they suddenly had hope!

Those animals somehow hoped that if they could stay afloat just a little longer, someone would reach down and rescue them. If hope holds such power for unthinking rodents, how much greater should is effect be on our lives.

CONCLUSION

There are no hopeless situations; there are only people who have grown hopeless about them.

Clare Boothe Luce.

THERE MUST BE SOMETHING YOU ARE CERTAIN OF

Job—The Wisdom of the Cross A Confident Hope—Of Vindication by a Redeemer (vv. 25–27)

What does Job “know” (v. 25)? By faith he knows three wonderful truths: he has a living Redeemer, this Redeemer will stand upon the earth, and Job will see him with his own eyes.

First, he has a living Redeemer. The “Redeemer” (go‘el) was someone tied to you by covenant, usually a relative, whose calling was to stand for you when you were wronged (v. 25). If you were murdered, he saw to it that your murderer was punished; if your share in the promised land was under threat, he safeguarded it;10 if your widow was childless, he gave her a child. In every way he stood for you when you could not stand for yourself; he is your “Vindicator” (Pope, Fyall) and “Champion” (Clines). One of the most beautiful illustrations of this principle is in the book of Ruth, where Boaz acts as Naomi and Ruth’s kinsman-redeemer, caring for them in their widowhood and becoming for Ruth the husband she needs. Job is confident he has a Redeemer who “lives” (v. 25), meaning “lives forever” in contrast with the impermanence even of an inscription on stone.

This Redeemer can be none other than God himself, the living God who often in the Old Testament stands as the Redeemer of his people. Many modern commentators reject this conclusion because they “find intolerable the logic … that God will help Job against God.” But their alternatives—perhaps that Job’s “Redeemer” is his words, which he is confident will survive his death, or a sympathetic member of the heavenly council—are pathetically inadequate by comparison. This Redeemer must “live” in an absolute sense, and he must be able to stand for Job as an equal before God, who is Job’s accuser. No one less eternal than God or of lower status than God will suffice.

This is not logical, by the sort of logic that the religious or philosophical systems can manage, but it is ultimately true. It is one of the deep ways in which the book of Job, like the whole Old Testament, ultimately does not make sense without Christ and without God, who is the Trinity. The sufferings of Job are a type and foreshadowing of the sufferings of Christ, in whom God is for us. As Luther put it, with his wonderful grasp of gospel paradox, God “loved us even as he hated us.” It is not only that the believer is simul iustus et peccator (at the same time a justified man and a sinner); God is simul Iudex et Redemptor (at the same time Judge and Redeemer).

Second, Job knows by faith that this Redeemer will “at the last … stand upon the earth,” literally “upon the dust,” which may be a reference to Job’s grave (v. 25). “Better than a fading tombstone inscribed with my vindication, there will be an eternally living vindicator standing on my grave, attesting my genuineness and right relationship with God.” In this context the word “stand” refers to a witness standing in court to bear testimony.

Third, Job knows that in the end he will see this Redeemer-God with his own eyes (vv. 26, 27). Although there is some uncertainty in translation, it seems that Job expects this to happen after his death (“after my skin has been thus destroyed” [v. 26]). As he has longed, he will indeed be hidden in Sheol and then summoned in resurrection to meet his God (14:13–17). Far from death tearing off his “skin” and marching him off to “the king of terrors,” as Bildad has asserted (18:13, 14), Job will be escorted to meet his God face-to-face.

To stand before God carries with it the meaning of having right relationship with God finally recognized and being vindicated. At the end of Psalm 17 David cries out, “As for me, I shall be vindicated and will see your face” (Psalm 17:15a NIV).14 This anticipatory, faith-fueled confidence of Job anticipates his words “now my eye sees you” after God’s final speech (Job 42:5).

It is all very personal, from the emphatic “I know” (v. 25) to the “whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (v. 27). Job’s faith makes this future reality so vivid that it is almost as if he is already experiencing this longed-for vision of God. “My heart faints within me!” (v. 27). “Heart” is literally “bowels” or “kidneys,” the seat of the emotions. We sometimes speak of having butterflies in our stomach; this was more like elephants. The deepest longing of Job’s heart is to stand before the God he loves and worships, and he believes that he will. He is a prophet, and the Spirit of Christ within him searches and inquires about what person and time is being indicated by these longings (1 Peter 1:10–12).

So Job says in effect, “I will not finally believe that the monster god is the God who made this world. I know that the God I have always feared and loved is related to me by covenant—I belong to him and his family and his people—and in the end, even if it is after my death, I will see him, and he will vindicate me so that it will be publicly seen that I have been a real believer with a clear conscience.”

This is an extraordinary insight of faith. Even though Job then goes back into further chapters of lament, Christians read these words and rightly say, “Job spoke more truly than he realized!” There is a sovereign Redeemer who lives and who will one day vindicate every believer and declare him or her justified from all sin. The true God is the Father who sent his Son into the world to be the innocent believer who dies for sinners; and the true God is the Son who so loved us that he gave himself for us. So indeed every believer can say, “God is for me in Christ; and no power or death or demon in the present or the future can separate me from his love in Christ” (cf. Romans 8:31–39).

How can we be sure of this? Because there was once a real believer whom the monster god attacked with all his vicious terrors, a blameless believer who experienced a terrible death he did not deserve and whom the Redeemer God vindicated publicly on the third day when he raised him from the dead.

George Frederick Handel’s librettist (Charles Jennens) was absolutely right when he set Job 19:25, 26 alongside the words “Now is Christ risen from the dead …” in that great aria in The Messiah. It is precisely the bodily resurrection of Christ that gives us the assurance that Job’s confidence was not wishful make-believe but sure and certain hope. The Father stood upon Christ’s tomb and acted as his Redeemer, to vindicate him by resurrection. This same God will stand upon the grave of every man or woman in Christ, to act as our Redeemer. And on the last day we will stand justified and vindicated before him by grace.

THIS CERTAINTY WILL CAUSE YOU TO WAIT ON HIM.

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