My Redeemer LIVES!

1 Then Job answered:

2 How long will you torment me
and crush me with words?
3 You have humiliated me ten times now,
and you mistreat[a] me without shame.
4 Even if it is true that I have sinned,
my mistake concerns only[b] me.
5 If you really want to appear superior to me
and would use my disgrace as evidence against me,
6 then understand that it is God who has wronged me
and caught me in his net.

7 I cry out, ‘Violence! ’ but get no response;
I call for help, but there is no justice.
8 He has blocked my way so that I cannot pass through;
he has veiled my paths with darkness.
9 He has stripped me of my honour
and removed the crown from my head.
10 He tears me down on every side so that I am ruined.[c]
He uproots my hope like a tree.
11 His anger burns against me,
and he regards me as one of his enemies.
12 His troops advance together;
they construct a ramp[d] against me
and camp round my tent.

13 He has removed my brothers from me;
my acquaintances have abandoned me.
14 My relatives stop coming by,
and my close friends have forgotten me.
15 My house guests[e] and female servants regard me as a stranger;
I am a foreigner in their sight.
16 I call for my servant, but he does not answer,
even if I beg him with my own mouth.
17 My breath is offensive to my wife,
and my own family[f] finds me repulsive.
18 Even young boys scorn me.
When I stand up, they mock me.
19 All of my best friends[g] despise me,
and those I love have turned against me.
20 My skin and my flesh cling to my bones;
I have escaped with only the skin of my teeth.

21 Have mercy on me, my friends, have mercy,
for God’s hand has struck me.
22 Why do you persecute me as God does?
Will you never get enough of my flesh?

23 I wish that my words were written down,
that they were recorded on a scroll
24 or were inscribed in stone for ever
by an iron stylus and lead!
25 But I know that my Redeemer lives,[h]
and at the end he will stand on the dust.
26 Even after my skin has been destroyed,[i]
yet I will see God in[j] my flesh.
27 I will see him myself;
my eyes will look at him, and not as a stranger.[k]
My heart longs[l] within me.

28 If you say, ‘How will we pursue him,
since the root of the problem lies with him? ’[m]
29 then be afraid of the sword,
because wrath brings punishment by the sword,
so that you may know there is a judgement.

Job 19

The Setting: Who Was Job?

There was a time when I believe the story of Job would have been well known. I cannot assume that any longer, for there are many people—even Christians—who say rather proudly, “I’ve never read through the Bible.” And when we question them a little bit further and ask, “Well, what do you do if you call yourself a Christian and you have a daily quiet time, a time that you set apart to read the Word of the Lord and speak with the Lord? What do you do during that time?” Oh, that’s easy. “I have an app on my phone. Every day I get given a verse, I read it, I read the writing about that verse, I pray, and I move on. In fact, I don’t even have to pray; there’s a prayer written out for me. So that’s my quiet time.” How long does that take? Two minutes. Two minutes. That’s what you’re giving God as a quiet time every day. Five minutes, ten minutes? It depends on who you are, I guess, how you’ll answer that question.

The story of Job, just to try and help those who perhaps don’t know, is a story about a man who is unbelievably wealthy, a man with an incredible reputation. He is the most righteous man in the east. He is a man of whom God approves, a man whom God has noticed and speaks of very highly.

Now, here’s the part that we do not understand. Satan comes before God one day in the Lord’s presence. I don’t know how that happens; I can’t explain it. It’s in the Word, I believe it, it’s declared, I accept it, it’s revealed, I trust it. And the Lord says to the devil, “Have you noticed my servant Job?” “I sure have.” In fact, the Lord says to him, “He is the most righteous man in the east.” “Yeah, I know. I’ve seen that. But you know why he serves you? Do you know why he continues with you?” says the devil to the Lord. “It’s because you put a hedge around him. You’ve blessed him, and everything that he could imagine that is good, he’s got.”

Now, let’s pause there. Let’s try and take it in. The devil is actually trying to duel with God. So he says to the Lord, “Take away the hedge. Remove the blessing from him, and then let’s see whether he serves you.” In other words, “You are saying, Lord God, that Job serves you from a pure heart and a pure motive. I’m not sure that he does. I believe he serves you because he can get blessing from you. Take away the blessing, and he’ll stop serving you.” And the Lord says, “Okay, I’ll tell you what: you can go out. I’ll give you permission to touch him, but I will draw a hedge around him. I will set boundaries, limits. You can go this far and no further.” So the devil goes out and he starts to test Job.

And as we’ve read together, Job comes into this place where there is real crisis and calamity. It doesn’t matter how bad your worst day has been; it’s never been a day like Job’s had. Ten children die on the same day. All the wealth that he had in his livestock—camels, sheep, and so on—is taken away by an enemy that invades. The houses of his children are burnt and razed to the ground. His crops, such that they were, and what was left were burnt and raised to the ground.

And then, as if that wasn’t enough, Job finds himself ill. Not with cancer, not with something that we can readily, easily identify—some have tried, but I think we’re going to miss the mark. He finds himself sitting in a place where his body is racked with boils and itch, and he is scraping them with a piece of pottery. The Scripture says to us that he sits on an ash heap. Remember what I said: it doesn’t matter how bad your worst day has been; it’s nothing like that.

And then, if things couldn’t get worse, Job’s wife is watching—Mrs. Job—and she looks on at him and says to him—let me put it in the vernacular—“Darling, I can’t stand it anymore. Seeing you in this agony, it’s just getting to me. Why don’t you just curse God and die? It would be far easier if you died; then your misery would be over.” And Job righteously replies and says to her, “You woman, how can we accept the good from God and not the bad?” That’s godliness. That’s a profound statement.

Then we have the rest of the book of Job, which is the unfolding of all that happens.

Five Headings for Job 19:

I want to unpack this chapter under five headings, and I’m going to go as fast as I can.
1. Job’s frustration with his friends—verses 1-6.
2. Job’s confusion at God’s actions—verses 7-12.
3. Job’s sense of forsakenness—verses 13-22.
4. Job’s belief and trust that God will vindicate him—verses 23-27.
5. Job’s word of warning to his friends—verses 28-29.

So, a lot of ground to cover.

Job’s Frustration with His Friends

You know you’ve got good friends when your friends hear that you are ill, that you’ve got crisis and calamity, that you’re suffering and mourning the loss of ten children and the loss of all your livestock, and you feel that your bank account has been invaded and there’s nothing left. And they leave their home, which as we understand it is far away, and they travel possibly a week or more. Eventually, they come into the very presence of Job, and there they see a man who has lost weight, is emaciated, is in mourning, and is suffering unbelievably. They get down into the ash heap because he’s outside, and they sit with him on the ash heap. You know you’ve got friends when they do that. It takes them however long it does to travel, and then for seven days, sitting outside on this ash heap, they remain silent.

What do you say to someone when they’ve lost a loved one? Many would use clichés. Those on the receiving end will tell you the clichés don’t help; they know the clichés, they’ve used them. Sometimes it’s better to sit in absolute silence.

I remember in the first church where I was—it was February—our children went off to an athletic event in Sekunda. We were in Middelburg at the time, and my phone rang—or the phone rang; we didn’t have cell phones, it was landlines in those days. It was this lady, and she said, “Help. I’ve killed my child.” And you go ice cold. I was like, “Who is…”—you know, I’m still getting to know the people, I’ve been there just a month. And she told me her name and she said to me, “My son has just drowned, and it’s his first birthday today.”

I want to tell you, at seminary they don’t prepare you for that. They don’t tell you what to say because they don’t know what is going to unfold for you. So I dropped everything and I went off to their home. I had the Word of God with me, and I sat. The mother was so angry with the father, and the father so angry with the mother, that they would not speak to each other, could not speak to each other civilly. He had taken rubbish out from the pool area. They had a spring-loaded gate, unbelievably strong. As he had loaded the bags of rubbish onto the back of a bakkie which took it away, somehow this child had slipped in. The gate was closed. The child got into the pool and drowned. “It’s your fault.” “It’s not.” And you get the scene. I sat between the two of them, I took their hands, and I held them, and I said, “I honestly don’t know what to say to you. I can weep with you…” because our children were six and seven and a half at that time—not that far apart. But you can’t begin to assume that you understand everything. Better to keep quiet.

And Job’s friends kept quiet. But then they started. They had this worldview, and this worldview was very simple: if you are good, God blesses; when you are bad, God doesn’t bless. When you walk righteously in the presence of God, you get blessing and wealth and health—and I’m not a prosperity preacher—and when you don’t, well, then God puts His hand upon you like He has here. “Job, you must have sinned against God.”

“I haven’t. I can honestly say I haven’t. I have sought to walk righteously before the Lord. I have been transparent with the Lord. The Lord knows my heart.”

“Job, God never works against His way that has been revealed. You must have sinned against Him.”

And Job has had enough after some days. He says to Bildad who has spoken—your friends can wear you down also—“Even if it is true,” verse four, “that I have sinned, then my mistake concerns only me. It’s between me and God. Bildad, butt out.”

But Bildad, Eliphaz, and his friends continue, and they just keep on doing it. Job chapter 7 and verse 3 says to us, as Job is speaking, he mentions “months of futility.” So there you are. You’re sitting on the ash heap. You’re scraping boils and pus and you’re becoming more and more emaciated. Your heart is weeping. You’re breaking in terms of the things that have just happened. Your friends are unrelenting, and months pass by, and all they can say is “You must have sinned,” without ever letting up. That is where Job is at in this first point: his frustration with his friends.

Now, in some way, I guess all of us can connect with that. We’ve had friends that have said bad things about us. We’ve had friends that have said things to us which have been truthful, but have pierced into the heart so deeply. And we may even have, like Job, had friends who have accused us wrongly, and they have been unrelenting in that accusation.

Job’s Confusion at God’s Actions

His friends were right. Deuteronomy makes clear: God blesses you when you walk in obedience. It makes clear that God curses you when you don’t. So from Job’s perspective—Old Testament theology and understanding—we would understand him to be saying, “I accept that for God to be doing this, something doesn’t fit. But here’s the truth: I’m innocent. I don’t understand why God is doing what He is doing.”

And Job, in uncharacteristic truthfulness—because very often we present an image, don’t we, to friends around us? We want them to think of us like this. Job lets it all out. He uses ten different verbs in these verses—verses 7 through to 12—and he’s speaking of God. “He” equals God. “He has blocked my way. He has veiled my path with darkness.” Can you imagine being in that position? “He has stripped me of honor. He has removed the crown from my head. He tears me down on every side. He uproots my hope like a tree. His anger burns against me. He regards me as one of His enemies. His troops advance against me. His troops come around my tent and besiege me.”

Where are you this morning? If things have happened in your life in this last week or the last few months that you feel like God has abandoned you, it just doesn’t make sense to you. You understand the Word of God: God blesses righteousness and obedience; God curses disobedience and unrighteousness. And where you are right now, you’ve tried to walk as Job did in absolute righteousness, truthfulness, obedience, and yet God has allowed crisis, calamity, sorrow, pain, suffering, loneliness to come upon you. And you in your heart are saying what Job would have been saying: “Oh God, where are You? Oh, that I could just know the sense of Your presence.”

I read a book once about the silence of God. It’s a book that I will never forget, because as this writer unpacked the silence of God, he moved from the silence of God into the sense of the absence of God. And as he unpacked the absence of God, he unpacked what he called—for this man—the dereliction of God. That’s how this person felt. And then at the end of the book, as he tidied it up, he turned to Psalm 139 and one sees faith shining through again: “Where can I go to flee from His presence?” It might feel like He is absent, but you know what? God never forsakes His own.

The reality is that God sometimes acts in ways we cannot explain. And I want to urge you to stop trying to explain God. Proclaim Him. That’s the Scripture. When you try to explain God, you’re trying to get into His heart and explain His motive. You can never do that. He is God. He is infinite. You can’t explain infinity. But you can trust that what God has revealed about Himself is true. And you can trust and believe and live your life based on the truth that He has declared. And Job chooses to do that.

You see, a faith not tested is a faith not worth having. When your faith is tested and it remains true, then you’ve got an anchor in life. Isn’t that what James is saying in chapter 1, verse 2 and following? *Consider it a joy, my brothers, whenever you experience trials of various kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance, and endurance has its full effect, so that you may be mature and lacking in nothing.*

Job, James, you—I allow your faith to be tested because through that testing, God is maturing you. Hard as it is, God wants the best for you, and He will not stop until He has accomplished that.

Job’s Sense of Forsakenness

One sees him crying out here in six or seven categories of relationship. When you hurt, you long for people to come alongside you. And when you are confused, you want people to come and to give some input into you, just to help you get some perspective. But for Job, it seems like everybody is just being quiet and has forsaken him.

So he says in verse 13, “He has removed”—that is, God—“God has removed my brothers from me. He has removed my acquaintances; they’ve abandoned me. My relatives stopped coming, and my close friends have forgotten me. My house guests and my female servants regard me as a stranger. I’m a foreigner in their sight. I call for my servant, but he does not answer, even if I beg him with my own mouth. My wife… here’s what she says: your breath stinks.” No companionship there. No comfort there. “Even young boys scorn me; they mock me. My family, my friends, my relatives, those around me, they’re all gone, and I am alone.”

What do you do when you get yourself into that position? Job does what we should do. Verse 21, he cries out to God: “Have mercy on me, my friends. Have mercy, for God’s hand has struck me.” And as he speaks to them, he’s speaking to God; they’re representing God. He’s asking for that mercy, and because that word is used again and again, one senses that it’s a plaintive cry. It’s a plaintive cry: “Lord, I can’t anymore. Stop it.”

That’s what leads to many saying today, “You know what? When I was an unbeliever, it was far easier than now that I am a believer.” And I’ve had people sadly say over the years, “I think it’s easier to go back into the world than to keep following God.” To which I’ve had to say those words out of Luke’s Gospel: *He who puts his hand to the plow and turns back is not worthy of the kingdom of God.*

You see, when you serve God, you’re saying to God, “I am Yours. I surrender. You can do with me what You please.” You’re saying to the Lord, “Shape me, mold me, do with me whatever You want, but bring me out better. Make me Christlike.” And when you say that, dear friend, you cannot say that without at the same time opening your door to experience something of the sufferings that Jesus would have to experience for you. But Christlikeness is what God wants, and so God allows crisis, calamity, and pain.

Job’s Belief That God Will Vindicate Him

“I wish that my words were written down.” And he goes on—verse 25, key verse: “But I know.” And it’s the kind of “know”—K-N-O-W—that you want to pay attention to. “I know that. I know that. I know.” Even although I can’t explain it, “I know that my Redeemer lives. Even if I can’t explain it all, I know that He lives. And one day, in the end, I’m going to come out of this and I’m going to surmount all of this, because He is the God who never, ever lets go.”

We want to cling to that this morning. He’s so intense. He wants his innocence to be inscribed on a scroll and written with a lead inscriber—in other words, nobody can change it once it’s written down. All he wants is justice. And his request, by the way, is answered. It’s not answered in the way he prayed it; it’s answered because we’ve got it. How do you know the story of Job? You know what happened behind the scenes. You know what happened to him. You know what happens after. How do you know that? Because God wrote it down. Did his Redeemer forsake him? No. Did his Redeemer allow it? Yes. Why? Because you and I are going to go through the same sorts of things. And when we look at the Scripture, we are getting biographical sketches of how God deals with some of His people.

Some of you enjoy blessing. Hallelujah. If you’re going through a season of blessing, great. I’m happy for you. We all are. But here’s the thing: your season of struggle is coming, because God allows birth. And if you’re going through your season of struggle, He has good news for you. Somewhere along the line, God’s going to bring you out of it. And you’re going to be stronger, and you’re going to be better. And you’re going to find that you know more about God than you knew before the whole event started to take place.

“I know that my Redeemer lives.” Now, it’s a wonderful statement. He makes a declaration about God wherein he’s expressing trust and he’s expressing confidence in God. He’s looking into the future, and he’s saying, “Somewhere in the future, the whole situation is going to turn around. And even if I have died, even if my body is dust, God is going to raise me up.” And this is the Old Testament—before Jesus is resurrected—He’s going to raise me up, and you will see. “My friends, I understand I don’t like you right now, but the day is going to come when God will vindicate me.”

Now, that word “Redeemer” is an important word. It’s the Hebrew word *go’el*, and it’s used some 44 times in the Old Testament. Simply put, a redeemer is a kinsman, a family member, a close relative who can come alongside you and can provide protection for you. If there is some legal litigation or something that is going on, this friend, this relative can come and can release you from that litigation. They can do whatever is necessary to get you off the hook.

A good example of that is Boaz and Ruth in the Old Testament. Ruth and Naomi leave the land of Moab and they start a journey to a new land. They are struggling because Naomi is a widow, and widows are disenfranchised people. They come into the Promised Land. And what does the Scripture say to us? It says to us that Boaz redeems Ruth. He does for her what no one else could do except somebody who is closely related to her. And what does he do? He pays the price to set her free, to take her on, to marry her, to look after her, provide for her, protect her. In other words, Boaz becomes her rescuer.

And when you say, “I know that my Redeemer lives,” your Redeemer is the one who is going to provide for you, the one who is going to protect you, the one who is going to deliver you, the one who is going to rescue you, the one who is going to restore your hope, and the one who is going to bring back joy into your heart and into your life. And here is Job in the midst of all of this: “I know—I know that I know that I know, even although I can’t explain it—that He, God, Christ, will do this.”

And Jesus comes down, and here you see the story of Jesus and Job mesh. Jesus comes down, and what do His friends do? They forsake Him. He’s innocent, but they accuse. They go away, but He suffers. And what does He do? He suffers in your place and He suffers in my place to set us free from the condemnation that our sin deserves, from the separation that we have earned because of our sin from the all-holy God. He comes down and He is unlike us. He doesn’t pay us back for our unkind words. He looks on, and even from the cross He hangs and He looks at those that are there and He says, “Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they’re doing.”

And so we have freedom and we have emancipation because of all that Jesus has done for us. And underwriting all of this is this glorious truth: He died, was buried, was raised, is ascended, is reigning on high, and is coming back one day to fetch those who belong to Him—those who say, “I have yielded to the will of the Father. I know my Redeemer lives.”

Have you done that? Do you know that your Redeemer lives? Do you have a Redeemer? If you don’t, this morning you’re lost and you’re headed one way—for an eternity without peace, an eternity of torment, an eternity where there is unending pain. But God sent His Son, perfect, righteous, innocent, to suffer in your place and mine so that His justice could be satisfied. Love and mercy meet in the cross of Jesus, so that sinners can be set free.

Job’s Warning to His Friends

*“If you say, ‘How will we pursue him?’ since the root of the problem lies with him, then be afraid of the sword, because wrath brings punishment by the sword, so that you may know that there is a judgment.”*

Tough words. Bottom line is this: Job is saying to his friends, “I want to warn you. You’re saying I’m guilty. Guilt of sin equals punishment. You don’t know my heart. You’re looking at circumstances and you’re making a very harsh judgment. Remember this: the way you judge others is the way you will be judged.” That’s the effect of what he’s saying to them. And Job goes on and he says, “But even if I die and I stand in death, I still know my Redeemer is going to come and He’s going to rescue me. Oh, my friends, stop judging me. Start praying for me. Start pleading for me.”

That is what Jesus does for us as sinners all the time. He pleads, “Oh, Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they’re doing.”

Conclusion

In the providence of God, I was reading Robert Murray McCheyne. He writes some of his memoirs, and there is a situation that he cites in it—and I’m almost at the end, don’t worry—where he cites that he meets up with another fellow pastor, Andrew Bonar. As the two of them meet, Robert Murray McCheyne says to Andrew Bonar, “So what did you preach on Sunday?” Andrew Bonar replies, “I preached on hell.” McCheyne is quiet. There’s a pregnant pause, and he says to Andrew Bonar, “Did you preach it with tears?” You see, said McCheyne, that’s the only way to preach about hell. When you understand the misery and the sorrow and the suffering and the separation and the eternity of that, you will weep for those who are going there. And so love mounts and you preach it with love, not with lean.

If you come to the book of Job and you come to the story of Job, what are you learning from Job? There is a thing called suffering. There is a situation where God does what cannot be explained. But hear this: even in your crisis, even in your calamity, even in your sorrow, even in your loneliness and your forsakenness, God has put a seed of faith in your heart. “I know that I know that I know my Redeemer lives.” And He does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. He rescues, He saves us, and He gives us a new hope and a new future. And one day we will see Job and we will hear him say—because we will hear it firsthand—“I know my Redeemer lives.” And we will say, “And so do I, because He’s touched me.”

Where are you this morning? Judging others? Forsaking friends? Beloved, get down on your knees and cry out to God to have mercy on them and pray for them. And whenever you mention hell, preach it, mention it with tears, because that will move you to the place where you speak of God’s love rather than just God’s punishment.

Now, let me put this clearly. God will punish the unrepentant. But if we will weep and we will pray and we will speak with love—more of heaven and more of grace than of hell—we can help move people from hell’s door to heaven’s hope. May that be true of us in the days ahead.

Are you going through suffering? Turn to God. Look up. Don’t look at. Look up. Cry out and trust. Your hope is in God. God bless you.