I Know That My Redeemer Lives
A Sermon for the First Sunday After Easter
Based Upon Job 19:25-27
March 30, AD 2008
He is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
If you truly believe that, then you have the same faith as Job has.
For Job believes the very same thing. “I know that my Redeemer lives,
And He shall stand at last on the earth” (Job 19:25).
Job’s words are words of prophecy. These words prophesy about the
second coming of Christ to judge the living and the dead. And they
also prophesy about the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Job
prophesies the truth revealed on that first Easter Sunday: “My Redeemer
lives, and He stands upon the Earth in His resurrected body.” This
vision of the Prophet Job is fulfilled in the eyes of the Apostle
Thomas, and that explains why Thomas is so insistent in seeing the
Risen Jesus with his own eyes: “In my flesh I shall see God, Whom I
shall see for myself, And my eyes shall behold, and not another” (Job
19:26-27).
These words of the prophet are also words of testimony. They testify
to the faith of Job. For the prophet of God not only speaks God’s
Word; He also believes God Word. So Job speaks by the inspiration of
the Holy Spirit, and Job believes by the power of the same Holy Spirit,
that his Redeemer lives!
He is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! That is Job’s testimony,
and your testimony. That is Job’s faith--and that is your faith; isn’t
it?
If it is not, it ought to be--for your own sake.
So, stop doubting, Thomas, and believe. Believe, as Job believes, that
your Redeemer lives, that He Who was crucified on the cross for our
sins on Good Friday stood upon the Earth, fully alive, on Easter
Sunday. For in believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, you
have life in His name.
You have eternal life in His name. That is the prophesy and the
testimony of Job. Job serves as a marvelous example of an Old
Testament Christian, a person who believed in the Christ Who was to
come into the world at some time in the future. While the spiritual
lives of the Old Testament saints often looks different from ours --
different because of the specific laws that God gave to them to prepare
them for the coming of Christ into the world in the flesh -- the
ancient saints possessed the very same faith that the Holy Spirit works
in our hearts today. For there was and is and ever shall be only one
true faith: the Christian faith.
It is the only faith that brings salvation unto eternal life with the
one true God--The Father, and Jesus Christ The Son, and The Holy
Spirit. Any other faith, by any other name, condemns a person to an
eternal death, because such a false faith does not grasp onto the main
point and chief article of the one true faith: the forgiveness of all
of your sins of deed and word and thought and desire, a forgiveness
given only because of Christ’s life and death for you, a forgiveness
received only through the gracious gift of faith that God’s Holy Spirit
alone plants within us.
That is the faith that Job held in his heart, worked by God’s Holy
Spirit Himself. By this faith, Job recognized that he was a sinner,
and that he must die and be laid in the grave, knowing that the
consequence of our sin is our death, as he says, “After my skin is
destroyed. . . .” (Job 19:26). But by this same faith, Job believes in
his own resurrection from the dead, for he trusts in the gift of
forgiveness and eternal life that his Living Redeemer delivers: “After
my skin is destroyed, this I know, That in my flesh I shall see God”
(Job 19:26). As surely as Christ Jesus the Redeemer lives and stands
upon the Earth, so shall Job live and stand in Heaven, and behold His
Savior, “Whom I shall see for myself, And my eyes shall behold, and not
another” (Job 19:27).
So also it is for all sinners who do not doubt, but believe. For in
believing, you have life in His name. Believing that you have been
baptized in the Name of Jesus Christ, you have the remission of sins
and the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38). Believing that you hear
the Living Voice of Jesus speaking to you -- “I forgive you of all your
sins” -- you possess an abundance of grace and of the gift of
righteousness and will reign in life on account of His Name (Romans
5:17). Believing that under the bread and the wine is the true Body
and Blood of the One Named Jesus Christ, given and shed for us
Christians to eat and to drink, brings forgiveness of sin--and eternal
life--by that Name.
And not only eternal life in the future, but life -- a new life, in His
name --now.
That life Job also enjoyed.
Now, that might sound strange--that Job “enjoyed” his life on earth.
For we know well what Job’s life was like. All of his earthly
wealth--and he had been blessed richly by God--was taken away by the
Devil. On top of that, all ten of his dear children had been taken
away by Death, all at once, by a tornado. Then Job had to deal with
health issues, becoming afflicted with painful boils all over his body.
Then he lost the consolation of his own wife, for she wanted nothing
to do with this sorry man or his God, telling him to curse the God Who
seemed to be cursing them and telling her husband to literally "drop
dead." And, when friends came to console him, Job soon discovered that
he no longer count these men as friends; for they told Job that he only
had himself to blame for all of his troubles, and they offered him no
words of comfort in his time of misery.
Listen to Job himself lament his sad situation, in the words that come
just before the words that serve as today’s Lesson, from the 19th
Chapter of the Book of Job, as Job responds to the comfortless words of
his friend: “How long will you torment my soul, And break me in pieces
with words? These ten times you have reproached me; You are not
ashamed that you have wronged me. . . . If I cry out concerning wrong,
I am not heard. If I cry aloud, there is no justice. He has fenced up
my way, so that I cannot pass; And He has set darkness in my paths.
He has stripped me of my glory, And taken the crown from my head. He
breaks me down on every side, And I am gone; My hope He has uprooted
like a tree. He has also kindled His wrath against me, And He counts
me as one of His enemies. His troops come together And build up their
road against me; They encamp all around my tent. He has removed my
brothers far from me, And my acquaintances are completely estranged
from me. My relatives have failed, And my close friends have forgotten
me. Those who dwell in my house, and my maidservants, Count me as a
stranger; I am an alien in their sight. I call my servant, but he
gives no answer; I beg him with my mouth. My breath is offensive to my
wife, And I am repulsive to the children of my own body. Even young
children despise me; I arise, and they speak against me. All my close
friends abhor me, And those whom I love have turned against me.” (Job
19:1-19).
We find in Job’s lament all of our own troubles. Relationship issues
with spouses, family members, and friends. Health issues. Emotional
issues. Personal wealth issues. Job has them all, and so do we.
Yet what Job also has is what we all ought to find in our own lives as
well. As Saint John puts it in his First Epistle, the 5th Chapter--our
Epistle for this day: “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world.
And this is the victory that has overcome the world: our faith. Who is
he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son
of God? (1 John 5:4-5). Job has faith in His Redeemer, His Lord, His
Savior, and with that faith God gives Job the victory that overcomes
the world and all of the problems that life in this fallen world bring.
For when you know that you will be living forever with God, because of
Christ’s victory over sin and death for you, your life now is a life of
victory. Even when it appears that God Himself is striking you -- as
it appeared to Job, who says, “Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you
my friends, For the hand of God has struck me!” (Job 19:21) -- true
faith continues to trust in that same God for deliverance --
deliverance into life everlasting, and deliverance from the cares and
concerns of the problems of this life.
For God does deliver us from those problems. He delivers us by
empowering us to do our part in the restoration of a broken
relationship by seeking forgiveness for offenses that we might have
given, and by offering forgiveness to those who have offended us--and
God comforts us by His eternal relationship of love with Him when our
efforts at reconciling with others is not successful. The Lord
delivers us from our ills by the continuing demonstration of His power
to heal our bodies through the work of medical care providers, and
especially by His promise to heal our final illness permanently, giving
His children the glorified bodies that will never again be ill or die.
God delivers us out of the pit of depression through the uplifting Word
that he speaks by His Spirit through the words spoken by caring family
members and friends. God delivers us from want by providing us our
daily bread each and every day, delivering everything that we truly
need through the work our own hands and through the generous hands of
others.
Thus we faithful enjoy life in this world as faithful Job did, even in
the midst of great troubles, knowing that, through our faith, God has
given us the victory in Jesus Christ, our Living Redeemer.
For He is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
And in His Name, so are you!
Amen.
The Reverend Jeffrey A. Ahonen
Deacon, Salem Lutheran Church, Malone, Texas
Mission Pastor, Saint Henry Lutheran Mission, Montreal, Wisconsin
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.sainthenry.info
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