I Know That My Redeemer Lives (Easter Sunday)

Pastor Mike will be speaking on I Know That My Redeemer Lives (Easter Sunday). He will be reading out of Job 19: 25-26.

And Job just says, okay. Maybe God is gonna slay me. Maybe God is punishing me. I don’t know. But no matter what God allows in my life or what God causes in my life, I will trust him.

I’m gonna ask you, whatever comes your way, will you still trust him? Hello. This is pastor Mike Sanders from the Hopeworth Having radio program. Thank you for taking time to listen in. Today, we’re gonna be in the book of Job as we are celebrating Easter.

You know, for the believer, Easter is really every Sunday. We celebrate the resurrection every Sunday, but we know there is that special time of the year that we really hone in, and we call it Easter, and we celebrate the resurrection of Christ. So today, we’re gonna be in Job 19, and we’re gonna be looking at two key verses, verse twenty five and twenty six, as we study I know that my redeemer lives. If you have your bible this morning, I want you to join me in the book of Job. Job chapter 19 verse 25 through 26 is our main text.

You may never have heard of Robert King Merton, the Columbia University sociologist. He died in 02/2003, but I’ll bet you have heard some of the phrases that he has coined like self fulfilling prophecy, unintended consequences, and it was Merton who coined the phrase role model to describe someone who would provide an example of positive behavior. Now the term may be fairly new, but the concept of being a role model is as old as the bible. If you want a role model of someone who has truly been transformed by the message of Easter, you will find that in the person of Job. The bible tells us in the book of James that Job is a role model for each one of us.

And despite Job’s intense tribulations and the unanswered questions that were in his heart, he verbally affirmed five times his commitment to the Lord. There were five great statements in the book of Job that were statements of faith, and they are planted like signposts as we read through it. We are reminded through the book of Job that when life is rough, and when we get to that point where we feel so emotionally defeated, that there are some true facts that sustain us and bring joy amid the storms in our life. We come to Job chapter 19 verse 25 through 26. Job declares, for I know that my redeemer lives and he shall stand at last on the earth.

And after my skin is destroyed, this I know that in my flesh, I shall see God. This confidence, this faith, this boldness that Job declares in the midst of his trials is rooted in his belief that the redeemer, Jesus Christ, is alive. In his heart, he was rooting everything in his future into the resurrection of a Messiah, and a future in which he would see God. So I want us to help see that manifested in the book of Job, and how that guides each of our hearts as we think about what is the big deal about the resurrection, and why is it that the church makes such a big deal about it? Well, let’s jump back to Job chapter one.

If you’ll just take your bible and go back. And I want you to see first of all this great statement that Job makes at the very outset of the book. And it is simply this, blessed be the name of the Lord. Now, when we come to the book of Job, many of you are very familiar with Job. And you know that the devil desired to stir up trouble in Job’s life.

The bible teaches us that Job was a righteous man. He was a blameless man. We look at verse one, it says, there was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless. He was upright. He was one who feared God, and he shunned evil.

The bible later teaches us that Job was a man who rose up early in the morning, and he would offer up sacrifices and prayers and worship to God. And that part of his prayers was that he was praying for his children. He was praying that God would protect them, that God would bless them, and that God would bestow grace upon them. Job was a man who was very dedicated in his faith, and he was very determined to meet God every morning and to worship the Lord. The bible tells us in Job chapter one that the devil decided to stir up trouble in Job’s life.

Let me remind you that no matter how righteous you are and how dedicated and devoted to your faith that you are, The devil is always looking, and the devil is always wanting to do everything he can to destroy our lives. He wants to trap us into sin, he wants to destroy our testimony, and he wants to set us back in our determination to live for Jesus Christ. And that’s exactly what the devil wanted to do for Job. The bible tells us that the devil was looking, and God said, have you considered my servant Job? The devil made the case to God that the only reason Job followed God was because of how much he was blessed.

How blessed was Job? Well, the scriptures tell us that he owned 7,000 sheep, he had 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 donkeys. He was a man who was not only blessed in his wealth, but he was a man who was blessed in his family. He had seven sons and three daughters. He was blessed in his faith.

He was considered to be upright and blameless and righteous. And in many ways, Job was a man who was rich. Not just rich materially, but he was rich in faith for God. And yet the Bible teaches us that the devil came in and began to stir up trouble in Job’s life. We learn as we read chapter one, and we don’t have time to read every verse this morning, that there came in one day in Job’s life that there was the loss of all his children, and there was the loss of all his wealth, and there was the loss of his own health.

And I want you to see in verse 20 of chapter one what is Job’s response in the midst of this great trial. Then Job arose, tore his robe, he shaved his head, and he fell to the ground and worshiped. And he said, naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Honestly, when you think about it, when you just kind of reflect upon all that happened to Job, and when you read this later, you’ll just be kind of just amazed. How is it that this man in the midst of his tears and grief and sorrow, and all that he has lost, would worship God. He would not only worship God, but the bible says that he would declare, blessed be the name of the Lord. It is easy for us to bless God and worship God when everything’s wonderful in our life. It’s easy to praise God when the bank account is full and all the bills are paid.

It’s easy to praise God when we have a job to go to tomorrow. But how many of us will praise God when we suffer loss? When we are hurting, and we are grieving, and we are struggling, and it’s hard for us to figure out the way forward? How many of us And I throw myself right in there, friends. How many of us would say blessed be the name of the Lord?

I think there were two things that helped Job to fight through the tears and the emotions. I don’t want you to think that Job was some robot and just kind of blurted it out, and he had no connection to his family. And that it wasn’t devastating to him. That he lost his family. He lost his health.

He lost all that he had and possessed. But I think first of all, Job had established a pattern of worshiping God every day in his life. That Job rose up and he made it a habit of his life. I know sometimes we might think that certain habits are bad and that’s true. But there’s also habits that are good.

They’re godly. And they instill within us character, and they develop, and they impact our hearts for God. And I think this is really at the heart of what is the maturity and the character of who Job is. He was a man who worshiped God. And even though his circumstances had changed, and everything was now so difficult in his life, Job still worshiped and praised God.

For you and me, it’s essential to remember that we build good habits in our life, because I’m gonna tell you my friends that life is not always easy. And there are many sorrows, and there are many sufferings that we encounter. We find ourselves on detours. We find ourselves in paths that are dry and difficult. We find ourselves in situations where there is much pain and there is hurt, and what is gonna be sustaining in your life is going to be the habit of faithfully worshiping God personally and spending time with him.

And that even though you cannot understand it and you cannot explain it, what comes out of your heart is a heart that blesses, praises, and worships God. Listen to me. It takes spiritual maturity for you to bless God in the pain. To be able to praise him through the pain. In the pain.

And I wanna tell you that your faith will be tested. The bible teaches us that. But we must learn to praise him. What else is it that helped Job to be able to say, blessed be the name of the Lord? I think it was his confidence and his belief that his redeemer lives.

I think it’s the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I think that he knows that we live in a world of sorrow and sadness, and that there are many struggles. But there’s a hope that one day my flesh shall see God and my redeemer lives. It is a sustaining force in the life of Job. Again, I know he’s hurting.

I know the tears are flooding. And you say, how do you know this? Just read the book of Job. But over and over again, Job is working through the grief. He is working through the pain and the tears are flowing from his eyes.

He literally says that like a river. But Job builds his hope on the truth and the fact of the resurrection. And you’re not gonna be able to say, blessed be the name of the Lord if your faith is rooted in emotions, or your faith is rooted in circumstances, or your faith is rooted only in good times, or your faith is, as long as I get these certain things from God, then I will follow him. The only way that you will mature beyond that is to say that no matter what, I’m gonna continue to worship the Lord. And blessed be the name of the Lord.

The second great statement that I want you to see in this book is in Job chapter two verse nine and ten. Shall we accept good and not bad? Look at verse nine of chapter two. Then his wife said to him, do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die.

But he said to her, you speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and shall we not accept adversity? In all this, Job did not sin with his lips. I don’t want you to be too hard on Job’s wife. I don’t want you to judge her and condemn her.

First of all, if you haven’t been there, I don’t think it’s good for us to quickly judge. Right? You can only imagine the heartache that she has of losing 10 children. You can only imagine the emotion. She brought those children into this world.

She nurtured them. She trained them. She loved them. She guided them, and she certainly influenced their life in a tremendous way. The bible says, she said curse God and die.

There are times that in our emotions of our adversities, that we express things through our lips and our hearts and our minds that don’t always truly reflect of what is true and perhaps even what we believe. I just feel like in the moment of the pressure, in the moment of the anger and the disappointment and the loss and the doubt that she just blurted out, Perhaps her and Job were talking and they were discussing of the why did all this happen. And she was looking to her husband for comforting consolation and perhaps that he could explain somehow why God would allow all this to take place in her life and their life together as a family. And Job was doing his best while he’s hurting himself, while he’s struggling, fumbling over his words, trying to console her. And she, out of anger, said, just curse God and die.

Listen, I want you to understand that God can handle our anger. He can handle when we don’t know what to say, or sometimes we say something that maybe we shouldn’t say. He can help us work through it. We are human. We are limited.

And we find ourselves be unable to reason the tragedy we’ve just experienced in our life. We live in a confusing world. We live in a world that is many times unreasonable. And so I certainly understand and I hear what Job’s wife is saying. Many times people have said, pastor, I’m angry at God.

And I look at them and I say, it’s okay. It’s okay to be angry at God. And they are kinda like in shock that I said this. God can handle your anger. There’s nothing that you have said or are thinking that God hasn’t heard before or knows what people think.

God knows your heart. God knows what you’re working through. God understands our finite abilities and how difficult it is for us to work through the emotions of something that is so tragic in our life. I want you to know that the sin is not anger. Now, if we let that anger lead us to reject God, to walk away from our faith, to give up in following God, that’s different.

The Bible says, be angry and sin not. Some of you are upset today because you’re missing your loved one and you’re missing that person that is so precious to you. And maybe as you are trying to work through that emotion, there’s a little bit of anger. Listen, God knows and God understands, and God created you with that anger. He created us with the emotion of anger.

Just like he created us with the emotion of joy, and he created us with these different emotions as humans. What he’s telling us is that we need to learn in our maturity, as we are growing in our faith, to channel our emotions in a direction that not only is glorifying to God, but is a blessing to others. Be angry and sin not. It’s a lot to work through. But what does Job’s response?

Where does God have Job in this moment? Again, Job says this. Shall we indeed accept good from God and shall we not accept adversity? So I want you to underscore that word accept because part of you working through your grief and your sorrow is learning that there are some things that whether we like it or not, we have to accept and we cannot change. I know.

Even me saying that is difficult to process. The devil has unleashed an attack upon Job. He is struggling. His body is going through a lot of health challenges. He has sores all over from head to foot, the Bible says.

He is very afflicted in his heart. He is grieving. He’s struggling. He’s trying to help his wife, and she’s questioning and wondering. And Job was a great man of faith.

The bible already declared that. Right? But Job’s faith was not rewarded with the healing of his own body. And Job’s faith did not lead to his children being protected. And Job’s faith did not protect his assets.

And here is Job struggling. Job would say later on in chapter five that man’s days are full of trouble. Here’s what I want you to know. You’re running around trying to get the answer. And you got well intended Christians who seem to always have the answer.

Have you met these Christians? They got the answer to every sorrow, to every suffering. And when you’re sharing your heart with them, they wanna share their sorrow and suffering, and they’re just messing it all up. They don’t understand that sometimes there’s not a good answer. Do you understand that?

That sometimes there’s not a reason that we can explain. We live in a flawed world. We live in a world where people are allowed to make choices. And sometimes those decisions lead to tragedy and a ripple effect that impacts other people who aren’t even maybe in the situation. Yesterday, I was just kind of reading about this New York City Police Officer that was murdered, and and I was following what his wife had shared at the funeral service yesterday.

And she made this statement, my husband’s death was senseless. She couldn’t understand it. She couldn’t come up with a good enough answer. And we say, well what if this and what if that? And again, we could go through all the what ifs we want, but here we are.

And that’s the way life is sometimes. That we have to be like Job and we have to accept the good and the bad. There is injustice in this world. There are things that don’t always seem to be fair. But we must learn to accept the things that are happening.

We certainly can remember that serenity prayer in which someone once wrote, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. This morning I wanna tell you, as I’ve said to you many times church, that the secret things belong to the Lord. And there are times we just have to accept and say, Lord, I’ll never know the answer. I’ll never understand the tragedy. I’ll never have a good enough reason that comforts my heart for why I’m experiencing this loss.

But I accept that here I am. And the key is how can I move forward? The third great statement that Job said is in Job chapter 13 and I want you to turn over there with me. Look at chapter 13 verse 15, though he slay me yet will I trust him even so I will defend my own ways before him. You might say, why would Job say that he would defend his own ways before God?

Well, from chapter four all the way through chapter 36, Job has to endure three friends who have all the answers. Do you have a lot of people trying to fix you instead of accept you? Job had them. They told Job that the reason he went through so much suffering is because he had some unconfessed sins in his life. How about that?

It wonderful to have friends who are spec finders? Jesus said to the Pharisees that you might wanna take care of the beam in your own eye before you take care of the specks in others. Right? Be careful when you’re out there trying to comfort God’s people, people in your family, or even people in the community. I remember the funeral director calling me and saying, Pastor Mike, can you get down here quickly?

We have a young lady who’s lost her baby. And I go in there, then she’s weeping, wailing. And she looks up and I introduce myself, and and she looks at me and she says, do not give me that God stuff. And I knew right then, this wasn’t the time to quote her 10 verses. I just listened to her.

I just asked questions, tried to understand where she was at and what the circumstances were, and offered my support and my help to help officiate the service. And I want you to know that it’s important for us as believers to be sensitive to the moment. There’s a lot of things that are true. Yes, I believe them. They’re in the bible, but the application is not the right timing.

How about this, the Bible tells us, a word fitly spoken. You do see what I’m saying? And so, there are times Christians, we are very much like Job’s friends and we think we got all the answers. And what we ought to do is spend the time listening, weeping, praying, and doing however we can to practically minister to them. But Job said in this verse, in the midst of his friends trying to point out all his faults, Job said, though he slay me, yet will I trust him.

Even so, I will defend my own ways before him. Meaning that his friends have found everything wrong with him, and why he’s going through, and they claim to know all the reasons why he’s going through tragedy. And Job just declares in faith, he says, even though he slays me, I’m gonna trust him, and I will defend myself before that his possessions are gone? Isn’t it enough that he is having health challenges? And now his friends pile on top of him?

And Job just says, okay, maybe God is gonna slay me. Maybe God is punishing me. I don’t know. But no matter what God allows in my life or what God causes in my life, I will trust him. I wanna ask him, whatever comes your way, will you still trust him?

The broken relationships, the setbacks, the disappointments. Will you still trust God? Will you still faithfully follow the Lord? Well, let’s hurry up and get to that fourth statement. But the fourth is the most encouraging, and the fifth gives us guidance as we leave today.

We go to chapter 19. I already read it to you, but I just again wanna bring it to your attention because I wanna take it a little bit further. Chapter 19 verse 23, and note again that Job says, I know that my redeemer lives. Verse 23, oh that my words were written, oh that they were inscribed in a book, that they were engraved on a rock with an iron pen and lead forever. For I know that my redeemer lives, and he shall stand at last on the earth.

And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I will see God. Look at verse 27. Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold and not another. How my heart yearns within me. That last phrase, how my heart yearns within me.

The idea of the word is actually being overwhelmed. So what Job is saying is that I’m overwhelmed with my circumstances. I’m overwhelmed with what I’m experiencing. He’s just being honest with God. He’s being transparent.

He’s just being true to who he is and he’s being real with God. He’s not pretending. He’s not being fake, but he’s rooting his hope. He’s rooting his trust in the fact that he knows that his redeemer lives. Did you see that phrase there several times?

Verse 25, I know. And then we come down and we see again that he says in verse 26, this I know. You’ll never be able to move forward in your faith if you’re rooting your faith in feelings. Our feelings are up and down. Our emotions are good one day, bad another.

I wanna give you a piece of advice that’ll help you. Somebody should have told it to you a long time ago. And parents, please tell your children everything you feel is not true. And everything you think is not true. Sometimes you and I feel and think things.

We’ve convinced ourselves and it has been destructive to our life. But Job goes back and he says, this is what I know. And I wanna encourage you to go back to what you know to be true based upon the word of God. And Job’s hope is that he knows his redeemer lives. And because his redeemer lives, Job knows that he will live.

And he knows that his flesh will see God. We know as we’ve taught you before that when our body is placed into the ground, death is the idea of separation. The soul and spirit is separated from God. The body is placed into the ground and that the soul and spirit is immediately in the presence of God. And the bible tells us that there’s coming a day when the dead in Christ shall rise.

That body that has been decayed, that has turned ashes to ashes and dust to dust, that body God will recreate into a new, glorified body, and the soul and spirit are reunited, and your flesh, your body in this glorified body will see God again. And that’s not only true for all who believe in Jesus Christ, but that is true for all of our loved ones who have preceded us in death. That they will resurrect. Listen to what the psalmist said. The Lord redeems the soul of his servant and none of those who trust in him shall be condemned.

The psalmist understood what Job was affirming that his redeemer lives. The word redeemer in the old testament means to be a vindicator. To be a vindicator, an advocate. And in the old testament setting, there was the responsibility of the closest undertake the cause of a family member, and defend them. Job realized that there was one in heaven.

Job realized that there was one in heaven who would acquit him of all the charges of his friends, and all the charges of the world, and all the charges of the devil, who is an accuser of the brethren, Job knew that there was one who would be his redeemer, and that redeemer, the messiah, Job, unlike us, he looked forward to a messiah, and he looked to that messiah vindicator. Perhaps the greatest truth that verifies Christianity is that Jesus Christ lives. And because he lives, we also have the hope of a future and an eternal life with Jesus Christ forever and ever. And in a real way, his resurrection is our resurrection. He was the prototype.

He was the first fruits, and therefore, we shall live again because he lives. This is pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ, there is hope worth having.