Today, we're going to talk about some of my favorite scripture. I have a lot of favorite scriptures. Reggie asked me one time what my favorite scripture was. I said, well, I have a whole lot of them. I can't name one. And then I named one, and she said, that's too long to put on a thing. So, I said, well, okay, I'll pick another one. So, I'll pick one today. You have your Bible, and I hope you do. Always have a Bible. And of course, there's some in the pew if you don't. I want you to turn with me to, because we're going to have to do a little retranslation. You know how we always have to do this, right? So, turn over to Job chapter 19, and I'll begin there in verse 23. And what I want to do is to give a little exposition of that text. And, you know, it's pretty clear, but there are some words that are a little malleable, we might say. You can kind of beat them with a hammer one way or the other, and we want to You know, look at that. I mean, the general theme here is very clear. Job says, my Redeemer lives, and I'm going to see Him after my death. And he says, I'm going to see Him in the body after my death. I love that. I love that. And Job is a very old writing, and Job is a very old character, you know, probably lived about the time of Abraham. So let's pick up here in verse 23, and as we go along we might make a few comments about what it's actually trying to communicate to us, and I think it's important that we do that. You know, the King James is the best English translation, I believe, Brother Dean, but it is not It's not perfect. Great scholars translated it for us, but the reason it's not perfect is because English is not a particularly good receptor language for Greek and Hebrew. Greek is much more precise and Hebrew is actually much more fluid. And so we translate into English, and we have to use a word to translate a word, and sometimes that just doesn't really quite work out. So we'll unpack this a little bit. Verse 23, Oh, that my words were now written. He wants his words written, doesn't he? And he got his wish, didn't he? Because they're written down right here. Oh, that my words were now written. Oh, that they were printed in a book. That's the same word as scroll. Okay, so, printed in a book, that they were graven with an iron pen and led in the rock forever. For I know, he says, I know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. Now, first thing I want to tell you, day is not in the text. He shall stand at the last upon the earth, is really what it says, stand at the last. And so, day is supplied. Now, I think that's a good supply of a word there, but it's not really in there. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. Now, that really is kind of cumbersome. After my flesh. What he's saying here is after the body, after my body is destroyed. After my body is destroyed. It really, that text really doesn't say anything about worms. The worms is not in the text, but after my body is destroyed, he says, in my flesh I shall see God. Now that word for flesh could be variously translated, and there's a play on words here. He says, I know that after my body is destroyed, yet in my body, it'll be a different body, in a renewed body, a resurrected body, I shall see God. Now that's really what he said. It's a play on words there. So I want you to see that. I want you to see that. I shall see God. It can be translated flesh, but it can also be translated as body. And I believe it's a play on words there. Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another. And then a very cumbersome phrase at the end of this. He says, though my reins be consumed within me. What's he saying there? Though my reins be consumed within me. That's kind of flowery Victorian language, but we wouldn't say it that way, would we? We would say, though my heart yearns within me to see God. in my renewed body. That's what he's really saying. My heart yearns for this. My mind yearns for this. My inward parts, my reins, my inward parts all yearn to see God in this way. What do we say in the New Testament? We want to see the Lord Jesus Christ, don't we? Aren't we all looking forward to seeing the Lord Jesus Christ face to face? Yes, we are. That's exactly what he's saying. He's basically saying, I am awestruck by what has just been revealed to me that I've written down, and I want it written down for posterity." And he got that wish. Well, okay, Job looks forward then, and of course Job is looking forward in two particular ways to a Redeemer, isn't he? A kinsman Redeemer, a Goel. We'll talk about what that means, of course. I think you probably know. But he's looking forward in two ways. He's looking forward to vindication in his earthly life, isn't he? Because you know, his friends have attacked him, he's had all these problems, he's been ill and sick, and Satan has buffeted him terribly, but wasn't allowed to kill him. So he's looking for that redemption, that temporal redemption, but he's also looking forward in faith to an eternal redemption, isn't he? An eternal redemption and an eternal existence, and that existence he's telling us in this text is in the body. He says also, he says, I want my words to be hammered out with a lead chisel in stone. I want them cast in stone. You know, when we look at something cast in stone, you remember when Joshua crossed the river and he piled up the stones? And he was asked, what meaneth these stones? He says, for remembrance, isn't it? You know, we moved back to Pulaski from Houston, Texas a little over a year ago now. And, you know, when we came back to visit from Australia one time, I remember my son was young, about 10 years old, and we were up on the square in Pulaski. I walked by there and I showed him the statue of Sam Davidson. He said, who is that? I said, that's Sam Davis. So I told him the story of Sam Davis, and of course it's a very interesting story about this Confederate hero. And so I said, he said, well why do they have a statue of him? I said, because they want you to remember who he was and what he did. Sam Davis, you know, everything in Pulaski is named after Sam Davis. I played at Sam Davis Baseball Park, Sam Davis Football Park. Everything's named after Sam Davis. Why? See, stone monuments, stone monuments are usually erected to help us to remember some important past person or event, right? We have them everywhere. We have them all over this country to remember various things. Job wanted that. He wanted his words recorded like that so that they would be remembered. You know, stone has that sense of permanence, doesn't it? Job got his wish. Now, in this chapter, Job laments the way that his friends have tormented him with their words, and he mourns over the suffering and losses that he has endured. But he will get his prayer answered for recovery from that. Now, you might say, well, he did lose those children, and they couldn't really be replaced, but he got more children. You know, it's interesting, we don't know exactly how long Job lived. We don't know that much about him. There are some resources that postulate some things about Job, about his age. In the Septuagint, the Alexandrian Septuagint, chapter 42, verse 16 of Job, we find that he lived 240 years, and that he lived 140 years after he was restored. Now, I don't know if that's right or not, Dean, I don't know. The Septuagint is not authoritative, but yet it is evidential, I suppose. We do know this. Job is an old character, probably lived about the same time as Abraham, probably lived about 2200 BC. We know that he preceded Moses because he did not observe the Mosaic Law. He did not offer sacrifices through priests according to the Mosaic light. It had to have been before Moses then. We know it was also after the flood, right? It was after the flood of Noah. And his wealth, we know he's very early on because his wealth was not actually measured in gold or some precious metal. His wealth, if you look at Job chapter 1, his wealth was measured in what? Livestock! Now, you know, we can relate to that in Giles County, can't we? Or Lawrence County, or whatever county we live in. You know, because this is where livestock would be similar to that, isn't it? So, we know that this is how his wealth was measured. So, we can kind of place him a little bit in time, but not perfectly. I want to mention two things this morning. I want to mention His hope in His Redeemer, and I want to mention His hope in His resurrection. And that's really the important thing I want to talk about because that's what this text in Job is talking about in Job chapter 19. So, first of all His hope in His Redeemer. Now I mentioned that the Hebrew word there is goel, that's an easy word. You don't have to really strain to understand goel. You may remember, of course, the story of Ruth. And in the story of Ruth, who was the Goel? Boaz. You know Boaz, right? And Boaz, by the way, is a Hebrew word which really refers to strength. And Boaz was a strong guy, wasn't he? He was a prominent man. And, you know, he was the Goel for Ruth and really kind of for Naomi as well, wasn't he? And he married Ruth because of the requirement for levirate marriage when the near relative had passed away. Of course, there was one nearer. I won't go through the whole story. But he married her because of levirate marriage. He felt an obligation to do that as a man of God, but I don't think he minded. I think Ruth was a pretty girl. I think he really liked her. He loved her, in fact, and that's evident from the story. But that's what the Goel did in Old Testament practice, wasn't it? that they would observe levirate marriage. They had other duties as well. By the way, if a relative, a close relative like that died, they had the responsibility to buy back the family property, you know, if it had been sold away. They had the responsibility, of course, of marrying the widow of a brother who died, of buying a family member out of slavery even, even avenging the murder of a relative avenging the murder. You know, it had cities of refuge. I'm not going to go into talking about all that today, but you know what that was about. So this is the same word that's used. And so we know then that Job is looking for his Goel. His Goel. And of course that has a spiritual meaning as well as a temporal meaning, we might say. wanted to be delivered from peril, and he mentions the Goel as being involved in his eternal life. Now we know who the Goel is, we know who our Goel is, it's Jesus Christ. We know that. But look this is a long time before Christ appeared, right? 2,200 years. So Job here is expressing his confidence though that God would be his Redeemer, his kinsman and Redeemer, his Goel, his protector, his defender, his Savior. that God would defend him, that God would vindicate him. His friends had attacked him, had attacked his honor, had attacked his integrity, had told him that he was sinning terribly. He didn't know what the sin was, but he said, but you know if he had not sinned so badly, they said, why would he be suffering so much? You see that was bad theology, wasn't it? That was bad theology by his friends, and of course they are upbraided for that a little later, rebuked for that. He knew that he had not committed the sins of which his friends had accused him, and he was confident that God would, in fact, defend him and vindicate him. You know, note that he was sure God would defend him even after his death, and that's what he says. He says, after my death. After my death, I will see God." So he was going to die. He knew he was going to die. But he also knew that the living God would be his defender and his savior. So he looked forward to the day in the future when God would stand as the judge upon the earth. This could have the legal sense of God acting as a witness for a defendant in a court, testifying that Job was innocent of the charges laid against him. It could have the connotation of being a witness, or even the judge himself. It's a legal term, isn't it? This is actually a legal term. So God, in fact, does this at the end of these discussions when He defends Job to the three friends, and we see it in the book of Job. But although Job may not have had a clear, well-orbed, complete understanding of the prophetic nature of his utterance here, you know, sometimes prophets don't know. Daniel says this, doesn't he? He says, my cogitations troubled me. I didn't know what I was talking about. And the angel said, don't worry about it. Shut the book. You'll stand in your place at the end of days. Don't worry about it. But, you know, he says, close the book and don't worry. Sometimes he tells us to do that. Don't worry. Brian talked about that this morning. He may not have had a clear understanding of the prophetic nature of his utterance, but Job's hope looks far ahead in faith to the Lord Jesus as our Redeemer. Now that's the point I want to get to. The Lord Jesus Christ is our Redeemer. He's our Goel. He's our kinsman. You know, He is like us in every way except without sin, right? And so He's our Kinsman Redeemer. He's our Goel. So Jesus was and is God, Son of God, second person of the Trinity, Son of God, the Father I might say. God, the Father sent His only begotten Son as our Redeemer. I'd like to go into that today, what begotten means, only begotten, monogamous in the Greek, but I won't go into that today. I can't digress. If I digress, Anissa starts to look at me, raise her eyebrows, give me this thing, you know, stop digressing, just go on with what you're supposed to say. And I try to do that, but sometimes I fail miserably. He was going to stand as the judge of all the earth. Now, we might say, well, Jesus has come. And in a way, He did stand as the judge of all the earth, didn't He? He brought conviction of sin. He corrected the Jewish theologians on their misunderstanding of the law, their misunderstanding of the law and grace, in fact. So, Jesus did do that, but He's going to do it in, I think, a more direct and proximate way when He returns to be the judge of all the earth. He's going to exercise that judgment. But He is our closest relative. He's our kinsman, our brother, our next of kin, the best defender we could possibly have because He's both God and man. And, you know, I can't emphasize this enough that He had to be both God and man. If He were not God, He's not powerful enough to save us. And if He's not man, He cannot identify with us in order to save us. We have to have His righteousness, don't we? We need His righteousness. If we don't have that, we will not be saved. And that comes completely as His gift. Now, so Jesus Christ, He had the ability to take our sin upon Himself and to pay the price that we owed to redeem us. It was a debt, as we say in the Lord's Prayer. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Well, that's true. That word is the same in Greek as it is in English. It's a debt. It's something that we owe, and in fact, we could not pay it. We do not have, we don't have enough money. We don't have anything that's worth enough to pay that debt. Every sin will be paid for. Sometimes the sinner is going to pay for it. Sometimes Christ is going to pay for it. But it's one way or the other. It's not going to be, there's no in between. So Job wanted God to defend him because of God's own righteousness, not Job's own righteousness. And he did defend him against the false accusations. He defends us on the basis of his righteousness, not our own. He was the perfect man. He lived the perfect life. We've talked about his active obedience and his passive obedience. He kept the law perfectly. He defends us before the Father because of His perfection given by imputation to us. We talk about being covered by His blood. Well, that's a symbolic metaphorical kind of an idea, isn't it? It's picturesque, and it's true in its metaphorical sense, isn't it? We're not actually physically covered by His blood, are we? But we're covered by His, what that means is we're covered by His death, burial, resurrection, His perfection, which He imputes to us as His righteousness. That's what being covered by the blood of Jesus Christ really means. So this should give us confidence before God. If we're honest with ourself, we have to confess our sin before God. We have to acknowledge that we're sinners and corrupt really through and through. So, I would tell you that our Redeemer lives, and one day He will stand upon the earth at His Second Coming, and one day He will take His place as the judge of all people. Every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. They're not all going to say, Lord, Lord. Some will say, Lord, Lord, and be lost. But they are all going to bow, they are all going to kneel and confess. Job was prepared for that day, and so should we be prepared. Now, the Lord Jesus will be our judge, our defender, our Redeemer, our Goel. Not only our Redeemer, He's the only one that can be the Redeemer. You know, I've been hearing people say sometimes lately, I call them pluralists, they're pluralists. What that means is they believe there may be many ways to heaven, as long as you believe in something, you know. You believe in some other God, you can be Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, whatever. You know, as long as you believe, you know, you'll be fine. That's not true. That's not true. That is not true at all. And so we look at that, and they accuse us, don't they? The world accuses us, and they say, well, you Christians. You Christians, your religion is too exclusive. It's too exclusive. You know, what about this and what about that? You got an exclusive. Anybody can't just come in. Well, we say that, don't we? We say that. And I say, you know, if somebody says that to you, that you have an exclusive religion as a Christian, I say stand up and look them in the face and say, you're darn right. You're darn right it's exclusive. It's very exclusive. Without faith in Christ, you will not please God. You will not be saved without faith in Christ. That's the thing you can experience about it. But that's the only way. He said, I am the way, not I am a way. I am the way. He said, there's none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. So Job, His hope in His own resurrection is because of His hope in His almighty Goel, who could provide that. Job, Job expected to die, didn't he? And this brings us to the second point. His hope in His resurrection is our hope in our resurrection, isn't it? It's the same hope. Job expresses it to us here in these few verses, five verses. He expected to die. Well, I expect to die. Hopefully not today. But I do expect to die. He was as sick as a man could be. He was suffering from terrible skin disease. His flesh was peeling, flaking. He was waiting for the day of his death. He anticipated that soon his very skin would be destroyed. The King James supplies that worms thing, but that's probably what would happen. You know, I'm not arguing with the translation, I'm just saying there's a little something supplied there. He knew that his body would be destroyed, wouldn't be long, and has been. You know, I don't know where Job is buried, but he's somewhere. His bones still exist somewhere. And though delayed, Job would eventually die. Every person can expect to die. You look, you know Hebrews chapter 9, what, 27, I think it is, that it's appointed unto man once to die, and after this the judgment. You know this. So unless, you know, unless you're still here when the Lord returns, I don't expect to be. The way the political situation is, they could come kill me any day now. But you know, unless that happens, the Lord has pronounced this decree on all mankind. Remember Genesis 3, 19, "...for dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return." You know, our bodies were made from the ground. You know, if you look at the chemical composition of a human body, except for the water, It's pretty much the same as the dirt. It really is. You think about it. We're all going to return to the ground, he says. Now, this is one of the consequences and punishments for sin. You know, when Adam sinned, he said, it's on the day that you eat thereof, thou shalt surely die. Told that to Adam, didn't he? And that's the way it was. You know, we even say it, don't we? We say it so to go to a funeral, and we say, oh, so-and-so, they're dead and gone. They're dead and gone. Well, you know, the body's not eaten up yet, but it will be. It will be, but we have a sure and certain hope in our resurrection because of the promises of God about that, not because of any merit in us. So though after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. In my renewed body, after the body is destroyed, I shall see God. The hope of the resurrection does not come through as often and as well-orbed in the Old Testament as it does in the New, thank God for the New Testament, but it is there as in this passage. That phrase, that phrase in Hebrew, I won't tell you the Hebrew words. I'm just going to keep that from you today. From the flesh can mean apart from the flesh, it can mean from the flesh, it can mean in the flesh, it can mean from the perspective of the flesh, it can mean from or in the body. All those things can, it's a little unclear there, isn't it? It's a little unclear there. I think I know what he's trying to say though. The point is that Job is confident that when he died his soul, his spirit would go to heaven and he would see God as though he was apart from the flesh or his body or in a different kind of body. With this reading Job is looking forward to the final day of his resurrection when he'll see God in a resurrected body. Who's he going to see? He's going to see the Lord Jesus Christ, isn't he? And so we know this, by the way, we know this because of clearer texts. clearer texts. You know, one of our principles of interpretation, let the clear texts interpret the less clear text. That phrase is not clear in Job. We kind of get an understanding of what he's trying to say, but let's let the clearer texts interpret that. We know that the body is that which is going to be raised. We know it from the New Testament especially. We can look ahead to the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, the bodies of believers be raised, and we also will see the Lord, seeing God. You know, that's associated with the body. That's associated with the body. This is the hope expressed in this translation. Yet in my flesh shall I see God, in my body. This is what Job longed for in his suffering, and it shows that Job was still clinging to God in faith. He longed for a close relationship with the Lord. He had a close relationship with God, even in his triune nature. You know, when the devil went and stood before God on the throne, and he said, he said, let me afflict him. He said, he'll curse you. He'll curse you to your face. Even Job's wife said, curse God and die. Curse God and die. But God said to him, he won't. He won't do it. And the reason that he wouldn't do it was because of his God-given faith, his God-given strength. He didn't have that kind of strength in his own merit, did he? We don't either. Dwight L. Moody said one time when he was asked, do you have faith enough to suffer persecution and death for Christ? You know, would you recant? And Moody said, I don't have that much faith. Moody said, but if I'm ever called upon to be martyred for my faith, God will give it to me. Now that was profound to me. I always remembered it, you know, because God will give it to us. Think about all the martyrs that have been martyred for their faith and have not recanted their faith in any way. Not that you could in your humanness do it, but the fact is You know, God will give us the strength if and when we need it for that. Job longed for it and he got it. He felt as though he had lost sight of God though sometimes. He felt as though he longed to see God. He longed for that relationship. He wanted to know the Lord was nearby, was nigh to him. He earnestly desired for a clear view of God and all His glory and majesty and might and so forth. I suppose he's gotten that now. But he didn't have it then. His body hadn't been raised yet, though. But it shows us that Job was still clinging to God in faith. The story of Job is a story about suffering, isn't it? And we suffer, maybe not to the extent that Job did, but we suffer too. And the point is, how would Job respond to that? Did he respond to that by cursing God and die as his wife told him to do? No, he didn't do that, did he? No, he withstood it. Did Paul respond to suffering when he was cast into prison, beaten with 39 stripes when he was imprisoned and so forth? No, he didn't do that, did he? No. He and Silas were singing hymns in the Philippian jail, weren't they? Look, how would Job respond? He responded in faith. This is a story of faith, faith in God, one man's trust, one man's confidence in God through incredible suffering. So, it's also a lesson for us then, pointing you and me to trust God, even when the supports and comforts and so forth of this life seem to be taken out from under us. Because Job knew, and he expresses here, the certainty of his resurrection hope. And that's what we cling to, isn't it? You know, whom I shall see for myself and mine, I shall behold and not another, though my reins be consumed within me, though my heart yearns mightily for that coming day. And we do too. It's an unshakable confidence. Well, let's get this closed up here so I don't run over time. I don't want to... I'm doing pretty good today, but so I could talk about something else. It's our great hope and our great confidence in it. The one thing of which he's absolutely sure. Job had plenty of questions about why things happened to him in his life. Lots of questions. However, he understood that God's purpose and plan was being fulfilled. And that his testimony, he desired for his testimony to be remembered for us, and it was. So this is the great hope and confidence of every Christian, isn't it? You know, there are many things in life that happen, and we don't understand them. Look, I'm the poster child for that. You know, there's so much that I do not understand about what goes on in this world. We pray for it. I heard Brian pray mighty prayer this morning for the country. We don't understand why some things are happening in this country. I could name things. I won't do that. But, you know, we could name them. We don't understand. I don't get it. I don't understand. Well, I'll stop. I don't understand how people can sometimes support candidates that they seem to support. I don't understand how anybody can support a candidate that favors the murder of unborn children. If I take every other issue and set it over here on the side, and there are many other issues, but I don't understand how anybody can approve of that. That's simply murder, and people cannot see it. I run into people all the time, even at the gym, you know, I go to the gym, and I say, oh, I'm for this guy because, oh well, you know, he supports a woman's right to choose. That baby doesn't have any right to choose. And it's not the baby's fault, is it? Well, all right. I said I wasn't going to talk about anything else, but I did. Now, as believers, though, we can look forward beyond the suffering of this age, this time, to the glory that is to come. So I want you to, I'll close with this, I want you to see life in an eternal perspective like Job did today. That's what I want to get across to you. And I think of a couple of sections of Scripture Romans 8, 18, the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to what? To the glory that shall be revealed where? In us. That's right, Janice, that's right. Now look, 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verses 17 and 18, Paul says, for our light affliction. I would never have considered Paul's affliction to be light. But that's what he says, which is but for a moment, and it is but for a moment. James says, this life is a vapor, appears for a little while, and then it's gone. Paul says, for our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. That's almost a redundant statement, by the way, because glory is a weight. That's the way it's described. While we look not at the things which are seen, boy, I tell you what. If the things which are seen are all that is, take me now." take me now." I mean, that's not it. We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. Well, the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal, right? So, without that hope, our faith... well, our faith would be vain, wouldn't it? If this is all there is, we would still be in our sins. With this faith, we can go on, even through suffering in this life. We can look forward to the day that Jesus Christ will return. I tell you, I applaud the last words of the book of Revelation, Maranatha, Lord, come now, come quickly. You know, when these lowly bodies will be transformed to be like His glorious body, the scripture said. Wow! I want that. I hope it's not selfish. I want it for y'all too. But I want that. You know, I look at some of these programs and they come on and they say, you know, we can take your consciousness now. We can put it into an avatar. That avatar will be healthy. It'll be like a robot. It'll be healthy and you can run and jump and carry on and play basketball again. I said, you know that wouldn't, I told Denise the other day, I said, yeah that wouldn't be bad if we were watching one of those programs. I said, that wouldn't be bad. I wouldn't mind that. I wouldn't mind that. But that's not the way it's going to be. That's not the way it's going to be. We can look forward to that though when our lowly bodies will be transformed to be likened to His glorious body. And we can say then with the same hope, the same confidence as Job here in this text, I know that my Redeemer liveth. and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth, and though after my skin worms destroy this body, after this body is destroyed, yet in my flesh, in my body, I shall see God." God the Son is the only Goel redeemer for Job, and so it is for every one of us.