Additional Scripture: Luke 20:27-38
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen. (Psalm 19:14)
If you ever think you’re having a bad day, read the Book of Job. Whatever your problems are, they will pale in comparison. Job is a devoted and faithful follower of God who received incredible blessings in abundance from God. Great wealth, property, and family. He would pray for his sons, and offer sacrifices for them, just in case they had sinned.
Yet God allowed Satan to strip Job of his wealth and health, with multiple calamities destroying his property and livestock, killing his sons at the same time.
Job’s response has been immortalized, often quoted by people with no idea about where it originated: “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”
It’s really the only attitude we can have during devastation; and I know that it’s not easy. Many of our fellow San Diegans lost everything a few weeks ago, and I know only a few who are able to keep that Job-like attitude that God gives and God takes away.
When we think about Job, that’s the image that usually comes to mind. The poor, former rich guy covered in boils and sores, wearing sackcloth and ash, but still praising God.
We tend to miss his understanding of salvation.
In the midst of his suffering, he understands that there is a redeemer who will save him and bring him to eternal life. He doesn’t know the name of this redeemer, but he knows who Jesus is.
Scholars are not in agreement about the origin of the Book of Job. Some think the story came down through the Edomites, written sometime after Jacob. Some believe it is even earlier than Genesis, since Job doesn’t include the rules and regulations associated with Mosaic Law, which would be somewhere around 1500 B.C. or earlier.
Others believe it was written during the time of King David or King Solomon, which would be about 1000 B.C. or so (986 B.C.).
Still others believe it was written during Ezekiel’s time in the Babylonian captivity, which would put it around the late 500s B.C. (598-573 B.C).
Even the latest dating, however, puts Job at a full six centuries before Christ’s ministry on earth. Yet he describes his knowledge of his redeemer with such deep sincerity that he wishes his words could be carved in rock and filled with lead for people to read centuries later!
Job describes that even after he dies, his Redeemer will still live and will still stand even at the end of days. And in his resurrected body, Job will see God at his side. He won’t see any other God besides the one true God he knows will save him.
In verse 16 of our Psalm 17, of which we heard a portion today, the psalmist writes, “But at my vindication I shall see your face; when I awake, I shall be satisfied, beholding your likeness.”
He’s not planning on taking a nap; he’s talking about the resurrection of the dead. Job doubts that he will be justified during his lifetime. But he is sure that he will stand before God in a physical body fully vindicated by his redeemer.
The Hebrew word that’s translated as “Redeemer” refers to the Old Testament term, “Kinsmen-Redeemer,” who was a close relative able to reclaim and restore the person’s property (Lev 25:23-24, 39-55), avenge the person’s death (Deut 19:6-12), free the person from slavery (Lev 25:25), and even go to court on behalf of his wronged relative (Prov 23:10-11).
Probably the best known example of the kinsman-redeemer is Boaz in the Book of Ruth. He was willing to rescue Ruth and give her a new life.
Job is convinced that his own kinsman-redeemer will be able to vindicate him, even on the other side of death, and that Job will be there to see it happen!
In Job’s time, very little was known about the afterlife — it wasn’t until many centuries later that Jesus and the writers of the New Testament would explain the significance of Christ’s death and resurrection.
Job’s statement gives us a powerful example of faith. He knew in his heart that he would be redeemed; he just didn’t know it was Jesus.
Sometime ago, a traveling evangelist was riding along and singing to himself a song called, “I’ve Been Redeemed.”
A fellow passenger heard him and began to sing along. When they finished singing the evangelist asked the stranger if he had been redeemed.
The man said, “Yes, praise the Lord.”
So the evangelist asked him when it was.
“About nineteen hundred years ago,” the man replied.
The evangelist was astonished and thought the man was a little crazy. He asked, “Nineteen hundred years ago?”
The man replied, “Yes, sir; but I’m sorry to say it’s only been about a year that I’ve known about it.” — George Cavanagh
Job believed in the resurrection, even though others did not.
Centuries later, we see Jesus preaching in the Temple courts in Jerusalem, and the Sadducees try to trip up his theology using a story from the Apocrypha. The Sadducees were a branch of Judaism that denied the resurrection. They believed in the first five books of the Bible only — the Pentateuch — as being God’s word.
Since those five books don’t mention resurrection, the Sadducees didn’t believe in it. Yet they chose a tale from the Jewish Book of Tobit, in which the jealous demon Asmodeus killed the righteous Sarah’s first seven husbands. The question they posed to Jesus was not a serious inquiry; it was a mocking, sarcastic taunt meant to make Jesus look like a fool.
Jesus, however, uses the same Books of Moses to show them proof of the resurrection, by arguing that God would not claim to be the God of people who don’t exist anymore. His covenant requires that if he is their God after death, then there must be something after death.
In fact, the very same Apocrypha the Sadducees used to try to embarrass Jesus contains the same common Jewish prayers used at the time to show God’s faithfulness to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as a living reality.
In 4 Macabees, an appendix to the Greek Septuagint, we read the following:
In 7:19, “they who believe that to God they die not; for, as our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, they live to God.”
And in 16:25, “And they saw this, too, that they who die for God, live to God; as Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the patriarchs.”
The Sadducees knew these writings, but chose to believe their own ideas instead of the Bible. They believed their own understanding instead of trusting in the Lord.
We have Christian Sadducees today who don’t believe in the resurrection. Often we call them bishops. They try to convince other Christians that the idea of a bodily resurrection is foolish. They tell us that Jesus didn’t really die on the cross — that he just passed out and then woke up in the tomb and escaped.
Jesus wasn’t able to rise from the dead, but he could survive a deadly flogging and crucifixion, and then use his nail-pierced hands to roll back a multi-ton stone from a grave being guarded by Roman soldiers without being heard or seen, and then hobble along on nail pierced feet to where his disciples were hiding out.
Or that Jesus actually died, but his disciples went to the wrong tomb, which was why it was empty. Of course, that means the Romans guarded the wrong tomb, and somehow neither the Roman nor Jewish leaders ever thought of just producing the body from the correct tomb to stop Christianity in its tracks.
Or the more popular idea that Jesus died on the cross, and the “resurrection” was merely a spiritual feeling that the Apostles felt in memories of Jesus, not a real bodily resurrection. This would mean that all the apostles preached a resurrection that was a lie, claiming to see something they didn’t really see, and suffered torture and death without a single one of them changing their story about the whole “resurrection” thing.
We tend to worry at times that the Church becomes too Pharisaical, creating too many difficult rules to keep track of, but we miss the influx of Sadducee influence regarding the new trend in disbelieving the salvation offered through the resurrection.
It’s incredible that the psalmist and Job both had no opportunity to hear from witnesses of any resurrection, yet believed in it with amazing faith, while Christians today who know about the overwhelming evidence supporting Christ’s death and resurrection and his redeeming sacrifice for us choose to not believe.
Jesus tells us that the logic of this world does not apply in the next one. In the Old Testament, God tells us that his ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not our thoughts. Yet we keep trying to fit God into our mold of what the creator of the universe should behave like.
How many times have you heard someone say that they can’t believe in a god who would allow suffering, or send people to Hell, or whatever pet peeve they have at the moment?
They really think that God’s existence is contingent on what they believe. If they choose to not believe in a God who allows suffering in this world, then that God doesn’t exist.
It’s like standing on the trolley tracks claiming that trolleys don’t exist. The 4:15 to La Mesa will run them over whether they believe in trolleys or not.
Jesus is our redeemer, the one people have hoped for and believed in for about 3,500 years so far. Like the Old Testament kinsman-redeemer, Jesus stands ready to reclaim and restore our place in his kingdom, rescue us from death, free us from slavery to sin, and be our advocate before the Father — an eternal parallel to the kinsman-redeemer authority of the Old Testament regarding this world.
The lyrics of a Keith Green song remind me of Job’s affirmation.
“When I stand in Glory,
I will see His face,
And there I’ll serve my King forever,
In that Holy Place.
Thank you oh my father,
For giving us Your Son,
And leaving Your Spirit,
’Til the work on Earth is done.
There is a redeemer,
Jesus, God’s own Son,
Precious Lamb of God,
Messiah, Holy One.”
God bless you. Amen.
