Job: Faith For Resurrection (Job 19:23-27)

Let's bow our heads before we begin to take a look at God's word. Our Father, we ask that you would speak to our hearts through your word and accomplish your every good purpose and pleasure in the hearts of your people.

We pray that you would encourage those who are downtrodden and discouraged. We pray that you would strengthen the weak and the feeble and that you would encourage us and show us your love and your affection and your eternal purposes.

The Challenge of Proving Bodily Resurrection from the Old Testament

And we pray that you would fill our hearts with joy and with adoration for our great God and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, amen. Well, Christian, I have a challenge for you this morning.

If I were to ask you to make the case for bodily resurrection, particularly the case that the Messiah had to rise again from the dead, would you be able to do it from scripture? Let me narrow it down a little bit and maybe make it a little bit more difficult.

Would you be able to do it without turning to your New Testament? Would you be able to make the case for the doctrine of bodily resurrection on the last day from just Old Testament texts? That's a little bit more difficult, right?

Because we typically think that the Old Testament really doesn't draw out that doctrine and really doesn't contain a lot of information on the subject of resurrection. When we think of resurrection, we think of the chapter that I read earlier, 1 Corinthians 15.

We think of the resurrection appearances of Jesus. We think of the book of Acts and the proclamation of the resurrection there. But if I were to ask you to make the case for doctrine of bodily resurrection just from the Old Testament, how successful would you be at doing that?

That's a bit more of a challenge. The New Testament is filled with all kinds of references to the resurrection. We have the promises that Jesus made himself that he would die and that he would rise again.

Then we have the proclamation of the apostles. We have the resurrection appearances in all of the gospels. Then we have the evidence of the resurrection contained in the documents themselves, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts.

And we have 1 Corinthians 15, which is the resurrection chapter. In other epistles like Philippians and 1 Timothy, there are references to the resurrection and references to that Christian hope. And the epistles promise not just bodily resurrection for the Messiah, they not only talk about that, but they promise bodily resurrection for the believer.

And then in the book of Revelation, we see that bodily resurrection and the timing of it. So from Matthew through the end of Revelation, resurrection, bodily resurrection, is all the way through the New Testament.

We would even say that it's just part of the warp and woof of the New Testament, it's woven throughout. We could say that without resurrection, there really is no New Testament revelation because all of New Testament revelation explains or exposes or expounds upon in some way the doctrine of bodily resurrection, either the resurrection of the Messiah or the resurrection of all those who believe in him.

So consequently, when we think of the resurrection, we think of the New Testament, we don't often think of the Old Testament. And so the doctrine of resurrection is sometimes treated as if it were a late addition to the plan of God, some appendix or addendum that he sort of tacked on to the end of the book, as if God took 400 years off between the Old Testament and the New Testament and thought to himself, what can I do to really improve this?

And he came up with the idea of resurrection as if that was something late in the game, it was something that he decided to do sort of in the 11th hour. But belief in the bodily resurrection is not a late development, it is not something that is uniquely New Testament.

In fact, it is a feature of God's revelation going back to the earliest times in the biblical record. Now, it is true to say that Christianity is a resurrection faith. And we can say that without any hesitation because Christianity really is the fulfillment of Old Testament Judaism.

So resurrection is not a doctrine that we tack on to Christianity as sort of an ancillary or secondary doctrine that is a nice thing to have as part of our faith as opposed to the Old Testament scriptures.

Rather, since Christianity is the fulfillment of the Old Testament scriptures, we would expect that there would be reference to and explanation of bodily resurrection even in the Old Testament, and there is.

Jesus Christ is risen from the dead three days after he was crucified, and he was raised in the same body in which he was crucified, but it was a glorified and different, a spiritual body, never to die again.

Now, if he did not rise from the dead and present himself alive with many infallible proofs, then he was a liar and his disciples are liars and the New Testament is a book of lies. And there's no need to believe in him, nothing hinges upon it, it's just a nice story or a myth or a fable.

But if he did rise from the dead three days after he was crucified and present himself alive with many infallible proofs to his disciples, then he is the divine son, he is the son of God, he is the Messiah, and eternal life and forgiveness can only be had through him.

So that the one who repents of their sin and trusts in him has eternal life, not because they have done anything to merit that, but because another, namely Jesus, has done everything on their behalf to merit that eternal life and to give them that eternal life.

And so the one who has repented and placed their faith in Christ has eternal life and will be raised in a glorified body just as he was raised in a glorified body. Christ is a risen savior, and Christianity is a religion, a faith, a confidence in bodily resurrection, not just of the Messiah, but also of all those who have repented and placed their faith in Christ.

And this goes back to the earliest times, the earliest records, even of the Old Testament, there was belief in bodily resurrection. And to show you that, I would like you to turn back to the book of Job, to the book of Job.

Job as an Early Witness to Resurrection Hope

We're going to see here the earliest confession of belief in bodily resurrection, the earliest one that can be found anywhere in Scripture, Job chapter 19. Now, this is not a passage that you would normally expect somebody to preach on on an Easter or resurrection Sunday.

Of all the places to turn, the book of Job, this is a book of suffering, right? Did we miss something? This is the book of suffering. This is a book that describes one of the lowest points in the life of one of Old Testament Scripture's greatest men.

It is a book about a man who loses everything. He is mocked by his wife. He is taunted by his friends. He is attacked by the devil. And we're going to turn to a book that recounts the incredible agony of a man going through the deepest and darkest and most discouraging times that probably anyone has ever had to suffer through on resurrection Sunday.

Now, you might be wondering, what's next? Ecclesiastes on Mother's Day? Then they're done that. So this is all upside then. After going through Ecclesiastes on Mother's Day, this is all upside. We're turning to the book of Job for two reasons.

First, because we have been going through the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 11, and looking at this Hebrews Hall of Fame. And though Job is not mentioned there, he is certainly a man that would deserve to be mentioned there, had the Holy Spirit decided to include him.

And he may even have been in the mind of the author when he gets to the end of Hebrews chapter 11 or towards the end, and he says, time will fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, and Samuel, and the prophets.

He may as well have included the name Job there because though Job is not mentioned in Hebrews chapter 11, he is that caliber of man. He is a man who had that kind of faith. And he is a man of whom we could say, by faith, Job, while in great suffering, did not shrink back to destruction, but instead confessed his conviction and his belief in his redemption, resurrection, and his ultimate reward.

That's the first reason, because it kind of fits in with the theme of Hebrews chapter 11. Second, because for the last several weeks, we've been talking about Abraham's faith, and I've made the case that Abraham's faith was a faith that believed that God is a resurrecting or life-giving God.

And this is key to understanding how Abraham responded both to the land promise as well as to the descendant promise. Abraham was willing to live in the land for 100 years without ever receiving it because he believed that God would raise him from the dead and give him that land in the end.

He believed that God raises the dead. And Abraham was willing to offer up his son Isaac on that mountain, even burning the body, because Abraham was a man who believed in God's ability to raise the dead and that he could raise Isaac if necessary.

So we've seen how resurrection is keyed in with Abraham's faith, and so this fits in right well with that. I was explaining yesterday the gist of this message to somebody, and they said, in other words, you're really just looking for an excuse to beat the same dead horse from a different passage.

And yeah, that's not entirely wrong. That's kind of what we're doing with this. Job 19, the question now that presents itself to us is a very intriguing one, namely, how much did the Old Testament saints understand about the doctrine of bodily resurrection?

How much did they understand about the doctrine of bodily resurrection? Especially at a time 2 ,000 years before Jesus came and lived and died, was buried and rose again, how much could a saint living back 2 ,000 years before Christ have understood about bodily resurrection?

The answer to that is found in verses 25 through 27. Read them with me. This is our text, and we're gonna read it here, and then I'm gonna zoom out and give you a little bit of context before we jump back in and go through it in detail.

Verse 25, as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last, he will take his stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh, I shall see God, whom I myself shall behold, and whom my eyes will see, and not another.

My heart faints within me. Now, that is the oldest text in Scripture that describes the subject or speaks of the subject of bodily resurrection, and it is quite magnificent. Job is the first book of Scripture that was written.

A lot of people are surprised to hear that. They think Genesis was written first because it deals with the things that happened in the beginning, but Genesis was written by Moses a long time after Job lived.

Job is the oldest book that you have in your Scriptures, and it can be dated with the early patriarchs, even probably prior to Abraham, at least contemporary, at the latest, a contemporary of Abraham, and my suspicion is that he predated Abraham, and I'll give you a couple of reasons why.

First, his lifespan fits in with the patriarchs and their lifespans early in the book of Genesis. It says after all of the afflictions that Job suffered through in chapter 42, verse 16, that he lived for 140 years after his suffering, 140 years.

Now, before the suffering struck him, he had fathered 10 children, all of whom were adults at the time that the suffering struck him, so he was old enough to have 10 adult children who were out of the house and living on their own at the time, and then after his suffering, he lived for another 140 years.

That puts his lifespan somewhere in the neighbor ham, neighbor ham, the neighborhood, the neighborhood of Abraham. From here on out, that's just the neighbor ham. That puts his lifespan somewhere in the neighborhood of Abraham at 175 plus years, which means that he would have lived between Noah and Abraham, and from what we can tell, he was not an ancestor or a predecessor of Abraham, probably in a different lineage because he's not listed in Abraham's ancestry, but he could have been another descendant of Noah and sort of on the side or a cousin in some way, a distant cousin of Abraham, and probably lived at Abraham's time at the latest, more likely before Abraham, so he's somewhere between Noah and Abraham.

Second, Job was a righteous man in that era, and that would indicate that he had a knowledge and he worshiped, a knowledge of, and he worshiped the one true and living God, which means that by the time of Abraham, knowledge of God that had been passed on from Noah and his three sons had been largely forgotten.

It was mostly an idolatrous world. You had these rare exceptions where God revealed himself to Abraham. Abraham was a Yahweh worshiper. God had revealed himself to Job. Obviously, Job is a follower of God, and then you have Melchizedek, who lived at the time of Abraham, to whom God had made himself known, but for the most part, by the time you get to Abraham's day, knowledge of and worship of the one true God had been largely lost after the time of Noah, so Job is probably prior to Abraham.

He had still understood this. It is very possible that Abraham and Job's life overlapped and that Job and Noah's life overlapped. Third, Job's wealth is measured in terms of livestock and not precious metals, and that is something that is consistent with other things that we read in Genesis about the wealth that Abraham had.

They weren't thinking in terms of gold and silver, but they looked in terms of livestock, meaning that since his wealth was measured by the amount of livestock that he had, that that was the way they referred to that.

He was a contemporary of Abraham. And then fourth, many significant post-Abrahamic events are not mentioned in the book of Job, like, for instance, Abraham, his descendants, the land of promise, the Exodus, the Jews, Jewish holidays, the sacrificial system, the priesthood, or the law of Moses, and there are other indicators that it was an early book written before the time of Abraham or around the time of Abraham, at least, and I'll save those for some time when I'm preaching through the book of Job, which nobody here is looking forward to, so just calm down.

Sometime after Hebrews, it's a way off. The story of Job is familiar to us. He was a faithful and righteous man. He loved the Lord, and the Lord granted, for some undisclosed reason, permission to the devil to attack Job and to attack his possessions and eventually his person.

In the first wave of Satan's assault, raiding bands of Chaldeans and Sabaeans came in and swept in and killed his servants and took all of his possessions so that in a matter of one day, everything he owned and almost all, with the exception of one or two of his servants, were destroyed and taken from him.

He lost everything, and then a great wind struck the house in which all of his children were living at the time and present at the time and destroyed and wiped out all of his kids, so he lost all of his children and all of his possession and most of his servants all in one day.

Satan was trying to try him. Satan didn't take his wife for some reason. I'll leave that up to your speculation as to why. And Job responded, I'm not saying anything about any wives here, I'm just saying something about what the devil may have had in mind for Job's wife.

In all of that, Job didn't curse God. He worshiped and has that great statement at the end of chapter one, verse 21. He said, naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.

Blessed be the name of the Lord. And chapter one ends with this magnificent statement. Through all this, Job did not sin, nor did he blame God. That's chapter one, verse 21. Well, Satan claimed that the only reason Job did not abandon his faith was because God protected his person.

And if he would allow Satan to attack Job and take away his health and make him suffer and be afflicted physically, that that would cause Job to curse God. So the Lord gave Satan permission to do that only to not take Job's life.

And so in chapter two, a second set of attacks comes Job's way. Chapter two, verse seven, Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, and he took a potsherd to scrape himself while he was sitting among the ashes.

So with the pus oozing and itching from his skin, in all of that misery, his only relief was to scrape his skin and relieve some of the itching and the pain with that potsherd, which itself would have been a very miserable thing to do, but at least it would have given him some relief.

And his wife, speaking like a foolish woman, joined in the attack and said to Job, curse God and die. And Job indicates that that was a foolish statement. And then his friends, and I use that term in the loosest possible way, heard of his suffering and came to visit him.

And then they sat down next to him, and the best thing they ever said to him is recorded in Job chapter two, verse 13. They sat down on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights with no one speaking a word to him.

That was the best thing that they said to him was seven days and seven nights of utter silence because that was the extent of their wisdom. And when they did open up their mouths to speak, their folly poured forth like salt upon his already miserable wounds.

Chapter two ends with this statement. His pain was very great. And then Job's friends, comforters, whatever you want to call them, charged him with all kinds of sin, dishonesty, injustice, theft, lying, sexual immorality, adultery, idolatry, greed, slander, blasphemy, and the list goes on.

And with every one of their accusations, Job maintained his innocence, not that he was perfect, not that he was sinless, but he maintained his innocence, saying there is nothing that I have done, having been God's friend, there is nothing that I have done that warrants this happening to me.

This is not a quid pro quo between me and God. I've done nothing to deserve what has come upon me and the gravity of it. But his friends wouldn't have any of that. And every time Job would maintain his innocence, they would double down and turn up the heat and bring more accusations.

And they would tag team this so that one friend would say something and Job would answer him and then the next friend would speak and Job would answer him, then the next friend. By the time we get to chapter 19, there in the second round of verbal attacks against Job, he has reached the very bottom of his emotional and spiritual reserve.

This is the lowest point in the book. And his confession of faith that we find in verses 25 through 27 is truly a turning point in the book for after this confession, Job's despair is not quite like it is before this confession.

There's something about this confession and uttering what it is that he says that sort of serves as a light to guide him through at least the rest of the book. So from this point forward, Job's discourses are much more hopeful.

And though he continues throughout the book to be lost in the fog of wondering why all of this has struck him, which he never gets answered, he ultimately knows that what he says in verses 25 through 27 is true and that in his bodily resurrection, he will find his vindication and his reward.

This is why this is such a hopeful part and I hope that you see, you have to understand a little bit of the darkness and the discouragement and the depression of this so that it serves as a backdrop against which this wonderful statement verses 25 through 27 can shine.

But we're not quite ready to get there yet. Chapter 19, this is where we're at, verse one. I want you to look at how Job recounts his sufferings. 19 verse one, Job responded, "'How long will you torment me and crush me with words?

"'These 10 times you have insulted me. "'You're not ashamed to wrong me.'". So he felt this emotional suffering that was afflicted by his friends and their verbal assaults and all of their accusations of his sin.

Second, he felt attacked and abandoned even by God. Verse 10, he breaks me down on every side and I am gone and he has uprooted my hope like a tree. He has kindled his anger against me and considered me as his enemy.

And then he was abandoned by his friends and his family and his loved ones. Verse 13, he has removed my brothers far from me and my acquaintances are completely estranged from me. My relatives have failed and my intimate friends have forgotten me.

Those who live in my house and my maids consider me a stranger. I am a foreigner in their sight. I call to my servant, he does not answer. I have to implore him with my mouth. My breath is offensive to my wife and I am loathsome to my own brothers.

Even young children despise me. I rise up and they speak against me. All my associates abhor me and those I love have turned against me. You hear the despair? Well, it doesn't end there. Look at verse 20, this physical suffering.

My bone clings to my skin and my flesh and I have escaped only by the skin of my teeth. Pity me, pity me, oh you my friends, for the hand of God has struck me. Why do you persecute me as God does and are not satisfied with my flesh?

So he expresses there is physical anguish in the suffering that he was going through, being tormented, in excruciating pain, wasting away. He continued to lose weight almost inexplicably to the point where he just says my skin is hanging off my bones.

He's a shell of a man by this point. He hasn't eaten a thing for at least a week as he sat there mourning and suffering. His bone clinging to his skin and he feels as if he has escaped death by the narrowest of margins.

Look at verse 20 where he says I have escaped only by the skin of my teeth. You've heard that phrase, right? This is where it comes from. I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. My skin hangs off me, my bones, the last thing I have is my teeth and by that it's a narrow margin.

And his friends thought they were doing him favor by insulting him and accusing him. Look at verse 22. Are you not satisfied with my flesh? Is my physical suffering not enough for you? I sit here and you see what I'm going through and yet then you come here and you just heap abuse upon me by verbally assaulting me.

Insulting me these 10 times. Is my suffering not enough to satisfy your blood lust? Do you have to come here and pour salt in these wounds figuratively? He's in agony. Verse 23 and 24, a prelude to his hope.

Oh that my words were written. It's describing here what he is about to say. Oh that my words were written. Oh that they were inscribed in a book that with an iron stylus and lead they were engraved in the rock forever.

Job would want what he says now to be written down and it has been, gloriously so, so that we can benefit from it. It is for our encouragement and our edification and our instruction that all of his words have been written down.

And he longs that this hope that he has, which he expresses in verses 25 through 27, might be chiseled into rock, written as it were, which he says in verse 24, with an iron stylus and lead. Oh that my words were engraved and chiseled into marble and then hot lead poured into them so that they would be doubly, eternally secure, right?

That they might be chiseled into marble and they would last and then that lead would be poured in so that they might never perish. Now Job's hope expressed there in verse 23 and 24 has been fulfilled literally, I think beyond what he probably could have imagined at the time, as these words in verse 25 and 27 have been inscribed on monuments and chiseled into headstones and written over tombs in granite all over the world, so many tombs that you would not even want to have to count them.

These words have been inscribed in stone and written in marble more times than Job could have ever imagined. Because this is the hope of bodily resurrection. Here it is again in verse 25 through 27. As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives and that the last, he will take his stand on the earth.

Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God, whom I myself shall behold and whom my eyes will see and not another, my heart faints within me. There are three different elements to his hope there.

Redemption, Resurrection, and Ultimate Reward

Job expresses his hope in his redemption, verse 25, his resurrection, verse 26, and his ultimate reward. His redemption, his resurrection, and his ultimate reward. Now that is a beautiful outline. That's a genius outline.

And I don't mind saying that because I didn't come up with it. I'm borrowing this, or I should say, litanizing this from Phil Johnson who preached on this passage. And I don't think it can be improved upon.

I worked on it. I tried to come up with something like different alliteration and it just, nothing worked. Job expresses the same hope that you and I have, our redemption, our resurrection, and our ultimate reward.

Each one of those verses. Let's look at it beginning in verse 25. First of all, I want you to see how these three things are connected. There is no ultimate reward if you are in the grave forever. And there is no coming out of the grave without redemption.

It has to be in this order, redemption, resurrection, to ultimate reward. And these three things are tied together so that the one who is redeemed receives the ultimate reward. And there is no ultimate reward without resurrection because of redemption.

So to have one is to have all three. To have the first one is to have the last one. And you cannot have the last one without having the previous two. There must be redemption, resurrection, to ultimate reward.

Now, just as a curious note, and I'm not gonna get into this at any length at all, but just to remind you that there is a resurrection promise to unbelievers as well. Scripture promises that. In Matthew, sorry, John chapter five, Jesus speaks of a resurrection to judgment.

In Daniel chapter 12, Daniel describes, or the Lord describes a resurrection to everlasting contempt. Unbelievers are resurrected from the grave on the last day in unredeemed, unglorified, but eternal and everlasting bodies to suffer the torments of hell everlastingly.

So everybody gets a body on the last day. But what is being described here by Job is a resurrection body. Verse 25, as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last, He will take a stand on the earth.

Now that phrase, that sentence is even more beautiful once you understand the context in which it is written. I know that my Redeemer lives. That's beautiful. That's beautiful enough. But it's especially beautiful in light of what Job has already said about how he feels the Lord has been treating him.

He's already expressed that he feels that the Lord has dealt with him unjustly. He feels as if the Lord has made him his enemy. He feels as if the Lord has made him his target and has pulled all of his arrows out of the quiver and aimed them at Job and made Job a special object of his injustice and his wrath.

That is exactly how Job feels. But how Job feels is irrelevant because he knows something. What does he know? I know that my Redeemer lives. Job knows he has a Redeemer. He knows his Redeemer is the God of life, and he knows that his Redeemer will give him life on the last day.

In spite of everything that Job felt about his circumstances and his situations and his despair, he knew something to be true, and that's what makes this confession of faith so glorious. I know that my Redeemer lives and that he will take his stand upon the earth.

This idea of Redeemer and redemption is something we see through both the Old and the New Testament. In the New Testament, the idea of Redeemer and redemption primarily has to do, one of the primary images is that of being bought out of the marketplace and spiritually speaking, we would say that that's the marketplace of sin.

Redemption involves the idea of buying back something or purchasing something out of the marketplace to redeem it. In the Old Testament, the idea of redemption is tied with the notion of a kinsman Redeemer.

We're familiar with that because of Boaz and Ruth. Even in the Old Testament, the imagery was one of somebody who had not only the opportunity but also the resources to purchase somebody who had maybe sold themselves into slavery to pay a debt or to purchase back somebody who had been seized and made a slave to deliver their possessions or to use them for themselves to pay a debt or to go to war or to rescue somebody who was under some sort of oppression.

That was the idea of a kinsman Redeemer. And it is easy for us to pull that into the New Testament and see how that is very symbolic of the Lord Jesus Christ who took upon himself flesh, came here and lived among us, shared in flesh and blood.

So he is our kinsman Redeemer in the sense that God has become man and that God-man then lived among us and identifies with us and then he has done the work to purchase us out of the slave market to sin and deliver us from the oppression of the devil and also to deliver us from these decaying bodies.

That is the idea of redemption. So Job, when he says, I know that my Redeemer lives, could not have known everything that you and I know because of all the revelation that we have in the New Testament, but he did know this, that God was his Redeemer and that God was a living God and that God would take his stand upon the earth.

Look at it in verse 25, on that last day, at the last. That is Job's way of describing what we would refer to as the day of Christ or the last day. On the last, at the last, on the final day, at the very end, my Redeemer will take his stand upon the earth.

It's amazing what Job knows about the future given that he's writing this 4 ,000 years ago. He knows that his God in some way will stand upon the earth. He will take his stand in that last day. The last day is that day of Christ, which Jesus described in John chapter six, verse 44, when he says, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day.

There's coming this day when God will raise the righteous from the grave in glorified bodies. And Job foresaw that time when God would take his stand upon this dust. That's what the word literally means, upon the earth, upon this dust.

It was a word that was used to describe dried out, dusty soil. Remember, Job is sitting in an ash heap, right? And what is he confessing? I know that my Redeemer lives, and on the last day, he will stand on this dust, on this earth.

That is quite a confession. Job didn't understand all the minute details that you and I do. We understand that Revelation 19 describes the coming back of the God-man who is in a glorified body, that his feet will touch down on the Mount of Olives.