(Palm Sunday/Lord’s Supper service 3-20-16)
If you want to make my wife Cheryl groan, just mention the Book of Job. I think she feels like we lived through that book for about two years as a family, and indeed Job can be one of the most sobering books in the Bible. But despite that, there are bright rays of hope scattered periodically in it. One of those places is in Job 19, just after one of Job’s “friends”, Bildad has just implied that Job had brought all of what had happened upon himself by some secret wickedness in his life.
Job responds in the first part of Chapter 19 to his “friend” by saying, “How long will you torment me, and crush me with words?” (We could preach a whole series from the Book of Job on how NOT to “comfort” people who are in a time of difficulty — and perhaps some time we will! — but that is not our focus today.) Today (and next Sunday for Easter) we want to look at Job’s words from the last part of this chapter, after Job spends the first 22 verses being exasperated at these “friends” who were accusing him instead of comforting him.
In :23 Job just exclaims, perhaps to his friends, perhaps to the Lord — or perhaps to the heavenly angels who were watching all this unfold like a drama: “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!”
And then Job makes the statement which is going to be our focus today, and which we will follow up next week for Easter Sunday: (:25-26) “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and 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.”
Job said, as difficult as all this is, I know I have a Redeemer who is going to make all this right between me and God. We are going to look at this idea of “My Redeemer” this morning, as we celebrate what Jesus did on the cross for us: Continue reading →
shawnethomas 