Title: Are You In The Know?
Bible Book: Job 19 : 23-27
Author: James Merritt
Subject: Certainty; Conviction; Confidence; Salvation
Objective:
Introduction
Most of us don't remember, but many years ago doctors used to make house calls. That is, they would actually come to your house with their little black bag, and they would examine you. One day a man took deathly ill, and his wife called the doctor and the doctor came out to the house.
When he walked in, the wife told him that her husband was upstairs. He told her to wait there; he went upstairs; was gone for a little while; after a few minutes came down and asked for a screwdriver. She gave him one. He went back upstairs; several minutes later he came back down and asked for a can opener. She gave him that.
He went back upstairs and shortly thereafter he came back and asked for a hammer and a saw. Well, finally the worried wife couldn't stand it any longer and she said, "Doctor, please tell me what is wrong with my husband?"
The doctor said, "I don't know yet. I can't get my bag open."
You can have a great deal of knowledge about a great many things, but if you do not know the right things, at the right time, for the right occasion, then it really doesn't matter what else you do know.
We are living in a world that is sinking in a sea of subjectivism and reeling on the road of relativism. More and more people are becoming less and less sure that they know more and more about anything. Years ago, someone once wrote this in a periodical, and it really captures the times in which we live:
The world is engulfed in an almost limitless quagmire of opinions, while there is a dearth of convictions. This inevitably makes for confusion and despair. Opinions are abundant while convictions are scarce. Opinions are produced by the superficial, while convictions are the result of agonized struggle. Opinions are what we think, while convictions are what we know. Opinions are conjectures or guesses, while convictions are firm beliefs founded on evidence. An opinion is something that we may change, but a conviction is something that changes us - one will die for a conviction, but never for an opinion.
It is refreshing, in the day and age in which we live, to hear someone get up and not just say I think this, or I assume this, or I imagined this, or I guessed this, or I supposed this, or even I believe this, but to say, I know this.
Job was that kind of man. Every time you hear the name Job you can't help but feel a wave of pity come over you. You talk about a man who knew trouble. He lost his family, he lost his fortune, he lost his friends. In the little cemetery behind his house lay the graves of all ten of his children. His big bank account was now full of IOUs.
Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. Then out of the black cloud of his life, came a silver lightning bolt of truth that was so marvelous and so wonderful, that he wanted to make sure that what he had come to believe and know to be true, would be written in stone with a diamond pen. What Job is about to say he wanted to be preserved. "Oh, that my words were written!" (V.23a) What a man says can easily be forgotten, but when you put black ink to white paper, it can stand the test of time.
But Job also wanted his words to be published. For he goes on to say, "Oh, that they were inscribed in a book!" (v.23b) He wanted what he was about to say to be circulated as widely as possible, and as long as possible.
Finally, he wanted his words to be perpetuated. "That they were engraved on a rock with an iron pen and lead, forever!" (V.24) Job wanted to make sure that every generation to come would hear what he had to say.
Well, God granted Job's request, and he inscribed these words in his own Word. The sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the rocks, the hills, will all pass away, but these words of Job embedded in the word of God will last forever. Because what he says is not just essential, it is eternal. It is not just important, it is immortal. Because when it comes to the time of your own death, you had better know the things that Job said he knew.
I. I Know My Soul Has Been Redeemed
"For I know that my Redeemer lives,.." (v.25a) Job was a redeemed man. He was a man bought by God who had been redeemed from the slavery of sin. Now that is an incredible statement because Job is talking about redemption, which is one of the great truths of the Bible. Yet, nothing about redemption had ever been published. Job did not have a single page of Scripture to instruct him.
Remember that Genesis may be the first book in the Bible, but Job is the oldest book in the Bible. It was the first biblical book ever written. Job had never heard a preacher talk about redemption. He had never heard a seminary professor talk about redemption. He had never even opened up a copy of a Bible and read about redemption, and yet he said, "I know my Redeemer lives."
Now there is no question in my mind that Job is talking about none other than the Lord Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ is presented throughout the Bible as our Redeemer. Now there are some who say that he could not have been talking about Jesus, because Jesus was not even alive when Job wrote this. The only problem with that is, Jesus was alive when he wrote this, because Jesus has always been alive. You remember he said to the Pharisees, "Before Abraham, I AM." There has never been a time when Jesus was not alive.
In fact, the Hebrew word there for "lives" literally means "lives forever." In a real sense, Jesus has never been dead; He lives forever. You see, even when Jesus died on the cross, He really was alive because even though His body died, He didn't die. That's why Jesus said to Mary, "He who believes in Me shall never die."
The difference between Jesus and the rest of us is, we had to be born in order to live. But Jesus was alive before He was ever born, because Jesus did not have His beginning at His birth, because He never had a beginning. The world is from the beginning, but the Word was in the beginning.
Notice that Job did not say "I know a Redeemer lives," or "the Redeemer lives," but "My Redeemer lives." You may not think that is a big difference, but I tell you that one little personal pronoun means the difference between heaven and hell; it means the difference between being lost and being saved. Oh, Jesus is a Redeemer, that is true. In fact, Jesus is The Redeemer no doubt. But, friend, in order to go to heaven he must be your Redeemer.
Jesus is potentially the Savior of the world, but He is actually the Savior only of those who believe. Can you say with David "the Lord is My Shepherd?" Can you say with the Apostle Paul "He is Christ Jesus my Lord?" Can you say with Job "I know that My Redeemer lives?" Friend, that is what makes all the difference.
II. I Know My Savior Will Return
"And He shall stand at last on the earth;.." (v.25b) Now there are two amazing things that we need to remember concerning this statement. First of all, as I have already told you, Job is the oldest book in the Bible. Here Job speaks of a second coming before he has even seen a first coming. Again, I remind you, there was no church, there were no ordained preachers, there was no Scripture, there were no seminaries, there was no religious instruction at all, and yet Job said, "I know that He shall stand at last on the earth."
Job is standing on the mountaintop of faith, and long before either coming occurred, he could see both comings of Christ. He understood He was coming first to redeem, but then He was coming to rule. He saw that there would be one coming that would climax in a resurrection, but then he saw there would be a second coming that would climax in a reign.
You may be interested to know that there are over 1,800 references in the Old Testament to the second coming of Jesus. As a matter of fact, there are twenty times as many references in the Old Testament to the second coming of Jesus as there are to the first coming of Jesus.
Now I studied under certain liberals who scoffed at the notion that the Old Testament talked about a second coming. There are many so-called Bible scholars today who say they do not believe that you can find the second coming of Jesus in the Old Testament, much less the New.
It reminds me of a Bible-believing preacher who brought a tremendous message on the second coming of Jesus from this very text. When he had finished one of those liberal unbelieving scholars came up to him and said, "I don't believe you can get the second coming out of the Old Testament. That wise old preacher said, "You sure can't, buddy, it's in there to stay."
If you will listen carefully you will find that Job reveals to us when Jesus is coming, where Jesus is coming, and why Jesus is coming. First he tells us that "He shall stand at last on the earth." Now the Hebrew language literally says, "at the last." Well, at the last what? The Bible says in 1 Cor. 15:52, "at the last trumpet" Jesus will come.
Well, when will the last trumpet be? It will be when Jesus looks over at old Gabriel and says, "Hit it Gabe." Now I don't know when that trumpet is going to blow, and Job didn't either. But evidently Job knew there was going to be a trumpet and that trumpet was going to blow and Jesus was going to come.
I heard about an old country preacher, and it was in the summertime when all Baptist churches go into summer slumps. His attendance was going down because the weather was so pretty, and he wanted to do something to get the crowds back. So he got up on Sunday morning and told his people that God had revealed to him when Jesus was going to come back.
As a matter of fact, that was going to be the title of his message. "You don't want to miss next week." Word began to spread like wildfire through that little country community. Everybody was telling their neighbors and friends, "Don't miss next Sunday, the preacher is going to tell us exactly when Jesus is going to come back."
Sure enough the next Sunday you couldn't get people in that church with a shoehorn. They were standing around the walls and out the door, eagerly awaiting the pastor's message. When he got to the pulpit he said, "I am now going to tell you when Jesus is going to come back.
He said, "Are you ready for this truth?" They all said, "Amen." He said, "All right, get out your pen and write it down, and it sounded like a tornado had gone through a paper mill people were getting out their pens and paper so quickly. He said, "Here we go-Jesus is going to come back when He's good and ready."
But Job also tells us where He's coming. That is, He is coming back from where He left. Two thousand years ago He ascended from the earth, and one day He's going to descend back to the earth. God revealed to Job that Jesus was coming back to planet earth. It will be a physical coming; it will be a visible coming; it will be a literal coming.
As you travel to other parts of the world, you find that certain people do not think like we do. They don't have the same world view. They don't even have the same view of history. Many people believe that history is cyclical. That is, it's just a series of events repeated over and over again ad infinitum.
Well, the Bible says history is linear; it is a straight line, and my friend, at the end of that straight line you will find Jesus Christ. This world is on a collision course with Jesus. Now part of this world is headed for judgment; part of this world is headed for joy. But all of this world is headed for Jesus.
But not only is Jesus going to take His stand on the earth, God has revealed exactly where He's going to take His stand. Listen to Zech. 14:4, "And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two, from east to west, making a very large valley; half of the mountain shall move toward the north and half of it toward the south."
I was interested to come across in my study the fact that at one time the Holiday Inn had planned to erect a hotel on the Mount of Olives. But after sending a group of engineers and geologists to study the site, those experts discovered geological fault running underneath the Mount of Olives which one day is going to cause it to split wide open. Well, I know exactly when the Mount of Olives is going to split wide open, and that's when the feet of Jesus hit the ground.
The Hebrew word for "to stand" literally means "to stand as a victor over an enemy." In other words, this word pictures a warrior standing over a defeated foe. It pictures a conquering general standing and gazing over the spoils of conquest. When Jesus left this earth He departed as a crucified Lord. But when He returns He's coming as a conquering King.
I heard about a business that was going broke, and the problem was the employees were divided, they were backbiting, and they were fussing with one another. They could not get along, and the whole business was about to come apart. The business hired a man to come in and take over the entire operation.
The first day on the job a particularly influential employee made an appointment to see the new boss. He walked into the man's office and said, "You know that we've got a lot of factions going on in this business, and you better be careful which side you take." The boss looked the man in the eye and said, "Mister, I don't know who you are, but I haven't come to take sides, I have come to take over."
When Jesus comes back to planet earth He's not coming to take sides, He's coming to take over. Every king will relinquish his throne, every general will surrender his sword, and every monarch will lay down his crown when Jesus comes again. That's why He's coming; to take His victorious stand on the earth.
III. I Know Myself Will Be Resurrected
"And after my skin is destroyed this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me?" (vv. 26-27) Now this is an unbelievable statement of faith. Disease had wracked his body, death had wrecked his home, and Job knew one day he would follow his sons and would also die. But he said, "In my flesh I shall see God." Job was not only concerned with life and death, he was concerned with life after death.
Remember, it was Job who first asked the age old question in Job 14:14, "If a man dies, will he live again?" Well, God answers the question right here, and God tells Job exactly what he needs to know about death.
I was reading the other day about thanatology. Thanatology comes from the Greek word for death, thanatos, and it literally means "the study of death." There is an increasing interest in death and dying perhaps more than ever before in the history of the world. Did you know that college professors report that courses on death and dying are among the most popular on campus? Did you know that more books have been written in the last ten years on suicide, out-of-the-body experiences, and death than have been written in the entire Twentieth Century? So many books and articles are being written now on death that psychiatrists are calling the phenomenon "the gloom boom."
Well, Job told us all we needed to know about death 3,000 years ago. He said that death is simply the destruction of the skin. It is simply the death of the flesh. I heard about a little five year old boy who went to Florida and he got a sunburn and his skin started to peel. He ran up to his mother and pulled off a big strip of skin and said, "Look at this Mother, I'm only five years old and coming apart already."
That's all death is; just the flesh coming apart. Even now death is leaving its footprints in my forehead called wrinkles. Death is leaving its graying color in my hair. I realize more and more I'm just a dying man preaching to dying people.
But notice that Job spoke of the destruction of the skin, not the soul. You see, death is the end of the body, but not the end of the soul. My outward man is decaying Paul said, but my inward man is being renewed day by day. Death kills the body, but it cannot kill the spirit, it cannot kill the soul, it cannot kill the self.
I heard about a preacher who was preaching the funeral of a godly man who had just died, and he looked down in the open casket at the body of that man and said, "Now folks, what we have here is the shell, the nut has departed." Well, that really is true because death is the destruction of the skin, but not of the self.
But you notice that Job says even though the skin is destroyed, he says, "In my flesh I shall see God." Now what is he talking about? He's talking about a resurrection. He's talking about a new body, an imperishable body, an immortal body, an incorruptible body. But in a resurrected body we are going to see God.
Job says in that very resurrected body, with literal resurrected eyes, he said I shall see God, "Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another." (v.27) This hope for a resurrection is as old as mankind himself.
Years ago I went to the Cairo Museum and saw the tomb of King Tutan Khamun, known to the world as "King Tut." It was absolutely fascinating and I went and studied the entire subject of mummification. You see, the ancient Egyptians believe that after death their bodies would travel to another world during the day, and at night they would return to their bodies. In order for the person's spirit to live forever it had to be able to recognize and return to the body. Because if the spirit could not recognize the body it belonged to it would die.
Whenever a body was mummified, it went through a process of seven steps that they called the seven steps of immortality. Now the process is too involved to go into here, but suffice to say they did everything they could to preserve the body because they had a hope that one day that body somehow might be raised.
Well, I want to tell you that 2,000 years ago, Jesus proved that the resurrection was not an Egyptian hope, it was a divine certainty, and one day in our flesh, with resurrected eyes, we're going to see God; with resurrected ears, we're going to hear God; with resurrected hands we're going to touch God; with a resurrected heart we're going to love God.
There was a seminary professor that had a little child left after the mother and his wife had gone to be with Jesus. She had died as a young woman, and this seminary professor took that little boy to the funeral home to visit the body of that mother lying in that casket. That little child didn't understand death, and when it came time to leave, he did not want to leave. He said, "Daddy, let's get mother to come back home with us." Well, the father tried to explain to the son that the mother couldn't come home. He said, "Son, we're going to go home, and God is going to take care of us and we're going to have to live without mother for a while."
They started to leave and that little fellow broke away from his daddy and ran back into that funeral home and stood there for awhile beside that coffin and then began to say, "Mommy, wake up, wake up, Mommy, please wake up." The dad gently put his hand on the boy's shoulder and said, "Son, don't do that. You can't wake her up."
The little boy said, "Yes, daddy, I can wake her up. I've seen her like this many times before." You see he had seen her take naps before in the daytime. In fact, he used to nap with her. He said, "I've seen her like this before Daddy. She'll wake up." He then said, "Wake up Mommy."
Well, you can imagine how that scene broke that daddy's heart. With tears cascading down his cheeks, he knelt down beside that little boy and turned him around, looked him in the eye and he said, "Son, you can't wake her up, I can't wake her up, nobody in this world can wake her up." But then with big smile on his face he said, "But, son, when Jesus comes He'll wake her up." And He will.
Conclusion
My friend, you better know and you better know that you know that your soul has been redeemed. You better know Jesus as your Lord because the Savior will return, and you better know Him when you die, so that your self will be resurrected. Thank God these are things we can know.
