We Shall Behold Him
Texts: Job 19:23-27, Revelation 22:1-5
Pastor Phil Hughes, American Fork Presbyterian Church, Utah
April 14, 2024
It is the central belief of Christian faith. It is the event that sets Christianity apart from every other religion, every other system of belief, every idea or philosophy. Everything you and I believe as disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ hinges on this being true. The Apostle Paul said if it isn’t true – if Christ has not been raised from the dead – then our faith is in vain. It is empty. A waste. A hoax.[1]
The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is either the greatest single fact in history, or, if it is not true, it is the greatest deception ever put over on people.[2] Our very presence this morning, what we are doing right now, testifies to it. From the very beginning of the Christian church, believers gathered on Sunday – the first day of the week to worship. We do this on the first day because it marks the day Christ rose from the dead. It was a radical and mighty statement when those first believers – most of whom were Jewish - moved their Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. They called the day of the week on which Jesus rose “the Lord’s day.” See Revelation 1:10. The only reason to get our sorry souls up on a Sunday and haul ourselves to church is because Jesus Christ is alive. If he is not then my advice to all of us is stay home!
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the very foundation of Christian faith. Paul says in Romans, “If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”[3]
We celebrated the resurrection two Sundays ago. We do it every year. Why only one Sunday? It is easy to give our attention to Christ’s rising for one Sunday, and then not think too much about it the rest of the year.
If this is the very heart of our faith then maybe we should let it linger a bit. What are the implications for our living the other 51 weeks of the year? We are going to hang with the resurrection for the next few Sundays because Christ’s rising from death is more than something to think about for just one Sunday.
There is a verse in Acts where it says, “With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was…powerfully at work in them all…”[4] When we let the message of the resurrection of Jesus take hold in us we open ourselves to God’s grace moving in our lives.
Every time we gather it is a fruit of God’s grace at work in us. When we meet to study the Bible and pray it is God’s grace at work with us. When we take collections for the hungry or people hurting in other places of our world it is God’s grace at work in us. When we take responsibility for two people from Ukraine seeking safety and freedom it is God’s grace at work in us. We are here in this place right now because Jesus is alive.
When we pray we are acting in faith that he is alive, listening, and will work for us. When we hear the accounts of the Gospels we aren’t doing this because we are interested in a dead man. Christ is living and moving. When we sing we are testifying in our hearts that he lives.
AW. Tozer said, “It is Satan’s greatest strategy to get God’s people to celebrate the resurrection, rather than experience it.”[5]
The resurrection has a way of penetrating deep into our lives, enabling us to see the world, not as a place of ultimate death and defeat but as the place that is waiting for God’s ultimate victory. What we celebrated two Sundays ago “is the experience of the power of God, the recognition that life is stronger than death and love is stronger than hate.”[6] When this begins to happen when through all the darkness and decay that we see we still hold onto the vision of life over death then Resurrection is beginning to have power with us. We are learning not just to celebrate it but also experience it.
I have grown to believe, more and more, that if we could just pull back the curtain we would find the living Lord standing right here. He is closer than we can imagine. The story is told of the writer G.K. Chesterton being approached by a newspaper reporter.
“Sir, I understand that you recently became a Christian. May I ask you one question?” the reporter inquired. “Certainly,” replied Chesterton. “If the risen Christ suddenly appeared at this very moment and stood behind you, what would you do?” Chesterton looked the reported right in the eye and said, “He is.”[7]
But while Jesus is the resurrection and the life, I want to go back to the Old Testament. To Job.
Most of us know the story of Job. It’s about a man who “was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil”.[8] But Job is put through a gruesome and life-wrenching test by God. When Satan challenges the Lord and says that if God takes away everything Job has Job will turn on God the Lord does it. Job loses everything: his family, his possessions, his wealth, and his health.
Good Hebrew/Old Testament theology in Job’s day was that if you are obedient to God you will prosper. Only the wicked and rebellious suffer like this. Job is outraged because he knows he is has done nothing to deserve this.
The bulk of the book of Job is a dispute in dialogue between Job and three of his friends. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar.[9] Each take turns telling Job that obviously he has done something wrong for all this to come upon him. With friends like this who needs enemies? Job’s friends tell him that this is divine justice and he must have deserved it. Job, in turn, responds to each one.
Job is insistent that he is obedient to God and that he cannot understand the reason for his incredible suffering. His friends can only imagine that his suffering is because of his guilt.
Job struggles with God, questions God, searches God, but he never turns against God. He knows God is just and righteous. That is why he can’t figure out what is happening.
Job wonders how long he will have to go through the torment of listening to the diatribes of these friends.[10] He even asks them to have pity on him and see how God is doing this as part of some kind of testing and trial that he cannot understand.[11] Job is being accused and he wants vindication.
Eventually Job cries out these words that have become words of great hope for people of faith. They are some of the best known and most heard from Job.
I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold (him), and not another. (NRSV)
I know that my Redeemer lives. George Freidrich Handel put that to music in his monumental and stirring work, The Messiah, and many people can’t hear those words of Job without hearing that triumphant music in their heads. These words are sometimes read at gravesides when a believer is buried.
You need to know that these verses are full of grammatical problems making it very difficult to translate and interpret. It has been said that no two scholars interpret these verses the same way and, indeed, many different teachers read them in different ways.
While we may think of “Redeemer” as Christ, this passage comes centuries before Jesus. Job had no clue what was to come. The word probably better means “Vindicator”. Some Bibles will read that way: “I know my Vindicator lives.”
In the Hebrew Scriptures the vindicator was the next-of-kin and nearest blood relation whose responsibility was to vindicate and act for the loved ones left behind after kin had died. If a husband died then it was the nearest blood relative’s duty to care for the wife and children. The cause and welfare of the person who had died became the cause of the vindicator. The vindicator would avenge one’s honor if that needed to happen. The vindicator would take up the case of the family of the deceased. It could mean making sure property or civil rights were granted. It could mean standing good for one’s debts. If you remember the book of Ruth, Boaz acts as a vindicator for Naomi, after her husband, Elimelich, died.
So when Job cries out, “I know that my Vindicator lives” he is saying, “I know there is One who will take up my cause, act for me, and vindicate me.” Did Job mean he would be vindicated in his life, or after he has died? On the one hand he says “after my skin has been destroyed.” On the other hand he says, “yet in my flesh I shall see God”.
As I said, there are many problems in correctly determining the meaning of the original words of this passage, and thus the meaning of these verses. But among all the questions in Job 19:25-27 two things are sure:
1) Job expects to be vindicated.
2) God is the One who will ultimately do that for him.
Job was absolutely convinced that among all the voices that were telling him he was wrong - that he couldn’t possibly be righteous, that obviously God was angry with him, that it was not going to work out for Job and that he better get his affairs in order – that he was indeed right and would be vindicated by God.
The powerful preacher of the early 20th century, G. Campbell Morgan, said it like this:
Job “affirmed his conviction that sooner or later his living…Redeemer, Vindicator, when all men had uttered their protest, would speak the final word. The last word would not be that of opposing enemies, or accusing friends, but that of God in vindication.”[12] Job held on to God.
The story of Job ends with Job faithfully enduring the suffering and verbal assaults and God restoring all he had lost. Job receives double the blessings he had before. It says, “The Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.”[13] God avenges and vindicates Job before those who criticized and questioned him.
What does this have to do with Jesus and the resurrection?
Jesus showed the vindication of God. Just as Job suffered and was mocked and was told he was wrong about his state and relationship to God so Jesus suffered tremendously. He was mocked. Religious leaders accused him of being demonic, of being against God. He was accused of being a friend of sinners and a liar. When he hung on that cross people said that obviously he was not what and who he said he was. Messiahs don’t die. “If you are the Son of God save yourself and come down off that cross.” “See Jesus…you were wrong.” But God vindicated him by his resurrection from the dead.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the vindication of God. It’s the great, “I told you so.” It shows that Jesus Christ was right. What he said and what he claimed is true.
Job found himself facing death. Everything around him was wrong. But he insisted that God would one day vindicate him and give him life. We are all suffering and groaning in one way or another in this earthly flesh. We are in a world that is dying.[14] Paul writes how in these earthly bodies (earthly tents) we grow weary, and groan and sigh. We grow weary under the burden of this present suffering.[15] The evidence of death is far stronger than life or resurrection.
But faith says, “I know that my Redeemer lives and we will someday see him.” It won’t always be like this.
Just like Job’s friends kept telling him how wrong he was many in the world say our hope in Christ is a false hope. Many say this life is all there is. You are foolish to believe in an afterlife with God. “Religion is a crutch. It is the opium of the people. You need it to make you feel better.”
But we believe that because Christ Jesus our Lord has been vindicated in his resurrection from the dead we will also someday be ultimately vindicated by God. Death will not have the final word. God’s enemies and the Accuser will not have the last say. Resurrection life in Christ Jesus will be the final word. God will have the last say.
Job believed that God would vindicate him. And Job believed that someday he would see God. Someday he would behold him and that seeing God would confirm his vindication. And when he saw God he would be able to say, “See! I was right!” “…then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.”[16]
Someday we will see God and we will be able to say, “See! We were right!” In Revelation, there is a vision of the throne of God and of the Lamb in the middle of the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem. It is a vision of heaven. And, it says, the servants of the Lord will see his face.
They will see his face. Five words worth highlighting in your Bible. They will see his face.
That vision will be our vindication. Sometimes we believe something is real but until we actually see it we don’t have peace in our mind. We believe someone is safe but until we actually see them for ourselves, we really aren’t totally sure. We believe someone will be restored to health but until it happens, we can’t rest. Like a mother waiting for her son to come home from a war, she believes he is OK but when she finally sees him face to face she will absolutely rest in the knowledge that he is OK and home.
Someday we are going to be vindicated. Our eyes at last shall see him. After he was risen, Jesus said blessed are those who have not seen yet believe. Yes. But one day we shall see him.
John wrote in one of his letters, “…what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”[17] And when we behold him we will be able to lift our hands in vindication. Then we will be completed as the new creation that God is making even now.[18]
When we see Jesus Christ, when we gaze on his face, then, as the great hymn declares, our faith will be turned to sight. “Lord, haste the day, when the faith shall be sight…”[19]
Yes, I know that my Redeemer lives.
PRAYER: Our Lord and God, we sometimes doubt to look beyond this world and all that is placed before our eyes that seems to contradict your presence. It is so hard to imagine the day when faith will disappear and not be needed because it will all be before our eyes. The faith will be turned to sight.
Give us faith to see, beyond touch and sight, some sure sign of your kingdom. And, where vision fails, help us to trust your love and your word, which never fails. Help us to know that because Jesus lives, we shall live also. In his precious and certain name we pray. Amen.
[1] I Corinthians 15:14
[2] William Barclay, The Apostle’s Creed for Every Man, p.134
[3] Romans 10:9
[4] Acts 4:33
[5] I am indebted to Steve Shogren for providing this wonderful quote.
[6] Will Willimon, found in Sermon Illustrations, Brett Blair, “When You Least Expect It”
[7] From Abba’s Child, Brennan Manning, p.97
[8] Job 1:1
[9] I have always seen Job as being presented like an opera. The dialogues are presented in an artistic and poetic fashion. Ninety percent of Job is in chapters 1 & 2, and 42:7-17 according to James Wharton, Job, Westminster Bible Companion. The gist of what happens to him is found in those passages.
[10] 19:1
[11] 19:21-22
[12] The Analyzed Bible, p.120
[13] 42:10
[14] See Romans 8:18-23
[15] 2 Corinthians 5:2, 4 see NLT
[16] NRSV
[17] I John 3:2
[18] N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, pp. 178-79
[19] From the hymn It is Well With My Soul