Pastor Slaughter

Easter Festival

March 31, 2024

Theme: I Know That My Redeemer Lives

Text Job 19:23-27

I remember it was like yesterday. It was my vicar (Intern) year. I was in Grove City Ohio. I was visiting one of the members. He got sicker and sicker while I was there. He was one of those guys that literally help build that church. But when I was there it was a struggle for him to make it church. He was my first solo hospital call. And I was all prepared to minister to him, but he ended up ministering to me. Towards the end he was in a nursing home. This once active man, who worked with his hands, now was bed written in a nursing home. I remember the question, “Why is God keeping me alive?”

That same year, cancer had infested her body. She felt terrible from the cancer and felt even worse from the treatments. Her hair started to fall out. She was sick. She had to have emergency surgery, but the cancer had spread to much. There was nothing more that the doctors could do. I remember talking with her. She asked me, “Is it ok for me to pray that God takes me home soon?” That was one of the most emotionally draining conversations I had with my mother.

How would you respond? What would you say?

Job was a man who had it all. He had many physical blessings from God. He had earthly wealth, a large family and respect from his peers. For reasons that are never explained Satan appears before the Lord, and the Lord gives Stan permission to rob Job of everything except his physical life. It was like Satan believed that the only reason Job had faith was because of all of these material blessings. In one day, he loses his wealth and children. On another day, he is struck with a painful and disfiguring disease. His wife tells him to curse God and die. His friends open their mouths only to blame job for his suffering.

Can you imagine what he was going through? Losing everything. His wealth, his family, his health. In the pits of despair and grief, the loneliness of having your wife turn on you and your friends say you are the cause for all this trouble in your life? Job even says to his friends, “Have mercy on me. Have mercy on me, you friends of mine. Because the hand of God has struck me. Why do you pursue me the way God does?” (21-22). Job is essentially saying God is my enemy. God is against me.

Does that sound like you? Have you felt alone? Have you felt the sing of sin in your own life as you see yourself wasting away? Have you also questioned, Where is God?  Have you seen what you’ve done and felt like sitting in pile of ashes and weeping because of your own sin? Maybe we haven’t had all of those things happen all at once like Job, but we can certainly relate.

When we experience these things, we recognize something. Something is profoundly wrong with this world. We reconcile something as well about ourselves. Something is profoundly wrong with me. What is that is wrong with the world… that is wrong with me? It is sin. We feel the effects of sin in the world around us, death, suffering, broken relationships. We feel the effects of sin like sickness, diseases, pain, loneliness. And we feel the effects of our own sin like the guilt. When it feels like God is the enemy, we need and answer outside of ourselves.

Here you have a man who lost it all. A man who was feeling like God is his enemy and yet it is so astounding to me what he says next. In fact what he is about to say is so important that he wishes it was inscribed on a scroll or chilled out on rock forever. “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the end of time he will stand over the dust. Then, even after my skin has been destroyed, nevertheless, in my own flesh I will see God.”

The answer that comes from outside of us. “I know that my Redeemer lives.” The Hebrew word for Redeemer has this really amazing picture behind it. It was a family member who was charged with restoring the rights of a person and avenging what had been done to them. Jesus… He is my family member, my Redeemer, my brother. And he restores a right relationship between me and God and he avenges that enemy of death.

And he did that on the cross where he paid the price for our sins on Good Friday, buying us back (redeeming us) from death! And so, Job confidently proclaims “I myself will see him. My own eyes will see him, and not as a stranger. My emotions are in turmoil within me.” That is the Easter message. That we will see him with our own eyes. That because he lives. We too will live.

This is the promise that Job held on to in faith. That even in the middle of all of his suffering, even when he felt like God was against him, even when he didn’t have the answer to “Why are all these things happening to me?” His faith still held on to the promised Messiah. His Redeemer!

Job is a great lesson for us as we experience suffering and hardship. Even when God felt like he was against him, Job still placed his trust in God. The temptation for us. Is to place our trust in our wealth, our families, our friends, our health. Can you imagine if that is where Job placed his trust in? The despair would be overwhelming. The same is true for us. If we place our hope and trust in anything or anyone other than God, what will happen if it is taken away? Where would that leave us? The pits of despair.

“I know that my Redeemer lives” that changes everything. When we feel like we are dying here, God in your Word I will put my hope. Do you feel forgiven? You are because God says so. He is risen! Hold on to that truth. Hold on to that truth even tighter when you go through Job like experiences. Because Jesus is your Savior and your Redeemer. So look for ways to strengthen that faith, by hearing his word, but studying that word, by prioritizing that word, because we live in a world that suffers from the effects of sin and if we place our trust in anyone or anything other than God, we don’t know when or if it will be taken away from us. But nothing can take away our faith in the fact that “I know that my Redeemer lives.”

My family in Christ, what would you say to that member in Ohio asking, “Why is God keeping me alive?” Or my mother who asked, “Is it ok to pray that God takes me home?” What do you say to someone who is like Job in the middle of suffering and pain? Point them to Jesus and confidently and boldly speak the words of Job, “As for me, I know that Redeemer lives, and that at the end of time he will stand over the dust. Then, even after my skin has been destroyed, nevertheless, in my own flesh I will see God I myself will see him. My own eyes will see him, and not as a stranger. My emotions are tin turmoil within me.” Amen.