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322. Book Ends

Job 19:23-27, Psalm 16, 1 Corinthians 15:50-58
Key verses: "I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end He will stand upon the earth."
Job 19:25
"Where O death, is your victory?  Where O death is your sting?  Thanks be to God!  He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
1 Corinthians 15:55-&-57

Way back at the beginning of our journey we described Job as an example of a man without the hope of Christ. O how he longed for a mediator between he and God, to plead his case and move the heart of God with compassion in his situation.  He longed to be relieved from his suffering.  We described Job as a man, like so many today, who have no hope of a savior or of a personal relationship with God.  Yet, remarkably, the Holy Spirit reached out to the heart of Job to help him know, without seeing, that there is a redeemer, the one he yearned for and that someday, even after he is dead and decayed, he would meet that One face to face.  Job knew of a resurrection.  He didn't understand it.  He had never seen it, but he proclaimed it just the same thousands of years before it took place. "And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see Him with my own eyes; I and not another."  (Job 19:26-27)

Now Paul, after Christ, explains what Job, and we, will experience in Christ.  "The perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.  When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true:  "Death has been swallowed up in victory."" (1 Cor. 15:53-54)  Christ, as the first fruit, went first, shedding His perishable form that He used to walk among us and conquer death, and then resuming His imperishable self, leading the way for us to follow through His power.

"Therefore My heart is glad and My tongue rejoices; My body will also rest secure, because You will not abandon Me to the grave, nor will You let Your Holy One see decay.  You have made known to Me the path of life; You will fill Me with Joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand."  (Psa.16:9-11)  Paul makes it clear to his listeners in Perga, that even this is a prophecy of the Christ that was fulfilled in Jesus.  (Acts 13:35)  For Jesus did not decay, but was raised because the imperishable cannot decay.

From end to end of God's Holy Word, His promise of the resurrection is proclaimed.  It did not take place in the way it was expected, but then, when God does things God's way, that is usually the case.  He is the God of the unexpected, the God of surprises.  He foretold what would happen, just as the prophets foretold His birth in Bethlehem, but the knowledgeable missed it because they walked by sight and not with the faith of the heart.  So, they missed the resurrection of the carpenter, because He didn't look or act like the Messiah that their learning had told them to expect.  He was Emmanuel, "God with us."  May our hearts remain open so that we are not guilty of the same.

The Holy Spirit reached out to Job to assure him of a resurrection to come.  Now, Jesus has given us that assignment to tell others of the hope and victory that is found in him.  In Job's case, all his human companions could do was find fault and suggest that Job repent, but there was no real hope.  We can be true friends to the Jobs in our lives by bringing the knowledge of the Forgiver who will make all things new.

Hymn:  "Up From the Grave He Arose"

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