Resurrection Lutheran Church, St Catharines

The Record Inscribed

Is anybody writing this down? Don’t worry, I’ve got it here. But even if one of Job’s friends was acting as the recording secretary during their discussions, that wasn’t good enough for Job. He wanted his words carved into the rock. A reed stylus on a clay tablet was not good enough. Coloured dye on parchment would not do. Quill, inkwell, and vellum; printing press; pen and paper; dot-matrix or laser printer; not even storage on the hard drive or in the cloud—no, these words needed to be recorded as the LORD once did with His own finger, inscribing them into tablets of stone.

Job was that immensely rich man, living in the time of the Old Testament patriarchs, who was greatly blessed by God. He was a devout man of faith who avoided every kind of wickedness. God had blessed Him with seven sons and three daughters (ten children in all). He possessed 7,000 sheep; 3,000 camels; 500 pair of oxen; and 500 donkeys; along with very many servants. He was known to be “the greatest of all the people of the east” (Job 1:3).

That is reason to celebrate and praise God. And He did so. He made daily prayers and sacrifices for his family. He did not take it for granted, but knew that it was all his out of God’s grace and mercy extended to him. Just the way that we celebrate and praise God when His grace and mercy toward us comes to mind, at times like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter, too.

It is wonderful to have that large family gathering with a superabundance of food and gifts, and new Easter clothes, and chocolate. Typically we have no lack of resources to make these kinds of celebrations lavish and full of joy, so that we are able to set aside worry and anxiety, malice and criticism. Even disagreements can be banished for a few days of Easter joy and celebration.

Could we give such praise and thanks to God at Easter if our situation were different? Perhaps you have wondered about that at some point of your life. What if your children were not there? What if you did not have enough food for yourself, let alone to share? What if you were in bodily pain from head to toe so you thought that you would rather die? And along with all of that, what if you were not so sure about God’s good intentions toward you?

That was the exact question that Satan wanted to plant into the head of Job so that he would forsake God and no longer believe Him to be gracious and merciful, no longer thank and praise Him but curse and despise Him, believing that God got some kind of amusement from inflicting pain and sorrow upon people. It is the same question that Satan planted into the heads of Adam and Eve, getting them to question whether God was really doing the best for them (Genesis 3:5). It is the same question that Satan continues to throw into your ear, too.

But God had faith in Job, that Job would remain faithful to Him even if all of those kind of blessings were stripped away. And in order to put Satan in his place, and to give you hope and strength in the times when you experience loss and pain and doubt and despair, God allowed Satan to afflict Job.

His oxen and donkeys were taken by raiders. His servants were killed. The sheep were burned up by fire falling from the sky. The camels were stolen. And all of his children died when the house collapsed in a wind storm. That would have been more than enough for anyone to forsake God if they ever would. But God allowed Satan to go even a step farther and to strike Job “with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head” (Job 2:7).

To be sure, Job’s praise and thanksgiving to God took on a new flavour. There were questions and pleas as well complaints and laments, but in all Job did not sin against God. And then came his friends who should have been a help and comfort to him in his sorrow and pain. But for the most part they just kept telling Job that he must be some awful kind of sinner for all of this to happen to him. He surely must have done something abominable if God were to allow such devastation to befall him, kind of like the way we look at the homeless on our streets with their dirty clothes and facial lesions and wonder what wickedness they have been up to that landed them in their pitiful predicament.

It hurt Job deeply that his friends would turn on him, but he continued to protest that he had not done anything for God to treat him any differently than before, or even differently from any other man on earth. Job continued to have faith in God’s mercy and grace toward him, even when things turned so sharply and painfully against him.

It was very similar to the way that Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God felt dying upon the cross. In His case alone, He was completely sinless. He was aware of God’s plan for His suffering and death to be for the salvation of the world. He, too, endured the verbal assaults of His own people as He suffered in excruciating pain and humiliation before their eyes. Jesus even cried out, much like Job, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46); a cry of faith that cannot believe, despite appearances, that God would ever do this.

And the accusations against Job kept coming time and time again from friend after friend after friend. Perhaps you have experienced how that kind of thing can take all the joy and happiness out of life, even out of one of those great celebrations that we like to have at Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter.

Job’s “friends” told him over and over again how terrible a person he must be. Satan continued to whisper into his ear that God had abandoned him. Job himself knew that he did not deserve any favour or even any justice from God. So he pleaded for them to stop talking and for God to speak up on his behalf.

This is why, if his friends were going to keep accusing him and cross-examining him to find out why God hated him so (as they thought), Job wanted things to be recorded. He wanted a permanent record of his own defense so that in the end everyone would see that he was not lying. There was no cover up. He was not hiding anything. They would all come to know everything in the end.

His faith in God was not misplaced. They would have to answer for their accusations against Job. Job’s own words would testify of his constant hope that God would come to his defense. And all of this would be read aloud for everyone to hear at the Last Day, the day that God Himself would come to raise the dead and to pronounce His judgment upon one and all.

The summary for Job’s defense was given in words that were written. We have them inscribed in a book. We read them. We sing them. We know them by heart. “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!” (Job 19:25-26).

It is a beautiful confession of the faith. It confesses that Job and all sinners have a Redeemer, one who will restore to them all that God has given and that the devil and the world and death have taken away. When the LORD first brought the children of Israel into the promised land, and it was apportioned out to them, God’s Law declared that if any family had to sell their land for any reason, a relative would be a redeemer for them. They would purchase it with the intent that it would be restored to the family who had lost it. Job’s confession of a living redeemer was his confession that God would pay any price necessary to restore Job’s life: his health; his wealth; even his children.

How would he receive his children back? Job’s confession reveals that he believed in the resurrection of the dead. Not only does his Redeemer live and would stand upon the earth at the Last Day, but Job’s children would be there too, and Job himself, and that his skin so afflicted with painful sores would be restored to health. He confessed that he would be raised from the dead to see God with his own eyes.

And this will be Job’s vindication. It will prove that he was right to keep questioning why God would allow this to happen. It was right of him not to believe that it was God’s intention to allow his suffering to go on forever. Job’s Redeemer will stand upon the dust of this earth on the Last Day to declare Job’s innocence, all his sins forgiven through the grace and mercy of God, because his Redeemer has paid the full price for a full restoration.

That is what Jesus’ resurrection from the dead declares. It declares that the price of redemption has been paid in full to restore to you all that the devil, this wicked world, sin, and death could ever take from you. Your Redeemer lives and at the last He will stand upon the earth, and though your flesh be destroyed, yet you will be raised to new life to see God with your own eyes.

You will look your Redeemer in the face and be forever confirmed in the belief that He does not forsake you; that He does not play games with your life and the things that are so dear to you. Rather, He works all things that you might be assured that even though you suffer the loss of the things most precious to you, they are not beyond His ability and His willingness to restore to you.

You can write that down. You can inscribe it in a book. You can engrave it in the rock forever. And if you take a walk through the cemetery you will see that many have engraved it on the tombstones where they rest, awaiting that great and glorious last day when they will see their Redeemer with their own eyes. Vindicated we will stand with Jesus, our Redeemer, to live forever with all the gifts that are ours for eternity.