At the end of yesterday’s devotional, we said that one consequence of knowing that our Redeemer lives is that we, too, shall live. Jesus’s bodily resurrection is proof of our own future bodily resurrection.
Then, too, we shall see God. This is the second consequence. We shall live again and in that living form shall see God. I shall see God! What a wonderful thought! And how much more wonderful than anything else that might be said! Notice that Job does not say, “I shall see heaven.” That was true, but it was relatively unimportant when viewed against the fact that he would see God. Spurgeon noted this fact and wrote, “He does not say, ‘I shall see the pearly gates, I shall see the walls of jasper, I shall see the crowns of gold and the harps of harmony,’ but ‘I shall see God’; as if that were the sum and substance of heaven.”1
Nor does he say, “I shall see the holy angels.” That would have been a magnificent sight, at least it seems so to us as we look through the eyes of John the evangelist, who wrote the book of Revelation. I find few scenes more thrilling than John’s description of heaven and the angels. But this too pales beside the gaze of the soul on God. Notice, finally, that Job did not even say, “I shall see those of this world who have gone to heaven before me,” even though this would be a great joy and his departed children would be among them. Job would see all these things: the pearly gates, the holy angels, his children. But over and above and infinitely more glorious than any of these, he would see God.
Do not think that this is a narrow vista, wonderful but small, like looking at one of those old-fashioned pastoral scenes within a candy egg. God is infinite. In Him all things are centered. Thus, to see Him is to experience perfect contentment of the soul and to be satisfied in all one’s faculties.
I trust that this and the other truths we have considered are real for you, or that they will become real this Easter. Can you remember them?
1) There is a Redeemer.
2) He is a living Redeemer.
3) He can become your Redeemer.
4) You can know that He is your Redeemer.
5) You can look forward with confidence and delight to those consequences which follow from these facts: you shall live again, and you shall see God.
Our conclusion is this: If Job, who lived at the dawn of recorded history centuries before the time of the Lord Jesus Christ—if Job knew these things, how much more should we know them, we who know of Christ’s resurrection and have witnessed His power in our lives. Job lived in a dark and misty time, before the dawning of the Lord Jesus Christ, that sun of righteousness, who has since risen with healing in His wings. Job lived in an age before Jesus had brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel. If he had failed to understand about the resurrection and had failed to believe in it, who could blame him? Nobody. Yet he believed. How much more then should we?
Do you believe in it? Can you say with Job, “I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God”?
If so, then live in that assurance. Do not fear death. During the next twelve months death will certainly come for some of us, but there will also be a resurrection. Besides, Jesus is also coming; and if that should happen soon, He will receive us all.
May I add one more thought? We believe these truths, yes. But let us not only believe them, let us pass them on so that others may share in this great resurrection faith also. What was Job’s desire after all? It was that his words might be preserved and that his faith in the resurrection be saved for coming generations. Job wanted his testimony to be engraved in lead and chiseled in stone. I do not know whether his wish was fulfilled in a literal sense, save in the fact that his words have been cut into many millions of gravestones. But I do know this: Figuratively the faith of Job has been cut into many millions of hearts so that those who have believed as he believed have become so many millions of living memorials, living stones, in which the resurrection hope is made manifest.
The resurrection hope has come down to us through many centuries of Church history. Let it pass to our children and to our children’s children, until the living Lord Jesus Christ returns in His glory. Jesus Christ lives! He lives! Then let us tell others, and let us shout with Job, “I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth”!
1Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth,” in Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. 9 (Pasadena, TX: Pilgrim Publications, 1969), 214.
