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July 25th, 2010                                                                                     The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Job 19:1-27                                                                                                      Rev. Matthew C. Rauh

YOUR REDEEMER LIVES

“I know that my Redeemer lives,” Job 19:25.

    Ever crossed your fingers for luck?  “I just applied for a new job.  Keep your fingers crossed.”  No one knows for sure where this habit got started.  Some say it goes back to pre-Christian days to ward off evil spirits.  Some say it goes to Christians persecuted by the Romans who would cross their fingers as a crude picture of Christ’s cross.  But whatever the origin, we cross our fingers either for luck or if we are unsure of something and hope it succeeds.  Keep your fingers crossed for the Twins.

    Friends, you don’t need to cross your fingers when it comes to death and life.  Ever notice how uncertain people have become?  Just listen to how they talk.  They say stuff like, “I hope,” or “I believe,” or “I think,” or “Maybe.”  But there us no uncertainty to the resurrection to eternal life.  Compare to how people talk with how Job talks, “I KNOW that my Redeemer lives.”  No ifs, ands or buts, but “I know.”  Friends, your Redeemer lives.  You know that.  It is the one thing you can be sure of when everything, and everyone else, fails in your life.

I.  How dark it can be.

    It hurts when we keep rubbing it in.  Imagine how a wife feels after she got a little fender bender in the parking lot.  The husband says, “You know that you dented the car, don’t you?”  He tells her the same thing right before bed, and then again the first thing in the morning.  He repeats it over the breakfast table and then to the pastor at church.  He writes a note saying she dented the car and puts it on the steering wheel for her and puts it in the newspaper.  Every day, in front of everyone, he tells her she dented the car.  That’s rubbing it in.  

    That happened to Job.  “Then Job replied:  “How long will you torment me and crush me with words?  Ten times now you have reproached me; shamelessly you attack me.”  His three friends visited Job.  Things were bad enough, but they made it worse.  They accused Job of some great sin, otherwise God would not have treated him like this.  But they didn’t just make their point; they kept rubbing it in and in and in.  Ten times they rebuked him.  Over and over and over again they accused him of some sort of sin.

    But they were not the only ones. “He has alienated my brothers from me; my acquaintances are completely estranged from me.  My kinsmen have gone away; my friends have forgotten me.  My guests and my maidservants count me a stranger; they look upon me as an alien.  I summon my servant, but he does not answer, though I beg him with my own mouth.  My breath is offensive to my wife; I am loathsome to my own brothers.  Even the little boys scorn me; when I appear, they ridicule me.  All my intimate friends detest me; those I love have turned against me.  I am nothing but skin and bones; I have escaped with only the skin of my teeth.”

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