Job’s Confession from the Ash Heap

“For 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" (Job 19:25–27).

Job says this from the ash heap.

The ash heap.

His children are all dead. His body is covered in sores. His wife has told him to curse God and die. And his friends, who came, we believe, to comfort him, have spent their time building the case that Job is secretly wicked, and that God is paying him what he’s owed.

Everything that gave him standing in this world is gone.

His reputation. His vast estate. His health. His dear children. His understanding of how God works.

All either stripped or shaken.

And from an ash heap that say as much about his destroyed life as it does his destroyed stuff, he says:

“I know that my redeemer liveth.”

My Redeemer Liveth

The word is goel. Kinsman-redeemer. That is the same word family used throughout Ruth.

A relative by blood and covenant who redeems a ruined relative by taking up their hopeless cause before their accuser. So, it’s a legal word as much as a family word.

This helps us, because Job is crying out for vindication before the accusations of his friends in Chapter 19. His reputation has been blackened, and he doesn’t know why. His friends have judged him a secret sinner, and his suffering has been God’s proof. And he wants someone to stand up and say, Job was right and you were wrong!

That is the goel’s work.

And Job says his goel, lives.

Everything around him is death. Death is the one argument Satan has been pressing from chapter one. Job smells death. And he drives a stake into death’s ground and says:

There is a living God above all this dying. A living God who is bound to me and will act.

My Redeemer lives.

He prepends the confession with, “I know.”

In Hebrew “I know” is bedrock. It’s the one solid thing left when everything else has sunk. When flesh fails and friends accuse, and the heavens are brass, this is what Job says:

“I know that my redeemer liveth.”

That must be faith in its most stripped-down form in all of scripture

Faith without feelings. Faith without answered prayer. Faith without a single ray of sunlight. A faith that confesses what it knows, rather than what it sees.

And what it knows is this one thing:

My Redeemer lives.

There are souls reading this who have lived in Job’s country. Your dark providences have been very long. Your prayers seemed to pop on the ceiling. No helpful explanations have come in your circumstances. Your well-meaning friends, though sincere, have not known how to help.

What does saving faith say in that condition?

It says what Job does.

“I know that my redeemer liveth.”

He Shall Stand

Then Job presses further, and farther, in the next words.

“He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.”

Now, we must be careful here. Job is describing a Second Advent hope here, not a firsts.

The latter day in prophetic use, carries the weight of the end of the age, the day of last accounting, when all that has been hidden will come to light. And the word “stand” pictures one rising to take a legal position, to appear as vindicator.

The Redeemer will rise and stand upon this earth on that last day!

Job has spent enough time listening to man’s paltry words. By the time we get to this chapter, Job has made peace with the fact that God may not ever clear the whole matter up for him. What he is waiting for is the final day when the Judge of all the earth will appear openly, when God’s hidden counsels will be revealed, every false verdict is overturned, and when Job’s own personal cause is settled forever.

That is what is keeping him alive, so to speak.

The Last Advent hope.

We know so much more than Job knew. We know the name of this Redeemer.

It is the Lord Jesus Christ, who came in the flesh as our Kinsman-Redeemer, and shall appear the second time in power and great glory (Heb. 9:28; Mat. 24:30).

When Job says his Redeemer shall stand upon the earth at the latter day, he spoke more than he grasped, but he spoke truly. And the Redeemer who will stand on that day is the same One who will say,

“I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen…” (Revelation 1:18).

In My Flesh Shall I See God

Then Job turns inward, and his words become almost unbearably beautiful.

“And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.”

He looks at his rotting skin and says:

This will not be the final me.

He anticipates. He sees it clearly now. The grave is coming either today or soon after. This flesh will be dissolved. He grants the enemy at least that much.

And then he says:

“In my flesh shall I see God.”

In Job’s own flesh.

This same body, rotting while living, will stand up on that latter day and see his Redeemer face to face. The worms do not have the final say over the body of one whose Kinsman-Redeemer lives. The grave is only temporary.

Fascinating that we read such future bodily resurrection language, from the oldest book of the bible. The hope has always been a bodily hope. The early church received it, recognizing it in the Jesus’ empty tomb and glorified body.

And then Job says the most amazing thing of all.

“Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another.”

Mine eyes, not other’s.

I shall see Him with these eyes, in this body, on that day.

There are many who have spent their whole lives hearing about the Redeemer others have seen with the eye of faith. They know the testimonies of others. But there is something missing that no second-hand testimony can satisfy.

They want to see for themselves. They want the thing itself, not the description of it.

That longing is holy, dear one.

And Job says it from his ash heap. Will you?

The Kinsman-Redeemer Lives

Dear friend, that final day is coming.

For every soul sitting on an ash heap of some, every believer whose body is giving out, every aged saint whose hands tremble and whose eyes have dimmed, every one who has carried a grief with no bottom and found no satisfying answer in this life, hear this ancient man speak from his ruin:

I know that my Redeemer liveth.

Job didn’t know the full story. We do.

The Redeemer came. He suffered. He rose. He ascended.

He is coming again.

And on that last great day He will stand upon this earth, every ash heap will give up its dead, and every ruined saint will rise and see Him and know that their goel kept His word.

The latter day is coming.

And the Kinsman-Redeemer lives.