(2.) When your delight in God, heaven, and holiness is still kept up: Piom. viii. .5, 'For they that are after the flesh, do mind the things of the flesh: but they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.'
(3.) When the heart is kept in a preparation for the duties of your heavenly calling.
Job XIX. 25.] the twelfth sermon. 293
SERMON XII.
^For IJcnoiv thai my Redeemer live(7i.' —Jon XIX. 25.
These words were spoken by Job, a man for the present miserable, and suspected by his friends as one that neither feared God nor trusted in him. Therefore, to comfort himself in his misery, and to vindicate his innocency, he makes confession of his faith.
In this confession you have the grand and most important articles reckoned up.
1. He doth solemnly declare and believe the promised Messiah to be his Saviour : / Jcnoiv that my Redeemer liveth.
2. His coming to judgment: and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.
6. The resurrection of the dead, with application to himself, for he saith, ver. 26, And though after my skin, ivorms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.
4. And lastly, the beatifical vision, ver. 27, Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another, though my reins be consumed, luithin me.
We have to do with the first article, his belief of salvation by the promised Messiah : ' For I know that my Redeemer liveth.'
I am not ignorant that this whole context is carried to another sense, not only by the Jewish doctors, but by some Christian inter- preters of good account, whose reasons, consisting wholly in gramma- tications, I list not now to examine. The common and received sense seemeth better.
1. Because these words are ushered in with a solemn preface, con- taining in them some notable truth : ' Oh that my words were now written ! Oh that they were printed in a book 1 Oh that they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever ! For I know,' &c. Surely such a passionate preface will become no other matter so well as the great mystical truths of the Christian faith.
2. The word (Goel, or kinsman) redeemer, "will suit with no person so well as Christ.
3. The rest of the passages do not run smoothly unless they be accommodated to this sense, and that I take to be the most obvious sense which the words will best bear.
4. Job, as it is clear by many passages in this book, had often disdained all hopes of being restored to any temporal happiness in this life, affirming that all his hope was gone, that he was worse than a tree cut down. This is the drift and current of all his former dis- courses.
5. When he saith that he should see God in his flesh, and with the same eyes he now had, I cannot imagine why these passages should be so emphatically spoken if he only intended in this paragraph a hope of being restored to his temporal happiness.
Having premised this, iu the words observe :^ 1. The causal particle, ^/br, giving thereby a reason why he would have his words so marked, because of the excellency of the matter.
294 THE TWELFTH SERMON. [JOB XIX. 25.
2. The article of faith : my Ilcdeemcr liveth.
3. The manner how tliis article is asserted and professed by Job. (1.) With certainty of persuasion : / hioio. (2.) With application
and appropriation : my Redeemer ; for I know my Redeemer liveth. All put to^'ether will yield this point : —
Doct. That it is a great comfort to the saints in all their aflSictions to know that they have a Redeemer living in heaven. This is the first thing whereby Job comforteth himself. I. I shall consider the matter of the comfort. II. Show you how it is applicable to all afflictions. I. Tiie matter of the comfort consists in four things : —
1. That there is a Redeemer.
2. That he is their Redeemer.
3. That he liveth.
4. That they hioiu this upon certain and infallible grounds.
1. That there is a Redeemer ; for he doth not say, I know that my Creator liveth, but my Redeemer.
The word is Goel. The Septuagint render it 6 iKKveiv fie fieWcov, he that will deliver me. Theodolion, better, on 6 a7;^t(TT09 /xov ^t}, my near kinsman liveth. The word projierly signifies such a one as, in regard of propinquity or nearness of kindred, had a right to redeem a mortgage, or the like engagement of land or livelihood : Lev. xxv. 25, 26, 'If thy brother be waxen poor, and hath sold away some of his possession, and if any of his kin come to redeem it, than shall he redeem that which his brother sold.' Or else to prosecute the law against the murderer of his friend or kinsman, Num. xxxv. 19, 24.
It is taken sonaetimes more largely for any deliverer out of thral- dom, or avenger of wrong in general. And so is in the Old Testa- ment applied to God or Clirist, to whom the term chiefly belongeth. To God, because of his powerful ])rovidence and rescuing his people out of their calamities : Ps. xxv. 22, ' Redeem Israel, 0 God, out of all his troubles.' To Christ, to whom it is most proper : Isa. lix. 20, ' And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and to them that shall turn away ungodliness from^ Jacob ; ' which the apostle applieth to Christ, Rom. xi. 2G. He then is the Redeemer, and it implieth — (1.) That he is our kinsman after the flesh, or by incarnation ; (2.) That he paid a price to God lor us in his passion ; (3.) That he pursueth the law against Satan, and rescues us by his power ; all which are notable grounds of comfort. For under the law the redemption of the in- heritance, or the person of the poor brother sold, was to be made by the next of blood, and that by the male side, not by the mother's, but by the father's side, and he also was to be the avenger of blood.