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my eyes will look at him

Job 19:1-29 (JDV)

Job 19:1 Then Job answered and said:
Job 19:2 Until when will you torment me and crush me with words?
Job 19:3 You have humiliated me ten times now, and you mistreat me without shame.
Job 19:4 Even if it is true that I have sinned, my mistake concerns only me.
Job 19:5 If you really want to appear superior to me and would use my disgrace as evidence against me,
Job 19:6 then understand that it is God who has wronged me and caught me in his net.
Job 19:7 I cry out: “Violence!” but get no response; I call for help, but there is no justice.
Job 19:8 He has blocked my way so that I cannot pass through; he has veiled my paths with darkness.
Job 19:9 He has stripped me of my honor and removed the crown from my head.
Job 19:10 He tears me down on every side so that I am ruined. He uproots my hope like a tree.
Job 19:11 His anger burns against me, and he regards me as one of his enemies.
Job 19:12 His troops advance together; they construct a ramp against me and camp around my tent.
Job 19:13 He has removed my brothers from me; my acquaintances have abandoned me.
Job 19:14 My kin stop coming by, and my close friends have forgotten me.
Job 19:15 My house guests and female servants regard me as a stranger; I am a foreigner in their sight.
Job 19:16 I call for my servant, but he does not answer, even if I beg him with my own mouth.
Job 19:17 My breath is offensive to my wife, and my own family finds me repulsive.
Job 19:18 Even young boys scorn me. When I stand up, they mock me.
Job 19:19 All of my best friends despise me, and those I love have turned against me.
Job 19:20 My skin and my flesh cling to my bones; I have escaped with only the skin of my teeth.
Job 19:21 Have mercy on me, my friends, have mercy, for God’s hand has struck me.
Job 19:22 Why do you pursue me as God has? Will you never get enough of my flesh?
Job 19:23 I wish that my words were written down, that they were recorded on a scroll
Job 19:24 or were inscribed in stone forever by an iron stylus and lead!
Job 19:25 But I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the end he will stand on the dust.
Job 19:26 Even after my skin has been destroyed, yet I will see God from my flesh.
Job 19:27 I will see him myself; my eyes will look at him, and not as a stranger. My heart longs within me.
Job 19:28 If you are saying, “How will we pursue him, since the root of the problem lies with him?”
Job 19:29 then be afraid of the sword, because wrath brings punishment by the sword, so that you may know there is a judgment.

my eyes will look at him

Moses, describing the creation of Adam, says that God formed him or “of dust from the ground.” (Gen. 2:7). The good news of the resurrection is described by Job using the same term that details what we are made of. Job proclaims “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.” But that word “earth” is not the word used in Genesis 1:1. It is the same word translated dust in Genesis 2:7. The dust that the Messiah will stand on at the last day will be the dust of Job’s body. But then something amazing happens. Job continues “Even after my skin is destroyed, Yet from my flesh I shall see God; Whom I myself shall behold, And whom my eyes shall see and not another.” The Messiah stands over the dust of Job’s dead body and brings it back to life!

This is the hope that the Bible gives humanity. It is not survival after death but rescue from death. It is not being “found naked” (without a body) in the intermediate state but being “further clothed” with a resurrection body. The Bible says that when Jesus Christ returns “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.” The nature of that change is made clear as well: “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.” We are dust: that is what we are made of, but our destiny is to be more.

LORD, thank you for the hope of resurrection.