In God Is The Only Certainty We Have

by Kevin Burton

   The words of Job, speaking of our loving, caring God, lend us comfort and certainty today.

   We sorely need comfort and certainty in today’s troubled times. To say they are welcome is an extreme understatement.

    But we don’t often pluck them from the book of Job, at least I don’t. But Alistair Begg, speaker on the Truth For Life radio ministry, gives some specifics of language that take us there.

   The text is Job 19:25, and the key thought, “I know that my redeemer lives.”

   The emphasis on “I know” and “my” is Begg’s emphasis, as revealed below.

   “The essence of Job’s comfort lies in the little word, ‘my’ – ‘my Redemer’ – and in the fact that the Redemer lives,” Begg writes.

   “Oh to get hold of a living Christ. We must get a share in Him before we can enjoy Him. What is gold to me while it is still in the mine? It is gold in my possession that will satisfy my necessities by purchasing the things I need.”

   “So a Redeemer who does not redeem me, an avenger who will never stand up for my blood, what benefit is there in that?”

   “Do not rest content until by faith you can say, ‘Yes, I cast myself upon my living Lord; and He is mine,” Begg writes. “You may hold Him with a feeble hand and half think it presumption to say, ‘He lives as my Redeemer.’”

   “But remember, if you have faith even as a grain of mustard seed, that little faith entitles you to say it.”

   Though our faith be small at times, our God is big. He does not waver, His will and sovereignty are not changed by events, and therefore we can speak with supreme confidence in the things concerning Him.

   This is Begg’s other gleaning from Job, the little phrase “I Know.”

   “But there is also another word here, which expresses Job’s strong confidence: ‘I know.’ To say, ‘I hope so, I trust so’ is comfortable, and there are thousands in the fold of Jesus who hardly ever get much further,” Begg writes.  “But to reach the essence of consolation you must say, ‘I know.’

   “Ifs, buts, and maybes are sure destroyers of peace and comfort. Doubts are dreary things in times of sorrow. Like wasps they sting the soul! If I have any suspicion that Christ is not mine, then there is vinegar mingled with the gall of death.”

   “But if I know that Jesus lives for me, then darkness is not dark: Even the night is light about me,” Begg writes.

   “Surely if Job, in those ages before the coming of Christ, could say, ‘I know,’ we should not speak less positively. God forbid that our positiveness should be presumption.”

   “Let us make sure that our evidences are right, in case we build upon an ungrounded hope; and then let us not be satisfied with the mere foundation,” Begg writes, “for it is from the upstairs rooms that we get the panoramic views. A living Redeemer, truly mine, is unspeakable joy.”

   For a look at that joy, what it meant to Job and what it means to you as a believer, let’s look at the rest of what Job had to say in the passage:

   “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth; and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, Whom I shall see for myself, And my eyes shall behold, and not another.”

   “How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:25-27 NKJV).