JESUS Christ our Redeemer Lives!

"I know that my Redeemer liveth." -Job 19:25 [KJV]

Matters are sometimes brought to a close point between God and the soul. It is stript of all its comforts. The soul is in heaviness (I Peter 1:6.) It is broken in the place of dragons, and covered with the shadow of death, as the Psalmist most emphatically paints the scenes of horror and affliction (Psalm 44:19.) So that he says, “I had fainted, unless I had believed” (Psalm 27:13.) Nothing within, nothing without, for the soul to stay itself upon, but the word of the Lord, and the Lord revealed in the word. Then is that sweet promise fulfilled. “They shall hang upon Him all the glory of His Father’s house” (Isaiah 22:24.) 

This was Job’s tried, tempted, afflicted, yet blessed state. Though all his comforts were dead, still his Redeemer lived. In the midst of all his losses, he had not lost this blessed knowledge. I know, it is a matter of the greatest certainty to my soul, I am as sure of it as my existence, that there is a Redeemer for lost sinners. I know He is my Redeemer. I have seen my want of Him, and my certain destruction without His redemption. He liveth. While He lives my hopes cannot die, my soul cannot despair. 

Stript of all things beside, nothing can separate me from the love of Christ. I know Christ liveth at the right hand of God for me, because He liveth in my heart by faith. Such is the language of this Old Testament saint. Says Luther, “I had utterly despaired, had I not known that Christ was the Head of the church.” “Head over all things to His body, the church” (Ephesians 1:22.) But how doth a soul know with Job, that Christ is his Redeemer, so as to say, with Paul, He loved me, and gave Himself for me? 

By the word of grace, we know there is a Redeemer. By the testimony of the Spirit of truth, through faith, the sinner is enabled to say, He is mine. My Beloved, my Friend. These are two infallible evidences of this. Christ has both our hearts and our hopes. Our heart is set upon Him. Our hopes centre in Him. 

(1st.) Christ is precious to our hearts. We have fellowship with Him by faith. We know that He liveth, because we enjoy the comforts of His life and love in our souls. We know Him both as dying for us, and also as living in us. He dwells in our hearts by faith. He sends us love tokens. He draws our affections to Himself, from the world of sin and vanity. 

(2d.) Our hopes are in Him. His Spirit gives us to see such an infinite perfection in His glorious work and finished salvation, as sickens us to every other hope: yea, kills self-righteousness, and self-confidence. “We become dead to the law by the body of Christ” (Romans 7:4.) We might as soon place our confidence in the righteousness of the thief on the cross, as in any righteousness of our own. “We know that He abideth in us, by the spirit He hath given us.” -I John 3:24

 

Then dry your tears and tune your songs: 

The Saviour lives again; 

Not all the bolts and bars of death, 

The conqueror could detain.

 

-preacher Wm. Mason (1724-1797 A.D.)

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