My Redeemer Lives April 8, 2007
Posted by Michael in Religion.trackback
[Note: This is a revised version of my post from last Easter. Just skip it if you were around last year.]
Consider the utter sadness of Christ’s exclamation from the cross, just before he died:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!
Jesus, God’s own son, was doomed to experience a type of suffering beyond the physical tortures he had endured — abandonment by God.
These words must have been heartbreaking for his friends. You can tell that they were profoundly moved. This is one of the few passages in the New Testament where the words of Jesus are quoted in his native Aramaic (by both Matthew and Mark), rather than just being rendered in Greek.
Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani!
Some of the bystanders thought he was calling on Elijah, and mocked him. They said, “Let us see if Elijah will come to save him.” This was a continuation of earlier mockery, where they had said, “He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’”
While this was going on, John reports that the Roman soldiers in attendance were dividing his clothes as plunder. They decided to gamble to see who would get his tunic. It was an item with some commercial value because it was seamless, so they did not want to divide it by tearing it up as they did with the seamed garments.
With his final words, Jesus was actually quoting Psalm 22, written by his forefather David, which eerily foreshadowed His situation on the cross:
(Psalm 22:1 NIV) My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?
. . .
7-8 All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads: “He trusts in the LORD; let the LORD rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.”
. . .
18 They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.
It’s a comfort to read the entire psalm that Jesus recalled in his agony. The psalm ends with a cry of victory, with the message of Easter. Jesus must have known this, even as he was dying.
27-31 All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him, for dominion belongs to the LORD and he rules over the nations. All the rich of the earth will feast and worship; all who go down to the dust will kneel before him– those who cannot keep themselves alive. Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn– for he has done it.
[Emphasis added.]
We are certainly among those “yet unborn” who cannot keep ourselves alive. Christ has done it.
Here’s a quote from the oldest book in the Bible, which predates Abraham by centuries and yet is clearly messianic. Listen to the testimony of Job, a leper:
(Job 19:25-27 NIV) I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes–I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!
That’s actually my favorite Bible passage. It is rich with the Hebrew notion of the kinsman-redeemer, a much more vivid concept than we normally think of when we say “redeemer” today. It’s the basis for the Easter oratorio in Handel’s Messiah.
I know that my Redeemer lives.
Happy Easter!
Too many people don’t like the book of Job because of all the suffering.
I like it because of the happy ending.
I dont like the story of Job. God took everything him for no reason and then gave him a b.s. “Where were you when I did such and such?” answer as a way of explanation.
But its ok because even though God killed off Jobs original family, took away everything he had, and made him suffer terribly, He gave him a NEW family and some free swag. Because really, family members are easily replaced.
Great moral.
Happy Easter!
Because really, family members are easily replaced.
Yeah, no shit.
Happy Easter to everyone.
God allows Satan to torment Job… actually inviting Satan to consider Job, who then becomes Satan’s target for all that tragedy and pain.
It’s all part of “Satan’s Little Season” and Jesus confirms this truth that those who follow Him will suffer. God is not displaying His wrath on Job. God is just. It’s not a punishment, but God’s confidence in Job.
It seems paradoxical, but God’s favor is what permits this to happen to Job. God knew that Job (with the Helper-Redeemer) would win in the end — and he did.
The book of Job shows God’s comfort for the faithful who become Satan’s targets. God knows even his faithful and strong fail, but God has enough love and hope to hold onto us and carry us through the dark times. They all figured it out! Abraham, Joseph, Job, David, Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Esther, Peter, John, Paul — and plenty more including ME!
“For I am convinced that NOTHING will be able to separate me from the love that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.” These are Paul’s words from his letter to the Romans 8 near the end of the chapter.
I’m convinced too and today is the day to celebrate it. It is real. It is physical. If folks bother to look you can find that there is and has been more tangible evidence to prove the existence of Jesus Christ and His Resurrection than the existence of any other figure or event in history. He who has ears — let him hear.
But its ok because even though God killed off Jobs original family, took away everything he had, and made him suffer terribly,
If you believe in God, you believe in eternal life. The end of time is literally when you die. The last verse to the hymn Amazing Grace describes this beautifully;
When we’ve been here ten thousand years…
bright shining as the sun.
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise…
then when we’ve first begun.
If this is so, then that relatively very brief span of time that Job had to exist without those he lost was no doubt a time of grief but he *knew* he would be with them again. Amazing Grace!
man the blogs are dead today. Heres a joke i got in my email today:
Bill and Hillary Clinton are at the Yankee season opener sitting in the first row, with the Secret Service agents directly behind them. One of the Secret Service guys leans forward and whispers something to Bill.
At first, Clinton stares at the guy, looks at Hillary, looks back at the Agent, and shakes his head.
The agent then says, “Mr. President, it was at the unanimous request of the entire team, from the owner on down to the bat boy. ”
Bill hesitates…but begins to change his mind when the agent tells him the fans would love it!
Bill shrugs his shoulders and says, “Okay, if that’s what the people want.” With that, Bill gets up, grabs Hillary by her collar and the seat of her pants, lifts her up, and tosses her right over the wall onto the field.
She gets up kicking, swearing, screaming, “I’ll kill you! You
@#$!&&&&&&&&*%$%**!!!..
The crowd goes absolutely wild. Fans are jumping up & down, cheering, hooting & hollering, and high-fiving.
Bill is bowing, smiling and waving to the crowd. He leans over to the
agent and says, “How about that! I would have never believed how much everyone would enjoy that!”
Noticing his agent has gone totally pale, he asks what is wrong.
The agent replies, “Mr. President, I said they wanted you to throw out the first “Pitch.”
The first time I heard this joke Bill was still in office, but it is still funny.
Happy Easter! He is risen!
20 hour power outage is over.
I have never seen a snowy Easter.
I probably won’t see another.
Still, it was very pretty.
Oh, and dr, for what it’s worth, the underlying message of Job is He’s God and I’m not. Even Job acknowledges this at the end, having demanded a hearing before the Almighty, he gets one.
And then considers that maybe he should have not demanded that.
God also pointedly ignores all of the preceding discussion between Job and his friends, much of which revolved around what Job must have done wrong to deserve his fate, or that God himself is unjust.
God never explains what the reader knows from Chapter 1 — Job’s fate was the result of a lunch bet between God and Satan.
As Dave observes, the point of Job is that God is God, and we’re not. We’re simply not going to solve the logical tangle that arises when you try to figure out why God allows human suffering.
The sophistication of the book and the messianic content is fascinating to me, given that it represents a very early stage of revelation.
On another subject, a great thing about Easter is that you get to gorge on jelly beans. I’ve got about 25 flavors of jelly beans in front of me right now. Reminds me of how Reagan always had jelly beans in his office.
I like all the jelly bean flavors except the one that tastes like popcorn. That’s just weird.
I ate a Peep today, and a chocolate egg. Tonight, the final season of The Sopranos begins. Life is good.
A little more than a “wager” though,
God glorifies Himself through this story. Satan wants to put God on the same plateau as himself, and God is having none of that.
The disciples asked Jesus, “why is this man blind? Is it because of his own sin, or the sins of his father? And Jesus answered, “it is because of neither, but instead that God may be glorified through him today”.
I prefer chocolate myself. “The bunny, the bunny, oh, I ate the bunny.”
Happy Easter, internet weirdos.
back at ya