Readings: Job 19:23–27; Psalm 17; 2 Thessalonians 2:1–5, 13–17; Luke 20:27–38

Job “imagines an ‘umpire’ who can stand between him and his angry God. … [But] his hope for an umpire or witness, that is, a third-person arbitrator, never materializes. … No, Job’s redemption, the reversal of his suffering, comes from God himself, who confronts him at the height of his suffering. … Job gets not an angelic arbitrator but God the Redeemer himself” (Tremper Longman III, Job [Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms, 2012]).

Job didn’t see or expect or predict Jesus, “mediator between God and humanity” (1 Timothy 2:5), “become for us … righteousness, holiness, and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30). Yet Handel (actually his librettist Jennens) was right to include the soaring air “I know that my Redeemer liveth” in the third, climactic part of Messiah. For the answer to Job’s question and the fulfillment of his hope — his and that of his people — came from a direction and in a way not subject to human control, not in thrall to human desires. And yet it was the answer, was the fulfillment, for Job and for Israel and for all creation.

That’s God’s grace in Christ — Christ who suffered, like Job, for his faithfulness. And God’s grace frees us, not for laziness or covetousness or disobedience, but for worship and service and sacrifice.