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The hardest, severest, last lesson which man has to learn upon the earth, is submission to the will of God. All that saintly experience ever had to teach resolves itself into this, the lesson how to say, affectionately, "Not as I will, but as Thou wilt." Slowly and stubbornly our hearts acquiesce in that. The earliest record that we have of this struggle in the human bosom is found in this Book of Job. In the rough rude ages when Job lived, when men did not dwell on their feelings as in later centuries, the heart-work of religion was manifestly the same earnest passionate thing that it is now. What is the Book of Job but the record of an earliest soul's perplexities? The double difficulty of life solved there, the existence of moral evil — the question whether suffering is a mark of wrath or not. Job appealed from the tribunal of man's opinion to a tribunal where sincerity shall be cleared and vindicated. He appealed from the dark dealings of a God whose way it is to hide Himself, to a God who shall stand upon this earth in the clear radiance of a love on which suspicion itself cannot rest a doubt. It was faith straining through the mist, and discerning the firm land that is beyond.

I. THE CERTAINTY OF GOD'S INTERFERENCE IN THE AFFAIRS OF THIS WORLD.

1. A present superintendence. The first truth contained in that is God's personal existence. It is not chance, nor fate, which sits at the wheel of this world's revolutions. It is a living God. To be religious is to feel that God is the "ever-near." Faith is that strange faculty by which man feels the presence of the invisible. We must not throw into these words of Job a meaning which Job had not, Job was an Arabian Emir, not a Christian. All that Job meant was, that he knew he had a Vindicator in God above. At last God Himself would interfere to prove his innocence. God has given us, for our faith to rest on, something more distinct and tangible than He gave to Job.

2. The second truth implied in the personal existence of a Redeemer is sympathy. It was the keenest part of Job's trial that no heart beat pulse to pulse with his. In the midst of this it seems to have risen upon his heart with a strange power, to soothe, that he was not alone. Note the little word of appropriation, My Redeemer. Power is shown by God's condescension to the vast; sympathy by His condescension to the small.

3. The third thing implied in the present superintendence is God's vindication of wrongs. The word translated here, Redeemer, is one of peculiar signification. Job was professing his conviction that there was a champion or an avenger, who would one day do battle for his wrongs.

4. There is a future redress of human wrongs, which will be made manifest to sight. There will be a visible, personal interference. If we use his words, we must apply them in a higher sense. The second Advent of Christ is supposed by some to mean an appearance of Jesus in the flesh to reign and triumph visibly. But every signal manifestation of the right and vindication of the truth in judgment, is called in Scripture a coming of the Son of Man. The visual perception of His form would be a small blessing; the highest and truest presence is always spiritual, and realised by the spirit.

II. THE MEANS OF REALISING THIS INTERFERENCE. There is a difference between knowing a thing and realising it. Job knew that God was the vindicator of wrongs. It was true, but to Job it was strange, and shadowy, and unfamiliar. Two ways are suggested for realising these things. One is meditation. No man forgets what the mind has dwelt long on. You can scarcely read over Job's words without fancying them the syllables of a man who was thinking aloud. The other is this — God ensures that His children shall realise all these things by affliction. If ever a man is sincere, it is when he is in pain. There are many things which nothing but sorrow can teach us. Sorrow is the realiser.

(F. W. Robertson, M. A.)

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KJV: For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:

WEB: But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. In the end, he will stand upon the earth.