Last week we heard in the reading from 1 Corinthians that with the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead Death has been swallowed up in victory. Christ’s defeat of death will continue to be the focus during the Easter season, particularly today. Especially the focus is the defeat of the death of our bodies. Job’s confession of faith is a prominent easter time reading because of the hymn we sing, I know that my Redeemer lives! Job confesses his confidence that in his own bodily resurrection- In My Flesh I Will See God!

Let’s review Job’s story up to this point in the book. He is called by God the one who is the most upright and God-fearing in the world. But Satan accused God and Job .In order to rebuke Satan God allowed Job to be afflicted by losing his family, his wealth, and finally his health. His three friends come to sit with him and comfort him. So most of the book of Job is their conversation. Although the friends intend to comfort him, what they truly end up doing is accusing him of some kind of sin. “You must have done something to deserve this, Job. God doesn’t do things like this to people for no reason.” Job chapter 19 is Job’s second speech to his friends. You might notice if you read the whole chapter that it is not as positive as the section we hear at Easter time. Job is bringing a complaint before God- not just empty whining but as though he is in a court room. He brings his case before the Judge of all and asks for justice to be done for him.

Although he points out that from his perspective he has not done anything to deserve losing everything in his life, he has not given up his trust in God. “I know that my Redeemer lives.” The Redeemer in the Old Testament world is someone who steps in for you legally. In the Law of Moses there was a position called the Redeemer who would take care of widows, like we see in the story of the book of Ruth with Boaz. Job expresses utter confidence in the Lord as his advocate against his accusers, both spiritual and human. He expects to be found innocent in the eyes of God due to his faith.

Job’s faith is our faith- Justified by faith in our living Savior. That is one remarkable part of this section of Job: Job who lived centuries before Jesus, is justified by his faith in the promise God had made to Abraham, to Noah, and to Adam. Christ’s resurrection makes clear what all the believers who came before believed by faith. The truth of the Christian faith did not develop or change over time as some people believe. Faith in God does not change because God does not change.

So Job confesses another important truth as well: the resurrection of the Body. There have been scholars who refuse to see this teaching in the Old Testament. It is supposedly developed through history or the experience of the church. But Job’s statement of faith is very clear: After my skin has been destroyed, in my own flesh I will see God. Consider his situation: he was suffering some kind of skin disease at that moment. His skin was likely to be destroyed sooner rather than later. But his confidence is that he will see God with his skin restored.

Every power of death is destroyed by Christ’s death and resurrection. Think back to your Catechism classes when you learned about the types of death Scripture describes. One is spiritual death. Your body is alive, but by nature we are born dead in sin- separated from God. Eternal death is the final judgment – eternal separation from God with no hope of reconciliation. This is the main power of death we often think about with the Resurrection: Jesus paid for the sins that have earned you eternal punishment. That is super important of course- but the third type of death Scripture speaks of and we experience is the one we are more used to dealing with- temporal death. This is the death when your body stops functioning and soul and body are separated. This we call temporal because on the Last Day body and soul will be reunited once again- those who see Jesus their Redeemer will be brought into eternal glory.

Jesus went out of his way over and over to impress on his disciples that he was raised in his body. So the same is true of our own future resurrection: A resurrection of the body. God created you with body and soul in one unit- this is who you are. In the resurrection you will be the same- body and soul. Your identity, who you are, remains consistent and is perpetuated into eternity. For example, some people have asked me if we will recognize people in eternity. We can point to so many examples of people being recognized after temporal death – such as Moses and Elijah when Jesus is on the Mount of Transfiguration, and of course Jesus himself. And you remain you as well. The Apostle Paul compares us to a seed- the body is sown and raised imperishable. We will be changed in degree of glory not in who we are.

The future promise of resurrection of the body has something to tell us about how we should view the bodies we have right now, before going through temporal death. We have been created by God in a body as a good gift of God. But this body does not merely belong to ourselves. It belongs to our redeemer, Jesus Christ. We honor God by using it properly.

There is a push against the importance of the body. This is nothing new, there have always been philosophies and ideologies that elevate the importance of the mind or thought over the body, as though material things are good and immaterial things are bad. All things, Seen and Unseen, are creations of God. But what we have that previous generations had less of is technology that disembodies us. Many people have their whole life on the internet or social media for example. What happens to people online may seem more real to them than what happens in real life. These technologies pull our attention and thoughts away from immediate circumstances and away from the duties God gives to us to take care of physically, with the people in our lives. That doesn’t mean that the Internet is itself evil; it means that it requires strict discipline lest it suck your attention away from more important things and become sinful by its use.

God has given us in some of the 10 Commandments specific duties concerning our bodies and other people’s bodies. Especially relevant for this discussion are the 4th, 5th, and 6th Commandments. In the 4thCommandment, Honor your Father and Mother, we see how God has established authority for the benefit of our bodily wellbeing. He places everyone into a physical family. Nothing you can do will change that reality. Parents are given responsibility to care for the good of their children, and even government has a responsibility to their people to ensure their wellbeing. For those of us under authority, we use the gifts we have been given to obey and honor that authority as God has established it.

In the 5thCommandment God specifically protects our earthly lives and reserves the right to end life. Murder is prohibited, but so is suicide. The time of our life is given by God for him to end in his plan. There has been in some places such as Canada and some States a push to make doctor-assisted suicide a normal thing. This is something against the 5th Commandment.

In the 6thCommandment God protects marriage, which is also a physical union between a man and a woman. The provision for our bodies in the 4th and 6thCommandments are obviously connected- marriage leads to children of course. The Apostle Paul speaks about the importance of sexual morality in 1 Corinthians by saying that all the other sins are committed outside the body, but sexual sin is committed against your body, which is the temple of the Holy Spirit. This aspect of life was not given merely for pleasure, but as a specific blessing of marriage, as a way to give honor to God inside of marriage.

We know our Redeemer lives, who has bought us and keeps us from sin and death. We will see him in our flesh-