I Know My Redeemer Lives

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I Know That My Redeemer Lives

 

September 3

 

Perhaps it has not caught your attention, but did you know that the celebration of the Lord’s Supper will cease?  Do you not recall that in Communion we proclaim Christ’s death “until He comes.”  At the return of the Lord we shall have no need to meet Him in the Lord’s Supper, for we shall know Him face to face.  So when we take Communion we are telling the world that we believe He will return.  Face to face means just that;  the dead shall rise.

 

It is, on the face of it, rather absurd.  The dead shall rise?  What makes you think such a thing could be?  Permit me three reasons:

First, the Old Testament prophets who foretold the coming of Christ also proclaim the resurrection of the dead.  Consider first what might be the oldest book in the Bible, Job:

"As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, And at the last He will take His stand on the earth. "Even after my skin is destroyed, Yet from my flesh I shall see God; Whom I myself shall behold, And whom my eyes will see and not another. My heart faints within me!

(Job 19:25-27 NASB)

 

And  this from the book of Isaiah:

Your dead will live; Their corpses will rise. You who lie in the dust, awake and shout for joy, For your dew is as the dew of the dawn, And the earth will give birth to the departed spirits.

(Isa 26:19 NASB)

 

Not enough?  Consider God’s justice.  Do you think Adolf Hitler got what he deserved in this life?  Is it because God is not just?  Never!  Is it because God is powerless?  Absurd!  Or is it simply that He is not finished with us yet?  The Day of Wrath approaches, and with it the resurrection of the dead.

 

Finally, the greatest proof of all.  One man—one only—foretold His own death, burial and resurrection.  The Man who did it tells us that just as the Holy Spirit raised Him from the dead, so shall the Spirit raise all mankind.  The Man Who has been to death and back says it will happen.

 

So as you take Communion today, remember:  as you do, you proclaim His death—until He comes again.  Soon, Lord Jesus, soon.