I Know That My Redeemer Lives

I want to speak about that living Redeemer whom we have. So prepare your spirit this afternoon. If you do not know that Redeemer, I want to challenge you to consider Him your Redeemer as well, your Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus. I want to go to Job chapter 19. We are going to begin with verse 23. And Job says here:

“...Oh, that my words were now written!—he did not know that his words were in fact going to be written, written in this wonderful book that is the Book of Job—oh, that they were inscribed in a book, that with an iron stylus and lead they were engraved in the rock forever!—And here is the central part of the sermon—I know that my Redeemer lives—Glory to the Lord. Say amen. I know that my Redeemer lives—and at the last He will stand upon the dust; and after this my skin has been destroyed, in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.—And he adds this slightly mysterious phrase—Though my heart faints within me.”

Father, we bless Your wonderful Word; we bless the principles it contains; we bless every declaration that has been made in this holy place today. The beautiful praise we have had, the prayers, the celebration of the resurrection of Your Son Jesus Christ, Your beautiful people gathered here today from all our communities, Lord, reflecting the excellence You have given us as Your people, Father, through the diversity seen in this place—Asia, Africa, Latin America, Spain, and all the countries of the earth represented, in a sense, in this assembly we have here today, Lord. And we thank You for Your creation represented in Your church today.

And now we ask that Your Word resound clearly in the hearts of those of us who are here, Lord, for the glory of Your name. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen and amen. This week I usually take out Handel’s Messiah—I do not know how many of you have heard that wonderful piece; it is one of the great, sublime pieces of music in all of history. Handel wrote that musical work, composed of many different musical sections, in eighteenth-century England. Handel was German, but he moved to England, and for most of his life he wrote many librettos and much opera, and God touched him so that he would write this wonderful musical composition, which I strongly recommend that you listen to for cultural enrichment, but above all for spiritual enrichment.

And Handel’s Messiah contains one section that, to me, is the most beautiful and moving of all, which speaks precisely... It is a musical piece in which a soprano declares, “I know that my Redeemer lives,” and she does so in an extraordinary way. And as I listened to that piece this week, the mysterious and powerful content of the text from which that musical piece was taken became clearer to me than ever before: the passage from Job in which he says, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the dust; and after this my skin has been destroyed, in my flesh I shall see God.”

And so this week I began exploring that passage, and I thought: although it is a difficult passage to expound in all its complexity, I am going to set out to use it as the basis for my sermon this afternoon. And I want this to be like a poem dedicated to the Lord Jesus Christ and to His resurrection, and I want all of us to be able to affirm these words of Job, a man who knew suffering as possibly no other man did; that is why he is in Scripture.

After a prosperous, blessed life—God had given him children, prestige, social influence, great wealth, and everything a man could desire—Job found himself involved in a dispute between God and Satan. When God says to him, “Look at My son Job. Are you not ashamed when you see how he serves Me?” He was a godly man, a man who feared God. And Satan, being our accuser, said to Him, “Yes, that is true. He serves You because You have given him all these blessings, all this wealth, all this glory; but take those things away from him and see whether he truly blesses You.”

And God’s sense of honor became involved in this, and the Lord said to him, “All right, take this away from him, and afterward take that away from him.” And Job gradually lost everything he had valued and possessed until he was left absolutely destitute; and the last thing to be afflicted was his own body. His body became covered with sores and oozing wounds, and with terrible pain and discomfort. All his children died in an accident one day, and all his money was gone. And this man spent years—and this is what the Book of Job describes—wrestling with God and asking Him, “Lord, why has this happened to me? I have served You, I have been faithful to You, I have lived a righteous life, and I have done everything that was within my power.”

And to make matters worse, his well-intentioned “friends” came. And brothers and sisters, let us be very careful, often, about the counsel we offer to people who are suffering. Never tell anyone, “Look, this is happening to you because God is dealing with you for some reason—because you did this or because you did that.” Even when you think that is the case, be very careful. These friends came to Job and began telling him that it was because he had some hidden sin and that this was why God... They did not understand the entire mystery behind Job’s situation: that there was a dispute and that Job was, as it were, the principal link to God’s honor, and it had to be seen whether he would remain faithful through it all.

And amid his great confusion, his profound sense of loss, pain, suffering, and physical agony, these words burst forth from him—words that, precisely because of that deeply painful and terrible background, have a far more precious and powerful meaning: “I know that my Redeemer lives.”

Can we, brothers and sisters, when we find ourselves in places of loss, speak in that way and still praise the Lord? I ask the Lord to help me in my own life so that, if a time of loss or trial comes, I may have the strength to say, “Father, I kiss Your hand and bless You, and I know that You live. I know that You are real; I know that You are faithful.”

Job was saying this from the very depths of his being. And I am not sure that he felt everything he was saying, but he declared it by faith anyway. And in this mysterious passage I see a series of elements that it is very important for us to have clearly established in our hearts; and if we do not have them that way, then we need to come before God and, as it were, adjust our faith and adjust our confession.

And I want to invite you to take a spiritual journey through your life and ask yourself whether you can say these things that Job is declaring here. And I want to go to the main, central point of his declaration: the word Redeemer. Because that is a very important word. But before I say this, remember something else: Job is the oldest book in the entire Bible. Although it appears almost halfway through the Old Testament, it was the first book of all Scripture to be written. In fact, it is the oldest book and account in the entire Bible.

Some commentators on Scripture say that this book was written about 1,500 years before Jesus Christ and that it is a mysterious book because its origin and its author are unknown. If it were known who wrote it, at least it could be dated, but that is not the case. At least many hundreds of years before Christ came into the world and carried out His entire redeeming and saving work, Job is speaking these words, and I believe that, to a large extent, he did not understand everything he was saying.

I believe that Job entered into something like a prophetic trance and began declaring things that certainly had to do with his personal situation, and it was an affirmation of faith that he was making concerning his condition; but in reality the Holy Spirit was directing Job, because God knew that the drama set forth in this book would serve as a foundation of comfort for countless souls throughout human history. And for many of us, reading this book has brought comfort. Wow, if Job did it, I can do it too. If Job kept his faith amid something that appeared to deny God’s faithfulness completely, I can do it too.

The Lord was crafting a book that seemed to be for that moment but was actually for all eternity. And that reminds us of something, brothers and sisters: we are living witnesses, and what we go through in our lives is on display—we do not know to whom—but the way we go through life’s trials, the way we live, the way we testify, and the things we say sometimes resonate throughout all existence; and they have effects that reach into eternity, of which we are not even aware.

And Job declares in this book, “I know that my Redeemer lives.” Today, in the twenty-first century, after having read Paul’s letters and the Gospels and having learned the story of Jesus Christ on the cross—His substitutionary salvation on our behalf, His death on the cross, and His righteousness imputed to us through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, about which we sang so eloquently this afternoon—we Christians understand what the word Redeemer means; but Job understood none of these things.

Job did not know that he was actually preaching a little Gospel in three or four sentences and that he was presenting something like a catechism that we, too, must be able to confess this afternoon. And if one part is missing—this catechism is like a clock; it is a clock in which each part meshes with the next—and if one part does not work, the others will not work either. It is important, then, that in your spirit you understand the different elements that make up Job’s declaration.

And the first word Job uses, the principal word, is precisely that: Redeemer. I know that my Redeemer lives. And that word, which we translate into Spanish as redentor and into English as Redeemer, is laden with meaning in the original Hebrew in which the Old Testament was written. We have translated it into Spanish as redentor and into English as Redeemer, but the word Job used was one that was well understood in his world, because goel—that is the original word Job used: “I know that my goel lives”—referred to a particular kind of person whom we sometimes see in the pages of the Old Testament. We see it, for example, in the case of Boaz, when he redeems Ruth and provides her with descendants. Because Ruth’s husband dies without leaving descendants, Boaz marries Ruth in order, in a sense, to redeem his relative’s line of descent. And by marrying her and giving her children and a family, he enables that relative’s line and name to continue.

The goel was someone like Boaz, who played a redemptive role and provided assistance and help during a family crisis. He was like a patriarch, in a sense, who served as an advocate and as a defender of the rights of a family member. He was a respected, powerful person who could sometimes play the role of an avenger who exacted justice for an offense committed against the family. He represented someone before the court of the tribe or community; he stood beside a member of the family when that person was in trouble and in need. And I hope you are already beginning to see in this the idea of Jesus in His role as parakletos, as helper, who stands beside us, represents us, will one day represent us in the heavenly court, and will plead for us before the heavenly Father.

Thus, all these ideas concerning the goel portray him as someone who defends our cause, represents us before a court, and stands in the place of our weakness and frailty: what we cannot do, he does on our behalf. That is what Christ does. The Lord supplies everything that you and I cannot supply before God’s court. The Bible says that none of us can be saved by our own righteousness. No one can come before God, no matter how good that person may be, how well behaved, how many charitable deeds that person may perform, how good a citizen or parent that person may be, how hardworking or well behaved that person may be—no one can one day come before the throne of eternal judgment and say, “Here I am. I have nothing for which to repent. Let me enter on the basis of my own righteousness.”

The Bible says that it is not through our own righteousness but through the righteousness of Christ Jesus. It says, “Not by works, so that no one may boast.” All of us, no matter who we are, fall short; we are weak and deficient before God’s court. Only through our goel, our Redeemer, Christ Jesus, can we come before the throne of God. And one day we will all have to come; one day, the Bible says, each of us will have to give an account of what we have done, whether good or bad. And we will need a goel; we will need a Redeemer, Christ Jesus, to plead for us and stand before us, so that the Father will not see us but will see Christ Jesus before He sees us, and will see us through the righteousness of His Son Jesus Christ.

Job did not understand these things, but he was saying them as if in a prophetic trance, as happened on other occasions; throughout Scripture, one sees many passages where people in the Bible spoke about things that would happen hundreds of years later, and only then could what was meant be understood. Such is the case, for example, of the blood that was painted on the lintels of the Hebrews’ doors before they left Egypt. The Bible says that God was going to destroy all the firstborn of the Egyptians, but He commanded that blood from a lamb be put around the door of every Jewish home, and when the angel of death passed by to take the lives of all the firstborn of that country that had rebelled against God, upon seeing the blood on the lintel, he passed over. And that, in fact, is the meaning of the word Passover, pasah, which means to pass over.

So no one understood what was being done, but centuries later we understand that the blood of the Passover Lamb, who is Christ Jesus, is what washes us from all sin. And so the Bible was setting forth a symbol of something that would happen centuries later, which we now understand perfectly.

When Job says “redeemer,” he is saying, “I need, and I know that I have, a redeemer. I have someone who can plead my cause.” Why? Because his friends were accusing him of having sins and saying that this was why God was condemning him, that this was why he was suffering—well-intentioned but foolish friends who did not understand what lay behind Job’s suffering, the whole glorious drama that was taking place.

But Job said, “No, I know…” When his wife tells him, “Curse God and die,” he says, “No, I know that my Redeemer lives. I know that He is with me. I have a redeemer, I have an advocate, I have someone who pleads my cause and who, sooner or later, will show that I am righteous and that I do not deserve this situation.”

And that is how we must see Jesus: as our Redeemer. Do you know Christ as your advocate? Do you know Him as the One who will represent you one day when you have to appear before the throne of God, and who will then turn the throne of judgment into a throne of grace for all who believe in Him? You need to recognize Jesus as your Redeemer.

The second thing Job says is, “I know.” There is an affirmation of great certainty. We must confess with our mouths that Christ is our Redeemer. And I believe Job had anguish in his heart, which is why he says at the end, “Though my heart faints within me.” How many times have we said something even though we did not feel it completely, but we said it because it is God’s truth? We say it, confessing with our mouths things about which we are sometimes uncertain, but when we say them, they become reality.

Confessing Christ as Lord and Savior will never be something about which you say, “I believe with one hundred percent certainty.” There will always be some doubt, what I would call biological doubt. There are times when our biology will betray us, and the Christian life will be a life of struggles and difficulties, and sometimes the devil will say to us, as Job’s wife said to him, “Hey, stop believing that nonsense.”

Nevertheless, we must confess that Jesus Christ is our Savior. We must say, “I know that Christ is my Redeemer.” Are we willing to confess it with our mouths? The Bible says that we must confess Christ as Lord and Savior; we must confess Him before others. The Lord once said, “Whoever confesses Me before men, I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. Whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.”

Do you know why we evangelicals place so much emphasis on people confessing Jesus as Lord and Savior? That is why: because something happens when you declare, as Job did, “I know that He is my Redeemer.” It is as though you sign something in the spiritual realm; with our mouths, we declare something. It is like those electronic transactions where they tell us, “Check this little box here,” meaning that you are signing.

When a man or woman declares something with their mouth, they are putting their will, emotions, personality—their whole being—behind it. And we must reach the point where we say before others, “I know that Christ is my Savior and my Redeemer, and I receive Him as such.”

Are we clear about that? Have all of us who are here confessed Jesus as our Lord and Savior? And if you have not done so, I want to invite you right now to begin moving your spirit in that direction. At the end of this time, I do not want anyone to leave here without being certain that they have a Redeemer, who is Christ Jesus, that you have confessed Him, and that you leave with assurance. Do not come to such a beautiful service as this simply out of habit or inertia, or because someone invited you and you did not want to disappoint them. Leave this place having signed a covenant with Christ Jesus.

The only alternative is to say no: you either say yes or you say no. If you do not say yes, you are saying no. And if you say yes, you are not saying no. So, in the name of the Lord, I invite you right now to place that “I know,” that conviction, within yourself, and then let the Lord continue guiding you.

You know, some people have a little doubt and are struggling in their hearts. Others still do not have everything in their lives straightened out: they have a romantic relationship they know is not from God, or some practice in their lives that is not what God wants, or they are still addicted to something, or whatever it may be, and they say, “No, I cannot confess Christ as my Lord and Savior.” You know, what God wants is for you to begin where you are, and from there He will gradually lead you where He wants to take you. But you have to begin.

Do not let the devil deceive you by saying, “No, not yet…” because the day you have everything completely ready and straightened out, you will no longer need Jesus. If you are a sinner, welcome to the club. That is precisely where God needs you to be in order to begin a work of transformation in your life. If you are a sinner, you are more than qualified to accept Christ as your Lord and Savior.

When I look at the passages of Scripture, I see that time and again the Lord encountered… Look at Zacchaeus, a sinner… Zacchaeus had not repented; he had not confessed Jesus as Lord and Savior. But the Lord said to him, “Zacchaeus, today I want to enter your house, and I want to sit down in your home.” And there the Lord began a work in Zacchaeus until Zacchaeus was brought to confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

The same was true of the Samaritan woman. They were all people who were not yet ready, but by receiving Christ within themselves and into their homes, the Lord was then able to work in them and lead them where He needed to take them. Begin by confessing Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and He will then lead you where you need to go.

Job says, “I know that my Redeemer lives”—my Redeemer. By saying “my,” he is personalizing that saving role of Christ Jesus. He is not a generic Savior; He is a personal Savior, which was what Job needed at that moment.

Can each of us who is here this afternoon say with complete assurance—or at least with spiritual assurance—that Christ is your personal Savior, your personal Lord? You know that you cannot depend on your mother being an evangelical, or your grandmother having been a Sunday school teacher, or having worn a white dress and a mantilla when she went to church. Someone has said that God has no grandchildren; He has only children. There are no grandchildren in the Kingdom of God; there are children. There are people who have personally confessed Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

Christ must be your Lord. You have to make a covenant with Him. You have to invite Him into your heart. We must establish a personal, individual relationship with Jesus Christ, and we must walk every day with our hand in His, following a path along which Christ becomes real in our lives.

It is not the church. Many people lean on the church; they come to church and shelter under the covering of Mother Church. But the Bible says that each one of us must individually accept Christ as Lord and Savior. The Lord says, “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will enter and dine with him, and he with Me.”

The Lord reached every person portrayed in Scripture individually, and many times He asked them, “Do you believe who I am? Do you believe I can do this?” Do you believe that Jesus Christ is your personal Lord and Savior? Do not lean on the church. Do not lean on a general confession. Have you accepted the Lord? Has the Lord seen that moment when your soul stirred within you, went toward Him, and said, “Lord, enter my life”? Have you personally invited Him to enter your heart? Have you begun a daily relationship with Christ, in which He will then begin to speak to you, begin to deal with you, begin to reconfigure your brain and your neurons, impart new habits to you, teach you His Word, and then take you along a path of gradual sanctification, in which God will renew you day by day?

That is what God calls us to. He calls us to the transformation of our minds through the daily renewal of our hearts. Job said, “I know that my Redeemer lives.” And that word “lives” is a word that becomes greatly impoverished when it enters Spanish, and even English as well, because the Hebrew is much more complex in its implications.

When Job says in the original Hebrew, “My Redeemer lives,” the word he uses, according to all the commentators I have read, is a word that refers not to just any kind of living being, but to God, to deity. That is, we could say that when Job says, “I know that my Redeemer lives,” he is saying, “I know that my Redeemer is the Living One; He is alive as God is alive.”

If you would like me to give you an illustration, because this is a very important point, in the book of Genesis you remember the story of Hagar, Ishmael’s mother. When Hagar finds herself abandoned in the desert and she and her son are about to die, God sees her, the Bible says, and rescues her and makes promises to her concerning her son Ishmael. God found her at a well, and the Bible says that Hagar gave that well a name: the well of the Living One who sees me. And in many words, “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,” the Bible says.

This idea of being alive, of living existence, is the word Job uses here to refer to his Redeemer. He says, “I know that my Redeemer is the Living One; He is the living God. He is alive. He is a God who embodies life.” And what do we celebrate on Resurrection Sunday? A living Christ. We say, “I know that our Redeemer lives.” And that is what we have declared this afternoon. We have a Redeemer who lives; “He is alive,” we declare.

And that is something so important that we must understand it. If Christ was not raised, the Bible says, we are the worst off in the world; we are to be pitied, because then Jesus becomes simply one more martyr who died and who, like Buddha, like all the others, like Muhammad and all the other religious reformers, died. Christianity is the only religion that dares to say that its Savior is alive.

And that is what we celebrate on Resurrection Sunday. No one, no other religion, dares to say this. Throughout the centuries, many great minds have set out to refute the resurrection. One of the most recent people to do so was a very well-known journalist here in the United States, a man of great renown in journalism. When his wife converted, his world came crashing down because he was an atheist. And wanting to save her from that deception which, according to him, Christianity was, he used all his journalistic skills and set out to conduct an investigation as though it were… because his field was legal journalism: he covered courts and wrote legal reports for his newspaper, one of the great newspapers in the United States.

And he says that he spent more than a year investigating all the different fields that could have a bearing on the resurrection and on the life and existence of Jesus Christ. He investigated medicine, all the accounts of the crucifixion and death, the church’s claims that Christ had risen, and His existence. He conducted an exhaustive study, as only a journalist of his renown and intellectual ability could have done. And he set out to investigate it in such a way that, if there were anything that could prove that Jesus’ resurrection was a lie, he intended to find it. And do you know what? He ended up accepting Christ as his Lord and Savior, and today he is one of the renowned pastors of this nation. In fact, a movie has just been released—which I recommend that you see, although unfortunately it is not playing in every theater—called The Case for Christ. The journalist is Lee Strobel, and he wrote that book, which is one of the best-selling books of recent years. Millions and millions of copies of his book have been sold, and in it he recounts how he was drawn out of his atheism into the conviction that Jesus Christ had truly risen.

One of the very important things is this, brothers and sisters: if you do not believe that Jesus is the Redeemer, your faith is defective. If you do not believe that he is your Redeemer, you are also missing an important piece. If you are not clear in your conviction and have not confessed with your mouth that he is your Redeemer, you are missing something. And if you cannot believe that he is alive today, you are missing something very important. I call you, in the name of Jesus, to confess the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We cannot be genuine Christians if we cannot confess that Jesus Christ is alive, that our Redeemer lives. And that is what we are doing this Sunday. And the last piece I want to leave with us this afternoon is to make sure that we are all clear about this; and if you are not clear, I want us to comb through this congregation today, and we are going to ask the Holy Spirit that no one leave here without having made that confession. And I ask everyone to remain very quiet; let us gather our children close, and let us have a moment of quiet so that all of us can give this very careful consideration.

Our brother and sister ushers, please help us with this. The last thing Job declares is when he says, “And at last he shall stand upon the dust; and after this skin of mine has been destroyed, in my flesh I shall see God.” The Holy Spirit, without Job understanding it, 1,500 years before the doctrine of the resurrection, the doctrine of the Last Judgment, the doctrine of the last days and the end of the world came, guided Job to make a very powerful declaration that we too must make.

And it is that one day everything we know will come to an end. The museums with all their marvelous works of art, those beautiful paintings, those statues, will melt like hot lead; the great buildings of Wall Street and Paris and Germany will be torn down, they will come crashing down like a house of cards; the great airplanes, the great constructions of the world, the great ships—the Bible says that the elements will be melted before giving birth to a new creation.

One day all the nations of the world will acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord. All the things of this world, all the vanities of this world, will pass away, it says; and at last, at the end of the ages, he shall stand upon the dust. And again, what the original Hebrew actually says is, “He shall stand upon the earth, upon the dust of the earth.” At the end of the world, at the end of days, the Lord shall stand upon the earth; the Lord shall establish his lordship, his sovereignty, his power over the dust of the earth.

The Bible says that one day the Lord will descend with the voice of an archangel, with a trumpet, and will stand upon the Mount of Olives; and the Bible says that the Mount of Olives will split in two beneath the weight of his lordship, and a great valley will form beneath him. And the Lord will declare that all the kingdoms of the earth belong to him alone, and he will be the Lord of Lords, acknowledged by all the nations of the earth. Then the Lord will hand the kingdom over to his heavenly Father and will say, “It has been delivered to me, and now I deliver it to you, so that God may be in all, over all, and through all.” Hallelujah!

And do you know what? We will be there to celebrate with Christ for eternity. And that is what Job declares here. Job says, “After my skin, my body, has been destroyed, after I have died, after the worms have eaten my body”—that is what the original Hebrew says, far more graphically than what appears here—“in my flesh I shall see God.”

How many here in this place believe that we are going to be raised together with Christ Jesus? Can you truly confess it with your mouth? Because that, ultimately, brothers and sisters, is what comforts us, assures us, strengthens us: this hope that we have. You know, that is the Christian’s last card to play. We can say to the Lord, “Father, heal me,” if we are sick; we can say to him, “Lord, get me out of this predicament I am in,” and perhaps God will get you out, perhaps he will not. “Lord, help me get out of this or that predicament.” But the last card we play is that if we die, we die for him; if we live, we live for him. Whether we die or live, we belong to the Lord. Hallelujah!

We will all have to die unless we are that generation that will be here when Christ comes. We will all suffer. What comforts me in this world is knowing that the cares and sufferings of this world are nothing compared with the glory awaiting us in our heavenly homeland. And for you to have that comfort in your heart, my brother, you must truly believe that you will see God in your flesh. You will not see him through a video—no. “With my own eyes,” Job says, “whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold him, and not another.” Hallelujah!

You know that your body is temporary; your body is frail. You may leave at the age of 20, or 30, or 80, or 100. But the wonderful thing for a child of God is that our existence is not determined by how many years we spend on earth; rather, we have eternal life, and one day we will see God face to face. On that day every tear will be wiped from our eyes and every complaint will be silenced. We live in this world and experience the cares, discomforts, troubles, and sufferings of this world as Job did. At that moment he was covered with sores and afflicted with pain, but he said, “Though my body is destroyed, I know that I will see him with my own eyes; with my body I will see him.”

Oh, my brother, my sister, I hope that this afternoon you too can be certain that your life, your body, your eternal existence are in God’s hands, and that if you leave this place at this very moment, when you walk out that door, no one can steal what God has given you, which is your eternal salvation, the salvation of your body.

I want us to bow our heads this afternoon, and as we listen to the worship for a minute, I invite you to the greatest privilege a man or woman can have, which is to consider whether you are clear about the Lord’s claims upon you. Right now the Lord presents himself before you, and he becomes present in hundreds of places throughout this space. He stands before you right now in his royal robes and knocks at the door of your heart; he touches your will and your feelings, and he says, “May I come in? May I come in as your personal Savior? May I come in as your Redeemer? May I come in as the guarantor of your eternal life? May I come in as the one who is your righteousness on the day when you must appear before the throne of judgment?” And only you have the handle on the other side of the door that can open the door to the Lord, because he will not force it. You are the one who must open that door.

And I invite you now, in the name of Jesus, to open the door. Picture yourself opening the door, if you have not done so before. You reach out your hand toward that door and place it on the handle. On the other side is the radiant person of Jesus Christ, and he is waiting for you to open the door and say to him, “Lord, come into my house. Walk through every room of my house; walk through my will, my emotions, my body, my recollections and memories, my appetites, my dreams, my projects and plans, my human relationships, my profession—all the rooms of my house. Lord, I invite you to walk through them and plant your flag in each one of them, and I receive you, acknowledge you, accept you, and confess you as my living Redeemer, my personal Redeemer, my Savior.”

And if you have performed that act this afternoon, if you have carried it out, I want to invite you to raise your hand this afternoon, right now. Raise your hand and, before your congregation and your community, invite Jesus to be your Lord and Savior. All those who wish to confess Jesus for the first time, if you have not done so before, I invite you to raise your hand high. Do not be afraid; do not be ashamed. Confess Jesus.

God bless you, my sister. God bless you. God bless you, my brother. I know that God is doing a beautiful work in your life. God bless those hands being raised. Brother, do not be afraid. What a precious day, when you can say, “I know that my Redeemer lives.” God bless you. Let those hands be raised. I know there are many hands. I believe we are going to have a harvest this afternoon as never before; we confess it in the name of the Lord. Raise your hand. Up there too. If anyone sees someone raising a hand, go over to them. Open the door to the Lord; take hold of the handle and open the door, and say, “Lord, come in. Dine with me; I want to dine with you. I receive you; I confess you, my living Redeemer. I know that one day I will see you in eternity. You are my God. You are my Lord, my Savior.”