Editor’s note: On 8 December 2023, my best friend Necia died after a brief battle with colon cancer. I had the privilege to preach at her home church the Sunday after her death.
Siloam Baptist in Llanrumney, Cardiff, Wales
There was a woman in the land of Wales whose name was Necia, and that woman was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.
I expect some of you recognize my paraphrasing of Job 1:1. Not long after Necia was diagnosed with colon cancer, I read through the Book of Job as a way to wrestle with God. Job tells the story of a man who was stripped of his family, his possessions, and his health. He lost everything. But in the end, he sees God, and God restores all that the enemy took and more.
So as Necia encountered complications and began to decline, I returned to certain passages in Job. I found myself meditating, contemplating, questioning… yes, learning. So I wish to share what God has been teaching me through Necia and Job.
I met Necia 15 years ago through the Internet. Yes, you heard that right. The border agent gave me that exact look some of you have when I came to the UK for the first time.
I was wary of trusting anyone online. But I enjoyed our talks. I asked God if I could trust this Necia. The LORD said, “Yes, you can trust her.” Some of the most true words I’ve ever heard from God.
Necia and I talked via text every day for more than 14 years. Every day. She was my confidant, my closest spiritual friend, my big sister in Christ.
And all of you here have been loved deeply and extravagantly by Necia. We’ve been ministered to by her. She has prayed for us. Hugged us. Fed us. Led us into worship. Pointed us to Christ.
And so we’re aching to know WHY God has allowed her to die early and in this way. Why?!
I cannot answer the why. But, following Necia’s lead, I can tell you WHO is responsible for Necia’s deep well of love and compassion. I can tell you WHO gave us the precious gift of Necia for the time we were allowed. And I can tell you WHO has made a way for us to see her again.
We’ll look at three passages in Job. They will speak to Job’s and Necia’s trust in their God.
Some speak of the “patience of Job.” But patience is not quite right. It was trust, it was faith in the God that Job desired to know personally. That is the same God that Necia knows personally and intimately. That same God desires that ALL of us know him as Necia knows him.
In the book of Job, we see this man – Job – lose everything: his house, his possessions, his children, his health, the support of his wife and friends. Most of the book is Job’s friends arguing that he must have done something wrong to deserve all this misfortune. His wife tells him to curse God and die. But Job knows he’s done nothing to merit all the disasters of his life. He argues for his righteousness before God and demands to make his case before God.
If it weren’t for chapters 1 and 2, where we see God and Satan talking about Job, we’d think Job’s friends were right: Job must have done something wrong. But God himself calls Job blameless.
We are all sinners saved by grace. Necia knew that. But she also knew that the cancer was not a punishment from God. Unlike Job, she knew that God has his reasons for allowing this or that into our lives and that we’re not in a position to question him. God’s wisdom surpasses our own.
Let’s start in Job 16. It is one of Job’s many prayers. His friends have just blasted him again, and Job fights back. Job says God has left him to be beat up by wicked people. Then he cries, fro, verse 19:
O Earth, don’t cover up the wrong done to me!
Don’t muffle my cry!
There must be Someone in heaven who knows the truth about me,
in highest heaven, some Attorney who can clear my name—
My Champion, my Friend,
while I’m weeping my eyes out before God.
I appeal to the One who represents mortals before God
as a neighbor stands up for a neighbor. (MSG)
This caught my attention so I looked at it more closely. Here’s another translation:
Behold, now in the heavens is my advocate who vouches for me above. My friends scorn me. To God I weep. My advocate argues with God for a person and as a son of man for his friend. (my translation)
It was the son of man that caught my attention. Son of man. Where have we heard that before? Son of Man is Jesus’ favorite title for himself in the Gospels.
At its most basic, son of man means human. But it goes deeper. Son of Man appears prominently in Ezekiel and in Daniel, so the title has great significance in Judaism. By the time of Jesus, Son of Man had messianic connotations… and yes, even divine implications. Some Jews WERE expecting a divine messiah![1]
In Ezekiel, the Son of Man is a priestly figure who stands in the gap as the representative human.
In Daniel 7, the prophet sees “one like a son of man” sit on a throne next to the Ancient of Days and receive power and dominion over all the nations. Daniel sees a man sit on the throne in heaven… a God-Man. When Jesus calls himself the Son of Man, he is saying I am that God-Man.
On this side of the cross, we clearly see Jesus as this divine Son of Man. He points to himself as the Son of Man. It is this claim that costs him his life. How dare a human say he is equal with God! But Jesus wasn’t a man who made himself to be God. No! Jesus is God who came down and became man to redeem our suffering.
And all the way back in Job, Job knews there is someone on his side in heaven. Maybe he didn’t know the details of who exactly the Son of Man is. But he knew he had an Advocate who defended him before the Ancient of Days.
Necia also knew – and now knows fully – that her Advocate Jesus was interceding for her through all of this. Hebrews tell us that Jesus “is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them (Heb 7:25).”
Jesus lives to make intercession for YOU. Jesus is praying for you directly to the Father.
This intercession is something we learn from Jesus. When God says, “Be holy like I am holy” he is calling us to act like him. In this case, he calls us to intercede and pray for others like he prays for us. And we see this in the life of Job, too.
Let’s jump to the end of Job for our second passage, Job 42. In this chapter, God has already appeared to Job and replied to his demands. God basically says, Job, you can’t see the whole picture. You did not create anything in the universe. I am God and you are not.
And Job is gobsmacked, speechless, for a time silent. Then he says,
I babbled on about things far beyond me,
talked about wonders way over my head. …
I admit I once lived by rumors of you;
now I have it all firsthand—from my own eyes and ears!
I’m sorry—forgive me. I’ll never do that again, I promise!
I’ll never again live on crusts of hearsay, crumbs of rumor.” (Job 42:1-6 MSG)
Job thought he knew God. Then he SAW him, HEARD his thundering voice and, like Isaiah, understands, “Woe is me! … for I am a man of unclean lips.”
Then God turns to Job’s friends,
7 … the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. 8 Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves. And my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly. For you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” 9 So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did what the Lord had told them, and the Lord accepted Job's prayer. 10 And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends. (Job 42:7-10)
This really overwhelmed me as I wrestle with God about questions in my own life. Here we are at the end of the saga. God has stripped Job down to nothing but a diseased existence to prove to Satan that Job trusts God for God, not for all the good things he had in his life at first. Job really does love and trust God… and even more so now that he has spoken to him directly.
Then God has Job intercede for his friends. Not just pray but act as a priest and offer atoning sacrifice. “And the LORD accepted Job’s prayer.”
In chapter 16, Job is calling out for his Advocate in heaven. But here, in chapter 42, Job is a foreshadowing of our Advocate in heaven.
We’re in Advent right now awaiting the coming of the King at Christmas. And we will remember for the next few months how Jesus was born of a virgin in Bethlehem and grew up a carpenter’s son in Nazareth. We think that he must have experienced the death of Joseph, his adoptive father. After he was baptized and started his ministry, Jesus suffers the death of his cousin John. Then he was rejected, first, by his hometown and later by the Jewish leadership.
As they move to kill him, Jesus was stripped of his freedom and his civil rights. He was stripped of his clothes and his health as the Roman soldiers whipped him and beat him so that he was not even recognizable as human. Then he was stripped of his dignity as he was nailed to a cross, most likely completely naked. And slowly the crucifixion stripped him of the ability to breathe.
But what does he say? “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Stripped of everything and suffocating on the cross, Jesus prays for his friends, his neighbors, and his enemies. And Father accepted Jesus’ prayer.
The Son of Man, the one who sits next to the Father and rules the universe, came down and suffered like we all do and more. Why?! To serve as our Great High Priest. Jesus, like Job, was stripped of his possessions, his health, his friends. But God raised him up to ever intercede for us. He is the atoning sacrifice that makes us right with God. He is the priest who prays for us,
15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Heb 4:15-16)
And Necia imitated our LORD in this, as she could. Jesus makes us all priests under him so we can minister mercy in this world. From her hospice bed, Necia was praying for us.
On Wednesday evening, Necia was already quite weak and not saying much. The hospice was very peaceful, but a new patient in the ward was very loud that evening. She was quite mobile, so this woman was up and down from her bed, talking loudly on the phone with her TV blaring. I was losing patience for myself and for Necia, who had been blessed by how quiet the hospice was compared to the hospital.
When I am struggling with impatience or unkind thoughts, I quietly pray, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me a sinner.”
Necia heard me muttering and asked me what I said. “Nothing,” I told her, “I’m praying for myself.”
“Tell me what you are praying for so I can pray for you,” she replied.
There she was laying in her hospice bed dying, and she’s offering to pray for me! The hospice chaplain, from the few days he knew Necia, already knew she was a woman of prayer, interceding for her friends and family… and probably the other patients and nurses.
Necia was still touching lives and endearing herself to people as she lay dying. The day they moved her to a private room because she was in her last hours, one of the nurses came in and wept. She had known Necia for days, and she was as grieved as those of us who have known her for years.
Necia was stripped of her health, her home, her privacy, and she was still imitating Jesus… teaching us how to be like Jesus even in the face of death.
Now we come to our third passage, in Job 19. It is perhaps the best-known prayer in the Book of Job:
23 “Oh that my words were written!
Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
24 Oh that with an iron pen and lead
they were engraved in the rock forever!
25 For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
26 And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God,
27 whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
For the time we have left, let’s focus on verse 25:
For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
Redeemer has a twofold meaning. The kinsman redeemer could buy you back from slavery or poverty, like in the Book of Ruth. The kinsman redeemer was also the avenger of blood, the family member who defended your name and honor when you were killed by somebody else.
Job knows his kinsman redeemer is alive and will advocate for him and avenge him. “And at the last he will stand on the earth.” That earth there isn’t the word for the planet earth as in other places but for earth as in dirt, soil… or even ashes.[2] It’s the same word as in Genesis 3 where God tells Adam and Eve “for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. (Gen. 3:19).
So what I see Job saying is
For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the dust and ashes. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God.
Job knows he will die and return to dust, “yet in my flesh I shall see God.”
Necia knew she was dying, but she knew that in her resurrected flesh she will see God.
On the first day I saw her in the hospice, I asked Necia, “How are you? How is your heart?”
“I am at peace,” she said, “and people seem surprised.”
I was not surprised. I knew she had lived her life submitted to the will of the Father and she was just continuing to do that even in the face of death. Yes, she was grieved by the illness. She was upset that it was caught so late. She had moments of nervousness and fear. But she would place all that at the feet of Jesus and trust. And her peace and faith radiated from her bed and ministered to those around her.
Richard, you and Necia taught me how to trust God completely. I thought I knew. I thought I had faith. And I did, but God wanted to call me deeper. And he brought me to you. Living with you and Necia has been a masterclass in faith. You have lived out what Eugene Peterson calls the “long obedience in the same direction” and it pleases the heart of God.
Christian friends, God is calling us to a deeper faith. Be assured that we have an Advocate in heaven – Jesus the Messiah – interceding for us before the Father. Our Great High Priest has made the atoning sacrifice for us, and the Father has accepted it. Not only are we free to enter the throneroom of heaven in worship and prayer, but we are called to minister God’s mercy to those around us. Keep feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless. Keep comforting the grieving. Keep sitting with the lonely. Keep loving the “unloveable.” Be Jesus to each other but also to those who wouldn’t pass those doors back there.
Necia knew that she has an Advocate in heaven. She knew that wholeness and health and resurrection life were awaiting her on the other side. She knew she would see her Advocate – Jesus the Messiah – when she crossed through the door called Death.
Because that same Jesus Christ passed through that door first. Jesus willingly suffered and died for Necia and for every one listening to this.
He can offer forgiveness for our sins because he suffered and died. He crossed that gate of Death so we would no longer fear it. If you visited Necia in her final days, you know that she did not fear Death. She knew it was merely a door to her Beloved Jesus!
Yes, we weep on this side because the Lord gave us Necia and he took her away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!
But she’s waiting for us. She’s still, in her death, pointing us to the Jesus who she trusted wholeheartedly. Oh, that we would trust him like she does! And so receive his love and forgiveness and healing, like she has.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Footnotes
[1] Boyarin, Daniel. The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ. Paperback edition. New York: The New Press, 2013.
[2] L. Wächter, “עָפָר,” Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001) 257–258.