I. Faith is most sorely tried when the hand of God touches ourselves. Yet even then the patriarch Job believed in the coming of Christ "I know," he said. True faith is solid, sure as knowledge. The senses know what will pass away and be no more; faith sees and knows what will abide for ever.
II. He contrasts, not only life with death, but life as the product of death. The glory of Christ began with the grave. What is the end of all earthly glory, and greatness, and wisdom and power is but the beginning of the heavenly. As to Him, so to us, the grave is the vestibule to glory. "We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is."
III. This change and transformation must begin here. Christ rose that thou mightest rise, but first from sin to grace, from vice to virtue, from things earthly to things spiritual, from love of self to the love of God. The road lies, not in feeling, but in acting, not in longing, but in obeying.
E. B. Pusey, Parochial and Cathedral Sermons,p. 406.
References: Job 19:25. R. Glover, Homiletic Magazine,vol. x., p. 243; G. D. Boardman, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxx., p. 345; Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Genesis to Proverbs,p. 126; Ibid., Morning by Morning,p. 112.