Teeth Don't Have Skin. Job Knew That Too.

You made the flight with thirty seconds to spare. You slid into the church parking lot at 10:29. You passed that class with a D-minus and a prayer. "Made it by the skin of my teeth!"

Now hold on. Let's think about that for a second. Run your tongue across your teeth right now. Go ahead, nobody's looking. Feel any skin? No? Me neither. So where in the world did we get this?

You guessed it. The Bible. The book of Job, chapter 19.

A man with almost nothing left

You know Job's story. He's a good man, "blameless and upright," the Bible says, and in a short span he loses everything: his wealth, his children, and his health. His body is covered in sores. His friends show up, and they're a comfort for about a week until they open their mouths. Then they spend chapter after chapter explaining that Job must have done something to deserve this.

By chapter 19, Job is at the bottom. Listen to him:

He has put my brothers far from me, and those who knew me are wholly estranged from me. (Job 19:13)

His family's gone. His friends have turned on him. Then he says the line we still use:

My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. (Job 19:20)

What did Job mean?

Honestly, nobody's completely sure, and I'd rather tell you that than make something up. The Hebrew is hard, and scholars have gone back and forth. Some think "the skin of my teeth" means his gums. Others think it's a vivid way to say he has nothing left. Either way, he's wasting away. He's skin and bones, and the only thing he got out with is something so thin it barely exists.

Here's how it got into our mouths. The first English Bible to use the phrase was the Geneva Bible in 1560. That was the Bible the Pilgrims and Shakespeare's England knew. It translated the Hebrew very literally, and it said Job escaped with the skin of his teeth. The King James kept that wording in 1611, and English speakers ran with it. Over time "with" became "by," and the phrase came to mean a narrow escape.

So today it's a happy phrase. You barely made it, but you made it. In Job it's a cry of pain from a man hanging on by almost nothing.

Keep reading

But don't stop at verse 20, because five verses later Job says one of the most stunning things in the whole Old Testament:

For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, (Job 19:25-26)

Wait a minute. This is the same man. He has no money, no family, no health, and no friends worth the name. He's got almost nothing left. And out of that comes: I know that my Redeemer lives.

Job didn't have answers. He wouldn't get the "why" for a long time, and in a sense he never got it. What he did have was a Redeemer. And he knew that even if his skin was destroyed, he'd see God with his own eyes.

You're not holding on by your teeth

Can I tell you something? Some of you reading this feel like you're hanging on by the skin of your teeth right now. Your marriage, your faith, your sobriety, your bank account.

Here's the good news. Your salvation was never about how hard you could hold on. It's about who's holding you. Jesus said:

I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. (John 10:28)

Job's Redeemer has a name, and his name is Jesus. He stood on this earth, just like Job said. He went into the grave to get you out, and he walked out alive.

So if all you've got today is the skin of your teeth, bring it to him. That's enough for him to work with. Grip doesn't save you. A Redeemer does, and he lives.