Jesus in Job
May 31, 2023
One Mediator
God has placed about us certain props to make us stand straight and upright. Ecclesiastes 7:29 puts it like this, “ … God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes [devices].”
God has clothed us all, godly and ungodly, with an armor of protection, a security; He makes it rain on the just and unjust. The wicked get just as much sunshine and air to breathe and their health is just as good as those that are the godly, those that are of Christ today.
The devil knows that if he can get to us, remove those props, strip us of every vestige of aid, take away our soft garment of security, take away our blanket, he can upset us and turn us upside down, destroy our morale, rearrange our thinking, brainwash us. And therefore, God places a hedge around us to keep the devil away.
Now sometimes the devil is permitted to crash the gate. And he’ll strip a person down to their naked soul. God permitted the devil to brainwash Job. The book of Job presents the problem, states the stripping down of his soul with no solution.
If you want to find the solution to Job’s dilemma, you must go to the New Testament for the real answer. It’s sort of like the algebra book I had at school. The problems were in the front of the book; the answers were in the back. And the Bible is like that. You get the problem here. You turn over to the New Testament, you get the answer.
Now the Old Testament, in many respects, is a very unsatisfactory book, by the way. Nothing actually is solved there. And as someone has put it, “The Old Testament is expectation. The New Testament is realization.” We have to go to the New Testament in order to get the answer. “For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). And that’s the answer to Job’s cry. “Oh, that there were an umpire to stand between us” (see Job 9:33). Job said, “If there was only someone that could take hold of the hand of God and take hold of mine and bring us together.”
And there is someone today. His name is Jesus, our Mediator and Advocate.