In today’s passage, Job expresses how great God is compared to us. God’s power and wisdom are so vast that no human can resist Him and remain unscathed. When He acts, no one can stop Him. Even if we were innocent, being in His presence would cause us to declare our guilt because He is so much more than us. We cannot even begin to imagine that we might answer any charges God might bring against us, even if such charges were not true. All of this Job declares, and it is true. Which leads Job to wish for a mediator, Someone who could listen to us as another mortal would yet who could stand before God as an equal. Thank God that He has provided such a mediator in the form of Jesus Christ, Who is both God and man.
Every time I read today’s passage I am struck by what Job says in chapter 9 verses 32 through 35. I know I have touched on it previously, but I want to look at it closer this year. Here Job expresses a wish that there was a being which could act as a mediator between himself and God. He expressed that desire after describing how no mortal can argue their case before God because He is so much more powerful, just, and righteous than any of us can possibly be. Standing in the presence of a Being such as God is, leaves even the most upright mortal trembling in fear. This leads Job to desire a being which could act as a mediator so that the terror of being in God’s presence would not leave us tongue-tied and unable to speak.
Which leads us to two lessons. If we truly understand who and what God is, we will tremble and be paralyzed by our inadequacy and sinfulness before Him. The first step to salvation, to being more than a broken, useless thing, is to fear God with a “hide under the table” sort of fear. Before we can learn of His love and truly understand it we must feel the overwhelming terror of being in His Presence and feel in our bones the need for Someone to mediate between ourselves and God. And from His Grace and Love, God has provided just such a mediator in Jesus Christ. Once we perceive our complete inadequacy in the face of God’s omnipotence, we can understand the love which led Him to become human and come to us on our level. Job cried out of our need for a mediator, and God revealed that He would provide just such a mediator. Every time I read this passage, I praise God for sending Jesus to be such a mediator between myself (and every other human being) and God.
In many ways the Book of Job illustrates that sometimes the best thing you can do to comfort a friend who is suffering is to merely sit there and listen to them. In his first two monologues Job expresses his desire for an end to his suffering, he asks for death rather than to continue suffering (it just occurred to me that the Book of Job may be a case study against assisted suicide). In the second monologue which starts today’s passage, Job seeks death because if he were to die at this point he could be sure that he had not denied God, which would give him consolation and even joy. But Job’s friends, in their effort to help him, accuse him of wickedness. In a way, they are taking from him his one remaining comfort. In their effort to find a way to help him, Job’s friends actually lead him into the sin of questioning God’s justice (perhaps sin is too strong of a word here, but God does call Job out for questioning Him at the end of the Book). So, let us seek to remain faithful to God, even when we face suffering, and let us seek to not make the mistake which Job’s friends made of accusing our friends of sin when they suffer.
There is really a lot in what Job says in today’s passage. I do not think I will cover all of it. I will start with Job’s expression of his feelings. He told his friends that he was in so much misery that he wanted to die. He felt like he had no more strength to endure the pain. He just wanted the pain to end. Instead of giving him words of encouragement, Bildad accused him of sin, told him that all of his suffering was because he had sinned. Job replies by expressing how great God is, that a mere human cannot hope to confront God, cannot even understand God’s perspective well enough to make a case for being innocent before Him. Job then says one of the most important things in this book. He asks for a mediator between himself and God, for someone who he, a mere mortal, could comprehend whom a mortal could trust to understand the concerns of a mortal and convey them to God. I have worded that poorly, but Job was asking for Jesus. Jesus is the mediator for whom Job yearned.
While reading the Book of Job it is important to remember that in the end God confronts Job and condemns his three friends for their lack of compassion. As a result, this is one of those parts of the Bible which most needs repeated reading to know where the person speaking is expressing a truth we should take to heart and where they are expressing a thought we should reject. Keeping that in mind I believe that most of what Job says near the beginning of the Book expresses opinions we should value and only later in the Book does he begin to fall into self-pity. When we suffer we are not sinning when we spend some time expressing how badly we feel. It is OK to express our anguish. Closely related to that, Job tells us that pointing out where someone is causing their suffering will hurt their feelings but has value. However, telling someone that their suffering is because they have done wrong when we do not know anything they have done wrong is worse than useless. Suffering is not evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the one suffering.
Job responds to Eliphaz by asking rhetorically if he does not have the right to cry out in pain when he suffers, a right to complain about the pain he experiences. He then answers his own question by giving examples from nature. He goes on to tell Eliphaz that his attempt at comfort was no comfort at all. But he takes Eliphaz’s advice and lays his case before God. However, Job goes beyond crying out to God for relief. He accuses God of tormenting him. Which brings us to Bildad’s response to Job. Bildad accuses Job of claiming that God is unjust and tells him that if his children died because they were guilty of some grave sin. Even if it is true, telling that to a grieving parent serves no useful purpose. Worse still, Bildad uses that as a jumping off point to tell Job that all he has to do to be restored to fortune and happiness is turn from his sins and seek God. By doing so, Bildad implies that the only reason Job is suffering is because he sinned.
Job replies to Bildad by pointing out that even if he put on a happy face as Eliphaz had suggested his pain would still be there; he would still be suffering. He points out that while God does things too marvelous to understand, that is the problem; those things are too marvelous to understand. We know that he does these things, we even see them being done, but we cannot see God, nor understand why He does what He does. As a result we cannot reason with God, because we do not understand Him. Job points out that there is a disconnect between our understanding and God’s. Then Job makes a most insightful statement: if only there was a mediator between man and God who could translate God’s thoughts so that we could understand each other. And we have such a mediator in Jesus Christ.
A little further on in his cry to God Job says something else very insightful, something which reflects a worldview basic to the Bible. The New International Version translates Job 10:10-11 as:<blockquote>Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese, clothe me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews?</blockquote>
God did indeed form each and everyone of us. So, only God has the right to decide when our lives will come to their end. This understanding forms the basis for the prohibition against child sacrifice, or human sacrifice of any kind. Here it is the basis for Job’s complaint: did God form him merely to make him suffer? And yet Job wonders why God would have allowed him to be born if his only purpose was to suffer.
I have never truly suffered from depression, but every time I read the Book of Job I feel even more strongly that reading it offers relief from that malady. The Book of Job does not offer an easy answer to suffering. In fact it tells us that there is no easy answer. Which should offer some relief to those who are suffering and do not understand why.
I always struggle with the Book of Job because of the need to keep in mind God’s condemnation of what Job’s friends say and His rebuke of Job. If you read Job, it is obvious that the first and most important lesson of the book is that suffering is not evidence that the sufferer is any more a sinner than anyone else. However, the length of the book tells us that there is more to be learned than just that. As I mentioned yesterday, Job is an example to us that we can faithfully serve God in the midst of suffering: that being faithful in the face of suffering may be our calling. I am going to paraphrase what Job said in the first part of today’s passage, “If I died now, I could be happy because, despite my pain and suffering, I have not denied God nor turned against Him.” So, whatever pain and suffering we face in this life, let us follow Job’s example and remain faithful to God in the midst of them.
Then Bildad responds and more explicitly blames Job’s suffering on his sin…without ever pointing out what that sin might be. This is perhaps one of the most important places to note that God condemned Job’s three friends. Bildad assumes that Job’s children died in their tragedy because of their sin, even though he knows of no sin which they committed. Further, Bildad is sure that those who prosper are godly and that the godly will prosper. Bildad is unequivocally wrong. Those who are suffering are not necessarily greater sinners than others and those who prosper are not necessarily godly.
Job speaks once more and tells us how much greater than us God is. He is mighty and powerful beyond the limits of our ability to imagine. God’s greatness inspires fear in us, as it should. Job complains that the fear which God inspires in us makes it impossible for us to plead our case before God, it would do so even if we were innocent of sin. Then Job expresses the plea that all men who understand God’s greatness and goodness have felt, if not expressed: “If only there were a mediator between us, someone who could bring us together.” And this is the great message of Christianity. There is indeed a mediator to bring Man and God together. That mediator is Jesus Christ.
In his reply to Eliphaz Job makes clear just how great his suffering is: he cannot eat, not even egg whites, because of the misery, he cannot sleep because the pain is too much. Job goes on to proclaim his innocence. He confronts his friends for assuming his guilt with no thought for his great suffering, no thought for his desperation. They could not point to something he had done wrong, they just assumed that his suffering was evidence that he must have done something wrong. Bildad replies by once more saying that Job’s children must have sinned and that is why they died. Further, if Job would just humble himself before God and confess his sins, his suffering would end. Bildad does get one thing right. He says that God will not reject those with integrity and will bring joy back to those who continue to honor Him, no matter how much they may suffer in the meantime.
Job responds that Bildad is correct in principle, but who can be considered innocent when compared to God. How can we hope to make a case to defend ourselves before God? He is so much greater than us, knows so much more. No matter how pure we make ourselves, we are still dirty and impure when brought into the presence of God. Then Job makes one of the great insights of the Bible. We need a mediator between us and God. It cannot be someone human because they would have all of the weaknesses and flaws which we ourselves have. In Job’s call for a mediator between God and man, we see the need for Christ. Only Christ can fill that role, experiencing and empathizing with human suffering but containing the full greatness of God. Having made this great statement about the need which Christ would later fulfill, Job makes his first misstep. He accuses God of torturing him for no good reason, of creating him for the purpose of watching him suffer. While Job’s despair is understandable, here he went too far. Whatever suffering we experience, we can know that God did not bring it upon us because He takes pleasure in our pain.
Whenever I read parts of Job I struggle with what to write. There is both so much and so little there. OK, little is the wrong word. When reading the Book of Job, it is easy to take the main point, that suffering is not always a result of doing wrong, and leave it at that. But there is clearly more to the book than that because it does not take 42 chapters to make that point.
Job correctly expresses the idea that it is OK for a person who is suffering to complain about that suffering. Yet, despite his suffering, Job never denied God’s Word or Holiness. His friends on the other hand assumed his guilt. They accused him of wrongdoing with only his suffering as evidence. In his suffering Job begs God to end his life. Yet notice that Job does not at any point attempt suicide. Job wanted to plead his case before God, yet he knew that would be futile. He recognized that even if he were right, he would not be able to make a case that would stand up in God’s courts. Then Job says something which goes to the heart of Christianity. If only there were a mediator who could go between man and God and bring us together. Well, the heart of Christianity is that there IS a mediator between God and man. That mediator is Jesus Christ.
