Year 1, Week 2, Day 4 Bible Reading Observation

Year 1, Week 2, Day 4

I have a brief observation for today’s reading of Job 14-16.

Today’s reading picks up the continuation of Job’s words begun in Job 12-13. With the completion of those words now in Job 14, we have finished the first round of interactions between Job and his three friends. Job 15 records the second round of words by Eliphaz, while Job 16 records the beginnings of Job’s response to Eliphaz. Job summarizes his friend’s attempts at comfort: “I have heard many such things; miserable comforters are you all.” (Job 16:2). I am not sure there really are perfect words that we can deploy, which will always soothe our troubled hearts when we are afflicted. And perhaps even though there are better things to say than other things, what lands as comforting words on one person’s soul may be less soothing for another person. The way we process sorrow and suffering is not simply on the basis of the thing itself that is producing the difficulty, but possibly more so on the basis of how we interpret the thing producing the difficulty. Needless to say, Job and his friends are miles apart on how to interpret the reality and cause of Job’s trial.

What struck me about God in today’s reading was revelation that is emerging from Job’s words concerning the need for a mediator. Job has been saying that he wanted to take his case before God and not merely continue hearing his friends render a conclusion. But Job has already acknowledged that he does not have someone to mediate his case before God: “There is no arbiter between us, who might lay his hand on us both.” (Job 9:33). However, the language that Job expresses in today’s reading reflects a growing awareness that he does in fact have someone who will stand between him and God: “Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and he who testifies for me is on high. My friends scorn me; my eye pours out tears to God, that he would argue the case of a man with God, as a son of man does with his neighbor.” (Job 16:19-21). Not only are his friends poor comforters, they are abysmal adjudicators. And yet Job has a sense that his advocate will come from on high. God will provide Job even greater clarity to the reality that he does, in fact, have a heavenly advocate.

God is revealing to us, through the troubles of Job, exacerbated by his unhelpful friends, that help exists. As it turns out, it is Someone, who also had unhelpful friends: “Then Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’” (Matthew 26:31). Jesus knows abandonment by His friends: “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” (Isaiah 53:3); and was surrounded by oppressors: “But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads” (Psalm 22:6-7).

The goodness of God shines brightly through Jesus. The One who had no advocate is now our divine advocate: “Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” (Hebrews 2:17-18). Jesus the God-man is the only qualified advocate between God and us: “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). Thus, we have a perfect advocate: “But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:1b-2).

Jesus is our mediator or advocate because in being both God and man, He is qualified to satisfy the justice of God concerning the offense our sin is before a holy God (the word propitiation points to the work of satisfying justice). Whereas Job raises our awareness of the need for a mediator, Jesus is revealed as the One whom Job had vague sense of. The reality of Jesus is no longer a vaguety, but a surety: “Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.” (Romans 8:33-34). Job’s “witness in heaven,” is in fact at the Father’s right hand.

What struck you in today’s reading? What questions were prompted from today’s reading?

Pastor Joe