Job, in his anguish and pain, felt deeply separated from God. He saw no hope for himself, for anyone really, in the hands of a distant and unhearing God. Perhaps you’ve felt the same? I know I have. Job shares these thoughts:

He (God) is not a mere mortal like me that I might answer him, that we might confront each other in court. If only there were someone to mediate between us, someone to bring us together, someone to remove God’s rod from me, so that his terror would frighten me no more. Then I would speak up without fear of him, but as it now stands with me, I cannot.

Sound familiar? Job, in some of the earliest words written in our Bible, asked for a mediator between God and man. He called for Jesus, without knowing anything about Jesus or hearing a prophecy of a messiah.

Job didn’t know of Jesus, but Job knew he needed someone like Jesus.

Someone to bring us together. I can’t think of better words, a more beautiful phrase, to describe what Jesus accomplished. Jesus brings us together with God. Jesus removes God’s rod from us and God’s terror need frighten us no more. Now we may speak with the Lord, through our mediator, who sits at God’s right hand and makes intercession for us.

It helps me to imagine Job, sitting in the dark, experiencing unbelievable loss, scraping skin eruptions all over his body with a broken shard of pottery, and wishing to die. Hopeless. Yet still believing, and desperately calling for someone to bridge the gap between him and God.

Job’s not the only one who’s sat in that place. You and I have as well. We all face pain and heartache and disappointment and tragedy. The only difference? The mediator waits for you and me to come, to speak and approach the Lord.

This incredible privilege, denied to Job, waits available to me and you and all who come together with Jesus.

Job 9 in week fifty of reading the Bible cover to cover

Photo by Daniel Lerman