Someone To Mediate Between Us

Job 9:30-34 – Even if I washed myself with soap and my hands with cleansing powder, you would plunge me into a slime pit so that even my clothes would detest me. “He 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.

Jeremiah 2:22 – Although you wash yourself with soap and use an abundance of cleansing powder, the stain of your guilt is still before me,” declares the Sovereign Lord.

Numbers 23:19 – God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?

Job 5:1 – “Call if you will, but who will answer you? To which of the holy ones will you turn?

Job 19:25-27 – I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!

Application:

• ·         Sins can be removed and forgiven, but only when the sinner repents and confesses.
• ·         Balaam is a foil to God—constantly shifting, changing—a prime example of the distinction between God and human beings.
• ·         God is so immense that Job feels he needs someone who can help him, someone who can argue his case in court.
• ·         The idea of a mediator, someone to arbitrate between God and Job, is an important motif in the book of Job.
• ·         Job expresses confidence that ultimately God will vindicate His faithful servants in the face of all false accusations.
• ·         He is absolutely certain, however, that death is not the end of existence and that someday he will stand in the presence of his divine “redeemer” and see Him with his own eyes.

All Scripture verses taken from NIV