His friends were no help. True enough, they had heard of his plight and had come to him, but they only looked at him as he suffered and said nothing. How heartless this seemed but little could this man understand how it was destined to get worse. They just looked at him for seven days, and when they finally talked to him, it was a heartless harangue of accusations. They told him that the adversity he was experiencing was because of the vile, sinful life he was living. Their words and his response to them occupy nearly 40 chapters in the Bible. This man was Job.
In the ninth chapter of Job, this man of patience proclaimed the majesty of God. God’s wisdom was such that the wisdom of any man was not worthy to be compared to His. His power seen throughout His creation caused those who really observed it to cower in fear at its magnitude. God is so great, and the wisest and strongest of mankind could never stand in any arena before Him. Job could not understand the nature of His suffering, but he did understand the magnitude of God.
In the midst of his suffering, Job described his own inability to comprehend how God could ever know what human suffering was like. He said, “For He is not a man, as I am, that I may answer Him, and that we should go to court together. Nor is there any mediator between us who may lay his hand on both of us” (Job 9:32-33). A mediator is that individual who stands between two individuals and, because of his ability to understand both parties in a conflict, brings peace. Job could not figure out how the Almighty could ever feel what Job was feeling. Job was covered from head to toe with painful boils, yet God had never felt this kind of pain.
We may sometimes find ourselves in a similar situation when we ask, “Why am I suffering so much? What is the reason all this is happening to me?” Such questions acknowledge that He exists and that He is sovereign, but we are hurting so much we find ourselves longing to know what God knows about our suffering. This is where Job found himself.
The reality is that the Almighty is almighty in wisdom. He does understand us, but what is the assurance to us that He does understand? Job said, “O that there were a mediator,” and we can say, “O how blessed we are because we have a Mediator.” One of the results of the Word becoming flesh is the absolute assurance we have of one who can truly go between us and the Omniscient One.
Meditate on these words, “He had to be made like His brothers in every respect…for because He Himself has suffered when tempted, He is able…” (Heb. 2:17-18). (More about this next week.)