Job 9:27

He began by admitting that God's ways of discipline are right. But he raised the all-important question: how could a man be right with God? In our day people use the short saying, "Get right with God," to awaken interest in the Gospel message. It might well bring the reply, "Yes, but how is that done?" This is exactly the question Job asked in verse 2. The rest of the chapter shows how earnest and sincere he was in asking it, for he put forward and examined four possible answers. Each one starts with an "If."

In verse 27 we find his third "If." He could not defy the God of heaven, and he could not prove himself right either. So should he give up hope, drop his search for the answer, and give himself over to a careless pursuit of enjoyment? Human nature has not changed. Many of us have followed the very line of thought Job showed here. But he threw the idea out at once, seeing how empty it was. If we carelessly forget, God does not forget. The sinner will not escape God's judgment by refusing to face the question.

Bildad had urged him to forget his troubles and look forward with courage. Job can only shudder at his sorrows and his pains, for he knows God will not hold him innocent. So his misery grips him like a vise.

He comes before God as Judge, and he is deeply confused. He cannot answer God one in a thousand.

Poor Job! He does not know now which way to turn. And is not this the case with every believer the moment he gets before God as Judge? How can he or you be just before God? Would not even one sin out of a thousand condemn you completely?

Even if he bathed in water as pure as snow, and washed his hands with soap, so that he was cleaner than he had ever been, God would still plunge him into the ditch. All self-help and self-improvement is useless. But then comes a ray of light. He needs someone else to help him, to bring him in touch with God, to make him just with God. So he calls for a daysman, an umpire. He wants someone who could lay His hand on God and on him, the sinner, so that the rod would be taken from him and his fear would end.

If you are resting on yourself, you are resting on ground that God does not approve. If you are resting on Christ, you have the only solid ground, and nothing can ever take it from you… "There is no daysman between us." That is what Christ became. Christ became the mediator between God and men. He is not only a mediator. He is a mediator who is just as divine as the God before whom He acts as mediator for us.

I am not commenting here on the spirit in which Job takes the matter up, for it was a wrong one. I bring it forward to show that the sense of the need of a mediator arises from the conviction of sin, and does not hinder it.