Job 9:35

He began by acknowledging the rightness of God's disciplinary ways, but raised the all-important question, as to how a man could be right with God. In our day people use the short sentence, "Get right with God," to awaken interest in the gospel message. It might well provoke the reply, "Yes, but how is it to be achieved?" That 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 suggested and examined four possible answers. Each suggestion begins with an "If."

He knew that melted snow gives distilled water of the purest kind. Such water has the greatest power to absorb and remove defilement. The picture he used is vivid. If he achieved something like this in his own character and life, what then? Why, God would plunge him in a dirty ditch as the only fit place for him. And even then, he himself, beneath his clothes, would be dirtier than they! The defilement was in himself and not in his surroundings.

Job hints that there is no use in making any effort to clear himself. If he is already pronounced wicked, he tries in vain to convince God that he is not. All efforts to alter the judgment are useless. And oh — where is there a daysman, a mediator who could enter into judgment, laying his hands upon God and Job alike? Consumed with terror, Job cannot speak.

Job clearly knew that he was a sinful creature before his holy Creator. He also knew that he had no means in himself of getting right. So his only hope was that a third party would step in; but he knew of no such third party, no "daysman." His three friends could not fill the role, and neither could any other man. The daysman must be great enough to lay one of his hands upon Almighty God, and gracious enough to lay the other upon poor diseased and sinful Job.

If a court sets a day for a case, the daysman is the one who appears for me and takes up my cause. Not only has Christ come to me in my sins, but He has come to answer for me, taking up the whole cause. He has done it — settled the whole thing as to my sins, and is gone back to appear in the presence of God for me... I have given up trying to answer for myself: He has taken it up.

A sense of integrity, without the knowledge of righteousness, causes much misery in the heart. Job says, "Let not His fear terrify me." He had this fear. God has taken away the fear in Christ, and there is a daysman between us, such as Job felt the need of.

How moving are the words that close this chapter! If only there were an effective intermediary, how different it would be. But, says Job, "it is not so with me." Have we ever thanked God with enough warmth that it is so with us? The fact is that though he may not have known it, Job was sighing for the coming of Christ. We can now rejoice in the "one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 2:5). He paid the ransom price, so that it is possible for a man to be just with God.