This article is based on Pastor Adrian Rogers' message, The God-Man, Our Mediator.
The Book of Job helps to answer this question of human suffering. Why do bad things happen to good people? But there is another real theme in the Book of Job, too: How can good things happen to bad people—how can sinners be forgiven?
What is man, that he could be pure? And he who is born of a woman, that he could be righteous? (Job 15:14).
Man is a sinner by birth, by nature, by choice, and by practice. We are all sinners. Behavioral psychologists try to explain away sin—“Man is ill, not evil.” But the Bible says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
What word best epitomizes God’s nature? Contrary to popular opinion, it is not love. God is holy.
Man cannot lift himself to God, because he is sinful. God will not lower Himself to Man, because He is holy. This is God’s justice. “You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on wickedness” (Habakkuk 1:13a).
Job had three friends try to answer his question, “How can Man be right with God?” They give three, wrong, satanically inspired answers.
The devil is the master liar—and every good lie has some truth in it.
Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said…. “In disquieting thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones shake. Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair on my body stood up. It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance. A form was before my eyes; there was silence; then I heard a voice…” (Job 4:1,13-16).
Eliphaz takes what this spirit says, and he passes it on to Job as bona-fide religious information. But what was in his bedroom was a demon spirit. We know it was not God, because later God says these men “have not spoken of Me what is right.” (See Job 42:7.)
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world (1 John 4:1).
The New Age is a syncretism of the world’s religions into a mystical worldview. There is a spirit that unites them, and that is the same spirit Eliphaz met in his bedroom.
Astrology takes the word of the stars as a substitute for the Word of God. Where do astrologist “prophets” get their knowledge? Not from God, because they do not know enough. They get their revelation from the devil himself.
If you unlock all the doors, something will come in. You are making yourself open to the devil. “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23). When you meditate, fasten yourself upon the Word of God.
In Revelation 21:8, the word “sorcery” is a translation of the Greek word pharmakeus, the same word from which we get “pharmacist.” There is nothing wrong with pharmacy, or medicine. But from time immemorial, people have used drugs to lose themselves and open up to demon spirits.
Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said…. Inquire, please, of the former age, and consider the things discovered by their fathers…Will they not teach you and tell you, and utter words from their heart? (Job 8:1,8,10).
The appeal here is to sophisticated reason. We do not know what was in the libraries of Job’s day, but we know who our “fathers” are.
Job wants to know: how a sinner can be right with God?
Then Zophar the Naamathite answered…“If you would prepare your heart, and stretch out your hands toward Him; if iniquity were in your hand, and you put it far away, and would not let wickedness dwell in your tents; then surely you could lift up your face without spot; yes, you could be steadfast, and not fear… (Job 11:1,13-15).
Some people will not be caught up in satanic revelation or sophisticated reason. But a great number will be caught up in sterile ritualism—a religion of form and self‑effort.
Millions of people are trudging to churches for meditation, and ceremony, and reformation, and they will leave with empty hearts…"having a form of godliness but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5a).
Then Job answered and said: “Truly I know it is so, but how can a man be righteous before God? If one wished to contend with Him, he could not answer Him one time out of a thousand…. 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 us both (Job 9:1-3,32-33).
Job is saying, “Oh God, you are holy, and I am sinful. I cannot argue with You. I need a middleman. I need a mediator.”
For whom was Job crying and longing?
For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus… (1 Timothy 2:5).
Not just any mediator would do. Jesus Christ is qualified because He is both God and Man.
Jesus became as much a man as any mother’s child. He wept, slept, hungered, and hurt. Why? Because our dominion was legally lost by a man, and it had to be legally regained by a man. “For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23a). No spirit can die. Christ became a man that He might die upon the cross.
But He had to be a sinless man. He could not have been a son of Adam, because in Adam all die. (See 1 Corinthians 15:22.)
Our mediator had to be the Son of God; therefore, He had to be born of a virgin. Jesus is the Son of God, not of Adam.
Everything that God has, says, and does, Jesus has, says, and does. Yet, everything that Job felt, Jesus felt. He was the one “who may lay his hand on us both.” (See Job 9:33.)
Between God and man there is a chasm, eroded by sin. Jesus bridges that chasm with His humanity on one side, and His divine nature on the other. There is one God, and one mediator between God and Man: Jesus Christ, who gave Himself as a ransom for all.
Job 4:1,13-16, 8:1,8,10, Job 9:1-3,32-33, Job 11:1,13-15, 15:14, 42:7; Romans 3:23, 6:23; Habakkuk 1:13; 1 John 4:1; Proverbs 4:23; Revelation 21:8; 2 Timothy 3:5; 1 Timothy 2:5; 1 Corinthians 15:22
If there is a messenger for him, a mediator, one among a thousand, to show man His uprightness, then He is gracious to him, and says, “Deliver him from going down to the Pit; I have found a ransom....He will redeem his soul from going down to the Pit, and his life shall see the light” (Job 33:23-24,28).
But He, because He continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them (Hebrews 7:24-25).
