“Earth, do not cover my blood; may my cry never be laid to rest! Even now my witness is in heaven; my advocate is on high. My intercessor is my friend as my eyes pour out tears to God; on behalf of a man he pleads with God as one pleads for a friend.”Job 16: 18-21
Mediation is a tricky skill. I requires a great deal of patience and tact. One must be able to think clearly and cut to the heart of an issue. But most of all, mediation requires that authority be given over to the mediator. Those coming to the table must give to the mediator trust and relinquish control over the topic of mediation in order for it to work.
Job, feeling trapped and crushed by God, calls out for mediation. For someone that can step between he and God, pleading for Job. His friends are insufficient for this role as they plead what they think to be God's case to Job. While most of what they say is true about God and men, sin and justice, their presupposition is the same as Job's, that God is angry and has cursed him. None of them are able to see clearly.
I think it is often that way with us. We can be quick to, mentally if not verbally, correct another's problem, or relationship, or theology. Mainly because our nature is to think that we can live someone else's life better than they can. So we "plead God's case" to the other while our own life may be in worse shape in other areas. Maybe thats why Jesus mentioned the speck and the log...
“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
Matthew 7:1-5
What if we took a different approach than Job's friends? What might happen if we plead our friend's case to God rather than vis-versa? Wither it be quietly to God in our prayer room or while standing next to a friend in need. This is especially important when our friend has not yet come to trust Jesus. All to often I find myself trying to plead God's case to the other even in my prayers. The only appeal God has asked us to make is one directing people to Jesus as their mediator...
For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:14-21
A handful of times in the book Job refers to this unknown but needed mediator. That mediator is Jesus. He stands before God for you and for me reconciling us. Then he does an amazing thing, he gives that ministry of reconciliation away to us so that we can bring his message to others.
May we be helpful to our friends, pleading their case before God and bringing the freeing message that they do have a mediator in Jesus.
In Jesus' name,
Amen
