Proclaimer Blog
In other words
I was greatly helped this week by reading a section of Job; Job 33:19-28. It’s part of Elihu’s first speech to Job. Christopher Ash persuasively argues that Elihu should be read as speaking truth to Job, in contrast to the three other friends.
Elihu addresses himself to Job’s complaint that God is silent (v.13). He asks Job to consider someone who is ‘chastened on a bed of pain … they draw near to the pit’ (vs.19, 22).
He says this of such a person in vs.23-26:
Yet if there is an angel at their side, a messenger, one out of a thousand, sent to tell them how to be upright, and he is gracious to that person and says to God, “Spare them from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom for them – let their flesh be renewed like a child’s; let them be restored as in the days of their youth” –
…then that person can pray to God and find favour with him, they will see God’s face and shout for joy; he will restore them to full well-being [or perhaps: to righteousness].
This is a beautiful picture, ultimately, of the mediatory, ransoming work of Christ. From one perspective, it only expresses truths which are already substantially familiar to a Christian who knows Mark 10:45 well. But how kind of God to breathe it out and preserve it for us, because of the way in which those truths are expressed:
• it’s addressed to someone feeling on the very verge of death, wondering why God seems silent;
• the long conditional clause (‘yet if there is an angel… and [if] he is gracious… and [if] he says to God’) powerfully conveys a sense of deep longing for such a mediating messenger from God;
• how rare such a mediator seems to be (‘one out of a thousand’);
• the graphic language of being ‘spared’ from going ‘down to the pit’;
• the sudden calling to God that he has ‘found a ransom for them’;
• the new reality this opens up for the sufferer: they can now pray to God and be sure of finding his favour, and they may now see God and shout for joy.
In our own Bible-reading, as well as our preaching, these are aspects of the work of Christ and its fruits to dwell on and draw richly from. A devotional time on this section felt very different and led to some different prayers than one on Mark 10:45 might, and so too should a sermon on it.