“Then Job answered and said, I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all. Shall vain words have an end?” (Have you finished berating me?) “or what emboldeneth thee that thou answerest?” (Or has the urge to answer ceased prompting?) “I also could speak as ye do: if your soul were in my soul’s stead, I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you.” Yes, indeed. Poor Job! His role is not easy, his position not comfortable, his seat not happy. It is simple to criticize, to sit in judgment on our fellow men, so long as we are not called upon to change places with them. With what alacrity Job would have changed places with Eliphaz! “ If your soul were in my soul’s stead, I could…shake mine head at you.” Just to return to normal was Job’s whole desire. We are reminded of those who came to view the Cross, who shook their heads, saying, “If this man were the Son of God (and sinless as He claimed) God would not have allowed this to happen.” The background and the foreground are nearly identical in places in our picture. What would Jesus not have given to return to normal, to a day spent among His disciples and friends! Would He not gladly have changed places with anyone in the crowd around Him? But this was the Father’s will, and He came to do the will of His Father. The pleasant duty of healing those around Him, of teaching the people about God, of living among His disciples is over. The unpleasant duty of dying for all men has be carried out also, grim though the prospect be. He is not come merely to do good to men of that generation; He is come to save the world. He could not draw all men to Him so long as He remained among them – He has to be lifted up so that those in the far corners of earth might catch a glimpse of the Saviour of the World. “And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.” But even on the Cross Jesus is better than any man on the ground. Job says, “But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips should assuage your grief.” There is not a man on the ground who could have brought comfort, renewed hope, peace and joy to the malefactor who repented, but Jesus did all that with one brief sentence, “This day shalt thou be with Me in paradise.” Listen again carefully to Job. “But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips should assuage your grief.” Job is saying that if he could change places with his friends and one of them cared to take his place, then he could comfort them in their real distress. But Christ is in real distress, and brings strength and comfort FROM THAT POSITION to others. It is a remarkable feat. There is a man in the crowd who, but for this Man whom he came to hurt, would be walking around with only one ear. Jesus had reached out to him and touched him and healed him; he in return had been one of those who roughly seized Jesus to carry Him away for trial and execution. Did he come forward at the seat of judgment to witness to the goodness of Christ then? Not a word. And on the Cross itself, His flesh torn and tortured, in an agony of distress, Jesus assuages the grief of His neighbor with a brief moving of His lips, although first the man had railed on Him. And amidst ever-increasing agony He takes time to assuage the grief of Mary His mother, and to strengthen John His disciple, though all had deserted Him in His hour of need. And even today, if we come to the now-empty Cross, we will find amid our tears of repentance a mighty Voice in heaven, saying, “I am He that liveth, and was dead; and behold I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of death and hell.” So will we be strengthened, and our grief assuaged. For if from that position of pain He could give strength and comfort, imagine what He can do today seated at the right hand of God! “The moving of my lips should assuage your grief,” says Job. Poor Job! How he longed to return to normality, and change places with Eliphaz! In chapter 13 he had got to the point where, as he says, “If I hold my tongue, I shall give up the ghost.” Here in chapter 16 even that little relief is no longer able to assuage his grief. In verse six he tells us, “Though I speak, my grief is not assuaged: and though I forbear, what am I eased?” Caught in the unseen vice, speech was his sole pressure vent, his safety valve in the face of death, but the pressure is building up, increasing rather than decreasing. By chapter 16 even the safety valve of speech cannot assuage his grief, and yet he must keep that vent open at all costs, for “if I forbear, what am I eased?” If this is merely the foreground of our painting of Christ, what must the background be like? Yet from the background the silence is deafening. Only two words betray the intensity of heat, the pressure of the fire of the wrath of God against sin – “I thirst.” Only those who have wandered at midday in a desert can realize the full force of those two words. They betray an unbearable condition, where heat causes dehydration. They are vented, forced out from between locked lips, by unheard-of pressures Job cannot be asked to endure. We see only the Lamb of God on the Wood of that Altar of Sacrifice – the fire is unknown, unimagined, unseen, the fire of the wrath of God against sin. We have to go back to the ancient temple, or the still more ancient tabernacle, to see the thing. From Leviticus come pictures of a terrifying scene – the sin offering. The beasts are mercifully killed before sacrifice is made. Only Christ can be asked to be a living Sacrifice. And had it not been for Job, no hint would ever have been given of what that might involve. Only Job the perfect was ever asked to sit in the seat of the sinner to give us some inkling of what it is like. Only Job the upright was ever asked to test the furnace. And only Job the God-fearing was ever asked to model in this way, the just man treated as the unjust. It was an unenviable position. Job’s patience is now a byword. But did Job bear it uncomplainingly? Yet who would change places with Job? Listen again to Job’s words. “But now he hath made me weary: thou hast made desolate all my company.” (Or companions.) “And thou hast filled me with wrinkles,” (Another effect of dehydration in the desert.) “which is a witness against me: and my leanness rising up in me beareth witness to my face.” The only sound on earth which approximates that speech is wordless – the bleating of the scapegoat in the wilderness. But can you see that the foreground of the picture here gives us the background too? Listen again as Job speaks. “He teareth me in his wrath, who hateth me: he gnasheth upon me with his teeth; mine enemy sharpeneth his eyes upon me. They have gaped upon me with their mouth; they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully; they have gathered themselves together against me. God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked.” Can you perceive that the words are more literally true of the background than of the foreground of our picture? They resemble more the speech of the psalmist or one of the prophets. They are somewhat inappropriate for a man only smitten with sore boils, but the are Job’s words. But they are completely appropriate for the background of our picture, are they not? “They have gaped upon Me with their mouth; they have smitten Me upon the cheek reproachfully; they have gathered themselves together against Me. God hath delivered Me to the ungodly, and turned Me over into the hands of the wicked.” Can you see now why we say Job is modeling for Christ? If this is scripture, does not all scripture testify of Christ? If this is testifying only of Job, why is it in scripture then at all? Can you answer? “I was at ease,” says Job, “but he hath broken me asunder: he hath also taken me by my neck, and shaken me to pieces, and set me up for his mark (or target). His archers compass me round about, he cleaveth my reins asunder, and doth not spare; he poureth out my gall upon the ground. He breaketh me with breach upon breach, he runneth upon me like a giant. I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin, and defiled my horn in the dust. My face is foul with weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death; Not for any injustice in mine hands: also my prayer is pure. O earth, cover not thou my blood, and let my cry have no place. Also now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and my record is on high. My friends scorn me: but mine eye poureth out tears unto God. O that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleadeth for his neighbour!” That is the cry of Job in the forefront of our picture. We see in it a man sorely tried, a man whom God has broken down, a man who has wept and prayed until he could weep and pray no more, and desires a ‘neighbor’ to pray for him now, but finds none willing. We see a man in the extremity of distress, a man weary of the battle who is too hemmed in to quit and at the same time too hard pressed to hold his own. Will another come to his aid, even to pray for him? There is none to come. Will the pressure ever ease? There is no end in sight. Will God step up and intervene? God is hidden from him. What shall he do then; indeed what can he do? Endure, endure, endure! But can a man endure so much? “He breaketh me breach upon breach” – it is the city wall crumbling under the staggering shocks of a battering-ram. Just how much punishment can a human body absorb? “Set me up for his mark,” as a target is set on an easel for archery practice. Just how many ‘arrows’ can be absorbed by the ‘target’? “Not for any injustice in mine hands.” A man can bear better when he is guilty than when he is innocent. Finally, in the very last verse we have Job in the now familiar strains of ‘no resurrection.’ “When a few years are come, then I shall go the way whence I shall not return,” says Job. Now if a just man like Job lost sight of the resurrection of the just, if only for a moment, how much harder for the Sin-offering to keep in mind the resurrection of the third day? Yet it was crucial for Him to do so. He is not going into death to rest, no matter how weary His soul may be or how sorrowful. He is going into death to fulfill His Father’s will. He is going into death unutterably weary, but He must be ready against the third day. Job could look forward to death as an end to the intolerable burden of grief, and Job could look forward to death as a relief from suffering, and Job could look forward to death as the end to his weariness, the long deep sleep. But Job has no thought of resurrection in mind. Now Peter, James and John fell asleep by the Garden of Gethsemane. Was the Man of Sorrows not equally weary? Christ will get no sleep at the palace of Annas or Caiphas or Herod or Pilate. He will get no sleep during His trial, as well as everything else, to fight the bitterest battle of His career. And death beckons with its promise of rest. But dare He sleep? Who will stand watch for Him, or who come there to awaken Him at the appointed time? None. Yet He arose very early on the third day. Job says in effect, “Only a little while longer here, and I shall go there (and rest) whence I shall not return.” We find in fact the thought of rest uppermost in his mind, because “I shall not return” signifies an end. But Christ is returning out of death the third day. He dare not be asleep when the call comes from God, and in fact He arose very early in the morning before the women got to the tomb. We need Job to illustrate for us something of what Christ faced, if we are to understand His bloodied sweat beforehand. The Man was human, but He was the Son of God. Scripture says, “Great is the Lord.”