Job Chapter 16 verse 21

WHAT did Job know that will help us? Have you ever felt dismay? When I was a teenager, well, maybe a preteen, memory fades in real time, doesn’t it; Mom took me to the Grand Canyon, there aren’t words to describe that sunrise; because it wasn’t just the colors, it was the enormity. It’s like time sucked all the wind out of the bottle, each exhale didn’t mean a thing, because it couldn’t be filled, the Grand Canyon, oh, so aptly named. Young, full of energy, full of hope, full of destiny, sure that the mess could be fixed, sure that love would prevail, young; those were real tears of joy. Mom cried too. Don’t you think it’s wonderful when you can both cry together? The day one of my best friends passed my wife rushed home to hold me, she’s not a crier, but we cried together. After about fifteen minutes we realized how just holding each other crying was not going to help us get on with the day, and properly remember the remarkable man we loved, so we had a quick giggle about our tears, we looked each other in the eyes of truth, and we knew love. I couldn’t stop the tears, they were just like that morning looking at that unbelievable truth in front of my eyes, this was God’s work- as Og say’s, “He paints with a big paintbrush,” Mandino has a real way with words, wish my skills could get there.

Job (Jobe) chapter 16 - verse 21- let's keep it in context we're looking at verses 18- 22

18 “Earth, do not cover my blood; may my cry never be laid to rest!”
19 Even now my witness is in heaven; my advocate is on high.
20 My intercessor is my friend as my eyes pour out tears to God
21 on behalf of a man he pleads with God as one pleads for a friend.
22 “Only a few years will pass before I take the path of no return.

There are many great Hebrew scholars in the world, Zola Levitt, in my mind, was likely one of them. Not sure if Zola ever got to examine up close and personal the remnant scrolls from the caves at Qumran, but my suspicion is, seems so. He makes the message of the Hebraic writings so alive. When Zola passed it was a tearful day for me, have many of his works, loved his television and YouTube offerings, loved his work to try and bring together two very large forces of faith, Christianity and Judaism; what a hero of the faith. Such a hero deserves your tears, his passing left a Grand Canyon sized hole in the need for peace and love in this house, but God will see it filled; just like the ocean, and because no water leaves the gravity of this planet- it always remains, your tears are still a part of that vast sea. In the previous verse -20- we see our hero Job getting in on the enlarge the ocean with our tears project, so that here in verse 21, we can more clearly see the face of the one who pleads. Pleading for you – pleading for us, let’s hope the reality of His tears and their might, can get in your heart.

Standing at the pinnacle of Jerusalem’s wall the image of Levitt looking out over that vast valley Jezreel, so much deep-deep history, one of the other folks that catches my eye is an older man, think he said 78 years old as of 2017 who made an astonishing web site - http://www.bible-studys.org/About%20Me.html – Ken Cayce, in my mind he’s pretty deep. Years tend to add depth to the understanding of scripture, which is why my constant plea to young Christian’s is dig into the word in it’s original languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, much as you can, when you’re young and your head can hold the knowledge. As you age, as experience starts to clatterer for attention inside your thinking; it tends to distract, not sure if that’s good or bad, just sense it seems to be what takes place. Was Job in this area, not sure that’s possible to discern. The book internally identifies Job “In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.” Mystery over time seems to equal perpetuity, especially mystery with reasonable, sensible and realistic emotionally touching content, plus time, will surely get close to perpetuity; and that’s what happens to this man from the land of Uz.

We look back through a lens of history, people in our future, if humankind makes it, which isn’t sure at all, at this point in 2018, but if humankind makes it, if we continue to exist, will your life have mattered? What do we do as humans that makes our lives matter? Here’s a thought, we have to communicate with truthful meaning. See, those who lie, over time, their lies will die out, lies die, it’s a fact. Urban myths last for a while, but eventually they change, just like the Bogeyman, they go away, they mutate, they change- lies do that. Truth doesn’t, it is timeless. So when you express truth with emotional content that somebody can relate to, it may last. Years from now the power of Og Mandino’s many uplifting writings will still help a little girl in Kansas “Get it,” and be able to last, yes, life was cruel to take her parents, but life took Job’s entire family- yet here Job explains that his intercessor, whom it seems to me by faith, Job is seeing Jesus Christ, perhaps not the man in form, but the sacrifice that will be required to intercede with a Holy God. No I don’t get Got, can’t comprehend God, too big, way too big for this simple guy to get his head around, but Jesus, Him seems almost possible to get. Again, not totally, see I’ve never changed water into wine- gone out into the stormy night that was scaring my family and making my dogs whine, and yelled at the wind and it calmed down. No sir, there are things about Jesus Christ that seem just past my grasp, never been able to walk across a lake, order fish to get onto my friends equipment. Never put a coin in a fishes mouth, never have been able to touch someone and heal, ah, but, had a shot at it- and that’s maybe interesting to hear- but Jesus, He’s way, way, up there- and yet Job it sure seems, knew Him!

There is something profound about Jesus Christ in that He bends to communicate with us. Someone has said that this is much like one of us being intimately concerned about an ant in the middle of the San Saharan desert, and making haste to go see that one ant for whatever reason. Would we do that? Haven’t been there, have you? So what’s our level of concern about that ant? Here’s something to consider, I think by the way that such an illustration is aside the mark, but something to consider, all of this, it’s not ours, we didn’t make it- consequently our personal touch to it is very limited. Over time we tend to lose touch, it’s our modern ways, children rebel and tend to leave home, that is how we have continued to exist as a species. But when those children truly love their home, ah my, they never leave. Some would cynically say, “Yeah when their wallets run out, boy howdy do they come home, and far be it for us to act dismayed.” OK that cynical outlook is understandable, but it wouldn’t be to Job, see, he now has a far more personal sense of what it means for them to be gone. There is something profound about Jesus who cares about you, and He gets intimate at it many times in your life. He got intimate with Job, right here, right now, in this verse, something told this poor hurting tearful man that he had an intercessor to God.

New Orleans, summertime, hot as – well, you could finish that statement with little difficulty, hot as hell. Kidron, the valley that would be intimate in Jesus’s life, connects to Gehenna, the valley Jesus would describe as, hell. New Orleans, well it was hot there in the summertime all those many years ago. Think you get the feel, sweat was a part of the experience. The missionary participants would go to chapel to pray, get the morning enlightenment, get filled up, pumped up and ready to go serve the homeless of New Orleans. Hot, scary (just a bit, you never what a desperate person will do?) and challenging this morning meeting at the historically significant Leavell Hall, a founder of the seminary there, a powerful place. A young lady was laying on the ground with her hands cupped over her eyes, the girl around her, and several of the young friends standing there around her said, “She has a horrible headache,” feeling very servile, almost proud to be able to help- I asked her, “can I get you some Ibuprofen, I have some back in the car?” “Oh,” she almost whispered from her pain,”Would you that would be so kind.” My soul was getting to serve, ran two blocks back to the car, ran two blocks back to the girl with the two pills, found a cup of water, gave them to her. She thanked me, and as I turned two steps to walk away He said, clear as a bell, “You believe in Me, or, Ibuprofen? Why didn’t you pray?” It wasn’t an indistinct voice, and no to the people who claim such is delusion, here’s the difference, Christ teaches, when it will stick- that’s not always so, hear His voice as He says, “Don’t toss your pearls before swine,” Christ knows when it will stick. That’s not a long sentence He said, but the power of it has stuck with me for a long time- and the moment, will never go. Job in his misery felt Christ, felt his intercessor!

Young people are easy to love, so much energy, so much hope, so much clarity that they can make it, will make it, and life to them is a bubbling, awesome, fun (most of the time, tests at school aside) filled thrill to be growing up in. Job had grown up in the land of Uz, he had become great, a leader, a man of wealth and prominence, and a man of faith. Job would be tested, says so, right there in the story, Job is getting slammed, put into misery and torturous pain, as a test. We can’t grasp how such could be, but Og Mandino says “God teaches in the key of life,” what a beautiful way to express it. What Job was growing through wasn’t an experience any of us would invite, would we? Yet here, thousands and thousands of years in perpetuity, we’re drawing some hope from his hope? My belief is God loves us in a way we can’t comprehend, we can get close to getting it; but we’ll never fully understand it. Perhaps that’s why we need a guide, a light, a man of immense power who will build his tent – a tabernacle says John “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God…And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 14). The word “dwelt” in Greek means “tabernacled.”

There sat Job in misery; there was Jesus, with Him. Jesus will also, when you’re ready, be with you.