The Daysman

Job is one of the most well known of Bible characters.  His book is the very first Bible book written in fact.  Through Satan’s prompting Job suffered immensely, becoming a famous example of one who endured greatest loss.  Understand how huge was Job’s loss.  He had great wealth, with 7000 sheep, 3000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 donkeys.  He had 10 children, 7 sons and 3 daughters, and many servants.  He was “the greatest of all the men of the east” we’re told in the book of Job chapter 1 and verse 3.  But on a certain day, through Satan’s tempting purpose and God’s allowing, attacking thieves and fire from heaven and a great wind came, and his children, wealth, and servants were swept away at once!  How much did he lose?  ALL of it!  Can you imagine so suddenly losing all of your children on the same tragic day that you lost everything else? 

Then we’re told how it went the next step further with Job’s health stripped away as well, resulting in terrible boils over his whole body.  We read in Job chapter 19 how nobody wanted to associate or be with him.  His other family members all fled from him as well.  His honour, his respect, every comfort all gone, when he had so much to begin with!  His wife then came to him in chapter 2 and said, “Do you still retain your integrity?  Curse God, and die” (vs. 9).  Job responded like a champion, answering her, “What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?  In all this did not Job sin with his lips.” 

Then Job’s three friends came to him in his darkest hour when everybody else was leaving him.  They came “to mourn with him and to comfort him” (2:1).  It was good of them to come to Job when it was hard, and to come with real care and compassion. They even “lifted up their voice, and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven” (2:12).  But alas not one of those three friends really understood Job or his true situation.  Therefore they became Job’s tormenters.  “Miserable counsellors” is what Job later called them. 

Oh how very great Job’s loss!  He lost all friends and family.  And while all others fled, these who came did not understand him through his tragic ordeal. 

As well, though Job clung to God throughout, yet he lost his sense of God’s justice, that God was being fair with him.  He was feeling so completely alone!  Have you ever been there?  Just so totally unknown and unloved by anybody, and misunderstood by all.  Nobody really there for you, on your side. 

Think about how this man is an illustration of Jesus Christ as He hung on the cross.  He cried “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” as He hung between earth and heaven.  He was rejected by the people of earth, both Jews and Gentiles.  Even His disciples fled from Him in fear.  And He was rejected by heaven, as it seemed, when His Father turned from Him as our sin was laid upon Him.  In a similar way Job was a man in the very perfection of anguish, stripped to the point of owning only his existence.  All things a soul might rest or depend upon, all gone!  Even the God of justice seemed to have departed from his experience in this most amazing moment of his life.

Listen to Job’s words now in Job 9:32 as he says of the Lord God, “For He is not a man, as I am, that I should answer Him, and we should come together in judgment.”  God is not like people, who when they have a debate or concern they go to court where justice can be sought between them.  You see, Job longed for a day in court that he might argue his unhappy case before the Almighty God.  He saw God as his accuser – UNFAIR accuser.  He longed for the opportunity to reason with the One he saw as unfairly tormenting him.  Hear Job in 9:19, “If I speak…of judgment, who shall set me a time to plead?”  Who is going to appoint a day, a court date, and God must honour it.  This is God, not a man.  Who has authority over God, to say to Him, “This is the day and time, and You will be there with this man, and will answer for Your actions”.  Who is the question.  But at the same time how useless to think of debating any situation with God in a court setting.  God is God.  He’s not a man as I am.  I’m not anywhere like His equal.  He’s the Almighty one.  As Paul’s words in Romans 9:20, “O man, who are you that replies against God?  Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it why have you made me thus?”  Shall Job say to God, “Why have you brought this upon me?”  This is God and not man, He who is in fact judge of all the earth.  What hope does Job have, you see?  His “tormenter” is his judge.  The very highest judge, of the supremest court of supreme courts.  There is no appeal to anything higher in existence.  For this is God!

Then in 9:33 Job says in anguish, “Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both”.  Now “daysman” is a very old word.  Even my very old Websters dictionary uses the word “archaic” in referring to this word.  The word “daysman” comes from the idea of a specific day appointed when a hearing would be conducted, a court date when a concern between people would be dealt with.  And there would be a man appointed to be the moderator on that day.  He would be the day’s man, who would hear and make judgment on that day.  This daysman would be somebody who could “lay his hand upon us both”, who could speak for both sides of an argument, as a judge or ombudsman, a mediator sort of individual.  One with authority to officiate between two sides, to stand between.  One who would listen without leaning to one side or the other.  One who would hear and lead to a reasonable judgment.  Here was Job’s dilemma.  Where could be found a daysman on God’s level, fully understanding God, and therefore able to “lay a hand” upon God?  And yet such a one must be like man, able to lay a hand upon man.  Where on earth could such a one be found?!  In all of creation, who could this be?  How utterly hopeless and helpless Job felt.  For there was no such daysman.  Who could we even be talking about to fulfil such a role?  From Job’s ancient perspective it was a question with no answer.  He was writhing in anguish under what he considered to be the smarting rod of God and he just did not understand.  Hear Job in 9:17, “for He breaks me with a tempest, and multiplies my wounds without cause”, speaking of God.  And in 10:2, “I will say unto God, Do not condemn me; show me wherefore You contend with me”.  “Show me why you are so contending with me”, he cries.  And in 10:7, “You know that I am not wicked; and there is none that can deliver out of Your hand”.  Job was crying foul.  This did not seem fair!  God, whom Job saw as both accuser and judge, was far beyond himself and therefore untouchable, thus none could demand of Him an answer for what He allows, because He’s God.  And again, with nobody, no impartial mediator to help!  What hope did Job have under the smothering hand of the?  Do you see his dilemma?  He recognised that God is God in His greatness, and man is helplessly little, putting God hopelessly out of reach, though there seemed to be injustice in God.  Out of this dilemma in the anguish of his tragic circumstances Job came to this desperate sense of need.  The fundamental human necessity to get to God, to deal with God, to have contact with God.  Yet with no way to get through to God; He too great and we too small, He so pure and we impure.  Behold the vast gulf between us.  And who, who, who among us, indeed in all of creation, could step in between and serve as the mediator?  Who is so worthy?  Who is able to interpret each to the other, me to God and God to me?  Who is able to lay a hand upon both God and man, fully understanding both sides?  Who could stand with authority between God and man, to so create a way of meeting, a way of contact, a bridge across the great dividing gulf?  What earthly ladder is so great as to reach to both earth and heaven?

Look well at the human dilemma Job recognised here.  Only the anguish of his desperate losses laid it bare, without which he never would have seen it.  There exists a fundamental necessity for man to reach the unapproachable God, pointing up the need for some mediator or ombudsman.  But ombudsman extraordinaire!!  One somehow beyond human.  For what human could be both God and man, could touch both? 

How often we find in the New Testament the answers for Old Testament questions.  With this great question of need, here is the reason why the New Testament begins with no less than four gospels accounts, with greatest possible emphasis, repeatedly bringing to our attention the same exalted Person.  It should be quite obvious that God’s answer to Job’s ancient elemental human cry is Jesus Christ.  Paul put it simply in I Timothy 2:5, “For there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus”.  One God, and one Mediator, and no other.  Here is the fundamental essence of Christianity.  Here is the great answer sounding from ancient days, from that earliest Bible writing.  Yes, there is a Daysman, a Mediator!  Job mourned that there is no daysman, no way to God.  Yet now at last the New Testament, the rest of the story, proclaims that such a one is found in “the man Christ Jesus”.  One who is God the Son, and thus fully qualified to lay one hand upon God. One who became fully man, and thus able to lay a hand upon man.  Jesus Christ is the one and only One able to bring man to God, to bridge the vast gulf between God and man, the perfect Daysman.  Not only because He is God, the very Son of God become man, but also because He knows human nature by experience.  Jesus was born of Mary and grew up to manhood.  He knows human nature, not just as God who knows all, but also from the experience of One who lived as a man.  “For we have not an high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).  He walked where we walk.  He lays His hand upon man in understanding. 

We read as well of this one Mediator that “He gave Himself a ransom for all” (I Timothy 2:5).  Something has been done that makes the way of approach to God possible through this one Mediator.  He paid a ransom, the ransom of Himself.  For what?  What is it that makes the great separation between man and God in the first place?  The prophet Isaiah gives the reason for man’s inability to get to God, proclaiming, “your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear” (Isa. 59:2).  There is the fundamental problem, the reason for man’s inability to approach God.  A man without sin does not need a Daysman, but not one of us is without sin.  The reason why man is conscious of his inability to connect with God is because our sin, our sinful nature has come between, bringing this separation.  But then Jesus came bringing the good news.  There IS a Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, the only One qualified to stand between God and man, He who gave Himself a ransom for all, He who paid the price that we might be saved.  In Jesus the sin that shut us out from God can be washed away so that we can come to Him.  Yes, the way to God is open!  He is approachable, in Jesus.  We can know God personally through that only Mediator.  Job’s ancient cry has found a full and complete answer.   

Now God calls every soul, you and me, to turn to Him and believe in Jesus Christ to be saved, to believe that He died for you, for your sin, and that He rose again from the grave a Victor over death.  Oh place your faith in Him and say to Him, “I trust You alone to save my soul from judgment upon my sin.”  Believe in Him!  That’s the simplicity of it.  Who can believe?  “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” the Bible promises in Romans 10:13.  When can you be saved?  Now.  “Behold, now is the accepted time.  Behold, now is the day of salvation” (II Corinthians 6:2).  Oh hear the warning there in Job 9:4 when Job said of God, “He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength; who has hardened himself against Him, and has prospered?”  The answer of course is nobody.  No soul hardens himself against God and prospers.  Some may think they do for a time, but not at the last. 

God has indeed given the answer to that ancient cry, that longing of every soul to find the way to God.  The answer is Jesus Christ.  There is no other answer, no other book or sacred writing, no other religion of man’s devising that can give the answer to that core longing in us to be right with God.  When that quest is in you with sincerity you will find the answer in Jesus Christ.  Only in Him.  One God.  One Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

Have you found Him?  Is He YOUR Daysman, YOUR way to God? 

Thank You Lord God of grace for Your perfect answer to our desperate need.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes unto the Father, but by Me” (John 14:6).

When a man cried out to God’s apostle in Acts 16 asking, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” the faithful reply from God’s messenger was simply, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved” (vs. 30-31).