94-98 - The need for a mediator

Good evening. Listen very carefully to this, will you? For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Let's try and say that, shall we? For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

Now listen how it goes on. Who gave himself as a ransom for all men. Let's say that.

Who gave himself as a ransom for all men. Now let's stand and we'll say both those together. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

Who gave himself as a ransom for all men. Now let's bow our heads in prayer. And we say the prayer which our Lord Jesus taught us.

Because he's the one through whom prayer is taken and presented before the Father. He is, as we will discover more and more clearly from the word of God this evening. He is the mediator.

He is the middle person. Outside of him we cannot pray to God the Father. But through him we can.

So let's use the prayer that he taught us to say. And when we've done that we're going to sing one or two fairly fast moving songs. And then moving into a more thoughtful older hymn.

All which speak of our indebtedness to the Lord Jesus and what he's done for us. Lord bless this service and as we come to you in this prayer. Make it meaningful to us.

Right from the outset. Our Father who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. In earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses. As we forgive them that trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom.

The power and the glory. Forever and ever. Amen.

Remain standing please. We'll start from mission phrase number 254. I am a new creation.

And we can praise God for what he's done for us. So we're now going to turn to supplement number 181. I am forever grateful to you.

That you came to see and save us all. We're going to continue with mission phrase number 199. Great is the Lord.

The city of our God and holy place. Praise the Lord in whom we have the victory, He is just, He is free, we bow down to Him. And though He wants to lift your name, on high we shall sing your mighty name.

Praise the Lord, the most worthy of praise, the King of our God's holy days, the joy of all of us. Praise the Lord in whom we have the victory, He is just, He is free, we bow down to Him. And though He wants to lift your name, on high we shall sing your mighty name.

His glory now we sing, who died and rose on high, and lives like death may fall, behold He stands at sight. First was dead, lives in bold abond, in beauty glorified, no angel in the sky can fully bear that sight. But now the Prince is coming high, and victory's surprised.

Bound in the law of peace, whose power has set us free, from foe to foe the Lord takes His, and all in prayer and praise. His reign shall no more end, and crowd is dismayed. Their powers of paradise extend, their praises ever sing.

Bound in the law of peace, the potentate of time, creator of the rolling seas, in ever peace of mind. For their Redeemer held, for Thou hast died for me. Thy praise shall never, never end, throughout eternity.

Do sit down. I tell you in the history of hymn writing, there'll scarcely ever be a hymn to beat that one. Thank God for all that it conveys in terms of solid and relatively simple to grasp truth.

Would you turn in your Bibles to Job and chapter 9? If you don't have a Bible and the person alongside you looks reasonably friendly and is armed with such, then check through some of the reading please. Job chapter 9. And we had a verse you remember a little earlier on at the beginning of our service and that came from 1 Timothy in chapter 2. We have some strange judges in our country. I remember a man by the name of Judge Pickles, but I think he's been retired.

He was a Buddhist. Not that he should be retired because he was a Buddhist, but he was a controversial figure. Now we had the extraordinary situation last week of a man who, in defending his allotment hut and TV and one or two things that he'd got in there, opens up his shotgun because some folk are going to ransack his place.

Maybe a knee-jerk reaction on his part. But what do you make of the judgement when the fellow who was going to steal from him and who indeed would have perhaps brutalised him, he is fined £400 and the old man is fined £4,000 for defending his property. Whom the gods destroy they first make mad.

Sometimes I think that that's a comment on certain aspects, not all thank God, of the British legal system. But here we've got a man and he too is in problem. His name is Job.

One of the oldest men whose stories, or one of the earliest men whose stories are recorded in the Old Testament. And there's a lot of frustration that's running through him. Let's just dip into the reading.

Verse 2. Indeed I know that this is true, things that his friends have been saying about God and to some degree about himself. But how can a mortal be righteous before God, though one wished to dispute with him he could not answer him one time out of a thousand. His wisdom is profound, his power is vast.

Who has resisted him and come out unscathed? He moves mountains without their knowing it and overturns them in his anger. He shakes the earth from its place and makes its pillars tremble. He speaks to the sun and it does not shine.

He seals off the light of the stars. He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the Bear. He is the maker of the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the constellations of the South.

He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed. Miracles that cannot be counted. When he passes me I cannot see him.

When he goes by I cannot perceive him. If he snatches away, who can stop him? Who can say to him, what are you doing? Verse 14, how then can I dispute with him? How can I find words to argue with him? Though I were innocent I could not answer him. I could only plead with my judge for mercy.

Even if I summoned him and he responded, I do not believe he would give me a hearing. Verse 25, my days are swifter than a runner. They fly away without a glimpse of joy.

Verse 32, speaking of God. He is not a man like me that I might answer him, that we might confront each other in court. If only there was someone to arbitrate between us, to lay his hand upon us both.

Someone to remove God's rod from me, so that his terror would frighten me no more. Then I would speak up without fear of him. But as it now stands with me, I cannot.

You might find it hard to believe, but when Rowena and I were in South Africa a month or so ago visiting her dad, I listened to Elvis Presley tapes. Now to come clean, the fellow who kindly loaned me his car had got nothing else but Elvis tapes to play on his recorder, on his radio set. And I got to like Elvis at least one or two things.

I mean I won't swap him for Brahms or Gretzky or what have you, but he got one particularly catchy piece. Don't they say that the lyrics were good? I don't know what that means, but I'm sure they were all right. And this piece, well let me tell you a little bit about it.

It was a guy who, he'd obviously fallen in love and his love was not returned by the girl and he kept writing her letters and the letters were never received. They were just sent back. Return to sender.

Some of you obviously know Elvis Presley because I saw reactions. Hope you know Isaac Watts as well. And the whole thing built up to frustration.

I mean here's this guy writing his letters, flinging them into the post box. They go to the address and it's a dud one. Return to sender, return to sender.

Here is the relationship that this man wants to continue to develop with this damsel and there's no way he's going to win. And you know it seems to me that sometimes prayers like that, you try to communicate with God. The psalmist talks about our prayers in terms of arrows and the arrows are returned blunted or so they would seem.

And here's this man Job and it's the frustration, the sort of Presley emotion that comes into these verses. The second one is replete with it. How can a mortal be righteous before God? I mean imagine trying to take God on.

Yet Job does want a relationship with God like I think any thinking person does. But if all your communications are flung back in your face, returned to sender, then your frustrations will equal that or equal those of Job. What is it that Job finds a problem? Well it's the otherness of God.

It's the fact that God is not like him. Job cannot take God on as he might take a mortal man on. How can I dispute with God, verse 14? How can I find words to argue with him, verse 16? Even if I summoned him and he responded, I do not believe he would give me a hearing.

He's not a man like me, verse 32, that I might answer him. And then in that 33rd verse, the pathos becomes absolute as there's a cry from the innermost being of Job's heart, Oh, if only. Do you have an if only in your life? If only I could have done that.

And not this. If only. You can almost hear the sob in Job's heart.

He needs help, but it seems as though his communications with the divine are returned to the sender. If only there was someone to arbitrate what the authorized version calls a days man, what trade unions would call an arbitrator, what sportsmen would call an umpire or a referee. If only.

There's a great man who used to preach in London in the 30s and his name was Campbell Morgan. Most of his sermons found their way into books. He was such an eloquent and such a well-tutored man in the Bible that what he had to say needed to be preserved for future generations.

And he's got a book that's not available in the bookstalls, but you can find it in second-hand shops, entitled Jesus's Answers to Job's Questions. If only there was someone to arbitrate between us. And here is the Apostle Paul inspired by the Holy Spirit.

And he speaks of the blessed Lord Jesus and he says there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus who gave himself as a ransom for all men. What Job needed and in his better judgment looked forward to, the Lord Jesus is. When there are parties which are removed from one another because there is a dispute, what will help to remedy the situation is someone coming alongside to represent the one party and also represent the other party.

You see, if you are to find an arbitrator today, if we have modern Jobs who are in the same predicament, sending their letters and their letters being returned to the sender, if you really wish to have someone to help you, then it seems to me the qualifications of the arbitrator must at least have these characteristics. The arbitrator must be accessible to both parties. The arbitrator must be acceptable to both parties.

The arbitrator must be amicable to both parties. When I was in India some while ago, a friend of mine told me a story which really made me crease with laughter. There was a man in the history of the British Raj that you've come across.

He died an awful death in Ireland as a result of IRA terrorist activity in relation of the Queen, the uncle of Prince Charles, Lord Mountbatten. Now when the Indians were given independence way back in the early 1950s, they had great problems getting their act together. India is a very complex country to administer even today.

There are so many people packed into it. You've got so many groups, racial groups and religious groups. Particularly the major religious factions are the Islamic people and the Hindu people and they seem to hate one another.

I don't think that's too strong a word, although I'm generalizing. When the British Raj pulled out, it meant that the security of India was very much in jeopardy and the Indians who were coming to prominence politically, they didn't feel they could handle the situation. And so they asked Mountbatten, the last representative of the British Raj, to stay on for a while and to help them out.

And he'd already been granted by Prime Minister Attlee the power to act on behalf of the King, the Queen and the government. He did a good job. So good that some of the older Indians still remember with gratitude the work of Mountbatten in India.

Now my friend was traveling through one of the Hindu villages and there was a problem. This is more recent times and one of the old villagers came to my friend and said, could you post me a letter to Lord Mountbatten? So he said, yes, I'll do that. This is just going back a few years.

And my friend posted the letter. The contents of the letter was that the old Indian had fallen out with the village headman who he thought had treated him badly. He had robbed him and he wanted some sort of judicial pronouncement from Mountbatten.

The unfortunate thing was that Indians can at times do a mischief with the English language. And my friend who posted the letter eventually got one bite from Mountbatten himself acknowledging the receipt of the letter and said that he was one of the funniest he'd ever received and he put it in his scrapbook because the dear old Indian had addressed him as your royal licentiousness. Here was a man who was able to represent the Hindu and also the Muslim, the British and also the Indian.

Job wants someone to stand between him. You need someone to stand between you and God. And I speak with respect.

God the Father needs someone to stand between him and you. Now when Jesus came into the world he's given a number of titles but one of the most popular ones that he employs is the title son of man. He uses that because well he's born as you were born as a child, he in a manger in the poverty of Bethlehem and his humanity is obvious to all who have to deal with him.

John eventually plunges him in the Jordan not because he had committed any sins, that is Jesus, but because he wants to identify with the sins that you have committed and I have committed. So Jesus becomes the representative man. He takes upon himself flesh like yours and mine.

And yet you know this beloved Christ is not just man. He is man, man truly. But he's not man only.

He can walk on the water, he can multiply bread, he can speak to the diseased limbs of a paralyzed man, he can bring skin back onto the surface of the body of a leper. Our Lord Jesus is not just son of man, he is son of God. Here is Job representing you.

Here is this great God and Father who we have offended and we need someone to come between us acceptable to the Father which surely Jesus was and is. Acceptable to us which indeed he must be. What a friend we have in Jesus.

Acceptable, also accessible. I mean by that that the Father is constantly in touch with our Lord Jesus, the beginning of the day, the end of the day, they're in communion. You read of it in the gospels.

And Jesus, he sees a woman whose only child has died and she can have access to Jesus and present her needs. In fact she hardly needs to present them, he knows what those needs are. Here is Caiaphas, here is the gyrus, the synagogue ruler in Capernaum and he's left at home his heartbroken wife, the little kid is terminally ill and by the time Jesus gets there she's actually dead.

But Jesus, he's so accessible, he goes and he ministers. And as for being amicable, our beloved Lord refers to his Father with that terminology, Holy Father, my Father. Here is our Lord Jesus and he is in touch on a friendly basis with his Father and when the women bring their little child to the Lord Jesus, he won't stop them from so doing because that's his nature you see.

If only there was someone to arbitrate between us, if only there was someone to lay his hand upon us both. Now why is Job so afraid of this God? I mean fear is certainly the way that you would describe the relationship. Look at the 31st verse, his terror would frighten me no more.

You know sometimes my dear friends, I think that one of the great problems of evangelicalism in the Western world is that we have lost a true concept of the fear of God. On your initial encounter with God, you do not party with him. Your initial encounter with God, it can be a very frightening experience.

Why is Job afraid of God? Why should you be afraid of God? Well you see this God to whom I make reference is not just the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, he is the creator of the world and he has a right to expect from you certain things which unfortunately time and time again you have failed to deliver. You please yourself? You please your friends? You please a thousand and one things? But I ask you, do you ever please him? He has a right for you to please him. How do you please God? By keeping his law.

Ah but this was the problem with the Old Testament people, it's the problem with the New Testament people. Using metaphorical language, Jeremiah says they left me the fount of living water and they tried broken cisterns which could hold no water. They despised me and they broke my law.

And God on the basis of his justice has a case to bring against men and women like you and me. And the fact of the matter is that if he did not bring his case he would in one sense deny his own integrity for God is a just God. You see I want to argue this almost with trembling in my voice that God in no way can fix his own justice.

He cannot tamper with it. God is the just God. God is the holy God.

God is the righteous God. And here is Job, relatively blameless compared with other men but a sinner compared with God. All your righteousness is as filthy rags as Jeremiah compared with what God expects of you, the standards that God expects.

That's why Peter you see when he goes to the shore and he spots the Lord Jesus on one of the encounters Peter just would run away from Jesus. Why? Because Jesus represents, he reflects God. And there is a sense in which the Lord Jesus can be if you're like a frightening person you feel uncomfortable in his presence because he's like a lily within the sewage.

He's spotless in a world of uncleanliness. So here is this God and here is Job. Here is the righteous God.

Here is the sinful man. And God has to argue on terms of his justice but there is if you like a paradox within God. There is a problem.

I would go so far as to say that God has psychological difficulties sometimes. Now don't misunderstand me. I will qualify that.

You see when you get to the mine of prophets you'll find God sometimes turning in on himself realizing the course of action that he has to take that he wants to take. How shall I give you up Ephraim? He talks of Israel as though Israel was his own son. How shall I give my son up? How shall I excommunicate my son? I have to do it because of my justice.

But my love is always towards the sinner even though his sin causes me repugnance. You see this is a charge that God levels against Job. This is me.

And if you have any sense at all then you appreciate that Job's dilemma is your dilemma. If only there was someone to arbitrate between us. Or are you so stupid as to say in terms of your defense well this is the way I was made you know.

I've got a sinful nature. I've got a bias towards sin. All right here's my answer to that question.

Do you ever fight it? To what degree do you fight it? The majority of us are quite happy to run along with the the blackest side of our nature. To do those things which we ought not to do and to leave undone those things we ought to do. And there is no innocence that we can claim.

Oh yes God but you know I will do better tomorrow. As though the doing of good tomorrow will somehow pay for the damage done today and yesterday. But you know Lord I may be a bad man but you have a look at him.

But God's not concerned about him. At the precise moment of your speaking He's concerned about you. So you're back with the same dilemma.

If only there was someone to arbitrate between us. And here is this beloved Christ and he listens to the conversation. He is son of God.

He understands the heart of the Father. He is son of man. He knows something of the treachery within humanity.

And then he puts his hands so to speak on man. And he puts his hands so to speak on the Father. And he says to the Father let me with your permission deal with the situation.

This man so far removed from you who can have nothing to do with you whatsoever because of his sinfulness. Let me not identify myself with him just purely in the mechanics of my birth. Let me identify myself with him in terms of the deficiencies that he has acquired.

And that presumably is what Tim was telling you about this morning. For that is what the beloved Christ did. He took upon himself the consequences of the sins of Job and the sins of the Old Testament people and the sins of the New Testament people.

The sin of the nations right down to the 20th century. The arrogance of Bosnia and Serbia. The horrific actions in Rwanda.

The rotten things that you have done. And that I have done. All fall upon him.

You see he becomes our sin. And after his death on the cross and his mighty resurrection he comes into his own as a mediator as the umpire not as the philosopher not as the pure academic. He comes as a practical saviour who can say to the father yes there is a sin but look what I have done.

And the fact of the matter is that both parties are benefited. The father in no way has to circumnavigate his justice. He doesn't tamper with that because the justice of God has been satisfied by what Jesus has done.

And this man who knows the agony of letters returned to sender is conveyed through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ into the very presence of the father and he is by grace made to be what he could never achieve by nature. As Jesus became what he was not human he made it possible for us to become what we could never have attained to members of the family of God reflecting something of his nature. The father is satisfied.

The sinner is blessed and the reason for the success of the operation if I may dare to use that word is the willingness of Jesus to act as our arbitrator if only can you hear it? If only there is one mediator between God and man the man Christ Jesus what Job reached out for in agony the Lord Jesus has fulfilled and makes it possible for you and me to enjoy sins forgiven and that's what this table is all about. The bread we eat the wine we drink bespeaks the mediatorial role of our beloved Lord the days man the umpire the one who works on our behalf thanks be to God Amen Let's sing the praise of our Lord in that lovely old hymn Amazing Grace how sweet the sound Our amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me I once was lost but now am found but now am found was blind but now I see was blind that taught my heart to see was grace my victory was grace how precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed to many dangers forth had spread but with grace my soul is made of stars and grace will lead me home When we dance and hear the shining angel song we know that grace is king of grace and there we must be proud