Eric Recker | Wayfarer

Even now my witness is in heaven;
my advocate is on high.
Job 16:19

Job needs a friend.

He certainly doesn’t have a good friend in the trio that have joined him on the dusty refuse heap. As I heard often in Looney Tunes cartoons growing up: “With friends like these, who needs enemies?” Eli, Bill, and Z have been of no comfort to the suffering Job, and in fact they’ve only rubbed proverbial salt into Job’s festering skin lesions with their needless accusations that Job has no one to blame for his suffering but himself.

Along life’s journey, I’ve observed that it’s in life’s darkest moments that you learn who your true friends really are. My friend, Eric, often references “2:00 A.M. friends.” The friend you could call at two o’clock in the morning and say, “I need you” and they wouldn’t hesitate to jump out of bed and do whatever it was you needed. Eli, Bill, and Z feel more like “11:00 A.M. friends.” They’re the friends who show up unexpectedly an hour before noon and stay way longer than desired knowing that you eventually have to offer them lunch.

In today’s chapter, Job once again calls out his 11 A.M. Friends for offering him no comfort. He then repeats his refrain that he feels like God’s enemy. In graphic language, he shares that he sees God like a ravenous lion hunting him down, gnashing His teeth at Job, and tearing at Job’s flesh. He calls God his “opponent” who has “shattered” and “crushed” him. He believes that God has “targeted” him like a sniper or assassin, despite the fact that his “hands have been free of violence” and his “prayer is pure.”

Then, like the hapless Hogwart’s Professor Trelawney, Job makes another incredibly prophetic statement without even knowing it:

“Earth, do not cover my blood;
    may my cry never be laid to rest!
Even now my witness is in heaven;
    my advocate is on high.
My intercessor is my friend
    as my eyes pour out tears to God;
on behalf of a man he pleads with God
    as one pleads for a friend.”

Most scholars agree that the story of Job is ancient, perhaps as old as the Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the book of Genesis. These words of Job’s, however, clearly describe the spiritual paradigm that Jesus introduced on the night before His crucifixion. He told His disciples that He was going to Father God in heaven, and would send to them from heaven the Holy Spirit of God whom He repeatedly refers to as “the Advocate” (John 14-16). The Holy Spirit is my heavenly Advocate, God in me here on earth. Jesus, meanwhile, remains in heaven seated at the right-hand of Father God. He is also my Advocate, as John wrote:

My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
1 John 2:1-2 (NIV)

Two things from my meditations in the quiet this morning:

The first is simply the wonder of Job’s cry for a heavenly advocate who would see his tears and plead for him before God as a “friend.” Even this foreshadows Jesus’ very words in the Garden as He shared with the disciples about the Advocate He would send: “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” (John 15:14-16). It’s as if Job was given what theologians call “prevenient grace” to understand that, despite his despair, he literally does have a friend in heaven pleading his case.

I’m glad I have an Advocate both here and in heaven.

The second is another one of my random music connections. It played in my head as I wrote this post. The lyrics seem particularly apt in light of today’s chapter.