”Lay down, now, a pledge for me with Thyself;  Who is there that will be my guarantor?”  (Job 17:3, New American Standard Bible)

Our deeply broken friend, Job, asked this question with a troubled and panting soul.  His “comforting” friends (who were miserable comforters really) were not sure if they could stand up for him with God.  They felt he was too sinful, subtly implying that they were the righteous ones.

As a kid, even before my teens, I sometimes, alone in my bed at night, wondered, Will I be accepted by God?  Then I thought, After all, my grandfather is there!  He is certainly a friend of God, and because of him I may make it!  He may, as it were, lay down a pledge for me and be my guarantor!  But my thoughts were wrong and didn´t hold water.

By God´s grace He faithfully brought me to the place, maybe a couple of years later, where I realized that my good grandfather, however much he loved me, could not help me.  I had to take the place as a lost sinner before God accepting Christ as the only Savior of my lost soul.

That solemn greeting I´ve passed on to many religious people, in the religious America not the least.  You must, I warn them, come to the place of the tax collector, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

My old Norwegian father-in-law was dying.  His wife and a daughter watched over him as he was sleeping.  Suddenly he opened his eyes and told them what he had seen.  He had met various loved ones clothed in white robes.  A voice had said to him, “These white robes are the righteousness of Jesus Christ!”  His wife and his daughter understood.  He was soon about to leave them and meet a bright eternity clothed in the same imputed righteousness  by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ and nothing else.

Job answered his own question a little later in ch. 19:23:  “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives!”  His “spiritual” friends had challenged him, “What can you know?”  (11:8) and:  “What do you know that we do not know?”  (15:9).  Here was what Job could know in the midst of his bewilderment, “I know that my Redeemer lives!”

What a testimony to take with you in your baggage, fellow pilgrim, in a world of dying, lost souls.

August  25, 2011