My Bible contains two stories--one near its beginning and one near its end--which to-day I must lay side by side. The first is the story of a man who feels that he is suffering more than his share of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. He thinks of God as very high and very holy; too wise to err and too good to be unkind; yet he cannot shake from his mind the conviction that God has misunderstood him. And, in his agony, he cries out for one who can arbitrate between his tortured soul and the God who seems to be so angry with him. Oh, for one a little less divine than God, yet a little less human than himself, who could act as an adjudicator, an umpire, a mediator between them! But neither the heavens above nor the earth beneath can produce one capable of ending the painful controversy. 'There is no daysman who can come between us and lay his hand upon us both!'
A God!
But no Mediator!
That is the first story.
The second story, the story from the end of the Bible, is the story of an old minister whose life-work is finished. He writes, in a reminiscent vein, to a young minister who is just beginning; and earnestly refers to his own ordination. 'Whereunto,' he asks, 'was I ordained a preacher and an apostle and a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity?' What is his message? He answers his own question. It is this. 'For there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.'
A God!
And a Mediator!
Job needed a Friend in the Great Court; but, alas, he could not find one!
Paul tells Timothy that he was ordained for no other purpose than to point men to Him who alone can intercede.