Selected readings from Job 38-42
1 Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:
2 “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge?
3 Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.
4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.
5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?
2 “Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him?
Let him who accuses God answer him!”
3 Then Job answered the Lord:
4 “I am unworthy—how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth.
5 I spoke once, but I have no answer— twice, but I will say no more.”
6 Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm:
7 “Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. 8 Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself?”
1 Then Job replied to the Lord:
2 “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
3 You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.
4 “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’
5 My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. 6 Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
God’s Wisdom Is Too Wonderful
For five weeks now we’ve watched Job wrestle with the question, “Why?” For five weeks Job has put God on trial for what Job felt was a miscarriage of justice. And for five weeks God stood silently by.
No more.
For the first time – in our series, and in Job’s life – God answers. It’s what Job had been asking for all along! He just wanted an audience with God; but now that he has it and hears God’s response, it’s Job’s turn to be speechless, while God goes off on Job. And, boy, does God have some things to say.
“Brace yourself like a man!” he says, not once but twice, “Brace yourself like a man!” God is going to have words with Job. And for four entire chapters, God asks Job one rhetorical question after another:
Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place?
Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?
Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons?
Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?
And those are just some of the questions in one of the four chapters in which God goes off on Job.
Now, forgive me if that comes as a bit of a surprise to you. I mean, we saw how upright and blameless Job was in the first 2 chapters – God himself said so. We established how horrible Job’s friends were in trying to heap blame on him rather than comforting him in a moment of pain and weakness. We even witnessed a remarkable testimony of faith last week, where Job was looking forward to seeing his personal Savior with his own eyes in the resurrection from the dead.
Job was a good guy, right? He was a victim of the devil’s schemes, he was falsely accused by his friends, he still maintained some semblance of faith even when his sanity wavered and now God yells at him? Why isn’t God coming to his defense? Where is the comfort? Where are the gentle words? Where is God’s tender voice?
Well, it turns out that while Job was trying to defend his integrity to his friends, he ended up idolizing it. He turned his own reputation into his god, and he tried to flip the script on the one, true God, by swapping his defendant’s seat for the judge’s bench.
It was OK – even good and right – for Job to maintain his innocence when his friends claimed that he must have committed horrible sins to deserve to be treated this way by God, because it was the truth; Job was blameless and upright. It’s OK – even good and right – for you to defend your good name from slander and lies. But where Job went wrong was when he reversed the roles and put God in the defendant’s seat, i.e. when Job sat in the judge’s bench began to accuse God of treating him unfairly; when Job valued his integrity and reputation more than he trusted God to do what was good and right.
Do you see the difference? It’s OK to wonder why God does what he does or why he allows things to happen as they do; it’s another thing entirely to question and critique God’s decisions. It’s OK not to know the answers; it’s another thing to demand them from God as if he owes you an explanation. It’s the same thing that God said to Job:
Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself?
And then God asks all those questions that Job can’t possibly answer:
Do you give the horse its strength?
Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom… Does the eagle soar at your command?
Do you have an arm like God’s, and can your voice thunder like his?
It’s the height of human hubris, the pinnacle of people’s pride to question and critique God, because it reverses the roles in our relationship. It puts us in God’s place and presumes to think that God owes us answers.
But does God need to ask your permission to make the sun rise? Do you have to approve his plans for the migration of the geese or the orbit of the earth? Did God get your OK before he knit you together in your mother’s womb?
Of course not, because God is God, and we are his creation. And even though – or precisely because – we do not always understand, there is a time for us be silent before the Almighty God and to marvel in quiet wonder at the works of his hands.
That’s why Job responds the way that he does: “I am unworthy – how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth.” That’s why Job admits: “I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.” That’s why Job regrets his words and repents “in dust and ashes.”
Have you spoken of things that you don’t understand? It’s nice to be in the know; it feels good to have answers to other people’s questions, but do you ever cross that line and begin to speak for God? Do you try to tell people why something is happening, even though God hasn’t told you? Do you ever feel the need to correct someone who really needs you to comfort them, or to condemn God’s decisions just to justify your own?
Well, that would be to fall into the same trap that Job did and to idolize your own integrity. That would be fall into the foolishness of Job’s three friends, and to presume that you know better than God. That would be to deserve the tirade and tongue-lashing that God doles out for four chapters. And if this were the end of the story, it would be a rather bleak way to close out this book.
But there’s more. God has one final word to say:
After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has. So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.” So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite did what the Lord told them; and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer.
You know, as difficult as it is to understand how God can allow a global pandemic and such severe political polarization, as impossible as it is see the plan for Parkinson’s or God’s answer for why there’s cancer, this is the wisdom that is too wonderful for me to understand.
God just chewed out Job, but he still considers him his servant. God is angry with Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, but he accepts their sacrifice and answers Job’s prayer. God does not stand for our sin, but he does forgive it, because God does not deal with us according to our folly either.
As unfathomable as God’s wisdom is, his mercy is more. He offered us a sacrifice for our sins too – only it wasn’t 7 bulls and 7 rams; it was the Lamb of God, i.e. God’s one and only Son, whom he loved but whom he gave up because he loves you too. God gave you Jesus to be the sacrifice to wash all your sins away and to restore a right relationship with your God.
There are times that we deserve to be chewed out – times that God is angry with us – but his love endures forever. And even when it feels like God is silent in this world, the sacrifice of Christ speaks volumes about the way God feels about you. He loves you and forgives you; he does not treat you according to your folly but according to his unfathomable grace and mercy, i.e. the same grace and mercy that was on display in the life of Job.
We could end the story here, and that would be good enough. Job could go to his grave knowing that he was still good with God – not because of Job’s blamelessness, but because of God’s forgiveness. But the story goes on:
The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. And he also had seven sons and three daughters. The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch. Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.
After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. And so Job died, an old man and full of years.
While he was sitting in sackcloth and ashes, scraping his skin with a piece of broken pottery for a moment of relief, Job couldn’t have possibly seen this coming, or even understood how it was humanly possible (and, strictly speaking, it wasn’t). But God blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former.
I bring this up because even though God doesn’t make you the same promise – he doesn’t promise you a happily ever after – he does have the same power. So that, when life seems completely out of your control, you can know that it’s not out of God’s. And even though you cannot know how God will wield his power – even though there will likely be times in your life when you will have to throw up your hands and say, “I just don’t know!” – you can still say, “but I do believe.” Because we have a God whose wisdom is too wonderful for us to know, but whose mercy is ours to hold forever.
May God give you the wisdom and patience and faith of Job to hold out hope in God’s unfathomable love and to find his peace on your unpredictable path. Amen.