Who does God think He is? (Job continued)

The church I grew up in was a Baptist church south of Atlanta, Ga. There are a lot of things I could say about this church. It was a great church in many ways: for supporting missionaries, for turning out young people who went into ministry, for teaching Bible memorization, for creating a sense of community, for teaching the importance of sharing your faith.

On the other hand, it wasn’t a very tolerant church – at least the leadership wasn’t - when it came to race relations or long hair (this was the late 1960s-early 1970s) or rock music. I say, “the leadership wasn’t” because many of the rank and file members were some of the most Godly people I have ever known, whose positive influence on me they may never know. But there was a period where a certain pastor came in and a cabal of Deacons took power and a whole bunch of us younger people simply left (or felt chased away). Not long after, a number of our parents left, too. After my junior year of high school, I never went back to that church.

But the church itself had what seemed, to a small kid, this huge auditorium that angled down to the pulpit and choir loft. Above the choir loft was a huge map of the world, with all these yellow lights representing every place that the church had missionaries that it supported. The baptistry, if I remember correctly, was right in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean (perhaps appropriately).

But I’ll never forget the words written across the map of the world: “To know God … to make him known.”

I have come to recognize that we cannot know God unless He reveals Himself to us – which He has, of course. Not only in Scripture, but Romans 1:20 says “For since the creation of the world God's invisible attributes—his eternal power and divine nature—have been understood and observed by what he made, so that people are without excuse.”

Psalms 19 says “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world …”

However, we do try to imagine what God is like. We try to create Him in an image we are comfortable with, so we say things like “A loving God would:
- Never allow suffering
- Never allow pain
- Never allow evil
- Never (fill in the blank).

These things sound good, but they are nothing more than human arrogance defining God by what we think God should be like.

We say things about God like Job does: "Oh, that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come even to His seat! I would lay my case before Him and fill my mouth with arguments . . . Why are not times of judgment kept by the Almighty, and why do those who know Him never see his days?" (23:3–4; 24:1; 13:23–24).

Well, after much dialogue and discussion and arguing over theology and the nature of guilt and sin and blamelessness among Job and his four friends, God does show up - but it’s not what Job expected. Rather than Job getting to question God, God questions Job.

It is interesting to me that God comes to Job as a voice in the whirlwind, in a storm. I wonder what Job thought about that, since it was a whirlwind/storm that killed his children!

But then the truth is, very often God speaks to us through our suffering; certainly He did with Job.

Let me say a few things about pain.

Pain is one of the loudest voices you’ll ever hear. It can drown out what you know to be true with lies – lies that say “You’ll never feel better. You’ll never be able to live a normal life. You’ll never be able to be the person you were before. You’ll never be able to do anything fun again. You’ll never be a good partner or parent. You’ll never …”

Having lived with someone who lives with chronic pain, I know there are times when pain changes the personality of that person I love, when the pain causes them to become someone different. I also know pain can convince some people there is no reason to go on, that life is not worth living if it’s going to be lived in pain. Pain truly is Satan’s voice, the father of lies, drowning out what you believe, what you know to be true, your ability to think clearly and reasonably.

But my wife has told me there are times, right in the worst of the storm of pain, that she can hear that still, small voice saying, “You are my child, you are worthy, your life has purpose and meaning. Trust me. I’m right here with you.”

Just as with Job – and so many other people in the Bible who saw God – in the midst of the storm, God often shows up.

For the first time since the second chapter of Job, God enters the story. For us, as readers, we know it’s the second time. But for Job and the other participants, it’s the first time they hear from God.

In speech after speech, Job cries out to God – pleads, argues, cajoles, whatever – and now, even as the fourth friend Elihu is speaking, (Job 32–37) a thunderstorm gathers and fills him with awe. It is as though Elihu senses the approach of God in this storm and brings his words to a close. And sure enough, somehow, out of the whirlwind comes the voice of God to Job (chapters 38–41). It’s almost as if God has grown tired of the ranting by the friends.

Now, I read recently where pastor Rick Warren noted there are 365 verses in the Bible that say, ‘Fear not.’ Warren recently wrote on his website. “It’s interesting that almost every time God talks to someone in the Bible, the first thing he says is, ‘Don’t be afraid!’” You know story after story where an Angel of the Lord’s first words are “Fear not!”

Yet here are God’s first words, as recorded in Chapter 38:
“Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?" (38:2). Job doesn’t respond.
"Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me" (38:3). Job keeps quiet.
"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much" (38:4).

One question would have been enough for Job, but it isn’t enough for God.

"Do you know how its dimensions were determined and who did the surveying? What supports its foundations, and who laid its cornerstone, as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?" (38:5-7).

The questions simply keep on coming. They pour like sheets of rain out of the clouds as he watches God Almighty define who is who in the universe.

So much for “fear not!” These are not great tidings of comfort and joy.

Rather than give Job an “attaboy” speech, God jumps in with both feet, banging on the proverbial table, and basically says to Job, “Have you ever run, much less created, an entire universe? If not, then I suggest you simply say ‘thank you’ for every breath you take and leave being God to God.”

That sounds kind of mean spirited, doesn’t it? So what is God doing here?

I think God’s questions weren’t intended to comfort or even teach, but to stun Job and his friends. They aren’t to enlighten them with knowledge as much as to awaken an appreciation for who God really is.

And God lays it all out – the mountains and valleys, the birds and animals and monsters of the sea, the stars and suns as well as the depths of the ocean.

He talks about big things, like the power to control the oceans. (Job 38: “Or who enclosed the sea with doors when, bursting forth, it went out from the womb; When I made a cloud its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and I placed boundaries on it, and set a bolt and doors, and I said, 'Thus far you shall come, but no farther; And here shall your proud waves stop'?”

He talks small things, like watching over the birth of a baby deer. (Job 39: “Do you watch when the doe bears her fawn? Do you count the months till they bear? Do you know the time they give birth? …”)

It is an amazing picture of all the things that are on God’s plate, a reminder that God didn’t just create the universe and then walk away, but watches over it all.

Isaiah 40 is a very Job-like passage where it says, “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance? Who can fathom the Spirit of the Lord, or instruct the Lord as his counselor?”

In other words, who is Job – or who am I, for that matter – to challenge God?

Finally Job’s feeble hand lifts, and God stops long enough for him to respond. "I am nothing - how could I ever find the answers? I lay my hand upon my mouth in silence. I have said too much already" (40:4).

God’s message eventually connects: Job is a peasant, telling the King how to run the kingdom. Job is an illiterate, telling Shakespeare how to write a play. Job is the clay, telling the Potter not to press so hard. "I owe no one anything," God declares. "Everything under the heaven is mine" (41:11).

And Job couldn’t argue. God owes no one anything. No explanations. No excuses. No help.

Which makes the fact that He gave us so much even more astounding.

How you interpret God's thundering response is critical. You can interpret God’s speech as a divine "in-your-face" tirade if you want. You can use the list of unanswerable questions to prove that God is harsh, cruel, and distant. You can use the Book of Job as evidence that God gives us questions and no answers.

But that is not how Job heard it. All his life, Job had been a good man. All his life, he had believed in God. All his life, he had discussed God, had notions about Him, and had prayed to Him. But in the storm Job sees Him! He has a personal encounter.

And no longer does Job expect or even want a straight answer from God. He realizes he can’t be like God – knowing all things. Instead, Job sees himself as a creature under the care of the Creator.

Don’t misunderstand what is happening here. God is not saying, “I can do these things because I’m God and you can’t stop me.” God is not irrational, using His power capriciously.

No, God says no man can imagine what it’s like, making decisions on how to run the world. But there is purpose, and that purpose is to uphold God’s Glory so that man can (as the Confession says) “enjoy Him forever.” We live believing, as the Psalmist said in Psalm 84, “God withholds no good thing from those who walk uprightly.” Of course, it is precisely because God not only sees the big picture but painted the big picture that allows Him to know what those “good things” are.

Few of us have had or will have the experience of God that Job had. But if we’re watching, we can see God for ourselves.

Where?

Well, in Jesus of course; the Light of the World who enables us to walk with Him when it darkness abounds. He is the One who is patient with his disciples, but who tests their faith in the storm, so that when he speaks the storm is stilled and his disciples exclaim '‘Who is this that the wind and waves obey him?’ Here we realize that we won't be left as orphans but that Jesus will come back to bring us into the family; who, until that days, lives within us in the form of the Holy Spirit. We have Jesus, who has been tested in every way as we have and yet triumphed over sin. And one day we will look back on the story of our lives and proclaim, “It is well with my soul.”

God isn’t bragging. He’s showing Job how much bigger God is than Job could ever imagine. And that it’s not all about Job – there are so many other moving parts to this earth that is under God’s hand and make up God's plan.

We know sometimes that what we see as tragedy, God means for good; and that what sometimes what we think is a blessing turns out to be a curse.

There is a Buddhist story that tells this tale:

The old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. "Such bad luck," they said sympathetically.
"Maybe," the farmer replied.
The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. "How wonderful," the neighbors exclaimed. "Maybe," replied the old man.
The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. "Maybe," answered the farmer.
The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. "Maybe," said the farmer … and so on. You get the idea.

We have one response to God: Worship. Faith. And humility – that it’s not all about me.

My wife was hit by a drunk driver and no one on the scene expected her to live. We were told that if we had not been so close to a Level One trauma unit at UAB Hospital, that if she had to been taken to a lessor hospital to be stabilized before being flown to the proper center, she wouldn't have made it.

I know that UAB hospital wasn’t built exactly where it was at the time that it was just for my wife’s accident. It has saved the lives of countless numbers of people. But it was also in exactly the right place at the right time to save my wife’s life. There we so many ‘coincidences’ to our story, a whole list of "coincidences'' from the head of the emergency room who just happened to be on duty that morning, to the most unlikely stories concerning my kids' travel home, to even people who happened to be on call at the hospital that weekend. But as much as everything was perfectly prepared for us that weekend, we were not the only people in the hospital that Saturday morning, that week, that month. I met many others in the waiting room whose family members were in serious condition and who were being helped by the same doctors that helped us. It would have been foolish for me to declare: these doctors are only here for my benefit. They only care about me.

It’s the same with God. Like those doctors (at the risk of adding to the God-complex of doctors) who cared about us individually, but also collectively, so God works in us as individuals while the massive pieces of the universe continue to fall into places.

Like Job in chapter 42, we can say to God, “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”

And live in the assurance that, despite what we see and feel and fear, the only thing we can know about God for certain is that He in in control.