Scripture: Job 38-41
Human speculation and arguing had gone on long enough. After
Job and his friends had spewed enough words to fill thirty-five Bible chapters,
God steps in to face Job, giving us one of the grandest monologues ever
composed as He questions Job on his wisdom, knowledge, understanding,
experience and power.
Observations:
These four chapters of Job, I must confess, are among my favorites in all of
Scripture. God reveals His grandeur, His greatness, His utter vastness here
with powerful eloquence and vivid imagery; and countless gems of truth and
insight adorn these verses, so that their collective brilliance blinds the
reader. It would be easy to spend months wandering these verses.
However, that is not the intent of this study. (Insert a
deep sigh here from me.) Rather, I will restrain myself to a few observations:
God spoke/answered Job
directly. He approached Job in a semi-visible form (whirlwind) and spoke in
an auditory voice. This tells me that although God is outside of His creation,
He can also invade it in very relatable ways.
God still provided no
answer. God didn’t warn Job before Satan struck what was about to happen.
God didn’t answer after Job cried out the first time. Only after the debate
wound to its conclusion did God step in. And even then, He didn’t tell Job what
had really happened or why. God merely reminded everyone Who He Was.
God can speak both
poetically and literally at the same time. All of God’s discourse in these
chapters are written in poetical form. But poetry doesn’t have to equal
metaphor. It is very clear in many spots that what God is saying is literally
true despite the beautiful poetry (e.g. 38:39-39:12).
Significance: Sometimes
when in the midst of difficult times, we wish, like Job, that we could talk to
God face to face. We often think if we could, we would obtain the answers we crave.
The story of Job reveals otherwise.
It’s not that God doesn’t know the answers. Otherwise Job 1
and 2 would not exist. Rather, He is more concerned about our trust in Him,
which is not rooted in knowing the answers, but in knowing the One who holds
the answers. Therefore, the best thing we can do when difficult times come is
to focus on Him.
That said, this passage also reminds us that God hears our
requests and responds. Oh, it might not be in a physical manifestation or with
an audible voice, like Job experienced. (Though again, this passage shows God
might; you never know!) And how He responds might not be the way we expect—Job
definitely didn’t expect the litany of questions he received; he had expected
to question God. But God did respond and He responded with what Job really needed, not what Job thought he needed.
Which brings me to my last point: God says exactly what He
means, which is why we can trust Him in difficult times. It’s so easy, to look
at a confusing passage or one which seems to contradict what human experience
has taught us and say, “What God really
meant by that is this.” As if God, the One who created language and who is described as the Word, somehow failed
to clearly communicate what He meant!
No, God says what He means, and His Words are always true.
Therefore, we must be very careful in taking a passage and saying, “It’s just a
metaphor.” For in failing to take God’s words at face value, we creep
dangerously close to echoing the serpent’s questions in Eden
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