Scripture reading: Job 38:1-7.

Sermon text: Job 38:34-41.

“Where were you?”

If you didn’t attend the event, you don’t know all the details. You can read a description that tells you what someone said and what someone did, but you’ll still miss the nuances, the body language, the tones, and all the important information that helps you better understand what happened.

In Job’s case, we must remember that Job didn’t know about the events in the first 2 chapters, events that occurred outside our reality. Job didn’t know that his suffering occurred because of Satan’s dare. Since chapter 3, Job and his friends had debated over the nature of God, argued over Job’s innocence (or guilt), and come dangerously close to accusing God of injustice. Only 1 Person really knew all the details, and to this point, He had said nothing.

Then, in chapter 38, God showed up.

For the next 4 chapters, God revealed His majestic rule over all creation. Everything everyone in the book had said about God evaporated before the revelation of Almighty God of His power and His might. As we read God’s answer to Job, we should heed the warning of these passages: Almighty God does not answer to humanity, and He does not stand in the dock of our accusations.

Following the conversations of Job and his friends, God spoke. The speech we read in Job chapters 38-41 constitutes one of the longest narratives you’ll find in which God speaks in Scripture. You’ll find no longer speech of God until the arrival of Jesus, the divine Son of God, whose teachings you find in the Gospels.

God “answered Job out of the whirlwind.” In this physical appearance of God on the scene, He chose to appear within a whirlwind and speak to Job. In all of Scripture, we find very few theophanies, so God’s appearance here demonstrates His grace to Job.

God’s first words probably struck terror into the hearts of the participants. “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” Remember that Job and his friends ranked as some of the wisest men of their time; each of these men held high positions among their peers. Job and his friends had read wisdom literature and probably written it as well. Now, God exposed them as ignorant and foolish.

Following God’s first statement, His next words constituted a challenge to Job. “Dress for action like a man; I will question you, and you make it known to me.” The created would now find himself in the unenviable position of teaching the omniscient God.

What would God choose as the subject of His first question? The beginning makes an excellent place to start. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Most likely, Job knew the creation story recorded by Moses in Genesis. One of my professors in seminary once told us a key clue to understanding the Psalms: “When the Hebrews could think of nothing else for which to praise God, they praised Him for the Creation.” God challenged Job with another account of the Creation.

“Where were you?” “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”

We mustn’t get sidetracked by the figures of speech in this account. God compared the creation of the earth with the building of a home, beginning with the “foundation” and going through the “bases” and “cornerstone.” Job understood the questioning, and could give only one answer: He wasn’t there.

God continued His questioning for the next 4 chapters. In the sermon text today, God’s questions reminded Job of his powerlessness to bring rain. “Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, that a flood of waters may cover you?  Can you send forth lightnings, that they may go and say to you, ‘Here we are’?” Even today, with all we know about the weather, meteorologists cannot guarantee their predictions with 100% accuracy.

“Who has put wisdom in the inward parts or given understanding to the mind?” Now, God confronted Job in his prideful abuse of wisdom. Job and his friends had used human wisdom to explain God’s decisions and actions, but God had given wisdom to humanity when He created Adam and Eve. Human wisdom can take us only so far when we try to decipher the actions and thoughts of Almighty God.

If Job and his friends could not answer God on any of these charges, they certainly couldn’t answer Him regarding the feeding of the animals. No human in his right mind would try to hunt for a lion; nor could we claim to feed the birds of the wild when they require feeding throughout their lives. We didn’t create animals, and we do not rule over them. Only God rules over His creation, intimately caring for His creatures.

As you read God’s answer to Job in this book, you realize that God’s ways truly transcend ours, and His thoughts truly eclipse our own. We cannot, in any possible way, begin to claim superiority over God.

We see in God’s speech to Job one of the greatest traits of the God we serve. In His infinite wisdom and power, God condescends to interact with us. The entire Bible records God’s desire to interact with humanity, the pinnacle His creation. Anyone who doubts God’s love for us should read the book of Job and see how God really does care for us.

Anyone who wants to know about God’s love for us cannot stop with the book of Job but must continue by reading the Gospels. In the Gospels, we see God’s ultimate explanation for all He does when we read of the life of Jesus, His Son.

Jesus didn’t explain God’s work in Job’s life. Instead, Jesus explained God’s expectations of us: To love Him, and to love one another. Then, as a brutal example of God’s true love for us, He committed an act that continues to baffle human wisdom: He submitted Himself to death by crucifixion, only to defeat death by His resurrection.

Jesus’ death and resurrection doesn’t make sense. St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:22-25).

Jesus’ death and resurrection gives us a glorious answer to the Job’s plight. God does care about us; He has worked to bring justice to the world. God has worked to bring an end to sin and suffering, and He did so in a way that puzzles the wise.

I love the way C.S. Lewis described this in Mere Christianity:

1. Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could to have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have. — Mere Christianity, II.ii.
   

If you want to know whether God cares about your trials, look to Calvary, to where God began setting everything right that our own sin had marred. Look to Calvary, and realize that God has made it possible for you to repent of your sins and confidently expect Him to accept you in His family. Look to the empty tomb to see God’s majestic answer to death, the ultimate result of Adam’s sin. Then, look ahead to a new heaven and new earth to see God’s majestic answer to sin and death, a new creation where He will dwell with us forever and we will enjoy His intimate presence with us for all eternity.