Studies in Job (pt.3): When God Speaks

Text: Job 38–39

Introduction: After the lengthy dialogue of Job’s three friends, God finally spoke. His speech was not what Job expected. Job was looking for an explanation for his unbelievable suffering. Instead, God gave him a science test with 77 questions! Job wanted to talk about the moral universe, God taught him about the physical universe. Job wanted the issues of pain and suffering to be high on the agenda, God had stars and seas, goats and ostriches on His mind. What was the point of all this talk about zoology, astronomy, and meteorology? God seemed to be saying: “If I can run the universe, can’t you trust me with the mysteries of your life?” These 77 questions fall into three categories: God is wise; God is powerful; and God is caring.

I. Do you know how I created the universe? (Job 38:4-21). God is wise.

A. I was the builder (38:4-7).

1. The choice—the eternity of matter, or the eternity of God. Either God or matter is eternal.
2. Confirmation of God as Creator (Psalm 19:1-6; Romans 1:19-20). He is eternal, not matter.
3. God was the architect and builder. He made the plans, took the measurements, and laid the foundation.

B. These were my building materials (38:8-21).

1. We know from Genesis that God created the universe out of nothing. He used no preexisting materials. He spoke the wonders of creation into existence.
2. The wonders of God’s creation are endless. They include . . .

• The seas. He fixed the shorelines.
• The sunrise. Because of God’s accuracy of design, the sunrise comes up with precise regularity.
• The springs of the sea. “Have you journeyed to the springs of the seas or walked in the recesses of the deep?”
• The secret of light and darkness. Where is the home of the sun and the dwelling place of darkness? God is a God of immense wisdom. He knows how to run this world, and therefore we can trust Him when we are seated on our personal “ash-heap.” Job experienced devastating losses, but so have we. In the worst financial crisis in decades, “loss” is the story of our life!

II. Do you know how I control my universe? (38:22-38). God is powerful.

A. Can you figure out the weather?
A panel of economic experts spent an hour discussing the future of the world economy. At the close of the discussion, the moderator asked if they knew one element on which the world economy depended. They answered with one voice: “The weather!” As mystifying as it may seem, the teaching of Job 38 is that God controls the weather patterns that seem controllable. Job 38:23-24 says that God has reserved the snow for “days of war and battle.” History students know that Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo because of rain and mud, and Germany lost the battle for Russia because of snow and blizzards.

B. Can you solve the mysteries of outer space? (38:31-33).

1. The stars speak to us of a God who is powerful and infinite.

The first hint in the Bible that the stars are innumerable is found in Genesis 15:4-5, when the Lord took Abram outside and said: “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.”

Arthur Pierson in God’s Living Oracles wrote: “The first reliable catalogue of the stars was made by Hipparchus, about 150 BC, and the second by Ptolemy about 150 years after Christ. Both these catalogues give . . . about 3,000—a very easy number to count . . . . When Galileo turned his telescope toward the heavens on the 7^th of January, 1610, for the first time it was known that there were stars never before seen . . . . From this point, as telescopes improved, discovery went forward until now it is known that the stars are absolutely countless.” When we compare the 21^st century tabulations of the number of stars, the figures boggle the mind.

An article from ESA Space Science states: “The Sun belongs to a galaxy called the Milky Way. Astronomers estimate there are about 100 thousand million stars in the Milky Way alone. Outside that, there are millions upon millions of other galaxies also!” And the first book of the Bible was suggesting this unbelievable number thousands of years ago!

Why do we need to know this information in our season of pain? Why would God be talking to Job about constellations when his friends had berated him, his family and fortune were gone, and he was diseased and sitting on an ash heap? How was this helpful?

The skeptic says God is either not loving or not powerful but He cannot be both. This was Rabbi Kushner’s dilemma as he wrote When Bad Things Happen to Good People. He concluded that God is good but not powerful. The book of Job ends by teaching that God is both good and powerful. Our next passage will teach us that God cares.

III. Do you know how I care for my creation? (38:39–39:30). God is caring.

A. His care for the animals. God brings up a procession of animals, beginning with the lion, the king of the beasts, and ending with the eagle, the symbol of dominance in the sky. With each animal, God seems to ask: Don’t you know that I care for these animals? This is the argument from the lesser to the greater. It’s the same approach found in Matthew 6. There Jesus talks of birds and flowers and asks, “Don’t you know you’re more valuable that these?”

B. The silence of God. Phillip Yancey writes in his book Disappointment with God: “Once a friend of mine went swimming in a large lake at dusk. As he was paddling at a leisurely pace about 100 yards offshore, a freak evening fog rolled in across the water. Suddenly he could see nothing: no horizon, no landmarks, no objects or lights on shore. Because the fog diffused all light, he could not even make out the direction of the setting sun.

“For 30 minutes he splashed around in panic. He would start off in one direction, lose confidence, and turn ninety degrees to the right. Or left—it made no difference which way he turned. He could feel his heart racing uncontrollably. He would stop and float, trying to conserve energy, and force himself to breathe slower. Then he would blindly strike out again. At last he heard a faint voice calling from shore. He pointed his body toward the sounds and followed them to safety.”

Something of that sense of utter lostness must have settled in on Job as he sat in the rubble and tried to comprehend what had happened. He too had lost all landmarks, all points of reference. Where should he turn? God, the One who could guide him through the fog, stayed silent. The whole point of the wager was to keep Job in the dark. If God had delivered an inspiring pep talk, such as, “Do this for me, Job, as a knight of faith, as a martyr.” Then Job, ennobled, would have suffered gladly. But Satan had challenged whether Job’s faith could survive with no outside help or explanation. When God accepted those terms, the fog rolled in around Job.

God ultimately won the wager, of course. Though Job lashed out with a stream of bitter complaints, and though he despaired of life and longed for death, still he defiantly refused to give up on God: “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in Him.” Job believed when there was no reason to believe. He believed in the midst of the fog.

Conclusion: In this time of immense loss, the bottom line for us is this: Will we trust God in the middle of the fog, when there are no earthly answers? Will we trust that God is wise and powerful and caring?