If God were to speak to you, would you choose the still, small comforting whispering voice that God spoke to the prophet Samuel and Elijah?
Or would you choose the powerful and challenging voice from the whirlwind that Job encountered? The still small voice would be my choice.
Sometimes God chooses to speak to us through mind boggling life experiences to get our attention, as God appears to do with Job. And this was God response to Job’s challenge to God in chapter 23, where Job cries out…
Would God contend with me in the greatness of his power? No; but he would give heed to me. There an upright person could reason with him, and I should be acquitted forever by my judge. (Job 23:6-7)
Job is caught totally off guard when God confronts him in the loud thundering sounds of the whirlwind. God honours Job’s request for an encounter with him, but not in the way he expected or wanted.
Job, like us, wanted answers to his many questions and an opportunity to question God as to why he was suffering. And as is often the case, God doesn’t answer our many questions. God never tells Job of the bet he has made with Satan concerning Job’s integrity and faith. God does not answer Job’s probing questions as to why the righteous or why anyone else suffers. God does not indulge or cater to Job’s obsession with his own personal integrity and to justify that he is innocent.
God refuses to be placed on the witness stand to answer to Job, instead God places Job on the witness stand to be bombarded with some seventy-seven questions in chapters 38-41. God challenges Job to answer the questions that are beyond his understanding.
For example God asks Job from the powerful whirlwind, . . .
“Who is it that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man (a hero-warrior), I will question you, and you shall declare to me.” (Job 38:1-2)
Or “Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars, and spreads its wings toward the south? Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes its nest on high?” (Job 39:26-27)
Imagine what you would think, say, or do if you were asked the same questions that God asked of Job.
Through the 77 questions that God asks of Job, Job is made to understand that God governs the universe in such a way that allows for creative design, that enables evil to be contained, and for God’s providential care to come through.
It also puts Job and us in a situation where we must stand in awe of God’s design, even though it is at times so bewildering and so beyond what or how we believe God should act or be.
All of God’s questions are meant to emphasize the fact that God is free to act just as we are free to act.
Most of us are much more comfortable with human free will, than we are with God’s free will. We generally give thanks to God that we are created to be free agents in this life, free to make choices, and free to accept or reject God and his blessings.
But when it comes to accepting God’s freedom to choose and to act, we become uncomfortable. And that is a whole different issue for us. After all, God is free to act and do as he pleases because God is God. God is not limited by what we think he should do or say. God will not be boxed in by human reason or human desire.
Like Job, we too are left speech-less, bewildered, in awe of God and yes, even troubled by this God who we have come to worship today. This means that God is beyond our control and we as creatures are under God’s sovereign and loving control whether we acknowledge or like it or not.
In chapter 40, God asks Job the question,
Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Anyone who argues with God must respond. (Job 40:2)
These are strong words from a God who speaks from a powerful whirlwind! They are words that demand a response from us. God had presented His case to Job and now it was Job’s turn to respond to God.
As a result, all of Job’s lofty words and well-practiced arguments escaped him. All Job could do was to fall on his face before God his Creator and say,
“See, I am of small account;
what shall I answer you?
I lay my hand over my mouth. (Job 40:4)
In Job’s response to God, we get a picture of how we are to respond to God our creator, redeemer and sustainer.
Job’s first statement, “See, I am of small account” reflects a man who has come to the important understanding that compared to the vastness of the creation he is insignificant. Job’s statement reveals a person who has been humbled by what he has seen and heard. He is one who comes to know the reality that God is God and he is not. This is an important lesson that every human has struggled with since Adam and Eve choose to disobey obey God and give into the temptation to be independent and sovereign creatures.
This is rather strange because we have been taught just the opposite by our society. We have been encouraged to recognize our value, importance, and significance as people. We are encouraged by society to be masters of our fate and to set ourselves up in the place of God.
There is certainly a place for recognizing our worth, for healthy individuals do. But the ever-present danger is when we place too much emphasis on our significance, we lose sight of the fact that God is ultimately in control and not us.
For us this means that whatever God allows we must bow in submission to him, just as Jesus humbly accepted and subjected himself to God’s will for him in the Garden of Gethsemane.
To be in a right relationship with God means that we must humbly accept the fact that God is God and we are not. When we forget this important truth even for a moment, we become self-focused, self-indulgent persons who do not glorify God.
Job’s second statement, “What shall I answer you?” reveals that he realizes that all of his petty questions, concerns, and demands mean very little in God’s larger design for his creation.
If Job couldn’t understand the inner workings of nature, or God’s purposes for his creation how could he possibly explain or understand his situation? Job is forced to let go of his many questions and yield to God’s wisdom and power.
But in doing so, God offered Job relief from his mental anguish caused by his many questions by saying something to the effect “Rest in me, trust in me. I’ll do my work and you do yours.”
This is relieves us of having to know the reason for why things happen. This frees us from having to play God and to put our efforts in doing what God wants whether we know what is happening to us, or those around us or our world.
Even Jesus, we are told in the Scriptures had to learn obedience through what he suffered. Jesus who was one with the Father, abandoned his right to control his destiny and submitted his will to the Father’s.
As Jesus leaves the Garden of Gethsemane, he goes on to boldly face and endure his cross with the solid confidence that things will turn out as God intends. If we are to follow Jesus faithfully, then we must abandon what we want in order to follow God in the ways chooses for us. This is the only way to be truly content in this life.
And Job’s third statement, Knowing when to be silent before God and listen. “I lay my hand upon my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not answer; twice, but will proceed no further.” (Job 40:4-5)
After all Job has gone through with his knowing why he has suffered unjustly, he begins to understand that God is much wiser and knowledgeable than he or his comforters think they are. God has already given him a lesson about God’s control over creation and Job knows he has much to learn and prepares himself to learn more.
We struggle with not having the answers to life’s perplexing issues. We want to control our life and hate it when we feel we don’t have control. Sometimes the only thing we can do is simply to be silent and listen to whatever God speaks to us from the Scriptures and from our circumstances.
If the last 20 months have taught us anything it the fact the only thing we have any sort of control over is how we choose to response to our circumstances and who we choose to listen to. The book of Job teaches us that our response to life is a choice that God gives to us. God can lead us to wisdom, but he can’t make us listen and learn what he wants us to learn.
When God in comes to Job in the powerful whirlwind to speak with him, God demonstrated to Job that he was listening to him and valued him. Otherwise God would have just ignored him.
Like Job, the Psalmist comes to stand in awe of God as he considers his creation by God. In Psalm 8 we read,
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and honor.
If this isn’t enough to convince us that God loves us and is in control then we should ponder anew the mystery of Christ’s suffering on the cross for our sins. If doesn’t convince us, then nothing will.
When God finally spoke to Job, the words probably weren’t the ones Job had wanted or expected to hear. But it was through God’s challenge to him to consider the complex, and awe-inspiring creation that Job was able to get his mind off his suffering. It also provided Job with a new perspective on God, his life, and even his personal pain.
When life seems so totally out of our control, God challenges us to consider the vastness of his creation and to understand that God is in control. And thus like Job, we too are challenged by God to rest in His divine control over the creation and our lives.
And we are challenged to see Him more clearly, love Him more dearly, and follow Him more nearly day by day in the midst of whatever circumstances we find ourselves in.
Amen.