So here we are at Job 38-41, this book’s amazing climax. These are chapters we must grasp if we want to know what this God-given book is `about`. It’s the question that struck me when we started: what, in the end, is the point – God’s point – of Job?
In his horrendous suffering, Job pleaded for an encounter with God (23:3). He didn’t expect it (30:20). But now – it happens! (`My ears had heard of You, but now my eyes have seen You!`, 42:5.)
Atkinson notes the encouragement here for any of us in deep darkness: God does come to us! – and His voice comes `out of the storm`, in more ways than one (38:1). But what He says to this man who wants to approach Him `like a prince`, wearing God’s indictment, if any, `like a crown` – `I would give Him an account of my every step`, 31:37 – is: `Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?`
Ouch!
(A friend of a friend was saved when she grasped the implications of that verse.)
What God speaks in these four wonderful chapters does what all the earlier arguing couldn’t; though God doesn’t answer Job’s questions, He speaks to his heart in just the healing way Job needs. For four immensely readable chapters (the book’s climax, if you will), He takes Job, and us, on a wonderful tour of His awesome creation. So what is God doing, not lecturing Job but stimulating him caringly with over sixty thought-provoking questions? Four things at least strike me.
The first, almost in passing, is the sheer joy and delight God shares at His creation – creation that made `all the angels shout for joy` (38:7). I love the way God so evidently delights in the horse, the hawk, the ostrich (that `flaps its wings joyfully`) and the eagle (39:19-30), and indeed in the silly stork despite its lack of common sense and wisdom (39:14-18). (`May the Lord rejoice in His works – He who looks at the earth and it trembles!` (Psalm 104).) But I’m particularly struck by God’s sheer delight in how He’s made Leviathan (look how after apparently finishing that topic in 41:11 He comes back to it for 23 more verses); delight (eg 41:12) even though Leviathan was apparently the chosen emblem of Satan (cf Isa 27:1 and Job 3:8). (Reading ch41, and again 3:8, I can’t understand how commentators see what’s said of Leviathan as describing a mere crocodile. Surely here we have some monstrous creature that terrorized these early humans (Psa 74:13-14, Job 26:13). If we are open to possibilities like the loch ness monster we’ll have no problem with that; and if (like me) you take the Flood to have been regional, not global, how it got into the Ark won’t pose a problem either.)
But then it’s worth asking why the Lord’s magnificent `grand tour` of all His works ends, culminates, with this Leviathan. One obvious point is that – whether Leviathan is indeed referenced as some monstrous creature that terrified these early humans, or the actual embodiment of Satan – the Lord is absolutely in sovereign control of it, and (41:11, 7:12) is far, far greater still. He is the Lord – hallelujah! And of course there may be a second purpose here beside what God is doing with Job (as C S Lewis says wonderfully, God’s way is to do `all things for each`): if indeed Leviathan was the emblem Satan chose for himself because of the features recorded here (just as the lamb was Christ’s chosen emblem), is this quietly putting Satan in his place as the book ends, Satan whose arrogance triggered all of this in ch1?
(I said that God’s delight in His creations appears `almost in passing`; but Atkinson’s Bible Speaks Today commentary makes a striking practical point: the best thing, if ever we want to help someone as deeply distressed as Job, may well not be ideas, doctrine, but `by taking them to see a waterfall or a sunset, by helping them recover an enjoyment in the world. Such steps are not always practicable, of course. But insofar as we can enable depressed people to… recover a place of security and belonging within the rich panorama of God’s creation, we are helping them. They need to know that they, too, belong.` And I remember a Canadian colleague saying how blessed she was, when she was deeply depressed at God’s apparent absence, by a friend saying, `Once a day, notice something beautiful.`)
Thirdly though: there is more going on in this astonishing creation than just what concerns humans. `Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain… to water a land where no one lives, an uninhabited desert; to satisfy a desolate wasteland?’ (38:26). This may take our minds back to ch1, which drew back the curtain on the supernatural world, and revealed that there were dimensions to what was happening to Job, things way beyond his vision, that underlay much of it but of which he had absolutely no idea; even though, in a way he couldn’t conceive, he was doing something phenomenal in it all to the glory of God. The same is true of us; and Boyd remarks shrewdly that `The point of [God’s] questions is to expose the massive ignorance of Job and his friends… Since we know so little about the vastness, complexity, and ordinances of creation, we are in no position to accuse anyone… Job’s friends accuse Job, and Job accuses God, because they fail to humbly acknowledge the complexity of the world God has created and their vast ignorance about it… When we try to arrogantly deny [such] finitude by ignoring all we do not know about creation, we end up either indicting people (as Job’s friends did) or indicting God (as Job did).` The other night I caught T D Jakes on television: if stressful things are happening to you, he said, it may well be because `something is coming down the line bigger than you`. What these chapters embody is the huge complexity of God’s universe, and then the still more boundless greatness of God; what Paul emphasizes as `His eternal power and divine nature` (see Rom 1:20).
And haven’t we here the paradox that must arise when we wish to think about what God is doing and why? On the one hand, God says twice to Job, `Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer Me` – there has to be a serious willingness to think (not a casual, shallow `How can there be a God when there’s so much suffering?`) And God does respond to our honest, serious questions. But to think seriously will also make us realize we are at the outer limits of what we can grasp, where the light of our unaided human reason fades pitifully away. In these creational chapters the sense of wonder forces on us (just as, say, a study of God’s quantum physics must do!) a deep awareness of our minds’ limitations; as Job realizes, of `things I didn’t understand, things too wonderful for me to know` (42:3, cf 40:5.)
So these chapters are about humility – worship, indeed – in the presence of God’s unimaginable greatness. I’m reminded of a Belarussian colleague sharing her desire to experience being like a speck of sand on the beach besides the glory of God: as distinct from the over-confident western rational tradition, even with all its strengths. There is so much we cannot know. (Isn’t all this one key reason why we each so much need the old testament – to bring us back to the majesty, the transcendence, the – shall I say holiness?- of God?) How then can we sensibly pass judgment on what this magnificent God may be doing? `Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?` Even Jesus on the cross had to cry out `My God, my God, why?`, and no answer came. Faith, says Atkinson, `is learning to trust God in the dark`; to choose to say, and it may not be remotely easy at all, “Father I don’t understand you, but I trust you”…
`The fear [that is, awe] of the Lord` – what we, and Job, are absorbing in all this – `is the beginning of wisdom`, says Psalm 111; the root of that wisdom which (Job 28) otherwise is so inaccessible. `This is what the high and exalted One says — He who lives forever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit; to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite”` (Isa 57:15). I’m reminded again of that deeply humbling vision of God’s utter greatness with which He equips Isaiah to be the greatest of the OT prophets in Isaiah 6. As Ash says, all this is about true worship, which is the beginning of wisdom.
And it’s this deeper grasp of who God is (`Now my eyes have seen You`, 42:5) that leads to a right view of who Job is (who we are). This has lots of implications. Grasping God’s greatness, wisdom, and power means knowing that ultimately we are safe. But also we’re called, as was Job, to humility when we’re tempted to insist what God should do (40:4). He is God and we are not. So our response, says Crabb, must be to `Desire much, pray for much, but demand nothing.` (Isn’t this practically powerful?) God doesn’t say Job is wrong in what he demands, but as Mallard notes, God doesn’t provide an explanation either; His response to Job is simply: Trust Me, I’m looking after it all, and I don’t make mistakes. Trust Me: `The living God`, says Atkinson, `is not so much to be … discussed, as to be known.` `What does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God` (Micah 6:8); letting God be God in the way (and at the time) that He chooses.
This (and, I do not find it easy!) is about living faith; faith focused above all on God. In fact Job is ending up where Paul does in Romans 11: `Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out! “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counsellor?” “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?” For from Him, and through Him, and for Him are all things! To Him be the glory forever, amen!` (NIV). And all these things come in these chapters from the vision of God, from really grasping, or really being shown, what God is like (42:5). So may it be for us!
Thus far, then, about God. But one other thing before we finish this week, about Job himself. When Job sees things as they really are, he has still lost everything, and he still worships God, but just for who He is. And that is a colossal refutation of all that Satan said in chapter 1. This book is the story of a believer’s – desperately painful – development and growth into deep, worshipful relationship with God. Horrible things do happen sometimes to good people – but there must be, there has to be, something wonderful that will come out of them, even massively outweighs them (Rom 8:18). Otherwise the God who loves us so greatly would obviously never let them happen.
And so it is here. God makes clear at the start and end of the book that Job is a very good man. So next week we’ll try to pull these things together: What was the point of all this as regards Job himself? What was it Job needed? How has Job changed, how has he grown? And, what does that say to us?
PS I can’t resist quoting here the very similar words of Proverbs 30:4, but look what, amazingly, they add!: `Who has gone up to heaven and come down?` [reminiscent of Jesus in John 3:13?]
`Whose hands have gathered up the wind?
Who has wrapped up the waters in a cloak?
Who has established all the ends of the earth?
What is His name; and what is the name of His Son?
Surely you know!`
