More and more about our world feels senseless and unjust. And then when a crisis hits in our own personal circumstances, it only strengthens the doubts: Does God know what He’s doing? Is He asleep at the wheel? Is He there at all?
An encounter with God pictured in the Book of Job gives us some truths to hang onto when the pain is deep, and life doesn’t make sense.
1. We’re not qualified to critique how God runs the universe
Following Job’s terrible losses, the Book of Job records 35 chapters of questioning and debate. People make confident statements about what God has done and what His motivations were. Throughout, Job longs for a meeting with God because he’s convinced that if he could only lay out his case, he could prove that he’s in the right and God has treated him unfairly. When God finally speaks, however, all the confidence quickly disappears.
In Job 38:2, God asks, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” He then follows this with a rapid-fire series of 45 questions, asking Job the measurements of the planet, the nature of its construction, and details about the sea, the waves, the clouds, and the stars. Today, He’d probably ask us to explain dark matter, black holes, and the direction of time or how He came up with the double helix structure of DNA and the invisible atomic particles that form everything we see. The point is that we know very little about the world that we live in, and so criticizing God is above our pay grade.
Job gets the message. He finally responds, “Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth” (Job 40:4). He realizes that he’s like a toddler in the universe God created. And it’s not easy being a toddler. Many things don’t make sense. But toddlers can cope with the confusion when they have a good dad they can trust.
When you’re tempted to criticize God, remind yourself how small you are and how little you know.
2. The world is a dangerous place in the control of a good God
One of the fascinating details of God’s response to Job is that it says that “the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind” (Job 38:1). Job is grieving; wouldn’t this be time for the still, small voice? Apparently not.
God speaks to Job from a violent storm in order to show how dangerous the world is but also how powerfully He rules over it. The earth is a place of earthquakes, disease, violence, and uncertainty, but God is in control of all of it.
He makes the same point by spending almost two chapters talking about two creatures, Behemoth and Leviathan, that thousands of years later we’re still not sure exactly what they are. Behemoth means something like “super beast,” and it sounds like a gigantic hippo with a tail like a tree. Leviathan is a threat from the sea that sounds like a crocodile on steroids, except there are sparks from its mouth and smoke from its nostrils.
God created murder hornets, jellyfish, megalodons, and tarantulas. They’ve found colossal squid near Antarctica that are 12 m long and weigh 1000 lbs. If you made calamari from their tentacles, they’d be the size of tractor tires. And we don’t know all of God’s purposes, but we know that He made these creatures. They teach us that we live in a dangerous world with real threats, but they also remind us that even they are under God’s sovereign control.
3. Eventually, we’ll all meet the God we’ve only heard about
The final lesson that Job’s encounter leaves us with is a caution. We tend to talk about God and the things we say about God casually, but one day, perhaps suddenly and unexpectedly, we will meet God. And meeting God changes everything.
Job says, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5-6). He had partial, incomplete, second-hand information about God. Now having met Him, he sees God in a way that he couldn’t before. Having met God, he’s overwhelmed with regret and wants to take back what he said.
Job’s words are given to spare us what he felt. And the good news is that the God we will one day meet is also the God who made a way for sinners to meet Him with joy rather than regret. Through Jesus Christ, we can be forgiven, reconciled to God, and look forward to the day when we finally see Him.
When your worst nightmare comes, you may not get an explanation. Job never did. But you can remember that you don’t see the whole picture, that your suffering isn’t outside God’s sovereign control, and that the God you will one day meet is the God you can trust today. You don’t have to understand everything God is doing to trust the God who does.
In awe of Him,
Paul
