All Sermons

Then the Lord Answered Job Part 9 By Andrew Davies

We turn this evening to the closing chapters of the book of Job, chapters 38 through to the end of chapter 41, in which the Lord himself speaks to Job, revealing his omnipotence and challenging him to understand, if he can, the mystery of God's ways and works.
The message of the book is that the faith of a true believer may be severely tested.
Faith has to face many perplexities, notably the perplexity of the fact that sometimes godly people are called upon to suffer.
When things happen to us, as happened to Job, how do we respond?
And what light is there on the question of the sufferings of the godly within the book of Job?
There are three shafts of light, I think.
The first is that behind the scenes, hidden from view, a conflict is taking place between God and Satan, and as Satan attacked Job's sincerity and God's name and God's goodness, Job defied Satan and destroyed the charges that he brought against God.
He worshipped God despite the fact that he suffered.
And so the grace of God in Job triumphed over Satan.
That is all the more remarkable when you think of the fact that Job was unaware of the conflict
going on behind the scenes.
So we need to see our sufferings in this light, that we have a great opportunity to
confound Satan and to glorify and magnify God's grace in our lives.
We can love God, indeed we should love God, for his own sake, not merely because he endows
us with blessings.
That's the first shaft of light on the question of the sufferings of the godly.
The second is that behind our sufferings there is a wise and loving purpose.
God who is our Father chastens us and disciplines us.
He wants to purify us and to strengthen us.
He wants to add new qualities to our lives which could not be created or added in any
other way.
So that sufferings are not a punishment so much as a way of God curing us, God purifying
us.
That's really the message that Elihu brings in his speeches.
God removes the dross from our lives through a refining process.
And he is our friend and our teacher, producing patience and trust and sweetness and hope
through sufferings.
That's the second shaft of light on the question of why it is that godly people may be called
upon to suffer.
But there's a third shaft of light, there's a third dimension to this whole reality.
God had another reason for allowing his servant to be afflicted and we find it here in these
words that are addressed at the end to Job directly from the Almighty.
They're remarkable and surprising words.
They're sometimes referred to as the storm speeches of Jehovah, because we're told in
verse 38 and verse 1 that the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind.
And again in verse 6 of chapter 40, the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said.
So out of these storms that surrounded him, God spoke to him.
One is reminded of the way in which God spoke at Mount Sinai to Moses out of the storm.
And here is the Lord out of a storm speaking to his servant.
Now what he does is to remind Job of three things and we won't be able to go through
this in detail, but I'll just try to pick out the three things that the Lord said to
Job out of these storms.
The first is that he reminded Job of his own wisdom in creation.
And chapters 38 and 39 are really all about God's wisdom in creation.
He refers to the seas, for example, in chapter 38 verses 8 to 11, who shut in the sea with
doors when it burst forth and disappeared from the womb.
The sea, God put it there.
In verses 12 to 15 of chapter 38, he speaks about the dawning of the day, have you commanded
the morning since your days began and caused the dawn to know its place.
And then in verses 16 to 18 of chapter 38, he speaks to Job about the depths of the sea
and the expanse of the earth.
Have you entered the springs of the sea?
Have you comprehended the breadth of the earth?
And of course, that was something that Job could not have done.
He didn't have the advantage that we do nowadays of space travel and of aircraft travel so
that we can see the earth in a new way.
And the Lord is reminding him of the expanse of the earth, but also of the depth of the sea.
In verses 19 to 21, he speaks about light and darkness and asks, Job, where is the way
to the dwelling of light and darkness?
Where is its place?
Verses 22 to 30 speak about the snow and the hail and the rain and the dew and the ice
and the frost.
Have you entered the treasury of the snow?
Have you seen the treasury of hail and so on?
Verses 31 to 33 of chapter 38 speak about stars and planets, which Job would have been
familiar with as he looked into the night sky.
And then verses 34 to 38, clouds and lightning and mists.
And into chapter 39, we have God speaking about the animal kingdom, the lion, the raven,
the mountain goat, the deer, the wild asses, the wild oxen, the foolish ostrich which can
outrun a horse and a war horse at that.
And he speaks about the hawk and the eagle.
The Lord is reminding Job of his wisdom in creation.
The question is, why does God say that?
Why does God speak to a man who is suffering in this way?
What help and comfort could Job receive from words such as these?
And then the second thing that the Lord does is to remind Job of his justice in the rule
of the world.
In chapter 40, verses 6 to 14 speak about divine justice.
Job had questioned God's justice as we do.
We ask our logical questions.
Is God all good?
If God is all good, why does he allow suffering?
Does God know all?
If he knows all, why doesn't he prevent things from happening?
If God can do everything, why doesn't he end all the suffering?
We ask our logical questions.
Logically, we would like answers to those questions, and we would think that if we were
in the place of the Almighty, we might do things differently from him.
We question God's justice.
So God questions Job, and verses 6 to 9 of chapter 40 tell us about that.
Prepare yourself like a man.
I will question you, and you shall answer me.
Would you indeed annul my judgment?
Would you condemn me that you may be justified?
Have you an arm like God?
Can you thunder with a voice like his?
Then adorn yourself with majesty and splendor, and array yourself with glory and beauty.
Disperse the rage of your wrath.
Look on everyone who is proud, and humble him.
Look on everyone who is proud, and bring him low.
Tread down the wicked in their place.
Hide them in the dust together.
Bind their faces in hidden darkness.
Then I will also confess to you that your own right hand can save you.
He's issuing Job with a challenge about his own incapacity to do anything better, anything
other than what actually happens under the sun.
What could you do?
The Lord is saying to him.
What could you do?
What can you do?
Can you rule the universe in justice?
Can you vindicate yourself?
Can your own right hand save you?
He's asking Job about himself and reminding Job of his own justice in the rule of the
world.
Now again, the question is, why does he speak to Job like that?
How can words like that help a man who is struggling with the meaning of suffering and
with the fact that though a godly man, he is suffering?
What assurance, what comfort is there from words like those?
And then the third thing that the Lord does is to remind Job of his power, seen particularly
in two great creatures, and chapter 40 verse 15 through to chapter 41 verse 34 are a description
of these two great creatures, usually understood by the commentators to be the hippopotamus
and the crocodile.
So there are variations on that understanding.
There are those even who regard one of these animals as a dinosaur.
But most commentators think that the reference is to the hippopotamus and the crocodile.
The point is that here are two creatures which Job cannot control.
He simply can't do it.
Chapter 41 verse 24 is a picture of that.
Though he takes it in his eyes, all one pierces his nose with a snare.
That is to say, you really can't do much about this great animal.
You couldn't pierce his nose with a snare.
And chapter 41 verse 1 and 2, can you draw out Leviathan with a hook or snare his tongue
with a line which you lower?
Can you put a reed through his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook?
But verse 11, who has preceded me that I should pay him?
Everything under heaven is mine.
That is to say, though you can't control these great creatures, Job, I made them, I put them
there, and they're under my hand.
The whole world is under my hand, and my power is greater than yours.
Now why does God speak like that?
Now Jonathan, would you just stop running back and forth, please, because people are
trying to listen.
Why does God speak like that?
Why does God, the Almighty, speak like that to a man like Job who is in serious difficulties,
in serious trouble?
What help is there from these words for him in his difficulties and in his troubles?
If you were in Job's position, how would you feel if the Lord were to speak to you like
this?
If he were to remind you of his wisdom in creation, if he was to remind you of his justice
in the ruling of the world, and if he was to tell you that there are two creatures that
you cannot control, but God has made them and put them there.
How would you feel?
How would I feel if this sort of thing happened to us, his wisdom in creation, his justice
in the world, his power over these creatures?
How can this help us in our suffering?
Might they not actually break us?
Might they not reduce us to reluctant submission?
Might they cause us to accept God's will with fatalistic resignation?
Might they even produce a kind of sullen and resentful acceptance of the inevitable?
Well they might, and in the hands of some people, to be reminded of these three things
might have that effect upon us if, for example, Job's three friends had spoken to Job about
these matters in the way that they'd already spoken to him, then the effect might have
been counterproductive.
But when the Lord says this to Job, it's different.
When the Lord speaks to Job in this way, it's not like any other person speaking to Job
in this way.
And that is because when the Lord speaks to him in this way, for the first time since
the very opening two chapters of the book, he speaks to him as the Lord, as Jehovah,
as Yahweh.
In chapters 3 to 37, the name of God that is used invariably throughout the book is
the name El Shaddai, the Almighty.
It's the name that's used for God very often in the book of Genesis.
And it's used in the book of Genesis at one or two strategic moments in the history of
mankind.
It's used in Genesis for situations in which God took over when everything seemed to be
lost within human history, when all hope seemed to have gone and all strength had been exhausted.
Let me just refer to the two occasions in particular when this name El Shaddai is used
in the book of Genesis.
It's used in chapter 43, verse 14, and in chapter 49, verse 25.
Take chapter 43, verse 14, as an example.
We're told here about Joseph's brothers returning with Benjamin, and they visit him when he's
in Egypt, now as a great man.
And you read in verse 14,
May God Almighty give you mercy before the man that he may release your other brother
and Benjamin.
This is Jacob now giving his farewell advice to the brothers on their return to Joseph,
whom they are to visit in Egypt.
May God Almighty grant you mercy before the man that he may release your other brother
and Benjamin.
It's a strategic moment.
Jacob is afraid that he's going to lose his son Benjamin, having in his judgment already
lost his other son Joseph.
He feels that he's going to lose his youngest son, and therefore he prays,
May God Almighty give you mercy before the man.
And then if you go on to chapter 49, verse 25, again you have this great name El Shaddai.
It's a reference here to Joseph, by the God of your father who will help you, and by the
Almighty who will bless you.
The blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lie beneath, blessings of the
breasts and of the wombs, blessing of Jacob to his son Joseph just before his death.
So here is the name El Shaddai used in Genesis of the power, particularly the power of God's
grace, the power of God's mercy.
But you see, it's the power of God's grace that is particularly the focus of this great
name.
He is El Shaddai.
He is the Almighty.
Now, as I say throughout the book of Job from chapter 3 through to 37, that is the name
that is used for God.
He is the El Shaddai.
He's the powerful God.
For Job's three friends, this great name El Shaddai symbolizes power, God's power.
But for them, it's detached power, distant power, punitive power.
The grace that is built into the name of God El Shaddai has gone.
It's the power of God that they're drawing attention to, not the power of God's grace,
but just his power, his detached, unyielding, sovereign power.
There's no grace in what they're saying.
Job for them needs to be broken.
He needs to be reduced.
He needs to be brought low.
He needs to realize his sin and brought to heel.
Their theology is barren of grace, but it's full of power, divine power.
So from chapters 3 to 37, when they speak of the Lord, they speak of him as El Shaddai,
powerful God.
So it's wonderfully significant, really, that in chapter 38, when the Lord speaks to Job,
he uses his name Yahweh, the Lord.
It's the first time that this name is used since the opening two chapters of the book.
He is the God of covenant grace.
He is the God known as the God full of loving kindness and mercy and compassion for the
children of men.
Therefore, what God says to Job, he says, as the God of grace, he is certainly El Shaddai
but he is also the sovereign Lord, the God of the covenant.
And when he speaks in wisdom about his creation, and when he speaks about his wisdom in creation,
when he speaks in wisdom about his justice and about his justice in the world, when he
speaks in wisdom about his power over the creatures, he is saying wonderfully encouraging
things for this man who is in distress and in trouble.
What makes these words then so encouraging?
Well, because he's addressing Job as the Lord, as the covenant God, as the God of grace,
he's opening up before Job new horizons.
You see, one of the problems is that we can be immersed by our sufferings.
We find them overwhelming.
We are trapped almost by them, imprisoned by them, but we need to look up and out.
We need to look around.
We need to look ahead.
Very often our sufferings cause us to look in.
We implode, so to speak.
We are caught in a cycle of trouble and depression and despair almost.
We need to look up and out and ahead and around.
We need a new horizon, so almost as though we're in a pit and we look down and in and
all around us we see despair and chaos.
We need these new horizons.
We need to see things that we haven't seen before and to look at reality in a way that
we've never looked into before.
Now, this isn't escapism.
Looking at God's wonders in creation isn't escapism.
Looking at God's justice in the government of the world isn't escapism.
Looking at God's power over the creatures isn't escapism.
That's what we're meant to do.
We are meant to look at the world.
We are meant to look at the government of the world.
We are meant to look at the creatures that God has put in the world and enjoy them and
appreciate them and reflect upon the fact that God is in charge.
And when we do that, we break out of the cycle of depression.
We come out of ourselves.
We walk among the wonders of creation and we take in the panorama and we admire that
we, who are creatures, have a place in this wonderful scene which God himself has painted
for us.
So not only is this a wonderful world, but we have a place in this wonderful world.
We have a position in this wonderful world.
We have significance in this wonderful world.
Jesus spoke about this.
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.
He's telling people to consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.
We're to think about that.
Look at the birds of the air, he says.
Look at the way your Heavenly Father feeds them.
Our Lord was saying something profoundly significant.
He was telling us something that we ought to do and Job needed to do this.
Job needed a new perspective.
He needed to open his eyes to other things that he wasn't thinking about, but he needed
to think about.
And he needed to think about them because they were evidence of God at work, God at
work in the world and God at work in his own life.
Look, Jesus said, look at the birds of the air when you're worried about what you're
going to eat and about what you're going to put on.
Look at the birds of the air.
They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your Heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not of more value than they?
Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature or his length of life?
So why do you worry about clothing?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.
They neither toil nor spin.
And yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of
these.
Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is thrown into
the fire, will you not much more clothe you?
Oh, you of little faith, therefore, do not worry, saying, what shall we eat or what shall
we drink or what shall we wear?
You must open your eyes to what God is doing and God has done all around you.
Here is God's handiwork.
Here is God's hand.
And this hand of God that has produced all this beauty around us is on us as well.
So he cares for you.
He's concerned about you.
Job needed that new perspective.
The El Shaddai was also Jehovah.
And he was the God who made a covenant with the day and the night.
And he'd also made a covenant with his people that he would not desert them and he would
not neglect them.
So the Lord speaking to Job as the Lord as the covenant God opened his understanding
to new horizons.
And it's a beautiful thing to do that.
It's a wonderful thing to be able to look at the sky, to look at the trees, to look
at the birds around us, to look at nature and to appreciate that all this came from
the hand of our gracious God and that he's the covenant keeping God and that he's our
heavenly Father.
That's the first benefit of these speeches to Job.
And the second benefit is that they reminded him and us that God is in control.
All these natural elements that are described in the book are outside our control.
We cannot control the sky.
We cannot control the sea.
We cannot control the light.
We cannot control the rain and so on.
All of these things are outside our control.
The situations of human life are outside our control.
We can't control the rising and the falling of the nations.
We just haven't the power to do that.
All the animals in the animal kingdom, the lioness and the lion, the raven, the wild
goats, the oxen, the hawks, the hippos, the crocodiles, they're not under our control.
All of these realities are outside of our charge.
We are not in charge of the world, hence the questions that are repeated here.
Chapter 38 verse 4, Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world?
Verse 12, Have you commanded the morning since your days began?
Verse 16, Have you entered the springs of the sea?
Verse 18, Have you comprehended the breadth of the earth?
Verse 21, Do you know it because you were born then or because the number of your days
is great?
Question after question is put to Job, verse 1 of 39, Do you know the time when the wild
mountain goat bears young?
Can you control that event?
Who set the wild donkey free?
Verse 19, Have you given the horse strength?
Verse 26 and so on, Does the hawk fly by your wisdom?
Verse 9 of chapter 40, Have you an arm like God?
Can you thunder with a voice like his?
Verse 24, Though he takes it in his eyes, or one tears his nose with a snare, and so
on and so on.
Over and over again there are questions here being put to Job.
That is to say, Job, who is in control of the natural world?
Who is in charge of the universe, Job?
Are you in charge?
Are you in control?
Who are you?
Who are you really?
Who is in control of nature, creation, history, providence?
Are you?
You seem to know a great deal.
You seem to have many ideas about the way things ought to be done.
Who is in charge here?
Well, we know who is in charge.
It's the Lord who is in control.
So his wisdom is greater than ours, his justice, his power, they're greater than ours.
And we see this.
We see orderliness, even if we don't fully understand the mysteries of providence.
And this God who is in control is for us.
That's really what the Lord is saying here.
Who has preceded me that I should pay him?
Everything under heaven is mine.
That's what the Lord is saying to Job.
Everything under heaven is mine.
All my attributes are involved here.
And you don't run the universe, I do.
And you can't run the universe, I do.
And I needn't explain to you the way I do it.
And I'm not unsuitable to you, and I'm not at your beck and call.
So just remember, Job, that you are not in control, but I am, and I'm for you.
Though you may not understand what's going on, I'm for you.
I'm your Father, I'm your God, I'm the covenant-keeping Jehovah.
And you are mine, and I am yours.
So I want you to think about that.
So his horizons are opened up.
He's reminded that the Lord is in control.
And the third thing, I think, that helps Job, as he is addressed by the Almighty in this
way, is that these words were spoken to him in love and out of compassion and tenderness.
Often our words are not spoken in love, are they, and the words of Job's friends were
not spoken in love.
They did not speak for God correctly.
But when the Lord speaks to us, he speaks in love.
He is the God of grace, he's Jehovah.
And he was there all the time, but Job couldn't see him.
But now he begins to reveal himself to Job in creation and in providence.
He's sovereign, his will is irresistible, but he's our Father.
He's our friend.
We're being reminded here of the sovereignty of God our Father.
So these three great realities that Job has been reminded of, the fact that God is the
just God, that he is the powerful God, that he is the wise God, all these things that
Job has been reminded of are encouragements to him because this God is his God, and this
God cares for him and loves him.
So his will is good and perfect, and his banner over him is love.
Everything however painful is working for his good.
Behind the frowning providence, he hides a smiling face, and that is now what Job begins
to see.
He hasn't seen it to the degree that he now sees it before, but he now begins to
see it.
And so God wants to unfold before him the reality of his own power and wisdom and grace
and justice.
He wants Job to know him in a new way, in a felt way, in a way that will not only humble
him, but lift him up and give him a new perspective and a new understanding of God's divine and
gracious will.
Now that, of course, in the full light of the New Testament is what Calvary is saying
to us.
What we're being told by the cross of Jesus is precisely this, that the God who is for
us is the God who is for us in redeeming love in sovereign mercy.
He's for us in dealing with our sins by laying them on his son Jesus Christ.
He's for us in dealing with his own wrath and propitiating it in the sacrifice of Jesus.
He's for us in dealing with the consequences of sin, that is to say sickness and suffering
and death itself in the cross of Jesus.
So the cross of Jesus is the complete answer to suffering.
It is the absolute, ultimate answer to suffering.
Because when Jesus died, he died to deal with our sins, but he also died to deal with the
consequences of our sin.
He died to deal with death.
He died to deal with the works of the devil.
The apostle John reminds us of that.
He came to take away sin.
He came to destroy the works of the devil.
The works of the devil are all about disintegration and disorder and dis-ease and death.
Those are the works of the devil.
But Jesus came in order to undo and to destroy the works of the devil.
So we see sufferings through Calvary, through God's great mercy and grace as the covenant
God who deals with sin and all its consequences.
Because there's no doubt that Calvary and the cross of Jesus is the answer to disease
as well as sin.
It's the answer to death as well as sin.
It's the complete answer to all the consequences of the fall, as well as the fall itself.
It's the answer to the curse that came into the world through the fall.
It's the answer to a declining universe.
It's the answer to the disorganization and the deterioration of the universe.
The cross of Jesus is the great answer to all suffering, to all sickness, to all death.
That's why it is the most immense moment in the history of the universe.
And when we think of the cross of Jesus, we're to think of it in these cosmic terms and in
its whole dimension of reality as God's answer, his ultimate answer to sin and sickness and
disease and death.
That's why when the apostle Peter preached, you remember on the occasion of the raising
of that man, the crippled man at the beautiful gate of the temple in Acts 3, he took the
opportunity to begin to speak about God's great purpose in forgiving sin, in sending
seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord, and in then sending the Christ ultimately
at the end to resolve all things and to restore all things.
Peter's sermon was about the cross, not only in terms of its forgiveness, but in terms
of the way it would deal with sin and suffering and sickness and death, and then Christ would
return and there'd be a new heavens and a new earth.
Now though Job wasn't able to appreciate in the way that we can this New Testament
perspective, nevertheless, it's here in the book and what the Lord was really saying to
Job was this, Job, trust me, Job, I'm your father, I'm your God, I'm your savior.
You must begin to think about me as the creator of all things and see me in all things.
You must begin to see my wisdom and my justice and my power in all things.
And you must remember that I'm in control and you must remember that I, the eternal
God, am your refuge and underneath you are the everlasting arms.
Job, I want you to know me and I want you to know me in a new way.
I want you to see me.
You've heard about me.
I want you to see me.
I want you to begin to understand some of the mysteries of my ways and of my works.
And so Job is given a new position.
He's able to see things in a new way.
That's why in the closing chapter, he answers the Lord and says,
Know that you can do everything and that no purpose of yours can be withheld from you.
You asked, Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know.
Listen, please, and let me speak.
You said, I will question you and you shall answer me.
I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.
Therefore, I bore myself and repent in dust and ashes.
He now realizes who the Lord is and who the Lord will always be.
And the fact that this great Jehovah God is for him and with him and has loved him and will love him forever and ever.
Wonderful when you begin to understand that.
You see, it's the thing that matters most in life that we realize and appreciate that the El Shaddai,
who is the powerful God of grace, is also Jehovah, the God of grace.
And he's entered into a covenant with us in Christ and he will never, never, never let us go.
It's a wonderful reality and it's something that we need to appreciate anew.
So there are these three shafts of light upon the problem of suffering.
Are we going to shout the omnipotence of grace to Satan, who charges God and us cynically?
Are we going to in the hands of the divine potter be like clay so that he can mold us and make us for his own beauty?
And are we going to trust this sovereign Lord who wants us to know him better and very often he leads us by a strange path
in order that we might know him better and come to know him more intimately and more clearly?
Well, that really, I think, is what the book is about.
And the final proof of the gospel of Christ is the cross of Christ.
Well, as our closing hymn is going to tell us, this mighty King of glory we can call our Father and our Friend.
And let's sing the last hymn as we draw the service to a close.
You'll notice that in the last verse of 97, you have really what I've been trying to say.
Will this mighty King of glory condescend?
And it's a hymn about God's greatness in creation and in governing of the universe and the wisdom that is revealed in God's works.
And then the last verse asks the question, will this mighty King of glory condescend?
Will he write his name, my Father and my Friend?
Can he do that?
I love his name.
I love his word.
Join all my powers to praise the Lord.
That's exactly it.
Well, let's sing the hymn to close, number 97.
Now may the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all now and evermore.
Amen.