If your supervisor at your job comes in late to work one day, do you have the right to question him, to say “Hey! Where were you? Why are you late?” Or if the owner of the company takes a day off, does he have to answer to the employees for it? No, neither of them do. However, an employee does have to answer to his supervisor or the boss. In a proper and Biblically run family, the child will need to answer to his parents for his behavior, but the parent doesn’t answer to the young child. It should be obvious, then, that God does not need to answer to anyone for anything He does, yet how many times do people, including some Christians, demand an answer or an explanation from Him? Our Scripture for today is a response that the Lord gives to someone who kept wanting God to explain Himself and to answer him for things that had happened in his life. Let’s look and see what the Lord had to say.
Our Old Testament Scripture for this week from the Lectionary of the Book of Common Prayer brings us to the Book of Job. Many of you are familiar with the account of Job, but in case you aren’t, here is a quick recap. Job was a godly believer in Yahweh, following and obeying Him to the best of his ability. He was a wealthy man, primarily a rancher, with ten children (Job 1:1-3). One day Satan appeared before God, and God pointed out what a good and righteous man Job was. Satan responded that Job only followed God because He had abundantly blessed him, and that if the Lord took away His blessings, Job would curse Him (Job 1:6-2:10). God put Job to the test, allowing Satan to take away his wealth, his children, and his health, yet Job did not curse God.
Job did not curse God, yet when several of his “friends” came, and in their discussions with him, they told Job that this must have happened to him because he had sinned, Job began to not only angrily answer his friends back, he began to question God, wanting an answer from Him. Throughout the majority of the book, Job and his friends go back and forth between each other, like a ball in a game of tennis, his friends accusing, and Job defending himself, including to God.
Throughout this book, Job had repeatedly called on God to verify his innocence to his “friends”. Now God finally appears, beginning in our Scripture passage, and for the remainder of the book. He will vindicate Job to the others, but first He brings Job to a right understanding of Himself. Job was not as sinful as his friends had stated, but he was rather presumptive in wanting to question God. Now God silences him (vs. 3). The Lord proceeds to describe and give examples from nature and creation to Job, asking him if he understands the how and why of everything. If Job did not understand the workings of God’s physical creation, how could he possibly understand God’s mind and character.
God has planned and created the universe down to the finest detail. The worlds are held up by the Word of God (Hebrews 11:3). The oceans have boundaries, limits to how far they can go on land. These limits are set by God Himself (vs. 8, 11). If the oceans ever go past those limits, it will be at God’s command.
God never gave the reason why Job suffered. He does not need to give an explanation! God did, though, ask Job if he was as eternal, great, powerful, wise, and perfect as God. If not, Job ought to be quiet and trust Him.
Between Job 38:1 and Job 41:34 God asks Job a total of 83 questions, none of which Job could answer. Job must let God be God, the sovereign and omnipotent Creator, who answers to no one! We all have questions that we would like to ask God, and it is good to be open and honest with Him. However, we should never get presumptive with Him, demanding answers, and feeling that He needs to answer to us. God is the sovereign God, not us.
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