"God is God" Job 38:1-15 & 42:1-17
- Youth & Outreach Director, Hunter Newton, preached this message as part of our Graduate Sunday celebration on May 21, 2023.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Audio Transcript
I said, God, I do not understand this world. Everything is dying and broken. Why do I see nothing but suffering? God, I’m asking you, could this be your plan? Sin has taken hold of this whole land.
Will you not say anything else to me? He said, where were you the day that I measured sunk the banks and stretched the line over all the earth and carved out its cornerstone? I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me. Although I had no right to ask, My God knelt and answered me. This is not me.
Auditioning for Slam poetry the local coffee shop these are the lyrics from Ghost Ship’s song titled Where Were you? There’s still a Christian band. This song has been really encouraging to me. I’ve really enjoyed it. I’ve worshiped to it, I’ve cried through it.
I’ve reflected on the goodness of God and it’s really covering with the chapters that we’re going to be tackling today. Where were you? It’s the first one of the first questions God asked Job and the book named after him. So we’re starting making our way there to job 381 15, and then we’ll also be in chapter chapter 42, all of it 1 through 17, on graduate Sunday. You think about this as a charge to our young men and women.
There’s not much better for them to know, to hold on to, other than this idea of who God is getting him right. God, friends, is God. God is God. But the same is true. We need to know this.
Well, it’s not just for the seniors today. So let’s go ahead and we can make our way there. And you haven’t Already said Job 38:1 15? God’s Word this morning says to us. Then the Lord answered Job from the whirlwind.
He said, who is this who obscures my counsel with ignorant words? Get ready to answer me like a man. When I question you, you will inform me, where were you when I established the earth? Tell me if you have understanding, who fixed its dimensions? Certainly you know who stretch a measuring line across it, what supports its foundations?
Or who laid its cornerstone while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Who enclosed the sea behind doors when it burst from the womb? When I made the clouds its garments and total darkness its blanket? When I determined its boundaries and put its bars and doors in place? When I declared, you may come this far but no farther, your proud waves stop here.
Have you ever in your life commanded to the morning, or assigned the dawn its place so it may Seize the edges of the earth and shake the wicked out of it. The earth is changed as clay is by seal. Its hills stand out like the folds of a garment. Light is withheld from the wicked, and the arm raised in violence is broken. And he turned us a few pages with me to chapter 42.
We continue to read. Then Job replied to the Lord, I know that you can do anything, and no plan of yours can be thwarted. You asked, who is this who conceals my counsel with ignorance? Surely I spoke about things I did not understand, things too wondrous for me to know. You said, listen now, and I will speak.
When I question you, you will inform me. I had heard reports about you, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I reject my words and am sorry for them. I am dust and ashes. After the Lord had finished speaking to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Timanite, I am angry with you and your two friends, for you have not spoken the truth about me as my servant Job has.
Now take seven bulls and seven rams, go to my servant Job and offer a burnt offering for yourselves. Then my servant Job will pray for you. I will surely accept his prayer and not deal with you as your folly deserves, for you have not spoken the truth about me as my servant Job has. Then Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuite, and Zophar the Naamathite went and did as the Lord had told them. And the Lord accepted Job’s prayer.
We continue to read in verse 10. After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes and doubled his previous possessions. All his brothers and sisters and former acquaintances came to him and dined with him in his house. They sympathized with him and comforted him concerning all the adversity the Lord had brought on him. Each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold earring.
So the Lord established, or the Lord blessed the last part of Job’s life more than the first. He owned 14,000 sheep and goats, 6,000 camels, 1,000 yoke of oxen, and 1,000 female donkeys. He also had seven sons and three daughters. He named his first daughter Jemima, his second, Keziah, and his third Karen Hippoch. No woman as beautiful as Job’s daughters could be found in all the land, and their father granted them an inheritance with their brothers.
Job lived 140 years after this and saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. Then Job died, old and full of days. So far as the word this morning. So we’re Taking a break. We’re stepping out of our series through Ephesians.
Pastor Roberts been doing an incredible job camping out on marriage in the Book of Ephesians these past few weeks. And so, like I said, today we’re giving our charge to our graduates. But also, this is for everybody. This is a charge to the whole congregation. We’ve not been in the Book of Job or anywhere near it.
And I’m guessing for some of us, maybe this is the first time. The sermon I preached this morning was the first sermon I’ve ever heard from the Book of Job. And so this is something that when we think of, we think it’s incredibly sad. Like, all these terrible things happen to him. And if you’re not familiar with the story, like, up until this point, Job was this incredibly rich man.
He lost pretty much everything there is to lose on planet Earth. He lost just about everything. All of his kids die, his possessions run dry, and he encounters great physical torment. But there’s also some absolutely beautiful stuff in this book. Such incredible things we see in the text this morning.
We see that Job has all that he needs when. When God and a few friends are all that he has. He has everything. And. But also recently, scholars have confirmed that Job was most likely a Cubs fan.
Yeah, there’s the. Yep, there you go. Satan says to that he wants to test Job and God lets Satan. So we get an important understanding of who. Who Satan is, too.
Like, Satan is on a leash. I think a common misconception we have is that Satan and God are just like this. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Satan is a created being, so God has dominion and sovereignty over him. Satan’s on a leash.
He can only do what God says he can do. So we see that in the opening chapters of the Book of Job here, as he said, as Satan tells God, if you test, if I test Job, he’ll surely betray you. But God knows the outcome. He says, go ahead. And he tells him what he can and cannot do.
God also speaks directly to Job. That’s a pretty unique experience. Like, God speaks to us through his Word, but we don’t have that too often that God’s spoken directly to the face of a human. This beautiful dialogue that we’re looking at today, we’re really covering all of chapters three, 38 through 42. But for the sake of time, we’re not going to read all of it.
But we’ll look at different themes, different things that are pointed out to us there. We’ll highlight the bookends and reference the middle sections. So we’ve got one main point today. And I told first services, just cheat sheet. If you’re like, what’s the main point?
What’s the big idea? My. My main idea, my big point is always the title. So God is God. Our four points.
So I’m mixing up on you. Normally we do 3, 4. God is creator. God is sovereign. Humans are not God.
God is restorer. God is creator. God is sovereign. Humans are not God. God is restorer.
So let’s go ahead and turn our attention to that first point together. God is creator versus camping out here in verses one through seven, after 36 chapters of misery. And what we could quite literally probably describe for Job as almost as. Almost as definite of an answer as you can get is like, probably pretty close to hell on earth for Job, except for he knows God. After 36 chapters of misery, of going back and forth with his friends as to why this could be happening to him, why.
Why is he questioning God? The Lord Almighty answers him, answers me, opens with, who is this guy who has continued to. To question me? And of course he knows who Job is. He spent time on Job.
He knit Job together in his mother’s womb. Essentially, God says here in these opening verses, he says, buckle up, Job, because I am going to answer you in all of your questions. He says, get ready to answer me like a man. If you think you know, then get ready to answer me. And of course, he lists both three chapters with rhetorical questions there’s no way Job could have had an answer to.
In verses 1 through 7, he asked Job questions about creation. And obviously Job wouldn’t have known all of those. He says, job, okay, where were you when I made the Earth, Job? Where were you when I. When I stretched the line over it?
And I know all the weights. And if Job maybe was a science major in college, he’d be able to tell him, well, I know how gravity works and all this sort of stuff. But he’s like, no, Job, like, where were you? How does this work? You don’t fully understand.
And Job is not getting belittled here by God, but God is highlighting his Godness. Like to say and establish what is the right order, right thoughts of things is not belittling. It’s just actually really healthy, really good. Where when we don’t say what’s actually true, we actually hurt people. True love tells the truth.
The most loving thing God could do for Job here is set the order right. We see this all the time with how Jesus interacted with People too. Jesus knew exactly how he needed to treat the tax collectors and the Pharisees. The tax collectors and the known sinners, like they knew they were sinners. They did not need to be told again.
They needed gentleness. They needed incredible amounts of grace. But to the Pharisees, they needed to be told, point blankly. This is what’s going on. This is what’s true.
And God is doing that with Job here. God is not belittling or saying that Job is worthless indeed. God cannot and will not do that. God is declaring here that he is God. He’s saying, I am God and I am the Creator.
Isaiah 64:8 captures a similar thought when. When it says, yet, Lord, you are our Father, we are the clay, and you are a potter. We are all the works of your hands. God is creator, we are creation. We are not in charge of Him.
He does not need our advice. To create something is to naturally know more than that within your creation. To create something is to have dominion over it. It’s not diminishing us, it’s highlighting God’s magnificence. There’s also great comfort not being creator.
It means I don’t have to know everything. I’m not in charge of everything.
There’s great comfort. It’s reminding him there’s the right order, Job struggle. And a lot of our current struggles come from getting this wrong. When we try to insert ourselves into the role of creator, we’re putting a weight on ourselves we were never meant to bear. We did not stretch out the earth.
We did not create everything. We have no idea how incredibly difficult it is to put together a human eye. We can’t do that on our own. But God can and did. He spoke it into existence.
We are not creator. We were never meant to bear that. We run into all kinds of problems when we pretend or try to be God. If you don’t believe me, just watch any of the Jurassic park movies. First Service didn’t laugh at that one.
Why do we need to know that God is creator? Why did Job need to know that? Because when we get that right, if God is creator and if he’s over every single thing, we need to line up in submission to Him. It just makes sense to think about, okay, if this guy can speak a world and a universe into existence, it probably would make sense to line up with him and under him. That just follows basic human logic.
Why do we need to know that? We want to play our role well. We should seek to know and to serve God. And we do this how? Do we do this?
We do this through knowledge of Him. We know him through his creation, but also his word. Romans 1 makes that abundantly clear. We know God in His Word by spending time with Him. Right?
I think it gets lost on us sometimes. We have the words of God to us. Creator. God gave us his revelation. He speaks directly to us.
But also we see him in His Word. We get commands in His Word. We can see what God’s like in His Word. We also know what God’s like and what his expectations are through prayer. Remember, in prayer, God will never contradict Himself in His Word.
God can’t contradict Himself, but we’re shaped by God in prayer. We see his heart in prayer, but also by getting discipled by other godly believers, but also to save discipling other believers. We worship God well when we acknowledge him as Creator and that his ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts are higher and better than our thoughts. God is Creator. God is also sovereign.
Looking at verses 8 through 15, the sovereignty of God here is evidence. It’s beautiful. And to me it’s one of the most comforting things to know that like God is overall, like there’s no higher authority than God and yet he wants to have relationship with Me. We can know him and there’s an end to things if we think about that. Like, he determines what truth is.
If you hear the phrase truth is relative, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because God determines what truth is. But even truth saying that something like truth is relative, that assumes that statement is true. And if my truth contradicts with your truth, then there is no truth. And there’s beautifulness to God being able to say this is true. This is how things are.
God is sovereign. He can declare these things. No one has rule over him in his sovereignty. He commands his creation. He can direct and guide things as he sees fit.
Job gets a first hand lesson of this. He’s saying, okay, Job, have you ever, have you ever in your life commanded the morning to rise or the sun to set? Have you ever done that, Job? Job, did you tell the sea where it’s supposed to stop? The obvious answer is no.
Have you done that?
God is clearly saying here, this is who he is. Only he has the power to do it. He has no rival, no equal. There is no other God before Him beside him. Isaiah 44, 6, 8 highlights this too.
It says, this is what the Lord, the King of Israel and its Redeemer, the Lord of Armies, says, I am the first and I am the last. There is no God but me, who, like me, can announce the future. Let him say so and make a case before me. Since I have established an ancient people, let these gods declare the coming things and what will take place. Do not be startled or afraid.
Have I not told you and declared it long ago? You are my witnesses. Is there any God but me? There is no other rock. I do not know.
Any God is sovereign because he is creator. The assembly line workers have sovereignty over a Toyota Camry because they created it. If they forget to put a belt on or a certain hose in that right place, then that Camry cannot function how it was supposed to. In the same way that we, when we get in our car, if we turn the key, we have sovereignty. We’re telling the car to go, and it must respond.
It must obey our commands. God is sovereign in that same sort of way. But also, we think maybe just right here in Wisconsin. Like the sovereign nations of the Native American reservations, they have dominion over themselves in ways that no one else does. Nobody else in Wisconsin can have a casino.
No one else in Wisconsin can set things in different regulations in certain ways in regards to, like, fishing or some sort of hunting regulations. They have sovereignty. They have dominion. They have rule over themselves. God is infinitely higher than even just portions of Wisconsin or an assembly line.
He is sovereign. He is good. He rules and reigns over everything.
He is sovereign because he is creator to the utmost degree. He is. He rules and reigns over everything.
Not one person has ever told God what to do or how to be. And as he had to obey them, we get to enjoy it. There’s rest in it, like I mentioned earlier, there’s incredible rest in his sovereignty. He determines who I am. He tells me how I am supposed to be.
And that’s really good. Because we have to understand and accept that if there’s a God who created everything, he might know a little bit more about what’s best for us. And his sovereignty and his goodness and his kindness. He holds our tomorrow. He tells me and you who we are.
He can tell us what we’re supposed to be. He holds forever. We can trust. We can trust, because he loves us. Not only is he creator, not only is he sovereign, but he loves us.
He wants to know us. He put the stars in the sky, but yet he knows you and I by name. And he loves us and wants relationship with us.
He not only rules and reigns, but every single decision he makes is with our best intent in mind. Every single decision, because he is our good Father, comes with our Best intent in mind on God’s incredible sovereignty. He directs us. He sets up natural laws and moral rules because of this love. Rules are loving.
A world without rules or order or laws is chaos. And that’s the absence of love.
Tom Mattoon isn’t here, so I can quote him and he won’t say anything. He said it to me best once. He said, I’ve lived too long in the goodness of God to get disappointed when I don’t get my way anymore. He always knows what I need. Charles Spurgeon said it this way.
It’s a quote I have up in my office. He said, God is too good to be unkind and too wise to be mistaken. When we cannot trace his hand, we must trust his heart. Both of these men capture it well. His sovereignty, his knowing our best intentions in mind.
God is creator. God is sovereign. But humans are not God. There are other attributes, like I said in chapters 39 and 41, or through 41, that we can recognize what God is. But to start out in chapter 42, Job gets his part in the play right.
He says some translations are going to have the subtitle saying, like Job repents. Mine says Job replies to the Lord. But it’s pretty clear Job recognizes his fault. He says, I know you can do anything. You asked, who is this?
He said, therefore I reject my words. I’m sorry for them. Job acknowledges here that he is indeed not God. Looking at these first nine verses of 42, he is saying, I am not God. And God’s clearly establishing with Job’s friends they are not God either.
This is a great representation of what does it mean to repent, of what it looks like to repent. Well, and if and every time we see this word repent in the Scriptures, it means a turning away from and a turning to, a turning away from wrong actions, thoughts or desires and a turning to and God. This is. I’m agreeing with what you’re right, that you are right. And this is what you’d have for me.
Turning away from. Okay, I have Job was not necessarily just not that questioning God is a wrong idea or action. We see that throughout the Psalms. Job doesn’t. God doesn’t condemn him for it, but he’s saying, saying like, you’ve had thoughts of me wrong.
And so it’s God. I know I’ve thought wrongly of you or thinking that I deserve these things. And it’s a turning to and God, this is who you are. This is what I’m supposed to be. God.
I’ve gotten this Wrong. I’m turning away from this wrong thought, action or desire. And I’m turning to you and who you are and what’s right for me. It’s turning to what’s true of God, regardless of circumstance. In the psalms, particularly Psalm 86, 14, 17, David writes, God, arrogant people.
You have attacked me. A gang of ruthless men intends to kill me. They do not let you guide them, he says, but you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth. Turn to me and be gracious to me. Give your strength to your servant.
Save the son of your female servant. Show me a sign of your goodness. My enemies will see and be put to shame because you, Lord, have helped and comforted me. It’s okay to be really honest with God about what’s going on. And there are circumstances that I know plenty of us have experienced that don’t feel very fair.
But it’s okay to be honest with God, but to think about and to tell him what we think of him or what’s going on in the moment. But it’s really good to end on getting him right. God, this is how I’m feeling, but I know this is what’s true. God, this is what’s happened. But I know that you are still God.
God, this is. This is something that I never thought I’d have to plan for. But I still trust you.
I know that none of us have ever not. We wouldn’t even dare think about it. But maybe picture a friend that we know has ever thought. We’ve never thought too highly of ourselves. But picture your friend, maybe they’re sitting next to you, has probably done that.
But just imagine. Imagine what it’d be like to think too highly of ourselves.
The danger in this line of thinking, of thinking too highly of ourselves is we get things in the wrong order. And we’re not just supposed to think of ourselves. Sometimes I think we’re just like, I’m dust, I’m terrible, I’m a worm. And David literally writes that in the Psalms. To think about that, like, we are made in God’s image.
Nothing else in creation, like, bears his resemblance. Nothing else in creation has a soul, can have this sort of relationship with God that we have. And so we need to keep that in mind. But we are not God. We do not get the same privileges or get to say what he thinks or how things ought to run.
When we recognize and confess this to people that we harm, things can be restored, things to be made right. The same is Far more true when we wrong God, when we repent and we make things right with him and our brokenness and our sin. When we think too highly of ourselves, we elevate ourselves to the point of maybe I know better than God. And it’s often fairly subtle. It’s couched in phrasing like you deserve to be happy or you should be able to be anything that you want to be.
Since when is that true? Since when do we deserve to be happy? God cares about our joy. He cares about our happiness. He loves us and he’s made us, and he wants what’s best for us.
But we didn’t deserve that. God gave that to us out of his loving kindness. Romans says that the wages of sin is death. That’s what we’ve earned. That’s what we deserve.
But God gave us mercy. He gave us grace. We get so caught up in thinking what our feelings dictate or say. Our feelings are not gospel. Our feelings are not true.
They’re helpful, but they’re not. They’re not law.
God’s goodness is not measured by our current circumstances. God’s goodness is measured by the cross of Jesus Christ.
God’s goodness is not measured by the car breaking down, the student failing a test. The unimaginable thing happened. God’s goodness is measured by the cross. And we never deserved that.
This line of thinking that we deserve to be happy or that God should do this or that is not just wrong because it’s sin. It’s just. It’s incredibly shallow. Like we have too small imaginations of how good things could be. It sells God short.
When we make statements like this, we’re saying that God’s gotten it wrong. And this is not new. It goes all the way back to the garden. They thought they knew better than God, too.
Job is repenting here of thinking that he knew better than God. Humans are clearly not God.
Luckily for you and me and for Job, God is also restorer. Looking at verses 10 through 17, when job comes to God and genuine repentance, he gets restored. And for our graduates and for everyone else hearing this, this is incredibly good news. God is restorer. He.
There’s nobody who made him be this way, but he chose to be. Out of his loving kindness, out of his good. This Old Testament book shows us the tiniest glimpse of the gospel. Joe, it says that at the end, job lived for 140 years after this. Do you not think he told anybody about what God did?
That he made Job right? He gave him back all of his Siblings, he gave him new kids. He restored his wealth. God restored Job. You don’t think he told anybody about it.
He made him right.
This man had so much taken from him. He was given back so much more and better than he could have ever imagined. We see a similar story in the case of Peter in the New Testament. You remember Peter. He was in Jesus inner circle, in the inner three, and he was praying with Jesus.
He’s interacting with Jesus on his last day. And he says, jesus, I’ll never betray you. And. And Jesus knows. And he says, the devil’s asked if he could have you.
And I’ve told him no. I’ve prayed that you’d be kept. And Peter says, I’ll never deny you. Me. Me, Peter, the guy who walked on water.
I will never deny you. And Peter does just that. Not once, not twice, but three times. Can you imagine that? Denying your best friend three times?
It’s also a little bit different when your best friend is. He’s the Lord of the Universe. He denies. Peter denies Jesus. Once, twice, three times before the rooster crows.
And after Christ’s death and victorious resurrection over everything, he sees Peter on the beach. And you’d have to imagine that Jesus, about the last person in the world that Peter wanted to see, but he walked towards him. Jesus made him right. He says three times. Jesus says three times to Peter, peter, do you love me?
And he says, you know I do, Lord. And Peter says, Jesus says, feed my sheep. Feed my sheep. Feed my sheep. And three times Peter gets to say, you know I love you.
And you know, as soon as that third time happened, like I’d have to imagine it was tears of rejoicing instead of tears of weeping. God restored Job with far better than he could have ever imagined. But he restores Peter with far better than ever he can, he could have ever imagined. On him, he built his rock. On him, he’s going to build his church.
God restores Job. He restores Peter. Because this is who God is. God restores Job. God restores Peter.
He wants to do the same for you and I. Still, Somehow we have to imagine the other side of this sin, around the suffering. For Job, this restoration feels even better than. As if none of it had ever happened. That’s hard to swallow.
It’s hard to understand. But we know that. We sense that it’s true. Our pop culture hits on this too. In the movie A League of Their Own, Tom Hanks says, it’s.
It’s the hard that makes it great. But that’s not where it ends we see Job restored. He’s made right with God and God gives him abundantly more than he could have ever imagined or asked for.
The same is true of our sin nature. Because of the perfect life, innocent death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we can be restored to Him. We didn’t deserve it. There’s no way we could have even known to ask for it. But because God is a restorer, he delights in giving it to us.
You can be restored through repentance in him and trusting in him, just like Job did. And he not only promises us eternity with him, but he promises a hope for the new heavens and new earth and the new creation when all everything will be restored to him. It’s going to be even better than the first creation. Brokenness made whole is going to somehow be better.
As our graduates get ready to face the world, as we get ready to go back into the everydays of life. These are incredibly important truths to know who God is. He’s Creator. He made everything, including you and me. He’s sovereign.
He’s over everything. Romans 8, 31:32 say what then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He did not even spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all. How will we not also with him, grant us everything, but also we are not God.
God is capable to have restoring everything. This is the really real reality, no matter what, that we can be restored.
Maybe this means a genuine repentance for the first time of a genuine repentance of I came up in the church, but I was not, I did not come up in Christ or this church thing is new for me. Or maybe you’re somewhere in the middle. Maybe it’s a genuine repentance for the first time of actually trusting Jesus, of actually saying God. I just can’t figure this out on my own of saying God, I’m not you. I am not God.
I’ve tried to be. It’s not worked for me. I’m sorry for acting like I like I like a new God. Would you forgive me? I trust in you for the payment of my sin and also to call the shots in my life from now on and forever.
But this isn’t just for unbelievers. I don’t know about you, but I never stop needing the gospel. I never stop needing the good news of Jesus Christ. I sin every day, believe it or not, and I’m sure you do too. I never stop needing grace.
I never stop needing mercies that are new every morning I never stop needing this good news. It’s not just for unbelievers or high school graduates or Sunday school teachers or parents or pastors. The gospel is for everyone. Job saw that. My prayer is that each of us would, too.
Let’s go ahead and pray.
Lord Jesus, we thank you so much for you for this time. We thank you for. For Tim Anton. For Ashlyn Seabird. For Brody Rosser.
For Carson Small. For Amber Schmidt. For Claire Morgan. For Colton Mefford. And for Brook Bacon.
And for students in youth ministry, but not in. In addition to the graduates. We thank you for the body here. And we thank you that your gospel is the power of salvation for all who believe there is no other name under heaven by which we can call on and be saved. Saved.
We thank you that you are God. You are God. And you are so good to us. Okay. That our hearts will be saturated with that good news.
And it’s in your beautiful name we pray. Amen.