Rev. David Holwick Book of Job series
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
August 23, 1998
Job 38:1-14
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I. The glory of storms.
A. My experience in an electrical storm in Georgia as a child.
My Dad was serving in Korea.
Mom sat in the dark living room before the picture window.
As huge lightning strikes lit up the sky, we huddled
against her.
Best storms are out West.
You can see for miles and miles, no obstructions.
The anvil cloudtops seem to reach heaven.
B. God meets people in storms.
1) Psalm 29.
a) Moses and Sinai.
b) Book of Revelation.
c) Known as a "theophany" - meeting God first-hand.
2) God meets Job.
a) All along Job has demanded to meet God.
b) Ironic that Elihu has just argued Job has no right to
ask for divine intervention.
c) Now he encounters the Creator, head-on.
C. If you could meet God, what would you want to know?
1) Direction of the stock market?
2) What will happen to you in future?
3) What he thinks of you?
II. What kind of answer is this?
A. No explanation for suffering given.
1) For 35 chapters, suffering has been focus. Not here.
a) The avoidance is almost shocking - is God mocking Job?
2) God is saying there is something more fundamental than
why the innocent suffer.
B. God's content goes back to chapters 1 and 2.
1) Once again we are "behind the curtain."
2) Real question is Job's faith, not his suffering.
3) Satan said Job believed out of self-interest. He lost.
C. Sometimes it's what you don't know, that matters most.
1) God gives no answers, period. Just questions.
a) Job didn't really want answers, anyway.
b) He wanted God back.
2) Theophany tells him God has not abandoned him.
a) God was his friend again.
III. God's majesty.
A. Job learns about God's character on a walk through creation.
1) The universe is full of wonderful paradoxes.
a) The more we learn, the more we realize how little we know.
2) What we do know underscores the wonder of nature, and by
extension, nature's Creator.
According to scientist Hugh Ross, the evidence of nature
points to an intelligent designer.
As a matter of fact, he says the evidence that life must
arise from intelligent design is 1 trillion times
stronger than just a year ago.
Ross has identified 50 characteristics of a planetary
system that must be "fine tuned" for life to exist.
For example:
Scientists tell us that the slant of the earth, tilted
at an angle of 23 degrees, produces our seasons.
If the earth had not been tilted exactly as it is,
vapors from the oceans would move both north and south,
piling up continents of ice.
If the Moon were only 50,000 miles away from earth,
instead of 200,000 miles away, the tides might be so
enormous that all continents would be submerged.
If the crust of the earth had been only ten feet thicker,
there would be no oxygen.
And without oxygen all animal life would die.
#2304
There are at least 50 required characteristics.
In mathematical terms, this is a probability of one part
in ten to the 65th power.
Physics considers anything with a probability of less
than one in ten to the 50th power an impossibility.
"The new studies about life give evidence that God and
only God is behind life," Ross said.
"This means that God must have some reason for creating us."
#3906
a) Danger of "God of the gaps."
1> God becomes limited to whatever we cannot explain
at the moment.
2> The more we learn, the farther God is pushed out.
b) Yet it is amazing what we don't know.
1> The more we learn, the more questions pop up.
2> Job's friends didn't know all, and neither did Job.
A> This is why God rebukes him in 38:2.
B. What God is saying.
1) "Until you know a little more about running the physical
universe, don't tell me how to run the moral universe."
2) Trust that God is bigger than us (and our problems).
3) It can give us an "overcoming" perspective.
Grigory Petrov was an archpriest of the Orthodox church.
He wrote this poem about nature's God:
What is my praise before you?
I have not heard the cherubim singing, that is the
lot of souls sublime, but I know how nature praises you.
In winter I have thought about the whole earth praying
quietly to you in the silence of the moon,
wrapped around in a mantle of white,
sparkling with diamonds of snow.
I have seen how the rising sun rejoiced in you,
and choirs of birds sang forth glory.
I have heard how secretly the forest noises you abroad,
how the winds sing, the waters gurgle,
how the choirs of stars preach of you in serried motion
through unending space.
What is remarkable about this poem is that Petrov wrote it
just before dying in a Siberian labor camp.
Because of his faith, he was able to end his earthly
existence in a spirit of praise to God rather
than bitterness towards his oppressor.
#1518
C. Job's response: he is silenced by his ignorance. 40:4-5
IV. God's morality. 40:8-14
A. God's second speech underscores his moral concerns. 40:8
1) God's control over nature is just part of the story.
2) God has the power to crush the wicked. 40:11-12
3) He is not just the Creator, but the Lord of the moral order.
B. God still has standards, and he is still in charge. 42:1-6
1) Job's response is repentance. 42:5-6
2) He knew he now had a personal experience with God. 42:5
V. God's magnanimity.
A. Job is blessed with abundance again. 42:10
1) Twice as much livestock.
2) Same number of children.
a) Hint that others are in heaven.
b) The need for a heavenly perspective runs through book.
3) Yet restoring of family and goods is minor point.
a) Faith, not rewards, is main emphasis in book.
B. Job was vindicated, as was God's trust in him.
1) In a world of paradoxes Job was suffering, not because he
was the worst of men, but because he was one of the best.
2) In all his wounds he prefigured the wounds of that one who
was the only truly holy man ever to live, Christ the Lord.
C. Thousands of years later, Job's questions have not gone away.
1) God did not answer all Job's questions, but his very
presence caused Job's doubts to melt away.
2) Job learned that God cared about him, and that he rules
the world. It was enough.
#2195
VI. The greatest believer in the Bible.
A. Many have not survived like Job.
1) Media mogul Ted Turner had a 15-year-old sister who died
of lupus.
A Christian friend told his dad that God's ways were
mysterious, but it would make sense in the end.
Turner Senior's response was to abandon his faith.
He never set foot in church again.
His son made the same decision.
2) Would you?
B. Believing against all odds.
Job's faith not only survived terrible deprivation, it
grew.
Job was before Moses, so he had no support from God's
miracles at the Exodus.
He had no fellowship with a covenant community like Israel.
He had no inspired Bible to gain strength from.
His faith was unsupported by tradition and contradicted
by experience.
Next to Jesus, Job must surely be the greatest believer
in the whole Bible.
C. Do YOU believe?
1) Don't be trapped in a limited point of view.
2) Trust in God for what you know, and don't know.
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SOURCES OF ILLUSTRATIONS:
#2304, "Flies On The Ceiling Of The Sistine Chapel," Dynamic Preaching,
Spring 1992.
#3906, "Pace Of Scientific Discovery Described As Evidence Of God,"
by Ken Walker, Online Christianity Today (America Online),
November 1, 1996.
#1518, "The Puzzle Of The Soviet Church," by Kent R. Hill, page 345,
1989.
#2195, "Riddles of Pain," by Philip Yancey, Christianity Today, page 80,
December 13, 1985.
(These and 4,300 others are part of a database that can be downloaded,
absolutely free, at http://www.holwick.com/database.html)
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