Gospel Light
"Then the LORD answered Job from the whirlwind and said, “Who is this who darkens the divine plan
by words without knowledge? “Now tighten the belt on your waist like a man, and I shall ask you, and you inform Me!" Job 38:1-3
Doesn't it seem like we think we always know better than God? If that isn't true, why do we get angry whenever things don't go how we expect them? The car breaks down; we get sick at the most inopportune time, or so we think; we fail to get that promotion for which we worked so hard.
As a result of enormous suffering and through the energies of three misguided and truth-illiterate "friends," Job was coerced into thinking he knew better than God. God begins his line of questions by asking Job what he knows by starting with the things men cannot explain. In this context, God was extraordinarily kind and, as always, perfectly truthful. Can Job explain lightning, snow, rain, storms, and how animals hibernate in winter?
In chapter 38, God gets to the main point, "Who is this who darkens the divine plan by words without knowledge?" God asked Job then, and what He asks us now is how great he is. There is the matter of God's eternal existence because He was there when it all started. God controls what we understand to be light and darkness in the universe He created. He set the boundaries for the oceans. He commands the morning, which means He controls the rotation of the sun, the earth, and all the stars.
God asks question after question about things He does, which no man could ever control. God closes His words to Job by describing the first of His creation, which is none other than a dinosaur. After comparing man to a dinosaur, man is nothing, but the dinosaur is nothing to God. Staying in the context of the dinosaur, God's final words to Job emphasize the main point, "Nothing on earth is like him, one made without fear. He looks on everything that is high; He is king over all the sons of pride." Pride is always the issue of sin.
A remarkable observation of humbling is observed when we compare chapters 38 to 41 of Job to Philippians 2:5 to 8. "Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, as He already existed in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself by taking the form of a slave and being born in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross."
The humbling is not of men but on the part of God. Men are hardened in sin and the pride that needs more than anything else to be humbled by the hand of God. Nevertheless, the same God that spoke to Job with a precise accounting of His eternal presence, understanding, and transcendent power is the one of whom Paul spoke, having humbled Himself as a slave to the point of death on a criminal's cross.
We see, therefore, the infinite God lowered to the utmost out of benevolent love and grace, revealing Himself on both sides of justice and mercy with nothing hidden.
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