God Challenges Job

Hi everyone and welcome back to Church of the Bible. It's a pleasure to be here tonight and to be with you all again. By way of announcements, we have several people missing today who have been without power due to major storms for two weeks now. So if we can just pray for all of those affected by the storms nationwide, really, we've got people all over the country here in church. I know over in Alabama they were affected really bad, but it sounds like at least some people have power back there.

But California has been, northern California has been hit real bad as well with snow like they don't normally get and they've been without power for weeks. So if we can just in our personal prayers lift up everybody affected by all of this great weather, it sounds bad, but it is good. We need the water. We will also provide and everything goes as planned. Still be in Exodus 22 this Wednesday at 630 here.

We did not have Bible study last week as almost everybody was without power. So we will be doing that ideally this week I will be planning to have church in Cedar at six. At six, not 630 at six at our normal place. So unless things change and then I'll let I'll be in communication with those who would be affected by that. So I believe that is everything right now for announcements.

So with that said, let's pray, get past my hiccups and go into some worship. Well, 1 second.

Okay, yeah, let's pray and go into a time of worship. Father. We thank you. Lord. We praise you for what a great and good and mighty God that you are.

We praise you for all of the things that you have blessed us with and in particular as we're here in church all over the place, we praise you for technology as well. Lord, I left up those nationwide affected by storms and power outages and all sorts of other things going on right now in our nation, Lord. People affected in other countries by major earthquakes and other things that are going on right now. It's just a very active time right now for natural disasters. And so Lord, while we praise you for the moisture, we also lift them up into Your hands that you will care for people affected by all of these things, Lord.

You'll care for their needs, you'll care for their health and their safety, Lord, and you'll just be sovereign over these things, Lord. I also pray as we go into our message today and worship that our hearts and our minds will close to the things of the world and to our worries and our other distractions and open to you right now, Lord, that we can pour our hearts out and be poured into by your Holy Spirit. And we thank you. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

He's our rescue, he's our rescue. We are free from forever?

There is good news for the captive good news for the shame? There is good news for the world who walks away?

There is good news for the doubter? The one religion failed for the good Lord has come seeking.

He's all looking for. He's all resolved. We are waiting for evermore sweetness.

Rest for those who strive is the way to trim the light.

Yes, the Lord is the way. The truth is the light he's on the skin, resting the word the odds leave us, Forest.

Come to the foot Owlette. There is redemption for every affection here at the first I'm so glad you ripped my life.

I'm so glad you came. To save us you get from heaven. Swear to show away from the earth to the cross my death. From the cross to the great, from the grave to the sky. Lord, I lived your name on it.

Lord, I love to sing your prayers I'm so glad you're in my life I'm so glad you killed me save us you came from everywhere to show from the earth to promise my death blessed assure us jesus mine oh. What? A four days of glory divine air of salvation virgins of God born of his spirit washed in his blood this is my story this is my song praising my savior all day long this is my story this is my song praising my savior all the day long perfect submission perfect daylight visions of rapture now burst on my side angels descending bring from above echoes of mercy whispers of love this is my story this is my song praising my savior all the day long praising my savior all the days long amen. So today we're going to resume or study through the book of Job. We've had a long break and during this break I had been I spent a lot of time wrestling with where to go with Job.

Do we continue chapter by chapter, endlessly through all 42 chapters or do we skip to the end? It's something I wrestled with ultimately we're going to skip to the end. We're going to pick up today in verse 38. And the reason isn't the illogical necessarily as much as I'm not saying there's not theology from where we left off when we left off in chapter 20 when we took our break. But we will see the debate as we continue between the friends, continue to repeat the same points that they had repeated as they argue back and forth.

And I encourage everyone to go and finish the story and the debates back and forth between the friends, especially right at near the end of the chapters, a fourth friend jumps into the story and begins to talk and reveal stuff about God and prepares the way for where we will pick up today. And you will notice that the majority of it is the same back and forth. We've had some new things added and as we go through. What we see is a continuation of this framework that Job and his friends had built, that everything's in this box and God is in this box. And there were rules that govern how everything inside of this box must work.

And that's how we explain everything in the universe. And now God's operating outside of the box. Job wants to know why. Throughout Job's speeches, as he rebukes his friends, we see glimpses of where he is demanding from God answers to his problems. He wants to know, Why am I going through this?

Why are you, a righteous and holy God, allowing a righteous person who has done no wrong, to suffer these tragedies, these tribulations? God is going to answer Job today in his first speech will be in 38 and 39. And he's going to ask several questions. But these questions that God asks can be summarized into three main questions do you know the source from which the universe begins? Do you understand the systems upon which the earth depends?

And do you appreciate the specialties by which the animals are distinguished?

As we go through God's answers to Job today? Or questions I should say. Nothing that God says gives an ethical answer to the issues of which Job demands a response. So Job has asked, why am I going through this? Why are you allowing these things to happen?

What happened to the God I thought I knew? And God answers none of it. And we also need to understand, and we'll get to this here in a minute that God did not answer Job on Job's timeline. He did not come to Job when Job wanted him to come. So let's dig in.

Let's see the response of God in his first speech today, beginning with verses one through three in chapter 38. Then Yahweh answered Job from out of the storm, and he said, or from the storm and he said, who is this darkening counsel by words without knowledge? Prepare yourself for a difficult task like a man, and I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

So as God begins to answer Job, he has no answer for him. Rather, he has accusations here. If you look at verse two. Who is this darkening counsel by words without knowledge?

Job has called upon God to defend himself. Job has accused God of breaking the rules of the universe, accused him of essentially not being a righteous judge anymore, and has envisioned that God would come to him in a courtroom type scenario and be put on the defense. But God has no need to defend himself. And God won't defend himself. He does not.

He will, however, in an oblique way, address Job's initial question of why, not from the perspective of reason, but from the perspective of God's power at work in the natural universe. We have to ask the question here. Does Job have the power to create, to understand heaven and earth? Stars and sea, morning and night, light and darkness. Can Job understand all of the components that are at work around us?

And these things that we can see are the edges of God's power. And as we when we began this, I started asking people to look at your own tragedies too. The only things you're going through we all have or will be at a point in our life where something is going wrong and we're asking questions and it seems we are not getting answers. And God will reassure us to a degree through these next few but vital chapters. God does not wait for an answer, though, as we go through this chapter, but he will add to the mystery of his living creation.

He'll talk about the lion's club, the mountain goat, the donkey, the buffalo, ostriches, horses, hawks, falcons all of which are God's creation, his glory, his care. And Job confessing that he's impotent and ignorant before the mystery of creation will repent at the end of this. We will see at the end of his repentance a restoration as well, which should give us hope. But he has a realization that he cannot judge God, nor can he understand the moral order of the universe. So God appears, finally, at last, in verse one, he answers Job from out of the storm.

Right now, the storm takes place in the chapters prior when there is a fourth and final friend who appears, who is speaking.

And Job's life right now is almost a storm as well, with everything going on the accusations, his doubts, the loss of his family.

And out in the desert there are strong dry winds that are blowing the dust into whirlwinds, as it were. And out of this, God appears. And this gives us some hope for as long as we sit in our trials and our sorrows and everything and we feel like God is ignoring us. We feel like we are pouring our heart out to Him. And we're asking for answers.

We're asking for reasons. We're asking for comfort and hope and help. And it seems silent. God will appear, but God will not appear. And often it seems as if he does not because we are expecting God to appear in a way that we've set up, that we've imagined for him to job had hoped, or I should say envisioned that his encounter with God would be in the courtroom, that there would be witnesses, that there would be testimony, there would be trial.

But God did not appear in the fashion that Job had envisioned. He appeared out of the storm for others. God appeared in the burning bush. He appeared in a cloud of fire. He appeared on a mountaintop, Mount Sinai.

He appeared in the small whistle in the wind, right? That little whisper as a small silent voice. Something we need to understand that that seems interesting is as we've seen him appear in the bush, a ladder of angels with Joseph. We've seen him appear in a will and a will on a lofty throne in a solar eclipse. In the Old Testament, we've seen him appear in a sheet filled with animals.

While all of these things have announced the coming of the Lord, god has rarely appeared twice in the same way. God has never again appeared in a burning bush. He has never again appeared in a ladder of angels. Never again has he appeared in the solar eclipse. And this is to prevent us from confining God into some form of box, into some form of a framework, to say that this is the only theologically and doctrine of the correct way in which God can appear.

For God can appear to us in many various ways, and he almost never comes in the way in which we will expect God. Then he says, when he first appears in verse two who is this darkening counsel by words without knowledge?

This is interesting. God confronts Job in all of Job's reasoning and all of his responses and speeches and accusations toward God. He speaks almost as if he has a right to know, as if he can demand the mind of God. He speaks as if he even knows what he's talking about.

Through the chapters we've read, we have seen small, little glimpses of Revelation. Job declared, I know that my redeemer liveth. Job envisioned a time when somebody can come and bridge the gap between man and God because God sits so high, a man so low, and we cannot speak on the same terms. And he envisioned somebody fully God and fully manned to come and bridge that gap. We see glimpses of revelation, but we see that the vast majority of what Job spews forth from his mouth lacks understanding.

But he speaks as if he should have direct access to the mind of God and as if his wisdom, Job's wisdom, earns him an explanation from God. But there is a great fault in this thinking of Job that is all too common in humanity as a whole, and that is to presume that if God were to answer our questions, we could comprehend the answers.

We assume that if we could sit and converse with God and he could explain to us the ins and outs and the reasons of why he has done stuff, that we would even understand it. But we have a finite mind. Our ability to comprehend is so small and so limited that we can never understand the reasonings and workings of God to the same level of Him.

But with such presumptions that we can understand and comprehend all of the ways of God we stagger about, we limit his power. We deny him his worth. We deny him worship. We deny him justice. We demand from Him things of which we have no right to demand.

We also condemn him.

I hear God condemned all the time by people who claim to be atheists and are somehow mad at God for flooding the world. As if they understood why a holy God would do that. Or as if they understood morality better than he who set into stone the moral laws that govern his creation. But when God comes here, he does not condemn him.

God did not condemn Job when he confronted him. Rather, he chides him.

He corrects him and rebukes him for throwing up a fit of rage without any knowledge, for just speaking empty words, almost. What's happening here? I've got a quote from a pastor here, David McKenna. He talks about gunners in World War II who, unable to turn back the invaders, would turn their guns and would fire to make a barrage of smoke, kind of like a screen. There would be smoke and shrapnel fire trails, things going everywhere at chaos that would allow them to hide underneath it.

And God sees Job's words as a similar tactic. Job is, in a sense, bombarded by the enemy, by the soldiers whom he cannot turn back, suffering, loss, his own tribulation, the swords on his skin, his friends who are condemning him, everything beyond his comprehension and control. And what he does is he sends a smokescreen to cover it, to hide behind of verbal scatter shot which defend his ignorance and impotence.

And in doing so, this is not just Joe. This is common to all humanity. In doing so, we show how small our faith is. We project blame where it does not belong, and we create shadows of darkness over the mind of God through which we cannot see. And words are actually common, a common defense for our insecurity.

Have you ever caught somebody in a position where they knew they were caught, they knew they were wrong, they knew they can no longer continue to debate, but then all of a sudden, all sorts of nonsense start spewing from their mouth. We see this all the time. It's a defense. When we get caught in a position where we cannot defend ourselves, where we don't have a solid rock to stand upon, we just start spitting out whatever can come from our brain to our tongue the fastest. And we don't think about it.

We just spew it out.

And God moves from accusing Job of speaking without knowledge, of putting up a smokescreen to hide behind. And these accusations against God, he says, prepare yourself for a difficult task like a man, and I will question you, and you shall declare to me job has challenged God time and time again through the chapters up to 38. And now God will challenge Job. He will test the knowledge of Job. He will push his wisdom to its outer limits.

God will be like a professor who told us, class, at examination time, if anyone gets 100%, it means, I have not examined the limits of your knowledge.

We're going to examine these questions that I brought up at the beginning? Do you understand the source from which the universe begins? Do you understand the systems upon which the earth depends? Do you appreciate the specialties by which animals are distinguished? And God will never give again an ethical answer.

Instead, he is going to give an answer that relies upon the power of God. Let's look at verses four through 21. He says, where were you at the laying of the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you possess understanding, who determined its measurement? Yes, you do know.

Or who stretched the measuring line upon it? On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars were singing together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who shut the sea in the doors at its bursting when it went forth from the womb at my making the clouds it's garment and thick darkness its swaddling band. And I prescribed my rule for it, and I set bars and doors, and I said, you shall come up to here, but you shall not go further.

And here it will set a boundary for your proud surgeon waves. Have you ever in your life command in the morning? Have you made the dawn to know its place, to take hold of the earth's skirts so that the wicked might be shaken off from it? It has changed like clay under a seal, and they appear like a garment, and their light is withheld from the wicked, and their uplifted arm is broken. Have you entered into the seas sources?

Or have you walked around in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Or have you seen the gates of the deep shadow? Have you considered closely the earth's vast expanse? Declare it, if you know all of it.

Where then is the way where the light dwells? And where then is its place that you may take it to its territory, and that you might discern the paths to its home? You know, for you are born then, and the number of your days is great. Ouch.

God is using now the boundaries of time in which Job himself is bound. Right. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Job's limit to time on earth. And his wisdom that he has gained in such limit to time do not extend prior to the creation in which God had made it. Who was there at the landing of the foundation of the earth? God alone was there. God alone was there at the moment he said, let there be a heavens and an earth right before the creation of the angels, the heavenly host?

There was God was job there were we there to see. As God carefully planned everything out. As he detailly determined where the Earth should sit in relation to the sun and the Moon around the Earth as he determined what should govern the seasons day and night as he determined the right amount of light and oxygen and other minerals that the Earth needed to sustain us. Were any of us there to question God's wisdom, to see the way in which he had planned it? To know the measurement of his creation?

Can any of us explain on what the heavens and the Earth sit upon? We know that the Earth is floating. But can we explain by what reason, what logic everything seems to simply float where it is?

Not even science can understand it. Can we explain what holds the waters in place right where they are and why they do not move forth?

Can we explain why everything governs so efficiently? Why the speed of light is constant? Can we explain why the Earth is exactly where it is at? I won't get into the fact that we're in the Goldilock Zone and the chances of it. Can we explain what put us here?

Can we explain why the laws of physics that govern everything are the way that they are? Why they work the way that they work? We can explain some of it, for certainly scientific discoveries have been able to explain elements of physics. We can explain the law of gravity. We can explain that an object at rest will stay at rest and an object in motion will stay in motion.

But can we explain why those universal laws exist to begin with? We can't even explain the beginning of the universe, what had caused it, let alone the the man made idea. The Big Bang that had caused the universe seems to break every physical law that we know in the universe. We cannot comprehend or understand the creation in which God has put together the laws that govern it and the immense amount of information and intelligence and power that goes into sustaining it.

As God begins to challenge Job with this wave of questions, he establishes that we are too limited to challenge God and to demand of Him anything. Our existence has never given us the power to limit the sea or to command the dawn.

We don't know the source of light.

Now the question why? Job wants to know why. Why am I going through this? Why is this right? Why are you allowing it?

Is a legitimate question. It comes out god has given us curiosity. God has given us the ability to reason and the ability to discover and to search.

But to ask why?

We first need to understand creation. We need to understand God himself.

We cannot understand why all things are the way they are without the comprehension required to understand the wisdom of God and the limitless abilities of God. But Satan sometimes takes the step that God has given us the ability to reason, the ability to discover, the ability to the search, to have curiosity. And he can twist it into things that lead to sin, into death. He did the same thing with Adam and Eve.

Job's curiosity has led him from asking the question into temptation. He went from simply asking for understanding to demanding that God explained his suffering. And he made a fatal flaw of assuming that he can be as wise as God. As we go back to the very beginning to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden job, not Job. Genesis, chapter three.

We see the same mistake made with Adam and Eve when Satan tempted them, when he appealed to their own desire and own sense of worth, he appealed to them with knowledge, right? If you eat this fruit, you can be as God's knowing good and evil. If you eat this fruit, you will be as wise as God himself. Your mind will be unlocked and you'll be able to reason as Him and understand as Him no good and evil as Him and rule for yourself and your own mind.

And Job has fallen into the trap here with seeking for understanding and then believing that he is as wiser or wiser than God. For Job has has come to a point in his position where he understood, right. My air quotes here understood the framework in which God operated and God has stepped out of it. And he must be wiser than God and demand an explanation as to why.

Job as us has to accept that there are times we can ask why and have to be okay with never receiving the answers. There are things that we want to know but we will never understand. There are things that we will never comprehend. And we have to accept this tension of curiosity while balancing it with the ability to trust in God, to trust in the Omnipotent One, in the Sovereign One. When he does not give us an answer, he says do you understand the systems upon which the earth depends?

Let's continue here with our next section. We're going to pick up right where we left off in 22 and read through 38. He says, have you entered into the storehouses of snow? Have you seen the storehouses of the hill which I have reserved for the time of trouble for the day of battle and war? Where then is the way where the light is distributed, where he scatters the east wind upon the earth?

Who has cut open a channel for the torrents and away for the thunderbolts to bring rain on a land where no one lives, a desert where no humans live, to satisfy desert and wasteland to cause the ground to put forth the rising of grass? Is there a Father for the rain? Or who fathered the drops of dew? From whose womb did the ice come forth? And who fathered the frost of heaven like stone the waters become hard and the faces of the deep freeze?

Can you bind the chains of the pleiades? Or can you loosen the cords of Orion? Can you lead forth the southern constellations at their appointed time? Or can you lead the bear with its children? Do you know heaven statutes or can you establish the rule on earth?

Can you lift up your voice to the clouds so that a flood of water may cover you? Can you send forth lightnings that they may go? And will they say to you, Here we are? Who has put wisdom in the ibis? Who has given understanding to the rooster?

Who can number the clouds with wisdom? Who can tilt heaven's jar at the flowing of the dust into a cast and the quads cling together?

God does not pause long enough for Job to answer him. Rather, Job sits in silence as God moves from one set of questioning to another. As God has moved from the time issue of Job's limited existence, limited wisdom from his limited time here and his limited power he then begins to move into more natural things. He begins to question whether or not Job can control these things if he has the power that God has and the sovereignty that God has. Winter brings snow and hell often times of trouble.

It can stop armies in their tracks and spring floods and summer thunderstorms water our lands. They bring forth crops and produce. They bring forth our lakes and our rivers. They water our cities and our towns. And God causes them to come into Go at his will.

It says here that God brings water and rain into the desert places to bring forth fields of grass and daisies where no one is for no other reason than his glory and his enjoyment alone.

As we look at these things, we can move from the question of why to the question of how, right? Why did God create heaven on earth? Why am I going through these trials? Why do these things exist too? How?

How did God create the heavens and the earth? How does God control Spider? Sorry, I got distracted by Spider coming down on its little web in front of me.

How does God move the constellations across the sky?

The temptation here of sin is more than desire to be as wise as God. It often is the urge to be as powerful as God. We want to understand what God has. We want to believe that we can comprehend what he has done. But we also want to be as powerful as he is.

We want to have control over our life. We want to have control over the circumstances around us. We want to have power. We want to be able to end suffering. We want to be able to put together broken pieces.

We want to have God's power.

We also assume that we can have God's power. We assume that if we can have wisdom, we can have power. We assume that if we can understand the way something works that we can put it back together and make it work. There's an old poem. Or is it a nursery rhyme?

I don't know, but everybody knows it is Humpty Dumpty, right? Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, humpty Dumpty had a great fall, and all the king's men and all the king's horses could not put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I've got a quote here from Fred Smith. He says that he has heard it said, whatever man can undo, man can do breaking from his quote for a minute we have this tendency to believe that if we can reverse engineer something, if we can take something apart and understand how it works, then we can put it back together again and make it work. Well, Fred Smith answers to the saying that whatever man can undo, man can do.

He says, I would like to break an egg over that person's head and say, now do what I have undone.

Well, we can break an egg, we can never put it back together again.

While we can explain certain elements of creation, we can never cause creation. While we can explain the earth's tectonic plates, while we can explain what causes the northern lights, while we can explain the law of gravity, and we can break it down to its fundamental science, we can never put it back together again and bring it into causation.

Weather is a great example. We can explain weather. We can explain how the sun heating up the earth causes evaporation. We can explain how that water vapor moves up into the atmosphere until it cools down to a point that condenses and continues to collect as condensed water droplets to form clouds. We can explain the relation between temperature and humidity, at which point it reaches such a weight that it has to fall out of the sky.

We can explain how the heating of air causes currents and winds and what causes them to move. But for as much as we can explain, as much as we can break it down to its fundamental components, we can never control weather. And we have tried. We have tried to weaponize weather for warfare. We have tried to control weather for economic gain.

We have tried to control it for our own pleasures as well. And we just cannot control whether in fact, weather is the number one influencer of the economy for weather and natural phenomenon. They are able to destroy civilizations in moments. They're able to wipe out entire cities. Tsunamis come and wipe away cities.

Hurricanes and tornadoes bring down power grids, tear apart homes. Earthquakes tear apart the earth. Fire can come and burn up warehouses and homes and destroy things. Nothing controls the economy more than weather, a factor completely out of our control. However, the scriptures here have declared for as much as God has questioned Job's ability, his power to control.

Whether God is in control of the snow and the hill, he is in control of the rain. Whether it falls in populized cities or in deserts abandoned from all humanity. He is in control of the constellations as they move across the sky of the Earth's seasons. He is in control of the floodwater and the lightning that goes forth. And as we understand that God is in control, we begin to wrestle with a phenomenon.

Remember at the beginning of paradox, at the beginning of Job, it was lightning, right? Fire from the sky which came and killed his servants and destroyed his cattle. So we begin to wrestle with this paradox. If God is in control, if he is sovereign over even the lightning, does that make God responsible for one lightning and natural disaster strikes? Does that make God personally responsible for the destruction of Jobs wealth?

The answer is no. For God has set up the rules that govern the universe. He has created it, and it is all in his power. And while we understand that God is not responsible for every strike of lightning that hits a home or a person or an animal, it's never out of God's control. And that is where we as believing Christians need to come to a point of understanding that God is never out of control.

Not that he caused it. He did not cause the death. In fact, we know who caused the death. Back in chapter one of Job, god gave the enemy permission to touch anything except for Job himself. The enemy was responsible for the death of Job's family, the loss of his wealth, the destruction of his property.

But it was not outside of God's control.

In fact, God spoke forth. It says here in verse one of chapter 38 from the Whirlwind out of the Whirlwind spoke God out of the very force of nature that took the lives of his children. There is nothing out of control of God. To believe in God as a Christian is to live with God's mystery. To believe in Him is to understand that there are things he does that we don't know why there are things he did.

He created the heavens and the earth by means which we do not understand. We believe in Him and we trust in Him. But we live with that mystery. We live with that knowledge that I can't understand, I can't comprehend.

And God assures us through that that nothing comes and goes by a whim. Nothing simply just happens. But he is sovereign over all of it.

There is, to quote another person again here, a fine line of mystery that divides creation, control and causation and human suffering.

Who here has read your insurance policy and seen where it mentions I've got a policy on my phone. It covers hardware defects. It covers accidental drops. I pay an insurance policy every month through my phone bill. If I drop my phone and smash the screen, it's covered.

But if you look in the fine print, it'll say Acts of God are not covered.

We see the same thing with car insurance. Policies regularly home policies, other policies they cover just about anything except for what the insurance company has determined to be an act of God. And this comes from a misconception that because God is creator of all and controller of all, then he must be the cause of all.

It must mean that earthquakes, tornadoes, floods and fire caused by lightning are acts of God. But according to God's word, they are and they are not. He creates the elements of nature, he controls them through his laws. But this is not IPSO facto that he causes them to favor some people, to destroy others. It does not mean that he intervenes supernaturally in all natural circumstances to bring blessing or judgment.

He may, but it does not make Him the de facto cause. We are again suspended here in a paradox. We must believe, as Christians that God is the Creator of all things that before God spoke forth the heavens and the earth and said that there be like that there was nothing. That all natural things are created through God and by God. We must believe that he is sovereign, that he is all powerful, that he can control all things while also realizing and accepting that he is not the one who intervenes in natural law so that every evidence of prosperity or punishment can be interpreted as cause and effect.

Let's go back to Job and his friend's the Bates. They have this cashier register type theology all people who do good get good, and all people who do bad get bad. But natural disasters are not partial or impartial to those who are good and those who are bad. A hurricane sweeping over a city is not going to stop at every righteous person's home and pass it by. A tornado is not going to seek out only the wicked.

While God is a Creator of all and controller of all, he does not intervene in natural law so as to make a theological system in which we are given titfortat for every action that we do. In fact, such theology, while possibly appealing where God automatically rewards justice and punishes wickedness, leaves no room for the grace of God. It leaves no room for salvation for all our sinners. All have fallen from the glory of God. All of us have gone astray to our own way.

It leaves no room for mankind's faith.

So we understand then that we have finite understanding. We cannot comprehend all. We understand that we are not all powerful, we are not sovereign the way in which God is and lastly, he ends. Today God talks about the creation of animals the distinction between them picking up where we left off. Verse 39 he says can you hunt, pray for the lion?

Can you satisfy the hunger of strong lions when they are crouched in the dens, when they lie in the thicket in ambush? Who prepares for the Croats pray when its young ones cry to God for help and they wander around for lack of food. Do you know the time when the goats of the rocks give birth? Do you observe the dough deers given birth? Can you number the months they fulfill?

Do you know the time of its given birth? When they crouch, they bring forth their young ones, they get rid of their labor pains, their young ones grow strong, they grow up in the oak, and they go forth and do not return to them. Who has sent forth the wild ass free and who has released the wild donkey's bonds to which I have given the wilderness as its house and the salt flat as its dwelling place? It scorns the city's turmoil. It does not hear the driver shouts, it explores the mountains as its pastors and searches after every kind of green plant.

It is the wild ox. Is the wild ox willing to serve you? Or will he spend the night at your feeding trail? Can you tie the wild ox with its rope to a furrow? Or will it hollow the valleys after you?

Hero the valleys after you? Can you trust it because its strength is great? Or will you hand your labor over to it? Can you rely on it that it will return your grain and that it will gather it to your threshing floor? The wings of the FEMA ostrich flap are they the pinions of the stock or the falcon?

Indeed it leaves its eggs to the earth and lets them be warmed on the ground. And it forgets that a foot might crush an egg and a wild animal might trample it. It deals cruelly with its young ones as if they were not its own, as if without fear that its labor were in vain because God made it forget wisdom and he did not give it a share in understanding. When it spreads its wings aloft, it laughs at the horse and its rider. Do you give power to the horse?

Do you clothe its neck with the mane? Do you make it leap like the locust? The majesty of its snorting is terrifying. They pawn the valley and it exalts of strength. It goes out to meet the battle.

It laughs at danger, it is not dismayed, it does not turn back from before the sword upon it. The quiver rattles along with the flash of the spear and the short sword. With the roar and rage it races over the ground and it cannot stand still at the sound of the horn. Whenever a horn sounds, it says AHA. And it smells the battle from a distance.

The thunder of the commanders and the war cry. Does a hawk soar by your wisdom? Does it spread its wings to the south? Or does the eagle fly high at your command and construct its nest high? It lives on the rock and spends the night on the rock point and the mountain stronghold.

From there it spies out the prey. Its eyes look from far away, and its young ones lick blood, greedily. And where the dead carcasses are, there they are.

God talks a lot about the animals here in the Creation. He talks about the way they give birth. He talks about the way they live freely. He talks about, to an extent, their individual needs and how he meets them all. But he also talks about how, without thought, their offspring go out without fear of them being trampled upon, without fear of them being crushed or eaten or die.

And it says here there's a distinction between humanity and the animal creation that God has left them without wisdom. He has not given them a part in understanding. God has given us a part in understanding. He has given us the ability to be wise, but he has not given us the estate of his own throne. He has not given us the ability to command the way that he commands, to understand the way that he commands, to have power like he has power.

But humanity is different and special from the rest of the creative acts of God. For when God came to form man, he said, let us create man after our own image.

But God demonstrates here that the created realm, the created animals and the beast of the earth, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, those who are not created after his own image, are they not fed by Him? Are they not given homes and shelters by Him? Does he not design them with special needs and special abilities to meet those needs?

Do the predators of the world not have special insight given them by God to spy out the pray? Do the pray not have special insight given to them by God to survive just as God has given to the animals? Providence, shelter, loving care, intelligent design, special thought. He gives to each of us the same. But as he gives to each of us the same.

It is not our place to question God. It's not our place in our finite understanding to demand from Him an answer which, if given, would not be understood. But, you know, for as much as God is questioning Job here, he is complimenting him. God has given Job no answers, only questions. God has given Job no conclusions, only facts.

God teaches humanity, teaches his creation not through filling us with the answers, not by telling us why, but by allowing us to seek, by allowing us to search it out, by allowing us to have induction.

God teaches us. He reveals himself to us. He gives us understanding through what he has done. And the most understanding that we can have is to realize Romans One when it says that the invisible attributes of God, his very qualities, are made manifest through the visible creation. And to understand that we have a God so big and so powerful that the fact that he even takes the time to communicate with us should be mind boggle.

And the psalmist says I look at the stars in the sky, the heavens, and what is man that thou are mindful of Him?

And we have true wisdom, then when we understand that our circumstance, our individual trials and tribulations and sorrows may have no answer that will satisfy our soul, no answer that will give us peace at night, no explanation that can make us feel better about losing a loved one, losing our home, losing our health, losing our friends. But to understand that we have a God who has infinite wisdom, a God who has infinite power and a God who has infinite care. For he cares for every beast of the land, he cares for every fowl of the air and every fish of the sea, and he cares for each of us. Our peace, then, comes not from understanding, not from demanding answers from God as to why bad things happen, but through understanding that it is in his control and in his sovereign not just his sovereign ability to control the universe, but in his love for us, in his wisdom, in his understanding. Right?

God cares for his creation, but he does it without violating his laws of nature. And even so, he has cared for Job and showed his care for Job by refusing to violate his freedom or insult his intelligence. God has given us facts to see the meaning, to apply understanding to our own lives. And throughout all of this, God is at work on developing faith. In fact, facts and faith, they go hand in hand.

When we have facts, we don't need faith. But when facts add to mystery, greater faith is required, right? We have facts that surround us, that facts that boggle the greatest minds, the greatest scientists of our world who struggle to understand why things are the way they are, why we're here, where we came from.

In fact, they're not looking at the facts. They're looking away from it to explain it. They're looking at the fact that we are here and they're removing faith from it. But when we allow the fact that we're here, the fact that the Earth is so perfect for our needs, the fact that we have seasons, the fact that everything operates in such a controlled manner, and we allow that to add to the mystery of the universe, we can place more and deeper faith in God. The one who does understand Job has suffered great loss.

He has suffered great tribulation. He hasn't even been in what's called no man's land between what he knows of God and what's unknown.

However, he has assumed that God owes him an explanation and that God must defend his position.

And this goes back to the beginning of the fall of man, where Satan promised the answer to even the garden when he said to her you will be like god. You will know good and evil. You will have wisdom.

Job has felt that in his wisdom, in his intelligence, his innocence, that he has earned the right to be as wise as God. None of us have earned that right.

None of us have earned or deserve or even have the right to God's wisdom. We do not have the right to demand of Him an explanation. But out of the mysteries beyond our comprehension come those who trust in Jesus Christ.

I want to end tonight. I've gone long and I apologize. These are some long chapters, and next week we will continue in chapter 40 that there's some cool we see some cool stuff. We see the Viathan and the behemoth dinosaurs and other things that God created come into the play here. But I want to end tonight with a plea to all of you who are sitting in sorrows right now or in tribulations trials, things in life that seem so tough that you can't understand why.

And you may be angry. You may not believe in God yet, and you may just be angry at the universe or the world. You may believe in God and be angry at Him and demanding answers and explanations.

And I'm here to tell you today you're not going to get one.

We started the Book of Job looking for those things, and I knew we wouldn't get the answer. And you're not going to either.

But what God wants you to get out of these what I want you to get out of these is that while we cannot understand why we can trust in one who does, you can choose today to trust in a sovereign God, you can choose today to trust in one with infinite wisdom. You can choose today to trust in the Almighty, the powerful God.

And you can choose to believe that while you don't understand why you're going through this, that God loves you and he cares for you, and it's in his wisdom that it's happening, and you can choose to rely upon his care. None of us were here at the foundation of the world. None of us here caused the bird to take flight. None of us here caused the rain to fall.

None of us here have any control outside of our ability to trust. So I plead with you in your moment right now, a mystery of the unknown, can you place your faith in Jesus?

Jesus says, come to me all who are weary, all who are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest.

And that rest does not come from answers, but that rest comes from the peace, the understanding that our friend, our Father is God, should die. And we must begin by admitting today that we're sinners, by admitting our lack of wisdom, by admitting our lack in ability to comprehend, but by believing that Jesus Christ is God, by believing that what he has done for us is enough to save us. By believing that he makes up for all of our lack of wisdom because he knows all and he controls all and confess in Him as our Lord. Make Him king over our life. And then our trials, our tribulations, however great they may be, will become small.

We can have peace. Because the one who is in control, the one who does understand, he's our king, he's our Lord. But Jesus also says, he calls us his friends tonight. I plead with everyone, come and have some peace. Go to bed tonight and lay your head on your pillow and get rest.

Allow your burdens, your iniquities, to flow out from you as God should die, takes the reins over your life. And if you're ready for that, I want to invite you in our closing prayer here to ask God into your heart, to let Him be in control and take it from you as we just follow his lead, as we look at the facts around us and we develop greater faith in God. We're going to pray now, and I invite you all to ask Jesus into your heart today. Father, I admit that I'm a sinner. And Lord, I admit that I am wrong for demanding answers from you.

I admit that I am wrong, Lord, to believe that I can even comprehend the mysteries of Your vastness, of Your limitless qualities.

And I also know, Lord, that I'm tired of being drained. I'm tired of these worries. I'm tired of searching so much for answers and being unwilling to accept what is and allow it to be unknown and trust in you. And so now, Lord, I just believe that where I don't have answers, you do. And I believe that and know and accept that I will not always receive them, I won't always comprehend them if you gave them to me.

But I trust in you as my Lord, as my king. And I confess you as my Lord and King, that no matter what I lack or fail to understand that you are in control and nothing's out of Your power. And I am willing to trust you in that. And I'm willing to trust that whatever you are leading me through, Father, that it will be for Your glory and it will be for my benefit. And with that, I ask you to take my anxiety or my anger or my depression or whatever it is that I have, Lord, and just give me rest.

Your Word says to come, all who are heavy, all who are weary, and you will give them rest. And I thank you for this. In the name of Jesus and Father, I pray for all right now that you will give this to them and that you'll be glorified as we turn from the sin of believing that we have the right to these things and from wanting it for ourselves to just trust in you and taking our crown off and following you. And we love you. We thank you.

In Jesus name, amen.