Things Too Wonderful for Me

October 26, 2014 Background Scripture: Job 42; Psalm 86 Lesson Passage: Job 42:1 – 10 A philosopher once described knowledge as an island in the sea of ignorance; as our knowledge grows, so too does the shoreline of our ignorance. Our lesson today is a reminder that we should not attempt to understand God. God’s thoughts and ways are so far above ours that we don’t even have the mental capacity to properly evaluate the miniscule amount that God shares with us. Whatever we believe is going on with God, there is always much more than we have the capacity to imagine. The book of Job adds a dimension to the revealed word of God that cannot be found anywhere else in the holy writ. The story of Job gives a clear explanation of reasons a child of God might suffer while trying to live a completely holy life. It is only in the book of Job that we see a dialog between God and Satan that we would otherwise find impossible to fathom. Outside of the book of Job, if we take everything we have studied in the bible about God and everything we have studied in the bible about Satan, we could not imagine God and Satan having what seems to be a cordial conversation about a follower of God. It is here that we also receive understanding that God is truly in control of everything. Disasters that we thought were the single-handed work of Satan must be looked at in a new context against the backdrop of the book of Job. Even suffering has bounds set by God. It is here that we derive the concept of “God’s permissive will”. The book of Job places the reader in the position of being in an audience that is observing scenes in both Heaven and on earth. As an observer, it is clear that God, in Heaven, is completely in control of what unfolds as chaos on the earth. Job’s life appears to totally unravel with no logical connection to Job’s behavior given the prevailing theology of the time as interpreted by Job and his friends. Job knows that he is doctrinally innocent yet even he wrestles with the implication of a theology that appears to fail him during the worse time of his life. Job understands what it looks like to outsiders because he would judge his situation the same as they except he knows better. Job knows that he is innocent but the evidence is stacked against him in light of the prevailing theology that even he believes. The only one who could make sense of this was God and Job accused Him of purposely hiding rather than explaining the apparent contradiction. Perhaps if there is a religious failure to be found from an earthly perspective of Job’s situation, it is that we presumptuously desire for God to rubberstamp our philosophy of Him. Too often when we think we understand something about God, we attempt to make our understanding a standard by which we measure new situations. The story of Job demonstrates that God can create a situation to expose the limitations of man’s wisdom and his feeble attempt to depend on his own understanding. New situations are opportunities to evaluate our understanding rather than another opportunity to validate something that could be faulty. Beyond everything that man is capable of learning, God knows things that are too wonderful for us to even comprehend. Robert C. Hudson October 17, 2014