It is exciting to watch God work in the heart of a lost sinner. It is important to remember that it is God that saves sinners. Our duty is to testify of Jesus Christ. A sinner may present himself as bold and brave and hard. God is wiser and more powerful than any lost sinner. He can break the heart of any person. He does not force Himself on anyone, but He knows how to work in the heart of the lost to bring His truth to bear upon them.
In our text, God was using His wisdom to help one of His children, Job, to see the need to humble himself before Him. God shows Himself strong at all times and through many different ways. He chose to use the Creation of the world to show Job how foolish he had been in his demands. God continued to remind Job that he was finite. He was not eternal. He was born. He had not always been. Job was not that old yet either. He had experienced some things. He had known some successes. Now he was troubled and he was finding it very difficult to take.
In verse 22 God dealt with the snow. How much did Job know about the snow. How much do we know about it. We need to shovel it or blow it out of our way. The snow can be a hindrance to our ability to walk or drive. Each snow flake is unique. Each snow flake has some dirt in it. It looks so white and it looks so fluffy when it is falling. Yet it is heavy to shovel. It does not melt immediately upon falling, and yet the temperature of the snow is not that cold. The air can be much colder than the snow is. Enough snow cover can keep the frost from going too deep. It has insulating qualities. There are many things we can learn from the snow. It did not just happen. God designed the snow. The snow came after the fall of man and after the flood of Noah’s day. God changed the weather patterns and He changed the climate and we have snow in our part of the world, but there are places that seldom or never see snow.
We do not usually look at hail as a treasure or as containing any treasure. Yet God asked Job if he had seen the treasures of the hail. Hail can be very damaging, but it also brings moisture. If it does not hit our plants and shred them, the moisture can be beneficial.
God says He has reserved the snow and the hail against the time of trouble. God used hail to demonstrate His power over the land of Egypt. The Pharaoh did not believe in God. He thought he was so much wiser than God. God used the hail to destroy some of the crops and to kill livestock. It was not man-made climate change that brought that hail. It was God that brought that hail to show the rebellious Pharaoh that he needed to turn to God. Pharaoh never did turn to God. He was very stubborn, but he knows better now, except that it is too late for him. Revelation 16:21 tells us that God will use great hailstones to punish the wicked in the time of the Tribulation.
In verse 24 God asked Job to tell Him how the light and the east wind work together. The light is seen and it spreads itself out. However, the light also works with the east wind to bring it upon the earth. How does that work. Secular man is so short-sighted. He looks at everything through the lens of evolution. He refuses to see the greatness of God, or even the existence of God. Job was not an evolutionist, but he failed to see so much of the wonders of God’s creation. Job had really short-changed himself by overlooking so many important facts. He had focussed on his sufferings and how he believed that God was not treating him fairly. God was showing Job how small he really was and that he had no right to sit in judgment of this great God.
God continued by asking about the way the waters run. What part did Job have in that. I was speaking with a former counsellor in our area about the water and the ditches. He talked of how they had designed some of the ditches and how some were not doing what they had planned for them to do. He talked of how one farmer wanted better drainage for one of his fields, but the counsellor talked about the effect that would have on other farmers. We can plan things, but we often fail to see the bigger picture. We don’t allow for the many variables. God knows what He is doing and He designed the waterways to work effectively to move the water around year after year. The wise person understands that while it might look nice to live near a peaceful river in the summer, that same river might be quite the rushing torrent in spring. Thus the wise person does not build too close so that he does not have to flee during that spring time when the river overflows its banks and can cause large amounts of damage to anything in its path.
What about the thunder and lightning? Job did not understand much about that either. The thunder and lightning cause it to rain on earth, even in places where nobody lives. Why would that be? Man is not the only living thing on this earth. There are animals that need grass to eat. There is a need for trees to grow to moderate the temperatures, etc. God sends the thunder and lightning, which is accompanied by rain for various purposes. Job had not considered this either.
God explained further why the rain falls where no man lives. God also wanted to know if the rain has a father. Who caused the dew to appear? Where did the ice come from? What about the frost? God was carefully and methodically stripping away the false ideas that Job had about Him. Job was really quite small in comparison to God’s greatness. Rather than be critical of God, Job would have been wiser to worship God.
The same can be said of us today. Rather than be critical of God, we would be wise to worship Him. So often we complain about things that we cannot control anyway. We are expecting a storm today. Some have already complained that we have had enough snow for this year. We need sunshine, blah, blah, blah. We have ungodly people who are trying to change the weather by sending jets up into the sky to put out chem-trails to change the weather. Of course there are those who believe that this is all a conspiracy theory. Yet there has been much written about this. When man tries to manipulate the weather, he makes a mess of things. But secular man keeps trying to play God. He thinks that given enough time, he will figure things out and he will outsmart “mother nature”. Fools reject the true God and they think they can improve on what God is doing. It will never work. If it were not for God’s mercy and grace, man would long have destroyed the world already. God is not allowing man to do so.
In our text, Satan would long have destroyed Job and all others if God were not in charge. Job did not understand this. Job was too focussed on a small part of his life and he could not see the bigger picture. God was giving Job a tune-up here. The good news is that Job was receptive to God’s rebuke. Job would benefit greatly from God’s challenge to him.
Those who are saved, can sometimes get misaligned by things that are happening and by a lack of knowledge. We need to be challenged from God’s Word regularly so that we do not become so ingrown in our thinking that we cannot see what God is doing. It is wise to ask God to help us to see things more clearly from His perspective, rather than complain about how He is doing things.
Pastor Bartel