God sets before Job an amazing array of mysteries of the created order and peppers him with questions. He confronts Job with the depth and power of the mighty seas of the world and asks if Job has any power to control them. As fierce and powerful as the oceans are during a storm and as daunting as they are in their vast expanse, God has set a limit to them—“enclosed the sea with doors” (8). At the shoreline their power is tame and fit for children and babes to wade in and build sand castles. “Thus far you shall come and no farther” (38:11). Unless God himself infuriates it with his winds, the shoreline tames the vast oceans. Can Job do any such thing as this? Can he understand and deal with this single created entity?
The next sixty verses lay an embarrassingly rapid-fire collection of questions and mysterious circumstances for Job to prove his metal for his right to engage God in a challenge to his ways. Who can read this and conclude that Job acquits himself well?
God challenges Job to give his knowledge of the mysteries of nature. Can he tell how God controls them and has designed them to accomplish their purpose? Often, God uses these things of nature for specific moral purposes (13, 15, 23). Job is challenged with darkness, light, snow, hail, rain, ice, dew, frost, the heavenly constellations, and lightning. Certainly, one of the most familiar things to any living person is the regular occurrence of morning. How did God arrange for that and can any man command its being or the time of its appearance? “Where is the way to the dwelling of light?” And conversely if there is light, how can it be limited so that there is also darkness, and “Where is its place?” (19). Surely these realities, so immediately and without intermission present in human experience, have yielded their mysteries to you, Job. For were you not there when I said, “Let there be light?”
God has placed the stars at such distances that we cannot reach them, and yet he upholds them for every moment of their existence. Though they are so far from each other they often appear to us as cunningly crafted images painted on the canvas of the sky (31, 32). The earth maintains its balance and its rhythm from day to day and season to season from its relation to these unreachable stars, so God poses this question: “Do you know the ordinances of heaven or fix their rule over the earth?” (38:33). Our planetary well-being and our individual well-being from a natural standpoint depend on this principle of gravitational equilibrium and yet all of the investigation of all generations since the creation has not exhausted the knowledge of its power or its possible applications. Failing to match the knowledge of God by empirical study of an observable phenomenon, shall we pretend to find intellectual and spiritual comprehension in his eternal purposes?
Can Job tell how God has put wisdom in the mind of man or how his intellect achieves understanding? (38:36). How does human language and the ability to communicate reflect the image of God? How do particular words in many different languages communicate universal ideas? How do memory and the reception of new ideas and arguments coalesce to form either an opinion or a conviction? Does Job know whence arise his questions and his own formulations of objections? Who taught him the technique of presenting a case? Who established the law of non-contradiction? Is it someone beyond the Lord? Is Job his own maker?
Who aligns the hunger of beasts with the provisions of nature? Both the lion and the raven, a ferocious beast and a bird, are carnivores (39-41). Does Job provide their prey for them? Does Job create the marvelous balance of predator and prey within nature?
In Chapter 39 God challenges Job to explain to him the peculiar characteristics of a wide variety of animals that all conduct themselves in different ways and yet all are provided for in their unique circumstances: mountain goats giving birth, deer calving and recovering, wild donkeys exploring the mountains for pasture, the wild ox and his rugged and dangerous independence, the stupid ostrich in her ignorant joy and invincible speed, the strong matchless horse both in nature and as trained for war, the soaring hawk flying with no knowledge of the principles of aerodynamics, and the rock-dwelling eagle with his magnificent eyesight and his uncanny instinct. If Job were able to discern how each of these creatures, so distinct, has its respective quality of strength and ability to cope, even thrive, in an exposed environment then God will consider consulting with Job about the wisdom of His moral purpose in the world. If we struggle to penetrate the secrets of the natural world and its irrational inhabitants, can we expect to grasp the eternal reasons and endless connections of purpose of the omniscient God?
Spurgeon preached words about a “Happy Christian” that should inform us in weal or woe. “The worldling blesses God while he gives him plenty, but the Christian blesses him when he smites him: he believes him to be too wise to err and too good to be unkind; he trusts him where he cannot trace him, looks up to him in the darkest hour, and believes that all is well.” We should be satisfied with this invitation to reason with God: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isaiah 1:18).
Dr. Tom Nettles is widely regarded as one of the foremost Baptist historians in America. He joined the faculty of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary after teaching at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School where he was professor of Church History and chairman of that department. Previously, he taught at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary. He received a B.A. from Mississippi College and an M.Div. and Ph.D. from Southwestern. In addition to writing numerous journal articles and scholarly papers, Dr. Nettles has authored or edited nine books including By His Grace and For His Glory, Baptists and the Bible, and Why I Am a Baptist.
Courses taught: Historical Theology of the Baptists, Historical Theology Overview, Jonathan Edwards & Andrew Fuller.
