“Have the gates of death been revealed to you,
or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?
Declare, if you know all this.” (Job 38:17-18)
The Book of Job does not explain the reasons why there is suffering in the world, why we have to endure illness, injuries, and loss from violence, accidents, and natural disasters. The book does not provide any neat little answers. It does emphasize the sovereignty of the Lord God Almighty. It points us to Him, to trust Him, to have faith in Him, no matter what.
The Lord heard all of Job’s questions and complaints. He heard all the words uttered by Job’s counselors. The Lord responded with a series of questions that demonstrated that neither Job nor his counselors were in any position to offer an opinion or assessment of how He, the Lord, should manage and run the universe He had created.
The point the Lord made here is that none of us can see the world from His perspective. We do not have access to or knowledge of all He knows and does and why. Therefore, we have no right to call Him unjust or unfair. The Lord created the universe all that is in it. Therefore, we lack the understanding to accuse God of wrongdoing or mismanagement. In the presence of God’s awesome majesty, we have nothing to say. We cannot boast of our “wisdom”.
We human beings attempt to control our world, our environment, yet we stand helpless before the chaos of the raging sea, the rushing torrents of floods and rivers, the awesome power of wind, rain, lightning, and thunderstorms, the raging virulence of COVID. These all seem to us to occur with random unpredictability, without reason or logic; but the Lord uses all such things for His own purposes. He controls them and sets their limits.
The message of Job is, therefore, trust God. He knows what He is doing even if we don’t. We need not demand explanations for what He does as if He were accountable to us, rather than we to Him. As we trust, we seek Him in prayer to plead for the strength to endure whatever He allows us to endure. We don’t have to make sense of it all. He is always right, true, and good. Our resentment and anger should not be directed toward Him. Rather, it should be directed against the evil in the world, against sin, and against the devil who is out to rob us of God’s goodness.