Dallas Area Conference 1993-10 — William MacDonald

God’s Questions to Job in the Closing Chapters

I'd like to think with you this morning about Job, and we'll turn first of all to Job 38, and just read a few verses there. Job 38. The point is that these last chapters deserve to be better known. Everybody knows the first two chapters of Job, and they've suffered with Job through all his losses, but not everybody is so familiar with these last chapters, and they present the glories of God in a way that few passages in the Bible do.

Job chapter 38, verse 1,. Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Now prepare yourself like a man. I will question you, and you shall answer me.

Where were you when I made the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know. Or, who stretched the line upon it? To what were its foundations fastened?

Or, who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted? Job was a historical character. He lived in the time of Abraham's father, probably. This is deduced from the length of years that he lived, and from other considerations in the book.

He certainly lived before the Law of Moses, didn't he? No reference here to the Law of Moses in this book. It really takes us back to the early days of human civilization, the book of Job. And this dear man suffered more loss than any other man in one day.

He suffered more loss than any other man in the history of the world, except the Lord Jesus, of course. He was wiped out. His material possessions were concerned, and his son's. And as if that wasn't enough, he was subjected to a terrible case.

I don't know if any of you have ever had boils. I had as a boy. I was recovering from dyspheria, and they fed me some fish. And up there in the north of Scotland, they have an expression, the fish jumped his skin.

That's the way it's translated, anyway. And it sure jumped my skin. And his condition was so pitiable that when three friends came to console him, they were speechless for seven days. Well, that's pretty bad, isn't it?

They sat with him, but they were absolutely speechless for seven days. It's too bad it hadn't been 70, but never mind, it was 70. Then they started to speak, and they started to weave a lot of human philosophy.

They appealed to history, they appealed to human experience, they appealed to the wisdom of the sages, of the ancients, and they just had one violin, and they just had one string on their violin, and they just played one note on that string.

And that note was, look, when you sin, you suffer for it. And you're suffering greatly. Only one conclusion. You must have sinned greatly. The imperfect bedside manner. Imagine going to a man suffering like that and telling him that.

Read the book of Job. You kind of get weary during those chapters. I do. Philosophy rears me anyway. Sin does bring suffering. They were wrong in applying it to Job, because Job was the most righteous man on the face of the earth.

They were judgmental, and they were wrong, and God said that later on. You haven't spoken concerning my service, that which I do. And then, after they got through, a young man named Elihu comes upon the scene.

People are divided in their estimation of Elihu. Some think he was just a proud, young, I thought he had wisdom, and others think, no, he really advanced the discussion to a higher state. Actually, the Lord doesn't criticize Elihu later on, as he criticized the three princes.

Even after you get through with Elihu, you still feel unsatisfied. You're going back, you're saying, how could a God of love, just men like that, to suffer the way Job did? Then God appears, beginning in chapter 38.

He does not solve the problem. What he does is he gives Job a university course here. He gives him a course in geography, and biology, and botany, and you name it. They're all here in the closing chapters of Job.

If you're not familiar with them, really, she kept them, and they're wonderful, and the more you study it, the more you study these chapters, the more wonderful they appear to you. And yet, what was God saying to Job?

Well, he presented his son, and his Lord, and his ignorance. The assembly he'll view down in San Jose, dear brother, Gordon Westwood has a son named David. They had a little girl, and she had that bone marrow transplant.

You know what an emotional rollercoaster it was for that family. You know, sometimes their hopes would be up, and then she would be recovered reasonably well. David and his wife decided to invite all their friends, all that had shown an interest in love, and it was great, and they gathered together out behind their house one Sunday afternoon.

Christian Fellowship and God’s Providential Purposes

This was Christmas. He gave a wonderful talk on what they had been through. He described all of the emotional zigzags that they had been through. He described the testimony that the Christians had been, and how the people at work would say to him, Dave, what can we do?

Could we come over and mow your grass? And he'd say, well, let's see the folks from the chapel mow the grass. And he'd say, well, could we bring some food? Let's see, the folks from the chapel bring meals to us regularly, you know.

And then he got all through it. He's holding the little girl in his arms, his dear little thing. You know, he said, what's the lesson in this? What a glory to God to see a young man like that. Tremendous.

That's what my today's wife showed me. Just imagine. God knew, of course, that he was going to present to the world his word. That we live in a world of trust. From the very earliest days. And so, he picked up one of the, exhibit A.

What do you think, if you could talk to Job today, what do you think, this is really quite a patch of trouble you went through, wasn't it? And put a, you don't get very far. He's working out perfectly.

Someday, you're going to see the other side of the, the loom is silent, and the shuttled geese to fly, will God unroll the canvas and explain the reason why the dark thread in the weaver's silkful hands is a thread of gold and silver.

Job today knows why all of this happened. He knows. In 1993, he would be talking about Job. Made it all worthwhile. Well, let's look at how God deals with him. Beloved, the wonders of God in creation.

God’s Rebuke and the Wonders of Inanimate Creation

First of all, God deals with his inanimate creation. Word of rebuke to Job, he said, who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge? What does that mean? Darkens counsel? Well, it means Job did a lot of talking.

He really did. He did a lot of sputtering. He wasn't patient, but he did endure. He did endure. The whole scene was just dark and vile. God said, now prepare yourself like a man, and I'll question you as, where were you when I met you?

How much is included in just a simple statement like that? Job is in the hands of the one who laid the foundations of the earth. Who determined its measurement? That's wonderful in itself. You know, did you know that planet earth is just the right size?

If it were more or less, we wouldn't be here today. Filth of the earth, and a rotation of the heavenly body. That's exactly right. Many things about that. To what were its foundations? That is marvelous, isn't it?

Suspended in nothing. You find so many of these things in the book of Job. The things that science discovered many, many years later. Who laid its cornerstone? Verse 6. When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God showed it for joy.

You'd never known that except for this verse in the Bible, would you? When the creation took place, the whole choir started to sing. It was such a magnificent event in God's program. And then he goes on to talk about the oceans and the seas of the world.

Of course, the world was covered with water at one time, and then God divided the water from the land, and then he says to the waves, Thus far shall your proud waves come. I love some of the language of Job, and even his comforters.

Languages are excellent. If you have an appreciation for great literature here. Who shut in the sea with doors? See its instructions as to how far it could come, and you mustn't come beyond that. And then he says, When I made the clouds as garments in thick darkness, it swam against.

Once again, it's picturing the earth and the clouds over the earth like a dress covering the earth. Have you commanded the morning since your day began? Did you ever stand out there and say, Okay, dawn, come now.

Time to come now. The dawn to appear and the light to blaze and over the whole earth casting. It says that it might take hold of the ends of the earth and the wicked be shaken out of it. Well, the dawn arises, and then the light just, and it says that the wicked might be shaken out.

Well, it's taking out as if a man had a cloth and he shakes the cloth, you know. Men love to carry on their wicked schemes in the darkness at night, don't they? Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil, and more crimes are committed in the nighttime.

And then the dawn comes as if like shaking the wicked out of that and causing them to slow down. It takes on form like clay under a seal and stands out like a garment. It's all poetic language. It's all figurative language.

When it's dark, apart from light, you can't see the landscape, but the light comes and you can see the topography of the landscape. You can see the valleys, you can see the mountains, you can see just the way the land, and that's like taking a seal and putting it in clay, and you can see the writing there.

Some parts are lower, and that's what happens when the dawn comes. You can see the earth, and I think that has the idea of the different coloring of a garment. When it's night, you don't see anything else.

You don't see the beautiful flowers, but when the dawn comes, there's flowers, there's all those colors. Then he goes on to repeat that from the wicked their light is withheld and the upraised arm is broken.

In other words, the light has come, day has come over the earth, and the wicked scurry to their holes and wait for darkness to come. Again, their upright arm, their power is broken to carry on. And then he goes on to wonderful getting these condensed courses, isn't it?

Don't have to spend four years. He says, have you entered into the springs of the sea or walked and searched the depths? What did Job know about what it's like at the bottom of the ocean? The marbles of the ocean.

It's probably east coast, made it by the Gulf Stream. Here's a stream of warm water that starts off down there in the Caribbean, and it goes through the Atlantic Ocean. Still warm. The Atlantic isn't warm.

I'm going to promise you. It goes up by Ireland and the coast of Scotland and up toward Norway. It's still warm. And he does the same with the Japanese Stream out on the west coast, too. If it weren't for the Gulf Stream, I think that a lot of those countries would be ice capped today.

But they're not. And God arranged all of that. It's marvelous, isn't it? You entered into the springs of the sea. Have the gates of death been revealed to you? You know, Old Testament saints knew very, very little about death and the afterlife.

Did you know that? Christ brought life and immortality to life by the gospel. You don't find very many clear statements of scripture in the Old Testament. If you ask a Jew in the Old Testament, what happens at the time of death, he'd probably shrug his shoulders and say, and she all expressed more of ignorance than an express of knowledge.

I really think she all just speaks of the disembodied condition, that's all. The spirit and the soul are separated from. We know that when the believer dies, his body goes to the grave, and his spirit and soul go to be with the Lord in heaven.

Have you seen the doors of the shadow of death? Have you comprehended the breadth of the earth? Tell me if you know all of this. And where is the way to the dwelling of light? Light is kind of a mystery, isn't it?

We don't think about that. But it is a mystery. I just couldn't understand the theories that they had, theory of light. And it is marvelous. Somebody wrote me the other day and said, we know the speed of light.

What's the speed of darkness? I wish he hadn't asked me. He said, and darkness, that you may take it to its territory, that you may know the path to its home. Do you know it? Because you were born then?

Or because the number of your days is great? When I think that God is not there. Have you entered the treasury of snow? I think in the King James, this is the treasures of the snow, and either one is very good.

Think of a God that can, so infinite in design, that he can design all those snowflakes that are really, they're very insignificant, and yet every one of them is different. And yet every one of them is beautiful, too.

The symmetry of it. Well, that's a good exercise. When you go home from the conference, sit down with a pen and paper and see how many different designs of snowflakes. Ideas. Just as architects run out of ideas in making homes.

Pretty soon they all look alike, don't they? The marvels of snow. It looks like it's so insignificant, and yet they start falling on Milwaukee, and pretty soon traffic grinds to a halt. Forget it. Time of trouble here means war time.

How do you know? Because it goes on to say that. For the day of battle and war. And it takes us back to Joshua 10, where more people were killed by the hail than were killed by the snow. Let light get around us.

It goes straight, but it doesn't. It can bend around the corner. He designed all of these things into the universe in which... Who has divided a channel for the overflowing water? The direction of the rivers.

He said, well, it just happened. That's the way it went. Well, it didn't just happen. It was all planned by God. Because He knew the needs of commerce in the coming day and everything else. And then it goes on to describe how rain falls on a desert place.

This is marvelous. It's marvelous that God went all over the world today to ground all over the world and filled the sea. Depths of earth. Depths this year and go down deeper next year. Because they're all there in the desert, too.

We were talking about this since I've been here in Israel for many, many years. Of course, the dear Arab people were there in Israel and Palestine in those days. And then the Jews come in and they start irrigating the land.

And they invent this drip irrigation. Soon the land is... In fact, they think they fulfilled the Scripture. The desert shall blossom like a rose. They think they fulfilled that. All they needed was to irrigate it and carry on farming in the proper way.

And it all sprang forth. And that's what God is speaking about in these verses. To cause it to rain on a land where there is no one. This is a desert. A wilderness in which there is no man. To satisfy the desolate wait.

Cause to spring forth the growth of tender grass. Has the reign of Father. Who has begotten the drops of dew. It's interesting, isn't it? You put your car out at night. And you go out in the morning. And there is covered with moisture.

Covered with moisture. How did that happen? By divine design. The waters harden like Jesus rose. Prince Edward Island. And we're driving along. Here's this big harbor. The Dixitany. It all freezes over.

Salt water. A team of horses or an animal group. And then God says, let's talk about astronomy. Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades or loose the belt? He talks about the influences of the heavenly bodies on the earth.

People think these men in this time were stone age men. What nonsense. Utter nonsense. Think of the knowledge that's here. In the book of Job. And as I said, Job lived before Abraham. The Pleiades. Or loose the belt of Orion.

Can you bring out Mazaroth in his season? Or guide the bear with his cup? And yet God has arranged all these things. In the sky. Their orbit. Their movement. And their influences here on the earth. He speaks about that in verse 33.

You know, the ordinances of the heavens. Can you set their dominion over the earth? The influence of the moon on the tide. The regularity. It can all be calculated. Newspapers will tell you when it's going to be high tide today.

And people watch that all the time. Can you lift up your voice to the clouds and an abundance of water may cover you? Well, I wish we could have done that the last six years out in California. We had a drought for six years.

But I couldn't go out and say, okay clouds, let it come down. Back to me. To think of anything like that. Can you send out lightnings that they may go and save you? Here we are. I love this one. Who has put wisdom into your thinking?

How are you thinking? How does that happen? Don't think about it. You know, the human mind baffles the best of scientists. And even some secular scientists say, don't try to compare the human mind to a computer.

No computer for an eternity. Who has put wisdom into your thinking? When I think of that, it really thrills me. When I'm working on the human mind, I say, okay, now wiggle your little finger. And the mind sends the signal down.

My little finger wiggles. We're sending more. Who can number the clouds by wisdom? Verse 37. Or pour out the bottles of heaven when the dust hardens and clumps and the clods cling. Turns to the animate creation.

God’s Care for Animals and the Wisdom of Instinct

He's been talking about inanimate things up to this point. But in verse 39, he turns to the animate creation. And he's saying to Job, quite a job arranging for all my creatures have something to eat. These verses kind of came alive to me during the days of desert storms.

Troops went over to Kuwait. You can think of what a job it was to assemble food. Three meals a day. An unknown theory providing for all. Opening his hands. That's what he says here. Can you hunt the prey for the lion?

Or satisfy the appetite of the young lions when they crouch in their dens or lurk in their lairs the lion waits? Who provides food for the raven? I laugh. Really, there is humor in the Bible. First of all, he speaks about the majestic lion.

You know, absolutely gorgeous. Then he speaks about that awkward little raven. He is as interested in the raven as he is in the lion. That's what a wonderful God of. His eyes on the pharaoh, even. But I know he cares for me.

Who provides food for the raven when its young ones cry to God and wander around, even to go and get food for its young? And the same with the lion. And then he talks about those wild mountain goats. Inaccessible, really, to Job.

Job could know very little about their gestation period, about their habits. But there they are, up in the mountain. He says, can you, verse 2 of chapter 39, can you number the months that they fulfill?

Do you know the time when they bear young? They bow down. They bring forth their young. Then he talks about the wild donkey in verse 5. And it's also called an onager there, which is just another name for a wild donkey.

I have made the wilderness and the barren land. He's out there on the desert, the wild donkey. Don't try to bring him into Dallas. He would be absolutely whole Dallas in contempt. He doesn't want to be in an urban setting at all.

He wants to be out there on the desert. And don't try to put a harness on him, either, because he won't obey you. He does not heed the shouts of the driver. The range of the mountains is his pasture. He searches after every...

Don't try to bring the ox back into your barn and get him into a stall in your barn and expect him to stay there. Don't try to put a harness on him to pull your plow after him. Will the wild ox be willing to serve you?

Will he bed by your manger? Can you bind the wild ox in the furrow with ropes? Will he plow the valleys behind you? Will you trust him because his strength is great? Will you leave your labor to him? No, better not.

Will you trust him to bring home your grain? Can you use him in your harvesting operation? Gather it to your threshing floor? The answer is no. And then he talks about the wild ostrich. And what a gawky creature, you know.

And what a fool it is. It lays its eggs in the sand and is quite unmindful of the fact that people can come and walk on the eggs and destroy them. Verse 14. She leaves her eggs on the ground and warms them in the dust.

She forgets that a foot may crush them or that a wild beast may break them. She treats her young harshly as though we're not hers. Her labor's in vain without her. Because God deprived her of wisdom, did not endow her with understanding.

He's saying, in effect, what a dumb animal. Behold your breath, friend. Verse 18. When she lifts herself on high, she scorns the horse. Revealing himself the God of creation and the God of pride. Then he goes on to describe the war horse.

The War Horse and God’s Sovereign Design

It's not just the horse, the war horse. And the war horse is a different breed, isn't it? The war horse knows what it's made for. It knows its job. And it does it very, very well. You couldn't apply these verses to a Fidesdale horse or an Arabian horse or something like that.

It has to be a war horse. Have you given the horse strength? Have you closed his neck with thunder or, some versions say, with a mane? Can you frighten him like a locust? His majestic snorting strikes terror.

He paws in the valley. That's a magnificent picture, is he paws in the valley. What's he saying? He speaks of his impatience. He sings a conference. He paws in the valley and rejoices in his strength.

He gallops. He mocks at fear. And is not frightened, nor does he turn back from the sword. God made him this way. Isn't that marvelous? Marvelous how God has given certain creatures an instinctive knowledge of what they're there for.

Certain dogs are retrievers, you know. Throw something, go and bring it back to you. Have to be a retriever. I was in a home in Detroit once, and there was a shelter. I love dogs. I think God put dogs down here to teach us how to worship.

You know. And there's a shelter, and I was admiring the shelter, and the owner said, that shelter should be a psychiatrist. I said, why? It's marvelous, isn't it? Marvelous when you stop to think of it.

God was trying to show, to show exactly what he was trying to show, to show. Back to the war horse. He mocks at fear, verse 22, and is not frightened, nor does he turn back from the sword. The quiver rattles against him.

The glittering spear in the chest. You can see just the tumult of the war, and the fears of the javelins. Is he afraid? Does he want to let him smell battle, and he wants to go right into the middle of it.

He devours the distance with fierceness and rage. What beautiful language. We would say he eats up the miles, wouldn't we? He eats up the miles. I mean, he's in a hurry to get there and get the job done, nor does he stand firm because the trumpet has sounded.

The blast of the trumpet. He says, aha! He smells the battle from afar. The thunder of captains. Going awfully fast this morning, and I just want you to know that any verse that we've done over there were written out.

We fill probably a library of a million volumes. Probably fill a library. Does the hawk fly by your wisdom and spread its wings toward the south? The migratory instinct of birds. Isn't that wonderful?

Spread its wings toward the south. In Germany, there's a bird called the lesser white-throat warbler, and it goes south for the winter, and then comes up north and lays its eggs and raises its young, and then, in a classic case of child neglect, the parents take off for the winter down south and leave the young a couple of weeks later, and they go south, too.

They're land birds, and they travel over thousands of miles of water. They can't stop. They have to know just the right amount of fat in their fuel, the fat. They have to go at the right speed. If they go too slow, it'll use up too much fat.

If they go too fast, it'll use up too much. They have to watch out for adverse winds, you know. Some of them fly in V formations for that reason. They know just how to do that, and they—did you know a hummingbird can fly across the Gulf of Mexico?

And if you take a hummingbird and take the feathers off of it, there's not much left. It can fly 500 miles across the Gulf of Mexico. If your car had that fuel, going into the dealer and buying that brand-new car—oh, just a minute, I forgot something.

Here's a cup of unleaded gas that'll do. That's what God does with his people. Does the eagle mount up at your command and make its nest on high? It dwells on the rock and resides on the crag of the rock of the stronghold.

From there, it spies out the prey. The eyesight of some of those birds is absolutely phenomenal, isn't it? It's way, way up there. You can see the prey down there, and they can time—when I was a boy, we used to go out to a beach in Brewster, Massachusetts, and the tide went out a mile, and we'd go out and dig sea clams.

The sea clam is about that big. I exaggerate, though. The sea clam, of course, never comes out of the sand, but it does squirt a little geyser. And here are the seagulls. They're going overhead, you know, and they can tell when a clam is close to them.

And they just hold their wings, and they come down, and they put their bill in the sand, and they grab the sand, and they take off. God has packaged that strength that any human being has. You put balls with speed of gravity after it.

The clam hits the sand, breaks apart, digested by the things that we have here. Coming over, I was mentioning, we saw some seagulls there on an athletic field this morning. You go out in the middle of the Pacific, you'll see seagulls.

What do they drink? What do they drink? You know what happens if you drink salt water, don't you? But it goes through a filter membrane. The salt comes out as a teardrop in the seagull's eye. I'll tell you that.

What would have happened to the first seagull? They'd have died of salt water in the meantime. Verse 29, speaking about the eagle. From there, it spies out the prey. It's eyes are wonderful. Eyesight.

Twenty-twenty vision, and then some. Its young suck up the blood where the slain are. There it is. Makes a partial confession. He says, well, what shall I answer you? I lay my hand over my mouth. Once I have spoken, but I will not answer.

Yes, twice, but I will proceed. The Lord answered, drove out of the world. God wasn't exactly satisfied with that confession that Job made here. He still had some lessons for him, and we're not going to be able to go over those.

You want me to stop at ten minutes, Bob? Is that right? Yes. We'll do it. I just wanted to show you verses 8, 9, and 10. Would you indeed annul my judgment? Would you condemn me that you may be justified?

Have you an arm like God, or can you thunder with a voice like his? Then he says, adorn yourself with majesty and splendor, and array yourself with glory and beauty. What does that mean? He's saying, so where are the robes of royalty?

Do you understand? See, Job had been questioning God. He had been questioning the providence of God in his life. And God says, okay, marvelous, isn't it? That's what he means. You adorn yourself with majesty and splendor.

That's the ruler, you know? The king, the part of his throne. Array yourself with glory and beauty. And then you just run the universe. Wherever you find ungodly men, you punish them. And where you find righteous men, you reward them.

I've put certain laws and resistance in my universe. Now you hate myself. I'd just like to leave that closing thought. Why did it all happen? How could a God of love allow his servants to go through all this?

Trusting God’s Purposes When Suffering Remains Unexplained

Father, we do thank you for your precious words. We've been going over these verses. We want to thank you for these revelations of yourself. But we don't know what lies ahead of us in life. We don't know what's coming.

We thank you, dear Father, that you are a God who can be trusted. That you are working out your purposes. You're a God of infinite love. And nothing can come into our lives apart from your permissive,.