Year 2, Day 120: Job 26

Mocking

I think that there are three topics about which we can speak today.  The first is quick and easy: Job’s mocking of Bildad (and probably Zophar and Eliphaz).  Job mocks them by saying “Oh, how you have helped him who has no power!”  He then goes on with a few more statements of mocking with respect to his friends.

I think what we can learn out of this passage is just how shallow we appear when we come to people and judge them before we listen to them.  So far, almost the breadth of this book has been an argument between Job and Job’s friends (with neither side being completely right, mind you).  There is no fellowship, companionship, or comfort to be found in this discourse.  What Job really needed was someone to come by and listen to him – and then if necessary to correct him.  What Job got was correction without understanding.

The older I get the more I understand – or at least see – the human impulse to judge.  I even see it in myself and it repulses me.  How quick are we to want to spout advice or criticism without taking time to listen first!  As we see here in Job, the only thing that kind of approach does is bring about arguments and make us appear shallow.

God’s Breadth

The second topic – and a much more positive topic – that I can address is Job’s words about the vastness of God.  When Job speaks these words, I know that he is speaking them with respect to how small we are next to Him.  But as I said yesterday, just because we are small beside Him does not mean that He sees us as small!  We can look to His grandeur and be in awe of it without needing to feel like we are nothing in His sight.  As the old children’s song goes, we are precious in His sight!

Just look at what God can do.  God can hang the planets in their place – even the stars!  God can orchestrate the movements of the heavenly bodies and set them in their course.  God can separate the heaven from the earth and even the water from the dry land.  He can shake the earth, make the earth stand still, calm the weather, settle the restless seas.  He can bring rain or hold it back.  He can even infuse life and sentience into His creation.

God is an impressive God.  For those of us who love Him and humble ourselves before Him, we have plenty about which we can be in awe.  He is literally the master of this universe.  What He can do and what He can keep track of is absolutely incredible.

God’s Nature

The third topic naturally lends itself out of the incredible nature of God.  I was struck by the verses in this chapter about Sheol (the place of the dead, not Hell) being bare before God and Abaddon (the place of destruction) having no covering.  These are really powerful images for me today.

Don’t get me wrong.  I know God sees everything.  I know that in the end all will stand before God and their deeds will be revealed.  Trust me, I get that and I believe it.

But there is something really powerful in thinking about it and pondering it for some time.  Typically we think of death as the point that life ends (or, well, at least is put in some kind of stasis until the resurrection, judgment, and eternal life begins).  We think about death as an ending point.  We are so limited in our perspective that when we think about existence we think only in perspective of our temporal life: birth to death.  In a way, it just goes to show how self-centered we can really be at times!

However, this is not how God sees it.  Job tells us that Sheol is laid bare before God.  God can see into the place of the dead.  There is nothing that is beyond His sight.  I see death as some minor blip on the radar between death and resurrection.  God sees it as a place to gaze upon.  {I don’t know why, and I don’t mean to imply that the dead are actually doing anything.}  I guess I am just awed so much by God and His ability that even the fact that He can look into Sheol is significant – an ability that I cannot grasp because I don’t even know why being able to look into Sheol is significant in the first place!

I guess that’s my third point from this chapter.  God is so awesome that we can be awed by things He can do – even when we don’t understand why it is important that He can do them!  To me that point feels like a really deep learning.  God is so big that not only can we not grasp everything He can do, we can’t even grasp why most of what He does is even necessary in the first place!   

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