One of the things that I find amazing about God’s Word is that it continues to bring forth great treasures of blessing and encouragement for my heart as I study it. In recent weeks we’ve been looking at some of Job’s experiences and his trust in the living God of the universe through those difficulties. The passages that we considered are very familiar passages. But there’s another passage of Scripture in Job that’s not very familiar to many people and I’d like us to consider it for the next couple weeks in our blog. Beginning in Job 28 we read, “Where then does wisdom come from? Where does understanding dwell? It is hidden from the eyes of every living thing, concealed even from the birds of the air. Destruction and Death say, ‘only a rumor of it has reached our ears’. God understands the way to it and he alone knows where it dwells, for he views the end of the earth and sees everything under the heavens,” (Job 28:20-24 NIV). Remember this passage is in the context of Job’s “friends”, who were criticizing him because he was suffering for his sins.
First Job talks about the difficulty of finding understanding or wisdom. Now if wisdom is not found in any of the places named, and it is not obtained by any of the means mentioned, how can people hope to obtain it and where must people turn to find it? If you can fly as high as the birds, you will not find wisdom there, nor if you go into the depths of hell and in death itself there is no wisdom. Only God knows where to find wisdom for God sees everything. He doesn’t choose to reveal all this knowledge to us, and we must be content and not worry about future events that Providence has dictated until they unfold before our very eyes. Job in his own experiences is acknowledging he will not know the secret reasons for his suffering until eternity reveals them.
Job also acknowledges in verses 23,24 that it is God who sees the beginning from the end. Solomon wrote the same thing in Ecclesiastes where we read, “What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end”, (Ecc.3:9-11 NIV). Wisdom’s value is known by God alone. He knows where to find the source of it for he is omnipresent. He sees all things having created the universe. It is the Lord God who has determined the elements, the source and weight of the wind, the amount of water in our oceans, and the principles and decrees that govern all of nature. God’s wisdom and knowledge embraces everything. Wisdom is indeed the ideal according to that which He has created in the world. In the New Testament we read that Jesus Christ is the logos through whom everything was created. John writes, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made,” (John 1:3 NIV). Paul affirms that teaching when he writes in Colossians 1:15,16, “He (speaking of Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him, (Col.1:15,16 NIV).
The Lord Jesus came to make God known to you and I and provided the way of salvation for us. Jesus came to declare the secret of eternal life, that he makes possible for us through His death on Calvary’s cross and His resurrection from the dead. Job knew that this soul-satisfying treasure could be found alone in his Redeemer (as we saw in previous blogs). Job recognizes God’s omniscience when he writes, “for he views the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens,” (v.24 NIV). Job acknowledges that God is everything. Earlier he used that as the source of his comfort when he talked about God ultimately vindicating him in Job 19. We cannot understand God’s ways because we are very shortsighted. And yet when we enter into a personal relationship with the God of the universe, through his Son, even when we go through difficult and amazingly challenging times, we can still know that He is with us, as Jesus has promised to never leave us or forsake us. I find Job’s depth of understanding at this point amazing, as he grows closer to the Lord and acknowledging the vastness of a God to whom we cannot fully understand or grasp. In the end of the book of Job, Job doesn’t find out all the reasons why he suffered the things that he suffered, but what he did have was a broader and greater view of how great God is. Let us use the challenges of live’s struggles and difficulties to draw us closer to the Lord Jesus Christ, who Peter encourages us “to cast all of our cares upon, for He cares for us”, (1Peter 5:7).
Trusting in Jesus,
Pastor Rich Sivo
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