God’s Questions To Us

The human ego is audacious when it considers how important it is. Have you noticed that the world revolves around certain people who have an overly inflated sense of self-importance? One day I was reading Job 38 to 42 and decided to answer God’s questions to Job.

Now we can question God, and He may answer; however, He is by no means obligated to.

You’re In The Hot Seat

To set the stage, the sky is darkened with black clouds. Lightning dances across the sky. A voice rumbles like thunder as it questions you. How do you answer these questions?

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?
“Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’?
Job 38:4-11

I remember watching the waves of the Gulf of Mexico hit the shore. While parasailing we could see for miles over the water and not even come close to seeing the opposite side. It wasn’t even the open ocean.

God wasn’t done yet.

“Have you ever given orders to the morning,
or shown the dawn its place,
that it might take the earth by the edges
and shake the wicked out of it?”
Job 38:12-13

I can’t even get people to listen to me the majority of the time.

“Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
Have the gates of death been shown to you?
Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?
Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
Tell me, if you know all this.”
Job 38:16-18

We know more about space than the bottom of the ocean. The expanse of the world? What I’ve seen so

far in less than the United States has captivated me.

“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow
or seen the storehouses of the hail,
which I reserve for times of trouble,
for days of war and battle?
What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed,
or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?
Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,
and a path for the thunderstorm,
to water a land where no one lives,
an uninhabited desert,
to satisfy a desolate wasteland
and make it sprout with grass?
Does the rain have a father?
Who fathers the drops of dew?
From whose womb comes the ice?
Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens
when the waters become hard as stone,
when the surface of the deep is frozen?”
Job 38:22-30

Weather? We can tinker with it a little, but we have no control over it. Yet Jesus dropped a storm to an eerie calm with three words, “Peace, be still.” You can’t control a man who can control a storm.

“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades?
Can you loosen Orion’s belt?
Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons
or lead out the Bear with its cubs?
Do you know the laws of the heavens?
Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth?
Job 38:31-33

Astronomy. The laws of Physics. We discover them, but we don’t write them.

There’s More

Read 38:39 to 39:30. I linked to it. You’ll find a God who’s intricately involved in the world, caring for everything that is in it, great and small. He’s also a God who does what He wants.

I heard someone say that if they had God’s power they would change the world, but if they had His wisdom as well, they wouldn’t change a thing.

“Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him?
Let him who accuses God answer him!”

“Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
“Would you discredit my justice?
Would you condemn me to justify yourself?

Who has a claim against me that I must pay?
Everything under heaven belongs to me.
Job 40:2, 7-8; 41:11

Job answered like this.

“I know that you can do all things;
no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.”
Job 42:1-3

That God stepped into this world to save us, reconciling us to Himself and restore creation. Jesus was condemned so that we may be justified. Look at the world, can we really say we deserve mercy? Look at your darkest thoughts. Think through these questions.