Job Questions God

If you had the opportunity to ask God a question, what would it be?  I am willing to guess you have a question or two you would like to ask, but when God is not immediately present, and we can’t see Him face to face, it is hard to formulate the question and feel like you are getting an answer straight from Him.  You are in good company, the Biblical character Job thought the same thing.

If you aren’t familiar with the story of Job, you should know that throughout the entire book, Job endures some intense suffering and loss.  This is due to the fact that Satan is afflicting Job, effectively ripping away every earthly blessing God had given him.  Job’s cattle, crops, family, and social reputation were all decimated by these trials.

For the first five chapters in his book, Job holds true under all of the persecution he is enduring.  He worships God in spite of His loss.  He honors God in spite of his wife’s despairing call to “curse God and die”.  In Job chapter 6, he begins to ask questions, wondering how he can possibly endure all that is going on.  After all, he says, he does not have the strength of stones and he is made of flesh, not bronze.

I am sure that Job had many questions for God, but he did his best to hold true and honor God through it all.  Job’s friends weighed in to share what they thought his problem was.  Despite his friends uninformed counsel, Job continued to assert that he was righteous before God and had no need to apologize.

In chapter 38, God finally breaks His silence to Job, and surprises him with a series of questions His own.  For the next four chapters, God asks a  series of more than sixty questions like, “Where were you when I formed the mountains”.  In asking these questions, God does not appear to give any kind of answer to Job’s questions at all.  God’s questions put Job in a place of humility before His almighty power and wisdom.  Woven into His questions are scientific, philosophical, and theological truths, so profound Job finally replies in chapter 42 verses three and five:

“…Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know…I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you…therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

I wonder, if you could ask God any question in the world, what would it be?  Would you ask Him why, or how He had done something in your life; perhaps ‘why not’ would pass through your mind.  More importantly, I wonder what question do you think God would have for you?  Were you there when He formed the mountains or measured out the depth of the sea?  Do you direct the creatures of the earth on how to live and where they will find food?  Can you truly control anything about anything in life?

God is glorious and worthy of being praised in the best of times and the worst of times.  We would be wise to learn from Job and simply stand in awe of God, and worship Him.