Job No.11 Who do you think you are?

Just before we come around the Word of God, I'd like us to sing that little song, As the deer pants for the water, so my soul longs after you. It's 21 in the Songs of Fellowship. You alone are my heart's desire, and I long to worship you.

You're my friend, you are my brother, even though you're a king. I love you more than any other, so much more than anything. Let's stand and sing.

As the deer pants for the water, so my soul longs after you. You alone are my heart's strength and my shield. You alone are my heart's desire, and I long to worship you.

Father, we offer to you the coming around your Word, and pray that you will speak to all our hearts. In the blessed name of your Son, always our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Please be seated and have your Bibles open at the passage from which a large extract was read, the Book of Job and the 38th and 39th chapters. Let me read you the second and third verse again of the 38th. Who is this that darkens my counsel? With words without knowledge, brace yourself like a man.

I will question you, and you shall answer me. There was a great theologian some years ago by the name of Rudolf Otto. He was a Jew and made a commitment to Christianity.

He became a professor in some of the more significant universities on the continent and wrote a book which became very famous amongst theologians and philosophers called The Idea of the Holy. And Rudolf Otto was particularly concerned to analyze religious experience. And he said there is a sense in which when you come face to face, when you have an encounter with God, it can only be described as an encounter with, and he used a Latin expression, the mysterium tremendens, which really means the sense of mystery and awe and an overwhelming realization, almost of something that is uncanny, that words are a poor vehicle to describe.

Perhaps it's easier to grasp what he was saying by by taking an old-fashioned English word and hoisting that up before you. And it's the word creatureliness. Now, it's easy to get a handle on that because the word creature, well, that's pretty obvious.

That's what you and I are. Creatureliness, well, that's some characteristic that devolves from being a creature. There is a sense of limitation.

You and I, we have certain abilities, certain adequacies, but we have our limits. And when a man is brought face to face with God, when he has an encounter with the Lord, then one of the offshoots of this is a realization of his utter inadequacy compared with the God in whose presence he finds himself. Now, there are many examples in the Old Testament that bear this out.

You take Jacob. You remember he's on his way to his uncle Laban. Things have not gone too well at home.

Basically, his own misdemeanor is responsible. And on one occasion, God apprehends him and he lifts a pillar to the Lord. It's a Hebrew custom and anoints the pillar.

And as he goes away from the place where he's been on his own in the open air during the whole of the hours of that night, he makes that remarkable statement, surely the Lord was in this place and I did not know it. And the preceding verses in Genesis tell you just how Jacob reacted to the presence of God. There was a sense of his creatureliness.

Here is Peter to put it through into the New Testament. And he's by the seashore and there comes into his life that remarkable man who will dominate his affections and become the purpose for living. And Peter, having experienced the wisdom and the miraculous power of the Lord Jesus who sends him back into the boat and to fish at the wrong time in the day because he's caught such a great shoal of fishes.

He bows then subsequently before the majesty of Christ. And he says, depart from me for I'm a sinful man, O Lord. Creatureliness.

Why did I take you to Psalm 19? I could have taken you to Psalm 8. I could have taken you to many other psalms to commence our service this morning. Well, because it seems to me that God has revealed himself in the realm of nature and there are occasions when nature is a powerful voice that witnesses to the presence of God. You go down to the seafront early in the morning or late at night or maybe as so often I do, you climb the hills around Worthing and you look out towards the horizon.

Maybe it's a moonlit night and let's assume that the weather is a little warmer than it is now. You fall back and you rest your head on the grass and you look up and you see the stars and the planets and the moon. And somehow there's such a sense that steals across your heart of your own creatureliness.

It doesn't mean that you're insignificant. It means that you recognize that out there and perhaps paradoxically also within you, there are forces, there is a power, there is a being whose authority you recognize. To quote the New Testament, you realize that it's in him you live and enjoy your life.

Well, you say, why are you engaging in all this? What's this got to do with Joel? Well, I want to tell you this, that you'll never understand the 38th and the 39th chapters of this book, which are perhaps two of the greatest chapters ever penned in the Bible. Unless you have this realization that there is the possibility and many of you, perhaps all of you here in some degree have already experienced it of having an encounter with the Lord, which almost transcends everything else. You see, this is my problem.

It often is in the pulpit. And as a result, I sometimes feel quite foolish. I am trying to put into words things that cannot be carried by the human vernacular.

I'm trying to talk to you about God. I'm trying to tell you about the most wonderful, the most important things in life. And there is a sense in which you cannot describe a picture.

There's a sense in which you cannot respond by words to deep and profound music. So there is a way in which a preacher is utterly inadequate in finding the vocabulary to project to his audience, to his congregation, what he is trying to say. And here is Job.

And he has a most remarkable encounter with God, totally unexpected in its manifestation, though eagerly sought for. Let me remind those of you who've been present for some weeks and those of you who are new to our morning service right now, at least to fill the latter group of people into the context. This book of Job bespeaks a man who has a struggle.

He's caught up in a vortex, in an interflow of forces, the like of which he does not understand. In the New Testament, we would say that he's engaged in this spiritual warfare. He is a pawn, or so to speak, there is the power of the evil one, Satan.

The Bible does not blush to use his name, who is endeavoring to prove to God that to put confidence in a man like Job is absurd. Job wants God for what he can get out of him. And Job is utterly unaware of the drama that's taken place in the heavens.

His life has been affected in a disastrous way. Not only his substance, his material wealth, but his family have been taken away. His health has gone from him.

Three friends have come from various countries to give him the wisdom that they want to pass on in terms of advice, and it's not helped Job. Time and time again, you find him in this book saying, if only, if only I could speak to God. If only God would reveal himself to me.

If only my maker would just manifest himself Oh, verse 35 of chapter 31, that I had someone to hear me. I sign now my defense. Let the almighty answer me.

Let my accuser put his indictment in writing. Surely I would wear it on my shoulder. I would put it on like a crown.

You see the point? Let the almighty answer me. And that's what he does. God discloses himself to Job, but not in the way that Job has anticipated.

And that is almost a constant with God. He will always surprise you. And he will rarely respond in the way that you desire, but respond he will, and respond he does.

So here in the 38th and the 39th chapters, I say is an eloquent response on the part of God to Job, the man on the rubbish tip. And as you read these chapters, it may be immediately that you have a conflicting reaction. You're moved by the actual wonder of the chapters, the poetry.

There's something here that is almost unique in scripture. And yet it seems to those of you who've run these studies with us, who've been with us during these last Sundays, it seems as though, well, the Lord is very much like a politician. I sometimes am home around two o'clock in the afternoon or 2.30, and I switch on to, or is it three o'clock, prime minister's question time.

It's a wonderful study in how to avoid questions by giving answers which are only remotely related to the subject that has been raised. Seems to me that that's the mark of a successful politician. And here in these chapters, it seems as though Job's problems are bypassed.

What you find is a description, a most remarkable, unequaled, unparalleled description of the marvel, the majesty, and the grandeur of this world. To give you a pracy of the contents, what you find is that the chapters start off with a description of cosmic elements, and then they move to meteorological phenomena. And then they conclude with a description of animals and birds, and particularly the horse with all its majesty and all its power.

And you realize as you're going into the 38th and the 39th chapter that this great God, when he looks down upon the world that he has created, he considers the animals as his pets, and even the wild ones untamed by men are within his control. And as far as natural habitat is concerned, his eyes look even into the nooks and the crannies where men have never been and sometimes causes out of the desert flowers to grow as he waters them for his own benefit and for his own glory. When we read together from the 19th Psalm, you recall those early verses speak of Mother Earth as though she is articulate.

But the voice of the earth going out to God in terms of praise and thanksgiving. And if you think that that's too mystical, well, you have problems because this is what the Bible is saying. The Bible tells you that the earth is the Lord's of the fullness thereof, and within the earth there is evidence of his creative handiwork.

That is why our blessed Lord says on one occasion, consider the lilies of the valley, they toil not, neither do they spin. Yet I tell you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. That's why the blessed Lord fastens on a sparrow and he says, if God cares for the sparrow who falls from its nest, how much more does heavenly Father care for you? And here tucked away in the 38th and the 39th chapter of this, for some people dusty book of Job from whom the cupboards must be blown more and more so that you can benefit from its message, is the presentation of the Lord, the sovereign Lord of the universe and the way that he looks upon the world that he has created.

And so in the 38th chapter and the opening verses addressing his remarks to the man on the refuse tip, we hear, then the Lord answered Job out of the storm. So quickly I'll give you my headings. From whence was the answer given? Out of the storm.

When first you read of Job in the predicament, go back to the earliest chapter to the first chapter and you will discover that as an avalanche of disasters breaks upon Job, they're placed within the context of the storm. The storm brings a trouble and God speaks from the storm. Nahum 1 and verse 4 tells you that God has his way in the whirlwind.

And what the metaphor means when you strip it of all its imagery and you get to the kernel of the truth that is being conveyed is simply this, that when a man is on a refuse tip, when a woman is beside herself with perplexity, it is from within the situation that God speaks and addresses him or her. Then, then the Lord answered Job. When? Well, when these so-called friends and counselors, the three, no, the four of them have had their say, then the Lord answers Job.

And he doesn't answer Job in the way that the counselors expected. Job, you're sin, man. That's the reason.

For your predicament. And it is a credit to Job that when God speaks, he does not refer to the indiscretions that these men, counselors reckon that Job needs to confess before the Lord. He just speaks.

Now that seems a simplistic comment, but I tell you, I'd trade most I have in life. If by doing so, I could continually be aware of God speaking to me. I think this one through carefully.

As far as my friends are concerned, I'm not really bothered about the menu of conversation on the agenda. The friendship is wonderful because they're prepared to speak. They're prepared to have dealings with me.

And don't you see the fundamental problem for Job was not the inexactness of his circumstances. His fundamental problem was God seemed to be distant from him. It wasn't the philosophical explanation that Job required.

It was the voice speaking in his ear. It was the sense of the presence of the Lord. You can dart the I's and cross the T's of your theology.

You can know the word of God better than John Calvin knew the word of God. And you can still be in great difficulty if through the word of God, the God of the word has not disclosed himself. If you don't feel his presence, nor his hand upon you, the Lord speaks from within the storm.

And Job, Job starts to realize that there is another vista, another dimension that opens up, that's not easy to bring into view when all you're thinking about is your own problems and difficulties. So the Lord says to Job, and there's a mild rebuke here, who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? And then he speaks to Job in a very complimentary fashion, and it doesn't come out terribly well in the NIV, brace yourself like a man, be like the stout man that you are. That is God's estimate of Job, a stout man.

To whom are God's words addressed? From whence do they come? From within the storm. But to whom? Well, you say it's perfectly obvious. Okay, I emphasize the obvious because sometimes it's that that we miss.

God speaks directly to Job. There is no record at all that he speaks to the three counselors or to the young man. Maybe this is a similar experience as in the New Testament when the voice of God, the bath coal, to quote the original language, when our Lord is baptized, a voice from heaven says, this is my beloved Son.

When Saul, Paul, is on horse on the Damascus road, those who are in attendance don't hear the voice, but Paul, Saul hears. And Job, Job hears the voice. Of God, to whom were the words addressed? They were addressed to the man on the rubbish tip.

Of what did the answer consist? I put the words answer in inverted commas because in one sense it's not an answer. There is no philosophical explanation given in chapters 38 and 39 of the difficulties through which Job went. Somebody has said of these chapters, they're one of the grandest things ever written with the pen.

Carlisle, a great preacher of last century, says, nothing I think has been written in the Bible or out of the Bible equal in literary merit to these two chapters. Another has said, this is the sublimest part of the book, but not everyone has dealt so favorably. Some have suggested that within these chapters, God has shown a great insensitivity to Job.

Some have suggested that he sidestepped the puzzling problems of Job, and here in the 38th and 39th are irrelevances which are almost insulting. Bernard Shaw says that God sneers at Job. What does God do? Do you like Weasley Gardens? If you've never been there, you ought to go, particularly in the late spring.

Don't take me with you. I know flowers in terms of the difference between a flower and a weed, but the variations, no way. I just enjoy them, but I know very little about them.

Imagine having the head gardener of Weasley drop you a note, Dear so-and-so, I would love you to come around our gardens. It's prime time as far as colors are concerned, and I will take you on a tour. Many of you would rush at such an invitation, and that, it seems to me, is the invitation that's dangled in front of Job by God.

Brace yourself. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you understand who marked its dimensions, surely you know. On what were its footings set? Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb? Have you ever given orders to the morning? Have you journeyed in the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? What is the way to the abode of light? Verse 22, have you entered the storehouses of the snow? Verse 25, who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain? Verse 31 and 32, have you seen the constellations? Have you seen the planets? Can you bring forth the constellations in their season? Verse 34, can you raise your voice to the clouds and cover yourself with a flood of water and so forth? And then into the 39th chapter, God takes Job like another Adam, and he shows him the animals.

He shows him the goats. He shows him the wild donkeys. He shows him the wild oxen.

He shows him, verse 13, the peculiarity of the ostrich. He makes reference, verse 16, to the strange way in which the ostrich in this time, in this decade, treated her young harshly. It's a different ostrich that you find today.

In the 19th, do you give the horse his strength or clothe his neck with a flowing mane? Do you make him leap like a locust, striking terror with his proud snorting? He paws fiercely, rejoicing in his strength and charges into the fray. Shakespeare has nothing on this. He laughs at fear, afraid of nothing.

He does not shy away from the sword. The quiver rattles against his side. Along with the flashing spear and lance, in frenzied excitement, he eats up the ground.

He cannot stand still while the trumpet sounds. At the blast of the trumpet, he snorts a ha. He catches the scent of battle from afar, the shout of commanders and the battle cry.

God goes on and he brings together the wonders of nature, the phenomena of the natural vegetation, the wonder of the animals, and he takes you all back to the beginning of time. Were you there, man? Do you understand? Do you understand about the gates of Hades? And of death itself? And Job is lost. It's not that God has dealt harshly with Job.

It's not that God has bypassed Job's problems. What God has done is he's elevated Job to a realization that El Shaddai, the favorite term that Job has to describe God, is indeed the Almighty God who is behind creation, who is at the end of creation, and who has Job constantly in view, despite the fact that Job, for a while, has doubted this. Pardon me saying it, but if I'd have been around on the scene advising God the absurdity of the notion, I'd have said this is the right moment.

You tell him. Tell him what? Tell him about Satan. Tell him about the problem in the heavenlies.

Tell him about, well, he's really a pawn and he's done jolly well. And God would have chuckled at the advice. Tell him that.

But the credit of Job is the faith that he has maintained. Deal directly with this and disclose this, and then he'll start to walk, not by faith but by sight. But lift his comprehension up.

Lift him from off the rubbish tip so that he sees something of the grandeur and the splendor of my handiwork and relates his creatureliness to that. And then he will continue in a life of faith, coping with his circumstances and bringing honor and glory to me. You see why, at the beginning of this address, I spent at least 10 minutes before I even took you to the text.

It wasn't because I'd run out of notes. My problem is not generally having enough to say. My wife tells me, shutting up when I've run the course, usually 10 minutes before most people think I have.

When you have an experience of God and a realization of his controls in the world of nature, the fact that he is behind phenomena, the fact that he is the Almighty One who has the whole universe in his hand, and that this universe chatters its praise to the Lord. And when you feel your creatureliness, then you can appreciate that if God can look after the major, then he will look after the minor. And incidentally, those are my terms, not his.

If God is concerned about the wild ox which cannot be tamed by man, if God causes the beauty of flowers to spring up in the nook and crannies of the caves where the deserts surround and there is no depth of soil, if there is no one else to see the beauty of those flowers but God himself, if he recognizes that as being the inanimate world's offering of praise to him, how much more will God have his hand and his sights upon Job, whether Job is at the crest of the wave as a successful businessman, as an influential politician, or whether Job is lacking in health, sitting wrongly on a rubbish tip. To what did the answer consist? Of what did the answer consist? It consisted of this, of God coming alongside Job as though Job is in a stuffy room with closed windows and the shutters are all down and God's clean sweet air has not got in and so God comes in through the door and he opens the shutters and he flings wide the doors and he lets the air in and he brings in the vista and Job sees for the first time in weeks and months something of the dimensions of the creation behind which this God is involved and Job is enabled in the presence of a solution. Not even to raise the questions because they seem insignificant.

What lessons can we learn from this? Well, I've almost spelt out my application in the course of unwinding my address, the imminence of God. Job does not find God above, like the philosophers say. He does not find him within, as the psychiatrists sometimes conclude, the ground of his being.

God is found by Job in the context where Job is because God says, I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. I will always have my eye upon you.

God is in his heavens but by his spirit he's present on earth and the future of Job is as secure as the character of God. Job never says, I see it all. Rather what he does say is, I see God.

Tim will preach on that next week. And when you have an apprehension of God and a realization of his love and his concern for you, then the problems are diminished and you can cope. So God takes Job a tour of his world.

He takes him as another Adam and he shows him from his perspective just the way that he esteems the world in which his glory has been revealed. This world, my friend, is God's world. It's not the devil's world.

The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. God will renew the world. He will regenerate the world.

He will not do away with the world and he will return it to its former glory. The redeemed of humanity will be there and the natural habitat, including the animals that God has caused to be created, there will be a reflection of them in the world that God is still to bring this one into. God has a high premium upon the world, upon its habitat, upon its ecology, but he has a higher premium upon you and upon Job.

And that's why Jesus came into the world to make it possible for the likes of us to be moved from the rubbish tip of sin and to find dignity and poise and a way ahead as we wait for the day when God shall return to the world in the form of his Son and renew the heavens and the earth. So God anticipates to some degree not only Job's problem, but also ours, and he says, brace yourself like a stout man. I will question you and you will answer me.

But we say with Job, Lord, having seen your tour de force, all you have in store, our questions are almost diminished to the point of being silenced. All we want is you, your voice, and your presence, the mysterious tremendous, the sense of God over against our creatureliness, and with that we can cope. Amen.

Let's go to number 43, which I think in Hymns of Faith helps to sum up some of the things that I've tried to say. We could have taken that hymn with the stanza, Things above are softer, blue earth below is sweeter green, something lives in every hue, Christ's eyes have never seen, which is the hymn writer's response to Job's experience in the 38th and 39th chapters, but we'll settle for Isaac Watts and we'll sing all these stanzas of hymn number 43. Supreme is the world in love, the love of angels stands, to thee we profess our sing of praise, the glory of all his death.

Praise to God, praise to the King, Son of the Most Amazing Christ, the God of redeeming love, his heavenly grace divine. I consider that our present sufferings are worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed, for the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice but by the will of the one who subjected it in hope, that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves who have the firstfruits of the Spirit grown inwardly as we await eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. Father, we thank you for Paul's commentary on Job.

And we recognize that our world and its future and its inhabitants are in your hands, and we bless you that you can cope. You're better than the best gardener that Wisley ever had. You're the great Lord of the universe.

You are the landlord of this world. Excuse us, your tenants, who have so often polluted it and done things which we ought not to have done and have not shown towards one another or the inhabitant the concern and the sensitivity that we ought. Help us, however, to realize along with Job that you will speak to those who wait for you.

And in converse with you and the sense of your presence, there is the stimuli that we need to go on to tomorrow and next month and next year. So, God of Job, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has the whole world in his hands, be thou our God. Amen.