Slices
Prepare
‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty’ (Revelation 1:8)
Bible passage
22 ‘Have you entered the storehouses of the snow
or seen the storehouses of the hail,
23 which I reserve for times of trouble,
for days of war and battle?
24 What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed,
or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?
25 Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,
and a path for the thunderstorm,
26 to water a land where no one lives,
an uninhabited desert,
27 to satisfy a desolate wasteland
and make it sprout with grass?
28 Does the rain have a father?
Who fathers the drops of dew?
29 From whose womb comes the ice?
Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens
30 when the waters become hard as stone,
when the surface of the deep is frozen?
31 ‘Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades?
Can you loosen Orion’s belt?
32 Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons
or lead out the Bear with its cubs?
33 Do you know the laws of the heavens?
Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth?
34 ‘Can you raise your voice to the clouds
and cover yourself with a flood of water?
35 Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?
Do they report to you, “Here we are”?
36 Who gives the ibis wisdom
or gives the cockerel understanding?
37 Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?
Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens
38 when the dust becomes hard
and the clods of earth stick together?
39 ‘Do you hunt the prey for the lioness
and satisfy the hunger of the lions
40 when they crouch in their dens
or lie in wait in a thicket?
41 Who provides food for the raven
when its young cry out to God
and wander about for lack of food?
Explore
God challenges Job further, using the natural world to demonstrate that Job is a very small fish in a big pond. What was Job thinking now? Did Job take in that of all the people to whom God could have spoken, it was him? OK, he was being put in his place, but this was God Almighty speaking, and to him directly!
Job is receiving individual attention now in a way he never did before his misfortune. God is answering his prayer. Job demands justice from God on account of his faith. He finds that when asked on what basis he can claim rights, he has none. Who has done what the Lord has done? Can Job even look him in the eye?
He is confronted with the works of the Lord. Has he considered this before? Even if Job had built a house and overseen a city and its people, compared to the greatness of all that God has done, Job is definitely small fry. The Lord’s works testify to his glory. What has Job to offer in return?
Respond
‘Praise to the Lord! Oh, let all that is in me adore him! / All that hath life and breath, come now with praises before him! / Let the Amen, Sound from his people again; Gladly for aye we adore him’
Deeper Bible study
‘Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens.’1 Open my eyes to see it more clearly today.
God continues to allow his creation to speak for him, giving Job stunning revelation. Like shopkeepers pulling back the shutters and removing the covers from their goods, the Lord is revealing to Job the wonders of his amazing design. Majestic poetry lifts the weary sufferer from focusing on his dreadful circumstances to the glory that exists around him. During my decades of pain and physical weakness, I have found it so helpful to get outside whenever I could do so and gaze on the natural world. The roughest of weathers holds a bracing beauty, experienced even in the ‘storehouses’ of snow and hail (v 22) but also in the searing heat of the desert (vs 26,27).
God oversees all these natural environments that humanity finds so hard to predict and even harder to tame. He can reserve hailstorms to use in battle or to send in judgement upon the nations2 but is tender enough to describe himself as the one who ‘fathers the drops of dew’ (v 28). When the Lord directs Job’s eyes to the heavens above with the constellations of Pleiades and Orion and the Bear, set amid millions of stars, he puts before him, and before us, so many reasons to bow the knee and confess that he is Lord. God truly has set his glory in the heavens.
Has this amazingly powerful God been absent during Job’s agony? Does God’s silence in that season mean that he was not active? No, through it all he has constantly been working out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.3 Even in Job’s darkest hour, God has been ‘sustaining all things by his powerful word’.4 As Job gazes, astounded, at the wonders of God’s handiwork in the universe, his eyes are indeed opened.5 So may ours be today.
Read Psalm 8:3,4 and thank God for his astonishingly complex creation and his amazing love for human beings like you and me.
1 Ps 8:1 2 Josh 10:11; Isa 28:2 3 Eph 1:11 4 Heb 1:3 5 Job 42:5
Bible in a year
Read the Bible in a year: Deuteronomy 15,16; Psalm 34
Pray for Scripture Union
Pray that Mission Enabler Chris Eales may have opportunities to train Faith Guides in Go Wild, an outdoor, experiential way of reaching the 95. Pray for the Go Wild residential at the end of May, for provision of team, children and protection after a long while since the last residential.
