God Answers Job: Part 2

How many of you are “checklist” type people?

How many of you are “shoot from the hip” type people?

Normally, these two classes of individuals end up either as best friends, or marrying one another.

I admire you checklist people (I married one!) because I have certainly been bitten by not having a list in the past.

However, having married on of you, I also know that the checklist system is not flawless, because the one flaw in the system is that you have to remember what to put on the list!

“no, I didn’t think about that...” has gotten all of us at one point or another.

Two facets of God’s nature come to play in this next chapter.

omniscience

Hebrews 4:13 ESV

And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

compassion

Isaiah 63:7 ESV

I will recount the steadfast love of the Lord, the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord has granted us, and the great goodness to the house of Israel that he has granted them according to his compassion, according to the abundance of his steadfast love.

Compassion is part of who God is, his actions are “born out of” or “one” with who he is.

And, his compassion is coupled perfectly with his omniscience. Knowing all that is and was and will be, knowing what is needed and what will work out to be.

Compassionate omniscience, omniscient compassion.

The fact that God is God is seen in his providential care. Knowing that the one God is intimately concerned with His own is a solace in difficulty.

1. Feeding the Lion Cubs - 38:39-41

The Care of Provision

Psalm 139:1–3 ESV

O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways.

2. Birthing the Kids - 39:1-4

The Value of Life

Psalm 139:13–16 ESV

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

3. Liberating the Donkey - 39:5-8

Beauty in Solitude

Psalm 139:7–10 ESV

Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.

4. Controlling the Ox - 39:9-12

Order in Chaos

Psalm 139:11–12 ESV

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.

5. Teaching with the Ostrich - 39:13-18

Patience and Wisdom

Psalm 139:23–24 ESV

Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!

6. Battling with the Horse - 39:19-25

Strength and Courage

Comparing the horse and the ostrich

Psalm 49:20 ESV

Man in his pomp yet without understanding is like the beasts that perish.

7. Soaring with the Birds - 39:26-30

Transcendence

Psalm 139:5–6 ESV

You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.

Psalm 139:17–18 ESV

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.

God’s transcendent thoughts, born from compassionate omniscience, reorder our complaints.

Jonah

fear

anger

depression

cynicism

God

power

wisdom

compassion

Jonah 4:9–11 ESV

But God said to Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?” And he said, “Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die.” And the Lord said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”