When we look at how Israel and the Church have understood God over the millennia, it is clear that this understanding sometimes conflicts with the record in our bible. Our bible tells us a few facts about God, and the book of Job in particular, gives some insight but sometimes we take it further and even contradict the bible. When Jesus came, he was able to help us understand God (Jn 14:9).
From our bible and our own knowledge we can put together some facts about God: (OH 1)
FACT 1: We worship an infinite God
FACT 2: We human beings are finite creatures
FACT 3: We are rarely able to fully understand ourselves, much less fully understand another person
CONCLUSION: We cannot ever fully understand God. Our understanding must be
• incomplete and wrong at times
• we may not even realise our own misunderstanding
RESULT: God sent Jesus to come to us, show us the way to God and help us understand Him
So can we at least start and recognise some of our faulty understanding?
The well known bible commentator, J B Phillips wrote to say “Your God is too small”. The book of Job tried to help Israel recognise essentially the same point. So let us start by looking at Job.
Job is one of the less well known books in our bible. It is one of the books of Wisdom literature – alongside Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs. Wisdom literature is a well known teaching tool used throughout the middle East in biblical times. The book of Job is not history, it is a story, a story intended to teach rather than record details of religious reality. Through the story, Job tries to teach us how great God is.
Job is a most unusual book. Apart from portions at the beginning and end, it is a single work of poetry and poses some of the most difficult tasks for translators. We are fortunate that translators have put so much effort into their work that we are able to appreciate the meaning of what was written, even if the quality of the poetry is lost to us. Some experts “regard it as one of the most original works in the poetry of mankind”. Written in Hebrew, few of us today are able to appreciate the significance of Job as literature.
However it is clear the significance of Job does not lie in it’s being a unique work of literature. Poetry was merely the tool used to present a message that is far more significant than the literary value of Job.
The story of Job is that of a man whose life was a model even God valued. He was VERY rich and had sons and daughters, which confirmed he was favoured by God using the traditional Hebrew viewpoint.
Job then suffered a tremendous series of calamities. He lost his wealth, his children and his health. His suffering was enormous, and he was in despair. His wife even urged him to curse God and die, as a way of ending his suffering. From the traditional Hebrew viewpoint, he appeared to be cursed by God, which implied that he had committed some great sin. I have even heard preachers comment that the fact that his wife was left to him was another curse, given her advice!
In Job’s suffering, he was visited by four of his friends to advise and comfort him. They are the origin of the term “Job’s comforters” to describe friends whose advice makes our troubles seem worse. Job’s friends could not believe his sufferings had arisen by any other means than sin. They told Job (at great length) to confess his sin and that God would help him if he did. Job rejected their advice, with much exaggeration, because he knew he had committed no such sin.
Towards the end of the book, the words of Job and friends are rejected by God in person (Job 38 – 41), not because they are untrue, but because they are too narrow. With all Job’s exaggeration we recognize at once that his friends are in fact producing their picture of what the fate of the wicked should be. They create their picture of God only by a careful selection of evidence. Job was suffering because what had happened to him didn’t fit his understanding of God either.
This explains the apparently unsatisfactory climax in which God does not answer Job’s questions or charges. Though God proclaims the greatness of his might, not of his ethical rule, Job is satisfied. He realizes that his concept of God collapsed because it was too small; his problems evaporate when he realizes the greatness of God.
The book does not set out to answer the problem of suffering but to proclaim a God that is so much greater than Job could understand that his concerns dwindle into insignificance. Perhaps this will help us with understanding God.
Let us look at part of God’s answer to Job in chapter 38 (OH2):
38 Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm.
He said:
2 “Who is this that darkens my counsel
with words without knowledge?
3 Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6 On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
7 while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?
8 “Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
9 when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
10 when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
11 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’?
12 “Have you ever given orders to the morning,
or shown the dawn its place,
13 that it might take the earth by the edges
and shake the wicked out of it?
14 The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;
its features stand out like those of a garment.
15 The wicked are denied their light,
and their upraised arm is broken.
The writer of Job devoted 4 chapters to his rendering of God’s response to Job, so I hope you will forgive me if I only present those few verses. Yet these verses are a tribute to how great God is.
The writer of the book tells us that Job was made aware that criticising God for his misfortune was a trivial matter when considered against God’s creation and knowledge. In the following chapters the writer continues God’s response to an extensive summary of the limits of human knowledge of God and his creation, as known at the time. Following that response, Job accepted that his understanding of God was too small, and apologised for his criticism.
With our knowledge today, we can recognise some of the limitations of the writer’s understanding of God, so long ago. Yet we can now add our own tributes to the power and wisdom of God. God is awesome beyond our understanding.
Job was made aware of how small was his understanding of God. Complaining to God because life does not go the way we expect is pointless because we cannot understand God and his plans. God can help us in our need even if the writer does not discuss it. However He has plans for us that go beyond this life into eternity. That is how much greater God is than we or Job can understand.
Despite the message of Job, Israel continued to misunderstand God. Israel remained focused on the law and obeying it rather than recognising how great God is. The prophet Micah in about 735BC was also among those who tried to show how narrow this is, but he took a different tack. He addressed the mindless giving of sacrifices based on the law. (Micah 6: 6-8) [OH 3]
6 With what shall I come before the Lord
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8 He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
It is possible Micah was contemporary with the writing of Job, with both inspired by a similar issue. A failure to understand God. Israel needed to have a better perspective on understanding God. Sacrifices and the law were no substitute for justice, mercy and trust in God.
For the Jews after their return from the Babylonian exile, their faith remained based on the words of the law as in our Old Testament. Not much change from Micah’s day. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day had a faith that was limited to the observance of rules derived from their understanding of the law. They did not see that God was bigger than any formal expression of law. As a result the Pharisees understanding of God was constrained by their rules. As Jesus pointed out in Matthew 23: 23, the weightier matters of the law consisted of Justice, Mercy and Faith, rather than the details expressed in their rules. Almost exactly what Micah had said 700 years before.
Jesus also directly addressed the idea of a faith based on rules, as taught by the Pharisees, when he was asked by a Pharisee “What is the greatest commandment”: (Matt 22: 35-40) [OH 4]
35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Jesus’ words again sound remarkably like those of Micah 700 years before. “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” They reflect a wider understanding of God than the rules of the Pharisees and show us what God considers important.
Jesus’ simple summary showed that all that is important among the rules taught by the Pharisees could be reduced to two absolute requirements. To love God and to love your neighbor. Elsewhere in the gospels we see Jesus rejecting specific rules such as those forbidding work on the Sabbath, where he said, “the Sabbath was made for Man not Man for the Sabbath” (Mk 2:27). The rules the Pharisees considered important were secondary to the two greatest commandments. We too need to recognise that we cannot understand God just by following rules.
However, recognising the two greatest commandments still leaves the issue of sin since nobody manages to always obey them – all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory. Sin separates us from God because He cannot accept sin. Only His Son, Jesus, was without sin. Jesus died for our sin on the cross in our place, since the penalty for sin is death. Jesus’ death allows us to come to God. We recognise that we need to accept Jesus’ sacrifice to allow us to come to God. God’s plan includes a way for us to come to Him.
When we seek to understand God, we need to cling to the important things. God is so much greater than us, that our problems are close to trivial as shown by Job. Yet God is aware of even trivia. Jesus taught us that God cares for every sparrow (Luke 12:6), let alone for each of us and he taught that the Father knows what you need before you ask Him (Matt 6:8). Peter also taught us to “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (1Peter 5:7). God knows us intimately and His care includes even trivia.
Job taught us that God is overwhelmingly great. Yet Jesus has taught us that God is great enough that He still knows all our troubles, even if He does not resolve them as we would wish. He has sent Jesus as His answer, so that we have a way to come to Him. Jesus is our way to God.
Jesus told Thomas, and us, in John 14:5-6: [OH 5]
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
God is great beyond our imagining, just as Job came to understand. But let us remember that our God, the creator of the universe, including ourselves, also cares for each of us. He is great enough to know each one of us individually. He even knows every sparrow, and He gave His only Son to suffer the penalty for our sin. Is your God too small?
Let us therefore [OH 6]:
• Try to recognise our limitations in matters of faith
• Try to expand our understanding of our faith so that it may grow.
• Recognise that because of our limitations, our “God is too small”, because our understanding is limited.
• Recognise that God is so great yet He is able to care for each one of us.
• Trust Jesus as the way to God through all that we fail to understand.
Let us pray
Our Father, we recognise that you are so much greater than us, and we cannot understand you as we wish. We recognise that you understand us while we even fail to understand ourselves. Please help us to obey the two greatest commandments, to love you and to love our neighbour, especially even though we cannot fully understand you.
Tawa Baptist 