Answers and Questions: Job 38:1-11, 25-27 - Healing Service / Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Whenever I see a bumper sticker or church sign that says, “Jesus is the Answer,” I wonder, what’s the question?

Indeed, Jesus is God’s answer to the pains and longings of life. In other words, God answers with the gift of relationship. For many, though, the quest for answers is a quest for knowledge and understanding. The Book of Job chronicles Job’s search for answers to the question, why am I suffering?

His friends believed they had the answer: Job was not as righteous as he believed himself to be, and his suffering was deserved.

Photo by Aldebaran S on Unsplash

But Job found this answer to be unacceptable. Not because he was proud or self-righteous but because he was smart enough to understand that explanation to be garbage. Job kept pressing God for an answer, while his friends kept telling him the same thing. 

After they wear themselves out, Elihu, a fourth friend, steps in to convince Job that God is disciplining him to avoid future sin. But Job rejects this answer, too. 

Job’s final plea is for God to reveal the wrongs he has committed to merit the suffering he endures. In other words, Job just wants to know why. 

Job wants to make sense of his suffering. We all do. If we are at fault, we want to know. If there’s a lesson we must learn, we want to learn it. If there’s a higher purpose, we want to pursue it. Those aren’t bad things. Job’s questioning and his struggles with God do not come from an evil heart. If Job can know why, then he can take the necessary steps to make himself right with God and save himself from the agony he’s in. 

Simply put, if he knows why, then he can fix it—or, at the very least, make some peace with it. 

At long last, God speaks. The Bible doesn’t tell us how much time passed before God speaks. It could have been years, maybe even decades. But God never tells him why. God says nothing that suggests that there even is a why. 

However, God answers Job’s question with another question: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding!” In other words, who are you, a mere mortal, to judge how I govern the world?

Job (and his friends) believed God works according to human standards of fairness, and that all of God’s ways can be both known and understood. But that’s just flat-out wrong. How can a mortal sinner know and understand the mysteries of God? 

Job took his suffering personally. That is to say, it was all about him and it was all because of him. But it wasn’t. Rather, Job exists as part of a universe that is full of chaos, mysteries, evils, and death. And yet, even these things are subject to God’s sovereignty. They have their place in God’s vast creative and redemptive mission. Job, in the tiny piece of eternity he occupies, is not at the center of it all. Job’s perspective is miniscule. God’s perspective is eternal. All things are subject to God’s sovereignty.

Even though God isn’t exactly gentle with Job, God commends Job for giving voice to his questions and doubts. It is not sinful to question God, doubt God, or be angry with God. God can take it.

If Job shared the mindset of his friends, he would’ve remained in ignorance and immaturity. But Job’s broken heart, his broken body, his broken spirit, and the unfairness of his suffering all served to open him to receive a Word from the Lord. God has no reason to speak to people who believe they have all the answers. This is why God commends Job for giving voice to his questions and doubts. God speaks to all who who have questions and are prepared to listen. 

If we know the “why” behind God’s workings, we would not use that knowledge for good. We’d do what Job’s friends do. Instead of helping suffering people, we’d blame them for their suffering. We’d puff ourselves up while condescending to those we judge as beneath us.

God isn’t found in the answers. God is found in the questions. The proof is in the very question Jesus cried from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). Even as Jesus taught us that his suffering and death free us from sin and death, God’s workings and God’s ways will remain a mystery to us as long as we occupy our mortal bodies. 

God never promises us answers. But God will give you Jesus. You don’t need answers as badly as you need a Savior. And with Christ suffering with you, crying out with you, praying with you, your deliverance will come. Jesus is more than just an answer. Jesus is salvation.

One thing never changes, no matter what the circumstances: God is good all the time. All the time, God is good. 

Job 38:1-11, 25-27 (NRSVue)

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:

² “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
³ Gird up your loins like a man;
    I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

⁴ “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
    Tell me, if you have understanding.
⁵ Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
    Or who stretched the line upon it?
⁶ On what were its bases sunk,
    or who laid its cornerstone
⁷ when the morning stars sang together
    and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?

⁸ “Or who shut in the sea with doors
    when it burst out from the womb,
⁹ when I made the clouds its garment
    and thick darkness its swaddling band,
¹⁰ and prescribed bounds for it,
    and set bars and doors,
¹¹ and said, ‘Thus far shall you come and no farther,
    and here shall your proud waves be stopped’?

²⁵ “Who has cut a channel for the torrents of rain
    and a way for the thunderbolt,
²⁶ to bring rain on a land where no one lives,
    on the desert, which is empty of human life,
²⁷ to satisfy the waste and desolate land,
    and to make the ground put forth grass?