Dear Missionary Lady,
Greetings in the name of the all-powerful God. God is the one who does what no one else can do, and He does it without any difficulty or challenge.
Lesson #39. God declares His own absolute control. As God reveals himself to Job in these chapters, there is much overlap in His revealed characteristics, but God does seem to focus on specific characteristics in turn. The previous verses emphasized God's wisdom; now He turns the focus to His power and control. Again, creation provides the proof.
God has control over water. The oceans have limits. When God holds them back, they are restrained, and when God releases them, they pour forth with power (38:8). God also controls the water by making it live in clouds. At times those clouds restrain the water, as it is trapped in them (38:9). Whether in the sky or on the surface of the earth, God controls the water so that it does His bidding. “And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed” (38:11).
God has power over the daily cycle. Each morning starts at God's command. “Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place?” (38:12). One apparent application of daylight is that it reveals the works of the wicked and stops some of their wicked deeds (38:13-15).
God’s power created the great expanse of the earth. There are flowing springs, towering mountains, and deep caves even in the oceans. Man is unable to plumb the depths, and the earth itself is broader than man can fully comprehend (38:16-18).
God controls the light. God can turn off the light in the earth and bring darkness as easily as man flips a light switch. One of the puzzling questions of science is, “When you turn off a light switch, where does the light go?” Man doesn't know the answer to that question, but God has the power to take all that light and make it disappear, whether through the turning of the earth on its axis or through clouds that block the sun or through nothing more than His will (38:19-20).
God controls the weather and causes it to do His bidding. Snow and hail and wind and other features of the weather are simply tools in God's hand that He commands at will, and they fight His battles for Him (38:22-24). God uses floods of water and thunderbolts (38:25). God's control of the weather is independent from man’s desires and even from the presence of man; God controls these aspects of weather even when there are no people to desire or appreciate what He has done (38:25-27). Man has studied the water cycle, but God makes the rain. He squeezes the drops of rain out of the clouds, and He pops the drops of dew out on the blades of grass (38:28). God causes the temperature of the earth and the atmosphere to change so that what once was water, flowing and free and even soaking into the earth, turns into blocks of ice that can be picked up or walked upon, and the dew that glistened on the grass becomes frost (38:29-30).
God controls the constellations. He has the power to arrange each star exactly where He wants it and to maintain the stars in those positions relative to one another. He can arrange stars into patterns, so that they look like a figure that man will later be able to identify. God guides the stars in their paths (38:31-33).
Not only does God create each element of weather, but He gives them orders so that they play their parts at the times and in the ways that He desires. God can decide whether clouds have so little water that is not enough to precipitate or whether the clouds are so saturated that they pour forth abundance. God controls the path of the lightning so that it goes just where He wants it to go, and God sends rain that takes blowing dust and converts it into muddy clouds (38:34-38).
At best, man struggles to understand these aspects of weather. Not only does God understand them, but God has absolute control over them. Man often labors in a laboratory in artificial conditions, attempting to create some of the things that God does easily with just His voice and on a global scale. Man is unable to predict the weather, but God controls its every detail. Man worries about trying to take steps to change the environment and prevent environmental disasters and damage, but God completely controls the environment with His voice and command. He could easily accomplish any of the things that man desires to do; if man thinks he even is able to create change, he estimates that it will take decades to accomplish, but God can do it instantaneously.
For a God with this level of control, a disease like Job faced is not a challenge. In fact, none of the disasters that came to Job were unstoppable for God. If God allows something to happen, it is only because that event serves His purposes. When God desires to reverse a situation, He can do so easily.
God “is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20). “For with God nothing shall be impossible” (Luke 1:37). Our circumstances in life may not be what we want them to be, but they are undoubtedly under God’s control, and they are subject to His power. When God decides to change them, nothing will stop His hand.
As you walk with God this week, may you see His hand work solutions that you have longed to see and wonders you have not anticipated.
Love in Christ,
Peggy Holt
member at Open Door Baptist Church in Lebanon, PA
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