Judging God (Job 40:6-8)

Job 40:6-8

6 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:

7 “Dress for action like a man;

I will question you, and you make it known to me.

8 Will you even put me in the wrong?

Will you condemn me that you may be in the right?

 

            In verses 6-8 of Job 40, we see God continue to question Job.  He’s been showing Job how incapable is man to understand and judge the deeds of God.  But God is not done yet.  Job had impugned the righteousness of God, and God will simply not let such a thing go.

 

            What grabbed my attention this morning is verse 8.  God asks Job if Job would dare actually try to defend himself and place God in the wrong.  Such is what Job had done.  Such is what all men do who allow themselves to be angry toward God. 

 

            Stop and think about God for a moment.  God is perfect.  He is holy.  The is righteous.  There is no taint of sin mixed in with God’s character.  Sin, by definition, is that which opposes or sinks beneath the perfection of God.  To think, even for a moment, that God has done wrong is to think that God is not God. 

 

            How careful we need to be.  It is our nature to look at facts and then subject those facts to our own judgment.  We see something happen, and in our hearts we say, “That is good,” or “That is wrong.”  Such should be the case when we examine our own deeds or the deeds of others.  But we dare not do so with God.  God’s deeds are always right.  God will not do wrong.  We dare not consider that we can sit in judgment over his actions and think such things.  We are too small, too weak, too foolish, too sinful, too limited, too frail, too not-God to be able to say that God has done wrong.  All we know, all we can say for sure, is that the God who made the universe is always right.  He is the definition of what is right.

 

            A look at Job’s experiences will help us all to understand his motivation.  We can all sympathize with his suffering.  But God wants to teach us all that God is the Holy One.  When we are exposed to God’s holiness, we rightly tremble and bow before him.  We may not understand God’s ways.  We may not grasp what God is up to.  But this is the point, isn’t it: God is God and we are not.  God will always do that which, by definition, is perfect.  Our lives might be desperately hard.  Our circumstances might be utterly depressing.  God is still God, he is still good, and he will still have a glorious eternity for all who will trust him through the work of his Son.