Faith

Remember when you were "hot stuff." Everyone in high school or college looked to you for all the answers. You were the "know it all" of everything. People seemed to just naturally feed on your statements and repeat them.

And then IT happened!

One day, someone not only dared to question you, they actually factually embarassed you – in front of everybody. You were "dead meat" on the highway of what used to be your life. All the facade you had built came tumbling down around you. You had been put in your place. You really wanted to crawl under a bench or rock and get lost.

That's what it was like for Job when God got started in chapter 38.

Right out of the chute, God says "Since you understand and know everything there is about who set the measurements of the earth and how they did it, tell us!"

BAM!

That hurt! Job and his wise friends were now really up against it. God actually started out by saying "You are a man, so put up your best stuff like a man, not like a little kid. I'm going to ask you some questions, and since you are so smart, you instruct Me!"

Remember when you were a kid and your mom or dad put you in the corner over something you had done. If they did not use this tactic, then you missed a very important lesson in life. I, me, you are not the most important people in the world. We are not the smartest, baddest things that roamed about our home, neighborhood or school.

We may have thought (actually, some of us probably think we are) we were the greatest thing since sliced bread, or the iPod. How sad to see our vision of ourselves come to a screeching halt.

Take some time and read chapter 38. It is amazing how God uses the natural things like clouds, seas, hail, light and dark to make His point. We cannot measure or control them. We cannot define or declare where they come from or when they will arrive. We are powerless.

The power is His!

I love God's show stopper in verse 34 – "Can you yell at the clouds and make them drop a lot of water on you?"

God is not done. It's like "Now that I have your attention, there are some other things you need to remember or understand."

Not your age, but rather Job 37 where Elihu is reminding Job and his friends of something they seem to have forgotten, and that is "Just who God IS."

Elihu paints a might picture of God. Maybe one day, some songwriter or photographer will find a way to capture this for us all. I'm no poet, songwriter or world famous photographer, but here is my shot at what he said.

His voice thunders and the earth shakes at the rumble of his voice. It has majesty and is like very loud thunder. He causes lightning when His voice is heard, and there is no way we can understand the power of that voice.

Remember, He is awesome, and above everything.

That could well have been Elihu's loud cry in the preceding chapters, but as he continues in chapters 36 and 37, his words cut! They reach down to the common denominator that man is not in charge. We are just caretakers. What we have is not a right but a gift. What we are is not because of what we have done, but because of what He allows.

Elihu seems to have seen through the words that flowed back and forth between Job and his friends. The "old guys" had rambled on and on, and the kid reminds them again and again that they had turned into windbags. Almost as though "you were talking just to hear yourself talk – you weren't really saying anything!"

One of the things that Elihu makes clear is that God can only act justly – He cannot do anything else, because He IS a god of justice and righteousness. He urges Job to understand that yelling at and about God won't get an answer. Elihu's words must have weighed heavily when he said "He has the case, and you (Job) have to wait for Him to answer! Stop babbling on Job, because by doing that you make it look like you don't know what you are talking about."

For all his youth, or the fact that he was so much younger than Job, Elipahz, Bildad and Zophar, Elihu must have listened well to some wise old men. His vision of who God is and what He can do has to be the result of his listening well. Here is the student, so to speak, teaching the teachers. It many ways, it was throwing their words back at them. While Job and Company carried on about many things, it was apparent to Elihu that they were missing the heart of the matter.

One of the challenges he lays down is in chapter 36 where he capsulizes the very power of God as a reminder that "we are not so much." In effect, he says "He has done a lot of things – remember? Can you tell how old God is, or where He will make it rain? Can you explain how the clouds work or how seeds sprout into food? Why aren't you able to explain how His lightning strikes and where? We can't get our head around it, so why are we sitting here blaming Him for what is happening?"

Then comes 37:13 where Elihu says "Whatever happens, whether it is to fix something, or for His world, or just because He loves us, He causes it to happen." BAM! It's as though he has hit the four old guys across the head with the very book they told him in his youth to read and remember. He was repeating their lessons back to them. He was reminding them of "Who's in charge."

You can read it for yourself in chapter 37, but in the end of his words, Elihu repeats his message. "God will not destroy (do violence or make a mockery of) justice and all His righteousness."

The message from Elihu over and over is that God cannot do anything but love us and deal with us according to His plan of justice. His laws have not changed – they are not subject to interpretation. His justice is not "living", but set. God will not deal with us in different ways, for to do so would mean there is no justice.

Our God IS an awesome God!