SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON PLAN - 7-11-2021 - JOB 40:1-14 - POWER DISPLAYED
LAST WEEK: In Job 28:12-28, we came into the story of Job as he was struggling to find true wisdom the midst of all of his suffering. As he pondered this mystery, we saw him reach a milestone of understanding that every single one of us, as believing Christians, need to achieve: That God has wisdom and we humans do not. Job rightly deduced that true wisdom is an immaterial thing cannot be found among human beings or anywhere else on this earth. True wisdom, he discovered, is directly visible only to God, and that His natural creation-which encompasses the entire universe that surrounds us-represents the embodiment of His wisdom. As Job continued to ponder this, he finally reached the conviction that the fear of God is wisdom and turning away from evil is understanding. Arriving at this central truth, Job understood the alpha and omega of wisdom: That he should fear God and avoid the tendency to sin by leaving all the unanswered and confusing questions of life to God by trusting Him in humble submission. We humans all have a desire to be wise. We want to understand how things work, to be able to answer questions, to make decisions, and to share what we know. Correct? BUT, we must learn that we only begin to be wise when we stop striving for wisdom out of our own human abilities and fully recognize that all of our human efforts to attain wisdom in this world apart from God will ultimately result in foolishness, not wisdom.
THIS WEEK: In Job 40:1-14, we will cover God's second, in-person challenge to Job. All through this Book, Job has been hoping for a one-on-one audience with God. He's heard detailed explanations from his friends, which all connect Job's suffering to hidden sin in his life. Job desperately wants to come before God and get some straight answers. We heard his complaint two weeks ago in Chapter 23:1-17, where he sought to argue his case (like a lawsuit) before God as his judge: if he's innocent, he claimed God should "acquit him forever"; however, if he's guilty, he demanded that God should tell him his offenses so he can confess and just maybe, bring an end to his suffering. In Chapters 38 and 39 (which we aren't going to cover), when God did finally speak directly to Job out of a whirlwind (a theophany), He didn't declare Job either guilty or innocent but changed the subject, and in a series of 59 questions, asked Job to explain how God formed the earth, its structure, its seas, its weather, and all the heavenly bodies around it (i.e., the entire universe). All through this first challenge, God makes it abundantly clear that He has the power to accomplish things that mere humans could never even dream of. Today, we'll hear God continue His challenge and give Job an opportunity to answer.
Read Job 40:1-2 - WILL YOU CONTEND WITH THE ALMIGHTY?
1 Then the LORD said to Job, 2 "Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Let him who rebukes God give an answer."
vv. 1-2: To paraphrase God's question, He's basically saying: Job, since you've already found me guilty of injustice against you, will you teach Me what you think is right or where I went wrong? Go ahead Job, speak your peace and give me some answers-enlighten me. We understand that God really didn't need to know Job's answer to this question, but Job needed to fully appreciate the fact that God was still God, and that he, Job, was still a mere human being. Commentators say that God posed this question to give Job a larger picture of his situation, like a person who stands too close to a painting and needs to stand back from it in order to gain a better perspective. Although Job was certainly out of order to make such demands of the Almighty, we need to remember that he's still struggling under enormous emotional and physical stress and to his credit, no matter how had bad things were for him, he had not cursed God to His face as Satan predicted he would.
APPLICATION 1: Whenever we find fault (contend) with God, we are always in the wrong. Like Job, we might find ourselves facing situations that place us under severe emotional and physical trauma. It can cause us so angry and confused that we might be tempted to fall into the blame-game trap of thinking it was unfair and undeserved that God had allowed these bad things to happen to us. This is a huge mistake-as Job rightly discovered-that can separate us from God when we need Him most.
Read Job 40:2-5 - JOB SPEECHLESS BEFORE GOD
3 Then Job answered the LORD and said, 4 "Behold, I am insignificant; what can I say in response to You? I put my hand on my mouth. 5 I have spoken once, and I will not reply; Or twice, and I will add nothing more."
v. 3: "Then Job answered the LORD and said" - Job was the only one of five human characters in the Book (himself plus Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, and Elihu, his four friends) to actually speak with God. And now, after God has given him a mind-boggling revelation of Himself in Chapters 38 and 39, He gives Job an opportunity to finally make his case (i.e., to have his "say-so").
v. 4a: "Behold, I am insignificant" - But when Job finally spoke, his tone and manner were utterly transformed: There would be no long speeches, no more rage, and no more heated challenges to the Almighty Creator. And it wasn't because Job's situation had changed-he was still miserable; but now, after this, he no longer believed that God had abandoned him-he understood at this point that God was truly with him. Now, after the revelation of God and the renewal of a sense of relationship with Him, the admission, "I am insignificant, tells us that Job now comprehends the enormous disparity between himself and Almighty God. In a word, He's been completely humbled...awed.
v. 4b: "what can I say in response to You? I put my hand on my mouth." - After being humbled, Job's now adopts an attitude of complete submission: He's rendered speechless, without words to say, and covers his mouth with his hand as a visible symbol of how he feels, and this is the natural reaction to God's presence. When Isaiah walked into the presence of God, he declared, "Woe to me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of armies." (Isa. 6:5). And the effect on Job is essentially the same.
v. 5: "I have spoken once, and I will not reply; Or twice, and I will add nothing more" - Job now admits that he has wrongly spoken out against God not only once, but twice, which is a figure of speech for "too much." So, with this, Job adds confession of wrongdoing to his submission to God.
OBSERVATION: It's important for us to remember that God never did forsake Job. Even though God withdrew the sense of His presence (which was a source of profound misery for Job), God was still guiding him all along, strengthening Job with his unseen hand, Indeed, Job could never have survived his ordeal without God's hidden support.
APPLICATION 2: Whenever we approach God, we always need to be mindful of the huge disparities between ourselves and Him. Over the course of this study, we've seen Job come full circle from an attitude of bitterness toward God in Chapter 23 to an attitude of humility in today's text. So, whenever the inevitable trials of life cause us to become bitter and feel separated from God, it's because we've allowed ourselves to forget that God is still the all-knowing, all-seeing Creator and that we are still imperfect humans. But when we approach God in humility with this inequality in mind, He will restore fellowship and hear us. Like Job, we sometimes have to learn this the hard way.
Read Job 40:6-7 - GOD QUESTIONS JOB
6 Then the LORD answered Job from the whirlwind and said, 7 "Now tighten the belt on your waist like a man; I will ask you, and you instruct Me.
vv. 6-7: Here, God issues His second challenge to Job in the same manner He used in Chapter 38. God appears again as a whirlwind (a theophany) and as before, God doesn't tell Job whether he's guilty or innocent but begins with a completely new category of questions-"I will ask you, and you instruct Me"-as His way of dealing with all of the questions that Job previously raised (we covered the specifics of Job's complaint in Chapter 23 two weeks ago). Notice that God's teaching method for Job is induction rather deduction. Instead of giving Job specific answers, God only asks questions, and instead of stating conclusions, God presents only the facts; and with these assorted facts, he counts upon Job to make the right connections and arrive at the right conclusions.
• When God instructs Job to "tighten the belt on your waist like a man," He's warning him to ready himself for another confrontation. In those days, a man would tuck the skirt of his robe into his belt to give him freedom of movement for work or fighting.
Read Job 40:8-9 - ARE YOU ABLE TO PROVE ME WRONG OR SAVE YOURSELF?
8 Will you really nullify My judgment? Will you condemn Me so that you may be justified? 9 Or do you have an arm like God, And can you thunder with a voice like His?
Note: In His second challenge to Job in the verses which follow, God's questions move from His revelation of the creation to His control and administration of the moral order within the creation.
v. 8a: "Will you really nullify My judgment?" - In this verse, we could substitute the word justice for judgment. So, God is essentially asking Job if he really wants to abolish God's administration of justice over the entire creation.
v. 8b: "Will you condemn Me so that you may be justified? God's question here could be rephrased to say: Are you trying to make Me look bad so that you can look good? When Job questioned God earlier, he seemed to be more concerned with the defense of his integrity rather than God's. In other words, did Job see himself as righteous? If so, then by virtue of justifying himself, he's condemning-i.e., making himself superior to-God. While God had not said anywhere that Job sinned, God's assertion here is intended to rebuke Job for his criticisms of God's judgment/justice. God considered Job to be a righteous man in His sight, but the key point here is that God did not want job to think that he was righteous in his own sight. We might even say that Job allowed himself to fall into the trap of thinking that since he couldn't fathom God's workings, that maybe God wasn't being fair.
Comment: We'll talk more about the idea of self-justification when we get to v. 14.
v. 9: "Or do you have an arm like God, And can you thunder with a voice like His?" - Here, God is challenging Job again to help him see the huge disparity between himself and the Sovereign Creator. God basically asks: "Job, do you think you can match my physical power?" "And, Job, are you capable of speaking with a voice that's as loud as my mighty thunder?" Obviously, he cannot.
Read Job 40:10-13 - JOB, ARE YOU PREPARED TO ASSUME ALL MY RESPONSIBILITIES?
10 "Adorn yourself with pride and dignity, And clothe yourself with honor and majesty. 11 Let out your outbursts of anger, And look at everyone who is arrogant, and humble him. 12 Look at everyone who is arrogant, and humble him, And trample down the wicked where they stand. 13 Hide them together in the dust; Imprison them in the hidden place.
Note: In the next three verses, God is basically asking Job if he's ready, willing, and able to undertake God' job of dispensing justice in a morally depraved world.
v. 10: "Adorn yourself with pride and dignity, And clothe yourself with honor and majesty" - Here, God is describing His symbolic manner of dress: He is adorned and clothed with pride, dignity, honor and magnificence at all times. The psalmist describes God as clothed in light so bright that it outshines the light of the sun (Ps. 104:2). While God had figuratively given Job his own robe of uprightness, He is simultaneously showing Job that he can't even come close to matching God.
v. 11: "Let out your outbursts of anger, And look at everyone who is arrogant, and humble him" - Previously, in Chapter 7, by insinuating that God was treating him as if he were wicked man, Job went so far as to question the correctness of God's dealings with wicked people, that is, why was God picking on him when there were so many really wicked people all over the place? And God's response to him is: okay Job, you ready to give it a try-to display massive anger as righteous wrath in such a way that it makes all of the self-important sinners of this world tremble with fear? Are you powerful enough to do that? God said this to make the point that power of this kind-righteous wrath-belongs to God alone.
v. 12: "Look at everyone who is arrogant, and humble him, And trample down the wicked where they stand" - Continuing to challenge to Job-God asks him: do you have the supernatural ability (i.e., omniscience) to identify every person who is arrogant? And when you find them, do you have the power to put them right? Of course you don't. And when you come upon people so wicked that they deserve death, are you equipped gather them all up and execute sentence upon them? Not likely. God was not actually suggesting that Job do these things-i.e., basically, to try to right all the wrongs in the world. He was simply showing Job that the task of doing this--exercising justice in this world-was God's job alone.
v. 13: "Hide them together in the dust; Imprison them in the hidden place" - God is referring to sending those condemned above-the arrogant and the wicked-to their end or to their graves. The Bible reports such instances which happened either before or in Job's time: Casting Adam and Eve out of the Garden (Gen. 3:24), destruction of the world by flood (Gen. 6:9-9:17), dispersing the builders of Babel (Gen. 11:8), and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19:24). Again, God offered concrete proof to Job that he was powerless to accomplish the things that only God could do.
Read Job 40:14 - CAN YOU JUSTIFY YOURSELF BY YOUR OWN ACTIONS?
14 Then I will also confess to you, That your own right hand can save you.
v. 14: This is the God's wrap-up: He's saying to Job, if you can do ALL (not one) of these things that I listed (vv. 9-13), I will confess that you are right and that I (God) am wrong. Because if you can do all these things, Job, it's proof that you can save yourself and need no divine intervention. But of course, Job, a mere human lacking any divine powers, could do none of these things, not a single one. Since he could not justify himself, he needed a savior. Job learned this the hard way but learned it well.
APPLICATION 3: God will repudiate any person's attempt at self-justification. In earlier chapters (21-27), Job criticized God's administration of justice in the world. He basically asked why wicked men were allowed to prosper while an innocent man like himself had to endure such great suffering. Then in chapters 38, 39, and this one, God brought Job up a very steep learning curve that showed him he had been far more concerned about his own integrity-i.e., self-righteousness-than God's. Job finally learned that only God is righteous and that he was powerless to justify himself, and since he could not justify himself, he needed a savior. As Christians, we all know that thousands of years after Job's ordeal, that God sent a Savior who covered the sins of the entire world. The apostle Paul explained justification this way: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 3:22-23).
PRAYER: LORD GOD, I pray that this sudden resurgence of the Corona-Virus pandemic will be brief and that we will be able to resume in-person church and Sunday school in the near future. While we are waiting, Dear God, I pray that you will preserve the health and well-being of everyone in this good church of ours. Lord, I pray that everyone who heard the lesson this morning from Job Chapter 40 came away with a fresh understanding of the huge disparities between You, as our sovereign creator, and ourselves as mortal and sinful human beings. To fully realize what You're doing every single moment-controlling and administering not only this world but the entire vast universe around us-is something we all need to embrace. Lord, I pray that all of us will take to heart the great truth that Job learned in this chapter: That You, the Almighty Creator and Sustainer, are God and we, mere human beings, are not. And that You, Dear Lord, and only You have the power to save, and for that Father, we give you all of our thanks and praise. In the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, I pray these things, AMEN.
