Job thought He knew God. He was a faithful servant (God Himself lauded him as so), trusted deeply in God, and cared about His Maker immensely.
Throughout the book of Job, his faithfulness never wavers. But his knowledge does. What he thinks he knows, he soon realizes, is not the full extent of who God is.
When Job realizes he does not know God as well as he thought, it initiates the end of his long trial.
In Chapter 40, verse 4 (two chapters before today’s verse), Job confesses “I am vile”, which could also be translated, “I am small”. Job went from thinking he could win an argument with God to just saying, in essence, you are too big for me. Now that Job understands how vast God is, how unable he is to fully know God, he relents. Job stops trying to question God’s ways.
Knowing God means realizing God is so far beyond us. We might not be able to recognize His benevolent intent through all the fog of difficult circumstances. But it is that very thing that makes difficulty so ripe with opportunity. It allows us to see that God is so beautiful, so wonderful, so vast. He transcends our reason and our circumstances. He is in both but contained by neither.
In order to live in the fullness of life, we have to acknowledge that God is God and we are not. We are not equals at a negotiating table. He does not owe us an explanation. He is up to “more than we can ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20). The true call in our lives to know God is not about figuring Him out – it is about trusting Him. To believe that He has our best interest at heart, even when that seems impossible to fathom.
One of the earliest stories in human history, The Book of Job is a foundational exploration of what it means to be human, how to relate to an Almighty God, and how to navigate the challenging (sometimes tragic) circumstances of daily life. This is the seventh of a seven part series that explores insights from The Book of Job and how to apply them to what we decide today.