“Can you tie the Pleiades together or loosen the bonds that hold Orion?” (Job 38:31)
This was the question the Lord posed to Job when He answered him. Job had been justifying himself in his desperate attempt to understand why God was allowing him to suffer. Then the Lord answers him out of the storm.
The Pleiades is a group of seven stars in the sky and the Orion is a constellation, a group of stars that form a recognizable form in the sky. The Lord is showing Job that he really has no cause to question God. In the Lord’s question to Job, God shows that he has no cause to question the One who tied the Pleiades together. Something that man could never do. Nor could he undo the bonds of the constellation Orion. It is God Who holds the constellation together. God asks Job sixteen different questions in this chapter and continues with more questions in the next chapter. To all Job must admit that only the Lord God could accomplish them all.
In chapter 40 Job admits that he has spoken foolishly. “Then Job answered the LORD, and said, Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer Thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth. Once have I spoken; but I will not answer: yea, twice; but I will proceed no further.” (Job 40:3-5 KJV)
As Habakkuk wrote, “The LORD is in His holy Temple; let everyone on earth be silent in His presence.” (Habakkuk 2:20) What a fearful thing it is to complain, murmur and speak about the Lord things we don’t even know nothing about. God is eternal, seeing the end of all things from the beginning. He is all powerful. How could we even begin to speak against His wisdom, knowledge and understanding which is beyond what we can understand.
Sometimes things happen that God has allowed that we don’t understand. We can only know that He loves us and that He is allowing whatever happens to us because we allow it, invite it or because He sees that it is best for us. Allow me to explain. Sometimes we allow things to happen to us because of our disobedience or lack of obedience in an area. Then we suffer the consequences of that. Other times we invite things into our lives by speaking wrong words. For instance, how many of us have said something like, “(Such and such) is killing me.” Well, it very well might.
But the Lord in His Love and compassion many times will allow something that is very hard for us to happen. But it is only at the end of it that we realize it was the best thing that could have happened. For instance: How many of us for one reason or circumstance did not marry the person we thought was the love of our life. Then decades later, we learn something about them that would have been miserable for us if we had married that person. There’s even a country song to that affect with the words, “Thank God for unanswered prayer.”
The bottom line is that we need to trust God. We need to submit all our life to Him, knowing that His way is better than anything we could imagine. And that is because He sees the end. We do not. Your worse circumstance could be the thing that will bring you the best outcome of your life. Even if the best is that you are wiser and stronger for experiencing that hardship. But the best of it all is that we are closer to the Lord. Many times, we don’t give God a second thought until there is no one else or anything else that can help us.
In Job’s case, God allowed the enemy to torment Job to show that Job loved God and would not deny the Lord no matter how hard his circumstances were. Job never denied the Lord, but questioned and complained trying to justify himself. He repented and the Lord restore all and gave him twice what he had lost.
One thing we must understand is that God is more interested in our eternal destination than the hardships of this temporal fleeting world. This is illustrated in the words of Jesus in Matthew: “"If your hand or your foot makes you lose your faith, cut it off and throw it away! It is better for you to enter life without a hand or a foot than to keep both hands and both feet and be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye makes you lose your faith, take it out and throw it away! It is better for you to enter life with only one eye than to keep both eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.” (Matthew 18:8-9) Jesus didn’t mean this literally, but the impact of the meaning is powerful. Better to lose whatever is holding us back from eternity than to hold on to it and lose heaven.
Comments