Why God Doesn't Explain

I've just started a new bible study on Job. Its one of those books I've always had really mixed feelings about studying, just like the book of Revelation. Maybe that sounds terrible to some people, but its truly how I feel if I'm totally honest. Perhaps its because it evokes deep fears in me about when I'm going to go through my Job season. If I'm going to go through a Job season. Perhaps because I really identify most times with Job's friend's perspective more than I want to admit. I think I do hope that fearing God and turning away from evil will allow me to avert disaster in my life.

But one of the questions that has always haunted me in studying this book is "Why didn't God tell Job why all this was happening?" Its one of those questions that really bothers me because none of the commentaries ask it. Perhaps it seems too irreverent or too obvious but its the obvious questions that needs to be answered. God's answer to Job is only about Himself. It has nothing to do with Job or with what Job has done or about God's conversation with Satan. It is all about what God knows and what He has done. It doesn't really seem to answer Job's question or ours.

Today though reading chapter one again I had a bit of a breakthrough.  I realized that the question is answered in why God told Satan about Job. Up until today I have always thought that God brought Job to Satan's attention because Satan doesn't believe in love or trust. He doesn't get it. And that why God points out Job. But today I had a new thought: God triggers this event by pressing his enemies' obvious button, not for Satan's benefit but for Job's. In allowing the enemy to go after all the things that appear to be his life, he truly discovers what his life is truly found in.

But the other thing that was clear to me today was that the reason God didn't bring up His discussion with Satan to Job is that it actually wasn't relevant. Because God really wants Job to see what He already knew. He wasn't making Job simply a pawn. Yes He was using Job to shine the truth of His love through him, but he wasn't a pawn.  He was working out the same principle Paul tells us in Romans 8:28: That God causes ALL things to work together for those who love Him, for those who are the called according to His purpose. He wanted Job to know that He was Job's anchor. Job's everything. But Job couldn't fully know that until it was all gone. All stripped away. The chapters that God spends asking Job if He knows the ways of creation and the threshold of wisdom is because He is wanting to remind Job of one true fact. The only fact that truly matters in this life: God is greater. Greater than our lives, our defeats, our sin, our suffering, our loss, our grief, our despair. He is greater. And realizing that He can be our everything in the face of nothing, in the face of an absolute void in our lives, He is our rock. The anchor for our soul. Because when we know this, our joy, our fulfillment, our purpose, our hope isn't fragile.

Because its Him. And even if our lives are stripped down to nothing, He is our all. He is enough. What freedom to know that our stability, our source of strength is not a fragile. It is not a thing, not rooted in a stage, in a circumstance or even an outcome, but in the person who is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the End.  God didn't tell Job about Satan because God wasn't using Job to show Satan something. God was using Satan to show Job something. Something that is true for all of us who call Him Savior.  He is always working in the lives of His beloved to show us this one truth: Nothing can separate us from the love of God. As Paul said, "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present, nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  The gift of the voids in our lives is that in staring into them, we know that just as in Genesis 1, the Spirit of God hovers over the surface of that void. Ready to create from the deep a new thing.  And so while none of us in our flesh can truly welcome the void, we can begin to rest slowly, slowly as the knowledge of Job's encounter sinks in. In the face of any future, any loss, any unforeseeable outcome one thing is sure: God is greater.