God is Beyond Us
August 07th, 2022 by G.
Job 38 — what an electric chapter!
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?…
When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?…
Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail?…
Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?
Our doctrine and practice makes God approachable. That is good.
But the point of approaching him isn’t to make him our Buddy Jesus. It’s to stand in awe of all that He is, from intimate familiarity with him. Instead of holding his greatness beyond measure at a comfortable distance as some kind of murky abstraction.
Comments (3)
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
August 07th, 2022 18:59:27
E.C.
August 7, 2022
I agree with you – I love Job 38 as scripture, as a conversation with God, and as literature. But I’ve also discovered a fondness for Job 40 & 41, in which God holds up the behemoth and the leviathan as examples of things that only God can understand or tame. I realize full well that most of the descriptions are symbolic, but seriously, the explanation of Leviathan is *wild*.
But yeah, I think that the better we come to know God, the more awe we will feel for His power, His excellent attributes, and His character.
Bookslinger
August 9, 2022
The Institute manual (instructor’s, I think) says that the poetic beauty of Job stands out even more in the Hebrew.
The book of Job would be a good candidate for reading via one of those multiple translation web sites, KJV, RSV, NIV, etc.
—
I picked up a couple things on this go ’round. The Institute manual referred to 1 Peter 4:12-14, about being partakers of Christ’s suffering. Job suffered unjustly, as did the Lord. So there was that similitude, somewhat of a learning opportunity via role-play.
That similitude led my mind to the Abraham-and-Isaac symbolic sacrifice, where Isaac took the Lord’s role, and Abraham took Heavenly Father’s role.
Then I remembered that Abraham had previously symbolically taken the Lord’s role when he was on that sacrificial altar in Egypt.
And then, all that seemed to point to the future of all those who would be heavenly parents, have spirit children, and one of them would be their firstborn who would …
So what was the Lord “ultimately” teaching Abraham, Isaac, and Job?
E.C.
August 9, 2022
@ Books,
I would say, that ‘take up your cross and follow me’ wasn’t meant to be metaphorical. To understand God, we need to suffer almost as He did. That He sees misery and suffering and sorrows with us, but that He paid the price to redeem it for joy.