The Unanswerable God Text: Job 23:13-17
Introduction: The Terrible Comfort of Sovereignty
We come now to the heart of the matter. We come to the place where all our modern, sentimental, squishy notions of God run aground and are dashed to pieces. We live in an age that wants a manageable God, a God who can be summoned to our therapy sessions, a God who fits neatly into our self-help books, a God who is, at the end of the day, rather like us, only a bit bigger and with better resources. We want a God who is a divine consultant, not a sovereign King. We want a God whose will can be negotiated, whose plans can be amended by our earnest petitions, whose decrees are more like suggestions.
But that is not the God of the Bible, and it is certainly not the God Job is wrestling with here in the ash heap. Job's friends, in their blundering attempts at comfort, have tried to reduce God to a neat and tidy system of cosmic karma. "Do good, get good. Do bad, get bad." They have a God who operates according to a predictable, creaturely logic. But Job, in his agony, knows better. He has run headlong into the raw, untamable, terrifying reality of the God who is God. He is grappling with a truth that our generation has done everything in its power to forget: the absolute, meticulous, and unchangeable sovereignty of the Almighty.
This passage is not easy. It is not for the faint of heart. It is what some might call the "hard" side of God. But we must understand that this hardness is the very bedrock of our comfort. A God whose will can be thwarted by men or devils is no God at all, and can offer no ultimate security. A God who is just "doing His best" in a chaotic universe is not worthy of worship; He is worthy of our pity. Job's terror here is not the terror of meaninglessness. It is the terror of a meaning so vast, so total, and so centered in the unchangeable will of God that it overwhelms his finite understanding. This is the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom. It is the necessary starting point for any true comfort. Before we can be comforted by God's sovereignty, we must first be terrified by it.
The Text
But He is unique and who can turn Him? And what His soul desires, that He does. For He performs what is apportioned for me, And many such decrees are with Him. Therefore, I would be dismayed at His presence; I carefully consider, and I am in dread of Him. It is God who has made my heart faint, And the Almighty who has dismayed me, But I am not silenced by the darkness, Nor thick darkness which covers me.
(Job 23:13-17 LSB)
The Unchangeable Decree (v. 13-14)
Job begins with a statement of breathtaking theological clarity, forged in the furnace of his own suffering.
"But He is unique and who can turn Him? And what His soul desires, that He does. For He performs what is apportioned for me, And many such decrees are with Him." (Job 23:13-14)
First, Job says, "He is unique," or as some translations render it, "He is in one mind." This is not a statement about God's loneliness. It is a declaration of His absolute singularity and consistency. There is no one like Him. There is no rival power, no cosmic parliament, no board of directors that He must consult. He is not of two minds. His will is not divided. He is utterly and completely integrated in His purpose. "Who can turn Him?" The answer is a resounding, absolute nobody. You cannot reason with Him to change His eternal purpose. You cannot outmaneuver Him. You cannot surprise Him. His decree is set from before the foundation of the world.
And what is the scope of this will? "What His soul desires, that He does." This is a radical statement. It is the doctrine of divine sovereignty in its most potent form. God is not reactive. He is not sitting in heaven, wringing His hands, hoping things turn out for the best. He is the ultimate actor, the first cause of all things. As the Westminster Confession states, God "freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass." This includes everything. The flight of a sparrow, the rise of kings, and the suffering of Job. Nothing falls outside the scope of what His soul desires.
And Job makes it personal. "For He performs what is apportioned for me." Job understands that his suffering is not random. It is not bad luck. It is not a case of the universe being out of control. It is an apportionment. It is a specific lot, a measured-out portion, assigned to him by the sovereign God. This is a terrifying thought, but it is also the only possible ground for sanity in the midst of suffering. If your suffering is meaningless, then you have every right to despair. But if it is apportioned by a God who is infinitely wise, even if you cannot see the reason, then it must have a purpose. It is a part of a story He is writing.
And lest we think this is a one-off situation, Job adds, "And many such decrees are with Him." God has a file cabinet, if you will, and it is filled with such decrees. The history of the world, from beginning to end, is the simple unfolding of what He has already written down. This is the God of Isaiah, who declares "the end from the beginning" (Isaiah 46:10). This is the God who "works all things according to the counsel of His will" (Ephesians 1:11). Job is not inventing a new theology; he is stating the plain, hard truth of Scripture.
The Proper Response: Dismay and Dread (v. 15-16)
Given this high and majestic view of God, what is the appropriate human response? Job tells us plainly.
"Therefore, I would be dismayed at His presence; I carefully consider, and I am in dread of Him. It is God who has made my heart faint, And the Almighty who has dismayed me," (Job 23:15-16 LSB)
The logical conclusion of understanding God's absolute sovereignty is, in the first instance, terror. "Therefore," Job says. Because God is unchangeable, because He does whatever He pleases, because my life is an apportionment from His hand, "I would be dismayed at His presence." The word for dismayed carries the idea of being terrified, agitated, thrown into confusion. This is not the cringing fear of a slave before a capricious tyrant. It is the vertigo that a creature feels when he stands on the edge of the Grand Canyon of God's infinite being. It is the awe-full realization of the Creator/creature distinction.
Job says he "carefully considers" and is in "dread of Him." This is not a mindless panic. It is a thoughtful, considered dread. He is thinking through the implications of who God is, and it makes his knees knock. This is the kind of fear that Isaiah felt when he saw the Lord high and lifted up and cried, "Woe is me! For I am lost" (Isaiah 6:5). It is the fear that caused the apostle John, who leaned on Jesus' breast, to fall at His feet as though dead (Revelation 1:17).
Our modern therapeutic church culture has tried to eliminate this kind of fear. We are told not to fear, that God is our buddy. But the Bible says, "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Hebrews 10:31). Job rightly attributes his faint heart to God Himself. "It is God who has made my heart faint, And the Almighty who has dismayed me." He recognizes that this dread is not a sign of pathology, but a sign of seeing things as they actually are. It is the Almighty, El Shaddai, the All-Sufficient and All-Powerful One, who is the source of this holy terror. To not be dismayed in the presence of such a God would be the height of arrogance and blindness.
The Unsilenced Faith (v. 17)
And here, in the final verse, we find the paradox of biblical faith. Here is the pivot upon which the entire Christian life turns.
"But I am not silenced by the darkness, Nor thick darkness which covers me." (Job 23:17 LSB)
After laying out the terrifying, absolute sovereignty of God, after confessing his own dread and dismay, Job does not fall into a silent, fatalistic despair. He says, "But I am not silenced." This is crucial. The darkness of his circumstances, the "thick darkness" of God's inscrutable providence, does not shut his mouth. He continues to speak. He continues to wrestle. He continues to appeal to this very same God who has dismayed him.
Why? Because the same sovereignty that is the source of his dread is also the only possible source of his hope. A God who is not sovereign over the darkness cannot deliver you from it. A God whose decrees do not extend to your suffering cannot guarantee that your suffering has any meaning. Job's faith is not in his own understanding. His faith is in the character of the God whose ways he cannot understand.
This is the difference between pagan fatalism and Christian faith. The fatalist says, "What will be, will be," and sinks into apathy. The Christian says, "God works all things according to the counsel of His will," and therefore prays, therefore acts, therefore speaks, knowing that his prayers and actions are themselves part of that counsel. Job is not silenced because he knows that the God who apportions the darkness is also the God who is righteous, just, and, though he cannot see it now, good. He will later say, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him" (Job 13:15). That is a faith that has been through the fire of divine sovereignty and has come out, not unscathed, but un-silenced.
Conclusion: From Dread to Delight
So what are we to do with this? This passage shows us the necessary progression of true faith. We must begin where Job begins, with the unvarnished truth of God's absolute sovereignty. We must allow this truth to dismantle our pride and our creaturely pretensions to control. We must allow it to produce in us a holy dread, a biblical fear of the Lord.
But we cannot stop there. We must see what Job could only glimpse. We must see this sovereign God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. The cross of Christ is the ultimate display of God's sovereignty. There, God performed what was apportioned for His own Son. Peter preaches on the day of Pentecost that Jesus was "delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God" (Acts 2:23). God decreed the most wicked act in human history for the greatest good imaginable, our salvation.
The same decree that is terrifying to the rebel is a fortress to the child of God. Because God is sovereign, we know that "all things work together for good to those who love God" (Romans 8:28). Because He is sovereign, we know that nothing "will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:39). The dread does not disappear, but it is transformed. It becomes the reverent awe of a son for a mighty and loving Father. It is the fear that drives out all other fears. We fear God, and so we need not fear the darkness, or the suffering, or the decrees of men.
Like Job, we are not silenced by the darkness, because we know the one who decreed the darkness also decreed the dawn. And His name is Jesus. In Him, the unchangeable will of God is revealed to be, for us, nothing but grace upon grace.