Where Wisdom is Found Text: Job 28:23-28
Introduction: The Folly of Autonomous Man
The book of Job is a glorious assault on every form of man-centered piety. Job’s friends, with all their tidy theological boxes, were convinced that Job’s suffering must be a direct consequence of some secret, heinous sin. We live in a world that still thinks this way, just from the other direction. Modern man, particularly the new atheist variety, looks at the suffering in the world and concludes that God must be either evil or impotent. Both Job’s friends and the modern skeptic are making the same fundamental error: they are assuming they have the standing, the perspective, and the right to put God in the dock and cross-examine Him. They believe that wisdom is a commodity that man can mine out of the earth, just like gold or silver.
Chapter 28 of Job is a magnificent poem about this very search. Man is industrious. He is clever. He can dig deep into the earth, diverting rivers, finding precious stones, and bringing to light what was hidden in darkness. He can find the source of the Nile, but he cannot find the source of wisdom. He can map the sea floor, but he cannot chart a course to understanding. The chapter repeatedly asks, "But where can wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding?" (Job 28:12, 20). Man does not know its worth; it cannot be bought with the gold of Ophir or precious onyx. The deep says, "It is not in me," and the sea says, "It is not with me."
This is the great problem of fallen man. He is a brilliant, image-bearing creature, capable of astonishing feats of engineering and exploration. But he is also a fool. He can weigh the mountains, but he cannot weigh his own soul. He can harness the atom, but he cannot govern his own heart. He thinks wisdom is a technical problem to be solved, a thing to be discovered, a product to be manufactured. But it is not. The wisdom that governs the cosmos is not a subject man can master; it is a Person to whom man must submit.
Our text today comes at the climax of this poem. After demonstrating the utter inability of man to find wisdom on his own terms, Job turns our attention to the only one who knows its address. God alone understands the way to wisdom because He is its source. And at the very end, He reveals to man what this wisdom looks like for a creature. It is not a complex formula or a secret map. It is an attitude. It is a posture. It is fear and repentance.
The Text
"God understands its way, And He knows its place. For He looks to the ends of the earth And sees everything under the heavens. When He set weight to the wind And meted out the waters by measure, When He set a limit for the rain And a course for the thunderbolt, Then He saw it and recounted it; He established it and also searched it out. So He said to man, ‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; And to turn away from evil is understanding.’"
(Job 28:23-28 LSB)
The Divine Prerogative (vv. 23-24)
We begin with God's exclusive knowledge of wisdom's location.
"God understands its way, And He knows its place. For He looks to the ends of the earth And sees everything under the heavens." (Job 28:23-24)
The answer to the chapter's repeated question, "Where can wisdom be found?" is answered with blunt finality. God knows. He knows its "way" and its "place." Wisdom is not some free-floating principle that God also has to consult. It is not a law book on a shelf in a cosmic library that God checks out. Wisdom resides with God because wisdom is an attribute of God. He does not just possess it; He is it. This is why Proverbs tells us that "The LORD by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding He established the heavens" (Prov. 3:19).
The reason God has this exclusive knowledge is grounded in His omniscience and His omnipresence. "For He looks to the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens." There is no corner of reality hidden from His gaze. Man’s exploration is painstaking and limited. We send probes into the deep sea and telescopes into deep space, but our knowledge is always partial, always a tiny pinprick of light in an immeasurable darkness. God's knowledge is exhaustive and instantaneous. He doesn't need to explore because He is already there. He doesn't need to discover because He is the one who put it there.
This establishes the absolute Creator/creature distinction, which is the bedrock of all sane thinking. There is God, and there is everything else. God is the uncreated Creator, and we are the contingent creatures. He is the potter, we are the clay. He is the author, we are the characters in His story. To forget this is to embark on the path of insanity. Man, in his pride, wants to be a peer of God. He wants to stand alongside God, or even above Him, and offer his considered evaluation of how the universe is being run. But this passage reminds us that we do not have that kind of access. We are in the story, not outside of it. Only God has the authorial perspective.
Wisdom Embedded in Creation (vv. 25-27)
Next, we see that this wisdom was not an afterthought but was the very blueprint used in the act of creation itself.
"When He set weight to the wind And meted out the waters by measure, When He set a limit for the rain And a course for the thunderbolt, Then He saw it and recounted it; He established it and also searched it out." (Job 28:25-27 LSB)
This is poetry of the highest order, describing the intricate, sovereign engineering of God. He assigns a "weight to the wind." We think of the wind as ethereal and intangible, but God treats it as a substance to be measured and calibrated. He "meted out the waters by measure." He sets the sea levels, the volume of the oceans, the capacity of the clouds. He sets a "limit for the rain" and a "course for the thunderbolt." The storm that appears chaotic and untamed to us is, from God’s perspective, a meticulously choreographed event.
This is a direct polemic against the pagan worldview, which saw the forces of nature as capricious, warring deities. The storm was not a god to be appeased, but a creature on a leash, following a course set by its Master. This is the foundation of true science. The universe is intelligible and operates according to consistent laws because it was made by a rational and consistent Lawgiver. You cannot have science without the presupposition that the universe is orderly, and you cannot have that presupposition without the God of the Bible.
And notice the verbs in verse 27. When God did all this, "Then He saw it and recounted it; He established it and also searched it out." This refers to wisdom. As God was designing and building the world, He was looking at His own wisdom, declaring it, establishing it, and "searching it out." This last phrase is fascinating. It does not mean God was discovering something He didn't know. It is an anthropomorphism meaning that He thoroughly examined and approved His own perfect plan. He surveyed His handiwork and saw that it perfectly corresponded to His wise design. Creation is the externalization of God's internal, perfect wisdom. The world is, therefore, shot through with meaning. It is a revelation of God. As Paul says, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood from what has been made (Romans 1:20).
The Great Revelation to Man (v. 28)
After establishing that cosmic, architectural wisdom is God's exclusive domain, He then condescends to tell man what wisdom looks like for him. It is not a physics equation; it is a posture of the heart.
"So He said to man, ‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; And to turn away from evil is understanding.’" (Job 28:28 LSB)
This is the punchline of the entire chapter and, in many ways, the entire Bible. After all the searching in the mines and the depths of the sea, the answer is revealed. God speaks it to man. Wisdom is not something we find; it is something we are told. It is not a discovery; it is a revelation.
And what is this grand secret? "Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom." The fear of the Lord is not a cowering, servile terror. It is an all-encompassing awe, reverence, and submission to the holy Creator. It is the constant awareness that we live and breathe and have our being before the face of an infinitely powerful, righteous, and holy God. It is knowing our place. It is the creaturely recognition of the Creator. It is the beginning of wisdom (Prov. 9:10) because it puts us in the right relationship to reality. Until you fear God, you are functionally insane. You are living in a universe you have not created, breathing air you did not make, and yet you are acting as though you are the center of it all. That is the definition of delusion.
The second clause defines the practical outworking of this fear: "And to turn away from evil is understanding." True wisdom is not abstract; it is ethical. The fear of God is not just a feeling; it is a direction. If you truly fear God, you will hate what He hates. "The fear of the LORD is to hate evil" (Prov. 8:13). Repentance, turning away from sin, is the necessary fruit of fearing God. It is the evidence that you have begun to understand how things really are. To continue in sin is to continue in folly. It is to act as though God is not there, or that He is not holy, or that He will not judge. It is to be a fool.
Conclusion: The Wisdom of God in Christ
This passage in Job lays the foundation, but the New Testament builds the house. It tells us that this divine wisdom, which was with God in the beginning and by which He made the world, has a name. The Apostle Paul tells us that Christ Jesus "became for us wisdom from God" (1 Cor. 1:30). And in another place, he says that in Christ "are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:3).
Jesus Christ is the personal embodiment of the wisdom of God. He is the Logos through whom all things were made (John 1:3). When God set a course for the thunderbolt, He was tracing the path of His Son's will. When He meted out the waters, He did so through the Word who would one day command the waters to be still.
This changes everything. It means that the fear of the Lord is not simply an abstract principle but a personal relationship. To fear the Lord is to bow the knee to Jesus Christ. To turn from evil is to turn from our own autonomy and to follow Him in faith and obedience. The world thinks this is foolishness. "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called... Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Cor. 1:23-24).
The world is still digging in the dark, looking for a wisdom that will justify its rebellion. They are looking for a wisdom that will allow them to be their own gods. But the search is futile. The only true wisdom is found at the foot of the cross. It is found in confessing that we are fools and that He alone is wise. It is found in the terror and wonder of realizing that the God who set a weight to the wind also bore the weight of our sin. To know Him is to have found the place of understanding. To fear Him is the beginning, middle, and end of all wisdom.