The Unsearchable Majesty of God Text: Job 36:22-33
Introduction: The Audacity of the Creature
We come now to the speeches of Elihu, the young man who waited patiently while Job and his three miserable comforters went round and round in their theological cul-de-sac. And now he speaks, and what he says serves as a kind of overture to the grand symphony of God's own speech from the whirlwind. The central problem in the book of Job is not suffering itself, but rather the human response to suffering. The problem is not that Job is on the ash heap, but that Job, from his ash heap, has begun to put God in the dock. He has demanded an explanation. He has, in his anguish, questioned the justice and goodness of the Almighty.
This is a temptation as old as the Garden. Man, the creature, wants to audit the Creator. Man, made from dust, wants to climb onto the bench and judge the Judge of all the earth. This is the root of our modern secularism. It is the very air our culture breathes. We believe we have the right to cross-examine God. We think our finite, fallen, and frankly foolish minds are a sufficient tribunal to assess the works of the Infinite. Elihu comes to confront this colossal arrogance, not just in Job's friends, but in Job himself.
Elihu's purpose is to get Job to lift his eyes. Job has been staring at his boils, at his losses, at his pain, and at his own righteousness. He has been navel-gazing in the midst of a hurricane of divine providence. Elihu's task is to grab him by the shoulders and make him look up at the storm itself, to see the majesty, the power, and the unsearchable wisdom of the God who rides upon it. He is preparing Job for the main event. He is setting the stage for God Himself to answer Job, not by explaining the "why" of his suffering, but by revealing the "Who" of his existence.
This passage is a magnificent display of what we call natural revelation. Elihu points to the ordinary, everyday workings of the weather, the rain, the clouds, the lightning, and he uses them as a sermon illustration to declare the glory of God. He is teaching us to see the world not as a self-contained machine, but as a theater of God's glory, a constant, roaring declaration of His power and wisdom. And the point is this: if you cannot understand how God runs the weather, what makes you think you are qualified to critique how He runs your life?
The Text
Behold, God is exalted in His power; Who is a teacher like Him? Who has appointed Him His way, And who has said, ‘You have worked out unrighteousness’? “Remember that you should exalt His work, Of which men have sung. All men have beheld it; Man looks from afar. Behold, God is exalted, and we do not know Him; The number of His years is unsearchable. For He draws up the drops of water, They distill rain for His stream, Which the clouds pour down, They drip upon man abundantly. Can anyone discern the spreading of the clouds, The thundering of His pavilion? Behold, He spreads His lightning about Him, And He covers the depths of the sea. For by these He judges peoples; He gives food in abundance. He covers His hands with the lightning, And commands it to strike the mark. Its thundering declares about Him; The cattle also, concerning what is coming up.
(Job 36:22-33 LSB)
God's Unquestionable Sovereignty (vv. 22-23)
Elihu begins by establishing God's absolute and unrivaled authority.
"Behold, God is exalted in His power; Who is a teacher like Him? Who has appointed Him His way, And who has said, ‘You have worked out unrighteousness’?" (Job 36:22-23)
The word "Behold" is a summons to attention. Look up! See this! God is exalted, He is lifted high, not by our praise, but in His own intrinsic power. His exaltation is a fact of reality before it is an act of our worship. Elihu then asks a series of rhetorical questions designed to slam the door on human arrogance. "Who is a teacher like Him?" The answer is no one. God is the ultimate instructor. All truth, all knowledge, all wisdom flows from Him. He doesn't learn; He knows. We don't instruct Him; we are instructed by Him.
This cuts directly at the heart of Job's complaint. Job has been acting as though he needs to teach God a thing or two about justice. Elihu says, "You have it backward. You are the student in this classroom, and you have been trying to grade the teacher's lesson plan."
The next two questions drive the point home. "Who has appointed Him His way?" Who gave God His job description? Who is His supervisor? The answer, of course, is that God is an uncreated being. He has no supervisor. He is answerable to no one. He is not part of a cosmic bureaucracy. He is the bureaucracy. And therefore, "who has said, 'You have worked out unrighteousness'?" Who has the standing to bring a charge against God? Who can audit His books and find an error? To even ask the question is to reveal its absurdity. It is like a clay pot accusing the potter of a faulty design. The pot has no grounds for such a complaint. Its very existence is owed to the one it presumes to critique.
Man's Proper Response: Worship (vv. 24-26)
Given God's absolute sovereignty, what is the only sane and rational response for man? Elihu tells us plainly.
"Remember that you should exalt His work, Of which men have sung. All men have beheld it; Man looks from afar. Behold, God is exalted, and we do not know Him; The number of His years is unsearchable." (Job 36:24-26 LSB)
The proper response is not investigation, but exaltation. "Remember that you should exalt His work." Our job is not to figure God out, but to praise Him. His work, His creation, is a perpetual song, and our calling is to join the chorus. This is not a minority report; it is a universal testimony. "All men have beheld it." Every person, in every culture, throughout all of history, stands under the same sky, sees the same sun, and feels the same rain. The evidence is not hidden. It is overwhelming. The problem is not a lack of evidence but a suppression of it in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18-20).
But there is a necessary humility in this worship. "Man looks from afar." We see the work of God, but we see it as creatures. We see the effects, but we cannot comprehend the cause. We are not insiders with a backstage pass to the counsels of the Almighty. This leads to the central point of Elihu's speech: "Behold, God is exalted, and we do not know Him."
This does not mean we can know nothing about God. He has revealed Himself in His Word and in His world. But it means we cannot know Him exhaustively. Our knowledge of Him is true but not comprehensive. He is infinitely greater than our capacity to understand. As he says, "The number of His years is unsearchable." He is eternal. He exists outside of the timeline He created. He has no beginning and no end. How can a creature who is but for a moment begin to grasp the plans of a God who inhabits eternity?
The Sermon from the Sky (vv. 27-33)
Elihu now shifts from abstract principle to concrete example. He directs Job's attention to the water cycle, a process so common we barely notice it, and shows it to be a staggering display of divine wisdom and power.
"For He draws up the drops of water, They distill rain for His stream, Which the clouds pour down, They drip upon man abundantly." (Job 36:27-28 LSB)
Consider the simple fact of rain. God "draws up the drops of water." He is the engine of evaporation. He then "distills" it as rain. This is a process of immense complexity and fine-tuning, presented with beautiful simplicity. The clouds are His vessels, pouring and dripping water upon the earth "abundantly." This is not a chaotic, random process. It is a managed, governed system of water delivery, designed for the benefit of man.
Elihu continues to press the mystery of it all. "Can anyone discern the spreading of the clouds, The thundering of His pavilion?" (v. 29). We can describe weather patterns with our modern science, but can we truly "discern" them? Can we grasp the mind that conceived of such a thing? The thunder is the sound of God's voice coming from His royal tent, His "pavilion" in the heavens. This is not deism, where God winds up the clock and lets it run. This is active, personal, and majestic governance.
This governance has a dual purpose, reflecting the dual nature of God's covenant dealings: judgment and grace.
"Behold, He spreads His lightning about Him... For by these He judges peoples; He gives food in abundance." (Job 36:30-31 LSB)
The same storm that brings terrifying judgment through lightning and flood is the very same storm that brings life-giving rain and provides "food in abundance." The storm is a covenantal tool. For those who are enemies of God, it is a terrifying display of wrath. For those who are His people, it is a glorious provision of grace. The power of God is not neutral. It is always directed toward His covenantal ends. He uses the storm to judge the wicked and to feed His people.
Elihu concludes with a final, stunning image of God's meticulous control.
"He covers His hands with the lightning, And commands it to strike the mark. Its thundering declares about Him; The cattle also, concerning what is coming up." (Job 36:32-33 LSB)
God does not just unleash the lightning; He holds it in His hands. The image is one of a warrior holding a spear or an archer holding an arrow. And He "commands it to strike the mark." Every lightning strike is a guided missile. There are no accidents in God's world. There are no stray bolts. Each one has a name and an address on it, assigned by the sovereign God.
The whole creation testifies to this reality. The thunder "declares about Him." And even the dumb animals, "the cattle also," can sense the approach of His power. The whole world is shouting the truth of God's sovereignty. The only creature with his fingers in his ears is man.
Conclusion: From the Dock to the Dust
Elihu's sermon is a call to repentance. It is a call for Job, and for us, to get out of the judge's seat and onto our faces in the dust. It is a call to exchange our arrogant questions for humble worship. Job wanted an explanation for his suffering. Elihu gives him a theology of God's majesty. And this is always God's answer to the problem of suffering.
We think we want an explanation, a neat and tidy flowchart that shows how our personal tragedy fits into the grand cosmic scheme. But God knows that such an explanation would be utterly incomprehensible to us, and even if it were, it would not heal our hearts. What we truly need is not an explanation, but a revelation. We need to see Him. We need to be confronted with the unsearchable, untamable, and yet utterly good reality of who God is.
When God finally speaks from the whirlwind, He does not give Job a lecture on theodicy. He gives him a tour of the zoo. He asks Job where he was when the foundations of the earth were laid. He asks him if he can command the morning, or bind the chains of the Pleiades. He asks him if he gave the horse its might or the hawk its flight. The point is the same as Elihu's. If you are not qualified to run the universe for a single afternoon, you are not qualified to critique the One who does.
The ultimate answer to Job's suffering, and to ours, is not found in a proposition, but in a Person. The God who holds the lightning in His hands is the same God who stretched out those hands on a cross. The Word who thundered from the pavilion of the clouds is the same Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. In Jesus Christ, we see the ultimate display of God's power, not just in judging peoples, but in saving them. He took the ultimate storm of God's wrath upon Himself so that we could receive the gentle rain of His grace.
Therefore, when you are tempted, like Job, to demand an answer from God, remember the sermon from the sky. Look at the clouds. Listen to the thunder. Consider the lightning. And then fall on your knees and worship the God who is exalted in His power, whose ways are past finding out, and who, in Christ, has given you not the explanation you thought you wanted, but the salvation you desperately needed.