“Can you hunt the prey for the lion …?” (Job 38:39).
The first word in each of the final three sections of Job 38 is “Can.” God is asking Job, “Are you able” to do any of the mighty works I have done? Are you able to bind the cluster of the Pleiades? Are you able to lift your voice to the clouds that an abundance of water may cover you? Are you able to hunt the prey for the lion? No, only God is able to do such things because, as we learned in yesterday’s study, God alone is creator; He alone is all-powerful.
“God has thunder, and lightning, and rain, and frost, at command, but Job has not, and therefore let him not dare to compare himself with God, or to contend with Him,” Matthew Henry wrote. “Nothing is more uncertain than what weather it shall be, nor more out of our reach to appoint; it shall be what weather pleases God, not what pleases us, unless, as becomes us, whatever pleases God pleases us.”
This chapter teaches that all-important lesson: God is powerful and man is weak. God is the one who has sovereign dominion over the waters of the earth. God alone oversees the depths of the seas, the far reaches of the desert, and the tangled jungles that no man has ever seen. Man has no power over such places, only God does.
Let any farmer testify to man’s frailty. He cannot tell the rain to come and quench the dry and thirsty land. He cannot direct the course of the sun any more than he can chase away the hail and the frost. God alone is sovereign over the rain, the heat, the frost, and the hail.
It would do us all well to consider how incapable we are to exercise any power not only over nature, but over our own selves. What man can change his own heart and breathe new life into his dead soul? No one. Only Jesus Christ possesses the power and the authority to change us and enable us to serve Him and follow His ways. In everything, we are totally dependent on God’s power. This is the first thing we must realize in redemption, that we cannot save ourselves. Only God has the power to give us new life and sustain us in it. Look to Him, then, in all you do, depend on Him, and do not exalt yourself, but humble yourself before His almighty power in all things.
Make a list of all the things in your life you have absolutely no power over. If you are doing this study with your family, make the list together. Include things that are physical, emotional, financial, cultural, etc. How can you practically rely on God’s power? Confess how you have not depended upon God in these areas.
