Job 38:4 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding.
Fifty years ago on July 20, 1969, we set up a television screen in the auditorium on the Bill Rice Ranch for the first and only time in our history. We set it up so that people could see the lunar landing of Apollo 11. When I think about that accomplishment, landing on the moon, I marvel. The only thing more marvelous to me than the lunar landing is the fact that it is actually history, not something we are looking to do in the future! It seems more like future science fiction than fifty-year-old history.
Yet, the only thing more marvelous than what we know about this universe is what we don’t know. It is vast, and the infinite nature of the universe is only a reflection of the absolutely infinite nature of its Creator. Do you understand the universe? No! Do you understand the God Who created and sustains it? No! Whether we are talking about the micro or the macro, whether we are talking about the weather or wildlife as in Job 38, God is too big to completely comprehend! Any god that you could fit within your skull is not God. If you could understand God, then you would be God. But you don’t understand God because He is infinite, without borders, and without limit. He is completely beyond our comprehension.
Finite is what we are. Finite is what we comprehend. Finite is not what we need! We do not need someone else as limited, small, weak, and lacking wisdom as we ourselves are. God is past understanding, but He is not beyond reach.
Job 38:1 says, “Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?” Who had no knowledge? Job did not have knowledge, and for that matter neither did his friends. Then God said, “Gird up now thy loins like a man: for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding.” Job could not declare what he did not understand, and he did not understand creation because it was but a reflection of the infinite nature of his Creator.
God is past our understanding, but, thank God, He is not beyond our reach. We can learn something from Job and his perplexity: a God too big to comprehend is big enough to trust. If someone is small enough to comprehend, they are as small as you are. If a person is bounded by a finite number of years and a finite amount of comprehension, then you cannot trust them to do what is beyond them or beyond you.
But God is worthy of our trust precisely because He is worthy of our all, our worship, and our amazement. Elihu, one of Job’s friends, said, “Stand still, and consider the wondrous works of God.” He said that God “thundereth marvelously with his voice; great things doeth he, which we cannot comprehend.”
In verse 19 Elihu says, “For we cannot order our speech by reason of darkness.” That is, we don’t know what to say because we don’t know everything, but God does. The bottom line is that we don’t know what is coming down the pike, but nothing is beyond the power, comprehension, and sovereignty of God. So, God is worthy of your trust because a God too big to comprehend is certainly big enough to trust for the things that are beyond us but not beyond Him.