Job 38:2 Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?
Have you ever known a dumb smart person? Now, sometimes I complain about my dumb smart phone, but maybe you have known a dumb smart person. It is a person who seems to know a lot of facts, but doesn’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain. Now, having wisdom and smarts are not mutually exclusive. It doesn’t mean that if you have one you can’t have the other. They are two independent things. I can be wise and not have a great body of knowledge, or I can have a great body of knowledge and not be wise.
In Job 38, Job finally faces God. All this time Job has been thinking, “If I just had a chance to make my case before God, I would plead my innocence and He would hear me.” 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?” “Words without knowledge.” How can we do more than that with most of life’s affairs? We are not limited in words nearly as much as we are limited in knowledge. God tells Job, “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 foundation of the earth?”
What follows is a string of theoretical questions where God asks Job how strong, smart, and present he is. The more God speaks, the more Job realizes the cosmic gap between Who God is and who Job is. Job is going to be faced with the fact that he doesn’t know what he wishes he knew. He doesn’t have the power he once had. He doesn’t have the presence he’d like to have. The good news is that a wise person lives by faith. I don’t have to be brilliant to be wise. I don’t have to be strong to be wise. I don’t have to be everywhere at once to be wise.
You see, a wise person lives by faith. Knowledge and what you can comprehend are limited, but wisdom does what knowledge cannot. Wisdom is taking the truth of God and living in light of what I do know. It is better to know very little but be very skilled in acting on what you know, than to know a lot of things but never act on them. That is where a lot of people are. They know a lot, even a lot about God, but they don’t act on it.
A wise person lives by faith, not merely what they know, but what God knows. There are three reasons for this. First, a wise person lives by faith because God’s knowledge is greater. “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” God says, “Declare, if thou hast understanding.” Job did not have understanding, but God does. By God’s understanding He created the worlds. So, I can live by faith because God’s knowledge is greater. I can trust Him and rely upon Him for what He knows when I don’t know.
A wise person lives by faith because God’s power is greater. Verse 12 says, “Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days: and caused the dayspring to know its place…?” God is saying, “Do you tell the sun where to rise and set? Do you have the power to command that?” The obvious answer is no. My power is limited to my lifespan, muscles, and other things, but God’s power is unlimited. We say He is omniscient, He knows everything, and He is omnipotent, He can do everything.
Third, a wise person lives by faith because God’s presence is greater. In verse 16 God asks, “Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? or hast thou walked in the search of the depth?” In the book of Psalms the psalmist basically says, “If I go to the deepest sea or the highest heaven, God is there.” He is! I can’t be everywhere at once, and there are places I can‘t be at all, but God’s presence is greater than mine.
So, a wise person lives by faith. A wise person is in touch with that which is greater than himself because he knows God and God knows everything. The truth is that the just shall live by faith too, and for the same reasons. A wise person lives by faith, but so does a just person. I don’t become just by doing better or good works. I become just by putting my faith and trust in God the Son, the Lord Jesus, Who lived the perfect life I could never live and took my sin as if He were guilty. God is sufficient for my earthly life and for my eternal life. In both cases, a wise person and a just person live by faith because God’s knowledge, power, and presence are all greater.