Job 13:3 (Job speaking) - “But I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to argue my case with God.”

Job is frustrated with God for all that’s happened.

And when God shows up, it doesn’t go how Job might have imagined.

God curiously starts by speaking on boundaries. First separation between sea and land:

Job 38:8 - “who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb… and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?”

God talks of day and night separation:

Job 38:12 - Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place?

The separation between life and death:

Job 38:17 - Have the gates of death been revealed to you?

The separation of dark and light:

Job 38:19 - Where is the way to the dwelling of light, and where is the place of darkness?

What if God isn’t just being poetic and chastising/sarcastic here?

What if he’s educating Job to see: “As there are boundaries in the created order, so there are boundaries in the spiritual.”

We sense things between the earth and spirit worlds but they’re mostly invisible and separated in a way:

Ecclesiastes 3:11 - he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

What if God said all this to Job and then took Job back to the beginning:

Job 1:6 - Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them…

Then it all made sense. The spiritual world is operating in a different plane of existence from this earthly world - for now, separated in one way.

How often have we assumed things about a situation and gotten angry to a friend, over email, on the phone, or face-to-face? Then we find out the reason for the other person’s behavior - their parents have just died or they found out their spouse is cheating? They explain the situation with sorrow and exasperation and we feel foolish.

God can be trusted even if we don’t know the full story. He’s given us the Bible to show us more of how he operates with one-time examples because those are enough. Believing this is one of the components that makes up the full package of faith. For:

Hebrews 11:6 - without faith it is impossible to please him

It wasn’t perfect but Job endured.

He lost his family to a wind:

Job 1:18-19 - “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, 19 and behold, a great wind came across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young people, and they are dead, and I alone have escaped to tell you.”

And God comes to him in a “high” wind - a greater wind:

Job 38:1 - Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said…

Job met God:

Job 42:5 - I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you…

May we endure it all. To hear him speak and teach and show us everything around his kingdom. “It’s a pleasure to meet you!” doesn’t begin to capture it:

1 Corinthians 13:12 - For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.