Merry Christmas from Job 26

The OT speaks frequently of the greatness of God.  Sometimes the pictures used by those great men are worth our meditation.  For example, Nahum 1:3 says, the clouds are the dust of His feet.  What a great thought when we look up at the clouds, to be reminded of the transcendent God Almighty whose greatness is just beginning on the other side of the clouds.

In Job, one of Job’s friends, Bildad, described God’s greatness (Job 25).  He did it, in essence, by reducing man to smallness, referring to humans as maggots or worms.  In the context his real purpose was not so much to exalt God as to reduce Job to finally admitting his sufferings were all his fault.

Job responded in the next chapter with a magnificent description of the greatness of God.  His view of God is actually enhanced by his view of what God has created.  In wonderful word-photos he calls to mind some of the magnificent things that catch our attention.  He binds up the water in His thick clouds, Yet the clouds are not broken under it (v8).  He drew a circular horizon on the face of the waters, At the boundary of light and darkness (v10).  He stirs up the sea with His power, And by His understanding He breaks up ^[c]the storm (v12; think of Jesus quieting the storms on Galilee).

But here’s the one that really grabs my attention.  Indeed these are the mere edges of His ways, And how small a whisper we hear of Him! But the thunder of His power who can understand (v14)? Job understands that his view of God’s greatness will always be short-sighted, only the beginning.

It’s Christmas time, and God’s whispering is fully evident in the story.  God spoke through what He considered a whisper.  He spoke through a baby, born in an insignificant city, in a tiny nation controlled by the Romans, born to an obscure couple through what would be considered a questionable conception, born and laid in a manger, announced not to the “movers and shakers” of the region but to shepherds, and then presented at the temple with the peace offering of the poor.  Those are all God-whispers.  Nothing the people of earth would consider earth-shaking!  And yet it was the greatest shout in all of history.

·        The Child was Immanuel, God in the flesh (Jn. 1:14).

·        Insignificant Bethlehem was proof of His Messianic identity (Mic. 5:2).

·        The obscure couple were of David’s lineage; He was David’s Son (Lk. 1:32).

·        The One with questionable conception was God’s Son, the Heir of all things (Lk. 1:32; Heb. 1:2).

·        The One in the manger was our sympathetic High Priest, who was tested as we are, in all points (Heb. 4:14-16).

·        The One announced to shepherds was Israel’s shepherd (Ezek. 34:30-31), the door of the sheep (Jn. 10:9), our Good Shepherd (Jn. 10:11), and the Lamb of God (Jn . 1:29), our Passover Lamb (1 Cor. 5:7).

·        The Child from poverty was the Savior who became poor that through His poverty we might become rich (2 Cor. 8:9).

Do you remember Elijah in the day when he ran scared from Jezebel?  God came and spoke to the great prophet.  But He didn’t speak through the mighty wind, the earthquake or the fire.  He spoke through a still small voice (1 Ki. 19:11-12).  Are we listening to Bethlehem’s whisper?