SERIES: The Book of Job
Weather Report
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Introduction: This morning we conclude the speeches of the principal human characters in the book of Job. From chapter 3 through chapter 37 we have seen the largest single portion of “uninspired,” but occasionally “inspiring,” human wisdom in the Bible. But lest I be misunderstood when I call these speeches uninspired, I hasten to explain. The record of these speeches is an inspired record, but the speeches themselves are not. You see, neither Job, Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, or Elihu were recognized prophets of God, and none of them were necessarily speaking for God to us. When we read their speeches, we are obligated to sift and choose the nuggets from the sludge pile. That is not true when we read the words of one of God’s prophets or apostles, like Isaiah or Paul or John; when they spoke, they spoke the truth of God. In fact, 2 Peter 1:21 tells us that the prophets and apostles “spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
When 2 Tim. 3:16 tells us that “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God,” that is a guarantee that these chapters in Job are an accurate record of what these five men said, but it is no guarantee of the truthfulness of what they said. Even falsehoods can be recorded accurately. For example, Satan spoke to Eve in the Garden of Eden and told her, “Thou shalt not surely die,” just after God had told her she would. The record of that conversation in Gen. 3 is inspired and therefore accurate, but Satan’s lie was still a lie. Likewise, anytime the Scriptures quote those who are not recognized spokesmen for God, we should evaluate such quotations by the author’s purpose for including them, rather than accept them as Gospel truth.
The author of the book of Job included these speeches, I believe, to demonstrate the bankruptcy of the human mind and heart when it comes to figuring out the sovereign purposes of God. These men were intelligent—in fact, brilliant by most standards—but when it came to discerning the cause or causes of Job’s suffering, they were completely ignorant. In the course of demonstrating their ignorance about ultimate truth, however, these five men shared many significant insights that are useful. While I wouldn’t feel comfortable building a doctrine solely on one of these speeches, they do offer some confirmation of truth taught elsewhere in the Bible.
Now just so we’re all on the same page, let me state again that I believe the entire Bible to be the inspired Word of God, including the record of these speeches from Job 3 to 37, but since the Biblical author is quoting the opinions of ordinary men here rather than speaking directly for God, we must evaluate these opinions by comparing them with the rest of Scripture.
Next Sunday we will begin to examine a speech in Job 38 and 39 which is guaranteed truthful in everything spoken. It is God’s speech, in which He finally addresses Job and his friends. But today we take a final look at Elihu’s wisdom, particularly his discussion of the weather. Mark Twain is often given credit for an aphorism that probably came from the pen of Charles Dudley Warner: “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” Elihu agrees, but he adds the insight that no one does anything about it because the weather belongs to God—He is sovereign over it, and it is His tool to accomplish His purposes.
I think it is appropriate for this subject to come up at the end of a summer in which the weather has been uppermost in everyone’s mind. From a record‑breaking heat‑wave in the east to a devastating drought in the southeast to an unimaginable flood in the Midwest to a close call with hurricane Emily, we have seen manifestations of weather—just in our country—that boggle our minds. Thorough‑going secularists, on the one hand, have gained renewed awe for “Mother Nature,” while some very religious people, on the other hand, have attributed the weather crises to riverboat gambling, the gay agenda, the abortion holocaust, or even Bill Clinton’s election. As perhaps never before, everybody is indeed talking about the weather. And I guess we shouldn’t complain, for I’ve heard it said that nine-tenths of the population couldn’t start a conversation if it weren’t for the weather. Think about that.
Before examining Elihu’s first point, let’s take just a glance at how he introduces his final speech at the beginning of chapter 36: “Bear with me a little longer and I will show you that there is more to be said in God’s behalf. I get my knowledge from afar; I will ascribe justice to my Maker. Be assured that my words are not false; one perfect in knowledge is with you.” Leaving aside the incredible arrogance and conceit in these words, I want us to note that Elihu views himself as coming to God’s defense. Job has accused God of being unfair and has complained because God hasn’t told him why he is suffering. Elihu views this as impudence in light of God’s awesome power.
Skip over now to verse 22 of chapter 36, where Elihu sets the stage for his treatise on meteorology: “God is exalted in his power. Who is a teacher like him? Who has prescribed his ways for him, or said to him, ‘You have done wrong’? Remember to extol his work, which men have praised in song. All mankind has seen it; men gaze on it from afar. How great is God—beyond our understanding! The number of his years is past finding out.”
In other words, Job, instead of complaining to God, should be bowing humbly before him because of His infinite greatness. And where, Elihu asks, can that power and majesty be viewed any more clearly than in the weather?
God is sovereign over the weather.
This is a very curious portion of Scripture. Within the course of about 20 verses Elihu talks about rain, snow, mist, storms, clouds, cold, thunder, frost, lightning, and ice. But he focuses upon three principal phenomena of the weather—the rain cycle, the rainstorm, and the blizzard, all which God controls.
He is in control of the rain cycle. Listen to how Elihu describes the process of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation: “He draws up the drops of water, which distill as rain to the streams; the clouds pour down their moisture and abundant showers fall on mankind.” Perhaps someone is saying to himself today, “The rain cycle simply follows the known laws of nature. The only reason Elihu brings God into the picture is that ancient people weren’t scientific, didn’t understand the laws of nature, and always attributed the unexplainable to some deity.” However, one must admit Elihu does show a fairly advanced understanding of how the rain cycle works—it’s only in regard to ultimate causes that he departs company with the secularist of today. What the secularist attributes to Mother Nature, Elihu attributes to God.
I think it’s important for us to understand that the Laws of Nature are not an independent set of physical rules and regulations to which God must submit. Rather they are simply a description of how God has constructed His universe. He established them as laws, just as He established certain moral laws and spiritual laws. The reason some people have such a hard time with the concept of miracles is that they fail to understand that the One who programmed the computer has the power and privilege to introduce a new program now and then. Of course, if one holds that there was no Programmer, but rather the computer evolved by itself to its advanced stage of complexity, then there can be no miracles. When we admit that the rain cycle follows the laws of nature, that takes nothing away from the sovereignty of God; rather it confirms His wisdom and power.
Next Elihu speaks of God’s control of the storm, for it, too, speaks loudly of the hand of God behind it.
He is in control of the storm. Elihu’s view reminds one of the child who speaks of thunder as “God rearranging the furniture in heaven.” Every element in the storm is seen as coming from the direct action of God. He spreads out the clouds, He scatters the lightning, He commands it to strike its mark, and He thunders with His majestic voice. The result is intimidating to both man and beast. Who of us hasn’t been in Elihu’s place as he admits in the first verse of chapter 37, “At this my heart pounds and leaps from its place.”
I have never been particularly frightened by storms because I usually sleep through them, but about 15 years ago we were visiting my brother’s home near Des Moines when a storm hit in the middle of the night. My wife was begging me to go to the basement, but that was nothing unusual, and I was suggesting she stifle herself. Then as the storm got worse, my brother yelled upstairs and wanted to know why we were trying to tempt the Lord. As my wife and Eddie headed for the basement, I stood at the upstairs window and watched the storm. When I saw a canoe crossing the back yard airborne, I decided it was time to join the sissies in the basement. That, friends, was a frightening storm. The next morning we found my brother’s canoe about a block away and learned that a tornado had ripped through town doing some fairly extensive damage. I have had a somewhat greater respect for storms since that experience.
Then Elihu speaks of God’s control of the blizzard.
He is in control of the blizzard. Look at the description: “He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth.’ (Skip down to verse 8). The animals take cover; they remain in their dens. The tempest comes out from its chamber, the cold from the driving winds. The breath of God produces ice, and the broad waters become frozen.” Anyone who has lived in the north can appreciate this description. My parents were born and reared in Mora, Minnesota, and they used to tell how every January the town would park a car in the middle of Fish Lake and then have a raffle, which would be won by the person who guessed the date in the Spring when the ice would thaw, and the car would sink.
Elihu, however, focuses not only on God’s sovereignty over the weather; he also makes it clear, secondly, that…
God is purposeful with the weather.
It’s easy to conclude at times that the weather is haphazard, chaotic, and indiscriminate. But Elihu denies that. He indicates that God has at least three different purposes in the way he distributes and assigns the weather.
Sometimes He demonstrates His benevolence. Look at verse 28 of chapter 36: “The clouds pour down their moisture and abundant showers fall on mankind.” Then verse 31: “This is the way he governs or nourishes the nations and provides food in abundance.” The point is even clearer in chapter 37, verse 13: “He brings the clouds to punish men (we’ll come back to that in a moment), or to water his earth and show his love.” I know people who regularly get depressed when it rains and complain because of the dreariness that results. Others fuss about the snow because of the inconvenience it causes. Still others complain about the heat or the cloudiness or the wind. But I think we believers should be much more inclined than we are to view these elements as manifestations of God’s benevolence, for I am convinced that most of the time that is exactly what they are. If we try, we can find something good in the weather just as easily as we can find something bad.
I like John Ruskin’s observation:
“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing,
Wind braces up, snow is exhilarating.
There is no such thing as bad weather,
Only different kinds of good weather.”[i]
And how about James Whitcomb Riley’s poem (with his own spelling):
“It hain’t no use to grumble and complane;
It’s jest as cheap and easy to rejoice.—
When God sorts out the weather and sends rain,
W’y rain’s my choice.”[ii]
Secondly, on occasion God uses the weather, not to demonstrate His benevolence, but to demonstrate His power, to show us who’s boss.
Sometimes He demonstrates His power. Look at verse 7 of chapter 37. After describing the blizzard and the downpour it says, “So that all men he has made may know his work, he stops every man from his labor.” There are times when the blizzard shuts down everything—schools, businesses, transportation, church—everything grinds to a halt. We have seen this summer that rain can do the same thing. Who would have believed six months ago that Highway 40 would be closed for weeks and that hundreds of businesses would be idled? Perhaps He did that not so much to punish anyone as to wake us up to the fact that, levees or no levees, we are not as much in control of our destiny as we think we are. God is still on the throne![iii]
Sometimes God does use the weather to demonstrate His discipline. We already noted the statement in verse 13 that “God brings the clouds to punish men.” On several occasions in the OT God brought hail or rain, but please note that this is the only statement in this entire treatise which indicates judgment as one of God’s purposes with the weather, and even that is followed immediately by an affirmation of God’s love. I think we should gather from this that God can indeed use the weather to chasten and discipline, but that is not a common thing. I think we should not be obsessed with discovering who is to blame for the summer floods.
By the way, verse 13 is a difficult verse to translate, and some scholars see three purposes in God’s manipulation of the weather rather than two. I mentioned benevolence and discipline, and both are clearly seen. But there may be a third. The phrase “to water his earth” may reveal a purpose related only to God Himself. One commentator expressed the thought this way: “Sometimes God might have a storm ‘just for Himself.'” He may punish men, He may display His power, or He may show His love, but He may also bring about a storm that is designed just to keep His beautiful creation in balance. Maybe He gets frustrated with the hundreds of miles of levees that people have created to box in His creation, so He just takes them out. It’s not a judgment so much as a re‑creation of what God intended in the first place. The forest fire, the hurricane, and the tornado could also be used for the same purpose—to restore God’s earth to what it was before people began to spoil it. It’s something to think about.
So far we have seen that God is sovereign over the weather and purposeful with the weather. Thirdly and finally, the point is made that …
God’s authority over the weather should humble us and cause us to revere Him.
This seems to be the point of Elihu’s entire discussion. He wants Job to see how incongruous it is for a human being who can’t understand or even predict the weather to complain about a God who controls not only the weather, but everything else as well. The fact that we don’t understand the weather is made clear in verses 14‑16.
We don’t understand the weather. “Listen to this, Job; stop and consider God’s wonders. Do you know how God controls the clouds and makes his lightning flash? Do you know how the clouds hang poised, those wonders of him who is perfect in knowledge?” Certainly we understand more today about these things than Job did 4,000 years ago, but I would say Elihu’s words are essentially true even today. Meteorology is still not an exact science. Hurricanes can be tracked, but no one knows until the last minute whether they will hit land or veer off to the ocean, as Emily did. Storms can be predicted, but the predictors are wrong as often as they are right. Not only is it true that we don’t understand the weather; it is also true that …
We cannot manipulate the weather. Look at verses 17-18: “You who swelter in your clothes when the land lies hushed under the south wind, can you join God in spreading out the skies, hard as a mirror of cast bronze?” In other words, if you are helpless to even cool off on a hot summer day, who are you to join God in the control tower and counsel Him as to how he ought to run His universe? After thousands of years of studying the weather intently, weather‑related deaths in 1993 are too numerous to count, demonstrating how helpless mankind is in the face of the storm or the tornado or the hurricane. So helpless are we, Elihu continues,…
We cannot even look at the sun. Verse 21 says, “Now no one can look at the sun, bright as it is in the skies after the wind has swept them clean.” What is his point? It seems to be this: if the clear sky is too bright for human eyes, then the dazzling brightness of God’s presence, which Job has requested, would be far more unbearable. Therefore, he concludes:
What business do we have telling God what to do? Frankly, I think Elihu has a pretty good point, and it is a point that God Himself will make starting in chapter 38, only with a different motive and a different result. Here’s how Elihu puts it beginning in verse 19: “Tell us what we should say to a God like this; we cannot draw up our case because of our darkness. Should he be told that I want to speak? Would any man ask to be swallowed up?” Are you crazy, Job, Elihu asks? How can you seek an audience with a God like this? You must have a death wish. He continues in verse 23: “The Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power; in his justice and great righteousness, he does not oppress. Therefore, men revere him, for does he not have regard for all the wise in heart?”
There are two messages here. One is that God is untouchable; the other is that He is just and righteous and will do what is right. In other words, you can’t relate to Him, but you can trust Him. As we saw in our last message, Elihu is partially right and partially wrong. Yes, God is a sovereign God. Yes, He controls the weather and all of nature. But His power and His majesty do not make him unapproachable. He can be found. He does care. He has not abandoned us. Even if our pain and suffering is God‑ordained rather than self‑generated, as in the case of Job, we need never fear that our God cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities or cannot sympathize with our weaknesses.
Conclusion: If only Elihu had known the words of Hebrews 4:16: “Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Then he might have offered Job some comfort and hope. It is, of course, through the Incarnation that God was brought near to us. The Son of God became one of us so that He might lead us to the Father and enable us to have a personal relationship with Him. While we stand in humility and awe of God’s power and majesty, we also stand in the righteousness of Christ and therefore come boldly and confidently before Him.
Imagine it! The God who stirs up hurricanes, who rides the storm, whose breath is behind the blizzard—this same God is our friend, our protector, our Shepherd, our Savior. Let’s honor Him with our love, our obedience, and our service.
DATE: September 5, 1993
Tags:
Weather
Sovereignty of God
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[i] https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/john_ruskin_108460
[ii] James Whitcomb Riley,Wet-weather Talk.
[iii] The 29th Psalm reiterates many of the themes of Job 36 and 37 regarding God’s sovereign control over the weather and nature.