“Behold, God is exalted by His power; who teaches like Him? Who has assigned Him His way, or who has said, ‘You have done wrong’?” Job 36-22-23.
The above has been added for context. The speaker above and below is Elihu, a young man who became incensed after listening to a dialogue between Job and three critical friends.
This was covered in “Power of God, Part 1, posted on 2-14-25, that post showed God’s power to save. The following one will show God’s power over everything.
“Remember to magnify His work, of which men have sung. Everyone has seen it; man looks on it from afar. Behold, God is great, and we do not know Him; nor can the number of His years be discovered. For He draws up drops of water, which distill as rain from the mist, which the clouds drop down and pour abundantly on man. Indeed, can anyone understand the spreading of clouds, the thunder from His canopy?” Job 36:24-29.
Elihu had a wonderful vision of God. This young man looked around him and saw, really saw the hand of God in all things. In so doing, he made the choice which is open to all men.
“Remember to magnify His work, of which men have sung. Everyone has seen it; man looks on it from afar. Behold, God is great, and we do not know Him; nor can the number of His years be discovered.” Job 36:24-26.
Elihu decided to put his trust in the living God who shows Himself in all of His creative power which can be seen, heard, felt and smelled throughout the earth and in the heavens.
Elihu saw these things in the world and became enraptured by the power and beauty of the God of creation. The psalm of King David below expresses magnificently the feelings of these godly men.
“I will extol You, my God, O King; and I will bless Your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless You, and I will praise Your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; and His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise Your works to another, and shall declare Your mighty acts. I will meditate on the glorious splendor of Your majesty, and on Your wonderous works. Men shall speak of the might of Your awesome acts, and I will declare Your greatness. They shall utter the memory of Your great goodness, and shall sing of Your righteousness. The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and great in mercy. The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works.” Psalm 145:1-9.
Job was not unaware of these things either as he said earlier in Chapter 26.
“He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing. He binds up the water in His thick clouds, yet the clouds are not broken under it. He covers the face of His throne, and spreads His cloud over it. He drew a circular horizon on the face of the waters, at the boundary of light and darkness. The pillars of heaven tremble, and are astonished at His reproof. He stirs up the sea with His power, and by His understanding He breaks up the storm. By His Spirit He adorned the heavens; His hand pierced the fleeing serpent. 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?” Job 26:7-14.
All of mankind has the witness to the invisible God all around them, even their own bodies give testimony to the living God.
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress [hold down] the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest [obvious] in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made…” Romans 1:18-20a.
These things are very clear to those who see the beauty and complexity of the things around us, even the physical laws men can rely on when they drive a nail into wood to build a house.
O, that all the inhabitants of the earth would stop and smell the flowers, feel a gentle rain on their faces, or look up into the night sky into an endless beauty and become enraptured by the loving God who created all of these things, and give Him the glory just as these men did.
Listen again to the adoration and the astonishment of Elihu
“Behold, God is great, and we do not know Him; nor can the number of His years be discovered. For He draws up drops of water, which distill as rain from the mist, which the clouds drop down and pour abundantly on man. Indeed, can anyone understand the spreading of clouds, the thunder from His canopy?” Job 36:26-29.
“Behold, God is great, and we do not know Him; nor can the number of His years be discovered.” Elihu’s vision of God was limited to what he could see, and the works of God in his own life.
Today the Christian knows God is great because we have seen His works in the Scriptures, His power to heal, to feed the multitudes, to raise the dead, His love, and His revelation of God the Father by His incarnation, Jesus Christ, God living among men.
Jesus is now seated at the right hand of the Father and will return to earth soon. Even so, the mute witness remains, look around you.
“For He draws up drops of water, which distill as rain from the mist, which the clouds drop down and pour abundantly on man. Indeed, can anyone understand the spreading of clouds, the thunder from His canopy?” Job 36:27-29.
The amazing thing is that God reveals more of the complexity of His creation as Elihu seeks to learn more of His works.
I do not know when history tells us of the rest of mankind being able to describe a rain cycle as accurately as this without using instruments to find it. But God’s revelations get more amazing in Job’s words below.
“He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing, He binds up the water in His thick clouds, yet the clouds are not broken under it. He covers the face of His throne, and spreads His cloud over it. He drew a circular horizon on the face of the waters, at the boundary of light and darkness.” Job 26:7-10.
“He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing…” this is the most incredible science fact in Scripture that I have seen.
The principle that the earth hangs on nothing was not discovered until around 1665 or 1666 A.D. by Isaac Newton, his findings of Newton’s Law of Universal Gravity were published in 1687 A.D. But God gave Job the knowledge that the earth is hung on nothing perhaps as many as two thousand years or more earlier.
Elihu stated the following in Job 36:27-28:
“For He draws up drops of water, which distill as rain from the mist, which the clouds drop down and pour abundantly on man.”
And Job stated this in Job 26:8:
“He binds up the water in His thick clouds, yet the clouds are not broken under it.”
King Solomon adds these facts to God’s revelation of weather cycles and rain:
“The wind goes toward the south, and turns around to the north; the wind whirls about continually, and comes again on its circuit. All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; to the place from which the rivers come, there they return again.” Ecclesiastes 1:6-7.
“He drew a circular horizon on the face of the waters, at the boundary of light and darkness.” Job 26:10.
This amazing revelation to Job that God drew a circular horizon on the waters, a natural occurrence at the boundary between light and darkness, see Genesis 1:16-18 as a possible hint of this. Men may have considered this possibility, but it took the astronauts to see it!
“The pillars of heaven tremble, and are astonished at His reproof. He stirs up the sea with His power, and by His understanding He breaks up the storm. By His Spirit He adorned the heavens; His hand pierced the fleeing serpent. 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?” Job 26:7-14.
The glory of God will not be seen when examined through the prism of the theory of evolution. This demonic theory is meant to reduce the glory of God to things that climbed out of the slime, reducing everything to a pointless existence created by time, plus chance, plus the impersonal.
When these men looked around them and saw the glory of God in creation, God revealed more of Himself.
How else would they learn of such complexities as gravity, “He hangs the earth on nothing”, the cycle of the rain, the constant circuit of the wind, the circle around the earth dividing light from darkness, and the weight of the atmosphere (Job 28:25)?
These things are for Christians too, God delights to reveal Himself to those who long to know Him better. He reveals Himself through the world around us when we look at the beauty and the complexity of a flower, the woods, mountains, or just a snowflake.
God reveals Himself through the Scriptures, the true depths are in the Bible when we see Jesus who reveals God the Father to us and then tells us how to have a heart like Jesus through the Holy Spirit.
“But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For Who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.” 1 Corinthians 2:14-16.
“Behold, God is great, and we do not know Him; nor can the number of His years be discovered.” Seek God in Christ with all your heart and you will find that He delights in revealing Himself to all who come to Him in sincerity.
“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?” Job 26:14.
Power of God, Part 2 taken from godisrevealed.com posted on 2-19-25 ck.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version, copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission, all rights reserved.