Insight for Living

Narrator (Male): We like a God we can figure out. A God who fits neatly into our categories, who always says yes, who never leaves us in the dark. But that's not the God of the Bible, and it's certainly not the God we meet in the Book of Job.

Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll invites us to consider a God far greater, far higher, and far more mysterious than we ever imagined. Why does He allow such suffering? Why the silence? Chuck doesn't offer easy answers. He offers something better.

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: You're new with us today, you wouldn't know that we're in the midst of a study in Job, and we have come all the way to the 25th chapter of this book, which means we only have two years and four months left to get through it. Not really.

Job 25:1. Then Bildad the Shuhite answered, "Dominion and all belong to Him who establishes peace in His heights. Is there any number to His troops? And upon whom does His light not rise? How then can a man be just with God, or how can he be clean who is born of a woman? Even the moon has no brightness, and the stars are not pure in His sight. How much less man, that maggot, and the Son of Man, that worm?"

Job responded, "What a help you are to the weak. You got it. It is sarcasm. How you have saved the arm without strength. What counsel you have given to one without wisdom. What helpful insight you have abundantly provided. To whom have you uttered words? And whose spirit was expressed through you?"

And then Job describes the departed spirits as well as the whole world about us, all the way to the heights of the universe. Verse 13. "By His breath the heavens are cleared, His hand has pierced the fleeing serpent. Behold, these are the fringes of His ways, and how faint a word we hear from Him. But His mighty thunder, who can understand?"

Narrator (Male): You're listening to Insight for Living. To dig deeper into Job's story on your own, be sure to purchase your copy of our Searching the Scriptures Bible Study workbooks by going to insight.org/offer. Chuck titled today's message, "The Futility of Unscrewing the Inscrutable."

Pastor Chuck Swindoll: A study of Job is essentially a study of God. For after all, God is the one who struck the deal with the adversary when he came and pointed out Job, claiming that if somehow God would remove the hedge from around this servant of his, Job would ultimately curse his name.

So it was God who released the enemy to Job. And it was God who set the boundaries saying, "But don't touch him, don't touch his life." And later it was God who permitted the adversary to come back and to touch him and bring upon him all manner of pain and suffering.

It was God's permissive will, strange as it is for all of us to understand that. It was His permissive will that allowed the enemy to do what he did with Job. And then it is God who steps behind the shadows and hides for 35 chapters. He doesn't speak. He doesn't give visions. He doesn't provide relief. He doesn't offer comfort.

Not only is He absent, He is silent. And it's tough for us. We who were reared in Sunday school were taught that the God we love is the God who is good and merciful and gracious and kind, full of love, and could never do anything cruel.

And then we happen upon an intelligent and careful study of Job and we're confused. And the longer we stay in the book, the more we realize, either we weren't taught correctly the full story about God, or we're not understanding the full story about Job. I think the former.

Paul wrote to the Romans and said, "Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways." So even as far back as the first century, as Paul penned his letter to the Romans, he informed the reader, ultimately us, that God is unfathomable and unsearchable.

It doesn't mean He isn't good, and it doesn't mean He stops being loving and merciful. It just means He is also incomprehensible. We're getting in deep. And before we know it, we realize there is a whole lot about God we were never taught.

And now, in the midst of our study of Job, we are forced to dig deeper and find out what it is that we were missing. Theologians call Him inscrutable. One of the first times I remember that word making a dent in my brain, I was graduating from seminary, and the president of the school at the time, Dr. John Walvoord, made the comment that he would hope that all of us would continue to remember that our God is unfathomable, which means we are unable to fathom His ways. And our God is inscrutable.

Then he said with a wry smile, "So don't try to unscrew the inscrutable." First time I'd put the two words together. But we so want to. Everything within us screams to explain and interpret and define fully the workings of God. For after all, we're intelligent. God made us like this. He tells us that we are to know Him, and we long to do that, so we continue to pursue Him. And the deeper we dig, the more unfathomable He becomes. And that's the way it's to be.

But we're not comfortable with that. We like things fathomable. We like things scrutable. We like to be able to explain and interpret and correctly analyze so that we understand the whole story. Impossible with God. Impossible.

You see, we think of God when no one is around as being maybe the oldest man we've ever known. He has a long beard and stands in the North of the old maps going, [blowing sound]. And he's blowing this wind across to move the sailing ships across the seas. Not so. He is not a little bit like us, He is nothing like us. As Isaiah wrote, "My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts higher than your thoughts." We are not alike.

Now we need an illustration that helps us understand the vastness of God. Astronomy will help. If it were possible to travel the speed of light on a straight trajectory, we would arrive at the moon in one and one-third seconds. Continuing at that same speed, do you know how long it would take us to reach the first star? Four years.

That's only the first star in this galaxy. Bear with me. Some of you have been to New York City and you have visited the Hayden Planetarium. It has a miniature replica of our solar system showing the speeds and the sizes of our planets.

What is interesting is that the three outer planets are not even included. You see, there wasn't room for Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Uranus would have to be in the Planetarium's outer corridor. Neptune would be around 8th Avenue, and Pluto? Another three long avenues away at 5th Avenue. Oh, by the way, no stars are included, for obvious reasons.

Can you imagine on the same scale where the nearest star would be located? Cleveland, Ohio. Vast. And remember, that's just our local galaxy and the nearest star. There's more.

A scientist once suggested another interesting analogy. To grasp this scene, imagine a perfectly smooth glass pavement on which the finest speck can be seen. Then shrink our sun from 865,000 miles in diameter to only two feet. And place an orange ball on the pavement to represent the sun.

Step off 82 paces, two feet per pace, and to represent proportionately the first planet Mercury, put down a tiny mustard seed. Take 60 more steps for Venus, and put down an ordinary bead. Mark off 78 more steps, put down a green pea. That's us, Earth.

Step off another 108 paces from there, and for Mars, put down a pinhead. Sprinkle around some fine dust for the asteroids. Then take another 788 steps more and place an orange on the glass for Jupiter. After 934 more steps, put down a golf ball for Saturn.

Now it gets really involved. Mark 2,086 steps more for Uranus, a marble. Another 2,322 steps from there, you arrive at Neptune. Let's let a cherry represent Neptune. This will take two and a half miles, and we haven't even discussed Pluto.

We have a smooth glass surface, five miles in diameter, yet just a tiny fraction of the heavens excluding Pluto. Now guess how far we'd have to go on the same scale before we could put down another two-foot ball to represent the nearest star? 6,720 miles. Miles, not paces. And that's just the first star among millions, maybe billions in this galaxy, which is one among thousands, maybe millions.

David in the 139th Psalm made the comment, "It is high, I cannot attain to it." I think it's his way of saying, "This blows my mind." And so it should. But we are uncomfortable with blown minds. After all, we're Americans. We know how to run things until we get to God.

Not only do we not know how, we cannot control Him, nor should we try. A. W. Tozer on this very subject of God's inscrutability writes, "Left to ourselves, we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. We want to get Him where we can use Him, or at least know where He is when we need Him. We want a God we can in some measure control. We need the feeling of security that comes from knowing what God is like, and what He is like is, of course, a composite of all the religious pictures we have seen. All the best people we have known or heard about, and all the sublime ideas we have entertained. If all this sound strange to modern ears, it is only because we have for a full half-century taken God for granted. The glory of God has not been revealed to this generation. The God of contemporary Christianity is only slightly superior to the gods of Greece and Rome, if indeed He is not actually inferior to them in that He is weak and helpless, while they at least had power."

If nothing else, the study of Job reveals to us, we do not know His ways. We cannot explain the inexplicable. We cannot fathom the unfathomable. So we cannot unscrew the inscrutable. And let's stop trying.

If only these foolish men who saw themselves as Job's friends had simply acknowledged that, it would have been so much more comforting to this man in such enormous pain, as he sat longing for at least an arm around his shoulder that said, "We're here, but we don't understand anymore than you do, man." But we're here.

God is up to something phenomenal, and it's high, we cannot attain to it. It is vast, we cannot measure it. May I go this far? He doesn't have a wonderful plan for everybody's life. For some lives, His plan is Lou Gehrig's disease. For some lives, His plan is a life of pain and heartbreak and brokenness. For some, His plan is no to the prayers for healing. But we don't like that.

We won't accept that. In fact, we'll go so far as to say if you believe that, you lack faith. I say if you believe that, you believe the Bible. Because the God of the Bible includes the lives of people who do not get well. Who do not quickly get over the problems. Who do not easily move through the illnesses. This book pictures its heroes warts and all. They fail, they fall, they hurt, and sometime, on occasion, amazingly, they succeed.

But we don't like that. We are Americans. And we can't stand the thought of failing or falling or losing or not getting what we want.

And so we should not be surprised when we turn again to the Book of Job and we wade through Bildad's nonsense of chapter 25. We hear more of the same garbage that has been going on since chapter 4. Chapter 5, chapter 6, chapter 8, chapter 10, chapter 12, chapter 15, chapter 18, chapter 23, chapter 25. Bildad the Shuhite answered, "Dominion and all belong to Him who establishes peace in the heights." That's true. That is true, Bildad. Doesn't help Job, but that's true. "Is there any number to His troops? And upon whom does His light not rise?" True. Absolutely. Doesn't help Job, but got a point.

"How then can a man be just with God?" Oh, that's comforting. "I mean, how can he be clean who is born of a woman?" Understand, that's good theology. We are not clean, having been born of a sinful person. Romans 5:12. "Wherefore, through one man, Adam, sin entered into the world and death through sin. So death passed upon all men and women, for all have sinned." We are sinners by nature, we are sinners by choice. We are sinners from Adam. It's called the Adamic nature in theological writing. He's right. We are not pure, having been born of impure parents. Not wicked necessarily, not immoral necessarily, but at heart, sinful.

And so he says, "How can anybody be just before God? How can he be clean who is born of a woman?" Even the moon lives with borrowed light, doesn't have light of its own. Even the stars that shine have light generated from their creator. How much less man, that maggot, and the son of man, that worm. Wow, thanks a lot. Boy, that's helpful, Bildad. Hadn't thought about that lately, but it's true.

Let me say three or four things by way of general observation. First, this is Bildad's third and last presentation. Thank the Lord. We will not miss him. Second, this is the shortest chapter in the entire book. Six verses. Third, Zophar, the third friend, doesn't bother to speak during this third cycle. Remember he spoke in the first cycle, he spoke in the second cycle, spoke third each time. And when you get to this third round, he doesn't speak at all. I think the discussion has pretty much run out of fuel. I think they really thought by now Job just isn't teachable.

And number four, having run out of arguments, Bildad doesn't attempt to prove Job wrong. Now he simply lectures. He just unfolds, sharing with him a piece of his mind he can't afford to lose. And so, out comes Bildad's last shot at it. He speaks first of God's power and greatness, verses 1-3, and then of God's justice and man's sinfulness, verses 4-6.

Remember, Job, that God is all light and you are all darkness. That's why you're suffering. Matter of fact, Job, maggot and worm pretty much says it best. There are times my heart truly goes out to Job. This is one of those times. I doubt that anyone has ever called you a maggot or a worm. Well, maybe your your wife or maybe your husband behind closed doors when things are really, really thin, you just. But I think I think the difference is, I think Bildad really meant it. I I I think Bildad had absolutely no use, no use for Job. Get out of my life. His final speech ends with this kind of major putdown.

There are a lot of sideline lessons to learn from our studies, and one of them is, whenever you have the opportunity to minister to whomever, putting them down never helps. Never. But that's what these men seem to be so good at. So is it any wonder that Job begins with a series of sarcastic verbal slams in return? "What a help you are to the weak. How you have saved the arm without strength."

Seems like the Hebrew is saying, "How you have saved with your arm the one without strength." That seems to be the idea. The way it appears doesn't make good sense in the English. I believe that's what the original text says. "How have you saved with your arm the one without strength?" Namely me. "What counsel you have given to one without wisdom? What helpful insight, what helpful insight you have abundantly provided?" My, my, my. "To whom have you uttered words? And whose spirit was expressed through you?"

You have really got the corner on truth, Bildad. Eugene Peterson's paraphrase. "Well, you've certainly been a great help to a helpless man. You came to the rescue just in the nick of time. What wonderful advice you've given to a mixed-up man, what amazing insights you've provided. Where in the world did you learn all this? How did you become so inspired?"

By the way, the Hebrew pronouns in verses 2, 3, and 4 are all singular, so they're directed only to Bildad. Only to Bildad. When you get over to chapter 27, the plural begins. Verse 5 of chapter 27, "Far be it from me that I should declare to y'all." Right, it's plural there. It's y'all through the book of uh through the chapter 27. But it's you when you're here in chapter 26.

What Job lacked in tact, he made up for in total honesty. By the way, sores will do that to you. Ask any nurse. Any nurse will tell you, especially those who work at the bedside, there's something about pain and the continuation of it that finally removes most of the tact and just gets down to the red raw facts of life. Someone wrote, "Pain plants the flag of reality in the fortress of a rebel heart." Even those who are stubborn and rebellious, when they have a lot of pain, there's then a lot of reality. There's no tact here with Job.

When you're covered with sores, and you're running a high fever, and you haven't gotten the sleep you need, and you haven't gotten the food you should have, and your body is emaciated, you're candid. "A lot of help you've been, Bildad." You know, we're just going to be painfully honest here and say, sometime we who give wrong counsel need that kind of response. We who have those big answers and long, drawn-out, sometimes putdowns and shame-based comments for things that are going through, we need to be told off.

Narrator (Male): There's a strange comfort in admitting we don't have all the answers. God is higher than our ways, deeper than our understanding, and He never promised to explain Himself. But He is good, He's in control, and He can be trusted even in the dark. That's the heart of what Chuck Swindoll has shared in his message called "The Futility of Unscrewing the Inscrutable."

Here at Insight for Living, we know you may come to this daily program with complicated problems that seem impossible to solve. In fact, maybe you're frustrated with an impasse you can't get around right now. You're stuck, you're confused, and your thoughts are cycling through your mind all day and all night without resolve. Well, all of us here at Insight for Living care deeply about you. It's our prayer that today's message and this complete series on Job will provide a daily reassurance that God knows your story.

We've produced a variety of creative resources to help you be at peace with God's inscrutable ways. First, Chuck wrote a full-length biography of Job. It brings his suffering and confusion to life. But more importantly, it helps you understand how to cope with unsolved mysteries. Second, the brand new Searching the Scriptures Bible Study workbook for Job is ready. This spiral-bound Bible study series is designed to help you dig deeply and reflectively into the biblical account of Job. And third, all 22 of Chuck's full-length sermons are available on CD and MP3. Or you can stream or download the sermons at your convenience. You can find all the details about this bundle of resources for the life of Job at insight.org/offer. Or call us at 800-772-8888.

Finally, I want to let you know that behind the scenes, Chuck has been working on a personal memoir. The title is "Awakened By Grace." And we'd like to send you a copy as soon as it comes out. You can purchase your copy now on pre-sale at insight.org/memoir.

Narrator (Male): I'm Bill Meyer. Join us when Chuck Swindoll continues his message called "The Futility of Unscrewing the Inscrutable" Friday on Insight for Living.

Narrator (Male): The preceding message, "The Futility of Unscrewing the Inscrutable" was copyrighted in 2002, 2004, and 2025, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2025 by Charles R. Swindoll Incorporated. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.