Bible Text: Job 38:4-7 | Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living |
Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone—while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? Job 38:4-7
“Who is in charge here?” That question, asked in broken English, once brought me up short. I was taking a group of friends into China, and after customs officials had discovered packages of Bibles which were to be gifts for Chinese Christians who had no Bibles, I, somewhat reluctantly, acknowledged that I was the one in charge.
I pondered that same question. “Who is in charge here?” Do you ever ask yourself, “Have we really learned anything in the past century?”
I recall the awkwardness I once experienced in the home of a Japanese friend. Our two daughters, his and mine, both about age 6, picked up a book on the coffee table. Finding a picture of the mushroom-shaped cloud of an exploding nuclear bomb over the city of Hiroshima, the little girls asked, “What is this?” I hesitated. Would the Japanese host give them his version, or would I say, “We Americans dropped the bomb on the families of our gracious hosts tonight.” Or should I politicize the answer and say, “The American President Harry Truman used this bomb to stop both of our countries from further killing each other”?
Frankly, as I stumbled for words I’m not sure whether my answer satisfied, wondering what to say without offending my host. But I do know, the issue of who is charge is one which every person needs to face.
George Bernard Shaw once said that if there is life on other planets, they must have been using Earth for their insane asylum. Question: Is life merely a matter of survival of the fittest, a random playing out of events with no theme or purpose? That’s what existentialists would have you believe. In this scheme, there is no God, no rhyme or reason to history, and no expectation of any order in the future.
The other alternative is to understand that God—not man nor fate—is still in charge, and though His timetable and His measure of patience is far beyond our understanding, there is a point at which God says, “Enough!” and decisively steps in, altering forever the course of history.
An overview of history paralleling the clear statements and prophesies of the Bible shows that there is a timeline which will eventually include an Armageddon of indescribable proportions, followed by the return of God’s Son. That’s when the nations beat their swords into plowshares and wars cease.
“All right,” someone says, “if God is in charge, then explain the negative events of history: wars, sickness, disease, destruction, conflicts, and disasters.” Understanding that man’s old nature is selfish, greedy, and hateful goes to the heart of the problem, and it is also the only thing that explains the simple story of redemption, the reasons that God sent His Son, who lived in our world, a world of brokenness and conflict, and showed us a better way, the way of peace.
Go beyond the battlefields of history and the news of who has the bomb and ask a more personal question, “Who is in charge of my personal life?” It is also a loving Father who makes us willing to be willing to let Him take charge in our lives. Question: Is God in charge of your personal life? “Let God engineer,” Oswald Chambers used to say, and when you do that, you know that in His quiet, firm, and loving way, no matter what happens, He will be in charge. Only with that confidence can we face the realities of living in a sinful, broken world. Thank God. He is in charge.
Resource reading: Job 38-42
