Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him. But the thunder of his power, who can understand?
– Job 26:14
What a great verse, and one of the many pictures we see in Job, and we’ll see this in every verse in the last chapters of Job. But one of the pictures in this book of the greatness of God, of the unsearchable majesty and mystery of God. Job describes all these different ways that God shows His power in creation, in the world.
By his power, he stilled the sea. By his wind, the heavens were made fair. That’s Job 26:12–13. And then you get to verse 14 and Job says, behold, these are, but the outskirts of his ways. Like his glory in creation, we’re just like touching the surface of the greatness and the glory of God. How small a whisper do we hear of him? We know, even in a revelation that we know about God, about who he is, we know so little because his power is so great.
Job 26:14 Teaches Us God is Infinite
He’s infinite in all of his attributes. Like we in our finite minds have such a small grasp on the greatness of God. He says the thunder of his power, who can understand? And this is a good reminder for all of us today in a way that leads us into worship and I want us to pray accordingly. God, we bow before you today in prayer, in awe. And we confess. And amidst all we know about you, and we praise you for all your revelation of yourself to us, in creation, the way creation shouts your glory, your invisible power and eternal attributes are clearly seen, being understood from what has been made around us.
We see the heavens declaring your glory, and we have your word. We praise you for your word, for your revelation of yourself to us in your word. And yet, we realize that our minds are so small and you are so great that your character, your attributes, your majesty, your glory, the mysteries of who you are, are far infinitely far beyond what we can fathom. So we pause in this moment just to say, we praise you. We worship you.
Job 26:14 Praises God for His Love
We praise you for your love and mercy and your justice and your goodness and your holiness and all these attributes we know to be true about you. Even as we confess, we’ve only scratched the surface in the wonders of your love and your mercy and your justice and your holiness and righteousness and your omnipotence and your omissions and your omnipresence, all of the attributes that you possess.
God, we know so much about you and so little about you at the same time, because our minds are so small and you are so great. And we bow in worship before you today. God, help us never to lose a holy sense of awe before you, regarding who you are. And God, we praise you that we know you, that we have a relationship with you. Jesus, we praise you for making this possible, for making it possible for us to be in communion with you right now, and for us to have life eternal, an eternity, to discover more and more and more and more and more and more and more delights in you. More beauty in you, more glory in you, that 10 trillion years from now we’ll still be discovering more in you because there’s no one like you.
Led to Glorify God
God, we praise you. We glorify you and we pray to God that you would help us to declare your glory to others. God, we pray you’d help us to introduce more people to you today. God, to tell others about your goodness and your love and your immersed and your justice and your righteousness. We pray that would flow from us in our lives here and our lives around the world. God, we pray for the Chechen people, God, for the spread of the gospel to Chechens all throughout Europe.
God, we pray. We pray that all the nations would know, all the peoples would know your glory and enjoy your glory because of our lives because we can’t keep this good news that we have about the one whose greatness we cannot comprehend. God, help us. Help us to declare your glory with the heavens in our lives today to declare your glory among all the nations. We pray in Jesus’ name. We pray all these things based on Job 26:14. Amen.
