Job 12:22 Commentary and Bible Study

Job selects the works of God which he alone can do, which are extraordinary. God is at work where no creature could work, designing and planning schemes which are beyond human ability to fathom. What to us appears to be darkness, a realm from which we are excluded because we rely on physical light to make sense of our environment, God, who depends on nothing but on whom all things depend, continues to work and the product of his workmanship comes forth to the amazement of all. Out of darkness he brings forth deep things. He not only works in the darkness, he takes advantage of it to create things that surprise, things that overwhelm, things that display his skill to all the world. This saying can be applied to providence, for the events of this world appear to us to be a confusion of darkness which no one is capable of penetrating, and yet God shows his continual control of history by drawing his elect out of it. His plan of the ages takes every detail into account and we worship the Lord when we see that what to us seems out of control and impossible to harness, is made by God his workshop where he fabricates objects of exquisite beauty.God delights in great reversals; he delights to show his power by moving beyond the realm to which human power is limited. And yet men withhold their praise in their pride, and refuse to admit what is so obvious to them: that their existence is in the hands of one who vastly exceeds them in skill and power. They would rather give the credit to nature, an imaginary impersonal entity which makes no moral demands of man. They would rather worship anything than the true God. God brings life out of death, for death was allowed to take universal hold of the creation just so that mankind would know how helpless he is. But now God has done what the whole creation was incapable of doing and has thrown off the tyranny of death and brought light and immortality to light. All the glory of this is focused on the person of Christ, who has personally and single-handedly defeated death not only for himself but for all his people. Who can fail to value a life which was once irretrievably lost and has now been brought back and placed in our hands?