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Job 37:16-18
16 Dost thou know [yada`] the balancings [miphlas] of the clouds [`ab], the wondrous works [miphla'ah] of him which is perfect [tamiym] in knowledge [dea`]?
17 How thy garments [beged] are warm [cham], when he quieteth [shaqat] the earth ['erets] by the south [darowm] wind?
18 Hast thou with him spread out [raqa`] the sky [shachaq], which is strong [chazaq], and as a molten [yatsaq] looking glass [ra'iy]? KJV-Interlinear
16 'Do you know about the layers of the thick clouds, The wonders of one perfect in knowledge, 17 You whose garments are hot, When the land is still because of the south wind? 18 'Can you, with Him, spread out the skies, Strong as a molten mirror? NASB
From Elihu's perspective, the matters of the atmosphere were beyond explanation.
The clouds, he knew, held great quantities of water. He had no doubt experienced heavy rainstorms and knew, as he states here, that the rains came from the clouds.
Elihu knew that the cold came from the north and the heat came from the south. He knew that there were times when the air was cool and dry, and there were times when the air seemed heavy with water, or humidity as we would call it.
And yet the simple question and the most difficult answer seemed to come from the fact that when on hot humid days, ones clothing seemed to heat up to the extremes. And on another day, the same clothing and similar weather were more comfortable. Why was that?
On one day the weather seemed turbulent and on another day the calm without winds made one wonder just where did those winds go.
The clouds seemed to hover in the sky in layers. Some floated at lower altitudes while yet other layers floated at much higher altitudes. How do they change with their heights? How do clouds stretch for miles and miles and retain all of that water?
The sky was sometimes called a curtain, a firmament, a fixture, or a scroll, and here Elihu uses the term 'molten mirror.
The sky was an unknown quantity. People did not know its extent, whether it stretched for a little distance while holding clouds, and then followed or layered by yet another sky or set of skies, followed by additional layers in which the sun and moon and stars might be held.
Could one climb a tall mountain or build a tower with which to reach these higher layers?
From Elihu's perspective, these were all legitimate and virtually unanswerable questions. And the source of the answers was limited to God alone.
So what is different in our current day. No one here was present when God established the design for this universe. No one here was present when God created the universe. No one here understands all of the intricacies of how God holds the universe together.
Certainly we know more about the universe today, than in Elihu's day, but the theories of origin still disregard Gods creation.
We cannot explain why planet earth has life while other planets even our own moon have none. We cannot explain why several extinctions were followed by several rebirths of life, especially when the trillion-to-one odds against even one random start of life, has been followed by several random starts, and again, why nothing similar occurred on other planets.
And as we studied yesterday, why can we not see angels? Why can't we detect them, even as they observe us on a regular basis? Why can't we see or detect God?
And the easy answer to these questions is that they do not exist, therefore cannot be detected. That all of life is random and continually evolving. And that history will continue forever just as it has transpired in the past with technology and philosophies changing as man evolves. That everything has an answer that can be found in science, and that there is nothing in existence that cannot be discovered or have its secrets unraveled.
But in his simplest of questions, Elihu teaches us all that there are indeed questions to which man will never know or discover the answers. And that those questions can take on the form of the simplest of topics.
No matter how sophisticated man might become, his tower to knowledge will never cross over the line to the spiritual side of life.
Everything in the physical world is there for mans discovery and there for man to make use of, '… be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth…'
But of the spiritual side of life, man has no command or influence or access except through the work of Christ.
We may discover how various components of the universe function, even of how biological life functions, but we will never be able to reproduce these actions, nor create totally new or similar ones. Man cannot and never will know how God created everything out of nothing.
And of the spiritual side of life, that side of life which lies beyond deaths doorway, that side which lies beyond this physical world, no living person will ever figure out a way, on their own, to cross over and return.
