Behold, God is great, and we know him not,

Neither can the number of his years be searched out.

For he maketh small the drops of water:
They pour down rain according to the vapour thereof:
Which the clouds do drop
And distil upon man abundantly.
Also can any understand the spreadings of the clouds,
Or the noise of his tabernacle?
Behold, he spreadeth his light upon it,
And covereth the bottom of the sea.
For by them judgeth he the people;
He giveth meat in abundance.
With clouds he covereth the light;
And commandeth it not to shine
By the cloud that cometh betwixt.
The noise thereof sheweth concerning it,
The cattle also concerning the vapour.
At this also my heart trembleth,
And is moved out of his place.
Hear attentively the noise of his voice,
And the sound that goeth out of his mouth.
He directeth it under the whole heaven,
And his lightning unto the ends of the earth.

After it a voice roareth:
He thundereth with the voice of his excellency;

And he will not stay them when his voice is heard.

God thundereth marvellously with his voice;

Great things doeth he, which we cannot comprehend.
For he saith to the snow, Be thou on the earth;

Likewise to the small rain,
And to the great rain of his strength.
He sealeth up the hand of every man;
That all men may know his work.
Then the beasts go into dens,
And remain in their places.
Out of the south cometh the whirlwind:
And cold out of the north.
By the breath of God frost is given:
And the breadth of the waters is straitened.
Also by watering he wearieth the thick cloud:
He scattereth his bright cloud:

And it is turned round about by his counsels:

That they may do whatsoever he commandeth them
Upon the face of the world in the earth.
He causeth it to come, whether for correction, Or for his land, or for mercy.—Job 36:26–37:13

God is great, and we know him not, and the number of his years cannot be searched out. Such is the doctrine of Elihu as he instructs Job and rebukes Job’s three friends. This is what Job forgot and what Job’s friends did not teach. God is great. He is incomprehensible in his majesty and glory. He inhabits eternity, and he cannot be searched out or comprehended by man. If Job had remembered that, he would not have complained of God’s dealings with him or demanded that God justify himself in his works with Job. If Job’s friends had understood that, they would not have spoken of God the thing that is not right.

Saying, “God is great,” is the same as saying, “God is God alone.” He is God, and the creature is not God. He is God, and man is not God. He is God, so he does what he wills in the earth and with the children of men. He is God, and he alone determines the eternal destinies of all men, whether elect or reprobate. He determines the course of the entire creation and brings creation to its eternally appointed end. He directs the lives of all men according to his good pleasure and for the revelation of his perfect sovereignty.

God is great. God is God. He is the reality behind all things; he works all things after the counsel of his own will; and he directs all things according to his sovereign and eternal counsel in order to realize and bring to pass his perfect purpose, for the glorification of his own name and the praise of his eternal covenant by the perfection of all things in Jesus Christ his Son.

As the demonstration of his doctrine, Elihu points to God as the God of weather.

Nothing is more ubiquitous in the life of man than the weather. Nothing is seemingly so ordinary. Men casually discuss the weather. Men watch and observe the weather. Men seek to predict the weather. Men bless and curse the weather. The weather powerfully controls man’s work and his life in the creation. No matter his technological advancement, man is dependent on a few inches of topsoil and the weather, for all men must eat. In the weather all men can see that God is great. Very few arrive at the doctrine of Elihu that God is great. Holding the truth down in unrighteousness, men fail to worship and to praise the wonderful God of weather and so to confess that God is great. In all their grumbling and complaining about the weather, men also fail to confess that God is great.

But, behold God! Elihu bids us to see, worship, confess, fear, acknowledge, believe, and humble ourselves before this awesome God. If the weather is mysterious, infinitely more mysterious is the God of the weather who is to be worshiped.

You must admit that weather is wonderful. Elihu calls our attention to the weather and many of the things that are connected with the weather: the gentle rain and the powerful storm, the clouds, the thunder and lightning, the snow and the ice that chill the ground and cover the seas. Weather in all its different forms is in view: weather as it is related to the changing of the seasons, weather as it brings food to man and beast, weather as it controls the lives of man and beasts.

The weather is marvelous. This is what Elihu says: “God thundereth marvellously with his voice; great things doeth he, which we cannot comprehend” (37:5). The word “marvellously” is miraculously. Because weather is the work of God, weather is marvelous. God does wonderful, mysterious, and miraculous things when he thunders with his voice. If that is true of the thunder, it is true of the lightning, the rain, the snow, the wind, the storms, and all the various forms of the weather. Those things are great, and we cannot comprehend them or the one who does them.

Being wonderful, these things always point away from themselves to the reality that stands behind them: God!

Wonderful weather! Wonderful God!

The origin of weather was not in the first creation but at the flood. Prior to the flood there was no rain, but dew watered the ground, and waters were above the earth and below the earth reserved by God for the judgment of the flood. At the flood God opened the windows of heaven and the fountains of the deep, and waters covered the whole earth and destroyed the world that then was, and another form of creation was born out of the ruins of that creation. That new world was a world of wonderful weather. So God said to Noah, “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” (Gen. 8:22).

Weather! Seasons! While the earth remains!

Listen to the wise man’s wonder at the weather. Men follow the weather, but none can outdo Elihu in his fascination with the weather. He sees God draw up the moisture from the earth to make the clouds, which he spreads around wherever he wills, and he distills their moisture as rain that he pours back down on the earth abundantly. Let me give you a few figures. One inch of rain falling from the clouds on one square mile of land equals around seventeen million gallons of water.

Abundantly!

Later Elihu says that God burdens the clouds with rain. The average lazy-summer-day cloud weighs about one million pounds. What then of a storm cloud? God makes enormous clouds that reach to the heights. “Who,” asks Elihu, “can understand the spreading, or billowing, of God’s clouds?”

The clouds that flash with lightning and roll with great crashes of thunder!

The noise of God’s tabernacle!

The sound of God’s voice!

These are the sounds that go out of God’s mouth. He shouts in the thunder. He casts out his lightnings, and he roars with his voice. He brings the small rain—gentle and pleasant—and sends the great rain of his strength—violent and brutal—that stops man in his tracks, makes all his activities to cease, and causes the beasts to scurry into their dens and caves and lairs for cover. Then all men in particular see the hand and hear the voice of God! He brings a whirlwind out of the south and bitter cold out of the north. He blows with his breath and covers the ground with hoarfrost and seals up the waters under ice.

That weather—gentle and violent, expected and unexpected, pleasant and destructive—calls the attention of all to the God of the weather. In that weather God declares plainly and shows convincing evidence that he alone is God, so that all men see in the pleasant April shower and in the terrible summer storm the eternal power and Godhead of God.

God speaks in all these things, so his Word is in these things; and God blows with his breath, so his Spirit is in all these things. He is the God of the Word and Spirit, who are God and who command the weather as God. So also he is the triune God. He is the God who made all things by the Word and Spirit and who upholds and governs all things by that almighty Word and Spirit. By the Word of Jehovah were the heavens made and all the hosts of them by the Breath of his mouth. So he also still speaks, and it is done; he breathes, and it stands fast. God speaks. God breathes. He is the living God because he is the triune God. Thus Elihu speaks not only of how God controls the weather but also of who God is. The wonderful God of weather is the only true God, the living God, the triune God, and the maker of heaven and earth.

If you and I cannot hear God speaking in the storms, wind, rain, snow, ice, fire, gales, hurricanes, and tornadoes, we are unbelieving.

And that is what man is by nature. Man by nature is more ignorant than a beast. Elihu says that by storms God announces his presence to the cattle of the field: “The noise thereof sheweth concerning it, the cattle also concerning the vapour” (Job 36:33). This means that God announces his presence with clouds, storms, winds, flashes of lightning, and crashes of thunder; and even the brute beasts tremble at the presence of God.

“The clouds,” says the wise man, “are God’s tabernacle”—a little tent that he pitches for himself in some part of the world, where he makes his presence known and by which all men see that he is God and that he must be worshiped.

But man holds that truth under in unrighteousness. Understand that men behold God’s works. Elihu makes that plain. Men see very plainly that the weather is the work of God. Men see the weather, and men see that God is the God of weather, that he sends it, controls it, and does his pleasure by means of it. But being full of hatred toward God, man will not worship God. Man will not acknowledge God, tremble before him, confess him to be the only, true God, will not seek him or believe in him.

That is because of the spiritual state of man’s heart. Elihu says, “My heart trembleth, and is moved out of his place” (37:1). This is a revelation of the source of the believer’s worship before the God of the storm, the wonderful God of weather. God has regenerated the believer’s heart, so that he not only sees God’s mighty works but also worships God on account of them. But the unbeliever does not tremble, not with the trembling of faith. He sees that weather is the work of God; and in his hatred toward God, the unbeliever denies it. He creates an idol. He said, “Baal,” if he was a Canaanite. If he is a modern and sophisticated Canaanite—all of whom are more wicked and less excusable than the Canaanites of Sodom and Gomorrah or of Tyre and Zidon—he says, “Mother nature,” or “Evolution,” or “Climate change,” or “Global warming”! These are all his idols. If he is a corrupt and unbelieving Israelite who has departed from God, he says, “Theistic evolution.” But it is the same wicked idol and the same ignorant and inexcusable folly of seeing God and denying that God is or that he must be worshiped and changing the glory of God into some vain idol of man’s vainer imagination.

This is clear in man’s very reporting of the weather, which is thoroughly atheistic. Can you imagine a biblical, spiritual weather report? God drew up the water from the earth in British Columbia, and he sent down a deluge on Dubuque, Iowa. God gathered the moisture from Lake Michigan, sent forth his cold blast, and caused ten inches of snow in Grand Rapids, Michigan. God formed the massive storm in the far north and sent it crashing into the Midwest with hurricane force winds, piles of snow or torrents of rain, and power outages all around. But man does not say that because he is an ignorant, malicious hater of God.

Think of what we—you and I—do with the weather. “It is raining.”

It is raining?

How often do we worship God for the weather? Perhaps when it is fair, but what do we do when the weather is foul? We complain, gripe, criticize—yes, we criticize the weather that God chose and decreed for that day. We are that bold and haughty.

Behold, God is great! That is what man will not say in light of the weather. Every day he is surrounded by the testimony of the weather—of the changing temperature, the changing wind, the changing season, the changing humidity, the changing barometric pressure. With every sunrise, every storm, every cloud, and every drop of rain, man is confronted with this truth, this cry of the entire creation—even the brute beasts rebuke man’s inexcusable madness—“Behold, God is great!”

But man will not say that. He is so ignorant, so wicked, and so full of hatred toward God that man will not even say that in the face of a mighty hurricane, a terrible thunderstorm, or a mighty gale that makes a mockery of all man’s buildings. When the beasts of the forests and the animals of the world retreat into their dens and caves and lairs before the face of God, man foolishly and contumaciously stands and defies God.

Surely, then, if man will not behold God and say, “God is great in the weather,” man is also ignorant of God’s purposes with the weather.

Weather is not only the work of God, but weather is also the work of God by which he accomplishes his wonderful purposes according to his perfect will. The wise man says, “It is turned round about by his counsels: that they may do whatsoever he commandeth them upon the face of the world in the earth” (37:12). By the words “upon the face of the world in the earth,” Elihu emphasizes God’s works in the whole world. Everywhere in the world he works this. “It” refers to “his bright cloud” in verse 11: “Also by watering he wearieth the thick cloud: he scattereth his bright cloud.” That is a flashing and thundering storm cloud. So Elihu has in view all the phenomena of the weather. God turns them by his counsels. Eternally, he decreed the weather and every aspect of that weather.

God’s eternal counsel is also his living command, so that he executes his eternal decree in the weather in order to accomplish and bring to pass his sovereign will. In every drop of rain, every bolt of lightning, every snowflake, every crash of thunder is the work of God according to his eternal decree.

And verse 13 says that God “causeth it to come.” This means that God causes the weather to hit the mark. Like an arrow shot by a skilled archer hits the target, so the weather as decreed by God and carried out by God hits its mark and does exactly what he willed with it. God is a divine archer who hits his mark every time. With every raindrop and every lightning bolt and every snowflake and every ice crystal, he hits his mark. They fall precisely where he ordained, and they serve precisely the purpose that he decreed. He certainly and infallibly brings to pass what he determined to do with the weather.

So what does the text say is God’s will and the reason he brings all this wonderful weather?

“That all men may know his work” (37:7). God declares himself every day to be God alone. He declares that to the ends of the earth. He declares that he is almighty, that he is excellent in power, that he is mighty in judgment and plenteous in justice, that he will not afflict, and that he alone must be worshiped. God mightily declares his presence in order that all men may know his works. And this means that all men know them, not in order that they acknowledge and praise God but that they be without excuse in the day of judgment for their failure to worship him on account of their inexcusable folly, malice, and wickedness.

“By them judgeth he the people” (36:31). “The people” means nations. “Them” refers to the lightning and thus also to all the different phenomena of a storm. So, for instance, “them” refers to the wind, the rain, the lightning and thunder, the snow and the lack thereof. The God of weather is not some local, tribal, or national deity; he is the God of the whole earth. And he constantly judges by means of the weather. This is also in harmony with the word of Elihu: “Behold God! He is great!” The word great is only ever used in scripture of God, and it means that he is an absolute sovereign. He does among the nations and among men what he willed and decreed. Our God is the governor of the whole world. Part of that government is his judgment among the nations. He judges by the storms; the winds; the rain; the thunder; the lightning; and the hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons that he sends on the earth.

And notice that in parallel with this, God feeds: “He giveth meat in abundance” (36:31). God judges by feeding too. He judges the wicked by feeding in his wrath and hot displeasure. Being angry with the wicked every day, he judges by giving them many things through excellent weather and so also sets them in slippery places in order to cast them down to destruction.

Regarding the believer and God’s people, he judges by feeding because he gives them food and drink in his favor and wonderful grace. But he judges in feeding! Always with every drop of rain, he judges by feeding, giving meat in abundance. Does that not also bring up the famine? For when God gives abundance here and there, he also withholds abundance here and there. Yet in fruitful years or barren, he judges, and that too according to his sovereign counsel of election and reprobation. To the elect, fruitful years and famine always come with the blessing of God. To the reprobate, fruitful years and famine always come with the cursing of God.

And the wise man focuses on this purpose of God with the weather: with every drop of rain in the whole world and every snowflake, God is mindful of his people and his covenant that embraces the entire creation. Elihu speaks of this in verse 13. God causes the weather—the storm, the gentle rain or the flood of his power, the blast of the cold or the gentle warm breezes, the changing of the seasons, the whirlwind, the thunderheads, and the hurricanes and gales—“to come, whether for correction, or for his land, or for mercy.”

These words come to the heart of God’s purpose in the weather and in all that he does with the seasons and the rains. The heart of that purpose of God is his covenant. This is what the word “mercy” indicates. That word speaks of God’s steadfast, covenant love for his people. All that he does in the world—now applied specifically to the weather—has in view his people, his covenant, and his promised mercy to them. Sometimes, by his work he has in view their correction. The word “correction” is the word for a rod. Fathers use rods in mercy to correct their children.

And God’s purpose in the weather is also for “his land.” This means the creation. God’s land is his creation, and he has a covenant that encompasses the entire creation, so that he will care for the creation and his people in that creation until he makes that creation perfect in the new heavens and the new earth. Everything God does in the weather is done in mercy, for his covenant, for correction, and for his land.

And that because God judged us in Jesus Christ. The storm is not for our destruction but for our good; the famine is not for our destruction but for our good; the rain, the ice, and the snow and all that God works in the world by them do not come for our destruction and with a curse because the storm of God’s wrath broke on Jesus Christ and cursed him for our sakes. And this Jesus Christ God also raised up and made Lord of all, by whom God rules and governs all things for his people’s sake. For this reason we worship instead of defying in hate-filled fear the God of the weather.

Now does not your heart tremble then, and is it not moved out of its place? Elihu trembled when God announced his presence in a storm. Elihu says regarding everything he observed of God’s dealings in the weather, “Behold God; God is great!” Elihu asks, “Who can know God, and can the number of his years be searched out?” Elihu says that only in Jesus Christ. Elihu says that in worshipful awe and in the knowledge that he was judged righteous in Christ. Otherwise, the God of weather must terrify. We cannot even comprehend all that he does in one aspect of creation that we call the weather. He makes every snowflake unique, trillions of raindrops, clouds manifold, and the ice. Then to believe that he does all these things with Christ and his people at the heart of all of them. Surely, he does things marvelously and things that we cannot comprehend.

And if we cannot comprehend God’s works, how much more is this not true concerning him who works all these things after the counsel of his own will and which things are thus at his command in order to bring to pass what he decreed?

How great a God in mercy is he. That in all of these mighty and wonderful and incomprehensible things that he does in the world of weather, he causes them all to come, and he infallibly hits his mark, whether for judgment, for correction, for his land, or for mercy. He is ever mindful of his covenant and his covenant people.

Oh, how small is man. Yet this God has taken thought for his people. He is ever mindful of his people. He does all things in the world—now especially in the weather— for his people and for his own covenant, to bring it to perfection in the new heavens.

And so, we worship this God. We humble ourselves before him. We call on him. We expect all good from him. We believe that since he is our God and our Father that he will provide us with all things necessary for soul and body.