In Job 38 God asked Job several questions. Among them, He asked if Job had been there when the foundations of the Earth were laid, or when the morning stars sang together. Was Job there when God enclosed the sea, and had Job searched its depths? Further on, God asked whether Job had seen the gates of death; was Job able to control the stars, or order the laws of the heavens?

The answer to all of these questions is, of course, no. You see, Job was speaking with confidence on subjects he didn’t fully understand. That’s why before grilling Job with rhetorical questions, God’s opening line of response is, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?”

That brings me to a question of my own: Have you ever noticed how confident science is about a lot of things? Science can come up with laws to describe principles of motion and matter and physics. But, like Job, it can only offer “words without knowledge.”

Human beings can no more lay the foundations of the Earth than control the mighty waters of the sea or change the weather. We are powerless when confronted with all these things…even with thousands of years of human history to draw on in which we have seen countless technological wonders and advances in science. Yet, we are powerless to do anything to stop the ravages of the elements and the finality of death.

There is not one of us who can escape death. But at dawn, two thousand years ago, three women made their way to a cold, dark tomb. That’s because just three days earlier someone very close to them had been executed in the most humiliating way imaginable…stripped, beaten, scourged, and finally…nailed to a cross. Not only were these women powerless to save this individual, but they were powerless to bring him back. So, they did what everyone in that day did; they brought burial spices; they came to anoint Him; they came to pay their last respects. This was it.

Or was it? They arrived and the stone, which blocked the entrance to the tomb, was rolled away. And instead of finding the broken body of this individual they loved, there was a young man there clothed in a long white robe saying, “He is risen, He is not here.”

Science can describe the rules, but science does not have the power to put them in place. Science can describe the “law of gravity” and “what” is happening when an object falls to the ground, but science still can’t explain why objects are attracted to one another. Science can point to decay and death, and make a scientific law about it, but science cannot make life, nor can it prevent life from ending.

But the same God who laid the foundations of the Earth, who makes the wind and the hail, who produces the lightning and ordains the laws of the universe, can suspend the curse on the Earth brought about by sin. It is this same God who raised His Son, Jesus Christ, to the astonishment, shock, and fear of those three women.

The time is coming when the curse will be suspended for all peoples over the face of the earth; when the God who has created all things will consummate them in a new beginning; when we shall see Him face to face, and those who by the Spirit of God have believed in His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, will enter into eternal glory; when death will be destroyed. And we “shall see Him in the flesh, ourselves, and not another” (Job 19). He is risen!

He is risen indeed, Hallelujah!

Amen.