Who Teaches Like God?

Job 36:16-33

16 "Indeed He would have brought you out of dire distress,
Into a broad place where there is no restraint;
And what is set on your table would be full of richness.

17 But you are filled with the judgment due the wicked;
Judgment and justice take hold of you.

18 Because there is wrath, beware lest He take you away with one blow;
For a large ransom would not help you avoid it.

19 Will your riches,
Or all the mighty forces,
Keep you from distress?

20 Do not desire the night,
When people are cut off in their place.

21 Take heed, do not turn to iniquity,
For you have chosen this rather than affliction.

22 "Behold, God is exalted by His power;
Who teaches like Him?

23 Who has assigned Him His way,
Or who has said, 'You have done wrong'?

24 "Remember to magnify His work,
Of which men have sung.
25 Everyone has seen it;
Man looks on it from afar.

26 "Behold, God is great, and we do not know Him;
Nor can the number of His years be discovered.

27 For He draws up drops of water,
Which distill as rain from the mist,
28 Which the clouds drop down
And pour abundantly on man.

29 Indeed, can anyone understand the spreading of clouds,
The thunder from His canopy?
30 Look, He scatters His light upon it,
And covers the depths of the sea.

31 For by these He judges the peoples;
He gives food in abundance.

32 He covers His hands with lightning,
And commands it to strike.
33 His thunder declares it,
The cattle also, concerning the rising storm.

Elihu continues to extol God’s majesty and asks the question, ‘Who teaches like Him?”  He tells Job (and by example and principle, all who read this) that justice by judgment for presumptuous sin has kept him from deliverance so far in Job’s distress.  Fear of God was lacking according to His word in verse 18 here.  Neither great riches or a powerful army can deliver from adversity, nor hiding in the darkness of nighttime.  Don’t choose sin when affliction comes, and remember that God teaches us in His way, a way unlike any other could or would do.  There is none like Him, and His ways are past finding out (Job 9:10, Romans 11:33).  Nobody can tell Him how to run the universe or themselves, and nobody can correct Him for doing wrong according to their own standards (Psalm 115:3), so we should listen and learn from Him as He works in His ways and we follow in obedience.  We should magnify His name and understand His eternality.  He has created this world, this universe, to be sustainable by His design.  We only can understand the edges of His ways in how everything works, and in how He rules to judge righteously and with absolute justice, no matter how things appear in our limited perspective.  The lesson here is for us to hear what Job did, and to take it to heart as well.  This implies that we learn from God in our own adversity and distressing circumstances.  He is sovereign and good, and we should trust and follow in willing obedience to His word, knowing His love and care for His children, which we are (1 John 3:1-3).  Who teaches like God?