When God is Nowhere to Be Found

Text: Job 23

 

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Dear people of God,

If you have ever lain in a hospital bed, staring at the ceiling, and prayed for a sign of God’s presence, only to be met with the sterile silence…
If you have ever sat in a car after a devastating loss, your hands gripping the steering wheel, and cried out “Why?” and heard nothing but the echo of your own sobs…
If you have ever felt the crushing weight of a depression or an anxiety that no pious platitude could lift, and wondered if God had simply left the building…

Then you know the book of Job. And you know the deep, aching territory of the 23rd chapter.

For weeks now, Job’s friends have been his preachers. They have come with their tidy theology, their air-tight system of cause and effect. “Job,” they say, “God is just. Therefore, if you are suffering, you must have sinned. Repent, and your fortunes will be restored.” It is a theology of glory, a theology that demands God make sense on our terms. It is a theology that looks for God only in strength, in blessing, and in obvious answers.

But Job’s experience screams against it. He knows his own heart. He knows he is not the secret sinner they make him out to be. And so, in our text today, he does not answer his friends directly. Instead, he turns from them and speaks a soliloquy of aching faith into the seemingly empty heavens. He teaches us what it is to preach to ourselves when God is nowhere to be found.

His first word is a word of Longing. “Oh, that I knew where I might find him!” Job doesn’t want to run from God; he is desperate to run to Him. He’s not looking for a miracle or a payment; he’s looking for a person. “I would come even to his seat! I would lay my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments.” This is stunning faith! He believes, he truly believes, that if he could just get a hearing, the God of justice would listen. “Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? No; he would pay attention to me.” Job’s faith in God’s character is stronger than the circumstances that seem to deny it.

But then comes the second word: Absence. “Behold, I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I do not perceive him; on the left hand when he is working, I do not behold him; he turns to the right hand, but I cannot see him.” This is the agony of the God who hides Himself, the Deus Absconditus. Job searches every compass point, every dimension of his life. He is certain God is at work, but he cannot see Him, cannot hear Him, cannot feel Him. This is the central pain of his suffering—not the sores, not the loss, but the silence. It is a silence every one of us has known.

And it is in the crushing weight of that silence that Job speaks one of the most magnificent sentences of faith in all of Scripture. It is the third word: Confession. “But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.”

My friends, this is not a theology of glory. This is a theology of the cross. A theology of the cross looks for God precisely where He seems most hidden. It trusts His promise over our perception. It clings to the character of God revealed in His Word when His actions in the world feel confusing and contrary.

Job cannot see God. He cannot find God. But he clings to what he knows: “He knows me.” In the darkness, he trusts that God’s omniscient eye is upon him. And then he speaks that incredible phrase of hope: “When he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.” The word “tried” here is a refiner’s word. A refiner heats the silver ore in a crucible until the impurities, the dross, rise to the top so he can skim them off. How does the refiner know when the process is done? When he can see his own face reflected clearly in the pure, liquid metal.

Job is beginning to see that this suffering is not punishment, but purification. It is not God’s anger, but His intense, focused attention. The purpose is not to destroy him, but to refine him, to burn away all the false foundations of faith—faith in blessings, faith in health, faith in a simple system—until all that is left is faith in God alone. The Refiner is at work, even when He cannot be seen in the smoke of the furnace.

But where, oh where, can we find this God? Where can we see His face and know for certain that He is for us and not against us? Job longed for God’s seat of judgment, but he couldn’t find it.

We know where it is.

We find our answer not in the whirlwind, but on a hill called Golgotha. We find it not in a powerful king, but in a crucified man. This is how God answers Job’s cry, and ours. He doesn’t give a philosophical explanation for suffering. He gives us His Son. In Jesus Christ, the God who seemed hidden comes out into the open. On the cross, Jesus entered into the ultimate God-forsakenness—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”—so that you would never, ever be forsaken. He was plunged into the silence so that you could be called children of God. He was refined in the ultimate furnace of God’s wrath against sin so that you would come out as gold.

You don’t have to find God, because in Christ, God has found you. In your baptism, He has named you and claimed you. Your case has already been pleaded by your Advocate, Jesus Christ the righteous one. You are acquitted. You are declared righteous.

So what do we do, then, in the daily grind, when the silence feels overwhelming and God seems hidden? We do what Job did: we preach the promise to our own hearts. We clothe ourselves in our baptismal identity every single day.

When the doctor’s report comes and the fear is real, touch your forehead and remember the cross marked there. In that moment, say to yourself: “I am baptized. God knows me. He will bring me through.”
When the grief hits you out of nowhere, and the absence is a physical ache, open your Bible to a promise—just one, like “I will never leave you nor forsake you”—and speak it out loud. Preach it to your own despairing heart.
When you feel the weight of your own failure and feel anything but golden, come to this table. Take the bread, drink the cup. Here is God’s tangible, taste-able promise that His body was broken and His blood was shed for you. For the forgiveness of your sins.

This is a daily imperative: Cling to what is true over what you feel. Cling to your baptism. Cling to His Word. Cling to His Supper. These are the places where the God who seems hidden has promised, without fail, to be found for you. He has sworn it by the cross. And that, dear friends, is a promise you can live by today, and every day.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.