Job 38:18

Now He comes up to the surface. "Have you perceived the breadth of the earth?" What do you know about it? "Declare if you know it all."

"Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth? Declare, if you know all this" (v.18). In Job's day he surely did not know that the earth was formed as a huge ball turning in space. Even today we are told the earth is 25,000 miles around. Who can grasp how great that is? Scientists have learned a great deal about God's creation. Yet the more they learn, the clearer it becomes that their ignorance is far greater than their knowledge.

Does he know secret things? — "which belong to God." … Has he fully known the expanse of the earth — all that it contains? Does modern science really know it? … The Lord asks these questions not only of Job, whose knowledge was limited to his own day, but of people today.

Job had not a single answer to these questions, and if he had spoken his words would have been folly. … But what is the aim of the Lord in putting these questions? To show that God is greater than man, and to humble man. It was to bring Job to the true knowledge of himself that he needed, and to free him from the pride of his heart.

So it is clear that God is bringing all Job's proud talk to nothing. But He is not satisfied with showing how small man is by what is vast. He also takes up things we might think are small by comparison. … So it makes little difference whether we look at the greatest of God's works or at the least. Everywhere we meet something completely beyond the reach of man. … Job had even claimed to judge the moral depths of God. Yet he could not face, and had no real idea of, what God is in the smallest part of His universe.

It is enough to show what God said to overwhelm Job's self-confidence. His ignorance was great. His powerlessness was plain. He lacked the wisdom to enter even the outer works of God. And, after all, what was God speaking about? Earthly things. … Job cannot answer even one of these questions. In fact no one has answered them to this day, for all the boasting of science. If that is how it stands with earthly things, what about the heavenly? What about the eternal things? There we depend on God completely. We know nothing but what He tells us, and this is all our blessing.

What after all is human knowledge but a knowledge, as Socrates said, of our ignorance? … What is the key to all these questions? It is God, the true knowledge of Himself. Knowing Him, we know the Author and Source of all knowledge. Leave Him out of account, and the sum of all science is a blank wall, beyond which the hidden truth still lies.