We will study a principle that is absolutely indispensable—a principle that we cannot take for granted, a principle we cannot live without. It is not new to you; I know that. But I need to repeat it for myself, and I think we all need to hear it again and again: total reliance upon God’s Holy Spirit.
This is the Lord’s book. Only the Holy Spirit can show us Christ. If we study the Bible and come only from the human side—just getting the academics—we are going to become prouder and prouder, because knowledge puffs up. We need the Lord, and God alone can reveal Him. He has promised that if we would come as little children, He would meet with us.
I want to share a passage from Isaiah before we pray together and look at what is on my heart to share. It is from Isaiah 41:17.
The afflicted and the needy are seeking water, and there is none,
And their tongue is parched with thirst;
I, the Lord, will answer them Myself.
As the God of Israel, I will not forsake them.
I will open rivers on the bare heights,
And springs in the midst of the valleys.
I will make the wilderness a pool of water,
And the dry land fountains of water.
I count it a high privilege to be able to represent the Lord Jesus and share from His Word. But according to that passage, and many others, you are not going to get any blessing because I am sharing tonight. You are not going to get any blessing because someone hands out an outline.
By the way, that is not my outline. That is the outline of the Book of Job. Do not worry about it; we are not going to be here till next week.
Just because I might have some illustrations, that is not what communicates the truth. This precious word says, “If you are thirsty, I, the Lord, will answer them Myself.” He is the One who satisfies thirst. So we praise the Lord for the privilege, but we know it is the Lord who must minister.
So, with that in mind, I am going to ask you to bow with me, please, and commit our time to the Lord. Then we will open His precious book.
Our heavenly Father,
We are so thankful for the Holy Spirit,
Who lives in our hearts,
Who searches the depths of God
And reveals unto us the very life of Christ.We pray this evening that, by Your grace,
You might open our hearts and our eyes,
That we might behold the Lord Jesus in a living way.
Take us beyond the letter. Show us Yourself.We know when we see You, we will be like You.
So we trust You now to unveil Yourself to us.
You know every heart. You know every need.
You know every hunger and every capacity.We believe You have brought us here,
And now we pray that You would meet with us
And show us our Lord Jesus Christ.Thank You in advance that You have already prepared us,
That You are doing it now,
And that You are going to continue to do it throughout the weekend.
Meet us where we are.
Take us, we pray, where You would have us.We ask in the matchless name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Well, as you know, we are going to look together to behold the Lord in His revelation of Himself in the Book of Job. So, without introduction, I am going to ask you to turn to the end of Job 42, verses 5 and 6.
This will be the key passage. This is the turning point. This is the goal of the book.
I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear;
But now mine eye seeth Thee.
Wherefore I abhor myself,
And repent in dust and ashes.
That is where we are headed. God aiding, God assisting, that is where we are going to go: “Mine eye seeth Thee.”
Now, I do not know what your background is or how much you have studied this wonderful book, if you have studied it at all. You know there are many approaches to the Book of Job. I do not know how acquainted you are with the man Job. There are many approaches to the man as well.
Let me give you some of the ideas my commentators had. They say this is the theme of Job.
Some say it is God’s answer to the problem of suffering—or, more particularly, why the righteous suffer. God gives His answer to the mysteries of suffering. Others say the book is God’s revelation of His blessings on the afflicted.
One commentator I read said the message of the book is the triumph of patience and faith. Another says it is victory over Satan and over self-righteousness.
Since the book ends with the double blessing—and that is the blessing of the firstborn—many say this is a book about sonship, about maturing through the cross to the place where you enter into the double blessing.
Others teach that it is just a picture of Christ. Job, the righteous sufferer, is a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ, the righteous sufferer.
Some say it is a book that shows the transcendence of God, the sovereignty of God, and how ineffable He is. You remember some of those great descriptions.
I personally think that Job 42:2 is the greatest single verse on the sovereignty of God in the Bible:
I know that Thou canst do all things,
And that no purpose of Thine can be restrained.
What a wonderful verse that is. That verse has helped me so much to make the sovereignty of God a mighty reality in my life.
For a while, I found myself half afraid to believe it. You know how you come to a verse and say, “Well, I know that is wonderful, but maybe it is too good to be true.” I was reluctant to pull out all the stops and just believe that with all my heart.
I discovered that the devil tries to steal God’s blessing from you by trying to make you think that one truth contradicts another truth. So you have to get the balance before you can embrace the truth of God. He weakens God’s truth by causing you to be afraid to claim it.
Satan says, “Now, do not believe in God’s sovereignty fully. You have to tie that in with man’s responsibility. Until you can get those things balanced, you cannot embrace it.”
I will tell you, brothers, it is enough to know it ties together. God has tied it together. You say, “Well, I cannot explain it.” I cannot either, and I am not going to try to explain it.
When I come to a verse like that, I believe it with all my heart. When I come to a verse on man’s responsibility, I believe it with all my heart. Do not let the devil weaken any passage like that. The devil says, “Yes, that is a good truth, but do not believe it too much.” Well, I am telling you, believe it too much. When you see a passage like that, ask the Lord to give it to you and embrace it. That is a resting place.
Now, I suppose the theme of Job—and if God enables me to get the theme of the book before your heart tonight in the introduction, I feel like I have released my burden—that is what this is all about. I just want to show you what I think the Holy Spirit intends as the theme of this marvelous book.
But I suppose that would depend on how you view the man.
I have read some commentators who said Job never existed, that he is not a historical character. He is just a poetic figure of speech, an allegory, and the whole thing is an allegory. Well, I hope you do not believe that.
A few people think—and I was surprised at some of them; I will not name them because otherwise I respect their comments, but I had a little problem with this—that at the beginning of the book Job is not even saved. He is not a believer in the Lord. They say he does not get saved until the verse we read: “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth Thee.”
You say, “But does it not say he feared the Lord? Does it not say he was perfect?” Then they point out, “Yes, but it says that about Cornelius, that he feared the Lord before he heard words by which he would be saved; and about Saul before he became Paul—according to the law, perfect, righteous, and so on.”
So they say this is just a self-righteous sinner who finally gets saved at the end of the book. Others say he is self-righteous, but he is not a self-righteous sinner. He is a self-righteous believer, and he needs to come to the place where he dies to self, dies to self-righteousness, and finally beholds the Lord.
I do not know if you have read G. Campbell Morgan’s book on Job. He takes a different tack. He believes that the Book of Job is the heart of man, and there are deep cries—cries that the debates and arguments can express. Those cries can only be met in the New Testament by the incarnation of our Lord Jesus.
For example, Job 9:2 asks, “How can a man be right with God?” He says that is a deep cry that man has been asking, and only Jesus can answer it.
Then, in Job 14:14:
If a man die, shall he live again?
There is a cry for redemption, for resurrection, and for eternity.
And in Job 9:32–33, Job cries for a daysman—you know, the umpire. He says, “Oh, if there were only somebody who could get us together, who could put one hand on God’s shoulder and one hand on man’s shoulder and bring God and man together.” It is a cry for a mediator.
In the person of our Lord Jesus, He not only put one hand on God and one hand on man; He became God-man. You talk about bringing God and man together in His own person.
So G. Campbell Morgan says there are these cries:
I know that my Redeemer liveth,
And someday I will stand;
In my flesh I will see God.
He even takes Job 3, where Job condemns his birth and wishes he had never been born, and says that is just a cry for a new birth. Job is crying out of death on the natural birth and crying for a new birth, and so on.
Well, is that what Job is about? Is it just prophecy in poetry, anticipating the day when our Lord Jesus will tell us about justification, resurrection, a virgin birth, a Mediator between God and man, and eternal life? Is Job asking the heart questions that seem to be latent in all humanity, crying out to know these things, answered only in Christ?
Certainly that is there.
How will we look at the book? Technically, almost everyone outlines the book the same way, and that is the outline I have given you. It is one of the easiest books in the Bible to outline.
I do not want to waste precious time with cold facts. That is why I handed that out. You can do what you want with it, but we will hardly refer to it at all. I am not using that as an outline; I just wanted you to see how the book is arranged.
I do not want to get involved in the controversies of the book. You did not come here for that. You came to see Jesus, did you not? That is why I came. I came to see the Lord and present the Lord.
You know, when you study the Book of Job, people ask, “Who wrote it?” A bunch of people say Moses wrote it; some say Job wrote it; some say Elihu wrote it; some say Isaiah wrote it. Then someone says, “You do not know how to study. Solomon wrote that book.” Another says, “Do not you know Hezekiah wrote that book?”
There are arguments on all of these. Brothers, I do not care who the human author of the book was. I know who wrote the book, and I think you know who wrote the book.
Was it written early in Abraham’s day, or was it written just before the captivity? I will leave that for you theologians and you hermeneutists to iron out. Was Elihu Abraham’s nephew? There is a whole bunch written on that. I will leave that for you to discover.
This weekend, God helping, I want to tell the story in the simplest words I know how. The secret of God is in the simple telling of the story. We are going to hear the simple story.
The more you get into the heart of the story, the more the distinctive message will come before your heart. Then, God helping us, we will be able to embrace that.
Now, in an introduction lesson, I am going to be making many references to the Book of Job. Some of you may be able to turn your pages quickly enough and follow along, or you can just trust me with the references.
I am quoting from the New American Standard, sometimes twice from King James, once from Darby. You will be able to pick some of that up, or you can get the tape later and look up the verses. Or, if you want, I will send you a set of notes. It does not matter. The point is, we are just going to look at Job as God has given it to us.
Let me start by showing you Job at the beginning of the book and Job at the end of the story.
What do we know about Job at the beginning of the book? Well, you are only one verse deep, and you have God’s opinion of him:
There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job;
And that man was blameless, upright,
Fearing God and turning away from evil.
So, we know something about the man in the very first verse. He was perfect—complete—upright. The Hebrew word means he was straight, fearing God and turning away from evil.
Glance at Job 1:8, please:
The Lord said to Satan,
“Have you considered My servant Job?
For there is no one like him on the earth,
A blameless and upright man,
Fearing God and turning away from evil.”
God calls attention to him. There is nobody like him. If you believe the book was written early in Abraham’s day, and there is no one like Job on the earth, that means even Abraham was not like Job. If it was written then, Melchizedek and other people were on the earth. This is quite a man.
We know he was a family man from Job 1:2. He had seven sons and three daughters. We know he was concerned about their spiritual welfare. Job 1:5 says:
When the days of feasting had completed their cycle,
Job would send and consecrate them,
Rising up early in the morning
And offering burnt offerings according to the number of them all.
For Job said, “Perhaps my sons have sinned
And cursed God in their hearts.”
Thus Job did continually.
We know he went through a lot. You know that from the record of Job—how he suffered, and so on. James 5:11 is the only time Job is mentioned in the New Testament:
You have heard of the endurance of Job,
And have seen the outcome of the Lord.
That is, the purpose God had in view.
Listen to these verses, which illustrate the faith of this man.
When he lost his possessions and his ten children, he said these words in Job 1:21:
Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
And naked I shall return there.
The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
One of my commentators said, “He did not mean that. He was in shock.” He said Job was in shock because he lost everything, and praising the Lord was his custom, so he just did that. Then, when he had seven days to think about it, he changed his mind.
He was not in shock. He worshiped the Lord. He worshiped the Lord.
Then, when he lost his health, and his life partner in frustration said, “Curse God and die,” Job 2:10 records his response:
Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh.
Shall we indeed accept good from God
And not accept adversity?
And in all this, Job did not sin with his lips.
Do not read this, “La, la, la.” When trouble was heaped upon trouble, and man is prone to vent all his frustrations, Job said in Job 6:10:
It is still my consolation,
And I rejoice in unsparing pain,
That I have not denied the words of the Holy One.
When he was very deep in his sorrow, deep into the book—even when he thought God was his enemy—Job 13:15 says:
Though He slay me, I will hope in Him.
Nevertheless, I will argue my ways before Him.
We are all familiar with his declaration in Job 19:25–27:
As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,
And at the last He will take His stand on the earth.
Even after my skin is destroyed,
Yet from my flesh I shall see God;
Whom I myself shall behold,
Whom my eyes will see, and not another.
My heart faints within me.
Then, when we are very deep into the book, Job 23:10 says:
He knows the way I take;
When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.
I tell you, the Bible says a lot about this man. He is called the greatest of all the men of the East—not only in wealth, for he was very wealthy, but this Gentile, do not forget Job was a Gentile, had come a long way in his knowledge of God.
That is how the book begins: a man who was perfect, upright, fearing God, turning away from evil; a family man; a priest in his own family; worshiping the Lord under severe trial; trusting even under the heavy hand of God; and knowing that, in the end, he would emerge as gold.
Now look at the end of the book, Job 42:6:
Therefore I retract,
And I repent in dust and ashes.
I like to put those two things together: Job was perfect; Job repented. Perfect men need to repent. Job is an illustration of that.
Do not think, dear brothers, that you will ever come to the place where you have arrived and do not need to repent, or where I have arrived and do not need to repent before God. We need to see the Lord at all times.
The Book of Job deals, I think, with those who have come pretty far in their heart knowledge of God, and yet they needed their eyes opened again. After all that was said, they needed their eyes opened again to enter into all that is meant when Job says, “Now mine eye seeth Thee.”
What do perfect men need to repent of? Well, we will tell you that when we come to the close and examine Job’s repentance. But right now, I just want you to know that perfect men need to repent.
That sentence does not contradict the truth that every Christian is complete in Christ. There is no contradiction there at all. Our capacity for fullness and completeness increases with every revelation of God. I can be full today and more full tomorrow; totally surrendered today and more surrendered tomorrow, because our capacity increases as we see the Lord.
Now let me, God assisting, try to get the theme of this marvelous book before your heart. If I can accomplish that, then that is the burden on my heart this evening.
I want to begin where Job did not begin. The book begins there, but not the man. I want to start with the scene he never got to see: that scene in heaven in Job 1—Satan’s appearance in heaven and the contest between God and Satan.
One has said that this was a spiritual war between God and Satan, and Job was just the battlefield of that war. Some have said that the greatest battlefield in the world is that famous plain of Esdraelon in Israel, which goes about forty miles and where many battles have been fought.
But I will tell you another battlefield probably greater than that: your heart and my heart; your soul and my soul. The war of Genesis 3:15 goes on all the time against the seed of the woman.
I am going to ask you to follow along as we read Job 1:6–12:
Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord,
And Satan also came among them.The Lord said to Satan, “From where do you come?”
Then Satan answered the Lord and said,
“From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.”The Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job?
For there is no one like him on the earth,
A blameless and upright man,
Fearing God and turning away from evil.”Then Satan answered the Lord, “Does Job fear God for nothing?
Have You not made a hedge about him and his house
And all that he has, on every side?
You have blessed the work of his hands,
And his possessions have increased in the land.
But put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has;
He will surely curse You to Your face.”Then the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power;
Only do not put forth your hand on him.”So Satan departed from the presence of the Lord.
I believe the theme of the book was born in the heavenlies, in that scene. Something took place there, and God has given us this marvelous book as an answer to that.
Again, I am going to pass by the theology of that meeting, and Satan coming into heaven. You can figure all that out. The point I want to make is that, on the day when God called Satan’s attention to His servant Job, Satan the accuser made a double insinuation.
He made an insinuation about Job, and he made an insinuation about God.
What was that double insinuation? Once again, Job 1:9–10:
Satan answered the Lord, “Does Job fear God for nothing?
Have You not made a hedge about him,
And his house, and all that he has, on every side?”
The insinuation against Job is this: God is just a purveyor. He is just a giver of gifts. God is busy dumping blessings on Job, and that is why Job serves Him. There is no other reason. He is a mercenary. He is a hireling. He is in it for the money.
According to Satan, to Job God was just a cosmic bellboy—someone to carry his bags, run his errands, and do what he wanted. He was a patron saint, someone just trying to take care of Job and protect him: a glorified Santa Claus, hedged around with every blessing.
Satan said, “You take that hedge down. You will see: he will curse You. He will curse You to Your face. It is all about the money. It is all about what You have given him.”
Satan is claiming that Job is the kind of friend Solomon mentioned in Proverbs 19:4:
Wealth adds many friends.
Well, you know what kind of friends those are. That is what Satan is saying. “That is why You have a friend. He sticks close to the fat pocketbook. He wants to be Your friend because You are so generous.”
I think Satan made a point—not about Job, but about a lot of people. I think we would be amazed at how true that is of so many. I wonder if, when God shows us our hearts tonight, it would not be at least partially true about some of us.
I am not saying we are in it for the money. But how much emphasis do we put on God’s blessing? I wonder if Satan was not trying to make that point.
From that same passage, Job 1:9–11, Satan makes an insinuation about God. Here is the insinuation: the Lord is not wonderful enough in Himself, apart from His gifts. He is not intrinsically lovely. He is not desirable to be served, loved, honored, worshiped, and adored.
There is no attraction in God at all apart from His gifts. That is what Satan was insinuating. Nobody would just choose God if God did not have a carrot to entice them.
He said, “Not only would they not serve You; they would curse You to Your face. There is nothing about You desirable. The only reason You have a following is because You keep giving stuff. You give gifts. You give blessings. You have surrounded Job with a hedge.”
That double insinuation—that man serves God because of what he gets, and that God is not wonderful enough in Himself, apart from His blessings, to be chosen, adored, and worshiped—was made in the heavenlies in the first chapter.
Hold that double insinuation, please, and let me make another observation about the book as a whole.
When you study the Bible under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, let me make this recommendation: whatever passage you are studying, read it over and over and over again. When you are done reading it, read it again. Be on the lookout for recurring emphasis.
As you read it over and over, you begin to pick up the heart of the Lord and see what He is emphasizing. Sometimes it is a word; sometimes it is an expression He uses again and again. I am suggesting that this is very revealing.
There is a title of God in Job that is not used once or twice or three or four times, but over and over and over again. The first time this title appears in the Old Testament, it appeared to Abraham, right after Abraham was trying to circumvent his wife’s barren womb and brought in Hagar, trying to help God.
God wanted to reveal Himself as the God of grace. Genesis 17:1 is the first mention of this title:
I am God Almighty;
Walk before Me, and be blameless.
And I will establish My covenant with you.
Those English words, “God Almighty,” are the title to which I am referring. That is the English attempt at translating the Hebrew word. I am sure you are familiar with it: El Shaddai.
God saved the Book of Job for the revelation of Himself as El Shaddai. El Shaddai appears six times in Genesis, once in Exodus, twice in Numbers, twice in Ruth, twice in Psalms, twice in Ezekiel, once in Isaiah, and once in Joel.
In other words, from Genesis to Malachi it appears seventeen times. Until you get to the Book of Job. When you get to the Book of Job, that name appears thirty-one times—more in the Book of Job than in the whole Bible put together.
God saved Job to reveal Himself as El Shaddai.
Now, what does that name mean? It is translated “God Almighty.” What does it mean?
The first part is El. That is God—the Most High God, the Strong One, the Mighty One. If you want to get the power of it, the Latin Vulgate translates it with the word from which we get omnipotence. That is El: Almighty God.
The second part is believed to come from the Hebrew word shad. The word shad is the word for breast, used throughout the Old Testament. It speaks about sufficiency, satisfaction, and completeness.
It is a picture of a mother holding her little baby in her bosom, and through her breast pouring out her life, giving provision, satisfying that little child. The root from which shad comes is a word meaning “to be sufficient.”
To get the impact of the word El Shaddai, you have to bring those two ideas together: that He is enough, adequate, and sufficient; and that there is satisfaction and completeness in Him.
I like to paraphrase it this way: El Shaddai, the God who is enough. But that is not the full power of the word. El Shaddai is the God who is more than enough.
For the rest of this series, I will refer to Him as the God who is more than enough.
Why do you suppose God waited for Job to reveal Himself as the God who is more than enough? If you know Job’s story at all, you know that is a wonderful place to reveal Himself as the God who is more than enough.
If anyone needed to know God as the God who is more than enough, it was Job when his hedge came down.
If He was enough—more than enough—for Job when his hedge came down, I have read the book, and I have an idea nobody here had their hedge come down like that. Oh, you might have had your hedge trimmed. I might have had my hedge trimmed. But it did not come down like that.
If He is more than enough for Job, may I suggest that He will be more than enough for you and more than enough for me?
Let me bring those two observations together and give you what I think is the theme: Satan’s double insinuation—one against God and one against Job—and this wonderful title, El Shaddai, the God who is more than enough.
I think many Christians miss the theme and wonder of Job because they do what Job did, and what his three friends did for thirty-four chapters: they ask the wrong question.
They want to know, “Why is Job suffering? Why is he going through this? Why do the righteous suffer?”
That is why Job 3 through 37 gets so heavy. Have you ever tried to go through it? It is burdensome to read because they are attempting to answer a question that the book does not ask and does not attempt to answer.
If the question is not the question, can the answer be the answer? If you ask the wrong question, you are not going to get the answer.
That is why so many have been frustrated going through the debates. They say, “Oh, I love Job—that is, Job 1 and 2, and Job 42, or where God begins to speak. I like all that. But that part in the middle, oh, that just burdens me.”
They are asking the wrong question.
Now, to get the theme, I have to give you the right question.
The question in Job that is answered is not, “Why do the godly suffer?” That is not it. The book does not address that. When you are all done, the book does not tell you about the mysteries of suffering. It is not about that.
What is the right question? May I suggest that this is the question, and we will try to answer it day by day, the Lord helping us:
Is God enough when the hedge comes down?
The book answers that question. That is the question of the book: Is the Lord more than enough when the hedge comes down?
I will tell you, the book gives a resounding amen and yes to that question. I want to show you how God brought Job to see that, because the way He brought Job to see that is exactly the way He will bring you to see it, and exactly the way He will bring me to see it.
This is a book about El Shaddai. This is a book about the God who is more than enough. Is He enough when the hedge comes down?
I suggest that is the theme of the book. The answer will show you that there are those—and may God increase their tribe—who choose the Lord just for the Lord, because He is enough.
To prove that, God allows Satan, under His sovereign control, to remove the hedge. That is the theme of the book: the absolute sufficiency of the Lord, the God who is more than enough when the hedge comes down.
There is no book in the Bible that presents the enoughness of God—is that a word?—the sufficiency of the Lord, like this marvelous Book of Job.
Now, in the time remaining in this introduction lesson, I want to underscore that theme by showing you the extreme example. Job is the extreme example.
Job’s hedge was an amazing hedge. You say, “God put a hedge around him.” Oh, what a hedge was around Job.
As I said, maybe you have had your hedge trimmed. Maybe there has been a breach in your hedge. Maybe even God has pulled down most of it. But He did not uproot it—not like He did to Job.
I want to show you the hedge that came down because it magnifies the sufficiency of the Lord. If God enables you, put yourself in Job’s shoes.
Some of us have experienced partial removals, I think, but not like this. Before I show you the height of Job’s hedge, let me call attention to three hedges mentioned in the book.
There is the hedge in Job 1:10, the hedge of blessing—the hedge around Job. But in Job 3:23 there is another hedge mentioned:
Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden,
Whom God has hedged in?
That one is hedged in by trouble. There is another hedge where it does not seem like you can see the light of day, and everywhere you look, there is trouble. Some people are hedged in that way.
Then, of course, I have to mention that wonderful hedge of restriction around Satan. I love that. In Job 1:12, the Lord says:
Behold, all that he has is in your power;
Only do not put forth your hand on him.
The same thing in Job 2:6:
Behold, he is in your power;
Only spare his life.
Thus far, no further. I would not trade anything for that truth: God has a hedge around the enemy. Are you not glad for that?
You are not at the mercy of any second cause, and you are not at the mercy of the enemy of your soul. You are at the mercy of the Lord. God has a security hedge around Satan. He needed permission to go into a pig. He cannot do anything without the Lord’s permission.
It is important to know that what comes into my life comes into my life by God’s permission. By the time it reaches me, it has become God’s will for my life. By the time it reaches you, it has become God’s will for your life.
Job was right when he said in Job 1:21:
Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
And naked I shall return.
The Lord gave,
And the Lord hath taken away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
He did not say, “The Lord gave and Satan took away.” He said, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.” What God allows, God does.
I love Job 2:3. The Lord said to Satan:
Have you considered My servant Job?
For there is no one like him on the earth,
A blameless and upright man,
Fearing God and turning away from evil,
And he still holds fast his integrity,
Although you incited Me against him
To ruin him without cause.
Who ruined him? Was it Satan? Was it God? “You incited Me to ruin him without cause.”
That verse alone shows you the foolishness of trying to answer the question, “Why was he suffering?” He says it was without cause. There you have it. You are only two chapters deep, and you know there is no “why.” It is not answered there.
God is sovereign.
You say, “The bullet killed the man.” No, the bullet did not kill the man; the gun killed the man. The gun held the bullet. You say, “The gun did not kill the man; the man killed the man. The man held the gun.” You say, “Ah, the man did not kill the man; the mob held the man. The mob killed him.” You say, “The mob did not kill the man; Satan held the mob. Satan killed him.”
Who is holding Satan?
I tell you, you have to believe it. Nothing comes into your life without the permission of the Lord.
There is an interesting verse in Job 27:11:
I will instruct you in the power of God.
Darby’s translation is:
Let me teach you concerning the hand of God.
The whole Book of Job is the hand of God, and Job wants to instruct us. Of course, he finally wants to say that God is enough when the hedge comes down. He is more than enough.
Job has a lot to say about that hand. In Job 12:9, “The hand of the Lord has done this.” In Job 19:21, “The hand of the Lord has struck me.” Job does not understand all about that hand, but he never doubts for a lonely moment whose hand it is.
It does not really matter, brothers, if that hand is giving or taking, if you know whose hand it is. If you are convinced this is the hand of God, I will tell you, you are going to see as Job did: “Now mine eye seeth Thee.”
Let me ask this question. When you thank God for your blessings—and I do not want you to answer out loud; just think—has anybody here ever, in thanking God for your blessings, thanked God for Satan? Realize what a blessing he is in your life.
Would you be a better Christian or a worse Christian if there were no personal Satan? You just think about that. I know there is a wrong way to thank God for Satan, but you know what I am trying to say.
God makes Satan sweat to make you a better Christian, and God makes Satan sweat to make me a better Christian. God uses all things. Psalm 119 says all things are His servants, and that all things includes Satan.
Now let me show you how this representative hedge was allowed to come down to magnify the theme of the book: the God who is more than enough when the hedge comes down.
First of all, his hedge did not slowly wilt and fade away. You know the record. Job, as he goes through the book, describes how it felt to him:
He bruises me with a tempest.
I am saturated with bitterness.
He hunts me like a lion.
God hands me over to ruffians,
And tosses me into the hands of the wicked.
I was at ease, but He shattered me.
He has grasped me by the neck and shaken me to pieces.
He has set me up as His target; His arrows surround me.
Without mercy He splits my kidneys open;
He pours my gall out on the ground.
He breaks through me, breach after breach;
He runs after me like a warrior.
Job says, “I am like a driven leaf, like dry chaff.” He says, “I am like a moth-eaten rag.” He says, “I am like curdled cheese.” He says, “God has exhausted me.”
See, we just sort of read that, “La, la, la.” Let me show you his hedge.
It is not enough to know that he was the number-one man on the earth—a family man, a wife, ten children, seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred female donkeys, male servants, and female servants.
Glance at Job 1:14–18, please. Did you notice that expression in verses 16, 17, and 18?
While he was yet speaking.
While he was yet speaking.
While he was yet speaking.
In less than five minutes, Job learned that he was bankrupt. So rapidly that bad news came, he was stunned. Evil tidings.
I live by the beach, and one time I was in a place that Job describes: God would not let me catch my breath. I was in a surf that would not let me get up. Every time I got up, I went down with another wave. I was choking to death.
Job says that in Job 9:18:
He will not allow me to get my breath;
He saturates me with bitterness.
In Job 1, one right after another, within five minutes, he lost everything he had, and he lost his ten children in one stroke.
I say his hedge came down—or started to come down. In the treatment of his hedge like that, he says:
The Lord gave;
The Lord hath taken away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Is God enough when you have lost all your possessions and all your children? That is an amazing thing. It was not sorrow that brought Job to his knees there. It was worship that brought him to his knees.
Then, in Job 2:4–5, he lost his health:
Satan answered the Lord and said,
“Skin for skin! Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life.
However, put forth Your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh;
He will curse You to Your face.”
Job 2:7 says:
Satan went out from the presence of the Lord
And smote Job with sore boils
From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.
And he took a potsherd to scrape himself
While he was sitting among the ashes.
Scholars describe what he had as black leprosy, a form of elephantiasis, and they go into graphic descriptions about the disease. I will stick to the Bible.
Here he is on an ash heap, scratching himself. Talk about intolerable itching, with a broken piece of pottery. In Job 7:5, he says:
My flesh is clothed with worms and a crust of dirt;
My skin hardens and runs.
We cannot imagine it.
When his friends came, they just sat there and wept for seven days in silence. Let me show you a few side effects of his disease.
His hedge came down, brothers. He lost his health. In Job 7:18, he was in chronic pain—chronic pain:
Thou dost try him every moment.
I have a dear friend who has suffered from Crohn’s disease for more than thirty-five years now. How he has suffered, and how his family has suffered.
I do not know if you have ever praised God for not feeling pain, but that is quite a hedge. That is quite a blessing—not to feel pain. But chronic pain. Let me ask: Is God enough when there is chronic pain?
Job 6:10 calls it unsparing pain. Add to that chronic pain Job 7:3–4: he could not sleep.
I am continually tossing until dawn.
Then he finally gets to sleep, and according to Job 7:14, when he finally gets to sleep, he has nightmares.
Is Jesus enough when you have insomnia? Is Jesus enough when you have bad dreams?
Add to that Job 6:6–7: he had no appetite. He said food was tasteless. Listen to Job 19:20 as he describes himself:
My bone clings to my skin and my flesh,
And I have escaped only by the skin of my teeth.
Nothing but skin and bones. He was fading away to nothing. He was dying before the eyes of his loved ones, withering away to nothing, pining away.
Is Jesus enough when you have lost everything—all your money, all your crops, all your business, everything?
We have buried some of our family. We buried our little granddaughter. That is one, and that was painful. You probably know loved ones you had to commit to the earth. Maybe someone you think did not know the Lord. That is painful.
Ten children, all at once. He did not know how much they suffered before they died. This is amazing. It is painful.
Is Jesus enough for that? Enough when He touches your body? Enough when you cannot eat? Enough when you cannot sleep? Enough when you have chronic pain every day, every day, every hour—this awful pain?
According to Job 19:17, this disease, as he was rotting away, had an offensive odor to it, and his friends were repulsed by the odor. Is Jesus enough for that?
No wonder he longed to die. He called his case hopeless. Job 19:10 says:
He has uprooted my hope like a tree.
When you have lost all hope, is the Lord enough for that?
You say, “Well, that was quite a hedge.” No, you have not even seen his hedge yet. That is a little part of his hedge.
When he lost everything, when he lost all his family, when he lost his health, when he could not sleep, when he had nightmares, when he lost the taste for food, when he was skin and bones, when he was withering away—that is only a little part of his hedge.
Job became a burden to his family, and they came to the place where they wished he was dead. They told him so. Have you ever come to the place where somebody wished you were dead?
There are several parts of Job’s hedge coming down that would devastate me. I know that. One is Job 2:9. He lost the support of his life partner.
His wife said to him:
Dost thou still hold fast thine integrity?
Curse God, and die.
I know she was exasperated. She lost her children too. I mean, she was suffering. I try to enter into her feelings. She was having a hard time.
But I will tell you, brothers, I do not know how I would respond if my Lillian ever said to me, “Curse God and die.” That is part of his hedge. He lost the support of his life partner. That is almost unbearable.
He was already greatly weakened when she made that temptation to him. I read one commentator who said Satan, to test Job, took his children; to test Job, he did not take his wife. Well, I do not know about that, but that was a big part of his hedge coming down.
There was still a lot of hedge to come down. Job 19:13–19 tells us how everyone turned against him. It mentions his brothers, acquaintances, relatives, intimate friends, the maids who worked for him—he would call them and say, “Come,” and they would not come—his male servants, young children, and all his associates.
So he says in Job 19:19:
Those I love have turned against me.
Have you ever had anything like that? Is El Shaddai enough when the hedge comes down?
You see, this is an extreme example. God is going to show that He is more than enough for Job when he loses all his possessions, all his children, his health, the support of the partner of his life; when his whole family turns against him, his neighbors turn against him, children turn against him, friends turn against him, and acquaintances turn against him.
You say, “His hedge is down.” Not yet. His hedge is not down yet. I say he has an amazing hedge.
In Job 29, he loses his ministry—and what a ministry he had. That man had such influence as a godly man.
In Job 29:8, he had a teaching ministry to the young and the old. In verses 9 and 10, he had ministry to dignitaries. In verse 12, to the poor. In verse 14, to the orphan, the dying, and the widow. In verse 15, to the blind and the lame. In verse 17, he stood up for the oppressed and brought the wicked to justice. In verses 21 through 25, he was a comfort to those who struggled in faith. To mourners, he brought consolation.
He lost his whole ministry. He lost his reputation. This is amazing.
I do not know if you have ever been in ministry and all of a sudden the door was slammed. That is just a little piece of your hedge. That is tough.
El Shaddai—is Jesus enough when the hedge comes down? This is an extreme example.
You say, “Well, his hedge is leveled now.” No, not yet. Not yet. The biggest part of the hedge is still standing.
He lost the sense of the presence of the Lord.
Job 29:1–5 says:
Job took up his discourse and said,
“Oh that I were as in months gone by,
As in the days when God watched over me;
When His lamp shone over my head,
And by His light I walked through darkness;
As I was in the prime of my days,
When the friendship of God was over my tent;
When the Almighty was yet with me,
And my children were all around me.”
Then Job says:
Behold, I go forward, but He is not there;
And backward, but I cannot perceive Him;
When He acts on the left, I cannot behold Him;
He turns on the right, I cannot see Him.
That was part of his hedge: God seemed far away. Now, you know and I know he did not lose the fact of God’s presence, but he lost the sense of God’s presence.
I know a little about losing the sense of God’s presence. I hope more and more I am coming to rest in the fact of God’s presence. But it is an awful thing to lose the sense of His presence—so distressing to the heart.
You run from one ordinance to another. You run to the Bible, to the field of meditation, to prayer and fasting, to the sanctuary, to the brothers and sisters in Christ, and you cannot find the Lord. Everybody else is enjoying the Lord, and you cannot find Him.
That is what happened to Job. He did more than lose the sense of His presence. He did something, brothers, that plunged him to despair.
It was not bad enough that he stopped trusting in the fact of God’s presence and began to be dismayed because he lost the sense of God’s presence. But because God seemed so far away, he began to entertain suspicious thoughts about God. He began to doubt God’s love. He began to regard God as his enemy.
Job 6:4:
The arrows of the Almighty are within me;
Their poison my spirit drinks.
Job 7:20:
Have I sinned? What have I done to Thee,
O Watcher of men?
Why hast Thou set me as Thy target,
So that I am a burden to myself?
Job 16:9:
His anger has torn me and hunted me down;
He has gnashed at me with His teeth;
My adversary glares at me.
Job 19:6:
Know then that God has wronged me
And has closed His net about me.
Job 19:11:
He has kindled His anger against me
And considers me His enemy.
I think that is the key to understanding Job 3, to be honest with you. Jeremiah went through the same thing in Jeremiah 20, where he wished he had never been born, and so on.
First, Job curses the day of his birth. If you get into the Hebrew there, it is not his birthday. It is the day of his birth. In other words, if he was born on Tuesday, he cursed Tuesdays. He wished God had never invented Tuesdays. He wished the whole thing was not in the calendar, and he thought that would solve the problem.
Feel sorry for other people who were born on Tuesdays if that curse came to pass. Then he wished that his mother had miscarried. He was not thinking soundly, because that would be cruel to his mother. Then, if he had been born, he wished he had died on the spot or been stillborn. Now that he was alive, he wished he was dead.
Commentators have a hard time with Job 3, and they are very rough on Job. I was a little surprised that, in the debates, his three friends never used Job 3 against him. I would have thought that would be the first thing they used: “What are you talking about? Did you hear what you said in Job 3?” They never did.
I have an idea what was really going on. He lost his possessions, and he did all right: “The Lord gave; the Lord took away.” He lost his children and did all right. He lost his health and did all right. He lost the support of his life partner and did all right.
Then he started to think. The more he began to think, God became his enemy. I think what he said in Job 3 was this: It would be better never to have existed than to have God as your enemy.
I think that is what that is all about. It would be better never to have existed. If you do exist, it would be better to die as soon as possible than to live on earth with God as your enemy. That is a heavy weight to bear.
I do not know if you have ever met anyone who thought God was their enemy. I have met two, and I pray God will deliver me—I do not ever want to meet another one. It is horrible.
Both of these—one was a brother, one was a sister—thought they had committed the sin against the Holy Spirit, and God was their enemy. One ended up in a catatonic stupor in a mental hospital, and the other finally took her life.
We prayed with them. We talked to them. We pleaded with them. We begged them. But they had that in their minds. One was like in a fetal position, with pains in the stomach. That is what Job was going through.
Job’s hedge came down. I am suggesting to you, brothers, that this is the purpose of the book: God wants to reveal Himself as El Shaddai, the God who is more than enough.
If God was enough—and I am going to show you that God brought Job to that place—then Satan’s insinuations were absolutely dismissed. God was wonderful in Himself, and Job did not care about anything anymore, only the Lord.
I am going to show you how God brought him to that place when the hedge came down: when he lost everything, lost his possessions, lost his children, lost the support of his wife, lost his appetite, lost his health, lost his sleep, was in chronic pain, lost his ministry, lost the sense of God. He was devastated. He lost everything.
God brought that brother, for our sakes, to the place where he saw El Shaddai:
Now mine eye seeth Thee.
God wants all of us to see Him that way this weekend, so you will know tonight, tomorrow, this weekend, and forever that God is more than enough when your hedge comes down.
That is what we are going to look at. You pray that God will take us as He took Job to Job 42. He was not there in Job 1. God had to take him there. We want to see how God took him there, because, brothers, that is how He will take us there.
That is what it is all about. He is enough. He is more than enough. He satisfies.
We are so hedge-centered, hedge-conscious. May God deliver us this weekend, so we can say:
I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear;
But now, now mine eye seeth Thee.
Let us pray that we see El Shaddai this week. Let us bow.
Father, thank You so much for this precious book.
Not our understanding, not what we think it might mean,
But what You have inspired it to mean.
Will You write that in our hearts?Lord, take us to the place
Where El Shaddai plus nothing
Is all that we need.Lord, thank You that You are going to do it,
Because we ask in the precious name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.