Episode Transcript
It is slightly past 10 o'clock, so we best begin.
I want you to bookmark the 12th chapter of the Gospel of Mark.
Just put a bookmark there, 12th chapter of the Gospel of Mark, and we're going to return to that later during the lesson.
For right now, we are in Job chapter one And I'm encouraged.
I got a comment or two over the last few weeks about people who were so glad we're teaching Job.
One said that he was wondering if the pastor or I would get around to teaching Job someday.
And so I'm glad that You're fulfilled in that way.
Now we spent a great deal of time last week learning about the phrase, the sons of God.
And if you missed it, I encourage you to go back and listen to the replayed version on Facebook.
You know, uh before Facebook and all the social media, the sound teams used to have to make a special copy of sermons for people.
They'd burn a DVD or or a C D.
Before that They had to make cassette tapes.
And if they made a cassette tape and somebody wanted one, then they'd order it.
And that cassette tape had to be copied.
It was quite a an ordeal.
And so don't ever take for granted that all of our lessons are available at your fingertips.
You don't even have to order a recorded DVD or CD, you can just go on Facebook and find the lesson and hit play, or you can go on YouTube.
Brother Fulton has the Genesis to Jesus. classes in order on YouTube and you can just hit play.
Isn't that wonderful?
So for all the negative things there are about social media, God still uses that in some ways that we can benefit from.
And we have a scene in our text that's in the spiritual realm, the heavenly realm, and it involves the sons of God presenting themselves before the Lord And in this case, as we learned last week, the sons of God are angelic beings.
They're not human beings in this passage.
And in the text it tells us that Satan came among those angels, those sons of God, in the presence of the Lord.
And so God interrogated Satan about where he'd been and what he'd been doing Kind of like God did in the garden when Adam and Eve hid themselves after they'd sinned.
God didn't ask those questions in order to be informed.
He asked those questions because he wanted the response from the ones whom he was asking.
And when Satan said he'd been going up and down and to and fro in the earth God challenged him to consider his servant Job.
He said, Hast thou considered my servant Job?
And then he described Job as being upright, perfect.
Esheweth evil, fearing God.
And so what God recounted about Job wasn't his status in the earth.
It wasn't how many cattle he had or how many servants he had or how big his family was.
God recounted Job's fine character.
That's what he put before Satan.
He said, if you consider this man.
And Job's financial and familial prosperity, his business prosperity.
That wasn't what was important to God.
Those were things with which God had blessed him.
But he put forth his character.
As the basis for making that statement, or asking the question, hast thou considered my servant Job?
Now look in verse 9.
Job chapter 1, verse 9, if you're just joining us on the internet, then Satan answered the Lord and said, Doth Job fear God for naught?
Satan answered a question with a question.
Now God's question was whether Satan had considered Job.
And Satan's answer should have been, yes, Lord, I have.
Everything you said about him is absolutely true.
But we're talking about Satan here.
And rather than giving an honest answer to God's question, Satan chose to mock Job's character.
By saying, doth Job fear God for naught?
And in doing that, he also was mocking God.
And remember the word feared means two things.
It can mean to be absolutely afraid, to be terrified.
Or it can mean to have reverence, and it can mean both at the same time.
You can have both.
Maybe you don't express them at the very same moment.
Example would be uh I read this morning where a lady who was hiking by herself in Colorado was killed by a mountain lion.
First time it's happened in the 20th century. 21st century.
And I can promise you that lady had a reverence for mountain lions.
When she went hiking, she probably thought I need to keep my eyes open here because there are mountain lions and bears in the woods and you run across one in the wrong time at the wrong time, then uh could be a problem The bears ought to be going night-night right now under a rock or in a tree well somewhere because it's wintertime, but the mountain lions don't But when that mountain lion approached her, assuming she saw it, at some point she she felt its presence.
Her reverence for that mountain lion turned into fear.
So she had those same type of emotions about a mountain lion if she were wise, and unfortunately she lost her life.
And I've mentioned to you before that the word fear, that both ideas, terror and reverence, are found in the Bible.
And in our text here, it's reverence that we're going to look at because that translation of the Hebrew word for fear best fits this text.
And there are three places in the Old Testament where the Hebrew word normally translated fear is actually translated as reverence.
And I'm going to read some of those.
Leviticus chapter 19, verse 30.
And you can also write down Leviticus 26, verse 2, because they say the same thing.
Leviticus 19:30 and Leviticus 26, verse 2 both say.
Ye shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence, there's our word, my sanctuary, I am the Lord.
So God commanded the children of Israel to keep the Sabbath, to guard the Sabbath.
And the Sabbath was a day of rest.
Now there are some religions who believe that you're supposed to worship on the Sabbath.
That's when you're supposed to meet as a congregation, and they're called Sabbatarians.
Or you may, I believe the Seventh-day Adventists do that, and perhaps some others.
But the Sabbath was simply a day of rest.
That's when God commanded the children of Israel to do no work on the Sabbath.
And that Sabbath represented the, well, it began with the Lord because on the seventh day he rested.
And then that Sabbath represented the finished work of Christ.
We rest in that.
He is our Sabbath.
So we don't come up here on a Saturday and say, yeah, we have to meet on the Sabbath.
That is a day of rest.
And so God commanded the children of Israel to guard that, to observe that, to reverence it, and also to reverence his sanctuary.
That's the tabernacle.
You know, the tabernacle was not a playplace.
It wasn't a place where we come play games.
The children of Israel Didn't have bake sales or bingo there.
Now later on, what did they do?
Well, we read about it a few months ago.
Man, they had sodomites building houses next to it, and they had other altars being built in it, and all sorts of idolatry taking place in it.
So they didn't reverence God's sanctuary then.
But that sanctuary, meaning a sacred place, was to be a holy place.
And the reason it was holy.
And the reason that it was to be reverenced was that it was the place where God met with the people, and where the people met with God. .
And this occurred through the high priest.
And for that same reason, this building is a sacred place.
The property is a sacred place.
And whoever filled in the holes out there, it looks great.
Thank you.
And if someone asks, well, what do you do there?
On that property, in that building, in this building next door.
Well, we tell them we teach God's word And we have a nursery for babies and restrooms for the people and a kitchen for us to cook food in, a fellowship hall where we m have meals together or sometimes have different events that are uh like Bible studies And we do that because the Lord has provided this building.
We celebrate what He's given us here.
We don't take for granted this place where we meet But what we don't allow is the use of this building for events that just bring glory to the world.
So if somebody says, well, we'd we'd like to have a car show up here in your parking lot, we're not going to do that.
Liability reasons as well.
Or somebody says, well, your auditorium is the perfect place for us to have some kind of a entertainment venue.
Well, what is it?
Well, we're going to have this country music group come in here and no you're not, not here.
So we're very careful and should be about what we allow to happen in the Lord's house.
And the beams and the bricks and the nails and the sheetrock and the foundation, the roof, all of those, that's not what's sacred.
We're thankful for those materials, but that's not what's sacred.
What makes this place sacred is that the Lord whom we worship in this place is sacred.
And we meet here to serve him, to worship him.
So we have reverence for this sanctuary, or we should have reverence for this sanctuary and for the building back here behind us.
And it would be good to keep in mind that everything that we do and everything we say in this place should be done as unto the Lord and for his glory and not for ours.
Now another Old Testament verse with the word reverence is Psalm 89, verse 7.
Psalm chapter 89, verse 7.
Which says, God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints, and to be had in reverence of all them that are about him.
And reverence, there is our Hebrew word for fear.
Doth God, is Job fear God for naught?
And so in reverencing God, In fearing God, we don't take his name lightly.
We don't take him lightly, and we don't take his name in vain.
His word is sacred.
So we reverence his word, and as we reverence his word, we're reverencing him.
When a person says, oh, I have reverence for God, I have uh healthy fear of the Lord.
But that person says, well, I don't agree with everything in the Bible, then that person's lying.
Because you can't say truthfully I have a reverence for God, but not his word.
There are some things in there I don't agree with.
Well, that's too bad if we don't agree with them, isn't it?
I mean you can just say I don't agree with it, and that doesn't change anything in the Bible.
It doesn't change who you are, and it doesn't change who God is.
You can no more love God and despise his word than you can love God the Father but not believe that Jesus is the Son of God.
And there are a lot of religions.
That are built upon that false claim.
They say, Oh, we love God.
We believe in God.
We just believe there is one God.
You know the religion of Islam is monotheistic.
That means they believe in one God.
Monotheist is God.
They're monotheistic, but they don't believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is God or the Son of God, and some of these door knockers who come up with their little watchtowers and all that, they don't believe it either.
If you ever decide to engage in conversation with somebody who's uh riding the bicycle and handing out the the watchtowers and our whatever they're doing, whatever they're uh literature is they want to share with you, whatever their doctrine is, ask them, what do you believe about the Lord Jesus Christ?
And that'll solve it right there.
They'll give you all kinds of stuff, but they won't tell you that he's God.
And if they cannot tell you he's God, then they don't love God.
They don't love the God of the Bible because that is his son.
Jesus said, He that hateth me hateth my father also.
John chapter 14.
So now that we understand the word fear, Is the word reverence in our text?
Let's look at the text and continue making this case.
Look at the phrase for not.
Doth Job fear God for not?
That means now we don't speak like that today.
We should start, but we don't.
We would say without a cause or for nothing.
Is he afraid for nothing?
There's a reason he's afraid.
So by using this rhetorical question, Satan suggests that God's, or that Job's reverence for God has a selfish motive behind it Satan agrees with God that Job reverences God, that he fears God.
But Satan questions why that's the case.
And the idea here is that Satan is accusing Job of fearing God Because of something good God's done for him, as we'll see in the next few verses.
Look down in verse 10 now.
Where Satan continues asking God, hast not thou made an hedge about him?
So here Satan strongly implies that this is the first cause for which Job reverences God.
Now a hedge is like a fence.
And it a fence functions two ways.
It can protect you against those on the outside.
Or it can keep you on the outside.
And so when we if you have a little children, little toddlers, and you look put them out in the backyard, you want to be sure you have a fence.
Because they don't know where they're supposed to go.
So they may just wander off into the woods or the next neighbor's house or to uh the street or wherever it may be.
So a fence keeps them in.
But what it also does while they're outside, if there's a stray dog running around, it keeps that stray dog out on the outside.
At least you hope it does.
And the Hebrew word here for hedge is used only twice in the Old Testament.
So let's look at the other way it's used. in that other verse.
And it's found in Hosea chapter 2, which we studied over the last few years before we came to Daniel.
Hosea chapter 2, in that chapter, God is warning the children of Israel of the punishment that's due to them for their unfaithfulness.
And in verse 6, it's Hosea 2, verse 6, God said this through the prophet Hosea, Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns and make a wall. that she shall not find her path.
Now in this case, rather than using a hedge to protect God uses a hedge to prevent access to a certain path, to keep Israel from going down that path.
But if you look at the verses before and after that in Hosea, you'll see that actually God preventing them from going down this certain path is protecting them.
He's actually protecting the children of Israel.
By hedging up their path.
Now the children of Israel may not see it that way.
They may say, boy, God is being awfully hard on us right now.
And perhaps that's the way many who are Jews feel today.
I don't know.
You know, when I think of hedges, because I've got to have a visual image of this, this is how I learn.
It's my primary learning mode is to visualize something.
I may not be able to see it with my eyes.
I I can't see the cross of Calvary with my eyes.
I wasn't there.
But I have a vision in my head. based on what the Bible says of what that must have looked like.
And I might be wrong.
It might not have looked exactly like that.
But that's how I recollect that information.
And when I think of hedges, I think of a red-tipped fotina.
And that is a if you don't know what that is, that's a large hedge.
You've seen one, because they're all over the place.
But that's a large hedge, and boy, it can really grow. tall and it's got prickly leaves on it.
And you'll know if you fall into one that you fell into a red tip fatina.
You wouldn't do well to fall into that sort of a hedge.
And when it grows next to the windows of a house, it's a pretty good way to keep burglars from gaining access to that window.
Because burglars.
They don't like to work in the first place.
So we know they don't like pain, difficulty, and all of that.
Now some of them will do some uh pretty risky stuff to get their next hit of dope.
But that's the that's one of the purposes of having those red-tipped fotinias.
And that bush protects the occupants inside the house against entry. at that window.
And it keeps the burglar on the outside of the house, keeps him from wanting to go inside because he doesn't want to tackle that prickly red-tipped fotinha.
Now the problem with the burglar is that he doesn't see that red-tipped fotina as a hedge that God is using to protect him from doing wrong.
He sees it as an impediment to getting what he wants, as an inconvenience.
Now let's apply that to us as Christians.
For a Christian, a hedge is God's protection either way, whether it keeps you on the inside safe from those on the outside, or it keeps those or you on the outside from gaining access to something that's harmful.
And you may say, well, you know, I feel like I've asked God to do these things for me, and he keeps shutting the door.
Okay, he may be hedging your way about like he did the children of Israel because you don't know what's ahead.
He does.
And you may think, well, I think this is a good decision I'm about to make.
I think I ought to be able to buy this $90,000 pickup that costs more than a house.
God's not letting you have the finances to do that.
Now, I want you to turn or look at Mark chapter 12, which you should have already bookmarked at the beginning of the service.
And this is a parable that Jesus spoke to the unbelieving Jews.
Boy, they tried to test him at every turn, and he always had the answer.
We would have called this a mic drop if Jesus had a microphone.
Just lay it down, enough said, right?
And we're going to learn about God's hedge Although in the New Testament, the word hedge is translated from the Greek language instead of the Hebrew.
But it means the same thing.
You'll find if you look that up.
It means the same thing.
And I'm going to begin reading in verse 1, Mark chapter 12, verse 1, and continue through verse 9.
It says this about Jesus, and he began to speak unto them by parables.
A certain man planted a vineyard and set an hedge about it.
There you go.
There's our word.
And digged a place for the wine fat, and built a tower, and led it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country.
And at the season he sent to the husbandman a servant That he might receive from the husbandman of the fruit of the vineyard.
And they caught him and beat him and sent him away empty.
And again he sent unto them another servant, and at him they cast stones and wounded him in the head, and sent him away shamefully handled.
And again he sent another, and they killed him, and many others, beating some and killing some.
Having yet therefore one son, his well-beloved He sent him also last unto them, saying, They will reverence my son.
But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir.
Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours.
And they took him and killed him and cast him out of the vineyard.
What shall therefore the Lord of the vineyard do?
He will come and destroy the husbandman and will give the vineyard unto others.
Now, uh the pastor actually taught on this about seven years ago, so it might be fresh in your memory, but if it's not.
I'll just review a couple of things with you.
In that parable, the man who planted the vineyard, now that's God.
Jesus, the husbandmen there were the Jews, and the servants sent to the husbandman were the prophets.
So the prophets would come and tell the Jews, this is what God says about judgment and righteousness, and they'd kill him.
Or like Jeremiah, put him in prison.
God had send another one and they kept doing that.
The vineyard that was planted was Israel.
And when the prophets were sent to warn the children of Israel, Of God's impending judgment.
Then, of course, they beat them, imprisoned them, killed them, they mocked them.
And the well-beloved son was Jesus.
And so he was sent to the same one, the same ones, the husband the who the husbandman killed.
And this well-beloved son Jesus in the parable was the very one who planted the vineyard in the first place.
I said God planted it, God is Jesus.
That's where you you you cannot Wow, we got a lot of volume there, didn't we?
That's where you you cannot say, well, I believe in God but not Jesus.
Or I believe they're two separate beings.
They are the same.
And the well-beloved son was the very one who planted the vineyard and put a hedge around it.
And that hedge was supposed to protect those on the inside from those on the outside.
However, in verse 9 of that passage in Mark 12, we see what happens when God takes away the hedge for Israel.
And puts it around the church.
Because the others in that parable, to whom Jesus, who was that certain man, Also called the householder in this other parable there in Matthew.
It's the same parable told from a different writer.
But the others. were the Gentiles.
That was the church.
And Jesus gave this vineyard To the church.
He said, Israel had found themselves unworthy for it, and they rejected it And Jesus said, all right, I'm going to give it to the real Israel of God, to the believers.
And the hedge he placed around the church was the gospel covenant.
And that gospel covenant is a hedge that protects both those who are within and prevents entry by those who are without.
Now when somebody comes to this church, whether it's their first time or their hundredth time We have a hedge.
Now you may say, well, I don't see a hedge.
It's not a physical hedge.
It's the gospel covenant.
We have a hedge that protects the Lord's church.
And when a person says, well, I don't know the gospel, or I'm not sure of the gospel, or I don't really know how to be saved, we don't say, well, then you have to leave.
That's not what we do.
We want them to stay.
We want to teach them about this hedge.
We want to tell them about the gospel.
And many believe it.
And it's wonderful.
And then they stay.
We send them through the Genesis to Jesus classes, which is where a lot of them believe.
And some may say on the third lesson.
I understand this.
Others may need to go through it again to pick everything up, and that's okay too.
We don't have any Ms.
Dorothy Hensley went through the Genesis to Jesus class a second time before she had to go to the nursing home.
Do you know that?
Now, there wasn't any doubt in my mind that Dorothy Hensley knew the gospel of Jesus Christ and that she was a believer.
None at all.
But in her own humility, she said, I want to go through it again.
I want to I want to review. those those teachings.
That hedge is important.
It was precious to her.
And so we want people to know we do have a hedge.
So if somebody were to come in as a visitor and then the want to meet with the pastor after the church service and say, hey, I want to join.
He's not going to say, oh, that's great.
Fill out this card.
Listen, you you don't just get to join.
The church.
We do not want somebody to be a member of this church who is not saved.
Now, can we know for sure they're saved?
No, we can't.
We have to Go by what they're telling us, but we can ask enough questions and figure it out most of the time that they do not know Jesus Christ as Savior.
But that hedge is there.
Now these religious organizations that don't have a hedge that say, oh no, no, we're building new parking lots because we have lots of people coming.
Uh well the uh Was it called the saddleback church out there in California, the Rick Warren Church?
There was one year he said, yeah, we've gained this many thousand members and Somebody did some research and found out that those people will come in, they join, and go right back out the door.
And another group will come in and join and go right back out the door.
So the retention of those members. was suspect at the very least.
We don't want that.
When someone comes in the door and they're on this side of the hedge because they're believers and they're members of this church, we don't ever want them to leave.
We want them to stay until Jesus comes.
Or until God takes them somewhere else by his providence.
But That hedge is important to us.
In fact, in John chapter 10, verses 1 through 2, we see this hedge described as well.
Jesus Said, Verily, verily I say unto you, he that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold now the sheepfold is the that's the Christians, that's the church, but climbeth up some other way, the same as a thief and the robber.
Now, if you don't come into my house through the door by me inviting you in, you come in some other way without my invitation.
You are a thief or a robber.
He said, but he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.
So to understand what Satan is saying here in our text in Job, Requires us to understand at least two things.
One, Job's spiritual hedge His spiritual hedge is the gospel covenant, and God will not remove it, and God will not allow it to be removed.
Because of that hedge, Job loves God.
He fears God.
He reverences God, and we do for the same reason.
The reason I love God isn't because he's made me prosperous in my finances.
It's not because he's given me a good career or allowed me to drive a pickup.
That's not why I love God.
I'm thankful for every one of those things.
But here's why we love God.
If you're a Christian, this is why you love God.
It's found in 1 John 4, verse 10.
1 John 4 verse 10.
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Now that word propitiation means that God's wrath was appeased because Jesus died for our sins.
That propitiation is our hedge.
And because of it, we love God.
1 John 4, 19, 1 John 4, verse 19 says about God, we love him because he first loved us.
That's why we love God.
And that's why Job feared God.
That's why Job loved God, is because God loved him first through the gospel covenant.
Now the second thing we know or should know about that hedge is that Job's physical, earthly hedge is temporary.
The spiritual one is not temporary.
It's permanent.
And sometimes what happens is God takes away the physical hedge.
And people think, well, he's forsaken me.
He's taken away my spiritual heads too.
I must not be saved.
There are some Uh charlatans out there who call themselves pastors, they're wolves in the pulpit, it's what they are, or on television telling people that If if you're in bad health, then then you you don't have faith and you must not be saved and all that.
It's terrible.
And the people they're telling this to are very vulnerable people.
They're they're not well versed in their scriptures.
They don't understand they really think there's something wrong with them spiritually because they're sick or because they broke their arm and it won't heal.
It's uh insane.
But this physical hedge that Job has, and we read about it, his large family, his large store of servants, all the livestock that he had.
That's temporary.
And if it's taken away, that does not mean Job has lost his salvation.
Salvation can't be lost.
We didn't find it in the first place.
God found us when we were lost.
We were the ones lost.
And now we've been found.
But not only did Satan say God made a hedge about Job, but he also said he made a hedge, look back in the text, about his house.
That means around his household. even his family, as that word is translated on three occasions in the Old Testament.
I know what the hedge looks like.
I know what that physical hedge looks like.
I often thank God for the protection or the hedge he's placed around me personally.
He's given me good health.
Oh, I've had things wrong with me just like everybody else has.
But by his grace alone, I've to this point been free from anything serious like cancer or diabetes or Heart attacks or strokes, and not everybody has.
So I'm thankful.
I don't say, well, it's because I work out it.
Listen, I know those things are important in prolonging quality of life and all that.
But as I've told people before, I'm one car accident away from being a whole different person.
I'm one stroke away.
I'm one uh losing my job away from being a different person physically.
But I also thank God very often, not just for the hedge he's put around me, but for the hedge he's put around my family.
Like he did Job's.
By God's grace alone, he's hedged my children and my grandchildren. from death or serious injury or crippling illnesses like cancer.
But I know that hedge around my family could be taken away at any time.
We live on a sin-cursed earth.
Things happen that we don't understand, that are out of our control.
Wickedness and violence and sickness and sorrow and death swirl around us all the time.
And Satan insinuated here that Job reverenced God because of that hedge around him and around his household and his family.
And then look back in the text and about all that he hath on every side.
So there was another part of the hedge.
Not only Job was hedged about, not only his family was hedged about, but all of his possessions, everything he had.
Was under God's protection.
That meant his cattle, his real estate, his house, everything else he owned.
Now from time to time we have a major expense like a car repair or replacement of an air conditioner or the need for a new roof But God has been so merciful to put a hedge around my possessions.
And I thank him for the income he's allowed me to earn.
And I know people who are without jobs.
He's perhaps they're sick or they're disabled.
But and some of you have gone through this.
I know that the stock market could crash.
It's done it before.
The US dollar could devaluate drastically.
And the earthly plenteousness that I enjoy could come to nothing tomorrow.
That hedge could be taken down Satan further claims that Job's reverence of God is because, look back in your text, thou hast blessed the work of his hands.
And his substance is increased in the land.
Now these two things go together, don't they?
When the work of your hands is blessed, Then the substance in the land increases.
Your substance in the land increases.
When the work of your hands is cursed, your substance in the land decreases.
And now not everyone's hands are blessed, and not everyone's substance is increased, but in Job's case, he had both.
And listen to what Satan admits outright.
He admits that blessings come from the Lord.
He does.
If you look, read back at what we just read, Satan said, thou, talking to God, he said, thou hast blessed.
He didn't say I've blessed.
Look at what I've let Job had.
He said, look at what you've done for him.
Now if Satan knows that it's God who blesses the work of man's hands, how foolish is it for a man to say he's self-made?
Look at all this that I did for myself.
And if you take these three causes together that we've just looked at Job being blessed or hedged about, his family hedged about, all that he has hedged about.
Then we sense a challenge from Satan When it comes to Job's health, his family, and his possessions.
And here it comes in verse 11.
Satan says to God, But put forth thine hand now and touch all that he hath.
Now at this point, Satan doesn't ask for permission to afflict Job.
Did you see that?
He wants God to do it.
He wants God to be the one to pull the hedge down.
So maybe Satan can have some plausible deniability.
I know supervisors who are like that.
I have in my career, and so do you, the big man up here.
Wants doesn't want to know what this one's doing, so when something bad happens, he can say, I didn't know about it.
Well, that's just dereliction of duty right there, isn't it?
But he'll often make the people below him do something unpopular and then when the masses, when the workers say, hey, that's not fair, then the the the top boss can say, well, I I don't I agree with you, it's not fair.
I don't know why he did that.
Just kind of a like a coward.
Well, Satan is a coward in this way.
He wants God, who's above him, to To afflict Job.
What an interesting strategy.
You remember earlier in our study today we saw where God said to Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job?
Now, God had not been sitting around waiting for an opportunity to make Job miserable He had a much higher purpose than that for allowing what he was about to allow.
And now Satan, who had considered Job, wants God to undo the hedge while Satan sits back and watches to see what'll happen.
And Satan predicts that the the result of this act will be, look back in the text.
And he will curse thee to thy face.
That is, he said, Job will curse you to your face if you'll take this hedge down.
And we've come across this Hebrew word for curse.
It's also translated as the word blessing.
Two totally different things, right?
Curse, blessing.
But the use of the word is determined by the purpose of the word.
An example would be the use of the Lord's name.
In Psalm chapter 51, verse 10, which I believe David wrote after he sinned with Bathsheba, and that precious little baby was taken to heaven.
David prayed, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
Now when David prayed, O God, He was blessing God's name, not cursing it.
The action was the same.
He said the words.
If you take that same phrase, oh God, and put it on the lips of a person who's using it to express frustration or ridicule.
Then it's a curse.
Same words.
Different meaning.
It's taking the Lord's name in vain.
Let me give you a help.
Some of you may not have uh uh heard me say this before, and I I stole this, by the way.
I got this from somebody a lot brighter than I am, pastors who's passed away years ago.
But he said there are three times when you ought to use the Lord's name.
When you're praying to him.
When you're praising him, when you're proclaiming him.
If you use his name outside of those three cases.
You are very likely using his name in vain.
You see, some people think, well, I know what God's name in vain is.
That's when people save GD.
Okay, well, yes, it is.
But many people use God's name in vain in a way that society would say, well, that's not cussing.
That's not cursing.
He just said God's name.
Were you praying to him?
Were you praising him?
Were you proclaiming him?
If you weren't, you probably are on shaky ground.
David was praising God.
And Job's, or Satan said, huh, you take this hedge down away from Job.
Satan said, Job will curse you to your face, God.
He won't bless your name anymore.
He'll curse you.
That is.
Satan's inference here is that the Job who once blessed God will now curse God to his face.
That is, he won't do it in private.
But like the rebel, he'll stand before God and do it.
Look in verse 12.
Actually, we'll have to look at verse 12 next week.
Time has failed us.
Father, thank you for all who've come to study your word.
Thank you for the hunger they have for it, and for teaching us by your Spirit.
And we ask that you do the same for us during this next hour in Jesus' name.
Amen.
