Many people believe that the book of Job deals primarily with the concept of suffering, that it explains why we suffer. Actually, suffering is not the main issue at all. Job experienced the dealings of God so that he could be brought into a place where God could give him a double portion. Several other principles are also illustrated. For example, at the beginning of the book we find Job interceding for his sons; and when he encountered difficulties, he responded by worshiping God. Then the book ends with Job worshiping on an even higher level, and interceding for his three religious friends who had offered him all the wrong reasons for his trials (Job 1:5, 20; 42:10). This message will deal with the great principle of the double portion, which is illustrated in the book of Job.
Once you understand this principle of a double portion, it seems to open up in your mind an explanation of the painful or difficult experiences you have had. The dealings of the Lord upon your life can never be explained while you are going through them. You must understand that God does not reason with you; He disciplines you. The Scriptures bear this out: “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him.” Does the Lord discipline only those who have sinned a great deal? Does He scourge every son who “gets out of line”? Must we endure the discipline because that is what we deserve? Although this is the way this passage is often interpreted, it is not what the Scripture says. The verse continues, “for those whom the Lord loves He disciplines” (the cause of the Lord’s dealings many times is actually the love He has for us!), “and He scourges every son whom He receives.” Hebrews 12:5b–6.
If only we could understand the occasion of God’s dealings in our lives! Many times the fact that we attain a deeper relationship with God occasions a change in His dealings with us. We say, “Well, it does not look to me as though I am a son, if He is going to scourge me!” No—those scourgings are evidence that you are a son! The right relationship that you have with God, and subsequently the expression of His love for you, occasions Him to bring a great deal of discipline into your life. If we had understood this from the very beginning of our walk with the Lord, we would not always be weighing these things from a human viewpoint. We would not say, “I am going through something because God is dealing with me, and after I have repented and after I have sought God and gotten everything straightened out, then God will mercifully lift His hand.”
There is no man with whom God dealt more severely than Job. Did you think it was the devil who put Job through all that suffering? Not according to Job. He said, “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). Job sensed that God was dealing with him. Even his wife sensed it and said, “Curse God and die” (Job 2:9). Yet Job would not do it, because nothing could move him from his integrity and from the faith he had that God loved him. God loved him! Of course, he was hit right down to the core of his life until he even cursed the day he had been born (Job 3). God struck at the very heart of his existence. Job’s will to live was even destroyed. But notice that God never reproved Job for cursing the day of his birth, because God Himself was the One who had allowed him to reach the place where he no longer seemed to have any reason to live (Job 2:3–6). If Job had nothing to live for, he could easily voice what he said. Why did God treat Job that way? As Hebrews 12:6 tells us, “For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives.”
Hebrews 12 goes on to say, But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. This discipline is difficult, but there is one thing about it: We will “be subject to the Father of spirits, and live!” He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Hebrews 12:8, 9b–11.
What is God saying to us in this? Our submission to His dealings prepares us for the double portion; it prepares us for an appropriation of His righteousness; it prepares us for that which we might never be able to lay hold upon otherwise. Something must jar you out of your present limited ability to reach into God. You can reach the ceiling in what you can do; therefore God must deal with you. What He does is like a shock treatment that opens up a capacity for God which you would never have otherwise.
It would be very worthwhile for us to read the promises of the double portion in the Old Testament. It is critical that we understand this principle of how God can double what He has for us. According to Daniel 11:32, those who love God will do exploits. Christ said that we would do the works He did, and greater works than He did, because He went to the Father (John 14:12). If these Words have any meaning or validity at all, then something must happen to us in order to bring us into an appropriation of more than even Christ walked in during His human ministry.
At the present time, we seem to be so limited that we are moving in very little of the effectiveness and power that Christ moved in. Something must come to jar us out of our present state of limitation, and throw us into an unlimited appropriation of what the Lord has for us. Your submission to God’s dealings prepares you to appropriate the double portion, the greater works, the exploits. None of these things can come to pass unless there are channels whom God has prepared to walk in them.
First we will read some of the scriptural promises about a double portion. Then we will discuss how they relate to you in your present circumstances. Isaiah 61:7 is the classic promise of a double portion: Instead of your shame you will have a double portion, and instead of humiliation they will shout for joy over their portion. Therefore they will possess a double portion in their land, everlasting joy will be theirs. This Scripture should confirm to you that there will be a restoration. However, this restoration is not a time of repairing what the devil has done. The book of Joel, in talking about the devastations, tells us that it was from the hand of the Lord that they came. Joel 1:4 and 2:25 portray the “swarming locusts,” the “creeping locusts,” the “stripping locusts,” and the “gnawing locusts.” They were sent as a plague to minister judgment to God’s people, and as a result the people began to pray and seek the face of the Lord (Joel 2:11–19). Would God actually raise up a remnant of people, only to have them become the occasion of discipline and chastening upon all of His people? Of course He would. That is exactly what He has in mind: “Judgment begins at the house of the Lord” (I Peter 4:17).
What about the people in all of the denominations? Does this Scripture mean that they should be swallowed up in the final judgment? God forbid! God has so many precious people who are indeed His, but something must jar them and shake them up so that a greater capacity for God can be created within them. There will be “deliverance in the remnant whom the Lord shall call” (Joel 2:32). People will call upon the name of the Lord who right now could not care less about walking on with God, who care nothing about receiving something more from the Lord. God is doing the same thing with us, and we are yielding; out of that shaking, the double portion will come forth.
Let us read another passage from Isaiah about the double portion. “Comfort, O comfort My people,” says your God. “Speak kindly to Jerusalem; and call out to her, that her warfare” (the margin reads, “hard service”; today we could say, “dealings”) “has ended, that her iniquity has been removed, that she has received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” Isaiah 40:1–2. The Lord has a way of dealing with us in order to bring about the results He wants. In His righteousness, the Lord actually brings people into a situation where they either open their hearts (as Jerusalem did in this Scripture) or they harden their hearts. God is bringing Babylon to the place (as we will read shortly) where He will heap upon her double for all that she has meted out to the nations (Revelation 18:4–8). God will also heap upon Zion a double portion above everything that they could have appropriated, or had ever dared to believe for (Zechariah 9:12).
Throughout the Old Testament, we read how God dealt in an amazing way with the Amorites, the Egyptians, and other nations. It causes one to marvel at the long-suffering of God. Just how did God deal with them? The Word tells us that God kept hardening their hearts (Exodus 10:1). He did it in a very impersonal way. Just as the sun shines down on wax and melts it, so it shines down on clay and hardens it. The same dealing of God causes one man to open up and melt before the Lord, and causes another man to become hardened and close his heart to the Lord. This is the chastening, or call it judgment if you prefer—the judgment of the Lord. At the Communion Table, you open your spirit and judge yourself so that you will not be condemned with the world (I Corinthians 11:27–32). The dealings of God will come upon this earth, and the man who repents and is broken before the Lord will withstand those judgments. The rock will fall, and as it does, it will do one of two things: It will either break the one who falls upon it, or it will grind to powder the one upon whom it falls. The man who receives it will be broken; the man who will not receive it will be ground to powder (Luke 20:18).
The dealings of the Lord come down to all of us in a rather impersonal way. The way we respond determines what will happen to us. If I had been on the throne of Egypt in Moses’ day when the Lord commanded, “Let My people go!” I would have immediately issued a solemn edict, signed my name, and sent it to all the people of Israel: “Get out of here—now!” That would have been the response in your heart, too, if you have that yearning to respond to the Lord. You want to please the Lord. When He speaks you respond.
But Pharaoh did not respond that way. The dealings of the Lord upon Pharaoh had quite a different effect on his heart. As he listened to the Word and weighed it, his heart hardened. The Scripture says that God hardened his heart (Exodus 10:1), and that is very true. God’s Word did harden his heart, just as the sunshine bakes the desert until it is like a rock. How God’s judgment will affect us depends upon the quality of response that we have within our hearts to the Lord.
God is seeking an occasion to give this world a Word which will cause it to turn one way or to turn the other way. God will deal with us to prepare us either for His judgment or for His blessing. We will find God heaping upon this generation either a double portion of judgment or a double portion of blessing. My heart is so concerned about this, because if you do not understand it, you may think, “God is partial against me. He is dealing with me so drastically!” The day that you should really be afraid is the day that God does not chasten you. According to the Word, that is when He is treating you like a bastard instead of treating you like a legitimate son of His favor, a son upon whom He is actually smiling (Hebrews 12:8). God will acknowledge everything He brings forth. Every son whom He receives He will first scourge (Hebrews 12:6). Why? By dealing with him, God will enlarge that man’s capacity for the unlimited blessings He wants to give him, the abundance that the Father is waiting to heap upon him.
Now do you understand why you go through difficulties? Once you understand this, you may say to yourself, “My, how the Lord must love me!” When I once remarked, “Oh! How the Lord loves me,” I do not think anyone grasped what I was saying. Because the dealings of the Lord were so severe, I took that as an evidence of His love. I have the marks to prove it. Like Paul, I can say, “I bear on my body the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ” (Galatians 6:17). Since the Lord promises us an extra portion of scourging, perhaps we should review those promises of blessing that follow. In Zechariah chapter 9, after Zechariah prophesied about the Lord coming into Jerusalem, he spoke, Return to the stronghold, O prisoners who have the hope (the King James Version reads, “prisoners of hope”); this very day I am declaring that I will restore double to you. Verse 12. Double!
Here again is the promise that there will be a double portion.
Jeremiah chapters 16 and 17 refer to quite a different double portion. Jeremiah 16:18: “And I will first doubly repay their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted My land; they have filled My inheritance with the carcasses of their detestable idols and with their abominations.” Verse 21: “Therefore behold, I am going to make them know—this time I will make them know My power and My might; and they shall know that My name is the Lord.” God will deal with the wicked doubly. For those to whom great privilege and great promises and covenants were given, the dealings of the Lord were twice as severe when they transgressed. Judgments were twice as severe. Why? This is a principle: To whom much is given, much will be required (Luke 12:48). If you do not act in accord with the will of the Master because you do not know His will, that is one thing; but if you do know it, then you will receive many stripes (Luke 12:47–48). God will deal with you with twice the severity that you think you deserve. You will never get away with evading the Lord’s will if you have had a Word from the Lord. His Word is what will judge your heart (John 12:48). His Word is what will determine the extent and the depth of His dealings upon your life.
Are you beginning to sense the principle behind these Scriptures? If so, then you will stop complaining and murmuring about the dealings of the Lord. You will interpret them correctly. If He is dealing with you doubly because there is sin in your life, then you will say, “Lord, just lay it to me.” But if He is simply dealing with you as He did with Job because your spirit is perfect, or if He is chastening you because you are a true son, then you will rejoice in it! Sometimes you will not be able to determine which it is. You may look up to the Lord and say, “Lord, are You doing this to me because I have sinned? Or are You doing this because I am entering into sonship?” It really does not matter which it is, as long as your spirit yields to the Lord’s dealings, and you open up and break through the limitations and the barriers that are hindering you.
God’s judgments upon the ungodly are quite different from His dealings upon His people. Jeremiah 17:18 makes this contrast apparent: Let those who persecute me be put to shame, but as for me, let me not be put to shame; let them be dismayed, but let me not be dismayed. Bring on them a day of disaster, and crush them with twofold destruction! God will never be content until He has totally annihilated that which has offended Him.
God’s judgment in this respect is even more graphic in the description of what will happen to Babylon: And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, “Come out of her, my people, that you may not participate in her sins and that you may not receive of her plagues; for her sins have piled up as high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. Pay her back even as she has paid, and give back to her double according to her deeds” (notice that double portion); “in the cup which she has mixed, mix twice as much for her. To the degree that she glorified herself and lived sensuously, to the same degree give her torment and mourning; for she says in her heart, ‘I sit as a queen and I am not a widow, and will never see mourning.’ For this reason in one day her plagues will come, pestilence and mourning and famine, and she will be burned up with fire; for the Lord God who judges her is strong.” Revelation 18:4–8.
We have established the scriptural basis of this concept of the double portion. Now we will see how it applies to our own hearts. If we believe that God is bringing down Babylon, we must believe also that there will first be a release of judgment in the earth—and we must not be given with sympathy to those who are judged. As you see that judgment actually in action, you may protest, “But they were good people; they did not deserve all of that!” That is not for you to decide. God has a principle by which He works. There are those who have received God’s Word, received His covenants and His commissions, with whom He will deal twice as harshly as would seem to be warranted. Meanwhile, He will also deal with you twice as severely as seems to be warranted. Sometimes the “blessing” that the Lord bestows upon us is very difficult to interpret optimistically! It seems at such times that with the blessing of the Lord, you really do not need any trouble. The Lord has given you enough trouble by just “blessing” you!
God’s dealings upon you and His dealings upon Babylon are like the sun: It shines upon you to melt your spirit before the Lord; but it shines upon Babylon to harden their hearts, in order that He might then deal with them on a different basis.
God is reaching out to turn something loose in the earth that will be awesome. I believe we are facing an age of miracles like we have never seen before. Yet it will not happen unless we submit to the dealings of the Lord which break us out of the restriction on our capacity for God, and bring us into the place where we can appropriate! The things we suffer open the door to that appropriation. The things we suffer make us a partaker of His holiness (Hebrews 12:10). The things we suffer bring the peaceable fruit of righteousness that we read about in Hebrews 12:11. God subjects us to His dealings so that our capacity to appropriate Him is increased.
If you are wondering what the judgment of God is all about, it is this: God must drive you into a corner until you appropriate more of His nature. You must let go of yourself and reach up to touch Him; and the only way this will happen is that God presses you into a place where in almost utter despair you submit to Him.
I have never known one of you to reach in, I have never known one of you to change, until God put you in a corner. You would be content to ride around blissfully on the merry-go-round, endlessly listening to the calliope and reaching for the brass ring. You would never move to actually make a break into anything. But when God puts you in a corner, you reach in—and the next thing you know, “Oh, what a meeting I had with the Lord!”
Have you ever considered exactly how Jacob became Israel? It seems apparent: Jacob simply went out and he wrestled with the Lord. But Jacob really had no choice! He did not meet the Lord; the Lord met him. Jacob wandered down to the brook Jabbok, perhaps only to think things over. And there the Lord met him! God said, “I am going to meet you”—and He proceeded to beat him up. It was when God put him in that desperate situation that Jacob’s hunger was greatest. Then he said, “I will not let You go until You bless me.” As the sun rose, Israel limped away—totally defeated, but totally changed (Genesis 32:24–31).
Your breaking through to more of the Lord is related to His dealings upon you. Until God chastens you and deals with you, often you, too, cannot break through to the next step; you simply cannot make it. You will not make the next step until He deals with you drastically. In moments of desperation, have you ever asked, “Where am I spiritually? Why is God dealing with me this way? Why has He backed me into this corner? Why have I had to go through all of these things, until I feel like everything is boiling over inside of my spirit! Why?” The answer is simple: God did that in order that He could change your hard head and give you the mind of Christ instead. He intended to bring you to this realization: “My ways of reasoning and my responses are too limited. I am not thinking the way God thinks. I am not living the way God wants me to live. I am not breaking through into it. I must break through!”
“Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth” (Hebrews 12:6). Yet He will not put upon you more than you are able to bear; but with the temptation He will also make a way of escape, that you may be able to bear it (I Corinthians 10:13). But do not think for a moment that your “way of escape” is your going back to all that you have attained or leaned on in the past. Rather, it is your appropriating something more from God. Your “way of escape” will require more of God in your life than you have now.
If you are going to do exploits (Daniel 11:32), you will need more faith than you have now. Are you wondering how you can work up that much faith? You are not going to pump it up! Instead, you will find yourself in a corner, and God will pin you there until you say, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief (Mark 9:24). Give me faith, Lord; increase my faith” (Luke 17:5). In that moment of desperation you reach up, and that is your way of escape—into God! Appropriating Him! Reaching into Him! You will not make the transition, you will not change until you do. Are you thinking, “Oh, how I would like to do that!” Good, because you will surely get a chance! You are being dealt with by the Lord for this very purpose.
It is not necessary for you to ask the Lord to begin to deal with you; you are already in the process! But it will help you a great deal if you understand the workings of God and you stop rebelling at His dealings upon you. If you find rebellion and withdrawal rising within you, let it be exposed and get rid of it. Say to the Lord, “I finally understand that You are dealing with me as You are, not necessarily because of my sin; all of this is designed to press me into a new level of appropriation, so that I can receive a double portion.”
Do you want that double portion? Then change your thinking about His dealings. Change your thinking. Change your heart. In the midst of His dealings upon you, look up and say, “Yes, Lord; I will submit to You. I will open my heart to You. I know You love me!” Then you can ask, “Where are those demons that I am to cast out? Where are those miracles that I am to work? Where is that moment in which I reach up with this new faith and appropriate something new? I am going to rise above these limitations; I will leave them behind as I reach into something greater. I submit to God with a new understanding of what He is doing in my life, and I determine to walk in it!”