God's Hedge

“And the LORD said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job,

that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect 

and upright man, one who fears God and eschews evil?’ 

Then Satan answered the LORD and said, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing?

Have you not made a hedge around him,

and around his house, and around all that he has on every side?’ ”

Job 1:8–10a

God did have a hedge around Job and all he had, and He had kept that hedge around Job for many years.  But now, He would take that hedge down, and He sent Satan down to earth to rob Job of his health, his children, and all that he had.  But have you ever noticed that Satan, though he was wicked, remained unharmed?  And he was unharmed because God had a hedge around him, too – to protect Satan from the wrath of His Son, who was still hidden.

Thousands of years later, when God revealed His Son, after Jesus ascended to the Father, he cast Satan out of heaven forever.  In other words, God took down the protective hedge that Satan had enjoyed when He glorified His Son, and the glorified Son removed that wicked cherub from his exalted position and banished him from the presence of God.

The Son was revealed, and Satan was judged, only in God’s time.  “In the fullness of time,” Paul wrote, “God sent His Son.”  There is another judgment coming, the Final Judgment, and it, too, will come at the appointed time.  Satan now roams the earth “seeking whom he may devour”; however, when Jesus returns to earth, he will cast him away again, this time from earth and into the Bottomless Pit, and then, after a thousand years, into the Lake of Fire forever.