The Hedge Around Job

THE HEDGE AROUND JOB

Job 1:8-10

INTRODUCTION

A. HUMOR

A policeman stopped me and said he was looking for a suspect with one eye. I told him to use both eyes and he might have better luck!

B. TEXT

1 In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. 6 One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them. 8 The LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil." 9 "Does Job fear God for nothing?" Satan replied. 10 "Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so at his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. Job 1:1-10.

C. THESIS

1. Satan basically said, “I’ve been looking for an opening in Job’s hedge, to attack him, but I couldn’t find one!”

2. Every time he’d tried to get through the hedge, an Angel would rap him on the knuckles. The enemy never got inside the hedge until God let him in, and God won’t let him in unless we will come out better for it. But I like the fact that he couldn’t get in!

3. We, as Christians, are standing in a place of victory. Jesus has conquered death, hell, and the grave. We are under the protection of the angels and the blood, but there’s also a hedge around us of the keeping power of God. “The wicked one touches them not” 1 John 5:18.

4. Church, I don’t know about you, but God built a hedge around me! Let’s see where else hedges are talked about and then draw some inferences.

I. OTHER PLACES HEDGES ARE MENTIONED

A. REMOVED BECAUSE OF SIN

1. SCRIPTURE: Isa 5:4-5 "What [more] could have been done to MY vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? 5 Now...I will take away the hedge thereof...and break down the wall...and it shall be trodden down." KJV

2. God put a hedge around Israel when they were obedient. However, when disobedient, He allowed the hedge to be torn down & enemies to invade to punish them for their sin.

3. In Joshua, after Achan had stolen the things dedicated to God, God told Joshua, “They’re protection is gone!” And they were defeated by a far-inferior army at Ai.

B. NOT MAINTAINED BY SPIRITUAL LEADERS

1. We need to remember that all natural hedges need to be trimmed/ attended to. So do spiritual hedges. Our next verse highlights a nation’s hedge not being tended to.

2. Ezek. 22:30 And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none. 31 Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath: their own way have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord GOD. KJV

3. God needed a mediator, an intercessor to act as the defense attorney for Israel, to intercede in their behalf before God, but He found none.

C. A HEDGE OF THORNS TO PROTECT DISOBEDIENT RELATIVES

1. The Prophet Hosea’s wife was unfaithful. God wanted that to change. So He prophesied, “I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths. 7 And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them: then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now. Hosea 2:6-7, KJV

2. Hosea was told to marry an unfaithful woman or a harlot. She represented Israel prostituting herself to foreign nations and their gods.

3. God said He was going to put a hedge of thorns” around her to keep her from her lovers. Then she would return to Him.

4. He made her life difficult with that hedge of thorns so that there was no place she could go or turn was without trouble or pain. She would eventually come to her senses and say “It’s better for me to be with the Lord than with foreign gods.”

II. WHAT THE HEDGE SIGNIFIES

A. PLANNING & PURPOSEFUL DESIGN

1. Hedges are not accidental or whims of nature, they are part of God’s system of checks and balances. There is a blessing on the obedient that is not on the wicked. Job’s hedge was of God’s doing…not Job’s.