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Faith is a Gift

pastortravislv

Why don’t they believe? This is a common question. It may be the most common objection that I know of to a reformed understanding of salvation. People, out of a desire to understand why some people do not entrust themselves to Christ, will raise the question of why this would happen. And the only place they can land where they are comfortable is to say that people do not believe because, though God gave them every opportunity, they simply chose not to.

I thought about this in a recent rereading of Matthew. In our church, we will soon be returning to Matthew for our sermon series, and I thought I’d better remind myself of what has passed. And in Matthew 13, Jesus speaks in many parables. The disciples are very curious as to why he would do so.

Do you remember how Jesus responded?

Matthew 13:10-11 – Then the disciples came and said to him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” 11 And he answered them, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.

Why did Jesus speak to them in parables? Why don’t they believe? To the disciples, Jesus responded by pointing out an answer that is a little different than what the disciples wanted to know. Jesus points out that, for the disciples, they should be thrilled that they do believe. Why? It was granted to them to believe. It was given to them to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven. The disciples have been given a gift, a kindness from God.

Note, please, that the gift from God is a free gift. Nothing, absolutely nothing, obligates God to give the disciples this knowledge. There is nothing that would make God a bad person or a wrongdoer if he did not give it. It is a free thing that God may do, to show his kindness, for his pleasure.

Jesus then speaks to the disciples about those who do not get to hear the message clearly. He cites Isaiah 6, where the Lord told Isaiah that all his preaching will dull the sight and harden the hearts of the people to whom he preaches. And Jesus says that this is what is happening with the parables.

But what are we to do with that information? How are we supposed to feel? Jesus says this to the disciples.

Matthew 13:16-17 – 16 But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. 17 For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

What the disciples were to do was to see that they had been blessed by God. Why were they blessed by God? Were they blessed because they chose to believe? No, that is not at all what Jesus says. They were blessed in that they were granted by God the message they were hearing. It is not that they had faith that made them a step better than those around them. On the contrary, their blessing is that God gave them eyes to see and ears to hear. Jesus said, “Blessed are your eyes.” He was telling them that they were blessed because God chose to reveal something to them that others around them were not receiving. They were gifted by God with the gift of faith.

Even Idolatry is a Symptom

pastortravislv

When studying biblical counseling, I found myself regularly looking at the differences between symptoms and causes. Sometimes a person would come and talk with me about a struggle they were having. But after we would talk for a while, we would discover that their struggle was a symptom of a greater, deeper struggle within. They were feeling concern about the fruit on the tree, but we were able to look down to find the problem at the roots.

In my reading of Jeremiah, I find a fruit and root problem relating to idolatry that surprises me a bit.

Jeremiah 16:10-13

10 “And when you tell this people all these words, and they say to you, ‘Why has the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us? What is our iniquity? What is the sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?’ 11 then you shall say to them: ‘Because your fathers have forsaken me, declares the Lord, and have gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them, and have forsaken me and have not kept my law, 12 and because you have done worse than your fathers, for behold, every one of you follows his stubborn, evil will, refusing to listen to me. 13 Therefore I will hurl you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.’

This is a passage where Jeremiah is communicating God’s judgment on his rebellious people. This is just before the captivity of the southern kingdom, their being carried off to Babylon. But notice the difference in the problems of the two generations in that section.

God says that the older generation is particularly guilty of idolatry. But the younger has done even worse. What could possibly be worse than being fool enough to bow to a statue and seek its aid against the command of God? The Lord says, “Every one of you follows his stubborn, evil will, refusing to listen to me.”

What then is worse? God tells us here that a generation that follows its own stubborn, evil will, a generation that refuses the word of God, that is worse even than the generation of forefathers who bowed to idols. Something about dad and grandpa bowing to a calf was less evil than Junior saying, “I don’t care what the Lord says, I’ll just do things my own way.”

Now, this is not to say that idolatry is not an evil deserving hell. God is clear that it is. But God says that there is something worse in the heart of mankind when we follow our own stubbornness, our own evil, our own rotten hearts and completely ignore the Lord.

Idolatry is a symptom of a deeper problem. Bowing to a statue is a symptom of the disease that came out in the next generation. The disease is trusting one’s own heart, ones own wisdom, one’s own ways above the Lord. And God says that self-trust, that following your own heart, is even more evil than being confused enough to make an offering to a figurine.

What in the world are we to do with this? We must recognize that our hearts are not trustworthy. Jeremiah tells us that in the next chapter.

Jeremiah 17:9-10

9 The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?
10 “I the Lord search the heart
and test the mind,
to give every man according to his ways,
according to the fruit of his deeds.”

Our hearts will lead us away from the Lord. The infection of human sin and human self-reliance will turn us from the God who made us. That disease leads to spiritual death. We must be humble enough to stop following our hearts, stop listening to our urges, stop believing ourselves, and start relying on a solid source of truth. We need God’s word. We need God’s wisdom. And this is found in the clear and perfect revelation of God in Scripture.

The point is that even humanity bowing to false gods is a symptom of the folly and the rebellion bound up naturally in our sinful hearts. WE need spiritual heart transplants, a procedure only performed by the Lord at our salvation. And we need to trust the word of God over our desires, as our hearts will still mislead us if left unchecked.

How do you guard yourself from the danger of a rotten heart? First, come to Jesus if you have not yet done so. Second, regularly and prayerfully open the word of God and saturate your life with it. Third, be a part of a faithful, Bible-teaching, Bible-believing church where you can sit under the exposition of the word in classes and from the pulpit. And fourth, remember that your heart, even transformed, is not totally trustworthy. Always check your desires, not by spiritual experience, but by the clear and unchanging word of God.

Some Thoughts on Justice and Accusations

pastortravislv

When significant accusations are made against a person, especially when issues of loss are involved, how do we deal with them? Do we take the modern legal motto of innocent until proven guilty? Do we use the criminal justice standard that says that guilt must be proven beyond doubt? Do we take the civil standard that guilt must be proved simply by preponderance of the evidence? Do we take the line of the #MeToo movement in which we believe all accusers regardless of evidence?

The problem here is that none of the above standards is the best standard. Why? None of those is the standard of the word of God. It may surprise you to realize that the Lord actually spoke quite clearly to his people about what must be the standard met in a case of accusation. And the Lord made it clear that there are also consequences for malicious false accusations.

Deuteronomy 19:15-21 – 15 “A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established. 16 If a malicious witness arises to accuse a person of wrongdoing, 17 then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days. 18 The judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, 19 then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. 20 And the rest shall hear and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among you. 21 Your eye shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

First, note that a charge will not be established without a witness (cf. Num 35:30; Due 17:6-7). The idea of a he said she said or a she said he said claim is simply not admissible. I’m not going to deny that, in our era of modern technology, video surveillance, DNA evidence, and all the rest perhaps this model could shift a bit. There are methods of proof that were not available to the men of the second millennium BC. But it should be a normal standard that we do not attempt to adjudicate claims of one person against another person without a witness and without any sort of physical evidence. Something other than the claim of the accuser has to point toward the guilt of the accused.

Note, in the issue of witnesses, the Scripture is also very clear that any person with evidence regarding a crime is obligated to come forward. It is a crime to conceal a crime in the biblical standard (cf. Lev 5:1).

But, if a person makes an accusation, particularly one that includes consequences for the one accused, the accuser also is to be held accountable for their actions. There is no such thing as a free pass at making a charge against someone if that charge is intended to do the accused harm. Deuteronomy 19:19-21 above shows us that one found to be bringing a false accusation was actually subject to the penalty they attempted to have imposed on the one they accused if they are found to be a malicious witness (cf. Due 5:20). Deuteronomy 17:6-7 adds the provision that one who accuses another of murder must also be the first one to begin the execution of the murderer. Thus, God intended to dissuade people from making false accusations by making it impossible for a person to simply accuse and then walk away.

You might wonder how it could be that God would speak so strongly seemingly on the side of the accused. Obviously the Lord does not want victims to not see justice. Obviously God does not want people to be afraid to speak out and tell the truth. So why would God make this seem so hard?

The answer is one of ultimate justice. When dealing with fallen humanity, we must understand that mistakes are going to be made in our criminal and civil courts. And we must make a decision as to where we err. Will we err on the side of punishing the innocent or acquitting the guilty? Obviously we want to do neither, as both are injustices. But the Lord has shown us in his word that it is better to err on the side of not punishing someone than to err on the side of wrongly punishing someone.

Why would that be? The answer lies in the truth of the absolute justice of God. Even as we are prone to error in our judgments, the Lord our God never makes a mistake. God will perfectly do justice. No one who appears to get away with a crime in their lifetime will find that their sin goes unpunished. God is just. He will always see to it that justice is done.

If we punish someone wrongfully, we can do nothing to give back to them what they have lost. But if we fail to punish a person who turns out to be guilty, the Lord will perfectly do justice. Thus, a belief in the Lord and in his word is what helps us to see exactly where to risk erring.

Let’s also remember that biblical justice, as a friend pointed out to me recently, is more than punishing the guilty. Biblical justice is about the glory of God. Justice is about restoring as much as possibly can be restored when wrong is done or crimes are committed. Justice is also about sanctifying people, preventing future crimes, bringing about purity in a land, and teaching all people to treat all people as image-bearers of God.

The hardest part of this concept given our social and political environment is that I would never want a man or woman, a boy or girl, to be afraid to tell the truth. If a person has been abused or attacked, they need to know that it is safe for them to speak out. At the same time, we must not develop a culture in which every accusation is so completely believed as to destroy a person’s career and reputation without any form of evidence.

What then must we do? IN general, we love those who accuse and love those who are accused, protecting the dignity of all humanity—people created in the image of God. We do not pretend that any person’s accusation is not a big deal. We do not make anyone think we will not take them seriously. And we counsel, and we apply the healing grace of the gospel to all our wounds. But that cannot mean that we automatically pre-judge all who are accused. As we see in Leviticus 19:15, “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.” We do not defer to the strong or the weak, the rich or the poor, the accuser or the accused.

We love the accused by seeking genuine, biblical justice. Are they guilty? Is there real evidence? Are there witnesses? If there are , we love the guilty best by doing justice so as to punish crimes and to call for repentance. WE preach the gospel to the guilty and point them to the Savior. That may not get a woman her job back or keep a man out of prison, but eternal life is worth far more than any loss in this present world.

But what if the accusation is proven false? Then we must consider biblical justice there too. False accusers are attempting, for some reason, to damage other people with their words. Can we discern intent? Can we find out that a person was malicious in their motivation? IF so, then we should enact just penalties for that crime.

What if we cannot discern intent? What if there may be a genuine false belief based on a problem with memory or simple misunderstanding? Or what if the one accused might be guilty but we just cannot prove it? Is justice thwarted? Of course not. In such a situation we entrust the situation to the eternal justice of God, we strive to biblically comfort the hurting and the oppressed, and we move forward knowing that, at the final day of judgment, the Lord of Heaven and Earth will do rightly.

Prosperity Does Not Equal Favor

pastortravislv

One of the more insidious lies from all of human history is the idea that, if God is with us, we get good things. The counter is that, if God is upset with someone, they always get bad things. The truth is, the favor or disfavor of the Lord is shown far more in eternity than in every day-to-day. King Ahab had a pretty nice kingdom. Job had it pretty rough. But which of them was faithful to the Lord?

As Jeremiah preached against the people of Judah, he had to speak against people who were smug. They assumed that they were fine, because they were experiencing prosperity. But look at how Jeremiah warns them.

Jeremiah 13:12-14

12 “You shall speak to them this word: ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “Every jar shall be filled with wine.” ’ And they will say to you, ‘Do we not indeed know that every jar will be filled with wine?’ 13 Then you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord: Behold, I will fill with drunkenness all the inhabitants of this land: the kings who sit on David’s throne, the priests, the prophets, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem. 14 And I will dash them one against another, fathers and sons together, declares the Lord. I will not pity or spare or have compassion, that I should not destroy them.’ ”

The Lord is speaking through Jeremiah, and his warnings will catch the people by surprise. Jeremiah says that these people have lots of wine. They respond by saying they know that, and they assume that this means that they are powerful, strong, successful, perhaps even favored. But then the Lord tells them that the very wine they love, the very thing they think of as the sign of their success, that is going to be the tool that the Lord uses to bring about their destruction.

I wonder how much we have forgotten this lesson. The things that our society thinks are marks of our prosperity, marks of our strength, marks of our enlightenment, so many of those very things can be the instruments of our destruction. We revel in our freedom. We rejoice in our financial prosperity. But we forget the Lord. WE think we need no favor but our own strength. And we will, if we do not turn to the Lord, find that what we rely on will be the very thing that the Lord uses to show his judgment on us.

But even outside of national issues, this can be true in churches. When we think we are strong, when a church gets proud of a program, a building, or a certain number of people, we can find ourselves in trouble. The Lord builds his church. If we start chasing numbers and dollars and praise from the community, we will find that we are no longer seeking what really matters, the favor of the Lord. May we not let, even in the church, our prosperity be the tool that tears us down. May we love the Lord and love one another to his glory and our good.

It Matters Who Is Our Maker

pastortravislv

In Jeremiah 10, the prophet speaks to the nation of Israel to warn them against learning the ways of the surrounding nations. He especially warns against astrology and idolatry. And then he takes some time to point out the silliness of bowing to statues. After all, Jeremiah reminds them that they know of the wood that was cut and the work of the smith and the sewing of the clothing for the statue. But then to think that the statue that you watched being put together is somehow your deity, that is absurd.

At the end, Jeremiah takes the people back to one place. Who made you? The God who made you is the real God. A god you made, not so much.

Jeremiah 1011, 14-16

11 Thus shall you say to them: “The gods who did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens.” …
14 Every man is stupid and without knowledge;
every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols,
for his images are false,
and there is no breath in them.
15 They are worthless, a work of delusion;
at the time of their punishment they shall perish.
16 Not like these is he who is the portion of Jacob,
for he is the one who formed all things,
and Israel is the tribe of his inheritance;
the Lord of hosts is his name.

Stop and consider the question of creation. It really matters who made us. If we exist at the creative decree of the God of the Bible, everything else must align to that fact. If God really formed us, then God is God and we are not. If God made the universe, he is infinitely wiser than us, infinitely stronger than us, infinitely greater than us. If God made us by his power and for his glory, then we exist under his ownership, and we owe him our fealty, we owe him the right due the Creator. If God made us, he has the right to define what we are to be and how we are to live.

Jeremiah reminded the people that the God who made us is real and all other things we bow to are simply man-made objects. It makes no sense to worship what you make yourself. And we must remember that we are creation, owned by God, under his rule. WE must live as his subjects for his great glory. And we must reject the notion that we can do anything to overthrow him or redefine him or otherwise shape the world that he made to our whim.

Misplaced Trust

pastortravislv

When Jeremiah preached to the people of Judah, the nation was on the brink of the Babylonian captivity. God was about to allow a foreign nation to come into the land and capture the people, destroy the temple, and show the anger of God over the sins of the nation. Why was God so upset? The people of Judah, people who had agreed to follow the ways of God, had been going against the law of God. They were cruelly abusing the poor and needy. They were shedding innocent blood. They were going after idols. And God would not tolerate it.

Even worse, the people who were doing all this were, whenever they were threatened, looking back to the physical presence of the temple in Jerusalem as a sort of talisman. They did not believe that God would ever let their nation fall, because they had the temple.

So these words to them from God through Jeremiah must have gotten the attention of at least a few.

Jeremiah 7:3-4

3 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. 4 Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’

Get the brashness of the people. We can’t fall. We have the temple, the temple, the temple. No matter how evil we are, we have the temple. God would not, could not, judge us. We are safe to continue to live as we want.

Jeremiah 7:8-11

8 “Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. 9 Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? 11 Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the Lord.

See the problem. These people were living as enemies of God. But when threatened, they point to their heritage as if that will protect them. And the Lord is letting them know that it will not. The past faithfulness of some of their ancestors will not protect a wicked nation from the coming judgment of the Lord.

And here we are, sometime around 2,600 years from that time. Is there anything for the modern American to learn? O, I think so.

First, as I said yesterday, we are not Israel. America is not the promised land, and Americans are not the new covenant people of God. So we should not apply this as a one-to-one comparison. But with that said, we should recognize that many Americans are willing to see our nation race headlong away from the justice and the ways of the Lord. WE shed more innocent blood in our nation than in any place at any time in history with the millions of unborn children sacrificed at the altar of human sexual freedom. We know we have a justice problem—even the political liberals buy that. We are sexually immoral. Our nation embraces and champions things that God calls abominations. And our nation aggressively opposes, in some corners, simple and faithful expressions of Christianity.

Should we expect that our nation can then turn to some symbols of our heritage and expect that we, as a people, are not worthy of the wrath of God? Should we say that our defense of the world in World War II gives us a free pass? Should we assume that the Christian heritage of our forefathers will keep us from destruction?

I love where I live. I am grateful to God for people who gave much to let me be free. I’m grateful for the continuing freedom, at least today, to worship, to preach, and to care for others in Christ. I would not want to live somewhere else. And I get patriotism.

But, dear Christian friends, let’s not assume that we can avoid the judgment of God that our nation is already experiencing by an appeal to the flag, the constitution, or the military. We need to be a repentant people. We need to see the gospel spread in our land. WE need to see people’s souls saved. We need to see the word of God again valued. And if we do not see such a change, we need to understand, as Judah had to understand, that a prior status as people under the favor of God is no guarantee of future blessing for a sinful land.

Anger Turned To Love

pastortravislv

Do you remember the way many gospel presentations used to begin? So often, people would start a presentation of the plan of salvation with the statement, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” Of course, when that statement was made in the 1950s, people in the U.S. had a general understanding of who God is and that we all have failed to live up to his standard. Thus, the statement of God’s love came as a relief and a light of hope for those who might have thought themselves beyond the reach of the grace of God.

When we discuss issues of salvation with people who are outside of the faith, often our path will be to focus on the love of God. Of course, this is good, as God is gloriously loving. But, if we are not careful, that presentation of love today can paint a false picture of the actual situation between humanity and God.

What do I mean? When all we let people know is that God loves them and really wishes they would be a part of his family, we do not paint a true and biblical picture. Instead, we paint a picture of desperation. We make God look like a guy who really wishes the sweet girl would go with him to the dance. And such has never been the biblical portrayal of our Lord.

Isaiah 12:1

You will say in that day:
“I will give thanks to you, O Lord,
for though you were angry with me,
your anger turned away,
that you might comfort me.

I think we gain something beautiful to remember about the gospel and about our own experience with the Lord from Isaiah 12:1. This in no way takes the loving nature from the picture of God, but it does clearly portray our position before the Lord.

The Lord tells the people how they will sing of him. He was angry with them. But he turned his own anger away that he might comfort them. Anger turned to favor is the glorious gospel picture.

The theological word for this is propitiation. The concept is that of God having righteous anger against us for our sin. But God, by means of a sacrifice, satisfies his anger so that he can now look upon us with favor.

Now consider the difference. IF I start the gospel presentation with a soft and sappy love of God, I miss some very important truths. God is holy. God is rightly, perfectly, terrifyingly angry over my sin. He should be. And I have earned his wrath. But God, by his choice first, decided to satisfy his anger by means of presenting God the Son as the perfect sacrifice for my sins so that two things can be true. On the one hand, God can look upon me with love and kindness because of what Jesus has done. At the same time, God can be clearly seen as perfectly just, as my sin is perfectly punished.

That is a bigger gospel than is a gospel of a lonely, longing, deity who just deeply wishes you would consent to have him as yours. Yes, God loves, but his love is far deeper than all that. God’s love is based on God’s perfectly turning from his righteous anger and providing the only sacrifice that could ever work so that he might look at us with favor.

Now, is that the picture painted in the Scripture? Yes, Isaiah 12:1 looks that way. But is that the gospel picture?

Romans 3:23-26

23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Jesus is our propitiation, put forth by God himself. Jesus is the sacrifice who turns the anger of God into his favor on us. And God did this to prove his justice. This is the gospel, and it is better news than God loving me and having a wonderful plan for my life. IN fact, God does love me and have a wonderful plan for my life, but that comes toward the end of the gospel, not at the beginning. The gospel begins with the holiness of the infinitely perfect God, his choice to turn his own anger away, and my eternal benefit at his gracious hand.

Forgetting How to Blush

pastortravislv

How do we handle texts from the prophets condemning the sin of Israel and Judah? That is not as easy a question as one might imagine. On the one hand, it seems simple. Sin is sin. God is not pleased when nations do the things he forbids. But the prophets are speaking something more.

The prophets who speak to Israel and Judah are speaking to a people who have made a covenant with the Lord. They have promised to obey his laws. They have accepted God’s promise of protection and provision. They also have accepted his promise of judgment if they refuse to obey him.

In our modern setting, our national government is not a one-to-one parallel with Judah. America is not Israel. Even if many of our founders were genuine believers, even if you accept the narrative that the nation is truly intended to be a Christian nation, we are not in covenant with the Lord. What Israel was is different than what we are. And thus to apply the words of the prophets directly is not exactly fitting.

The prophets were speaking to people who were in covenant relationship with the Lord, who had accepted his governing, who had signed off on his justice, and who then turned and rebelled. And I still want to ask, what is the closest parallel? How do we apply something like the following?

Jeremiah 6:12b-15

for I will stretch out my hand
against the inhabitants of the land,”
declares the Lord.
13 “For from the least to the greatest of them,
everyone is greedy for unjust gain;
and from prophet to priest,
everyone deals falsely.
14 They have healed the wound of my people lightly,
saying, ‘Peace, peace,’
when there is no peace.
15 Were they ashamed when they committed abomination?
No, they were not at all ashamed;
they did not know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall among those who fall;
at the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown,”
says the Lord.

Notice with whom God is most upset. God is speaking powerfully against the religious in Israel who are speaking a false peace to the people of the land. God is speaking to false prophets and other such men who are telling the people of the land that they need not repent. God is promising judgment to come for those who should have the truth, and out of a love of sin or a love of comfort or a love of status are telling the sinning nation around them that it’s all just fine.

Now, do not think for a moment that God is giving the non-religious of the land a pass. They have committed abomination, but they do not even know how to blush. The concept of shame for grievous sin against the Lord is simply gone from that society. And thus the judgment of God is coming.

How do we handle this? I’d say two things at least are in order. On a simple side, sin is sin, and we need to see that our land is full of evil. Be careful not to let gratitude for our nation and those who have helped us maintain freedom prevent you from seeing our need of national repentance. WE embrace as a nation what God calls abomination. We have legalized the shedding of innocent blood. We have publicized sexual immorality and condemn those who still know how to blush. And if we do not repent, repenting as a nation, we are under wrath that we will not survive.

But, as a Christian, I need to be really careful not to let this passage make me only point fingers at the lost world around me. God’s strongest condemnation here is for the people who claim to be his people, the religious leaders, who speak peace to a land in rebellion against the Lord. We cannot do that and be faithful Christians. We need to weep. WE need to blush. We need to call our land to repentance. We need to warn of judgment and not rest in a supposed righteousness built into our culture.

Our nation is not Israel. We as a people do not have covenant promises of favor from God. We would do well not to boldly commit abomination before the Lord. Those who are in covenant relationship with the Lord, his church, need to be sure first not to participate in the sins of the nation. We next need to be sure not to pretend that the sins of the nation are OK. And we need to warn the nation to repent by first coming to Christ and then by turning from the evils that bring the wrath of God down on any nation.

Does this make me about modern social justice? Nope, I’m about repentance. I’m not about allowing the secular academy to tell us what is and what is not acceptable repentance. I’m about the word of God calling the people of God to stand in opposition to all things that dishonor God. So I hate racism. I hate murder. I hate abuse. And it is my job, as a Christian, to let the word of God command me how to live and how to call others to repentance.

A Quick Thought on God Knowing You

pastortravislv

One common interpretive tool to attempt to make sense of the predestining grace of God is a heavy reliance on the concept of foreknowledge. Those who would argue that God responds to the future choices of his free creatures in order to determine his decree of predestination have to argue that God, with divine foreknowledge, looks down the corridor of time and sees who will and who will not choose him.

A reformed response to this kind of thinking is to point out that God’s word regularly uses the idea of God knowing someone with a different semantic meaning than simple information. When the Lord knows a person or a nation, the Lord is expressing that he has a particular favor on them. After all, the Lord knows, intellectually, all that there is to know. But for God to know you is for him to have a particularly loving relationship with you.

Consider the words of God at the beginning of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 1:4-5

4 Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying,
5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

What is God declaring to Jeremiah? Why is it such a significant turn of phrase? God says that he knew Jeremiah even before Jeremiah was formed in the womb. If this is merely God saying that he had knowledge of Jeremiah’s existence or even Jeremiah’s future choices, that is both amazing and ordinary. It is amazing, as we know our God knows all things. But it is ordinary in that this phrase would mean nothing more to Jeremiah than the expression of the fact that God has intellectual awareness of Jeremiah in just the same way that God has intellectual awareness of all human beings.

But look at the parallel. To know Jeremiah was for God to consecrate him. For God to consecrate Jeremiah was to set him apart as a prophet. The knowledge is put in a parallel position to the consecration in the poetic lines. This is not God saying that he understood what kind of guy Jeremiah would be and so he chose to use him. No, it is God saying that, before Jeremiah was ever formed, God had already set upon Jeremiah his consecration, his sacred calling. God knew Jeremiah in a special way, not in the same, ordinary way that God has knowledge of all humanity. God chose Jeremiah before he was born so that Jeremiah would be set apart and fulfill a glorious divine purpose.

Repentance for Questions

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As the book of Job comes to a close, we watch the dramatic confrontation take place, but it is not the one we expect at the beginning. From the third chapter of the book onward, we are expecting to see Job confront the Lord with his questions as to why all this bad stuff is happening to him. But, in the end, it is the Lord confronting Job, and rightly so.

By chapter 40, we have already had a couple of chapters in which God has shown Job that Job is unqualified to even ask the questions that he is demanding that God answer. Job was not there when God set the universe in place. Job was not there when God set the stars in order. Job does not know how God keeps the snow and the hailstones. Job is finite, and there is no way that he is ready to question God.

And as chapter 40 begins, God checks with Job to see if Job has gotten the point.

Job 40:1-8

1 And the Lord said to Job:
2 “Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty?
He who argues with God, let him answer it.”
3 Then Job answered the Lord and said:
4 “Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer you?
I lay my hand on my mouth.
5 I have spoken once, and I will not answer;
twice, but I will proceed no further.”
6 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:
7 “Dress for action like a man;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.
8 Will you even put me in the wrong?
Will you condemn me that you may be in the right?

In verses 1-2, God asks Job if he really wants to fight this battle. And Job, in 3-5, says that he will remain silent. Job has almost gotten there, but he is not quite there yet.

Thus, with the beginning of verse 6, we get another couple of chapters of questions in which the Lord again declares his infinite might and infinite wisdom in comparison to Job’s finitude.

All this to get to verse 8, the question that God asks that should ring in our ears like a gong. In verse 8, God asks, “Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be in the right?” And you should be able to feel what the answer to this question should be. It is a rhetorical question, and it’s obvious teaching point is this: No human being has the right to attempt to declare God to be in the wrong.

Stop and consider this truth more clearly. What would be required for a human being to have the right to declare God to be in the wrong? There are only two possibilities that I can think of, and each of them is horrific. One possibility would be that a human being could declare God to be in the wrong if there is an external measure of right and wrong to appeal to that is outside of, beyond, and over God. But if such a standard existed, a thing above God to measure him and find him right or wrong, that standard would be the ultimate, not the deity it claims to measure. Thus, to declare that God is measured by an external standard would declare God to be less than God. The second alternative, one even more blasphemous if possible, would be to declare that the human himself is in a superior position to the Lord and thus has the right to measure and judge God.

But all of theology teaches us that God is the ultimate. God is holy, a cut above us in his perfections, and is measured by no external standard. God gives us the standard of right, not the other way around.

Job 42:1-6

1 Then Job answered the Lord and said:
2 “I know that you can do all things,
and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
3 ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
4 ‘Hear, and I will speak;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.’
5 I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees you;
6 therefore I despise myself,
and repent in dust and ashes.”

In chapter 42, Job repents. He even laughs at his own foolishness for how he darkened counsel by words without knowledge. Job knows that his words added nothing to the discussion. Job knows that his questions came from an entirely wrong place and lacked wisdom. And so, unlike chapter 40 when Job merely said he would be silent, now Job repents. He was wrong in his questions and attitude. He was wrong in believing that he could declare God to be wrong. And so Job turns. And the book ends with God showing Job grace and favor.

I do not, in this little post, desire to be unsympathetic to Job. He messed up—otherwise repenting would not be the proper response—but he messed up far less than many a human would have done in his setting. Remember his wife telling him in 2:9 just to curse God and die? No, I do not want to put Job down in any way. But this is a significant point that we must grab hold of. God is God and we are not. We are in no position to judge the morality of God, because we lack the wisdom and purity to even begin to measure his perfections.

I have had conversations with many people who do not understand the ways of the Lord. They may even say, at the end of the day, that they disagree with laws God made or things God calls sin. They may disagree with the existence of hell or that Christ is the only way. And all of these are questions of the actual morality, the moral goodness, of God.

We must, if we are not to be taken down a very dangerous path, begin with a proper understanding of the infinite wisdom and unending holiness of god. We must remember that, if God really is God, he cannot be measured by a morality that is external to him. He must be the standard of perfection, for no other being in the universe matches his glory. God is right. And when we think that we can judge his choices, we are acting, to follow Scripture’s own description, like fools.