Month: April 2016

Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt. (Ps 123:3)

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.  (Ps 51:1)

Lord, hear our prayers.  We come to You broken and hurting.  Heal our wounds.  Apart from Christ, we have sin on our heads.  Forgive our sin.  Thank you for the Cross that heals and brings forgiveness.  And thank you for a mercy that is infinite.

Have you ever seen suffering? Maybe a woman dying from cancer or a man sitting in jail for doing the right thing, or a woman whose husband has left her, or a nation going through famine or war. All these experiences are Earth. Ever since Genesis 3, suffering has been the normal experience of the human race, and sometimes this suffering makes people question God’s goodness. Sometimes people throw the sufferings of Earth into the face of a Christian and say, “Where is your God of love, now?”

Of course, one way to address this accusation is to point out that the human race isn’t exactly the pinnacle of virtue. But today, I don’t have time to flesh out that idea. I want to focus on a different response to suffering.

I want to talk about the mercies of God. The Bible could not be clearer. Our God is a merciful God, and His mercy is tied up with His love. Mercy is an expression of love. Peter said “love covers a multitude of sins.” (I Pet 4:8) In the Scriptures mercy entails a tender-hearted compassion and expresses God’s care for His hurting creatures. When the psalmists frequently cry out for God’s mercy, they are not asking primarily for forgiveness of sins but for relief from oppression. Evil men pursue David to take his life, and he cries out for God to have mercy. An invading nation slaughters God’s people, and they cry out to God for mercy. In drought, in famine, in war, in disease, in danger, in childlessness, and much more, God’s people ask their God to show them mercy. They want a God who has compassion, and this compassion is a common thrust of the Biblical words for mercy. God feels for those who hurt; He has an infinite compassion on them. But this is only one aspect of the mercy of God.

The same words for mercy also often refer to forgiveness. God’s shows His mercy by forgiving our sins. God’s mercy, thus, has this double meaning: 1) God has compassion on His creatures, and 2) God will forgive their darkest sins. This is news beyond our grandest desires. The one who truly grasps it must admit that he cannot grasp it. Sing Christian! God sees your sufferings and will address them! And God forgives!

The reason mercy entails both these meanings is that suffering and sin go together. God’s mercy deals with the entire package, not just one element of the problem. Mercy is holistic. When the people lowered the paralyzed man through the roof, they wanted Jesus to show mercy and heal the man. Jesus responded with mercy and said, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” (Mk 2:5) Sometimes we just want relief from our pain when what we really need is a clean soul. We want the depression to go away, but we forget to ask for the sin to go away. We want the tumor to be healed but don’t think about having our sins wiped away. We want relief from the symptom without dealing with the cause. But God’s mercy deals with the cause. Praise God. He heals tumors … and depression. He deals with our pain, and we can trust Him when we hurt. But He wants to do more. His mercy is bigger than we think. He nails our sin to the Cross. He says to us, “Come to me, my child. Be mine.” He gives us Himself and grants us an eternal inheritance that far outweighs our “light and momentary afflictions.” (II Cor 4:17)

That’s right. Make no mistake. Glory is mercy. We often look only to Earth for our mercy, and God does often grant us physical relief or material blessing here and now. When He does so, it is grace. But it is also true that sometimes we suffer many years till we die. Sometimes people suffer at the hands of injustice. When that happens, we must see that our lives are but a nanosecond in the grasp of eternity, and it is the glory of that eternity that makes up for our nanosecond of suffering. God will show His people mercy one way or the other and sometimes both ways.

But the mercies of God are not just in eternity or in the Cross. We must understand that the oxygen we breathe is mercy. The water we drink is mercy. The food we eat is mercy. The home we live in, the sun we enjoy, the rain that brings the crops, the clothes we wear, the friends we have, the car we drive, the music we like, the very life we live — all of this and more is mercy. We take these things for granted and somehow think that sinful creatures deserve pleasures. We don’t deserve any of these things. But we do enjoy them, and we do so because our God shows mercy.

A full treatment of our sufferings and of God’s mercy deserves more space than this blog can give, and I may have raised as many questions for you as I have answered. That’s OK. But we have got to see the mercy in God. It is part of His character, and it is everywhere we look. Now and for eternity.

God is love. (I Jn 4:8)

His love endures forever…His love endures forever…His love endures forever.   (Ps 136)

Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy.   (Mic 7:18)

God on high, can the angels in heaven comprehend your love? Is there any end to it? How can I, full of sin and rebellion against you, quick to ignore your voice and heed my own inclinations ¾ how can I possibly know your love? Yet you love me! Oh glorious fact! And you forgive my ugly sin! Thank you. Oh thank you.

Now we get to talk about the part of God that everyone likes to talk about — the love of God. If you have heard anything about the Christian God, then you know that He is full of love and compassion. And praise Him, for it is true! Last week I said that God’s judgment against sin is on virtually every page of the Bible. This week I say that His boundless love is also on virtually every page of the Bible. Even when God judges, He loves. All the way back in Genesis, God sent a curse for sin but covered Adam and Eve with His sacrifice (Gen 3:8-21). In Noah’s day, God judged the world, but if you were to ask Noah if God loved, he would reply with a thundering “yes,” for he was the recipient of that love. God showed His love to Israel while she was in Egypt. Amazingly, He kept delivering His people during the times of the judges, when they spit in His face again and again. He showed His love to Moses, to Samuel, to Ruth, to Hannah, to David, to Solomon, to Isaiah, to Jeremiah, to Daniel, to Mary, to Peter, to Paul. And He continues to show His love to you and me today. He does this because it’s who He is. God so loved the world that He gave His only son (Jn 3:16). God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rm 5:8). You cannot escape the love of God. Even when you sin, He loves you. The love of God is what makes life worth living. Remove it from earth and earth would be hell. To know that God is for us and is working for our good is enough to cheer the most despondent heart. You may feel that no one cares, but you are wrong. God loves.

In fact, God is love (I Jn 4:8). Tozer helps us understand this statement by explaining that it does not mean that God is some impersonal force. We do not worship love, and God never intends us to. Rather, the Scripture is speaking as we sometimes do when we say, “Dora is grace in action,” or “Robin is the picture of faith.” God is love perfectly, but love is not our God.

The love of God means that God is passionately looking out for our best interests. It means God has affection for us. We are not just pawns on a chessboard or file number 13479. God has feelings for us. He wants our good; He wants us to know Him; He wants to share with us from His bounty. To God we are children, not clients. God is not a cold force but a warm affectionate person.

He is love, but He is not love in the abstract. He loves you. He loves me. And the amazing thing about such love is that you and I have rebelled against Him. We are not people who are naturally friendly to God. The Bible describes us in our unconverted state as enemies (Rm 5:10). But God still loves us. The depravity of the human race magnifies the love of God. The better we think ourselves, the less we understand God’s love. Ironically, many who talk about God’s love have precious little grasp of it. Some think too highly of themselves; some think of God’s love as a type of human right, and it is precisely when we think we deserve God’s love that we miss it. His love then ceases to amaze. But when we see that we deserve wrath, the Cross astounds us. Praise God! He is willing to forgive. Even me.

God’s love sacrifices. “Greater love has no one than this,” Jesus said, “that he lay down his life for his friends.” (Jn 15:13) “Love is not self-seeking.” (I Cor 13:5) Love desires the good of someone else so greatly that it will sacrifice its own desires and comforts to bring about that good. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.” (Jn 3:16) The ultimate expression of the love of God is found in Jesus Christ. His sacrificial death and resurrection is the pinnacle of the revelation of God’s love. Those events show God paying a great price for our best interests. People who deny the Atonement and Resurrection strip the power out of God’s love. They change the passionate sacrifice of God’s love into a lukewarm feeling. Divine love becomes human love. They remove God’s laying down His life yet think they somehow have a greater love. We cheapen the love of God when we deny the Cross, but we fully declare it every time we take communion and proclaim His death till He comes.

One of the wondrous things about life is that we, too, can love. Because we are created in God’s image, we have the capacity to love, but since we are finite and fallen creatures, our love is limited and imperfect, even tainted. Nonetheless, God, as the fountainhead of love, is the foundation of all legitimate human loves. An ungodly woman may have a love for her husband and children. Even that kind of love “is of God.” Some of the other desires and motives mixed in with her love may have a different source, but the love itself could not exist without God. Take Him away and all legitimate human loves disappear as well. We cannot love without God.

And so … God has a passionate desire for our well-being. This desire is warm, tender-hearted, and drives Him to make the ultimate sacrifice for us. It allows us to trust Him in all things and to serve Him from the heart as a son or a daughter. It provides great comfort, great joy, even in the midst of suffering, for we know that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne. (Ps 89:14)

The Lord within her is righteous; he does no wrong. Morning by morning he dispenses his justice. (Zeph 3:5)

See, the day of the Lord is coming — a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger. (Is 13:9)

The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath. (Rev 14:19)

O God Most High, righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne. How could I ever stand in Your presence on the basis of my own righteousness? I have none. On my own, I stand condemned, and I know it is right. Your wrath and justice are good and right, and I praise You that even in Your mercy, You remain just. Always.

The dictionary defines justice as “the principle of moral rightness; equity.” It is a moral word and a rather broad moral word. Sometimes we think of justice as merely the proper punishment of evil and reward of good. That concept is indeed justice, but it is only one example. The mechanic who will stick to his quote even though he will now lose money is being just; the woman who will not move in on another woman’s man is being just; the student who will not copy an exam is being just. Justice is doing, thinking and loving what is right. The Old Testament Hebrew and New Testament Greek words bear this same sense. Justice is righteousness. When the Bible says that God is just, it is saying that He is morally right in everything He does. God is good, and God cares intensely about right behavior and attitudes. Right and wrong matter to God. If they do not, then God is not good.

Most people today have little difficulty with what I have said so far. They know (or at least think it ought to be) that God is just and good and, thus, cares about right and wrong. But if God is just, the more common and narrow application of justice is also true of Him. He must have equity. He must be no “respecter of persons.” He must show partiality to no one. He must treat sin as sin deserves to be treated, regardless of where He finds it. Now if we begin to see reality, this application of justice should make us squirm, for we both know things we have done that we would rather God not know about.

This application of justice entails judgment. Moral rightness requires that one make distinctions between right and wrong, and a just judge must punish evil. We would have to shut our eyes through all of Scripture to try to ignore the truth of God’s judgment on sin. It is on almost every page we turn. God does not gloss over sin. He condemns it and punishes it severely. The fact that He does so flows from His justice. If God merely looked past our sins, He would be corrupt. Unfortunately, too many people think that God is corrupt. Such thinking is itself sin and needs to be called so. The idea that God will simply gloss over our sins is morally reprehensible. God’s judgment against our sin is necessary if God is to be God.

This judgment is just, and it is inextricably tied to the character of God.  When God administers justice against sin, that justice is an expression of His wrath. God does not merely punish sin; He is angry at it. God’s character is never neutral toward sin.  He hates it, and He hates it precisely because He is just.  The justice of God and the wrath of God are woven together.

Now the wrath of God is an anger, but it is not the petty anger which you and I often have. The wrath of God is a righteous, passionate hatred of evil, and it flows from His justice. God so vehemently hates evil because He so passionately loves what is right. The more we love, the more we hate the desecration of what we love. Anger at evil is something we understand. People are angry when children walk into schools and shoot children, or when a terrorist blows up a plane and kills hundreds of innocent lives, or when a large corporation uses its power to exploit helpless people, or when a politician intentionally lies to cover up wrongdoing. Anger in these situations is not a bad thing; it shows that there is a place in our hearts for what is right. If a person were calloused when confronted with such problems, we would quickly wonder about his heart. Doesn’t he care? The wrath of God is like this sort of anger. It is the heart of God responding to the desecration of something precious. It is the natural expression of His character toward sin. It is the essential manifestation of infinite moral goodness. It is how pure goodness behaves when confronted with sin. God would not be God if He had no wrath toward sin.

The judgment and wrath of God are not particularly popular ideas today. We would rather talk about God’s love and forgiveness. We are more comfortable with those concepts. Yet the God of the Bible is as much a God of judgment and wrath as He is of love and forgiveness, and we ignore His judgment to our peril. If we are not careful, we will turn God into nothing more than Santa Claus. But remember.  God does not exist to indulge our desires.

Some do not like the idea of God’s wrath because they do not consider their sin to be particularly bad. They can understand wrath against child molesters and rapists, but most people do not do such things. They are just average folks who love their children and work hard to pay the bills. Isn’t God a little bigger than to get in a tiffy all about their piddling faults? Doesn’t He have bigger sins to worry about than their lusting at magazine pictures or impatience with Mrs. Johnson? Surely God is not so petty as all that. Wrath against such trifles is beneath the dignity of God. Or so they imply.

I certainly agree that God ought not get upset over nothing, but the fact of the matter is that the view God has of our sins and the view we have do not agree. When you look at Scripture you find Jesus equating lust with adultery and unjust anger with murder (Mt 5:21-8), not because their external consequences are the same but because the heart that produces the one is the same heart that produces the other. God’s anger at sin is directed at the nature of the heart. This is why Paul can say that greed is idolatry (Eph 5:5; Col 3:5).  When we finagle the discussion in the car to get the family to go to the restaurant we want, we are revealing a selfish heart that God fully sees. God sees past the specific expression straight into the ugly source itself. We may not see our finagling as such a big deal (if we are even aware of it). We are adept at taking corrupt hearts and motives, dressing them up in wedding clothes and then seeing how pretty the tuxedo is. But God sees through all the dressing we put on. He sees straight to the heart. And He sees the heart from the perspective of absolute holiness. He has wrath because if the righteous standards of God were applied to our hearts, we would look to Him as child molesters look to us.

The Christian faith says that people flatter themselves, and one of the requirements God puts on a person who would become a disciple of Jesus is that he stop such flattery and admit that he has a damnable heart. Those who see their sinful hearts have no difficulty with the concept of a just wrath against them. They know they deserve it. Those who complain about the wrath of God are blind to their own heart. They have no clue about how serious sin is.  We would do well to spend time contemplating the justice and wrath of God, for if our God will not pour out His justice and wrath on our sin, then we have a god who is less than God.  And we have no need for Christ.

Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne. (Ps 89:14)

O God Most High, You are just and justly angry at the sin you see in my heart. Teach me, as I love You, not to forget Your righteous judgments and, thus, not attempt to exploit Your kindness.

There once was a judge who presided over a county court. One day, the court tried a man for breaking into a mansion and stealing jewels worth a million dollars. Many witnesses testified against the man. Videotape showed him inside the house collecting the jewels and putting them into a bag. Fingerprints, DNA evidence, and a piece of clothing all pointed to the man’s guilt. The evidence was overwhelming, and the jury found the man guilty. However, the judge liked the man and felt that the crime wasn’t so bad after all — that this man was a good man despite his mistake — so when it came time to pronounce sentence, he let the man go.

What do you think of that judge?

I agree. I don’t see how anyone could defend the judge’s actions. The job of a judge is to administer justice. A judge who fails to do so is corrupt.

Now, I mention that story because it is a parable for how most people think of God. We like to think that we are not such bad folks. Yeah, we struggle with greed or lust or selfishness, but doesn’t everybody? I mean, we’re not any worse than the next guy. And, Oh yes, there were those times when we stretched the truth, but we had good reasons. And I almost forgot about the times when we slandered God in our minds and with our words, but He understands. And our worship of self, and our talking about our boss behind his back, and our angry outbursts, and our unwillingness to stand for the truth because our culture would laugh at us, and our desire for the praise of men instead of the praise of God, and our sharp tongue, and our bitterness for what mom did, and our failure to help the needy. We do all these things and more and justify ourselves in them. We rewrite what Scripture means to suit our desires. You know. The Bible doesn’t really condemn that behavior. It condemns only a particular expression of that behavior within a narrow context, and, of course, we do not fit that context or that expression. We are different. All of this is the human race. And when we think of God dealing with the human race, we often picture Him as a kind grandfather in the sky, someone who is there just to take us fishing or buy us donuts on Saturday mornings. God is a nice man who exists for me. And when we do admit that He is a judge, we often believe that He is the sort of judge who is quick to overlook an offense (especially our offenses, for our offenses are minor). Consequently, we too often believe that God will let us off no matter what we do.  After all, He is loving, and isn’t that what love means?

Now this view of God we must absolutely throw in the trash. This view of God rips all of His justice away but still thinks it has God. This view of God is idolatry. It creates a god to suit our desires, as if the purpose of God was nothing more than to stroke our comfort. Let’s get this straight. God. Is. Just.

I don’t think anyone has problems with that statement. What people have problems with is how to interpret it. Of course, God wants us to interpret His justice in accordance with the Scriptures, not in accordance with our personal desires. We don’t get to pick and choose what justice is or does. When we reach the point where we acknowledge that our view of justice must come from Scripture, then we are on the right path. Therefore, the next step in this discussion of God’s justice is to explain what Scripture says about it.  And since I have no more time for this week, we will have to put that off till next week.

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. (Ps 139: 7-10)

“Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?” declares the Lord. “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” declares the Lord. (Jer 23:24)

…though He is not far from each one of us, for in Him we live and move and have our being. (Acts 17:27-8)

God is here, God is there

God is always everywhere.

You cannot run

You cannot hide

He will never leave Your side.

Blessed God who is where I am, comfort me with Your presence, challenge me with Your presence, uplift my soul with the reminder that You are always with me and are always right here for me to adore and enjoy.

There is no place you could go where God is not. Because He is infinite, He must be everywhere and in all things. He is on a busy Manhattan sidewalk and a lonely Himalayan peak. He is at the bottom of the ocean and on the craters of the moon. If we could travel to the farthest star in the farthest galaxy, we would find Him neither closer nor further from us than He is right now. Because He is infinite, He cannot be confined to a particular place and is, thus, never closer to one place than another. He encompasses all places equally, and He is accessible in all places equally.

Wherever you are God is. You cannot flee; you cannot hide. He sees what you do because He is present wherever you do it. He knows your thoughts and motives because He is present inside where those thoughts and motives are formed. In Him we have our being. When we live life, we can frequently forget that God is right with us. We may stretch the truth in talking to a customer because it never dawns on us that God is present hearing every word we say. He is the unseen party at every conversation. When man and woman meet privately, their meeting is not so private as they think. I wonder how many “secret” affairs would occur if the parties involved realized that their actions were not so secret. Make no mistakes about it: God sees everything. We might refrain from sin more often if we simply realized that fact. How we view God affects how we live life.

But God’s omnipresence has another glorious benefit. God is with us! He is Emmanuel! We can talk to Him and communicate our most intimate thoughts and feelings to Him because He is where we are. We can enjoy Him and have continual communion with Him because He is with us. We do not need to go to a special city or building or nook to enjoy God. He is with us in the office, in the kitchen, in traffic, at the lake, at a conference or a concert or a war. His presence is in the darkest prison and at the most jubilant wedding celebration. We can enjoy Him now. Wherever we are. This fact gives us instant access to the Creator of the Universe at any time. You need not wait for next Sunday church to worship God and be with Him. Of course, if where we are is in the midst of sin, or if our heart is not in the proper frequency, we may find access more difficult. But He is accessible to the heart that is ready.

Our need for God is constant. Our felt need for God waxes and wanes. There are times in life when we feel our need more acutely, when it seems as if the waters are flowing over our head. There are times in life when we need someone, when we weep and grieve, when we are angry and frustrated, when we are despondent and helpless. God is there during those times. It is for those times that we find Jesus’ reminder most comforting: “I am with you always even to the end of the age.” During those times we can derive great comfort from the fact that God is with us.

Other times, however, it feels as if He is gone. You pray but hear nothing, read Scripture but feel nothing. God seems silent, far off. Job had this experience, as did some of the psalmists. I do not wish to speak for God and say why He seems so far away. But I do wish to say that even in those times, by faith, we can remember that, despite what we feel, God has not abandoned us. He is with us even when it does not feel so. Our feelings do not change reality. You cannot escape God, even if you would like to. You are always in His presence.