Showing posts with label compassionate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label compassionate. Show all posts

Sunday, July 05, 2020

You will get God angry says Moses, and you will die. But Israel will not be destroyed.


Deuteronomy Chapter 4: Part 4: Moses foretells Israel’s difficult future.
Deuteronomy 4:25-31 -- The Passage and Some Thoughts
In verses 25 and 26 Moses tell the sons of Israel that by the time they become grandfathers, they will act corruptly, and make a graven image or idol to worship and God will be so provoked to anger. That would be in the future, but in the present, he wants them, as well as heaven and earth, to witness today that when that happens, they will soon thereafter die; they will be utterly destroyed.
David Guzik says this reference to heaven and earth was like saying, “Creation itself would testify against an idol-worshipping Israel.”
What a message to give a people – a people who know that you talk with God. Or was this so far away that it didn’t faze them at all? When we are warned about what God will do to the wicked, does it faze us, does it bother us, or is it too far away to worry about it right now – after all, we have a life to live.
In verses 27 to 28, he continues his predictions of what will happen to them:
The Lord will scatter them.
They will be few in number in any nation that God drives them to.
There they eventually will serve gods (small g), made by man, out of wood and stone; gods that don’t see them, nor hear them, nor eat, nor smell. Guzik says, “If Israel wanted idols; God would put them in the middle of a land where there were idols galore.” When we disobey God by wanting something we should not have, He often gives it to us – at our own peril.
And all these things have happened to the sons of Israel – both in the rest of the Old Testament (some 550 years later at the time of the Babylonian exile of Judah) but in many ways right up to 1947 when they were finally recognized as a nation by most, but still hated by so many.  Why even today, as I write this, one store owner in Toronto had posted that “Zionists are not welcomed here”. You can read all about it and see the video at Foodbenders, Toronto. In fact, anti-Semitism continues to grow again all over the world.
This is very sad for us Christians who know how much God loves the Jewish People and the plan that He has for them. However, others reading the scriptures, even these here today, could easily say, “Well, they deserve it -- I mean, after all, the Bible says they will ‘serve other gods’ again.  Well, this is what happens when you serve other gods. Here’s my take on this: I don’t think that my foolishness before God allows you to treat me in a way where you take on punishing me on behalf of God.  Enough said on that here.
Chuck Smith has an interesting take on all this. First, he calls Moses’ foretelling “prophesy”. And we could agree with that, as we know that Moses almost always spoke after he consulted with God.
Secondly, Smith says we need to marvel at the fact that when the Israelites were scattered and left without a homeland, they remained an ethnic group, if not a nation. That is amazing because no other group has been able to do that.
Then in verses 29 to 30, he describes and foretells what the Israelites will do at that point when they come to their senses.
They will seek God.  (I think we all eventually will seek God. I know I do when I’ve sinned.)
They will find Him if they search with all their hearts and all their souls. (And we do.)

These things will happen in the latter days after they have once again been in distress.
Then they will return to the Lord their God and listen to His voice. (What he does not tell them, and what we don’t know when it comes to our own lives is when exactly will be our “latter days”.  And maybe that’s the whole point of it. Maybe we’re supposed to seek God, find Him, and stay close to Him right now.)
Robert Jamieson wisely suggests that these latter days may indeed mean:
“. . . either towards the destined close of their captivities, when they evinced a returning spirit of repentance and faith or in the age of Messiah, which is commonly called ‘the latter days,’ and when the scattered tribes of Israel shall be converted to the Gospel of Christ. The occurrence of this auspicious event will be the most illustrious proof of the truth of the promise made in Deu 4:31.

Then in verse 31, Moses tells us what the Hero of the story (the Hero of every story in the Bible – God Himself) will do and why.
He starts off with the need for them to know that their God is a compassionate God.
He will not fail you.
He will not destroy you.
He will not forget the covenant He had made with their fathers.
Can you imagine being the sons of Israel about to enter the Promised Land and told that in just two generations you will have failed miserably, and you will be back at square one – again. How defeating. How honest.
Yet how wonderful to hear from Moses what the end of the story for the children of Israel will look like.
This is without a doubt, another jam-packed little passage in this Old Testament book.
Wrap-up
Check out this passage in regard to your own life right now. And I’m asking myself these same questions: (my personal answers in brackets)
1. Have you forgotten God recently or at some point in your life?  (Yes.)
2. Have you found something else to worship? (Yes.)
3. Have you realized you made God angry in doing so?  (Yes.)
4.
Did God, in a sense scatter you? (Yes. In my case, He left me with an avenue of service for a long time.)
5. Did you feel very alone because of it all? (Yes.)
6. Did you become a servant to something or someone else?  (Yes; the devil himself and the people he worked through.)
7. Did you seek God again? (Yes.)
8. Did you find Him because you searched with all your heart and all your soul?  (Yes.)
9. Do you realize that your “latter day” could be any day now?  (Yes.)
10. Do you believe your God is a compassionate God?  (Yes.)
11. Has your God ever failed you?  (No.)
12. Do you believe your God has not, nor will He, utterly destroy you?  (Yes, because He loves me; and because He will not forget His Old Covenant with Abraham and His New Covenant through Jesus Christ.)

This morning our pastor preached on Enjoying God (part one of a ten-part series) and his key passage was Ephesians 1:3-6. The particular part of that passage that I enjoyed the most was the last two words of verse 4 and all of verse 5: “In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will.”
God had His eyes on the children of Israel through all their sinning and falling away to this day and forever. Moses tells us that. The Apostle Paul tells us that God has His eyes on His sons and daughters that have been adopted by Him now and forever. Now that’s cause for rejoicing. Even through these days of the Covid.

It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.

Thursday, June 09, 2016

God: A Verbal Self-Portrait

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God Describes God
Exodus 34:6-7: Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.”
In the previous study, we left Moses standing on Mount Sinai where the Lord had descended in a cloud and stood there with him. Moses then called upon the name of the Lord.
Our text says God then passed by in front of him and spoke. But what He said was a self-testament as to Who He is, how He works, and what He does. Many portions of Scripture give us comfort with respect to the God we have entrusted our life to, but these two verses in Exodus seem to provide, for me at least, all the assurance I need. Believing there is a God (an Infinite Intelligent Entity) who created life and me specifically, and that our relationship with Him matters, as I do, then here God Himself describes Who He is to us – this is the original “verbal Selfie” if you like.
God tells Moses, and through him He is telling us, that He is compassionate. That describes someone who has feeling for or shows sympathy and concern for others. God did not just create us and abandon us as some who like to describe Him as the “absent landlord” believe. He continues to care for all that He has created – especially us. He would do whatever it would take to save us. And He did – but that’s the whole story behind the New Testament although both the need and the foretelling of His rescue plan are well entrenched in the Old Testament.
God says He is gracious. That describes someone who is courteous and kind. God invites us to a relationship with Him; He never forces us into it. And when we accept, He is kind to us, allowing us to grow and develop in our spiritual lives. One dictionary also says that in Christian belief, the term also means the showing of “divine grace” as in we are “saved by God’s gracious intervention” on our behalf. In fact, I would suggest that it is His compassion that causes Him to exercise His graciousness with respect to our salvation. If He were a God that had no compassionate, why then would He ever have to demonstrate grace towards us?
God says He is slow to anger. Many of us (I know I speak for myself) wish we were just that.  If there’s one quality of God’s many of us could benefit from, it is that – being slow to anger. Many of us have experienced anger in our relationships – spouse, family, friends, or at work. Most times these experiences are temporary and with effort, can be controlled or their impact mitigated. But to get a better understanding of God’s slow to anger characteristic, that is, the exercise of this aspect of one’s character at a divine, all-powerful, level, we need to consider briefly the absence of a “slow to anger” characteristic in some examples we may all be more familiar with. Consider for a moment, an alcoholic parent/spouse who comes home totally wasted from drinking and demands total and immediate compliance with his/her every whim and then strikes out with physical violence towards anyone who fails to obey. I am not suggesting that God is like that at all. On the contrary, my point is He is totally opposite to that. But as Supreme Creator and Ruler of the Universe, were He not slow to anger, we mere mortals would deserve such lashing out. Or consider some of the cruelest rulers in history – names like Idi Amin Dada, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Pol Pot, Ivan (IV) the Terrible, Adoph Eichmann, Adolf Hitler, and Josef Stalin come to mind. Perhaps people like North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong-un from present times can be said to have limited patience or a short wick. They all behaved the way they did or do now because of their power and authority. God Who has more power and authority than all of them combined, shows His compassion for us, His graciousness to us, by being among many other good things, slow to anger with us.
God tells us He keeps lovingkindness for thousands. Don’t take the number ‘thousands’ as literal. The point is that God has it in His nature to act in a tender and an affectionately benevolent way (the definition of the word by Merriam-Webster dictionary) towards others – us.
Also, do not confuse God’s “lovingkindness” with the loving-kindness as the English equivalent for the Buddhist term Mettā, as described in the Metta Sutta of the Pali Canon's Sutta Nipata (Sn 1.8) and Khuddakapatha (Khp 9), and practiced in Loving kindness (and Mettā) forms of Eastern Buddhism religious meditation. Their source is not of the God of the Old Testament, the Creator and Lord of all.
God also tells us He forgives iniquity, transgression and sin. That is a big part of His work. It is true someone (including God) can forgive someone else for an iniquity, transgression and sin committed against the forgiver or another person (as in the case of a bereaved parent forgiving a criminal for shooting their child to death) without the transgressor even knowing either about the fact that he/she has sinned or about the fact that they have been forgiven. There is great value in forgiveness to the forgiver including the loss of resentment and the ability to move on. However, the net effect on the individual guilty of the sin is nil; he/she continues on his/her merry way.
God, on the other hand, is not in need of any comfort or release from anything and His forgiveness is not about Him so much (except that is what He does) as it is about the sinner needing forgiveness. For that reason, God’s forgiveness of our sins requires us:
·      to be aware of the fact that we are transgressors against His laws,
·      to repent of the fact that we committed them, wanting to pursue them no more,
·      to seek His forgiveness in order to be accepted into fellowship with Him,
·      to accept the method of His forgiveness which He provided several thousand years later from the time of this self-description (i.e. through His Son, Jesus Christ who paid the penalty for our sins in our place, dying on the cross), and
·      to accept Christ as Lord of our lives.
All that is necessary because God will not co-exist with sin. And all that is possible because God is willing to be a forgiver of sin, as part of His very essence.
However, lest we consider His desire to forgive and to have us live in relationship with Him such that our sins do not matter to Him, God warns us outright, He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. Neglect all the steps outlined above and God says you will be punished. You can also ignore the warning He gives, but as ‘danger’ signs we often see say, “Doing so is at your own peril.”

It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.