God Bless the Child (Who Gives Us Peace)

This, believe it or not, is a post about Christ, and though it may not appear as such for a while, I must importune your patience and indulgence.  Sometimes the sobering realities of humanity's deserved lot are the best way to illuminate Christ's glory; amen?

Imagine for a moment that you have died in your sins, and that the time of your judgment has come upon you. (You will remind me, of course, that these are events very likely to be separated in time for most of us, which is true, but we will skip to the judgment here.) You find yourself, eyes to the ground, before the Lord Jesus Christ, unmistakable in power and incontrovertible in holiness.  This is no dying Savior upon the cross, not anymore.  This is the risen, exalted King.  Perhaps those words once caused no more than a shrug or a smirk with you, but now you see what they mean, in their fullest, most wondrous, most terrifying sense:  Christ, the risen, exalted King.

You feel the hope and the confidence bleeding out from your heart - a flow not to be stanched, a death wound.  Your legs are stone, and you make no doubt that this God - the only God there is, you now see - will know all about you, more than you know yourself, and far, far more than you would care to remember, if you could help it.  Your life is laid bare, though, and the sum total of what you are overwhelms the simple objections you used to make in defense of your supposed goodness of character.

You are a sinner.  God is holy.  He justly delivers your sentence of condemnation.

Perhaps you meet this sobering moment with quiet.  Perhaps, though, you are familiar with Jesus, and so feel as though your long hypocrisy gives you cause to speak, to say something before all is lost.  So words erupt from your lips and hang as a conspicuous intrusion into the reverence demanded by divine holiness.  You have just spoken the only words you will ever speak in the presence of God, and they are blasphemous:  "‘Lord, Lord, did I not do many things in your name?" (cf. Matt. 7:22) You have questioned the recollection of the Omniscient, and the judgment of the Omnisapient (the All-Wise); He is not moved; this latest sin augments your considerable tally, and you go down to the lake of fire.

As you find yourself in the suffocating maw of that blackness, the punishment will begin.  Whether you have a brief instant to anticipate and to dread the arrival of God's wrath or not, I cannot say.  However, when the fullness of divine, just, holy fury explodes upon you in that lonely place, it will exceed the meager limitations of any of your experiences or imaginings.  You will feel, in that first instant, that there is no possibility of your surviving even this preliminary fragment, this barest sliver, of God's fury.  How indeed could it not destroy you, and all of the universe with you, in a truncated flash of agony?  It is as though every conceivable pain which mankind has ever endured, or ever could endure, through every millennium of our world, has been compressed and concentrated into one divine blow - except a thousand times stronger.

The intensity of this fury is not the amazing part - the truly astonishing thing is that you find yourself quite whole and intact; indeed, the next wave of torment is already upon you.  You find even that your mental faculties are similarly preserved, although such complete agony should drive one mad.  It is then that it drives home in your perfectly clear intellect - the same God who visits such omnipotent fury upon you is the God who has omnipotently fitted you for that fury.  It will never consume you completely.

This is a pain beyond reckoning, a sharp, hot, complete misery that would annihilate a normal human body in a heartbeat.  Ten thousand white-hot bands of iron wrapped about your frame and searing into your flesh would be a welcome, even laughable alternative to what you now endure.  How I wish it could be described!  It crowds out and banishes hope.  You may clench your fists; you may double over until your knees touch your cheeks, but no such measures will bring relief.  Your tricks from your previous life can do nothing here.  Neither is there a friend whose hands you may grip, whose shoulder you could embrace.  You are utterly alone; your only companions are your own cries.  There is also nothing to distract your mind from your torment; the once-pleasant recollections of your former life now simply herald your sinfulness.

In fact, in the basest sense, this is probably the complete and ultimate focus of all your thoughts:  God and my sin.  God and my sin.  God and my sin.  Every wave of agony brings a fresh remembrance of your absolute deservedness of hell.  You cannot argue against the justness, but as you never learned to love God when you labored under His grace, you certainly cannot do so now.  You find yourself cursing Him with the appallingly blasphemous self-destruction of unrestrained sinfulness.  And for this, your miseries are now doubled, but still you live. 

As this indescribable maelstrom of inescapable agony continues, you realize that you are not growing accustomed to it at all.  It is in no way like those pains back on earth that afflict people until they simply learn to deal with them on a continual basis.  Every stab, every bite, every hot needle is exquisite in its novelty and relentless upon your person.  If there are two things which you begin to learn after the first thousand years of unbroken torment (that first drop in that infinite, incomprehensible bucket), they are simply that you will never grow even the slightest bit acclimated to your situation (if anything, the contrary), and that you will never, ever get out of hell.  Could you see that great ocean that is God's holy wrath against you, your heart would break to see that it has not lowered even a thousandth of an inch.  Your shrieks of pain, of frustration, of hopelessness, and of black, impotent rage, will never cease to pour from your parched and writhing lips. 

This is what it is to have enmity with God - a battle which we can never win, and which will rob us of every glory, every prize, every grace, and every hope.  Of course, we have no choice but to be the enemies of the Lord, having been born into the family of sin.  Romans 3 teaches us that we never could and never would love God, so it seems a hopeless matter from a human standpoint.  We are doomed, in and of ourselves, to run straight into the teeth of hell.

I speak specifically to you here, Christian.  Walk your mind as profoundly as you can through the horrific marches of hell, which, for all these words, I have not even begun to describe here - this is how the enemies of God meet eternity.  It is sure, unavoidable, and deserved. 

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;
And the government will rest on His shoulders;
And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6

These are familiar words, but does your heart not bound for gladness at them?  Read the last phrase once more:  Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace.  This is a far, far greater thing than the dubious fraternity that the world pretends around Christmas - this is peace with God Himself!  This is a complete reversal from the devastating certainty of eternal despair at the hand of a just God to the heartening certainty of eternal delight at the hand of that same God!  "Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." (Rom. 5:1)

Let us never commit the sin of naming Christ the Prince of Peace without reverent remembrance of what that means - the incredible magnitude of the hell which He suffered on the cross, and the immeasurable gift of peace with God.  Our esteem for Christ the peace-giver should be seeping more and more, if not outright flooding, into every element of our lives - certainly into our interaction with others and into our faithfulness to kingdom work, but let it start where it should, with a heart of humble and grateful worship toward the Prince of Peace.

Forget the Bad - Fear the Good!

God's self-understanding is beyond questioning.  Thus His descriptions of His many counterfeits, those would-be comers in the sealed arena of deity, are always crushingly perceptive.  For instance, when He warns His people in Jeremiah 10 not to trifle with idols, He says this of them in verse 5:

Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field are they,
And they cannot speak;
They must be carried,
Because they cannot walk!
Do not fear them,
For they can do no harm,
Nor can they do any good.

In other words, idols do not possess even the vigor needed simply to move or to speak.  Where, then, is the logical basis for fearing acts of judgment or vengeance from such as these, when they have no more strength or volition than a head of cabbage?  (Though, to be sure, there are those who do fear cabbage.)  God renders this crystal clear when He explains that idols cannot do evil (a better translation than "harm," it appears), and certainly they can do no good either.

A god who can act evilly is surely one to be feared:  what sort of tragedies, calamities, or injustices might be visited upon us, without warning, cause, or explanation?  What promise could be made that we could trust?  What assurance could we enjoy, even of our continued existence?  How could such a god be appeased beyond doubt?

However, all the terrors that would attend a god capable of evil are nothing compared to the very real terrors of our living, holy God, who can do only good.  A perfectly good and holy God is a God of integrity, a God of preserved promises, and a God of faithful, fulfilling action.  While this means that we may trust His salvation with a grip that even death's cold fingers are helpless to loosen, it also means that we must trust His condemnation in the same way.  His holiness is relentless, and it will be satisfied and avenged. 

This should devastate our glib, cavalier hearts.  An evil god may tire of punishing a certain enemy, or else this god may feel that the punishment has at last become equal to the crime.  A perfectly holy God, on the other hand, knows that any offense against Himself is immeasurable, and must be punished immeasurably.  His integrity will see His work done, and His justice does not permit Him to parole His enemies.  His honesty cannot overlook the treachery of a sin, so every one must be accounted for, either on the cross of Christ, or in an eternity of hot, dark, agony.

To die, unrepentant and prideful, and thus to fall into the hands of a holy and offended God, is a prospect overwhelming in its hopelessness.  To live, unrepentant and prideful, in the knowledge that you are actively offending a holy God should provoke an urgency of fear sufficient to dwarf and obscure any other concern of life.  Even to live as believers in the throes of unrepentant sin should cause our hearts to quail, for if we look at ourselves in this dreary light, we will find all of our former assurance unceremoniously stripped away (1 John 2:3-6, 2 Peter 1:3-9).

To summarize, then, God uses the nature of idols to reveal something about Himself.  He says, in essence, "Do not fear idols; they can do nothing.  Do not fear evil gods, for these are not real.  Fear Me, because I am real, and because I am holy."  There is no hope found in the folly of defiance; the only real hope is the hope that God extends to us in the blood of His Son, spilled for the punishment of the sins of those who would believe in Him and turn from those sins.  To the believer and the unbeliever alike, I say simply this - do not harden your heart to this.  Believe in His justice, and then live in His grace.  He extends certainty of that eternal salvation which alone can deliver us from the certainty of eternal destruction.  Repentantly seek this with all your heart, and when God has blessed your humble frame with this salvation, do not fritter away the blessed assurance of that salvation through persistent disobedience!  Take fullest advantage of His unspeakable kindness, friend.

We will let Jeremiah's fittingly humble response ring in our ears as we close:

There is none like You, O Lord;
You are great, and great is Your name in might.
Who would not fear You, O King of the nations?
Indeed it is Your due!
For among all the wise men of the nations
And in all their kingdoms,
There is none like You.
- Jeremiah 10:6-7

Glory Without Love

In the brief history of this blog, we have already made much mention about God's glory - its importance and pre-eminence in the world.  This is not a lament, for indeed, how could the grateful recipients of His perfect and continual grace ever say too much about His glory?  Having said this, it must be acknowledged that we do run a risk of painting a lopsided portrait of our Lord if we prove careless in our rapture. 

Here is the risk.  If everything around us, including evil, has its being so that God may display His glory to tremendous degree (as we posited with almost painful brevity in How Glorious Is Glorious?), then what does this say about the genuineness of His love for us?  If God's goal is to display His glory, does this mean that His love is just a means to that end?  Put simply, does the pre-eminence of His glory diminish the quality of His love?

Three independent lines of thought should converge to offer some certainty in this matter about our loving Father.

1.  God's character is holy.  "This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you," says John in 1 John 1:5, "that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all."  God is overflowing with moral purity, and, as we know that God does not change (Mal. 3:16, Jas. 1:17), that moral purity is adorned with an impregnable integrity as well.  Put simply, God is holy, and He will never, ever be anything but perfectly holy.  Thus if He has put into His Word that He is love (1 John 4:8), we know that we absolutely must trust in His unimpeachable truthfulness.  He is not something resembling love, but rather love itself! 

He who cannot lie (Titus 1:2) has disclosed Himself indelibly as a God of love, and His bedrock holiness guarantees further that this love is uncorrupted by even the smallest vein of selfishness, impatience, or pride.

2.  The linguistic nature of God's love, as described in the Bible, demonstrates its reality.  God is "abounding in lovingkindness" (Ps. 103:8b, etc.).  "Lovingkindness" here is chesed in the Hebrew, the very idea of which moves beyond mere obligation into the realm of generosity.¹  By no means may we accuse the Lord of doing only the bare minimum in relation to us His children - the very language of His book declares that He goes above and beyond.  The extra mile (or extra lightyear?) which God covers in His faithful love demonstrates that more is at work than merely pretending a loving demeanor.

The New Testament likewise affirms this.  Here, the operative word for love is, of course, agape, with which we are all no doubt familiar, but one exemplary foray into scripture will uncover some exegetical paydirt.  Christ prays to the Father, "and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them." (John 17:26) Here Christ declares that the agape love which the Father has for Him will also be directed toward His disciples, and, by extension, the rest of His followers.  If there is weight in God's love toward His own divine Son, then there is also in His love toward us.  This thought should provoke praise from hearts astonished into greater humility; amen? 

3.  The reality of His glory is predicated upon the reality of His love.  Notice how the psalmist describes God revealing His glory (Ps. 98:2-3):
"The Lord has made known His salvation;
He has revealed His righteousness in the sight of the nations.
He has remembered His lovingkindness and His faithfulness to the house of Israel;
All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God."

He demonstrates His salvation, His righteousness, His faithfulness, and yes, His lovingkindness, and so shows a generous measure of glory.  Mark this well, though:  God's glory, then, becomes reliant upon the reality of these different outpourings of divine character - His glory is not what it purports to be if, say, His righteousness is a farce, and so forth.  He has therefore tied the actuality of His glory to the truth of His love (and other wondrous things), and were His love a travesty, His glory would fall short - a gold veneer applied to a helium balloon. 


For these reasons, and others like them, we believers may rest in the certainty of divine love.  By no means does God's desire to display His glory diminish the reality of His love - in truth, the glory is seen in the reality of the love!  Our Lord has laid upon our grateful hearts a love so incalculable, so pure, so real, that we are powerless to equal it.  "See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are." (1 John 3:1a)

And such we are.



1:  Vine, W.E., Merrill F. Unger, & William White, Jr.  Vine's Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words.  Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1996.  p. 142.

Fitted for Wonder

Long decades and many miles after the Israelites had been led from Egypt by God's omnipotent hand, they finally stood poised to begin their conquest of the Promised Land.  God's hand had not left them, and the wayfaring nation stood ready.  Now the surging Jordan River lay between them and Jericho, and God was about to work a wonder. 

The next day, His might would see this flooded, coursing river utterly stopped, its torrents piled in an inexplicable heap miles away, until the Israelites, stepping out onto the soft bed before them, would find naught but dry ground beneath their sandals.  God in His limitless power would once again prove unencumbered by the very natural laws which He had laid down at creation, and Israel would soon have a home. 

Joshua said to his people, "Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you." (Josh. 3:5b) This is an interesting sort of imperative for him to issue on the verge of the parting of the Jordan.  Why should they consecrate themselves?  What bearing might it have?  Indeed; Joshua did not say, "Consecrate yourselves, so that tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you."  Indeed, there is no cause and effect suggested here at all.  What, then, is the purpose of this command?

1.  The worthiness of God.  God deserves, richly and in every way, to be attended by holiness as He works His wonders.  He Himself is the Sun of holiness; it radiates from His very being just as light and heat issue from our central star, and He commands His people, "Be holy, for I am holy." (Lev. 11:44, etc.) Is it not wholly fitting that the Israelites, being made aware that greatness, unspeakable and divine, would soon be upon them once more, should seek to clothe themselves in a humble and pure godliness?  What could be a more appropriate response to the miraculous and gracious working of a holy God on behalf of an often wayward people?  Our God deserves holiness from His people, and indeed has laid works of holiness before them (Eph. 2:10). 

2.  The gladness of His people.  The Israelites could not rely upon the pure wonder of the God's work to stir their very human hearts.  If they wanted to savor the undiluted glory of it, if they wanted to rejoice in the Lord at the sight of it, they needed to prepare themselves beforehand.  We see this in our own lives at times, do we not?  In those moments when pride has free course in our hearts, we are unmoved by the moving hand of God.  God's provision in difficulty, His resolution of a demanding situation, even His salvation of a previously unyielding and dead heart do not move us, but leave us only with a vague sense of scorn, skepticism, or indifference.  By God's grace, sometimes this spiritual apathy is enough to startle and to stir us into repentance, but oh!  It is a far, far greater thing to see His work with holy eyes and to come unencumbered to His throne in humble adoration.  It is an exquisite and lingering shame when the sounds of God's matchless glory fall upon the deaf ears of His very own children!

Joshua's words serve as a warning and a challenge to believers in all ages.  Are we honoring a dserving God with consecrated spirits?  Are our hearts so cleansed as to desire to see His glory?  Do the manifestations of His amazing grace find a glad welcome in us?  If we do not see much of God's work around us, miraculous or otherwise, should we not consider that perhaps we are not cultivating holiness in our hearts, and so are not looking for or desiring His glory as it comes down?  Friends, let us fight the spiritual decay that can lead only to spiritual apathy!

Simple Truth Entreated: The Response of Unbelievers (Part 4 of 5)

Simple Truth Entreated:  The Response of Unbelievers

           

If you are reading this and have not been saved from the just penalty of your sins by Jesus Christ, or if perhaps the force of biblical truth has removed you of all your certainty of your salvation, then do not barricade your heart against the saving truth of the Word  Repentance and surrender to Christ are your only rational recourse.  True, the gospel seeks to invade your sinful heart, to conquer it, and to change it as to make it utterly alien, but you must, you must throw open the gates and let it enter undisputed, or it will kill you someday, and for all eternity.  This gracious offer of the Lord, so real and substantial in this instant, will not endure even a hairsbreadth beyond your own life – what certainty have you beyond this brief moment? 

As Paul implored, “we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” (2 Cor. 5:20b) We stand to gain nothing in this appeal, excepting joy, whereas you stand to gain “everything pertaining to life and godliness.” (2 Pet. 1:3b) Come; come now, before you draw another breath!  There is no matter of greater importance, nothing of truer urgency, than this matter of the sinful chasm between you and your Creator.  Do not wait for tomorrow when today may yet betray you!  “It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Heb. 10:31) To die without Christ is to be judged by Christ, without the benefits of His protection or intercession.  He will weigh out your sins, and will justly repay each of them, including the sin of reading this appeal and ignoring it.  You will find yourself consigned to a blind torment beyond the reckoning of art or science, a lonely agony unsatiated by the endless passage of ages.  Surrender all to Christ; admit of your guilt before Him!  Plead His forgiveness, and lay your very life at His kingly feet.

If we urge you in light of His grace, we also charge you on the basis of His sovereignty.  “God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.” (Acts 17:30b-31) God not only invites all to repent of their sins; He commands that repentance.  The day of judgment approaches, over which Christ will preside as proven, triumphant Lord, so the command has gone out:  repent now.  God has created this world such that He is Lord over all of it; He sovereignly issues His orders, and it falls to us to obey Him.  Fortunately, He is entirely wise, powerful, and righteous – we need not fear His leading. 

Many objections are commonly made by those who resist the gospel; let us briefly examine but a few:

- Some of you will say, “This is all well and good, but I simply do not believe in God.”  This is merely to say that you believe in yourself, for, as your finite mind cannot account for a God like the One revealed in the Bible, then He clearly must be a fabrication.  So you set yourself up as your own sure authority, and all your life is washed through the filter of your own good opinions.  Do you not see, though, how dangerous this becomes?  An earthworm could hardly conceive of a thinking, feeling, deciding, inventing human being, but this does not render human beings any less real.  Does an annelid’s inability to grasp music or technology make you or I any less real?  Surely not!  Rather, it serves to underscore the vast difference between a worm and a person.  

This vastness looms larger still between us and our God, and we cannot afford to dismiss this reality out of hand simply because it does not reduce to a comfortable human understanding.  In actuality, how disappointing would an entirely comprehensible deity be?  If God were such a one that could be understood completely, He would not be God at all, for this would fully assure us that He was a fabrication of the human mind.  Our inability to fully understand Him should not dissuade us of His reality.

- Some others will say, “Surely; I believe in God, but I cannot believe in your God.”  My friend, my God is the God revealed by the Bible; what better revelation of God and His character would you have?  Your own suppositions?  Another book, perhaps?  When science and archaeology have crushed countless so-called holy books to powder, the Bible stands conspicuously intact, a solitary monument in the midst of so much rubble.  Space does not permit a complete treatment of its enduring character, but I urge you, look into its history.  See how it has been preserved in the face of determined and repeated opposition.  Mark how its truths have not been altered, though it passes through centuries, through languages, and through cultures.  Note how it is the product of dozens of human minds from different eras and different nations, and yet it comes together as a cohesive whole.  You begin to understand that the Bible you hold in your hand is a startling book indeed – it is the revelation of the one true God to humanity, written perfectly by that very God through human agents, and preserved diligently by God against every feeble calamity and opposition that this world could muster.  To understand this book is to see our Creator as He has revealed Himself.