Vengeance is Sweet

We all know the verse, “Vengeance is mine the; I will repay says the Lord.” Moses knew it too; so did David. The verse we often quote is in Romans twelve, but Paul is rehearsing his Old Testament. The concept first appeared in the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 (verse 35). David picks up the theme in several of his psalms which Bible scholars classify as imprecatory psalms. The word imprecatory describes the act of invoking evil or cursing. You may be shocked to find that David regularly asked God to curse his enemies. At first it seems out of character for “a man after God’s own heart.” But it is not – not if you understand God’s heart.

When Moses introduced the idea, he was in the midst of telling the Children of Israel about the nature of God’s judgment. He told them that Yahweh would protect them by wreaking havoc on the nations that opposed them. It is fascinating to me that God says He is judging the nations because they didn’t remain faithful but followed other gods – demons actually – instead of Him. The implication is that the nations had the option to follow Yahweh but turned away. The Psalmist underscores this saying, “He rules forever by his might; he keeps his eye on the nations. The rebellious should not exalt themselves. Because they did “exalt themselves,” God chose Israel to demonstrate what His people were supposed to look like. We know they failed miserably, but God never abandoned them completely; there was always a remnant He saved.

We also know now, on this side of the cross, why God kept His people around: they were going to fulfill His promise to Adam and Eve. He would crush the head of the Serpent who led them astray. It seems that the Serpent also led the nations astray. We might not remember that every nation was descended from Noah and his sons. It was after the flood when God divided the nations and then chose Abraham to be the father of His chosen people. My point is that the nations knew who God was; their ancestors were all saved by the same ark. At some point they forgot Who saved them and went after other gods.

I am not going to suggest that we have to justify anything God does or even understand it necessarily. What I am saying is that the nations deserved what they got because they turned their backs on God. This explains the cryptic remark God made to Abraham: He couldn’t let him have the promised land because, “The iniquity of the Amorites [was] not yet fulfilled.” The Amorites is a catch-all term for the nations. God wasn’t ready to destroy them yet in Abraham’s day. He wanted them to be fully iniquitous before He executed justice on them.

If you look closely at Old Testament history, the nations are all over it. God forbade the Israelites from destroying Moab when they conquered the promised land. It could be that God needed Moab to be around years later so a Moabite girl named Ruth could become the great-grandmother of King David, the promised one. God left the Philistines unconquered so they could test the faithfulness of His people. God let the nation of Assyria thrive so they could take captive the ten tribes who rebelled against God’s chosen dynasty and worshipped other gods. Later God let the powerhouse Babylon do the same with the remaining Israelites to punish them for turning from Him. And don’t forget what Peter said in the first gospel sermon: God used evil men, men of His own people, to goad the nation of Rome into crucifying their Savior.

I may offend some people with what I am about to say, but I believe it needs to be said. God still controls “the nations.” I have no trouble believing that He would use nations to discipline His people, the church. After the tragedy of 9/11, a conservative leader suggested that perhaps God was using the jihad to chastise a wayward people. I can’t say I know that for sure. What I can say is that the church in America has large factions that are slipping more and more into apostasy. The faithful believers in this country are not holding up their end of the representative government they are blessed with. (See The Faithful Have Vanished.)

I truly believe that if we understood the dire threat to Christianity posed by the progressive movement in America, we would storm the voting booths in every election to change the leadership. It is not just our right as citizens; it is our duty as the faithful children of God. All the children of Israel had to do to reinstate God’s blessing was to smash their idols and worship the one true God. There are idols among us in this country. (I have named them.) We need to do some smashing of our own. We need to beg God for vengeance on our enemies. Strange as it sounds, that’s biblical. And it would be sweet.

Related posts: Idol Worship; Keep Yourselves From Idols; Storming the Gates

The Faithful Have Vanished

In Psalm twelve, David mourns, “the pious have ceased to be for the faithful have vanished.” Sometimes I think this is true of America today. Pious is an old word we don’t use much anymore, but it is a good biblical description of people who possess devotion, reverence, fervor for the things of God. David mourns the passing of this class of people and explains their absence by saying, “the faithful have vanished.” The biblical meaning of “faithful” is those who trust in God. Having lost faith or trust in God, devotion, reverence, and fervor for the things of God have mostly ceased to be in America.

I think there are at least four reasons why this condition exists today. The first is our ridiculous wealth and prosperity. America is one of the wealthiest nations on earth, and despite the presence of endemic poverty and a growing homeless population, our “poor” are better off than most of the rest of the world’s population. We rank seventh in yearly income on a list of sixty nations reported by World Bank. The poverty level in America for a family of four is $31,200 annually; that’s $21.37 per person per day. Currently, 1 billion people in the world live on less than $1.00 per day. We hardly qualify as “poor.” This level of wealth causes people to feel self-sufficient with no need for trust in God.

The second reason for our vanishing faithfulness is the pervasiveness of evil. The Psalmist says, “The wicked [evil] prowl about when vileness [worthlessness] is exalted among the children of humankind." Many of the highest paid persons in America are either athletes or entertainers. I don’t mean to denigrate sports or entertainment; there is a place for them in a healthy society. Our problem is found in the word “exalted.” It means to lift up or raise higher than all else. The truly worthy people in our country are the pastors, the teachers, the police, the healthcare workers, the common laborers who fuel the engine of our economy. When those people struggle to get by while athletes and entertainers make millions for a single performance, the inequity represents the exaltation of worthlessness.

Rampant commercialism is another aspect of worthlessness being exalted. When Jesus said believers should lay up treasures in Heaven and warned that no one could serve God and materialism, He cautioned that treasuring wealth places our hearts in the wrong place. While money itself is not evil, treasuring it is. The new car, the bigger house, the better everything represents the things that are passing away in contrast with the things that are eternal. Faithfulness has vanished in the face of material wealth.

I believe the third explanation for our lost faithfulness is the commercialization of religion. While we are travelling this summer, I have the opportunity to visit the church my daughter introduced us to which we have been “visiting” online regularly. I would be lying if I didn’t admit I am enjoying the experience. The worship is thrilling; the preaching is biblical and direct; there are programs for just about anyone. The attendance in four services is in the thousands. But I can’t help thinking that for many attenders it’s about being in a beautiful place with beautiful people. There are two other such mega-churches within a few blocks. I drive past half-a-dozen smaller churches on my way there. Attending one of these churches gives many people a sense of having fulfilled their religions responsibility, and further demonstrations of faith are unnecessary. They have bought a commercial Christianity.

Then there is the commercialization through Christian radio, Chrisitan publishing, countless para-church ministries all of which exist by selling their version of a religious commodity. None of these are bad in themselves; they each serve a need in the Christian community. However, true, biblical religion is often supplanted by a commercial version that is false on its face. True religion, Jesus says, is worshipping in spirit and in truth. True religion, James says, is helping widows and orphans. True religion, Paul says, is finding your place in the Body of Christ. The commercialization of the church in America does little to promote those things.

Another reason the faithful have vanished is because many of them are hiding their light under a basket as Jesus said. Whether because of fear of recrimination or outright persecution, too few sincere believers are standing up against the overwhelming tide of secularism that is drowning our society. It is a sad irony that in countries where Christians are being physically persecuted, often martyred, the church is growing while in comfortable America it is shrinking. Too many American faithful have bought the secular humanist’s lie that the founders’ principle of freedom of religion actually means freedom from religion. Nothing could be farther from the minds of the Founding Fathers. They knew that without religious faith as a grounding element, the experiment they proposed would never succeed.

Unfortunately, those who are most likely to be the missing faithful David mourned are leaving the church and parking their faith on the steps on their way out. Someone recently categorized people who don’t attend church as “Nones” or “Dones.” The Nones never had a religious faith; the Dones once did but now are saying been there, done that, not interested anymore. The blame for the Dones’ exodus might be placed at the door of the church. Many Dones tell pollsters that the church is no longer relevant in their lives. This attitude may betray a selfishness that requires the church to meet their felt needs while ignoring the fact that the church, the body of Christ, needs them as much as they need it.

It may also be true that many churches have forgotten why they exist, and because of that, they are no longer places where body life is practiced and promoted. The New Testament gives no support for the idea of lone ranger Christians. Paul stresses the analogy of the body over and over in his epistles. Peter talks about the church being a building of living stones, not single rocks lying around in a secular desert. The Nones can be excused for not realizing this; the Dones have no excuse unless it is the failure of their pre-Done church. When the Hebrew author warned believers not to forsake gathering together, it was in the context of maintaining ones’ faith. The remainder of the tenth chapter of Hebrews has some dire warnings for those who despise the work of Christ which established His body, the church. The faithful would do well to heed that warning and stop the vanishing act.

Related posts: What is the Church; Be Content on Sunday

Suffering for Righteousness’ Sake

As I am finishing Job in my through-the-Bible reading this year, I have come to the place where God answers Job in the last two chapters. He does not pull any punches in declaring that He is sovereign over all His creation. Something God does not do is tell Job he was wrong about being righteous. After establishing His credentials as Creator, God simply leaves Job to conclude that God can do whatever He wants with His creation. In other words, God may allow suffering in the life of a “righteous” person.

I put righteous in quotes because as Paul says, “There is no one righteous.” One could argue that Job lived under a different set of rules than those of Paul’s day, but that won’t wash. The very argument Paul uses in his Roman discourse is that righteousness has always been a matter of faith not works. Using an example from before the Cross, Abraham, Paul belabors the point that it was Abraham’s willingness to trust God that led to his being declared righteous. Depending on your definition of suffering, it might also be said that Abraham’s faith did not excuse him from suffering any more than Job’s did.

The trials of the righteous are something I have written about several times. (See related posts below for examples.) I disagree with preachers like Rob Bell who deny that hell exists. (See Hell? Yes!) I have also taken issue with Randy Alcorn’s position that Christians are supposed to be happy all the time. These men, along with the purveyors of the prosperity gospel, misinterpret Scripture in such a way that sincere believers who experience trials and troubles think they have fallen out of favor with God. (See Abraham’s Promises.) Nothing could be farther from the truth. Hear the Apostle Peter: “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, when it^[a] takes place to test you,” Or Paul’s word to Timothy: “All those who want to live in a godly manner in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” Jesus Himself said that tribulation was inevitable.

The problem with many Christians today is their warped concept of God. Sadly, the misperception of who God really is often comes from the pulpit. In ages past, the idea of a strong sovereign who worked his will unilaterally was common. Nobles and kings lorded it over their subjects often with no mercy. It was certainly true during the times when the Bible was being written. It remained the normal way of things up until about the twelfth century when the idea of individual human rights began to be explored.

In the eighteenth century a young upstart colony of England proposed the concept of “certain unalienable rights” granted by the Creator. While I heartily support that idea as it was enshrined in our founding documents, I regret to say that it has worked its way into religious thinking among many people. I regret this because it has caused people to think of God in the same way as the King of England, for example. Mistaken people think their rights extend to the right to invent their own image of God. (See That’s Not God.) When that sort of idea invaded our seminaries, a flood of bad theology washed through the church.

It would be helpful, corrective, if we all remember what the original sin was: independence. Adam and Eve chose to be independent of God, making their own truth, and look where that has led us. Thinking back to Abraham again, notice that Paul’s main point to the Romans was that Abraham “trusted” God. In other words, his ideas of how things should work (ie: Ishmael) had to be abandoned. God went so far as to ask Abraham to sacrifice the son He had finally granted (Isaac) as an act of obedience or trust. The story has a happy ending because God didn’t make Abraham go through with the slaughter. But he proved he was willing. The writer of Hebrews says that Abraham believed God would bring his son back from the dead if he killed him as ordered.

Abraham and the rest of the catalogue of faithful ones in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews trusted God even though most never saw the ultimate vindication of their faith. The writer says they were looking for a different city, “one whose architect and builder is God.” They were willing to let God draw up the plans and then live them out no matter the consequences. When Paul told the Romans that things would work out for good, he meant that God’s good plan would be worked out through the lives of His children. (See Working All Things for Good.)

The best life we can hope for in this world is the one God has planned for us. I have tried doing things my way a few times, and things didn’t always work out for good – mine or those around me. I am late to the party, but I can say for the most part that I am willing to let go and let God as they say. This is hard for me because I think I am the smartest guy in the room. The problem is that if I believe the Bible, God is always in the room too. That leaves me (or should leave me) somewhere way less that the smartest guy. On the other hand, recognizing who God is and deferring to His wisdom in my life is the smartest thing I can do – it’s the righteous thing to do. If I suffer, I suffer. I am also looking for that other city.

Related posts: Don’t Ask Why; Ask the Right Question; The Goodness of God in the Bad Times; Is it the Devil or is it God?; Can You Praise God?

Confidence or Craziness

The book of Job is a puzzling one for most people. It begins with a conference in God’s presence including some vaguely identified beings, one of whom is “the satan.” As I explained in “Understanding the Book of Job: the Heiser Effect,” the Hebrew word from which we get the name, Satan, means accuser and was linked to the serpent in Genesis which was probably not a serpent at all, but a “watcher.” This fits the context of Job because when God asks the character what he has been up to, he admits to watching what is happening on earth. This is what brings up his accusation of Job: he only trusts you, God, because you have him hedged in with divine protection.

This is where the trouble begins for most of us when we see what God does. He basically turns Satan loose to afflict Job, though within certain limits. We have to ask ourselves why God would do that. We know the end of the story, so we can at least see that if God was testing Job’s faith, he passed and was blessed abundantly in response. But for Job, the end was not at all clear. Job’s suffering was both physical and mental. His body was afflicted with painful lesions, and his soul was wounded because he knew he had been righteous in his behavior before God.

I am not alone in thinking that God does test His people. John MacArthur says, “When God wants to prove the quality of one’s commitment, He tests it. The test may come directly from Him, as with Abraham when God asked him to sacrifice his son Isaac (Gen. 22:1–2), or it may come through difficult circumstances, as with the Israelites during their wilderness wanderings (Deut. 8:16), or it may even come from Satan himself, as God permitted with Job (Job 1:12; 2:6).”

As we know from Job’s speeches, there was little comfort in knowing that God’s hand was on him. And yet, Job displays his true faith when he says, “But I myself know that my redeemer is alive, and at the last he will stand up upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, but from my flesh I will see God, whom I will see for myself, and whom my eyes will see and not a stranger.” This is an amazing statement of faith when we realize that Job lived long before the Cross on which his Redeemer died and even long before the God he worshipped revealed Himself to Moses.

When God did speak to Moses centuries later, He gave a provision in His law to correct a potential injustice. The concept of a redeemer, a go-el (גְּאוּלִים), was part of Jewish law. We see it in the story of Ruth when Boaz redeems Naomi’s inheritance on Ruth’s behalf. Of course, the ultimate demonstration is God’s provision of His Son as our Redeemer. We are redeemed, bought out of slavery to sin by the payment Jesus made on the Cross.

What is amazing about Job is that he had the confidence that God would provide a redeemer for him even though there was no written promise to do so. Job’s friends thought he was crazy. Even his wife told him to curse God and die. Job’s answer to his wife is another expression of his deep faith: “You speak like one of the foolish women speaks. Indeed, should we receive the good from God, but not receive the [adversity]?” He told his friends that even if God should take his very life, he would still put his trust in God. That’s crazy, or else it is the ultimate statement of confidence.

Here is MacArthur again: “When you are tested, remember that God is working on your spiritual maturity and that He will never test you beyond what you are able to endure and will always provide a means of victory” When we face trials, we must be sure we are like Job: righteous in our behavior. God does chastise His children when they stray, but we cannot be like Job’s friends and assume that a trial necessarily means we have sinned. (Although, if we have transgressed, God’s discipline brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness into our lives.)  James confirms what MacArthur says: trials work for our maturity. You can be confident of that. That is not craziness.

Related posts: Understanding the Book of Job, Finally; The Goodness of God in the Bad Times; The Winnowing Fork of God;

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John MacArthur, Strength for Today (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1997).