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).

Better Living Through Right Thinking

Over the years the promise of better living has been suggested through many means. A quick Google search reveals the possibility of better living through chemistry, alchemy, design, birding, dentistry, pharmaceuticals, TV, coffee, technology, bitter melon (?), and the list goes on. The desire to improve ones’ life is probably universal. It is true that one advertisement from a few years back suggested that “It don’t get no better than this,” referring to a life bathed in a particular brand of beer, but I suspect that would only be true for a narrow slice of the population – though probably a larger slice than better living through birding.

There is a promise of better living that applies to all people at all times. The path to a better life is found in the Apostle Paul’s advice to the Philippians: “Finally, brothers, whatever things are true, whatever things are honorable, whatever things are right, whatever things are pure, whatever things are pleasing, whatever things are commendable, if there is any excellence of character and if anything praiseworthy, think about these things.” Here is a universal formula for better living.

I make that claim because of the verb Paul used in his advice: think on (λογίζομαι) these things. The Greek dictionary offers these synonyms for “think on”: calculate, compute, count, and reckon. I reckon that if I think on those things listed by Paul, if I count the ways, compute the results, and calculate how my life might improve, it will lead to better living. A look into each of the suggested things to think on will provide the necessary proof.

First, think on whatever things are true. I have written previously about the proper meaning of truth. I have also suggested that we are in danger of falling into what I called a state of “Truth Dysphoria.” Too many people don’t believe there is such a thing as truth. They would have us believe that truth is a personal possession; whatever they think is true is true – for them. Their idea may not be true for you, but it is true for them, or so they think. That attitude strikes a critical blow to the meaning of the word. Britannica says truth is, “the property of sentences, assertions, beliefs, thoughts, or propositions that are said, in ordinary discourse, to agree with the facts or to state what is the case.” In other words, truth is what is, or said another way truth is that which comports with reality.

The reality is that God’s Word is truth. Jesus proclaimed the He was the Truth. These are not arguable assertions; they are true whether anyone believes them or not. Calculate how much better life would be if everyone spoke and lived according to biblical truth. People who are living in an alternate “truth” should find themselves on the wrong side of the law or on a psychiatrist’s couch. That is not true in our society anymore, sadly. When liars get reelected, when abortions are not murder, when men can be women, when truth is anyone’s opinion civil society becomes a sham. How much better living would be in a society where truth was computed correctly.

Second, think on whatever things are honorable (σεμνός). The word Paul used can mean venerable or reverend. The idea is that these things have been tested by time and are respected for their reliability and truthfulness (there’s the truth again.) There seems to be a trend away from things that are venerable (old) and revered (well-respected) in today’s society. I wonder if our penchant for retro-this and retro-that betrays a deep-seated desire for things that are venerable. In a way these modern remakes do honor something from the past, yet they seldom elicit the reverence that Paul was suggesting. Not all old things deserve honor, but a nod toward tradition (venerable things) in some things would make for better living: respecting the place of law and order, upholding the sanctity of life, maintaining traditional family values, defending the principles enshrined in the Constitution. Most important of all is the reverence and application of biblical truth (again) in all of life. That would make for better living; count on it.

Next is whatever things are right. (δίκαιος.) In English, we would naturally think of this as the opposite of wrong, which is not incorrect. However, in the context of the Bible and Paul’s list of things to think on, the better opposite is sin. This Greek word is often translated righteous. Because God is infinitely righteous, His ways are always right. Anything that does not line up with God’s right ways is sin. James says that the path to sinning begins with a thought – a sinful thought. So, thinking of right things instead of sinful things would naturally lead to better living. You reckon?

Paul next calls us to think on things that are pure (ἁγνός.) My first thought was Michael W. Smith’s “Agnus Dei” which has a special place in my heart, but for y’all it means “holy God.” Think of the saying that cleanliness is next to godliness. Some good synonyms are sacred, chaste, and modest. If chaste and modest make you think of sexual purity, you are on the right track since the biblical opposite of purity is often presented as sexual perversion of some kind. Just as believers are to remain chaste and modest in human relationships, as the Bride of Christ we must maintain spiritual purity as well. As I wrote at length in “Women’s Attire,” practicing biblical modesty presents an appearance that promotes order as opposed to one that creates chaos. Monetary gain or social advantage are also subject to discernment as to purity. Avoiding lustful thoughts, whether for love or money, and keeping the mind on that which is pure is calculated to lead to better living in every circumstance.

Paul then suggests believers think on things that are pleasing. Now, there are many things that would please me to think about, but I doubt Paul would approve. Pleasing (προσφιλήςhi) does not mean what you or I think it means. “Lovely or acceptable” are synonyms suggested by the Greek dictionary. I am going to defer to one of my favorite Christian philosophers of the twentieth century, Francis Schaeffer. He tells believers that loveliness or beauty is only found in that which aligns with God’s truth (there’s that concept again.) Real beauty, according to Schaeffer is anything that aligns with the truth of God’s revealed character in His Word. Better living is found in the beauty of God’s Word. There is nothing better.

The next recommended thought is more complex. Paul says to think of things that are commendable (εὔφημος.) Synonyms are conducive to success or favorable. A transliteration of this word is euphemism. A euphemism is a way to make something sound better than it does in the original. We speak of “passing away” instead of “dying.” We have dozens of euphemisms for sexual intercourse that shade the truth of what is actually occurring in a biblical sense. I don’t think Paul meant that we should shade the truth of what we are thinking on. He meant we should think on things that will favor our success.  I reckon that would lead to better living.

When Paul next suggests we think on things that are commendable, he uses a word that can be translated virtuous (ἀρετή.) Virtue is not something we spend much time on these days. Perhaps that is because virtue has become a rare commodity. We have been inundated with the idea that we must accept everyone no matter how flawed they may be. Acceptance and inclusivity are the only “virtues” society admires these days. Pointing out what the Bible calls sin in another person is now called hate speech. A person who demonstrates what the Scripture calls virtue is usually mocked as backward or old fashioned. The traditional virtues of chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, kindness, patience, and humility are often met with scorn. Yet if we think on these things and seek out people who embody these virtues, I calculate that our life will be better.

Paul’s final recommendation ties directly into the idea of virtue. Praiseworthy (ἔπαινος) suggests we should think on things to which we would give honor. Who deserves that more than God? If we follow Paul’s advice to the Colossians and “set [our] mind on the things above,” we will have a heavenly perspective on all of life’s issues. I remember being told that if I focus on my problems, they just loom larger; if I focus on God my problems disappear. If I honor God in my thinking, if I make Him my first thought instead of my last hope, I will experience the best living I can ever imagine. That doesn’t mean there will be no rough patches in life; it means that I will sail through the hard times secure in the knowledge that I am always in God’s hands. Through the waters and through the flames He is with me. Compute that: there you will find better living than any alternative I can think of.

Related posts: Where Do You Find Truth; Truth Dysphoria; Debating ‘Christian Cleavage’; Women’s Attire; Think About It

Second Exodus

Don’t grab your Bible and search for Second Exodus. You will not find it any more than you can read from the book of Second Hezekiah regardless of how often people “quote” from it. By pretending Second Exodus exists I am referring to the record in Ezra and Nehemiah that tells of the return of the Israelites to Jerusalem after their captivity. There are some interesting parallels between the first and second exodus of God’s people.

Second Chronicles closes with a list of the people who returned when King Cyrus fulfilled prophecy by releasing them from captivity. Just as God allowed Moses to lead His people from captivity in Egypt, Zerubbabel and Joshua led God’s remnant from captivity in Babylon. The conditions in Judah were not vastly different from what the Israelites faced when Joshua led them into the Promised Land. Just as the Canaanites had opposed Joshua’s incursion, the people who lived around Jerusalem in Zerubbabel’s time vehemently opposed the returnees’ rebuilding of the city and the temple.

The opposition was successful at first: the king of Persia being convinced that the Jews were rebellious; the returning Jews stopped building for sixteen years. Two kings came and went in Persia (formerly Babylon) before the Jews asked king Darius for permission finish the temple. Once Darius made a search of the records, he gave them permission to build. He also told the local residents to leave the Jews alone. They were able to complete the temple.

Almost one hundred years later, under king Artaxerxes, Ezra gathered several thousand Jews and led a second group to Jerusalem to teach the law. It was during this time that Nehemiah was inspired by God to go to Jerusalem to complete the wall which remained a pile of rubble around the city. With the king’s blessing and provision, Nehemiah and a large number of former captives made the trek across the desert to Jerusalem. The locals rose up against Nehemiah’s building project just as they had before, but things were different this time. The locals tried petitioning the king, but this time the king told them to stop hindering the work. They tried physical attacks, but Nehemiah convinced the Jews to stand strong against them. They succeeded: the walls and the temple were eventually completed.

Here the history lesson ends and the application for us begins. I suppose the main thing we might draw from this historical account is that God is without doubt a god of second chances. In reality, letting the Jews return from their seventy-year sentence in Babylon was not their second chance; it was more like their two hundredth chance – or two thousandth chance to prove faithful. God’s second chance nature was first revealed in the Garden of Eden when He did not execute Adam and Eve for their disobedience. He instead gave them the chance to live a few hundred years with the results of their rebellion. Their relationships with God, each other, themselves, and nature were all damaged by the fall from grace.

But God’s grace remained. As He promised Adam, He worked a plan to bring His wayward people back to Himself. Throughout the historical record, from Noah to Abraham to Moses to Joshua to David and finally to His One-and-only Son, God gave His people whatever chances they needed to accomplish His will. Then through Paul He exposed the mystery of His plan: all people, not just the Jews, would be offered grace unto salvation. “Not of works lest any man should boast,” Paul counsels. By grace through faith in the risen Savior, every living person has the chance to embrace God’s plan and gain adoption into His family.

The New Testament clearly teaches that God’s grace unto salvation is a one-time decision to get on board; however, the effort to stay on board is a daily struggle. That is not to say that a believer’s failures cause the loss of grace; that is assured by the sincere acceptance of the grace displayed on the cross of Calvary. However, believers can and will slip into times of trial and discipline when they feel far from grace. Stubborn disobedience cannot erase the promise of a sincere profession of faith, but it can and will hinder the close fellowship with God and fellow believers.

That is when we experience another “second chance.” My wife and I spent several years working with recovering addicts and returning felons; they knew the meaning of a second chance, and they lived daily in the wonder and glory of that knowledge. Sometimes they slipped, as we will also, but the beauty of God’s grace is that the opportunity of a “second exodus” from sin’s captivity into God’s grace and forgiveness always exists.

We must continually examine our lives as Paul says to be sure, “That [we] are in the faith.” The forgiveness bought on Christ’s cross is always available if we follow John’s advice and confess our sin. The people in the first Exodus proved so faithless that they died in the desert. The people in the second exodus from Babylon were not much better. But God soldiered on to fulfill His plan even though His people did not deserve it. And isn’t that the definition of grace: undeserved favor. We will never deserve grace, but let us at least try to live worthy of it. If we don’t let sin take us captive, we won’t need a second exodus.

Related posts: God of Demonstrations; For God’s Sake; The Knowledge of Good and Evil

God’s Little Coincidences

Warning: this is a long story.

I recently wrote an article called, “What is a Miracle,” to distinguish between the everyday wonders of God’s creation and a true miracle. I said that something like a blossoming flower or a beautiful sunset are not miracles; rather, they are evidence of God’s continuing power and order in His creation. A true miracle, I believe, suspends, or overrules natural things and is by definition beyond nature – supernatural. As I said before, I believe God does still performs miracles, because I have been the witness of at least one and the subject of at least two in my own experience. I sometimes question the veracity of the TV miracle workers who prance on today’s stages, but I don’t doubt that God can do miracles today.

I firmly believe that God works in human lives (even unbelievers’) to work His will. I may never know if God caused a delay in my schedule that caused me to arrive late at an intersection where someone had just run a red light and would have smashed into my car. I won’t necessarily know if God ordered my steps so that I narrowly avoided a contact that would have exposed me to a deadly virus. I strongly suspect that God arranged my career moves so that I was in the right place to do His will even though I did not know what that specific task might be. That line written by William Cowper is true that, “God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.”

My opinion was strengthened by John MacArthur’s devotional thought today. He wrote, “Providence is how He orchestrates, through natural means and processes, all things necessary to accomplish His purposes in the world. It is the most frequent way He works and controls the daily course of human events. The only other means the Lord uses to intervene in the flow of history is miracles. But He does not perform miracles in the same way now as He did during the days of Christ, the apostles, and the prophets. However, God has continuously used providence from eternity past to coordinate the infinite variety of factors necessary to accomplish His perfect purpose.”^[1]

I am not a hardcore cesssationist like MacArthur, but I do agree with his assessment of how God works today. A story from my past will illustrate. I had finished a graduate degree in Michigan in school administration and was looking for a position in a Christian school. My father knew a guy who knew a guy who had a school in California. (1) To my surprise, I received a call one evening from said gentleman in California asking if I would be interested in checking out their school. After a brief interview, he offered to fly my wife, Karen, and I out. They put us up in a board member’s home and treated us more like royalty than candidates, and after much prayer, we accepted their offer.

They also wanted to obtain a used school bus which was prohibitively expensive in California, and since I was then transportation liaison at the school where I taught, I had access to economically priced busses. They offered to buy a bus and pay the expenses to get it to the coast. (2) We found a bus, removed the seats, and put them in a 15-passenger van I owned and planned to tow behind the bus. Then we loaded all our worldly possessions in the bus. We had a friend who had been a stevedore who helped us pack so that there was not an inch that was not filled. (3) We left Michigan – me, Karen (seven months pregnant), and our two children – thinking God had set us on His path for us.

The first hint that all was not going well was the tow bar pulling out of the mounts on the van bumper within a hundred miles of home. After two failed repair attempts, and the towbar coming apart again, we landed in a small town in Iowa where a welder in a farm implement repair shop did what I had asked the two previous mechanics to do: weld a carrier to the frame of the van. He also reinforced the towbar itself as he determined it was underrated for the weight we were pulling. (4) We thanked him, paid his reasonable bill, and headed west again.

Unfortunately, we didn’t even get out of Iowa before the next problem struck: the bus began to spit and sputter and smoke. We pulled into a rest area, and I called an International dealer a few miles down the road. I asked if they could send a mechanic with an ignition condenser because I believed that was the source of the misfiring. He said he would send a driver in a tow truck in case it was needed. The driver arrived shortly but without the condenser. He listened to the rough running engine and declared that it couldn’t be the condenser. His only option was to tow us in. We unhooked the van and piled the family into the tow truck.

After twelve hours of shop time and a night in a motel, they still had not discovered the problem. They drained and refilled the gas, replaced the fuel pump, installed a new carburetor, but it still ran like #%@*. I asked if they had replaced the condenser, and they said no. I insisted they do so immediately. You guessed it: it ran like a charm. (5) I demanded that they remove the $300 carburetor and labor, but I agreed to pay $60 for the fuel pump but not the labor to install it. The bill was still over $300, but we were back on the road again, although we were now off our schedule by days and over budget by hundreds. We went back to reattach the van and continued.

We sailed out of Iowa and enjoyed the flat country of Nebraska, though it was somewhat boring. At that point, boring but moving was a delight. Somewhere in western Nebraska, the temperature had risen to over 100, and there was a thirty-mile-per-hour crosswind to fight. Worse, I couldn’t get the bus any higher than 3^rd gear which meant we were travelling at about 19 mph. Then the engine began to overheat. I pulled to the shoulder to let it cool and discovered a stream running beside the road. (6) After the engine cooled, the kids and I carried water from the stream in soda bottles to refill the radiator. We got back on the road, staying in 2^nd or 3^rd gear (11 to 19 mph) to keep the engine from overheating again.

When we arrived at our intended stop for the night, Cheyenne, Wyoming, we discovered it was Frontier Days which meant there was not a motel room for fifty miles. When we shared our awful day with the waitress, she said we should be glad we had reached the top of the continental divide. We had been climbing all day without knowing it! It was good news, but we still had over a thousand miles to go, and our supply of travelers’ checks was nearly exhausted. We went on to Rawlins where we could get a motel for the night. Since this was before the days when everyone relied on plastic to survive, we had nothing but a checkbook from a Michigan bank. Fortunately, we had a long-time friend who lived in Salt Lake City which was on our intended route. She agreed to cash a personal check for us to complete our journey. (7)

We arrived in SLC after the banks had closed for the weekend. Our friend, Nancy, who was a doctor, went to a grocery store she frequented, and the manager agreed to cash a local check for $300 which she planned to cover with our check to be deposited in her account on Monday. (8) We left the next day and drove to Las Vegas where we were undoubtedly the most unique vehicle the strip had ever seen. We were in a 66-passenger school bus with luggage strapped on top pulling a 15-passenger van with our son’s hobby horse on top. We left at 2am so we could cross the desert into California before it heated up. I’m sure the people on the strip that night thought they had seen a live replay of the Clampetts on parade.

I have told this story many times in the four decades since it happened. The disaster, disappointment, and depression it caused have paled over time, but one thing has stayed clear. God was with us in at least the eight ways I have numbered, and I will never know what else He may have orchestrated to get us to California safely. I will quote MacArthur again: “Think about it. The vast scope and endless outworking of divine providence, in which God draws together millions of details and circumstances to achieve His will each day, is a far greater miracle than the relatively uncomplicated, one–time supernatural occurrences that we usually term miracles. Belief in God’s providence is, therefore, one of the greatest exercises of faith we can have and a major contributor to our general preparedness and peace of mind as we encounter trials and hardships.”^[2]

We have come to call the apparently ill-fated journey to California “The Ordeal.” The truth is, we don’t know why God called us to California or why He allowed us to be tried in so many ways; perhaps Satan was trying to thwart God’s plan for us. But we believe beyond the shadow of a doubt that God was in it all the way. I am reminded of the verse I have referenced before: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not flow over you. When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned.” We are not promised deliverance from trials but divine providence in the midst of them.

In the years since the trip, whenever trouble comes to call on the road or at home, we can say with certainty that God will get us through, not with miracles necessarily, but with His gracious providence. When we recognize the kind of things that represent that providence, we smile at one another and say it’s one of God’s little “coincidences.” I pray you may have the same faith in the trials you face.

Related posts: Working All Things for Good; Speaking of Illness; OMG It’s Me!

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^[1] John MacArthur, Strength for Today (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1997).

^[2] John MacArthur, Strength for Today (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1997).