An Old Testament Portrait of Grace

I love it when I encounter truth in God’s word that contradicts common stereotypes, one of which is the inaccurate generalization that God is a God of wrath in the Old Testament and a God of love in the New.

As I was reading through Daniel I found a beautiful portrait of God’s patience and kindness toward the arrogant, pagan king, Nebuchadnezzar.  In chapter 3 we read of Nebuchadnezzar's 90-foot statue, before which he commanded all peoples, nations, and languages to bow in worship lest they be thrown into a burning fiery furnace.

Only God has the right to demand worship like this.  King Nebuchadnezzar exalted himself to be like God, making himself worthy of God’s fierce and just wrath.  What a perfect opportunity for God to confront this pagan King.  He could have said something like, “You threw my servants (Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego) into the fiery furnace for failure to worship you, a self-exalting man.  Prepare yourself for my everlasting fiery furnace on account of your failure to worship me, the living God."  But what we see in chapter 4 is not an episode of God’s wrath but rather God’s grace to humble the king through drastic means in order to show him that God alone is the Most High, the King of heaven, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion.

This contrast between the mercy of God, who has every right to demonstrate his wrath, and the arrogant harshness of a man, who has no right to demand worship the way he does, is wonderful.  Praise God, that He is not like us, especially in response to our thinking that we’re like Him!

Gospel Warning

High School Ministry just concluded its series “Understanding Gospel” on Wednesday night.  After taking four weeks to examine the topics of (1) God as Creator and Lawgiver, (2) Man as sinner, (3) Jesus Christ as Savior, and (4) Grace and Faith as the basis and means of salvation, the final message came in the form of a warning, a warning to not merely understand the gospel but to embrace it wholeheartedly as the good news that it truly is.  Here’s a summary of that warning.

There have been two catastrophic world events in the past few weeks.  The cyclone that hit Myanmar could have a death toll well over 100,000 people.  The earthquake in China has claimed at least 22,000 lives.   The sudden nature of such devastating events should wake us from our spiritual slumber.  No one in either Myanmar or China could foresee these events.  There were no warnings.  Families were not marking their calendars for the coming cyclone.  Businesses weren’t planning to close down for the coming earthquake.  These events took their victims by surprise.

The urgency to embrace the gospel becomes more apparent with these catastrophes playing on our televisions.  They should remind us of our own mortality and the relative ease with which our lives can unexpectedly terminated.  There is no guarantee that our next breath will not be our last; tomorrow isn’t promised to anybody.  Jesus gives us a strong warning when he was questioned about two tragic events in His day (see Luke 13:1-5).  He told his listeners that it wasn’t their superior righteousness that kept them alive and safe from harm’s way.  In fact He urged them toward repentance, lest they also perish.  We must take this to heart.  It isn’t as though our righteousness has kept us from a massive disaster.  The reason that our lives have been spared is not owing to the fact that we don’t deserve a devastating encounter with God’s power in nature.  On account of our rebellion against God we do deserve for our lives to be swept away, and unless we repent and embrace the gospel, we will likewise perish.

To illustrate with colorful language the precarious condition of the unbeliever and to help create a sense of urgency, I quoted at length from Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (with a little explanation and paraphrase the students followed along great):

“The unseen, unthought-of ways and means of persons going suddenly out of the world are innumerable and inconceivable. Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that they will not bear their weight, and these places are not seen.”

“Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a falling rock. Were it not for the sovereign pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment . . .”

These sobering and graphic thoughts aren’t meant to serve as scare tactics but rather as poignant pictures into reality so that we might be roused from our apathy as we observe the horrors in Myanmar and China on the evening news and then head off for a cozy night’s sleep in our comfy beds.  Unless we repent and embrace the gospel we will likewise perish, maybe not in a cyclone or earthquake, but nevertheless, we’ll perish.

Growing in Appreciation for the Cross

In Sunday’s message I spoke of the cross as the greatest display of God’s wisdom, for by it God resolves the greatest dilemma in the history of the universe.  That dilemma, posed as a question, goes like this: How will the holy and righteous God of the universe save hell-deserving sinners (on account of belittling and treating as worthless the infinite glory of God) without compromising His justice?

This line of thinking was informed by something I read in John Piper’s book, The Supremacy of God in Preaching (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1990).  In it he references a sermon by R. C. Sproul on Luke 13:1-5 titled “The Misplaced Locus of Amazement,” wherein Sproul points out that there is an “age-old difference between the way natural man sees the problem of his relation to God and the way the Bible sees the problem of man’s relation to God.  Man-centered humans are amazed that God should withhold life and joy from his creatures.  But the God-centered Bible is amazed that God should withhold judgment from sinners” (p. 30).

One of the discussion questions for Life Groups this week relates to growing in our understanding of and appreciation for the cross.  Understanding the cross as from a God-centered perspective means that we will see Jesus’ saving work as God’s undeserved resolution to the dilemma of our massive sin problem.  Let us be reminded that God’s wrath is not by any means an overreaction to our sin.  We are worthy of God’s wrath just as God is worthy of glory, but God, in His infinite wisdom (and kindness), chose to bear His own wrath and bring us to glory through the cross.  “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” (Rev 5:12)