The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my heart and mind in Nahum 1:2, 8b,
"The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath. The Lord takes vengeance on his foes and vents his wrath against his enemies... he will pursue his foes into the realm of darkness."
Here is quite a statement about the Lord. From Nahum's vision, the Lord declares his wrath and his destruction of his foes. But I thought God was our God of love...? How do we reconcile this?
Some have come up with the incoherent notion that God was an angry God in the Old Testament and a loving God in the New. Kind of like how our president has evolved on the issue of same-sex marriage, he has seen the light and now, instead of remaining angry as he was in the Old, he is now loving in the New. The problem with this, of course, is that God expresses his love throughout the Old and his wrath in the New, just as he does the other way around. Here is an example from the Old: "The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin." Exodus 34:6-7. And, from the New, "'He [Jesus Christ] will rule them with an iron scepter.' He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: king of kings and lord of lords." Revelation 19:15.
The reality of both God's righteous anger and his love is not for us to reconcile, to "figure out", to rationalize or to make sense of. These two primary qualities of our God are communicated to us that we may know of him. We call our Bibles "revelation" because within the pages of Scripture God reveals himself. He did not provide us the Scriptures because we could have figured all this out on our own - he has revealed to us the things he has precisely because we can't figure them out on our own and we need to be told, we need to be informed.
I recall a then new movement within the evangelical world about ten years ago or so, "the emerging church". I remember reading one of its chief proponents, saying that it was the height of arrogance to think we could read the Scriptures and then claim to know important things about God. His point was that God is so transcendent, we need to recognize we are really not equipped to comprehend him. While I could appreciate the comment about God's transcendence, and that our comprehension of God would always be limited, I had to marvel at his hypocrisy. On the one hand, he was telling us we can't know things of God, yet he knows God is so transcendent we can't know him. I guess he thought he was the one exception. My other thought at the time was that the very purpose of Scripture was to address that very issue. Because in our limited state we struggle in our knowledge of God, God reveals what he wants us to know of himself. If God says he "so loves the world", then I know it. If he says "It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God", then I know it.
In any event, I was just reading this morning that this same man lost his pastoral position a few years ago. It followed his reasoning that a God of love would never consign anyone to a miserable hell on judgment day. Therefore, there must be a universal salvation for all mankind. Note, I used the word "reasoning". He "invented" his own god. He displaced the rightful place of the Scriptures in his life with his own reasoning.
This is the problem when we abandon the Scriptures. When we fail to avail ourselves of the truths they provide, all we are left with is our own reasoning. When we look to our reasoning we substitute what God has revealed for something much less reliable. This is why it behooves us all to embrace what the Scriptures have to say, not what we think they should say, not what we reason they should say. Just as we embrace Jesus Christ in faith, so we need to embrace his word. And, of course, neglecting the Scriptures is sure way to be led by our own deceitful hearts. I know I can't trust mine...
Our God is both a God of love and a God of justice and judgment. I don't need to reason it out... I just need to accept that God is who and what he claims to be.
Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!
If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just respond and let me know.
Trevor Fisk
trevor.fisk@gmail.com
"The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath. The Lord takes vengeance on his foes and vents his wrath against his enemies... he will pursue his foes into the realm of darkness."
Here is quite a statement about the Lord. From Nahum's vision, the Lord declares his wrath and his destruction of his foes. But I thought God was our God of love...? How do we reconcile this?
Some have come up with the incoherent notion that God was an angry God in the Old Testament and a loving God in the New. Kind of like how our president has evolved on the issue of same-sex marriage, he has seen the light and now, instead of remaining angry as he was in the Old, he is now loving in the New. The problem with this, of course, is that God expresses his love throughout the Old and his wrath in the New, just as he does the other way around. Here is an example from the Old: "The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin." Exodus 34:6-7. And, from the New, "'He [Jesus Christ] will rule them with an iron scepter.' He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: king of kings and lord of lords." Revelation 19:15.
The reality of both God's righteous anger and his love is not for us to reconcile, to "figure out", to rationalize or to make sense of. These two primary qualities of our God are communicated to us that we may know of him. We call our Bibles "revelation" because within the pages of Scripture God reveals himself. He did not provide us the Scriptures because we could have figured all this out on our own - he has revealed to us the things he has precisely because we can't figure them out on our own and we need to be told, we need to be informed.
I recall a then new movement within the evangelical world about ten years ago or so, "the emerging church". I remember reading one of its chief proponents, saying that it was the height of arrogance to think we could read the Scriptures and then claim to know important things about God. His point was that God is so transcendent, we need to recognize we are really not equipped to comprehend him. While I could appreciate the comment about God's transcendence, and that our comprehension of God would always be limited, I had to marvel at his hypocrisy. On the one hand, he was telling us we can't know things of God, yet he knows God is so transcendent we can't know him. I guess he thought he was the one exception. My other thought at the time was that the very purpose of Scripture was to address that very issue. Because in our limited state we struggle in our knowledge of God, God reveals what he wants us to know of himself. If God says he "so loves the world", then I know it. If he says "It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God", then I know it.
In any event, I was just reading this morning that this same man lost his pastoral position a few years ago. It followed his reasoning that a God of love would never consign anyone to a miserable hell on judgment day. Therefore, there must be a universal salvation for all mankind. Note, I used the word "reasoning". He "invented" his own god. He displaced the rightful place of the Scriptures in his life with his own reasoning.
This is the problem when we abandon the Scriptures. When we fail to avail ourselves of the truths they provide, all we are left with is our own reasoning. When we look to our reasoning we substitute what God has revealed for something much less reliable. This is why it behooves us all to embrace what the Scriptures have to say, not what we think they should say, not what we reason they should say. Just as we embrace Jesus Christ in faith, so we need to embrace his word. And, of course, neglecting the Scriptures is sure way to be led by our own deceitful hearts. I know I can't trust mine...
Our God is both a God of love and a God of justice and judgment. I don't need to reason it out... I just need to accept that God is who and what he claims to be.
Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!
If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just respond and let me know.
Trevor Fisk
trevor.fisk@gmail.com
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