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 Psalm 60:1-3,
"You have rejected us, God, and burst upon us; you have been angry—now restore us! You have shaken the land and torn it open; mend its fractures, for it is quaking. You have shown your people desperate times; you have given us wine that makes us stagger."
Here David speaks of a terrible time Israel experienced at the Lord's hand. David says the Lord rejected his people and "burst upon" them. He lays this at the feet of the Lord's anger at the nation. The Lord had "shaken the Land" and "torn it open". Desperate times for Israel at the Lord's doing!
Was God just being mean to his people? Why would the Lord bring hardship to his own? After all, they were God's chosen and covenant people. Wouldn't you think that our God of love would bring peace, prosperity, health and ease to his people if indeed he loved them?
Those who study the Scriptures know that God's people, as a representation of all mankind, had a bent to drift from God. David was a man of mighty faith, but that did not mean the whole nation was strong in faith. There were issues with God's people. On the surface we know that Israel prostituted themselves by chasing after foreign idols, they engaged in sinful practices and drifted away from the Lord. Through these things we recognize that corrupting sinful nature that dwells within had a way of expressing itself on a corporate level within the fabric of the nation.
I personally believe something else was going on at the time in the way God interacted with the nation, something beyond punishing Israel for her misdeeds. That "something else" was that God was preparing the nation for delivering his redemption of all mankind through his people Israel, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was to come into the world through Abraham's offspring to offer himself as a sacrifice to to pay for mankind's sins. When Jesus died on that cross, he made the way for sinful mankind to be forgiven those sins and have access to join the kingdom of heaven through faith.
In preparation for bringing Jesus Christ into the world through the nation of Israel, we see God working in the nation as early as over a millennium earlier. That preparation included forcing course corrections to the nation to bring them to the place he wanted them to be when Jesus Christ arrived. At major issue was the nation was to recognize the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob as her God, and reject all of the false idols created by Israel's neighbors.
This took a long time to bring about, however, God very effectively accomplished it. Through the eventual destruction of the northern kingdom of divided Israel by the Assyrian empire, and the later slaughter and deportation of a remnant of the southern kingdom of Israel by Babylon, God finally effected their fidelity to himself.
Not to say that Israel had resolved their problems with God. Indeed, Jesus took the leaders of the Jews to task for their many failings and sins that we read about in the gospels. However, one thing the nation was not condemned for by Jesus was her recognition of God. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had fully and finally become Israel's God shortly after Israel was allowed to return to their land following their deportation to Babylon, and certainly by the time Jesus had come into the world. This is one reason I believe why we see the animosity of the Jews toward their half-breed Samaritan neighbors.
Accomplishing that spelled a lot of trouble for Israel over time and exposes mankind's proclivity to turn from our Creator God. In passages such as Psalm 78:34 we learn why God dealt in such a way with Israel at times, "Whenever God slew them, they would seek him; they eagerly turned to him again." God was very effective at what he wanted to accomplish in the nation of Israel, and it wasn't going to be a quick fix. We see this played out over and over as we read Israel's history in books like Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, etc.
"You have rejected us, God, and burst upon us; you have been angry—now restore us! You have shaken the land and torn it open; mend its fractures, for it is quaking. You have shown your people desperate times; you have given us wine that makes us stagger."
Here David speaks of a terrible time Israel experienced at the Lord's hand. David says the Lord rejected his people and "burst upon" them. He lays this at the feet of the Lord's anger at the nation. The Lord had "shaken the Land" and "torn it open". Desperate times for Israel at the Lord's doing!
Was God just being mean to his people? Why would the Lord bring hardship to his own? After all, they were God's chosen and covenant people. Wouldn't you think that our God of love would bring peace, prosperity, health and ease to his people if indeed he loved them?
Those who study the Scriptures know that God's people, as a representation of all mankind, had a bent to drift from God. David was a man of mighty faith, but that did not mean the whole nation was strong in faith. There were issues with God's people. On the surface we know that Israel prostituted themselves by chasing after foreign idols, they engaged in sinful practices and drifted away from the Lord. Through these things we recognize that corrupting sinful nature that dwells within had a way of expressing itself on a corporate level within the fabric of the nation.
I personally believe something else was going on at the time in the way God interacted with the nation, something beyond punishing Israel for her misdeeds. That "something else" was that God was preparing the nation for delivering his redemption of all mankind through his people Israel, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was to come into the world through Abraham's offspring to offer himself as a sacrifice to to pay for mankind's sins. When Jesus died on that cross, he made the way for sinful mankind to be forgiven those sins and have access to join the kingdom of heaven through faith.
In preparation for bringing Jesus Christ into the world through the nation of Israel, we see God working in the nation as early as over a millennium earlier. That preparation included forcing course corrections to the nation to bring them to the place he wanted them to be when Jesus Christ arrived. At major issue was the nation was to recognize the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob as her God, and reject all of the false idols created by Israel's neighbors.
This took a long time to bring about, however, God very effectively accomplished it. Through the eventual destruction of the northern kingdom of divided Israel by the Assyrian empire, and the later slaughter and deportation of a remnant of the southern kingdom of Israel by Babylon, God finally effected their fidelity to himself.
Not to say that Israel had resolved their problems with God. Indeed, Jesus took the leaders of the Jews to task for their many failings and sins that we read about in the gospels. However, one thing the nation was not condemned for by Jesus was her recognition of God. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had fully and finally become Israel's God shortly after Israel was allowed to return to their land following their deportation to Babylon, and certainly by the time Jesus had come into the world. This is one reason I believe why we see the animosity of the Jews toward their half-breed Samaritan neighbors.
Accomplishing that spelled a lot of trouble for Israel over time and exposes mankind's proclivity to turn from our Creator God. In passages such as Psalm 78:34 we learn why God dealt in such a way with Israel at times, "Whenever God slew them, they would seek him; they eagerly turned to him again." God was very effective at what he wanted to accomplish in the nation of Israel, and it wasn't going to be a quick fix. We see this played out over and over as we read Israel's history in books like Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, etc.
God wasn't just treating Israel harshly for punishment's sake, he was, among other things, preparing the nation for the coming of her Messiah.
A blog with my ruminations over the years can be found here: http://worshipfortoday.blogspot.com/
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 reply and let me know..
A blog with my ruminations over the years can be found here: http://worshipfortoday.blogspot.com/
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 reply and let me know..
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