August 11
August 11
God’s stern warnings are not judgment, but rather extensions of his mercy. We are to examine ourselves, confess, repent, and experience the grace of fresh starts and new beginnings.
Through his prophet Jeremiah, God warns his people to turn from their sin, with a threat of dire consequences if they don’t:
Go down to the house of the king of Judah and speak there this word, and say, “Hear the word of the Lord, O king of Judah, who sits on the throne of David, you, and your servants, and your people who enter these gates. Thus says the Lord: Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place. For if you will indeed obey this word, then there shall enter the gates of this house kings who sit on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their servants and their people. But if you will not obey these words, I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that this house shall become a desolation. For thus says the Lord concerning the house of the king of Judah:
‘You are like Gilead to me,
like the summit of Lebanon,
yet surely I will make you a desert,
an uninhabited city.
I will prepare destroyers against you,
each with his weapons,
and they shall cut down your choicest cedars
and cast them into the fire.’” (Jer. 22:1–7)
Do you struggle to think of these words as being consistent with a perfectly holy God of infinite love? Do they seem to you to contradict the gospel of his grace? Do they make you afraid to entrust yourself to him? How do you understand divine warnings and threats?
Here’s the first thing that we need to understand. None of us would want to live in a world whose ruler wasn’t angry with evil. If he wasn’t, there would be no hope of justice, righteousness, security, or peace. In actuality, God’s anger with evil is the hope of the universe. It is his anger with sin that sent Jesus to the cross to provide for us forgiveness and the deliverance found in the ultimate defeat of sin. God also knows that, because of sin’s deceptiveness, we convince ourselves that we can do what is wrong without consequences. So, in rescuing love, God punctuates his warnings with the threat of dire consequences.
When parents warn their children not to do something wrong and add a threat of consequences if they do, it’s not because they lack love but because their children are dear to them and they want to rescue them from whatever may harm them. So it is with our Lord. He knows what can harm us, and so he speaks with the stern voice of a loving Father. He reveals the potential consequences of our sin not because he despises us, but because we are precious to him.