Withholding Gifts from Our Children

Good Friday found me driving sullenly back to my parents' house while three children sat in perfect silence behind me.  The five of us were supposed to be enjoying a rare lunch out at Chick Fil A, but less than cooperative behavior during the biannual family pictures that morning had consequences.

As a mother who loves her children dearly, I wanted nothing more than to lavish this special treat on them all.  But because I am a mother who dearly loves her children, I simply couldn't.  Heart heavy, I drove home to the routine lunchtime meal of peanut butter sandwiches, bananas, and carrots.

This isn't the first time I have been unable to shower my children with every good and perfect gift because they failed in some way to uphold the rules of Scripture and of our family.  Each time, it hurts my heart to uphold justice and stay my hand, but I know how much my children learn through these teaching moments, lessons they retell for years to come because they remember what blessing was lost due to their own choices and actions.

In these times, I am merely shadowing what God the Father does with His own children.  While I usually think of God as staying His holy hand when it comes to judging the world or waiting to pour out His wrath on a perverse and unholy generation, God also holds back His blessings. 

After explaining of God's judgment to come, the prophet Isaiah appealed to Israel, saying, "Therefore the LORD longs to be gracious to you, And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you.  For the LORD is a God of justice; How blessed are all those who long for Him" (Is. 30:18).

Gracious. Compassion.  Blessed.  These are words to describe how the Lord desires to treat His children.  In the King James version, the phrase "Therefore the Lord longs" is translated as "and therefore will the Lord wait."  He must wait to bless us with His grace and compassion...because He is a God of justice.

God doesn't deprive us of blessings out of spite or anger but simply because He is perfectly just.  As a parent, I understand this longing, this waiting to bless my own children.  How much more must our God long to bless us with all He has?

Isaiah continues, saying "He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when He hears it, He will answer you. Although the Lord has given you bread of privation and water of oppression, He, your Teacher will no longer hide Himself, but your eyes will behold your Teacher.  Your ears will hear a word behind you, 'This is the way, walk in it,' whenever you turn to the right or to the left. And you will defile your graven images...You will scatter them as an impure thing, and say to them, 'Be gone!' Then He will give you rain for the seed which you will sow in the ground, and bread from the yield of the ground, and it will be rich and plenteous" (Is. 30:19-23).

In this passage, the prophet alludes to three things that cause God to stay His hand--(1) not relying on the Lord, (2) not listening to the words of the Lord and (3) idolatry.  At the time, Israel was guilty of all three--it had turned to Egypt (not God) for protection, had rejected the words of the prophets, and was worshiping false idols.

Today, though, we, too, are often guilty of all three as well.  Sometimes, we trust in our bank accounts, our connections, our skill, and our intelligence for our security instead of in God.  We may seek out help from our spouse, friends, our family, and neighbors before we stop and ask God for help.

Likewise, we often fail to listen to the words of the Lord.  Any day that passes where we do not crack open the Bible or where we read simply to check it off our daily routine while not really engaging in the text is a day we have failed to listen to His Word. 

And finally, any time we put anything before God--even good things--we are guilty of idolatry.  Our family.  Our job.  Our favorite TV show.  Our children.  Anything can become our idol if it keeps us from putting God first.

As generally happens after we have experienced God's judgment, the people of God in the above passage grew more sensitive to God's voice to the extent that they could hear "a word behind" them. God, Himself, became their Teacher, implying they were willing to receive and be tutored by His Word  Also, they recognized their idols for what they were ("impure thing[s]") and rid their lives of them.

The result?  Blessing.  Rain. Rich, plenteous, bountiful blessing.

Yes, Scripture says "He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Matt. 5:45).  Still, God's Word shows that He longs, He waits to pour out more blessings on us than He already does simply because we fail to rely wholly on Him, fail to listen to Him, and fail to put Him first in our lives.

How differently might our lives look if God could give us everything He wanted to lavish upon us?

Mother Nature or Father God?

Tornadoes continue to rip across the United States, the most recent ones touching down late last week.  This past winter, the United Kingdom has suffered more severe flooding than has been recorded in over two and a half centuries.  Even now, North America remains covered in the third highest recorded level of snow, with a blizzard slamming into the northwest only six days ago.

It seems every time I flip to a news page, I'm reading about one natural disaster or another.  Blizzards. Tornadoes.  Floods.  Hurricanes.  Earthquakes.  Tsunamis.

The media calls it "Mother Nature."

But as I listen to the loud rumblings and watch the narrow slivers of light from another thunderstorm shaking across our hay fields this evening, I know better. 

"Mother Nature" is not the supernatural force beyond our control.  We have not offended "Mother Earth" with the way we have polluted the land.  As Christian writer and speaker Kay Arthur is so fond of saying, "It's not Mother Nature; it's Father God."

And yet, an act of God's judgment is not how the world perceives what some media outlets have dubbed "wild weather."  As the prophet Isaiah says, "O LORD, Your hand is lifted up yet they do not see it" (Is. 26:11).

Mankind does see the judgment of God with his lifted hand, but it both denies God the authority behind the resulting destruction as well as refuses to accept it as a demonstration of judgment.   As such, the weatherman claims "Mother Nature is sure angry today" when, in fact, it is Father God who is demonstrating His wrath.  Or, on other occasions like with the tsunami in late 2012 that killed thousands, we watch clip after clip of people wringing their hands and asking "why!?" while refusing to look upwards and inwards for the answer.

I do understand this "head in the sand" attitude.  It's often too harsh to think of a God who would massacre 19,000 people in a matter of seconds, isn't it? And so, as Isaiah's words state--the Lord's hand is lifted in judgment; yet, the world does not see it.

Isaiah, though, gives an explanation for all of God's judgments, whether they be of the natural kind or not: "For when the earth experiences Your judgments The inhabitants of the world learn righteousness. Though the wicked is shown favor, He does not learn righteousness; He deals unjustly in the land of uprightness, And does not perceive the majesty of the LORD" (Is. 26:10).

God judges mankind for one purpose--so each man or woman will learn righteousness.  That's what it all boils down to--doing whatever it takes to get our attention, to make us righteous.

To become righteous means to become right with God.  This requires moral perfection, which we are utterly unable to achieve on our own, no matter how many good works we accomplish.  As Paul says, "This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe" (Rom. 3:22).  Christ's righteousness, then, justifies us, covering our sin, so that we become right with God once again.

This is the sole reason for God's judgment of any man or woman on this earth--to lead that individual to righteousness and, thus, to salvation in Jesus.

Tonight's thunderstorm outside my window is a blessing, not a curse, for my rows of corn and newly planted potatoes, giving them life that they might live.  And yet, so much of the erratic weather we witness is less a blessing and more a sign of God's judgment.

Let us not blame Mother Nature nor shake our heads in bewilderment as so many do.  Instead, let us recognize the power of Father God at work as He seeks to draw a lost and dying world to its knees in order for its people to learn righteousness, which is found only in His son Jesus. 

A Building Thunderhead

There are days when I want to shove God into action.  I read of the injustices around the world--stories of brother slaughtering brother, of women being trafficked instead of protected, of children living in fear and extreme poverty, or of one group seeking to wipe another from the face of our planet in the name of religion.

I feel a mixture of anguish and anger at the injustice of it all, often asking why our most patient God doesn't step in and just put an end to all this suffering.  This isn't how it was meant to be.

My prayers repeat the words of the martyrs beneath the altar in Revelation who call out, "'How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?'" (Rev. 6:10).  No matter my impatience, God continues to wait; it is as if I have received those saints' same answer: "a little while longer" (v.11).

"How long, O Lord,"  I push-- impatient, antsy, lacking comprehension of who or what He is waiting on.  And yet, all the while, He sits in perfect patience.

The prophet Isaiah describes this patience as a building thunderstorm: "For thus the LORD has told me, 'I will look from My dwelling place quietly Like dazzling heat in the sunshine, Like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.'" (Is. 18:4).

I have watched such clouds of morning dew transform ever so slowly into the wrathful thunderstorm caused by a Louisiana summer's "heat of harvest." In the morning, clouds stretch small and thin on the horizon, streaks of translucent gray against the brilliant aqua of a sunlit sky.

By noon, I compare both how dark and opaque as well as how high and how wide the heat has made the clouds to determine whether or not the storm will come; yet, despite modern meteorology and radar available on every smart phone, there is still no telling if or when or even where the day's heat will build to the breaking point.  Those clouds are still, ultimately, a mystery.

What's more, even in those times of drought when cities and sometimes entire states are praying for such showers of rain to come, there is no rushing or forcing those droplets to fall.

This is the image of our God, waiting to enact judgment.  The word used in verse four is "quietly."  Unlike me at times, He is not concerned about the unjust getting away with anything because He always has an eternal view versus my short-sighted, temporal one.  Unlike me, He will not be rushed.  Also, His timing cannot be predicted with any certainty.

We do not know the when or the where.  The only certainty in this simile is that His storms of judgment will come.  And when they do, they will be at the perfect time: "For before the harvest, as soon as the bud blossoms And the flower becomes a ripening grape, Then He will cut off the sprigs with pruning knives And remove and cut away the spreading branches" (Is. 18:4-5).

The next time we witness injustices around us--perhaps even suffer greatly from them, ourselves--we must keep this image of God in our minds, as a God quietly, slowly building wrath as a thunderstorm in the summer afternoon heat.

It is am image both to fear and to give comfort, depending on where you are in your relationship with Him.

Can America Learn from Israel's Mistakes?

Despite its economic woes over the past few years, America still ranks among the top ten wealthiest countries in the world.
Honestly? It's what Americans expect--to be the most powerful, the wealthiest, the most innovative. Even when the outlook looks dim, there always seems to be an underlying belief that things are destined to get better over time..."because this is America, the greatest nation in the world."

It wasn't too many thousands of years ago that another nation felt the same as many Americans--blessed, better than everyone else, undefeatable .

In the days of King Solomon, Israel was at the top of its game in terms of its economy, size, and military might. Scripture records that "all the kings of the earth were seeking the presence of Solomon, to hear his wisdom which God had put in his heart" (2 Chron. 9:23). With each visit, the foreigners added to Israel's wealth so that by the end of his opulent reign, "The king made silver as common as stones in Jerusalem, and he made cedars as plentiful as sycamore trees that are in the lowland" (2 Chron. 9:27).

God had blessed Israel beyond its wildest dreams, transforming the descendants of Egyptian slaves who had wandered aimlessly in the desert for forty years into the most powerful nation on earth.  

Through the prophet Ezekiel, God described all He had done to bless Israel as a nation: "I wrapped you with fine linen and covered you with silk. I adorned you with ornaments, put bracelets on your hands and a necklace around your neck. I also put a ring in your nostril, earrings in your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your dress was of fine linen, silk and embroidered cloth. You ate fine flour, honey and oil; so you were exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. Then your fame went forth among the nations on account of your beauty, for it was perfect because of My splendor which I bestowed on you" (Ez. 16:10-14).

Yet, the nation of Israel disregarded God's laws, "played the harlot" by worshiping other gods.  To add insult to injury, Israel used all those blessings God had given it to create idols: "You also took your beautiful jewels made of My gold and of My silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself male images that you might play the harlot with them.  Then you took your embroidered cloth and covered them, and offered My oil and My incense before them.  Also My bread which I gave you, fine flour, oil and honey with which I fed you, you would offer before them" (Ez. 16:17-19).

God repeats the word "My" throughout the passage to emphasize the fact that all the nation's wealth had come from Him.  Yet, all the gold, silver, cloth, oil and decadent foods--Israel used it to court not only the favor of false gods but to also court the favor of pagan countries like the Egyptians, Philistines, and Assyrians (v. 26-28).

A powerful, wealthy nation did not give God thanks for the blessings, but rather used those gifts for its own evil, wicked purposes as it turned its face almost entirely away from God--sound familiar?

History records that the Israelites did not repent and turn back to God.  Instead, they continued to think because they were God's chosen people, He would never turn His back on them.  Even when His blessings began to dry up like a raisin in the sun, they still believed they were immune from His judgment--because they were citizens of Israel, God's chosen nation, which made them the greatest--right?

Wrong.  God warned Israel time and time again that He would judge them for their worship of false idols, for their ingratitude, for their breaking of His holy law.  He warned He would "give you [Israel] into the hands of your lovers [the nations], and they will tear down your shrines...strip you of your clothing, take away your jewels, and will leave you naked and bare...they will stone you and cut you to pieces with their swords...They will burn your houses with fire" (Ez. 16:39,41).

Not too many years later, God did just that, giving Israel into the hands of its enemies, which stripped the nation of its wealth, massacred its citizens, and burned the city of Jerusalem with fire. 

As the old saying goes, "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."  

America must not believe itself insulated from God's wrath just because it has received God's blessings all these years.  Instead, it must seek to learn from Israel's mistakes.  If not, it, too, will be doomed to walk this same road, repeating the mistakes of the too many proud nations that have come before us.

What's More Terrifying Than an Earthquake?

After the earthquake in Haiti, after Hurricane Katrina, after the twin towers fell in New York--these are the times when some journalist pulls a major religious personality on screen and asks the same question--where was God when all this happened?

Several times, I've seen that religious personality be God's mouthpiece, claiming the disaster was a direct outpouring of God's wrath, was His judgment--on Haiti for its practice of witchcraft, on New Orleans for its culture of voodoo, on America for its pride, greed, and moral decline.

Yes, when Christians think of God's wrath, great devastation worthy of a front page story comes to mind.

We SEE God's wrath as a hurricane, earthquake, or tornado that makes a town look like Tinker Toys after a two-year-old gets her hands on them.  We SEE His wrath as a tsunamis with its wall of water towering over the tallest building.

But I would argue there is a more terrifying outpouring of Godly wrath and judgment that goes almost unnoticed--the wrath of abandonment.

For instance, in Ezekiel when a group of elders comes to consult the prophet, God doesn't give the answer they expect, telling them to "Repent and turn away from your idols and turn your faces away from all your abominations" (Ez. 14:6).  In other words, God wants His people to turn their faces away from sin and toward to Him.

If His listeners refuse to repent, though, God spells out the nature of His wrath and judgment: "anyone of the house of Israel...who separates himself from Me, sets up his idols in his heart...I will set My face against that man...I will cut him off from among My people" (Ez. 14:7-8).

The punishment for not repenting?  Abandonment.  God will cut the person off, will leave him to his fleshly heart's basest desires with no Spirit to keep him in check, will allow him to believe his own delusions with no Spirit to whisper truth, will not put forth His holy hand to stem the tide of evil.

We've seen an example of God stemming the tide of evil by keeping a man's desires in check before.  When Abraham deceived King Abimelech, saying that his wife Sarah was actually his sister, God warned the King not to touch her.  Abimelech responds that he is innocent to which God replies, "I also kept you from sinning against Me; therefore I did not let you touch her" (Gen. 20:6).

Scripture even says that when God abandons man in His wrath, He may send a delusion in the form of a false prophet, a false spirit, to reinforce the lies the person insists are truth (See also 1 Kin. 22:20-23).

The New Testament confirms this, saying, "" They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness" (2 Thes. 2:10-12).

Such a judgment should frighten us to their knees.  If it doesn't, we should then read the words of Paul who speaks of this "wrath of abandonment" as a result of mankind's wickedness.

Paul gives a list of what mankind can expect when God withdraws His hand in His wrath, "Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator...since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless" (Rom. 1:24-25, 28-31).

Sound familiar?  This is what we can expect of those left to their own devices when God abandons them in His wrath.

With no Spirit to guide them, to keep their fleshly desires in check, mankind can do much worse to itself than any natural disaster we see on the news tomorrow.

We must repent, turn away from our iniquity and beg God's continued hand of mercy on our lives.

Before We Point Another Finger...

The government, the Democrats, the Republicans, Wall Street, Roe vs. Wade, our public school system, Feminism, divorce, materialism--

If I were to ask you what's wrong with our planet, would it be hard to point your finger at one or more of these as the root of all moral decline?

Or maybe it's something else you see when you turn on the 10:00 news, read a newspaper, or better yet, just take a walk through your neighborhood.

Most of us need not even open our eyes to find something, someone who would meet the qualifications of an abomination in Scripture. We Christians?  We're really good at finger pointing.

Still, you and I might shamefully yank our hands back to our sides if we truly understand how God's judgment works.

God's condemnation of sin?  His judgment?

It starts with His own people.

Scripture records the prophet Ezekiel's vision of God's coming destruction of evil.  Since Ezekiel and thousands of Israelites were living in exile in pagan Babylon at the time, one might expect God to be pointing His finger at King Nebuchadnezzar and that whole bunch of murderous idol worshipers who were mistreating God's chosen people, defiling His holy temple, and mocking His holy name.

Yet, that's not what happens.

Instead, after having a "man clothed in linen" "put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations which are being committed in [Jerusalem's] midst," He tells His executioners, "Utterly slay old men, young men, maidens, little children, and women, but do not touch any man on whom is the mark; and you shall start from My sanctuary.' So they started with the elders who were before the temple" (Ez. 9:4, 6).

Here, God's judgment starts in His holy city of Jerusalem. At His temple. With His chosen people.

God restates this concept in the New Testament when the apostle Peter says, "For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God" (1 Pet. 4:17).

Judgment of sin starts at the house of God.

Judgment of sin starts with the people of God.

What's even more condemning of a Christians's finger-pointing attitude is John's inaugural vision in the book of Revelation, a book that is often used on street corners to tout God's coming judgment of this whole sinful world. 

But before God describes all the woes coming upon the earth? Before He gives us a vision of the the final judgment and of unsaved being dragged down into an eternal pit of fire?

Like Ezekiel, he starts with God's people, the temple of God represented by the church: "I saw seven golden lampstands; and in the middle of the lampstands I saw one like a son of man" (Rev. 1:12-13).  Just so we don't miss the lampstand reference, John clearly states the "the seven lampstands are the seven churches" (Rev. 1:20).

What follows is two chapters chock full of both praise and condemnation of God's church for not being the pure, holy, passionate light to the world that God has called it to be.

Do you see the pattern?

All these passages show that God doesn't first point His holy finger at your unsaved neighbor, at the masses living a flagrantly sinful life.  Instead, He is pointing His finger at Christians like you and me in an attempt to purify us of all sin so that we can glorify Him as a light in the surrounding darkness.
 
Judgment begins at the house of the Lord, with the people of God.

So, before we wave that index finger too boldly, we must first look to God's word to see what finger He may be pointing at each of us. 



Image: Sculpture in Brisbane, Australia