God of Thunder

Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him!  But the thunder of his power who can understand? — Job 26:14

We are sometimes amused by the diatribes of unbelievers as they rail against the god of their imagination, but you can always tell when even those who claim to be believers turn out to be idol-worshippers.  The idol is a puny thing.  It is carried around by the ones who believe in it like the dead man in “Weekend at Bernie’s”.  It is animated by and has power over only the one who has been deceived by it, or who deceives himself with it. 

A god that can be fully explained and fully understood is not God.  Most often we hear only the faintest whispers and glimpse the Lord in shadows moving at the edge of vision.

When God speaks in full voice, we are overwhelmed.  In John 12, the Father speaks audibly to the Son.  Though the voice is overheard by those around Jesus, it is incomprehensible to them. The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, An angel has spoken to him (John 12:29).

We may all hear the thundering voice of God in the storms of life, in our tragedies and catastrophes, but, too often, it is sealed to us.  And when the seven thunders had sounded, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying, Seal up what the seven thunders have said, and do not write it down (Revelation of John 10:4).

The truth can create fear in us.  We cower and stop our ears, passing it off as a “natural” phenomenon.  We have decided beforehand that God does not speak; therefore, this terrifying thing cannot be His voice.  He can’t be telling us that we are reaping what we have sown.  He can’t be calling us to repentance.  God only speaks through the soft, soothing, comforting voices of His priests and His ministers. 

Beware of those who explain away the thunder.

The Sudden Stop

Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven …  For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. – Luke 6:37, 43-44

I expect to be judged.  I expect to be judged on my performance, my achievements, my failures, my strengths and my flaws.  Jesus does not forbid forming opinions nor does He expect us to refrain from making informed judgments.  He admonishes us not to jump to conclusions or to pre-judge someone on the basis of culture, religion, ethnic background, or even on past failures.  A reformed criminal should be given opportunities to live honestly.  Someone from a bad family should be judged on his or her own behavior and not on that of family members. 

That does not mean that we have to accept and tolerate bad behavior.  If a drunk tells me not to judge him that makes him no less a self-destructive drunk, and it certainly doesn’t give him the right to drive his car into mine out on the highway.  If I break my marriage vows, I am an adulterer, and it requires no judgment to call me such.  The secular world doesn’t want the words of Jesus to carry their plain and obvious meaning.  They want those words to mean that they will not be judged according to the fruit they bear – a complete contradiction to what the Lord says. 

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap (Galatians 6:7).

Too many today are mocking God by quoting Christ out of context, and God is never mocked.  God is reality, and reality cannot be escaped.  The secular world has leaped from the top of the tallest building in town, and it is a long, laughing thrill ride down.  What rushes toward us at terminal velocity is the ground.  Do not judge by the fall.  What hurts is the sudden stop.

Some Reviving

For we are slaves. Yet our God has not forsaken us in our slavery, but has extended to us his steadfast love before the kings of Persia, to grant us some reviving to set up the house of our God, to repair its ruins, and to give us protection in Judea and Jerusalem.  -- Ezra 9:9

We were slaves to sin, to the old nature, to the powers and principalities of this world and its darkness.  The deliverance of the Jews from their captivity and exile and their restoration to Jerusalem foreshadows our deliverance through Christ who, as Philippians 2:7 says, effectively made Himself a slave like us.  He experienced the rejection of death and exile in hell.  Then He arose triumphant -- just as He had said, at the end of three days, “reviving” and rebuilding the true Temple of God – His own body. 

The world is troubled in many ways today.  There is fear and violence and uncertainty.  Financial crises loom.  Terror and persecution stalk the lives of innocent people in countries all over the planet.  Fools cry, “Peace, peace”, but there is no peace for those ruled and controlled by spiritual wickedness. The problems faced by humanity cannot be solved by military interventions, global initiatives, bail-outs, bail-ins, or changing flags. 

When it comes to eschatology, as I have said before, there is a lot I don’t know, but I do know the Lord gives wisdom to those who will ask of Him.  For those Christians who have not asked already, I would suggest that now would be a really good time to ask in earnest.  I’m not saying that the Lord has spoken to me about anything, but I have a feeling we are going to go through some changes and difficulties such that most of us in the West have not seen or experienced. 

It will, I think, be a kind of exile.  Keep Peter’s warning in mind:  For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? (1 Peter 4:17)  People are hollering about America being judged for court decisions and such.  The Lord might decide to straighten out His people before He starts on the world.  We should not be discouraged if that should be the case for it means we are closer to revival, renewal, and restoration than ever before.

Days of Reckoning

For it will come upon all who dwell on the face of the whole earth. -- Luke 21:35

The context here is the not-too-future destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.  The Lord warns us to be watchful lest we become too distracted by the worries as well as the pleasures of life.  That’s an important understanding.  But alone, the verse says something more general. 

All of us “who dwell on the face of the whole earth” will face a day of judgment and reckoning.  It may be as part of some great and noted movement of history – wars, revolutions, reformations, invasions, natural catastrophes of disease or destruction – something that will be written down and remembered.  It can also happen on a very quiet, mostly unnoted, personal level. 

Every day there are thousands upon thousands of people who find their lives turned upside-down.  Unless it happens to us or to someone close to us, we won’t even be aware of it.  It may be the ultimate day of the Lord as we step through the veil into eternity to answer for our stewardship and our lives.  It can also be something like Saul of Tarsus experienced on his way to Damascus.  It may be an unexpected loss or setback or threat in any area of life. 

There are all kinds of reckonings, and all of us, regardless of our place in history or society, regardless of our families, our resources or abilities will have days of reckoning come upon us.  The best we can hope for are two such cataclysms.  The one I have already mentioned.  Death is inevitable and unavoidable.  My standard answer to people who remark about the dangers of riding a motorcycle is that the mortality rate for bikers is 100%.  The funny thing is that it is also 100% for non-bikers. 

The second is not altogether dissimilar: 

Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:11, KJV)

This, too, is a crisis, a calamity of will.  To come to the Cross is to recognize our own death in the vicarious sacrifice of Christ.  If we will come to this crossroad and take the right way, when that which comes upon all comes upon us – whatever it might be, up to and including the laying aside of our physical body, it will not find us unprepared. 

God and Government

So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth.  For the wicked surround the righteous; so justice goes forth perverted. -- Habakkuk 1:4

Verse 4. The law is slacked: They pay no attention to it; it has lost all its vigour, its restraining and correcting power, it is not executed; right judgment is never pronounced; and the poor righteous man complains in vain that he is grievously oppressed by the wicked, and by those in power and authority. That the utmost depravity prevailed in the land of Judah is evident from these verses; and can we wonder, then, that God poured out such signal judgments upon them? When judgment doth not proceed from the seat of judgment upon earth, it will infallibly go forth from the throne of judgment in heaven. – Adam Clarke, Commentary, on Habakkuk 1:4

Please direct your attention to that last sentence in the quote from Clarke.  Most of us as Christians are familiar with Paul admonition in Romans 13:1 to be obedient to civil government:   Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.  I can believe, readily enough, that God, in His wisdom, has a hand in establishing governments.  We can see that some government is appropriate and useful and necessary. 

As a Christian, I favor justice, respect for the lives and property of others, and good moral behavior.  I seem to recall a time when people behaved themselves because it was the right thing to do, when what we could call “community standards” were recognized and generally accepted.  I am concerned about the militarization of local police forces and the increasingly militarized bureaucracies of the federal government.  But when community standards and common decency are pushed aside, when the basic morality reflected in the Ten Commandments is dismissed, it’s not too surprising that stronger and more tyrannical governments arise as a consequence.

In other words, if we want Andy Taylor for our sheriff, we need to live like the citizens of Mayberry.  I believe that God will give us the kind of government we deserve.  America is far less a Christian nation than it was a hundred years ago.  We can blame that on Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson, FDR, LBJ, Clinton, Bush, and Obama, but the fault lies in us -- perhaps not you and I personally, but the citizenry as a whole.  As Peter told us long ago, [I]t is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? (1 Peter 4:17). 

The purpose of the Church is not to rubberstamp the decisions of secular authority.  We are not to accommodate and tolerate whatever the government decides to approve and endorse.  We can have license without righteousness, but we cannot have liberty.  If we want to live in a free country, we have to be moral people – not by government mandate but by the mandate of heaven. 

Perhaps there is a corollary to Clarke’s observation.  If, when judgment fails to come from the civil magistrates, judgment falls from the throne of God, is it possible that we could restore righteousness to secular authority by living according to the divine standard?  Then he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak again but this once. Suppose ten are found there. He answered, For the sake of ten I will not destroy it (Genesis 18:32).  The Cities of the Plain would not have been overthrown if there had been within their walls but ten decent, troubled souls, ten who wept and mourned for the sins of Sodom.