Old Testament

Pending Judgment–Part III

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By Linda Rex

When it comes to God’s judgment, we saw last time that God has done all that is necessary for our salvation. God frees us in Christ to participate fully in this gift of grace, enabling us by the Spirit to live in the truth of who we are as God’s beloved children. At the same time, though, we are free to embrace or reject the gift God has given us in his Son Jesus Christ.

In essence, we judge ourselves—we come into the Light of God’s penetrating gaze and allow him to cleanse and restore us, or we turn from him and continue to walk in darkness, thereby experiencing the consequences of turning away from Christ.

Adam, and all humanity since his time, has turned away from God—but God, in Christ, has turned humanity back into face to face relationship with himself. Jesus Christ is the right relationship each of us has with our heavenly Father.

But God does not force us into relationship with himself. He has secured our relationship with himself in Christ, but does not force us to participate in it. Rather, he invites us. He woos us. By his Spirit, he draws us to himself. We are beloved, held, cherished, and yet free to turn and walk away.

I do not know why people choose to resist and walk away from this awesome relationship, but they do. And if a person insists on resisting and turning from this relationship, God will eventually yield to their decision, while at the same time never ceasing to love and forgive them.

What’s interesting is that people who do not know or believe in Christ are still participants in God’s life and love. They do not recognize or concede that this is so, and may even resist any attempt God makes at drawing them closer to himself, but they are still included in God’s grace to us in Jesus Christ. God allows them to be a part of what he is doing in the world, even if the part they play is a negative one.

The struggle we have with reading the Old Testament is seeing God at work among the nations, allowing the destruction of people groups, wars, and genocide. We find it difficult to accept God ordering certain people to be killed or allowing others to suffer famine and other hardships. If the God of the Old Testament is just like Jesus Christ, then why did he allow or cause these things to happen?

The modern-day Jesus is often portrayed as soft, kind, gentle, and loving. Our pictures of the long-haired, white American Jesus give us the impression he was full of compassion, understanding, and was sensitive to every possible issue and feeling of the human heart. He loved little children and working with his hands. Yes, he might have had a moment of anger in the temple when dealing with the buyers and sellers, but this wasn’t his usual response to such things.

We don’t usually get the impression that the Jesus of scripture is a real, flesh-and-blood man who was strong, decisive, and oozing masculinity. It seems that the Jesus we think of who is powerful and comes to deliver and help is the One who sits in glory ready to condemn and judge the world, who in his second coming is expected to punish and eliminate all the evildoers in the world. This Jesus more closely resembles the God of the Old Testament.

Jesus favored the use of “I am” statements during his time here on earth. He made it quite clear that he was the God of the Old Testament here in human flesh—the “I Am” in person. Over and over he went out of his way to show the truth of this, and that he was the perfect embodiment of God in our humanity. And this is where we begin to struggle. Just who is Jesus, and just how does he jive with the God of the Old Testament? They almost seem like two different people.

There also seems to be a dichotomy between the Jesus of the first coming and the Jesus of the second coming. And this also reflects on how we view the God of the Old Testament. There are inconsistencies between each of these God-views because we do not see Jesus Christ clearly, and we do not see God himself through the correct lens.

And we see events almost always in terms of this life alone. We don’t usually keep a kingdom perspective about things. When someone dies, we think or feel that’s the end, even if we believe in an afterlife. But the apostle Paul tells us we need to keep our minds and hearts on heaven, not on things of the earth which are passing and fleeting. What happens in this life needs to be kept in the context of eternity and the eternal purposes of our Living Lord.

This is the same perspective we need to use when looking at the events in the Old Testament. We need to realize that this is God’s story. It is the story about all he did in preparation for and in bringing about the salvation of the world in and through his Son Jesus Christ. God’s ultimate judgment on sin and death was fully taken up in Jesus Christ and resolved once and for all.

The Old Testament tells the story of God’s covenant relationship with the people of Israel from whom the Messiah came. These scriptures tell about God’s love for his people, and indeed for the whole world, and his deep compassion as they wandered away from him, and his longing for them to be faithful and obedient to him. It tells how he defended and protected his people, providing for them in the midst of difficulty and struggle, and in the midst of hostile, pagan nations. It also tells how he allowed them to experience the consequences of turning away from their covenant relationship with him, while he still called them back and sought their change of heart and mind toward himself.

Everything which happened as recorded in the Old Testament must be viewed through the lens of Jesus Christ, and from the perspective of God’s eternal purposes. God judged all humanity worthy of the gift of his very own unique Son—Jesus Christ is God’s judgment on sin and death. God’s redemption of his own chosen people Israel set the stage for his redemption of all humanity.

In Hebrews 9:26 we read that Jesus, rather than being offered over and over like the temple sacrifices were, was offered just once “at the consummation of the ages.” When the time was exactly right, after specific events and circumstances had taken place, and after certain prophecies had been fulfilled or were prepared to be fulfilled, Jesus came and offered himself in our place. This was to “put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” Jesus took care of sin once and for all—so we do not have that hanging over our heads any longer. Romans 8:1 says, “There is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” In Jesus Christ we are free from sin and death.

Judgment, for those who are in Christ, is not a thing to be feared. In Hebrews 9:27-28 we read, “…inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.” Christ’s coming is meant to be a celebration. It’s meant to be the time when we all gather together, rejoicing in his return, and having a merry time at his banquet, clothed in his garments of righteousness. Death is not to be feared, but to be celebrated as the transition between this life and the life in eternity Jesus purchased for us to be spent with our loving God and all those near and dear to us.

Jesus Christ, being God’s judgment on sin and death, is the One we welcome with open arms and happy faces when we see him in glory, because we are trusting in all he did on our behalf. But it is equally possible that in that moment—in death or at Christ’s return—our hearts might condemn us. We may, when face to face with the glorified Jesus, be like those described in the book of Revelation who try to run and hide from him. We may come face to face with the glorified Savior in that particular moment and realize our way of being is a far cry from that ordained for us by God in creation as made in his image, and renewed by Christ in his redemption. And we have nowhere to turn if we refuse Jesus Christ since he is our salvation, and he is God’s judgment on sin and death. And so, our hearts will be filled with fear, fear of God and fear of his punishment.

But fear is not what God meant for us to have in that moment. In fact, God meant for his perfect love for us expressed to us in Christ to cast out all our fear. God has reconciled us to himself in Christ, and merely asks that we be reconciled in return. How often God has said to us as humans, “Don’t be afraid!” God means for our response when we see Christ in glory to be receptive, heart-felt love not fearful dread—this is why Jesus came and did all that he did and this is why God sent his Holy Spirit into human hearts.

This unhealthy response to God was something he battled with from the very beginning. Case in point was when Israel came to Mt. Sinai and God spoke with them. They were terrified and begged to have Moses speak in God’s place. And while Moses was receiving the terms of the covenant, Israel decided to play with idols. These people who were very special to God never really grasped the real nature of God. God wanted them to get to know him, but they constantly set up barriers between themselves and him.

God called the patriarchs and then the nation of Israel into covenant relationship with himself. He would speak to them through prophets. He would speak of bringing them to the place where they would “know” him—come to be intimately aware of and obedient to his loving will. He defended and protected them. He chastened them, and allowed them to stubbornly go their own way even when it was to their detriment. God’s heart from the beginning has been eternal life—this knowing and being known intimately as Abba and his Son in the Spirit.

We need to understand that God’s judgment ultimately is meant to restore, renew, and heal broken relationships—between us and God, and between us and each other. The purpose in judgment is not to destroy or punish so much as it is to bring us into truth so we can experience the true freedom which is ours in Christ. We were meant for life, real life, in fellowship with God and one another—and God’s purpose is for us to experience that both now and forever. We are free to refuse to participate in this kingdom life—but we will experience the consequences of having done so—and that is another conversation altogether.

Abba, thank you for your loving heart and the gift of eternal life in your Son Jesus Christ. Grant us the grace to embrace all you have done for us in Jesus. Let us turn away from ourselves and the things of this life and place our dependency fully upon Christ. In your Name we pray. Amen.

“Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.” Hebrews 9:26-28 NASB

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Pending Judgment—Part I

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By Linda Rex

If Jesus is indeed the exact representation of the Father, does that mean that our heavenly Father is a really nice guy who never did or does anything in anger or that might be hurtful to us as human beings? If we look at the Old Testament and our Abba through the lens of Jesus Christ, does that mean that God never did any of those things such as burning up cities or killing people? What does it mean that God is love, and that he is gracious and forgiving, and yet is also just?

I have said before that if the God we see in the Old Testament is different than Jesus Christ, then we need to consider if perhaps we may have misunderstood something about Jesus Christ or God himself. However, we cannot discard or throw out scriptures just because they don’t agree with the picture of God which we believe we see in Jesus. It is entirely possible that those who wrote millennia ago saw God through the lens of the angry-must-be-appeased God, but that does not exclude their writings, for as the apostle Paul wrote, “Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.” (1 Cor. 10:11 NASB) We can learn from the failures and mistakes of others, and also learn from these events and people about the goodness and faithful love of our God.

Moses recorded a conversation he had in which God described himself. In Exodus 34:6-7, we read: “The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” It’s interesting that God described himself as being very gracious and forgiving, but also as a person who does not leave the guilty unpunished. In fact, Moses wrote, whole generations experience the consequences of people’s disobedience to God.

I find this quite interesting, because during Jesus’ ministry, one of his disciples consistently sinned against the rest of the group, and was left unpunished by Jesus—sort of. The apostle John writes, “But Judas Iscariot, one of His disciples, who was intending to betray Him, said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and given to poor people?’ Now he said this, not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief, and as he had the money box, he used to pilfer what was put into it.” Judas was a thief, and Jesus allowed him to continue in his thievery up until the end of his life. He offered him rebukes, but Judas did not turn away from his sin.

Now granted, Judas was included in the twelve disciples for the very reason that he would one day betray his Lord. In the listings of the disciples Jesus chose after spending all night in prayer is this man who would be a traitor, who would betray Jesus into the hands of those who wanted to crucify him (Lk. 6:12-16; Matt. 10:2-4; Mk. 3:16-19). The apostle Peter, after Jesus’ resurrection wrote, “Brethren, the Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit foretold by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus. For he was counted among us and received his share in this ministry.” (Acts 1:16-17 NASB)

Jesus was a great a scholar of the Hebrew scriptures, as the teachers in the temple indicated he was, so he would have known the prophetic word about the one who would betray him in such a way that he would be crucified and die. Every one of his disciples was capable of betraying Jesus, yet Judas is the one who did it—the one who never dealt with the truth of his thievery by repentance and faith in Jesus. If you or I were running a non-profit business and we found out someone was rifling the petty cash every chance they could, we would most probably fire them the minute we discovered the truth. But this was not Jesus’ way.

Jesus’ view of justice and judgment comes straight from the heart of the Father—to restore the one who has estranged themselves by sin to a right relationship with Abba and those they have hurt. He told Nicodemus:

“For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”

Often God doesn’t need to judge anyone, because we are so good at judging ourselves—hiding in the darkness rather than coming into the light of God’s love and grace in Jesus. Hiding in the darkness eventually leads to painful and difficult consequences, some of which may lead to suffering and even death. Sadly, the outcome of Judas Iscariot’s hidden sin was his betrayal of his Lord, his subsequent remorse, and his tragic end of life by suicide. If Judas had only come to the Light—to Jesus—and received the grace which was his, owning up to the truth of his unloving behavior and allowing Jesus to restore him, his life may not have ended so tragically.

Peter wasn’t much better than Judas. He quite vocally denied Jesus three times—emphatically, with curses—because he was afraid of being arrested. After all his earlier promises to the contrary, when the chips were down he refused to identify with Jesus in his moment of greatest need. What might have gone through Peter’s head when Jesus caught his eye during his final denial? I can only imagine. Whatever it was, it led to Peter’s great repentance, and his urgent desire to reconcile with his Lord on the shores of Galilee after the resurrection.

Hiding in the darkness rather than coming into the light of God’s love is evidence of our lack of participation in our covenant relationship with our heavenly Father. Refusal to face the truth of our broken ways of living and being keeps us in the place of judgment. We have been given forgiveness and acceptance in Jesus Christ, but we can refuse it and live as though it isn’t true for us, and subsequently experience all the consequences due to us for having done so.

We can hide our “dirty deeds” in the darkness and pretend all is okay—living in the “freedom” of doing our own thing—and never receive the grace God has provided for us in Jesus. God has set us free from sin and death through Christ and empowers us by his Spirit to live in the truth of this and to share this truth with others. By refusing to receive what God has given to us in Jesus Christ, refusing to trust in God’s love and grace, we are judging ourselves.

We are placing ourselves outside the door to God’s kingdom which Jesus opened up for us in his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, and are saying to him that we can’t or won’t go in. The door is unlocked and even standing wide open—but we have no interest in entering. If Jesus is our true humanity, and he is the door through which we enter, the only exclusion which occurs is that which we choose for ourselves. God doesn’t have to stand with a big book of deeds either good or bad, deciding who goes in and who stays out. We do a pretty good job of doing that on our own.

Our entering in of the kingdom of God does not just happen at the end of our physical life. We live even now in the already-not-yet of God’s kingdom. This means we participate, or don’t participate, in Christ’s perfect relationship with his Abba right now, in this life today, as well in the world to come. We experience only glimpses of eternity right now, but we can begin to experience the blessings of the world to come in the midst of the struggles and difficulties in the world which is our today.

There are many things we need to learn about who Jesus is, and in learning about Jesus, come to understand about who Abba is. This will help us in our understanding of what was written in the Old Testament scriptures. I would like to talk more about this in next week’s blog. In the meantime, I encourage us all to find anything in our lives which we are trying to hide away from the view of Abba, and to bring it into the Light, so that through Jesus we may receive the reconciliation which is ours in him.

Thank you, Abba, for your perfect love and grace. Thank you that we can come to know you and your great love through your Son Jesus and by your Spirit. Give us understanding of what it means to live and walk in the Light, exposed fully to your loving gaze, hiding nothing. No matter how broken we may be, you have redeemed us and set us free in Jesus. May we receive this gift with open hands. In your name, Jesus, we pray. Amen.

“The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” Exodus 34:6-7 NASB

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Why Surrender is Hard

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By Linda Rex

There is something unsettling about realizing you are not in control of your circumstances or the people in your life. This inability to manage the people and circumstances of one’s life may create a deep sense of anxiety or distress, especially if we are the product of a dysfunctional family where chaos, control, or abuse were the normal, everyday experience of our youth.

Our deepest inner struggle sometimes may be to obey the call by the Spirit to surrender. We may cling so tightly to the outcome of what needs to happen, that we stifle the process, and we restrict the free flow of the Spirit of life.

Surrender is a real struggle for some of us. It is our natural human inclination to demand our own way, to figure out our own solution, and to determine for ourselves what the beginning and end will be. Truly, we have never fully let go of our effort to decide for ourselves what is good and what is evil. It seems our natural tendency is to stand under that tree longingly looking upward, reaching incessantly for what we in our hearts know is not the real solution to our problems.

Whether we like it or not, this unwillingness or inability to surrender, is deeply rooted in this simple reality: we do not know who God is. The God we believe in—if we say we do believe at all—is apparently not the kind of God who is really trustworthy and faithful, and truly loving. If he were, we would implicitly, completely, and without reservation, trust him.

Perhaps the reason we don’t have any faith in God is because the God we learned about or have been exposed to, is not a God we feel we can give our allegiance to and trust in. Perhaps the issue is not whether or not God exists, but rather, coming to a different understanding about who he is.

Joel Davila spoke this past Sunday at Good News Fellowship (access his sermon here) about this very thing. It is important we reexamine at times what it is we believe and don’t believe, and why we believe what we do. We need to ask ourselves, “Is it possible I have been wrong in my understanding about who God is, and what the Bible teaches about him?”

Many people first read the Bible beginning in Genesis and right on through. They see a God who is angry and vindictive, and who consciences the destruction or genocide of whole people groups. And then Jesus shows up and is not understood at all. He seems to indicate he is God even though he is demonstrably very human—and he seems to be the antithesis of the God of the Old Testament. And the people who follow him end up dead, or even worse, perpetuate the death and genocide of people groups in his name.

And that is the root of the problem. We just do not know nor do we understand the truth about who God is. We don’t read the Bible in the light of who God really is, as he has revealed himself to us. We cling tightly to our prejudices, our views, and our culturally or religiously influenced beliefs about the being and nature of God.

This is why the Spirit through the Body of Christ calls us to repentance—to a turning around or metanoia—to a turning away from our false beliefs about God toward what is true. God has revealed his true nature and being to us in the Person of Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit has come to open our minds and hearts to understand, receive, and believe this truth, and to live in and by it.

One of the greatest misunderstandings of us as followers of Christ is in regard to how we read the Bible. We often believe that if it’s in the Bible, then it is something we should do. The Israelites and other Biblical figures did and wrote things in the name of God which were quite truly, awful and hard to understand or forgive. But the Bible must always be read with the understanding these people were inspired by God to write, yet they were broken people who wrote about God for God from a paradigm in which they did not fully know or understand the nature and being of God as he really was.

We must never read the Old Testament, or any part of the Bible, for that matter through any lens other than the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Scripture, and as Hebrews 9:19 says, even the book of the law, needed to be sprinkled with blood—to have God’s grace extended to it.

Jesus Christ is “the radiance of his glory and the exact representation [or ikon] of his nature.” (Heb. 1:3 NASB) Whatever we read in the Bible to learn about God’s Being must agree with the Person of Jesus Christ and his revelation of the Father. If it doesn’t seem to jive, then we need to be open to the possibility that we, or those who wrote these things, may have misunderstood or misinterpreted the motives, heart, will, mind, and actions—indeed, the very nature—of God.

How we read the Old Testament is also critical. I share this often because it made such an impact on me. My professor and mentor, Dr. John McKenna, taught the proper way to read the Torah is to read it in the order it was written. This means we don’t start in Genesis 1:1, but rather in Exodus 1:1. In Exodus we see God calling, and revealing himself to, Moses. Moses had the privilege of hearing from God’s own lips a description of his Being (Ex. 34:5-7). This description by God of himself is summed up in the apostle John’s words, “God is love,” (1 John 4:8) and “God is Light” (1 John 1:5).

This God of love and light drew a people into covenant relationship with himself at Mount Sinai, bearing with them as they wandered the wilderness, and finally bringing them to the edge of the Jordan River. It is here Moses wrote Genesis. His purpose was to teach the people the truth about who this God was they were in covenant relationship with, and who they were as his people. He was their Creator and their Redeemer, their God of covenant love and faithfulness. He was a gracious God who called them into relationship with himself and gave them a way to live in loving, faithful relationship with him by teaching them his way of being.

The nation of Israel wrestled through the centuries in this relationship with their God. They struggled to love, follow, and obey him. They always seemed to fall into the default of our human brokenness, into the lies perpetuated about the angry, condemning God of the nations who demanded servitude and sacrifice. Worst of all, they applied God’s name to things which could not have possibly come from the heart of their loving, gracious God.

How do I know this? Because when God chose to reveal himself to us by sending his Word into our humanity, this is not the way Jesus Christ was. Anything which does not coincide with who Jesus was and is, as he revealed the Father to us, needs to be reconsidered and reexamined. We need to have the humility and personal honesty to say it is possible we, all of humanity and us personally, have misunderstood.

This makes some of us very uncomfortable. But the Spirit calls us to see Abba in the face of Jesus, not only through the written Word. Apart from the revelation of the Living Word, the written Word has no substance. Jesus is the exact representation of the Father, so whatever we read in the Old Testament, or all of the Bible for that matter, must be seen and understood through the lens of Jesus Christ.

And so, the apostle John writes Jesus was very human and tangible, while at the same time he was fully God. The early church fathers sought to put words to all this and came to see the God revealed to us in the Person of Jesus Christ was One God in three Persons. This relational God is a God who is Light and who is Love. The followers of Jesus Christ worship this God of Light and Love because he was revealed to us in the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ.

This relational God of Love and Light revealed to us in Jesus Christ can inform and transform not only our reading of the Bible, but every facet of our lives. We can find hope, strength, and an ability to trust in this God. This is the God who is willing to, and who does, join us in our darkness and brokenness, just so we can come to know him and to live in relationship with him. He comes to us even now in the midst of our struggles in the real Person and power of the Holy Spirit.

His purpose is not to harm us, condemn or reject us, but to draw us closer to him, and to share every aspect of life with us. He doesn’t expect us to carry everything ourselves but invites us to participate with him in finding and carrying out a solution to our struggles. When we can’t carry on, he carries us. But, then, we find ourselves in the place of needing to do the difficult thing: surrender.

Surrender is the hardest thing for us to do. But what if God was just like Jesus? Then could we surrender? If God was just like Jesus, could we trust him in every situation and allow him to care for us and provide for us, and maybe even direct us where we should go?

Surrender is tough. But not impossible, because Jesus completely surrendered himself to his Abba, and to us, even to the point of death. Any surrender which may be required of us is within the context of Christ’s perfect surrender. And he, by the Spirit, shares that surrender with us even now. Whatever we have need of is ours in Christ by the Spirit. This is why Jesus is the central point of the Christian faith.

If it is true of Jesus, it is true of our Abba, and therefore, of his Spirit. In the Spirit, through Jesus, it is becoming true of us, as we surrender and trust in the perfect love and light of God as expressed to us in Jesus Christ.

Dear Abba, thank you for never giving up on us, but continuing throughout the millennia to teach us the truth about who you really are—the God who is Light and who is Love. Thank you for sending your Son to us in Jesus and now by your Spirit so we can come to know you in truth and participate in your love and grace. Awaken us to the reality of your Love and Light through Jesus and by your Spirit. Amen.

“God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.” Hebrews 1:1-3a NASB

“What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life—and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us—what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” 1 John 1:1-3 NASB

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