Wednesday, October 16, 2019
“Now prophesy all these things, and say to them, “‘The Lord will roar against his own land from his holy dwelling in heaven. He will shout like those who tread grapes; he will shout against everyone on earth. His cry of judgment will reach the ends of the earth, for the Lord will bring his case against all the nations. He will judge all the people of the earth, slaughtering the wicked with the sword. I, the Lord, have spoken!’” This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: “Look! Disaster will fall upon nation after nation! A great whirlwind of fury is rising from the most distant corners of the earth!” Jeremiah 25:30-32
Jesus sent out the twelve apostles with these instructions: “Don’t go to the Gentiles or the Samaritans, but only to the people of Israel—God’s lost sheep. Go and announce to them that the Kingdom of Heaven is near. Matthew 10:5-6
For the time has come for judgment, and it must begin with God’s household. And if judgment begins with us, what terrible fate awaits those who have never obeyed God’s Good News? And also, “If the righteous are barely saved, what will happen to godless sinners?” 1 Peter 4:17-18
Jeremiah (and all the prophets) spoke a
word of doom to those who rejected God’s sovereignty. The Gospel is an announcement of God’s
forgiveness and desire to gather up the lost sheep. Peter’s letter returns to the looming
thunderclouds of Judgment Day, not just for the godless sinners, but beginning
at the footsteps of the church. This
begs a big question:
Does the Gospel announce the end of Judgment, or does the proclamation of Judgment make the Gospel disappear?
Answer: Yes!
What?
Wait a minute; how can two opposites swallow each other? That’s like Will Rogers’ two snakes who
grabbed each other by the tail; they ate each other and disappeared. The next big question begged is: How can this be?
The answer to all questions of this sort
become easier when we understand that God judges evenly, never capriciously,
always with love and justice in perfect harmony. And so, the answer to the continual pointing
of Old Testament prophets to judgment, and the New Testament Gospel pointing to
grace which metes out forgiveness, is in where the Death Angel visits. If you recall the Passover event in Exodus[2],
God told Moses to instruct each household of the captive nation of Israel in
Egypt to slaughter a lamb, placing its’ blood on the doorposts and lintels of
the entrance to their homes. When the
Death Angel visited judgment on Egypt that night, those who trusted God’s
instructions were saved. For those
Egyptian households that were not “under the blood” the firstborn child
died. It is a chilling thought, but our
God is awesome and IS to be feared! In addition, our God is loving and grace-filled,
always offering forgiveness and salvation to anyone who will repent of sin.
So this is the message of Jeremiah (about
judgment), and Matthew (about grace), punctuated by the Big Fisherman Peter’s
warning to the household of faith (the church), it’s all about responding to
the offer of grace to escape the judgment, and not being impertinent over having
received the grace, but rather walking in careful obedience to the leading of God’s
Holy Spirit.
In other words, don’t forget you’ve been
saved; live like it!
For You Today
For good measure let’s hear Paul’s summary
of the whole matter:
So we must listen very carefully to the truth we have heard, or we may drift away from it. For the message God delivered through angels has always stood firm, and every violation of the law and every act of disobedience was punished. So what makes us think we can escape if we ignore this great salvation that was first announced by the Lord Jesus himself and then delivered to us by those who heard him speak? Hebrews 2:1-3
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