Monday, March 13, 2017
539 - Prophet and Loss
Spirituality
Column No. 539
March 14, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
March 14, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Prophet and Loss
By
Bob Walters
If
there is a worse job in the history of mankind than being a prophet of God to
the nation of Israel in the Old Testament, I can’t imagine what it would be.
Prophets were the all-time, all-star,
all-truth bearers of what certainly sounded like bad news for a nation of
sinners that plainly did not want to hear it.
Israel was so busy believing its ancient press clippings about being the
chosen of Almighty God that its people forgot about God’s almighty
righteousness. Israel sinned and
rejected and was disobedient, and God through the prophets told Israel what he
would do.
It wasn’t pretty and a lot of the
Bible is hard to read: blood, chaos, death, war, disease, plagues, earthquakes,
floods, enslavement, destruction of whole cities, exile of entire populations
and in every way imaginable being disowned by the Creator of the universe and
their sworn protector. It was a message
no one wanted to hear.
Then there was the Good News of the
coming deliverance through and salvation in Jesus Christ for all mankind. To ancient Jewish ears, the message of this
coming Messiah was largely misunderstood gibberish. Suggesting that God was going to tear down
this nation like a lion but then deliver the whole world through his Son “a
lamb” only added “crazy” to the people’s disbelieving assessment of the
prophets’ messages.
The people took God for granted and
most of the prophets for crackpots.
It really wasn’t any better for Christ
Jesus the incarnate Son of God and his apostles. In Jesus mankind encountered not merely a message
or a prophet but the divine person of
God’s love, truth and forgiveness, along with an invitation for eternal relationship
with God in heaven. How was that
received? Jesus and most of the apostles
died violent deaths at the hands of disbelievers, typical of the difficulty and
resistance mankind has always had hearing, trusting and acting on God’s truth. Maybe
because so many of us don’t trust ourselves, we don’t or won’t trust God.
Well, God is righteous; we can trust
that.
In the Old Testament we think God
looks mean. No, He is righteous.
In the New Testament we think – and
this is an egregious error – that God is punishing His Son instead of us. No, Jesus on the Cross is God becoming sin and
defeating death for the sake of God’s righteousness because God’s righteousness
is His love. If we understand nothing
else about God, we had better understand that.
God’s love gives us hope; God’s
righteousness tells us He’s God.
We make a mistake if we look at God’s
actions anywhere in the Bible and see retribution rather than righteousness. Retribution is a reaction, a trade, a
transaction, a change, and God does
not change. Righteousness is the
unchanging truth and purity of God’s love.
With our sin reconciled in Christ, Godly relationship becomes possible.
We can freely change our hearts and
accept God’s righteousness, but God does
not change. That’s what the prophets
tell us and it’s our loss when we miss it.
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