Ukraine – Remember Mercy

in , , /by

In Wrath Remember Mercy – Habakkuk 3:2

This was the heartfelt prayer of one of the Old Testament prophets (Habakkuk) when he faced the prospect of his own country (Judah) being overrun by the vicious and murderous forces of Babylon. Babylon, led by a dictatorial king, was the superpower of its day; it had overwhelming military power and was not afraid to use it. It would mercilessly kill all who opposed it and would smash to pieces and burn down any city that tried to stop it. In attacking Judah it was seeking to extend its borders and further its power, and would do so without mercy. In his prophecy Habakkuk said that at such a prospect his heart pounded, his lips quivered and his legs trembled – all symptoms of deep fear. In picturing this scene we have very clear echoes of what we have been seeing in the Ukraine. It’s amazing how utterly relevant the bible can be in what it relates! 

Judged by God?

Habakkuk had spent much time praying for Judah, his country, and had reluctantly come to the conclusion that his country was being judged by God. That is an important issue but I don’t propose to go into that here. Whatever the reason for the appalling situation Habakkuk couldn’t bear to see his country suffer and was determined to make his appeal to the mercy of God. Even if there was an element of judgement he was convinced that the mercy of God was still available because his God was a god of mercy. Mercy! – mercy is that grace of God which leads God to help even those who do not deserve it. Habakkuk was right in approaching God in this manner. The supreme example of God’s mercy is to be found in a truth that St. Paul emphasised, “while we were yet sinners Christ died for us”. When Jesus came we were given something we did not deserve, something that would enable us to triumph over evil and avoid judgement. God is full of grace and mercy and compassion.

God of Mercy

First, let’s call to mind God! Unlike so many of his contemporaries Habakkuk had a profound faith in God. Disasters were not going to shake that faith. He knew that God had created all things, had showed great mercy and blessing to his nation and was watching everything that was happening. He knew God was not indifferent to human suffering, of whatever kind it might be and that he was always attentive to the cries of those who believed in Him. His faith in God would not waver – he would go on praying and trusting God, come what may. We need to take that same stand. At this time we are very much in need of God and his intervention in a world of violence and sin. WE NEED HIS MERCY. 

The Mercy of Jesus

Two short stories from the gospels remind us vividly of the nature and depth of God’s grace, his mercy and his compassion. These great virtues are constantly displayed in the ministry of Jesus. The first example is from Luke 7. Jesus was just about to enter a small village in Galilee with a crowd following him when he met with another crowd coming out of the village forming a funeral party. It was the funeral of a widow’s only son. As Jesus saw the distraught widow woman we are told he had compassion on her. (NIV translates “his heart went out to her” – a very illuminating expression. He saw her weeping and heartbroken and immediately was drawn to her need. He didn’t ask any questions. Instead he went up to the woman and said, “Don’t cry”. Her tears we might think nearly brought tears to his own eyes. Then he simply stopped the funeral procession by touching the coffin, and then raised her son to life. This was not the only occasion when Jesus showed such compassion over those mourning the loss of loved ones. When, later on, his friend Lazarus died he wept alongside Lazarus’ two sisters, Mary and Martha who were deeply distraught. He wept, even though he was on the point of bringing Lazarus back to life. Jesus here reflects the heart of his Father, of God himself. “He that has seen me, has seen the Father”.

The second story involves a blind beggar (Lk18). This beggar sat by the roadside when he learned that Jesus was passing by. He couldn’t see where Jesus was so he kept shouting out at the top of his voice, “Son of David, have mercy on me”. The people around him told him off and to shut up. Not much mercy there! Jesus stopped and ordered the man to be brought to him. He asked him what he wanted and the man said, “I just want to be able to  see”. Jesus healed him and commended his faith. The beggar had asked for mercy, for grace. All his life he had been told he was under a curse of God for his blindness and of little worth – that was a typical condemnation of the blind in those times. So he’d asked for mercy (Have mercy on me!) – underserved favour. And he received it.

Big Mercy!

What is worth taking note of in both these stories is that the “mercy” in each case was not small or negligible. It is always very important to be grateful for small mercies. But this was quite the opposite. These were very big mercies. In the first story a person was given an extra lease of life; in the second, sight and well-being were restored after years of anguish. The lesson from that is that God is able to do some very large and powerful things in people’s lives, even ordinary people. It encourages us to hope for and pray for powerful manifestations of his compassion, mercy and grace. This takes us back to our understanding and grasp of what God can do. It is God who topples evil people, it is God who ultimately rules the nations, it is God who changes circumstances , large and well as small. God can do big things. Our concept and understanding of God needs to be big; our prayers need to be big. Paul the Apostle had just  such a big grasp of how to ask for big things. Listen to this injunction to Timothy, one of his young helpers:

I urge then first of all that requests, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for everyone – for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.

So, let us continue to pray earnestly and especially for nations being “trampled upon”.

A Break in the Sky and A Thunderclap

in , /by

A Ray of Mercy against Dark Clouds of Judgement

With just days to go prior to Christmas the nation held its breath to see what would be the outcome of one of the most crucial General Elections in our history. Political life and government in the House of Commons had reached a point of unparalleled chaos and confusion, with all the norms of reasonable and sensible behaviour lost in a welter of anger and mutual hostility. We were watching all the time-honoured procedures of our democratic government being glibly overthrown, and we saw even those whose responsibility it was to guard those procedures actually doing most to undermine them. We were threatened with a deep and debilitating constitutional crisis. Politically we were in “meltdown”. It was a hideous, unbelievable dream for a nation which prided itself above all on the fairness and sensibleness of its political institutions. 

At the deepest level, from a spiritual standpoint, as a nation we were clearly experiencing the hand of God’s judgement.  

But with Christmas still before us we woke up to find the nightmare had gone, the confusion abated and a government with a working majority “in situ”; we had had an election which did not leave us with the chaos of a “hung” parliament, or something even worse. Stability had been restored. There was a real calm after the storm, a genuine break in the sky. The relief was palpable and widespread, though obviously not universal.

There had been a great deal of earnest prayer surrounding that election, not only corporate prayer but the prayer of many individuals, and God had shown “mercy in the midst of wrath”.  We had been spared absolute political collapse. Prayer had prevailed it seemed. That is a truth Christians need to ponder and act upon more than ever in the coming days.

A Very Loud Thunderclap

The New Year, however, saw a sudden and totally unexpected thunderclap which severely jolted that feeling of relief. Donald Trump openly ordered the assassination of Qassem Suleimani (“the Mastermind of Iranian foreign policy”) by a drone attack. Such an action was unprecedented and clearly an act of war. Had the President lost leave of his senses in a moment of pique? Did he realise the possible devastating repercussions? Was this Trump at his most irresponsible? The “markets” showed signs of panic. Everyone was alarmed at the possible outcome – war!..? Such fear was eminently reasonable as a first reaction. But then something very surprising happened even in the first two or three days of the “crisis”. A number of eminent journalists and analysts began to say in effect that even if this were the “irresponsible Trump” what had happened was actually not as dire at it first seemed. The fact was that a very definite “red line” had at last been put down in the clearest way possible with Iran. Critically the President was able to show that Iran had been operating through its “proxies” a clandestine and bloodthirsty war with America (and others) for a long time: the strike was intended to stop it. The analysts also took note of the fact that Iran’s options for revenge were very limited, and especially so since it was clear that the U.S. was prepared to respond, and could respond, with superior strength to any retaliation. The shouting on the streets in Iran was threatening but only cloaked a lack of power. Neither did the shouting necessarily reflect the feelings of many Iranians who have been disillusioned by the “regime” for some time now. Moreover it had come at a time when economically Iran is in something of a critical state. And the great powers looked on – mute.

So, has even this dangerous-looking thunderclap really got a silver lining? Does what has happened look like some merciful restraint on Middle East violence? Are we in this country in a better position both nationally and internationally than we were toward the end of 2019? It would be unwise to get too optimistic. The next twelve months could be another bumpy ride for our government over the EU issue. How sure can we be that America will see the job through in the Middle Eastern boiling pot or will President Trump do a characteristic back-track? What will the other super-powers do? They are watching and waiting for their opportunity.

The fact is that though we may well have seen something of the mercy of God for our nation, the sky is still dark with the threatening clouds of judgement. The spectre of major war has been raised in a very significant way, even if there has been a silver lining. Biblically, the judgements of God can be seen to progress from political chaos to war, and we do well to take heed of the warnings of God. That is the overriding feature in the outlook, and the truth we need to keep firmly before us. The fact is that our nation still pursues its non-moral course of behaviour, if anything getting gradually worse in its obscenities, its legal absurdities, its violence, its unbridled lust for money and pleasure etc. And what is true of our nation is true of the whole Western world. We are utterly dependent on the mercy of God. The recognition of that dependence needs to be paramount in our praying. “In wrath remember mercy” has to be our constant cry both corporately and individually, and it needs to come from “pure hearts and clean hands”. 

I feel very strongly that this is a time when the prayer of concerned individual Christians is of the utmost importance; it is not a time to wait for prayer meetings to be called (though there is need for that in our churches), but a time to take individual responsibility in prayer.

JUDGEMENT AND MERCY IN THE BOOK OF EXODUS

in , /by

The second of this series of the relationship between the judgment and mercy of God takes us to Exodus and to the revelation that God gave of Himself to Moses. This revelation is undoubtedly one of the most vivid and prolonged of all the revelations of God in Scripture, which is not surprising since it involved the huge events of the deliverance of the Jews from Egypt, the re-formation of the nation around its new Law and Covenant, and its long journey through the wilderness to the Promised Land. Moses was at the very centre of all this, hearing God and doing his bidding.

His first encounter with God was in the desert as a refugee. It took place through a manifestation of a burning bush through which God spoke. His first words were, “Do not come any closer – Take off your sandals for the place where you are standing is holy ground”. In response, we are told, “Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God”.  (Gen 3:4ff). Thus the starting point of revelation for Moses was a deep feeling of the holiness of God and a sense of awesome fear. This did not, however, stop Moses speaking boldly to God as the conversation continued but his approach was always one of a genuine “fear of the Lord” – a profound respect and awe at God’s holiness. This was not the slavish fear of the typical pagan for his unpredictable and “unholy god”. It was a genuine “godly fear”.

The first experience the Jewish nation under Moses had of God as He began to deliver them was the enormously powerful and frightening judgements he poured on the Egyptians to secure the nation’s release. Then there were miracles of provision in the wilderness. But His plan was not simply that they should see his power and be set free but that they should be a holy nation, worshipping a Holy God, utterly free of idols and living a fully moral life. To that end they were to have a Law. So He met them at Mount Sinai. There he gave this Law to Moses but at the same time he gave them a revelation of himself as a Holy God. They witnessed the glory of God come down like fire on the mountain with the whole covered in smoke. There were loud trumpet blasts and the mountain itself trembled. They were not allowed to go up the mountain on pain of death, Moses alone being excepted. Indeed they trembled with fear and kept their distance. They were faced with the Living God who was holy and who was to be feared in his holiness. It was crucial that they recognised his holiness and walked in the Fear of the Lord. Again He was to be recognised as completely different from any pagan God. 

It is utterly mistaken to dismissively think of this revelation as “primitive”. The recognition of God as a Holy God is fundamental to any true walk with God. It is as important for us in our so-called civilised era as for any previous era. In fact it is still our greatest need. The Commandments as they were given to Moses demanded that there should be no idols or graven images (which invariable spawned every kind of evil behaviour), but that worship be centred on Him exclusively, the Living Creator God. They demanded behaviour which was not destructive to other human beings.

Unhappily whilst Moses was up on the mount receiving such commandments the people, despite having trembled at the sight of the mountain, gave themselves to gross idolatry and immorality, losing any sense of the fear of God. As a consequence they experienced the anger of God, with death in their midst and plague. 

All this was written into the Jewish national history and Scripture for a reminder of the fact that they (and we) are called to holiness. God is not there just to provide for a thoughtless, selfish or indulgent life. Indeed ungodly living is not something he tolerates but which incurs his deep displeasure and visitation. However, there was another revelation that God gave of Himself to Moses in the midst of all this, which is very much of a contrast, and of great importance. As Moses was interceding for the nation, that God would not destroy it for its idolatry and immorality, he uttered quite an astounding prayer. He prayed “Lord show me your glory” (Ex. 33:18). After all the powerful interventions he had witnessed in Egypt and in the wilderness one wonders quite what he had in mind, or what prompted it. But clearly he had become aware of something else in the nature of God he wanted to know about or at least he felt his understanding was incomplete.

God agreed to answer his request saying, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my Name (nature), the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion”. So Moses once again ascended the mount and the LORD put Moses in a cleft of the rock and “came down in a cloud … and proclaimed his name”…..  “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sins of their parents   to the third and fourth generation for the sin of their parents” (Ex. 33:18 – 34:7). 

This was a revelation of the unbounding love, grace and mercy of God. That is His glory. Moses had seen his power and his judgements prior to this, but now he saw His love and felt something of the depth of it. He saw that God was slow to anger, not that there was no anger but a God reluctant to release his anger. His first desire is to show his love, but when his holiness is ignored anger must follow. That anger brings judgement, even on families where people walk contemptuously in sin. God is love, but it is a holy love that hates evil and burns against it, punishing it wherever it is to be found. Something of this glory of the love of God caused Moses’ face to shine when he came down out of the mount, and thereafter he had to wear a veil when he was with the people.

We sometimes seem to think that the Old Testament revelation of God is primitive and lacking. There is nothing lacking in this revelation of God to Moses. He sees God as we need to see him, first in his holiness and then in his love, though the two are in fact one. Judgement is the love of God refusing to countenance or parley with evil. The “fear of the Lord” and the “love of the Lord” are the twin insights that must always be with us.

Printable Version

I do hope this resource maybe helpful, and please feel free to print them out for your own purposes.

 

JUDGEMENT AND MERCY IN THE BOOK OF GENESIS

in , /by

This is the first in a series of studies in different books of the bible on the issues of the judgement of God and the mercy of God. We live in an age when the former threatens and when the latter is desperately needed. It is also an age in which we have little consciousness of the reality and devastating nature of judgement and consequently little grasp of the real depth and need of his mercy. We have a profound need to understand and come to terms with the judgements of God, and to recognise that his mercy is not simply or easily there for the taking, much as God longs to give it.

Genesis starts with a brief but majestic story of creation; everything was made by God and everything he made was good. Very quickly, however, the story moves on to man’s disobedience to God, a disobedience which was the result of man’s weakness and Satan’s temptation. Judgement follows quickly; man is expelled from the idyllic Eden, is doomed to die, and the very ground he walks on is “cursed”. Adam’s eldest son kills his own brother out of envy, and evil spreads everywhere as the peoples of the earth increase and abandon God. The world comes under the judgement of God in the form of a devastating flood. But Noah “found grace in the sight of God” and was saved by the mercy of God. Of Noah we also read, “Noah was a righteous man, a man of integrity among his own generation, and he walked with God” (Gen. 6:8-9). Here, in the first few chapters of Genesis we have the fundamental and constant message of the whole bible: to reject God is to invite judgement and severe punishment, but to walk righteously in an obedient relationship with God is to receive mercy and to know his love and blessing.

Genesis moves on next to Abraham. He has the same spiritual frame as Noah: like Noah, Abraham walked with God. God spoke personally to him and called him to leave his own land of Ur of the Chaldeans and to go to Canaan where God promised to make of him a great nation, a nation to be brought up in the fear of the Lord. Abraham “believed the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:6). Despite numerous human mistakes and difficulties God watched over him, protected him and prospered him in his journeys and affirmed his “faith” by further revelations of Himself.

Of particular significance, however, for our theme of judgement and mercy is the account of Abraham’s relationship with his nephew Lot, and the episode relating to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Chs.18 & 19), Very graphically and emphatically it underlines the lesson outlined above. It also adds a crucial dimension of the place of intercession in the release of God’s mercy.

Lot had journeyed with Abraham from Ur and had exhibited the same faith in God as Abraham. He, too, therefore was marked as righteous and he too prospered, so much so that there was not room enough for both Abraham and Lot to live together in the part of Canaan where they had settled. Abraham gave Lot first choice of more land in Canaan, but Lot’s eyes were fixed on the valley of Jordan, rich and fertile, and on the city of Sodom where “the people’s sin was grievous”. Tempted by wealth and luxury, he strayed off God’s path and settled in Sodom in the despite its evil. At some time later God revealed to Abraham that the time of reckoning for Sodom’s evil had come. Knowing the gross evil of Sodom, Abraham feared the worst, namely its destruction, and was immediately concerned that his nephew Lot might be caught up in it. Immediately he interceded for Lot’s safety, although obliquely and without mentioning Lot, on the basis that God, the Just Judge, ought not to destroy an evil city if there were righteous people (like Lot-unmentioned!) in it. God listened to Abraham’s intercession but the very next day–following a blatant and violent public attempt at rape at Lot’s own house – he did judge the city. It was completely engulfed in what appears to have been some sort of volcanic eruption and totally destroyed. But Abraham’s intercession was not ignored. Lot and his wife and two daughters were in fact spared the inferno by being forcibly removed by angels just before the destruction took place.

Thus Lot tasted the mercy of God in his deliverance, mercy due largely to his uncle’s righteousness and concern for him as part of his family. The reality is, however, that God wanted to exercise this mercy – that is why he spoke to Abraham in the first place of what he intended to do to Sodom so that Abraham could and would intercede. God wants to hear and answer intercession; it releases his mercy. He is full of mercy. The real tragedy in Lot’s story is that he resisted the full measure of mercy and would not divorce himself completely from the vicinity of Sodom and go back to the promised land of Canaan. His “righteousness” remained compromised and his subsequent family history was hugely blighted and was certainly not helpful to the Jewish nation which sprang from Abraham. There can be no compromise with evil, for God makes no compromise with it.

As an example of the reason for judgement along with the violent manner in which judgement can come and the relation of judgement and mercy, this episode is much to be pondered over. It is an utterly raw and basic story from the most primitive of times but incredibly clear and direct in the message it offers. We have pictured for us a God who is very ready to show mercy, but who will by no means condone what is evil but will judge it with great severity. We should not shun the primitive context or seek to adapt or “update” the message, for it will be repeated persistently throughout the Old and New Testaments. Indeed it speaks to our generation the truth it most needs to hear – we need to know once again the “fear of the Lord” as the real context for His mercy.


Printable Version

I do hope this resource maybe helpful, and please feel free to print them out for your own purposes.