Tag: judgment

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Noah and the Voice of God

The Voice of the Lord is the important element in Bible stories. We discover this very early in our reading of the Word. See Genesis 1:3 “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”

After falling into sin, Adam and Eve heard the Voice walking in the Garden to find them. Voices generally don’t have feet. This phrasing points to the first chapter of John’s gospel. There, Jesus is referenced as the Word made alive. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

The Bible teaches us about the God who is Here, with us, as Immanuel. The primary problem for us as people is one of hearing Him.

The Lord came to Adam and Eve. They were fearful, but the sound of the Voice drew them out of hiding.

The Scriptures show us just how devoted God is to those He created in His image. Note that God met Cain after he slain his brother Abel. The sad part of that story is that Cain departed from the presence of the Lord, rather than seeking to find forgiveness and rest in His Maker.

Once Cain got east of Eden, we see that he and his family members became busy people. They made tools and instruments. They formed communities and developed cities.

I think this over-activity was stimulated by the fact that they needed to do something to fill in the empty spaces in their lives. Those gaps in their existence were put there by the Lord – eternity set in them according to Ecclesiastes 3:11. And the spaces within were to be filled with time and communication in a relationship to the Lord.

In other words, we were made to listen for God, for the Voice that seeks us and saves us. Without this connection to Him, things go wrong – tremendously wrong as we see when we reach Genesis 6.

Evil Imaginations, Violent Atmosphere

The world God had made “good” and “very good” degenerated into chaos.  What was the source of this turbulence? The imaginations of men’s hearts became only evil continually (see Genesis 6:5-6).

Fallen angels furthered the corruption at work through their relations involving the daughters of men. Many have debated over how these diabolic interactions were executed, but the activity did seemingly result in a category of giant humans (see Genesis 6:4).

Violence dominated the society. One of the first lyrical expressions in Genesis came from Lamech, a man who sang a boast to his wives about how he killed men who insulted him (see Genesis 4:23-24).

The corruptions upon earth were not limited to the human population either. All flesh had grown tainted and poisoned through the practices of the people. “And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth” (Genesis 6:12).

All of this served to bring grief to the heart of the Lord. He lamented at what had brought this atmosphere to earth. He pondered over how to deal with this situation. We get a real taste of how much we are really made in His image from this account. God was heartbroken over how men used their freedom of choice to foster wreck and ruin.

The weight of sorrow over the devastation God oversaw prompted Him to consider a total obliteration. However, there was one man who found favor; one upon whom the Lord chose set His heart upon – Noah.

This man was graced by the Lord. He was there living with integrity amid the confusion and the catastrophe.

Noah’s ears were open. He listened to the Voice. He got a project, a world-saving mission. It came to him in great detail. And it took him 100 years to complete. Through building the Ark at the command of God, Noah served as an heir and preacher of righteousness (see Hebrews 11:7; 2 Peter 2:5).

The ‘Foolishness’ of God

The report of Noah and the great Flood is one of those Bible stories that stimulate reactions of scorn from the educated and sophisticated, those supposedly in the know. How could any Supreme Being unleash such waves of judgment upon His created ones? They say.

The real issue is a lack of comprehension about the nature of sin. There is a profound failure to see the decay and death that sin brings to us in our physique, our psyche, and our psychology. Our bodies, our souls, and our minds have been afflicted to various degrees because of the ways of transgression. All of this gets transmitted into the corporate elements through culture and atmosphere.

Paul wrote that the wisdom of the world sees the things of God as foolishness. Those who gather to themselves facts and data in a natural pursuit of understanding find the concept of divine wrath as abhorrent. You have, I am sure, heard people say that they cannot believe in the God of the Bible because they want a God of love, and no God of love would judge the world so harshly. They want a deity who lets us live and let live.

Love that has no anger at the wrong that can come about is not love at all. Love produces in us something that the psalmist celebrates as “perfect hatred” (see Psalm 139:22).

In His holiness and righteousness, God washed away the generation that had befouled the earth. It was an operation of healing to keep in motion the process of redemption and salvation.

Men refuse to listen to His Voice regarding the matter, it’s just that simple. They also turn to demanding explanations that they could never understand if they were told them.  “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25).

Jesus confirmed the reality of the Flood and Noah. The reason I believe the Noah account is because Jesus said it was true.

The story also figured large in Jesus’ teaching about the Last Days and indicators of His return to earth. “For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the Ark” (Matthew 24:37-38).

This begs a question for us: How bad could things really get here on earth? As bad as they got in the time of Noah.

Dwell on those words and it is easy to become discouraged.

Think on this instead: God found a man and His family and that’s all He needed to keep mankind alive and ready to flourish.

The Lord remains the God who so loves, the God who gave His very life. He took upon Himself the judgment of righteousness as the Son.

One Lamb — one spotless Lamb — offered upon one Cross won the victory. In spilling His innocent Blood, Christ accomplished what was accounted as the ransom paid for the sins of the whole world.

Yes, men’s hearts and imaginations are desperately wicked to this day. But the heart of God for our salvation remains ever true. Reconciliation, restoration, recreation – these define the purpose of the Almighty.

It is a purpose that shall not fail.

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The Light of Forgiveness

A woman was caught in the “very act” of adultery and brought to Jesus. She was thrown at His feet right there in the Temple, in the house of mercy.

A number in the mob there had started to gather stones to throw at her. Tragically, as we read through the pages of human history, there are accounts that indicate a strange and evil curiosity tied to public demonstrations of judgment, especially ones that involve execution. Crowds gathered for these bizarre spectacles, and if we read the passage from John 8 carefully, Jesus tells us why.

What had been a regular morning of ministry for the Christ was roughly interrupted. He had come early to the Temple from the Mount of Olives, which was one of His usual places of prayer.

A crowd soon gathered around Him, and so He sat and taught.

It was then that the scribes and Pharisees showed up with their catch. Using this woman, these religious leaders had an object lesson that they used to confront Jesus. They trumpeted the Law of Moses:  “Such women are commanded to be stoned, but what do You say about it?” (see John 8:5).

There was an ulterior motive at work here. Should Jesus sanction this stoning, He would have set Himself as an enemy of the Roman imperial authorities who governed the region. The Jewish community in Judea and its environs were permitted some measure of self-management through the Sanhedrin, a council of leaders who advised the governors.

Capital punishment was not part of this council’s purview. Only Rome could administer this brand of justice. This reality served to set the stage for the Crucifixion of Christ by the decree of Pontius Pilate, who governed Jerusalem.

Scribbling in the Dust

“What do You say about it?”

They pressed Jesus as He lowered Himself and stuck His finger in the dirt before them. “He wrote on the ground,” reported John, the Apostle who penned this gospel.

Here we have the only recorded incident of Jesus doing some writing. What He put down there in the dirt, we do not know. Many have made their speculations, so I will reveal mine for you.

To me, it would be just like Jesus to challenge these religious ones on their own terms. These men formed a gaggle of self-proclaimed defenders of Moses and his writings. So I think the Lord could have made reference to Leviticus 20:10:  “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.”

Perhaps, Jesus was more succinct with His jots and scribbles. Could it be that He just posed the obvious question:  “Where’s the guy?” The very act of adultery does require both adulterer and adulteress, and the Law required both to be put to death.

At last, Jesus stood. This marks a change in the dynamic of the confrontation. He was about to make a declaration of truth from a position of authority. The command with which Jesus spoke astonished those who heard Him. His message came straight from the Father – He made this clear about Himself and His words in the latter portion of John 8 (see verses 18-38).

His declaration was this:  “…He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her” (John 8:7).

Those words cut straight to the core of everyone present. Listen to the stones as they fall to the ground. See the accusers walk away – one by one, oldest to youngest – as these words jabbed conviction into their consciences. At least these consciences were still a bit tender to truth. By the time Jesus was turned over to Pilate on His way to the Cross, these very ones were too hardened to do the right thing.

This mob had been drawn to the scene because of a thirst for vengeance. The real reason for these feelings came from the deficit motivation lurking in their own selves. Their hearts hurt, wounded and scarred by the fallout of their own failures. They were pained by guilt. They did not know what to do with the hurt, except to come and watch someone else take punishment.

No Condemnation

Jesus returned to His writing in the dirt and soon He and the accused woman were left alone. None remained to accuse her. All had come see their own sinfulness in the presence of the Son. Again, He stood to make another statement of authority, a pronouncement of forgiveness and release and responsibility.

 “… Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more” (John 8:10-11).

No condemnation! Paul would write of this great truth in his letter to the Romans. His master treatise on the unrighteousness that lingers in all human beings and its answer in the work of the Person of Christ expands on what we read in John 8. None can excuse himself, wrote Paul. All fall short of the glory of God. Everyone needs a Savior; each of us requires a Redeemer who will announce:  “Neither do I condemn you.”

This passage in John has been analyzed and some view it as something added to John’s gospel at a later point in church history. The character and style of the writing is clearly John’s with the attention to detail and the focus on conversation. Some claim these words are from God but that they are out of place in this context.

Me? I agree with the late Warren W. Wiersbe, onetime Moody Church pastor and host of the Back to the Bible radio show. He says in The Bible Exposition commentary:  “The story fits right here.” And Dr. Wiersbe says this encounter sets up what comes next in the chapter.

“Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world. Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).

The accused woman was deep in the darkness of sin. Her desperate condition came before Jesus. She stood accused. She was guilty. She had violated the Law that the Lord had communicated through Moses.

Jesus, however, flipped the script on the accusers. He turned on His Light. The Light shined into the accusers. Each of them had to face the record of sin written upon his own dirtied heart. They could have stayed with Him and with her, the one caught in the very act, because now their very acts — their very sinful thoughts even — had been exposed to them as they had exposed this woman.

The Savior went on to describe the power of His Light. It shines the Way to forgiveness and release. Abide in the Word, He told them and “you will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32).

The Son came for them all; for all stand accused before our Holy God. He longed to see every one of them receive His love and be free for “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:37).

The Son, the Truth, Freedom. All can be ours. Thank you, Jesus.