“Where Is the God of Judgment?”

“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil.

I the LORD do all these things.”

God, in Isaiah 45:7

If God were a Christian, He would not have said such things about Himself.  As it is, however, He is free to tell the truth.

God was also free to tell the truth when He said through Moses, “I kill, and I make alive” (Dt. 32:39), and He was free to tell the truth when He warned Israel through Micah, “I will make you sick” (Mic. 6:13).  And the author of 2Samuel was enough like God not to talk like a good Christian, either.  He said that God struck David’s infant son so that it died (2Sam. 12:14–15), and in 1Samuel, he said that God took His holy Spirit from King Saul and sent an evil spirit upon him instead (1Sam. 16:14–15).  David’s tearful prayers did not save his child, and Saul’s tears did not obtain forgiveness.  Moses said that God cursed man to labor, and cursed man to die, and cursed mankind with languages to prevent them from working together.  And Moses also said that God overwhelmed this planet with a flood, drowning the men, women, and children in it.  And their helpless screams for mercy did nothing to stop the flood waters from rising.

It is rare to find any righteous soul in the Bible talking the way most modern Christians talk about God.  What Christian minister will go on television and declare that God is a man of war (Ex. 15:3), or that God hates the wicked and the violent (Ps. 11:5), and that every day, God is angry with those who do evil (Ps. 7:11), and that if sinners do not repent, God will cast them into a lake of fire where they will be tormented forever (Rev. 20:10; 14:10–11).  God knows nothing of what Christians call “unconditional love”; He has never forgiven anyone who did not first repent and confess their sin (cp. Prov. 28:13).  God promises eternal life only to those who obey Him, but “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all nations that forget God” (Ps. 9:17).

God is a God of love, and He always has been.  He was a God of love when He condemned the man in the wilderness to die because he picked up sticks on the Sabbath, contrary to the commandment.  He was a God of love when He cursed Miriam and then Gehazi with leprosy.  He was a God of love when He starved the Israelites in Samaria to the point that they began killing and eating their own children.  Yes, God is, and always has been a God of love, but that is not all He is!  He is also, and always has been “a consuming fire”, and it is also, and always has been a fearful thing to fall into His holy hands.

“Where Is the God of Judgment?”

Malachi 2:17

A particularly detestable spirit of our time is the demon that promotes a God who is not a man of war, who never hates, is never angry, who never makes people sick, or kills a baby, or would even consider creating evil.  I recently read a book by a woman who once belonged to the Lord but now has succumbed to this filthy spirit.  She calls herself a teacher and seduces others by teaching them to “get rid of” the Jesus of the Bible.  She proclaims instead a god who never judges, a god whom no one need fear, and she teaches that there is no such thing as sin.  Those who secretly desire an excuse to commit sin follow her.  She is a fool, and she makes fools out of those who believe her.  Go ahead, you fools!  Try to get rid of Jesus.

Her heresy is an old one.  False prophets in Israel also taught, contrary to all the holy scriptures, that “everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and He delights in them!” (Mal. 2:17a).  They scoffed at the warnings of the true prophets, saying, “Where is the God of judgment?” (Mal. 2:17b).  But their foolishness attracted no one in Israel who was upright in heart, and it attracts no one today whose heart is pure before God.

“Do not be deceived,” my friends.  “God is not mocked.  Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap, so that he who sows to his flesh shall from the flesh reap destruction, but he who sows to the Spirit shall from the Spirit reap eternal life” (Gal. 6:7–8), “for the LORD is a God of judgment; blessed are all they that wait for Him” and do not follow teachers who are blinded by the mad spirits of this age.

Fellowship

When Brother Paul Curtsinger dropped by one morning, he made an arresting statement: “I don’t think Jammie and I understand what fellowship is.  It can’t be believing the same teaching because I have seen people who believe the same doctrine not have fellowship at all.”  The subject of fellowship had been on my mind for several days, and I told him so.  Then I told Paul that after much consideration, I had concluded that not only is true fellowship not believing the same doctrine, but it is also not love, for God has loved many a person but had no fellowship with them at all.  So have we all.  There are people whom we all love dearly to this day, with whom we have no fellowship in the light of God.

Genuine fellowship in Christ, I concluded, is in our feelings.  Fellowship with God means to feel what God feels, when He feels it.  Jesus lived that way; he was alive to the feelings of his heavenly Father each moment.  And in that fellowship, there is no sin.  When we feel what our heavenly Father feels, as Jesus did, we will not sin, and we will not make wrong judgments.  Our words and our actions will be directed by the feelings we share with the Father and the Son.

If we feel what God feels, when He feels it, we will rejoice at the proper time, and be grieved at the proper time.  King David, for example, grieved for his little baby as long as there was hope that God would heal it, but when the child died, David “arose from the earth, and washed, and anointed himself, and changed his apparel, and went to the house of the Lord and worshipped.  Then he came to his own house, and when he required, they set bread before him, and he ate” (2Sam. 12:20).  David’s servants thought this was odd behavior, and they asked him, “What is this thing that you have done?  You fasted and wept for the child while it was alive, but when the child died, you rose and ate food” (2Sam. 12:21).  David explained that the time to grieve was when there was hope for healing, and concluded by saying, “But now that he is dead, why should I fast?  Can I bring him back again?  I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me” (2Sam. 12:23).

This is how we want to live with others, especially they of the body of Christ.  If we have fellowship with God’s feelings, we will fast and pray for a brother when he first begins to drift away from righteousness, and not wait until after he is gone to be sad.  After all, when God sees the spiritual condition of one of His children begin to deteriorate, He feels sorrow – and so will we if we have fellowship with His feelings.  When we feel what God feels, our thoughts and our actions toward a weak brother will reflect God’s feelings toward him, at the time God feels them, not later!

Pray to feel what God feels when God feels it.  That is true fellowship with Him, and it is the only way we will ever come to know Him or ever have fellowship with one another in His Son Jesus Christ.