The Second Letter of Peter

Subtitle: Growing in Godliness- 1

2 Peter 1:1-9.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, July 12, 2026.

As we begin to look at Peter’s second letter, we should note up front that Peter clearly treats this letter as if it will be his last.  He states that he will shortly put off his body, as the Lord has shown him. 

Let’s look at the letter.

Introduction (v. 1-2)

The letter starts off with a statement of who is writing or sending it.  This is the Apostle Peter.  This is just as he introduced himself in his first letter.  However, Peter adds the name Simon.

In some ways, this is his name, and it is normal for him to use it.  However, in the first letter, he did not do this.  There he introduced himself only as Peter.  It was Jesus who gave him the name Peter.  Thus, Peter emphasizes his new life following Jesus his master.  Yet, Simon would also emphasize that he is that same Simon who has been being transformed by the teaching of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit.  God was redeeming Simon through Jesus, making him into the rock that Jesus had called him to be.

Peter also adds that he is a slave of Jesus Christ.  This may seem contradictory in light of the Apostle Paul’s emphasis that the Jews time serving under the law was a slavery.  In Jesus, they are now set free from the law of sin and death.  Yet, Peter is not calling himself a slave because Jesus has made him one.  No, Jesus has set Peter free.  Yet, Peter so loves the Lord Jesus that he considers himself a slave of Christ.  He volunteers to live only for the purposes of Jesus and not his own.

Peter does not address this letter to a specific group.  However, in 2 Peter 3:1, he will mention that this is his second letter.  Thus, it seems reasonable to think that this letter was sent to the same people as the previous letter (central Asia Minor).  Yet, it is possible that it had a wider circulation.  He simply says in verse 1 that he is writing “to those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours.”  He is essentially addressing it to believers.

Faith involves what we do but also is a description of the truth about Jesus that we are called to believe.  We are walking out the faith that others before us have passed down to us, but we are also walking in the faith to which the Holy Spirit has drawn us, even stirred up within us.

This faith has been made possible by “the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”  It is his righteousness that lays the foundation for our faith.

It is important to note that in English this phrase could be read as either calling Jesus God, i.e., he is both God and Savior, or it can be read as speaking of two persons, the Father and Jesus.  The Greek grammar behind this phrase is fairly clear that God and Savior are both describing the same person, Jesus.  This is one of those clear places in Scripture where the divinity of Jesus is explicitly declared.  We see a similar statement in Titus 2:13. You may find some Greek Scholars who dispute this, but it is generally seen to be a conclusive statement of the divinity of Jesus.

Peter ends his introduction with a salutation of “grace and peace be multiplied to you…”  Grace is the good gifts of God in a variety of forms.  Peace is both an external peace (no longer enemies with God) and an internal peace (an assurance of right standing with God resonating in our hearts).  Peter prays for it to be multiplied to them (as it is needed), but particularly in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.  The knowledge of God has been given to mankind through Jesus.  When we understand all that Jesus has made available to us, it becomes a source of never-ending grace and peace to the believer.

Peter gives a final exhortation (v. 3-21)

What we have been given (3-4)

Chapter 1 lays out a final exhortation of the Apostle.  He starts out by describing a couple of things that believers in Jesus have been given (or granted).  These have been granted by “his divine power.”   Jesus exercised divine power throughout his ministry, death, and resurrection.  On top of this, his divine power has secured many important blessings for believers.  Peter sums this up by saying that we have been given everything we need for life and godliness.  When you feel like you can’t do what God has given to you to do, remember that Christ has supplied everything you need to live a life that displays the godliness of our lord Jesus.  Yes, our flesh fights us and even wins some battles.  However, in the end, we are more than conquerors through Jesus Christ our Lord.  We must learn to thank God for His supply in every situation.  We must learn to walk in faith knowing that He is going before us to make the way.

We must be clear that it is the purpose of Jesus that we should live a godly life in his name.  Yet, at the same time, it is he who also supplies everything we need to do that.  He has supplied the message of truth, the presence and empowering of the Holy Spirit, the family of believers along with many who are spiritually mature and can help us, and finally, he has supplied us with the Scriptures that have been confirmed and proven trustworthy.

The second thing that has been given to us is “his precious and magnificent promise by which we partake of the divine nature.”  This is a mouthful and says a lot.

The promises of Jesus are that he will not abandon nor forsake us in this life.  He will also send the Spirit to aid us.  He will bring us to himself so that where he is we may be there too.  He has secured an inheritance within the kingdom of God for us.  We will be his jewels on the day of his second coming.  These are only some of the great promises of Christ for those who follow him in faith.

What does he mean by “partakers of the divine nature?”  It does not mean that we are becoming gods ourselves.  Rather, God is supplying to us things that are His by nature.  He is eternal by nature, but He has made it possible for us to partake (have a portion) in his eternal life.  We also partake in the eternal fellowship among the Godhead.  This is about a relational bond and life that we can share with God.

The flip side of this partaking is that we are those who “have escaped the corruption that is in this world through lust.”  By nature, we are those who are being corrupted by the lusts of the flesh.  By partaking in the divine nature, we are enabled to escape the death that is brought about through the lusts of men.

In your faith, diligently add these things to your life (v. 5-9)

Faith is the foundation of our walk with Christ.  However, we need to add some things to our faith.  In fact, we need to be diligent in this matter.  The following list is similar to Paul’s fruit of the Spirit.  It is clear that they are not intended to be exhaustive.  Rather, Peter is telling us not to settle for faith alone.  We must go on to let the Holy Spirit help us to bear the fruit of His presence.  These character traits are to be in our lives.  They will ensure that we are not stuck doing one thing to the exclusion of all other virtues.

To our faith in Christ, we need to add virtue (moral excellence).  How we live matters.  To our virtue we need to add knowledge.  Peter is not talking about the knowledge of humanity.  We need to add the knowledge of God that has been made available in Jesus.

Let me just insert here that this may sound strange.  How can I supply virtue to myself?  Though Peter does not make this explicit, the previous mention of the fruit of the Spirit is part of the answer.  God is supplying His Spirit in order to transform us into the image of Jesus.  However, this requires me to “supply” the faith and courage to walk these things out.  I must be intentional.  The question is never about God’s supply.  He is faithful.  However, the question is whether I will take up what He is supplying and adding it to my life.

To knowledge, we must add self-control.  Notice that knowledge in and of itself can puff us up with pride.  Thus, all of these virtues working together keep us from falling short of the image of Christ.

To self-control, we are to add perseverance.  Many people can do good things for a short time.  We are called to stick in there and endure to the end.

To perseverance, we are to add godliness.  Sometimes people who have endured many hardships can become arrogant and hard towards others.  We can cease to be like Jesus in our care for the lost.  We need both.

To our godliness, we are to add brotherly love.  This emphasizes the relational love that develops between family and friends as we do life together.

Finally, we are to add love (agape).  This is a love without condition.  It is love for the sake of Christ.  I love you, not because we have done life together and I have a bond with you, but because Christ compels me to do so.  This seems to serve as the capstone of Christ-like character we are to emulate.

Peter then makes a conditional statement.  “If these are yours and are increasing…”  It is up to you to listen to Jesus and to his apostle.  You can add these things because God is faithful to help you, supplying all you need to do it.  Instead of calling for a certain level, Peter emphasizes that they are increasing.  It may be hard to know if you are increasing in love over the short term.  However, over time, we can see how God transforms our life as we trust Him and obey.

If we have these and they are increasing, then we will not be useless and unfruitful.  Without Christ, our lives are essentially that: useless to God and unfruitful for the things that matter.  As God pours into your life, He is also working to make you spiritually fruitful to others in your life.  He will be able to use you to impact people who are spiritually lost, or brothers and sisters who need a helping hand.

Jesus even told his disciples that God will sometimes prune perfectly good things out of our life in order to make us more fruitful.

As we read verse nine, we can see that certain people were kicking against Peter’s command to grow in godliness.  Thus, Peter challenges those who refuse to follow this instruction.  They are blind and short-sighted.  They are blind to all that Jesus is trying to do in their life, and they are short-sighted to the day when they will give an account to the Lord they claim to have trusted.

They have forgotten their purification from former sins.  This is what Jesus is doing.  He has first legally purified us from our sins.  Yet, he then enlists us in a lifelong task of cleaning sin out of our lives.  We are not saved because we do this.  Rather, we do this because he has saved us.

For the life of me, I do not understand how some people have twisted grace into the idea that they don’t want to “work.”  Somehow you are encroaching on their freedom if you challenge their sin.  Jesus did not die to give us freedom to sin as we please.  He died to set us free from sin.  If we are not blind to the deleterious effects of sin in our life, then we will rejoice to have his help in this.

Praise be unto Jesus who delivers us from these bodies of death!

Growing in Godliness audio

The Character of God- Part 7

Subtitle:  God is Faithful Truth

Exodus 34:6-7.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on January 19, 2025.

Today, we will look at the fifth description of God’s character.  God is faithful truth!

With this sermon, we will bring this series that looks at the character of God to a close.

God is faithful truth in the Old Testament

The Hebrew word used here is emeth (em’ eth).  Modern Hebrew says emet.  It means truth, but by extension, it means the dependability and trustworthy nature of that which is truth.  Thus, it is sometimes translated as faithfulness.  At its root, the concept is one of stability or firmness.  You might picture the old hymn, My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less.  It speaks of Christ as the “Solid Rock” and states that all other ground is “sinking sand.”  That is a very biblical picture and is at the heart of this word today.  Are you building your life on Christ the solid rock, or are you building on anything else, which is sinking sand?

Truth is a foundational concept.  To believe that something is true when it isn’t true is to discover many unexpected ways in which your underlying beliefs do not uphold your actions and steps.  I might believe that I am a 7 foot 2 inch all-star basketball player.  However, that will not change the reality of what would happen if I tried to play against NBA players.  The reality of what I actually am will be crushed by the reality of what those NBA players can do.

Our thinking is powerful, but it doesn’t change the truth; it doesn’t change reality.  It can, however, change how I respond to reality.  My thinking can powerfully change me, if I properly respond to truth.

On the other hand, to believe that something is false when it is actually true isn’t much better.  I pretty much doom myself to trying a bunch of ways that don’t work.  Of course, many a scientific discovery happened because someone tested false assumptions about what is the truth.

Foundational truths do not conform to our desires.  It is what it is, and a wise human will quickly see through the lies that they are basing their life upon.

Of course, we are not always able to properly discern truth through a scientific discovery, whether in science or God’s work in our life.  We can praise God that He hasn’t left us alone to only discover truth by our senses.  God has revealed many truths to humanity through the years, things that we would have never discovered without His revelation.

The word Amen also comes from this same root and essentially means, “that is true” or “that is trustworthy; you can stand on it.”  A double amen intensifies the meaning.  The Gospel of John has 25 occurrences of the double amen.  The King James Version translated this as “verily, verily.”  For a Hebrew person to use this double Amen, a perfectly trustworthy thing will follow.

In the Bible, people who have emeth have stable character and can be trusted by others.  They keep their word.  This doesn’t mean they are never late for an appointment.  It is not a statement about perfect performance of what they say, i.e., they are never stuck in traffic.  Rather, it is a statement about their character.  They mean what they say and do everything they can to back it up.  If you have ever crossed a creek by stepping from rock to rock, you have probably found that some rocks look stable, but they are not.  You can confidently step on them and then they wobble, often sending you into the water.  A person of emeth doesn’t wobble when you trust them or lean on them. 

This brings us to some of the occurrences of this word in the Old Testament.

Moses would sit and judge the disputes of the people when they were in the wilderness.  In Exodus 18:21-22, Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, recognizes that it is too much for him.  The multitude of problems will where him out.  He then counsels Moses to select “men of emeth (truth/faithfulness)” who will be able to decide the smaller problems and only send the hard issues to Moses.

A man of emeth is not just someone who tells the truth.  Rather, they are men who live life by truth.  It is part of their character.  They do not see their position of authority as a way for gain.  Instead, they know the truth that lies behind their position.  The position is not for enriching them, but for the help of the people.  God talks a lot about authority, but notice this one thing throughout Scriptures.  Leaders are always supposed to be for the purpose of serving the people, not serving themselves.  Positions of authority do not exist because some people are just better than other and deserve to rule over the people.  They don’t deserve a better life with the people buying off their favor.  God cares about the people.  He only cares about those in authority in as much as they help or hurt the people.

The truth is that two people committed to honoring God may not always agree, but they should be able to come to an agreement without someone else judging their case.  The problem isn’t about wisdom, but about our sinful unwillingness to honor God in our disputes.

Abram demonstrated the verb form of this word in Genesis 15.  When emeth is in a verb form it takes on the idea of believing or putting your trust in something or someone.  This is what lies behind the famous verse in Genesis 15:6.  “[Abram] believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.” (NASB).  This believing is not talking about a mere intellectual belief in God’s existence.  It is talking about all the actions that Abram did because he believed that God was trustworthy.  Thus, Abram left Ur of the Chaldeans and traveled to Canaan.  There, he lived in tents, awaiting God’s promise. He was more than a trustworthy man, but also a man who saw God as trustworthy.  In the Bible, God is the greatest One at being faithful truth, trustworthy.

Believe it or not, we even have a verse in which it says that Israel believed God.  In Exodus 14:31, Pharaoh’s army had just been drowned in the Red Sea.  This caused Israel to believe in God.  Yet, as they travelled with God through the wilderness and to the Promise Land, their faith in God was tested.  Each test begs the question, “Do you trust God now?”  It is not that God is purposefully causing all of these things, though He can surely test how trusting we are.  But, as things happen in life, He is watching to see what we will do.  Will we believe in Him, or put our trust in something else?

We know that Israel failed very often.  Yet, God helped them (even helps us) because He is faithful truth.  It is His character.  This means that God is not simply a truth-teller, or One who wants truth from others.  He is the foundation of all truth itself.  He is the only being in the universe that is absolutely dependable.

Jacob coming back to Canaan, with his 2 wives, 12 kids and many herds of animals, stopped at the border and confessed to God that he was unworthy of all the faithful truth that God had shown to him (Genesis 32:10).  When Jacob had left for northeastern Syria, God had spoken promises to him.  Over the last 20 years, God had proven to be trustworthy and had shown Jacob faithful truth, not because Jacob deserved it, but because God keeps His word.

This brings us to Moses and his rock metaphor for God.  Deuteronomy 32:31-32 points out that the fallen spiritual beings that the nations worshiped as gods were not trustworthy.  Their rock is not like the Rock of Israel.  Their gods wobbled whenever they put their trust in them, but Yahweh was an absolute stable rock.  This is another way of speaking about God’s emeth, faithful truth.

We should recognize that there is a parallel between Israel running from the giants and David fighting Goliath.  In Numbers 14, Israel balked at fighting the giants.  They decided to kill Moses, pick a new leader and go back to Egypt.  However, God steps in and that doesn’t happen.  Still, they are told that they will stay in the wilderness for 40 years as a punishment for their unbelief towards God. 

Thus, later when David comes to check on the battle his brothers and Israel were fighting against the Philistines, he finds a giant challenging Israel and everyone trembling in their tents.  They were not believing God again.  They were essentially on a spiritual trajectory back to Egypt, back to the wilderness.  Yet, God steps in.  This time He raises up a “man of emeth” who will face the giant and give Israel victory over the Philistines.  Solomon recognizes this in 1 Kings 3:6.  “You have shown great lovingkindness to Your servant David my father, according as he walked before You in truth and righteousness and uprightness of heart toward You…”

You may see the pattern now that a trustworthy person is someone who is trusting the truth of God in their life, their decisions and actions.  David lived out the truth of God even when it looked like it could get him killed.  Of course, David would later fall woefully short of this during the event in which he commits adultery with Uriah’s wife and then has him killed in an attempt to cover it up.  David fell short, but the pattern of salvation coming through a man of perfect emeth is made clear in the Old Testament.

People are not born with trustworthy genes.  Trustworthiness comes from a life of putting your trust in God.  It comes from the experience of life in which we discover that God is the only One who can uphold our trust perfectly.

Thus, God promised David that one from his offspring would be that perfect Psalm 1 picture of a man who fully trusts God and thus becomes a tree of life to all who will eat of his fruit.  This offspring would be the Anointed One of Psalm 2 who would inherit dominion over all of the earth, bringing salvation to those who bow to him in allegiance.  This Messiah would not fall short.  This was revealed to David and he spoke of it (sang of it) in his psalms.  This would be a forever kingdom because the king is a man of perfect emeth.  He is stable, unfailing and trustworthy, and so, his kingdom is a kingdom of emeth.  He would stand up to the giant, spiritual forces that were dominating humanity and fully trust God.

This is why the Bible speaks of the kingdoms of this world falling before the Messiah.  They definitely will not be able to stand against his return as Revelation 19 declares.  However, over the last 2,000 years, nations have risen and fallen at his command.  The united States of America is falling apart even now before Jesus has come back.  We could even cease to exist as we currently do, whether split apart or taken over by a foreign power.  Regardless, the problem is always our lack of trusting God.  America is not trusting God, and it is destroying our country.  Yet, He gives times of opportunity for repentance.  Perhaps, the US still has time to repent and be restored before Him.

In 2 Samuel 7:16, we are told of a prophecy from God through the prophet Nathan to David.  David’s throne would be “established” forever.  This is the verb form of emeth, but it is in a passive form.  It is the idea that something will be made trustworthy, faithful truth.  His kingdom will be like a rock because The Rock of Israel, the Stone of Israel (Genesis 49:24), will arise.  A kingdom can be no stronger than the one upon whom it is built.  The Messianic Kingdom will last forever because it is built upon The Rock.  All other kingdoms are built on sinking sand.  Only Messiah’s kingdom can go through the fire of God’s wrath (a day when He judges all the nations on earth) and survive.  All other kingdoms will not survive.  At least, not in their current forms.

This brings us to the catastrophe of the exile.  There was a civil war in Israel in the days of Solomon’s son.  The nation was divided into ten tribes in the north called Israel and 2 tribes around Jerusalem called Judah, or Judea later.  The northern tribes were wicked and eventually God used the Assyrians to conquer them and cast them out of the land.  This happened circa 722 BC.  This left Judah feeling vindicated, but they were not any more righteous.  They were exiled by the Babylonians around 136 years later (586 BC).  The northern tribes never really returned from exile.  Whereas, as many as desired of Judah, came back from Babylon 70 years later.  In this environment, there was a question on the minds of Israel.  Is it over?  Is it possible that God will not keep His word because we have failed so badly?  Did we misunderstand the promises and they were always conditional on our obedience?

Psalm 89 is a treatise of this crisis.  It starts out praising the promises of God to David.  Verse one sings of God’s emeth (faithful truth) and praises Him.  Yet, at verse 38, we have this.  “But You have cast off and rejected, You have been full of wrath against Your anointed.” Seven more verses detail the reality of being cast off by God. 

Verse 46 begins a series of questions.  “How long, O LORD? Will You hide Yourself forever? Will Your wrath burn like fire?”  Verse 49, “Where are Your former lovingkindnesses, O Lord, which You swore to David in Your faithfulness?  God had sworn an oath to David in His emeth, faithful truth.  Yes, Israel has sinned greatly, and the house of David has sinned just as greatly.  Yet, God is faithful even when we are faithless.

Jesus is the faithful truth of God

The questions above were answered throughout the Old Testament prophetic books.  God would cast Israel out of the land, but He would still be faithful to send the Messiah and save humanity.  Still, from 400 BC to the time of Jesus, there were 400 years of silence from God.  They had heard enough.  They had enough truth to weather the years and wait for Messiah, if they could but trust God.

This is why Matthew 1:1 is so powerful.  Whenever we find the Gospels together in antiquity, it is always Matthew first.  Matthew opens his Gospel, and the New Testament, with a bold declaration that Messiah had come in the person of Jesus.  God had finally kept His promise and sent the One who would save Israel and the nations.  The name Jesus in Hebrew basically means “Yahweh is salvation” or “the salvation of Yahweh.”  Notice that Matthew emphasizes that he is from the line of David and Abraham.  The names of the fathers in between are important and Matthew goes on to give the full genealogy.  However, don’t miss the main point.  In Jesus, God was fulfilling His promises to David, and His promises to Abraham.  He could have even added Adam.  Messiah had come and God’s faithful truth, His emeth, was on full display in the face of the failures of Israel and the failures of the Gentile world.

The presence and work of Jesus was a confirmation of the promises and faithfulness of God.  We see this in Romans 15:8-9.  “For I say that Christ has become a servant to the circumcision on behalf of the truth of God to confirm the promises given to the fathers, 9 and for the Gentiles to glorify God for His mercy; as it is written, ‘Therefore I will give praise to You among the Gentiles, and I will sing to Your name.’”

The Incarnation of The Word of God into the man Jesus is God keeping His word, but Jesus is also the very truth of God itself.  Nothing that has been made was made without him.  He is the effective cause of creation.  He is the absolute bedrock truth of all reality.  In Jesus, the Truth of the world stepped down into it, but men loved darkness rather than the light.  To put your faith in Jesus is of a greater nature than putting your faith in man’s scientific understanding.  Yes, you can follow the science (our current understanding), or you can follow the One who is the mind behind how all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose.  Science rightly understood can only point back to its Creator.

A believer in Jesus doesn’t just become more trustworthy.  They even become like the Rock that they are building upon.  They are more stable, enduring, than all the “wise” people of this world who refuse to stand upon Jesus, who refuse to believe and trust God.  They are both on quicksand themselves and a quicksand to those who trust in them.

We are not Israel going against giants in the Promised Land literally.  However, we metaphorically face the same thing.  The big obstacles in front of us challenge us and are akin to the giants of old.  Will we trust Jesus and take hold of our personal inheritance and the inheritance of our people?  Or, will we tremble at the powers flexing in front of us?  Will we shrink back from trusting God’s word, standing with Jesus and his ways?

Jesus went through death and then God raised him up.  He is forever a testimony to those who would dare to follow him that God will uphold them as well.  He is also a testimony to those who shrink back that there is no other way to salvation.  As a Christian, if I really believe God, then I have no excuse to quit in the face of scary, big people, fallen spirits, or circumstances.  Most of us will not face the threat of death like Jesus and his apostles.  But, we can face even that with complete trust in God.  We can choose to honor Jesus by walking into it.  We can look into the face of tormentors and tell them to go ahead and do what they want, but I am going to stand with Jesus because that is your only hope of salvation.

Those who think they are so powerful, who are pounding on those nails or wielding those weapons of annihilation, who are so following the science of their own wisdom, they are going to be flat on their face before Jesus in the future.

It doesn’t matter if I live long enough to see that or not.  That is not my hope.  My hope is Jesus!

The giant ideologies and giant people, of fame, power and fortune that we face, try to intimidate us.  “How dare you stand against the great and powerful Oz!”  But, I’d rather stand with Jesus, the slain lamb, than with all the smoke and mirrors of this world.  I’d rather stand with Jesus than any empire that this world tries to establish without Jesus!

Faithful Truth audio

The Character of God- Part 5

Subtitle:  God is Slow to Anger

Exodus 34:6-7.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on January 5, 2025.

Today, we move to the third aspect of God’s character.  He is slow to anger.  That thought is worth a hallelujah, perhaps a couple of hallelujah’s.  In fact, it is worth a whole Hallelujah Chorus, however many hallelujahs that would entail!

It is ironic that the “God of the Old Testament” is usually spoke of as being to angry and mean.  Yet, this is part of a great irony concerning complaints about the God.  On one hand, people complain that God was too angry and too judgmental.  On the other hand, they will complain by saying this.  “If God is good, then why is there so much evil in the world?”  Though these people have generally given up believing in a God, they use this two-pronged attack to justify their rejection.

However, these complaints are quite contradictory.  We want God to get rid of evil, and yet, in the cases where He has stepped in to judge evil, we don’t like it.  What they really mean is that God should use their definition of evil.  He should get rid of all “those kind of people.”  However, there are millions who think this way.  If God chose to operate by yours, all the others would still be complaining because they have a different definition of who is evil.  We want God to remove evil, but we don’t want Him to remove us.

Let’s look at this virtue of God’s patience, slowness to anger.  I mentioned back in the first sermon in this series that verse 6 centers on this character trait of God.  It is then put in tension with the central part of verse 7, looking like this.  God is slow to anger; yet, He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.  It goes from joy, “yay!”, to sobriety, “oh!”  God forgives iniquity (i.e., guilty people) and yet He won’t let the guilty go unpunished.  He is not provoking us to question His character, but to question how those go together.

Ultimately, God is all of these characteristics: Compassionate, Gracious, Patient, Lovingkindness, and faithful truth.  Yet, you can’t game God.  Those who give lip service to Him, and yet, reject His perfect character, imaging the serpent, will be punished in the end along with those who outwardly rejected Him.  Thus, God is slow to anger, but He will eventually get there, if I don’t turn away from sin and towards Him.

These characteristics can be thought of as different facets of the goodness, or love of God.  However, in the end, they are simply facets of the unitary, underlying being of God.  It gives rise to these concepts that are all flavored somewhat differently.

God is slow to anger in the Old Testament

Slowness to anger probably doesn’t need to be defined, but the Hebrews had an interesting way of talking about anger.  In Exodus 34:6, God literally says that He is “long of nose.”  This is a metaphor that comes from anger language within Hebrew.  An angry person is often described as “their nose burned hot.”  It is descriptive of how a person’s face will turn red and become hot when they are angry.  I like to picture a tea kettle that heats up until the steam shooting forth causes the whistle to blow.  The anger builds up until it reaches the end of a person’s nose.  Of course, it is a metaphor and is generally translated without the metaphor, i.e., they became angry.  Let’s look at some examples in the Old Testament.

There is a scene in Genesis 39:19 where Joseph is being accused before his master, Potiphar.  Joseph had been sold into slavery by his brothers and ended up in Egypt.  There he was purchased by Potiphar and proved to be very good at managing things.  Joseph was soon put in charge of all of Potiphar’s holdings.  It was doing so well that Potiphar didn’t even ask how it was going.  He had full faith in Joseph’s ability to increase his wealth.  This drew the eye of Potiphar’s wife.  She tried to draw Joseph into a sexual relationship, but he ran out of the room.  Her response was to cry out and accuse him of trying to force himself upon her.  When she tells Potiphar, we are told “his anger burned.”  Literally it says that his “nose burned hot.” Potiphar had a very visible, angry response.

This helps us to understand how a patient person might be called long of nose.  It would take longer for their heated anger to reach the end of their nose.  We might say a long nose is similar to a long fuse.  The connection is not about actual long noses, but about being more patient and slow to explode in heated anger.

Let’s look at Proverbs 19:11 to further illustrate.  It reads, “A person’s discretion makes him slow to anger.” (NASB)  It literally reads, “The discretion of a man lengthens his nose.”  So, a person is not limited to what there personality is in the present.  We cannot plead innocence because we were “born with a very short nose.”  We can’t be absolved of fault because of a genetic predisposition.  Through gaining wisdom, we can lengthen our nose, lengthen our fuse, become more patient and less volatile.

Though a man can gain patience through the insight gained from a careful sifting of the facts, God does not gain patience or insight.  He is absolute discretion, or wisdom.  Thus, His patience is absolute.  God already knows absolutely everything about the universe.  He has the “longest nose” in the universe.  It takes quite a long time and a lot of evil to cause His anger to reach its fullness.

This leads us back to the context of God’s deliverance of Israel from Pharaoh.  God had been quite patient with Pharaoh.  He even gave him 10 different warnings, chastisements, to encourage him to back down.  Yet, when Pharaoh saw the Israelites leaving Egypt, he pursued after them.  Yet, God stood between Israel and his army as a pillar of fire.  Meanwhile, Pharaoh watched as the Red Sea was transformed into a roadway for Israel to escape. Pharaoh should have gotten the message.  Yet, when the pillar of fire moved out of the way, Pharaoh commanded his armies to follow the path through the sea after the Israelites.  God’s anger finally reached its peak.  The Egyptians are drowned as the sea walls collapse upon the path, erasing any trace that it existed.  This brings us to Exodus 15.  Israel is on the shores of the sea and have witnessed a miraculous delivery, but also a judgment.  A song quickly arises, and all Israel break forth in a worshipful singing about God’s great deliverance.  Look at verses 7 and 8.

Verse 7 says, “You send out Your burning anger, and it consumes them like chaff.”  The burning anger here does not employ the nose metaphor.  It uses a word that means anger, but is only used of God.  However, in the next line of verse 8, it says, “At the blast of Your nostrils the waters were piled up…”  This is an example of poetry.  The burning anger of verse 7 (more literal) parallels the blast of God’s nostrils (metaphorical).  This pictures the anger of God reaching the end of His nose and blasting forth with such power to make a pathway through the sea.  Of course, they did not believe God had a nose and was in the spirit realm using the power of His nostrils to make a path for them.  Rather, Pharaoh had tested God’s patience one too many times.  God has given him every opportunity and motivation to back down and live.

Notice that God’s anger is not whimsical and capricious, like an abusive alcoholic.  It is a response to the evil that we do to one another.  It is based upon His compassion and love.  Israel was in Egypt because of the sin of Joseph’s brothers.  Yet, Joseph was used of God to save Egypt from a horrible famine.  This made him, and by extension his family, heroes in Egypt.  They had most favored people status with Pharaoh.  Of course, over time, this began to wane.  Eventually, the story of Joseph became a story of long ago.  At some point, a Pharaoh looked at the large group of Israelites on his borders and feared that they would join his enemies eventually.  He wickedly subdued them and made slaves of them.  This was a betrayal of the brotherhood that they had experienced previously.  Eventually, a later Pharaoh arose who still feared their large numbers even in slavery.  So, he had all the male babies of the Hebrews drowned in the Nile.

God saw all this evil, and began to lay the groundwork for the rebuke that He would bring to Egypt.  Yet, all along the way, He leaves room for the Egyptians to repent and avoid destruction.

Notice that the anger of God and His judgments are not a fearful thing for those who are suffering under evil.  They are the ones He intends to deliver.  It is a righteous response of compassion and love to the evil that is played out before God.  Yet, God in His wisdom, balances out the reality of a particular evil with the reality of humanity’s slavery to sin.  If He judged all sin and evil in this world, none of us would survive.  We should notice that Pharaoh’s army is actually destroyed by his own hubris.  God didn’t want to destroy him, but He would, if Pharaoh did not back down.

Yet, Israel itself would go on to do evil things among themselves and to others.  In the Old Testament, God uses Israel to demonstrate how and why His patience would put up with humanity over such a long time.  He loves us and doesn’t want us to perish.  He gives us cautionary disciplines over and over again.  We may shape up for a season, and yet turn back to wickedness.  Yet, God’s disciplines will lead up to a final judgment in which a person, or a nation, careens into a destruction event because of their own wickedness.

Jesus is the patience of God

This brings us to Jesus as the Patience of God.  It is interesting that we do see Jesus angry in some passages.  Yet, there is always a righteous reason for it, and the expression of his anger is done in a godly manner.

For example, in Matthew 12:10, the authorities complained about Jesus healing on the sabbath.  Jesus became angry and rebuked the way that they put rules above other people and yet had ways of working around it for themselves.  They were using the rules as a means of keeping themselves above the people, not for helping them.  They couldn’t care less for the people, but God cares deeply for the people.  Still, Jesus doesn’t slay them all.  He simply rebukes them, calling them to repentance.

Of course, a similar thing happens to the disciples in Mark 1014.  They were trying to keep people from bringing their kids to Jesus.  Jesus becomes indignant and rebukes them.  He then challenges them that they won’t make it into the Kingdom of God if they don’t receive it like one of these kids.

Jesus was generally angry at the self-righteous snobbery of the religious leaders, while they were guilty of sin.  Yet, there was one time when the anger of Jesus led to a physical altercation.  He overturned the tables of the money lenders and sellers of sheep, whipping them out of the temple grounds.  Why?  They had turned the Court of Gentiles into a smelly place of commerce, but God wanted it to be a place where Gentiles could approach and pray.  When we use the things of god in a way that is contrary to His purposes, it tries His patience.

In spite of these situations, we see that Jesus is quite patient.  His responses are tempered and always he rebukes them back to the righteousness of God.  The most obvious case for his patience is before his accusers on the day of his crucifixion.  They lied and abused their authority in a sham trial to convict him.  Later on the cross, we see absolute slowness to anger of both Jesus (Father forgive them.  They know not what they do.) and God the Father (the heavens and earth did not melt in fervent heat).  Yet, in the crucifixion of Jesus, God’s patience with the nation of Israel was coming to an end (at least for this part of His work through Israel).  He then gave them forty years of hearing the teaching of His prophets, the Apostles of Jesus, calling them to repentance and times of refreshing from the LORD. You see, God rebukes us so that we may be convicted of our sin and turn back to Him for forgiveness and healing.

This brings us to the wrath of God in Romans 1:18-19.  Paul states that God’s wrath is revealed from heaven upon those who reject and suppress the truth.  This chapter shows how the Gentiles had become so bad.  God had called them to repentance and had revealed His judgment from time to time in things like the Flood, the Tower of Babel and the confusion of the languages, even Sodom and Gomorrah.  Yet, they willfully forget these things (2 Peter 3:5).  Still, God in His anger doesn’t simply stomp them out.  Rather, Paul describes it in verses 24, 26 and 28. In each verse, he refers to God handing them over to the lusts of their heart, to degrading passions, and to a depraved mind.  As we continue to sin, God hands us over to the destroying effects of those sins.  Like Nimrod trying to connect with the fallen spiritual powers that had led the pre-flood world into gross sin, we can persist in things that are not good.  Thus, God gave the Tower-of-Babel generation over to those fallen spirits.  They would reap the harvest of what they were pursuing all along.

Yet, God still cared for the Gentiles.  Just as He still cares for the nation of Israel today.  Sin has bad consequences.  They are bad for the one doing the sin, and they are bad for the people around them.  Those consequences have a snowballing effect.  They build up and gain momentum over time.  At each turn of the rolling monstrosity, God is trying to get our attention, calling us to repentance.  Yet, we eventually reach a final judgment event, if we persist in sin. 

For an individual, that final judgment event begins with our death.  For a nation, it is comes when the government is destroyed and the people subdued by others.  Nations are allowed to rise, and nations are put down in judgment. In fact, there is not one nation that exists today in the same form from 2,000 years ago.  God’s wheels of judgment have brought many nations to an end, and allowed many others to arise.  However, there is an ultimate judgment for all the nations of the earth at the end of this age.

Israel was supposed to be God’s servant to the nations, but they had failed.  God sent Jesus, not to push Israel down and leave them in the dust, but to take their place in judgment so that they could be saved.  In fact, he was doing this for the Gentiles as well, even for you and me. 

God loves humanity too much to let us continue to do evil to one another.  That love will eventually be expressed in justice, but He gives us time to change.

Jesus could have thrown up his hands and said, “Enough, I’m done!  Get me out of here!”  Yet, he patiently endured death on a cross, a horrible way to die.  He stepped up with compassion and took our punishment upon himself, so that we can be forgiven.

This brings us back to the tension in Exodus 34:6-7.  Yes, Jesus died for our sins so that we can be forgiven.  But, he did not die so that we can now sin with impunity.  You cannot game God.  No one can say that they can now sin since they are forgiven.  However, no one can say, I’m forgiven because I have never sinned.  This is the wonderful God that we belong to, and the impossible mystery of why people choose sin over Him.

God’s goodness has been poured out upon humanity is so many particular ways, not because He owes it to us, but because that is who He is.  Let’s present that to a lost and fallen world, even if it chooses to crucify us. 

God is Slow to Anger audio

The Character of God- Part 3

Subtitle:  God is Compassionate

Exodus 34:6-7.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on December 22, 2024.

Over the last two weeks, we have looked at the greater context of this passage, which shows God’s promise to help humanity at The Fall in the Garden of Eden.  We then looked at the immediate context of God’s miraculous deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt and bringing them to Mt. Sinai in order to make a covenant with them.

Today, we begin looking at the 5 character descriptions that God gives of Himself in Exodus 34:6, which begins with God being compassionate.

As we approach Christmas, it is fitting for us to contemplate the incarnation of Jesus as the compassion of God.  Jesus is the compassion of God that has come down to earth to lift us out of our predicament.

God’s compassion for Israel

In the immediate context, God’s actions toward Israel has been a demonstration of His compassion.  I’m talking about the supernaturally powerful way that God delivered them from Pharaoh and his armies.  They were redeemed out of slavery and back to the inheritance that had been promised them through the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  They are brought to Sinai to create a covenant that is sometimes pictured as a marriage.  They are declaring that Yahweh alone will be their God, and Yahweh is declaring that He will make them His special people.

It would be good to define exactly what is meant by the compassion of God.  The Hebrew word in this verse is ra-‘khum and comes from a related noun ra-kha-mim’ (adj.=compassionate, noun=compassion).  This word has an inner and an outer aspect that we will look at.  But, I would like to mention something else before we get into that.

There is a sense that all character descriptions of God are simply facets of a unified being of God that underlies it. It might be better to think of all these different character traits as a facet of love.  God in His being is love, and that love manifests in many colorful ways.  They are all love, but they take on particular aspects of love.  That is what is happening with compassion as we break down what it essentially means.

The inner aspect of compassion refers to a deep-seated feeling (i.e., down in your guts, aka visceral).  This deep-seated feeling involves a softening towards the plight of another.  It is the part of us that sees someone in their difficulties and melts towards their need instead of being hard towards them.  There is typically a natural connection that elicits the emotion, and sometimes even a direct relationship.  This can be one human to another (simply because they are human), or as close as a father and mother towards their child.  In fact, in this passage, we are contemplating an inner softening in the heart of God towards His human creations.  He could have been hard towards the plight of Adam and Eve.  He could have been hard towards the plight of the people of Israel.  Instead, God saw them and was internally softened towards their situation.  He is their Creator.  He made them to be human imagers of Himself, and compassion for them, for us, was deeply felt within Himself.

Yet, there is always an outer aspect to compassion.  It is not a word that only speaks of a feeling.  It also refers to the action that results because of this inner softening.  Sometimes the context of these words may focus on either the inner or the outer aspect, but it is never understood that the other did not happen.  They go hand in hand.  It is the inner compassion of God that drives the external actions of God’s compassion towards us.  He is compelled by His own compassionate character to do something compassionate towards our need.

It is worth pausing at this point and asking yourself this question.  Do I truly believe that God feels compassion and exercises compassion towards me, towards us all?  I say this because there has been a targeted campaign by the devil and his angels against the character of God.  Yes, he makes this case through people, but he does so through tempting rationales like he used with Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden.  He accuses God of not being trustworthy, having an ulterior motive, lying, and even keeping Adam and Eve from something good.  So, he tempts us to disbelieve the truth about our compassionate Creator.

God has always been, and even now is, perfect in His compassion towards us all.  He has helped us at all times along the way, but especially through Jesus.  The flip side to God’s compassionate help is our often unwillingness to accept His help.

In the final verses of Exodus 33, God tells Moses what He is going to do in this revelatory event of Exodus 34 that we have been talking about.  In verse 19, He references His compassion.  “Then He said, ‘I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before you.  I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.’”  Essentially, He is declaring that He is sovereign in His compassion.  There is no one who can charge Him with a lack of compassion and so force Him into a particular action.

This causes some to think of God as being whimsical or capricious.  If God is such, then you can never know if you will have His compassion or not.  Perhaps, you would even believe that your own smallness would mitigate against any probability that He would have compassion on you.  This is not what is meant in this verse.  God is sovereign in His compassion, but it is not talking about a sporadic event that only falls upon certain special people that He whimsically picks. 

God’s compassion is not something He does from time to time to break up the monotony, as if He were playing with people.  Rather, the very being of God is compassion.  His actions are not like a New Year’s resolution, i.e., not like us.

This begs the question.  How can I be one to whom God wants to give compassion?  The truth of Scripture is that there is a foundational compassion that everyone has received.  God in His compassion has made salvation and help available to us.  However, we have to have faith in Him in order to take hold of it.  Jesus is the compassion of God.  There is no access to His compassion by ignoring Jesus and trying to sue for it on other grounds.  Even those who are rejecting God’s compassion in Jesus are swimming in the compassion of God.  They may not recognize it.  They may push it aside and go after something they think is better.  But, God’s compassion is all around us at all times.

All of God’s actions, even judgment, are impacted by His compassion.  Yet, they are also informed and affected by His wisdom and knowledge.  Imagine a child complaining that the parents are not being compassionate because they won’t give him some particular item that he fancies.  It is generally not until a child becomes an adult and matures that he comes to see that his parents were compassionate towards him, perhaps especially when they didn’t give him what he wanted.  God knows things that we cannot.  He is infinitely wiser in His decisions than we ever could be.  Thus, there is a part of this discussion about God’s character that calls for true humility on the part of us as humans.

Let’s dial back to the context of this event in Exodus 34.  When God first approached Moses about Israel’s slavery (Exodus 3), it can be read as primarily a judgment upon Egypt.  However, the story is primarily an action of God’s compassion for Israel.  Look at Exodus 3:7-8.

God gives several descriptions that help us to understand His compassion.  He states that He has “surely seen” the affliction of Israel, and that He has “heard their cry.”  He even states, “I know their sorrows.”  I can imagine that many Israelites were even then complaining that God doesn’t see or care about their sorrows in Egypt.

This then leads to verse 8, “so I have come down to deliver…”  The word to deliver has a sense of rescuing, even snatching them out of the hands of Pharaoh.  Thus, even though we can talk about God’s compassion for all humanity, in some situations, there is one part of humanity oppressing another part.  It can also be that both are mistreating one another.  God’s takes all of these things into consideration by His knowledge and through His wisdom.  Yes, God still cares about the Egyptians, but He also cares about all of humanity.  Israel was a key part of His plan to help humanity.  If God is to help all humanity, then He must step in to save Israel.  Yet, how He does it involves a wisdom that we can only superficially know.

I don’t know if we understand just how huge this statement of seeing, hearing, knowing, and coming down, is.  Humans have forever charged that God can’t know what it is like to suffer.  If He did, then surely He would do something about my/our situation.  Yet, when we are completely honest, we will come to see that God is compassionate, but also wiser than we can fully comprehend.

You actually have to get away from suffering before you can gain perspective on it.  When you are in the middle of suffering, it is hard to process your grief and emotions.  I believe that God has compassion upon our difficulties while suffering. 

When you and I imagine God having compassion on us, it does not involve Him coming down and becoming like we are in mortal flesh and vulnerable.  We want Him to strike our enemy down with fire from heaven, but what good does becoming weak like us do?  Well, God’s compassion is much deeper than we often want it to be.

You see, God’s compassion is not just about the difficult situations that may keep us down.  He also has compassion for our enslavement to sin and the consequences it brings.  Yes, He cares about your external situation, but He also cares about our internal slavery to sin.  This is a much harder problem to help.

Our natural bent is to think that God is not compassionate because of difficult things we have experienced and the things that we don’t have.  But, God made you for something greater than you may want to embrace, at least not yet.  Yes, God saw Israel in its external slavery.  Yes, God sees us in our external problems.  But, He also sees something worse in us that needs His help.

We all have different sins that we are drawn towards.  We may even find ourselves in bondage to those sins thinking that God has abandoned us.  We would be like Israel wondering where God is.  Why did He leave them in bondage for so many years, if He was eventually going to deliver them?  They needed to see their internal bondage, but often it is only our external bondage that opens our eyes to the internal bondage of sin.  We may be willing to give lip-service to God and His promises, but at the end of the day, we tend to want to do whatever we please without repercussions.

God saved Israel from Egypt, but their sins kept pulling them away from God and into bondage throughout their time in the “Promised Land.”  Eventually God let the kingdom of Israel be torn in half (north and south).  He later let each of them be conquered and taken into exile, slavery again.  Yet, even in exile, God promised through His prophets that He would have compassion upon them.  Let’s go to Isaiah and see some of these promises.

God’s compassion for humanity (Isaiah 46:3-4 and 49:5-6)

In this passage, God references the birth of Israel from the womb.  By the way, the word for womb here comes from the same root for compassion.  It isn’t the only word for womb, but it is the one used here.

God uses the picture of a mother carrying her newborn baby.  He states that it was He who carried them in their “young age” (as a fledgling nation), and it will be He who carries them “even to your old age,” which must represent their nation being at a place of going out of existence.  God tells them that He will “save” them.  The word for saving them is related to the idea of delivering a baby.

Israel continually had trouble with being unfaithful towards God and turning towards idolatry.  Eventually, God would hand them over to their choice, which always led to bondage.  God in His compassion for Israel (and for us) gave them over to the bondage of their (our) sinful choices.  It is His deep compassion that wrestles with us over our stubborn sin.

It is easy to fear as our predicaments become stronger, and we become weaker (much like a person growing old).  Three chapters later God brings Isaiah back to this again (Isaiah 49:5-6).

The book of Isaiah has a section from chapters 42 through 53 where there are four “servant songs.”  This passage is part of the second one.  They are pictures of, and interactions with, the Promised Messiah.  Here, we have Messiah [Jesus] declaring what God had told him.  Messiah was formed to save Israel!

However, we also see that God says saving Israel is too small a thing for such a Messiah.  The Messiah will also be a light to the nations so that God’s salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.  You see, God had compassion on Israel, even a compassion that was filled with tough love.  But, in the end, His compassion was not just for Israel.  He had compassion for the rest of the nations as well.

This is where the greater context of the book of Genesis is intended to be understood in Exodus 34.  The tragedy of the Fall in the Garden (Genesis 3), the tragedy of man’s rebellion and destruction in the Flood (Genesis 7-8), and the casting off of the nations at the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11) may look like God just keeps picking favorites and getting rid of everyone else.  This is far from the truth, however.

Each of these events were accompanied by promises of God to help humanity.  God disciplines humanity, but through it, His compassion has always been present in the promise of the serpent-crusher, the Anointed One of God.

Think about it.  If Israel worried that God didn’t care about their situation, how much more could the Gentiles worry that God didn’t care, or even give up hope on His care?

Yet, later in Isaiah 49 (verses 14-15), God meets their complaint of being abandoned, forsaken, and forgotten, with the image of a nursing woman.  Can a mother forget her nursing child (i.e., helpless)?  Generally, the answer is no, though a broken world can stomp motherly compassion out of some moms.  Even if it happens among humans, God will not forget Israel.  It may feel like He has forgotten them, but this is simply not true.  Yet, at the same time, God cares about the Gentiles too.  He cares about the “light,” the truth, that they are seeing about His true character.  He cares that they are reached with the good news of His faithfulness, even to promises that are millennia old.

Jesus emphasized this faithfulness to his followers before he left to ascend into heaven.  “I will never leave you nor forsake you, even to the end of the age.”

God does care about us, and He has compassion for us.  Yet, in His wisdom, He deals with us in ways that is best for overcoming our sin.  This is true for individuals, but also for people groups, even all of humanity.  Jeremiah was a righteous man, but he witnessed the destruction of Israel.  God’s compassion to him and to Israel was not just focused on external circumstances (like we want it to be).  It is even more focused on internal slavery to sin.  His compassion is bigger than my external situation, bigger than my individuality, and bigger than any one group of people.  It involves all of humanity.

Genesis, Exodus, and the whole Old Testament, are about the promised compassion of God centered in the being we call Messiah, Christ.  This is Jesus.  Over 2,000 years ago, Jesus was born into this world as a baby in Bethlehem.  He is the compassion of God, however, not in the form we wanted.  Yet, he is in a better form than we could have hoped for.  Just think of how easy it is for humans to idolize a person.  We tend to idolize the wrong people because of our sinfulness.  Thus, even embracing Jesus as our Messiah becomes a test of us.

How can the life of a man 2,000 years ago help me today?  Let’s look at what the followers of Jesus discovered about him.

John 14:8-9

In this passage, we see that Philip asked Jesus to show them the Father.  In this moment, they discover that Jesus wasn’t just teaching them about God, but that they were seeing God the Father by seeing him.  Yes, Jesus was human, but in a way they couldn’t understand, he was a perfect picture of what the Father was like.

God in His compassion did not wave a wand over the world in order to fix it.  He didn’t say a word and destroy all of the evil in the universe.  Rather, He joined us in the suffering so that we can see that, all along, it was He who has suffered without us understanding the depths of it.

He who made the eye, does he not see?  He who made the ear, does He not hear?  He who made pain receptors, does He not feel pain?  Sometimes, God lets us feel pain so that we can come to realize the pain that He has endured from before the foundations of the earth.  He is not untouched by everything.  He is in intimate contact with every part of His creation at all times.  As He created, He had already counted the cost and foresaw the price of suffering He would have to pay.  He could heal the pain, and it would be worth it.

We may be angry that God allows their to be consequences to sin, i.e., living life adverse to His wisdom.  Yet, the consequences themselves are an invitation from God to join Him in His suffering, particularly through Jesus.  In Jesus, we are enabled to see just how much God feels about our sinful condition, and what He is willing to do to save us from it.

The amazing thing is this.  When we enter into his suffering, our suffering suddenly takes on meaning.  Victor Frankl spoke of the value of purpose and meaning when a person is suffering.  We can suffer anything, if we think it has purpose and meaning.  In Jesus, the purpose and meaning of suffering takes form.

So the disciples came to understand that seeing, hearing, and following Jesus was to see, hear and follow God the Father.  This is at the heart of the first chapter of John’s Gospel.

John 1:14-18

John describes Jesus in this passage as the very Word of God that created all things.  More than this, he is the glory of the only Son from the Father.  He is full of Grace and Truth, which are two descriptions of God’s character in Exodus 34:6.  John speaks of him existing before himself, even from the beginning of creation.  Lastly, John sees Jesus as the only one who came down from God to reveal him.  He is not just another prophet.  He is God with us, Immanuel.
Let me close by reminding us of the life of compassion that the Lord Jesus lived.  He did not come to pat the elite of Israelite society on the head.  Rather, he spent his time among the common people, the poor, the lowly, the diseased, and the oppressed.  He didn’t do this because they were righteous.  He did this because he was the compassion of God.

It was often said that he was “moved with compassion” at the multitudes.  He touched lepers and cast out evil spirits.  In Matthew 23:37, Jesus said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!  How often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!”

Notice the big problem with compassion here.  Sometimes the people you are trying to help are actually running from true help.  Sometimes, you have to step back and let them suffer the consequences before they will be open to true help.

Jesus sent his disciples out to share the truth of God’s love, God’s compassion for all those who want it.  May we stop complaining about our lot.  May we start praising God for His loving compassion, and the honor we have to represent it to others.  May we turn from our sin and follow the Promised One from God who leads us in victory over sin, the devil, and a world that often chooses evil over Him!

God is Compassionate audio