The Acts of the Apostles- 91

Subtitle:  At the Mercy of the Winds

Acts 27:1-20.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on February 9, 2025.

We now turn to the final act of the book of Acts, which is Paul’s voyage to Rome and the subsequent two years under house arrest while he waits for his appeal to Caesar.

It could be called Paul’s Fourth Missionary Journey, except this journey has him under Roman arrest.  Previously, Paul chose to travel by land and by sea to convert people to Jesus and establish churches.  However, who actually sends us on a mission journey, if not God?  Sometimes, God may use authorities and shackles to put you in a place to witness for Him.

Handcuffs never impeded Paul’s ability to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus to others.  He had presented the Gospel to King Agrippa, several governors, Roman Commanders, Roman Centurions and other magistrates.

The title of this message refers to the stormy winds that will buffet this trip to Rome.  The winds can be a metaphor for things that are bigger than us, over which we have no control or choice, pushing us this way and that way.  But, no matter what gale force headwinds we face, the Lord is greater than any natural or metaphorical storm.  The believer in Jesus does not need to fear.  Instead, they can trust His plan in their life to lead to a good place, no matter how bad the present may seem.

God is able to bring peace to the storm, or, He can use it to get us exactly where He wants us to be.

Let’s look at our passage.

The Voyage from Caesarea to Crete (v. 1-8)

This chapter begins another “we” section.  This means that Luke has joined Paul on this trip to Rome.  He also mentions in verse 2 that Aristarchus of Thessalonica joined them.  This is the same Aristarchus that has helped Paul in his missionary journeys and was even seized by a mob in Ephesus when they couldn’t find Paul (chp 19-20). 

This may seem strange to us, but this is not a military vessel.  It is a commercial ship that any paying customer can board.  No doubt, Paul knows that he will spend a substantial amount of time under house arrest and has asked them both to join him.  They would be able to help him. 

Paul and some other prisoners are put under the charge of a Roman Centurion named Julius.  With a number of soldiers requisite to the number of prisoners, they board a ship that is from a western port of Asia Minor called Adramyttium.  This ship is not headed to Rome, but travels up the Mediterranean coast, most likely headed back to Adramyttium.  At first, there is no mention of bad winds.  They voyage to Sidon and put into port.  It is here that Paul’s treatment by Julius is described.  He “treated Paul kindly and gave him liberty to go to his friends and receive care.”  It is likely that he was one of the centurions who were in the auditorium on the day that he addressed King Agrippa II.  Paul clearly made an impact upon him.  Nice treatment was not a hallmark of Roman centurions.

Verse 4 gives us the first mention of contrary winds.  These winds were making it harder to go where they wanted to go, towards the west.  “Under the shelter of Cyprus means that they sailed on the side of Cyprus toward which the wind was blowing.  Since it mentions Cilicia, Pamphylia and Myra of Lycia, these winds were blowing northeast causing them to sail on the northern side of the Island.

It is at Myra that they switch to an Alexandrian ship bound for Italy.  Here it is mentioned again in verse 7 that they were moving slowly for many days with difficulty.  By the time they reach Cnidus, they realize that the winds are such that they cannot continue East.  This means that a wind from the northeast is coming down from the Aegean Sea.  Thus, they turn south in order to use the Island of Crete as a shield against this wind.  This allows them to sail west along the southern coast of Crete until they reach a town called Fair Havens.

Paul’s wise counsel (v. 9-13)

They had lost a lot of time in this difficult sailing.  It was getting late in the year approaching winter, and they were only half way to Rome.  “The Fast” in verse 9 would be a reference for Jewish people regarding the Day of Atonement.  This occurs between mid-September and mid-October.

Paul strongly advises them not to continue the journey.  It is becoming too dangerous.  If they foolishly push on, he believes they will suffer damage and loss of life.  Essentially, they would have to winter in Fair Havens until the Spring. 

There does not seem to be a word from the Lord in this advise.   In other words, this is not a prophecy from the Lord Jesus.  This is Paul using his experience of traveling on ships.  He recognizes that they are fighting the reality that they have simply lost too much time.

It is important for Christians to understand that God does not always give us a prophetic word or a dream.  In those moments, we use our minds and experience in order to determine the best course.  Yet, it is also important for Christians to use the mind of the Lord and think biblically about the matters before us.  We should bathe such decisions in prayer, asking the Lord to help us make a good decision.

Yet, even when we think biblically and prayerfully, Christians can be wrong in their decisions at times.  Our opinions and conclusions should be held humbly, but also expressed.

The centurion puts the question to the captain (the man who owns the boat) and the navigator.  It appears that there is some poll of the crew as well.  The sailors do not like the idea of staying at Fair Harbor.  Apparently the name of the town was overstated, at least in winter.  There are several reasons sailors would not want to winter for three months in a particular harbor.  It may be that the prevailing winter winds blow directly into the harbor, reeking havoc upon any ships docked.  However, it may also have to do with the number of men on the ship (267 according to verse 37) and the ability of the town to put up and entertain that many men.  Their decision is to attempt a run along the coast to a harbor called Phoenix on the same island that is about 40 to 80 miles away (the exact location of Phoenix, Crete, is in dispute).

At some point, a south wind began to blow softly, and the sailors take advantage of the turn in winds to attempt a run to Phoenix.  Have you ever been suckered by a “favorable wind?”

Caught in a violent storm (v. 14-20)

They do not sail far when a northeast wind begins to pound the vessel.  It is so strong that they are unable to turn into the wind and hold their position.  Thus, they turn and let it push them along.  It is clear that they end up in an existential crisis.  They may die, and so, Luke describes a series of increasingly desperate measures.

Have you ever told yourself that you couldn’t live without something or someone?  If you end up in a situation where holding on to it may get you killed or severely injure you, then you may find that you do not want it that badly.  “I don’t want to let this go, but I want to live.”  How many things are people holding onto at the expense of eternal life?

These men begin throwing cargo into the sea in order to lighten the boat.  Later they begin to throw expensive tackle overboard.  They even run ropes around the boat in order to band it (strap it) so that it doesn’t split apart from the violence of the storm.  This is a lot of dangerous work in the middle of a violent storm.  Yet, sometimes human power and expertise is not enough.

We should praise God for guys who do stuff like this in the middle of storms, or for the reconstruction efforts they do after such storms.  However, the power of man is quite limited in the face of the powers of nature.  Praise God that He is greater than the storms!

These men abandon all hope (verse 20) of making it through the storm.  These experienced sailors have reached a point where they are at the end of their wits and strength.

From the Apostle Paul’s perspective, this is a bad situation.  However, Jesus had told him that he must go to Rome.  Still, he doesn’t know what that is going to look like.  Sometimes your experiences are roped together with the choices of others.  It can be frustrating and angering.  We can rage against men and against God.  Yet, God does not intend for any of us to live unto ourselves.  We are born for relationships and into relationships that affect us in many ways.  We can complain, or we can trust God and honor Him in our choices.  When someone else’s decision seems to ruin our life- keep in mind that we are quick to be overly dramatic in such times, it is better for us to cast ourselves upon God and look for His direction.  Raging against people and God will not fix anything.  Paul represents a man with his ear to the Lord, who gives good help and counsel to others.  Yet, he is still yoked to their decisions.

We can think of this as being at the mercy of the winds that other people create.  Some create good winds and others bad winds.  Of course, we might ask ourselves if we are perfect in our determinations of which is which.  Sometimes things that we call bad can end up doing the greatest good in our life.  This good thing can only be seen with retrospection.

As we move forward in this culture, we are going to be continually challenged.  Things in our Republic (things in our families, things in our jobs, etc.) will insert themselves, and we will be unable to control these violent prevailing winds of the time.  Yet, there is one thing we must hold fast.  Jesus is greater than all that we face, and he has promised not to leave us alone in it, but rather, to work it towards our good.

I am reminded of the time when Jesus was sleeping in the boat while a storm threatened him and his disciples.  These fishermen shook Jesus awake crying that they were about to die.  Jesus stood up and commanded the winds to cease, and they did.  “What manner of man is this?” they exclaimed!  God is greater than deep states, globalists, wannabe dictators and even natural disasters.  We can rest in that knowledge, even when he doesn’t cause it to cease immediately.

Greater than God’s ability to put an end to anything we face is His ability to make the storm serve His purpose.  Goliath served a purpose on the battlefield that day.  He glorified God in his death before an inexperienced, young man named David.  No one else had faith in God that day, but David did.  May God help us to face these storms, even when it becomes clear that He means to take us through it.  He loves you and has your best in mind!

Mercy of the Winds 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 6

Subtitle:  God is Abounding in Lovingkindness

Exodus 34:6-7.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on January 12, 2025.

Today, we will look at the fourth description of God’s character from Exodus 34.  God is abounding in lovingkindness!

Let’s look at our passage.

God abounds in lovingkindness in the Old Testament

Even in the English language, we can see that a compound word, like lovingkindness, is having trouble translating the original word.  This is a small Hebrew word, khesed (khe’ sed), but it has a big meaning. 

It essentially has three components to it.  First, it speaks of loving care, and then, it adds generosity.  Lastly, we add a sense of keeping commitment, loyalty.  Thus, God’s khesed is His generous, covenant-keeping love for us.  You might see that the word lovingkindness touches on two of these, but doesn’t quite cover all three aspects. 

There is a wide variety of ways that different translations have translated this.  In fact, even within a particular translation, you may see several different words. However, before we look at some English translations, I want to look at a Greek translation from the 3^rd century B.C. (c. 200 to 250).  This translation is called the Septuagint.

The Septuagint, also shown as LXX, translates this word with a Greek word that means mercy.  On first look, it may seem that they gave up on finding a word, but there is more to it than that.  We do not experience God’s khesed in a vacuum.  Rather, His amazing khesed is in the context of our continual failure to reciprocate with a love that is even remotely close to it.  Rather, humanity has tended toward a stingy, covenant-breaking self-love.  Thus, God’s generous, covenant-keeping love in the face of our unfaithfulness can be definitely understood in the context of mercy.

It is common to distinguish between grace and mercy by this.  Grace is receiving what you don’t deserve, i.e., a gift, but mercy is not receiving what you do deserve, i.e., a pardon.  Of course, the word mercy is more than this.  At its root, there is a concept of misery.  God’s grace touches the guilt of our sin, but God’s mercy goes deeper and touches the misery of our sin.

We see that this is quite a word.  Let me point out some of the choices of English versions.  The New King James Version uses lovingkindness in Exodus 34, but it also translates khesed in other places as “mercy” and even “goodness.”  The New American Standard Bible 1995 also used lovingkindness, but then, in the 2020 edition, changed it to faithfulness.  The New International Version takes the simple route and translates it as love.  The English Standard Version chose steadfast love.  Christian Standard Bible chose faithful love; New Living Translation chose unfailing love; the New English Translation chose loyal love.  They are all very similar, but no one of them capture the whole sense of khesed without requiring the reader to understand its connections to these other concepts.  Thus, God’s love (khesed) is a love like no other.  Let’s look at some examples of its usage in the Old Testament.

The story of Ruth involves a couple, Elimelech and Naomi, who lived in Bethlehem.  A famine came upon the area, and they finally sold everything and moved to Moab with their two sons.  While in Moab, Elimelech dies.  Next, we see that the two sons marry Moabite women.  They live there for over ten years when something happens that is not detailed.  Both sons die, leaving Naomi and the two daughters-in-law alone.  Ruth realizes that her daughters-in-law would be better off to go back to their families.  She also hears that the famine has lifted in Israel, so she plans to go back.

This gives us a beautiful scene where Ruth refuses to go back to her family, but chooses to go with Naomi back to Israel.  Look at her words in Ruth 1:16-18.  “16 But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. 17 Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the Lord do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me.” 18 When she saw that she was determined to go with her, she [e]said no more to her.” (NASB) We need to keep this expression of love in the back of our minds as we jump to their arrival in Israel.

Of course, they have no money to buy back Elimelech’s property, and they wouldn’t be able to work it by themselves even if they did.  We are told that they arrive just as the barley harvest is beginning.  This leads to Ruth deciding to glean what she can from the fields after they have been cut.  She just happens to end up in the fields of a man named Boaz.  Boaz just happens to be a near kinsman to Elimelech.  He ends up being very generous to Ruth because he is aware of Naomi’s situation and Ruth’s commendable, extreme faithfulness to her mother-in-law.

This brings us to the first mention of a generous, covenant-keeping love in Ruth 2:20.  “Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “May he be blessed of the Lord who has not withdrawn his kindness to the living and to the dead.” Again Naomi said to her, “The man is our relative, he is one of our closest relatives.” (NASB)

Here, Ruth returned home the first day and was able to glean almost 5 gallons of cleaned barley.  Naomi is astonished that she could gather so much in one day.  She realizes that someone has been gracious to Ruth and to her.  Several blessings are revealed as Naomi quizzes Ruth.  Ruth ended up in the field of a kinsman, and on top of that, a kinsman who was inclined to be generous to her.  The version above chose to translate khesed with the lesser term kindness.  However, Naomi uses khesed precisely because Boaz has demonstrated a generous, covenant-keeping love towards them.  He is not necessarily in a covenant with them, but as their kin, he does have a commitment to help them as best he can.  Why is Boaz being so kind, or generous?  Well, let’s look at his words in the next chapter.

Naomi begins to realize that God is helping them, and Boaz is a unique guy.  She counsels Ruth on how to discretely propose that Boaz take on the role of the kinsman redeemer by marrying her and raising up a child for Elimelech’s line.  This leads to Ruth coming to the field late in the evening while Boaz is sleeping among the harvest as a security.  She uncovers his feet and rests at his feet, waiting for the cool air on his feet to wake him up.  When Boaz wakes up, he sees a woman lying at his feet and says this.  “He said, ‘Who are you?’ And she answered, ‘I am Ruth your maid. So spread your covering over your maid, for you are a close relative.’ 10 Then he said, ‘May you be blessed of the Lord, my daughter. You have shown your last kindness to be better than the first by not going after young men, whether poor or rich.’”

Just as we saw Naomi declaring the actions of Boaz to be khesed, so we have Boaz declaring of Ruth that she has twice shown khesed.  The first time that he has in mind is her faithfulness to come to Israel with Naomi.  Boaz is clearly declaring that she had done an act of khesed.  Yet, her proposal to him to marry her is called an even better khesed.  Maybe it is better simply because it is done towards him.  Regardless, we might ask again, what commitment would Ruth be keeping by asking Boaz to marry her?  First, she is a Moabitess and has every reason to fear marrying a man of a different nation.  Yet, she would do so because it would better her and Naomi’s situation.  Carrying this risk on herself is an act of keeping covenant in difficult circumstances.  Yet, she is also honoring the circumstance of Boaz being the one who was gracious to her.  Apparently, Boaz is much older than her (she is probably mid-twenties).  She might choose to marry simply to eat, but if she was merely following the lusts of her flesh, she would look for a much younger relative, redeemer, to approach with this proposal.  She is being faithful to the fact that it was he who took notice of her and chose to bless her instead of mistreating her.

Thus, David comes from great-grandparents who not only understood what khesed was, but also lived it.

Jacob’s fear of Esau in Genesis 32 is another place where we find this word.  Jacob had taken advantage of his brother when Esau was hungry.  Esau gave Jacob his birthright for a bowl of beans.  Later, Jacob deceived his father and, thereby, swindled Esau out of the blessing.  This led to Jacob fleeing to what is northeastern Syria today.  Over 20 years, he accumulated two wives, twelve kids, and he had many sheep, goats, oxen and donkeys.  Then, God told Jacob to go back to Canaan.

Genesis 32:9-10 is a prayer that Jacob prays to God on the borders of Canaan because he fears what Esau will do to him.  In verse 10, he recognizes that he is not worthy of all the lovingkindness, khesed (generous, covenant-keeping love), that God has given to him.  Lovingkindness is coupled with the word translated in NASB as “faithfulness.”  This is the word that we will look at next week, which is the last description in Exodus 34:6.

Jacob knows that he doesn’t deserve God’s blessing in his life, nor His protection.  Yet, he goes on to ask God to spare him.  He mentions his grandfather and father, recognizing that God’s mercy to him is directly connected to his covenant with them.  He is in a long line of chosen ones to whom God showed great khesed.  Yet, these chosen ones are part of God’s great khesed to humanity.  This brings us back to Israel in Egypt and God’s deliverance.

Israel’s redemption from Egypt comes to a highpoint in Exodus 15.  Israel has just come through the Red Sea in an impossible way, only to see Pharaoh’s army drowned trying to follow them.  On the opposite shore of the Red Sea, Israel sings a song of God’s deliverance.  We find this description in the middle of the song in verses 11 through 13.  “Who is like You among the gods, O LORD?  Who is like You, majestic in holiness, awesome in praises, working wonders?  You stretched out Your right hand, the earth swallowed them.  In Your lovingkindness You have led the people whom You have redeemed; in Your strength You have guided them to your holy habitation.”

God is generously keeping his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by rescuing Israel.  Despite all of their failings through worshiping other gods, complaining about Moses and an overall stubbornness in sin in the face of God’s miracles, God has loved them.  They too could say with Jacob, “We are unworthy of Your khesed, O God!” 

This why the intercessions of Moses are so key throughout the Torah.  We saw some of these intercessions while Moses was with Israel at Mt. Sinai, and we saw the generous love that God gave to Israel then.  Yet, God’s khesed did not stop there.  When they get to the Promised Land, they refuse to go in because they see the giants.  They balk and accuse Moses (God) of bringing them to this place to get them killed.  Oh, yes, that makes sense.  God saved you from Egypt and Pharaoh’s army only to sacrifice you to Canaanite giants.  Still, unbelief has never been bothered by its penchant to overlook God’s faithfulness in the past. 

They plan to kill Moses, elect a new leader and then go back to Egypt.  In this context, God gives Moses the same offer again.  He will dispossess Israel and send plagues against them, while making a new chosen nation out of Moses and his descendants.  Numbers 14:17-20 records Moses interceding for Israel again.

“17 But now, I pray, let the power of the Lord be great, just as You have declared, 18 ‘The Lord is slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression; but He will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generations.’ 19 Pardon, I pray, the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of Your lovingkindness, just as You also have forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.”  20 So the Lord said, “I have pardoned them according to your word…”

Notice here that Moses is quoting God’s description of Himself in Exodus 34 back to Him.  He is calling upon the generous covenant-keeping love of God to pardon Israel’s sin and give them mercy.  They don’t deserve it, but do it for the sake of who You are, for Your character, for Your great name!

God does lay a punishment upon that generation, but it is not one in which they can’t repent and serve God by teaching their children not to do what they did (unbelief and rebellion).  This is a grace that is similar to Adam and Eve.  Yes, difficult things are put upon them.  However, if they will carry those heavy things with faith in God, then those heavy things will do a good work in them, and God will pardon their sins.  Yes, these people will be in the wilderness for another 40 years, but they can teach their kids to avoid the failings that they did.  They can show them the good way instead of becoming angry with God’s discipline in their life.  We can embrace His generous, covenant-keeping love in the midst of his disciplines and become a testimony to others.

There are some other worthy mentions of khesed in the Old Testament.  The book of Hosea emphasizes the khesed of God versus the worthless love of Israel.  Hosea 6:4-7 says, “What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?  What shall I do with you, O Judah?  For your loyalty is like a morning cloud and like the dew which goes away early.  5 Therefore I have hewn them in pieces by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of My mouth; and the judgments on you are like the light that goes forth.  6 For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, and in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.  7 But like Adam they have transgressed the covenant; there they have dealt treacherously against Me.”

God’s great khesed deserves a response of khesed towards Him.  Yet, Israel’s khesed was like the dew that quickly dissipates under the heat of the sun (difficulty, trials and temptations).  However, this was not unique to Israel.  Over and over again, whether it be Adam, the pre-flood world, the Tower of Babel generation, the patriarchs, David, Israel, etc., humanity has reciprocated God’s generous covenant keeping love with lip-service, even complete rebellion.  His generous, covenant-keeping love is met with stingy, covenant breaking treachery.  Yet, even so, God’s faithfulness would still respond by sending His Anointed One, Jesus, to create salvation from this problem for whosoever would put their faith in him.  The prophets pointed out this problem and answered that there was still hope because of God’s abounding khesed.

Jesus is the overly generous, covenant-keeping, merciful love of God

The Apostle John speaks of God’s great love given to us (1 John 3:1).  This love is not just about Israel.  Jesus dies on the cross to take the failure of Israel upon himself, but he is also dying for the Gentiles too.  It is in this reality that we can know that God really does love us.  He really has kept His covenant with us as a group (humanity) and as an individual.  In these last days, He is offering an everlasting covenant to whosoever will take Him up on it.  This covenant is really between the Father and Jesus, the perfect, human Son of God.  However, like Boaz with Ruth, we who are moral beggars can come into relationship with Jesus and participate in this covenant.

This is key.  In the face of our failures, the eternal Word of God becomes one of us to bind himself to us forever.  It is a kind of burning the bridges behind.  When Jesus takes on a mortal body, it would one day die, but to be resurrected as a human, but in an immortal, heavenly body, is a form of showing that there is no going back.  Jesus will not turn back until he has completed redemption.  He has inherited all things, and we can too because of our living connection to him.  Yet, it is more than a connection.  He has drawn us close into an intimate relationship.

We should notice throughout the Bible that those who are being cast out, or pushed out, are really being handed over to their sins so that they will repent in the midst of their resultant misery.  The sad results of our willful sin can open our eyes to God’s goodness and lead us to cry out for mercy, for grace.  “Everyone who calls upon the LORD shall be saved!”  (Joel 2:32; Acts 2:21).  All of this is in the face of our failures.

Christmas should not be seen as a lovely thing of babies and gifts.  That little baby was birthed into this world with one goal in mind, to go to the cross and glorify God the Father.  He was born into a dark and evil world that truly hated him.  It was worse than an abject failure of humanity to merit anything from God, but an actual positive resistance against His purpose and plan of redemption.

The life of Jesus is the essence of sowing seeds while weeping.  Just as there was at the laying of the foundations of the earth, so too here, there is a melancholy in the midst of God’s confident love towards humanity.  All of this is done because the Lord Jesus knows that there is joy on the other side of this sadness.  The grace of God will bring it to an ultimate good.  In Jesus, the unthinkable, the inconceivable, is there over the top of our complete failure.

Though it is clear that Jesus is the perfect khesed of God towards humanity, we should not miss the reality that Jesus is also the perfect khesed of humanity towards God.  In Jesus, humanity has fully reciprocated the khesed of God with absolutely perfect khesed.  Jesus is the greater Isaac who does not struggle as he is brought to the place of sacrifice and bound to the wood.  There is no Angel of the LORD to intervene.  The greater Isaac is the greater offering that the LORD has provided to redeem humanity.

Jesus is also the greater Boaz.  He is the Son of God’s love, and we can come under his covering because he is a willing kinsman redeemer.  As Naomi counseled Ruth regarding how they could be saved, so we see our own salvation.  Others have told us how to present ourselves to Jesus, in humility, without pretense, simply asking for the grace of being covered and redeemed, asking Jesus to take us under his wing as his bride.

Jesus has the wealth to redeem us.  He has the ability to redeem everything we have lost.  Yet, he also has the heart, the loving disposition, to save us.

Yes, to connect to Christ is to receive an inheritance in the future.  However, it also gets back for us an inheritance in this mortal life.  We don’t know what that fully entails, but by faith, we press forward to take possession of our souls first, and then our lives.  We can do this because Jesus has poured out the Holy Spirit upon those who put their faith in him.  I’m not talking about houses and money.  I am talking about the works that God has determined for us to do from the very laying down of the foundation of the earth.  Let us put our faith in Jesus, listening to the Holy Spirit, trusting the Scriptures, and doing those things that He has called us to do!

Lovingkindness 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