The Character of God- Part 2

Subtitle:  The Presence and Glory of God

Exodus 32-34.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, December 15, 2024.

We continue to look at the character of God.  This is not only an issue for Christians.  Even an atheist can struggle with the character of “the Christian God.”  They have typically rejected such a God for several reasons.  First, they simply do not believe it is the best explanation for everything (perhaps they deny any true spirituality, i.e., all is material).  However, they also will point out what they believe to be character flaws in this “God of the Bible.” 

Yet, it is easy to cherry-pick issues and present them in the worst light when you do not believe or like this God.  So, what is the true character of the God of the Bible?  This is what we are exploring in this series.

Last week, we looked at the greater context of Exodus 34:6-7.  The preceding book of Genesis and the current book of Exodus are an important part of its larger context.  We saw a God who has created a creation in a state of being “very good.”  Yet, a rebellion has happened, first by spiritual beings and second by humans.  Yet, God has promised to help humanity against the devil (the serpent), even though they continue to rebel against Him.  This hope was summed up in a chosen line that goes all the way to the nation of Israel, which becomes a chosen nation to bring forth the One who would conquer the works of the devil.

Today, we are going to look at the immediate context found in Exodus chapters 32 through 34.  Here, we will find that Israel is no better than those who were before them.  They are just as fallen and in need of redemption as much as everyone else.  How did God’s chosen people end up in slavery in Egypt?  How did they fall into complaining and idolatry at the very time that God was saving them through miracle after miracle?

It is precisely in this picture of the failures of Israel, and consequent questions of the reader, that we find a revelation of God’s character.  No matter what state you are in, cast off from God or His chosen nation, we are all in need of redemption from the bondage of sin.  The good news is that God is just the kind of being who will (character) and can (power) save us from sin and redeem our lost inheritance as God imagers exercising righteous dominion over the whole earth.

Let’s look at our passage.

The first intercession of Moses (Exodus 32:7-14)

Biblically speaking, intercession involves two parties that are at odds.  Someone from the aggrieving party (or even from outside of it) speaks to the aggrieved party, to reconcile the relationship.  There are several places in the Old Testament where a human being appears to be more merciful than God.  This passage is one of them.  Another passage is Genesis 18, where Abraham intercedes with God on behalf of his nephew Lot in Sodom.

What is actually happening in these passages?  I believe that God is using the situation to provoke thoughts and prayers (intercessions) from them on behalf of others.  This is not a charade.  Because God’s character is being questioned (first by the devil and then by humanity influenced by him), He will do more than just tell us what is right.  He wants a relationship of trust with us, and to obtain that, He provokes us with the things of life.  In prayer, we wrestle before God with what He is doing and what He will do.  God doesn’t just do things and tell us, “Because I said so!”  He is trying to teach us.

Moses interceding with God becomes a picture of the One who would intercede with God on behalf of all of humanity, Jesus, the Greater Moses.  This One would be the Son of Man, but also the Son of God.  Yes, God interceding with God for the sake of humanity.

In our passage, God tells Moses that Israel is involved in gross sin at the very moment that God was giving Moses the Covenant they had agreed to follow.  He calls them an obstinate people, and then, He tells Moses to leave Him alone so that He can destroy Israel and make a new nation out of Moses.

This would solve the headache that Moses had in leading them to Sinai.  However, it would only represent a starting over.  The question then becomes this.  In 400 years, where will the descendants of Moses be?  Will they do any better.  I think that Moses intuitively knows that this will not fix anything.  It is better to face the music and go through the current bad situation.

Moses intercedes with God for the lives of Israel.  He points out that this will affect Egypt’s view of His character.  Yahweh only brought the Hebrews out into the desert to kill them.  He also reminds God that He is the One who brought Israel out of Egypt.  Finally, Moses appeals to God’s relationship with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (remember that his name was changed to Israel). 

This last point is not about challenging God to keep His word because a nation made from the descendants of Moses would satisfy the promise.  Though, Genesis 49 implies that God has revealed some specifics to Jacob about each tribe of Israel.  This is more a call for mercy on these descendants because of their relationship to those patriarchs.  It is similar to the description in Genesis 19:29.  God remembered Abraham and delivered Lot out of Sodom’s destruction.  The same is said earlier in Exodus 2:24 about Israel’s slavery in Egypt.  The intercession of those who are no longer living among us can still have an effect upon our lives.  We haven’t merited more mercy from God, but He remembers those who have gone before us and His promises to humanity. 

God is not just talked into mercy by Moses.  Rather, Moses makes the case for what God already wants to do.  In fact, this can just as easily be seen as a test of Moses.  By now, Moses should have a good understanding of what motivates God and His character.  This offer to make a nation from him tests his own character.  Moses passed with flying colors.  He imaged God rather than the serpent.

However, it is not enough to be the recipient of the intercessions of past generations.  Am I an interceder for the generations coming behind me?  What am I imaging?

The second intercession of Moses (Exodus 32:30-35)

Following the first intercession, Moses goes down the mountain and confronts Israel with their sin.  In verse 30, he tells them that he is going back up the mountain to see if he can make atonement for their sin.  Atonement is a covering for one’s sin that allows them to be acceptable to God.

We see Moses agreeing with God that Israel’s sin is egregious (“great”).  He then offers himself to be blotted out of God’s book, if God will not forgive their sin.  What is this book?  This is probably the Book of Life that we see mentioned several times in the New Testament.  We are not given details, but the idea of being blotted out is quite clear.  The name of Moses would no longer be on the list of those who would inherit eternal life.  It is quite possible that the names of everyone conceived is put in that book.  At some point (that only God can judge), they can be removed if they prove to cross a line beyond which there is no spiritual recovery.  It is also possible that only the names of those who put their trust in God are put into the book.  Being blotted out would represent apostatizing from faith in God.

God responds by saying He will only wipe out of His book those who “sin against Me.” (Verse 33).  He then tells Moses to lead the people from Sinai.  He tells him that an angel will lead them, and Israel will be punished for its Exodus 32 sin at the time of God’s choosing.

It is unclear if Moses has a substitution in mind, i.e., blot me out instead of them, or if he is only identifying with them, i.e., blot me out with them.  Regardless, this steadfast refusal to go forward without them is a picture of God’s own refusal to leave humanity behind, under the weight of its folly.  Of course, Jesus does both of these things.  He identifies with us when he became a human, and then he offered himself as a substitute before God.  The life of Jesus, represented in the blood that he shed, becomes the atonement for our sins.  Of course, the name of Jesus could not be blotted out of God’s Book of Life because Jesus was the Life of God come down to earth.

The words of Moses are similar to the words of the Apostle Paul in Romans 9:3.  Paul knows that it is impossible, but he wants the Romans to understand just how much he cared for his fellow Jews.  If it were possible, he would be accursed, cut-off, so that they would not be.  Yet, only those who embrace Jesus as Messiah the Redeemer can receive life.

The third intercession of Moses (Exodus 33:1-3, 12-17)

This intercession follows on the heels of the last one.  In fact, all of these tie together under the idea of Moses wrestling with God over the problem of Israel’s sin and whether or not it could be atoned.  Further, there is a question of what mechanism could atone for Israel’s sin.

You probably noticed in the prior section that God tells Moses that He is not going with Israel.  He will only provide an angel to lead them into the Promised Land.  This third intercession is all about the Presence of God being with Israel.

Verse 3 explains that Israel would be destroyed if God went with them. Skipping to verse 12, Moses then wants to know the one that God will send to lead them.  This is not simply about knowing the identity of the angel, i.e., what is the angel’s name.  He wants a knowing of relationship, or experience.  Just what kind of angel will lead us up, if you aren’t going with us.  Then, in verse 13, he says that he really wants to know God.  “Show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight. And consider that this nation is Your people.”  You can see the connection between knowing God (His character) and being able to find grace in God’s eyes.  Moses wants relationship with God, not just for himself, but for Israel as well.

God then responds by saying that His Presence will go with them and give them rest. He doesn’t immediately say how He will be able to do this without destroying Israel.

The response of Moses helps us to see why God’s presence is important.  Moses points out that the nations will not know that His favor rests upon them as a people, if God doesn’t go with them.

God’s response is to affirm that He will go with them because Moses has found favor with God.  This may help us to see how God could actually not destroy Israel.  It is out of relationship with Moses that God will not destroy them.  This typifies the relationship that Jesus has with God the Father.  This relationship can save all who put their faith in him (whether they are in Genesis awaiting the serpent-crusher), in Israel awaiting the Messiah, or today, among the nations awaiting the Second Coming of Jesus.  All of this is a putting of faith in God’s promise. 

When the Word of God took on human flesh in the man Jesus, the Presence of God walked among us.  How could he do this without destroying Israel?  He did it by taking their destruction (even that of us Gentiles) upon himself.  Blessed are those who put their trust in Him!

“Show me Your Glory!” (Exodus 33:18-23; 34:5-7)

This section is sometimes described as an intercession, but I see it as a furthering of the earlier idea that Moses really wants to know God.  He also wants to see God’s glory, unhidden by clouds, smoke and fire).  God brings Moses into relationship closer than normal.  Moses would speak with God “face to face” like a man speaks to another man.  This would still be an accommodation to the humanity of Moses.  A unique manifestation would allow Moses to speak to God as one speaks to another person. 

The last part of chapter 33 is where God describes just how He will reveal His Glory to Moses.  God would place Moses in the cleft of a rock that was near God on the mountain.  God would then cause His goodness to pass in front of Moses, covering him from destruction with His hand.  God would then declare His Glory, referred to as the Name of the LORD, to Moses.  As God moved away from Moses, He would remove the covering of His hand so that Moses could see His back, but not His face.

Let me say that every aspect of this event is used of Jesus in the New Testament.  There is only one Rock who is near to God, and that Rock is Jesus.  This Rock was cleaved to make a place of safety from the absolute holiness of God.  Jesus is the Cleft in the Rock.  Jesus is also the Hand of the LORD that covers us so that we are not undone by looking upon God’s unmitigated Glory.  Jesus is the very Goodness of God that is caused to pass in front of Moses, all the while declaring the Name of the LORD, which is Jesus Himself.  His being, character and reputation is that of Yahweh.  In total, Jesus is the Glory of God revealed to humanity (see John 1:14, John 11:40, and Revelation 21:22-27).  Jesus is the ultimate accommodation of God to help us see His Glory without dying.

Chapter 34, particularly verses 5-7), give us the event itself.  In the weeks ahead, we are going to focus on the declaration that is given about God’s character, which can be equated to His Glory, and His Name.  These character traits of God help Moses, and us, to know this God who has Created us, made a Promise to us, and is even now Saving us.  It is the God of Compassion, Grace, Slowness to Anger, Loyal Love, and Faithful Truth (Ex. 34:6).

You see, the serpent has always lied about the character of God.  God did not lie to Adam and Eve; He was not holding out on them, trying to keep them down; He is not self-seeking, but rather seeks the good of those He has made.  In truth, God can be trusted, but the serpent cannot.  God can be trusted, but our weak human hearts cannot.  Even when we are faithless, He is faithful (2 Titus 2:13).

The fourth intercession by Moses (Exodus 34:9)

Upon seeing the Glory of Yahweh, Moses sums up his request in verse 9.  He asks for God to go along with Israel and him (Presence).  He asks for a pardon for their wrongdoings and sin.  Finally, he asks that God would take them as His own possession, His inheritance.

We are currently in a political season where presidents pardon people before they leave office.  There are people who deserve a pardon.  Perhaps, the punishment was too vindictive and part of the sentence is commuted.  Perhaps, the person was railroaded and no one is moving to help the person get out of prison, etc.  However, Moses is asking for a pardon of actual wrongdoing.  There is no human who will have eternal life without God pardoning their sin.  This is the tension of verse 6.  God is merciful, but He will not let the guilty go unpunished.  How can God pardon a sinner?  In a word, it is Jesus, the Salvation of Yahweh!  Confess your sin and call out upon Jesus to cover them.  Put your faith in him, not just to cover sins, but also lead you to image the Father in your life, now and into eternity!

In his first coming, we see the Glory of God the Father revealed in Redemption.  It is God’s redemptive glory.  In his second coming, we will see the Glory of the Father revealed in Judgment. 

During this season, let us come to know the God who redeems us more and more each day.  He wants to pardon our sin and take us as His own, but He will not leave the guilty unpunished.  The only solution is to let Jesus atone for the guilt of your sin.  Praise God for His indescribable Gift!

Presence & Glory audio

The Character of God- Part 1

Subtitle:  Introduction

Exodus 34:6-7.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on December 8, 2024.

Structure of the verses

As we approach these verses today, we find a scene where God is declaring his character before Moses on Mt. Sinai.  He refers to Himself as Yahweh, which is often written in English as “LORD” or “Lord.” Some older English versions brought it across as “Jehovah.”  Regardless, this is the name that God reveals to Moses at the burning bush.  It is often recognized as the special name that God uses in making covenant with Israel.  It essentially means, “I am that I am” and is a declaration of being the essence of existence itself, “The One Who Is Existence Itself” or “The Eternally Existent One.”

We will look at these verses in more detail in the weeks ahead, but let me point out a notes on these verses.  In verse six, we have a five-part description of God’s character.  It is poetically designed to have two sets of two character traits surrounding one.  It looks like this.

• “A God compassionate and gracious
  • Slow to anger,
• And abounding in lovingkindness and faithful truth.”

This has an effect of surrounding a central character trait and bringing focus to it.  This is not to say that God’s slowness to anger is the most important one, but that it sticks out.  This will make more sense when we look at the structure of verse seven.

Verse seven picks up character trait number four, lovingkindness, and comments upon it.  This second verse has a bracketing structure, or bookended one.  This bracketing helps to highlight a central point in this verse similar to verse six.  It looks like this.

• “Who keeps lovingkindness
  • For thousands [of generations]
    • Who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin;
      • Yet, He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.
    • Visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren
  • To the third and the fourth generations.”

As  you can see, the numbers (“thousands” versus “third and fourth”) correspond to one another.  Also, the next indents correspond as well (“Who forgives iniquity” versus “visiting the iniquity…”).  These contrasting brackets surround a central point that God will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.  Thus, these two verses highlight that God is slow to anger (because of His compassion, Grace, Lovingkindness, and Faithful Truth), and yet, He will not let the guilty go free.  He is merciful, but He is no pushover.

A way to highlight why this is so important is to look at how this tension, between God’s mercy and His ultimate judgment, affects people from different parts of the world.  In the West, we tend to be uneasy about God’s judgment.  We read the second part of verse seven and we think that it has turned bad.  Whereas, people in the Middle East would look at the same verses and think it is the first verse that is problematic.  It makes God sound like He is too merciful.

If you still don’t understand then think of it as a tension between God’s love.  He will be compassionate, but He must hold the wicked accountable for the sake of those they hurt.  Of course, God perfectly satisfies this tension.  Yes, He is slow to anger, but He can eventually get there.  When He does, He is not like us, losing control and choosing to go down the path of overkill.

We should also notice the contrast of ratio.  God keeps lovingkindness to a 1,000 generations, but only visits the iniquity of the fathers to the 3^rd and 4^th generation.  We see this kind of ratio in Isaiah 61:2.  There the prophet proclaims the “acceptable year of the LORD’s favor, and the day of vengeance of the LORD our God.”  Here the ratio is roughly 365 days of favor to 1 day of vengeance.  I don’t believe this is intended to emphasize the ratio, but rather the magnitudes of difference.  God’s character requires Him to eventually judge, but He is not “Vengeful.”  His character is about doing what is good to His creation.  However, what do you do when a particular created being seeks the harm of many others?  Eventually the goodness of God requires that creature to be held accountable.  Yet, God does so quickly without relishing in it. 

You could say that it is harder to get into the “doghouse” with God than it is to get out.  This is very different than people.  In fact, some people who are very judgmental of the “God of the Old Testament” will never let others out of the doghouse.  They will hold a grudge against you until they die.  God is not this way.  God’s wrath is intended to be quick, surgical, and a warning to others that they should repent before they end up in that situation.

The Message of Genesis

This revelation to Moses is not in a vacuum.  The context leading up to this passage is the books of Genesis and Exodus.  Let’s look at Genesis first.

Genesis essentially presents the problem with the world and then explains God’s solution to that problem.  Have you ever asked this question, “What in the world is God doing?”  Chapters 1 and 2 establish that the problem is not God’s fault.  He made the creation “very good.”  See Genesis 1:31.  God made the heavens, both the material stars and galaxies as well as the immaterial angels and spirit-realm.  He also made the earth where humans dwell.  All of it was made very good.  Whatever you do, don’t think you are going to get far blaming God for the evil in the world.  What we see today is not what God made.

Chapter 3 then describes how everything went bad.  It has two important aspects.  Adam and Eve (humanity) have a breakdown in their relationship with God.  They had no reason to doubt God, and every reason to trust Him.  Yet, they chose to reject His wisdom and do their own thing.  Fractured relationship with God is at the heart of this world’s problems. 

However, a second issue is highlighted, there has been spiritual interference in that relationship.  The serpent lied to Eve and deceived her into distrusting God.  Revelation 12:9 makes it clear that this ancient serpent is the devil, satan, the dragon.  Regardless of whether you think this is a literal snake that is possessed of the devil or a serpentine manifestation of the devil, the end-result is the same.  The devil meddled in the relationship between humans and God.  He talked them into trusting him rather than trusting God, Who had never failed them before.  What is at question in Genesis 3?  It is God’s character.  Does He speak the truth?  Can He be trusted?  Is He actually holding us back so that we do not become as great as He or greater?  These are the aspersions satan stirs up in their minds.  Humanity has broken faith with God, but a crafty, spiritual meddler took advantage of their youthful innocence.

This sets up Genesis 3:14-15.  God curses the serpent, but gives a promise to mankind through the woman.  First, there will be hostility between the woman’s seed and the serpent’s seed (the devil’s).  Second, a particular seed, “he,” will crush the serpent’s head while having his heel injured.    If you look closely at those verses, you see that this is a powerful promise from God that their enemy would one day be dealt with through a mortal blow.  Though satan is a spiritual being, he will eventually die like a man. 

This sets up a promise or hope that humanity can hold onto, even when it seems bleak.  God particularly emphasizes the seed of the woman.  The serpent attacked through her, and so God’s counter-attack will come through her.  Yet, it will be a man who crushes the serpent’s head “he.”  God’s solution is a particular man who will be the serpent-crusher.

Genesis 4 becomes important because it shows us what the hostility between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent would essentially look like.  Cain and Abel are both seed of the woman in a biological sense.  Note: if you have listened to YouTube videos or documentaries that try to make Cain the offspring of a physical union between the serpent and Eve (or even Yahweh), then know that this unequivocally cannot be so.  Genesis 4:1 tells us that Adam had sex with his wife and she gave birth to Cain.  She then “gave birth again,” and it was Abel.  There is no room to insert a physical serpent offspring here.  The point of the passage is that Cain is making a spiritual choice to follow (to image) the serpent, rather than God, which is what Abel did.  There is even a scene where God talks to Cain in a Fatherly way, warning him that sin sought to master him.  The two seeds are spiritual dynamics between the sons of righteousness and the sons of wickedness.  The sons of wickedness are hostile to the sons of righteousness and choose to persecute and kill them.  However, Cain didn’t have to choose to be a son of wickedness.  God truly did put a door of hope in front of Him.  He had no reason to break faith with God and follow the path of the serpent (who was a murderer from the beginning, John 8:44).

Eve’s next son is called Seth, “Appointed One,” because God had appointed another seed for her, one to take Abel’s place.  He is not just taking his place physically, but as one appointed for the chosen line, the line from which the Serpent Crusher would come.  We see this chosen line of Appointed, spiritual men who personally represent, and have faith in the promise of God to crush the serpent’s head through a particular seed of the woman. This is revealed through prophecy, which Eve does here with Seth.  We see it several more times with Enoch and Noah.  These men are prophets who hear from God.

Thus, Genesis builds off of the First Rebellion of Genesis 3, presenting two more rebellions.  The Second Rebellion is seen in Genesis 6 as rebel Sons of God come down and create a wicked race of beings.  Regardless of how you interpret this passage, the overall point is that this speeds up wickedness until it fills the whole earth.  Noah and his family are the only ones left faithful in all the earth.  The wickedness threatens the Chosen Line and the possibility of bringing forth the Serpent Crusher.  God sends a flood to cleanse the earth and allow humanity a fresh start.

The Third Rebellion is after the flood in Genesis 11.  At the Tower of Babel, Nimrod leads a rebellion against the purposes of God.  As God confuses the languages, He also casts the nations out of relationship with Him, like Adam and Eve.  They want to worship fallen angels, and so He hands them over to these beings.    From now on, God would not deal with humanity as a whole, but only through the man Abram and the nation of Israel that would come forth from him.  Through Abraham, the chosen line, and later through Israel, a chosen nation, God would bring forth the ultimate Chosen One who would crush the serpent’s head and then bless those people and nations who would bless him.

The book of Genesis ends with Jacob prophesying over his sons in chapter 49.  There he prophesies that the tribe of Juda would hold the kingship, until Shiloh comes.  Shiloh can be translated as “The One To Whom It Belongs,” which in the context of Genesis is clearly the promised Seed of the Woman who would crush the devil’s head.

This book would serve to help an ancient Israelite understand their part in the world and what God was doing.  Things were not hopeless.  God had a particular man that He would bring forward at just the right time.  It was their job (and it is our job) to keep faith in God’s plan and His Man.  They must wait for God’s Serpent Crusher.

But, one might complain with this question.  How will that help me when I am dead?  Yes, that is the question that is eventually answered through the prophets.  Even Job believed that he would see God with his own eyes at the last day, even though he would die (see Job 19:26).

The Message of Exodus

This brings us to the next book.  We find God’s chosen nation in bondage in Egypt, making bricks for the power of this world, Pharaoh.  This is partially because the Egyptians had betrayed them, but also partially because they had begun to worship the God’s of Egypt.  In fact, the Egyptian’s betrayal follows the earlier story of Joseph’s betrayal by his own brothers.  Joseph was then sent on ahead of his brothers to become the one in charge of Egypt in order to save them from a famine.  What happened in this family of Jacob was a picture of what would happen in the family of nations.

You see, you can be the chosen line, the chosen one, the chosen nation, but if you aren’t careful, you can end up in a cast out position, serving the gods of this world.   You can end up as a metaphorical slave in Egypt (your life of bondage to sin) in meaningless work for the false gods of this world.  In that condition, you can cry out, “God, where are you?”  Of course, His response would be something on the order of, “That was my question for you along time ago!”

The chosen line, and chosen nation, are not shown as perfect.  The Serpent Crusher is not a genetic experiment to breed a champion.  It is a miracle of God, despite their (our) failures.  Yet, Abraham believed God; Jacob came to believe God; Joshua, David, Isaiah, Joseph and Mary, all of them believed God.

What does Adam do following the Genesis 3 punishment?  He has a choice.  He can either walk in his own wisdom in further rebellion against God, or, he can go to work in the sweat of his brow.  He can labor to feed his wife and kids.  He can bear that punishment in the hope that God will keep his promise and crush the head of his enemy, the devil.

The message of Exodus is that no matter how chosen we are, and how much God has promised to work through us, we all end up in slavery (personally, nationally, globally).  Salvation can only come by a supernatural work of God.  God must redeem us by His own Right Hand!

Exodus is the template of God’s salvation.  He will come to us in our slavery and powerfully show up the false gods we have been serving.  He will then lift us out of bondage and cause us to inherit what we had lost.  Of course, we must simply trust Him and follow Him.  Jesus Christ is the supernatural intervention of God, and we would do well to put our trust in Him and follow Him at this juncture.

Exodus 1-18 is all about God bringing Israel out of Egypt and to Mt. Sinai, where a covenant He will cut a covenant with them.

Chapters 19 to 40 is all about the covenant.  Yet, the people are afraid of God, so they have Moses be their intermediary.  Moses goes up on the mountain for 40 days (chapters 20 to 32).  As God gives to him the details of the covenant, Israel gets tired of waiting for Moses to come back.  They make a golden calf and worship it as the god who brought them out of Egypt.  This is akin to a person cheating on their marriage partner during the ceremony!  They couldn’t even give God 40 days of faithfulness before they were going astray from Him.

What happens in a case like this?  Does a man simply say that this kind of thing sometimes happens, and then, continue to marry the woman?  God even gives Moses an offer.  He would destroy Israel and make a nation from Moses.  However, Moses points out that this will only make God look weak to the nations.  It would appear that He couldn’t really save people. 

I believe that God is actually provoking Moses to see and give voice to what God was going to do all along.  God would have mercy on Israel.  He would continue into this covenant with them.  For better or worse, He would be their God and they would be His people.  God doesn’t just want to give us the answers to the test.  He wants us to come to the realization for ourselves that His way really is the better way.  If we listen to God and pay attention, we can come to understand the God who became human and died on a cross for our sins.

Perhaps, we might understand Him enough to follow Him and lay our own lives down in such a way that others may be saved.  How many of us haven’t found ourselves trying to follow God, but then falling short and missing the mark?  Of course, we all have.

How can God put up with Israel?  Their story is our story.  God’s character is such that He helps us, forgives us, is slow to anger.  Yet, He will judge in the end.  This is the backdrop to the event in Exodus 34, where Moses goes back up the mountain after confronting Israel with their sin.  There, God reveals His amazing character to Moses.  This is what we will be looking at for the next 5 weeks.

Character of God 1 audio

The Acts of the Apostles 54

Subtitle: The Justification of Believers

Acts 13:33-41.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on September 10, 2023.

We are picking up today part of the way through Paul's address in the synagogue of Pisidian Antioch.  They had joined the group's meeting on the Sabbath, and have been asked to share with the assembly.  Paul takes advantage of the situation to declare that Jesus is the Messiah.

However, Paul emphasizes their, our, spiritual need, the need to have our sins forgiven, and to be justified before God.  We will talk more about what this means.  Yet, imagine having all of the sins of your past removed from your account before God because of Jesus!

It is amazing to me how many Western people have some kind of belief in karma.  They think that if they do enough good things to outweigh their bad things, then they should be acceptable.  Of course, the Eastern religions posit reincarnation because they know that such a work would be difficult to achieve.

However, the Bible says that we will only have one mortal life to live and then we will face judgment.  There will not be an innumerable number of attempts to get it right.

Rather than the image of scales, we should see the image of cleanliness.  I grew up in central Idaho where there is not much pavement and lots of dirt.  I loved the look of white clothes, and white shoes.  However, they would very quickly be stained with dirt, pitch, etc.   The real question is this.  How can I get it sparkly clean again?

It is good to do good things, but that cannot clean the stain of the bad things you have done.  How can I be cleansed?  How can I be justified before God so that, when I'm standing before God, and I've done all of this, He may justify me?

This is why Paul's sermon was important to them that day, and is still important to us today.  It is through Jesus that we can be forgiven and justified.  You can have the help of Jesus by the Holy Spirit to battle sin in your life and move forward justified.  For the Christian, death itself becomes the final stroke against sin in our life.  It is God's final help to us.  "Here son, let Me help you."  For the believer, death is not a loss; it is a gain, a promotion, a victory!

Let's look at our passage.

Paul continues preaching in Antioch of Pisidia (v. 33-41)

Paul had earlier revealed that the man Jesus had come forth as had been promised by God to David.  Jesus was the One that God promised David would come from his offspring.  This Jesus was the ultimate Seed of David, and was now God's Savior for Israel, and even for the Gentiles.  They were there that day to tell them this good news.

Yet, the good news also has some attendant bad news.  The rulers and those who dwell in Jerusalem crucified him.  What?  But, don't fear.  God has raised Jesus from the dead.  He now has provided salvation for all who will believe on him. 

This is all as the Old Testament Scriptures had promised.  God had promised to send a Savior and, even in the face of their faithlessness, He had done it.  In fact, God did it in a way that actually used their sinfulness to accomplish it.  Jesus had to die in order to pay the price.  It wasn't right what they did, but it accomplished a good thing because of the love of God.

This is part of our human condition; it is not just a Jewish thing.  Christianity was never intended to be a list of 10 things you have to do, or 7 sacraments that will keep you good.  It is a relationship with God where He puts His Spirit within you.  We are now enabled to walk with God because Jesus has laid down his life for us.  In fact, Jesus has laid himself down for us as a foundation that we build on, or a road that we walk on.  Each step I take in Christ, I am walking on him.  It is holy ground, and I had better take my shoes off.  That is how much he loves us.

Paul uses the phrase "raised up" 7 times in this passage.  One time about David, and six times about Jesus.  It starts out by referring to him being raised up as a Savior, just like God raised up David to be a king in the place of Saul, just like God raised up prophets to speak to the sins of Israel.  It is a metaphor that refers to the power of God coming on a person and enabling them in any particular task.  However, it has a double meaning.  It also hints at the raising up of the resurrection, which God did with Jesus.  In fact, Paul could have gone on to emphasize that Jesus was raised up even higher at his ascension, into the heavens and at God's throne! 

Paul then reminds them of some of those Old Testament prophecies starting with Psalm 2:7.  This psalm opens with the kings and rulers of the earth planning to cast off the LORD and His Anointed One (Messiah).  It doesn't detail their plan, but quickly moves to a rebuke from God. 

By the way, the Apostles in Acts 4 quoted these first three verses as talking about their day: Herod, Caiaphas, Pilate, and others plotting to get rid of Jesus.

Yet, Psalm 2:4-9 shows us that God will not change His mind, regardless of what the kings and rulers do to cast off Messiah.  Verse 6 literally says, "I, I have set My king on My holy hill!"  The word for set has the sense of being poured out, and in this context, would be a reference to the installation ceremony, coronation, of the king where he is anointed for the position he now takes.   Yet, also notice the emphasis that God gives to Himself.  He doesn't care what the great powers of the earth think.  He is the great God whom no one can overrule.  Four times He emphasizes His activity, His choice for Messiah, and His place for Messiah to rule.

Verse 7 then has the Messiah declaring what the Father has told him.  "You are My Son, Today I have begotten you."  The begotten language is not saying that Jesus is a created being, or that God literally procreated and made him.  In the context, you can see that the Anointed One is being rejected and cast off.  He already exists, and is even made to be king.  The begetting is connected to his installation as king.  Something has happened during the rebellion of the kings of the earth that has brought Messiah into a new relationship with the Father.

All of this is a direct connection to God's covenant promise to David in 2 Samuel 7.  He told David that one from his line would not only inherit the forever kingdom from God, but he would be a son to God and God would be a father to him.  Upon the resurrection, Jesus now stood as the immortal, but human, son of David who could inherit all things.  He had become the perfect Redeeming King for Israel and the Nations of the earth.

I think that we have a misunderstanding about Jesus.  We can think that his interpretation of the Old Testament came out of left field and was completely unforeseen.  However, it is clear, as you walk through David's psalms, the prophets of the Old Testament, and certain portions of the Law of Moses, that some of these people understood far more than we give them credit.

Of course, Jesus was always the Son of God in that He dwelt with him from the beginning in relationship.  Yet, something unique happened on the event of His resurrection that no amount of being divine could replace.  He was now the perfected, immortal son of David, son of Abraham, Son of Noah, Son of Adam, who could inherit all things.

Of course, any age since the first century can be seen as raging against God and His Anointed.  We can see this today in our republic.  Why do all the powerful people in our land rage against God and His Messiah, Jesus?  Why do they imagine a vain thing, that they can cast off any restraints of godliness in our society?  They project that they shall cast off Jesus, his people, and any restraint on their future plans.  That is today's spirit, and that is an antichrist spirit, an anti-Christ spirit.

Yet, today as well as in the first century, the God of the heavens laughs.  You don't have a say in this, no matter how powerful you are among humans.

Verse 12 of Psalm 2 warns the kings of the earth to kiss the son lest they perish in the day that his wrath is kindled just a little.  So, we live in a time where the wrath of God is paused, and men, both small and great, are given opportunity to make their peace with Jesus, to come to terms with God's choice of Jesus, which we cannot overturn.

The next passage that Paul quotes is Isaiah 55:3.  Though he is continuing to talk about Jesus, this begins the explanation of what he means by the "sure mercies of David."  Paul clearly sees it speaking of the resurrection of the Messiah, which Psalm 2 doesn't reveal.  Notice that Isaiah 55:3 speaks of us coming to God in a way that our "soul" will live, and we will receive an everlasting covenant with Him.  Whatever the sure mercies of David are, Isaiah saw them as connected to our souls living and entering into an everlasting covenant with God.

Paul then goes to Psalm 16 to show us what David would have considered to be the sure mercies that God had promised him.  This psalm has David praising God for the hope that he has.  He particularly has the belief, a promise from God, that his soul will not be left in Sheol, or the grave (vs. 10).

Just like Job (see Job 19:25-26), David believed that he would be resurrected some day.  His destiny was not to be stuck in a spiritual holding place called the grave.  Yet, he also believes that God will not allow His Holy One even to see corruption.  Either David is speaking of himself as God's holy one, or he is referencing the promised one that was to come from his line, the Messiah.

Of course, Paul argues that the people of Israel know that David died, went into the grave, and decayed.  Either God's sure mercies to David failed, or David spoke of himself being released from the grave some day and the Messiah not even seeing decay, which implies a death.

The Psalms as a prophetic collection lays forth the idea that the promises of God to David would be filled in one of his seed who would be the perfect Anointed of God.  The Psalms lay out the case of God raising up David, the failure of David, the promise of God to David of an Anointed Son, and the promised fulfillment.  This is why the Psalms end in a collection of praises, Hallelujah Choruses!  Jesus is the Greater David, just as he is the Greater Moses, the Greater Adam, etc...  He is just Greater!

It was Jesus who saw no corruption.  On top of this, at the resurrection of Jesus, we are told in Matthew 27:52-53 that many Old Testament saints were resurrected at that time as a kind of first fruits of the resurrection of the righteous.  Most likely, David was in this group.  So, God kept His word completely to David in the person of Jesus.

If David knew that these things would happen, how come the religious leaders of the days of Jesus didn't?  It is the same for us.  When you spend too much time going after the things of the flesh (but in a religious way, mind you), you start to lose and forget God's word.  You stop understanding the things of God and hand down confusion to the next generation, and it continues.  Lest we become despondent, remember that the world isn't falling apart.  It is simply falling into place.  God is teaching us through the events that happen, both good and bad.

Having established the facts of what Israel has done, what God had promised them, and then what God had done in their day, Paul moves to what this has to do with them, or anyone for that matter.  They were 500 miles away from Jerusalem.  How does this impact them.  We are not only thousands of miles away from Jerusalem, we are also separated from these things by nearly 2,000 years.  So, what does this mean?

God has a message for Israel and for the nations of the world.  That message has not ceased to be relevant all of these years later.  Through Jesus, anyone can put their faith in him and be forgiven of all their sins.  The word is literally to have your sins removed, like something that is so sticky that only God can get it off of you.  Jesus has become the perfect Savior, and the good news is that he is a savior for Israel and the Gentiles.

In verse 39, he also speaks of justification.  The word essentially means to be made right, or just, in God's sight.  Some have used the play on words, just-as-if you had never sinned, to define it.  However, the biblical picture of us standing with God on the shores of the New Heavens and the New Earth (see Revelation 21-22) is not so much that it is as if we had never sinned.  It is more that we have come out of a conquered place, and have been restored.  That restored place is much stronger and powerful than the place Adam and Eve stood in back in the Garden.  They were innocent of the knowledge of good and evil.  We will not be innocent children, easily tricked.  Rather, we will be powerful sons of God, full of the knowledge of what evil has to offer, and what the love of God means to us.  There will be no Satan in that day, but if there was, no one would listen to him.  This is justification. 

We should note that Paul speaks about things that the Law of Moses could not justify.  The Law was not intended to justify anyone, but there is a certain kind of justification within it.  Yet, the justification that Jesus offers justifies everything about us.

Paul ends with a warning to the people about rejecting Jesus.  It is interesting that Psalm 2 also ended with a warning to the kings and rulers of the earth.  The last line of that psalm reads, "Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him [God's Messiah]."  Of course, that is the question isn't it.  What will you do with Jesus?  Paul quotes from Habakkuk 1:5, which addresses those who are despising God and His work.  Am I a despiser?  No matter how gracious God is, and how far He goes to remove our sin and make it possible for us to be right with Him, there is no grace for those who despise God and His Anointed Savior, Jesus.  Isaiah says, "There is no hope for the wicked."  Habakkuk says to the despisers, "marvel and perish."  These are strong words, but when you realize all that God has suffered and gone through in order to save them, and yet they reject Him, then it makes complete sense.

We cannot have salvation, the sure mercies of God, redemption, forgiveness, and justification without true repentance.  The door to repentance is the presentation of the person and work of Jesus.  To reject Jesus is to take your stand against God and His Anointed King.  It is also to take your stand against your own hope of salvation.

"Eternity, eternity, where will you spend eternity?"  Another song says, "What will you do with Jesus?  Neutral you cannot be.  Some day your heart will be saying, 'What will he do with me?' "  Now is your turn to judge Jesus, but know that some day very soon it will be him judging you.  Yet, in his mercy, God gives us time and many chances to come to our senses.  O praise God for all of His mercies!

Justification of Believers audio

It's Me Standing in the Need

2 Samuel 12:1-14.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on the Sunday preceding Dependence on King Jesus Day, July 2, 2023.

The story of David's sin with Bathsheba can be found in 2 Samuel 11.  It is a dark stain upon the otherwise righteous life and impeccable character of David.  I mean a stain so dark that it causes many to balk at how he could have done these things without having been like this all the time before it.  Chapter 11 ends with the statement that is translated in many versions as saying that David was "displeasing to the Lord."  It literally says that "it was evil in the eyes of the Lord."

Temptation is a powerful thing.  It started with David walking on his rooftop in the cool of the evening.  From his vantage point, he happened to see a woman bathing who was a striking beauty.  He should have walked away at that point.  One cannot control that first moment of seeing something that you were not attempting to see.  However, lust took root in David's heart.  He had "beheld" her too long with his eyes.

The Bible speaks of  making provision for the flesh.  In this case, David did not know who this woman was.  He could have left it at that, but his desire pushed him to inquire about the identity of this woman.  It was then that he found out that it was Bathsheba, the wife of one of his elite warriors, Uriah the Hittite.  He should have immediately walked away.  She was the wife of another man, and thus, not a potential prospect for him (even though he had plenty of wives at this point). 

Now that he knew her identity, David's lust pushed him further.  He sends for Bathsheba to come to the palace.  It is not clear how she is talked into coming to the palace, but it appears she was as willing as he to commit adultery. 

It is not clear if David intended to continue meeting with her, but she later sends back word to David that she was pregnant.  During this story, her husband Uriah has been with the army of Israel across the Jordan.  They were battling against the Ammonite city, Rabbah (the modern city of Amman).  We don't know how long they had been away, but Uriah's absence made it easier to commit the adultery.

David had a problem.  Uriah would know that the baby could not be his.  David had no doubt made some promises to Bathsheba.  To solve his problem, David calls for Uriah to come back to Jerusalem under the guise of quizzing him about how the war was going.  After this debriefing, David tells him to go home, even sending food to his house as a reward for all his faithful service.  Of course, David believes that a man who has been away to war for months would immediately jump on a chance to be intimate with his wife.  Thus, Uriah would never know that the child was not really his.

However, Uriah did not comply.  He was too noble to sleep with his wife while his brothers in arms were still at war and perhaps dying on the field.  They couldn't sleep with their wives, and neither would he take advantage of his trip home. 

David finds out the next day that Uriah did not go home, but slept in the servants quarters of the palace.  He tried one more trick by having Uriah eat with him and attempting to make him drunk so that he would lose his inhibitions and go home.  Still, Uriah exercised restraint (unlike David) and again slept in the servants quarters of the palace.

David had to send him back, and so he sends him back to the battle with a letter for Joab the General.  It basically told Joab to put Uriah in the front of the battle and then have the men pull back so that Uriah would die.  Joab complied, and Uriah died at the hands of the Ammonites.

How could David have done such a horrible thing to anyone, much less a man who had been faithful to him during the many years of running from Saul?  David had chosen to act like the very man he had replaced, abusing his power, and unrighteously seeking the life of a just man.  He did all of this to satisfy his lust.

This brings us to our passage today.

Nathans story (v. 1-6)

One has to believe that the Spirit of God had been convicting David all along the sordid path of his sin.  At the moment of seeing her, it would have been there.  "Walk away!"  But, David didn't listen and pressed on.  "Don't ask who she is!"  However, David did it anyway.  "Don't send that servant to fetch her!"  Yet, he did.  "Don't take her into your bedroom!"  "Don't call for Uriah!"  "Don't send him home."  "Don't get him drunk."  "Don't write that letter!"  "Don't give it to him!"  All along the way, David trampled the warnings of his conscience and of the Spirit of God, letting his lusts drag him away.

Sin often creates problems and we see David scrambling to cover up his sin.  However, he reached a point where he was no longer scrambling and it appeared that he had gotten away with it.  Yet, when we refuse to listen to God, He has ways of getting our attention.

Let's recognize that David did not just commit two sins, adultery and murder.  He was daily sinning against the Lord who had loved him, protected him, and raised him up to be king of Israel.  He was sinning against God every day he hardened his heart.  David was trapped in his sin.

However, God cared about Uriah's family.  He cared about Israel, and about what David would become if he was allowed to get away with this sin.  God cared how David's actions would affect the strategic position that he had within God's plan of redemption for Israel and the nations.

In 2 Samuel, God had promised David that the Messiah would come through his line, and that he would sit upon the throne of David forever.  This sin was an obstacle to the work of God through David and so God steps in by sending Nathan the prophet to David.

Speaking truth to power can be a dicey prospect even when God sends you.  God can protect you, but He can also be testing the authority to see if they will abuse his servant.  Think about it.  What happened to most of the prophets?  They were killed by the powers to whom they spoke the truth. 

Today, in America, people are slobbering at becoming a prophet.  They are going to schools, and studying the lives of "prophets," so that they can learn to be one.  However, becoming a true prophet of God is akin to receiving a death sentence in this world.  It is heartaches and humiliations galore, not a giddy event.

Telling David a story allows Nathan to slip the truth in before David spits it out.  You remember the song.  "Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down..."  There is a lot of medicine that we need, but we don't want to swallow it.  We don't want to hear it.  We are sick and tired of hearing it.  We put our fingers in our ears and then angrily go away so that we won't have to hear it.  Of course, in doing so, we have just testified against ourselves.  On the day that we stand before God, He will ask us why we didn't listen.  We may then reply that we couldn't have known.  Yet, God will play that moment back to us, and we will be silenced.

Nathan's story is a classic rich man versus poor man plot.  David would quickly empathize with the powerless poor man, having been the youngest of a lot of brothers.  Also, he had been falsely accused by Saul who was the previous king.  Saul had hunted him like a deer throughout Israel, seeking to put him to death unjustly.

The story is very straight forward.  A rich man who has plenty of lambs to slaughter, and plenty of money with which to buy a lamb if he needed, is contrasted with a poor man who had nothing but a ewe lamb that he had purchased.  It was a family pet, much like we would keep a pet dog.  Like any pet, this lamb had become very dear to the poor man and his children.

One day a traveler came and stayed with the rich man.  Instead of feeding him from his own flock, or buying a lamb from the market, he takes the lamb of the poor man and feeds it to his visitor.  Though nothing is mentioned, the poor man would have never agreed to this.  So, we are left to imagine what the rich man did to take the lamb, no doubt a group of his hired hands roughed the poor man up.  Of course, such details are irrelevant.  How does a person come to a point of such gross sin?

Of course, this is an analogy.  The traveler represents the temptation and the lust of David being stirred up.  Like a traveler from afar, lust shows up and asks for lodging for the night.  He should have told it to go lodge somewhere else.  However, David wished to entertain this traveler.

Though Nathan did not ask for a decision, David explodes with great anger.  He is quite passionate in declaring judgment against the rich man.  He calls upon the Lord as a witness, "As the Lord lives!"  He then declares that the man will die.

Now theft was not a capital crime in Israel, just as it isn't in our Republic.  His statement that the lamb will be paid back four times shows that David is quite aware of Exodus 22:1 and its prescription.  However, because the rich man did this thing "without pity," David wants him to die.

Mitigating factors are things that lessen the gravity of a crime.  Perhaps a man was an orphan, very poor, and had no food.  Such a person who steals a lamb in order to keep from starving is not going to be judged so harshly.  However, the rich man has aggravating factors.  David thinks that his riches and insensibility requires death.

It is an interesting dynamic that people who are overly harsh in their judgments are often hiding sin of their own.  They refuse to repent, and thereby punish themselves, so they take it out on others.  David himself is guilty of several capital crimes.  You might think he would be adverse to capital punishment.  Instead, he insulates himself by becoming overly righteous.  Sometimes people can become so bad that they lie to themselves.  "I'm okay, and it is everyone else who is wrong!"

Jesus alludes to this in Matthew 7:5 when he talks about judging.  "Hypocrite!  First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."  When you have fought against sin in your own heart and mind, you tend to be more compassionate without excusing the sin.  You know that fighting sin is hard, so you work hard to help your brother come clean before God without crushing him with harsh words.

Every son is disciplined by their fathers.  As earthly fathers, none of us are perfect in our discipline.  If you have any kind of heart for them at all, you try to do your best.  Of course, no kid likes the discipline they receive at the time.  However, discipline doesn't have to be perfect to do a good work in us.  By its very nature, being disciplined to do anything in life builds strength and tempers a person.  It can be directed in better paths latter, but the foundational skill is there.

This is why many in our society enter the work force and cannot keep a job.  They were never disciplined, and taught how to discipline themselves at home.  Parents know that life is tough, and if a person is not disciplined, it is even tougher.

The same thing is true spiritually.  Let's get real.  The effects of sin are devastating, and harsh.  If you are not disciplined, get ready for a lot of lumps.  Of course, there isn't a one of us who hasn't received their fair share of lumps from sin.  However, God is gracious to keep reaching out to us.

Nathan waits until David's response is made, and then, he masterfully reveals that the story was a picture of his actions with Bathsheba.

The meaning of Nathan's story (v. 7-14)

"You are the man!"  With this simple sentence, David quickly sees that Nathan knows everything, and that God is not going to let him get away with it.  You are the man in this story David.  And, this time, you are not the poor, persecuted man.  You are the abusive, rich man.

Nathan quickly moves to the judgment that God has given.  Notice that God is not as harsh in His judgment as David was in his.  You could say that God didn't keep the Law of Moses.  I remember a Jewish man asking me a gotcha question.  "Is there grace in the Law of Moses?"  I told him that there was grace all through the Law of Moses.  He was surprised that this would be my answer as a Christian.

The prophets of Israel understood that the Law could not save them in and of itself.  David himself got it.  In Psalm 51, which he wrote following this event, he writes that if God really wanted the blood of bulls and goats that he would give it.  Instead, what God really wanted was a broken and contrite heart.  Such a man God would not turn away.

Have you noticed that our society seems to be exalting a principle of not having to pay the consequences of sin.  However, mercy is not mercy unless sin is sin.  What I mean is this.  If we detach sin from its natural consequences, then we are no longer being merciful.  We diminish sin to something that isn't your fault, poor you.  We enlist the taxes of the rest of society to mitigate, and even erase as much of the consequences as we can.  This is not mercy; it is insanity.  It creates a society of thankless, entitled brats who have lost connection with reality.  It also creates an elitist class that grifts off of the tax pools that are enlisted to "help these poor people."  Yes, they are poor, and yes they need help.  But, this is the last thing these grifters would ever hope to happen.  Thus, every year the helpless and hopeless pool grows larger, and the pot of money needed to "help them" grows larger, and the amount of money that ends up in the pockets of the elite and their cronies grows exponentially. 

This is why God designed homes to be a protected environment for kids to learn about the consequences of sin.  Parents are not perfect, but they have the greatest interest in this child maturing into a man or woman that is able to discipline themselves for their good, and the good of society.  Believe me, when you leave home and go out into the world, the stakes become much higher, and the consequences of a poor choice can mean your life, and much more, your eternity.

We should see consequences as the grace of God that tell us that we can't ignore and run from sin.  It tells us that it is better to nip it in the bud because the effects of sin grow exponentially the longer we cling to it.

David was running from his sins, and it needed to be nipped in the bud.  God had staked a lot on David, but he doesn't hide his sin.  He makes him face it publicly.  In fact, God knew what David would do when He removed Saul and placed David in his place.

It is important to recognize that the Bible does not present King Saul as all wicked, and King David as all righteous.  They both are raised to power as good men, and they both end up in a place of abusing their power and being rebuked by God.  So, what is the difference between Saul and David?

The difference is this.  When confronted with their sin by the Lord, David repented, but Saul blamed it on everyone but himself (including God).  David turned away from a heart that is hardened against the ways of God with a broken and contrite heart, but Saul hardened his heart and persisted in his ways of wickedness.

This has always been the difference between the righteous and the wicked.  It is not that the righteous have never sinned, or haven't sinned as much as the wicked.  It is that they repent when God sends the message, "You are the man!"  Of course, we need to walk repentance daily.  It is a trap to think that you no longer have to worry about repentance because you did it already.

Two thousand years ago, Jesus identified with His Church knowing what a mess we would make of it.  Jesus is not for our sin as a Church.  He despises what it does to us and to a fallen world.  Don't be deceived.  He will always rebuke and discipline the ones He loves.  He will not walk arm and arm with us and pretend like our sin is no big deal.

However, God is not afraid to be connected to us and our sin.  We are His Church. He is faithful to do the work of purifying His children, and His Church as a whole.  Ultimately, the end times will bring forth a polarization of the external Church into a false church vs. a True Church.  Christ will allow the Beast to destroy one and will stand in defense of the other.

An aggravating factor is that David sinned in the face of great blessing from God.  David had difficult times during the years of King Saul.  Yet, God protected him, and sent men to rally around him.  God gave him victory over Goliath when no one else had the faith to stand against him.  God blessed him as a victorious general in Saul's army.  God blessed him with a family, and ultimately that his dynasty would last forever.  Verse 8 shows us God's heart.  "If that had been too little, I also would have given you much more!"

We should note that it was normal for kings throughout the world to have whatever women they desired under their rule.  In fact, it is even still normal for presidents today to send word to a woman, married or not, that the president is interested.  Power goes to people's heads, and people will protect and feed the lust of an individual simply to stay close to the levers of power.  No one would have batted an eye at what David did if he were in a nation other than Israel.  However, this was Yahweh's land.  The God of Truth, who raised up kings and put them down at His leisure, made this a different story.  The God of Israel would not countenance such a thing without repercussions.

However, I am talking about America today!  We have been so blessed, and we have been gobbling up blessing after blessing, to the left and to the right, just shoving it into our mouths like a bunch of porky pigs.  Still, we just don't have enough.  We have to go out and straddle the planet with our military and global corporations, taking as we please and cloaking it in a deceptive cloak of morality.

We do similar things in our cities and towns.  Family members do it to family members.  In so many ways, we are gobbling up the grace of God, and we are taking it for granted.  You can't do that for very long and survive the wrath of God.

Yet, God in His great grace is faithful to send voices out of the wilderness to tell us a story, to try and get our attention.  I believe that God is greatly displeased with these united States of America.  I think that He is trying to get some Nathan's to rise up and confront the people of this Republic.  Yes, truth must be spoken to our government officials, but the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court are not the highest human authorities in this land.  No.  The highest human authority in this land is We the People who ordained and set in order the highest human law of this Republic, the Constitution of these united States.  The rebuke must first be heard by We the People, and a response of repentance must first be walked out by We the People before God will hold our criminal servants in government accountable.

Ours is not a message of destruction.  God gives grace to David.  He deserved a death sentence, but God actually wanted a repentant heart that would quite the lawlessness.  There is hope in repentance.  God hasn't cast you off yet.  He is not calling for your death!

David  is told that he has despised God's commands (v. 9), and then later that he has despised God Himself (v. 10).  David knew the truth of God, but in this moment he wanted to sin.

It is a great blessing to know the heart and commands of God.  Many people in this world don't know their right hand from their left hand.  It doesn't excuse their sin, but it does mitigate their guilt before God in comparison to ours.  Some might say that no sin can be mitigated, but our sin can be done with aggravating factors that make it even worse.

Yet, over the top of this, David did his sin anyways.  He then continued to sin in order to cover up his previous sin.  Temptation and sin is precisely a trap.  The bait may be delicious, but now Satan has you in his hands.  He will manipulate you into more and more sin, worse and worse sin, in order to defeat the work of God in your life and sphere of influence.  Sin knows no boundaries, and there is no "bottom of the barrel."  There is only a descent into the abyss, into the bottomless pit of degradation and wickedness.

The word "despised" has the sense of lifting your head disdainfully against God and His Word.  Is this not a picture of our Republic today?  Is this not a picture of many Christians who give lip service to God, but despise His Words in their hearts and actions?  Let not a man bound by sin think that he can have freedom.  God will be faithful to send gracious rebukes, but if we do not repent, we will continue in slavery to sin and the powers that He places over us.

Nathan tells David that his actions had given the enemies of the LORD occasion to blaspheme (v. 14).  There were those in Israel who refused to serve Yahweh in their hearts.  There were also some who refused to believe that God had removed Saul and placed David on the throne.  They hated the ways and decisions of Yahweh.  To blaspheme is to declare things as true that are not true of Yahweh and His work. 

This is happening all across our land today.  Some of it is the fault of the Church.  We give ammunition to the enemies of God when we hide sin and refuse to deal with it.  This also gives ammunition to the spiritual powers to keep them from coming to see the truth of God and switching allegiance.

In this case, it is most likely that the blasphemy would not be centered on the idea that there is no Yahweh, or that He is not really about righteousness.  They would speak out against the decisions of Yahweh that were pronounced by prophets like Samuel and Nathan.  They could even reject the idea that a Messiah figure would come from the line of David.  How can a righteous man come from such a line?  One can't in the flesh, but by the Spirit of God, all things are possible!

It is one thing for people to despise God and His ways when Christians do what is righteous.  Jesus said in Matthew 11:6, "Blessed is he who does not stumble because of me."  Jesus had done nothing wrong, but he knew many people would not understand what He was doing.  However, the American Church is not pure.  We have become like David in many ways.  Have we also insulated ourselves so that we don't have to hear the voice of the Nathan's in our land?

Let me end with talking about God's mercy on David.  David would not be executed, and God would not cancel the covenant promise that He had made concerning Messiah.  Furthermore, God would remove David's sin from him. 

This is not favoritism.  This is about God's love for all sinners of the earth, and grace for those who will turn from their sin, repent, and turn towards Him and His righteousness.  Messiah would not come from a perfect family of a perfect tribe of a perfect nation.  God's work within all of us is at its best mercy upon a sinner who deserves death.  Even the people that He uses in our lives are merely sinners saved by the grace of God.

In the midst of God's grace is also chastisement.  The child would die, and David would continually have trouble with "the sword" among his family.  On top of this, God would raise up one who would sleep with David's wives in the full view of all of Jerusalem.  This was done during the rebellion of his son Absolom.  God sends a signal to Israel and to the nations that no man, no matter how much authority God has given him, is above the Word of God and the call to repentance by anyone in society.

America has been sinning for a very long time, but the greatest problem is those who claim to know Jesus who are refusing to repent.  They don't want to give up their authority and will not be held accountable to any religious notions.  Do you remember the phrase, "No king, but King Jesus!"?  Just like God knew Israel would fail from the beginning, so God was quite aware of the faithlessness of this nation that would grow through the centuries.  Yet, He decided in our favor during the War for Independence.

We must quit looking at the nations when God is saying, "You are the people!"  We must quit looking at the sin of others when God is saying "You are the person!"  We must once again become a repenting people, even as we pay a chastising price for past sin.

I believe that God can and will give mercy to this Republic if we will humble ourselves and turn away from our wicked ways.  We have to quit excusing sexual immorality in the Church.  We have to quit excusing the sacrifice of our children for a better life.  We have to quit eating, drinking, and being merry in our own houses while the rest of the Republic goes to hell in a hand basket.

Let me close by reminding us of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Eric Metaxas talks about this in his book, Letter to the American Church.  Adolph Hitler became chancellor of Germany in January of 1933.  November 6, 1932, on Reformation Sunday, Dietrich was preaching from Revelation 2 in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin.  All the bigwigs of society were there with many pastors in attendance.  This prophetic message focused on the message to the Ephesian Church.  "I have this against you, that you have left your first love."  They were celebrating the work of Martin Luther and that they were the spiritual descendants of him, the Lutherans.  Yet, the harsh pill, the medicine, you are not at all like Martin Luther.  He stood against every demon of hell in order to follow the Spirit of God in obedience to Jesus.  Yet, this group would not take a stand against the Nazi Party's racist policies.  The Church of Jesus could never compromise with such ideologies.

Dietrich was pushed off as a young man who was just looking for a fight.  Years of experience would tame him.  This is often true, but Dietrich was not looking for a fight.  He was simply seeing that they were already in a fight that precious few could see, a fight for the soul of Germany.

Metaxas says that there were 18,000 pastors in Germany at the time.  Three thousand were like Dietrich and stood steadfast against the Nazis from the beginning.  Another three thousand were Nazi lovers who had no problem with the invectives and signaled threats against the Jews.  That left twelve thousand (2/3rds) in the middle.  The problem for Germany was not the 3,000 Nazi-loving pastors, but the impotent two-thirds in the middle.  Some of the 12,000 eventually woke up, but after it was far too late to save their society from the great evil that was threatening it and the world.

Metaxas mentions that Hitler took power in January of 1933.  Bonhoeffer was already scheduled to make a speech via radio address in February 1933.  His topic was servant leadership.  As Bonhoeffer described the kind of leadership that Christians must exhibit and require of their leaders, the power to the whole radio station was shut down.  It had become to late to make a difference as Hitler quickly began to flex his power and take control of the media in Germany.

We can point to lost people who are doing lost things as the problem in our society.  They are a problem, but they are not the problem.  The problem is not even those lost pastors, bishops, and denominations that embrace wickedness in the name of love and tolerance.  No. The problem in these united States of America is the two-thirds of pastors, elders, and Christians who are on the fence about how to move forward.  The enemy does not care if you don't embrace wickedness, as long as you are feckless and afraid to take a stand exactly where the Holy Spirit is calling us to take a stand today (like Dietrich against Hitler, and David against Goliath).  God is looking for people in His Church who love truth more than their reputation, or a nice cushy position.  Martin Luther lost his place in the Roman Catholic Church.  He was hunted by the powers that be.

God will be gracious if enough of us wake up, and say yes to the Spirit of God.  Our actions right now actually say that we are just here for the American Dream.  But, have you ever considered what Jesus' Dream for America is?  We can stiff arm the Spirit and try to get back to "normal," having a good Church service with wonderful music, happy family, happy BBQ in the afternoon while watching sports.  It is not that these things are wrong and bad, but that they become all that we are living for while people are dying in a lost state, going to hell, and  we are losing our Republic.

Perhaps you are of the ilk to simply give up.  Yes, that's what happens when people sin.  Que sera, sera.  O, friend, you don't want to go through what can be next, and how bad things can get. God is removing the middle ground because it always belonged to Satan in the first place.  We must choose this day whose side we are on.  And, the only way to stop it is to repent and follow Jesus. 

Pick up your cross and let's follow him!

It's Me audio