THE HARD PICTURES
The Lord is a jealous God and avenging, the Lord is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies. Nahum 1:2, R.S.V.
When you get your snapshots back from the processors and begin thumbing through them, you probably look for one thing. You want to make sure that all the portraits of your family and friends are reasonably flattering. If you are like most people, you won't mount any color prints in the family album that show people with frowns, closed eyes, or unflattering profiles. You don't want your grandchildren remembering you as a dour-faced specimen.
It can never be said that when God gave us His personal portrait album within the covers of the Bible He had edited out all the difficult and potentially unflattering pictures. We have the unabridged edition, not just those portraits of a sweetly gentle "grandfather in the sky." It is inevitable that in selecting 365 Biblical sketches of our Father we should come across some hard pictures, such as the overtly severe passage quoted above.
The question, though, is whether this portrait can be reconciled with all those passages that show God as seeking to win and heal His enemies. Or can the readers go through the divine photo album, choosing to look only at the more flattering portraits? (How many of you will want to memorize today's text to quote to your friends?) What do we do with these hard pictures of a loving God?
Having been a schoolteacher, I can recall occasions when I needed to portray myself to undisciplined students as very severe. In order to bring order out of chaos, they needed to know that I had painful recourse in mind should they not behave themselves. But that is not how I wished to be remembered by my students. And so once they were sitting still enough to listen, I was quick to show them that I prized friendly interaction, gentle words, and an atmosphere of freedom and love. In their maturity, however, they would have taken advantage of that approach had it been the only one they had seen.
Throughout the Old Testament, God often was trying to bring some order into the lives of people who had respect for only those who would inflict pain on the disobedient. In His love for them God risked portraying Himself in that light in order that the people might take Him seriously and come to appreciate His true qualities of gracious love.
The Lord is a jealous God and avenging, the Lord is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies. Nahum 1:2, R.S.V.
When you get your snapshots back from the processors and begin thumbing through them, you probably look for one thing. You want to make sure that all the portraits of your family and friends are reasonably flattering. If you are like most people, you won't mount any color prints in the family album that show people with frowns, closed eyes, or unflattering profiles. You don't want your grandchildren remembering you as a dour-faced specimen.
It can never be said that when God gave us His personal portrait album within the covers of the Bible He had edited out all the difficult and potentially unflattering pictures. We have the unabridged edition, not just those portraits of a sweetly gentle "grandfather in the sky." It is inevitable that in selecting 365 Biblical sketches of our Father we should come across some hard pictures, such as the overtly severe passage quoted above.
The question, though, is whether this portrait can be reconciled with all those passages that show God as seeking to win and heal His enemies. Or can the readers go through the divine photo album, choosing to look only at the more flattering portraits? (How many of you will want to memorize today's text to quote to your friends?) What do we do with these hard pictures of a loving God?
Having been a schoolteacher, I can recall occasions when I needed to portray myself to undisciplined students as very severe. In order to bring order out of chaos, they needed to know that I had painful recourse in mind should they not behave themselves. But that is not how I wished to be remembered by my students. And so once they were sitting still enough to listen, I was quick to show them that I prized friendly interaction, gentle words, and an atmosphere of freedom and love. In their maturity, however, they would have taken advantage of that approach had it been the only one they had seen.
Throughout the Old Testament, God often was trying to bring some order into the lives of people who had respect for only those who would inflict pain on the disobedient. In His love for them God risked portraying Himself in that light in order that the people might take Him seriously and come to appreciate His true qualities of gracious love.
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