Tag Isaiah

The Jesus of Love and Wrath

Todd R 1 Comment

Some people talk about their willingness to accept the God of the New Testament, but not the God of the Old Testament, believing that the NT God, in the person of Jesus, is a God of love, but that the OT God is a God of wrath and judgement.  However, there is plenty of God’s love in the Old Testament, and plenty of God’s wrath in the New, and all of these aspects are part of the character of Jesus Christ, who shows us a perfect image of God the Father.  There aren’t two Gods, but all of His characteristics aren’t obvious at all times.

A good illustration comes from Luke 4:18-19, when Jesus announced His public ministry by quoting Isaiah 61:1-2a aloud in the synagogue on the Sabbath:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
            because he has anointed me
            to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
            and recovering of sight to the blind,
            to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

After reading this, Jesus stopped and rolled up the scroll, and said to those assembled: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  (Luke 4:21)

Jesus announced here that He would be the one to overcome every form of poverty, captivity, blindness, and oppression.  He would be a God of love.  But some of those listening, especially the religious leaders, would have been familiar with the further context of what Jesus was quoting.  Isaiah 61:2 reads, in full:

“to proclaim the year of the LORD’S favor,
            and the day of vengeance of our God;
            to comfort all who mourn”

Jesus didn’t accidentally stop reading in the middle of the verse; He intentionally stopped reading right before a phrase on vengeance.

Isaiah was saying the Messiah would come to proclaim both God’s “favor” and “vengeance,” but why didn’t Jesus read the next part?  The full verse shows Jesus as both a God of love, and of vengeance, but I think He left it out because the vengeance part was not being fulfilled “Today,” but later, which might have been a surprise to people based on their expectations of the Messiah.

Many expected a conquering Messiah that would overthrow Israel’s oppressors, which was Rome at the time.  In contrast, Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem shortly before his death was described in John 12:15:

“Fear not, daughter of Zion;
             behold, your king is coming,
            sitting on a donkey’s colt!”

The people were glad to celebrate Jesus’ arrival, but Jesus came to Jerusalem humbly with no intention of defeating Rome, much less conquering the entire world.  Many Jews were disappointed in this peaceful Messiah, and this was part of the reason He was crucified.  This image of love and humility was the Jesus of His first coming, proclaiming “the LORD’s favor” and offering peace to anyone who will have it.  2,000 years ago, Jesus was focused on winning the spiritual battle for souls.

But Jesus will not always arrive in peace.  Later, in Revelation 19:11-16, Jesus is shown as the conqueror coming in vengeance:

“I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war.  His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself.  He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God.  And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses.  From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.  On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.”

This time Jesus isn’t riding into the city on a donkey, but the image is similar with the expectation many had that the Messiah would be a conquering king.  This is the Jesus of His second coming, but really the same Jesus just in different circumstances.  Having won the spiritual battle on the cross, in the end He will be victorious in every way.

So, Jesus is a God of love, but He is also a God of wrath and vengeance.  He spoke much of forgiveness during His time here 2,000 years ago, but he also spoke much about how God’s patience will eventually run out and He would come again in a much different way.  He also tells us that if we know Him, we also know the Father, so the Father has the same aspects to His character as well.

What could this separation of Jesus’ mission into two parts mean for us today?

I think it means that the primary purpose of our witness before He comes again is “to proclaim the year of the LORD’S favor” in love.  The church shouldn’t hide any parts of the character of Jesus, including His role as judge, but the mission of His church excludes taking vengeance, because He will take care of that Himself later.  Love is the way we win the spiritual battle, the fight for men’s souls, and mirrors what Jesus emphasized during His first advent here.

Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:12 that the spiritual battle should be our focus: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

We don’t win this battle in wrath, pursuing vengeance on this world’s sinners (which is all of us).  We win it by following the path He has laid out for us.  In the end, He will be the judge of all.

The Savior Among Us

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“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” – Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:23

In the Gospel of Matthew, this verse from Isaiah is applied to our Lord Jesus.  The name Immanuel means “God with us” and the name Jesus means “the Lord saves.”  In these two names is a beautiful picture of salvation, which means a restoration to a life lived with God beginning imperfectly here on earth, but eventually perfectly in His paradise.  Salvation and togetherness go together.  What we are saved from is our inability to live with God because our sin and His justice were unreconciled until the cross.

Among Jesus’ last words on earth were His command to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19).  Included in this is bringing the hope to the world that He brought to us by being present.  God did not leave us alone but bore the cost of our reconciliation on Himself.

Today, be among those who need the hope God provides through the salvation He bought.  His desire is to live among the world through us, calling His current and future people to live with Him.

Photo by Gareth Harper on Unsplash

Don’t Fear Jezebel’s Algorithm

Todd R 1 Comment

Sometimes we can get frustrated with the way the media, either traditional or social, seems to ignore or block out positive stories about God or Christianity.  Online networks like X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook can be very efficient at this, using complex algorithms to filter information, but on top of that human editors can intervene and block users they decide don’t fit their “community standards.”  However, resistance to spreading God’s word is as old as time, and God has never needed the assistance of any kind of media to accomplish what He wants to accomplish.

Consider the Old Testament story of Elijah, who prophesied during the reign of Israel’s evil king Ahab and his wife Jezebel.  According to Who’s Who in the Bible, “Jezebel devoted herself to bringing the worship of Baal and his consort Asherah to Israel. She employed 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophetesses of Asherah (1 Kings 18:19), and persecuted the prophets of the Lord, including Elijah (1 Kings 19:1-9).”[1]  Many prophets were killed.

Elijah despaired, as written in 1 Kings 19:10 – “I have been very jealous for the LORD, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.”  It was as if all Christian voices but Elijah had been silenced by the authorities, and even he couldn’t feel safe.

Apostles also struggled to stay strong, including Paul.  When he was frustrated at resistance and lack of progress in Corinth, “the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.”[2]

When Paul needed an example to encourage others to persist, he used Elijah’s story in Romans 11:2 – “God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel?  ‘Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.’  But what is God’s reply to him? ‘I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.’” Corinth seemed like a lost cause, but God reminded Paul not to trust his own judgment.  God had it under control.

Therefore, our hope is not in the editors of our newspaper, or in social networks where we can share God’s message, or in the benevolence of the programmers of algorithms that choose who sees what we post, or in the regulators and legislators who monitor the public square, or in the founding political documents that give us rights.  But:

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
            and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
            giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
            it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
            and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” – Isaiah 55:10-11

Like Jezebel killing all the prophets while promoting Baal and Asherah, censorship of Christian content may seem to be everywhere.  However, social network algorithms, editors, regulators, and governments are not our enemy, but our enemy is the one who tries to convince us we need these things more than we need the God who made them and who made us all.  His word will accomplish its purpose, and we have Elijah’s and Paul’s words and actions as evidence.

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” – Romans 8:31

[1] Gardner, Paul D., editor.  The Complete Who’s Who in the Bible.  (1995)
[2] Acts 18:9-10

What’s in Your Temple?

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When describing His holiness, God provided pictures like the one in Isaiah 6:1 – “In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.”  Because “the train of his robe filled the temple,” there is no room in the temple for anything that isn’t holy.  Or in Revelation 15:8, which says: “and the sanctuary was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the sanctuary until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished.”  Until God’s judgment was complete – both on the unrepentant and on the cross for His people – there would continue to be no room in the sanctuary for anyone but the Lord.

How do these pictures apply to us?  Paul asks in 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 – “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?  If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.”  Therefore, we ask ourselves: does the train of the Lord’s robe fill our temples?

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

A transformative moment came in my Christian life when I understood sin in contrast to holiness, rather than as a list of “don’ts.”  It’s possible (perhaps even easy) to convince ourselves we are not sinners in need of grace by defining sin as things we don’t do.  However, much of the time, the word “sin” in the New Testament is a translation of the Greek word hamartia, which means “to miss the mark.”[1]  The word has athletic connotations, such as if an archer couldn’t hit the bullseye, they wouldn’t win the competition and the prize.  As we all know, archers are supposed to be accurate, and if they aren’t, they’ve “missed the mark.”

Therefore, when Paul writes in Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” he is not saying everybody failed to follow a list of dos and don’ts, but that we have not fully lived the life God intended us to live.  Romans 3:23 declares that while we wouldn’t set up idols in our church building, all of us tolerate some idols in our soul, which is where the Holy Spirit of God chooses to dwell.  The train of His robe does not fill our inner temple, and we too often trod on it with dirty feet.  We’ve “missed the mark” any time there’s other stuff in our temple, directing our thoughts and actions.  However, by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ we have both a hope of living with God and a future where His metaphorical robe does fill us.

In Paradise, God’s people will – individually and collectively – “hit the mark” perfectly for eternity.  His perfect temple will be completed in Paradise, with the living stones of all His people.

Paul returns to holiness again in 2 Corinthians 6:16 to 7:1, quoting several Old Testament passages, since holiness of His people has been the plan from the beginning –

“What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,
             ‘I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them,
                        and I will be their God,
                        and they shall be my people.
            Therefore go out from their midst,
                        and be separate from them, says the Lord,
            and touch no unclean thing;
                        then I will welcome you,
            and I will be a father to you,
                        and you shall be sons and daughters to me,
            says the Lord Almighty.’

Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.”

Amen

[1] Greek Strong’s Dictionary

Leviathan Defeated!

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Photo by Humble Lamb on Unsplash

Isaiah 27:1 declares: “In that day the LORD with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.“

We must acknowledge the enemy as a powerful dragon to know the difficulty of our struggle, and also that it is the LORD who ultimately must, and will, destroy him “In that day” (rather than now or when we want Him to)

“It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations” – J.R.R. Tolkien, in The Hobbit