Must God Forgive?

I have had the opportunity to address this question before and I am more adamant now than I have ever been in my stance on this issue. Today in my devotions I was going through Jeremiah 5. I have been there for a couple of days now and I ran into verse 7 which says, "Why should I pardon you? Your sons have forsaken Me and sworn by those who are not gods. When I had fed them in full, they committed adultery and trooped to the harlot's house." The question that is asked at the beginning of that verse is a rhetorical question which really does not need an answer. The answer is undoubtedly "No", God does not need to pardon anyone for anything at any time.

Most of the time I hear that God chooses to forgive because He is a gracious and merciful God whose love covers a multitude of sin (maybe one time I will blog on the misuse of Proverbs 10:12 on all kinds of levels, but for now, I will just say that many people misuse it). While it is totally one hundred percent true that God is merciful and gracious, it is also true that He is just, holy, and pure. He cannot tolerate sins of any kind and is required by His own character to punish sin. So what does it mean that God is gracious, merciful, and forgiving? Does it mean that God sweeps our sin under the rug? Does it mean that God simply chooses to look the other way when we sin? Does it mean that God's love dissolves the sin that we commit? Does it mean that we can sin whenever we want because it no longer offends the holy God of the universe? As in Jeremiah 5:7, these questions are all rhetorical. The answer is a big fat "NO!". God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He does not change (Jeremiah 4:28, Isaiah 46:10). So if God is gracious, merciful, forgiving, just, holy, wrathful, and pure, how do they all work in harmony with consistency that we as Christians can try to emulate?

I would argue that God's grace and mercy which lead to forgiveness are NOT unconditional in nature, contrary to much of the world's thoughts. If you are struggling with me saying that, I would encourage you to read through Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah for starters to see how God deals with those who continually sin and throw their sin in God's face, believing all the while that they are God's chosen race. Time and again they say that they are chosen so there is nothing to fear. God's comments on thinking patterns like that are not pleasant. So if those attributes of God are not unconditional, the only other option is that they are CONDITIONAL, meaning that there are conditions placed upon God's mercy, grace, and forgiveness.

AHHHH! What are you saying Ben? Is God bound by something that keeps Him from pouring out his love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness out on every single person who is conceived? My answer is ABSOLUTELY! God's own justice is the condition that keeps God from doing that. God cannot overlook sin simply because He loves someone. God's holiness cannot pretend that one of His creations didn't lie when in reality he did. Think about it for a moment before you shove you fist through your computer screen wishing it were my face. If you were the father or mother of a child who was brutally raped and you were sitting in the court room and the judge said something like this, how would you feel, "I know that what this gross perverted pile of garbage did was one of the most detestable things known to man, but I know him personally and I choose to show love to him as opposed to justice. I know that he really deserves to be put in the general population of a prison so that he can find out how it feels to be raped, but I am choosing to show grace and forgiveness to him because of my love for all people. I am sorry to the little girl who was violated by this man, but you should allow your love to cover the multitude of sins that he has committed against you." Any logical, feeling, alive person would go through the roof with anger and wrath at both the rapist and the judge. Why? Because justice would not have been shown in any manner. As a matter of fact, I would argue that the judge would be sinning by not doing his job and showing gross partiality to the rapist.

If that's true with sinful people, think about a holy God who has never sinned. When we sin we sin first and foremost against Him (Psalm 51:5), the One whom is perfect in every way. God would be sinning and inconsistent with His own nature if he were to overlook sin. So there is no way that God shows unconditional love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness to people who continually live in sin. Is God required to forgive, NO! God is required to be true to His own nature. This means that He must exact justice where sin is involved. His wrath must be poured out in instances where His laws have been broken. His anger burns towards those who worship other gods and forsake Him.

The difference for Christians is that God's justice, wrath, and anger have all been shown towards and poured out upon His own Son. It's still not unconditional...rather the conditions have been met by Christ in full. When a Christian sins, Christ is there on his behalf pleading his case before the perfect judge (1 John 2:1). So to those who claim that God is a forgiving judge and will forgive them for the sins that they are committing, I will just quote Jeremiah 5:7 one more time. Take it to heart and be extremely scared.

"Why should I pardon you? Your sons have forsaken Me and sworn by those who are not gods. When I have fed them to the full, they committed adultery and trooped to the harlot's house."

By the way, the reason why there is a picture of a glass that has fallen and is shattering into a million little pieces is because of it's visual illustration of what happens to a person when God lets go of them. If the perpetual sinner's life has not been shattered yet, rest assured it will. God is graciously restraining them until the perfect time when they will utterly destroy themselves. Check out Pharaoh's life in Exodus and Romans 9 if you are struggling with this concept. Or Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. It's not a pretty picture of what happens. Thus is the end to everyone who shoves their fist in God's face and says, "I will do what I want for I am God."

Soli Deo Gloria!

Have Your Own Way...

I find myself identifying with the Israelites in Jeremiah again. More times than not, I have thought to myself..."Man this sure does sound like me." Here is what God says, "If a husband divorces his wife an she goes from him and belongs to another man, will he still return to her?" That's a rhetorical question. Of course he will not return to her, that man would be in modern terms a "whooped" man. God goes on to tell the Israelites that that is exactly what they are doing with God. They have become polluted by whoring themselves out to every other god that comes down the pike.

In verse 2, God asks the question, "...where have you not been violated?" So the question that popped into my mind was, "In what ways, beside the physical, is a harlot or adulterous woman violated?" The mental would be the first place. She has images and thoughts in her mind that will never go away. She can return to those images and dwell on them as often as she wants to and her husband might never know. What a horrible thought. She might decide for whatever reason that she wants to come back home, but when things get tough and she wants to escape, she can imagine in her and go back to the time when she was doing what she wanted to do and enjoying it. There is nothing her husband can do to stop her from doing that except to be exactly who she wants him to be [verses who she needs him to be]. She is also violated emotionally. She is not really sound when it comes to emotions. A harlot has been living by what makes her feel good at that moment. Going to from bed to bed, she has lived for the day. Is it possible to return to being the celibate wife that she used to be? I am not sure. She has also been violated in lifestyle. A wife has duties that she needs to take care of in order to glorify God and lift up her husband. A harlot bails on all of those duties and simply does what she wants to do. I could go on and on if I wanted to, but the fact remains that she has left her husband and is doing what she thinks she should do [by the way, the modern day church came to mind as far as the description of harlot goes.] But perhaps the biggest way that she has been violated is that she has not become worldly. She has entertained the ideas of the world and has become accustomed to finding her happiness there. She has taken advice from the world, which means that she has listened to the world. She has started to look like the world, and for all intense and purposes she is the world. Why would a godly husband want her back?

So there is where I am this morning reading through the first 5 verses of Jeremiah 3 feeling like a pile of poo because in many ways, I feel that I am this whore that God is describing. I often times do what I want to do (verse 5) and have my own way. I end up looking like the world in what I laugh at, think about, partake in, and so forth. Then when the business of the world fades away and I am left with just my thoughts, I start to feel guilty and hurt inside for the way that I have treated my God and the relationship that I have with Him. This isn't on a daily basis but it is more frequent than I would like to admit. No one has to tell me to roll over in the morning and give my wife a kiss...yet I find myself rolling out of bed and starting the day without talking to God. So when I am left with just my thoughts, I tend to do what the Israelites did in verses 4 and say, "My Father, You are the friend of my youth? Will You be angry forever?" In other words, I tend to live by my emotions and come back to God [I know that my emotions are not what I should live by, and that adds to the frustration].

BUT this is where I must interject the truth behind the emotions and the roller coaster ride that I often times feel that I am on. This truth is where I get to lift the name of Christ high in order that He might be glorified. On those days when I do not do what I should and come to God the Father on my knees and seek a relationship with Him...I have a High Priest who did. On those days when I don't stop thoughts from going through my head that shame the name of God because they are sin laced...I have a savior who stopped the sinful thoughts at the gate and told them where they could go. On the days when I give into the sinful thoughts and bring forth physical sin in my life...I have a master who was tempted in all things as I was yet didn't stumble once. In other words, my justification, my righteousness, my holiness, my place with God rests in Jesus Christ alone. It is His Life, Death, and Resurrection from the dead that allows me to sleep at night knowing that the wrath that I stirred up in God that should have been poured out to me has been fully consumed by the Son. There is nothing that I need to fear. Where I fall, Christ excelled. This is to His glory not mine. And I know that this is no excuse to live in and continue in sin (MAY IT NEVER BE!), but it is comforting to know as I am reading through Jeremiah and Identifying with the Israelites.

Humiliation (A Puritan Prayer)

Sovereign Lord, When clouds of darkness, atheism, and unbelief come to me, I see Your purpose of love in withdrawing the Spirit that I might prize him more, in chastening me for my confidence in past successes, that my wound the secret godlessness might be cured. Help me to humble myself before You by seeing the vanity of honor as a conceit of men's minds, as standing between me and You; be seeing that Your will must alone be done, as much in denying as in giving spiritual enjoyments; by seeing that my heart is nothing but evil, mind, mouth, life void of You; by seeing that sin and Satan are allowed power in me that I might know my sin, be humbled, and gain strength thereby; by seeing that unbelief shuts You from me, so that I do not sense Your majesty, power, mercy, or love. Then possess me, You alone are only good and worthy. You do no not play in convincing me of sin, Satan did not play in tempting me to it, I do not play when I sink in deep mire, for sin is no game, no toy, no bauble; Let me never forget that the heinousness of sin lies not so much in the nature of the sin committed, as in the greatness of the Person sinned against. When I am afraid of evils to come, comfort me, by showing me that in myself I am a dying, condemned wretch, but that in Christ I am reconciled, made alive, and satisfied; that I am feeble and unable to do any good, but that in Him I can do all things; that what I now have in Christ is mine in part, but shortly I shall have it perfectly in heaven.

Winds of Change...

Well as some of you might have heard, my time here at Christ the Rock is coming to an end. It's not just the end of my time here at Christ the Rock, my time in youth ministry is over as well. It's hard to believe....10 years at the same church doing the same thing and loving every minute of it (even the tough times).

I thought it would be a good thing to write out what has brought about these changes so that no one gets the wrong idea. Last March I was planning on taking a group of youth to Canyon Hills Community Church for a Precept conference. The week of the conference I got a call from the church. Naturally, I thought the call was going to have something to do with the Precept conference. Much to my surprise, it was not. The pastor on the other end of the line started by saying that he had called NANC (the National Association of Nouthetic Counselors) and gotten my resume from them. He went on to talk about their church and how they were looking to fill the counseling spot when their current counselor retired in the following spring. Long story short is one meeting led to another and this past Friday they called and offered me the "Pastor of Counseling" position at their church. Counseling is a passion of mine, counseling is where I believe I have been gifted, and counseling is where I have been educated. It was the perfect fit.

The only problem...leaving those I love, care for, and consider my sheep and closest friends. 10 years is a long time and relationships that have been around for most of that are deep. So it was not an easy decision that I came to when I told the other church that I would accept the call. If I would have been ticked off, upset, or in any other kind of negative emotional state, the decision might have been a whole lot easier. The fact of the matter is that I was not looking to change churches, ministries, or anything else. I was called out of the blue and when all was said and done...it was clear that God was moving me out of youth ministry, away from the Christ the Rock, and onto other things.

I really wish I could have my cake and eat it too. I want to have the job that I am going to and bring everyone with me or bring the church I am going to down to PO so that my relationships can stay intact. But that's not life. We are vessels in God's hands and He is positioning all of us exactly where He wants us. This isn't some cop-out to make me feel better or anything like that. It's the truth. Romans 9 is all about the Sovereignty of God and how He has the right to do what He wants with those that He has made. I live and breath this, as some of you know. God had this time planned out before I was even born. He is bringing it to fruition and will see it through to the end. I can't stand up and say, "Hey God, what are you doing?", and neither can any of you who might be reading this blog. Isaiah 46:10 says, "Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, "My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure';" God will do all that He wants and as His adopted son, I need to be submissive to His plan. In addition to this, Isaiah 55:8 & 9 says, "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," declares the Lord. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts." Amen to those truths. I am glad that God is in control and not me...I would screw things up in about 2 seconds.

I am sure there will be more to come in the way of excitement and hurt as the days progress towards my leaving. I will continue to rest in the fact that God is working all things together for His good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28). Feel free to leave me feedback on this blog. I would love to hear from you. For those of you who I am closest too and hurting for the most...I am only a hour and 10 minutes away. Not too far. God is good and He will not allows us to go through something that is too tough to handle but He will give us the way of escape (1 Corinthians 10:13). Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice! Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication [asking] with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:4-7).

My last day at Christ the Rock is October 13th. I won't be leaving the area until around November 1st though. See you all around.

Soli Deo Gloria - To God be all the Glory for ever and ever Amen.