Thankful, Day Eighty

Make a joyful shout to the LORD, all you lands!

Serve the LORD with gladness;

Come before His presence with singing.

Know that the LORD, He is God;

It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves;

We are His people, and the sheep of His pasture.

Enter into His gates with thanksgiving,

And into His courts with praise.

Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.

For the LORD is good;

His mercy is everlasting,

And His truth endures to all generations.

Psalm 100, NKJV

Some people don't like the idea of serving the God of the Bible because they see certain examples in the Bible of God's anger and think, "How could a good God do such bad stuff? I want a loving God who never gets mad at me." What they don't understand is that the Judeo-Christian God is the only loving God there is.

He is the God of the universe, and He makes the rules. Every day, God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, fellowshiping with them face to face as friends. And in the beginning, there was only one rule: Don't eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you do, you die. Keep in mind that God didn't kill Adam and Eve for eating the fruit, but the knowledge of sin combined with their own disobedience to one simple rule led to their own spiritual deaths and their eventual death.

Following the expulsion from the garden, the next sin we get introduced to is pride, then anger and bitterness, which led to the first murder. The Bible doesn't tell us how Cain got his wife, but it might be safe to assume he knocked her in the head and kidnapped her, because no one wanted anything to do with Cain after he killed Abel. For 1500 years, there were no rules, no laws, and apparently no consequences. And humanity, left to itself, grew increasingly evil, consorted with demons, and became violently wicked. God didn't arbitrarily destroy humanity with the flood; it was an act of mercy, preserving the one family that had not been tainted and totally corrupted by the sins invented in the world so that the human race would live on.

After the flood, there was only one hard-and-fast rule: Don't kill each other. If you break that rule, you die. Does anyone really have a problem with that one?

Flash-forward a thousand years. God chooses a small band of nomadic wanderers to bring about His salvation plan for the earth. He nurtures the family until it has grown to a company of six hundred thousand men plus women and children, leads them into the desert for their own protection, and there gives them ten laws to follow, laws inscribed in stone. And what were they? They weren't just silly rules meant to interfere in peoples' lives. They were good and decent laws for living in community with both God and man. Rules like: I'm the only God; serve me. Don't make images of me; I can't be contained in a picture or a statue. Don't talk bad about me. Give me a day of worship, which will also be a day of rest for yourselves. Obey your parents and treat them right. Don't steal. Don't kill. Don't have sex with your neighbor's wife. Don't lie about other people. And don't let negative emotions like anger, lust, and greed fill your heart.

And if you break those rules, you die. But those rules only applied to those living in that particular nation. The Israelites didn't go around killing everyone who lied to them or stole from them. They only imposed the law on those who were supposed to be living under it. And just in case you're going to ask about all those women and children that were slaughtered when Israel invaded Palestine...those were some evil and awful people groups, thoroughly corrupted by wickedness and demons just like those from before the flood. They were people who roamed the streets of their cities looking for victims to rape and abuse. They sacrificed their own children in the fiery bellies of false gods to ensure a good harvest. They practiced all kinds of sexual immorality and deviancy without restraint, which always leads to the breakdown of the family first, and then the community. These were not good people who died; these were exceedingly bad people.

Under the ten commandments, if you sin, you die. But then Jesus came. The unique and only begotten Son of God arrived on the scene two thousand years ago, spent thirty years in obscurity, spent the next four years doing nothing but good and preaching righteousness and forgiveness, and then suffered a cruel execution at the hands of political and religious maniacs who were threatened by the kingdom He preached--a kingdom of righteousness, peace and joy. And in His death, Jesus accepted all the punishment for all the sins of all the people everywhere. The wages of sin is still death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ. Now, you don't have to die for the wrong that you've done. You can get forgiveness and go to heaven and be in relationships with God forever.

And now we are back at the beginning with only one rule: Believe in Jesus Christ for forgiveness and salvation. But if you don't, you die. And still we have a problem with the simplicity of God.

Every religion in the world offers a god, or gods, or gods and goddesses, or sometimes outright demons for people to serve, and they are religions that make demands on the people. If you do enough right things, and give enough money, and have enough good thoughts...then you will earn whatever kind of salvation is being offered and achieve whatever higher state is promised. I'm glad I serve a good and loving God who took it upon Himself to provide for my redemption. What could be better than that?

I'm thankful to be serving a God who provided salvation as a free gift to anyone who would receive it, available to anyone regardless of age, gender, status, or national origin. I know myself, and I cannot do enough good stuff to make up for the bad stuff and somehow earn salvation for myself. Thank you Jesus for doing what you did, for dying so that I wouldn't have to.

I'm thankful to be serving a God who, even in judgment, remembers mercy. God doesn't want to destroy people. Before the flood, He gave the world 100 years of warning to get right, but they rejected. He gave Sodom and Gomorrah the witness of righteous Lot; they ignored it. He gave Egypt a chance through the ministry of Moses, but they hardened their hearts. He gave the world a chance through the good and holy law, not the one inscribed in stone, but the one written on tablets of flesh--our hearts. And still we close our eyes, plug our ears, turn our heads, and harden our hearts against our own conscience. And now He has given us Jesus. We have every chance in the world to embrace mercy (and I'm preaching again...); I'm glad that God wants to love me rather than destroy me.

I'm thankful to be serving a God who is patient and long-suffering, willing not that any should perish. He is slow to anger, abounding in love and mercy and grace. And I'm glad He suffers long with me.