Category Archives: Judgement

Augustine, City of God, Discipleship, Judgement, Knowledge of God, Providence, Purity, Repentance, The Christian Life, The Second Coming

Day of days

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All of us at one time or another have raged at the injustice in the world. Indeed, social inequality is one of the most pressing issues of our day. We see power imbalances everywhere, corporate greed ruining the planet, governments suppressing their citizens – and our hearts break.

Into this strife Augustine writes. He takes these challenges head on as he addresses the final judgment of the world in Book 20 of the City of God. The last judgment is the day when life as we know it will stop and the veil that has kept us from perceiving the presence and reality of God will be forever ripped in two. We will face our maker, our master, our martyr – but this time the lamb will become a lion and every single person who has ever lived will give account for their life.

While in this life the relative benefit of those who seek to be godly is obscure:

It will then be made clear that true and complete happiness belongs to all the good, and only to them, while all the wicked, are destined for deserved and supreme unhappiness.

XX.1

Unfortunately how this will all work out is not clear to us, or possible for us to discover. Why God sometimes visits judgements on people who deserve it, and sometimes they seem to get away with it. Why those who seek to love God are often buffeted by the winds of adversity, and others who love only themselves are left alone – only God knows the reasons for these things. The important thing is that at the last judgment:

It will become plain that God’s judgements are perfectly just, not only all the judgements that will then be passed, but also all the judgements passed from the beginning, and all which are to be pronounced hereafter until the day of judgment.

XX.1

The duty of the believer is not to watch the wind, seeking to discern the whys and wherefores of individual circumstances and connecting them back to individual behaviour. No our duty is to trust in the loving kindness of our Heavenly Father, for:

At that day, it will become evident by what just decision of God it comes about that at this present time so many, in fact almost all, of the just judgements of God are hidden from mortal perception and understanding. However, in this matter one thing is not hidden from the faith of the devout; and that is, that what is hidden is just.

XX.1

Are we waiting patiently? Are we trusting implicitly? We who cannot predict with any certainty the path of a single starling as it swoops in the evening sky, let alone the dizzying murmuration of several hundred can certainly not predict the hidden course of perfect justice in the hand of the loving God in the life of one person.

Our response should be to ensure we are sowing seeds of righteousness that will bear a rich fruit on that final day, building our lives with solid gold and precious gems, plucking up the weeds and cleaning out the barn. The rest we humbly leave to the maker, master, martyr God.

Judgement, Old Testament, Sermons

Ruthless Rehoboam

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This post is a summary of my message on Week 14 of The Story. Today we are looking at the events immediately after the death of Solomon. From now on it will be a steady downward path towards apostasy, spiritual decline, military defeat and eventual exile to a foreign land. This is not a happy story – the glory days stand behind us now. Hope you enjoyed them!

imageReverse Referendum
In a referendum the people are given a choice – they answer yes or no to a specific question. In our passage today, we see the reverse, the people come to the new king with a specific question that requires a yes or no answer. Will he say yes and ease their labour conditions, or say no? He decides to phone some friends, in fact two groups of counsellors. But he chooses the wrong advice – the old and wise heads urge caution and prudence, the young guns advise boldness, dominance and ruthlessness. Clearly the people had been dissatisfied with their forced labour under Solomon but had been reluctant to challenge the status quo. Rehoboam goes for bravado over brotherly kindness and machoism over mercy. And what would you know, there just happens to be an enterprising young man ready (Jeroboam) to mobilise the resistance. The mighty Kingdom of Israel is split over a single decision on employment terms and conditions.

All this was from the Lord – 1 Kings 12.15 states it clearly, Rehoboam’s pride and arrogance are the means whereby God brings his previously declared judgement upon Solomon. Jeroboam loses no time in establishing himself as a rival king in the northern tribes – fortifying cities, creating a counterfeit worship system and installing his own priesthood, so the people don’t need to go to Jerusalem. But he also opens the door for all the other idols around them.

While God had purposed that Jeroboam be the means of splitting the kingdom in two, he had not wanted them to worship other gods. From now on Israel would edge steadily towards spiritual disaster. As king after king continued and deepened the sinful practices and habits.

Repeated Rejection
We almost always think of warnings as being negative things, but warnings can be wonderful. The fire alarm that wakes you up in the middle of the night and saves your life will seem a wonderful invention when you are stood outside in the dark. The flashing light on your dashboard warning you of your fuel filter is boring, but if you don’t have it you can end up losing power on the motorway. Warnings can be wonderful things when they are genuinely aimed at protecting us from harm.

Throughout this period in Israel’s history we see God actively and intimately involved in the key events. We see in these passages is a God who passionately cares about his people, and the decisions they make, the people they hurt and the desires they hold, especially those that they put above him. Unfortunately it is a story of repeated rejection of God (all references are to 1 Kings):

Ruthless Rehoboam pic1

Remnant Remain
In the midst of all the warnings, the judgements, the destruction of the kingdom, there is a jewel. Living for God in those times must have been very tough…everything that you had enjoyed about being the people of God was being dismantled. What hope is there? 1 Chronicles 11.13-17 – these five verses give us a ray of hope that the light has not been totally extinguished. The Levites see what is happening and turn their backs on the land that was rightfully there’s and leave for Judah.

They were rejected by Jeroboam and in some ways you might say they had no choice. But in 16 we read about the people, the faithful remnant who had set their heart on seeking the Lord, they also left their homeland and came to Judah and strengthened it and supported Rehoboam as God’s anointed king. It is a spiritual exodus from unfaithful Israel to faithful Judah.

In all the darkness of these days God had not left himself without a witness. These had not bowed the knee to Jeroboam, or his false religions. Their love for God cost them their homes and land, they left all for the sake of their God. So a remnant remained – and this will be the case throughout the rest of Israel’s history. The faithful few who sought the Lord and swam against the prevailing spiritual decay and backsliding.

Conclusion
Finally a few words on what this means for us today, how do we understand what is going on here?

Each warning was sent in love – to restrain an evil intention or rebellious act. But each warning went unheeded. The key thing is that they are written for our encouragement Paul says in Romans 15.4: “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”

A key text is 1 Corinthians 10.1-13: all received the blessings, but not all were pleasing to God. God was making a point with the Old Testament events, an example for all time, that we might learn and not repeat the lessons of history. So what are we to learn? God wants our hearts! At the heart of what He desires, is His desire for our hearts.

Have you ever watched a sailing boat tack across a lake to try and sail upwind? One minute it is heading towards its destination, the next it is heading in what seems like the opposite direction. If you didn’t know anything about sailing you might question the sailor at the rudder, but all the while the boat is slowly making its way upwind and upriver. So it is with this passage, it is like a moral maze that we find ourselves in with this passage. The question we need to ask is, what is God doing in these verses? Is he for Israel or against them? Why is he so strict with his own people?

The answer, I believe lies in 3 deep truths…firstly the impartiality of God, secondly the divine, righteous jealousy of God, and thirdly the progressive, deepening, revelation of God seen in scripture.

  1. God shows no partiality – he is a holy God and a loving father who knows what is best for us and does not want us to be satisfied with lesser loves – whatever they may be. His love drives him to intervene, sometimes requesting, sometimes allowing, sometimes restraining and sometimes judging. We must have a holy fear – of ourselves and our weakness, fear of God and his righteousness, fear of starting well, but not finishing the race. Do our lives please God?
  2. God is jealous for our love – we almost always view jealousy as a bad thing. But in its pure form, striped right back to its essentials jealousy can be beautiful thing. It says: “I know what is the best thing for you, and it is me, not anybody, or anything else, but me”.
  3. God has established a covenant of grace with us not a covenant of works; not of obedience, but faith, a righteousness apart from the law. We stand on a foundation of unconditional love. Our experience of this love in our daily life is conditional upon our obedience. The covenant of law is not good for sinners, Rehoboam, Jeroboam, Solomon, the Man of God – all discovered this the hard way. The covenant of grace is the only refuge for the sinful person.

This is the referendum choice we all face – do you believe that I am the Son of God? This is the complete obedience to every warning, the blameless lamb of God, who is yet rejected for us. This is the king who has rescued a remnant, do you know you are one of his children today?

Apologetics, Augustine, City of God, Judgement

War and Peace and the judgements of God

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It was during the final year of my MPhil life that I decided to read War and Peace. I was frustrated by how long it was taking to finish off my research and I wanted a book that I would keep me company until the end. It’s was an epic read, much of it was very enjoyable, other bits mundane. But through it all Tolstoy weaves the lives of a small group of people into the macro events of 19th century Russia as they alternate between times of war and peace.  

In Book 3 of City of God Augustine takes up a similar challenge. He has dealt with “the evils which affect the character and the mind” in Book 2 and now turns to the “only evils dreaded by fools, namely physical and external disasters”. Thus in this book Augustine traces the often violent history of Rome since its foundation to modern times.  His purpose throughout is to discredit the claim that the most recent disasters are due to the abandonment of the pagan gods in favour of Christianity. How could this be, he asks, when the entire history of Rome is peppered with civil and federal wars – all of which occurred while these same gods were worshipped?

Before examining the historical events, Augustine begins with a note of exasperation. He asks his reader why it is that “the only things which evil men count as evil are those which do not make men evil? (3.1)”. He ironically observes that men “are more disgusted by a bad house than by a bad life” – they are more concerned with their possessions than their characters. Nevertheless, Augustine takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the history of the Roman Empire to show how inconsistent their own gods have been in their protection.

So here’s a history of War and Peace in ancient Rome…

  1. War: The destruction of Troy. Augustine explains the founding of Rome through the destruction of Troy, but then he asks “why was it (ie Troy) defeated by the Greeks when it had the same gods as the Greeks?” The explanation according to his opponents, is that Priam, the king of Troy, paid the penalty for perjury of Laomedon, his father. Moreover, the gods were incensed at the adultery of Paris and abandoned Troy. But, Augustine argues, the gods do not punish adultery among the gods, or fratricide, upon which Rome was founded. Augustine asks “what benefit can they bring Rome when they failed to protect Troy?”
  2. Peace: The rule of Numa Pompilius. Numa succeeded Romulus, the founder of Rome and enjoyed a time of peace. However, this time of peace was not associated with worship of the gods as the sacred rites which required their worship were not established yet. Interestingly, Augustine asks whether wars are inherently necessary to prove Rome’s greatness or were they merely a result of aggressive neighbours?
  3. War: with Alba during the time of the kings of Rome.
  4. War: during the time of the consulship and the conflict between Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius, when Brutus killed his own wife and sons because of their conspiracy to restore Tarquin.
  5. War: the Punic Wars fought against Carthage, the other superpower of the day.
  6. War: the siege of Saguntum (219BC), initiating the Second Punic War, because of their affiliation with Rome and yet the Roman gods gave no assistance to this city that had trusted in them.
  7. War: the massacre of Romans by Mithridates, king of Asia.
  8. War: the Civil Wars (88-82 BC), initiated by well-meaning Gracchi who wanted to redistribute  the land wrongly possessed by the nobles but turned into a blood-bath by Marius and Sulla.
  9. War: the Servile War (73-71 BC), started by a handful of gladiators – notably led by Spartacus.

It is easy to see that there was more War than Peace, but both were equally dangerous for the opponents of those in power. For “Peace and War had a competition in cruelty; and Peace won the prize. For the men whom War cut down were bearing arms; Peace slaughtered the defenceless.”

Augustine’s opponents claimed that “the reason for the worship of these gods, the reason why their worship is demanded, is to safeguard men’s felicity in respect of things perishable and impermanent”‘. But if that is the case, and it is really true that Rome was protected by their gods – why were those who had pledged allegiance to Rome not protected? As he states emphatically “what folly to believe that Rome did not perish beneath a conquering Hannibal because of the protection of the gods who had no power to save Saguntum from perishing as a reward for its friendship with Rome”!

The key question that this chapter raises is: How do we relate the events of history to the judgement of God? Augustine is arguing against the wrong assumption that the gods (with a small g) were punishing Rome for abandoning them in preference for Christianity. He strongly argues that no clear parallel between war and peace and the object of a nation’s worship can be drawn. Switching Augustine’s argument round the other way and applying it to today – surely this means we need to be really careful about pronouncing doom and gloom from specific events of war and peace.

In many ways we in the West face a mirror situation to that of Rome. The West has turned its back on the Christian God, is God now punishing it for its unfaithfulness? The message from Augustine is to be careful ascribing specific events as a judgement from God. There have been many preachers willing to ascribe the rise of AIDS, the 2004 Asian tsunami, the global banking collapse and many other events to the judgement of God. These grab the media headlines for a few days but is there any real substance behind them, other than personal opinion?

The lesson for ancient Israel was that it should learn lessons from the defeats in battle. When Israel was faithful it could expect the help of the Lord in fighting against their enemies, when they were unfaithful they were quickly subdued. There was a clear relationship for ancient Israel in this area. In fact this was the error of Sennacherib (repeated by the New Atheists today), for in his taunting of Hezekiah he recognised no difference between the God of Israel and all the other gods of the nations he had defeated (2 Kings 18.33-35). There was no such God who could protect his people from such a powerful army. But he was wrong, and he was soon defeated because of his insolence against Jehovah.

So, does this pattern carry forward for the Christian? The crusades provide ample evidence that some have believed that they do. However, does scripture support the view that “God is on our side”? The key point that needs to be understood to have a correct view of what makes something a judgement of God is whether there is an interpretation of the event. In the passage above in 2 Kings 18, Hezekiah prays to God and receives the word of the prophet Isaiah (2 Kings 19.20-34). The prophetic word provides the context for the action of God. Thus, in verse 35 when the angel of God killed 185,000 soldiers overnight, Sennacherib leaves in defeat the next morning. Interestingly, the converse is also true (and more common) – the prophets provide the explanation for the defeat and exile of the people of Israel through the ministry of Isaiah, Jeremiah and many others.

As someone who believes in the sufficiency of scripture, this means that events in our day may or may not be judgements from God. But we can never be sure without the prophetic word which no longer comes infallibly.  The facts that we can be sure of is that there is a final Day of Judgement coming when the justice of God will break forth in a final, complete,  fair way. We already have the interpretation for this coming event in the book of Revelation, and this is the judgement that is to be prepared for. We should spend less time retrofitting disasters into convenient “told you so” straplines and more time lovingly, patiently, compassionately warning of the ultimate judgement to come, where every thought will be exposed, every motive weighed and every action repaid.

“For you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying “Peace and safety” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labour pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.” 1 Thessalonians 5.2-3