Word of Salvation – Vol. 29 No. 40 – October 1984

 

God’s Mercy And Justice

 

Sermon by Rev. S. Voorwinde, v.d.m. on Psalm 103:8 & Nahum 1:2

(Belgic Confession Art. 20)

Scripture Readings: Psalm 103; Nahum 1:1-8

Suggested Hymns: 196, 369, 350, 353, 170

 

Brothers and Sisters and young people, in Christ our Saviour,

The German writer Franz Kafka once described an old book that was lying on a shelf.  The binding had come off and as it lay open it had almost become two books which were barely held together by just a few stitches of binding that remained.  I’m sure you can picture it and at home you probably have some old, perhaps brown and dusty, books that fit that description.  It’s still one book, but it’s barely holding together; it’s almost falling apart into two separate books.

Well, for Kafka that was the way he saw the Bible.  It fell open into two books, the Old Testament and the New Testament; and there were just the flimsiest connections holding it together.  It hardly deserved to be bound in the one cover.

Sometimes there are Christians too who are tempted to think this way of the Bible.  Sometimes they may put their questions into words, but very often they will keep their questions to themselves.  Doesn’t the Bible sometimes strike you as almost two separate books?  In the Old Testament you have a God of wrath, in the New Testament you have a God of love.  In the Old Testament God is cruel, in the New Testament, He is merciful.  In the Old He is a God of vengeance, and in the New He is a God of forgiveness.

A few years ago I was talking to a young man who knew very little about the Bible.  The only knowledge he had was what he remembered from Scripture classes at school.  Still, he was interested in learning more and bought himself a “Living Bible.”  He started reading it, beginning at Genesis 1; but when I visited him some time later, he had given up in disgust.  By the time he got to the Book of Leviticus he had decided that this was not the same God that he had learned about in Scripture class.

Well, is that true?  Is there really a different God in the two Testaments?  Is there such a black and white contrast between the Old and the New?  Or can we perhaps harmonize God’s love and God’s wrath, His mercy and His justice?  Is this contrast, the apparent contradiction, perhaps the key to a deeper understanding of who God is?

To answer these questions I want to do three things in this sermon:

1.  To take a look at God’s mercy, how it was shown in the Old Testament, then in the New and again today.

2.  To look at God’s justice in the same way.

3.  To see the interplay between the two in both Testaments and again today.

First then, let’s consider God’s mercy.  Perhaps God’s mercy is nowhere more vividly described than in the Old Testament in Psalm 103.  Here is a whole Psalm devoted to that very theme.  Listen again to the words of our text: “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.”  And what is the writer thinking of there?  What past events is he calling to mind?  Well, ironically enough, the very events that turned off that young man who was reading through the Bible for the first time.  He is thinking about the Exodus from Egypt and the journeyings through the wilderness.  It was after the episode with the golden calf that God introduced Himself to Moses as “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin;” (Ex.34:6 & 7).

Then He gives Moses a second set of tablets with the Ten Commandments.  He forgives the people and renews the covenant.  They are a stiff-necked, stubborn and ungrateful lot, but still He bears with them and leads them on into the Promised Land.  In the wilderness He gives them water to drink and manna and quails to eat.  The Psalmist of Psalm 103 can think of no better example in the entire history of Israel to demonstrate the love and compassion and forgiveness of God.

Then when we turn to the New Testament and examine the life of Jesus, God’s mercy is of course unmistakable.  Think of the Sermon on the Mount, the parable of the Good Samaritan, his miracles of healing, his feeding of the crowds.  Time and again we read that he has compassion on the people because they are like sheep without a shepherd.  At one point John the Baptist sent some of his disciples to ask Jesus whether or not he was the Messiah.  Listen to Jesus’ answer as he summarises his ministry:

“Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the good news is preached to the poor;” (Mat.11:4 & 5).

From beginning to end, Jesus’ ministry is a demonstration of the infinite mercy of God.  And later when the apostles go out, this ministry of mercy continues.

Now, what about today?  How do we experience the mercy of God?  Do we really have to ask questions like this?  The whole world is a living proof of the mercy of God.  He gives food, even to those who blaspheme His name.  He gives wealth and treasures even to those who misuse his good gifts.  As Jesus said: “He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous;” (Mat.5:45).

And what’s the lesson behind all of this?  What relevant message is there for our affluent society living without God?  What about those people taking God’s kindness all so much for granted?  Let me say that there is but one lesson, one warning, one simple answer, and that is that you must repent while God’s kindness and mercy last.  If you don’t, God’s patience will come to an end.

Paul and Peter make the exact same point.  Paul in his letter to the Romans says: “Do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?  But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed;” (Rom.2:4,5).

Peter in his second letter also writes about the day of judgement: The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.  He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance;” (3:9).

So this is God’s message to apathetic people basking in their affluence and taking his mercy and kindness so much for granted: “I am giving you the opportunity to repent.  That’s why I’m patient and tolerant and kind.  But woe to you if you miss this opportunity!  The day of grace won’t last forever.”

This is God’s message to a prosperous country like Australia with so many self-sufficient people.  There is only one reason for our peace, prosperity and affluence, and that is that we are given time to repent.

This leads us now to our second point which is God’s justice: If man fails to repent God’s mercy will ultimately come to an end.  God’s justice comes into play and his wrath must express itself.  We see this so clearly in Nahum’s prophecy about the city of Nineveh.  The whole prophecy is about the fate and doom of that great capital of the Assyrian empire.  This is how he starts: “The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath.  The Lord takes vengeance on his foes and maintains his wrath against his enemies.”

Now what has happened to the mercy of God?  Has God forgotten to be merciful to these people?  No, not at all.  It was to the city of Nineveh that God had sent the prophet Jonah about 100 years earlier.  And there Jonah preached what must have been one of the shortest and most successful sermons of all time: “Another forty days and Nineveh will be destroyed.”  The city wasn’t destroyed because the people repented at Jonah’s preaching.  But this time there is no repentance and Nineveh’s days are numbered.  Nineveh had experienced God’s mercy in a most remarkable way, but now it becomes the object of His wrath and judgment.  Nahum’s prophecy came true in 612 B.C. when a flood breached the city walls, the Babylonians invaded and never since has it been inhabited.  Today all that’s left is a big mound.

God’s wrath and justice had been well deserved.  Not only had they been warned by Jonah more than a century before, but these Assyrians from Nineveh had also become known for their ruthless military power.  This is the record of history: “The track of Assyrian conquerors was marked by impalements, by pyramids of human heads, and by other barbarities too horrible to be described.”  They were the Nazis of the ancient world, and no one complained when they came under the wrath and judgment of God.

But now, when we turn to the New Testament, what do we see?  In Christ, do we not see in him a God of mercy and forgiveness alone?  Didn’t Jesus Himself say: “I did not come to condemn the world, but to save the world?”

Well, of course, that’ s true in a way.  Christ’s first coming was designed first of all for salvation.  His second coming is the time also for judgment, for the day of his wrath.  Yet even so, while He was on earth you could hardly refer to Him as “gentle Jesus, meek and mild.”  Just as Nahum had prophesied the destruction of Nineveh, so Jesus predicted the destruction of Jerusalem.  To be sure, He did it with tears in His eyes, but He did it clearly.  Initially Nineveh had repented at the preaching of Jonah, but Jerusalem never repented at the preaching of the greater Jonah.  Finally there must come an end to God’s mercy and patience.  It came in A.D.70 when the Roman legions levelled Jerusalem with the ground.  Whereas the Christians escaped out of the city, the Jews had escaped into it, and historians estimate that as many as one million may have been killed.  For them the day of judgment had come.  They had not repented at Christ’s preaching, and now the wrath and justice of God falls on the doomed city of Jerusalem.  All that remains of that ancient city today is the well-known Wailing Wall.

And what about today?  How do we see the justice and the wrath of God?  Well first of all the fall of Jerusalem still points to the Day of Judgment.  It is one enormous reminder that if Jesus was right about the destruction of Jerusalem, then He was also right when He prophesied about the end of the world.  What happened to Jerusalem is a pointer to the Day of Judgment.  But it isn’t the only one.  There will be earthquakes, famines, wars.  They too are reminders that the great and terrible day of the Lord will certainly come.

How often do you think of that when you watch the news on television?  When you are shown in graphic detail some of the effects of a tornado or a cyclone or a famine, what do you think?  Does it strike you that this is a reminder, a warning, that the Day of Judgment is coming?  And if these mere “signs” are so terrible, then what a dreadful and awful day that’s going to be!

Now please don’t get me wrong.  If nowadays a city gets hit by a cyclone or a tornado, it’s not in the same category as the destruction of Nineveh and Jerusalem.  We can’t say: “Well, that’s God’s judgment on those people.”  I remember after the Darwin cyclone in 1974, a man telling me after church: “I thought it happened because they were the biggest beer drinkers in Australia up there.”  Maybe they were, but we can’t say that was the reason for the cyclone.  It is however, a reminder that we should repent and a warning that the Day of Judgment will come.

So far we have seen God’s mercy in the Old Testament, in the New and again today.  We have also taken note of His justice, during those same three periods.  Now, how exactly do the two relate?  How can: the same God at the same time be merciful and just?  The Bible gives us a very beautiful picture of the interplay of God’s mercy and His judgment, and that picture is the rainbow.  You don’t have a rainbow on a sunny, cloudless day.  Nor do you have a rainbow when it’s only grey and showery and overcast.  You have a rainbow when there’s sun and storm at the same time.

And so we have the rainbow of God’s grace when there are the sunshine of His mercy and the storm clouds of His wrath.  There’s the rainbow only when we have both at the same time…

  (i) We see that at the time of the flood the unbelieving world perished, but Noah and his family were saved.

  (ii) We have it at the Red Sea. Pharaoh and his host were destroyed.  Israel was spared.

  (iii) Also at the destruction of Nineveh, it meant doom for the Assyrians, but it gave hope to Judah.

The rainbow forms when God’s justice and mercy are expressed at the same time.

And never is that clearer than at the cross of Calvary.  It was there that God’s justice and mercy met in the profoundest possible way.  God was absolutely just because sin was punished, and He was absolutely merciful because He took the punishment upon Himself in the Person of Jesus Christ.

As the Belgic Confession says:

“God therefore manifested His justice against His Son when He laid our iniquities upon Him and poured forth His mercy and goodness on us, who were guilty and worthy of damnation.”

The sins of Jerusalem were punished when that city was destroyed.  The sins of Nineveh were punished when that city was destroyed.  The sins of the world will be punished on the Day of Judgment.  But, thank God, our sins were punished when Jesus died on the cross.

For those who repent and believe God’s justice is past, and His mercy will go on forever.  The storm is over, the sun is shining and they live under the rainbow of His grace.  But for those who refuse to repent, do not believe and ignore the cross, the storm is still to come; and there will be no rainbow at the end of it, because there will be no end of it.  The storm of God’s wrath will last forever.

How is it with you today?  How is it with your sins?  Have they been punished in the past, or are they still to be punished in the future?  Where will you spend eternity?  In heaven, which is the ultimate in God’s mercy and love?  Or in hell, which is the ultimate in God’s justice and wrath?

And So, when we read the Bible we don’t have to choose between a just God and a merciful God.  We have a God who is both just and merciful.  We can’t play the one virtue off against the other.  He is perfectly merciful and He is perfectly just.  He is as just as he is merciful and as merciful as He is just.

And you can prove that simply by looking at the cross of Calvary.  It was there that His justice burned and His mercy shone.

Amen.