Old Sandals

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter….our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king.  But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up.”   Daniel 3:16-18

“He is able.”  “And He will.”  “But if not.”  Where did such simple yet forceful words come from?  We might imagine the three Hebrew youths recalling the proclamation of the prophet Isaiah as the guards brought them forward to stand before the king.

He is able.  Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth neither faints nor is weary.

And He will.   He brings the princes to nothing.  He makes the judges of the earth useless.

But if not.  Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel: My way is hidden fom the Lord, and my just claim is passed over by my God?…Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But those who wait on the Lord…

The Chaldeans answered the king, and said, “There is not a man on earth who can tell the king’s matter; therefore no king, lord, or ruler has ever asked such things of any magician, astrologer, or Chaldean.  It is a difficult thing that the king requests, and there is no other who can tell it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.”   Daniel 2:10-11

“With all due respect, it isn’t done that way, O King.  Tell us the dream first, and then we’ll get back with you.  Only the gods above could actually tell you what you dreamed, O King, and they aren’t anywhere around that we might inquire of them.”

You know where this is going.  The Christian gospel that God—God—became a real man, and not only a man but a servant, and not only a servant but a sacrifice for the sins of mankind, is absolutely a unique idea in history.

It is news, good news that is too good to be true, except that it is…

Then the king instructed Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs, to bring some of the children of Israel and some of the king’s descendants and some of the nobles, young men in whom there was no blemish, but good-looking, gifted in all wisdom, possessing knowledge and quick to understand, who  had ability to serve in the king’s palace, and whom they might teach the language and literature of the Chaldeans.   Daniel 1:3-4

It may be that Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah suffered castration in Babylon. They were, after all, under the charge of Ashpenaz, the master of the eunuchs. And castration was often the fate of men taken captive by ancient conquering nations.

Nevertheless, these four youths were God’s men in God’s time. They remained faithful despite extremely difficult circumstances and displayed exemplary courage.  This is all the more remarkable if they were indeed eunuchs. To God be the glory!

And the Lord God of their fathers sent warnings to them by His messengers, rising up early and sending them, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place.  But they mocked the messengers of God, despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, till there was no remedy.
2 Chronicles 36:15-16

We should not understand the wrath of God as a pot of water on a slow heat, rising slowly but steadily in temperature—because of our accumulated sins—until it reaches the boiling point, when it is poured out upon rebellious mankind in all of its scalding fury.

On the other hand, we should not understand the wrath of God as little more than a figure of speech, a metaphor for the troubles of mankind, brought on by the foolishness of their own decisions.

How should we understand the wrath of God, then?  It is not His first response to sin and rebellion, to be sure.  It is rather a last resort, after all merciful endeavors have been exhausted, after having sent many messengers—rising up early and sending them—only to have their voices ignored by apathy, or silenced by imprisonment or death.

The knowledge of the kindness and mercy of God should lead us to repentance.  The knowledge of the wrath of God should keep us from taking His kindness and mercy for granted.

The joy of our heart has ceased.  Our dance has turned into mourning. The crown has fallen  from  our head. Woe to us, for we have sinned! Because of this our heart is faint.  Because of these  things  our eyes grow dim.  Because of Mount Zion which is desolate, with foxes walking about on it. You, O Lord, remain forever. Your throne from generation to generation. Why do You forget us forever, and  forsake us for so long a time? Turn us back to You, O Lord, and we will be restored. Renew our days as of old, unless You have utterly rejected us, and are very angry with us!   Lamentations 5:15-22

We are all familiar with the expression, “God moves in mysterious ways.”  It is certainly true that God is sovereign; He can do whatever He wants.  There is no mystery here; this must be the case, by definition.

However, God is not capricious. He is not arbitrary. He does not act willy-nilly.  His character—His glory—is revealed through His actions in history.  How does a righteous, merciful God work in a fallen world with fallen sinners?  That is what the Bible—His story—is all about.

The hands of the compassionate women have cooked their own children.  They became food for them in the destruction of the daughter of my people. The Lord has fulfilled His fury, He has poured out His fierce anger. He kindled a fire in Zion, and it has devoured its foundations.   Lamentations 4:10-11

Pressing on the upward way is at times quite difficult, but to turn from it is to risk falling into the depths of utter despair and destruction.

This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope.  Through  the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not.  They are  new every morning. Great  is Your faithfulness. The Lord  is  my portion…therefore I hope in Him! The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul  who  seeks Him.  It is  good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord….For the Lord will not cast off forever. Though He causes grief, yet He will show compassion according to the multitude of His mercies. For He does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men….Who is  he who  speaks and it comes to pass,  when the Lord has not commanded it?   Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that woe and well-being proceed?   Lamentations 3:21-26, 31-33, 37-38

Salvation is the gracious gift of God, but it is not altogether one-sided. There is a give and take to it.  The Lord gives and we take, we receive.  The gift is not something we can counterfeit.  If He doesn’t give, there is nothing for us to receive.  His giving, then, is paramount.  But our receiving is indispensable.  Our refusing the gift doesn’t negate the gift.  Our receiving the gift is an act of faith, but that doesn’t make it a “work”.  We are saved by His grace, through our faith.  And even our faith is His gift to us, another gift for us to receive.

This give and take is perhaps (perhaps) best summed up by an Eastern Orthodox Bishop, Kallistos Ware, who put it this way:

“What God does [in saving us] is incomparably more important than what we humans do; yet our voluntary participation in God’s saving action is altogether indispensable. Our cooperation with God is genuinely free, but there is nothing in our good actions that is exclusively our own. At every point our human cooperation is itself the work of the Holy Spirit. The inter-relationship between divine grace and human freedom remains always a mystery beyond our comprehension.”

Standing like an enemy, He has bent His bow.  With His right hand, like an adversary, He has slain all  who were  pleasing to His eye.  On the tent of the daughter of Zion, He has poured out His fury like fire. The Lord was like an enemy. He has swallowed up Israel, He has swallowed up all her palaces. He has destroyed her strongholds, and has increased mourning and lamentation in the daughter of Judah.   Lamentations 2:4-5

We may liken the wrath of God to a pot of water on a hot stove which is slowly brought to a boil by the wickedness of mankind, and then poured out in fury on them on the day of judgement.  He has poured out His fury like fire.

We may also (or rather?) liken the wrath of God to the stove itself, dangerously hot to be sure, but only to those who approach it in a careless manner.  The Lord is like an enemy.  He actually is the lover of mankind.  Not the enemy.  But if in our foolish and rebellious hearts we regard Him as the enemy, there are consequences.

Is it  nothing to you, all you who pass by? Behold and see If there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which has been brought on me, which the Lord has inflicted In the day of His fierce anger.   Lamentations 1:12

Although the world can barely  contain the volume of scholarly books written about the cross of Jesus Christ, it is not primarily, nor should it be, a subject for academic inquiry.  The death of the Son of God on a Roman cross is rather something to reverently behold.  Behold and see, with the eyes of faith. 

God is certainly speaking to us all the time, but He speaks most forcefully out of the stillness, at those times and in those places when the other “noises” of life have been quieted.  When the jeering had stopped, when the gawking crowds had largely dispersed, when the garments had been gambled away—it was then the centurion was able to stop, look and listen.  And his response simply but forcefully sums up all the writings in all the scholarly books when he said, “Surely, this man was the Son of God.”

Then all the men who knew that their wives had burned incense to other gods, with all the women who stood by, a great multitude, and all the people who dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying:  “As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we will not listen to you! But we will certainly do whatever has gone out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, were well-off, and saw no trouble. But since we stopped burning incense to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword and by famine.”   Jeremiah 44:15-18

“We will not listen to you!”  The force with which these words are spoken to the prophet— in light of the destruction which has taken place in Judah and Jerusalem, which destruction was prophesied for many years by the mouth of the very same prophet—is  chilling.

It is not as if these rebellious men and women were utterly devoid of the grace of God.  It was the grace of God which sent Jeremiah to them in the first place.  And, in one sense, they could not have even rebelled against God apart from His grace.  What is man, anyway?  But they cast aside God’s gracious warnings and refused to listen, preferring instead their own “damn” way, if you will.

These words spoken so long ago are chilling, but we should also find them sobering.  Sobering because you and I have also to decide how we will respond to the word of the Lord.  Recall these words spoken by another of God’s prophets.  To us today.  “For if the word spoken through messengers proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just reward,  how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?”  How indeed.