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At the Gates of Glory

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Psalm 122:1-2 (NASB)
1  I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the LORD.”
2  Our feet are standing Within your gates, O Jerusalem,

Daniel 9:2-6 (NASB)
2  in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, observed in the books the number of the years which was revealed as the word of the LORD to Jeremiah the prophet for the completion of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years.
3  So I gave my attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes.
4  I prayed to the LORD my God and confessed and said, “Alas, O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and lovingkindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments,
5  we have sinned, committed iniquity, acted wickedly and rebelled, even turning aside from Your commandments and ordinances.
6  “Moreover, we have not listened to Your servants the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings, our princes, our fathers and all the people of the land.

Daniel 9:9-17 (NASB)
9  “To the Lord our God belong compassion and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against Him;
10  nor have we obeyed the voice of the LORD our God, to walk in His teachings which He set before us through His servants the prophets.
11  “Indeed all Israel has transgressed Your law and turned aside, not obeying Your voice; so the curse has been poured out on us, along with the oath which is written in the law of Moses the servant of God, for we have sinned against Him.
12  “Thus He has confirmed His words which He had spoken against us and against our rulers who ruled us, to bring on us great calamity; for under the whole heaven there has not been done anything like what was done to Jerusalem.
13  “As it is written in the law of Moses, all this calamity has come on us; yet we have not sought the favor of the LORD our God by turning from our iniquity and giving attention to Your truth.
14  “Therefore the LORD has kept the calamity in store and brought it on us; for the LORD our God is righteous with respect to all His deeds which He has done, but we have not obeyed His voice.
15  “And now, O Lord our God, who have brought Your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and have made a name for Yourself, as it is this day—we have sinned, we have been wicked.
16  “O Lord, in accordance with all Your righteous acts, let now Your anger and Your wrath turn away from Your city Jerusalem, Your holy mountain; for because of our sins and the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and Your people have become a reproach to all those around us.
17  “So now, our God, listen to the prayer of Your servant and to his supplications, and for Your sake, O Lord, let Your face shine on Your desolate sanctuary.

What a difference a generation makes. Daniel, believed to be a part of the first deportations to Babylon around 605 B.C., bore witness to the desolation of God’s people and His temple.  The identity of God’s people was associated with the city of Jerusalem. Daniel remained faithful apart from the geographical association and served God personally, even bringing the knowledge of God Most High to the gates of Babylon. At the time of 536 B.C., Daniel called upon a covenant God to restore a national identity again for the sake of His name.

Warnings of the reproach of God’s people are explicitly recorded throughout Scripture from the time of Moses and his Deuteronomic homily.  Even in the time of David and God’s choice of an early king to govern His people, the warning is very conspicuous:

2 Samuel 7:12-16 (NASB)
12  “When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom.
13  “He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
14  “I will be a father to him and he will be a son to Me; when he commits iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men and the strokes of the sons of men,
15  but My lovingkindness shall not depart from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you.
16  “Your house and your kingdom shall endure before Me forever; your throne shall be established forever.”‘”

Worship took preparation. Worship was preceded by expectation. To the devotee, it is an approach to the gates of God’s throne. David and Daniel both stood in defense of the name of God Most High in the face of a dominant nation. Zerubbabel said in Zechariah 4:6, “Not by might nor by power but by my Spirit, says the Lord Almighty.” A prayer attributed to Blaise Pascal says, “Lord, help me to do great things as though they were little, since I do them with your power; and little things as though they were great, since I do them in your name.”

 

Mission

Theodicy

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In a majority of biblical accounts, God’s people were more concerned about the justice upon the wicked then they were about their own personal struggles and afflictions. Job sought out a Redeemer who would be and Advocate on his behalf only to say, “NO! He did everything right. He even interceded on behalf of his children through prayer and sacrifice.”

Looking at the context of Amos 5:24, the message to those who have defiled the name of the Lord, His Temple, and His offerings is the burden of Amos and the call for justice. “Let justice roll down like water and righteousness like a stream.” A deluge of cleansing was needed to disinfect God’s people.

Habakkakuk likewise called out to God (1:1-4), “How long shall I cry out and you, oh Lord, will not hear?” There was injustice.  In place of the Lord God, Israel had graven images of foreign gods. It was typically their practice to blame their gods when things went wrong. Child sacrifice and mutilation was the answer when the harvest was not plentiful or when drought had stricken the land.

When people blame God for suffering, they have reduced God to nothing more than an image graven from a heart of stone. Educating the world on how a child of God should act in the midst of suffering will go a long way to show the world a living God.

 Theodicy– “defense of God.”  God’s justice demands an answer to lawlessness.  Sin must be answered with its consequences for God to be holy. God’s Word reveals the “full disclosure” of His holiness. His Word does not hide His faithfulness and His justice We should have certain expectations of a Holy, Righteous, and Just God as we should have expectations in anything else (see Romans 3). The Book of Romans tells us we have God’s law instinctively written on our hearts. God is the God of law. All creation falls under the law of God. God is fair by sticking to His rules, even though it means that it applies to us, we should expect nothing less than consistency. One person will not be saved by good works and another by Christ. Does not our realization of disobedience and the consciousness of sin demand a greater response to the grace and mercy of God? If by our good works we were saved and suffered the consequence of sin in the immediate sense, we would have no need for a Savior? Romans 3:26 sees God as both Just and Justifier. Without the understanding of God’s Law, we would be lost in our sin and not aware of it. All have sinned (Romans 3:23) and the wages of our work of sin is death (6:23). The only way to the Father is through the Son.

Job is not so much a story of injustice suffered wrongly but is a story of victory and justice for right-doing to extend outside the limits of a single person to expand broadly to a periphery of witnesses. John 9:1-3 is the scripture where Jesus was questioned with the sins of a blind man’s parents. The victory and purpose for many who would see Jesus as the “light of the world” was at the expense of one person’s temporary affliction. Scripture also speaks of mortality being swallowed up in death and creation being prone to decay and corruption (Romans 8:22, 21) in HOPE. We must define again what evil is and what sin is. Evil can be defined as that which works contrary to God. It is not evil when suffering works toward his providence, right?  Many things today come from bad interpretation. Looking at Hitler, and more recently in the Middle East, we can call these men—evil men. The two young men recently who decapitated their mother and severed her hands are evil. Psalm 11:5 says that God hates the one who loves violence. There’s no such sentiment in the Bible that leads us to believe that God only hates the sin and not the sinner.  What justifies the condition that brought about their propensity toward evil?  In these cases, it’s sin. The effects of evil and the environment of suffering for the preservation of the saints of God is providence. Remember the houses built on the sand and the rock? For the non-Christian, every day is a chance for repentance, no matter how we look at it and His will toward their salvation. Anything suffered by an unsaved person is an expression of God’s holiness, not an expression of his love, or lack of love. To sin is to rebel against God’s law and therefore against His own holiness. Sin separates us from righteousness and affects us with death.

To live outside of a relation with God IS to live contrary to our created purpose.  Genesis: and things were created after “its kind.” We are created God-kind FOR a relationship with Him. That is why we can become brothers and sister with Christ when we are transformed and born again as a new creature through the breath of God’s Spirit and implant of the seed of His Word. To attempt to relate with creation or anything that isn’t God is to deny our purpose. To look at God as unreasonable for allowing suffering is accepting a relationship with creation and death, not our Creator and life.