January 30, 2004

            When recently reading of a local burglary, I began to think of what can happen when a person has no sense of God’s presence in his life.  A person who can storm into a house, bully a sick and elderly person or a terrified child, can hardly be said to really believe that a good God exists or that He is attentive to His creation.

            Consider the depths to which a person can sink when he or she believes that there are no consequences for his or her actions or thinks that “no one will ever know”!  What holds such a person back?  The Bible says in Psalm 14:1 that “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’  They are corrupt, their deeds are vile….”  The result of a contemptuous disregard for God is corruption and deeds reeking of the stench of vileness!  If there is no belief in God, the human heart cannot help but sink into the swirling maelstrom of selfishness and evil.

Of course, we must have the right kind of “belief”, too.  Belief in a harsh, tyrannical deity can leave us vainly trying to “perform” for His favor or trying to earn a salvation, the price of which cannot be met by human effort.  That God is sadistically “waiting for a chance to toss you into hell” is not a very encouraging thought!

On the other hand, it’s almost as bad to believe in either a sugary, wishy-washy God who’s just too big a “pushover” to ever confront us for our being “naughty” or a God who’s nearsighted and just a bit deaf, without His glasses or batteries for His hearing aid.  If this last notion is what we subconsciously believe about God, we’ll feel as though we can simply do anything we please confident in thinking that “God isn’t ‘man enough’ to stop me”.

            In response to such reoccurring “dumb ideas about God”, the Bible announces two equally vital attributes of the Lord that both complement and uphold the other.  The first is that God is perfectly righteous and, consequently, judges sin.  Consider the fierce but encouraging words in Proverbs 24:19-20, “Do not fret because of evil men or be envious of the wicked, for the evil man has no future hope, and the lamp of the wicked will be snuffed out.”

             “No future hope?”  Does it really mean that one’s wickedness can result in his being “snuffed out?”  Well, yes.  It means exactly this if his wickedness runs to its ultimate and logical conclusion.  It is a fatal error to not realize that God takes human wickedness seriously.  “The Righteous One takes note of the house of the wicked and brings the wicked to ruin” (Proverbs 21:12).

But sadly, as crime and immorality escalate both nationally and in our own backyards, it is abundantly clear that we are collectively failing to realize this truth.  The evidence isn’t only in the recent plunderings of area homes.  It is evidenced every time we nonchalantly shrug off the lack of integrity in the workplace, when we’re lazy in the care of the health and well-being of our families, or when we turn away those in genuine need though they cry out for help.

            The only response that one can expect from a perfectly righteous and holy God is a perfectly righteous and holy judgment.

            The second attribute then is our only hope.  For though our individual and collective rebellions earn us a wage of judgment, He lays before our feet a season of grace, a window of opportunity to turn from our own way and follow Him.  “Will evildoers never learn – those who devour My people as men eat bread and who do not call on the LORD?” (Psalm 14:4).

            What should we do in this short but wonderful era in which we might choose to turn to Him?  Our response should be what is said in Hosea 10:12, “Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the LORD, until He comes and showers righteousness on you.”

            Such grace is not cheap:  it cost God His very best so that the shower of His righteousness might completely cleanse the horror of our sin.  God’s very best was the sending of His Son to receive upon His own body His Father’s judgment of human wickedness.  May we individually and as a people respond to such an offer of grace by turning from that which will only drown us in destruction to that which offers us life beyond the limits of our imagination.

(Thom Mollohan has ministered in southern Ohio the past eight years and is currently the pastor of Pathway Community Church.   He and his wife are the parents of three children.   He may be reached by email at pastorthom@pathwaygallipolis.com).