Destroying Talking Lego Buildings

Suggested Reading: Romans 9:14-29

I've always loved watching the difference between the way little girls play with Legos and the way little boys play with them (please forgive the stereotyping I'm about to do based on my experience). Little girls like to build something and then play with it and admire it. While boys sometimes do that as well, little boys are just as likely to build something for the sole purpose of destroying it. They enjoy putting something together just so they can knock it down and I admit I did the same thing when I was a little boy. When girls and boys play together this can lead to conflict, and eventually to separate building endeavors. Often I hear the little girls ask the question, "Why do you build it if you're just going to knock it down?" and just as often I hear the boys respond with something like, "I built it. I can knock it down if I want to."  Imagine for just a moment, though, if one of those Lego construction projects suddenly spoke up and said, "You can't knock me down! I have rights!" While children might stop and wonder at the suddenly speaking legos, they might just as easily laugh and say, "Oh yeah, I built you and I can knock you down if I want."

As human beings created by God, the human race has grown increasingly arrogant through the centuries, believing we have the right to tell God what he can do and what he can't do. Even Christian theologians today have the audacity today to decide what God can and can't do based on their own ideas and human systems of moralities. Paul fought this same attitude from people who didn't want to face God's judgment for their sin and questioned God's right to act as judge. Paul responded by asking, But who are you, a mere man, to talk back to God? Will what is formed say to the one who formed it, “Why did you make me like this?” Or has the potter no right over the clay, to make from the same lump one piece of pottery for honor and another for dishonor? (Romans 9:20-21, HCSB).

We serve a God who is loving and kind, who extends mercy to us because of His great love for us. But we must never take God's kindness and patience for granted and start believing that God owes us kindness and patience. As his beloved children, we can trust that God will give us mercy because God has promised it to us, but we must never presume upon it. We must never begin to treat God with the attitude that he owes us anything. God has the right to do whatever God wants to do with us. The fact that God doesn't simply destroy us and has promised not to doesn't mean we should treat God like he can't.

Have you been presuming on God's grace? Doing things you know you shouldn't because God has to forgive you if you ask him? Have you been pushing the boundaries without worrying about the consequences because you know God will be patient with you? Normally, we call that taking advantage of someone. As kind and merciful as God is, trying to take advantage of God is a dangerous game to play.

Rejoicing Over the Evil Step-Mother's Demise

Suggested Reading: Isaiah 8:5-10

I have always been amazed at the number of Cinderella type movies that come out every year. One of the things that nearly all of these movies have in common is that the evil step-mother character gets what's coming to her in the end. Usually, the step-mother experiences some kind of humiliation, often forced to spend the rest of her life doing the kind of back-breaking labor that she had previously forced Cinderella to do. Just as often, the step-mother loses her fortune to Cinderella because it really belonged to her all along. On rare occasions these movies kill off the step-mother character at the end. The reason we always see the step-mother "get what's coming to her" is simple: we enjoy seeing people paid back what they deserve. It's human nature.

Unfortunately, our joy at seeing another person experience well-deserved pain is not something our Heavenly Father is proud of. In the book of Isaiah, God had promised delivery and judgment against the northern kingdoms of Israel and Syria for teaming up to attack Judah. But instead of simply being grateful that God was protecting and avenging them, the people of Judah began to rejoice that Israel and Syria would get what was coming to them. So God sent this message through Isaiah: "My care for the people of Judah is like the gently flowing waters of Shiloah, but they have rejected it. They are rejoicing over what will happen to King Rezin and King Pekah. Therefore, the Lord will overwhelm them with a mighty flood from the Euphrates River- the king of Assyria and all his glory. This flood will overflow all its channels and sweep into Judah until it is chin deep. It will spread its wings, submerging your land from one end to the other, O Immanuel" (Isaiah 8:6-8, NLT).

Justice is important to God, but mercy is just as important, and God's desire is that we crave mercy for our enemies because we ourselves have received mercy. Rejoicing in another's pain or misfortune earns God's discipline in our own lives, no matter how much the other person deserves what's coming to them. When God sees us do things like rejoicing over the death of Osama Bin Laden, or celebrating that a murderer was executed, or gloating that our back-stabbing co-worker had her heart broken, we demonstrate that we do not value justice or mercy the way God does, that we are only interested in payback, and we earn God's judgment ourselves.

If we are truly children of the God who sent His Son to die for a world that rejected Him, our prayer would be for mercy; we would long to see the wrong-doer changed by the Spirit of God and transformed by the power of the Gospel; we would find ways to reach out to them just like our Father reached out to us. Even if they deserve it, we should never rejoice that someone gets what is coming to them.

When God Pulls An Intervention

Suggested Reading: Proverbs 19:11-19

From time to time, my wife enjoys watching a show called Intervention. Nearly every episode shows some person or another dealing with drug addictions. This person has typically been supported by one family member or another through bad decision after bad decision because that family member cannot bear to see their loved one live on the street or go hungry. As a result, these addicts never suffer the consequences for their actions. Not until the family members promise to cut the addict off, forcing the addict to go into recovery, does anything change. Only after facing the consequences for their bad choices does the addict begin to get some things straight.

The author of Proverbs discussed this dynamic in Proverbs 19:19 when he said, Hot- tempered people must pay the penalty. If you rescue them once, you will have to do it again (NLT). The author was talking about the need to let people suffer the consequences for losing their temper but the principle often applies to a variety of areas in life. Very often we, as stubborn and prideful people, refuse to learn our lessons until we face consequences for our bad decisions. Sometimes parents wrestle with this principle when raising their kids, afraid to let their kids struggle. But sometimes God has to apply this lesson with us.

Very often we pray for God to deliver us from terrible circumstances without acknowledging that our own bad decisions led to those terrible circumstances,  and without learning our lesson. We pray for God's mercy on us without realizing that the greater mercy is allowing us to suffer the consequences for our choices so that we learn our lesson rather than saving us and having to rescue us again later.  Sometimes, we would be better served praying that God would demonstrate to us where we made our mistakes than praying that God would deliver us.

Sometimes tragedy is just tragedy and hardship is simply circumstance. But sometimes we have caused our own problems and we will never learn our lessons until we have to face the mess we have created. If you are dealing with a disaster of your own making right now, pray that God will enable you to learn your lesson. In the long term, that is more merciful than saving you from your own mistakes

The LORD is an Avenger (Black Holes Included)

Suggested Reading: 2 Thessalonians 1:1-12

One of the places where the 2009 Star Trek movie diverged from the original Star Trek Television series was in the role of the planet Vulcan. In the 2009 movie, the villain, Nero, traveled back in time and destroyed Vulcan, murdering billions of people in the process. At the climax of the movie, Captain Kirk and his Vulcan first officer, Spock, have Nero's ship trapped at the edge of a black hole. Kirk contacts Nero and offers to render assistance but the villain is so consumed by his hate of Vulcans that he refuses. When Nero refuses his help, Kirk opens fire. When Kirk explains his offer of assistance to Spock, assuming that Spock would appreciate the non-violent gesture, Spock's understated, "Not in this circumstance, Captain," reminds the audience that Nero was an unrepentant genocidal murderer. In this particular instance, Spock did not want non-violence. Spock wanted the murder of billions of his fellow Vulcans avenged. The audience understood that, in this case, mercy was far too good for the genocidal Nero. The blood of all his victims cried out for justice.

We often think of God being represented through Jesus as a God of undying love and inexhaustible mercy, and we are right in that regard. But God cares as much about the victims as God cares about being merciful to the victimizer.  1 Thessalonians 4:6 reads, "This means one must not transgress against and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger of all these offenses, as we also previously told and warned you" (HCSB). 2 Thessalonians 1:6-8 tells us, "It is righteous for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you...taking vengeance with flaming fire on those who don’t know God and on those who don’t obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus" (HCSB).  We often focus on God's forgiveness for the sinner because we view ourselves as the transgressors and want mercy extended to us. But what if we are the victim like Spock? Suddenly justice sounds a lot better than mercy, right?

God is a God of both justice and mercy. Yes, God extends forgiveness to the repentant. But, caring for the victim, God extends justice to those who reject his mercy through unrepentance . God does not extend his justice because God is callous to the sinner's cries but because God is sensitive to the cries of the victim. God avenges the suffering of his people when the guilty party refuses to repent. This should comfort us because we know that God will bring us justice if those who cause us pain do not change their ways. But it should also give us pause when we refuse to acknowledge and rectify the hurt we have caused others. How will God mete out justice to us if we refuse to change our ways?

Yes, the Lord is merciful and loving, but the LORD is also an Avenger.