A good Monday Crosswind Church!
It is not uncommon for Bible students and theologians alike to be confronted with the seeming differences between the God of the New and Old Testaments. The Old Testament told us of stories of a vengeful God Who would not relent in judging the enemies of Israel. When He commanded Israel to destroy the pagan nations around it, He wanted total annihilation which critics of the Bible regarded as genocidal. In some instances God did not want Israel to take any prisoners, which led to the slaughter even of women, children and livestock. These stories in the Old Testament have been used by prominent atheistic adversaries of Christianity to attack God and have also become a major apologetic pain point in our defense of the faith. I believe though that it doesn't take too much to reconcile the God of the Old and New Testaments. In the New Testament, Jesus revealed and personified a gracious heavenly Father Who loves the world so much (John 3:16). The encompassing grace of God seen in Jesus and His finished work far outweighs the stories in the Old Testament. Romans 8:32 says "If He Who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also, along with Him, freely give us ALL things". Someone with an open mind would just have to conclude, that on the basis of the lavishness of God's love found in the New Testament, He then has every right and every good reason for His actions in the Old. It takes faith to understand that God's every move as recorded in scripture is a build up to His grand master plan of carrying out His greatest act of love through Jesus' death on the cross. Furthermore, the Lord Jesus claimed that Moses wrote about Him in the Old Testament. Therefore, we cannot divorce the God of the Old Testament from the New. The lavish grace of God in the Bible, however, is not only found in the New Testament. In an honest study of the Old Testament, one should be confounded more by God's extravagant forgiveness of the most despicable figures in Israel's history. We see that in the story of the most wicked kings of both the Northern and Southern kingdoms of Israel, Ahab and Manasseh. God pronounced condemnation and calamity upon Ahab through the prophet Elijah because of his idolatrous and murderous practices. The Bible was so clear in describing Ahab's wickedness and how deserving He was of God's judgement. "But there was no one like Ahab who sold himself to do wickedness in the sight of the Lord, because Jezebel his wife stirred him up. And he behaved very abominably in following idols, according to all that the Amorites had done, whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel." (1 Kings 21:25-26) However, when Ahab responded to God's word through Elijah by tearing his clothes, putting on sackcloth and mourning, immediately God forgave him and said : "Because he has humbled himself before Me, I will not bring the calamity in his days. In the days of his son I will bring the calamity on his house.” (1 Kings 21:29) The same kind of forgiveness and delay of judgement was seen in the story of king Manasseh of Judah, whose wicked rule of 55 years was the longest in Jerusalem. Yet God showed tremendous grace when Manasseh repented and humbled himself. The judgement of God however, was still carried out after the time of Ahab and Manasseh. Was God unfair in forgiving these two wicked rulers? This is a show of God's extravagant grace in the Old Testament. God remained holy and just, as the national punishment and consequence of sin, though delayed, was still meted out in the next generation by their destruction and exile to Assyria and Babylon. We see this kind of grace in face of impending judgement over and over in the Old Testament; with the people of Nineveh after Jonah's preaching; in the humbling of king Nebuchadnezzar; in His holding back His hand from wiping out idolatrous Israel in response to Moses' plea, and many other stories. Truly God's ways are higher than ours, He is righteous in all His deeds. We can only trust that His judgements are always true. Some of His decrees and dealings in the Old Testament may be hard to understand, but He remains consistent in one thing. His unlimited grace is always present, even in the face of impending judgement. Praised be His Holy Name!
In Christ, Pastor Ramon
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