Before the Throne of God Above

Before you read the rest of this post, take a moment to finish this sentence on paper or in your head:

"The God I believe in would never..."

Think about that for a moment. The omniscient, omnipotent, sovereign God of the universe would never... do what? Our God is in the heavens; He does all that he pleases. What can we say he would never do? Yet many people have an answer to that question, and it often comes in the form of another question:

"How can a loving, merciful God send people to Hell?"

When people ask themselves this question, they are leaving out several important attributes of God and some important background information that answers itself.

The first thing we need to understand is that God is holy, and we are not. Holiness is perfect, spotless righteousness. If God came into contact with sin, He would no longer be holy. Since every single person is a sinner, we must therefore be eternally separated from the holy God. The physical place where God is not found is Hell. People don't choose whether or not they are going to Hell, but rather we all have no choice aside from Hell due to our unholiness.

Okay, so God is holy. But He is still loving, so how can He send people to Hell?

A second important attribute of God is that he is just. People often confuse 'just' with 'fair.' We must realize that they are not the same thing. Fairness means everyone gets the same thing. Justice means everyone gets what they deserve. In this case they would originally result in the same thing: everyone would go to Hell. In fact, everyone is born headed straight there. However, we must remember the attribute we are more comfortable with: God is merciful. While justice means everyone gets what they deserve, mercy means everyone gets more than what they deserve. Therefore God sent His son Jesus, who lived a righteous life and took on all of our sin, and died on the cross as punishment for them. The illustration my youth pastor used today was that we are all in a river to Hell. God is not sending to Hell, but we are making our own way there. This is not merely due to rejecting the gospel. We are making our own way to Hell because of all of our sins, that sin included. But God, being rich in mercy, rescues us by pulling us out of the river of our sins.

If we were comparing this to a court of law, we would see it in this way: God is the judge. He looks at us and says, "You are guilty, and you deserve death, but I forgive you." That explanation makes sense. But that's really not the best explanation of what happens when those in Christ are judged. A better illustration would be God the judge looking at us and saying, "You are NOT guilty." It has to be this way because if we were guilty, it wouldn't matter if we were forgiven. We would still not be holy and therefore would still be unable to stand in the presence of God. The only way to stand in the presence of God is to be holy; to have no guilt. And only through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ can we say that our sins are dead, and we are hidden in Christ's life, and therefore not guilty.

The best way I have heard it worded is in the song, Before the Throne of God Above:

Before the throne of God above
I have a strong and perfect plea:
A great High Priest, whose name is Love,
Who ever lives and pleads for me.

My name is graven on His hands,
My name is written on His heart;
I know that while in heaven He stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart
No tongue can bid me thence depart.

When Satan tempts me to despair,
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look, and see Him there
Who made an end to all my sin.

Because the sinless Savior died,
My sinful soul is counted free;
For God the just is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me
To look on Him and pardon me

Behold Him there, the Risen Lamb
My perfect, spotless righteousness,
The great unchangeable I am,
The King of glory and of grace!

One with Himself I cannot die
My soul is purchased by His blood
My life is hid with Christ on high,
With Christ, my Savior and my God
With Christ, my Savior and my God

We will never be able to fathom the depth Christ's love for us. How can we even try to understand God's grace? We could never count the vast amount of sin in our own individual lives. Yet Jesus paid for all of it, and we have been given the gift of salvation. One day we will inhabit the New Heaven and the New Earth and our creator, the one, true, holy God will dwell among us. That is not something that ought to be taken for granted.

The final attribute of God that is important to answering this question is that God is sovereign. He is in complete control, and He does whatever pleases Him. We struggle to understand this sometimes, and I think we probably always will. We simply need to understand that God does whatever he wants to do, and he doesn't have to explain it to us. The illustration in Romans 9:20 puts it into perspective nicely. God is the potter and we are the clay, and we have no right or reason to ask God why He does something. We should always remember Romans 8:28. No matter what the situation is, God is working it together for our good on the eternal scale because we love Him, even if we cannot see it.

So we should not be asking ourselves how a loving, merciful God could send people to Hell. We should be in awestruck wonder that the holy, just, sovereign God rescued us from Hell. And we should more importantly be sharing it with others and glorify God in everything we do because He has rescued us.

"For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ." -1 Thessalonians 5:9

Establishes Means Establishes

Jonah was a prophet. God literally spoke to him. He and God talked to each other. Do you ever wonder what on earth he was thinking when he decided he could run from God?

The God he spoke to was omnipresent. You can't run away from someone that's everywhere. Why did he even try? Lately I've noticed something. Regardless of who the target audience is, pop culture seems to have one incredibly important message for us. So many new-age movies and television shows find it incredibly important that we understand that we are in control of our lives. William Ernest Henley ended his famous poem, Invictus, by saying, "I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul."

That sounds so inspirational and moving. Everyone likes the sound of that at first. But then we start to think about it. Do I really control my fate? The idea in and of itself is absolutely ridiculous. You don't tell your loved ones when the time is right for them to pass away. You don't tell your banker how much money you should have. You don't tell the world what you will do with your life. Sure, we can dream. We can wish. You can want something with all of your heart. You can work your life away trying to reach that goal. That's wonderful, and I respect you for working towards your goal. But you don't decide if and when you're going to get there.

As I said, God gives and takes away (Job 1). You can work for things you want and dream about things you don't have, but don't forget where they came from. You aren't entitled to a great life. God gave you everything you have. He always has and always will have a perfect and sovereign plan for each and every one of us. I said a long time ago that taking matters into your own hands won't usually work out. Jonah tried to get away from God, but he didn't get very far. In the end, God's will was done, just the way it is in our lives.

Proverbs 3:5 says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding." We need to accept the fact that we truly are not in control. God will do what God will do, and we need to understand that as much as we hate to admit it, God is right and we are wrong. And what we want isn't always what we need. It's hard to accept. I for one certainly do not like to be wrong in my thoughts, words, or actions. But guess what? We aren't perfect.

I guess all I'm trying to say is that I don't agree with the popular message that we are in control. Our sovereign, omnipotent God is in control, and that definitely doesn't bother me. Sure, there will be times when I'll be disappointed that I don't get what I want. There will be times when I won't understand what's going on. But the Lord establishes my steps, and nothing could bring me more peace.

"The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps." -Proverbs 16:9

Is God A Vending Machine?

It's so easy to trust Christ when everything is falling apart, but what happens when everything seems okay?

Most people have been told at one point in their lives that when things get rough, they can fall on Jesus, metaphorically speaking. But why does it never occur to people to trust Jesus when things are easy? Doesn't it make more sense to assume God is at the center of the seemingly easy parts of our lives just as we assume He is of the hard parts? He is God, regardless of how life is going.
When things aren't going your way, what is your natural response? As a believer, your response is probably to bring your requests to God, trusting in His sovereign plan for you. And many of us know from experience that He may or may not answer these requests the way you hope He will. So when He doesn't, you keep persevering, knowing God is in control. But what do you do when He does?
Most often, we sort of forget that the reason we don't think we need to make time for God is because He's the reason we aren't in major trouble. He provides for our needs, and more often than not, we just don't remind ourselves that it was He, and not us.

Are we not all sinners? Have we forgotten that if not for Jesus we would all spend eternity separated from God? We need Jesus regardless of our earthly circumstances. I think the problem is that we focus too much on this life. In the craziness of the moment, we forget we have a lot more ahead of us than a few decades. So when things in this life seem perfect, though they never really are, we forget that if all you ever got from God was salvation through Jesus Christ, you would have much more than you deserve. You'd be too focused on how wrong things in your life are going to remember that. And then things start looking up, thanks to God, and you forget about Jesus again because life is great, so why worry about eternity?

God is not a vending machine. He's not your personal instant problem solver. God gives and takes away with His own perfect reasons. So rather than focus on what God is not doing for us when we aren't happy, we should start focusing on the fact that he gave us life in the first place, which we didn't deserve. And we should remember that we who are in Christ have an eternity with him. That alone should bring us a joy that we can't even contain. So let's rejoice in the Lord always. Let's share the joy with everyone. Let's remember that Jesus is all we need and not worry about anything else. Regardless of our circumstances and our feelings, let's remember to trust Christ in everything.
"Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock." -Isaiah 26:4