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Saturday, April 27, 2013 The compatibility of bringing grief and showing compassion. Lamentations 3:31-33 NLT For no one is abandoned by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he also shows compassion because of the greatness of his unfailing love. For he does not enjoy hurting people or causing them sorrow. ___________ I've finished reading Jeremiah and Lamentations this week. I've also been preparing a Bible study on Joshua chapter 11. I'm very concerned for you and for me. I think we have deliberately misrepresented God. We think we know what's best. We are quite sure we know right from wrong. So we think we know how God should act. We stand in judgement over God. We gather others who hold the same opinion as us and feel smug. We feel self - righteous. We're confident we know how God behaves. God is a nice God. Or we dream up an evolved God, a new God, a changed God of the New Testament. BUT God is the same yesterday, today, and forever! God does not change. What God does is right. We are not better than God nor do we know better than him. We can not take from God what he has claimed. We can not attribute to another what God has attributed to himself. When I read these passages I have to reevaluate my opinion of God. I must fear God. I must trust him. I must follow him because he demands it. I must not think I am better than God. I must not think I know better than God. I must not make God in my puny image. I must also not use God as my sword! God is not my tool for my twisted sense of vengeance or my bigger gun brought to the shoot out! I do not choose what is just. God is not up for the highest bidder. I've seen both these approaches to God's more uncomfortable accounts of judgment. From the first chapters of Genesis to the last chapters of Revelation, God has held out death and all its horrors as a judgement for disobedience. And God does demand love. We showers us with blessings and he scares us with terrors! But all this is to the end that we would know him, fear him, and love him! Far too often we have glossed over the overwhelming inescapable wretched judgements brought about by God against his people for their hard hearted spiteful rebellion. But then we also have ignored his self sacrificing, compassion, grace and love! In fact we have ignored God altogether unless it is to use him as a genie in a lamp, a scapegoat for evil and trouble or a weapon against our enemies. We can not make God for our own purposes! We did not invent right and wrong. We are not trustworthy sources of ethics, morals or reality. We are flawed and selfish. We should stop making idols that bear the name of Jesus, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit. We must cease reading the Bible to accomplish our own ends. We are not God. We actually misunderstand who God is or what he is like. A proper view of God should be our goal. And to that end we must challenge our preconceptions. We must not avoid the unavoidable. We must force our minds to wrestle with the truth. Our world is full of apparent paradoxes. We don't know everything. In fact we actually really know very little. Whether we are people of faith or people of reason, whether we are say we follow science or the Bible or feel we have reconciled them both. We will have to trust other sources, we will have to accept we can't explain all the apparent paradoxes. But we still need to grapple with them. We need to be humbled. We need to resist making God in our own image. God the bear Lamentations 3:10 (NLT) 10He has hidden like a bear or a lion,waiting to attack me. Lamentations 3:11 (NLT) 11He has dragged me off the path and torn me in pieces,leaving me helpless and devastated. Lamentations 3:12 (NLT) 12He has drawn his bowand made me the target for his arrows. Lamentations 3:13 (NLT) 13He shot his arrowsdeep into my heart. Lamentations 3:14 (NLT) 14My own people laugh at me.All day long they sing their mocking songs.