LOCKED, LATCHED, OR OPEN--DOORS (2 Kings 6-7)

The words that jumped out at me today struck me by their poetic extravagance. I'm not sure where I'll go with this, but we'll find out together.

Israel was in the middle of a 7 year famine (and still rebelling against God, but no surprise there). Unlike the dramatic showdown at Mt. Carmel between Elijah and Baal's prophets, Elisha casually walks up to the palace one day. The king was talking to Elisha at the end of chapter 6: "This trouble is directly from God! I'm fed up with God."

So perhaps chapter 7 is part of the same confrontation, or perhaps not. But one thing is clear: there was no love lost between the king and the prophet.

It does feel like poetic justice that Elisha's response to the king (I hate God!) was to announce, "The famine is over. Tomorrow one handful of meal or two handfuls of grain will cost a shekel."

The king's advisor scorned him. (any more than Ahab believed the drought was over when Elijah announced it.)  Here is the phrase that caught my attention: "You expect us to believe that? Trapdoors opening in the sky and food falling out?"

Maybe he should have studied Israel's history better. Because God did exactly that during the Wilderness Wanderings, providing quail until everyone was sick of meat. And manna showed up each morning like dew.

I'm arrested by the visual imagery of his complaint. A trapdoor in the sky and food falling out.  Can you picture it? The closest I can come to imagining it makes me laugh.

Do I need to point out that Elisha's prophecy came true?

Look at the juxtaposition of the two chapters. The king says, "I hate God!"

God responds--not with a dire warning, but with compassion and concern and love. "I'm stopping the famine."

The king's advisor, like the second thief crucified with Christ, made fun of God doing the impossible.  The king himself? He at least enjoyed telling tall tales of Elisha the prophet. Alas, he didn't repent, but he gave God's spokesperson a grudging respect.

Today I have been greatly discouraged. A door that  hoped would open wide for my writing instead only opened a crack. I have been mourning/ranging/crying about it all day.

Perhaps that's why I need this message tonight. When God moves, things can happen instantaneously. If God so chooses, the trapdoor that now remains latched although cracked, can swing wide open. Tomorrow.

If it does - praise God.

If it doesn't - still praise God. And realize that God is causing that the famine with that publisher for His own reasons.

GENOCIDE? (Joshua 10-12)

If a country today did what Israel did when they conquered the promised land, the entire world would fight against and cry "genocide."

They fought 31 city-kings, and killed every man, woman and child.

I get it. Kind of. The Israelites had a hard time staying faithful to God in the best of times; they quickly slid into idolatry. The more Canaanites were left alive, the more opportunity for temptation and sin would increase. Another version of if your hand causes you to sin, chop it off. 

But where is the God who delayed punishment of Nineveh when they repented? 

Start with the fact that God never changes. He has always been full of compassion and mercy.

Centuries before, God had told Abraham that "the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure." (Genesis 15:16, NIV)  The wording makes me think of the flood, when men did evil, only evil, day after day, all day long, and God destroyed to destroy them all. 

I have to believe sin saturated the culture of the Amorites. It not only extended vertically, in their worship of idols, but also horizontally, in their treatment of each other. Perhaps they celebrated sin, and made heroes of whores and murderers. 

Four centuries earlier, they had heard and seen Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Abimelech, at least, king of the Philistines, seemed to show respect for Abraham's God. 

In other words--they had had opportunity to see and know the truth, but instead rejected it. They threw themselves into sin with a whole heart. They earned every ounce of punishment that they received. 

Again I ask, though, were they that much more sinful than ancient Rome? or contemporary America? If someone were to write The Rise and Fall of the Amorites, what would it say?

I see a glimmer of "fair play" in the verse that says "they all stubbornly fought the Israelites." If they had come out from their cities under a flag of truce and offered to surrender, would God's orders have changed?

The problem is, that the verse also says it was God's idea that they would continue fighting, so they would be cursed and annihilated without mercy.

I suspect that wording, though, is a lot like Pharaoh's heart. In some cases, it says God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Other times, it says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart.  The locals  were all too eager to go to war against the invading Israelites.

And yet, still, how is what Israel did any different from what Hitler did in conquering Europe? What America did in subjugating Native Americans? What happened in Rwanda?

I  don't know. I don't have any quick, easy understanding. I do offer a few thoughts:

• God doesn't change.
• God takes sin seriously. 
• God is in charge. We are not equals on the playing field. His rules govern us.
• Often, when God in his grace extends the period for repentance, we see it as weakness and continue sinning more and more.
• God wants to perform radical surgery to remove sin not only from us but from tempting us.
• We don't have to have all the answers.

I will close with these words from Joel 2:13: 

Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.

COMPASSION

God, your God, is above all a compassionate God. (Deuteronomy 4:29-31, MSG)

This verse makes me want to sit down and homestead. I want to bookmark it to return to when I'm discouraged, to meditate on it so that it becomes part of my psyche.

Maybe the desire comes from my recent study on the blessings and curses associated with the covenant. God keeps telling Israel how good they have it, how right and fair the laws are, how many reasons why they should be glad.  But knowing their tendency to sin, He also warns them of the consequences.

So this verse serves as a lighthouse, shedding light and hope and a way home for those who are lost in son.

Above all, Your God is a compassionate God.

Above all implies that ore than any other quality God possesses, He is compassionate first. Compassion: feeling with someone else, especially wanting to relieve their suffering. His compassion is superior to human understanding or expression of compassion, and without equal in being able to alleviate our suffering.

My God is compassionate. We are "in relationship." I'm not appealing to some stranger. I'm appealing to the God who chose me as His own.

He is compassionate. Com+passion: He feels our passion with us.  The incarnation, Jesus becoming man, is the greatest expression of His compassion. Jesus became man to know our weaknesses.

There is no sin so bad that God will not forgive it. Yes, our choices put barriers between us and God. But God's overruling compassion made a way to restore us to Him: His Son died on the cross to take away our sin, and He will willingly forgive us for our sins whenever we ask.

We can't outrun God or drive Him away.
He won't let us.