GOD IS MERCIFUL, BUT DON'T PUSH IT

In the teaching yesterday at Life Church Bayside, I spent a few moments dealing with one of the more challenging verses in the whole Bible, Deuteronomy 28:63 (NIV) ”Just as it pleased the LORD to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you.” The first reaction is to assume that in the original Hebrew “please” doesn’t mean please. Other translation use words, such as: “pleasure” and “delight.” It’s shocking to think that God receives some type of pleasure in “destroying” and disciplining people. The commentators, Keil & Delitzsch, wrote the following regarding this verse: “With this bold anthropomorphic expression (using a human expression to describe God) Moses seeks to remove from the nation the last prop of false confidence in the mercy of God. Greatly as the sin of man troubles God, and little as the pleasure may be which He has in the death of the wicked, yet the holiness of His love demands the punishment and destruction of those who despise the riches of His goodness and long-suffering; so that He displays His glory in the judgment and destruction of the wicked no less than in blessing and prospering the righteous.” Personally, I think the commentators’ perspective is very helpful. We live in a time and place where God’s love and mercy are all too frequently used to excuse blatant disobedience. I’ve had people straight up tell me, “I know what I’m doing isn’t the best, but God wants me to be happy.” It’s as if “happy” and the desire to be happy trumps everything. I think there are many people who place “false confidence in the mercy of God.” They figure they can live however they want, and do whatever they want to do, and the grace and mercy of God will cover them.

We talked about Deuteronomy 28:63 in our small group last night. One of the things which came up in our discussion is the idea that if we’re going to talk about the love of God, i.e. His amazing grace and mercy, we need to follow it by also referring to the holiness of God. On the other hand, if we’re going to talk about the holiness of God, we need to quickly follow it by referring to the love of God. The idea is that you can’t separate the character and nature of God, as if He has multiple personalities: He is loving and He is holy; He is holy and He is loving!

When Moses encountered the Lord on Mount Sinai he received a profound revelation of God’s character, which I think is relevant and helpful in understanding how the Lord could be pleased to destroy the disobedient. Exodus 34:6-7

(NIV) “And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, ‘The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.’" This verse helps me. It describes the mercy of God without diminishing His holiness. It communicates the compassion of the Lord without compromising His character.

I think what it comes down to is this: God is merciful. He loves to love on His children and pour huge blessings into their lives. But if we decide we want to disregard the commandments of God and do our own thing, we need to be aware that the mercy of God only goes so far and for so long. In other words, God is merciful, but don’t push it!