“The bricks have fallen, but we will rebuild with cut stones; the sycamores have been cut down, but we will replace them with cedars.”
These are the words the prophet Isaiah says were spoken by the people of Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom, in response to the disaster of invasion God had sent upon them. They are spoken, Isaiah says, in their ‘pride and arrogance’ as they refuse to ‘turn to the one who struck them’, as ‘they did not seek the Lord of Hosts.’ [Isaiah 9:6-12]
What disturbs me is that they are so similar to the words we hear from our leaders and communities after the disasters we experience – fire, pandemic, flood. We will ‘build back better’, or at least we will restore things to how they were, as if our resources were infinite and God’s wrath against sin temporary. There is no humbling, no recognition that we are a nation under judgment, and where there is no repentance judgment will continue, sometimes until the offending nation is removed [Amos 4:6-13, Isaiah 13].
There is no humbling, no recognition that we are a nation under judgment, and where there is no repentance judgment will continue
As a nation we deserve judgment. What command have we not broken. Covetousness is nurtured. Many think it unfair that someone should have more – either of opportunity or wealth – than them. We are trained to want more, to never be satisfied with what we have. Our political discourse and social media is awash with ‘false witness’, half truths presented as the whole truth, peoples motives and actions being misrepresented, selective presentation of the facts – and that is before we get to the outright lies spoken for personal advantage. Sexual immorality, sex outside the marriage of a man and a woman, is promoted and protected. It is expected that young people will be sexually active, fornication normalised. Stealing – the property of others is misused, shoplifting is provided for in the budgets of our retail chains, cash in hand transactions evading tax obligations is expected by many. Violence against women is common, and the destruction of the lives of the unborn said to be the right of adults. And this is only a brief survey of the last five commandments. Parents increasingly find their authority is undermined or marginalised in the lives of their young people, and greed, and the belief that we are the source of our own wealth, drives an economy without rest. And with all this many persist in asserting our enlightened righteousness founded in our emancipation from the authority of any god.
As a nation we deserve judgment but we, believers, are often resistant to this conclusion, reluctant to articulate it, and that reluctance can distort our thinking and response as God’s people.
As a nation we deserve judgment but we, believers, are often resistant to this conclusion, reluctant to articulate it, and that reluctance can distort our thinking and response as God’s people. Let me suggest some reasons why we are reluctant. Test all things.
1. Many, especially Anglo Australians, have been brought up with the lie that a society can walk away from God without consequences. It is now just taken for granted that what you think about and how you respond to God is irrelevant.
2. There has also been, with the introduction of other faiths through immigration, the relativization of the claims of the true God in our society. He is now just the deity of one faith community amongst many, not the almighty Creator of heaven and earth
3. Both of these developments have reduced the living God in the imagination of many to a dumb idol, who can do nothing on his own
4. Christians may consciously resist these trends but often we live with a reduced God, the small god of personal rescue not the Lord of heaven and earth for that is the only god we are allowed to speak of. Doubt this? Think of the floods. Many of us like to think of God as paddling the rescue boat to pluck individuals to safety, and not as the God who sent the rain. Yet He sends the rain [Matt. 5:44]
5. In addition our individualism, even our focus on individual salvation, means we minimise Scripture’s clear teaching that God judges nations, and not just His people. The prophets have chapter after chapter addressed to nations – Isaiah 13-21, Jeremiah 46-51, Ezekiel 25-32, Amos 1-2, Obadiah, Nahum 2, Zephaniah 2:4 ff, and Jonah. God judges nations for their collective sins but we somehow don’t hear it, even though Paul says in 1 Corinthians that ‘God judges outsiders.” [1 Cor. 5:13]
6. Even those of us who believe in judgment tend to defer, in our thinking and conversation, all judgement to the end, despite Scripture saying that God’s wrath is being revealed from heaven now [Romans 1:18ff]. Our inability, without prophetic insight, to link any particular judgement to any particular sin should not blind us to the reality that God is an active judge in history. As the Psalmist says “God is a righteous judge and a judge who shows his wrath every day.” Psalm 7:11
7. We don’t like to think about it for we are fearful for our prosperity and our children’s future. Talk of judgement, of God judging our sinful nation, unsettles us, but we are in danger of letting our worldly prosperity matter more to us than righteousness and the vindication of God’s holiness in His righteous judgements. Yet in our reluctance to think and speak of God’s judgement on our nation we become part of the problem, for our sins continue unrebuked.
God judges nations, and as we see in Jonah, nations can sometimes repent. This is not just an Old Testament doctrine. It is the Lamb in Revelation 6 who opens the seals that unleash the judgements of God in history.
It is important that we acknowledge this truth, and that God is judging our nation, for it reminds us where our nation’s real problem lies.
It is important that we acknowledge this truth, and that God is judging our nation, for it reminds us where our nation’s real problem lies. It is under God’s holy wrath, deservedly so, and like Nineveh needs urgently to repent. Preaching the gospel that proclaims Jesus is Lord and all should repent and believe in Him is not some otherworldly irrelevance in the face of humanity’s pressing problems. It is the only way for people and nations to find peace with the Holy and righteous God, to find the almighty God to whom we can cry out for mercy.
Acknowledging that God is judging our nation should also spur us on to be a thankful and holy people. Thankful, for the sins we share in deserve wrath, but God has spared us, reconciled us to Himself through the death of His. Thankful to know peace with God through faith in Jesus when there is no peace for the wicked [Romans 5:1, Is. 57:21].
And determined to be a holy people, set apart for God. We should want a life together that shows we have turned away from sin to live according to God’s word, a life that is not marked by greed, by sexual immorality, by deceit, by treating the living God as if He is an idol, unable to enforce His judgements and keep His promises. It should be a common life, for God saves a people, not just individuals, and He expects His people to maintain the holiness of their common life [Matthew 18, 1 Cor. 5-6].
We should want a life together that shows we have turned away from sin to live according to God’s word
It is as a holy people that we can seek and promote the good of our community, that we will be salt and light. For to be holy is to become more like Christ, and so committed to love, to truth, and to seeking the lost. In love we will be determined to be good neighbours, to showing compassion to those wounded by sin and suffering under judgment. We will man the rowing boats and donate goods. And in love we will pray for our nation, seeking its welfare from God Jer. 29:7, 1 Tim. 4:1-2. Committed to truth we will speak up. We will resist black being called white and white black – that is we will be committed to moral truth. And we will be committed to the truth of God, to resisting the introduction of false teaching, often teaching that accommodates to the world’s values and judgements, into the church of God.
Like our holy Lord, knowing His compassion towards us, we will keep calling others to repentance and faith, to find peace with God now and refuge from the wrath to come through believing the gospel.
And like our holy Lord, knowing His compassion towards us, we will keep calling others to repentance and faith, to find peace with God now and refuge from the wrath to come through believing the gospel.
Our nation is suffering under the judgement of the true and living God, our God. Who else will call them to turn in repentance to God for mercy except those who already know His mercy in Christ?
