What are the limits of the patience of God?
More importantly, how many of us are wise enough to discern those limits and
stop short of them?
Anyone familiar with the gospels recognizes
that testing the patience of God is dangerous. Satan once took the Lord Jesus
to a pinnacle of the temple and reminded him of the promises of God in the Old Testament about the
protection of those who make the Lord “their dwelling place” in the hope that Jesus would jump in order to make a point. The Lord responded by quoting the Law of Moses: “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”
Asking What would have happened if ...? is a
fool’s errand, but the Lord clearly set us an example here by responding in the
best possible way. Still, many of us live as if the question we should ask
ourselves is not “What would Jesus do?” but “How much can I get away with here?”
Persistent casualness about sin and indifference
to the importance of pleasing God call into question whether or not we really
know him at all. Such an attitude finds us incorrectly presuming that: (1) we know better than the Almighty what is
in our interests; or (2) we will be able to learn whatever lesson God may
be trying to teach us on an occasion we deem more suitable.
We Know Better
The absurdity of the
first notion should be readily apparent. If our Creator and Sustainer does not
know us inside and out, then we cannot be known at all. But most of us are not
so bold as to suggest we have a more accurate sense of what is ultimately good for
us than God himself. We would agree that God surely knows what is in our interests
(and for his own glory), long term or short, but would prefer a license to
pursue one or two short-term goals of our own before submitting to what we
would theoretically agree is his “good and perfect will”. These goals or desires may not be wicked
things in and of themselves, but in pursuing them we are forgetting that “You shall have no other gods before me.”
We Can Learn This Lesson Later
Believing we can put off obedience until it
suits us presumes that we are children of God, even as our conduct and thought
process provide no evidence of this. We have convinced ourselves that God’s
treatment of us will always be remedial rather than retributive; his goal to
restore and rehabilitate rather than to act in judgment.
But can we really be sure we are God’s
children if we have no inclination to obey him? After all, the signal proof of love is obedience. John writes, “Whoever says, ‘I know him’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar.”
What Happens to Those Who Want Their Own Way
For those who insist on having their own
way, God has a track record of eventually letting them do so. One problem with refusing
to acknowledge him when he makes himself known is that we tend to find ourselves
less and less inclined to do so as time goes by:
“And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.”
Once the cognitive processes become
debased, it is hard to imagine how acknowledging God gets easier.
So can those who call themselves believers
really expect to learn the things God wishes to teach us in our own good time?
Or does repeated rejection of God’s goodness demonstrate that we are really not
in his family at all?
To put it another way, God is always teaching
lessons, but it may turn out the lessons are actually for others. If we are not
careful, we may find our lives were actually only illustrations and cautionary
tales for a characteristically obedient group of disciples of which we erroneously
think ourselves to be members.
Illustrations and Cautionary Tales
Israel as a nation believed themselves to
be God’s people. But only an obedient minority was really his. The rest were
actually illustrations and cautionary tales, though until judgment fell on them,
most surely had no idea of this. Consider the following examples:
❶ Israel insisted on a king, so God gave them a king
Now there is nothing intrinsically wicked about monarchy. The Lord Jesus is a king. The sin was in
Israel’s desire to be like the nations around them rather than to be what God
had called them to be. In doing so, they rejected the King they already had:
“Where now is your king, to save you in all your cities? Where are all your rulers — those of whom you said, ‘Give me a king and princes’? I gave you a king in my anger, and I took him away in my wrath.”
They got exactly what they asked for and it turned out rather poorly for them.
❷ Israel insisted on meat rather than manna
Now there is nothing intrinsically wicked about meat, or about having a craving for it. But there is something
quite wicked and ungrateful about despising what God has actually provided and
desiring something else instead. Perhaps “wanton” is a better word:
“But they had a wanton craving in the wilderness, and put God to the test in the desert; he gave them what they asked, but sent a wasting disease among them.”
Again, God gave the people exactly what they said they wanted.
❸ Israel preferred death in the wilderness to a life of faith
To be fair, in the minds of the Israelites who complained to Moses and Aaron, the choice was probably not quite
as stark as it may appear to us. When they cried out, “Would that we had died in this wilderness!” it was probably a case of an unfortunate rhetorical flourish rather than an
indication of their genuine desire. Likewise, the choice of trusting God to
bring them into Canaan against a multitude of enemies probably appeared more like
certain death to them than the sure thing it turned out to be.
In any case, God once again gave the people exactly what they wished for:
“Say to them, ‘As I live, declares the Lord, what you have said in my hearing I will do to you: your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness.’ ”
Nobody who died in the wilderness could
complain that they didn’t ask for it.
Have Thine Own Way
In all these cases, many who started out to
all appearances as the people of God ended their time on earth as nothing more
significant than illustrations and cautionary tales.
Paul tells the Corinthians:
“Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.”
Not all selfish choices have consequences
as drastic or long-term as those made by Israel, of course. But to those
determined to have their own way, God is still in the business of letting them
do it. Christians intransigent about marrying a very specific sort of woman or man that they are convinced will satisfy them frequently end up with exactly what they thought they wanted, only to find out God
knew better. Christians who insist on restructuring the churches they attend in
imitation of the world around them find themselves out in the world even as
they sit in church. Christians who put money before God often end up with … money.
Be careful what you wish for.
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