[God Is Love] God's Judgment as the Noonday
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May 18, 2014 |
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Senior Pastor of Manmin Central Church Dr. Jaerock Lee
He is God's servant of love and power who has awakened people of all nations by spreading the core of the gospel following the Lord's way and manifesting the fiery works of the Holy Spirit.
Manmin Central Church opened with only 9 adults and 4 children in 1982. Through the works of the Holy Spirit the church has grown to become a mega-sized church with approximately 10,000 branch and associative churches world-wide. Just as Jesus preached and confirmed the word by the signs that followed His teaching, Dr. Jaerock Lee confirms that the Bible is the truth by showing the power of God
He has conducted many overseas crusades such as in Uganda, Japan, Pakistan, Kenya, the Philippines, Honduras, India, Russia, Germany, Peru, DR Congo, the U.S., and Estonia since 2000 and showed explosive powerful works. Among them, Uganda Crusade was reported by CNN.
He also preached in Jerusalem at the Israel United Crusade 2009. He proclaimed Jesus is the Messiah and it was broadcast live to approximately 220 countries. He is dedicated to the Word and prayer to accomplish the providence of God who desires all people of all nations to be saved at the end time by proclaiming the gospel to the end of the earth and achieving the mission of the ministry to North Korea. www.drlee.or.kr
"He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noonday" (Psalm 37:6).
If someone were to ask you what the most beautiful thing in the world is, many people may answer it is love. However, what if they are asked what love is? How many people can give the right answer?
Of course, they might explain about love as they have felt it based on their experience, knowledge, and thoughts. However, without knowing God's love and without love in themselves, they can't say they know love. This is because God is love itself and the origin of love.
Then, what kind of love does God, who works in love and justice, show us?
1. God who works in justice
Two primary characteristics of God can be generally said to be 'love' and 'justice'. 'Justice' is God's characteristic or attribute with which He judges fairly between good and evil. The standard to discern between good and evil is the Word of God in the 66 books of the Bible.
If we know only the love of God without knowing His justice, our love can't be perfect. Conversely, if we know God's justice without understanding His love, we might feel that God is just fearful and strict. Therefore, only when God's justice and love are harmonized beautifully, can true love be shown.
God created all the heavens and all things in them, He rules over them all as the Master, and He is the only Judge. Although He has the authority, He doesn't do everything just as He pleases but He Himself abides by spiritual law.
Among the items of spiritual law, God allowed those that are necessary for our earthly lives to be written in the Bible in the form of 'Do, Keep, Throw away, and Don't Do'. Exactly upon these words, God works, which is manifested as justice in the sight of people.
The fundamental principle of justice is to allow people to reap as they sow and repay them as they act. Galatians 6:7 reads, "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap." God let men reap whatever they sow.
Reaping whatever one sows doesn't just include physical things. It embraces thoughts and things harbored in heart as well as words and deeds. Whatever they are, if one sows evil he will reap evil and if one sows goodness he will also reap goodness. For instance, "The wages of sin is death" in Romans 6:23 means if one sows sin he will reap death. Hence, God also cannot but sentence sinners to death at the Last Judgment.
Proverbs 16:2 states, "All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, but the LORD weighs the motives." So, we must not have untruthful thoughts and say things that belong to the untruth. And we must not act in the untruth. God can judge all thoughts and things in the heart as well as the words and deeds.
If we truly love God, then, what should we do? By holding to the Scripture Matthew 12:36, saying, "But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the Day of Judgment," we should say only things of the truth.
God knows our every thought and numbers our hair of head. He hears every word that comes from our lips. Therefore, I urge you to remember that God's justice will be definitely revealed during our lives on the earth or revealed at least at the Last Judgment.
2. God's love shown in His justice
Do you feel the God of justice is fearful? If one feels this way, then, he doesn't know the heart of God who works in justice, and he must be still dwelling in darkness. He feels afraid because he just feels the fear of punishment given according to justice rather than feeling the heart of God in His justice. That is why the justice of God is fearful to him.
For example, if one observes the traffic rules while he is driving on the highway, there is no reason for him to be afraid of police officers. He may rather feel reassured since he can ask them for help if he has a problem. However, persons who often break the rules feel uneasy wondering if there might be a police officer somewhere around him.
God's justice was set not for punishment but for rewards. God brings every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil (Ecclesiastes 12:14). He is also a rewarder of those who seek Him (Hebrews 11:6). Evil doers are punished as retribution as much as they do evil. Meanwhile, goodness and blessing return to those who did good to the extent they did the goodness. This is the justice of God.
Thus, God's justice is not something dreadful to people who dwell in the Word of God but for them it is rather blessing and guarantee.
As explained, the justice shows the heart of God who wants to bless those who desire to live in the will of God and seek the truth. He wants to repay them with everlasting reward in Heaven. Only with understanding this heart of God can people feel the love of God in His justice.
They can realize that even the punishment or affliction given according to the justice all come from the deep love of God who wants to make them perfect and come out from darkness to light.
Proverbs 3:12 says, "For whom the LORD loves He reproves, even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights." As said, God reproves His children because of His love and it is the proof of His love for them.
If one doesn't turn away from sin, he can't avoid death. That is why God lets them realize their sin even through reproof and punishment. By doings so, He wants to lead them to the way of salvation and blessings.
3. David was made perfect through God's love and justice
David loved God and pleased Him with great faith from his early childhood. But King David had sinful natures that he hadn't thrown away and it caused him to take the woman Bathsheba and lay with her. Moreover, to further suppress the problem, David even arranged for her husband, Uriah, to be killed by enemy troops.
This incident put David under punishment and harsh affliction according to the justice of God who repays one in accordance with what he does. His son, whom Bathsheba bore him, died and Absalom his third oldest son rebelled against him and tried to kill David. David ended up leaving his city and fled miserably.
God loved David and allowed for the punishment and hardship to come to him so that he could pull out the sinful nature that remained in him. Consequently, David became a perfect person who was after God's heart in the sight of God. God poured down greater blessings upon him than before. Meanwhile, Absalom who rebelled against David his father met with miserable death. When he was running away on his mule, the hair of his head was caught fast in an oak and he was left hanging where he was killed by Joab's spear.
God judges sin according to justice but at the same time the judgment is to give blessings to His beloved children. Thus, God's justice is good medicine and blessing for those who try to live in the truth and those who repented of sins and turned away from them although they had lived in sins. On the contrary, the justice is shown as the strict judgment for those who live in sins without turning back from them.
Because of God's justice, we can entrust everything to God in any kind of situation. If there were no justice of God, the result would be no different whether we acted in goodness or evilness. Then, who would want to do good and what kind of hope could we harbor by acting in goodness without His justice?
Ecclesiastes 12:14 says, "For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil." Galatians 6:9 reads, "Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary." So, we have to believe God who works all the time in justice and should always act in goodness and the truth seeing only God regardless of whether others see us or not.
4. The reason the judgment is likened to the noonday
Noonday is the time when the sun shines most brightly during the day. Even though one lives deep in the forest or walks among tall buildings, he can see the bright light from the sun high in the sky at noonday. The light at the noonday has no darkness at all and shines very brightly, so nothing can hide it and everything is revealed under the light.
Psalm 37:6 says, "He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noonday." It means that the proof of God's love for those who are loved and guaranteed by God will shine brightly as the light of the noonday. If one is loved by God, he must be a person who loves God and distances himself from evil.
So, if someone else does evil to this kind of a person, it violates God's justice. In the view of God's justice to judge between good and evil, to do evil to those who don't do evil itself is to clearly violate the justice. Therefore, God judges evil doers who act against those who are loved by God in His justice.
Let me take Moses for an example. God chose Moses to lead the sons of Israel, His elect, in coming out from Egypt and He made him a proper vessel for God's use through 40 years of trial. To lead the people of Israel out from Egypt and to reach Canaan, among whom the men numbered about six hundred thousand, God needed a leader whose heart resembled God's.
Moses the leader of Exodus, led the people with patience, mercy, and forgiveness though they disobeyed, complained, grumbled, and stood against him countless times during the 40-year-life in the wilderness. God might have felt pleased to see Moses who resembled Him.
However, God did not forgive those who complained about him and blamed Moses. When Korah and some people rebelled and stood against Moses and Aaron, God let the earth open its mouth and swallow them up along with Korah. The God's anger was not caused by a lack of His love.
But He showed His justice and judgment as the noonday to those who perverted what is right by confronting and grumbling against Moses. God worked this way so that the people of Israel could learn from this incident so that no one would stand against and blame Moses later.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, I pray in the name of the Lord that you will always show the justice of God as the noonday and glorify God.
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