The Law, the Lamb, and the Lion

I recently spent several days at the Bloomsburg Fair in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, telling people about GoServ Global and the things we do in the name of Jesus.

The Bloomsburg Fair is very popular, with as many as 60,000 people per day coming through the gate. GoServ had erected a Safe T Home ® at the fair (pictured with my co-worker, Barb Meister, in the doorway) so many, many people who were intrigued by this grain bin-based structure designed to give people hope in tropical countries would stop by, ask questions, and learn about what we do.

Our primary objective when we do this is not to raise funds, although we do accept donations. And yes, I share our mission to bring hope through Jesus many, many times per day. The Gospel is there, but it’s not like I’m delivering a sermon urging repentance and acceptance of forgiveness through belief in Jesus Christ. No, our objective is to simply let people know who we are and to make relationships with people. It’s amazing what the Holy Spirit can do in situations like this.

And, sometimes, the Holy Spirit holds a surprise in how He works.

Thursday was a gray, rainy day at the fair. We arrived late and the crowds were very, very thin. (The next day, we learned that Thursday set a record for the smallest attendance at the fair in recent history at just over 20,000 people.) About 2:00 p.m., the rain let up for a little while and I decided it would be a good time to walk out to the parking lot and install some new wiper blades on the company van.

The wiper blades went on without a battle at all (HALLELUJAH!), so I opened the hood to add some washer fluid.

As I was adding the fluid, I heard a voice say, “Do you need any help?”

It was a guy on a golf cart who worked for the fair. He had seen the open hood and kindly stopped to see if I was in distress. I explained about the wiper blades and thanked him for stopping by.

Bob (not his real name) was a very nice guy and the conversation began easily with him. I told him I was a missionary with GoServ and I invited him to stop by our site at the fair and see what we were about. He said he figured as much (I was wearing a GoServ T-shirt) and, although he believed there was a God, he didn’t have much use for Him in his life because he was abused as a child, and even though he used to cry himself to sleep every night begging God that it would stop, it never seemed to do help.

So, there I was, on a wet and gray Thursday afternoon in a muddy parking lot, with a guy who was convinced the God of the universe had abandoned and forgotten him when he was a powerless and vulnerable child in the presence of an evil over which he had absolutely no control. 

I remember thinking that people in this situation often have great trouble trusting Father God when the only male authority figure they have ever known effectively crushed any and all trust in any father figure of any kind.

Bob said he had found comfort and healing in fishing because it was something he could do by himself without condemnation or judgement –and I smiled because I knew something about that. I told Bob how I had gone through the same thing and how fishing –and Jesus– had helped me when I quit drugs and alcohol. We had something in common, I could feel the Holy Spirit’s presence, and we had a wonderful conversation that included Jesus.

My new friend gave me a ride back to the gate so I didn’t have to walk in the mud, but before I got out, I prayed a very simple prayer over him, asking that Bob would come to truly know exactly how much Jesus loved him. 

The whole experience, including changing the wiper blades, took maybe 30 minutes. When I got back to the GoServ site, I told my co-workers that I had changed the wiper blades, added washer fluid, and preached the Gospel while I was gone.

It was a great feeling, but in the days that followed I was haunted by the thought of someone who would abuse a child and how Bob had felt abandoned by God.

The idea that God doesn’t care, or that He is powerless to help, or that He knows but allows this kind of thing is perhaps the toughest question we face as Christians.

Yes, I remember Psalm 56:8:

“You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.”

I know God knows all we go through. He knows our hurts and our pain. But how can He let something like this happen to children?

And then, as I prayed one morning, the big story came into focus:

God created Adam and Eve and they lived perfect lives. They lived in a beautiful garden, they had all they needed, and they had a perfect relationship with their Father God. There was no death, no sickness, no tears, no pain, and nothing so awful and hideous as child abuse.

But then, they chose to rebel against their Father and they did the one thing He told them not to do. God did not put the tree there to tempt them, but that they would have a choice because without the presence of the choice, there could be no love. Robots cannot love. Adam and Eve had to have a choice or love would be meaningless.

So, they had to leave the garden. Sin and death, misery and hardship stalked them. God gave them the Law, and the laws were good. If they could just keep that Law, the misery would be minimized until the promise He made of a Savior could come about.

Of course, they could not keep the Law perfectly. The world, their own flesh, and the enemy of their souls saw to that. And so, the misery continued.

So, God sent the Lamb. Jesus, the Perfect Lamb, kept the Law perfectly and because His love for us was perfect too, He died in our place so that our relationship with our Father could be restored and we could return to live with Him forever in perfect harmony – just as He had planned from the very beginning. The very people He came to save killed him in a hideous act of injustice and cruelty, but He rose from the grave proving that He was indeed the God He said He was and that death was defeated once and for all. 

While Jesus was here on earth with us, He taught us that love ruled. He taught us that to love God and love each other was the heart and the root of all and everything. 

So, the Lamb fulfilled the Law. He taught us how to live, He redeemed us and restored us as God’s family that we would take care of this world and the people around us as He intended until He would return.

That doesn’t mean He eliminated all the evil in the world, because He did not take away people’s free will. Love hadn’t changed. It still needed to be a choice. That means some people still choose evil and misery and doing horrible things –even to children.. 

Of course that evil –and let’s call it what it is– that sin is something God hates. God hates sin because it harms and wounds and kills the people He loves. It steals the love He wants for us, it destroys the relationships He intended for us, and it outright kills the people He loves. 

Of course God hates sin. If He didn’t, He would not be a just and loving God. Sin cries out for justice. When Cain killed his brother Able, the Bible says in Genesis 4:10:

“But the LORD said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground!”

So, it’s absolutely understandable that sin would make God angry. Anger, even what the Bible calls “cruel, with wrath and fierce anger” is exactly what we should expect from a God whose beloved children are killing and abusing each other. Isaiah 13:9 says, 

“Behold, the day of the LORD comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it.” (ESV)

This is something all preachers face. The whole “Law versus Gospel” is a road with a ditch on both sides of it. 

A god without love is a tyrant. A god without justice is no god at all. (I am not the first person to say that.) I do not want a wishy-washy God who gives evil a pass, who lets people hurt each other, who looks the other way when a child is abused. 

We want people who do horrible things like abusing children to be punished. We want them to suffer. If it were up to us, we would want them beaten and mocked and have nails driven through their…  Well, you get the idea, but that’s not justice. It’s revenge.

No, human beings need to live in a world where true justice is real because if there were no justice it would mean God doesn’t care.

You cannot have it one way or the other. All of God’s attributes are infinite. His love, His mercy, His grace, His wisdom, His power, His beauty, His wrath are all infinite. But out of all those attributes the only one I can find that He restrains, that He holds back, is that fierce anger and wrath. The Bible says He is “slow to anger,” (Psalm 103:10 and Exodus 34:6) that He “holds back His anger and does not unleash His full fury.” (Psalm 78:38)

And that brings us to the Lion.

Yes, God does restrain His fierce anger and wrath during the time of the Lamb, but there will come a day when that time will end and the time of the Lion will come upon this earth without warning. Revelation 19:11-16 (NLT)

“Then I saw heaven opened, and a white horse was standing there. Its rider was named Faithful and True, for he judges fairly and wages a righteous war. His eyes were like flames of fire, and on his head were many crowns. A name was written on him that no one understood except himself. He wore a robe dipped in blood, and his title was the Word of God. The armies of heaven, dressed in the finest of pure white linen, followed him on white horses. From his mouth came a sharp sword to strike down the nations. He will rule them with an iron rod. He will release the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty, like juice flowing from a winepress. On his robe at his thigh was written this title: KING OF ALL KINGS AND LORD OF ALL LORDS.”

Justice will indeed be done when Jesus returns. The Bible says murderers and thieves, idolaters and greedy people, swindlers and all those who are unrepentant will not inherit the kingdom of God. There will come a time when child abusers will stand before the throne of heaven and answer for all they have done –and it will be too late for them to repent.

But, in the meantime, we should not forget 2 Peter 3:9: 

“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” (ESV)

God is giving people –even horrible, evil people– time to repent. 

Those of us living in this age, the age of the Lamb, have been given the opportunity to repent, but Jesus is coming back and time will run out for all those who have not come to Him as Savior, and King of kings and LORD of lords.

In the meantime, it is our mission to remember that we are all sinners, that none of us are worthy of salvation, but it is only through God’s grace and mercy and love that we are saved. It is that grace, that ridiculous mercy, that amazing love that we need to share with all so that they would come to Christ and be forgiven. We must love deeply those who have been hurt, we must pray for all who are living lives of misery and pain, we must reach out and offer the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Good News, to all who need Jesus.

The glorious, wonderful gift in the midst of all of this that sometimes He chooses one of us to share the miracle of His love -- even in a muddy parking lot on a Thursday afternoon.