Last Thursday the late night talk show host, Stephen
Colbert, made a joke at God’s expense. He was riffing on the continued spread
of the coronavirus. Then he went off stage, got a bell, started ringing it, and
this is what he said: “Plague! Plague! A righteous cleansing to punish man for
his lust and vanity! Oh, swing your scythe O angry God. Repent! Repent!
Repent!” The audience laughed. Then he said, “Where was I?” and continued on
with his monologue.
Jesus says that in the last days it will be like it was at
the time of Noah and like it was at the time of Sodom and Gomorrah. At the time
of Noah the people only grew more wicked continually. The people were very
busy. They were padding their pockets. I believe that they reached a very high
level of sophistication in their civilization. But they didn’t care about the
God who had spoken to Adam and his descendants through Seth all the way down to
Noah. This God had said that judgment was coming over the face of the whole
earth. He was going to utterly smash and destroy all that he had made. He essentially
said what Colbert joked about: “A righteous cleaning is coming to punish man
for his lust and vanity. I’m going to swing my scythe because I am angry.
Therefore, repent!” When the people heard about Noah’s God they thought Noah
was coo-coo for believing in him. I bet you that there were jokes made about
Noah.
At the time of Sodom, the rich people of that fertile plain
had become so delicate in their tastes that natural relations were no longer
enticing enough for them. They had to search out exotic, disturbing experiences
in order to satisfy their sexual appetites. They gave up natural relations and
burned with lust for the people of their own sex. This sexual perversion is
what happens when cultures get rich and old and decadent. It happened at Sodom.
It happened to the Greeks. It happened to the Romans. It happened to the
British. It has happened to us. Not only is there this sin, which is bad
enough, but what is much worse is that it will not be recognized as such. It is
defended with such ferocity that those who will not go with the flow are
denounced as deplorable. Those who are evil are regarded as good, and those who
are good are regarded as evil.
Without even trying, Stephen Colbert sums up perfectly our
horrible spiritual condition as a people and a nation. What he says is so true
that it is basically a textbook, catechism answer. God punishes man for his
lust and vanity. He swings his angry scythe. We should repent. But then he
laughs. The audience laughs. There evidently is wide appreciation for this
joke, because the way that I found about it was by watching the morning news on
Friday. They replayed it as a kind of cute little joke to raise your spirits.
What happens when hearts become hardened is that people
laugh at God’s threats and roll their eyes at God’s promises. They do not feel
bad about how they regard God’s Word. It’s just a matter of course for them. If
they feel bad about anything it might be that there are people like us who are
so deluded as to believe that what God says in his Word is actually true. They
hope that eventually we can be educated out of our medieval backwardness.
To be a Christian these days it takes a bit of a backbone.
If you want to be liked by everyone, then I don’t recommend that you remain a
Christian. If you want to be regarded as smart by everyone, then I don’t
recommend that you remain a Christian. You must put aside the desire to be
praised by men and strive after being praised by God instead. Only those who
regard God as their friend, their mighty fortress can even begin to live in
such a way where they seek God’s approval instead of being approved by our
peers.
The Psalms in the Bible are instructive in this regard. The
Psalmists are always praying to God and praising him as their defender, their
rock, their strength, their hope. Very often the Psalmists speak to God about
their loneliness. They are regarded as failures by their fellows. Family and
friends abandon them—not because they have harmed them, but because they put
their trust in God. Nevertheless, the Psalmists remain confident.
Psalm 27 says, “The Lord is my light and my
salvation—whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life—of whom
shall I be afraid? When evildoers advance against me to eat my flesh, when my
foes and my enemies come against me, it is they who will stumble and fall. If
an army lines up against me, my heart will not fear. If war rises against me,
even then I will keep trusting.”
This psalm encourages the Christian to not lose heart in the
face of disappointments and dangers. Even if the stakes of the fight are a
whole army against just you—keep trusting.
The Psalmist, David, goes on to say: “One thing I ask
from the Lord. This is what I seek: that I live in the house of the Lord all
the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his
temple.” The end point of your life is no earthly thing. The end point of
your life is to see God in his glory, and not being afraid, because God has
washed you in the blood of the Lamb and made you holy and righteous in his
sight. No amount of mocking can take this inheritance away from you. No amount
of violence can take this away from you. As Jesus says, “Do not fear those who
kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, fear the one who is able to
destroy both soul and body in hell.” Fear God, not men or the devil.
Speaking of fearing God, then, how should we regard the
coronavirus or any other trouble that comes upon us? Are these things God’s
punishment for sin? Here we are likely to run into a common problem where our
reason would like to know more than what is given to us in the Scriptures. We’d
like to have a kind of mathematical precision where we know precisely what sins
trigger this or that punishment.
A portion of Scripture that is very helpful in teaching us
how we should regard tragic events is the beginning of Luke chapter 13. It says
there that some people told Jesus about a calamity. Pontius Pilate had mixed the
blood of some Galileans with their sacrifices. That is, Pilate had killed them.
Jesus responded, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than
all the other Galileans because they suffered these things? I tell you, no. But
unless you repent, you will all perish too. Or those eighteen who were killed
when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse sinners
than all the people living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no. But unless you repent,
you will all perish too.”
From Jesus’s answer you see two important things: First of
all, he would not have us inquire with mathematical precision as to who is a
greater or lesser sinner and therefore receives a greater or lesser punishment.
In our times, this is not a hard lesson for us to learn. Nobody has to be
taught it, because practically everybody says, “Who’s to judge?” The second
thing that you should notice is that Jesus urges repentance upon all who only
just hear of the calamity happening. He does not deny that God punishes sin. He
threatens them with God’s punishment when he says, “Unless you repent, you
will all perish too.” That is to say, God will cause you to die. In our
times, this second part is not understood well at all. It is so poorly
understood that jokes are made about it.
So here is a foundational truth that we should all take in
very deeply. At the close of the Ten Commandments in the Catechism the question
is asked, “What does God say about all these commandments?” Then some Scripture
is quoted—from within the account of the Ten Commandments itself: “God says, ‘I,
the Lord, your God, am a jealous God. Punishing the children for the sins of
the fathers to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but
showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my
commandments.” Then the catechism asks, “What does this mean?” Answer: “God
threatens to punish all who break these commandments. Therefore we should fear
his wrath and not do anything against them. But he promises grace and every
blessing to all who keep his commandments. Therefore we should love and trust
in him and gladly do what he commands.”
The foundational truth is that God punishes sin and blesses
righteousness. This foundational truth goes all the way back to the Garden of
Eden, which we heard about this morning. Adam and Eve were created as good,
even very good, in the image of God. They had a glorious fellowship with God.
All the trees and fruit and animals were given to them by God to enjoy. God
said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and rule over it.” They
were given a warning, though. They were not to eat from the Tree of the
Knowledge of Good and Evil. If they did, they would certainly die. God
threatened to punish them for breaking his commandment. Paul, most likely
thinking of this sin in the Garden, says, “The wages of sin is death.”
We should have this equation firmly in our minds as a foundational truth: Sin =
death. We should be as certain of this truth as we are of 2+2=4.
Therefore, when we see death or the things that lead up to
death in ourselves and those around us, we should think of this equation. Our sin
is at the root of it. This is why Jesus says that we should all repent when we
hear of calamities. Likewise, when we sin, we should fear God’s punishment.
That punishment is meant to lead us to repentance. Because we are so stubborn
and unbelieving, it often takes God’s heavy hand upon us to make us turn to
him, asking him to comfort us in our deep distress.
For God has not left us without comfort. He did not leave
Adam and Eve without comfort. He promised that a seed of the woman would crush
the old evil foe who has brought us into our misery. As you know, Jesus would
defeat death by taking away its root and its source—which is our sin. The
atonement that Jesus works for us by his holy precious blood and his innocent
suffering and death has taken away God’s awful wrath of death for all people.
All who have died with faith in Jesus have defeated death. The grave will eventually
have to give them up to a new and more vigorous life with the resurrection from
the dead.
What you see going on with the redemption that Jesus
accomplishes is that the fundamental truth of the Law that we have spoken
about—where God punishes sinners—has been swallowed up by a greater truth—God’s
salvific, sacrificial love in Jesus Christ. Our sin cries up to heaven for our
punishment, but Jesus offers himself as the sacrifice that rescues all sinners
from the hell that we most certainly otherwise deserve. The truth of God’s love
swallows up the truth of God’s justice, having carried out justice in punishing
Jesus for our sins.
So when trials and afflictions come upon us, we should not
laugh them away or think that God has nothing to do with them. We should regard
them as God’s discipline. As you know, discipline is not carried out for doing
what is good, but for doing what is bad. Therefore, we should fear God’s wrath
because of the foundational truth of the Law and turn to him for our everlasting
comfort.
It’s like it was when we were children. Our parents did not
discipline us because they hated us, but precisely because they wanted good for
us. When the discipline hit its mark and the child is humbled, he just might edge
his way back to the one who had punished him. He wants to be comforted. He’s
sorry. He wants to know that his parent still loves him. What father or mother
can resist such a child? Do not all fathers and mothers want to take such a
child up into their arms and comfort him? We want to wipe away every tear and
assure the child of our love.
If we, who are evil, do this, how much more is it the case
that God will receive and bless the one whom he has disciplined? The God of all
comfort comforts us in our afflictions.
So when God lays his heavy hand upon you, do not reject him.
Don’t laugh at him. Repent, confess your sins, and draw near to the throne of
grace, that you may obtain mercy and find grace in the time of need.
No comments:
Post a Comment