Valentine’s Day was a couple days ago. This day for a lot of people brings to mind things that they perceive to be romantic such as Romeo and Juliet. I was listening to the classical radio station the other day on the radio and they were introducing Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet fantasy overture and it got me thinking. Not about romance but about how backwards society’s thinking about love is today.
It has everything to do with the spirit of how most churches perceive the Bible today. They want to see it only as a happy love story with a God who is full of love and about a God who is there to tend to their every need.
Sad but in much the same way the Bible is a tragedy as Romeo and Juliet really is. In Romeo and Juliet we find two supposedly love struck teenagers, Juliet is 13 and Romeo is around 17 years of age. Their supposed love story lasts but a few days and at the end of the story we have the two teenagers dead along with four other characters as well. This is not much of a love story at all yet people insist on recalling it as such.
Most have not even read the story for themselves. Sound familiar? Yes, just like the Bible most of the people who want to insist that God is only love and that He is there to serve them have not even read the Bible through its entirety. If they had they would have found that yes God is love but He is just and righteous as well. If they had read it through they would have read of Man’s willful separation from the God who created him. They would have read of the plan and tireless efforts of God to reconcile man to Himself. This plan would culminate with God making Himself to be a man in order to die in the place of sinful men. This was the only just sacrifice for man’s sin. This plan is full of selfless love on the part of God and yes, it was tragic that God had to do it this way but it was the only solution for man’s problem. Man needed reconciliation back to God and he could not do it for himself.
Just like Romeo and Juliet there are killings recorded in the Bible but these deaths dictated by the hand of God were not senseless as were the ones in the Shakespearean tragedy. With God’s standard being perfect and much higher than any man’s sense of justice and with many men not even trying to achieve it with their hearts being far from God then death was and is true justice.
Some may be honest with recognizing that God was a wrathful God towards those who opposed him in the Old Testament. These same folks will quickly state that God is no longer like that in how they perceive the New Testament. Yet even in the New Testament we see specific examples of God striking people dead for their rebellion as well as the final judgment of every soul who did not turn back to God despite the callings and warnings of God. All of these souls will be sent to eternal torment in hell. This is holy and perfect justice.
While God is love as we know the Bible does state this, many miss the fact that at the exact same time God is just and his wrath abides on those who oppose Him.
People forget that while... God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3:16), at the exact same time they fail to realize that the foolish will not stand in His sight and that He hatest all workers of iniquity (Psalm 5:5).
People forget that friendship of the world puts us at war (enmity) with God (James 4:4). We choose to war against Him and yet He chose to die for us. When people end up dying due to their sinful actions towards their holy and righteous Creator then they deserve to die both physically and spiritually. This is not a matter of just love but more importantly it is about true justice.
Sad that most see this as unfair but a selfish worldview will make people think irrational like that. It will make them see the Bible for something that it is not. They will see the Bible as only a love story and will selfishly ignore the fact that they deserve the wrath of God.
The Bible does tell of God’s love for us but it is more importantly a warning about God’s wrath and that it truly is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31). It is a warning that His wrath abides on us if we do not truly believe (John 3:26). But at the same time it provides us the solution that He gave us about two thousand years ago (John 3:16).
Isaiah the profit said “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20). Today when we see people interpret the Bible as only a love story and perceive God as only there to serve them it is very much what the prophet was warning about. We need to stop calling good evil and evil good. We need to wake up and realize what the Bible is warning us about.
Just like Romeo and Juliet the Bible is a tragedy but the Bible does have a better ending for those who repent and believe and live for God.
Here are but a few examples of God’s wrath as recorded in both the Old and New Testament. As you can see it is on a much grander scale from not being a romance as Romeo and Juliet. More importantly it is not a trivial story which Romeo and Juliet is.
Genesis 7:23: Noah’s Flood (Millions were killed).
Genesis 19:24: Sodom and Gomorrah. Two entire cities were utterly destroyed.
Ex 32:26-28: 3,000 were killed who were not on the Lord's side.
1 Kings 20:28-29: God killed 100,000 Syrians.
2 Kings 19:35: An angel of the Lord killed 185,000 sleeping soldiers.
2 Chronicles 13:16-17: God killed a half million Israelite soldiers
Acts 5:5-10: Ananias and Sapphira
Acts 12:23: King Herod Aggripa
Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. Ephesians 5:14
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