BASKING IN THE UNIQUENESS OF GOD

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," says the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)

The longer I know Christ and the more that I understand His ways, the more that I am astounded at how He thinks and feels and wills. God's will is not a simple thing. He can will a thing in one sense and not will it in another sense. When we read that God wills a thing or that he does not will a thing; or when we read that he delights in a thing or that he has no delight in a thing, we must always be ready to admit that this simple statement of what he wills or delights in is not the whole story in our limited understanding. God's heart is capable of complex combinations of emotions infinitely more remarkable that ours. He may well be capable of lamenting over something he chose to bring about.

For example, when Jesus entered into Jerusalem He knew what was about to happen. The Pharisees were going to get the upper hand. The people would be fickle and follow their leaders. And Jesus would be rejected and crucified. And within a generation the city would be obliterated. Look how Jesus says it in Luke 19 verses 43-44:

"For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation."

Yet Jesus’ is also tenderly moved. We read in the proceeding verses 41-42,

"And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, "Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.."

Jesus felt the sorrow of the situation. This doesn’t mean His sovereign plan has thwarted by human rebellion and will. It means that Jesus is more emotionally complex than we think he is. He really feels the sorrow of a situation. No doubt there was a deep inner peace that He was in control and that His wise purposes would come to pass. But that doesn’t mean He couldn't cry.

Another time we read that when Lazarus died, Jesus said,
"for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe" (John 11:15). He promised to Martha in verse 23 "Your brother will rise again" and in verse 40 that they would "...see the glory of God". So Jesus had purposely planned to let Lazarus die and that his death was good and that in this death the glory of God would be made manifest.

Yet we also see Jesus' response to the sorrow and mourning of Mary, Martha, and the family in verse 33, "When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled"; verse 35, "Jesus wept"; and verse 38 "Then Jesus, deeply moved again." Jesus had planned the death and resurrection of Lazarus yet could feel deep sorrow and compassion over the situation.Amazing!

Another time we read of God speaking about King Saul saying,
"I regret [or repent] that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following Me and has not carried out My commands" (1 Samuel 15:11).

In regards to Saul God was able to feel sorrow for Saul's actions in view of His own foreknown evil of Saul and pain He would feel, and yet go ahead and will to do it for wise reasons. And so later, when he looked back on the act, he can feel the sorrow for the act that was leading to the sad conditions, such as Saul's disobedience.

Listen to what God says about the death of the wicked in Ezekiel 18:23,

"Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live? And then verse 32, "I have no pleasure in the death of any one, says the Lord God; so turn, and live."

Yet listen to the Lord in Deuteronomy 28:63,

"Just as it pleased the LORD to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess."

We are faced with the inescapable biblical fact that in some sense God does not delight in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 18), and in some sense he does (Deuteronomy 28:63; 2 Samuel 2:25).We can say that in one sense God does delight in the judgment of the wicked (in so far as he contemplates the judgment in relation to the greatness of their wickedness and in relation to the preservation of his justice and glory and in relation to the other good things for other generations that will come from it, etc.), and in another sense he has no delight in the death of the wicked (in so far as he contemplates it narrowly as the destruction of his creature created in his image with potential for his praise and as a tactical victory of the evil one). God, in whose hands are the issues of life and death, has a way that He can look upon the perishing in such a way that he grieves over their destruction.

Jonathan Edwards once described that the infinite complexity of the divine mind is such that God has the capacity to look at the world through two lenses. He can look through a narrow lens or through a wide-angle lens. When God looks at a painful or wicked event through his narrow lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin for what it is in itself and he is angered and grieved. "I do not delight in the death of anyone, says the Lord God" (Ezekiel 18:32). But when God looks at a painful or wicked event through his wide-angle lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin in relation to everything leading up to it and everything flowing out from it. He sees it in all the connections and effects that form a pattern or mosaic stretching into eternity. This mosaic, with all its (good and evil) parts he does delight in (Psalm 115:3).

God's emotional life is infinitely complex beyond our ability to fully comprehend. That is what makes Him God. Oh the challenge to know a being who is and expresses Himself in categories beyond our logic, frame of references, experience, and comprehension!

Who can comprehend that God is angry at the sin of the world every day (Psalm 7:11), and yet every day, every moment, he is rejoicing with tremendous joy because somewhere in the world a sinner is repenting (Luke 15:7,10,23)? Who can comprehend that God continually burns with hot anger at the rebellion of the wicked, grieves over the unholy speech of his people (Ephesians 4:29-30), yet takes pleasure in them daily (Psalm 149:4), and ceaselessly makes merry over repentent rebels who come back to Him?

Who of us could say what complex of emotions is not possible for God? All we have to go on here is what he has chosen to tell us in the Bible. God's heart is capable of complex combinations of emotions infinitely more remarkable that ours. He may well be capable of lamenting over something he chose to bring about even if we can't.

Humbly basking in my limited understanding and the depths of His nature and glory,
Pastor Bill