The Mercy Of God

Another thing that I’ve learned from my FB atheist group (technically a group where atheists and theists talk to one another), is that one claim against God is that He is cruel and genocidal.

Of course He is neither of those, or any of the other horrible things people accuse Him of. They remind me of Psalm 139 that says of those David identifies as “the wicked,” “For they speak against You wickedly / And Your enemies take Your name in vain.” (v. 20)

I don’t think I ever understood before how a person could speak wickedly against God.

In actuality, the accusations against God could not be further from the truth. His judgments, for example, always were preceded by warning, of one kind or another.

Take the death of the first born of each household in Egypt—the plague that forced Pharaoh’s hand so that the Egyptians actually drove the Israelites out of the land. Moses asked and repeatedly asked, and God sent signs, then nine other plagues that became progressively worse, showing Pharaoh’s need to obey.

Then there are the Amalekites, a favorite group of people among the atheists because God told His people to wipe them out. These were the people Saul was to defeat utterly in battle. The people who accuse God of wrong doing simply ignore the part about the attacks which the Amalekites carried out against the Israelites when they were on their way to the Promised Land. Not open warfare, mind you, but raids against the back of the line where the weak and elderly and children were most likely to be.

God pronounced judgment on them then, but He didn’t order King Saul to carry out the punishment until some 200 years later, after the time of Joshua, after the time of all the various judges. In other words, the Amalekites had two hundred years to repent and turn from their wicked ways. And they apparently did no such thing.

In fact, the Amalekites fought along side the Midianites who Gideon faced—these were the guys who stole the crops of the Israelites so that Gideon had to thresh his wheat in a wine press to keep it out of their hands.

Because of Midian the sons of Israel made for themselves the dens which were in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds. For it was when Israel had sown, that the Midianites would come up with the Amalekites and the sons of the east and go against them. (Judges 6:2b-3)

Years later, when Saul became king, he led Israel against the nations that were coming after them, including the Amalekites: Saul “defeated the Amalekites, and delivered Israel from the hands of those who plundered them.”

So apparently throughout Israel’s history, from the early days before they’d even arrived safely in the land which Abraham had owned, the Amalekites pillaged, raided, ransacked, ravaged the people of God. Even with that defeat by Saul, they did not relent or repent.

The consequence was that God told Saul to carry out His judgment against them:

Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt.

Two hundred years to repent, and they continued in their wicked way, so God acted. Compare that to what happened to the Assyrians who Jonah finally warned:

When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God relented concerning their calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it. (Jonah 3:10)

The truth of the matter is that all we like sheep have gone astray. We have all turned from God in our own way, some more angry and adamant than others, but we all shake our fist at God and declare we are captains of our own fate. James gives a practical example:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.”

The point he’s making is that we plan and project and strategize as if God doesn’t even exist. He goes on to say,

Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.”

Because, the truth is, the wages of sin is death. We all deserve to die, and the fact that we live a day is an example of God’s mercy. That we live and thrive and have productive lives, that the rain falls on the just and the unjust, that God sends us warnings, that His Holy Spirit convicts us of sin—these are all examples of God’s great mercy.

Matthew records this statement of Jesus:

“What do you think? If any man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go and search for the one that is straying? If it turns out that he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine which have not gone astray. So it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones perish. (Matt. 18:12-14; emphasis mine)

God’s heart is a heart of mercy. He will rescue those who will be rescued.