A Note from Tom: March 16th, 2011
Hope you’re having an awesome week!
It’s harder to do this week.
How do we go through this week and not be so saddened by the suffering of so many thousands in Japan. So much misery. So much pain and grief. So much loss. So much gone. So many gone. We are so far away. It’s impossible to imagine what so many are suffering. We have brothers and sisters in Christ who are there and helping. Some feel this is a moment like no other to show the love of Jesus in the darkest hours. Can we help them?
What is helping me is the promise that our God is King of Heaven and earth. He sees from His throne. And He knows what He is doing. Psalm 33 tells us that “…the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations…. From heaven the LORD looks down and sees all mankind; from his dwelling place he watches all who live on earth—he who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do.
He sees what is happening.
He knows what He’s doing.
He knows why this has happened.
And He cares about their suffering.
Even though nothing in all the universe happens unless the King of all allows it…and only He could ever understand why things must be as they are…I know His heart is broken for the pain of the suffering, even though it is a suffering He has allowed. For He loves them. He IS love. He gave our Lord Jesus to this world because He loved it. Not the world of trees, rivers, clouds, and grass. He loves the world of men and women, boys and girls, Chinese, Romanians, Norwegians…and Japanese. So many of them are lost. Japan has always had few…maybe 1%... who love and trust in Jesus. But He loves them. John says that “God so loved the world” that He sent Jesus so the world could be saved, not judged. Not talking about trees. It’s for people that He came. So that whoever believes could have new, ever-lasting, never-ending life. (John 3.16-17)
Jeremiah once wrote that even though God allowed so much suffering to come on some people…the people of Moab…for reasons He alone knows, He still was broken hearted for them.
Because He loved them.
“The valley will be ruined and the plateau destroyed…The fall of Moab is at hand; her calamity will come quickly…”
“Therefore I wail over Moab, for all Moab I cry out, I moan for the people of Kir Hareseth. I weep for you, as Jazer weeps, you vines of Sibmah…So my heart laments for Moab like the music of a pipe; it laments like a pipe for the people of Kir Hareseth.” (Jer. 48.8, 16, 31,36)
He sees.
He alone knows why.
He weeps.
He loves.
You know, this has been a difficult week for another reason. An influential minister with a church of 10,000 has written a book in which he wants Christians everywhere to understand that in the end, no one will be lost forever. Apparently he believes that even in hell, “no one can resist God’s pursuit forever because God’s love will eventually melt even the hardest hearts” and everyone will one day or other, make it to God.
They are talking about this book everywhere. In the New York Times. In USA Today. And thankfully, pastors and theologians who love the Scriptures are rightly and faithfully refuting this new book. They are defending the Word and explaining that the Scriptures truly, clearly, repeatedly tells us- warn us- that “He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed.” (2 Thes 1)
Faithful pastors are preaching, writing, and blogging that people everywhere have to hear and believe in our Lord Jesus or they will be lost forever.
Only thing is…
I’m afraid this is going to be a fight. I’m afraid that before a lost and dying world which has never so desperately needed to hear the Message of His love, this is going to get loud. I hope it doesn’t become an ugly argument on the news shows. In fact, it already has. It’s already become sometimes ungracious and unkind.
As people talk about this in the days ahead, I hope there is one thing added to all the arguing, debating, and reasoning.
I hope there is weeping.
For the ones who are lost. For those who will be lost forever unless in love someone tells them about Him.
More than anyone, our Lord Jesus spoke of the place where lost people go. He called it the place of “weeping and gnashing of teeth”. He once told people to their face, ““You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?”
Then four verses later, He wept. For them.
His heart cried “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Matt 23)
He saw.
He alone knew why they would be lost forever.
He wept.
Because He loved them.
He sees.
He alone knows why
Yet He weeps.
Because He loves.