Judgment Toward Mercy

"When standing in a field of flowers or on a bed of hot coals, choose the flowers."

WE SEE JUDGMENT AS sentenced condemnation and the consequences of some negative act. One who is judged is either found guilty or freed underneath suspicion. We give the one judging a hard heart, most of the time, and when applied to God, a sternness of character, when our heavenly Father has proven for all time that He prefers forgiveness. Seeing judgment as the axe which falls, we look at people and people’s actions from a negative side.

The story of Israel told in the Old Testament paints the gentle, loving heart of God. But to see it requires acquaintance with who God reveals Himself to be in the New Testament. We must view God in the greater light which shines through Jesus’ sacrifice and not be content to sit in darkness. Israel found herself judged for her sins, but did the God who SO LOVED the world to the extent of the death of His Son rejoice in her judgment or in promised redemption?

“And with what was God angry for forty years? Was it not with having to watch his children persistently reject his healing ways and slowly die and fall in the desert? And whom did God tell that they could never get well and find rest as long as they rebelled against the only Remedy if not those who died in the desert? So we see that they were not able to get well and enter into God’s rest because they didn’t trust him or accept the truth he revealed.” (Hebrews 3:17-19 Remedy)

When she wandered in the wilderness for forty years, that was forty years, the people had to repent, to change their ways, and stop sinning. God’s forgiveness is proven on Calvary to be as far as the east is from the west. His mercy was not shorter nor smaller before then. Did God judge them? Yes. But how great was their sin? Ezekiel tells of idol worship and perversion inside the temple’s walls. Isaiah tells of infant sacrifice. Yet, even then, God desired to forgive. That is His nature. He desired to cleanse and for His people, for all people, to walk with Him in justice.

Justice is a different word from judgment. Justice allows the one judging to decide right from wrong. Yet deciding on the side of right works, choosing to see someone’s actions as right, is also judgment. Choosing to give mercy is the sentence of judgment being suspended. The one judged may have done wrong but the Judge chooses not to sentence them for it. Though they deserve consequences, they are lifted and not laid upon the guilty person.

God judged Israel and the surrounding nations for His name’s sake. From His people, Israel, would come the fullness of His salvation. This is His chosen judgment. From their sons would come the Savior, Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary, a son of David, who was God Himself. Though the world deserved a guilty sentence, He did not want them to pay the penalty of it and chose to take all that men deserved onto Himself. He desired to be seen as mercy.

“And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have wrought with you for my name's sake, not according to your wicked ways, nor according to your corrupt doings, O ye house of Israel, saith the Lord GOD.” (Ezekiel 20:44)

“He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.” (Psalms 23:3)

All the sacrifices and feasts of worship required under the Old Covenant Law, were meant to show God’s forgiveness. All that He asked to be performed by the priests was meant to look toward His coming redemption and the Law’s fulfillment. He wanted them to see the Messiah and to be forgiven. But instead, blinded by their emotions and fleshly desires, they set them aside, again and again, and became like other nations. Judgment fell when they became exalted by their sins, and the God who had formed them and made redemption’s promise to them appeared no better than any other god created by men.

Yet still, He lamented and declared His faithfulness. He is faithful. To His judgment, to His mercy, to His holiness. He judged to show who He was as El Elyon, the Most High God, and He forgave to prove He was Yahweh, Jehovah. As if God needs to prove Himself. He doesn’t except to show Himself strong in the eyes of men. We are the reason He revealed Himself as Jireh, the God who provides, as El Shaddai, Lord God Almighty, as Rapha, Healer. He needed to be seen as redemption, as Redeemer, for men to focus their eyes on the Savior who was to come, which they would not do when the God of heaven and earth, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob looked like sin.

“It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:22-23)

Jesus came to earth to reveal the Father as love, its very Source; as life within all living things; as eternity, that which never ends but continues; as light, the fullness of knowledge and wisdom and beauty. As forgiveness, which He desired to give through grace, His goodness, and power. As the authority, patience, and strength to live well with Him and inherit what Jesus’ death would give to all who would believe. In filling us with His presence, He enables us to overcome all that causes sin.

“For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:” (Romans 8:3)

Death and all the effects of death, all the causes of it (sickness and disease, accidents, deformities, and any other malady of the body or mind) have been condemned, have been judged, and declared null and void to all who will believe it. If we will choose to walk by faith in God’s love for us and the benefits provided by the cross, then there is no healing which is held back from men. But we can choose, like Israel, to live under judgment.

When faced with standing in a field of flowers or on a bed of hot coals, choose the flowers, and let the beauty God sent Jesus to reveal change your life forever, from condemnation to mercy.

PRAY WITH ME: God, I come to you as a sinner, aware of who you are as God, as forgiveness, and I ask you to come into my heart and fill me with your Holy Spirit. I seek Jesus as the Savior and choose to believe fully in His death on the cross, His burial in the tomb, and His Resurrection from death and the grave. I believe He is now King of Kings and ask Him to be Lord of my life. Change me, God, from a sinner lost in darkness to a child of God rescued by your mercy and grace. Amen.

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” (Romans 8:1)

Photo by Aki Nakazawa on Unsplash


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com