Oct 02 2008
When God Fails
Does such a thing seem impossible to you? How can God fail? Since God is perfect in all His ways, omnipotent in all His actions, all knowing from before eternity past to beyond eternity future; how can anything He sets His desire upon fail? The simple answer is, that it can not. The world claims that God is fallible though, it can be shown that God fails in all sorts of things when the worldlings sets themselves up as the final arbitrators of right and wrong. But this then, is a human failing, not God’s. The world can not make sense of the God that we freely worship because they can not understand some of the things that He does, (or allows by His providence). The Old Testament prescriptions for law breaking, the rule of judgment used between the followers of God, the command that innocent women and children, (even livestock), should be eliminated through genocide; these are things that the world holds up as some of God’s failings.
These are the kinds of things that we have thrust before us by people who have not embraced the Scriptures and allowed the Holy Spirit to show them the whole picture that God has laid out for us. They pick out an incident and, in their inability to understand, wave it as a banner to attempt to defame God. “How can you profess to love a god who murders children?” Lets take a look at the slaughter of the Amalekites, when Samuel charges King Saul with God’s instruction to remove them from the face of the earth. It was God’s desire that there should remain no trace of this people to defile the nation of Israel or cause trouble for His chosen ones. God had reasons, and God knew a few things that Saul did not.
Being able to look into the hearts of men, God knew that there was utterly no redeeming value in these people; they were a cancer. Now, if a person has cancer, the treatment is to remove it; ALL of it. It is cut and scraped and irradiated until there is not a single living cancer cell left remaining. Does the physician try to reason with the tumor? Does the lab staff begin a regiment of rehabilitation on the diseased tissue so that it may be re-introduced to the patient at some future date? Of course not! A cancerous tumor has utterly no redeeming value in it and must be destroyed; so it was with the Amalekites. When Saul was sent to purge the cancer from the promised land the goal was that not a single thing remain to indicate that such a people ever existed. Not even plunder was to be taken, all was ordered for destruction.
It should be pointed out that the charge against God for killing the innocent women and children is foolishness and that God’s command was just. First, because God is perfect in His justice, we must accept that His edict to eliminate the Amalekites was in accordance with His perfect nature. Second, there is no such thing as an innocent person. We are all, from the moment of our birth, willful and rebellious and if any perfect people would have existed anywhere on earth; you would certainly never have found them among the Amalekites. Third, Since God alone is capable of creating life; it is reserved for God alone to determine when and how it should end, and the disposition of the soul afterward. The annihilation of the Amalekites served another purpose besides simply removing them from the path of Israel. This act was also intended as a warning to any who might rise up against God’s chosen people.
As for seemingly harsh punishments under Old Testament law; stoning for adultery, death for cursing your parents, an eye for an eye and may others that we think excessive today; these do not apply today. Has God changed His mind or relaxed His standards? No. What has happened is that we have come into an age where a new part of God’s eternal plan has been established, the old covenant of the law has been replaced by the new covenant of grace. For some reason, people seem to want to place themselves under a system of law, (instead of the system of grace), and then charge God as unreasonable because He knew that we wouldn’t be able to keep the law, and because He exacts excessively severe punishment when we fail. They act as though God waits for us to violate His laws so He can crush us.
This misunderstanding of the law is one of the major problems we face when we try to share our faith. Most non-believers, (and too many supposed Christians), think that we must keep God’s law to be justified before the Lord. If God knows that we can not keep the law, what kind of a perverse pleasure can He have in watching us fail? The mistake is simply that the law was never instituted as a means of salvation; it was intended to teach us that we need a redeemer. If a person never feels a need they will never receive the fulfillment of that need. If you fill your car with gas, do you then leave the service station looking for a place to buy gas? No, you don’t have a need. If you don’t have a fuel gauge, you may go your merry way not recognizing the need growing in your tank, but the time will come when the car stops. This was our condition before the law. We didn’t realize that we were sinning against God, even though we were. The law was our gas gauge. The law showed us that we are incapable of living in the ways that God would have us live. The law condemned us to Hell except that we be redeemed.
The law gives us the indication that we need a Saviour, and the new covenant of grace brings that Saviour to us in the person of Jesus Christ. The old covenant of the law and it’s sacrificial system of atonement is dead and made obsolete by the institution of the new, better, covenant of grace through Christ. We can never be the righteousness that God requires on our own so we have been given Christ Jesus to pay our sin debt for us. Romans 10:4 says, “Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.” NIV. In our acceptance of Christ, He not only takes our filthy sins from us, but He assigns to us His perfect righteousness. In our conversion we are cleansed from all that is unholy, and then garbed with a robe of purity. On that day when we stand before God in judgment, we will appear spotless in the righteousness of Jesus.
So then, is the law entirely worthless today? Not at all, it still has the same function as it always did, that is; to point us to Jesus. But if a person who has no understanding of Christianity and the God of the Bible begins to read the Scriptures like any other book, (from the beginning), they are likely to get very discouraged before they complete Leviticus and Numbers. If they think that God expects them to follow all of the rituals and laws of Moses they will rightly come to the conclusion that it is an impossible undertaking. The spiritual infant can not begin with meat, they need milk. The day comes that milk is no longer enough and they should move on to solid food but they need someone to help them understand that the Old Testament teaches and predicts, while the New Testament fulfills and comforts.
It can seem like a, “Catch 22,” when you think of it. You need the Old Testament law to realize a need for salvation in Christ; and you need the assurances of salvation in Christ to be able to withstand the burdens of the Old Testament law. The curse of sin in your life will crush you without Christ, and yet, without understanding your sinfulness, you can not realize your need to be saved. The need to understand the whole picture at once, while only being able to digest one glimpse at a time, can make Christianity appear as though it is all pretzel logic and circular reasoning. Perhaps this is why only God can call a person to Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Only the Spirit can unlock the mysteries of God so that we can understand and learn what we need to know in order to accept the gift of God’s grace through the sacrifice of Jesus of Nazareth for the payment of your sins, and my sins.
When we encounter people who refuse God because He seems so wrathful and unreasonable and unfair in the things He has done or commanded others to do; pray for them. Pray that they will have their ears opened to hear the message God has given you to share with them, that the Spirit will guide their questions to allow them to understand, and that you will be given the right words to present the Holy, just, loving, (and yes), even wrathful, and vengeful God of all creation; God’s plan of redemption for a lost and dying world through the death and resurrection of His only Begotten Son Jesus Christ and God’s longing that all would come to a loving relationship with Him through Jesus.
Never forget that we are not saving anyone. We do not make converts or even lead people to the cross. In truth, these are the workings of God through us. As He conforms us more each day to the likeness of Christ, we are better able to be used by Him to express the truth of the Gospel of Christ to the world around us. Did God command horrible atrocities? To our way of thinking, perhaps. But were they righteous? Absolutely! God never does anything that is not necessary to accomplish His desires, and everything that is necessary, He will do perfectly. If you find yourself witnessing and get stuck on a particular point, don’t worry. It is perfectly acceptable to know, that you don’t know something. Ask for time to study so that when you get together again you might have the right response, and then dig into the Word of God and the Spirit will provide the answers you need to complete the task at hand. The Spirit knows that God, the Father, would have us speak in truth and in ways that show we live…
All for the Glory of Christ
I am sorry but is you just expressing your own thoguhts and ideas
[Reply]
Fundamental Charlie Reply:
October 16th, 2009 at 10:56 am
It’s fine that you choose to not agree with me, but i am a bit dismayed that you did not state why you feel this way, or put forth any alternatives.
I believe that The Word of God supports the things that I wrote but if you think otherwise, please share your thoughts more fully so that we might all receive illumination from the exchange.
God Bless,
Fundamental; Charlie
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God allowed Obama on the throne, so God either through action or inaction, FAILED.
I prayed almost daily asking God to heal my mother. But God killed her instead. God FAILED.
I prayed for help with the personal financial crisis that the Bolsheviks in Congress have put me in, and God heard my prayers– They cut my hours at work today. God FAILED.
But if you want to use Democrat Doublespeak, you could say God SUCCEEDED.
-kev
[Reply]
Fundamental Charlie Reply:
February 6th, 2010 at 10:21 am
Kev,
First, God is A-political and while I agree with your assessment of the current Obama-nation going on in the White House, I still have to insist that God has allowed this for His purposes. But even in that, it has nothing to do with a Republican or Democratic view. I label myself as a Republi-Indepen-Decrat. I think that if not even Satan can stand if he be divided, then we are making a mistake in having a 2 party system in the first place.
We rarely see the reasons and benefits of God’s providence while we are in the midst of the trials. While I can sympathize with your loss of income and the loss of your mother you are judging this from an imperfect earthly view. In order to have any hope of an effective walk with the Lord, we have to be wise enough to admit our own stupidity.
I’m sorry that you lost hours/income, but obviously God has something else in mind for you. Perhaps He is still in the process of bringing you to the point of absolute brokenness so that He can use you more productively.
The loss of a loved one, especially a mother, is only sad when viewed from the perspective of those that remain behind. I know it is usually spoken in the light of empty platitude, and I do not mean it to be that way at all, but your mother is doing better than she has, her whole life, (assuming that she was in Christ when she was called home).
It is not possible for God to fail. He can, and oftentimes does, fail to do what we want though, but all that means is that we are wrong in what we are asking. If there were a more perfect way for God to act in our lives, He would already be doing it!
God Bless,
Fundamental Charlie
[Reply]
Your reasoning is fatally flawed when you ascribe all that happened in the old Testament as that of a reflection of the desires and workings of God. The people Israel often decided their own direction and man can and does take Gods Word and twist it to fit man’s own agenda. To believe such is not to diminish the Word. To fail to recognize and admit that this happens in the historical Bible does an injustice to those we are trying to reach with the reality of the gospel.
And, to say that when one loses a job or faces a set back that ‘it is the will of God’ alienates more than serves. No one knows why such things happen, but if it is by the will of God, than ipso facto God is at fault when He then doesn’t provide peace and another door opening in such trying times. You are using trite, over worn explanations. I challenge you to think a bit independently of your past teachings. This is not to diminish God nor to remove Him in any way from being our salvation/creator/lover. It means stepping out in prayer and faith and using your then new insights to help people who need meaningful explanations, not platitudes that have never served a useful purpose.
[Reply]
Fundamental Charlie Reply:
July 22nd, 2010 at 8:29 pm
Jim,
Delighted to hear from you but I don’t understand the charges you are leveling, still; let me respond.
First, I did not say that all that happened in the Old Testament, (or the New, or the happenings of today), were reflections of the desires and workings of God. What I said was that if something happens, then it is either by the direct hand of God OR by His providence. In other words, what He doesn’t cause directly, He allows. If there is any question in your mind about this then please tell me, is there anything that God does not know about? Even if it is the mere onset of consequences for one’s own actions and choices, God know what they are and can, if He desires, intervene to alter the outcome.
I also never suggested that the Word of God is not routinely twisted to appear to bend to the will of man. If you have read many of the articles I have posted you will see that I am practically begging people to educate themselves so that they will not fall victim to exactly that sort of thing. DISCERNMENT is what I’m all about in that light. The problem is that I tend to go long as it is and to fully unpack every issue in every article would be prohibitive in both space and redundancy.
I also did not say that the loss of income, nor the loss of a loved one was necessarily the will of God, only that it seemed obvious that God had something more in mind for Kev, and offered that PERHAPS, (a suppositional opening), there might be a reason that was hidden from him for why such things may have happened.
Further, I thought that I was very clear in saying that I did not want my comments to come off as platitudes, but the fact of the matter is, (and I am sticking to my guns here), God has a plan that is perfect and if a more perfect way of accomplishing His purposes was available, then He would already be using that better way.
The purpose of the entire piece was to show how we, as the flawed, fallen beings we are, do not have the ability to see the events that are unfolding from the perspective and with the wisdom that God possesses.
I appreciate your input and I hope you will keep reading and offering your comments but I will not bend what may seem offensive to accommodate the readers, and I don’t believe that they would want me to either. I agree that service is vital but not at the expense of softening an offensive Gospel, and yes, it is an offense. If the truth alienates then so be it. In the words of of Dr. Lutzer, “It is better to be divided by truth than to be united in error.”
God Bless,
Fundamental Charlie
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