#DailyDevotion You Probably Shouldn’t Treat God Like Barney The Dinosaur
Psalm 7 11God is a just Judge, a God Who is angry every day. 12If anyone will not repent, He sharpens His sword; He bends His bow and strings it; 13He aims His arrows to kill him, making them blaze with fire.
Despite what some people think God is a just Judge. Paul says in Romans 2, “12All who sin without having the Law will perish without the Law. And all who sin having the Law will be judged by the Law.” There are those who sin against their conscience and God judges them according to their conscience. There are those who God’s revealed will from His word and they are judged according to that. All are judged and all are found wanting. “God is angry every day,” David says. Why is that? Well there are eight billion of us down here every day not obeying our conscience or the Word of God. We all are running afoul of God’s nature. He naturally, according to his nature and name is merciful, kind, loving, forgiving sins but disciplining those who commit them. He seems to be very patient as St. Peter notes in 2 Pet. 3:9, “He is patient with you and doesn’t want any to perish but wants them all to come to repentance.” Yet there comes a day of judgment.
David warns us to repent before God issues His judgment against us. God sharpens His sword for those who do not repent. Perhaps we will feel the edge of that sword in this life. Perhaps we’ll only get it in the next. It won’t be pretty. David describes it another way. God bends His bow and aims His arrows to kill the unrepentant and set them ablaze with fire. Well now you know where the New Testament gets this imagery. There is a day of judgment coming where God will judge the world and everyone in it. How will you stand on that day? What will be God’s just judgment of you? There is only one escape and that is to be covered in the blood of the Lamb, our LORD Jesus Christ, to be judged with him already in the waters of baptism. There, the flame of God’s righteous anger cannot touch us.
14Here’s one who conceives evil, is pregnant with harm for others, and gives birth to a lie.; 15He digs a hole and keeps on digging until he falls into the hole he was making. 16The harm he plans comes back on his own head. The crime he means to do comes down on his own skull. 17I will thank the LORD — He is righteous. I will sing about the name of the LORD Most High.
Verse fourteen and fifteen would be amusing if it weren’t true. No one gets away with anything. We often think the rich who got that way through immoral means get away with it. We don’t see all the trials and tribulations they must go through though. It will bite them at some point in time. Whatever evil we may plan for others will eventually come back and harm us. It will “come back on our own head.” Don’t be jealous of those who do evil and seem to get away with it. They aren’t fooling God. Planning to do evil should not be part of the Christians’ life. We are not called to repay evil for evil. Yet I hear at times from their lips, “They don’t know who they are messing with.” Whatever it is they are planning will not work out for their good.
Rather, we should thank the LORD and sing about the name of the LORD Most High. He is our vengeance. He is our righteousness. He has provided us with His Only-Begotten Son Jesus Christ whose blood atones for all our sins and is our propitiation from God’s righteous wrath.
Heavenly Father, while we deserve your great wrath and punishment, for the sake of Jesus Christ, have mercy upon us so we do not experience your great anger on the day of your judgment. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.