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February 22 - April 8, 2023
In God’s story, we are the family that has endured extreme hardship. The human community has been torn apart by sin. Jeremiah’s story is but one example. And our home is falling apart. Creation is groaning in bondage. But the gospel knocks on our door. A total renovation is coming.
Our sin wants distance from God, and it is our distance from God that is destroying us.
The Judge offers mercy, if we will accept it. But if we will not, we should be forewarned: Jesus is coming to liberate creation from our bondage. His justice will heal the world.
WHY DOES GOD JUDGE THE WORLD? God judges the world to heal the world. We need God’s judgment because of the deception of appearances, the brutality of history, and the bondage of creation.
They saw the coming of Jesus not as the annihilation of history, but rather as the purpose of history realized.2 They believed Jesus could come back at any time, during their lifetime even, yet their picture of God’s kingdom was one flooded with every nation, tribe, and tongue from all across the earth, worshipping around the throne of God and his Christ.
where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.6 There are two important things I want to point out here. First, God’s judgment in this passage is directed primarily at the people of God, not at the outsiders. It is the “subjects of the kingdom” who are thrown outside: those who have heard God’s Word, known his promises, and been proximate to his work in history. When God shows up, Israel’s leaders are being kicked outside and Roman centurions are streaming in.
The picture is one of sin inside the city being cast outside, and sin outside the city being restricted from coming in. God is setting the world right. This is what judgment is all about. And it involves a weeding out and a gathering in. Jesus’ rejection by Israel’s leaders and the faith of the Roman centurion the weeding out foreshadows gathering and the in that will take place when God’s kingdom arrives in fullness.
This is a lot to pull from Jesus’ chat with a Roman centurion. Was this a fluke, a onetime exception in a broader story moving in an otherwise different direction? It’s worth zooming out to see this theme’s centrality throughout the biblical story: God’s purpose has always been to heal the nations.
God’s judgment is like divine surgery: performed to heal the nations. Sin is like cancer: it wants to tear the human social body apart.
IS HEAVEN RACIST? No, God’s judgment restores the nations from sin’s ruin, to himself and through himself to one another in his multinational, multicultural kingdom. Jesus is the Great Physician who heals the human social body.
the goal of humanity, the destination of creation, the last pit stop that this whole crazy train of history has been hurtling toward since Eden . . . is a wedding with God.
And it celebrates the union of good folks and bad folks: in a kingdom where all is given and nothing is earned, whose atmosphere is grace..
God does not invite us because we’ve earned it; he invites us because he wants us there. Jesus defiantly declares that the kingdom of God is something dynamically different from the genteel, proprietary insiders running into the wedding feast while the lecherous pagans are kicked outside. Jesus declares it is not our moral behavior that gains us entrance into God’s kingdom: it is his mercy.
Pay attention, this is revolutionary: good and bad behaviors are not the basis God uses to judge the world. His mercy is.
God’s mercy: there is no other basis ...
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Too often, we believe and act as if our presence amid God’s people is a result of our good behavior, our moral accomplishments, our ethical performance, rather than the sheer grace of Jesus. God does not invite us to his wedding because we’ve earned it. He invites us because his a...
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God is not obligated by our accomplishments or required by our merit. He does not have to welcome us to his wedding because we prayed a prayer, fed the homeless, or gave our lives in an overseas war zone. God has invited us in spite of ourselves, not because of ourselves. He doesn’t invite us because he has to; God invites us because he wants to. The cross is God’s wedding invitation, where Jesus levels the playing field before the mercy of God, invites us to be united with him as his bride and reveals some astonishing news ...
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That’s the picture. This is the king’s wedding, a regal affair, a presidential occasion: something worth bringing your best, busting out the finest duds, and dressing to the nines for. You would expect the king to be livid.
Yet notice how the king does not call the wedding crasher “jerk,” “idiot,” or “troublemaker.” He calls him “friend,” similar to the Lazarus parable, where the rich man is called “son.” God’s posture is one of friendship, of invitation, of embrace—even to the unrepentant rebel. God calls the wedding crasher “friend.”
Even whilst being quarantined away from God's kingdom God still says you as a friend and a son or daughter.
But the wedding crasher is silent. Speechless. Dumbstruck. He responds not with repentance but rather as one who’s been caught. His silence betrays him: he does not take the wedding seriously. So the king boots him.
HOW ARE GOD’S WEDDING AND JUDGMENT RELATED? God’s throwing a wedding and he wants the world to come. God’s judgment arises against those who don’t treat the wedding with the honor and respect it deserves: insiders who don’t take the invitation seriously and outsiders who try to bring their sin in with them. God’s wedding will reconcile the world.
I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.6 The King goes on to explain to the goats the beef he has with them: they did not do these things. This is revolutionary: Jesus says how we treat “the least of these” is how we treat him. When a dictator tortures his people, he tortures the Son of God. When a CEO exploits her overseas workers, she exploits the earth’s rightful King. When the priest raped Jeremiah, he was raping Jesus—the Judge of the world. Jesus confronts the brutality of history by identifying with the vulnerable,
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Jesus identifies with the vulnerable. How we treat them is how we treat him. But this has a flip side. When a deadbeat dad walks away from his child, he walks away from Jesus. When the cheerleader overlooks the girl sitting alone at lunch, she overlooks the Savior of the world. When the rich man ignores Lazarus, he ignores the presence of God.
Those who have “blessed Jesus” by feeding the poor, clothing the shivering, and visiting the prisoners are blessed by God. Those who have “cursed Jesus” by ignoring the thirsty, avoiding the stranger, and steering clear of the sick are under the curse. Jesus’ identification with the vulnerable of the world becomes central in determining how we stand before God.
The drug-addicted son whose mom brought him into the world strung out on heroin, whose stepdads beat him mercilessly as a kid, and who succumbed to the lie that he was worthless and eventually took his own life, may be surprised to encounter Jesus as the Resurrection and the Life who can raise his body from the grave, the Great Physician who can heal and make him whole, and the Son of God who can call him home to the Father he was made for.
There are goats hiding in the sheep pen. And some of them look very spiritual. I don’t know many who can claim to have driven out demons or performed miracles. Jesus seems to be painting these goats not as apathetic wallflowers hiding on the periphery of his church, but as rock-star Christians and superhero evangelists at the center of the action.
Notice three features of what Jesus says here. First, he contrasts when these places were prepared. While the kingdom has been prepared “since the creation of the world,” Jesus gives no such designation for the fire. This reminds us of the point made in chapter 1: God creates heaven and earth—and creates them good. God does not create “heaven, earth . . . and hell.” The destructive wildfire of hell is an intruder in God’s good world; it holds creation in bondage. But it does not have the last word. A place has been prepared for it—outside God’s kingdom.
God blesses; we curse. The Father is good; we want to be left alone. The Light shines brightly; we prefer darkness. Ultimately, we are judged not for our failure to successfully wrap our hands around God’s arm, but rather for our stubborn refusal to be grasped by him, our incessant prying of his fingers from our recalcitrant hearts.
If we think God’s love and justice are schizophrenic, it probably means we have a distorted understanding of both.
Injustice violates God’s love for the world. This is why, in the biblical vision, injustice is not limited to degrading others, but includes degrading ourselves. When we demean ourselves (through degrading behaviors such as sexual promiscuity, gluttonous eating, or drug abuse), we violate ourselves as an object of God’s affection. We do violence to God’s purposes for our flourishing. Our self-abuse is treason against God—suicide is only its most extreme form.
DOES JESUS’ JUDGMENT MEET THE DEEPEST NEEDS OF OUR WORLD? Yes, it addresses the brutality of history, the deception of appearances, and the bondage of creation. Jesus’ judgment of the world arises from his love for the world.
Do we get a second chance? The question often arises: “Can I reject God now but change my mind on the threshold of his kingdom?” To ask the question this way, however, is misleading: it reveals that we probably don’t actually want the kingdom. If we prefer freedom from God now, what makes us think we’ll change our mind when his kingdom comes? If we harden our hearts toward his presence today, why would we expect tomorrow to be different?
We are becoming the kind of people we will be for eternity.
Nirvana is depicted as a place outside creation: where there is no physical or material substance, no elements of the earth, no dancing or drinking, no emotion or movement, no sun or light. The goal of salvation (“the end of stress”) is to get there. When set in contrast to God’s redeemed world, nirvana starts to look a lot like the darkness outside the new creation. A lot like the aftermath of the “anti-creation.” Nirvana starts to look an awful lot like hell.
Modern Religion Where I live, being considered “good” has little to nothing to do with institutional religion. The social benchmarks for moral applause have more to do with whether one eats organic, rides his or her bike to work, and supports a humanitarian initiative in Africa. Things like these—even if good things that contribute to the flourishing of our world, in a manner similar to many traditional religious works—comprise our contemporary bars of righteousness by which one’s social capital is improved. In corporate culture, these bars may have more to do with how much money we’ve made or
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HOW DOES GOD JUDGE THE WORLD RELIGIONS? God’s reconciliation is itself a judgment on the religions and ideologies of the world, inasmuch as they stand opposed to God’s reconciliation for the world.
LOVE IS GOD? Ian, a friend exploring Christianity, had decided to reject it. He explained: “I have come to believe not that God is love, but that Love is god.” When asked what he meant, he continued: “When I’m hiking in the mountains or holding a newborn baby, I have these moments of epiphany where I feel the universe is motivated by love and sustained in love. I want to live into this reality more fully.” Love was something like an animating force behind the universe, which Ian had come to believe we should make central for our lives. I asked which parts of Christianity turned him off. Ian
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The gospel has gone global. In the twenty centuries since Jesus walked the dust of the Middle East, the Atlantic Ocean has been sailed, the Ural and Himalayan mountains crossed, and the Sahara desert overcome—the world has “shrunk” and the good news of God’s coming kingdom has spread throughout nearly the entire earth. Jesus is gathering the nations out of our empires and into his kingdom.
Jesus reconciles weak and strong in his church. We are gathered into a kingdom where all is given and nothing is earned. We are gathered not through imperial power, economic influence, or social strategy, but rather through the sacrificial love and atoning power of the King’s blood shed in weakness for us. The poor, sick, blind, and lame worship alongside the presidents, generals, and CEOs.
The upside down kingdom.
This is why the sign of faith is repentance. Repentance is not adding Jesus to oneself, but rather the conversion of oneself to Jesus. The gospel calls us, in light of Jesus’ coming kingdom, to “repent and believe” that Jesus is Lord.8 Our hope is built solely on Jesus—our solid rock, foundation, and reward—or it is not built at all.
But sharing our faith is desirable: Jesus is Life—in a world that is dying, how could we not share him? Jesus is Light—for captives groaning in darkness, how could we not proclaim him? Jesus is Love—for a society sinking in self-centeredness, how could we not shout him from the rooftops? “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”10 To look on our decaying world and not want Jesus to be known is like looking on a dying friend and refusing to offer the medicine in your hands.
In Jeremiah’s story (chapter 7), for example, we should have used much greater judgment as churches in proactively investigating child abuse accusations and removing pedophiles from the priesthood. The fact that, so often, priests were simply moved from one parish to another to protect the reputation of the church is a travesty. We abandoned the call to exercise judgment with one another. And the world God loves was hurt in the process. The church’s witness was hurt in the process. Jeremiah was hurt in the process.
DOES JESUS’ SURPRISE IN JUDGMENT MEAN THE CHURCH IS IRRELEVANT? By no means! It is precisely the church that Jesus weeds out of and gathers into. Jesus’ surprise in judgment magnifies, rather than marginalizes, the church as his body and bride.
Rachel’s parents asked her similar questions years earlier. They were atheists and were concerned when Rachel started following Jesus. Rachel was wise enough to know the point is not to have “all the right answers.” She’d learned it’s more important to love our family and friends well and listen to their concerns, rather than trying to be the know-it-all with a perfect comeback for every challenge.
Israel is not the bully, pirate, or dictator invoking the gods to justify her conquest of the weak. Israel is the opposite: the weakling who’s been getting her lunch money taken every day by the playground bullies. She is the little nation whose vessel’s been under constant attack by pirates while lost at sea. She is the dissenter among the nations getting railed on by the dictators. Israel is the weak. Canaan is not just a little bit stronger, not just overwhelmingly stronger—they are in a different league altogether. Their firepower puts them in a whole other category. Israel should get
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“Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.”4 Israel learned to sing this song in the valley of the shadow of the empires, with Egypt on one side and Canaan on the other: outrageously outgunned and outmanned.
Gideon is, like Israel, not who you’d expect. He is the least in his family; his family is the weakest in his tribe; and his tribe is the last in Israel.5 He is the last, the least, and the weakest within Israel, as Israel was the last, the least, and the weakest among the nations. God usually chooses the last kids picked on the playground when it’s time for a revolution.
This is not a battle strategy; it’s a death wish. Unless God is doing the heavy lifting.
Israel’s battle strategies look ridiculous because they are designed to. They highlight that God is the one really doing the fighting. There is a famous psalm that says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”
When we zoom out to the mighty empires of the ancient world, it is almost as if God is intentionally choosing the smallest, weakest, most vulnerable, helpless, and powerless nation he can, to demonstrate to the mightiest, wickedest, bloodiest, nastiest powerhouse empires of the day that there is a message he wants to send loud and clear to the ancient world. His message? “This is who I am! I am the rightful ruler of the earth, and I stand up for the weak, exploited, and oppressed!” The kings of the hill may reign for a day, or even for centuries, but God will eventually arise for judgment on
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