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The average stay in a marriage is about eight years;18 my
The average stay in a job is four years, and every year it drops;19 my
And here’s the problem with that: the best things in life are the result of faithfulness. Usually years, if not decades, of faithfulness. Faithfulness is long obedience in the same direction in an age of instant gratification.
What would it look like for you to stay faithful to the vows you made, through all the emotional highs and lows of life together?
What would it look like to seize upon a dream for your life and run after it? Not at a sprint, but at a slow, steady pace, ready to wait for a very long time to see God’s calling on your life materialize and bloom to life?
Where has God called you to be faithful?
Whatever it is, the odds are that it will be hard work. It will be painfully slow. And frustrating at times. The best things in life always are. But trust me, it will be worth it.
you’ll end up with a “God” who is simply a projection of your own wishful thinking. A God who isn’t real, but artificial, made to order in a laboratory, not grown in the soil of reality.
Yahweh is like a sentry on guard. He wants to make sure that you get his hesed.
To “sin” is to miss the bull’s-eye.
Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance?
As one heavyweight scholar said in his commentary on Exodus 34, “He does not reluctantly forgive sins against himself and others; he does so eagerly, as a manifestation of his character.”5
Yahweh’s justice isn’t about retribution or payback or some kind of God-size vendetta—it’s about the healing and renewal of the world.
Because Yahweh is forgiving, we don’t have to cower in fear and dread Jesus’ return. We can take our “wickedness, rebellion and sin” straight to the cross and let it die on Jesus’ shoulders.
because Yahweh is also just, we can look forward to a day when his Son, Jesus, will judge the world, banish evil forever, and lead humanity to a glorious horizon.
When parents sin, the children are collateral damage.
because Yahweh is just, he will continue to punish sin in each and every generation until it’s completely gone.
As one New Testament writer later put it, “Mercy triumphs over judgment.”12
Sin, at its root, is not trusting God.
Yahweh is forgiving, but sin is not. Sin is unforgiving—merciless, petty, and cruel.
The cross was the Father and the Son working together, in tandem, to bring mercy and justice together—to absorb all the world’s sin, and the evil it creates, in Jesus’ death and release all God’s life in the resurrection.
The warning is this: Yahweh will deal with sin in our lives, one way or another.
Sin is dehumanizing. There’s no better word for it. When we sin, we become less than human; we miss the mark of all that our Creator intended for our lives.
God usually doesn’t have to lift a finger to punish our sin. Because it is its own punishment.
“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”31
help them uncouple from the baggage that will hold them back from life to the full.
we can break free from sin, even sin that runs back for generations.
“Even now,” declares the LORD [Yahweh], “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning”
Who knows? He may turn and relent and leave behind a blessing.34
Because the only fitting, rational response to this kind of God is worship.
What Yahweh wants is a living, breathing people to put his name on display. To show the world what he is like, not only by what we say, but by how we live.
Once again, “changed his mind” is an English phrase, not a Hebrew one, and you could easily get the wrong idea. I’m not questioning Yahweh’s omniscience or saying he changed his knowledge. Rather, it seems that he changed his attitude or relationship toward Nineveh. Once again, see Bruce Ware’s in-depth explanation: www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/29/29-4/29-4-pp431-446_JETS.pdf.
