It is concerning that the sympathy for “suffering” has become greater than the desire for justice among believers.
In 2019 I published a book on Amazon.com entitled, “Intentional Influence: A Woman’s Guide to Biblical Mentoring,” In the introduction I wrote that I had observed that many Christian women seem to expect that God will bless them for the suffering they experience in their lives. When they learn that God’s Word says that He will bless us for obedience, not suffering, they seem surprised.
Surely, the Church has made many mistakes over the centuries. The one these women have latched onto is largely a dismissal of the Old Testament. So-called “New Testament Christians” seem to think that the Old Testament has been voided and they must only study the New Testament. Deuteronomy 11:26-28 and 28 are very clear that God blesses us for obedience and curses us for disobedience. Please read one of these when you have time.
When we are robbed of the Old Testament, what’s lost leaves a gigantic hole in our faith. It makes Jesus’ assurance that He did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it (i.e., complete it) empty words (Matthew 5:17). It leaves behind so much of our understanding of God’s faithfulness and wisdom in the laws He left us.
The sacrificial system in the Old Testament points us directly to the sacrifice that Christ made for us by giving up His life as a punishment for our sin. There is a song that says, “God looked at Him and pardoned me.” What an act of grace God gave His people! The book of Hebrews assures us that that was the end of that system, Christ’s sacrifice was the last one needed for us to be forgiven for our sin (Hebrews 7:27, 10:10).
Not only was the sacrificial system ended, so also were dozens of other ceremonial laws like the dietary laws (Mark 7:14-23) and the feasts (Colossians 2:16).
The moral law was not satisfied. The Ten Commandments, the Psalms and Proverbs, and most of the case laws are just as important for us as they were when they were written.
One of the major consequences of the Old Testament believers’ view of the Law has been that Christians have been labeled as cold or harsh because we are willing to say things like “abortion is murder.” Or, to repeat phrases from the Old Testament that talk about delivering those stumbling toward the slaughter (Proverbs 24:11) or acknowledging that the land that has been “polluted by blood” (Numbers 35:33) because of the deaths of innocents (who is more innocent than a baby in the womb?).
In recent weeks the nation has been caught up in the prosecution of a postpartum mother who killed her three small children, one at a time, by strangulation. There has been an astonishing amount of sympathy for the mother, to the exclusion of concern for justice. How much of this is due to the effects of years of “legal” abortion?
For over fifty years this nation has been allowing, even advising, women to kill their babies in the womb. We now see that attitude carrying over to children outside the womb. What a tangled web!
A society that fails to stop the murder of children, in or out of the womb, is not just observed and known by our righteous God, but will be judged by Him. From a biblical standpoint, actions have consequences (good and bad). Our circumstances, our suffering, our “feelings” are not what is to be adjudicated, it is our actions.
As the Church of Jesus Christ, we have not been standing on the Word of God or holding ourselves, our churches, our civil governments, or society to that standard. I fear this is because we have abandoned justice, forsaken the blessings, and are living in the curses of a just God – because of the innocent blood that pollutes our land (including the three murdered by their mother and the “copy cats who have followed in her footsteps).
We cannot wonder why we see many curses from the hand of God in these days. We must repent – personally, as the body of Christ, and nationally as we continue to shed innocent blood – even if that’s “only for the first 12 weeks of a pregnancy!”