Viewpoint

God alone on the throne

The third in a series of articles in which Major Howard Webber considers the question: Am I being punished?

IN the second commandment, when God condemned the making of ‘an image in the form of anything in Heaven above or on the Earth beneath’ (Exodus 20:4), he wasn’t condemning the making of an ‘image’ per se. In fact, on two occasions, God actually commanded Moses to make images: the two cherubim in Exodus 25:18 and the bronze snake in Numbers 21:8. What God was condemning was making an image for the purpose of worshipping it.

The Israelites kept that bronze snake for centuries as a continual reminder of God’s providential care in the wilderness. Yet King Hezekiah smashed it to pieces because the people had made it an object of worship by burning incense to it (see 2 Kings 18:4). It is a warning to us all about how precious symbols and items associated with the worship of God can become as important as the object of worship himself. One can even become more preoccupied with the Army, with publicising and promoting it, than with God himself.

God sees the worship of anything or anyone other than himself as idolatry. An idol is anything that we honour and love as much or more than we honour and love God. To do so is to insult the majesty of God and treat him with contempt – something God sees as hatred.

In Exodus 20:5, God describes himself as ‘a jealous God’. Whenever the Bible speaks of him as being a jealous God it doesn’t mean that he is envious of someone or that he covets something. No, God is jealous for, zealous for and protective of what is right.

He alone is God Almighty, and he makes it clear that nothing can compete with or deny that fact. In Isaiah 42:8 he states: ‘I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols.’ God created the universe and you and me in such a way that we are only fully at peace, fulfilled and contented when we put God where he ought to be: at the very centre of our lives. In other words, we are the beneficiaries of God being who he is and of our treating him as such. With God alone on the throne, all other things will have their rightful place.

In Job 21:19 we read: ‘It is said, “God stores up the punishment of the wicked for their children.”’ Job couldn’t accept that, stating: ‘Let him repay the wicked, so that they themselves will experience it!’ The people of Israel came to believe that any suffering they experienced was due to the sin of their parents and not their own sin; that they were innocent. Finding themselves exiled in Babylon, with Jerusalem destroyed, they cried out: ‘Our ancestors sinned and are no more, and we bear their punishment’ (Lamentations 5:7). It was a view they summed up in a proverb they created, ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’ (Jeremiah 31:29).

That thinking may have developed from Exodus 34:7 and Numbers 14:18, which, like Exodus 20:5, speak of God punishing the children to the third and fourth generations for the sins of the parents. Jeremiah made it clear that the proverb was wrong: ‘Everyone will die for their own sin; whoever eats sour grapes – their own teeth will be set on edge’ (Jeremiah 31:30). And, through the prophet Ezekiel, God condemned the proverb: ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, you will no longer quote this proverb in Israel… The one who sins is the one who will die’ (Ezekiel 18:3 and 4).

Most Babylonian exiles might have considered themselves innocent victims, but Nehemiah didn’t. He cried out to God: ‘I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s family, have committed against you. We have acted very wickedly against you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses’ (Nehemiah 1:6 and 7).

It is a prayer that challenges me – as does this verse from the Army songbook:

We have not loved thee as we ought, Nor cared that we are loved by thee; Thy presence we have coldly sought And feebly longed thy face to see. Lord, give a pure and loving heart To feel and know the love thou art. (SASB 630)

MAJOR WEBBER LIVES IN RETIREMENT IN BOURNEMOUTH

Next week

God is patient