The biblical idea of God’s judgment is an inconvenient truth in our modern culture, but there is a cumulative corporate sin that God must judge if he is to be God. There is a time coming for judgment of systems, businesses, conglomerates and nations for the sheer wickedness that they have either surreptitiously or blatantly perpetuated: poverty that could have been alleviated, starvation that could have been prevented, the sex trafficking of children, abuse, wars and genocide that could have been stopped. How could the merciful God not call a halt to human evil with the final judgment of which his prophets have warned for millennia? I don’t know how God will bring justice to bear on non-human entities, but he will.
Going Deep // Focus: 2 Kings 24:1-4
During Jehoiakim’s reign, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon invaded the land of Judah. Jehoiakim surrendered and paid him tribute for three years but then rebelled. Then the Lord sent bands of Babylonian, Aramean, Moabite, and Ammonite raiders against Judah to destroy it, just as the Lord had promised through his prophets. These disasters happened to Judah because of the Lord’s command. He had decided to banish Judah from his presence because of the many sins of Manasseh, who had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood. The Lord would not forgive this.
God is both merciful and just. He is not one or the other. He is not one without being the other. God is the perfect blend of loving kindness and divine justice. He wouldn’t be God if he weren’t, and when we step back and really think about it, we would not want it any other way. Now personally, when we are under his hand of judgment, we might wish that he were all mercy. And when we are under the cruelty of man, we might wish that God were all justice. But objectively speaking, God by definition must be both/and: perfect justice and perfect mercy.
In this chapter, after a few centuries of Judah’s back-and-forth flirtation with sin—mostly flirtation, if not full on dating—God’s patience has run out. Prophet after prophet has warned the nation by pointing out their sin, calling them to repentance, then giving them reprieve when they renounced their evil and returned to God. But the sin that occurred under Manasseh was beyond forgiveness.
Really? Beyond forgiveness, doesn’t God’s Word say otherwise? Haven’t you heard that no one is beyond God’s reach in previous chapters? Yes I have. In this case, God forgave wicked King Manasseh when he humbled himself in a Babylonian prison and begged the Lord to pardon his many transgressions. God did, and even returned Manasseh back to his throne in Jerusalem to finish out his life making up for some of the evil that had been inflicted during his reign. So yes, God can and will forgive the repentant heart of the most evil.
But there is a cumulative corporate sin that God must judge. The blood of innocent people cries out from the earth for God’s justice; blood that men and women in power have shed, or stood by and allowed to be shed when it was in their power to stop it. There is a time coming for judgment of systems, businesses, conglomerates and nations for the sheer wickedness that they have either surreptitiously or blatantly perpetuated. I don’t know how God will bring justice to bear on non-human entities, but he will.
Such was the case with Judah at this point in their history. There had been a brief reprieve under the repentant Manasseh, but the sons that followed him were thoroughly steeped in evil. And because the cumulative reservoir of sin from the last few generations was now spilling over the dam of God’s mercy, swift and sure judgment came at the hands of the Babylonians. End of story for Judah!
Do you suppose that will happen on a worldwide scale sometime soon? Do you get the feeling that the cumulative evil that has been inflicted on humanity for the past several hundred years, especially in the past century, will be called to account in the presence of Almighty God? When you think of the poverty that could have been alleviated, the starvation that could have been prevented, the sex trafficking of children, abuse, wars and genocide that could have been ended, how could the merciful God not call a halt with the final judgment of which his prophets have warned for millennia?
Yes, he will forgive the truly repentant—so stay in that camp—but the build up of evil he will tolerate only for so long. And we would not want it any other way.
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