Chapter Seven

(Excerpt from Why Is Life So Hard? Volume 7: God’s Judgments)

Psalm 119.52

I remembered your judgments of old, O Lord, and have comforted myself.

Learning How the World Works

I don’t remember the world feeling quite so broken when I was a child.

Oh, life on the farm wasn’t easy in a large, poor family. We worked hard. We rarely owned anything that wasn’t a hand-me-down. Thank God for the generosity of his churches, or many a year there would have been no Christmas or Thanksgiving.

Despite such hardships, there was a measure of comfort in learning how the world worked. We knew the rules. Being poor was no excuse for being lazy. A job worth doing was worth doing well. Cleanliness was next to godliness. Don’t talk back.

We could count on getting in trouble if we broke those rules. We knew what was right and what was wrong, or if not, we found it out “the hard way.” What comforted us, in a bizarre way, was knowing that there were consequences to disobedience. If things went wrong, someone was held to account for it. And someone made it right again.

The World Is Not Safe

We hear about new atrocities and catastrophes from morning through night around the globe. This has created a stressful psychological climate. The world is not safe, and moment by moment news programs report its unpredictability, its menace.

Linking the world into a global community has benefits, but who has the wherewithal to withstand all its problems?

If the brokenness of my childhood world required comfort, how much more does all that’s presently wrong with the world at large?

Where do we turn now, as we did as children? Who will pay for the harm that is done? Who will make things right again?

This is the role of God’s judgments. This is what makes them good.

Don’t our hearts cry for safety (in our worries) and righteousness (in our grievances) when we wake in the night? Isn’t the chaos of our world—global or personal—what keeps us awake in the first place?

This is life outside Eden, and our race has been suffering under its weight practically since we began. There has never been a perfect society. No civilization outlasts conquest and upheaval forever. The world needs a better way than self-centered ambition and power-based control.

Enter the kingdom of God.

Jesus looked out over multitudes of riff-raff who wake in the night to worry and fret over the troubles of life. What did he offer them? He spoke blessings over their troubles. Look at all these people—poor, hungry, meek, sad. Good news, folks, the kingdom of heaven is for the likes of you. (Mt 5.1-11)

He had yet to defeat their enemies, but plans were in the works and going ahead.

That being the case, he began to teach them how to live like kingdom people.

Those plans…. Isaiah spotted it over 2700 years ago. We all like sheep have gone astray, and God has laid on the Messiah the iniquity of us all (Is 53.6). Think of it. All the wrong that has ever been done, or that ever will be done, must be atoned for. Someone has to pay the price. That someone was the Christ.

Paying is one thing, you say, that’s justice. But what vengeance? What about making it right? This is also up to God. “It is mine to avenge,” he told Moses. “I will repay.”

God at the Center

David did not have access to nightly news broadcasts but he saw enough evil and wrongness around him that he found God’s judgments of old—his righteous decrees, his precepts and statutes—comfort for his soul.

When he hid his family in Moab and went on the run from Saul.

When he bid goodbye to his kindred soul, Jonathan.

When his baby boy died because of his sins against Bathsheba and Uriah.

When his son raped his daughter. And her brother killed him for it.

When friends and counselors betrayed him.

When his misdeeds brought God’s wrath on the nation.

When he abandoned the Ark of the Covenant to flee before Absalom’s rebellion.

There was a lot of heartache in David’s life. Some of it was even his fault.

David turned with every step toward the ancient way recorded in God’s Word. He had no other hope. He knew himself to be fallible. He knew people to be treacherous.

He knew nothing in this world could be counted on except one thing alone. You, oh Lord, have been our refuge. Your name is a strong tower. The righteous run to it and are safe.

That’s how David ruled his kingdom—God at the center, the reason and rule of life in Israel.

And because he did, he was promised an eternal heritage. One of his descendants would sit on his throne forever.

The Son of David finally came, laid down his life to pay for the world’s wrong, and took it up again. Now he lives to restore all things. All authority in heaven and on earth belong to him. He reigns in righteousness through endless days.

Don’t be deceived by the state of the world.

God’s judgments of old do not change. What he has promised he will fulfill.

Jesus is already Lord. He is already exalted to the highest place. He bears the name above all names. Every knee has not yet bowed, perhaps, but they will.

What comfort to us who long for his appearing. Even so, come Lord Jesus. Come.