It came. The judgment of God always comes on sin. And it will come to careless religious people. God’s at work in His judgment right now. And His judgment slumbereth not, it’s near. Don’t you ever let yourself be lulled into senselessness, you wake up and start reading the signs of the times. God’s judgment is near.
Not only are God’s ways misunderstood by careless, religious people, but sad to say, they’re also misunderstood by the world and even more misunderstood. In verse 11, “Then shall his mind change and he shall pass over and offend imputing this his power unto his God.” Now that’s a difficult verse to understand. What it means is this, that after the Chaldeans conquered Israel, they’re going to think they did it themselves. They’re going to think they did it by the power of their own god. The Chaldeans when they did conquer Israel, completely failed to realize that they were being used by God and they went around patting themselves on the back telling themselves how great they were for having done this. They thought they owed their military success to their own ability. Boy, that’s so typical. No matter what a man accomplishes, he always pats himself on the back. But God was soon to demonstrate to them that it was not so because the God who had lifted them up was about to smash them down. Sad to say in the world in which we live today, people soon forget that what they do they do not do in many ways by their own power, but are permitted by God. Great powers have come and gone and conquered and become drunk with their own success and God has cast them down, and still man never learns the significance of history, the real history that is God’s history, never dawns on him.
Yes the ways of God are mysterious to the careless, religious people and to the world. The world thinks its doing it on its own and in reality they’re nothing but the pawns of God. So the ways of God are mysterious and they are misunderstood, but thirdly and most importantly, though they be mysterious and though they be misunderstood, they are moral. They are always moral. The ultimate triumphant of right, the ultimate glorification of God, the ultimate setting up of God’s Kingdom is the end of all history and God’s ways are right, they are always right, they are always righteous. God is moral. God can do no wrong. God exerts a divine superintending power over the history of His world. God has divine control of this world. In verse 6 it indicates that God is going to raise up the Chaldeans. God is the one in control. Every single nation on this earth is under the power of God.
How do you know that? Romans 13:1, “The powers that be are…what?…ordained of God.” God is the Lord of history. Listen, God was sovereign in creation, was He not? God is sovereign in the dispersion of man at the Tower of Babel, was He not? God is sovereign in the historical process, is He not? And I’ll tell you, God’s just as sovereign in how it all ends as He was in how it all began. God is going to end history because He began it and He’s responsible for everything that happens. So there is a divine control over history. And may I say at the same time, there’s a divine plan in history. Things don’t happen by accident. They’re a part of God’s plan. Because, you see, it’s God who sees the end from the beginning, because it’s God who knows the times and the season. God knows exactly what He’s doing, the clock of God is never off one split second. Every single thing happening in this world today is happening right on schedule because God is a divine timetable. In Ecclesiastes chapter 3 you have that beautiful passage about a time to love and a time to die and a time to weep and a time to work. And just as there are times and seasons in the lives of men, so divine history is on time. You look back to Daniel and you read about the 70 weeks of Daniel and you know that God keeps timetables that are infinitely accurate, that are careful. There’s a divine plan, there’s a divine control, there’s a divine timetable. God is running history and He’s running it to the end that He sovereignly desires it to come to.
And what is that end? It’s the glorification of His Kingdom. The key to the history of the world is one concept, get it and never forget it. The key to the history of the world, here it comes, is the Kingdom of God…that is the key. God’s redemptive history…history of the Old Testament was Israel, history in the New Testament is the church. And in the Old Testament the Kingdom was promised. In the New Testament age it was promised again and then postponed. The Kingdom of God runs right through history. God’s desire was to call out a people holy, set apart unto His name. That’s His plan. The Kingdom of God is central in history. The only thing that matters in this whole world and this whole universe is the Kingdom of God. The problems of today are to be understood only in the light of the Kingdom of God. The problems of yesterday are to be understood only in the Kingdom of God and so the problems of tomorrow.
What God permits in the church and what God permits in the world is related to His Kingdom. And it’s going to be established. And the principle is the same, before the glory there must always be the suffering. So don’t stumble at world events. We’ve just scratched the surface of this book, we’re going to go on further. But don’t stumble at world events. If you’re a Christian, ask yourself this….whatever is happening, ask yourself this…how does this relate to the Kingdom of God? Ask yourself that if you’re a Christian. Whatever is going on, how does it fit in to God’s plan to establish His Kingdom? If you can’t figure out why there’s conflict in Israel, how does it fit in to God’s establishing His Kingdom? If you can’t figure out why there’s problems going on in our country or around the world or in your own life, how does it fit in to God’s Kingdom? If you’re not a Christian, if you don’t know Jesus Christ and you’re not a part of His Kingdom, ask yourself this…what is God trying to tell me? What is God saying? What is there in the world and what is there in me that needs to be corrected? Why is this judgment coming? What’s wrong with the world and what’s wrong with me? And having asked yourself that question, come to the sense of your own sin and then turn to Jesus Christ who can take you out of the kingdom of this world and put you into the Kingdom of His dear Son. Let’s pray.
Father, tonight we realize we have just scratched the surface of this tremendous book. But, Father, tonight perhaps somehow we’ve been able to think about some of the things that are important in this, Thy precious Word. Oh we know Thy ways are mysterious and we know how people so easily misunderstand them. But, O God, we know Thy ways are always moral.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
