God’s Response to His Unpopularity

     Unlike frail humanity, Jehovah is not fazed by white-hot hatred.  While civil rulers and multitudes of their citizens chafe at Jehovah’s sovereignty and resent Christ’s universal authority (Matthew 28:18), their plotting and scheming to break away from the immutable chains of the moral and spiritual laws that govern our existences is pointless.  Its utter foolishness and futility can be easily seen in God’s response to His unpopularity with millions of people.                                           

     First, God laughs (Psalm 2:4).  Humanity’s petulant animosity and the temper tantrums of spiritual snowflakes do not cause Him any alarm.  Such behavior does not intimidate Him; it does not have Him worried; and, there is no possibility of some future compromise on His part in an attempt to appease His haters.  As a matter of fact, He eternally purposed to use humanity’s vicious rejection of His Son to play an integral role in the atoning sacrifice of the Lamb of God.  Jehovah’s focus is redemption, not popularity.

     Second, God does not change (Psalm 2:5).  The ungodly will never frighten Him into a compromise of His holiness.  (The truth of the matter–which makes such hostility so utterly foolish–is that He cannot even be tempted to compromise His holiness [James 1:13]).  The revelation of His unchanging righteous wrath against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of man began with the first sin in human history, and it will culminate with the complete elimination of every form of it in the lake of fire called Gehenna (Revelation 19:20, 20:10-15) which He long ago prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41).  Jehovah’s passion is holiness, not popularity.

     God has unmistakably and irrevocably demonstrated His sovereignty in human history.  The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus which resulted in His ascension and coronation (Psalm 2:6) and the establishment of His eternal kingdom which shall never be destroyed (Daniel 2:44) is a fact of human history that cannot be erased or revised.  Unlike recently destroyed statues in the United States, the church is an immoveable monument to God’s sovereignty, providence, wisdom, and authority.  How wise is the one who chooses to “serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling” (Psalm 2:11).   

 

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Author: jchowning

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