When you read the Bible and see it condemning a particular sin, if the sin seems absent today, do you move on? Or do you presume every sin is common to man?
Take bloodshed, for instance: across the Old Testament God rebukes man for shedding innocent blood.1 In fact, the first mention of blood in Scripture is God's condemnation of Cain for shedding the blood of his brother, Abel: “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground."2
When you read this and the many other places where God's people are condemned for shedding innocent blood, do you stop to consider whose blood cries out to God from our soil? Do you find yourself wondering whether God cares about the hundreds of thousands of disabled and elderly who are starved, dehydrated, and drugged to death each year in our hospitals, nursing homes, and bedrooms? Do you wonder if God keeps track of the newborn who are denied...
necessary medical treatment because they have a genetic defect? Do you ask God what sort of cries he is listening to from the blood of America's 50,000,000 slaughtered babies?
God condemns Samaria and Edom for carrying their warfare to the slaughter of pregnant women and their unborn babies (Hosea 13:16; Amos 1:13). When we read such words from God, do we ever stop to wonder whether the slaugher of American babies in our generation could be God's judgment for our slaughter of the pregnant women and unborn babies of Dresden, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima?
I ask because God declared Job to be a righteous man, and here is Job's own description of the particulars of his righteousness:
I delivered the poor who cried for help, And the orphan who had no helper. The blessing of the one ready to perish came upon me, And I made the widow’s heart sing for joy. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; My justice was like a robe and a turban. I was eyes to the blind And feet to the lame. I was a father to the needy, And I investigated the case which I did not know. I broke the jaws of the wicked And snatched the prey from his teeth. (Job 29:12-17)
Are you a father to the needy? Do you snatch the unborn from the jaws of the bloodlusting idolaters of Planned Parenthood? The feeble and elderly from the jaws of ghoulish hospitalists and hospice nurses?
If not, learn to be a father to the needy like godly Job.
If so, Happy Father's Day!
Tim serves Clearnote Church, Bloomington, Indiana. He and Mary Lee have five children and big lots of grandchildren.
Want to get in touch? Send Tim an email!
