It’s Unfair…… or so it seems
In many parts of the Bible that I read I find myself saying “Wow Lord, what you have done here just seems so unfair!”
I’m thinking of all those children killed in the “plague of the firstborn” in Egypt when every firstborn child in the land was killed in the time of Moses. It was a terrible time, in fact in Exodus it says that there was a loud wailing like never herd before in Egypt and in verse 7 of Exodus 11 we read “Then you will know the LORD makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel?”
Or what about the time when Noah became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. He had three sons Shem, Ham and Japheth. Unlike his two brothers Ham treated Noah with disrespect, and yet Canaan his son was cursed not Ham himself!
Or what about the man of God from Judah in 1 Kings 13 who did miraculous things in the time of Jeroboam and prophesied in an amazing way who was told by God on his way to Jeroboam “You must not eat bread or water there or return by the way you came”
Then he meets another prophet in 1 Kings 13:18-19, and the prophet said to him
“I too am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying, ‘Bring him back with you to your house, that he may eat bread and drink water.’ ” (He was lying to him.) 19 So he went back with him, and ate bread in his house, and drank water.
For doing this the man of Judah was killed by a Lion!
There are many others and in each case I’ve said to myself at the time it does not seem fair to me! In some cases I still don’t know why it happened as it did, but I definitely do know this, we serve a God who is perfect and all His ways are just!
Deuteronomy 32:3-4 NKJV
3 For I proclaim the name of the Lord: Ascribe greatness to our God.4 He is the Rock, His work is perfect; For all His ways are just, A God of truth and without injustice; Righteous and upright is He.
This brings me to this next story about David where I had so many questions. Questions like, “Why did you do this Lord?”” Lord how can You do this to someone?” it seems such the wrong thing to do Lord?” By the way If you think its sacrilege to ask God these kinds of questions just read Habakkuk “Why do you tolerate wrong”, “Why are You silent…”
The story of David and Bathsheba is well known, David sees Bathsheba the wife of Uriah, bathing. He calls for her, sleeps with her and she falls pregnant. He then arranges for Uriah to be killed. This has two major purposes
This allowed pregnant Bathsheba to escape the penalty of adultery, which was death
It also protected David’s reputation by concealing his affair and allows him to marry her
But there are consequences to David’s sin (as there always are to sin) and Nathan approaches David and challenges him in 2 Samuel 12:11-23
2 Samuel 12:11-23 New King James Version
11 Thus says the Lord: ‘Behold, I will raise up adversity against you from your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbour, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. 12 For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, before the sun.’ ”
13 So David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”
And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. 14 However, because by this deed you have given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also who is born to you shall surely die.” 15 Then Nathan departed to his house.
And the Lord struck the child that Uriah’s wife bore to David, and it became ill. 16 David therefore pleaded with God for the child, and David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground. 17 So the elders of his house arose and went to him, to raise him up from the ground. But he would not, nor did he eat food with them. 18 Then on the seventh day it came to pass that the child died. And the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead. For they said, “Indeed, while the child was alive, we spoke to him, and he would not heed our voice. How can we tell him that the child is dead? He may do some harm!”
19 When David saw that his servants were whispering, David perceived that the child was dead. Therefore David said to his servants, “Is the child dead?”
And they said, “He is dead.
To be honest with you when I read that firstly David was to be punished by getting someone close to David to sleep with his wives/ servants, it just seemed distasteful to me. And then secondly to punish someone by killing his child just seemed totally barbaric to me. So let’s have a closer look at this
Looking at the first of Nathans prophecy in Vs 11,
Thus says the Lord: ‘Behold, I will raise up adversity against you from your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbour, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun
This we know was fulfilled by the rebellious Absalom.
Its important that we remember (if we did not know it already) that that God does not cause us to sin. God did not make Absalom do this.
As Jesus has said, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand”. The Kingdom of God stands against evil
Furthermore we know that in James we read
James 1:13-14
13 When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.
So God is not causing Absalom to sleep with David’s concubines.
Have you ever noticed how often in families the children often do very similar work to that of their parents. Or sometimes their mannerisms often mirror their parents, in some cases it’s quite detrimental, just think of addictions, violence etc that seem to follow family lines. Well this is more than just genetics. That precedent that is created by parents (or sometimes friends) , and is used to either defend, justify or encourage them to do exactly the same thing as what they have seen. Its easy to copy if they have seen it before! You can call this a natural consequence of sin. The gravity of which I think, we can underestimate. This is the mechanism of sin being carried down the generations. It also means we have to be careful of what we watch or even who our children associate with?
Deuteronomy 5:9 New International Version
9 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,
This verse does not mean God punishes an innocent child for the fathers sin. But that the sin that follows to the next generation is punished.
So the consequences of our sin are of our own making. The more sin we see the lower the barriers become to doing the same thing. So it gets easier for us to copy. And so the detrimental effects of this sin on our lives can be passed on. Absalom is copying what David did. Unless God intervenes in the life of Absalom or whoever, the sin, given the right circumstances will flourish and will result in a self-inflicted judgement and subsequently detrimental consequences (self-punishment essentially).
However all this is put aside when we are washed in the blood of Jesus, we become born again into the family of God- we have a new family- we have a new heritage. Whatever has had a hold on you is broken.
Looking at the second part of Nathans prophecy:
14 However, because by this deed you have given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also who is born to you shall surely die.
Again this seemed so unfair to me. David had fasted and prayed, he had truly repented. In fact he wrote Psalm 51 at this time
Psalm 51
1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge.
So why did God do this? Well the answer is given in vs 14 itself.
…..because by this deed you have given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme,…..
We should not for a minute think that the child’s death was an atonement for sin, it could never be. And it was no arbitrary punishment, but if there was no consequence to David’s sin , David who was anointed of God and led God’s holy people, not only would it embolden Israel’s enemies, it would make a mockery of God’s law. They would mean nothing. If the leader of Israel gets away with this, there would be no difference between Israel and their idol worshipping enemies.
The leaders of Israel’s enemies practiced things like prostitution and fornication and murder as part of normal life, while Israel’s God declared such things to be abominations and
outlawed them in Israel.
Simply put, God’s power and authority were being tested and this was an existential threat to the whole nation. Israel and its enemies needed to know that Israel was set apart by God and He was mighty and all powerful.
But did the child have to die? Do you know we too make this call when there is an existential threat to our nation?
The night of 19 July1916 was the start of the battle of Fromelles. The British high command devised an attack as a feint to hold German reserves from moving south to the Somme where the large allied offensive had begun on 1 July. In the end it had no effect on the Somme battles.
But on that night almost 2,000 Australians were killed in action or died of wounds and 470 were captured. One of the battalions, the 60th, had gone into the attack with 887 officers and men. When the survivors gathered at brigade headquarters the following afternoon, only one officer and 106 men answered the roll call. This was perhaps the greatest loss by a single division in 24 hours during the entire war. Many consider Fromelles the most tragic event in Australia’s history.
Along the four-kilometre front of their attack the Australians had to cross between 80 and 400 metres of open ground in broad daylight and under direct observation from the German lines. The German defences included concrete blockhouses and a strong fortification, known as the Sugarloaf, overlooking most of the allied line of advance.
More than two years after the battle, on the day of the Armistice of 11 November 1918 when the guns of the Western Front finally ceased fire, a war correspondent wandered over the battlefield of Fromelles and observed the grisly aftermath of the battle. “We found the old No-Man’s-Land simply full of our dead,” he recorded. “The skulls and bones and torn uniforms were lying about everywhere.”
Many, many innocent people died that night. To win a war many innocent people die. Short term losses as tragic as they may be ,to achieve a victory in the end. A terrible position to find oneself in.
So we too have to make decisions that may be damaging or even tragic in the short term, but that are hopefully essential long term. The death of David’s son was not atonement, it was not vengeful, it was simply an inevitable and necessary consequence of a sin that had extremely severe ramifications for the nation of Israel. There was no other solution.
Difficult decisions must be made with a long term view. And when we face times where we think life is unfair, if we turn to the word of God we will find this
2 Corinthians 4:16-18
16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
We should never forget that
-there is One who knows the beginning and the end,
- there is One who sees all things and is all knowing,
-there is One who loves us in whatever circumstances we find ourselves,
One who calls us His friend.
He is the rock on which our lives are anchored. There is nothing more we need!