Can We Still Worship The “Smighty Almighty”?

Can we still worship the “Smighty Almighty?” The reason I entitled the message that is because of the article that I told you about. Catherine Nixey who wrote an article entitled Nearer My God To Me. In this article she indicated God is becoming more liberal, He’s becoming more tolerant. She said as a result of that nobody believes in the Smighty Almighty. The God who smote the Egyptians, the God who smote Sodom and Gomorrah, the homophobic God of the Old Testament. Nobody believes in that anymore or very few she said, believe that anymore. So what we have to do is to look at the God of the Old Testament. It is a very difficult experiment, I should say it’s a very difficult assignment that I have been given. As I think about this because the God of the Old Testament is very complex as we shall see, but we have to address the issue as it exists.

Art Linkletter, some of you may remember him, he was a man who spent a lot of time with children, and he always published the foolish things and the funny things that kids said. Art Linkletter said one time he saw a kid scrawling something on a page and he said to this kid, “What are you drawing?” And the kid said, “I’m drawing a picture of God.” Linkletter said, “Nobody knows what God looks like.” The kid said, “They will when I’m finished.”

The question of what God is like is the most important question that you and I will ever confront. Tonight we’re going to confront it through the eyes of the Old Testament, and it isn’t easy, but it is biblical.

The Old Testament God has its critics, Richard Dawkins and he is the world’s most famous atheist. He said, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it; [a] petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist.” And he goes on to say “genocidal” and then he lists some other words that I can’t pronounce. [Dawkins] said [God] is a “Capriciously malevolent bully.”

So that comes from an atheist who is very clear regarding his belief on the God of the Old Testament. Simply dismisses him as indeed a vindictive bully. Now that comes from outside the faith, obviously because Dawkins is an atheist, but what about within the evangelical world? What do evangelicals believe about the God of the Old Testament? Well, Greg Boyd, the pastor of Woodland Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, who taught at Bethel University for sixteen years, wrote a book entitled The Crucifixion of the Warrior God. He insists there has to be a distinction between the God, the textual God of the Bible and the actual God that exists. He says the Old Testament is a literary depiction of God by a fallen violence prone, culturally conditioned, ancient near Eastern biblical narrator or prophet. This textual God, as I want to emphasize, does not really exist.

What about Moses? Moses suggests he apparently was demonically influenced when he commanded the Israelites to drive out the Canaanites and massacre them. He says Moses’ command was under a curse and it’s ghoulish. Now, once you take that point of view, what do you do with the New Testament? For example, the Bible says in the book of Thessalonians, it says that Jesus is going to return “Inflaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and the glory of his power.” (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9)

What do you do with that? Well, Boyd says, and I might quote him also, he talks about the fact that we must understand the apostle Paul was vindictive when he said this I can’t find the quote exactly here, but I have it here. Where he goes on to say as a result— I found the quote, “I consider it beyond question that some of Paul’s language about his opponents reflects a hostile and mean-spirited attitude. I cannot deny that Paul was occasionally nasty and name-calling and inconsistent in his teaching about Jesus.” So he goes on to criticize Paul and what he’s doing is he’s denying what Paul wrote in the book of Thessalonians because after all, God is a God of love. Jesus Christ showed that love on the cross. You can’t believe in that kind of a judgmental God. Well, that’s Greg Boyd.

What about Andy Stanley? Andy Stanley is a well-known evangelical, a pastor. He wrote a book called Irresistible, and in it you might be acquainted with the fact that he says we have to unhitch the Old Testament from the New, and he gives many reasons for it. He says, if we accept the Old Testament, we’re going to fall into errors such as the prosperity gospel, the crusades, antisemitism, legalism, exclusivism, and judgmentalism among a number of other things. What do we do with the God of the Old Testament and is he the same as the God of the New Testament? That’s the question.

Before I begin my remarks, I want to say that say a word about the context in which the Old Testament was written. It was written in a context in which there was tribal warfare. There were primitive views regarding justice. There were no central governments. So, it is a very difficult book and in the middle of this, God put His Word, and He gave the Israelites a revelation. It isn’t as if God is approving of such things such as slavery.

Years ago, I used to teach apologetics in the 1970s and the big question at that time was, is the Bible true? Nobody asks that question anymore. The question is, is the Bible socially regressive? Is it up to date regarding its view of slavery and women for example? That’s the criticism the Bible is receiving these days. But let’s talk about slavery for just a moment. This morning, I read the Exodus 21. I reread it regarding slavery and what you must understand is the Bible actually elevates the role of a slave in a way that no primitive culture does. God doesn’t approve of slavery, but he does humanize it.

For example, the first thing in that chapter is this, slaves can go free every six years on the seventh year they can be free. They can decide whether they want to stay with their master or whether they want a different master or whatever it is that they want to do. Also, later on in the chapter it says, “If you go out and you capture a man, and you force him to become a slave, you should be put to death for that.” So yes, slavery was tolerated in the Old Testament, but you must understand these slaves had nothing, nowhere to go. So it was a matter of mercy of making slavery in a way that was more tolerable. That’s what the Bible does.

As a matter of fact, it helped the poor people. They had no place to go and oftentimes working for someone was the means of their livelihood. What about the New Testament? Sometimes contemporary people criticize Paul. They say, well, why didn’t Paul speak against slavery? Once again, slavery was a part of the Roman empire and what Paul says to the masters and the slaves is groundbreaking.

For example, he tells the masters to be good to their slaves and to stop threatening— This is actually in Ephesians 6:6. He says this, “Know that you have a master in heaven and you are going to give an account to your master just like you’re expecting the slaves to give an account to you.” So, Paul is elevating the role of slaves, and of course he does this in the book of Philemon.

But of course Christianity with its tremendous emphasis and power, it became the means by which slavery was abolished. People like Wilberforce and others. Verses of scripture show that in the New Testament, slaves had absolutely the same rights and the same privileges and should be welcomed into churches just like their masters. One of the best verses in this world in which there’s so much discussion regarding critical race theory is Colossians 3:11, “That in Christ there’s neither Jew nor Greek bond or free, (And then it goes on to say) circumcised or uncircumcised, whether they be Scythian, barbarian, all are one in Christ.”

What the New Testament teaches is that because of the work of Jesus on the cross, all who believe have a transcendent unity including slaves, bond, or free. Including circumcised or uncircumcised, and this is the unity to which our churches should be working. Critical race theory today tears all of that apart. Critical race theory says we have to divide on the basis of our skin color to put it in a single sentence before I move on. Critical race theory tears apart everything Jesus died to bring together. As we think about the New Testament and the Old Testament and its conception of God, we must always put everything in context.

What I’d like to do now is to discuss three areas of criticism of the God of the Old Testament, and the first is the Genesis flood. A number of years ago, it is quite a few years ago, I was watching a PBS program with Bill Moyers, and he was discussing with a panel the Genesis flood. They basically agreed God was like a child who built a sandcastle—this was their illustration—and then something went wrong. He lost his temper, and He took that sandcastle and destroyed it and then He felt bad. That’s what God did. God created the world; He created people and things got out of control. God felt bad and therefore he gave a rainbow. He gave a rainbow as a kind of apology, “I’m so sorry that I did this to the world.”

Now you must understand what’s going on in a discussion like that and we won’t take time to turn to the passage I was going to, but I can see that time is hurrying on. You have to understand they believed the Bible is a record of what man thinks about God. It’s not a book from God, but it’s a book about God written by human beings whose view of God is constantly changing. As a matter of fact, in the program they said, take any citizen at random and he will have better morals than the God portrayed in the Genesis flood.

Once again, we must understand we’re dealing with a God whom we cannot control. If you look at the text, it will say, “God regretted that he made man,” and that is an anthropomorphism. It doesn’t mean God actually regretted it because He couldn’t foresee it. The Bible sometimes speaks in these terms because what it’s saying is we are viewing God as if He were a man, so we understand Him better. The Bible says God therefore had sorrow for what was happening in the world, but the whole world was filled with wickedness.

During that period of time when it began to rain for 40 days and 40 nights, I have no doubt that those who really called upon the name of the Lord seeking mercy would have received it. Furthermore, there was grace shown in the rainbow—which is being hijacked today with the LGBTQ plus community—but there was grace shown in the rainbow. Not only that, but he spared Noah of course, as all of us know. But you can’t look at this passage and say, “This couldn’t be God,” because then you have the New Testament to deal with.

Jesus spoke about the days of Noah. It referred to the flood as an example of coming judgment. So, as we read a passage like this, what we have to do is to realize this is a historical passage. We have to accept it for what it is if we believe the Bible at all. Because once you begin to deny that the flood happened or say God just lost His temper from there on everything in the Bible begins to fall apart.

What do we do about the Canaanites and their destruction? Maybe I will turn to this passage in Deuteronomy 7. I’m sorry we are bouncing around somewhat tonight, but we have to. Deuteronomy 7:1-2, “When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering into take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, (Megabytes for sure.) the Canaanites... more numerous and mightier than you, and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them completely to destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them.”

Wow, men, women, and children are to be killed. That’s difficult. We all admit that it is difficult, but let’s ask a couple of questions. First of all, did the Canaanites know about Israel believing in the true God? The answer to that is yes, actually they knew better. How do we know that? Because the harlot Rahab, here she is. She’s a prostitute of all things and when the spies come to Jericho, what does she say? You can read it for yourself. She says, “We heard about the miracles that God did to bring you across the Red Sea and so forth,” and she said, “We know that you are the worshiper of the one true God.”

Now, if a harlot knew all that, it is very clear that the leaders of the various tribes knew that Israel was a worshiper of the true God. Yet of course the Canaanites clung onto their idols. Is it a matter of the whole issue of ethnicity? Was it just ethnic cleansing like some people say? The answer is no. The reason we know that is because in Ezekiel 16, the Bible says the Israelites were actually at one-time Canaanites. It says they have the very same origin. As a matter of fact, it says your father was an Amorite and your mother was a Hittite. Now, of course in Egypt, they developed their own identity, but they’re really of the same origin, the same ancestors if you trace them back far enough. Furthermore, if it was a matter of ethnicity, why is it that the harlot Rahab was spared and actually becomes a part of the genealogy of Jesus Christ?

It wasn’t because of ethnicity. Was it because they had the wrong religion? Not really because they didn’t have the revelation that Israel had. So, it wasn’t just simply that we are here to force you to switch religions. The reason the Canaanites were massacred are two in number. Number one, this was a matter of warfare. God was giving people the land. That is to say God was giving Israel the land and the people were being killed as oftentimes happens in war. The second reason though is because the cup of the Amorites, the cup of the Canaanites was full of iniquity.

Archeologists have uncovered a lot of artifacts and a lot of material that shows the Canaanites had descended into the deepest kind of sexual immorality and perversion that you can possibly imagine. So, they were being judged for that. Of course, if you’re going to kill the parents, the children also are a part of that. God gives life and God takes life and what we need to do is to see this in context.

Often, they were offered terms of peace. We know that because there were some tribes that accepted peace from Joshua such as the Gibeonites, and they were not killed. So, the warfare was to claim the land. Let’s remember this, God was not a respecter of persons in some sense. because when Israel disobeyed and fell into deep immorality, God judged them just as severely. You have the Assyrian captivity, you have the Babylonian captivity. When they were there in captivity in Babylon, God did not suggest to them that they should set up a theocracy. It was this land and this land alone that we call Israel today that was given to Abraham, and now the descendants of Abraham were there to claim it.

So, it’s a difficult thing to experience this, but it’s also very complicated. We don’t have time to get into the nuances. But there are instances when it says that they wiped out the Canaanites and then later on a few chapters later, it shows there were still Canaanites there. It wasn’t always that all were killed, but if we can think of a military operation where the chief leaders of the tribe and the military were killed, then of course the others had to submit to Israel. Throughout Israel’s history, you oftentimes have aliens and those who were Canaanites existing among them. But it’s a difficult passage of scripture we must deal with.

Well, the third aspect has to do with stoning. You’re stoned for a number of different offenses. I was reading this morning, Leviticus 18, also Leviticus 20 because it is there in chapter 18 where you have five or six different kinds of sexual sins that are listed. And later on in chapter 20, it says, particularly when it comes to same sex relationships, that those people should be stoned, but so should adulterers and those who commit other kinds of sins. In fact, there’s at least a dozen different sins in the Old Testament that deserved stoning. And the question always is why is it that we zero in on homosexuality oftentimes? Why is it that the evangelical church goes back to the Old Testament for homosexuality but doesn’t go back to the Old Testament for such things as whether or not your cloth has threads that are intermixed because the Jews weren’t supposed to do that? Those are the kinds of questions I hope to deal with in the next message. When I ask the question, is God more tolerant than He used to be? And that’s in the next sermon.

But when it comes to the stoning, we must understand that negotiation was oftentimes taking the place of stoning. As a matter of fact, there are no clear historical instances where the stoning was carried out except for murder. Why? Because the Bible says in the book of Numbers 35, “You may accept a ransom for all these other sins, but for murder there can be no ransom.” In other words, there were alternate ways that people were punished for their sin other than stoning. The Bible doesn’t have a lot to say about that, but that text in Numbers 35 certainly clarifies that often there was a substitute penalty, but there’s more.

One of the reasons you have such few stonings, if any, is because the high bar was put there in order to carry this out. What am I talking about? In Deuteronomy 17:6, it says explicitly that nobody can be put to death unless there are two witnesses. Alright, you have two witnesses. It’s not just somebody saying so-and-so did so-and-so stone them. There have to be two witnesses. Furthermore, the two witnesses are the first ones who have to throw the first stones, and we see this when they brought the woman to Jesus. And you know that story.

So stoning is very difficult. The judgment was immediate, but believe it or not, there were some advantages to that immediate judgment. Because later on God prolongs the penalty, the penalty comes later. As it says in the book of Ecclesiastes, “Because the penalty against a sin is not carried out immediately, people feel it is fine to do wrong.” So, God is showing here that He is holy, that He is demanding justice, that He is demanding punishment instantly. But it is indeed a difficult thing for us to accept.

What I want to do in the rest of this message is to talk to you directly about God. I've written down seven different truths about the God we serve. I think if we understand this, it'll put a lot of the Old Testament in context.

First of all, remember God didn’t choose his attributes. God didn’t say, I think I’m going to be omniscient. I think I’m going to be omnipotent. I think I’m going to be interested in displaying my glory. God never said that because God always was from the beginning and I am the Lord and I change not. The reason that is so critical is because we have to recognize we are up against the God who is and not the God that we would prefer. We cannot make God into something other than He is.

The Church of England has a proposal pushed by some people that God should be made into a trans God. That He is a “He” in the Bible, but we should also call him “She.” First of all, I thought we were supposed to honor people’s preferred pronouns. I was under that impression. So, if God reveals himself as a he and as a father, let’s keep him as a he and a father. We cannot rewrite our opinion of God and change His character and as I’ve emphasized, to change him into a God that He isn’t. When He said to Moses, “I am that I am.” What He meant was, “I am who I am and I’m not who you would prefer me to be.”

Maybe I’ll say more about that when I preach about the doctrine of the wrath of God and how we have to deal with atheists who struggle with the wrath of God and who think they can defy God. So, when we open the Bible, there are things we do not understand. We wonder why God does A, B, C, D when we think he should do something else, but that’s not up to us.

I think it was William Cooper who wrote the words regarding those who want to judge God. I’ll see if I can do it by memory. He said, “They take from God’s hand, the balance and the rod, they re-judge His justice and become the judge of God.” If God in the Old Testament prescribed a certain penalty, if God in the Old Testament said the Canaanites are to be wiped out, that’s the God that we are dealing with. Whether we would prefer a different deity or not, we cannot shape God into a more manageable deity, which people are doing constantly today.

So, first of all, God did not choose His attributes. God is God and we revere Him and worship Him as such. It’s not up to you and me to change Him or to judge Him. Secondly, God does not treat everyone alike. I’m so sorry that God is not a socialist. There are people who think God should treat everyone alike, but He doesn’t. I’m going to read a very hard passage to you, but it’s in God’s Word.

“But what shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’ So then he has mercy on whom he wills, and he hardens those he wills.” (Romans 9:14-18) “Oh,” you say, “Pastor Lutzer, that’s so hard. I’m objecting.” Okay, I get it. Paul knows you’re going to, and this is what he says.

“You will say then to me, ‘Why then does he still find fault? (That’s what’s coming to my mind) For who can resist his will?’ (And now it comes.) But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me like this? Has the potter no right over the clay, to make one vessel onto honor another, onto dishonor.” (Romans 9:19-21) Whenever I preach these hard things at Moody Church, I would speak to those who would say, “How do I know whether or not I’m elect?” I’d always say, “The good news is you can find out. So don’t object. What you do is you repent of your sins and you receive Christ as savior. And if you do that, you prove that indeed you are part of the elect because God has softened your heart. God has overcome your darkness. God has shown you your need of Jesus Christ and has granted you the faith to believe.”

This side of the lake, I would’ve expected a stronger. Amen. Amen. Yeah. Don't you folks attend churches that teach that? I was under the impression you did.

So, it’s tough. But remember this, God does not treat everybody alike. He did not treat Hammurabi the way He treated Abraham. Abraham was just as much a pagan, but God comes to Abraham. God did not come to Hammurabi even though Hammurabi had quite a bit of light and the Hammurabi code shows that. Third, in the end, everyone receives justice. Everyone receives justice. God has to make sure His justice is fully satisfied. Much of this justice is meted out in this earth. Much of the justice is taken care of in the future, but God treats everyone justly. For those who have received Jesus Christ as savior, God treats us justly because Jesus took our penalty and met the high bar of God’s justice for us.

This is a weak, amen. But it’s starting to come. You and I must understand that God cannot bend one scintilla of His holiness and His demand for justice. So what we need to do is to understand even in this life, some people receive mercy. Others receive immediate justice and perhaps also future justice, but God demands justice at all times. When Jesus died on the cross, He got what He didn’t deserve. Namely our sin. We get what we don’t deserve, namely His righteousness and all of God’s justice requirements are met. Paul says in the book of Romans that He is just and the justifier of all who believe in Jesus.

But one way or another, God always demands justice and treats everyone justly even though He treats people differently. Third or whatever, fourth, God’s glory is His aim, not the happiness of the creature. God of course does many things to make us happy, to make us satisfied with Him. The gospel of Jesus Christ is designed in such a way that we shall be with Him. We shall rejoice forever with Him. But really ultimately overriding everything God does is His glory and that glory is manifested in different ways. The nation, Israel existed for His glory. All things are of God, forever of Him, through Him, to Him are all things forever and ever. So always remember God’s glory is what is ultimate for Him.

Now, if you object to what God asked Israel to do, namely, to kill the Canaanites. You say, “Well, He asked them to kill innocent people.” I have to tell you there were no innocent people in Canaan. If you’re taking notes, you should write this down. Only once did God judge and punish an innocent person. Only once. The only innocent person God punished was Jesus, and He punished Him for our sins. He who knew no sin was made sin on our behalf that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. So, as we look at the Old Testament with all of the things we do not understand—and I struggled with it even as you do—let us always remember that God is just. He punishes everyone, not equally but accordance to what they did with what they knew. And that only once did He truly punish an innocent person.

Something else. I think this is number six in my notes, if I’m counting correctly, never did God reject a person who sought Him. So, no matter what era, no matter what religion, if people genuinely seek God, “You shall seek me and you shall find me if you seek me with your whole heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13)

Now, it does say in the book of Proverbs and elsewhere that “When they call onto me, I will not answer.” (Prov. 1:28) And you say, “Well, why that?” The very next verse says, “Because they hated my instruction.” But throughout the world, God will always respond to people who seek Him with their whole heart. When it comes to the Gentiles, the apostle Paul says in Romans 2, that they are going to be judged not by the law because they were not given the law of Moses, but rather they’re going to be judged by their own consciences and they’re going to be judged by nature, but they’re going to be judged fairly. And that’s my last point, that throughout all of eternity, we are going to be singing just and true are thy ways, thou king of saints. We’ll look back and God will give us the wisdom to know that He did everything justly and He did everything well and we will serve Him with gladness and joy knowing that which was right was done.

I want to end this message by reading some verses from the book of Nahum. As I read these verses; I want you to notice the complexity of God. As someone who’s a little older than I was previously, I spent a lot of time actually contemplating God. I try to imagine His immensity. I wrote an article on who created God that circles on the internet. Showing that it is much more logical and reasonable to believe God existed from all eternity than that the cosmos existed from all of eternity. I’ve always had an interest in this, and what you think of God is the most important thing about you. But God is one whom we have to approach, brothers and sisters, in worship even if we do not understand Him. We understand a good part of Him, but there’s much about God that we do not understand.

Maybe Jonathan Edwards is right when he says that the ideas of God will go on throughout all eternity. The book of Nahum 1:2, “The Lord is jealous and avenging God; the Lord is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in the whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust are of his feet. He rebukes the sea and makes it dry; he dries up all the rivers.” (Nahum 1:2–4) And so forth. I’m going to skip now to Nahum 1:6, “Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger? (The answer is nobody, of course.) His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken into pieces by him.”

Takes your breath away, but thank God for the next verse: “The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him.” (Nahum 1:7) Vengeance, anger, goodness, mercy, all of that is in God.

Tonight as I close in prayer, I’m going to have a moment of silence after I open in prayer. Because what I want you to do is to just spill out your heart to God and say, “I want to worship you. I do not understand all about you, but I accept the God of the Old Testament.” I accept who you are because as we’re going to see tomorrow, if you don’t accept the God of the Old Testament, you certainly cannot accept the God of the New Testament. I’m going to show you the unity of the testaments and we’ll answer the question as to whether or not He’s more tolerant than He used to be. But for now, I’m going to pray. I want you to worship in your heart and then I’ll close.

Father, I pray that these thoughts, however imperfectly given tonight, might enable us to worship you in a new way. To see your sovereignty, to see your greatness, to see who you really are. Father, we thank you that we don’t have to understand everything about you to bow humbly before you and say that you are God, and we are not. Now, in this moment, I pray that every heart who has listened to this message might give you praise and worship in their hearts.

Our Father, we pray that no one who has listened to this message might reject you because they do not understand you or they react against what you have done historically. We thank you today, Father, that though we are finite, you do seek worshipers as you mentioned to the woman at the well. We ask we might worship you in spirit and in truth with all that we have, and that we might always know that you are our God because you sent Jesus. As he said in John 17:3, “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” We bow humbly in your presence tonight for your glory. Amen.

Amen.