Accepting God's Justice

“Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord GOD: for the day of the LORD is at hand: for the LORD hath prepared a sacrifice, he hath bid his guests.” (Zep 1:7 AV)

 The sacrifice to which the prophet refers is the slaughter of God’s enemies at the battle of Armageddon.  The guests are the beast of the field and sky who will partake of the carrion left in the field of battle.  This will be a gruesome sight.  One that will be hard to forget.  Because of this, I wish to dwell on the first part of the verse.  It will be hard to hold one’s peace as we see the full measure of God’s wrath poured out on rebellious mankind.  We would expect the lost to wail.  Why wouldn’t they?  What do they have to lose?  They are oft to hell anyway.  In fact, the Bible tells us there will be weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. The peace spoken of is for the rest of those who will witness it.  In particular, I think it will be for the tribulation saint who has yet to experience his or her glorification and has not come into the full knowledge of the LORD Jesus Christ.  The point is simple.  We do not like to see the wrath of God poured out.  We do not like to see the extreme judgment of God.  Our natural reaction would be to complain.  Or, at the very least, gasp in shock.  But we cannot.  As God does what He does, we have no place to express how we feel about it.

It is hard to see someone whom you love very deeply suffer because of their very bad choices.  I am trying to think of a particular incident in my childhood, but I am sure they are too numerous to remember any single event.  This is not to say my parents were cruel or unfair.  It is that they had eleven children and I am sure I witnessed a time or two when I thought my father was a bit too aggressive in his dealings with errant siblings.  Plus, when you are young, any punishment seems too severe.  If my father swatted the behind of my brother, I would think he brought him to the brink of death when all it was was a simple little swat.  In our immaturity, we do not have a sense of justice.  No matter the punishment, we always thought it was too much.  Never did we see grace when my father passed on punishment.  No matter what we did, we never thought it was worthy of the punishment doled out; large or small.  When Dad was truly angry, and he had a right to be, he acted decisively.  That was not pleasant to watch.  In our youth, we thought my dad was an unreasonable man.  It wasn’t until we matured and understood just how wrong that wrong can be that we began to appreciate the values our father had on chastening.

The saved of the millennium may be shocked to see the full measure of God’s wrath upon wicked mankind.  But as Paul tells us in Romans, God will be just before mankind.  We may not like seeing how He deals with others, but it really is none of our business.  How God chooses to deal with some as opposed to others is not under our jurisdiction.  God is always just in His doings.  He is always right.  His testimonies are always right.  God never overreacts to the wrong mankind does.  If anything, He shows way too much grace.  So, when the LORD deals with someone, or maybe even ourselves, we should learn to keep silent before the LORD.  It is His right!  It is His responsibility.  We have nothing to contribute.  We must accept how the LORD deals with any given situation because He is God and we are not.