| November 3, 2022 -- He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.”
Psalm 103:10 “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? Psalm 130:3
“Treat every man according to his just deserts, and who shall ‘scape whipping?
Shakespeare (Hamlet) “There’s no connection man can reason out Between his just deserts and what he gets.” Robert Frost “A Masque of Reason”
How many times have you heard someone say “I don’t get what I deserve” or words to that effect? Most of us think of ourselves as basically “good” people and therefore feel we should be rewarded for our “goodness”. But if we sit down for a really long “think” and meditate on what we should have been doing and have not done, or what we should not have done and have been doing, and if we are really honest with ourselves, we must come to realize that we fall far short of perfection.
But there is one more error in some people’s thinking, which is that people “get what they deserve”, that goodness is rewarded with good things and bad behavior is rewarded with punishments. And yet in the Bible we find over a dozen instances where the writers won- der why this is often not the case. The prophet Jeremiah says “Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all of the faithless live at ease?” And in Job we read: “Why do the wicked live on, growing old and prospering?”
There are hard questions here, and few good answers, yet in the end we can look forward to the resurrection of all who have not rejected God, relying on His mercy to forgive sinners and grant them everlasting life. Reading the Book of Job, we find a person who, although a good and righteous man according to the standards of his day, underwent much suffering, so that at one point he sought death. But eventually he developed through the eyes of faith a hope for better and brighter days, a realization that an all-merciful God would not let him suffer forever. Let us all nurture that hope, and with Job we can say: “I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth, and although worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh will I see God.”
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