FamilyLife Today®

Speaker 1

Right here in the middle of lamentations, when basically the entire nation is going into meltdown, it's the worst things could be circumstantially. In the very middle verse, God says he doesn't from his heart afflict or grieve the children of men. Does he afflict or grieve the children of men? Yes, but he doesn't do it from his heart.

He's sovereignly overruling all the good and the hard things that wash into our lives. It's all under his fatherly care. But the hard things aren't from his heart. What does that mean? Apparently, it's not as if he is chuckling and sort of has a little wry smile on his face thinking, "I'm going to teach them." Our tears elicit his tears.

Here's the teaching of the Bible, guys. Because of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, when we are in dismay and distress, Christ himself feels that dismay and distress himself more acutely.

Speaker 2

Welcome to family life today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Dave Wilson.

Speaker 3

And I'm Ann Wilson. And you can find us@familylife today.com. this is Family life today.

Speaker 4

You know, one of the things I've honestly struggled with and you know this is reconciling the God of the Old Testament with the God of the New Testament.

Speaker 3

Oh, you have struggled with this. Like, how can this happen?

Speaker 4

I mean, there's been times when I've gone through the one year Bible and I'm like, I don't want to read anymore in the Old Testament. It just feels like God's a God of wrath.

And Jesus in the New Testament who said, if you want to see the father, look at me, He's a loving God.

And I'm like, how do these two go together? Are they really the same God?

Speaker 3

Well, this is going to be a great conversation because a lot of people have wrestled with that very same issue.

Speaker 4

So we've got Dane Ortland in the studio today. Welcome to family life today.

Speaker 1

Thank you, guys. Good to talk with you.

Speaker 4

You know, we've had two programs talking about your book *Gentle and Lowly*.

As a pastor in the Chicago area, in Naperville, and as a dad and husband with five kids, this understanding of God that we talked about in the last couple of programs—of Jesus being gentle and lowly—resonates deeply with me.

Speaker 3

I've been crying, you guys, several days in a row.

Speaker 4

Yeah, she wants me to start crying. And I remember when I was reading it and we talked about this just being really hit. I was gonna say softly, no, it was strongly pushed back. Like a wave hits you, this is who he is.

And so as we mentioned already, it seems different for a lot of us of the God of the Old Testament. A God of holiness and wrath and judgment and this gentle, lowly Jesus. And Jesus said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. I and the Father are one. So if you want to know what God's like, Jesus is the visible representation.

So he's the heart of God, but it doesn't feel like the same God. And you do a great job talking about this in the book. But talk about, how do you reconcile those two different views of God?

Speaker 1

There's a couple ways to come at that, Dave. One is what actually won out at the end after the entire Old Testament: God is sending his Son to die in our place for our sins, satisfying his perfect justice and proving his perfect love. So at the end of the day, he didn't say, "Forget it, I'm done. You guys are out of luck." He saved us.

That's one way to look at it from a macro perspective. But there's passage after passage that bubbles up as we read through the Old Testament. If we can make it past February in our one-year reading plan and through Leviticus, it's like a workout.

Speaker 3

That's why I do the one year Bible, because at least you have a.

Speaker 1

New Testament Islam in there that keeps you afloat. The gentle and lowly heart of Christ. Actually, here's what I've said. If I have to go to only one part of the Bible to talk about what God's heart is, the prophets are perhaps the most blushing, the most effusive place to find it.

Actually, no one talked about hell more than Jesus there in Matthew 11. At the end of chapter 11, saying, I'm gentle and lowly in heart, he's walking around saying, woe to you Bethsaida. Woe to you Chorazin. Because they didn't repent.

But we read in a passage like Exodus 34, which scholars will say is the definitive self-revelation of God in the Old Testament. This is what in John 1, the apostle John alludes to and says, this text got up and walked around on two legs on planet Earth. Moses says, show me your glory. And God does not respond, I will make all my glory pass before you. He responds and says, I will make all my goodness pass before you. Apparently, God defines his glory as his goodness.

Then he says, the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious. What are the first words out of his mouth? A God merciful and gracious. Slow to anger—like we grew up with a yellow lab. They're great because they just put up with so much before they nip you. Slow, irreverent analogy. Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Keeping steadfast love for thousands to a thousand generations is really what that means.

Then the text goes on to say, but who will by no means acquit the guilty, but will visit the sins of the fathers on the children and the children's children. So you think, wait a minute, God, are you withdrawing all the good and glory you just said? The answer is no. He says, down to the third and fourth generation, judgment will roll. Down to a thousand generations, steadfast love will roll. And he doesn't mean at generation number 1001, you're done. It's a Hebrew way of saying it will never end. That's the proportion 3 or 4 to 1000 and more. God's judgment, which is true and fearsome. God's abounding love.

Speaker 4

That is so beautiful.

And I tell you, one of the things I found really interesting in your book is when you comment on Lamentations. I'll read it and just, you know, comment as you did in the book, but it says, "He does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men."

In other words, you get into, "He does not afflict from his heart." What's that mean?

Speaker 1

Well, Dave, you and I are going to die one day. Not having plumbed that. We're going to enjoy that. We're never going to just download that, have that in our back pocket and move on to better other truths.

This is wondrous, right here in the middle of Lamentations when basically the entire nation is going into meltdown. It's the worst things could be circumstantially in the very middle verse of the entire book. It is the exact middle. And there's a literary point to that. God says he doesn't from his heart afflict or grieve the children of men.

Does he afflict or grieve the children of men? Yes. But he doesn't do it from his heart. He's sovereignly overruling all the good and the hard things that wash into our lives. It's all under his fatherly care. But the hard things aren't from his heart. What does that mean? Apparently, it's not as if he is chuckling and sort of have a little wry smile on his face, thinking I'm going to teach them. Our tears elicit his hears.

Here's the teaching of the Bible, guys. Because of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, when we are in dismay and distress, Christ himself feels that dismay and distress himself more acutely. So God does not afflict from his heart.

Speaker 4

It is so different because we think. Well, I'll tell you this. I thought of this this morning as I was reflecting on the truth out of *Gentle and Lowly*.

My dad, when I was 5, 6, or 7 years old, had girlfriends and was drinking too much. I found out later, and I didn't even remember this, that he took me on trips with his mistresses while still married to my mom. He ended up divorced, and this was in the early 60s when there were very few divorces at the time.

So, I was being raised by a single mom, and it was just myself and my little brother. We moved to another state to live near my mom's parents because she needed help. All that to say, within about six weeks, my little brother died of leukemia at the end of this tragic year.

I know my dad, over the years, softened up, and I had more of a relationship with him in college. He always felt like that death was God's punishment for his sin. He articulated it one time, but I know it was like there. Wow, talk about that. Because I think a lot of us feel like that's sort of God: we do things wrong, and these are the kinds of bad things that happen to us because that's the heart of God.

Speaker 1

Well, God couldn't have punished your dad's son for your dad's sin because he had already punished his own son for your dad's sin. All God's divine ferocious wrath, justly deserved by each one of us. And I'm number one on the list. If we're in Christ, it has been fully exhausted. Not like he got most of it out, but he might have another tantrum. Fully exhausted on the cross of Jesus Christ.

Jesus experienced hell and condemnation so that we, though we will die, when we look back at the cross, we see our deserved hell and condemnation back there. If we are not in Christ, if we are not safe in Christ, then our hell and condemnation is out. In the future, if we're in Christ, we can look back and say, it's behind me because Jesus dealt with it there. I'm never going to face that again.

Hardship, pain, suffering, death, yes, but never hell and condemnation. And you're right, Dave, we deeply, deeply disbelieve that. So we got to keep telling each other.

Speaker 3

Hey, I just want to pause for a moment and remind you as a listener, you might need to hear this. You are not alone.

Speaker 4

Nope.

Speaker 3

And did you know? I don't know if you know this, but Dave and I have a team at Family Life today ready to pray for you. It's this incredible honor and privilege just to lift your name up to God. So if you need prayer, please, please reach out to us.

You can head on over to familylife.com/prayforme. Again, that's familylife.com/prayforme, and tell us how we can pray for you. And we're not kidding. Dave and I have a prayer team specifically dedicated to praying for our listeners. Praying for you.

I pray all the time. I walk almost every day, and that's when I'm going to be praying for you. And Dave, you always fast on Fridays, and that's when you pray. Well, more than just Fridays.

Speaker 2

Yeah, it isn't just Fridays, but all.

Speaker 4

Day Friday, while I'm getting hunger pangs, I'm praying. It's like breathing. I'm praying all day. And often I pray for Family Life listeners like you. And like Ann said, you're not alone.

Speaker 3

You matter to us.

Speaker 4

Yeah. And God is with you, and we would love to lift you up by name. So Again, go to familylife.comprayforme and we will pray for you specifically. Tell us what you need. We'll pray for that.

Speaker 3

Okay. I probably shouldn't bring this up, but this is something we talked about in one of our seminary classes. This is Stump Dane.

Speaker 4

Now, Stump.

Speaker 3

Well, I just like this is.

Speaker 4

I don't think he's stumpable.

Speaker 3

I don't either. This is a hard passage of when David says, let's bring the ark into Jerusalem, and Uzzah is carrying the ark and he slips, the ark falls and Uzzah dies.

I read that and think, oh, you know, if we make one wrong move, God's gonna annihilate us.

Speaker 1

That is a very solemnizing, sobering passage, isn't it, Ann? Just one or two thoughts. One is, we don't know exactly what was going on in Uzzah's heart.

Speaker 3

That's what our seminary Prof. Said.

Speaker 1

Apparently, there was some kind of pride or recalcitrance or hardheartedness or stubbornness or willfulness or something such that this is the way R.C. Sproul puts it in *The Holiness of God*, such that Uzzah proudly assumed his hand was less profane than the ground. In other words, why couldn't the ark hit the ground? But here's this sinful man; he says, "Oh, I'll steady the ark." He assumed that he was more holy than the ground, something like that. We don't know what was going on inside of his heart, but the ark that he reached out and touched was something that deeply displeased God, and God made an example of him.

Now, okay, that's true. All right. That's very sobering. Jesus Christ showed up and he said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days, I'll build it." He was the temple. Ephesians 2 speaks to the same thing; he's the chief cornerstone. We are living stones being built up into him. The ark was the forerunner of the tabernacle and then the temple. We are ourselves not only touching that ark and not dying; we're part of it. We are part of that temple—immovably, invincibly. We have been swept by grace up into it, into fellowship with God.

What the ark was always meant to do was restore Eden. The ark, and then the tabernacle, which was just an RV to a home, the tabernacle was a movable temple. Then the temple was a little miniature Garden of Eden where the profane and the sacred could come together all over again. Uzzah got it wrong. Let us take note, and let us all the more wonder that we've been brought into this very thing of fellowship and presence of God.

Speaker 3

Oh, that was actually way better than I've ever had it explained.

Speaker 4

I told you, he's unstoppable. There you go. I mean, that really was.

Speaker 3

And that's what I would say to people when we're reading scripture. And something seems like, oh, that doesn't seem fair. There's usually something deeper behind it, but you can always count on God's love and mercy being there.

Speaker 1

Amen.

Speaker 4

And you wrote, and you've talked about this a little bit as you think about the Old Testament and the punishment.

You actually wrote, I'll read your exact quote: "Mercy is natural to him. Punishment is unnatural."

You even call it, like, strange, natural strange. That is so contradictory to what I read.

Speaker 1

It is.

Speaker 4

It seems like punishment is natural. It's like every page; it feels like in the Old Testament it isn't. But it feels that way because it jumps out.

It's almost like media jumps on controversy because it leaps higher.

How is mercy natural, punishment unnatural?

Speaker 1

Not in the sense that God is like, he's 100% merciful and 85% judging or anything like that. We believe in a doctrine called divine simplicity. Just in one quick sentence, all that means is any attribute that God is, he is 100%. He's not like a pie with slices, and the love slice is a little bigger than the wrath slice. No, every attribute he is, he is 100%. We believe that that's orthodox theology. We have believed that for 2000 years.

Okay, now having said that, how does the Bible talk about God? I want to talk about God in the way the Bible does, not the categories of philosophical theology. How does the Bible talk about God? This is Jonathan Edwards and Thomas Goodwin. Both say the Old Testament scriptures speak of punishment being God's strange work. What they mean by that is it's something less natural to him. It's something that he has to sort of like you put the water on the stovetop when you're making the mac and cheese, and it takes a little while to boil up. It's not like the microwave.

There's something unnatural in him for him to judge because what pours out of his own deepest heart most naturally is mercy. We saw it there in Lamentations 3, and that's the consistent testimony of Scripture. He will not wink at sin. He will judge sin over the impenitent. But for those who humble themselves, who say, "Help, save me, I need help, I'm a wreck," who have the honesty to do that, they will experience what is most natural to God. We think it's unnatural. What is most natural to God is the floodlike nature of his mercy and embrace.

Speaker 3

Oh, I like that. Don't you like the floodlike nature of his mercy?

Speaker 4

Oh yeah. I mean, it's just again, it's like mind blown.

Part of me is thinking of all the sermons I preached over 30 years. Did I articulate that well enough for people to understand the beauty, the softness, the gentleness of their father, who absolutely adores them and they want to run, to not run away from in their sin?

Speaker 3

You can do it right now with our listeners.

Speaker 4

Well, I mean, we are. I mean, thank you, Dan, for writing this and talking about this.

Here's a thought I had when I was just listening to you. I thought, has this changed your prayer life? Do you pray differently now that you have a different view of who he is?

Speaker 1

Oh, I have grown in prayer. Not as I have read books about prayer, but books about God. Yes, I grow in prayer. I don't need someone to tell me, here's three tips, here's five steps, here's a new strategy.

But if I see who he is, I mean, you were talking about my dad earlier, Anne. When you see what a person is like, you're either repelled or drawn in. And that's all prayer is. It's just going through life as if God is actually there, like he's your friend and Father and cares for you. Not just a force or like a platonic ideal way out there, some abstraction, but a person with a capital P. A person. Not a human, but a person that we relate to.

So I have so much growth I need in my prayer life. Okay, don't hear what I'm not saying, as one of my seminary profs said. But I can pray and enjoy praying if this is who God is.

Speaker 3

I have felt that. I think as I've gotten older, I run to him. I think before it was more of a discipline. I need to get this in. It's my vitamin of the day. And hear my prayers. I'm praying. And now it has become. Maybe it's because I see him more clearly of who he is. I mean, I get teary talking about it because he's my best friend. I know that sounds.

But I also know, I believe that He's God. He's the king, he's majestic, he's the Creator. And yet he loves me. And I've said this before, Dave, but when we were dating, and you know how that infatuation, the love, the feelings, it's still there, honey, but it also comes and goes.

And that can be true of our walk with God. But I feel that about the Father, about Jesus. But that's because I've spent so much time now out of my desperation for him, being with him. You can't be with him that much without being changed by his love.

Speaker 1

Amen. And just a footnote to that, Sister, there is one person in the universe who really understands us. Our spouses. They understand us better than any other human.

But there are some things where it's like, no, no, this is what I'm saying. You don't see God. And Christ is never mystified at, wait a minute. What's going on inside you. They understand exactly where we are at.

And that is powerfully winsome, drawing us to him. That they understand us. We will never be misunderstood by Him.

Speaker 4

You know, it's so critical, as you know better than anybody, because you wrote the book for us to understand this proper, clear vision of who God is through Jesus. Because, I mean, I used to preach this. This is one of my themes. It's not the size of your faith that matters. It's the size of your God. In other words, you can have mustard seed-sized faith. Jesus said that tiny. But if it's in a small God, you need much size in a huge God.

And I remember saying to a guy once who was going through something in my church, actually a friend who was going through something, I used this pat answer. Hey, dude, you know this, but let me remind you, Jesus is with you in this. And you know what he said? That's not comforting. Cause that Jesus is pretty disappointed in how I'm responding.

Like, oh, so you think about that. If you tell somebody God's with them, but their view of God is he's an angry guy, or that's even more crushing. It's like, I'd rather be alone than with that guy. But when you understand he's gentle and lowly, he's crying with you, he's holding you, he's yet all powerful. Oh, it's like, oh, now that's going to get me through this.

Speaker 3

And I'm just thinking of our listeners, like, if you haven't experienced him in that way, continue to run to him, get to know him, be in his word.

Listen to it on audio, download the YouVersion app. There's so many ways to connect to him.

But the more you're with him, I think the more we see him and understand his love for us.

Speaker 4

Dane, thank you.

Speaker 1

What a joy to talk with you. Thank you.

Speaker 3

This is family life today. And we're in. And Dave Wilson and we've been talking with Dane Ortland and we've been talking about his book, Book Gentle and the Heart of Christ for sinners and sufferers. And it is just so good.

Speaker 2

I mean, what a great three days. Just him articulating the heart of God made known through the heart of Jesus, Gentle and lowly.

You feel loved. You feel like Jesus has his arms wide open as we run to him. Or he runs toward us.

And he's not running toward us to judge; he's running toward us to give us a hug.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 3

And I think I always thought, yeah, Jesus runs toward me when I'm acting obediently in doing what he wants me to do, but just to be reminded that he's running toward us no matter what, out of his great love and grace.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Let me tell you, you want to get this book. If you don't have it, you need to get it and you need to get several because you want to give them to family members, your kids, your neighbors. This is great stuff.

Here's how you can get Dane's book *Gentle and Lowly*. Go to familylifetoday.com and you'll find a link right there in the show notes.

Or if you want, give us a call at 1-800-358-6329. That's 800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today.

Speaker 3

Oh, here's my question. Do you follow us on social media? If not, you can head over to Instagram amilylifeinsta or you can find us on Facebook. Family Life for more regular encouragement because we want to encourage you.

Speaker 2

We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today.

Speaker 3

Family Life Today is a donor supported production of Family Life Accrue ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.