January 29
This calamity the Jews had brought upon themselves. If they had been walking in faithfulness and humility before God, He would in a signal manner have made the wrath of the king harmless to them. But they had separated themselves from God by their sins, and had rejected the Holy Spirit, which was their only shield. They had not studied the Scriptures with a desire to conform to the will of God. They had searched for prophecies which could be interpreted to exalt themselves, and to show how God despised all other nations. It was their proud boast that the Messiah was to come as a king, conquering His enemies, and treading down the heathen in His wrath. Thus they had excited the hatred of their rulers. Through their misrepresentation of Christ's mission, Satan had purposed to compass the destruction of the Saviour; but instead of this, it returned upon their own heads.
Desire of Ages, page 65 from the chapter, 'We have seen His star'
We know enough about Herod to think that ‘what goes around comes around’. His life would suggest to us that justice would be served if he were to die a painful death. He did.
I was reading about Herod and noted this, “As Herod lay dying, racked in pain and agony, the men of God and those with special wisdom opined that Herod was suffering these things because it was “the penalty that God was exacting of the king for his great impiety”.
We can understand all of that – but that remark in the reading about the Jews bringing the calamity upon themselves sounds hard. We recognise that if we don’t do our job we end up getting the sack. We know that if we drive our car at higher than the speed limit and PC Plod spots us we will be pulled over. We can see that if we harm our own health – we are the first in a line of people to know the pain and anguish that may follow.
It is harder to understand that a whole group of people, innocent children and their parents, may suffer because of the evil nature of one man.
It is slightly less hard to understand that ‘the Jews’ did not experience God’s protection because they did not set out to conform to the will of God.
However we look at this there are problems. I can’t answer your questions. I can't answer my own questions. There are some things we can’t fully answer. There are times when we just have to trust to God’s handling of the issues.
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Housekeeping details for you
The point of this short blog will become clear if you decide to use this reading in the way we intend it. Netherfield Seventh-day Adventist Church believes in healthy churches. You can see what that means if you head to the relevant Healthy Churches page of the website. We also want other churches to be healthy. That means you can join in our campaign to create healthy churches, with healthy people serving the people in those churches.
A healthy church is one where Jesus comes first. A healthy church is one where the people work together to put Jesus first. One thing we are doing is to join people together to spread that news. I would like you to look at our prayer partners page. This will explain how we want you to use this short devotional. Very basically we want you to find a like-minded Christian friend who you will join with to : choose to pray together every day, decide together on a way to serve other people together, to help them grow as Christians - and to invite the Holy Spirit into your life every day. This blog that you will receive every day simply gives a common spiritual purpose. If you are a newcomer and want to join the blog with this object in mind click here
