Song: Isaiah 26

A God whose forgiveness brings salvation.

“The Lord was very angry with your ancestors. Therefore, tell the people: this is what the word of the Lord says: “Return to me,” declares the Lord Almighty, “and I will return to you,” says the Lord Almighty. Do not be like your ancestors, to whom the earlier prophets proclaimed: this is what the Lord Almighty says: “Turn from your evil ways and your evil practices.” But they would not listen or pay attention to me, declares the Lord. Where are your ancestors now? And the prophets, do they live forever? But did not my words and decrees, which I commanded my servants the prophets, overtake your ancestors?” (Zechariah 1:2-6)

Song: Judges 5

Generation after generation of kings of Israel and Judah rejected God as their king. They thought like Gideon, if the Lord of our ancestors is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, “did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt? But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of our enemies (Judges 6:13).

Before Israel had kings there were judges that were leaders over Israel during the times of Israel’s ancestors when God was taking the land of Canaan from its inhabitants and giving it as a possession to his people (Exodus 6:4). Those judges led the people of Israel to trust in God to fight their battles and to deliver them into the inheritance that was promised. However, even their ancestors who saw all his wonders rejected God’s leadership, and the people followed the ways of the people around them and what they put their faith in (Judges 6:7-10).

In the time of Israel’s ancestors, before there were kings, God also would send prophets to the people to say to them, “this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. I rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians, and I delivered you from the hand of all your oppressors; I drove them out before you and gave you, their land.  I said to you, “I am the Lord your God; do not worship the gods of the people around you, in whose land you live. But you have not listened to me” (Judges 6:7-10). Israel, during the time of kings, had not forgotten its history but like Gideon did not believe that their God, who saved by wonders, was with them.

Gideon lived through a time when the enemies of Israel were making it impossible to live among them. They would attack Israel whenever they attempted to put down roots of any kind and would rob them of their livelihood (Judges 6:1-4). When God spoke to Gideon, he was in a pit that he was using to hide food scraps from enemies. God said to Gideon that he heard the cry of Israel for help and was going to use Gideon as a new leader to deliver his people from the oppression of Israel’s enemies as well as deliver Israel from all doubt that the God of their ancestors was with them (Judges 6:11-14). God told Gideon that because Israel had cried out to the Lord for help that he was responding and would forgive his people for not trusting in him; this forgiveness would bring salvation (Judges 6:6). God told Gideon that this forgiveness would also bring assurance and remove all doubt (Judges 6:16). God says to Gideon that if he trusts in him and returns to the God of his ancestors by believing that he is able to help, the forgiveness that God is prepared to offer will provide the protection of God. God says to Gideon, “I will be with you” and will strike down all of your enemies and none will be left alive” (Judges 6:16). God was promising that he would not partially deliver his people but thoroughly deliver his people who have turned to him and asked for his help; asked for forgiveness (Judges 6:16).

God told Gideon, that God’s forgiveness that brings salvation did not require human strength. Gideon questioned God’s plan by asking why would you make me leader when there are people in Israel stronger and more notable than me? “How can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family” (Judges 6:15). God told him not to worry about how unqualified he felt, but to go in the strength that he had (Judges 6:14). All the strength that Gideon had was courage enough to tear down the altar his father had built to the gods of the nations and people around them and from the rubble construct an altar to the God of his ancestors in faith that God’s forgiveness would save them. All the strength that Israel had, at that time, was the strength to ask God for help. They had no other strength all of their possessions had been taken away, their livelihood and their confidence. Gideon’s confidence in God’s plan to use him was so low that he asked God for multiple signs that God would be faithful to his word and “save Israel as he had promised” (Judges 6:36). They had no great army; and when Gideon went to fight his enemies, he had God’s promise and thirty-two thousand men, but since God told Gideon that his salvation doesn’t require human strength, he told Gideon that thirty-two thousand was too many people, because when he fulfilled his promise God did not want Israel to think that that deliverance from their oppressors came by their own strength.

Not only did God promise that he would be faithful to his word to forgive and deliver as he had done for Israel’s ancestors, but God said that he would deliver them by his own strength. God told Gideon that he would thin out the army to only what he needed. The first thinning was to remove everyone from the army camp who did not have faith in God (Judges 7:2-3). God says to Gideon go and ask the people if anyone is afraid of their enemies and if they are let them go back home, and twenty-two thousand people left, and the army was reduced to ten thousand. The second thinning was to remove anyone who felt qualified to fight, respectable soldiers. As the people were drinking from a water source, God said to Gideon look at them and watch how they drink if they drink the water in a respectable way dismiss them, only take the people who are lapping the water like dogs and the numbers were reduced to three-hundred (Judges 7:5-6) and God said, “with the tree-hundred men that lapped like dogs I will save you” (Judges 7:7).

God was telling Gideon that his forgiveness that brings salvation doesn’t require human strength, it doesn’t require human skill, it doesn’t require human notability, it doesn’t require human respectability. God was saying that by his higher authority and power he is able to forgive and that forgiveness will bring salvation even if what he chooses to use is the least or the weakest in human eyes, it is by their faith in him, not their strength or their numbers, that God was planning to bring salvation to Israel.

Just like he had done for the people of Israel in Egypt when he said to Moses, “I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as El Shaddai (God Almighty) but by my name The Lord (Exodus 3:15, the I AM) I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they resided as foreigners. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant. Therefore, say to the Israelites, “I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgement. I will take you as my own people and will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians (Exodus 6:2-7).

When Israel’s kings rejected God, they rejected the I AM, God Almighty whose forgiveness brings salvation through the strength of his power to do more than what humans are capable of. Because as the Almighty his power to forgive is greater than the enemies of Israel’s power to oppress and to hold captive, more powerful than the doubt of the Israelites during the time of Moses, Gideon and all kings, able to perform miraculous deliverance on behalf of his people who believe in him and who turn to him for forgiveness and help.

God’s deliverance requires turning and Israel and Judah refused to turn and look to God for help and salvation. When they rejected God as their king, they also rejected the gift of forgiveness that comes from returning to God. God’s word says that his forgiveness is the power that is able to remove from his sight the transgressions that led to God’s people being overtaken by their enemies. When God’s people ask for forgiveness, God immediately replaces their guilt with his help and salvation and creates a space between their transgression and the consequences that follow that is “as far as the east is from the west” (Psalms 103:12).

God’s word says that he desires to pour out on his people mercy and that this desire is what leads him to blot out the transgressions of people who ask for forgiveness and “remember your sins no more” (Isaiah 43:25) so that God’s forgiving power can reconnect God back to his people in relationship and his people to the blessings that come from that connection.

God’s forgiveness has the power to restore.

When God speaks to his people, Israel and Judah or all believers and says, ‘return to me’ it is because the inheritance of forgiveness is only accessible to people who are with him, “return to me and I will return to you”. Asking for forgiveness removes condemnation and “returns to you” God’s help and “returns to you” anything that turning away from God blocked from you.

No blessings on earth can compare to how God is able to bless you. Rejecting Jesus as king, or living away from the connection to God, even in a good place, is comparable to living in a wilderness or (Numbers 20:1-13) when God’s people asked Moses, “Why did you bring the Lord’s community into this wilderness, that we and our livestock should die here? Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place? It has no food and there is no water to drink!”

Returning to the connection God’s forgiveness brings is like coming back to your own home after a tragedy kept you away like the Shunammite woman who Elisha said ‘go away with your family and stay for a while wherever you can, because the Lord has decreed a famine in the land that will last seven years. The woman proceeded to do as the man of God said. She and her family went away and stayed in the land of the philistines for seven years. At the end of the seven years she came back from the land of the philistines and went to appeal to the king for her house and land. The king assigned an official to her case and said to him, give back everything that belonged to her, including all the income from her land from the day she left the country until now” (2 Kings 8:1-2,6).

Reconnection and restoration is the heart of God. It is the desire of God to restore relationship of his people back to him, because God chose Israel, “for his own sake”, to prove his own good name, that anyone who believes on this God, El Shaddai, God Almighty, the I AM, he would forgive, save and help. God says that he would pay the highest ransom to bring his people back into relationship with him “I would give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba for your stead. Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you, I will give people in exchange for you and nations in exchange for your life” (Isaiah 43:3-4). The one who is returning to you is the God whose forgiveness has the power to restore you to the God “who created” you “formed” you “loves” you and wants to be with his people (Isaiah 43:1,4,5).

Jesus God’s gift of forgiveness

And God did pay the highest ransom to bring his people back into relationship with him. “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6-8).

God’s forgiveness has the power to remove condemnation

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Forgiveness is more than feeling apologetic for wrongdoing. Forgiveness is an action of returning to the one who is able to remove condemnation and save from God’s wrath. Israel and Judah were not blameless they were guilty, they were condemned. God said that he would punish Israel for all of its sins, for the sins of their ancestors turning away from him and for them following the path of their ancestors and remaining disconnected (Amos 3:1-2). But whenever the kings of Israel and Judah did ask God for help, God removed condemnation from his people who turned to him, and he forgave and he saved.

So “since we have now been justified by [Jesus’] blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life.” (Romans 5:9-10)

Jesus teaches about forgiveness

Matthew 9:10-13 “While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’ (Hosea 6:6) for I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Jesus is saying that the gift of mercy and forgiveness that he is able to give, is a higher authority to believers than the law that requires sacrifices and condemnation. In Matthew 5:17 Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Jesus is the righteousness that God requires and the King that people of God reject when they choose to condemn when God has chosen to forgive.

Romans 8:3 says, what the law could not do God did, through Jesus and condemned condemnation. Jesus fulfilled the requirement of the law for righteousness and created a way to access God’s forgiveness that is above all authorities with the power to lawfully reject Jesus’ sacrifice. So that Romans 8:1 “there is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” Jesus has set us free from separation from God that leads to condemnation and has given forgiveness that leads to life. This life through forgiveness is what the kings of Israel and Judah rejected when they rejected God and what people reject when they reject Jesus’ sacrifice. Christianity is a spiritual religion and the spiritual sacrifice of Jesus’ life and death on the cross was what was needed to satisfy the law of the spirit of God that requires righteousness and brings forgiveness that saves.

In John 3:17 Jesus says, “God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.” How do you return to God? Through forgiveness. God says, “return to me” through my son, and “I will return to you”. In John 3:18 Jesus says, “He that believes this word of forgiveness is not condemned.” They are reconnected.

Prayer: Forgive me God for looking to my own ability to save myself and restore me to you. I know that forgiveness through Jesus is the only power capable of salvation. Forgive and remove from me as far as the east is from the west all doubt that you are God. Forgive and remove from me any idea that I can overcome my enemies without you and send help. Forgive and remove from me all sense of hopelessness as I return to you my God whose forgiveness brings salvation.