John Piper wrote a post the other day at Desiring God called “Why Was Zedekiah Roasted in the Fire?”
Here is an excerpt:
The horrors of physical suffering correspond to the horrors of moral and spiritual outrage. Sometimes this means that people’s suffering is directly correlated with their immorality and belittling of God. This will be the case, for example, with the eternal suffering of hell. It will correspond in perfectly just measure with the outrage of an individual’s sin.
But often the correlation is indirect. Everyone suffers physically because of the outrage of Adam’s sin, and because of God’s subjecting all of creation to futility (Romans 8:20). But these sufferings do not all correspond to an individual’s particular sins. All physical suffering corresponds to moral and spiritual outrage, but not all suffering corresponds directly to individual sins.
We discussed some of this in the post about the consequences of David’s sin of adultery with Bathsheba. David suffered the loss of his child with Bathsheba as a result of the immoral choices he made when he sinned against God by having an adulterous relationship with her.
We looked at this from the vantage point of those who would have contempt of Christianity and its followers. We humans are so full of pride and think we are masters of our universe. What we don’t seem to realize is that God laughs at us when we puff ourselves up.
As Piper says, “all physical suffering corresponds to moral and spiritual outrage.” The problem we face today is that we have lost all our sense of moral and spiritual outrage!
Friends: God hasn’t!
Piper references a passage in Jeremiah that is quite horrifying, unless you have Jesus as your Savior. The passage is God speaking.
“‘Because of them a curse shall be used by all the exiles from Judah who are in Babylon, saying, “May the Lord make you like Zedekiah and like Ahab, whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire, because they have acted foolishly in Israel, and have committed adultery with their neighbor’s wives and have spoken words in My name falsely, which I did not command them; and I am He who knows and am a witness,” declares the Lord.’” –Jeremiah 29:22-23.
God Himself is the one who knows and who is the witness to our sin! For while Zedekiah’s and Ahab’s roasting in the fires of Nebuchadnezzar was only temporary, there is an eternal fire that they and all that live apart from God will experience: the lake of fire that Satan himself will be cast into along with all the demons and sinners apart from Christ! Don’t be one of them.
HT: Trey Ratcliff
May He Increase!
