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The Consistency of God
One of the characteristics of God which sets Him apart is His utter consistency.
He is "...the Father of lights with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." James 1:17. With such a God there is no capriciousness, no acting from self-interest, no disregard of the great principles underlying the law, no seeking to justify the means because of the end.
In some ways it is easier to see this consistency of God in natural law than in moral law. The men who have journeyed out into space in recent years have depended upon the absolute consistency of law. They knew that "there was no variableness" or "shadow of turning" in the laws of nature. They knew that there was "no variableness neither shadow of turning" in the thousands of laws of gravity, velocity, and combustion. If those laws had fluctuated from moment to moment, it would never have been possible for them to make their calculations and set forth on such an undertaking.
However, it is often difficult to see this same consistency in the workings of God with sinful man. It seems to many that the Lord does things one way on one occasion, only to follow a completely different set of rules on another occasion. As a result, there is a tendency to wait and see how He will act in a given situation, instead of a confident awareness of exactly how God will relate to it. But when the actions of God are rightly understood, it will be seen that He is always consistent.
Typical of the Old Testament is the incident at Mount Sinai, when Moses came back to find the people worshipping the golden calf. After calling upon them to repent, he found that a great number of them would not repent.
Therefore, under the direct instructions of the Lord, he said,
"Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, 'Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp and slay every man his brother and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor'. And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men." Exodus 32:27-28.
There was rebellion in the camp and it had to be obliterated, or the whole camp of Israel would have been endangered. The rebellion was put down by force, just as it is in the kingdoms of men throughout history. In all political kingdoms, if rebellion is successfully crushed, it is done by force.
But that is not the way of God.
"The exercise of force is contrary to the principles of God's government; He desires only the service of love; and love cannot be commanded; it cannot be won by force or authority." The Desire of Ages, 22.
"From Christ's kingdom, every instrument of coercion has been banished." The Acts of The Apostles, 12.
And again, it is clearly written that force is not God's way, in The Desire of Ages, 759:
"Rebellion was not to be overcome by force. Compelling power is found only under Satan's government. The Lord's principles are not of this order. His authority rests upon goodness, mercy, and love; and the presentation of these principles is the means to be used. God's government is moral, and truth and love are to be the prevailing power."
Now this makes it appear that the Lord is indeed inconsistent. In one place, the principles of His kingdom state that force has no part in His way of doing things, while in another place, it appears that the Lord did employ force after all to put down a rebellion among His people. But this cannot be. It is the way of men to use force to put down rebellion and with a little further investigation, it will be seen that the way of man was used at Mount Sinai, not the way of God.
For it was never the intention of God that Israel should carry swords in the first place. Israel, their forefather, had led his unarmed and defenceless company to meet an angry Esau with four hundred armed men, demonstrating how God would deliver His people without them carrying swords at all. Long afterwards, God put into words that same lesson, when He said,
"Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts." Zechariah 4:6.
When the time came that Moses knew by divine revelation the he was to lead the people out of Egypt, he was firmly convinced that he must do it by the power of the sword. He therefore struck down the Egyptian slavemaster, expecting that this would be the signal for Israel's revolt and that, with the Lord's blessing they would quickly defeat and destroy the Egyptians.
But God was not in that way. No matter how well-meaning Moses had been, no matter how much God wanted to deliver His people, the way of force was not right. It took forty years for God to retrain Moses into His way instead of man's way of doing things. And then God sent him back to Egypt dressed not as a field commander with gleaming sword in hand, but as a shepherd with only a shepherd's staff in his hand.
If the way of the sword had been God's way for Israel, He would have blessed the move when Moses struck down the Egyptian, and empowered Israel to rise and destroy the Egyptians, instead of letting them suffer on as slaves for another forty years.
Nor was this all. On the night of their departure, the Lord sent His Spirit to impress the Egyptians to give them all that they would need on their long journey. He even made provision for the construction of the Sanctuary which would take place long after their departure --- a need which no one but He could foresee. But He did not call upon the Egyptians to furnish them with any weapons. As the Israelites approached the Red Sea, "They were unarmed." Patriarchs and Prophets, 282.
And as surely as the Israelites left Egypt unarmed, just as surely did the Lord intend them to remain that way. Yet, only a short while later, we find them going forth to war against the Amalekites before they even reached Mount Sinai. So where did the weapons come from? (See Patriarchs and Prophets, 287-288).
Some may argue that this was God's way of providing them with the weapons.
The truth is that God was but doing here what He had done in the Garden of Eden, when He had placed the forbidden tree before our first parents. While He had explicitly shown them the way in which Israel was to travel without the sword, He would not force them to travel that way.
He would test them to see how well they had learned the lesson. Unfortunately, they took the weapons and traveled on, just as Adam and Eve took the forbidden fruit off the tree.
Now as surely as they did that, they introduced the way of man in the place of the way of God into the government of Israel.
"The Lord had never commanded them to 'go up and fight'. It was not His purpose that they should gain the land by warfare, but by strict obedience to his commands." Patriarchs and Prophets, 392.
His commands are delineated in the ten commandments, which clearly state: "Thou shalt not kill." Exodus 20:13. Therefore, it was God's plan that they should obtain possession of the land of Canaan without killing or stealing at all, just as they had escaped from Egypt without killing anyone at all.
However, let it not be said that God did the killing for them, for He keeps His own law to perfection, the same perfection that He desires of His people. The Egyptians destroyed themselves by driving away the protection of the Lord from themselves.
Thus, it is clear that the Lord never gave them the sword. For in His way there is no force, no killing and no destroying. The people took the sword themselves; and thus introduced their way in the place of God's way.
Now the question arises, How would God relate Himself to this situation? What would His consistency of character require Him to do, once this change had been brought about? If we continue to search, we will find that He did what He has always done under the same circumstances. He did not modify His own principles in the least.
He simply continued to work as a Saviour.
Naturally, we might expect God to say that if it was not done His way, then He would not have anything to do with it at all. But we are fortunate that this is not His attitude. When man chose to go his own way in the Garden of Eden, if God had then said, "I will have nothing more to do with man", we would have been a lost race. But instead, the Lord went right on working for them as a Saviour. Before they sinned against Him, He sought to save them by warning them of the consequences and by heaping on them all the blessings He could. Then when they did sin, He worked to save them not only from the sin itself, but from the suffering caused by it as well. And He did the same thing exactly with Israel.
First, He did all that could be done short of using force to save them from taking up the sword. When they did take it up, He did not forsake them, but continued working to save them from the evil results of their choice. Had He forsaken them, they would soon have ceased to exist. Satan and the enemies surrounding them would have seen to that.
It would be impossible to understand the actions of God at Mount Sinai unless it is first seen and understood that Israel had substituted their way in the place of God's way. When they put their way in the place of God's way, it then became impossible for God to do it His way. God will warn and plead with us, but He will never compel men to do things His way.
Therefore, when the situation arose at Mount Sinai, God could not, and did not, deal with it Himself. In effect, He said to the Israelites, "You have set up a government based upon the principle of force. Having turned away from My way, you will have to handle this situation you own way. The most I can do is to give you counsel on the best way of handling it using the weapons you have chosen."
Never
let it be said that what was done at Mount Sinai was God's way,
for He never puts
rebellion down by force.
For instance, consider the consistency of God's course all the way through. Right up until the crossing of the Red Sea, the Israelites had not introduced their own way of the sword. Therefore up until that point we see God doing things entirely His own way. On the banks of the Red Sea, they took the armour from the bodies of the dead Egyptians and thus introduced their own weapons in place of God's. So the very next time they were faced with an enemy, we find them having to do the fighting themselves.
Then we come to the golden calf incident. In the meantime, no change had been made in the government of Israel. It was still a government of the sword, and thus man's way of doing things. Therefore, God could not and did not deal with the offenders in His chosen way, but called upon Israel to fulfil the responsibilities they had taken upon themselves.
Always, this is the way that God related Himself to a problem, when men stood in His way. When the people offended against the law of the land, even though those laws were spelled out by God for them, it was the government and not God which punished them.
A number of incidents illustrate this. There was the stoning of the Sabbath-breaker [Numbers 15:32-36], of the adulterer and adulteress [Leviticus 20:10], and of Achan when he stole the Babylonian garment and the gold from Jericho [Joshua 7]. Then, as they advanced upon the land of Canaan, they had to do the fighting and take the land themselves. And through it all, the Lord was unfailingly consistent in His relationship to them, in dealing with all these problems their way.
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