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UNDERSTANDING JUDGMENT “Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgment.” (Job 32:9) Elihu’s point here is that old age is no guarantee for wisdom. He had been patiently listening to the counsel of Job’s friends and was not at all impressed with their words. So, he is respectful in basically acknowledging that older folks usually do have good counsel, but then he says, “not always.” Then he adds “neither do the aged understand judgment.” Different things could be said about that comment on judgment, but I’d like to make a few applications on how the statement stands true in our own time and in our own nation. I will be fifty-eight years of age this month, and I’ve heard that “judgment is coming” all of my life. I’ve heard that God will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah, if He doesn’t judge America. I’ve heard that there’s no way we can survive for another ten, twenty or thirty years, yet we just keep moving forward as a nation and enjoying our freedom for the most part. Some use that freedom for evil purposes, while others use it for good, but the freedom is mostly still available as we celebrate another Independence Day: Did we really believe America would make it this far? Back in the 80’s, I thought we’d never see the year 2,000. Then we somehow survived the Clinton years and Y2K. After that, I began to view America and judgment through a more scriptural lens, a lens that pretty much reveals that God knows what He is doing and no one else does. He has been tolerating evil and dispensing measured judgment for thousands of years, so most of us have probably been a bit hasty in our assessment of just how and when God will judge America. Let me offer you a few thoughts to ponder as we enjoy another Independence Day and maybe wonder “How many more will there be?” In UNDERSTANDING JUDGMENT, we need to understand that . . . I.) GOD DOESN'T WANT TO JUDGE AMERICA The idea that God sits high in the heavens just looking for a reason to rain down judgment on people is not Biblical. In fact, such a notion is rooted more in ancient heathen religions than in the Bible itself. God said, in Ezekiel 33:11, "Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?" Then II Peter 3:9 says, "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." Rather than sitting ready to strike men with judgment, God is more ready to either pardon the sins of repentant societies or to grant them more "space to repent" (Rev. 2:21), especially when their sins are weighed against some good or usefulness that God might be considering. We'll deal with that later, but for now, just take note of the fact that God doesn't WANT to judge America. Ezekiel 18:32 says, "For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord GOD: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye." Lamentations 3:33 says, "For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men." Sometimes God MUST intervene with judgment, but that's not what He WANTS to do. He wants life, liberty, peace and goodness for everyone. Consequently, America is celebrating her 245th birthday. Praise God for his grace! 2.) NATIONAL JUDGMENT DOESN'T MEAN TOTAL DESTRUCTION In judgment, a nation receives what is necessary, not total devastation, and usually not even what it deserves. Referring to Israel, Jeremiah 46:28 says, "Fear thou not, O Jacob my servant, saith the LORD: for I am with thee; for I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have driven thee: but I will not make a full end of thee, but correct thee in measure; yet will I not leave thee wholly unpunished." God never fully destroyed Israel, and he never will. His judgments were measured judgments that had the right amount of justice, correction and mercy. America is not in a covenant relationship with God as Israel was, so we have no promise of God never destroying America, but we do have the many examples of how God has rendered measured judgment in the past without fully destroying nations. True, God did destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, but those were the exceptions, not the rule, and they were cities, not powerful nations with tens of millions of people, sometimes even hundreds of millions. Most prominent nations of the past have been judged in measure and allowed to continue with much less power and influence. In spite of her many sins and the great judgments of Exodus, Egypt is still a nation today, just not the mighty nation that she once was. Much the same could be said of the empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome, and in more recent history, powers like Spain and England. God didn't annihilate Catholic Spain; He just sank the Armada. None of these people were "wiped off the map," so to speak; they were just reduced in power and significance. God told ancient Israel that she could be the head or the tail among the nations of the world, and this stands true with all nations. If a nation pleases God, then it can enjoy prosperity and prominence among the nations. Deuteronomy 28:13 says, "And the LORD shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the LORD thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them." But, just the opposite can happen, if a nation turns to sin and displeases God. We read in Deuteronomy 28:44 that "He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail." Can we say, "CHINA"? Can we say, "FEDERAL RESERVE" and "WORLD BANKERS"? Can we say, "THIRTY TRILLION DOLLAR NATIONAL DEBT"? Yes, we're still the world superpower, but for how much longer? God doesn't have to rain down fire and brimstone. He might just let others become the HEAD while our economy falls to the mercy of foreign powers. Rather than being totally destroyed, we might just become the next England, Egypt or Rome. And it just might happen so smoothly that most never even notice. In many ways, it could be said that God has BEEN judging America for many years, yet very few are waking up, because they think of divine judgment in the flawed terms of total destruction only, rather than in terms of economic struggles, wars, debt, the breakdown of the family, corrupt government, disease and heath issues, etc. 3.) GOD IS HOLY, BUT ALSO VERY FAIR AND BALANCED Probably less than twenty years before destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, God gave us a glimpse into His well-balanced sense of justice. He told Abraham that the Jewish people would serve the Egyptians four hundred years: "And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance." (Gen. 15:13-14) While speaking of eventual judgment on Egypt, which was a measured judgment, not total destruction, God also mentions the upcoming judgment of another society: "But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full." (Gen. 15:16) The Amorites were some of the the idolatrous heathen that inhabited the land that Israel would take under the God-ordained leadership of Joshua (Jsh. 3:10). Yet, they would not be ripe for the kind of judgment that God had in mind for another four centuries! God has many "pokers in the fire", and only He fully knows what He is doing, when He is doing it, and how He will do it. If in Genesis 15, God was already planning His judgment strategy for hundred years in advance, and it involved multiple people and nations, so we can only GUESS what He might be planning today. God's holiness demands judgment, but his other attributes demand that that judgment be fair and well balanced. When the evil Babylonians were sent in to take the Jews captive, righteous Jeremiah was spared and allowed to remain in the land (Jer. 40:1-6). God can judge a people without judging ALL the people, and sometimes the presence of enough righteous people can turn away or prolong judgment altogether. The same God that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah would NOT have destroyed them if only ten righteous people had been there (Gen. 18:32). So, in judgment, God has not only the wicked in mind, but also the righteous. I, for one, prefer to live my life in such a way as to give God one more reason to be GRACIOUS to America. I hope you do as well. I also hope that I've offered a bit of Biblical balance to this subject of divine judgment, because there's a whole lot more at play than just "Evil America deserves judgment." If it were that simple, we would have gone up in smoke long ago. Some wise individual once said, “If I had God’s power, you’d see a lot of changes in this world. But if I also had his wisdom, you’d see no changes at all.” God knows what He is doing, and He is always doing RIGHT. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Gen. 18:25) Yes, He certainly will, and His actions will likely be far from anything we are expecting.