by David Scott Robertson
Pizza franchises specialize in delivering delicious hot pizzas right to your house. Hospitals deliver babies, the United States Postal Service delivers mail, and Federal Express claims to be able to deliver your package anywhere in the U.S.A. when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.
A speaker delivers a keynote address, a boxer delivers a knockout punch, and a taxi driver delivers a passenger to the airport. Deliveries are commonplace in our modern world. We have come to expect it and view it as routine. But I want you to know that God also delivers.
Many, many times the Bible describes God's delivering His people FROM something harmful. He delivered them FROM distress, FROM death, or FROM the cruelty of wicked and evil men. Often scriptures relate that He delivered His children OUT OF a bad situation or PREVENTED a serious and potentially fatal predicament from ever happening. Jesus delivered many who were oppressed of the devil and countless more from the bondages of sickness, demonic possession, and most importantly, the curse of sin itself.
So, would we be safe in saying that God's deliverance is ALWAYS a good thing? Not necessarily. I guess it all depends on you. Have a look at the following scriptures where God delivered all right, but it's not quite what we have come to expect:
(Judges 13:1 NIV) Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD, so the LORD delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years.
(2 Kings 13:3 KJV) And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he delivered them into the hand of Hazael king of Syria, and into the hand of Benhadad the son of Hazael, all their days.
(Dan. 1:2 NIV) And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god.
Above are three examples when God's deliverance OF HIS OWN CHILDREN didn't turn out so well for them. It's sad, tragic really, when what is normally a good thing, the best thing, the miraculous thing--that is, the divine intervention of Almighty God into the affairs of men--works against them.
The Lord, who is slow to become angry and rich in loving kindness and tender mercy, will not permit His tolerance to sin, rebellion, and disobedience to endure forever. There comes a time when enough is enough, and God delivers. He delivers His enemies into the hands of His people and contrary to popular belief, sometimes He even delivers His people into the hands of His enemies. To disbelieve this is to contradict scripture and ignore history.
The moral of this story is to not put the Lord your God to a foolish test. Do not presume upon the mercy and patience and grace of God. You may be well versed in the power of God to deliver and He may have in times past used you as a vessel to deliver others, but if you persist in a pattern of disobedience--either willful sin or passive indifference--God will deliver you...and you may not like it.
But even in wrath, God is merciful. Even in judgment, God is kind. Even in delivering a person or a people group into chastisement, He is wise. Consider the Messiah's deliverance into the hands of sinners:
(Luke 24:7 NIV) 'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.'
(Rom. 4:25 NIV) He [Jesus] was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.
God delivers on time, every time, all the time, for all time.
DSR
8/30/04