Trusting God’s Justice Beyond Our Understanding

Read Genesis 20:1-18

Does not God’s sense of justice strike you as rather interesting in this story? Abraham is in the wrong, he is the one who lied and deceived, and yet at several instances it is Abimelech who is threatened by God, and Abraham in the end who is rewarded, as he is given many gifts by the Abimelech and appears to be granted the rights of being a citizen and not a foreigner when Abimelech offers for Abraham to dwell in his land.

How is Abraham rewarded in all this? How is Abimelech threatened when he acts with integrity better yet Abraham becomes the means through which Abimelech is blessed.
Somehow the deceiver becomes the bestower of blessings.

In verse 7, Abraham is even referred to as a prophet, a person who speaks on behalf of God and intercedes for the needs of others to God, and yet he is a deceiver. The Bible is filled with scores of people we would never imagine God choosing, and he oftentimes does things
in his justice that we do not understand.

This is where books like Job come in so handy. For Job wrestles with this very truth, the justice of God. How can a righteous man have all his wealth and children taken from him, how can be made to suffer when all he has done is honour God?

Does Job receive an answer to his question? He does but not necessarily the one we would want to hear. God puts Job in his place, showing him that the creature has no right to dictate to the creator what is right and wrong, and that God’s thoughts are so much higher than ours we can not completely comprehend his justice.

We can see the justice of God at work in this world in so many ways. We have judges that uphold justice, police who enforce God and restrain evil, his judgements are being carried out everyday though imperfectly of course.

Our desire to help the poor, care for the needy, and to speak up for those who don’t have a voice is part of God’s image within us, his justice is mirrored in our desire to see it in this world. But there will come a point where we do not understand God and what he is doing. We will not be able to understand how he is just in what he does.

Is that reason enough for us to reject him? No it is not. We must understand that God has a plan and he is not obligated to tell us everything or anything about it really. But he has revealed to us in his word all that we need to know.

As Christians we must learn to trust in nothing but the character of God himself, who he is. Sometimes it will be our only light in the darkness.

Prayer:

“Lord, your thoughts are higher than our thoughts and your ways higher than our ways. We cannot begin to comprehend all that you do. In these things that go beyond our comprehension, please help me to trust in you. To know that all you do is good, perfect and part of your plan. In Jesus name, Amen.”