Forgive Like God || Psalm 86:5 || Manna for the Mind #10

Welcome to Day 10 of my “Manna for the Mind” devotional series! This series takes a passage of scripture (typically 1-3 verses) and builds its understanding through its context and connecting scripture. Doing this helps us understand what the Bible truly teaches us. 

Psalm 86:5

5          O Lord, you are so good, so ready to forgive, so full of unfailing love for all who ask for your help.

If you’re unfamiliar with Psalms, they are poems of praise or prayer written to express deep emotion. When we use Psalms as our focal verse, we typically will have a string of them together that helps us build on the patterns and commonalities written by the various psalmists.

Psalm 103:8

8          The Lord is compassionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.

What are the commonalities between these two verses? God is a good god. He’s compassionate, forgiving, and full of unfailing love. This concept is the foundation of understanding who God is as a character. We see this first expressed in Exodus 34:6 as Moses is trying to reason with God about not taking the Israelites out after the Golden Calf incident, and similar word choices are repeated twenty-seven times in the Old Testament. This high amount of repetition is something to be aware of because highly repetitive information signifies importance to the author or reader. Let’s see this foundation play out in Joel 2:13.

Joel 2:13

13        Don’t tear your clothing in your grief, but tear your hearts instead.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. He is eager to relent and not to punish.

Baal was the most important of the Canaanite gods, and the many names he was known by were used to describe all the local deities worshiped throughout all the Israeli-occupied land. The Israelites failed to remove the idols and pagan worship centers as God commanded them to. Because of that, they became tolerant of them and frequently joined Baal worshipers, often through the influence of corrupt kings.

Something about that opening line hits differently: “Don’t tear clothing in grief, but tear your hearts instead.” My first response was, “Don’t throw a temper tantrum, but do some deep reflecting instead.” How often, in times of grief or strong emotions, do we do something physically that doesn’t benefit us. I have a whiteboard wall calendar in my room with about 6-8 dents in it from my frustration. I’m not proud of it, but it’s the truth. Our physical reactions in moments of strife can fatigue more than anything else and hinder our progress through life.

We’re told to tear our hearts. Look deep within ourselves, analyzing each layer, and see where we can improve and learn from the grief. God is merciful, ready, and willing to forgive us when we ask. God is full of compassion, which means that no matter how bad we messed up, he still loves us. These things allow us to reflect genuinely and deeply on where we are in our grief and where we need to go. All we must do is ask.

Nahum 1:3

3          The Lord is slow to get angry, but his power is great, and he never lets the guilty go unpunished. He displayed his power in the whirlwind and the storm. The billowing clouds are dust beneath his feet.

God is slow to get angry but intense when he’s ready to punish. Let’s talk about this concept because it’s a jarring statement. God gives us many chances to have do-overs and do things that get us back on the path he’s set for us. The number of chances is innumerable. However, those who intentionally refuse those chances and intentionally go against God will face the wrath he has. Think about the people in your life. I’m sure there’s at least one person to whom you’ve tried to give so many chances because you care for them and want the best for them, and so on and so forth. Yet, they intentionally still mess up your relationship with them and cause you strife. I’m confident there’s one person in your mind that popped in. Those people reach your last nerve, and that’s it. You might blow up at them, get into a physical fight with them, or silently cut them off altogether. You’re, in essence, giving them the reality that they created for themselves. God does the same thing. Think about the story of Pharaoh and the Ten Plagues in Egypt.

Pharaoh consistently refused to let the Israelites go. We see it written that Pharaoh’s heart remained hard after the first six plagues. When the plages of festering boils came about, we see it written that God hardened Pharoah’s heart for the remaining plagues. It follows the same pattern I talked about earlier. God gave many chances for Pharaoh to repent and do what was right and intentionally did not, so God took over the pattern that Pharaoh created and solidified the reality that Pharoah desired. We know the end of the story, though, and that’s for a different series to talk about. Still, it shows a more realistic representation of God’s anger and how it’s not like anger as we recognize it today.

People often avoid God because they see so much evil in the world and the misconduct and hypocrisy shown in the church by the church. It’s the question: “Why does God allow these evil things to happen in the world?” It’s hard to grasp that because God is slow to anger, he gives his TRUE followers time to share his love and truth with those causing the evil. If God came down and fixed everything for us, would we have free will? No. God could dictate what happens when and how, and we would be forced to follow it. While God understands the possibilities of what could happen, he put humanity in charge of ruling and keeping dominion over the world. We’ve just gotten horrible at it. It feels, at times, that we’re resorting to the days of the Judges where “everyone does what was right in their own eyes.” We see this happen with Christians and churches and non-Christians all over. We need to learn, understand, comprehend, and share God’s love with those around us, who might share it with those around them and create one of the biggest, loving butterfly effects the world has ever seen.

As Christians, we have to remember that the ultimate judgment will come. It won’t be when we want it to, but it will. When we’re asking why God doesn’t take care of the world’s evil sooner rather than later, remember that if God did, humanity wouldn’t have lasted past Adam and Eve. We saw God’s attempt at that with Noah and the flood, and Noah still committed sin even after being claimed as “finding favor with God.”

Let’s transition to another Psalm and talk about God’s forgiveness.

Psalm 130:3-4

3          Lord, if you kept a record of our sins, who, O Lord, could ever survive?

4          But you offer forgiveness, that we might learn to fear you.

This builds on the concept we just discussed as to why God offers patience and forgiveness. Keeping a record of sins (holding grudges) builds a wall between you and someone else. If God kept the record, imagine the wall between us. It’d be so high and long, but through the sacrifice of Jesus, the wall was demolished. The curtain was torn, and we can go directly to the compassionate, merciful, loving Father we all want. Plus, to replicate God’s love for the world, we must also adopt this. We can’t let grudges get in the way of how we treat one another. We may not have to like the person’s actions, motives, etc., but we must respect them because they are still a human and God’s children, more importantly. Amen.

Father God, we thank you for the compassion, mercy, and love you give us daily in all moments. Help us learn what it means for us and how we can share it with the world. In your name, we pray. Amen.