Talking With Israel

Genesis 18:23-25
(23) And Abraham came near and said, "Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked? (24) Suppose there were fifty righteous within the city; would You also destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous that were in it? (25) Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked; far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"
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God's justice is according to His righteousness, His holy character. Psalm 119:172 defines righteousness, stating "All Your commandments are righteousness." Those commandments reflect in writing the character of God.

What God does is always consistent with who and what He is, and what He has written. His righteousness is absolute purity. He is utterly incapable of an unholy, unrighteous, unjust act. For God to act unfairly, He would simply have to cease being God. It is totally impossible for Him to commit an injustice.

When Abraham uses the word "righteous" in verse 23, he is not saying, "Would You destroy the sinless with the wicked?" He means people who, through their fear of God and being conscientious, have kept themselves free from the iniquity of S***m and Gomorrah. Abraham's concern was that there were people in the city we might consider to be really good citizens. They were not sinless, but if there was a fear of God in them, maybe they were trying with all their might to obey God, but they were caught up simply in being in the environment which God had decided He was going to destroy.

God does not always act with justice; sometimes He acts with mercy. That is what He did with Lot and his family. God acted with justice against the city because it was so corrupt, so evil, so filled with sin that it even offended God's sense of what is right and wrong. It even offended God's patience, His longsuffering. And so in justice He wiped the city off the map, but in grace and mercy He spared Lot, his wife, and two children.

Mercy is not justice, but neither is it injustice, because injustice would violate righteousness, and God always acts according to His holy character, which is total righteousness. Therefore mercy, which manifests kindness and grace, does no violence to righteousness, and we may see non-justice in God—which is mercy—but we never see injustice in God.

— John W. Ritenbaugh

Believing in the God of Israel (“BELIEVING” means DOING what He says) is hard for a natural person. “Natural” means a person NOT LED by the Spirit.
How natural is acknowledging His sovereignty over all the affairs of mankind? How natural is it to acknowledge His presence being around you and guiding you all day, every day – and RELY on it? How natural is it to say “no” to fornication and adultery? How natural is it to be forbidden to lie, cheat, steal and rob? How natural is it to consume unleavened bread for a week or to afflict yourself for a day of atonement, when you give your body absolutely nothing? How natural is worshipping Him on the day He chose, the 7th day and not the 1st? How natural is it for people not to know – or care – about the 2nd death? How natural is it for a person to put all of their faith into a future that is only written about?
Believing in the God of Israel is a spiritual circumstance, in which all of those things are done. As God promised in Jeremiah 31:33: “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel atter those days”, declared the Lord, “I WILL PUT MY LAW WITHIN THEM, AND ON THEIR HEART I WILL WRITE IT; AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE”. Walk THIS way.

The cause of man's plight is not ignorance of the right but his own desire, which leads him to substitute his will for God's. This simple story, of Adam and Eve, illustrates why man's relationship with God has run afoul. By deliberate choice, man separates himself from God, who created him and gives him the freedom to choose.

Nothing changes regarding the free-moral agency of the person called by God. When one is forgiven and receives God's Spirit, He does not overpower them. THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE FREELY REMAINS. even as with Adam and Eve. To take away this privilege would truly make the individual a puppet on a string and destroy God's creation of him or her in His spiritual image. God is free to choose, and so is man created in God's image. It is this freedom of choice that opens the door for man, through redemption and conversion, to be like God in character.

CHOOSE YE THIS DAY WHO YOU WILL SERVE!!