Are believers spared when God judges nations? In this episode, Pastor guides us to sobering biblical passages about the judgement of God. The good news, despite the turmoil, is that God is gathering a people for Himself from every nation. His plans are eternal; His truth will never be overcome by the world’s collective attempts to suppress it.
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Transcript: Welcome to “5 Minutes with Pastor Lutzer.” I’m so glad that you joined us today because we’re discussing: how does God judge a nation? I remember someone asking me, “Pastor Lutzer, is God mad at America?” That’s a good question. Is God mad at America? Someone else says, “Do you think God will ever judge America?” and I say God is already judging America because there are some immediate consequences to sin. And then sometimes those sins begin to boomerang and the consequences become even more severe. How does God judge a nation?
Well, let’s just plunge right into it and say that God sometimes uses a very evil nation to judge a more righteous nation. I’m thinking of Habakkuk in the Old Testament. Remember how he cries to God and says, “Oh God, there’s evil in the land do something.” God says, “Habakkuk, I am. I’m bringing the Chaldeans—that is the Babylonians, against you.” And Habakkuk—“I can’t figure this out.” He goes on to say—he says, “they’re more evil than we are!” God says, “Yeah. But I’m going to use them.” In fact, He speaks about the Assyrians as being the rod of His anger. So, sometimes nations are judged by other nations. So let’s keep that in mind.
Sometimes nations are judged because God simply turns them over to their immorality. Romans 1—you’re very familiar with it, aren’t you? Where it says three times: “God gave them up.” “God gave them up.” And the context has to do with sexual sin because God says you are suppressing the truth. There are a lot of people out there who in their hearts know the truth and as a nation we have simply followed that line, haven’t we? I mean the approval of same-sex marriage, the approval of abortion, all of this is really something that our nation is doing that eventually, incrementally and finally, will incur the judgement of God. And when that happens the righteous suffer with the wicked. You know during that time of the captivity, you have Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they go to Babylon too, and as there are downturns in a country, the Christians are affected.
Now, the Bible also says in Matthew 25 that there is going to be what is called the judgement of the nations. I remember reading that when I was younger and I thought, “Okay, America is going to be brought here and God is going say ‘America. you go this direction’ and perhaps Russia goes the other direction and Bolivia goes a different direction. That’s not the way it really is. God says He’s judging the gentiles. He’s judging the various nations, but in the end, it is always an individual judgement when it is a final judgement. And the Bible says that this will happen when Jesus Christ returns to earth and sits on His throne, for what we call the Millennial Kingdom, and the division will be between the sheep and the goats. And here’s something that I think should excite us: In the book of Revelation, it says clearly that there will be people from every nation. Every nation! God has a remnant everywhere and God is doing more in the world than you and I could possibly recognize. He is developing nations, but among those nations, He is choosing His people and every nation will have sheep—that is those who hear the voice of Christ. And every nation will have goats also. But the good news, of course, is that even though we become a part of how God is judging the nations while we are here on earth in the end, it’s an individual judgement and we shall be with God forever.
Join us next time because I’m going to be talking about the subject of the nations in the future, especially, nations even in heaven. Thanks for joining us today and as for today you just go with God.