Death for Picking up Sticks on Sunday.

Atheists enjoy criticising God whenever something happens that they do not understand.

They like to make accusations that God is not just, does not care or love, and is wholly capricious, a bit like the fabled Greek or Roman Gods, who were constructed by men who were idealising what they thought a god could be like, and arrived at something similar to themselves.

In particular Atheists like to take one Bible verse which on the surface appears malignant, and then attempt to construct a case in court that God is not perfect.  I guess they think that if they can remove one brick from the house, then the whole house must collapse, and they love picking on some Bible verses to make God appear unjust or cruel in his punishments.

Take for example the man who in the Exodus story was stoned after disobeying the direct instruction of God to take a day off on the Sabbath Day, and rebelled against God by collecting firewood.  There were also plenty of others who died disobeying God at that time, including 23,000 after a bout of sexual immorality, another who cursed God, and yet others who tried to take over from Moses.

In a similar vein, in the New Testament, soon after the Holy Spirit was given to the disciples, Ananias and Sapphira (who were part of God's people, having received the Holy Spirit and been aware of all of the events surrounding the life of Jesus) decided to lie to God about money, and also died quite dramatically on the spot, slain presumably by an angel.

Plenty of people have done these things at other times in history which has not attracted the same instantaneous results.

To understand these events, you need to understand the context in which they happened. All these people had been witnesses to amazing events, including all the miracles performed around the time of the rescuing of Israel from Egypt, or later the rescuing of sinners by the death of Jesus with the associated miracles associated with his life and resurrection, including the arrival of the Holy Spirit.

Furthermore, God's presence was very close to the people in both cases.  God was travelling himself with the people of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was very close to the disciples after Jesus had been resurrected.  Sin does not survive in presence of God, sinful men do not wish to be in the presence of God, and cannot see his face and live. God is Holy, nothing evil will be permitted to enter his presence. It’s a bad time to sin, when God is close.

All men under the sentence of death for sin eventually anyway, but for the rest of us there is a delay of judgement to allow time for men to realise what their problem is, and turn to God for the solution. Warnings are issued too, like Jonah’s warning to Nineveh.

Perhaps these people’s timing was poor, God was really close, and building something important; who knows, perhaps some other time in history they may have had time to repent, but they had plenty of warnings first. Pharaoh had plenty of warnings too….

But it is not the physical death of the body that Jesus tells us to worry about, but the second death, the death of the soul which unforgiven sin causes. This death can only be prevented by requesting the Blood of Christ to cover over the sin, sin which every-one has.

God’s justice is a scary thing, and rightly so, and can happen at any time. It’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God without the coverage of the Blood of Christ.

Rebellion, disobedience, pride, sexual immorality, brutality will all be punished in the end, unless repentance occurs and coverage is obtained.

So these people along with many others through-out the Bible, both Israelite and others, received the consequences of their selfish and sinful actions, justice at the hand of God who is perfectly just. And these events are recorded as a warning to all who read them. Take God’s justice seriously. Avail yourself of His solution too, while you are at it.