Be Assured

For Wednesday, August 3, 2005
Proverbs 11:21

Be assured, an evil person will not go unpunished,
but the offspring of the righteous will be delivered.

While watching a sports event, such as a basketball or football game, you will usually notice a coach get extremely angry, sometimes for no apparent reason. He screams at the officials. His assistants may have to hold him back. Why is he so angry? He sees what he perceives to be cheating by the other team; that's bad enough; but what pushes him over the edge is that he can't get the officials to see the cheating and punish it. "They are getting away with it!"

Isn't that what angers us as well in other areas of life? What makes America so angry about Osam ben Laden? Not only that he commits murder, but that we cannot bring him to justice. And worse yet, other people treat him as a hero. We do not like Saddam Hussein, but he no longer fills us with rage because he is behind bars.

What especially gets our anger is the perceived injustice that involves us. The driver who cuts in front of us; the co-worker getting away with being a slacker or advancing through cheating; the fellow student who gets a better grade because he cheated, and so on. "They are getting away with it!"

No, they are not. God sees all, and God will reward each person for what he has done. We might see the punishment come; we might not. Quite likely the punishment or reward will not be what we expect because we do not judge rightly. We also are sinners; we also commit the same sins in different forms. Our sense of justice is influenced more by how we are affected. That's why we can read of a murder taking place without a tinge of emotion if we know none of the parties, but we will become outraged because a company made a mistake on our bill.

Be assured. Be contented. Evil will not go unpunished. No one is getting away with anything. The righteous will not only be delivered, but their offspring as well. God is in control. What we need to do is trust God. Our concern is to be obedient to his laws and not let the evil of others unduly influence us. How else could Jesus go calmly to the cross, except that he entrusted himself into his Father's hands knowing that justice, not evil, would prevail?