God gives people an opportunity to change — but even when He knows they won't — He doesn't take them out ahead of time. In waiting, He shows the whole world His patience, justice, and foreknowledge.
People do not appreciate this about God. Because once everything unfolds, they want to know why God didn't intervene and keep it from happening. Think about it, though, if God went around intervening before anybody did evil, then people would say: “Why did God take Frank out? He wasn't such a bad guy...”. Lucky for God, His main goal in this life is not to keep us happy and informed.
I love that this verse is in here. I think this reference to God waiting for the Amorite's sin to reach “its full measure”, actually answers a lot of questions we might have as we look through history. For instance: “Why did God allow Hitler to wreak such havoc?” I'm not going to claim to know the answer to that question in full, but I think there are a few things we can't miss here — but lets just look at one: if God had taken Hitler out early on, the world would have never known the extent of sin that mankind is capable of. (As Dr. Phil would say: “If you don't acknowledge the problem, you can't fix it.”) It is only when the world sees how broken it really is, that they have the chance to see their need for a Savior. And us getting that, is actually God's goal for us in this life.
“The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3: 9)
God is. God is great. God is good... and His answer to evil in this world is — The Savior — who did the perishing for us.
From Guest Blogger, Lisa Jones.
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