Question:
What is God like?
How Justice and Mercy meet.

Answer:
Do you know how God had the people of Israel worship in the days of the prophet Moses? God sent Moses to do many great things but the most precious and greatest was to give the people God's Word. And in the Word God instructed his people on how they were to worship. It was in that worship that God showed them how his Justice and his Mercy would meet.

God told the people, "Be holy because I am holy." (Tawrat, Leviticus 11:45) The term holy simply means to be separate from sin or evil. Sin is any time a person with his thoughts or words or actions does something that is wrong in God's sight, when a person disobeys God. So God was telling the people to be holy, to be perfect. (For more on the term Holy go to God is Holy) But what happens when a person fails to be holy? What happens when a person sins or does something wrong? When a person loses his temper with his friend—what then? God tells us the verdict for not being holy. "The soul who sins is the one who will die." (Ezekiel 18:4) Now when God says the soul it makes clear that he is not just talking about some physical death. He is talking a spiritual death. That is the way the Bible describes hell. It is spiritual death, it is the punishment of not just the body but also the soul. And yet God is merciful.

Through Moses the prophet told the people to bring a sacrifice when they worshipped him. For example a man might come to the Temple and he would confess his sin but instead of God destroying the man for not being holy, the animal was killed. The animal died but the man went home alive. Of course the blood of animals does not remove the sin a person commits. And when the people thought they could just come to God and make a "payment" he rebuked them by saying, "I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats." (Isaiah 1:11) And yet God told them to make sacrifices and was pleased when they did that in faith. Why? It was because God was teaching them something about how he would bring Justice and Mercy together. He even taught that before Moses through the Prophet Abraham!

Remember when Abraham was going to sacrifice his own son? He was about to kill him but God commanded him to stop and instead provided a ram. What joy Abraham must have felt! His son didn't need to die instead he could sacrifice and worship God by killing the ram instead. This was God's mercy at work. So for thousands of years the followers of the true God according to God's command brought sacrifices. But what did it mean? What was God teaching?

The answer came through John the Baptist (). John was a powerful prophet in his day. He proclaimed to his people that they needed to return with their hearts to the true God. He warned them that they were in danger of God's judgment because of their evil behavior and their evil hearts. John was so important that God even predicted his coming beforehand through the prophets. Isaiah was a prophet of God who lived about 1300 years before the birth of Mohammad and 700 years before the birth of Jesus. God said this through him describing John (Yahyah). "A voice of one calling: In the desert prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it." (Isaiah 40:3-5) This was John's mission, he was to prepare the people for God. If they were proud they needed to humble themselves. If their hearts were stubborn they needed to listen. John was sent to prepare the people for the Messiah's coming. When God would help his people.

One day Jesus came along and John was with two of his disciples. He told them, "Look, the Lamb of God!" What did he mean by calling Jesus the Lamb of God? Every person in Israel knew that you brought a lamb for sacrifice. But God wouldn't need a sacrifice for anything he did wrong. That is absurd and offensive. God is holy and who would he sacrifice to? And yet John says the Lamb of God. God had a lamb and was going to sacrifice it? Why? John already had given the answer. On the previous day Jesus was walking toward John. John when he saw him immediately proclaimed to the crowd, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29) This is what God had been teaching the people through Abraham, Moses and all the prophets.

Sin must be paid for. The penalty for any sin is death. But God in his mercy was going to provide a sacrifice so that we wouldn't have to die. The prophet Abraham gave the picture of this when he sacrificed the ram instead of his son. Isaiah the prophet 700 years beforehand describes it this way. "He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence nor was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand." (Isaiah 53:9-10) God was making Jesus a guilt offering, that means he would die for our guilt. It was the place where justice and mercy met. On the cross was where sin was punished and the Lamb of God died. It was because of the cross you and I can stand before the Holy God and be welcomed home.