What Are You Looking For? Part 1: The Nicene Creed

God The Father...Protects

God the Father…Protects

          God’s protection of those who love him is seen is Scripture from the earliest times.  Even when Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden God the Father protected them from eating of the Tree of Life.  That might not seem like a good thing to us, but imagine if they had eaten of the Tree and we lived forever as we are.  With all the consequences of Adam and Eve’s sin, with our concupiscence (our disordered inclination to sin) forever active in our lives here on Earth, forever. Imagine, for example, Hitler living forever.  Not good.  But God protected us from that by expelling them from the Garden.

            He showed his protection to the Israelites before he ever set his covenant before them.  At the time of the Exodus, every Israelite living in Egypt was protected from the plagues.  At the time of the tenth plague, the Death of the Firstborn, they were protected by the blood of the lamb.  It was during the preparation against the coming plague that we see a condition put on God’s protection.  They were only protected through obedience.  The lamb had to be slain.  The blood had to be applied in a specific way.  The lamb had to be consumed in a specific way.  If they didn’t do those things, if they weren’t obedient to the Lord, they weren’t protected and death would visit them as well.

            The significance of all the Israelites experienced in the Exodus took on a deeper meaning when God set forth his covenant agreement with Moses and the people.  By this time he had so proven his ability to keep his end of the covenant, to protect them and bless them that they knew exactly what his proposal meant.  The covenant was simple.  If you love me with all your heart and are obedient to all I say, I will bless you and protect you.  If you don’t, I won’t.  Choose.  That was the covenant.  Once the choice was made, on God’s end it was unbreakable.  Ever.  All you have to do is read the Bible to know the Israelites didn’t always keep up their end of the covenant. 

            But even loving God and being obedient to him doesn’t mean bad things will never happen.  God’s protection means there are limits to the evil that can come against us.  In Job, Satan asks permission of God to test Job.  (Notice he has to ask permission before he can act.)  At first, God permits Satan to take all of Job’s worldly goods: children, homes, flocks, etc.  But he is not permitted to touch Job.  When Job continues to trust God and worship him, Satan again goes to God and asks for permission to do more. He figures if Job gets painfully ill, it will break Job’s fidelity to God.  God grants permission, but with a condition: you can’t kill him.  Even after all of this, after being told by his wife (wonderful supportive woman that she was) to just “curse God and die” (Job 2:9), after his friends have repeatedly told him he must be the worst sinner around or God would have protected him from evil, Job makes one of the great statements of faith, “Though he slay me, yet I will hope in him.” (Job 13: 15 NIV)  Job understood that just because you are righteous doesn’t mean nothing bad will ever happen.  Life happens to everyone.  But he knew not to fear the killing of the body.  Fear the killing of the soul. 

            That’s ultimately what God’s protection is.  Yes, he provides our guardian angels to physically protect us from time to time, but the protection and blessing he promised through the covenant with Moses was more, much more, than just physical.  Their souls were protected.  When evil would come, even if they died, their souls would be saved.  In our day, that saving is still through the shed Blood of the Lamb.  And, just like with the Israelites, for the Blood of the Lamb to be efficacious, and save us from death, it must be applied to the doorposts and lintel of our homes.  To where we live.  And the flesh of the Lamb must be consumed in the proscribed way.  And when we do that, the covenant is confirmed.  And we are His people and He is our God.