Theological Commentary: Click Here
Discipleship Focus: Calling
- Calling asks whether or not God has called the person to the particular work at this point in their life.
Make sure
to understand the historical significance of what is being said in this
chapter. Remember that God’s people,
Israel specifically, had fallen away and refused to repent. When they refused to repent, God sent Assyria
upon them to judge them and to bring them into captivity until they
repented. God absolutely called Assyria
forth. God absolutely empowered them to
accomplish His task. God doesn’t have an
issue with the fact that Assyria conquered Israel.
What God
takes up issue with is how they went about fulfilling His calling. They did not conquer the Hebrew people of
Israel in any sort of dignified way. We
know that they slaughtered people mercilessly.
We know that they intentionally killed the babies of the Hebrew women to
break the will of the people. We know
that they intentionally humiliated people publicly and disfigured the
captives as examples to others.
Yes, the
Assyrians were called to humble the Hebrew people of Israel. But they were not called to do it in the
manner in which they accomplished the task.
As followers of God, this is an incredibly important thing for us to
remember. Just because God calls us to a
task does not give us permission to go about the task in any way possible. Remember that God judges us with mercy,
sending His own Son to die so that repentance is always an option. We should follow the same mindset. When we are called by God to accomplish a
task, we should go about it in a way that promotes mercy and grace, not
judgment and wrath.
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