The Lord Comes Down

And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower.
GENESIS 11:5
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The Lord Comes Down
Over against our weakness and the smugness of the ungodly, Scripture bears witness that finally God descends, punishes, and opens His eyes, ears, and mouth. This the godly believe, but with a feeble faith, while the ungodly smugly disregard it. Hence let us be warned by the example before us and learn this: the longer God puts up with idolatry and other sins, and the longer He pays no attention to them, the more intolerable will His wrath reveal itself to be later on. Therefore we ought to consider it a great kindness if He does not permit our sins to go unpunished for a long time. Psalm 30:5 exhorts the Church to give thanks because the wrath of the Lord is "for a moment" and because He loves life. It says: "Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning"; and Psalm 89:30, 32: "If his children forsake My Law and do not walk according to My ordinances, I will punish their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with scourges." This is a wrath of grace, when the punishment comes quickly and calls us back from sin.
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