Isaiah 15:5 (ESV)

My heart cries out for Moab;

her fugitives flee to Zoar,

to Eglath-shelishiyah.

For at the ascent of Luhith

they go up weeping;

on the road to Horonaim

they raise a cry of destruction;

Even as God says that he will judge Moab, his heart cries out for her. Even as God hates her sin, he loves her. Even in his judgment he has compassion. In Isaiah 16:4 he says, “Let the outcasts of Moab sojourn among you; be a shelter to them from the destroyer.” Jesus instructed his disciples to love their enemies. This is the pattern that God himself practiced. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). “While we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son” (Rom 5:10).

As a father there were times when I had to punish my children for their behavior. I had clearly laid out the boundaries for them. They knew what was expected and they crossed the line. I often did not want to punish them. My preference would have been to look the other way. I hated to see them experience the pain of a spanking, or losing a freedom, or giving up some activity that they had been looking forward to. Until I became a father I never understood why my parents said, “This hurts me more than it hurts you.?

When we think about God’s judgment we often think of his hatred for sin. Unfortunately, we often neglect to consider his love for the sinner. We cannot even begin to imagine the grief God must have felt when he sent the flood. Could it be that when Genesis 6 says that it grieved God to his heart that he had made man, God was grieving the punishment he must send as much as the sin they are committing?

Genesis 6:5-7

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.”

In the ethical and cultural debates churning through our country it is common for Christians to say that we must hate the sin and love the sinner. That statement is understood by those on the other side of the moral question to mean, “Hate me, but say that you love me in order to feel better about yourself.” Of course, we have trained a generation to believe that if we disagree with them then we hate them. We are reaping our own fruit here. Unfortunately, too often they are correct. We do say that more to make us feel good about ourselves then to generate actual love. It is often couched in terms like, “Love means speaking the truth no matter how harsh it seems!” But that is not what God is doing in Genesis or in Isaiah. The real question is: How can we truly love those who are coming under God’s judgment?

Lot’s daughters got him drunk in a cave, and slept with him in order to have children. The Moabites are the descendants of that incestuous relationship between Lot and one of his daughters. Moab was the country that tried to curse Israel while they were still in the wilderness. The Moabites are the unclean people that we so often try to avoid in our self-righteous pursuit of holiness. But God said that his heart cried out for them.

Perhaps it is time for us to stop worrying so much about being clean and safe, and start reaching out to truly love others. Real ministry is messy. May we see AIDS patients, human trafficking victims, those addicted to drugs and alcohol, those devastated by the immoral choices they have made in life, and those fleeing desperate living conditions through the heart of God. Let us set aside our own comfort and safety in order to truly love those whom God loves passionately. “God so loved the world” (Jn 3:16)! May our hearts cry out for them as passionately as God does.