‘Behold, the Lamb of God’
ide
o amnos tou theou
College Study
44th teaching
7.22.2013
“God’s Wrath”
Part I – its Nature
Introductions.
Project
Scriptura:
Announce next week’s topic (God’s Wrath part II), challenge each person to find ONE Bible verse
about this attribute of God to share next week, you may use any resource as
long as you find just one verse. The
Bible is loaded with references to God’s wrath, find one more for next week)
Review:
What was our subject the last time we met? What
does Veracity mean (two meanings)? Who asked the question: What is Truth? What
are four qualities of Truth? God embodies the Truth, He is Truth; what
metaphysical kindred-attribute to Veracity shows that God is Truth and a revealer of Truth? How can God correspond to Himself, since Truth is what
corresponds? Veracity also means that God is honest: what metaphysical
attribute shows that God is incapable of lying? What keyword does the Bible
often use to describe God’s Veracity as telling the truth? If God is faithful,
then how ought we to react toward the promises He has made?
End Review
Turn to Romans Chapter
1:1 to 2:8.
Tonight’s study is entitled: “God’s Wrath, part I”. I think this is a large enough subject, and
one which is surrounded by much confusion, so as to deserve a two-part study.
Therefore, next week, we’ll examine a few more things about God’s Wrath.
Tonight though, we’ll concern ourselves with “the Nature of Divine Wrath”. Needless
to say, this is a vastly important doctrine. The wrath of God is tied to huge
biblical concepts like punishment in hell, the crucifixion, the book of
Revelation and so on.
Listen to the words of the preacher Martyn-Lloyd Jones,
talking about reasons for considering the wrath of God: a “reason for
considering it is this: that the apostle's whole argument is that we can never
understand the love of God until we understand this doctrine. It is - the way
in which we measure the love of God. There is a great deal of talk today about
the love of God, and yet were we truly to love God, we would express it, we
would show it. To love God is not merely to talk about it; to love God, as He
Himself points out constantly in His Word, is to keep His commandments and to
live for His glory. The argument here is that we really cannot understand the
love of God unless we see it in the light of this other doctrine which we are
now considering. So it is essential from that standpoint.
“Let me put it in this way. I suggest that we can never
truly understand why it is that the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God,
had to come into this world unless we understand this doctrine of the wrath of
God and the judgment of God.”
That’s huge! However, studying the wrath of God immediately
presents us with a few problems.
For example, Americans today have their own pre-conceived
notions of what they think God should be like. Sometimes people don’t want to hear
about what God is actually like. They’ve
already got an image in their heads of their own conception of God. So not the
least of the problems confronting us in our study of God’s wrath is the fact
that studying the wrath of God is unpopular. Thinking of God as angry is not an
easy pill to swallow. It certainly is not a pleasant subject for the unbeliever
and the unrepentant. Nobody unaccustomed to the things of God wants to hear
about an all-powerful Being who is angry at them.
But this is also an unpopular subject even in churches
across America. One proof of that, I think, comes in the form of the diet of
worship songs in modern Christianity. Today, my wife and I tried to think of as
many songs that mention the wrath of God as we could. We came up with one: the
song we just sang “In Christ Alone” where it says that the wrath of God was
satisfied in Christ on the cross.
Our worship songs are concerned with praising God’s
faithfulness, His love, mercy, kindness, goodness, as well they should, but
rarely will you hear a song that mentions the wrath of God.
And what’s more, the preaching of the wrath of God is
largely gone from the pulpits of America. And thereby, the church has lost one
of its greatest motivators to come to Christ. There are great reasons why a man
or woman should come to Jesus and be saved: because Jesus loves them, because
God has a plan for their lives, because He can save them from depression,
drugs, suicide and meanness and because then they can get into heaven. But one
really great reason why a man or a woman should come to the cross of Christ is
for safety and refuge from the wrath of God, which has every right to condemn
that unrepentant man or that unrepentant woman to the Pit of Hell.
It’s quite a motivation to someone to say “come to Jesus
and experience the joy of heaven”. It’s quite another motivation to some to say
“come to Jesus and escape the coming Day of God’s Wrath!” There’s a sense of
urgency there. The terror of God’s wrath can motivate powerfully! As it should
be.
So, unpopular or not, preaching the wrath of God is
something we should grow accustomed to doing. The wrath of God ought to be a
subject often used in our Christian vocabulary.
Because really, it doesn’t matter whether it is unpopular
or not. It doesn’t matter what people think God is like as much as it matters
what God is actually like. It doesn’t
matter if someone doesn’t want to hear about a wrathful God simply because they’ve
got a sort of “gentle Jesus” lovey-dovey view of God in mind, and that’s all
they want to hear. The truth is: God has wrath, regardless of what peoples’ own
thoughts about God are, the truth remains the truth.
It’s kind of like Superman.
Now bear with me here. I started writing a blog post on
this observation. The film Man of Steel
came out last month, to divided audiences and mixed reviews. And one of the
most common complaints that I had heard about the movie is that “Superman acted
out of character”. Essentially, what people were saying is that the Superman
they saw in the movie didn’t fit their pre-conceived notions of what this
American icon should be like.
Now the real wild thing, and this is where you can see my
point and the comparison being drawn… the real wild thing is that the Superman
in the movie is actually the same
Superman from the comics, what many would consider to be the real Superman: the Superman of the
original source material.
I won’t spoil the movie for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet,
but the huge choice that Superman makes at the end of the film is the one which
caused many to cry out “Superman wouldn’t act like that!” when in fact, the
choice he makes in the movie is exactly the same choice he makes in the comics
when confronted with the same villain and the same situation.
What does this tell us about people? It tells us that
people hold their pre-conceived notions about what somebody should be like as
more important than what that somebody is actually like. And in a greater sense
than Superman, God Himself has His own original source material: the Bible. Just
as the comics tell us everything about the real Superman, the Bible tells us
everything about the real God, not just what people happen to think that this
God should be like.
People can make all the complaints they want against the
wrath of God saying “God wouldn’t act like that!” or “God does not hate, He’s a
God of love”, but all these complaints are moot. They’re worthless. Because you
can say all you like “I can’t believe in a God of wrath”, and that will have no
effect upon what is actually real. It’s just wishful thinking. And the sinner
might wish that God was more tolerant than terrifying, but that’s not reality. All
that matters is what God is actually
like as detailed in the source material, not merely what everyone thinks God is like.
Therefore, we have this tremendous task before us of
studying the wrath of God and preaching it to a world which finds the subject
distasteful, but we’re going to do get equipped tonight in THREE points:
1. What is Wrath?
2. The Nature of God’s Wrath
3. Challenging the Wrath of God
1.
What is Wrath?
Wrath is a very old-sounding word, but what does it actually
mean? The word wrath is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as: “strong
vengeful anger or indignation; punishment for an offense or crime”. Another
possible definition says that wrath is “punishment or vengeance as a
manifestation of anger”. And Wikipedia claims that wrath is “usually associated
with violence, violent reaction or acting out”.
Each of these definitions seem to point out that wrath is
an action that stems from an emotional basis. The difference then between anger
and wrath is that anger is a feeling and wrath is an action coming out of that
feeling. Perhaps that’s why the wrath of God is always linked to the judgments
of God, the actions taken by His anger toward the ungodly.
*Now the Bible uses several words to describe God’s wrath.
In Hebrew, the word charown
means a burning anger, heat or fury. It’s a word always used for God’s anger. It’s
used in Exodus 15:7, where Moses
says “And in the greatness of Your
excellence You have overthrown those who rose against You; You sent forth Your wrath
which consumed them like stubble.”
Another Hebrew word, ebrah means outbursts of passionate anger,
an outpouring of excess anger or overflowing rage, similar to our Western idea
of a bot boiling over symbolizing anger.
In the New Testament, the Greek word for wrath is orge. It can mean anger, agitation,
temper, impulse, desire or any violent emotion. It can also mean anger
exhibited in punishment. It was a cultural word too, used for the punishments
inflicted by local authorities.
With these words in mind, you get an image of God’s wrath
as being very powerful, active, violent, vengeful, angry, consuming,
overwhelming and punishing. The Lord is no push-over. He’s not someone you want
to mess with.
For greater insight into specifics of what the Bible says
about God’s wrath, let’s have our Project Scriptura verses. Hopefully you found
at least one verse in the Bible that mentions God’s wrath.
Isaiah 1:24-25/Colossians 3:5-6/Revelation 16:1/John 3:36/Psalm 21:8-9/Revelation 20:15/Psalm 7:11-17/Malachi 4:1
Consider also: Psalm
59:13, “Consume them in wrath,
consume them, that they may not be; and let them know that God rules in Jacob.”
Psalm 90:7, “For we have been consumed by Your anger, and by Your wrath we are
terrified.” Proverbs 11:4, “Riches do not profit in the day of wrath,
but righteousness delivers from death.”
2.
The Nature of God’s Wrath
In the previous point we asked the question: what is wrath?
To be more specific, God’s wrath is
His active attitude toward sin and the unrepentant.
One of the editors of the ESV study bible, a man named
Wayne Grudem, said this: “If God loves all that is right and good, and all that
conforms to his moral character, then it should not be surprising that he would
hate everything that is opposed to his moral character.”
Indeed, the wrath of God has its object. It’s not like God’s
wrath is an all-encompassing storm or hurricane that threatens to destroy the
wicked, the church, the animal kingdom and the planet. God’s wrath isn’t just directed
at everyone and everything. It has its target. So what then, or who, is the
object of God’s wrath?
Look at Ephesians
2:3 says “…we all once conducted
ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of
the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.” That phrase
children of wrath is a figure of
speech that essentially means objects
of wrath. By nature, the unrepentant sinner is an object which the wrath of God
targets.
Other Scriptures agree:
John 3:36, “He who believes in the Son has everlasting
life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of
God abides on him.”
Psalm 7:11, “God is a just judge, and God is angry with
the wicked every day.”
Job 36:13, “But the hypocrites in heart store up wrath…”
Romans 1:18, which
we read at the beginning: “The wrath of
God is revealed from heaven” against what? “…Against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men…” And Romans 2:5, “But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent (that
is, unrepentant) heart you are
treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath…”
God’s wrath then is aimed at sin and the unrepentant. It is
His righteous anger toward evil.
However, it is incorrect merely to think of God as only wrath. And I think this has come up
many times in our studies. God is not only
love, as He is not only wrath. His
attributes each interlock and fit together. And this is exactly the case of God’s
wrath, it fits together, corresponds with His other qualities.
With that in mind, let’s notice six things about the
wrath of God:
Notice firstly,
that the wrath of God flows from God’s Holiness.
God is Holy. This means He cannot look upon and approve of
sin. Habakkuk 1:13 says “You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and
cannot look on wickedness.” God’s Holiness means He cannot tolerate sin. God’s
Holiness means He cannot overlook sin. His Holiness demands that sin be dealt
with and the reasonable action for taking care of sin is His wrath and judgment.
So His wrath flows from His Holiness.
Secondly, the
wrath of God is in accordance with God’s
Moral Perfection.
Since God is morally pure and perfect, then He cannot but
love what is morally good and hate what is morally evil. Since sin is morally
evil, God as morally Perfect must oppose it. And His moral opposition to sin is
His wrath. You wouldn’t call a man a “good man” if he loved things like rape and
child abuse and theft. You’d call that man a “bad man”. Well, it just so
happens that God is a morally Perfect Being who says “For I, the LORD, love justice; I hate robbery…” (Isaiah 61:8). Proverbs 12:22 says that lying lips are an abomination to the LORD
but that He delights in those who act faithfully. God cannot but love the good
and hate the evil, because He Himself is morally and perfectly good. So His
wrath is in accordance with His Moral Perfection.
Thirdly, the
wrath of God is as powerful as God’s
Omnipotence.
Remember God’s attribute of Omnipotence? It means
all-powerful. Clear statements occur in Scripture which indicate that God has
all power, such as in Jeremiah 32:27,
“Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all
flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me?” Note that God’s wrath is only as
powerful as He is. We’re not talking about the petty temper-tantrums of a
little child, who has little power to be able to accomplish anything or effect
those around him. We’re talking instead about God Almighty, for whom nothing is
too difficult. His wrath then comes with the same strength as Himself, His
wrath is as strong as His own power. There is no pit deep enough, no stronghold
fortified enough, no defense against the awesome and overwhelming power of God’s
all-consuming wrath (except of course for the refuge we take in His own Son).
So His wrath is as powerful as God’s Omnipotence.
Fourthly, the
wrath of God is regulated by God’s
Impassibility.
Remember the doctrine of Impassibility? It basically means
that God is always in total control of His own emotions, that in fact, His own
nature regulates His emotions. In other words, what God feels and how He feels
about things is all based upon who He is. In a nutshell, Impassibility shows
that God does not have mood swings. You realize that God loves the righteous? Hebrews 1:9 says so: “You have loved righteousness and hated
lawlessness…” Now, question: will there ever be a day when God decides to
love lawlessness and hate righteousness? Will there ever be a day when God
cherishes the wicked and calls them His children, while forsaking His saints?
We know that He certainly could never do that. Why? Because of Impassibility.
His emotions are regulated by His nature and character. How God feels about
good will always be how God feels about good. And how God feels about evil will
always be how good feels about evil. The objects of His wrath will always be
the unrepentant and not the believer. I’ve heard it said beforse that the only
prayer God wants to hear from the unbeliever is a prayer of repentance. Therefore,
God’s wrath is a feeling which is regulated by God’s Impassibility.
Fifthly, the
wrath of God is tethered by His
Longsuffering.
God’s Longsuffering is not an attribute which we’ve covered
yet, but it basically means His patience. II
Peter 3:9 is the classic verse on this attribute: “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness,
but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all
should come to repentance.” In 1741, the American preacher Jonathan Edwards
preached a sermon known as “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”. Before he
could finish the sermon, he was many times interrupted by people in the
congregation moaning and crying out “what shall I do to be saved?” In it, the
preacher said “there is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of
hell, but the mere pleasure of God”. This mere pleasure of God is His Longsuffering,
His patience. Listen to the words of this powerful sermon: “It is no security
to wicked men for one moment, that there are no visible means of death at hand.
It is no security to a natural man, that he is now in health, and that he does
not see which way he should now immediately go out of the world by any
accident, and that there is no visible danger in any respect in his
circumstances. The manifold and continual experience of the world in all ages,
shows this is no evidence, that a man is not on the very brink of eternity, and
that the next step will not be into another world. The unseen, unthought-of
ways and means of persons going suddenly out of the world are innumerable and
inconceivable. Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering,
and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that they will not
bear their weight, and these places are not seen.” Have you ever stopped to
wonder why God does not just cast every sinner into hell this very moment, and
satisfy both wrath and justice? Because God is patient with sinners, giving
them time and span of life to repent, though He is angry with them. Only those
who do not repent are treasuring up wrath in the day of wrath to come (Romans 2:5). So God’s wrath is tethered by His Longsuffering.
Sixthly and
finally, the wrath of God is what motivates
His justice.
As we’ve seen, the word wrath
specifically means anger that takes action, vengeance, an anger that punishes
the wicked. Note that God’s judgments are always upon the wicked, always upon disobedience;
always upon the one that refuses His love… these are the objects of His wrath.
And God’s justice is what God’s wrath accomplishes in dealing with these
objects. It’s black and white.
You know what else is black and white? The Twilight Zone.
Recently, I’ve enjoyed revisiting this classic series of American television
with my wife. But what strikes me as a theme throughout the series is the
Twilight Zone’s very “black and white” view of justice. For example, we watched
one episode called The Execution. In it, a notorious criminal is about to be
hanged. Apparently, he shot someone in the back. But just as he drops with the
noose about his neck, he disappears. In the 20th century, a
scientist used a time machine to transport a random person from the past. The
criminal finds himself in the 1960s. But still being a criminal, he knocks out
the scientist and eventually tries to rob the place. Suddenly, a contemporary
criminal appears, strangles the robber from the past and himself stumbles into
the time machine. The contemporary criminal, now a murderer too, is then
teleported back into the past at the exact moment when the first criminal was
about to be hanged. He gets hanged instead. And as the scene fades out, Rod
Serling’s pointed narration states: “This is November 1880, the aftermath of a
necktie party. The victim’s name: Paul Johnson, a minor league criminal and the
taker of another human life. No comment on his death save this: justice can
span years. Retribution is not subject to a calendar. Tonight’s case in point
in the Twilight Zone.”
That’s justice folks. That’s justice such as we are unaccustomed
to in our time today. Everything now is ambiguous and “gray”. We’re often made
to sympathize with villains in movies and plays and television. Our modern
world of tolerance has little room for justice. It’s a good thing that God is
not a product of our modern world. And God is a God of black and white justice.
The command of the gospel is very clear: turn, repent and believe to be saved
or reject the salvation offered you and suffer eternal separation from God. But
it is the wrath of God, angry with the sinner and dealing with the sin, which
is what motivates God’s justice.
*I think now we have more of a complete view of what God’s wrath
is like. It’s a mistake to assume with our culture that the wrath of God is
simply Armageddon to come, or that the wrath of God is seen only in hurricanes
and storms. The wrath of God is much nearer and more immediate than those
things. The wrath of God rests upon the wicked.
Now I would be in error myself if I were not to say this as
a warning: the wrath of God rests upon the sinner. Are you a sinner who has
come to Christ for salvation? Have you believed in Jesus for eternal life and
safety from the wrath of God?
I only ask this because I believe that it’s possible and
not only that but very easy in fact to hide within the walls and pews of the
church without ever being a part of the church yourself. How can I say that’s
possible? How can I suggest to you that that’s an easy thing to do?
Not because of any theological argument, but because I did
it myself for many years, and I think if we’re honest we might realize that
maybe we’ve done this too in our youth, and… even more importantly, some of you
might still be doing this today.
Oh yes I hid behind my church-going parents. I hid within
the ranks of Christians, among the Bibles and the pews and the lights and the
songs and teaching after teaching after teaching, not once realizing that I was
a stranger to all of those things. I wasn’t at church to seek God. I wasn’t a
believer. I was simply there. And most of the time, I didn’t want to be there.
Until one day I realized that I can’t escape hell by hanging on to the heels of
by heaven-bound parents.
Perhaps, then, that describes your current experience. Are
you hiding from salvation in the church? Realize that you cannot hide from the
wrath of God except for in His Son Jesus. Do I mean to scare you into
salvation? Heck yes. What’s wrong with that? Shouldn’t I try however I possibly
and truthfully can to motivate anyone to come to Jesus that they might not only
experience eternal bliss but escape infinite damnation.
Friends, if you’re hiding among Christian believers as a make-believer,
it’s time to wake up. It’s time to become an adult. It’s time to grow up. It’s
time you took the call of God seriously and came to Him not only because He
loves you and promises His blessings, but just as much because outside of His
love there is only the terrifying awful wrath of God Almighty. As the Bible
says “It is a fearful thing to fall into
the hands of the Living God.” Why would you not escape His wrath for safety
in the cross?
If you are outside of Christ, you need to desperately think
about these things, and let the wrath of God terrify, let the flames of hell
horrify you. They should. There is safety in the blood of the Lamb.
And if you already know that you are a believer, you need
to take this message of God’s wrath to those upon whom the wrath of God abides!
3.
Challenging the Wrath of God
Awhile back we had a group exercise where we had a chance
to answer some of the world’s most important accusations against God. I thought
that would be a good idea for tonight’s study.
Here’s the plan: we’re going to split into two separate
groups. Each group shall receive a question or accusation that the world has
against God. Your task, Christian, is to answer the question in discussion as a
group and then present your answer. The other group and myself then will have
the chance to assess your answer, whether it is true or not.
Group One:
Q. How can God exercise both wrath and mercy,
since wrath brings punishment but mercy spares punishment?
Group Two:
Q. How can the Bible be true if its supposedly
unchanging God changed from a God of wrath in the OT to a God of wrath in the
NT?
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