One of the things that shows up a lot in the Bible, but
which is rarely talked about, is the wrath of God. Even a lot of us
pastors don’t like to talk about it very much. Hearing about the wrath of
God--or preaching about the wrath of God--makes us uncomfortable. We like
to think that God is love, that God is forgiveness, that God is
mercy.
And of course, that’s all
true. God is love. God is forgiveness. God is mercy.
But wrath is also a part of who God is. If you look in the New
International Version of the Bible, you’ll find God’s wrath mentioned one
hundred eighty times. So we cannot honestly deal with the Bible if we
don’t talk about it.
But we say, well, the wrath of God is an Old Testament
concept. That all changed when Jesus came. Jesus has a gospel of
love, of caring, of forgiveness, of mercy. Jesus’ message was not a
message of vengeful anger. Jesus’ message was a message of love.
And there is some truth in
that. Of those one hundred eighty mentions of God’s wrath, about a
hundred fifty of them come in the Old Testament. And it’s also true that
Jesus did talk a lot about love and forgiveness. But that does not allow
us to just ignore the subject of God’s wrath, for a few reasons.
One is that the Old Testament
is still part of the Bible. It is still God’s word to us. If we’re
going to be honest about our faith, we cannot just ignore something on the
grounds that it comes from the Old Testament.
Another is that God does not
change. The Bible tells us that God is the same yesterday, today, and
forever. Therefore, it cannot be that God used to feel wrath but does not
do so any more. God does not change in that way.
But for me, the thing that
clinches it is that Jesus showed he could feel anger. Jesus, in our Bible
reading for today, showed genuine wrath. Jesus showed extreme
anger. It was a strong, vengeful anger. It’s true that Jesus is
love and forgiveness and mercy, but it’s clear from our reading for today that
that’s not all Jesus is. As the joke goes, when we ask “What would Jesus
do?”, we need to remember that chasing people with a whip is one of the
options.
Now, I don’t want to be
misunderstood. I don’t believe that God is an angry God. I don’t
think God sits in heaven in a bad mood, waiting for a chance to slam
people. The Bible also says God is slow to anger. It says that
several times, and often follows it by saying that God is abounding in
love. We do not worship an angry God. An angry God would’ve wiped
us out a long time ago, with all the stupid things we humans can get up
to. In fact, an angry God would’ve known how frustrating we humans would
be and probably would not have created us in the first place. An angry
God would’ve stopped with dogs or something.
But God can get angry.
And Jesus could get angry. Look at what our Bible reading says.
Jesus wanders into the temple courts shortly before Passover. He sees
people in the temple courts selling cattle, sheep, and doves. The reason
they were doing that was because those were things people needed to make
sacrifices in the temple. Jesus also sees people sitting at tables
exchanging money. The reason they were doing that was because you could
only buy the animals for the sacrifices with a certain type of money, and not
many people had that type of money. So, they needed to exchange it.
And the thing is, in both of those
instances, the sellers had a captive market. You could only use animals
bought in the temple courts for sacrifices, and you could only buy those
animals with the money you got from the money changers in the temple courts.
That meant that, to make a sacrifice to God, you’d have to pay whatever the
people in the temple courts required you to pay. Saying it was too much
and walking away was not really an option, either, because these were
sacrifices they were required to make under Jewish law.
That was what got Jesus so
upset. The people who were in charge of the temple were religious
leaders. These were people who knew the scriptures backward and
forward. They knew what God wanted. These were people who claimed
to be representing God. They claimed to be serving God. And all
they were doing was serving themselves. They knowingly and deliberately
disobeyed God for their own selfish desires.
When you read the
Bible, that’s the sort of thing that gets God angry. That’s what provokes
God’s wrath. It’s not our mistakes. God knows we’re going to make
mistakes. It’s not our weakness. God knows how weak we are.
It’s not even our sins, necessarily. God knows how prone to sin we
are. After all, the Bible says that we’re all sinners. If our sin
was going to make God angry, God would spend all of His time being angry.
And again, our God is not an angry God.
God knows all about our
mistakes and our weaknesses and our sinful nature. God knows more about
that than we do. After all, God created us, and when you create something
you see the flaws in it better than anyone else. The fact that God knows
everything about us, and loves us anyway, shows that God is not an angry
God.
None of those things provokes God’s
wrath. What provokes God’s wrath is when we make a conscious decision to
do something we know God does not want. What provokes God’s wrath is when
we understand perfectly well what God wants us to do and how God wants us to
live, and yet we still go ahead and disobey God anyway. And what provokes
God’s wrath is when we do that not out of fear of what could happen, and not
out of a failure to sufficiently trust God, but simply to fulfill our own selfish
desires.
Our Bible reading for today
shows that God’s wrath is real, and that even Jesus could display it. He
overturned the tables and chased people with a whip. That’s a pretty
powerful wrath for someone who’s known as the Prince of Peace.
But here’s the good news. Even in
God’s wrath, there is always the chance for forgiveness. Because those
other things we said about God are all true. God is a God of love and
forgiveness and mercy. Because in all those hundred and eighty times that
the Bible mentions God’s wrath, there’s always more to the story. That
more is that people sincerely repent of their sin. They go to God humbly,
and they ask for forgiveness. And God forgives them. And God
blesses them and gives them another chance. It happens every single time.
So what does that mean for our
lives? Well, take a look at your life. And I’ll take a look at my
life. Is there a time when you made a conscious decision to do something
that you knew God did not want? Is there a time when you understood what
God wanted you to do and how God wanted you to live, and yet went ahead and
disobeyed God anyway? And is there a time when you did that just to
fulfill your own selfish desires? And I have to answer those questions,
too, and ask if there are times when I’ve done those things.
Maybe you have not. I
don’t know. It’s not my job to judge you. Judgment is God’s job,
not mine, and I’m quite content to leave it in God’s hands. God knows a
lot more about it than I do. But I encourage you to ask those
questions. And I encourage you to do it seriously. And I need to do
it seriously, too. Because here’s the thing: God already knows the
answers to those questions. We may be able to fool other people. We
may even be able to fool ourselves, if we want to badly enough. But we
cannot fool God. We can never fool God.
So we need to seriously ask
those questions of ourselves. And we need to answer them as honestly as
we can. And if we have any inkling that the answer to any of them might
be yes, we need to do something about that. We need to go to God.
We need to go humbly and sincerely. We need to repent of our sins, and we
need to ask God for forgiveness. If we do, we know God will give us that
forgiveness. God will bless us and God will give us another chance.
And remember, too, that Jesus
told us something else. Jesus said there is incredible rejoicing in
heaven over one sinner who repents. So there’s no need for the idea of
repentance to scare us. If you need to repent--if I need to repent--let’s
do it now. Let’s give heaven a chance to throw a party for us
today. Because after all, a party in our honor beats getting chased with
a whip every time.
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