We’re doing a sermon series called “What’s the
Good Word?”, looking at words we use in church a lot and talking about what
they really mean. The word for today is “wrath”. The word “wrath”, is defined as extreme
anger. It’s a strong, vengeful
anger. And it’s also one of the things
the Bible tells us is as attribute of God.
And you’re thinking, well, there’s a cheery topic.
And no, it’s not cheery at all.
That’s one of the reasons a lot of us--even a lot of 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 the 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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