God's Wrath

Lately all my biblical studies have been pointing me back to a single theme: God’s wrath. Who winds up getting it? Why do others not? What does it really look like? God has been reshaping my understanding of His judgment and, quite frankly, it scares me a little. Let’s dig a little deeper into this.

Typically when we talk about the wrath of God, we think of fire and lightning raining from the heavens with a wild ferocity. We think of the plagues of locusts, frogs and boils. We often think of the wrath of God as Him actively trying to cause us harm. I remember one time growing up when I was watching Dr. Who, and the episode featured a creature that was basically supposed to be the devil. Being a little kid, it freaked me out and I went to bed clutching my bible because I thought I had just opened myself up to demons. Silly, I know. 

I am in no way trying to deny that demons exist or that possessions aren’t a thing, but I want to highlight something else for a second. You see, the theme that has been cropping up for me lately is a different form of punishment. Many times throughout the bible, it says God basically took His hand off of the situation and let it play out without Him. Look at the story of the Kings. The Israelites kept pushing to have a king and to “be like the other nations,” a plan God wasn’t a fan of. Eventually he said “fine, here you go! We’ll see how it goes.” And surprise, surprise! The vast majority of the kings turned out to be tyrants who led Israel astray. 

Sometimes God’s wrath is a big fat “I told you so.” He warns us time after time and we keep ignoring Him, so He lets us see the consequences of the path we were so desperate to take.In short, He lets us go our own way to mess around and find out. The problem is that our way feels so right that we become blind to where it’s taking us. That’s why I believe it’s so important not to live and die by what feels right. Proverbs says that there is a way that seems right to man, but in the end that way leads to death. 

DEATH!DEATH, PEOPLE! That’s harsh! But sometimes it truly does feel like the sweet release of death. Human beings always seem to be itching for shortcuts. We don’t want to put in the work to get where we should be. We want it easy and we want it to feel nice. That’s what scares me: I might get super comfy, even excited, about something, but in the end it will lead me to slavery, chains and addiction. 

You can’t trust a wicked heart. If I went and poured nasty chemicals into the source of a fountain, would you expect it to spew out beautiful, clean water? Probably not. Why, then, should we expect to see good actions from our own wicked hearts? Sure, we might have a lucky break or two, but truly good things don’t come from us. 

I know I just made a drastic push in a different direction, but I am trying to prove a point. I want to reel this back in with a few things I still think are true:

1 The fact that we will never get it right, will never be perfect is the point of the gospel. You can even say that it’s the beauty of it. We don’t have to try to be perfect, we have someone who came to die to be able to do it for us. So take a second to breathe a sigh of relief over that one. 

2 What I am trying to get at is a matter or priority. Priority is what you do when two things disagree. If it’s between your way and God’s, which would you choose? I used to often scoff at things that didn’t make sense to me. I used to put myself first, and that’s wrong. When you don’t understand something, or think you could do it better, the sinful answer is to say that your way should be done instead of God’s. If you don’t get it, you follow orders and ask if He could help things make sense. But you still aren’t entitled to all understanding. Sometimes you have to just keep following, even if you don’t understand it all. 

And that leads me into one of the other questions I started with: who truly gets God’s wrath? Well, to put it in modern terms, the one who gets God’s wrath is the man who says “I got this!” The one who thinks they have it all together, who is “good enough” in their own eyes. It’s he who is smart enough, wise enough to get by, that’s the one that God’s wrath falls upon. 

But I don’t mean to say God is harsh. If you’re committed to following Him, He isn’t so temperamental to toss you to and fro to the wind like a ping-pong ball in the dryer, but I think if we dig our heels in and plant that seed of arrogance in our hearts, God just might hit a point where He lets us see the evil tree He was trying to uproot. 

Our favorite reference for this is the pharisees. We remind people of how they were so high on their self-righteousness that they were even willing to crucify a blameless man. But I think there are more examples these days. I see people trying to play God all over the place. People deciding that God made them the wrong gender, thinking that lives are theirs to take, trying to bend rules to justify selfish action, and so on. In one way or another, all of us are trying to say “no, God, I know best. I’m taking the wheel and I say where we should go.” Don’t get me wrong, we all wrestle with this. We all have our moments where we say these words. It’s OK, Jesus died for that. But what isn’t OK is to keep those from Him. The devil wants to turn those things into a wedge between us and God. He wants us to dig our heels in and use those things as an excuse to keep from coming to God. And we often do because we like how sin feels. Deep down we know if we approach God with our wicked things, He will actually take them from us. We don’t like that. 

And I think this is why God rewards our humility. The fact-of-the-matter is that we suck. He knows it, He even came to die for it. If we just stroll into the throne room and say “hey, God! It’s me. Yep, your son. Yep, I’m still imperfect. Sorry about that.” He is quick to forgive us. But the entire idea of forgiveness and grace don’t make sense if we act like we haven’t done anything wrong! That’s the point of forgiving! All throughout the bible, God softens His wrath against those who humble themselves and admit that they still suck. And when I say that they suck, I don’t mean that they devolve into a pit of self-loathing, I just mean that they recognize that they don’t measure up to the standard of perfection. Imagine if I drove up to your house in a brand-new truck, filled to the brim with bags upon bags of concrete. What would you do if I told you to lift the truck? You’d probably tell me that you couldn’t do it. No duh, right? Would you feel bad about not being able to lift the truck with your bare hands? Probably not, it’s just impossible! That’s the difference. That’s how we should treat our imperfection. We’ll never get there and that’s alright. He calls us out to hit the gym to improve where He has called us to, but it is all with the sole purpose of growing closer to Him who already lifted the truck for us. 

And that leads me to the other point I made earlier. Notice that I said he softens His wrath, not completely removes it. I think there are times where He gives us a glimpse of the path we are going down, not to punish us for doing wrong, but to warn us what will happen if we don’t change. I was reading today in 2 Chronicles 12. The king of Israel starts to go astray, neglecting God and the people. Because of this, God sends His prophet to remind the king that he is slipping. The king comes to his senses and admits that he sucks. So God doesn’t completely obliterate him. But still lets their enemies steal a great deal of the riches in Israel. A price was paid, but many lives were spared because the king had the sense to correct his path. 

I think that’s what happens with us sometimes. Sometimes God shuts a door and we keep punching it, trying desperately to get it open because we think it’s the right way. Sometimes God lets us see through the peephole of that door, letting us see where that door leads. And, news flash! The view isn’t typically pretty. It might lead to a nice rush, a blissful high, but in the end it leads to our permanent destruction. 

But if you’re one of those people that is freaking out reading about how God can be wrathful, don’t worry. This message probably doesn’t pertain to you as much as you think. If you’re so worried about making a wrong step, God has your back. He doesn’t set up a path with an electric fence on either side, he sets up sturdy guardrails right before the cliffside so we don’t go soaring off the edge and down the mountainside. He puts soft yellow lines on the road, then those annoying bumpy spots a little closer to the edge, and then he puts up the outer-bumpers to keep us from flying. And even then, it isn’t necessarily God that causes us all this harm, it’s flying off a cliffside, tumbling down the mountain that really hurts. God didn’t push for that to happen, He just says “alright, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” I don’t know who said it first, but Billy Graham once wrote that “we are punished by our sins, not for them.” That quote has always stuck with me.

If there’s anything that I want to leave you with as a takeaway, it’s this: keep in step with Him. Do your best to listen to God and learn His ways. If you are earnestly seeking Him, He won’t let you down. He will make it clear if you are getting out of step. We all do it, and forgiveness is there for it. But be wary of the pride that tells you that you’re more right than God. For that is a serious blunder that may cost you. Pray for understanding and He will answer your prayer. Pray for guidance, and admit daily that you don’t measure up to perfection. Learn to become content with the fact that you can’t bench-press a loaded truck, and He will lift it for you. 

Until next time

May peace be your guide

ACTION STEPS

Practice the art of silence. Sometimes finding balance is by pushing back on our natural tendencies, and humans have a natural tendency to act on their own accord. Focus on pushing back by not acting until you feel God calling you. Focus on listening to Him instead of having words to speak. This will help you act at the right time and not beforehand.