Understanding God's Wrath

I would much rather read about Israel possessing the promised land (Joshua), and the New Israel being possessed by the Spirit of God (Acts). These are uplifting events in the life of God's chosen people. They encourage our hearts and spur us on to live out the words of Joshua to the people who were settling east of the Jordan: "Only be very careful to observe the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, to love the Lord your God, and to walk in all his ways and to keep his commandments and to cling to him and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul."

Messages like the one Jeremiah delivered in Jeremiah 11 are a little harder to take. Take for example verses 22-23: "Behold, I will punish them. The young men shall die by the sword, their sons and daughters shall die by famine, and none of them shall be left. For I will bring disaster upon the men of Anathoth, the year of their punishment." It sounds awful, even brutal, but if you think about it there is even encouragement in these words if we bring them to Christ.

As we've been reading through the prophets we definitely get the idea that the Lord hates our sin, rebellion and idolatry. So heinous it is to Him that He will judge it with great fierceness. If one takes time to consider exactly what it must have been like to experience these judgments, one could not help but recoil from these imaginings.

But when you begin to understand the wrath of God upon sin as expressed in Israel's history, you have to be drawn to consider the wrath of God upon His own Son. Perhaps God has been graphic in His display of His wrath on Israel and the pagan nations, so that we would better understand how awful the display of His wrath was on His Son. If we can enter into say the judgment of famine and understand how horrible that is, perhaps we can begin to understand how horrible the cross is. God's ultimate wrath poured out on His Son! Wow!

But dont' forget why God is pouring out wrath on His Son. He is doing it to demonstrate His love, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And not did He did, but He took the full expression of God's wrath for our sin.

So the next time we recoil at something we read in the prophets, remember that the display of God's wrath is but a grain of sand compared to the fullness of wrath Jesus took for you and for me. Let that understanding also be an encouragement to each of us to love the Lord with our all, and to live to serve His gracious purposes in our world.