Why did God Command the destruction of Nations? Part 3: The Beautiful Wrath of God
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Before I preach, I want to take a moment to talk about our opportunity to help some of our family in the body of Christ, particularly to the west of us in Fort Myers, Naples, and other places that were impacted by Hurrican Ian. There are about 11 C&MA churches in the areas that had the most devastation. The good news is, that as far as we know, all of our pastors and their congregations got through the storm without injuries or deaths. However, many of the church buildings and homes of those brothers and sisters were damaged, some significantly.
Simon Ladaa, who has preached here before, had some roof damage and water intrusion in his home and now has a mold issue. Many others have structural damage and are displaced or without power still. John Sappia and our District Superintendent, Tom Flanders, are over there today to learn more about how we can step in to help our C&MA family members and their mission to share Christ to those affected by the storm. I will probably be going during the week to offer comfort and encouragement to the pastors and others.
Some of you have been through significant hurricanes, and you know this is not going to be a situation where people quickly return to normal. I won’t recall all of the damage as I’m sure you have seen the news reports as I have. But in the midst of this is a great gospel opportunity! We will be informing you in the coming weeks of ways to help. If you have ideas of how we as a church can help, please share that with the church leadership. It may be that in the coming months we will make trips out there to help, both with physical labor and needs, and to share the love and peace of Christ.
The emotional stress is going to be extremely high for so many people. Losing a home is among one of the top stressful things that can happen to a person, whether they are a child or a senior citizen. And even those whose homes remain, there may be significant repairs needed. Some people will lose close friends who choose not to rebuild and move to another part of the country. Some will lose jobs because their place of employment is no longer there. In the midst of this very real emotional stress, there will be people turning to many things to try to numb the pain. Some will use drugs, either prescription or illegal, to try and numb the pain. Some will turn to other types of sins in an attempt to forget the aching sadness they feel.
Our prayer should be that for the hurting, there will be a better option for them to turn to, that the gospel of Jesus will be heard by the hurting and those in pain, and that they will be convicted of their sins and their need for a Savior, and put their full trust in Christ.
Until we find out some more specific needs, you can give either through the church or through the C&MA website to the disaster relief fund. I would encourage you to do that. You can also pray for those impacted as I am sure many of you already are doing. And we should pray about how God would use us, Oasis Church, to make a positive impact.
It is biblical for us to help other Christians who are in need. In 2 Corinthians 8, Paul writes about the Macedonian church, and how they gave, from an outpouring of joy, they gave beyond their means, and even begged for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints. The Corinthian church should follow their example, Paul wrote, because when one believer is in abundance he should help the one in need, so that later on, the favor may be returned, for we all will end up in some kind of need. 2Cor8.13-14
For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of fairness
your abundance at the present time should supply their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness.
This generous giving should not only be applied to money, but to the gift or presence, that is, being present for someone who needs encouragement or someone to listen. We should be generous in thinking of these churches, perhaps finding ways to communicate to them about how we are praying for them. So please keep all of this in mind, and as I said, we will be communicating ways to help that are more specific as we learn of the greatest needs.
Let’s take a moment to pray for our family in Christ that has been affected by the hurricane.
Why did God Command the destruction of Nations? Part 3: The Beautiful Wrath of God.
Why did God Command the destruction of Nations? Part 3: The Beautiful Wrath of God.
Over the past few weeks, we have been examining a passage of scripture that certainly can make some people uncomfortable. And the main reason it seems uncomfortable to many people is because in this passage God commands the destruction of several people groups by Israel as they enter the promised land. My hope is that as we have been examining this and considering it within the framework of 4 key doctrines, that you and I will be more comfortable with what God has commanded in these passages.
So two Sundays ago, we considered this passage in light of the holiness of God. God is perfectly holy, and set apart from sin, so that he cannot forever tolerate sin. Sin must be punished in time, although God is patient, or forbearing, and does not always punish sin immediately, as soon as it happens. And that is a very good thing, because if God punished every sin the moment it happened, none of us would be around to talk about God’s holiness this morning. So God is holy, but he is also patient. However, since He is a just God, he cannot allow sin to go on forever without recourse.
Last week, we considered the concept of sin and the danger of sin, which leads nicely into this weeks topic, the wrath of God, because ultimately the wrath of God is burning against sin. And next week, Lord willing, we will look at God’s Sovereignty in all things, including salvation.
We will begin by looking at the passage in full: Deut7.1-11
“When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you,
and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them.
You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons,
for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly.
But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire.
“For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples,
but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,
and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face.
You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I command you today.
Now the wrath of God is revealed in this passage in three spots: Deut7.2
and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them.
and Deut7.4
for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly.
and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face.
God’s wrath is revealed in verse 2 in the devotion of those enemies of God to complete destruction with no mercy. Israel is warned that if they do not do this, they would soon be the objects of God’s wrath because they would be turned by these pagans. We see that in verse 4, and He says he destroys those who hate him in verse 10. All of these are examples of what triggers God’s wrath. Idolatry, wickedness, violation of the covenant, outright hate for God, all of these things will stir up his wrath against the guilty.
Now, to begin talking about God’s wrath, we probably ought to define it. Here is one definition
Lexham Theological Wordbook Divine Wrath
The wrath of God or divine wrath are concepts used in both the OT and NT that invite readers to consider the anger of God in contrast to his mercy. The concept of divine wrath emphasizes the danger of opposing the divine will and expresses, in human terms, the emotional reaction provoked in God by sin and rebellion.
Here is another definition:
Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary Wrath, Wrath of God
WRATH, WRATH OF GOD Used to express several emotions, including anger, indignation, vexation, grief, bitterness, and fury. It is the emotional response to perceived wrong and injustice. Both humans and God express wrath. When used of God, wrath refers to His absolute opposition to sin and evil. When used of humans, however, wrath is one of those evils that is to be avoided.
Do you see the difference? You and I are not to have wrath. But why, if it is bad for us, is it good for God? Because in God’s case, his wrath is always perfectly aligned with his attributes, like holiness, justice, forbearance or patience, love, and all of the other attributes of God. For us, wrath could only be sinful because inevitably, our sinful parts will infect any sense of holy wrath or anger we may have. People cannot have righteous anger in the perfect sense that God can. James1.20
for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
While we speak of what it means that God has wrath towards sin and sinners, we must also say some things that God’s wrath is not. In mythology throughout history, people have invented all kinds of gods, and these gods of man’s invention were often knowing for being, for lack of a better word, emotionally unstable. And this was not a good thing. One of the legends was that one of the gods got so angry he could had to be restrained by other gods. The anger of the gods was not necessarily consistent. This is why people feared these gods and took special care to keep them all pleased, so they had temples and idols, and gave gifts and sacrifices to keep the gods appeased.
But these emotionally unstable gods had no absolute standard, so people rightly lived in fear, since at any moment those gods may decide what was good yesterday is bad today. And even if you did everything right, they may just have a temper tantrum, and this may be in the form of an earthquake or a storm or a flood or something. We know that even people who are explosive are not fun to be around, it’s like walkign on pins and needles to keep them happy, or their wrath will be kindled. This is why the proverbs warn about being around people like that: Prov
Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man,
lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare.
Many proverbs and other scriptures warn about men of wrath, how much worse, then, must people have feared these man-made gods who they believed would act wrathfully towards them.
God’s wrath towards sin is nothing like that wrath of the mythological gods, and nothing like the wrath of people who cannot control their own emotions. The wrath of God, I hope you will agree with me before we part ways this morning, is beautiful. And that is because the wrath of God is coupled with his mercy, and with his love. One commentator said God’s wrath is not capricious, which means given to sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behavior, but is always a moral and ethical reaction to sin. And another pointed out that the Old testament holds the doctrine of the wrath of God in balance with three other doctrines: his forbearance, his love, and his readiness to forgive.
God’s wrath in the Old Testament was mostly focused on Israel when they violated his covenant, and on the enemies of Israel, who were his own enemies. These were God haters, they mocked him outrightly, and his wrath was on them. But really, God’s wrath ultimately is against ALL sin and ALL sinners. Not one sin is too small to not merit the wrath of God.
We also are enemies of God before we come to Christ. Before any of us put faith in Jesus, we really were no different than the god-hating pagans that the Israelites were to wipe out in Deut 7. We can think of God’s wrath in 2 acts, if you will. The first act is his present, ongoing wrath against sin. and the second is God’s final wrath on the rebellious, wicked people who refuse to ever repent and believe in Jesus.
The first act is partly what we see in Deut 7, and part of what we see all around us in the world today. And his wrath is carried out presently in 2 major ways. His wrath is carried out by people that he has created to be agents of his wrath, or it is carried out by other created means that he has created. In Deuteronomy 7, he is commanding Israel to act as agents of his wrath. They are created by him and he has chosen them for this task.
There are other human agents of God’s wrath today: IN Romans 13, believers are commanded to be good citizens who place themselves under the jurisdiction of the governing authorities, or civil authorities. The reason is that they are in their place of authority because God instituted proper authority in our governance, and also because the governing authorities are God’s servants, Rom13.4
for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.
Does this mean that we are to obey the law, even if we do not like the current government leadership? Yes, and the only exception to this is if following the law of man is in contradiction of God’s commands. Many people are facing difficult choices in this arena, whether it is the government in authority or their employer in authority. I believe that more and more, conscientious believers are going to be facing these very difficult choices. Yet in the end, we may need to say with the apostles, should we obey man rather than God?
Now it is interesting that even in at least one writing I found as I was studying for this sermon, that someone tried to say that God’s wrath is not emotional at all; In other words, just as a judge may not have emotion towards giving someone the sentence prescribed by law, God is not emotional at all in the case of his wrath. Psalm7.11
God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day.
The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.
He feels indignation, or anger, every day. He is a jealous God; remember that I mentioned in a previous message that this is not unfounded jealousy like a boyfriend might have because another guy opened the door for his girl, this is the kind of jealousy for what is good and right, the jealousy that a man may rightly have for the loyalty of his wife, not in a sick way of restricting her to stay at home and not communicate with anyone, but in the sense of wanting her to himself and him alone in the marriage bond.
So certainly I think we can say that God’s wrath is linked to his anger towards sin and his jealously for what is holy. Now, a king or a judge may also have a duty to carry out the wrath, such as that wrath towards a murderer who is sentenced for his crime. The duty is important, the person of justice must carry out that punishment, but make no mistake: a righteous judge not only carries out the sentence because of his duty, but because of his love for what is right. We cannot say the only motivation is a righteous disposition, nor can we say the only motivation is duty. A truly righteous person carries out both what is right and what his duty requires.
In the case of the rebellious against God, it also can be said that the guilty are intentionally provoking the wrath of God. The sinner by nature hates God and therefore has no respect for His laws and statutes. Now, I mentioned earlier that there is a present, ongoing wrath that God has towards sin. I said this could be the civil authority, who are supposed to uphold righteousness by punishing crime; God’s wrath is also revealed in other ways. One is through what we may call natural events that occur.
Things can happen to people that are the result of God’s wrath, and yet we are cautioned to not look at every misfortune of others and assume that they deserved God’s wrath more than us, and that is why they suffered. In fact, Jesus himself gave this warning: Luke13.1-5
There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.
And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way?
No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem?
No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
And so we must be careful in judging what has happened to someone. An example could be the hurricane. Could we rephrase what Jesus said in our own context? “Those who were impacted by the hurricane, were they worse sinners than the rest of you, because they suffered in this way? Do you think they were worse offenders than all the rest (meaning you)?
So we need to be careful about these things. Could God’s wrath have been part of it? He can do whatever He likes, so of course this may include natural disasters. In fact, scripture makes clear that God does often judge in these ways. Yet, are we safe to say that since we escaped, that we must be more righteous? We had better not.
But in the Old Testament, sometimes God’s wrath was at the same time a display of his mercy. This happened when the wrath of God caused people to respond in repentance.
Lexham Theological Wordbook Theological Overview
There can be no doubt that divine wrath plays an important conceptual role for ancient Israel, early Judaism, and early Christianity. However, the exact nature of that role is unclear. At one level, the frequent reminder of the punishment of God if his people transgress could simply be an attempt to hold sinful acts in check. But more profoundly, the wrath of God serves to remind people that God wishes their best and is willing to take physical action to inhibit the self-destructiveness of human rebellion. Said another way, God’s wrath is the twin of God’s mercy. Mercy without correction is mere permission, and mere permission never has the best interests of the person in mind. God’s wrath, then, is God’s mercy. And God’s mercy is, because of the nature of God’s love, sometimes made known in God’s punishment of wrongdoing and wrongdoers.
God is willing to take physical action to inhibit the self-destructiveness of human rebellion. Let’s think about that for a moment? Does this not sound like a good parent? Doesn’t a good parent do things, sometimes even motivated somewhat by anger, that are designed to keep their child from self-destructing? I think every parent has done things like this, if they are a good parent. I know my parents took action sometimes if I were doing something that was self-destructive. And though I may not have thought it at the time, I now can be thankful that I was kept from doing some really stupid and dangerous things.
You may have further noticed that some children respond more quickly to the correction than others; for the one who is easily corrected, there is less need for discipline, and for other children it takes more and sometimes more severe disciplines. And still, this is done to protect the child. Yet none of us like being corrected at the time. Heb 12:11
For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
Mercy without correction is mere permission, and mere permission never has the best interests of the person in mind. Now, another way the wrath of God is played out in real time all around us is by him removing the restraints to sin. In other words, he just gives people over to their own desires, and that in and of itself is a revealing of the wrath of God. Rom1.18
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
I read the rest of that chapter already recently, but I commend the end of Romans 1 to you when you are trying to remember why it is that the world seems to be getting more and more sinful all around us. The wrath of God is revealed, how? God gave them up to the lusts of their hearts, Rom 1.24, to dishonorable passions, Rom1:26, he gave them up to a debased mind, 1.28, they were then filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, and so on. The wrath of God is revealed in sinful people becoming more and more sinful.
So we have spoken about the present, ongoing wrath of God, let us look now to the final wrath of God on the rebellious. In the end, there will be two categories. The first category will be sinners who learned of the seriousness of their rebellion, repented and put faith in Jesus, and therefore are spared from the wrath of God, and the second category will be sinners who hated God and never turned from their rebellion, and were given over to the sinful desires of their hearts, and thereby heaped upon themselves God’s wrath, and they will be the recipients of God’s wrath. This wrath we see forecasted in many places in scripture: 1Thess2.16
by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved—so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them at last!
This is the wrath of God represented by bowls of wrath detailed in Revelation. And in case you may be one of those who has tried to separate the Father from the Son, saying the Father is the wrathful one and the Son the forgiving one, remember that the final wrath of God is referred to in Revelation as the wrath of the Lamb. Who is the Lamb? Jesus: Rev6.16
calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb,
Jesus is indeed the one who will carry out the wrath of God on the unrepentant. And the wrath of God is often referred to as the cup of wrath. Isaiah and Jeremiah both refer to God’s judgment upon sin as the cup of wrath. This wrath is the wrath that no one will be glad to face. Those that mock God now, and hate him and refuse to obey his laws, they boldly mock to his face, and yet our passage in Deuteronomy 7 says that He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face.
In other words, the wicked who sinned right in front of God, with no fear, with no reverence for a holy God, will have God’s repayment, and God will do it face to face. And what do we already know about the ability of sinful man to see God face to face? No one can do it and live. No, you cannot in the end stand boldly before God in your sin and continue to mock him outright to his face. He will repay, and he will repay by pouring out his wrath. This is the cup of wrath the prophets spoke of. The day will come when all unrepentant sinners will drink from that cup.
This is the cup our Lord spoke of in Mark14.36
And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”
Jesus took the cup of the wrath of God. I love the song “In Christ Alone”, and I’ve been told that many of the radio versions of this song have left out a very important verse that says: 'Til on that cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied, for every sin on him was laid, here in the death of Christ I live.
I’m going to wrap up the sermon and we are going to move right into communion. I asked for it to be after the sermon because I felt that this reminder may bring us to our time of reflection with perhaps a little more appreciation of what Jesus did for us.
In Deuteronomy 7, we see God’s wrath spoken of in 3 instances. That the sinful pagan nations were to receive the wrath of God delivered by human agents he appointed. God’s wrath is revealed in verse 2 in the devotion of those enemies of God to complete destruction with no mercy. Israel is warned that if they do not do this, they would soon be the objects of God’s wrath because they would be turned by these pagans. We see that in verse 4, and He says he destroys those who hate him in verse 10. All of these are examples of what triggers God’s wrath. Idolatry, wickedness, violation of the covenant, outright hate for God, all of these things will stir up his wrath against the guilty.
God’s wrath is present and ongoing in at least these three ways we considered. Human agency, such as those representing law and order in our government. They are agents of God’s wrath and do not bear the sword in vain. Second, God’s wrath is revealed in the unrighteousness of sinners. Since they have chosen to sin, they are given over to more sin. The restraints are removed, and so they heap more and more wrath upon themselves. And third, through means that God controls, people may experience his wrath through the events that happen in the world. Amos3.6
Is a trumpet blown in a city, and the people are not afraid? Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?
I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things.
People may experience the wrath of God in these ways. However, for those in Christ, we need not fear the wrath of God. As difficult as it is to experience the present, ongoing wrath of God, in the end, his final wrath on the rebellious will be terrible. Unrepentant sinners will drink from the wine cup of the fury of God. And yet, for those who have put their faith in Christ, we can rest with the assurance of our salvation, that though we indeed deserve to drink from that cup, there is One who drank from it on our behalf.
Last week, I said the greatest example of the wrath of God ever witnessed until now was the death of Jesus on the cross, where God’s wrath was poured out on him, as he took on the sin of the world and took that wrath on behalf of all who would believe in him.