YHWH: Slow to Anger

Story about coming home really late in high school when mom was standing at the top of the stairs, arms folded and yelling.

Many of us might tend to think God is like my mom: standing at the top of the stairs, arms crossed, just waiting for the perfect moment to yell at us.

This is a pretty common way that our culture talks about God. And I think if we walk around with that mindset, it could have a long-term impact on how we relate to God and to others.

Three options:

1. Walk in fear, paranoid.

2. Walk in self-righteousness, angry at others.

3. Walk away because that kind of a God just isn’t worth following.

“Some of us view God’s heart as brittle, easily offended. Some of us view his heart as cold, uneasily moved. The Old Testament gives us a God whose heart defies these innate human expectations of who he is,” (Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly, p. 140).

I think that the Bible actually offers us a completely different view of God, one that frees us up not to walk in fear of him, paranoid and nervous or uncertain of his intentions, one that frees us up not to walk in self-righteous judgment and anger towards others, and one that frees us not to walk away from him but to draw near to him. Let’s jump back into our key verse for this series as we start tonight:

“The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,” Exodus 34:6 (ESV).

God’s not angry with you.

God is slow to anger because he is quick to love.

There are three passages that demonstrate God’s character to us and I want us to take some time looking at them. Because a person can tell you that they’re a certain way or describe themselves as something but it might not be true. For example, I could tell you “I’m a runner” but you don’t have to believe me, that might not be true. But if you look at my life long enough, the truth will be revealed. I believe if we study the Scriptures long enough and really take a look at God’s life, we’re going to see what is really true about his character. He’s said he’s slow to anger, but is he really? Let’s find out…

“But Moses implored the LORD his God and said…’Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self,’…And the LORD relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people,” Exodus 32:11-14 (ESV).

Context:

The people have just escaped from Egypt. God has just rescued them. He has parted the Red Sea. He appeared to Moses in a cloud of fire and smoke on top of Mt. Sinai and gave them the 10 Commandments. When I say “just” I mean, the ink hasn’t dried. God is literally still on top of the mountain with Moses. And God has sworn himself to the Israelite people and promised to be with them, to love them and protect them. All they have to do is walk in obedience to this covenant, these 10 Commandments help them do that. And what are the first two commands?

1. Love the Lord your God above all other gods and worship him alone.

2. Don’t make any idols.

Again, the ink still hasn’t dried from signing on the dotted line. God is still up on the mountain with Moses. And what do the people do? They break both commandments. They make a golden calf at the base of the mountain and the priests who were supposed to be leading the people to worship God are instead leading them to rebel against God in the worst way possible.

God has every right to vent his anger. In fact, he’s about to. He’s about to say, you know what I’ve had it with this unfaithful people, I’m starting over. But Moses stood in the gap and asked God to be patient and forgive.

You always know which one of your parents is the pushover when you’re asking for new stuff. For me, it wasn’t one of my parents really, it was my aunt. She was a pushover and she knew it. My love was for sale to the highest bidder and she was willing to pay top dollar. And now I’m that way with my daughter. Literally my wife showed me a picture of these random Bluey toys on amazon earlier today and I didn’t even hesitate, I said freaking buy them. My daughter has over 100 bows. Guys, she only has 1 head. But I can’t help it. When it comes to my daughter, I can’t help but give her whatever she asks for.

When Moses asked God to be patient with his people and be slow to anger with them, Moses knew God was kind of a pushover. He was confident that God would forgive the people because that is who God is. He loves to be slow to anger because just like we talked about last week, he is quick to show mercy/compassion and grace.

Let’s look at another example…

“And now let the power of the Lord be great as you have promised, saying, ‘The LORD is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty…Please pardon the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of your steadfast love, just as you have forgiven this people, from Egypt until now,” Numbers 14:17-19 (ESV).

Same stuff, different day. The Israelites have been traveling through the desert with God leading them by a literal pillar of fire and smoke. They’ve seen him single-handedly destroy the most powerful empire in the entire Ancient World at this point. They saw him part the Red Sea. They’ve been eating heaven bread this whole time in the desert. But now they get to the edge of the Promised Land—this place that God has been leading them all this time—and they chicken out. They rebel against God and decide not to trust him and not to do what he wants them to do.

Same thing: Moses asks God to forgive them and God just can’t help himself. He loves to show forgiveness and mercy and grace to his people. He loves to be slow to anger.

OK, let’s try one more passage of Scripture, but this time, let’s look at some non-Israelites and see if God treats other people differently.

“O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? …for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster,” Jonah 4:2 (ESV).

This one’s crazy. The Ninevites were enemies of God and his people. They hated the Israelites and actively killed and tortured them. They were a wicked and cruel nation. And God sent Jonah, an Israelite prophet to go and preach to them about his love so that they could be saved. And Jonah said no. You see, Jonah was so angry and stubborn in his hatred towards the Ninevites that he didn’t want God to be slow to anger with them. Jonah wanted God to be slow to anger with him and his friends and his family, but he wanted God to be quick to anger with his enemies. But God gave us a glimpse even all the way back in the Old Testament that he loved being slow to anger not just with his people Israel, but with the whole world.

You see, in the New Testament, the apostle Paul goes on to sum it up like this…

“Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” Romans 2:4(ESV).

And that leads us all the way to Jesus…

Jesus proves that God isn’t angry with you.

2 Major Truths About Jesus:

1) Jesus fulfills all of the Old Testament (Matthew 5:17)

2) Jesus is God in the flesh (John 1:14)

Let’s go back to Exodus 34 really quick, because there’s a part of the verse, we haven’t been reading that’s really critical to tonight’s message. It doesn’t say that God is “merciful/compassionate and gracious, never gets angry, abounding in steadfast love…etc.,” it says he is slow to anger. This is important: God does get angry. There is evil and sin and brokenness in the world and God rightfully gets angry at that sin.

Think about all the sin and injustice in the world around us that makes you angry (racism and inequality, war and violence, hunger and extreme poverty, corruption, the list goes on…)

When it says God is slow to anger, it doesn’t mean that God is indifferent towards evil or wickedness, quite the opposite. What the Bible does mean is that God doesn’t like venting that anger on people. But the rest of the verse in Exodus 34:6-7 says something really important: “he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.” Ultimately, throughout all these times that God has been slow to anger and he has been patient with the sin and brokenness in the world, something’s gotta give. That anger has to be unleashed.

And that’s where Jesus comes in. I want us to look at another passage from the Old Testament, this is a prophecy about Jesus that dates to several hundred years before Jesus was born. This prophecy is found in the book of Isaiah and it describes exactly what Jesus the Messiah came to do. It explains exactly why Jesus came to die on the cross. Let’s read it…

“Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him [Jesus]; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt…Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.…he [Jesus] poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors,” Isaiah 53:10-12 (ESV).

You see, Jesus exhausted all of God’s anger so that we could receive his love.

Let’s go back to those 3 possible long-term ways that we might relate to God and others if we view God has perpetually angry and ready to yell at us…

1. Walk in fear—you don’t have to fear punishment and condemnation because Jesus offers forgiveness (Romans 5:8)!

2. Walk in self-righteousness or have anger towards others—this is where Jonah was. We don’t have to be that way because we realize that God has been patient and forgiven us so we can be patient and slow to anger with others (James 1:19-20)!

3. Walk away from God—you don’t have to walk away because God has brought himself near to you; he came down to this earth to die for you and to rise again to offer you life with him. Will you take a step of faith and courage tonight and draw near to him?

Pray.