D - God's Character Pt. 4

Gracious = Khen

Gracious Gift = Kharis

Exodus 34:6 (NIV)

6 … “compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in loyal love and faithfulness”

Over the last few weeks you and I have been able to look at God’s character. We have seen How God is compassionate and how God is gracious to us. Today we are going to spend some time talking about another one of God’s character attributes. So according to this list: Which one do you think we’re going to talk about today?

Compassionate

Gracious

Slow to anger

Loyal love

Faithfulness.

Today we are going to spend some time talking about God being slow to anger.

There really isn’t a single word to describe God being slow to anger in the Hebrew language. It’s more of a phrase that is translated to:

Long of Nose

What in the world? God has a long nose? I mean, It’s not literal right? Of course not, God doesn’t have a long nose. Or rather, I don’t know if He has a long nose, because I’ve never seen him before.

But what does it mean to have a long nose? It means that He is patient. See, back in those days having a short nose meant that you were quick tempered, it was easy to make you angry. So God describes himself as Long of Nose, not because He has a long nose, but because it would take a while for God to get angry.

But this does kind of mean that God does get angry though right, so what is it that makes God angry?

Romans 1:18–24 (NIV)

18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness,

19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.

20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools

23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts...

So these Bible verses tell us something really important: God has revealed Himself to people. He has made Himself known. How? Firstly He has created everything that exist.

God created everything

The things we see did not show up on accident, we would not see the things we see or experience the fun in life and the things that bring us joy without God.

He revealed Himself by

2. God has shown us right from wrong.

God has placed in our hearts general understanding of what is right and what is wrong. That’s the truth, generally people can agree on what is right and wrong. Of course we can’t agree on everything, but we can agree on some things. We can all agree that murder, stealing and senseless war is wrong. If you saw shay getting bullied would you all be happy about it? Of course not! we can agree that it’s wrong.

But, people have decided to take credit for that. People will say: I think that’s wrong because someone else taught me. Without God, morality doesn’t mean anything. You can’t prove to me the difference between right and wrong without God.

God reveals Himself to us through:

3. Jesus

Jesus came to earth, revealed Himself, claimed and proved to be God. And more than 500 people witness Jesus alive again after He had already died.

But, the verses in Romans teach us this:

God has revleaed Himself, He has taught what is right and what is wrong, But people refuse to acknowledge God, and although God is patient, He eventually does get angry at people for their sin. What does that look like?

Romans 1:24 (NIV)

24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts...

Those who refuse to acknowledge God and continue to live in their sin, God gives them over to the consequences of their sins. At some point God’s patience does run out and people have to deal with their own consequences.

I mean, if I hurt someone, or I lie to someone, or if I steal something I should face my consequences. But the truth is, I deserve it.

So yeah, God does get angry. In the same way we would get angry if we saw someone else bullying Shay, or May, or Gray. But, unlike us, God is slow at expressing His anger because He wants to give everyone a chance to turn away from their sin and turn to Him instead. God does not want you to self destruct. He wants to save you, protect, and help you. Which is why His patience is so much bigger than His anger.

Discussion Questions

1. How does the following passage portray God’s patience?

Romans 1: 18-24

2. How are we called to respond to God’s patient character?

3. Is it possible to love someone and be angry with them at the same time? Can you provide an example of what that looks like?