Slow to Anger
Chris Lumsden & Dave Waller
The Character Of God • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 42:06
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Intro
Good morning, everyone!
You all know Dave.
Every so often we do a co-teaching format to switch things up and offer a different way to receive God’s word.
And it worked out for us to have one of these preaching conversations in our Character of God series.
This is our third Sunday in this series as we are using Exodus 34:6-7 to consider the question, “What is God like?”
Dave, there are so many things we could be talking about this morning, why does it matter for us to think deeply about what God is like?
“What are we made for? To Know God. What aim should we set ourselves in life? To know God. What is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent (John 17:3) What is the best thing in life, bringing more joy, delight and contentment, than anything else?...Once you become aware that the main business of that you are here for is to know God, most of life’s problems fall into place of their own accord.” - Knowing God, J.I. Packer, 1985, p. 29
Packer quote
Dave sets it up with Chris
Chris - God as “Slow to Anger”
We typically use the ESV translation
Slow to anger - ESV
Longsuffering - KJV
Endlessly patient - MSG
And so that really is what the phrase is getting at
God is patient. He doesn’t fly off the handle. He is not capricious. You don’t have to worry if he’s having a bad day.
But he does get angry. Because he’s a person. And that anger is a response from love that comes out in response to sin and evil.
What’s interesting is that in Hebrew, slow to anger is literally an idiom which means “Long of nose”
God has a long nose.
Which Disney character had a long nose?
Pinocchio.
In the Hebrew mind, God is pinocchio-like. Isn’t it funny how different cultures use words and pictures?
Why long nose?
When you get angry, what sometimes happens?
You expect heat.
We might say the person is a ‘hot head.’
If someone is patient, we might say they have a ‘long fuse.’
So, in a sense, Ex. 34:6-7 is saying that it takes a really long time for God to get hot. But he does get there.
One example, in Exodus you have a genocidal maniac in Pharoah who is bent on destroying Israel.
He orders all Israelite baby boys to be killed. Thrown in the river.
And to that evil, sadistic man, God gives 10 chances, we call them plagues. God gives him 10 chances. We might say - God is being irrationally patient. But that’s his long nose. In the words of the Message, he is endlessly patient.
Here’s another verse to consider…
8 But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.
9 The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.
Chris asks Dave - “What problems arise as we touch on this topic of God being angry?”
Dave - “Problems” with God’s Anger
Dave explains further
Erickson quotes
“We must begin with the assumption that God is an integrated being and the divine attributes are harmonious, we will define the attributes in the light of one another. Thus justice is loving justice and love is just love. The ideas that they conflict may have resulted from defining these attributes in isolation from one another. While the conception of love apart from justice, for example, may be derived from outside sources, it is not biblical teaching.” - Christian Theology, M.J. Erickson, 1985, p. 298
“Love is not fully understood unless we see it as including justice.” Christian Theology, M.J. Erickson, 1985, p. 298
“To say anger and love coexist doesn’t go far enough. Anger arises because of love.” The Atonement: An Introduction, Jeremy Treat
Chris asks - How does it fit in with other attributes?
Dave - Anger and the character traits of God
Dave explains further
Dave asks Chris - What is the first time in the Scriptures that God gets angry?
Chris - What makes God angry
If I didn’t know, I would probably guess the flood story.
But if not there, possibly Adam and Eve.
But what’s crazy is we don’t read about God’s anger until Ex. 4, which is 54 chapters into the Bible.
A lot has gone wrong so far in the story.
A lot.
Let’s pause and consider, knowing what makes someone angry is really helpful in knowing a person.
If I get mad anytime you wear shoes in my house.
You’d say wow Chris is a neat freak.
You probably could remember as a kid the things that God your parents angry and you tried not to do those things.
In Scripture, often times the first time something happens is very important to help us think about a topic, especially when it comes to what God is like.
The first time God is angry is Ex. 4, the story of God and Moses at the burning bush.
God meets with Moses on a mountain by a tree and says I want to save my people. Their cry has come to me, and I’m going to save them! Come, I’m going to send you to Pharoah!
And we think, Great! God is so compassionate, holy, and good, and he wants to save his people. Moses is going to be his guy.
But what does Moses do?
Argues with God.
He has 5 rebuttals with God who wants to use Moses to save Israel.
Who am I? What’s your name? They won’t believe me! I’m bad with words!
Ex. 4 - Moses
13 But he said, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.” 14 Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses and he said, “Is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart.
Here we have God getting heated for the first time in Scripture.
And what does he not do? Smite Moses. No thunder. No lightning bolts. No dead bodies.
He seemingly concedes the point to Moses and offers a solution.
What do we learn about God via this interaction with Moses?
He has a very long fuse.
Not the first, second, third, or fourth time gets him heated. It’s the fifth!
God’s anger is not always associated with violence.
Sometimes it is, but in this first instance we see his anger lead him to offer a solution.
His anger is often manifested in giving people over to the very thing they ask for.
This is a huge theme in Scripture. God gives people over to what they want, and this is a picture of his anger.
Sin is wanting something other than God more than God, and when we get it we find out it’s not that great.
God gives Moses a solution through his brother Aaron. Who ends up making the golden calf while Moses is on the mountain?
God wants us to trust him.
Moses wasn’t swearing, smoking, or listening to Rock and roll. He was refusing to trust what God said. God wants us to trust him.
God’s anger is always a response to human sin.
God does not show up in this story angry because he’s had a bad day.
People do that!
God comes to Moses full of compassion, ready to save Israel. And Moses wants to get in his way!
That makes God angry.
Dave asks about anger and wrath
Chris - God and wrath
Someone might say, “Well yeah what about the first time God shows his wrath?”
Wrath and anger are different words for us.
If someone say, wow Chris got angry today, that means something completely different than Chris was wrathful today.
Wrath is anger unchained.
Not so in the Bible.
13 Therefore thus says the Lord God: I will make a stormy wind break out in my wrath, and there shall be a deluge of rain in my anger, and great hailstones in wrath to make a full end.
Wrath - same word for heat
Anger - nostrils
So often, if not all the time, wrath and anger are synonymous, but in Scripture many times in our English translations wrath will be attributed to God while anger will be attributed to people.
That’s not because God is more angry, it’s just another word for anger, sometimes with the picture of heat or nose.
Even so, reading big chunks of our Bibles can be hard when we encounter difficult passages having to do with God getting angry.
The prophets can throw me off. I can get confused at the vivid pictures of God’s anger. What is he like?
We have to remember that God’s anger is always a response to human sin and evil.
"Really, the ultimate evil when it comes to pathos is indifference and apathy—to stand by and say and feel nothing when something terrible is going on. The prophets never portray God's anger as something that can't be accounted for, or unpredictable, or irrational. It's never spontaneous outbursts. Always a reaction occasioned by the conduct of humans motivated by a concern for right and wrong." - Abraham Heschel
And, it’s a really good thing he’s affected by sin and evil. What would be worse is if God was unmoved. What a good thing that God is not just a nice God who looks at murdering innocent children in Exodus or when his people do the very same things and says, “Oh it’s okay.”
And in the prophets, we see God’s heart behind his anger.
11 Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?
32 but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion
according to the abundance of his steadfast love;
33 for he does not afflict from his heart
or grieve the children of men.
Chris asks Dave - How do we see this in Jesus?
Dave - Jesus and Anger
Dave explains further
1 He entered again into a synagogue; and a man was there whose hand was withered.
2 They were watching Him to see if He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him.
3 He said to the man with the withered hand, “Get up and come forward!”
4 And He said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to kill?” But they kept silent.
5 After looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored.
6 The Pharisees went out and immediately began conspiring with the Herodians against Him, as to how they might destroy Him.
12 And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves.
13 And He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you are making it a robbers’ den.”
Dave asks Chris - how might we consider responding to this?
Chris - Gospel connection
In one sense, God being a God who can get angry at sin and evil is really bad news.
Because if I’m honest, I’m a part of the problem.
I hurt people with my pride, thinking I’m better than others, using words and actions to hurt others, withholding good I could be doing from others simply because I want to protect myself.
I use anger in harmful ways, I have heat for reasons that have nothing to do with the people I’m angry with.
And so if God really is just, he’s going to deal with the problem. And the Bible says the wages of sin is death. I have contributed to death in the world, and so God’s heat ought to turn on me.
But God is also compassionate and gracious.
And we see on the cross, God’s anger against sin and evil and his love for his sinful people meet.
6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Jesus took the heat for us.
Instead of unleashing the fullness of his righteous anger on people, he took it himself. It cost him everything because he loved us.
Jesus took the heat for us.
So now, I don’t have to be afraid of God, worried if he’s burning against me. He took the punishment himself willingly for me.
And now, I can receive the free gift of forgiveness if I own up to my part in the problem and trust that he is God and I’m not.
And so like the passage says, we respond in joy. What good news that God is patient. And what good news that God gets angry at sin. He has made it right in Jesus and he will make it fully right one day when he returns. That’s hope.
Any last thoughts Dave
Lead into Communion
