Stunned By God's Anger

“Even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this land? what [meaneth] the heat of this great anger?” (De 29:24 AV)

Israel is given two chapters of blessing and cursing.  If they obey the LORD and love Him with all their heart, then the LORD will bless them. If they fail to follow the law and reject the LORD, then there are cursings that follow.  I find it interesting the list of cursings is three times and long as the blessings only to show we are more prone to failure than we are to obedience.  One of the cursings is the destruction of Jerusalem and the people carried away into captivity.  This happened first to the ten northern tribes, then to Judah and Benjamin.  They went after the false gods of the nations around them and God judged them.  The words above are words of the pagan nations around them.  They are confused.  They do not seem to comprehend the wickedness of false worship.  To them, it may have seemed wrong, but not to the degree that God punished them.  They cannot comprehend how God can become so angry with His people that He would dispossess them and destroy their country.  To the heathen, God’s anger is always extreme.  They cannot compute that a God who claims to love also will become so angry that He destroys.

The lack of ability to acknowledge and see God’s anger is not something that should lack in the hearts and minds of God’s children.  God has a plethora of emotions.  All of them are right, infinite, and holy.  God is indeed love.  But God is also justice.  God is mercy.  But God is also anger.  God is compassionate.  But God is also indignant.  He owns and exercises His attributes infinitely and in balance.  To refuse to see God’s anger in not a trait the child of God should desire.  Yes, God is love.  But He is also a chastening God.  What struck me is the willful ignorance of those who would ask such a question.  They are so far removed from who and what God is, their expectations of what God should be is totally unrealistic.  But this also reminds me of saints who refuse to entertain the possibility that their ’bad luck’ might be the hand of God that has come out against their disobedience.  The ‘why me’ Christian thinks that life should be nothing but good times and if it is not, then God is unfair.  Believers like this sit stunned at the least bit of adversity because someone has misguided them or failed to teach them the proper way of looking at our relationship with the God who created us.

Remember the first time you had to spank your child?  They sat stunned!  What was that for?  Why did Dad just do that to me?  Why is he angry?  So what if I threw my bowl of cereal on the carpet because I was made?  Surely it doesn’t warrant a spanking.  If our toddler reaches from something he is not supposed to touch, and we swat his hand, he looks at us in deep shock.  He is amazed that his parent would do such a thing.  This is before tears.  This is before the fit.  This surprise comes because the child cannot comprehend their disobedience earned a swat equal to the infraction.  They simply do not see what they did wrong on the same level as the swat they just received.  This is immaturity.  This is lack of humility.  This is entitlement.  This is a child who believes his or her parents exist for the sole purpose of making them happy.  It is a shame that we as God’s children are shocked at what the LORD does or allows for our benefit and maturity.  We sit shocked that God would allow such things.  To be stunned at the hand of God because one has determined God’s actions to be unequal with our behavior is a trait of the lost.  If we know our Bibles as well as we claim, we would understand God’s grace in that we never do receive the full extent of what our sin deserves.  Praise the LORD.