There’s an expression in the insurance business if destructive acts happen like floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes. They’re called “Acts of God.” There’s this idea that God must be a mean, destructive, angry person.
People in the church, seeking religious truth, have questions about God when they read stories in the Bible where God commands Israel to wipe out enemies, or God gives real harsh directives — “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” or God ends someone’s life. Thoughtful people should raise the question, “How do I make sense of this stuff?”
This Sunday we try to make sense of this stuff and discover the truth about who God really is.
Alright, we’re going to answer some important questions over the next 5 weeks.
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A lot of people wonder, “What is God like?”
Next Sunday we’ll look at where God falls along the continuum between tolerance or judgmentalism. We’ll answer the question, “Is God… judgmental?” Is God this distant character who is kind of cold-hearted?
If you know someone who’s asking this question, I want to encourage you to extend an invitation to them this week — better yet, bring them with you next Sunday.
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Alright, today we’re looking at — Is God… angry?
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There are a lot of ideas out there.
Some get expressed through things like cartoons.
Gary Larson, who drew The Far Side, has a picture of God at his computer.
A poor guy is walking with a piano suspended over him, and God’s finger is right above the “smite” button.
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You wonder, “Is that what God is going to do?”
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There was a movie starring Jim Carey called Bruce Almighty — a deeply theological movie.
Carrey’s character doesn’t get what he wants, so he cries out to heaven, “Smite me, O Mighty Smiter.”
Is that what God does? Does he just want to smite people?
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This idea gets expressed sometimes in the oddest ways.
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In the insurance business, there’s an expression if destructive acts are happening like floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, or tornadoes. They’re called “Acts of God.”
How do you think it makes God feel when those are the things we call acts of God?
There are other natural events, tropical breezes and sunsets… We don’t call those acts of God, just terribly destructive things.
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There’s just this idea that’s out there, “God must be kind of a mean, destructive person.”
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Sometimes these ideas get articulated very thoroughly.
Richard Dawkins believes very strongly that religion is a bad thing and the God presented, especially in the Old Testament, is a bad person.
He wrote “The God Delusion.”
This sentence is by far the most famous sentence in that book.
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
He gets kind of nasty after that, so I won’t quote him any farther.
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And it’s not just atheists who wonder about that. People who are in the church, seeking religious truth wonder.
We’ll sometimes read the Bible, and there will be these stories where God commands Israel to wipe out enemies, or he’ll give real harsh directives — an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or God will end someone’s life.
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Thoughtful people are just going to raise the question, “How do I make sense of that stuff?”
This is really important. This is something we all need to think about.
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I would suggest that your actual idea of God is the most important object in your mind… whether or not you think there is hope and meaning attached to existence, whether or not you believe you can confidently trust him or not.
That part of your mental map is the most important thing in your mind.
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You see, if I think God is a bully, I’ll never be able to feel close to him.
I’ll want to avoid certain parts of the Bible because I’m afraid my faith will be shaken if I get really honest about looking at them.
I’ll never be able to have the kind of joyful confidence in this God who could enable me to live a confident life.
I’ll never be able to surrender. I’ll always be afraid, if he’s out there, he’s kind of after me, so I could never really surrender to him. I’ll always think, “No, I have to keep the option open of taking care of myself.”
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Well, over the next 5 weeks, there’s an awful lot at stake in what we’re going to be talking about at the deepest, fundamental levels of how we live our lives.
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Today we’re going to look at God and anger. This is a huge topic.
I want to do this by going through some important questions on this topic.
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The first one is…
[SLIDE_02]
What do the writers of Scripture mean when they talk about God being angry?
If you start reading the Bible, you will see these statements that talk about the anger of God.
In the Old Testament we’re told,
[SLIDE_03]
The Lord’s anger burned against Israel and he made them wander in the wilderness for forty years.
“The LORD’S anger burned against Israel…” Because they were disobedient. “…and he made them wander in the wilderness for forty years…”
That’s a long time to wander.
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Job is talking about evildoers. He says:
[SLIDE_04]
By the breath of God they perish; by the blast of his anger they are no more.
These are really straightforward statements about God being angry.
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Now part of what’s interesting is, the writers of Scripture talk quite a lot about human beings getting angry, and essentially every time they will say — it’s not good. People shouldn’t get angry.
The writer of Ecclesiastes says,
[SLIDE_05]
Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools.
That’s a very picturesque way of saying it.
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Paul (we’ll come back to this one) says to the church at Ephesus:
[SLIDE_06]
“In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.
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One really important idea in the Bible is that anger as God experiences it is very different than anger as you and I experience it.
So we can’t attribute our experience of anger to God.
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Now when you think about it, humanly speaking, what happens to you when you get angry?
[SLIDE_07]
A bunch of stuff does.
Your muscles clench.
They tense up.
Your blood pressure rises.
Your heart rate accelerates.
You have these neurotransmitters that give you a surge of energy.
These are all things that happen to your body.
For human beings, anger is intrinsically a physical, bodily, sensation… and the angrier we get, the more our bodies get taken over by anger.
We’ll talk about people losing it or people melting down or people exploding.
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The part of your brain that’s associated with emotions is called the amygdale, and there’s a little phrase that when someone really, really goes crazy, they suffer an “amygdala hijack.”
The amygdala hijacks their whole central nervous system, and they become incapable of rational thought.
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There is a superhero who experiences tremendous bodily transformation when he gets angry.
Does anybody know who that superhero is?
The Incredible Hulk.
When he’s a normal guy, Dr. Bruce Banner, he’ll say, “Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”
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Now in the ancient world when people thought about the gods, they thought of them kind of like we think of superheroes, but real. They had these superpowers, but they all had fallible human characters.
If they got mad, man, watch out. You don’t want to be around them when they’re mad.
If you read stories about Zeus, he had real anger control issues.
Thor, (not depressed out of shape Thor) the guy with the hammer, had real anger control issues.
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Now whether or not you believe what the writers of Scripture say is true, this is fundamentally important.
When the writers of Scripture talk about God and anger, we can’t think about it like we do anger and people or anger and superheroes.
For one thing, because the writers of Scripture say God is perfect (he is never mean, never sins in what he thinks or what he does).
But also because God is spirit. This is a really important dimension of who God is.
God doesn’t have a body, and what that means is…
God never loses it.
God never melts down.
God’s heart never races… because he doesn’t have a heart.
His blood pressure never rises… because he doesn’t have blood pressure.
God never melts down.
He never has that amygdala hijack… because God doesn’t have an amygdala.
In fact, God doesn’t have a brain… and he has never missed having a brain at all.
That’s why Dallas Willard says, “Everything is a ‘no-brainer’ to God.”
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Don’t groan at me. That makes me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.
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Humanly speaking, anger is a very deep part of our bodily experience.
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In the Old Testament, this is captured in real colorful ways.
The Hebrew language and culture are very concrete. They’re very physical.
In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for anger (literally aph) is the word for nose.
When we read the word anger, that’s the Hebrew word for nose.
When you get angry at someone, especially in ancient times, they would think about the fact that your nostrils flare up, that you raise your nose in contempt of someone, or that your face will get red because the blood collects, particularly in that area.
An important anger phrase in the Old Testament is — “…slow to anger…”
Literally, that means “long in the nose.” When you see that phrase in the Bible, to be slow to anger, literally in Hebrew is to be long-nosed.
If you look at the person next to you right now, if they have a long nose, they are a God-like human being.
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If they have a short, stubby little nose they have a short, stubby little fuse.
My dad used to kid me when I was growing up for having a short, stubby little nose. It made me so mad I wanted to punch him.
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In the Bible, this phrase, “slow to anger” is used to describe God.
That’s how they viewed God — slow to anger.
This is so central to God’s character that it’s part of his name.
When he reveals himself to Moses early on as the human race is learning about God through Israel, this is what God says.
[SLIDE_08]
Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming,
[SLIDE_09]
“The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.”
That’s God’s essential character. That’s God’s name.
That little phrase “slow to anger” is used seven times in the Old Testament to describe God.
Every single time it’s paired with that next phrase — He is abounding in love.
That’s the God of the Bible.
He is not mean.
He is not irritable.
He does not fly off the handle.
He is slow to anger.
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Then if we’re going to be honest, that leads to the next question.
If that’s the case…
[SLIDE_10]
Why do the writers of Scripture portray God as getting angry?
Why is it that in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, God seems to get mad? It seems like he flies off the handle.
I thought kind of by way of helping us just roll up our sleeves and learn about this, we would look at one of the most prominent stories in the Old Testament that is a weird anger story and find out how this looked to them.
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It’s really important when you read the Bible to assume it’s written by intelligent people who understand the law of contradiction and are at least as bright as we are.
And they have an understanding about God — that he is slow to anger.
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In this particular story, the ark of the covenant is being returned to Jerusalem. The Israelites have won it back from the Philistines.
There’s a big parade, a big celebration. There are 30,000 people watching.
The ark is put in a cart being drawn by two oxen and guided by a guy named Uzzah.
Then this weird thing happens.
[SLIDE_11]
When they came to the threshing floor of Nakon, Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God, because the oxen stumbled. The Lord’s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down,
[SLIDE_12]
and he died there beside the ark of God. Then David was angry because the Lord’s wrath had broken out against Uzzah, and to this day that place is called Perez Uzzah.
Now this is the kind of story we read in the Bible and we think, “What in the world is going on? It seems like Uzzah did something he should be commended for. Why would God do this?”
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Again, this is written by people who understood God to be slow to anger.
So let’s walk through it for a moment.
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[SLIDE_13]
In the Old Testament, there were really clear instructions on how the ark was to be transported.
All the Israelites reading this story would know about that. It’s repeated numerous times.
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The ark is this box, real important to Israel. It has the Ten Commandments and the manna in it. It had gold rings on it. Poles were to go through the rings, and then priests were to carry those poles so the ark would be up on their shoulders.
This is not coincidental. There’s a really important reason for this.
The ark, because it had God’s Law (the Ten Commandments) in it, was kind of like the expression, the embodiment, or the presence of God in Israel’s midst.
It was the most sacred thing in all of Israel.
It’s like how they treated the ark taught the people how to treat God.
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In their culture in the ancient world, if a king was going from one place to another, they would always be transported on what was called the litter.
There would be a throne or a seat. There would be rings in it, poles put through the rings. Then the noblemen (the servants of the king) would carry the king.
That in itself was a tremendous honor, to be able to carry the king.
That was the way to teach all the people, “We will honor the king. We’ll revere the king. We’ll follow the king.”
You would never, ever, ever put the king in a cart driven by a couple of oxen. You would never do that!
In the ancient world, it was really clear you don’t put the king in a cart. It would be an insult.
To make things worse, the whole reason Israel lost the ark of the covenant in the first place was they had mistreated it.
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Years earlier, they went to battle against the Philistines…
Again, part of what we have to understand in the Old Testament, part of why there’s this severity here — it’s a little like raising a child.
It’s like God is starting from scratch, from a blank slate. They know nothing. They think of God as an idol.
“He’s just this force we don’t have to obey. He’s not concerned with justice or love. We can manipulate him to get what we want.”
So they’re going into battle. They say, “Well, the ark is kind of God’s presence. It’s a magic box, so we’ll bring it into battle with us. If we have the ark there, we win! God is in our pocket. God is under our control.”
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God has to teach them quite a painful lesson — that he is not under their control. He is not in their pocket.
This is not superstition. This is not idolatry. The spiritual is not some kind of force that can be used for selfish human beings.
How are they going to learn this?
They lose the ark.
Now, this is the occasion when the ark is coming back to Israel. The whole reason why they lost it was they didn’t understand about God yet.
To make things worse, there are 30,000 people watching.
How the ark is treated is going to be how they learn to treat God. “Is God an object to be manipulated for me or is he a person to be loved and obeyed?”
See, the question of this whole story is, “How am I treating God?”
It starts to turn the tables on me.
This putting God in a cart is a deliberate insult, is a demeaning thing that will lead all the people irreparably into error in thinking about and living with God… so it has to be addressed.
Then that still leaves the question, “Isn’t that way too severe a punishment for Uzzah? Couldn’t he get like a timeout or something?”
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A word about God and death.
For us, when we look at death, it’s the worst possible outcome.
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I was talking about that prayer from Jim Carrey, “Smite me, O Mighty Smiter.”
Old Testament scholar David Lamb says that actually is a prayer by an Old Testament character named Elijah.
He’s really frustrated with God at one point. Things aren’t going well. His prayer is, “This is enough! I have had enough. Now, O Lord, take away my life. — Smite me, O Mighty Smiter.”
God doesn’t do that. God encourages him and sends him back into the fray.
Eventually, God does bring Elijah’s life to an end, but it’s not punishment.
It’s quite an extraordinary story. God actually sends a chariot of fire, and Elijah goes home to God.
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See, from our perspective, when we see death, and if God is involved, we think of it as just this awful, terrible punishment because we don’t know what’s on the other side.
It is, I think, very much like when our oldest daughter was a really little girl. Sometimes she would come to me, and she would say something like, “Daddy, when I grow up, will you promise me you won’t make me go away? Daddy, when I grow up can I live at home with you forever?”
I’d have to say to her, “Well, no. I know you want that now, but the day is going to come when you’re going to want to leave home.”
She would say, “No, Daddy. That will never happen because I would never find a man as smart, strong, wonderful, and charming as you.”
I would say, “Well, that’s understandable, but someday you will see it differently. Go talk to Mommy, and you’ll find out.
“The day will come…not today, not tomorrow, but it’s going to come…when you’ll grow up, and then you’ll know.”
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See, death is so much that way.
We look at death, and it’s the worst.
In fact, for one person to inflict death on another — “Thou shalt not kill” — is generally the ultimate action of hostility because it means, “I wish you did not exist.”
Death to God does not mean, “I wish you did not exist.”
To God, it’s simply a relocation, and it can be a homecoming, even for foolish, old Uzzah if Uzzah really wants God.
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See, this is terribly important.
As you read through the Bible, as you read through those Old Testament stories, then you must believe if God is truly by nature slow to anger and abounding in love, then he does, in life and in death, the absolute best that can be done by any human being.
That’s who our God is.
And that’s why Jesus loved the God of the Old Testament so much.
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This leads to another really interesting question…
[SLIDE_14]
Is God a loving God or an angry God?
By the way, the whole phrase loving God comes from the idea that God is a loving God.
That’s not been a constant for the human race.
No one thought Baal was a loving god or Moloch was a loving god or Zeus was a loving god.
So where did the idea come from that God is a God of love?
We hear that now as if it’s always been around. People say, “I believe God is a God of love.”
Where did that idea come from?
Well, it came from this little country of Israel and then was spread to the world through Jesus. That’s where it came from.
Sometimes people will say, “You know, I like the God of love Jesus described, not the God of the Old Testament.”
Do you know who never said that?
Jesus… because where he got all of the information about God is from the Old Testament where the writers say the first commandment is, “…love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength.” Anything else is moral insanity.
You see, part of why Israel loved that commandment is it says God wants to be loved.
What an amazing thought that God wants to be loved. Jesus taught about that.
Now this is a really important thing. When we think about love and anger, the opposite of love is not anger.
[SLIDE_15]
The opposite of love is malice.
Malice is the will to harm. Anger isn’t that.
Anger is an emotion. Anger is what I experience when my will is thwarted, when someone does something I don’t want them to do, particularly when I think I’ve been wronged.
But there’s a problem with human anger.
Almost always with human beings, when my will is thwarted and I think you did it, I want to hurt you back. Anger on a human level almost always leads to malice.
Maybe for some of us it does because of the way our wires have gotten crossed in our bodies.
This is why James says:
[SLIDE_16]
Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.
“Everyone should be… slow to become angry…” — Why? — “…because human anger…” Notice, not God’s. “…human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.”
Human anger produces this sense inside me that, “I’m right, you’re wrong, and I’m superior to you. I am morally above you. I’m a victim.”
That’s why we enjoy anger.
Part of why it’s so dangerous and so hard to get rid of is we like being angry.
Then I’m the victim.
Then I deserve sympathy.
Then I get to retaliate against you.
This is why anger is so irrational. People do the craziest things.
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[SLIDE_17]
I enjoy playing golf.
But golf is one of those sports where people tend to get angry.
Any golfers here?
If a golfer gets mad enough, what do they do?
They will take a club, which costs a fair amount of money, and throw it, bend it, break it or smash it into something like a tree or the ground.
Why would someone do that?
Like, “It’s the club’s fault. It’s not my fault! This club deserves to be punished. I want this club to feel the pain it has inflicted.”
Really?
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I’ll get mad at my phone.
Anyone ever get mad at your phone?
I was talking to Siri not long ago, and I said “Siri, call Mom.” Siri said, “I don’t know your mom. In fact, I don’t know you.”
I said, “Siri, you fool, my mom is listed in my contacts as ‘Mom.’”
Then I remembered Jesus said you’re not supposed to call another person a fool.
Then I remembered Siri is not a person. So I said it again, ”Siri, you’re a fool.”
She said back to me, “I’m a fool for your requests.” She’s programmed to say that.
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We just get angry at all kinds of stuff because anger is irrational in us.
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God, see, is not Siri. God is not a force. God is a person.
God does anger, but God doesn’t do mean. God doesn’t do malice. God never wills to harm.
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Here’s another story about God’s anger in the Bible. God tells Moses to go to Pharaoh.
“I want to free my people. Pharaoh is oppressing them.”
Moses just keeps putting God off. “I don’t want to do it. Who am I?”
God is so patient. “It doesn’t matter who you are. I’ll be with you.”
“Who are you?”
God says, “I’m the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
Moses says, “No. They won’t believe you’ve sent me.”
God says, “I’ll do signs.”
Moses says, “No. I’m not good at talking.”
God says, “I made your talker. I’ll help you.”
Moses says, “No. Send someone else.”
[SLIDE_18]
Then the LORD’S anger burned against Moses…
What does God do?
Does God smite him?
Does God hurt him?
No, he sends Aaron along to help him, and does amazing things to release his people.
God does anger, but God doesn’t do malice. God doesn’t do mean.
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See, it’s really important to understand the connection of love and anger, because God is a person.
Therefore, God loves, and God feels deeply.
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[SLIDE_19]
Anger is connected to love.
C.S. Lewis put it like this: “Anger is the fluid that love bleeds when you cut it.”
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You know, one way I can sin with anger is I get mad when I shouldn’t, but another way (much more rare but it happens) is I can fail to get angry when I should, when something has happened that a human being ought to be angry about.
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I read about a pilot’s favorite flight story one time. It was a flight from New York to Florida.
An elderly couple gets on the plane. They shuffle. They move slowly because they’re very old.
There’s a guy behind them who is just being a jerk. He’s mocking them for holding him up. He is a really self important guy.
He’s kind of obnoxious. He sits right in front of them. He’s mean to the flight attendants.
He’s not satisfied with his meal. He sends his meal back twice… on a plane. The second time, just to show his contempt.
After he sends it back, he jerks his seat back as hard as he can on purpose… and it causes all the food and drink to spill on the dress of this elderly lady sitting behind him.
No one can believe this guy.
The flight attendant comes up to the elderly couple, apologizes, and asks if she can help.
The old guy says, “I appreciate that. Actually, we’re on this trip because we’re celebrating our fiftieth wedding anniversary. We have been saving up for a long time. We’ve never been on a plane before. This is our first flight.”
She feels terrible. She brings him a bottle of champagne.
He stands up, uncorks it, and pours it over the head of the guy sitting in front of him.
Everyone in first class applauds… because every once in a while, something happens that someone ought to get angry about!
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If you think about our world…
How often does someone get mistreated?
How often does someone get bullied?
How often does an innocent person get ripped off?
What kind of God would God be if he could look at our world every day, billions and billions of people, and every day a countless number of people unseen who can’t do anything back —
elderly people getting abused
little babies who have done nothing wrong getting beaten
innocent people getting gunned down
whole races being demeaned because of the color of their skin
human beings being trafficked like they were objects
What kind of God could look at that and just say, “Well, you know, that’s the way it goes”?
If God is any kind of God, then he has to get angry.
The writers of Scripture say he does, but he doesn’t do malice, and he doesn’t do sin.
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Therefore, for you and me, when we get angry, we’re to bring our anger to God. We’re to surrender to God. We can’t trust the way we’ll handle it.
This is why Paul says to that church, “In your anger…” He doesn’t say, “Never get angry.” He says,
[SLIDE_20]
“In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.
It’s not God. It’s the Devil. It’s the Evil One who gets a foothold in our anger.
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Where this all comes out for you and me is surrender my anger to God, because only God can handle anger.
I have a lot of it, and so do you, probably more than you realize.
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[SLIDE_21]
I’ve been just thinking about it a lot and noticing it in myself this week.
Sometimes, in some of you, it may come out in exploding types of ways
A lot of us, it comes out in much sneakier or more passive ways
or pouting ways
or Irish ways
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I came home from work one day, and it had been a long day. I was just thinking, “I’m entitled to just rest. When I get home, I just want to do nothing.”
I get home, and Kathy (my wife) says to me, “There are a couple things I’d like you to do. When you have time, would you do this… and would you do this?”
Now these were reasonable requests. The things she wanted me to do were things I should have done. They were my responsibility.
How do you think I responded to that?
Do you think my immediate inward thought was, “Thank you so much for reminding me of the things I need to get done around the house. How delinquent I’ve been in procrastinating and leaving those things undone. How helpful it is for my own character development that you would alert me to this. Thank you, wife of mine”?
I did not!
What happened inside me was, “I’ve been working so hard all day, I shouldn’t have to do this stuff. I don’t feel like doing this. She ought to know this. Instead, she has laid this burden on me. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to do these tasks right now even though I’m tired, and she knows I want to rest. I’ll do them no matter how long it takes, no matter how miserable it makes me, no matter how much I have to suffer and allow that suffering to inflict everyone else. Then she’ll know.”
Am I the only one who ever thinks that way?
Of course, all those thoughts are not as clear as I’ve articulated them to you or I’d see how ridiculous they are.
They’re just these kind of fuzzy, smoldering, stupid, living away from God thoughts.
They’re just these thoughts that kind of build up one after another after another… unless I allow God to intervene.
I can stand up her now and reflect on that and think, “That was so stupid. I need to go back to my wife and apologize for handling that situation so poorly.”
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Then there’s this amazing thing God has given when it comes to anger that God invented called forgiveness.
That’s what can happen when I bring my anger to the cross. See, the cross is where God’s anger at sin and God’s great love for sinners meets.
It’s at the cross where anger and love meet, and the result is forgiveness.
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This is an amazing power that can be part of my life and yours that will heal the malice that anger unleashes in us.
That’s where I just want to mention this one last question. So many people wrestle with this, again, at a really deep level.
Maybe not at the conscious level or what you think you’re supposed to say, but so many people just wonder —
[SLIDE_22]
Is God mad at me?
Is God sitting up in heaven wagging his finger, shaking his head? — “Didn’t get it right. No, no, no.”
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I want to tell you it is true that God experiences anger… and that’s a really good thing.
But if you come to him at the cross with an open heart, you never have to wonder.
It’s funny. Sometimes I’ll just say these words, and they can… I can just hardly get past them.
“God is not mad at me. God is not angry at me.”
I know something about how I mess up and I know I mess up a lot. But God is not angry at me.
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God loves you more than you can possibly imagine.
From one moment to the next, God wants to do by you the best that can be done. That’s God.
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There’s a wonderful statement to God’s people in the Old Testament through the prophet Jeremiah. This is from the Message by Eugene Peterson.
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God told them, “I’ve never quit loving you and never will. Expect love, love, and more love!”
What are you expecting in the weather today? Sun, sun, and more sun.
What do you expect from God for eternity? Love, love, and more love.
Let’s pray.
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You might bring to God right now whatever thought or idea or feeling you find yourself having when you think about God. Just you, nobody else. Just you and God.
Maybe you’re kind of afraid of him or you feel like he is kind of distant. Maybe you’re aware on a day like this that you’ve been carrying resentment or anger or bitterness and you need to lay it down at the cross.
Ask God for the power to seek forgiveness from someone, to confess to someone, or to offer forgiveness to someone.
God, help us to see you the way you really are. Reveal yourself to us. We ask in Jesus’ name, amen.
Sermon Summary
There’s an expression in the insurance business if destructive acts happen like floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes. They’re called “Acts of God.” There’s this idea that God must be a mean, destructive person.
People in the church, seeking religious truth, have questions about God when they read stories in the Bible where God commands Israel to wipe out enemies, or God gives real harsh directives — “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” or God ends someone’s life. Thoughtful people should raise the question, “How do I make sense of this stuff?”
Well join us Sunday as we try to make sense of this stuff and discover the truth about who God really is.
Scripture References
Numbers 32:13
Job 4:9
Ecclesiastes 7:9
Ephesians 4:26-27
Exodus 34:5-7
2 Samuel 6:6-8
James 1:19-20
Exodus 4:14
Jeremiah 31:3
Next Steps
I will bring someone with me next week.
I believe God is a loving God.
I will bring my anger to God and trust him to handle it.
I will be angry, but I will not sin in my anger.
I believe God is doing the absolute best for me.
I will expect love, love and more love from God.
