Bruce Collins, Evangelist

The personal website of Bruce Collins

Does God Get Angry?

Meditation for the week of January 17, 2010

Job 36:18 Because there is wrath, beware lest He take you away with one blow; For a large ransom would not help you avoid it.

God gets angry!  Let there be no doubt about it. The God of mercy, grace and love that we serve has a day of wrath stored up for those who will not believe in Him.  John 3:36 says, "He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him."  And yet, God does not desire to unleash that wrath.  John 3:17 says, "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”  Preaching on God’s wrath is not popular, so from time to time God preaches on it Himself. 

He reminds us that sin came into the world and death by sin every time one of our loved ones pass into eternity (Romans 5:12).  We end up asking ourselves, “Why do humans come to this kind of an end?”  The answer is because of sin.  When Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, I am sure she had no idea that she was going to make a decision that would affect all of mankind for all eternity.  Now some may say that they don’t fear death and that death does not remind them of God’s judgment.  However, the Bible calls death “the last enemy” and it is going to be destroyed at the end of time (1 Corinthians 15:26).  Most people dread the process of dying.  It does remind me that God judges sin.

Then we have tragedies.  Recently, Haiti was devastated by an earthquake.  Some who were good and some who were evil died in the quake.  I expect that there were believers in Christ and unbelievers who died in the quake.  Why did it happen?  Was that country more depraved than other counties?  Or when the hurricane, Katrina, struck New Orleans, was that because they were more wicked than say San Francisco, or Minneapolis or Waterloo where I live?  Of course we had religious people who said, “Yes!”  The Lord says, “No!”  He says in Luke 13:1-5, “There were present at that season some who told Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered such things?  I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.  Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem?  I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.’"  In our day, God does not usually judge specific sin immediately, but He does remind us that He does judge sin.  It is through calamities that many of us wake up and ask, “Why?” 

The answer as to why the calamities occur in the areas where they occur and to the people that they affect is a question that we cannot answer.   Many times innocent people are hurt and killed in these calamities.  But instead of asking, “Why them?”, perhaps we should ask, “Why not me?”  It is only because of the grace of God that we who are living have been given another day to serve God.  Our life and our breath are in His hand.  We cannot control the day of our birth and we cannot control the day of our death (unless we are suicidal).  We cannot control the beat of our hearts or the breath in our lungs.  But we can recognize that these things are in the providence of God.  He in His mercy reminds us that the “day of wrath” is coming.  Only those who have turned from idols to serve the living and true God and been delivered from the wrath to come (1 Thessalonians 1:10-11).

There is a ransom that has been paid to deliver us from God’s wrath.  Christ stepped in and met that demand 2,000 years ago on a bloody cross.  Today, God is offering His Son as the ransom for us.   But there is a day coming when those who turn their backs on the love of God that was manifested by the death of Christ will experience God’s anger.  In that day, a great ransom will not deliver them.  These tragedies remind us that God’s wrath against sin is real.  His wrath against the unbelieving sinner will also be real in a day that is coming.

Yes, God does get angry!

Bruce Collins

1 Comment »

Comment by Tony Tronson

January 18, 2010 @ 1:08 pm

Dear Brother Bruce;
Keep that blood stained, Old Rugged Cross as the theme of all letters, along with the Lamb of God that died on it, to save us from our sin.
May our God through the Lord Jesus, bless you in all ways.
Your friend,
Tony.

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