The Wrath of God

Something which many people fail to address any more is the wrath of God. The only people who seem to want to teach on that are the wackadoodles like the Westboro Baptist Church, who are on the far too extreme side of things or the ones who say “there is no longer wrath” or the increasingly fewer ones who actually preach it rightly…that Yahweh, the God of Israel, is loving, just, kind, merciful, slow to anger, good—but also wrathful.

  

For people to say that God hates everybody except for them is wrong…for God so loved THE WORLD that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting life(John 3:16). For people to say that God wants certain people to go to Hell is also wrong. For, as Scripture tells us in II Peter 3:8, Yahweh is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”

  

For people to say that there is no longer wrath is perhaps the most dangerous of the doctrines concerning the wrath of God, for it removes all consequence of sin. If there is no wrath, why preach the Gospels? Why attempt to reach anybody? Let us all eat, drink, and be merry, for nothing will ever come of our evil.

  

In order to say that there is no longer wrath, one would have to reason within themselves that the God of the Old Testament is not the same God of the New Testament…that, somehow over the course of time, Yahweh changed. (I hear that having children can do that to a person). One would have to reason that, whenever God says that He never changes and is always the same(Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 13:8)he didn’t mean it.

  

I have come across several teachers who teach that, sometime between the Old and the New Testaments, God changed. Yet, this is in complete contradiction to Scripture. If Scripture says that God does not change and yet He does change, then Scripture is false, and what ground is there for your faith? If you do not believe every word of Scripture to be true, then how can a person say that anything in Scripture is true? How can any person, by that presumption, claim that Jesus Christ died on the cross and was risen from the dead to save man from his sins? If there is no longer wrath, why would Jesus have needed to die on the cross anyhow? Therefore, one must claim that part of Scripture—and as a result, all of Scripture—is false, in order to claim that there is no more wrath. And in order to claim that Scripture is false, one must claim that their faith is a sham. And if one’s faith is a sham, why listen to their teachings on faith?

  

Can one claim that all of humanity is now saved and that, somehow, the death and resurrection of Jesus turned the wrath of Yahweh from off of all of humanity?

 On the night of the Passover, in Ancient Egypt, the Jews covered their doors in the blood of lambs. Doing this did not spare the Egyptians. It spared the Jews because the Jews were the ones who trusted that, through the blood of a lamb, God would keep them safe.

  

Yahweh is a holy God. He cannot look upon sin. This is not to say that He does not see it, but that He is so incredibly holy that He simply cannot be around it. This is why, for just a few moments on the cross, Yahweh turned His face from Jesus. For, in that moment, the sins of the world weighed upon the shoulders of the One on the cross.

 In order to understand that the wrath of God must still be around, one must understand just what sin is. Yahweh created the universe and all that is in it. By all rights, it is His. We are just given permission to steward it, but we are to glorify Him in it. To sin is to act against the will of God. To act against the will of God is to rebel against the Creator. To rebel against the Creator—the King—is to claim subservience to the enemy. Even we, as humans, understand that this is base treachery and that, if you were to stop fighting for your nation and fight for another nation, you would be killed. Yet, in society, nobody has any problem with traitors of a nation being executed. It is only whenever we betray our King that we believe punishment to be unjust.

 If sinning is acting in direct opposition to the will of God and acting against the will of God is also rebelling against the King, then sinning is rebelling against the King. For a person to say that rebelling against a King will have no consequences is like saying that pulling the pin out of a grenade and then putting the pin back in will somehow keep the grenade from detonating. You’ve pulled out the pin, tripping the spring and igniting the spark. If you put that pin back in, the grenade is still going to explode because the spring is already tripped. In the same way, if you rebel against God and then say “nothing will come of this”, chances are that that won’t keep something from coming of it. You’ve offended a Holy God and I guarantee you that He has the power and the right to strike back harder and faster.

  

There are only two sides in the war of good and evil. There is no Switzerland. If you are not for God, then you are against Him. If you are against Him, then you are for the enemy. If you are for the enemy, then you are under the wrath of God. From the moment in which you are able to understand right from wrong, you are liable for whatever sins you commit. Therefore, no person is exempt from the wrath of God on their own, for the wrath of God is against all unrighteousness. To sin is to be unrighteous. Therefore, if you are a sinner, then you are unrighteous. If you are unrighteous, then you are under the wrath of God.

 This is why Jesus came.

 In Ancient Egypt, the Jews had to take the blood of a lamb and put it over their doors in order that the wrath of God—in the form of the angel of death—would pass over their homes. This was the final plague against Egypt and it would be what finally convinced the Pharaoh to free the Israelites from slavery.

  

Throughout Scripture, we hear of Jesus being called the “Lamb of God”. This is because, whenever we are covered in His blood, the wrath of God passes over us. He was beaten for our sins and bruised for our iniquity. He took upon Himself the punishment that rightly belonged to us. By His wounds, we are healed…by His blood, our sins are hid. They are no more.

 You have been alone in a cell, beating your head against the wall. The shackles around your ankles keep you restricted to one small section of the cell…imprisoned even from being able to move around your prison. And whenever you accept Jesus as your Saviour, He comes and breaks the shackles. He opens the cell and says “follow me.”

  

What do you do?

  

Do you follow Him? Or do you take one step outside of your cell and then step back in? It would seem easier and far less risky to stay. Even though you can see the form of Jesus ahead of you, the corridors are dark and smelly. The air is damp and full of mold. At least now, you are free to leave whenever you want to, because you accepted Jesus as your Saviour. You said the prayer…you may even have been baptized…but, right now, what is familiar to you seems better than leaving and walking down that dark hallway. Who knows what you might meet? No, perhaps it’s better to stay behind…you’ll leave if you need to, now that you can, but it’s just so much more comfortable…

 What you did not know and He did know is that, at the end of the hall, there are steps leading out of the dungeon. And once out of the dungeon, all you would’ve had to do is to follow Jesus until you were out of Satan’s kingdom and into the Kingdom of God.

  

And after that?

 Sure, you still would have needed to follow Jesus, but you would be in the Kingdom of God…there would be no more tears, no more sorrow, no more pain, no more darkness…it would’ve been easy once you got away from the enemy’s kingdom and were free of his allies.

  

And all it would’ve taken was to step out of that cell…but because you stayed, you kept sin and Satan as your master, rejecting Jesus Christ as your rightful King. Therefore, whenever the King would be ready to lead the Army of the Lord against the kingdom of unrighteousness, you would be beneath its palace in the dungeons…and whenever the castle of Hell is brought down upon you, who can you blame? Because Jesus had offered you an out…and you didn’t take it…

 The wrath of God is poured out against all unrighteousness…and he that believes on Jesus has everlasting life: and he that does not believe on Jesus shall not see life, but the wrath of God is on him…therefore, choose ye this day whom you will serve…as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.