Ecclesiastes...Pastor Phil Strong

Part 25

9-25-11

Living in the Kingdom requires a good imagination, because, remember… Jesus asks us to dream with our “eyes wide open”.

Jesus asks us to imagine a world…

            … which is the thoughtful and self-initiated creation of a good and loving God (one you could feel free to call “Father”),

            … where the life you live and the choices you make are consequential,

            … where there is the possibility of being invited into such a reality and actually choosing to ignore or reject it: you’d be a “fool” (no, really),

            … where evil is not the last word, love is, and love demands judgment.

What I have consistently struggled with, more than “belief in God”,  is “believing in God”.

            In our lives of faith, there will always be “God” and there will be our “image of God”, and, inevitably, the inner ‘tug-o-war’ comes at the point where the (2) no longer seem harmonious--- where they run head-on into each other. Most often, what disappoints us is not God, but our image of God. It’s why what we think about God matters.

● If we are honest, we utilize this image of God in much the same way as any other form of idolatry: we reduce him to something we can customize and control…. something we can utilize to secure the life that we desire. When that image fails (which it inevitably will), we will abandon it and the inner-turmoil that results will cause us to either pursue a more realistic understanding of God (based on revelation) or simply create a new one.

● There will forever remain (2) essential challenges to our understanding of God (theology): 1) our tendency to “civilize” him; to refine him, a bit; give him some ‘talking points’ and some conversations to avoid at parties (e.g. judgment, righteousness, etc.), 2) our tendency to “anesthetize” God; offer him in such a way that convinces us that he is essentially ‘numb’ to anything regarding creation [“impassability”… not subject to suffering, pain or the vacillation of involuntary passions].

“How do you make sense of a God who is celebrated as sovereign, but who is depicted as demonstrating emotional reactions, such as grief, delight, sadness, or anger?”

Are we simply left to choose between a God who is subject to dramatic mood-swings and tantrums, and a God who is cold and unfazed?

● When we say that God is ‘angry’ (or ascribe any other emotional response), we are using the language available to us in order to describe the incomprehensible (“wonderful” in Isaiah means ‘beyond comprehension’). We all realize how beneficial language is and how ultimately limited and inadequate it is.         

● The issue is, most of the expressions of anger we have witnessed are disproportionate, reactionary and destructive. So, little wonder that we are hesitant to assign such a character quality to God.

Judgment is God’s decisive “no” to evil and disorder and his definitive “yes” to shalom.

Any talk of God setting things right (justice) absolutely demands that he address all that is wrong.

►Justice is always the measure of God’s anger.

Within the biblical connotation of divine-anger, there is a measure of what we would call “righteous-indignation”. It is God’s jealous displeasure and protective love toward of all that is rightfully his! It is God’s way of saying, “You can’t do that… that’s mine!”

►Compassion is always the response of God’s anger.

Restoration, not abandonment, has always been God’s approach to his defaced and degraded creation.

►Love is always the motivation for God’s anger.

Anger is appropriate to love, not contradictory. It is not consistent with love to sit by unmoved and unprovoked and just let evil happen.

Anger might be understood as impatience with evil, because unless patience has limits, it ultimately becomes destructive; it’s no longer a blessing, but a curse.

[Numbers 14:18; Jeremiah 15:15; Psalm 86:15; Psalm 145:8-9]

Exodus 34:6 "I am the LORD, I am the LORD, the merciful and gracious God. I am slow to anger and rich in unfailing love and faithfulness...

Psalm 103:8-11 The LORD is merciful and gracious; he is slow to get angry and full of unfailing love. He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever. He has not punished us for all our sins, nor does he deal with us as we deserve. For his unfailing love toward those who fear him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.

Patience is never to be understood as tolerance, but simply restraint in the hope of repentance (“Maybe this time…”)

Judgment must come, not because God is anxious to “give ‘em what they’ve got coming”, but because each day of his patience in a world of injustice and disorder means more violence, more abuse, more suffering, more death. God’s patience is costly, not only for God, but for humanity. Patiently waiting for the world to be set right means allowing for the wrong to continue.

Our cry: “God, this has got to stop. What are you waiting for?!” Everyone else.

            “The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to realize destruction, but wants everyone to repent” (2 Peter 3:9).

            “God… who wants everyone to be saved and understand the truth” (2 Timothy 2:4).You might say that God is a bit idealistic.

Unless God is “wrath-ful”, he is not good and he is not God at all. 

 “Could you really believe in… could you really love a God who sat idly by and ignored all the disorder and abuse and pain? What would you conclude to be true about him?” Either he was impotent or, even worse, indifferent.

God’s wrath is his anger on our behalf: it is love in the face of evil. It’s what we believe to be the legitimate response of love in the face of injustice.

I knew something of my mother’s love better in her anger than in any other expression.

God is depicted as a God who grieves and who suffers, not only because of, but alongside of, faithless humanity [a voluntary exposure].He gets angry.

But, it’s not an arbitrary anger because we have broken the rules, but the anger a loving-parent feels as they watch their children make choices which are sure to bring them pain. In that sense, anger is but another dimension of love.

Imagine, having no one angered about what evil is doing to you? “Wait… you’re supposed to care!?”

● So, our assumption is that God is generally repulsed by humanity, but fond of his Son, Jesus. So, he says, “Well, I love you and since you seemed to have developed such an affinity toward them, I’ll let you take the heat.”

There are at least (2) things wrong with this perspective: 1) it implies that Jesus’ actions somehow changed God’s mind about us, 2) it suggests that the only way God could ever tolerate us would be if someone would allow him to “vent” on them.

● To the contrary, it says that Jesus did not die “for our sins” in spite of the fact that he was God, but because of the fact that he was God. It’s what you should expect from love. It’s what you should expect from God.

Romans 5:6-8 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

It is only the certainty of God’s love that allows us to accept his anger.

“His anger lasts for a moment… but his favor (his love) lasts a lifetime!” Psalm 30:5

[Psalm 100:5, 106:1, 107:1, 118:1-4; Isaiah 54:8]

● We never have to be worried that God is in “one of his moods”!

His love for us is fixed (“endures forever”, as the Psalmist celebrates) and the only one more stubborn than man is God. He is stubbornly determined to love us and refuses to sit idly by and watch us self-destruct.