There is a common
perception among some Christians that the God of the Old Testament is an angry
God, ready to destroy people at the slightest provocation. At best, they see
God as a grumpy old man watching everyone carefully to catch them having fun,
so he can say, “Stop it!” At worst, they see God as a sadistic monster who
delights in punishing people. With such a view of God, it is no wonder that
some people want to get rid of the idea of God completely.
Alongside this
angry God, many Christians also think that the God of the New Testament is a
loving God, so unlike the angry God of the Old Testament that they are hardly
connected. Jesus, people think, is the supreme example of love and acceptance,
drawing children into his arms and spreading love and delight wherever he goes.
Of course, both of
these views are caricatures. In the Old Testament we have wonderful gentle
passages such as Psalm 23, which picture God’s love in clear and graphic
language. In the gospels, we have Jesus speaking sharp judgments such as, “Then
the king will have them thrown into outer darkness, where there is weeping and
gnashing of teeth!” Not so gentle Jesus, meek and mild!
Nevertheless, our
problem remains. How do we bring together our picture of an angry God and a
loving God? Should we just cut all the verses about God’s judgment out of the
Bible? That would leave us with a ragged pastiche of pages, falling apart with
so many passages cut out. What should we do?
Jeremiah 4 gives
us the picture of the angry God, ready to judge. Paul, in 1 Timothy 1, gives us
the picture of the loving and merciful God, ready to forgive and save and bring
us to God forever. I want to explore these passages briefly, and then return to
the question.
Jeremiah 4
These prophecies
come on the context of the end of the southern kingdom. Israel had been carried
off into exile by Assyria, and Judah now nears the end of its life as an
independent country. By the end of the book, Judah is also in exile, in
Babylon. It is no surprise, then, that Jeremiah has been called “the weeping
prophet”, because his message is full of heartbreak and pain. These verses are
no exception.
·
Verses 11-12: God speaks
judgment, compared to the way that a hot wind shrivels up everything in its
path. Such a wind could blow out the chaff, making what remains healthy, but
this wind will simply destroy. Earlier in the chapter, Jeremiah speaks of the
possibility of repentance, but by this point he speaks as though it is too late
to repent.
·
Verses 22-28: God sees what
God’s people have done. They are disobedient children, who deliberately rebel
against God and go their own way. In other places (such as earlier in this
chapter, and also in chapters 11 to 13), Jeremiah pictures the people of Judah
as an adulterous lover, who runs after other men instead of after her
bridegroom.
Although Jeremiah
does not name the sins here, they are clear from the rest of the book. The
people of Judah have rebelled against God in many ways – notably by oppressing
the poor (a call to social justice) and by worshipping the gods of Canaan, especially
Baal (a call to spiritual purity). The key problem in their rebellion is
divided loyalty. They think that their worship rituals in the temple will
protect them, but God knows that they have given their allegiance to other
gods. God judges such rebellion relentlessly. As the closing verse of the
passage puts it, “I have spoken, I have purposed; I have not relented nor will
I turn back.”
1 Timothy 1
Paul is close to the end of
his life as he writes to Timothy, his “son in the faith”. In the first verses
of the chapter, he gives Timothy instructions for the younger man’s ministry.
Then, in the verses we read, Paul reflects on his own life.
·
Paul recognizes
that he had lived the kind of life that deserved harsh judgment. “I was”, he
says, “a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence.”
·
Paul recognizes
God’s mercy and love and grace at work in his life: “The saying is sure and
worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners – of whom I am the foremost.”
·
Paul is an
example of God’s grace at work in our lives, which leads to the kind of praise
that we sang in one of our hymns this morning, “Immortal, invisible, God only
wise”. God is perfect, and we are terribly flawed; yet God fills us with God’s
grace and holiness so that we can be with God forever.
This picture of God is
almost completely opposite from the way that Jeremiah describes God. What’s
going on?
An Attempted Synthesis
There is a fairly obvious
way to bring these two pictures together, whether or not we find it satisfying.
There is an anger towards others that grows from hatred of the other; this we
should ask God to purge from our hearts. Such anger also is far from the way
that Jeremiah portrays God. Instead, Jeremiah suggests the kind of anger that
goes with loving someone deeply and wanting the very best for them.
For example, using the
example that Jeremiah gives, a parent may show anger towards a child who deliberately
acts in ways that will hurt the child or others. The anger and hurt that the
parent feels are a direct outgrowth of parent’s love for the child.
I remember a day many years
ago when I was in Grade 11. I had dallied too long getting ready for school and
I missed the school bus. My mother had to drive me to school several miles
away, throwing the rest of her day off schedule. When I got home, my father
gave me a letter – two and half typed pages, in an envelope on which he had
typed, “To My Only Son, whom I love deeply.” The letter described my tendency
to wait until the last minute to do things and my tendency to make excuses for
choices that were clearly my fault. Dad was deeply grieved at personal habits
that he knew would make my life harder, and so he wrote me a strongly-worded
letter to help me to change. The depth of his feeling was the depth of his
love. I have that letter in my desk at home and pulled it out before writing
this sermon.
You can probably give us
other examples of far more difficult parent-child conversations, and you know
what I mean by saying that the depth of our hurt as parents is also the depth
of our love. Sometimes that hurt shows itself as anger. That’s what happens in
Jeremiah 4.
Another example from other
passages in Jeremiah – of an adulterous lover – is more graphic. God presents
the picture of a bridegroom whose bride spends their honeymoon pursuing other
men. Reversing the picture makes the same point: Any one of us would be both
hurt and angry if our spouse, husband or wife, would pursue another lover. We
know people to whom this has happened, and we know that the more you love your
spouse, the more such betrayal hurts.
What shows us clearly that
God’s love is deeper than God’s anger is the fact that God does not give up on
Judah, even when God brings the judgment of exile on the people. In the case of
an adulterous lover, our response is to end the relationship. Instead, God
works ceaselessly to restore the relationship. This is not the action of a God
whose essence is anger; this is the action of a God whose essence is love. In
this portrayal of God, Paul’s gratitude for grace make sense.
A final point before we
continue: Jeremiah describes the sin that leads to such anger as social and
spiritual. A basic sin in Judah at that time is the sin of greed and economic
injustice. The people thought that proper forms of worship would compensate for
their sin, and they persisted in worshipping Baal and worshipping Mammon (or
Money). I suspect that this sin is a point of connection with our society. We
also in Canada are given to the pursuit of money and wealth. This leads us to
the “Going Deeper” aspect of this sermon.
Going Deeper
The question of God’s love
and God’s anger is not just an academic exercise, designed to provide fodder
for a college dorm bull session. Serious issues are at stake, and the most
serious is the question of who is in charge of our lives. The title of this sermon
comes from a poem named Invictus by William Ernest Henley. The poem begins: “Out
of the night that covers me,/ Black as the pit from pole to pole,/ I thank
whatever gods may be/ For my unconquerable soul.” It ends with these words: “It
matters not how strait [narrow] the gate,/ How charged with punishments the
scroll,/ I am the master of my fate,/ I am the captain of my soul.”
Written in the 19th
Century, this poem expresses an indomitable spirit that many people admire. And
rightly so! Henley wrote the poem as he faced one physical problem after
another, including tuberculosis of the bones and the amputation of his left
leg. At the same time, I hear an echo of human pride as expressed in the words
of Milton’s Paradise Lost, when Satan
exclaims, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven!”
Henley celebrates the
indomitable human spirit that surmounts every challenge, closing “I am the
captain of my soul.” But is this something to celebrate? An indomitable spirit
based on the lordship of Jesus Christ is good, but one based on solely on the
self is simply pride. It is precisely this self-sufficiency that Jeremiah
challenged and that Paul renounced. One of Paul’s most common self-descriptions
was as “a slave of Christ”. There is a fundamental truth of life – that
everyone is a slave of something. None of us is really the master of our fate.
All of us will die. In the end, we can make nothing certain.
This is the question that
thinking about God’s love and God’s wrath drives us to: Who is your master?
Jeremiah puts it negatively: Because you [people of Judah] refuse to bow to
God, God will force you to bow! Paul puts it positively: Because he has
surrendered to Jesus, God has acted in grace and mercy and love to transform
him. Both of them ask us: Who is your master?
It is a harder question
than it seems. We are really good at hiding our deepest selves from ourselves.
It is also a more important question than we realise. Eternity hangs on the
answer.
Conclusion
We will come back together
in the Going Deeper time to talk about these questions, and about any other
questions or issues you may have. Meanwhile, I challenge each of us here this
morning to consider whether we are following the example of the people of Judah
– living for ourselves, expecting God to care for us because we go to church,
or the example of Paul – living for Christ, whatever it costs and wherever it
takes us.
I know what our forebears
would have said. They gave up everything to follow Christ faithfully. What will
you say? What will I say?
Steinbach Mennonite Church
15 September 2019
Text
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
11At
that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem: A hot wind comes
from me out of the bare heights in the desert toward my poor people, not to
winnow or cleanse— 12a wind too strong for that. Now it is I
who speak in judgment against them. …
22“For
my people are foolish, they do not know me; they are stupid children, they have
no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do
good.” 23I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void;
and to the heavens, and they had no light. 24I looked on the
mountains, and lo, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. 25I
looked, and lo, there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had
fled. 26I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, and
all its cities were laid in ruins before the Lord, before his fierce anger. 27For thus
says the Lord: The whole land
shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end. 28Because
of this the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above grow black; for I have
spoken, I have purposed; I have not relented nor will I turn back.
1 Timothy 1:12-17
12I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened
me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, 13even
though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I
received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, 14and
the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in
Christ Jesus. 15The saying is sure and worthy of full
acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am
the foremost. 16But for that very reason I received mercy, so
that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience,
making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal
life.17To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God,
be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
Focus
Many people see God
as a harsh judge and turn away. Some Scriptures sound like that is the case,
but is it really? Why does God judge so fiercely (as we read Jeremiah)?
Some Questions
·
What are the judgment passages of Scripture for (as in
Jeremiah)?
·
Are you satisfied with this way of bringing God’s anger and God’s love
together? Or does it seem to you that speaking of God’s anger simply
contradicts God’s love?
·
How can you or I tell who or what is the “master of your/my soul”?
·
When someone says, “Jesus is my Lord and Master”, how can you tell if
they are speaking the truth?
· How
can we become people who really follow Jesus with total allegiance?
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