Word of Salvation – August 2024

 

Righteous Anger; Awesome Grace

 

Sermon by Harry Burggraaf B.D. on Romans 1:18 + 3:21

Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 29:16-29
                                    Romans 1:18-20; Romans 3:21 – 26

 

It’s been a turbulent few weeks – Bali bombing, sniper kills ten, shooting at Monash, Chetnyan rebels hold 700 hostages.  Immense amount of anger in the world; racial, religious, relational.  We don’t know how to handle anger very well.  Least of all our own.  We’re probably most afraid of that.

It comes as a bit of a surprise then that the Bible tells us that God also is angry.  We would least expect it from God.  But unlike human anger it always has a redemptive focus and outcome.

TEXTS:

“God’s anger is shown from heaven against all the evil and wrong things people do.  By their own evil lives they hide the truth.  God shows his anger because some knowledge of him has been made clear to them… so people are without excuse” (Romans 1:18)

“But now God’s way of putting people right with himself has been revealed.  It has nothing to do with rules and laws… God puts people right through their faith in Jesus Christ…  everyone has sinned and is far away from God’s saving presence.  But by the free gift of God’s grace all are put right with him through Jesus Christ who sets them free.” (Romans 3:21)

Some time ago I did something stupid.  I mean really, really stupid.  I was driving to school and approaching an intersection I cut in on another car.  I gave the other driver very little warning, just a flick of the indicator and a quick change of lanes.  I didn’t even hear the screech of brakes of the car behind me.  But I sure felt the vibes of the guy at the wheel.

The stupid thing wasn’t just that I cut in front of another car but WHO was at the wheel.  He was a great big tough guy.  You know, faded blue singlet, big biceps, tattoos all over his arm and chest.  I should have picked on someone my own size.

And he was fuming.  Talk about ‘road rage’.  I could feel the anger right through the windows of both cars.

And then I added insult to injury.  I had to do something.  The chap was hot on my tail.  He was beside me in the next lane, and he looked as if he was conducting an orchestra, singing at the top of his voice.

Now this bit is really stupid.  In an effort to placate him I thought I’d try a sort of ‘sorry’ gesture.  You know, shrug of the shoulders, hands up in despair.  However I forgot to control certain fingers and it came something like (middle finger up).

Somehow the meaning of the apology didn’t communicate.  I noticed his face going red, then a deep purple.

What was I to do?  I had offended someone.  I had outraged them.  They were livid.  There was nothing I could do to pay for my sin.

I thought of putting my foot down and getting away.  But my Holden has a V6 and I noticed he had a V8, all hotted up.  The deep rumble just purred power.

Besides can you imagine the headlines, “Donvale Christian College Deputy Principal in high speed drag race along Springvale Road.”

So I decided to sweat it out.  I desperately prayed that the lights wouldn’t turn red at the next intersection.  There he was right beside me, steaming, livid.  Oh no!  Canterbury Road and the lights change to red.  Mr Big guy whizzes in front of me.  Opens the door.  Gets out of the car.

I quickly slip the locks on my car doors.

All sorts of things flash through my mind.  Articles I’d read about road rage fists through windscreen; people getting out sledge hammers… or worse, knives.  I remember with a sigh of relief that PM John Howard has outlawed automatics and semi-automatics; but what about pistols?

Would I be shot, or just clobbered?

Bang, bang, bang, on the window.  ‘Oh Lord, please let the lights change, let a nice policeman come along; let this guy have a heart attack; let Jesus return right now… anything!’

And then it hits me like a bombshell.  At that moment I am entirely at the mercy of this other person.  Only the nature of his character and his intentions stand between me and a bloody nose.

He had a right to be angry!

I had absolutely no excuse!

I could do nothing to undo my stupidity and error.

I could only pay for my sin.

I depended entirely on the goodwill of the other person.

GOD’S ANGER

“God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all the sin and evil that people do”, says the apostle Paul.  God IS angry at evil.

Is this reasonable?  Is this an honourable picture of God?

The wrath, the anger of God, is a terrifying phrase; people feel very uncomfortable using that sort of language about God.  Somehow in an age where toleration and acceptance and softer qualities are in vogue it seems somewhat demeaning, even primitive to speak of an angry God.  This section of Romans 1 is not very popular and I must confess I’d think twice about reading it at the dinner table if we had non-Christian guests.

People have always felt uncomfortable about the Bible’s teaching of an angry God.  In the first centuries of the Christian church, Marcion, one of the early heretics, denigrated the Old Testament because he felt its description of an angry God, punishing sin, was unworthy and conflicted with the love of God in Jesus in the New Testament.  So here, in Romans, Marcion just eliminated the words ‘of God’, so Paul is said to say “THE WRATH is being revealed from heaven” – a sort of impersonal, amorphous angry force.

Modern scholars tend to do the same thing.  C.H.Dodd claimed that although Paul often speaks of ‘wrath’, only three times does he refer to the ‘wrath of God’, and never of God being angry.  So they try to de-personalise the idea of God’s anger.  It is somehow a ‘wrath out there’ that comes into play when people do wrong things.

Even Luther is said to have found the idea of God’s wrath difficult.  He spoke of God’s love as ‘God’s own work’, but he spoke of his wrath as ‘God’s strange work’.

But there is a place for anger in this world and God is rightly angry at the way that humans treat him and his world.

God’s wrath has been described as “the holy revulsion of God’s being against that which is the contradiction of his holiness”.  Because he is God, because he is characteristically holy, God cannot tolerate sin, and the wrath of God is his legitimate annihilating reaction against sin.

Of course God is love.  But love is always angry at evil.

In the Deuteronomy passage it says that God’s fierce burning anger is because ‘people abandoned the covenant.  That life giving relationship God has with his creation – with humans, the masterpiece of his creation; with the earth and things; the relationship he has set people in with each other and with the earth.

So of course God is rightly angry at the way that humans pollute and destroy his world; ripping up forests and delicate ecosystems and squandering non-renewable resources as if they were going out of fashion.

God is angry at the terrorism that kills innocent people with bombs; he is also angry at the conditions of inequality and oppression that causes the same terrorism.

Of course God is rightly angry when people demean and belittle and damage other people, the crown of his creation, made in his very image.  How can God tolerate the plight of little kids dying of starvation because the political and economic systems we have created just don’t distribute food fairly?  How can God ignore violence in marriage, or abusive relationships, or gossip that destroys the integrity of another person, or the frivolous irresponsible ways people express their sexuality.

God is rightly angry when people find their meaning and significance in the products of his creation – work, leisure, things, wealth – rather than in the worship and service of the Creator.

God is angry when people violate the life giving, life nourishing covenant he has with his creation.

Of course we need to be careful not to confuse God’s wrath with the anger of humans.  The two have very little in common.  When we are angry it is often a fitful passion.  It is self-driven, often arbitrary, prone to irrational explosions of temper.

We get browned off because we’ve been overlooked, neglected or cheated.  Because we don’t get our own way…!

The anger of God is not a temperamental burst of emotion.  God doesn’t get angry because his will is denied.  He gets angry because the disobedience he sees always results in self-destruction.

We have a memorial garden at school for a teacher who died a few years ago in a horrible car accident.  It is a ‘sacred’ space.  Special to the memory of this teacher.

At the beginning of spring the sweet boronias and grevilleas in it burst into bloom.  One day we come to school and there are many of the plants snapped off at the roots, because some careless kid has jumped on them from the veranda above.

I am furious.  I have a right to be angry.  There is no excuse for such vandalism.

A teacher friend of mine was in a shopping centre with several levels.  At the top level he saw a young teenager with a MacDonalds thickshake, still half full, lean over and purposely drop it over the balustrade down on to a group of people standing below.  Thankfully it misses the people but splatters the content all over them.  He was furious, grabbed the offender and marched him down three levels to apologise and clean up.  He was rightly angry.  The young chap had no excuse.

We must not confuse the wrath of God with human anger but we can understand it, I think.

God is angry at the evil that ruins his world and especially at the evil that ruins his children.  Habakkuk writes, “His eyes are too good to look at evil; he cannot stand to see those who do wrong.”

What kind of a father would sit by and watch his child hurt himself, or hurt others?  What kind of God would do the same?

The apostle Paul says three things about God’s wrath…
 – it is right or ‘righteous’;
 – we have no excuse against it; and
 – his anger is absorbed in his grace.

GOD’S ANGER IS RIGHTEOUS

I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a movie or read a book where your overwhelming response is – ‘this is so unfair’; ‘why did nobody do something about this?’  ‘This makes me really angry.’

I have that sort of a reaction when I read about the horrific numbers of people dying of aids in southern Africa.  Why doesn’t someone do something about that?

Or closer to home, the Good Weekend runs an article on 30% of young offenders being sexually abused in the first week they are jailed.  In a civilised country like Australia?  Surely not?

Or some big name executive shrugging off the fact that he’s just sent his company bankrupt destroying the savings of thousands of small investors; well that’s the market place.

Or some middle aged guy running off with some young bird because his wife of thirty years no longer makes him happy.

Or a community of marginalised slum dwellers in Manilla displaced from their pathetically basic homes, because some rich company who has bought the support of corrupt politicians wants to build a new headquarters.

Surely this can’t be allowed?  Why doesn’t someone do something about this?

The wrath of God is righteous because it is love saying ‘this is enough, evil must be corrected’.  Humans cannot be allowed to continue to hurt themselves.  Because God is holy, there must be justice.  God’s anger is not first for punishment but for restoration; for putting things right again.  It is redemptive.

There is a dramatic scene in the book of Revelation of people who have been persecuted and been at the receiving end of humanity’s disobedience and evil.  They cry out ‘How long Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’

God’s response to the haunting question of those who have experienced the rough end of life is his wrath.  The exercise of his justice.

‘Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst… God will wipe every tear from their eyes.’

God’s wrath is righteous because it puts wrong things right.

WE ARE WITHOUT EXCUSE

The thing that made me most helpless with my road rage ‘friend’ was that I had no excuse.  I was wrong.  I knew you just can’t cut in front of people.  I knew it was dangerous.  I knew he had every right to be angry.

Paul says we have no excuse before God.  Humans know what God is like and they know the way the world operates.  God has revealed himself in Creation and Creation shows us that there is a created and moral order that we violate at our peril.

The Psalmist writes: ‘The heavens tell the glory of God and the skies announce what his hands have made’.  Every star is an announcement.  Each leaf is a reminder.  The seasons are a book.  The patterns of creation are a lesson.

Hundreds of years ago the great church father Tertullian wrote: ‘it was not the pen of Moses that initiated the knowledge of the Creator… the vast majority of mankind, though they had never heard the name of Moses, to say nothing of his books, knew the God of Moses nonetheless…  Nature is the teacher; the soul is the pupil.  One flower from the hedgerow… one shell from any sea… will they speak to you of a mean Creator.’

It isn’t that God hasn’t spoken.  We often fail to listen.  Just look at the world, says Paul, you don’t even need the scriptures, to tell you that suffering follows sin.  Break the laws of agriculture – your harvest fails.  Break the laws of architecture – your building collapses.  Break the laws of health – your body suffers.  Act dishonestly and deceitfully – your relationships will wither.  Play with infidelity and your marriage will fail.  Fill your mind with garbage and your moral convictions will weaken.

Look at the world.  See how it is constructed.

One of the tragedies of many of the worlds so called natural disasters is that they are often the product of the misuse of the environment.  Land is deforested and landslides occur.  Rivers are diverted or dammed and floods kill thousands of people.

God has a right to be angry when we violate his order of things, because we are without excuse.

RIGHTEOUS ANGER IS ABSORBED IN AWESOME GRACE

As I stood at the stop lights I realised that the only thing between me and a bloody nose was the good sense, the generous disposition, the undeserved restraint, the forgiving character of the offended driver.  I had no excuse.

Paul writes “God’s anger is shown from heaven against all evil”… “but”, ah that great divine ‘but’.

‘But now God’s way of putting people right with himself has been revealed… nothing to do with rules and laws… God puts people right through their faith in Jesus Christ… by the free gift of God’s grace all are put right with him through Jesus Christ who sets them free.”

God’s righteous anger is absorbed in his awesome grace.  It is God’s incredible mercy, his free gift of grace, his justice exercised in the sacrifice of his Son that sets us free from the natural and inevitable consequences of the stupid and wrong things we’ve done.

I think it is not until we experience and acknowledge the rightness of the wrath of God that we can fully appreciate the magnitude of what he has done and continues to do for us in Christ.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience of being released from the rightful consequences of something that you’ve obviously done wrong.  You know you’re in the wrong, and you know you should pay for it and then, ‘wow’ you’re set free, forgiven.

We had it once on the way to Sydney; the Hume highway; 124k in a 100k zone; oh no a policeman!  $165 maybe $210; 4 or 6 demerit points.  And the policeman says – ‘I’ll let you off with a warning this time.  What a delicious feeling.  Oh rapture.  Oh joy!

When you catch a kid out at school.  He knows what he is doing deserves a detention, rubbish duty, some nasty consequence.  And you let him go, you set him free.  The delighted smile on his face.  Gratitude supreme.

The free gift of God’s grace in Christ sets us free from his wrath.  And it sets us on a path of new obedience.  A life which attempts in the power of the spirit to be a good covenant partner.  Faithful to the way God has designed his world.

“How great are God’s riches!  How deep are his wisdom and knowledge!  Who can explain his decisions?  Who can understand his ways?  To God be the glory for ever!”

Amen.