Message 09-30-07

 

Series:            What I’ve Always Wondered

Scripture:            Romans 2:1-11

 

Title:                                        The Wrath that Is and Is to Come

 

I was in conversation with a man who decided to go to seminary after years of life in another profession. We were discussing theology.

 

He brought up Jesus’ parable of the lost son. We read this story a couple of weeks ago as part of our service here. John, the man I was speaking with, commented that this was a story of salvation without sacrifice. There was no suffering in the story of the prodigal son. He was just offered free salvation.

 

At that time I was working as a youth pastor and had been doing youthwork for years, and I was stuck in a bind because I wanted to disagree with him. He was telling me that God was all loving and kind and gentle and ready to receive us back and that the story of Jesus dying on the cross was not revealing anything about God. Jesus died, he was suggesting because people killed him, not because God needed Jesus to die in the scheme of things.

 

I had a choice to make in that moment. I could be rude or I could try to speak in as thoughtful a way as possible. I tried thoughtfulness. I asked, “So you don’t see any suffering in the story? You don’t think anyone suffered?”

 

No, he said, that’s the point.

 

I struggled because I could understand why he didn’t recognize suffering. I had worked with all three of his children. I had walked alongside each of them as they arrived at 16, 17, 18 years old as each of them imploded in self-destruction. I had walked alongside his old son as he removed himself from his father’s life cutting off all connections. I had walked alongside his daughter as she ran away from home, got pregnant and married without his participation. I had driven his youngest son home from youth group meeting after youth group meeting because no one had come to pick him up. No one looked for him to get into the house. No one called when he was late. When the youngest son began small actions that threatened a move toward suicide, when he jumped out of moving truck for example no one showed up to meet me in the hospital. No one called me to find out how to handle these kids. No one began looking for the youngest son until 2 days after he ran away. After he stole a car and had an accident and was put in jail… then his father showed up.

 

I stood looking at this dad for a moment and realizing why he couldn’t see suffering in the story of the lost son. He never suffered at the loss of his own children. They were intrusions into his life. He couldn’t see the father in Jesus’ story aching over the loss of his son.

 

Jesus told us stories to help us understand God. John, the dad I just told you about, didn’t understand God from Jesus’ story. He didn’t really pay attention to Jesus’ story. He made up the way God was supposed to be according to his own attitude. God didn’t care about evil, really. God was just loving and loving meant being warm and nice and ready to receive back the wayward child. They could get back into the house. He couldn’t recognize the heart that was aching to bring the child even further in.

 

The question we’re looking at today is: We seem to hear a lot about God’s love and understanding and feel good things… but does He hate sin and will He judge?

 

We’re going to look into the wrath of God today. It’s not a popular subject, but it is probably one of most important things we need to understand about God. If we can understand the wrath of God we can get a lot of things into perspective in life. If we can understand the wrath of God we can understand the love of God. 

Some people think that those things are contradictory. My hope is that you won’t think so when you leave today. As I read the Bible what I find is that at the core of the wrath of God is God’s love.

 

You’ll hear me say that at the center of the universe is a loving heart. And we read in the Bible that God is love. You’ll hear Jesus say that God so loved the world that he gave his only son, but let’s look for a moment at a story that includes that image, a story that Jesus told.

 

Jesus tells us that the kingdom of God is like a man who rented out his vineyard and when he sent his servant to collect the rent the renters beat the man up. The man sent other servants to collect the rent and they beat those servants up as well and a couple they even killed. Then the man sent his only son, Jesus said, because the owner said to himself ‘Surely they will respect my son’. But when the renters saw the son was coming they decided to kill him so they could take over the vineyard. What did the owner do? What did Jesus say? Did the owner throw up his hands and say, “Oh I wish you hadn’t done that, but I guess you win. You own the vineyard now.” No, Jesus said the owner got his men together and they strapped on their swords and they rode in and slaughtered the renters.

 

Does that sound like God? Some people would like to avoid words like this or stories like this even when they come from Jesus. We want to say, that’s not the way God is. That’s not what God is like.

 

This has been a problem for Christians since the beginning. One of the first people ever called a heretic was a man named Marcion. Marcion said that the God of the Old Testament wasn’t really a god. He was what he called a demiurge – kind of like one step up from a demon. He was powerful and created the world, but he was mean and vicious. He got angry. He was wrathful. So Marcion threw out the Old Testament and said, the only people who got it right was Jesus and Paul, but he threw out certain words of Jesus. He threw out certain words of Paul. One commentator wrote, the only Christian in the second century who understood Paul was Marcion, but we must take note that Marcion misunderstood Paul.

 

Marcion didn’t like a god who wasn’t all loving, who wasn’t just nice. So he made up his own god. It’s important to catch that. He made up a god. He didn’t accept the God of the Bible, not the God of Jesus and not the God of Paul.

 

One of the hardest things we can do is put the words of the Bible out in front of us and see what they are actually saying as they lay alongside each other. How can God so love the world that he gives us his son, but still express himself in wrath? How can that be the same God?

 

As hard as it is to believe I have to share that there were times when my children disobeyed. One day one of our daughters acted out. It surprised me and I gave her a warning. She was about 12 years old and I told her that if she did it again – whatever it was – she wouldn’t be able to go to the movies with us. Now this was a big deal. It was Christmas time and my wife’s entire family was together – five brothers and sisters, all the spouses, children, grandparents, even a couple of friends. We were all going to the movies together. And my daughter did whatever it was again. I couldn’t believe it. I mean I was stunned. So, I said, “Okay, you’re not going to the movie.” All the adults came down on me. That was too mean. That was too harsh. Finally one of the aunts said, “Well, if she’s not going then I’m not going either. I’m staying here with her.” And I said, “Well you can stay if you want, but you’re not staying with her. She’s going to be up on her bed. She can read or nap or just sit there, but she’s not hanging out here and watching TV or something. You can’t be with her even if you stay.” The adults flipped out on me. But we went to the movie and my daughter stayed home.

 

Everyone enjoyed the movie but as we left they all jumped all over me again. They couldn’t believe I did that. But nobody cared that she’d done anything wrong. No one was worried about her being disobedient. When we got home I went to my daughter and expressed my dismay – why would she choose that? I told her that if she did it again she wouldn’t be able to go to the movie – why choose what she did over the movie? She didn’t have an answer and she said she was sorry and we made up and cleared things up.

 

You know what?  I never was really angry during that time. I was never really upset, but I know that my daughter lived in my wrath while I went off to the movie with the rest of the family. I know that she felt my wrath the whole time we were separated.

 

But this only gives us the merest glimpse into the wrath of God because you see my friends we’re not talking about acting out or being disobedient in some small way.

 

We serve a God who knows the names of every one of the 40,000 children that will die of starvation today. We serve a God who knows the names of every person struggling to make a dollar today. And when I say a dollar I mean a dollar because they will only make about 200 dollars this year. Every person who is going under the scalpel of Sylvia Campbell in the northeast hills of Haiti today – God knows. God knows the ones who won’t make it to where Sylvia is working and God knows the ones who will die because they can’t reach her.

 

Last Sunday there was an article on the front page of the New York Times about large investment firms that buy up nursing homes and then sell off even up to 60% of the management to private companies. One company then hires staff while another handles medicine and doctor visits while another company handles maintenance. In these kinds of places, and the example they used was the Habana Health Care Center here in Tampa, the quality of care diminishes substantially. Do you know who God cares about there? He cares about all those elderly people with bedsores and no one to pay attention to them. He cares about the staff who are frustrated because they aren’t getting enough support to get their jobs done now. He cares about the investors who are allowing their profit margin to crush their hearts. You see my friends, God is love and so God rages against our heartlessness.

 

I hear people say that God is not angry. God is not someone to be feared. God is loving. But what they are actually saying is they believe that God is apathetic. Do you know what Marcion said about God? Marcion said that the God Jesus revealed was “incapable of anger, entirely apathetic and free from all affections.” Do you understand why the Christian community called Marcion a heretic? It’s because people who follow Jesus know that God hates sin. He is not apathetic. We have a God who is raging in anguish over people who would let 40,000 children die when all they need is clean water and a little food.

 

Our heartlessness is so big and the problems are so huge that we are overwhelmed when we try to do anything, so what did God do? He sent his son. God gave us prophet after prophet to tell us to stop doing damage to each other, to warn us to stop. So God sent his son to receive all the consequence of our misuse of each other. The consequences of our sin don’t fall on us. They fell on him. That way our hearts can soften and grow stronger at the same time. That way we can learn the love at the center of the heart of God’s wrath. We also get the escape.