Who Warned You To Flee?

“Go, inquire of the LORD for me, for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that has been found; for great is the wrath of the LORD that is kindled against us, because our ancestors did not obey the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us.”  2 Kings 22:13

Wrath – Leon Morris, one of the world’s great Greek scholars, said something incredibly important.  “Unless we give a real content to the wrath of God, unless we hold that men really deserve to have the wrath of God visit upon them the painful consequences of their wrongdoing, we empty God’s forgiveness of its meaning.  For if there is no ill desert, God ought to overlook sin.  We can think of forgiveness as something real only when we hold that sin has betrayed us into a situation where we deserve to have God inflict upon us the most serious consequences, and it is upon such a situation that God’s grace supervenes.  When the logic of the situation demands that He should take action against the sinner, and He yet takes action for him, then and then alone can we speak of grace” (The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, p. 185). 

In 622 BC, Josiah, king of Judah, instituted far-reaching spiritual reforms based on the discovery of a copy of the Law.  When Josiah heard the content of the scroll, he tore his clothes in agony, because he realized that he and his people had been disobedient to the Law of the Holy One, and God was angry!  He knew that they all deserved God’s wrath, and unless they repented and God favored them again, they would surely experience the consequences.  The Hebrew word, hemah, means “great heat, rage or wrath.”  Did you notice that Josiah uses a very visual verb in association with this noun?  God’s wrath is kindled against us.  The great, unquenchable fire of the Holy God has been ignited and it will burn away everything that is opposed to God’s character.  King Josiah understood the consequences, and trembled for his life.  Do we?

You won’t find the wrath of the Lord preached much these days.  Higher criticism of the Bible sent God off to anger management classes so that we could “feel” better about our lack of righteousness.  You don’t hear sermons about the kindling of God’s anger.  Now we teach that God forgives even before we ask.  But disguising wrath as psychologically inappropriate for a “loving” God is dangerous theology.  It leads to behavior where sin is overlooked instead of confronted.  It leads to a Christianity of “nice” people rather than those who are obedient without personal regard for themselves.  Ultimately, it leads to a world that no longer needs God, since we are all perfectly capable of improving ourselves.  Right?

Remember what John the Baptist shouted at those religiously correct Pharisees who came to go through the baptism ritual.  “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”  It’s a question we might ask ourselves.  Do you want grace to swallow up your sin?  Then you will have to look into the center of God’s wrath and see the intensity of His hatred for the unholy.  You will have to see that you stand in the middle of that terrible maelstrom.  Then you will know what grace really means, that God overcomes His enmity with all that is unholy and rescues us in spite of who we are.  Grace saved me, but I didn’t deserve it.  I only have God to thank.