Video Transcript: Divine Wrath

We come now to our last session on 'The Attributes of God' and we come to the 'Wrath of God'. I think we can say that it seems like we've barely begun to study these  attributes of God and we know that there's still yet so much more of God to learn. But I think this has been a good introduction for us and a refresher and a reminder of these  distinguishing qualities that are in the character of God. No study of the character of  God would be complete without this study of the wrath of God. The wrath of God is an  expression of His holiness. The wrath of God really is by necessity of His holiness  because God is infinitely pure and because God hates sin and loves righteousness.  God cannot be neutral towards sin. There is in God a settled, determined indignation  against all that is unholy. There is divine wrath that by necessity must react against all  that does not conform to the purity of His holiness. I think of the wrath of God as really  like a black velvet backdrop. When I met my wife and it was time for us to be engaged, I went to the jeweler. I went into this store in downtown Dallas that was up on a high  floor in a high-rise building and walked into this room. And the jeweler pulled out a  diamond. This diamond looked okay to me. It was a karat and I was somewhat  pleased with it but not wowed with it. And then he did this. He pulled out a black velvet  backdrop – wise man – and he slid that black velvet backdrop under this diamond and  there must have been overhead a hundred lights and it was as though every light in  that entire room was just sucked through the diamond because of the black velvet  backdrop and that diamond now suddenly looked like it was on fire, like it was alive. It  was ready to leap off the counter. What made the difference? It was the black velvet  backdrop that caused the diamond to glow so brilliantly. Well, so it is the black velvet  backdrop of the wrath of God. When we take His love and we take His foreknowledge  and we set it on top of this black velvet backdrop, it causes the love of God to burst  forth and to shine and for us to sing “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved  a wretch like me” because wretches deserve hell. Wretches deserve judgment.  Wretches deserve what this black velvet backdrop would represent. So as we come to  this subject on the wrath of God, it's necessary in order for us to be excited about the  grace of God that we do not reeive what we deserve. We are given what we do not  deserve. It causes our hearts to leap out of our chest as we study the love of God. If  you tell me God so loved me and I did not know the bad news and I did not know  about this, I would probably almost just yawn and say “so what?” But if you tell that I'm under a curse and that I'm condemned that the wrath of God abides on sinners every  moment of every day and then you tell me the good news of the Gospel of Jesus  Christ. You just got my attention and I'm not walking, I'm running to the cross. I am  fleeing to the Lord Jesus Christ to enter in to His saving wounds and enter in to His  receiving arms. Now, this study on the wrath of God and it will be intense and it will be  focused but it is a necessary part of God's holiness and it also serves to cause us to  cherish the grace and the love and mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ. This word for  “wrath” in the Old Testament, there are many words that are translated for “wrath.” I'm  not going to bother to pronounce them all in the Hebrew language but let me just give  you some of these definitions just to give you a feel for what this word wrath means. I  mean sometimes we think of it as just like, well I guess, someone lost their temper or  something or someone got angry. This word 'wrath' is an extraordinary word. It means  to “become heated up,” “to burn with fury.” It's how it's used in Numbers 25:3 towards 

idolatry on the part of God. The word refers to a burning fierce wrath; God's anger  burning against Israel when they worshipped the calf. The word means to be bitter as  God who was fierce in His bitter anger toward ungodly nations (Zachariah 1:15). The  word is also used with connotations of venom and poison meaning it's fatal, it's lethal  when it is unleashed. The word is used synonymously with fury. In fact in the Bible, the word is often used of the flaring of the nostrils of an animal who is so furious as it's  ready to charge, that the animal would begin to – intense anger and fury, being ready  to be unleashed by almighty God as sinners will be in the blazing hot oven and  furnace of His wrath. We come to the New Testament. The word means a fury that  reaches a fever point, a fever pitch. God never loses control of Himself. When man  becomes angry, he can enter into a time of anger where he loses control of himself.  God never loses control of Himself and that's what makes this so scary. It is so  calculated. It is so right. It is so holy. It is so necessary. Another word means “was  used of man's breathing violently when pursuing an enemy in great rage.” I think we  have the idea. There's other words that I could share with you. It's a very manifest  word with many different words in the Bible, almost as if you're holding up a diamond  and no one side of the diamond can really capture the whole of it. There are many cuts that make the circumference in the round and God's wrath is so multi-faceted and so  multilayered and so intese towards the wicked that even no one word captures the  whole. What are categories of God's wrath? One, there's His 'abiding wrath', that right  now the wrath of God abides upon sinners. Roman 1:18 says “For the wrath of God is  pured out upon sinners.” It is abiding upon sinners. Right now it's hovering over the  head of sinners ready to be unleashed like a violent thunderstorm at any moment.  Jonathan Edwards captured the imagery of this in that sermon “Sinners in the Hands  on an Angry God” as though at any moment, the wrath of God would be poured out  like a dam break. Right now His mercy is holding back his wrath. But the more that His mercy holds back the wrath, it's as though the river is building and building and  building and the pressure is intensifying, the longer the longer that it's held back and  when at last that dam of mercy gives way, the wrath of God will come like a tsunami  upon sinners and drown them and overwhelm them. What a picture this is that God is  angry with the sinner. Psalm 5:6 says “the Lord abhors the man of bloodshed and  deceit.” In the previous verse, “You hate all who do iniquity.” God must because He is  a God of wrath. Psalm 7:11, “God is a righteous judge and a God who has indignation  every day.” God is preparing to judge the sinner and He is ready now to judge the  sinner. That's why in Psalm 2:12, the Psalmist says “Do homage to the Son.” The King James says, “Kiss the Son, lest He become angry and you perish in the way for His  wrath may soon be kindled.” This abiding wrath of God, Romans 1:18 that I quoted  earlier, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and  unrighteousness of men.” This is a serious thing. That wrath is already now abiding  over the heads of sinners. What must they do? Just die and it will be unleashed.  Second, not only abiding wrath but 'catastrophic wrath.' There are individual times in  human history when God brings severe judgment upon the human race and it is an  expression of His wrath. That is exacly what took place in Genesis 6-7 when God  caused the flood, of His -- a literal flood – but of His wrath to drown the whole world  and save but Noah and his family. At Sodom and Gomorra in Genesis 19:24, the Lord 

rained on Sodom and Gomorra brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. Can  you imagine that? It was raining fire and brimstone and sulfuric acid and as it fell upon  people, it just literally consumed them. They became like shish-kebabs and just were  burning to death before they then went in to the eternal fire. God sent the plagues and  death to Egypt and struck dead the firstborn of Israel it was a judgment of God and His wrath. And on and on we go even droughts and famines that God sent throughout  human history. It was a severe judgment of God because they would not hear the word of God and because they kill the messengers who brought the word of God. God  brought the hammer down hard and rightly so, and I want to say we are a nation ripe  for judgment as we have been flaunting the Word of God. Third, there is 'consequential wrath' which is God's wrath revealed in the principle of sowing and reapingand when  sinners sow their seeds of immorality and impurity and all kinds of licentiousness there is a reaping. And that reaping comes as an expression of wrath as there are  expressions of the AIDS disease and all kinds of sexually transmitted diseases that  are spreading about those who do that which is not natural and men after men and  women lusting after women and there is a consequential wrath of God that comes  down upon those who violate His word. “Do not be deceived,” Galatians 6:7, “God is  not mocked; whatsoever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to  his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption.” Hosea 8:7, “For they sowed the wind  and they reaped the whirlwind.” That is God's consequential wrath. It is brought on by  flagrant disobedience by an individual, by a culture, by society, by a nation. There's a  line in the sand that God draws across which you may not go any further without  reaping the consequences. Fourth, there is 'abandonment wrath'. God's wrath also  expresses itself when the sinner after repeatedly rejecting the knowledge of God and  the Gospel of Christ is abandoned by God and turned over to the pursuit of his or her  own sins. It's a terrifying hing when a man is turned over by God to his own sins and  God will no longer bring influences to bear upon that life. Proverbs 1:24 speaks of this  wisdom calling out in the streets. “I called and You refused. I stretched out my hand  and no one paid attention, You neglected all my counsel and did not want my reproof, I will also laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your dread comes, when your dread  comes like a storm in your calamity like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come  upon you. Then they will call on Me but I will not answer; they will seek Me diligently  but they will not find Me. Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear  of the Lord, they would not accept My counsel, they spurned all jy reproof, so they  shall eat at the fruit of their own way and satiated with their own devices.” What did  Hosea say abou Ephraim, God through Hosea? “Ephraim is joined to idols, let him  alone.” Turn out the lights, the party's over. Romans 1:24, “because when they knew  God, they did not receive Him as God.” They rejected the knowedge of God. Verse 24, “Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity so that their  bodies would be dishonored among them.” Verse 26, “For this reason, God gave them over [that's abandonment] God gave them over to degrading passions.” Women  exchanging the natural functions for that which is unnatural – lesbianism. And then in  verse 28, “and just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave  them over to a depraved mind to do those things which are not proper.” There is no  way back to God when God abandons a person, a culture, a nation. You want to go in 

that direction? God says I'll give you a shove in that direction and you may go the way  of your own choices. Fifth, there is 'eschatological wrath'. That means the wrath of the  last days. That means the wrath surrounding the final hour of human history  immediately preceding the return of God's Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. That last time in history is known as the great day of God's wrath, the great day of the wrath of the  Lamb and they will run into caves and say 'Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of the  wrath has come'. And who is able to stand? What a day that will be as Jesus comes  back. You know the hallelujah chorus is in Revelation 19 as all of heaven is rejoicing  that finally the wrath of God is being poured out. The martyrs under the altar of God  crying out “How long, oh God? How long until you avenge our blood?” As if to say,  'They took our blood, God, you take their blood.' That day will come at the second  coming of Jesus Christ. That door will open in heaven and there will be a white stallion that will come out of that door and Him who sat upon it is faithful and true and out of  His mouth comes a sharp two-edged sword and on His garments, it is stained with  blood and it is not the blood of Calvary, it is the blood of His enemies. It is inescapable  as He comes back and He will tread down the nations with the fierce wrath of God the  Almighty. When He comes back, there will be a display of wrath like this world has  never seen. The global flood in Genesis 7 will seem like a Sunday school picnic  compared to the fury that will be unleashed in the last day. But sixth and finally, there  is 'eternal wrath'. There is the wrath of hell. There is eternal fire in hell. Hell is a place  of eternal fire. It will be the torment of the damned. They will long for just one drop of  water to touch the tip of their tongue. There will be the weeping and gnashing of teeth.  There will be a holocaust that will go on forever and ever and ever as sinners are  thrown into the furnace of His fury and into the oven of His rage as He will pour out His wrath. He will say to those on His left 'Depart from me, accursed ones, into the eternal  fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels'. These will go way into  eternal punishment. Revelation 20:14, 'then death and Hades were thrown ibto the  lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire and if anyone's name was not  written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.' I cannot conceive of a  more terrifying imagery that drowning yet never drowning, yet ever drowning in the  lake of fire. I said this was the last wrath, but there is one other wrath. There is  'redemptive wrath' as Jesus upon the cross as he bore our sins suffered the wrath of  God for you and me that you and I would never be subject to the condemnation and to the wrath of Almighty God. So strong was this wrath upon Calvary's cross, thousands  of men had been crucified, only one suffered the eternal wrath of God upon that cross. So great was it, Jesus cried out “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?” as  He suffered the torment of the damned in that three-hour period of time from noon until three o'clock in the afternoon as He bore my sins. He pulled the veil of darkness over  the entire universe and the whole universe went black as He suffered in our place  upon the cross. Great is the wrath of God. Every soul will either be damned in hell or  will be pardoned in Christ, but eternal wrath will be poured out upon every person for  their sins. For we who are the elect, that wrath was poured out upon our  representative head, the Lord Jesus Christ, as He suffered in our place so that you  and I would never go to the lake of fire.