In Isaiah Chapter 2, we have the prophecy of the “Day of the Lord”, which typically refers to the time of God’s final judgement on a prideful, rebellious mankind (Isaiah 2:12). The horrors of that time are presented most clearly in Zephaniah 1:2-18, wherein Zephaniah 1:15 reveals that it “is a day of wrath…”
From the time of the first man’s (Adam) prideful rejection of God’s purpose for and rule over his life, through that Day of the Lord described above, both the wrath of God and the mercy of God has and is being revealed in the midst of a rebellious mankind in which all have sinned and come under the just judgment of God, who apart from His mercy, will end up in Hell (Habakkuk 3:2) (Romans 3:23). As I noted in my previous post, both God’s wrath and mercy, are revealed throughout the Bible as God’s means of destroying man’s pride. In this post I will look at the glory of God’s great wrath and in the following the glory of His abundant mercy in crushing the pride of sinful mankind (Romans 1:18) (Lamentations 3:22-23).
The wrath of God refers to His active, passionate, personal and necessary expression of His perfect hatred and hostility, His righteous indignation and moral outrage toward sin – His resolute activity in punishing the sin He hates (Psalm 7:11-13) (Proverbs 11:21). It is His just and measured vengeance toward sinful men and angels who in our pride and rebellion have defied His righteous laws, slandered His holy character, despised His unfailing love and denigrated His infinite glory (Deuteronomy 32:35). In doing so we have brought nothing but corruption, destruction, disorder and death into God’s good and perfect creation (Genesis 1:31).
In the account of that creation, mankind, male and female, represented by Adam and Eve, are created in the image of God to display His beauty, His excellence, His magnificence, His glory in every aspect of their being. They are entrusted with the right and responsibility of ruling over, while enjoying all of God’s good creation (Psalm 8:3-8). They were given the incredible privilege of procreation, within the intimacy and joy of marriage, bringing forth other image bearers to extend the glory of God to the ends of the earth (Genesis 1:28) (Genesis 2:24).
Their allegiance to God, their trust in His love, their gratitude for His grace would be tested immediately by God, by Him giving them one commandment, one prohibition within all that He had created for them to freely enjoy (Genesis 2:15-17). And they utterly fail the test.
In the midst of the beauty, glory and wonder of God’s good creation, in the midst of the honor, glory and blessedness of life that God had freely bestowed upon them, they disobey God’s one command, pridefully believing the devil’s lie that they themselves could not just image God, but essentially become gods, with the freedom and ability to do as they please, whenever they please, however they please, accountable to no one, just like God (Genesis 3:1-5).
Upon eating from the forbidden tree, they immediately begin to experience the corruption and loss of all that God, in love, had blessed them with. The image of God in them becomes corrupted in every aspect of their being, such that the race that will come forth from them (us) will, from the moment of our conception, inherit that same sinful corruption and consequences (Psalm 51:5) (Romans 5:12) (Ephesians 2:3). The glory and beauty in which God had clothed them quickly fades, the peace, joy and intimacy they had with God and one another is ruptured. God puts them (and us) in their proper place as beings created by Him out of the dust they walked upon, proclaiming to them that it is to that dust they will surely one day return (Genesis 3:6-12) (Genesis 3:19).
In His wrath, God curses the earth that He created for their/our enjoyment, such that everything in it, from virus’, to weeds, to the weather, will oppose mankind in our attempts to exercise dominion over it just as this first couple and subsequently all mankind opposed God (Genesis 3:17-19).
Adam and Eve and ultimately all who will proceed from them are exiled from God’s glorious presence, no longer the objects of His intimate love but now subject to His wrath, having no means of their own of returning, as the sword of God’s divine justice will hang over their/our heads throughout human history (Genesis 3:23-24).
From that moment on, God, in His wrath, gives them and the prideful, sinful race that will proceed from them over to both the natural and judicial consequences of their/our prideful rebellion, all of which is described quite succinctly in Romans 1:18-31. Now spiritually dead, separated – cut off from the glorious life with God for which mankind was created, men and women will live in a sin-corrupted world filled with overwhelming misery, suffering and sorrow. Interpersonal strife and violence, political oppression and injustice, war and crime, natural and technological calamities, sickness and disease, the increasingly debilitating ravages of aging will all become the norm in this world, with physical death occurring at a rate of 100%. All of this was designed by God to humble our hearts and bring us to our knees, to repent of our sinful pride and submit our lives fully to the sovereign God who created us to know, trust in and enjoy His infinite goodness and unfailing love (Luke 13:1-5) (Psalm 31:19).
However, in the midst of His wrath and judgement, God displays His abundant goodness and amazing grace, which we are told in Romans 2:6 is meant to lead us to repentance; to turn from our self-centered, self-sufficient lives to lives centered on and dependent upon His infinite goodness, wisdom, power and love (Isaiah 30:18) (Psalm 103:8).
God graciously allows us to use a measure of the intelligence and creativity He endowed us with as image bearers to invent things and devices that help mitigate the impact of life lived in a sin-cursed world, allowing us to enjoy many of the good things God intended before sin entered His good creation, including such blessings as marriage and family, food and drink, beauty and nature. There will be men and women gifted by God with extraordinary talents and abilities that will benefit society and entertain the masses. However, it will be their glory that we will celebrate and not God’s, as we continue to worship and serve the creation rather than the creator who is the source of all goodness and blessing (Romans 1:21-25).
And it will be this disdaining of God as the source of our life and all good things in it, and our ongoing worship of self that will lead to His ever increasing wrath and judgement that will have its ultimate expression in Hell, where the prideful rebellion of all who are consigned there will be crushed forever (James 1:17) 1 Corinthians 4:6) (Romans 2:5-8) (Luke 16:19-25).
BUT GOD has another, more glorious plan for and means of crushing the sinful pride of mankind, which we will look into in my next post.
Grace and Peace ×