Every year I pray for God to give me a word or theme for Easter. I did the same this year. I have distinctly been told WRATH over and over again.
I am currently studying Noah and the flood and in it the author had us concentrate on how Noah repeatedly proves and the bible even states that he walked with God. The people around him were absolutely evil. So much so that God becomes sorry that he ever created mankind. God decides to start over with the one person(and his family) who has been walking with him. He builds an ark(for an amazingly long time) and they get on it with all the animals that God tells them to. I know I am watering down this incredible story but I want to get to the destruction part. It rains for 40 days and 40 nights until water completely covers the earth and then that water stays there for 10 months. I don't know that I have ever thought about what those scenes looked like. The dead people floating. The dead animals. The darkness. Trash floating everywhere. The sea creatures did not die so I imagine them eating and tearing flesh. Maybe people floated on things at the beginning trying to survive and Noah could not save them. He had to watch as they died. In my head when I imagined the scene before now I imagined grown men standing around drunk and yelling horrible things. That made it easier to think of them dying. But that wasn't it. It was everyone that died. Everyone. In a time where I have access to the Most Holy Place, call God our friend, and I have the Holy Spirit living inside of us, I tend to see God as so loving and gracious that the Old Testament God is hard to fathom. And that is the beauty of the cross. I believe with everything in me that God still has that wrath and that vengeance. But I believe with everything in me that God promised not to destroy us again, so he will not. And I believe that God the Father has chosen to allow Jesus and his precious death on the cross to satisfy that wrath. It didn't go away. It has just been suffered already. In those moments on the cross where Jesus felt the Father turn his face on him, when he bore every sin ever committed before and that ever would be after, when darkness fell over all the land...that was the same wrath Noah saw all around him. He saw God handle his business. On Good Friday Jesus handled business once and for all. I never concentrated much on the wrath that was satisfied for me. But I have this year. Every time my mind has drifted to praying about Easter this week it has been so much gratitude that I will NEVER have to experience that wrath. That I want have to know what that darkness is like. I won't have to know what that absolute feeling of destruction and despair is. God won't ever turn his face on me. He will not forsake me.
I hope you reading this have that assurance. If you don't at the end of your life, you will know that wrath. Hell is real and living without God for eternity will be absolutely miserable beyond what you and I can imagine. Jesus withstood it for you too if you will just accept his sacrifice. I think my praise on Sunday morning will be just a little different this week. My gratitude level will be up slightly more. I am so thankful for a God who reveals things to us through the Holy Spirit so that we can understand his character and who he is just a little more and so that it changes us and our response to him. He is so good.
"In Christ alone, Who took on flesh,
Fullness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones He came to save.
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied;
For ev’ry sin on Him was laid—
Here in the death of Christ I live."
IN CHRIST ALONE" WORDS AND MUSIC BY KEITH GETTY & STUART TOWNEND COPYRIGHT © 2002
I am currently studying Noah and the flood and in it the author had us concentrate on how Noah repeatedly proves and the bible even states that he walked with God. The people around him were absolutely evil. So much so that God becomes sorry that he ever created mankind. God decides to start over with the one person(and his family) who has been walking with him. He builds an ark(for an amazingly long time) and they get on it with all the animals that God tells them to. I know I am watering down this incredible story but I want to get to the destruction part. It rains for 40 days and 40 nights until water completely covers the earth and then that water stays there for 10 months. I don't know that I have ever thought about what those scenes looked like. The dead people floating. The dead animals. The darkness. Trash floating everywhere. The sea creatures did not die so I imagine them eating and tearing flesh. Maybe people floated on things at the beginning trying to survive and Noah could not save them. He had to watch as they died. In my head when I imagined the scene before now I imagined grown men standing around drunk and yelling horrible things. That made it easier to think of them dying. But that wasn't it. It was everyone that died. Everyone. In a time where I have access to the Most Holy Place, call God our friend, and I have the Holy Spirit living inside of us, I tend to see God as so loving and gracious that the Old Testament God is hard to fathom. And that is the beauty of the cross. I believe with everything in me that God still has that wrath and that vengeance. But I believe with everything in me that God promised not to destroy us again, so he will not. And I believe that God the Father has chosen to allow Jesus and his precious death on the cross to satisfy that wrath. It didn't go away. It has just been suffered already. In those moments on the cross where Jesus felt the Father turn his face on him, when he bore every sin ever committed before and that ever would be after, when darkness fell over all the land...that was the same wrath Noah saw all around him. He saw God handle his business. On Good Friday Jesus handled business once and for all. I never concentrated much on the wrath that was satisfied for me. But I have this year. Every time my mind has drifted to praying about Easter this week it has been so much gratitude that I will NEVER have to experience that wrath. That I want have to know what that darkness is like. I won't have to know what that absolute feeling of destruction and despair is. God won't ever turn his face on me. He will not forsake me.
I hope you reading this have that assurance. If you don't at the end of your life, you will know that wrath. Hell is real and living without God for eternity will be absolutely miserable beyond what you and I can imagine. Jesus withstood it for you too if you will just accept his sacrifice. I think my praise on Sunday morning will be just a little different this week. My gratitude level will be up slightly more. I am so thankful for a God who reveals things to us through the Holy Spirit so that we can understand his character and who he is just a little more and so that it changes us and our response to him. He is so good.
"In Christ alone, Who took on flesh,
Fullness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones He came to save.
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied;
For ev’ry sin on Him was laid—
Here in the death of Christ I live."
IN CHRIST ALONE" WORDS AND MUSIC BY KEITH GETTY & STUART TOWNEND COPYRIGHT © 2002
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