The wrath of God

Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God.  Your sins have been your downfall.  --Hosea 14.1

Have you ever thought that God hated you?  That He was doing everything He could to see you fail?  Sometimes the popular message that "God is Love" rings hollow in your ears.  You may feel like you are experiencing the Wrath of God more than His unfailing Love.

During the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, a man named John Calvin, a theological leader in France and later in Geneva, actually taught that God hated some people and loved others, and there was nothing you could do to move from one group to the other.  The five points of his theological foundation are sometimes known by the acronym T.U.L.I.P.:

• Total Depravity, or Total Inability.  This is the concept of Original Sin.  All men are born into sin, and they have no ability to reach God on their own.
• Unconditional Election.  If God has destined you to become His follower, there is nothing you can do about it.  You can't lose your Salvation, because it was ordained by God.
• Limited Atonement.  Not everybody is going to be saved.  Jesus died for all the ones that were destined to become Christians, but the others cannot claim Christ's atoning blood for themselves, as God has rejected them.
• Irresistible Grace.  Again, if God has destined you to become a Christian, you can't choose not to participate.
• Perseverance of the Saints.  This is akin to Security of the Believer.  God has ordained your Salvation, and no one or nothing can separate you from it.

This is how some interpret the 15th chapter of the book of Jeremiah.

Then the Lord said to me: "Even if Moses and Samuel were to stand before me, my heart would not go out to this people.  Send them away from my presence!  Let them go!  And if they ask you, 'Where shall we go?', tell them, 'This is what the Lord says: Those destined for death, to death; those to the sword, to the sword; those to starvation, to starvation; those for captivity, to captivity.'" (Jeremiah 15.1-2)

No one was more favored by God than Moses and Samuel.  Yet God told Jeremiah that even the intercession of these two saints could not sway Him from His plan to punish them.  A bit of background.   Verse four says that all these curses were due to what Manasseh, king of Judah and son of Hezekiah, did in Jerusalem.  In I Kings 21, we get this bio:

Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty five years.  His mother's name was Hephzibah.  He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. (I Kings 21.1-2)

These detestable practices included rebuilding temples to foreign gods that his father had destroyed, erecting alters to Baal and symbols of the goddess Asherah.  He worshiped the stars, and desecrated the Temple of God, even going so far as to offer his son as a sacrifice to the gods.  He practiced sorcery, and consulted mediums.  Bad king, bad decisions, bad actions.  Because of this man's actions, God's wrath was poured out upon the whole nation.

But that's not all.  The wrath of God not only extended to the entire nation, but also to the third and fourth generations.  Manasseh's son Josiah was king after Manasseh died, and he tried to reverse some of the evil practices his father had brought into Jerusalem.  He tore down the altars to Baal, and removed the Asherah poles.  He killed all the priests devoted to the foreign gods.

Nevertheless, the Lord did not turn away from the heat of his fierce anger, which burned against Judah because of all that Manasseh had done to provoke Him to anger  So the Lord said, "I will remove Judah also from my presence, as I removed Israel, and I will reject Jerusalem, the city I chose, and this temple, about which I said, 'There shall My Name be'." (I Kings 23. 26-27)

How depressing!  Even if Josiah followed the Laws of God, the Wrath of God was so great that there was no blessing.  The Bible does not say that the people of Israel followed Josiah, or whether they were too happy about losing the idols they had worshiped for the last half-century.  Tearing down their beloved shrines and killing their priests may not have endeared the king to his people.  This may be why God did not turn away His wrath.  And the son and grandson of Josiah did not follow in the ways of God.  Again, this passage may be used to teach Calvinist doctrine.

But I don't think so.  See, God had already sent the prophets to preach that a Remnant of Israel would return to Israel, and rebuild Jerusalem.  These were the people who Jeremiah said were destined to be taken into captivity.  Just like water is purified by being flushed through a filter; just like gold is purified by fire, the people of Israel were purified by the fiery Wrath of God, and by being forced into captivity.  Only those who were faithful to God and to their Jewish faith would survive.  Not because God hated the people, but because He hated their sinful practices.  God wanted their behavior to be honorable to Him; if their behavior did not honor God, then there were punitive consequences.

I think if God were a psychologist, He would be a behaviorist, not a Freudian.  That makes me an Armenian theologically, not a Calvinist.  I believe that God always gives us an out, a way to repent.  In Jeremiah 15, after God had destined the evil men to death, starvation, sword or captivity, he said this:

The Lord said, "Surely I will deliver you for a good purpose; surely I will make your enemies plead with you in times of disaster and times of distress." (Jeremiah 15.11)

This verse tells me two things.  First, all people--all individuals, all families, all nations--will experience hard times.  It is how we respond that matters.  If we honor God, He will deliver us.  Not only will He deliver us, he will draw others to Himself by making an example of you.  Secondly, I don't think this message was to Jeremiah only.  I don't think that the prophet was the only one of the Elect, while the others who heard this message were eternally damned from the beginning of time.  I believe everyone has a choice to follow God.  The blessing may not come in this life, but if you have faith in God, your blessing will come.

I heard a story about a businessman in a sporty convertible that got lost.  He was zipping along the Farm to Market roads, trying to read his map and get back to the freeway.  As he was distracted by his GPS, he drove his car into a ditch, and try as he might, he couldn't get it out.   So he started walking toward the nearest farmhouse.  He knocked on the door, and asked the farmer if he could help pull his car out of the ditch.  The farmer led the man to his barn, and there they found an old, broken-down, blind mule. "This is Warwick, the mule," the farmer said.  The man wondered how this dilapidated old mule could help him, but he watched as the farmer led him to the car.  After tying the yoke to the car, and securing the mule to the yoke, the farmer yelled, "Pull, Ned!  Pull, Henry!  Pull, Frank!  Pull, Warwick!"  The businessman watched in amazement as the lone mule puled the car out of the ditch.  "That's amazing," said the man.  "But tell me, why did you call out the names of four mules, when only one was there?"  The farmer reached over and scratched Warwick behind the ears.  "Well, Mister, it's like this.  Ole Warwick is blind, see.  If he knew he was the only one pulling, he wouldn't be able to drag the car out by himself.  But if he thinks he has a whole team pulling with him, then there's no limit to what he can do."

It may seem like you are alone.  It may seem like your family, your nation, even your whole world is experiencing the Wrath of God.  But don't get caught up in what you can see.  Like Ole Warwick, the mule, do your best for God, and He will multiply your efforts.

The ways of the Lord are right; the righteous walk in them, but the rebellious stumble in them.  (Hosea 14.9)