It is my strong conviction that believers should be reading the word. Recently Mark Batterson wrote, “When you open the Bible, God opens his mouth. When you close the Bible, God closes his mouth.” That entire post is well worth the 90 seconds it will take to read, and the 90 minutes (or more) it will take to digest.Every couple weeks we have a gathering of Bible readers, called 365 Forum, who bring their observations and their questions over the previous readings, which we discuss, and then I share a short introduction into what’s coming. From time to time I also want to use my blog to share some thoughts from our daily readings.
In 2 Chronicles 28 King Ahaz, Hezekiah’s father and all around bad guy, repeatedly chooses to reject God in favor of Baal, even sacrificing his own son. His God-ordained multi-stage punishment, according to the Scriptures, was defeat at the hands of Aram with many prisoners taken to Damascus, followed by defeat to the Northern Kingdom. In one day Pekah’s army killed 120,000 of Judah’s fighting men. The Israelites took plunder and prisoners back to Samaria, where they were met by Oded the prophet. This is the only mention of Oded in the entire Bible. He admonished them, “Because the Lord, the God of your fathers, was angry with Judah, he gave them into your hand. But you have slaughtered them in a rage that reaches to heaven. And now you intend to make the men and women of Judah and Jerusalem your slaves. But aren’t you also guilty of sins against the Lord your God (2 Chronicles 28:9-10)?” Oded was telling them that just because God was angry with Judah, that was not license for Israel to be abusive.
I was stung by the words of the prophet. How many times have I used God’s anger as an excuse to inappropriately express my own? That’s not to say that it was wrong for me to be angry but, like Israel, it’s easy for anger to slip into rage. In his insightful work The Prophets, Abraham Heschel writes: The prophets never thought that God’s anger is something that cannot be accounted for, unpredictable, irrational. It is never a spontaneous outburst, but a reaction occasioned by the conduct of man. Indeed, it is the major task of the prophet to set forth the facts that account for it, to insist that the anger of God is not a blind, explosive force, operating without reference to the behavior of man, but rather voluntary and purposeful, motivated by concern for right and wrong. [1] He goes on to say: There is no divine anger for anger’s sake. Its meaning is, as already said, instrumental: to bring about repentance; its purpose and consummation is its own disappearance. [2]
Read Paul’s charge in Romans 12:17-21. With the help of the Spirit, we are not to respond as our human natures urge, but to respond just the opposite. If someone has hurt us and is in need, even though we might be tempted to relish their position, we are told to reach out to them and relieve their pain.
Again, God’s measured, purposeful anger is never an excuse for our uncontrolled rage, which will result in, at the very least, our own need for repentance. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (Ro. 12:21).
[1] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 282.
[2] Ibid., 286.
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