Tag Archives: wrath

DO NOT MESS WITH GOD

Bible Study, ,

DO NOT MESS WITH GOD

Sun and moon stood still in the heavens at the glint of your flying arrows, at the lightning of your flashing spear. In wrath you strode through the earth and in anger you threshed the nations. You came out to deliver your people, to save your anointed one. You crushed the leader of the land of wickedness, you stripped him from head to foot. With his own spear you pierced his head when his warriors stormed out to scatter us, gloating as though about to devour the wretched who were hiding. You trampled the sea with your horses, churning the great waters (Hab. 3: 11-15).

Of whom was the prophet speaking here?

In graphic, vivid, poetic language and with emotional ecstasy he described God’s victory over the Pharaoh and the land of Egypt. God swept through the land with plague after plague, stripping away everything in which the godless Egyptians put their confidence. Using the powers of the natural world, He destroyed their agriculture, their livestock, their infrastructure and finally their firstborn because Pharaoh refused to honour Him and obey His instruction.

God, invisible though He is, is not to be trifled with. He is unstoppable in His wrath against those who defy Him and destroy His people but he is also unstoppable in His mercy towards those who fear Him. This is the amazing thing about our God. When the Bible describes Him as “for” those who fear Him it means that He bends all His energies and provides all His resources to support those who honour Him and uphold His cause.

When puny man takes God on, he gets more than he bargained for. Pharaoh tried it and lost. By the time God was finished with him, his land was in tatters, his people in disarray and his once mighty army lifeless corpses floating in the Red Sea. God defended His people as fiercely as a mother bear her cubs by destroying those who came against them.

Sennacherib, ruler of Assyria, the cruellest and most violent nation on earth, tried to swallow up little Israel in the days of Hezekiah and Isaiah and came off worst. He challenged God and God took him on, leaving his 186,000-strong army lying dead in their encampment outside Jerusalem. Sennacherib himself perished at the hands of his own sons while he worshipped his idol god.

Nebuchadnezzar, ruler of Babylon, thought he was God and demanded worship or else  . . . Three young Hebrew men refused to bow down to his image and paid for their disobedience by being thrown into a seven-times-heated oven. Instead of burning, though, their ropes burned and they walked freely in the fire in the company of their God. Nebuchadnezzar had to admit defeat and call them out because they were indestructible in the presence of God.

Goliath, giant warrior champion of the Philistines, tried it too and lost his head in the effort. Stripling teenager David, not even a seasoned soldier but a keeper of sheep, accepted his challenge and, unarmed except for a sling and a stone, sank a pebble into the forehead of the challenger, leaving him face down in the dirt and as dead as a doornail.

Make no mistake, when God is for His people, He is for us. No matter how badly things go for us when the world takes us on, we shall come up trumps in the end. We have the many stories in the God’s history book and the many promises of God that evil will never overcome God or His people.

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? (Rom 8: 31).

God is just. He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fie with His powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ 2 Thess. 1: 6-8).

Reminiscing led Habakkuk to go on to an expression of confidence that has echoed down the ages. More of that tomorrow . . .

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

A WILD CELEBRATION!

Bible Study, , ,

A WILD CELEBRATION! 

A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet on shigionoth.

“Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord. Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy (Hab. 3: 1-2).

What is the meaning of shigionoth?

“Shiggaion, from the verb shagah, “to reel about through drink”, occurs in the title of Psalm 7. The plural form, shigionoth, is found in Habakkuk 3:1. The word denotes a lyrical poem composed under strong mental emotion; a song of impassioned imagination accompanied with suitable music; a dithyrambic ode.”

http://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/shiggaion/

A dithyramb is a “usually short poem in an inspired wild irregular strain” http://i.word.com/idictionary/dithyramb

Why am I probing the meaning of shiggionoth? I believe it is significant to explore the wild emotion of Habakkuk’s prayer. This was his response to the revelation God gave him regarding his problem. This was far more than an intellectual issue. What he wrestled with touched him to the core of his being. Why did God seem not to care about the moral mess his people were in?

God’s response shook him because he was not anticipating the horrifying thought that not only did his holy God tolerate the actions of heathen nations against His people, He actually admitted to being directly responsible for raising them up to punish Israel. How could He? It was as though Habakkuk was betrayed by a trusted friend. His second dilemma was even worse than the first. What God was doing was unthinkable – He was in bed with the enemy!

Only when God revealed the final phase of His reply did the prophet get it. Aha! God placed every individual, heathen or Israelite, on the same footing – accountable to Him and responsible for his actions. No one was off the hook. His people could not hide behind their collective covenant relationship with Him and the heathen could not use the excuse that they were God’s instrument for dealing with His people.

It was this truth that sent the prophet into a frenzy of anticipation. He remembered God’s deliverance of His people from slavery and His judgment on Egypt. This great event in the history of His people marked the beginning of their life as a nation. In graphically poetic language, he related the effects of God’s coming on the natural world and on the enemy who seemed invincible.

With his confidence in the sovereignty of his God restored, he celebrated God’s mighty victory over the Egyptians. Surely, just as He fought for His people over their oppressors then, He would stand by them again against the Babylonians when His purposes for them were complete.

God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. His glory covered the heavens and His praise filled the earth. His splendour was like the sunrise; rays flashed from His hand, where His power was hidden. Plague went before Him; pestilence followed His steps. He stood, and shook the earth; He looked and made the nations tremble. The ancient mountains crumbled and the age-old hills collapsed – but He marches on forever (Hab. 3: 3-6).

God is unstoppable in His power. Nothing stands in the way of His march towards fulfilling His purposes. He demolishes every natural obstacle with ease. Even the mighty waters give way when He passes by.

I saw the tents of Cushan in distress, the dwellings of Midian in anguish. Were you angry with the rivers, Lord? Was your wrath against the streams? Did you rage against the sea when you rode your horses and chariots in victory? You uncovered your bow, you called for many arrows. You split the earth with rivers; the mountains saw you and writhed. Torrents of water swept by; the deep roared and lifted its waves on high (Hab. 3: 7-10).

He proceeded to review the horrendous and systematic destruction of Egypt through the eyes of a worshipper. From the other side of the Red Sea, in the land of Midian His people watched God come in majestic splendour to sweep away the Egyptian army through the writhing waters of the Red Sea.

As the prophet remembered, he worshipped. It was this God, this mighty Sovereign whose power was unstoppable, who would intervene again to rescue His people from the devastation of the Babylonians. Just as Egypt has served God’s purposes and then were crushed like bugs in God’s hand, so He would mete out judgment on another nation which thought it was God.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide

The Power Of The Cross – The Atoning Sacrifice For Our Sins

Gospel, , ,

THE ATONING SACRIFICE FOR OUR SINS

God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement (propitiation), through the shedding of His blood – to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance He had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished – He did this to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. (Rom. 3: 25-26)

A sacrifice of atonement, more accurately translated “propitiation” – what does that mean? It is a truth about the blood of Jesus that is not spoken about much these days. Forgiveness – yes. Propitiation – no. Although it is in the Bible, we ignore it because we have no idea what it means.

Propitiation has to do with the wrath of God, something we don’t like to think about because it conflicts with our idea of God’s love. How can God love us and be angry with us at the same time?

“In the first three chapters of Romans, Paul makes the argument that everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, is under the condemnation of God and deserving of His wrath (Romans 1:18). Everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). All of us deserve His wrath and punishment. God in His infinite grace and mercy has provided a way that His wrath can be appeased and we can be reconciled to Him. That way is through the sacrificial death of His Son, Jesus Christ, as the payment for sins. It is through faith in Jesus Christ as God’s perfect sacrifice that we can be reconciled to God. It is only because of Christ’s death on the cross and His resurrection on the third day that a lost sinner deserving of hell can be reconciled to a holy God. The wonderful truth of the gospel is that Christians are saved from God’s wrath and reconciled to God not because “we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10)”

(http://www.gotquestions.org/propitiation.html – retrieved October 2015)

In order to understand the meaning of propitiation, we must understand the implications of sin. Sin is much more than just the bad things we do that God does not like. Sin, in the Bible involves everything that contradicts God’s perfection. This includes things like disease, deformity and death; bloodshed or the disruption of anything that God created. Even the mildew in the houses of the Israelites had to be atoned for by sacrifice because it was something less than perfect.

Imperfection of any kind is an affront to the perfection of God’s nature. The wrath of God is  His settled disposition of anger directed towards sin.

“Wrath is defined as “the emotional response to perceived wrong and injustice,” often translated as “anger,” “indignation,” “vexation,” or “irritation.” Both humans and God express wrath. But there is vast difference between the wrath of God and the wrath of man. God’s wrath is holy and always justified; man’s is never holy and rarely justified. . . 


In the Old Testament, the wrath of God is a divine response to human sin and disobedience. Idolatry was most often the occasion for divine wrath. . . The wrath of God is consistently directed towards those who do not follow His will (Deuteronomy 1:26-46; Joshua 7:1; Psalm 2:1-6).

“he New Testament also supports the concept of God as a God of wrath who judges sin. The story of the rich man and Lazarus speaks of the judgment of God and serious consequences for the unrepentant sinner (Luke 16:19–31). . .

“The wrath of God is a fearsome and terrifying thing. Only those who have been covered by the blood of Christ, shed for us on the cross, can be assured that God’s wrath will never fall on them. “Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through Him!” (Romans 5:9).”

(http://www.gotquestions.org/wrath-of-God.html – retrieved October 2015)

Since God is holy/love. His wrath must be appeased and therefore demands the death of the sinner, but His love cries for mercy. How could He be both just in punishing sin and, at the same time, the justifier of the sinner, declaring him not guilty and allowing him to go free?

God’s solution was Jesus. He came into the world as the Son of God, a human being born without sin because He was conceived, not by a human father but by the Holy Spirit. He lived a life of perfect obedience to the Father. Since He had no sin of His own, His death was unjustified unless He became the substitute for sinners.

God’s wrath against sin was directed at Jesus. Death was the culmination of everything that ,sin could throw at Him, which He absorbed into Himself without rebellion or retaliation. When God’s wrath was spent, Jesus died – but He rose from the dead because death could not hold Him. Unlike sinful man, His death was not for His own sin.

God’s wrath was completely satisfied. Sin’s debt had been paid in full. Sin was atoned for – God was propitiated, and He was free to absolve every sinner from the guilt of sin. Both just and the justified of those who have faith in Jesus.

This is the power of the cross.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

For more details, check my website:

http://luellaannettecampbell.com/

 

 

Do Not Mess With God

Bible Study, , , ,

DO NOT MESS WITH GOD

Sun and moon stood still in the heavens at the glint of your flying arrows, at the lightning of your flashing spear. In wrath you strode through the earth and in anger you threshed the nations. You came out to deliver your people, to save your anointed one. You crushed the leader of the land of wickedness, you stripped him from head to foot. With his own spear you pierced his head when his warriors stormed out to scatter us, gloating as though about to devour the wretched who were hiding. You trampled the sea with your horses, churning the great waters (Hab. 3: 11-15).

Of whom was the prophet speaking here?

In graphic, vivid, poetic language and with emotional ecstasy he described God’s victory over the Pharaoh and the land of Egypt. God swept through the land with plague after plague, stripping away everything in which the godless Egyptians put their confidence. Using the powers of the natural world, He destroyed their agriculture, their livestock, their infrastructure and finally their firstborn because Pharaoh refused to honour Him and obey His instruction.

God, invisible though He is, is not to be trifled with. He is unstoppable in His wrath against those who defy Him and destroy His people but he is also unstoppable in His mercy towards those who fear Him. This is the amazing thing about our God. When the Bible describes Him as “for” those who fear Him it means that He bends all His energies and provides all His resources to support those who honour Him and uphold His cause.

When puny man takes God on, he gets more than he bargained for. Pharaoh tried it and lost. By the time God was finished with him, his land was in tatters, his people in disarray and his once mighty army lifeless corpses floating in the Red Sea. God defended His people as fiercely as a mother bear her cubs by destroying those who came against them.

Sennacherib, ruler of Assyria, the cruellest and most violent nation on earth, tried to swallow up little Israel in the days of Hezekiah and Isaiah and came off worst. He challenged God and God took him on, leaving his 186,000-strong army lying dead in their encampment outside Jerusalem. He himself perished at the hands of his own sons while he worshipped his idol god.

Nebuchadnezzar, ruler of Babylon, thought he was God and demanded worship or else  . . . Three young Hebrew men refused to bow down to his image and paid for their disobedience by being thrown into a seven-times-heated oven. Instead of burning, though, their ropes burned and they walked freely in the fire in the company of their God. Nebuchadnezzar had to admit defeat and call them out because they were indestructible in the presence of God.

Goliath, giant warrior champion of the Philistines, tried it too and lost his head in the effort. Stripling teenager David, not even a seasoned soldier but a keeper of sheep, accepted his challenge and, unarmed except for a sling and a stone, sank a pebble into the forehead of the challenger, leaving him face down in the dirt and as dead as a doornail.

Make no mistake, when God is for His people, He is for us. No matter how badly things go for us when the world takes us on, we shall come up trumps in the end. We have the many stories in the God’s history book and the many promises of God that evil will never overcome God or His people.

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? (Rom 8: 31).

God is just. He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fie with His powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ  (2 Thess. 1: 6-8).

Reminiscing led Habakkuk to go on to an expression of confidence that has echoed down the ages. More of that tomorrow . . .

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com or www.kalahari.com in paperback, e-book or kindle format, or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Check out my blogsite at www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

A Wild Celebration!

Bible Study, , , ,

A WILD CELEBRATION!

A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet on shigionoth.

“Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds,  Lord. Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy (Hab. 3: 1-2).

What is the meaning of shigionoth?

“Shiggaion, from the verb shagah, “to reel about through drink”, occurs in the title of Psalm 7. The plural form, shigionoth, is found in Habakkuk 3:1. The word denotes a lyrical poem composed under strong mental emotion; a song of impassioned imagination accompanied with suitable music; a dithyrambic ode.http://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/shiggaion/

A dithyramb is a “usually short poem in an inspired wild irregular strain” http://i.word.com/idictionary/dithyramb

Why am I probing the meaning of shiggionoth? I believe it is significant to explore the wild emotion of Habakkuk’s prayer. This was his response to the revelation God gave him regarding his problem. This was far more than an intellectual issue. What he wrestled with touched him to the core of his being. Why did God seem not to care about the moral mess his people were in?

God’s response shook him because he was not anticipating the horrifying thought that not only did his holy God tolerate the actions of heathen nations against His people, He actually admitted to being directly responsible for raising them up to punish Israel. How could He? It was as though Habakkuk was betrayed by a trusted friend. His second dilemma was even worse than the first. What God was doing was unthinkable – He was in bed with the enemy!

Only when God revealed the final phase of His reply did the prophet get it. Aha! God placed every individual, heathen or Israelite, on the same footing – accountable to Him and responsible for his actions. No one was off the hook. His people could not hide behind their collective covenant relationship with Him and the heathen could not use the excuse that they were God’s instrument for dealing with His people.

It was this truth that sent the prophet into a frenzy of anticipation. He remembered God’s deliverance of His people from slavery and His judgment on Egypt. This great event in the history of His people marked the beginning of their life as a nation. In graphically poetic language, he related the effects of God’s coming on the natural world and on the enemy who seemed invincible.

With his confidence in the sovereignty of his God restored, he celebrated God’s mighty victory over the Egyptians. Surely, just as He fought for His people over their oppressors then, He would stand by them again against the Babylonians when His purposes for them were complete.

God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. His glory covered the heavens and His praise filled the earth. His splendour was like the sunrise; rays flashed from His hand, where His power was hidden. Plague went before Him; pestilence followed His steps. He stood, and shook the earth; He looked and made the nations tremble. The ancient mountains crumbled and the age-old hills collapsed – but He marches on forever (Hab. 3: 3-6).

God is unstoppable in His power. Nothing stands in the way of His march towards fulfilling His purposes. He demolishes every natural obstacle with ease. Even the mighty waters give way when He passes by.

I saw the tents of Cushan in distress, the dwellings of Midian in anguish. Were you angry with the rivers, Lord? Was your wrath against the streams? Did you rage against the sea when you rode your horses and chariots in victory? You uncovered your bow, you called for many arrows. You split the earth with rivers; the mountains saw you and writhed. Torrents of water swept by; the deep roared and lifted its waves on high (Hab. 3: 7-10).

He proceeded to review the horrendous and systematic destruction of Egypt through the eyes of a worshipper. From the other side of the Red Sea, in the land of Midian His people watched God come in majestic splendour to sweep away the Egyptian army through the writhing waters of the Red Sea.

As the prophet remembered, he worshipped. It was this God, this mighty Sovereign whose power was unstoppable, who would intervene again to rescue His people from the devastation of the Babylonians. Just as Egypt has served God’s purposes and then were crushed like bugs in God’s hand, so He would mete out judgment on another nation which thought it was God.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com or www.kalahari.com in paperback, e-book or kindle format, or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Check out my blogsite at www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com