Yesterday my daughter came in from outside and informed me that her and my son had been playing with a Frisbee and it had landed in the middle of the street. I walked out the front door and saw my son standing at the edge of the street waiting to run out and get the Frisbee. I yelled at him to stop and ran out to the edge of the street with him. You see we live on an extremely busy street on top of a hill. As I stood there, even I was a little intimidated to run out into the street to pick up the Frisbee. My son kept jumping forward like he was about to run out into the street to get it as he yelled, "I can get Dad! I can get it Dad!" I keep telling him "No, I will get it." After several exchanges, I yelled at him, "Stop talking back to me and get into the house."
Anyone driving by at that specific moment may have thought that I was a terribly angry and abusive father. What they wouldn't have understood was the cause of my anger. I kept visualizing my son running out into the street and getting killed by a car. What made me so angry was the thought of the pain that my son would suffer because of his foolish defiance of my commands.
"God isn't mad at you!" is something I have heard as sermon titles and book titles. It seems to be popular these days to paint God as this cosmic hippie singing "all we need is love." All we talk about is God's love, grace and forgiveness. Those things are truly amazing and should be celebrated, but the issue is that you cannot talk about love without talking about hate. I don't truly love my children, if I don't hate the things that will harm them.
Ephesians 5 says "Don't be fooled by those who try to excuse these sins, for the anger of God will fall on all who disobey him." God being angry at people who disobey him isn't something we like to think about much or talk about much in our messages. It isn't the type of message that will become a best selling book at Wal-Mart.
It is so important that we understand this aspect of God's word. God does get angry at us. Whether we are Christians are not, whether we go to church or not, whether we read are Bible or not, God gets angry when we disobey him. Why? Is it because he is a cosmic kill joy that only cares about people following the rules? NO! It is because he is a loving heavenly father. He gets angry when you sin, because sin causes death. He wants you to experience life!
It is so important that we have an accurate view of what God thinks about sin. He doesn't have a "who cares, it's no big deal" attitude. His word tells us that we are fools if we try to convince ourselves or anyone else that sin really isn't a big deal.
As a follower of Christ I strive to love the things God loves and hate the things God hates. God hates sin. It makes him very angry, because of the physical, emotional and relational death it brings to his kids who he loves so much. If you are trapped in sin, God is angry. It isn't because he hates you. Quite the contrary, it is because he loves you so much.
Maybe it is time to stop trying to run off and do our own thing but to truly trust the voice of our heavenly father.
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