“Yet I persistently sent to you my servants the prophets, saying, ‘Oh, do not do this abomination that I hate!’ But they did not listen or incline their ear, to turn from their evil and make no offerings to other gods. Therefore my wrath and my anger were poured out and kindled in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, and they became a waste and a desolation, as on this day.” Jeremiah 44:4-6.
Why does it seem that God is angry and so punitive in the Old Testament? Jeremiah 44 captures with amazing concision the reason for God’s actions toward His people. There are five reasons why God “appears” different in the Old Testament compared to the New Testament.
- God was completely faithful to His covenant relationship with Israel. God was clear about the nature of His relationship to Israel. He was faithful to His Word and how He would bless Israel and when He would discipline them.
- When Israel disobeyed God, He persistently reached out to them time after time after time by appealing to them to repent and return to Him. God demonstrated divine patience with His people, even when, as Jeremiah 44 clearly points out, they would not listen.
- Israel was incorrigible regarding their sin. They not only ignored God’s ongoing appeals to repent, but they were unashamed to keep on indulging in sinful behavior that often outperformed the sin of pagan nations.
- Israel mastered the ability to harden their hearts to God’s truth. They quickly ignored God and pursued the religion of the cultures around them. They set up idols in their heart and rejected God.
- Israel constantly ignored God’s holiness and righteousness. Because they had a myopic view of God, they made excuses about their sin rather than repent out of a fear of the searing and consuming reality of His purity and holiness. They never grasped the terrifying reality of His righteousness.
After exhaustive efforts to call Israel to repent, God disciplined them diligently, constantly intensifying His efforts to provoke His people to abandon their sin and return to Him. God afflicted His people with defeat and ultimately being destroyed by foreign nations and exiled because of the toxic nature of their sin.
When we have a low view of God’s holiness, righteousness, and purity, it becomes easy to make excuses for sin and justify evil. Our arrogance permits sinful behavior, and we act surprised that God would be disappointed in us for our behavior. Israel often became more like the pagan cultures than influencing the world with the power of God’s righteousness.
What should surprise us is not the intensity of His wrath on sin, but His profound patience with His people when they refuse to repent of sin and are unashamed to indulge sin and evil. His mercy, patience, kindness to pursue us in spite of our hard hearts, our self-indulgence to justify bad behavior and disobedience is shocking beyond imagination. What is shocking is His persistent, unrelenting loyal-love to His people.
Pastor Brad
