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You will have noticed when we read 7:1 that the anger of God burned against Israel.
I hope that as Bible believing Christians that we realise that God is more than just a God of love!
The character of God is a many sided thing, it has many facets:
God is a God of love (1John 4:12)
But the same letter goes on to show us also that:
He is just
He is light - which means he is holy and God gets angry at sin.
In fact no-one gets as angry as God! He is perfectly angry. And let me warn you that when God gets angry, he gets awefully angry and he gets awefully hard on you if you will not listen to him and walk in the light of his ways. Why? Because he is holy and as he made us in his image, he designed us to be holy to or we and others will get hurt.
Let’s dismiss a myth. God is not like an etherial grandparent. God is not so soft and inoffensive and ineffectual so as to react to your misbehaviour by patting you on your head and giving you sweets when you are wrong. NO. When God is angry, he can be terribly hard on you and do you know one of the worst things he can do? He can pull away his restraint on your behaviour.
Read Rom 1:18-32.
And today the anger of God burns. How do we know? Look around you! Look at the newspapers, the adverts, the TV programmes, the films we are being ‘treated to’. See their influence on the values of ordinary people in our communities and the values they reflect.
How far is that from the place, the life that God wants all people to enjoy?
It’s a world apart.
It’s a world away from the moral constraint given to humankind by God. And many are practicing and advocating a lifestyle which is a total abandonment of the moral constraint given to us by God for our benefit. Yet for many good people this has simply resulted in moral confusion.
Some sections cry out for the church to give a moral lead to the nation;
others cry out that the moral lead it gives is anachronistic - no longer relevent to society today.
e.g. Bishop of Reading controversy; people o/s church voice opinions about what the church should do (from the outside); Yet whe serial abuse/murder; integrity lapses in public life etc. they call for church to take a moral lead.
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