I Am Slow to Anger

Well everybody we are in for a treat today because we have a special guest speaker, Jay Kim. He was here two years ago and was such a blessing to our congregation. We wanted to have him back again. Jay is currently the lead teaching pastor at Westgate Church in San Jose. Prior to that he was a teaching pastor at Vintage Faith right up the road from us and what he would probably want you to know. Well a couple things first of all he authored this excellent book Analog Church. It's been so well received in the Christian community I encourage you to check it out after this service. But most importantly Jay is married to Jenny and they have two young children and it is just a delight to have him here with us this weekend. Would you give a warm TLC welcome to Pastor Jay Kim.

Thank you guys. Thank you guys so much. Can you hear me okay? Yeah fantastic. It's good to see you. It's great to be back. Like Mark said I was here a couple of years ago and you know one of the first things I said when I was last year was just a big thank you to all of you as not as a pastor but just as a fellow follower of Jesus. And I understand not everybody here and not everybody watching online would consider themselves that. But for me as a follower of Jesus it is such a comfort and a joy and tremendous encouragement watching you all from afar. The way you share the love of Jesus in real tangible ways. The way you shine light into dark places in Santa Cruz County and beyond. And so just know that just from one person to all of you I am constantly cheering you guys on.

And your pastor René is a hero of mine and your team here Mark and Val and Elizabeth leading worship and so many others. I just have I hold you all in high regard. So I am honored to be with you today. A couple of months ago René emailed me and he said hey Jay I'd love to have you come back to Twin Lakes and speak sometime this summer. And I was like of course of course I would love to be back and hang with your people you know. And I was like what do you want me to talk about God's love or God's grace or his compassion. What is it René? And René emails back and he's like Jay I would love for you to come and talk about God's anger. Right? And I'm like oh yeah totally like casual light summer topic. Right? Let's talk about God's anger.

And you know on the outset talking about God's anger doesn't seem like a fun thing. And it really isn't. It's a little bit awkward. It's a little bit tricky. However if you just hang with me I think we're gonna discover together at the end of this entire thing that there is immense hope. I know this sounds like a paradox but there is immense hope for us when we consider what the Bible actually tells us about God's anger. And for the last few weeks you all as a community those of you in the room and those of you watching online you all have been journeying through this brand new series God's Guide to God. I love the title of the series because the series is exploring two verses in Exodus 34:6–7.

Actually most biblical scholars believe that Exodus 34:6–7 is the most quoted Bible passage by the Bible. Almost 30 times in just the Old Testament alone this passage Exodus 34:6–7 are quoted in other parts of the Bible. And one of the reasons why it is quoted so often is because it is in fact God's Guide to Himself. In these two verses God describes who He is and what He is like. And so this exploration, this journey we are on together in these two verses are of utmost importance because what we think about when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

A.W. Tozer in his book The Knowledge of the Holy he famously begins the book with this statement that what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. This is true whether you are a passionate follower of Jesus or an atheist or something in between. If you are an atheist and if you are and you're joining us here today we are thrilled you're here you are always welcome here. And maybe you are an atheist and in your mind you think when you think about God you just think nothing. There is no God. Well that actually is the most important thing about you because it frames your reality. It tells you what life is all about. It informs the way you live in and through the world.

And if you're a follower of Jesus and when you think about God you think about God the Father who sent His Son Jesus so that we might have life and life to the full now and on into eternity. Well if that's what you think about God that's the most important thing about you. It frames your reality. And so this series God's Guide to God is of utmost importance because what comes to our minds when we think about God who we think God is and what we think God is like is the most important thing about us. It will frame your reality. It frames the way you live your life and move in and through the world.

And so let's begin with the passage Exodus 34:6–7. I'll just read it to you in its entirety. "And He," God, "passed in front of Moses proclaiming the Lord the Lord the compassionate and gracious God." You've explored those two words in the past few weeks. "Slow to anger, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving, wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet He does not leave the guilty unpunished. He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation." Now again there is a lot here which is why it's an entire series.

Today what I want to do is focus on these three little words, slow to anger, slow to anger. Let me be honest with you. I am certainly glad that God is slow to anger. But to be honest I don't quite know how I feel about the angry part. That God gets angry. That's not as comfortable. It's certainly not all that comforting for me, at least on the surface. So let's work our way backwards here. Let's first talk about anger. Just a few thoughts about the anger of God. God's anger, it is often called His wrath in the Bible. Those two words are synonymous in the scriptures. God's anger or His wrath. God's anger or wrath are mentioned more than 600 times in the Bible you guys. You all came here to church for an encouraging message and here's this guy that you don't know telling you God gets angry more than 600 times in the Bible. And you're like, "Why did I come today? Today's the wrong day. Where's René? He's way more encouraging."

Okay, here's the thing. Yes, God's anger or wrath are mentioned more than 600 times in the Bible. And yes, that is a lot of anger. That is a lot of wrath. However, every single time we see God's anger in the Bible there is almost always a particular set of circumstances which evoke God's anger. What this means is that God does not randomly arbitrarily get angry. What this means is that God is not naturally angry. What this means is that God's natural inclination or disposition is not one of anger. God's anger or His wrath, yes, it comes up more than 600 times in the Bible, but it is always the result of a particular set of circumstances.

I could show you example after example, but let me just show you one passage from Psalm 78 which I think sort of encapsulates the usual normative set of circumstances which bring about God's anger or His wrath. This is Psalm 78:56–59. The psalmist is telling the story of the Israelites as they journey through the wilderness out of slavery in Egypt and into the promised land. What's really fascinating about this is the passage that we are studying during this series, Exodus 34. Those are words God speaks in the midst of this journey. And the psalmist is reflecting back on that journey and the psalmist says this, "Yet they," they being the Israelites, "tested the most high God and rebelled against Him. They did not observe His decrees but turned away and were faithless like their ancestors. They twisted like a treacherous bow for they provoked Him to anger with their high places." High places in the ancient world were places where people would go to worship idols or false gods. They moved Him, God, to jealousy with their idols.

Here's the key. When God heard, when God heard all these things, He was full of wrath or anger and He utterly rejected Israel. Okay, I share this one passage with you because if you were go, if you were to go to all of the 600 plus other places in the Bible where we see God's anger or His wrath, what you would discover is a very similar sort of situation. Every time we see God angry, we see these sorts of circumstances, these sorts of really broken choices that broken sinful humans make. I mean let's just recap Psalm 78. The Israelites test God, they rebel against God, they fail to observe God's instructions, they turn away from God, they are faithless toward God, and they provoke God with their idolatry. I mean look at the list. God didn't just wake up one morning on the wrong side of the bed. He didn't just go to the kitchen and realize He was out of milk for His Cheerios and now He's just kind of ticked off today and now He's gonna take it out on us.

That's not how God's anger or His wrath works. God is not short with us because He's quick-tempered. God's anger and His wrath do not bubble up to the surface because He just arbitrarily decides one day that He doesn't really like you that much. God's anger comes about always after a long series of brokenness and sin, does all sorts of destructive stuff in us. And on the tail end of all of those broken sinful choices that you and I are so familiar with, I'll just readily admit this to you, surprise, surprise, I am a sinful human being. I make bad choices sometimes. I sometimes find myself trekking down the path that leads toward my own demise and destruction, rebelling against God's plan for His own glory and for my flourishing as a beloved Son. And in those circumstances we see God's anger and His wrath. It isn't random. It isn't arbitrary. In fact I would suggest to you that the consequences of God's wrath or His anger are squarely upon our shoulders.

This is Isaiah 3. It says, "The look on their faces," and He's talking about sinful broken people like us. "The look on their faces testifies against them. They parade their sin like Sodom." Sodom was this ancient city known for their sinful broken destructive tendencies. "They do not hide it. Woe to them." Listen, look at this line. "They have brought disaster upon themselves." God's anger, God's wrath is not random. It is not arbitrary. It certainly is not His natural disposition. God doesn't wake up most mornings and decide that He's just going to be really angry with us. In fact God's anger is actually a loving consequence of human rebellion against God's plan for His own glory and for our flourishing. Let me say that again. God's anger is a loving consequence against human rebellion, against God's plan for our flourishing.

Now you might ask the question, well like how is anger loving? But if you think about it for just a few moments, you know how it's loving. I spent about 10 years as a youth pastor working with high school students and middle school students and eventually college students. And during my 10 years there was a student in our youth ministry. His name was Michael and he was a beloved kid in our youth ministry. A beautiful family, several siblings who were also in our youth ministry. And he was this great kid and about halfway through high school he began running with the wrong crowd at school. And that's a pretty common thing but this wrong crowd was like really, really wrong. I mean they led him down a path leading to literal destruction. Michael found himself by the time he was a sophomore in high school an addict. He was addicted to drugs and not just like everyday teenager drugs, like really, really destructive stuff. Literally on the path to his own physical, spiritual, emotional demise. And his family, his mom, dad, his siblings, his friends, me, we were heartbroken.

And after many conversations, after lots of prayer, by the time he was a junior in high school it got so bad we decided that the appropriate thing to do would be to have an intervention. Like a literal one of those, I'd never been a part of one of these before, but an actual intervention with like his therapist and all sorts of people in this room. And I still remember sitting in this room with Michael who was surrounded by people, men and women who loved him, who had nothing but his best intentions in mind. Let me tell you, let me describe to you what that room was like. That room was full. It was overflowing with anger. I mean there was yelling and screaming and crying and tears and tension and anxiety and push and pull and arguing. Now does that rub any of you the wrong way? Maybe there are better methods, right? Maybe you're a psychologist or a counselor and you're like, "Ah Jay, I would have done it a different way." Sure, but does it rub you as like ethically wrong that there would be an emotional response of anger in an environment like that? No, because anger is sometimes the natural and in many ways the most loving instinctive response that we can have when someone we love is clearly walking down a path leading to their own demise.

I have a six-year-old and a three-year-old and just this past week my three-year-old son punched my six-year-old daughter in the arm. Now if you had been a fly on the wall and you saw me look at my son and say, "Oh Simon, you punch your sister?" You know what man, you do you, you know? You just, you do you. What would you think to yourself? You would think, "I don't think Jay really knows how to be a dad." Because the most loving thing I can do in that situation is not lean toward tolerance. We live in an age of blind tolerance where it's like absolutely unacceptable to speak any word that reeks even a spidge of judgment. How dare you tell another person that their choices might be wrong or the path they are on might be destructive. How dare you? Just let me do me and let you do you. That's the cultural ethos of our day. And I would suggest to you such blind tolerance is in fact utterly unloving.

Because the most loving thing I could do for my three-year-old son is to pull him aside and sternly and firmly let him know that's not how we roll in our family. That's not how you treat your sister or anybody. That's love. Our friend John Mark Comer who wrote a fantastic book called God Has a Name out of which much of this series derives, he says this, "That when you see somebody you love in pain, it should move you emotionally and it should move you to action to do something about it." That's why Yahweh's love is an attribute but his wrath isn't. The scriptures teach that God is love but we never read that God is wrath. Wrath or anger is Yahweh's response to evil in the world. This idea is critically important for us. Culture will tell you how can you be a Christian? How can you worship a God? Don't you read the Bible? He's just angry all the time. He gets angry more than 600 times in the scriptures. How can you worship an angry God who's just vindictive and violent and wants to take it out on people? How can you do that? That is a misunderstanding of the scriptures.

Because in fact God's wrath or his anger is because of his love for us. Because he sees all that is broken in our lives and in the world. And he loves us too much to leave us going headed down that path that leads to destruction. God's anger or his wrath it is a love in action. God judges because judging wrong is the right thing to do when you love someone. The late great Eugene Peterson puts it this way that the biblical word judgment means the decisive word by which God straighten things out and puts things right. Judgment is not a word about things describing them it is a word that does things. Putting love in motion and applying mercy nullifying wrong and ordering goodness. So yes God gets angry but his anger is born out of love. His wrath is actually love in action. God's anger is correcting wrongs that is setting things right. God is not quick tempered. He doesn't get angry arbitrarily or randomly and he doesn't get angry quickly.

Remember Exodus 34:6 God is what? Slow to anger. He is slow to anger. That phrase slow to anger in the original language of the text ancient Hebrew or two Hebrew words. Erek apayim. And the Hebrew phrase Erek apayim get ready you know what it means? It means long of nostrils. What God is literally saying is I am compassionate and gracious and I've got a big big nose. And he's not talking about his physical attributes. God is not physical in the way you and I think of physical. He's talking he's using a euphemism to describe his disposition. There was a research study done by some professors and researchers at UC Santa Barbara several years ago and they were studying the physical attributes of human anger and what they discovered was that there are seven very specific muscles in the human face that contract when we get angry. The same seven muscles across all cultures and across all ages. This is really fascinating.

In fact in the research study they found that children who were blind from birth, kids who would never set eyes on anything for them when they got angry the same exact seven muscles contracted. So this is a nature thing not a nurture thing. It's not something we learn by watching others. It's just a natural part of your DNA. When humans get angry these seven specific muscles in your face contract. One of those muscles are the muscles around your nostrils. This is why when you get really really angry your nostrils flare. And these researchers after lots of study and research what they found is that they believe the reason for this is because the natural human desire when you are angry is to make yourself as big as possible so that you can impose a threat to the one angry you. And so it's a natural sort of biological DNA part of the way God has made us that when we get angry these particular muscles contract because something inside of us wants to get big so that the person or people angering us know that we pose a threat to them that we can harm them.

That's what happens when we get angry. And when God says that he is slow to anger, a wreck, a pain, what it means is that it takes a very long time for God to flare his nostrils. It takes a really long time. It takes a lot to happen for God to become big and pose a threat to you. The theologian Carmen Ives in her fantastic book, Bearing God's Names, she describes it this way, that what Eureka Payim means is that his nose is long enough that the heat of his anger has time to cool before he acts rashly. Does God get angry? Yes. But his anger is a loving consequence of the broken and sinful choices that we shall often make. Because love cannot sit by and allow the beloved to continue down a path that leads to destruction.

And so yes God gets angry, but he is slow to anger. Anger is not his natural disposition. We read in the Bible again that God is love, but never that God is wrath or God is anger. That's not who he is, it is simply how he responds because he is love. Make sense? And he is slow to anger. 2 Peter 3 reminds us that he, God, is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. He is patient with you.

Now, several years ago I was at an event with a dear friend of mine named Philip Pattison. And Philip, several years ago, started an organization called Foster the Bay. And Twin Lakes Church has partnered with him in the past. And Philip and Foster the Bay, what they do, Philip was just really moved many years ago by the absolute need in the foster care system. There are so many kids in the foster care system, both in California and around the country, who were in need of loving homes that would take them in and love them and care for them, whether it was to build them back up to a reconciliation with biological family or to find an adoptive home. And so he began this organization called Foster the Bay, and he asked me to attend one of their meetings.

It was a meeting for potential foster parents. He was basically gathered, he was in this restaurant, and he gathered all of these, you know, these young married couples, and he was basically pitching the need for foster care. So these are all men and women who are considering whether or not they want to become foster parents. And Philip gets up there, and the first thing he says is, "If you say yes to fostering a child, I need you to know you are entering into pain." And I thought to myself, "Philip, dude, you need to go back to, like, marketing, take a marketing class." That is the worst pitch ever. These people are, like, excited, and they're ready to go, and that's how you're going to invite them, like, "Enter into pain?" Nobody wants to do that. What do you do? Right? So crazy.

And then he goes on to explain, and he says, "Fostering is entering into pain because if you say yes to becoming a foster family, your family is not gaining a child. You are making the decision to give your family to a child." And then I saw this room full of potential foster parents moved to tears as they heard story after story of foster parents in the area who had given their families to a child, who had sacrificed time, energy, their schedules, their convenience, their leisure. These men and women who had given so much to open their home, not to gain a child, but to give their family to a child in need. This entrance into a narrative of pain, these men and women who up their own volition chose to step into pain because they had more love to give than they realized.

When I heard that from Philip, I began to think, "Man, this is what it looks like. This is what love really looks like." When God says that he is slow to anger, listen, that's not just a trite little statement. It's not just poetic metaphor. He is utterly slow to anger. He is so incredibly, insanely patient with us, patient enough to enter our pain, to not leave us down the path of destruction, to not take it out on us with anger and wrath, but instead to get to a point where he says, "You know what I need to do? I need to change the entire story, and the way I'm going to do it is to enter the pain rather than get angry, rather than just pour out my wrath on these people. I'm going to send Jesus my own son to enter the pain, to bear the pain, to bear the weight of sin and death upon his own shoulders, to die on a cross, and to come back to life so that these people who are broken and sinful might have a chance."

Rather than saying, "You know what? I'm just going to gain a couple of children for my family, the ones who make all the right choices and do all of the right things and live the perfect little life. I'm going to gain them into my family." Instead of that, Jesus comes and he says, "I am giving you the family of God." This is how slow to anger God is. Slow enough to send his son to bear the brunt and the weight of pain and death on our behalf. I love this phrase. I rarely read the King James Version, but the King James translation of Exodus 34:6 is beautiful and it is appropriate. "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious," and this is a word we rarely use these days, "he is long suffering." That's what slow to anger means. He will suffer a long, long time because he loves us so much before his anger bubbles up to the surface.

But certainly he does get angry, and how could he not? He loves us too much to leave us down the path of death and destruction. Maybe you look back on your past today and you see nothing but guilt and shame at what you've done or what's been done to you, and you fear today that God is angry with you. Maybe you look at your present and you see nothing but failure and disorder and darkness. Maybe your life is a mess. Maybe you don't have it all together the way that you thought you would by this time, and you fear that God is angry with you. Maybe you look ahead to your future and you see nothing but fear and anxiety with the gravity of uncertainty paralyzing you, and you fear that God is angry with you.

I want you to know, God is not angry with you because of your guilt or your shame. God is not angry with you because your life is a mess. God is not angry with you because of your fear and your anxiety. God loves you, and he is slow to anger. God is utterly patient with you, patient enough to enter your pain and to give you his family when you had none. Patient enough to send his own son to bear the weight of sin and death and our brokenness before his anger bubbles up to the surface. And if and when his anger does show up, it is because he loves you too much to leave you going down that path that leads to your own demise. He is slow to anger, utterly patient, entering pain, giving us his family.

Let's pray together. God, we thank you for your love. We thank you that you love us too much to simply blindly tolerate those moments, those choices, and those decisions in our lives which lead to our own destruction and demise and eventual deaths. We thank you that rather than lashing out wrathfully that you are slow to anger, slow enough, patient enough to send your very own son to bear the weight of the consequences of our choices. To enter our pain and to give us your family, to call us sons and daughters at great cost. And Jesus, we thank you for paying that cost, a price that we could never pay on our own. We love you in return. We commit our lives to you. We pray these things in your name. Amen.