SPEAKER_00: Well, when I was in high school, our student ministry took a mission trip to Memphis, Tennessee.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody ever been to Memphis, Tennessee before?
SPEAKER_00: So uh it was a good trip.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of mission work to be done in Memphis.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but there was one night where we went and we had kind of like a worship and a teaching time, and the worship was really good, but then the speaker came on.
SPEAKER_00: And this dude preached like he was personally trying to scare the devil into getting saved.
SPEAKER_00: Like this guy was as hellfire and brimstone as you could possibly get.
SPEAKER_00: Like he uh was, you know, turn to burn, you're going to hell.
SPEAKER_00: Like you better, you know, God is angry at you for your sin.
SPEAKER_00: And like he was like full on like that type of dude.
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we can laugh about it now, um, just how much he really like harped on God's anger, God's angry, God's angry.
SPEAKER_00: But meanwhile, you just had a bunch of middle schooler and high schoolers who were like scared to death.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and I remember one of my good friends, she actually had a lot of uh really struggles from that trip in her relationship with the Lord because she kind of had this complex where she just couldn't get over seeing God as this angry, vengeful God.
SPEAKER_00: And so why am I telling you that story?
SPEAKER_00: Well, because this last uh couple of weeks now, this is probably what, week four, uh, we have been walking through our Yahweh series, and we've been walking through the passage, passage of Exodus 34, 6 through 7, and how God gives his name to Moses, and not just his name, but his character, who he is, what he's like, and this is God telling us all of this.
SPEAKER_00: So this is like straight from the source.
SPEAKER_00: So we introduced this series talking about how there are a lot of different ideas about who God is, uh, even here in Bernie, and we wouldn't necessarily all, you know, say that we believe in a different version of God, but when it gets down to it, some of us view him as somebody who just like is there to make us feel better, or you view him as somebody who's just waiting to strike you down.
SPEAKER_00: Like we have all these different views, and so what better way to find out who God is than go to the source, God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's what we've been doing in this series.
SPEAKER_00: And last week we talked about how God is compassionate and gracious, that he loves his children, that he loves them with this parent-like love that that's deep and hard to explain other than getting to experience it, and that God is gracious or merciful, that not only does he feel love towards us, but that he shows us that love, primarily through Jesus Christ's death, burial, and resurrection for the forgiveness of our sins.
SPEAKER_00: This week, the phrase that we're focusing on is slow to anger.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why I told you that story up front, because a lot of us, like my friend, really struggle with the idea of God's anger.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we read it and it's in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: It talks about God being being having anger or wrath, uh, but we don't really know what to do with it.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we view like there's this angry Old Testament God, and then Jesus is the nice version, and it couldn't be any further from the truth.
SPEAKER_00: But the question is, what is the truth?
SPEAKER_00: How do I wrap my head around a God who is all loving, a God who is love, yet also has anger and wrath?
SPEAKER_00: Like how can those two things coexist?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the truth is they do perfectly, and that's what we're gonna unpack tonight.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we're gonna see is that God is slow to anger, he's patient with us.
SPEAKER_00: However, he doesn't ignore sin.
SPEAKER_00: He calls us to turn back.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, his love, uh his anger comes out of his love, and we're called to turn back to him and reflect his patience to other people as we bear the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's the sermon in the sentence.
SPEAKER_00: If you have your Bible, go ahead and flip open Exodus 34, verses six and seven, and then uh we're gonna read through that.
SPEAKER_00: So it's gonna be on the screen if you don't have a Bible with you.
SPEAKER_00: Starting in verse six.
SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord God, these are all Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: If it says Lord in all caps, that means Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving, kindness, and truth, who keeps loving-kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin, yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.
SPEAKER_00: So would you pray with me real quick?
SPEAKER_00: Would you take just a moment to pray for your own heart, for your own mind, that the Lord would remove any distractions, uh, that he would even soften your heart and your mind when it comes to ideas about him that you might have come in here with tonight, things you might have picked up from when you were a kid, from the house you grew up in, from the church you went to before.
SPEAKER_00: And that you would just have an open heart and mind to his word and what he says about himself, and that we leave here changed.
SPEAKER_00: And would you pray for me that I would preach his word, uh, that I would stand behind it, that I would not speak through fancy words of wisdom, but I would speak through the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Father, we thank you for tonight.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for the opportunity to gather under your word, to get together, to have fun, to do all these things, and then to get to just sit together and learn your word, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so we pray that you would prepare us for this here in the next few moments and praise things in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: And everybody said, Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So, like we said, the verse that we're the or the phrase that we are focusing on this week is slow to anger.
SPEAKER_00: And like the last few weeks, we go back to the original language, the Hebrew, because that tells us a lot.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and the phrase in Hebrew is arah apa'im.
SPEAKER_00: I think I said that right, or horribly wrong.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But it literally means long of nostril.
SPEAKER_00: So apparently God has a really big nose or something, right?
SPEAKER_00: No, but that's actually like a it's like an idiom or what we would call like a um, what's the word I'm looking for?
SPEAKER_00: Like a phrase of speech or whatever that is supposed to be, right?
SPEAKER_00: I can't, I'm losing the words, but you get it.
SPEAKER_00: It's what it means is when someone got angry, these Hebrews, that in their thought, the nose was associated with anger.
SPEAKER_00: And so it was said that somebody's nose was burning or their nose got hot, like we would say somebody's fuming or their temper is flaring.
SPEAKER_00: Think about how we use the words hot-headed, thick skinned, big-hearted.
SPEAKER_00: Like we don't literally mean those things.
SPEAKER_00: When we say that somebody's thick skinned, what do we mean?
SPEAKER_00: They're tough, they don't really worry too much about criticism from people.
SPEAKER_00: When we say someone's big-hearted, we don't literally mean they have an enlarged heart.
SPEAKER_00: You go to the hospital for that.
SPEAKER_00: We mean that they care a lot, that they're kind, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so, in the same way, when it talks about somebody having a hot nose, it means quick anger.
SPEAKER_00: But to say someone has a long nose means that they are slow to anger.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's a figure of speech.
SPEAKER_00: That is the word that I was looking for for like a minute, a second ago.
SPEAKER_00: It's a figure of speech that's talking about how God is slow to anger.
SPEAKER_00: And that's really important.
SPEAKER_00: Like, why do you think he needs to say, well, God's slow to anger?
SPEAKER_00: Like, like, why bring that up of all the things you could say about God?
SPEAKER_00: Well, because if you think back to this day and age and think about in your history class and what you've learned about Greek mythology, and this predates even that, uh, gods were super vengeful, right?
SPEAKER_00: If anybody ever seen the Percy Jackson movies, right?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh big fans, right?
SPEAKER_00: We've seen them, right?
SPEAKER_00: The gods are all over the place.
SPEAKER_00: They get mad, they're they're they're cranky, they're they're just wild.
SPEAKER_00: And that's actually what this uh culture believed about the gods.
SPEAKER_00: For example, there was a Babylonian god named Enlil, who was a storm god.
SPEAKER_00: And in their version of their ancient flood myth, he got annoyed because humans were being too loud.
SPEAKER_00: And so he decided to wipe them out with plagues, droughts, a famine, and then finally a flood.
SPEAKER_00: And he was so mad that they were being too loud because the god couldn't sleep at night.
SPEAKER_00: And so he decided to wipe them out with a flood.
SPEAKER_00: And now that's a myth, right?
SPEAKER_00: But that was how this world viewed gods.
SPEAKER_00: And so it actually was very important to say that, hey, Yahweh, the God of the Bible, is not some cranky temperamental God.
SPEAKER_00: He's not some old boomer in heaven waiting to just throw a lightning bolt and take you out.
SPEAKER_00: He is slow to anger, he's patient, right?
SPEAKER_00: He is controlled towards you.
SPEAKER_00: He is not going to just look at something to smash you down and yell at you for.
SPEAKER_00: God is slow to anger.
SPEAKER_00: But there's another aspect to this phrase that we actually have to pay attention to because in our culture, we've kind of thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
SPEAKER_00: And we need to understand that this phrase may be that God is slow to anger, but God is slow to anger.
SPEAKER_00: God does have anger.
SPEAKER_00: He gets angry.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't like to talk about it a lot because it kind of scares us, it makes us kind of be concerned or worried.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but the Bible talks about it a lot.
SPEAKER_00: In Psalm 5, 5 through 6, it says, The boastful shall not stand before your eyes, and this is talking about God.
SPEAKER_00: You hate all who do iniquity.
SPEAKER_00: And then Psalm 11, 5 says, The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence, God's soul hates.
SPEAKER_00: So God hates people?
SPEAKER_00: Like I thought God was love.
SPEAKER_00: Like, how does God hate?
SPEAKER_00: How does God get angry?
SPEAKER_00: Well, look at what it says that God hates the wicked, those who love violence.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: In your mind, picture the serial killer, right?
SPEAKER_00: Picture the terrorist, picture the the child abuser, the school shooter, like that type of evil and wicked.
SPEAKER_00: When you see it on the news, you just have this part of you that feels like something's not right.
SPEAKER_00: That's evil.
SPEAKER_00: As crazy as things have gotten in the world, I still believe that there are things that we can all look at and say that is objectively evil.
SPEAKER_00: And that is what God has anger towards.
SPEAKER_00: And that's normal because anger is a proper and right response towards evil.
SPEAKER_00: When you see a helpless child being abused, or you see somebody go into a school and kill tens of children, that should cause some anger.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the type of anger that we're talking about when it comes to God.
SPEAKER_00: And it's hard to wrap our heads around that because usually our anger comes from like a wounded ego, right?
SPEAKER_00: Somebody embarrassed me.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody took advantage of me.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody, somebody hurt my feelings or did something that I didn't want them to.
SPEAKER_00: And so now I'm mad.
SPEAKER_00: And not only do we get mad, but we get selfish.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't ever just want justice, we want revenge.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: They they broke up with me, so I'm going to destroy their reputation.
SPEAKER_00: They hit me, so I'm going to hit them twice as hard.
SPEAKER_00: We just want a little bit more, a little bit further.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not God's anger.
SPEAKER_00: God's anger is self-control, that it's at the right time.
SPEAKER_00: It's righteous anger against evil.
SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, here's the thing: God's anger comes from his love and compassion.
SPEAKER_00: For example, if you know me, I'm not a super angry guy.
SPEAKER_00: I am not perfect by any means.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and like I deal with anger in my own way and struggle with it my own way, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm not the guy to yell at some kid uh in a Camry that he cut the muffler off of who cut me off in traffic.
SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm not gonna yell at him.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna talk to myself with the windows rolled up uh like a normal person, like a responsible adult, right?
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna fume by myself.
SPEAKER_00: Or I'm not gonna yell at the drive-thru worker because my fries were cold.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna think about how they betrayed me, like for the rest of the drive home.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but in all seriousness, it really does take quite a bit to make me visibly angry.
SPEAKER_00: But I will say there are there are two things in this world that you can do that will grant you VIP all access pass to scary Garrett.
SPEAKER_00: Mess with my wife, mess with my kids, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like those are the two things.
SPEAKER_00: If you do those two things, I will get mad.
SPEAKER_00: And I still remember uh when I was a new parent, still, like we just had Layton and she was little and she's learned to walk around.
SPEAKER_00: We're at a playground, right?
SPEAKER_00: And she's playing around, and this boy who's bigger than her comes up and pushes her over.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know what my first thought is?
SPEAKER_00: Check the wind, the conditions.
SPEAKER_00: Like, if I were to go full Brandon Aubrey on this kid, like how far could I just punt a two-year-old?
SPEAKER_00: Like just send him to the other side of the playground.
SPEAKER_00: Like, can I spiral a small child into a street?
SPEAKER_00: Like I was ready to throw hands with a toddler.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's my princess, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like you don't mess with Leighton.
SPEAKER_00: I say it all the time in here.
SPEAKER_00: You hit her with a ball, I hit you with a ball.
SPEAKER_00: That's how it works, right?
SPEAKER_00: Same thing for Michael.
SPEAKER_00: But in all seriousness, that anger doesn't come from the fact that I'm an angry person.
SPEAKER_00: That anger is a byproduct of my love for my daughter.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: When you love someone, when something threatens that thing, anger is a normal response.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm talking about anger as an emotion.
SPEAKER_00: Now, would it have been objectively wrong for me to brand an Aubrey a kid into traffic?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, that would have been wrong and illegal, and I would be in jail.
SPEAKER_00: But the anger that wells up within me is a sign that I actually love my daughter.
SPEAKER_00: If God were like a lot of times, you hear about I just couldn't believe in a God that gets angry.
SPEAKER_00: Man, I wouldn't want to believe in a God that doesn't get angry.
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to believe in a God that can watch someone walk into a school and take innocent lives, that can watch someone drive a truck loaded with bombs into a crowd and set it off and not get angry?
SPEAKER_00: Would you want to believe in that God?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we talk about God's anger, we have to understand that it comes from his love.
SPEAKER_00: God's anger is not one of his attributes.
SPEAKER_00: That's not who he is.
SPEAKER_00: It is something he has, but it's not who he is.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says God is love, but it never says God is wrath, because his wrath comes from his love and his compassion.
SPEAKER_00: It's how a loving God responds to evil.
SPEAKER_00: It's not him losing his temper, it's his love in action against evil.
SPEAKER_00: And so that might pose the question then like, what does God's wrath really look like?
SPEAKER_00: Like what is included in this whole idea of God's wrath?
SPEAKER_00: Like how does he enact his wrath?
SPEAKER_00: Like, does he hit you with a lightning bolt?
SPEAKER_00: Does he give you a flat tire?
SPEAKER_00: Does he give you bad skin?
SPEAKER_00: Does he make you a New York Jets fan?
SPEAKER_00: Like, how does God punish people in the world?
SPEAKER_00: And I think the last one might be one of them.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing uh the way that wrath shows up in the Bible is not always the same.
SPEAKER_00: And really, there's two kinds of wrath that we see from God.
SPEAKER_00: And one is what we would call God's active wrath.
SPEAKER_00: So to make it as simple as possible, this is when God steps in and deals with evil right here and right now, usually in a supernatural way.
SPEAKER_00: You think back to times when this has popped up in the Bible, there's a story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which these cities were doing things that I cannot talk about on a stage in front of this audience.
SPEAKER_00: Like there were awful, awful things going on in these cities.
SPEAKER_00: And God gave them chance after chance.
SPEAKER_00: He was slow to anger, right?
SPEAKER_00: In fact, with Sodom, uh, God told Abraham, Man, if you can find like four righteous people in that city, it'll be spared.
SPEAKER_00: He couldn't find anybody but Lot and his family.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And so ultimately this city gets destroyed by fire from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Some people believe it was a meteorite.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine like God's wrath?
SPEAKER_00: Like, no, he doesn't like hit you with a hurricane.
SPEAKER_00: Like he just straight up meteor strikes you.
SPEAKER_00: Boom, you're done.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's another story of Ananias and Sapphira, who they, this is the New Testament, right?
SPEAKER_00: They sell a piece of property and they give the proceeds to the church.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing: they said that they gave all of them without actually giving all of it.
SPEAKER_00: And the sin was not that God wanted all of their money.
SPEAKER_00: The sin is they didn't have to give any of their money to the church.
SPEAKER_00: They gave just enough that they could use it to make themselves look good, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because somebody previously named Barnabas had just actually done that.
SPEAKER_00: And so they, hey, that Barnabas is getting a lot of praise.
SPEAKER_00: I want a lot of praise.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna sell something, and I I don't want to give all my money because you know I need this new thing, I need a new camel, right?
SPEAKER_00: I need a new like water jug, like I'm gonna do all that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I need the new Air Moses's, but you know, I'm gonna keep a little bit of the money in myself and then I'm gonna act like I gave all of it.
SPEAKER_00: You know what happens?
SPEAKER_00: God strikes them both dead on the spot to protect the early church.
SPEAKER_00: And that's God's act of wrath, actually stepping in and stopping evil.
SPEAKER_00: And that's in the present.
SPEAKER_00: There's a day in the future that the Bible authors write about that is called the day of the Lord or the day of Yahweh, and this is the day when every wrong will be made right.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus comes back and justice is dealt perfectly, right?
SPEAKER_00: Every sin will be paid for, whether it was by Jesus on the cross or by someone who doesn't accept him.
SPEAKER_00: But all the tears will be wiped away and all the sad things from human history will be made untrue.
SPEAKER_00: And so for those who haven't placed their faith in Jesus, that day is a really positive thing, or those who have placed their faith in Jesus, that's a positive thing, right?
SPEAKER_00: We get to look forward when you see something on the news that's terrible.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, God's gonna come back and make this right.
SPEAKER_00: Like justice is the Lord's.
SPEAKER_00: But if you don't believe in Jesus, if you haven't placed your faith in him, that's a warning, right?
SPEAKER_00: To think that we can live life and do a bunch of evil, wicked, messed up stuff and then just get off scot-free, that's not how God works.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing God's active wrath, especially in the present, is not like super normal.
SPEAKER_00: Like you don't see a lot of people getting smoked by fire from heaven when they ask ChatGPT to write a sermon or a paper for them, right?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, or a sermon, right?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Because some of y'all will be in trouble on the papers, right, from ChatGPT.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine, like, hey, ChatGPT, you write me a 300-word essay, boom, like pile of ashes right there.
SPEAKER_00: You're done.
SPEAKER_00: It'd be terrible.
SPEAKER_00: So we don't see a lot of God's active wrath, but what we do see is a lot of what we would call God's passive wrath.
SPEAKER_00: When God judges by doing nothing.
SPEAKER_00: And one time that this shows up in the Bible is with the nation of Israel, that Israel had been living in rebellion uh for a really long time, and eventually God just removes his hand of protection.
SPEAKER_00: And this country named Assyria comes in and conquers them and burns everything to the ground, tears it down.
SPEAKER_00: And eventually that same thing happens to Assyria with the Babylonians.
SPEAKER_00: And see, Assyria and Babylon, they were the big empires of the time.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what empires of the time did.
SPEAKER_00: They invaded people, they took their land, they burned it down, and then they built their own stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And so they were gonna do that, whether God caused them to or not.
SPEAKER_00: So God didn't tell them, hey, go invade so-and-so.
SPEAKER_00: What God did, he said, All right, Israel, you want your own gods?
SPEAKER_00: Fine, have it your way.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna remove my hand of protection, I'm gonna stop fighting those battles for you, and you can try to do this on your own.
SPEAKER_00: And what happened?
SPEAKER_00: It led to destruction.
SPEAKER_00: That's God's passive wrath.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't step in to stop you from evil, but he lets it keep going until it ultimately wrecks your life.
SPEAKER_00: And it's when God removes his blessing and his protection and says, Hey, you're on your own, good luck.
SPEAKER_00: Louis Giglio has a quote and he said, One of the scariest realities in life is that if you insist, God will let you do it your way.
SPEAKER_00: One of the scariest realities in life is that if you insist, God will let you do it your way.
SPEAKER_00: Not that you would get caught in a pornography addiction, but that you wouldn't.
SPEAKER_00: And it would warp your heart into something that's completely incapable of ever actually loving someone.
SPEAKER_00: Not that you would get caught drinking or vaping, but that you wouldn't.
SPEAKER_00: And you become a slave to it.
SPEAKER_00: Not that your friends would call you out for gossip, but that they wouldn't.
SPEAKER_00: Because you've pushed away every honest voice in your life.
SPEAKER_00: That's the scary thing about God's passive wrath.
SPEAKER_00: If you're running from God, the worst possible thing he can do is let you.
SPEAKER_00: And so to recap, I know this is really heavy, so hang with me.
SPEAKER_00: We will end a lot happier than that.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine it's like, all right, guys, have fun, have a good night, go play foursquare or something.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh is slow to anger.
SPEAKER_00: God is not quick-tempered, he does not fly off the handle, he does not just sit there and wait for you to give him a reason to scream at you.
SPEAKER_00: He is controlled, he is patient, he's calling us to himself.
SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, God does get angry.
SPEAKER_00: But this anger is not just some, you know, fly by the seat of his pants, I'm angry because I had a bad day, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
SPEAKER_00: His anger comes from his love.
SPEAKER_00: When he sees evil things happening in his creation, stuff hurting his kids, stuff hurting his people, he gets angry.
SPEAKER_00: And because he's loving, that anger comes towards evil.
SPEAKER_00: But like every week, we have to ask the question like, why does this matter to me?
SPEAKER_00: Like, like, why, as a teenager in Bernie, does God's anger have anything to do with how I live other than being afraid of God?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it shouldn't make you afraid of God, but it does have a few things.
SPEAKER_00: One, some of you need to hear the part about God being slow to anger.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you grew up in a home where you had a parent or two parents or a grandparent or whoever raised you who was very quick to anger.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and and you have lived in a place of fear and anxiety towards that.
SPEAKER_00: And when you hear about God being your heavenly father, you put that experience onto him.
SPEAKER_00: And it's really hard to shake those ideas.
SPEAKER_00: I am sorry, but that is not who God is.
SPEAKER_00: God is the perfect heavenly father, the father that none of us has experienced, right?
SPEAKER_00: Even if you have the best dad ever, doesn't come close to the Father's love for us.
SPEAKER_00: That he calls us to himself, that he's patient with you, that he doesn't guilt or shame you.
SPEAKER_00: As a believer, guilt and shame, that is not from God.
SPEAKER_00: Guilt and shame beat you up.
SPEAKER_00: Conviction calls you to life in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't say, hey, look how much you screwed up again.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Why would you why don't go towards that's not good for you?
SPEAKER_00: Come to me, come to me.
SPEAKER_00: I have the living water, I have life to the full.
SPEAKER_00: Why would you want anything else?
SPEAKER_00: Come to me.
SPEAKER_00: God is slow to anger, He is patient, He loves you.
SPEAKER_00: Two, some of us tonight need to hear the warning that God does get angry.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you grew up in a Christian home, you've been in church, you've been to Bible studies, you've been to camps.
SPEAKER_00: But whether you realize it or not, you've kind of like punted the idea of God having anger a long time ago.
SPEAKER_00: To you, he's more like that parent who lets their kid do whatever they want, right?
SPEAKER_00: Party around, sleep around, drink, do drugs.
SPEAKER_00: He's just there to kind of fund your fun.
SPEAKER_00: And church youth group is just a way to kind of check the box so that you can go and do whatever you want without feeling guilty.
SPEAKER_00: The most loving thing I can tell you tonight is that is not the God of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: God loves you, but because he cares about you, he cares about what you do.
SPEAKER_00: You know that again, because God cares about you, he cares about what you do.
SPEAKER_00: God loves his creation, and all sin leads to death.
SPEAKER_00: Might not be physical death, but it might be the death of a relationship, the death of your mental health, the death of your physical health.
SPEAKER_00: And so God hates sin.
SPEAKER_00: So ask yourself, are you entertaining yourself with the things that God hates?
SPEAKER_00: Are you building your life on stuff that God hates?
SPEAKER_00: God loves the sinner, but he hates the sin.
SPEAKER_00: Because the sin kills the sinner.
SPEAKER_00: And he wants the sinner to find hope and healing and freedom that he paid for with his blood.
SPEAKER_00: And so are you entertaining yourself with things God hates?
SPEAKER_00: Gossip, pornography, substance abuse, pride, greed, selfishness, comparison.
SPEAKER_00: If so, God might be patient, but he's not blind to it.
SPEAKER_00: His mercy is to give you time to repent, not permission to continue.
SPEAKER_00: And he might step in.
SPEAKER_00: And I pray that he would step in.
SPEAKER_00: If you are living in a house of cards, the kindest thing God will ever do is knock it down.
SPEAKER_00: The scary thing is sometimes God lets you have it your way.
SPEAKER_00: You might think that you're headed to the good life when you're really living, heading to some version of a living hell on earth.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't want that for you.
SPEAKER_00: So if that's you, repent.
SPEAKER_00: Turn around, change directions.
SPEAKER_00: There is mercy and grace.
SPEAKER_00: Today you can be born again.
SPEAKER_00: If you've already been born again, you can be renewed to the right relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: But three, this whole series we've talked about how we are also made and called to bear God's image.
SPEAKER_00: That we're supposed to be a visible representation of an invisible God to the world around us.
SPEAKER_00: And so we said, if God is compassionate and gracious, we should be compassionate and gracious.
SPEAKER_00: If God is slow to anger, then we should be slow to anger.
SPEAKER_00: And so think about, ask yourself this who are you most prone to taking your anger out on?
SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's not yelling and screaming, maybe it's being passive aggressive, maybe it's giving someone the cold shoulder.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's ignoring your parents, making your siblings feel like trash, tearing down that one person in the group chat.
SPEAKER_00: Who are you most prone to taking your anger out on?
SPEAKER_00: And the sad thing is it's usually the people we love the most, the people we're closest to, because we take it for granted that they're not gonna go anywhere.
SPEAKER_00: So we just make them miserable.
SPEAKER_00: So who do you need to be more patient with this week?
SPEAKER_00: How can you be more slow to or slower to anger with people that even you disagree with?
SPEAKER_00: Can you be kind?
SPEAKER_00: Can you be forgiving?
SPEAKER_00: Even if they give you a reason.
SPEAKER_00: If that's a really difficult person, maybe you're like, hey, you don't know this guy.
SPEAKER_00: It's really easy to be quick to anger with him.
SPEAKER_00: Good.
SPEAKER_00: Think about how much more of a picture of Jesus that will be to that person if you can be the one person in their life that's actually patient with them.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's the thing, guys, is we as Christians, we're called to be salt and light, not so that people will pat us on the back, but that they would want to know more about the God we serve.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if y'all have turned on the news right now or looked on your Instagram or X or TikTok.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, slow to anger is not really the trend right now.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: It's all about tearing each other down.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it feels like since what was that, September, things have just like we thought we were divided, things have just ramped up even more.
SPEAKER_00: Like the response is just rage, rage, rage, rage.
SPEAKER_00: Think about how much of an opportunity it can be for us as a Christian, as Christians, to show something different to the world around us, to stand out, to say, hey, you don't have to be angry all the time.
SPEAKER_00: You can love people you disagree with, you can love people that don't love you.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's the message of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: So to summarize, God is slow to anger, he's patient with us, but he won't ignore sin.
SPEAKER_00: So we're called to turn back to him.
SPEAKER_00: And as we do that, we get to reflect his patience to others.
SPEAKER_00: And I know that sounds hard to do, but just like so many weeks before, God is not asking us to do anything that he himself has not done.
SPEAKER_00: Guys, God has been so patient to us.
SPEAKER_00: Man, I think about in my life how patient God has been with me.
SPEAKER_00: I think about, I was actually texting one of my friends from student ministry uh for information on that Memphis trip illustration at the beginning, because I didn't want to misquote it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, because I had a lot of friends on that trip, but I actually didn't get to go, so I heard all this secondhand.
SPEAKER_00: And as I was thinking about that, I was thinking about why I didn't get to go on that trip.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and it's because I was just running from the Lord at that time in my life.
SPEAKER_00: I got in a relationship with someone I shouldn't have been in, and it just really pulled me away, and it just wasn't good.
SPEAKER_00: And all that while I was playing the part of church kid, I had all the answers, I showed up, everybody pat me on the back, I even got to share my testimony.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody thought I had it all together.
SPEAKER_00: All the while I was hiding a pornography addiction.
SPEAKER_00: I was, I mean, so many hurts from my my growing up and my parents' divorce, and I was just an absolute mess.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what it took?
SPEAKER_00: It took God knocking down my house of cards, my freshman year of college, to show me, hey, you've been living a lie.
SPEAKER_00: But I love you too much to let you keep on living it.
SPEAKER_00: And praise God for that.
SPEAKER_00: But I look at that, I say, man, God's been so patient with me.
SPEAKER_00: How could I not be patient towards others?
SPEAKER_00: And it's one of the most convicting things to think of.
SPEAKER_00: So I challenge you, make a practice of that.
SPEAKER_00: We have our practice this week, and it doesn't include this because it's just the spirit in the moment came to me.
SPEAKER_00: But think about down.
SPEAKER_00: What are ways that God's been patient with you?
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_00: All the times when you've said one last time and again and again and again, or all the times when you know what he calls to do and you didn't, yet he still forgives you.
SPEAKER_00: If you are breathing today, God's grace is available to you.
SPEAKER_00: And that's very important to know because we talked a lot about being slow to anger and being God's child.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing Scripture says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and the wages of sin are death.
SPEAKER_00: And so we are born into sin, and we have all chosen to separate ourselves from the source of life.
SPEAKER_00: And we all, at one point in our lives, have stood under the wrath of God.
SPEAKER_00: And the only way out is through the grace of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The crazy thing is, the same God who burns with anger against sin is the one who took all of that anger on himself.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus got up on that cross and he took every ounce of wrath that you and I deserved so we could receive every ounce of love that we didn't.
SPEAKER_00: But if you have not placed your faith in Jesus to be your Lord and Savior, you are still under that wrath.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't say that to be like that guy from Memphis, all hellfire and brimstone.
SPEAKER_00: I say that because I truly believe with all my life that it is true.
SPEAKER_00: And if that is you, I want nothing more than for you to experience the life that is only available in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna find in a relationship, you're not gonna find a lot of money, you're not gonna find a lot of popularity, you're not gonna find in a rising to the top of your sports.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna get there and you're gonna realize that well runs dry just like the rest of them.
SPEAKER_00: The only well that doesn't is the living water, and that is Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And I want nothing more for you to experience that.
SPEAKER_00: And so tonight, I don't think we have a response song.
SPEAKER_00: Aaron, do we have a response song?
SPEAKER_00: Do we?
SPEAKER_00: We do have a response song.
SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're gonna do that.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna stand here and we're gonna worship.
SPEAKER_00: And if that's you and you say, Hey, I need to get right with God, I am under his wrath.
SPEAKER_00: I have never made a decision to place my faith in him, lock in for a second.
SPEAKER_00: I know when we move towards worship, it's easy to move around and get distracted.
SPEAKER_00: If you feel convicted and you say, I need to do that, make that decision tonight.
SPEAKER_00: Don't wait.
SPEAKER_00: And yes, it is true that tomorrow is not promised, but I don't want to scare you into it.
SPEAKER_00: But why would you go another day?
SPEAKER_00: If you believe that what God says is true, why would you want to go one more minute without being his child?
SPEAKER_00: Because God is slow to anger.
SPEAKER_00: And he calls him to calls you to himself.
SPEAKER_00: So would you pray with me?