Nahum 1:2-6 – “The LORD is a jealous and avenging God; the LORD is avenging and wrathful; the LORD takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.  The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, and the LORD will by no means clear the guilty.  His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.  He rebukes the sea and makes it dry; he dries up all the rivers; Bashan and Carmel wither; the bloom of Lebanon withers.  The mountains quake before him; the hills melt; the earth heaves before him, the world and all who dwell in it.  Who can stand before his indignation?  Who can endure the heat of his anger?  His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken into pieces by him.”

Hebrews 12:28-29 – “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”

Maybe there’s a fire and brimstone preacher lurking within me, I don’t know.  What I do know is that I truly believe that we suffer as a people of God for a lack of preaching His wrath.  If you read a passage like Nahum (or much of the Old Testament for that matter), you may say to yourself, “God is scary!”  It isn’t fear mongering to preach the wrath of God, God is scary!  He is also good.  Infinitely good in a way we cannot understand fully.

There is nothing scarier than an all powerful holy God, pouring out just wrath against a sinner for all eternity.  Just wrath.  We are God’s creation.  We were created to reflect the glory of God, and instead we have each gone our own way, rejecting God and all that He is for us.  God’s holiness cannot be in the presence of any amount of sin, and even our best “righteous” good moral work carries within it enough sin to damn us to hell for eternity.

Psalm 143:1-2 – “Hear my prayer, O LORD; give ear to my pleas for mercy!  In your faithfulness answer me, in your righteousness!  Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you.”

Isaiah 64:5-7 – “You meet him who joyfully works righteousness, those who remember you in your ways.  Behold, you were angry, and we sinned; in our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved?  We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.  We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.  There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities.”

Romans 3:23 – “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”

We’re in trouble.  Big trouble.  To be reconciled to God we need to be righteous, and none of us are even close.  We need a new righteousness.  Not a “do-over” that simply wipes out previous sin to leave us to ourselves to mess up again, we need a once and for all time declaration of righteoussness.  We need our sin and the wrath of God removed from us, and we need to be clothed in a rightouesness outside ourselves.

Genesis 15:6 – “And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”

Philippians 3:8-9 – “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—”

1 Peter 3:18 – “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God”

Romans 3:21-22 – “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.”

This is the promise of God, that everyone who hopes in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, will be credited with His righteousness.  Rejoice that we are reconciled through Christ alone.  We are hopeless, hope in Him.

Grace and Peace,
Adam