Transcript

00:00 Paul Tripp: Here we are again, Shelby.

00:01 Shelby Abbott: Here we are! All right.

00:02 Paul: We've got to stop meeting like this.

00:05 Shelby: No, let's never stop meeting like this. Let's always meet like this.

00:09 Paul: I think I say this every time, but this topic has particular interest to me and importance to me because it's so central to my own story. We're going to talk about the blessing and danger of anger, and a lot of people would immediately connect with the second part of that danger of anger.

00:38 Shelby: Right.

00:39 Paul: But most people wouldn't put blessing and anger together; and so, we want to make sure that we talk about both aspects of that. Anger is a very dangerous thing. It can be a very destructive thing. You could argue, as much as we embrace biblical sexual morality that much more damage has been done by angry people than by sexually immoral people.

01:20 Shelby: Yes, and we're quick to go after sexual immorality, but not anger.

01:24 Paul: And we should speak to sexual immorality and, particularly, in a culture that's gone crazy; but I just think of the amount of homes right now that are just destroyed by anger, in the process of just being destroyed by anger and businesses and governments and things between nations and friendships and just... the list goes on...

01:53 Shelby: Parents and kids, yes.

01:54 Paul: And on, it's just everywhere and so I thought I would start by telling my own story. I'm sure people who have heard me speak a lot have heard this story, but it's so germane to what we're about to talk about. I think it's worth setting things up just by this story and then, saying, "Okay, what do we do we do with anger?

02:23 I was a very, very angry man. I didn't know I was angry. If you had characterized me as being angry, it would hurt my feelings. But I was angry enough that I was in the process of destroying my marriage, my family, and my ministry.

02:53 Luella, my dear wife, was very faithful in bringing that anger in front of me, not in vengeful ways, but saying this is wrong and it should not be tolerated. And once you had approached me with my anger, I would wrap my robes of righteousness around me, which I have none, and tell her what a good husband she had.

03:27 I'm a bit of domestic guy. I don't mind doing things around the house. I do most of the cooking; and again and again, when she would come, I would argue for my righteousness instead of being willing to look at my anger, which is pretty typical of anger.

03:47 When you're angry, you're not self-reflective. You're other-focused. And there was a moment when she was... she just hung in there and was just saying, "No, Paul, but his is you and this is wrong." I was a pastor and I said to her, "95% of the women in our church would love to be married to a man like me." How's that for humility? And Luella very quickly informed me she was in the 5%.

04:24 Shelby: Thank you, but no, thank you.

04:25 Paul: Yes, it was just a disaster and Luella, two things were going on with her. She had already begun to plan her escape.

04:36 Shelby: Oh, really?

04:37 Paul: To, "If this gets physically violent, I need to have a plan for me and the children. And then, she would sit on Sundays and in a fear of someone coming and saying, "Oh, it must be wonderful to be married to a guy like Paul," and not know what to say.

05:05 So she was in that tension all the time. My brother Ted and I went to a conference about ministry aimed at pastors and people in ministry; and at the end of the weekend, we drove together. We're driving home and Ted said, "You know what, we should probably make this applicable to us," and he said, "Why don't you start," and he began to ask me questions.

05:34 And when he was asking me questions, the word picture I always used was like God was ripping down curtains, and I was seeing myself with accuracy for the first time in years. It was so disjointing for me that it was hard for me to imagine that man I was looking at was me, but it was.

05:57 I was hearing myself. I was seeing myself. I mean, praise God for the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit. Don't ever resist the convicting ministry of the Spirit. You're not being condemned. You're being loved.

06:10 Shelby: Yes, it's grace.

06:12 Paul: And I couldn't wait to get home to talk to Luella and you know me. I usually enter the house in some kind of goofy way and this time, I came in very serious and I said, "Luella, we need to talk," and she immediately stopped what she was doing and she sat down.

06:42 And I said to her, "For years, I know that you've been trying to talk to me about my anger and I've been unwilling to listen, unwilling to hear; but I can honestly say I want to hear what you have to say to me," and she told me she loved me and then, she talked for two hours. And in the two hours, God began this process of just radically changing my heart. The operative word there was "process". I didn't become un-angry in that moment. In fact, the next several months were horribly painful.

07:20 Shelby: To see prime examples of your anger?

07:22 Paul: Well, because everywhere I looked, I saw anger and it was just crushing, but God was making that so reprehensible to me that I would never want to go back there again. And I remember the one day I was coming down from upstairs in the house we were living in then and Luella was waiting for our children to come home from school.

07:46 And I saw her from the back and it hit me that I was free from that anger, and I put my hands on her shoulders. She looked at me like this, you know, from behind and I said, "You know, I'm not angry at you anymore," and she said, "I know," and we both cried and wept at that at the same time.

08:08 Shelby: Beautiful.

08:08 Paul: And I look back at that and I think how could it be that I could assess myself so utterly righteous and yet be in the throes of something so utterly destructive? And that is the huge deceit of anger because typically, anger looks outward and doesn't look inward, and that's why I think that this is such an important topic. I think there are way more angry Christians out there than anybody ever talks about.

08:58 Shelby: Yes, and people are certainly willing to admit.

09:01 Paul: Yes, and I think because of our theological knowledge of biblical literacy, our regular fellowship with church, we think of ourselves as the good guys. We're on the good team. We celebrate the right stuff. We have the right values.

09:24 Shelby: Right theology.

09:25 Paul: Yes, and all that stuff can mask something that is in the process of destroying us and that was sure to me. I look back and I just shudder to think where that story would have gone.

09:42 Shelby: If you were to take a guess, how many years would you say that you wrestled with that, even though you didn't know you were actually wrestling with it?

09:50 Paul: Well, I came into marriage with it, and...

09:56 Shelby: When was that conversation with your brother?

10:00 Paul: Well, I was at CCEF, so I was 37.

10:07 Shelby: Okay, so a long time. That's why I wanted to ask.

10:10 Paul: I got married at 20.

10:12 Shelby: Yes, seventeen years. That's a long time to be blind to something that's pretty obvious. At least to your wife, it was pretty obvious.

10:21 Paul: And what happened was, as our life got busier — it was there at low levels in the beginning — but as the life got busier and we had more children, I got angrier and angrier and it was just going nowhere. Nowhere good.

10:46 So let's have a little conversation first before we start looking at some scripture at what anger is and you jump in and interact with this. There's usually three aspects to anger. It's an offense. Now, that offense can be true or perceived offense. By that, I mean the person hasn't done something morally wrong to me, but I'm seeing that as an as an offense.

11:22 Shelby: Right, so offenses being committed against you.

11:24 Paul: Yes, so there's some kind of thing that I would name as an offense and then, it has an object t. That's the offender or it could be a thing.

11:37 Shelby: Yes, the experience that happens.

11:38 Paul: You know, you kick a chair. So there's always an object and that's the core of the deceit of anger because I'm focused on that. I'm not focused on me; so it's an it's an offense, an object and then, some kind of desire.

12:04 I want that person out of the way, I want them to take responsibility, I want them harmed; but there's always some motivating desire. That's why [when you're] angry, you get in somebody's face or your voice... you're trying to get something from them.

12:24 So those aspects are even there in righteous anger because in righteous anger, there is a true offense, there is somebody who has committed that offense, and there's some responsibility that should follow that; and it's right to desire that responsibility; I mean, you could say, desire justice. And if you think about those three things, there's never a day where the dynamics I've described aren't in your life somehow.

13:06 Whether you're seeing it as a neighbor, whether you're seeing it in yourself and your marriage, whether you're seeing it at work, whether you're seeing your children fighting, you're seeing that dynamic play out. It is intensely universally human. You know, it's just amazing that we just don't get free of it.

13:30 Shelby: Yes, you don't need to teach a kid how to be angry.

13:35 Paul: Isn't that amazing? Of all the things we have to teach children. I can remember the first time Justin slugged Ethan. I mean, Ethan was just a toddler and Justin was maybe two and a half or three, something like that.

13:56 Shelby: Okay, so we're dealing with young people here.

13:58 Paul: And I'm just thinking, "Wow!" I didn't have to say, "Now, you're going to get mad and you're going to want to be violent. Let me tell you how to do that."

14:11 Shelby: That's called bad parenting. "Put your fists up."

14:16 Paul: Somehow, he knew he could make fists.

14:19 Shelby: Yes, and cause harm, yes. Yes, it's a natural instinct that's within all of us. You talked about your anger story at the beginning and you don't get there by accident. You foster it over time. It becomes a natural part of your reaction to certain things. I've wrestled with anger as well. Mine came through the discovery of recognizing that I was severely guilty of road rage. Now, I wasn't like driving people off the highway or yelling out the window.

15:01 Paul: You just shot him from a distance?

15:02 Shelby: No, I wasn't doing obscene gestures with my hands or anything like that, but when anybody would offend me in some form or fashion — so there's your point — whenever they would, I would scream in my car and I would yell.

15:20 I would get so angry at what was happening and I recognized that this is just not healthy, so I ended up going to see a counselor to help me get to the bottom of what was actually going on while I was experiencing that in my car.

15:34 Paul: I can give you another example. When I wrote the book Dangerous Calling[: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry], which is about the unique temptations of pastoral ministry, I would start by telling my anger story.

15:46 I did this all around the world, this conference, and there was never a weekend where I didn't have a pastor pull me into a room or pull me aside and say, "I'm that angry guy." Sometimes, multiple pastors and after about a year of that, I said to Luella, "We're in bigger trouble than I thought we were."

16:12 Shelby: Yes, there's this a systemic problem in the church.

16:16 Paul: This is just universal in Christian leaders, anger. And, obviously, it's not just destructive to their families, it's going to be destructive to the church.

16:30 Shelby: Yes, and every now and then, you can catch a little of it trickling out in conversation. If you know a spiritual leader, if you are a spiritual leader surrounded by other leaders or pastors, eventually, something is going to pop out and reveal itself that, "This guy is pretty upset right now. They're pretty angry over something that seems kind of minuscule," and I would say pay attention to those warning signs.

16:58 Paul: Yes, well, you know, I was in the same morning service, church service with a friend and he wasn't usually there. He was a pastor and he was taking a Sunday off, and went someplace with us to go to church with his wife somewhere other than their church.

17:17 And I asked him what he thought of the sermon and he said, "Well, let me tell you what my wife said. He said, "When we walked out, I asked her what she thought and her first response is that preacher is an angry man."

17:32 Shelby: Really? She noticed it immediately.

17:35 Paul: Now, that preacher probably didn't have any idea that his anger was exposing itself, but there are ways that he characterized people or said things that reveal underneath this is some anger.

17:51 Shelby: Yes, and would you say that because you wrestled so deeply with anger for such a long time, you're so familiar with it, was it easier for you to spot anger in other people?

18:04 Paul: I think I am sensitive to it and I'm surely sensitive to it within myself because I don't want to be back there again; and I think if it weren't for God's gracious rescue, that would have been a sin theme in my life.

18:27 I mean, I think we all have areas of susceptibility and they're not the same. We all sin, but we don't sin identically and anger was surely one of my areas of susceptibility, and probably would continue to be if it weren't for God's ongoing keeping power.

18:46 So, yes, I think there is a susceptibility. I want to give one other thing. So we've talked about the three: there's offense, an object, desire, that this stuff is universal. Anger is really shaped, too, by personal expectations.

19:11 We are all just little self-appointed sovereigns and we have expectations for every moment of our lives, what we would like that to be. And so often, anger is rooted in somebody getting the way of our expectations, thwarted expectations.

19:30 Expectation leads to disappointment and I mean, it's really helpful just to ask the question, am I angry because wrong has been done or my desires have been thwarted? In a more wholesome way, anger is rooted in moral values, that there are things that should make us angry because they're wrong and maybe that wrong means somebody is dealing with an injustice and injustice may alter their lives; and we should not be numb in those...

20:20 Shelby: Or indifferent, yes.

20:23 Paul: So that's a little bit just about what anger is. What I'd like to do is we're going to take two podcasts to talk about this. This first one, I like to just talk about God's anger and the way to couch this is that God is perfectly holy in every way and all of the time.

20:51 It's impossible for God to do anything wrong because He's got no wrong within Him. He's pure and holy in the infinite sense of what that means. And yet the scripture does reveal His anger and so, we know for that that anger and righteousness can exist together. And so I want to immediately get our conversation away from... I've had so many people say to me, you know, "I'm comfortable with Jesus, but that God of the Old Testament..." I mean, come on.

21:40 Shelby: Yes, yes, they draw the boundary lines between Old Testament and New Testament, that He was angry, Jesus is better.

21:46 Paul: "That's just a horribly mad old man," and that's not at all how God has presented the Old Testament and maybe you think that because you want your heavenly Father to be a doting grandfather who just permits everything and that's not righteous, that's not holy.

22:09 So, Shelby, turn, if you would, to Genesis 3. It's the first historical recording of God's anger. If you would read — it's kind of a long passage, but it's worth reading — 8-19 of Genesis 3.

⁸And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. ⁹But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” ¹⁰And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” ¹¹He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” ¹²The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” ¹³Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

23:20 ¹⁴The Lord God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
¹⁵I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
He shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise His heel.”

23:44 ¹⁶To the woman he said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.”

23:57 ¹⁷And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
¹⁸thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
¹⁹By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”

24:32 Paul: So I'm going to put you on the spot here.

24:34 Shelby: Oh, great.

24:36 Paul: That's what you're in the chair for. When you read that passage and you think about God, what comes to mind?

24:47 Shelby: There's several things that come to mind when I think about God. I think about God trying to immediately deal with the ramifications of the choices that the sinful human beings have made. There's also consequences and He's pointing out specific consequences to the sinful choices they have made.

25:10 Those consequences are painful. They hurt. They're not pleasant. He talks to the serpent. He talks to the man. He talks to the woman. He gives them all specific consequences that are painful and I think God could have, like you said before, been a doting grandfather and been like, "Oh, it's no big deal," but no. He's dealing with the ramifications of their choices. He's purposefully disciplining His children because He cares about them.

25:46 Now, we know more of the story of what God does after this and so, there's a really important gospel picture here, but just for the verses that I read, there's intentionality in how He's dealing with the sinful choices they have made.

26:05 I also think about, specifically, in verse 9 when He says, "Where are you?" God knows exactly where they are. He knows exactly what they're doing. He knows exactly what they have done and so, He's asking that question to get at them because He cares about His relationship with them still. So there's an anger element of what's happening here, but there's also a relationship, and anger and relationship can be tied together very closely, so.

26:37 Paul: Yes, when you walk into one of your children's room and you say, "What have you done," they know you're angry.

26:49 Shelby: Yes, they know you're upset.

26:50 Paul: I mean, that clearly. So God's angry. We can't escape. This is the third chapter of the entire Bible and here it is. God's angry. I mean, that phrase alone, everybody reads that, knows the person who's saying that is angry, so you can't escape the anger of God.

27:20 Second thing that I would think about this is in this situation, the anger isn't a contradiction of His holiness. It's an application of His Holiness because there has been an evil one who has deceived Adam and Eve, causing them to choose to do something that violated God's command.

27:50 The whole scene is evil. You couldn't be holy and say that's okay. I mean, imagine if you're in a situation where a child is being slapped around by an out-of-control parent. You should not just walk away and say, "Oh well."

28:14 Shelby: Yes, being involved.

28:17 Paul: Because that response exposes evil inside of you, so God couldn't possibly be holy and say this whole thing is okay. Of course, He couldn't and I love that the first historical indication of God's anger is clearly not a contradiction of His holiness. It's clearly an extension of His holiness and so, we can't pick and choose the characteristics of God that we're going to celebrate, of course; and there's a second thing that I think is really clear. It's not unbridled, out-of-control anger.

29:21 Shelby: Yes, He's very measured in all of this. He's very under control.

29:24 Paul: What happens next is actually a poem.

29:30 Shelby: Yes, if you look at your Bible, you can see it. It's even written that way.

29:35 Paul: Yes, I mean, it's so there's this gorgeous moral restraint that you see here. I mean, at that moment, this One with infinite power could obliterate everything, but you don't see that kind of anger. When you see anger out of control, it's never going to be righteous anger. That's not where righteous anger goes and we see that right here.

30:06 God is now in a reasonable, measured way laying out the consequences of the evil of the serpent and the disobedience of Adam and Eve. So you have clear anger. It's not unbridled anger. It's anger — we could say this — under control. If anger is righteous, it's going to be controlled by the other character qualities you're carrying in your heart — mercy, love, desire for peace. I mean, all those things.

30:53 Shelby: Compassion, yes.

30:55 Paul: Compassion regulate anger.

30:59 Shelby: Yes, and anger has a tendency to, in human beings, drive that out or, at least, mask it while it's happening.

31:06 Paul: There's another thing that's really interesting here and we'll talk about this more later, that this anger of God actually drives future hope because He makes it very clear that He's not going to let this evil win and that's the promise of the head of the serpent being crushed, and we know that ultimately is Christ, that that means that righteous anger produces good things.

31:45 It doesn't produce these evil things and you see it right here, that God is just... He is so angry at the evil that has now entered this beautiful world that He created, that He says, "No, no, no, no, no, this will not win."

32:05 I love that and we talk about that, that there's grace in the passage and surely is grace, but we don't talk about the fact that's driven by God being angry at evil and saying, "I'm not going to allow this evil to win."

32:20 Shelby: Yes, no doubt God was angry at Joseph's brothers when they sold him into slavery and mistreated him the way that they did, and abandoned him and then lied to their dad; but the good that came out of that, which we read at the end of Genesis, is the saving of a nation and so, yes, there's a hope there.

32:42 They couldn't see it. We can because we can look back on it and there's been plenty of times, I think, in the lives of human beings, if you want to go without a biblical example, where we could see that anger in righteousness leads to hope. It leads to justice. It leads to love. It leads to reconciliation. It leads to compassion and good things. Those examples are few and far between, but they do exist.

33:08 Paul: Yes, yes, and it's just so clear here. So right away, there are things that we learn — that God's anger is not a contradiction of His holiness and in that way, we don't have to run from God because He's angry.

33:35 Shelby: That's good, yes.

33:36 Paul: The best way to say that is God's anger is not a defect of His character.

33:42 Shelby: Yes, it's really important to know that.

33:45 Paul: And that is so valuable to understand and you see that right away in this first historical example. Second, the reason we can understand it's not a defect of His character, is it's very clearly an extension of something that's good in God.

34:06 Holiness is a beautiful thing and it's beautiful to love what is right and to hate what is evil, and we also can see that's not a defect in His character because it's not unbridled, out-of-control, destructive, horrible anger. It's not. It's the careful meting out of consequences that is God's authority to do and corresponds to the warning that He gave Adam and Eve when He made the commands in the first place.

34:50 Shelby: Right, yes.

34:51 Paul: So He's...

34:52 Shelby: Not completely out of left field.

34:54 Paul: Right, and not changing the rules of the game.

34:56 Shelby: Yes, yes.

34:56 Paul: And then, we also see that this anger is producing a harvest of good. You know, when you're in unbridled anger and you're in somebody's face, you're not thinking about a harvest of good. I mean, you're just not. I love the turn on this in this passage where God makes it very clear that He hates evil so much, He's not going to allow it to win.

35:35 So it's beautiful things to see right away about anger in the Lord and again, I want to say this over and over again. Anger is not a defect in the character of God. Therefore, God's anger should not embarrass you, should not be an embarrassing piece of your theology.

36:02 Shelby: That's good.

36:03 Paul: It shouldn't be something when someone asks you about God's anger, you think, "Oh no, I don't want to talk about this. It's just..." We should not have that response at all.

36:13 Shelby: Yes, but we do because we ascribe to God the characteristics of what we experience when we go through anger, because we generally believe anger = bad because of the destruction that we see and all the sin that comes out of anger.

36:32 We attach that definition to God and I would definitely say there's plenty of people who do not like to talk about the anger of God. There are plenty of people who are embarrassed to talk about the anger of God and they want to run away from it.

36:47 I've seen that in a number of different interviews or whatever. When secular people interview pastors or Christians and they ask them the difficult questions, and watch them shrink away from talking about the anger of God because it's just so easily misunderstood; and even to your point, when people say, "Well, the God of the Old Testament is angry and the God of the New Testament is loving," as if anger and love are the opposite of one another, but they're not.

37:20 They're not the opposite of one another and so, we have a tendency to shy away from talking about the angry God all the time. I know I do. I don't really want to talk to someone about that when I'm doing a random evangelism conversation.

37:33 Paul: Yes, you're absolutely right and you're anticipating the next passage that I want to look at. It's from Nahum. I mean, how many times have you done a Bible study of Nahum?

37:48 Shelby: I can't say that I have, yes.

37:50 Paul: This is Nahum 1:[2]-3. I'll read this time. This passage is like a practical theology of God's anger. It is just awesome and we'll take it apart.

²The 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.
³The 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.

I love where this starts. ^2aThe Lord is a jealous and avenging God.

38:45 Shelby: Yes, verse 2, the first chapter.

38:48 Paul: True love is always jealous. I mean, if Luella came to me and said, "I'm going to spend a weekend with another man," and I would say, "Well, that's okay," I don't love her.

39:08 Shelby: Yes, that's true, yes.

39:10 Paul: And again, we look at jealousy as always an evil thing and love is jealous. And so, when it says God's jealous, He's jealous that He would have the centrality in our hearts that He designed us to have and He will not share us with anything else or anyone else, so we're describing something good about God.

39:50 This passage is essentially saying right there in the beginning that His anger is an extension of His love and that's, again, so important to understand that if God loved us, if He loves us, there are moments where anger is the appropriate response. And then, the Lord is jealous. The rest of verse 2 basically saying, "And He doesn't mess around," right?

40:28 Shelby: What translation are you reading from?

40:34 Paul: He ²is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries and keeps wrath for His enemies. There's something that's being said here that's important, is holy, righteous anger is consistent. Unrighteous anger isn't.

40:58 There'll be times where you'll do something, it won't bother me at all. You'll do it another time and it just makes me so mad. Well, what does that tell you? It doesn't have anything to do with moral values, moral offense, or true right and wrong.

41:11 It's just one time you did it and you weren't in my way. One time you did it and you were in my way; and so, I never know. And when you live with a person who's unrighteously angry, what you have to become is an emotional weatherman.

41:27 "How is he doing today? Will this tick him off today because it didn't tick him off yesterday," and you never know when you're going to get in trouble. God's not like that. All the ways of the Lord are right and true.

41:42 He's absolutely faithful. He's the same yesterday, today, forever. He hates evil. He will avenge evil. End of story. You're never, you know, tiptoeing through your life, wondering if today, what didn't make God angry yesterday was going to make Him angry today.

42:05 Shelby: Right, yes, there's no walking on eggshells around God that way and wondering. He's not unpredictable in that way, yes.

42:13 Paul: And isn't it amazing He creates Adam and Eve, and the very first thing He does is talk to them. He lays out the rules and in Genesis 3, He enforces the rules. That's an utter consistency. That's what's being talked about here. When it says the Lord is avenging, that's something that's happening.

42:36 Shelby: Yes, it's in the present, and wrathful. That's happening in the present. This is an interesting thing to talk about, too, because I've actually even had this conversation with my girls at one point, of describing God as a jealous God; and they immediately think jealousy is bad, for good reason because when we're jealous of someone else, and we, as a child, take their toy.

43:07 Paul: Well, they've experienced jealousy as siblings in a bad form.

43:09 Shelby: Yes, in a bad form all the time and even when in anger, I've had conversations with them and it's like, "Daddy yelled right here. I was angry and I'm sorry." So to them, that communicates anger = bad. So we really have to make sure that we unpack this and understand what's being said here and what's true of God's character in the process of knowing that He's both jealous and angry, and yet He's pure and righteous; and He hasn't done anything wrong. So anger is not something necessarily to ascribe sinful character qualities to God, even though most of the time that's what's happening within us.

43:53 Paul: Yes, and it's exactly right. I think that whenever we use these human terms and apply them to God, we always have to redefine them. Like there are people, because they lived in abusive homes, who don't find comfort in God being a Father, so we have to redefine the fatherhood of God for them. And so, we have to redefine jealousy and the kind of jealousy that's pure and holy because it's an extension of love.

44:37 And what's interesting here is that the anger of God has this clear object. It's His enemies. Well, what's an enemy of God? It's an enemy of what is true and holy and good and loving and kind and right. It's an enemy of His authority and His holiness.

45:04 So it's not describing like God's just an angry person, He's just going to get irritated at whatever and we shouldn't think that. That person is... that's evil anger when you know, it's like a boss that's just mean. And the Bible doesn't describe God as just being mean and you just got to be careful because you never know. You know when you offend God, whether you admit it or not.

45:45 I've been going through [John] Calvin's "Institutes [of the Christian Religion]" and when he talks about everybody is born with an awareness of God written in our hearts and the law of God is written in our hearts, that the unbelievers are a lot more aware of moral offense than anybody wants to admit to.

46:12 But God's making it clear that He's not just this angry person, then you never know when you're going to offend Him and His anger is different everyday; and that's the horrible lifestyle of somebody who's living with an evilly angry person because you just never know when you're going to get it.

46:33 Shelby: Yes, again, like taking those characteristics that we experience, even the redefinition of terms that you were talking about, even the term "love". The culture has taken that term and twisted it, and turned it into something that it's not necessarily true.

46:54 Paul: I hate the term, "I had a date last night. We ended up making love." What you made was not love. You made sex. You didn't make love. You have no love for that person at all. You have no intention for that person. Everybody in life, you have no commitment to them. You would sacrifice nothing for them. Don't call it that. It drives me crazy because it is such a horrible diminishing of what true love really is.

47:31 Shelby: Yes, and the culture has hijacked that term. Even the phrase "love is love", which is attached to a certain driving force in the culture right now; but it doesn't even really mean anything. "Love is love". What does that mean?

47:47 It's just a circular argument that doesn't really mean anything, so it's really important that we define terms, especially, as we're talking about the holy God, who is not like us, which scripture tells us that. So we need to be very careful and define God on His own terms of what He communicates about Himself instead of what we think.

48:07 Paul: Yes, and I love how in this passage you read that verse 2, it's pretty heavy. Verse 3 really does help you understand the content of verse 2 and I want to again get back to a little bit of hermeneutics, biblical interpretation here. Scripture interprets scripture.

48:33 You just got to be very careful. You read scripture in context. You let other passages help you understand what certain passages mean because "the Lord is a jealous and avenging God," you think, "Oh my goodness," but then, it says ^3aThe Lord is slow to anger and great in power.

48:55 It's very interesting to me that this passage puts together "slow to anger and great in power". First of all, it just means that this is not hair-trigger, unbridled, out-of-control anger. God is slow to anger. That means He's patient, He's kind, He's merciful and those are all beautiful characteristics.

49:27 Meanwhile, He's holding the greatest power ever. There are moments when a father in a place of anger will say, "Do you know what I could do to you?" I mean, that should never be said, but it is said and that's not who God is. He's holding infinite power and yet He's slow to anger. That is really just so beautiful.

50:04 Shelby: Yes, and I haven't really thought about that before, of putting "great in power" and "slow to anger" in the same sentence. They're very closely tied to one another. They're not in conflict with one another.

50:19 Paul: It's not like God, crazily angry and saying, "Do you know who I am? Do you know what I could do?" It's not what's happening here.

50:29 Shelby: Yes, and great in power kind of communicates His ability to be slow in anger because we're obviously not great in power. We're very weak people, we're very needy people, and we are quick to anger. We are very, very fast.

50:46 Paul: Well, and so, just like that first sentence in verse 3 helps you understand verse 2, the second part of that sentence helps you understand the first part of the sentence. ³The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. His slowness and anger is not compromise of what is right.

51:15 Shelby: Yes, there's still justice.

51:17 Paul: Yes, so God is absolutely consistent. What is evil to Him is always evil. The rules are not changing. That's why it says "by no means will clear the guilty". God's not being permissive. His slowness to anger is not permissiveness.

51:35 Shelby: Yes, that's good.

51:38 Paul: Like a parent who just is tired and should deal with something, doesn't deal with it because they don't feel like dealing with it and so, it's the way this passage just unfolds. It's just so, so helpful. Yes, He's a jealous God, but that jealousy is a product of His love; but He's slow to anger. Even though He has infinite power and His slowness to anger isn't inconsistency. I mean, that's why I said it's like a theology of anger here.

52:17 Shelby: It really is and the easy thing to do is quickly read past this, maybe underline a couple of words and just keep going. That's why I love that we take the time to pause and really dive into this and think, put effort into the interpretation of what the scripture is actually communicating here.

52:37 Like, have you ever thought "slow to anger, great in power, by no means clearing the guilty"? Let's pause and really dissect what all those things mean. That will give you a clearer and clearer image of God. It peels back the layers instead of dealing with just the flyby, which we often do in our times in the word.

52:56 Paul: I mean, the thing that just blows me away is these two verses alone correct so many of the misconceptions about the anger of God and that's why you have to believe that all scripture is profitable. This has been recorded and preserved for us over thousands of years because God loves us and He chooses to be known, Shelby. This is beautiful.

53:29 God wants us to know Him. He's making Himself known here and we shouldn't just blow by these things, particularly when, you know, if you've been around a wrongfully angry person, you may hit this. You're reading through the Bible through the year and you hit the first chapter of Nahum, and you just might not want to read this and just run by it when there's just such beautiful explanations of God's anger and its connection to love, its consistency that God's slow to anger even though He has infinite power. It's just beautiful.

54:20 Shelby: Yes, yes, and I think I heard John Piper one time say the passage does not mean the opposite of what it says. So often we just go, "Oh, that's what this means," and we think the opposite of what it actually communicates.

54:38 However, people just don't take the time to pause and actually reflect on what the scripture is actually saying, so be careful about how we interpret this, especially, when you're talking about the subject of anger because there's so many misconceptions about it.

54:53 Paul: So just looking at Genesis 3 and Nahum 1, you're already unable to walk away with embarrassment about God's anger, that it's a defect in His character and that summarily, we should fear the fact that God is angry; and that's just two passages. So let's go to Psalm 7 because this adds another element that I think is really important and easily misunderstood. This is Psalm 7:11. I'll let you read this time.

55:49 Shelby:¹¹God is a righteous judge,
and a God who feels indignation every day.

55:57 Paul: So God is a just judge, righteous judge and He's angry with the wicked everyday. Now, we already said three things about God's anger. We see it in Genesis 1. It's an extension of His holiness.

56:20 Shelby: Genesis 3, yes.

56:21 Paul: Nahum 1, it's an extension of his love and now, Psalm 7, it's an extension of His justice. We're used to anger being unjust. You know, you're screaming in the car, not because somebody's done evil, but because they're not doing ahead of you what you want them to do.

56:46 Or you're ripping at your children because you wanted to relax in the evening and they're disturbing your relaxation. Or you get into a fiery fight with your wife because she chose to contradict the glory of your wisdom.

57:05 I mean, all those are an injustice and there is no injustice with God. His anger is always, always, always, and again I say unto you, always just. I love how it says "God's a just God and God is angry". I like that's together.

57:29 Shelby: Yes, indignation, that's what that is, like anger and He's a righteous judge, and He feels indignation everyday. Everyday!

57:41 Paul: I was watching every day I was watching a court scene. Some of that popped up on social media and it was a person who had been historically disrespectful of the court system. And this judge leaned forward and said, "Not in this court. The courts in America are a good thing. They're for the protection of the citizens and I will not allow disrespect of the court."

58:27 Now, he was angry, but it was just. It was just. "If I just permit this, then courts don't mean anything and they don't have any power." And if God turns His back on evil and just walks away, then His law has no meaning and there is no hope for us.

58:56 Shelby: Yes, and I think that a lot of people would probably agree with what you're saying, that, yes, God should be angry at the injustice, the evil that's happening in the world. I think we're all in line with that until we recognize that the evil in the world is also the evil in us and then all of a sudden, we're not okay with God being angry and just because we want Him to correct what's going on out there, but we don't want Him necessarily to correct what's going on in here.

59:28 And so it's everywhere. He's just and He's righteous. Therefore, He's going to deal with the sin that's in your heart as well, not just the sin that's going on out there in the world in other people. It's important to recognize that, that even though He's slow to anger, He's indignant at the injustice that's happening in your heart and in your life.

59:50 Paul: So for those who are hearing this conversation or watching us, the Lord is holy, perfectly holy. He's infinitely loving. He is eternally and consistently just, and because He's all those three things, He's angry. You got to say that.

1:00:20 Shelby: Yes, yes, and that's a tough thing for people to understand.

1:00:24 Paul: And so, I can wake up in the morning and I can say that the One sitting on the throne of the universe that has infinite control over everything, control I will never have, who understands everything, even down to the specific motives of every heart, is perfectly loving. He's perfectly holy. He's perfectly just and He will be angry in all the right places for all the right reasons. It's beautiful.

1:01:05 Shelby: Yes, and I think it's important to recognize, too, that often, we think that the opposite of love is hate, which is quite often accompanied by anger, hatred. But in reality, hatred or anger has a tendency to be focused still on caring about what has happened.

1:01:32 Actually, the opposite of love, when you think about it, is indifference because indifference is just, "I just don't care at all," and so, if God were indifferent to the injustice that was happening in the world, He would not be loving. It's really important to understand that. So He goes after the injustice in the world with anger because He is loving.

1:01:55 Paul: And that's why it says, "And God is angry with the wicked every day." Again, you have the totality of the consistency of God's anger because it's rooted in holiness. It's rooted in love. Listen, if God were never angry, it means His love isn't love, His holiness is holiness, and His justice isn't justice.

1:02:22 So I want to speak to this. You can't hold on to God's holiness, love, and justice and repudiate His anger because every one of these passages we look at is connecting these beautiful character qualities to the exercise of His anger.

1:02:46 Shelby: Yes, we, especially in America, have this tendency, however, to pick and choose like God is a buffet of, "I want this, I want this, I want this, and I'll leave that behind," and God is not a buffet. It's all or nothing and that's why it's really important to understand what is actually being presented in the scriptures about who God is.

1:03:08 We can't just pick and choose and say, "I want Him to be this and this and this, but I'll leave that to the side." It doesn't work that way. Fortunately for us, God is all of those things and always good and always loving and so, don't be scared of God's anger. It's a very good thing.

1:03:30 Paul: Yes, and the Bible is just... again, we just have to say this. The Bible is so clear in connecting the anger of God to things that everyone would esteem. Wouldn't you like to live with a perfect person? Holiness is a beautiful thing.

1:03:53 Wouldn't you like to live with a person who is absolutely always loving? Wouldn't you like to live with a person who is a picture of consistency of justice? That's what God is and then, it's not like, "You know, by the way, He's angry. Stay away now. Yes, that anger is just connected in scripture to these beautiful qualities and so, be heartened.

1:04:28 Shelby: Heartened, yes, not hardened.

1:04:30 Paul: Yes, be heartened that you wake up and this is the One that rules everything. And if it's true that His anger is an extension of His love and His holiness and His justice, then that anger will be exercised in all the places that are to your benefit. That's why I named this "The Blessing and Danger of Anger". We're talking about blessing here.

1:05:01 Shelby: Yes, yes, it's a good thing.

1:05:04 Paul: It's beautiful. So let's...

1:05:08 Shelby: I have nothing to add to that.

1:05:10 Paul: Let's continue with Micah 7.

1:05:15 Shelby: Going back to the minor prophets.

1:05:17 Paul: Oh, I have to talk about this while you're looking. Why is this stuff discussed so much in the minor prophets? Because God's announcing judgment and so, He's connecting that judgment to His character so they understand that what God's requiring of them and wanting of them is a good thing.

1:05:41 Shelby: Yes, and even what we were reading before with Nahum, am I right in saying that was a warning to the Ninevites, I think? And we all know the Ninevites from the story of Jonah and what happens to the Ninevites, even though they're a very wicked city and they have a very subpar prophet communicating to them, they turn and they are reconciled. They're made right and restored into a relationship with God, as a result of that. That's a good thing, as a result of His anger.

1:06:15 Paul: And they listen to Jonah, even though he smells like fish.

1:06:20 Shelby: A fish, a great fish, a very great fish. So this is Micah 7?

1:06:25 Paul: 18.

1:06:27 Shelby:¹⁸Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity
and passing over transgression
for the remnant of His inheritance?
He does not retain His anger forever,
because He delights in steadfast love.

1:06:43 Paul: So one of the things that we are very used to in human anger is the grudge, the holding on to it, the bitterness, the "once you offended me, then I treat you in light of that offense forever"; and that's why this passage is important.

1:07:09 Who is a god like our God that's absolutely holy, yet He pardons iniquity? He's found a way of forgiving without compromising His holiness. It's beautiful and so, you can say God is utterly holy, utterly just, and incredibly forgiving; and they're not contradictory. It's just beautiful.

1:07:43 Shelby: Yes, and we don't see an example of that in human form, so it's difficult for us to wrap our head around it.

1:07:51 Paul: I mean, you would never say that's an angry person and he's so forgiving.

1:07:56 Shelby: Yes, exactly, exactly.

1:08:00 Paul: And so, God's not angry like that because that kind of anger is not forgiving and when it says "^18aWho is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of His inheritance," it's saying for the people that He has placed His love on, His special chosen ones, that love is not something they've earned or deserved.

1:08:34 It's imparted. When I think of this, I think of I will be angry at the rebellion of my children. I never ever think of packing their bags and driving them out of the house, and saying I'm going down to the court tomorrow and I'm going to remove your name from the family. It's never ever entered a thought. And then, the passage says He does not retain His anger forever. I love that.

1:09:14 Shelby: Yes, good news.

1:09:16 Paul: Have you ever... I don't know if you've had this in your marriage, but Luella would say to me, "Are you still angry? It seems like you're still angry."

1:09:27 Shelby: Yes, I've definitely had that happen. "Say you're not angry."

1:09:32 Paul: And you say, "No, I'm not angry. I'm not angry. I'm not angry."

1:09:38 Shelby: "Are you sure? You sure you're not angry?

1:09:43 Paul: And why? Because He delights in love.

1:09:46 Shelby: Yes, the opposite of a grudge.

1:09:49 Paul: So you see in God's perfection, the consistency of His anger can live with the consistency of His grace without being contradictory. So I can say my God is angry, my God is forgiving, my God has wrath, my God is gracious and you don't have to say to me, "You're crazy."

1:10:27 Shelby: Yes, although most people would say that you're crazy because they don't understand the complexity of that. I mean, we're taking the time here to unpack all of this over the course of a podcast, but having those conversations with people, especially non-believers, who don't understand that, we need to be patient with them.

1:10:50 We need to know that they're not going to understand, even if you did say that God is angry and God is loving, God is wrathful and God is gracious. If you said that to them, they would think you're crazy. So, there's not going to be quick answers to this or, at least, people are not going to be satisfied with quick answers, so be patient, be intentional, and spend time with people to help them understand the truth of what the scripture is giving.

1:11:15 Paul: So let's talk about that because I think this is really an important point when we talk about something that's as easily misunderstood and is a struggle for many people. When we read scripture, every portion of scripture is profitable. It's given for our training and righteousness, so that we would be adequate and prepared for good works. So that means I don't get to pick and choose.

1:11:57 There are people who read the Bible, it says God is angry with the wicked everyday and He delights in steadfast love, and they would think, "I can't believe both those passages at the same time," and I'm saying you must because that's what the word of God says your God is like.

1:12:21 I can't not hold both of those I have to hold on to both of those at the same time, that this One who is slow to anger, loves parting iniquity is steadfast in love, is also angry with the wicked everyday because the Bible says that.

1:12:42 And so, I need to grow in my meditation, so I can grow my understanding, so those no longer seem impossibly contradictory to me and I want to say yes, God's patient with you as you grow on that, but that's your job. If God describes Himself this way and this way, it's your job to hold on to both of those and somehow, come to understand that those are not contradictory.

1:13:16 Shelby: Yes, what if we approached scripture with the posture of believing the best in scripture or believing the best in who God is, as opposed to constantly doubting, constantly asking questions, constantly being skeptical, which is what I think most people approach the scripture with. They're like, "Wait a minute, that doesn't make sense. Nah," and then, they roll their eyes and move on or they close the Bible and say, "See, this is just a bunch of ridiculousness."

1:13:40 Paul: Yes, my way of thinking it is I want to approach God's word with a posture of willingness and acceptance. I had a Hebrew professor that I loved and he was on one of the translation committees for, I think, it was the NIV.

1:14:06 In one of the previous, they have built through several levels of translation. He was one of the higher levels and one of the translators wrote, "Translations iffy. Passage unclear," and he wrote, "Passage clear. Human understanding is iffy."

1:14:37 Shelby: Love that.

1:14:38 Paul: And he's exactly right. The problem's not the book. The problem is what I bring to the book and let's just take an aside for a minute. Again, this is how to understand your Bible, how to relate to your Bible.

1:14:53 You have to know you never come to your Bible neutral. You never come to your Bible empty. You have all kinds of preconceived notions. You have all kinds of experiential assumptions. You have all kinds of theological givens and they shape the way you read the word of God; and you have to be very, very careful that you're not cutting and pasting without even realizing it. Thomas Jefferson created the Jeffersonian Bible and I actually have a copy of the Jefferson Bible.

1:15:35 Shelby: Do you really?

1:15:36 Paul: Yes, and...

1:15:40 Shelby: I got to see that sometime.

1:15:41 Paul: He said, "There are things that came out of the mouth of Jesus that are so infinitely wise, they could only come out of the mouth of the Divine, and there are things that are so infinitely stupid, they couldn't have been said by the Messiah. These things I cut out of my Bible."

1:16:06 Shelby: Who gave Jefferson the authority? That's hubris.

1:16:11 Paul: But I get that. I get you probably wouldn't get out scissors, but we do that and I would imagine that Psalm 7 talks about the anger of God with wickedness would not be the one easy to accept. It would be that He delights in steadfast love, but they're both descriptions of the same deity, and they're not in contradiction.

1:16:41 Shelby: Yes, I'll tell you a quick little story. Back in COVID times, when we all first locked down, all of us had extra time on our hands. I started reading things that I wouldn't ordinarily read and I started researching into wolves and I don't know why, and I don't remember how I got down that rabbit hole.

1:17:01 But wolves are typically what we think of as evil creatures. You know, in every fairy tale and that kind of stuff, the wolf is bad. Even scripture says "wolf in sheep's clothing". They're dangerous and they're bad and they're scary.

1:17:14 But then, I started reading about what they do and they provide a lot of value to an ecosystem because the carcasses of their prey feed other animals. It nourishes the soil and all that kind of stuff, and I found that even though wolves typically are considered to be bad or dangerous or evil, they also provide a lot of good.

1:17:37 And so, we would look at the evil of wolves and say that's bad, but the positive values would say, "Oh, that's good," and we have a tendency to do that with God as well. We have a tendency to go, "God is loving and kind and merciful. Ooh, I like that. That's a good thing."

1:17:51 Well, God is wrathful and angry and just. "I don't know if I like those things as well." Well, you can't pick and choose. It's the same. A wolf is a wolf is a wolf, and God is God is God. Now, I'm not making direct comparison here, obviously, but we are not allowed to say I pick this one and exclude this one about the character of God. We need to have both. He is loving and He is wrathful.

1:18:17 Paul: Yes, amen. So again, we've connected God's anger to His holiness, His love, His justice and we've said that this One who is angry with the wicked everyday is also glorious in mercy, glorious in steadfast love, and those live together in our Lord; and that's such a different way of thinking about anger.

1:18:56 We would never expect patience, slowness, steadfast love, forgiveness from somebody you would characterize as angry and that's why it's so important to have this conversation and redefine what anger looks like when we're talking about God's anger.

1:19:19 Shelby: Yes, redefine in biblical terms. We're not just coming up with it now. It's actually been there already.

1:19:24 Paul: And again, you can't run. You can't say you believe God, that you surrendered your life to His sovereignty and His grace, and pick and choose how He reveals Himself. So let's go to Romans 12 because we've hinted at this, but I want to talk about the implications of this for our lives. So what does it mean for us that God is angry and His anger is connected to His love, His holiness, and His justice? Romans 12:14-21.

1:20:21 ¹⁴Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. ¹⁵Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. ¹⁶Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. ¹⁷Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. ¹⁸If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. ¹⁹Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” ^20To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” ²¹Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

1:21:07 Now, verse 17. ¹⁷Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. That just seems crazy. Come on, if I do that, evil's just going to go run rampant. And then, it says, "¹⁸If [it's] possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. ¹⁹Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”

1:21:42 And so, the reason I don't have to take vengeance onto my shoulders is because there is this holy, loving, just God who cares about evil and I love what it says, "But leave it to God's wrath." It's basically saying, "Stay out of My way. Don't try to do My job. Let me do what I alone am able to do."

1:22:16 The reason for that is it won't be 'til we're on the other side that we'll ever experience anger that's perfectly righteous. So often, even if our anger is initiated by something righteous, it takes turns along the way and so, here's a promise that just the fact that God, His anger is an extension of His holiness and His love and His justice means I have hope that evil will be dealt with in my world.

1:22:48 I can live in this world of injustice. I can hope that justice will ultimately reign or you'll just be overwhelmed. And there are people who live in fear, live in anxiety, live in depression because they're hopeless, because this world just seems so dark and so evil and so unjust.

1:24:46 Paul: So I want to take this a little bit of a different direction. You know you can Google the promises of God and you get a list of all the promises of God or you hear somebody wrote a book on the promises of God.

1:25:07 There's a promise of God here that never gets on that list. It's a promise. ^19bVengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. That should be on your mirror in the morning because we don't believe it and it's just as trustworthy and just as faithful as any other promise of God that you would find encouraging and you would build your life on. God promises that He will repay evil.

1:25:36 Shelby: Yes, it's really good to know, especially, not only when we're dealing with moral failures, but when we're dealing with the ramifications of the evil in this world, the sickness that happens, the breaking down of our bodies, the disease that happens, the viruses, the things... because I mentioned this to you before.

1:26:00 I have a friend who has ALS and he's in his early 40s, and bound to a wheelchair now. And that wasn't God's intended design for this world to have him be captured in a shell of his own body, but there's enormous hope in this. We wouldn't go here first to apply that to his situation but, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay." God is going to take care of that one day, too.

1:26:30 Paul: And going back to Genesis 3, Genesis 3 tells us all that stuff is a result of sin. Now, ^9bVengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. There's two things, though, you have to accept and this is another important conversation. God doesn't tell you you'll be able to be the witness.

1:26:55 Shelby: Oh, that's really good, yes.

1:26:57 Paul: Because people say all the time, "Well, I don't see it."

1:27:00 Shelby: Yes, "I want to see people get theirs."

1:27:01 Paul: That's not part of the promise that somehow, you'll get the gratification of seeing that person get theirs. That's not the promise and I think the fact that's not part of the promises is a protection for us because we don't want to get evil gratification over the judgment of another person. You know, Proverbs [24:17] says if your enemy stumbles, do not rejoice.

1:27:35 Shelby: Yes, very good, yes.

1:27:38 Paul: The second thing is God doesn't promise it will be in our time. So I have a sense of time and He doesn't tell me when. He doesn't tell me any of those things and so, if you don't see it and it doesn't happen in three weeks, you can't say, "Well, that's not true," because that's not part of the promise.

1:28:01 Shelby: Yes, yes. We forget that the timeline goes on forever. In the grand scheme of things, if God is eternal this way and this way, our life is a little tiny dot on the on the line of eternity and we are so focused on just this little dot, but we forget often that there's a bigger thing going on that we're just unaware of or we don't think about it, too much. So we think if it doesn't happen in the dot, that it's not going to happen at all.

1:23:11 Shelby: Yes, with no hope for a solution, yes, because the lowly get beat down in many ways and they don't really see any justice coming at all. When evil is done to you, repaying evil for evil is just a knee-jerk reaction that we have.

1:23:29 We're constantly thinking, "You did that to me, I'm going to do that to you, too, and it's going to be worse." And again, that's something that happens with kids, repaying evil for evil. You don't have to teach them how to do that. They know exactly what to do. "If you hit me, I'm going to hit you twice."

1:23:49 It's really hard to get out of the way of what God is doing; and it's really hard to not try to take the wheel from Him and say, "I'm going to take it from here because You clearly don't know what You're doing," or we're just honestly very impatient.

1:24:06 We want immediate response. We want immediate vengeance. I mean, some of the most popular movies that exist are plots that revolve around vengeance, revolve around revenge. People love to watch that. They love to see...

1:24:27 Paul: Liam Neeson wouldn't have a career without that.

1:24:28 Shelby: Exactly, and there's something in there that's like righteousness.

1:24:34 Paul: Because the hunger for justice is built inside of us.

1:24:37 Shelby: Yes, there's something in there, but I mean, we love to see the bad guy get theirs; but again, we think we relate to the good guy because we think we're the good guy.

1:28:33 Paul: Or the fact that to us, that seems like the world's getting worse does not mean that God has forsaken His holiness and His love and His justice, and is not faithful to His promises. Very, very important to know this is a declaration as firm as any promise God has made for us, but He doesn't promise that I will witness His vengeance and that it will be within my sense of when it needs to happen. It's very important not to apply that to this passage because you'll end up concluding that God's not faithful.

1:29:21 Shelby: Yes, and that's what we do. We do that all the time. I really love that "witness" thing because we love to see people get what's coming to them and if we don't see it, we feel like it's just unsatisfying; but it's not necessarily about that at all. And like you said, the evil kind of continues if we're able to see that. We're able to revel in the fact that they're getting what's coming to them and that's evil in and of itself.

1:29:55 Paul: Well, let's take an example. Now, let's go back to Genesis 3. God announces His judgment on Adam and Eve and He announces He'll the head of the serpent. Now, my sense of timing is do that before dark, send Jesus, finish it all, be over. What we get is this long period of thousands and thousands of years before Jesus comes.

1:30:31 Now, we have the benefit of the revelation to see that the plan of redemption is marching on. Out of Abraham comes Isaac and out of Isaac comes the nation of Israel, and out of Israel comes Judah and out of Judah comes Jesus; and you know.

1:30:55 But it just seems like God's made a promise and then, nothing happens. And, I mean, things get so evil in Israel that kings are killing kings and, I mean, it's just... you just think, "Where is God? What is He doing?"

1:31:12 Well, the march of redemption is moving on and Jesus comes at just the right moment in God's plan. And you know, historians argue that there's never a moment in history to that time where it was a perfect moment for the Messiah to come; and so, we have the same struggle. We see the promise of God and then, we expect in three seconds, we're going to see the full completion of that promise; and that's just not how God works.

1:31:49 Shelby: Yes. Adam and Eve didn't see the head of the serpent crushed. They weren't able to see it. I have this picture like a print in my office and it's a common one, but I really love it. It's a picture of Eve crying and it's next to Mary, who's pregnant, and Mary has her foot on the head of the serpent; and they're like embracing each other and I love that because it's a picture of that.

1:32:17 Eve didn't actually see that happen, but God reaches across time and makes it happen at the perfect time that Eve would eventually, in her lineage have the Messiah come out of that and crush the head of the serpent. Even though she was guilty of eating the fruit, vengeance was the Lord's and it came after that in the person of Jesus thousands of years later. It's a good reminder.

1:32:48 Paul: And we have hints of Eve still looking forward and holding on to the Lord. She produced sons who knew what it meant to worship God and everyone who's a believer, whether you are an Old Testament believer or us today, is looking forward because we're all in the middle of the story, but you have to be very careful the way you embrace the promises of God.

1:33:19 This is a sure promise. This should be in the promise list that we quote "^9bVengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord," doesn't say you'll be a witness. It doesn't say it'll be in the timing that makes sense to you.

1:33:33 Shelby: Yes, really healthy way to approach that.

1:33:35 Paul: But the implication is we can give ourselves to doing good in the face of evil because of who God is, because He's going to avenge and that goes right back to these Old Testament passages. Nahum 1:2 says He's an avenging God. Paul picks that up in Romans 12. There's the Bible holding together so the God that Nahum describes is the same God that Paul describes to us as He applies these truths to our lives.

1:34:19 Shelby: Beautiful, absolutely incredible.

1:34:19 Paul: Yes. One more passage and then, I want to just say a couple things. This is Revelation 16, starting with verse 17.

¹⁷The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple, from the throne, saying, “It is done!” ¹⁸And there were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, and a great earthquake such as there had never been since man was on the earth, so great was that earthquake. ¹⁹The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell, and God remembered Babylon the great, to make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of His wrath.

1:35:11 I'll stop there. In Revelation 6, there's seven bowls of God's anger that are poured out and this is the final bowl; and I love that it says, "It is done." I just wanted to read that is when God says, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay," there will be a final meting out of God's vengeance.

1:35:35 Evil [will] forever win. I like to say it this way. We'll be able to go to the one funeral that we want to attend. We'll attend the funeral of sin and death; and peace and righteousness will reign forever and ever and ever. The hope of completion of redemption is not just rooted in God's grace. It's rooted in His anger because He is going to say it's done. I love that and I love that there's an exclamation point.

1:36:16 Shelby: Yes, and it should remind us of what Jesus said on the cross.

1:36:19 Paul: And then, you see His unleashing of His power in ways that are just scary. There's a hope that God will not get tired, He'll not compromise His law, He won't say, "Well, maybe evil isn't so bad after all," that if He is perfectly holy and perfectly loving and perfectly just, He will bring this thing to an end.

1:36:53 And you can't do that, I can't do that; but we know that's going to happen and on the other side will be life so gorgeous, it defies our imagination and every legacy of sinful anger will be ever gone. Horrible murder, horrible injustice, horrible abuse, and all the suffering that comes out of those things — forever gone because God will say, "I'm done."

1:37:30 Shelby: Yes, the words that we revel in as Christians when we look back on is Jesus — I just mentioned this — Jesus saying, "It is finished." It is accomplished. It's done. We love those words because it helps us to understand that sin has been dealt with. We love those words.

1:37:48 What if we're able to look to the future the way that God describes it and read with delight the same way that we read "it is finished" from the lips of Jesus? God's saying it is done. We have to be patient because it's not happening right now.

1:38:05 It will happen one day, but what if we had that kind of faith, the faith that we have to look back on the fact that Jesus dealt with sin once and for all — "it is finished" — what if we had the same kind of faith to look forward that God will eventually say it is done? We should delight in that. We should take pleasure in that.

1:38:24 Paul: Amen. Well, let me just make some concluding observations here. We could spend hours in other passages. I've tried to pull out some passages that really help guide our conversation.

1:38:45 Shelby: Yes, these are fantastic choices.

1:38:48 Paul: First thing I want to say is you would not want to live in a world where the one in charge of the world was incapable of anger ["I wouldn't want to be bothered"], be the son of a father who was incapable of anger.

1:39:08 I would want to be married to somebody who was incapable of anger. I mean, one of the ways that God rescued me from the sin of my anger was the righteous anger of my wife saying, "This is wrong. This cannot be tolerated and I will never come to the point, Paul, where I say this is okay."

1:39:31 That's a beautiful thing and so, to know that the One who sits on the throne of the universe is angry in all the right places, in all the right times, in all the right ways because that anger is an extension of His holiness, love, and justice, it's just so wonderful.

1:39:55 I mean, people occasionally ask me, "How do you get up and face this evil world everyday," and this is what I always talk about. It just gives me such hope. I mean, I live in Center City, Philadelphia. I see heartbreaking scenes everyday and you see them in the suburbs, too.

1:40:19 But my belief in what we have described in these two hours is what gets me up in the morning. Let me say it again. If you want to hold on to a God who is a doting, permissive grandfather, you do not want to worship the God of the Bible a and you just have to face that.

1:40:46 You have a choice. It's a hugely important moral choice of designing a god of your own making or willingly bowing before the God who is as He revealed Himself in His word and those choices are inescapable.

1:41:13 Shelby: Yes, we've all seen kids who are raised by parents who are permissive and allow them to do whatever they want, and those kids end up being disasters. They end up being like the most selfish people in the world and often, they're very angry as well because they feel like they've been violated anytime something goes wrong and that goes back to their upbringing. We don't want a God who is permissive to allow us to do whatever we want. Chaos will ensue and we will be miserable.

1:41:42 Paul: My son, who's now 47 — he was 47 yesterday — said to me once years ago, he said two things. "Thank you for disciplining us." He said, "I have friends who got no discipline," and he said they're just out of control. He's like, "I can't be with them."

1:42:07 And then, he said, "I look back and I never think anything about that discipline was the result of your love for us." He said, "I didn't like it and I would try to avoid it, but I knew you weren't doing that because you hate me," and that's our heavenly Father. I'm a sorry picture of what He's like.

1:42:39 Shelby: Yes, but what a gift that he said that to you on his birthday. Saying that to you, that's a gift to you.

1:42:42 Paul: Yes, yes, yes. Third thing I want to say again is it's impossible to be perfectly holy and not be angry with sin. You want God to be angry with sin and that response to us is not condemnation. It's discipline, but we want to be disciplined. Hebrews 12 tells us that discipline produces a harvest of righteousness, good things. God's holy anger also produces His perfect justice and that justice is our hope.

1:43:26 So one other thing that we haven't talked about, but I want to say is because of His hatred for evil in what is called common grace, God restrains evil everyday, keeping sinners from being as bad as they could be without His restraint.

1:43:46 Shelby: Okay, you're going to have to unpack that one a little bit because people will look at the world and go, "Uh, really?"

1:43:51 Paul: No, look. Why do people choose to keep traffic laws? It makes no sense to me. Every car is filled with a self-sufficient, self-sovereign human being and yet, they keep traffic laws. Why are there anything's left in our stores at all? Why doesn't everybody in the world shoplift everything? Why don't we all just murder one another. I mean, I could go on and on and on with this.

1:44:27 Shelby: Yes, this is exactly what I wanted you to say.

1:44:29 Paul: I mean, it's all restraining grace. It's not because we're good. I'm always amazed when I drive. I thought of this so many times, with all the crazy drivers, how orderly it is. Why? You can't explain that from the people who are behind the wheel.

1:44:57 It's because God loves us and He chooses between the "already" of the fall and the "not yet" of the new heavens and new earth to make life livable for us because He prizes His creation and so, as just as He is, part of His anger with evil is to restrain it, so it can't do everything it would otherwise do if He pulled back His restraint.

1:45:26 We call that common grace. It's grace, but it's operating all the time. Why does a person who is otherwise selfish, choose to hold the door for me? I mean, it's just example after example. Why can a teacher possibly control 25 seven-year-olds? Every child behind every desk wants his way, but somehow, they choose to be compliant.

1:46:01 Shelby: Yes, sometimes. Yes, you're exactly right and I think we need to remind ourselves of those things, instead of immediately going to the poor things.

1:46:12 Paul: Here's what's important. God is not making a promise of vengeance and then, letting evil just run unbridled as bad as it can be and then someday, He's going to end it. He's actively restraining evil along the way. That's part of His holiness. It's part of His love. It's part of His justice.

1:46:34 Shelby: Really good.

1:46:35 Paul: So it's not like He makes a promise in Genesis 3, we're not going to get it for who knows when and He's up their passive, having a cigar and a bourbon.

1:46:47 Shelby: Okay. Interesting word picture, okay.

1:46:50 Paul: Well, what are you going to say, a hot dog?

1:46:52 Shelby: A hot dog and a Coke Zero. Yes, we'll go with cigar and bourbon, but I understand what you mean. But a lot of people think that God's just kind of sitting there passively allowing whatever to happen, but any good that we see in this world as a result of His grace.

1:47:10 Paul: Here's a theological point. The promises of God don't connote passivity before they're fulfilled because this is a God who scripture says never slumbers nor sleeps. He's incessantly on point, excessively active and so, because He hates evil, He's constantly restraining evil.

1:47:42 There will be the final bowl of punishment when He'll say it's done. He does punish evil along the way, but one of the aspects of His holiness, His love, and His justice is restraining evil all the time, so we're not all as bad as we otherwise would be.

1:48:03 Shelby: Yes, that's helpful to think me, too, not other people out there. I'm not as bad as I could be because of God's grace.

1:48:09 Paul: Yes, and it's not just believers that He restrains. He restrains everyone and otherwise evil people create a technology that makes our lives better. A physician who would shake his fist in the face of God takes care of me and gives me health.

1:48:42 Shelby: Scientists who are atheists make breakthroughs.

1:48:45 Paul: All that is God restraining evil because He's a God of boundless love. Beautiful. So between the "already" of the promise to Adam and Eve and the final bowl where He says it's done, don't think that God is passive. His hatred of evil is that everyday hatred, it means there's a lot more punishment going on than we would know, but He is also restraining evil so it doesn't reign free.

1:49:18 Shelby: Yes, really good. I mean, this is like talking about writing this stuff down on a Post-it note and put it on your mirror in the morning. This is stuff we need to be reminded of all the time. I mean, otherwise, I feel like where's the hope? There's no hope if you don't have a God behind what's happening in the world, you know. There's no hope there.

1:49:40 Paul: So you do not have to be embarrassed by the anger of God. I's not a defect of His character. In fact, it's your hope in this life and the one to come. It is so wonderful that the One who sits on the throne of the universe, who rules the world according to His will is angry everyday with evil and will not relent until evil is no more, 'til He rises and says it is done. And that is an extension of His holiness, it's an extension of His love, and an extension of His justice.

1:50:27 Shelby: Yes, praise God.

1:50:28 Paul: It's just beautiful and the last thing I would say is don't try to do what God alone can do. When God says, "Leave room for My wrath," He's saying, "Don't try to do My job. Trust that my promises are secure. They're true and rest in My hatred of evil." Beautiful.

1:50:59 Shelby: Yes, and that's hard to do because it's painful, especially, if you've been wronged. If you've been hurt, you want to get vengeance. You want to see that person get what's coming to them but sometimes, God calls us to restrain that and trust that He will take care of it; and that is painful on the part of a human being.

1:51:19 Paul: And let the cross be a reminder. It's not just the grace of God that sent Jesus to the cross. It's the anger of God with sin. On the cross, God's anger and God's grace embrace, and the cross shows you that when God says, "Vengeance is mine, I'll repay, "God means it."

1:51:46 He means business. That's why Jesus had to die and I think of that all the time. When I begin to doubt the justice of God against evil, the cross is always my reminder because there's [an] actual moment in history where we see God doing exactly what He said He was going to do with evil.

1:52:14 Shelby: Yes, and if you don't believe that that purchase happened, the receipt is the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. He's not dead. He's alive right now and that should remind you, with hope, that it's going to be dealt with. It will be dealt with, all evil.

1:52:34 Paul: And may we not run from God because He is angry, but rest in Him because He is.

1:52:43 Shelby: Yes, to be continued?

1:52:45 Paul: Yes.

1:52:46 Shelby: More next time?

1:52:47 Paul: We want to talk about... do some talking about the anger of Jesus because there's several instances where that anger is clear in scripture and then, talk a little bit about what the Bible says about our anger.

1:53:03 Shelby: Love it, yes, looking forward to that. Thank you for this. This was a master class in understanding the character of God. Really appreciate it, Paul.

1:53:12 Paul: Yes, isn't it wonderful that this God is not just sovereign, but He's our Father by grace? We're His children. Best Dad ever.

1:53:27 Shelby: We'll get him a mug.

1:53:28 Paul: Yes.