The Wrath of God

QUOTES FOR REFLECTION

“There are a lot of people who struggle mightily with this whole idea. They say, ‘If God is a God of love, he doesn’t send people to hell. If God is a God of judgment, he can’t be a God of love. I can’t reconcile the two things.’ Yet the Bible insists that not only is God a God both of love and wrath—not only do those two things not conflict with each other, but they actually establish each other. One without the other is nonsense. One without the other is meaningless. If you actually try to somehow extract, remove surgically, excise the Christian message of the wrath and judgment of God, what you actually have is nothing left at all.”

~Tim Keller, Pastor & Author

“If we do not protect God’s wrath, we lose the bad news, and if we lose the bad news, we lose the good news — we lose the gospel.”

~Tony Reinke, Senior Writer at DesiringGod.org

“God’s wrath is more horrifying than we can ever imagine, but he will pardon any who take refuge in the shelter Jesus provides.”

~John Piper, Pastor & Author

“’Til on that cross as Jesus died

The wrath of God was satisfied

For every sin on Him was laid

Here in the death of Christ I live.”

~“In Christ Alone” by Keith & Kristyn Getty

SERMON PASSAGE

Psalm 7 (ESV)

1 O Lord my God, in you do I take refuge;

   save me from all my pursuers and deliver me,

2 lest like a lion they tear my soul apart,

   rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.

3 O Lord my God, if I have done this,

   if there is wrong in my hands,

4 if I have repaid my friend with evil

   or plundered my enemy without cause,

5 let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it,

   and let him trample my life to the ground

   and lay my glory in the dust. Selah

6 Arise, O Lord, in your anger;

   lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies;

   awake for me; you have appointed a judgment.

7 Let the assembly of the peoples

  be gathered about you;

   over it return on high.

8 The Lord judges the peoples;

   judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness

   and according to the integrity that is in me.

9 Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end,

and may you establish the righteous—

   you who test the minds and hearts,

   O righteous God!

10 My shield is with God,

  who saves the upright in heart.

11 God is a righteous judge,

  and a God who feels indignation every day.

12 If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword;

  he has bent and readied his bow;

13 he has prepared for him his deadly weapons,

  making his arrows fiery shafts.

14 Behold, the wicked man conceives evil

  and is pregnant with mischief

  and gives birth to lies.

15 He makes a pit, digging it out,

  and falls into the hole that he has made.

16 His mischief returns upon his own head,

  and on his own skull his violence descends.

17 I will give to the Lord the thanks

  due to his righteousness,

  and I will sing praise to the name

  of the Lord, the Most High.