Today's Word

 

The very last part of the verse we have been looking at in Joel is a characteristic of go that I personally frequently fail to exhibit. This refers to a characteristic that we would never want to experience. It refers to God’s anger. In the Old Testament, it is recorded that the attitudes and acts of his earthly people in their journey to Israel and their persistent rejection of God in their homeland drove God to anger and punishment many many times. And it is recorded in Hebrews 13 that “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God”. 

But the last characteristic that is recorded in the verse in Joel, is that God is “slow to anger”. As sinful and very imperfect human beings, this is a characteristic that we are very grateful to see recorded. Our lives compared to God’s perfection frequently fall far short of His standard, but we are thankful that He has patience with our failings and has already forgiven them through the death of Jesus on the cross. His anger against sin has been quenched by that death, but we must never take advantage of His tolerance as Christians, our total ambition should be to please Him.

The same characteristic should be something we also exhibit in our own lives. Anger that we experience can rarely be described as ‘righteous anger’, it is our basic human nature reacting against someone that we consider having offended us. Jesus’ instruction is still valid, “turn the other cheek!” That may be beyond us at times, but we can certainly count to 10 before reacting.

Article written by Brian Preston, Elder @SFGH Church