God's Governmental Wrath

Continuing on the subject of God’s retributive, governmental, and consequential justice, we will focus our attention now on these last two terms since retribution was mostly covered in the last lesson.

If we reflect upon the last topic of God’s retribution coming to the earth in the last days, we can also see God’s governmental justice if we look closely. In 2 Peter 3:9 it says, “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” In the context of this verse, there were people mocking the future prophecy about God coming to judge the earth just like how in the days of Noah people mocked him thinking that God was going to destroy the world with a flood. People mock prophetic words because they often seem to take so long to come about that people begin to think that the prophet or prophecy is false or that God is untrue. But Peter assures his reader that this judgement will surely come about and God is not slow about His promise because for Him, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day. But the reason Peter gives for why it is taking so long for the cleansing of the earth to come with God’s retribution is because God is very patient. He is patient with our sin and rebellion against Him and desires as many people to be saved before that terrible day of wrath comes. We can see here that God does not delight in the death of the wicked and His heart towards humanity is one of much grace and compassion. You and I hate to see all the suffering and violence that happens on this earth because of people doing terrible things. But you know what? So does God. He desires the good of all His creatures. He wants to put an end to all death, suffering, and acts of evil. The prophecy that must be fulfilled spoken by the prophet Daniel, is to put an end to sin and bring in everlasting righteousness; and Paul writes that the last enemy to be defeated is death. These things must happen so that we no longer have to live in misery. God wants to bring paradise back to the earth and eternal joy but in order to do that, things need to be cleaned up and renovated first. It is the only way for God to accomplish this goal in light of the fact that each person has their own free-will. So you see, God’s governmental justice is about bringing everlasting peace to the earth so that all things can be restored, individuals can be vindicated for the crimes done against them, and so that God is righteous and upholds His moral order in the sight of all and shows forth His compassion for the good of all. Therefore, governmental wrath will be poured out upon the earth to bring in that restoration. For those who decide to be on the wrong end of this, they will either turn to God and be saved or they will perish in their evil ways. But this wrath of God is not personal—it’s purposeful. The refiner’s fire is coming where all dross will be taken away and all that will be left remaining will be pure gold (Mal 3:2). Let God purify you while there is still time.

Some may wonder if the God in the Old Testament is the same God in the New Testament, specifically, Jesus. So far, I think we have already demonstrated sufficiently that Jesus will be the one coming back as judge over the earth. So, this is congruent with the judgements that we see in the Old Testament and we can conclude by this that Jesus is the same God who has not changed because “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8) and He is the radiance of God’s glory and “the exact representation of His nature” (Heb 1:3).

Some of us may have read the Old Testament many times over, all the while, being oblivious to God’s governmental wrath. How does this work? God used His governmental wrath to purify Israel so that His name could be known throughout the whole earth so that all the ends of the earth may fear God. If they all departed from Yahweh and went to serve other gods in that polytheistic society that they were surrounded with, then who would represent Yahweh? Who would know of the only true God? Who would turn people from their wickedness so that they could be saved and inherit eternal life? There would be no one left and all would be lost and perish. But God, knowing that the abolition of the seed of faith was possible, provided Israel with many blessings so that their hearts would stay thankful to the Lord, and He gave them many laws so that they would not be led astray by paganism and so that they would walk the path of righteousness where life is found. But when they abandoned His Sabbaths, forgot the Lord who brought them out of the land of Egypt, rebelled and turned away from the Lord and the way of life, God afflicted them and brought many judgements against them because their pride kept them from the way, the truth, and the life. They needed to be humbled and broken so that they might turn back to be saved, make God’s name known throughout the earth so that others might be saved, and so that the seed of Abraham would endure to bring about the Messiah, the one who would save the world and deliver His people from their sins.

God made a covenant oath to Abraham saying, “I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 26:4). And since God could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, promising the outcome of this oath. Since it is impossible for God to lie, and because He had to maintain the honor of His word, and because He desired to bring salvation to the world, He would surely make good on this promise. Whatever it would take, He would ensure the preservation of the line of Abraham both physically and through faith to bring about the Messiah from whom all the nations of the earth would indeed be blessed. But not only through Jesus, but through all those who are in Jesus through faith, the world would be blessed through them. As a result, the descendants from Abraham by faith would be as numerous as the stars in the night sky.

God’s judgements were harsh in the Old Testament because the people’s hearts were so hard. But if they were to soften their hearts and worship the only One true God, then severe judgements would not be necessary. Another thing we must keep in mind is that the Bible tends to just record the main events. It doesn’t record so much of the mundane tasks that were done for the time in between God’s judgements. So, at a glance, it looks like all God is doing is judging people and that’s all that God is. However, that is not true. God gave His prophets messages of warning and messages of repentance for people to turn to God. Jeremiah, for example, spent most of his life preaching and prophesying but it was only in his later years that God finally came with His judgement. This means that God was more than patient and endured the rebellion of His people for many years before executing judgements. So, if you pay more careful attention, you will see God’s love and patience like when you read Jeremiah 2-3 or the book of Hosea.

However, all that may not be a sufficient explanation for Israel’s earlier days. Like, what about right after Israel left the land of Egypt and they were already worshipping a golden calf idol, saying it is what brought them out of the land of Egypt? Then God struck many of them dead with seemingly not much patience. Why did God do that? Well, this was the beginning of when God made a covenant with Israel and provided laws to them from Moses. If God were patient in the very beginning of the covenant, then surely Israel would have all apostatized. If God did not act quickly in punishing them, then they wouldn’t have taken God seriously. They would have presumed upon His grace and patience to deepen their hearts into rebellion. But God had to put a swift stop to it. He needed to demonstrate that the laws He was enacting were serious and He really expected Israel to obey them. It was a requirement to maintain their purity. This was not optional.

Another reason for why God’s judgements were harsh in the Old Testament is because sin is like a virus that is highly contagious. Bad company corrupts good character and a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough. One drop of chemical poison in a glass of water is enough to kill. In a similar way, sin also kills. Sin brings forth death and the more we choose it the further we disconnect ourselves from the life of God. The more evil that we live, the more we spread that evil to everyone else. Have you noticed that if you’re around a co-worker or friend that constantly complains or gossips, it rubs off on you and you start doing the same thing they do? Well, in a similar way, this is what sin was doing to Israel. Both, their own sin and the sin of the nations surrounding them. Oftentimes, they would intermingle with the other nations and intermarry. This caused problems for them even as it caused problems for the wisest man, Solomon. This is what is written about Solomon:

1 Kings 11:1-8

Now King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, 2 from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the sons of Israel, “You shall not associate with them, nor shall they associate with you, for they will surely turn your heart away after their gods.” Solomon held fast to these in love. 3 He had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines, and his wives turned his heart away. 4 For when Solomon was old, his wives turned his heart away after other gods; and his heart was not wholly devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. 5 For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians and after Milcom the detestable idol of the Ammonites. 6 Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and did not follow the Lord fully, as David his father had done. 7 Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable idol of Moab, on the mountain which is east of Jerusalem, and for Molech the detestable idol of the sons of Ammon. 8 Thus also he did for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.

Did you know that Israel had started worshipping the god Molech and that they learned about this false god from the Canaanites? Do you know what they did in worshipping Molech? They sacrificed their children alive and burned them in the fire while they would beat their drums louder and louder to drown out the screams. That was a detestable act which God Himself was surely detested by and it was a practice that God wanted to eliminate. To do that, He would have to afflict and bring destruction to the Israelites to bring that godless practice out of them. He would also need to have the Canaanites destroyed so that the Israelites wouldn’t relearn that abominable practice. So you see, many of the punishments in the Old Testament had a cleansing purpose to rid people of evil. God used war, plagues, and famine to curb the sin problem so that it wouldn’t get as bad again like it did right before He sent the great flood. That was not a judgement that God wanted to repeat and so He enacted lesser judgements to keep sin at bay. Otherwise, worldwide suffering would certainly increase and people’s hearts would become so hard in sin that they would not believe in the One true God to attain immortality and their sin would prevent others from receiving life as well. Sin prevents people from coming to God and it’s a deadly virus. But God is a good surgeon and so He performed surgery upon the world so that He might save it. The incisions were painful but the result would bring healing.

There was also governmental justice displayed in the very beginning at the garden of Eden. After Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, God said, “‘Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever’— 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. 24 So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.” This act of God was a mercy of God. Because of sin in our lives and in this world, we make ourselves miserable and we make others miserable. Human trafficking, embezzlement, and other crimes are bad enough with people living about one-hundred years, how much worse do you think it could get if it could last for an eternity? Problems with mental health are also the result of this sinful world that we live in. Imagine suffering and struggling with those things all your life for an eternity and never being able to die. That would certainly be torture. But God didn’t want that for us. He wanted us to have an end to suffering. And so, it was a mercy for God to banish humanity from entering back into the garden. Otherwise, they would live forever in their sin. That’s not the kind of life God wanted for us because He loves us. He also did not want that kind of life for us because it would be a governmental disaster and a very poor reflection of His character since we are His image-bearers. And so, it was a very good governmental decision that He made. God does not punish just to punish—He punishes because He is good.

Circling back around to the New Testament, we see that in the church age, God also displayed serious punishments. We’re given the example of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 it says that they lied to the Holy Spirit. As a result, the Lord killed them. Perhaps this was God showing forth how serious He took sin that His attitude about it hasn’t changed after the cross. He still hates sin even as He did when the many Israelites were struck down by Mt. Sinai. Then in 1 Corinthians 11:30 some people were partaking of the Lord’s table (communion) in an unworthy manner and because of this Paul says, “For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep.” By sleep, he meant that they were dead and then others had physical sicknesses as a result of their sin. And then to one of the churches, Jesus gives this admonition, “I gave her time to repent, and she does not want to repent of her immorality. 22 Behold, I will throw her on a bed of sickness, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of her deeds. 23 And I will kill her children with pestilence, and all the churches will know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts; and I will give to each one of you according to your deeds” (Rev 2:21-23). Yet, many people in our day want to ignore God’s discipline and hatred for sin. They think that the cross made it so that they can sin as much as they want and everything is going to be alright.

But there is a continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament on God’s attitude towards sin. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:6-11 about the Israelites as being an example of what could happen to us if we treat sin lightly, “Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved. 7 Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and stood up to play.” 8 Nor let us act immorally, as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in one day. 9 Nor let us try the Lord, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the serpents. 10 Nor grumble, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. 11 Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.” For what reason would they be an example if none of these things were possible to ever happen to us? If the example was not applicable to us, for what reason would the example be mentioned? Hebrews 12:5-8 says, “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, Nor faint when you are reproved by Him; 6 For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, And He scourges every son whom He receives. 7 It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 8 But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.” Discipline is something we can expect from God to purify us and if we don’t receive it then either (1) we’re illegitimate children, that is, not saved; or (2) God is being patient and gracious with us. If it is the second one, we should not presume upon God’s grace. There is a day coming where Jesus will remove the lampstands out of their places if they refuse to repent. That is, He will judge those within the church and people will die. They will no longer be a light unto the world because they will be dead. This is a sobering warning taken along with Revelation 18:4 warning of mystery Babylon saying, “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not participate in her sins and receive of her plagues.” God disciplines His church to purify it. When the Apostle Paul heard that there was a man committing incest inside the church, he ordered the church to “remove the wicked man from among yourselves” (1 Cor 5:13). And why was this? Because Paul understood that “a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough” (v. 6). He knew God desired the purity of His people but if there was wickedness within the camp, it needed to be dealt with. You can’t make good tasting cookies with a rotten egg. Even if all the rest of the ingredients are good, it only takes that one to ruin the whole batch. Now, I say all of this not so you should live in fear. Hebrews 12 says to not faint when you are reproved by God. Why? Because He loves you. But at the same time, it says do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord because He is serious about sin. There’s a balance. Unfortunately, modern Christianity has lost that. Either you’re in a church that’s all about how bad of a sinner you are and condemnation and you’re such a wicked and depraved person. Or, you’re in a church that’s all about the love of Jesus that covers all your sins so you don’t have to worry. Everything is going to be alright. We don’t want to offend anyone so we don’t talk about sin here. How about we follow the Bible and what Jesus really wants for the church? Church should be a hospital for the broken to receive love and acceptance and hope in Jesus Christ to be healed while at the same time, being an ER room to surgically remove and cut off the sin that is destroying you. People should be able to go to church and feel the comfort and love of the gospel to feel safe while at the same time, hearing enough about sin that it makes them uncomfortable. The preachers who never talk about sin are enabling the corruption of the church which is the very thing that Jesus bled and died to set us free from so that we would be purified, that we would be honorable vessels pleasing to God.

Titus 2:11-14 says, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, 12 instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, 13 looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, 14 who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.”

Now I mention all these things not to say that after we are saved, we can become enemies of God through one sin here or there. We are in covenant relationship with God as believers—He won’t abandon us at the slightest infraction of His law, “For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we will live together with Him” (1 Thess 5:9-10). However, God still hates sin because of what it does to us, what it does to people around us, and because of how it tarnishes the glory of His name. For this reason, He will implement means of affliction to purify us and if that doesn’t work, He may have to take us home early. And that might even be a grace that He bestows upon us so that we will not apostatize and perish along with the rest of the world. For believers in the New Testament, this is called discipline. For believers in the Old Testament, this was called wrath. If we are living in a right relationship with God and have a repentant heart, then we don’t have to fear God’s retribution. We don’t have to fear God exacting a penalty for our sin because we are in a state of forgiveness and we trust in His love for us that He made abundantly clear at the cross. But if we are stubborn and rebellious in heart, living however we please, then we ought to fear because God is serious about sin.

The last way we shall look at God’s governmental wrath is through His use of other nations to bring about His purposes. I mentioned this briefly, but I would like to bring out the fact that God does not meticulously control these nations to bring about His wrath on other nations. In this way, God is sovereign over the situation but He isn’t forcing anyone’s hand. Rather, He orchestrates events according to His divine purpose while at the same time not neglecting an individual’s free-will. Doing this, God’s wrath isn’t direct but indirect. Think of it like having a proxy in a war. In our current global conflict, Russia is fighting Ukraine while Israel is fighting Iran and Palestine. You could say that Ukraine is a proxy for the United States and the UN to fight against and weaken Russia. The U.S. has been providing them money, weapons, and ammunition to help them fight the Russians for the past few years. And then Iran might be a proxy for Russia to fight against Israel and the United States. It’s not exactly like this with God using other nations but the idea is similar. God can help a particular nation attain victory by enabling their success in some way. The nation He chooses already has the desire in their heart to fight against the nation God wants them to fight against. God might simply give them a green light to do it and that emboldens them and gives them courage, especially if they have been told by a prophet or from a dream that they will be a powerful nation and they will conquer. Or, He may give them divine strength. However, it would be wrong to assume that God does this every time there is a war.

In the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, we see a similar situation of God using people to fight for Him to administer justice when God uses the Babylonian Empire to punish Israel and the other nations for their sin. God said, “I have made the earth, the men and the beasts which are on the face of the earth by My great power and by My outstretched arm, and I will give it to the one who is pleasing in My sight. Now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, My servant, and I have given him also the wild animals of the field to serve him” (Jer 27:5-6). God calls Nebuchadnezzar His servant (Jer 25:9; 43:10), because God had chosen him and enabled him to conquer the nations.

In Ezekiel 30:24-25 God explains this empowerment by symbolically putting His own sword in the king’s hand, “For I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon and put My sword in his hand; and I will break the arms of Pharaoh, so that he will groan before him with the groanings of a wounded man. Thus I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, but the arms of Pharaoh will fall. Then they will know that I am the Lord, when I put My sword into the hand of the king of Babylon and he stretches it out against the land of Egypt.” And God also speaks out against Zedekiah, king of Jerusalem and the city:

Thus says the Lord God of Israel, “Behold, I am about to turn back the weapons of war which are in your hands, with which you are warring against the king of Babylon and the Chaldeans who are besieging you outside the wall; and I will gather them into the center of this city. 5 I Myself will war against you with an outstretched hand and a mighty arm, even in anger and wrath and great indignation. 6 I will also strike down the inhabitants of this city, both man and beast; they will die of a great pestilence. 7 Then afterwards,” declares the Lord, “I will give over Zedekiah king of Judah and his servants and the people, even those who survive in this city from the pestilence, the sword and the famine, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of their foes and into the hand of those who seek their lives; and he will strike them down with the edge of the sword. He will not spare them nor have pity nor compassion.
(Jer 21:4-7).

In this passage, God is angry with Jerusalem and king Zedekiah and so God decides to do something about it. God specifically uses language like, “I will gather,” and “I Myself will war,” and “I will strike down,” even though in the context we know that God did not directly do this because Babylon was the one doing it to them. Yet God was the one who sent them there to judge Jerusalem. God would ensure that Babylon’s siege, capture, and exile of the city would be successful since they failed to heed all of His warnings (Jer 27:8). The reason we know that God did not deterministically control Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar is because they overstepped God’s just retribution. You could say that they committed war crimes. It is for this reason that Jeremiah 25:12-14 says:

“Then it will be when seventy years are completed I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation,’ declares the Lord, ‘for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans; and I will make it an everlasting desolation. I will bring upon that land all My words which I have pronounced against it, all that is written in this book which Jeremiah has prophesied against all the nations. (For many nations and great kings will make slaves of them, even them; and I will recompense them according to their deeds and according to the work of their hands.)’”

God also personally punished Nebuchadnezzar for his pride, because he thought that all of his success and his great empire was because of what he did to make it great. If the other nations didn’t escape God’s judgement, then neither would the mighty king of Babylon escape. God is one who judges without partiality. For this reason, the king went insane and lived like a wild animal in the field and ate grass until the time of his humbling was over.

But how did Nebuchadnezzar go insane? Was it a direct punishment of retribution from God? Or was it more of a natural punishment like Romans 1 where God simply gave him over to a depraved mind and to foolishness? It could really be interpreted either way.

In this lesson, we have covered God’s governmental justice and wrath in these ways.
God’s purpose is to:

• Bring in His everlasting kingdom in the renewed earth

• Fulfill His covenant oath with Abraham to bring the Messiah and a multitude of heirs through faith

• Soften people’s hearts through affliction so that they would turn to God and be saved

• Demonstrate the seriousness of His law so that people would be healed and all the ends of the earth may hear about Yahweh so as to be saved

• Quarantine the virus of sin so that it didn’t kill faith for Israel and the rest of the world

• God’s judgements were poured out upon various nations to ultimately reduce the world’s future sufferings

• Adam and Eve were banished from the garden of Eden so that humanity would not live forever in sin and this was God’s mercy upon us to reduce our suffering and to bring about the earth that He wanted to see which would represent His image.

• Punishments were and are inflicted in the church age to purify a people for His own possession

• God used an indirect means like Babylon who was freely willing to fulfill God’s purposes

What we can take away from all of this is that in God’s governmental justice and wrath, there is an inherent restorative and remedial nature to this. It is important that we read the Bible not just through the lens of retribution but also through the lens of restoration. There are many opinions that people have of God and how they express themselves when encountering God but those representations are not necessarily the clearest picture of who God is or who God wants everyone else to see and know who He is. Remember, this God is Jesus, whose whole purpose of coming down to earth is to save it, to save us, and to restore us back to God, back to life.

Moses wanted to see God’s glory and the Lord permitted Him to see His radiance but only through the cleft of a rock. The first words out of His mouth were not, “Holy, holy, holy.” They were not “sovereign, sovereign, sovereign.” They were not “powerful, powerful, powerful.” They were not “fear me, fear me.” No, but rather, the first words out of God’s own mouth of how He wanted to be represented, in how He wanted to be made known for was this: “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin” (Ex 34:6-7). This is Jesus. These things are God’s love and God’s love is His holiness. God’s love is the name that He desires to be known throughout the ends of the earth! This is His glory. This is why He does what He does. It is only at the end that God adds the disclaimer that He “will by no means leave the guilty unpunished ...” He certainly cares about His law—but He desires to be loved more than He desires to be feared. Do you know this God? Do you know this Jesus who desires to show you His compassion and grace?