Is God angry at me?

The short answer to that question, assuming you are asking it (as I once did) based on the guilt you feel from your sinning behaviors, is a definite Yes or a definite No depending on one thing. 

In the Old Testament there's a story of Achan's sin (see Joshua 7) that made me think that God was angry with me. 

The conviction birthed out of the guilt I felt for the sin I knew I was committing. I was aware of my sin, and this awareness meant I also knew I was choosing to sin. 

I was to blame for my sin, and when I read Joshua 7, about how Achan directly disobeyed God despite having been told what not to do, I saw myself in Achan.  

I remember tha horror I felt within me when that correlation was made.  It was awful and I dreaded to know the truth. 

But I had come so far in my search for real answers and the real God that this was something I knew I couldn't ignore no matter how horrific it felt to know so well that I was Achan. 

That I sinned willfully.  

Achan even confessed his sin later on and he and his family were not spared because of his confession.

20 Achan replied, “It is true! I have sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel. This is what I have done: 21 When I saw in the plunder a beautiful robe from Babylonia, two hundred shekels of silver and a bar of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them. They are hidden in the ground inside my tent, with the silver underneath

Achan confessed that he coveted or saw something he wanted so badly that he was willing to disobey God to have it!

He knew it was wrong and that's why he hid his disobedience from the others.  But he could not hide it from God. 

I read this and remember feeling like ....yes!  I know what you feel Achan!  I sin willfully because I want something so badly that I'll even disobey God to try and get what I want!  It's terrible, but the reality of my life exposes that that is what happens.  I covet people's lives, relationships, beauty, achievements, styles and homes that I will disobey God's ways in order to get closer to having what I want, and usually my methods of disobedience are hidden from the eyes of the church.  But they are never hidden from God. 

The truth in this passage is that Achan, like myself, had a desire that was stronger than the desire to glorify God. 

And then it says that because of this they not only killed him, but they killed his animals, his children and everything he had taken in disobedience and burned it all along with him. 

24 Then Joshua, together with all Israel, took Achan son of Zerah, the silver, the robe, the gold bar, his sons and daughters, his cattle, donkeys and sheep, his tent and all that he had, to the Valley of Achor. 25 Joshua said, “Why have you brought this trouble on us? The Lord will bring trouble on you today.”

Then all Israel stoned him, and after they had stoned the rest, they burned them. 26 Over Achan they heaped up a large pile of rocks, which remains to this day. Then the Lord turned from his fierce anger. Therefore that place has been called the Valley of Achor[f] ever since.

When I read this I remember thinking....if God was angry at Achan for what he did, and if this God is unchanging that that meant God should be angry at me in the same exact way and intensity that He was with Achan.

Furthermore, if that was how God felt then I was going to die at any second! 

I remember reading this and being afraid of God -- not that He was powerful but that He was angry with me for my intentional sins.  I remember asking someone in the church, "is God angry at me?" And pressing the question further,  "Does my sin make God angry?"

I was terrified and angry myself all at once.  How could a gracious and loving God be so angry like that?!  How could God not care that Achan confessed and that Achan had fell prey to his weak sinful desires?  I was angry because I was Achan, and that didn't feel good.  

I remember this was when I was in Cambodia (doing YWAM--which by the way I never completed because the mission portion was too hard on me physically and mentally) but somewhere in the archives of this blog I mention this moment.  I mention my turmoil at the thought of God being angry at me after having read about Achan's sin.  I remember my eyes stinging with tears as I tried to convey my thoughts to the Ywam person (We had just finished a string of lectures on the attributes of God).  I was asking if God was angry at me, not so much because I felt bad at having offended God (although guilt would have made me come to that defensive conclusion), but more so because that meant He was going to strike me down at any second!  I was on the verge of tears because in that moment I felt so helpless!  If that's who God is then there was no chance for me!  The Ywam leader probably thought my tears were drawn from a repentant heart, but the truth of the matter is that in that moment I was so perplexed and angry at God for being God (someone angry enough to kill not only Acahn but his children too) and at myself for being myself (someone who coveted the things of this world more than the things of God).  Achan knew that if he sinned his whole household would pay for it too!  He knew because that was the cultural custom back then.  So it wasn't like he sinned thinking it was just himself that might suffer.  He knew, but yet he still did it.

I knew too. 

The tears were evidence that I knew my sin.  

God was angry at Achan's sin, which Achan knew and still chose to do.  

I remember just wrestling with this.  I was so torn and hurt and felt so abandoned by the love of God.  I remember every leader I spoke to tried to steer me back to how "God loves me" but their words did nothing to resolve the tension in my heart when I reflected back on Achan's sin.  How could a loving God do something like that?  More pointedly, how could God love someone like me who is just like Achan?  For a while I tried to ignore it and just saturate my thoughts with how much God loves me, which seemed to work for a while, but it wasn't until today that I look back on that time with so much more clarity and adoration and awe at how God was speaking to me. 

To me.

Not to the leaders or the people who read my blog, but to me.  The wrestle within me was real, the tears testified of my pain at being just like Achan, and the hopelessness of my state of being.  I could try harder to be better, but all it took was one sin.  And I had more than enough to be stoned and burned 500 times over, so I knew I definitely used up my quota, especially if the quota was zero! 

And then the gospel happened to me. 

God would be angry at my sin had it not been for the sacrifice of Jesus.  The gospel is a beautiful Redeemer, it is the help from One who did what u could not.  I could never appease God's righteous and just anger at the sin I chose and continue to choose to do, and God knew that about fallen humanity.  Therefore he sent His one and only Son to pay the price of blood!  Where I should have suffered death as Achan did, Christ took my place.  Christ died for sins committed by the world, but some will still try and justify themselves rather than believing in His work on the cross.  

I'm reading the book of Acts now, and I'm reminded of how people will choose the pull of the world, which is that riches, comfort and personal gain are what will sustain you in life.  Rather than choosing life which is believing in Jesus that He died for all of your sins, some will reject this in favor of trying to justify themselves with appearances of life.  "Look at me I'm rich!" or "look at me I'm admired by millions!", "look at me, I worked hard to have everything I want in life!", so on and so forth. 

When you choose life you choose repentance.  You choose acknowledgment of your complete failure to win God over, you choose your weakness and your inability to save yourself.  You choose to look at the cross of Jesus and behold how beautiful it is that God showed us mercy by sending His Son to die in our place.  You choose to know the truth, which is that you deserved death, not just because of your sins today but because of the very first sin...it only takes one sin to forfeit holiness.  You choose the truth of that.  

  

However, this gospel that is beautiful to me will look disdainful or boring to the person who chooses the pulls that come from this world.  The pulls that say to make it on your own.  In the first chapter of Acts, Luke (the writer) reminds us of what happens to all those who choose their own way over the way through Jesus.

"to take the place in this apostolic service that Judas left to go to his own place.” 

(Acts 1:25 HCSB)

I'm reminded of the choice.  To go to Jesus or to go to my own place.

Some will choose death!  And a good litmus test of this is to examine and see what you do when you sin.  Do you run to the cross or do you start thinking that next time you'll do better, you'll work harder?  As much as the latter sounds noble or even intentionally good, if it omits the gospel it is presumptuous.  You can't do better and try as you might you will never attain the perfection necessary to be justified and United with God.  Aka: you will never be able to be where God is, meaning you will not be able to enter into His rest when you die. 

Your place is death, but in Christ is life!

Christ was perfect, He lived a sinless life, which made Him eligible for the atonement He made on our behalf.  He died so that we might live in Him.  

The gospel is offensive to those who are adamant on justifying themselves.  

Hosea 2:15 (a prophet in the Old Testament) mirrors this coming covenant when he says that

"There I will give her vineyards back to her and make the Valley of Achor into a gateway of hope."

The valley of Achor was where Achan was burned with all his household due to the wrath of God! 

This valley, this reality of God's anger against sin, and the offensiveness of sin would be a door of hope for us in Jesus! Why?  Because Jesus would be the one to die so that we would have life.  The reality of our sins would point us to the hope we have in Jesus who took away those very sins that once burned Achan! 

It is not that God has changed, He cannot change because perfection cannot be made more perfect. 

Numbers 23:19 states,

"God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?"

 Sin is still as atrociously offensive to Him as it was when Achan committed them by disobeying God's orders.  

What has changed our situation then?  

Jesus changed our situation. 

How is it that God's anger is turned away from the stench of my rebellious sins? 

Jesus took my sin and clothed me in His perfect righteousness so that my stench went down with Him in the grave where it remained, while He was raised and did not remain in the grave.  

1 Thessalonians 5:9 says,

"For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,"

"And what if God, desiring to display His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience objects of wrath ready for destruction? And what if He did this to make known the riches of His glory on objects of mercy that He prepared beforehand for glory — (Romans 9:22-23 HCSB)

Honestly I still don't quite understand with precise clarity what Paul was saying in Romans regarding these "objects of wrath" and "objects of mercy," (albeit I may have a pretty good idea or ideas) but I have a lingering hunch that it will be clear to me when it needs to be clear to me.  So I want to have it in this blog to look back on with even deeper appreciation for the way in which God speaks to me personally. 

I pray that God used me today, right now, to deliver the gospel to you in the deepest most sincere parts of your heart.   The gospel of the beauty of Jesus who took your penalty and gave you Life.  Believe in Jesus and you will live. 

It's not about what you do on earth (how you continue to sin), but about what He has done and finished for you on the cross.  Live by The Truth of this gospel, and you will be set free from the power of sin.  Run to Him, run to the cross, and believe in the love of our Father, when sin wraps it's nasty arms around your arms and legs, head and feet, in that very moment remember that you were once to pay for that, but instead Jesus paid the price of your death.  Why?  Because God so loved the world that He gave His One and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall have everlasting life. 

Yes God will always be angry at the offensive reek of sin's deathness, because He is life.  But God loves us far more than the hatred He has for sin in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us!  Jesus is the proof in the pudding.

"But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us!" 

(Romans 5:8)

Ahhhh.  

When you feel God should be angry at you, run to the cross, and let it be known that He loves you more than He hates your sin. 

It's shocking and crazy, and sometimes I can't seem to wrap my presumptuous little head around such a great love, but the proof is there.  It's in the story of Achan, it's in the experience I had in Cambodia, it's in the book of Acts and Romans, it's in all those dark moments when I felt the weight and agony of my sins, it's in today's reflection, and it's in every passage of scripture leading up the present time, it's everywhere.  

God is fully righteous in that His holiness will not stand sin and must punish it, and God is fully love in that His love was to take that punishment on Himself for our sake.  The only thing we offer is the sin that required Him to be our substitute for the penalty we ensued.  We live by grace, and boast only in the cross of Jesus, who is One with the Father.  In essence it is the Father's love that took our place. 

The full blown incomprehensible truth of God's love.  A mighty rushing wind.  

Be swept into it.

Jmegrey