God of limited anger
Psa
30:5 For
his anger lasts only a moment, but his favour lasts a lifetime; weeping
may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.
In
these meditations we have already considered the God of Anger, but
here there is something more that needs taking in. Do you ever remember
times when, as a child, you did wrong and there came a division between
you and your parent who was angry with what you had done? The separation
was the thing that hurt you more than any smacking you may have received,
the fact that your parent thought badly of you and didn't want to
know you. Well that, almost certainly, is how many of us were brought
up, and in a day of no smacking, the only punishment seen by many
is banishment, and psychologically that is far worse that smacking
which is over in a moment.
David
knew this about God. Yes, He did get angry when it was justified,
but that anger was a temporary thing, something that only lasted for
a moment. Yes He does bring discipline (see Prov 3:11,12,
Heb 12:5,6) but it is a momentary thing in the scheme of things. Yes,
it may leave you weeping for a night, but it will only be for a night
(all right, a ‘night' may not just be a few hours, it can be days,
depending on the depth of work the Lord has to do in us!) It will
only be for a limited period and mostly it is only a very limited
period.
Consider
the usual order of events in these things today: you do something
wrong, the Holy Spirit within you convicts you, and you are sorry.
What has been going on in heaven? The Father sees the sin and is angry
– because He is with sin. He stirs His Spirit within you and you respond.
Now what happens? At that moment Jesus intercedes on our behalf: “Father,
I died for them, I died for that sin, it's been dealt with.” (1 Jn
2:1,2), and the matter is instantly closed. What may happen is that
in the earlier stages you may take longer to respond to the Holy Spirit's
activity within you. Like Jonah (Jon 1:1-4) we try to ‘run away' from
God and pretend it didn't happen, so it takes a little longer for
the Lord to bring us to our senses so that we repent, but the moment
we do, the above conversation in heaven takes place.
There
is an important principle here: God's anger against a sin last only
until you repent. The literal interpretation of our verse above which
says “weeping may remain for a night” is
actually “weeping will come in at evening
to lodge”. It's the picture of a lodger who comes to stay
overnight. You may not yet the significance of this, so let's say
it again: God's anger against sin lasts only until you repent. He
doesn't carry on holding the failure against us after it's been dealt
with. Some of us feel God will keep on harbouring it against us. No
He won't; once it's dealt with it's over. That's how any punishment
with children should be. When our children were little we had a saying,
“After smacks come cuddles.” The practice of pushing our children
away is psychological manipulation which is harmful. The controlled
smack without anger after a clear warning against a serious wrong,
followed by hugs, says this is dealt with and is now past history
that can be forgotten. It is interesting to note that under the Law
of Moses, incarceration (prison) was not an option. The options were
death (for major crimes, which became few) or restitution. In other
words, there was no long, prolonged punishment, but reconciliation
as quick as possible into society. God is looking to bring favour
and blessing, but we'll have to leave that to the next meditation.