I Am Slow to Anger // Promises You Can Depend On, Part 7

All too often these days, people fly off the handle. We're under pressure, all this stuff happening – so we just react.  But there's a promise of God that runs in completely the opposite direction to that. It's amazing these days how quick people are to fly off the handle. Just recently on the evening news I was listening to reports of a man in his fifties who murdered his wife and his two grandchildren with an axe. What drives people to do that? And it's not just axe murderers, you look around there's road rage, there's supermarket rage, people are under so much pressure they just snap. And there seems to be precious little grace and tolerance in this world. You know maybe, maybe I sound a bit pessimistic but so much of our interactions with other people is moving away from the gentle pace of close relationships to the frenetic pace of a transaction orientated world; from the quiet chat with the owner of the corner store just down the end of the street to the "beep, beep, beep" of the bar code scanner at the supermarket. And as we're squeezed into this battery hen cage, our expectation is that, that other people become just like us, that the anger and the tension and the pressure, well that's just the norm, it's the way things are. People are angry and the more we live our lives in that reality the more our image of God changes – well surely He must be angry too. Over the years I have sadly been a person who possesses a short fuse. It's something that finds its roots in my personality. I'm a "goal" orientated "outcome" orientated person who always wants to do my very best. In fact you could say that I've had to be delivered of being a perfectionist. Nothing wrong with that until the arrogance of perfectionism creeps in. Something that Gods really had to deal with me in is this whole issue of rolling over the top of people and it's not been easy for me to let that go. See the upside of having a personality like that is you get things done. The down side is you do roll over people, bang, bang, bang, quick decisions, quick actions, get it done, leave a trail of destruction of broken relationships in my path. That was the pattern of my life before coming to faith in Jesus Christ 13 years ago and as I said, it's the main thing that God's had to deal with me, to take me from the arrogance to humility, from hatred to love, from perfectionism to compassion. Been a big journey, it's a journey that continues. So given that, it's really easy for me to think of God as well, being like me, as being a grumpy old man with a big stick. The more we get to know Him the more we realise how far we fall short of who He is and the more we depend of His grace. I think that's the way it's meant to be but you know something, it's not meant to be a guilt trip. I know I fall short of the glory of God and if He's some grumpy old man with a stick, there's no good news in that. It's bad news. And yes, God is a God of judgement; yes, one day there will be a day of reckoning and yet, every day I fall short in some way, every day I stuff something up and if I think of God as being this old grumpy man with a big stick, well holy good night! What sort of life is that going to be. It's kind of weird; Proverbs chapter 1 beginning at verse 7 says this: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. But that doesn't mean we spend the rest of our lives running scared under some sort of campaign of fear and tyranny from God. In fact it's meant to be the exact opposite. God is a God of grace, I am forgiven freely, you are forgiven freely because Jesus paid that price for you and me on the cross. All we have to do is to believe that. It's the same for you as it is for me but believing is tough if we still harbour this secret "grumpy old man with a big stick" image of God. This week and last on the program we've been working our way through a 10 part series that I've called, "Promises I Can Depend On' and one of the most important ones, one we're going to look at today, speaks directly into this 'grumpy old man' image, this reality. Here it is, it's repeated over and over again in His word. The first time it appears is when God passes before Moses and this is what He says to Moses: The Lord your God is a merciful and gracious God. Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Keeping steadfast love to the 1,000th generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. Yet by no means clearing the guilty but visiting their iniquity upon their children and their children's children to the third and fourth generation and Moses quickly bowed down his head towards the earth and worshipped God. Isn't it really interesting? Tells us a lot about God, God is saying about Himself, "I am merciful and gracious and slow to anger". Let's just think about this "slow to anger" thing for a minute. How contrary it is to what we experience in our world today, a world that lives on a short fuse, everybody's racing around, everybody's under pressure and stress. Slow to anger people are actually quite hard to find and when we do, aren't they wonderful? We do something wrong or fall short in that relationship, they don't jump down our throats, they don't cut us off, they don't belittle us and humiliate us and they don't punish us. Well, God is slow to anger, that's what He's like. As He told Moses, ultimately He will act, ultimately, if we continue rebelling against Him. He will act but He is slow to anger and that gives us space and time to change. That's safety, that's security, that's a promise of God, Gods saying, "I am merciful and gracious, I am slow to anger". Instead of exacting His punishment straight away, instead of that He comes to us in mercy and in grace, in steadfast love and faithfulness that abounds through to the 1,000th generation. We don't deserve any of that, I know I fall short of the glory of God and you do too. But it's not about what we deserve, it's about who He is and He has made an unbreakable promise: I am merciful and gracious, I am slow to anger. That's a promise that you and I can depend on; when we're living through the consequences of our own stupidity, while we're in that place, when those consequences are lashing at us with a fearsome storm, that's okay 'cause it doesn't change who God is. He is still merciful and gracious and slow to anger and as we'll see, over the next few days, ready to forgive. That changes a whole bunch of things for me. God, my God, is not some grumpy old man with a big stick that's just sitting there waiting to whack me over the knuckles the first time I step out of line. In fact it's the complete opposite. At the end of the day God is a just God. That's why He gives us His Son, to pay the price for you and me on that cross and through the cross. Because His just anger towards you and me was poured out on Jesus Christ on that cross, we're forgiven. God is slow to anger! Just let it sink in, just sit there and think it through. God, who could snuff you and me out in a second, in an instant, that God is full of grace and mercy, He is slow to anger. Now that, that's a promise that you and I can depend on.