I’m playing with fire, as they say.
So when is the first time “God’s wrath” is mentioned? I’ll tell you. It’s Exodus 15:7.
And in the greatness of Your excellence You overthrow those who rise up against You;
You send out Your burning anger, and it consumes them like chaff.
Exodus 15:7 (NASB)
You should read the whole chapter. It’s quite beautiful. The people of God are singing a song after being saved from Egypt.
While many translations say “burning anger” here, it’s the Hebrew word for wrath.
But at whom is this wrath directed? This is so important, because it sets everything else up and gives us a very clear picture of what God’s wrath is doing and why.
Picture Moses, Miriam and the rest of Israel for a moment. For the first time, we can sort of say “God is a God of wrath” here, but given the context, is there any universe in which Moses and company think the wrath is directed at them?
Of course not.
Wrath is for Egypt.
Let’s go back to the beginning and see how God repeats how things work. Before Adam and Eve. Before much of anything.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.
Genesis 1:1-4 (NASB)
What do we see here? If we’re going to present light and darkness as themes of good and evil (which the Bible does), what does this show us?
God set things up in a certain way, to include darkness and chaos, but God has authority there, as well. He hovers like a dove (the promise of peace) and then shines a great light and separates the light from the darkness.
This is the repeated pattern of the entire Bible.
Light overcomes darkness, and it is God who speaks that into existence. But here’s the thing. It’s beautiful and poetic, but it isn’t a lived experience in the sense of the kind of darkness that people suffer. So God repeats the story in another way.
Enter the Serpent.
Adam and Eve are given a single rule and a known consequence: “Don’t eat the fruit or you’ll die.”
You can use philosophy and try to pin the blame on God for setting it in motion, but the story simply does not communicate that God is saying “If you eat it, I will kill you.” Rather, it is establishing the influence of darkness, personified by the Serpent. The Serpent is crafty, deceptive, and quite interested in manipulating Adam and Eve into disobedience. He succeeds, and the world is plunged into darkness.
But God calls Adam and covers him. There is light.
Then God separated the light from the darkness. We read what God says to the Serpent.
So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
Genesis 3:14-15 (NIV)
Most Christians view this as pointing to Jesus defeating Satan on the Cross. Striking the heel wounds, but crushing the head kills forever. And John 1 calls Jesus “the Light of all Mankind.”
The next story is Cain killing Abel. It’s another story of darkness, only this time, the curse of sin seems to have infected humanity so much that leads Cain to murder. Several generations go on, and we have Lamech bragging about murdering. He mocks God.
It’s dark again.
Six chapters in, the world gets quite grim. Darkness again. How dark?
Genesis 6:5 reads “…every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.”
God’s response? Wrath?
No. It’s grief. That’s what it says. God was sorrowful He made them.
This is so important to understand because there’s something happening in the background that we haven’t been told yet.
If we only see people “being evil,” you’d be inclined to just stomp out the evil and start over. Wrath!
But that’s not what’s happening here. Why grief?
Let’s go back to what I said earlier.
The picture of Egypt as the object of God’s wrath is critical here, despite the first half of Ezekiel 20 (much later) showing Israel’s idolatry within Egypt. God didn’t pour out his wrath on Israel. God saved Israel from Egypt. Why?
The answer to this starts with Abraham. The short version is that God promised to stay with his future generations, blessing those who bless him and cursing those who curse him, and promises to bless EVERYONE through him. Quite a promise. (And God delivers on that promise!)
In keeping this promise, God obligated Himself to His people, to be their God, and for them to be His people. And in this, we have a division between God’s kingdom and this… other kingdom.
Egypt?
No. The bigger kingdom. The Kingdom of the Air.
Stay with me now.
This Kingdom of the Air is called this by Paul in his letter to the Ephesians.
Air. It’s the thing we breathe unconsciously. We breathe in and breathe out, and it’s all around us, in everything. It is our lived reality, but we don’t see it. And in it, we were dead.
And you were dead in your offenses and sins, in which you previously walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all previously lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the rest.
Ephesians 2:1-3 (NASB)
This kingdom is mentioned elsewhere as well. Paul talks about it in 2nd Corinthians. Here, the kingdom isn’t just a place where we are dead. We were also blind. (Note the “Let there be light” bit at the end there!)
… in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they will not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants on account of Jesus. For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
2 Corinthians 4:4-6 (NASB)
In Colossians, Paul contrasts the Kingdom of Light with the Dominion of Darkness, pointing out that we who are redeemed have been rescued from the other kingdom through redemption. (This means “released by payment of ransom.”)
…and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Colossians 1:12-14 (NIV)
It’s not just Paul, though. John says this as well. In his first letter, he writes this. The whole world is under the control of the evil one!
We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.
1 John 5:19 (NIV)
Lastly, but probably most important, when Jesus is lead to the Wilderness to be tempted by Satan, what is Satan’s most interesting offer?
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”
Matthew 4:8-9 (NIV)
How can he offer the kingdoms, unless… he owns them? It wouldn’t tempting if he couldn’t!
So we get this picture from various writers of our New Testament that describe an invisible kingdom: we are slaves in it; we are dead in it; we are blind in it; Satan owns it. He owns it all.
But we who believe are ransomed by Jesus into the Kingdom of Light.
While we were dead and blind, we couldn’t worship God. We couldn’t even cry out to God. The dead don’t know what they’re doing. In the words of God to Jonah, “they don’t know their right hand from their left.”
So how does God fix this, and where does wrath come in?
Let’s go back to Egypt, which is the first time God’s wrath is mentioned.
I want to remind folks that even though the Exodus doesn’t mention Israel’s sin here, Ezekiel does later in Ezekiel 20. Israel worshiped Egypt’s gods. Because of course they did. They’re enslaved by Egypt.
Just like in the Kingdom of the Air, the enslaved inhabitants don’t see God. They’re blind. And they’re dead. They can’t even worship unless they’re rescued! But Pharaoh/Ruler of this World has no interest in this, and so he holds them. And then the plagues are threatened.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the Lord says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me.
Exodus 8:1 (NIV)
In Exodus 4:23, God finally stands up from his throne to demonstrate His power; God seizes this other ruler by the throat, presses His face in closely and declares so loudly it shakes the world: “Because you have enslaved my son Israel, I am going to kill your son.”
This. Is. Wrath.
There are 10 plagues, each representing different gods of the Egyptian pantheon. The first thing God does is spill the blood of the Nile, or Hapi. And then Heket, Geb, Khepri, Hathor & Apis, Sekhmet & Imhotep, Nut & Set, Seth, Ra, and then divine Pharoah himself.
WRATH.
With a mighty hand, the God of Israel poured out wrath on Egypt’s gods. He demonstrated His power to Israel during a time when they knew that there was absolutely nothing they could do. They were slaves, dead and in darkness.
Let there be light. God’s kingdom come.
This is the story of Egypt, but it’s also the story of God and the Kingdom of the Air. Everything Paul & John describe about the Ruler of this world and the kingdom of darkness is the spiritual equivalent, only this time, it’s the entire world. God must now save everyone.
EVERYONE, everyone? Maybe.
The price that was paid to free Israel came in the form of the blood of lambs, spilled and covering the door posts of God’s people. It was a symbol: life for life, paid to free God’s people. But not every household of Israel obeyed the rules.
Is this their lack of belief? I don’t know. But when the son of God crushed the head of the serpent, it was a greater Lamb’s blood that was shed on the cross. It was a greater Life paid for the life of God’s people. For the whole world.
But this time, there isn’t anything God’s people are required to do. We don’t have to kill a lamb ourselves, so we can’t fail the task. Perhaps God’s greater Lamb covers all the door posts, so that when the avenging angel comes, God’s wrath will pass over us all.
What about punishment for our sins? Isn’t there “wrath” for that? What about the wicked deeds of nonbelievers? What about the wicked deeds of people who now believe?
Let me give you a picture: The Kingdom of the Air is inhabited by the walking dead. The dead obey dead gods.
While they are dead, they do the wicked deeds that their dead gods demand, and they are accountable for them. While living in the Kingdom of the Air, they are under the cloud of the avenging angel of God’s Wrath. If God does not save, they will die.
But when they are redeemed, they are born as new citizens into the Kingdom of Light! The deeds they committed are wiped clean because the deeds are tied to their past selves. They are born again, covered in God’s righteousness. No longer guilty of wickedness.
This doesn’t mean that there’s no repentance or restoration. As the walking dead, the Kingdom of the Air forced us into harming one another, and in order to be made whole, we must repent. We aren’t under wrath, but we still must make peace with one another. And with God.
But we do so, not out of fear of punishment or terror, but as citizens in the Kingdom of God’s grace. We come as children, apologizing for the harms we caused, and knowing God’s tender grace. God knows us. God knows our hearts. There is only God’s goodness here.
But for the Ruler of the Kingdom of the Air, there is only God’s Wrath. When the end comes, we will see this kingdom roar like a beast, only to be seized and crushed and thrown into a lake of fire to be destroyed, along with the many gods within it.
Will God save everyone? I don’t know. I know that we are tasked to make disciples and to be a light and to proclaim the goodness of our God and this Kingdom of Light. Does this open the eyes of our neighbors who are stuck in the dark? Does it nudge them closer to the Cross?
I hope so. So that’s why I share the good news. That while I was dead, God brought me to life, opened my eyes and saved me from death.
God’s Beautiful Wrath will destroy the dark kingdom. It will destroy the serpent. It will destroy the darkness.
Let there be light.