We’d all kind of want to think of God as a loving, gentle God … and of course He is. But God is also a God of anger and ultimately of judgement.  And if we don’t get that, then the whole Christmas thing becomes pretty meaningless.   We Need Peace It is fabulous to be with you again this week, leading up to Christmas. Now Christmas is this time of, well supposedly, peace and goodwill to all men. Peace can be hard to come by. So many lives are in turmoil, day by day, step by step, there’s conflict. In a sense, it’s the way of the world, yet so many lives are in so much turmoil – in the home, between husband and wife, in families, in the workplace. I mean, people get "feral" in the workplace – and of course, in ourselves. Some people have a lot, some people don’t have very much, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. Some people believe in Jesus, other people don’t, yet still, they don’t have peace. Conflict rages on! Life is always bringing along things to rob us of our peace. Have you noticed that? It happens to all of us. That’s why in these weeks leading up to Christmas – this Christmas that is supposed to be about peace and goodwill to all men and women and kids and everyone else. We are doing a series called, "A Peace Beyond All Understanding". I believe we need to unzip our souls and pour God’s Word into us and get some great teaching on the peace that Jesus came to give us. I believe that God’s plan for your life and God’s plan for my life is to give us a peace and a joy beyond all human understanding and that’s why we are doing teaching on "peace" in these weeks leading up to Christmas. The whole problem of the human condition, the whole thing begins with our rebellion against God. You can read about it in the first couple of chapters of Genesis, when Adam and Eve – God blessed them, God put them in the garden, God provided for them and they rebelled – they did the one thing God said "don’t do". And you might say, “Come on, Berni, what’s this got to do with Christmas?" It’s got everything to do with Christmas because the moment that they rebelled and the moment that we first rebelled in our lives against God, we initiated a war between us and God and that’s what we looked at last week on the program. If you missed it, visit our website at ‘Christianity works.com' and you can listen to it again. We need to understand the anatomy of that battle because it is that battle, that war that you and I initiated in our rejection of God that is the whole reason behind Christmas. We were looking at the Book of Ezekiel – now the Book of Ezekiel was written by a prophet called Ezekiel, not surprisingly, to Israel just a few years after they were exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon. These were God’s people. God had promised them the land of Israel, He’d given them Jerusalem, He’d given them Judea, He’d given them all of this land and He’d blessed them and they turned their back on Him. They worshipped other gods; they worshipped other idols; they did abominations in God’s sight, so ultimately God’s judgement fell on them. He used the King of Babylon to bring his armies into Israel, he destroyed the land, he killed most of the people and those that were left went into exile as slaves in Babylon and Ezekiel writes to them – I’m just going to read a very short passage from the fifth chapter. If you’ve got a Bible, grab it. We are going to be spending a bit of time in Ezekiel and a few other books today. Just to explain where we’re at, so we’ll recap. This short passage about God’s judgement of His people because they rebelled against Him: This is what the Lord God says: “This Jerusalem, I’ve but she has rebelled against me again; against my ordinances; against my statutes, becoming more wicked than all the nations and all the countries all around her, rejecting my ordinances; not following my statutes. Therefore, this is what the Lord God says: “Because you are more turbulent than all the nations that are around you and you haven’t followed my statues or kept   my ordinances, but you have acted according to ordinances of the nations that are around you. Therefore, this is what the Lord God says: “I myself am coming against and I will execute judgements among you in the sight of the nations. And because of all your sin and your abominations, I will do to you what I have never yet done and the like of which I will never do again.” And so He then goes on to talk about all of His anger being spent on them and letting countries come against them to destroy them and wild animals and famine and then pests and God brings His judgement on Israel – why? Because Israel rebelled against God – Israel rebelled, God expelled! Remember these were God’s people; God’s chosen people! Now some people reject God altogether and they have this sense of emptiness and something missing. Other people who believe in God; who believe in Jesus, hold part of themselves back, maybe they carry around some un-forgiveness, maybe they have some secret sin, maybe they have their own idols. Whatever, but we all need peace in our lives. Amen? We all need that deep, satisfying fulfilling peace and the biggest thing that robs us of that peace – the number one issue – is our rebellion against God; going our own way, as Israel did. You and I are hard-wired for a relationship with God. Let me read you this short passage from Psalm 139 verses 14 to 18. This is what it says: God I praise you for it was you who formed my inner parts. You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works that I know very well. My frame wasn’t hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth; your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me when as yet none of them existed. How weighty are your thoughts O God, how vast is the sum of them. Isn’t that a beautiful passage, of God’s involvement right from our conception when we were in our mother’s womb? Our substance, our frame wasn’t hidden from Him. He is the one who has made you and me what we are, and when we reject Him. When we reject the one who created us, the one who loves us, we declare war on God and ultimately, we kindle His anger and judgement. We get all proud and we set up our own throne, our own rule, our own kingdom, our own life and God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. And that’s the beginning; that’s the essence of our turmoil and our discontent. Unless we understand that, Christmas doesn’t make sense and today we are going to particularly look at God’s anger. It’s not a picture of God we like to think about, but the anger and the judgement of God is kindled by our rebellion and strangely, it lies at the heart of Christmas.   Angry God We are looking today at the anger of God. “My goodness, Berni, it’s almost Christmas time and you’re talking about an angry God, what’s the matter with you?” Well, we’ve got to understand God’s anger and why He gets angry with us, for us to understand Christmas. It’s a good question: “Why does God get angry with us?” If you have a Bible – we are working our way through the Book of Ezekiel – go to chapter 14 of Ezekiel. This is a book that was written by the prophet Ezekiel to Israel, at a time when God’s judgement had fallen on the nation. When the Babylonians had come and destroyed Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, killed many of the inhabitants – these are God’s chosen people – and taken the remnant as slaves into Babylon. The people are going, "well, my goodness, what’s going on?" Ezekiel the prophet is explaining God’s judgement to God’s people and this is what he...

Released on 13 Dec 2020