Wisdom

"He's only ever working to show us what He sees."

THE FATHER has complete knowledge. He knows all things in any situation, every word spoken, every word thought, all things done in the dark or in the Light (Psalm 139:12). What most assume He has done in His wrath is actually what He has done in His wisdom. Not wrath. Wisdom. Because He knows everything.

Take His famous conversation with Moses. He told Moses He would destroy Israel and start over with him (Exodus 32:10). From Moses He’d make His people. Moses then pleaded with Him to spare the nation, and it says God “repented” and promised to show mercy. Now, temporarily skipping the true meaning of all that, we must see what happened next because what we’ve assumed about God there is wrong.

After God said He would show mercy, He tells Moses to go back down the mountain and see what Israel is doing. So Moses obeys, only to find the nation worshiping the golden calf (pretty vilely, I might add), and he loses it. He breaks the tablets upon which God had written the Ten Commandments of the Law, he grinds the calf to powder and stirs it into their drinking water, forcing them to drink it, and he gathers the sons of Levi to him and sends them through the camp where they slaughter 3,000 men.

What we see here isn’t God’s anger but Moses’s. And we know he did not enter the Promised Land, years later, because he got mad (Deuteronomy 34:4).

God’s actions were done from His complete knowledge. He knew the beginning and how it would end. He didn’t have to assume things or guess at things or draw conclusions. He meant what He said when He decreed to Moses His punishment for Israel, but He said it because He knew them. He knew every person in Israel. He knew Moses from stem to stern. It wasn’t His wrath on display, not how we have pictured it incorrectly. It was His wisdom and intolerance for sin.

Even that is wrong in our ears. God is mercy. Period. Exclamation point. He’s ALWAYS longsuffering, ALWAYS compassion, ALWAYS patient and kind. But He is holy, so He and sin don’t mix. He is not tainted with it. That is not possible (James 1:13). Instead, what is sinful will not survive when placed in His Presence. He loved Israel. He’d rescued them from Egypt with mighty miracles. He’d blessed them with safety and abundance. Not even their shoes wore out in their wanderings (Deuteronomy 29:5). He adored Moses. He’d chosen him as his prophet from before his birth and protected him from being slaughtered at Pharaoh’s edict (Exodus 2:10). What God wanted was for Israel to trust Him and enter the Promised Land, believing in His promise to them, and for Moses to lead the way. What happened instead was Israel balked and wept, “We’re all gonna die!” and Moses blew up, again, and struck the rock of Christ twice (Numbers 20:11-12).

God only works in us from wisdom and never from any of the moods and reasonings of darkness. There’s no dark in Him (1 John 1:5). He’s never trying to teach us something by making us suffer pain and sickness and oppression. He’s only ever working to show us what He sees. He wanted Israel and Moses to have His point-of-view, and if they had, it would be a different story.

God’s wrath is where He is forced to let us go because we aren’t listening. Jesus loved Judas, He pleaded to the Father for Judas but, in the end, had to let him go. Judas was filled with Satan (John 13:27). He’d turned totally against God. So have unclean spirits. Jesus didn’t die for them. He died as a man for all mankind. Though God knows each unclean spirit, when they were created, how they sinned, and everything they’ve said and done, though He is love and they were created from the love and glory of God, they are now empty of Him and stand in the wrath, or we might say absent of God.

Satan sets the example. When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, the Holy Spirit led Him there for that reason. It was God’s doing. But we see that Satan didn’t know who Jesus was, despite having stood before Him in Job 1. (God – Father, Son, and Spirit – are ONE always.) Satan says, “If you are God …” IF. Then proceeds to tempt Jesus to sin, not realizing the Holy Spirit was present in fullness (John 3:34). Jesus had the completeness of the Spirit in and upon Him. Yet, there was Satan, empty of God, standing beside the complete Presence of God, without any idea.

How much greater is God’s mercy then, since He knows how we are, where we’ve misstepped, and his mercy toward those who deserve severe judgment? That He has all knowledge and still loved us enough to become human and die a cruel death is far, far more than we can ever grasp or think. It certainly x’s out what we’ve called the wrath of God. Put simple, God is good and seeks to do good. It isn’t in Him to condemn anything. He’s too big, too grand, for that.

“Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:” (James 1:13)

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” (James 1:17)

Photo by Jack Anstey on Unsplash


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com