Dear church family, let me briefly introduce myself to you. I am Ron Standish. My wife and I, and our family have been attending WLA for 28 years and I have served as an elder since 1996. By the grace of God, He saved me in 1970 when I was 15 years old and He has enabled me to walk faithfully with Him with all the ups and downs that come from being a new man in Christ that still needs to put my old man to death, until the day that I go home to be with Jesus.

Today’s ‘Saturday with the Elders’ comes from what God has been teaching me about Himself and about me as I continue in my study of Isaiah.  This lesson comes in the context of a phrase that perhaps many of you have heard - “I don’t like the God of the Old Testament for He is a God of wrath. I like the God of the New Testament because He is a God of love.”  While this may often be said by people who do not yet believe in Jesus, I have discovered how much that thought has found a home in my own heart. And this in spite of the biblical facts and my strong conviction that God is infinite, eternal and unchanging and that He shows both His wrath against sin, for He is a just God, and His great and merciful love in both the Old and New Testament.

God has graciously pointed out my discomfort with His wrath in my study of Isaiah, for much of the first 34 chapters of Isaiah is dedicated to God’s wrath against Israel, Judah and the surrounding nations for their great and many sins against the Lord. I have felt uncomfortable. I have felt that God’s punishment was excessive and ‘did not fit the crime’. Sometimes I have had to stop studying Isaiah for God’s wrath was too much for me. 

How merciful is God to such a sinner as me, for He patiently continues to teach me through this experience and this study. He has taught me first, that my perspective is all wrong. I have in effect been judging God according to my own standards. I know that God is absolutely holy, absolutely without sin, and that He always (infinitely, eternally and unchangeably) does what is just and good and yet I have still questioned the extent of His wrath and punishment against the wicked. The wicked being everyone who does not repent of their sins and believe in Jesus to be their Saviour. And I was one of those wicked people.

Second, by the very nature of who God is, He is never excessive in His severity towards sinners and He is never cruel.  Studying Isaiah is a wake-up call to me of how great is our sin before our God, both individually and collectively. We should not be surprised that we make little of sin, for we were born in sin and we are very familiar with our shortcomings. But we do not set the standard. Our God, the Creator and Sustainer of His universe sets the standards. Think of how much our Lord blesses all mankind by His common grace, giving each person life, sustaining each person, providing for their needs and our response is one of denying and despising God, even though He has made Himself plainly known to all people (Rom 1:19,20). If anything, “He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.”  (Ps 103:10). 

Third, I am justly deserving of God’s wrath for my sin. Wrath such as is described in Isaiah 34. Here is one verse to consider: “For the LORD is enraged against all the nations, and furious against all their host; he has devoted them to destruction, has given them over for slaughter.” (Isa 34:2). My sin, and the sin of everyone in this world is that great before the Lord that we justly deserve His infinite wrath and punishment.  How much greater is the mercy of God that He should save such a wretch as me.

So the next time you hear that someone says they do not like the God of wrath, or you feel it in your heart that God’s wrath is too much, remind yourself that God is just and we are not. He only does what is perfectly right and good and therefore join with me in confessing that we are justly under His condemnation and deserve His infinite wrath and punishment. And then rejoice in God’s great mercy in saving you and me. As great is God’s hatred towards sin, and justly so, greater still is His love for us, which He has proven by sending His Son to pay the penalty for our sins by dying in our place. Jesus took all the wrath of God that we justly deserve to make us right with God so that we would be justified in His presence. “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”  (Ps 103:11,12). And when God gives you the opportunity, tell others of this offer of God’s mercy to those who hate, but deserve, God’s wrath.