The Patriarchs - Patiently Longsuffering

This is the twelfth post in a series that I am doing based on the lives of the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), the accounts of which are found in the book of Genesis.  In spite of the title of this series, the record of the experiences of the men listed above are only incidental to me.  What I find far more interesting, relevant, and important is the revelation of the character and nature of God that we can see by observing these men's lives.  Each post will coincide with a lesson being taught in a classroom.  As such, they will not be in a traditional essay format.  Rather, it will be a slightly expanded version of the notes that I hand out in class.

The Genesis Account

Gen. 17:17 – The reality of the biblical record is that men like Abraham, although praised in scripture for their faith, were very deficient in the “day-to-day” application of that faith.  In this case, the patriarch actually has a period of doubt and laughs at God’s promise.  It is fascinating that the Hebrew word used here to describe Abraham’s laughter is the root of the word that would eventually become Isaac’s name.  There is a duality of implication to be seen here in the naming of the promised child.  First, it served as a continual reminder to Abraham of the fact that he had once doubted.  Second, it represents the transformation of doubting and mocking laughter into believing and rejoicing laughter when the birth came to pass.

Gen. 18:12-15 – Sarah laughed at the Lord’s promises.  Do you see what she is doing here?  She is taking her understanding of reality and applying it to her assessment of the validity of the truth claims of God.  In effect, Sarah was “wise in her own eyes”.  Is there anything more ridiculous than for a human being with severe limitations both in capacity to comprehend truth and in ability to evaluate truth to elevate their own deficient ideas to a higher plane than God’s?  In fact, ridiculous is too polite of a word to use in describing this type of thinking.  The Bible doesn’t call it ridiculous, it calls it evil.

Supporting Scriptures

Pro. 3:7 – There two emphatic logical links in this passage.  On the one hand we have over estimating the worth of one’s own wisdom being equated with evil.  On the other hand we have rightly estimating the worth of God’s wisdom being equated with good.  There is no middle ground.  To count ourselves as wise is the opposite of fearing the Lord.  And when we fear the Lord that action is described as a turning away from evil.  Therefore, if we do not fear the Lord, seen here by implication as being wise in our own eyes, then we are in fact doing nothing less than turning to evil.

2 Pet. 3:3-10 – Human patience is defined as “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.”  This definition is insufficient to describe the divine patience of God.  It is true that God does not become unjustly angry.  However, to say that He tolerates delay, trouble, or suffering is to imply that He is affected by the passage of time, the presence of conflict, or the intrusion of distress; all of which are patently false when applied to God.  In fact, I think that even describing Himself as patient, as He does here in 2 Peter, is a bit of an anthropomorphism in which God ascribes to Himself a human characteristic for the purpose of helping us to understand Him better.

Questions For Meditation

What does Abraham and Sarah’s laughter imply about their belief in the promises of God

This is pretty obvious.  They didn’t believe Him.  They placed their own understanding in a position of higher importance and relevance than their trust in God’s promises.

What would be a modern day evangelical Christian equivalent to the mocking laughter that Abraham and Sarah displayed?

With this question I am very specifically referring to people who are already Christians.  I am not talking about unbelievers who do not place their faith and trust in Christ.  I believe the parallel today with the behavior exhibited by Abraham and Sarah is behavior exhibited by authentic practicing Christians.  They were the ancient, pre-incarnation and pre-new covenant equivalents of modern day believers.  As such, the best way to apply the timeless truth of what they experienced then is to line it up alongside what we Christians experience today.

With that being said, I believe the manner in which we express the same tendency to doubt and dishonor what God has said is through our worry.  We will define worry later.  But for now let’s just operate on the assumption that it, whatever it is, is wrong.  We can rest assured of this truth when we consider the teachings of Jesus.  Specifically, in Matthew 6:25-34 our Lord gives us a thorough debunking of the human tendency to worry.  He pointedly asks a series of rhetorical questions designed to make us feel ashamed of our unbelief:

           i)     Isn’t life more than just food?

          ii)    Isn’t the body more than just clothing?

         iii)   Aren’t we more important than birds?

         iv)   Doesn’t God care for us more than for flowers?

Jesus then follows with an absolutely blistering epithet: “You of little faith!”  It is as if we are children who, due to their overpowering terror of the dark refuse to trust the word of their parents that there is nothing to fear.  This was, quite frankly, a manipulative statement designed to do nothing less than to cause shame and embarrassment in the hearts and minds of His audience.  It ought to do the same to us.

The astonishing fact that God did not execute discipline upon Abraham and Sarah for their unbelief should drive us to consider how patient and longsuffering He is with His children.  In light of that, how does this attribute of God give us a detailed road map for exactly how to live worry free lives?

There are a few preliminary steps we need to take in attempting to answer this question.  We need to define, from a human perspective, what it is to wait and to worry.  This will give us an understanding of what it means to have patience, again from a human perspective.  Then will follow the all-important step of considering how the patience of God contrasts with this.

The human concept of waiting is like this.  We have a desire for a thing to occur immediately.  However, we have no power to make that longed for thing happen.  Therefore we are required to “wait” for a force outside of ourselves (e.g. time, another person, circumstances, even God) to act in such a way as to cause the effect we are desiring.  Seen in this light, to wait is to live with unsatisfied yearning.

On the flip side, human worry is exactly the opposite.  We have a desire for something not to occur immediately.  In fact, we would usually like it, whatever it is, to never occur.  And similarly to waiting, due to our inability to shape reality as we wish we are forced to live in perpetual dread of the undesired situation coming to pass.

So then, to be patient, from a human point of view, is to be content in our uncertainty.  It is to relax in the face of the unknown.  It is to laugh at the future, not mockingly or dismissively, but confidently and joyfully.  And over-arching all of this is the reality that human patience is born out of delay, trouble, and/or suffering as indicated in the definition given above.

But this is inadequate and inaccurate when considering the patience of God.  He is timeless, having existed before the presence of time itself.  James 1:17 describes God as having “no variation or shifting shadow” in a nod to the passage of the sun across the sky and the resultant movement of a creature’s shadow upon the ground.  God is omnipotent, tolerating no opposition to His will.  Proverbs 21:30 is quite plain: “there is no wisdom and no understanding and no counsel against the Lord.”  And God is holy, experiencing no imperfection or blemish that would lead to suffering.  In fact, as Habakkuk 1:13 points out, God is too pure (holy) to even approve evil and He cannot look on wickedness with favor.

2 Peter 3:3-10 expresses the idea of God’s patience quite well.  By the word of God the heavens were created in ancient times.  By the word of God the world was destroyed by water.  By the word of God the present creation is destined for fiery destruction.  And all of this has happened or will happen at the precise timing and placement of God’s own choosing.  Again turning to Habakkuk 2:3 God tells the prophet that “The vision is yet for the appointed time; it hastens toward the goal and it will not fail.  Though it tarries, wait for it; for it will certainly come, it will not delay.”  There is no hint of pent up desire with God.  There is no trace of opposition to His sovereign will.  And there is no presence of anguish over the outcome of events past, present, or future.  Every event in the history of the world has occurred at exactly the time God intended for it to happen.  Thus the underpinning of human patience is completely stripped away when it comes to the Lord.

This is the key to living a worry free life.  We must become so consumed with God that every circumstance, every encounter, every desire, every experience of our lives is viewed through the lens of His revealed character.  As John Piper puts it, we must cultivate a “God entranced worldview”.  Our goal must be to emulate the timeless, smooth, and painless patience of God by clinging to Him exclusively and tenaciously.  Whether we can attain to that goal in this life or not is completely irrelevant.  As Paul makes quite clear in 1 Corinthians 9:24 our mandate is to prepare as runners before a race with the full intention and expectation of winning that race.  This is what Jesus meant in His sermon on the mount that we looked at earlier when, in Matthew 6:33 He said to “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness”.

The Patriarchs - Jealously Demanding

This is the eleventh post in a series that I am doing based on the lives of the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), the accounts of which are found in the book of Genesis.  In spite of the title of this series, the record of the experiences of the men listed above are only incidental to me.  What I find far more interesting, relevant, and important is the revelation of the character and nature of God that we can see by observing these men's lives.  Each post will coincide with a lesson being taught in a classroom.  As such, they will not be in a traditional essay format.  Rather, it will be a slightly expanded version of the notes that I hand out in class.

The Genesis Account

Gen. 18:1-11 – Abraham goes “all in” in his efforts to be a good host for his guests.  The evidence suggests that he knew these guests were God because he used a word reserved in Hebrew culture to address Yahweh alone.  This means that Abraham’s display of frenzied activity was intentionally directed toward God.

Gen. 22:1-10 – God demands absolute devotion in His followers.  To someone who does not worship the Lord this should look like insane zealotry.

Gen. 29:15-30 – Jacob was a man of passion and commitment.  These qualities led him to engage in some treacherous blunders but they also equipped him to stay the course until he achieved his goals.

Supporting Scriptures

Luk. 14:25-35 – Jesus, in an apparently impromptu moment, makes several statements in this passage.  The problem is that they seem to be rather disconnected and random.  First he talks about hating relatives.  Then He goes off on a tangent about building projects and war preparations.  Finally, He finishes up with a seminar on the properties of salt.  Has Jesus gone off the deep end or is there more here than meets the eye?

Questions For Meditation

Why do we as Christians sometimes fade into anonymity in our culture?

This is a critical question both to consider and answer biblically.  The United States is obviously a country of tremendous freedoms that we celebrate at least three times per year, on Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Veterans Day.  It is proper and fitting that we do this.  But these same freedoms that we enjoy have a dark under-belly when it comes to Christianity.

Four years ago Lifeway Research conducted a survey of evangelical Christians.  They found that 80% agreed with the following statement: “I have a personal responsibility to share my religious beliefs about Jesus Christ with non-Christians.”  Furthermore, 75% said “I feel comfortable that I can share my belief in Christ with someone else effectively.”  However, 61% of those surveyed had not shared how to become a Christian with anyone in the previous six months and 48% had not invited anyone to church in that same six month period.

What I would like to discuss today is not specifically evangelism.  But I believe that these statistics on the state of modern evangelical evangelistic efforts are a symptom of a more serious disease.

In the Genesis passages cited above, we find three examples of character qualities that God desires in His followers.  These principles transcend the historical time period of the Jewish Patriarchs and inform our understanding of what it means to be an authentic Christian today; or at least they should…

In the beginning verses of Genesis chapters 18 and 22, which we have looked at before in this series, we are presented with two snapshots from the life of Abraham that serve to illustrate what following God meant to him.  The former passage describes a visit from God when Abraham’s tents were pitched near the oaks of Mamre.  At this point the Patriarch is wealthy and powerful.  His covenantal relationship with God has paid huge material dividends already, resulting in vast herds and flocks of cattle and sheep as well as the requisite servants to care for them all.  Abraham was a man accustomed to having others do his bidding.  Yet when he realizes that it is God, in the appearance of three men, who is in front of him, notice what his response is.  He runs from his tent to greet The Lord.  He begs Him to stay so that he can serve his master.  He hurries to his tent and instructs Sarah to make bread.  He runs to the herd and selects a tender and choice calf to prepare.  Then he serves the food and stands by in case anything else is needed.  These are not the actions of a man who is halfhearted in his focus on God.  What comes to mind is a coiled spring, wound up and bursting with unreleased energy, awaiting only the summons of the Master to spring forth with vigor and power.

The second passage, in chapter 22, is even more striking.  Here we find the familiar account of the offering of Isaac.  Abraham travels to Mount Moriah with the full intention of killing his own son for the sake of obedience to his God.  The definition of a zealot is “a person who is fanatical and uncompromising in pursuit of their religious, political, or other ideals.”  Can we possibly describe Abraham any other way?  It is easy for us to look with a calm detachment on this event that occurred some three thousand ago.  But how would we respond to such an incident today?  I’m certainly not calling for Christians everywhere to go running off to kill their children.  But if we really take a moment to stop and think about Abraham’s actions here it is exceedingly difficult to call them anything but crazy.  Yet the man stands eternally praised and blessed by God in the pages of the Bible because of his loyalty that some would also call zealotry.

To further refine the picture that is emerging, consider the life of Abraham’s grandson Jacob, also known as the deceiver.  In Genesis 29 we find him having already fled to Haran to escape the wrath of his brother Esau.  Jacob the deceiver is living with his uncle Laban, a man who is also cunning and treacherous.  Our protagonist is duped into working double the number of years for the right to marry his love, Rachel.  One could certainly argue that Jacob deserved this for his prior sinfulness at home.  But the point as it pertains to the discussion today is that he was a man of passion.  This great passion informed and drove most of the decisions of his life, both good and bad.  Jacob’s desire for both the material blessings of Esau’s birthright and the eternal blessings of the Abrahamic covenant resulted in the aforementioned deception in Canaan.  But this character trait also dictated that once he had a goal in mind such as marriage to Rachel he was absolutely and unswervingly committed to that goal with a singular passion that caused the passage of seven years to seem but a few days to him.

This then is the picture that the Bible paints of what God both desires and demands in His followers.  First, a whole hearted commitment to Him that is free from the distractions of this world, as witnessed by 2 Chronicles 16:7-9.  And second, an unswerving allegiance to Him that is unmoved by the competing interests and preferences of everything else, which is exactly what Jesus was getting at in Matthew 12:30 when He uttered the famous line “he who is not with Me is against Me”.

I believe the reason we as Christians tend to fade into obscurity in our culture is because we lack these qualities.  We are not “all in”, as it were, for the cause of Christ.  Rather, we are “some in”.  We give to The Lord some of our time, some of our finances, some of our passions, and some of our effort.  But we are endlessly swayed and distracted at the drop of a proverbial hat by a myriad of other worldly desires.  This results in the kind of alarming survey numbers regarding evangelism that Lifeway uncovered in their investigation.  Do you think the word alarming is inappropriate when applied to the issue of Christians not sharing the gospel?  Then perhaps the commands of Christ are not the top priority in your life.  Think about it.

What does Jesus mean with His statements about hating relatives and planning for construction/war?

It has been well stated that Jesus of Nazareth was not merely a good man.  Either He was who He claimed to be, God in the flesh, or He was completely insane.  The controversial and provocative statements He made, the unquestioning loyalty He demanded, and the self-sacrifice He expected, if delivered by just a man, are the words of a lunatic.  Luke 14: 25-35 is a good example of this.

In this passage Jesus, His disciples, and large crowds are apparently walking along.  Seemingly on the spur of the moment Jesus turns and begins to talk to the crowds.  What follows is a series of what appear to be random disconnected statements and rhetorical questions that would not seem out of place in the ravings of a madman, if someone took the time to transcribe them.

First He says you have to hate your family if you want to be His disciple.  Then He ups the ante by saying that you have to carry your cross to your own execution to be His disciple.  Out of nowhere He switches gears to talking about planning for a large construction project, in this case the building of a tower.  Jesus turns right around and drops lessons in proper preparations for war by a king.  And then He ends with a command to give up all possessions.

So what gives?  Is Jesus off His rocker?  Of course not.  Rather, there is a unified theme and undercurrent running through this whole sequence that beautifully serves to illustrate and expand upon what we have already looked at in Genesis.

What Jesus is teaching here is nothing less than a complete dissection of the human experience.  Our mental faculties can be divided into two groups; emotions and feelings contrasted by logic and reason.  To be a disciple of Jesus means to have the entirety of your emotional spectrum completely absorbed by Him, to the point that there is nothing left for anyone else that doesn’t run through Christ first.  At the same time, to be a disciple of Jesus means to devote every fiber of your thinking capacity to the contemplation of Him, to the point that there is nothing left for any thoughts that are not first informed by Christ.

If you are not prepared to give 100% in both areas in your pursuit of Christ then the harsh truth is that you are not worthy of Him.  And if you find yourself unable to surrender every single worldly possession to God (e.g. cars, televisions, books, jobs, spouses, children, even life and health) then the harsh truth is that you are not worthy of Him.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that you run out tomorrow and trash everything and live on the street.  It means that you are prepared to go to that length if He asks it of you.  You are prepared to give up everything for the sake of Jesus.

What does He mean with His reference to salt in the same passage?

This is the sobering reality that is the capstone to what has come before.  If a prospective disciple of Christ is not willing to give Him all of their emotion and all of their reason in a carefully considered and precisely measured intention to completely divorce themselves from the world in whatever manner is necessary to draw closer to God then they are as good as salt that is no longer salty.  In other words they are useless.

But Jesus doesn’t stop there.  He goes on to ask a rhetorical question: what do you do with useless salt?  What do you do with seasoning that isn’t even good enough for a manure pile, let alone dirt?  You throw it away of course.  The implication is that the person who claims to be a disciple of Christ yet who does not follow the pattern established in the first part of this passage of absolute devotion to God will be tossed out along with the rest of the trash.  And since we know from verses such as John 6:37 that Jesus will not allow anyone who truly comes to Him to be cast out the only logical conclusion is that the useless person we are describing was never really a part of Christ to begin with.  This should be nothing less than a sobering wake up call for anyone who identifies as a Christian.  If you are feeling provoked, convicted, and/or condemned at this moment, like I am as I write this, then I encourage you to consider that it is Scripture and the words of Jesus that is provoking you.  If this teaching lands on you without emotional impact then I encourage you to consider whether you are really a Christian or not.

The Patriarchs - Overwhelmingly Terrifying

This is the tenth post in a series that I am doing based on the lives of the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), the accounts of which are found in the book of Genesis.  In spite of the title of this series, the record of the experiences of the men listed above are only incidental to me.  What I find far more interesting, relevant, and important is the revelation of the character and nature of God that we can see by observing these men's lives.  Each post will coincide with a lesson being taught in a classroom.  As such, they will not be in a traditional essay format.  Rather, it will be a slightly expanded version of the notes that I hand out in class.

The Genesis Account

Gen. 18:1-8 – Scripture describes Abraham scurrying around in a mad dash to minister to the Lord who had come to visit him.  This is a picture of the mind set we should have when we consider the awesome presence of God.

Gen. 20:11; 26:6-11 – Abraham demonstrated a fear of men that prompted poor decisions on his part.  And apparently he passed this tradition on to his son.  They both placed their concerns in the wrong place.

Gen. 29:31-30:24 – Rachel and Leah treated sex and child bearing like a competition and like resources to trade back and forth.  Where was their fearful reverence for God and the statutes He had instituted?

Supporting Scriptures

Luk. 12:4-5 – The ability of man to inflict harm is as nothing compared to God.

Deut. 4:24 – The Lord is a consuming fire and a jealous God.

Heb. 12:29 – The terrible wrath of God should produce in us an attitude of reverence and penitence.

Isa. 66:15 – To be an enemy of God is to have judgment and slaughter executed upon you by the hand of the Almighty.

Pro. 1:25-26 – Those who ignore the words of God will be laughed at and mocked in the day of their calamity, distress, and ultimate destruction.

Jer. 25:27-38 – The wrath of God is given extended treatment here.  He will force open the jaws of the wicked and pour the cup of His terrible wrath down their throats.  He will roar like a lion and hunt His prey; those who have rejected Him.  God will butcher the nations from one end of the earth to the other.  Their corpses will lie on the ground like dung.

Rev. 14:19-20; 19:15 – Vivid and graphic imagery is given in Revelation of the great day of judgment when God will pour out His wrath upon sin and sinners.  The image of a vast wine press is given, into which are thrown the enemies of God, represented here as grapes.  Then the grapes are trodden in the press and literally an ocean of blood is squeezed out.

Isa. 63:3 – Coupled with the image of the wine press from Revelation, here we see a picture of God Himself actually trampling the people to death who have been cast into the press.  Their life blood spatters and stains His garments.

Rev. 14:9-11 – The worshipers of Satan will be subjected to burning torment forever and ever; the smoke from their charred flesh rising into the heavens.

Questions For Meditation

Why does God spend so much time in the Bible describing His wrath?

This is not a trick question.  The answer should be blindingly obvious.  The only possible reason for God to spend so much time describing His fierce hatred of sin, His inevitable response to sin, and the guaranteed punishment for those who sin and do not come under the protective blood of Christ is because He wants us to understand the ramifications of how we live our lives.  He wants us to fear Him.  We are to be very afraid of God’s great anger. 

My daughter, who is six years old, is a perfect example of how we should respond to Almighty God.  The Lord has blessed her with a very tender spirit.  And she loves her daddy very much.  She loves nothing more than to play with him and snuggle with him and read stories with him, etc.  But when her daddy becomes angry, when his eyes start to flash and his voice begins to rise, her spirit withers and her joy turns to terror in the blink of an eye.  Now to be sure, sometimes when her father gets angry it is for selfish reasons and it is a blight upon his family.  But the point is not the merit or shame of the father’s anger.  Rather, the relevant theme is the response of the child; fear and sorrow.  Not lightly does my daughter esteem the wrath of her earthly father.  And not lightly should the children of God esteem the infinitely greater wrath of their heavenly father.

As an aside to fathers who may be reading this; a wise man once told me that a child’s first glimpse of God should be their father.  Before they even have a reasoned comprehension of who God is a small child should be given a foreshadowing of the perfectly worthy creator they will meet one day in the perfectly unworthy character, speech, choices, temperament, and actions of the man under whose authority they first begin to understand the world around them.  This is an incredibly daunting and terrifying, yet wonderful and awesome responsibility that we as men of God have.  And as it relates to this topic today, how will your children understand the great and terrible reality of the wrath of God if they do not first see it in you?  To be sure, God is perfectly capable of revealing Himself to whomever He wishes without the assistance of any of His creations.  But please understand that it is precisely through those creations that God prefers to reveal Himself.  So by conducting yourself as a wimpy, servile father who has no authority vested in him you are not providing a benefit to your children, as our culture would have you believe.  Rather, you are actually doing them a disservice and depriving them of the great gift of having a window, clouded and smeared though it may be, into the character of their Creator.

And let me state once again, because what I have said is terribly prone to misunderstanding and distortion, I am not condoning abuse, uncontrolled rage, or dictatorial fathers who rule over their subjects with a fist of iron and an uncompromisingly self-centered spirit.  What I am saying is that there is a place and time for love and affection just as there is a place and time for wrath and punishment.  To favor either over the other is a distortion of the character of God that we have already seen in this series on the Patriarchs.  Refer back to week five and six for a look at God’s twin attributes of unconditional love and infinite generosity.

Why do we tend to marginalize the reality of the anger of God?

Tucked into the latter chapters of the book of Romans is an interesting little command from the Apostle Paul.  Romans 12:16a instructs us to “be of the same mind toward one another”.  Some English translations render this phrase as “live in harmony with each other.”  How does this relate to our topic today?  Well, ask yourself the question: why do I sometimes tend to not live in harmony with the members of my family?  Why do I behave toward and speak to them in ways that I would never dream of doing with someone at church, school, or work?  The reason is probably because you tend to take those closest to you for granted.  And I believe this same principle is all too often applied toward The Lord, in that we take Him for granted as well.

We are privileged in the United States to be born in a country with tremendous freedoms of civic expression and religious worship.  As such, for many of us, there is perhaps the perception of a mandate of Christianity at some point in our lives.  If such a perception exists it is rapidly eroding in the face of modern American humanism.  But in certain areas of the country it is still very much alive and well.  This perception dictates that Christianity is the de facto religion of preference.  Especially for children who grow up in a Christian home, there can tend to be an idea of getting around to following Christ “one of these days”.  We know what is right to do, and when we’re finished with our time of youthful pleasures and self-gratification, then perhaps we’ll have time for God.  Certainly this does not describe all people’s experience, but I believe it does describe the thought processes of many.

And in this paradigm of thought what tends to be lost is the awful, debilitating, stomach clenching, throat tightening, numbing terror that should overwhelm our senses when we contemplate what the Bible says about God’s wrath.  Especially nowadays with the over emphasis on God’s love that many Christians and many churches are guilty of, what is often lost is the very real and tangible contemplation of God’s horrible fury over and raging, burning hatred for, sin.  We take God’s anger for granted and in so doing we mutilate our own fully realized and informed understanding of who He is.  We do this to our very great peril.

If we do treat lightly the wrath of God what impact does that have on our contemplation of His other attributes?

As we have looked at in past weeks, the presence of evil, or that which is contrary to God, in the universe actually serves to illuminate the holiness of God.  Just as the blanket of darkness during the night helps us to more fully appreciate the explosion of light during the day, so evil that we see should drive us to a greater appreciation of God’s character.  In the same way, we cannot possibly be properly thankful for God’s saving grace and mercy and love if we do not understand the soul crushing terror that is His rage.  The grace, mercy, and love that He showers us with are not just casually flippant bonuses we get for no reason whatsoever.  They are literally saving us and keeping us from drinking the bitter torment of the cup of God’s wrath that Jeremiah speaks of in the verses above.

If you are a Christian, would you like to butcher your understanding of and gratitude for the regeneration and salvation that God has graciously provided to you?  Then by all means, ignore His anger toward sin.  If you are not a Christian, would you like to continue spurning God’s wonderful offer of saving grace through the blood of Jesus Christ until the day you draw your last breath, perish from this earth, and enter into the courtroom of the Almighty where you will stand condemned to an eternity of suffering with no possibility of a defense?  Then by all means, ignore His anger toward sin.