When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you— 2 and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally.[a] Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. 3 Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, 4 for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.

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5 This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. 6 For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.

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He will give their kings into your hand, and you will wipe out their names from under heaven. No one will be able to stand up against you; you will destroy them.

-Deuteronomy 7:1-5, 7

One: Was God JUST when he commanded the annihilation of a specific people group?

Under the rules of conduct—no matter how evil a given people were, God gave the Israelites specific instructions to:

One: Was God JUST when he commanded the annihilation of a specific people group? Absolutely. You know it!

Two: Are love and judgment incompatible?

Down deep inside we are fully aware:

Love and Justice go hand in hand.

Think how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships. Do we respond with benign tolerance as we might toward strangers? Far from it…Anger isn’t the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference….God’s wrath is not a cranky explosion, but his settled opposition to the cancer….which is eating out the insides of the human race he loves with his whole being. 

-Becky Pippert

The Bible says that God’s wrath flows from his love and delight in his creation.

1. He is angry at evil and injustice.

2. Because it destroys people he loves.

Two: Are love and judgment incompatible? Not at all.

Three: Why is this generation so opposed to an angry God?

The path of wisdom was to learn to live in conformity with the unending spiritual and physical realities. That wisdom rested largely in developing qualities of character, such as humility, compassion, courage, discretion and loyalty.

We gained a new confidence through the sciences that we could control the physical environment.

That has now spilled over so we now think we can reshape the metaphysical realm as well.

But like the law of gravity, the Spiritual law is absolute!

Three: Why is this generation so opposed to an angry God? It has created its own spiritual reality apart from objective truth.

You want your spiritual cake and eat it too.

Four: If God smites evil doers, why can’t we?

JESUS SAVES YOU TO SANCTIFY YOU.

Not only because He loves you—but because He loves everyone around you as well.

There is no one righteous, not even one; 

-Romans 3:10

26 he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

-Romans 3:26

My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, 6 because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.

-Hebrews 12:4-6

There is only one mediator between God and Man—the man Jesus Christ.

Two Challenges:

God our Savior, 4 who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all people.

-I Timothy 2:3b-6