¹⁷ And with whom was He angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?

Angry God? Yes! God can be very angry. And He was with the Israelites. They rebelled and He killed them. There is no nice way of packaging that up to reduce its shock. Yes, God can be provoked to even killing people. The Bible makes this very clear, even in our section of Hebrews where this is repeatedly emphasized and we readers are warned. God is not to be trifled with!

People today often reject the notion of an angry God, but to do so is to reject the God of the Bible. This is not just an “Old Testament God.” In fact, the New Testament portrays God as capable of being angry and does nothing to moderate that image. Our passage in Hebrews makes that clear. It would be so easy for the writer to say, “That is the way God was in the old days, or at least that was their conception of Him. But now, because of Jesus, we see that God is not really like that at all.” NO! The writer says just the opposite. It is precisely because God is like that, that we need salvation.

But, how can God be a loving God and at the same time be an angry God? These two notions of God come together at the cross, and that is a major theme of the book of Hebrews. If God was not a loving God, then there would be no hope for salvation. If He was not an angry God, there would be no need of salvation. But because He is both, we not only have a need for salvation from His anger, but we have the hope of salvation. It is not that His love supersedes His anger, or even eclipses His wrath. His love satisfies His repulsion of sin by providing a solution to it. His love acknowledges and affirms that God is legitimately angry with us for our sinfulness by providing a sacrifice for us, namely, His incarnate Son paying the sacrificial price to bring us forgiveness.

If God were not angry, then there would be no need for the supreme act of love on His part, in providing a sacrifice for our sins. Christ’s death would simply be relegated to the realm of a moral inspiration, a kind of “chicken soup for the soul.” How ironic that those who reject the dilemma of an angry God lock themselves out of the only possible solution to that dilemma. Choosing not to believe in a God who is angry will not make that God go away! We will still have to face Him one day at the judgment seat. Better to deal with an angry God now, rather than later. He is the Sovereign of the universe and we are subject to Him. Praise God, He is also a loving God Who provided the remedy.