Heaping Up Wrath

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But because of your stubbornness and you unrepentant heart,
you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s
wrath, when His righteous judgment will be revealed.
Romans 2:5

In the book that bears his name, we find the prophet Habakkuk protesting to God. He is astonished that God would allow the wickedness that he saw all around him to go seemingly unchecked, lamenting both the sin of Judah as well as the rise of the Babylonians. In particular, though, he struggled to understand how God could stand by and watch as the armies of Babylon brutally conquered rival nations. His question was very simple:

Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?
Habakkuk 1:13

In a round-about way, Habakkuk essentially asks God if He’s paying attention (talk about coming boldly before God!) and to his complete bewilderment, God actually acknowledges the validity of
his complaints! Even so, God warns Habakkuk that terrible things are still to come. For before it’s all over with, the Babylonians will completely overrun Judah and take the people into exile. Needless to say, this revelation does little to ease his dismay.

Habakkuk’s reservations also reflect the same sentiment that incited Jonah to try and avoid his prophetic calling to the nation of Assyria. Remember how well that worked out? God severely chastised Jonah for putting himself in the place of judge and jury, and rebuked him for caring more about the life of a plant than about the souls of the Assyrian people.

And I’m certain that Moses wondered basically the same thing as he tended his flocks in the Midianite wilderness during his exile. Having witnessed first-hand the cruel, unjust treatment that the Hebrew people endured at the hands of the Egyptians, he probably asked “Why doesn’t God do something?” on more than one occasion. Little did Moses realize, though, that God was planning to do something—something unprecedented and spectacular—and that he would be at the center of the drama.

Vessels of Wrath

So why did God allow the Egyptians to rise to the place of prominence that they enjoyed? Clearly they were a nation that paid no regard to Him or His commandments, yet the Egyptians had become one of the most powerful nations in the world. Hence, it is not hard to see why Moses was less than enthusiastic about bringing this message to Pharaoh:

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Get up early in the morning, confront Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me, or this time I will send the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people, so you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth.’”
Exodus 9:13-14

It’s bad news for Pharaoh & Co. because God is on the verge of judging Egypt for her arrogance and blatant idolatry—and we’re not talking about your average, run-of-the-mill reprimand either. On the contrary, God is going to make a statement that will endure for countless generations:

For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.
Exodus 9:15-16

In this proclamation, God not only puts Pharaoh on notice that He could have wiped out Egypt at any time, but also that Egypt’s prosperity has come from His hand! Indeed, it must have come as
quite a shock to discover that the God of Hebrew slaves—rather than the gods of Egypt—was responsible for Egypt’s rise to power. Even more outrageous, though, must have been Moses’ revelation that this same God was about to make an example of the Egyptians when they are at the very height of their power and their glory! Clearly, these are messages that Pharaoh is unwilling to accept, and in the end his stubborn pride brings judgment upon the entire nation.

From a certain perspective the whole episode can seem to be somewhat unfair, almost like Pharaoh has been “set up.” Still, recall that this is the same nation whose greatness had been established thanks to the counsel of a man by the name of Joseph:

So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh. All the Egyptians sold him their fields because the famine was so severe, and soon all the land belonged to Pharaoh.
Genesis 47:20 (NLT)

So why wait four-hundred years? Why not judge Egypt sooner for her rejection of the God of Israel? Because not only was God planning to bring judgment against this proud people, He was simultaneously using the circumstances of Israel’s tribulation to prove Himself and His power to the descendants of Jacob:

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these signs of mine among them that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the LORD.”
Exodus 10:1-2

Don’t forget that back in the fifth chapter of Exodus the Israelites complained bitterly because Moses and Aaron had made them a “stench” to Pharaoh. Then after they leave Egypt, as they are pinned down between Pharaoh’s armies and the Red Sea, the people ridicule Moses and ask him if he brought them out to die in the desert. They mock him (and by association, God) by declaring that it would have been better to stay in Egypt! So even after witnessing the plagues first-hand, it isn’t until after they pass through the Red Sea (a national baptism of sorts) that they begin to understand who God really is and to put their trust in Him:

But the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left. That day the LORD saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore. And when the Israelites saw the great power the LORD displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant.
Exodus 14:29-31

In the final analysis, then, God allowed Egypt to prosper so that Israel would know beyond the shadow of a doubt that He had delivered them—and no one else. The point is that God withheld His wrath against the Egyptians and allowed them to become powerful, by design:

Then the LORD said to him, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions.”
Genesis 15:13-14

So it wasn’t as if God needed four-hundred years to figure out what He was going to do with the “mighty Egyptians,” but rather that He planned all along to use their own ambition and pride against them. In the process, God guaranteed two things:

• Egypt, who had long-forgotten the days of Joseph, would be so proud and self-assured that Pharaoh would certainly deny Moses’ request to let Israel go. Consequently, this would prevent the Israelites from claiming later on that their freedom was in any way due to Pharaoh’s benevolence.
• The Israelites, who were clearly powerless to rescue themselves, would see the utter hopelessness of their situation. As a result, they would also have no basis for taking partial credit in their liberation.

In short, God not only ensured that the Israelites clearly understood their need for a Savior, but also that He alone would be glorified in their deliverance. And as for the Egyptians who had apparently been given a “pass” for 400 years? They discovered that God cannot be mocked as they finally reaped the full measure of the wrath they had been “heaping up” in the interim. It’s a picture-perfect illustration of Paul’s observations in the ninth chapter of Romans:

Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?

What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?
Romans 9:21-24

Instruments of Wrath

Now fast forward to the reign of the Assyrians, a fierce and brutal people whom God raised up for the express purpose of bringing judgment upon the other godless nations of the ancient world. They were known for piling up the skulls of their enemies as monuments to their victories, and so Jonah could not understand why God would be inclined to show them any mercy. Accordingly, he tried his best to avoid playing any part in their potential stay of execution.

As it turned out, Jonah’s reservations were well-founded, for when he finally obeyed and went to Nineveh, the response of the king and the people was to repent in sackcloth and ashes. This resulted in the very pardon that Jonah least wanted to see:

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.
Jonah 3:10

While Jonah was clearly displeased, though, we also know that the Assyrians’ reprieve was only temporary. For like the Egyptians, the Assyrians started to believe that they were invincible and therefore accountable to no one but themselves. Just listen to the message that Sennacherib, the King of Assyria, sent to Hezekiah, the King of Judah:

“Say to Hezekiah king of Judah: Do not let the god you depend on deceive you when he says, ‘Jerusalem will not be handed over to the king of Assyria.’ Surely you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the countries, destroying them completely. And will you be delivered?

Did the gods of the nations that were destroyed by my forefathers deliver them: the gods of Gozan, Haran, Rezeph and the people of Eden who were in Tel Assar? Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, or of Hena or Ivvah?”
2 Kings 19:10-13

Can you hear the defiance? It’s the same spirit of arrogance that appalled David and compelled him to face the mighty Goliath. And just as David vanquished the one who taunted the God of Israel, God punished the Assyrians by passing the sword of His judgment to a rival nation: the Babylonians. The armies of Babylon crushed the proud Assyrians and then picked up where they left off—hence the reason for Habakkuk’s lament over Judah.

But later on, when the Babylonians stumbled over their own pride, God raised up the Medes and the Persians to judge them. Who were in turn conquered by the Greeks…who were later defeated by the Romans… In fact, each of the nations that God used as part of His plan had their own date with judgment appointed well in advance:

“But when the seventy years are fulfilled, I will punish the king of Babylon and his nation, the land of the Babylonians, for their guilt,” declares the LORD, “and will make it desolate forever.”
Jeremiah 25:12

It is important to note, though, that just as God had no need to incite the treachery of Joseph’s brothers, neither did He somehow coerce the Assyrians to butcher and terrorize their neighbors. On the contrary, the Assyrians, Babylonians, and all the rest were simply allowed to do what came naturally. In other words, these willing accomplices “heaped up wrath” even as God used them as instruments of His wrath, and in the end their own actions testified against them.

So although God allowed these pagan kingdoms to “prosper” for a season, He was merely postponing their day of reckoning until they had each fulfilled their part in His plan. God was ultimately using their evil intentions against them, and through the rise and fall of these ancient empires we get another illustration of how God truly does work all things together for good…even the most sinful plans of men.

Trust And Obey

At a certain level, it’s easy to understand why the prophets were distressed by the impunity that Israel’s enemies seemed to enjoy. They reacted to the egregious sin of the nations around them and naturally assumed that God would be most glorified through their swift judgment. The problem is that they had the timing all wrong and they left no room for the glory of God’s mercy. Not that this is surprising, though, for as David had observed centuries earlier, it is never easy to see the wicked prosper:

Truly God is good to Israel, to those whose hearts are pure. But as for me, I almost lost my footing. My feet were slipping, and I was almost gone. For I envied the proud when I saw them prosper despite their wickedness.
Psalm 73:1-3 (NLT)

His angst notwithstanding, David ends the psalm with the assurance that better things await him in the life to come. What accounted for his change of heart? Quite simply, David looked beyond his immediate circumstances and reminded himself that God’s wrath would eventually be satisfied. Consequently, when he compared his eternal pardon to the temporary reprieve of the wicked around him, there was simply no comparison. It’s a valuable lesson we all need to learn.

Even beyond trusting in the timing of God’s judgments, though, we must also learn to trust Him for the means of His judgments. For while it’s one thing to see the wicked prosper, it’s quite another to see them do it at your expense. Why do you think Jonah was so reluctant to go to Nineveh? The last thing he wanted for the Assyrian people was mercy. On the contrary, Jonah wanted to see them receive justice, and so he reacted with contempt when God relented from pouring out His wrath:

But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry.

He prayed to the LORD, “O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
Jonah 4:1-3

And what was God’s reply? He scolded Jonah for presuming whose sin was in greater need of judgment.

If we are honest, we must admit that there’s a little bit of Jonah in each of us, for we are all prone to becoming self-righteous when we see flagrant sin in those around us. The problem, of course, is that it’s always easier to discern God’s glory when He is judging the sin of someone else; it’s when the sin being judged is our own that we struggle to find the glory in it. Still, as Jesus warns us in the Sermon on the Mount, we should worry less about the sins of others and more about ourselves:

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?

You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Matthew 7:1-5

Therefore, God’s rebuke of Jonah should likewise serve as a sober warning to each of us: our primary concern should be keeping our own spiritual houses in order. We must learn to deal with our own “planks” first, let God worry about judging the sins of others, and above all trust in God for the outcome when things don’t seem to make sense. Eventually, this is exactly where both David and Habakkuk ended up:

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior.
Habakkuk 3:17-18

Indeed, whereas Habakkuk was initially asking God “How can you let this happen?” the question he should have been asking was “O God, how has it come to this? What have we done to incur your holy wrath?”

And the answer should have been crystal clear.

(Next >> A Vicious Cycle)