"The Burning Rock" Deuteronomy 32:19-35 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Deuteronomy thirty-two.

We'll jump into the middle of the song right after Israel has returned in rebellion against their God, their rock.

Deuteronomy 32, verse 19.

Deuteronomy 32:19

And Yahweh saw it and spurned them because of the provocation of his sons and his daughters.

And he said, I will hide my face from them.

I will see what their end will be.

For they are a perverse generation, children in whom is no faithfulness.

They have made me jealous with what is no God.

They have provoked me to anger with their idols.

So I will make them jealous with those who are no people.

I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.

For a fire is kindled by my anger, and it burns to the depths of Sheol, devours the earth and its increase, and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains.

And I will heap disasters upon them.

I will spend my arrows on them.

They shall be wasted with hunger and devoured by plague and poisonous pestilence.

I will send the teeth of beasts against them, with the venom of things that crawl in the dust.

Outdoors the sword shall bereave, and indoors terror for young man and woman alike, the nursing child with the man of gray hairs.

I would have said, I will cut them to pieces, I will wipe them from human memory, had I not feared provocation by the enemy, lest their adversaries should misunderstand, lest they should say, Our hand is triumphant.

It wasn't Yahweh who did all this.

For their nation void of counsel, and there is no understanding in them.

If they were wise, they would understand this.

They would discern their latter end.

How could one have chased a thousand, and two have put ten thousand to flight, unless their rock had sold them, and Yahweh had given them up?

For their rock isn't as our rock.

Our enemies are by themselves.

For their vine comes from the vine of Sodom and from the fields of Gomorrah, their grapes are grapes of poison, their clusters are bitter, their wine is the poison of serpents, and the cruel venom of asps.

Is not this laid up in store with me, sealed up in my treasuries?

Vengeance is mine and recompense for the time when their foot shall slip, for the day of their calamity is at hand, and their doom comes swiftly.

So reads the word of the living God.

And oh, it is my desire this evening that you would smell the smoke coming from this song.

Which is the smoke of the fire, of the fury, of the anger of God.

God writing through Moses to the people of Israel on the eve of the conquest of Canaan warns this wayward nation about their future idolatry when they will bow down under every green tree to demonic idols.

And at the heart of this witness, this warning to the people of Israel is this arresting, throat-grabbing alarm to wake up and appreciate the danger that they are in because of the anger of God against vile sinners.

Therefore, the mission of this text is mine also, to call out to you here this evening, who have not fled to Jesus Christ for refuge, who yet remain under the wrath of God, and if you do not turn to Christ, will face an eternity under that wrath.

It is my mission, as it is the mission of this text, to plead with you, as John the Baptist pleaded, to flee from the wrath to come.

Why?

Because Jesus says in John 3.36, whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.

Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life.

But the wrath of God remains on him.

That means that there are some of you sitting here, and I am not fooled by the fact that some of you attend church.

There are some of you sitting here who have God's sword of wrath pointed straight at your heart.

The fire of his fury surrounds you and one day will engulf you if you do not fly to Jesus Christ for refuge.

Your doom is coming swiftly, and maybe you pay no attention.

And so I must warn you with this text, as Moses warned Israel, so that you may know a holy fear of the anger, the wrath of God, and that that fear would drive you to Christ.

This God who is incensed against you may also be your only safety in his wrath-bearing Son, Jesus Christ, where you can find perfect peace and love.

Now I already hear the objection.

This is just another one of those fire and brimstone sermons, isn't it?

But I know better.

God is love.

God does not hate.

I heard a sermon this past week in which the pastor said exactly that thing to her congregation.

God is not full of hate.

She repeated, God is not full of hate.

Now, of course, God is love.

And yet, here is this text staring you in the face.

It says in verse 22, A fire is kindled by my anger.

That's the word of God.

Whatever your concept of God is like, in order for it to reflect the God who has spoken in the scriptures, he must be an angry God.

A God of great wrath and fury.

According to his word, God is angry.

God chose to write a song to put it in the mouth of Moses, to put in the mouth of the people of Israel, so that you might be able to read it even today.

And at the center of this song, he declares his anger, his wrath.

This passage contains two of the at least seven Hebrew words for anger, and applies each of them to God.

Throughout the scriptures, all of those words about wrath are applied to God some 375 times, as compared with the 80 times they are compared with the wrath of man.

Psalm 7, 11.

This is a God who feels indignation every day.

Nahum chapter 1, verse 2.

Nahum 1:2

The Lord is a jealous and avenging God.

The Lord is avenging and wrathful.

The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.

Isaiah 63, 6.

I trampled down the peoples in my anger, I made them drink in my wrath.

If you wonder if God is a God of anger, then you should just ask Sodom and Gomorrah.

What did God feel like when he reduced their civilization to ash?

Another objection.

You say, oh, but that's just the primitive, warlike Old Testament God.

The New Testament God, Jesus, who I belong to, he is a God of love, not anger.

Mark chapter 3, verse 5.

Mark 3:5

Jesus looked around at them with anger.

Romans chapter 1, verse 18, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

Romans 1:18

Romans 9, 22, God even says that he desires to show his wrath.

Colossians chapter 3, verse 6, it is because of these things that the wrath of God is coming.

Colossians 3:6

In Revelation chapter 6, in this terrifying display of the wrath of God during the tribulation, the people of the earth will cry out to the mountains, fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?

Revelation 6 · chapter mention

That's why A.W.

Pink said, There are more references in Scripture to the anger, fury, and wrath of God than there are to his love and tenderness.

So it simply will not do, friend, to sweep away the anger of God with a broom made of hay.

You're dealing with fire.

You're dealing with judgment.

You're dealing with an unquenchable anger.

God is angry, and if you are outside of Christ, God is angry at you.

That wrath abides on you and will for eternity unless you come to Christ.

There is no use in trying to hide from this wrath.

Adam and Eve tried that.

It didn't work.

Instead, God would have you look at his fury full in the face, to feel the blast of heat from his nostrils, and so to seek the one fireproof shelter he has installed on this earth, which is the cross of his son, bearing his own wrath.

That is precisely the purpose of Deuteronomy 32, 19 to 35, to cause you to fear the anger of God, so that you might know the salvation of God.

So let's gaze with trembling and fear then at the holy anger of God.

The anger of God we'll look at in four parts.

The first in this text is the fairness of God's anger.

The fairness of God's anger.

Verse 19.

It says, The Lord saw it and spurned them because of the provocation of his sons and his daughters.

The Lord saw it.

It, the spiritual adultery of the people of Israel, their idolatry, their hatred of God turned into the worship of a creature, their flagrant abuse of his grace.

God sees that, and his response to that is that he spurned them, he despised them because of that provocation.

The word spurn it means to look on with contempt and disgust.

And what we begin to see at the very outset of this passage is that God is not capriciously angry.

He is not angry for no reason.

He's not just flying off the handle.

Because if you look back one chapter, Deuteronomy chapter 31, verse 20, in introducing this song it says, For when I have brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey, which I swore to give to their fathers, and they have eaten in our full and grown fat, they will turn to other gods and serve them and despise me.

Deuteronomy 31:20

Same word.

And break my covenant.

So they despise God, God despises them.

What we need to begin to see about God's fury is that it is not unprovoked.

God by Himself in eternity past is love.

Love between the Father, Son, and Spirit.

There is no anger from the Father to the Son.

And yet when sinners enter the picture, God's righteousness encounters that sin and is provoked to righteous anger.

The anger of God is God's righteous opposition to sin.

It is fair, it is in kind, it is proportionate, and it is deserved.

That's why he includes these three phrases, because of the provocation of his sons and daughters, for they are a perverse generation.

So I will make them jealous.

What is anger?

You ask, well, anger is just a desire for justice in the face of injustice.

Righteousness wronged longs for more righteousness.

I think we tend to wince when we hear a mention of the anger of God because our most common experience with anger is very unrighteous.

When you think of anger, you think of yourself and your own anger, or perhaps the anger of another person towards you that was unjustified.

You think of an anger that is unprovoked, that is totally out of bounds, that was way too much.

God's anger is not off the handle, it's not losing his temper, he's not having a tantrum.

God's anger is not like ours in that respect.

His anger is righteous.

There is no selfishness, there is no lack of control, there is no bitterness, no malice in the anger of God.

God simply sees evil for what it is, he desires that it be judged, and his anger is that desire.

What we must know about this blazing anger of God is that it is not in opposition to the love of God, but in fact gives that love weight.

That's why he says, because of the provocation of his sons and daughters, those on whom he had set his affection.

Think about it.

If I were to go home tonight, and in the middle of the night, an invader broke into the house and began beating my children.

And my response to that was to say, you know what, I'm not angry at you.

It's just wrong.

Would you think that I love my children?

No, of course not, because love wants the best for the object of that love.

Therefore, anything that impedes that best is unjust, is wrong.

It produces anger.

God's perfect holy anger is the product of righteous love.

It's not its undoing.

In order for God to be loving to a sinful world, he must also be angry.

Put another way, after the fall, God's love without anger would be hate.

That's why S.

Erlundson says this.

The wrath of Yahweh is a personal quality without which Yahweh would cease to be fully righteous, and his love would degenerate into sentimentality.

So it is right for God to be angry with unrighteous creatures who have rebelled against him.

When his creatures and indeed his covenant people despise him, hurt themselves, and start worshiping idols, his righteous response is fury, is anger.

That's why he says in verse 20, I will hide my face from them.

I will see what their end will be, hide my face, I will remove all of my favor from them.

And I'll see what their end will be.

Really, I will see to what their end will be.

I will determine it.

Because they're a perverse generation, they have turned into something that they were never meant to be.

There are children in whom is no faithfulness, no truth resides in them.

It's only lies.

Of course, that makes God furious.

In verse 21, he says, They have made me jealous with what is no God.

They have provoked me to anger with their idols, so I will make them jealous with those who are no people, and I'll provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.

First note the parallel in this passage.

People make God jealous with no God, so God makes people jealous with no people.

There's even a rhyme in here between the word idols and the word foolish.

This passage is quoted by Paul in Romans 10, 19 to refer to Gentile inclusion, that part of God's anger is going to be displayed in his casting aside Israel in order to bring in the Gentiles, opening the gates to the nations.

Second, I want you to appreciate what this word is here that he said.

He says, They have made me jealous with what is no God.

That's another word that hits us the wrong way, doesn't it?

God jealous?

That can't be right.

Again, it's because we tend to have unrighteous jealousy, whereas God's is a righteous jealousy.

Jealousy, a zealousness for ownership of a thing, a desire to have another's affection, for example.

Like righteous jealousy would be a husband desiring his wife's affection.

That is a good jealousy.

Unrighteous jealousy would be desiring the affections of a woman who is not his wife.

And God has righteous jealousy for the people of Israel.

He says in Deuteronomy 4.24, for Yahweh your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.

Deuteronomy 5.9.

You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God.

Deuteronomy 6.15, for Yahweh your God in your midst is a jealous God.

Or Exodus 34, 14, for you shall worship no other God, for Yahweh, whose name is jealous, is a jealous God.

He says, Israel, when you go after idols, when you depart from me, when you live your life just however you want to live it, and you belong to me, that provokes me to anger.

That provokes me to jealousy.

I want your affections.

In fact, I demand them back.

All this is to tell Israel and to tell you that God deserves your devotion.

And anything less than a full heart given to that God rightly earns his anger, his wrath.

So God's anger is fair.

Secondly, God's anger is fierce.

The fierceness of the anger of God.

Look at verse 22.

He says, For a fire is kindled by my anger, and it burns to the depths of Sheol, devours the earth and its increase, and sets on fire the foundation of the mountains.

God begins to describe what the result of this wrath will be.

What will happen because God feels this way, because he is angry.

A fire is kindled.

This is a common image for judgment, destruction.

It characterizes not only covenant curses, but eternal hell, the lake of fire.

The point that he's getting at here, burning to the depths of Sheol, devouring the earth in its increase, setting on fire the foundation of the mountains, is that when God Is angry, everything burns.

Everything will melt before the holy fury of God.

Nothing can stand against him.

You cannot escape it.

He says, even in death.

Verse 23, he starts to speak to exactly what that judgment will look like.

I will heap disasters upon them.

Meaning, this is no impotent wrath.

It is coming with power, heaping, continually to pile on apocalyptic fury with the power to destroy worlds and undo creation itself.

He says, I'll spend my arrows on them.

I'll use every last means that I have to pour out my wrath in full measure.

It will be unbearable.

Verse 24, they shall be wasted with hunger and devoured by plague and poisonous pestilence.

I will send the teeth of beasts against them with the venom of things that crawl in the dust.

This is the judgment of famine, of sword, of pestilence, of wild beast, common in the covenant curses, but also all throughout God's judgment to all nations.

All will be experienced by Israel because they did not fear God's anger.

Meaning, God is not simply stamping his feet at the people of Israel and crossing his arms in anger.

He will make good on that anger.

He will pour it out.

It will affect their lives forever.

Revelation chapter 6, verse 8 captures this.

Revelation 6:8

Death and Hades are given authority to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth.

God can back it up, and he will.

And when God is angry, blood is spilled.

Turn with me to Revelation chapter 14.

Revelation 14 · chapter mention

I just want to show you so you can see it yourself.

Revelation 14.

Just a few images in the Bible of the wrath of God.

Of course, it's all over Scripture.

This is just some of the more dramatic scenes that we find in the tribulation.

Revelation chapter 14, verse 19.

Revelation 14:19

This angel is told to begin gathering the clusters from the vines of the earth.

And so the angel, verse, this is Revelation 14, 19, so the angel swung his sickle across the earth and gathered the grapeharvest of the earth and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.

This is, of course, an image of destruction, of bloodshed.

Verse 20, and the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress as high as a horse's bridle for 1600 stadia, 184 miles.

And it gets even worse.

Revelation 16, there are seven bowls of God's wrath that are poured out on the earth, painful sores, the sea and rivers turned to blood, the sun consuming people with fire, the kingdom plunged into darkness, rivers dried up, lightning, thunder, earthquakes, hail.

And in the middle of it, an angel comes and says, Revelation 16, verse 5 Just are you, O holy one, who is and who was, for you brought these judgments.

Revelation 16:5

For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink.

It is what they deserve.

And you think, Well, I'm not living in those times.

Well, friend, if you do not come to Christ, this is the fate that you will find.

Revelation 14, verse 9.

Revelation 14:9

And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any one worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulphur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.

And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshippers of the beast in its image.

You've all heard the expression Love the sinner, hate the sin.

Well.

Meaning, this is a fierce anger that you could never withstand.

And so if you have not sought shelter in the Lord Jesus Christ and in his crucifixion, I plead with you, know what your end will be.

Know the fury that is coming to you.

This anger will be more than you can bear.

You cannot outmuscle God.

You cannot outrun God.

You cannot outsmart God.

He will find you in his fury and he will torment you day and night.

And the only hope that you have is to run to Jesus Christ.

You must fear this God and his anger.

The consequences are too great.

Not only is God's anger fair and fierce, but here we find again in Deuteronomy chapter 32 what God does with the foolish, the foolish and the anger of God.

Deuteronomy 32 · chapter mention

Verse 26, now he turns to consider both the nations outside of Israel and Israel as they essentially ignore the anger of God.

Verse 26, I would have said, I will cut them to pieces.

I will wipe them from human memory, had I not feared provocation by the enemy, lest their adversaries should misunderstand, lest they should say, Our hand is triumphant.

It was not Yahweh who did all this.

Meaning, God could have wiped Israel off the map.

He told Moses he was going to do that once.

Moses pled with him not to.

So he said, I might have done that.

That might have been my plan, if only it were not for those other nations out there who would have gotten the wrong idea by the whole thing.

If they saw me wipe out my own covenant people, they would have claimed responsibility.

My hand did this.

It wasn't God.

Which is exactly what happens, of course.

Syria comes and besieges the northern kingdom of Israel, wipes them out, and then besieges Judah, the southern kingdom, and brags to them about how Yahweh had nothing to do with this.

It was all about them and their might and their power.

And you know what God says in Isaiah chapter 10, Assyria, you're just an axe in my hand.

Isaiah 10 · chapter mention

If it weren't in my hand, the axe wouldn't do anything.

And God brings judgment to them.

This is telling us that it is rare that when God dispenses his anger on this earth, the world acknowledges it as the anger of God.

Though certainly you may find in the New Cycle an occasional mention of an act of God, mostly God's wrath, his anger is ignored.

And probably the most common way this is ignored is what we see in Romans chapter 1, verse 18 and following, that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men who suppress the truth in their unrighteousness.

Romans 1:18

And how is it that God expresses that wrath?

Well it goes on to say in verse 24, and then three times repeats it, he gives them up.

He gives them up.

He gives them up to their base desires, and they plunge deeper and deeper into sin.

You know, when you see a society in that sinful freefall doing precisely what it wants, that is the anger of God.

Sinners get what they want from an angry God.

C.

S.

Lewis said, there are only two kinds of people in the world those who say to God, Thy will be done, and those to whom God says, Thy will be done.

He went on to say that the gates of hell are locked from the inside.

The world will not acknowledge that God is angry because then it must repent.

But maybe you think God isn't angry because you've gotten what you want in your life.

That may just be the first ember.

He goes on in verse 28 to now address Israel.

For they are a nation void of counsel.

There's no understanding in them.

They are foolish in the most typical sense.

They don't get it either.

It's not just the atheists, it's also the people within the church.

If they were wise, he says, they would understand this and they would discern their latter end.

Same phrase from verse 20.

They would see to their end, they would get it.

But they don't.

What was it that they're supposed to get?

Well, look at verse 30.

How could one have chased a thousand?

And two have put 10,000 to flight unless the rock had sold them and Yahweh had given them up.

Meaning, how could a tiny army beat a bigger army unless God did that?

Unless it was a supernatural overthrow, which happens in the history of Israel.

For example, in Numbers 14, the Amalekites and the Canaanites beat them even though they outnumber them.

If they were wise, he says, probably a better translation of if they were wise is, oh, that they would be wise.

The way that little particles used in other passages, Psalm 81, 13, oh, that my people would listen to me, or Isaiah 48, 18, oh, that you had paid attention.

It's meant to be an intentional contrast with verse 27.

God does not desire the enemy to boast, but he also does desire Israel to be wise.

You see here a glimpse of God's mercy for the people of Israel peeking through.

He wants them to understand.

He does not want to expend his wrath and anger on them.

He wants them to get it and turn and be saved.

And yet they won't.

They don't see it.

Even though it's plain as day.

Verse 31, now he turns back to the nations, for their rock is not as our rock.

Our enemies, and probably a better translation here is the NASB, even our enemies themselves judge this.

Our enemies, to some extent, they get it.

Maybe they don't fully acknowledge God's hand in this, but they get it to a degree.

And look who they are.

Verse 32, their vine comes from the vine of Sodom, from the fields of Gomorrah.

The Sodomites understand the anger of God better than the Israelites.

Their grapes are grapes of poison, their clusters are bitter, their wine is the poison of serpents and the cruel venom of asps.

They're on Satan's side of this thing.

And even they appreciate that God is angry at his people.

These enemies should be on the losing end.

How is it that they could beat God's people?

And they would say, because God is angry with them.

Meaning, in your own life, do not mistake the patience of God for his indifference.

And do not mistake the rise and fall of nations as mere political consequence.

Oh, that just happened.

Because this king said this and this person did that.

No, it is that divine hand of anger that turns the wheel of history.

The question that God poses to Israel is: will you continue to be so foolish?

Will you continue to ignore my hand?

Listen, just because God uses means does not mean God is inactive.

He is working all things through providence for his ends, and some of those ends are according to his anger.

This is the foolish and the anger of God.

But lastly, this text turns us to the fleetness, the speed of the anger of God.

Look at verse 34.

Is not this laid up in store with me?

Sealed up in my treasuries?

He's stating now a principle, and the principle is so plain, it's hard to miss.

Verse 35 vengeance is mine.

It belongs to him.

God can dispense the judgment of his fury as he sees fit.

This idea of storing it with him, this is God's judgment, is like a vicious payment ready to be exacted on all under his righteous frown.

It is God's right and prerogative to dispense his justice and his anger, how and when he desires.

Edwards, Jonathan Edwards, preached one of the most famous sermons in the English language on this very verse, verse 35, Sinners in the hands of an angry God.

And the main point of that sermon, he said, was this quote, there is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell but the mere pleasure of God.

Vengeance belongs to him.

You're not in charge of the day of your birth any more than the day of your death.

And if you remain outside of Christ, then on this very day you might go into your grave and plummet yet further down to a fiery hell.

You have no assurances that you will see tomorrow.

It is simply God and his own timing that determines when that vengeance will come.

So when will it come?

He says, for the time when their foot shall slip.

For the day of their calamity is at hand and their doom comes swiftly.

When will the vengeance of God come on you?

Sooner than you think.

He says, it's coming swiftly, it's at hand.

God's timing is his own, but he calls it soon.

It's coming, and in all likelihood it will come at a time when you do not expect.

Then you can keep the anger of God at bay by your polluted righteousness.

All you can do is acknowledge the sovereign fury of this God and plead your case before him.

Vengeance is his.

Deuteronomy.

And they brought that book to him.

And Shaphan, his secretary, read to him that book.

And as he heard it, his idolatrous shoulders bent lower and lower until he could bear it no more.

And 2 Kings chapter 22 says this.

2 Kings 22 · chapter mention

And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahakam the son of Shaphan, and Akbor the son of Micaiah, and Shaphan the secretary, and Isaiah the king's servant, saying, Go, inquire of Yahweh for me and for the people and for all Judah concerning the words of this book that has been found.

For great is the wrath of Yahweh that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book to do according to all that is written concerning us.

Probably one of the last pages that he heard read was Deuteronomy 32.

And he got it right.

God is wrathful.

His anger is great against idolaters.

And so he said, please go inquire of this God.

How might we be saved?

And glory of glories, we do not live in his time.

We live in our time when God has sent the message forth that you do not have to ask anymore.

It has been answered, the cross.

Jesus Christ is the answer to that question.

How can the wrath of God be satisfied and I might live?

It is the cross.

It is Jesus Christ, the infinite one, bearing God's wrath, so that you might not.

Great is the wrath of God that is kindled against sinners of all stripes.

My question to you is: will you leave this place tonight with God angry at you?

Or will you run into the open arms of His Son and find Him to be the most loving, gracious, sweet, tender Savior you could ever imagine?

Anger or love, both are in God.

Which will you choose?

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we feel the weight of this text.

I know that this has been heavy.

And yet we want to know and understand your word rightly.

We want to feel it for what it actually says, and this is what it says.

This is who you are revealed to be, and we praise you for it.

And so, Father, I plead with you to be at work in the hearts of those hearing me right now.

That if any have not flown to Christ and sought refuge under the shadow of his wings from your furious anger.

Oh Lord, please spare them.

And for those of us who find ourselves living in the shadow of that cross, oh, we praise you.

Oh, we thank you.

Thank you for not giving us what we deserve, but instead giving us Christ.

He is all we have.

We pray this in his name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to iBC.church.

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location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.