So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and cut the earth’s vintage. He threw it into the great wine press of God’s fury. Or, as the song puts it, “the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” Probably the most famous sermon ever delivered in what is now the United States was preached in 1741 by Jonathan Edwards entitled, “Sinners in the hands of an angry God.” God’s anger, God’s fury, God’s wrath are not preached today as they have been in the past. But God’s wrath is a Biblical truth. It basically expresses that God issues a passionate “NO” to certain behaviors and beliefs. The contemporary attitude of “you do your thing and I’ll do mine” is not how God operates. God wants us to do the right thing, the kind thing, the compassionate thing. When we do not, God’s wrath arises — not with divine thunderbolts but by letting the consequences of our ungodly behavior play out in the destructive spiral they unleash.
