God's Anger Burns

 Many people fail to see the true character of God. They simply focus on the love of God, and they forget about His holiness. God is both, not just one or the other. It might be hard for us to understand, but it is His nature, and He combines them perfectly in all He does. That is why we can always know that God acts in love toward us, even when His holiness causes Him to punish us with burning anger. We see this in the life of Israel over and over again. (Numbers 25:1,3) When the people were at Acacia Grove near the land of Moab, they encountered the women of Moab. The women tempted them to enter into the worship of Baal of Peor, their god. The men of Israel engaged in sexual sins with them, because that was how they worshiped Baal. When God saw that they had aligned themselves with the idol, Baal of Peor, His anger burned against them. It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of God when He is angry with us.

God hates sin. It makes Him very angry, because of His holiness. Many sins are connected with some type of idolatry. We sin when we make the choice to allow something to take the place of God. When we focus on the idol of sex, sports, money, recreation, or anything else that draws us away, we are prostituting ourselves. As believers, we are married to God. He is to be the only One we worship. When we are unfaithful, and go after an idol, our close relationship with God is broken. We are saying to God that He doesn't meet our needs, and so we are going to something else. That is a terrible insult to God, and it is a horrible mistake. God is the only One who can meet our needs perfectly. Therefore, God's anger burns against us, and we receive the punishment we need to turn us back to Him. This is the love of God in action, since He knows sin will destroy us, and no idol can meet our needs. Please, we must watch out for idols and put them away quickly, before the burning anger of God comes against us.

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Tomorrow, I intend to read Numbers 26-28.