07 THE WRATHFUL MOOD
07 THE WRATHFUL MOOD But here is one now that may startle you. It is the wrathful mood -- the wrathful mood of the Spirit -- not that it makes you want to hit somebody. That is carnality, but I am talking about that holy sense of the soul in its cry against wrong and injustice and sin.
God has put in every one of us a sense of fair play, the sense of justice and rightness, and we do not want to see it outraged anywhere. If you should find a man abusing a child and not feel indignant against him you are a backslider. If you find any one oppressed and do not feel resentment in you, you have no moral character. Whether it be individuals or nations, your soul rises up against it. You have to hate wrong as much as you love righteousness to be a balanced Christian. You have to hate iniquity as much as you love righteousness, for that is the balanced character of Jesus. The soul that cannot hate as hard as it can love is not balanced. I do not mean to hate folks but to hate sin and wrong, and get hot in your soul against it. You won’t stand for it.
I remember once in Little Rock, Arkansas, the pastor whom I was assisting in the meeting came down by the hotel and took me to the mission, and as we turned around the corner and came along to an alley, there was a saloon there. Just as we got in front of the saloon a little man intoxicated came running around the screen and a great burly man came after him, got him by the collar and held him down on the cement and planted his knees on the fellow’s breast.
It was all done just as I stopped opposite and I sprang to him and said, "Get off him." He said, "You don’t know what he called me." I said, "It does not make any difference. Get off him," and the police came and took the little man; and I said, "Take him," but I could not make him do it.
Someone said, "What would you have done if he had not gotten off?" I would have helped him off. "Would not you have lost your sanctification?" Not unless I had let him abuse that man without a protest from me. I would have been contemptible if I had not. We run that thing of non-resistance in the ground. If it is a personal affront, God will give you grace enough to bear it, but you have no business hiding behind Christian perfection when the helpless are to be protected.
I once said to a fellow who was enthusiastic about non-resistance, "Suppose some man came in and began to abuse your sister or your mother." He said, "I must not do anything, I am sanctified." I said, "You are just soft." If you think that is sanctification you are just soft. It would be my business to lay him out with anything I could get my hands on in the interests of the defenseless.
God save us from this cheap sentimentalism, that has a notion that because we are Christians we must not protect anyone else. Mine will not work that way. I have taken abuse from others but I do not propose to see any kind of a brutal ruffian impose upon anyone else who is defenseless as long as I am able to help or protect them.
It is also true of nations. America can lose her soul by getting beds that are too soft, by getting too many automobiles, and by letting other nations trample upon weak nations. The above arises out of the natural instinct for justice and fair play and natural indignation against wrong. But you say, did anybody in Scripture ever have a wrathful spirit? Yes. The following is an instance of holy wrath and indignation wrought in Paul by the Holy Spirit. In Acts 13:9-12 we read: "Then Saul (who also is called Paul) filled with the Holy Ghost, set his eyes on him, and said, O full of all subtilty and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord? And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a season. And immediately there fell on him a mist and a darkness; and he went about seeking some to lead him by the hand. Then the deputy, when he saw what was done, believed, being astonished at the doctrine of the Lord." This is that same Paul that said, "We beseech you." It is the same Paul, but the Holy Ghost is talking in a different way. There is a lot of difference between these moods. We must be pliable enough to let Him play however He will, for one string music is monotonous. There is a wrathfulness needed in everybody without which you have not a perfect moral character.
However, when I am talking about this mood of the Spirit it is something that works in you against sin and cries out against wrong like Jesus did. He would not stand for the temple to be prostituted by selling doves and changing money and having cattle and sheep in the courts of His house. He said, "It is written my house shall be called a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves," and they went out, for His Holy wrath was stirred and they dared not stay.
I went to my pulpit to preach once and I was so hot with wrath against sin I was dangerous to touch. The wife of one of my best friends came to talk with me and I cut her off quite short, and she said playfully, "Now I will tell John." I said, "Tell him anything you want to. Do not bother me now." Sin got a drubbing that day like it never had in that place, and after it was over any one could have approached me.
One day at a certain town the boys said they were going to give me a dose of stale eggs and I went and prayed until I wanted them to come on. Then I went back and preached. All of a sudden God, unexpectedly to me, poured out through me a vial of wrath against sin and I went home to bed that night without any missiles. The Spirit had put the fear of God upon their hearts. That is why holiness preachers can say things for which men not filled with the Spirit would be stoned. It is because the Spirit pours wrath through them and the sinner is filled with conviction and fear. God has a way of putting the wrath of the Spirit on a man until it looks awful dangerous to be a sinner, and he is not going to waylay you to flog you, but will hunt a place of prayer.
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