Root Cause Analysis on What Conditions Bring the Wrath of God

Well, good morning, everyone. Jim, Art, thanks very much for that. It's always wonderful to hear people sharing the gifts that they have, especially the musical gifts with us. Never grow tired of hearing that. Well, today is a day that we think of prophecy, and sometimes prophecy comes in dreams. My daughter came to me this morning and said she had a dream. Her dream was that my sermon was boring. So I'll let everyone be the judge after I'm done speaking, whether she's truly a prophet or not.

We'll hope for not. We're a non-profit household. Well, this is a time of year that we think of a lot of different things. We think of the return of Jesus Christ. It's a time that brings incredible joy. It's also a time that's going to bring a lot of calamity with it, especially the time that immediately precedes the return of Jesus Christ.

And calamity has a way of focusing the mind, doesn't it? You can think of ridiculous situations in movies that we see where something goes wrong and everyone who's doing stupid things right before that then sits around and says, wow, maybe I shouldn't have done this, I shouldn't have done that. Or when you run out of gas on a dark highway and you start thinking, maybe I should have taken an exit a mile back and filled up the car. But it's not only those not as serious situations. When serious things happen in the world, what is something that always happens? We go back and we analyze what happened.

We think about plane crashes and how we sometimes commit a group of experts to a year or more to examine an airplane crash. What happened? What failed? And they do what's called a root cause analysis, right, to get back to see exactly what was the foundational thing that went wrong so that it will not happen again. So what I'd like to do today is take that type of approach and think a little bit about the time that's going to come, the return of Jesus Christ, and think about the conditions that bring about the wrath of God.

Now, the return of Jesus Christ and the Day of the Lord is not, in one sense, a one-time event. It's not the only time that God has gotten angry with mankind and punished mankind. Certainly the magnitude of what happens and the way that it happens is extreme in a one-time event. But God is a consistent God. God approaches things very much in the same way on an ongoing basis. So let's look today, in the brief time that we have, at some root cause analysis and how God evaluates the thoughts and the approaches of mankind.

And this is very much a biblical concept and one tied to this time of year. Turn with me, please, if you will, to 2 Peter 3. 2 Peter 3. Of course, we refer to the Day of the Lord. We realize this time immediately before the return of Jesus Christ is a time of great calamity where God is also coming to punish the world. 2 Peter 3 in verse 10, as we think of this time, the Day of the Lord, it says in verse 10, will come as a thief in the night in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise and the elements will melt with fervent heat.

Both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. And here's the punchline, therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the Day of God because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat. So this question, this root cause analysis, is thought about what kind of people ought we to be recognizing what it is that's going to happen at the time of the return of Jesus Christ.

It's a very relevant one for us to think about and address to ourselves today. This passage, of course, goes on and answers the question in terms of being steadfast, remaining in God and in His way. But I'd like to focus even a little more specifically on a root cause issue that's underlying the wrath of God and who it is that God resists and who it is that God accepts. Let's start in an example of fire and brimstone. I'm sure as soon as we think of those words or hear those words, a specific example comes up and it's Sodom and Gomorrah.

So if we remember a little bit about the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, its background lies with Lot and with Abraham, right? The two of them, Abraham was called out to leave his country and he was brought into the land that we know is Palestine now. He and Lot, and they had herds and their herds became very large, so large that they had some difficulties in terms of who was going to be where in the land. And Lot and Abraham eventually split up and Lot ended up in this area that became Sodom and Gomorrah.

It was some of the most fertile land in that area. You could easily grow crops there, the soil was rich, it was a fantastic situation for all of the things that had to be done in working as a herdsman and as a farmer. But what is it in the end that happened at Sodom and Gomorrah? Turn with me to Genesis 19, verses 24 through 28.

Genesis 19, verses 24 through 28. In a small way, this is an example of what's going to happen at the time of the Day of the Lord. In a small way, in this case because it was geographically very focused on these cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Genesis 19, we'll start in verse 24. Then the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord out of the heavens. So he overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.

But Lot's wife looked back behind him and she became a pillar of salt. And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord and he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the plain and he saw on behold the smoke of the land which went up like the smoke of a furnace. So God entirely destroyed this civilization that was there on this very fertile plain. All the people who lived there, he only saved Lot and a few members of his family that went out from there. And some of us might remember that account and all the other details that went along with it. But what was the sin? What was the root cause sin of Sodom and Gomorrah?

Okay. Let's look in Ezekiel 16 and the answer might surprise some of us. We can think, of course, of the sins that were committed there and Sodom is known to this day for those sins. Let's read Ezekiel 16 verses 49 through 50 which gives us a root cause analysis of the sin in this case of Sodom. Ezekiel 16 verses 49 through 50. Here Ezekiel is talking, he's comparing Jerusalem to Sodom and he's talking about their sins in comparison to one another.

And in verse 49 it says, Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom. She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness. Neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty and committed abomination before me, and therefore I took them away as I saw fit. Now talk certainly about the abominations that were the end result of everything that was happening at Sodom, but as it talks about the chain of events and the progression and the root cause, what is it that it puts at the very front of the list?

Pride. Pride as the root cause. Let me quote briefly from Jameson Fawcett Brown from the Bible commentary talking about this passage. Jameson Fawcett Brown says here that God, the heart searcher, here specifies as Sodom's sin not merely her notorious lusts, but the secret spring of them, pride flowing from fullness of bread caused by the fertility of the soil and producing idleness. Pride, it goes on to say, is always cruel. It arrogates to itself all things and despises brethren for whose needs it therefore has no feeling.

So the root cause of the sin and eventually the destruction of Sodom started with pride. It then worked itself out to ignoring the needs of other people as we heard in the first message, so important to use the gifts and the fruits of the spirit that were given to help others and not to turn away from them. But pride, which then led to ignoring the needs of other people, especially the poor and the needy, which then went on and led to much greater physical sins which we're all familiar with.

Let's take another example. Again, a world ruling, in this case a world ruling empire, God's wrath in this case focused very closely on one person who ruled that empire. Many of you know the name of Nebuchadnezzar. Those of you who studied Western civilization in high school, we studied the Babylonian empire, right?

We see great things here about the hanging gardens of Babylon, one of the wonders of the ancient world, where in this city there were monstrous gardens that were watered and you could see every possible kind of tree. And Babylon at that time ruled the known world. It was the most powerful empire there, and its king was a man named Nebuchadnezzar. And, like any powerful man, he had everything that he wanted at his fingertips.

A huge army, wealth, anything else that a person could want, he had before him. And in this account, he's talking with the prophet Daniel, and it happens in Daniel 4. We won't read all the account, but let's rehearse briefly what it is that happened. Like any king at that time and any ruler today, he had advisors around him, wise men they called him back then, and Nebuchadnezzar had a dream. It was a dream of this huge tree that grew up, and birds were perched in it, it gave all kinds of shade all around it, and animals would come and bask in the shade of that tree.

And then he saw how the tree was chopped down, and it fell, and a band was put around the stump. And then after a certain period of time, the band was removed, and the tree was able to grow again. And Nebuchadnezzar was puzzled by this dream, he was troubled by it. And so he went to his wise men, to his advisors, he asked, what in the world does this mean? This dream has come to me, and it must mean something significant.

And in the end, Daniel, as someone who was recognized by the people around him as a righteous man, a man of God, came, and he was asked to interpret the dream. Let's start in verse 27 of Daniel 4, and it's telling what he has to say here. He tells about, first of all, before we get to this verse, he tells that it means that Nebuchadnezzar is going to be cut off.

He's going to lose his rule, and he's going to be like a wild animal for seven years. And after that, will be replaced on the throne, or be able to take his throne again. And the advice that he gives in verse 27, he says, Daniel says to the king, Therefore, O king, let my advice be acceptable to you. Break off your sins by being righteous and your iniquities by showing mercy to the poor. Perhaps there may be a lengthening of your prosperity. Remember, we talked earlier in the example of Sodom and how it tied together as a root cause pride and ignoring the needs of the poor.

So here we see it in the reverse, but Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar, if you want to try to forestall this, if you want to live righteously and hopefully avoid this calamity that's being prophesied, look out and have mercy for the poor. Very much tied in, again, as a root cause issue. And then pride will come into play here as we read on.

In verse 28, all this came upon King Nebuchadnezzar. At the end of 12 months, he was walking about the royal palace of Babylon. And you can imagine here what that palace must have looked like in grandeur.

And if you've ever seen pictures and depictions of these hanging gardens and all the space that they covered, you would imagine in a land where these types of things didn't normally grow, he was able to enjoy every possible kind of fruit and vegetable, vegetation, incredible flowers all around him. And in verse 30, the king spoke and said, Is this not great Babylon, that I have built for a royal dwelling by my mighty power and for the honor of my majesty? And while the word was still in the king's mouth, a voice fell from heaven, King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it has spoken, the kingdom has departed from you.

And they will drive you from men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. They will make you eat grass like oxen, and seven times shall pass over you until you know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men and gives it to whomever he chooses. In that very hour the word was fulfilled concerning Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from men, and he ate grass like oxen. His body was wet like the dew of heaven till his hair had grown like eagle's feathers and his nails like bird's claws. It's an incredible story when you think about it.

As some people would say, you just can't make this stuff up, right? It's an amazing story. A king, somebody ruling the empires who basically gets turned into a cow and ends up grazing out in the field for seven years. Hair growing like crazy, the nails ending up looking like claws. And for what reason? What was the root cause? We look at the example, those verses that precede in terms of what the words were that came out of Nebuchadnezzar's mouth that immediately preceded him being struck down that way. It was the words of pride, wasn't it?

Words that said, look what I have done, look what I have created. No room there for God, no room there for anything else other than what he himself had done. And again, the two characteristics, those root cause characteristics that we saw attributed to the people in Sodom and Gomorrah of pride and of the way that they treated the poor and those who needed their mercy.

Then in verse 36, I find this a really interesting passage as well because we don't really think about it very often, but typically the books of the Bible that we can think about that were written are written by prophets, they're written by apostles. This is a passage of scripture that's written by a ruler, a king, of one of the greatest empires ever in the world, written in the first person here in Daniel. Let's read in verse 36. Nebuchadnezzar says in his own words here at this point, at the same time, my reason returned to me, and for the glory of my kingdom my honor and splendor returned to me.

My counselors and nobles resorted to me, I was restored to my kingdom, and excellent majesty was added to me. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, all of whose works are truth and his ways justice and those who walk in pride he is able to put down. Imagine how strong those words are. I mean, think about our president standing up and saying these words in front of all the people. Imagine any other ruler, think of the greatest rulers you can think about.

Think about your manager at work, think of the CEO of the largest company, think of Bill Gates standing up and saying these words. This was the most powerful man in the world at that point in time. And after what God had put him through, he said these words that he praised and extolled the King of heaven, realizing that all who walk in pride he is able to put down.

Now let's fast forward to the time that we think about today on the Feast of Trumpets. Does this same attitude get associated with the Feast of Trumpets? Not surprisingly, the Day of the Lord shows the same type of judgment happening against the proud. Turn to Isaiah 2 with me, please. Isaiah 2. Isaiah writes here in a prophecy about the coming Day of the Lord, and we'll read verses 10 through 12 and verse 17. Isaiah 2. Starting in verse 10 of Isaiah 2, it says, Isaiah writes, Enter into the rock and hide in the dust from the terror of the Lord and the glory of his majesty.

The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, the haughtiness of man shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. For the Day of the Lord of hosts shall come upon everything proud and lofty, upon everything lifted up, and it shall be brought low. And in verse 17, the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of man shall be brought low.

The Lord alone will be exalted in that day. So this analysis, this consistency of God in terms of what it is that he looks for and what it is that he resists, what it is that he destroys when it comes from mankind, is very consistent across all of these different passages.

We don't have time to go into it today, but if you wanted to look further, you could see very similar conditions in the time of Noah. And when God entered in in the time of Noah, Noah caused the flood to cause the destruction. And if you read Romans 1, we'll see a lot of the same things. It talks about sins and deeds very similar to what we read about in Sodom, and also talks about pride, the fact that men knowingly resist God, knowing that things are right and still decide to do things that are wrong.

That again is in the latter part of Romans 1 if you want to look at it later. Let's turn, though, to 1 Peter 5, verses 5 through 7. 1 Peter 5, verses 5 through 7, because this is where God really lays out a distinction between the attitude of pride and the opposite of that attitude, which is an attitude of humility. 1 Peter 5, verses 5 through 7. 1 Peter 5, verses 5 through 7.

This is where I want to focus the rest of the time and the message today in terms of what we can and should do and the types of spirit and way of being that we need to take on in order to receive the grace of God. 1 Peter 5, verses 5 through 7. Likewise, you younger people submit yourselves to your elders. Guess all of you be submissive to one another and be clothed with humility. For God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.

Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon him, for he cares for you. We need to think about and reflect on the world that we see around us and the attitude of the world that we see when we look at it, that there's so much of the same things that were symptoms or final results at the time of Sodom and Gomorrah.

We see so many of the things that were final results at the time of the flood happening in our world today. We need to think back to the root cause and what it lays out in this scripture in terms of what God resists, which is the pride of mankind, and what God looks for and gives grace to, which is the humility of mankind.

I'm sure those of us who've been in the church for a long time and studied our Bible carefully can think of a host of different passages from the scripture that come to mind in terms of humbling ourselves before God and God looking to him who's poor and of a contrite spirit and trembles at his word.

So we have to think about that as we live our day-to-day lives. Now we know we're put into this world for a reason. Jesus Christ, deliberately, as he points out in John, did not ask God to take us out of the world. We're asked to live in this world as Christians, but not to be like it, and that's our daily challenge. We have the poles of the world and everything that's going on in it every day that's trying to pull us down in this viewpoint of pride.

Sometimes it's what we see written in Romans where we know that people know what's really right, but they've decided they're just not going to do it. And in other cases it's simply people have never been exposed to the way of God, and so they believe, you know, life is just going to go on the way it is. I've got to figure out for myself what's right and wrong. I'm going to take the path in life that gives me the most happiness, because, hey, you only live once. Let's make the best of it, right?

Nobody's going to tell me what I can and can't do. I'm going to find my happiness. And that's a very prevalent attitude that we see out there, one that we have to be aware of and think about as we decide the kinds of lives that we're going to live and as we strive to live our lives according to the way of God. Let's look at Philippians 2 as a definition of humility.

What is humility that we're supposed to take on? And what does it mean at its core so that we can be accepted by God, so we can receive the grace that we want from Him? And this is the attitude that will be an outgrowth of God's Holy Spirit living in us. If we're submitted to that Spirit and allowing it to work through us. Philippians 2. Let's read verses 6 through 11. I'll read out of God's Word translation in this case. Philippians 2, and I'll actually start in verse 3.

Sorry if I'm confusing anyone out there. Verse 3 of Philippians 2. Don't act out of selfish ambition or be conceited. Instead, humbly think of yourselves as being, think of others as being better than yourselves. Don't be concerned only about your own interests, but also be concerned about the interests of others. Have the same attitude that Jesus Christ had. Although He was in the form of God and equal with God, He did not take advantage of this equality. Instead, He emptied Himself by taking on the form of a servant and becoming like other humans, by having a human appearance. He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, death on a cross, and this is why God has given Him an exceptional honor, the name honored above all other names, so that at the name of Jesus everyone in heaven, on earth, and in the world below will kneel and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

This is the biblical definition of what it means to be humble, to not grasp ahold of the things that we have. God has given us all gifts, material gifts as well as spiritual gifts in different measure, but what is it He wants us to realize? It comes from Him. He gives it when He wants to give it, He can take it away when He wants to take it away.

And the faith that we have in God is knowing that in the long run, whether we're in times of plenty or in times of want, that God cares for us and He's building something for us in the future, in the long term, in His plan, so that we can have salvation, we can have a place in His family.

And, just like we read about as we were reading examples of pride, not surprisingly, what's completely connected up to this attitude of humility is how others are treated. We read again in verse 4, being not concerned only about our own interests, but about the interests of others. So this idea that pride or humility will exercise itself, it'll evidence itself in the way that we treat other people. And whether we put them ahead of us, or whether we view ourselves as better than them and deserving of the things that we've been blessed with.

So just as pride sets off a chain reaction of ignoring the plight of the poor and then going down into a spiral of sinful behaviors, godly humility also sets off a chain reaction. A reaction of first truly understanding our own sinful nature and the need for Jesus Christ's sacrifice, followed by realizing that without God, all of us as human beings, no matter how we look, or what we wear, or the cars we drive, or the homes that we have, are in the same condition before God.

And then it results in doing all that we can in our own power with what we've been given to serve others and to help show them the love that Jesus Christ has given us. So as pride leads to ambivalence in the plight of others, humility leads to deep caring and exercising God's love and showing it to other people. So how do we make this all practical? We think back again about the fact that Jesus Christ will return, and that's what Peter was writing about. And I think of my dad often in this context.

He died several years ago. He was an engineer, I would say eccentric engineer, but some people would say that's an oxymoron. So I can remember as a kid growing up, any electronic toy that I bought, my dad would immediately take because he had to modify it. It wasn't good enough the way that it was. He had to add this, he had to change that because it just wasn't quite right. He could spend hours in the garage fiddling with the car to try to make it better because the carburetor just wasn't tuned quite right.

That's the way an engineer is. One of the interesting things that he brought out, and this would have been back in the 70s, he got so frustrated with some of the jobs that he worked in because he was down at the end of a line after things had been produced, and he was a test engineer at that point in time.

And they would find errors, they would find problems in what was being produced. And he would come home sometimes just incredibly frustrated saying, you know, why do they waste our time doing this? Why don't they just fix the problem at the front end, produce this stuff right, build processes so that mistakes won't happen, and stop having all of us waste our time at the end of the line figuring out what mistakes other people made and then never fixing them. I found it interesting, a couple of decades later, actually, when I was in a management class, what is it that we were studying in the 1980s into the early 1990s, the Japanese production system?

What was the Japanese production system all about? It was about quality. It was about thinking about the way that you produce things, not waiting for mistakes to happen at the end, but taking apart that process and making it the way it should be at the front end, thinking about it, working out the flaws, and producing something that doesn't need to be fixed after it's been built.

Same way for us. We're a work in progress, right? We're God's workmanship. How often do we sit back and think about the things that are causing the outcomes in our lives? I sat through an interesting seminar for work just a few weeks ago, a gentleman named Harry Kramer. And he was, I think he's got religious beliefs of some sort based on some of the things that he was thinking. One of the things I took away from that discussion that I found very compelling about what he had to say was, he said, you know, when I finish my day, no matter how late it is at night, I take 10 to 15 minutes and I reflect on my day.

He said, I've done this every year, every day, for 30 years. And what he said he does, he thinks back on the way that his day went, thinks about what went well, thinks about what didn't go well, he thinks about the actions that he took and why he took them, and he reflects on whether that matches up with his moral code and the way that he's used life.

Now, as Christians, we would, of course, replace that with by saying God's way, God's law, God's spirit, and the way that it works in us. How often do we sit back and reflect and take time to think about what are the actions that we took? What are the things that are going right in my life? What are the things that are going wrong? What are the results that I'm seeing in my family, in my neighborhood, and the people at work? And what is it that I'm contributing, good or bad, to the way that's happening?

How is it that God's spirit is living in me? How is it that I'm quelling that spirit and not living according to it? As we think about this idea of humility and pride, I think this idea of reflection, taking that time to meditate and think about how is it that we are and are not living in accordance with God's way of life? And on a daily basis, how can we invite God and ask Him into our life through the power of His Holy Spirit to live that next day differently and according to His way?

So as we go back and think about it and consider the root cause analysis we've gone briefly through today, what is it that lies in the root of what it is that God resists and eventually will have to stamp out in mankind? It's the attitude of pride. And what is it that is being replaced with through God's spirit working within us? It's the attitude of humility. So as we walk forward in this Holy Day season and reflect on the incredible reward that God has for us, let's also think of ways that we can build in time for reflection, think about the root causes in our own life, and invite God through His Holy Spirit to work even more powerfully within all of us.