Today's Passage: Isaiah 23-25

In our growth groups we are talking about God's wrath & God's love.  Do these things really go together?  As strange as it may seem, they actually do.  Today we will study the wrath on Pharoah and the Egyptian people for not letting the Israelites go.  As we study the plagues that God sent on the Egyptians, we will see that Israelites were protected.  We will also look at the destruction that will come on the earth in Revelation 15-16.  The God who so loves the world and is slow to anger is the same God who cannot tolerate sin.  This is why Christ gave Himself as the perfect sacrifice on the cross.  One reason these two extremes are so hard to understand is found in scripture (later in this book, in fact)  Isaiah 55: 8-9 say, "'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,' declares the Lord. 'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.'"  If we could understand everything about God, He would not be a god worth praising.  We can trust in the fact that His wrath and His love, faithfulness, and loving kindness are all consistent with who He is.