God,
Wrath, Emotion, Judgment. 1 Kings 11:9
1 Kings 11:4 NASB “For when Solomon was old, his wives turned
his heart away after other gods; and his heart was not wholly devoted to the LORD his God, as the
heart of David his father {had been.}” This is an important contrast to pick up
as we go through this chapter. Because of his failure to follow in David’s
footsteps with a focus, a devotion, a faithfulness to God, he is not going to
receive the blessing that would have been his if he had been obedient to God.
The conclusion is in verse 6: “Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and did not
follow the LORD fully, as David his father {had done.}” We will see again and again as
we go through Kings that the concept of evil is contextually defined as
idolatry—leading people to worship a deity other than the God of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob. It is fundamentally the worship of anything other than God as God.
What does it mean to fully follow the Lord? The idea is not that he is
completely obedient or perfect, or that he never made mistakes, or that he
never sinned. We know that is exactly what David did: he sinned in incredible
ways, and very publicly. All of these things indicate that David was a sinner;
there wasn’t anything perfect about him. Yet his heart, the focus of his
thinking, his volition was positive and never shifted, he was loyal to God even
though he sinned many different times. That is the issue, and it is the same
issue for our own lives. The way that God evaluates us is in terms of our heart
focus, our positive volition, our dedication to Him. It is not that we get away
with sin or that sin in our life is not significant, that is not the issue. The
issue fundamentally is that orientation, that devotion, that loyalty to God.
Then we see the response of God in verse 9 NASB “Now the LORD was angry with
Solomon because his heart was turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had
appeared to him twice.” Notice how the writer of Scripture under the influence
of the Holy Spirit emphasises the significance of that twofold appearance of
God to Solomon. Many people think that if they had just seen Jesus they would
then have had a stronger faith, have been a better Christian, and they would
not have doubts. Solomon’s heart has turned away from the Lord, he is on
negative volition. Twice God has appeared to him, so he has an incredible
amount of empirical evidence of who God is and what He can do for him. He has
been blessed beyond almost any other human being, and yet despite the physical
blessing, the appearance by God, he turns and rejects God. That is a tremendous
lesson for any of us. The issue isn’t that empirical reality; it is trusting in
God’s Word. It is the same principle that Jesus reiterates when he tells the
story of Lazarus and the rich man. As the rich man was in torments he begged
Abraham to let Lazarus be raised from the dead so that he can go back to his
brothers and tell them about God and what the consequences are if they reject
God. Abraham said that if they don’t believe Moses and the prophets they won’t
believe somebody who is raised from the dead. The issue is the Word of God. If
the Word of God is available—and it is to everyone in the church age—then it is
sufficient, and we don’t need signs and wonders and miracles and all of these
other things that don’t actually work.
The rest of the chapter sets us up for God’s divine discipline and His
judgment on Solomon. God is going to outline what He is going to do to Solomon
in the rest of this paragraph and then starting in verse 14 He is going to
raise up external enemies to
“Now the LORD was angry with Solomon.” What does it mean that the Lord was angry. The
verb that is used here is the Hebrew word anaph.
It means to be angry and it is an intensified form in the hithpael stem, but it
is built off of a noun aph, which
means nose, nostrils, in some places face, and it is used metaphorically for
anger. We run into this in Hebrew and in Greek as well where certain things
described as emotions are stated in terms of these body parts. For example, we
hear of someone getting made and his nostrils flare, or his face gets red, etc.
It is a figure of speech that means His nose burned. A term that was used in
the early church was impassibility, but it is a term that has come under
tremendous debate over the last fifteen to twenty years because of the rise of
a heretical teaching within evangelicalism known as the openness of God
theology or open theology.
The term “anthropopathism.” The basic thing we have to remember is what
God says to Isaiah in Isaiah 55:8, 9 NASB “‘For My thoughts are not
your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,’ declares the LORD.
As creatures we have a certain understanding of things in a creaturely
frame of reference, but God is totally other. What is fundamental to biblical
Christianity is the creator-creature distinction. So when we get on the other
side, beyond our finite frame of reference—from empiricism, rationalism and
mysticism—into the realm of God’s true existence in heaven there is little that
we can truly comprehend because of our finiteness. But God has revealed Himself
to us in certain was so that we can know Him, and what we can know about Him we
can know truly. But there will always be things about Him that we fail to
understand, and so we have to be careful as we set up this analogy between the
finite realm on the one hand and the infinite realm of the creator on the other
hand that what is on our side of the divide is merely a comparison. And God is
saying, as it were, if you could grasp what is going on with me and my
character and my attributes then what I am telling you just gives you a glimpse
in your frame of reference of what I am like. It is not that we don’t know Him
but we don’t know Him and can’t understand Him exhaustively. So we should be in
awe that this God that the Bible reveals to us, the God who seeks our
relationship, our fellowship, the fact that he has created us for a purpose and
that part of that purpose is to be in relationship with Him.
So we look at these words like the verb for “anger” and one place that
we find it is in Psalm 2:12 NASB “Do homage to the Son, that He not
become angry, and you perish {in} the way, For His wrath may soon be kindled.
How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!”
Psalm 79:5 NASB “How long, O LORD? Will You be angry forever?
Will Your jealousy burn like fire?” Notice in the parallelism that jealousy is
parallel to anger. So all of these terms—jealousy, anger, wrath—have to be
treated the same way.
Carl F. H. Henry: “God’s agape is comprehended in voluntary relationship to extend
from His creative and compassionate personality [he assumes the meaning of
compassion and doesn’t explain it or deal with it where it comes from
Scripture]. As represented in the Bible God’s love presupposes the
exclusive voluntary initiative of the sovereign divine Being who no external
power can manipulate.”
He is basically saying there that whatever is in the attributes of God
are not being impacted by that which is outside. That is what impassibility
means.
“Schliermacher’s effort to explain theological
representations of divine grace is merely the symbolic language of preaching
and poetry distorts what the Bible consistently affirms, namely that God freely
engages in compassionate and merciful acts.”
He then goes to a well-known Baptist theologian from the late 19th
century, Augustus H. Strong, who observes that while God’s holiness is
invariable His mercy is optional.
“Compassionate response is no induced in God by the
distress of creatures as if they were able to effect a change in the nature of
an otherwise uncompassionate being.”
There he is trying to explain impassibility, that the inner nature of
God is not affected by what is outside. If it is, God is mutable. So Henry is
wrestling with how to explain this.
“Rather, response is grounded in the living God’s
essential nature, i.e. His will, His voluntary disposition. Whatever Christian
theology means by the passibility of God it does not mean that God’s love,
compassion and mercy are mere figures of speech.”
That’s the statement. His assumption is that to say it is a figure of
speech means that there is really nothing on the other side of the analogy. You
just say we have an analogy but it is just a figure of speech, it doesn’t
really refer to anything. The point we make is that for the analogy to work
there is something on the divine side that what is on the human side is
analogous to. We just can’t comprehend it. And it is much more extensive and
very different from words like emotion and feeling. When we read anything on
emotions one of the things that is interesting is how our emotions are enacted
by things we see, things we smell. We have an emotional reaction of joy or pleasure
or maybe revulsion, whatever it might be; but the emotion is stimulated
physically.
Historically these have been understood as anthropopathisms. E. W.
Bullinger: “… the ascribing of human attributes, etc., to God… the figure is
used of the ascription human passions, actions or attributes to God.”
An anthropopathism is a figure of speech or language of accommodation
whereby human emotions such as regret, surprise, remorse, sorrow, happiness,
anger, jealousy, are ascribed to God which He does not actually possess, or
ascribes to God to communicate with any finite creaturely frame of reference
God’s policies, plans and person.