Thursday, May 01, 2008

Roy Clements - When God's Patience Runs Out

This is a book of sermons preached on Amos in 1984. Some of the application now therefore seems very dated, and there's one or two technical details about his handling of Amos I disagree with, but it's certainly well worth a read and good for getting across some of the force of what Amos was saying and for thinking about how to apply it to today.

Why are there so few of this type of book around. Why, for example, can't I find one on Hosea, or Joel, or Obadiah, or Micah?

Anyway, here's a thought-provoking quote:

For if God cannot in any sense be angry with people, what do we mean when we say he is being patient with them? If God is not subject to real and intense provocation by human sin, then all those Bible words such as long-suffering and mercy, even grace, become emptied of all meaning.

(Here's my link to commentaries I recommend. Any listed before the / are ones I find helpful to use devotionally, like this one...)

3 comments:

John Bradshaw said...

A comment found about this quote.

John Bradshaw said...

oops...here's the link
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GHClark_List1/message/3112

John said...

Thanks for this.

However, the issue at hand isn't God's mutability, but rather whether or not he is angry with people (which then ties in to the whole Penal Substitutionary Atonement argument).

Paul Helm (and others) have shown that anger at sin, and even at sinners, is perfectly compatible with the classic understanding of immutability.