Wait Until Your Daddy Gets Home!

Wait until your Daddy gets Home!

My mom put up with a lot - having 3 kids. She has survived the ordeal but not without some scars, and a few gray hairs. I don’t know how many times I was sent to my room and told to stay there until I was 18. I believe I got a few bruises myself.

When my mom had – had it up to here – there was one phrase that let me know I had really messed up. When she “Wait until your daddy gets home!” that, it was the last straw. I had danced on her last nerve and gone over the edge. It never came until after several warnings being given first.

It was going to be the wrath of mom, with punishment administered by my dad. When mom threw her ace. She had to carry through. She could not back down. She had to insist that I be punished. Other wise she would be powerless in the future.

Once you know that punishment is coming, does it bother you? It did me, especially as a kid. I really did not want to die….

The God of the Old Testament seems to act a little like this. Adam seems to start a patter that repeats often. This pattern of warning, and action by God for disobedience starts back in the Garden of Eden. Adam knew not to eat the fruit. When he took the bite, he disobeyed God. The punishment was eventually death, as a consequence of Sin.

The Noah story, the people were wicked and God saved a few righteous and the rest were washed away. Every thing started over.

In Exodus, when the covenant with God is broken, the people experience exile, famine, defeat and death.

People never learn, in all of the Old Testament the wrath of an angry God was so easily forgotten, maybe they thought it will never happen to them. After all, they weren’t that bad.

The prophets were used by God to tell the people they were approaching the last nerve of Divine patience. I believe all of us here know the basics of the prophet’s stories. The format is that the people were loyal and worshipful of God. Time passes and they drift off and get interested in other things.

You know, the have the kids sling throwing competition. The donkey races and of course shopping at the bazaar. And everyone has to make a living and not everyone can afford to take off on the Sabbath.

The people of God drifted and started valuing the other activities more than their relationship with God. Usually the slippage happened over a large of years. At some point God decides that is enough, it is time to correct their actions. He picks a prophet, sometimes the person is ready and other times they resist. Whatever the case they end up doing as God tells them.

They start telling it like it is and it normally makes the people mad. The story continues if you don’t change God’s gonna punish you…..

The prophet proclaims God’s message so long and nothing seems to be happening until the prophet looks like a fool. When people really begin to pay absolutely no attention….. Bang … Wrath …war…. Slavery… punishment….death.

The people are crying out with no recourse, and God is silent letting them wallow in the mess they made for themselves.

Eventually the people turn and again focus on the real God and not the idols in the world around them. But like a soap opera today it is not long until it starts again.

So what do you believe about the God recorded in the Old Testament?

(jealous, strict, hateful, loving) Do you feel there is a different between to God of OT and NT?

I believe that between the old and new Testament there is no difference in who God is and how he acts. God was and still is a loving God. His patience and warnings lasted 100’s of years sometimes. He tried to get attention of the people sometimes through a generation or two before the wrath came down. He wasted a lot of time and breath on the people in hopes that they would remember who God is, what He had done for them. He finally had to keep the punishment that was stated if the people did not change.

As a kid I knew most of the time Mom was bluffing. I knew that in a few hours, and at the worst days, that whatever punishment She gave in anger would fade. I would be out of my room, back watching TV, Riding my bike or going some place that I would never be allowed to go again.

You see my Mom Loves me, I am her son. She does not want me to suffer. She does not want to be thought of as mean. Mom can be a pushover if you use the sad face and the I’m Sorry voice. I can get way with attempted murder.