The Grapes of Wrath // Reaping the Harvest of Righteousness, Part 1

<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">God is an amazing God. A loving God. But there’s a side to Him that we don’t like to think too much about. It’s the angry God. The God of judgement and wrath. But if we don’t get our mind around that side of Him, then the good news of Jesus – well there’s nothing good about the news.</span></p> <p> </p> <h4><span style="color: #ff9900; font-size: 14pt;"><strong>Why Sin is a Four Letter Word</strong></span></h4> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Now, something that strikes me as I look around the world in which we live, is that we live in a world where just about anything goes. Even in my short life time – just on half a century, which, in the overall scheme of history, is like a drop in the ocean – things have changed radically. Let me give you just one example.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">When I was a young man, a woman falling pregnant outside marriage was a great matter of shame. Today it’s a life style choice that many women make. Many, many couples choose to live together without making the commitment of marriage.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">And just in case you think I am plucking that out of the air, the statistics tells us that, in Australia at least, co-habitation before marriage has increased – wait for this – from eighteen percent of couples in 1975 to almost sixty percent today. It’s gone from being the exception, to being more the norm. Just the way things are these days.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">You know, sometimes you hear people thumping the table, telling us how bad things are these days, "Now like the good old days when I was young." The implication is that this younger generation is, well, you know, they have no discipline or standards and if only things were like they were back in the <em>"good old days"</em>.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The problem is, the <em>"good old days"</em> weren’t really that good. Husbands still beat their wives back in the <em>"good old days"</em>. Children were