How God's anger ceases.
I. IT CANNOT CEASE WHILE THE CAUSE FOR IT REMAINS. An irascible person is provoked to wrath by slight causes; but inasmuch as his anger springs chiefly from his own fiery disposition, the cooling of passion allays the rage of wrath, even though circumstances remain unchanged. But God is "slow to anger" (Psalms 103:8); he is not wrathful by nature, because in essence he is love. But the anger which is slow to begin is the more deep and terrible, as it does not arise without adequate reason. Further, a weak person may tire of his anger, even though the cause of it remains unchanged. An explosion of wrath exhausts him. He has not the energy for sustained anger. The fire simply burns out. But this cannot be the case with the great, the unexhaustible nature of God. God is ever the same, always true, just, active. Therefore so long as the cause for anger is unchanged, the anger too must remain. "God is angry with the wicked every day" (Psalms 7:11). As long as men continue in sin, so long must God abide in wrath. An eternity of sin must, be accompanied by an eternity of Divine anger.
II. IT WILL CEASE WHEN THE OBJECTS OF IT ARE DESTROYED. This appears to be the terrible goal of the text. Gracious as it reads in word, the purport of it is most fearful. It stands between passages of denunciation and condemnation; it cannot describe a kindly cessation of wrath. The anger of God will burn till it has nothing further to consume. Then his fury will rest. Thus it was with Israel nationally. The people were swept away, consumed off the land. Only a "remnant" was spared, a mere stump of the old tree, from which new growths could sprout. We see no more of God's anger against a man when he has been killed. If nothing were interposed for the saving of his soul, the natural consequence of sin run out to its extremity would be destruction. Then God would cease to be angry with the sinner, for the plain reason that there would be no sinner left against whom his wrath would be called forth.
III. IT WILL CEASE WHEN THE CAUSE FOR IT CEASES. There is another way by which the anger of God may be allayed. He is not desirous to see his children destroyed, for he is merciful and gracious. When sin is pardoned, God's fury towards the sinner rests and his jealousy departs. But this pardon does not depend only on the will of God, or he would forgive all his children.
1. It is dependent on repentance. So long as the soul persists in impenitence, God's anger cannot cease to burn. It is not simply a question of the amount and guilt of the sin which first provoked God's wrath. The continued impenitence is virtually a prolongation of the guilt. But when the sinner truly repents, God's anger abates.
2. It is also dependent on Christ's atonement. We are able to read the words of Ezekiel with a more hopeful meaning than that which the prophet seems to have put upon them, because "we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the Propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:1, 1 John 2:2). We read that "the mercy of the Lord eudureth forever," but never that the anger of the Lord endureth forever. On the contrary, "He will not always chide, neither will he keep his anger forever" (Psalms 103:9). Still, God only ceases to be angry either because sin destroys the sinner or because God destroys the sin.