God's Anger = God's Mercy - John 11:33-35

"When Jesus saw her crying, and the Jews who had come with her crying, He was angry in His spirit and deeply moved. 'Where have you put him?' He asked. 'Lord,' they told Him, 'come and see.' Jesus wept."

These verses come from the well-known story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead.

When Jesus arrived in Bethany after Lazarus had died, He encountered family and friends mourning over the death of Lazarus.

These verses describe a wide range of emotions that Jesus exhibited as He shared in the sorrow of Lazarus' death felt by family and friends.

His emotional display was not unusual emotions by any means. Who hasn't attended a funeral and been moved to tears by the grieving family of the deceased? We even get tearful or angry by the drama of a movie we are watching or book we are reading.

Jesus was not only moved to tears by the mourners' anguish and distress, He was agitated and stirred to anger by their torment over Lazarus' death.

However, the anger that Jesus exuded is striking. His indignation is even noted again in vs. 38; "Then Jesus, angry in Himself again, came to the tomb. And when Jesus commanded Lazarus to come out of the tomb, "He shouted with a loud voice, 'Lazarus come out!" (vs. 43).

God is mad at the sin and rebellion that Satan has enticed humanity to follow him in and that's what Jesus was feeling here. In fact, God hates our sin and rebellion so much that He did something about it.

He delivered us! He saved us! He redeemed us! And He did it by sending His Only Son, Jesus, to die as a sacrifice for our sin and rebellion.

Yes, God's holy anger aroused not divine retribution but sublime mercy!

"For God did not send His Son into the world that he might condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him" ( John 3:17).

"For I did not come to judge the world but to save the world" (John 12:47).