God's Severity and Kindness

What does it look like when God is angry, and how would we even know? That question sits at the heart of this message drawn from Numbers 22, where we encounter the story of Balaam, a man who kept pushing against what God had already made clear. The passage forces us to wrestle with something we often avoid: the reality that God's anger is real, it is just, and it is something we can bring upon ourselves through persistent negotiation with his word. But the story does not stop there. Woven into every moment of Balaam's stubbornness is something we might easily miss: mercy. The night God gave him to reconsider, the donkey beneath him, the inconveniences that slowed his journey. All of it was grace in disguise. This message challenges us to reframe how we see disruption and delay in our own lives. What if the inconvenience we are frustrated by is actually God extending kindness, giving us space to stop before we run through a stop sign we cannot take back? The tension between God's severity and his kindness is not a contradiction. It is an invitation to see God more fully and to respond with the kind of trembling gratitude that comes from understanding what we have truly been delivered from.