A fourth way we can know God through His book is by looking for Him in the moods of the Bible. We are emotional beings, created in the image of a God who has made us to walk with Him not only with our minds but also with our emotions. We have been created with the capacity to share God’s joy and jealousy, pleasure and anger, love and hate. We get to know Him by believing that He is to be feared, loved, and praised, and by entering into those truths with our heart. We need to think through the Scripture to the point of feeling it. As we feel the moods of the Bible, our knowledge of God will grow.
Learning From Literature.
Mood is important to achieving the effect the author of a piece of literature intended. A feeling of desperation grows as we read Jack London’s gripping story To Build A Fire. The setting is the Arctic. The character is a man caught in a blizzard. The story is about survival; if he cannot build a fire, he will die. As he struggles to ignite a flame, while the air becomes colder and colder, attempt after attempt fails. As he comes closer to the end, we feel his growing sense of frantic desperation. The mood almost overwhelms us.
The Moods Of The Bible.
When we take a bird’s-eye view of the Bible, we observe two basic contrasting moods: despairing pessimism and hopeful optimism. They are both rooted in God’s character and reflect whether man is responding to Him in obedience or disobedience.
Despairing Pessimism.
One of the prevailing moods of the Bible is that of sorrowful, despairing pessimism. It is there for those who refuse to come to God His way—through Jesus Christ. This mood, which every sensitive Christian feels when the Bible is read, is rooted in God’s perfect justice. Just as He cannot lie or fail to keep His side of an agreement, so He cannot allow such things as slander, unthankfulness, adultery, or child abuse to go unpunished. If He did, He would violate His own nature. That’s why, when you read the Bible, you can get depressed reading about the terrible things that happened when men, created for God, tried to live for themselves.
Don’t you feel sympathy for Achan and his family when you read Joshua 7? Can you identify with David’s feelings of alarm and frustration when God struck a man dead just because he tried to keep the ark of the covenant from falling off a cart? (2 Sam. 6:1-9).
Have you ever felt the mood of despairing pessimism that gripped Jeremiah and Ezekiel as they watched the downfall of the nation they loved? Have you felt the warm tears of Jeremiah as he cried like a brokenhearted mother or father? He knew that if Israel didn’t repent they would be destroyed. Feel the mood of the situation as he cries out, “Oh, that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!” (Jer. 9:1).
You haven’t really felt the mood of the stories in the Bible if you have never felt like Jeremiah did. God wants us to feel that way. Jesus, our perfect example, did. Think of Him with the tears running down His face as He thought about what was going to happen to the Jewish people because of their rejection of Him (Mt. 23:37).
Why did God give us a Bible that produces such an oppressive mood of negative, unhappy feelings? Because He wants us to be like Him. He wants us to share the kind of compassion that allows Him to care when others bring pain and destruction on themselves and those they love. The thought should send shivers up our spine. Listen to God in Ezekiel 33:11, “Say to them, ‘As I live,’ says the Lord God, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die?’“
Don’t miss this fact. Reading the Bible should sometimes make you feel horrible. It should sometimes scare you. That’s because its Author is right in His treatment of wrong. He must punish moral and spiritual rebellion just as any society must punish crimes of rape, embezzlement, or public drunkenness. He must do it even though He doesn’t like to. He must abandon people to utter hopelessness even though it hurts Him to do so. Listen to Him as He, like a parent who must deal severely with a rebellious child, cries out to the Israelites, “O Ephraim, what shall I do to you? O Judah, what shall I do to you?” (Hos. 6:4). We don’t really know God as we should until reading His Word causes us to feel the kind of hatred for pride, sexual violence, and marital unfaithfulness that God feels.
The following are examples of Bible passages that are designed to produce a mood of sorrowful, despairing pessimism: Joshua 7; 1 Samuel 4; Matthew 27:1-10; Acts 5.
Hopeful Optimism.
There is another mood that runs from Genesis to Revelation. This atmosphere also stems from God’s character—His love, grace, and compassion. The psalmist declared, “The Lord takes pleasure in His people” (Ps. 149:4). The Proverbs repeatedly declare that God is delighted when people are honest, upright, truthful, and prayerful (Prov.11:1,20; 12:22; 15:8; 16:13). Paul actually referred to the gospel as coming from “the blessed [happy] God” (1 Tim. 1:11). (The Greek word translated “blessed” here in most versions really means “happy.”) If you want to see this happy, forgiving, loving side of God, read Psalm 103, John 3:16, and Romans 8. Yes, God is the God of hope. Paul prayed, “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 15:13).
This happy side of God should fill us with overwhelming joy. It should give us a positive, hope-filled attitude toward the future. Jesus Christ came. He lived a perfect life. He revealed God’s love. He died for our sins. He conquered death. He saves all who put their trust in Him. He assures us that He is coming again to take us to be with Him forever. He tells us that the sorrows and sins and pains of this life will be replaced with the glory of living forever in His presence.
Yes, the Bible is a hopeful, optimistic book because its Author is a loving, compassionate, communicating, fellowshipping kind of God. He showed this side of His character when He sent His Son into the world with the assurance that everyone who trusted in Him would enjoy an inexpressibly wonderful eternity. That’s the best news imaginable! It’s good news to be celebrated! It’s so good that it deserves a deeply emotional response of joy, gratitude, and praise. If we are not deeply moved by the Bible’s story of hopeful optimism, we do not see or understand our God the way we should.
Examples of Bible passages that inspire a mood of joyful, hopeful optimism are Psalm 32; 42; 121; Daniel 6; Luke 18:35-43; 23:39-43; 2 Timothy 4:6-8. Remember that all of these passages, even the words of the Psalms, relate to stories of real people.
Knowing God Through The Mood
1.Do you think God wants us to feel emotion when we read His Word?
2.If you neglected to consider the mood of a particular Bible story, how would your understanding of that story be affected?
3.What would you say are the two primary moods of the Bible?
4.What mood is predominant in the account of the flood? of David and Goliath? of Ananias and Sapphira? What do these moods tell us about God?
