Who knoweth the power of thine anger?

Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Psalm 90:11-12
This verse talks about two things that are extremely unpopular subjects even among those who profess to be Christians in this day – the wrath of God and the fear of God. These subjects have become so unpopular that if one begins to speak about them, there is a chorus of voices which begin to cry out “God is love. God is merciful. Stop being so negative. You are legalistic. Sure God hates sin but he loves the sinner …” And we are told that we need to present Jesus as one who gives us abundant life and fullness of joy, who satisfies all our needs etc. Now I don’t deny that he does all these things, but this is NOT the heart of the gospel. These things are NOT the main issue. The heart of the gospel is this – We, as fallen sinners and rebels against God, are under his righteous wrath. This world will one day be consumed by fire. The gospel is the way of escape. The cross is the place of refuge. Repent of sin and run to Jesus, putting your trust in him. He endured the wrath of God in place of the believer and therefore he is the only one who can save us from God’s just and holy wrath.
If you saw someone floating down a river and saw that they were heading towards a waterfall over which they would soon plunge to their death, would you try to persuade them to swim to shore or grab the lifesaver that you threw to them by talking in gentle tones of love and mercy. No – you would not! If you really loved them you would warn them of what lay ahead. You would be beside yourself, screaming at them to get out before it was too late, and you would persist even if they rejected your efforts.
Why then do we speak to sinners and soft soothing tones, speaking only of God’s love, and avoiding the subjects of his Holiness, His wrath and of coming judgment. Is this how the apostles preached? Most certainly not. Consider Paul before Festus… “But as he was discussing righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come, Felix became frightened…” Today, however, we are told that we should not frighten sinners into the kingdom of God, rather we are to woo them with the message of God’s love. This is putting the cart before the horse. How can anyone even begin to comprehend the love of God, unless they first get a glimpse of his holiness, justice and wrath. It is only against the backdrop of these things that we begin to comprehend the greatness of God’s love towards sinners. To the degree that we minimize his wrath and holiness, to the same degree we minimize his love.
Paul said “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men…” 2 Cor5:11 Why should we do any differently. According to this verse, Paul himself knew something of the “terror of the Lord”. Is it possible that one reason we shrink from this subject as we deal with others is because we ourselves have never known anything of it? Proverbs says that the “fear of God is the beginning of wisdom”. Many have tried to water this verse down by saying that this only speaks of a “respect” for God and not of terror. In so doing, they reduce God to a benign, soft-hearted, individual who will pass over sin lightly. It takes away from who he really is. I submit to you that those who put forward this idea, do not know God themselves. If we have not, in some measure, in some way caught a glimpse of God as a thrice Holy, just, all poweful, sovereign ruler and creator of the universe, as well as a merciful savior, than we really do not know God at all. Rather, we have made a God in our own image out of the imagination of our own heart, and that is idolatry.
With these thoughts in mind, I invite you to read what several other man have said about the text that we are considering:
“Good men dread that wrath beyond conception, but they never ascribe too much terror to it: bad men are dreadfully convulsed when they awake to a sense of it, but their horror is not greater than it had need be, for it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of an angry God. Holy Scripture when it depicts God’s wrath against sin never uses an hyperbole; it would be impossible to exaggerate it. Whatever feelings of pious awe and holy trembling may move the tender heart, it is never too much moved; apart from other considerations the great truth of the divine anger, when most powerfully felt, never impresses the mind with a solemnity in excess of the legitimate result of such a contemplation. What the power of God’s anger is in hell, and what it would be on earth, were it not in mercy restrained, no man living can rightly conceive. Modern thinkers rail at Milton and Dante, Bunyan and Baxter, for their terrible imagery; but the truth is that no vision of poet, or denunciation of holy seer, can ever reach to the dread height of this great argument, much less go beyond it. The wrath to come has its horrors rather diminished than enhanced in description by the dark lines of human fancy; it baffles words, it leaves imagination far behind. Beware ye that forget God lest he tear you in pieces and there be none to deliver. God is terrible out of his holy places. Remember Sodom and Gomorrah! Remember Korah and his company! Mark well the graves of lust in the wilderness! Nay, rather bethink ye of the place where their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched. Who is able to stand against this justly angry God? Who will dare to rush upon the bosses of his buckler, or tempt the edge of his sword? Be it ours to submit ourselves as dying sinners to this eternal God, who can, even at this moment, command us to the dust, and thence to hell. ~C. H. Spurgeon
Who knoweth the power of thine anger? No man knows the power of God’s anger, because that power has never yet put itself forth to its full stretch. Is there, then, no measure of God’s wrath — no standard by which we may estimate its intenseness? There is no fixed measure or standard, but there is a variable one. The wicked man’s fear of God is a measure of the wrath of God. If we take the man as he may be sometime taken, when the angel of death is upon him, when the sins of his youth and of his maturer years throng him like an armed troop, and affright and afflict him — when with all his senses keenly alive to the rapid strides of bodily decay, he feels that he must die, and yet that he is not prepared — why, it may come to pass, it does occasionally, though not always come to pass, that his anticipations of the future are literally tremendous. There is such a fear and such a dread of that God into whose immediate presence he feels himself about to be ushered, that even they who love him best, and charm him most, shrink from the wildness of his gaze and the fearfulness of his speech. And we cannot tell the man, though he may be just delirious with apprehension, that his fear of God invests the wrath of God with a darker than its actual colouring. On the contrary, we know that
according to the fear, so is the wrath. We know that if man’s fear of God be wrought up to the highest pitch, and the mind throb so vehemently that its framework threaten to give way and crumble, we know that the wrath of the Almighty keeps pace with this gigantic fear …
If it has happened to you — and there is not perhaps a man on the face of the earth to whom it does not sometimes happen — if it has ever happened to you to be crushed with the thought, that a life of ungodliness must issue in an eternity of woe, and if amid the solitude of midnight and amid the dejections of sickness there pass across the spirit the fitful figures of all avenging ministry, then we have to tell you, it is not the roar of battle which is powerful enough, nor the wail of orphans which is thrilling enough, to serve as the vehicle of such a communication; we have to tell you, that you fly to a refuge of lies, if you dare flatter yourselves that either the stillness of the hour or the feebleness of disease has caused you to invest vengeance with too much of the terrible. We have to tell you, that the picture was not overdrawn which you drew in your agony. “According to thy fear, so is thy wrath.” Fear is but a mirror, which you may lengthen indefinitely, and widen indefinitely, and wrath lengthens with the lengthening and widens with the widening, still crowding the mirror with new and fierce forms of wasting and woe. We caution you, then, against ever cherishing the flattering notion, that fear can exaggerate God’s wrath. We tell you, that when fear has done its worst, it can in no degree come up to the wrath which it images …
Now, it is easy to pass from this view of the text to another, which is in a certain sense similar. You will always find, that men’s apprehensions of God’s wrath are nicely proportioned to the fear and reverence which are excited in them by the name and the attributes of God. He will have but light thoughts of future vengeance, who has but low thoughts of the character and properties of his Creator: and from this it comes to pass, that the great body of men betray a kind of stupid insensibility to the wrath of Jehovah … Look at the crowd of the worldly and the indifferent. There is no fear of God in that crowd; they are “of the earth earthy.” The soul is sepulchred in the body, and has never wakened to a sense of its position with reference to a holy and avenging Creator. Now, then, you may understand the absence of all knowledge of the power of God’s wrath. “Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.” –Henry Melvill.