Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention to Romans chapter 3, and reading
from our text, verses 24 and 25. Being justified freely by His
grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom
God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to
declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are
past through the forbearance of God. Romans 3 verses 24 and
25 And what is upon my spirit is
the wrath-ending sacrifice of our Lord. The word propitiation
is meaning a wrath-ending sacrifice, a putting away the wrath of God
through the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ. And our text
sets forth, justified, that is countered, free from condemnation,
and it is by God's grace not earned, and it is through the
redemption that is in Christ Jesus. So, our Lord not only
put away the wrath of God, or satisfied the demands of the
broken law, And so that those that have faith in His blood,
they then are freed from the condemnation of a broken law,
and they are given a righteousness which is Christ's righteousness
to be theirs. And those sins that are passed,
the Old Testament saints, they had that same trust, that same
way of salvation, as what we do. I want to look this evening
before we look at some points to consider the wrath of God. We can be sometimes hardened
or really not consider what it would be if there was no salvation, or if
there being a salvation that we are not partakers of it, what
actually then is to remain for us? So I want to look at a few
scriptures that give us a little picture of the wrath of God. It's hard for us to think of
a God so great that he has made the heavens, the sun, the moon,
the stars, he's made this world. He knows what is in the heart
of man. Our Lord Jesus Christ knew it. Solomon in his prayer dedicating
the temple said, whose heart to the sons of men thou knowest,
such a great God, and to have that God as being such a holy
God, but stirred up to tremendous wrath. Some of us, we might have
seen a person that is so filled with anger or wrath, but to think
of our God, the eternal God, And that we are the subjects
of that wrath. He is angry with us. We read that he is angry with
the wicked every day. And by nature, we are wicked. Just because we attend the place
of worship, or brought up under the sound of the truth, does
not mean that we are not wicked. We are. And until we are Brought
by God's grace to life and belief, we are still under the wrath
of God. And in Revelation chapter 6,
we read this as the picture of the end of the world when the
heavens are departed as a scroll. And we are told the kings of
the earth and the great men and the rich men and the chief captains
and the mighty men and every bondman and every free man hid
themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains and
said to the mountains and rocks, fall on us and hide us from the
face of him that sitteth on the throne. and from the wrath of
the Lamb. Now note, it is the wrath of
the Lamb, the same Lamb, the Saviour, His wrath. For the great day of His wrath
is come, and who shall be able to stand? When we think of the Psalms,
and especially the Psalms Moses, Psalm 90, then he points us to
consider the wrath of God. In verse 7, For we are consumed
by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled. Thou hast set
our iniquities before thee, our secret sins, in the light of
thy countenance. For all our days are passed away
in thy wrath, We spend our years as a tale that is told. The days
of our years are threescore years and ten, And if by reason of
strength they be fourscore years, Yet is their strength labour
and sorrow, For it is soon cut off and we fly away. Who knoweth
the power of thine anger? Even according to thy fear, so
is thy wrath. And he follows that with this
word. So teach us to number our days,
that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Now our text is
in Romans, and Paul writing to the Romans has a lot to say. about the wrath of God. In the first chapter, verse 18,
the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness
and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. Solemn word, holding the truth. but in unrighteousness, in an
evil and a wrong way. In the second chapter, in verse
five, from verse four, who despises
thou, and this is those that judge another that do the same
things, the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering,
not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance,
but after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself
wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous
judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his
deeds. And in verse 8, Those that are
contentious do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, what
shall be to them indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish
upon every soul of man that doeth evil. In the fourth chapter,
following where our reading has been, our text is, we also have
The law, in verse 15, worketh wrath, for where no law is, there
is no transgression. And then in chapter 5, where
God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us, much more than being now justified
by his blood. we shall be saved from wrath
through him. We have the picture of wrath
and the saving from the wrath of God through the Lord Jesus
Christ. When he comes to the ninth chapter,
then the Lord speaks of his sovereignty in the illustration of a potter
having power to make one lump unto honour, another vessel unto
dishonour. What if God, willing to show
His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering
the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction, and that He might
make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy
which he had aforeprepared unto glory." When Paul writes to the
Thessalonians, he says to them that God has not appointed us
unto wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. The wrath of God is a fearful
thing. fearful thing to be under, under
that condemnation, and to be facing that wrath. And that is
why we have set forth before us the gospel, the way of escape,
the way of deliverance from that wrath. We're not to think, We are to seek the things of
God so that we can get to heaven, but not think about our sin in
the face of a holy God, or what it shall be to come short and
to fall under the wrath of God. So I want to look this evening
firstly at how the wrath of God And its appeasement through sacrifice
was shown through the Old Testament. Just a few examples in the Old
Testament. And then secondly, Christ's wrath-ending
sacrifice. That is what he accomplished
at Calvary. And thirdly, the means by which
the benefits of Christ's sacrifice are imparted to a sinner. But firstly, the example in the
Old Testament, if we go back to Adam and Eve, when they first
fell, when they were under the law, and under that sentence
of death. Then we read that God provided
them coats and clothed them, took away their nakedness. But
to do that, there had to be death, there had to be shedding of blood
of the animals that were slain. And right at the very beginning,
there is introduced the need for a sacrifice so that the wrath
of God is taken away and mercy and long-suffering can be shown. The next one that I mention is
when the wrath of God was poured out on the old world in the days
of Noah. The wickedness that was upon
the earth at that time What a tremendous picture of the wrath of God when
he deluged and destroyed all of the earth and all the inhabitants
of the earth apart from those that were in the ark. And after the flood when Noah
and those that were in the ark, they came out of the ark We read the very first thing
that was done was a building an altar unto the Lord. Chapter 8 of Genesis and verse
20. And Noah took every clean beast
and of every clean fowl and offered burnt offerings on the altar. Now, of course, he had been commanded
to take more of the clean beasts on the earth, so we may say right
at the very beginning, God had not only ordained to save Noah
and all in the ark, but also there was that provision of the
animals with the intention that there should be a sacrifice. And the sacrifices, they pointed
to the Lord Jesus Christ. So we read in Verse 21, And the
Lord smelled a sweet savour, and the Lord said in his heart,
I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake. For
the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth, neither
will I again smite any more everything living as I have done. And he gives the beautiful promise,
while the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat,
and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. So on the one hand we have the
wrath of God and the destruction of the old world, and then we
have the sacrifice, and then we have a promise attached to
that. We think of the coming of the
children of Israel, out of Egypt. And it is highlighted that until
blood was shed, there was no setting free. But what a contrast
there, because there was death in all of the houses of the Egyptians,
sorry, in the houses of the Egyptians, of the Egyptians themselves,
But in the houses of the Israelites, there was the substitute, there
was the lamb. Why was God wroth against the
Egyptians but not against the Israelites? Why were one spared
and the other not spared? The sacrifice was what made all
of the difference and the Lord's promise that he gave in Exodus
12, And verse 13, the blood shall be to you for a token upon the
houses where ye are, and when I see the blood I will pass over
you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you when
I smite the land of Egypt. So the picture is the Lord in
His wrath smiting the land of Egypt. They escaped that wrath. The last one I'll mention is
that when David, at the end of his life, he numbered Israel
and the Lord smote them with pestilence, 70,000 died. But then the Lord said, it is
enough. And David went, he saw the angel,
the sword raised up, the threshing floor of Ronan the Jebusite. And there he offered offerings
and sacrifice. That was where the same place
where Abraham offered his son and where there was the provision,
the same place where the temple was to be built. And it was through
that way that God showed David where the temple that Solomon
was going to build was to be built. But what ended that time
of pestilence and death and wrath against Israel was the sacrifice. And when we have then in the
Word of God a propitiation, a wrath-ending sacrifice, we have these pictures
in the Old Testament of the sacrifices and they stood Between the death
and between life, they made the difference. And it is in that
way that the Lord Jesus Christ and his offering, his sacrifice,
makes the difference. And so I want to look then at
Christ's work, Christ's sacrifice. It was a wrath-ending sacrifice. There's several aspects. The
first is this, that it was a substitute provided. We mentioned about
Abraham on Mount Moriah. And Abraham, he said to Isaac,
when Isaac said, the fire and the wood. Well, fire and wood,
wrath of God, that which is to consume something. that which
is to burn it up. In all of those sacrifices, that
was what was set forth. My son, God will provide himself
a lamb, a substitute. And if we think of the children
of Israel in Elijah's day, when God was angry with Israel, had
gone after Baal, they had There's hundreds of prophets of Baal,
and they suffered them, they allowed them. And God sent three
and a half years of famine, and then brought them to Mount Carmel
to be a trial. And that trial was through sacrifice. The sacrifice that was accepted
of God, that was consumed by fire from heaven, That proved
who the true and living God was. And they were to know, in looking
upon that, that God had turned their hearts back again. In effect,
God Himself had turned away His wrath. When the fire fell from
heaven, it did not fall upon the Israelites, it did not fall
even upon the prophets of Baal, but upon the sacrifice. and he
burnt it up, the wood, the bullet, the stones, the water, the dust,
everything. Must have been a fearful sight,
that fire descending from heaven and just consuming everything. But when the people saw it, then
they were willing to of themselves destroy the prophets of Baal. But this is a picture If we think
of the sacrifices of our Lord on Calvary, of our Lord suffering
upon the tree, and we think of that fire coming from heaven,
consuming that sacrifice, the wrath of God upon the sacrifice. This is what the Lord endured. We can't think the time is so
vivid that our Lord did not suffer in that way. There's another
aspect of Christ's sacrifice, and that is what is in Isaiah
53 verse 6, that he hath laid on him the iniquity of us all,
that is, all of God's people, all of those for whom he died,
I lay down my life for the sheep. The appeasing of the wrath of
God was specifically for his people. It's not the case that
the wrath of God through Christ on Calvary is now taken away
from the whole world. One said to me years ago, I don't
know what the problem is. Christ has died. Sin is put away. We're all saved. Let us just
live and enjoy our lives. And no idea of that wrath of
God still remaining on all who do not have and haven't been
given faith and trust in Christ's sacrifice on Calvary. And so those sins were laid on
him. We can see a picture of that
in the Garden of Gethsemane. When he was pressed down, he
sweat great drops of blood falling to the ground. When he cried,
Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." That
cup was the wrath of God, unmingled, that tremendous wrath of God
that was to fall upon him. It wasn't just what the thieves
endured with him, the crucifixion. It wasn't just that. The main
aspect was this in our text, which is a propitiation, a wrath
ending sacrifice. And so our Lord endured that.
David, a thousand years before Christ suffered, he penned Psalm
22. My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? Our Lord spoke those words upon
the cross. The darkness over the land for
three hours. his father hiding his face from
his son. The wrath of God felt in his
soul. He shall see the travail of his
soul and shall be satisfied. In ending the wrath of God for
his people's sin, then he settled the debt that they were required
to pay. Without the shedding of blood,
there is no remission. The law demanded the soul that
sinneth, it shall die. But it also provided that there
could be a substitute to die in the place of the sinner. But as all men are sinners, that
substitute could not come from mankind, but must come from God,
must be the Holy Son of God. And so that required debt. was paid, how do we know? Because
of the empty tomb, rising again from the dead. His people then
are redeemed, they are set free, they are loosed, and as we read
in Romans 5 verse 9, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. And it is through our Lord enduring
that wrath and that poured out upon Him on Calvary. We may think of Christ's death
in many ways. Settling a debt, standing in
our place, bearing our sins. But it's important for us to
realise that he endured the wrath of God in our place, and that
that was a major part, the most part, of his sufferings, what
he endured. God cannot punish sin twice. He cannot demand it at his beloved
son, and then demanded on his people as well. In the tribes, in the Old Testament,
in the wilderness, the rock was to be smitten once, not twice. The second time it was to be
spoken to, but Moses smote it twice. And for that he wasn't
allowed to go into the promised land because it destroyed the
type. It's reinforced to us, the type
is. It is Christ that died, yea rather,
risen again. And that assurance that is given
to all men in that he has raised him from the dead. In Acts chapter
17. We read in verse 30, 31. Because she hath appointed, at
the times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth
all men everywhere to repent, that is, to turn away from idols
to the living God, to the only way that the wrath of God may
be taken away, because he hath appointed a day in the which
he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained,
whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath
raised him from the dead. That assurance not only is the
sins of his people put away, but there shall be a day when
he judges the world in righteousness and that is by the Lord Jesus
Christ. In effect, in that day, it shall
be said that Christ has endured the wrath of God for those of
his people who have been brought to believe and trust in him.
But what of those outside of Christ? How unjust it would be
if for them there was no wrath. If then Christ has suffered for
his people the wrath of God, but the rest, well, it didn't
matter. The Lord wouldn't pour out his
wrath on them. He poured out his wrath on his
son, but not on others. But that is not the case, and
that's what Paul says. The assurance, God, in raising
from the dead, there will be a day of judgment. May we view afresh our Lord's
sufferings as a wrath-ending sacrifice. In the ordinance of
the Lord's Supper to follow this service, we show forth the Lord's
death till he come, and do it in remembrance of him. And when
we look upon it, may we look upon it in this way, It is the
sacrifice of our Lord, the remembrance of the sacrifice, the one sacrifice,
where our Lord endured the wrath of God in the place of his people. But I want to look lastly at
the means by which the benefits of Christ's sacrifice are imparted
to a sinner. In our text we have set forth
that the justification is freely given by His grace, it is through
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, and that it is a wrath-ending
sacrifice, and it is set forth through faith in His blood. And we have two things that are
set forth in our text. One is grace, and the other is
faith. And the Apostle Paul, when he
writes to the Ephesians, he says to them, in chapter 2 verse 8,
For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves,
it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. It is the kind grace, the free
unmerited favour of God to a sinner, that as his son's death is set
forth, as he is preached and lifted up, that the Holy Spirit
will bear witness in the hearts of His people. The Lord will
be precious, faith will be given by God, by our Lord, to embrace
and to trust in what Christ has done. In verse 22, before our
text, We read, even the righteousness
of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ. Not faith in Jesus
Christ, in one sense that is true, but it is of. I believe in the ESV that is
wrongly translated. It takes away the teaching that
the faith that saves comes from the Lord Jesus. It's not only,
it's not exercised by man on the Lord Jesus, it comes from
the Lord Jesus. In Hebrews 12, he is the author
and finisher of our faith. He gives it. So that faith, it
is by faith of Jesus Christ. unto all and upon all them that
believe. Believing is the sure token of
the Lord giving faith, to have joy and peace in believing, to
see what Christ has done, to have our eyes open to it, and
to trust in it, and to view it as we've never viewed it before,
And it'd be a wonderful thing to us, and a wonderful plan,
and a wonderful design of God, that so saves sinners, and justifies
God, and yet shows mercy, mercy through His blood. And so, this evening, may we
be able to view Christ's death and sufferings as a wrath-ending
sacrifice, and it be impressed upon us how vital it is that
the Lord does give us faith and that we do believe and that we
do trust and have that abundant evidence that our sins were laid
upon Him. Unto you which believe, He is
precious. And where Christ is precious,
you have a sweet token of the Lord bearing the wrath of God
in your place. May the Lord add his blessing.
Amen.