Turn with me to Matthew 23. I want to encourage all of us
to ask the Lord to open our hearts to this message. If he will do
that, I believe we will be blessed. We just looked at every verse
in this chapter, chapter 23. We just did that for our Bible
study. I said in the Bible study that
this would be a companion message to that Bible study. So I want
to get right to the point of the message because we just looked
at all the verses. I want to get right to the point
of the message. Our Lord pronounced, woe, to
this world. Woe to the world. And it's because
he said at the end of verse 37, you would not. You would not. You would not
come to me. You would not bow to me. You would not believe on me. You would not. Who is he talking
to in that moment? He's talking to the world. He's
talking to the whole world. Look at verse one. It says, then
spake Jesus to the multitude and to his disciples. All of them. Everybody. He was talking to all flesh. He was talking to all flesh,
to all flesh. He said, you will not. And in John chapter six, he told
us why man will not. He said, it's because man cannot. Man cannot come to Christ. He
said, no man can come to me except the father which has sent me
draw him. Man cannot bow to Christ. Man cannot bow to Christ. Man
cannot believe on Christ. Faith is not of ourselves. That's
the gift of God. Why ultimately cannot man do
any of these things? Why ultimately will not man do
any of these things? Here's the reason why. Man's
nature won't allow it. Man's nature won't allow it.
This is something that an old preacher of the gospel used to
read and quote a lot. And this is good, okay? It is not mental inability that
keeps a person from coming to Christ. It is not mental inability
that keeps a person from coming to Christ. A person can study
the Bible as well as any other book. Men and women have the ability
to do that. A person can study the Bible as well as any other
book. We can say prayers as easily as we can curse. We can believe that Jesus died
on a cross as easily as we can believe that Columbus discovered
America. Man's inability to come saving
to Christ lies not in his body or his mind, it is because of
his nature. Through the fall of Adam, our
fallen nature and wills are so depraved, so corrupt, so debased,
we love, delight, and enjoy all that is contrary to God. John
5.40, you will not come to me. John 5.42, you have not the love
of God in you. John 543, I come in my father's
name and you receive me not. John 544, you seek not the honor
that comes from God. John 547, you believe not the
word of God. See that sheep, he is tame and
can be petted. He will eat grass. He will come
when the shepherd calls. See that wolf? He is wild. He will not be petted. He will
not eat the grass. He hears the call, but he will
not come. Nature. That's good, isn't it? The nature of one or the other. Because of the nature, the ruined,
dead, sinful nature of all of mankind, woe to all of mankind. All right, now. But because of the nature of
God. I titled the Bible study, The
Nature of Man, and I've titled this message, The Nature of God. And ask the Lord to let you enter
into this. You know, when we talk about the nature of man,
that's all we can say. It's just woe, it's just bad,
it's wretched, it's this, it's that. But because of the nature
of God. What is the nature of God? What
is the nature of God? I'll show you in Exodus 34. Hold
your place right here and go over to Exodus 34. Exodus 34, the Lord met with Moses on Mount
Sinai and proclaimed to Moses who he was. The Lord God of heaven
proclaimed what the character of his person was. When we read all those verses
in Matthew 23, we were looking at the character and nature of
man. That's what man is and that's
what man does and it was not good. But the God of heaven proclaimed
to Moses what his character and his person was. He said, this
is my nature. This is who I am. This is what
I am in the very nature of my being. Exodus 34, verse six. And the Lord passed by before
him and proclaimed, the Lord The Lord God, merciful and gracious,
long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy
for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and
that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity
of the fathers upon the children and upon the children's children
unto the third and to the fourth generation." He said, that is
my nature and character in being. That's who I am. Now, what do we take from that?
What can we learn about the nature of God in reading that? Well,
number one, we can learn that God is holy. God is holy. The middle of verse seven, he
said, he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity
of the fathers upon the children and upon the children's children
unto the third and to the fourth generation. Why? Because he's
holy. He's holy. That's why the cry
is woe to all of this world. It's because our God is holy. And that means He must judge
rightly. He must judge rightly. Hold your
place here and flip back to Matthew 23. Our Lord told the religious world
here, you are foolishly toying around with the commandments
of God. You teach some and you throw out some and you change
some and you divide some. And in doing that, clearly you
do not understand the weighty matter of the law. Look at verse
23. He said, woe unto you, scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you pay tithe of mint and anise
and cumin and have omitted the weightier matters of the law,
judgment, mercy, and faith. These ought you to have done
and not to leave the other undone. He said, you pay all of this
tithe. You make sure that you have all
of your tithes paid. You do that. You stress that.
And in doing that, you have omitted the weightier matters of the
law. What is the weightier matter
of the law? I'll tell you what the weightiest
matter of the law is. The wages of sin is death. The wages of sin is death. He
said, you are going around telling everybody. Now, if we want God
to be happy with us, we need to be doing better in obeying
his commandments. We don't want him to be displeased
with us. The Lord says, displeased? You have bigger problems than
that. You have much bigger problems than that. Clearly, you do not
understand what my nature is. Clearly, you do not understand
what my law says. I must slaughter you according to the just demands
of the law. And I will by no means veer from
those demands because I'm holy. I'm holy by my nature, that's
what I am. Man runs around in his silly
religion totally oblivious to the weightier matter of the law. He has sinned, therefore he must
die. And I don't care what we do from
this point on. I don't care if everybody here
had the ability to stop sinning. You know, that's what false religion
tells people. Stop sinning. You want to go to heaven? Stop
sinning. I don't care if everybody here had the ability to stop
sinning. Sin against the law has already been committed. It's
already been committed. And God is holy. That's the very
nature of His being. And He said in verse 23, you've
omitted the weightier matters of the law and judgment. Man's
sin against the law and God's certain punishment of man's sin
against the law. God is holy in his nature and
God is just in his nature. But thank God, right here in
verse 23, it says he's merciful in his
nature. God is merciful in his nature. He is a merciful God. The Lord God in His very nature
is merciful. Oh, how merciful. We are not merciful in our nature.
If there's any mercy in us, that's Christ in us. We are not merciful by nature. In His very nature, He delights
to show mercy. He will be merciful to whom He
will be merciful. That's the very heart of his
nature. You say, well, how can God be
merciful if he must punish sin? How can God be merciful if he
must punish sin? That's where faith comes in. The law, judgment, mercy, faith. Can't we see the salvation of
sinners in those four words? The law, judgment, mercy, faith. Isn't that our story? God was just in justifying His
people. How can God be merciful if He
must punish sin? To know the answer to that, we
need to know something of His nature. Go back with me to Exodus
34. Exodus 34 verse six, it says,
and the Lord passed by before Moses and proclaimed the Lord,
the one and only Lord. He said, that's who I am. The
Lord, no other God beside me. And then he said, the Lord God,
the sovereign God. The Lord God, that's who I am,
he says. And then he said, merciful and
gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth. How can God be merciful to sinners
and gracious to sinners and patient with sinners and abundant in
goodness and truth to sinners? How? Here's how. Look at chapter
33, verse 19, it's across my page. Chapter 33, 19. He said, the Lord said to Moses,
I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and will proclaim
the name of the Lord before thee, and will be gracious to whom
I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show
mercy. And he said, thou canst not see
my face for there shall no man see me and live. He said, this
is a sovereign act that I am going to do because without me,
it cannot be done. I'm holy. I'm holy. My holy justice will demand and
it will execute the wages of the sin that has been committed
against me. But he said in verse 21, The
Lord said, behold, there is a place by me and thou shalt stand upon
a rock and it shall come to pass while my glory passeth by that
I will put thee in a cliff to the rock and will cover thee
with my hand while I pass by. Who is that rock? That rock is
Christ. That hand is Christ. The right
hand of God, God in the nature of His holiness, He had to judge
and punish the sin of His people to death. But God in the nature
of His mercy and His grace, in the nature of His love, you
know, we talk about nature, the nature of something or someone
is all that they can be. By nature, that's what they are.
All that our God can be is holy and just. and merciful and righteous
and gracious. That's his nature. In the very
nature of his mercy and grace, in the nature of his love and
compassion and pity, that is so amazing to me. That is the
nature of God. as just and holy as He is, in
His very nature, He possessed love, compassion, pity. And in all of that love and compassion
and pity, He provided Christ the rock for His people to hide
in while His judgment was poured out on them, while it just overwhelmed
them, overtook them, overflowed them. God in his long-suffering
goodness, he provided Christ the lamb, Christ the sacrifice,
Christ the blood offering, Christ the appeasement. Justice demanded
the shedding of blood because the law said without sin, there's
no remission for it. Therefore, mercy and truth met
together and righteousness and peace kissed each other in the
person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And now, because of that, every
soul who looks to Him in faith and stands on Him in faith, in
Him and on Him, not in the flesh, not in the law, Christ and Christ
alone. In Him, in His deliverance and
His redemption, the proclamation is not woe to you anymore, no
more. Now it's blessing to you. Blessed art thou in Him. Because of Him, blessed art thou.
Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and from Jesus
Christ our Lord because justice has already been served. Sin
has already been punished. Judgment has already passed by. One of my favorite illustrations
of this is a story that I used to tell you all the time years
ago. I think it's been a while since
I've told this, but back in the days when people were settling
out west, out in California and places like that, they used to
travel in wagon trains because it was safe. It was safer. There
were a lot of dangers traveling across this country alone, especially. So they would have a wagon master
and everybody would follow this wagon master across the plains
out west. And they would send a scout on
a horse. He would ride about two miles
out in front of this wagon train to see if there was any danger.
And if there was, he would come back and report it. And one of
the One of the very common dangers was prairie fires. Somehow a
fire would get started and all this tall grass would catch fire
and it would just sweep and it would burn up whatever was in
its path. And on this venture out west, a scout was out in
front and saw a prairie fire. and it was getting bigger and
growing and moving quickly. So he turned around and went
back to the wagon train and he told the wagon master, there's
a prairie fire and it's coming right for us and it's coming
fast. So the wagon master told all
the men, he said, let's scrape an area of grass behind our wagons
and start a fire on the other side of that scraped area. And
they did. And that fire just took off behind
them. And as soon as it was gone, he
said, let's ease all the wagons back. And so they pulled the
wagons back, and they're all sitting there waiting. And here
comes that fire. Comes up over the hill, and it's
just a wall just raging, coming quickly. And they were sitting
there, and this man was holding his little boy in his lap. And
that little boy saw that fire coming, and he squeezed his daddy
tight. And his dad put his hand on him,
and he said, it's OK, son. He said, look down. Do you see
all that black stubble? We are standing on burnt ground. And the fire cannot touch us,
because it's already been here. And you're safe. And that judgment
is not coming here again. And it didn't. And that's what we have in Jesus
Christ. That's exactly what we have in
Jesus Christ. In the nature of God, he provided
a judgment for us. Before us. That's how he could keep mercy
for thousands. That's the way he can keep mercy
for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and
by no means clearing the guilty. They stood on the very spot that
judgment came. That's the nature of God in the
person of the Lord Jesus Christ. judgment, mercy, faith, they
all agree and they are all fulfilled. They're all in harmony with the
nature of God in the person and the saving work of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And I'll close this message with this line right here. Just
flip back to Matthew 23 one more time. Matthew 23, the end of verse
39, The last line right here says,
blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Blessed
is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Once a sinner sees
the law, judgment, mercy, and Christ, faith in Jesus Christ. Once a sinner sees how all of
this woe is turned to blessing, That's what that sinner will
say. Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Blessed
be the name of Jesus Christ. Blessed be the one who came and
delivered us from all this woe to come. All praise to him. Praise him. Amen.