Never know what the elders of
Grace Truth are going to pull out of their hat. That was great. So, but where was I? Oh yeah. You know, that stuff used to
work back in the day. You start talking, the music comes, like,
oh yeah, I can see it in the seats. But, how do you relate
to God? That's where I was. We relate
to God in a way that we think of Him. We relate to God in His
holiness and His righteousness and His perfection because of
how he sees us, of how he sees us. And beloved, I'm going to be
honest with you. There is a lot of doctrinal assertions. There are many things that are
true concerning God. There are many things that we
have learned and we learn continually about who he is. And as we go
through the Bible over and over again, it is the source of our
learning. It is the source through which
God teaches us. We can learn information relating
to God through other sources, but God has not promised that
through those things He would teach us of Himself. But in the
Word alone do we learn who He is. And through the Word alone
do we learn how to relate to Him as He relates to us. Because it doesn't matter how
we want to relate to Him. What matters is how He relates
to us. See, here in 1 John 4 where we
saw that God sent His only Son into the world so that we might
live through Him. In this is love, verse 10, not that we have
loved God. See, God is not loving toward
us because we have loved Him. God is not loving toward us because
we are loving people. God is not loving toward us because
we do well in the world. God is not loving toward us because
we are benevolent. God is not loving toward us because
we decide to believe in Him. God is not loving toward us because
we choose salvation. God is not loving toward us in
any way whatsoever because of who we are or what we have done.
Otherwise, we would be more powerful than God to be able to change
His heart by our own deeds and desires. And we ourselves would
be better than God, so we must take the title of the Almighty. God first loved us. If we lose sight of this, We
will live our Christian life in bondage. If we lose sight
of this, we are falling back under the yoke of slavery. If
we've never seen this, we've not been born of God. And the moment we see that, the
moment we're aware of that, the moment that our conscious bears
witness of the eternal love of God for his people, that is the
new birth. That is the instantaneous moment
when God goes, wake up and see me. Did you see that? That is the moment. That you
can know, that you know, that you know you have eternal life.
You know what I'm saying? And I'm going to leave that hanging
there because we're not going there. But so many people all over the
world who claim Christ, so many pulpiteers who claim to preach
Christ, they'll preach the truth written in the Word, then make
an addendum. Because everybody can read it,
right? And when we parrot the words of the Bible and then we
make an addendum, we make an exception, we make a condition,
we are preaching a devilish false gospel that will not, cannot
save. But it will condemn you. No,
it won't condemn you, beloved. It will condemn them. We relate to God out of His love
for us eternally and that is the only way we can stand before
Him like children and say, hey Pop, without Him smiting us,
without Him destroying us. It's the only way we have access
to Him in any relationship, in any knowledge, with any intimacy
is that Jesus Christ took the wrath of the Father instead of
us. He took our place. He was punished
in our stay. God is never in the business
of letting sin go unchecked. He will not fail to execute justice
and wrath and vengeance against sin. So, beloved, this letter
is written to teach us how we ought to relate to God, to remind
us of how we ought to relate to God because of how He is related
to us, because of what He has done for us. And then there is
a huge reality of these New Testament letters, and they are the therefores. We learn a lot about Christ.
We learn a lot about truth. And we are right to be overjoyed
in that context. We are good and well-meaning
and ought to celebrate and exult and break dance and sing and
praise and share and do everything we can when we see the truth
of Christ taught and preached. But for some strange reason,
there's always going to be this little bit of tension when we
get to the therefores of scripture. Because of God's unending love
and mercy toward you beloved Therefore I urge you Therefore
I command you as God's Apostle therefore I call you to you see
these words man people don't like those things I And that's
what John's talking about. John's like, okay, we get the
essence of the gospel of free and sovereign grace. Now, live
in a manner congruent with the powerful love of God for you.
Because it is a motivator. We don't have to have the piano
start playing to get you in the spirit of being motivated. That
was just perfect, Jesse. That was just great. We should
just let it run. No, it messes with my brain.
It takes me back to days that I don't like. We need to be motivated. But
I am of the opinion, beloved, in my experience, so I can't
say this is the way that it is, but I'm of the opinion in my
experience that very few people want to hear the therefores whatsoever. They don't want to be shepherded. In July of 2007, I said that
very thing to a man at my congregation in California. You like the way
I preach, and you like to hear my teaching, but you don't want
my shepherding. You want to hear me say some
cool stuff, but you don't want me to hold you to it. And I have
said that to countless numbers of people throughout the years,
thousands of people personally and privately and publicly. They don't want to be held to
the standard of life to live as loving people in the body
of Christ. But everybody wants to amen the
truth and we should, but they want to have disdain toward the
life of living in Christ. And one motivates the other. This is what I've been talking
about for 22 weeks now in 1 John. It's what Jesus prayed that the
Father would do and what Jesus prays God the Father does. And
so when we see, when we see our lives in contradiction to the
righteousness of God, to the love of God, we correct those
things. Why? Because God first loved
us. We ought to love one another.
And I'll be honest, beloved, we ought to spend our time dealing
with that more than anything else in the world. We study the
Word of God so that we may know who He is. So that we may encourage
each other to get busy with our hands and get busy with our prayers
and get busy with our feet proclaiming and loving and serving the body
of Christ. It's like Paul talking to the
Thessalonians. He said that there was a subsection of their church
that he called busybodies who were so busy with everybody that
they did nothing for anybody. Busybodies. And he told them,
if you get to work with your hands, you won't have time to
worry about what everybody else is doing because you'll be serving. And I believe this is the primary
point of life as a true believer. Otherwise, take us home now.
We get the gospel, and we should always learn the gospel, for
without it, we're just a cult. Without the truth of Christ,
without the love of God toward us, we're just another cult. We're just another worldly, benevolent,
kind, self-serving, false group. But we all relate to God, don't
we? And as believers, we relate to
God through his word. We relate to God through prayer.
We relate to God through each other. We relate to God But the
only way that we can do this profitably is if we keep the
gospel as the cohesion of it all. Why are you doing this for
me? Because God has loved me in Christ. Why are you helping me? Because
God has given Christ for me. Why does this matter to you?
Because God's name is at stake and he has done great things
for his people. And I mean, we could go on and
give an example after example. And as God relates to us, we
need to understand that God relates to us in his heart and mind,
and these are anthropomorphic expressions of God who is not
a human being. Now people say, oh, the son!
Yes, he took on humanity for 33 years. Then he glorified,
was glorified again. So Jesus Christ and his humanity
did not divest himself of his divinity. So when we relate to
God in humanistic ways, we are putting God in a very myopic,
squeezable box. We must relate to God through
his word. And when the Word tells us this
and the Word tells us that and the Word tells us this, the answer
is yes. The understanding and the expression of our hearts
is yes, that's correct. We don't take it outside the
lines. We don't color outside the lines
the pages of the Bible so that we can get creative. God doesn't
want our creativity. He wants the rigidity of His
dogma concerning His own revelation of Himself. Friends, those are
all nasty words in today's economy. to be myopic, to have blinders
on, to be focused, to be dogmatic, oh no, those are not, well, we
can be those things in sinful ways, but when it comes to knowing
who God is, there is no other way. Some people ask the question
to me sometimes, how can I change how God, how can I cause, let
me get it exactly the way it is, how can I, Get God, that's
how it is, how can I get God, grammatically bad, but how can
I get God to bless me? And the answer to that is you
can't. There's nothing you can do to get God to bless you. Well, is what I'm doing the reason
I lost my job? I don't know, what are you doing? Did you cuss out your boss? Yes. You know? Did you steal from
the company? Absolutely. Why am I going to
jail? You robbed a bank. It's natural consequences. You
kick a wall, you break your toe. I mean, come on, guys. This ain't
Marvel Comics. As a believer, There is the discipline
of the Lord that seems like punitive, that seems like punishment. It's
not. God loves us. Therefore, he disciplines us.
In Hebrews, we've seen that. We've learned that in many different
ways. We've seen it illustrated in the Old Testament. God hones
and prunes and teaches his children just like we teach our own children,
just like you as children are being taught. Don't put your hand in the fire.
Why not? It'll burn you. No, it won't. It'll burn me. And
then they don't put their hands in the fire again. Isn't it funny
how children, when they gain the wisdom of experience, they
begin to teach other children? Don't touch that. Even if it's
the wisdom of experience of consequence that's not painful or damaging,
like, don't go down there, because my daddy will get upset. I mean,
that's wisdom. You're daggone right I'm going
to get upset. Don't do it. Don't say it. Don't run. We cannot change God's disposition. If he relates to us in a negative
sense, that is an eternal function of God's will. He will not change
the way he views us. Now you might think, well, I
don't really understand what you're saying. Well, let's put it, even though I said not
to do this, the only way we can sort of understand it in our
own lives is, do you have that person, maybe in the faith, a
kind and dear person that's always trying to do well, but there's
something about them that you just don't like and everything
they say, you look at it in a different light. Everything they do, you
try to say, well, I wonder why they did that. It's certainly
what, because of kindness. I mean, we can all raise our
hand that we have those thoughts and feelings at times. And it
may not be continual, but we do have those thoughts and feelings.
We come to a place sometimes where we just don't like some
people. Because they've done something
or said something in some way And no matter what they say or
do, we suppose a negative motive or an underlying meaning behind
what they say that's probably not the truth. And there's nothing
we can do. God doesn't work that way. God has established two very
distinct ways in which he relates to all humanity. And I'm gonna
give them to you, and the terms have a wide gate of meaning.
I want you to understand about semantic range. has everything to do with how
people see, in a sense, certain terms. And I have several good
examples, but I can't say them from the pulpit, because they
really get discolorful. But if you think about when I
was a child, certain terms that meant happy don't mean happy
anymore. Certain terms that meant cool
don't mean cool anymore. I mean, look at that vernacular.
What are you doing? I'm chilling. What does that
mean? I'm sitting still, I'm cold, and I have icicles on my
ears. I mean, you know, so there's ways and expressions in which
terms and the dictionary writers write those terms down based
on how people use them in truth. That means in their real lives.
They don't make up words in the dictionary. It's about how they
use them. So the word Google is a mathematic expression. Then
it became a company. Then it became a tool. Now it's
a verb. So there's a wide gate of So
I can't go through all those wide gates of meaning. I want
to stick to a very myopic meaning of the expression of John in
this letter. Then we're going to go to Paul, then we're going
to go to Moses, then we're going to go to other places. But God has two very
distinct ways in which he relates to humanity. He relates to humanity
in wrath, or he relates to humanity in grace. He relates to humanity
with hate, or he relates to humanity with love. He relates to humanity
in justice, or he relates to humanity in mercy. And he never mixes the two. There's never a time where God
hates the elect and pours wrath upon them and
then changes his mind and loves them. If he said, wait a minute,
what about Israel? Well, see, these are temporary expressions
of God. And sometimes just by proximity,
we get the wrath of God, but we don't get the second death.
I remember in 9-11 when that took place. The church we were in down there,
very big, very large attendance, a lot of people. And Robin is painting a mural
on one of our children's rooms. Grace is a year old, and she
crawls for the first time. So she's on the phone to tell
me, Grace, just crawl. We didn't think she'd ever crawl,
walk, move, talk, nothing. And while she's on the phone
with me, she's listening to the radio, and the radio says, oh
no, there's the story, 9-11. I'm like, well, that's odd. And
the internet was not much of anything during that time. So
you had to just look on Yahoo News. You had to look at a forum. There wasn't any live streaming
and all that kind of stuff. It didn't exist. And then by the time we got over
to the big sanctuary, put the news, CNN up on the thing, started
looking. As we're watching this report
of this accident, we see that plane going. I mean, literally,
what in the world? This has got to be a movie. And
I'll never forget that night. The entire community, all the
churches of the community, every religion in town, prayer vigil. And church campuses were packed.
In fact, that following Sunday, I would say that we had four
services at the time on the weekend. I would say that they were all
over capacity. All over capacity. And I got
on the pulpit, and I looked out, and I looked at my text, and
I'm like, I'm not changing what I'm preaching because of this thing. But they're
all here to hear something. So I gave my little three-minute
spiel, and I said it just like this. A lot of people are saying
that God has judged America. And I'm here to tell you this,
beloved, ladies and gentlemen, friends, if God had judged America,
we wouldn't be in this building tonight. If God poured wrath
out on the United States, there would not be any of us to stand
and say, maybe one, look at Sodom and Gomorrah, maybe one to say
what the Lord has done. But that is not wrath, that is
long-suffering, the natural consequence of the fallen world, the natural
consequence of political malfunction, the natural consequence of destroyed
and destructive men. And I said, I'm going to be a
prophet in the foretelling sense that I bet you in the next two
weeks we'll be back to normal attendance. And sure enough,
next week it was actually under attended. Because I think I offended
a lot of folks. Not turning your Bibles to Philippians
1, you know. Because that's what people say, oh this is the wrath
of God, oh this is the wrath of God, oh this election is the
wrath of God, oh this is the wrath of God, this economy is
the wrath of God. No it's not. The wrath of God is eternal death.
The wrath of God is righteous execution of justice, which is
good. We should want that as God's
children. The saints in Revelation are
looking for it. How long, O Lord? When are you
going to bring recompense against these people who continue to
defile you, to mock you, and to hurt your people? When are
you going to bring fire? So those are the two ways in
which God relates to humanity, justice and mercy. And all of
humanity before humanity ever existed, before the cosmos was
ever spoken into being, God immutably had a people in his heart that
he loved, that when he created them, he would save them and
the rest he hates. And he's just and true and righteous
in both of those. Because at no time does his love
for the elect and his hate for the reprobate ever cover up any
of his attributes. Never does anything God do ever
cannot be exercised outside of the attributes that he is. Because
God cannot be divided. It's something to note too that
God does not react to things. God is not like me. God does
not run like a first responder. God does not run like a defender
of life. God does not run with the paper
towels to clean up the meal. God does not do that. God does
not react. He is not emotional as we understand
emotion. If I'd said something extremely
rude or off color, it would destroy us. It would destroy your conscience. You'd feel it. There's nothing
you can do to stop the feeling. God does not work that way. God is not human in his essence,
in his mind, in his work. He is divine. He is the high
one and he is all wisdom. Therefore, God in everything
that he does, in everything that he desires, makes a decisive
act. And God makes a decisive act
to be and to act how he is and does. This is the simplicity
and the immutability of God on display. The unchangeableness
of God. Go to Romans 9. And you say,
why are we in Rome? I didn't tell you. I'm going to teach
topically on this thing out of the context of John. Romans 9. Remember, we're now going to
look at two ways in which God relates to all people. One is
wrath, one is mercy. Paul says, I've gotta read the whole thing,
I'm sorry. I am speaking. I was gonna like,
I'm just gonna deal with these ten. I'm gonna read the whole
thing. I'm speaking the truth in Christ. I am not lying. My conscious bears me witness
in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish
in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were accursed and
cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen, according
to the flesh." What he's doing there is he's lamenting the fact
that the ethnic Israel, that is Jewish brothers and sisters,
rejected Christ by and large. And yet in his hatred of Christ,
Christ saved him. There was no greater hater of
Christ than Paul of Tarsus. His words, not mine. And then God snatched him out
of the domain of darkness and blinded his physical eyes and
gave him spiritualized to see and he saw the beauty and the
glory of God through Jesus Christ. He saw the efficacy of God's
true eternal love for his elect people. And then he went that
moment and tried to preach to the very people he was going
to arrest. And they're like, I don't think so. So God had
to intervene against the wills of men. You're not gonna fool
me. I've seen this tactic before.
You want to be my friend? I don't think so. So God had
to send them a vision. They are the Israelites and to
them belong, and this is the historical essence of what God
has done in the election of Israel temporarily to show the eternal
election of His people, the true Israel, even out of these people. They are the Israelites and to
them belong the adoption The glory, the covenants, the giving
of the law, the worship and the promises, to them belong the
patriarchs. And from their race, according
to the flesh, is Jesus the Christ, who is God over all, blessed
and forever. So it is. But it is not as though
the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended
from Israel belong to Israel. And not all are children of Abraham
because they are his offspring. But here's the gospel. But through
Isaac shall your offspring be named. This means that it is
not the children of the flesh who are the children of God,
but the children of the promise. are counted as offspring. This is what the promise said,
about this time next year I will return and Sarah will have a
son. And not only so, but when Rebecca has conceived children
by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born,
neither of them had done anything good or bad in order that God's
purpose of electing grace, and I'm just going to emphasize it
that way, might stand and continue, not because of works, but because
of him who calls, she was told, the older shall serve the younger.
As it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. Now y'all know
how I've taught this. You know how I've taught the
essence of Genesis 3. You know how I've taught in Hebrews
where Paul uses Cain and Abel as a example. God had no favor for Cain. God
hated Cain. God loved Abel. For he was God's
son. Why? Because that's what God
is. He can do as He wishes. And everything
that He wishes and everything that He does is righteous. What shall we say verse 14 in
Romans 9? The question, what are we gonna say? God is unjust
by no means. My Bible has an exclamation point
there. For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have
mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So
then it depends not on human will, it depends not on human
work, but on God who has mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh,
for this very purpose, I have raised you up that I may show
my power in you and that my name may be proclaimed in all the
earth. So then he has mercy on whomever he wills and he hardens
whoever he wills. How does God do that? By his
being, by his will, by his power. Imagine the Pharaoh growing up
in Egypt, having every blessing that any man could ever want
in life. power, abundance, wealth, health, military, slaves that
will be at his command. And then he takes the throne
of Egypt and he's on top of his game. And the world looks at
him and goes, well, the gods are surely signing on this man.
But what was that for? What were the blessings of God
in the life of Egypt for? So he could destroy it. So that he could take a people
in bondage and snatch them out. So that he could show his electing
grace in the context of his love for his people. That's the point. Is God unjust? No. Then the next
question, what does Paul ask? Well, why is he still fine-fought
then? If he's not unjust, why is he fine-fought? Who can resist
his will? Beautiful question. The oldest
written book of the Bible is Job. Not many years before Moses
wrote. And Job gets an answer sort of
like this from God, doesn't he? Where were you? Who can resist His will? Who
are you, old man, to answer back to God? Well, what is molded, say to
the molder, why have you made me like this? Has the potter
have no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one
vessel for honorable use and the other for dishonorable? And
then Paul asks, what if God, desiring to show his just wrath
and to make known his absolute power, has endured with patience,
long suffering, Kindness, that's what it looks like, doesn't it?
Mercy. There's an end, the axe shall
fall. Vessels of wrath prepared for destruction so that he would
make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy which
he has prepared before him for glory. Even us whom he has called,
not from the Jews but from the Gentiles, as indeed Hosea. rights of God. Those who are
not my people, I will call my people and her who was not beloved,
I will call beloved. And in every place where it is
said to them, you are not my people, they shall be called
the sons, the children of the living God. Oh, see what kind
of love the father has given to us that we should be called
the children of God. And so we are. So we see this Romans 9, people
like to dictate how God should act. People like to dictate in
the world how God should love. People like to dictate in the
world who God is, but God has dictated who he is and how he
does what he does. And so for simplicity's sake,
in the context of John's letter, we need to understand what John
is referring to in the sense that God is love and that God
has love for us. It is in contrast to how God
relates to unbelievers, to rebellion. But people always charge God
with being unjust. And the reason they do that is
because they do not know Him. So John has made it clear, I
write these things that your joy may be complete. We know
that which was, and we tell you. Now you know, and you know that
this is the message we have given you, that we have had from the
beginning, that He is light, and in Him there is no darkness.
That He is love. And these two things are always
true about God, no matter what God is doing. Even in wrath,
even in justice, even in anger, and even in hate. He is never
not who He is. And everything that He does is
for the sake of His glory. Your election, your salvation
was for the sake of His name. It's not about us. But we are
the beneficiaries of His glory. We partake in His glory. The nothings that become something,
that bring to nothing the things that are. The story of the Bible
is not that difficult. And I've had the charge even
this week, well, you know, the God of the Old Testament is wrathful
and hateful and vengeful and on fire and upset and aggravated
and ants in his picnic and all this kind of stuff. And the God
of the New Testament is the exact opposite. Oh, I say that as a
big, big ignorant. I haven't ever read the Bible
statement. Surely we see vengeance and wrath
in the Old Testament. Deuteronomy 35, vengeance is
mine, and recompense for the time when their foot shall slip.
Matter of fact, Jonathan Edwards wrote an entire sermon that's
very famous on that particular thing. In time, their foot shall
slip. It's called Sinners in the Hands
of an Angry God. It's got no authoritative bearing on anything
we believe, but it is an incredibly piece of good literature. And I'll be honest with you,
we don't need to preach herald fire and brimstone and then offer
people options on how they're going to escape it. That's demonic.
We need to understand the essence of God in righteousness. You
see that this is not counterintuitive. God is righteousness, which includes
wrath and hate and justice. And God is love, which includes
grace and mercy and kindness, but also wrath and justice. For the day of their calamity
is at hand and their doom comes swiftly. If all the Bible ever told us
about God was His righteousness, we would all cower in the corners
of darkness waiting for the day when God's vengeance would justly
be executed upon us. But because we now know that
God is love toward us, He is love in Christ, He is love in
mercy, He is love in all the ways He acts, but He has an object
of His love and it is His elect people. For the Lord will vindicate
his people, Deuteronomy 32, 36. And he will have compassion on
his servants. And when he sees that their power is gone and
there is none remaining, bond or free. The ultimate purpose
of all of this, and I always get in trouble when I say things
like this, so bear with me. God loves himself. And it's not the same as if we
loved ourselves, because we're to love ourselves as our neighbor,
as in the same way. And we're to love God also. This is 1 John. The wrath of God has been being
poured out from the days of creation when Adam was told by God. He
showed him his wrath. He said, if you eat this, you
will surely die. That's not a natural consequence,
though it is. It's a spiritual sense of justice
where God brought wrath upon humanity because of sin and rebellion.
Why? What's the deal? I remember an atheist apologist
and I having a conversation in Berkeley one time, and he's saying,
that's just a maniacal situation in my mind, that this all-benevolent,
loving, good, righteous God would just annihilate the human
race because somebody ate fruit. I said, it had nothing to do
with fruit, buddy. I said, it had everything to do with Adam
and Eve weighed the consequences of death, the wrath of God, and
being like God themselves. And they chose to be like God
themselves. They chose to usurp the glorious
love that God has for himself, which he alone is worthy. Then I said, have you ever gotten
away with something illegal, not felonious, but illegal, like
speeding and the cop couldn't find you or whatever? He goes,
oh yeah. What if they caught you? What
was it? Well, shoplift at a candy bar
in middle school. That'll put you in jail for a
year. Is that wrong? No. I said, well, imagine you
trying to go into the judge's chamber and sit on his bench
and execute judgment. What do you think they'd do?
What do you think they'd do if you put a badge on and pulled
people over and tried to ride on tickets and you're not a police
officer? What do you think they'd do? Well, that's bad. I said,
well, if that's bad, how bad is it for us to think we're God?
Couldn't see it. In Exodus 22, the first use of
the word wrath is there, but it's not the first time it's
mentioned. You will surely die is the wrath of God. Exodus 22,
we see these commandments. You shall not, verse specifically
22, 22, you should not mistreat any widow or fatherless child.
If you do mistreat them and they cry out to me, I will surely
hear their cry and my wrath will burn and I will kill you. That's God speaking. If you mistreat
a widow or an orphan and they cry to me, I will kill you. and your wives shall become widows,
and your children shall become fatherless." That's what God
says. Oh, this is not a compassionate God. If you lend money to any
of my people who is poor, you shall not be like a money lender
and charge him interest. You will not do that. If you
take your neighbor's cloak in a pledge, you shall return it
to him before the sun goes down, for that is his only covering,
and it is his cloak for his body. And if you have it, what else
shall he sleep in? And if He cries to me, I will hear, for
I am compassionate." In the same breath, God is saying, I am justice
and I am mercy. I am wrath and I am grace. See, divine anger and divine
wrath is good and just and loving because God is love and God is
holy and He loves Himself. And death is God's punishment
for sin, plain and simple. Wrath is poured out then as a
necessity. Wrath is necessary and glorious
as a response to rebellion and to self-made glory. See, Moses
understood this when I read Psalm 90 this morning. Lord, you've
been our dwelling place in all generations before the mountains
were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the
world from everlasting to everlasting. You are God. You are the highest of all. You
return man to dust and say, return, O children of man. You sweep
them away as a flood, and they are like a dream, like grass
that is renewed in the morning, and in the morning it flourishes
and is renewed, and in the evening it fades and withers. For we
are brought to an end by your anger, and by your wrath we are
dismayed. You have set our iniquities before you and our secret sins
in light of your presence. For all of our days pass away
under your wrath. We bring our years to an end
like a sigh. Moses understood the wrath of
God. Then he cries out for the mercy of God. He says, let your
favor, let your work be shown to your servants and your glorious
power to their children. Let your favor, the favor of
the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands
upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands. Make us glad. As many of the
days as you have afflicted us, for as many of the years as we
have seen evil. We have been evil in this world, God, Moses
is saying. And we know that your wrath and
your justice is good, and it is pure, and it is precious,
and it is glorious. And have mercy on your servants. For without mercy there is nothing
but justice. The opposite of grace is justice. Grace is to get that unmerited,
undeserved, unearned favor. In the context of the economy
of grace in the Bible, the grace of God to the elect is salvific. It is God expensing His mercy
by sending Jesus Christ into the world that He would die for
His people. And He would die for His people
alone. And that grace empowers the body of Christ in little
vessels of clay, as Paul would say. To show that the power,
the all surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. And we
go out and we proclaim the good news of salvation, the good news
of grace, the good news of life, the good news of the promises
of God, the good news of His anger vindicated, the propitiation
that Christ is. And all the while that the world
hears, when it falls on deaf ears, it falls on deaf ears because
God has not granted them the ears to hear. And when someone hears and someone
sees and someone believes this great promise and this great
finished work of God, it is because God has granted them the ears
to hear and that they hear and He gifts them faith to believe
in the proclamation of the finished work of Jesus Christ. That is
all that we can preach. The Old Testament saints understood
the wrath and the mercy of God. The New Testament saints understood
the wrath and mercy of God. Back to that claim that God has
just changed. He's not just. He was mad over
here and He's calm over here. Really? Don't be deceived. A temporary
stay is not a foolish, blind, grandfatherly kindness. Don't
you hear that? A temporary stay of execution
is not a blind grandfatherly kindness. What is a grandfatherly
kindness? You take this car for a spin,
you crash it into the neighbor's house, I don't worry about it,
I can't drive anyway. I mean, you know, no, God is not like
that. I said this week, when God shows
favor to the reprobate, it's for the sake of his glory. In
other words, He is acting in a manner congruent with His divine
purposes of election. God takes no pleasure in the
wicked, but loves those He has purposed for salvation through
Jesus Christ. The benefit of what we see of
any benevolent power of God toward non-elect people is for the sake
of the saints who will share in the light of Christ. And what's
the point of that? Ephesians chapter 1, to the praise
of His glorious grace. God is praised for the sake of
who He is and what He does. God is praised as God. And in like manner, God, in that
sense, fully and justly exercises hatred toward those destined
for wrath. The children of the promise,
as we've seen in Romans 9, are eternally loved. You've heard
me say that a thousand times over. God loved me before I was. The children who are not of the
promise are eternally hated in just and righteous anger. These actions are established
by God for the sake of his glory. It is not of him who wills or
works but him who has mercy. Malachi 1 is where that comes
from. I've hated you, said the Lord. Does it say that? No. I've loved
you. I've loved you, says the Lord,
but you say, how have you loved us? It's not Esau, Jacob's brother,
declares the Lord. Yet I've loved Jacob, but Esau
I have hated. I have laid waste his hill country
and left his heritage to jackals and the desert. And if Edom says,
we are shattered, but we will rebuild the ruins, the Lord of
Hosts says, they may build, but I will tear it down, and they
will be called the wicked country, and the people with whom the
Lord is angry forever. Your own eyes shall see this,
says God through Malachi, and you shall say, great is the Lord,
beyond the border of Israel. So see, you hear me say these
things, you think, well, this is just an opinion. No, it's
not, it's an expression of what scripture teaches. God, when
we see His wrath, we rejoice. Not because we don't deserve
it. We rejoice because He deserves
His wrath to be poured out upon rebellion. Because His name must
execute justice. And we have escaped it, not because
God has just went, oh, it's okay. We've escaped it because the
crosshairs of justice and righteousness have been pointed away from us
and on to Jesus. I think Moses got it right, didn't
he? David got it right too. When he says in Psalm 5, Give
ear to my words, O Lord, consider my groaning. Give attention to
the sound of my crying, my King and my God, for to You do I pray. O Lord, in the morning You hear
my voice. In the morning I prepare sacrifice
for You and watch. For You are not a God who delights
in wickedness. Evil may not dwell with You.
The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes. You hate evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies. The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty
and deceitful man, but I, through the abundance of your steadfast
love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy
temple in the fear of you. Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness
because of my enemies. Make your way straight before
me, for there is no truth in their mouth. Their innermost
self is destruction. Their throat is an open grave.
They flatter with their tongue. Make them bear their guilt, O
God. Let them fall by their own counsels because of the abundance
of their transgressions. Cast them out, for they have
rebelled against you. But let all who take refuge in
you rejoice. Let them ever sing for joy and
spread your protection over them, that those who love your name
may exult in you." That means find their joy. For you bless
the righteous, O Lord. You cover them with favor as
with a shield. God hates the sinner, beloved. He hates the sinner because it is the sinner who
brings forth sin. God loves his children, beloved. And he has qualified us to share
in the inheritance in life. You notice that every time the
psalmist ever writes about bringing wrath, he always puts himself
in a place of worthy of that wrath, but then sets himself
under the wing of God's protection. Lord, you protect me from yourself. And that is why God and how God
purposes things like Uriah to bring forth the song sung in
worship we know as the 51st. How telling of a confession that
would be. We're gonna learn a new song today, beloved. And it's
a song about my wicked sin. My infidelity and my murder.
So let's all stand and sing together. Have mercy on me, O God. My sin
is forever before me. Can we not all sing the same
song? But can we not also sing the same song of praise? Because
we relate to God not in wrath, sort of. We relate to God in
wrath this way, that God poured His wrath out on His Son. And
that is an expression of His eternal love for us. He doesn't
let it go, he handles it. He exercises justice and righteousness
and judgment on sin. And whoever God has given to
the Christ, when Jesus died, they were set free. And many
of the elect don't know that yet. Many of the elect are still
there. Many of the elect are still being
born. Many of the elect will still be living in the world
and we continue to proclaim and God has ordained the smallest
details of our travel. Check engine light coming on
at the middle of nowhere and you stop and share the gospel
and the elect come to salvation. Why did my truck break down?
So that God could send the gospel to them. Little things like that. So we relate to God in his love. Because his anger is satisfied
in those he loves. Because the one that he loves
above all things is himself. And he loves the Son in a different
way than he loves us. You need to understand that.
The semantic range of love in the Bible, it expresses it this
way, God's love for himself, God's love for the Son, God's
love for his people. And then some people like to use the same
term, and it's not wrong to use the same term, but it's confusing,
it's convoluted. God has a sort of love for the
world in a benevolent way. Well, let's just use benevolence.
The word benevolent means goodwill and favor, good desire. Kindness
means good benefit. But why does God have good benefit
toward, why doesn't He just arrest all of wickedness now? Because
that's not the intention of His electing purposes. That's not
the purpose of God's electing grace. Out of the darkness He
grows a people. So God puts up with darkness
and allows it to prosper. Allows it to grow so that in
the end of it all, when He sets the record straight, the wrath
of God is satisfied forevermore. And the reprobate are absolutely
done. And so are the elect. But we're
done in Christ. The wrath of God is finished
in Jesus Christ. And the wrath of God is pending
for those who are not His. God shows his love for us in
the destruction of Jesus Christ, beloved. And God shows his love for his
own glory in the destruction of the wicked. I want you to hear that again.
God shows his love for us in the destruction of Jesus Christ.
And God shows his love for his own glory, for himself, in the
destruction of the wicked. They don't receive the love of
God, they are judged because of it. Big difference. Subtle, but big. We hear John write these words
and he says, and after this I saw, and you know God has sent, Jesus
has given him pictures and sequences to show past, future, present,
different things about redemption. Revelation 19 says, after this
I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude
in heaven crying out. This is a picture of how the
saints in glory are relating to God. It's a picture. He heard this picture. Hallelujah. Salvation and glory and power
belong to our God for His judgments are true and just. For He has
judged the great prostitute, the world, who corrupted the
earth with her immorality and has avenged her on the blood
of His servants. Once more they cried out, Hallelujah!
The smoke from her goes up forever and ever. A finished destruction. And the 24 elders and the 4 living
creatures, and if you want to know what these pictures mean,
I've done a whole series on reading Revelation. It's on the church
website. I don't have time to go into all that today. But the
four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who was seated
on the throne, saying, Amen, hallelujah. And from the throne
came a voice saying, Praise our God, all you his servants, you
who fear him, small and great. Then I heard what seemed to be
the voice of a great multitude. The roar like, it's a simile,
like the roar of many waters and the sound like the sound
of mighty peals of thunder. They were crying out. Hallelujah. For the Lord our God, the Almighty
reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and
give Him the glory for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His
bride has made herself ready. It was granted her to clothe
herself with fine linen, bright and pure. And then the angel
said to me, oh, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds
of the saint. And the angel said to me, write this, blessed are
those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
And he said to me, these are the true words of God. And I
fell down to his feet to worship, but he said, you must not do
that. I am a servant with you and with your brothers who hold
the testimony of Jesus. Worship God for the testimony
of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. And we come all the way through
this and we see, Beloved, let us love one another, for love
is from God. For whoever loves God has been
born of God and knows God. I want to show you, just in a
simple picture, that God's love is illustrated, is manifested,
and is experienced in the giving of His Son, and that His love
for us is also further experienced through the regeneration of our
hearts and minds when we hear the gospel of free and sovereign
grace that we might believe in His absolute eternal love for
us. And that we know in the context of that love, His wrath is poured
out on Christ instead of us. But there is a day when all unbelief,
when all rebellion, when all evil will experience the absolute
hatred of God in real time. His disposition is hatred. His action is justice, is wrath,
is judgment. And He loves Himself. And He's
righteous in doing so. So how then do we love like that?
If this is the love that God has shown us, He sent His Son
to be the propitiation for our sins, it means the wrath of God
is satisfied. It's very simple. Let me give
you a picture. Your doorbell rings. Someone comes over to
your house. And it might be the person we
talked about earlier. No matter what they do or say, you can't
see through the clarity or the fogginess. You can't see with
clarity through your disposition toward them. Now imagine a sinner
ringing the doorbell of heaven. This is just imagery. And God going, oh, not him again. I don't like that guy. That's not how he sees us. While we are way long off, the
father sees the son and he runs toward him. He girds up his loins
and he runs and he embraces his son. And before the son could
even say everything he needed to say, I have sinned against
you. I have sinned against God. Make me a slave that I might
not eat pig food anymore. The father embraces him and says,
our son who was dead is now alive. What was lost is now found. Servants,
kill the fatted calf. Celebrate with me tonight because
my child is alive. The marriage supper of the Lamb,
beloved. This is good news. while the self-righteous reprobate
and all the evildoers of like mind look on with despair and
frustration and disdain. I should have unplugged the doorbell. And God turns and says to them,
have I not given you food and clothing and treasure and everything
else? Look at you, you can't thank me for anything. So the
wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness from heaven. Christ has invited us into the
place, into the veil, through the Holy of Holies, into the
presence of the abode of God, where we are called beloved. I always thought it would be
cool to be a servant, White House or be a servant in a castle or
palace. I just think it's cool to clean
those things. I mean, that would be neat to
clean a palace. Yes, I'm strange. God's not gonna make us servants
in the palace of heaven. We're gonna sit with Him. We're
gonna sit at His table. And we are the beloved. And how do we love like that?
The best we can open in our lives to one another. The best we're
able and gifted to open the door when it rings. The best we're
able to pray and to answer and to respond and to do what we
can do. Be available. And in those small ways, the
love of God is seen in our lives. Especially as we have opportunity
to continue to exalt in the celebration of the love of God for his people
forevermore. Rejoice in that, beloved. Have
clarity in understanding these things. Let's pray. Let us rejoice and give you glory. really is the thing that we will
be most busy about when eternity comes. And it will not be contrived. It will be flowing out of the
abundance of the heart that we have. And Lord, we long for that day,
but until then, give us these moments. Give us these fillings
of your Spirit. Give us these empowerings. to
rest, to be patient, to love as you are teaching us
to love. Not that you've already taught
it to us. Lord, we're still learning. Father, that when we bow our
consciences in prayer, when we humble ourselves and our minds
to know that we're about to speak to you, let it not be just rote memories. of spiritual liturgies. But Father let us be ever mindful
that we are speaking to the God of creation. That we should understand with
great trepidation that you could cast our soul into damnation.
But that we should not fear because perfect love casts away fear. And that when we love each other,
your love is being finished in us, being perfected, being brought
to its point. And I thank you God for your
patience with me, that I was overburdened with all of the
things I wanted to share today, but that your will was done.
And I thank you for the Christ. for His blood being shed in our
place. And through Your love and through
the giving of Your Son, You are satisfied with us. You do not
tolerate us. Father, You embrace us. And we
pray these things in the name of Christ. Amen. Thank you, beloved. Could you
stop that for me? Let's see.