What Todd just said about my
claim to fame is very true, and I claim it wholeheartedly. How many buttons am I supposed
to turn on? OK, I'm only seeing one.
Oh, here we go. Okay. Yesterday, we were sitting
in Savannah's room over at Cardinal Hill, and the therapist came
in, and she wanted to know who each of us were, you know, the
family. And she said, I got you pegged. You're the dad. And I
said, that's absolutely right. That's my claim to fame, being
Holly and Savannah's father. It's just very true. If you would open your Bibles
with me to Psalm 76. I've titled the message this
evening, The Wrath of Man. will praise the Lord. Our text will be one verse, verse
10 of Psalm 76. Surely the wrath of man shall
praise thee. The remainder of wrath shalt
thou restrain. Now Savannah has asked me to
give this congregation a message from her. She wanted me to tell
you that your prayers matter. You can imagine that everybody
in every walk of life that knows her has told her we'll be praying
for you. And she wants you to know your
prayers matter. And she's thankful when God's
people have prayed for her. And we understand why. James
said, the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
And that made me think about my prayers. I always want my
prayers to include praise and thanksgiving. I want to live
my life praising the Lord. If we're going to praise the
Lord for something, we're going to have to know He did it, aren't
we? We're not going to praise the Lord for something He didn't
do. And I know most people would praise the Lord for the blessings
and comforts that they receive, and certainly we ought to thank
the Lord for those things. If we have them, He gave them
to us. But what about when a tragedy
or a very painful event happens in our lives? What about when
a young person dies? They've got a young family. We
think there's so much left for them to do. Can we praise the
Lord in that? We can if God did it. Did God
take the life of that young man and young woman? Would God do
such a thing? What about when you walk into
an ER one afternoon and you find your daughter completely covered
with bruises and blood, and every breath she takes makes her moan
because it's painful? Are you gonna praise the Lord
in that? I want to, don't you? We're gonna praise God for it
if he did it. I mean, did God do such a thing? Or is this just an accident that
happened outside of God's control? What about natural disasters
that kill thousands of people? Are we going to praise God in
that? Did God do that? Or did Mother
Nature do that outside of God's control? Did Satan do it outside
of God's control? I mean, do we think, well, Satan
must have done that because a good and loving God would never have
done such a thing. You know, people ask a whole lot of questions
like that, and I will freely confess to you that I don't know
everything there is to know about this topic. But here's what I
do know. I remember Brother Henry telling
me one time, let's start with what we know. Well, let's start
with what we know. God did it. That's what we know. Everything that happens on this
earth, whether it's something we call good or something we
call evil, happens according to God's eternal will and purpose. Nobody ever does anything in
time that God did not foreordain to happen before time. Either
God did it or somebody overruled God's will and did it anyway.
Is that the only two choices? That's the only two choices I
see. Well, God did it. I want you to look at a couple
of scriptures. First, Amos chapter 3. Daniel, Hosea, Joel, and then
Amos. God did it. Amos chapter three, verse six. Shall a trumpet be
blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? Shall there be
an evil in the city? and the Lord hath not done it?
No, God has done it, hasn't he? All right, look at Isaiah chapter
45. This will sound very familiar
to you. This is the passage where Todd read to us to open the service. Verse five, Isaiah 45. I am the Lord and there is none
else. There's no God beside me. I go
to thee that thou hast not known me. If they may know from the
rising of the sun and from the west, there is none beside me. I am the Lord and there is none
else. I form the light and I create the darkness. I make peace and
I create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things. God does them, doesn't he? One
more scripture, Proverbs chapter 16. Proverbs chapter 16, verse four. The Lord hath made all things
for himself, yea, even the wicked, for the day of evil. Even the
wicked, made for the day of evil, made for God, for God's purpose. Now, you know I'm not saying
that the wrath of man works the righteousness of God. God does
that by himself, but this is what I'm saying. God's in control. He's sovereign, so He's in control
of everything and everyone and everything in God's creation.
is going to be used to praise God. And this is my prayer, that
God would allow us to praise Him for His salvation, for His
mercy and His grace to His people in Christ Jesus. But if we're
rebels against God and we refuse to bow to Him, we live in opposition
to God's free and sovereign grace, we're going to put up a fuss,
but God's going to overrule us. And even our rebellion is going
to work to His praise. When evil happens in this earth,
you just write this down, it happens according to God's eternal
purpose. God did it because it seemed
good in His sight. It seemed good and not because...
God didn't do it to bring forth evil. He did it to bring forth
good. It was good in His sight. And
we may see it as evil at first, but God's going to bring good
out of it. That's just the way God has ordained it. And only
God can over, only God can do that. Only God can overrule the
wickedness of man to bring to pass his purpose of good. And that's what God is doing
every time we experience evil in this life. Every time. Now I want to give you six examples
of this, the wickedness of man praising God. The first one is
Job. Satan nearly destroyed Job, didn't
he? Satan took everything Job had
except his life and his wife. It was so bad, Job wished he
took his life. Now why did that happen? What
is it, who is it that caused all that pain to happen? It wasn't
Satan. No, it was God. God's the one
that brought Job to Satan's attention. Satan didn't come ask the Lord,
can I touch Job? God told Satan, have you considered
my servant Job? There's nothing like him in the
earth. He's a perfect and an upright man, one that fears God
and eschews evil. God put all this in motion. And
Satan came and he took away all Job's riches. He took away all
of his servants. He killed all of his children.
Then he covered Job's body with boils. and all of that happened. Why? Because the Lord brought
Job to Satan's attention. The Lord's the one who is in
control of this trial. The proof of it is, why didn't
Satan kill Job? Why didn't he kill his wife?
Because surely the wrath of man shall praise thee and the remainder
of wrath shalt thou restrain. First, God said, don't touch
his body. You can touch his stuff, don't
touch his body. And then he said, you can touch his body, but don't
take his life. God was the one who was in control of this thing
all along. And what was Satan's purpose in this? To show God,
you let me touch him, he'll curse you to your face. That was Satan's
purpose and it wasn't accomplished, was it? No, the opposite happened. God's purpose happened This trial
brought Job even closer to the Lord because in the end, Job
praised God like he never could have praised Him unless he'd
been through the furnace of that awful trial. Job said, I've heard
of you with the hearing of the ear, but now I see you. Now might
I see you. Wherefore, I abhor myself and
repent in dust and ashes. That brought him closer to the
Lord. Any time you find any sinner repenting in dust and ashes,
the Lord's nearby. It brought him close to the Lord.
Second is Joseph. Now, Joseph was the classic good
boy. He was an obedient child. He
was a joy to his parents all the time. And there was no secret,
Joseph was the favorite son of Jacob. Everybody everywhere loved
Joseph, except his own brothers who hated him. And one day, they
took their brother out in the open field and they threw him
down in a pit where no water was. And that must have made
him tired. They decided to take him a break
and eat lunch and build their strength up. And after that,
they were going to kill their brother. But while they're eating,
Reuben convinced them, let's not kill our little brother,
but let's sell him off into slavery instead. And you know, that's
what they did. Can you imagine Selling your
brother into slavery to men like ISIS. That's who they descended
from. I mean, how horrible. Would God allow that? Would God
do such a thing? Yes, he did. Joseph was sold
into slavery and God blessed him there. He rose up to a very
important position in the house of a rich man named Potiphar.
And Potiphar's wife falsely accused Joseph. He had done anything
wrong and Joseph found himself thrown in jail for a crime he
did not commit. And God even blessed Joseph down
there in that jail. The prisoner, in this case, ended
up running the asylum. The prisoner was the one who
ended up in charge of the prison. And Pharaoh's butler was down
there in the prison. And he had a dream one night that troubled
him. Joseph told him what his dream meant. He said, real soon,
you're going to go back to serving Pharaoh. And when you get there,
would you tell him about me and my situation? And the butler
said, it's the first thing I'll do. And the butler forgot all
about Joseph for two whole years. Now you think how evil that is.
What an injustice that is. Would God allow that to happen?
Would God really do that to one of his children? Would he? Can
we praise him for it? I can tell you God did it. And
let's start with why wasn't it worse? Why wasn't it worse for
Joseph? Why didn't his brothers kill
him? Because surely the wrath of man shall praise thee, and
the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain. God kept him from
doing that to accomplish his purpose. I can't imagine what
that prison was like that Joseph was in. I mean, how does anybody
not catch a disease and die within days in one of those places?
Why didn't Joseph catch a disease and die? Because surely the wrath
of man shall praise thee, and the remainder shalt thou restrain.
The remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain. See, all this
happened. God brought all this evil to
pass to accomplish God's purpose, God's eternal purpose in the
redemption of His people. After all those years in slavery
and prison, in one day, Joseph was delivered out of the prison
to the palace, second in command of all of Egypt. Look at Genesis
chapter 50. Joseph knew why it happened.
You know the story, Joseph, how he met his brothers, and he showed
such love and compassion and forgiveness to them, and their
father, Jacob, died, and the brothers thought, he's gonna
get us now. This is just, he gonna get us. Genesis 50, verse
20. In verse 19, Joseph said unto
them, fear not, for am I in the place of God? But as for you,
you thought evil against me. Everything you did, you did because
it was evil in your heart, and you determined to do evil, but
God meant it unto good, to bring to pass as it is this day, to
save much people alive." They did the evils in their heart,
but whose will did they accomplish? They accomplished God's, didn't
they? Men meant everything that they did to Joseph for evil,
but God meant it for good. God brought good out of it. Think,
what would have happened if Joseph hadn't gone down to Egypt? When
that famine came, all of the children of Israel would have
starved before God ever brought them to the land He promised
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If Joseph hadn't gone down into
Egypt, the children of Israel never would have followed him,
and they never would have become slaves in Egypt, and you and
I never would have had the picture of redemption through the blood
of the Passover lamb. It was the blood of the Passover
lamb that set them free from bondage in Egypt. And Pharaoh,
he tried to stop his free labor from leaving the country. Years
before, Pharaoh had heard, there's a deliverer been born. And Pharaoh
said, I'll tell you what, I'll solve that problem. You know,
leaders are problem solvers. He said, I'll solve that problem.
Just kill every boy baby. And he did it. Can you imagine
how evil of a thing this is? People of Israel suffered having
those little boys taken from their arms and slaughtered. But every boy baby wasn't killed.
There's one was spared, and Pharaoh himself ended up raising him,
Moses the Deliverer. man had a plan. We had a saying
we had in college and we hung it up on the wall that men make
plans and God laughs. Pharaoh thought he had a plan,
didn't he? Whose purpose was brought to pass? Surely the wrath
of man shall praise thee and the remainder of wrath shall
thou restrain. And then Pharaoh tried to fight against God to
stop him from letting Israel go and God sent a plague And
in every plague, we read that Pharaoh hardened his heart and
he wouldn't let the people go. Now, do we need to get bent out
of shape about this? When our rulers do something today, we
don't like it. Do we need to get bent out of shape about this?
Who was in control of whether Israel went free or not? It wasn't
Pharaoh. It was God. And then we read
that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. And that was the end of old Pharaoh. Now, Pharaoh was a wicked, evil
man. Would Almighty God really put
that evil man upon the throne of this mightiest country in
the world so that he could do harm to so many people? Would
God do that? Yes, He would. And God told us
why He would. Look at Romans chapter God overruled the wickedness
of Pharaoh to accomplish God's purpose. Romans 9, verse 17. For the scripture saith unto
Pharaoh, even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I
might show my power in thee, and that my name might be declared
throughout all the earth. Therefore, hath he mercy on whom
he will have mercy, and whom he will, he hardeneth. See, God, he does his will. He
can over, he is so, I guess I'm trying to find the
right word, powerful, wonderful, majestic. that he overrules the
wickedness of man to bring to pass his purpose. I want to touch
on this for a moment. You know the story we touched
on when we looked at Job. In the end, Job was blessed with
children and twice as much as what he had before, physically
speaking. Joseph became second in command
in all of Egypt. Israel was set free, sent to
the land of flowing with milk and honey. Now, will all of us
be delivered from every evil like that? No, we won't. You know better
than that. We won't all end up enjoying such great blessings
upon the earth. Our brethren in Hebrews 11 didn't,
and that won't always be the case. Well, preacher, what do
you got to say to people who end up dying in this awful, horrible
misery? Well, I'll let our brother Job
answer that question and pray that the Lord will allow us to
say the same thing and mean it. The Lord gave and the Lord has
taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Though He slay me, though He
slay me, yet will I trust Him. He is become all my salvation. That's what I say. Thirdly, what
about David and Bathsheba? There's no two ways about it.
David did wrong. People try to kind of, I don't
know. David did wrong, and this is
awful. David's sin displeased the Lord. His sin of adultery with Bathsheba
and his sin of killing her husband Uriah, this thing displeased
the Lord. It's wrong, it's sinful, and
there's no excuse for it, and that's why their child died.
Now David, the man after God's own heart. I mean David, David,
the man that God took from watching sheep and made him king of Israel.
David, the sweet psalmist of Israel. Look at the sin he's
committed. Is God going to have to start
all over? Is God defeated because David's just messed everything
up? No. Surely the wrath of man shall
praise thee, and the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain.
God sent His Son, His Son, in the flesh through the union of
David and Bathsheba. That's something only God can
do. Alright, fourthly, what about
the persecution of the early church? I mentioned Hebrews 11.
Look over at Hebrews chapter 11. That persecution is more
horrible than we can imagine. They covered the Christians in
animal skins and threw them down with these hungry lions so the
lions would think they're animals of prey and these lions just
ate them alive. They tied them to stakes and
burned them alive. They covered their body in tar
and stuck them on posts and used them for street lights, lighting
their bodies on fire. Hebrews chapter 11, how horrible
that must have been. Verse 36, and others had trial
of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover, bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn
asunder, they were tempted, were slain with the sword, they wandered
about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, and
tormented, of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered
in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens, and in caves of
the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through
faith, received not the promise. God, having provided some better
thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect."
They didn't have any deliverance. They died without deliverance.
Now why would God allow such wickedness to happen to His people?
We've already determined God did it, didn't He? Can we praise God in that? I tried to think about that.
Reading that is one thing, and you mentioned it this morning,
those martyrs who were praising God while they're being burned
at the stake. Can I do that? I know I couldn't without God's
grace, I know that. Look over at Acts chapter 11.
I can tell you why God did this. Why did he allow such persecution
to his people who believed him? Acts 11 verse 19. Now they which were scattered
abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen, traveled
as far as Pharncy and Cyprus and Antioch, preaching the word
to none but unto the Jews only. And some of them were men of
Cyprus and Cyrene, which when they were come to Antioch, spake
unto the Grecians, the Greeks, preaching the Lord Jesus. And
the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed
and turned unto the Lord. Persecution at home forced the
disciples to scatter everywhere. And they went preaching the Lord
Jesus everywhere they went. and God's people heard the gospel. God's people heard, and they
believed. They turned to Christ, and they
were saved. A great number believed. We get caught up in numbers,
and I'm thankful a great number believed, but I thought if I
lived in that time, and I was the only one when they came to
Cyprus and wherever these towns they came to, what if you were
the only one that believed? You'd be mighty thankful, wouldn't
you? Wouldn't that be a feast for you? They preached Christ
everywhere they went, and God saved His people because of it.
God overruled the wickedness of men and brought the eternal
good of His people out of it. And this is something you'll
find, that the church on earth always thrives the most when
men are the most determined to crush it. That's when it thrives
the most. Do you know why that persecution
didn't kill every believer and why it didn't scare every believer
into not preaching and didn't wipe out the preaching of the
gospel forever? You know why? Because surely the wrath of man
shall praise thee, and the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain.
Now, I've saved my two big guns for last. Stay with me. Listen
to these. Here's the fifth thing. What
about Adam's sin in the garden? Now we already know God's in
control of everything. Then why didn't God just stop
Adam from sinning in the garden? I mean, if Adam hadn't sinned,
when Adam sinned, you and I sinned in him. We became guilty when
Adam sinned. Well, if Adam hadn't sinned,
we wouldn't be in this mess, would we? We wouldn't be suffering
pain and sorrow and sickness and loss and death. So why didn't
God just stop Adam? He could have. He's God. He could
have if He wanted to. Want me to tell you why God didn't
stop him? It's for the same reason God does everything else He does.
It's for the glory of His Son. God didn't stop Adam from sinning
to bring about God's purpose of the redemption of His people.
See, Adam is a representative man. Everyone who Adam represented
did what Adam did, and that's you and me. We were all in Adam,
in his loins. When Adam sinned, we sinned.
When Adam sinned, you and I became guilty. Now, if Adam hadn't sinned,
then we'd be standing on our own, and we could still sin. We could still fall into condemnation
on our own, and if we did that, there wouldn't be a Savior for
us. See, there's just one sacrifice for sin. Christ is not going
to be sacrificed every time one individual sins. If we would
understand the gospel, we need to understand this truth of representation. See, we were made sinners by
a representative man, by what a representative man did, and
if we're made sinners by what one representative man did, we
can be made righteous by what another representative man did.
Adam sinned. as the representative man allowed
God to display His greatest glory in saving sinners through the
second representative man, the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. See, if Adam hadn't made us unrighteous
by his disobedience, Christ could never make us righteous by his
obedience. If Adam hadn't killed us, we
could never have life in Christ. If we'd never been lost in Adam,
we could never be saved in Christ. We'd never see the glory of Christ
unless first we see the ruin of man. We'd never see the glory
of holiness if we didn't first see the filth of sin. And Satan
came into the garden with the purpose of destroying God's creation,
didn't he? That's what he was going to Eve.
That's what his goal was. You know why Satan didn't carry
the day and destroy God's creation and destroy this new race that
God had created in Adam? You know why he didn't? Surely
the wrath of man shall praise thee, and the remainder of wrath
shalt thou restrain." Now, Adam shouldn't have sinned. He shouldn't
have rebelled against God. God told him, don't eat of that.
How many trees were in the garden? You can eat all, all of it but
one. Why do you have to have that
one? There's no excuse for Adam's rebellion. But God overruled
Adam's sin. to accomplish His purpose of
sowing His glory and the redemption of His people through the Lord
Jesus Christ. See, this was God's eternal purpose.
Here's another reason God didn't wipe out Adam the very moment
that he sinned, because redemption in Christ was God's eternal purpose.
Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
God created the world knowing exactly what Adam would do. because
this is his purpose, to save his people. He's always seen
his people in Christ, the Lamb slain. All right, here's the
last thing. What about Calvary? In our refined society today, Calvary would just shock us speechless
to see what that scene really looked like. And everything men
did on that day, was entirely wicked. They tied the hands of
a man who was innocent. They could find no fault in him,
but they still tied his hands behind his back, put a blindfold
on him, and beat him in the face and said, now prophesy and tell
us who hit you. They cleared their throat and spit it in the
face of a man that they said, I can't find any fault in him.
Wicked men. Wicked men who knew nothing of
religion, enjoyed their time mocking the Son of God. They mocked Him as king. They
made Him wear an old, dirty, purple-looking blanket for a
robe. They put a wilted reed in His hand, and they shoved
a crown of thorns down in His scalp, and they mockingly bowed
the knee to Him, crying, Hail, King of the Jews. And when they
had their fun doing that, They made him carry his cross and
took him to a place where he couldn't carry it anymore, made
somebody else carry it, laid him down on the ground on this
cross and nailed his hands and his feet to that thing in nails
the size of railroad spikes and picked it up and dropped it in
a hole and laughed while he suffered. And the wicked religious men
gathered around about that time and mocked him as he died, saying,
he saved others. Himself he cannot save. That's
a whole nother message. They were right. They just didn't
know it, did they? He saved others. Himself he cannot save. He couldn't
come down from the tree. He's gonna save his people, could
he? No, he couldn't do it. They said, he's the son of God. Let's see if God will have him
now. Why? We'll believe on you if you'll
just come down from the cross. Their wickedness on full display. Why would God allow all that
evil to happen to his only begotten son? This is the son the father
loves. He spoke audibly from heaven
to say, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. You
hear him. Why would God allow all that
evil to happen He did it so that his people
would have salvation and justice, and justice. At Calvary, God
put his glory on full display. Now, I know man's wickedness
is on display, but at Calvary, God's glory is on display, the
glory of his wisdom, the glory of his justice. The glory of
his grace, the glory of his mercy, the glory of his love for his
people far outshines man's darkness and sin. And the wicked had a
purpose that day. They wanted to get rid of this
Jesus of Nazareth so they could get on with their business of
playing church. But you know the wicked didn't carry the day,
did they? No, they did everything their
wicked heart desired to do and they didn't carry the day. Salvation,
God used them to accomplish the salvation of His people in justice. There was no perversion of justice
that day at Calvary. On that middle cross, an innocent
man did not die. A guilty man died. God would
be unholy to put to death an innocent man. He put to death
a guilty man. Just like you talked about this
morning, we can't understand, but by God's grace we believe
it. The Father made him sin, made him sin, and put him to
death for it to satisfy God's justice. Christ died to satisfy
God's justice. He satisfied God's justice because
his sacrifice, his perfect sacrifice, put away all the sin of his people. And now God's justice demands
they have life. It demands they go free. What
wisdom of God in salvation through the sacrifice of a substitute.
That's God's wisdom. See, there'd be no sacrifice
for sin. There'd be no salvation unless Christ was crucified. So you know what God did? He
allowed wicked men to do everything their evil hearts wanted to do.
But in so doing, all they did was fulfill His determinate counsel
and foreknowledge. You just did what God determined
before to be done so that God's people would be saved from their
sin. And even though we may not always
see it, and I don't know, maybe I'm a little bit of a pessimist
and I think we'll never see it, I don't know, but we will seldom
see what God's purpose is in all of our trials and the evil
things that we experience in this life. But the same thing
always holds true. And we're going to experience
the effect, the suffering of evil in this life because men
will always be evil. You and I can't get away from
the evil that's in this world because we're carrying it around
with us in the heart that we're born with. Men will always be
evil, and God always allows them to do what they want to do to
accomplish His purpose, not theirs. Now, doesn't that comfort your
heart? Maybe it's a sign of me getting old. I don't know. I
tend to think, a lot of people do, generally I guess it's people
with gray hair, tend to think that the world is getting worse
and worse and worse and worse. I'm convinced the world is worse
than it was when I was a teenager. Maybe it is, maybe it didn't,
I don't know. But, you know why it's not worse than it is already?
Because God's on the throne. Surely the wrath of man shall
praise thee, and the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain.
And Lord, to whatever degree He is determined to do, is going
to restrain that wrath until He's taken His people out of
this wicked world, and then He's going to let her loose. And then
he's gonna create new heavens and a new earth wherein dwells
righteousness. And then we're gonna say, oh,
I see. Now I see. This was his purpose
all along. And he did it by allowing that
evil to happen, making his son sin for us, that he might purchase
eternal redemption for his people. That's why he did it. All right,
the Lord bless you. I was thinking while you were
preaching, as far as historical events, the best thing that ever
happened to me, as far as historical events, is when Adam made that
fruit. What a blessing. I'm so thankful
it's that way. If Adam hadn't eaten that fruit,
I would have ended up eating it. And when Adam ate that fruit.
All the glory of salvation. Took place and I'm so much more
secure because Adam ate that fruit. I can't fall away. I have the righteousness of God.
Thank the Lord for who he is. Let's pray together. Lord, how we thank you that the
wrath of man shall praise thee and the remainder of wrath thou
shalt restrain. We thank you for how glorious
you are in holiness, how awesome in power. We thank you for the wonders
you perform that your will is always done. Lord, we're so stupid. So very stupid, so very sinful. Give us the grace to be still
and know that thou art God. We give thanks for this time.
As we face this coming week, we ask that you would enable
us to, by faith, walk with our son. In his blessed name we pray. Amen.