And preach Christ as he ought to be
preached.
And though I heard no word, I knew.
Son, even then you will not preach Christ
as he ought to be preached.
All the choruses of glory, all the choruses
and corrals of heaven strain with every fiber
of their spirits will be to lift a
word that might be worthy about the Christ.
And after all is sung and after all
is cried out, they bow their heads knowing
they have not even begun to climb the
foothills of the Himalayas, of the glories of
Christ.
Oh, that your heart would be warmed, that
your heart would be warmed.
In Romans chapter 3, verse 23, for all
have sinned.
That does not shock us today.
It does not terrify us.
It does not scare us or frighten us.
And it should, it should, it should.
One man fell, one man sinned, our father
Adam.
And one sin was enough to crash an
entire universe into condemnation, was enough to set
this entire world almost into a whirling spiritual
and moral chaos, physical chaos.
One sin, one tiny sin is so grievous
against a holy and loving and gracious and
compassionate God that it takes down a universe
with it.
And then there we are.
We stand and we multiply sin upon sin
upon sin upon sin.
We are a people of unclean lips and
we dwell among a people of unclean lips.
We have no idea the gravity of sin.
If you're older here, you might have caught
yourself saying, well, let me put it this
way.
I'm not wanting to attack young people tonight,
but let me just give you an example
to show how dull we can become to
sin.
We can come to be with regard to
sin.
The things that are worn by your culture,
the things that are worn at the beach
by your culture, that even you as Christians
wear.
If that had been worn by a person
even 60 or 70 years ago in public,
they would have either been thrown in prison
or placed in an insane asylum.
And yet we do it today with no
shame whatsoever.
Just in a matter of 60 years, look
how dull we have become to what is
wrong.
How can we as a people understand the
gravity of sin?
When we swim in it, we drink it
down as though it were water.
Everywhere you look, it is used, it is
promoted.
And so when the Bible says for all
have sinned, we see nothing frightening about it.
And yet we do not know that, that
creatures far more splendid than us angelic beings
with one revolt in heaven, with one turning
away from God in heaven, they were cast
out and an eternity of destruction awaits them
without one hope of salvation.
It is as though God standing on the
day of creation, He speaks to stars that
can swallow up 6,000 of our suns
and He says, you stand in this place
and you move in this way until I
give you another word.
And then He speaks to planets and He
tells them, put yourself in such and such
orbits and stay there until I command another
thing.
And they all obey Him.
And then He says to the mountains, be
lifted up and He tells valleys, be cast
down.
And they march to every word with perfect
obedience.
He pours the rain out on the ground
and the ground obeys by turning to mud.
He brings the sun out from behind the
clouds and the ground dries in obedience to
the Lord.
He tells monsters of the deep, the ways
that they should move, the waters that they
should stay in.
He tells the deep itself, you will come
here and you will go no further.
And they all obey Him.
And then He looks at you and says,
come and you go, no, we have no
idea the gravity of sin because we have
no idea of the greatness of God.
I think sometimes I agree with a psychiatrist,
Jung, who said, hurry is not of the
devil, hurry is the devil.
Now, I believe in a personal devil, but
the point I'm trying to make is that
one of the works of the devil is
to keep the people of our culture so
entertained with frivolous, trifling things that they know
not who God truly is.
And then there are puppeteers who do not
know God themselves.
And so allow the people to participate in
trifles while they march their way into hell.
But oh, my dear friend, if only I
could pull back the curtain, if only I
had hours with you tonight to take you
through every step of Scripture and show you
what God sees when He sees sin and
to show you the passionate, yea, even violent,
furious hatred of God that comes against sin.
It is so hard to preach on sin
unless you have spent several, several weeks preaching
on the attributes of God, unless you have
preached on the law.
Someone asked a preacher one time, he said,
why don't you preach on hell?
I never hear you preach on hell.
And he said, well, it's pretty much useless
to preach on hell.
Everybody believes in hell.
The problem is no one believes they're going
there.
So I preach on the law.
Oh, my dear friend, young people, the vileness
and the wretchedness of sin.
So many people today are appalled when I
speak of hell.
And yet if they truly understood the glory,
the beauty and the kindness and the love
of God, and they truly understood their own
vileness, they would quickly understand that hell is
a just place for the ungodly.
Do you realize, my dear friend, that there
is enough in you apart from Christ that
if it were not for the restraining grace
of God, you would make Hitler look like
a choir boy?
Why?
For all have sinned.
What a terrifying statement.
It leaves us dead.
It leaves us corralled.
It leaves us on the ground without any
hope whatsoever.
For all have sinned.
Now, when you're catechizing your children or reading
through the Westminster, you come to understand that
sin is lack of conformity to the law
of God.
And when we say that, that's an impersonal
thing, and it doesn't sound too bad.
Sin is breaking a rule.
It is not conforming to law.
And that's not such a terrible thing at
first until you understand that the law to
which you are not conforming is God's law.
And that to break God's law is to
dishonor deity, to lift your clenched fist in
the face of God and proclaim to Him
that you will not have Him to be
God over you.
And if you could, you would storm through
the gates of the throne room of God.
You would tackle God and slaughter Him.
That's what it means when the Bible says,
for all have sinned.
And that's why any type of good work
we think we could lift up to God
in order to make ourselves right with Him
is absolutely, well, not only preposterous, it's blasphemous.
He says, for all have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God.
Now what does this mean in the context
of Romans, the first three chapters?
I think it first of all would mean
this.
We did not esteem God to have any
worth whatsoever.
Although they knew God, they did not honor
Him as God.
And come to the point where even fighting
against Him, He's not even worth enough to
fight against.
Just simply ignore Him.
You say, well, those are pretty hard words.
No, they're pretty true words.
There is not a man, woman, or child
in this building tonight, including this preacher, who
has esteemed God as He ought to be
esteemed.
Who has shown gratitude to God as He
ought to see from His creature.
I mean, you are able to turn almost
anything, an inanimate object, a car, a house,
into an idol and lift it up above
God.
Give it more worth than God.
You're able to take clothing and give it
more worth than God.
You're able to take your own reputation, your
own time, everything, and make it of greater
worth than God.
You do it every day.
Here we were created for Him.
We were created by Him, but we were
created for Him, for Him, for Him.
We receive breath.
Every breath we receive comes from the Almighty,
and it is given to man only to
return it to Him in praise.
Every beat of our heart is given by
the sovereign decree of God so that our
hearts might beat for Him.
But as I was praying in the pastor's
office, Lord, this heart of mine, so prone
to wander, so prone to leave the God
I love, when we look at the human
race, the only thing I can say, if
I were to pick out one word, it
would be ingratitude.
That everything you are, every good and perfect
gift you've received, everything of pleasure, everything of
joy, everything that's ever been of any good
whatsoever in your life has come from Him.
Now, people always talk, theologians, talk about the
problem of evil.
If you're biblical, there is no problem.
The problem of evil, why do bad things
happen to good people?
That is not the question at all.
That is not the question.
Why do bad things happen to good people?
The problem, the philosophical problem within the context
of Scripture is why is there anything good
on this fallen world?
God should have left us nothing of joy,
nothing of beauty, nothing of peace, nothing of
life.
The question is, how can He still be
so gracious to a people that hates Him?
And all men are born haters of God
until they are regenerated by the power of
God, fallen short of the glory of God.
And where has that left us?
Where has that left us?
A hollow husk of a people.
One thing that I try to get across
and that I want to get across so
much to my sons is that sons, you
were made for Him.
And as Augustine said, your heart will be
restless.
Your heart will have no peace, yea, until
you find Him.
Isn't it amazing, let me speak to the
Christians for a moment that are here, isn't
it amazing that we are the wealthiest, most
protected Christians in the history of Christianity, with
more at our disposal than all the other
Christians put together down through the history of
the church.
And yet if you go into a Christian
bookstore, most of them, you will find out
that more than half of the volumes are
dedicated to fixing how empty we are.
Now isn't that a marvel?
And why is it that we are so
empty?
For the same reason that Jesus never was.
He said, I have food to eat that
you know not of, and that food is
to do the will of my Father who
sent me.
There is a real sense in which God
has placed eternity in your heart.
There is a real sense in which your
heart, there is this infinite hole in your
heart.
And if you know anything about mathematics, you
cannot fill, or philosophy, you cannot fill infinite
space with finite matter.
This world, as great as it is, all
its wealth, all its beauty, all its fame,
all its fortune, take the whole thing, rob
every other human being on the face of
the earth and take all of that and
put it in your heart and your heart
will still be empty.
And that is why so many people are
so miserable today.
And that is why so many people are
like the walking dead.
They breathe, they think, they speak about things
that they do not possess.
The difference between a secular philosopher and a
theologian is this.
The secular philosopher will constantly speak about beauty
and truth and life and peace and purpose
and meaning.
But for him, it is nothing more than
the writing of poetry.
It is nothing more than a dream.
He does not have it, nor can he
find it for anyone else.
The theologian says, yes, all these things exist,
but they exist in the Godhead.
They exist in deity.
They exist in God the Almighty, Creator of
the heavens and the earth.
For all have sinned and fallen short of
the glory of God.
Now this presents a most tremendous problem.
A most tremendous problem.
And I want to speak for just a
moment.
We're all aware of the movie, The Passion,
that has come out.
I have no qualms whatsoever with the film.
Many preachers and things have written me, asking
me my opinion, what should they do and
all sorts of things.
And most of them, I've responded this way.
I don't have a problem with Mel Gibson,
nor do I have a problem with his
film.
But I do have a problem with the
Southern Baptist preachers who are going to use
that thing in all the wrong ways.
You see, you take a look at that
film, which I yet have seen.
I'm afraid to see it.
I'm just afraid.
I don't know if I can bear it.
But when you see the physical sufferings of
Christ, what is not communicated by the preacher
in the modern day pulpit, is that is
a small reflection of the greater pain that
the Christ suffered.
We are going to see tonight that it
wasn't whips and thorns and crosses that were
the true pain of the cross.
And we're also going to see that it
wasn't those things alone that save us.
But we're going to see something much greater,
much more horrifying, behind what can be seen
with the eye.
It says, for all have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God.
Now, this presents a tremendous problem, and I'm
going to read a text to you.
He who justifies the wicked and he who
condemns the righteous, both of them alike are
an abomination to the Lord.
Now, I'm going to shorten this.
He who justifies the wicked is an abomination
to the Lord.
That's Proverbs 17, 15, one of the most
important verses in the Bible, because it explains
just about the full context of everything that's
going on in the Bible.
He who justifies the wicked is an abomination,
a hateful thing, a loathsome thing, in the
sight of God.
And that there, my friend, is the greatest
problem in the entire Bible.
When we go back to Romans 3, verse
24, after hearing in verse 23 that all
men are wicked, and wicked indeed, we come
to verse 24, and it says, being justified,
an action done to the wicked by God.
God justifies the wicked.
And yet we read in the book of
Proverbs, we read in Scripture, and Scripture cannot
be broken.
What do we read?
It is an abomination to the Lord to
justify the wicked.
And yet now in Romans we hear that
God is justifying the wicked.
What do we do with this passage?
This is what the entire Bible is speaking
about.
This is what the Gospel of Jesus Christ
is all about.
If God is just, He cannot pardon the
wicked.
And we are wicked.
Therefore, we are without hope.
See, in a land that knows nothing of
law, or the philosophy of law, or justice,
or righteousness, a corrupt people, children of evil
deeds, that's what we are.
Ignorant of greater, weightier matters, that's who we
are.
We cannot understand Scripture as it should be
understood.
That if God is the just judge of
all the earth, and if God must do
right, and He must be consistent with His
character, that's what it means to do right,
then God cannot forgive the wicked, but must
measure out to them the judgment that is
due them.
And the question of the entire Bible is,
how can God be just and at the
same time justify wicked men?
If you look in verse 26, you have
that.
So that He would be just and the
justifier of the wicked.
Now, let's look at this passage, being justified.
Everything, my dear friend, I want to come
down there and I just want to shake
you.
Every, if you study contemporary or comparative religious
studies, if you do comparative religious studies, the
different religions in the world, you'll find out
that there are really only two.
You'll find two truths actually.
First of all, you'll find out that every
real religion is setting out to answer one
question.
How can a man be right before God?
That right there ought to be proof to
an anthropologist or sociologist that there's something to
the Bible if everyone on the face of
the earth believes that they are wrong with
God.
And the question of all these religions out
in the world is, how can I be
made right or declared right with God?
How can it happen?
And that's what justified means.
Speaking about Christians, He says that they are
justified.
That means that the Christian who believes in
Jesus Christ is declared to be right with
God.
That God forensically or legally declares that believer
to be right with Him.
To be right.
Not wrong.
Not sinful.
Not out of balance.
Not out of turn.
Not in rebellion.
But right.
And again, I present the problem to you.
We're not right.
So how can a just God declare us
to be right?
Hold on to that question.
And He says, being justified as a gift.
Now I said you can say two things
about comparative religions.
First of all, that they're all seeking to
know how to be right with God.
But then you can say another thing.
When you study religions all around the world,
you'll come to the conclusion that there are
really only two religions.
There are really only two religions.
Christianity, a religion of grace.
True Christianity, a religion of grace.
And all the other religions have one thing
in common.
They all seek to be made right with
God through their own virtue, their own merit,
their own works.
All of them.
Without exception.
Take them all, put them all together.
You will find this to be true.
All the religions outside of genuine biblical historical
Christianity believe that they can somehow make themselves
right with God by their own virtue and
their own merits.
Which shows you, first of all, that their
greatest sin is idolatry.
Because they're calling something God that is not
God, because if they knew the true God,
they would know His holiness and understand their
sinfulness and realize that they could never gain
a right standing with God through their own
works.
But He says being justified, being declared right
with God, reconciled to God, at peace with
God.
How?
As a gift.
By His grace.
As a gift.
This is the same word that is found.
This is very important.
Listen to me.
Sometimes where I preach, someone will get up
and sing a song that's the eternal question,
I can't understand why God would love me.
And when they sing that song, I'm like
in the back going, Oh, pick me, I'll
tell you why.
If you're always wondering why God would love
you, what is it that God sees in
you that causes Him to love you?
Let me answer that question for you.
Absolutely nothing.
As a matter of fact, everything that God
sees in you, apart from His grace and
the work of Jesus Christ, would only bring
judgment and wrath against you.
You see, when the Bible says for all
have sinned, it doesn't mean that prior to
coming to Christ, you were a pretty good
person who made some mistakes or every once
in a while sinned or sinned every once
in a while.
That's not what it means.
It means that prior to coming to Jesus
Christ, the only thing you ever did with
every breath was sin against God.
And he goes on and he says, justified
as a gift.
Now, there is a passage that Jesus quotes
in the book of Psalms.
It says, the Gospel is quoted, and they
hated Him without a cause.
Scripture is fulfilled, they hated Me without a
cause.
Now let me ask you a question, Christian.
Does anyone, I mean, could anyone stand up
and say they have a right reason for
hating Jesus?
You could search the world over and over
and over again, and you will never find
a person who even has one reason for
hating Jesus.
And that's the same word that's used here
by the Apostle Paul.
Justified without cause.
He declared you right, and you gave Him
no reason whatsoever to do it.
But he not only says that, he says,
justified as a gift by His grace.
Now Paul has said something and iterated.
He's become redundant, it seems.
It's as though Paul is saying, you have
been declared right with God as a gift,
as a gift, as a gift, as a
gift, as a gift, as a gift, as
a gift, as a gift.
If we read in the book of Galatians,
and throughout the book of Romans, we understand
the book of Ephesians, he's always saying the
same thing.
He's always hammering the same truth home to
the people.
Your salvation is a gift by grace.
It's a gift by grace.
Now why does he have to do that?
Because men hate grace.
You say, what?
I've never heard of such a thing.
Grace is unmerited favor.
Grace is when God is kind to you
even when there's no reason for it.
Grace is when God treats you with favor
when you've done just the opposite and deserve
wrath.
Why would anyone hate that?
Why would anyone hate unmerited favor?
Because it is unmerited.
And if it is unmerited, it means that
in order to receive it, you have to
acknowledge what Romans 3.23 is saying.
You have to acknowledge in order to come
to Christ, you have to acknowledge that there
is absolutely nothing in you that could motivate
a holy God to be favorable to you.
And that if you are declared right with
Him, you are only declared right with Him
because of a working and a thing coming
out of Him that has nothing to do
with you.
Men do not want to humble themselves.
If I were a preacher of works, I
could have a church of 30 million people.
If I were a preacher of religion, I
could have a church as large as any
church in the world.
If I was a preacher of works, because
men love to hear that they're good enough
to get to heaven.
Men love to say that they have done
something in order to merit God's favor.
And then they don't stop there.
I mean, you give a sinful man an
inch, he'll take a mile to the point
where finally, he has placed his throne over
God and God has become his debtor.
That's why men hate grace.
That's why men hate the song, Nothing in
my hands I bring, Simply to the cross
I cling.
Well, surely there's some worth in me, isn't
there?
No!
And that's what men hate.
He says, being justified as a gift by
His grace, how can He do this?
How can God declare the wicked to be
right when they are not right?
God uses two words.
One of them is almost unspeakable.
It's not theatrics when I tell you that
I'm almost afraid to say this word.
Redemption.
We are a people who play marbles with
the diamonds of God.
We throw out words.
We speak them.
We yell them.
We scream them.
We sing them.
And oftentimes, we know not what we do.
I know that this is not exactly a
wonderful display of God's attributes.
I'm going to say something a bit human.
In a human way about God, which doesn't
really apply directly, but as an illustration, what
do you think would go through the mind
of God when He hears the word redemption?
A word that we read quickly.
A word that we just sing out thoughtlessly.
And yet, what would go through the mind
of God when He hears such a word?
Would it be His only begotten Son crucified
over a garbage dump outside of Jerusalem for
the sake of a bunch of people who
can't even begin to understand the cost?
How is it that we are declared right
with God?
What?
Because blood was spilt.
The blood of God's only begotten Son.
What a gift this Father has given unto
us.
I remember after my first boy was born,
whenever I thought and taught and studied on
the cross of Jesus Christ, my attention was
always given to the Son, to the Son,
to the Son.
And the sufferings of the Son.
I never thought much about the heart of
the Father until I had a son.
I would die a thousand deaths for my
boys.
I would do everything in my power to
defend them from harm.
I would rather be tortured with torture unspeakable
than to see harm befall them.
And as I was driving down the road
in my old truck, I began to think.
The Father and what He gave.
If I, being evil, and that's what Jesus
said, can love my boys with such a
passion, what is the love of the Father
toward His only begotten Son?
And yet to give Him up to be
crucified over a garbage dump, for His blood
to be spilt, so that wicked men who
hate God might be reconciled to Him.
Redemption, a price that is paid to bring
deliverance to a slave, to bring deliverance to
captives.
And that is what God has done.
The word redemption.
One of the things that seem to haunt
me is this.
I have been bought with a price.
Not with gold or silver or trinkets from
temples, but I have been bought with the
precious blood of the Lamb of God.
I am now not my own.
I am a prisoner of love.
Now we go farther, and He speaks about
this redemption.
And He says in verse 25, speaking about
His Son, whom God displayed publicly as a
propitiation.
Whom God displayed publicly.
God, as Martin Lloyd-Jones says, placarded Him,
ordained that He die in a most public
display for a purpose.
And what was that purpose?
That purpose was to reveal the true character
and nature of God and to vindicate that
character.
To demonstrate once and for all who God
truly is.
You see, you need to understand something.
When you talk about Christ dying for men,
you can say a hearty amen, but understand
that first of all, Christ died for God
and for God's glory and for God's revelation
and for God's vindication.
And you need to understand something.
Everything God has ever done, He has done
it for His Son.
And everything the Son has ever done, He
has done it for His Father.
We are beneficiaries, but we are not the
center of the universe whom God displayed publicly
as a propitiation.
A sacrifice that does what?
A sacrifice that takes sin away.
That removes guilt once and for all.
But more than that, a liberal will tell
you that.
Not only just taking guilt away, but satisfying
justice and appeasing the fierce, holy, violent wrath
of Almighty God.
That's what a propitiation is.
Now, let's get back to the great divine
dilemma, as we could say, that we saw
in the book of Proverbs 17, verse 15.
To justify the wicked is an abomination.
So how can God justify the wicked without
being an abomination?
The only one way, there is only one
way, through this propitiation, this sacrifice of God's
Son.
In ancient Castellano, in Spanish, in La Reina
Valera, which is an old translation that we
often use in South America, it's used in
Spain.
When the publican or the tax gatherer is
praying in the temple, he cries out, Se
propicio a mi.
Se, which means be.
Propicio, propitiation.
Propicio a mi.
Be propicio, to me.
The word means literally this, be merciful to
me.
Now you say, well, that's a wonderful thing,
and God is a quite merciful God.
No, there is a terrible theological and philosophical
problem here.
Let me explain it to you with a
vulgar illustration.
Let's go back to Valladolid in the 16th
century, Valladolid, España.
And the punishment for a slave at that
time, for stealing from his master, would be
death.
Instant death, no appeal, death.
So the master comes home one day and
he finds the slave stealing.
He grabs him by the back of the
neck and is dragging him to the gallows
because the law declares that the slave must
die.
That's the law.
And the slave, knowing he's going to the
gallows, falls down on his knees and cries
out, Se propicio a mi amo.
Be merciful to me, master.
You say, well, now it is up to
the master to decide whether to be merciful
or not.
No, there is something much deeper here that
we don't understand and we need to understand.
The law demands that he dies.
When the slave asks for mercy, he's asking
the master not to obey the law.
He's asking the master to look away from
the law and ignore righteousness and justice.
Let me give you another illustration.
Let's say that you go home tonight and
your entire family has been slaughtered on the
floor.
And you see the man who's done this
with the blood on his hands running through
the back door.
And you go through the front door and
you come around the house and you knock
him to the ground and you take him
to the police and the police take him
to the judge and the judge looks down
at him and says, I'm a loving judge.
I forgive you.
The first word that's going to come out
of your mouth, the very first words will
be, I demand justice.
This is not fair.
You are going to write congressmen and senators.
You are going to write the newspaper.
You're going to call up the radio and
television stations.
You're going to do all in your power.
You're going to cry out that there is
a judge on the bench who is far
more wicked than the criminals he allows to
go free.
A judge must do right.
He must do justice.
We demand such things from our own judges.
How much more the judge of all the
earth must he do right?
You see, God is holy and God is
just.
He cannot be inconsistent within himself.
He cannot turn away from his own justice
and just forgive the wicked.
I hear preachers sometimes saying, God could have
been just with us, but instead of being
just, He was loving.
They're saying that God was unjust.
That He was wicked.
That He became an abomination in the name
of love.
No, my dear friend.
And then there are others who say that
God must conform to the law.
God must carry out the law as though
there's a law higher than God.
No, that's not true either.
God cannot forgive the wicked just like that.
Not because there's some law over Him that's
higher, but because the law flows out of
His very nature.
God cannot be inconsistent in His own being.
He cannot say, I'll be loving today and
not just, or I'll be just today and
not loving.
God must be both just and loving.
And He is in our salvation.
For He sent His only begotten Son to
die in our place and pay the price
and become the just and the justifier of
those who have faith in Him.
Now there's something you need to understand about
this Son.
First of all, He is a man.
God became a man.
Wonder of wonder that Mary should give birth
to the One who created her.
Wonder of wonder that manna should take on
human form.
Wonder of wonders that the God of glory
should become a man.
And why does He need to become a
man?
It is man who has sinned.
It is man who must die.
The blood of bulls and goats will not
take away sin.
And so if we are to be saved,
a man must die in our place.
But that man must also be God.
And why is that?
There are several reasons.
First of all, salvation is of the Lord.
The Jehovah Witnesses, they do not understand what
they're doing when they say that Jesus Christ
is not God in the flesh.
Here's what they are saying.
That God created or made a creature, albeit
very special.
They say Jesus is nothing more than a
created being, a creature.
So God makes a creature, sends that creature
down to win for us salvation.
That creature becomes our Savior.
And salvation is no longer of the Lord.
God will have none of it.
All the work of salvation on behalf of
man is a work of God.
And God became man to do that work.
He was God.
Some other reasons possibly we could think about.
Who but God could withstand the wrath of
God?
Have you ever thought about that?
Before His anger, before His wrath, the mountains
melt.
But only God could go to a tree
and withstand His very wrath against our sin
and our crimes.
Another thing that's very interesting to think about.
In order for us to be saved, someone
has to lay down their life.
But here's something I want you to think
about.
And then college students always ask me this.
They say, well, how can one man dying
on a cross for a short period of
time, suffering the wrath of God, pay for
a multitude of men and save them from
an eternity in hell?
I love that question.
The answer is this.
Because that one man dying on that cross
is worth more than everyone else put together.
He is worth more than planets and stars
and angels and people and crickets and clowns
and dust and dirt and mountains and seas
and the monsters of the deep.
All that ever has been, all that ever
will be, every created thing flowing from the
fingers of God, put it all together on
the scale and put the Christ on the
other side and He outweighs them all in
value.
He outweighs them all.
Now, we need to speak about one thing.
Now, and it is this.
I was in a seminary in northern, it
was in Eastern Europe, last year.
A Germanic type of seminary.
All the volumes were in German.
I was kind of looking around.
I was teaching there and I had a
break and I was looking around to find
something I could read.
And there was a book on the cross
of Christ.
Now, if you have read as many books
as I have, you kind of learn to
open the thing up, go through it really
fast and you can find really quick what
the book is all about.
You just have to know where to look.
This is what that book said.
God looked down at the sufferings of His
Son on that cross that were being inflicted
upon Him by the hands of men.
And He counted that suffering as payment for
our sin.
That's heresy.
That, my friend, is heresy in the greatest
degree.
Or you'll hear preachers that will say, the
Father looked down from heaven and He saw
the suffering of His Son at the hands
of men and it was so vile and
so horrid that the Father, out of love,
turned away from His Son and could not
bear to see His suffering.
That is heresy, my friend, to the greatest
degree.
My dear friend, if you are saved here
tonight, you are not saved because the Romans
and Jews rejected Jesus.
You are not saved because they beat Him
with a cat of nine tails.
You are not saved because they nailed Him
to a rugged cross.
You are not saved because of what men
did to Jesus.
If you are saved, you are saved because
when He was on that cross, He bore
your sin and the Father in heaven crushed
Him under the weight of His own wrath.
That is the thing that saves us.
That is what saves us.
Just look for a moment at the cross.
Christ on the tree.
He cries out, My God, My God, why
have You forsaken Me?
Now notice, His theological, philosophical problem is not
My God, My God, why have the Romans
nailed Me to this tree?
Or why have the Jews turned their back
on Me?
That wasn't His problem.
He knew why men had done that.
Men hate God.
And men hate God because their deeds are
evil.
But Christ looks up and cries out, My
God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?
You say, well, what does that mean?
Just listen and I'll tell you.
When Jesus was quoting that text, when He
said that, He was quoting from the book
of Psalms.
And I believe also that when He quoted
those words, that the Pharisees who knew the
Psalms, that a terror came over them because
He was quoting the words of the suffering
servant of Yahweh.
Listen, you'll find meaning in Jesus' words from
the book of Psalms.
It starts out, My God, My God, why
have You forsaken Me?
Far from My deliverance are the words of
My groaning.
Now, first note, both in the Greek text,
in the New Testament, here in the Hebrew,
in the Old Testament, the word is forsaken.
Jesus Christ is looking up into Heaven and
saying that His Father has forsaken Him.
That His Father has abandoned Him.
It is not just something romantic in which
the Father looks down at His Son and
cannot bear to see the suffering and He
turns away because He loves Him.
No, the Bible says, Jesus Himself declares that
the Father, when Christ was on the cross,
forsook Him.
And He says, My God, My God, why
have You forsaken Me?
Far from My deliverance are the words of
My groaning.
O My God, I cry by day, but
You do not answer, and by night, but
I have no rest.
That's His complaint.
And then He gives an argument.
He says this, In You our fathers trusted.
They trusted and You delivered them.
To You they cried out and were delivered.
In You they trusted and were not disappointed.
His argument is this, There has never been
a time in the history of the covenant
people Israel that a righteous man cried out
to You and You did not answer.
But I, Your Christ, Your Messiah, Your Son,
I bleed on this tree and I cry
out to You and You have turned Your
face away from Me.
Why?
And then He answers His own question.
Verse 3, He says, Yet you are holy.
And in verse 6, But I am a
worm.
Christ had become the serpent in the wilderness,
the bearer of the iniquities of God's people.
All the guilt of our filth, all the
guilt of our crimes, all the guilt so
horrid and wretched and loathsome before a holy
God was placed upon the Christ, the Holy
One of God, the Trihagion, the Holy, Holy,
Holy.
There He is on a tree.
He had always known the Father's pleasure and
the Father had always known His love, but
now He is on a tree and He
has become the horrid thing.
He has become accursed.
Hear the Scriptures when it says this, Cursed
is every man who does not abide by
all the things written in the book of
the Law so as to perform them.
That's you.
But you don't understand what it means to
be cursed.
Do you know what it means to be
cursed before a holy God?
It means that you are so wretched, so
filthy, so disgusting, so loathsome before the holy
God and the holy inhabitants of heaven that
the last thing you will hear when you
take your first step into hell is all
of creation standing to its feet and applauding
God because He has rid the earth of
you.
And yet the Christ, the precious, holy Son
of God who knew no sin but became
sin for us, He took all our guilt
upon Himself and the Father turned away.
And all those little tracks of ours when
we talk about man is sinful and God
is holy and there is a great chasm
between the two, we have no idea what
we're saying.
It's not just some little painting in a
track, my dear friend.
A chasm so wide it cannot be crossed.
And the Christ bore our guilt and the
Father turned away.
You and I, even after walking with the
Lord 20, 30, 40 years, we've known His
presence and His power in our life.
The most horrid thing that could ever happen
to a man of God is for him
to wake up and not sense the presence
of Christ.
That is the most frightful thing.
I have heard from my mentors, I have
heard men much older than me warn me
and warn me and warn me and warn
me.
Son, the one thing you must fear, you
know the presence and the power of God
on your life.
Dread the day that you'll wake up and
it not be there because you will die.
You will crumble into the dust.
And I being evil and you being evil
would sense such disparity, losing the presence of
God, enough to drive a man insane.
What would I feel like right now if
last night I had committed adultery?
What would I feel like right now if
I had committed some heinous crime unknown to
all of you last night, unknown to my
wife?
Literally, I would have blown my brains out
with a gun.
It would have been all over for me.
Life, everything, gone.
And I being a wicked man can sense
the shame of such guilt.
Now imagine the Christ on that tree.
Holy, holy, holy, undefiled, pure.
And yet in one moment all the guilt
of God's people is heaped upon Him.
And instead of the sweet communion He had
known before eternity, His fellowship is broken with
His Father and He is left to die
alone.
Estranged of God and estranged of the people
of God.
He is like the scapegoat in the Old
Testament.
There were two of them, you know.
It was as though the sins of God's
people were imputed upon them and one goat
was sent out into the wilderness and the
other one was killed.
And the one was killed because the wages
of sin is death.
And the other one carried the guilt of
God's people out into the wilderness to wander
and stumble and die.
Forsaken of God and forsaken of man.
Yea, the writer of Hebrews says that He
suffered outside the gates of the city.
And not only that, I know I'm going
long, but this is an important thing.
I would question your salvation to want to
leave at a point like this.
And then you go to the garden and
you find another telling tale about the cross.
Here we have Christ the man weeping in
a garden in anguish so deep that it
brings forth blood.
A terror upon Him like no man has
ever known.
And He cries out, And these silly little
boy preachers who sit there and go, What
was the cup?
The cup was the cross.
Jesus did not want to go to the
cross.
The nails, the whips.
Is our Christ and our Savior less than
His disciples?
Can it be that so many disciples, some
say over 50 million in the last 2
,000 years, have gone to crosses, have been
set aflame, and they did so willingly, even
singing hymns?
Boldly and without fear, they played the man.
In the name of Christ, they died horrible
deaths.
And they did so with joy.
Are you going to tell me that their
leader, their captain, their Savior cannot face the
same trial except with great fear and trembling
and anguish?
My dear friend, it was not a cross
that so terrified the Christ and brought Him
to anguish.
It was not puny little nails.
It was not the whip of a man.
It was not the weight of a beam.
What did He dread?
Something no man could bear.
That He would go to that cross and
carry on His back our filth.
Filth that sometimes we drink down like water.
Filth that we sometimes want to bathe in.
And yet so wretched and horrid to the
Christ.
Why did He not want to go there?
Why did He cry for that cup to
pass?
Because He knew that bearing the guilt of
His people, He would be forsaken of His
Father.
He would be forsaken of His Father.
And then finally, why?
Why?
I want you
to listen.
For thus says the Lord, the God of
Israel, He says to me, Take this cup
of the wine of wrath from My hand
and cause all the nations to whom I
send you to drink it.
They will drink and stagger and go mad.
What was in the cup?
I was teaching at a classical Renaissance school
in St. Louis a while back.
And I asked that question.
A little eight-year-old girl stood up
and she said, Sir, the wrath of God
was in the cup.
And I said, Hear out of the mouth
of babes a child who knows more than
many theologians, that all the holy hatred of
God against our vile evil would come pouring
down on the head of the Christ and
crush Him.
All the judgment of God that you should
drink down, that I should drink down, it
was poured upon the head of the Christ.
I was on an airplane two weeks ago
and a young man asked me, we were
talking back and forth, a very secular young
man, and he said, Well, then who did
kill?
Was it the Jews?
Who killed Jesus?
And I said, God killed Jesus.
He said, I've never heard such a thing.
I said, Most church men haven't either.
Have you never read in Isaiah 53, And
it pleased the Lord to crush Him.
It pleased the Lord to crush Him.
You say, and you say rightly, that the
love of God cannot be described.
Oh, it goes beyond measure in intensity, in
purity.
It goes beyond measure.
Who can describe the love of God?
Well, say the same for His wrath.
And all the wrath of God, the fury,
the anger, the hatred of God against evil
came crashing down on the head of His
own Son.
Someone, in order for God to justify the
wicked, someone had to die in the law
place of the wicked condemned.
Someone had to take their guilt upon Himself
in that someone had to be God in
the flesh.
And He took that guilt upon Himself.
And then the estrangement that you and I
should experience in hell throughout all eternity, the
Christ had to suffer.
And then all the fierce and furious wrath
of a holy God against the wickedness of
His people had to come crushing down on
His head.
And He died.
And our text says, What does this do?
It does this.
This was to demonstrate His righteousness, God's righteousness.
It was to prove that God really is
righteous.
Well, why would God need to do that?
Why would God need to give such an
example that He's truly righteous?
And here's the reason.
Because in the forbearance of God, He passed
over sins previously committed.
What does that mean?
If God is just, Adam should have died
immediately.
If God is just, He should have flooded
the earth and flooded Noah with it.
If God is just, He should have never
made a friendship with Abraham.
If God is just, He should never call
David His son.
Because all of them deserve condemnation.
How is it that God could forgive them
and forbear their sin?
How is it that God could save Abraham,
save Noah, save David, and all the Old
Testament saints?
And how is it that God can save
you and declare you to be right with
Him only because 2,000 years ago the
Lamb of God shed His blood for them
all?
Shed His blood for them all?
Do you want to know, saint, how much
you've been forgiven?
Look at the cross of Christ.
You want to know, sinner, how much God
hates sin?
When His own Son bore sin, God crushed
Him.
God crushed Him.
What do you think He'll do to you?
I'll finish by saying that when Christ died,
He vindicated God.
He proved once and for all that God
is just and sin must be dealt with
to come into His presence.
And when God resurrected His Son, He vindicated
Him.
We're going to close by just...
and I thank you for your patience.
We're going to close just...
There's a psalm that the patriarchs of the
first five centuries used quite frequently to describe
something of the resurrection and the ascension of
Christ.
It's always been dear to me.
The psalm starts out by saying, Who may
ascend to the hill of the Lord and
who may stand in His holy place?
And the answer is this, He who has
clean hands and a pure heart, does anyone
here qualify?
No.
Who has not lifted up his soul to
falsehood and is not sworn deceitfully, is there
anyone here who qualifies?
No.
Who can ascend?
Of all the men on the earth, can
one of them, the best of them, ascend
up to heaven and stand in our place
as our mediator?
Is there one among us that can be
the captain of our host?
Is there one among us who can lead
us into glory?
Is there one among us who qualifies?
That was Job's question.
Oh, that there was a daisman, that there
was a mediator, that there was someone who
could lay His hand upon us both.
Christ, the man, risen from the dead.
And He ascends up into glory.
And He comes to the gates of heaven,
the doors of the abode of God.
And He says this, Lift up your heads,
O gates, and be lifted up, O ancient
doors, that the King of glory may come
in.
Can you imagine the response on the inside
of those doors?
Who is this that cries out to these
doors?
No one has ever spoken this way to
these doors before.
What man on earth would dare lay His
hand to the latch?
Who thinks they have the right?
And they say, Who is this King of
glory?
And the answer comes back from the mouth
of the Christ.
It is I, the Lord, strong and mighty.
It is the Lord, mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O gates, and lift
them up, O ancient doors, that the King
of glory may come in.
And those doors, for the first time, those
doors that shut me out, those doors that
shut you out, those doors that cry out
to you mockingly saying, You shall not pass.
You shall not enter here.
Those doors are open wide, and there stands
the Christ in all His glory.
Oh, what I would have given to be
an angel on that day.
You see, they're not like us.
They were made, when they opened their eyes,
they looked into His face.
And there He stands.
The Lord of glory has returned.
Can you imagine Him walking up to the
throne of God and sitting down?
His Father looking over and saying, Son, it
is finished.
Father, it is finished.
Indeed, the price has been paid.
Oh, take the royal diadem and crown Him
with many crowns, the Lamb upon the throne.
This is your Lord, Israel.
This is your glory, church.
This is your hope, that man who stands
there, not a man, but the man, God's
man, in God's presence for us.
And He has called upon us to repent,
and not to treat repentance as something you
did to initiate your Christian life.
He calls upon us to repent and to
continue repenting, to continue acknowledging our need, to
continue, and to continue, and to continue, and
to continue clinging to Him.
Clinging to Him.
And dear saints, not just clinging to Him,
but coming to know Him.
I have set it upon myself to know
the Christ and His cross.
I know very little about the Second Coming,
eschatology, and all sorts of things such as
that.
I don't have time.
We are to grow to know Him and
know Him.
Why?
So that we might be like Him.
And so that we might cling to Him
and rejoice in Him, and worship Him, and
worship Him, and worship Him.
The more you know of Christ, the more
you must love Him.
The more you must love Him.
If you're here tonight and you consider yourself
to be an upright and good man, then
there's nothing here for you tonight.
This is no place for you.
There is a place for you.
And it was created for the devil and
his angels.
But if you're sitting here tonight and you
have seen the vileness of your heart, and
you are crying out, you are wondering, is
there any hope for a sinner like me?
This is your place.
Christ died in your place, sir, ma'am,
boy, girl.
Christ died in your place.
It is finished.
He has paid the price.
Come.
You say, what must I do to be
saved?
Throw yourself down upon the Christ.
Repent of trusting in your own goodness.
Repent of trusting in your works and everything
else, and trust in Christ, and Christ alone,
and you shall be saved.
And if you're a church member here, a
saved one, that is, how can you not
love Him?
They will mourn for Him as one who
mourns for an only Son.
Everyone says, Brother Paul, go see the Passion.
I suppose I will when I get enough
courage.
But would you think it strange if I
did not want to see the death of
my own son?
Would you think it strange if I told
you I was afraid to go watch a
video of the death of my brother?
Then I must be strong and I must
pray much before I go see such a
thing that even attempts to portray the death
of my Lord.
How will I be able to hold up?
How can I hold up when I read
His Word and I understand everything He's done
for this blind, wretched beggar that I am?
Dust that breathes holy breath.
Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing my
great Redeemer's praise.
Pastor.
Many preachers and things have written me asking
me my opinion, what should they do and
all sorts of things.
And most of them, I've responded this way.
I don't have a problem with Mel Gibson,
nor do I have a problem with his
film.
But I do have a problem with the
Southern Baptist preachers who are going to use
that thing in all the wrong ways.
You see, you take a look at that
film which I yet have seen.
I'm afraid to see it.
I'm just afraid.
I don't know if I can bear it.
But when you see the physical sufferings of
Christ, what is not communicated by the preacher
in the modern day pulpit is that is
a small reflection of the greater pain that
the Christ suffered.
We are going to see tonight that it
wasn't whips and thorns and crosses that were
the true pain of the cross.
And we're also going to see that it
wasn't those things alone that saved us.
But we're going to see something much greater,
much more horrifying behind what can be seen
with the eye.
It says, for all have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God.
Now this presents a tremendous problem.
I'm going to read a text to you.
He who justifies the wicked.