Let's open up our Bibles to Romans chapter
three, Romans
chapter three, verse twenty three.
For all have sinned and fall short of
the glory of God being justified as a
gift by his grace through the redemption which
is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly
as a propitiation in his blood through faith.
This was to demonstrate his righteousness because in
the forbearance of God, he passed over the
sins previously committed.
For the demonstration, I say, of his righteousness
at the present time so that he would
be just and the justifier of the one
who has faith in Jesus.
Where then is boasting it is excluded by
what kind of law of works?
No, but by a law of faith.
Let's pray.
Father, we come before you.
In the name of your son.
We are so needy.
Of grace and mercy.
Our time of need is every moment.
We need the every hour.
Father, if the accuser were to come against
us, we could not stand on our own.
And so we praise you, Lord, that we
do not have to.
That our elder brother has triumphed.
And it's not a shame to call us
brothers.
We pray that tonight that he would get
glory for himself.
That his word be preached.
And that the Holy Spirit may work among
men.
Changing hearts.
And planting greater ideas.
Greater thoughts about God.
Filling.
Men with the Holy Spirit.
And leading them to a victorious life.
To triumph over sin.
To resist the devil and the world.
To be an instrument of righteousness.
God, help us.
We will be helped.
In Jesus name.
Amen.
I have read a passage that I think
if our hearts were right.
It would lead us to weeping.
With joy.
With praise, with adoration.
In these simple verses, you have heard things
that scribes and kings and teachers and prophets
long to hear would have died a thousand
deaths to hear.
And throughout church history, some of the greatest
preachers who ever walked on the face of
the earth considered this passage to be the
greatest passage in all the Bible.
Spurgeon, Martin Lloyd-Jones referred to this as
the Acropolis, the fortified city of the Christian
faith.
If I had to lose all the scriptures
except one portion, I would choose to keep
this portion for myself.
There is enough truth here to lead us
through a thousand eternities, and even after all
those eternities are done, we would still not
comprehend all the glory revealed in this passage.
That is the gospel.
I'm amazed at men that are so amazed
at things about the second coming and are
so filled with desire to know every nut
and bolt of when Christ will come back
and exactly how he will do it.
But I can assure you this, you will
know absolutely everything about the second coming on
the day it occurs.
But you will spend a thousand eternities in
glory and not even begin to comprehend the
glory of God in the gospel of Jesus
Christ.
It is the message above them all.
I'm amazed at Charles Spurgeon, considered the prince
of preachers, and I would consider him to
be the prince of all preachers.
And yet when you look at the way
he preached, he broke every rule that we
have today on correct expository preaching.
And really, the man only had one theme.
I mean, if you preach the same message
all the time, you're bound to get good
at it.
He had one theme and it was Christ
crucified and resurrected from the dead, every passage
he took, he made a beeline for the
cross.
Now, let's look at this passage for all
have sinned.
If I could summon an angel to pull
back the hood from your face, the thing
that blinds you to the reality of this
passage, it would have a tremendous effect on
you.
If you were a believer to understand these
simple words, all have sinned would cause you
to have such an appreciation of the cross
of Christ.
You would be beside yourself so full of
joy that it might slaughter your heart.
It would be too big a joy to
fit within the realm of your human body.
And if you as a sinner and without
Christ.
Could understand what it means, this accusation that
all have sinned, if you caught a glimpse
of the holiness of God.
It would kill you with fear.
To know that you have rebelled against this
glorious God.
You see, one of the reasons why men
do not fear sin is because they do
not know God.
And one of the reasons men do not
know God is because very few people are
preaching about him.
Really preaching about him, if God, as he
appears in Scripture, were to be preached in
most churches.
Inside of a week, the church would be
split and lose half its members, you would
hear people running out of the church saying,
I don't agree with that, that's not my
God, I could never love a God like
that.
And what they're simply saying is this, the
God I have is a God I made
with my own mind, a figment of my
imagination, I made him and I love what
I've made.
But if we truly had a glimpse of
God and if we truly were not in
Christ and did not have the assurance of
salvation, we would tremble to the point of
death to know that we have sinned against
one so glorious.
All have sin, what a terrible thing, a
heinous crime deserving of an eternal hell.
So many people often wonder, why is hell
eternal?
It just doesn't seem just that men should
be punished for eternity.
The punishment is immense because of the greatness
of the one against whom they sin.
And a God of infinite goodness, of infinite
worth to sin against him demands a punishment
of infinite duration.
All have sinned, it's as though God stood
there on the day of creation and he
commanded planets to put themselves in a certain
order and they all obeyed him.
He commanded stars to spread them out, spread
themselves out in the sky as he had
ordained, and they all bowed and worshipped.
He told mountains to be lifted up and
they obeyed, he told valleys to be cast
down and they did so, he told the
brave sea, you will come to this point
and you will go no further.
And it obeyed.
And then he looks at you and says,
come and you go, no.
All have sinned.
The heinous nature of our sin is much
more than a deed.
Men sin because men are sinners, born so
by nature, an evil brood born in sin,
conceived in sin, coming out in sin, walking
in sin.
And hating God from the moment they draw
their first breath.
That's how the Bible describes men again, I
hear so many people say, well, no, I've
loved God all my life and again, no,
you loved a figment of your own imagination.
You made a God and fell in love
with what you made.
Most people in churches today have to understand
that that Sunday morning is the greatest hour
of idolatry in the week, because most of
the people that are in there worshiping don't
even know what they're worshiping or they're worshiping
a God.
That's nothing more than a figment of their
own imagination.
And if someone were to begin to expound
God from the scriptures, they'd be angry.
Just think of all those silly TV preachers,
all the ones that get all the great
crowds.
How many times do they do a conference?
How many times do they do a crusade
on the attributes of God?
They can't touch that sacred pole.
They have nothing to do with such preaching,
they preach about frivolous, stupid things for carnal
people.
They preach about money and wealth and prosperity
and health because the people who listen to
them do not want God, they want the
very things the men are espousing all have
sin.
How heinous is your sin?
Some of you reject Christ, want nothing to
do with Christ, how heinous is your sin?
Well, let me share with you.
The last thing you will hear when you
take your first step into hell is all
of creation standing to its feet and worshiping
God because he has rid the earth of
you.
That's how heinous your sin is before a
holy God.
All have sinned.
You say that doesn't bother me, then be
terrified.
Could it be that even now he's turned
you over and there's no hope for you
all have sinned.
And fall short of the glory, what does
that mean to fall short of the glory
of God?
Since most of Christianity in America today is
wrapped around man and he finds himself plopped
in the center of it.
It means that God had a wonderful purpose
for you.
But you didn't meet up to that wonderful
purpose that he had for you, and God's
doing his best to get you back there,
because the most important thing is that you
have purpose.
That's not what this passage teaches.
Falling short of the glory of God has
to be interpreted in light of the context,
Romans one, that although they knew God, they
did not glorify him as God nor give
thanks.
You were made not for you, you were
made not for your purpose, you were made
for him.
You were made for him, and as Augustine
said, you will be restless until you find
him.
Or he allows himself to be found by
you.
You were made for him, your heart beats
only for him, you are given breath only
to praise him.
That's why your sin is so vile.
You suck down the breath God gives you,
you take that beating heart and with it
do all manner of corruption and think not
that it is God who gives you life.
You take all of his goodness as though
it were your own spoil and like a
pirate, you run away with it.
And for that, you will die in hell,
you say, oh, my goodness, I've never heard
anything like this.
If you'd lived 100 years ago, you would
have heard it all the time.
All have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God.
This falling short of the glory of God
is also a good word for the believer.
In what sense do you realize that American
Christians are the richest, wealthiest.
Most protected.
Group of Christians that have ever walked on
this planet, and yet you go into all
those silly little bookstores of ours and 75
percent of all the books that are there
are written about how empty we are.
Why are we empty, Christians were empty for
the same reason Jesus never was, he said,
I have food to eat that, you know,
not of my food is to do the
will of him who sent me.
Why are we empty?
Because we're all about self and our self
is not very large.
It's not even big enough to fill us.
How are you filled?
You're filled with him.
By thinking great thoughts of him, by crying
out for him, by doing his will.
His kingdom, his name be sanctified.
Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us,
but unto thee be the glory for all
have sinned and fall short of the glory
of God.
Now, let's go on speaking about Christians now.
He says this being justified.
What an amazing thing.
Being justified, some preachers are fond of saying
being justified means just as if I'd never
sinned.
No, that's not what it means at all.
Being justified.
Some people in marginal Christianity have said that
being justified means that the moment you believe
in Jesus Christ, he makes you righteous, he
infuses you with a with a power so
that you can do righteous deeds before him.
No, that's not what it means.
To be justified before God is a legal
declaration.
It is a forensic term that the moment
a man.
Even though he be a mighty sinner, the
moment a man regenerated by the Holy Spirit
repents of his sins and believes the gospel,
he is declared before the throne of God
to be right, justified.
Justified.
And he goes on being justified as a
gift by his grace.
Now, this is rather redundant, it's though he's
saying the same thing twice.
Being justified as a gift, I'm sure you're
familiar with the passage that says they hated
him without a cause.
The same word is used here as a
gift, and what it means is this.
They hated Jesus without a cause.
Did Jesus Christ ever give anyone a cause
to hate him?
Did he ever sin against someone?
Did he ever make someone stumble?
Did he ever be was he ever abusive
with someone?
Never.
He never gave a person a cause to
hate him in the same way this passage
is teaching.
God justified you without a cause.
You never gave God a reason to declare
you right with him.
Never, never.
Let me even go further, you never gave
God a reason to save you.
One of the most difficult theological questions to
answer is, why does God save men?
You say, well, that's easy, what's difficult about
that?
God saves men because he loves them.
But you've just moved the question back one
step.
Now, here's the next question, why would a
holy, righteous God love evil men?
You said, well, I don't see the problem.
Well, let me set it out for you.
Let's say that they interviewed a man on
television and he said that he loved Hitler.
What would you think about the man?
You'd think that he was just as much
a monster as Hitler.
Goodness cannot love evil.
Evil loves evil.
If someone says that Hitler's just all right
with them and they love Hitler and they
appreciate Hitler and they would do ever what
they could for Hitler, it means that in
their own nature, they're just like Hitler.
So how can a God who is righteous
by nature love?
A wicked man, he does so without cause
of man.
When the question is asked, why does God
love men?
He answers with the tauntology.
He answers by saying this, I loved you
because I loved you.
God loves because he is love and God
expresses that love to demonstrate his glory on
the earth and in heaven.
I thought for a while that God must
surely have a sense of humor because it
seemed like every time I got up to
preach, some lady would come up and sing
a special didn't matter what church I was
in, would sing a special.
It would always ask the question, oh, God,
what did you see in me that you
loved me so much?
And I would be like a schoolboy in
the back of the class with my hand
raised.
Oh, pick me, I'll tell you.
And I'd go up to the platform not
wanting to crush her light.
But having to set things straight, God saw
nothing in you.
To love you.
God loved you because God is love.
And he elected to love you to demonstrate
his glory.
Oh, God, I'm so glad you never gave
up on me.
He never gave up on you because he
never put any confidence in you to start
off with justify.
He declared us right without a cause.
Now.
Let's just look for a moment, let's just
do some comparative studies on religion, take the
three major religions in our world today and
see the extreme difference between the three.
Let's say that we have an a Muslim
Orthodox Jew and a true Christian.
I have to say true Christian in the
United States because there's so many false ones
running around.
You come, the reporter comes to this this
Muslim and says, sir, if you died right
now, where would you go?
And he says, I would go to paradise.
And why is that?
I'm a righteous man.
I've read the Koran, I've obeyed the Koran.
I've given alms, I've made the holy pilgrimages,
I pray every day, I am a righteous
man, I should go to heaven.
OK, reporter understands that clearly, there's a logic
to that.
So he asked the Orthodox Jew, sir, if
you died right now, where would you go?
I would go to paradise.
Why?
Because I love the law of God and
I've walked in the way of the righteous.
I am a just man.
Reporter says, I understand that comes to the
Christian says, sir, if you died right now,
where would you go?
Christian says, heaven.
Well, sir, what's your reason?
In sin was I born.
And in sin did my mother conceive me.
I have gone astray since my mother's womb.
I have broken every commandment that God has
ever given.
I deserve the greatest of punishments for offending
my God.
And the reporter stops him and says, sir,
hold it.
The other two men, I quite understand there's
a logic to what they're saying.
I don't understand you.
These men are going to go to heaven
based upon their own virtue and their merit.
How are you going to go to heaven?
And the Christian smiles and say, I go
there upon the virtue and the merit of
another Jesus Christ, my Lord.
This is being justified as a gift.
By his grace, salvation is authored by grace,
grace is the source of salvation.
If you are saved, you are saved only
by grace, God's unmerited favor.
Sir.
If it was point ninety nine percent, God.
Point one percent, you'd be in hell.
It's amazing to me that.
So many times I'll address people who say
they are believers in Jesus Christ, but as
I press with Scripture upon them, eventually they
begin defending themselves by all the goodness that
they have done.
But the Christian walks from that as far
as he can get, claims no merit at
all and looks only to Jesus Christ, they
say, Brother Paul, then you are validating all
the Christian testimony here in this country where
people are constantly saying they're believers and yet
they live in wickedness.
You're saying that's OK.
Not at all.
Salvation is only by grace.
Salvation is only by faith.
Salvation is a work of God.
But salvation is not just justification.
It is also regeneration where God changes the
heart of the one who has believed and
that one who has believed becomes a new
creature and new creatures do new things.
Now, it is being justified as a gift
by his grace through the redemption.
I don't remember the Puritans name, but it
was said that there was one Puritan divine
that was so given over to the things
of God that he believed that there were
certain words that when they were spoken.
A man ought to be silent.
And his lip ought to tremble, if that's
true.
This is one such word.
Redemption to pay a price to purchase a
captive.
Or a slave and what price was paid,
not the silver and gold.
Of all the world didn't rip up.
The roads in heaven and deposit it in
someone's account, the price that was paid was
the blood of God's own son.
This ought to be the controlling, the one
great controlling factor in your life.
All morality and ethics should spring from this
one great truth.
The son of God shed his blood for
me.
If not, it is idolatry and it is
twisted.
Why do you love your wife?
Because Jesus Christ shed his blood for me.
Why do you serve your brother?
Because Jesus Christ shed his blood for me.
Why do you walk in the way of
the righteous?
Even when there is persecution, because all who
desire to live godly in this age will
suffer persecution because Jesus Christ shed his blood
for me.
Why should you come to Christ?
Because he shed his blood.
It's the one thing that controls us.
That consumes us, that constrains us.
We could say this, that the Christian, the
wise Christian lives between two days.
The day when Christ hung before men and
shed his blood and the day when all
men will stand before Christ, those days ought
to control us.
Our thoughts, our deeds.
I'm always hearing we ought to live for
eternity, and that is true, but that is
secondary, we ought to live for Christ.
And for what he has done.
Paul, the apostle, called himself a prisoner.
In chains.
For Christ, and yes, he did bear physical
chains, but I think that behind those words,
he meant something much deeper.
When the reality of the death of Christ,
the death of the Messiah on his behalf,
came to him through the gracious working of
the Holy Spirit and the preaching of the
gospel, he became captured once and for all,
his entire life controlled by one thought.
He shed his own blood for my soul.
Paul.
That is why much of the preaching in
America today absolutely disgusts me, I loathe it.
Come to Jesus, you'll fix your marriage.
And if he doesn't, you're not going to
come.
Come to Jesus, he'll balance your checkbook.
Come to Jesus, he'll give you self-esteem.
Come to Jesus, he'll buy you a new
car.
Come to Jesus, you'll have nice friends.
Now, come to Jesus because he's worthy, even
if it costs you your life, come to
Jesus.
Old Leonard Ravenhill used to say.
God promises you two things.
When you come to Christ, eternal life and
a cross.
Do you need more?
Is salvation no longer enough to motivate a
man to come to Christ?
Escaping the judgment of hell is no longer
enough.
The blood of Jesus Christ is no longer
enough.
I know of a college student years ago
who was quite quite the man about campus.
One day heard the gospel and he went
from being the man about campus to some
fool standing where the students would walk, handing
out tracts and telling people to repent and
believe.
And some of his friends grabbed him one
day and they pulled him off to the
side and they said, don't you understand?
You're ruining your reputation.
What are you doing?
Everyone thinks you're out of your mind.
And he asked them one question, he said,
did Jesus die for me?
And they said, well, of course we know
that we're Christians, too.
What else can I do?
He asked them, what else can I do?
My life is now gone.
He shed his blood for me.
I no longer have a will.
I no longer have a way.
I no longer belong to me.
I've been bought with a price, the power
of simply understanding redemption.
And that's why it so angers me.
When the gospel is treated as Christianity 101,
the little tiny baby truth that you learn
and quickly grasp and then march on to
greater truths, there are no greater truths.
There is enough motivation to carry you through
eternity in the small word redemption.
If you understand it correctly, it says through
the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.
Paul tells us about that in the book
of Ephesians, doesn't he?
He runs wild with the longest sentence in
the world.
Ephesians chapter one, he goes on and on
and on over and over in Christ, in
him, in the beloved.
I was preaching on that one evening and
a young man walked up to me after
the service and he goes, you're right, Brother
Paul, Jesus is all we need.
I said, young man, Jesus is all we
have outside of him.
We have nothing.
If we are not in Christ, we are
in Adam, you see, the Christian, only the
man, not Christian, but man can only walk
in two spheres.
There are two spheres laid out in the
Bible everywhere, two opposing spheres.
You're in Adam or you're in Christ.
You're in condemnation or you justify you're in
death or you're in life, you're in the
flesh or you're in the spirit.
There's only two realms, I pray to God
that you be in the one that matters
in Christ.
I so love the Apostle John because he
identifies himself not as the one who loved
Jesus.
But as the one who Jesus loved in
him, in him, no boast.
No plea.
We have only one thing.
I am found in him and I am
found in him by his own doing so
that not even of my faith I can
boast, not even of my repentance, for it
is a gift of God.
Can I boast it's all him, every bit
of it from A to C, from the
first stitch to the last, it's only Christ.
He goes on, whom God displayed publicly as
a propitiation.
Whom God displayed publicly, God could have put
away sin in a corner.
But he chose the central city on the
face of the earth, the most religious place
in the world, and at the crossroads he
saw to it that his son was hung
on a tree for all the world to
see, as Martin Lloyd Jones used to say,
placarded him.
You can't drive through Las Vegas without seeing
the filth placard on billboards.
God placarded his son, he displayed him publicly
for all the world to see.
And why is that for us, for us?
Yes, for us.
But for more than us.
He placard in there for God, because through
the cross, let me just put it this
way and we'll explain it later, did Christ
die for men?
Most certainly.
But I think principally you can say this,
Christ died for God.
Did Christ die to justify men?
Most definitely.
But above that, he died to vindicate God.
You see, we always think that everything's about
us, don't we?
You mean it's not?
Christ loves men.
Christ died for men.
But principle in all his endeavors was God.
So God displayed him publicly.
Why?
To reveal something through the cross.
And we're going to see in a little
while what that is.
Whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation, propitiation
other than the names of God.
Without a doubt, the most important word in
the entire Bible, can you define it?
You can't even understand the gospel apart from
this word.
Do you know what it means?
For so many years in different translations, this
word has been taken out of the book.
Because it says some things carnal men do
not want to hear.
Remember several years ago, preaching in Detroit and
had the privilege, I was preaching and Vernon
Hyam was there, one of the great saints
of old.
And after I got through preaching, he walked
up in tears, running down his cheeks and
he had his Bible open and he said,
we got the word back in the book.
And he was talking about a certain translation
that had taken propitiation out and replaced it
with another term.
But he said, finally, they put it back.
That word propitiation, what does it mean?
We have a word in Spanish, an ancient
Castiano propitio.
And says, go something like this, if, let's
say, a slave speaks to his master and
says, I said propitio, I mean.
Master, be propitious to me, be merciful to
me.
A propitiation is a sacrifice that makes it
possible.
For a just God to justify wicked men,
it is a sacrifice by which the justice
of God is satisfied and the wrath of
God is appeased.
And it makes it possible for that God.
To forgive.
To declare right, wicked men.
Now, I want us to go for just
a moment to the book of Proverbs, just
for a moment.
Chapter 17, I'll show you the greatest problem
in all the Bible, Proverbs chapter 17, verse
15.
He who justifies the wicked and he who
condemns the righteous, both of them alike are
an abomination to the Lord.
Now, let's just put both ends together on
this.
He who justifies the wicked is an abomination
to the Lord.
He who justifies the wicked is an abomination
to the Lord.
What is an abomination?
It's about the worst thing you can be.
It goes beyond description in language.
Anyone who justifies wicked men is an abomination
to God.
Do any of you sense the problem?
I have just stood here for 15 or
20 minutes explaining to you how God justified
wicked men.
And yet the same God says anyone who
justifies wicked men is an abomination to God.
Here is the divine dilemma.
The greatest problem in all of Scripture is
this.
If God is just, he cannot forgive you.
This is what the gospel is all about.
And yet I travel all over the world
and people look at me with jaws dropped
saying they've never heard such a thing before.
Yet this is the gospel.
The great problem is this.
A just God cannot forgive wicked men.
Let me give an example that I use
all the time.
If you were to go home tonight.
And find your entire family slaughtered on the
floor and the murder standing over their bodies.
And by your own strength and the adrenaline
flowing through your veins, you grab the man
with blood on his hands, you throw him
to the floor, you tie him up and
you call the police.
The police come and take him off to
the jail.
In the jail, he is brought out after
a few days and brought before the judge.
And the judge looks down at this man
who slaughtered your entire family and says, I'm
a very loving judge.
I declare you pardoned.
You're free.
What would you do?
You would scream out, I demand justice.
You would write the newspapers, you would be
on television.
You'd be writing letters to congressmen and senators
and presidents and everyone who would listen to
you.
You would say that there is a judge
on the bench who is more vile and
more corrupt than the men he sets free.
Isn't it amazing you demand such righteousness and
justice from your own earthly judges?
And yet you think that the judge of
all the earth, the one true judge, the
only truly righteous judge, can just simply forgive
men?
That's the greatest problem of all of Scripture.
How can God be just and justify wicked
men?
Now, I want us to be careful here,
because sometimes it comes out in literature and
in preaching in a way that it should
not come out.
There is not some principle of justice higher
than God that he has to submit to.
I've heard people say there's a principle of
justice that even God can't violate.
He must follow that rule.
He must appease justice.
He must satisfy it before he can forgive.
That's nonsense.
The justice that God must satisfy is his
own.
His own nature, his own character.
You see, that's why we understand so little
about the gospel, because we understand so little
about the nature of God, because so little
is preached about it.
The gospel begins not with God loves you
and has a wonderful plan for your life.
It begins with who God is.
He is just.
And how can a just God forgive?
Pardon, declare righteous, wicked men.
There's only one way justice, God's own justice
must first be satisfied and his wrath must
be appeased.
Now, let's talk about wrath for a moment.
If I had a dime for every time
I heard an evangelist, especially on TV, say,
now, the first thing I want you to
know is God's not an angry God.
Well, the first thing I want you to
know is God is an angry God.
The Bible says he's angry every day.
I want to talk to you for just
a moment.
About both the anger and the hatred of
God.
Let's talk about the hatred first.
God hates that's the first thing you need
to understand, there are many scriptures throughout the
Bible that says God hates.
Now, here's something else that you need to
understand.
Oftentimes we hear this beautiful evangelical statement.
God hates the sin and loves the sinner,
God loves the sinner and hates the sin.
Well, that's really nice.
The only problem is it's not true.
Have you ever read Psalms chapter five?
Let's go there for just a second.
Psalms, chapter five, verse five, the boastful shall
not stand before your eyes.
You hate all who do iniquity.
Does it say he hates iniquity?
No, it says he hates all those who
do iniquity.
And then I think it even says he
hates all those who do wrong.
Do you see that now what's immediately popping
into some people's heads is this.
Well, what about John 316?
What about it?
It's inspired.
It's in the Bible and we ought to
believe it.
What about Psalms five?
You see, you can't take one part and
leave the other part out.
Especially when both parts explain each other.
People always talk, well, God so loved the
world.
Yes, I agree with that.
Praise the Lord.
But he also says he hates those who
do iniquity.
So we just believe the whole Bible.
Well, then, good.
Let's do it tonight.
It says that.
That there is a real sense in Scripture
in which the hatred of God is against
wicked men.
I had someone say to me one time,
no, God doesn't hate because God is love.
God is love and he can't hate.
And I say, no, God is love.
Therefore, he must hate.
Is it what you mean?
That doesn't make sense.
Of course it does.
Let me give you an example.
Do you love Jews?
Hope so, then you must hate the Holocaust.
If you tell me you're basically neutral about
the Holocaust and it was really no big
deal, then you really can't tell me that
you love Jews.
You love babies, then you must hate abortion,
you love African-Americans, you must hate slavery.
If you truly love that which is excellent,
that which is righteous, that which is good,
that which is lovely, then you must hate
that which contradicts those very things.
What would you think about a person who
was neutral?
And even whistling a tune as he read
the newspaper about a little child whose life
was destroyed by a pedophile, you would say
that individual was as pathetic and wicked as
the pedophile.
There is a sense even in us of
a righteous indignation, of a hatred of evil.
It's part of that fingerprint of our creator.
When we hear that a man who murdered
12 people was fined one hundred and fifty
dollars, we become angry.
Whoever told us to become angry.
Whoever taught us that we should, we become
angry and we don't even know why.
Why?
There is a real sense in which we
were made in the image of God despite
the fall.
There's some of that remains.
There is this imprint of God upon us.
We hear of wicked things.
We become angry.
We say we hate what was done.
God is love.
He loves all that is conformed to his
character.
His attributes.
And his hatred.
Is against.
All that opposes it, you said, well, Brother
Paul, what about God's love?
What about God's love for sinners?
Well, it would take several lectures to get
through that.
Let me simplify things grossly, let me simplify
things.
There is a real sense in which the
scripture teaches that the hatred of God.
Is revealed against wicked men.
And yet the nature of his love is
such that he is able to demonstrate love
even towards the objects of his hatred.
There is a real sense and again, oversimplification.
There is a real sense in which the
mercy of God cries out to man with
one hand and says, come, he who is
thirsty, come, he is hungry, has no money
to buy bread, come.
And there is another sense.
Which the hand of mercy holds back the
wrath of almighty God.
So with one hand, mercy holds back the
wrath of God.
With the other hand, it bids men come
the vilest of men to come.
But one day you must understand those hands
will be withdrawn.
And the wrath of God will fall upon
men so that the great captains of industry
and armies will cry out for rocks to
fall upon them and to hide them from
the wrath of the Lamb.
And we'll spend an eternity in hell under
the wrath of God.
Now, here's another evangelical cliche.
Fallacy, when you hear people say that heaven
is heaven because God is there, that's true.
And then they say hell is hell because
God's not there.
That's not true.
Hell is hell because God is there.
In the full force of his perfect justice.
And his wrath now be very careful because
we're not we have these images of hell
based on Dante's Inferno instead of scripture.
Hell is not some sort of twisted torture,
God gleefully torturing wicked men.
No, hell.
Is perfect, pristine, blazing white justice.
This.
In which every man will receive exactly what
is due him.
Not one ounce more and not one ounce
less, his his punishment in hell will be
so just that even the wicked will have
to raise their hands and say, the God
of all the earth has done right by
me.
This is not a tame God.
C.S. Lewis got it right when he
said that.
This is not a tame God.
Although Americans seem to have they seem to
think they've domesticated him, they've not domesticated him,
they created another that was domesticated to start
off with.
But he's not the true God.
You see, someone had to die.
Someone had to die.
And satisfy the justice of God and appease
the wrath of God and make it possible
for a righteous God to forgive wicked men
and to declare them right before him.
Now, we're going to go on.
Some of you are probably thinking, well, isn't
it time?
If it's time for you, then you need
to leave.
But I'm going to keep preaching.
I'm going to get through this.
I don't want to stop.
It says in Romans.
That God displayed him publicly as a propitiation.
Christ.
Died.
And only Christ could die, no one else.
The one who died on that tree, first
of all, had to be a man, he
had to be a man, don't you see?
The blood of bulls and goats will not
cleanse us, will not take away our sin.
Adam has sinned.
A son of Adam must die.
He must be a man.
But not only must he be a man.
He must be God.
He must be God, the one who dies
on that tree must be not only man,
he must be God.
And why is that?
Well, let's just look at a few things.
First of all, a little passage from Jonah
that is so very important.
Salvation is of the Lord.
That's why the doctrine of the Jehovah Witnesses
is so it's such blasphemy.
They pretend that it was a creature who
died on that tree, if a creature died
on that tree, then we have a creature
as a savior.
God created some innocent thing, gave it life
and sent it down to do the work
of reconciliation.
No, salvation is of the Lord.
Lord, God does not share that title with
anyone.
No one is savior, but the Lord, the
Lord became a man.
Another thing that's very important, I always seem
to think it quite unusual, but the one
who died had to give his life away.
You ever thought about that?
Who has life to give away?
Only God has life inherent.
All other life is borrowed.
Who has life to lay down, who has
authority to lay down their life and take
it back up again?
It was not the life of another that
he laid down.
Was his own had to be God, who
but God can withstand the wrath of God
and rise again.
Mountains melt before the Lord's anger.
Rivers dry up.
The great sea, the great and brave, mighty
sea bends down in fear and trembles at
the wrath of God.
Heard men both say, well, I'll stand before
him on that day.
No, you won't.
You'll melt before him like a tiny wax
figurine before a blast furnace.
That's what you will do on that day.
Who can withstand the wrath of God, another
thing that is so important and most important
to me, I was speaking several years ago
at a university, it was question and answer,
and there was a young man who didn't
like me very much.
And so he stood up and he held
up his hand and he says, I've got
a problem.
I said, OK.
He said, how can one man suffer for
a few short hours on that tree?
And save a multitude of men from an
eternity in hell.
I said, oh, son, I thank you for
that question.
That one man.
Could suffer on that tree a few short
hours and save a multitude of men from
hell, because that one man on that tree
was worth more than all of them put
together.
When theologians talk about the perfection of Christ's
sacrifice, it's not just the sinlessness of his
sacrifice, it's the worth, the infinite worth of
that sacrifice.
You take everything that is mountains and molehills,
crickets, clowns, dust, stars, men and mice, everything
that's ever been.
And you put it on the scale and
you put Christ on the other side and
he outweighs them all.
It's his value in these soupy songs, they
say God looked all over for a man,
but he couldn't find one who was who
could die, who was sinless.
That's preposterous.
Even if there had been a sinless man,
he couldn't have died for us.
It had to be deity on that tree.
It had to be God.
An angel in heaven would not have worked,
take all the millions, the unnumbered creatures so
glorious that if we saw one of them,
our hearts would split in two with fear.
Take them all and they're not worth enough.
To pay for your sin, he had to
die, but how did he die during the
Mel Gibson film, which I never saw, I
don't have any problems with it, I just
never saw it.
I got so many emails from people all
over the all over saying, you know, this
is this about this movie and this is
that.
And I've got problems with this and that,
and I'm sure there were problems with it.
But most of those preachers who wrote me
railing on Mel Gibson, I would write them
back and I said, I don't have near
the problem with Mel Gibson and his movie
than I do with you and your preaching.
Because the problem is not Mel Gibson, the
problem is not some film on the passion,
the problem is that the very men who
ought to be the friends of Christ don't
even understand his greatest work.
During that movie, I heard a very prominent
preacher, he came on the radio, National Radio,
and he said, there's been much talk about
the cross, so I'm just going to take
the entire time and tell you about the
true meaning of the cross.
I said, praise God, finally, somebody.
And I listened and I waited and I
waited and I waited and I waited.
He never did it.
He gave them what I used to call
in Latin America, El Evangelio Romantico.
The romantic gospel, but not the true one.
He preached Jesus as a martyr, but not
as a savior.
Now, what's my point?
This is my point.
Several years ago, I was in a seminary
in Eastern Europe, a Germanic seminary, and I'd
been teaching a group of pastors and things,
and I was very tired.
I went into the library.
It was all in German.
I don't read German.
So I was trying to find something I
could read, and I came across a book
entitled The Cross of Christ.
Now, it was not John Stott's book, but
it was another book written by an author
that I never knew.
The cross of Christ, and if you're boring
like me and you've read a lot of
books, you open up a book and you
start thumbing through it to find out what
the guy really wants to say.
And this is what he said.
When Jesus Christ was on the cross, God,
the father, looked down from heaven and saw
the suffering that was afflicted upon Christ, the
suffering that was placed upon Christ by the
hands of evil men, and he counted that
as payment for our sin.
That's heresy, do you recognize it?
It's heresy, our sins are not atoned for
because of what men did to Jesus Christ
or merely for what they did to Jesus
Christ.
Our sins are atoned for because of what
God did to his only begotten son on
that tree, all those little tracts of ours
that that have man on one side because
he's unholy and God on the other because
he's holy and there's a great divide between
the two.
How do you suppose that divide is going
to be closed?
Someone had to die bearing sin.
Bearing sin, he who knew no sin became
sin, Galatians says, cursed is every man who
does not abide by all the things written
in the book of the law so as
to perform them.
You know what it means to be under
a curse?
Means that you are so vile before a
holy heaven, as I shared earlier, that the
last thing you'll hear when you take your
first step into hell is all of creation
applauding God because he's read the earth of
you, you are a curse.
To everything holy, to everything right, to everything
good, you are a curse and Christ redeemed
us from the curse of the law.
Becoming a curse for us, he took upon
himself our sin, have you never heard?
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?
I hear preachers all the time say the
father looked down at the suffering of the
son and he loved him so much he
could not bear to see his suffering.
So he turned away from him.
That is a lie.
That's not what Jesus said.
Jesus, when he was on the cross, he
said that God, the father, forsook him.
And why is that?
God cannot look upon that which is unclean.
God turned away from his only begotten son.
Someone had to die outside of the favorable
presence of God, like the serpent lifted up
in the wilderness, like the scapegoat.
Israel would come out and lay their hands
upon the head of the goat, symbolically transferring,
transferring their sin to him.
And then the goat would be led out
into the wilderness where it would wander and
die outside of the gates of the city.
So Christ died outside of the gates of
the city, forsaken of God and forsaken of
God's people.
Bearing their sin.
In Psalms 22, it begins by saying, my
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
And puts out the complaint by day and
by night, I call out to you, but
you do not answer and then comes with
the argument saying there's never been a time
in the history of your covenant people, Israel,
that a man cried out to you and
you did not hear him.
You did not answer.
But I cry out to you day and
night and you do not listen.
And then he gives the answer.
He said, but thou art holy.
And I am a worm.
I am a worm, someone had to die,
bearing your sin and die outside of the
wrath of God.
You see, our great problem.
So we understand nothing about holiness and righteousness,
we laugh at sin.
We take awkward glances at sin, second looks,
we giggle under our breath at sin.
We think it's funny when someone talks in
seriousness about sin, how sinful.
Is sin the son of God had to
become a man, go to a tree and
bear the sin of his people and be
forsaken by his own father and crushed under
the full force of his wrath to put
away sin.
Is the only way.
He died forsaken of God.
But more than that.
He's in a garden and he cries out,
Father, let this cup pass from me.
Three times, let this cup pass from me,
let this cup pass from me.
I have heard preachers say the most absurd
things about that cup.
Oh, the cup was that Roman cross.
Heard one preacher say the cup was Satan,
Christ was afraid of the wrath of Satan.
Father, let this pass from me, sweating blood
breaking through his skin, such anguish and terror
at the thought of drinking some cup.
What was in the cup?
I hear people say, well, it was that
Roman cross and the Roman whip and those
crown of thorns.
No, do you realize that after Jesus ascended
into heaven, after a few years, a terrifying
persecution fell upon the people of God?
Do you realize that since the death and
resurrection of Christ, they estimate that over 50
million Christians have died tortured?
Do you realize that many of those Christians
died, crucified upside down, covered with pitch and
set on fire to provide lights for the
streets of Rome?
And yet most of them went to the
cross with their chest out singing joyfully.
Are you going to tell me that men
can do that, yet the captain of their
salvation hides in a garden trembling because he's
afraid of a cross that they joyfully embrace?
Do you honestly think that he was afraid
of a Roman whip or some nails?
I was teaching at a school, a reformed
Christian school years ago, and I'll never forget
this.
I walked in the school and they said,
you're going to be teaching kindergarten through the
12th grade in chapel.
And I thought, well, that's a wide group.
And I said, be kind of difficult, and
they said, no, it won't be difficult here
for the Paul.
I said, well, I'm going to teach on
propitiation.
No problem.
We've been teaching the second graders about propitiation
for about six weeks.
So I go in and I get through
the middle of the sermon and I say,
young people, what was in the cup?
And I'll never forget a little girl, she
couldn't have been more than eight or nine
years old.
She raised her hand and I said, yes.
And she stood up out of her seat,
put one hand on the desk and she
said, sir.
The wrath of almighty God was in the
cup.
Here is an eight year old who knows
more than most evangelists in America.
What was in the cup?
The fierce, just, holy, righteous hatred and anger
of God against wicked men, his fury against
evil fell upon his only begotten son.
Have you never read?
And it pleased the Lord to crush him.
Someone had to die under the wrath of
God that his justice might be satisfied and
his wrath might be appeased.
God became a man, went to a tree,
bore the sins of his people and was
crushed under the full force of his own
judgment.
That's amazing.
How can God be just?
And justify the wicked.
That's how.
That's how he died.
And he rose again from the dead.
Rose again for or because of our justification.
It means that the resurrection is the public
declaration of God, that that sacrifice on that
tree was sufficient.
To atone for the sins of his people.
It was God's word, God's vindication of his
only son, and then that same son.
That rose from the dead.
Conquered death, ascended up into heaven, I love
the patristics, I studied them quite a lot
when I was in when I was in
seminary, it was one of the one of
the few blessings I actually had while I
was there.
But it was amazing, some of the things
I mean, the patristics, the guys of the
first five centuries of the church, sometimes they
could get kind of wild, but they said
some things that were beautiful.
And one of the things I noted in
a lot of the old guys who break
some of the rules like I do.
They would always go to Psalms.
Chapter 24.
The Ascension song.
Verse seven, Christ ascends.
Christ, very God, yes, but man, one of
the things we have to be careful about
as evangelicals is we are always defending the
deity of Jesus Christ, and that's extremely important
because that's one of the things that Satan
is always going to attack first, the deity
of Christ.
But at the same time, we must never
forget.
That he was man.
He died for us as God, as man,
he rose again from the dead as God,
as man, he ascended up into heaven.
There is one God and one mediator between
God and men, the man, Christ Jesus, he
ascended up as God.
But as man now, permit me a little
freedom here, but in this text in verse
seven.
A verse of chapter 24 of Psalms, Christ,
the man.
Comes to those great and mighty gates that
no man has ever approached.
And he cries out, lift up your heads,
old gates and be lifted up, old ancient
doors that the king of glory may come.
Can't you just imagine?
Heaven hearing that.
Angels in silence, in awe, mouths shut, some
even maybe angry, saying, who is this that
calls out to these gates?
No man has ever spoken a word to
these doors.
Who dare lay their hand to the latch?
And the answer comes back, who is this
king of glory?
And Christ responds, the Lord, strong and mighty,
the Lord, mighty in battle, lift up your
heads, old gates and lift up you ancient
doors that the king of glory for the
first time.
Of all time, the doors were open for
a man, every time I think about that,
I think about that old song.
Or hail the power of Jesus name, let
angels prostrate for bring forth the royal diadem
and crown the immense, immeasurable joy of glory.
He approaches the throne.
And as no man has ever done.
He sits down at the right hand of
the majesty upon high.
Father.
It's finished.
Son, it is finished.
Indeed.
This same Jesus.
Whom you crucified.
God has made him both Lord and Christ.
And now God, who has not done this
thing in a corner, commands all peoples everywhere
to repent.
And to believe the gospel.
To repent and believe the gospel.
What is it to repent?
Repentance is a work of God.
He begins to work in the heart through
the preaching of the word, through the work
of the Holy Spirit, exposing sin, things that
we laughed about, things that we boasted of,
things that we joked about.
He begins to show us the sinfulness of
sin, and we see ourselves as blind and
wretched and naked and poor, covered in filth
and worthy of damnation.
And we want more than everything else we
want.
To get as far away from what we
are as we can.
Who will save me from this body of
death, oh, wretched man that I am.
And in that work of grace, he also
reveals Christ and the sinner set up on
the dung heap, looks for the first time
in his life at the face of a
savior.
And because God has done such a work
of regeneration in that person's heart, recreating that
heart and true righteousness and true holiness, when
their eyes fly open and they look upon
Christ for the first time with that new
heart, he is altogether lovely and they're irresistibly
drawn to him because of his beauty and
his grace.
And they fall upon him and they claim
no righteousness of their own.
And through faith, they are declared right with
God.
Christ.
Based upon the virtue and the merit of
Jesus Christ, the Lord.
What will you do?
Know this.
I've preached, but I can do nothing else
for you.
Look around your mother, your father, your friend
can not help you.
If God does not move on your behalf,
exposing sin, revealing Christ, there's nothing for you.
There's no hope.
If you can walk out of here nonchalant
and the same way in which you came
in, be utterly terrified.
Be utterly terrified.
And let that terror cause you to fall
on your face and cry out for God
to have mercy on you.
What you've heard tonight, you won't hear much.
These are the old ways.
These are the old things.
That old men now in heaven stood on
and died for.
You won't hear this much, but it's true.
It's true.
If I lose sleep tonight, it will be
not because your checkbook is not balanced.
Are you tottering on not having self-esteem?
If I lose sleep tonight, it's because one
day you will stand naked before a holy
God and it's not right with you.
And on that day, you will be separated
as so many goats from so many sheep.
And you will be thrown in hell.
Jesus said, do not fear the one who
can kill the body and harm it no
more.
I will tell you who to fear, fear
the one who, after he kills the body.
Can throw the man in hell.
I don't like that.
You're off balance, Brother Paul, you know, let
me say this.
Years ago, I was preaching in the meetings,
I got up one night and I preached
on the holiness of God, the holiness of
God.
And afterwards, men met me at the back
door and they said, we've got a problem
with your preaching.
I said, OK, state your case.
They said, you preached on holiness tonight, not
once did you mention the love of God.
And I said, men, I have a problem
with you.
Last night you were here and I preached
on the love of God and not once
did I mention the holiness of God and
not one of you had a problem with
it.
Do you want men to tickle your ears,
to tell you things that are not true?
To line their own bellies.
With your applause.
Or do you want to know God?
The one true God.
Who both makes alive and kills, who saves
and condemns.
But has done a great thing on behalf
of sinful men and made a way for
them to be saved.
Through faith in Jesus Christ.
Let's pray.