Now this morning we're going to finish our
little studies in the attributes of God, but
we're not going to finish the subject.
In fact, the subject will never be exhausted
in time or in eternity.
But first of all this morning we want
to think about an attribute of God known
as the wrath of God.
The wrath of God.
And that says that God acts in retributive
punishment on unrepentant sinners.
God acts in retributive punishment on unrepentant sinners.
The wrath of God is just as much
one of the divine perfections as his love,
grace, or mercy.
Sometimes I think we don't like to dwell
on the wrath of God.
It's pleasant to dwell on his grace, on
his omnipotence, on his omniscience.
But when we come to the wrath of
God, we have a tendency to soft peddle
it.
But I say again, the wrath of God
is just as much one of the divine
perfections as any other of the attributes of
God.
Let us read some scriptures that deal with
this subject.
Romans chapter 1 and verse 18.
It says, for the wrath of God is
revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness
of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness.
Now there are many other passages in the
word of God that dwell on the wrath
of God, but to me the most expressive,
if I really want to take in something
of the wrath of God, I have to
turn to Psalm 22 and hear the blessed
Christ of God hanging upon the cross of
Calvary, bearing my sins, and crying out, my
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
And I don't think that we're overstating the
matter when we say that in those three
awful hours of darkness, the Lord Jesus endured
the terrible wrath of God against our sins.
That all of hell, for all of eternity,
was compressed into those three hours.
After all, his death atoned for an infinite
number of sins, of an infinite number of
sinners, so what did he endure there for
you and for me?
We sometimes sing infinite wrath rolling over his
head, infinite grace, for he died in my
stead.
It's almost too much to think of God
becoming man in the person of the Lord
Jesus and enduring such suffering and torment to
save people who really didn't care and who
didn't deserve it.
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?
Some theologians today like to think that the
Jehovah of the Old Testament was a God
of vengeance and vindictiveness and wrath and that
the Jesus of the New Testament is the
meek and humble Jesus who only loves and
shows grace and mercy, but nothing could be
further from the truth.
For the Jehovah of the Old Testament and
the Jesus of the New Testament are one
and the same and there is no conflict
between God's wrath and his love.
No conflict whatever.
They would like to think that God is
only a God of love but such a
God does not exist.
I often hear people say, how could God
sustain an everlasting hell?
How could a God of love send his
creatures to hell?
Well, think of it this way.
God looks down and he sees a world
plummeting down to hell, not because of anything
on his part, but because of man's own
sin and disobedience.
To avert that terrible catastrophe, God sends his
beloved Son into this world and men take
him and by wicked hands crucify and slay
him.
And God says, I'll have the last word.
He's the Savior of the world and you
bow your knee and you trust him as
Lord and Savior and I'll give you everlasting
life with me in heaven.
And man looks up and says, I don't
want it.
I'd rather have my sins than have Christ.
I'd rather go my own way.
Now I'd like to ask you the question,
what is the alternative?
If man won't accept God's salvation, what is
left but his wrath?
And actually, of course, it isn't God who
sends men to hell.
Men choose hell.
It's a deliberate choice on man's part.
Hell was made for the devil and his
angels.
If anyone goes to heaven, it's completely the
grace of God.
If anyone goes to hell, it's completely his
own fault.
Does that sound doctrine?
I believe it is.
And God will be vindicated in this, in
a coming day when every knee bows and
every tongue confesses Jesus Christ to the glory
of God the Father.
A judgment is God's strange work.
We read that mercy rejoices against judgment.
But if man will not have God's salvation,
there is no other alternative but his wrath.
Now, are there any practical applications in each
of the attributes of God?
We have tried not just to stop with
the doctrinal, but we've tried to make it
practical in our own lives.
Is there anything practical in this for me?
Well, actually, there are a lot of practical
things.
First of all, is there any place for
wrath in my life?
Well, I read in Ephesians chapter 4, be
ye angry and sin not.
Let not the sun go down upon your
rod.
When is it right for a Christian to
be angry?
Incidentally, anger is commanded in the word of
God, isn't it?
It says be ye angry.
It's commanded in the word of God.
When is it right for a Christian to
be angry?
It's right for a Christian to be angry
in God's cause, never in his own.
We should be lions in God's cause and
lambs in our own.
And I think you see this in the
ministry of the Lord Jesus.
He went into the temple.
He found the temple court overrun with money
changers.
They had turned the house of God into
a place of mercenary traffic.
And Jesus took a scourge of small courts
and he drove out the money changers.
And they, the disciples remembered that it was
written of him, the zeal of thine house
hath eaten me up.
It wasn't because of anything they did to
the Lord Jesus that he drove out the
money changers, but it was zeal for the
house of God that drove him to do
it.
He was angry in God's cause, not in
his own.
In his own cause, he allowed men to
take him and commit the worst crime of
the universe in impaling him on a Roman
gibbet.
And so there is a place for anger
in my life, anger in the cause of
God.
Secondly, I believe there's a place in ministry
today for a blazing prophetic indignation.
And incidentally, it's something that's missing in the
evangelical world.
Where are the prophets who cry out against
sin?
Sometimes I think Anita Bryant has more courage
than most of us preachers.
She put her career and reputation on the
line.
I don't necessarily defend everything she's done, but
I'll tell you, you have to say this.
She was willing to put herself down on
the line to cry out against sin.
There's very little of it today.
We have generally an attitude of soft peddling
all that.
I believe that we would see more fruit
for God if we preach the wrath of
God in balance with the love of God.
Sometimes I think that sinners today are giving
the impression and they feel, well, here I
am, you lucky Lord, this type of thing.
I have such wonderful talents, you know, ridiculous,
absolutely ridiculous.
Our general approach today is God loves you
and has a wonderful plan for your life.
But I tell you, that isn't the full
story.
The full story is that the wrath of
God awaits the unrepentant.
Makes me think of Jonathan Edwards years ago,
preaching that message back in Massachusetts, sinners in
the hands of an angry God.
And the people clung to the pillars that
were holding up the roof for fear that
the place would fall down upon them.
Talk about conviction of sin.
Where is it today?
Would you please tell me?
Most of our modern evangelistic methods pass over
sin very lightly.
They heal the wound of the daughter of
my people slightly.
And I believe that we have to recapture
the vision of the wrath of God.
And then I can find cause for worship
when I study the wrath of God.
You say, really?
Yes.
I praise God that I'll never know the
wrath of God.
Shall not come into condemnation, John 5, 24,
but is passed from death unto life.
Isn't that wonderful?
And there we can gather together and we
can sing, death and judgment are behind me,
grace and glory lie before.
All the billows rolled or Jesus, there they
spent their utmost power.
We can sing, there is no condemnation, there
is no hell for me, the torment and
the fire, mine eyes shall never see.
Finally, another practical result in our lives, and
probably there are many more, but these are
some that come to mind.
If I really dwell upon the wrath of
God and contemplate the horror of an eternal
hell where their worm dieth not and the
fire is not quenched, where the smoke of
their torment ascendeth up forever and ever.
Dear friends, it'll give me love and compassion
for the lost and a desire to go
out and seek the one to the Lord
Jesus.
And maybe it'll lead me to write a
letter to that unsaved loved one, to get
down on my knees as I've never done
before and storm the gates of heaven, pleading
to God to speak to those people.
What happens when we pray for the unsaved?
Does God save people against their will?
I don't believe he does.
Why do we pray for the unsaved?
I'd like to share this with you.
I believe that every time I pray for
an unsaved person, God works in that person's
life in some way.
I think maybe that person walks down the
street and someone hands him a track.
I think maybe that person turns on the
radio or the TV and hears some word.
Maybe he's driving along the countryside and sees
a rock with a scripture text painted on
it.
In some way, I believe with all my
heart that every time I pray for an
unsaved person, God works in that unsaved person's
life.
When I was in the Navy, I met
an unsaved fellow.
He was a pilot in our squadron, and
I witnessed to him.
And I have prayed for him since 1945.
The burden has never lifted.
And it's interesting that from time to time,
that fellow contacts me.
He will not let the contact drop.
And sometimes he'll send me clippings from the
newspaper in Miami of things that he thinks
will be of interest to me because they
concern Christianity.
And I sent him a copy of the
book Born Again by Charles Colson.
I got a long-distance telephone call from
me.
He said, hey, Mac, that was really a
great book you sent.
And he's just as unsaved as he can
be today.
But you know, I really believe that every
time I pray for Douglas Danford, God speaks
to him in some way.
And I say that as an encouragement to
you to pray on.
Pray on God.
Now, I don't think God's going to save
him against his will, but I'm asking God
to break his will and bring him penitently
to the feet of the Lord Jesus.
Well, the contemplation of the wrath of God
should give us tender hearts for those who
are unsaved.
I think I quoted those lines before.
Let me look on the crowd as my
Savior did, till my eyes with tears grow
dim.
Let me view with pity the wandering sheep
and love them for love of him.
The wrath of God.
Another wonderful attribute of God is the eternity
of God, the eternity of God.
Maybe we can just expand this little definition
that we have this morning.
Our definition says God is without beginning or
end.
You might like to add to that he
transcends time.
He transcends time.
Eternity is the lifetime of God.
Now, dear friends, I think you've realized, you've
felt as I have all through these studies
that we're dealing with things that are really
too great for the human mind, aren't we?
You and I can't understand eternity.
We can't.
It's too big for these little minds of
ours.
You say, who made God?
Who made God?
God is without beginning or end.
He transcends time.
Eternity is his lifetime.
Turn, first of all, to Psalm 90 verses
1 through 4.
Psalm 90 verses 1 through 4.
You know, this psalm was written by Moses,
wasn't it?
Moses was in the wilderness and marching through
the wilderness with the people, and it was
like one long continuous cemetery.
The people were dropping off like flies.
That generation of warriors, over 20 who came
out of Egypt, they were dying one by
one.
And every day that they came to Moses
with the Wilderness Gazette, it was just one
long obituary column.
And he cries out to the Lord here
in the 90th Psalm, Lord, thou hast been
our dwelling place in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever
thou hast formed the earth and the world,
even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.
That's beautiful, isn't it?
From everlasting to everlasting.
Thou art God.
Thou turnest men to destruction and sayeth, return
ye children of men.
That is, I understand, return to dust.
You see one successive generation after another, and
it's as if God, it's really poetic language,
God is saying, return to dust.
Well, this generation returns, and then another one
comes along to take their place.
For a thousand years in thy sight are
but as yesterday, when it is past and
as a watch in the night.
And then you don't have to turn to
it, but Deuteronomy 33 and verse 27, it
says, the eternal God is thy refuge, and
underneath are the everlasting arms.
That's a wonderful bringing together of truth, isn't
it?
On the one hand, the greatness of God,
the eternal God is thy refuge, and the
other hand, the nearness of God, underneath are
the everlasting arms.
In the first part of the verse, you
have God infinitely high.
In the next part of the verse, you
have God intimately nigh.
That's the kind of a God he is.
The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath
are the everlasting arms.
You read in Job 36, 26, neither can
the numbers of his years be searched out.
Neither can the numbers of his years be
searched out.
And Psalm 9, verse 7 says, the Lord
shall endure forever.
Now, it's wonderful to me to come to
the subject of the eternity of God and
realize that I'm dealing with something that my
mind can't take.
I hurl my mind back and back and
back before the world was made, before the
stars were in their courses.
Try to go back and back and back,
and I can never get to the beginningless
beginning.
In fact, you can't find words to describe
it.
God is without beginning or end.
He transcends time.
Eternity is his lifetime.
Perhaps you've heard this illustration of the difference
between God in this respect and us.
If you're down in Minneapolis and a parade
is going by on one of those long
straight streets, and you're standing there by the
side of the road, you see the parade
going by, but you only see the part
of the parade that's passing you, don't you?
Just that part.
But if you could get up in a
very high building in Minneapolis, right by the
parade route, it's conceivable that you would see
the whole parade from beginning to end, isn't
it?
But dear friends, we're down here on the
earth, and we see the parade of human
history going by, but we only see 60,
70, 80 years at a time.
And God is high overall, and he looks
down, and he transcends time, and he sees
the whole parade from beginning to end.
Which means that Calvary is an ever-present
reality to him.
God doesn't live in a realm of time.
He transcends time.
And everything is present with God.
Mind you, he accommodates himself to us by
using tenses of verbs.
We wouldn't be able to understand otherwise.
Mind you, he accommodates himself to us by
using tenses of verbs.
We wouldn't be able to understand otherwise.
But he sees it all.
And I have no reason to doubt that
when we get to heaven, he'll make it
possible for us to see it all from
beginning to end, too.
After all, those light waves are in the
universe somewhere.
Why couldn't God harness them and show us
the creation?
Show us Joseph in Egypt.
Show us the Exodus.
Show us the history of the Old Testament
period.
And show us Calvary exactly as it took
place.
My, that'll be a worship meeting, won't it?
That'll be a worship meeting when we look
down and see the whole parade of human
history from the beginning to end.
A saga of the love and faithfulness of
God.
God is without beginning or end.
He transcends time.
Eternity is his lifetime.
What effect does this have on me?
How can I help but worship such a
God?
I'm so glad that he's presented in this
way in the scripture, if he weren't, I'd
know he wasn't God.
And then secondly, not only worship, but the
contemplation of the eternity of God teaches me,
by contrast, how very short-lived we are
down here.
And it makes me pray, teach me to
number my days, that I may incline my
heart to wisdom.
My, we're just down here for a very
little time, and it goes by so quickly.
The days are evil, and we should redeem
the time.
There are things that we can do for
the Lord down here that we'll never be
able to do in heaven.
We should be about our Father's business.
The eternity of God.
While another attribute of God is what we
call his infinity, his infinity.
And that means that his greatness is beyond
calculation, measurement, or human imagination.
His greatness is beyond calculation, measurement, or human
imagination.
And you can add that he is unbounded.
Limitless.
The infinity of God.
Once again, we're dealing with a subject that
our mind just won't stretch to take in.
We can't understand infinity, but God is infinite.
A lovely verse that I think bears this
out is found in 1 Kings chapter 8.
1 Kings chapter 8, and it's verse 27,
Solomon's blessing and prayer at the dedication of
the temple.
But will God indeed dwell on the earth?
Behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot
contain thee, how much less this house that
I have built.
It's beautiful.
The heaven of heavens cannot contain thee, how
much less this house that I have built.
And then Jeremiah chapter 23 and verse 24
says, do not I fill heaven and earth,
saith the Lord.
The infinite God.
You know, it really hurts me to hear,
hear men talking about God today as if
he were just someone like ourselves.
It really hurts.
And mind you, it affects man's life because
we become like what we worship.
The greater our thoughts of God, the greater
our spiritual stature will be.
David had great thoughts of God, and those
thoughts are crystallized for us today in his
psalms.
Solomon had great thoughts of God here as
he dedicated the temple.
They should lead us to worship.
Secondly, they should teach us how very finite
we are.
Really, when I think of it, one day
we're strong and healthy, and then a non
-filterable virus somehow enters our system, and the
next day we're as weak as a wet
dishrag.
You know, the strongest man.
Born but for one brief day.
Very, very finite.
But I link with this.
What a wonderful thing that God, the infinite
God, will stoop down and take someone as
finite and limited as we are and deign
to use us in his service.
Isn't that wonderful?
I tell you, I'd like to say something
to the young people here today.
The greatest use of your life is to
lay it at the feet of the Lord
Jesus.
Spurgeon said to his son, my son, if
God should call you to his full-time
service, I should not like to see you
dribble down into a king.
You know, I was brought up in a
godly Christian home, and I respect and revere
my parents.
Some of my most sacred memories of our
family gathered around the kitchen table, those creaky
old wooden chairs, my father reading the Bible,
and we'd get down on our knees and
pray as a family every day.
But I want to tell you something, too,
and it's the truth.
I don't remember our family, I don't remember
ever having had the work of the Lord
held before me as a desirable way to
spend my life.
My folks came over as immigrants from Scotland,
and they were poor.
And there was this terrific drive to go
ahead and make money, terrific drive.
And I absorbed it very gladly and very
readily.
And I had the terrible delusion for many
years that man was placed here on the
earth for no higher reason than to make
money.
And then God worked in his own wonderful
way.
Right when I was in the midst of
the business world and on my way to
retiring at 35, having made a quick kill
in the stock market, I never got that
far.
But God intervened, and he set me on
the road to higher dividends.
And I'd say to you young people today,
man is here for bigger business than to
make money.
And your life is very short, you're just
a finite creature.
But God has given you the unspeakable privilege
of turning over the control of your life
to him and letting him choose the pathway
for you.
Really, what could be better than that?
These are thoughts that come to us as
we contemplate the infinity of God, the tremendous
privilege of serving such a God.
I already believe the time.
The foreknowledge of God.
I told you we were not going to
finish, and it's true.
The foreknowledge of God.
Now some of you might not agree with
this.
God knew certain persons from eternity and sovereignly
decreed to bless them.
This is very closely linked with the sovereignty
of God.
And we had it before we spoke of
that verse in Ephesians 1, for chosen in
Christ before the foundation of the world.
Some people think of foreknowledge of God simply
as God knew from the beginning everything would
happen, but took a hands-off attitude.
I believe the foreknowledge of God means that
God knew certain persons from eternity and sovereignly
decreed to bless them.
But let me quickly add this.
Although I believe that with all my heart,
I believe just as firmly that God has
given man a will to choose.
And I believe that God makes a bona
fide offer of salvation to every man and
woman, boy and girl in the world.
And I don't believe there's a person living
in the world today who couldn't be saved
if he trusted the sinner's Savior.
Now you say, how can you put those
two things together?
How can you reconcile those two things?
I can't reconcile them and I don't try,
but I believe them both because they're taught
in the Word of God.
I read in the one hand in the
Word of God, chosen in Him before the
foundation of the world.
And I read in the same Bible that
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but
have everlasting life.
And so I believe in the sovereign election,
the foreknowledge of God, and I believe equally
strongly in man's free will and that God
is not playing with men.
God is not mocking men.
He's not playing games with them.
He's making a bona fide offer of salvation.
And the only way you or I or
anyone else can ever know if we're elect
of God is by trusting the Lord Jesus
as our Lord and Savior.
Now people don't like that because there's a
seeming conflict there.
Well let me tell you something, the seeming
conflict takes place here in this mind and
not in the mind of God.
In His mind there's no conflict, whatever.
Let's read a few verses about the foreknowledge
of God.
Chapter 8 of Romans.
Romans chapter 8.
I'm looking in the Old Testament, that's how
rattled I am.
Romans chapter 8 and verse 29.
For whom He did foreknow.
Here it is.
Whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate
to be conformed to the image of His
Son, that He might be the firstborn among
many brethren.
Moreover, whom He did predestinate, then He also
called.
Whom He called, then He also justified.
And whom He justified, then He also glorified.
Now doesn't it seem from that verse that
the foreknowledge of God is determinative?
Whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate.
If He foreknew a million, He predestinated a
million.
If He predestinated a million, He called that
same million.
If He called that million, He justified them.
And if He justified them, they'll be in
heaven at last.
And what that says is that if God
foreknew one million, that million will be glorified
at last.
Wonderful.
Romans chapter 11 and verse 2.
Romans chapter 11.
God has not cast away His people which
He foreknew.
Watch ye not what the scripture saith of
Elias, how he maketh intercession to God against
Israel, saying, Lord, they have killed thy prophets
and dig down thine altars, and I am
left alone, for they seek my life.
God foreknew the nation of Israel.
It was determinative.
Before eternity, He knew He was going to
choose the nation of Israel as His earthly
people.
And 1 Peter chapter 1 and verse 2.
1 Peter chapter 1 and verse 2.
Says, elect according to the foreknowledge of God
the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto
obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus
Christ.
I think that's a lovely verse because it
begins back in eternity and comes right down
to the time of your conversion.
Elect according to the foreknowledge of God.
That took place long before you and I
ever came into existence.
Through sanctification of the Spirit.
I believe this sanctification of the Spirit is
what I call pre-conversion sanctification.
Before you were ever saved, the Holy Spirit
started to set you apart.
An unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing
wife.
He set apart, and the Spirit was working
to set me apart to the Lord.
And then it says, through obedience and sprinkling
of the blood of Jesus, and that's when
I appropriate it to myself.
So there you have a little panorama of
a person's salvation in just a few words.
And then of course in Acts 15, 18,
it says, known unto God are all his
works.
Known unto God are all his works.
You say, what effect, what does the foreknowledge
of God do in your life?
Well, once again, it makes me a worshiper.
I think of that, the verse of that
hymn we used to sing, Why hast thou
made me hear thy voice?
And enter father's room, while thousands make a
wretched choice.
They'd rather starve than come.
I wonder if I should just read some
of the others, just so you'll have a
taste of it.
The time is gone, but just let me
read them.
Self-existence.
You and I had existence given to you,
to us, God never did.
God does not owe his existence to anyone
or anything outside himself.
The cause of his being is in himself.
God does not owe his existence to anyone
or anything outside himself.
The cause of his being is in himself.
Don't you love him?
Self-sufficiency.
God doesn't need anything outside himself.
He doesn't, he doesn't need us, but he
seeks our worship.
He can live without it.
He's completely independent of us in that sense,
but he seeks those who will worship him
in spirit and in truth.
I love this attribute of God.
God is incomprehensible.
God cannot be fathomed by the human mind.
Man can know of God only what he
has chosen to reveal.
God cannot be fathomed by the human mind.
All that we can know of him is
what he has chosen to reveal to us
in the sacred scriptures.
And then finally the transcendence of God.
God is exalted far above the created universe.
He existed long before there was such a
thing as a created universe.
This is our God.
He will be our guide forever and forever.
Shall we pray?
Father, we love you, and we love the
son of your love, and we praise and
worship you today.
Praise and worship you for the Holy Spirit
of God too, and for the Word of
God that we have in our hands.
And Lord, how grateful we are that you've
given us minds to dwell upon these lofty
and sacred themes.
Oh God, we pray that as we go
away from this conference we might go away
with a new appreciation of you, a new
deep and abiding trust in you, hearts to
worship you more than we've ever done before,
and lives that are given over to you
in service with no reserve, no retreats, and
no regrets.
We ask it in the Savior's worthy and
precious name.