You may be seated.
Please open your Bibles to 2 Corinthians, chapter
5.
2 Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 21.
Our obedience to Christ, in that we learn
many things about Christ and about ourselves, but
also in our disobedience and in our frailty,
we learn much about ourselves and even much
more about Christ.
It's always a terrible thing to be a
conference speaker, because Christians that possibly have not
quite grown in maturity as they should, think
too much of men.
The conference speakers sin and are needy, desperately
in need of grace.
Always, no matter how mature you become, how
wise you stand in the word, how powerful
in the spirit, it is always a result
of extra measures of God's grace.
There never has been and there never will
be such a thing as a great man
of God.
There are only weak and pitiful men of
a great and merciful God.
In looking in the mirror, if I had
to define Christianity, I would say a desperate
person clinging desperately to Christ for the sake
of Christ.
And why do I say for the sake
of Christ?
Regardless of our weakness and our sin and
our constant need of grace, if we have
been regenerated by the spirit of God, Christ
is beautiful to us.
He is that pearl of great price.
I do not find much joy in simple
morality or in trying to rise above my
culture.
I find joy in the face of Christ.
Young people, many of you are being taught
and trained as I wished I had been
taught and trained.
But there is also a danger in that.
Beware that you don't determine your goodness by
simply judging yourselves in light of a fallen
culture, but that the standard for heaven is
Jesus Christ and his righteousness.
I have heard many reformed theologians say, if
a man wants to be judged by his
own goodness, then let him stand in the
scale and then let the law be put
on the other side of the balance and
see how well he does.
I would agree with that statement, but I
would say something far more radical than that.
Let a man step up to one side
of the scale and then let Jesus step
on the other side of the balance.
All our righteousness is like filthy rags, and
that is why Christ had to die.
I hope you are not choosing some sort
of self-improvement.
I hope that you're not seeking to be
moral for the sake of morality, because that
is idolatry.
I hope you're not wanting Christianity in order
to have a good marriage.
I hope you're not coming to Christ in
order to have a clean family.
I hope that everything you do, you do
for him.
For him.
Because all else is idolatry in moral philosophy,
we understand that for a creature to be
reasonable, it must have a reason for what
it does.
A greatest good.
If you find a man standing out in
the rain and you ask him why he
is there and he can give you no
answer, you have to conclude that he is
an unreasonable creature.
We must have a reason for all that
we do.
And if we are the pinnacle of God's
creation, it is just assumed that we will
choose for ourselves the highest reason for what
we do.
And there is no higher reason than the
person of Jesus Christ.
There is no greater good, if the father
is any judge, of why we should be
doing all that we are doing than learn
from the father, for he has done everything
he has done for his son.
For his son, for his son, through his
son.
I'm going to talk today about Jesus Christ,
especially my burden is always to you, you
youngsters.
Your minds can be caught away.
To many detours that led to lead to
dungeons and death and all your
homeschooling, get Christ parents and all your teaching,
give Christ.
I have found in all these years, though,
there has been some moral improvement in my
person.
When I look in the mirror that without
Christ, I am utterly desperate and without hope.
So if I had all the combined morality
in the world, the virtue of every man
gathered up in a bucket and placed and
given to me, I would still be like
filthy rags before God.
I need Christ.
Second Corinthians, chapter five.
Let's begin in verse 20.
Therefore, we are ambassadors of Christ as though
God were making an appeal through us.
We beg you on behalf of Christ, be
reconciled to God.
We are ambassadors when an ambassador is sent
out from a certain country to another, his
adornment, his clothing is extremely important.
No country, no king wants to send send
forth a representative in tattered rags.
Even our own capital was built in a
certain way.
So as to communicate certain things about our
country, we are to have some shine on
our face.
There should be something beautiful about us, something
kingdom looking about us.
Yes, there should be morality.
Yes, there should be a biblical morality.
Yes, we should be moral people.
We should seek to conform to every word
that God has spoken.
But we need even a greater beauty, beauty,
something of the glory of Christ reflected from
our faces.
But the only place you can get that
glory is from Christ himself seated before him,
beholding him.
Worshipping him, meditating upon him, thinking about him.
Christ and the gospel is not Christianity 101,
and from there you go on to deeper
things.
There is nothing greater than Christ and there
is nothing greater than his gospel.
I always tell students that everything you will
ever want to know about the second coming,
you will understand on the day that it
occurs.
But you will spend an eternity of eternities
in heaven and you will not even begin
to reach the foothills of the glory of
God in the face of Christ and his
gospel.
It will be a tracking down, a chasing
of the glory of God in the person
of Christ to be all about him, all
about him.
Young woman and young man, I would would
that you would belong to Christ.
That you would be a prisoner of Christ.
After many years of walking with Christ, this
is what you'll discover when Paul, the apostle,
said he was a prisoner of Christ, Jesus,
a prisoner in chains, you'll understand that it
wasn't the cruelly fashioned Roman chains of which
he was speaking so much.
But the love of Christ in light of
Paul's so many failures.
The love of Christ placed him in bondage,
the love of Christ constrained him.
It drove him, it even made him do
things he didn't even know why he was
doing them.
But he was a prisoner of the love
of God.
If you think that men and women down
through the history of the church that have
been used of God were somehow driven by
their love for Jesus Christ, you are so
wrong.
They were driven by Christ's love for them.
That's why John does not refer to himself
as the the one who loved Jesus.
He looked at himself, yet even as an
apostle, he looked at himself and he found
no reason to speak or sing about his
love for Jesus.
But he called himself the one whom Jesus
loved.
And that is what motivated his life.
Now, the love of Jesus Christ.
Is seen in every manner of things, the
very atheist that clenches his fists and shakes
it in the face of Christ.
Does so by the power and grace of
Christ.
Who reigns upon the evil and the good,
every where you look, we see the love
of Christ poured out on all men, not
simply the elect, but all men.
Do you realize, young people, that this is
a fallen world and that presents a problem?
What is the problem?
There shouldn't be any leaves on trees.
There shouldn't be any clean water, there shouldn't
be marriages in this world, there shouldn't be
joyful births, this this whole planet should look
like a stage for Beckett's waiting for Godot,
everything should just be dark and gray and
horrid.
The fact that there's any laughter even out
of the mouth of the wicked, any joy
is an expression of the love of Christ.
And that is why men are so guilty.
Someone asked me one time, what is the
greatest sin society has ever committed?
I said, well, there is many.
But I said, possibly the day we landed
on the moon.
He said, what do you mean the day
we landed on the moon?
The day we landed on the moon demonstrated
a brilliance.
This.
Of which no one had ever seen that
brilliance came from Christ.
And all of mankind should have fallen down
on their faces and worshiped God, who gives
such knowledge and intelligence through his grace to
wicked men.
You see, this world is all about Christ,
and in one sense it knows it and
rebels against it.
So the love of God is manifested in
every shape, form and fashion in this world.
Child, know this, if your parents do not
beat you, if they do not lock you
in a dungeon, it is because of the
common grace of Jesus Christ working in their
life.
Every blessing, every bite of food, every breath
that's clean.
Christ, you owe him much.
You owe him everything, every
moment not given to Christ is a moment
wherein the king of kings is betrayed, betrayed.
Go ahead, young person, live for yourself if
you choose, but know that you're the greatest
of all betrayers.
And you are demonstrating the coldness of a
heart against the greatest manifestation of love.
Constant love, even in your rebellion.
But there is one place where the love
of Christ is manifested in a way unlike
any other, and that's what we're going to
look at.
It says in verse 21.
He, God, made him who knew no sin
to be sin on our behalf so that
we might become the righteousness of God in
him.
When I think of Jesus Christ, when I
think about him walking on the water, when
I think about him raising the dead, casting
out demons, healing the sick, the blind, the
lame, making the deaf hear and the dumb
speak, I think it's absolutely phenomenal.
But the most amazing thing, apart from the
cross that I see in the Lord Jesus
Christ, is that he was sinless.
I want you to think about this for
a moment.
But there has never been one moment in
all of your life that you loved God
as God deserved.
Never once.
Sometimes when people ask me, what's the greatest
sin a man can commit, I say, well,
I suppose it's it's breaking the greatest commandment,
which is to love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
Never one time have you done that.
Not once in all your life have you
loved God as God deserves to be loved.
And yet every moment of the life of
Jesus Christ, he loved God as God ought
to be loved.
Never once have you and I done what
we have done.
Perfectly and completely for the glory of God,
never once, yet there was never one time.
When Jesus did not.
Do what he did perfectly and completely, absolutely
for the glory of God, this is absolutely
an amazing savior that we have.
You see, in all your busyness, in all
the great and important things to think about,
think about these things, because the more you
think about these things, the more you begin
to reflect.
This beauty of Christ, I suppose it's very,
very important to study the classics, my children
will read some of them.
And.
My dear friend, we I care very little
for what the Greeks wrote.
Very little for all the things that were
said by them.
When I have the perfect revelation of life
in the person of Jesus Christ, do not
boast that your child has this classical education.
And.
Post that they know Christ and they make
much of Christ and all they want is
Christ, that they've almost become like a horse
driving a carriage with blinders on both sides
of his face.
The child does not want to know anything
but Christ.
He was perfect.
And yet it says that he God made
him Jesus, who knew no sin to be
sin on our behalf.
Even the great reformers would shy away from
this text.
They would caution you whenever you approached it,
what does it mean?
We have to be very, very careful here.
We can say too little.
And diminish the power of the cross, or
we can say too much here and blaspheme.
What does it mean?
That Christ was made to be sin on
our behalf.
Well, I think the answer is found in
the text so that we might become the
righteousness of God and him.
When a person is justified, when a person
believes in Jesus Christ, they are not infused
at that moment with some power that turns
them in to a perfectly righteous being never
to sin again.
Although regeneration does a lot to our heart,
the genuine Christian is never free from sin,
and he does not consider himself to be
a righteous being.
But he considers himself to be righteous before
God legally, forensically, the moment we believe in
Jesus Christ, he legally or forensically declares us
to be right with him.
But don't forget this second part, which is
absolutely essential.
He not only declares us to be right
with him, he treats us as right with
him.
That is a freeing statement, my friend.
He not only considers you to be legally
right with him, he treats you as right
with him from that moment on forever because
of Christ.
Now, let's look back at Jesus Christ for
a moment.
What does it mean that he was made
sin?
Does it mean that when Christ was on
the cross, somehow his impeccability was diminished?
Does it mean that on the cross, his
his perfect nature was somehow deformed into some
wicked thing?
Absolutely not.
On that tree, he always remained the spotless,
sinless lamb of God.
Then what does it mean?
It means that on that tree, your sin,
your guilt was imputed to him.
It was considered by God to be his
and God treated him as though it was
his.
Do you see that?
You see, you revel in the fact that
God has legally declared you to be right
and he treats you as right with him.
But the only way that could happen is
because your sin, your guilt was imputed to
Christ legally before the bar of God.
He was treated as you ought to be.
He stood, as John Gill used to say,
in your law place.
Now, I want you to think for just
a moment, you and I, according to Job
and many other texts, we are we're exceedingly
wicked.
We're a people that drink down iniquity like
it was water in the same way that
a fish cannot know it's wet.
We know so very little about the horrid
nature of sin.
And the difference between purity, true purity in
us, we know almost nothing.
When John Flavel wrote of Jesus Christ, he
says, I write is one who writes by
moonlight.
I cannot write clearly when you and I
think about sin.
We think about sin like dirty little boys
sitting in pitch black darkness.
We do not know how heinous our sin
truly is.
You see, let me give you this example.
Imagine that a few of you fine ladies
decide to go to the inner city and
witness to some prostitutes.
And while you are witnessing to the prostitutes,
the police come and they gather the prostitutes
up in the paddy wagon and they identify
you with them and gather you into the
buggy with the rest.
They handle you roughly and they throw you
in behind the bars.
The prostitutes are in there as the car
makes its way to the precinct.
They're filing their nails, telling jokes, cussing, laughing.
This has happened to them a million times.
You're sitting there in that patrol car.
You can hardly breathe.
You are so ashamed, you are so frightened,
you are so disgusted with the whole matter
that's been attributed to you.
That doesn't even.
Almost it should not be used as an
example because it doesn't even come close to
what the holy son of God experienced on
that tree when he took.
Our guilt, young person, as you grow older,
you will find something very unusual happening that
sins become more and more heinous to you.
The things that you didn't even really notice
in your earlier part of your Christian life
now become almost like.
Like you've murdered a man, you come to
the point like old one old brother, I
knew who just sat there at the kitchen
table, an old man, a prophet of God,
and he did like this, he just slammed
his fist on the table.
I, I hate sin, I hate it.
But if we who are trained in sin
can begin by the power of the Holy
Spirit and the grace of Christ to begin
to have such a hatred of sin, what
was it like when the son of God
bore your guilt on that tree?
Yes, he had to be deity.
What else could sustain him under the crushing
blow of your filth?
Now, when he was on that tree, not
only did he carry our guilt, he carried
our curse.
The divine curse.
That the wicked carry now today because of
media and other things, you think of curses
as something that maybe a a gypsy would
cast upon you or that some witch might
throw upon you and turn you into a
frog or something like that, it seems so
harmless, it seems so comical, mythical.
There is such a thing as a curse.
And there are hardly words in the Bible
stronger.
And more heinous and frightening than that word,
every person in this room at this moment
that does not know Jesus Christ is under
a curse.
And everyone who does know Jesus Christ was
at one time under that same curse.
When I when I look through the scriptures,
trying to describe, trying to bring about some
fearful aspect, what does it mean to be
under a curse?
The closest thing I can come to is
this.
Imagine that in your sinful state without Christ.
You're standing before the judgment throne of Christ
and not only in the presence of God,
but all the holy angels and saints made
perfect.
Now, children, I want you to think about
it this way, young people, you.
That your parents are standing on one side
or the other as you stand before God,
saints made perfect, the holy angels, the presence
of God, and yet you without Christ are
in your sin.
And God pronounces judgment upon you, depart from
me, you worker of iniquity, I never knew
you.
The last thing you will hear under that
curse, the last thing you will hear as
you take your first step into hell is
all of creation standing to its feet and
applauding God because God has rid the earth
of you.
And in that great choir will be standing
the very ones who gave you birth.
Do you honestly think this is a game?
Some of you have been to church so
much, it's so common to you, and you
do not realize that every day you attend,
you heap greater judgment upon yourselves.
This is not a game.
It is drastic, it is dangerous, it is
horrifying, and to purists demanded the death of
the son of God.
Don't play with that truth.
Don't treat him as common.
The father shows no mercy upon those who
do not honor his son.
And grow in appreciation with regard to what
his son has done for them, Galatians, cursed
is everyone who does not abide by all
the things written in the book of the
law to perform them.
Now, how can we be free from that
curse?
There's only one way that the Messiah, the
mighty Christ, as Samson went to those city
gates and threw them upon his shoulders and
carried them up that hill and slammed them
to the ground, defeated.
So Christ had to take your curse, your
guilt, your sin upon himself and take it
to that hill.
Now, what does it mean that Christ became
under that curse?
What does that mean?
Well, first of all, I want you to
look at something that's just you don't have
to turn there right now.
It is in Matthew five, starting with verse
three.
But there we have the Beatitudes.
It is a description of the blessed.
So if it's the description of the blessed
in the counter of what we find in
the Beatitudes would be something of a description
of the curse.
It would show us something of what had
to happen to Christ so that the Beatitudes,
the blessing might be yours.
In the Beatitudes, we have blessed the blessed
are granted the kingdom of heaven, but the
cursed are refused entrance.
The blessed are recipients of divine comfort, but
the cursed are objects of divine wrath.
The blessed are satisfied.
The cursed are miserable and wretched.
The blessed receive mercy.
The cursed are condemned without pity.
The blessed shall see God.
The cursed are cut off from his presence.
The blessed are sons and daughters of God.
And the cursed are disowned in disgrace.
How are you doing today, brother?
Oh, I'm blessed.
Do you realize that the only way you
can say, oh, I'm blessed.
Is because he was cursed that you see,
you hear some words and you think, oh,
I'm blessed, I'm this, I'm that.
The Puritan spoke this way, that there were
some words that were so mighty, so tender,
so reverent that once they are spoken, all
should be silent and there should be nothing
but a trembling of the lip.
But the people who know God and the
cross so little can never experience such a
thing.
You say I'm blessed and you stop and
you think about it for a moment and
you begin to weep.
I'm blessed.
How can it be?
I'm blessed.
How did I just say that?
Because he was cursed.
He was cursed, so I'm blessed.
He was cursed.
I'm blessed.
I'm blessed because he was cursed.
You see, they've taken the gospel and they've
reduced it down to a little track.
And that's the only thing you know about
the gospel, and that's why you can't love
God.
Evangelical Christianity, the word evangelical doesn't even have
any meaning.
Because it has no gospel, no gospel to
make you love God, no gospel to control
you, to drive you get the gospel, know
the gospel in the 27th and
28th chapters of Deuteronomy, God divided the nation
of Israel into two camps.
One camp was placed upon Mount Ebal and
the other camp was placed upon Mount Gerasim.
The camp on Mount Gerasim were to cry
forth all the blessings that would fall upon
the head of the covenant keeper.
Of those who obey the law of God
and on Mount Ebal were pronounced all the
curses that should fall upon the covenant breaker,
the ones who have not kept the law
of God, that would be you.
Now, I say you and not and not
we for a specific reason.
It's the same for me, but I don't
want to say we.
I want to say you and not second
person plural, but second person singular.
Why?
Because I don't want you to feel comfort
in the fact you're surrounded by other people
just like you.
I want the Holy Spirit to grab a
hold of your conscience as though it was
one spotlight beaming down upon only you.
You have broken all of God's law, you
are the covenant breaker.
And all the curses of Mount Ebal should
be poured forth every moment upon your head.
And the only reason they are not is
because those curses of Mount Ebal was poured
forth upon the head of God's son.
Let me say something that R.C. Sproul
said a few years ago, I mentioned his
name because he's a respected theologian and what
I'm going to say is going to sound
so drastic.
But if this is a shock to you,
then maybe you will begin to understand why
the gospel is such a shock.
The son of God on that tree, perfect,
spotless son of God, the lamb of God
on that tree, when he looked up into
heaven and cried out, my God, my God,
you have forsaken, why have you forsaken me?
Bearing the guilt of his people, the father
slammed the gates of heaven and cried down
to him, the Lord, the Lord damns you.
And then upon him, all the curses.
Of the covenant breaker upon him, upon the
Christ fell, let me read them to you,
but let's do this in the context of
the person of Christ.
It's as though the father looked down upon
him and said this, these are the curses
the Lord sends upon you, curses, confusion and
rebuke until you are destroyed and until you
perish quickly.
The Lord smites you with madness and blindness
and with bewilderment of heart.
And you will grope at noon as the
blind man gropes in darkness with none to
save you.
Do you understand now why the day grew
so dark?
The Lord delights over you to make you
perish and destroy you and you will be
torn from the land.
Curse shall you be in the city and
curse shall you be in the field.
Curse shall you be when you come in
and curse shall you be when you go
out.
The heavens, which is over your head, shall
be bronze and the earth, which is under
you, iron, you shall be a proverb, a
terror, a taunt among all the people.
Quoting directly from Deuteronomy, let all these curses
come upon you and pursue you and overtake
you until you are destroyed, because you would
not obey the Lord, your God, by keeping
his commandments and his statutes, which he commanded
you.
All of this that should have fallen upon
you fell upon him.
The justice of God extending its hand, pointing
its finger to condemn you now to the
cross, to condemn him again from Deuteronomy, Christ
bore our sin upon Calvary.
He was cursed as a man who makes
an idol and sets it up in secret.
He was cursed as one who dishonors his
father or mother, who moves his neighbor's boundary
mark or misleads a blind person on the
road.
He was cursed as one who distorts the
justice to an alien orphan and widow.
He was cursed as one who is guilty
of every manner of immorality and perversion, who
wounds his neighbor in secret or accepts a
bribe to strike down the innocence.
He was cursed as one who does not
conform to the words of the law by
doing them.
The only covenant keeper that ever walked upon
this planet.
Carries the guilt of all the covenant breakers.
And their curse falls upon him.
It's an interesting passage in the book of
Proverbs.
It says, like a sparrow in its splitting,
like a swallow in its flying, so a
curse without cause does not alight.
A curse never had a cause to alight
upon the Lamb of God.
Until that day on that cross, when you
gave it reason, when your sins were imputed
to him.
I always find it so amazing, people telling
me I have Brother Paul, I have such
a problem with this idea of of Adam's
sin being imputed to me.
I do not think it's right.
I do not believe it.
I say, well, you have cut yourself off
from any hope of salvation.
Why?
Because if it is wrong for Adam's sin
to be imputed to you, it is wrong
for your sin to be imputed to Christ
and his righteousness to be imputed to you.
The psalmist David said this.
How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered, how blessed is the
man to whom the Lord does not impute
iniquity and in whose spirit there is no
deceit.
Yet on the cross, the sin imputed to
Christ was exposed before God and the host
of heaven.
He was placarded, as Martin Lloyd-Jones used
to say, before men and made a spectacle
to angels and devils alike.
The transgressions he bore were not forgiven him
and the sins he carried were not covered.
If a man is counted blessed because iniquity
is not imputed to him, then Christ was
cursed beyond measure because the iniquity of us
all was imputed to him.
He was treated as the covenant breaker in
the renewal of the covenant and Moab.
There is a passage that seems particularly interesting
in light of the cross, in light of
the person of Christ, and the language seems
a bit strange to me unless it somehow
is pointing to something greater than itself.
Listen to what he says upon the covenant
breaker.
It says the Lord, the anger of the
Lord and his jealousy will burn against that
man.
And every curse which is written in this
book will rest on him and the Lord
will blot out his name from under heaven.
And then the Lord will single him out
for adversity from all the tribes of Israel,
according to all the curses of the covenant
which are written in the book of the
law from our stock, from our flesh and
blood was singled out one man.
All his brothers were covenant breakers.
He alone was the servant of Yahweh.
He alone was the true Israel.
He alone was the covenant keeper.
He alone.
The father with him was well pleased in
everything he did, but on that tree he
bore the guilt of his brothers.
He bore their sin in the
priestly blessing.
Let's just turn there for a moment to
Numbers chapter six.
For just a moment, number six, twenty four,
the Aaronic blessing, the priestly blessing, chapter six,
verse twenty four of Numbers, the Lord bless
you and keep you.
The Lord make his face shine on you
and be gracious to you.
The Lord lift up his countenance on you
and give you peace.
This presents a tremendous theological problem.
Oh, if we could only see what a
theological problem this blessing.
Causes.
This isn't right.
God cannot bless a wicked people or a
wicked individual.
It is wrong to pronounce this on anyone.
How can anyone be blessed before God if
God is just, if God is holy, if
God is right?
He cannot bless, place his favor upon the
wicked.
How can it be done?
There is only one way the curse that
was yours was placed upon him and the
blessing that was his was placed upon you.
And.
Let's reword this as it fell upon Christ.
Verse twenty four, it says, the Lord bless
you and keep you, but at Calvary, the
Lord curse you and give you over to
destruction.
Verse twenty five, the Lord make his face
shine on you and be gracious to you.
But at Calvary, the Lord take the light
of his presence from you and condemn you.
The Lord, verse twenty six, lift up his
countenance on you and give you peace.
But on Calvary, the Lord turn his face
from you and fill you with misery.
It is rarely that I preach that I
don't mention this truth.
And for years I have had Christians, sincere
Christians of 30 years, of 40 years in
the faith, come up to me afterwards weeping
and say this.
I always believed that Jesus died for me
and I've always trusted in him, but I
never could understand really why he had to
die.
I know it was because of sin, but
how does his death I mean, what does
it do?
Why was it required?
So shallow is our preaching.
You see, here's the greatest problem that exists
in all of Scripture.
If God is good, he cannot forgive you.
Some of you are saying, well, why not?
And that just demonstrates the ignorance of your
age.
Greater men than you would have known the
answer to that swiftly.
You see, you live in an age where
there is no justice, where there is nothing
right or noble left in the world.
But you see, if God is good.
He cannot pardon the wicked.
You say, well, why not?
Well, let me give you a vulgar illustration.
Imagine you go home and find your entire
family slaughtered on the floor and the murderer
standing over them in a rage, you throw
the man to the ground, but you come
to your senses and instead of vengeance, you
demand justice and so you tie him up
instead of killing him and you call the
police, the police come and take him away
to the prison.
Months go by and he's finally presented before
the judge and the judge says this, I
am a loving and gracious judge, slow to
anger, abounding in mercy.
Therefore, I pardon you.
Go home.
And what are you going to do, little
man, are you going to do the very
thing you demand God to do?
Are you just going to walk away and
say that was wonderful?
That was absolutely wonderful.
I am so happy.
No, I tell you what you're going to
do.
You're going to write the Congress.
You're going to call the president if you
can.
You're going to alert the media.
You're going to write newspaper articles.
You're going to say that there was a
judge on the bench far more wicked than
the criminals he lets go.
See, so there is a sense of justice
in you, after all, that could not have
evolved, you must be created.
So what is God to do?
You demand justice here on Earth.
You complain when the tiniest offense is made
against you, husband, your wife doesn't behave herself
properly.
You become offended.
Why?
If you do the same children, anyone takes
away any right of yours and you're ready
to scoff and have their head off at
the shoulders.
And yet you scoff because God is just,
if God's just, he cannot forgive you.
So the question is, how can God forgive
you and still be just because God becomes
a man and takes upon himself your guilt
and he pays the price with his own
life, with his own son.
He does the work.
Some evangelists will tell you, well, instead of
being just with you, God has been loving.
Therefore, logically, God's love is unjust.
That's impossible.
No, God must be both loving and just,
and it is not because there's some principle,
universal principle over the head of God to
which he must conform some statement of righteousness
which he must obey.
That's not the reason God must be righteous
because he is righteous.
There's no inconsistency in his person.
He cannot simply pardon justice.
His justice must be satisfied.
And he did that through the death of
his own son.
Now, again, even though I have said this
a million times, I will say it a
million times more if the Lord gives me
breath.
So many people look at the tree and
they they go.
Well, the nails, the crown of thorns, the
spear in his side and and all the
physical suffering, and I don't want to take
away anything from that.
It was necessary and it was terrible.
But if that's all you know about the
cross, you don't understand anything about the cross.
I'll hear preachers preach during Easter and such
about the death of Christ.
And and they talk about crowns of thorns
and Roman whips and all these things.
And they never really tell anybody about the
cross.
It wasn't the pain of the cross was
not a Roman whip.
Not proving.
When Christ is in the garden and he
cries out three times, let this cup pass
for me, let this cup pass for me,
he is under such anguish that sweat turns
into blood.
Is it like some people say that in
his omniscience he had foreseen the cat of
nine tails coming across his back, the crown
of thorns on his head, the beatings, the
mockings, the nails, the crucifixion?
Is that what caused him?
To pray in such anguish in the garden,
absolutely not, absolutely not.
I can prove it.
Is it not true that for the next
three centuries, countless Christians died on crosses?
Read the Book of Martyrs, countless died on
crosses, and the story goes that most of
them went to the cross joyfully praising God
that they had the privilege to die for
Christ.
Now, let me ask you a question.
Are the disciples of Jesus Christ going to
joyfully embrace a cross that their captain of
salvation desired to avoid?
Or is the disciple greater than the master?
Was Christ truly afraid of a Roman whip?
What was in the cup?
There is only one biblical answer.
Let me give you two passages, Jeremiah, twenty
five, fifteen and sixteen.
But first, Psalm seventy five, eight.
Just listen.
For a cup is in the hand of
the Lord and the wine foams.
It is well mixed and he pours out
of this.
Surely all the wicked of the earth must
drain and drink down its dregs.
Jeremiah, for thus says the Lord, the God
of Israel 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, the wrath of
Almighty God was in the cup, God's holy,
righteous hatred.
Now, shall I finish this statement with God's
holy, righteous hatred, hatred for sin?
Are God's holy, righteous hatred for the sinner?
Now, if I listen to all those bumper
stickers, I must understand that God loves the
sinner and hates the sin.
But if I listen to the Bible, Psalms
five, five, I must understand that God hates
all those who do wrong.
God does not send sin to hell.
He sends men to hell because his wrath
is against them.
You say, well, what about John three, 16,
for God's to love the world and the
world is full of sinners.
Yes, it is true, more true than you
will ever know or I can ever preach.
But what about Psalms five, five?
It's in the Bible, too.
So that's the problem with modern day evangelicalism.
It just picks what sounds nice and avoids
the rest.
But the rest is the saving part.
You say, God is love.
He cannot hate.
Do you love Jews?
Then you must hate the Holocaust.
If I walk up to you and I
say, what do you think about African slavery
and colonial America?
And you go, well, I'm pretty much neutral
on it.
I don't think it was that big of
a deal.
Then you do not love African-Americans.
Do you love children?
You hate abortion.
You see, if you truly love.
You also truly hate God loves with a
passion that none of us could even begin
to surmise.
And God hates.
But his love is of such a nature.
That though his wrath is directed toward the
objects of his wrath and rightfully so, because
they are wicked.
His love is working redemption for them.
And what you need to understand, and Paul
is very clear in the book of Romans,
especially chapter two, is that there is a
sense in which God is looking at the
wicked and his wrath is against them.
But the mercy of God, with one hand,
holds back his wrath and with the other
hand beckons you to come.
And you say, no, I will not.
Well, no, this one day.
Maybe even before you die.
This merciful call may be stopped and you
may be turned over to your own wickedness,
never to be saved.
And know this, that even if the call
remains your entire life.
Upon death, that hand will be pulled back.
And all the wrath of God, that mercy
withheld from you will now be poured upon
your head in heaping measure.
You're trying to make us afraid, preacher.
Young fool, listen to me, there are some
things of which you should be afraid.
Just imagine for a moment you're.
In a little village, about an eighth of
a mile at the bottom of a huge
dam, and it's a thousand feet high and
a thousand feet wide, filled to the brim
with water.
And you wake up one morning to hear
a crack, an explosion like nothing you've ever
heard before.
And as you run to the window.
And then make your way outside, you find
that the dam, the wall has been breached,
there's nothing left of it.
And within a matter of seconds, your entire
village will be engulfed, the city of destruction.
The fleet of foot cannot outrun it, the
strongest swimmer will be sucked down.
There's no hope.
And right before the rage reaches you, the
ground opens up and takes it all in
and not one drop splashes upon your pant
leg.
Christ on that tree did that for you.
He did that for you.
No, both now the severity and the love
of God.
The severity of God in that that dam
was going to crush you and has crushed
many.
Did you know this?
Death is not natural.
Well, death is as natural as birth.
No, it's not.
Death is supernatural.
You don't think God judges men?
Hundreds of thousands of men will be swept
away into death this very day and most
will wake up in hell.
Death is not natural.
It's supernatural.
It is the judgment of God.
Imagine a millstone, ten thousand pounds upon the
ground and another of light shape and size
on top of it.
And they're hurling and twirling against one another.
And you take a little grain of wheat
and you put it into the middle of
them at first for just a microsecond.
The pressure is felt.
The whole is burst.
The insides are ground to powder and nothing
remains.
You say, well, I'll stand before God.
I'll argue my case.
You will melt before God like a tiny
wax figurine before a blast furnace.
But Christ.
He was that grain of wheat for unless
a grain of wheat fall to the ground
and die, it abideth alone.
But if it died, bring it forth much
fruit.
Now I want to go we're closing.
I want to go to.
Outside of the scriptures, probably my most favorite.
Words ever penned by the hand of a
man.
It's one of my most favorite writers, John
Flavel, read the first volume of his works,
The Meditorial Glories of Christ, and you will
never be the same.
He talks he writes about a dialogue in
eternity between the father and the son.
I call it the father, the father's bargain,
I just listen.
Here, you may suppose that the father to
say when driving his bargain with Christ for
you.
Oh, why don't people write this way anymore?
The father speaks, my son, here is a
company of poor, miserable souls.
This miserable that have utterly undone themselves.
Yes, young person, I know you grow up
in a in a world that allows you
to blame society for every wicked thing that
you've done.
And allows you to even smile and smirk
at a preacher like me.
But know this, you've undone yourself, it will
be your undoing and it's your society that
you create it and don't blame your father's.
The generation before you, because the fact that
you do the same deeds they did shows
that you are their sons, they've undone themselves
and they now lie open to my justice.
Now, listen to this justice demand satisfaction for
them or will satisfy itself in the eternal
ruin of them.
You want to pay your own price for
sin.
It's an eternal death.
Why so long you have trespassed against an
infinitely good God?
Another thing you should realize is this part
of what makes hell hell is that you
are turned over to you.
So you're supposing that people go to hell
and there they repent, they do not.
I believe C.S. Lewis was on track
when he said this, that the door to
hell is locked on the inside.
If you were to throw the door open
and say, come out, only bow to God's
scepter, they would slam the door closed.
I'd rather rot in hell, such as what
happens to men when they're turned over.
So if there is any sense of wanting
to know God in your heart at this
moment, you better cultivate that.
Don't turn away from God calling out to
you because there will come a point where
you will hear no voice.
What shall be done for these souls and
thus Christ returns, oh, my father, such is
my love to and pity for them.
I hear men today.
I don't want anybody's pity.
You need it whether you want it or
not.
Such is my love and pity for them.
Then rather that they shall perish eternally, I
will be responsible for them as their guarantee.
Now, this is one of the best parts.
Bring in all thy bills that I may
see what they owe thee.
Now, sometimes young men will get married and
they'll come back to my office after several
months and they'll go.
I had no idea it was going to
be like this.
I'm not sure I did the right thing.
I just wish I could turn back the
hands of the clock for just a few
long enough to get out of that marriage.
What did I do?
You see, before that, they were all making
great claims about the love that they had
for this woman and how they would lay
down their lives and not now that they
know the matter, what it demands, their selfishness,
wants them to back out to see Christ
as father.
Bring in all their bills now.
When he went to the cross, he knew
exactly what he had to pay.
He wasn't deluded, he wasn't romantic, he wasn't
just thinking grand thoughts, he knew exactly practically
what he was going to have to do
and he chose to do it anyways.
But here's the most amazing thing.
And young men think about this when you
get married.
He did not die for a woman already
perfect.
He died for a tramp of a thing.
For sinners, he died, if he loved you
that much, when you were thus, how much
more does he love thee?
Do you see that?
And then he says, Lord, bring them all
in.
And this is my most favorite part.
Lord, bring them all in so that there
may be no after reckonings with them.
Saint, do you understand what this is saying?
Bring in every one of the bills, father,
and when I pay, I pay in full
so that they will never be dealt with
again.
Not one sin past, present or future will
ever again be laid at your feet in
blame.
And that is why he considers you righteous.
No after reckonings, no undiscovered bill in his
omniscience, all was placed before him, he knew
all and he paid all at my hand.
Shall thou require it?
I will rather choose to suffer their wrath,
the wrath they deserve than they should suffer
it upon me, my father, upon me be
all their debt.
And then the father says, but my son,
if thou undertake for them.
Thou must reckon to pay the last might,
expect no abatements, do not expect me to
lighten my hand because you are my son.
And then listen to this, the first time
I read it, it kept me there.
The father looks to the son and says,
if I spare them, I will not spare
you.
Believer, you don't know whether or not God
loves you.
You're unsure.
That he really cares, listen to the language,
OK, son.
We'll undertake this.
But no.
If I spare.
This people.
I will not spare you.
And then, oh, what a charge, what a
proof of deity, the mighty Christ, I can
just I mean, you can just see him
content, my father, let it be so charge
it all upon me.
I am able to discharge it.
No angel, no man, no group collectively.
No one can make that statement except God.
I am able to discharge it.
And though it prove a kind of undoing
to me, isn't it amazing the way love,
true love thinks so little about the burden
it must bear?
And though, father, it be a kind of
undoing to me, it'll cost him everything.
But his love for his people is such
that it is kind of an undoing.
I recall where if a man is made
a slave.
In the scriptures, he has a husband and
a wife, has a wife and children given
by the master, and after his period of
slavery is over and he can be set
free, but his love for his wife and
his children is so great that he will
go and tell his master, I do not
want to leave.
And the master takes him over to a
threshold or a post or a beam and
takes in awe and puts him against the
beam and pierces his ear with awe, demonstrating
that he will be the servant.
He will not stop at this task.
He will be a servant permanently.
And he does this for the love of
his bride.
So Christ laid aside his glory in heaven
and he became not just obedience unto death,
but death on a tree.
He became the servant of servants, all out
of love for his bride.
You see, eventually, young Christian, this is what's
going to happen to you.
Hopefully your weakness and your sin will no
longer cause you to doubt God's love.
But cause you to marvel in it that
he you know, let me give you a
lesson.
You know, the hardest thing you're ever going
to have to do as a Christian, the
most difficult thing you're ever going to have
to do.
Brace yourself.
It is a monumental task.
The most difficult thing you're ever going to
have to do is believe that God loves
you as much as he says he does
honestly, honestly.
Yet, what a marvelous task, though it prove
a kind of undoing to me, though it
impoverish all my riches, empty all my treasures,
yet I am content to undertake it.
I'm going to finish just with an old
story that you all have heard so many
times.
There is an old man called out of
a pagan land by the name of Abraham.
He believed the promise, the promise was finally
given, and then upon the giving of that
promise, a great sacrifice was demanded.
And I want you to listen to the
language.
You see, if Christ, I know there it's
all the rage today, you know, that this
book has nothing to do with Jesus and
this book in the Bible has nothing to
do with Jesus.
And this book of the Bible has nothing
to do with Jesus.
I will tell you, Jesus Christ is on
every page of the Old Testament.
And if he is not, it is nothing
more than a book of morality.
I don't need morality.
I need a savior.
But listen to his language.
Tell me this could not have been written
differently.
Tell me there's not more than what's being
said here.
He looks down at Abraham.
He says, Abraham, take now your son, your
only son whom you love, Isaac, and go
up to the land of Moriah and offer
him there is a burnt offering on one
of the mountains of which I will tell
you the old man obey obeys.
He comes to the final point after binding
his child with rope, after heaping up sacrificial
wood for fire upon him, all the things
that had to be done.
Finally, he takes the knife and the will
of that old man is given into the
will of God.
And as he comes down, God stops him
and says this, Abraham, Abraham, do not stretch
out your hand against the lad and do
nothing to him.
For now, I know that you fear God
since you have not withheld your son, your
only son from me.
At the sound of the Lord's voice, Abraham
turns around and there's a ram in the
thicket caught by its horns.
He pronounces the mountain, Jehovah Jireh, the Lord
will provide.
I know that there are many teachers on
TV and in Houston and Dallas and in
so many other places of the world that
flippantly say this statement, Jehovah Jireh, he will
give you a big house, Jehovah Jireh, he'll
give you a Mercedes, Jehovah Jireh, he'll do
this and that.
They blaspheme.
They are like unreasoning animals that know not
what they are saying.
It's Jehovah Jireh.
God will provide a ram.
What do I care to have all the
riches of the world?
What do I care to have health and
life?
I'm doomed at the end of seventy five
years unless there is a ram, unless there
is a lamb.
I need a lamb and it draws to
a close, the story draws to a close
and everybody in the congregation breathes a sigh
of relief.
Well, that was a good ending.
There's only one problem.
Wasn't the ending, it was the intermission.
And.
Generation after generation after generation, hundreds, thousands of
years passed.
And this curtain draws back open again, and
there he is, God's son.
God's only son.
The son whom he loves.
Hanging on Calvary and God takes the knife
out of Abraham's hand.
And lays his hand across the brow of
his only begotten son and slaughters him.
I wish I had a good voice.
I would sing.
I don't know what to do.
What do you do now?
Well, what do you do?
It's over.
You're saved.
And yet you're a prisoner to him, God
told Abraham.
Because Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son,
Abraham, now I know that you love me
because you would not spare your only son
for me.
And the Church of Jesus Christ now looks
up to God, the father, and says, I
know you love me.
I know you love me.
Because you would not keep your only son.
You would not spare him, but you gave
him just amazing grace, how sweet the sound
saved a wretch like me.
These are the kind of truths that disintegrate
not only our reality.
But our heart.
That captivate us at this moment at the
cross, it's just like everything begins there for
us.
And everything ends there for us, starts with
him, it ends with him, it's all about
him, everything is about him.
Take your breath away.
Oh, that God would give you a vision
of the cross.
He died, he died, died
and then.
And then three days later, up from the
grave, he arose with a mighty triumph, not
only over his foes, but over mine death.
Where is your sting?
Gray, where is your victory?
My captain, my captain has come to you
and he has tore off the lid from
your tomb and infused you with life.
We're free.
From sin and death, I'll finish, I promise,
just go to just Psalms really quick, Psalms
24 is called the Psalm of Ascent, and
I know that I'm going to now be
identified with.
Old Puritans and will be accused of
trying to take every text and twist it
around to have it having to do something
about Jesus, but the question in verse three,
who may ascend unto the hill of the
Lord and who may stand in his holy
place, he who has clean hands and a
pure heart, who has not lifted up his
soul to falsehood and has not sworn deceitfully.
Are there anyone here who qualifies anyone?
No one.
This condemns us.
We all stand there, shoulders drooped, our hearts
broken into death has come over our brow.
There's nothing left for us.
We cannot ascend.
We can't go there.
We're shut off, we're cut off.
But there was a man, there is one
God and one mediator between God and men,
the man, Christ Jesus, the man, yes, fullness
of deity.
But don't be docetic, fullness of deity, also
fullness of humanity.
Two natures without confusion, without either being lost,
he is our savior, God, our savior, he
is a man.
The man and he qualifies, he qualifies, he
qualifies, and so he sends up into heaven
a man and he stands there at the
doors that are rusted and barred and he
cries out in verse seven, lift up your
heads, old gates and be lifted up, old
ancient doors that the king of glory may
come in.
Can you imagine the shock on the other
side who yells at these gates, who commands
these gates, who would dare lay their hand
to the latch of these doors?
No man passes this way.
And they cry out, who is this king
of glory?
And then the mighty Christ answers back the
Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in
battle, lift up your heads, old gates and
be lifted up, old ancient doors that the
king of glory may come in.
And for the first time in all of
time, those doors swung open for a man
when he walked through that door.
Oh, you talk about this.
Every angel in heaven, you see, they're not
like us with the first thing they ever
saw when they opened up their eyes was
him.
And there he stands again before them, the
mighty Christ, the son of God, the savior
of the world.
And they fall down before him.
Oh, hail the power of Jesus' name.
Let angels prostrate fall, bring forth the royal
diadem, crown him Lord of all, crown him
with many crowns.
And that man, Jesus Christ, can you imagine
ascending up to the throne of God, each
step of his foot, ascending and to sit
down at the right hand of his father?
You see, that is why we can say
that God is love.
And not that he became love when he
created.
See, he always has been loved because there's
been more than one person in this Godhead,
there's been a trinity.
And the father has loved the son and
he sees the son and the son is
seated in his right hand.
Can you imagine?
Maybe he said something like this, maybe he
looked at his son and said, son, it
is finished.
And the son, father, it is finished.
Indeed, I have done it.
When God could find no man to stand
in the gap, when he was amazed and
appalled that there was no one on earth
to work his salvation by his own right
hand, he completed the work.
His son, the king, magnificent and full of
glory, religion, I scoff at religion.
Morality is a small thing.
Christ, Christ, Christ, Christ, young man,
Christ, scoffer, Christ, old man, Christ, Christ, Christ,
and the call of this mighty Christ to
you is repent and believe the gospel.
None of this praying a prayer.
None of this repetition after a religious authority,
no repents and believe the gospel.
But my heart is cold.
Then go away and lock yourself in a
room and cry out to God until he
saves you.
Seek him and he will let himself be
found by you.
Repent and believe the gospel.
How will I know, because the spirit of
God by the spirit of God assurance will
be given.
How will I know, because the love of
God will be shed abroad in your heart
supernaturally and I won't be telling you you're
saved.
You'll be telling me you've been saved by
his hand, by his hand.
Repent and believe the gospel.
Repent and believe the gospel, Father, I it's
like always.
There's no way to get around this.
There's no way to explain it.
There's no way to understand it.
It's so big.
Father, please, I'm praying that you would open
up the heart.
And the mind of people that you will
regenerate them.
The graces of repentance and faith be granted
that they would press on violently into the
kingdom.
And they would have a strong assurance of
conversion that they would go on bearing fruit.
Oh, God, and raise up, especially from our
young men that will be women that will
be like candle wicks consumed by a flame
for him, Lord, for him, for him, Lord,
for him, for him.
In Jesus name, amen.