We are not sufficiently acquainted with the exceeding
sinfulness of sin, and we need to spend
an entire morning just dwelling on it until
it sinks into our deeps.
I'm impressed by a statement in one of
my sources here where the author says, sin
is the measure of salvation.
Sin is the measure of salvation.
What does salvation mean?
Except the salvation from sin.
And if we don't know what sin is,
then what then is salvation?
And what is the God who saves?
Everything fails.
Everything rises or falls, succeeds or collapses with
the issue of sin itself as evil in
which God's wrath is justified because it's a
righteous wrath.
It's not human petulance.
So, he says, all heresy has its source,
we can say all error has its source
in wrong or feeble conceptions of sin.
Why do you think it is that we
are prone even as the church to have
feeble or inadequate conceptions of sin?
Why that propensity?
Why is that a marked characteristic, especially of
contemporary church as a feeble or inadequate conception
of sin?
Sin itself blinds one to sin.
Sin itself is a power that blinds one
to its very nature.
That's what makes it so deceptive.
That's why only judgment really reveals it.
We understand sin by the magnitude of the
judgment required to meet it or the judgment
that it occasions.
But in itself, it's hardly ever recognized as
sin.
It's called love or self-justification or I
got it coming or however you want to
phrase it.
All heresy, all error has its source in
wrong or feeble conceptions of sin.
As with church, so with individuals, the estimate
of sin determines everything.
Not only it's sin itself, but it determines
God.
Because how can you understand God as holiness
or righteousness except from his own attitude and
truth about sin?
Everything is lost, rises or falls over this
one capital word.
And whoever makes it a subject has a
thing in itself that deserves examination because our
own flesh shrinks from being found out.
So I've got two Bible dictionaries here and
I want to just use them to see
what they say about sin.
And we can stop at any point and
elaborate and discuss.
So sin is failure, error, iniquity, transgression, trespass,
lawlessness, unrighteousness.
It is an unmitigated evil.
And that word evil is like a neon
light, something flashing on and off in my
inner man, evil.
We need to recognize evil because not to
recognize evil is to be naive and ignorant
and susceptible and make yourself a candidate and
victim for its power.
Think of recent, of German recent history, failing
to recognize evil.
And we can think of our own, especially
in an age where darkness is celebrated as
light and evil is celebrated as good.
So to recognize evil and to smart over
it, to hate the bloody thing and to
recognize it, not only in society and in
others, but in ourselves and our own propensity
is a remarkable requisite because our naivety is
willful and stupid.
There's no reason to be naive about evil
in an age such as ours, because we
can already read in history what has been
the tragic result of societies and nations that
will not recognize it.
An unmitigated evil.
But the definition of sin is not to
be derived simply from the terms used in
scripture to denote it.
The most characteristic feature of sin in all
aspects is that it's directed against God.
What is the nexus, the defining point of
sin?
It is directed against God.
We're supposed to, I would not have known
sin if it had not been for the
law.
The law of God, which is the statement
of God and his righteousness, instructed Paul about
sin or else he would have been mindless
and self-congratulating and completely unaware of the
truth of his own condition or that of
men.
The law reveals sin.
God reveals sin.
God's action and the redemptive work reveals sin
or it would not have been known.
And what is it in its heart?
Any act, thought, speech, conduct that is directed
against God, anything contrary to God, anything offensive
to God, anything that is a counteractive measure
against God that wants to nullify, mitigate, reduce,
his reality is evil and sin.
So even to compliment him in a kind
of a false way, reduces the truth of
God and therefore is opposed to God to
compliment the sin.
So we have to see through the forms.
What is the end?
What's the purpose of this compliment?
What is really being said here?
And what does he say?
He condemns his wrath is against those who
hold the truth in unrighteousness or oppose the
truth or hinder the truth.
And another place that talks about not only
will they not themselves come into the kingdom,
but they prevent others from coming.
Isn't that remarkable?
You want to know what sin is?
It's not only that you withhold yourself from
God and his kingdom, but you actively work
to hinder others.
That's evil.
That's sin.
That's anti-God, anti-Christ.
That's why David said against thee and thee
only have I sinned.
The victim was the man who was murdered
and the woman who was disadvantaged, but he
sees it essentially against thee, especially being the
king, king of Israel and psalmist.
Why was Moses not permitted entry into the
land?
After 40 years of chauffeuring this people through
the wilderness and all of the heartache and
vexation that that responsibility bore, when it came
to the threshold of entry, he was forbidden
and all he could do was glimpse it
from Mount Nebo, but he himself could not
enter.
How come?
What was the explicit act for which the
penalty by God was to be denied entry
into the land?
And listen, hold on, hold on a second.
Let's not rush here.
Entry into the land isn't like, well, I
can unpack my suitcase at last after 40
years.
Entry into the land is, is payola, is
eureka.
It's coming to Zion.
It's the capstone, the conclusion, the finality, the
consummation.
After 40 hard years, your soul craves for
the, for the thing for which you have
been in preparation all those years long.
And to be denied that entry, particularly as
the father and guide and prophet is a
remarkable judgment.
So what was the sin commensurate with the
judgment?
He was vexed in his spirit.
Remember that?
And so what's so bad about that?
The water did come, it gushed, God was
faithful.
So just a technicality that a momentary lapse,
instead of speaking, he struck.
God said, speak.
He did not say strike.
So there's a clear thing.
The essence of the Sinbo, God said, you
did not sanctify me before the people.
Your act gave an impression that was erroneous
about me because you are so identified with
me, your conduct, how you deport yourself is
the statement of me.
And in that act and that disobedience and
in the peak, the irritation against the people
that provoked him, he was exhibiting something, not
God.
He did not honor God.
He was not sanctifying God by his conduct.
And God thought it so serious an error
that it deserved the judgment of being denied
entry into the land.
What about King David?
Others can fornicate and perform adultery, but for
David to perform it as King of Israel,
who is a reflection of the monarch in
heaven, that act is against God because it
defames God in proportion to the role that
David is given to occupy to perform.
Got that?
So that's why David said against thee, and
thee only have I sinned.
I have disparaged you by my conduct.
I should have been the more greatly responsible
because people get an impression of you as
father and as King, as they see me
as the visible expression and representative on the
earth.
Because if your King can take liberties, what
then are you permitted?
And the scriptures say, as the priest, so
also the people.
When the priest became degenerate, when they were
not conscious of their office and took liberties
and were not walking in the consciousness of
God, the nation reflected that fall, as the
priest, so also the people.
So here's a little glimpse about the evil
of sin, of how though it may emerge
or be expressed through a single individual, the
consequences are wide.
It's directed against God.
The carnal mind is at enmity with God.
So when the scripture says that sin is
the transgression of the law, it's a statement
about the law as the statement of God.
So against the law is against God.
Transgression is violation of that which God's glory
demands of us and is therefore in essence
the contradiction of God.
So who has ever transgressed?
Do you pray every morning, Lord, forgive me
my transgressions, even though you're not conscious of
any?
You pray, Lord, in my breathing in and
breathing out, I know that there's iniquity.
I know that there's iniquity that is ever
rising up within me.
There's something that rises up out of my
Adamic taint that is inadvertent, and though I
may not be conscious of it, I'm asking
your forgiveness for it, though I can't identify
it.
My transgression and my iniquity is ever before
me.
You ever pray like that?
I pray like that daily.
It's not an extreme position.
It's very realistic.
So we have to know how pervasive this
thing is, how deadly and how without breathing
in and breathing out, and especially if we're
given to speaking in the Lord's behalf, because
we read that in the volume of much
speaking is sin, is transgression.
Just the volume of words themselves almost make
it certain that there's going to be some
inadvertent insertion, something out of our humanity, some
unwisely chosen illustration or expression that corrupts the
statement that somehow comes out of the best
of us, however well-meaning, just in the
volume of words.
It's a precarious existence to walk blamelessly before
him.
How about making nice and trying to comfort
someone when God wants them to feel the
full brunt of their condition?
How about interfering with the sanctifying work of
God by being a meddler and making nice?
How much do we play the role of
God and displace God, not out of sinister
intention but out of good intention, but it
is still opposed to God.
So this is the transgression.
This is going beyond the limit.
What is transgression?
Going beyond a limit that God himself has
set.
And we just need to be conscious of,
is there a day in which we're not
transgressing, exceeding God, by some initiative of our
own thinking to do good and wanting to
be seen and doing good and receiving the
credit for it, and our ego craving to
be recognized of men will always drive us
to displace God, or by holding back when
God is requiring something but we're afraid that
we'll be misunderstood or someone will be offended.
So either way, the prospects for transgression are
ever and always before us.
So it's not unbefitting to ask God's forgiveness
for transgressions even when you're not conscious of
any particular one, because how can you live
a day in your mortality, breathing in and
breathing out, in the ingredients of that day,
in the complexities of it, in which there's
not opportunity, in which you have not expressed
one way or another something opposed to God.
And the most vile kind is when it's
opposed to God in the name of God.
Or when you're trafficking in God and enlisting
God's name to sanctify and validate something out
of your own flesh.
God said, God told me, God, God, God,
God.
That is a vile form of transgression that
doesn't think too much to take the liberty
to sanctify its carnality by invoking God's name.
And where is this not done?
At the highest echelons of Christendom, where the
suckers gape at these men and nod and
continue to pay the bill.
If you're conscious of a known sin, you
need to confess it.
And I believe that God subsumes and takes
in with the confession of the known sin,
the things that are not known.
See what I mean?
But if you'll hold back on what is
known, you're still liable for that and all
of the unknown.
But if you'll confess what you know, he's
gracious not only to forgive you for that,
but that which you don't know.
So your soul is cleansed by the confession
of that which you do know.
But then pray as I pray, Lord, I'm
not conscious of a particular transgression, but I
know I have breathed in and breathed out
of my humanity today.
And somewhere in the course of that, in
thought, speech, or deed, in something that I've
performed or failed to perform, or some presumptuous
act or illusion or reference, I have transgressed.
My iniquity is ever before me.
Yes, I'm saved.
But the Adamic thing is there until the
day that we receive a glorified body.
That flesh is still at enmity with God
and always wanting to express its carnal thought,
sometimes in the very vocabulary of God.
So praise the Lord for the blood.
And when you invoke the blood, the blood
seeks out and finds and nullifies those things
of which you're not conscious so that you
could be sanctified within and without.
So frequent confession, frequent invoking of the blood,
frequent coming to the Lord's table and taking
that blood within and let it find its
way into those hidden crevices and cracks where
self and vanity, pride, and sin lurk and
hide themselves.
God has made provision if we will avail
ourselves and if we are conscious both of
our need and of the provision that God
has made.
Or else we're clouded, we're unclear vessels, we
make uncertain sounds when we blow the trump,
our witness is defective, it lacks credibility and
penetration, and we're just get-by-saints even
with each other, let alone in the hostile
world.
So there needs to be a clarity, a
purity, if we are to be effectually his
witness.
You shall be witnesses unto me.
Moses was not that witness in his presumption
to do his own thing, although God made
clearly how he was to address the rock.
And he paid the penalty.
If you have a trumpet, any brass instrument
that has not been cleaned and polished and
buffed, it will affect the tone and viber
of what is emitted.
The same thing with ourselves as vessels, if
we are clouded over and not buffed and
kept clean, though we may say the right
thing, the words, the sound of the words
does not have its penetrating power, it's muted.
So that's why many in the world have
heard the word of God, but not the
voice of God.
The voice of God, that God rebukes Israel
for not hearing his voice.
So that voice and the words need to
be heard through the vessels for whom God
has clear and full expression.
Because he's holy, and if you are entertaining
that which is contrary to that holiness, how
shall he flow through?
So we have to keep a purge and
sanctified in a man so that both his
voice as well as his words could have
their perfect transmission.
I don't know that I can prove this,
just thoughts that I have in my 40th,
41st year as a believer and being a
mouthpiece of the Lord, and knowing in myself
whether the resonance of God and the tone
is clear, or whether it's affected by some
condescension on my part for things that I
should not have allowed.
I can pick up the metallic clang, the
artificial, the brittle note of human piety, it
doesn't ring true even when it's quoting scripture.
Then I can hear in other voices the
broken quality of someone who has a history
with God and it comes through with the
voice.
The voice is a distinctive statement, so watch
your voices.
Your voices will either resonate God or resonate
yourself.
Okay, sin makes its mark.
You can see it in faces, you can
hear it in voices, the attitudes that we
carry.
We talked this morning about blasé matter-of
-factness, a certain air that sophisticated people in
the world carry.
You know, nothing can really impress them.
They've seen it all, they've heard it all.
Who are you?
It's a defensive pose.
It's not the innocence of childhood that looks
at you adoringly as if, boy, where did
you come from?
And wow, you're something special.
And they're receiving something special because they see
something special.
Their innocence allows them to see it and
our sophistication keeps us from seeing the thing
that a child sees, but it's concealed from
us because we're blasé matter-of-fact, you
can't impress me.
It's an egoistic device.
Okay, see how easy it is to sin?
It's ever before us.
Look, man, no hands.
I breathe and I'm a sinner.
We know sin by the fact that we
are sinners and it affects much.
We're stunting personalities, we're corrupting families, we're sending
out into the world deranged men like Woody
Allen, and then we watch their films and
we're influenced by what they produce.
And so the thing just has resonance throughout
the whole of culture and life until there's
a comeuppance and a judgment.
So these sons grow up deprived and want
to succeed in very ostentatious ways and become
rich quick and greedy and powerful and domineering
in industry and commerce and trade and finance.
And so we have the whole effect of
their stunted personalities in the society that we
inhabit together.
And they will go into the pornography business
and make billions, not millions, billions on punk
rock culture, on rap artists.
Who are the recording companies?
Jewish.
Hitler blamed the Jews for the corruption of
German civilization and he wasn't far wrong.
And one day the anti-Semites in this
country will remind us that the woman with
whom Clinton had his affair was a Jew.
And that many of the places that have
affected what we read, what we understand, what
we see in movies and film and TV
and have shaped the national mentality away from
God and away from nation.
Sin will have its consequence and God will
judge it.
For the wages of sin is death.
There's got to be a recompense.
Why?
Because we inhabit a moral universe.
If there's no consequence, there's no morality.
Then anything goes that you can get away
with.
And so if you read Psalm 73, the
psalmist is so vexed he's almost out of
his skull that the wicked are prospering who
don't give a rap about God and they
speak indiscriminately and loudly in the most defiant
and blasphemous ways and get away with it
and prosper.
But the righteous suffer and the psalmist himself
is suffering and he's just about ready to
throw the towel in.
And so you know I'm just tempted to
go along with the flow and get in
on this and prosper myself.
Why am I maintaining my integrity at such
cost?
And then out of his deep vexation God
brings him into the sanctuary and then he
says now I see.
I see their end.
Though they don't get pay for it in
this life, if they don't pay for it
in this life they will pay for it
eternally.
I've seen their end and they will slip
into it an unspeakable agony eternally that makes
this universe moral.
If hell were emitted or removed from our
universe it would not be a moral universe.
Heaven is a moral compensation for the righteous
who maintain their righteousness at sacrifice and as
a recompense for evil.
If it's not judged in this world it'll
be judged in the world to come.
So do you have that sense?
The word moral is even absent from our
conversation.
Okay Satan's attack is directed against the integrity
and veracity of God.
If sin is against God we can understand
the attack in the garden.
Has God said?
Even if he has said it, so what?
He can say anything but is he accountable?
Does he really mean it?
Or is he just talking?
It's raising questions about the character of God
that's Eve bought.
That maybe God is trying to keep us
from sharing coming into the kind of glory
that is rightfully ours with him and he
doesn't want us to eat of the tree
by which we will obtain an equality with
God and be as God.
That was the insinuation of the devil.
Disparaging God in his motives for telling them
why they should not.
He didn't tell them why.
He told them they should not eat from
that tree.
The devil is explaining and raising questions about
the character of God who speaks.
Has God said?
So it's opposed to God.
Sin is opposed to God as God and
that she had accepted the most blasphemous assault
upon the integrity of God and she coveted
for herself divine prerogatives.
Why would God's first creation be so susceptible
to Satan's lie and the questions raised about
God's veracity and character?
Why should he not be implicitly believed and
trusted?
What is faith other than trusting God because
of his character?
That what he says is true and that
he means it and that he's not a
man that he should lie.
Faith is trusting God.
My message in Africa was that just shall
live by their faith and that God has
promised in his word that righteousness exalts a
nation and the answer to your poverty is
not a program from the United Nations or
some Christian charity.
The answer to your poverty is getting right
with God and living according to his word
that says seek first the kingdom of God
and his righteousness and all things else will
be added unto you.
But who in fact is doing it?
It's a remarkably lavish promise that if you
make him a first priority everything and anything
else will be added unto you.
Put me first is in keeping with the
first commandment.
But who's doing it?
And I'm saying to Africa this is the
key to the elimination of poverty, ignorance and
disease.
Put God first and do it though your
environment does not give any suggestion that it
could provide the prosperity that God says will
follow.
But prosperity exalts a nation is not the
issue of your natural resources or skilled manpower
it's the issue of God's word and his
promise.
Got that?
Did God say?
Can you trust what God has said?
Is he trustworthy?
And that's the devil's attack to question the
character of God and the remarkable thing is
how susceptible Eve was to those suggestions and
how susceptible we are ourselves also now.
Quick to disparage God and equally as quick
to have more confidence in our own opinion
and thought and flesh than in his word.
That's our sinful propensity.
You can't begin to know how elaborate are
the Judaistic defenses of David that in fact
he was already married to Bathsheba and Uriah
was that his name?
Was some secondary thing who didn't rightfully have
the possession of her so David was in
fact not sinning.
In other words Judaism breaks its neck to
save David from any implication of being a
sinner and justifying him even in his adultery
and in his murder in ways that are
so remarkably ingenious that you just gasp and
don't know how to answer.
Why is that?
Because if they can save David from his
hideous and apparent sin then of what shall
they be guilty?
If you can find a defense for him
you'll not have trouble to find defense for
yourself.
Man does not want to acknowledge himself as
sinner but wants to be established in his
own self-righteousness and if anyone comes along
and says your self-righteousness is itself the
nexus of sin and needs to be brought
to death and the only righteousness is the
righteousness of God that can only obtain in
union with him through death you'll be a
candidate for death.
That's why Jesus was crucified.
So when we talk about Judaism and Jews
what we're really talking about is man because
that's what Jews are.
The epitome of man and all of these
rationalizings and cunning explanations is man trying to
get off the hook.
Refusing to receive the indictment and statement of
God about the human condition which Jews share
being man that there's not any man good
and if God were to mark iniquity who
can stand?
There's not a righteous man upon the face
of the earth who doeth good and sinneth
not and when you quote that to a
Jew they'll say we're in the New Testament.
No this is Old Testament, this is in
Psalms, this is in wherever.
So there's an instinctive unwillingness to acknowledge the
truth of our condition as God himself states
it and the greatest statement of the truth
of our condition is not only in the
word that I've just quoted but in the
act of God in the crucifixion of his
son.
That's God's ultimate statement of the truth of
our condition for our condition warranted that answer
to his wrath and his wrath required that
kind of just recompense.
That means his wrath was rightly kindled against
our sin but we have not rightly understood
sin and therefore how should we rightly understand
and appreciate the sacrifice made for it?
Therefore this falls into the area of something
ceremonial and only lightly regarded and therefore the
gospel itself which of which Paul was not
ashamed because it had a power does not
for us have that power and we can't
commend it to others as power because we
have robbed it of its power enlightening the
entire thing because our basic problem of failure
is the right acknowledgement of sin as sin.
That's why we're taking these pains, that's why
we're devoting this time.
If we don't get off this spot we'll
remain on it because if we don't come
through here we don't come through at all.
I've never seen that so clearly and we're
making up not just for a lifetime of
neglect we're making up for generations, we're making
up for centuries, millennia of church neglect of
the heart of its own faith.
Satan has robbed the church by denying this
exceeding sinfulness of sin and by which God
himself is denied of the exceeding holiness of
his holiness.
So I'm going to just leap ahead right
now at that point and share something that
I read this morning that I thought was
superb in which the author says the fact
that men have derived salvation from the cross
and the shedding of God's blood is only
incidental to the greater purpose for that sacrifice
which is not so much for man but
for God himself.
Listen to this, that the redemption is from
the wrath of God.
God freely justifies men by means of the
ransom power of Christ Jesus.
He is such because God has set him
forth his blood as sufficient propitiation.
Paul is satisfied because it is God's own
provision.
God's satisfied with the offering which he himself
has provided.
This is justification by faith to declare his
righteousness and man's sin is not misfortune it
is guilt.
God's wrath burns against it.
Why should that wrath ever cease?
His law bore witness to the gospel.
The smoking altar where he offered his lamb
or his bullock not only testified that God
could remit the offer of sin but declared
also that God was holy.
That the whole issue of sacrifice from the
beginning and finally in its ultimate expression was
not only to declare sin as sin and
that man was guilty but to declare that
God is holy.
Sacrifice is for God.
Sacrifice is something that pertains to his justice,
to his sense of right or righteousness so
that the issue of his holiness demanded some
answer to sin or else he would be
thought to countenance sin or to think it
light or to dismiss it or even almost
to approve it.
The sacrifice of blood indicates God's recognition of
his own holiness that requires so great an
extent in order to justify him.
So the issue of the cross is not
just what it performs for man it is
what it performs for God.
Let me go on here.
The chief question in saving man is not
how the man may be accounted just but
how God may remain so in forgiving his
sins.
How can a just God forgive sin?
If he does it lightly, is that an
evidence that he's not really holy but more
just an expedient deity that can look the
other way and is not taking the issue
of sin or righteousness seriously?
So the way in which God's character is
to be declared is by how far he
himself goes over the issue of sin because
the ultimate issue is himself.
His own holiness will be determined or affected
or lost by how far he himself goes
in answering the issue of sin and that
he has rightly weighed the guilt of it.
In earlier times there was a thick veil
over his righteousness but the cross removed it
and demonstrated his judgment of sin.
The terrible tragedy of the cross which God
set forth his son in his blood is
his measure of man's demerit.
The punishment that man so long escaped fell
at last on the son of man.
Divine righteousness seemed at one time to be
asleep.
One might have asked if it even existed.
Man sinned and yet they lived, they sinned
on and yet reached in safety an old
age.
Where were the wages of sin?
It was this relative impunity which rendered a
solemn manifestation of righteousness necessary.
God's character was in question.
His honor was at stake because he seemed
so long to wink.
Paul says in Acts something, he's winked at
this in times past but now calls every
man everywhere to repent.
So there was a long season before the
cross in which sins seemed not to be
judged and men were getting away with murder.
That's why the psalmist was almost driven to
the point of insanity as he didn't see
any recompense for sin.
The wicked were prospering and the righteous were
suffering.
So it kind of allowed for certain impunity
with sin that required in time a solemn
manifestation of righteousness.
Jesus died for men but in a much
more striking way he died for God.
Now we really see the son.
The son is dying not only for the
benefit of men, that's a secondary thing so
to speak, but his first and primary concern
for his death and his willingness to bear
it is for his father.
He's dying for God.
He's dying for the name of God.
He's dying for the honor of God.
He's dying for the holiness of God because
if God will count him in sin or
dismiss it as something light that does not
require as serious a judgment as what fell
upon his son, especially as his son, then
that raises questions about God, his own veracity,
his own character, his own truth, his own
lightness over a question of which he's asking
us to be serious and he himself is
not serious.
How holy then is he?
So Jesus died for the father, he died
for the name and how does he teach
the disciples to pray?
Pray this, I'll father one of him, Hallowed
be thy name.
And not only did he teach his disciples
to pray, Hallowed be thy name, he lived
and died that his name would be hallowed.
His death hallowed the name of the father
because it justified God in how far God
will go in the recognition and in the
meeting of the issue of sin.
Willing even to go so far as to
give his only beloved son, not just to
death, but to the cruelest death as we
described yesterday.
So the issue is God.
And you know, and because we are a
man-centered civilization, we only think in the
terms of the benefit of man, save from
sin, save from hell.
We don't think that that's only the secondary
aspect.
The primary and first is God himself.
And until I read that this morning, I
had not ever contemplated that.
Can you understand the better?
Why from the very beginning, when Jesus enters
the Jordan, which is a picture of going
down into death, that's what Jordan actually means.
The translation of Jordan is the descent into
death.
He was already prefiguring his own crucifixion and
coming up out of the water and resurrection.
And the voice of the father rings out
from heaven.
This is my beloved son in whom I'm
well pleased.
This is a son who doesn't live for
himself.
He's living for my name, for my honor.
He hallows me.
His conduct, his sacrifice, his willing death is
in complete deference to me in love for
me as a father.
He's so jealous and concerned for my name
and for my honor that even in his
last words to his disciples, he said, whatsoever
you ask of the father in my name,
which is his name, it will be given
you.
The name of the Lord for Jesus had
much greater cogency than the way in which
we use that phrase.
Are we God honoring?
Father honoring?
Are we concerned for his name and his
honor, his reputation?
Why then are we so quick to divorce?
Why are we so quick to call the
marriage quits because it's become painful and demanding
and vexing?
Why aren't we toughing it out and believing
for the grace of God in even seemingly
impossible conditions in which there doesn't seem to
be much prospect of hope or change?
Why aren't we conscious that our willingness to
divorce is going to bring a slight and
a shadow over the name of the Lord
and what he is as God when he's
called us to be witnesses unto him?
Why do we take the act with such
impunity, levity, casualness?
We don't have the regard of sons for
the father, his name.
We're not concerned to hallow it.
And if you feel that deeply, you'll never
be able to preach out of yourself.
The issue is not coming up with a
good message or even a biblical message or
wowing the audience or blessing your hearers.
The issue is always what is God saying?
What is the father wanting in this moment?
Not whether it pleases me or even pleases
the hearers.
How dare I presume to interject something out
of my cleverness or even something that has
previously been given by God and has proved
successful if I want now to court the
applause of men rather than to honor the
father who is sovereign and his every moment
is jealous and that he's established works to
walk in before the foundations of the earth
were laid.
He knew the end from the beginning.
How dare I at any moment interject something
of myself, however correct biblically it might be.
What is needed is the now present truth.
What is needed is the explicit sovereignly determined
word.
If God is to be hallowed and honored,
even if I don't see the result of
it, even if it makes men angry or
displeased or hostile is not the question.
The question is, is it his word?
Not my convenience or my ability.
So where do we see an attitude like
that prevailing in America from our pulpits?
What a different church we would be to
hear that word but also to see men
whose first regard is his name and his
honor.
How much is that itself a sermon?
How much is that calculated to impress us
and bring a higher level of seriousness about
our own walk with God when we see
it demonstrated Sunday by Sunday in the men
who are called to minister to us and
will and dare not interject their own opinion
of and even will on some occasion say
I have nothing to say.
God has given me nothing and I dare
not fill the silence with something of myself.
That is a message.
So how shall we pray?
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done as
it is in heaven.
Hallow his name on earth.
Your name be hallowed.
What does that word mean?
Whoever uses it, is that in the English
language?
Did Jesus make it up?
What does that mean to hallow?
Not hollow.
Hallow.
H-A not H-O.
Can you know?
If you don't know what the word means
how can you do it?
To hallow.
How does this hallow God?
How does this glorify?
How does this exalt his name or how
on the contrary will it impugn God and
rob him of his holiness and his reputation
and those who behold my conduct and my
speech.
If we lived with that as the predominant
rule of life, how much different would our
life be and our witness?
But that's a radical consideration.
We also ought to cherish, pursue, define, understand,
take to heart these great words, hallow.
To hallow the name of the father that
he commended in the Lord's prayer cost him
his life.
Can you hallow God without expense?
How can you hallow his name?
Hallowed be his name, his honor, his reputation
by our conduct and speech except at cost.
In a world that is at enmity with
God, how can you hallow God in that
world and not pay something for it?
In opposition, in misunderstanding, in persecution, there's got
to be a consequence.
Hallowing costs something.
It cost Jesus something.
The failure of Moses lost him something.
So if Moses is capable of failing to
hallow God and David failed to hallow God
by his conduct and even needed to hear
a word from the prophet before he himself
was convicted, thou art the man.
He wasn't even aware of his sin until
that penetrating prophetic word came.
Of what are we capable?
If Moses failed and David failed, of what
are we capable?
Got that?
How ought we to be walking then?
Always conscious that if these great men staggered
and failed, who knew that they were called
to hallow God, what about ourselves?
This is the note of seriousness that is
absent from the church that makes it so
flaky and light.
Interesting that the word, as everyone knows for
glory in Hebrew, is also translated as weight.
The issue of glory is the issue of
weight and the issue of non-glory is
the issue of lightness.
So when I run to see these other
prophets that are being so celebrated, invariably the
witness that I have is lightness.
They are too light.
The atmosphere is too light.
It's too frivolous.
It's too glib.
It lacks the weight that is appropriate to
God, which is his glory.
So this note of seriousness together with the
fear of the Lord, who is holy, is
the foundational thing lacking in the church and
we've missed it in its most acute revelation
in the crucified Christ.
His honor demanded the blood of the cross.
How much more when he forgives it?
In all times the cross honors God whether
men believe it or not.
Isn't that a remarkable statement?
It's nice when men believe it, but even
if they don't believe it, it's a statement
to the cosmos.
It's a statement for eternity.
It's a statement that honors God.
Good if men will believe it, but it
had to be performed for his own sake
or his holiness was in question.
His holiness and his righteousness, Paul says this
is the righteousness of God, that in the
gospel the righteousness of God is revealed.
How so?
That something had to be performed in justifying
God as righteous and that something was the
death of his own son.
Therefore, he hates iniquity and he doesn't take
it lightly.
His wrath is justified even if it has
to fall upon his own son, as indeed
it could not fall on any other.
Calves and bulls could not suffice.
Human sacrifice could not suffice.
It had to be upon God himself.
That's how holy he is.
That's how far he will go and that
has got to be computed, taken in to
our consideration about the meaning of the cross.
It's the issue of God as God.
To profane is to make what is holy
into commonplace.
Exactly what we are guilty of as the
church.
When God says the priests shall teach the
people of the nations, the goyim, the difference
between the sacred, the clean and the unclean,
the holy and the profane.
To teach the nations not only by proclamation
but by example or else the whole thing
becomes blurred and it all becomes profane.
So the sacred has got to be preserved
and held and made distinct from the commonplace
and the unholy, which is a priestly function.
But if the priests don't know the difference
and the priests are not careful to maintain
the difference, how then shall the nations know?
This is Israel's sin and Israel's failure and
now it's become also the church's failure.
How do we know what is holy?
How do we know God as holy?
We sang it this morning but do we
really understand it?
What is holy?
What is holiness?
Which is the essential, not just the attribute
of God but the summation of God.
It's his distinctive and all of his attributes
are holy.
He himself is holy.
There's no other holiness independent or apart from
God.
Any measure that we have is only the
reflection or what is appropriated by faith from
his nature.
No one else has it.
If it were not for God, it would
be an absent faculty in life and reality.
But think of what that will mean if
holiness and the sense of it is removed
from the earth.
Profanity, profaning, sin comes in like a flood
and you have a Sodom and Gomorrah where
men are willing, knocking over themselves to fornicate
with angels.
They're tired with the blase availability of ordinary
men but here's a novelty with whom we've
not fornicated before.
Give them to us, they pleaded with Lot.
Talk about utter depravity, how far men will
sink when there's no consciousness of God and
his holiness.
That they will profane even by those sent
by God for their gratification and for their
lust.
That he had to send out his daughters
if that would pacify them that he had
to protect the holy emissaries that had come
down from God.
We're moving in that direction right now, our
world.
Somebody brought me the New York Times.
I don't know if it's a gift or
an anguish.
It takes me two hours to read the
Times and five minutes to read the Bemidji
Pioneer but what I have to read also
is the art section, the theater, the movie
reviews.
You cannot believe, you cannot believe how ugly.
Naked ballets now, fornication depicted in art forms
and all of the films invariably have to
do with lesbians, with homosexuals, with drugs, with
the vilest of the vile is the subject
matter of our culture as if it's the
only thing that can command our interest.
We're going down saints.
If ever the Lord prompts me, I brought
with me from New York one day's clippings
from the New York Times of that day
and God giving me the grace I can
read to you an indictment of our present
world in every section of that newspaper whether
it's the financial section, the drama section, the
news section, the editorial section.
We're headed down and out for the want
of the knowledge of God as God.
Well, let's ponder that as we take a
break.
Lord, unless you give grace, unless you send
the word into our deeps, it will just
become another piece of information, head knowledge.
We'll be unaffected and therefore we will not
be able to hallow your name.
We'll not think it urgent, we will not
know how, it will not be for us
an issue.
We'll always opt then for what is convenient,
what panders to our enjoyment.
So Lord, you've called us to be holy
as you are holy and we confess that
we barely understand the meaning of that word
but we will understand it better when we
see how far you go through your son
to defend your name, your honor, your character
in the world.
For if that is lost, we're without hope.
To what shall we turn?
What standard of a humankind can begin to
offset the evil for which man is so
disposed?
So we bless you Lord.
Thank you Lord, help us to know you
and to honor you.
Sons who like Jesus are willing to suffer
in order to hallow your name and that's
what it will take.
There has got to be lost, there has
got to be cost in a world such
as this who will take you seriously and
make you a first priority over any other
consideration.
It has got to cost and we want
to say as so much as in this
life we're willing in the grace that is
given.
Seal something with us this morning Lord that
was not there before until we heard how
the cross is more the provision for your
own honor than it is for our benefit
and that we had not seen it and
not considered it because we are not as
much sons as that son who died that
your name should be hallowed.
Bless this church Lord that's represented in this
room and the nations that are represented and
sons send something into the church in the
world that has been too long absent my
God and that is being fomented and generated
and gestated in this room and these discussions
and we thank and give you praise for
the privilege my God of being so called
in Yeshua's holy name.