Shall we turn now in our Bibles to
the 50th Psalm.
I'll read the first, the outnumbered verses.
Pastor Brian will lead the congregation in the
reading of the even-numbered verses, and shall
we stand as we read God's Word.
The mighty God, even Jehovah, has spoken, and
called the earth from the rising of the
sun unto the going down thereof.
Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God
hath shined.
Our God shall come and shall not keep
silence.
A fire shall devour before him, and it
shall be very tempestuous round about him.
He shall call to the heavens from above,
and to the earth, that he may gather.
Gather my saints together unto me, those that
have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.
And the heavens shall declare his righteousness, for
God is judge himself.
Hear, O my people, and I will speak.
O Israel, I will testify against thee.
I am God, even thy God.
I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices
or thy burnt offerings to have been continually
before me.
I will take no bullock out of thy
house, nor he goats out of thy folds.
For every beast of the forest is mine,
and the cattle upon a thousand hills.
I know all of the fowls of the
mountains, and the wild beasts of the field
are mine.
If I were hungry, I would not tell
thee, for the world is mine, and the
fullness thereof.
Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or
drink the blood of goats?
Offer unto God thanksgiving, and pay thy vows
unto the Most High.
And call upon me in the day of
trouble.
I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify
me.
But unto the wicked God saith, What hast
thou to do to declare my statutes, or
that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy
mouth?
Seeing that thou hatest instruction, and castest my
words behind thee.
When thou sawest a thief, then thou consented
with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.
Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy
tongue frameth deceit.
Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother.
Thou slanderest thine own mother's son.
These things have you done, and I kept
silence.
And you thought that I was altogether such
a one as yourself.
But I will reprove thee, and set them
in order before thine eyes.
Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest
I tear you in pieces, and there be
none to deliver.
Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me, and to him
that ordereth his conversation aright, will I show
the salvation of God.
Let's pray.
Father, we do thank you that you are
a very patient God, long-suffering, full of
kindness, full of truth.
And Lord, we thank you that you have
forestalled judgment that should have come.
We ask you, Lord, though, that you would
help us, that in the postponing of the
judgments that we so readily deserve, that we
don't make the mistake of drawing false conclusions
and thinking that perhaps we've escaped the judgment
of God, because maybe you didn't see, or
you didn't know, or possibly didn't care what
we did.
Show us, Lord, just how intricately our lives
are bound together in you, and how, Lord,
when we do that which is wrong, your
heart is grieved.
And Lord, if we persist, we can come
to that place, Lord, where we will be
facing the judgment of God.
So, Lord, open now our hearts as we
turn to your Word, and teach us, Lord,
out of your Word, in Jesus' name we
pray, Amen.
Amen.
This morning we want you to look with
us at Ecclesiastes chapter 8 verse 11.
Here Solomon declares, because sentence against an evil
work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart
of the sons of men are fully set
in them to do evil.
One of the great characteristics of God's nature
is his patience.
God is so patient with us.
God is so patient with the world in
which we live.
As I see this world in its moral
freefall, I often wonder at the patience of
God.
How is it that God can be so
patient and allow evil to dominate, and evil
to be in control?
And as the Lord said, evil days waxing
worse and worse.
How long will God let it go?
How long can God let it go?
When will God finally step in and intervene?
He is so patient.
When God revealed himself to Moses, as Moses
was sort of there in the cleft of
the rock, and the Lord passed by and
he proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah God, merciful and gracious,
long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth.
And so God revealed as a part of
his nature, long-suffering.
Now one of the reasons for God's patience
is that God is not willing that any
should perish, but that all should come to
repentance.
And so God gives man many opportunities and
much time to repent from his evil, because
God's not willing that any should perish, but
that all might come to repentance.
But there comes a day when you can
actually sin away the day of grace.
And rather than experiencing the mercy and the
goodness of God, you will face the wrath
of God.
As Paul the apostle said in Romans chapter
one, For the wrath of God is revealed
from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of
man that holds the truth of God in
unrighteousness.
The wrath of God.
Jesus in addressing the Church of Thyatira in
Revelation chapter three, said that they had that
false prophetess, the woman he called Jezebel, who
taught the Lord's servants to commit fornication and
idolatry.
And Jesus said, I gave her space to
repent.
But because she did not repent, I will
cast her and those that commit idolatry with
her into the great tribulation.
But those words, I gave them space to
repent.
For many of you today, it could very
well be that you are living in that
space that God has given to you to
repent.
He wants to make sure that you've had
every opportunity to repent from your sin.
Way back in the time of Noah, God
said to Noah, my spirit will not always
strive with man.
That God's spirit does strive with man is
indeed a great blessing.
But in that statement, there is a warning.
God's spirit will not always strive with you.
If you are rebelling against God, there will
come a day when God will no longer
strive with you.
But God will say, I've given them up.
And what a tragedy when God says to
the prophet, pray no more for their good.
If you do, I won't hear your prayer.
The patience of God.
But yet there comes the day when we
have expended the patience, when we have had
the space to repent, but refused to repent.
There in the days of Noah, God gave
the people space to repent.
He gave them a hundred years.
Noah is called a preacher of righteousness.
And as he was building that arc, that
big boat out there more like a barge
as he was building it out there in
the desert, I'm sure it became quite a
novelty.
They probably had guided tours to see this
old man building this huge barge out here.
And I'm sure the nightly commentators were making
a lot of jokes about this old crazy
guy building this big barge out there in
the middle of the desert.
But as they would come in the tour
groups, Moses would lay down his hammer, I'm
sure, and he'd start to preach.
He was a preacher of righteousness.
He was warning the people of the evil
that they were doing and how that it
would definitely bring the judgment of God upon
them.
That God's grace would soon be expired and
they would be destroyed with a great flood
by which God was going to destroy the
world.
When God had safely gathered Noah, his family,
and the animals into the ark, he shut
the door.
They had actually gone beyond the ability now
to repent.
And now there remains only the judgment of
God for their evil.
We read that in the time of Noah,
there was a population explosion.
We read that the wickedness of man was
great upon the earth.
We read that the imaginations and the thoughts
of men's heart were only evil continually.
And that there was violence filling the land
and corruption.
Sounds an awful lot like the day in
which we live.
Population explosions, man's hearts and imaginations on evil
things continually, violence and corruption filling the earth.
Interesting, Jesus, as he talked about the coming
day of judgment, said, as it was in
the days of Noah, so shall it be
in the time of the coming of the
son of man.
And surely we are seeing the same kind
of conditions that provoked the judgment of God
in the destruction of the world that was.
Peter wrote in the last days, there would
be scoffers.
They would say, where is the promise of
his coming?
Things just go on as they were from
the beginning.
But Peter said of this, they are willingly
ignorant that God did bring the judgment and
destroyed the world that then was with a
flood.
Peter then went on to affirm the day
of the Lord will come.
And just to count that the long suffering
of God is salvation.
It's giving men and women the opportunity and
the space to repent.
There is a proverb.
I think it's 29 one that declares he
that being often reproved and hardens his neck
will suddenly be destroyed.
And that without remedy, God's declaration often reproved,
but harden your heart, stiffen your neck.
Don't bow before God.
The Lord said suddenly destroyed and that without
remedy.
There is a time we know not when
a point we know not where that marks
the destiny of man to glory or despair.
There is a line though by man unseen
that crosses every path, the hidden boundary between
God's mercy and his wrath to pass.
That limit is to die, to die as
if by stealth.
It does not quench the beaming eye or
pal the glow of health.
The conscience may still be at ease.
The spirits light and gay, that which is
pleasing still may please and care be thrust
away.
But on that forehead God has set indelibly
a mark unseen by man for man is
yet is blind and in the dark.
And yet the doom man's path below may
bloom as Eden bloomed.
He did not, does not, will not know
or feel that he is doomed.
He knows that he feels that all is
well and every fear is calm.
He lives, he dies, and he wakes in
hell, not only doomed, but damned.
Oh, where is that mysterious born by which
our path is crossed, beyond which God himself
hath sworn that he who goes is lost.
How close are you to that line where
to go over the line God will say,
that's it.
All who go are lost.
In Psalm 37, David wrote, fret not thyself
because of evildoers, for evildoers shall be cut
off.
Those that wait upon the Lord will inherit
the earth, but in time the wicked shall
be destroyed.
You shall diligently look for his place and
it will be gone, but the meek will
inherit the earth and the soul delight themselves
in the abundance of peace.
The wicked plots against the righteous and mocks
at him, but the Lord shall laugh at
the wicked for he sees that his day
is coming.
Note, the evildoers are going to be cut
off.
In time, he said, the wicked are going
to be destroyed.
The Lord sees that their day is coming.
You know, we often fret because of evildoers.
As today we see the wicked flourishing, we
fret.
And I have to admit, I fret over
that.
When I see the liberals enacting their legislation,
that is in open defiance to the laws
of God.
When I see the judicial system, again declaring
that the laws of God are not legal
to be posted in a public place.
When I see the liberals wanting to force
their wicked agenda on all of us, including
our school children.
And this past week, the Santa Ana school
board went ahead and voted to go ahead
and invite the homosexuals and lesbians to become
teachers.
And one of the spokesmen for that group
did declare that it is their agenda to
start teaching our children from kindergarten, the acceptance
and all of homosexual lifestyles.
That's their announced agenda.
And then he talks about the hatred and
all that he observes by those that are
against their agenda.
I fret when I see the school districts
bowing to this kind of pressure, but God
laughs.
God sees that their day is coming, that
the evildoers will soon be cut off and
the wicked will be destroyed.
But as our text said, because the sentence
against an evil work is delayed, people often
draw false conclusions.
One of those false conclusions is that God
doesn't really know what you are doing.
In Psalm 73, Asaph, the psalmist said that
they say, how does God know?
Is their knowledge in the most high?
And because God has not executed speedily the
punishment, the judgment for their sin, they begin
to feel that God really doesn't know.
He is so busy with the universe that
he doesn't really look after us as individuals.
But surely Jesus taught us that he is
infinite and that there's not even a sparrow
that falls to the ground, but what our
father isn't observant of that.
And if God is interested in the sparrows,
how much more in you?
The psalmist said, he who has taught knowledge,
does he not know?
God who gave to us wisdom and knowledge,
it is folly to think that God doesn't
know.
But because the sentence against the evil work
is delayed, people often think, well, God doesn't
see what I'm doing.
In Psalm 94, the psalmist said, O Lord
God to whom vengeance belongs, show yourself, render
a reward to the proud.
Lord, how long will the wicked triumph?
How long shall they utter and speak false
things?
They do wicked things and then they say,
the Lord does not see, neither does he
care.
But then the psalmist said, consider this, you
fool.
He that created the ear, do you think
that he cannot hear?
He who created your eyes, do you think
that he cannot see?
But yet these are false conclusions that people
often draw, because seemingly they are getting by
with their evil.
They can speak blasphemously, contemptuously against God.
They can stand out there and shake their
fist and say, if there be a God
in heaven, let him strike me with lightning.
And then when lightning doesn't strike, they can
say, aha, you see, there is not a
God in heaven.
I challenge him and all the foolish things.
And the foolish conclusions that man draws, because
God is so patient, and God is so
long suffering, and he does not sentence the
evil work speedily.
Sometimes people say, well, God is too weak
to bring judgment.
Paul wrote to the church in Rome, but
we are certain of the judgment of God,
and that it is according to truth against
those that commit evil.
Do you think that you can escape the
judgment of God?
Or do you despise the riches of his
goodness and long suffering?
Do you not know that the goodness of
God is intended to lead you to repentance?
But through your hard and impenitent heart, you're
just storing up into yourself wrath, so that
when that day of wrath comes, God will
render to every man according to his works.
No, God is not too weak.
God is just loving, and he is patient,
and he's long suffering, and he's not willing
that you should perish.
But what he is saying is that all
of your evil is just sort of being
like a dam being held back from the
judgment.
But one day, the dam will break, and
God's wrath and judgment will be poured out,
and that without remedy.
People sometimes think that they've actually gotten by
with their sin.
It's been a long time now, and nothing
has happened, and so I really got by
with it.
David had sinned with Bathsheba.
He had an illicit affair with her, and
it resulted in her becoming pregnant.
And so David devised a scheme by which
he could sort of cover over his guilt.
Her husband, who happened to be fighting against
the Ammonites, David called him back to inquire
concerning the battle.
David figured that he would go home and
spend the night with his wife, and so
later when she informed him that she was
pregnant, that he wouldn't know the difference, but
figured it probably happened when he was home
on leave.
But he didn't go home to his wife.
He spent the night at David's porch.
And so David sent him back into the
battle with instructions to the general to put
him in a place in the battle where
he would be certain to be slain.
And when David received word that Uriah was
slain in battle, he then took Bathsheba as
his wife.
Now as far as the people were concerned,
they were all talking about what a wonderful,
magnanimous king they had.
When a man, one of his men, falls
in battle, his wife is pregnant, look, the
king graciously takes his wife and is going
to bring her up and let her become
a part of the palace.
Oh, what a wonderful king.
And when people would sort of congratulate David
for his wonderful kindness, what do you think
was going on in his mind and in
his heart, knowing what he had actually done?
But he thought, nobody knows the difference.
I've gotten by with my sin.
But the prophet Nathan came to David.
And the prophet Nathan revealed to David that
God knew his sin.
God knew what he had done.
And David cried out, I have sinned against
the Lord.
The prophet said, God's forgiven.
You see, God's not willing that any should
perish.
But then the prophet told him what was
going to happen.
The prophet said to David, why have you
despised the commandment of the Lord to do
evil in his sight?
God saw you, David.
You've killed Uriah the Hittite with a sword
and you've taken his wife to be your
wife.
You've slain him with the sword of the
children of Amman.
Now, therefore, shall the sword never depart from
your house because you have despised me, saith
the Lord.
You've taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite
as your wife.
Thus saith the Lord, behold, I will raise
up evil against you out of your own
house.
And I will take your wives before your
eyes and give them unto your son.
And he shall lie with your wives in
the sight of this son.
You did it secretly, but I will do
this thing before all of Israel and before
the son.
And the child that is to be born
shall surely die.
David, the Lord saw you've done this evil
in the sight of the Lord.
And you're going to have to pay a
price.
There'll always be a sword in your house.
Your children will rise up against each other
and one of your sons will rise up
against you.
You don't get by with it because the
sentence of an evil work is delayed.
Don't think that you've gotten by with it.
One day you'll have to pay the price.
Perhaps the worst of all foolish conclusions that
a person sometimes derives because of the patience
and the long suffering of God is that
God actually approves what they did.
Some people can actually so deceive themselves that
they think that God is approving.
If God didn't approve, why didn't he do
something?
Why didn't he strike me?
Why didn't he take something away?
Why is it that I'm still going on?
And look, I've got blessings and so forth.
And they interpret that as God approving their
evil.
But in the Psalm that we read this
morning, Psalm 50 verse 19, the Lord said,
you spoke evil and deceitfully.
You spoke against your brother and you slandered
your own mother's son.
These things you have done and I kept
silent.
And then you thought that I was like
you, but I will judge you.
People think that God is like them, that
God approves.
But God said, no, I'm going to judge.
Because the sentence against your evil has not
been executed speedily, don't jump to false and
foolish conclusions.
Don't think that you're getting by with your
evil.
Moses said to the men from the tribes
of Reuben and Gad, when they were ready
to go in to take the land, these
men came to Moses and they said, you
know, we don't really want to go into
that land.
We're very happy right here.
We're cattlemen.
This is great cattle country.
And we're content to just stay here on
this side of Jordan.
Moses was upset.
He felt that it would demoralize the rest
of the people when two of the tribes
are not willing to go into the land.
And so he tells them that don't you
realize that we turned back once before and
we've been in the wilderness for 40 years
and you know, you can't do this.
And they said, oh no, no.
We didn't mean that we won't go in
with you and help conquer the land.
All of the men who are of fighting
age, they will go with you until you've
conquered the land.
But then once the land is conquered, it's
our desire to return to our families here
and we will then just raise our cattle
here in this cattle country.
Moses said unto them that that's fine if
you will do that.
But behold, if you will not do that,
you've sinned against the Lord and you can
be sure that your sin will find you
out.
You can always be certain of this.
Your sin will find you out.
Sooner or later, your sin will catch up
with you and you'll have to face the
consequences of your sin.
You can be sure your sin will find
you out.
God has seen, God does know, and God
will bring judgment upon every transgression.
But here is the message of the gospel.
Jesus took your sin.
He died in your place.
When he was upon the cross, God laid
on him the iniquities of us all.
God is not willing that any should perish,
but that all should come to repentance.
And thus God has provided the means whereby
he can righteously forgive you your sin because
of the substitute, Jesus Christ, who took your
sin and took the penalty and the punishment
for your sin upon himself.
And that if you will confess with your
mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe
in your heart that God raised him from
the dead, you will be saved.
Saved from the coming judgment of God that
is going to come against all of the
unrighteousness of men and the ungodliness of men
who have held the truth of God in
unrighteousness.
God has given you space to repent.
But the door of salvation will not always
be open.
As with in the days of Noah, when
Noah was in the ark and God shut
the door, there remained only for those that
were outside that certain fearful looking forward to
the judgment of God by which God destroyed
mankind at that time.
God is gathering those within the body of
Christ into the safety of that faith in
Jesus.
And the door I feel is about to
shut.
The patience of God is about exhausted.
And once the door is shut and you're
left outside, you will have only that fiery
indignation of the wrath of God, whereby he
devours his adversaries to face.
And you will discover, as we are told
in the book of Hebrews, it's a fearful
thing to fall in the hands of a
living God.
Because the sentence against an evil work is
not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the
sons of men is fully set in them
to do evil.
Don't get caught up with the folly of
the world and the misguided concepts of the
world and thinking that you're getting by with
the evil.
God doesn't know, God doesn't see, God doesn't
care.
He does.
He has just forestalled the judgment to give
you the opportunity to repent.
Know this, that the grace of God is
intended to bring you to repentance.
Father, we thank you for the grace, the
mercy, the long-suffering that you have displayed
unto us.
And Lord, we thank you that you did
not execute speedily the sentence against our sin,
but you gave us the opportunity to repent
and to receive the cleansing and the forgiveness.
And we thank you, Lord, that there is
therefore now no condemnation to those that are
in Christ Jesus.
Lord, though there are those here today that
are walking the path of sin, who have
deceived themselves into thinking that it really doesn't
matter to you how they live, because you've
been patient, you've let them get by.
They've mistaken, Lord, that long-suffering as tolerance,
as weakness, as blindness, or as approval.
But Lord, lest they be destroyed when your
judgment comes, we pray that today they will
hear your voice and not harden their hearts,
but will turn, Lord, to you and find
your forgiveness and your pardon and your cleansing.
In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.