Speaker 1: All right, let's take our Bible and go to the book of Isaiah, isaiah, chapter 9.
Speaker 1: If you're visiting here you don't have a Bible, you can find one in front of you and go to page 608, 608, and there you'll find Isaiah, chapter 9.
Speaker 1: On July 8th 1741, jonathan Edwards was visiting a church in Connecticut, having left his church in Northampton, massachusetts, and he preached a sermon at what was known then as the Second Meeting House of the churches in Enfield.
Speaker 1: He started a sermon that he ended up not finishing.
Speaker 1: He started a sermon that he ended up not finishing, and that sermon, which he never did get to the end of, stands as probably the most famous sermon ever preached on the soil of what's now the United States of America.
Speaker 1: When Jonathan Edwards rose to speak, he announced his text from the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 32, verse 35, with these words their foot shall slide in due time.
Speaker 1: Witnesses of that sermon said that Edwards neither gestured nor raised his voice.
Speaker 1: He spoke softly, he spoke simply, and he warned the congregation, the ones particularly who were unconverted in the midst of it, that they were precariously dangling over the precipice of hell.
Speaker 1: And he said these words walking over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak it will not bear their weight and these places are not seen.
Speaker 1: As he continued to preach this sermon, those in the congregation at Enfield couldn't control themselves as they listened to what we now know as the sermon Sinners in the Hands of an angry God, strong men were clinging to posts and pews, feeling as if their very life was slipping into hell.
Speaker 1: At that moment, edwards could not be heard over the commotion and he stopped, and he asked the congregation if they would please be quiet so he could continue the sermon and that they might withhold themselves from weeping and crying out.
Speaker 1: Edwards sought to convince them that God was not only a God of justice, he was also a God of mercy, and he urged salvation to them.
Speaker 1: These are some more of his words from that sermon.
Speaker 1: He said Now you have an extraordinary opportunity, a day in which Christ has thrown the door of mercy wide open and stands calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners, a day in which many are flocking to him and pressing into the kingdom of God.
Speaker 1: Many are daily coming who were very recently in the same miserable condition that you're in now.
Speaker 1: They're now in a happy state and their hearts are filled with love to him who has loved them and has washed them from their sins by his blood, and they're now rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God.
Speaker 1: As the sermon continued, edward's voice, indeed, was swallowed up by the loud cries and commotions of people as they contemplated eternity and their lack of preparedness for it, and he closed out the sermon with these words Let everyone that is out of Christ now awake and fly from the wrath to come.
Speaker 1: The wrath of Almighty God is undoubtedly hanging over a great portion of this gathering.
Speaker 1: Let everyone fly.
Speaker 1: And he finished his sermon, and throughout the night in the town and the places around Enfield, connecticut, men and women could be heard crying out to God, and later tallies count that over 500 people were converted, either that night or in the next few days.
Speaker 1: The Great Awakening the Great Awakening, had come to Enfield, connecticut.
Speaker 1: It didn't start there, but it continued on with a flourish for several more years.
Speaker 1: The Great Awakening was a revival that spread throughout the 13 colonies and, by the time it was completed, about 10% of the population of the 13 colonies counted that time period as a time when they were converted to Christ.
Speaker 1: Historians say that the Great Awakening was the first and grandest unifying force of the 13 colonies, and the United States would probably not be the United States if they did not have that one unifying experience of the new birth in Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: This morning, as we come into the book of Isaiah, we return to a theme that we've seen a few times, even in these early chapters that we've gone through already.
Speaker 1: We come back to the theme of judgment and God's wrath.
Speaker 1: The book of Isaiah, as you've probably recognized, moves very quickly from strong statements of mercy and strong oracles of judgment.
Speaker 1: Grace and judgment alternate throughout the rest of this prophecy.
Speaker 1: As we'll see, we're in the middle of a section chapter 7 to 12, that is a point of crisis for the wicked king Ahaz, the king of Judah, with the Neo-Assyrian empire rising up in the east and exerting its weight toward the west as it moves toward the Mediterranean and down into Egypt.
Speaker 1: Smaller places like Aram, which is now Syria, or the northern 10 tribes of Israel and even Judah itself lay in the path of this war machine.
Speaker 1: The kings of Aram and Israel have made an alliance with each other and they put the pressure on Ahaz and Judah to join in a coalition, and if he did not, they were going to assassinate him and put someone else on the throne.
Speaker 1: Brooding with fear over that threat, ahaz is out, wandering through Jerusalem, and Isaiah meets him and offers him some comforting news.
Speaker 1: If he would only believe it, that if he would trust God with his kingdom and his life, god would act in almighty power and deliver him and defeat his enemies.
Speaker 1: But Ahaz had already made a secret pact with Assyria and he didn't want to bow to God Almighty, and so he refused to do so.
Speaker 1: And because of that determination, he and the people of Judah walked into the judgment of God.
Speaker 1: Though that oracle, I'm sure, was unwelcome, isaiah even struggled with it, as he mentions in Isaiah 6, he realized that preaching these strong, challenging words were a significant part of his ministry.
Speaker 1: Messages of divine judgment are hardly ever popular, but the theme of God's wrath is one that the Bible doesn't shy away from.
Speaker 1: However, in our day, the modern habit in churches many, many churches is to play down the subject of judgment.
Speaker 1: Those who still believe in the wrath of God and not everyone does doesn't talk about it.
Speaker 1: We're in an age in which people are unashamedly selling themselves to the gods of greed, pride, sex and self-will, and churches mumble on about God's kindness and say virtually nothing about God's judgment.
Speaker 1: This morning, we come to this passage and we're going to see judgment and wrath here.
Speaker 1: This passage in Isaiah has a lot to say about the anger of God, and you'll notice an outstanding feature in the section that we're going to be looking at.
Speaker 1: As we go from chapter 9 and verse 8 all the way to chapter 10 and verse 4, there is a repeated refrain, which will be the four sections that we'll look at.
Speaker 1: Take a look at chapter 9 and verse 12.
Speaker 1: At the very end of it it says in all this, his anger is not turned away and his hand is still raised to strike.
Speaker 1: Now drop your eyes down to verse 17.
Speaker 1: And at the very end of that one, in all this, his anger is not turned away and his hand is still raised to strike.
Speaker 1: Now go from that verse to verse 21.
Speaker 1: In all this, his anger is not turned away and his hand is still raised to strike.
Speaker 1: And then, finally, in chapter 10 and verse 4, again at the very end of the verse in all this, his anger is not turned away and his hand is still raised to strike.
Speaker 1: These four verses repeat this refrain which shows up first of all in chapter 5 and verse 25.
Speaker 1: And it says because they despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.
Speaker 1: Therefore, the Lord's anger burned against his people and he raised his hand against them and struck them.
Speaker 1: In all this it ends.
Speaker 1: His anger is not turned away and his hand is still raised against them.
Speaker 1: God was warning the people, through Isaiah, that their major concern was not Assyria, but the God of heaven and earth, and he points out that their trouble is not because of Assyria's greatness.
Speaker 1: Their trouble is coming upon them because of their sin and the consequences of their sin.
Speaker 1: In fact, in chapter 10 and verse 5, assyria is described this way Assyria, god says the rod of my anger, the staff in their hands, is my wrath.
Speaker 1: Assyria is only the instrument of a God who's going to use them in order to bring judgment upon these people.
Speaker 1: If they continued to choose sin and evil and not come to God with repentance, they were going to experience God's wrath with an unrelenting force, and that force would be the sweeping army of Assyria, and that force would be the sweeping army of Assyria.
Speaker 1: This passage that we're going to look at leads us to a significant question who are we going to fear?
Speaker 1: Who are we going to reverence?
Speaker 1: Often, we fear people and we chase after their favor.
Speaker 1: It's the wrong way to live life.
Speaker 1: There's a God in heaven and he's a God who loves us more than we can ever imagine, and it's his favor, not people's favor, that we should cherish primarily.
Speaker 1: It's his wrath, not people's wrath, that we should fear most.
Speaker 1: It's not the powers of this world that we should give our attention to.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, it is the power of the God of heaven and earth that we should give ourselves to.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, these four sections of the book of Isaiah, in chapters 9 and 10, help us to understand how God will stand opposed to people determined to disobey him.
Speaker 1: We'll move through these sections and as we do, we'll highlight some issues for ourselves.
Speaker 1: The first thing we're going to notice in verses 8 through 12 of chapter 9 is that God will humble the arrogant.
Speaker 1: God will humble the arrogant.
Speaker 1: Isaiah identifies right here, off the bat, israel's basic problem.
Speaker 1: Take a look at verse eight.
Speaker 1: It says there the Lord sent a message against Jacob.
Speaker 1: It came against Israel.
Speaker 1: All the people, ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria, will know it.
Speaker 1: They will say with pride and arrogance the bricks have fallen, but we will rebuild with cut stones.
Speaker 1: The sycamores have been cut down, but we will replace them with cedars.
Speaker 1: The Lord has raised up resin's adversaries against him and stirred up his enemies.
Speaker 1: Aram from the east and Philistia from the west have consumed Israel with open mouths.
Speaker 1: In all this, his anger is not turned away and his hand is still raised to strike.
Speaker 1: The northern tribes of Israel had come under military attack and it had been devastating for them.
Speaker 1: Just as it says in this passage.
Speaker 1: It speaks poetically, but it speaks of the true devastation of war.
Speaker 1: The bricks have fallen down, there's been rubble in the villages and in the cities, and the sycamores have been cut down.
Speaker 1: The war machine has destroyed village and countryside, but the people aren't thinking about their bleak situation and crying out to God for help in the midst of this destruction.
Speaker 1: In fact, they're laughing everything off.
Speaker 1: And what are they saying?
Speaker 1: Well, they're saying that these setbacks are just temporary and you know, they've got the ability to come back stronger than they were before.
Speaker 1: This is what they say the bricks are fallen, but we will rebuild with stones.
Speaker 1: The sycamores are cut down, but we will replace them with cedars.
Speaker 1: And there's this idea that the things that we had passed down to us have been cleared away, so that we, who are the stronger and mightier people, might be able to replace bricks with stones and these sycamores with cedars, these grand trees.
Speaker 1: What are they speaking about?
Speaker 1: Their pride, their pride that they've got everything in hand, even though circumstances have gone against them.
Speaker 1: The war machine is coming through.
Speaker 1: Their land is presently in a state of rubble and destruction, but, boy, they can take care of it.
Speaker 1: They can answer this.
Speaker 1: They're blinded by their pride.
Speaker 1: They assure themselves and they try to assure everybody else.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, it was hard, but we can come back.
Speaker 1: One of the worst aspects about pride is that the arrogant person is probably the one who doesn't see it himself.
Speaker 1: Somebody said that pride is the sin that everybody can see, except for the person who's full of it.
Speaker 1: And it's the pride of these people that prevents them from having a realistic assessment of themselves, and it's what keeps them from humbly coming to God for help and strength and guidance.
Speaker 1: This is at the heart of the human, this is the heart of the problem of humanity.
Speaker 1: What keeps us from going to the God who created heaven and earth?
Speaker 1: Our pride, the fact that we think we can do it ourselves.
Speaker 1: So, whether we're a loud person or a soft-spoken one, whether we're quiet or quick, pride and our self-absorption that we're passionately consumed with is what leads to our destruction.
Speaker 1: There's a passage in Scripture that's repeated twice as a truism, as an axiom, as a statement that draws out a lesson of life, and it says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but the last place I want to be is on the opposite end of God's opposition.
Speaker 1: That's a horrible place to be.
Speaker 1: So when we lash out in pride or arrogantly push others aside to take the spotlight or pridefully retaliate with a passive aggressiveness that brings damage to people unexpectedly, whenever we're acting out of a heart of arrogance and sinful pride, god will resist us.
Speaker 1: Israel ignored this.
Speaker 1: There was no self-reflection, there was no humility.
Speaker 1: So God's hand was stretched out still, and we see this in a very ironic way in this passage.
Speaker 1: The people of Israel are saying well, the bricks have fallen down, but we're going to raise up stones.
Speaker 1: The cedars have fallen down, but we're going to raise the.
Speaker 1: Sycamores have fallen down, but we're going to raise up cedars.
Speaker 1: And how does God answer this arrogance, this pride that's lifted up in their hearts.
Speaker 1: He's going to do his own lifting up Verse 11,.
Speaker 1: The Lord has raised up Rezan's adversaries against him.
Speaker 1: Your heart's lifted up in pride.
Speaker 1: In your pride, you think you can lift up the stones and lift up the cedars.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm going to do some lifting up myself.
Speaker 1: I'm going to lift up your adversaries.
Speaker 1: I'm going to lift up your adversaries, whether it's a sudden destruction or a gradual decline into despair.
Speaker 1: God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.
Speaker 1: See, god is a real personality with real anger and real love, and he has wonderful things that he desires for people who delight in him.
Speaker 1: His grace can recover everything that we fail to be or do, but he will not negotiate with our self-exertion and self-exaltation.
Speaker 1: He will not.
Speaker 1: He would much rather lead us gently by calm waters, but he will not settle for a proud heart, whether it's a religious one or an openly rebellious one.
Speaker 1: The second refrain here begins in verse 13 and tells us something similar.
Speaker 1: God not only humbles the arrogant, but he will frustrate the defiant.
Speaker 1: In verse 13,.
Speaker 1: The people did not turn to him.
Speaker 1: Who struck them.
Speaker 1: They did not seek the Lord of armies.
Speaker 1: So the Lord cut off Israel's head and tail, palm branch and reed in a single day.
Speaker 1: The head is the elder and the honored one, the tail is the prophet, the one teaching lies.
Speaker 1: The leaders of the people mislead them and those they misled are swallowed up.
Speaker 1: Therefore, the Lord does not rejoice over Israel's young men and has no compassion on its fatherless and widows, for everyone is a godless evildoer and every mouth speaks folly.
Speaker 1: In all this, his anger is not turned away and his hand is still raised to strike.
Speaker 1: Instead of going to the Lord in their prideful heart, they looked for answers among the people that lived with them, and among those people they found what they thought would be good leaders and they put them into place.
Speaker 1: You see, when God is forsaken, people are still looking for answers, looking for assistance and looking for guidance, but looking in all the wrong places.
Speaker 1: And so they chose these people.
Speaker 1: But instead of being messengers of truth and of care, instead of making right decisions for the people in which was given their trust, these leaders and these prophets spoke lies and they led people down a destructive path through those deceptions, led people down a destructive path through those deceptions.
Speaker 1: These leaders did not have the people as their greatest motivation for their acts and their lies and their limitations and their misleadings weren't because of the limitations of their abilities.
Speaker 1: It was because, once they got a taste of power, they wanted to keep that power, even at the cost of those that they served.
Speaker 1: What a horrible thing this is.
Speaker 1: Israel had not turned to the one who struck them.
Speaker 1: They did not seek the Lord of armies, and so the Lord cut off those wicked leaders, those leaders, social leaders, political leaders, religious leaders.
Speaker 1: They were all swept away and God's hand was stretched out.
Speaker 1: Still.
Speaker 1: You see, in all of our afflictions, listen, it's more important to run to the God who afflicts us than to run away from the God who afflicts us.
Speaker 1: And when God strikes us, the biggest mistake that we can make is to run away, just like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden rebelled and ran away and hid themselves Right.
Speaker 1: See, god never strikes without reason and he never chastises without purpose, even his own people.
Speaker 1: In the book of Hebrews, it tells us my son, do not take the Lord's discipline lightly or lose heart when you're reproved by him, for the Lord disciplines the one he loves and punishes every son he receives.
Speaker 1: Endure this discipline.
Speaker 1: God is dealing with you as sons, for what son is there that a father does not discipline.
Speaker 1: But if you're without discipline that all receive, then you're an illegitimate child and not a son.
Speaker 1: He says this.
Speaker 1: He said no.
Speaker 1: Discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful.
Speaker 1: But later on, however, it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been exercised by it.
Speaker 1: Don't run from the God who bruises you.
Speaker 1: Israel understood that he was called Jacob for a long time until he wrestled with God and was wounded by the angel he wrestled with and from that point forward, in submissiveness, he turned to the God he was once wrestling against and now he found in his wounding health.
Speaker 1: In the third refrain we see that God not only humbles the arrogant and frustrates the defiant, but he will leave the cruel to the consequences of their conduct.
Speaker 1: He'll leave the cruel to the consequences of their conduct.
Speaker 1: Verse 18,.
Speaker 1: Wickedness burns like a fire that consumes thorns and briars and kindles the forest thickets so that they go up in a column of smoke.
Speaker 1: The land is scorched by the wrath of the Lord of armies, and the people are like fuel for the fire.
Speaker 1: No one has compassion on his brother.
Speaker 1: They carve meat on the right, but they're still hungry.
Speaker 1: They've eaten on the left, but they're still not satisfied.
Speaker 1: Each one eats the flesh of his arm, manasseh eats Ephraim and Ephraimim Manasseh Together.
Speaker 1: Both are against Judah.
Speaker 1: In all of this, his anger is not turned away and his hand is still raised to strike.
Speaker 1: As the pressure of Assyria's war machine began to heat up and to move against them, everyone was scrambling to save their own neck, and if that meant dealing harshly with your neighbor in order to save yourself, they were going to do it.
Speaker 1: It says here Manasseh eats Ephraim and Ephraim Manasseh, and together both against Judah.
Speaker 1: In the kingdom of the northern tribes of Israel, the two major tribes were the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, and here they are destroying each other, and in their frenzy of self-destruction they even turn on their brother who's to the south of them, judah, because they're not seeing anything from a divine perspective.
Speaker 1: Every one of them is looking at one another as a potential threat, and they'd much rather get rid of the threat now than to find that that person becomes a greater enemy later on.
Speaker 1: Having forsaken the covenant God, these tribes are now attacking one another in a bloodbath.
Speaker 1: That reminds us of the book of Judges.
Speaker 1: You see, in a world where self-preservation and self-exaltation reign supreme, nobody's safe when power is used for personal advance, you can just expect that one day someone else will want that power and will take you down.
Speaker 1: These self-seeking people were destroying themselves and they were destroying one another, and here's the principle behind this.
Speaker 1: All of that pain was not an addition to sin.
Speaker 1: It was the outworking of their sin.
Speaker 1: The land is scorched by the wrath of the Lord of armies.
Speaker 1: You see, the wrath of God is seen in the damage that this sin is inflicting.
Speaker 1: God is here, activating his judgment by allowing the people here to act out their desires and to feel the consequences of that sin.
Speaker 1: Without his restraint, god's hand is still working that way.
Speaker 1: In the book of Romans, it tells us for though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude.
Speaker 1: Instead, their thinking became worthless and their senseless hearts were darkened.
Speaker 1: Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal men, birds, four-footed animals and reptiles.
Speaker 1: Now notice the next verse.
Speaker 1: Therefore, god delivered them over, in the desires of their hearts, to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves.
Speaker 1: Listen to this.
Speaker 1: The world is not facing the possibility of judgment because of the condition it's in.
Speaker 1: The world is in the condition it's in because they're already facing the judgment of God.
Speaker 1: The situation that we're in is part of the judgment of God, is part of the judgment of God.
Speaker 1: The degradation of society is an indicator that God's wrath is already here, that his hand of restraint is already being withdrawn and allowing people to fulfill the passions and pleasures of their hearts in the destruction of one another.
Speaker 1: That is judgment.
Speaker 1: How does this address us in the church?
Speaker 1: Again, this principle similarly addresses the people of God even inside a local church.
Speaker 1: The Apostle Paul told the church at Galatia if you bite and devour one another, be warned you will be consumed by one another.
Speaker 1: We opened up by learning something about Jonathan Edwards.
Speaker 1: Not many years after the Great Awakening, jonathan Edwards was fired by the church.
Speaker 1: He served for nearly 25 years, and by being fired, I mean he was really fired.
Speaker 1: Here's the tally of the votes 230 to dismiss him and 23 to keep him on as pastor.
Speaker 1: Only 10% of the people he had served for nearly 25 years wanted him to remain as a pastor of the church.
Speaker 1: Now, of course, jonathan Edwards was not a perfect man.
Speaker 1: None of us are.
Speaker 1: He had his faults, and some of them were significant.
Speaker 1: But the situation that led to his dismissal was more than just that.
Speaker 1: It's a long and sordid tale of a mixture of bad pastoral decisions, of disputes among the congregation, of the congregation, leaving him and his family close to debt and even starvation close to debt and even starvation of envy in the town, a perceived coolness of Edward's personality and longstanding theological tensions within the church and even within Edward's extended family.
Speaker 1: It's a horrible, horrible example of the failure of a church to love its own.
Speaker 1: It's an ugly blemish on the face of Christianity.
Speaker 1: All of us have seen it and perhaps many of us have experienced it ourselves.
Speaker 1: God, let that church feel the sting of their sin.
Speaker 1: And that church is no longer.
Speaker 1: In Northampton, massachusetts, there are two congregations that both claim Jonathan Edwards now as their pastor, when none of them wanted to claim him then.
Speaker 1: But I don't think either one of those churches actually has any direct connection to the congregation.
Speaker 1: He let that church crumble as a consequence of their lack of trust, of their suspicion, of their failure to love, of their grudges and unforgiveness, of their anger and broken promises that were all fueled by pride and ambition as they gave themselves over to greed and to gossip and a host of other things.
Speaker 1: The fourth refrain in chapter 10, verses 1 to 4, tells us that not only does God humble the arrogant and frustrate the defiant and leave the cruel to the consequences of their conduct, but he also will bring the hard-hearted to ruin.
Speaker 1: Let's look at these verses.
Speaker 1: Woe to those enacting crooked statutes and writing oppressive laws to keep the poor from getting a fair trial and to deprive the needy among my people of justice, so that widows can be their spoil and they can plunder the fatherless.
Speaker 1: What will you do on the day of punishment, when devastation comes from far away?
Speaker 1: Who will you run to for help?
Speaker 1: Where will you leave your wealth?
Speaker 1: There will be nothing to do except crouch among the prisoners or fall among the slain.
Speaker 1: In all this, his anger has not turned away and his hand is still raised to strike.
Speaker 1: In this area that was full of human arrogance and the adulation of wicked leaders who were full of mutual destructive behavior, justice became a rarer and rarer commodity.
Speaker 1: The poor and the helpless.
Speaker 1: The widows were being used as instruments for the glorification and padding the pockets of those who already had more than they needed.
Speaker 1: And this is this final stanza of God's anger brought against those who had consciously used the legal system for their own personal benefit and to make themselves rich personal benefit and to make themselves rich, who had took advantage of the poor, who oppressed the widows, who stepped onto the weak.
Speaker 1: But God tells them something.
Speaker 1: He tells them that there's coming a day when all of their riches will do them no good whatsoever.
Speaker 1: They will not have enough riches to deliver themselves.
Speaker 1: And when Assyria overran Israel in 722 BC, these words came to pass what are you going to do on the day of punishment?
Speaker 1: Who will you run to for help?
Speaker 1: Where will you leave your wealth and the 10 northern tribes of Israel never, ever, returned from that day of judgment.
Speaker 1: And if Judah did not listen well to this oracle about Israel, they too would crumble to this oracle about Israel.
Speaker 1: They too would crumble.
Speaker 1: And sadly, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: They continued to oppress the weak and the less fortunate members of society and they took advantage of them for years.
Speaker 1: The capture of Jerusalem is not going to happen for several more decades after this, but it did happen, and for the very same reasons after this.
Speaker 1: But it did happen, and for the very same reasons.
Speaker 1: You see, you and I can never wear God down to where he just says fine, have what you want and enjoy it.
Speaker 1: He is the Lord of the armies, after all.
Speaker 1: Now let's draw all this to a close.
Speaker 1: This is a very serious and very sobering message, but it's the best news that people could have heard, because, in speaking the truth to them about their hearts and their potential future, isaiah was actually cracking open the doorway to hope for them.
Speaker 1: If he had simply walked away from them in this kind of behavior that they were in, full of arrogance and pride, full of self-destructive behavior, lashing out one against the other, stepping on the weak, if he had just left them alone, the consequences were going to be horrible.
Speaker 1: But he spoke these words in an oracle of judgment, so that it might pierce through their hard, stony hearts and lead them, hopefully, to humility and repentance and into a place where they would receive the help of God, and into a place where they would receive the help of God.
Speaker 1: What they needed to learn, just as we need to learn, is that God's wrath in the Bible is always a judicial act of righteousness.
Speaker 1: He's administering justice to these people.
Speaker 1: His wrath here, as you can see, is not some wild loss of self-control.
Speaker 1: It's not some outburst of seeing red and burning with anger.
Speaker 1: It's not irrational action, it's not a rage, it's not wounded pride or even a bad temper.
Speaker 1: God's using terms here like wrath and anger, but he's not doing it in the same way.
Speaker 1: We think of wrath and anger in relationship to ourselves, because behind all of it is justice.
Speaker 1: This is moving his action, and so when scripture speaks of God using terms that we're familiar with wrath and anger he's not placing onto those terms and onto God the same limitations and the same imperfections that lay upon our wrath and our anger, because he is a holy God.
Speaker 1: Let's just look at an example God's love is is grand and glorious.
Speaker 1: In fact, god even says God is love in the scriptures.
Speaker 1: But his love is never foolish or impulsive like our love can be.
Speaker 1: It's not full of immoral actions like our passions can be.
Speaker 1: In the same way, god's wrath is never capricious, it's never self-indulgent, it's never irritable, it's never dishonorable in any way.
Speaker 1: It's a right and necessary action of justice against sin.
Speaker 1: Let me put it very plainly God is only angry when anger is deserved.
Speaker 1: This is a right and necessary reaction against evil.
Speaker 1: We talk about righteous indignation among ourselves, but if we really thought about it, how much of our righteous indignation is actually righteous, but with God, his righteous indignation is always righteous.
Speaker 1: Just ask yourself would God who took as much pleasure in sin as he did, good be God after all?
Speaker 1: Would a God who did not move against evil in this world be perfect?
Speaker 1: Of course you'd want him to move against evil in this world be perfect.
Speaker 1: Of course you'd want him to move against evil.
Speaker 1: There's something else these folks needed to learn, just as we need to learn that God's wrath is his justice in action.
Speaker 1: But we also need to understand that God's wrath is in answer to something people have chosen for themselves, is in answer to something people have chosen for themselves.
Speaker 1: You see, his wrath is active in opposition against evil.
Speaker 1: Love is spontaneous, springing from the character of God, but wrath is the movement of justice and righteousness against something that is trying to thwart that righteousness.
Speaker 1: The book of Romans, in chapter 2, the Apostle Paul put it this way Because of your hardened and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourselves.
Speaker 1: On the day of wrath, when God's righteous judgment is revealed, he will repay each one according to his works.
Speaker 1: And in that short little section of the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul speaks to both of these issues, that God's wrath is an act of judgment, but God's wrath is an act of response to personal sin.
Speaker 1: Hear it in a different place.
Speaker 1: Two verses after John 3.16.
Speaker 1: You know John 3.16?
Speaker 1: You know the big banner at the football games?
Speaker 1: John 3.16.
Speaker 1: We all can quote John 3.16 if we've never even seen the Bible.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 1: God is love.
Speaker 1: Two verses later, this is the verdict the light has come into the world, but men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.
Speaker 1: What is he saying there?
Speaker 1: That the decisive action of judgment on the lost is a judgment on those who have rejected the light of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: All of God's actions are judicial actions toward someone who's already chosen a path of rebellion and defiance, of rebellion and defiance.
Speaker 1: And that leads us to the final call and appeal that's inherent in this passage.
Speaker 1: There are two choices for humanity.
Speaker 1: Just like Jesus said, come to me all you are burdened and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Speaker 1: You can either come to me all you are burdened and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Speaker 1: You can either come to God or not.
Speaker 1: You can either seek to save your soul and refuse God, or you can relinquish yourself into the hands of God now and find yourself saving your soul by losing it.
Speaker 1: The question is are you willing to put yourself, your life and your eternity into the hands of God now, or would you rather go about your own way and find yourself still in the hands of God, but not in a day of grace but in a day of judgment?
Speaker 1: I understand the hesitancy.
Speaker 1: I wasn't raised in a Christian home.
Speaker 1: All of this was foreign to me for the first couple decades of my life.
Speaker 1: For years I ran away from the concept of a God, thinking that he only intended doom for me and that he was going to rip away from me all the things that I thought were important or pleasurable to me.
Speaker 1: And I was wrong on both accounts.
Speaker 1: I feared God for all the wrong reasons, because he had plans of more than just doom for me and he had something to say about the things that I thought were important, that there were other things much, much, much more important.
Speaker 1: And to my pleasures, there were other things that were much, much, much more pleasurable than what I was holding on to, much more pleasurable than what I was holding on to.
Speaker 1: You see, I had to cast myself to him and trust him.
Speaker 1: Cs Lewis, in his book the Chronicles of Narnia, talks about this concept of the majesty and the mercy of God being held together majesty and the mercy of God being held together and he does so through a figure, a lion figure who is the representation of God in the stories, by the name of Aslan.
Speaker 1: Aslan is described in the Chronicles of Narnia as one person put it, he is both intolerably severe, right.
Speaker 1: He is both intolerably severe, right.
Speaker 1: He is both intolerably severe and yet irresistibly tender.
Speaker 1: At the same time as Lewis writes the Chronicles of Narnia, he presents this figure, aslan, a lion who represents God as the rightful king and ruler of the domain of Narnia, and he has not to be trifled with.
Speaker 1: When the Pevensie children first hear about Aslan, they really are a bit shaken by it and unsure what to think, and they didn't know what to do.
Speaker 1: Should they be afraid or not, when they hear about this lion, aslan?
Speaker 1: And so Susan asks is he quite safe?
Speaker 1: I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.
Speaker 1: And Mrs Beaver says well, if there's anyone who thinks that they can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most everyone else or just silly.
Speaker 1: So Lucy replies well then he isn't safe.
Speaker 1: And Mr Beaver chimes in and says safe.
Speaker 1: Who said anything about safe?
Speaker 1: Of course he isn't safe, but he's good.
Speaker 1: He's the king.
Speaker 1: I tell you.
Speaker 1: See, god, like Aslan, is not a tame lion, he's not safe.
Speaker 1: Throughout all the chronicles of Narnia and the stories, aslan is portrayed as someone who cannot be tied down unless he wants to be.
Speaker 1: He cannot be controlled, he cannot be manipulated, he cannot be bullied.
Speaker 1: He commands reverence and he commands obedience.
Speaker 1: And when the children first meet Aslan, they start to get an understanding of that.
Speaker 1: This is what CS Lewis says as the narrator of the story.
Speaker 1: People who have not been to Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrifying at the same time, cannot be good and terrifying at the same time.
Speaker 1: If the children had ever thought so, they were cured of it now, for when they tried to look at Aslan's face, they caught a glimpse of the golden mane and the great royal, solemn, overwhelming eyes, and then they found they could not look at him and everything became trembling.
Speaker 1: Mr Beaver's answer is an important one, that answer to Lucy's question.
Speaker 1: Then he's really not safe.
Speaker 1: He said safe.
Speaker 1: Who said anything about safe?
Speaker 1: No, he's not safe, but he's good.
Speaker 1: He's the king.
Speaker 1: Aslan is good.
Speaker 1: And then, when you read those stories, you see that this figure that CS Lewis is portraying Godwith is the one who is ultimately and utterly compassionate.
Speaker 1: He forgives and then dies for Edmund.
Speaker 1: As Aslan is walking to the stone table where he will be the sacrifice, he walks with Lucy and with Susan.
Speaker 1: And in this time of weeping we find that Aslan understands suffering, that he understands weaknesses.
Speaker 1: And, wonderfully, when Aslan rises from the dead, what does he do?
Speaker 1: He throws a magnificent party and he plays with the children.
Speaker 1: And again, it's these words, whether it's more like playing with a thunderstorm or playing with a kitten, lucy couldn't quite make up her mind.
Speaker 1: We don't put a kitten and a thunderstorm into the same entity, do we?
Speaker 1: But that's exactly God.
Speaker 1: Into the same entity, do we?
Speaker 1: But that's exactly God.
Speaker 1: We've looked at a passage that's full of judgment and wrath, but it's righteous judgment, but there's also something about God that is outside of justice.
Speaker 1: It's called mercy and grace.
Speaker 1: Justice, it's called mercy and grace, and the scriptures tell us that we who are the children of wrath and deserving of punishment, that God, in the great mercy with which he loved us, has given us forgiveness through his blood.
Speaker 1: What a wonderful, wonderful message that is.
Speaker 1: And when we hear words like this in the book of Isaiah, or as it goes in all the other places of scripture that it does, we should not quiet down or put behind us this understanding of who God is, because it's true of him, and it is wonderful as much as it is terrifying, because he is also the God who speaks to those who deserve his judgment of an offer of grace and mercy.
Speaker 1: And that is such a grand thing that the Apostle Paul, after speaking at length about personal sin and of the liability to judgment in the book of Romans, says this there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
Speaker 1: Christ Jesus, god will wipe away the judgment you deserve, but in only one place, that's if you're in Christ Jesus.
Speaker 1: Outside of Christ Jesus, you are under the umbrella of judgment, but in Christ Jesus you are in the place of welcome.
Speaker 1: And he goes on to speak about that.
Speaker 1: Later in that chapter he said he who did not spare his own son but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also, with him, freely give us all things?
Speaker 1: Wow, who is he that brings a charge against God's elect?
Speaker 1: It's God?
Speaker 1: Who justifies, who can separate us from the love of God?
Speaker 1: Nothing, nothing, not even God himself, because he has struck his son with the punishment we deserved and has grant us eternal forgiveness.
Speaker 1: So I urge you if your heart is full of pride, god will humble that heart in judgment or he'll bring it to humility and salvation.
Speaker 1: If you're defiant, he will stand against you.
Speaker 1: If you're cruel to others, he will let you feel the consequences of your sin.
Speaker 1: If you continue to use avenues of justice for personal gain and advancement to the harm of the weak and the frail and the defenseless, there'll be no hope for you.
Speaker 1: There'll be nothing but to lay dead or among those doomed to die.
Speaker 1: But if you come to the one who did not spare his own son but delivered him up for us all, you can stand in eternity with the words crying out who shall lay a charge against this one?
Speaker 1: And not even Satan himself could give a valid reason for God to turn his wrath against you, because he has enveloped you in his eternal, inseparable love.
Speaker 1: Let's pray together, our heavenly father, as we come into the end of this year and the beginning of the next.
Speaker 1: We thank you that our sins have not received what they deserve, that you have not cast us away, which we rightfully deserve to be Lord.
Speaker 1: Rather, in your mercy, you've saved and delivered us through your grace, exerted in Jesus Christ, our Lord, whose sacrifice on the cross was a sufficient, whose sacrifice on the cross was a sufficient covering for all our sin, and in believing on him, we are saved from the wrath of God, delivered forever saved, received, accepted, loved.
Speaker 1: Father, I pray for us as your people, first of all, that we would cherish this grace, understanding at what cost it's come and how contrary to what we deserve it is.
Speaker 1: But, lord, I also want to pray for those in our midst this morning who perhaps do not know you, who are running from the God that they know will bring them to judgment, and I pray, father, in your mercy, that you would arrest them in their running and cause them to turn around and run to you.
Speaker 1: Father, I pray that they might find you just as we have found you, not a God who will scold, not a God who will condemn, but a God who will receive the prodigal embrace and clothe and feast with him.
Speaker 1: Father, we ask this in Christ's name, amen.