SPEAKER_03: Please open up your Bibles to Romans chapter three.
SPEAKER_03: We'll begin in verse twenty-three.
SPEAKER_03: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith.
SPEAKER_03: This was to demonstrate his righteousness because in the forbearance of God he passed over the sins previously committed.
SPEAKER_03: For the demonstration I say of his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_03: Father, we come before you in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_03: And we pray, dear God.
SPEAKER_03: That He would be explained, that He would be exalted from your word, that your people would have a clearer understanding of the gospel, that they would gain an exquisite appreciation for the gospel, that their lives would be transformed by the gospel.
SPEAKER_03: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: The text that I have just read to you has been called by many, by Charles Spurgeon, by Martin Lloyd Jones, the Acropolis of the Christian faith, the strong and fortified city.
SPEAKER_03: Many theologians have said it's the most important passage in the entire Bible.
SPEAKER_03: I made a commitment more than two decades ago that no matter where I preached, even in a place where the gospel is clearly expounded, I would preach from this text.
SPEAKER_03: My whole life has been given to missions.
SPEAKER_03: Since I was a young man.
SPEAKER_03: Now more than four decades have passed.
SPEAKER_03: You need to understand that missions is not about sending missionaries, it's about sending God's truth through missionaries.
SPEAKER_03: The priority is the message.
SPEAKER_03: It is the message, it is that thing that is the power of God for salvation to all who believe, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
SPEAKER_03: It is that message which must be understood.
SPEAKER_03: And as I travel around the world, I often see believers that have even been persecuted for the faith, and I believe genuinely converted, and yet without a clear understanding of what Christ has done, of what God has done through his Son.
SPEAKER_03: So we're not going to have much time at all to expound this, but I want you to catch some very important ideas that are great truths, that are the foundation of gospel understanding.
SPEAKER_03: The first, for all have sinned.
SPEAKER_03: That statement no longer makes anyone afraid.
SPEAKER_03: As a matter of fact, people boast about how much they can sin.
SPEAKER_03: They delight in their sin.
SPEAKER_03: They flaunt their sin.
SPEAKER_03: You see, the problem is not that the world does not recognize that it is sinful.
SPEAKER_03: The problem is it just doesn't care.
SPEAKER_03: And it just doesn't care because it does not have a correct understanding of God.
SPEAKER_03: One of the things that we see in the book of Psalms is that there is a great rebuke toward the people of God.
SPEAKER_03: He says, You thought I was like you.
SPEAKER_03: The God of our nation, the God of the world, the God of even many people who go to evangelical churches is nothing more than a figment of their own imagination.
SPEAKER_03: They've made a God in their own image, and then they worship that God.
SPEAKER_03: You cannot understand the gospel of Jesus Christ if you do not know who God is.
SPEAKER_03: He is loving and compassionate, slow to anger.
SPEAKER_03: He is also full of wrath and a God who is angry every day.
SPEAKER_03: We'll explain that a little more as we go on.
SPEAKER_03: All have sinned.
SPEAKER_03: If you go back to Eve in the Garden, you see that it seems like a light trespass.
SPEAKER_03: They took a fruit from a tree and they ate it.
SPEAKER_03: And yet the entire world, the entire cosmos, was thrown into chaos and destruction and groans in despair, even until today.
SPEAKER_03: One sin.
SPEAKER_03: And yet, how much have you sinned?
SPEAKER_03: You can't even begin to calculate it.
SPEAKER_03: How much has this nation sinned?
SPEAKER_03: How much has the world sinned?
SPEAKER_03: All have sinned.
SPEAKER_03: Imagine this for a moment.
SPEAKER_03: God commands the stars to be put in their place, and they all bow down and worship.
SPEAKER_03: God ordains that the planets will move in certain spheres and circles.
SPEAKER_03: And they all cry out, Amen.
SPEAKER_03: God tells the mountains to be lifted up, the valleys to be cast down, and they obey.
SPEAKER_03: He tells the sea, you will come to this point and you will come no further, and the sea obeys, and God looks at you and says, Come, and you go, No.
SPEAKER_03: That is why on the day of judgment, all of creation will applaud when God casts the sinner into hell.
SPEAKER_03: You have no idea the God you're dealing with.
SPEAKER_03: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
SPEAKER_03: Boy, if there's a text that has been twisted, God has a wonderful plan for your life and you must be saved in order to achieve it.
SPEAKER_03: That's not what this text means at all.
SPEAKER_03: The text should be defined by its context.
SPEAKER_03: Romans chapter 1.
SPEAKER_03: Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God nor give thanks.
SPEAKER_03: God did not create you so that you could fulfill some aspiration of your own.
SPEAKER_03: You were made for him.
SPEAKER_03: And you'll find no peace, no fulfillment.
SPEAKER_03: You'll find nothing but an empty stage, awaiting for Godot.
SPEAKER_03: You'll find nothing apart from him.
SPEAKER_03: Every beat of your heart, every thought, every fiber, every twitch of a muscle is due to his kindness toward you.
SPEAKER_03: You were made for him.
SPEAKER_03: When he brings Israel out of Egypt, he gives them two reasons for obeying the law.
SPEAKER_03: I am the Lord your God, and I redeemed you.
SPEAKER_03: He is the Lord your God.
SPEAKER_03: You belong to him.
SPEAKER_03: You are to be for him.
SPEAKER_03: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
SPEAKER_03: I hear preachers so often say, well, the first thing I want to tell you when I get to the pulpit is that God is not an angry God.
SPEAKER_03: Well, the first thing I want to tell you is that he is an angry God.
SPEAKER_03: As a matter of fact, he's angry every day.
SPEAKER_03: Very angry.
SPEAKER_03: If you cannot fathom his love, let me tell you, you cannot fathom his anger.
SPEAKER_03: And you cannot fathom his anger because you cannot fathom his hatred.
SPEAKER_03: You say, what do you mean?
SPEAKER_03: My God doesn't hate.
SPEAKER_03: Well, the God of the Bible does.
SPEAKER_03: You say, well, I've never heard of such a thing.
SPEAKER_03: That's wrong.
SPEAKER_03: How can a God of love hate?
SPEAKER_03: Well, let me explain it to you.
SPEAKER_03: If I were to walk up to you and say, what do you think about Auschwitz?
SPEAKER_03: What do you think about what was done to the Jews in Nazi Germany?
SPEAKER_03: And you said, well, you know, it really doesn't bother me.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, things happen.
SPEAKER_03: Should I not consider you an immoral person?
SPEAKER_03: If I walk up to you and I say, What do you think about slavery in the early Americas?
SPEAKER_03: And you go, Well, you know, economics.
SPEAKER_03: If it did not generate in you some sense of holy anger, of righteous indignation, I would consider you just as immoral as the slaveholder.
SPEAKER_03: If I ask you, what do you think about the 65 million babies that have been slaughtered by the Americans?
SPEAKER_03: And it doesn't trouble you.
SPEAKER_03: What kind of monster does that make you?
SPEAKER_03: Isn't it amazing that we reserve the right to have righteous indignation?
SPEAKER_03: To look at a newspaper and be angry when we see some person violated.
SPEAKER_03: Isn't it amazing that you and I have that right?
SPEAKER_03: We demand it.
SPEAKER_03: And yet, God know you can do nothing but be some benevolent little grandfather or Santa Claus in the sky.
SPEAKER_03: Do you see how twisted our minds are?
SPEAKER_03: It's beyond imagination.
SPEAKER_03: God is angry, and he ought to be.
SPEAKER_03: Do you know why he is?
SPEAKER_03: Because he's love.
SPEAKER_03: If you love Jews, you'll hate Auschwitz.
SPEAKER_03: If you love Africans, you'll hate slavery.
SPEAKER_03: If you love children, you'll hate abortion with every fiber of your being.
SPEAKER_03: Let's not play.
SPEAKER_03: Because there is coming a day when all playing is going to cease.
SPEAKER_03: And you are going to stand naked before God, and you are going to answer for every vile imagination that's ever come forth from your mind.
SPEAKER_03: All have sinned.
SPEAKER_03: It's a serious matter.
SPEAKER_03: The great question is not, why is there a hell?
SPEAKER_03: Well, there is on earth.
SPEAKER_03: That's the question on earth.
SPEAKER_03: Why would God send anyone to hell?
SPEAKER_03: That's the question on earth.
SPEAKER_03: It's not the question in heaven.
SPEAKER_03: The question in heaven is why would God allow anyone to come here?
SPEAKER_03: Because this is a vile and wretched and condemned and fallen race.
SPEAKER_03: And that is what the Bible is all about.
SPEAKER_03: You see, if you really want to condense it down as to what the scripture's about, it's not about us being moral or nice or religious.
SPEAKER_03: It is about a question regarding the attributes of God.
SPEAKER_03: It is a question regarding God Himself.
SPEAKER_03: If God is good, he must condemn the wicked.
SPEAKER_03: What is your complaint?
SPEAKER_03: Politicians are corrupt.
SPEAKER_03: Judges are corrupt.
SPEAKER_03: Why?
SPEAKER_03: Because they don't do justice.
SPEAKER_03: They let the wicked go free for a certain amount of money.
SPEAKER_03: And yet you want a God like that, don't you?
SPEAKER_03: Maybe that's why our officials are like that.
SPEAKER_03: It's because it's the very God we want.
SPEAKER_03: We don't want a God of justice.
SPEAKER_03: And so in judgment, God gives us exactly what we want in Washington, which is politicians and judges without justice.
SPEAKER_03: Be careful what you ask for.
SPEAKER_03: But I can assure you that God is not like the men that rule over us.
SPEAKER_03: He is a just God.
SPEAKER_03: And we will see.
SPEAKER_03: Now, let's go on.
SPEAKER_03: For all the world has sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
SPEAKER_03: Now he refers to the Christian in verse 24.
SPEAKER_03: To those Christians at Rome, he says an absolutely extraordinary thing.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's almost impossible, it is impossible to communicate, to comprehend even what's being said here.
SPEAKER_03: In light of the fact that everyone in the world is a sinner, a rebel, a hater of God, Paul writes that some are now declared right before God.
SPEAKER_03: Declared right before Him.
SPEAKER_03: How can that be?
SPEAKER_03: He says, being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: He describes the Christian as being justified.
SPEAKER_03: Being justified.
SPEAKER_03: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_03: It is a forensic, a legal term, meaning that the Christian is legally declared right with God, by God.
SPEAKER_03: And then he goes on and explains how could this be?
SPEAKER_03: It's a gift.
SPEAKER_03: He says, as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, as a gift.
SPEAKER_03: Literally, it's almost as if he's saying, being justified as a gift by a gift, by a divine gift.
SPEAKER_03: It's all a gift.
SPEAKER_03: And that's what separates Christianity from all the other religions in the world.
SPEAKER_03: All the other religions in the world.
SPEAKER_03: If you ever took a contemporary religious class with me, it'd be quite easy.
SPEAKER_03: Some people say there are thousands of religions.
SPEAKER_03: I say there are only two.
SPEAKER_03: There's all the religions in the world that have one thing in common.
SPEAKER_03: They're all religions of works.
SPEAKER_03: And then there's Christianity, which exclusively is a religion of grace.
SPEAKER_03: If you come to the Orthodox Jew and you say, if you die right now, where will you go?
SPEAKER_03: And he he would most likely say, My hope that I would be in the way of the righteous, that I would go to paradise.
SPEAKER_03: What is the basis for your hope?
SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm a righteous man.
SPEAKER_03: I read the law, I read the Torah.
SPEAKER_03: I'm a righteous man.
SPEAKER_03: You go to a Muslim and you say, if you died right now, where would you go?
SPEAKER_03: He'd most likely say, To paradise.
SPEAKER_03: And you say, Well, well, why?
SPEAKER_03: Well, I've kept the faith, I've honored the pilgrimages, I give alms, I pray, I am a righteous man.
SPEAKER_03: You go to the Christian, the real one.
SPEAKER_03: And you say, if you died right now, where would you go?
SPEAKER_03: He would go, I'd go to heaven.
SPEAKER_03: Well, why?
SPEAKER_03: I was born in sin, and in sin did my mother conceive me.
SPEAKER_03: I have broken every law that God has ever made.
SPEAKER_03: And I deserve nothing but condemnation.
SPEAKER_03: And there you stop at me and go, I don't understand.
SPEAKER_03: These other men, I understand them.
SPEAKER_03: They're going to go to heaven because they're they're righteous.
SPEAKER_03: You're telling me with a smile on your face, you're going to heaven, and yet you deserve the very opposite.
SPEAKER_03: How can it be?
SPEAKER_03: They're going on their righteousness.
SPEAKER_03: How are you going?
SPEAKER_03: And the person says, I am going on the righteousness of another, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_03: God has done this thing for me.
SPEAKER_03: God has saved me.
SPEAKER_03: Who's the hero in this camp?
SPEAKER_03: Man.
SPEAKER_03: Who's the hero in this camp?
SPEAKER_03: God.
SPEAKER_03: What is being revealed in this camp?
SPEAKER_03: The supposed righteousness of men.
SPEAKER_03: What is being revealed in this camp?
SPEAKER_03: The righteousness of God.
SPEAKER_03: The boast is God.
SPEAKER_03: The boast is Christ.
SPEAKER_03: And you say, oh, that's wonderful.
SPEAKER_03: No, that presents heaven with the greatest problem imaginable.
SPEAKER_03: And that's what Paul's dealing with here.
SPEAKER_03: If God is righteous, he cannot forgive you.
SPEAKER_03: Even faith in God alone, your faith in God, cannot procure your salvation.
SPEAKER_03: It can't atone for sin.
SPEAKER_03: Faith can't atone for sin.
SPEAKER_03: There's still the problem.
SPEAKER_03: This was of the reformers, this was a major issue.
SPEAKER_03: As a matter of fact, you would have never heard the gospel preached by a reformer or even Spurgeon without dealing with this topic, for the most part.
SPEAKER_03: William Bates in the 17th century wrote an excellent book, The Harmony of the Attributes of God and the Cross of Christ.
SPEAKER_03: How can we harmonize the attributes of God?
SPEAKER_03: Because if he's righteous, he cannot justify the wicked.
SPEAKER_03: Now, I want us to look at that for a moment.
SPEAKER_03: I want you to go all the way back to Exodus.
SPEAKER_03: Chapter 34, verse 5.
SPEAKER_03: This is one of the greatest revelations of God in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_03: Exodus 34, 5.
SPEAKER_03: The Lord descended in the cloud and stood there with him, with Moses, as he called upon the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness, who keeps loving kindness for thousands.
SPEAKER_03: What a magnificent display of the glory of God here.
SPEAKER_03: His compassion, his mercy.
SPEAKER_03: And then he goes on in verse 7: who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin.
SPEAKER_03: Now here he's not trying to get us to do a word study on these three words.
SPEAKER_03: He's doing something very Hebrew.
SPEAKER_03: He's just piling one term upon another, saying that God forgives all types and kinds of sin.
SPEAKER_03: There is just no sin that God does not forgive.
SPEAKER_03: Then he goes on.
SPEAKER_03: Who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin, yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.
SPEAKER_03: Hold it.
SPEAKER_03: Does anyone here see the contradiction?
SPEAKER_03: He forgives all types and kinds of sin, but he will punish every sin.
SPEAKER_03: He will punish every sinner.
SPEAKER_03: How do you have both?
SPEAKER_03: How do you forgive all types and kinds of sin, and yet you punish every sin and every sinner?
SPEAKER_03: Now, go with me to a text in Proverbs.
SPEAKER_03: Chapter 17, verse 15.
SPEAKER_03: He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike, are an abomination to the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: The word abomination is probably the strongest language in the Hebrew Old Testament.
SPEAKER_03: He who justifies the wicked is an abomination to the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Almost all the songs we sing are about how God justifies the wicked.
SPEAKER_03: So, to how does God justify the wicked without becoming an abomination himself?
SPEAKER_03: Here again, the seeming, apparent conflict in the attributes of God.
SPEAKER_03: How can this be harmonized?
SPEAKER_03: That's what Paul is dealing with, that's what Bates was dealing with, that's what the reformers were dealing with, Luther was dealing with.
SPEAKER_03: He is a just and righteous God.
SPEAKER_03: We have all sinned.
SPEAKER_03: His righteousness demands our eternal death.
SPEAKER_03: If he bypasses his righteousness, he's no longer righteous.
SPEAKER_03: Like these silly evangelists today.
SPEAKER_03: I think if we took most of them and put them on an island where there are no people, we would advance the gospel.
SPEAKER_03: Because they say things like, instead of being just with you, God was merciful.
SPEAKER_03: Well, then God's mercy is unjust.
SPEAKER_03: God cannot forego his mercy, I mean his justice any more than he can forego his mercy.
SPEAKER_03: He cannot deny who he is.
SPEAKER_03: It's not just that he does just things, he is just so how does he forgive you?
SPEAKER_03: You and me while maintaining his justice.
SPEAKER_03: Let's go on.
SPEAKER_03: Just go for a moment to Malachi.
SPEAKER_03: Chapter 7.
SPEAKER_03: Look at verse 18.
SPEAKER_03: Who is a God like you who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of his possession?
SPEAKER_03: He passes over it.
SPEAKER_03: He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in unchanging love.
SPEAKER_03: He will have compassion on us.
SPEAKER_03: He will tread our iniquities underfoot.
SPEAKER_03: Yes, you will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.
SPEAKER_03: So here we have a God who passes over the rebellious acts of his people.
SPEAKER_03: David is even more bold in the Psalms, and then repeat it again in Romans 4, that he covers our sin?
SPEAKER_03: He covers it?
SPEAKER_03: What would you think about a judge who covered sin, who covered crimes, who put carpet over the top of the blood stain?
SPEAKER_03: Do you begin to see the problem that Paul is dealing with?
SPEAKER_03: And it's the entire problem of the gospel.
SPEAKER_03: And if you can't understand this, you can't really understand the gospel.
SPEAKER_03: The gospel has to do with the reconciliation of the attributes of God.
SPEAKER_03: How can God do this thing?
SPEAKER_03: How can he be both just and justifier of the wicked?
SPEAKER_03: And then, you know, you go to Psalms, you go to Micah here.
SPEAKER_03: Verse 19.
SPEAKER_03: All these songs today written, you know, God tread upon our iniquities and tralala.
SPEAKER_03: God cast our sins into the depths of the sea.
SPEAKER_03: Oh, let's throw a party.
SPEAKER_03: Do you think that your sins are atoned for because God somehow raked them off your back and stomped them?
SPEAKER_03: Do you think your sins are remembered no more because God scooped them off of you and threw them into the sea?
SPEAKER_03: Do you think that is enough?
SPEAKER_03: God took your sin.
SPEAKER_03: He just didn't throw it to the ground and stomp it.
SPEAKER_03: He took your sin and he placed it on his son.
SPEAKER_03: And he tread upon him.
SPEAKER_03: He tread upon his own son and ground him to powder on that tree.
SPEAKER_03: He took your sin off of you.
SPEAKER_03: He didn't roll it up in a ball and throw it into the sea.
SPEAKER_03: He rolled it up and laid it on his son and cast his own son into the sea of his wrath.
SPEAKER_03: See, it changes things when you understand the theology.
SPEAKER_03: He's the greater than Jonah, don't you see?
SPEAKER_03: Jonah's running from God as a disobedient prophet.
SPEAKER_03: He's asleep in the bow of the boat.
SPEAKER_03: A great storm comes up.
SPEAKER_03: He comes up and he recognizes I, yes, I'm I'm the wayward prophet.
SPEAKER_03: I'm the disobedient prophet.
SPEAKER_03: Cast me into the sea.
SPEAKER_03: And they cast him into the sea.
SPEAKER_03: Many, many, many years later, Jesus says, let's get in the boat and go to the other side.
SPEAKER_03: And you think it's a story all about just how he has power over nature.
SPEAKER_03: Well, that's true.
SPEAKER_03: That's not the story.
SPEAKER_03: He gets in that boat, he's asleep in the bow, just like that disobedient prophet.
SPEAKER_03: And a storm comes up.
SPEAKER_03: And those disciples are maybe thinking, maybe the Pharisees are right.
SPEAKER_03: Maybe we've got a Jonah on this boat.
SPEAKER_03: We're about to be swallowed, and he's down there sleeping just like Jonah.
SPEAKER_03: Except this greater than Jonah is different.
SPEAKER_03: He proves that he is no disobedient prophet.
SPEAKER_03: He comes out and he calms the sea.
SPEAKER_03: But that's just a small introduction to what's about to happen.
SPEAKER_03: Jonah said, cast me into the sea.
SPEAKER_03: Cast me into the sea of this wrath, this natural expression of the wrath of God, and it'll be extinguished.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus cast himself into the sea of the wrath of God, and it was extinguished.
SPEAKER_03: That's what you need to see.
SPEAKER_03: That's the message here.
SPEAKER_03: So we go back to the book of Romans.
SPEAKER_03: How is it that we can be justified as a gift through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus?
SPEAKER_03: There are some words that our fathers used to say should only be mentioned if our lip is trembling.
SPEAKER_03: Every time you hear the word redeemed screamed out, just remember the price of that redemption.
SPEAKER_03: Do us all one favor, remember the price of that.
SPEAKER_03: The blood of God's own son.
SPEAKER_03: You see, that is the mystery of godliness.
SPEAKER_03: That's the reason we serve him.
SPEAKER_03: It's not that we be prim or proper or well-ordered or cultured or principled or even ethical.
SPEAKER_03: We're not imprisoned by a desire to show how upstanding we are.
SPEAKER_03: We follow him because of who he is and what he did.
SPEAKER_03: We're imprisoned by that.
SPEAKER_03: Paul basically says in 2 Corinthians 5, he died for me.
SPEAKER_03: I've died.
SPEAKER_03: I'm compelled by this thing that he did for me.
SPEAKER_03: I have no escape.
SPEAKER_03: I can't leave Christianity.
SPEAKER_03: I can't leave the ministry.
SPEAKER_03: I can't.
SPEAKER_03: Why?
SPEAKER_03: Paul, you suffer so much.
SPEAKER_03: He died for me.
SPEAKER_03: I'm compelled now.
SPEAKER_03: Remember a young boy standing there handing out tracks on a university campus and he had just been converted and his friends thought he'd lost his mind.
SPEAKER_03: They said, What are you doing?
SPEAKER_03: Your reputation is going to be ruined.
SPEAKER_03: People are laughing at you.
SPEAKER_03: And the young man just turned around and said, What else do I do?
SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_02: He died for me.
SPEAKER_02: I have no other.
SPEAKER_02: I have to do this.
SPEAKER_03: You see.
SPEAKER_03: So what does it mean, redemption?
SPEAKER_03: There was this YouTube thing that became very famous, you know, where this man's chained to a wall and Satan's about ready to.
SPEAKER_03: You see a shadow of Satan about ready to whip him, and then all of a sudden Christ comes and interposes and takes the beating from Satan so that the man can be let go.
SPEAKER_03: That's not what happened on that tree.
SPEAKER_03: The whip was not in the hand of the devil, it was in the hand of God.
SPEAKER_03: And that's why Paul goes on to say, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith.
SPEAKER_03: A propitiation, a sacrifice that satisfies the demands of justice, completely satisfies justice.
SPEAKER_03: And that's what he did on that tree.
SPEAKER_03: It is finished.
SPEAKER_03: His suffering and his death satisfied justice for all the sins of his people, past, present, and future.
SPEAKER_03: But what happened on that tree?
SPEAKER_03: I have spent a great deal of my life studying the gospel, writing on the gospel.
SPEAKER_03: The physical sufferings of Jesus were horrendous.
SPEAKER_03: The shame he experienced, the mock king trial, everything.
SPEAKER_03: It was all part of the wrath of God being manifested upon him.
SPEAKER_03: That is true.
SPEAKER_03: If you go back to Deuteronomy chapter 27, you can see much of what happened to Jesus in the trial and through the Romans and everything else.
SPEAKER_03: You can see those things as judgments for the breaking of the law, the turning over to the Gentiles, everything.
SPEAKER_03: But what you have to understand, we are redeemed, if we are redeemed today, not merely because of what the Romans did to Jesus when he was on that tree, it's because of what God did to his son when he was on that tree.
SPEAKER_03: If you go quickly to Galatians chapter 3.
SPEAKER_03: Verse 10, for as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, cursed is everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law to perform them, we were under a curse.
SPEAKER_03: There's just simply no way that I can explain to you the depth of the horror of that statement.
SPEAKER_03: Except that it might be something like this that on the day that you were condemned, and when the door is opened and you take your first step into hell, the last thing you will see when you turn around is all of creation standing to its feet and applauding God for having condemned you.
SPEAKER_03: How was Christ cursed?
SPEAKER_03: He was cursed as a man who makes an idol or a molten image, an abomination to the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: He was cursed as one who dishonors his father and mother.
SPEAKER_03: He was cursed as one who moves his neighbor's boundary mark.
SPEAKER_03: He is cursed as one who misleads a blind person on the road.
SPEAKER_03: He is cursed as one who distorts the justice to an alien, orphan, and a widow.
SPEAKER_03: He is cursed as one who commits every manner, atrocity, of immorality.
SPEAKER_03: He is cursed as one who strikes his neighbor in secret.
SPEAKER_03: He is cursed as one who accepts a bride.
SPEAKER_03: He is cursed as one who does not confirm the words of the law by doing them.
SPEAKER_03: Before he went to that tree, he cried out, he said, Let this cup pass from me.
SPEAKER_03: I have heard so many silly sermons on the cup.
SPEAKER_03: The crown of thorns, nails.
SPEAKER_03: Do you realize that even till today, how many Christians die on crosses?
SPEAKER_03: Some of the early Christians dying on crosses and then covered with pitch and set on fire?
SPEAKER_03: Do you realize how many Christians have gone to a cross singing hymns?
SPEAKER_03: And with joy that they could die for their Lord in such a manner, saying things like, play the man?
SPEAKER_03: And yet the captain of our salvation is in a garden crying out, Let this pass from me?
SPEAKER_03: Do you really think that it was a bunch of Romans, a crown of thorns, and some nails that caused Christ to tremble so?
SPEAKER_03: What kind of opinion do you have of him?
SPEAKER_03: What was the cup that he did not want to drink?
SPEAKER_03: In Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_03: For thus says the Lord God of Israel, thus he says to me, Take this cup of the wine of my wrath from my hand and cause all the nations to whom I send you to drink it, they will drink and stagger and go mad.
SPEAKER_03: Those Christians went to the cross.
SPEAKER_03: Those Christians today go to the cross and the stake and the firing line and the rot of prison with joy at times.
SPEAKER_03: Fear, yes, but joy, because they know that God is with them and for them.
SPEAKER_03: Christ went to that tree knowing that he would have to cry out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me and poured out all your wrath?
SPEAKER_03: Those three hours of darkness, do you think it was just cloudy and raining?
SPEAKER_03: I believe it was the darkness of Egypt where a man could not see his hand in front of his face because Christ had to be shut up.
SPEAKER_03: He could not even look at the false mourners and draw any comfort.
SPEAKER_03: He had to be completely shut up while billow after billow after billow of God's massive, extraordinary hatred of evil passed over him and crushed him until justice, God's justice, said, I am now satisfied.
SPEAKER_03: The punishment due the people has been paid.
SPEAKER_03: And Paul goes on in Romans, and he says, This was to demonstrate his, God's righteousness, because in the forbearance of sin he passed over the sins previously committed.
SPEAKER_03: For the demonstration, I say, of his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: What is he saying?
SPEAKER_03: This is one of the, if not the most extraordinary passage in the whole Bible.
SPEAKER_03: What is the problem he's dealing with?
SPEAKER_03: The problem he's dealing with is that God, throughout all of human history, has shown mercy.
SPEAKER_03: That's the problem.
SPEAKER_03: He has held back his justice and shown mercy.
SPEAKER_03: You know, the devil's not only the accuser of the saint, he's the accuser of God.
SPEAKER_03: Can you imagine?
SPEAKER_03: Adam and Eve fall.
SPEAKER_03: The devil, what is this?
SPEAKER_03: What is this?
SPEAKER_03: They have sinned.
SPEAKER_03: They should die and the entire race with them.
SPEAKER_03: And yet you give them a promise?
SPEAKER_03: Genesis 315, a seed born of them?
SPEAKER_03: Crush me?
SPEAKER_03: You give them hope?
SPEAKER_03: Where's your justice?
SPEAKER_03: Oh.
SPEAKER_03: Noah?
SPEAKER_03: The problem with the flood is that Noah and his family should have also died.
SPEAKER_03: That wasn't just.
SPEAKER_03: Oh, and Abraham, your friend Abraham, he lied.
SPEAKER_03: He did not believe you.
SPEAKER_03: He put his wife in jeopardy.
SPEAKER_03: Oh, in Israel, they worshiped me, not you in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_03: You said so yourself and the prophets.
SPEAKER_03: David?
SPEAKER_03: Your son?
SPEAKER_03: A man after your own heart?
SPEAKER_03: He's an adulterer and a murderer.
SPEAKER_03: And the law says he must die.
SPEAKER_03: Where's your justice?
SPEAKER_03: It's as though two thousand years ago God called Satan front and center.
SPEAKER_03: Do you want to know how I can give a promise to the fallen race?
SPEAKER_03: At the moment of their falling?
SPEAKER_03: Do you want to know how I can deliver Noah from a flood and his family?
SPEAKER_03: Do you want to know how I could keep Israel?
SPEAKER_03: Make Abraham my friend, David my son.
SPEAKER_03: Look to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_02: Look to the cross.
SPEAKER_02: Where my son now dies for them all.
SPEAKER_02: That's what happened there.
SPEAKER_03: That's what happened there.
SPEAKER_03: He suffered every drop that had to be suffered of the wrath of God, of the love of God against evil.
SPEAKER_03: And then he cried out, It is finished, and he turned the cup of God's wrath.
SPEAKER_03: And not one drop of wrath fell out for his people.
SPEAKER_02: And he died.
SPEAKER_02: And they buried him.
SPEAKER_02: They buried him.
SPEAKER_02: The logos.
SPEAKER_02: Life itself.
SPEAKER_02: The very revelation of God.
SPEAKER_02: The light of light.
SPEAKER_02: But on the third day, up from the grave he arose with a mighty triumph for his foes.
SPEAKER_03: And what did that resurrection prove?
SPEAKER_03: Paul will tell us in chapter 4, verse 25.
SPEAKER_03: He who was delivered over because of our transgression and was raised because of our justification, a difficult text, seems to be indicating that that resurrection was the proof that justice was fully satisfied.
SPEAKER_03: Everything is paid.
SPEAKER_03: Prior to this, imagine yourself as a debtor and justice coming after you.
SPEAKER_03: The one you owe is seeking you in the streets.
SPEAKER_03: You must hide in dark corners and stay in your house and hide in the basement, not answer the door, completely and always terrified because your debtor, your debtor.
SPEAKER_03: The one to whom you owe money is coming after you, coming after you, coming after you, coming after you.
SPEAKER_03: Your life is utter misery, and you hide as Adam and Eve hid in the garden.
SPEAKER_03: But then you find the note that your debtor has been paid.
SPEAKER_03: And you walk out in the street and you see him coming.
SPEAKER_03: And he has a smile on his face and he embraces you.
SPEAKER_03: Payment in full.
SPEAKER_03: He rose.
SPEAKER_03: And he did something rather tremendous that is a part of gospel proclamation, but that is often left unannounced.
SPEAKER_03: But not today.
SPEAKER_03: After forty days, he ascended up.
SPEAKER_03: He ascended.
SPEAKER_03: The old prophets, the old reformers, the old Puritans, Spurgeon, the early Baptist, Presbyterians, they would go to Psalms 24 and find a story there.
SPEAKER_03: So here we have this man, Christ Jesus, fully God, and yet your brother, fully man.
SPEAKER_03: And he ascends up to the gates of heaven.
SPEAKER_03: And this is what he cries out.
SPEAKER_03: Lift up your heads, O gates, and be lifted up, old ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.
SPEAKER_03: Spurgeon says that all the angels run to the parapet of the wall of heaven and look down in amazement.
SPEAKER_03: Who is speaking?
SPEAKER_03: I would add this.
SPEAKER_03: They probably looked down and said, What man has come here?
SPEAKER_03: Who would dare lay his hand on the latch of this door?
SPEAKER_03: They cry out, Who is this King of Glory?
SPEAKER_03: And the man Christ Jesus answers back, the Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.
SPEAKER_03: Lift up your heads, O gates, and lift them up, old ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.
SPEAKER_02: A son of Adam.
SPEAKER_03: Flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, our elder brother, our champion.
SPEAKER_03: We all failed.
SPEAKER_03: But he alone has triumphed, and the doors open, not by grace.
SPEAKER_03: He needs no grace.
SPEAKER_03: They opened by virtue of his own righteousness, the very righteousness of God.
SPEAKER_03: Man, I hope they play that scene for me when I get there.
SPEAKER_03: I want to see it.
SPEAKER_02: All of heaven.
SPEAKER_02: And heaven goes far beyond angels and things of which we know, creatures, cosmos, all of it falling to its face.
SPEAKER_02: And to see this brother of ours walk in and ascend the very steps of God.
SPEAKER_02: Flesh of our flesh.
SPEAKER_03: And sit down at his right hand.
SPEAKER_03: Wouldn't it have been splendid?
SPEAKER_02: The father may have said.
SPEAKER_02: It's him.
SPEAKER_03: Everything is him.
SPEAKER_03: That's what you've got to see.
SPEAKER_03: Everything is him.
SPEAKER_03: It was all made for him.
SPEAKER_03: This whole story is for him.
SPEAKER_03: Everything is for him.
SPEAKER_03: And so we live our lives in light of that.
SPEAKER_03: His beauty is so magnificent that if you were to only in your in your human state at this moment, if you were to only catch a glimpse of the beauty and joy in his face, it would fracture your psyche.
SPEAKER_03: It would ruin you.
SPEAKER_03: In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple.
SPEAKER_03: And above him stood the seraphim, each one having six wings.
SPEAKER_03: With two they covered their face, with two they covered their feet, and with two they did cry.
SPEAKER_03: And one cried unto the other, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_03: The whole earth is full of his glory.
SPEAKER_03: And the post of the door moved at the voice of him who cried, and the house was filled with smoke.
SPEAKER_03: Then said I, This prophet, woe is me, I am undone, I am disintegrated.
SPEAKER_03: Do you know to whom he was looking?
SPEAKER_03: Who was sitting on that throne?
SPEAKER_03: Who did he see?
SPEAKER_03: He saw the sun.
SPEAKER_03: But now we see him as not only the king of glory, but our brother, with whom we are co-heirs.
SPEAKER_03: No one could make up such a story.
SPEAKER_03: No one could make up such a book.
SPEAKER_03: What will you do?
SPEAKER_03: If you're here today, don't please do not play.
SPEAKER_03: Not in light of this, do not play.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, away with all your silliness, all your contemporary Christianity, all your American easy believism and all your other stuff that you throw in with it.
SPEAKER_03: Let it all rotten hell.
SPEAKER_03: Acknowledge that there is only one king.
SPEAKER_03: And there is only one true country, and there is only one true people, and it is for these things we should live.
SPEAKER_03: But you cannot live for the one in whom you do not believe.
SPEAKER_03: And if you have believed, there will be evidence of it, man.
SPEAKER_03: There will be evidence of it.
SPEAKER_03: How has your life changed?
SPEAKER_03: How is your life changing?
SPEAKER_03: Is there a reality of God, or are you just a silly moral person?
SPEAKER_03: Do you know him?
SPEAKER_03: Do you love him?
SPEAKER_03: And do you lament the fact, like me, you love him so little?
SPEAKER_03: Have you changed?
SPEAKER_03: Are you becoming more like him?
SPEAKER_03: And do you lament the fact that you're not like him enough?
SPEAKER_03: What has he done to you?
SPEAKER_03: What is the proof that you belong to him?
SPEAKER_03: Think on these things.
SPEAKER_03: But more importantly, call upon the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Call upon the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_03: Father, thank you for your son.
SPEAKER_01: Oh Lord.
SPEAKER_03: It's been so many years.
SPEAKER_03: Oh, there's oh, one day we'll see him.
SPEAKER_03: One day.
SPEAKER_03: But oh God, now, while we still have breath, let people believe.
SPEAKER_03: Let them hear the message and be changed by it.
SPEAKER_03: For is it not, Lord, you promise the power of God for salvation to all who believe.
SPEAKER_03: God help this people.
SPEAKER_03: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with Jesus.