If you would this morning, I want you to turn to Psalm 5, the fifth psalm. And while you're turning there, I'll always remind you, just by way of establishing a foundation, the book of Psalms is 150 individual psalms. It's not chapters within a book. And the Psalms were Psalms, basically the ancient Jewish hymn book. And if there is a division to be made in Psalms, it is this, the fact that it is divided into five books or five scrolls. And book one that we're in is Psalm 1 through 41. And every book of the Psalms, every scroll has a different theme. And the theme of this first book is human suffering and the need for divine deliverance. I know I sound like a broken record, but we're going to see this over and over and over and over again. We're going to see it again in a different way today in Psalm 5. Again, the psalmist is David. This is known as a psalm of lament. Now, we're going to get down to verse 10, and we're going to see an imprecatory prayer. There are some imprecatory psalms, but this is not considered an imprecatory psalm. It's got an imprecatory aspect. but it's a psalm of lament and I'm going to read the whole psalm for sake of context but I'm actually going to preach verses 10 through 12 next week because I want to give special attention to it. We're talking about a prayer. for the judgment of our enemies and what that entails and what we should and shouldn't do and what David means by this. This is a language we really don't use anymore. I seriously doubt you've probably ever heard a pastor say, now what I want you to do is pray that your enemies be brutally killed. You probably never heard that and probably never will. So I want us to understand what it is and what it's not. But with that in mind, Let's read the Word of God together. Psalm 1, we'll begin in verse 5. David says, Give ear to my words, O Lord. Consider my meditation. Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King and my God. For unto Thee will I pray. My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord. In the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee, and I will look up. For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness, neither shall evil dwell with thee. The foolish shall not stand in thy sight. Thou hatest all workers of iniquity. Thou shalt not destroy them that speak leasing. The Lord will abhor the bloody and deceitful man. But as for me, I will come into thy house, into the multitude of thy mercy, and in thy fear will I worship toward thy holy temple. Lead me, O Lord, in thy righteousness, because of mine enemies. Make thy way straight before my face. For there is no faithfulness in their mouth. Their inward part is very wickedness. Their throat is an open sepulcher. They flatter with their tongue. Destroy thou them, O God. Let them fall by their own counsels. Cast them out in the multitude of their transgressions, for they have rebelled against thee. But let all those that put their trust in Thee rejoice. Let them ever shout for joy, because Thou defendest them. Let them also that love Thy name be joyful in Thee, for Thou, Lord, will bless the righteous with favor, without compassion, as with a shield. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we love You. We come to You in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. And Lord, we just thank you so much for this day you've given us. Thank you for those that have come. Lord, we're just so grateful today. Lord, to know Jesus Christ and the pardon of our sins. And Lord, if somebody doesn't know Jesus Christ today and the pardon of their sins, I pray that today would be the day of salvation. God, that you would draw them to saving faith in Christ. Lord, I pray that Lord, if somebody is struggling, Lord, if we're really dealing with trials or whatever the case may be, that You would bring us comfort. Lord, bring us conviction where needed. I pray that You would just enter me as sin itself, fill me with Your Holy Spirit, make the preaching powerful and clear, and I pray that Christ would be the only one that's magnified in this place today. And it's in His name we pray these things. Amen. So I want to look this morning at the thought of the holiness of our God and our King. Next week we'll be looking at the justice of our God and our King. These things go hand in hand. And the word holiness isn't found anywhere in this psalm. It's not in the text. But the principle is seeping from every word. This text is saturated with the holiness of God and what that looks like and what that entails. And I know for our home folks, maybe a lot of the things I'm going to say is going to seem like a broken record. This is not going to be popular preaching. It's not something that's probably preached in most churches. I can promise you this, you will never hear Joel Osteen or Stephen Furtick or any of those guys preaching out of Psalm 5. They're not going to find anything to put their narrative. And you know, if I don't do anything else in my life, if I accomplish nothing else as a pastor, it's my responsibility to the best of my ability and the grace that God gives me to help you know God better. And if I don't do that, I'm a failure in what I'm supposed to do. And what I see a lot of today is a lot of so-called pastors and preachers in churches, really they wouldn't even need the Bible for what they do. They use it as a prop to satisfy their critics. There's a lot of self-help going on. There's a lot of psychology being taught. There's a lot of health and wealth and empty promises and even flat-out lies. But I can promise you the thing that's going to help you more than anything else is to know God. is to grow in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the only way that you can do that is to be a student of the very Word that God has revealed Himself in. He has revealed Himself through His Word. And so that's what I'm here to try to do this morning. Listen, we don't get to decide who God is. We don't get to do that. God is who He is. And the only choice that we really have is to submit to the God that He is or to try to create a God in our mind that He's not. Don't be guilty of that. Don't create a God of your own mind. Submit to the God of the Word, the God who is. And so when we read texts like Psalm 5, maybe to the uninitiated or maybe those that may be outside of the faith or outside of Christ, and maybe even for young Christians, some of this language is different. It's not something you're going to hear in popular culture and in liberal so-called churches, but it's in the Word of God. So the best thing we can do is to try to better understand it instead of trying to explain it away. And I know, I think, if you were looking at Scripture, Every preacher was called to preach the Word of God faithfully, to preach the gospel faithfully. But I do think that if you look, that even the different preachers and apostles, they had a different niche that God had called them to. I think you see Barnabas was the son of consolation. Paul was the, he was the apostle to the Gentiles. Peter dealt more specifically with the Jews. And I think if I do have a niche, I have such a burden to call the church, and I'm talking about believers in Christ, and specifically this local body where God has called me, to bring us back to a knowledge of the holiness and justice of God, because without that, you can't even make sense of His love. You can't even make sense of the cross. And so that's really my burden. And so I want to look at the holiness of our God and King this morning. God is called righteous, even though we don't see the word holiness here. He's called righteous in verse 8, which goes hand in hand with holiness. And this language that we see in Psalm 5 is very similar to Isaiah chapter 6, where Isaiah saw the Lord, the King. He said, I have seen the King high and lifted up on His throne. where both his train and his holiness filled the temple. If you remember, Isaiah also saw these angelic creatures, these seraphim, and they were just overwhelmed by the holiness of God. It's almost like they were shivering and trying to cover themselves, and they cried, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. We also see this in Revelation chapter 4 and verse 8. And I want you to know, I don't want to get too deep in this, but I want you to kind of think about this. In theology, there's something known as the simplicity of God. And what that means is that the characteristics of God are not divided. Like, He's not like 50% love and, you know, 40% holiness and 10% this and no. He is 100% holy. He's 100% love. He's 100% powerful. I mean, you can just go down the list. He's 100% of all His traits and attributes. Some of them overlap more than others, but I would say concerning His holiness, I find this interesting. There's no other trait in the Bible by which the Lord is called three times. Here he is called holy, holy, holy. When all the saved and the heavenly host in the end there are worshiping and praising Christ in heaven and crying holy, holy, holy, we don't ever say that about anything else. He's never called love, love, love. Now God is love, but He's never called love, love, love, or good, good, good, and He's a good God. So I think there's a special emphasis on this so it would really be beneficial for us to understand what that means. The word holy means to be set apart. That's what it means. It's a purity. It means to be set apart. And the word holy in the Old Testament comes from the Hebrew kadosh. It's the kadosh of God. And what that means is His otherness. The otherness of God. And even when we're commanded to be holy, it's not even used in the same sense. There's no way that we could be holy like God is. He's the eternal God of the universe. He is the self-sufficient, self-existent creator of all things. And so we could never measure up to that. We could never catch up to that. We could never be that. His holiness is His otherness. He is not like us. It means to be set apart. Wholly separated from sin. This is a great way to remember the word holy. If you think about the other word holy. He is wholly separated from sin. And so, the world completely misses the concept of holiness. The cults miss this concept of holiness. The ancient pagans certainly missed this. It's true of David's day, it's true in our day, and this is something to keep in mind because we do understand there was a context in which David was writing as well. Do you know that the concept of a holy God was totally foreign to the pagan gods? You see, the pagan gods, they were thought to be extremely powerful beings, but they were not holy. They could be bribed. They could be persuaded. They could lose their temper and get angry. They could be arbitrary. And so, the idea of a holy God was a totally foreign concept. This is yet another reason we know why the Bible is the inspired Word of God, is because men would never record stuff like this. This is not a God created in the imagination of men. And so, The concept of holy God was inconceivable in David's day and it still is today. The holiness of God is both a terrifying and yet a wonderful thing. So the question that I want to wrestle with this morning is why is the holiness of God such a wonderful and yet a fearful, awful thing? Listen, if you don't understand and accept the holiness of God, and listen, I'm not saying we can ever completely comprehend it because we're not God. But if you don't have a rudimentary understanding and acceptance of this doctrine, you cannot even begin to know who God is. You cannot skirt around the holiness of God and really know who God is. If you have a God that is not holy, He has no wrath for sin, and He has no justice, then you are not worshiping the God of the Bible. It's just that simple. And so why is the holiness of God such a wonderful and yet a fearful thing? Well, number one, the first thing I want to look at is His authority. Look at verse one. Give ear to my words, O Lord. Consider my meditation. Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King and my God. For unto Thee will I pray. My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord. In the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee, and will look up. Listen, we cannot miss this key concept in the first few verses. The first thing we have to notice here is notice in verse 1 how LORD is spelled. It's all caps. Every single letter of LORD is capitalized. And what have I told you about that in our English translation? It is a translation of the name of Yahweh. That is the covenant name of God. It is the most sacred to the Jews. But here's what you have to get. In the Old Testament, most people think that Yahweh is just used of God the Father. And it is frequently used of God the Father. We find that in examples like Psalm 110 and verse 1. The Lord, Yahweh, said unto my Lord, Adonai, sit thou at my right hand, and I'll make thy enemies thy footstool. God the Father is clearly communicating about God the Son in that text. But here, Yahweh is used of who? Look at verse 2, hearken unto the voice of my cry, my king and my God, for unto thee will I pray. Now who in history is the only king that was also God? The Lord Jesus Christ when he came to this earth through the womb of the Virgin Mary, the God-man. And so this is talking about the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Godhead. It's a reference to Yahweh. Isn't that amazing? How Yahweh is used of God the Father, God the Son, and even sometimes God the Holy Spirit, depending on what the context is. This is Trinitarian language. One God manifested in three persons. Again, I can't 100% explain that, but then again, an infinite God cannot be fit within the finiteness of my four-pound brain or yours either. I just preach it because that's clearly what the Bible says here. But I want you to see his authority. Now, concerning this thought of authority, you know, it's really hard for us in our Western world to grasp the concept of a monarchy. You know, in our democratic republic, our system is designed to work in a way that we elect people to represent us And if we aren't satisfied with the way that they represent us, we get to fire them at the ballot box and get somebody else in there. That's the way it's supposed to work. And we have rights, and we have courts, and we have appeals, and we have certain laws about cruel and unusual punishment, and that's good. I think those are good things. But here's the thing. It's not that way in a monarchy. It's not that way under a king. The king controls everything. His word is the law and it's final. There is nobody above a king to appeal to. He is it. He is the judge, jury, and executioner. God is separate and above His creation in His power, wisdom, and His holiness. God has no equal. This is why David says at the end of verse 3, look at the end of verse 3 there, he says, In the morning, I will direct my prayer unto thee, and I will look up." This is a rhetorical way of saying that God is above me. Man, we could do a lot with that concept. God is above us. He is separate and over His creation. Now, this concept is why atheism has become so popular. The atheist understands. And by the way, don't take this the wrong way. I think in a very practical way, atheists are more honest than people that have bought into a false religion and false gods. Because the atheist at least understands that if there is a God, that if there is a Creator of everything, then that means He's above His creation. And so what they do is they choose not to acknowledge such a God because then they have had to sacrifice their autonomy. They understand that concept. God is above everything. Atheism is a futile attempt at autonomy from God. The Lord has ultimate authority over the universe and nobody can stay His hand. And understanding this about God, it ought to humble us and put a healthy awe and fear of God in our hearts. Listen, we understand that He is a good God. He is a loving God, but He is a holy God, and He is the King with ultimate power and authority. Now, if you were in a foreign country, and you had an invitation to go before a king, an absolute monarch, and you knew that even your life was in His hands, all He had to do to take your life was to speak the Word. in order to take your home and family, all he had to do was speak a word. His whole life essentially, practically speaking, is in His hands. You wouldn't be flipping about how you approached Him. You wouldn't be goofing off. There would be some reverence there. There would be some respect and some awe there. I think we have completely lost that concerning God in this country. There would be some respect, I think about, the Chronicles of Narnia series that C.S. Lewis wrote. Toward the end of his second book, there's a scene where the book is kind of closing out and the beaver is talking to the kids about Aslan and he's leaving and they're asking him about this great lion and one of the kids makes a mistake of saying that Aslan was safe. The beaver said, oh no, He's good, but He's not safe. God is good, friend, but He's not safe. Listen, Jesus is not your homeboy. He is God, and He's the King, and there should be some reverence there. There should be some understanding of His holiness and His ultimate authority and power. Nobody is above Him. And when do you stop being so flippant when it comes to who God is? But then secondly, by the way, before I move on, I do want to say this, talking about why is it such a wonderful and yet awful thing, the holiness and the power and the kingship of God. Well, I tell you why it blesses me is because not only is He my King, not only is He my God, but through Jesus Christ and His sacrifice on the cross, I'm also His child. If you're on the right side, it'll help you to know that your God is in absolute control of everything and there's nothing that can happen to you that doesn't first pass through His fingers. There is nothing that happens in our life, no sorrow, no trial, no tear, nothing but what God allows. That brings a comfort to me. And when I make the mistake of flipping on the news, and I see what's going on in the world, I go to bed at night knowing that God is in control, and there is nothing that happens that He does not allow. It'll help you if you're on the right side. It ought to put some fear in you if you're not. But number two, the holiness of God is a wonderful, fearful thing, not only because of authority, but also because of accountability. Look at verse 4. For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness, neither shall evil dwell with thee. The foolish shall not stand in thy sight, thou hatest all workers of iniquity. Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing, which is lies is what leasing is. The Lord will abhor, that means to detest, the bloody and deceitful man. Now listen, this is some of the strongest language in all the Bible concerning God's hatred of sin and even sinners. And you say, well, God hates the sin, but He loves the sinner. But here's the thing, you cannot separate the sin and the sinner. At the judgment, the great white throne judgment, God is not going to cast the sin of adultery into the lake of fire. He's going to cast the adulterer into the lake of fire. God is not going to cast drugs into the lake of fire. He's going to cast the drug dealer into the lake of fire. He is going to judge the sinner for the sin that they committed. He is not going to throw lies into the lake of fire. He's going to throw the liars into the lake of fire. That's what the Bible says over and over and over and over and over again. I know some people struggle with this concept, but listen, we're going to have to come to grips with this and have a better understanding of it, and hopefully over the next two weeks you will understand this. What are we to do with what we just read? It literally says the foolish won't be able to stand in His presence. Now, the fool is somebody who lives their life as if there is no God. The fool has said in his heart, there is no God. Proverbs 1 verse 7, among other places. And so the foolish won't be able to stand in His presence. What that means is that they would literally be eviscerated in the presence of God. I mean, you think about even the disciples, the apostles, when Jesus just peeled back his flesh just a little bit, that earthly robe, and they got just a glimpse of his glory at the transfiguration, they fell down like dead men. God told Moses, he said, no man can see me and live, because in our sinfulness, we could never be in the presence of a holy God like that. The immediate question, though, that gets raised is, wait a second. I thought that God is good. Yes, and that's the problem. Paul Washer once said that the most terrifying truth in all the universe is that God is good, and what is a good God supposed to do with sinners like us? Think about that. If God is good, and He is. And He's the only one that's good, and He is. I mean, the Bible says there's none good but God. There's none righteous, no, not one, Romans chapter 3. There is none that seeketh after God. There is none that doeth good. There is none that understandeth. All of our righteousness, Isaiah says, is filthy rags in the sight of God. Our sin is a stench in the nostrils of God. That's a hard thing to hear, isn't it? That's what the Bible says. And until we understand the proper diagnosis of who we are and what we've done, we're never going to seek the proper cure. The cross makes no sense without that diagnosis. And so, if God is good, and He is, and if He's the only one that's good, let me ask you this, what is the opposite of good? Evil. So if He's the only one that's good, and there's no one else that's good, what does that make us? See, people struggle with that. When I take the table out and I've got the challenge on there, there's no such thing as a good person changed my mind. You know what I get almost without exception? Well, I think people make mistakes, but they're good people. Good people make mistakes. They have some whoopsies. They might tell some white lies, they might do this and that. What the problem with that is, they have ignored God's standard of justice, and they have replaced it with their own. I know this is not very deep, this is not profound, but here's the thing. You're always going to be successful when you measure yourself by your own standard. But when we compare ourselves to the standard of God, it's not the case. and He will hold sinners accountable. Habakkuk 1 verse 13 says that God is so holy, His eyes are so pure, that He cannot even look at sin. He cannot even behold sin. And what that means is not that He doesn't see sin. He's very much aware of what's going on in the world. It means He cannot look upon it in a tolerable way. He cannot sweep it under the rug. And so, when we think about the fact that God is good, Part of being good is being just. Think about this. This is what the world misses. This is what the American, I'll put in air quotes, church is missing. They do not understand that the goodness of God requires him to be just. Do you think it's good to be unjust? So if he's a good God, he must be a just God. That's not a good thing for unjust people. Now think about this for a second. Just to give one example of the Nuremberg Trials. The Nuremberg Trials took place after World War II. And this is when the International Council and the International Court brought before them the Nazi leadership to be judged. Man, it's a great study. You need to look at it sometime. But the Nazis' only defense was that even though you may disagree with what we did, and even though you may think that it's abhorrent and all these things, you can't convict us because we didn't break any laws. Because our country decided to do these things, and therefore under the laws and the leadership of Germany, we were just obeying orders. You can't convict us for obeying the laws of our own country. But you know what the judges of that council came up with? This would have gone great, and I just forgot to mention this, this would have gone great with our Wednesday night study about the moral law of God. But the judges in that case, they decided that, and I quote, there was a law above the law. There was a law above the law. Countries don't get to dictate what morality actually is. There is a law above the law. I wonder where that came from. Maybe it was from that universal law giver we talked about Wednesday night. And so he is a just God. Now let me ask you this. What would you think about those judges if they would have just let those Nazis off scot-free? Those that had brutally murdered Jews and women and children, millions of them, and just said, you know, I know you're guilty and we probably could come up with a way to convict you, but, you know, we're such good judges. We're just going to let you guys walk. Enjoy your lives. Does that not do something? That puts my stomach in knots. It makes me angry. Well, where does that come from? Because we recognize how unjust it is. Here's the disconnect though, and if you miss this, you miss the whole thing. Even in our fallenness, we can recognize and be angry at injustice. But what we miss is the fact that we're the criminal. We're the criminal. God is so holy, that He looks at our sin and He is so offended and so abhorred by our sin. And just to kind of prove this, I brought this up before and I use this a lot. But when I'm sharing the Gospel with people, I have to make them aware of how they stand before God. And outside of Jesus Christ, outside of salvation by grace through faith, in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, they're lost, they're undone. The Bible says the wrath of God abideth on them. They're one heartbeat, one breath away from hell and the judgment of God. That's what the Bible says. And to prove that, let's just think about the Ten Commandments for a minute. And I always bring this up when I'm witnessing outside and outside of the church, and I bring up the fact that the Ten Commandments, that's God's minimum standard of human behavior. And I always ask Him, you know, have you told any lies in your life? And with the exception of one person, just one person in all the years I've been doing this, They said that they had told lies. Oh, yeah, I've told lies. Yeah, sure. You know, and... Well, what do you call somebody that tells lies? You're a liar. You, at some point in your life, have lied for the sake of self-preservation. What does that say about you? What does that say about what's in your heart? And I had a person recently say, well, they kind of tried to minimize that and say, but yeah, but everybody's told lies. What does that say about everybody? All of humanity lies. What does that say about all humanity? We're all liars. What is a God supposed to do with liars? He's supposed to just sweep that under the rug? Just put a blindfold on? Y'all just come on into heaven. You'll be okay. No. What about adultery? Jesus took it a step further. And He said, if you look at a woman with lust, you've committed adultery in your heart already. What's God supposed to do with that? Oh, no biggie, no biggie. Come on, come on. What about stealing? What's he supposed to do with thieves? He's the righteous, he's the good judge. He's not gonna let it slide. So, according to the word of God, on our own merits, we're all in trouble. This is what we have to get about the holiness of God. We can't even begin to understand God until we recognize His holiness in our sinfulness. The problem is we're not nearly as offended by our sin as God is. You say, well, I still just can't buy into this concept. Let me illustrate it like this. Let's say you took a pocket knife and you went outside in the parking lot and you found a rock and you began to scratch that rock up with that knife. I mean, people may look at you a little funny, but nobody's thinking about it, nobody's worried about that. Well, let's say you went out to the junkyard, and you took that same pocket knife, and you begin to scrape the paint off the sides of some of those junk cars. Well, the owner of the junkyard comes out, and he's upset. What are you doing? He said, I could have sold that door that you just scratched up. Then there's consequences. Maybe he makes you leave, or maybe he calls the cops. Well, think about taking that same pocket knife and going to a luxury car dealer. and scratching up a Lamborghini. I mean, it just makes me cringe to think about, well, now we've really done something. Now the cops are coming. The owner may beat you up before the cops even get there. They're upset. Imagine taking that same pocket knife and using it on a child to cut a child. You see how we're becoming more and more offended by this? What's the difference? It's the value in the thing that was harmed. God is of the ultimate value. His holy and just standard is of the ultimate value. And our sin is abhorrent to Him. That's why the cost is so great. That's why the standard is so high. You say, What in the world? I mean, how is this possible? Well, it's because God is holy, and His kingdom is a kingdom of righteousness. Therefore, He must punish sin and unrighteousness. The holiness of God is both wonderful and fearful because He will hold sinners accountable, which is a scary thing considering that we're all sinners. Number three, I'm going to sab it up a little bit. Number three, His holiness is wonderful and yet awful and fearful. because of His abundant mercy. Look at verse 7. He says, I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercy, and in thy fear will I worship toward thy holy temple. Lead me, O Lord, in thy righteousness, because of mine enemies. Make thy way straight before my face, for there is no faithfulness in their mouth." Their inward part is very wickedness. Their throat is an open sepulcher, an open grave is what that means. They flatter with their tongue. And so David makes a clear distinction between him and his sinful enemies. Now, on the surface, this would have been really arrogant and prideful of him to say if we're not paying attention to what he actually said. I mean, it almost looks like David's saying, yeah, Lord, I know everybody else is a sinner. I know everybody else has got problems but not me. I'm going to just walk straight into your presence and you're going to bless me and that's not what he's saying. David was a sinner as well who was in need of the mercy of God. We've seen this even in past weeks. And so, how can he possibly say that? Well, the answer is found in one word in verse 8, and that is mercy. Or one word in verse, I'll just read it, verse 7, But as for me, I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercy. And in thy fear will I worship toward thy holy temple. So the only way that David was able to approach the presence of God is because, not anything in him, but because of the mercy of God. Mercy is when we don't get what we deserve. On the flip side of that same coin, grace is when God gives us what we don't deserve. Therefore, there's no such thing as earned grace or earned mercy. You say, well, it makes it sound like God is loving towards sinners. Well, you better believe it. But didn't the Scriptures just say that God hates all workers of iniquity, which is all of us, sinners? Well, yes. Well, how can God be both loving and hateful towards sinners? Well, first, I need to give you a category here. I think that the hatred of God must be seen in illegal terms. It is when somebody offends His holiness. He must punish sin. This is opposed to being simply personal, a personal hatred. It's not like our hatred. You know, if we're honest, our hatred is pretty much always selfish. You know, somebody offended us. Somebody made us angry. Somebody cut us off in traffic. Whatever the case may be, God's hatred is not like that. It's a righteous hatred. And so, the hatred of God is like a righteous judge that issues punishment against a lawbreaker. A good judge is going to do his duty without a personal vendetta. You remember the statue of the blind eyes of justice with the blindfold on? Think about a judge that had a personal vendetta. That would not make a good judge. That's the hatred of God, that kind of judicial action and wisdom. And so are you saying that God will cast some into hell for their sin and others he will pardon by his mercy? Yes, absolutely, 1,000%. But if we're all sinners deserving of God's judgment, How can God pardon us without becoming an unrighteous judge? And just to go back to the Nuremberg trials for a minute, again, what if those judges had actually found them guilty and yet just pardoned them, just full-blown let them free and there was no consequences for that? Again, this would not be a righteous judge. So how can, in other words, how can it be different for God? You know, if He just lets us off scot-free, how can He be a righteous judge? How can He not become complicit in what we've done? Well, again, this is where the cross comes in. And if you don't understand and accept what we've said about God up to this point, the cross doesn't even make sense. What did Christ die such a horrific death in order to save us from? What's the point? If God's not holy and wrathful and He's not going to punish sin, why did Christ have to die such a horrible death? It makes no sense. I've asked several people about that, usually on the atheistic or certainly super liberal side of things. And I've gotten some really weird answers over the years. Most of the time I get a deer in the headlight stare, which means I know they've never even thought about that. But I've actually had somebody, this only happened one time, I actually had somebody say that Christ died to save us from our lack of self-esteem. Really, it really happened. But here's the thing, folks. You say, how can God be that wrathful and yet that loving? How can He be that holy and just, and yet that merciful and gracious and forgiving? It doesn't make sense. It makes perfect sense. And they all meet at the cross. I love how the cross is really like an intersection. I mean, even the shape of it is like an intersection. And the cross is the intersection of God's wrath and His love, His justice and His mercy. All of it meets at the cross. Because on the cross, God the Son took upon Him our sin. He wore our sins in His body on the tree, the Bible says. And for that sin, God the Father poured His wrath upon His Son, Jesus Christ. He punished Jesus Christ for the sins that we committed. Therefore, it wasn't swept under the rug. It was judged. It was punished, but it was punished in Jesus Christ. I love how one author put it. That when Jesus was on the cross, God treated Him as if He had lived our sinful life. But because of the cross, that if we're in Christ Jesus, God can treat us as if we had lived the righteous life that Christ lived. Think about that for a second. The reason that I'm saved today, the reason that I'm right with God, and the reason that I know I'm going to heaven is because God has given me the righteousness of Christ. His righteousness has been imputed to those that are saved and only those that are saved in Christ. 2 Corinthians 5.17 says that He, talking about Christ, was made sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. That's it. I'm not going because of my good works. Listen, good works can never erase broken laws. Can you imagine those Nazis at the Nuremberg trials? I know we gassed six million Jews and killed women and children and all that, but we fed them some good soup while they were there. We did some good things. We gave money to charity, and all that money we stole from the countries that we conquered, we did good things with those. Oh, well, in that case, we're going to let you off. It doesn't happen like that. Good works can erase broken laws, and we've all broken the law of God. So God places His wrath. He punishes Jesus for what we did. If you want to know what God thinks about sin, look at what He did to His Son. And if He didn't spare His Son, He's not going to spare anybody else. You can take that to the bank. But if you want to know what God thinks about sinners, look at what He did for us through His Son. It's an unimaginable truth. And so, that's how it intersects. That's how it comes together and makes sense. This is how God can pardon sin without winking at sin. And in order to find God's mercy, you must run to the foot of the cross. Listen, you must abandon your faith, and yourself, and your works, and your self-righteousness, and whatever else you've done, because God's not impressed with it. You have to come to a place where you realize that you are a sinner lost and undone without Christ. That you've never done anything to erase your sin. You could never do anything to appease God. And you say, on the basis of Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner. Three days later, Jesus Christ rose from the dead. That's how we know that God is satisfied with His sacrifice. That's it. That's the only sacrifice that can please God. And we can be clothed in His righteousness. Look at verse 8. Lead me, O Lord, in Thy righteousness, because of mine enemies make Thy way straight before my face. And so, it's not our righteousness, it's the righteousness of Christ. And this is why His holiness is both fearful and wonderful. But sadly, so many people never see God as holy and just, and therefore they never see themselves as lost sinners, and therefore they never see a need for God's mercy. When Isaiah saw the holiness of God, he said, Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people with unclean lips. God's holiness is a fearful and wonderful thing because of His authority. He is the King and there is no appeal to anyone higher than Him. Because of His accountability, because of His holiness, He has a zero tolerance for sin and He will hold sinners accountable. And because of His abundant mercy, He will pardon and forgive all those that come to Christ by faith. I'll say this as I close. If your view of God allows you to believe, that you're really not as bad as you think you are. You have not recognized the holiness of God. And you have not seen your need for salvation through and in Christ alone. God is that holy. And the only reason that we don't think so is because we see that through tainted sinful eyes. God is not really as holy and powerful and just as the Bible says He is. And I'm not near as bad and depraved and in need of a Savior as the Bible says He is. You just not come to terms with what God has said about you. And if you get the diagnosis wrong, you'll get the cure wrong. Nothing outside of faith in the death, burial, and resurrection is going to be good enough. Jesus is enough. That's it. Our God is holy. He is righteous and He is our King. It's a wonderful, fearful thing, but I'm thankful that in Jesus Christ we can have mercy.