Let us turn again in the word of God to Psalm 69. Psalm 69. And reading in verse four. They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head. They that would destroy me, being my enemies wrongfully, are mighty. Then I restored that which I took not away. And we shall consider, as the Lord is pleased to enable us, the closing words in verse four. Then I restored that which I took not away. These are the words of one who is restoring to God something which man took away from God. Will a man rob God? Yes, he did. He robbed God, not of his essential glory, That is impossible. That is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. But he robbed God of what is sometimes called his manifested glory, the honor which is due to God in his own world. You have here crime and punishment of the crime. And the punishment of the crime is laid upon one who did not commit the crime. I restored what I took not away. The world does not recognize that the death of Christ was a punishment for a crime. Nowadays, the character of God has been so diluted that we are left with a God who makes no demands. And sin, if the word is ever used, is trivialized into some kind of human failure or mistake or something which is acceptable because everybody does it. This is nothing new. Sin covers itself, and it covers God from you. If you go back to Genesis chapter three, the devil comes, and he portrays God as a God who makes no demands, and that sin is something trivial. and that God will not respond when it happens. It is the nature of God to respond to sin. It is a crime against his moral government. And God would not be true to himself if he did not punish sin. Shall not the God of all the earth do right? If he were to let sin go unpunished, he would not be doing right. He would not even be a judge. So these are the words of one who is restoring to God what man took away. First of all, what was taken away? The outward honor The glory which was due to God was withheld. It was taken away from him. Sin made man incapable of manifesting the glory of God which he was created to do. And we read in Romans chapter three, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Now there are different views there of what is meant by the glory of God. Certainly it means that God is not being given the glory which is his due. He's being robbed of something, something is being withheld. But I'm inclined to the view of Samuel Rutherford and a few others that to come short of the glory of God is referring to the image of God. We come short of the image of God, so we cannot manifest his glory as we ought to have done had we not sinned. And if we are not manifesting the glory of God, we are resisting. We are transgressing the law. We are disobedient. We have committed crime. And even for the believer, sin will sometimes trivialize what we are guilty of. The Lord Jesus taught us to remember, by giving us that prayer, Forgive us our debts. There is a debt due to God, and we have failed to pay it. People talk about their debt due to society. What about the debt due to God? We were supposed to manifest his glory. and to love him with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. And we have failed to do that. And furthermore, we resist, we resist the demand to do that. And sin would rationalize that and trivialize that. When obedience to the law is not practiced, you have crime. This was a robbery. man took something away from God, the outward honor which belongs to God from his creatures. And when he did that, he took something also away, because sin has so many consequences. To rob God of his honor and obedience results in disharmony, and it's not even a passive disharmony. It's not a case of the sinner saying, I want nothing to do with God. It is an act of disharmony. It is resistance. It is enmity. This communion, which man enjoyed with God, he has taken away. He took himself away with it. So, sin, crime divides. And Adam begat a son in his own image. And we see the consequences in ourselves and in our society. And yet, sin will persist in persuading people. God has no demands. Sin is not what God says it is. The wages of sin are not death, but surely the death of Christ proves otherwise. It was not sufficient, as some would have us believe, that God could simply turn away from our sin and accept us as we are. And even if he had given us a new heart, what was to be done about the guilt? Something had to be done about the guilt. Sin forgotten is not sin forgiven. And although it seems our statute book becomes smaller and smaller, and there are less and less things being designated as crimes, God's list of crimes is far greater, greater than we can imagine, because we have all committed sins we're not even aware of, but it is guilt. Whether you are conscious of it or not, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. A robbery has been committed. God has been robbed of his glory. To many, that seems so trivial. But for the believer, that is the chief end, to glorify God as we ought. And we cannot be satisfied in this world because we cannot do it as we ought. and we long for it, when there be no more sin, but only giving to God the glory for which we were formed. And the people of God remember, that is their description. This people have I formed for my glory. They shall show forth my praise. So something was taken away. Secondly, This was a debt we could not pay. Psalm 49, none of them can redeem his brother because their redemption is costly or precious. But it means costly. What we are talking here is about a crime against an infinite being which carries with it infinite guilt. And man cannot redeem his brother. He cannot redeem himself because man is finite and man is limited. That doesn't stop some people trying to. There are those who will lessen the debt to an amount which they think they can pay. They will reduce sin to externals. They will diminish its heinousness, like the Pharisee, so that they then convince themselves, touching the righteousness which is of the law, blameless. Who could point the finger to those who could stand and pray that I am not as other men are? And yet, what are they doing? They are not taking away their debts. They are increasing it. They are increasing it by their sins, and especially by the sin of trying to pay the debt in a way other than God has purposed. It is just another sin. But sadly, there are those who accept they cannot pay and they are in despair. They accept the verdict of the Bible. They are convicted of sin by their natural conscience and they feel hopeless. And why do they feel hopeless? Because they do not have faith. Because where there is faith, there is hope, and there is love. So you have two categories. But then there is the third. Is it Mary who said, the rich has he sent away empty, but the empty are filled, having nothing, casting away my own righteousness. I cannot pay. But there is revealed here one who came to pay. There is this freedom, shall we say, in the Godhead to transfer the punishment of crime from one to another. That does not usually happen in a human court of justice. But it happens in God's court because it happened to Christ. The only case I can remember reading about which comes near to this was back in ancient Greece about 400 BC. There had been a great battle at Marathon against the Persians. It was like a last stand and the Greeks They fought very bravely, it was their last stand. And there was one soldier in particular, the brother of Aeschylus. Now, Aeschylus was a famous poet. And in that battle, he lost most of one arm and half of another arm. And a year or two later, his brother Aeschylus was brought up in court. His crime was, in those days, speaking against the gods, Zeus and Athena. He was saying there are no such things. And he was brought to court, and this so-called blasphemy carried the death penalty. And he was found guilty by the judges, and as is the practice, before he passed sentence, which could only be death, Is there anyone in the court who has anything to say on behalf of the prisoner? And Aeschylus' brother was there, and he held up his wounds. And Aeschylus was set free. That is about the nearest equivalent to describe how Christ stands on behalf of the sinner. and shows his wounds, and the sinner goes free. So we could not pay, but another can pay. The emphasis here is on I, I restored. Attention is drawn to Christ in the Word. Behold, I come. Yet in coming, he must satisfy all the demands of God for the crime. Ebenezer Erskine, a great preacher, he imagines a council in the Godhead. We speak of the council of peace or the covenant of grace. And he imagines all the attributes of God sitting at the council of God's table, and each speaking in turn. And truth says, I told you man would fall. And righteousness said, he's not getting into heaven without righteousness. And justice said, I must be satisfied before I can accept anybody. And mercy said, I would like to go forth in mercy. Now happily, says Erskine, the meeting was presided over by the wisdom of God. And the wisdom of God said, there is a way. I know a person who can satisfy all these demands. He will bring righteousness. He will satisfy justice. And when justice is satisfied, you mercy will go forth. And now you truth, you go and proclaim this to the sinners on the earth. In the volume of the book it is written of him. Behold, I come. I restored that which I took not away. An infinite debt requires an infinite person. with infinite merit. But he must become man also, remember, because the nature which sinned must be the nature which pays the debt. Christ suffered in the flesh to bring us to God. He said to his Father, I have glorified thee on the earth. I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. There was the law breaker, and now we have the law keeper. He magnified the law and made it honorable. He brought glory to God, and that salvation wrought by thee, his glory is made great. He restored harmony, the just suffering for the unjust to bring us back to God. He was obedient unto death, because part of the debt is death. And that must be very frightening for those who think that they can make peace with God through their keeping of the commandments. They forget that death is part of the debt. They may think they can do the one, they cannot do the other. And the image of God Well, the image of God was lost by Adam, but the image of his son, and there would seem to be a distinction. Romans 8 talks about being conformed to the image of his son. The image of his son cannot be lost. The image of God could, but the image of his son cannot be lost. And when the image is restored more and more, more and more glory is given to God. And they show forth increasingly the praises of him who called them out of darkness into his marvelous light. I restored what I took not away. But one final word here, and remember, no word in scripture is redundant. It says, then, then I restored. When did he complete the payment? You have that in the opening words. You see what every sin deserves in the opening words. You see what he had to go through in his sufferings. The waters coming in, penetrating to the soul. The deep mire. There is no standing on a cross. where floods overflow me, weariness crying, dried, eyes failing, but nevertheless waiting for God. Now, there's a lesson for those who are suffering, that Christ in his suffering took himself to God in prayer, and he did not give up praying. The sufferer is often tempted to give up and say, well, what's the use? Here is the great example for us in suffering. He continued to pray. Then I restored. At the climax of his suffering, then I restored. At the climax of the opposition against him, they had him crucified. They thought they prevailed. His enemies wrongfully were against him. The mountains of God's wrath were going over him. The floods overflowed me. You see, every sin deserves not only physical suffering, but mental and spiritual suffering. And he did that. He repaid in full. Was anything missed out? No, he says. My sins are not hid from thee. All the sins imputed to him for which he was liable to pay, none were hidden. He spared not his own son, nor any sin that was laid upon his own son. Then, and this is very humbling for us, when, when we were his enemies, When we were without strength to pay, Christ died for the ungodly. Then I restored what I took not away. Here we have redemption accomplished. The climax of the payment on the cross. He was the sin bearer from the womb. But on the cross, he bore it away. It was no longer on him. And the guilt was no longer on his people. The iniquity of Judah, the sin of Israel could be sought for, but it would not be found. Now you see, friends, what sin deserved. Much more than we think it does. You see the character of God that he must be just and the justifier of those who believe in Jesus. He glorified God in his life and in his death. And the apostle says, God forbid that I should glory except in the cross, the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. And the result, praise to God, and life for sinners, and Christ glorified in the midst. We must remember that although sin is freely forgiven to us, there was a cost. And God does not forgive sin unless he punishes it first. Unless the debt is paid, the sinner cannot go free. And in the end, a choice is made. Either you choose to pay for your own sin, or you flee to this glorious surety. You see, with that old man, in my place condemned he stood, sealed my pardon with his blood. And what is the effect on the sinner who flees to this great debt payer? Well, it seems to be summed up well in those words of Charles Wesley. It's like the application of the debt paid. The sinner goes free. And he said, long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and nature's night. Thine eyes diffused a quickening ray. I woke the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off, my heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed Thee. That is the experience of one whose debt is paid. Then, he says, I restored that which I took not away. Sin punished on a glorious surety. Look unto me, he says, and be ye saved. The result, glory to God in the highest degree, and on earth peace because of God's good will towards men. May he bless this short meditation on his word.