The Word of Truth is sponsored in part by Paul Rents. Visit paulrents.com for party and equipment rentals. Welcome to the Word of Truth, a ministry of Pastor Lars Larsen and the First Baptist Church of Leominster, Massachusetts. It is our desire that our Lord use this broadcast to instruct, encourage, and strengthen both Christians and local churches in the New England region. Pastor Lars is always available to assist you. You may reach him at 978-660-8869. May today's message from our pastor be blessed by our Lord to instruct and encourage you through the Holy Scriptures, the Word of Truth. Greetings, and thank you for listening to our program. God has purposed above all that He has purposed to show forth His glory through all that He has made throughout all of history. God has created all things for His glory. And He has purposed that all of His people glorify Him. we read Psalm 145 verse 10 where it really collects these ideas together all your work shall praise you O Lord your saints shall bless you we've been arguing of late that the glory of God is most clearly and beautifully seen in the cross of our Savior when he died to secure the redemption of his people there the glory of God is most clearly and fully manifest to the world Now, last time we began to speak of the attribute of God least mentioned and appreciated by most, I suspect, that being the wrath of God, and we will continue to address this matter today. But first let us pray for our God's help, our God's blessing. Our Father, we are as Moses who once requested of you, please show us your glory. May you open our eyes so that we may see the wonders of your beauty and power, the glory of your wisdom and justice, the manifestation of your mercy, even in the presence of your wrath. May you help us to know you and praise you for who you are in truth. And Father, we ask that you would reveal your glory savingly to many sinners who are in need of salvation. They perhaps do not see your wrath in which they are currently immersed, nor the terrible destiny of eternal wrath in which they will experience no mercy from you in contrast to their present experience of your patience and forbearance with them. And so, Father, may you help us, your people, to see your wrath more clearly so that we might be aggressive in our efforts to win the lost to Jesus. Help us to be as those whom Jude described, being others who say with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh. We now give ourselves to you and your purposes in Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. Now again, last time we addressed, or began to address, the nature of God's wrath. God's wrath is His eternal and infinite detestation of all sin and unrighteousness. Sin is, at its essence, an affront to God's right to rule. It is a manifestation against His authority and rule. It is rebellion. The response of God and His wrath is the measured and appropriate putting down and punishing of this rebellion. God is angry against any and all sin, and His wrath rests upon sinners. His holy nature stirs Him to move against sin with holy indignation and fury. Now we also spoke last time about the revelation of God's wrath in history, particularly, of course, biblical history. Down through history God has in the world manifested His righteousness, manifesting His wrath in great historic events in which He overturned great wicked men and great wicked nations. And of course we know from the Bible that He will manifest His wrath greatly at the second coming of Jesus Christ when He will judge the world in righteousness by His Son. And then men will desire death rather than face the wrath of God in Christ? As the book of the Apocalypse, the book of the Revelation describes in Revelation 6, 15. and the kings of the earth and the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains and said to the mountains and rocks, fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. And yet we should not limit the revelation of the wrath of God as only occurring now and then in history or only at the end of the age. And so we closed our last program by showing that God's wrath is continually shown through history. It's demonstrated throughout each and every day of our lives. Do you see it, however? How is God's wrath seen? Well, in Romans 1, Paul says that sin itself is a manifestation of the wrath of God upon sinners. In other words, when people sin, God turns them over into greater sin. Sin itself is a punishment, and ultimately, of course, it will encounter the wrath of God on the Day of Judgment. And so when we see people in great sin it's because God has turned them over into sin to be punished by their sin and the wrath that comes as a result. And actually toward the end of last program I began to read the passage in Romans 1 but had to cut it short and I want to read it in its entirety at this time. for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven this is what Paul asserts beginning with Romans 1.18 now here he doesn't say the wrath of God was revealed or the wrath of God will be revealed at the end of history but rather he's speaking present tense for the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven even now against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in righteousness." Paul argues that all people everywhere should recognize that God is the Creator and therefore they ought to know better than worshipping Him as though He were a tree or a rock or a bug or something like that. Rather than glorifying God, whom is clearly displayed before them, they change the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, birds, four-footed beasts, and creeping things. And so as a result, due to God's judgment, His wrath manifested, therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness in the lusts of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. And then he goes into great detail as to the nature of the wrath of God manifested as God turns people over to their sin. He says, For this reason God gave them up to vile passions, for even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another men with men, committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was their due. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind to do those things which are not fitting, being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness. They are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, without natural affection, unforgiving, unmerciful, who, knowing the righteous judgment of God that those who practice such things are worthy of death, and not only those who do the same but those who approve of those who practice them. and so the wrath of god is being revealed god is active in his world and he is judging our land of course he's judging the nations jesus christ is king of kings and lord of lords and even now this entire world belongs to our lord jesus all principalities and powers have been made subject to him and King Jesus is ruling over his world and he is manifesting the righteous judgment of God his father upon the earth and it will ultimately and finally be seen at the second coming Now many regard this passage of Romans 1 today as hate speech. God is regarded as a declaration of His wrath that shone forth in His world when societies remove all moral restraint, cast off the rules and the rules that the Creator has placed upon them. This is a fearful passage. But we will not apologize for it, or pretend that it's not there, or that it is the composition of a bigoted, homophobic, anti-Semite who fancied himself an apostle of Jesus Christ. These are the words of God. God has declared that when we see great sin about us, when we see the declining of our society into moral decadence and spiritual ignorance, we are witnessing the manifestation of God's holy and righteous wrath and judgment. What we are seeing is a precursor to the full and final judgment of God, the final unveiling and unleashing of God's wrath, unless people humble themselves, repent of their sin, turn in faith to Jesus Christ, in whom alone is forgiveness of sin, and thereby escaping the wrath of God. Let us not think, however, that the wrath of God is reserved for what some would regard as the most guilty of society. God's holy word makes it abundantly clear that the wrath of God is upon all humanity, for all are sinners. They are all outside of Jesus Christ under His wrath. As it's written, he that believes on the Son has everlasting life, he that believes not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. If you're not a disciple of Jesus Christ, you're under the wrath of God. It abides on you. These words do not say that the wrath of God will one day abide on you. Rather, if you are outside of Jesus Christ, the wrath of God presently abides on you. You may not see the full manifestation of God's wrath at this time, but there will be no escape from Him. except the escape that's allowed through the Son of God, who alone can save sinners from the wrath to come. Lot was told to flee to the mountains away from Sodom, lest he be consumed with all the rest. And all of humanity is now told through the gospel to flee to Jesus Christ from sin, lest they too experience the wrath of God being poured out upon them. Before the wrath of God that now hangs over them comes crashing down upon them. Jesus Christ alone can save his people from the wrath to come why is this? because the wrath of God that's coming upon the whole world at one time was once poured out upon Jesus when he died upon the cross for his people and so let's consider for the next few minutes the revelation of God's wrath in the death of his dear son where is the revelation of God's wrath most clearly and fully seen? Some may argue, perhaps with great weight, that it will be on the final day of history when Jesus returns, judges the world, and casts all rebels and unbelievers into eternal hell. And indeed, clearly, that day will be a manifestation of the wrath of God. Again, people will desire to flee. They will prefer to be in a landslide or a cave-in, having the mountains fall upon them, rocks cover them, rather than stand before the holy and righteous judge to answer for the deeds done in this life. And yet one could make the argument that the wrath of God against sin and sinners is most fully seen in the death of God's own Son upon the cross. Jesus died on His cross because the wrath of God had come upon Him for sin and sinners. When we consider the sufferings of Jesus by which He was afflicted, we might think of the cruel wickedness of those who took Him, humiliated Him, and tormented Him, and then nailed Him to that cruel cross. But please remember they did not take his life. They were instruments in the hand of God whereby God's wrath was administered to Jesus as a substitute for sinners. Jesus endured the wrath of God for our sin. The sun was obscured, the land was darkened, the earth convulsed when the Son of God died. All blessing had been removed from Him. All wrath had been laid upon Him. Our God had made Him an offering for our sin. As we read in the Scriptures, the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was sinless, infinitely pure and harmless. And yet look what occurred when He became associated fully with us. When He became identified with you, the sinner, the hand of God weighed upon Him and He was crushed under its load. He got what you deserve. When sin was laid upon Christ, it brought upon Him all the consequences connected with it. God has no pleasure with sin, and although His Son was His Beloved Son, when Jesus became sin, it was not possible that the Father could or would manifest any pleasure of His presence to Him. Jesus was alone for the first time in eternity. He went through the horror of great darkness, the withdrawing of the conscious enjoyment of His Father's presence. But further recognize that God must punish sin. And though the sin was not Christ's by His actual doing it, yet it had been laid upon Him as our representative, and therefore He was made a curse for us. What were the pangs which Christ endured? What were the punishment, the pains that He endured? Well, we cannot say with certainty, but surely one of the greatest weights that Christ endured was the misery of His own knowledge that He had become identified with sin itself. His nature was fully holy. He had never known sin experimentally. He was always distanced from it in the sense that he was undefiled, separate from sinners. But there upon the cross, Jesus came to be regarded by the Father, and certainly he felt himself to be, as it were, a sinful defiled unclean thing warranting the full loss of all blessing all comfort and all joy for the father had made him to be sin for us who knew no sin as Paul expressed in 2nd Corinthians 5 21 when sin was reckoned to Jesus this is what happened according to Charles Spurgeon sin must have become even more abhorrent to him than it would have been to a merely perfect man His griefs are worthy to be described according to the Greek liturgy as unknown sufferings. The height and the depth, the length and the breadth of what Jesus Christ endured, nor heart can guess, nor tongue can tell, nor can imagination frame. God only knows the griefs to which the Son of God was put when the Father made Him to be the iniquity of us all. To crown all there came death itself. death is a punishment for sin and whatever it may mean whatever over and beyond natural death was intended in the sentence in the day thou eatest thereof thou shall surely die Christ Jesus felt death went through and through him until he bowed his head and gave up the spirit he became obedient to death even the death of the cross again those are the words of Charles Spurgeon How is it that people excuse their behavior, justifying their sinful actions? Well, they presume upon God's love and mercy, assuming, presuming that God will give them a pass because they're not so bad after all. But what does your sin deserve? When even the perfect sinless Son of God became associated with your sin, He was slain under its sentence. The wrath of God was poured out upon Him. But it was only in this way that He could be our Savior from the sin that condemns us. And so Jesus took this role upon Himself. He was willing to step off His throne and condescend to our low estate and become one of us. He lived in a manner that God demanded of us, but we failed to perform. And then He died so that He could pay the debt we owed so as to remove the curse of God from us. And the only wrath you and I as believers, if you're a believer in Jesus, the only wrath you and I will ever see with respect to ourselves is the wrath of God poured out upon Christ when he died on our behalf. And so we look on him in faith and we see his sufferings not as the mere result of cruel and hateful men, we see the wrath of God gloriously displayed. He received in himself what we deserve, the unending and undiminished wrath of God for our sin. Now, in the light of this, do you think that your goodness is going to preserve you from God's wrath when the perfection of Jesus did not spare him from death? Yes, his righteousness delivered him from the power of death, but not the penalty of death. But you and I have no such righteousness. We need His righteousness to count for us. And only then, having the righteous Son of God endure the wrath of God on our behalf, may we have confidence and assurance that we have been delivered from the wrath that come. May God be praised for the glory of His wrath born on our behalf and displayed so beautifully and wonderfully in the cross of Calvary. Now, as we close out our consideration of the wrath of God as a manifestation of the glory of God, allow me to pose a question for your consideration. Do we live in the best of all possible worlds? Well, most everybody would respond with a resounding no. War and crime, disease and death would be cited as ample evidence that things are not as they should be if we lived in an ideal world. And we would grant that if the criterion for assessing the state of things were the health and peace and comfort of all people, then indeed we live in anything but the best of all possible worlds. However, If we consider the biblical testimony regarding the purpose of all things, that is, to glorify God, reveal God for who He is, then we can rightly conclude, yes, we do live in the best of all possible worlds. If this world exists and all that happens in history occurs for the purpose of glorifying God, that is, for God to reveal Himself to His creation to the end that He would be acknowledged and worshipped, then indeed we could not live in a better world suited to this purpose. As the scripture declares, as Paul himself declared, O the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has become his counselor, or who is first given to him, and it shall be repaid to him. For of him, and through him, and to him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen. And again that's Romans 11 33 through verse 36. Now I think that it's fitting that we follow up this last attribute of God's wrath with an emphasis on the glory of God's love in the death of our Savior. Many would consider the love of God the crown of His glory. Now, we might begin this subject by turning to the epistle to the Romans and consider what I believe to be a definitive statement on our subject, the love of God as manifested at Calvary. And so in Romans 5, beginning with verse 6, we read these words. For when we were still without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Now the Bible pronounces and illustrates throughout its pages that our God is a loving God. 1 John 4, 16 states the fact clearly, And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. And yet though the truth that God is love is commonly held and commonly affirmed, it's a subject that is commonly misunderstood. One once described it this way, love is the best known but the least understood of all of God's attributes. Those were the words of John MacArthur in his book entitled The Love of God and I think he's right in that statement. False assumptions are held. False assertions are made about God's love. Many take the thought that God is love and then run with it, forming all manner of false thoughts about the nature of God and His ways among the peoples of the earth. The Bible states that God is love, but the Bible also defines what that love is like. And again MacArthur said, Scripture does not merely say God is love and leave it to the individual to interpret subjectively what that means. Many, however, have done this. They suggest that because God is love, that He is easy to mollify towards sin and sinners. Now, we've been speaking about the wrath of God, a topic not frequently addressed or heard of. Why? For one reason, it's not a popular topic. People don't want to hear about it. But a second reason is that people do not believe the wrath of God is consistent with the love of God. And so people ignore or deny the wrath of God, wrongly believing that the love of God cancels out his wrath. They see a God of love viewing sin not as a great evil to be punished with His eternal wrath, but really merely as an unfortunate malady that needs healing, healing which is offered to all due to His love. And so they take their shallow, skewed concept of divine love and apply it as a means to justify their behavior and to form and shape a Christianity that suits them. Again, to quote MacArthur, they envision God as a benign heavenly grandfather, tolerant, affable, lenient, permissive, devoid of any real displeasure over sin, who without consideration of his holiness will benignly pass over sin and accept people just as they are. And so we need to consider, we need to understand this matter of God's love and how it is manifest on Calvary. And so let us begin to work through this topic and we might first begin to speak about the general love of God that God has for all mankind. Perhaps the point of greatest confusion about this subject is due to the failure to distinguish the special love that God has for His chosen people over against the general love that God shows for the whole world. There is a tendency for people to assume that God loves all people alike, and consequently they draw wrong conclusions about how God views people and how they relate to Him. But the Bible presents God's love as discriminating. God has a love for His chosen people that He does not have for others. He calls His people beloved. He doesn't call His enemies beloved. But I see we've come to an end of our time today. We'll have to address this matter next time. Until then, may the grace of God be abundantly given to you. We trust that God has blessed you from listening to Dr. Lars Larson. Today's program, as well as previously recorded messages, are available through our website. We invite you to visit thewordoftruth.net. The First Baptist Church of Leominster and Concerned Friends have sponsored this broadcast of the Word of Truth. If we may assist you by directing you to a sound, Reformed church near you, please contact us. If Pastor Larson can assist you further or answer a question that you may have about today's subject, he would be pleased to speak with you. You may reach him at 978-660-8869. Until our next time together, may our God bless you richly through our Lord Jesus Christ. Today's The Word of Truth program was sponsored in part by Paul Rents. Visit paulrents.com for party and equipment rentals.