Errors Concerning Propitiation, Part 2

If you pour Kool-Aid out at the top of a hill, what happens? It runs down by gravity — you don't have to push it. So those who neutralize wrath say sin runs down to its punishment by built-in consequence; God doesn't actively punish, He just steps aside and lets sin take its course. Pastor Martin uses this to make the heresy concrete.

What happens to that water? Or that Kool-Aid? Or that punch? Whatever is in it.

10:06 - 10:12 Read in full sermon

You try to tell those whose bodies floated on the Flood waters that God's wrath is just a passive let-them-go. The fire and brimstone on Sodom, the bears tearing the mocking youths, the destruction of Jerusalem under Roman armies — God's wrath is positive intervention, not absence.

It says he drove the man and the woman out of the garden and he set an angel with a flaming sword by the way to the tree of life. You try to tell those whose bloated bodies float on the crest of the forty days and forty nights of the opening up of the heavens, the opening up of the fountains of the deep, that there is no such characteristic in God as positive divine anger when God inundates the whole earth and all but eight souls are destroyed by water.

19:41 - 20:15 Read in full sermon

Martyrs went to the stake singing hymns. They hugged the stake like a friend. None of them sweated drops of blood, none cried 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me.' If our Lord had nothing more to face than a martyr's death, He must be pitied — He broke down under pressure. But Gethsemane proves He bore something the martyrs did not: divine wrath.

Nevertheless, not my will. There are martyrs who never prayed that way. The moment they knew they were going to the stake, they leaped at the thought and hugged the stake as their dearest friend. There was no cringing.

23:09 - 23:23 Read in full sermon

The point: Stop being scandalized by the ugliness of the cross — to the awakened sinner, that ugliness is beauty.

Pastor Martin protests sentimental Good Friday and Easter services. There is nothing pretty about the only sinless man hanging naked under shrouded heavens, crying abandonment. Yet to a sinner who knows his sin, the ugliness of Calvary is the most beautiful sight in the world.

to behold the only sinless man who ever lived, hanging naked and stripped beneath the shrouded heavens with an agonizing cry of abandonment. What's pretty about that?

25:09 - 25:26 Read in full sermon

Pastor Martin describes the contemporary evangelism flooding the New York metropolitan area: billboards saying 'I found it,' phone numbers to call where you hear 'God loves you and there's a wonderful plan for your life.' He critiques both the content and the silence on God's wrath.

Call 6921264. And when you call, you know what you'll hear? God loves you. And there's a wonderful plan for your life.

28:57 - 29:07 Read in full sermon

The point: Test every gospel presentation by the pattern of Romans: does it begin with wrath and culminate in propitiation?

Pastor Martin reports reading a published Christian magazine testimony of a political activist who saw a face she took to be Jesus in the moon, wept, recited the Lord's Prayer and Psalm 23, and woke the next morning feeling new. Pastor Martin: that is what passes for conversion when wrath is removed from the gospel.

That was her conversion. Another one saw his face in the face of Jesus in the moon and had a good weep, quoted the Lord's Prayer in the 23rd Psalm and woke up the next morning feeling peaceful. That's his conversion. And that is not caricature.

30:32 - 30:44 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Oh, but Paul, you don't start the gospel with the wrath of God. You turn people away. That's not psychologically sound.

What is the first word of the gospel as Paul presents it in Romans? Not 'God loves you' but 'For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven.' Paul has whetted appetites for ten verses, and then begins his exposition with divine wrath. That is the inspired pattern.

And now he's got our ears and he says, I'm going to tell you what the gospel is. And what's the first word of the gospel? Look at your Bible. It's not here on my forehead.

32:57 - 33:04 Read in full sermon