Lessons: God's Character Revealed

Introduction and Review of Christ's Abandonment

0:03 This sermon was preached on Sunday evening, February 18, 1990, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Now let us once again seek the face of God in prayer, remembering especially that very encouraging promise of our Lord. If you who are evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? And we meet this night without seeking any visible, physical manifestations of the Spirit.

0:45 We believe that to be fanaticism unwarranted by the Word. But how desperately we need His inward, powerful, illuminating ministry that He might take of the things. And reveal them to us with clarity and apply them to our hearts with power. Let us ask Him to be present so to work among us.

1:12 Our Father, we do thank You for that gracious word of promise that fell from the lips of our Lord Jesus. Because we believe His words to be words of truth, we are emboldened to come to You as our Father, who is in the heavens. And while we say, Hallowed be Your name, why will He acknowledge You to be infinitely above us,

1:43 totally unlike us in terms of Your perfect, spotless purity? Yet we thank You. Your heart is toward us. You have adopted us through the work of Your dear Son.

1:57 And You have bidden us to come boldly to the throne of grace, and we therefore come and plead. Give us of the Holy Spirit this night that He may be present as the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, the Spirit of understanding, the Spirit who takes the things of Christ and reveals them with power. Oh, may He do His work among us as again we focus our attention upon the mysteries of the darkened heaven and the piercing cry of abandonment, come, Lord, and visit us, we pray, for the good of our souls and for the glory of Your name. Amen.

2:42 Now, those of you who regularly attend this place of worship know that it is most unusual for me to be found in this pulpit both morning and evening on any given Lord's Day. However, since Pastor Nichols, who was scheduled to preach, has been sick all of this week, with one of the more active and vigorous flu bugs, it seemed right to seize this opportunity to give a concentrated period of time on our meditations with respect to the sufferings of Christ as they are set before us in Mark 15, verses 33 and 34. And for the benefit of any among us who were not here this morning or last Lord's Day morning, let me read the text and then seek very briefly to review the core of what we have discovered in our meditations together thus far. Mark 15, verses 33 and 34.

3:51 And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, Eloi lama sabachthani, which being interpreted is, My God, my God, why hast thou, or why didst thou forsake me? In the opening up of these words last Lord's Day morning, we considered the visible context of the abandonment, the darkness described in verse 33, the vocal expression, of the abandonment, the words of verse 34, and then the biblical explanation of the abandonment in which we saw from the analogy of Scripture that the darkness was God's way of stating something in the visible, phenomenal realm. Darkness speaking of God coming forth to a work of judgment, and then the cry being interpreted in the light of such a passage, as 2 Corinthians 5.21, in which we are told that God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us. And it was there,

5:21 in those mysterious hours of darkness, that in a very unique and concentrated way, our Lord constituted sin for us and dealt with in the judgment of God. Then this morning, we addressed ourselves to the question, what does this abandonment reveal concerning God's attitude towards sin? If the cry was wronged for part of our laws, he was the vicarious sin bearer, what does this tell us then with respect to God's attitude towards sin? And in answer to that question, we sought to establish but two simple but fundamental, fundamental realities, namely, God sins seriously, and God judges sin severely. Now tonight, I wish to trace out a second but related line of thought in the face of the darkened heavens and the piercing cry, and that line of thought is this, having considered what the abandonment reveals with respect to God's attitude towards sin, consider with me tonight what the abandonment reveals

The Cross as the Supreme Revelation of God's Character

6:48 of the character of God himself. Consider what the abandonment reveals of the character of God himself. Now in addressing this subject, I will first of all make an introductory assertion. Having made that assertion, we shall then concentrate on two strands of the context, the first and the second, the character of God that are highlighted here in the incident of the abandonment.

7:21 The introductory assertion is this, in all the disclosures that God has made of himself in the work of creation, in his continuous works of providence, and in his special works of redemptive or remedial grace, no work of God's own. No work of God's own. No work of God's own. No work of God's own.

7:44 No work of God's own. No work of God's own. No work of God's own. No work of God's own.

7:44 God and completely reveals his character as does Lord Jesus Christ from the cross of their burst forth the most clear the most comprehensive the most intensified beams of divine disclosure to be found at any time of God's universe and in meditating upon this fact I was struck with a very strong suggestion that even in the age in the new heavens and in the new earth in the perfected state of glory that the most comprehensive the most clear and supplied beams of God's self-disclosure Cayman's when he behold on his throne he beholds the land in the midst the throne and when I didn't activity or described in the latter chapters of the book of the revelation we are told

9:08 that the land who is in them shall leave them and could it be that this is a suggestion that even in our glorified we shall have an eternity to gaze upon Vince and clear beam that find the concentration in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ we read in John 18 no man has seen God at any time the only begotten who is in the bosom of the Father he has declared he has literally succeeded him and we know God only know him as he is revealed in the face of Jesus Christ our Lord said in John 49 he that have seen me the father and if all of the life of our Lord was revelatory of the father then surely his glory on the cross is the relation of who and what the Father is.

10:24 Now, while all of the characteristics or what the theologians call the attributes of God have their most glory on the cross, I wish to draw your attention to several aspects of God's character which on the surface would seem to be at odds with one another, but which embrace and intertwine in the cross of Christ for the salvation of the likes of you and of me. Now, having made then this introductory assertion, consider with me these two strands of thought with reference to what the abandonment reveals of the character of God himself. And the first is this. The abandonment...

God's Burning Holiness and Inflexible Justice Revealed

11:16 The abandonment tells us that God is the living God of burning holiness and inflexible justice.

11:28 The abandonment... That God is the living God of burning holiness and inflexible justice.

11:42 Concern the true God... Number one, that he is a God of burning...

11:56 Consider with me one text from the New and one from the Old Testament. In Hebrews chapter 12, Hebrews chapter 12, coming towards the conclusion of an epistle that sets forth the great truth of God's final speaking to man in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ and all the realities of the new and better covenant, the writer to the Hebrews says in verse 28 of Hebrews 12, Wherefore, leaving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us have grace whereby we may offer service well-pleasing to God with reverence and awe. For nothing is that inality of his being opposite is true.

13:22 God was known this when he came down as thunder and lightning and the blast of trumpet. The writer to the Hebrews is telling us that when God come upon God and shrouds and so pulls out, and who is the light of his life, there is a manifestation of his wrath upon his Son. There is a manifestation of his burning holiness that far like lightning flash upon Sinai, for their lightning a pistless stone. Here it was the lightning there marked the bosom of the Son of his love. And therefore, he appeals to the Hebrew Christians receiving a kingdom based upon the mediatorial of our Lord Jesus Christ. And in the book of the Hebrews, we read that Jesus Christ is the son of Jesus. in the light of all that God has revealed of Himself in the establishment of that kingdom, let us have grace whereby we may offer that revelation, namely, pleasing to God with reverence and awe,

14:53 a consuming fire. He is a God of burning holiness. And then the one passage from the Old Testament, Isaiah 30, and verse 14. And this has peculiar significance because it sets forth the truth of God's burning holiness in the context of man, illusion, and sin, and asks a haunting question.

15:25 Isaiah 33, and verse 14. The sinners in Zion are afraid of the sinless ones. Now what is called their fear and their trembling? Can dwell the devourer?

16:03 Casting burnings. And then the answer comes, he that walks righteously and speaks uprightly, he that despises the gain of oppressions, etc. This text has often been wrongly brought into the surface of the doctrine of hell. It has nothing to do with hell.

16:22 If it does, then verse 15 says that those who walk righteously and speak uprightly and despise the gain of oppression will go to hell. That men walking in the way, the evangelical righteousness will perish. That is, you see, not the teaching of the verse. The question is, who can dwell as a devouring fire?

16:49 Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings? And no wonder sinners in Zion are afraid and trembling seizes the godless ones, for in the face of the God,

17:07 this is against them, so long as they are found in their sin. Now what does this imagery mean? To convey our God is consuming.

17:20 He is described as devouring and everlasting burning. Well, the answer is essentially this. God in himself is utterly apart and separate sin. That's the positive side of what it means to say he is a consuming fire god of burniness.

17:47 But then the negative side is that in his being utterly apart and separate sin, his whole with whole against sin. That's why he is a fire and is thirsty for oxygen and thirsty for combustible material that consumes actively all that stands in its path. And God is saying to us in this imagery that he ever has been and is and ever shall be and was. And he is. And he is. And he is.

18:34 At the cross, a God burning holiness.

18:44 In the light of this, the scripture says in Habakkuk 1, verses 12 and 13, these words which simply clinch the nail that I've been seeking to set in your minds. Habakkuk chapter 1, verses 12 and 13. Are not thou from everlasting, O Jehovah, my God, my holy one? My holy one?

19:19 O Jehovah, thou hast ordained him for judgment and thou, O rock, hast established him for correction. Thou that art pure is then to behold evil and thenst not in perverseness. O Jehovah, is then to behold that canst not be evil. Canst not look into perverseness.

19:52 That is, look with favor. Look with delight. Look with approbation. He can only look to consuming that which is the opposite of all that he is.

20:06 But then I have said that the cross and particularly the abandonment tells us that God is the living God, not only of burning holiness but of inflexible justice. He is a God of burning holiness. We established it from the text in Hebrews, the text in Isaiah. I sought briefly to explain what that means set before us as a God of inflexible justice.

20:38 In Exodus 23 and verse 7, God declares to his people that which would be in conformity with himself as the nation of his own peculiar object of love, covenant nation, is to be holy as holy and because he is holy. And again and again, through some of the most minute details of what we would say were piddling little issues of dress and of fashion, in the midst of it, God will buttress and clinch the commands that touch every facet of the life of the covenant nation with the words, for I am holy. And here he says in Exodus 23, 7, keep thee far from a false matter. The innocent and righteous slay thou not for I will not justify the wicked to show equity and justice in your dealings because justify the wicked and you reflect my character, the administration of justice in Israel. The psalmist sets forth the beautiful imagery in Psalm 80.

21:58 Psalm 89, 14 and in Psalm 97, 1 and 2, with the picture of the very foundation of God's throne being embedded in perfect justice. Psalm 89 and verse 14, righteousness and justice are the foundation of thy throne. It is the picture of God's throne too, righteousness and justice. And if God would ever be anything other than perfectly inflexibly just in the administration of his government, his throne would topple and he would cease to be the glorious enthroned one of Israel. See the similar sentiment in Psalm 97, verses 1 and 2. Jehovah, let the earth rejoice. Let the multitude of isles be glad.

23:06 Let the clouds and darkness surround about him. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. Now notice how it ties in with what we previously established of fires before and burn up his adversaries round about. There in Psalm 89, righteousness and justice are the foundation of thy throne.

23:39 Loving are before thy face. Yet he is. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. And a fire is before him to consume his adversaries.

23:58 God is a God of inflexible justice. And these assertions tell us that God will always be in the strictest justice in the administration of the moral government of the world. With God, there is no plea bargaining behind closed doors. There is no greeting of the palm.

24:23 There is never wrong judgment based upon inadequate evidence. There is never false judgment based upon an inability to sift through and rush the evidence. It is the God of infinite knowledge and correctitude. And therefore when he makes a judgment, he always makes it according to truth.

The Abandonment as the Apex of God's Holiness and Justice

24:51 And therefore his throne remains unmoved. As the throne established in righteousness and in justice. Now you say, surely Pastor Martin, you've allowed your ruminatings to take you eons from Mark 15. No, my friend.

25:10 Come back to that text with me now. Having sought to establish, albeit so briefly,

25:19 that God, the living God, is a God of burning holiness and a God of inflexible justice. How are those characteristics of God revealed in these words? Darkness over the whole land. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cries with a loud voice, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

25:50 I say the abandonment and the darkness. Declare that God is a God of burning holiness and of inflexibility. And nowhere is it more clearly declared than the incident of his abandonment upon the cross. Think of what had happened.

26:12 Jesus is all the cumulative abuse from the hands and from the tongues of men. And I reviewed that abuse this morning. And I don't want to do it again this evening. But since he voluntarily placed himself in the position of the God of burning holiness and of inflexibility, the bearer of the guilt of the sins of his people, since in the darkness that now was upon earth, heaven was fully looking his place upon his throne of justice and righteousness.

26:55 And while men cannot see the events of those hours for the darkness with which God himself has enveloped me, even if I may use darkness and light with light, for God is sitting in court. And sitting in court, he has assumed his place as the moral governor and judge of the universe. And when he looks at his son, all of judgment due to his people, God now deals with his son in a way that makes the treatment of men appear by comparison as kindness.

27:55 All of who was commanded, weak in judgment, meek in judgment, and self-centered, are not noises in with lust, and are not words for the promise of repentance. Even today we see the mill potential. Only of the setting the

28:54 earner while his host with his father running the fray in actions

30:14 so because god is a god of burning holiness and he will not suspend his holiness even in the face of the cry of his own son and i say further he is a god of inflexible justice sins are being charged to the lord justice call one thing on the presence of sin the scripture says the wages of sin is death the source in it shall flexible justice and there is but one text to which i direct your attention that affirms this in such a magnificent way many texts teach it but i say this one affirms it in perhaps the clearest way romans 8 and verse 32 he that negative

31:27 not but positive delivered him up for us he spared not he delivered him up listen as i read the very perceptive words of the late and beloved professor john murray in a sermon on this very text found in his collected writings negative sparing applies to suffering that may be inflicted children when they do not inflict the full measure of the chastisement due for the offense committed judges spare criminals when they do not pronounce a sentence commensurate with the crime committed it is the opposite of this kind of sparing that the apostle proclaims suffering was inflicted upon god's own it was inflicted by the father and the father he did not alleviate the stroke he did not inflict the stroke he did not inflict the stroke he did not inflict the stroke he did not he did not inflict the stroke he did not inflict the stroke he did not inflict the stroke he did not withhold one whiff of the full full judgment due to the sins of those on whose behalf

32:56 sons suffered listen to the words of the profit below order to have played on the indian unity of us all and to prove it he asked put into greece also this incomparable conjunction they're is nothing like it elsewhere not even in council nowhere not even in consultation will not meet it not even counsel is truly what we were expecting they didn't benefit from the gospel this is a final conclusion this is the end of this sermon this is the final conclusion this is the end of this sermon The Father sung with infinite and immutable love. Every detail of the suffering endured constrained the love and the delight of the Father. It was all endured in obedience to the Father's will. But the Father did not lighten the stroke that fell upon His own well-beloved Son. The strokes fell upon Him in unrelieved intensity, with all the weight due to the sins He bore. Naked holiness, nature of wrath, to be poured out upon the Son. No wonder gardeners suffer.

34:14 Spring fishing for words expressed it this way. Justice burned with wrathful fury at the cross. Justice burned with wrathful fury at the cross. Professor Murray goes on to comment, and I read just a few sentences of the positive.

34:38 Did not spare, and we must never think that there was any sparing. But He delivered Him up. The Father delivered Him over to nothing less than the curse and the desert of sin. Jesus was made a curse, and He was made sin.

34:55 The two texts we examined last Lord's Day morning, Galatians 3.13 and 2 Corinthians 5.21. He was identified to such an extent with sin, that the condemnation of sin fell upon Him.

35:12 The condemnation of sin is preeminently God's. It is the wrath of God that will burn in the place of woe. Here is unheard of conjunction. The Son bore there was no.

35:32 The understanding and how narrow the perspective of those who think that the infliction of wrath is inconsistent with the exercise of infinite love. The opposite of love is not wrath, but hate. God did not hate His Son. He loved Him.

35:52 And He never loved you as the just sentence for one who bears the guilt of the sin of a multitude whom no man can number.

36:18 And then the professor goes on to write, The condemnation is abandonment. This was the cry of the Son of God upon the hill of Golgotha. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? It was only because the Son was the object.

36:37 It was the object of the Father's unique and immutable love that He could thus be abandoned. The lost in perdition will be abandoned eternally. But no one of them will ever be able or have occasion to cry, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? The abandonment of Christ on Calvary's tree was abandonment in pursuance of the commission given to Him by the Father.

37:07 It was abandonment in pursuance of the commission given to Him by the Father. And it was abandonment with the unparalleled effect of ending it. Because it was abandonment with this result, it was abandonment of inimitable, that which can never be repeated or paralleled, inimitable agony. Who delivered up Jesus to die?

37:35 Not Judas for money. Not Paul. Not the Jews for envy. But the Father did for love of lost sinners.

37:51 What a pathetic view when the cross is viewed in some vague and indefinite and undefined way as some kind of an expression that everything will turn out all right because God is nothing but love. No, my friends. That's not the cross of the Bible. Because the cross of the Bible finds its apex of mystery and yet the heart of its meaning and its glory when mass of the burning into the felt awareness of His wrath and His judgment until bearing it to the point of a bursting soul. The dam breaks and out comes the cry of derilation.

39:05 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Application to Unbelievers: The Danger of Despising God's Holiness and Justice

39:13 Now, my listening friend, this is the God with whom you and I have to do. A God who does this to his well-beloved son. That's the only God who exists. Any other God is this God of justice.

39:39 This God, whatever man may, whatever your own ages of sin is, death, it shall die.

39:58 Now, why do you treat lightly the offers of mercy and the claims of this Christ? You despise his mercy because you do not respect his holiness and his justice. That's why. That's why you can go on and face another day without any trembling, without any fear.

40:22 Once in a while, the prickings of an accusing conscience, but no regret, desire.

40:35 That you are that which he accomplished for sinners. You despise his mercy because you really don't respect his holiness and his justice.

40:54 I therefore beg you to come to the cross and see if God dealt thus with his beloved son when he was innocent in himself, guilty only with imputed sin. What will he do with you if you meet him laden with the sin of your name? The sin of your deeds, the sin of your thoughts, the sin of your words. And you meet this God in the same courtroom where Christ met him.

41:25 And you meet this God whose throne is established in righteousness and justice. And a fire goes before him to consume his adversary.

41:37 Do you see now why Golgotha is the preview of hell? The scripture says, These shall go away into outer darkness. There shall be the what? The weeping and the wailing.

42:07 The son of God under the feltness of abandonment. My friend, you come to judgment and you have no saving relationship to this Christ. You will know darkness. God will cast you into outer darkness.

42:30 And you will cry. But it will not. It will not be the cry of what I called this morning. The temporary holy confusion of the human mind and soul of Jesus.

42:43 But yours will be the cry for judgment. That is, you know that word. You would not take seriously that God is a God of burning holiness and inflexible justice. And taking seriously his holiness and justice.

43:15 Find a refuge in a crucified Christ.

43:19 But you dared to treat lightly these things. And you come to judgment laden with your sins. And you meet this God of burning holiness and inflexible justice. And no one to plead your case.

God's Infinite Love and Unfathomable Mercy Revealed

43:39 May God have mercy on you. But I hasten and much more briefly. Because it's more glorious when set against this backdrop. Behold, behold, here in the cry of abandonment what God tells us about himself in this second area.

44:01 The abandonment tells us that God is a God of infinite love and unfathomable mercy.

44:13 When we seek to stand in our mind's eye on Golgotha, feel the darkness, hear the piercing cry. And we must ask ourselves this question. If God governs the universe, how is it that a set of circumstances ever came to pass? Now listen to my words carefully.

44:39 In which God, why didst thou forsake me? If God rules the universe, why did he ever get himself in such a set of circumstances? Where he's bound by his own character to do nothing. I'll tell you this.

45:19 There's no answer to that question but this. The God of infinite, of God of burning holiness and inflexible justice. Is at one in the same time the God of infinite love and unfathomable mercy. Two texts that set this before us so clearly.

45:41 Romans chapter 5. Romans chapter 5 and verse 6. For while weak. In due season Christ died for the ungodly.

45:55 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die. But for adventure for the good man, someone would even dare to die. But God mendeth. God display demonstrate.

46:18 In that while sinners, Christ died for us.

46:26 Under the darkest of all that those words mean. And what was it? That moved him to give his son. It was his own love.

46:46 Freely, sovereignly, wondrously set upon sinners. Complaining them not in terms of what that love would one day make them. But in terms of holiness. Why Christ died for us.

47:16 And in so doing God is commending. God is demonstrating his love. And the second text is 1st John 4 verses 9 and 10. 1st John verses 9 and 10.

47:34 In was the love of God manifested in our case. That God sent his only son into the world. Then we might live through him. But now notice John is not content to give just that generic statement.

47:55 Some might say then well the great proof of God's love then is the. Incarnation and as we behold Crother and his exemplary life. And his sacrificial death in the sense that he laid down his life and the innocent died himself did not deserve it. No he goes on to say precisely how the love of God was manifested in our case.

48:24 And with what end did he send his only begotten son into the world. And by what means we might have life through him. Here in his love. Not that Christ is the only begotten son.

48:36 Not that we loved God. But that he loved us. And sent his son. To be the propitiation.

48:46 The appeasement for sin. The propitiation for our sins. Beloved if God so loved us. If Christ was the instrument that propitiates.

49:10 There was only one way. Since God is a God of infinite holiness. And the only way. To inscrevaus....

49:16 Burning holiness inflexible justas... Christ turns it away from us by swallowing it up in himself.

49:22 Is phenomenal! And when T vain sin jumped in self and when the last drop was Efendimiz itself and when the last drop was swallowed. Then the cry broke forth. My God my God!

49:33 Why have you forsaken me? You see we must never think that Golgotha is the place where Jesus won for us the love of an angry God. That is blasphemous. Even to this day.

49:46 to think it. No, Golgotha is the place on display to be the propitiation for our sin. It was God's love that consented to such a scheme of redemption. No wonder Christ is called the wisdom of God.

50:18 What but the mind of God could ever conceive of such a plan of redemption in which the offended satisfy all? And that the guilty ones might have a righteous pardon and a just forgiveness. Yes, hallelujah. What a salvation. Only the infinite mind of God can conceive it.

The Meeting of Justice and Mercy at the Cross

50:51 Only the infinite love of God and power bring it to pass. And now God offers freely, without restraint, all the benefits of that work that his son accomplished for sinners in the gospel. He says to all men, this is yours again. I say again, my listener, behold the glory of God bursting forth from the darkness and the cry of abandonment. Behold him on the one hand as the God of burning holiness and inflexible justice, and yet wonder of wonders intertwined in that manifestation of infinite love and unfathomable mercy. Now here in the cross, these seemingly contradictory characteristics of God meet, and they kiss one another. Gardner Spring in his marvelous book, The Attraction of the Cross, in one of the chapters stated it this way so beautifully. These two characteristics of God, his justice and his mercy, started in the apostasy in the

52:15 Garden of Eden. Mercy and justice now meet at the cross. There in the part through the atonement of the guiltless one, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now when sinners see the first couplet, the first part of that couplet, that God is a God of burning holiness, all is and all that is in him is totally and utterly opposed. He is a God of inflexible justice. Every sin, must and shall. When taking the cross, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Seriously, we know that a million eternities in hell could never atone for our own sin. And despairing that there's anything we can do to construct a fabric of our own righteousness with which it called our when sinners see the first and flee to Christ in the discovery of the second. As I meditated upon this this afternoon, you must forgive the imagery, but I could think of

53:45 it in no other way. Justice personified sees the sinner trembling, sees the sinner serving this, and he sees that sinner then run to Christ and justice jumps and shouts and claps his hands and says, Blessed be God. All sins have been met in that sinner, but he does not have them met by being cast into outer darkness, but by finding refuge in the Lord Jesus, who died the just for the unjust, that God might be just, and yet the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus. And while justice shouts and dances. That he has held his ground, and yet the sinner is pardoned.

54:47 Love sings her triumphant song and shouts in exultation. I have gained my object. I have won the rebel sinner. I have overcome his hard thoughts of God.

55:04 And I have brought him broken, believing, submissive, and trusting to the foot of the cross to embrace. A crucified Savior. My friends, that's the gospel. The gospel is not that God is one big amorphous glob of unprincipled love.

Final Exhortation to Unbelievers: Deal with God Now

55:25 And somehow, rather, is the God before whom sinless creatures, the burning ones, described in Isaiah 6. They'll face and feet and cry one to another, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God, the Almighty. And when a godly prophet, he wasn't a bum or a profligate. He wasn't a junkie or a whore.

56:09 I'm a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean.

56:30 No God is a God of burning holiness and inflexible justice. And my friend, that's the God with whom you have to do. Now have dealings with him while the door of mercy is open and leads to a cross. Or have dealings with him in his throne room in the last day, where righteousness and justice will be the foundation of his throne in the day of judgment.

56:58 And then you'll take seriously the darkness and the cry. But it will not be Christ's darkness and Christ's cry. It will be your own.

57:10 And that forever.

The Trinitarian Counsel and Refuge in Christ

57:15 Those are the issues.

57:18 Those are the issues.

57:21 Now. There was darkness over the whole land. From the sixth hour until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice.

57:34 My God, my God. Why did you abandon me? And if an answer did come, it would have been this. I've abandoned you because I'm a God of burning holiness and inflexible justice.

57:53 And I am the God. I am the God of infinite love and unfathomable mercy.

57:59 And you have voluntarily given yourself to bear the wrath due to those on whose behalf you bear it. And if I spare you, my son, someday, I will have to vent the remainder of wrath upon them. But we are committed in the counsel of Trinitarian love and grace. So to deliver those upon whom we have.

58:26 Set our love from eternity. That even the court of heaven cannot find one gram of unrequited guilt in those for whom you die. There is therefore now no other in Christ Jesus. Oh, if you're in him, what a place of refuge.

59:02 What a place of refuge. If you're in him, what a place of refuge. If you're in him, what a place of refuge. If you're in him, what a place of refuge.

59:05 If you're in him, what a place of refuge. If you're not in him, I wouldn't trade places with you this moment for a billion worlds.

59:15 You're playing Russian roulette with your soul. Run to Christ. Hide in the Savior. Ask God for the sake of his well-beloved to accept you and pardon you.

59:32 And grant you the righteousness that Christ himself has wrought. And that he himself is. To all who believe in him.

Application to Believers: Live in New Obedience

59:45 And my last word is this, dear people of God. How can we be so careless? How can we be so earthbound? How can we be so insensitive to our sins?

60:02 How can we toy with things that may even remotely possibly bring disgrace to his name? When he bore all of this, not only that we might be pardoned, and accept it, but that we might be brought into the orbit of Eden restored, life lived in communion with God, in ever-growing conformity to the image of God, as patterned, excuse me, in the Son of God. May God grant that the sight and the meditations upon the abandonment of our Lord will so deepen our love to him that that love may find new expression in him. May God grant that the sight and the meditations upon the abandonment of our Lord may find new expressions in new obedience, new hatred for sin, new determination in the language of 2 Corinthians 5.15, no longer to live unto ourselves, but unto him who for our sakes died and rose again. Let us pray.

Concluding Prayer

61:07 Our Father, as we bow in your presence, we confess that we are both ashamed and baffled when we even, in attempt to meditate upon the glory of your holiness and of your justice, the wonder of your love and of your mercy. And, O God, while some among us might find delight in the contemplation of these things in abstraction, when we behold them amidst the gore and the blood, the nakedness, the shame, the spittle, the shrouded heavens and the piercing cry of God, we confess, Lord, we cannot take it in. Look upon us. Remember our frame, that we are dust. And since you have revealed these things, give us the inward strength to apprehend them.

62:06 We know that we shall never fathom their depths, but, O God, may we apprehend, lay hold of them. And by prayer and meditation, enter deeper into the wonder and the glory and the sacred mystery, the mystery of them. O Father, for those who sit here, having never contemplated what it was to stand before you, a holy and a just God, may deep and unshakable conviction of sin seize upon their hearts that will give them no rest or peace until they embrace the peace and the rest purchased by an immolated and a forsaken Savior. O Lord, have mercy upon the unconverted, give them eyes to see and heart your beloved Son. And we pray for us, your people. We confess, O Lord, that all our dabbling with sin and our flirtations with the world appear ugly when we stand upon Golgotha and when we look at the sights and hear the sounds. But we confess it's so difficult for us to keep these things before us in the midst of the pressure of the world and the activity of our own people.

63:24 In the midst of our own remaining sin and the subtlety of a wicked devil. God, give us grace that we may be a people whose every thought and word and motive and deed is molded and shaped by the great truth that Christ died for our sins. Hear our prayer and seal the meditations of this day to our heart that we may live to your praise. We ask in Jesus' name.

63:52 Amen.