The Death of Jesus

Exodus 34:6–7 NKJV

6 And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, 7 keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.”

BIG IDEA: In the death of Jesus, God’s JUSTICE AND MERCY for sin and sinners met.

There is no aspect of Christianity that many modern people find more OFFENSIVE than the belief that God is a God of wrath and judgment.

Giving up on a God of WRATH and judgment is to give up on a God of LOVE.

SIN is the CANCER that God’s wrath burns against because it is destroying the people and the world he loves.

God’s love leads to God’s wrath and God’s wrath leads to God’s mercy AND justice.

#1 There is no aspect of Christianity that many modern people find more OFFENSIVE than the belief that God is a God of WRATH and JUDGMENT.

We latch onto the idea that God is a God of love. We are comfortable with that. But a God of vengeance, no thank you!

In this regard...

A. We are more culturally conditioned than what we realize.

i. American Culture

a. One of the most fundamental beliefs in America is that there is no moral order outside of oneself that applies to all people at all times in all places.

As a result...

b. Many Americans believe that it is up to each individual person to determine what is right and wrong for them.

“Nobody has the right to tell us how to live!”

c. Consequently, the only God many Americans are willing to believe in is a God of love...defined as a God that loves and accepts people no matter how they choose to live.

They reason that a God that is upset with them because they determined what is right and wrong for themselves is not a God worthy of their worship.

However, if you are from a...

ii. Traditional or War Torn Cultures

a. People from traditional cultures who believe in an absolute standard of morality, or from war torn countries were great atrocities have been committed, find the idea that God is a God of love defined as accepting people no matter how they live extremely offensive.

Last week, I quoted an African woman who I had heard speak at a conference a couple of years ago who had lost most of her family, including her husband, in the genocide. Can you imagine telling her that God accepts everyone no matter how they live and does not care about justice. Could you imagine telling a black person who lived decades ago in the Jim Crow south that God is a God of love who is not concerned with justice but who overlooks people’s sin and accepts everyone just as they are. Can you imagine telling a survivor of the Holocaust the same? Can you imagine telling a Cambodian who had all of their family tortured and killed by Pol Pot’s regime, this too? The idea that God is only a God of love and not a God of wrath, justice, and judgment, would be repulsive to them and not worthy of their worship.

There is a major problem with the American way of thinking that every person has the right to determine what is right and wrong for them, and therefore, the only God where the birth shipping is the one who loves us no matter how we choose to live.

#2 Giving up on a God of wrath and judgment is to give up on a God of LOVE.

God’s wrath and God’s love are not mutually exclusive. They actually go together and compliment one another.

A. The opposite of love is not wrath but indifference.

Let me explain.

As you would expect, there are not three people in this world that I love more than my wife Mary and my two boys Elijah and Isaiah. As a result, nothing will arouse my anger more than someone mistreating them. If I was indifferent to their mistreatment, no one would call that love. My anger would also be aroused if one of them started engaging in a destructive lifestyle. I would be upset over how they are hurting themselves and others. Again, if I was indifferent, my indifference would reveal my lack of love.

If Mary left me for another person, I would be full of jealousy and anger. Why? I love her and she belongs to me. If I was indifferent that would reveal that I never loved her in the first place.

It does not spring forth from a moody, bitter, and resentful heart that flies off the handle for the slightest reason and enjoys torturing people. Oh no, God’s wrath pours forth from his heart of love.

Author, Becky Pippert, puts it this way:

B. God’s wrath is not a cranky explosion, but his settled opposition to the cancer…which is eating out the insides of the human race he loves with his whole being.¹

The Bible tells us that...

#3 SIN is the CANCER that God’s wrath burns against.

God hates sin because it is the cancer that is destroying the people and the world that he loves.

If God didn’t hate sin, how could he be described as loving?

What is sin?

The Bible describes sin in a variety of ways.

But I want to quickly highlight three of them.

A. Sin is disobeying the law of God.

1 John 3:4 NKJV

4 Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.

For example, we sin when we:

Bend the truth

Driven by selfishness, rage at our spouse, children, or coworkers

Gossip about those we should have loved

Covet another person’s beauty, talents, or possessions

Are envious…envy is not just wanting what another person has (coveting) but also hating that person for having it.

Lust after a person that is not our spouse

Fail to keep our promises

Cheat others

Fail to take care of the poor and hurting.

B. Sin is idolatry.

Romans 1:18–25 NKJV

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, 21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. 24 Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, 25 who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

There is more to sin than just doing bad things. Sin also includes turning good things into ultimate things...things that we have to have in order to be somebody, be satisfied, and/or feel secure. In fact...

i. Underneath all the commands of God that we disobey is the reality that we have turned some good thing into an ultimate thing.

For example, the person who cheats to get ahead at work does so because they have turned career success into an ultimate thing that they have to have or they're a nobody. The person who tells a lie to save face does so because they have made human approval an ultimate thing. The person who bills his customers more than he should does so because he has made the acquisition of money an ultimate thing. The overbearing parent is looking to their kid’s performance to justify their existence. The “my child is my best friend” parent, who has no rules for their child because they don’t want to risk their child getting angry at them, is looking to find meaning in life through their child. The husband that is sneaking around viewing pornography is doing so because they are looking to pleasure to bring their heart satisfaction. Every time you sin, you're looking to some created thing to give you what only God can. When you sin you are worshipping and trusting in something but it is not God. You are engaging in idolatry.

C. Sin is spiritual adultery.

James 4:4 NKJV

4 Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

God is the most compassionate, generous, loving, wonderful, attractive, and pure being in the universe. He has created us so that he could love us with all of his heart and so that we could love him with all of our heart. He is the source of everything good in our life. And yet when we sin, we ditch the Most Lovely to go after other lovers. In doing so, we mock, dishonor, and fail to exclusively love the one we owe absolutely everything to.

The cancer that is destroying us and God's world is our disobedience, idolatry, and spiritual adultery. What is God's response to that cancer that is destroying those that he loves? Indifference? No! Righteous Anger, Indignation, Wrath.

Now, we must ask, what does God’s wrath lead to?

#4 God’s love leads to God’s wrath and God’s wrath leads to God’s mercy AND justice.

God is both merciful and just. He loves to forgive disobedient, idolators, and adulterers, and yet, even though he gets no pleasure out of the destruction of the wicked, he can't let the guilty go unpunished.

What is God to do?

How can he uphold both his mercy and justice?

One word...Jesus!

A. In his death, Jesus absorbed the wrath of God and the just punishment for sin.

God allowed his justice to fall upon himself! There are other religions that claim that there is a god that is just who will fairly repay people according to their deeds. However, they consider the idea that God would allow his justice to fall on himself ridiculous. That would be so beneath their god.

B. Since God’s justice has been met through Jesus’s death, only God’s mercy remains for those who are in Christ.

You see...

If God was ONLY JUST, Jesus wouldn’t have had to die because sinners would be responsible for bearing their own punishment. If God was ONLY MERCIFUL, Jesus wouldn’t have had to die because God would just overlook sin and not enforce justice.

But because God is both just and merciful, Jesus had to die.

APPLICATION: What does the BIG IDEA mean for us today?

Because, through the death of Christ, God’s justice and mercy met:

APPLICATION #1 We can ESCAPE God’s justice and RECEIVE his mercy.

As I was sharing what sin is, I hope your realized that you are guilty of breaking God’s commands, idolatry, and spiritual adultery. If you still can’t see your sin, it proves further that you are under the spell of sin because sin always seeks to justify itself.

I hope you have also realized that God loves you so intensely and the other people in your life, he is deeply angry about your participation in the cancer that is destroying you and others. Remember, if he didn’t love you so intensely, he would be indifferent, not angry.

Because God loves his creation and hates evil, he is committed to justice, which of course means, he can’t let your sin go unpunished. It must be paid for.

Because God is so extravagantly loving and so full of mercy, he sent his Son Jesus, to bear your punishment so that his justice could be satisfied and to earn your pardon so that his mercy could be satisfied too.

But their is one condition if Christ’s work is going to be applied to you.

A. In order to escape God’s justice and receive God’s mercy, you must repent and place your faith in Jesus.

1. Repentance means to own up to and turn from your law breaking, idolatrous, and adulterous life.

2. Faith means trusting in and relying upon Jesus’s death as the payment for your sins and the sacrifice that makes God’s forgiveness of you possible.

Have you repented and placed your faith in Jesus?

Have you received the gift of having God’s justice satisfied for you and his mercy extended to you?

This of course also means...

B. If we reject God’s mercy in Jesus’s death, we will experience God’s justice.

Either Jesus absorbs God’s wrath and justice in your place or you absorb it.

The sad reality is that many people choose to persist in their law breaking, idolatrous, and adulterous life style for their entire lives without repenting and receiving God’s mercy. And as there life goes on, their heart becomes harder and harder decreasing the chances that they will ever repent and put their faith in Christ. As they continue to separate themselves from God, their soul shrivels more and more with each passing day as the cancer of sin in them metastasizes. As they become more entrenched in their addiction to sin, the more self absorbed...the more cynical...more bitter, jealous, and envious they become…the more entitled…the more spiteful…the more consumed with the belief that it is “everyone else’s fault”…and the more justifying and blind to their sin they become.

For those who, over a lifetime, repeatedly refuse to receive God’s mercy in Jesus, there is only one thing that God can do.

Respect their choice and allow them to experience his justice.

What fair sentence will they be given?

What was the worst part for Jesus when God’s justice fell on him?

Jesus’s cry from the cross revealed it.

Did Jesus cry out, “Oh the nails in my feet and wrists!” “Oh my shredded back that I have scrape against the rugged wood cross to raise myself to get a breath!” “Oh the crown of thorns that has been pushed into my skull!” “Oh the embarrassment of hanging naked for all to see, mock, and spit on!”

His cry was:

Matthew 27:46 NKJV

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

For Jesus the worst part of the punishment he bore for our sin was separation from God the Father.

1. Eternal separation from God will be the worst part of the punishment that all who persist in evil and resist the mercy of God are bound to experience.

The absolute worst part of being forever quarantined in Hell is that God is not there.

Over the years I have heard people basically say that to describe Hell as eternal separation from God is to minimize the horrors of Hell.

I respectfully disagree.

If we don’t understand how horrific it would be to be separated from God, it is because we don’t understand how amazing God is.

God is the source of everything good.

He is the source of love.

He is the source of joy.

He is the source of peace.

He is the source of truth.

He is the source of beauty.

He is the source of righteousness.

He is the source of justice.

He is the source of human flourishing.

His is the source of harmony and unity.

He is the source of meaning and purpose.

To be completely separated from God is to have a meaningless, hate filled, manically depressed, chaotic, conflict filled, deception filled, hideous, existence in which you are perpetually disintegrating and becoming more and more isolated, evil and less human. It is a world totally void of anything good and full of unrestrained evil.

No wonder the Bible describes Hell as a place of utter darkness and a place of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

While in one sense, it is true that God sends people to Hell, it also true that Hell is something that one freely chooses.

2. God sending a person to Hell is God honoring what a person has chosen all their life and that is to be separated from him.

He is simply letting them bear the full weight of their choice.

That is why G.K. Chesterton said:

Hell is God’s great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice.²

That’s why D.A. Carson has said:

“Hell is not a place where people are consigned because they were pretty good blokes, but they just didn’t believe the right stuff. They’re consigned there, first and foremost, because they defy their maker and want to be at the center of the universe. Hell is not filled with people who have already repented, only God isn’t gentle enough or good enough to let them out. It’s filled with people who, for all eternity, still want to be the center of the universe and who persist in their God-defying rebellion.³

What else does the truth that through Jesus’s death...God’s justice and mercy for sin and sinners met mean for us to today?

APPLICATION #2 We can be free from the POWER of sin.

The moment a person becomes united to Christ through repentance and faith, they become united to Christ in his death.

A new reality is true of them.

They died with Christ…that is their old life apart from God, guilty of sin, and trapped by the enslaving power of sin was crucified.

It was murdered.

It was killed.

I has come to a decisive ending.

This killing off of the old person was necessary.

Why?

Because...

Death always precedes resurrection.

A person’s old nature must be killed before they can be given a new nature. A person’s old life has to be killed so that a person can be raised to new life in Jesus. A person can’t be raised to new life if the old life hasn’t died.

You see...

A. When Jesus died, he killed our old life in Adam, so that his resurrection could also be ours.

Romans 6:5 states that our old man has been crucified with him, were are no longer slaves to sin, we are freed from sin, death no longer has dominion over us, were a dead to sin.

If you are a Christian, don’t you realize that you have already died. Your old nature dominated by sin has been brutally murdered.

What does that mean for you today?

Two things:

First, as Romans 6:11 states:

Romans 6:11 NKJV

11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

1. Consider yourself to be dead to sin.

I love how one commentator talks about this verse.

Romans: An Introduction and Commentary 2. The Meaning of Baptism (6:3–14)

This is no game of ‘let’s pretend’; believers should consider themselves to be what God in fact has made them.

In other words, consider yourself to be what is actually true of you! Believe in who you really are! Dead to the ruling power of sin!

Secondly, since your old nature dominated by sin has died and you are now alive to God...

Romans 6:12 NKJV

12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.

2. Don’t let sin reign in your body.

Since you are now dead to sin and alive to Christ and no longer have to use your body for sin, use it for righteousness.

Exercise the freedom you’ve been given to live for Christ.

That the Christian is dead to sin and can now use their bodies as instruments of righteousness are such critical truths!

There are too many Christians that are living without the realization that they are not only forgiven but their old life has been killed. It has come to a definitive end. Sin no longer has dominion over them. They are dead to its ruling power. They are no longer slaves but are free. They actually can present their bodies as instruments of righteousness.

If this is not real to our hearts, we will not experience victory over the sin, that although we have been given a new nature, still resides in our bodies.

Too many Christians live as some former slaves lived after slavery was abolished in America.

Some slaves at that time didn’t believe that slavery was actually abolished and so they still believed that they were slaves.

Some recognized their freedom but fell back into their old ways of thinking and behaving, and as result, went back to serve their former masters.

What’s more Christian...quit looking back to the shame and guilt of your former life. It is dead and there is no condemnation for you in Christ Jesus through faith. Put all your mental and emotional energy into living out the new you!

Because, through the death of Christ, God’s justice and mercy met:

APPLICATION #3 One day we can be free from the PRESENCE of sin.

A. Christ’s death revealed that God is extremely serious about justice and ensures us that he will make the world right.

So serious that he was willing to die to uphold justice. So we can count on Christ’s promise that he will return to engage in one final act of justice in which he will remove evil once and for all from his world. While it is extremely, extremely sad that many people will experience the just sentence of an eternity in Hell because of their own free choice, we should be very thankful that God is a God of justice and that Hell is real.

Why?

1. If there was no judgement and no Hell, the world would never be made right.

In other words, if there was no Hell there would be no Heaven. If God did not banish from the new heavens and new earth those who persist in rebelling against him, it wouldn’t be long before the new earth was filled with the cancer of sin.

Thank God that all evil will be quarantined in Hell forever and will never be able to infect God’s world again!

Hell makes Heaven possible.

Revelation 20:11–15 (NKJV)

Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works. Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.

Now the question becomes for those who have repented and placed their faith Jesus, “How will I not mess up God’s new world?”

2. God’s mercy makes his people fit for his new world.

The second we are united to Christ through repentance and faith, God’s mercy forgives us of our sin and frees us from the power of sin but one day, when he resurrects our bodies, God’s mercy will enable us to be free even from the presence of sin. There will be no remnant of sin hanging around in our bodies so we can enjoy God’s new world and won’t mess it up! At last, we will fully reflect the glory of God. The good work that God started in us will be complete. Finally fit to rule over God’s new world on his behalf with righteousness and justice.

2 Corinthians 3:16–18 NKJV

Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Romans 8:18–21 NKJV

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

Mention Good Friday service

¹The Reason For God by Tim Keller p. 72.

²The Case For Christ/Case For Faith CompIiation by Lee Strobel p. 625.

³Ibid. p. 659.