FEB 10 2019 | The Crown: David as King S1E4 | The Grace of Wrath

Sea Change Church · The Crown: David as King · "The Grace of Wrath" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · February 10, 2019
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Hi church, my name is Eden. I'm one of the elders here for you guys and then I'm also a part of the financial committee and then I'm a part of a wonderful marriage group headed by Deb and Garrett. So I'm going to be reading 2 Samuel 4, 5 through 12. Now Rechab and Bana, the sons of Rimon and Berothite, set out for the house of Ish-bosheth. And they arrived there in the heat of the day while he was taking his noonday rest.

They went into the inner part of the house as if to get some wheat and they stabbed him in the stomach. Then Rechab and his brother Bana slipped away and they had gone into the house while he was lying on the bed in his bedroom. After they stabbed and killed him, they cut off his head, taking it with them and they traveled all night by the way of Araba. They brought the head of Ish-bosheth to David at Hebron and said to the king, Here is the head of Ish-bosheth, the son of Saul, your enemy, who tried to kill you.

This day the Lord has avenged my lord, the king, against Saul and his offspring. David answered Rechab and his brother Bana, the sons of Rimon and Berothite, As surely as the Lord lives, who has delivered me out of every trouble, when someone told me Saul is dead and thought he was bringing good news, I seized him and put him to death in Ziklag. That was the reward I gave him for his news. How much more, when wicked men have killed an innocent man in his own house and in his own bed, should I now demand his blood from your hand and rid the earth of you?

So David gave an order to his men and they killed him. They got off their hands and feet and hung the bodies by the pool in Hebron. But they took the head of Ish-bosheth and buried it in Abner's tomb at Hebron. The word of the Lord. What a story, right? Good news. Good morning. It's getting real. I got a new preaching outfit today. Do you like it? Yeah, it's comfortable, but it's upscale as well. It's got a nice collar as well.

And you can move a lot. And I'm going to move during this sermon series. So I start planning my preaching outfit around Friday at around 2. A little beard care. Not that you care. Let's move on. I want you to go to verse 11. This is a, we're going to talk about God's wrath. Now I've been at the church almost five years, finishing my fifth year. First time I've ever spoken about God's wrath. And you really can't, you really can't do a study of the life of David without taking seriously the violence that is a part of it.

And the violence that is a part of the Old Testament. Which actually really trips a lot of people up. And I think the church needs to do a better job than perhaps it's done in the past at letting people understand the necessity of wrath. Why God has wrath. How it's not actually part of God's nature. Wrath is not part of God's nature. Anger is not part of God's nature. It is a response that comes out of God's nature when things are contrary to his nature.

But we come to this part where once again some people have come and tried to give the kingdom, the crown to David. And the thing we've learned about David is David never reached out to take the crown. One of the lessons from the crown series so far is that David never took the crown. And this is the second group. Actually there was one man before an Amalekite who came and said that he lied and said that he had killed Saul.

And David said, you spoke it from your mouth. And I think David pretty much knew that he didn't kill Saul. And this guy thought he was going to be rewarded for this act of bravery or whatever you would call it. And David wasn't having anything of it. And he had his men kill the Amalekite. Now come these other two who have killed the son. If Bosheth is the son of Saul. And David has a very complicated relationship with Saul.

But I would argue through my understanding of the scriptures that David was the son that Saul I think wanted for a while. Until David began to supersede him because of the promises of the Lord and the disobedience of Saul. Obviously Saul had another son named Jonathan who was David's best friend. And Ithbosheth is Jonathan's brother. And these two men come and say, I've killed the brother of your best friend basically.

And now you're going to be king over all of Israel because there was a divided kingdom that we learned about last week. And David wasn't having none of it. These guys did not understand. And David says something about this kind of evil. And I think when we look at evil and we think about God, we need to understand that God wants to eradicate evil. And it happens in some very difficult to understand ways, especially in the Old Testament that we see.

And we want to look at this. But God oftentimes in the Old Testament used individuals to accomplish his purpose of removing evil from the world so that peace might exist. Why he chose to do it that way, I don't know. But he does. And we're going to talk a little bit about this. But I want to look at verse 11 because something that David says is something that I think God could utter. And he said this. How much more? He says, that was the reward I gave him for the news.

And that was the story of the Amalekites saying that he had killed Saul. But these two men had gone in and they had killed Isbosheth on his bed during his nap. And he says, how much more when wicked men have killed an innocent man in his own house and on his own bed, should I not now demand his blood from your hand and rid the earth of you? I mean, this is part of David's character. David was a man of war. David had a lot of wrath.

David had a lot of revenge. And he did a pretty good job most of his life staying his hand from reaching out against those that would come against him. Matter of fact, the one time when he wanted to kill a man, his wife Abigail came. I think it was, it wasn't Nabor. I forgot the man's name. But his wife Abigail comes and says to him, you know, don't do this evil thing. And David stays his hand. And then the Lord ends up enacting vengeance upon him.

Kimberly, what was his name? What was it? Nabal. Nabal. There you go. I had it right. So I was, well, it's close. And so God exacts his revenge. And this is one thing that David learned over and over again is that God will take care of your grudges and your grievances and you don't need to. Now, I was thinking about some of the great bullies of all time. Scott Farkas from the Christmas story. Probably the best. The little, can your eyes get any beatier?

I mean, absolutely. The beatiest little eyes. He's ended up looking like a Calvin Klein runway model. Google that guy. He has just ended up just being amazing. But when he was 12 years old or 14, whatever he was, and how good did it feel when Ralphie was just up on him? That scene is like three minutes long and he is just giving it to him, you know? And the whole time, aren't you like, yeah, you go, Ralphie. You know what I mean?

Like, you go, little Ralphie. And he's a bully. And don't you love it when the bully gets what they deserve, right? I mean, doesn't it feel, I mean, it feels really good. Movies have made so much money on this. Remember Hans Gruber, okay, from Die Hard, you know? I think it was a German guy, you know, Hans Gruber. And Bruce Willis takes him out. And isn't it amazing when he gets taken out? You feel so good. Another one is Johnny from the Karate Kid.

What a great bully, right? A bully named Johnny, which is really interesting. He had that skeleton outfit. And I remember, you know, when he does the whole, like, I'm going to fall over. I have no balance. But when he does that thing and he kicks him in the face and you're watching the Karate Kid, you're thinking, yes. We love it when the bully gets what they deserve. And movies are built on this. And very few movies have made a lot of money where the bully wins.

Very few. There's very few storylines that are written. And one of the storylines happens to be justice. And every one of us has something inside of us that tells us that justice must be done. We can move to something beyond the bullies of movies to somebody like Adolf Eichmann, who was one of the German architects of the final solution to eradicate the Jews. From the face of the earth. And you look at him and there were basically death squads that came out of Israel back in the day that would go and they would hunt for the SS that had these crimes.

And many of them they killed in cold blood. But Adolf Eichmann, they brought back, they went to Argentina. They actually kidnapped him in this crazy story, if you've ever heard of it. They kidnapped him and took him back to Israel, where I believe he was hung, I believe, for his crimes. And there was a sense in all of us, right, that when somebody like Adolf Eichmann gets what they, quote, deserve, we kind of shrug our shoulders a little bit.

We all have a little bit in us that thinks, okay, we weigh it out on our mind. Okay, what do they deserve? And everyone has a different understanding of what you think a crime deserves. But there is a sense where we become God and we give ourselves the ability to say, this was really bad. This person hurt this person. This person did this. And this is what should happen to them, even if it be death itself. And many of us have seen someone get a death penalty and thought to ourselves, perhaps, unless you are a complete pacifist, unless you are Gandhi or someone that has gone down that path.

But I think it's very difficult, not to, on occasion, to put yourself in the place of God, even when someone is killed, murdered, or executed, and think to yourself, they probably deserved it. Now, we have to get very real with our own humanity to realize that we have those thoughts. Even if they are the most angelic in nature, because you were saying justice is being done. But we have to realize that on occasion, we put ourselves and have the ability to play God.

To say that there is vengeance, it needs to be done, and there needs to be justification. What I think is so interesting, especially in our culture today, and I will say this in regard to the church. The church has done, throughout the centuries, a really poor job of talking about the wrath of God. The wrath of God has been spoken about for so long that, you know what, basically, you know, sinner, you are a sinner. You are in the hands of an angry God.

God is out to get you. He is chasing you down. Look at the Old Testament. You are going to see story after story of this God who arbitrarily just doles out vengeance. And he really doesn't like you. But because of what his son did on the cross, you might be able to sneak in. Like, that is what we have done for thousands of years. No wonder nobody wants to come to church. Where the story couldn't be more different. And if you were to look at a metaphoric story, the story goes more like this.

God created you a mansion, humankind. And humankind took a match and some gasoline and poured it over and lit the match. And then they got stuck inside, and the smoke's coming, and they're coughing, and they're choking. And he's like, I got to get them out. I got to get them out. And he sends his only son in as a propitiation for their sin to rescue them. But the son dies in the process. But they are saved. Now they have the opportunity to once again embrace God who is love.

And he did everything in his power, sending his only son. And I will say over and over again that probably the worst thing that can happen, in our understanding, is losing your child. There was an old, I think it was an old Muslim curse that somebody told me. It was kind of a blessing, a backward blessing that would say, may you outlive your children. Like, that's not a good blessing, right? It would be like this, like, backward blessing.

The worst thing that could happen, and many people in this congregation, our family as well, we've lost children. Not me particularly, but my family. Carrie's parents have lost a son. It is the worst thing that could happen. And it makes sense to me that when God chose a rescue plan for mankind, he chose the plan that was the most difficult way to go, where he loses his son. That is the gospel that God has sent us. And we have done such a poor job thinking we can leverage people's fear in order to get them to run into the church.

But the Bible doesn't say that. It's for God so loved the world. See, we have not done a good enough job leveraging God's love to say that you are God's beloved. He wants to embrace you. He wants to bring you into his family, into righteousness, away from sin. And so our culture is interesting because, back to this idea of playing God, our culture, we live in an outrage culture right now. We have the Twitter mob, and you go to the headlines, and they're, like, looking for, like, the one person who's the most angry, and that becomes the entire headline for the nation.

Like, the nation feels this way, right? And we live in this time of outrage. Everyone is upset. And if you look around, justice is being doled out from a social platform. You find somebody who has committed whatever the sins of our, we've kind of corporately decided in the secular world. Let's not even say the church, but the secular world has made a decision. This is really bad. This is bad. You know what they are. I won't name them for you.

This is bad. And then we will dole out justice, whether it be prison, whether it be the loss of their economic income, whatever it is, we dole it out as if God would. Right now, society is working in the very same way. And I'm not saying that justice doesn't need to happen. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying we're getting very good as a society at doling out justice, deciding, being judgmental, deciding what it is, and then doling out the justice.

What I think is so hypocritical when I speak to some of my secular friends is when they don't give God the same luxury. Like it's okay for us as a society to crowdsource our values and then to dole out the punishment, but not to allow God to do the same. And we'll see that over and over again. And there's this huge, if you start talking about, you know what, God has been offended in some ways. And his wrath is upon those things that offend him.

Although wrath is not a characteristic of God. Wrath is a response to when the characteristics of God have been besmirched. So when something that is contrary to God exists, then what happens is a response to that is God's glory. God will do everything in his power. He doesn't even have to do anything to his power. His natural reaction will be to snuff that injustice out and to bring equality back. And our society understands equality.

But this is why God's wrath happens. God's wrath doesn't happen because he decided, I want to be wrathful. God's wrath happened because there was an action that went contrary to his character. And in order to bring things back into balance, God is a just God. He must have justice. And he will do everything in his power to bring equality and justice back to that scale. David was one of the means that he used to do this, like it or not.

God brought justice. And it's interesting because, you know, if you want to be honest, the Bible is full of genocide. Right? I mean, it's full of genocide. In the Old Testament, God says to, there's all these nations that are living in Israel, excuse me, in Canaan, that is the Holy Land. And God says to the Israelites, I want you to go snuff them out. It's no different than Serbia. It's no different than some of the things that we've seen happen in Africa.

It is complete genocide. Right? We just have to be absolutely honest with this. But one of the differences is that it's not man, and if you're going to look at it theologically, you have to realize that God is in charge and can do anything with this creation that he wants. Now, that's hard to swallow. Well, but it's different than man just deciding, I don't like those people because they have this color hair or whatever, and then they try to go cleanse the society.

The reason God sent Israel into the Canaan, into this land, to remove these people is because the way in which they were living was so antithetical to who God was, it needed to be removed. Actually, the people of Molech were burning their children alive as a sacrifice. I mean, that's, right? We don't like that, right? That's not a good one. There was these things happening. There was all, you know, there were sexual temple cults that were going on.

There was, you know, all types of, you know, sin and things that were besmirching, but it was absolutely horrific. And if you read in Leviticus and you read some of the stories, they were actually, it says they were putrefying the land until the land was crying out. Now, it's really interesting because if you want to look at it theologically, we are made of the earth, right? It says we are from dust to dust. And there is a connection between the way man lives their life, mankind lives their lives, and the way the earth responds.

Now, I'm, it's interesting. You will see that when Cain kills Abel, what does God say? The ground, his blood cried out from the ground. Like, the ground has a response to it. When Jesus raises from the dead, there was an earthquake. Over and over again, you see that the things that mankind does actually affects the environment according to the scripture. You know, look, I'm not a denier of climate change. I see it around.

I remember when I was in San Diego. I remember it was like seven years ago. I was in Lucadia on the beach. It was 101 degrees on the beach. I'm from San Diego. This is the first winter I remember in like 10 years. I'm not a denier of it. Sometimes I just think that the cause of it might be a little different. Granted, not, you know, I'm not getting into this conversation deep. But like, you know, obviously, why do we have all the, you know, if you want to say it's pollution, which is fine.

I believe that there's some part of that. I think it's man's greed, right? It's man's greed that has caused the world to just be destroyed in so many ways or to allow people to live in poverty where they can't keep proper sanitation. Not to go too deep. But the world, I believe that the world is actually crying out. And sometimes I wonder if some of the things we're seeing happen in the climate doesn't have to do with the way we're living our lives on the earth.

Like it's beyond CO2. I just wonder. Because I see this in scripture. So it's just a thought that you can go deeper on. But the land is crying out. And the land was crying out against the things that were happening. Actually, if you knew that the things these people were doing, and you can read them in the Old Testament, you would probably go back to what I mentioned to you earlier in the sermon. Where you would see David and you would think, you know, they probably needed to be eradicated.

Like you would go back to that place that I already took us to earlier to see what had happened. There was so much defilement that the land was crying out. It says in the scripture the land was crying out. And God wanted to bring a balance of peace back. And God uses, this is so interesting, God uses wrath to bring peace. It's really an interesting thing in the scripture. You look at Jesus on the cross. Jesus on the cross is, God's wrath is poured out upon him.

But what happens because of that wrath? We have peace because of that. And so David is an instrument. And look, I'm not saying this is an easy thing to talk about. But God uses David to cleanse an area with something that would seem really horrific to us. In order that it might have peace and be brought back to a greater understanding of who God is. This is the theological truth. And I think these are some of the hard things of walking with faith that we have.

That we do see that it changes once Christ is on the cross. Once Christ is on the cross, all of that wrath has been poured out upon his son. And there is no longer any need anymore to have a David come and to do these things. Because Jesus took on the full wrath of God. In today's world, any concept though of God's wrath upsets our modern sentiments. David was a man of war that we said. And as you'll see in your notes, David was a man God uses to right injustices.

Foreign kingdoms we talked about. We're doing those things. And this is really one thing that's interesting. God uses David and Saul as archetypes of the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Covenant and the New Covenant. Look at these two kingdoms. Two of the kings who rule over all of Israel. The first is David. I mean obviously Saul was there. But when David comes, it is a kingdom that is taken a lot by blood.

There is a lot of war going on. There's a lot of disunity. But all of a sudden, all of that gets cleansed out. Because David basically, God uses him to clear it out and to cleanse the land. When he has a son, the second kingdom, which would look closer to the New Covenant comes. That's his son Solomon. Solomon is a man of peace. Solomon rules for 40 years in complete peace. Things for the most part, there's a lot of things going on that would offend our modern sensibilities.

Slavery, there's a lot of things that are still going on. Multiple wives, I get it. I don't think we can always judge history by today's standards. But looking at it for the most part, it came to a place where there was absolute peace. It is a look at the second covenant. And so if you want to look at the Old Testament covenant, David's kingdom was more Old Testament. Although you were seeing precursors of this man who had this incredible deep relationship with God.

Totally flawed. A man of blood. A man of rage. And maybe some of you get that. Maybe some of you have a problem with anger. And that's one thing I don't think I've ever spoken about here. David was that man. But when David's head went down to the grave, his son came up. And from that place on, it becomes a place of peace. It looks just like the cross that is in the middle. That there was rage, there was warfare. But God says, you know what?

You know who's going to pay the price for all this wrath? It's going to be my son. And then you have a kingdom of peace that is available if you choose to receive it. Moving on, looking at these scriptures. God's wrathful reaction is always meant to be a segue to peace. That's hard to swallow. Like that's super hard. I get that. I don't want to, I don't really understand it myself. But the more I look about it, whenever you see God with an act of rage or there's warfare or something that goes on, you see that when it's over, it ushers in a season of peace.

Jesus' death was so violent. I mean, it was absolutely violent. But what does it usher in? It ushers in absolute peace. Second Chronicles talks about this second kingdom that I mentioned about from Solomon. It says, but you will have a son who will be a man of peace and rest. And I will give him rest from all of his enemies on every side. His name will be Solomon. And I will grant Israel peace and quiet during his reign.

I want to understand just quickly as we move through, if you turn your page over, understanding the wrath and anger of God. This is from J.I. Packer. It's not easy. By the way, I could do a frou-frou message. It would be a lot easier to talk about, FYI. But I think we need to be really honest with some of the difficulties. And I don't think Christians understand how to speak about God's wrath in a way other than to promote fear to other people.

And now, you know, we have a nice out. Because if you look back now with Jesus on the cross, you can see that that wrath has been satisfied. And that we know, you know, there's a completely different kingdom that represents more of the kingdom we see with Solomon. But J.I. Packer says this, God's wrath in the Bible is never capricious, self-indulgent, irritable, morally ignoble thing that human anger so often is. It is instead a right, a necessary reaction to objective, moral evil.

God cannot allow evil to just exist and still be just. His nature is just. He cannot allow something. Imagine if you see a child being beaten by somebody on the street. Are you going to step in and do something even at great risk? Well, God hopes you, I hope you are. Even at risk to yourself. You would step in because that needs to be righted. It cannot go on. That's God. If you want to see, that's how every time God sees an injustice, no matter what it is, because his perfection, it needs to be righted.

And here's the thing that's so amazing. In order to have a quality of scales, because this is what a quality is, it's a balance of scales, the justice needs to match the offense. And when you've offended the love of God, let's just say it's the love of God. There's lots of things you can offend from God. Sin is anything that is against the nature of God and offends the nature of God. When you've offended the love of God, God's love is eternal.

It's eternal. It goes out as far as you, I mean, you can't get there to the end. The consequence for that needs to be equal to the offense. Why is God so heavy-handed? He's heavy-handed because he has to be, because the justice needs to match. It would otherwise be a child being beaten in front of you, and you walk up and say, hey, you probably shouldn't do that. Hey, buddy. Hey, stop it. He's just kicking the kid. You're like, hey, I did my best.

It doesn't work that way. You might need to just go ham, as my daughter would say on that kid. There's like eight people. They're like, yeah. You go crazy on, you have to do whatever it would take because it has to meet. Because when God is offended, it has to meet, or there will be no justice. There will be no equality. So why is hell so gnarly? And by the way, it isn't created for human beings. Why is it so heavy? Why is it eternal?

Eternal. Why? Because God is eternal, and the offense needs to match the liberty and the justice doled out. Jesus is the one, the only thing that could pay that price. You see, that's the story of the gospel. That's the story that, hey, it took a while for God to set up the narrative, to set up the story so that we could understand it, to show us how this worked. But in the end, Jesus came and paid that price. He was the only one that could pay the eternal price, the eternal God who came that was perfectly God, perfectly man, and paid that price for us.

Wrath and anger. This is really key. I think if you're going to discuss God's wrath and anger, you need to let people, there's nowhere in the Bible that I could find it. I looked for it all week. Maybe you can find it. There's nowhere in the Bible I could find that says God is anger. There's nowhere in the Bible that says God is wrath. There's nowhere in the Bible that says God is hate. All these things are not attributes of God.

They're reactions of God against when he is offended. They are not his attributes. They are not in his character. So I think the church did a really poor job for hundreds of years talking about God's wrath like it was part of his personality. It is not. But when you come against something that is of God, it is a necessity that shows up. God's wrath is a necessity. Just like the necessity that you need to jump in and help that kid.

It is a necessity. It might not be part of your nature that we see. Wrath and anger are not attributes of God, but a response against that which violates his nature. And God's wrath is upon anything that violates his nature. And anything that violates his nature is called sin. Look, the world does not like sin. Well, they like sin. But like, they don't like sin. You can't. I was listening to one of the judges being interviewed recently, and one of the congresspeople said, do you believe that this is a sin?

And I thought, what an interesting question to ask a judge in a secular forum. You know what I mean? I thought that's a really interesting question. Like, I would ask, well, how do you define sin? Do you believe in sin? And if they said no, then I would say, well, then why would you ask me to talk about a fairytale concept? Let's talk about reality is what I probably would have said. But nonetheless, what is this idea of sin?

And God's wrath is upon anything that is sinful. And we don't like sin. The world doesn't like sin. But I have to tell you, they don't call it sin, but just go on social media, go into the newspaper. I actually have been thinking about writing a book called A Guide to Secular Religion because there is such a religion going on right now that it is so close to the Puritanical Salem witch trials where, like, you define what it is, you tear the person down with a label, and then you dole out their punishment.

It is the Christian playbook from, like, 500 years ago. It's the exact same thing. And you could actually line up historically what Christians have done because it's all about power anyways, right, in a lot of ways, and put it against what's happening in society today and say it's just another form of man's religion. But where science is God and politics is church, and, you know, you move on. I won't go too deep. I don't want to tell you my whole book.

But nonetheless, the world will tell you what sin is. They just won't tell you it's sin. And it's really often, I always ask my secular friends when they tell me, like, you know, you should do this and do that and whatever. And they don't believe in God or my atheist friends that I'm friends with. And I say, why? Well, because it's right. Well, says who? Well, because society over years has said it's right. Well, society over years said that pedophilia in first century Rome was fine too.

So why not that? You know, like, where is the anchor to what you believe? Where is the firm foundation? That's a great question when you talk to secular people. People are God that, you know, that don't have a relationship with God, but they have a set of values. It's usually a little bit of Buddha, a little bit of, you know, Zen, a little bit of Jesus. We like Jesus. Not a lot of hate out there for Jesus, by the way.

I like Christians a lot, but not a lot of hate for Jesus. But I just asked them, where does it come from? Where is this code that things come from? Well, the Bible, we have the Bible. We use it as an anchor. And it tells us what God's nature is. And all sin is. God didn't create sin. And the book of the law, probably the greatest document ever given to mankind was the Ten Commandments. I mean, you could run any society by that, basically.

It's, you know, it's a phenomenal document. It's probably the greatest gift to Western culture ever is the Ten Commandments. And, you know, if you just look at these things and live according to them, it's going to set up a society that is completely orchestrated to run with equality. But we talk about these ideas of where these things come from. And sin is anything that goes against the nature of God. And that's all it is.

If you want to know what sin is, God didn't create sin, but God told us what sin is because it goes against the nature of God. Let me just give you one example. Why is adultery sin? Because God is a committed God that wants to have an individual relationship with you. And when he created a marriage relationship, which is something that marriage is a created thing, when he created a marriage relationship, he wanted to define and let it be like him.

He wants it to represent his character exactly. So you are committed to one another. He will never break his relationship with you. When you are in a marriage, something that he created, and you break a relationship, you go against the character of God of his complete belief and loyalty to you. And you go against the loyalty of God. And that's why it's sin. Because it goes against the nature of God. And that's all the laws of God are.

All they do is tell you what his true nature is and anything that violates it is sin coming in for a landing now. The biblical truth is that the necessity of God's character demands that every offense be atoned for. And I talked about that. Every single offense needs to be atoned for. Atonement is reparations for wrong or injury. And here's a few verses that I think are interesting. One, the scripture's clear in Romans 3.23 that every single person has sinned and falls short of the glory of God.

And Jesus was clear that if you just do one sin, there's no like, there's no like, hey, you're a good person. In the Christian values. This is why people stumble on the Christian values. You can't good person it enough to make it to be with a perfect God. You have to be perfect. So if you live a completely perfect life, but one time you're at a stoplight and someone cuts in front of you and out the window you scream, done.

He says if you break one law, you've broken them all. Why? Because you're imperfect. And perfect can't be within perfect. That's the deal. This is why Jesus had to be perfect and why the wrath was poured upon him when he was perfect. Bible says all of us have sinned. The thing I also love in Romans 5.8, which isn't there, that says while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. See, the good thing is, is like God's offended.

God has a right to be offended. He has a right just to say to hell with all of you. To hell with all of you. I got no time for this. Ain't got no time for that. Sorry. Sorry. He has a, if you watch YouTube, you'll know that one. He can just say to hell with all of you. All y'all. That's how you say it. But instead he says, no, I love you. That's the gospel. This besmirched lie that God is this angry, it is a lie from the pit of hell.

It is a lie from the pit of hell. God wants you back. He wants a society back. He wants us to pray that while we were yet sinners, while you were beating his son, he was dying for them on the cross. While they were putting the nails in his hands, he was dying for the person putting the nails in his hands. That's Jesus. That's the gospel. And it's something we need to be excited about and realize that we're broke. Think we're woke, but we're broke.

Isaiah 54, four through six. He was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well-being fell upon him. And by the scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way, but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him. Surely our griefs he himself bore and our sorrows he carried. Yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted.

Oh, that's the gospel. Question is, do you want it? Thessalonians says this, for God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. Come on. For God has not destined us for wrath. We are not destined. We weren't built for wrath. We weren't built for hell. We're built for relationship. We're built for heaven. We're built for a kingdom peace that looks more like Solomon, that looks more like Jesus, and we're meant to spread it around the world.

And what I see happening in our culture right now in the name of false righteousness is the exact opposite. Living in wrath. Looking for the next person who screwed up. And you will pay the price. I guarantee you, you will pay the price. Trust me. It is a lie that is branded as righteousness. And it is a lie that will take you right to the pit of hell because it has no redemption. And there is no place in our society today for redemption.

You might get partial redemption, but you never get full redemption. I want to say, if you've besmirched someone, if you have sinned, if you've been broken, met someone this week that came in and said, I was a human trafficker. You know, they said, I've repented, and they want prayer. Man, the church wants you. You can be completely set free. We want you. That's the ones Jesus wants. And the world, in the name of a false, you watch it, it is a false righteousness.

And all it's going to give you is a second rate. Maybe you can come a little bit closer if you repent good enough, but you'll never get to the top of the mountain again. One mistake, and you're out of the race. One mistake. Look at it. Not that mistakes shouldn't be paid for. Not that people shouldn't go to jail. I'm not saying that. But in the church, we have a place where mistakes can be redeemed. You might have to pay a price.

You might still have to go to jail. You might still lose your family because of what you did. But in the name of Jesus, you can be set free. And hopefully that's good enough in the eyes of God. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.