series on the atonement – 2

We mentioned this morning that it was difficult if not impossible to appreciate God’s magnificent solution to the problem of the broken God-Man relationship until we had first acquired a good understanding of the problems that He faced. Sometimes I think if we really knew the full story behind the blessings and gifts that others bestowed upon us that we would appreciate them far more than we generally do. For example, you will remember that there was a time when David was hiding from Saul. Saul was the King of Israel and was out to take David’s life. And David one day just casually said that “I would be so happy if I could just take a drink from this particular well water.” But he realized that particular well that had such good water in it was behind enemy line, behind the troops of Saul. A couple of David’s loyal colleagues heard that request and they very, very carefully snuck behind enemy lines at great risk to themselves, went a long way and risked a lot in terms of personal safety and drew some of the water that David was longing for out of that well and brought it back to him. And I think that if they would have just come up to David and handed him a cup of water, he would have probably said “Gee, thank-you, I appreciate that” and drank the water and gone on to the next order of business. But when he found out where that water came from he was overwhelmed, instead of drinking the water, he poured it out on the ground as an offering. Because he understood what was behind that gift, that blessing, all the effort that went into the provision of that cup of water, he appreciated it so much.

I think that it’s very much the same with our understanding of the atonement, we have become so familiar with various cliches pertaining to the cross, and the lamb that was slain, and to the shed blood of Christ and so forth. And all of those, I shouldn’t say all of them, but most of those cliches and phases that we use are true. But we don’t really fully appreciate when we are using them, when we are saying them, repeating them. We haven’t made an effort to fully examine all that God did in order to produce or to offer, extend to us salvation. We just kind of take the gift and run with it, maybe once or twice we will be reminded that it cost God his life but even that’s a bit of over simplification. We need to understand why it was necessary for Jesus to offer up his life. Why was that required? How hard or how easy was it for God to reconcile man to Himself? All of these things were discussed in great detail in the early church. It was not possible to be a member of the early church and not have an understanding of these things. But today we’ve become modern and sophisticated and I guess for some of us it’s no longer important to take the time to discuss the great doctrines of Christianity. And I think the reason for that is that so many years have passed between the time that Jesus walked this earth, between the time that Jesus hung on the cross and today that somehow it doesn’t all seem very real to us.

Some of the “Christian” words we use don’t seem to have relevance to the real world, they’re just part of an empirical, abstract, spiritual dimension. Because they’re relegated to a spiritual dimension, they don’t have any real impact on our day-to-day lives. But I’ll tell you, if somebody that you knew – that you walked with and talked with and fellow- shipped with – had, a couple of months ago, had given their life for you, you’d still be thinking about it a great deal, you’d be talking about it a great deal. Particularly, if that person was Jesus Christ whose life was so extraordinary in so many ways. It’s just too far removed from the 20th century and so we’ve become, I think, a little bit glib about it. Trite. I believe that’s what God wants to change because when we become glib and trite about the Atonement and Cross, it doesn’t work for us anymore. And you see, salvation itself is a matter of being saved from something. And if we’re going around talking about the fact that we’re saved, don’t you think would be a good idea that we had an understanding of what it was that we were saved from?

It’s not possible to be saved from our sins unless we’ve had an effective and real encounter with the Cross of Jesus Christ. So it’s really a serious thing that we, today, have not pressed in to the Holy Spirit for revelation of the Cross to us. Without it we just simply cannot be saved. Somebody who is living their lives in sin, isn’t saved from their sin. The Angel, in announcing to Mary and Joseph, the birth of Christ and what they were to name the Baby, also made the statement, “Ye shall call His name Jesus for He shall save His people from their sins”. Salvation is being saved from sin. If we are not freed from the bondage of sin then we’re not saved from anything.

If I can’t get through a single day without sin raising it’s ugly head in dominance over my life then what’s the difference between the way I was before I was a Christian and now in real terms? I’m going around talking about the fact I’m saved and what I really mean when I say that is that I’m going to Heaven after I die and that I’m now going to church and I’ve adopted a Christian exterior but as far as my lifestyle is concerned, I’m still sinning all the time. Maybe the sins that I’m committing are different sins than they were before but we cannot be free from the power of sin until we’ve had an encounter with the Cross – simply because sin has become, prior to salvation, a way of life for us. We’re very familiar with it. We’ve embraced it. It’s part of us and we have actually come to the point where, through our own choices, we have developed sinful habit patterns and actually sin has become our nature. It dictates our every course of action to us.

Paul talks about this state of affairs in Romans – “Is this law?”. And Christians, just by virtue of the fact that they have one day gone forward in the church and knelt at the altar and repeated the sinner’s prayer, cannot expect that in itself to free them from the bondage of sin because it won’t. In salvation is that we’re saved from our sins and that we move out of an old life, where sin has had predominance, and we move into a new relationship. It’s not a matter of going forward in a church and performing some kind of an act and saying to Jesus, “I accept you into my life”, and suddenly God no longer looks at our sin as sin, and now we’ve got the key to Heaven in our back pocket. When we encounter the Cross it not only deals with the effect of past sin and takes away guilt, it also gives us the ammunition, if you will, to deal with sin that we confront in the future. You see, God doesn’t want to just forgive us, He wants to transform us. There are people today who want to be forgiven but they don’t want to be transformed. The problem is God won’t forgive you unless you allow Him to transform you.

The church today is split right down the middle on this doctrine. There are many, many denominations and Christians who say you can be forgiven of your sin without being transformed. That it’s alright to sin every day in word, thought and deed. That God has positionally sanctified you and that you’re standing in Christ is something that is different from your actual state. When you sin, it wasn’t the new man who did that, it was the old man. We all have this dirty, old man in us who commits all these sins. You see, we don’t do it, the old man does it. Yeah, schizophrenic is right! I remember, it was either and Irish judge or a Scottish judge, who was confronted with a man who had just stolen some goods. He was Christian, at least claimed to be, and came before the judge and he said “Judge, that was my old man that did that”. And the judge said, “Well, I’ll tell you what I think we ought to do. I think we ought to take your old man and your new man and put them both in jail and let them work it out”.

God in the covenant that he gave to Israel…we’ll be getting into this in more detail when we get into the subject of Redemption…gave man a two part covenant. The first thing He said He would give them was forgiveness of sins, a pardon. The second thing He said He would give them was a new heart. You can’t separate the new covenant down the middle and say, “I’ll take half of that covenant but I don’t want the other part of it. I like being forgiven of my sins but I also like who I am and I want to still be me. But I want to be forgiven me, I want Heaven but I also want to live the way I want to live here on earth.

I want to have my cake and eat it too.” What you’re really saying is, “I want to be saved from the results of my sin but I don’t want to be saved from my sin itself”. Fortunately for us all, God doesn’t work that way. God says, “Don’t you know that whoever you yield your members to, as servants to obey, you are their servant?” Whether of sin and unrighteousness and death or to God and righteousness and life. You choose. You’re either going to be saved through the power of God, through the Love of God as manifest through the Cross, from actual sin, or you’re not.

I’m repeating this several times because I wanted to go deep into your minds and I don’t want you to ever forget it. Salvation means that you are saved from your sin. Not in an abstract way but you really are. It means if you’re saved, you don’t go around sinning anymore. I’m not talking about sinless perfection. I’m not talking about the fact that once you become a Christian you never sin anymore. I’m not saying that. Well, that’s right. We don’t go around making sin a matter of life. We don’t go around expecting to sin. If you’re living a life under the expectation that you are going to sin every day, not only will you sin every day but you will have to admit to yourself that you’re really not saved from sin. You will also have to admit to yourself that sin is the most powerful force in the universe and that the Blood of Christ just is not strong enough to cope with the demands and the power of sin.

Of course, I don’t believe that happens to be the case. I think the Blood of Christ and the Love of God causes the power and the magnetism of sin to pale in comparison. When people get saved all things are passed away, behold, all things become new. We think differently and we act differently. And it’s not a process either, by the way, in the sense that, Barry brought up the key word here, that we continue to intentionally do that which is wrong. We cannot come to God with a bunch of known sin in our lives and not allow Him to deal with that known sin to the point of salvation. There are a lot of youth leaders today that are counseling their young people, there are a lot of pastors today that are preaching to their congregations…that we shouldn’t be too hard on the new Christian who has got a bunch of raunchy, sinful habits because it’s a process – becoming a Christian is a process – it takes time. There’s a sense in which that’s true and there’s a sense in which it’s not true at all. When we come to God in salvation, what we are saying is “We surrender.” We surrender all the weapons of selfishness that we have been using against the righteous, moral government of God. We have to realize that sin, known sin, it’s a weapon. They are like hand grenades and bullets and rifles and we use these things to fight against God, to hurt God, to damage God in His Kingdom.

In the book of Ezekiel, God says “When you’re coming before me, cast away from you all your transgressions.” Notice he doesn’t say some of them – cast away, throw away the worst things you’re doing. He doesn’t say, “Hang on to a few and I’ll deal with those things at a later date.” He says, “If you’re going to come to Me to be saved, you’re going to come to Me, on My terms, not yours”. Remember, God doesn’t need to be reconciled to man, He never left. Man needs to be reconciled to God, he’s the one who split the relationship. And so if it’s going to be reconciled, it’s going to be reconciled on God’s terms. And as I read the scripture out of Galatians, Chapter 1, this morning “Before salvation we were hostile, we were enemies in our mind towards God”. We were fighting a war, a moral war with God in His Kingdom. Nobody in their right mind is going to accept a surrender from someone who remains armed to the teeth when they’re signing the act of surrender. Would you? God’s not stupid. We’re coming to Him and we’re saying, “We want you to save us from our intention and our desire from the act of using all of these weapons. We’re really sorry. We were really wrong that we’ve been hurting you and we intend to quit”, which is what repentance is, by the way, “so we cast away from ourselves, all of our transgressions”. We get rid of all of them.

All that we are aware of. Everything that we know that’s wrong. We confess that before God at the moment of salvation and as soon as we do that then God accepts our surrender and we can be saved. That does not mean that we are perfect at that point. That does not mean that everything in our life is pleasing to God. But it does mean, at that particular moment in our lives, we are living up to and obeying every bit of moral enlightenment we have. Which means at that point, we begin to live a holy life. Not a perfect life, a holy life which means that we’re living up to all the moral light that we have at that time, that given moment.

Now, a relationship is a process. The process of entering that relationship, if there is no process of entering the relationship, that happens at one specific moment, when we come to terms of surrender…but then as we, at that point, when we become Christians our relationship to God changes in a fundamental way. We cease to be just subjects in God’s moral government and we become members of His household. And God now lovingly begins to reveal to us new ways that we can please Him. New ways that we can adjust or modify our life or our attitudes or our behavior. And the more time we spend with Him in relationship, the more we become like Him.

And in the course of that relationship we read the promise that if we sin, we have an advocate with the Father and if we’re willing to confess our sin then He will be faithful and just to forgive us that sin and to cleanse us again not just forgiveness but cleansing, transformation, from all unrighteousness. So the big difference before and after salvation is that before salvation, sin is a manner of life, after salvation, it’s the exception. Just like in any love relationship.

I’ve shared this illustration before and I’ll share it again now. I have grown up all my life in a Christian home with a mother and father that loved each other and cared for each other and that served one another. There’s no doubt in my mind now nor has there ever been that my parents were living in a love relationship. That does not mean that I have never seen my parents argue.

That does not mean that I have never seen them do things that hurt one another because I have. But even during those incidents, they weren’t always pleasant, I didn’t conclude in my heart that they had suddenly fallen out of love. However, if after that incident they had not gone back to one another and made up and asked for forgiveness and then gone on and they continued to behave in a way that they knew was designed to hurt the other person then I would have to begin to say to myself, or admit to myself, as painful as it might be, “I don’t think my parents love each other anymore. I don’t think they have any relationship anymore.”

So it is in a relationship with the Lord God. If we make sin a way of life, a practice, if we persist in sin, then there is no relationship at all. We have embraced sin and we have begun again to live for ourselves supremely. We have made ourselves and our own wishes and desires king. And you don’t point to a person who over a long period of time is persisting in sin, living and making choices that individual knows is designed to hurt God and then describe that person as a Christ-one, a person who is walking in the Spirit, who is walking with the Lord. What do they have? They have nothing. They have nothing. Now we need to be very careful in this area, in observing others, to not slip unwittingly into an area of judging our brothers in the body. I think we need to be very careful and withhold our judgement because we may catch that person at a bad moment. They may love the Lord with all their heart. I think to the best of his ability the disciple Peter wanted to please the Lord but he did some really unintelligent things at times. If we had approached Peter during the time he was denying the Lord, what would we have concluded, “This guy doesn’t have any relationship whatsoever with Jesus. I heard him deny it. Boy, that guy needs to be cast out or delivered or something.” And we would have been wrong if we had come to that conclusion. The Lord confronted Peter over that denial in a very gentle but in a piercing way. Peter’s heart was broken, you’ll remember, when the Lord dealt with him over that denial later on. But we shouldn’t go to the other extreme and watch somebody languishing in sin over a period of months.

Obviously their heart has grown cold, their relationship with God is going nowhere and then just to refuse to say anything to them because we don’t want to be judgmental. What we’re doing is we’re saying we recognize the fact that this person is no longer relating in love to the Father at all. We can tell it. By the way they’re talking, by their attitudes, by the way they’re living, their choices, they haven’t got anything going with God anymore. They’re not living like a Christian lives. They’re not free from the bondage of sin. Sin is taking it’s toll on their lives….but we don’t want to judge them. Well, that’s ridiculous. If we really love them as members of the body of Christ, what we need to do, is we need to get alone with them, put our arms around them, tell them that we love them and that we’ve noticed that changes have been taking place in their life and that their heart is apparently been really growing cold towards the things of the Lord and how can we help minister to them. No parent or brother or sister or family member who saw another member of their family that they loved destroying themselves in some way would refuse to go and talk to them about it under the pretense that they loved them and they didn’t want to say anything judgmental. On the contrary, the person who truly loves their brother or sister in Christ is going to be the one who will confront.

Not in a haughty, arrogant manner but in a way that will perhaps prompt them to do some evaluation, to do some auditing, that might put them back on track for eternity. We’re not just talking about somebody that might be screwing up here for a couple of months on earth. We’re talking about somebody that’s playing with fire, that’s playing with their eternal existence.

So salvation is a profound thing, it’s a very real thing. It’s not an abstract thing, it’s a real thing. Salvation is something that we live. It’s something that we experience. It’s something that becomes part of our lives. Who we are as people is transformed. It’s nothing less than that. And if we’re preaching a gospel that identifies salvation as anything other than being saved from the bondage of sin then what we are presenting is not very good news. To oversimplify the problems that God faced in restoring the ruptured God-man relationship, reconciliation, is to face the prospect of missing the full impact of His solution. By the way, to reconcile, in case you want to write down a brief definition. To reconcile means to restore to favor; to adjust our differences; to cause one thing to cease and another to take it’s place. The reconciliation outlined in the Bible is twofold; firstly, between man and God; and secondly, between man and man. That’s outlined in 2nd Corinthians 5:18-20.

I’d like to take a preliminary look right now and we are go into, into some length in discussing all four of these problems but I’d like to take a preliminary look right now at the various problems that God faced, the obstacles that needed to be overcome in restoring a mutual, loving, happy relationship between God and man.

The first thing is that the individual, the one that God happened to love, the one God had chosen to love was a criminal on death row. God had said, “The soul that sinneth, it shall surely die”. And man, prior to salvation, had sinned, had chosen to sin against God and was thus living under this sentence of death, eternally. And this made, if God was going to restore the relationship, if reconciliation was to take place, that meant that God’s first order of business was to remove the just consequence of death from a law violator He loves. To remove the just consequence of death from a law violator He loves. This is a problem here.

This matter of God, in effect, rescuing man the criminal, on the moral death row, is called God’s governmental problem. That’s the first problem that God faced in reconciliation. The governmental problem. Now I’m just, I’m giving you a preliminary look at the four problems and then we’ll come back and look at each one in depth.

The second problem that God had in restoring the broken God-Man relationship was that man by virtue of his moral drift away from God had lost his concept of God. He didn’t know what God was like or what God thought. And God, therefore, in order to restore a mutually happy relationship needed to reveal Himself to man. God needed to reveal Himself to man in some way. And this is the personal problem. Man not knowing who God was, who God’s person was, what His character was like. By virtue of man’s moral drift, he’d missed that, he’d forgotten, he’d lost that concept. So God’s second problem in reconciliation was the personal problem.

Now, we could say I guess, just this first problem, the governmental problem in itself problem enough. But added to that were three more problems. The personal problem and then thirdly, there was the problem of man’s pride. And believe me, that is a problem. I am speaking starting this evening and the next couple of sessions about pride and I think I’ve shared with some of you on that subject in the past. Pride is a horrendous thing, it’s a real cancer. Man had been away from God so long that he totally lost all perspective with regard to his own importance and ability. In other words, man began to think he was something that he wasn’t. He was actually under the impression that life itself revolved around him. Because there could be no meaningful relationship as long as man had and maintained this self-centered opinion of himself, it became necessary for God to reveal man to himself.

The second problem was that God was going to reveal Himself to man. The third problem was to find a way to reveal man to himself. Man needed to see himself for what he really was. This third problem was the hypocritical problem.

And finally, the last problem that God faced after he had resolved the first three and man had moved back into relationship with God, back into fellowship with God, man had a complete pardon in hand and the renewed ability to see God and himself accurately there still was this problem. In order to induce man, to provoke man, to urge man to terminate his love affair with sin and to prevent this new relationship from reverting to it’s prior state, to the way it was before salvation, God had to find the right formula to maintain the restored relationship by establishing a powerful sin deterrent barrier. This is the fourth problem or the motivational problem.

This is part of reconciliation. If and when God found a solution to these problems, all four of them. A way to free man from the just consequence of death; a way to reveal Himself to man, show man who he really was, God; and then show man who man really was, show him his heart; and then find a way to keep this new relationship from breaking apart again and reverting to the way it was before. If and when God could solve all of these problems then that same tender relationship that God enjoyed originally in the Garden of Eden would once again grow and flourish. And I need to say at this point, it’s very important once again to repeat, that there were many things that were to be accomplished by the Atonement. There were many things that God was going to accomplish in the Atonement. A solution to just one or two of these problems that we have written on the board would not have been adequate or sufficient. Many theories today on the Atonement will provide a solution maybe to this problem or maybe to this problem or maybe another problem.

But if God had only solved that problem it wouldn’t have been enough. He could have freed man from the just consequence of death so that man could continue to live but he would not have continued to live in intimate love relationship because he didn’t have the foggiest idea of who God was and he still would hold these superficial opinions of himself. And if God had merely through the Atonement revealed what He was really like to man that wouldn’t have been enough because He wouldn’t have been able to uphold the law or His moral government. He would have said, “The soul that sinneth it shall surely die”. Then how could he turn around and say “No. I changed my mind. The soul that sinneth it shall surely live.” and have anybody respect the integrity of the Law or the Law Giver. And even if God revealed to man what His heart was really like, man still has his own problems. He’s not looking at life accurately. He’s still deceived. Even if somehow the Atonement solved all three of these first problems, we don’t just want a change, we want a change that lasts. That’s going to work through our whole lives. It can’t be just a momentary experience, where we come to an altar one day and we see our sin and we go “Oh, that’s horrible. I really am dirty.” And we see just momentarily the love of God and we think “Oh, how wonderful.”

And there are people that teach today that’s what salvation is all about and the problem is that when people teach others that’s what salvation is then the chances are excellent that they’ll go out and from that point on and in the next two or three weeks they’ll be living in sin again. See God wants to provide us with a powerful sin deterrent barrier through the Cross so that it takes away our desire to continue to sin. It’s not just that He wants to deal with the results of the sins we have already committed, which the Cross does. The Cross is also to help us deal with future temptation. So God wanted to accomplish many, many things through the Atonement and it’s important that we have an accurate understanding of the Atonement as being many ends accomplished through one solution. Pretty brilliant plan. The plan of salvation is absolutely perfect. God accomplished everything He needed to do.

It is God’s design often times not just in reference to the Atonement but in reference to many areas of life that many ends will be accomplished or fulfilled or met by one solitary action. God did not generate light, for example, only that we should be able to see. Did God create light so that we could see? How many of you think He did? Yes, He did. God created light in order that we should see. But that’s not the only reason that He created light. There are numerous other ends that we’re aware of and perhaps there are many that are unknown to us in the creation of light.

Light is directly responsible for color, warmth and time, as well as having an indispensable impact on the development of agriculture. So God accomplished many things through the one act of creating light.

So it is with the Atonement, God accomplished many ends through one action. And keeping this in mind we want to now move on to examine the four major difficulties that God faced in his effort to reconcile the God-Man relationship. I don’t know how far we’re going to get here. We’re going to at least cover this first problem, the governmental problem and if we can we’ll cover the second problem as well or at least part of it today and then tomorrow morning we’ll continue.

Now an understanding…let me just erase…you’ve got these down here. Let me just erase these last three and let’s just concentrate for the last few moments on this first problem. God’s governmental problem. Let’s take them one at a time so we can understand and appreciate each one.

In understanding God’s governmental problem, which I think some people find the most complicated of the four to understand. I think its helpful again to remember the story, the Old Testament, of Daniel in the lion’s den.

Daniel had been selected by King Darius the Great as his virtual second in command. And Darius the Great at that time ruled over a kingdom that extended over all of the civilized world of that day. And the administration of the kingdom was handled by a hierarchy of 120 princes which in turn answered to 3 presidents of which Daniel was the chief.

Daniel didn’t just…you know…he wasn’t just born the chief president of Iran, or Persia, that day. He earned favor, the grace and favor of Darius the Great. Because he was a hard worker, because he was honest, because he was loyal, he exhibited those qualities that any king would want to have in a right hand man. The king loved Daniel and he trusted Daniel. But Daniel’s fellow leaders didn’t like him at all, for the simple reason that they were jealous that he was preferred, that he was special to the king, and they weren’t. And they were scheming and maneuvering to try and get him out of the way. And so they came before the king, played on the king’s pride and said “Oh king live forever”. Stupid saying really when you stop and think about it, nobody’s going to live forever. “Oh king live forever”. You know I think it would be much more realistic if they would just come and say, “Oh king have a very long and healthy, fruitful life” . “Oh king live forever. We have an idea. We just think you’re the greatest, Darius. There isn’t another leader on the face of the earth that can possibly compare with you. And it would be in everybody’s best interest in your kingdom, if they have any problem or they have any need that they should come to you, and you alone, to petition you, and you alone, for the next thirty days.”

Now that should have made Darius suspicious right there. I mean if I was Darius, I would have thought to myself, “Hey, if I’m really all that great, why make it thirty days? I mean, if I’m going to live forever, let’s just make this thing last forever, for perpetuity. Anybody wants to petition anybody, then they can just come and petition me. They need my consent and my decree and my blessing.” Well, of course, these colleagues of Daniel’s knew darn well that Daniel prayed to a Being or a personality that was higher than Darius the Great and he called him Jehovah. So this king ,in his pompous arrogance. signed this idiotic decree and then these other leaders sent their spies out to peek in on Daniel’s quiet time. And promptly came back to the king. You know, like a bunch of tattle tales. And told the king that Daniel was…I mean, here they’d got Polaroid shots of it, the whole works, they’ve got the proof, the evidence, hard evidence. Here was Daniel praying towards Jerusalem, towards Jehovah God, and he was not petitioning you, Darius. He was petitioning someone else, who he considers to be greater than you. Do you consider that very loyal? Consider Daniel’s position in the kingdom. I mean if the number two man in the kingdom is caught worshiping or petitioning somebody other than you…you’re going to have big problems, you’d better deal with this. And it wasn’t until that moment the king realized what had happened…he had really screwed up. The king, who loved Daniel so much, became ensnared by the words of his own mouth. He trapped himself. And see, they had a big thing in those days about law.

We have a big thing about it today. You know the Americans for Civil Liberties Union, for example, they’ve got this big thing about the letter of the law and they are going to enforce the constitution, the letter of the constitution upon all of us, even if it destroys the will of the framers of the constitution, and the way of life that we enjoy in this country. It’s a demonic, satanic controlled organization that we need to be praying against. The Americans for Civil Liberties Union has nothing to do with civil liberties whatsoever. They’re anti-God, they’re anti-righteousness, they’re anti-everything that this nation was founded upon.

Well, the Medes and the Persians had this big thing with law too and they would sign their various decrees or their various legislation with this phrase..”According to the law of the Medes and the Persians, which altereth not…”. Which means, you know, once you say it you don’t back out. And then the king would sign that and would make a mark on the paper or document with a signet ring that only he had. Once that ring went on to that document, it was, I mean, the law was poured in concrete. And it was a big thing, I mean, law is important. Law without sanctions is..? Advice.. Mere advice. And even back then they understood that much. And Darius is thinking to himself.. “My gosh, what am I going to do? We have passed a law and maybe it’s a stupid law but it’s a law. And people in this country, in this kingdom, need to know that when we pass laws we mean business. We’re not just doling out advice. But I’ve passed this law, I’ve signed it and Daniel has violated this law. What am I going to do? Especially, with all of these leaders in here snipping at my heels right now.” I’m sure feigning the greatest degree of grief over this unfortunate predicament. Oh, no….probably weeping over Daniel’s fate. How sad it was..the king really didn’t have any choice.

He had no choice at all. And it says, in fact I’ll read it to you. “…and then they answered and spoke before the king. Daniel, who is one of the exiles from Juda, pays no attention to you, oh king.” That’s an interesting way they start…Daniel pays no attention to you. Now was that true? Do you think that was true? If anybody was more loyal to the king, Darius, in all of his kingdom than Daniel, I don’t know who it would have been. They didn’t come and say, “Oh, Daniel just..we saw him praying to his God”, they came and they started by saying “he doesn’t pay any attention to you”. When I get to heaven, I kind of hope that God has kept a film archives because there’s a whole bunch of things in the Bible that I would like to put on a projector and watch. And one of those things was this event, where these leaders were going before Darius. I want to see the expressions on their face. I’d like to see the whole scene. “He pays no attention to you, oh king. Or to the injunction which you signed. But he keeps making his petition, three times a day.” And then as soon as the king heard this statement, he understood what he’d done. As soon as the king heard this statement, he was deeply distressed and set his mind on delivering Daniel. And even until sunset, he kept exerting himself to rescue him. Darius was really hurting.

Talk about a guy who kicked himself. I think Darius was probably furious with those people that had brought this information to him – I think he knew the whole thing all of a sudden. It was all clear to him what was going on. But he was more angry with himself than anybody else because he’d been duped. And he thought and he thought and he thought, “Man there’s got to be some kind of escape clause in this legislation. There’s got to be some way out of this.” But he couldn’t find it. And he waited until the last possible moment but in the end, he put Daniel in the lion’s den. And I think it is just beautiful the way he comes in, probably the crack of dawn the next morning and said, “Daniel, was your God able to deliver you?”. Hoping against all the odds that Daniel’s God really was who Daniel thought and said He was. Now this was the problem or dilemma that Darius faced. Again, how was he going to balance justice and mercy. The age old dilemma. If he doesn’t put Daniel in the lion’s den, he is exerting mercy to the maximum. Then what hurts and what’s going to suffer? Justice. Yes, and beyond that the law, right. The law of the Medes and the Persians which altereth. And what happens if he puts Daniel in the lion’s den what suffers? Daniel. That’s right, Daniel suffers but what else? Mercy. Mercy, but what else? The kingdom suffers, doesn’t it? You’re losing you’re best administrator and your best friend. Sure.

So, he’s got to chose, “Am I going to lose my best administrator and my best friend or am I going to lose the whole law of the kingdom.” Boy, talk about a time to start wringing your hands and biting your fingernails.

This was exactly the position that God was placed in after Adam and Eve had sinned by partaking of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which God told them not to partake of. God loves man, He loves him so much, He wants this intimate fellowship with him. But he also recognizes that sin is a horrible, powerful thing and he doesn’t want it to start spreading out of control in the universe. And to allow man, to help man to understand how he viewed sin and how terrible sin really was, He attached a sanction to it and that sanction was death. So what is God going to do? Is he going to, in effect, condone sin? And say “Okay, I know I said, The soul that sinneth it shall surely die but in this case, the soul that sinneth it shall live because I really like you and I really don’t want you to die.” but then what’s going to happen when the next person sins? God really likes him too. And the same with the next one and pretty soon nobody’s going to die for their sin. But the other alternative, of course, is that everybody dies. And that’s not to hot an alternative either. So this is God’s government problem. How can God, as the righteous moral governor of the universe, whose responsibility it is to uphold the law of the universe and to uphold righteousness and to protect society. How is He going to get out of this dilemma? This is God’s governmental problem.

How does a government balance justice and mercy and wisely dispense their consequences for the good of society? The purpose of laws and of courts in this country and, of course, in the whole universe is to dispense justice, not mercy. I think we make a big mistake, and I, you know this past couple of weeks I’ve seen program after program it seems, just the last couple of weeks on television dealing with rehabilitation.

And about poor prisoners, poor criminals who are just put in these warehouses and about what happens to them when they’re in these warehouses and how they’re made worse and when they come back out into society they’re worse than ever. We need to put more money into rehabilitation. We’ve got to make the prisons a nicer place, they’ve got to become schools, they’ve got to become training centers. Free education while the rest of us have to pay for ours. You can go out and murder somebody or rape somebody and then the taxpayers in return will pay for your free education. And we must not hold people in prison indefinitely because that’s inhumane. The purpose of penal institutions today in a lot of people’s minds is rehabilitating, it’s mercy. No it isn’t. It’s never meant to be merciful. A prison should be a rotten place so that people who go there don’t want to go back a second time. The purpose of prisons is to get people away from normal society.

If people are out murdering and stealing and raping by their own choice, which is, of-course, the big debate isn’t it because we’re told that people don’t do these things as a result of their own choice, they’re forced to do them, they can’t help it. I was born in a certain neighborhood and I never could get a very good education and so therefore that made me go out and rob banks. Or I grew up and my mother and father they got divorced at an early age so that made me go out and commit rape because I was so angry against women. No, the purpose of prisons and the purpose of laws is not to protect the violator. It’s to protect the rest of society from being violated. You know there might come a day when prison becomes such a nice place that people start committing crime so they can go there. Do you think I’m kidding? Some people join the army for that reason. And they’ll go to prison for that reason, too. I’ve heard people say, even now, that they’d rather be in prison than out. So the purpose of courts is not to protect the person who has violated the rights of somebody else, it’s to protect the rest of us who chose not to do these things from being victimized. And every just penalty, every just penalty, the lawbreaker pays strengthens moral government and almost every mercy he receives, weakens justice. Unless the government finds a method of blending mercy and justice.

Only the gospel can reconcile the two concepts without damaging or misusing one or the other. And had Darius been able to figure out the answer to his dilemma, what would he have had to done? He would have had to go to the lion’s den for Daniel. He loved Daniel but not that much. Not that much.

Now, how would you feel if tomorrow morning you turned on the radio, assuming of course you had access to a radio, I realize that these people here are depriving you of all news from the outside world. What would you feel like if you turned on the radio and suddenly you heard Dan Rather or somebody saying, “We have a news flash here. The President of the United States has just issued a blanket pardon for all prisoners currently incarcerated in American prisons, affective immediately.” How would you feel about that? When the prison doors all across the country began to swing open and all of these prisoners, all of these criminals, who had violated the law started to march back out into society without serving their terms, or their full terms, what message would be on their lips or in their minds? “Crime pays”. That was quick. That’s right. Crime pays. You can break the law and get away with it. What happens to the law? What has happened in our country, folks, to the law? You can break the law and get away with it. You sure can. The law in this country no longer has much in the way of teeth, it’s become toothless. It’s no longer become a deterrent to people contemplating violating the law. And what has happened to the integrity of the law giver? Well the courts in this country of course some people are saying today have made a mockery of the constitution and the of wishes of the legislators and the lawmakers.

God could never sacrifice the welfare of His government in such a way. Knowing full well that law without consequence or sanction is merely advice, God had to find a viable way to demonstrate to every moral being His respect for the law. For if God didn’t respect the law who else could be counted to do so. If God Himself didn’t respect the law then nobody else could be expected to think that it was very important. God’s law is important to you and to me today because God has demonstrated to us that it’s important to Him. And if God had demonstrated otherwise, that the law wasn’t all that important to Him, it wouldn’t be very important to us. Compromise on a such an issue of such immense importance was simply out of the question to God. He would uphold His law. God would remain just and righteous in His solemn responsibility to hold the moral fabric of His Kingdom in tact.

So, an expansion now on God’s governmental problem which was again how to remove the just consequence of death from a law violator He loves reveals the following dilemma for God. This sums up God’s governmental problem: 1. Man had sinned violating God’s moral law. 2. The consequence of this violation was death. To underscore the seriousness of sin. 3. Yet, God loved his creation and did not want to see him die. So again to recap. Man had sinned violating God’s moral law; the consequence of this violation was death; yet, God loved his creation and did not want to see him die. So, therefore, God’s problem was to find a way to: a. Uphold His law. b. Show His hatred for sin. c. Set the man He loved free. d. Without encouraging others to sin. That was the first – this is the first of God’s four problems in reconciliation to be solved in the Atonement. How would you get out of just that one?

Do you think at this point that you have a pretty good grasp or a pretty good understanding of what God’s governmental problem was in reconciliation? Does anybody have a real question, a real block on that before we go on to the next problem. Good.

The second problem that God faced in reconciling man to Himself, in restoring the ruptured God-Man relationship was the personal problem. God had to find a way to accurately reveal to man what his heart was really like.

Now, we’re going to perhaps not finish our discussion of this second problem that God faced, the personal problem, before it’s time to eat. If not we’ll continue on in the morning. I believe that it’s this second problem, the personal problem that has been more confounded and more confused in the minds of Christians than any of the other problems. This is where more Christians derive erroneous concepts of the Atonement and what the Atonement’s all about than any other area. So I want you to pay particularly close attention to what I am saying and what I am not saying. Okay?

We deal with the personal problem, we need to start by defining the difference between grief and wrath. We’re told that God experiences both. How are these emotions manifested in the death of Christ, in the Atonement, and in God’s heart?

They’re what conditions. In order for humanity to be reconciled with God, it’s necessary obviously that we know God. How can we be reconciled and move back into an loving relationship with somebody we don’t even know? So God, recognizing this problem and wanting to win man back to Himself, goes out of His way, strives, to reveal to man what His heart, God’s heart, is really like. We need to know what God’s character is like, we need to know how He’s disposed towards us and how He feels concerning sin. And we must further take time to study God’s love memos represented in this book, the Bible, dealing with His thoughts and His attitudes. Or, if we don’t, if we fail to take time to study those memos, then we’ll be destined, as a result of our moral drift away from God, to misinterpret Him entirely. Have you ever been in a relationship with somebody, and in the course of that relationship, and I don’t know what degree of relationship necessarily we are talking about here, it can vary, you’re in a conversation with somebody and at the end of making a statement that person shakes their head and they look at you and say “You just don’t know me at all. You just don’t know me.” God does that all the time. And you know when He does it I think more than any other time? After Sunday morning sermons – on the Atonement.

Now, we go back to the Garden of Eden. God has told Adam and Eve that they are not to partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and if they do they would surely die. They did. What did they do after they had sinned? After they had partaken of that fruit? They hid themselves. They sewed fig leaves together. Why do you think they hid? They were afraid, they were ashamed, they were embarrassed. They had changed. They were afraid. Why were they afraid now? They had never been afraid of God before. They were expecting wrath. They thought God had changed. Now what really happened when they ate that fruit? Who changed? They changed. And they assumed that because something had happened inside of them and suddenly their eyes were opened and they were thinking thoughts they hadn’t thought before, it was a profound alteration that had taken place in their minds. They thought because they had changed, that God too had changed. And God, all they had known about God including His sanctions, that He had expressed to them was that it came out of a heart of benevolence, of love. They loved Him and He loved them. And they walked together in the cool of the day and shared fellowship and intimacy.

And now we see this profound alteration has taken place in the heart of man and there Adam and Eve aren’t out there obeying the Lord doing what they’re supposed to do waiting for God to come down and walk with them in the cool of the day sharing fellowship and intimacy. They’re cowering and hiding behind bushes. What a picture. Adam thought because his heart had changed that God’s heart had also changed. And this very concept then, from that point on, carried on throughout the entire race of rebellious men and women. From that moment on they began to imagine, in their minds and in their hearts, a God of wrath filled with a desire for vindication. Suddenly this lovely Being who wanted fellowship is now coming with an iron mace, ready to destroy.

And people have wondered if perhaps the wrath of God that has been kindled by their sin and their actions and their disobedience might not at least partially be appeased by gifts or by their suffering. And so we’ve see, in pagan societies and not so pagan societies, throughout the history of the world and all over the world, people coming before idols bringing food, bringing all kinds of things, even the fruit of their own body, even their own children. They cut themselves and they bleed and they put spears and needles inside themselves and the Hindus, they’ll do all kinds of horrible things to their bodies to appease the wrath of God. “Okay God, I know that I’ve hurt you but see I’m bleeding now. I’m hurting too…so now you won’t be so mad against me. And I’ll bring you gifts. Please don’t be so mad.”

The tragic spectacle of man worshiping God from fear, rather than out of love and intimacy, is heightened by these pitiful rituals of self-inflicted torment. And the world wide hope is that God will somehow be soothed in His own heart as He watches the sinners suffer.

The founder of the covenant denomination, P. P. Waldenstrum said in his book , Be Ye Reconciled to God, “Many dear children of God view this as the very essence of Christ’s work. They think they never can escape the wrath of God unless it has been poured out upon someone else in their stead. In their opinion, the chief significance of Christ is that He be a shelter to shield against God or, so to speak, a lightening rod for His wrath in order that they may feel safe before Him.”

The old hymn writer, Isaiah Watts also highlights this misconception in one of his hymns, “Rich were the drops of Jesus’s blood that calm His frowning face. That sprinkled over the burning throne and turned the wrath to grace. Thy hands, dear Jesus, were not armed with a revenging rod like the Father’s were. No hard commission to perform the vengeance of a God. But always mercy, always mild and wrath forsook the throne, when Christ on the kind errand came and brought salvation down.”

Albert Barnes, whose written a book published by Bethany Fellowship entitled simply, The Atonement observed, “…in such language as this, while something may be set down to mere poetry, into the overflowing emotions of gratitude to the Savior for the part which He has performed in the work of Redemption, it is undoubtedly implied by a fair interpretation of the language that a change has been produced in God by the work of the Atonement and in some way a Being before stern, severe and angry has been made mild, forgiving and kind”.

So you see that this false concept about the heart of God that entered into Adam immediately subsequent to his sin and then passed down throughout human history to all of these societies where all they could think of is that when they did something wrong suddenly God was filled with this anger and this wrath and this desire to be vindicated. God has been hurt therefore He’s on the warpath to hurt those who have hurt Him. God is not going to forgive the sinner until somehow He has been paid back for what sin has done to Him. God is not going to forgive until He sees somebody suffer first. He is going to see blood shed. And when He sees blood and when He sees suffering then God will forgive. So you see, we have totally lost our concept of who God is. We’ve totally thrown agape love out the window. We’ve said God loves with strings attached. God wants to be paid back. He wants vindication. We don’t know Him. And God shakes His head and says, “You don’t know me. I didn’t love Adam any less at all the moment he sinned. I was grieved about what he did but I didn’t love him any less”. This serves to illustrate the tremendous need to discuss God’s attitude and approach in the process of reconciliation.

Christians have grasped hold of scriptures pertaining to God’s wrath and in the midst of all their theorizing, they’ve missed a very, very important point. That point is that it was not God who needed to be reconciled to man. It was not God who needed to be reconciled to man. It was man who needed to be reconciled to God. God’s disposition of love towards man has never changed. It has not been diminished by the fall or by any other subsequent event. And as we mentioned earlier there is, in fact, no sin which you or I could commit capable of severing God’s love. There is nothing one can do to make God stop loving. God hates sin but He loves people. The love of God never needed to be restored by perpetuation because it was never lost. The Atonement could not have changed God for He tells us plainly, in James 1:17, that His character is unchanging.

The essential idea in the Atonement is and I’m quoting here from Barnes, “…not that God was originally stern and inexorable and that He has been made mild and merciful by the Atonement but that the Atonement itself has its foundation in His willingness to pardon. Not that He has been made benevolent by the Atonement but that He was originally so disposed to show mercy that He was willing to stoop to any sacrifice but that of truth and justice in order to that He might show His willingness to pardon the guilty. He gave His son to die, not that He might be bought over to love but as the expression of love.” Do you understand the difference? When the Bible speaks of the wrath of God to what does it refer? Everywhere, that’s right, everywhere the object of God’s wrath is described as sin and unrighteousness, not people. God has a hatred and a fierce wrath for sin and for unrighteousness. But not for you or for me or for anybody else. If God started hating other moral beings it would pollute His character and He certainly wouldn’t be a Being possessing agape love.

How would the universe survive if God should one day cease to hate sin? So, God never hated us and He was never filled with wrath toward us. If that’s not why Jesus died, to replace that wrath with love, and if, the death of Christ did not appease the wrath of God towards sin, then what was the nature of His death and His sufferings. Fortunately, it, the Atonement, didn’t take away the wrath of God towards sin. Can you imagine that? The day after Jesus died, God no longer hates sin? That would be something wouldn’t it. So it wasn’t the wrath of God; it wasn’t the wrath of God’s heart or desire to be paid back or vindictiveness that was changed in the Atonement. That has nothing to do with the death of Jesus. But boy, have we been taught that.

The Bible speaks of “a wrath to come” in Luke 3:7 and man’s preparations for that day are also included in the scripture in Romans 2:5 where Paul says “But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasureth up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God”. Now the first time the word “wrath” appears in this scripture it can be interpreted to read or to mean guilt. You treasure up or you horde up or you harbor guilt in your heart because your heart is impenitent, you refuse to repent of it. And the second time the word “wrath” appears in this verse it’s the painful duty of a righteous God; it’s the consequence levied against unrepentant sinners. We’ve already seen or talked about the incredible grief that sin brings to the heart of God but we must also understand that the execution of judgement brings Him even less comfort. Let me say that again. Sin itself brings grief to the heart of God but the execution of judgement upon sinners brings Him even less comfort. God pleads and pleads and pleads with men to change their hearts so that He can withhold judgement – all throughout the Bible.

Ezekiel 33:11, “Say to them, as I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked…” Could He make it any clearer? “I have no pleasure”, I, God have no pleasure, ” in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn back, turn back from your evil ways for why, will you die, Oh house of Israel ?”

Lamentations 3:33, “For He does not afflict willingly nor grieve the sons of men”

Isaiah 1:18-20, “Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet”, alright, we accept that fact, “they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If you be willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land:” even though your sins have been red as crimson, “But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”

No desire to destroy. No desire to judge. No desire to see suffering or affliction. If we like Nineveh, will be willing to repent of our sin, then we will in the words of Jonah, “…find a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in loving-kindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.” That’s pretty nice isn’t it? One who relents concerning calamity, gracious, slow to anger, abundant in loving kindness. That’s the God of the Bible. We must not take our theology out of hymns but out of the word of God. Let God speak for Himself. Let Him reveal Himself to us. If we staunchly refuse God’s offer to, as He says, “…come and reason together”, then there will eventually come a time when in Gordon Olson’s words, “God is regretfully conscious that the means at His disposal to secure man’s obedience have been exhausted”. And that’s the worst moment to God. He pushes that moment off and off and off and off until He comes to a point where He’s regretfully aware of the fact that He’s done everything He can possibly do to secure our obedience and that now to protect the rest of society, to uphold His world government He must execute judgement. But He doesn’t do it with a smile curled up at the side of His mouth. It’s at this moment that God’s grief reaches a climax. For He knows for the highest good of all involved He must judge the unrepentant sinner.

Probably several, how many of you have listened at one time or another to the Agape land Album put out by the Agape Chorus..a children’s album. There is a song on that album that I think illustrates God’s attitude toward the judgement as well as anybody ever has that I am aware of. It’s a song about Noah and about the flood and it goes like this.

“But as the Lord was speaking, He then began to cry. He wept and wept for forty days and He wept for forty nights. And though it had never rained before in all of the earth’s long years, now up the ark began to rise afloat upon God’s tears.” That is the Bible God. That’s the God that we have relationship with.

What if we break here with a word of prayer and then we will go ahead and continue discussing this second area..the personal problem..and how our understanding of the heart of God has gotten all confused over the years not just other pagan societies but even we as Christians and how its affected the way that we relate to God and honor God and understand His nature and character.

Father, we thank you for this time together this afternoon. We thank you for the privilege of allowing us to come together and to talk about something that is so meaningful. Lord, I just ask that this truth would be burned into the depths of our souls; that we would be changed by truth; that we would become new men and women who are cleansed, who embrace both parts of your new covenant; your forgiveness of sin for which we’re so grateful; but also Lord a cleansed and transformed heart which we also need and want. Lord show us who You really are and show us ourselves as well. In Jesus name.