[0:00] Some people who are a bit familiar with the Christian faith will say things like this to us. I've rarely had anybody say, I've had people say something like this to me face to face.
[0:11] It's more something that you read or you'll see on YouTube. You Christians are crazy. You believe in a petty tyrant, thin-skinned God who's always angry and is always seeking to mete out his anger at human beings who are just basically trying to mind their own business.
[0:35] And how preposterous is this to think that your God is just so completely consumed with anger and consumed with judgment, and that's bad enough. But it's even worse that you Christians think that the brilliant idea around this is that he should kill his son and that somehow or another that lets you all off the hook.
[0:54] How is that not something like child abuse? How is that not just something that fosters anger in people and fosters, in fact, gives permission for people to do horrible things to their kids?
[1:05] The whole idea of Christianity is completely and utterly preposterous. Here endeth the sermon. No. I don't know if you've ever had anybody say that.
[1:17] You can read about it. People like Christopher Hitchens were very famous for going on rants like this. Often one of the things that Christians will say in the face of that, and I've only had it maybe twice, somebody say something along that lines to me in a coffee shop.
[1:33] In fact, in both cases, they said it with quite a loud voice. And I'll be honest with you. I got very red-faced because the whole Starbucks turned to look at me as this guy went on this rant about me.
[1:47] But usually you don't have people say that to your face. You'll just see it in YouTube. A lot of times Christians, in response to this, will say something like, well, that's sort of more of an Old Testament idea, and Christians aren't Old Testament people.
[2:03] We're New Testament people. And the New Testament really portrays God as love and Jesus as love, and that's not the right way to understand what the Christian faith is.
[2:15] Now, the unfortunate thing is that if the person speaking to you knows the Bible at all, they'll say, I'm sorry, it's in the New Testament. And that's the verse that we're looking at today, is one of the times in the New Testament where, in fact, the anger of God at sin is, in fact, very specifically and explicitly taught.
[2:38] It's just not often recognized because it's an old-fashioned word that we don't use very often. So if you would just turn your Bibles again, I'm going to bring it to your attention. I'm going to read the three verses before it, or the four verses before it, and then the key verse.
[2:54] And this is going to be one of those Sundays where we're just going to really camp on this idea of God's anger. And I can't give you advice about how to handle a conversation like that with people.
[3:09] Probably my main advice would be to say, listen, you've caught me really off guard on this. How about if you talk to my pastor? Or just caught you off guard.
[3:22] Maybe we can get together in a week, and I'd love to try to explore this with you. I'm not quite sure what to say, but I'd love to continue. And that might be just the best thing that you can do. But we're going to explore this idea and the objections that most Canadians would have to it.
[3:36] But let's look at it first. It's 1 John, right at the back of your Bible, chapter 1, verse 8, and we'll start there. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
[3:49] If we confess our sins, he, that is God, is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him, that is God, a liar, and his word is not in us.
[4:06] My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous.
[4:18] He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. And the word propitiation means something which turns aside.
[4:33] I'm going to unpack the idea a little bit more. Something that turns aside God's anger. That's what it means. And it's here, it's in chapter 4, it's in the book of Romans, and it takes place in a noun form in a variety of other places in the Gospels.
[4:47] I think it's a total of six times in the New Testament this word is used. So if we have somebody making this very strong case against Christianity and we try to say it's an Old Testament idea, not a New Testament idea, if they know the Bible at all, they'll come back at us and we won't really know what to do.
[5:07] So let's just think about it for a second. Well, the first thing about this is to think about anger. I mean, that's where a lot of this gets its power. This is quite a few years ago now, but there was a woman who used to go to this church.
[5:23] This is a long, long time ago. I've been here a long time. I hadn't realized it was as long until Andrew got up and reminded us. Just if you're wondering, I came here as a pastor at 14, so 25 years, I'm only 39.
[5:35] Not true. But there was a woman who was about to start having children and one day she wanted to talk to me and we set up a time to talk. And one of the things that she shared with me is that she had a mom, she was really looking forward to getting married, but she had a great fear about having children.
[5:53] And the reason she had a great fear about having children is that she herself had a mom who was very anger driven. You never knew what would set off her mom's anger, but something would set it off.
[6:06] It was all very idiosyncratic. It was always something self-centered, something that offended her in some way. And she would set off her mom's anger. And then her mom was very, very, very, she used corporal physical punishment and was very, very violent with this woman.
[6:23] And she said, the problem is that I see my mom and myself more and more. And I'm just really, really worried that if I actually have kids, if I'm able to have kids, that I'll end up being like my mom and that I'll have this anger and I'll do so much violence to them.
[6:46] Now, we had several conversations around all of this and the point of it isn't how you counsel somebody about something like that, but the fact of the matter is is that we all know anger driven individuals, every single one of us.
[6:57] In fact, if we were just to say, let's share some stories afterwards about anger driven people, we'd all have stories. In fact, we might start trying to top each other with stories about anger. And so when we hear this idea of this idea of propitiation, that God's anger has to be turned aside, the first thing that we do is start to think of anger driven individuals.
[7:19] In fact, that'd be exactly what people in Jesus' time would have thought about because one of the things that characterized the gods and the goddesses is you never knew when you were going to piss them off and when they were pissed off, boy, they were pissed off and they would do all sorts of terrible things to you.
[7:34] Now, what I would just say to that is I'd say one particular thing for us as Christians when we see this idea, which is very unsettling, and that is this, Christians all accept that the most perfect revelation of God is Jesus.
[7:48] And all I would say to anybody, if I had the chance, is I'd say, I just challenge you to this. I ask you to read the four gospels. Just read the four gospels. It's recognized that these are either eyewitness biographies of Jesus or based on eyewitness testimony of Jesus.
[8:05] And I ask you, read these four gospels and then see if Jesus is an anger driven individual. And nobody could read the stories of Jesus and think that he was an anger driven individual.
[8:17] And then I might say, and not only is Jesus not an anger driven individual, but if you know anything at all about the Christian faith, that the heart of the Christian faith is this idea of the Trinity. You're going to get sort of a bit bored of me always going back to who God is, but the fact that the God is triune is unbelievably important.
[8:34] The fact of the matter is, is that you could wonder about Allah's anger. But the fact is that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity shows that before there were any human beings, before there was a creation at all, that from all eternity, the Father loved the Son and the Son loved the Father.
[8:49] And the Holy Spirit both loved the Father and the Son and is the love between the Father and the Son. And you can see that that there's this fundamental harmony, that there's no anger in God in his very nature.
[9:01] And that God in his very nature creates not out of anger, but out of love and out of goodness. And so whatever this doctrine means, what we have to understand is God is not an anger driven petty tyrant.
[9:15] Listen again. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
[9:29] He is the propitiation for our sins. But some of you might say, but George, you're still, I don't know, like, but don't you think a God that never gets angry is a better God?
[9:43] Like, don't you think that that should be what we're evolving to, is to not be angry? Don't you think if God is really God that he should evolve to never even having this line of propitiation in the Bible at all?
[9:57] To which I would just say this. Think about anger again a little bit more. Now, no longer thinking about anger driven individuals who are petty tyrants.
[10:08] Imagine that you were to take a group of people and you were to show them a documentary, maybe even a bit of a graphic documentary, of the many places in the world where either young girls are stolen from their family to satisfy the sexual lusts of men, or where parents actually sell their young girls, like very, very young girls.
[10:36] And imagine you watch that video. Would it be a sign of moral evolution if you were not mad at that? Somebody who could watch that and think about it and not be mad, it's a sign that they're immoral.
[10:58] They're missing something. To not be angry at real abusive evil. In fact, even think about it for a second.
[11:11] Imagine that after the video that not only is one of the people not mad at it, but they then give you a long argument as to why it's not as bad as it looks.
[11:22] They become a spin doctor for evil and you would look and say, you're a spin... They would not be a person that any one of us would point to and say this is an example of highly evolved moral person.
[11:39] We would say there's something wrong with you. And it's the same thing as this. Why would we want a God that's never angry at evil? Why would we want a God who is not angry at...
[11:53] During Cambodia, when the Pol Pot killed one-third of the population of the country, why would we want a God who's not angry at that?
[12:08] The fact of the matter is is that God's... This doctrine of God's settled anger against evil is in fact a good thing. Like, why would you want to worship a God that does not get angry at great evil and injustice?
[12:25] Listen again to the text. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
[12:37] He is the propitiation for our sins. But some of you might say, George, here's part of the problem. The idea of sin is just a completely and utterly ridiculous idea.
[12:49] And it is. I don't watch very many comedians on Netflix or any of the other places where you can watch comedians. But I can tell you this. The little that I know about them, that if a comedian came out onto the stage and began by saying, I'm a sinner, the whole audience would laugh.
[13:07] I want to talk about how bad a sinner I am, the whole audience would laugh. It instantly conjures up prune-like spinsters frowning at people having fun.
[13:22] Nuns and monks who are completely and utterly off their rockers with fasting and self-flagellation, being upset with people. That's the image that it conjures to our society and our culture.
[13:37] And it's one of the reasons why usually if I talk to non-Christians, I won't use the word sin. I would only use the word sin if I had really developed a very long relationship with them. I would, in fact, talk about evil and wickedness.
[13:50] But, in fact, the idea of sin is something which is a very, very important word for Christians to remember. It's a very, very good word for Christians to remember because it includes God in it.
[14:07] that if I was just to use the way Canadians speak about right and wrong and I would do something, maybe I punch Chris. I'd never punch Chris. He's younger, vastly bigger, and stronger than me.
[14:19] It would be a foolish thing to do. But let's say for some reason I decided I would punch Chris. Well, people can say, well, you've done something wrong to Chris. It was also a really stupid thing to do. But you did a wrong thing to Chris.
[14:31] And it's just between you and Chris. Why on earth does it include something like God? It's just between the two of you.
[14:43] So here's where the word, this is where the doctrine of sin is very important for Christians to remember because it actually opens up the fact that it's never just a private act of evil against a person.
[14:56] There's something else involved. And I'll give you a story, an illustration to help you to understand it. I was going to originally use that some Canadians went and invaded the U.S. embassy and took part of it over. But given how people in Canada feel about Trump, we might cheer at that.
[15:09] So I won't use the U.S. as an example. Imagine that there's a group of Canadians, three or four from this church after the service, and they go to the French embassy. And while they go into the French embassy, they punch the guards and go into the embassy and start throwing their weight around, punching a couple of the embassy staff and maybe even punching the ambassador from France.
[15:32] Now here's the question. Is their action just a sin or just a wrongdoing against the individuals that they punch? No.
[15:46] It's an offense against France. In fact, it would be the case that if after they came out, Canadians just said, yay, way to go, and the Canadian government refused to try to punish them at all or do anything at all like that, not only would the people who were punched be upset, all of France would be upset.
[16:08] All of France would be upset because it wasn't just an individual act against a particular person. It was an act of aggression against France. And that's how everybody in Canada and throughout the entire world would understand it.
[16:21] And you see, this is then why the doctrine of sin is very important. It's why churches need to never lose the doctrine of sin because to say that something's wrong or something's evil can easily seem as if it's just between me and the person who's wrong.
[16:35] But the idea of sin always brings to our remembrance that it's also something against God. God is included. Why? God is the creator of all things. He is the sustainer of all things.
[16:46] He is sovereign over all things. He has never renounced his sovereignty. He didn't go down and look and say, I'm sick and tired of Canada. I'm sick and tired of the earth. I'm just going to forget about it. If he forgot about it, we wouldn't exist.
[16:59] He's never given up his sovereignty over the entire world. And so every act against the created order, because it can be, it's a sin to pollute.
[17:11] It's a sin to rape the earth. Any act against animals which is cruel is a sin. It's against God's creation. And any act against a human being is also a sin.
[17:24] And so therefore it is appropriate for God to be upset. Nobody would wonder why France was upset that Canadians went in and punched the ambassador. We wouldn't think they were being ridiculous.
[17:36] And so it is that every human being needs to understand that their wrong actions is also something against God. Listen again to the text. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father.
[17:53] Jesus Christ, the righteous, he is the propitiation for our sins. Some of you might say, I'm the downtown version of a Kanata soccer mom.
[18:06] Like, everybody loves me. I don't do anything bad. Like, I'm a good person. Like, you'd want to have me as your neighbor. Like, the school loves it that my kids go to that school because I volunteer and help them out all the time.
[18:17] I'm a good employee. Like, I'm a good person. Like, I've never done anything against God. Like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can see that God should do something about those people who abuse children and Paul Pot and what he did in Cambodia, but I'm a good person.
[18:31] I'm a soccer mom. I'm a deputy minister in the civil service. Like, I know how to mind my P's and Q's and dot my I's and cross my T's. I haven't done racist things or anything like that that's going to get me in trouble.
[18:44] Well, you can look through my whole Twitter history. Nothing bad. Well, the illustration of the French embassy once again would show us the problem.
[18:54] Let's say in this particular case that a group of you go in and you punch the guard and all and you punch the ambassador but then you take over a whole floor of the embassy and you seal it off and through the door you apologize for having punched the person but basically the fact of the matter is you say, listen, I love the location.
[19:17] This is way nicer than my apartment or my house. I don't have to pay anything for it. Like, the furniture is really nice. It's really clean and by the way I expect the French government to keep sending in a maid every day and clean everything like that and I'll just ignore France.
[19:32] I'll just live here but I'll ignore France. Well, what would we say? Well, we think actually what we would think is we'd think they were mentally ill. Like, we'd say anybody who thinks they can take over the third floor or the second floor of the French embassy and just live there as if it's theirs and doesn't think there should be any consequences or that they've bothered the French government and that if the French government is mad, it's like, what's your problem?
[19:57] Like, we'd think you're missing something, like you're mentally ill. But that's exactly the story of the soccer mom or the deputy minister. We live in God's world. We breathe his air.
[20:09] We depend upon gravity. We didn't create ourselves. God gave us the gift of life. Every single breath we take is given to us by God. Every thought that we have in our mind is given to us by God.
[20:22] Everything that is good is, in a sense, coming from God. We consistently and utterly live in God's world and yet, if we completely and utterly ignore him, it's no different than taking over the third floor of the embassy, thinking it's yours and ignoring the French government and then wondering why they think it's wrong.
[20:46] Once again, listen to the text. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father. Jesus Christ, the righteous, he is the propitiation for our sins.
[21:00] But then some of you might say, okay, well, this propitiation, the siniest side of the wrath of God, well, why doesn't God just get over it? Like, isn't that a sign of maturity? Like, the mature person gets over it.
[21:11] Why doesn't God just get over it? Now, think about it for a second. Who usually says get over it? The person who's done the wrong.
[21:21] Imagine this scenario. My wife isn't here because we had three of our grandchildren come and spend a sleepover, and anyway, that's why she's not here this morning.
[21:32] But imagine that I'm up here, and then halfway through the service, my wife Louise comes walking on the stage. She singles to Andrew with, you know how women can have the look? The look.
[21:43] I can't do it. I should have somebody come up here and give the look. Andrew has been married for many years. He understands the look. And she points to this, and Andrew quickly turns it on, and then she points at me, and he quickly mutes me.
[21:59] And then Louise gets up on the stage and tells you the terrible thing I did to her this past week. And you were all horrified at what I've done.
[22:14] And then I say to Andrew, to that, and I'd say to Louise, why don't you just get over it? How would that go over with the whole room?
[22:26] Would any of you say, George, you hear what she just said? you can't say, why don't you just get over it? So why is it that we can say that to God?
[22:42] Why don't you just get over it? Why don't you just get over it? Listen to the text again. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ.
[22:58] He is the propitiation for our sins, the one who deals with God's wrath in a just way. But, some of you might say, okay, George, I think God's still a little bit overreacting about this whole thing, this anger thing, you know?
[23:17] Because I'm not that bad a guy or a gal. Here's another thing. Just imagine for a moment, if I ask you, can you think of somebody who did something wrong to you that you still remember and are bothered by?
[23:31] My guess is every single one of us will instantly remember something that's happened to us that was wrong and we still remember. In fact, I would bet that if I said, we're going to take 20 minutes, half an hour, I'd like you to write down 10 things you remember that have been wrong to you and you still remember and it still bothers you, probably all of us would be able to write that list.
[23:51] Some of us might actually, when we start to think about it, this is one of the problems with memory, is that it might go back to something when we were 12 or 10 or 8. We all know what it is, especially for those of us who are a little bit older, that all of a sudden we smell a smell or we hear a sound or we see a scene and it brings us right back to that time when we were 12 or when we were 16 or some other time and we remember once again, it might have slipped our mind, but it's never really gone away.
[24:18] We remember that thing which is wrong. We all have that, but the very, very sobering thing is that people have those same thoughts and memories about me and about you.
[24:39] The fact of the matter is we all know that we do things that are wrong and they can trouble us. They can make us sleepless. They can make us ashamed. They can trouble us and I talked about that a little bit last week in the sermon about one of the sources of like a type of secular cursing.
[24:56] But the fact of the matter is is that even though we can be troubled very much by certain things that most of us actually very quickly discount the way we've hurt another person and no longer think about it.
[25:07] So imagine what it would be like if all of a sudden God was to show up and he was to freeze me in space and all of a sudden people who remembered something that I had done wrong to them or I had done wrong to others that they loved and they still remembered it and it still hurt them and they start to file in because they're going to remind me about it.
[25:33] Every seat in here would be full. God is able to bring them and they remembered. Every seat in this room would be full. In fact, this room would be too small.
[25:43] I don't know how big the room would have to be. It might have to sit several thousand. The fact of the matter is is that I would be horrified. I would see people I wouldn't remember but then if they start to voice it they say, George, this is what you did to me when I was 10.
[25:58] This is what you did to me when I was 8 and you were 8. This is what you did to me, George, when you first got ordained. This is how you spoke in such a way and how it hurt me. And many people would have more than one thing that they would say and the room would have not just 300 and some but 3,000 and some and I would have to stand there in the face of all those people throughout my life that I have done something wrong to them that it was sufficiently wrong that they still remember it and it still bothers them and hurts them.
[26:30] How could I stand in front of that? And if you folks here were able by the power of God to all be off on the side and to watch that you would get quieter and quieter and quieter as the room filled and as each person came in as they told the whole room what it was that I had done and you would know that I had no hope at all of satisfying their righteous anger and bother and bother at what I had done to them.
[27:13] I might be able to handle one or two or three or four but I couldn't handle them all. See the God who does exist is a God who knows all things sees all things and he doesn't forget and his not forgetting isn't a bad thing because remember what I just said?
[27:39] Why don't you just forget about it? Whoa! No, no, no, no. There's some things you don't forget about. How could I possibly stand before these demands and God hasn't even added his own voice and nobody has even added the things that I've said and done in my own mind that only God has known?
[28:02] Could you imagine what it would be like if God all of a sudden revealed to every person the different things in my mind that I have thought and done and said in my mind that have been silent and how big the room would be and how could I stand before it?
[28:17] Listen again. My little children I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin but if anyone does sin we have an advocate with the Father. Jesus Christ the righteous.
[28:28] He is our advocate and he's not just our advocate he's not just the righteous one. He is the propitiation for our sins.
[28:41] He is the one who satisfies God's proper anger at the evil that I have done the things which I should have done which I did not do which demand that there be some satisfaction of justice and he is the one who satisfies God's proper anger because he is just and he does something for me in my place when I could not stand for I would be completely and utterly unmade.
[29:22] Why didn't he just pardon me? Really? Really? If just before Trump whenever it is whether he loses this election or whether he has to step down at the end if just at the end of that if Trump takes all of his cronies and pardons them how many of you will celebrate it and say that's a good thing he just gave him a pardon?
[29:42] What will you say? That dirty rascal It's not a sign of justice Justice needs to be paid Here's this two final types of things to understand what it is that Jesus does for me Two of them are both illustrations that I've used before in different contexts I apologize for those who've heard them before but I'm still using them because they're a very good one You see what we want is we want some type of satisfaction Justice when things have been wrong there needs to be not just justice shown but there needs to be Here's the illustration I've used before You have a young woman and her husband is off traveling a lot for the job they're just starting out in life they live paycheck to paycheck they don't shop at Nordstrom's they shop at Walmart they look forward to the day they could afford Costco they just shop at Walmart they go to
[30:43] Fresco they go to the reduced section if they go into Loblaws they're just getting paycheck to paycheck but the young woman's mom has given her a couple of extra dollars to treat the kids and so the husband has gone on one of his trips trying to make some money and she goes to this little restaurant just a family restaurant takes her three little kids five three and one into the restaurant they're basically good kids but she goes into the restaurant she has the restaurant time from hell her waiter or waitress has that perfect ability to not see when you signal you know those times when you're in the waitress and the waitress just seems to have that ability to not see you and respond and so they're not getting served and the kids start to get a bit antsy and then finally they come and they bring them water and the waitress throws up and goes okay like what do you want like this and she's just really rude to her and she looks at her kids and she rolls her eyes and she's rude and she's really slow with the food and so the kids make a little bit of mess they spill their water and every time the waitress comes with a loud sigh she sighs about having to clean up the mess and people in the restaurant are now looking and then finally the food comes and the waitress gets the order all wrong but rather than the waitress apologizing she says it you know women like you just make me sick and tired like you just have baby brain and baby brain and mommy brain
[32:04] I didn't get the order wrong you got the order wrong she says it with a loud voice and the whole restaurant is looking at the mom and the poor mom is getting all red faced completely and utterly embarrassed she doesn't know what to do so she ends up just giving in to it because she can't stand up for herself and her kids are upset and everybody in the room is looking at her and she just feels completely terrible and so she's leaving the restaurant and as she's leaving the restaurant finally she's trying to get her kids out she's just the tears are coming down her face she doesn't care about her makeup being wrecked and her tears are coming down the face and there's an older woman who comes into the restaurant she sees this young woman with the three little kids and the older woman says honey like dear what's wrong and the woman it's the first time she's been in the whole restaurant that anybody's even shown any compassion to her at all and she just starts to blurt it out how terrible it's been and how the waitress mistreated her and how everything's wrong and the food was wrong and she gets all upset and the woman you can just see her heart's breaking with compassion the older woman for her and then she says I'm the owner of the restaurant
[33:04] I'm going to make it right I want you to be satisfied I'm going to make it right we could all discuss afterwards over coffee about how she's going to make it right part of her making it right is going to cost herself right the owner and part of it might be that she goes in and she says excuse me everybody I really apologize for the way my staff have treated this young woman what they did was reprehensible they're fired immediately by the way and I'm just really bad I'm really sad that this has come up to upset you and just to show you my commitment to this being a family restaurant apple pie for everyone on me and then she goes and not only does she give the lecture to the waitress and she fires the waitress but she says to the young woman listen you're going to be my guest in this restaurant for the next year you come in you order anything you want it's all on me and all everything is dealt with the injustice is dealt with her reputation the lack of money that she had all of those things and the woman goes away thinking it still was really hard but justice was done and I'm satisfied imagine once again all the people here and they all have these things about that I have done wrong and I can't deal with them
[34:29] I might be able to make amendment of life for one or two or three or four but all of the things and I can't possibly deal with this and the Bible says that Jesus is the propitiation for my sins for your sins and what that means is that Jesus seeing my inability to deal with justice and understanding all of us intrinsically understanding that what we need with justice is that it's made right that there's a satisfaction and that's what it means by satisfying God's anger it's not that he's willful it's not that he's hateful he's only love he's only driven by justice and God can't just pardon me because all of those who have wronged me can say you can't just there needs to be some sense of satisfaction and so in this profound mystery of grace God the son of God takes my place he is the perfect one his sinless life for mine his place he trades places with me at this profound eternal level that the anger of God at my wrong can be dealt with the final example
[35:43] I've used this before because you might say well how it is that Jesus can do that for me and for all the people we inherently understand that it is possible for certain natural representatives to take the place of many lives two years from now three years from now COVID-19 is a long distant memory there's been a vaccine nobody in the earth will get it and you go to Wembley Stadium 110,000 people they're there to watch a soccer game a football game and sometime during the show all of a sudden a group of terrorists they get all of the entrances they lock them up with chains there's an announcement made that they put a small nuclear bomb in the very center of the field the whole place is a hostage they say if anybody tries to do anything we're going to start shooting innocent people and all of England and all of the world will be spellbound by this thing terrorists having taken over 110,000 people in Wembley Stadium and the whole world would be captured by it all of England
[36:46] Scotland Ireland and Wales Canada United States all of the former commonwealth everybody would be mesmerized by this 110,000 people held captive by these terrorists and if I called them up and said if you let them all go I'll sit on the bomb they'd go what?
[37:03] are you nuts? hang up I can't just go and sit on a bomb so they give 110,000 people up the Queen called them up the Queen of England called them up and said if you let those 110,000 people go I will sit on the bomb in their stead the terrorists would take that in a moment she naturally could take the place of 110,000 people and no one would question or doubt it this teaching that when Jesus dies on the cross he is dying as a propitiation for your sin and for mine that God the Son of God if the Queen of England can naturally stand for 110,000 people how much more can God the Son of God stand for every human being who has ever lived and ever will live and how could it not be that he by his emptying himself of his glory of his divine prerogatives of his splendor of his appearance of God and he's setting all of these aside all of these aside so that he ends up dying on a cross and experiencing all there is to taste of death you can see that within this that there is a full satisfaction of justice and the whole gospel is this profound news that God never stops being opposed to injustice he never stops being opposed to evil and he does not just merely pardon and let go his cronies but that God the Son of God seen my great need and yours that we could not deal with on our own he comes to me and says take my hand if you take my hand
[38:58] I'll take your place and you can have my place and I am willing to be undone and unmade for you and that is what the gospel is that is what the gospel is that is what the text here says listen to it again my little children I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin but if anyone does sin we have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous he is the propitiation for our sins just a couple of things as we close he's done it but we need to receive it and we can only receive it not by weighing our merits but by saying I need you thank you for doing this I accept you as my savior and my lord and that profound thing that you do for me the second thing about this which is so important for us just as we close is it helps us to understand why Christians should never be partners or spin doctors for evil and injustice because we see that God never lets evil and injustice off the hook and as we are formed and shaped by the gospel it means that we should be formed and shaped to always be repelled and horrified and properly angry at evil and injustice the gospel shapes us for goodness and for justice and for a hatred a proper hatred of evil and injustice and finally only the gospel provides the impetus and the grounds by which I can begin to examine my own life to know that
[41:05] Jesus has dealt with all of the demands of justice against me with nothing left out in his once for all sacrifice and to know that when he takes my place and bears the proper anger of God that justice might be satisfied and offers me his place instead and to know that one day I will dwell in glory does not then give me not because of anything I've done or not because of my marriage but purely because what of Christ has done for me and that God with perfect knowledge there's nothing in my past present or future that was not dealt with by Jesus upon his death on the cross that actually begins to provide a type of security for me to look at the evil that I do day by day or maybe evil that I have done in the past to begin to say to God and to people that was wrong I beg your forgiveness how can I amend my life only in that sure and strong place of the gospel can we begin to have a place to stand to see ourselves without self-deception without self-flattery but to have one who's our advocate who can also speak to us and say
[42:23] George let's look at this let's look at this let's look at this together remember I've already paid for it let's look at this because evil always ruins our lives and is never the basis of our identity please stand invite you to stand just bow our heads in prayer father we give you thanks and praise that you do not tolerate evil and injustice that it is always wrong to you we give you thanks and praise that you will judge father we confess before you that there is no way at all on our own merits or by own cleverness or flattery or spin that we could stand before perfect justice we acknowledge that our standing before you our cry to you as our father our cry to you as our father who loves us is not based on our ability to spin our lives but our acknowledgement that we can only stand before you because our blessed savior jesus is our propitiation that he has stood in our place and dealt and been dealt the punishment that we properly deserve that justice might be satisfied and has not only taken our place to bear this proper anger and evil but has offered us his perfect standing with you so father we stand here only in jesus our propitiation and we ask father that as your holy spirit draws us to be more and more to be more deeply knowledgeable and aware of what it is that jesus has done for us that father as this becomes more true in our lives the way that we understand ourselves and see our lives and see our past and our present and our future we thank you father that it is a place by which we can deal with those things that we do that are wrong day by day we thank you father that our destiny is secure in jesus and we ask as well that you would so grip us with the gospel that we are opposed to all evil and injustice in ourselves and in others that you would purify our moral sensibilities and our sensibilities around justice that we would not be swayed by the fashion of the powerful and the fashion of the media but that we would be able to look upon your perfect face of justice and even when the whole world says injustice is just that we would know that that is not true and we would not bend our knees to injustice or support it or applaud it but humbly pray and speak against it
[45:13] Lord please make us such people to your honor and your glory and the furtherance of your kingdom and all God's people said Amen