Divine Retribution (Jonathan Edwards) | The Whole Counsel

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Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder, and with me again is Chuck Baggett, and we are coming near to the end of a book that we've been doing for about 18 weeks now, and that is a book called

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Salvation in Full Color, 20 Sermons by Great Awakening Preachers. And it is a series of sermons all on the theme of redemption, how does

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God save us? And it is laid out in a very theological and experiential order, so it does start with the character of God, and then it ends with dealing with divine retribution and the warnings that God gives us.

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So it really is a very helpful book. It is a pretty, I would say, it's a challenging go.

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The sermons were written in the 1700s. Some of them are very clear, and some of them are a bit academic.

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I don't want to scare anybody off, but you probably need to be prepared for that. But it really is worth the effort, and I wouldn't say that if I didn't really believe it.

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We've read through it a couple of times as a church, and we're pretty careful in recommending books at the church.

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We try not to recommend books that are just academic. We try not to recommend books that are just interesting, and some people, on some secondary topic, we want to limit our reading to the very best of the best.

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And so this is one of the books we've recommended and read through as a church more than once in the last 20 years. But it is a book that requires some earnestness.

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Now, we're looking at a sermon by Jonathan Edwards. So I think that Edwards, of all the preachers in this book,

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Edwards is probably the best known. But let me give you just a few highlights from his life that Mr.

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Roberts mentions in the introduction to the chapter, and then Chuck, you're going to run us through an overview of the sermon.

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Jonathan Edwards, born in 1703, his mother was a very godly and very intellectual young woman, daughter of a famous pastor named

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Solomon Stoddard. And Stoddard's not as well known today, but he was very well known in that day, arguably the most influential pastor in the early decades of the 18th century in the

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New England area. Stoddard had pastored during five seasons of revival, extraordinary seasons of grace in his church.

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Eventually, Edwards is going to work with Stoddard. And though Stoddard was an earnest, godly man, he also had some wrong views of church membership that developed.

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It's called the halfway covenant. You can look that up. We don't have time to cover it here. Edwards' first stirrings, spiritually, happened when he was a seven -year -old during a time of revival in the area, and that stirring faded.

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So it kind of, you know, made him interested in his soul, and then it passed away. Later, when he went to college, toward the end of college, he went through another season of real concern over his soul, and that led to genuine and lasting conversion.

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Now, in 1722, when he was about 19 years old and had been a Christian for a few years, he began preaching.

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He was licensed to preach, and he started preaching in New York. Preached there for about eight months. Eventually, in 1726, he becomes the assistant to his grandfather,

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Solomon Stoddard, and he marries a young woman named Sarah, who also was a very capable young woman and a great aid to him throughout his life.

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1729, three years after joining arms, so to speak, to work with his grandfather.

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In 1729, Solomon Stoddard died, and Edwards is now the sole pastor of a very influential church.

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Strangely, from 1729 to 1734, those first five years, very difficult years for him.

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I suppose we should expect that looking back, when you have an older man that's very influential. But when we think of Jonathan Edwards, I guess we just kind of put him on the level of the apostles, and we think, well, he wouldn't have any problem following anyone.

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But as a young man, he did have some trouble, and the church seemed fairly apathetic.

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He began to preach on the great themes of redemption, and God's sovereignty, and prayed for an outpouring, and in 1734 and 35, there was a powerful period of restoration or revival in the church, and that faded.

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But then with the coming of George Whitefield in 1740 to the area, another wave of revival began, and that lasted longer.

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1744, about, what, 15 years after he comes to the church initially, there are some problems.

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There's some teenagers who have been misbehaving, and he calls attention to that publicly in the church, and reads their names.

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And these powerful families exert their influence, and in 1750,

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America's greatest theologian and perhaps greatest spiritual leader is kicked out of his own church.

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1751, he goes to be a missionary to the Indians. In 1757, he is asked to be the president of the

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College of New Jersey, which becomes Princeton, and he becomes the president. He takes the smallpox vaccination and dies.

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All right, Chuck, why don't you overview the sermon? So, the sermon in the series, as Mr.

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Roberts lays it out, is Divine Retribution, as Edwards wrote it, was the eternity of hell torments. Based on Matthew 25, 46, these shall go away into everlasting punishment.

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This is, I think, a helpful sermon, considering that there are so many people today who don't think that God will actually punish people eternally, or whose view of hell is inadequate, as you hear them talking about.

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It's obvious. So, it's a helpful sermon for us today, but it's also one of those things, as we've seen so often in this book, that is most helpful, because of how it's laid out in the order that it is.

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If you've discounted all that's gone before, then you probably are going to discount this also. Or if you've not thought carefully about who

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God is, and the depravity of man, and the heinousness of sin, then you're going to possibly discount this.

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But if you've thought carefully through those other issues, then how could you not think carefully about the things that he says here?

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So, here, again, we see the order is important. The sermon, as he lays it out, four points.

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The first is that it is right that God inflict on wicked men a punishment that is eternal.

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And under that, he deals with two different aspects, that God's punishment of wicked people is not inconsistent with his justice, and that it's not inconsistent with his mercy.

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And those are probably still two of the arguments that people would offer today. The second is that this punishment is eternal punishment.

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It is abiding, a sensible punishment. It's not just annihilation. You're not just disappearing. Third, that it is eternal.

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So, not just of long duration. And he gives several arguments that people make, and I don't know that we'll actually get to that point, so I'll just mention them here.

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I mentioned here that there are people who make the argument that when

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God speaks of it lasting forever, there are other places in Scripture where forever is obviously kind of hyperbole.

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And so, they're trying to apply that to this punishment. But he makes arguments and demonstrates that that's not what

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God means here, and that's not the only language that he employs here. So, you can read that section.

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Also, though, that it is eternal and it's not shortened by God. God doesn't, in a moment of pity, see people suffering in hell and say, okay, that's enough, which goes back really to the argument of justice, doesn't it?

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So, he makes both of those points, demonstrating that it is an eternal punishment. Then he lists four outcomes of this punishment that show that they are good outcomes, there's good that comes from this.

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There's God's majesty vindicated. He is

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God, and He deserves our obedience. He deserves our love.

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Justice is upheld. You know, God has, for a long time, in a sense, winked at sin. He demonstrates justice at the cross.

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Before that, He had winked at sin. But He still is, in a sense, delaying and waiting.

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But His justice will be upheld. His grace is glorified. And we see this,

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His grace glorified, as we see something of the greatness of our salvation. The sin is that great, the punishment is that great, the salvation must be a great salvation.

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So, His grace is exemplified in that. And then also, if we deserve that, if that's the punishment that is deserved, then how great is

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God's mercy or grace demonstrated to us when we think about the rewards that we receive, the joy of living with Him through eternity for those who are in Christ.

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Then he makes a number of applications, and we'll walk through some of those, I think, as we go through the sermon.

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Yeah. Before we even get to the particular high points of the sermon that we want to discuss today,

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I think it is good to remember that it is an extraordinary kindness. It is a kindness of great significance that if all of humanity is rightfully heading to a very perilous end, that we are given a warning, that we are given a warning in a timely fashion, that we are given a warning in time to turn away from this perilous end while there can still be something done about it.

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But also, that the one that gives us the warning in a timely fashion so that we can do something about this is actually the only being who fully understands what's coming.

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You can think of people giving you a warning and telling you how to prepare. Um, so what if you ignore them?

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Well, you know, they gave you a warning, so ignoring them is, you know, that was a, you know, it was a crime against yourself, so to speak.

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You know, you should have listened. You passed up a kindness. But what if you did everything they said to prepare for the coming need or danger or crisis?

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And when the crisis came, you were ill -prepared, not because of a lack of effort, but because the person who gave you guidance did not have all the facts.

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And therefore, even though you followed their advice, you know, to the letter, you suffered great harm at the end.

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So, it is an extraordinary kindness that God says to his enemies, to fallen humanity that fights against him.

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He explains to them what is coming so that they will be moved even by self -love to turn and to cry out to God and to ask what the crowd did, you know, when

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Peter preached, you know, what must we do to be saved from this? Um, it is not all that there is to Christianity, you know, saving your skin.

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Um, but it is a great starting place to realize that God has kindly exposed the terrible ultimate end of this pattern of life in time for me to be saved.

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Also, remarkable kindness in consideration of the fact that the one who's providing this information is the one that you've offended and is the one who himself has provided the means of escape.

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Yeah. It would be a very different picture of God if one of the angels came and kind of behind God's back, so to speak, said to humanity, by the way,

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I'm not supposed to tell you this, but there's a very terrible day coming and here's how you should prepare. Um, but it is the

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King that we fight against constantly. And like you said, and the King who paid the price so that not only can the warning come, um, but the way of rescue can come.

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Uh, John, before we get too far into the discussion though about, uh, justice and, uh, whether or not

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God's punishment is consistent with justice or inconsistent with justice, I think we should probably define what justice is and make sure that we're all talking about the same thing.

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So how would you describe justice here for this discussion? I think if, um, we talked about this a little on the side, you know, there, there is the matter of law.

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So if a law is broken and the law prescribes a, a response of justice.

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So there's the legal response to breaking or keeping a law benefits and, you know, uh, negative consequences.

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Uh, that's part of it. And God's law, not only lays out the line, do not cross this line beyond this line is, is wickedness, but God's law also explains what the consequence could be.

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But with human law, if the human law is unfair, even though a per, when a person breaks that law and someone says, well, but the law requires this response, if the response is not appropriate to the offense, then we would say, okay,

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I know that's what your system says, but your system's not just. So imagine a system that said, we can't imagine this, you know, really, but imagine a system that said in this country, murder of a child is a small matter, but stealing from a boss is a big matter, you know, and you would say, wait, wait, wait.

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So murder of a child gets a $10 fine. And if you steal a hundred dollars from the boss, you go to jail forever.

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Well, that's what the law said, but your law is unjust. Okay. So there is law, but it's more than law.

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I think the simplest way to say is that justice is an equitable and equal and appropriate response to a crime.

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So the, you have an action and then a reaction. So the action of the crime is, is on this level, you know, level five out of 10.

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And the response to that is the consequence is matching that. So it's a five out of 10.

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If you steal an apple, then there is a response of the law, but it's a, but it's a, it's a small, you know, it's a small infraction and, and the punishment is small.

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If you, if you get drunk and you hit someone on the way home from the bar and you kill them, then the response is much different.

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So when we think of justice, we think, does the judge, uh, does the law respond to a crime in a way that is equal to the nature of the crime?

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Um, so let, let, let's think of, um, that could be abused in different ways.

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You could say, um, the law is unjust. Okay. The judge is unjust if he doesn't give the full response that should be given.

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So a man gets drunk, he drives home from the bar, he runs over a child and the child is killed.

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The man goes to court and he's there and the judge gives him basically a slap on the wrist, a hundred dollar fine.

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And the whole country is up in arms. How did that happen? Well, then we find out that the judge is actually very close friends with that man and his family.

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So we would say, wait, wait, that is not just, he was not given an appropriate response.

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The penalty did not match the crime, but you could do the other way. A child steals the apple from the grocery store and runs out the door because the child is starving.

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The child is caught and brought before a court of law and put into prison for five years. We would say, wait, wait, wait, that wasn't equal either.

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So both of those are unjust. Justice would mean that a fair and equitable and appropriate response from the law is given that matches the crime.

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So when we think of sin and we think of an eternal judgment, that's a little hard for us.

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We say, my sin, I just don't see that it matches an eternal judgment, a sin that took a minute to commit or a sin that hurt a person for a year, or a sin that, you know, whatever, even a sin that was in my mind that nobody but God knew about.

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How can that be, how can it be fair for that to have earned an everlasting torment?

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And that brings us to the question of what is the nature of the debt of sin and how in the world do you measure that correctly?

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And how do we, how can we as Christians say that God is right, that eternal judgment is the right response when sin seems not as big as eternity?

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Eternity. So what would you say to a person that says, okay, I've sinned, but I don't think my sin has earned that kind of response from God?

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Well, you haven't really considered who the lawgiver is and the character of God, that he's infinite. You know, we lack objectivity, both one thing because the sin is ours, you know, so much easier to see sin in someone else and a terrible sin that's deserving something.

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But when I do it, it's easy to justify it and think of all the reasons why I don't deserve what the law prescribes.

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But the real answer, the thing you're asking about, I suppose, is that we don't really know the lawgiver and we don't consider that sin is really against him and his honor, his character.

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And so we don't see the sin as being a big deal. Like you said, it was for a moment, it was against that person, forgetting it may have offended that person, but ultimately it offended

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God. Yeah. When we think of the offense of sin, or we could think of the debt of a sin, we have to rise above the human kind of view.

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We tend to think that small actions, small infractions on earth, small infractions, well, we deserve small penalties and large infractions, large penalties, and that's right.

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But when we think of sin, the primary thing is that we're sinning against a person, not against a law, not against an abstract set of rules.

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In this nation, you're not allowed to go 95 mile an hour. So if you go 95 mile an hour, there's a response of the law.

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But when we think about spiritual issues, it's the person that's offended that's primary.

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It doesn't mean that there aren't smaller or bigger infractions spiritually, but ultimately every sin deserves an infinite response because every sin is against an infinite being.

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And Edwards makes this argument. We owe God love. That's the great command, to love

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God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Now, if we will not give God the love and the honor and the obedience that is due to Him, then it's a crime.

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We've robbed God what we owe Him. Now, if God is an infinite being, then the argument from Scripture is that the crime carries an infinite penalty, and that's fair.

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The penalty matches the crime. And he goes on to argue and say things like, well, is it against God's just character?

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He said, well, this kind of series of if -thens, if sin is wrong, then it is right for a holy, perfectly morally straight being to hate it.

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And we agree with that. It is not right, even on the earthly level, for a judge that we expect to hold the standard of right and wrong.

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It is not right for him to suddenly show up in court and love what's wrong and hate what's right to reward the wicked and punish the good.

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We would be up in arms and say, you have failed. So, when we think of the eternal judge,

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God, I think we can all agree it is right for God, being a pure being, to hate what is impure, to love what is pure.

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So, that's our first argument. Second, if sin is an impurity that is against an infinite being, then it is an infinite impurity, in a sense, we could say.

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It carries an infinite weight, an infinite shame and guilt. An infinite evil.

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Yes, and an infinite evil. And therefore, it is right for a pure and infinite being to hate an infinite evil with infinite hatred.

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And it is right for an infinite, pure being who is just to respond to infinite evil with an infinite punishment.

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And so, while we have always looked at crimes based on the action rather than based on who we've sinned against, we have to rethink that when it comes to the heavenly.

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So, Edward's big argument there is, if you understand the nature of God correctly, and you understand, then, the nature of sin correctly, it is an infinite evil, then it really is not just okay for an infinitely righteous or infinitely fair God to punish sin with an everlasting punishment.

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It is actually right and praiseworthy. And to not do that would be wicked.

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I was just thinking, again, how important it is to have established in your thinking who

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God is and the character of this King. How can you agree with that if you don't think that God is what the

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Bible says He is? If you don't understand what it is to be holy, what it is to hate sin.

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I mean, not that we grab it completely, but if you have no context for really reckoning with that, how do you agree with what you just said?

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Yeah, and Edward says that at the end of his first argument there. He says that there is no way to deny the airtight logic of this and the rightness of an everlasting judgment of the sinner, unless you can argue that God does not have infinite worth.

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And, you know, because we are blind to the greatness of God and we all are born thinking that we are

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God -like, you know, we're the center of the universe. In a sense, we cannot prove that to a person.

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God has to open their eyes to that. But we can say when you stand before Him on that day, which

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Revelation describes as a day where we are called before that throne of judgment and all creation flees the face of the

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Lord Jesus on the throne of judgment at that moment, not on the throne of mercy, and you are called before Him, can you imagine the terror of the first moment of awareness that He is infinite, like He is all

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He said He was? And therefore, suddenly your measure of every one of your sins is put in front of your eyes in the right size, you know, and you realize the only right thing

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He can say to me is, depart from me forever. So it's quite, you know, in the application,

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He's going to say there is a madness to ignoring these kind warnings. Well, the second thing

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He says under the rightness of an everlasting judgment is that it's not against God's mercy.

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One of the problems that we have with considering God's mercy is that we often try to equate it with our mercy, our view of mercy, and oftentimes our view of mercy is really a sentimental kind of mercy, and so we might see someone suffering what is justice, but feel like it's enough and start crying, you know, mercy, that's enough, it's enough, when justice really hasn't fully been completed, or a sentimentality that overrides logic.

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So you look at a situation, and logically you know this is what needs to be done, but sentimentality, emotion grabs you, and you override logic, and you let something slide that you know you shouldn't let slide, and I think oftentimes we think

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God is that way, and that, so He intends to be just, but sentimentality will override justice at some point, and emotion will get the best of Him, pity for us, but God's pity is not a sentimental pity, it's not,

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His mercy is not a sentimental mercy. He's determined to show mercy, but on some very strict basis, and not just arbitrarily.

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Yeah, and you know, we just tend to approach it all very egocentric, you know, like well, but when

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God sees me on the day of judgment, He will somehow find it in His heart just to ignore justice in that instance, and He will be overrun with, you know, pity for me, and so He'll give me mercy instead.

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You know, somehow it's gonna work out, because I think God is so loving, He, you know,

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He couldn't find it in His heart to punish me eternally, but again, let's think of, let's go ahead and think of an earthly situation.

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If it was your child, in our illustration, if it was your child that was hit by a drunk driver, and the judge listens to the facts, and he says to the drunk driver, you deserve, let's say, 10 years in jail for this, whatever the penalty would be for manslaughter, and the judge looks at him and says, but you know, just a few minutes ago,

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I had a kid in here that stole an apple, and I showed mercy to him, so really, I feel like, I don't know,

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I feel like I should, I owe mercy to everybody. I showed mercy to him, so I'm gonna have to show mercy to you, so you're off the hook.

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You know, the family that, whose child had been killed, would rise up and say, I don't understand this, you know, ruling.

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Justice is required. Why are you saying, because you showed pity in one case, you have to show pity in every case?

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One thing we don't understand about mercy is, we kind of combine mercy and justice in the wrong way. Mercy is the refusal to give the negative consequences that we deserve, but that is a free gift.

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When we think about the justice and the mercy of God in His character, they're both there, essentially, but when we think about the exercise of those things, the nature of justice is such that God must always be just, or else

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He would not be God. So, He must always express justice, but He does not always have to express mercy, because mercy is the kind of thing that is freely given.

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So, God can be perfect and not give a free gift. You know,

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He gives you what you deserve, what you've earned. If He doesn't give you something above and beyond that, it does not impugn

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His character. We say that, when we say that, we talk about grace and mercy as being free, not that it doesn't cost anything, but that it is unobligated.

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It is free. God is free. His hand is not bound. He is not obligated to give mercy to anybody.

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If He gives mercy to anybody, it is a pure gift. But also, we need to understand that mercy and justice in God, they always go hand in hand.

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That is, mercy is always accompanied with justice. So, the only way for God to look at us and say, you, you will not be charged with that crime, is for God to look at our representative,

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Jesus of Nazareth, whom He has provided, and to say to His Son, that sinner will not be charged with this crime, because I have charged my

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Son with this crime. So, justice has come and been satisfied. And then, mercy can reach us.

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So, we could think of it this way. Mercy crosses a road paved with justice through Jesus Christ's life and death in order to reach any one of us.

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So, understanding the nature of mercy helps us to understand that an infinitely, perfectly, morally pure and loving

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God is still the same God that has designed the punishment for an infinite sin to be an infinite misery.

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He talks about a couple of other options that humanity's come up with. Well, maybe we'll just be annihilated.

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That's what that means. And He gives clear biblical evidence that is not what occurs. In the accounts in Scripture, where Christ describes the coming judgment, there is always a conscious awareness of the punishment and an awareness of why you're being punished.

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Every scene that we see, there is a conscious awareness of the misery of the punishment that you have earned and are being given.

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So, annihilation is not a biblical option. And then, the other one was kind of a purgatory kind of thing that, okay, you'll be there a long time, but not eternally.

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And as you mentioned earlier, forever doesn't mean forever. One of the arguments that Edwards gives is, this is not only is there no

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Scripture that supports that, but this is given, this judgment will be declared in an existence that's eternal.

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Time has stopped being counted. The old creation is gone. There is an eternity now, eternity with God or eternity away from God.

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And so, when Christ says to the believer, to enter into this wonderful provision that you've been given, it's timeless now.

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It's a timeless existence. There's no limit to that. But there's also no limit when

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Christ says to the unbeliever who has rejected Him that they will enter into an everlasting punishment.

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Right. And the language is the same. So, if you shorten the punishment, you have to shorten the reward also.

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Yeah. Yeah. And again, if God is sentimental and not just, what's to keep

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Him from looking upon those in the new creation? And what's to keep

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Him from looking at us and say, you know, I just, I'm tired of you, you know, and so you now are removed from the new creation and cast into a judgment.

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So, yeah, we have to be honest as we read the Scripture, even if it's a painful topic.

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He also says that if that is what God is doing, if He says forever, but He doesn't really mean forever, then it's a wickedness because it's like He's issuing threatenings to try to govern us and to coerce us into behaving a certain way when

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He's not really going to carry out the punishment. So, it's like a parent who threatens their child constantly, but never, you know,

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I'm going to get you and they never do. Yeah. So, governing the world by deceit.

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Yeah. But who governs by deceit? I was thinking when I read this sermon this week, the enemy has governed us by deceit, but God never does.

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And so, if He gives us this warning, it will be carried out. He mentions those four things.

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You read them. Four good things. I mean, is there any, you know, ultimate outcome from judgment that is good?

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And He mentions them. So, of the four, Chuck, you know, any of those that kind of hit you for the first time or that you found most compelling?

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I don't think there were any that hit me for the first time. The one that always tends to get my attention is how

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He glorifies Himself through His grace on the vessels of mercy, undeserved. And it probably says something about being egocentric that I'm not more gripped by the fact that He is vindicating

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His majesty or glorifying His justice. But it is a marvel that He shows mercy to people who don't deserve it.

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And that is magnified even in the punishment of the wicked. Yeah.

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I think that it is hard not to look at those second two that He mentions, the third and fourth, dealing with His grace.

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But it does put grace in the right context. And it is very easy, especially, you know, in the

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Mid -South, where grace is a word that is heard everywhere, you know, so to speak. And the gospel is kind of told, at least in parts, quite often through our culture still, and the idea of forgiveness.

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But it just gets shrunk in my eyes, what

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I've been given in being given Christ. And part of the measure of that is what

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I've not been given. And, you know, how I can wake up each morning, and, you know, if the weather isn't nice,

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I'm grumpy, and I'm sulky, and self -pitying, you know. And I think, then you read a chapter like this, and you think, how can you ever wake up and have that perspective when you realize what you've not been given today, and what today might have been?

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So, yeah, many wonderful things. God's justice and His character is made right, lifted up high, and God's enemies are amazingly rescued.

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Well, He gives some applications. His first application, He has kind of two big applications.

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And the first is, you know, He kind of calls attention to the madness, to the insanity of ignoring this.

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And so He says, how can you still prefer a few moments of sinful pleasure when you know that you are running the risk of everlasting misery?

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But I think the more penetrating application under that first one is this insanity of coming to church and agreeing with the preacher who preaches on the topic, and, you know, and talking about those liberals out there that don't even believe in hell anymore.

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And it never changes the way you live. The insanity of walking daily toward the precipice of an eternal misery, of which you will be conscious forever without hope of, you know, relief.

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And you do so with the words of a preacher or a parent or a

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Bible verse or a good book crying out in your ears, and you nod and agree with every cry, and you still move in that direction.

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Yes, madness. His final application is to the lost. Consider how great and terrible a thing eternity really is when you will be called to suffer the very fair, equal, appropriate punishment for your sin.

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You know, you think about on earth, even the worst physical pains that we suffer or emotional pains, which oftentimes are worse.

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Even in the back of your mind, when things are darkest, you do say kind of like, this has a limitation.

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It won't last forever. Even if it lasts your entire life, the Christian thinks this is just this life.

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There will be an infinitely longer existence without this sorrow. So the fact that there is hope makes everything bearable.

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But on the day of judgment, it will be the first time that humanity faces something without hope.

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There is no hope. There will never be an end to the justice that you will endure.

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And so the utter hopelessness of the justice, to me, is perhaps the most terrifying thing.

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Yeah, I can think of a time or two I've heard people in so much pain that they would say, just let me die.

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But then in eternity, you know, death is not an option to end the torment that you feel.

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And finally, one final great application is, if God has warned you in a timely fashion, do not sin against his kindness and add to the list of your crimes against the king, the crime of an indifference to his mercy, that he would stoop down to explain to you what's coming in time for something to be done about it.

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And the thing to be done is to run to the one being who has actually endured the infinite wrath of God, the

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Lord Jesus Christ, to come to the God -man and to lay everything before him and to say, if you, triune

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God, have appointed your son as the representative of the sinner and commanded the sinner to come without restriction, come, come, then why should

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I not avail myself of that? And, you know, and to just, you know, in a simple way, we could say to give all that you know of yourself and to lay hold by faith of all that the scripture describes of Christ for the sinner.

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It is the only appropriate response to the warnings that God has given us.

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And so it would just be wisdom for anyone who has listened to the podcast and considered these things at times to take seriously the claims of Jesus Christ, to go to scripture and read what he says about himself and to see how

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God has in scripture explained the way of mercy, a path of mercy, that Christ living a life of perfect obedience that we've refused to live would satisfy the law of God and that Christ's suffering on the cross, the infinite wrath of God on behalf of his people has satisfied the penalty, the law's justice.

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And he's been raised to demonstrate to everyone with an empty grave that God has accepted what he's done.

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What can we do then? Well, we come to the scripture and we see what he says about himself. We read his claims and we believe and we turn away from everything else in order that we might turn our lives toward him, you know, to what the old writers call closing with Christ.

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That is, you know, really appropriating, grabbing hold of what he's promised and giving all that we are in response.

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Well, we've come almost to the end of the book, Salvation in Full Color. And if you are still wanting to get a copy of this, you can find a link to that in the description.

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The final sermon is by Azahel Nettleton, and he was a leader in the second great awakening.

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And it's based on Proverbs 29 verse 1. And Nettleton's title was

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A Solemn Warning. He that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.