The First Message of the Cross — E.A. Johnston

God Will Punish Sin

Over 40 years ago, I worked in a Bible bookstore, and one of my duties in addition to sweeping the floor was to wait on customers in the front of the shop and sell them Bibles and Gospel tracts. This bookstore had a wide variety of good Gospel tracts, and I read every single one of them.

I am still a lover of tracts to this day, and believe in their good to the souls of men. Well, one particular tract still sticks out in my memory because it was based on a true story, and it involved six young men.

I was a young man at the time, so it caught my attention. The theme of the tract was that God is not mocked, and God will punish sin. I recall that in the story, God punished sin in a very dramatic way.

In the incident of six young men who openly mocked God, they mocked God because they did not believe in a God who punishes sin. And today, friends, we live in a society where most folks do not believe that God will punish sin.

Just look at their lives of open rebellion to God, and that they are walking witness to the world that God does not punish sin, for if He did, He would cut them off. And because He does not cut them off, they sin openly and defiantly against that God who in their minds does not punish sin.

Even the majority of church members today do not believe in a God who will punish sin. If they did believe God punished sin, they would not live as they do so carelessly in it. Many church members today sin presumptuously because they just do not believe in a God who will punish sin.

Their God just would not act that way. Their God is just a God of love. He would never send anyone to hell. He is too nice of a God for that. And they are right. I believe they are right. Their God would not act that way and send anybody to hell.

But the God of the Bible would, and He does, for the God of the Bible punishes sin. Listen to this text from Isaiah 13 11. And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity.

And I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. And that, friends, is the first message of the cross that God will punish sin. Well, allow me to get back to my little story about the gospel tract and the six young men who mocked God.

Six Young Men Mock God

What made that story stay in my mind was that there was an eyewitness to a tragic accident, and he recorded the story as told to him by one of the dying men. It had all the hallmarks of a good detective story or mystery movie.

And I remember it to this day. Here now is that story as best as I can recall it. It was an awful train wreck. The train went off the tracks in a bad snowstorm, and carnage was everywhere. Bodies lay out in the snow as they were dragged from the wreckage of that train.

Ambulance sirens rang in the distance on their way to that terrible scene. One of the victims lay in the snow, bleeding all over. A Mr. Waters, who also was a passenger on that train, held the head of a dying man in his lap as they awaited medical help.

This dying young man related the following story to Mr. Waters. It went like this. He said that ten years before, he was a traveling salesman, and while he was passing through a town, he had spent a night carousing in the bar room of an old hotel.

On that evening, the conversation among the patrons of that bar turned to the religious awakening that was going on in that town. There had been a touch of revival in some gospel meetings, and people were getting saved left and right.

Some men in the town who had been drunkards got saved and quit drinking, and much the town was talking about this revival of religion. And this traveling salesman was a young man in his late teens, and he listened with interest to the story of the revival as he drank his whiskey.

Here now are his words as related to Mr. Waters telling about that eventful night in the bar of that hotel. On that particular evening, all kinds of wicked jokes were played. I had made some fast friends in the bar with some other five young men, one of whom was the son of the owner of that hotel.

He and the others became my drinking companions that night. We all began to laugh and make fun of the revival. Someone in the bar asked how the meetings at the church were conducted and what was taking place in them where the revival was.

One of my drunken companions volunteered to act out and demonstrate the religious meeting. I'll never forget it. Six of us young men kneeled on the floor and began to mock God. We prayed for the forgiveness of our sins and even tried to imitate tears of repentance.

We put on a good show that night, even closing it out with a hymn, Rock of Ages, oh the blasphemy that went on from our lips that night. And when we were done singing, we looked around and the bar was empty.

The other patrons were so shocked by our awful blasphemy, they'd gotten up and left. While we six young men mocked God because we didn't believe God would punish us for sin, the dying man continued his story.

Tragedy and the Consequences of Mockery

What I'm about to tell you is no fiction, no sir. It happened within the last ten years. There were six of us participating in that mockery and before the end of the first year, the son of the hotel owner suffered a fall.

In that fall, a blood vessel burst in his brain and he never again regained consciousness. He died. Someone might think that this is not unusual, but notice it was a violent death. Two years later, the young man who started the demonstration was with a hunting party in the country and during the night, he got up to get a drink of water.

In the dark, he missed his way and fell down the steps. He broke his neck and died two days later. The third to go was Tom. He was the one who sang the loudest when we sang that hymn and mocked God and dared God to do anything about it.

He fell down his own cellar steps and died. When I heard of his death, I became nervous and wondered if my two other drinking companions had met a similar fate. News was getting out about these untimely deaths.

One of the men became fearful and went out west, hoping to avoid a tragedy in the same town that took the other lives. He became a railway guard, usually a safe occupation, but I read a newspaper account of his tragic death.

He'd been caught between the bunkers of two coaches and was crushed to death. Last year, I met my only surviving companion. One evening, he too met a sudden death, falling from the door of a saloon onto the concrete street.

His head struck a rock and pierced his temple, and he died there, in the gutter. Since that time, I have waited for my own end, as it is now before me, and it's obvious to me that God is a God who will punish sin.

With that last sentence, the dying man breathed his last. Mr. Waters is still haunted today by that man's dying words. God is a God who will punish sin. Well, friends, that tragic story always stuck with me, and it's unsettling to me now as I recount it to you, but it is a testimony to the fact that the God of the Bible will punish sin.

Ecclesiastes and the Delayed Judgment of Sin

People in our day live in open rebellion against the Holy God because they do not believe God will punish sin. There is a verse of Scripture which alludes to this very thing. It's found in the book of Ecclesiastes in chapter 8 and verse 11.

Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. And that is true, friends, both outside the church and in it. People today just don't believe in a God who will punish sin.

If they did, they wouldn't live as they do and sin with such impunity against the Holy God. And the first message of the cross in the gospel is that God must punish sin. God is holy and He hates sin. My Bible states God is angry with the wicked every day.

Biblical Examples of Divine Judgment

The fact that God punishes sin is found throughout our Bibles. Look at the biblical record found in Genesis wherein is evidenced that God punished sin and God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually and it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth and it grieved him at his heart and the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth.

And God hated sin so much that He killed all but eight people in the days of Noah because the God of the Bible must punish sin because man's awful sins are hideous in the eyes of a holy God. We see again in the book of Genesis how God will punish sin because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great and because their sin is very grievous and the Lord reigned upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah, brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven and He overthrew those cities and all the inhabitants of the cities and that which grew upon the ground.

It is crystal clear folks that God will indeed punish sin but many today believe that God has changed His stripes, that He has chilled out towards sin, that He is just a God of love now and He wouldn't send anybody to a terrible place called hell.

So we have removed hell out of our preaching today and we don't call the lost sinners but the unchurched and we have modified our language and toned down our view of God and placed Him on our level and our God just wouldn't act that way and send people to hell.

But listen friends, the God of the Bible will but folks just don't believe that today and the trouble with our sin soaked society is that people sleep well at night because they don't believe God will punish sin.

They will clench their fists and shake them in the very face of God as those six young men in that story did because folks today just don't believe in a God who will punish sin and a lot of church members don't believe in a God who will punish sin.

They don't let their profession of faith interfere with their daily living. They have their theology all worked out to where they can live in sin and still sleep well at night because their God does not punish sin even when you witness to people today and you talk about Jesus dying on the cross.

They're not interested because they don't believe God will punish sin and no one will be interested in what Christ did on the cross until you believe that God will punish sin. We have forgotten what the message of the gospel is in your day and mine.

The First and Second Messages of the Cross

In our generation we are fed a diluted gospel message of the cross that speaks only about a offered Christ but there is no use to offer a remedy to people who don't need a remedy. You see friends, it's no use today to preach the second message of the cross, the forgiveness of sins through Christ's blood.

This generation doesn't need it since forgiven. In their eyes they are nice little people who aren't as bad as the murderer in prison. After all, they never killed anybody. They are alright compared to other folks.

They don't need their sins forgiven. They don't think there is any need but we still go on and offer the second message of the cross, Christ and his forgiveness of sins. But listen friends, this generation of hell bound sinners needs to hear the first message of that bloody cross and that message is God will punish sin.

Every time they nailed those nails into the flesh of the Son of God, every stroke of the hammer said God will punish sin, God will punish sin, God will punish sin. But in our day of weak evangelism, we beg people to come to Jesus when they don't feel like they need Him.

A man won't go to the doctor unless he discovers he is deathly ill. When a man is sick to the point of death and the doctor has a remedy that will cure him, that man will give that doctor every sin he has to get well and live.

But he doesn't need a cure if he doesn't think he is sick. Are you with me? Listen to this story. There was an Englishman who loved to hear good preaching. He often traveled to Scotland to hear the great preaching of that country.

Isaiah's Vision of God's Holiness

One day he went to a church in Scotland and heard the minister tell about the majesty of God and His holiness. He spoke from Isaiah chapter 6 where the prophet Isaiah sees God on an exalted throne. And this Scottish minister said, In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon the throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple.

Above it stood the seraphims. Each one had six wings. With twenty covered his face, and with twenty covered his feet, and with twenty did fly. And one cried unto another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

The whole earth is full of His glory. And the post of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips.

And that Englishman left that church with his mind set on the holiness and majesty of God. And the next day he listened to another minister preach. And this man preached on the deceitfulness of the human heart from the book of Jeremiah.

And as he listened to this minister, he saw his own wicked heart. He saw what a vile sin he was before a holy God. And he was undone like Isaiah. He saw his lost condition before that just and holy God.

And as he left the church, he wandered over the hills of Scotland. And he wondered if that holy God would have mercy on such a vile wretch as he. And then later in the week, he went to hear another Scottish preacher.

From the Law to Grace and the Need for a Savior

And this man preached on the lovingness of Christ and His preeminence out of the book of Hebrews. This Englishman saw Christ the Redeemer and that He had died for him. And he came to that bloody cross and knelt there and found Christ that day.

He came to realize that once a person is awakened to his vile condition before a just and holy God, then he realized he's lost and in need of a Savior. And only then will he seek that remedy for sin in the person of Jesus Christ.

He saw that Christ is truly lovely to the person who has seen their need of a Redeemer. And that's the very thing, friends, that both John Wesley and George Whitefield preached. They both preached the law before grace.

They brought sinners to Mount Sinai before they took them to Mount Zion. But we don't do that that way today. We just take everybody to Mount Sinai and ask them to accept Jesus as their Savior. And few today feel their need of such a Savior for sin because they just don't believe that God will punish sin.

But if we today would hold sinners up to the utter severity of God's holy law and show them that God requires perfection from all men, and they are sinners and not perfect, and when they are held up against that holy law of God, it will kill them because they are big sinners and they will fail that test and be sent to hell.

Then and only then, friends, after a man gets lost and shut up to God, can we then introduce the second message of the cross, Jesus, the sacrifice for sin. Listen to me, dear ones, if you do not hear anything else I say today, remember this, God will punish sin.

Christ as the Substitute for Sin

That's the first message of the cross. And after somebody believes that, you can come in with the second message of the cross, that substitute who hangs there in my stead, Christ is God's sacrifice and my substitute.

We must get back to preaching the gospel in its purity and in its proper order. We must preach the full counsel of God when we preach the gospel message of the cross. And that first message of the cross is God must punish sin.

The second message of that bloody cross is that substitute who hangs there in my stead, Christ is God's sacrifice and my substitute. You know, I needed a substitute, friends, and so do you. How awful it is to be condemned by Almighty God, to be guilty at that judgment bar of God and be handed a sense that lasts for all eternity.

But I rest in my substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shed his blood and died for me. He shed his blood and died because God must punish sin. And that's the first message of the cross. We need to get back to it, friends.

We need to start preaching it again. So sinners will see their need of a Savior. Oh, friends, let's get back to preaching the gospel in its purity and proper order, all for God's glory.