The Vengeance of God

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Nahum 1:2-3

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I'm not sure what Tozer, if he was alive today, would say today, but it has not improved.
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And so as we've opened this book of Nahum, we have been together,
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I might say, confronted with God. Nahum has begun his prophecy by showing us and reminding us who
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God is. That might even say a bit surprising. I sketched out, as I was reading through Nahum and studying,
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I sketched out four sermons for Nahum chapter one. Well, today we're on the fifth sermon, and we're still in verse two, and we're being confronted with who
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God is. And next week, we'll be confronted with the long -suffering of God, the patience of God.
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And then we'll be confronted with the power of God. And then in verse seven, we'll be confronted with the goodness of God.
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All of these realities in the first eight verses of who God is. We must, as evangelicals, recover an awe of God.
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Gregory Cook, in his commentary on Nahum, says, we read the Bible to know
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God. He has told us about himself. We will not know God if we refuse to listen to his self -description.
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Those who will not allow the Bible to describe God do not worship the
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God of the Bible. They worship a God of their own making. Friends, this is all over the
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Bible Belt today. Let's take a few verses here from the Bible. Let's take a few thoughts that my great -grandparents shared with me.
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And let's take a few things I've seen on TV. And then a few things I just came up with myself.
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Let's mix them together. And this is my concept of God. Friends, this is what we must do here.
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We must know God. As we enter into another fall season, hey, you guys know there's not a person more excited in this room that there are less than 150 days till Christmas.
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September. We're the Burr months, right? See you, summer. It's on its last days.
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I can endure the 100 degree weather this week because summer's on its way out. As we approach a fall season, as we approach an election cycle, or as we're in the midst of an election cycle, as we get ready as a church for the new fall
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Wednesday nights, and we talk about new committees and new teachers and all those sorts of things, as we think about budgets and evangelism and worship and all of this and everything else, we must know
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God as He has revealed Himself in the Bible. Because if we get that wrong, nothing else matters.
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We must love and adore God for who He is. And so today, we take up quite a sobering subject.
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And I remind you that we only take up this subject because it's revealed in the
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Scripture. And that is the vengeance of God. Stand with me as we honor the reading of God's Word.
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And I'm just going to read verse 2 and verse 3. The Lord is a jealous and avenging
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God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries and keeps wrath for His enemies.
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The Lord is slow to anger and great in power. The Lord will by no means clear the guilty.
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His way is in the whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet.
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Father, I pray that we would remember first and foremost that as we enter into this time of preaching, we haven't left worship behind.
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This is worship. What we're doing now is engaging our hearts and minds in worship.
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As we hear what Your Word has to say, please, O God, do not let us treat this subject cavalierly.
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Let us not treat this subject dismissively. Let us hear what it is Your Word has to say and let us worship
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You as You have revealed Yourself to us. And let us see why this is such good news that You are the
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God of vengeance. We pray that the Spirit would be pleased to sanctify the saints.
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We pray, Holy Spirit, that You would be pleased to draw sinners to Yourself, unconverted people in this room, that You would draw them to Yourself even today, and that they would look to Christ as their only suitable and all -sufficient
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Savior. For the glory of the name of Jesus, we pray, amen.
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You may be seated. We find ourselves here then with a little lesser -known attribute of God and probably lesser -appreciated concept of God, and that is the vengeance of God.
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So we've really jumped in with both feet, haven't we? The jealousy of God. And now this morning, the vengeance of God.
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But I hope to show you this morning with His vengeance, just like with jealousy, we worship
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God not in spite of His being vengeful. We worship
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God because He is the God of vengeance. In fact, I might put it to you this way as we think about the sermon, the beginning.
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Do you really want God to be love? Do you really want
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God to love you? Because true love comes with wrath.
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The opposite, or no, I shouldn't say it that way. It's not the opposite. The other side of love is wrath, is hatred.
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I'll illustrate it simply this way. If I love my children, I'm not okay with someone coming in to harm them.
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I'm going to stand in the way. I'm going to protect them. Or what person, when they watch the movie
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Taken, which spoiler alert, okay, and if you haven't seen Taken by now, I'm sorry. I'm going to ruin it for you.
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But what person, when they watch the movie Taken, is disappointed that Liam Neeson's character at the end kills all the bad guys and rescues his daughter?
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What person is like, man, I was hoping that wouldn't happen? No, you want that to happen. There's something in you that says, hey, this is right.
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And we know that. Now, the God of the Bible is love. But let me make it plain that he's not love in the way that we so often characterize love in our society today.
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He is love in the sense of true love, pure love. A love that will not and cannot tolerate infringement upon his glory.
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You remember last week I said that God is pursuing the highest good of the universe, which is his own glory.
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And God opposes those who oppose this good. Louis Burkoff, the theologian, put it this way.
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God, in virtue of his divine righteousness and holiness, cannot simply overlook defiance to his infinite majesty, but must needs visit sin with punishment.
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This is the God of the Bible. The Lord is a jealous and avenging God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful.
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The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power.
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And the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in the whirlwind and storm and the clouds are the dust of his feet.
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This is God. What we're going to do this morning will follow basically the same outline as last week.
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So first, God's vengeance defined. First, God's vengeance defined.
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The Lord is a jealous and avenging God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries.
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Now, the King James, at least the King James and maybe others use the
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English word revenge here. But it's better, I'm telling you, it's better to understand this as avenge.
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Because vengeance, avenging flows from justice.
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That's what we're talking about. The Lord is an avenging God. The dictionary term for avenge, the
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English dictionary term or definition. To exact satisfaction for a wrong by punishing the wrongdoer.
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That's a basic understanding of vengeance. To exact satisfaction for a wrong by punishing the wrongdoer.
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So our text says that the Lord avenges. The Lord not merely avenges, but the text says the
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Lord is avenging. As one commentator put it, the character of God means that evil cannot triumph in the world.
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So we're gonna walk through this a little bit technically, but I hope it helps you. So in Hebrew, verse two begins with two
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Hebrew words. Essentially we translate it, God is jealous. Or jealous is
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God, either way. But then after those two Hebrew words, there's eight
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Hebrew words that follow. And of those eight Hebrew words, six of them are this phrase.
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Nekem Yahweh. So you got eight words, six of them are those two words. Nekem Yahweh, Nekem Yahweh.
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They're all back to back right there. Then there's two more words. And then after those two words,
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Nekem Yahweh. Three times in an eight word sequence, you have the phrase
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Yahweh is avenging. Do you think the Lord is trying to make a point?
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You'll notice also in your Bibles that the words here of Nahum are indented funny, right kids? Children, look at your
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Bibles for just a second. I hope that your Bibles are open if you're a child and that you can read.
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But children, look in your Bibles and you tell me. You see the words are kind of funny spaced, right?
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They're indented a little bit funny, aren't they? Well, that's because this is Hebrew poetry.
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And you're not gonna notice this so much in English, but really it's beautiful Hebrew poetry. It's very rhythmic.
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There's even alliteration and wordplay that you sometimes can't really bring out so much in the
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English. But I do think that we can understand this in the English. And that is the repetition here, because you can still see it, the repetition of God's vengeance.
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Children, that's something you can even look, if you can read, you can count how many times you see the word avenging or vengeance there in verse two.
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Now, in Hebrew, doubling a word or doubling a phrase, it adds emphasis.
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In English, we do different things. You bold it, you underline it, or sometimes if you're stuck on Facebook, it's like,
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I think their caps lock button's stuck, right? Everything's in all caps, all right?
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So there's different things that we can do to emphasize. But in Hebrew, you double something, and that adds emphasis.
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But another thing that you can do, besides doubling it, and this seems to be reserved for the weightiest of emphases, is you can triple something.
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Now, we know this in a very popular verse in Isaiah chapter six, verse three. In Isaiah chapter six, verse three, the seraphim, one is calling to another, and they're not saying, holy is the
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Lord of hosts. Holy is Yahweh Sabaoth. That's not what they're saying. Nor are they saying, you could emphasize it this way, holy, holy is the
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Lord of hosts. Now, if they just said, holy is the Lord of hosts, or if they just said, holy, holy is the
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Lord of hosts, the point is communicated, isn't it? We understand God is holy.
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But they don't say, holy is the Lord of hosts, nor do they say, holy, holy is the
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Lord of hosts. What do the seraphim say, one to another, in Isaiah six, three?
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They say, holy, holy, holy is the
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Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. The threefold repetition is holiness, holiness to the max.
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You see, we have words like comparatives, like we have good and best, or some, more, most, or strong, stronger, strongest.
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Hebrew doesn't really have that, and if it really wants to emphasize something, you'll have a threefold repetition.
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So the holiness of God in Isaiah six, three is being superlative to the max, if you will, that God alone, in a sense, is purely holy.
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He is the holiest. But this is lesser known text, and yet here it is, a threefold repetition, if you will.
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It's lesser known than Isaiah six, three, but it's equally as emphatic. And that is, nekem
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Yahweh, nekem Yahweh, nekem Yahweh. The Lord is avenging, the Lord is avenging, the
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Lord is avenging. Now, it's not all together. I mean, there is those two words that space the first two and the last. But the point is, threefold repetition, right here in our text on the vengeance of God.
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He wants His people to know it. He wants you today to understand that He is the one that will exact satisfaction for wrongs by punishing the wrongdoer.
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Now, this has tons of implications. Three, I might just mention,
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God has the right to take vengeance, right? He's God, we're not. God has the right to take vengeance.
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He's holy. God has the power to take vengeance. Some people would want to take vengeance, but they can't, they're not powerful enough.
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Well, God has the right to take vengeance, and He has the power to take vengeance. And then thirdly, I'll just mention this,
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God has the wisdom to take vengeance. In other words, He's going to take vengeance, and where we mess up is we might take vengeance too far, or we might not take it far enough.
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God is going to get this perfectly right. Now, in the immediate context, the
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Lord is a jealous and avenging God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries and keeps wrath for His enemies.
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Assyria, at least Nineveh, right, had repented in 750 BC. They had then even been used as a weapon in God's hand to punish
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Israel, to punish Judah, but really they had gone too far. Sennacherib defies
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God. They were morally corrupt. They were sexually immoral. They were idolaters. They mocked and harmed and killed
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God's people. And now God is emphasizing to His people here in the strongest possible terms that He is the
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God of vengeance. Really, verse two is simultaneously terrifying and comforting.
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You remember Nahum, the name, means comfort. It means comfort.
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The book of Nahum is a comfort to the people of God and a terror to the wicked.
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But this vengeance of God reminds us of the wickedness of sin. It ought to humble us all, for we have all had moments, even this week, where sin was treated far too casually.
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Let us see this morning. Our God is a God of vengeance. So that's the vengeance of God defined.
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Secondly, the vengeance of God despised. This is perhaps one of the most despised doctrines of God.
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This is one of those doctrines that even I would say well -meaning,
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I'm trying to be very gracious here, but even well -meaning Christians would have a difficult time at times adhering to it.
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But understand that the wrath of the holy vengeance of God is plainly revealed and emphasized in our text.
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God has enemies, you understand? And these enemies aren't just Satan and demons.
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Real people with real names and faces and locations are
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His enemies, and this is what the text is implying. The Lord is jealous and avenging.
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He's a jealous and avenging God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries and keeps wrath for His enemies.
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Who are His enemies? Well, in this text, it's the people of Nineveh. You remember back in Jonah when
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God is full of compassion for Nineveh, and now He is full of wrath and vengeance, and He's going to take
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His justice out on this wicked city and the
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Assyrians. But you say to me, God is love, and God loves everyone.
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And this is true. Like, let's be clear up front. I affirm, and we must affirm, that God has a genuine love for all mankind.
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For example, in the Gospel of Mark, when the rich young ruler comes to Jesus, and he denies
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Jesus, like, he's like, I'm not doing that. I'm not selling all that stuff and following you. It says, the text says, that Jesus looked at him and loved him.
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There is a certain sense that God loves mankind, and we affirm this.
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But there's other passages in the scripture that are equally as true, that God has a righteous and holy hatred, not just towards sin, but even sinners.
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Psalm 5 .5, for example, says this, the boastful shall not stand before your eyes.
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You hate all evildoers. You understand the text says, not that God hates evil.
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That's true. The text says that God has a righteous and holy hatred toward evildoers.
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I'm just telling you, that we've got to wrestle with the entire Bible. We don't get to just run with the verse over here that makes us feel good and that we like, and we run with it.
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We've got to have a complete biblical picture of who God is. So why did
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God destroy Nineveh? Answer, he wanted to. They deserved it. They wronged a holy
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God. They sinned. They transgressed his righteous law. Yeah, preacher, but that's how
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God acted in the Old Testament. Right? Wrong.
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2 Thessalonians 1, verse seven and eight. We'll come back to this later. So note this verse, 2
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Thessalonians 1, seven and eight. It says, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know
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God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
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Paul calls Jesus Christ the Lord of vengeance here. That he will inflict vengeance, which
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I might add, by the way, is a reminder that Jesus is Yahweh. He is the second person of the
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Trinity. We do not pit the God of the Old Testament against the God of... When you talk about the vengeance of God or the wrath of God or the anger of God or the hatred of God, and you begin to think that the application of this, not just to someone overseas, but to people you know and if you're not in Christ, even to your own soul, as you begin to think about this, you begin to be uncomfortable because you don't understand the holiness of God.
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God destroyed the whole world, men, women, and children in a global flood.
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God used Israel to march into cities and to wipe out the entire cities, not just men, women, and children, even the livestock.
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God did this in the Old Testament. God used other, like in our text, God used other nations, like he's gonna use
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Babylon to destroy Assyria. God does these things. This is not the way that we often like to think of God, but one commentator aptly points out our objections to God's vengeance and justice do not come primarily from trying to defend
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God's character. They come from trying to safeguard our standing as good Christians while we live lives devoted to a world that hates
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God. The point that he is making in that commentary is the vengeance of God makes us uncomfortable because we're too comfortable with sin.
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Many despise the doctrine not for God's honor, but because of their rebellion.
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They need a God who will buddy up to their sins because they will not leave them.
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But we must not let this be true of us. I'm trying to communicate in this series that Nahum's God is our
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God. The Lord is a jealous and avenging God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on his enemies and keeps wrath on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.
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Friends, I'm gonna tell you this morning that only Nahum's God is worthy of worship. Only Nahum's God can accomplish salvation.
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In fact, this leads us to our next point, the vengeance of God defended. So again, God needs no defense, but can we ask ourselves this morning, what would it be like if God were not avenging?
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So just think about this for a moment. Is an unavenging God really worthy of worship?
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A God who trivializes sin? A God unwilling to exact justice?
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A God who lets evil win? An unjust God, an unholy God, is this
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God worthy of our worship? And the answer is, of course he's not. Wayne Grudem is right to say, it is in fact a virtue to hate evil and sin.
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It is actually good to hate evil and sin. God is virtuous then because of his vengeance, because God exacts satisfaction for sin against sinners, because God is wrathful, because of these things, he is worthy of our worship.
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His vengeance means evil does not have the final say. His vengeance means no wrongdoing will be left undealt with.
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His vengeance means he will have full and final victory over his enemies. Is anybody hearing this this morning?
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This is good. God's avenging is good for us. We don't relegate this to some specialized small group.
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We don't hide this truth from the masses. We teach it to our children. We teach it to everyone who will listen.
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We proclaim gladly and openly that our God is the God of vengeance. Imagine this scenario.
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You've just made it out of a canyon, a narrow canyon. Inside that canyon, a ravenous bear, grizzly bear.
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You get out of the canyon, you escape barely. You're walking down the trail.
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Well, there's some people coming toward you. They're about to enter into the canyon. What do you do to those people?
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Do you just casually walk by and tip your hat? Have a good day.
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Do you stand and say, hey, I got a question. What do you guys think about the weather today? What do you think about politics?
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What do you think about Bitcoin? No, you don't do any of those things.
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What do you say? You come up on them with the most serious face you can, with a very sobering reflection and you say, listen, don't go in the canyon.
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Why not? There's a bear, the bear. You're not ready to go into that canyon. He will attack you.
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He'll eat you alive. I barely escaped from my life. You can't go in there and hope to come out alive.
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Please don't go. And if they were just gonna go anyway, you'd plead with them. You're not understanding. Listen to me.
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Don't go in the canyon. The bear will destroy you. I mean, right?
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You wouldn't just, you wouldn't just be like, ah, whatever, they'll figure it out.
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No. You'd be serious. Friends, infinitely more so is the church compelled to preach the vengeance of God.
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One of the most loving things that you can do for a person is to warn them of the vengeance of God that is to come.
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But also one of the greatest comforts the church can take today is in the fact that God is the
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God of vengeance, a God who keeps a wrath for his enemies, a God who will destroy his adversaries because he will destroy all evil.
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Verse three, the Lord is slow to anger and great in power and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty.
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He's not ruled by emotions. He is not full of rage like a mad mom in the stands when the umpire calls a strike on their kid and it shouldn't have been a strike, you know?
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He doesn't have a short fuse and a bad temper, but he is the God who has holy hatred upon all that would detract from or openly attack his glory.
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All sin, all idolatry, all immorality, all false worship, all hypocrisy, all self -righteousness, all wrongdoing, all secret sins, all open sins, all oppression, all tyranny, all taking advantage of someone else, all gossip, all murder.
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God knows it all. God sees it all. God hates it all. God will avenge it all and this is good.
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God is good and the redeemed will praise him for all eternity, not in spite of his vengeance, but because of his vengeance.
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Now to our fourth point. The Lord's vengeance defined and despised, defended, and then fourthly, the
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Lord's vengeance demonstrated. The Lord is a jealous and avenging God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful.
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The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power.
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The Lord will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in the whirlwind and storm and the clouds are the dust of his feet.
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Contextually, we see that the Lord demonstrates his vengeance upon Nineveh. You remember the dates.
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This is probably written around 650 BC and then in 612 BC, Nineveh and the
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Assyrian Empire is wiped off the map. It'll be no more. God demonstrates his vengeance upon this city because of their mockery of him, their oppression of his people, and for their immoral and sinful lives.
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But I want to show you this morning that Nineveh's destruction points us forward to two more events.
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So the destruction of Nineveh, this really happened, real history. But we don't stop here.
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The destruction of Nineveh brings our mind to two more biblical events.
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The first is the cross. Now we need to really wrestle with this here and I hope that you're listening.
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There are many atonement theories out there. Some of them are true.
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Some of them are not true. But there is one reality of the atonement that we cannot move from its central focus.
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And this is the reality of the necessity of the placation of the wrath of God against sinners.
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Puritan William Taylor preached it this way, God is just and if the righteousness of Christ do not screen thee, the wrath and vengeance of God must needs break out upon thee for thy guilt.
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Thus the vengeance of God brings us to the gospel. The Lord is a jealous and avenging
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God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.
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And that should immediately for the Christian bring your mind to Golgotha. To bring your mind to the reality of the suffering
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Savior. God is full of wrath upon his enemies. Okay, well that's good because you know, his enemies are over there.
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They're over, well I was pointing at the turnages. Not to imply that the turnage, they're over there. They're overseas.
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Those are his enemies. The people that say, you know,
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Allah is God. Those are his enemies. Which by the way, that's true. They are. But see,
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I'm in America. One nation under God. I'm not God's enemy.
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No, no, no, hold on just a second. The enemies of God are those who commit evil.
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Oh, I'm okay. Guess what? You know who was evil? Joseph Stalin.
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He was evil. You know who was evil? Adolf Hitler. He was evil.
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Or I watched a documentary on Netflix about serial killers. Oh, those people are evil.
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Listen, they were, yes. Yes, they were all evil. However, evil is sin.
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To sin is to commit evil. In other words, sinners are
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God's enemies. You know what God's wrath will destroy? Not just sin.
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God doesn't just throw sin into hell. Sin, you don't understand that anyway. He throws sinners. Let me use two
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New Testament texts to prove my case here. First, Ephesians 2 .3.
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We all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of, you know what?
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Wrath, like the rest of mankind. In other words, what we used to be, Paul says to the Christian.
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What the Christian used to be is a child of wrath, just like the rest of mankind. The rest of mankind is presently a child of wrath.
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Or if that doesn't make sense to you, John 3 .36. John 3 .36. Whoever believes in the
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Son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
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You understand? So here is the problem. God is angry with the wicked every day. That's Psalm 7 .11.
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And then our text, verse three. Look at verse three specifically. The end there of that first sentence. He will by no means clear the guilty.
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That's the problem. What can I do about my sins? If I am an enemy of God, preacher if you're telling me this morning
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I'm an enemy of God, what can I do about my sins? A God who will avenge the wrong done to him by transgressors of his law.
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He will avenge, he will take vengeance upon those who have transgressed his law. I've transgressed his law. A God who knows all the ways that I've not only wronged him, but that I've wronged others.
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Not only have I transgressed the law of God and sinned against God, I have sinned against other people. And God knows about this all.
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And he will not, the text says, look at verse three. I'm just preaching what the text says. He will by no means clear the guilty.
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He will not let those who are guilty of these things go unpunished. I am guilty.
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What can I do? Nothing.
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You can do nothing. Just let that simmer for a second.
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You have already done. You've sinned. And you can do nothing.
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But if I say this prayer, no. But if I get baptized, no. But if I give money, no. You can do nothing.
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I cannot placate or propitiate or satisfy the wrath of God. I might even add here that not even hell in one sense fully satisfies the wrath of God, because hell is not just 10 ,000 years and then it's over.
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It's forever. I can do nothing. But in steps of substitute.
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His name is Jesus! The Son of God! Takes on human flesh and is born of the
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Virgin Mary. And He does nothing in His life but righteousness. This Jesus then goes to Calvary and His hands and His feet are affixed to a
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Roman wooden cross. And He's suspended between heaven and earth. And there, the
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Lord takes vengeance upon His adversaries. God saves us from His own vengeance by avenging our sins against Him in the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Instead of smiting the pompous
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Roman officials or the haughty Jewish officials or destroying the crowds or annihilating you and me, what
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God does is crush His Son under the weight of His holy wrath. The Lord is jealous and avenging
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God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries and keeps wrath for His enemies.
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And we see this unleashed in part in Nahum and upon the people in Nineveh. But we see it unleashed even further upon Jesus Christ on the cross.
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Jesus becomes the guilty one in my place. And my guilt, therefore, is not left unpunished.
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Rather, it is punished in Christ. God has His holy vengeance in the
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Gospel. Romans 3, 25 and 26. God put forward Christ Jesus as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith.
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This was to show God's righteousness because in His divine forbearance, He had passed over former sins.
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It was to show His righteousness at the present time so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
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In other words, Abraham got off scot -free. David got off scot -free. Moses got off scot -free.
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The Old Testament saints got off scot -free. You said you don't leave the guilty unpunished, but somehow you forgave their sins.
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That's unjust. And they're right, that's not just. It's not just to just say, well, whatever, you just go on.
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Well, how is God going to be just? Answer, Jesus. In Jesus, He punished so that His people could be forgiven.
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You lose the vengeance of God and you lose the Gospel. Christ is our propitiation.
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Wrath, satisfying, sacrifice. And He raises again from the dead for our justification that by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, we might become the children of God and be credited with the righteousness of Christ.
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Benjamin Keech. Sin was imputed to Christ. Yea, every sin we have or ever shall commit so that in Christ we have borne already all that vindictive wrath and vengeance of God that was due to us according to His holy law and threatening denounced against us.
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Oh, what a glorious Gospel. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
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The Lord is avenging, the Lord is avenging, the Lord is avenging. God's holy vengeance upon the city of Nineveh is a small picture of what
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He did upon the cross to save His people from their sins and the just retribution owed to us for our disobedience to His law.
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But we read that text this morning. Brother Charles read that text this morning from John chapter 19 from our scripture reading.
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What did Jesus cry on the cross? Not, it's about to be done.
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Not, I've finished part of it. Not, I've done 98 % and there's only 2 % left for you to do.
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No, our Savior cries from the cross, it is finished and gives up the ghost.
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This is the Gospel. In Christ it is finished. Christ is our all.
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Christ's life and death and resurrection is the final word and in Christ alone there is therefore now no condemnation.
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Now I tell you this, God is willing because of His love to discipline His people and He will do that.
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You can fall under the chastising hand, the disciplining hand of the Lord, but there is no more vengeance to be had against those in Christ Jesus because our
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Savior has already fully satisfied God's vengeance upon the cross of Calvary.
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Look, I know we're not this kind of church, but if we were, that'd be a real good place to say hallelujah, right?
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Praise the Lord, hallelujah, what a Gospel we have. Hallelujah, all
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I have is Christ and it is enough. Now I need to mention this, there's a second event that Nineveh points us to.
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Points us to the cross, but also Nineveh reminds us of this, final judgment. The Lord is a jealous and avenging
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God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries and keeps wrath for His enemies.
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The destruction of Nineveh, I'm telling you, is but a foretaste of the vengeance of God that will finally be poured out upon this world.
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So 1 Thessalonians 5, 2 Peter 3, they both talk about the day of the Lord coming like a thief and destruction coming upon those who reject
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God. Revelation 6 .16 is interesting because it says kings and slaves and generals, everyone outside of Christ, it says this, will be calling to the mountains and rocks, fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the
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Lamb. In other words, this day will be so overwhelming that they should say fall on us, mountains, rocks, caves.
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And we say God is glorified in His vengeance. When He topples nations, when
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He overthrows sinners, when He has the last and final say against every wrong and every sin,
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God is glorified and the church sings. We will sing. You just better be ready.
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If some of the Psalms make you uncomfortable, you need to understand that one day we will surround the throne and some of our songs will be about the vengeance of God.
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The day of vengeance cometh. And this is a sobering reminder. And it brings now to my mind four applications based on all we've heard.
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There's be so many more. Pastor Jacob gives me a hard time sometimes. Like I say, in conclusion, 15 points, but really in conclusion, four applications.
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Now don't unbuckle your seat belt yet. It's take just a minute. But listen to some applications from this text.
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Three of them are to one group and then one to another group. So the first three to this group, believers.
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So first of all, believer, I believe that from our text we have an application of hope.
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And this is the reality of the historical context of this letter, or I mean of this prophecy.
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Suffering now, glory to come. And for the believer, the
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New Testament, for Christians understanding the gospel in its fullness, the wrath of God against your sins is atoned for in its full measure.
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So the application is hope. There is no more condemnation. Listen to me. I know, I know it probably doesn't need to be addressed, but I'm gonna address it anyway.
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There's no purgatory waiting for you. The sword of God's vengeance has been sated in piercing
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His Son and raising Him again from the dead. There is hope because all wrongs will be righted.
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You've been mistreated at work. People have overlooked you. People have talked bad about you.
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They've gossiped. They've done horrible things to you. Some of you have gone through things that the rest of the church body, we cannot imagine.
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But all wrongs will be righted. The judge of the earth shall do right. No tear will have been cried in vain.
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No evil will be left unpunished. The Lord of hosts, the mighty one of Israel, He will do it. He will have final vengeance on all
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His enemies and therefore all the enemies of the church. The King is coming again. He will slay the nations, the
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Bible says, with the sword of His mouth. We must live for this day. And part of this hope is, church, we must have a bigger view of God.
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We must let the book that I'm preaching from, this Bible, must shape our view of who
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God is. We must let the Bible show us God. We must root out of our heart lesser views of God.
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We must repent of any ways that we've tried to make God into our image. We must adore
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God as He's revealed in the Bible. Will you, I'm asking this morning, worship
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Nahum's God? Will we resolve to grow in our awe and fear of God? And as we await this hope, will we weep for sin?
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Hey, listen, first and foremost, will we hate the sin that sent Jesus to Calvary?
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Your sin? Will you hate it? I'm talking about your remaining sin before I'm talking about everyone else's sin.
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Will we mortify our own remaining sin? Will we stop excusing and tolerating our own sin because it's not as icky as someone else's sin?
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Will we say, because of what God has done and because of His holy vengeance, I hate my sin?
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Secondly, believer, as we live for the day of vengeance, we must be serious about justice now.
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Now, man, I hesitate even to say it because when you talk about justice, remember that we saw the woke cancer really, really messed us up.
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Just because someone says they are for justice doesn't mean it's true justice. DEI requirements obscure justice.
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But the vengeance of God means we do care about just laws. We care about the wickedness of abortion.
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It grieves us. Injustice grieves us. We want to stand against our government which says it's okay to change your body parts or that anyone can marry anyone.
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We care about these things because we love God. We want a just land because we love
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God. There's a yearning in us for justice to be. It's why when you see a male boxer punch a female boxer, there's rage in you.
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That's wrong. That's not just, by the way, I would say, talk to me about this if you disagree, but I'm just gonna go ahead and say, women shouldn't even be boxing, right?
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It's not the place of a woman to be punching each other in the face. But for sure, it's not okay for a man to punch a woman.
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That's unjust. It's not okay for a woman to work so hard all their life in swimming.
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And then a guy says, well, you know what? I'm gonna, now I'm a female. And then he wins. Or in basketball or whatever the case may be.
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You understand. You understand that because we love the God of vengeance that within us is a holy sense of justice.
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Now, very clearly, remember this. Remember Romans 12, 19 through 21.
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Beloved, listen to me now. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine.
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I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
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For by so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
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It's very important. We leave vengeance to God. It's not ours to give.
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And we take opportunity, even with those that we disagree with, to show them goodness, to show them kindness, to show them grace, and most importantly, show them the gospel.
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And we warn the world of the vengeance that is to come. And that they are required to live and do justly as God counts justice.
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But again, I see a lot of people today saying just love sinners. Well, okay, I agree with that.
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I do agree with that, but to be clear, I mean love them enough to tell them the truth. And part of the truth is the vengeance of God is coming.
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And remember, it is, in fact, a virtue to hate sin and evil. So let me just encourage the church with this.
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Don't give here. It is okay to hate sin and evil.
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Don't be ashamed about that. Well, I hate homosexuality, but I'm embarrassed about it.
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No, no, you can't be vengeful about it, but you should hate it.
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And you should not feel guilty for hating culture's sins. Let me say that again, because I think that some of you and some of us, we may struggle with that.
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Don't feel guilty or ashamed for hating the culture's sins. It is the right thing.
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Thirdly, believer, it is right for the church to pray for the day of the Lord to come. The people of God are constantly in the
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Scriptures crying out to Him for vengeance. For example, one of these days we may sing Psalm 94. Psalm 94 starts out this way, verse one and two.
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Oh Lord, God of vengeance, oh God of vengeance, shine forth, rise up, oh judge of the earth, repay the proud what they deserve.
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That's just not the kind of verse you find crocheted on a pillow, is it? But listen, there is a bit of angst, if you will, if you want to use that word.
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We don't always get this right in our hearts because we're in a fallen world, we have remaining sin, but here's the angst.
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On one hand, we preach and we plead and we build families and we invest money and we live and we plan for the future and we even look to future generations.
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That's part, that's side A. But on the other hand, we say simultaneously, how long, oh
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Lord? Don't you see the injustice? Don't you know? Won't you rise up from your holy throne and rescue us?
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Won't you take your vengeance on the wicked? Come back, return for your bride and execute justice.
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You should feel both of these as a believer. We don't just know
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God is coming back, we pray for it. We long for it. We look for his righteous vengeance to rain down even as we have compassion upon and warn sinners of the wrath of God to come and we plead with them to turn to Jesus for mercy and to find in him alone an all -sufficient and only suitable savior.
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Which brings me finally to my last application to mention. So that's one group of people, believer.
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To the unbeliever, the application from this text is simply this, the wrath of God is coming.
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The Lord is a jealous and avenging God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.
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There is no, listen to me now, there is no neutral position here.
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You are either in Christ this morning or you are an enemy of God. And the text says the
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Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and the text says that he keeps wrath for his enemies.
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Well, what does it mean to be an enemy of God? Surely, I'm not an enemy, right? I'm here at church.
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An enemy of God is one that belittles his holy character by scoffing at his commands, by making your own way, by ignoring his word, by rejecting his son, by living in your own righteousness, by going day after day after day after day after day in your own sin and saying, oh yeah, but I know back there when
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I was eight, 10, 12, I prayed a prayer so I'm good. I'll keep living this way. That is to find yourself in opposition to God.
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I think it's the most difficult thing this morning to do this. In fact, it's impossible unless the Holy Spirit does it. And that is to get through your mind and heart that you can sit in this room today and be an adversary to God.
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But I remind you that the holy vengeance of God is good. Look at verse seven. We are going to get to verse seven eventually.
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The Lord is good. A stronghold in the day of trouble. He knows those who take refuge in him.
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God knows in a saving covenantal way those who take refuge in him.
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You see, the Christian message is this. God saves us from God.
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God, by God, saves us from God for God. This is the Christian message.
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And the warning is a storm is coming. A storm that will lay to waste every false foundation to bring recompense upon every rebel soul to expose all the corruption, all the corrupt governments, all the corrupt organizations, the corruption that has happened in the
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Ethics and Religions Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. It will expose all of the corruption in these places, but it will also expose the corruption of your own heart.
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But there is a refuge from the storm. There is a place of safety.
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And the shelter is Christ. I remind you again, 2 Thessalonians 1 .8.
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The Lord Jesus will come inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our
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Lord Jesus. That is vengeance on those who know God from creation but have rejected him. But then there's another group, those who do not obey the gospel.
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In one sense, we talked about in Sunday school, you would say we don't obey the gospel because the gospel is what
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Jesus has done for us. But what Paul means is that other sense, the gospel absolutely, yes, it demands obedience.
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It demands a proper response. The response is repent and believe in the gospel.
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We come to Christ by faith alone. And then that faith produces in the hearts of believers a desire to obey what the
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King has said. But there will be many on the great day of vengeance who heard the gospel.
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Maybe you're here this morning. Maybe even you've given a thumbs up or a head nod or a wink or whatever to the gospel, but you've not submitted your life to Christ.
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So you come and you hear and you sit and the gospel washes over you, but it's like a big rock in the middle of the
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Buffalo River or whatever. It's just, the gospel's hitting you, but it ain't moving you. You just stand there like a stone.
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Wave after wave after wave after wave. Pastor Jacob preaches his guts out. Pastor Quatro preaches his guts out.
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We have others that come, preach the guts out. We sing the gospel. We share the gospel. We're on the street preaching and passing out tracts.
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We're doing these things. And here you stand like a stone as the water just goes on. You say, well, no.
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Or maybe you say, you know what? I know that I gotta get some things right, but maybe tomorrow. Or you know what?
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I'm gonna think about this. I appreciate that. I'm gonna think about that. And that just goes on and on and on until Christ returns in vengeance.
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But I say to you this morning, dear soul, that I set Christ before you. The Christ who beckons those to come to him who are weary and heavy laden, and he will give them rest.
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Why do I preach this way? I preach this way because I love lost people, because I want my sons and my daughters that are remaining outside of Christ to hear the gospel and come to Christ.
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And I don't want there to be a single hypocrite in this church or a false believer. I want no one to stand before the
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Lord one day and they say, why didn't anybody warn me? Why didn't they tell me? Why didn't they remind me that vengeance is
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God's? I want you to hear and know and believe Christ will save you. He will save you today.
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The Christ who says, anyone who comes to me, I will not cast out. The Christ that is full of love and mercy and pity for wretched and undeserving sinners.
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Sinners who deserve only judgment and condemnation, whom Jesus says to,
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I have done it all, come and follow me. The rich young ruler, he looked at Jesus and says, he walked away sad.
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He realized, I can't do it. I won't do it. I got too much stuff and I love my stuff too much.
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And he turned and he walked away. But here you are today with a choice before you.
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Christ or vengeance. God promises to pardon you, to forgive you of every sin, to justify you by Christ, to set you up on a new path, to bind your life together with this ragtag, motley crew of believers in the local church as we seek to know
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God together and walk in His ways. The church alone is going to be sheltered from God's vengeance.
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The truth that the Lord is avenging must this morning arrest your attention and cause you to consider your life.
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What do you do, man? What do you do? Like the dog chasing the car. We have dogs at our house.
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I like to chase the car. And I think to myself, what are you gonna do, man, if you ever catch the tire?
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It ain't gonna be what you thought it was. And you chasing the world. And you chasing your dreams.
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And you chasing the promises the world holds. It's not gonna be what you thought it was if you ever catch it.
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But I say to you this morning, there is refuge in Christ. What does it profit you to gain the whole world and forfeit your soul?
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Come to Jesus, who bore the wrath of sinners on the cross and rose again, will you this morning,
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I'm asking you, will you come to Christ? Will you come to Jesus with the eyes of faith? I'm trying to make sure
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I scan and see every eye, every head, so you can see. Will you come to Jesus? Will you believe on Christ?
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Will you repent of your sins and run to Jesus for mercy? Will you understand this morning that Jesus will forgive you and clothe you in his righteousness, but you can't sit there like a stone in the river, like a stick in the mud.
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You must repent and come to Christ and trust him. And God says, I will forgive you. I will cleanse you.
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I will heal you if you turn to me. Will you turn? That's all
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I've got. Will you turn? Little children, my children, children, other children in this room, will you turn, please, please?
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Adults, maybe you're just kind of hanging on here because you're like, well, I know what happened a couple of years ago and I feel bad and I just don't,
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I want to just, I want to kind of hang around. And no, listen, I'm telling you, are you in Christ? Will you please come to Jesus?
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Parents, grandparents, the vengeance of God is coming, but today's a day of mercy and God will receive you.
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Your only qualification is that you must be a sinner. If that's you, trust
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Jesus and be saved. And church, let's take seriously knowing
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God for who he is. Father, help us, help us, help us to know you and to live for your glory.
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May Christ be precious to the saints today and may he be a refuge to the sinners in this room who have not yet come to him.
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May they repent even today and believe the gospel. May this afternoon be filled with counseling after counseling after counseling because the
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Holy Spirit in his sovereign mercy has awakened sinners. I pray this would happen.
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Send revival to our land. Send revival to our church. Send revival to our state.