Well, I want to begin by saying, What an honor and joy it has been for me to be with you for these days. I wish this trip to South Africa wasn't so short. Steve and I fly early Monday morning. Thank you for your warmth of fellowship, the great questions, the things you've done to stimulate me and my thinking. We love these times. Please pray for us; we are faced with every week, very important ministry decisions for which we need God's wisdom. If you think of Paul Tripp, and there's one thing that I would like you to pray for, it's this: Pray that I faithfully and perseverantly live what I preach; that's the passion of my heart, that I would be an example of the things that I proclaim.
I Need Grace as Much Today
I do understand it's easier to proclaim them than to live them, and I need God's grace as much today as the first day that I believed. Let's just pray: Lord we would thank you again for the incredible gift of your Word, for the zeal of the Holy Spirit that applies it to our hearts with such specificity, for the sovereignty of the Father that brings us again and again, by His will, under the counsel of your Word; and for the day by day and moment by moment grace of Jesus. Guide us, teach us, convict us, challenge us, encourage us, motivate us.
We would pray, this evening, in Jesus name, Amen. Our oldest son, Justin, walked at nine months. It just didn't seem possible that this little male human being would be mobile at that age, and we knew that when Justin was upright and mobile, there was a new world of danger available to him. So, in an act which seemed like parental futility, I coddled little Justin over to the electric wall outlet and lectured to him about the danger there, while he inserted his finger up his nose with great concentration.
The next day, I was sitting in the living room reading the newspaper, and I heard the toddle of pitter-patter of little feet coming down the hallway. Justin didn't know that I could see him with my peripheral vision, and I saw his little head peek around the corner, convinced that I wasn't seeing him; he made a beeline for the electric outlet, (hmmm) and just before he put his hand toward it, he did this (turned his head). Nine months old! He knew exactly what he was doing; the look back at dad was a dead giveaway.
That was an informative, but sad, moment for me as a father, because I knew this little boy, not yet able to communicate, having not yet had many human experiences, had already bought into one of the darkest, deepest delusions that a human being can buy into...it is that, "I can do what is wrong and it won't make a difference, that what I do and say, just doesn't make a difference." That somehow, someway, there aren't overarching moral walls; that somehow, someway, this world is free of cause and effect, that there aren't consequences for my behavior.
Maybe you're sitting here thinking tonight, "Well Paul, I don't believe that!" I want to say, "Yes you do." Oh, maybe again, in an overarching theological way, you believe that you've been born into a distinctively moral world that is ruled by a righteous and holy God, of course you believe that. Probably if you didn't believe that, you wouldn't be in this room this evening. But there are moments when we buy into the delusion; there are moments when we actually come to think that what we do and say won't make a difference.
I've sat with husbands and wives in sad, sad moments; I've sat with husbands and wives who are so angry and bitter at one another that the things that they say to one another have made me weep. And I know there was a moment in time where they adored one another, where they loved to be in one another's company, where their hearts would lift when they would hear the voice of the other person, when they couldn't think of anything that they would like to do more than to be near one another, and now there's acrimony and anger and bitterness.
And I know that, somehow, they've gotten there because of the little, mundane moments of life; they have told themselves that they could do what is wrong, and it wouldn't harm their marriage. I can scream at my wife, and it will be okay; I can cheat on my taxes, and it'll be okay; I can eat more than a human being should ever eat, and it will be okay; I can turn another person into my own personal idol, and it will be okay; I can commit adultery and somehow pull it off; I can spend endless hours on the Internet looking at things I should not look at, and it will be okay; I can blow off church whenever I don't feel like going, and it'll be okay.
Somehow, in those little, mundane moments of life, there are places where we all are very tempted to buy into the illusion that life doesn't have consequences. Now, I would like to say that that delusion is the product of something deeper and even more profound. It is that all of us, in places, want to retain ownership over our own lives; we all want to be our own sovereigns; we all want to write our own rules; we all want to believe that moments that: my liberty, my independence, my pleasure, my comfort, my satisfaction, my power, is the most important thing.
You know it's true. If you are a husband and, sometime in the last couple weeks, you said something nasty to your wife, you haven't done that because you're ignorant of God's call to you. You've done that because, in that moment, I'm going to say it, you didn't give a rip about God's call, because you wanted what you wanted and, at that moment, you have ascended to the very throne of God and said, "I will do what I want to do because that's what I want to do." It's a dark and dangerous thing, and the fact of the matter is, sin isn't somehow, first, the breaking of some abstract set of laws; sin is, first, the breaking of relationship with God.
Worship Comes First
You see that's why in the 10 Commandments, what's first in the Commandments... those first commands have to do with relationship with God; worship of God, because it's only when God is in His rightful place, that everything else will be in its rightful place. What I saw in my son that broke my heart was that first powerful evidence of a rebellion against God. A saying, "I will have it my own way," and buying in to the fact that, "I can violate the core paradigm of the universe that I was created for God; I can violate that, and it will be okay."
It will never be okay. Now, Scripture is very clear about this issue of consequences. A couple of references: Psalm 15, tells us that we become like the idols that we serve; that's consequence; you can't mess with idols without being changed. You actually begin to take the shape, the moral form of the idol that you serve...what a warning! Galatian 6:7 says, "God is not mocked; what you plant, you will harvest." Think about that dynamic: Every day, I'm harvesting seeds I previously planted; and every day, I'm planting seeds that I will someday harvest.
Now the problem is that we're all very skilled at denying our own harvest. We are. My daughter came home from school one day with her report card, and she said, "Dad, I need to talk to you about my report card." (You know right away that's bad news...if this thing needs a preamble and an introduction, it's bad news.) So I said, "Well talk to me." She said, "Well dad, it's my grade in English." (the language that she speaks) I said, "Yes." She said, "Well, I got a D in English; it's a bad grade." And then she said, "But I want you to know, I got the highest D in class."
And she said, "I know why; I talked to the other kids in class, even the smart kids in class, and they barely got B's and C's. They barely did any better than I did; and we know why...It is this teacher. Dad, you know he's a new teacher." She actually said this! "And he's learning to teach on us." Now, I'm thinking under the weight of this man's pedagogical inability, my daughter has sustained the highest D in class; I ought to post it on the refrigerator; I ought to call grandma; we ought to go out to eat in celebration.
Now, what I realized in that moment, she's not just trying to pull the wool over my eyes, what she's actually done is sometime between when she got the report card and she got home, she was able to convince herself that this had nothing to do with her-how scary! It had nothing to do with homework poorly done, notes not well taken, tests not properly studied for-it only had to do with the immaturity of the ability of this teacher-poor girl living under such educational oppression. I hugged her and made sure she was okay.
Well, all of that was introduction. What I've sought to do in our time together is visit with you: What it actually means to live eternity in the here and now, to live as if you actually believe in forever, and I couldn't shut this down without taking this next step, in the face of all of what I just said. The Bible does two very stark and significant things that are absolutely clear and unavoidable. Here's the first one: The Bible is very clear in its teaching that humanity is marching toward an inescapable moment of judgment.
Did you hear what I said? Humanity is marching toward an inescapable moment of judgment. There is a second thing that the Bible does: The Bible holds before me that if I live a life of unrepentant spiritual adultery, denying God's existence, breaking his commands, rejecting his grace, I will spend an eternity in the unending torment of hell. You just can't escape it; and I am deeply persuaded that the reason these two teachings have become uncomfortable for us and have often become a source of debate, even though they're clear in Scripture, and have sort of been treated like the embarrassing uncle of the family that we want to hide from public is this...because we neither take the holiness of God seriously or the sinfulness of sin seriously.
If you would meditate on the stunning nature of the absolute perfection of God and his holiness, and you would begin to allow yourself to track what Scripture says about the dark horrendous, heinous ugliness of sin, you would have a different response to these teachings. I'd like you to turn with me to Matthew 25, because in Matthew 25, you have these two very clear thematic teachings in Scripture: The clear and inescapable moment of judgment and the dark and horrendous specter of hell brought together in the teaching of Christ.
Final Judgment
Christ is teaching here about final judgment. It's a very helpful and instructive passage; I want to read a rather lengthy passage for you: When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all His angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. Before Him will be gathered all the nations; (what a scene) and He will separate people one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will place the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
For I was hungry, and you gave Me food; I was thirsty, and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger, and you welcomed Me; I was naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.' And the righteous will answer Him saying, 'Lord when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? And when did we see You a stranger, and welcome You, or naked and clothe You? And when we did see You sick, or in prison, and visit You? And the King will answer them, 'Truly I say to you as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to Me.' Then He will say to those on the left, 'Depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not welcome Me; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.' Then, they also will answer, saying, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister to You?' Then He will answer them saying, 'Truly I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.' And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
Couple of observations: There is, in this passage, no moral elasticity; it's not as if this is confusing; the judgment is precise and clear; we live in a moral world, and we would like to think that there's much more moral elasticity in life than there actually is. You have moments when you're working to convince yourself that what is wrong, it's not exactly wrong; that that, somehow, what you have done, doesn't fit under that category of wrong; there's no confusion here. There are those who have lived this life of disobedience or those who have lived this life of obedience for the glory of God; it's clear.
There's a second thing I would say: That there is, in this passage, clearly as in many passages in Scripture, the principle of moral verticality; nothing you ever do is truly horizontal because you were made for God; there is a way in which everything you do has God-ward motion toward it: Either a rejection of God or a loving, gracious, willing service of God. That's why David, having committed adultery and murder, what does he say in Psalm 51? It's almost shocking to hear: "Against You, and You only have I done this evil."
David is recognizing the verticality of human behavior. Jesus says, "As much as you've done it to these, you have done it to Me." You cannot ever make your life just horizontal; the verticality...and every thought, and every desire, and every word, and every action, because you were made for God, and you are either living unto him, or you're living with your back to him. And there is no comfortable neutral ground to be found; it's a moral world ruled by a holy God. The third thing that I would say is that the judgment picture in this passage is concrete and specific; it's about specific choices, it's about specific behaviors, it's about specific words.
You don't live in general moments; you don't live in the nebulous world. You live in a specific world; of specific locations and specific choices and specific words to specific people; that's how you live. And God rules all of that in his Lordship and He has designed a way to live in all of that by His law and his commands. And I'm afraid that the Church of Jesus Christ has been weakened in its resolve by the horizontal, moral elasticity of the culture around us, and we allow things into our lives and into our hearts, and through our eyes and in our minds, that we should never allow, and we think it's okay, and it's not okay.
You need to be careful; the Bible is very clear that there is an ultimate consequence, and that ultimate consequence reminds me that this is a moral world ruled by a holy God. And the fact that it's a moral world ruled by a holy God means the things I do and say do matter. There is such a thing as final judgment; there is such a place as hell, a place of horrible separation from God, a separation that is unthinkable in its horror. Imagine what would happen if God would withdraw, in this moment, his provident care from earth; imagine the utter chaos; imagine the inhumanity; imagine what it would be like.
Our minds can't take in what it would really be like to be in a place where God is utterly absent-what a horror! And what it's like to live in horrible, eternal torment, the fire never quenched. Now, I would like to say this to you, and I'd love for you to hear it: This fact that this teaching is so clear in Scripture is itself a grace. This is the God of glorious grace who opens the doors so we could look at the horror of horrors, so that we would be warned, so that we would be afraid, so that we would repent, so that we would run to the only place where we can find redemption and protection and salvation--the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Perhaps it takes for us the whole heinous horrors of hell and all that that means, the separation, for God to drive us to the foot of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, because it's so easy for us to be morally asleep, morally flexible, morally self-excusing, and so God, in grace, puts these things in front of us as a warning. You cannot escape the existence of that final judgment; you cannot escape the biblical teaching that there is a place of eternal separation from God and eternal torment; that is the place for those who have lived lives of spiritual adultery, rejecting God's existence, breaking his commands, denying his grace, and setting themselves up on the throne of their own kingdom.
Seven Things
Now, maybe you're thinking, "Okay Paul, what do I do with this? How do I live in light of this?" Well, I want to end my time with you by suggesting seven things- that means we'll be here till Tuesday-fair warning. First of all: The doctrine of hell should break your heart. It should make you weep that there would ever be one person who would face such a thing. It should crush your heart. We must never hold this doctrine cavalierly; we should never hold it lightly; you should never hold it pridefully; you should never hold it selfrighteously.
It should break your heart that there are blind and rebellious people that are around you, right now, that are marching their way to a God-separated, eternal punishment - eternity. And that should make you weep - I said it in a little video clip; there's a way, brothers and sisters, that we should be the saddest community on earth, because we know what sin does to us now and what sin results in the hereafter - we should weep, and we should let that sadness grip your heart, and let that sadness produce tenderness and humility inside of you.
Second thing: Actively fight the delusion that it doesn't make a difference. I've said this already since I have been here; it is a theme in my teaching: You need to be aware that you're in a constant conversation with yourself. I said it earlier this week: And that's: No one's more influential in your life than you are because no one talks to you more than you do-you laughed, but it's true. If you do that, don't move your lips, and it is best not to change positions when you answer. But you are, you are always theologizing with yourself, and I think it's very important to require yourself to be aware of your own self talk; be aware of what you're saying to yourself.
Now, here it is; here is the dynamic: Because you're a believer, the heart of stone has been taken out of you, and the heart of flesh has been replaced. That means, that when you do what is wrong, your conscience will bother you; and when your conscience bothers you, you only have one of two choices. You either confess that that wrong is wrong, and you place yourself, once again, on the justified mercies of Christ and receive his forgiveness; or watch this, or you'll erect some system of self-justification that makes that wrong acceptable to your conscience.
We are so skilled at doing that. Paul talks about pretenses that set themselves up against the knowledge of God; a pretense is a plausible lie. If I stood before you this evening and I said to you, "In my younger days, I was a female Olympic gymnast." That's a lie-please tell me-but it lacks plausibility. But if I stood outside this building with a beautiful expensive suit, a nice leather briefcase, and some architectural drawings, and a little bit of structured vocabulary, I could fool you for a while that I was an architect.
And so, what we do is rather than run, when our conscience bothers us, toward the grace of Jesus, we work to build arguments that will make that wrong acceptable to our conscience. That will make that wrong seem less wrong, plausible arguments that make us feel okay about what is not okay. And because we live in a fallen world, you have a lot of things to point to that don't have anything to do with you. I had a mom who captured it very well for me, she said, "I know, 'a soft answer turns away wrath, and a harsh word stirs up anger,' but whoever wrote that didn't have these children."
There it is. And so you've got to be very careful that you're not buying into this delusion-that actually you can do what God says is wrong; you could not only make yourself feel okay about it, but you can embrace the fact that that won't lead anywhere bad; fight the delusion. Third thing: Require yourself to see sin as sinful. The scary thing is sin doesn't always look sinful to us. You know when that man is at the mall and he's lusting after that woman, he doesn't see danger; he doesn't see disaster; he doesn't see brokenness; he doesn't see immorality--he sees beauty--that's the danger of sin!
When that young person has now stepped way beyond God's boundaries and way beyond his parents' boundaries, he doesn't feel danger; he doesn't feel the disaster and destruction of what he's doing; he feels the buzz of temporary autonomy and temporary freedom--it's like a drug! The husband who has just, in a nasty, self-righteous, arrogant way, demeaned his wife and her wisdom by arguing her into a corner with great delight, doesn't feel the ugliness and the lack of love in that; he feels the power of winning.
The Last Bite of the Cookie
The child who's eating the last bite of the cookie that he was told he must not have before dinner, doesn't taste disaster; he tastes chocolate chips, and because the last bite happened before mom came into in the room, he lives with the power of getting away with it. The scary thing about sin is its deceitfulness, its ability to present itself as something beautiful, when it's not beautiful at all. Some of you have fallen in places, maybe even this week, because you bought into the beauty of sin, and you let that beauty propel you when sin is anything but beautiful.
It's a horror--nothing less! Require yourself to see sin as sinful. Fourth thing: Be thankful for final justice. Be thankful for final justice. One of the things that we struggle with so much is the injustice that's everywhere around us. The injustice on the playground where a child who's not athletic is made fun of because of choices he didn't make, the injustice of someone who bends and breaks the rules in the workplace and becomes successful when you're moral and you don't get an advancement, the injustice of somebody rejecting you because of the color of your skin or your ethnic background, the injustice of a businessman who cares more about his bottom line then he does the welfare of the people who've invested in his business.
It's everywhere around us, and there is a cry in the heart of every human being for justice--when will justice come? Brothers and sisters, hear this--justice is coming. There will be final justice, and we will be able to go to the funeral of injustice. Injustice will die because God is holy. Fifth thing: Daily, celebrate grace. Don't ever stop celebrating grace. You see, you could not behave yourself out of hell into heaven- it would never happen because your big problem is you; the thing that you need to be saved from is you; the thing that you need to be rescued from is you; the thing you need to be protected from is you-you are your problem!
David says it, he didn't say, "Well my problem was a beautiful lady who lived next to me." No, he says this in his confession: "Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me; create in me a clean heart, O God." God it's me, it's my heart, it's my nature--I am my problem. And so the only hope for us is that God would reach down into the muck of our iniquity and lift us out by his gracethat's the only hope. The only hope for humanity is grace--you can say it in a word-- grace.
Jesus had to be willing to come; He had to suffer through all those years; He had to be willing to face the cross; He had to live a righteous life; He had to be the sacrificial Lamb; He had to conquer death; because sinners cannot behave their way out of their sin--they must be rescued by powerful rescuing, forgiving transforming grace--our hope is one thing--grace. And if your story is marching toward the kingdom of glory and grace, forever to be with Jesus, you cannot boast; you must lift up your head in praise, because it's not of you; it's of Him; that's the gospel.
Sixth thing, I couldn't resist this because it's been the theme: Keep reminding yourself of what is important; God's important; His reign is important; His glory is important; His redemption is important; His grace is important. Don't get snookered into believing, once again, that unimportant things are important, and they begin to take moral command over your life and lead it into dark and destructive directions. Remind yourself again and again and again what is important; surround yourself with people who remind you what is important; attend a church that lays before you the truths of what is important, because it's so easy for us to fall into elevating things to levels of importance way beyond their true importance.
The final thing is this-number seven: Be zealous to share, wherever you are, the gospel of rescuing grace. How can you look at the theology of final judgment and a theology of eternal punishment in the face and not be motivated to share where you are, the gospel of rescuing grace? Tomorrow, the day after, the day after, you will brush shoulders with people who are marching toward doom, and they don't know it. And you've been sovereignly positioned by God's care next to those people. You have opportunity.
These teachings in Scripture are inescapable; there is a final judgment; there is a place of eternal torment called hell. The only hope for humanity is the glory of the rescuing grace of Jesus. What does that result in? It results in these two things: A serious and thankful life--a serious and thankful life. Let's pray. Lord, we can be people who hold onto clarity of theology, yet in moments in our lives, live in moral denial. Thank you for the clear warnings in your Word. We receive them as a grace.
Thank you that you did for us what we could not do--you paid for us a price we could not pay; and you conquered for us what we could not defeat; we are deeply grateful. In Jesus name, Amen.
