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Sermon Manuscripts
Restoration of a New Testament
View of God
a sermon in the series,
Hebrews: An Epistle of Encouragement
A sermon delivered
Sunday Morning, June 15, 2003
at Oak Grove Baptist Church, Paducah, KY.
by S. Michael Durham
© 2003 Real Truth Matters
Hebrews 12:28-29
Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: 29 For our God is a consuming fire.
The manner in which you view God plays a pivotal role in all aspects of your Christian life. I cannot emphasize this fact enough. A Biblical view of God translates into a stable and joyful Christian life. But an improper view of God can destabilize a great many areas of your life. Let me illustrate. If you see God as one who is not involved with the affairs of men, then you will be a very prayerless Christian and a person who takes matters into your own hands. Your theological and doctrinal position might include God’s involvement and providential care of His own, but such position, which is intellectual alone and not in the heart, is not faith. While I do care about what truth you believe and assent to intellectually, it matters more to me what is in your heart, because what is in your heart is what you really believe. What is believed in the heart is translated into the actions of a man.
Another example would be if you view God as severe and harsh, then it will be difficult for you to see Him as a compassionate Father longing for you to draw near to Him in child-like faith. If your view of God is that He is very permissive, then your view of the Christian life is going to be permissive in regards to sin. You will view grace more as God’s unmerited favor that removes the consequences of sin but does not remove sin from the believer. Much of modern Baptist life is here, I am afraid. Grace has become God’s means of dealing with the guilt of our sin and is no longer His means to eradicate sin’s sway and power in our lives.
So you see how a correct view of God is paramount to your vitality as a Christian. In fact, your eternal destiny is in the very balance and is largely determined by whether or not you have a biblical view of God, a view derived from the pages of sacred Scripture itself. I have said repeatedly that this is the foremost problem of Christians and Christianity today. The second problem is our view of man and sin. Sadly, for nearly a hundred and fifty years, theologians, seminaries, pastors, and churches have erred in both of these strategic doctrines. A skewed view of God must lead to a skewed view of man. And both of these calamities have befallen us.
The bedrock of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the nature and character of God. The righteousness of God is where the apostles began their preaching of the gospel. Sinners must know the nature of God, and, in particular, His righteousness if they are to be saved. Our modern and sophisticated gospel begins with man and revolves around him. Consequently, churches are full of members who have not been converted. Christianity to them was like joining some organization that would provide them wonderful benefits. To them the church’s benefits are worth the dues of a couple hours on Sunday morning and a few dollars in the offering plate. “There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:18). There is no real understanding of the righteousness of God. And if an understanding of God’s holy character is missing, then forget about trying to convince the sinner that he is sinful. This is what has happened. Today, the teachers of evangelism and church growth have advised “do not come down on sin but minister to the unconverted’s needs and they will come around.”
There must be a restoration of the Gospel in our generation or all will perish, and if there is to be a restoring of the Gospel, there must be a restoration of the New Testament view of God.
When I say New Testament view of God, I do not mean to imply that the Old Testament’s presentation of God is inferior or that God changed from the Old to the New Testament, as some actor changing between scenes. The God of the Old Testament is the same God of the New Testament. He has not changed, and this is very clear in Hebrews chapter twelve.
Last week, we saw a tale of two mountains. In verses eighteen through twenty-four, the writer of Hebrews compared and contrasted the Old and New Covenants. He showed clearly that although these covenants are different, the God from whom they proceed is the same. If the children of Israel did not survive the disobeying of the God of Moses who came down on Mt. Sinai in such terrible and frightening manifestation, then do not let anyone think that he or she will escape judgment for refusing to listen to Christ and obey Him. The New Covenant is a superior covenant and has replaced the Old Covenant, and therefore violators of the New Covenant will be dealt with in a very severe way.
In verses twenty-five through twenty-seven we see that God is shaking all things so that only the immovable kingdom of God will remain. This is the purifying that even now is occurring. God has been shaking and will continue to shake until everything is removed that is not a part of the eternal kingdom of His dear Son, Jesus Christ. God shakes you and me and thereby removes things from our lives that are not a part of this glorious covenant and kingdom. And so the author of this epistle of encouragement warns his audience in verse twenty-five, “See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven.”
In verses twenty-eight and twenty-nine the author reminds us that God has not changed since the days of the giving of the Old Covenant. He is still the same God. From these verses the case should be made for the restoring of a New Testament view of God. But before we examine what the proper and biblical view of God is we must address some improper views of God.
AN IMPROPER VIEW OF GOD
Because of the division of the Bible into two sections, the Old Testament and the New Testament, many have wrongly concluded that God went through some metamorphosis in the intertestamental period. Somehow God mellowed by the time the New Testament dispensation began. He was no longer this vengeful, vicious and dangerous God. Now He was a merciful and compassionate God that loved the world and gave His only begotten Son. And so we see this dichotomy of God.
His Judgment is in the Old Testament and Mercy is in the New Testament?
We must tackle this question concerning the obvious difference between how God dealt with men in the New Testament and the way He dealt with them in the Old Testament. It is true we do not see fire from heaven burning cities like Sodom and Gomorrah in the New Testament. Nor do we see God destroying the earth with a flood. We do not read verses in the New Testament like Isaiah 13:9 which says, “Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.” Nor do we read commandments ordering Christians to kill evildoers as we do in the Old Testament. “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass” (1 Samuel 15:3).
In the New Testament this wrathful view of God seems to be diminished. However, it is wrong to make the assumption that God somehow changed. It is dangerous and wrong to believe that judgment is no longer an expression of God’s nature and that mercy is now the exclusive means by which God expresses Himself to sinful man. God declares, “For I am the LORD, I change not” (Malachi 3:6). Our own writer of Hebrews preached the immutability of God in chapter thirteen and verse eight, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.” Judgment must remain a part of God’s expressions of His character as are blessings an expression of His mercy.
None other than the Lord Jesus Himself promised judgment on all those who rejected Him and His message. In John chapter nine and verse thirty-nine, He states that for the reason of judgment He came into the world, “And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind.” He talked much more about hell than He did heaven. He was constantly warning folks of hell’s torments. “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” were His words (Matthew 10:28). With bitter pathos He condemned the self-righteous religious leaders, “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” (Matthew 23:33).
It was the same merciful Christ who forgave the adulteress that made a whip and drove out the moneychangers who corrupted the temple. It is critical that we today understand that the Lord has not changed in His dealings with man, and that judgment is as much manifested in the New Testament as in the Old. In fact, the greatest demonstration of God’s wrath in the Bible is not the Flood of Noah, nor is it the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is not the Ten Plagues of Egypt or the exile of His people to Babylon. The greatest demonstration of God’s judgment is not even found in the Old Testament. Rather, it is found in the New Testament. On a hill with three crosses silhouetted against the Jerusalem horizon is where God displayed His greatest demonstration of His wrath and judgment. It is when He crushed His own Son under the heel of holy justice. Here we see manifested the full revelation of God’s hatred toward sin and His righteous dealings with it. Jesus became sin for us and God killed Him for it. The terror of God’s justice was expressed in the body of Christ. The mutilation of each lash of the Roman whip was the thrashing of God’s displeasure against sin. The nails that pinned our Lord’s body to the tree of shame were the spikes of God’s holy anger toward the revolt of man. You cannot look at Calvary and say that somehow God underwent a public relations makeover and became tamed, reserved and has put away His righteous judgment in the New Testament.
If you disregard God’s judgment of sin in Christ Jesus, then know that God will judge your sins as well. He hates sin and He has not changed in this regard. How can you escape, you who are evil, if God would not spare His holy Son? Christ’s death on the cross is proof positive that judgment awaits you. Surely, if the Father would curse His Son whom He loves, you already abide under His curse, you who are His enemies. God may not pour out His judgment upon you today or tomorrow, but you can be certain that one day the hammer will fall, and you will cry, as will others, “to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb” (Revelation 6:16).
This leads me to another improper view of God that exists in many circles. It stems from this idea we have just explained about the New Testament being strictly mercy and no judgment and that is, an improper view of God’s righteousness.
An Improper View of God’s Righteousness
The idea that God has changed from an Old Testament God of judgment to a New Testament God of love and mercy is a result of a defective view of God’s righteousness. Righteousness has been mistakenly understood as what only one does. No doubt, one can perform acts of righteousness, but actions of righteousness flow from one who is righteous, otherwise, “good deeds” are nothing more than hypocritical and meant to secure glory for oneself. True righteousness comes from one who is righteous. “Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous” (1 John 3:7). Righteousness is the quality of holiness. It’s about being right in thought and heart—which is the loving of God more than anything else. If God is righteous He must think and act righteously. Therefore, God being righteous is holy and opposed to all unrighteousness. His holy nature must cry out for the end of evil and those who do evil. His righteousness must demand justice and the removal of all that is wicked and opposed to holiness.
To say that God does not want to execute judgment is to say that God is not opposed to evil and evildoers, and if this were true, then God is not righteous. Again, this is the mystery of the cross and Jesus’ death unfolded. Paul tells us in his Epistle to the Romans chapter three and verses twenty-five and twenty-six that this is the reason Christ died—to vindicate God’s righteousness and yet be merciful also. Men had long supposed that God’s righteousness was no better than man’s righteousness. Because God had long delayed in showing His full and unmitigated hatred against sin, men had supposed that God winked at their sin. They thought God’s system of justice was very much like man’s, a basic works type of justice. You do more good than you do bad and you’re ok. But man had misjudged God and His merciful delay in judging sin. But on Calvary He displayed it. Paul says,
Whom God hath set forth [to be] a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus (Romans 3:25-26).
God could not perpetually deal with man’s sins using animal sacrifices. He could not continue to withhold His burning vengeance on sin and the sinner; His righteousness could not suffer this. And so Christ was sent, and in His death, God’s righteousness is vindicated. Christ shows the world that God is righteous and that He will always judge sin.
Any view of God that minimizes His judging of sin and the satisfying of His holy justice is an attack on the righteous character of God and on the sacrificial death of Christ. To draw the conclusion that God is a God of love and hence He cannot possibly condemn men’s souls to hell’s judgment is blasphemous. It is contrary to the very love of God. You surely do not insult those you love, and yet to say this of God in the defense of love is to be unloving and do despite to the grace of God. It makes God out to be unrighteous. Such a view of God discredits the holiness and righteousness of God.
If Christianity and the gospel message are to survive in this twenty-first century, then we must accept the gospel presentation of God. There must be a call to restore the New Testament view of God. That is what the writer was calling for in this entire epistle as well as our text. He is calling for a return to a biblical view of God, and that is what I call us to this morning.
Whether you are a member of this church or not, I am calling you to return and uphold a view of God that was not invented in the ivory towers of modern intellectualism but revealed in the Holy Scriptures. The only place that this correct view can be created, sustained, and known is in the written word of God. God has not left mankind in the dark, not knowing who He is. He has communicated and revealed Himself to us through written revelation. And the writer of Hebrews tells us there is one pinnacle to the revelation of God, one glimpse of God that outshines all other revelations, and it is Jesus Christ. For “the Word was made flesh” (John 1:14).
Today, if you want to know what God is like, I invite you to look at Jesus. Yes, the same Jesus, the very same compassionate and tender Jesus who forgave the adulteress, is the same Jesus who took some cords and made a whip and drove the moneychangers out of the Temple. This is the one to whom I bid you to look if you want to know who God is and what He is like. The same Jesus who patiently taught those who wanted to learn is the same Jesus who spoke in parables so that men might not understand, saying, “lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them” (Matthew 13:15). It is the same Jesus.
I invite you, if you really want to know who God is, to do a study of the first four books of the New Testament, called the Gospels, and especially the Gospel According to John. In John you see this mystery in flesh, that Christ was fully God, as if not a man, and fully a man, as if not God, in one person, in one body and yet these two natures not mixed. And in that body God is revealed.
He, Jesus, is the good shepherd. He is the very one who is looking for His lost sheep. He is looking for that soul who is lost and knows that it is estranged. He tenderly looks for that lamb that has gone astray and is bleating, crying, with all of its might, so that every muscle in its body is tense with its distress. Do you wish to be found by this Good Shepherd? Do you long at this moment that He would lift you up from your fallen position and save you from your death? Then you must accept God just the way He is revealed in Christ in the Scriptures.
It is this same Good Shepherd who said that He had come into the world to die for His lost sheep. In John’s Gospel our Lord is recorded saying, “As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, [and] one shepherd” (John 10:15-16). This is the same Jesus who turned to the religious leaders and said that they were not His sheep. “But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you” (John 10:26). Christ was making a definitive statement to these men. He had come to save the lost sheep of Israel and the lost Gentiles who would be brought into the sheepfold, but looking at these men, whose hearts were as hard as stone, He said, in effect, “My death will mean nothing to you, because you are not my sheep.”
What a contrast! You say it is confusing, but it isn’t. God is righteous. You must always begin with this principle when approaching God. That is how Paul begins his gospel presentation to the Romans, and it is always where God begins in His revelation of His person. God is righteous! The problem with us is that we are not righteous. We have transgressed this holy God’s law and His glory. Therefore, the penalty must be exacted, the penalty must be paid. The same God who is righteous and will judge all men, the living and the dead, the good and the bad, is the same God that died on a cross, and He suffered all His divine wrath in His body and in His own soul. There is no mental dichotomy with God. He is not schizophrenic. He suffers no identity complex—He is both righteous and merciful, just and forgiving. This is not a God of the Old Testament and a different God of the New Testament. It is the same God hanging on Calvary with arms outstretched, calling to any who would hear Him, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). You can know with certainty on that final day of reckoning when all men will stand before the gaze of God’s searching omniscience, that there is no condemnation. If you are in Christ, who is the revelation of this God, then you stand uncondemned. The Bible says in Romans chapter eight and verse one, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” You can know this peace and hope today!
Let us come back to the God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ, the God of the Word! Amen. |
