INTRODUCTION THE CROSS AND THE WRATH OF GOD (Isaiah 53:4-6; Romans 5:6-11) I have a new plan for the sermons on the Communion Sunday of each month this year. In Holy Communion we recognize, remember, and even celebrate the death of Christ for us. My plan is to preach on some aspect of the Cross each Communion Sunday so that we may come to have an even deeper appreciation and understanding of what happened at the Cross. Then when we partake of Communion it can be truly an Eucharist. Some Christians call the Lord s Supper, The Eucharist. The word Eucharist comes from the Greek word for thanksgiving. One of the impetuses for me in going in this direction is my reading project for this year. It is to read some books on the Cross or on the Crucifixion. So far I have read John Stott s, The Cross of Christ and I am now reading Fleming Rutledge s The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ. Especially in Rutledge s book she emphasizes the fact that the preaching on the Cross has diminished today, even in evangelical churches. This is in contrast to the New Testament priority of it and especially Paul s emphasis on the Cross. He said in 1 Corinthians 2:2 NKJV: For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Why was Paul determined to preach on Christ and Him crucified? I Corinthians 1 gives the answer: 1 Corinthians 1:21-24 ESV (21) For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. (22) For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, (23) but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, (24) but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Christ is the power of God. It is Christ crucified who is the power of God. It is through preaching the message of the Cross that God is pleased to save those who beleive. So I want to keep the message of the Cross before us and one way of doing this is to preach on some aspect of the Cross each Communion Sunday, when we are already thinking about the Cross. This morning I want to focus on the Cross and the Wrath of God. April 7 2019 Corntassel CP Church Page 1
WHAT DOES THE CROSS HAVE TO DO WITH THE WRATH OF GOD? What does the Cross have to do with the wrath of God? Does the Bible connect them? Romans 5 connects them: Romans 5:8-9 HCSB But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us! (9) Much more then, since we have now been declared righteous by His blood, we will be saved through Him from wrath. Through the Blood, i.e. the Cross, we will be saved from God s wrath. Another way that the Bible connects the Cross of Christ to the Wrath of God is the word: propitiation. For example Paul uses this word in Romans 3:25 Romans 3:25 HCSB God presented Him as a propitiation through faith in His blood, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His restraint God passed over the sins previously committed. Propitiation means to satisfy the justice or wrath of God. So we need to connect the Cross and the Wrath of God in our understanding and faith. THE LACK OF PREACHING ON THE WRATH OF GOD Now if preaching about the Cross is receding in our churches today, the preaching on the Wrath of God has almost disappeared from the pulpit! Why? It is because we don t want to think of God as a wrathful, angry God. We only want a loving God. Some say that an emphasis on the wrath of God is an Old Testament view of God. Jesus view of God is a loving God. We need to take Jesus view of God. But is this really the way the Old Testament and the New Testament reveals God to us? I don t believe that it is. The Old Testament speaks much of the love of God or the loving kindness of God. Just think of all the times the Psalmists and the Prophets mentions God s love endures forever. And the New Testament speaks of the wrath of God. Just read several of Jesus parables. Our current churches may be silent on the wrath of God but this hasn t always been the case. One of the most famous or well-known sermons in American history is by Jonathan Edwards in 1741, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. This sermon had the effect of bringing many to a saving knowledge of Christ. Here is a portion of it. Notice how Edwards portrayed God s holy wrath. Hold on to your seats! The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or April 7 2019 Corntassel CP Church Page 2
obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath towards you burns like a fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince. And yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. O sinner! consider the fearful danger you are in. It is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it and burn it asunder. Consider this, you that are here present, that yet remain in an unregenerate state. That God will execute the fierceness of his anger implies that he will inflict wrath without any pity. When God beholds the ineffable extremity of your case, and sees your torment to be so vastly disproportioned to your strength, and sees how your poor soul is crushed and sinks down, as it were, into an infinite gloom; he will have no compassion upon you, he will not forbear the executions of his wrath, or in the least lighten his hand; there shall be no moderation or mercy, nor will God then at all stay his rough wind; he will have no regard to your welfare, nor be at all careful lest you should suffer too much in any other sense, than only that you shall not suffer beyond what strict justice requires. Nothing shall be withheld because it is so hard for you to bear. Ezek. viii.18. "Therefore will I also deal in fury; mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity; and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them." God will have no other use to put you to, but to suffer misery; you shall be continued in being to no other end; for you will be a vessel of wrath fitted to destruction; and there will be no other use of this vessel, but to be filled full of wrath. [God] will not only hate you, but he will have you in the utmost contempt; no place shall be thought fit for you, but under his feet to be trodden down as the mire of the streets. And seeing this is his design and what he has determined, even to show how terrible the unrestrained wrath, the fury and fierceness of Jehovah is, he will do it to effect. There will be something accomplished and brought to pass that will be dreadful with a witness. When the great and angry God hath risen up and executed his awful vengeance on the poor sinner, and the wretch is actually suffering the infinite weight and power of his indignation, then will God call upon the whole universe to behold that awful majesty and mighty power that is to be seen in it. Wow! No wonder it is reported that many people were holding on to the back of pews with white knuckled hands, crying out for the mercy of God! No April 7 2019 Corntassel CP Church Page 3
wonder God s Spirit used that sermon in a mighty way to bring unrepentant and unregenerate sinners to fly to Jesus with faith in His work for us on the Cross! Today we need to recover the truth that the wrath of God is real and we all stand under it. And the Cross is the only way of escape. John the Baptist s conclusion of John 3:16 is in verse 36 of John 3 is: John 3:36 HCSB The one who believes in the Son has eternal life, but the one who refuses to believe in the Son will not see life; instead, the wrath of God remains on him. What is the wrath of God then? WHAT IS THE WRATH OF GOD? When we speak about the wrath of God, remember that it is the wrath of God. So everything we know about God that He is just, righteous, and holy. He is love, good, and wise. We need to understand the wrath of God in light of these attributes. Another problem we have when thinking about the wrath of God is to think that God s wrath is like human anger. It is not. Our anger can often be unpredictable, petty, and disproportionate. Although these things are often true of human anger, none of them are true of the anger of God. What is God s wrath? It is the just and measured response of his holiness toward evil. This is the key to understanding God s wrath. It is the response of his holiness toward evil. Fleming Rutledge The wrath of God is not an emotion that flares up from time to time, as though God had temper tantrums; it is a way of describing his absolute enmity against all wrong and his coming to set matters right. (p. 130) The anger of God is not something that resides in him by nature; it is a response to evil. It is provoked. It is not an attribute of God. It is a provoked response of God. The Bible says, God is love. That is his nature. God s love is not provoked. He does not love us because he sees some wisdom, beauty, or goodness in us. He loves us because he loves us. But God s wrath is different; it is his holy response to the intrusion of evil into his world. If there was no sin in the world, there would be no wrath of God. So the Bible s teaching is that the wrath of God is different from human wrath. God s anger is his settled resolve that evil will not stand. April 7 2019 Corntassel CP Church Page 4
One day God s wrath will be poured out on all evil. But God has a plan to deal with evil and sin. He has a plan on how to overcome it, remove it, and not let it destroy His creation. His plan has to do with the Cross. HOW DOES THE WRATH OF GOD RELATE TO THE LOVE OF GOD? In a real way the wrath of God is evidence of the love of God. How can this be? Just think for a moment. If you see evil done to a person, say a little child being molested by some child molester, it would be an act of love to be angry and do something about it. Your wrath, being moved by love, will seek to remove that evil from that child. In a similar way God s wrath on evil is an act of love to do something about it. He seeks to remove that wrath in the Cross of Christ. The Bible speaks about God s wrath being poured out at the cross: I will soon pour out my wrath upon you, and spend my anger against you (Ezekiel 7:8). This takes us to the heart of what happened at the cross: The divine wrath toward sin was poured out on Jesus. He became the propitiation for our sins (Romans 3:25), which means that the wrath provoked by our sins was poured out on Jesus at Calvary. Now don t ever get the idea that God loves you because Christ died for you. No, it s the other way round. Christ died for you because God loved you! He loved you even when you were the object of his wrath! Romans says that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. God so loved the objects of his wrath that he spent the wrath on himself at the cross. This is His amazing Grace! The outpouring of God s wrath at the Cross was the greatest act of love this world has ever seen. CONCLUSION To appreciate the Cross we must believe in the reality of God s wrath against sin and sinners. To benefit from what Jesus die on the Cross, we must believe in Jesus, i.e. put our absolute faith in Him. The only hope for sinners is that between us and the wrath of God stands the Cross of Jesus. Remember that Christ not only died for our sins, He arose from the dead, the resurrection. He now stands before you today, a living Savior! He offers you the priceless gift of peace with God. He is ready to forgive your sins and fill you with his Spirit. He is able to save you from the wrath to come and to reconcile you to the Father. He has opened the door of heaven, and he is able to bring you in. Will you come to Him? Will you believe in Him? If you know Him, will you recommit your faith and life to Him as we partake of the Communion? April 7 2019 Corntassel CP Church Page 5
This is how the Cross relates to the wrath of God. One of the central things that Jesus did on the Cross was to absorb the wrath of God poured out on our sins. Amen? Amen! April 7 2019 Corntassel CP Church Page 6