Love & Wrath | Jeff Vines | Forgiveness (Week 2)

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Whether you're a seasoned believer or just starting your journey with Christ,

let's open our hearts and minds as we explore together how this sermon can shape and strengthen us as disciples.

I know it's hot outside and you're in the air-conditioned.

As a matter of fact, some of you didn't want to come to church, but you knew we had air-conditioned, so here you are.

No, just kidding about that. It's just a joke. I know you're here.

This is one of the messages that is really going to require you to engage and think.

If we do the hard work of thinking through this, then when we come back next week and talk about how it is you and I,

the process of forgiving someone that's significant.

That's significantly wounded us, then it's going to make so much more sense to you if you do the hard work first.

One of my concerns as an older pastor is that a lot of our preaching today is quite motivational.

So you get a lot of kind of pep talks, nothing wrong with that.

But if you don't know the theology behind the pep talk, then you get in trouble.

So my generation had a lot of heavy teaching, and quite frankly, we were bored sometimes because it was so heavy,

we didn't know what was going on.

Now this generation is very good at the let's go after it, not so good at understanding the foundation upon which we're making these statements.

So there's got to be a turn now.

So the church has got to go back to the Bible and a whole new generation so that we can have the pep talks again.

Okay?

John 3.

We're in a series on forgiveness.

And the Bible says, one of the most famous verses,

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son,

that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already,

because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.

So if you were to open your Bible,

for the first time,

and you didn't know a lot about God,

but you're trying to find out,

you've heard this is the revelation of God to us to understand God,

who he is and what he's doing in the world.

And you started reading the Old Testament.

One of the first things you would discover is a God who promises to show himself holy in righteousness.

He is so holy, you will read,

that according to Exodus 19, 23 and 24,

when he descends on the mountain to give the Ten Commandments,

it becomes so holy,

that it can't be touched.

It's so holy that if humans get too close, they'll die.

That's a holy God.

You further discover that God's holiness moves him.

In fact, almost requires him to punish sin.

Leviticus 11, Leviticus 19, Leviticus 20, 1 Kings 3, 7.

And as you continue to read, again, if you've never read the Old Testament,

you continue to read from Genesis all the way through,

you're going to discover that the Bible is clear,

that God is so holy that he will not let evildoers or the unjust go unpunished.

However, God's wrath is not like ours.

We are wrathful when we get angry at somebody, right?

It just boils and boils and then out it comes.

But God's wrath is described as his holiness released judicially against sin.

You and I get mad, it boils like a volcano,

then boom!

But God's wrath is not like ours.

His wrath is holiness released judicially against evil.

Now, I'm not sure there's anything more clear in the Bible than the fact that God says he's

going to do justice and he's not going to shrug or wink or ignore sin or evil.

Heinrich A.A., the German poet, was reputed to have said just before he died,

God will forgive me, that's his job.

But Herman Bovnik said,

shallow idea that forgiving is natural for God.

The Old Testament teaches that forgiveness is not a given,

but the Bible says God will often pardon the offense.

But wherever forgiveness is obtained,

it is something to be regarded with awe and wonder.

Woo-hoo!

God has forgiven.

At the same time, the Old Testament is also filled with claims and promises

that God is a forgiving God.

So first of all, God will not let the unjust,

and the evil person go unpunished.

And then all of a sudden, we hear about God as a forgiving, gracious, merciful God.

And so we read in Isaiah, when he sees God high and lifted up,

all of a sudden, he comes to terms with the magnitude of his own sin.

And he repents, Isaiah chapter 6, verse 7.

And as soon as he repents, God offers him forgiveness and mercy.

I don't think we see this tension between the holiness and the love

and forgiving nature of God.

More clearly than we do, when Moses said,

God, show me your glory, and in Exodus 34, this is what happens.

And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming the Lord, the Lord,

the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger,

abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to the thousands,

and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin.

And notice, yet, he does not leave the guilty unpunished.

He punishes the children.

He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents

to the third and fourth generation.

And the Hebrew is even more emphatic here.

It literally says, in no way will God treat the guilty as if they were innocent.

Anybody see the problem?

You have both.

Is God a loving God who forgives the guilty,

or is God a just God who punishes the guilty?

And the Bible teaches us he is both.

Both.

And the question is, how?

Now, go back to John 3.16 for a moment.

Perhaps the most famous verse in the Bible.

Anybody remember this guy, by the way?

Roland Frederick Stewart.

Remember him?

Sad story.

Rainbow hair.

This guy traveled to every major sporting event.

Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, the World Series, with his John 3.16 sign.

But the problem is, John 3.16 is a feel-good verse,

but only when you read it.

But only when it's taken out of context.

Because the very next verse speaks of condemnation.

And then condemnation is defined in verse 36 of John 3.

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.

But whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him.

So the Bible says that God's wrath is on all of us,

no matter who we are, from where we come, until Christ.

And when Christ comes into our lives,

the wrath of God is removed.

Modern people struggle with the idea of a God who condemns anybody or anything.

And the reason is because we all define God, especially in our time, in this generation,

God is all-loving, and that's full stop.

Forget it.

But the Bible never sees God's love and God's anger as opposed to each other.

Instead, the Bible says that they are meaningless apart from each other,

God is both fury and love at the same time.

One of the reasons that you and I, when we hear that God is a wrathful God,

is that we think God's anger is like ours.

So, we're on the 210.

Have you noticed I use this example?

Do you think I have a problem with bad drivers?

I mean, I was thinking about this today.

It always goes right there.

And I think that's a problem I have.

In fact, I was coming home.

I had really bad asthma.

So, I drove down to Newport Beach and just walked along the ocean for a while,

and the air was great, and so the asthma went away.

But coming back, you know, it takes you 40 minutes to get there.

It took me two hours, and my GPS was taking me everywhere.

How many of you get really upset when you get in line like you're supposed to,

to make the turn?

And people speed by like, your life's not important.

It's only them.

And so, they go all the way, and then they expect you to let them in.

And what gets me is people do let them in.

Don't let them in.

There's justice in the world.

Stop letting them in.

Okay, we'll get to that in a minute.

Where's your love, Pastor Jeff?

Where's your love and forgiveness?

We'll get to that.

The point is, when somebody does that to us,

or when somebody says something to us or about us,

we feel, you know, our egos hurt.

Someone's attacked our image, you know, our rights.

But God, He's not wounded.

He doesn't have wounded pride when someone does something.

They shouldn't have done.

As a matter of fact, if you look at the Old Testament,

God only gets angry when evil destroys something He loves.

God gets angry when something is destroying something that He loves.

He gets angry when you destroy yourself.

You know, you hear people today saying, what?

It's my body, and I can do what I want to with it.

Well, first of all, it's not your body.

You didn't design it.

You didn't create it.

It was given to you by God.

And because God is the owner,

He actually gets upset with you when you ruin your own body.

So your God may be a God of all love,

but that's not the God of the Bible.

It's not the God who is.

It's the God you've created in your own image

because that's what you want.

Or, I've met a lot of Christians.

Their God is a God of all wrath.

They're glad God's angry,

and He's going to get all their enemies.

And they can't wait until God gets all their enemies.

Of course,

they have no sin in their life,

so God would never get them.

They're delusional as well

because it's a God they've created in their own mind.

So here's the big question.

Huge question.

Where did the idea that God was love come from?

I've asked many college students this on university campuses.

How do you know God is love?

What if I told you God's just big, bad, and ugly,

and He's going to get all of us?

Who told you God was love?

One student said to me,

well, it's inherent.

You just know it.

I said, really?

Not in the ancient world, it wasn't.

A matter of fact,

before Jesus,

there was never a concept that God was love.

Do you know that, historically speaking?

The Greek gods can be described in one way.

A word that Paul borrows to describe the work of Jesus in Romans.

Propitiation.

And propitiation is where you take a sacrifice

and you lay it down at the altars

of the,

of the false gods,

and you run for your life,

hoping that when God would consume this offering,

instead of consuming you,

somehow there would be no residual impact.

That was the God of the Greeks.

Who told us God was love?

Other religions?

Folks, most religions teach that any inequality in this life

is due to thoughts, words, and deeds

that you've entertained or uttered or committed in a previous life.

It's the law of karma.

So, if,

if bad things are happening to you,

you deserve it.

Because you did something in a previous life.

And now there's retribution.

There's no forgiveness, only retribution.

You're getting what you deserve.

The idea of a loving, forgiving, merciful God

does not come from religion.

In fact,

most religions have a plurality of gods

who must constantly be appeased.

Even monotheistic religions, like Islam,

see God as impersonal, unloving, demanding,

who's going to release his wrath with joy against the heathen someday.

Okay?

So, God is a God of justice.

Where did we get the idea?

Who told us that God was a God of love?

By the way, do we get it from nature?

I mean, you think about the modern evolutionary theory,

which is so substantially brutal,

that only the fittest survive.

I don't think nature,

uh, nature may tell us of the greatness and the creative power of God.

Does it tell us of the love of God?

Think of cats.

There's no, there's no remorse in a cat.

Have you noticed that for its dastardly deeds?

I mean, most cats play with their prey before it kills them.

That's a cat.

I'm convinced, if they could, they'd kill their owners.

You say, why, why would you say that?

Well, have you seen a lion?

What's a lion?

Just a big cat.

It'll kill you.

That's what they really want to do.

And then you take dogs.

Dogs will sacrifice for their owners.

Cats would gladly sacrifice their owners to preserve their own lives,

but not dogs.

Dogs will lay down their lives, and Jesus himself said,

no greater life, no greater love hath man than he laid down his life for his friends.

Okay, I'm getting off track.

Here's the point.

The concept of a loving God came from one place, the Bible.

And most people don't know they think God is love

because they're living in the after effects of the Judeo-Christian world

that has taught them this for generation after generation

since the coming of Christ.

As a matter of fact, do you know that when the ancient pagans first learned

that the Christians were saying that God is merciful, loving, and forgiving,

they were offended by it because they said society could never function

with a forgiveness mentality.

All societies passed until Jesus.

God is angry, and he's going to get all of us.

And Jesus comes along, and suddenly we have followers of Jesus

talking about a good God of mercy, love, and forgiveness.

Now, can I ask you to just think about something for a moment?

Come on, we're doing well, we're making good progress.

Modern people think of slavery, and they ask,

you and I, how on earth could anybody, how could people

have ever accepted such a monstrosity like slavery?

But that's not how historians think.

Historians ask this question.

They say, considering the fact that slavery was universally believed

by all societies, and they believed that the strong had the right

to attack and enslave weaker people, and since everybody had always done it,

the real historical question is, when did it occur to people

that it was actually wrong?

Who first had the idea?

And the answer is, the voices who called for the abolition of slavery

were all Christian.

Why?

Because Christians believed in a God who is a God of justice and love.

Why?

The reason Christians started fighting injustice was because God is a just God and we should be

just people too. So here we go. The wrath of God then is an expression of a loving God

rightfully demanding love from human beings toward one another and toward him.

So first, the love of God expresses wrath. Now again, that sits difficult with you, doesn't it?

The love of God expresses, often expresses wrath. All right, let me give you an example. I think

we'll kind of, oh, I get it. And it's Rebecca Manley Pippard in a book called Hope Has Its

Reasons. She says, think of how we, you and I feel when someone we love is ravaged by unwise

actions in relationships. Do we respond with benign tolerance? And she speaks of watching

two very gifted, talented friends destroy themselves with drugs.

And then she says, and I quote, I feel fury when I'm with them. I want to say, can't you see,

don't you know what you're doing to yourself? You become less and less yourself every time I see you.

So she's angry. Real love, she says, stands against deception, the lie, the sin that destroys.

Anger and love are inseparably bound in the human experience. And if I flawed, a flawed,

narcissistic and sinful woman,

can feel this much pain and anger over someone's condition, how much more a morally perfect God who

made them. Anger isn't the opposite of love. Hate is. And the final form of hate is indifference.

My father, my father demanded character, integrity, truth-telling in our home.

And he loved us. He would sacrifice for us. And he did. But when you violated those things,

my dad was both love and holy. Holy in the sense, okay, you violated the simple precepts of this home.

You're grounded for two weeks. That's called justice. Now come here and give me a hug.

I love you. And the reason I'm doing this is to protect you from future harm and encourage you

to make better choices. So he's not grounding me because he hates me. He's grounding me because he

loves me. Now we're gaining some ground. We're gaining some ground. We're gaining some ground.

We're gaining some ground here. The problem in the church is Christians tend to emphasize

one over the other rather than seeing how they work together. So sometimes we tend to veer into

this very conservative religion that is harsh and rooted in a severe God or a liberal religion

that is relativistic and sees God as simply accepting of everything. So we even become

Westboro Baptist Church. We even become Westboro Baptist Church. We even become Westboro Baptist Church.

Concerning everything and everyone, no grace and hatred for everybody. Or we become West Hollywood

Church of Christ that affirms everybody and everyone with no pursuit of biblical holiness

or purity. How can we escape either of those distortions? And here's the answer, the cross.

All right, I want to read, go back and read Romans 3. I'm going to pause. We have to get this.

The whole idea,

forgiveness and justice and reconciliation is based on the cross described in Romans 3. So

I'm going to go slowly. Here's what we read. But now apart from the law, the righteousness of God

has been made known. Righteous. There's two ways to be right with God. Live perfectly or pay the

penalty for breaking the law of God. No one can live perfectly. There's no one righteous, no,

not one. So the Bible tells us, thank God, there's now a righteousness that comes apart from the law,

apart from your goodness, to which the law and the prophets testify. So the entire Old Testament

is pointing toward this. Verse 22. This righteousness, what's he saying? Two ways to be

right under the law. Keep the law perfectly, pay the penalty for breaking it. This righteousness

is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. Why? Because he paid your

penalty for breaking the law. So now when God looks at you, he sees you as righteous because

you can be righteous by keeping the law perfectly or paying the penalty. There's no difference

between Jew and Gentile for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And all are

justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ. You say,

how? Because God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement.

What is atonement? Reparations. I did this, now I've got to make up for it. And there's two ways

you can do it. You can either pay personally, or there can be a substitutionary atonement on

your behalf through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. So Jesus pays the penalty

on your behalf. You receive it by faith and God sees you as righteous,

because you kept the law, but because Christ atoned for your sins on the cross.

Now, why did God do it that way? He did this to demonstrate his righteousness,

because in his forbearance, he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished.

So in the Old Testament, if you thought just by offering an animal on the altar that your sins

are forgiven, no, temporary. It was pointing to something greater, to Jesus, the Lamb of God,

sacrifice for the sins of the world. He did it to demonstrate that he had left the sins committed

His righteousness at the present time. And I love this, so as to be just and the one who justifies.

Justice has been upheld because sin was punished on the cross and love has been upheld because

he punished his son rather than punishing you. And you receive the son, the wrath of God is

no longer upon you, no matter what you've done or where you've been. Now, here's the beauty of that.

The beauty is that you're not punished on the cross, you're not punished on the cross, you're not punished on the cross.

Because the cross does not merely provide temporary respite from condemnation, we're

told that Jesus Christ now stands before the Father as your lawyer, as your legal representative

or your advocate.

That means the law that was once our enemy because it condemned us is now our friend

because it frees us.

How can the law be our friend?

Because we are just under the law.

Because there are two ways to be just under the law, live perfectly or pay the penalty

for breaking it.

Christ paid our penalty and now stands before the Father.

And every time you sin, past, present, future, Jesus reminds that sin's been paid for.

As a matter of fact, for God to punish us for any sin would be to exact two payments

for the same debt.

Right?

Wow.

I didn't say he wouldn't discipline you.

That's another topic.

But for God to punish you for any sin would be to exact two payments for the same debt

because Christ already paid the debt in full.

And now Jesus stands before the Father claiming justice for us.

1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our

sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

Amen.

It is fair and just that God now forgives us because the requirements of his justice

have been met at the cross.

Now, are we okay?

Is your head hurting?

Let's take a deep breath.

There are two ways now to pursue justice when someone has wronged you.

One, you can pursue justice.

justice out of vengeance, or you can pursue justice out of love. If you pursue it out of

vengeance, what happens is you are so mad that you want to make the person pay and you want to

make them pay worse than what they did to you. It's never equal. You want to ruin them. You want

to talk about them. You want to gossip about them rather than going to your brother or sister.

You want to destroy them because you're so angry. The problem with that is you end up hardening

your own heart and you'll continue to hurt other people later. And the perpetrator who did wound

you continues to wound you every day because you've given them power over you. Or you can

pursue justice out of love. Now, what does that look like? That means that when someone has wronged

you, you go to them, but you're actually motivated.

Out of love to restore them. You go and you say, look what you did. Now we'll get to the justice

part. What you did really offended me. I have been wounded and I'm urging you to repent of what

you've done in order that you might be restored in order that we might be restored if it's possible.

Now, if I've, if I've, if I've done something to you and I'm your brother. And so in Galatians

six, we're told bear each other's burdens and that's not suffering that sin. So if I've done

something to you,

let's use my buddy Rick over here because he's offending me all the time. So let's say, no,

actually, let's say, let's say I've done something to make Rick really mad. He gets

quiet and suddenly he's not returning my calls. We're not golfing. He's just really mad. If he

comes to me and says, Hey, you did this to me and you need to repent. What am I going to do?

But if he comes to me and says, brother, you know, you and I are brothers and

none of us are perfect. We're both flawed. But when you did that, it really hurt me.

And I'm, I just, I need us to talk through this and be reconciled. Then I get the feeling that he

really does consider me a brother and that he's wanting to, to reconcile and work this out. Now,

that's what Matthew 18 is about. And we'll get to that next week. But you see the difference in

coming to someone because you want to make them pay and coming to someone because you love them

and you want to restore. Because let me tell you something, every single one of us, including the

guy on the stage has said and done hurtful things to other people. Sometimes,

sometimes on purpose, but sometimes just you being you.

Personality conflicts. It's just you being you. You don't mean it, but it happens. We're all guilty.

Now, the doctrine of justification by faith, because we said the cross will govern this.

As you go back to the cross, you see how both of these things work together.

Justice and love. As you go to the cross,

notice that God did not just wave his hand and say, you know what you people did? Forget it. Let's

move on. No, our sin is so serious. I mean, think about this. The second person of the Trinity

had to take on human nature, live a life as a servant, die on a cross and pay the debt of

justice. Man, that's serious business. On the other side, the doctrine of justification reminds

us that we're all culpable, that we've all done bad things, that we're all perpetrators.

That while we remain committed to justice, which is the right thing to do, because that's what God

did. As we move out, we move out in love so that we don't demonize people who disagree with us. So

we don't deal harshly with them. But instead, as we pursue justice tirelessly, we do it from

the motivation of love. Now this is hard. So here's how we're going to end the sermon with

one big illustration, because you need to see how this plays.

True story. Rachel Denhollander, a former gymnast who was sexually assaulted multiple times

by USA gymnast physician, Larry Nassar. In 2018, if you know her story, she broke through the wall

of official denial, was the first woman to publicly accuse him. And that opened the door

for all other kinds of women that he had abused to have the courage to come forward who previously

were afraid to speak. Now, here's the thing about Denhollander. He was a woman who was

defiled. She's a Christian, and she's super smart. In her work as an advocate, she saw that

churches, not all, but some churches, routinely mishandled sexual assault allegations. Churches

would counsel victims to forgive and forget and not say anything. Not to listen when alarm bells

were sounded about someone's behavior.

Even at times obstructing criminal investigations. The church. She even learned of women who were

being told to forgive and not report their husbands who were abusing their daughters.

At the bottom of all this were churches, not all, not all now, come on, don't lump them all

together. There's still a lot of churches who get this right. But at the bottom of all this,

the church is teaching on unity, forgiveness, and grace that ended up defending or resulted

in abusers being forgiven while their victims sat in silence and were characterized as bitter.

In her memoir entitled, What is a Girl Worth? Rachel Denhollander recounts her extensive

inner wrestling after she became aware of what had been done to her. And I quote,

I did want to forgive Larry, but I didn't want my forgiveness to be used as an

excuse to act as if something terrible wasn't really that bad.

Prominent Christian teachers had implied you haven't really forgiven and trusted until you

can be thankful for the evil that was done to you. Is that really what forgiveness means?

Can I just say no? Okay, we'll get to that. It wasn't right, but I'd heard it from authority

figures. So often I felt alone in my grief. Some of her friends came to her and said, man,

if that's what your church is doing, then I'm going to forgive you. And she said, no, I'm not

just saying you need to leave God and leave the church, but she's smart. And she said, wait a

minute, removing God and the church is not going to fix the problem because without God, there's

no such thing as evil and no such thing as good. And no such thing as an absolute moral law to

define evil and good, but to have an absolute moral law, you need an absolute moral law giver

who is God. So without God, there is no such thing as sin, evil or good. She's smart. She said,

I can't throw God and the church out. I got to resolve it some other way.

She said, and I quote, every other religion outside of Christianity relied on some form of

doing enough good things to outweigh the bad as if life were just a balancing scale and the damage

from evil would go away if someone did enough charity work, said the right prayers or took

pilgrimages, but that's not justice. I knew Larry had helped create an autism foundation, which was

great, but that good deed did not stop my nightmares. The evil he did was there. The damage was

done. Nothing could make that disappear. So how did Rachel harmonize justice and forgiveness? How

did she come to terms with this? Through the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ on the

cross. How so? You know what the cross does? First, the cross shows you that a victim's sense

of injustice and desire for vindication is holy and right.

Uh,

shows us that God hates injustice and therefore so should we. And she says, actually she quotes

Fleming Rutledge, great quote, who says it makes many people queasy nowadays to talk about the

wrath of God, but there can be no turning away from this prominent biblical theme. Oppressed

peoples around the world would have been empowered by the scriptural principle of a God who is

angered by injustice and unrighteousness. Stay with me. You're doing so well on the cross.

We see not merely the love of God, but the justice of God as well. That means that justice is part of God. Therefore, it's got to be part of those who've been created in his image. Justice. But we also see love on the cross. And we see how God is committed to both justice and forgiveness. Remember, justice is upheld, sin is punished, but love is upheld because he takes on your sin debt. So how does that work when we're dealing with other people?

When Jesus died on the cross, it meant with a single stroke, justice was done on sin, and then the door was opened to forgiveness. So God couples his forgiveness with the satisfaction of the requirements of his justice. What I'm trying to show you, and it's very difficult in 30 minutes, 35, 40, 45, 50, is that God loves both of them. You can't do one at the exclusion of the other.

Both. All right, so let me take a small detour, a small one, and then I'll finish. Are you still with me? One of the reasons that the new modern world rejects Christianity is because it says it is not going to call good when a father abuses his son on the cross. But look at it from their standpoint. That's how they're thinking. I hate Christianity, they say. How can you have as your centerpiece God abusing his son and call that good?

Because you don't understand atonement. Christians do not believe in three different gods. They believe in one God in three persons. Okay, so what? Miroslav Volf says, the father would be abusing the son on the cross if Christ were a third party, beyond God who was wronged and humanity who wronged God. But he isn't.

In Christ, wrote the apostle Paul,

not Christ was reconciling an angry God to a sinful world, not Christ was reconciling a sinful world to a loving God. Rather, God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself. Folks, the doctrine of atonement is that God is like a banker. And if you owe the banker money, and a third party comes and pays it on your behalf,

the banker hasn't forgiven you. Somebody else provided atonement. But the story of the gospel is

that God himself comes down. Emmanuel, every Christmas, God with us. In God the Father,

God the Son, God the Holy Spirit is the Godhead. And so God himself, even though it's tough for us

to get our minds around, God himself takes and pays the debt that we should have paid.

When a banker himself pays the debt that we should have paid,

on behalf of another, that is both satisfaction of justice and forgiveness in a single stroke. And

that's basically what God does. The debt is owed to him. He pays it on your behalf.

Remember who Jesus is, God in the flesh. Okay, Pastor Jeff, that was a bit much, but

what does all that really mean? Well, it means that the only possibility of healed relationships

is if both justice and forgiveness are paid. And if both justice and forgiveness are paid,

forgiveness are pursued simultaneously using the model of the cross. Okay. All right. What do you

mean? What I mean is that you are no less a Christian. Listen carefully. This is the,

this is the punchline. You are no less a Christian when you stand in a court of law

and you have been sexually abused. And as an individual, you forgive the person who abused you

but corporately as a citizen of the state and under the authority that God has established,

Romans 13, to protect the rights of the innocent, you expect that person to go to prison.

As an individual, you forgive. And we'll talk about how to do that. Under God's authority and

God's law and his establishment of government, you have every right to expect that person to go to

prison. Why? Because you're angry. You're angry. You're angry. You're angry. You're angry. You're

angry. Out of love. Love for who? Love for him that he might recognize the severity of his sin

and repent and love for future victims. Both can happen at the same time. I had a friend of mine

in New Zealand who was a teacher and he came to me and said, Pastor Jeff, we're having a real

problem at school. We have this big bully. I mean, this guy's like six, five, six, six, 250 plus

pounds. What's the problem? He's bullying all the boys and they're terrified to come to school.

I said, well, what's the problem? Expel him. Oh, the teachers at school are saying that would be

unloving. What about the 250 boys who live in pain and suffering? What about loving them?

How can you meet justice in both love? You tell the bully, look, we've got to expel you. You've

got to recognize how serious this is, but we do love you and we want you back at school,

but you've got to pay the penalty for your bullying. Otherwise you'll never,

ever get that this is not working. Gone are the days when Christians think they stand in a court

of law and unless they corporately and publicly say to the person who has sexually abused them

or raped them or murdered a relative that I don't want you to go to prison. I will forgive you,

but you still need to go and pay the penalty that justice requires.

The temporal nature of human justice serves as a picture of God's final justice. It presents

the abuser the opportunity to come face to face with the reality and severity of a sin.

It is a call to the abuser to repent, to side with both God and their victim and condemn the

evil that they have perpetrated. It is only in this scenario that the possibility of reconstructing a

relationship is possible. Truly repentant abusers who have come to side with God and

their victim have the opportunity to come face to face with the reality and severity of a sin.

Victims do not use their repentance as an excuse to escape human justice or make demands of their

victims. True repentance involves acknowledging the harm they have done and the rightness of

punishment. This biblical theology enabled Rachel Denhollander to speak these words in

the courtroom as she looked at Larry Nassar. She said, and I quote, I pray you experience

the soul-crushing weight of guilt so that you may someday experience true repentance and true

forgiveness from God, which you need far more than forgiveness from me, though I extend that to you as

well. She gets it. Justice and love. It's all how you approach the person who's offended you.

Now, I know that some of you, look, there's all kinds of questions here. We can't get into that

until the next two weeks, but I know your questions.

Look, I live a real life. What about the person who doesn't think they did anything wrong?

What about the person who will not repent? What am I supposed to do then? We'll talk about that. Just

take a deep breath. And before we go there, just please understand that God is not opposed to

justice or repentance, but he wants us because we know that we too are sinners and put in the

wrong place at the wrong time. We don't know what we would do.

To approach the one who's offended us with mercy, grace, and love while pursuing justice,

to love them in hopes that they will repent, see the error of their ways and be restored.

What do you want me to do, pastor? For now, I'm encouraging you, embrace forgiveness.

From what we said, name the trespass, but identify with the perpetrator.

Try to ask for forgiveness.

ask the question what shoes they've been walking in for how many years, forgive the debt, reconcile

when possible. While at the same time you're embracing forgiveness, seek justice corporately.

Letting the criminal go is not justice, folks. Individually, you forgive corporately. You expect

there to be a payment for violation. One more quick example, and then no fake endings. This

will be the end, okay? I've experienced this. I've been your pastor now for almost 17 years,

and God willing, I'll be for another 10 at least. But here's the thing. Let me tell you something

that's happened in my own life and ministry. Let me tell you something that's happened in my own

life and ministry. So there have been times as I've ministered here that we have had a moral

failure on our staff. Now, thank God not recently, but we've had moral failures.

And when we have a moral failure, one of the things I do is I have a moral authority talk

with all the staff from time to time. And I make it very clear, if you do these things,

you will be fired. Okay? If you're cheating on your husband, I mean, if you're sleeping with

somebody on staff, I make it very clear, you do this. Now, here's the thing. When that's been

violated, my first move is usually to bring the men and say, I'm disappointed. You're going to

lose your job.

This is your last day. But the church loves you. And we're actually going to pay for your counseling

because we're not just going to abandon you, but you do lose your job. Now, I am amazed at how many

people get angry with me because I fired them. And they'll say, where's grace and mercy?

Let me tell you where grace and mercy is. We're for you. We're not going to abandon you. We're

going to get you counseling, but I'm not going to let you stay on staff because I'm trying to

protect other women on our staff right now or other men.

That's where the love is. Do you see how they work together? And until we understand how they

work together, we're supposed to have love for the perpetrator, but also love for the victim

and love for future victims. How is this going to help us? Well, first of all, I hope that what

you've heard reminds you that you're a sinner, man. And so am I. And we all need forgiveness

and grace. And it's so serious that God sent his son to the church. And he said, I'm going to

cross. In fact, I hope I explained that, that God came down in the form of man and paid the

penalty your sin and mine deserves because it's serious. And God's justice is nothing to be

mocked. But at the same time, God is so loving that he paid your penalty on your behalf to meet

the requirements of justice because the requirements of justice must be met.

And so I hope that what you've heard reminds you that you're a sinner, man. And so I hope that you're

of love. Why does God meet the requirements of his holiness? And he does so with love because

he loves you and you're created for relationship. And he does not want to be estranged from you,

but he's got, he can't avoid justice. He's got to meet justice and love. And he does so through

the cross. Do you see why the cross is brilliant in the mind of God? And you will find it no other

places. For God to punish us for any sin would be to exact two payments for the same day.

You're a sinner and justice demands that you be held accountable. You are through Christ. When

justice comes, God's motivation is love. I can't keep going. Listen, there's so many of you in the

room right now. Your life did not turn out the way you thought it should. And you're angry at God or

somebody did something to you and you're thinking, why did God, you know, there's no God, otherwise

this wouldn't have happened.

For many of you, you've never understood that when you start down the wrong path,

God's going to get you because he loves you. See, would God not be unloving if he just sat

back and let you ruin your life? Now, there are other times when things happen to you

that God hates it as well, but there's no God. And so, when you start down the wrong path,

there's no God. And so, when you start down the wrong path, God's going to get you because he loves you.

This is a world in which there is freedom. And delayed justice is not the same thing as no

justice. Justice will come, but the only way you're going to be able to survive

is to look at the cross and what Christ did and expect justice, but approach with love

in hopes that the person will repent, be restored, and you let go so it will no longer have power

over you.

Now, I have to stop now. Don't miss next week. But at the very least, all of us should be so

grateful that you're on a one-way ticket to heaven, not because of what you've done,

but because of what Christ did for you. And in heaven's name, if you've got some sin in

your life, like I said, stop, repent, go now, he'll forgive you. And if your life

is not going the way you hoped that it would, maybe, just maybe, God is trying to get your

attention and he's approaching you with love saying, stop doing this. It's going to destroy

you and come home and reconcile with your father. And I will make your path straight

and that peace will return and you'll begin to experience the true love I have for you.

Okay? Father, thank you for your goodness. I pray,

as always, anything I said that is not consistent with your word, it'd just be forgotten. Anything

I've said that is consistent, that would go deep into our hearts. I pray a special prayer for those

who are dealing with something that goes so deep, that is so difficult, and still, after two weeks,

they feel they don't have their answer. I pray that all of this would culminate and come together

in the next two weeks so that at least by the end of it, they would know what they have to do,

what they should do, what will bring healing into their lives. In the meantime,

let us bear each other's burdens with love so that as you have reconciled the world to yourself,

that we can be reconciled to our brothers and sisters. In Christ's name, everybody said, amen.

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Amen.