We are so used to not being punished. We are so accustomed to grace that we abuse it. And whenever God does do what is just, we think he's unjust. That's how confused we are. And that's how we despise the goodness of God.
Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Perhaps you've read passages like 1 Samuel 15, where God commands Israel to slaughter the Amalekite people, and you wonder, how could a good God wipe out an entire nation? What is carnage like that doing in the Bible? To understand divine wrath and to see why you and I deserve judgment as much as the Amalekites, stay here as John MacArthur continues his series from Romans 2.
It's a look at the reasons God will ultimately judge the world and why those who don't know the Lord will be without excuse. That's the title of John's study. And with today's lesson, here is John MacArthur.
Now let me ask a question and then answer it. How can people question God's goodness? How can they do it? Answer. By seeing Watch this.
by seeing history from the wrong perspective. Let me show you. We're experiencing God's goodness. We're experiencing God's grace. God's mercy.
And then we go back to the Old Testament, right? And we start reading the Old Testament, and we read about all these amazing things that God does. He turns Lot's wife into a pillar of salt. Because she looked backwards. You say the poor lady.
I mean the whole place is burning up. I mean it's it's so hard to resist the peak. I mean it isn't a mortal sin. She just went. Zap!
Out of existence. I mean, it seems so arbitrary. I mean, so. Why that? And we say, what kind of a god is this?
Cruel and... whimsical kind of punishment. And what about when he called for the extermination of every Canaanite? Kill every man. Every woman?
You see, it made some people so distressed that they just have to say, well, it's not the same God. I mean, it can't be the same God, it's impossible. Lord Platt writing In the London Times said, perhaps now that it is written in a language all can understand, the Old Testament will be seen for what it is, an obscene chronicle of man's cruelty to man, or worse perhaps his cruelty to woman, and of man's selfishness and cupidity backed up by his appeal to his God, a horror story, if ever there was one, it is to be hoped that it will at last be prescribed as totally inappropriate to the ethical instruction of schoolchildren.
Well, we can't handle that book. It's too gross. Look at Leviticus chapter 10. Aaron had two sons. Oh, he was so proud of those two boys: Nadab, and Abihu.
Any father would be, and you know what? They were going to be priests. What a great thing. They were going to be priests. And guess what day this was?
Leviticus 10, get this. This was their ordination. And they went in there and they took the censer that the priests used and they put fire in and they put incense in and they offered strange fire before the Lord which he commanded them not. They messed around. They were so excited about being a priest that they just took some liberty and they went in there and did some kind of a thing that was not what they were supposed to do.
And there went out fire from the Lord and devoured them and they died before the Lord. Can you imagine Aaron? And have you ever asked yourself about the flood? How could God drown the whole world? Does that seem like cruel and unusual punishment to you?
People say God is just too severe. I mean, if things kind of go on all, and every once in a while, whack, somebody just dies. It seems like it's so arbitrary and so whimsical and so capricious. He kills one, let someone else live? And he doesn't always enforce the death penalty in some cases, but he does enforce it in others.
Two little boys, two young boys I should say. Get all excited and do some kind of foolish thing. We really don't know what they did, but some kind of foolish thing in there, and they die, and David commits fornication and adultery, and he lives. If you look What's this? At the Old Testament, With the New Testament in view, You're gonna get confused.
Because we live in an aura of the goodness and mercy and grace of God. And if you go back from that perspective, you're going to get all confused in the Old Testament. The problem is We feel that God is unjust. Because we are comparing his justice with his mercy. Not His mercy with his law.
Let me show you what I mean. We have to go back to creation. You cannot look at the Old Testament from the New Testament. You have to look at the Old Testament from the creation.
Now God said this. In the day you eat of the fruit of the tree, you should surely what? Die. When God created, he said, you sin, you die. The New Testament reiterates the wages of sin is what?
Death. The soul that sinneth Ezekiel, it shall. Die. In creation, all Sin was a capital offense. Any sin.
God had a right to kill.
Now think of it this way. God made men freely. Created man of his own choice. Freely. He made man to glorify him.
He made man to radiate his image. He made man to manifest his person, but man rebelled.
Now if God freely made man and God freely gave man his life and God freely gave man the conditions to continue that life and man chose to violate that then God had every right in the world to take that life back, right? After all, he gave it freely. Whenever we sin, we are striking a blow at God's sovereign character. We are misrepresenting His image and His intention for us. We are insulting God.
And does not He who freely gave life have the right to freely take it back? If he gave the conditions and we violated them? Is that unfair? No. No, he gave the conditions.
That would be just. He has every right to take back the life he gave when that life violates his conditions.
Okay, Adam and Eve ate. Let me ask you a question. Did they die? No? No, they didn't die.
Today Get justice? No, what'd they get? Mercy. And at the moment that Adam and Eve sinned, God's mercy was activated. And you know what else was activated?
The plan of the cross. Because as soon as God was merciful to sinners, somebody had to take his justice, right? And the cross. became A fixed reality.
So originally, every sin, now stay with me, every sin. Required death. Is it unjust by God's law to take the life of the rebel to whom God has been so good? No. But God didn't exercise his justice.
He was merciful to Adam and Eve.
Now listen to me. By the time you come to the Mosaic law, you only have 30 to 35 capital offenses. That is not cruel and unusual punishment. That is an amazing reduction. in the severity of God's judgment, isn't it?
Because originally it was any sin and now it's just 30 to 35 of them. And who knows how many Thousands there are. God is so merciful, but by the time he gets to the Mosaic era, he's reduced it to 30 to 35. And you know something else? Even in the case of those 30 to 35, there were times when God did not enact His justice.
There were times when the people of Israel did all of those things and God spared their lives. He was merciful. Wherever there was adultery in a marriage, there was supposed to be death. But because they were so adulterous all the time, God permitted them to divorce. as a gracious, merciful alternative.
And they were to die for idolatry, but how many times did God forgive that idolatry? And how many times was He merciful? They were to die when they were Committing fornication, but how many times did God Show his patience. They were to die when they murdered, but how many times did God seem to overlook it? He was so patient.
So patient. And you see, beloved, that is the point. If you compare the Old Testament with the original created standard, the Old Testament is full of mercy.
Now listen to me. But we are so used to mercy. We are so used to grace. We are so accustomed to getting away with our sin. We are so used to not being punished.
We are so accustomed to grace that we abuse it. And whenever God does do what is just, we think He's unjust. That's how confused we are. And that's how we despise the goodness of God. When God Knocks down in death Ananias and Sapphira, we say, Well, how can God be so cruel when the fact is, how could anybody else in that congregation stay alive?
They were all sinners. You see, we so trade on God's mercy and we're so used to abusing God's grace that we are offended if God isn't merciful. Isn't that the truth? He chooses times not to be merciful. You say, well, I still don't understand why he does it.
Listen, I'll tell you why. Because it's so bad now, and we trade so much on his mercy and abuse his grace so badly now that if he didn't give us those frequent examples of his justice, imagine how much more we would trade on his mercy without any fear of repercussion. The reason that God, from time to time, takes a life and comes down in severe judgment. Is because periodically throughout the flow of redemptive history, he has to illustrate what should happen to bring us back to our senses because we are so accustomed to his mercy. If we didn't have examples of the consequence of sin, We would go on blissfully trading without a thought.
on his mercy. Look with me at 1 Corinthians 10, and I think I can illustrate this truth to you. First Corinthians Ten, eight. Talks about the people who committed fornication. And when they committed fornication, God took the life of 23,000 of them.
Why? Why did God kill 23,000 idolatrous fornicating people? Why? Verse eleven: All these things happened unto them for what? Examples.
and are written for our admonition. Who are living at the end of the age, so that when we think we stand, we had better take heed, lest we what? Four.
So why are there throughout the Old Testament And even into the new, why are there those illustrations of God's instantaneous wrath? They're examples. And God does those. to show us what should happen to all of us and to build in our hearts attitudes of thanksgiving. Every day I live, I should say, thank you God, thank you for being so merciful and overlooking the sin today that should have caused my death.
and eternal judgment. I'll tell you, we would never tolerate the insubordination that God tolerates. We tread on his mercy. Even with these examples, can you imagine if there weren't these examples, what would happen? Look at Luke 13.
I think this is so graphic. Luke 13. Verse 1. Powerful passage. There were present At that season Some that told him.
Now, some people come to Jesus and they tell him something, and they tell him about the Galileans. whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.
Now some Galileans came down apparently to the temple. And they were Jews, and they came into the temple to offer their sacrifices. And there they were doing their religious. Activity. And Pilate moved into the temple.
And slaughtered them, so that the blood pouring out of their bodies was actually mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. Right in the time they were worshiping their God, he slaughtered them right on the altar. And the people are crowding around Jesus, and they're not asking about Pilate's cruelty. They're asking about God's justice. And they're saying, What about that?
I mean, what about those Galileans and Pilate, that pagan, that desecrated person, comes in and slaughters them in the midst of their sacrifice? I mean, how can God allow that? And I think what they're saying is, were they super wicked? Were they super sinners? Were they more vile than everybody else?
I mean, why did they suffer that way? Where was God? I mean, was God off saying, oh, I forgot about those Galileans in there? Pilot got him before I could think about it. Or was God saying, You're more wicked than everybody else, and you're going to get it right here with your phony religious activity going on?
And Jesus answering said unto them, Are you supposing, are you thinking that these Galileans were sinners worse than all the other Galileans because they suffered such things? I mean, do you think that the reason this happened to them is because they deserved it more than anybody else? Nay, I tell you, and unless you repent, you'll likewise perish. Who's See what he said? He said, they aren't any worse than you, and unless you repent, you're going to get the same thing.
They were examples. They got justice. as an illustration of what all the rest of them were going to get if they didn't repent. They weren't worse than anybody else. They were chosen examples that God elected to use as illustrations.
Or they said What about those 18 people? Upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed him. Can you imagine that? I mean that would be in the headlines. 18 folks are just walking down the road.
And some big towers there, and it just starts to go. And it falls on 18 people. Eighteen people with With wives and husbands and kids and And their life is gone. I mean, it just fell on them and it killed them. And I mean, they weren't sinning, they were just walking down the street.
I mean, they weren't doing anything evil and they died. Are you thinking that they were sinners above everybody else? Were you thinking they were worse than everybody else? No. No.
Unless you repent, You're going to perish just like they did. You see the point that he's making? They're not worse than anybody else. They're just illustrations of what you all ought to be getting. That's all.
You understand? You see, we are so used to mercy.
So use the grace. That we think justice is unjust. History affirms God's goodness. To some, he has given the role of example to warn of sin's just consequence, and to make all men grateful and repentant that it hasn't happened to them. But let me say.
In closing, back to verse 5. Romans 2. If you refuse God's goodness. If you refuse to be led to repentance by his goodness, If you will not come to thank Him and to come to Christ, then your hard and unconverted heart is just piling up wrath, and you may be surviving now, but in the day of wrath, when the fullness of wrath is revealed in the righteous judgment of God at the great white throne, it's going to break loose on you. The ones who are not repenting are piling up a storehouse of sin and judgment laid up little by little.
Oh, what an illusion. Because God is merciful, people think it's all going fine, you see. And instead of being driven to repentance over God being so kind to them as sinners, they think because things are going well, that they're really okay and they're fine and everything is wonderful. What an illusion. And so they tread on his mercy only to wind up someday.
With His full fury. The phrase hard and impenitent heart, I think, is interesting. The word hard there is. Sclerotes, we get sclerosis from it, hardening of the arteries. Arteriosclerosis, or sclerosis of the liver as well.
Hardening of the arteries may take you to the grave, but hardening of the heart will take you to hell. And then he calls it an impenitent, a non-repentant, unconverted, unchanged heart. Ezekiel talked about the fact that the people had a stony heart. Ezekiel 36:26. In Ezekiel 3, verse 7, he talks about Israel's being hard-hearted.
Jesus talked about hard hearts. Matthew 19:8, Mark 3.5, Mark 6, 52, Mark 8, 17, John 12:40. The writer of Hebrews calls in chapter 3 and in chapter 4 three times: harden not your hearts. Harden not your hearts. Don't become cold and indifferent.
Because all you're doing is storing up unto thyself. In other words, that you're responsible, you're doing it to yourself. You're storing up divine fury that'll break loose on the day of wrath, which is further defined as that day when righteous judgment is fully revealed. And I believe that has to be the great white throne. In Revelation 20, it tells us that the Lord calls together all the wicked dead from everywhere and to the throne, and they are judged out of the books in which is the record of their deeds, and they are cast forever into the lake of fire.
With the devil and his angels.
So men face the truth. You can tread on mercy now, and you will receive fury in the future. Or you can see mercy for what it is and be grateful and come in a repentant heart to God and turn to Christ. If the goodness of God Toward you is not leading you to repentance, then drop. By drop.
Every sin you commit is filling up a reservoir of God's patience. And it is held together by God's mercy. But someday the dam gets too full and the wall breaks, and you will be drowned in an eternal flood of your own sins. But you have an alternative. There in the midst of that is an island of safety.
And that island is Calvary. There the Savior is waiting. If you come to him. Bow with me in prayer. Father, thank you again for teaching us through your word.
Thank you for not giving us what we deserve. Thank you for your goodness. Forbearance, long-suffering. For your mercy. Thank you for the examples you gave.
to show us that if we don't repent The same will happen to us. May we turn to you. With thankful hearts Come to Christ. And not Drop by drop, fill the reservoir. with our sin.
that someday shall break to Dranus. We know that there's no need to face that judgment. For Jesus Took all your justice and all your wrath. On the behalf of those who believe, May we enter into that. faith.
Father, we pray that you'll draw into your own kingdom those you would have to come. For your glory in Christ's name. Amen. You're listening to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. Today we continued John MacArthur's study on the nature of God's judgment, titled Without Excuse.
Well, when judgment is the subject, perhaps what comes to your mind are Old Testament passages where God brings famine and pestilence to his enemies and even wipes out entire nations. The question is: Is there an element of God's judgment in current events? Are tragedies that we see today, tsunamis and earthquakes and mudslides, for example, are those modern-day equivalents of God's judgment in Old Testament times? Here's how John answered that.
Well, there is a sense in which the judgments of God in the Old Testament. Were specific? at specific times and in specific places and on specific people In many cases, Who had been warned by God through His prophets of what was to come if they didn't repent and believe in Him.
So, yes, there is a sense in which Old Testament judgments, those specific judgments that God brought after warning people, were indeed unique to that era. When when God was uh Good one. Acting in judgment in very, very special, very pointed, and very focused ways.
So in that sense, they were unique. But in the broader sense, All tragedies All earthquakes, tsunamis. Hurricanes Tornadoes accidents, epidemics, um plagues. All of those things are the judgment of God on sin. They may not be the specific judgment of God on an idolatrous nation, but they are all the byproduct of a cursed world, fallen people.
sinful people Living before a holy God. God has cursed the earth, God has cursed human life because of sin. And so, while not specific judgments in the sense that they are immediate, direct, miraculous judgments of specific sinners. Yes, in the broad and general sense, What happens? in the world on any level that brings about Death and catapults people into eternal judgment is in fact a form of God's judgment.
I said that when I was being interviewed on Larry King after 9-11 That while this is not God's specific judgment on the people in the towers as if they were the worst people in the world. This is an illustration. of what will happen To all sinners They will die. They will perish. and they will experience Not just the physical judgment of God, but His eternal judgment as well, and sinners need to prepare.
Turning to Christ. That's right, friend. God's Word promises victory for all who are in Christ. To see the future as Scripture says it will be, I encourage you to download our newly redesigned MacArthur Study Bible app. It now includes additional Bible translations, improved searching and note-taking, and John's 25,000 study notes are now included at no cost.
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Now for the entire Grace TU staff, I'm Phoenson with a question. Say you've devoted your entire life to helping the less fortunate. Will that get you closer to heaven? Consider that tomorrow as John MacArthur continues his study called Without Excuse. With another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time on grace to you.
