The Lie That God Is More Tolerant – Part 2 of 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. In the Old Testament, sin was judged quickly and harshly.

Nowadays it seems that sin goes virtually unpunished. Has God changed? Today, why believing that he has is tantamount to believing a dangerous lie, one you can't afford to believe.

From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. We're in a series on ten lies about God and why you might already be deceived. Pastor Lutzer, tell us how covenants play a role in understanding what may seem to be an evolution in God's approach to humanity. Well you know Dave, the very simple direct answer is this, that God deals with us differently in this era than he did in the Old Testament times. But even while I'm speaking, there's a passage of scripture in Hebrews chapter 10 that comes to mind. It says this, and I'm paraphrasing, if in the Old Testament people died by the account of two or three witnesses of how much greater punishment shall there be for those who trample underfoot the blood of Christ. And then you get into the book of Revelation and you discover serious judgments from God on the ungodly.

Even worse judgments than described in the Old Testament. So from my heart to yours today my dear friend, let us remember that God has not changed. I've written a book entitled Ten Lies About God, and I wrote this book to help all of us to get back to the biblical God and not simply a God of our own imagination. For a gift of any amount, we're making this book available for you. Hope that you have a pen or pencil to write this down.

You can go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now at the end of this message, I'm going to be giving you that contact info again, but let us remember the God of the Bible is the only God whom we should be worshiping. You see the contrast? Sinai, stay away. God's presence is not mediated.

Therefore you cannot endure it. Zion, Jesus has come. Come, come to the city of the living God. Come into the very holy place. Jesus is here. That's the first contrast. You say, well, is God more tolerant? You're asking the question too soon.

You have to stay with me. Secondly, there's another way to describe this contrast, and that is between the old covenant and the new covenant, the old covenant and the new covenant. It says there in verse 24 that Jesus is the mediator of a new covenant. Now in the old covenant, you have to understand God made a covenant with a whole nation. In fact, even there at Sinai, they all said, whatever the Lord has said, we will do.

Mind you, they went back on their word within a matter of days, but they meant well at the moment. Now, God says, I'm going to make a covenant with a whole nation and the whole nation has to obey me. And the Lord says, there's not going to be any freedom of religion.

I want you all to worship the same God. And if you follow false gods, you should be stoned. And I'm going to rule through the prophets and through the kings directly. And I'm going to look at Israel as a nation.

And if you sin, you are going to receive some very severe immediate penalties. The new covenant is entirely different. In the new covenant, we discovered that God is no longer going to deal with a nation. He's going to deal with individuals and he's going to pluck them up from the different countries of the world and save them and form what we call the church today with both Jew and Gentile. God is going to bring them together to form this new spiritual nation. And furthermore, they are now going to be, the church is going to be an island of righteousness in a sea of paganism. And therefore, we're to obey those who have the rule over us, even if they are pagan, even if they don't accept our viewpoint, unless it conflicts with a matter of conscience, we are to be good and obedient citizens. Now look at this. This is an amazing passage in first Corinthians.

Either you need to turn to it or listen carefully. Paul is talking about a relationship with the world in this new era. And this is what he says. First Corinthians, chapter five, verse nine, I have written to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. And then he clarifies, he said, not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral or greedy or swindlers or idolaters.

In that case, you'd have to leave this world. What if you worked in the loop and said that I'm not going to eat with anyone who's sexually impure, anyone who's greedy, anyone who's a swindler, anyone who is immoral, anyone who's these things, you'd probably be eating your lunch alone. So Paul says, that's not what I mean. Of course you have to eat with these people. But he says, I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother and he's sexually immoral or greedy or an idolater or a slanderer or drunkard. With such man, don't even eat with him because see, he claims to be a believer.

He claims to be a member of the church and so you don't associate with somebody who's living like that. What business of mine, verse 12, is it to judge those who are outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside.

God's going to take care of those people. What he's saying is expel this wicked man from your midst. They had somebody in their congregation who was having an immoral relationship with his mother-in-law or his, what shall we say, his father's wife at least, it says. That's the way to say it in chapter 5, verse 12. So what Paul is saying is, you know, our first responsibility isn't to clean up the world morally because that's impossible. I mean, we have many campaigns here in America that try to do that and they're moderately successful, but that's not our primary responsibility. It is to have a pure church, not a pure world.

That's impossible. But as we purify the church, the church begins to share the good news of the gospel and has power in the world. Notice what Paul is saying. He's saying what you ought to do is to discipline the people within the church who don't live like Christians. You say, well, what about all those dozen things in the Old Testament that you told us about for which people should be stoned? Those are the very things for which churches should discipline their people. We don't have the power to put people to death because we do not have that Old Testament theocracy, but we do have power to do, what shall we say, relegate people to spiritual death by cutting them off from the congregation and recognizing that God has not changed his mind about any of these things and therefore condemning all of the things that are mentioned in the Old Testament that are worthy of death. They are still things that God hates and we have to recognize that. So Paul is saying that what you need is a pure church in the midst of a pagan world.

One day a woman came to her pastor and said, you know, I am living in sin, but I'm a Christian, so it's different. He said, yeah, it sure is. It's far worse.

It's far worse. You claim to be a believer. Your name is enrolled in heaven. You're associated with a holy Jesus. You have become one with him and you're living like the people of the world. It is very serious. As a matter of fact, if the church does not discipline you, most assuredly God will because the book of Hebrews says that he scourges every son whom he receives. And if you are not disciplined for your disobedience, it is proof that you are not a child of God, no matter what aisle you walked or what card you signed. This is serious stuff. It's the contrast between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.

But there's a third way to describe the contrast. And now finally we're going to find an answer to the question with which I began the message. Is God more tolerant? Is it safer to sin today than it was back then when people were so harshly treated? Well, let's look at the text and what a passage this is. We're back in Hebrews chapter 12 verse 25.

See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven. At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens. And the words once more indicate the removing of what can be shaken that is created things so that what cannot be shaken may remain.

Therefore since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful and worship God acceptably with reverence and awe for our God is a consuming fire. Wow, what's the third contrast? It's the contrast between immediate physical judgment and future eternal judgment. The Old Testament when you disobeyed the great emphasis was on losing your life. You were put to death.

You were stoned. It's true that there was an eternal aspect to the punishment as well, but that was not the emphasis. If you didn't obey God the earth opened and in the case at least of some they fell into it as a judgment of God. New Testament entirely different. God allows sins to accumulate.

It says in the book of Romans that there are people who store up wrath for the day of wrath. Furthermore it talks about the fact that that judgment shall be much greater, much greater. Now let me give you three very important principles and I shall mention them briefly and these are the ones now that will tie it together in our minds and hearts.

Listen very carefully. Number one, the greater the grace, the greater the judgment for those who refuse it. The greater the grace, the greater the judgment for those who refuse it. If they did not escape because of Sinai, what do you think is going to happen to the world?

Because of Calvary. Now, if they did not escape, how much less will we when he's speaking now from heaven through his son, the greater the grace, the greater revelation of God, the greater the judgment that is still future. In fact, then he shook the earth. He came and Mount Sinai trembled and had shook and the people were scared, but the day is coming when he's going to shake just not the earth, but the whole heavens.

As a matter of fact, he's going to shake the universe. God is going to come. The God of Sinai is going to come in judgment and you can imagine what that judgment will be like. Now I want you to know that I think in the Old Testament that those penalties that were so harsh to us, that those penalties were actually very gracious because people saw the immediate effects, the immediate effects of their sin.

They knew that if they disobeyed instantly, they'd be punished. Today, people say to themselves, oh, it's not that bad. God's not doing anything and therefore they think to themselves that he's more tolerant and understanding because Jesus has come and you know, nothing's happening. This leads to the second important conclusion. The greater the grace, the greater the judgment. Secondly, and now this is from my heart to yours. Everything I've said is from my heart to yours, but this especially never interpret the silence of God as the indifference of God. Don't you ever think that because God is silent, he's indifferent to what's happening. In fact, it says in the book of Ecclesiastes, when the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, the hearts of the people are filled with schemes to do wrong. I like the translation that says that when God does not execute his judgments quickly, people think it is safe to do wrong. They say it's safe because nothing's happening. We're getting by.

Don't be deluded. Sometimes we say that justice delayed is justice denied. That's true for human courts, not for God. It doesn't apply at all because God, you see, loses no information over the centuries. God is the one who is going to resurrect and he is going to try people and all of the wrongs are going to come out. That which was spoken in the house is going to be shouted upon the housetop and in the end, we will be able to sing just and true. Are thy ways thou king of saints? And we will see that the God whom we think was far too harsh in the Old Testament is a God who is the God of the New Testament and his justice and his judgments will be just.

C.S. Lewis in his Chronicles of Narnia tells children's stories really fantasy stories but they're beautiful stories about the Christian faith and one of them, maybe some of you remember this passage, you have Aslan the lion and he's going to be met by some of the children who are really scared to meet this lion. Aslan represents Christ in the novel and so these children are talking with, I think it's Mrs. Beaver and they say, and I think it's Susan who says something like this, she says, I'm scared, I'm nervous to meet Aslan and is he safe? And Mrs. Beaver says, well, everyone who meets Aslan is afraid.

They are either braver than most if they aren't or else they are just plain silly. And then little Lucy pipes up and says, but I want to know whether or not he's safe. And Mr. Beaver says, safe?

Are you kidding? Of course he isn't safe. But he is good and he is the king. Is God safe? Of course he's not safe. The book of Hebrews says it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Of course he's not safe. But he is good and if you come to him through Christ, he'll accept you. God's silence should not be interpreted as the indifference of God. Thirdly, either your judgment in the future will fall upon your own shoulders and it will be a terrifying judgment.

It will be a judgment that will make Sinai look like your typical picnic out in the park. Either that judgment will fall upon you and you're going to have to bear it or else you're going to have to find a substitute, somebody to bear it for you and there's only one person who can do that and that's Jesus. And when he died there on the cross, he suffered for us and by the way, the next message in this series deals with a lie that God has never personally suffered. We're going to talk about the suffering of God on the cross. But when Jesus died there, you see, he bore our eternal penalties and he bore our sins so that justice can be assumed in our relationship with God so that we can come into his presence, so that we can inherit that which he wants to give us.

Notice what the text says. Oh, this is grace. We're free, right?

It's not that bad. Oh, since therefore we receive a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful and worship God with reverence and awe. Our God is a consuming fire. Same God who came in fire there on Sinai is the same God of Zion. Of course he's the same God. Of course his standards have not changed.

Of course in judgment it's all going to be meted out to prove that not one the centilica of what he ever thought about sin would somehow be mitigated or lessened. There is a story that comes to us from the days when the prairies stretched from one part of the horizon to the other. A man and his daughter, the story goes, were walking along and in the distance they saw a prairie fire that was coming in their direction.

At least they thought it did. It was still miles away, but they thought maybe it would come there by nightfall or by morning. So the story is that the man began to begin a fire right where he was. He'd burn a patch and then he spread it and then he kept spreading this patch and he was burning as big an area as he possibly could and staying out of the flames. When the fire did come and his daughter was so terrified he said, you know dear, I'll tell you, if we stand where the fire has come the flames won't get to us because we're standing where the fire has already been. When you and I come to Calvary, when we come to the cross and the one who hung there for us and bore our penalty and the fire of God, when we come we're standing where the fire already was because God is a consuming, consuming fire and he isn't safe. He isn't safe, but he is good because of Christ. And so we come and now we come into his presence and we say to ourselves, I can enter because the terrors of law and of God. With me they can have nothing to do because my Savior's obedience and blood hides all of my sins from view. My name on the palm of his hands eternity cannot erase forever there it stands a mark of indelible grace.

See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. For if they did not escape who heard him there on Sinai, what makes you think that they will escape now because of the grace of Calvary? He shook Mount Sinai but he's shaking the universe. Therefore we come in humility and we come to Jesus who can save us and we worship God with reverence and awe because he is consuming fire. Let us pray. Father forgive us for thinking it's safe to sin. Forgive us for thinking that throughout the years maybe you have changed.

Maybe it's not as bad as the Old Testament paints it to be. Forgive us Father and we pray that in these moments you might draw us to yourself as Christians first of all to be cleansed from that which you hate and for those who have never trusted Christ as Savior would they flee to Christ at this moment to be where the fires already been? And before I close this prayer if you've never received Christ as Savior you can do that right now. Simply say Lord Jesus I know that I'm a sinner and I flee to you for forgiveness and for protection.

I accept you as my substitute. Would you tell him that at this moment? And for those of you who won't why won't you? Are you refusing him who speaks?

You talk to him. Father do not give up until all the work that you desire to do in the hearts of all of us is accomplished. We pray in Jesus name.

Amen. You understand of course my dear friend that in the Old Testament God revealed himself he was also a God of grace but it is true that in the New Testament we see grace more clearly defined and illustrated through the coming of Jesus Christ. But remember this the greater the grace the greater the judgment. When I think of the passages of scripture I just referred to that our God is a consuming fire. We have to remind ourselves and I know you've heard me say this again and you may hear me say it again in the future.

We must get back to the God of the Bible and not the God of popular culture. I've written a book entitled 10 Lies About God and I believe that this resource will be of great benefit to you answering questions from our culture regarding Christianity regarding God for a gift of any amount we're making it available for you. I hope that you have a pen or pencil handy so that you can write this down. You can go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now because this resource I believe will be of such benefit to you I'm going to be giving you that contact info again but I want to thank you in advance for helping us. Perhaps you have heard me say this before but running to win is now in 50 different countries in seven different languages. Why? Because of people just like you who pray for us who support this ministry and you've also probably heard me say that this is not the ministry of a man or a church or an organization it is yours and ultimately it indeed is God's.

Here's what you do go to rtwoffer.com that's rtwoffer.com or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at running to win 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard Chicago Illinois 60614. Take a moment to ponder perhaps the deepest mystery of all. How was God affected by the sacrifice of his own son?

Was he passive or did he weep? Next time on Running to Win why the emotions of God really do matter. Plan to join us as our series on 10 Lies About God continues. Erwin Lutzer will speak on lie number three that God has personally never suffered. Thanks for listening this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.