[0:00] Well, it's good to be with you all again this morning. Some of you perhaps weren't here! last night, and some of you may have forgotten what I said last night, so let me remind you! of what we talked about last night. We began by remembering that great famous statement! in the Bible, God is love. And I observed that in one sense that's a very simple statement which anybody can grasp, a child could grasp it, but on the other hand it is a statement that can be twisted and abused, especially when we think about it meaning what we think love means for us, and we picture God as a bigger version of us, and we think that everything that love means for us, it must mean for him. And we thought then about how God reveals himself to us. We observed that the odds are stacked against us knowing God really, and being able to speak about God, because we are very, very small creatures, and he is an infinite God, because we are sinful creatures, and he is a holy God, and yet we found he has revealed himself to us. We have a double problem, the problem that the revelation of God that is out there in the world has been ruined by sin, so that the image of God in which Adam was created has been ruined, so that if we could see what is out there clearly, we wouldn't see God clearly.
[1:22] The second part of the problem is that our eyes are darkened by sin, so that we can't even see what is out there. And then we found in the scriptures that God has provided a double solution to this double problem. He has given us the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom the image of God is restored. In fact, he goes even further than Adam. The Lord Jesus isn't simply the image of God, he is the one in whom God dwells fully. He is God. And so we have a new objective revelation of God out there. And then he has given us the Holy Spirit who opens our eyes to see that revelation, so that we can indeed know God. And he describes himself to us, he describes this revelation in Christ to us, in the pages of the Bible, using creaturely language.
[2:07] And we went through some examples of the ways that God speaks about himself in the Bible. He calls himself a lion, an eagle, a hen. He even calls himself a moth, and rot. And these extraordinary creaturely descriptions of God. And we observed that this isn't just something that happens by accident, or it's not a sort of happy coincidence that God finds he can use things in the world to describe himself. But this is why he made them in the first place.
[2:34] All of the created things around us are a field of communication between us and God, so that he purposed this for the lion. This is why the lion is there, so that it can speak to us about God. This is the most important job that the lion does. And so God takes up all of these created things in the world, and uses them to speak about himself. So we ended up really with two principles. First of all, the principle of difference. God is very, very different from us. He is infinite, and he is holy, and we are small, and we are sinful. So he's not like us. But then amazingly, the principle of revelation, that he can be known. He has given us a revelation of himself in Christ, and he's described that revelation in the words of the Bible, using all of these created things, this amazing range of created stuff that he uses to describe himself in Scripture.
[3:26] And I said last night that what we wanted to do today was to take these principles, the principle of difference and the principle of revelation, and bring them to the topic of God's love. So when the Bible talks about God's love, how is God's love different from our love, and how is it like our love? And in particular, actually, we're going to be focusing on how it is different, because in a sense, we have some idea of what it would be for God's love to be like our love, and perhaps the more tricky question is, well, how is his love different from our love? And so that's what we're going to be doing this morning. You'll remember that we had some opening questions, really, about what it means to say that God is love, especially given that the Bible depicts his love as the love of a husband for a wife. Well, does that mean that it's exactly like human love? Does God's love run hot and cold? Might he fall out of love? Does his love fluctuate?
[4:19] Is his love an act of will, of determination? Is it a feeling? Is it an emotion? An emotional love, as we have? We ask those questions. So those are the kinds of questions we're going to be looking at today. How is his love different, and how is his love knowable? And of course, we're not going to just sit down and think, and ask ourselves what we might think about that. We go to the Scriptures for the answer, because it is, as we've said in the Bible, that God describes himself to us.
[4:50] Now, if we took this statement, God is love, imagine, I should have brought one really, but imagine I had an envelope. Imagine that God had dropped down from heaven an envelope. And we open up the envelope, and we pull out the piece of paper from inside it, and on the piece of paper it says, God is love. And that was it. That was the revelation of God that we had, full stop at the end. There's no more revelation. What would we conclude? I think then, we would conclude, and we would rightly conclude, that God, when he loves, is just like us. We would have no qualifying statements, nothing to suggest refining our understanding of what love is in God. All we'd know is, God is love, and we'd think, so what is love? That's what God is.
[5:37] The point is that we don't have that. The statement, God is love, in the Bible doesn't come to us in isolation like that. It comes to us in the midst of the Bible. And it's that same Bible that warms us against comparing God with created things, that tells us he isn't like us. He's very different from us. He is far above the creation. So we have the positive revelation of God's love in the context of the whole of the Bible, and it's the things that God says elsewhere in the Bible that make us stop and think about what God's love is exactly, and about how it isn't going to be just the same as our love. In other words, the Bible interprets itself, as I said last night. It's not our interpretation of the statement, God is love that matters.
[6:31] And your ideas, or my ideas, it is what that statement means in the context of the rest of Scripture, with one passage shedding light on another passage. There we discover the full meaning of the love of God, when we read it alongside everything else that God has said about himself. And so that's what we're going to try to do. Let's begin then to sketch a picture of the love of God from the Bible, with two aspects in this morning's session that we're going to think about, and then more later on today. The first is this, that God's love is the first love.
[7:07] It's different from our love, because it's the first love. And the second will be that God's love is different from our love, because it is just love. It is holy love. So let's think about this claim that God's love is the first love. God's love is different, because his love is the first love of all. And that means that his love is the defining love. God's love is the defining love. Our love is not what defines love. God's love precedes all other love in the universe. But what is that love that precedes all other loves? It is the love within himself, the love of the Father for the Son. John 3 verse 35 tells us, the Father loves the Son. Think of the words that the Lord Jesus' baptism and transfiguration. This is my Son whom I love. So the Father loves the Son. And also scripture tells us the Son loves the Father. John 14 verse 31, the world must learn that I love the Father, and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me. So the Father, we find in scripture, sends the Son he loves into the world. And the Son comes in loving obedience to his
[8:34] Father. So the incarnation is an act of love. The Father for the Son and the Son for the Father. This is what you might call the intra-Trinitarian love of God. The love, that simply means within the Trinity, between the persons of the Godhead. The love of the Father for his only begotten Son.
[8:54] The love of the Son for the Father. And I could go on, the only reason I'm not going to go on to do it is because it would take quite a long time to keep spelling out the love of the Holy Spirit. You could map every relationship in the Trinity, couldn't you? But the talk would be rather long if I kept saying that every time I refer to the intra-Trinitarian love. But the Spirit is included here as well, of course. It's interesting, isn't it, that this love exists within God only because there is differentiation within God. The differentiation of the persons. The Father and the Son are one God, but the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Father. It is this Trinitarian love between the distinct persons of the Trinity, which is the first kind of love. Eternal love. Love actually beyond time and outside of time. In a sense, the word first is almost inapplicable because God made time. When he loved, there was no first or second or third. This is the love before all loves.
[9:54] And it's his love that therefore grounds all other loves in the creation. Now it's worth noting, I think, and it draws the point out, perhaps more emphatically, the contrast with the Islamic conception of Allah at this point. Here are some words from the Quran. Say, he is Allah, the one and only. Allah, the eternal, absolute. He begetteth not, nor is he begotten, and there is none like unto him. In other words, whereas the Bible shows us that the true God is three persons and the Father eternally begets the Son, the Quran denies that there is any such relationship within God. The Quran rejects the doctrine of the Trinity, though it does actually reveal a rather odd view of it. Here are some more words.
[10:45] And behold, Allah will say, O Jesus, the Son of Mary, didst thou say unto men, Worship me and my mother as gods in derogation of Allah? He will say, Glory to thee, never could I say what I had no right to say. Had I said such a thing, thou wouldst indeed have known it. Thou knowest what is in my heart, though I know not what is in thine, for thou knowest in full all that is hidden. Did you notice that understanding of the Trinity there? Didst thou say unto men, Worship me and my mother as gods in derogation of Allah? So a couple of misunderstandings there. First of all, that the Trinity consists of the Father, Jesus, and Mary. Interesting.
[11:33] Had Muhammad met idolatrous Christians who seemed, as far as he could tell, to worship Mary? Perhaps. Second misunderstanding is that the doctrine means that there are three gods and that worshipping Jesus and Mary, the Holy Spirit, involves derogating Allah, or derogating God. So the Qur'an views the doctrine of the Trinity as being a tritheism, a belief in three gods. But let's leave that aside for the moment and just observe that when Muslims believe that, while Muslims believe that Allah is loving when he forgives sin, their denial of the doctrine of the Trinity means that they cannot believe that God is eternally loved. He cannot be eternally loved because he is eternally alone. He is eternally alone. And someone who is eternally alone cannot eternally love. Considered apart from the creation, Allah has no object of love. He is not himself loved. Only the God of the Bible has the eternal ground and definition of love within himself.
[12:47] This surely then is an aspect of God's perfection. That he is always loving in his own inner life. The Father eternally delights in his Son and his Spirit. The Son eternally delights in his Father and his Spirit. The Spirit eternally delights in the Father and the Son. God is eternally loving within his own inner life.
[13:11] And this is who he is. And this is who he is. Even the word always is inappropriate. It's a time word again, isn't it? The Trinitarian relations in the Godhead are untroubled, undisturbed, and eternally constant.
[13:31] Even as the Son dies under the curse of sin and cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The relationship of the Son as God to his Father remains intact. It is fashionable to say that the Trinity was torn apart at the cross or something like that. You occasionally hear that preached. And you can see why, because it sounds terribly dramatic.
[14:01] But of course, if the Trinity is torn apart, then there is no God. The Trinity is not an optional added extra to God, which he could set aside so that the Father and the Son could stop loving each other for a while and then pick up their love after the crucifixion.
[14:17] No, no, that would imply that the Trinity is something that God could choose to be or not to be from moment to moment. But God is the triune God. And he can never lay that, and does never lay that aside.
[14:28] This, then, is the untroubled, undisturbed, eternally constant being of God. Now, if you're thinking, well, how do you square that with the Lord Jesus saying, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
[14:41] Then take a note, and after this afternoon session I will take questions, and you can pursue that then if you want to. So love is not something that God opts to be from a list of choices that he makes each day, as if he wakes up in the divine morning and says to himself, hmm, who shall I be today?
[15:02] Ooh, shall I be evil or good, loving or unloving? No, God is love. He's not like Madonna or Lady Gaga. You know, every few months they reinvent themselves with a whole new identity.
[15:20] God is who God is always. He is perfect love forever. And there is therefore a perfection of completeness to his inner relations, the completeness of his love.
[15:34] There is an eternal fullness about God's triune love, a superabundance of love in the Holy Trinity. Here, then, surely, is a difference between human and divine love.
[15:49] Divine love, God's love, Trinitarian love, comes first of all. It, not human love, therefore defines love. And so it's not to be defined by our love.
[16:03] Not even by our marital love. It defines all other loves. So yes, the Bible depicts God's relationship to his people as a marriage.
[16:15] But it does that because human marital love is like God's love. Not because God's love is like human marital love.
[16:29] It's not that the first love is the love in marriage, and then God's love patterns itself on human love. It's the other way around. The first love is God's love. And human loves are pale reflections of his love.
[16:44] His is the defining love. And what difference does that make to us? Well, I think there'll be many differences we could draw out. I suggest one to take away and reflect on is this.
[16:57] I think we prize love, don't we? I think even our culture, in a weird kind of way, prizes love. If you look at the number of songs in the top ten that are about love at any point in time, it'll be most of them.
[17:10] Now, they may have a pretty weird idea of what love is, but they're singing about love, albeit in a twisted form. So we long for love, and we esteem love.
[17:22] We long for it in our own lives. We seek for it in our relationships. But it is a simple fact, and a sad fact, because of the effects of sin in the world, that we will never find love amongst ourselves in flawless form.
[17:40] We will never find it. Even in the happiest marriage. For being here today, I said something about marriage last night. You said, I've got away with it, you won't have it. We will never find it.
[17:51] We have a very happy marriage. You can have the happiest marriage in the world, and it won't be flawless. There will be things wrong with it. Imagine an eternal, constantly harmonious, constantly delightful relationship.
[18:12] You can't. You can't. Even the best of marriages is not like that. But there is one such love.
[18:22] In one place, in the eternal life of God, there is a flawless love. And really, I think, as we remember that God's love is first, and it is flawless, and it is complete, we simply need to stand silenced before the intratrinitarian love of God, and adore him for it.
[18:48] Adore him for who he is in himself. Very often, I think, we adore God for what he does for us, don't we? We're good at adoring him for what he does for us, and that's right.
[19:01] The Bible praises him for his acts, for his deeds. But we need to go beyond that, because there is a risk, isn't there? The great Jonathan Edwards once commented that even a dog will love a master that is kind to him.
[19:18] It's a good point, isn't it? Even a dog will love its master if its master feeds it. There's a risk, isn't there, that our Christian lives are really all about what God does for us. But actually, in the end, therefore, it's really all about us, and our benefit.
[19:32] And we need to go to adore him for his deeds, and to go beyond that, to adore him for who he is, which is what we see in his deeds.
[19:43] His deeds show us who God is in himself. So his love manifested to us in the cross shows us that God is love. So we don't worship the cross.
[19:57] We worship the Christ of the cross, who is God, and who shows us that God is love. And so we need to remember not only what he's done, but who he is, and to stand silenced before he is, who he is, as we see the perfection of his love, which we will see nowhere else.
[20:26] Secondly, God's love is not only first. His love is also just love. By which I don't mean it's just love. I mean it's just love.
[20:39] That's not getting any clearer, is it? Just love in the sense of holy love. Pure love. Love that acts in justice. Now here we're not thinking about his love within himself, although that too is a perfect just love.
[20:54] The inter-trinitarian love is perfect and just. But we're thinking here about when God acts outside of himself towards his creatures. And we find that his acts of love to his creatures are always acts of just love.
[21:09] Now what do I mean by that? Quite simply this. That in loving, God never violates his own justice. His holiness is never compromised by his acts of love.
[21:26] You can think of abundant human examples of compromising integrity because of love, can't you? It would be very easy to compromise integrity to, you know, for somebody in a position of power to favour someone they love and to act unjustly as a result of it.
[21:43] But God's love is never, his holiness is never compromised by his acts of love. So when he loves, he simultaneously maintains perfectly the demands of his justice.
[22:00] Now there's been a lot of confusion on this point. And I think quite a lot of people have got entirely the wrong end of the stick, which is a technical theological description. They've got the wrong end of the stick like this.
[22:14] Well let me read you a verse from the Sermon on the Mount and then show you what people do with it. Matthew 5, 39, Jesus says, I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him, the other, also.
[22:30] From such verses, many conclude that God will not exact retribution. They look at it.
[22:41] They rightly think it requires of us accepting injury and not seeking retribution, which indeed it does. But they then take the step of thinking that if that is what love requires of us, as Jesus explains it, then that must be what love requires of God himself.
[23:04] So that he too must not seek payment for sin. He too must forego punishing sin. He must turn the other cheek.
[23:16] And they conclude from that, because map that across the whole of your theology, you can see where it's going, can't you? They conclude from that, that when the Lord Jesus died on the cross, he cannot therefore have been paying the price for sin.
[23:30] He cannot have borne the punishment for our sin, laid upon him by the Father, because God's not going to do that. Because God tells us not to do that, he won't do it himself.
[23:42] He'll just let the sins go, and there will be no punishment for them. And so they conclude that penal substitutionary atonement, as it's known, namely the belief that the Lord Jesus bore the punishment for the sins of his people in their place, not true.
[24:01] And Jesus did not die bearing the punishment for our sins, because God tells us, don't seek retribution. One writer puts it like this, if the cross has anything to do with penal substitution, then Jesus' teaching becomes a divine case of do as I say, not as I do.
[24:23] I, for one, believe that God practices what he preaches. So he preaches, no payment for sin. Don't seek payment for sin in the Sermon on the Mount. God practices what he preaches, and so he will not seek payment for sin, and penal substitution cannot be true.
[24:40] Because if it is, it renders God a hypocrite. So you see what's going on here. This is a precise example of what I've been trying to describe last night, and what I mentioned at the beginning this morning.
[24:54] Somebody is arguing that God's love is just like our love. Yes? They're taking the biblical definition of what it means for us to love one another, and applying that to God.
[25:09] So that the principle of non-retribution applies to God as much as it applies to us. Human love and divine love are identified at this point, in this way.
[25:21] And that argument I want to suggest fails to grasp the vital principle of difference. Yes? Our first principle.
[25:32] It's forgotten the principle of difference. It's latched onto the principle of revelation. it's thought that God is just like us. But it's forgotten the principle of difference. Because actually, when you put the statement God is love in the context of the Bible as a whole, the Bible does not identify divine and human love in this way.
[25:54] In fact, it plainly marks the difference between them on precisely this point, that God's love is different from ours because God does exact payment of the price for sin.
[26:09] And this is why we read Romans 12. So would you turn back to Romans 12? Page 1139.
[26:28] Okay, remember the argument. Remember the argument that we've just seen? That God won't exact the price for sin himself because he tells us not to.
[26:39] God is like us at that point. Now just read what Paul said. Verse 17. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody.
[26:51] If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath.
[27:02] For it is written, it is mine to avenge. I will repay, says the Lord.
[27:15] Do you see, it's slightly mind-boggling, isn't it? How can anybody make that mistake in the light of Romans 12? Because Romans 12 is so plain.
[27:26] Paul's logic is plain for all to see. you Romans, you Roman Christians, don't take revenge. Why not?
[27:37] Because God does. And it is his to do it, not yours. Because God reserves retribution to himself as the judge of all humanity.
[27:54] It is his office, his job, not your office, not your job. So Paul tells us that God and man are different at precisely the point where some people want to say they are the same.
[28:11] God maintains the requirements of justice in a way that we must not, and we must not because he does. He maintains his justice.
[28:24] But leaves us with a question though, doesn't it? How? How does God act in a way that is both loving and just? How can he both forgive and yet maintain the demands of his justice and have always a just love?
[28:42] Now it's important, most of you will know the answer to that question, it's important not to depict God as being internally conflicted between his love and his justice.
[28:54] It's very easy to do that, but he can't literally be internally conflicted, as if he sits around puzzling over the problem. There he is, he's sitting there after Adam's sin and he's thinking, oh no, what am I going to do now?
[29:09] Oh, such a problem. Oh dear, I've got to take sin seriously, haven't I? I've got to have some kind of justice. But I love them too.
[29:20] I don't know, how could I square that? Ah, I know, I'll do it this way. It's not like that, but we can present it like that, can't we? We can preach it even as if there's a great dilemma for God who's really struggling to work this one out.
[29:36] Now, there's some truth in that from certain perspectives. It is amazing to us that he holds these two things together. We would look at it and think, how could you ever do that?
[29:50] Yes? It's amazing to us that he isn't only just, but is also loving. It's amazing to us that he doesn't just punish our sins, but that he punishes our sins and is loving to us at the same time.
[30:04] That is extraordinary. His grace is extraordinary. But he's always from eternity calmly purpose the perfect harmony of his love and his justice.
[30:17] justice. It's not a dilemma in that sense. How? How does he do both? Well, God could either punish our sins on us, or he could, as he does, punish them on our substitute.
[30:32] When the Lord Jesus died, he bore our sins in his body on the tree in our place, so that our sins are punished. And God acts in love to save and in justice to punish, and he does both in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.
[30:51] So that there is forgiveness and sin paid for. Now we can even go so far as to say that in one sense we are punished for our sins.
[31:03] How could we say that? Surely we may say we're not punished for our sins. Well, yes, we're never going to experience the punishment for our sins, but we can even see how we can say that we are punished for our sins because Christ and his people are so united.
[31:19] He is our covenantal head, the appointed head of his people in God's covenant. In the covenant that God makes with Christ, Christ undertakes to become the head of the church, his body.
[31:33] And he undertakes to take from his body its sin upon himself to bear the punishment for it. This is a union between Christ and his church.
[31:44] It's planned in eternity, it's decreed in eternity. Remember, God chose us in him, in Christ, before the foundation of the world, according to Ephesians 1, 3. And then in history, as sinners are drawn to Christ, they are united to Christ by the bond of the spirit.
[31:59] So the New Testament on page after page talks about us being in and with Christ, dying with him in Romans 6, raised with him in Romans 6. Our life is now hidden with Christ in God, in Colossians 3.
[32:12] And so close is our union with Christ that we can actually say that we died with Christ. That's why Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5 verse 14, one died for all, and therefore all died.
[32:32] And so we can even get to the point of saying that we are punished in Christ. John Owen, the great Puritan theologian and local resident here, put it like this.
[32:46] God might punish the elect either in their own persons or in their surety, it means their substitute, standing in their room instead. And when he is punished, that is when Christ is punished, they also are punished.
[33:01] For in this point of view, the federal head, that means the head in the covenant, and those represented by him are not considered as distinct, but as one. For although they are not one in respect of personal unity, they are still distinct persons, they are, however, one, that is one body in mystical union, yea, one mystical Christ.
[33:25] Namely, the surety, the substitute is the head, those represented by him, the members, the limbs, and when the head is punished, the members also are punished.
[33:37] But in such a way that we never experience that punishment because we're being rescued from it by the head bearing it in our stead. So see then how God upholds his love and his justice in perfect harmony.
[33:51] The sins of God's people are not just left unpunished, they are punished in Christ. So strong is the union that we can even say that we are punished in Christ. God's love then, unlike our love, is a love that upholds justice perfectly.
[34:10] Now when I say unlike our love, that's not a problem with our love. Our love shouldn't uphold justice perfectly. I'm not criticising our acts of love. The whole point of that Romans 12 passage is that we are not to enforce the demands of justice when we love, because God does it.
[34:27] This is a vital difference between his love and our love, and grasping it, failing to grasp it, has serious implications. Imagine what will happen if you fail to grasp it. Well, you can go two ways, can't you?
[34:38] First of all, you might think God should be just like us. That's what I was outlining earlier, that view. Then he must do just what he tells us to do, and there must be no punishment for sin and no justice.
[34:54] Simply forgive it, don't deal with it. On the other hand, this is a scary version, even scarier version perhaps, we might think, there's no difference between us and God and our love, so we should be just like he is.
[35:12] In which case, we will always demand punishment and payment when we love. Because unlike the Lord, we can't provide a substitute, can we, when somebody sins against us.
[35:29] And so we will pursue from someone who sins against us every last farthing from them, because we think that we should be just like God. And that would involve making ourselves God.
[35:47] Appointing ourselves the cosmic ministers of justice. And that, in short, would be a satanic desire to put ourselves in the place of God and to do what he does.
[36:02] So we must remember the difference between us and God and our love and God's love at this precise point. Realise that precisely because he always acts in agreement with the demands of his justice, we don't have to do so.
[36:25] In short, we'll see why we do not need to seek retribution against someone who sins against us. Why we don't have to pursue every claim that we have.
[36:39] Why we don't have to fight back against every injustice that is committed against us. Why we don't have to exact every last farthing. In short, why we can let things go.
[36:54] Because you see people, don't you, who've not let things go. And you may be somebody who's not let things go.
[37:09] Month after month, year after year, you hold on to your claim, lawyer after lawyer, until you are actually consumed by your desire to exact payment from somebody.
[37:26] Until it devours you. Now perhaps it's not something where you can resort to law, but you can nonetheless nurse your resentment against somebody.
[37:40] So that it becomes a bit like a secret, treasured pet that you keep quietly in the back of your house. And you care for it, and you nurture it, and you feed it, and you water it, and you keep it warm in a bed of hay, carefully attending to its needs.
[38:00] And this pet, this desire for revenge grows, and grows, and grows. And what started looking like a little peccadillo becomes in the end a great monster, a monster that will eat you.
[38:15] Until there is nothing left of you, apart from your maniacal obsession with revenge against the person who has sinned against you. I wonder if you have such a pet that you are nurturing.
[38:31] Perhaps it's young and new, but perhaps in some cases it's very old, and you've been nursing it for years and years. It could be different things, couldn't it?
[38:42] It could be a demand for revenge against a persecutor, a non-Christian enemy. It could perhaps more likely be a demand for justice from a family member, somebody who's abused you in some way, emotional, physical.
[38:58] It could sadly in a church be a desire of a minister or a leader in a church. I don't think I've had any private conversations with your ministers or leaders, and I've said this, I haven't, but sadly we know this is often the case, the desire for a leader for revenge against people in the congregation.
[39:22] Congregations can sin against their leaders. Perhaps it's the other way around. We know that pastors can sin against people in their congregations, a professing pastor who turns out to be a butcher rather than a protector of Christ's sheep, someone who wrongly marked you as an enemy, who isolated you and hounded you out.
[39:46] Part of you longs to expose them. You would love to have a website that could flackhard the sins they've committed against you, so that everyone would know just what they are like.
[40:02] Some of you may have none of these problems, but some of you may live constantly with these kinds of issues, and for some of you it may actually be almost too late. There's little life left in you that's been sucked out of you, and you are nearly only a hollow shell containing a searing desire for revenge against somebody.
[40:26] And if that is the case, then I urge you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to stop. you need to turn your face against that desire, and to walk away from it, and to let it go.
[40:42] And you can do that, because you can leave room, as Paul says, for the wrath of God. In relinquishing that desire for revenge, you are not giving up on justice, you are simply saying, it's none of my business.
[41:01] I am not the cosmic ruler, the just judge of the universe, and I will stop poking my nose in where it does not belong, in the Lord's business.
[41:12] I am not the custodian of all of the rights and wrongs of the universe, and I recognize that he will deal with it. Will you trust him to deal with it?
[41:23] Will you look to the cross and see that he never, ever leaves sin unpunished or unpaid for? Don't think he doesn't see it, or that he doesn't care about it.
[41:36] Don't think he's ignorant of it. Of course he does. Behold the cross. You know that he takes sin with the deepest, deepest seriousness. And you know, therefore, that you can let it go and leave it to him and love without a desire for justice.
[41:57] And then day by day, with explicit prayers of renunciation, that monster that you are nurturing, you may find shrinks and shrinks and finally dies.
[42:11] Until you find yourself at the point where you can, with a joyful heart, pray for God to bless your enemies. Let's pray together.