Precision Software Appli…tions Silver Collection 4/Precision Software Applications Silver Collection Volume 4 (1993).iso/religion/theol02.exe/THEOL02.TXT

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GOD AS A BALANCED BEING

In this lesson we will discuss God as a balanced being. You must
remember that although God is loving, merciful and faithful, at the
same time the Bible reveals Him as just, holy, and righteous. This
country has had so much of the "love of God" that they think God is a
Santa Claus sitting up in heaven waiting to kiss somebody. This
country has had so much of love they can read John 3:16 and never
blush. America has been exposed to so much love, preached by lovely
people who want people to love them so they can get their money, that
this country has forgotten that God is just and that God is holy and
that God is righteous and that He will not tolerate sin, never has
tolerated sin and never will tolerate sin. War is God's judgment on
sin here and hell is God's judgment on sin hereafter. God has never
gone out of business in His attitude toward sin nor will He ever.

Many Christians today have a lopsided view of God. Some overemphasize
His love and forget that He is just and holy at the same time. Now, it
is the love of God that allows God to forgive sin and to show mercy to
a repentant sinner, but it is the holiness and justice of God that
demands that sin must be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
Romans 6:23 says, "For the wages of sin is death." We read that every
transgression in the Old Testament received a "just recompense of
reward."

We must get a balanced view of God. The emotions that show up in man
are small, depraved counterfeits or counterparts of the original
nature that is perfect and holy and righteous. The liberal and the
atheist, of course, have trouble with this because they figure this
way (figuring from the depths of their depraved natures): "Well,
surely God is better than man, so if man hates, God wouldn't hold a
grudge against anybody. God can't hate anybody." They figure, "Well,
if man can forgive an enemy, then certainly, God can forgive a man
anything." This, of course, is a perverted view of the majesty of God.
Every attribute of man is magnified a thousand times in the Lord. God,
to be a balanced God, has to have a balanced nature; God Almighty has
to be a perfect being. His jealousy has to be perfect. His love has to
be perfect. His righteousness has to be perfect. If God were a human
being He would be completely frustrated. God is not like a human
being. God is God and His holiness is perfect. His righteousness is
perfect. His justice is perfect.

God will not acquit sin at all or overlook the sins of the sinner.
They have to be paid for in some way. We have Calvary as the
manifestation of God's willingness to pay for man's crimes which God
does not forgive apart from substitutionary atonement. The trouble, of
course, comes from trying to liken man to God and creating a god after
man's image or creating a god after man's fanciful pagan imagination.
The God of the Bible created man in His image and man fell. Therefore,
man's emotions and feelings, his jealousy, his wrath, his
righteousness, his justice, man's laughter, his tears, his holiness,
his goodness, his kindness, and his mercy are fallen counterparts.
They are minimized remnants of the once great and holy character of
man's Creator--God.

Although God became man in the flesh, God in essence is a spirit and,
therefore, He is a balanced being and all His attributes are perfect.
God is not a mere human being. If God were a mere human being you
could deal with Him like any other man. God is not a mere human being.
God is not a man. Numbers 23:19 says, "God is not a man, that he
should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent." God is not
a man and His wrath and His love work together in perfect harmony, for
one becomes a balance for the other. For example, for a man to argue
that hell is impossible and that a loving God could not send a hapless
human being there for ever and ever is an unbalanced view of God which
comes from a mental sickness on the sinner's part. To argue that hell
is impossible on the grounds that you don't want to believe it is
nonsense. And if you continue to reject the truth of it, after it has
been revealed, on the grounds that you don't believe or you can't
"prove it" only proves that many people are mentally sick.

You have never seen the back side of the planet Neptune. What does
that mean? You don't know what is beyond the third heaven or the sea
of glass. What does that mean? There is no man who has seen the
inhabitants of the earth (that the Bible speaks about) who are in the
bottomless pit about 4,000 miles straight under your feet. So what? To
argue that hell is impossible is a rather stupid argument in view of
the fact that many unsaved men have a foretaste of hell before they
get there to such an extent that they even say "hell is just in your
mind." To argue that hell is impossible is ridiculous in view of the
fact that Jesus Christ stated it was a fact. As a matter of fact, in
the Sermon on the Mount it was the Lord Jesus Christ who first coined
the expression "hell fire." People who don't like "hell fire
preaching" don't have any business fooling with the Sermon on the
Mount. Yet, some of the wildest situations you ever heard of occur in
America where liberal socialists are majoring in the "Sermon on the
Mount" and never talk about hell fire.

To argue that hell is impossible proves that a sinner has an
unbalanced view of God. To understand the horrors of hell and the
blackout at Calvary, we need to think about the holiness of God and
the severity of God: God's wrath on sin. How can any of you talk about
the love of God and the love of Christ when you read in II Corinthians
5:21, "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we
might be made the righteousness of God in him." What do you suppose is
involved in God making Jesus Christ to become the personification of
sin? Love? In plainer words, when we reject the doctrine of hell and
the severity of God, we are unbalanced--not the Lord. What do you
suppose is involved in this statement: "For Christ also hath once
suffered for sins, the just for the unjust," I Peter 3:18? You call
that love? What do you make of this statement: "Christ hath redeemed
us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us," Galatians
3:13? Would you say that if God turned you into a curse that that was
a manifestation of His love? No. To understand the horrors of hell and
eternal punishment you have to remember that the God who reveals
Himself in the word of God is a holy God. He is not like the god who
reveals himself in Transcendental Meditation--the great passive neuter
force. He is not like the god presented by the graduates and the
faculty members of the leading state universities in America--the
great neuter force field or the energy field of eternal evolution.

The God of the Bible reveals Himself as holy and He manifests a severe
attitude against sin. That is why many scientists prefer other
religions. The holiness of God demands that we be holy. The law of God
pronounces eternal damnation on the guilty sinner in accordance with
the justice of God. One of the great marvels of our age is that God
found a way of salvation that satisfies both His holiness and His
love. You read about this in Romans 3. How can God be just and at the
same time justify all the sinners? The only way God can be just and
holy and justify the sinner is to take the sinner's place. This
solution satisfies the law and leaves man as a creature with a free
will who can choose either salvation or damnation, or heaven or hell.



God Is Holy

All right, first of all, God is holy. You can't imagine a God who can
be anything but perfect and holy. If He is not perfectly holy then
He's not God. To be holy, of course, means to be free from all
defilement--to be pure. God is absolutely pure. The Bible says in I
John 1:5, "...God is light, and in him is no darkness at all."
Habakkuk 1:13 says, "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and
canst not look on iniquity." In Exodus 15:11 we read, "Who is like
unto thee, O Lord...glorious in holiness." In 1 Samuel 2:2, "There is
none holy as the Lord: for there is none beside thee." In Isaiah 6:3
the seraphims are crying, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts."
Simon Peter says in I Peter 1:16, "Because it is written, Be ye holy;
for I am holy." This holiness of God separates Him from man.

Educated sinners who like to think they are all right always reject
the first three chapters in Genesis. You will find the standard
operating procedure for faculty members of state schools is to pretend
that from Genesis 10 onward we are dealing with history but from
Genesis 10 backward we are dealing with mythology. Strange, isn't it?
Of course, they are forced to admit that from Genesis 10 on is history
because it is recorded history and dead men tell tales and the stones
and rocks cry out. See Luke 19:40. There is evidence for the flood in
history. There is evidence of Ur and Lachish and Akkad, the Babylonian
cities in history. There is evidence of Abraham's dwelling place in Ur
of the Chaldees and of the ziggurats in Babylonian history. Therefore,
the standard way of handling the Bible by the unregenerate, fallen,
depraved, Christ-rejecting, God-defying sinner is to pretend that
everything from Genesis 10 on is history but from Genesis 10 backward
is mythology and legend. Why? Because the first three chapters state
that man is not going up: he is going down. The first three chapters
teach that Darwin was a bigger monkey than he thought he was. The
first three chapters teach that you were made in the image of God and
that you are now descending to the level of a beast. That is what we
call "negativism." I believe that one ounce of negativism is worth a
pound of positivism when it comes to dealing with the truth. And these
positive thinkers, after all, are the most negative thinkers in the
world when you get right down to it.

The most intolerant people who ever lived are scientists who profess
to be broad-minded. You throw that old King James Bible at them and
watch them clam up and have hysterics and strip their gears and burn
out their clutch plate and burn the valves and throw pieces of
carburetor all over the highway. There is nobody in this world more
narrow-minded or more intolerant than a religious liberal. Nobody!
They are the people who try to get Bible broadcasts off the radio.
They are the people who try to shut down the radio stations with
blackmail by threatening the FCC. They are the people who can't stand
any Bible truth contrary to their own liberal upbringing. Well, in the
Bible the holiness of God separates him from fallen man, and man is a
fallen creature.

"Ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ,"
Ephesians 2:13. The only way that man can approach a holy God is
through shedding of blood, for "the life of the flesh is in the blood"
and God is life and God gave life to man. There is not a heathen in
the darkest parts of Africa or Asia who doesn't know that "without
shedding of blood is no remission" of sins (Heb. 9:22). You have to go
to college to "unlearn" that basic universal truth. God is holy in the
Bible. The God of the Bible hates sin. His holy wrath will punish sin.
And this explains Isaiah 53:10 where the Bible says, "Yet it pleased
the Lord to bruise him" (Jesus Christ). Isaiah 53:5 says, "But he was
wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the
chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are
healed." God is holy. The God of the Bible is not the god of Buddhism
and Hinduism. The God of the Bible is holy and does not tolerate sin.
The God of the Bible does not call evil good and good evil. The God of
the Bible never speaks about "values clarification" and "relative
situation ethics." That is the work of the Christ-rejecting,
hellbound, fallen Adamic nature and it seeks to set up its own
standards to replace God's standards because God's standards are too
high. God is holy. You say, "Well, how in the world can I become holy
like God?" You cannot apart from a sinless Saviour who died in your
place. Like they say out in the world, "No way, man, no way."



God Is Love

All right, secondly, God is love. We read in I John 4:8, "He that
loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." This is not only a verb
that says God loves, but it is also a noun--"for God is love." If God
lives in a person's heart by conversion, then they must love Him, for
He is indwelt by love. John said in I John 4:7, "Beloved, let us love
one another: for love is of God."

What is love? Well, out there on the magazine racks love is
fornication, premarital sex, perversion, bestiality and adultery--or
adult consent in adultery. When the newsstand speaks of "love" and
somebody's love affair and somebody's romance, they are talking about
fornication and adultery. You are living in a day and age that never
"tells it like it is." It professes to be the most frank and open
generation on the scene, but it is the most deceitful, hypocritical,
varnished, veneered, shellacked generation that ever lived. What is
love? Well, folks talk about "falling in love," that is, covetousness
or emotional upset. Folks talk about "making love," meaning
fornication or adultery or a married situation or relationship. Of
course, this isn't love.

Love is a desire for and a delight in the welfare of the one on whom
the love is bestowed. Love is giving. True love is even love for your
enemy--Matthew 5:46, "For if ye love them which love you, what reward
have ye? do not even the publicans the same?" A hippie who loves the
hippie, groupie, Moonie and the communists and hates "the
establishment" is a rascal. Christ said, "Love your enemies...pray for
them which despitefully use you" (Matthew 5:44), "...bless, and curse
not," Romans 12:14. If all you can love are the folks who are in
agreement with you, you "ain't worth shooting."

Love is a desire for and a delight in the welfare of the one on whom
the love is bestowed. If you love somebody, you want to give things to
them. Do you love God? If you love somebody you like to spend time
with them. Do you love God? I didn't ask you if you put up with Him as
a boarder or dictator or paid Him weekly rent as a landlord. If you
love somebody you want to talk with them. If you love somebody you
take sides with them against their enemies. Do you love God? If you
love somebody you hesitate to think evil of them and always think the
best of them. Do you love God?

The love of God is manifested toward the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ,
and believers in particular. The Bible says of the unbeliever in John
3:36, "He that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath
of God abideth on him." The Bible says about the religious man that is
counting on his religion and his sacraments to save him that he is
alone in the world, "dead in trespasses and sin," without hope,
"without God," and that he is by nature, by birth, a child of wrath.
Read Ephesians 2. Now, how is that for a negative picture of mankind?
You don't read through the Bible very far before you see why it is not
permitted in a college curriculum except as dead history and as a
sample of poetic beauty. You don't have to read through the Bible very
far before you find out why professors ceased to study the great
doctrines and truths of the Bible and believe them. You don't have to
read a great deal of the Bible to see why many people prefer Hinduism,
Buddhism, Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, or Rama Krishna--
somebody who won't rock the boat.

In the Bible, if you've never been born again by the Spirit of God,
apart from your religion and your sacraments and the rest of your
nonsense, you are dead in trespasses and sins; you're going to hell.
You say, "I don't like that." Don't get mad at me. Turn off your head
instead of the radio. Get mad with God. Phone up the Lord in heaven
and say, "Look here, I don't like your Book. I don't believe your
Book. I know I'm better than that. What right have you to talk to me
that way? Look who I am." And then some day the undertakers will put
you to bed with a shovel and you will find out who you are. You say,
"Why is it necessary to talk that way?" Because this country is so
saturated with Hollywood love and the National Enquirer, Observer, and
Midnight kind of love that the average person in America when he talks
about love is simply talking through his stack.

The Bible says in John 16:27, "For the Father himself loveth you,
because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God."
"For God so loved the world"--past tense--"that he gave his only
begotten Son"--past tense. This caused God to work out a plan of
salvation to give men an opportunity to escape wrath and damnation.
God is a loving Father and manifests His love to the Christian by
chastening. "For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourageth
every son whom he receiveth," Hebrews 12:6. Then, love in the Bible is
defined as giving. "For God so loved the world that he gave...." It is
very possible for you to give without loving. But, you cannot love
without giving. In every love affair on the face of this earth there
is an element of selfishness on the part of one or both parties. You
haven't got one love affair on the face of this earth where somebody
isn't trying to get something for themselves. And this means simply
this: If you've missed the love of the Lord Jesus Christ as your
personal Saviour, you have missed the greatest love on the face of
this earth. Christ loved you enough to die for your sins, and you have
no other friend who would love you like that.



God Is Faithful

God is faithful. "God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the
fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord," I Corinthians 1:9.
Deuteronomy 7:9 says, "Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is
God, the faithful God...." Now, this word "faithful" means somebody
who can be safely trusted who is reliable and dependable. God is
faithful for He is honest and never changes. His "faithfulness
reacheth unto the clouds," says Psalm 36:5. "All his works are done in
truth," David says in Psalm 33:4. God's faithfulness is manifested in
His keeping of His promises and in His fulfilling every word that He
has spoken. God is unchangeable, for as Balaam said back in Numbers
23:19, "God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man,
that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath
he spoken, and shall he not make it good?" Yes, He will. God will keep
every promise to protect, assist and guide His child in need.

Some of the greatest promises in the word of God held out to the
believer are so great that they are called "exceeding great and
precious promises" by Simon Peter in II Peter 1:4. I will only quote a
few of them, but you can see by the checkbook that the Lord has given
you to fill out that a believer in Jesus Christ who has been born
again has access to riches that no unsaved man has access to, no
matter how high he is in his religiosity.

Check Number One--"But my God shall supply all your need according to
his riches in glory by Christ Jesus," Philippians 4:19.

Check Number Two--"I can do all things through Christ which
strengtheneth me," Philippians 4:13.

Check Number Three--"...He which hath begun a good work in you will
perform it until the day of Jesus Christ," Philippians 1:6.

Check Number Four--The Lord is faithful, "So that we may boldly say,
The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me,"
Hebrews 13:6.

Check Number Five--"And God is able to make all grace abound toward
you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound
to every good work," 2 Corinthians 9:8.

Check Number Six--"For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor
things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall
be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus
our Lord," Romans 8:38-39.

And finally, Check Number Seven--"And we know that all things work
together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called
according to his purpose," Romans 8:28.

"If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself,"
II Timothy 2:13. And Paul says in I Corinthians 10:13, "God is
faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are
able; but will with the temptation also make a way of escape, that ye
may be able to bear it."



God Is Merciful

Moses says in Deuteronomy 4:31, "(For the Lord thy God is a merciful
God:) he will not forsake thee...." Now, a little bit later he did put
Israel aside, but notice the statement is that He will not forsake
thee in the sense of if you are willing to go by what He said, then He
will keep His promise to you and will not forsake you and will show
mercy. Notice that instead of inflicting pain and death every time as
a punishment for sin the Lord is merciful and spares the sinner and
gives the sinner many blessings, health, comforts and earthly joys;
and these are given to both saved and lost. I don't know how many
times God has given some of you people a good meal who didn't even bow
your head at the table and thank God for the meal. Amen? I don't know
how many of you God has gotten out of car wrecks and you still think
you are smarter than Peter, James, John, Matthew, Mark and Luke. I
don't know how many of you God has saved from a violent death, being
thrown by a bucking horse or brushfire. I have no idea. I only know
that God is merciful, and God spares the sinner over and over and over
again.

And yet, in all His sparing and all His mercy, the Lord says in
Proverbs 29:1, "He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck,
shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." Throughout all
God's mercy is the constant warning that although God will put up with
some things temporarily and be merciful to you, he won't put up with
it forever. His mercy "endures forever" in the sense that God keeps
His word and God will spare the saved sinner, but His mercy ceases in
hell, unless you can call a lake of fire mercy for people who have
rejected Jesus Christ. I can't imagine anything more like hell than
being in heaven with Jesus Christ when I didn't believe on Him and
thought He was just like Buddha. Wouldn't that be hell--having to cast
your rewards which you had earned at the feet of a man you didn't
trust? How would you like to look into the eyes of a man who loved you
enough to die for you, knowing that you never trusted Him and never
thanked Him and never received Him. Maybe in that sense hell is
"mercy."

Matthew 5:45 says God "...Maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on
the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." God will
give good crops to an atheist. What does that mean? It doesn't mean
anything. One time an atheist sent a letter to a preacher and he said,
"Preacher, it's October, and I plant on Sunday, plow on Sunday,
harvest on Sunday, and here it is October and I've got the biggest
bank account of any farmer in this county. Now, how do you account for
that?" And the preacher wrote him back and said, "God doesn't settle
accounts in October. That's how you account for that." You may have
gotten away with it 100 times, but you won't get away with it at the
White Throne Judgment; you won't. The Bible says, "Because sentence
against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of
the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil," Ecclesiastes 8:11.

God is sovereign and can choose to show His mercy to whom He desires.
Romans 9:15 says, "For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I
will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have
compassion."  The mercy of God can be shown to the multitudes. Exodus
20:6 says, "And showing mercy unto thousands of them" (then here is
His condition) "that love me, and keep my commandments." In this day
and age God has chosen to show His mercy to people who come to Jesus
and trust Him as their salvation. He may allow His mercy to extend
generally to an unsaved man, but His mercy in eternity (eternal mercy,
eternal heaven, eternal life, and eternal joy) only comes to the man
who does what God told him to do. And, what God told you to do is to
quit trusting your own righteousness and trust His righteousness.

Now, how great is the mercy of God? In Psalm 103:11 we read, "For as
the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy" (condition)
"upon them that fear him." Again in Psalm 103:17, "But the mercy of
the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting" (condition) "upon them
that fear him." Notice in Proverbs 9:10, "The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom." And for some proud, self-righteous, stubborn,
self-reliant, self-preserving, self-sustaining, selfish, egotistical,
religious, bloated, puffed up, swelled up, puff-shirted people to go
around talking about the mercy of God is like Charles Manson talking
about being a Bible-believing preacher. If you're doing that, you're
not kidding anybody but yourself. "The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom." And don't tell us that you don't have to learn
to fear God. You also have to consider going to hell at judgment. If
you haven't considered it you've overlooked it and are dealing just
with the positive aspects of God, God's mercy. You've got a perverted
god. He's a crook.

If your god only has one side to him, love and mercy, you haven't got
the God of the Bible. You have not got a holy God. You have an
unbalanced god. Why not trade him in for a used car and make yourself
some money? People say, "Do you have to talk that way?" That is the
way to talk in dealing with eternal things, and if you are honest,
there is no other way to put it. You say, "I don't believe that." All
right, sit still a minute and reason. Now listen, if your god only has
love and mercy, I say he's a pervert. Do you know why? Because if all
he has is love and mercy, then he has to love fornication, adultery,
perversion, deviation, bestiality, blackmail, embezzlement, lying,
killing swearing, cheating and extortion. He has to love them with the
same degree that he loves honesty, purity, decency, courage and
righteousness. Now, there is that great big synthesized, integrated,
passive, relative god. There he is. He's a freak. That is not the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is not the God who reveals
Himself in the word of God. That is some other god. That is some other
gospel. That has nothing to do with the revelation of God concerning
Himself. That is a lost sinner trying to fashion God after the image
man would like to create Him in so that God won't interfere with his
devilment.

Again, Psalm 32:10, "...He that trusteth in the Lord, mercy shall
compass him about." Then, we learn something. We learn that even an
unsaved, Christ-rejecting. hell-bound sinner can experience the mercy
of God in this life. God's mercy is one of His communicable attributes
which He can communicate to man. However, when it comes to eternal
mercy (the mercy of the Lord from everlasting to everlasting), this
only occurs at Calvary in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ who is
"God manifest in the flesh." God is determined to show everlasting
mercy upon the sinner who trusts His Son and receives His Son. When
the penitent sinner comes to Jesus for forgiveness, he claims no
merit, but he throws himself upon the mercy of the Lord. When the
unsaved man comes to God for salvation, he doesn't come for justice.
He comes for mercy.

Now, the Lord Jesus Christ is very clear about this in the New
Testament and He has something to say to you egotistical, self-
inflated puffed-shirts who think that you are somebody and who think
that your little old sacraments, your little old religion and your
little old rinkey-dinkey "golden rule" can get you to heaven. The Lord
Jesus Chr;st has something to say to you in Matthew 9:12,13, "But when
Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a
physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what that
meaneth...." You ready? Matthew 9:13, "...I will have mercy, and not
sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance." Are you righteous? Then get out of the way and let a
sinner get saved! The Lord has no business with you. That Bible says
in Romans 5:8, "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:6, "For when we
were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."

Are you ungodly? Are you a sinner? If you are not then stay out of the
way--the Lord has business to do and you are in the way. The Bible
says about you that you "stand in the way of sinners." The Bible says
about you that you don't enter the kingdom of God and you stop those
that are entering from going in. The Bible says about you that you
stumble and cause those to stumble who are trying to find Christ.

(Read Malachi 2:8 and Matthew 23.) If you are not ungodly or a sinner,
then you have no business getting in the way of people who are trying
to find Christ. Get off the track before you get run over in the
traffic. When the sinner comes to Jesus Christ for forgiveness, he
claims no merit, but he throws himself upon the mercy of the Lord. He
claims not his own righteousness but God's righteousness which is
Jesus Christ; he does not plead for a chance to "live it" and does not
point to his own life. He says with the ancient publican of yore, "God
be merciful to me a sinner" (Luke 18:13). Another famous sinner (who
wrote nearly a quarter of the Old Testament) said one time, "Have
mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness..." (Ps. 51:1).

God is merciful. There is not a case where man ever came to God in
fear, trusting God's righteousness and God's goodness, that God ever
turned a man down. And the Lord Jesus Christ held out his open
invitation to sinners in John 6:37, "...him that cometh to me I will
in no wise cast out." For 2,000 years the Lord Jesus Christ has been
standing at the crossroads of eternity inviting men to come to Him. He
says in Matthew 11:28-30, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and
learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest
unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." He said
to a certain group of self-righteous religious people, "And ye will
not come to me, that ye might have life," John 5:40. The last
invitation in the Bible before the prayer for the Second Coming of
Christ says, "...the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that
heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever
will, let him take the water of life freely," Revelation 22:17. God is
merciful.

God Is Just

God is just. Moses said in Deuteronomy 32:4, "...God of truth and
without iniquity, just and right is he." David said in Psalm 19:9,
"...The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." The
God of the universe is just and righteous and will mete out just
judgment to each individual. Abraham said in Genesis 18:25, "...Shall
not the Judge of all the earth do right?" He certainly will. If you
want justice, you will get it. If you want God to square accounts with
you and give you what you have coming to you, I'll guarantee you He
will do it. That Bible says that in the day of judgment "...He shall
reward every man according to his works" (Matt. 16:27). And He said in
Romans 2:1,5,6, "Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou
art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest
thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things. But after thy
hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against
the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; Who
will render to every man according to his deeds." Solomon said, "For
God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing,
whether it be good, or whether it be evil," Ecclesiastes 12:14. God
will bring you into judgment--whether it be good or whether it be
evil.

God is just. He will make no mistakes. Isaiah 45 21, "...there is no
God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour...." God, being just,
righteous and holy, must act in a manner that is just, righteous,
upright and holy; and He will. If your sins deserve hell, the Lord
knows it. If pitting your puny self-righteousness against the
righteousness of God is a crime worse than adultery or murder, I'll
tell you somebody who knows it, if your pastor doesn't know it. God
does! If your standing up and shaking your fist in the face of God
Almighty and bragging about your golden rule and your ten commandments
while you were trying to prove that your righteousness was as good as
the righteousness of Jesus Christ so that you wouldn't have to trust
him merits a lake of fire, don't worry, you will make it! First Samuel
2:3 says, "...the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are
weighed." God's nature of character leads Him to do that which is
right at all times and God as the Just One will be the final Judge of
all things. Notice I Kings 8:32, "Then hear thou in heaven, and do,
and judge thy servants, condemning the wicked, to bring his way upon
his head; and justifying the righteous, to give him according to his
righteousness." Notice also Revelation 20:12-15, "And I saw the dead,
small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and
another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were
judged out of those things which were written in the books, according
to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and
death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were
judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were
cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever
was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of
fire."



Conclusion

So, we learn from our lesson on God as a balanced being that God is
holy, God is love, God is faithful, God is merciful, God is just and
that our God "is a consuming fire" (Deut. 4:24 and Heb. 12:29). Now,
how can God be loving and still demand holiness at the same time? How
can He be merciful and at the same time take care of the guilty
sinner? The answer can only be found at Calvary. It cannot be found in
any system of works on the face of this earth. The answer to the
problem can only be found at Calvary. At Golgotha we find expressed
both the wrath of God against sin and the mercy of God toward the
guilty sinner. So, in speaking of God's attributes, we learn several
things at Calvary. We learn first of all that God loves sinners and
wants to save them. We also learn that God desires to justify sinners
knowing that they cannot justify themselves. We learn that God wants
to demonstrate toward sinners His absolute perfect righteousness so
that they can see what He requires. We learn that God Himself is
willing to take man's suffering, pain, temptation, sorrow, and
sickness in Himself and bear the punishment of the guilty, although
He, God Himself, is not guilty.

Thus, Calvary is where a cross is found. We find where man's will and
where God's will cross, and where that cross is we find the
righteousness of man obliterated by the righteousness of God. At that
cross we find the mercy of God level and just and distributed evenly
and we find the wrath of God descending vertically on the helpless
back of the crucified Saviour. You cannot find salvation in this age
apart from a completed. perfected blood atonement. You say, "You're
very dogmatic about that, Brother Harris." I don't have to worry about
it. I'm talking to bloody people. I never have to worry in qualifying
my Ianguage to prove anything or validate anything. My congregation is
bloody. The life of the flesh is in the blood. Whether you call that
trouble Bright's disease, Hodgkin's disease, leukemia,
arteriosclerosis, hardening of the arteries, blood clot, or anything
else, when your blood ceases to function, you are dead.

So, when I talk about a blood atonement for sin I'm talking to
anybody. I don't have to be choosey. I don't care if you are a Roman
Catholic priest. an Episcopal bishop. a Roman Catholic archbishop, a
Jewish rabbi or a Buddhist or Hindu guru. I don't have to worry about
whether you believe in daily vacation Bible school or whether you are
a Bible-believing Baptist preacher or a Methodist steward or a
Presbyterian elder or a Baptist deacon. You are all in the same boat.
The Bible says, "the life of the flesh is in the blood."

The Bible says in Romans 3:22-23, "...There is no difference: For all
have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." And when it comes to
sin, there is no more difference between a doctor and a lawyer than
there is between a junkie, a pimp, a prostitute and a bum. I know that
some of you people who were deceived into thinking that your education
and your money made you respectable don't like that, but who cares
what you like anyway? I mean, after all, when faced with the absolute
truth of the word of God, what does your opinion amount to? What does
my opinion amount to? Less than nothing! The Bible says that "there is
no difference." Now, if it says that, it means that. The fact that you
think you are different because of your education, your money, your
social image or your religious standing is no concern of mine and the
Lord is not going to regard it one way or another. The Bible says in
Romans 2:11, "For there is no respect of persons with God."

Calvary is common ground. It is ground which levels all men to sinners
and even includes God's Son as a sinner. You read in your Bible in
Isaiah 53:12 that Jesus Christ "...was numbered with the
transgressors." When He came to the ministry of John the Baptist where
sinners were being immersed and John tried to stop Him, Jesus said,
"Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfill all
righteousness" (Matt. 3:15). He took His place as a sinner in His
baptism. He took His place as a sinner on Calvary. And God bless your
soul, doctor, reverend, rabbi, father, lawyer, or whatever you call
yourself, you will take your place there, or in eternity you will see
the other side of God's face, the side you didn't believe was there.
God is love but not that kind of sentimental love that gushes over
sin. The love of God is holy and just. God hates sin and God will not
tolerate it. It you don't believe it. just keep on like you are going
and you will find out.

To understand God, His being, character and nature, we must study
Calvary. We must study the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. We must
spend time with Psalm 22. Spend time with Isaiah 53. If you are an
orthodox Jew, you will find both of these passages in your Old
Testament. If you don't believe the New Testament, then read Exodus
12, Psalm 110, Psalm 22, Genesis 12, Isaiah 53, and Zachariah 10,11,
and 12. If you are a Catholic or Protestant and you believe the New
Testament, spend some time in Romans 5,6,7,8,9 and 10. Spend some time
in Ephesians 1,2 and 3. Spend some time in Colossians 2,3 and 4. Above
all, spend some time in your New Testament in the Gospel of John.
Calvary satisfies the holiness and justice of God by fulfilling all
the requirements of the law and permits a sinner to enter heaven
legally. Or, as Paul says in Acts 13:38,39, "...Through this man is
preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: And by him all that believe
are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by
the law of Moses." Again, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of
the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every
one that hangeth on a tree" Galatians 3:13. Jesus Christ's death on
Calvary's cross not only justifies you from the ceremonial laws given
to the Jews but also from the moral laws of the ten commandments,
which is perfectly clear from Romans 13 and II Corinthians 3.

Now, if you are one of those foolish people who believe that you are
saved partly by faith and partly by works because you spend your time
in James instead of Romans and if you are one of those deceived, self-
righteous sinners who is always going to the Judaistic portion of the
New Testament to prove salvation by works (where you have got no
business being), you should spend some time in Romans 13 and II
Corinthians 3. Learn that the ten commandments--all ten, not just nine
of them--were taken care of when Jesus Christ died on the cross. The
Christian is no longer under the law. He is under grace. You say,
"Well, what then, shall we...?" Oh, never mind all that hot air. When
we begin to talk about salvation by grace through faith, we always
have these self-righteous, scripture-quoting Christians coming in and
trying to damn the sinner before he can find Christ by telling him
that if he does get saved he will have to do this and this and this
and this and this. These men are blind guides who lead the blind and
they "both shall fall into the ditch" (Matt. 15:14).

If you want to know what happens to a saved child of God who doesn't
live right, the Bible is very clear on it. But it certainly is never
connected with his redemption or his salvation. His redemption and
salvation are completed at Calvary when Christ said, "It is finished."
When Jesus Christ died on Calvary's cross, He satisfied the holy
demands of a holy God for a just and righteous life and a perfect
blood atonement, dying in the stead of the sinner. May God help you to
see that today. May God reveal to you that Christ died, "...The just
for the unjust, that he might bring us to God," I Peter 3:18.