" GOD’S JUSTICE IS THE CAUSE OF OUR SALVATION."

Scripture Reading:
Jonah 4
Nahum 1:1-11

Also:
Canons of Dort, Chapter II, Articles 1 & 2

Singing:  (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Psalm 7:4
Psalm 40:1
Psalm 103:5
Psalm 78:13,16
Psalm 34:6,7

Beloved Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ!

Lord’s Day 4 revolves around the topic of the justice of God. It’s a topic we don’t find that stimulating; something in us would prefer that we speak about the mercy of God instead of His justice. That is why I want to make very clear straightaway, congregation, that the material of this Lord’s Day is not human consideration, but is our echo of what God says in His Word. God Himself speaks in the Bible about His justice, we read what He says, and in Lord’s Day 4 we repeat after God what He told us in His Word. If we find the material of Lord’s Day 4 hard, it’s in fact God’s Word we find hard.

Furthermore, we need to bear in mind today what we confessed in Lord’s Day 1. We said in the second Question & Answer of that Lord’s Day that we needed to know three things if we are to enjoy fully the comfort of the gospel. The first of the three things we needed to know was "how great my sins and misery are." Lord’s Day 4 will outline for us in greater detail than the previous two Lord’s Days just how great our misery is. Though it’s a dark message, let’s realize well that the white never looks so white than when you set it against a background of blackest black. That’s what we do here with the gospel.

On the basis of what God told us in His Word, we’d confessed some pretty bad things about ourselves in Lord’s Days 2 and 3. We’d acknowledged that while God demanded full obedience to His law, all we could do was disobey, hate. We’d acknowledged too that the cause of the problem was not some manufacturer’s defect, but our own fall into sin. In other words, the problem is completely us.

Yet you know how things go when you’re in a corner. In an effort to defend yourself, you go on the offensive, you attack. You’re caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and the automatic thing you do is say that Johnny did it first so you better talk to him. Self-defense by pointing the finger at someone else…. That’s what we do with the Questions of Lord’s Day 4. We go on the offensive and attack … who? God, God’s justice. First we suggest that maybe God is unjust in demanding obedience from sinners as we are, then we attempt to belittle God’s justice because, after all, isn’t God merciful…. By the grace of God, though, we are moved to give Scriptural answers to these sinister questions.

I preach to you the gospel of the justice of God. I use this theme:

1. God maintains the demands of His law.
2. God’s mercy does not annul His justice.

God maintains the demands of His law

Question 9 picks up the thought we confessed in Lord’s Day 2. We’d learned from God’s Word that the Lord wants obedience to His law, perfect obedience. That means, we said in Lord’s Day 2, that God insists on total love; He wants us to love Him with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind. Nothing half-hearted, nothing of "she’ll be ’right;" God wants total, radical, absolute obedience. But, we added too, we can’t do this, for we’re "inclined by nature to hate God and [the] neighbor."

Now the question is: is God not unjust by requiring of us what we can’t do? Isn’t it wrong, isn’t it unfair, to demand of a blind man that he describe what’s on yonder hill?

You see, brothers and sisters, what we’re doing here? We’re conceding that Yes, we’re sinful, we’re conceding that indeed "we are totally unable to do any good and inclined to all evil." But instead of being small and humble in the face of the consequences of our fall, we’re developing the nerve to suggest that maybe God is being unfair in His treatment of us. Should God not be more reasonable, should God not take into account our circumstances, our handicaps?

That question becomes more pressing when we realize that amongst people this is a basic assumption for the way we operate together. Some of us, for example, are expected to front up at work tomorrow morning, and if don’t we shall face some less-than-pleasant consequences from the boss; after all, he insists that we be punctual. But we end up in the hospital tonight with appendicitis. We’re not worried about the reaction of the boss though; we’re sure he’ll change his demands for us, his expectations for he’ll take into account our changed circumstances. Mom tells the children to set the table with the best dishes. In the course of doing so, you drop the stack of plates. We realize: Mom may be upset that the dishes are broken, but she’ll change her demands on us, she won’t insist we set the table with the best dishes – after all, we can’t, they’re broken. See, that’s life; we change demands according to changing circumstances. The question is: should God not do that too? That’s question 9: "does God not do man an injustice by requiring in His law what man cannot do?"

In answer to that question, the Scriptures draw our attention to the beginning, to Paradise. Specifically, God made man good and in His image, and so we were able to obey God’s law perfectly. That we fell into sin is our own fault; "man, at the instigation of the devil, in deliberate disobedience, robbed himself and all his descendants of these gifts" – as we already confessed in Lord’s Day 3.

And let’s be honest, congregation, we can see much validity in this answer. Suppose you have an exam next week but in your foolishness you throw your notes out the window. Whose fault is it that the exam is too hard? We realize well that the teacher is very much allowed to demand that we know the material of the course; we certainly don’t expect him to downgrade the exam to accommodate our folly. It’s I who, in deliberate disobedience, tossed my notes out, and now I have to wear the consequences.

Yet, brothers and sisters, there is more to the matter than simply the fact that God made us able to obey, and we handicapped ourselves. Suppose for a moment that the Lord our God in Paradise would have changed His demands upon us as a result of our changed circumstances, would have changed His demands to suit what we were able to perform after the fall. What would such a change on God’s part have told us about God?

It would have told us, congregation, that God changes, that God is flexible. I grant, with our human way of looking at things, that’s attractive. We don’t like people who are inflexible, rigid. We feel we need to move with the times, need to be willing and able to bend with the circumstances. So we say of God too that we’d like Him to be flexible, to bend His expectations according to the circumstances.

As it is, this notion that God should be flexible is deeply imbedded in many minds of contemporary Christianity, even in our churches. We hear it in our midst too that "God understands," and the point is that we think that the Lord takes into account the difficulties of our circumstances and so lowers His demands upon us. We say: God realizes how stubborn my child is, and so understands that I don’t put my foot down to insist on obedience. We say: God realizes how much pressure I have at work, and so doesn’t hold it against me that I smoke a bit of dope from time to time. You see, we think in terms of God altering His demands upon us to suit the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

But now the question is, congregation, whether God reveals Himself to be like that. Does He change His demands for us according to the circumstances in which we find ourselves? Specifically, is God more tolerant of sin when our circumstances become harder? Or is it so that God demands more obedience of us when the pressure is lower? At bottom, it’s a matter of whether God is flexible, a matter of whether God looks through His fingers at sin, ignores certain sins in certain circumstances. In answering that question, we need to look at the very first time that God was confronted with a change of circumstances in the lives of man. That first time was, of course, the fall into sin – Genesis 3.

And see: in Gen 3 the Lord God did not change His demands! The demand of Gen 2 had been obedience; God had written His law on Adam’s heart so that he knew what God wanted of him, and he obeyed – till he ate of the forbidden tree. But after the fall there’s no change in God’s demands; after the fall into sin it remained God’s command to Adam and his offspring that they serve no gods but God, His command that Adam and his offspring serve God only as God demanded. As before so after the fall there was no place for theft, for lying, for adultery, for killing, for coveting, etc. God established His covenant with Israel at Mt Sinai and gave to His people the same commandments to which Adam and Eve were bound in Paradise. Indeed, Israel –and it’s true for all men everywhere- were expected to love God with all one’s heart and soul and mind – just as God demanded of Adam and Eve before the fall into sin. Jesus Christ repeated the same thought to the disciples in His sermon on the Mount. "Therefore," He said, "you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven in perfect" (Mt 5:48). Conclusion: after the fall into sin the Lord God did not change His demands; they remained as they were.

Is that a good thing? Most definitely, brothers and sisters, it is! If God would have changed His demands on account of our falling into sin, He would be reactionary, would change because we change. That’s to say that somehow we set the standard, we take the lead, and God follows on the cue that we give; we change, so He changes. Human nature might like that idea, but it’s not Scriptural.

No, beloved, God is God, and that’s to say that His standards remain the same, unchanging. Let people be unfaithful, but God is faithful. Let people change, but God does not change. That in turn means that we can always know what we have in God. In our day and age so very much changes; so little is today the same as it was, say, 50 years ago. But God doesn’t change with the weather, His demands don’t vary from day to day. His demands today are exactly the same as they were 50 years ago, as they were 500 years ago, as they were 5000 years ago. Computer technology doesn’t change that, scientific know-how doesn’t change that, resurgent heathendom doesn’t change that – no more than the fall into sin changed it! God is the one constant amidst all the changes of life; always is He God – and therefore His demands the same.

And Yes, this is reason to praise Him! The psalmist instructs us to do precisely that in Ps 111. "Praise the Lord!" he insists at the beginning of the psalm…, and then proceeds to explain why. "All His precepts are sure," he says, "They stand fast for ever and ever" (vs 7f). Here is stability, security, He the only Rock in the midst of the changes around us.

It’s true, beloved, the Lord God has not changed His demands, despite our fall into sin. Yet that does not mean that God is callous, unfeeling toward sinners. For the Scriptures also declare that while God continues to insist on perfect obedience to His law, God as a father pities His children; "He knows our frame, He remembers that we are dust" (Ps 103:14). That is the reason why He sent into this world His only-begotten Son, a man not touched by the fall into sin, a man able to obey perfectly the holy demands of eternal God. Christ set about His earthly task, and what did He say to His disciples? This:

"Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill" (Mt 5:17).

Jesus’ point? He came to obey every command of God! God’s law counted for Him too; Jesus also had to obey perfectly every jot and tittle of the law of God. He had to, just as we do, because the Lord did not relax His expectations one dot. It’s because God maintained the demands of the law that Jesus ended up on the cross of Calvary; that was the result of His careful obedience to every command of God.

Does God do man an injustice by requiring of him in His law what man cannot do? The Lord, my brothers and sisters, would have us reject the thought of injustice with God. It’s because God maintained the demands of the law that Christ ended up on the cross – and so acquired our salvation. Shall we dare, shall we dare, then, still to think there might be injustice on God’s part?? It is for us instead to praise Him for maintaining His demands; His justice produces our salvation!

The careful listener will at this point, I suspect, raise a second concern we have in relation to God. A couple of the Catechism students picked it out too, and it’s this: if God shows mercy in giving Jesus Christ, doesn’t that empty God’s justice of its clout? It’s the point of Q 11: "But is God not also merciful?" That brings us to our second point:

God’s mercy does not annul His justice

It’s a fact: the Bible speaks much of the mercy of God. I think, for example, of the verses we read from Jonah. The Lord had told Jonah to proclaim doom to the city of Nineveh; "yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown" (3:4). After some protest the prophet had done so. And see, the king decreed repentance so that God "relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them" (3:10). Jonah worded it like this:

"…I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm" (4:2).

God Himself expressed the matter like this:

"… should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left - and much livestock?" (4:11).

It’s a thought we like. So we’re terribly sinful, and it’s our own fault, and God is just is keeping His high demands upon us. Then we like the idea that there’s a gentle side to God, that there’s abundant mercy in Him. We feel: that means that God won’t look too seriously at our sins. So we conclude: our misery isn’t that big after all, for God will abundantly pardon.

Now, it’s true, congregation, that the Lord our God is merciful. There are various passages of Scripture beside the Jonah passage that point that up. But it definitely will not do to play God’s justice off against His mercy in the sense that God’s justice gets swallowed up by His mercy – so that in turn there’s scarcely a penalty for our sins. The Bible is insistent that God’s justice is very much a reality, and woe be to us if we should ignore it!

I think here of the passage we read from Nahum’s prophecy. Nahum addresses the very same city Jonah addressed, and says this:

"God is jealous, and the Lord avenges;
The Lord avenges and is furious.
The Lord will take vengeance on His adversaries,
And He reserves wrath for His enemies" (1:2)

We understand: that’s a very different picture than we glean from Jonah! But the prophet makes it more pointed still. Vs 6:

"Who can stand before His indignation?
And who can endure the fierceness of His anger?
His fury is poured out like fire,
And the rocks are thrown down by Him."

"Rocks are thrown down by Him…." No wonder, as vs 5 says, that "the mountains quake before Him, and the hills melt!" God in His wrath is not to be trifled with!

This is the thought, beloved, to which we give expression in our Lord’s Day. We say in A 10 that God "is terribly displeased with our original sin as well as our actual sins." The term "terribly displeased" attempts to capture the color of God’s anger as described in passages as Nahum 1. "Terribly displeased": Nahum speaks of an anger that moves mountains, an anger that makes the earth heave. It’s an anger that results in destruction so that rivers dry up and flowers wilt and hills melt (vs 4f). It’s the same picture as Jesus painted when He described hell as a place of "weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Mt 24:50). Here’s an agony beyond words, a horror so awful that no eye has seen it nor ear heard nor the heart of man conceived – a horror that gives eternal expression to God’s terrible displeasure with our sins.

And make no mistake, beloved. The infinite anger of God as described by Nahum is not restricted for heathens alone, like the people of Nineveh – or to people who once heard the gospel (as Nineveh did from Jonah) and rejected it. I read in Numbers 11 that God’s people Israel "complained", and when the Lord heard it, "His anger was aroused" with as result that "the fire of the Lord burnt among them, and consumed some in the outskirts of the camp" (vs 1). I read in the same chapter that the Lord sent quails, and "while the meat was still between their teeth, before it was chewed, the wrath of the Lord was aroused against the people, and the Lord struck the people with a very great plague" (vs 33). Note it well, brothers and sisters: God’s anger was aroused against His own people by covenant, people like you and me!

Nor is a passage as Num 11 unique. Time and again in the book of Judges the Lord confronted His people with His anger upon their sins. It all ended with the exile, when the Lord in anger cast His people away from Him. No, beloved, the Scriptures nowhere downplay the justice of God as if the human race need not fear God much. Such is His justice, and therefore His terrible displeasure, that the penalty of God crushes a man, crushes us. We put it like this in the Canons of Dort:

"And as He Himself has revealed in His Word, His justice requires that our sins, committed against His infinite majesty, should be punished not only in this age but also in the age to come, both in body and soul" (II.1).

And in our Lord’s Day:

"His justice requires that sin committed against the most high majesty of God also be punished with the most severe, that is, with everlasting, punishment of body and soul."

If this, brothers and sisters, is what we confess, we shall need to be careful to take God seriously!! And inasmuch as I speak now to you and not to another, I need to urge you to take God seriously. It just will not do to assume that God has but little emotion on account of your sins, that God looks the other way when you sin. On the contrary! That is why the question needs always to be on our minds: how will God respond if I do this or that? To provoke His wrath is to invite such punishment that even mountains falling on us will not save us from His anger. Let is be fixed in our minds: the Lord is a severe judge. And that is why our misery is so great!

How great? So great that even the Son of God on the cross of Calvary cringed under the weight of God’s wrath. If anybody was ever miserable, surely it was He as He hung there suspended between heaven and earth, rejected by God and man alike, tormented by the excruciating pain of divine rejection. That is what we deserve on account of our sins.

Yet here, beloved, is the gospel. The justice of God requires that the wrath of God against my sins be poured out on me. But see, in boundless mercy God puts Christ between His wrath and me, so that the wrath I deserve falls onto Christ! In the words of the Canons of Dort:

"For us or in our place He was made sin and a curse on the cross so that He might make satisfaction on our behalf" (II.2).

Notice those glorious words, beloved of the Lord! "For us", "in our place", "on our behalf": those words describe that the Lord Jesus Christ took the wrath of God that we deserve!

That is the gospel. God’s wrath is not minimized, God’s wrath is not buried under a flood of mercy either. Rather, God’s wrath is fully satisfied by Jesus Christ – who acts "on our behalf."

Next week, the Lord calls us to sit at the Supper of the Lord, the good news of Christ dying for us and in our place. It’s a wonderfully glorious gospel for unworthy sinners. But nothing makes the glory of the gospel of that table stand out so sharply as the black background of our sins and misery.

I acknowledge my sins and accursedness, acknowledge that I deserve His wrath in this life and the life to come, acknowledge that I am black. Now Christ would tell me that He bore for me the wrath of God against my sin. Given how black I am, I dare not stay away when Christ would impress upon me the shining glory of His work on my behalf.  Amen.