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The Character of God - Part 3 | David Pawson - Official | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: The Character of God - Part 3
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You are listening to David Porson podcasts.
podcasts.
This is a series of 10 talks covering
the character of God. Part three,
holiness, indignation, justice.
justice.
I want to read now from the book of the
[Music]
And I'm not going to stop at verse 8.
which is where every public reading of
Isaiah 6 that I have ever heard has
stopped, which is a pity because it's
right in the middle of the story. Isaiah
chapter 6.
In the year that King Isaiah died, I saw
the Lord sitting upon a throne high and
lifted up, and his train filled the temple.
temple.
Above him stood the seraraphim, and each
one had six wings. With two he covered
his fa face, and with two he covered his
feet, and with two he flew. And one
called to another and said, "Holy, holy,
holy,
holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole
earth is full of his glory."
And the foundations of the thresholds
shook at the voice of him who called.
And the house was filled with smoke. And
I said, "Woe is me, for I am lost. I am
a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in
the midst of a people of unclean lips.
For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord
of Hosts."
Then flew one of the seraraphim to me,
having in his hand a burning coal, which
he had taken with tongues from the
altar. And he touched my mouth and said,
"Behold, this has touched your lips.
Your guilt is taken away, and your sin
is forgiven."
And I heard the voice of the Lord
saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will
go for us?"
Then I said, "Here am I.
Send me."
And he said, "Go and say to this people,
hear and hear but do not understand. See
and see but do not perceive. Make the
heart of this people fat and their ears
heavy and shut their eyes. lest they see
with their eyes and hear with their ears
and understand with their hearts and
turn and be healed.
Then I said, "How long, O Lord?"
And he said, "Until cities lie waste
without inhabitant and houses without
men, and the land is utterly desolate."
And the Lord removes men far away and
the forsaken places are many in the
midst of the land. And though a tenth
remain in it, it will be burned again
like a terabin or an oak whose stump
remains standing when it is felled.
The holy seed is its stump.
It's one thing to say to God, "Here am
I, send me." It's quite another thing to
be prepared to deliver the message that
We're going deeper and deeper into God
on these Sunday mornings. Maybe you
never thought quite like this about God.
Maybe the whole fullness of the Godhead
never quite struck you. I hope that by
the time we finish the alphabet, you'll
realize that God is so great. Now we
started very simply with ABC and I said
that God was our creator, our almighty
and bountiful creator. But the Bible
doesn't use those adjectives about him.
The Bible says he is our holy creator.
And then I went on to his deity and his
eternity. Those things which make him
unlike us. And my text was this. I am
God and not men. But I didn't give you
the other half of the text. The other
half is I am God and not man, the holy
one of Israel.
I told you last Sunday morning that God
is our father and we rejoice in that.
But when Jesus prayed to his own father,
he said, "Holy Father and when we pray
the Lord's prayer, we must always
remember to include holy be your name."
Or as it's put in our English version,
hallowed be your name. And we must never
forget that the word holy needs to be
put in front of everything else you say
about God. Even to say God is love
is dangerous unless you add the
adjective holy because there are so many
unholy kinds of love around that we
shall not get the right picture. So I'm
taking the letter H but I'm also taking
two more which are related to it. And I
want to speak this morning of God's holiness,
holiness,
his indignation,
and his judgment.
This will be a fit preparation for next
week when we look at the other side, his
kindness, love, and mercy. But let's
look this morning at his holiness, his
indignation, and his judgment. A very
serious subject, and I wouldn't choose
it if the Bible hadn't commended me to
speak about such things. not very nice
or pleasant and probably your
temperament reacts as well but it's true.
true.
Now let's take the word holy first. It's
a word that is dropping right out of the
English language.
There are so very few few things still
regarded as holy that it's a word you
will rarely hear. Even our holy days
have become holidays and a slight switch
in spelling has taken the holiness right
out of them. Now this word holy is used
in different senses. First of all, it's
used as a swear word.
It's used in a swearing context and
swearing always takes something that is
holy and treats it as profane and to be
trampled upon. And therefore, most swear
words go straight back to either
religion or sex. The two holiest
relationships that we know, our
relationship with God and our
relationship between men and women. And
therefore, most swear words go back to that.
that.
I suppose one of the best known ones is
simply a shortened version of by our
lady, though not many people realize
that, but it goes straight back to religion.
religion.
and others have been ripped out of the
Bible, damned and evacuated of their
theological content. And that is a word
in the Bible and a word that Christians
can use, but it's been treated as
profane and flippant. And likewise with
the ho word holy, holy mackerel, holy
smoke. Holy smoke is probably a phrase
lifted straight out of Isaiah 6. Holy,
holy, holy. And the house was filled
with smoke. But we use it now as a swear
word or as a slang phrase.
Now there are others who use the word
holy not in a swearing sense but in a
sarcastic way. He's a holy Joe. Holier
than thou attitudes. And they use it as
an insult.
And indeed if some people called me a
holy Joe I would feel insulted. I'd feel
they I'd given the wrong impression or
that they were saying something nasty
about me. Isn't this a tragedy that this
word which belongs to God and describes
God should be used either in a swearing
or in a sarcastic manner?
More overseas than in England, the word
holy is often used in a superstitious sense.
sense.
Meaning people, places or objects to be
avoided because they are mysterious,
because they are uncanny and seem to be
associated with supernatural power. Now
that's beginning to get a little nearer.
Then there are those who use the word
holy simply to describe something sacred.
sacred.
Jacob at Bethl said this is a holy place.
place.
Or Moses when he saw the bush was told
take your shoes off. This is a holy
place. Meaning it is a sacred place. And
a book was written by a German
philosopher called Rudolph Otto which
has influenced very profoundly many
theologians in this country and he
called the book the idea of the holy and
he coined a word the sense of the
numinous and what he meant was a place
or an object or a person who gives you a
sense of don't touch keep away.
Well, now that is a sacred use, but it's
still not the scriptural use. The
scriptural use of the word holy means
far more than supernatural power. It
means supernatural purity.
Purity. It's the very character of God.
And when you say God is holy, you mean
God is cleaner than you can imagine. God
is utterly, utterly pure. And this is
something that we have never known. So
it's so difficult for us to imagine it.
I'm going to try and make this real for
you this morning. May I begin by asking
two very simple questions. First, what
would it be like to meet a really holy
person? Would you like them or dislike
them? Would you feel drawn towards them
or repelled by them? What would you
really feel if you met a really holy
person? Now, maybe you never have done.
Maybe you feel you have done.
But when Jesus was on earth, for the
first time in human history, a really
holy person was living among men. And we
can answer the question by asking how
did people feel about a holy person
called Jesus. The answer is very simple.
At first they were attracted.
They came in their thousands. They loved
him. They were drawn to him. They wanted
to be with him. But very soon this gave
way to a discomfort. They began to feel
when they got nearer to him a little uncomfortable.
uncomfortable.
They began to feel a little dirty. They
began to feel a little sinful until they
began to say this kind of thing. And one
man who lived with him for about 2 years
said this, "Depart from me for I am a
sinful man." In simple English, I'm not
for the likes of you.
And the upshot of it was that within
three years they hated him.
Now that is how people react to a a
really holy person. At first they might
feel drawn then they feel uncomfortable
and they finish up hating him. That
happened to Jesus. His holiness had this
effect. A really holy person does have
this effect.
That is why Jesus said they hated me and
they will hate you. But the hate will be
in inverse proportion to your holiness.
Whoever would live a godly life in
Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution,
said Paul. And the hatefulness goes with
Santiago of Casio once said this. He has
a daily beauty in his life which makes
me ugly.
And nobody likes to feel ugly. One could
alter that and say, "He's got a
cleanliness about his life that makes me
feel dirty." Nobody likes to feel dirty.
He's got something in his life that
makes me feel so different. Now, when
Isaiah the prophet went to church one
Sabbath morning, he looked up and before
the service began, when he was all alone
in the temple, he was thinking about God
and suddenly he said, "Why God is holy,
holy, holy, holy." Do you know what he
said? He said, "And I've been saying
dirty things with my lips this week."
And he said, "I realize now that I never
noticed it because everybody else at
work was a man of unclean lips. And I
never knew it. I didn't realize that you
can be a dirty person what you say as
well as in what you do." And suddenly he
realized, "Holy, holy, holy. Woe is me.
I'm lost. I'm undone."
That wasn't the end of the story. God's
holiness reached down and burnt it.
porterized it and burnt it out of his
life and said, "Now you can be holy as I
am holy."
Now, the other question that might get
us into the feeling of the word holy is
this. What would a really holy person
feel if they met me? Did that ever
strike you? I've tried to answer the
question, what would I feel if I met a
really holy person? But what would that
person feel if they met me and if they
knew everything about me? Now once again
it's so difficult to imagine because
I've never been completely holy and so I
don't know.
We'll have to start with the Bible and
ask how does God feel about me when he
meets me? And I find that in the Psalms
in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel,
Micah, Nahm, Habac, Zephaniah, in every
one of these books, it says that when
God meets man, he's indignant.
That's why I use the letter I at this
point. When holiness meets something
that is not holy, indignation is the
immediate result. That's a biblical
word. Now, let me start with human
examples. I'll start with a humorous
one, but it'll begin. There was a man
who just finished cementing the drive to
his garage, and he got it beautifully
smooth, just finished, when a boy ran
right across it chasing a ball. And he
caught the boy, and he boxed his ears
soundly. His wife saw him do this out of
the window and when he came in she said
I thought you love little boys. Well, he
said, "I love them in the abstract but
not in the concrete."
Well, now
just start. Why was that man indignant?
The reason was very simple. He'd made
something that was nice. He'd made
something that was complete, something
he could stand and look at with
satisfaction, something that was a good
job. And if ever you've done a bit of
cementing, you know the satisfaction
that comes when you've got it smooth and
can stand back and look. Why was he
indignant? Because somebody
thoughtlessly, carelessly spoiled it.
And those footprints would stay there
probably and spoil his work.
That's what indignation is.
They put up a very beautiful statue in
Keel University recently
just before I visited the students
there. And when I got there, the statue
was dorbed with paint
and other things had been stuck onto it
and the whole thing was spoiled.
And the authorities were highly
indignant, rightly so.
There is a little chapel in Beckensfield
that I know, a little Methodist chapel,
where one Sunday morning they arrived to
worship God in the beauty of holiness,
and they found that the chairs had been
smashed and put on a bonfire inside the
building. They found the hymbooks had
been torn up. They found that everything
had been wrecked. Every window smashed,
the carpets torn up, the whole place ruined.
ruined.
Indignation comes in at that point.
I think some of you are old enough to
remember the great preacher FW Robertson
of Brighton. One day FW Robertson was
walking down the street in Brighton and
he came face to face with a young man
who had blasted the purity of one of the
young girls in his church.
And when FW Robertson saw that young
man, he bit his lip in his anger until
it bled.
That's indignation. It was the kind of
holy indignation that Shaftsbury had
when he saw the children slaving in the factories.
factories.
It is a holy thing. And it's because we
are not more holy that we don't have
more indignation,
righteous indignation.
And if I could give you one more
example, a divine example. Do you
remember when Jesus got angry? Do you
remember when he whipped men? Do you
remember when he said, "You've ruined my
temple. This is the house of prayer."
And you've made it into a stock
exchange. You've ruined it. And he
whipped them out of the temple. indignation.
indignation.
Now, let's go back to the beginning. God
made a world. We're going to look at
that tonight. And he fashioned it with
his hands and he completed it. And then
he looked at it and he said, "That's
good." And he put trees and flowers in
it and animals and birds and fish and he
said, "That's good."
And he put men in it and completed his
work and said, "That's very good. Now
stay that way." And chapter 2 of Genesis
says, "Stay that way. Don't let the
knowledge of evil spoil this. Stay that
way. Keep it nice. Keep it clean. Keep
it happy." And you know what happened?
And God looks down at a world that left
his hands. A very good world. And it's
not a very good world. It's not a world
in which you love your children to grow
up. I tremble for my children. They're
just getting on the verge of teenage
years. are going to realize what kind of
a world they really live in.
Oh, I'd have chosen a different world to
bring my children up in if I could,
wouldn't you? It's not a good world. But
you realize what God feels when he looks
down. He's indignant. Of course he is. I
made it beautiful and you've ruined it.
I left it very good. And look what
you've done with your suspicion and your
hatred and your gossip and your cruelty.
We are vandals in God's universe.
And until we've realized that every one
of us, we shall never begin to be holy
because I have added my share to the
world's problems. I haven't reduced
them. I have added my share of self-centeredness
self-centeredness
and temper and impatience. And so have you.
you.
Well, now no wonder is God is indignant.
He's described by one prophet as the God
who is of purer eyes than to behold
iniquity. Can't bear to look at it.
Don't know if you've ever felt as holy
as that. It's a rare human experience.
But God is like that the whole time.
Therefore, I come to the question which
Nahm asks, who can stand before his indignation?
indignation?
Who can face an angry God? What is this
anger going to result in? The answer is,
and I come to my third letter, it must
result in judgment.
A holy God who's indignant must go on to judgment.
judgment.
And here I must take this very serious
theme which runs right through the
scriptures from beginning to end. And
against this backlog, come next week to
the glorious news that he's kind,
loving, and merciful. But you'll never
understand his sheer kindness unless
you've understand understood that God is
the judge of all the earth. Now, how do
we know he's judged? The answer is very
simple. Because of what he's done in the
past, because of what he's doing now,
and because of what he's going to do in
the future. I don't like speaking about
this. I don't like preaching about it.
I'm not the kind of hellfire George who
loves to dangle people over the pit. But
it's there. It's there. And if I'm to be
true to him and faith him one day as a
preacher, I must speak of these things.
Take the past.
The historical records of the Old
Testament contain some remarkable examples
examples
of the moments when God's indignation
reached boiling point and boiled over.
Sodom and Gomorrah and the two
neighboring towns. There is nothing left
of them but a graveyard and they now
belong to the Palestine Pesach company
with headquarters in Palmau.
But there's not a man living there and
not a woman. Why? Why? The very word
sodomy. Look it up in your English
dictionary and you'll find out why.
Because God reached the point where his
indignation was such that he said, "I
must judge this these cities, four of
them, and they've gone altogether."
So has Jericho. It's a ruin. There's
nobody living in Jericho today. There's
a town of that name, but it's a mile and
a half away. It's a different place.
Jericho is gone. Babylon is gone. And
God said, "Nobody will ever live in you
again." And you know that even today
Arab carriers will not stay within the
walls of Babylon or Nineve at night for
fear of the jin, the evil spirits, so
that no man even sleeps in Babylon or
Nineveh today.
Tire has gone. These were individual
towns that so offended God's holiness
that his indignation spilled over in judgment.
judgment.
There was once a whole society which
suffered the same thing the days of
Noah. We'll be treating that on Sunday
evening. But here was a society living
purely at the physical level. They never
got above it. They they ate, they drank,
and they married. They lived to satisfy
only their physical desires. That is the
level at which God's indignation bubbled
over. He said, "You're not living for
the things that I meant you to live
for." And therefore, the immediate
result was violence filled the earth.
Now, this is as up to date as tomorrow
morning's newspaper, isn't it? Is this
out of date? That when people live for
material things alone and physical
things alone, that violence will fill
the earth. This is today,
but Noah's society was completely obliterated
obliterated
except for eight people.
There were individuals like the man
Achen and like the woman Jezebel. But
the Bible is full of enough examples to
tell you that there comes a point where
God's indignation boils over into
judgment. That's the past. Now, what
about the present? Can we discern his
judgments today? Yes. Not at an
individual level, but at a social level,
yes. Read Romans 1, and it reads like
the news of the world. And Romans 1 says
this, "When men give God up, God gives
men up. And the immediate result,
perverted minds and perverted bodies,
unnatural relationships between men and
men and women and women. And if you read
Romans 1, you'll find that this is
precisely what is happening in our day.
I challenge you to go home and study it.
God's judgments are in the earth today.
And without being alarmist or
exaggerating, I do believe our nation is
under the judgment of God. When read in
the light of Romans 1, his indignation
reaches a certain point. And when we
consider the opportunities that this
nation of ours has had, we do not
deserve anything less.
An Indian student came to Britain and
the missionary who had led him to the
Lord trembled wondering what the Indian
would feel like when he saw Britain as
it really is. But the Indian came back
to India and the missionary said, "Well,
what did you think of England?" And he
said, "Marvelous."
He said, "Within within the first
quarter of an hour in London, I saw
three miracles."
The missionary said, "Tell me more." And
the Indian said, "Well, I got on a bus."
And he said, "I sat down and
downstairs," the man taking the money
was upstairs and my next door passenger
got up to leave and said, "Here is my
money. Would you give it to the
conductor?" Miracle number one.
Sorry, he didn't give it to the Indian.
He gave it to another passenger and said
to another passenger, "Will you give
this money to the conductor?" And the
Indian watched and said, "Miracle number
one." Miracle number two, when the
conductor came downstairs, the other
passenger gave him the money. Miracle
number three, the conductor didn't put
it in his pocket, but in his bag and
took a ticket out and put it in the used
ticket. And the Indian said three
miracles within the first quarter of an
hour in London. He said, "I would never
But my friends, that story is 40 years old.
old.
It happened 40 years ago.
Would he see three miracles in London today?
today?
When the reader's digest can say that
the national pastime in England is petty
pilfering. when the railways must allow
thousands upon thousands upon thousands
of pounds for pilford towels, soap and
fittings and what have you.
When in every factory people are making
foreigners as well as the things for
their bots. If you don't know what
foreigner is, I'll explain to you afterwards.
afterwards.
Now this is our situation and God's
indignation must be very rife against a
nation that thinks more of bingo than
the Bible. We must recognize this. Let
me turn to the future.
Paul said when he stood on Mars Hill the
Aropagus, he said God has appointed a
day when he will judge the world.
There's a day coming when all vandals
will be dealt with by God. There's a day
coming when every secret will be
revealed. A day coming when all we've
done and all we've said must be faced.
This will be the final and most
searching day of all. An of Austria once
said to Rishlo, "God does not pay at the
end of every day, my Lord Cardinal, but
at the end he pays."
God does not pay at the end of every
day, my Lord Cardinal, but at the end he pays.
pays.
I must close, but somebody might well
say to me, is this the God and father of
our Lord Jesus Christ?
Is this the God that Jesus believed in?
My answer is yes, it is. And I give you
five reasons why I believe this is the
God of Jesus. There has been a false
dichotomy produced over the last 40
years between the God of the Old
Testament and the God of the New as if
they are different gods. And somebody
asked me, a minister of the church asked
me a fortnight ago, "Do you believe
everything the Bible says about God?"
And when I said yes, he looked as me as
if I'd crawled out of the ark.
I do. And I believe that everything I
have been saying this morning, Jesus believed.
believed.
Let me tell you why. And with this I
close and against this backcloth come
next Sunday morning to hear the other side.
side.
First of all, Jesus had a Bible and his
Bible was the Old Testament. He had no
other for the New was not written. That
was the Bible in which he was brought up
and that is the Bible to which he set
his seal and it is the Bible from which
he quoted. And that Bible, the Old
Testament, taught the God that I've been
teaching you this morning. Reason number
two, within the New Testament itself,
you have the clearest possible picture
of a God who is holy and indignant and
judging. In the last book in the New
Testament, the book of Revelation, which
is a book written by Jesus, it claims to
be the word of Jesus, the risen ascended
Jesus, speaking to the church. And
that's the God he portrays there.
Reason number three, in the epistles of
the New Testament, Paul talks of the day
of wroth when God will judge the secrets
of men according to my gospel. And there
is no other gospel. This is the good
news. It must be bad news before it's
good news. Fourth reason in Matthew,
Mark and Luke, Jesus himself
quotes as historical events the
judgments on Noah, the judgments on
Sodom and Gomorrah, the judgment on Nineve.
Nineve.
Therefore, we must take them seriously.
And the fifth and final reason is simply
that Jesus himself in his own words
spoke of this kind of God. I want to
read you some words of Jesus, just three
verses. Listen to this.
For as the father has life in himself,
so he has granted the son also to have
life in himself
and has given him authority to execute
judgment because he is the son of man.
Do not marvel at this, for the hour is
coming when all who are in the tombs
will hear his voice and come forth.
Those who have done good to the
resurrection of life and those who have
done evil to the resurrection of
judgment. Those are the words of Jesus.
This is the God and father of our Lord
Jesus Christ. But oh, I wish I could go
on and preach another hour now. I don't
want to stop there. I don't want to stop
with his judgment. There is a way out.
There is a way to meet a holy God. There
is a way of forgiveness. There is a way
of becoming holy as he is holy. There is
a way for man to rise.
There is a way. And the God who is holy,
the God who's indignant when he meets
anything that is not holy. And the God
who must judge the vandals of his
universe who've ruined what he made.
That God is kind and loving and merciful
and does not take any pleasure at all in
the death of the wicked. He's too holy
to do that. and is provided Jesus Christ.
Christ.
It is of thy mercies, says the book of
Lamentations, that we are not consumed.
Your mercies which are new every morning.
morning.
Is because of that that we dare to come
and take this bread and this wine. And
remember that mercy has triumphed over wrath.
wrath.
And that the judgment which was due to
every one of us has been turned away and
put upon Jesus Christ.
That he has faced that indignation and
that holiness for us and made possible
the forgiveness that makes us new
creatures. Will you stay if you love the
Lord Jesus? Take this bread and this
wine to remind you of God's holiness,
his indignation, and his judgment, which
are as clearly seen in the cross as his
kindness, his love, and his mercy. Let
Oh God, we've been very serious this
morning, but in your holy presence, we
know we ought to be.
And yet we rejoice that this is not the
last word.
We pray that we may come to this table
and take this holy sacrament to our comfort
comfort
for the sake of Jesus Christ who died
for our sins. Amen.
Amen.
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