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Tonight, for our consideration, I would like to rehearse for you a very ancient story. It was written some three thousand years ago, and if you're interested to read it yourselves later on, you will find the reference in the Old Testament, in the book of second Samuel and chapter fourteen. It concerns the king of the united tribes of Israel and Judah, the famous king by the name of David. And we shall find it concerns problems that he met as the king of that nation, in dealing with justice for the population at large, and thorny and difficult problems about justice that related to his sons and daughters.
Though the story, I say, is some three thousand years old, we read it still because it raises for us in modern society the same kind of question. It will raise the question in the, at the level of public justice in our countries, because it deals with the problem of punishment for crime. Let's talk about that for a moment. I suspect you followed debates in recent years on what might be the purpose of punishment of crime.
Why should you lock people up in prison, for instance? Why should you sentence them to hard labor? Traditionally, people who have thought about these things of punishment have said there are 3 purposes behind punishment. The first and foremost and most important is what is called retribution. When somebody commits a crime, the government would take the view, the law of the land would take the view that they deserve to be punished.
They must satisfy the law and suffer the penalty that the law lays down. Whether the punishment does anything else worth doing is, in the first place, beside the point. According to the traditional view, a man or woman that has broken the law, committed a crime, is worthy to suffer the penalty of the law and must be punished. But then if somebody has, uh, committed a crime and deserves to be punished, then the traditional view said that you could use that punishment as a warning to somebody else, so that there somebody else doesn't do the same crime.
In other words, you could, uh, use the punishment to deter other people from doing that crime. If you find that you're shooting your next door neighbor means that you are executed, and people hearing of that will perhaps be deterred from shooting their next door neighbors. So the theory of deterrence. And then in more recent times, there has been added another reason why, uh, punishment is, uh, what punishment is about. And that is, when the prisoner is serving his punishment, the authorities should so arrange things that what he suffers is also educational, geared to helping the man improve and to change his attitude to life and to society, so that when he has finished his punishment and comes out of the prison, he's a better man than when he went in.
That was for many centuries the traditional view. I cannot know, of course, what the view is in Prince Edward Island. Perhaps you don't have any criminals, and you don't have to think about these things at all. So God bless you. But in our countries, in the East, in recent times there has been a very wide protest against the idea of retribution. Many say you shouldn't punish a criminal just because he's broken the law, just to satisfy an arbitrary set of rules.
That's savage. That's taking revenge. It is primitive, and we should stop it. The only two rule things that punishment's supposed to do, therefore, is to, first of all, be a deterrence to the prisoner himself, so that once he gets out of jail, he won't do the same crime again, you see. And it can be a deterrence to the general public. You see what's happened to him or to her, don't you do the same thing as you'll land in the same place. And the other theory that is now popular and almost supreme is that the point of view of punishment in prison or elsewhere is to improve the prisoner.
And so that when the prison sentence is finished, their attitudes may have been changed to society, and they come out and they no longer want to, uh, commit evil deeds against society, but are able to, to live a decent life. So, popularly, at any rate, in the East, the idea of retribution, that someone must suffer whether it does him any good or not, that someone must suffer whether it acts as a deterrent or not, someone must suffer simply because he or she has committed a crime, broken the law, done damage to others.
They deserve to be punished and must be punished, whether it does them any good or not, or whether it deters them or anybody else or not. That view is vociferously opposed in many sections of British society. Now, that raises some very important things. The late C. S. Lewis used to point out that if you get rid of the idea of retribution, you jolly well deserve to be punished, and you must suffer the penalty that the law inflicts on you. If you get rid of that idea that you deserve to be punished, then society gets itself into a very dangerous situation.
If a man doesn't deserve to be punished, well, then how can you use his punishment as a deterrence to others? You haven't done anything wrong, sir. You did see a beautiful TV, and, uh, for a flicker of a second, you were tempted to, uh, steal it when no one was looking, but you didn't steal it. So you don't deserve to be punished. But would it be okay to take you and put you in prison and punish you anyway? To say, well, now you see what's happened to him? Anybody that's stealed TVs, the same will happen to them. Would that be okay? You say, surely not. The man doesn't deserve to be punished. Then you've no right to punish him just to make his e- him an example to other people.
That would be grossly unfair, wouldn't it? Well, what about the idea that people don't really deserve to be punished by the penalty of the law, but they, uh, ought to be put in prison to improve them? That's very dangerous. They don't deserve to be put in prison. Should they be in prison just to improve them? That's what, of course, the Russians did for many, many decades. They put people in prison. What wrong had they done? Well, they hadn't done anything wrong, except they disagreed with the Communist Party. That must mean they were mentally sick. That's how they, uh, argued.
If anybody disagreed with Stalin or anybody, he must be mentally sick, so he must be put in prison or hospital to cure him. And so they were, so to speak, cured by being given drugs and all kinds of things. And another serious thing resulted. You see, if you've committed a crime and the law sentences you, the law will fix the amount of punishment and the time. And when you have, uh, fulfilled the punishment, you'll be let out. But if you are seriously mentally sick, you go not to prison, you go to a doctor, and he's the one who decides whether you are sick or not, and he will be the one to decide if you ever recover, when you recover.
There'll be no date fixed. You won't come out till you're healed. And that in Russia meant sometimes you never came out because the authorities decided you hadn't been cured. Getting rid of retribution, then, is a very dangerous thing. But I do not wish to stay upon that, because we have more important matters to discuss this evening. Why should we bother about this business of punishment and what punishment is, and whether retribution is right?
Why, my good friends? Because this question goes right to the heart of our Christian gospel. For the gospel is, as you know, not that Christ lived to give us an example, though he did that. The gospel is that Christ died for our sins, according to the scripture. He died the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. When we think about Christ dying upon the cross, we have to ask ourselves what exactly was happening when he died on the cross.
He wasn't simply dying as a martyr, was he? The Bible says, all we like sheep had gone astray. We had turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquity. The chastisement, the punishment of our sin was upon him, and with his stripes we were healed. That lies at the very heart of the gospel.
That is the fundamental significance of the cross of Christ. We sing it with the children, wounded for me, wounded for me. There on the cross he was wounded for me. Gone my transgression, and now I am free. All because Jesus was wounded for me. It pleased, that is God's purpose was, his decision was to bruise him. He had put him to grief. Why? Because we had broken God's holy law and come under the threat of its penalty, and that there could be no way of release until that penalty was paid.
We could not pay it. Therefore, God gave his son. He was delivered up for our offenses. Said the law, cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things that are written in the law to do them. That was a very high standard. Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things that are written. Some people regard God's holy law as a kind of a university examination. You know, I told you before, but you won't believe it, well, I tell you again.
We who taught in such institutions were very kind and generous-hearted people, you know. If a student got seventy percent, we crowned him with glory and honor and said he was the most brilliant student that ever came through the doors of the university and gave him a first-class degree. If a student got, uh, uh, si- sixty percent, we said that was marvelous, that was worth a two one. um And if he got, say, just over fifty, fifty five-ish, we said, well, that's respectable, he got a two two. And if he got about forty, we gave him a third, but he got through. Mm. And there were some people that the examiners had mercy on.
If they got thirty nine, well, we said, what's in a one? And some people have that idea about the law of God. They think they do their best to keep it, and if they keep it seventy percent, which is a high figure, isn't it? Well, on the whole, that will do. That cannot be. The standard of God's law is that if you don't continue in everything written in the book of the law, then the law curses you. He that keeps the whole law and offends in one thing, says James, is guilty of all. That at first sounds a hard saying, but perfection is a whole.
Anything less than perfection is not perfection. You see, I- I- I remember in my student days, when China and- and mugs and things were very rare just after the war, someone had given me a beautiful jug, China jug it was. I'm very proud of this jug. There weren't many about, you see, to make afternoon tea with, you see. And one day, when I went to take it out of the cupboard, this beautiful jug of mine, it hit against the side of a, a saucer or something, and the sound was rather dull. I said, he- hello, is that cracked?
So I got it out and put it up to the light, and there, to be sure, all the way down the side of this beautiful jug was a crack, you see. I said, what a pity. It's only one crack. But then the milk came through. So sentimentally, I got it and put it back on the shelf. And I said, don't be so sentimental, old boy. I took it down, pulled it apart, and put it in the bin. You only need one crack like that in a jug, you've ruined the jug. That's how it is. If a crane is lifting a very heavy weight, pulling the engine of a ship out of water, and one link goes, but all the others are okay, what happens now?
Well, you say the, the whole engine falls down. Of course it does. God's law is like that. You break one commandment, the law is broken, isn't it? And the standards of perfection are so high and realistic that the law says, if you don't continue to do all things written in the law, then the law's curse descends on you. God is a realist when it comes to sin, you know. And in our hearts, I suspect we agree with God. We wouldn't like the concept of a heaven that's ninety nine percent perfect, would we?
Still less a heaven that's seventy percent perfect. We look forward to a heaven that's a hundred percent. And since we've all fallen short and the law curses us, hear then the gospel of God. To deliver us from the curse of the law, Christ was made a curse for us. To put it in crude language, he was punished instead of us. Ah, but people say that's, I can't believe that.
I thought God was a God of love. If God is a God of love, how could he punish anybody? Surely punishment is inconsistent with love. So people say, don't they? And hope against hope that God is so loving that in the end he will say that our sin didn't really matter after all. So I would like to thi- us to think about that. What is the relation between love and punishment? And that's the reason why I want now to recount to you the story in the Old Testament about King David, because as we proceed with it, you will begin to see that it raises this very same problem.
The relationship of love to punishment. As I say, the story is given at length in two Samuel fourteen. I cannot now go through every verse. If you like to check my accuracy, then have your, uh, Bible text open at two Samuel fourteen. And to put it briefly, the story is this. King David had a number of sons. When one day, for reasons we need not now consider, one of those sons by the name of Absalom, tricked a brother of his called Amnon to go to a party where Absalom had him murdered.
And the murder being done, Absalom skedaddled and fled into exile. Evidence, of course, that he had a guilty conscience. Evidence that he feared of what the king would do to him for having murdered his brother. So Absalom ran off and was gone two or three years in a foreign country. And you know, perhaps you parents know it better than I, what happens? Little by little, the king who was terribly distressed at the beginning over the murder of one of his sons. Well, the wound healed a little bit, and the king began to forget, and the thing was softened in his memory.
And his commander in chief of the army was a man named Joab. And Joab saw that the king was beginning to soften towards Absalom. So Joab concocted in his head a scheme for persuading the king to let Absalom come back home. And this is the scheme. He found a woman of stikoa who was, had the reputation of being a very wise woman. Being a wise woman was a kind of profession in those days, was it?
I think a lot of them still have it. But anyway, uh, she was a wise woman. And Joab went to her and said, now here, my dear, I would like you to do something for me. And what is that she? I want you to dress up all in dark mourning clothes, as though you'd been a widow for years, all in heavy mourning, you see. And I would like you to go into the king and say to him what I'm now going to tell you to say. So he rehearsed to the woman what she got to say and how she got to say it, you see, and she was going in to tell the king, to plead with the king, and to tell him a tremendous yarn, you see.
Now, we'll follow the woman. Are you ready? We'll come into the court. There'll be David the king sitting on his throne of justice, you see, to to decide the cases that come before him. Can you see him on his throne, crown and all? You'll see. And here in comes this woman, you see, all dressed up in black, pooh. And, uh, you'll have to watch her because if you don't, she'll pull the wool over your eyes. She will. She's not the first woman to be very clever at arguing and twisting men round their fingers, you'll see. Mm-hmm. So she came into the king. I think she had a little onion in the pocket ready to produce the tears when they had to be produced, you'll see. And she said, oh, my lord, my lord.
And he said, what ails you, woman? She said, my husband's been dead a lot of years, and I was left with two sons. And uh, and uh, uh, the one son, he rose up and he murdered the other one. And you know how they do. Because it was all put on, you know, put on it was. Ha, managed some tears. And now she says the townspeople have risen up, and they say you must hand over the other, the son, the living son, and have him executed for murdering the other boy. And she says, if they do that, your majesty, they'll put out my coal completely.
Meaning, she's a Hebrew, you see, she used that vivid language. You'll put my fire out, that is, you'll destroy my family. My husband's gone. Now one boy's been murdered. I left with another boy, and the townsmen are saying this other boy, he's got to be killed too, executed for murdering his brother, and it will destroy me, your majesty. This punishment business is stupid, she says. What good does it do? Hmm. Said the king, I hadn't thought about that. Ah. But you, you go home, that'll be all right.
Ah, but said the woman, you see, I know it's a bit risky, your majesty. I mean, guilty people ought to be punished, but, um, you know, in my case, um, and, uh, I'll take all the blame for it. If anybody says this is wrong, I'll take the blame for it, and you'll be innocent, king. Oh, he said, well, go home, and, uh, I'll see that nothing bad happens to you or your boy. She's a wise old woman, she was. Ah, she said, ah, but let the king fear the Lord, you see, and swear to me by the Lord that you won't let my boy be executed. Now she's bringing God into it. She wanted God on her side to say that the criminal should not be executed.
And the king said, yes, all right, I swear to you by God, that's okay. And when the woman saw she was now safe, you see, ah, he's sworn by God that he wouldn't execute her son nor her either. Then she began to put the pressure on the king. So you're going to save my boy, are you? Thank you, Your Majesty. And you say God is agrees with you, and you've sworn an oath in the name of God. That marvelous. But why? Tell me, she says. In saying that, you're making yourself guilty, aren't you, Your majesty? David sat up in his seat. Me guilty? Me guilty of what? Oh, why doesn't the king bring back his banished son?
And David began to see a trap closing. For in refusing to bring back your banished and pardon him. You are guilty yourself, aren't you? Says the woman. Well, David hadn't thought about that. So then she plied her really powerful arguments. You see, your majesty, she said, you know, all this punishment business is silly. We are as water spilt on the ground that cannot be gathered up together again. We are in England, we have a a similar proverbial saying.
We don't talk about milk being s- uh, water being spilt. We say it's no good crying over spilt milk. I don't know if you, uh, have that in your sophisticated society here. No good crying over spilt milk. Well, it isn't, is it? You spilt the milk on the ground? There's no good trying to gather it up. A little child might say, cool, I, I just spoiled the ice cream. I spilt the ice cream on the ground. The ice cream is gone, and want to gather it up. And mum say, well, there's no use. You can't gather that up anymore. It's gone, isn't it? So grow up. Grow up, do. You can't, that's no good. You can't, um, it's no good crying over spilt milk.
And that's what the woman was saying to the king, only she said water. We are as water spilt on the ground, aren't we? Which cannot be gathered up again anymore. I mean, my son is dead, he got murdered. But if you execute the other chap, it won't bring back my son to life, will it, your majesty? So what's the point of executing the other chap? Won't do any. Won't bring back my s- other son, will it? Well, I hadn't thought of that, said the king. Well, fancy that now. Oh. Oh. And then she had two more things to say. Do you see?
One was true, absolutely true, and the other was a big whopper of a lie. But that's a skillful way of arguing, you know, to get a lie and wrap it round with some truth, and the people will look at the truth, they'll imbibe the truth and swallow the lie at the same time. As he said, you see, for God does not take away life. Incidentally, if you read that story in the authorized version, you'll have to be careful about their translation. It is not true to the manuscripts, but that, by the way. What she actually said was, God does not take away life, but devises means so that his banished should not forever be exiled from him.
The next, the second bit was beautifully true, as we shall see later. God has devised a way of bringing back guilty sinners. God has found a way of forgiving guilty sinners and reconciling them to himself and welcoming them to his heart and his home and guaranteeing them a heaven forever to be with him. That is perfectly true. God has devised a way so that his banished be not permanently exiled. But the first thing she said wasn't true, was it? God doesn't take away life. Didn't her Old Testament tell her time and time and time again?
What happened at the flood, for instance? What happened to Korah, Dathan, and Abiram? What happened to Pharaoh and his armies at the Red Sea? That bit was a lie. God doesn't take away life. The law says, and it's God's law, the soul that sins, it shall die. That is God's law. Right at the very heart of the Christian gospel is the principle without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.
Yes, God has devised a means of bringing back his banished. I can't resist telling you now what it is. God's way for bringing us back as sinners to his arms and his home and his heart. Cost the death of Jesus Christ, God's son, our savior. That is the means that God has devised. But in that moment, David was flummoxed by the unexpected arguments. He hadn't learned to think it through. And he was convinced.
So the woman went on to say, now, David, you better take means to bring back what she meant was Absalom. But she put it all in difficult language so that the king didn't see the point too quickly. But at length, the king saw what she was at, and it was a whole of a put-up job. Said he to the woman, tell me, my woman, did Joab put you up to this? And now the woman felt nervous. If the king in that moment found out she'd been acting apart and none of it was true and this was all a ruse, she was afraid the king might do something to her disastrous. So with womenly skill, then the king said, tell me, did Joab put you up to this?
Is this all a bit of a, a, a, a ruse? She said, you know, your majesty, you're like an angel, aren't you? Nobody could hide anything from you. And what do you say to a woman when she says, looks at you and says, you're absolute angel? You see, they know their tactics, don't they? What her they do. Uh, you see, can't get, you can't get angry with a woman that says, you are like an angel for wisdom, you're a marvelous man, you've seen through it, well, you're wonderful. All right, said the king. Go and tell Joab. I'll bring back Absalom.
Go and tell him, and bring Joab to me. So off the woman goes. He's gone now. Gone to call Joab. But by your leave, I'm going to stop at the, uh, the here, and, uh, I'm going to have a word with the murdered boy. You know, at least I'm going to pretend to. It's a kind of thought experiment. Can you imagine? Can you imagine I find him lying on the ground? He's been murdered, you see. And I want you to imagine that he can hear what I say and then can reply to me. So here I am, can you see me? I'm now walking up. Oh! It's a corpse on the ground. Oh! It's a young man too. I said, what are you doing here, old fellow? And Daddy says, oh, well, I can see that.
Mm-hmm. And he says, and what are you going to do about it? I said, what do you mean, what am I going to do about it? Well, the dead man says, I want justice, that's what I want. Well, I say, oh boy, you can't get justice now. I have a right to justice, he says. My brother went and took away my life. I had the right to live as he had the right to live. And he's unillegally, cruelly taken my life away. Is he going to carry on living to the rest of his life and enjoy himself? And I be robbed of my life, and you don't do anything about it?
I want justice. What would you say to him? Well, I've got an argument. I learned it from his mother. Now look here, my boy. We are as water spilt on the ground. You're very much on the ground. I, I, and it's no good crying over spilt milk, you see. You're dead now, old chap. Nothing will bring you back again. Grow up, don't behave like a child, you, I mean, it's done now. What do you think you'd say to that? Jolly well, not fair, says he.
No, well, that's what your mother says. My mum says that. Oh, what would your view be? Let me put you a question. When mum said that, the lad's dead. There's no good crying over spilt milk. She was loving him? No, you say she, she, well, well, anyway, she, they loved the other son, and he, she didn't want him to die. Why didn't she? Well, because she would be robbed of both sons if that happened. Well, who was she loving?
I can't bring myself to think she was loving the boy that lay on the ground dead. And that's the thing about love, isn't it? God is love. He loves the criminal, but he loves the victim. You see, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps you've warned me I'm an ungodly man, and you warned me not to drive my car when I'm under the influence of drink and come roaring down the road.
You say you'll run somebody down one of these days, but I continue to do it. One day, I swerve and knock down your daughter. Lovely girl, sixteen, seventeen, killed. What will you say? Well, the women of the place all come out armed with knives nearly to get at me. Rotten. Serves to be punished. Ten years from now, they will have forgotten all about it. I want to tell you this, that if that happened, God wouldn't forget about it.
If I don't repent, God will have that against me for all eternity. How's that, you say, because he's savage? No. Because he loves that girl. And because he loves her, he values her. And because he values her and loves her, if I damage her and don't repent, God's love is eternal. He'll have it against me for all eternity. He will never say sin doesn't matter.
Is that God being severe, or is that God being loving? So far from l- l- punishment being inconsistent with love, punishment is an expression of the love of God for the victim. If I will repent, there is forgiveness.
But they are the terms. But now the woman's back, and Joab has come. All right, says the king to Joab, you win. You can bring Absalom home. But he is not to see my face. He can come back to the city. He is not to come to the palace and come and meet me. I will not meet him. I will not accept him. Yes, he can come, he can come back. Now tell me, was that real forgiveness?
Would you say David had forgiven Absalom just because he let him back, but then wouldn't let him see the king's face, wouldn't give him access to the king? Was that love? Of course it wasn't. If David had really forgiven Absalom, he'd have let Absalom come in right to the king's presence and see the king's face. But persuaded by Joab and the woman, David tried to compromise, let Absalom back, but not let him into his presence.
Oh, ladies and gentlemen, I can't resist right now breaking off from that story. You see, the forgiveness God offers us is a forgiveness that the moment we, uh, repent and believe, God not only forgives us, but invites us right into his presence and his heart, right this very moment now. And how can God do it? Because God was not prepared to compromise with sin. God can forgive us if we will come in repentance and faith, and can thereupon receive us because God's law has been upheld, God's character upheld, by the fact that his son was given to bear the penalty for our sin, and the price has been paid, and the way is open to complete forgiveness and access with God.
But David had compromised, hadn't he? So Absalom came back, and he wasn't allowed to see the king's face. But Absalom got tired of that, for Absalom, you know, was one of those young, young gentlemen. He was used to having his way. Not gonna have anybody stand in his way. So he is not content to stay in the city but not enter the palace. He was going to enter the palace and defy the king. So he set light to the crops of the commander in chief, Joab. And when Joab said, what do you think you're doing? He said, why didn't you get onto the king to bring me back to the king?
So Joab one day came with Absalom and brought him right into the king's presence. And the king kissed Absalom. Oh. Not a word of I'm sorry. I wish I hadn't done it. Brazingly coming into the king's presence. Without repentance, without apology. Oh, sad moment. When David kissed the unrepentant sinner. God will never do that. In the par- par- parable of the prodigal son, the father kissed the prodigal, but only when the prodigal had come to himself and repented and returned in repentance to the father.
Isn't it so? When the king kissed Absalom, without Absalom's repentance, and said, right, I won't punish you. You will remember the next thing Absalom did. He prepared troops, he prepared chariots, he prepared the knife to turn his father off the throne and knife him in his heart. That sin, unrepented of. If God allowed sin to go unfor- uh, uh, unrepented of and yet forgave it, it would turn the very God of heaven off his throne. So Absalom rebelled.
He had no gratitude to the king for sparing him. In the war that followed, the king's armies defeated Absalom's armies. And the king told his commander in chief, if you get Absalom, do not kill him. But Joab and the army found Absalom with his neck caught in the branches of a tree and his mule gone from under him. And Absalom got his warriors around him and said, kill him. And they said, no, the king said, don't kill him. Oh, get out of the way, that he said. Absalom put a dart right through his heart. And when the news was brought to David, he went up into the room over the gate of the city and broke his very heart.
Oh, Absalom, he said, my son, my son Absalom. Oh, Absalom, my son, my son. Broken-hearted father. And when the ki- people heard the king wailing the death of A- Absalom, they began to feel ashamed. And Joab ran up the stairs and virtually booted David down the stairs. You foolish man, he said. Get down! And talk to the people. You're making all this fuss about Absalom.
These people down here have stood by you, the king. They've risked their lives in battle, all because of Absalom's rebellion. They've lost their fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, and so forth to support you, the king, and here you are, grieve for Absalom and not grieve for them. You have more concern for the criminal than you have for his victim. And in some countries in the East today, that would seem to be true. The courts have more concern for the convicted criminals than they have for them. That's beside the point. But you see, who can listen to King David's lament without being moved to the heart?
What a predicament he was in, wasn't he? You see, if he had just been a king and not Absalom's father. He could have issued the, the, the command for execution. He needn't have thought twice over it. But he wasn't just a king. He was Absalom's father. If he had been a father, Absalom's father, and not a king, he could privately have forgiven Absalom. The king can't do it. The king is responsible for universal justice in his commi- kingdom, isn't he?
There was the cliff stick. Oh, Absalom, Absalom, my son, my son. Would God I had died for you. And as we read that ancient story, ladies and gentlemen, we come to the very heart of God, upon the throne of God. What a window it opens into God's heart. The situation that faced God. He'd made us, every one of us, hadn't he? Loves every one of us with a creator's love. Will be loyal to us.
And yet, he's not only our creator. He must be our judge. He's the judge of all the universe. He cannot show favoritism. God is the author of the law. He's the author of the penalty that the law demands. He cannot change that without changing his own very character. He cannot deny himself. How shall he solve the problem? We, his creatures, have sinned against him, offended the very character of God, broken his law, deserve his punishment.
God cannot say it doesn't matter. How shall he enforce the law and yet pardon us? That is the marvelous story of the gospel, ladies and gentlemen. You say, what did God feel when his son Jesus Christ on the cross cried, oh my God, why hast thou forsaken me? God's own darling son, given up to suffer the penalty and curse of the law. On our behalf.
But what David couldn't do, would God I had died for you, that God's son has done for us. Can you believe it, friend? Think a moment. The creator of the vast universe. And we who were made to do his will have gone our own way like sheep. And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
I'm a backyard astronomer, you know, very feeble one. And sometimes I've put up my, my Celestron telescope and found the Andromeda Nebula. It's not a nebula really, it's a galaxy. Billions of stars. And that's only one amongst billions and billions of galaxies. And as I look at it, then I think, how can it be true that the God who made those galaxies for me became man and died in my place.
What a fantastic gospel that is. And it is true. And because of that death, God, to put it in Bible terms, can be just, remain just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. Oh, it's enough to begin us saying hallelujah and never leave off to the remotest part of eternity. And there's the Bible because of it. Because Christ has died for us upon repentance and faith, we're not only forgiven, reconciled to God, but we're invited to come near.
We have access unto the Father. Or to change the terms, we have boldness to enter into the holiest of all. And my good friend, if you are a repentant and you believe in Christ, God's Son, who died to save you on the tree, then this very moment you could come in spirit and enter the very throne room of God and know yourself welcome and at home. Here is the problem of the universe solved.
A God who is love and a God who is light. A God who is holy and must condemn sin, a God who is loving and has found a way to save the sinner. And they who are thus saved and know themselves welcomed into the very presence of God and have felt the kiss of God upon their foreheads will say with Paul, the Son of God, he loved me and gave himself for me.
