Romans 3:23-26
²³ALL HAVE SINNED AND FALL SHORT OF THE GLORY OF GOD, ²⁴being JUSTIFIED as a GIFT by His grace through the redemption which is IN CHRIST JESUS; ²⁵whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation IN HIS BLOOD through faith. This was TO DEMONSTRATE HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; ²⁶for the demonstration, I say, of HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS at the present time, so that He would be JUST and the JUSTIFIER of the one WHO HAS FAITH IN JESUS.
²³ALL HAVE SINNED AND FALL SHORT OF THE GLORY OF GOD
This is not new, this is what your grandfather or great grandfather and all generations before him would hear this when they listened to a Gospel sermon, but it is hardly mentioned today.
Here’s the thing you need to understand.
• God is righteous, and because He is righteous, He must judge you.
• You must also understand that God is love, and because God is love, He must hate.
The soft and watered down sermons, people are used to hear these days, make that people think that God is like them. And that He is kind of a Santa Claus who will turn up whenever they like, and instantly give whatever they want.
Last week someone reacted on one of my messages: (I inserted some reactions)
“Your words sound like judgment and hatred (if you call warning people for an imminent danger hatred, you have other definitions for love and hate, than I have),
you don’t know God, for God is only love, and He will not judge anybody. (What about the last judgment where everyone, nobody excluded, will be judged?).
It sounds like you are fearing God (yes, I indeed fear God, not in the sense of being afraid, but because I am only a man, and He is the most high, I fear Him),
but He is just our friend. (Wrong! He is not just our friend! He is high above us, and if you don’t see Him high above you, you will not be able to see the severity of sin, and that will cost you your life some day).
He wants us to have riches (yes, but not earthly wealth – love for money, earthly possessions may one day prevent you to enter heaven),
and to receive money we must give money to our pastor (if you want to make him rich, go ahead, but don’t expect more money in return),
we call that sowing (no that is not sowing. The sowing Jesus spoke about is sowing with his word).
Now the pastor is rich, but soon we all will be rich. But you won’t, because you don’t ask for money, and pointing at danger is nonsense. You are just jealous. Anyhow, if you would read the Bible for a change, you would know that God is love and cannot hate (if God cannot hate, please explain to me the flood, Sodom and Gomorra, and all the other examples),
and that you are not allowed to talk so judgmental” (see a previous message on that subject)
God cannot hate?
I just said it, and I say it again: God is love, therefore He must hate!
Let me try to explain this:
• When you say that you have feelings of love towards the Jews, you can’t be neutral about the Holocaust, you will hate the Holocaust!
• When you say that you have feelings of love towards the African-Americans, then you must hate slavery!
• When you say you love children, you must hate child molesters
If you are truly righteous, and if you truly love all that is good, all that is pure, all that is Beauty, all that is life, then you must hate certain things!
Isn’t it amazing that we reserve that right for ourselves, and deny it to God, well it may shock you, but God has all the rights to be angry, and hate things that happen on this earth, and the people who do those things.
If you can be neutral, and without passion, in the face of such evil that happened during the Holocaust in camps like Auschwitz and Birkenau, if that doesn’t bother you, you are a heartless person.
A normal response to that would be a righteous indignation, where your reason has to literally subject yourself to what is right, or you would go out, find those evil people, and murder them for what they did.
We have a righteous indignation.
If we, being evil, can burn with anger, when we hear about the injustices in this world, how much more a perfectly holy God.
God will rightfully punish those who murdered them, whom He loved. And He will rightfully judge all of us righteously.
Including you and me.
If you don’t belong to Him yet, then turn to Him today!
Don’t delay!
To be continued.
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