Sermon Transcript
Well, hi everybody, thanks for joining us today. I’m recording today’s message on Thursday, June the 3rd, and in honor of my youngest son CJ, who is graduating from high school today. I wanted to start my message today by quoting from one of CJ’s and my favorite movies. I’m talking about the theologically edifying movie Nacho Libre. Now, if you’ve not seen it, you need to.
It’s a family-friendly comedy about a guy who is a monk who serves as a cook at a monastery in rural Mexico, and the monastery is home to some orphans. And as much as Nacho loves serving God, by cooking for and working with the orphans, he also has a dream to— wait for it— to one day become a Mexican luchador or a wrestler. I’m telling you, the movie is fantastic. Of all the many, many countless movies that have been made throughout history about soft-hearted cooks who work at a monastery and who fall in love with a nun and who struggle to balance that with their love for wrestling, I think Nacho Libre surely has to be among the best, don’t you think? I think so.
Anyway, in the movie Nacho Libre, the main character Ignacio, or Nacho, who’s played by the actor Jack Black, has a buddy named Esqueleto, and who— Esqueleto becomes Ignacio’s wrestling tag team partner. And Ignacio keeps talking about God and about how he is concerned about Esqueleto’s salvation, but Esqueleto says— and I don’t want to do Esqueleto’s accent— he says, I don’t know why you always have to be judging me. Only because I believe in science. And trust me, it’s a funny line in the movie at that moment, but that is followed by Ignacio sneaking up behind Esqueleto and surprise baptizing Esqueleto by dunking his head quickly into a bowl of water. Now, why do I bring up this movie?
It’s silly, right? Again, I wanted to do so in honor of my son CJ because I’m super proud of him and I love him. Uh, and we, CJ and I, frequently quote lines from the movie around the house. Also, I think anytime you can work in a reference to a movie like Nacho Libre into a sermon, I think you gotta do it. But more specifically, because of what Esqueleto says, why do you always have to be judging me?
That’s something each of us has thought and have asked. We’ve asked it of other people. We ask it when we feel like people are unfairly judging or criticizing us. We hate being judged. I hate it.
Just thinking about people forming an opinion of me or looking down on me just brings up bad memories and unpleasant experiences and emotions. But we especially ask this question, why do you always have to be judging me, to God. Or maybe we don’t ask God verbally or directly, but we might think it. God, why do you always have to be judging me? Why do you have to be a judge at all?
Why do you have to judge others? Why can’t you just be a God of love? You’re good at that. So just stick to that. We ask the question, why do you always have to be judging me?
Because many of us see and feel, I think, a tension in Scripture as modern readers. We wonder how it’s possible that the Bible can portray such a lovely and caring God at one time, but then in the same breath also present us this picture of an angry, vindictive God who seems impossible to please. And this tension bothers us. I mean, a lot. Not just in terms of God holding us accountable, but doing so in such a terrifying manner.
And we’re like, would a good loving God really do that and really be like that? In his classic book Knowing God, J.I. Packer talks about this subject and asks the question. He says, do you believe in a God who acts as our judge? Many, he says, it seems, do not.
You speak to them as God as a Father or as a friend, a helper, and their faces light up. But you speak to them of God as a judge and they frown and they shake their heads. Their minds recoil from such an idea. They find it repellent and unworthy, unquote. Maybe you can relate today.
Well, we’ve been doing a sermon series the past few weeks from the book of Isaiah, and we’re not going verse by verse or covering the entire book or anything, but we are focusing on key themes from Isaiah. And today I want to address this topic of God as a judge. It’s found woven throughout the scripture there in Isaiah. And more specifically than God as judge, I want to try to answer the following questions in today’s message. One is really 2 questions.
When we’re talking about God’s judgment, what exactly is God doing and why is he doing it? What is he doing And, and why? The second question is, how is he doing it? How does he judge? And then the third question is, why do we want it?
Why do we want God to be a judge? Before we go any further though, I did feel compelled to just say this. I know that addressing a challenging topic like God’s judgment often brings up even more questions in our minds, and I just felt compelled to say here up front And I want you to hear it from your pastors that your questions are always welcome here. I mean that, always. You’ve got questions and we have questions, and I just hope that we will always remember and appreciate how wonderful and gracious God is, that he wants you and me to actually know him and to trust him and to know that he’s actually okay with our questions.
He’s okay with us wanting to move beyond simple pat answers to difficult questions. And I trust that God’s Word will point us to His truth today. And my hope is that that would create a hunger and a desire to know God and to know His heart and love more fully than we did coming into today’s message. So, that’s what I’m praying for. So, let’s get into it.
The first question, again, in judgment, what exactly is God doing and why is He doing it? To me, these 2 questions seem to go together, and so that’s why I combine them. I think answering one helps answer the other. Even though we’ve been in Isaiah for a few weeks now, and even though we’ve already covered a couple of verses from chapter 1 in previous weeks from Isaiah, chapter 1 of Isaiah is actually a great place to keep coming back to. The entire book of Isaiah is basically a working out of what we read in chapter 1, and if you can lock into what is happening in chapter 1, I think you’ll have a better chance of understanding the rest of the book.
The first part of the book of Isaiah really plays out a bit like a courtroom scene, but we’re not talking about Judge Judy or People’s Court, which I learned this past week is somehow still on the air. People’s Court, who knew? But in Isaiah 1, God is the one who calls the court to order. God is the one who states the charges. God is the one who presents his case against his own people.
And he eventually pronounces his judgment, and it’s not a pretty scene. So what are the charges that God is bringing? Chapter 1 tells us. Look at verse 2. Hear me, you heavens, listen, earth, for the Lord has spoken.
I reared children, God is saying, and I brought them up, but they have rebelled against me. Okay, here’s a reasonable question. How did they rebel against God? Look at the second half of verse 4. They have forsaken the Lord.
They have spurned the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on him. You know, God’s purposes have always been to work out his plan in the world through his covenant people. The problem, as Isaiah 1 is already showing us in just the first couple of verses, is that we as covenant people, from the moment we enter into relationship with God, become unfaithful. We don’t want to be married to him anymore, so to speak, or at least we want to be able to pursue other loves and other lovers. Okay, so specifically, how are we unfaithful?
And how were the people of God in Isaiah 1 unfaithful? Let’s continue the court scene. You may remember that Pastor Dave Gudgel came and spoke to us a couple of weeks ago and shared that one of the ways that we are unfaithful to God is by mindlessly going through the motions of religious activity. That’s verses 11 through 15 here. In chapter 1.
And to that religious activity and that mindless going through the motions, God says to that, I’m not impressed by it. I’m not impressed, people, by your meaningless offerings, so stop bringing them. Stop your worthless assemblies. Stop your singing. Stop your hypocrisy.
Stop paying me lip service, God is saying, when I know that your heart is actually far from me. So they, the people of God, and we, are guilty of that. On top of this though, we see that the people are also guilty of corruption and unjust treatment of others. Look at verse 21 again in chapter 1. See how the faithful city Jerusalem has now become a prostitute.
She once was full of justice. Righteousness used to dwell in her, but now murderers. And then look at verse 23. Your rulers are rebels. Partners with thieves.
They all love bribes and they chase after gifts. They do not defend the cause of the fatherless. The widow’s case does not come before them. So what is God saying? He’s saying that his people have not been taking care of those who far too often fall through the cracks of society— the widow and the orphan and the poor, the oppressed and the defenseless.
But again, sadly, that’s not all. Look at verse 29. He says, you will be ashamed because of the sacred oaks in which you have delighted. You will be disgraced because of the gardens that you have chosen. Well, what’s that talking about?
Well, the 2 primary pagan gods at that time and place were Baal and Asherah. Baal was the god of rain, and Asherah was the goddess of fertility, and they were seen as working together to provide a harvest for those who offered up sacrifices to them. And Asherah was represented by a tree, so many worshiped trees as a symbol of Asherah. So that phrase sacred oaks is probably just a reference to any form of idolatry. There is what is being said, to worshiping any god other than the true God.
So what is God’s judgment? What is he— what is he doing in judgment? Verse 24 tells us. Look at chapter 1, verse 24, and the first part of verse 25. The Lord, the Lord Almighty, the Mighty One of Israel declares, ah, which I’ll just quickly pause to point out is a Hebrew interjection, that word ah that frequently appears in the Old Testament.
In this particular instance is an expression of grief and pain, kind of like saying woe or alas. So the point here is that God is hurt and he’s angry. He says, ah, or woe or alas, depending upon your translations. I will vent my wrath on my foes and will avenge myself on my enemies. I will turn my hand against you.
So this is an explanation of judgment. In judgment, God is venting his wrath on his foes and avenging himself on his enemies. Okay, well, who are his enemies? Well, here in chapter 1, it’s none other than the people of God. The people of God might have thought of themselves or viewed themselves as the helpless defendants and the surrounding nations as the arrogant bullies who would at last meet their match and get the judgment from God that they so justly deserve.
But here, it’s saying that God is actually going to judge his own people. I mean, he actually compares them to Sodom and Gomorrah in verse 10, for goodness’ sake. And I want to pause just for a moment here to say, I think that this is a really, really important point. God is always entirely consistent. Consistent, and he does not play favorites in his judgments.
And it’s not like God’s pronouncement of judgment was catching the people here off guard. He had been warning the Israelites again and again and again that if they broke their covenant with him and adopted the cultural and religious practices of the nations around them, they would face the very same consequences as those nations. So I think it’s incorrect to say or to assert that God is always for Israel and it’s against all other nations. And in fact, if anything, in the Old Testament, I think it shows us that Israel’s status as God’s chosen people actually exposed them to God’s judgment more than any of the surrounding nations. See, God brings his judgment, his divine judgment, on human evil, period, regardless of the nation.
Now, when we talk about the judgment of God, I think it’s common for us to think about God having like an emotional outburst of some kind, like how you or I might get mad because somebody ticks us off, or how we get mad because we’re having a bad day or we’re not feeling well or something like that. But God doesn’t have bad days. He doesn’t just blow up. And thankfully, he doesn’t ever arbitrarily or randomly just lose his temper or take out his frustration on people. I mean, when we talk about God’s judgment We’re not talking about outbursts of rage.
If God had outbursts of rage, we’d all be dead. No, His judgment is His natural and necessary anger in response to any human evil. Let me repeat that. God’s judgment is His natural and necessary anger in response to any human evil, just like you would get angry or I would get angry if you saw someone endangering, say, your child. Or your friend.
So God gets angry when humans oppress each other. He gets angry when we fail to have compassion or pity on the vulnerable. He gets angry when we go through the motions of religion. He gets angry when we are unfaithful to him. He gets angry when we have idols or whenever we try to make God into our own preferred image of him so that he can be more manageable and palatable and comfortable to suit our own personal tastes and needs.
And because, though, God is full of compassion and loyal love, and because He is not simply content to just let us continue in our own self-destruction and rebellion, He brings judgment. I mean, after all, would God really be good if He didn’t get angry and eventually do something about evil? Would He really be good if that were the case? Okay, so here’s the second question. How does God judge?
Just briefly talked about what God is doing in judgment and what judgment is and why, but how does he do it? What is the process? How does it work? In answering this question, I feel the need to say first that, as I mentioned a moment ago, God’s anger is not a temper tantrum. God’s anger is an expression of his justice and of his great love.
And God is, thankfully for you and for me, slow to anger, which means that He gives people lots and lots of time and opportunity to change. That said, there are also, we see many, many instances in Scripture where God’s anger and judgment is expressed as handing over an individual or a family or a community or a nation over to the consequences of their own choices The Apostle Paul talks about that very thing in Romans 1, in fact, where he says that God often just hands people over to their own destructive desires and decisions, including freedom from himself, even if that leads to their calamity or their— or to their ruin. Or like what we see here in Isaiah, where for hundreds of years prior, the Israelites turned away from the God who had rescued them out of slavery. And though he gives them many, many opportunities to turn around, they just kept giving their allegiance to the gods of other nations. And as a consequence, God gave the Israelites over into the hands of their enemies.
Since they were so intent on serving the gods of other nations, God, in his just anger, gave them exactly what they wanted and allowed them to be defeated and taken into exile. And that’s what God’s judgment looks like for those who reject God. He gives them what they want. He removes his hand of protection and restraint, which is a scary thought, and he allows them to reap the natural consequences of their choices. Before it gets to that point, however, God often brings judgment in a different way.
Go back to the second half of Isaiah chapter 1, verse 25. In response to our unfaithfulness, God says this: I— again, this is God speaking, I will thoroughly purge away your dross and remove all of your impurities. You know, every once in a while I happen to stumble across a show on the History Channel called Forged in Fire. Maybe you’ve seen Forged in Fire. Each show is a 3-round elimination competition between bladesmiths who are given the task of forging in fire really challenging bladed weapons.
Now I know and I understand virtually nothing about what is actually happening anytime I happen to watch the show, but like Nacho Libre, I just know I like it and it’s fantastic and it’s mesmerizing to watch, and I know that you need to see it. Anyway, that idea of being forged in fire, or that show, came to my mind as I thought about what God is saying here in verse 25, what he’s doing. He’s bringing up a common image that shows up a lot in Scripture. It’s the idea of a metallurgist taking a mineral from the earth that is extracted in a crude ore state that is not very attractive and that really can’t be used for very much because it, it has significant imperfections and impurities in it. So the metallurgist takes that ore and adds a catalytic agent and white-hot heat, and in essence boils the imperfections or the dross out of the ore so that it can reach its highest state of beauty and strength.
And in the Bible, God is the master metallurgist, and we come to him with major imperfections, imperfections which keep us from being conformed into God’s likeness and looking like God wants us to look and from fulfilling the purposes for which he’s made us. So God, in love, allows the heat to be turned up in our lives, so to speak, usually through some type of trial or suffering or pain. Now, I want to be sure to clarify here and say that I don’t mean to imply that each and every ache, pain, or struggle that you experience is connected to a specific sin in your life. I’ll quickly share that I participated in the LACS golf tournament this past Saturday, and on the tee box of the 4th hole, I was setting up and about to swing, and all of a sudden I just experienced a really sharp pain in my lower back, and it went down my leg, and I could no longer bend over or stand or even sit in the golf cart without significant pain. And some of you more seasoned folks are probably thinking, hey Steve, get used to it, you’re getting older, it only gets worse from here.
But anyway, I decided to try to walk around and to stretch and to take the next couple of holes off, and eventually I felt a little bit better. But I will say that one of my playing partners at the moment commented to me somewhat jokingly, I think, hey, I wonder if your back hurts because God is judging you for something that you did. Now, it didn’t help that the person who told me that was actually my son Tate. So thanks for that, son. But anyway, the point is that while in one sense all misery and all devastation can be seen as evidence of God’s judgment in maybe some way, I think we need to be cautious.
I think we need to be cautious about not interpreting all suffering, or even most suffering, as a specific punishment for a specific sin. Otherwise, I think you start getting into the prosperity gospel, or maybe becoming like one of Job’s friends who watched Job suffer and were like, hey, Job, what did you do? You must have done something, that’s why you’re suffering. However, I do believe, and I think the book of 1 Peter really talks a lot about this. I do believe that God frequently does use trial and challenging circumstances to put us through the furnace, so to speak, in order to strip us of our pride and our self-reliance, and in order to refine us and to purify us and to remove the dross within us that contaminates our hearts and our lives.
See, God wants to discipline and train us as his children to hate our sin just as much as he does, and he wants to cause us to put our hope and trust in him alone. So here’s a question: is that good news or is that bad news? What do you think? Is that good news or bad news that we go through this process? Actually, it’s a little bit of both.
This text is saying that there’s going to be resolution and there’s going to be cleansing, but the process of being refined is going to hurt a bit. I know that during moments of refinement, we’re often tempted to think, if God really loved me He wouldn’t allow me to go through this. And while I don’t wanna minimize that concern, I actually can relate to it. The reason that God doesn’t just wipe us out is because while He despises and He judges sin, He intensely loves people. He does so much.
And so God’s aim in refinement is to destroy sin without destroying the sinner. Anyone who has ever had cancer or have a loved one who has had cancer like I have, understands this. You want to aggressively kill the cancer, but you also want the patient to be able to walk away. And in the same way, God’s judgment is aimed at our sin, not the sinner, because God loves the sinner. The problem is, is that God can’t simply overlook the sinner in judging the sin because the sinner is the one doing it.
But here’s what God has reminded me afresh of as I was thinking about this message and of how God brings judgment. Because God is slow to anger, and to me, it’s just, it’s remarkable that we can have complete confidence that when God does get angry, it is always measured anger. It’s always strategic. It’s always purposeful. It’s never arbitrary or careless.
And what that means for us is that because God is such a good Father, and because he provides such nurturing discipline and care as we go through the fires of refinement, He knows exactly what you need. And to use the words of Tim Keller here, God is able to bring the external brokenness of this world into a relationship with the internal brokenness of your life and soul in just the right way, and in just such a way, and in just the right proportions that rather than it destroying you, it actually teaches you. It wakes you up, it strengthens you, and it heals you. Okay, so we’ve addressed what God is doing in judgment, and why and how, but why do we want it? Why do we want judgment?
And maybe you’re like, Steve, actually, I don’t want it, thank you very much. But the Bible makes the case that you really, really do want it. Psalm 96:11-13 says this: Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad, let the sea resound and all that is in it. Let the fields be jubilant and everything in them. Let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.
Let all creation Rejoice before the Lord. And we’re like, okay, why are they rejoicing? For he comes, it says, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in faithfulness. And then in Psalm 98:4-9, it says, shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth!
Burst into jubilant song with music! Make music to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing, with trumpets and the blast of the ram’s horn! Shout for joy before the Lord, the King. This sounds like some celebration here. Let the sea resound and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.
Let the rivers clap their hands. Let the mountains sing together for joy. Let them sing before the Lord. Again, we wonder, why are they singing for such joy? It says, for he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples with equity. I don’t know about you, but we hear this and it makes us wonder, Um, why are people celebrating? Why are they rejoicing about God judging and judging the earth? Judgment’s a bad thing. It’s a painful thing, right?
So why are they acting as if God’s judgments are actually beneficial or desirable in some way? Hey, that’s a great question. I mean, are, are they rejoicing because God is coming as a judge to smash the world to smithereens because it’s been misbehaving itself? That wouldn’t make much sense. So there has to be something else going on, and there is.
The real answer why they’re rejoicing is because in his judging of the earth, God is coming to make things right. He’s coming to make things right. N.T. Wright talks about how in ancient Israel there would be these circuit judges who would go around the various towns and villages, and there would be bad things happening. So these communities would look to forward to the judge coming because things would get sorted out and put right again.
And that’s really the essential biblical idea of God’s judgment. He is making things right. Now, I’m not implying that everyone will ultimately be saved or rescued from God’s divine wrath, and I’m not implying that there isn’t accountability for our choices. What I’m suggesting is that divine judgment is actually beneficial for God’s people. It’s actually good news according to Scripture.
It’s why the psalmists often cried out, O Lord, how long, O Lord? They were saying, when that day of judgment comes, people are going to cry out, finally, finally there’s going to be justice. Finally, systematic injustice and bullying and violence and arrogance and oppression are going to be dealt with. Finally, the wicked will be firmly put in their place. Finally, the poor and the weak will be given their due.
Finally, all things are going to be set right. That’s why they’re celebrating and rejoicing. Psalm chapter 7, verse 11 says, God is a righteous judge and a God who feels indignation every day. I’d mentioned earlier that there are many in our culture who say that they really don’t want an angry God of judgment, that this age really can’t abide any more teaching on a God of wrath who feels indignation every day. But I don’t entirely buy that, and neither should you.
Not when we think about the injustice and the atrocities and the manifestations of evil and the suffering we see all around us and have possibly even experienced ourselves. I think deep down that we actually all know that we need a God who feels indignation every day. We need it. It would be awful to have a God who is an unrighteous judge who never actually condemns and never actually punishes and never actually deals with the wrongs of this world, which is really no judge at all. Well, without a God of judgment, we’d be in despair because it would mean that everything is relative and that we can define right and wrong for ourselves without any fear of consequences.
It sounds like that’d be fun. It sounds like that would be liberating, but it’s really not. It would mean that life is meaningless and that nothing you do makes any difference in the end. No, we, we need a God who names and judges sin and who holds people accountable. So with that in our minds, look at Isaiah 1 one more time here, verses 26 through 28.
I— again, God speaking— I will restore your leaders as in days of old, your rulers as at the beginning. Afterward, you will be called the City of Righteousness, the Faithful City. Zion will be delivered with justice, her penitent ones with righteousness. But rebels and sinners will both be broken, and those who forsake the Lord will perish. So after judgment, it’s saying that there is going to be something better for God’s people.
God will restore those who remain faithful to him. Verse 23 told us that the leaders were corrupt and responsible for great injustice, but through judgment Leaders will be purified and restored. And it says that the people of God will once again be called the faithful city. And that’s good news because before judgment they were told in verse 21 that they were no longer faithful and that they were compared to a prostitute. But God is going to change that through his judgment.
So God’s people are going to be refined and they’re going to be purified and their sins wiped away. And notice that the ones who come out on the other side of these dark days are not just anyone. Verses 27 to 28 says, it will be those who are repentant, who tremble before God and are humble of heart. Those who remain unfaithful will be broken and will perish. One of the obvious major implications of recognizing that God is judge is that we are all, every one of us, everyone held accountable by God for every word, every thought, every action, every desire, and every choice that we make.
We will all be judged. We’re also accountable for our knowledge of the truth. Every time we hear knowledge from God’s Word or God’s truth, we’re accountable for the knowledge of that and our willingness or unwillingness to act on it. So on the one hand, it’s really not helpful to just try and throw out the idea of judgment and accountability altogether just because you don’t like it. On the other hand, it would also certainly not be helpful to think that we could someday stand before God with our head held high because of the amount of good deeds that we’ve done in this life.
That, that’s ludicrous. So you can’t get rid of God’s judgment, and you and I can’t stand up against it either on the basis of the good that we’ve done in this life. The only possible way that you’re going to be able to stand and handle God’s judgment is if you understand what God did when Jesus came to the earth to make things right, bringing judgment and making things right. The Bible tells us that the reason God’s judgment is good news is because the one through whom God’s justice will finally sweep the world isn’t a hard-hearted, arrogant, or vengeful tyrant. He’s the Man of Sorrows, as Isaiah 53 calls him.
He was acquainted with grief. The Jesus who came on a mission to rescue, who loved and died for his enemies and for rebels like you and me. The Messiah who in love took the world’s judgment upon himself on the cross. He experienced the full weight of what we deserve, the unfiltered wrath and judgment of God. I mean, God unleashed the full measure of his judgment, full strength, undiluted upon his Son.
So the reason why we ultimately need and want judgment is because in Jesus’s life, death and resurrection, we see God’s anger at evil and his love for people, and they’re working together to make things right and to provide forgiveness and life for a humanity that is lost and self-ruined. When God is angry and he brings judgment, it’s because he is good. And because he is good, compassionate and gracious and slow to anger and abounding in love, there is grace and mercy and hope to stand on the future and final Day of Judgment, Day of the Lord, for anyone who repents and receives Christ by faith. Let’s pray.
God, I want to thank you for your provision and all the ways that you come through for us. We thank you that you’re a good God. We thank you for your judgment, and we thank you for your refinement.
We know that that’s a painful process to be pruned and refined. But we pray that as we go through those processes, that you would help us to trust you and to know that it’s a sign of your love and of your involvement and great care for our lives. Thank you, God, that you’re slow to anger and that you give people time. You give people time to hear your truth and to respond to it favorably. And I pray that as you give time to folks to turn and to repent and to say yes to Jesus.
I pray that we would take advantage of that because there will come a day, we know, when there will be no more chances. I pray, God, that you would bring your people closer to you and refine us and be glorified in all that we say and do in our lives. May people see Jesus through us, and may we experience your love, whether it’s in judgment or in compassion, Lord, whatever the form it comes, and we thank you for it and for providing our Savior who received your judgment so that we who are not right with you could be made right with you. Thank you for that. And we pray all these things in Jesus’ name.
