Post by Les Brewer on Mar 25, 2022 14:55:46 GMT
What’s Wrong with Everybody? - Ephesians 4:17-24
We live between God’s judgment and God’s salvation. We live between divine wrath and divine mercy. That’s what human history is. Human history is full of judgment. From the time of the Fall in the garden, judgment fell; death came. Human history is the chronicling of all the relentless judgment of God on the unrighteous and the ungodly.
But at the same time, history is the story of God redeeming His people. So we find ourselves, along with everybody else in human history, living between God’s judgment on the unrighteous and God’s mercy on the righteous. And God knows exactly what He is doing, and I will point that out to you in 2 Peter chapter 2, 2 Peter chapter 2. The text of this passage is focused on judgment, but I just draw your attention to verse 5, where it talks about God not sparing the ancient world, and it refers to the Flood that basically drowned the whole world except eight people: the family of Noah. When that judgment fell and God didn’t spare the ancient world, He preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly. And then in verse 6, when God “condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter,” He also, in verse 7, “rescued . . . Lot, [who was] oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men.”
God drowned the world and protected Noah and his family; God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and protected Lot. And that is because of verse 9, “The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment.” That’s the separation that essentially tells the story of human history—judgment on the ungodly, and rescue and salvation on those who are righteous.
To continue reading this in text format, please follow this next link or scroll down for the recorded message www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/49-21/whats-wrong-with-everybody
We live between God’s judgment and God’s salvation. We live between divine wrath and divine mercy. That’s what human history is. Human history is full of judgment. From the time of the Fall in the garden, judgment fell; death came. Human history is the chronicling of all the relentless judgment of God on the unrighteous and the ungodly.
But at the same time, history is the story of God redeeming His people. So we find ourselves, along with everybody else in human history, living between God’s judgment on the unrighteous and God’s mercy on the righteous. And God knows exactly what He is doing, and I will point that out to you in 2 Peter chapter 2, 2 Peter chapter 2. The text of this passage is focused on judgment, but I just draw your attention to verse 5, where it talks about God not sparing the ancient world, and it refers to the Flood that basically drowned the whole world except eight people: the family of Noah. When that judgment fell and God didn’t spare the ancient world, He preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly. And then in verse 6, when God “condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter,” He also, in verse 7, “rescued . . . Lot, [who was] oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men.”
God drowned the world and protected Noah and his family; God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and protected Lot. And that is because of verse 9, “The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment.” That’s the separation that essentially tells the story of human history—judgment on the ungodly, and rescue and salvation on those who are righteous.
To continue reading this in text format, please follow this next link or scroll down for the recorded message www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/49-21/whats-wrong-with-everybody
