The Wrath of God in Preaching – R C Sproul

The following video is from YouTube site, cfbchurch

Video-page link: https://www.youtube.com/@cfbchurch/videos

The site has only 46 videos, consisting mostly of Steven Lawson; with a few featuring R C Sproul; two featuring Albert Mohler; and one, J. Innabnit.

R C’s sermon was part of the 2010 Expositor’s Conference.

Sermon Text: Leviticus 10: The Death of Nadab and Abihu:

Leviticus 10:1  Then Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans and put fire in them. Then they placed incense on it and offered strange fire before Yahweh, which He had not commanded them.

There are some Highlight points following the video, but those points can in no way come near to hearing R C’s sermon. His exposition is the best and most complete I have heard on God’s wrath in the context of the entirety of both the Old and New Testaments; and in general, on the wrath of God.

 

 

HIGHLIGHT points [any bracketed statement; all emboldening and underscoring are mine]:

• The initial 3 minutes were used in waking up the audience of pastors, R C was the first speaker after lunch [I was actually a bit put off by his attempts at humor, especially since the topic is so solemn]
• Minute marker 3-6 were spent in telling a story about the first church wherein he worked and a curriculum change that came down from the United Presbyterian presbytery:
• The scripture text of this sermon is Leviticus 10:1ff; the above story gave a new interpretation of our sermon text for this new scientific age; Sproul later left that presbytery
• Their interpretation was basically theological liberalism, he explains it in detail; suffice to say they called the biblical interpretation of the days of Leviticus primitive and their interpretation, post Calvary, enlightened
• They no longer believed that God was wrathful, but merciful
• It is a common misconception that “the God of the Old Testament is wrathful; the God of the New Testament is merciful”
• R C stated called that mistake a false dilemma, because both testaments are equally revelatory and both are the inspired witness of God Himself
• Furthermore, there is no place in the Bible where we see a more fierce example of the wrath of God than at the Cross
• RC began to explain scripture text:
• Leviticus 10:1 Then Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans and put fire in them. Then they placed incense on it and offered strange fire before Yahweh, which He had not commanded them (LSB)
• [By the way, John MacArthur wrote a book titled, Strange Fire, wherein he addressed the worship of the Charismatic church. Two posts related to that book are linked below]
• God struck down Aaron’s two sons for their experimental worship; without warning; suddenly
• Aaron was filled with consternation – RC speculated that Aaron could have been thinking that he had given his life to serving God, trained his sons to worship, shaping them to do so; they’re young and could be expected to err or diverge from God’s prescriptions for worship…
• Aaron went to Moses to complain, likely hoping to be supported
• Moses replied:
• Lev 10:3 Then Moses said to Aaron, “It is what Yahweh spoke, saying, ‘By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, And before all the people I will be glorified.’” So Aaron kept silent. 4  Then Moses called to Mishael and Elzaphan, the sons of Aaron’s uncle Uzziel, and said to them, “Come near, carry your relatives away from the front of the sanctuary to the outside of the camp.” 

• RC explained Aaron’s silence: Romans 3:19 Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are in the Law, so that every mouth may be shut and all the world may become accountable to God;
• All mouths will be shut at the Day of Judgment because they will be in front of a Sovereign, omniscient, omnipotent God who knows their thoughts and motives, no excuse will be accepted
• Lev 10:5 So they came near and carried them still in their tunics to the outside of the camp, as Moses had said
• RC explained that in the wilderness wandering of Numbers, the tents of all the tribes surrounded the Ark of the Covenant when they were not traveling. Each tribe was an equal distance from the Ark and would therefore be blessed in an equal manner
• Being far from God causes one’s blessedness to diminish
• Being outside the camp is equivalent to being without blessing, as in the following scripture:
• Mat 22:13 “Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’
• The place of outer darkness is ‘outside the camp’
• RC noted that their bodies were put in the place wherein the stranger and foreigner to the COVENANT of God would dwell, the outer darkness
• To that place wherein Jesus said there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth
• [for more on this concept of outer darkness; weeping and gnashing of teeth, see one commentary entry at the end of these highlight points]
• God wanted the corpses removed as far as they could be away from Himself, as He is holy and would not be profaned by them even in their deaths
• The following verses are the words of Moses forbidding Aaron and his other sons from grieving for the two slain sons:
• Lev 10:6 Then Moses said to Aaron and to his sons Eleazar and Ithamar, “Do not uncover your heads nor tear your clothes, so that you will not die and that He will not become wrathful against all the congregation. But your relatives, the whole house of Israel, shall weep over the burning which Yahweh has brought about. 7  “You shall not even go out from the doorway of the tent of meeting, lest you die; for the anointing oil of Yahweh is upon you.” So they did according to the word of Moses
• They needed to learn the difference between the common and the holy; between the profane and the sacred
• The church today mostly, does not acknowledge this difference. To most, the church is as common / profane as the world; when they enter into it, there is no sense of difference
• RC speculated that the chief reason for this loss of the sacred is that many think they have to become like the world so the worldling might come in to the church and find it acceptable
• RC began to discuss other events in scripture wherein God immediately killed someone for violating His holiness: Uzzah and the Ark of the Covenant was the first event he discussed:
• 2 Samuel 6:5 Now David and all the house of Israel were celebrating before Yahweh with all kinds of instruments made of fir wood, and with lyres, harps, tambourines, castanets, and cymbals. 6  Then they came to the threshing floor of Nacon. And Uzzah reached out toward the ark of God and took hold of it, because the oxen nearly upset it. 7  And the anger of Yahweh burned against Uzzah, and God struck him down there for his irreverence; and he died there by the ark of God.
• King David erred in that he did not have the Levite clan of the Kohathites carrying the Ark with the poles; but he was carrying it on an ox cart
• Uzzah made a fatal error by touching the Ark to steady it as it was about to fall; Jonathan Edwards preached on this and noted that Uzzah presumed that his hands were cleaner than the mud which the Ark would have landed in, not so; human depravity is worse
• RC began to discuss a mid-20^th century Roman Catholic theologian who wrote on the events in scripture wherein God immediately slew an Israelite: the two above, in addition to Korah’s rebellion of Numbers 16; and Ananias and Sapphira of Acts 5
• A couple of points RC made were: that the theologian, and others, concluded that God’s actions in these instances revealed a dark aspect of His deity; and RC briefly spoke about capital punishment, noting that treason is a crime that receives capital punishment in the USA
• Regarding treason, in Israel, all sin was seen as treason against a sovereign God, who had the right to rule over every Israelite; as He has the right to rule over every human to date
• Choosing to sin, even a little sin, is choosing to assert your will over His: treason
• As RC continued to discuss the ideas of the Catholic theologian, he noted that this man spoke of the history of redemption, God’s patience, forbearance, mercy…, giving us time to repent and experience the grace of redemption
• But that the more merciful God is about our sin, the more hardened we become
• Millions of people in the world don’t give a single thought to the fact that when they die, they will be held accountable for every act they did while on earth
• Jesus commonly taught that all will come before the judgment seat of God
• Yet there is no fear of God among us
• The Catholic theologian speculated that the 4 stories above are meant to remind us that God does not play games regarding sin; that His wrath is real and dreadful
• RC mentioned a speaking engagement wherein his chosen topic was “Saved from What?”
• He therein made the point, to the amazement of many, that God saves from God’s wrath against sin
• Then he told a story about when he taught a class of 250 at Bible college and that they were assigned 3 short essays for their total grade. He told them when making the assignment that they would fail if they did not turn in the paper when it was due
• On the day the first paper was due, 25 failed to bring their work. He gave a 2 day extension; when their second paper was due, 50 were not prepared and needed a 2 day extension; when the third paper was due, he gave no extension to the 100 students who came with no paper
• They challenged him and called it unfair, wanting justice. He confronted a student who had been given an extension at the time of his second paper, who had no paper that day and said, he would give him justice and failed him on his second paper also
• They stopped calling for justice then
• RC noted that we are like that: we initially appreciate grace; then we expect grace; then we demand grace
• In the following verses, Paul sets forth the glory of God’s gospel, but notice how he follows up those two verses:
• Rom 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17  For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “BUT THE RIGHTEOUS WILL LIVE BY FAITH.”
• Paul does not follow those two verses with an explanation of justification by faith alone, he speaks about the wrath of God
• Rom 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19  because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.
• In verse 18 above, the Greek word that it translated into the English word ‘wrath,’ is Or-gay
• What could be the link between the Greek word for wrath and the English word that indicates unbridled sexual licentiousness?
• It refers to unbridled, unmitigated passion: that is, the wrath of God revealed from heaven is not some mild displeasure of God, it is His divine fury, a kindling of anger beyond our imaginations
• That wrath is directed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men
• God’s wrath is not arbitrary, frivolous, capricious; it has a well-deserved target: unrighteousness and ungodliness
• In this text, His wrath is specifically aimed at those, whom He calls wicked, who take the truth that He has revealed so clearly of Himself in nature and suppress it, exchanging it for a lie and serving the creature… [see Romans 1:19-32]
• Later in Romans, Paul unfolds the truth of the gospel as he discusses substitutional atonement of Jesus
• Jesus experienced the unmitigated wrath of God; God did not pass over Him; but we think God is obligated to forgive us
• There is no place in the Bible wherein we see more clearly the reality of God’s wrath and the reality of His mercy than the cross
• Rom 3:26  for the demonstration of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus
• [The ‘just’ is a reference to God’s justice; ‘justifier’ is a reference to His mercy; He can be merciful because Christ paid for the sins of those who believe in Him]
• God could not be holy and wink at sin
• [There are pastors who teach that God winked at sin and chose to be merciful; not so; He punished the sins of believers by punishing Christ. Teachers like Brian McLaren accuse God the Father of cosmic child abuse because of the cross; if you follow such preachers who were clearly not called by God to preach His truth, then your soul will be ruined]
• 1000’s died on Roman crosses during the early New Testament times, only one of those experienced the fury of God, Jesus
• If not for Him, we’d be as vulnerable as Uzzah, Nadab, Korah…

The following is one commentary from Bible Hub on one of three texts wherein Jesus said those words; for more, click link to Bible Hub at the end of comments:

Benson Commentary

Mat 25:30  “And throw out the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

[What Jesus said about the man who received one talent and buried it instead of using it such that it would increase for the Master.]

Matthew 25:30. And cast ye the unprofitable servant — Who has so wickedly abused my goodness; into outer darkness — The darkness which is without the heavenly city, even the horrible darkness of hell.

There, instead of the light and joy possessed by those who are admitted to the marriage- supper of the Lamb, shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth — Through the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched. There shall be the weeping of the careless, thoughtless sinner, and the gnashing of teeth of the proud and stubborn.

See notes on Matthew 8:12; Matthew 13:42; Matthew 22:13.

But why does this servant meet with this punishment? What had he done?

It is true he had not done good. But neither is he charged with doing any harm.

Why, for this reason, for barely doing no harm, he is consigned to outer darkness.

He is pronounced a wicked, because he was a slothful, an unprofitable servant. So mere harmlessness, on which many build their hope of salvation, was the cause of his damnation!

Observe this well, reader; slothful servants, who do nothing with respect to the purpose of their being sent into the world, nothing to answer the end of their birth and baptism, who are no way serviceable to the glory of God, or the good of others, will be reckoned with as unprofitable servants.

A slothful servant is a withered member in the body, a barren tree in the vineyard, an idle drone in the hive, that is good for nothing.

In one sense, indeed, we are all unprofitable servants, Luke 17:10. We cannot profit God, Job 22:2; but to others, and to ourselves, it is required that we be profitable; and if we be not, Christ will not own us as his servants.

Link to Bible Hub:  https://biblehub.com/commentaries/matthew/25-30.htm

Links to posts in this blog to posts about MacArthur’s book Strange Fire; from the category of Prosperity Preachers:

Post:  SEED-FAITH PLAN OF THE PROSPERITY PREACHERS

https://sheeplywolves.com/seed-faith-plan-of-the-prosperity-preachers/

Post:  STRANGE FIRE CONFERENCE: THE UNBIBLICAL DOCTRINES AND CONDUCT OF MODERN PENTECOSTALISM.

https://sheeplywolves.com/strange-fire-conference-the-unbiblical-doctrines-and-conduct-of-modern-pentecostalism/

Narrative and links from the YouTube site: cfbchurch:   

Their statement about themselves:  We exist to glorify God by making disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ throughout the whole world through the proclamation of God’s Word, resulting in transcendent worship, kindred fellowship, strategic ministry, and biblical evangelism:  http://christfellowship.cc/

Featured Image:  SPROUL: Vida y pensamiento del gran teólogo y maestro biteproject.com