“Imprecations, Genocide, & God’s Wrath” (Deuteronomy 28:15-63) | 3/15/20
Deuteronomy 28:15-63 | 3/15/20 | Will DuVal
Well, we’ve come to the end. Not of HUMANITY, hopefully, but of our sermon series - Tough Texts (too soon?). And I told you from the start, our texts would get PROGRESSIVELY tougher. Together, we have tackled:
-Seemingly IRRELEVANT passages: genealogies, censuses, and lists of measurements
-Allegedly CONTRADICTORY passages: are there 2 different Creation accounts in Genesis, 4 incompatible resurrection accounts of Jesus in the Gospels?
-Abortion
-Unanswered Prayer
-Justification by WORKS (James 2)
-Can We Lose our Salvation (Hebrews 6)
-The VERY tough OT Law
-Tough JESUS (“Hate your father and mother…”)
-Jephthah’s Vow and Sacrifice of his own daughter (Judges 11), and…
-Head Coverings and Gender Roles (1 Corinthians 11)
And NEXT Sunday, God in his GOODNESS ordained that Polly and I would be in Utah, hopefully adopting a baby just in time for Pastor THAD to get stuck with the toughest text of ALL: Romans ch.9 and double predestination: “Why would God create some people… MOST people, and choose NOT to elect them for salvation, only to send them to an eternity in Hell?” Come back next week to hear Pastor Thad explain THAT one (if corona hasn’t taken us all to our predetermined eternal destinations before then!).
But this morning I get to unpack with you the SECOND toughest text of all, and we’re actually gonna BUILD UP to it by examining four separate but related categories of texts, once again, listed in order of increasing difficulty. All with a unifying theme: God KILLS people. If Thad is tackling God’s role in our SPIRITUAL death next week, allowing or even SENDING people to Hell; this week I’ve got it much easier, cuz I’ve just gotta explain why God allows or causes physical, temporal death.
These topics are so TOUGH for us because we’re no longer simply dealing with questions of RELEVANCY (“why would God spend valuable pages of Scripture on this topic?”), it’s no longer about CONSISTENCY (“does this passage line up with what we know from history, science, and elsewhere in Scripture?”), and we’ve gone FAR beyond our own PERSONAL hang-ups about a passage (“I don’t like the way this text challenges me to think or act or LIVE differently”). No, now we’re dealing squarely in the realm of THEOLOGICAL problems - “How can we possibly call the God of THESE portions of the Bible a “good God”; how is a God like THIS worth worshipping?”
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Specifically, we’re gonna read a LOT of passages, where God kills a LOT of people, for a LOT of stuff, that on the surface, might seem to US, rather… unimportant? Absurd? Even Unfair? These texts have left many unbelievers with the impression that the God of the Bible is CRUEL, harsh, excessive, vindictive… a blood-thirsty, maniacal psychopath, as I heard God described in researching this week.
A.W. Pink points out: The Bible has more references to the wrath of God than to the love of God.
-Jesus talked about Hell more than he talked about Heaven. Why?
For one thing, I think it’s because MANY MORE people will end up there! It’s the Same reason there are 54 verses on curses, in Deuteronomy 28 that we’ll read in a minute, and only 14 verses on blessings! The curses are just far more RELEVANT, for most listeners.
-But I think it’s also because we tend to ignore unpleasant truths; we want to turn a blind eye to passages like the ones we’re gonna read this morning. So God goes out of his way to emphasize them all the more!
The first sub-category of problematic text we find, and by the way, I’m not sticking to your bulletin outlines; I will actually spend the BULK of the sermon considering the four categories you see just in the introduction there. And we’ll really only turn to consider the Bible’s answer to these problematic passages toward the end. But the first category is the IMPRECATIONS - an Imprecation is a curse that invokes misfortune on someone - the idea is that God CONCEIVING of killing, He INSPIRES this desire for vengeance in the heart of a human author. And such imprecations are found ALL OVER the Bible, but especially, in the Psalms. There are over a DOZEN imprecatory psalms. PRAYERS for the destruction of the psalmist’s enemies.
Now, I’m just going to READ you a few of the highlights, straight from the Bible, and I want YOU to consider why God not only ALLOWED these passages into His Bible, but actually INSPIRED them - remember, 2 Tim 3:16 “All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” - God, in what sense and to what END did you INSPIRE these verses? In what ways do you intend for them to TEACH and TRAIN us?? Listen:
Ps 10:15 “Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer”
Ps 5:10 “Make them bear their guilt, O God...
cast them out, for they have rebelled against you.”
Ps 17:13 ““Rise up, LORD, confront them, bring them down; Deliver my soul from the wicked by your sword”
Ps 58:6-10 “O God, break the teeth in their mouths…
Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime, like the stillborn child who never sees the sun. ...The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance; he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked.”
Ps 59:13 “ consume them in wrath;
consume them till they are no more”
Ps 69:24, 27 “Pour out your indignation upon them,
and let your burning anger overtake them…
Add to them punishment upon punishment;
may they have no acquittal from you.”
Ps 83:10, 15 “[may they] become dung for the ground...
may you pursue them with your tempest
and terrify them with your hurricane!”
Ps 109:9-12 “May his children be fatherless
and his wife a widow!
May his children wander about and beg…
May the creditor seize all that he has…
Let there be none to extend kindness to him,
nor any to pity his fatherless children!”
Ps 140:10 “Let burning coals fall upon them!
Let them be cast into fire,
into miry pits, no more to rise!”
And last but not least: Ps 137:9 “Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock!”
What do we DO with such passages? We can’t just chalk them up to human sinfulness, like God pushed pause on inspiring David for a minute, while David flew off into another vengeful tirade; no - Paul QUOTES the imprecatory psalms in his epistles, as inspired Scripture. Romans 11, vv9-10 is a direct quote of Psalm 69, vv22-23. Even JESUS, quotes them; in John 15:25 he quotes from Psalm 35 AND Psalm 69. So we can’t just write these imprecations off so easily.
But our problem gets even BIGGER. Because not only does God CONCEIVE OF killing in the Bible, He flat out COMMANDS it. We’ve already examined a few of those commands, in previous sermons in this series, but here’s a more comprehensive list of capital punishment-level offenders:
*Witches (Ex 22:17)
*Fortune-tellers (Lev 20:27)
*False Prophets (Zech 13.3; Dt 13.1-5; 18:20-22)
*Homosexual practitioners (Lev 20.13)
*Adulterers (Lev 20.10)
*Fornicators (Lev 21.9)
*Non-virgin brides (Deut 22.20-21)
*Disobedient children (Ex 21.15; Lev 20.19)
*Priest-rejectors (Dt 17:12)
*Sabbath-workers (Ex 31.12-15)
*Non-Levite tabernacle-approachers (Num 1.48-51)
*Polytheists (Dt 13.7-12; 17:2-5)
*Blasphemers (Lev 24.10-16)
*Non-believers (2 Chr 15.12-13; Deut 13:13-19)
But perhaps the most POPULAR allegation made against God by non-Christians is that He commissions GENOCIDE. Genocide is defined as “the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.” (dictionary.com) And while the excerpts I’m about to read you may SOUND genocidal, I will explain later why I don’t think they fit the definition. But here’s their evidence: (Num 21; Jer 50-51; Ex 23.23; Josh 8; Judg 18; 1 Kgs 18)
Deut 20:16-18 “in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded, that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God.”
And the Israelites answered God’s call: Deut 3:6 “We devoted them to destruction, as we did to Sihon the king of Heshbon, devoting to destruction every city, men, women, and children.”
In fact, when they FAILED to finish the job, they got in big trouble:
Num 31:1-3, 14-18 “The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Avenge the people of Israel on the Midianites”... So they warred against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and killed every male… But Moses was angry with the officers of the army… Moses said to them, “Have you let all the women live? Behold, these, on Balaam's advice, caused the people of Israel to act treacherously against the Lord… Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves.”
Similarly, King Saul’s mercy was the very REASON God rejected him as king over Israel; for FAILING to kill all the conquered Amalekites: 1 Sam 15:1-10 “Samuel said to Saul, “The Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore listen to the words of the Lord... ‘Go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’... But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep… and would not utterly destroy them…. So the word of the Lord came to Samuel: “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments.” ”
Even our favorite KIDS’ stories, the cute songs they’re singing back there right now, about Joshua fighting the Battle of Jericho, and the walls come a-tumbling down; any idea what happens in the very NEXT verse, AFTER the walls fall? “Then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword.” (Joshua 6:21)
And God didn’t just send his people to judge the pagan nations; he did the OPPOSITE as well! He sent the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Romans, to execute divine justice against Israel! DOZENS of passages to choose from, but for sake of time, I’ll just read you three:
Jer 15:3-4 ““I will send four kinds of destroyers against them,” says the LORD. “I will send the sword to kill, the dogs to drag away, the vultures to devour, and the wild animals to finish up what is left. Because of the wicked things Manasseh son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem, I will make my people an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.””
Ezekiel prophesies: “Then I heard the LORD say to the other men, “Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and little children. But do not touch anyone with the mark. Begin your task right here at the Temple.” So they began by killing the seventy leaders. “Defile the Temple!” the LORD commanded. “Fill its courtyards with the bodies of those you kill! Go!” So they went throughout the city and did as they were told.”” (9:5-7)
Isaiah 13:9-16 “Behold, the day of the Lord comes,
cruel, with wrath and fierce anger,
to make the land a desolation
and to destroy its sinners from it...
Whoever is found will be thrust through,
and whoever is caught will fall by the sword.
Their infants will be dashed in pieces
before their eyes;
their houses will be plundered
and their wives ravished.”
But believe it or not, friends, it gets even worse. Because not only does God CONCEIVE OF, and COMMAND killing, he actually CARRIES IT OUT HIMSELF! Directly. And OFTEN. We all know the stories of Noah’s flood in Genesis 6, the infamous plagues on Egypt (Ex 7-12)... One website I found claims that God’s official “kill count” in the Bible is 2,038,344 people. And we of course can’t consider all of them, so I’ve just pulled out the 3 toughest examples:
In Leviticus 10, Moses’ brother, Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, are incinerated, they’re burned alive - for offering the wrong kind of fire on the altar. Seem harsh?
In 2 Samuel 6, God strikes Uzzah down, for reaching out to stabilize the ark of the covenant when the oxen stumble while transporting it into Jerusalem. Seem unfair?
And MY personal favorite, no surprise, 2 Kings 2, when God sends two she-bears to maul 42 teenagers for mocking the prophet Elisha and calling him, “Baldie”! Let that be a lesson to ALL of you, in the youth group - BAD THINGS HAPPEN when you mock a man of God, for being follically challenged.
But NONE of those are the toughest text for this morning. Because not only does God conceive of killing, not only does He command it, He doesn’t just carry it out Himself, He actually CHOOSES it. He WILLS it. In some sense, God even DESIRES it.
You say, “Wait a minute, I thought Ezekiel 33:11 said “As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live””. Yes. True. And yet, Scripture is CLEAR that there is a very real sense in which God is actually PLEASED to execute His JUSTICE.
And in Deuteronomy ch.28, our TOUGHEST text for today, and arguably, in the entire Bible, we get a VIVID, GRUESOME picture of that. God not only foretelling His judgment against Israel’s sin in gory detail, but His actually taking DELIGHT in it. In the first 14 verses of the chapter, God has outlined the BLESSINGS he will pour out on Israel if they will obey Him and keep His commands, but then he turns SHARPLY in v15, and spend the next 54 verses - this is the longest literary unit in the entire book of Deuteronomy - 54 verses of CURSES that God will bring on them, if they DISOBEY the Law He has just finished delivering to them - Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; this is how the Torah, the OT Law, draws to a close.
Deuteronomy 28:15-63 (selected excerpts for time)
““But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you... The Lord will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in all that you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me… Your dead body shall be food for all birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away… You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall ravish her… You shall father sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours, for they shall go into captivity… You shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything. And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you. 49 The Lord will bring a nation against you… And they shall besiege you in all your towns throughout all your land… 53 And you shall eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies shall distress you. 54 The man who is the most tender and refined among you will begrudge food to his brother, to the wife he embraces, and to the last of the children whom he has left, 55 so that he will not give to any of them any of the flesh of his children whom he is eating, because he has nothing else left, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in all your towns. 56 The most tender and refined woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because she is so delicate and tender, will begrudge to the husband she embraces, to her son and to her daughter, 57 her afterbirth that comes out from between her feet and her children whom she bears, because lacking everything she will eat them secretly, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in your towns. 58 “If you are not careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, the Lord your God, 59 then the Lord will bring on you and your offspring extraordinary afflictions, afflictions severe and lasting, and sicknesses grievous and lasting… until you are destroyed. 62 Whereas you were as numerous as the stars of heaven, you shall be left few in number, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God. 63 And as the Lord took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so the Lord will take delight in bringing ruin upon you and destroying you.” This is the word of the Lord...
What do we do with a passage like THIS? “The Lord will take DELIGHT in bringing ruin upon you”... bringing THIS KIND of ruin upon you? Watching your wives be ravaged, watching you eat your own CHILDREN?!
Well, I see FOUR options:
#1- We might suggest “Well that was just the God of the OLD Testament - He was a God of WRATH; but thank God for JESUS, who reveals the God of LOVE to us.”
That’s how the 2nd c. heretic Marcion tried to resolve this theological tension. Just postulate two gods - a God of OT wrath VERSUS a god of NT love. 2 big problems with that, however:
First - Heb 13:8 says “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” And so is God the Father. Malachi 3:6 “For I the Lord do not change”
Second - There’s LOTS in the OT about God’s love and mercy -
-““The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Ex 34:6-7);
-“give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!” (Ps 118:1)
And there’s ALSO a lot in the NEW Testament, about God’s WRATH:
-He strikes Ananias and Sapphira dead in Acts 5 for lying
-Read the entire Book of Revelation!
-Rom 1:18 “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. ”
-Rom 3:5-6 “Is God unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? ...By no means!”
-Rom 12:19 “Never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” ”
-And of course Thad’s passage for next Sunday: Rom 9:22 “God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction”
So forget Marcionism!
#2 - the second option is the god of liberal process theology. A God who isn’t actually sovereign - He isn’t in CHARGE; we can get God off the hook for all these alleged biblical atrocities if we believe that the human authors THOUGHT God was commanding them to kill their Canaanite neighbors, they THOUGHT God’s judgment was the reason thousands of their own fellow Israelites got the plague and died, but come on; they were primitive people. We know better today. So we parse out good from evil, according to our OWN arbitrary, self-imposed standards of morality, what “feels right” to us, and we might give God credit for helping pull off some of the GOOD stuff - you find a $20 bill on the street, “Yay God”, but CORONAVIRUS - that somehow caught God by surprise. God can’t be sovereign over THAT! Over human DEATH. Over she-bears mauling disrespectful KIDS.
But God’s WORD tells us “Our God is in the heavens;
he does all that he pleases.” (Ps 115.3)
Eph 1:11 He “works all things according to the counsel of his will”
So we must rule out the god of process theology as well. God IS Sovereign. He IS in control. Over EVERYTHING, even the tough stuff:
Isa 45:6-7 “ I am the Lord, and there is no other.
I form light and create darkness;
I make well-being and create calamity;
I am the Lord, who does all these things.”
#3 - A third option for dealing with these tough texts, is to simply say, “That’s disgusting; a God who would delight in bringing destruction, in watching His own people reduced to cannibalism; I don’t want anything to DO with a God like that; I’m out!” And walk away from Him. And that’s what MANY have done. Some of your loved ones. I know we have folks in this room, [[streaming at home,]] whose siblings, your parents, your kids, your spouses, have walked away from the faith, over passages just like these. I did. Maybe that’s even you. And this morning you’re trying to cling to whatever shred of faith you’ve got left in the goodness of God, and frankly, this sermon, up to THIS point, isn’t doing a whole lot to help!
Friends, I want to show you another way. Another option, a fourth way of understanding these troubling texts. You know, I was racking my brain this week trying to figure out how I was going to tie the GOSPEL into a sermon like THIS. The gospel is the central message of the Bible, the good news of Christianity. And it is the power of salvation to all who believe, Romans 1:16, so you’ll hear the gospel in EVERY sermon at West Hills. Because it’s the most important news in the world; and in case this is your first Sunday here, or your LAST Sunday here, your ONLY Sunday here, you need to hear this great news. This news which you must believe in order to be saved. It’s TOO good NOT to share. But I was racking my brain - what kind of theological, exegetical gymnastics am I going to have to pull off to squeeze ANY good news out of a sermon like THIS, full of such HORRIFYING texts. When it dawned on me, God revealed to me: stop trying so hard; these passages point us to the beautiful truth of the gospel in a powerful way that few other texts in all of Scripture do.
Because the GOSPEL is 4 very simple, yet PROFOUND truths about who God is, who YOU are, what God has DONE for you, and what YOU must now do.
#1 - God is HOLY.
God’s holiness means he is “set apart in all His perfections”. Of ALL God’s attributes - His love, his mercy, his power - God’s HOLINESS is the most important for us to grasp, because it gives definition to all the others. God is PERFECT in His love, PERFECT in mercy, perfect in power. God’s holiness is emphasized more in Scripture than any other trait. It’s His only quality that is repeated 3x in immediate succession - He is “Holy, Holy, HOLY” - (Isa 6:3; Rev 4:8) for additional emphasis.
And what it ALL boils down to is that God is NOT like us. We don’t have the faintest GLIMPSE of just how perfect, how wonderful, how majestic, how AWE-some, how awe-inspiring God is, or we wouldn’t be able to think about anything else, all day long. That’s why the angels can SING “Holy, Holy, Holy” around His throne in Heaven, all day long, for the rest of eternity, and never get tired or bored, because He REALLY IS that Holy!!
And if you don’t understand God’s holiness, you won’t understand his justice. You won’t understand how He could wipe out an entire NATION for being utterly sinful, or kill a well-intentioned guy, who was just trying to help out, when the ark was falling. But he disobeyed the Lord’s direct command. And that’s the second truth of the gospel:
2) Man is SINFUL.
In the same way that we don’t have the slightest INKLING of just how sinful we are, or we’d ALL be curled up in the fetal position, waiting for God to SURELY incinerate US. Strike US dead. You’ll never appreciate these tough texts until you appreciate just how Holy God is, and just how sinful YOU are. When you do, you’re actually faced with a much DIFFERENT problem, the OPPOSITE question: “God, how could you, in all your PERFECTION, in your HOLINESS, possibly allow such wickedness to persist, for even a single DAY, in this world you created and love, in the hearts of PEOPLE you created and love? God why don’t you send a Giant Flood every DAY around here?!
See, we need to recognize that of ALL 2,038,000 deaths the Lord brings about in Scripture, NONE of them was arbitrary. Capricious. Unjustified. A Christian will NEVER ask the question, “How could God allow an innocent person to die?” Because the answer is: He DOESN’T! An “innocent person” is a contradiction of terms. Romans 3:23 - ALL have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God. And Romans 6:23 - the WAGES of our sin, what it rightfully EARNS us, EVERY ONE OF US, is DEATH. The Canaanites, Amorites, Jebusites… Uzzah, Nadab and Abihu, Ananias and Sapphira. And every loved one you have ever personally lost in this life: it might sound cruel to say they DESERVED to die, but that’s ONLY because we don’t have the faintest CLUE just how sinful they were, and just Holy God is.
The better question is: “Why did God make the Israelites endure hardship in EGYPT for 400 years, instead of leading them out to slaughter these godless, idolatrous, child-sacrificing heathen nations ever SOONER?” And God foretells, in Genesis 15:16, when He promises that land to Abram in the FIRST place: because “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete”. The Bible only gives us the Israelite perspective. But it’s clear that God was reaching out to these pagan peoples for FOUR CENTURIES, giving them every possible opportunity to repent, turn and follow Him, the true God. Why? Because He IS “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin”.
He TAKES no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
2 Peter 3:9 - God “is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. ”
But He’s ALSO a God “who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation” (Ex 34:6-7).
And so REALLY, the toughest question of ALL, is how can God be both those things? Be PERFECTLY loving and merciful toward us, while ALSO remaining PERFECTLY Holy and Just. And the answer, is our third gospel truth:
Because #3 - Jesus is SAVIOR. On the cross, Jesus Christ perfectly satisfied the righteous WRATH of God against sin, while perfectly DISPLAYING the undeserved LOVE of God for sinners like us. And the hardest truth to swallow is that God did not BEGRUDGINGLY send Him to the cross; in much the same that he “delighted” to bring destruction upon the sinful Israelites, we hear in Isaiah 53 that “Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God” (v4); not just by sinful man; this was the plan and will of GOD the FATHER!
And that’s even more clear in v10: “it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
he has put him to grief”. It’s the same Hebrew word as “delight”. God DELIGHTED to crush Jesus. For our sin. How?
John Piper calls it God’s “wide-angle vs. narrow lens” view of the world: “when God looks at a painful or wicked event through a narrow lens, he sees the tragedy of sin for what it is in itself, and he is angered or he is grieved at what he sees… But when he looks through his wide-angle lens, he sees the tragedy of sin in relation to everything leading up to it and everything flowing from it. He sees it in relation to all the connections and all the effects that form a pattern or a mosaic, stretching into eternity. And that mosaic and all of its parts, good and evil, bring him delight.” (John Piper, “Does God Delight in Destroying Sinners?”, APJ, Oct 23, 2015) Why? Because the mosaic, the overarching picture painted by all of human history, points to JESUS. His redemption for us, on that cross.
Friends, these are DIFFICULT truths to accept? Who can receive them? With man it is impossible, but with God, ALL things are possible. And NECESSARY. You MUST receive these truths, the gospel. Because #4 - Faith is REQUIRED.