As we enter our third week teaching on the Cross I have felt the weight of dealing with difficult concepts. It is hard to teach the whole council of God and not have to deal with hard stuff. The last two weeks the reality of our sin and God's wrath toward sin and sinners has been heavy in my mind and in my words. You simply cannot have the love of Christ in John without the Judgment of God from Ezekiel. It is the Justice and anger of God against sin that makes the beauty of Christ's suffering shine. Their is no forgiveness of sin without blood as Hebrews says. I know why so many people shy from the hard realities of the bible...they are hard and often hurt our hard hearts. You do not preach on sin, blood or wrath if you are trying too grow a church, but you must if you are trying to grow Christians. To avoid the depth of sin is to avoid the magnitude of grace. To settle for simply an indifferent "only loving" God without the penalty and anger of a just God dismisses the judgment he bore in himself to love us and misses the meaning of sacrificial efficacious love. We must see the harshness and horrors of our sin or settle for a "cheap grace".
I am to comforted to know others have struggled through teaching hard stuff. As George Whitefield the great English evangelist has said, "It is a poor sermon that gives no offense; that neither makes the hearer displeased with himself nor with the preacher."
I would rather have displeased people with the gospel, its foolishness and offense, than stand before God a coward.
