The Anger of God

If you have a Bible with you, which I hope you do, would you please turn to the book of Romans. And we're going to pick up the story in chapter 5. As Paul begins this wonderful debate on justification, he's getting towards the end and towards the climax of justification. And I'm going to be reading verses 1 to 12.

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance.

Perseverance, character, and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. You see, just at the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.

Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man, someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him? For, if when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life? Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. Now, I'd like you to have your Bible open at the passage that was read to us. And we'll be looking at one or two other verses of Scripture also.

It was Romans chapter 5 and verse 9. Romans 5 and verse 9. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him? And that rather ancient hymn that we were singing is the only one I could discover. I'm not saying that I've exhausted checking through the book, but I read through most of the hymns of faith last night. It's the only one that I discover that had anything to say about the wrath of God, the anger of God.

Verse 3, The ungodly filled with guilty fears, behold his wrath prevailing. For they shall rise and find their tears and sighs are unavailing. The day of grace is past and gone.

Trembling they stand before his throne, all unprepared to meet him. Do you know it says something about hymn books, and this one in particular, when you have to ransack them to find a comment about the wrath or the anger of God. Now, not only does this apply to hymns of faith, it applies to many of the songs of fellowship.

There was a German theologian by the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was martyred by the Nazis during the last world war. And Bonhoeffer, whose theology I wouldn't agree with all the way down the line, nonetheless compels me at times just to stop and think through some of the comments that he made. And one comment was this, and listen to it carefully and you'll understand what he means.

We rarely read the word of God against us. We rarely read the word of God against us. We tend always to read it for us.

Now what does he mean? Well, simply this, that there are verses of scripture which are rather marvelous that we take to our hearts and we apply to our own circumstances. You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed in you. And some of you, and I've made reference to this before, and I'm not deploring the habit at all, will recall the old-fashioned promise box, where you had a box about the size of a Cadbury's chocolates, all filled with minute little promises from scripture.

And the idea was that you picked one out each day and you took that promise as being yours. Now they were very selective in the way that they put those promises in the boxes. And never did you find the text being used, Our God is a consuming fire, or flee from the wrath to come.

And many another example that I could cite. Now, I use this just as an illustration to indicate what Bonhoeffer meant when he said that rarely do we read the word of God against us. We always read it for us.

And that's the reason why I feel compelled this morning, although earlier on not feeling so good today, I was wondering about just backing out of the subject completely, as it takes some concentration to bring it to your attention. Why I feel compelled to speak once again, as I have on the last two Sunday mornings when I've been ministering here, on a subject that brings a lot of people a great deal of difficulty. And I refer to the anger of God.

When did you last hear an address on the anger of God? Do you believe in the anger of God? You see, there are some people who feel that such a notion is so utterly unacceptable, it's really not Christian to think of anyone being angry, but more of that in a moment or two. I was thinking earlier today of that incident of Jonah. You remember how Jonah, at the end of the book that bears his name, is confronted by God, and Jonah is very annoyed because, well, he's been preaching about the judgment of the Lord falling on Nineveh, and nothing's happened because the people have responded to what the prophet evangelist has had to say.

And because the vengeance of God has not been shown towards the people in Nineveh, Jonah is very distressed and despondent. And the Lord says to him in the fourth verse of the fourth chapter, Have you any right to be angry? Have you any right, Jonah, to be angry? Now what I want to do is to take that verse and invert it, that question, and put it not to Jonah, but to God. Have you, O God, any right to be angry? There was another Old Testament prophet whose message was directed to the same people as Jonah's ministry.

I refer to the prophet Nahum. And he tells us in the opening verses of the prophecy that bears his name, The Lord is a jealous and avenging God. The Lord takes vengeance on his foes and maintains his wrath against his enemies.

The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, but he will not leave the guilty unpunished. So you see, just two examples. And I could have picked many, many other to have brought before you.

Two examples of the notion of the anger of God. But as I say, it's a most unfashionable doctrine to bring before a 20th century audience. And so what I want to do, and I choose my words somewhat carefully today, I want, first of all, to defend.

And I'm almost speaking like a fool in saying this. I want to defend the notion of the anger of God. And I do so for reasons I've just touched on a few moments ago.

For the majority of pulpits today, the idea of God being angry is utterly unacceptable. And if you say, well, how do you cope with the verses that this particular preacher has brought to bear from the Old Testament prophets and doubtless others that he could quote from the New Testament, well, they would say something like this. You know, the Bible follows intellectually what Darwin believed nature followed scientifically.

Now, what did Darwin do? Well, he propounded the theory of evolution, didn't he? He told us that from simple species you got more complex species evolving. And the whole of the natural phenomenon, the whole of nature is to be understood in terms of the weakest of the wall and ultimately the most complex and the most powerful, they sustain life. Evolution.

Well, not only do you get evolution, say, these people who study the Bible in terms of the natural law, but you also get evolution in religious thought. And, of course, people ages ago, they believed in a God of wrath. There was no other way that the primitive person could be compelled to be afraid of the wind that blew through the trees, of the waves that broke down on the seashore.

They thought of them in terms of God's power, and they were afraid. They were afraid of the gods. And this primitive idea of superstition of God, you see, it's written into the Old Testament.

And there are those who go so far as to say, of course, the God of the Old Testament is a completely different entity from the God of the New. The God of the Old, well, He's some malevolent, He's some evil force who desires the blood. Look at all those animal sacrifices.

He's a God of lust, and He's completely different from the God of the New Testament, who's best illustrated in the person of the Lord Jesus. So, you see, all these ideas, they're brought forward. And the notion is, the conclusion is that you just take the Word of God, you take the Bible, having put it through your own sieve, and you determine yourself what to accept and what to reject.

Well, as I say, that's an evolutionary approach, if you like, to Scripture. But, you know, it's an utter nonsense. It is an utter nonsense to suggest that the God of the New Testament is different from the God of the Old Testament.

It's an utter nonsense to do what I would suggest many people to do today in sentimentalizing the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, gentle Jesus, meek and mild, look upon a little child. That was the first prayer I ever learned at my mother's knee.

And it was a good prayer. But you can so overemphasize the gentleness and the meekness of the Lord Jesus Christ that you miss out on a great deal that He has to teach in terms of the anger of God. Because there were few people, indeed I would go so far as to say this, there is no one in the whole of Scripture who testifies to the wrath of God more than our Lord Jesus Christ does.

But more of that in a moment or two. Let me, in defending this notion of the wrath of God, of the anger of God, let me introduce you to what I've called the domino theory, the domino theology. Let's say that God is not a God of anger, shall we? Let's just say that for a moment.

There is no wrath, there is no vindictiveness, there is no vengeance in God whatsoever. Well, certain things will follow as a result of that. You remember when you played dominoes as a child, although it's an adult game as well, isn't it? You may have been playing it this last week.

Well, when I was a kid, we didn't play dominoes, we just stood the things up. You know how the Japanese have got the world record in knocking down as many dominoes as possible by locking down one and they all knock down? You know the idea, don't you? You've seen it sometimes on television and when it's in colour it really is quite dramatic. One domino knocks another domino down which knocks another domino down.

Now, let's think this one through. If you move away the idea that God is an angry God, what else do you knock down? Well, you knock down the reason for which Jesus died. You see, the ordinary view of why Jesus died is well summed up in that beautiful hymn, There is a green hill far away.

You remember one of the verses? He died that we might be forgiven. He died to make us good, that we might go at last to heaven saved by his precious blood. In other words, the blood of Jesus had something to do with making it possible for us to go to heaven, removal of our sins, paying the price for the things that we have done that are wrong.

Now, of course, if God is not angry at sin, then the death of Jesus can in no way pay for the sins that I've committed. Do you understand what I'm saying? And indeed, many people are teaching this today in the established church. For example, in the Methodist church to some degree.

What are they saying then? Well, when Jesus died, it wasn't in the sense of a payment for the sins of the world. They said that that is the theology of the butcher's shop. He died as an illustration of love at its greatest.

He died the death of the martyr, you see. This is love, the greatest love that ever any man can have. And I am stimulated to love my fellow man simply because of what Jesus has done.

Now, in one sense, there is a degree of truth in that, but it doesn't go far enough. There is no idea of the payment for sin. And in one sense, you could say that on that theory alone, that Jesus died to show us just how courageous we can be.

His death on the cross was not vital for salvation, alright? So, we've knocked that down on the domino theory. Now, let's move on a little further. What do you feel when you die? Well, a lot of people are afraid of death.

I've met very few people who are not. And the thing that concerns them is what is after death. Is there a heaven? Is there a hell? And it's the notion of hell, you see, which is utterly unacceptable in the modern time in which we find ourselves.

And so, we have what is known as the doctrine of universalism. When you die, well, Jesus will make it right for everybody, you know. God is the God of love, always lead to heaven.

I've heard that so many times, have you not? Now, if that is so, what's another consequence of all this? Well, why go into all the world and preach the gospel? Now, there was an article in the Times, a very well written article, last Saturday by David Alton, who I think is SDB, Member of Parliament for somewhere in the Liverpool area. And Alton was writing about Christianity in Nepal. And he was deploring the fact that Christians in Nepal often are subject to the most horrific persecution.

Of that, there can be no doubts, despite the denial by the Nepali ambassador in London. Now, some bright spark wrote a letter which was published yesterday in the Times arguing against David Alton and said, well, you see, the problem about the Christian treatment in Nepal is this. If you Christians would just go to Nepal to help them educationally, to help them as far as hospitals are concerned and agriculture is concerned and will say nothing about the gospel, then there'll be no problem for Christians in Nepal.

You see, the difficulty with Christians is wherever they go, evangelicals, they have this terrible habit of wanting to convert other people. That is really an appalling thing, isn't it? We want to convert. Why do we want to convert? Well, the apostle Paul says, knowing the terror of the Lord, that's 2 Corinthians 5, knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.

What does he mean by the terror of the Lord? Well, according to the New Testament, he means that God is a God who can be angry with sinners. And the only way for his anger to be overcome is somehow for the sin to be dealt with. Now, if Paul is right and if evangelical Christianity down the centuries is right, then it is necessary today in Nepal and wherever you go to preach the gospel.

The gospel of a God who is angry against sin. If you remove the anger of God, then I say you completely reinterpret the Christian faith. You don't have a Christian faith at all.

You may have some philosophy. You may have a good code of living. After all, the Lord Jesus was a very wonderful man and he set down great ethical teaching and so on and so forth.

You may benefit at this level. But you see, the thing that gives Christianity, I speak reverently, its clout is removed. So you see how absolutely necessary it is for us to believe in the anger of God.

Not just because I brought a logical argument to bear from two verses of Scripture, but literally I could have brought you dozens and dozens of references. That's my problem this morning. Which verse do I take you to? There are so many that vie with the other to have comment on to sustain what I'm trying to teach.

Now another problem that we have in dealing with the thought of the anger of God is that we sort of, we use what theologians call anthropomorphic terms to describe God. In other words, we see God as an inflated, larger, grander idea of ourselves. And we take the word anger as we use it and we insert the meaning and the use of anger to God on the same basis.

And that of course is completely wrong. In one sense it's understandable, but it's wrong. Now when you normally talk about being angry, you're thinking of a man who blows his top.

To use a colloquial expression, someone who loses his cool, right? You know, anger is something that is volatile. When it gets you, you can't control yourself. You're blown along, the wind of anger is blown into your personality and air along from your mouth and perhaps even physically with your actions.

You're doing things that in saner moments you wouldn't do. Now when God talks about his wrath, the one thing that you have to know by way of differentiation is that the anger of God is not similar to that. It is not what I have called a capricious anger.

The anger of God is a controlled anger, not a capricious one. Let's have a look, there are many verses that I could have brought to our attention. Let's look at Psalm 78 and verse 38, which is different from the one on my overhead, but nonetheless it's a very clear statement of this.

Psalm 78 and verse 38, speaking of the Lord. It's lovely to hear the rustle of those pages as you're looking up the verses, because as I say so often, what I have to share is not important. What is important is what the Bible is saying, because the God of the Bible speaks through his contemporary word.

Psalm 78, verse 38. Yet he, God, was merciful. He atoned for their iniquities and did not destroy them.

Speaking of the Israelites and days gone by, time after time, he restrained his anger and did not stir up his full wrath. Let me remind you again of Nahum and the first chapter and the third verse. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power.

You see, there's nothing capricious about God's anger. It's something that's completely under his control. It's an anger that sometimes is withheld, but it doesn't mean to say it's withdrawn.

Ecclesiastes talks in the eighth chapter, in the eleventh verse, talks about the sentence of God not being executed swiftly. Peter speaks about the day of the Lord being distant, not because God is reluctant to bring his promises, his prediction into reality, but he doesn't want the death of anyone. So often he will withstand his anger.

He will control the day of judgment and put it off on a basis of, well, allowing more opportunity for people to repent. Now then, that's what I mean when I say God's anger defended. Apart from what I'm arguing this morning, you could only say of Christianity, as a German theologian said, a God without wrath brought man without sin into a kingdom without judgment and to a Christ without a cross.

That's liberal Christianity. But you know that man is a sinner, that God is a righteous God and he will call you to account for the way that you've lived your life. And the death of Jesus was a horrific death on the cross.

And the reason for that death was so that you and I might have our sins forgiven. The anger of God is a very real thing. So, having defended God's anger, well, let me go on for a moment or two and ask the question and supply some of the answer.

Where is God's anger directed? Where is God's anger directed? Well, look at Romans in chapter 1 and the 18th verse. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness. Now, did you notice, and particularly you need to if you're using the authorized version, it's clearer a little, I think, in the NIV.

Did you notice the present tense there? The wrath of God is being directed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men. You see, in one sense it's true to say that the wrath of God, the anger of God is going to be made absolute on the day of judgment. Our Lord makes this very, very clear in many of the parables that he teaches.

But it is true to say that there is a very real fashion in which men and women today are suffering because of the wrath of God. How do you explain some of the things that are in vogue? I'm not now talking about the great problems of earthquake and famine. Let's talk about man's bestiality to man.

It's so easy here in Comfortable Worthing to feel that the whole world is civilized. Well, I'm not always too sure that behavior patterns in Worthing actually are deserving of the description civilized, but there are many places in the world where man is anything but civilized. There are many areas in the United Kingdom where people hesitate to walk on the streets at night.

I remember my mother phoning me up from the very area where I was born, where I grew up as a lad, and telling me now how the police have gone up and down those narrow, cobbled little roads, and warning especially older folks not to go out at night. Now, you never had that 30 years ago. Really, I'm not exaggerating.

How do you explain the amount of fear that there is? The cross absurdity of, to give you another example, of granaries in Europe being so full to capacity that we have these butter mountains, and these grain mountains, and these wine mountains, and so forth, and yet just a couple of thousand miles away you've got people who are in need. I heard an economist last week demonstrate the fact that most economists are deranged, justifying that it was impossible to move from point A to point B the food. When any child in an infant school in Worthing could tell you that if you've got a surplus in A and you've got a deficit in B, then get some transport and shift A to B, and work out your mathematical economic problems after you've dealt with the basic difficulties of ordinary folk in need.

Now, perhaps some will say I've grossly oversimplified the problem. I would say that I have illustrated something of the grossness, the grotesque way in which sin in this world is manifesting itself today. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven.

You see, in one sense God has stepped aside. I don't mean this directly. There are ways in which he works out his purposes today, but there is a sense in which God says, all right, you don't want me, you don't want these ten commandments, you don't want the New Testament gospels and epistles, well, get on with it.

Sort it out yourself. And that's precisely what we're trying to do. We spin ourselves further and further into an increasingly dizzy state.

And many of us are coming to a realization that unless there is some remarkable turnabout in the way that human behavior patterns continue today, then ultimately we're moving nearer and nearer to the abyss. God's anger is being directed towards the world in modern society. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness.

Now, this isn't new, this teaching of the Apostle Paul. You take John the Baptist. There he was preaching his heart out on the banks of the Jordan, and from all over the villages and the cities near up to Jerusalem they came to listen to the man.

And what did John preach? Flee from the wrath which is to come. The axe is about to be laid to the tree, says John. You vipers, he spoke to the Pharisees, the religious leaders, you who should know so much, you're just like vipers with venom in your tongue, and a double amount of God's judgment will fall upon you because of your blatant hypocrisy.

Now John was the cousin of our Lord, the blood cousin of our Lord. And when Jesus comes along, he attests the ministry of the Baptist. He doesn't deny it.

And Jesus sets up these parables in which he speaks about the kingdom of God about to come, and that ultimately those who are saved will enter into it, and those who are not saved, they'll be in a most uncomfortable position. It's our Lord who speaks of the weeping and the wailing and the gnashing of teeth. Oh yes, I know, his language is perhaps in some degree metaphorical, but when you've stripped of its metaphor, you've got an unbending principle that you and I, sooner or later, will be before the judgment seat of God.

That's what Jesus taught, this meek and gentle Jesus. He spoke about condemnation. He spoke about God's anger, the anger of God that's passed on all men, on all ungodliness.

He preaches it in face of the coming judgment. And when our Lord preaches about the wrath of God, he doesn't talk about God's wrath being conferred upon man as though it's God's choice so to do. He rather speaks in terms of God making final what man has already decided.

Now in case you didn't understand that, let me try and illustrate. Let's go back to Genesis 3. Here you've got Adam and Eve, and they're in the garden, this lovely paradise that God has created for them, really an environment that's tailor-made for them. And it was natural for them to have communion with God.

Well, they loved communion with God, didn't they? The Lord came down. You remember how it's put so lovely in Genesis 2? The Lord came down and he conversed with Adam in the cool of the day. This is what man was made for, a relationship with God.

But then Adam sinned. Eve sinned. Now what happens? Well, when they're expecting the next interview with the Lord to occur, they don't turn up.

They're hiding themselves. And the Lord comes into the garden and he says, Adam, where are you? Where are you? And ultimately Adam is pushed out of the garden. He lives east of Eden.

What does God do? He confirms the choice that Adam has already made. He confirms the choice that our first parents have already made. And this is how I see the wrath of God.

It's not that God decides he wants to pour out his wrath upon these people. It's rather that these people accept the wrath, the anger of God as opposed to his love and to his forgiveness. Now listen to John in the third chapter of the gospel that bears his name, repeating words which are probably from our Lord Jesus or the inspired comment of the evangelist.

The 18th verse. Whoever believes in Jesus is not condemned. But whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.

This is the verdict. Listen, here's the language of the judiciary. This is the verdict.

Light has come into the world, but men love darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. And then in the 36th verse of that third chapter of John's gospel.

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him. You see, God confirms you in the choice that is already made. So, we've seen two things.

God's anger defended. I've shown you that from Scripture you can hardly argue against the notion that God has an anger which he directs towards sin. And God's anger directed, well, the specific situation is the sinfulness of orderly men and women.

Now let's finally and briefly conclude. God's anger deflected. How does God deflect his anger? Well, let's look at Romans chapter 5 again, that important verse that we've already heard twice from this pulpit.

The 9th verse. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him? Now what is Paul referring to? Well, he's referring to our Lord Jesus. Look at the 6th verse.

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. So, the aversion of God's wrath is very much linked up, argues the illustrious apostle, by the coming of the Lord Jesus. Well, what does Jesus do? Well, he demonstrates what a good man, the most wonderful man, can do.

He demonstrates God's love for us by dying on the cross. Verse 8. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Now then, have you ever seen a lightning conductor? Well, of course you have.

The lightning conductor, when it's on a farmhouse, shall we say in Cornwall, where they sometimes have some very violent electric storms, it's vital for the preservation of the farmhouse. And sometimes the velocity, the intensity of the electric charge that's directed against the farmhouse, it's so great, that as the lightning conductor deflects it, it melts. But nonetheless, the current is taken down into Mother Earth, where it's dissipated, and as a result, the farmhouse remains intact.

The lightning conductor gives itself to preserve the farmhouse. Now, in that sense, and every illustration has some fault in it, but in that sense, we see what the Lord Jesus has done. He hung on the cross of Calvary.

Why did he hang there? Was it for crimes that he had done? When he hung upon the tree, nate was his own undying love, and grace beyond degree. It wasn't for anything that he had done, Pilate found him faultless. The Jews could only bring trumped-up charges, and they were proven to be absurd.

Which one accuses me of sin, says Jesus to his antagonists. And those who were nearest and dearest to him, later on when they were writing their letters, they said of this man, well, he didn't do anything wrong. Then why did he die, tell me that? Well, I'm back to the green hill far away.

There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin. He only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in. That's where the wrath of God meets earth.

It's directed towards humanity. But the Lord Jesus is the son of man, the representative man. That means he stands in your place, in my place.

Not in a comprehensive sense, not the total humanity, willy-nilly, their choice and assent, but all those who recognize their own deficiencies, and who are afraid of the terror of God. He stands for them. For that great innumerable company of people to whom John refers in the book of Revelation.

And the full velocity of the wrath of God. The holy God, who cannot remain a moral being if he just smiles at sin. The obverse to the love of God is the anger of God.

It's the other side of the same coin. God cannot be holy love. If he just bypasses sin, it would be moral indignation throughout the whole of eternity that would be heaped, I speak as an idiot, on God, if that were the case.

You cannot have a God of love logically without a God who is capable of releasing righteous anger against those who have lived in ungodliness. So what did the blessed Christ do? He was a lightning conductor on the farmhouse. And he took the anger of God into his own body.

And so intense was the charge. It destroyed his life. It almost, but it didn't, it almost eliminated his hope.

And as the blackness surrounded the cross, there came a cry that was deeper than the deepest darkness from the heart of Jesus. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Into the grave of hell he dropped. But from hell itself he raised his hand, which touched the throne of heaven and was allowed to stand, as he addressed the Father and said, My God, after the atoning work of Christ had been completed, there was a reconciliation possible for Jesus, Son of Man, representative of all men.

God raised him, raised him from the dead, the power of an endless life, raised him as the firstfruits, raised him as the prototype. As he lives, so we shall live, says the gospel so many times in the New Testament. Do you believe these things, my friend? If this is the last address I ever preach at Worthing Tabernacle, let me at least exonerate myself of any charge that I have not explained to you what the wrath of God means and how the wrath of God can be diverted through the grace of Jesus Christ.

And so, I ask you to consider, as Paul puts it in the 11th chapter of Romans, in the 22nd verse, both the kindness and the sternness of God. The kindness, and I think the authorized version puts it, the severity of God. Yes, he's a severe God, but he's a kind God.

He's a holy God, and he's a righteous God. And he makes it possible for you and for me to resume a faith relationship with him as Adam had before he fell. But it requires of you a humble assent to all that Jesus did as you bow your knee before the cross and say thank you, Jesus, for being the conductor that deflects the anger of God from me.

Thank you that you took my hell so I might experience your heaven. Yes, my friend, God can be angry, but if you kiss the Son, he'll turn his anger from you. Let's pray.

Father, we're grateful. Some of us, perhaps for the first time, have looked into the notion of the anger of God. And we're grateful for what you have saved us from and what you've saved us for.

Now help us to show that gratitude in the way that we live our lives for the sake of Jesus our Lord. Amen. Let's skip that last hymn and go to There is a Green Hill for You.

There is a green hill far away outside a city wall. If you get the number, shout it out, please. 175.

Evelyn's got them all memorized. 175. We'll enjoy singing this and then a brief prayer and we'll come around the Lord's table as quickly as we can.

175. 175. There is a green hill far away outside a city wall.

We may not know, we cannot tell what fate we have to bear. But we believe it was for us He hung and suffered. He died that we might be for Him.

He died to make us whole. And we might know at last to bear Saved by His precious blood. There was no other good enough for sin.

He hung, He poured out of the dead. All that mattered He did. Now, Father, we ask that the word spoken in weakness might, by the quickening and the strengthening of Your Spirit, have acquired its own forcefulness.

And we ask that it may live on in our minds and help us to remember something of Your grandeur and Your grace. And of the loving way in which You've provided for ordinary folk like ourselves. And in these days when the Gospel message is so easily diluted, we pray that we might see an increasing return to presenting the good news that it contains in the same context as our Lord Jesus launched it.

And this we ask for His sake. Amen.