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an example unto those that after should live ungodly (II Pet. 2: 6), or as Jude puts it--
they were `set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire'.
(3)
He spared not the natural branches of Israel's olive tree.
Israel however were an elect nation, a covenant people, heirs of the promise made to
Abraham, beloved because of the fathers, a people with a peculiar destiny and great
glory, yet because of unbelief, which led them to deny the very Messiah sent to them,
because of unbelief subsequent to their pardon and the invitation given at Pentecost,
Israel, excepting a remnant, were blinded, they were given a spirit of slumber, eyes that
they should not see, and ears that they should not hear. Their table was made a snare, a
trap, a stumbling block and a recompense, and their back bowed down. They fell, and
were castaway, and became as dead (Rom. 11: 8-15). Some of the branches of Israel's
olive tree were broken off, and now comes the warning to the Gentile believer of that
dispensation.
"Take heed lest He also spare not thee" (Rom. 11: 21).
Angels, the old world, Sodom and Gomorrah, Israel, and the Gentile believer, all in
their turn were compelled to realize `the severity of God'. If we stayed here we should
have but one side of the picture, rigorous, untempered justice.
There is however another, without which the character of God would be
misinterpreted, and His glorious purpose of grace be unknown.
(4)
"He spared not His Own Son" (Rom. 8: 32).
How often has the Scriptural insistence on the necessity for a sacrifice as a basis for
redeeming, forgiving, justifying grace, been the object of attack, not only from the
outside unbeliever, but alas, from those who are untaught and misled.
Have we not heard at some time the public orator working himself up into indignant
fury as he denounced the Gospel basis of redeeming blood in some such language as the
following?
"My friends, I stand here today, to denounce with every fibre of my outraged being,
with all the sense of abhorrence that one feels at the exhibition of tyranny in high places,
I stand here to denounce I say, the so called Gospel that outrages every sense of decency
left to us, by representing the Father refusing to forgive His erring children, apart from
the horrors of a bleeding sacrifice. Which one of you would ever dream of such a brutal
and inhuman demand"? etc., etc.
One question and one question only needs to be put to all such misrepresentations, and
that question is, "Who supplied, Who gave that bleeding sacrifice?" The answer is "the
God Who demanded the sacrifice is the One alone who made it". He did not demand
atonement or offering at the hand of the transgressor, "He spared not His Own Son". It
was the God Who had been offended, the Judge Whose righteousness demanded the
sentence of death, the Creator Who had been so outrageously treated by His creatures, it