message. But I fear it's one that, as churches and preachers, we are growing reluctant to be frank about.
It's a great mistake to confuse divine patience with divine indifference. According to this story, God is being patient with us human beings, sending one servant after another and finally sending his own Son. The danger is, we could be deceived into thinking that his patience is infinite. But Jesus says it is not. The heart of God is unbearably provoked. You must not mistake his patience for indifference.
It's popular to speak of God as a kindly old fellow, all love, who would never harm a fly. But where have we got the idea from? It certainly wasn't from Jesus. It is God's moral indignation against evil that prevents his love from degenerating into mere sentimentality. We don't really admire people who are never angry. There are times when righteousness demands anger—at cruelty, at prejudice, for example. We can't respect a person who remains in some kind of insulated benignity when confronted by real wickedness.
If there are times when people ought to be angry, how much more, then, will there be a time when God will be angry! Do not mistake patience for indifference. He's patient with us men and women, but not indifferent towards our sins. We are accountable; and ultimately we shall give account of that missing rent, account for those injured servants, account for that murdered Son.
How does Jesus see the future? He sees it as a day of accounting, a day of judgment. Samuel Johnson remarked, 'I remember that my Maker has said that he will place the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left. That is a solemn truth which this frivolous age needs to hear.' The frivolous age he was talking about was the eighteenth century, but there's plenty of frivolity still around.
It disturbs me most profoundly that so few people today take hell seriously. Many of those theologians I mentioned earlier are universalists, insisting that hell is a
