God Is A God Of Wrath Attributes Of God (10 Od 10 Sermons)

So far, we have preached about God's being holy, immutable, love, jealous, orderly, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. The Bible reveals all these attributes to us because God wants us to come to know Him. He knows we cannot WORSHIP and SERVE Him if we do not KNOW Him. Now, if I was a liberal preacher I would stop with what we have already preached about. Why? Because thus far these are things we like to hear about. But now we come to the attribute that most probably wish was not there. In fact, many liberal preachers will not declare THAT THE GOD OF THE BIBLE IS A GOD OF WRATH as much as He is A GOD OF LOVE. Why?

(1) MANY LIBERAL PREACHERS ARE NOT SAVED. They know if they preach that God is going to send His wrath on the ungodly, they know they are preaching something they themselves do not want to hear. But, the truth is the truth, even if it is not preached! For example...

Illus: Suppose a man has cancer and he refuses to go to the doctor because he does not want to hear the doctor say that he has cancer. Will his not wanting to hear the TRUTH from the doctor cure him of cancer? IT WILL NOT!

Well, many liberal preachers stand in pulpits, sinners, without Jesus. They have no intention of preaching on THE WRATH OF GOD because it would apply to them and they do not want to hear it.

Another reason some will not preach on the wrath of God is...

(2) THEY KNOW THE LOST WORLD DOES NOT WANT TO HEAR THAT MESSAGE. They do not want to hear about it PERSONALLY and they know SINNERS do not want to hear it.

We have been told by the "experts" that if we wish to fill a church in these evil days the subjects of SIN, JUDGMENT, and THE WRATH OF GOD should never be preached on.

Illus: If you find this difficult to believe, I challenge you to go to a Christian book store and buy all the books you can find on church growth and read them. No longer do they, in a subtle way, suggest that preaching the Bible offends people; they come out and state it clearly. If you want your church to grow as theirs have, there are certain things that must not be preached on. A man must never mention the "H" word, never break a sweat, not be a Bible-thumping preacher. He must only speak of "positive" issues and speak in a soft, pleasant voice.

The books of the 90's do not encourage "preaching" at all. The authors feel preaching must be replaced with SIMPLY SHARING THE WORD OF GOD THROUGH TEACHING.

Now the Lord has given teaching, and we certainly need a lot of it in all of our churches, but it should never take the place Biblical preaching that tells lost mankind about a HELL TO SHUN and A HEAVEN TO GAIN! The "liberal" preacher will not preach that because he sees the church too much as a business.

Illus: That is, if a man wants to be rich he has to invent something that there is a market for and then supply what is needed for that market. The liberal preacher knows that in a wicked society like ours there is not a big market for preaching the Word of God, so He preaches what the people want to hear, not what God wants them to hear. Paul warned Timothy this day would come. Look at II Tim. 4:3-4, where we read, "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fable."

The days that Paul spoke of certainly have come to America. The liberal preachers are smart enough to recognize we live in the time that the apostle Paul spoke of and they know that UNGODLY people across America are not looking for a preacher who will preach on SIN, JUDGMENT and THE WRATH OF GOD!

Still the Bible clearly reveals that God is a GOD OF WRATH as much as It teaches God is A GOD OF LOVE. God is VERY DISPLEASED with the sinner and one day he will have THE WRATH OF GOD POURED OUT ON HIM BECAUSE OF HIS SINNING. That presents a problem because we Christians also find ourselves committing sin sometimes. Every now and then you will meet a Christian who professes that he has overcome sin, but most of us recognize we are tempted by Satan every day and sometimes we find ourselves giving into that temptation.

In I John 2:1, the apostle dealt with the Christian's sin problem. We read, "My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." In his compassionate way, John kindly states that he was writing those things that, "...ye sin not..." Then he adds, "...If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father..." John wanted every young convert to know that once he was saved he still was not perfect. Some time he might find himself falling into sin, but that does not mean he is no longer saved. It simply means he needs to recognize he has sinned and ask God to forgive him, and turn away from that sin. John said that we have, "...an advocate with the Father..."