THE WRATH OF GOD
ROMANS 1:18-32
• This a very important portion of Scripture. Not in the top 10 of most popular sermon texts. Not a touchy feely part of Scripture. The prosecuting attorney steps to the front of the Judge and lays out a case against mankind.
• LOST WORLD: Name of a popular movie out the Jurassic Park trilogy. World of dinosaurs, hidden away jungles, island far away from society. The real ‘lost world’ is what you walk into every day. It surrounds your every activity. The defining principles of lostness which are also the reasons for the wrath of God are set forth in our text for today.
• GOD’S COURTROOM: We now enter it. Beginning here and continuing through several chapters God establishes the guilt of mankind. Gentiles and Jews, Pagans and Religious.
• 45 RPM Singles: Popular songs of the day on one side while other side was a throwaway song. To buy one was to get something very good on one side but the flip side you didn’t even want to listen to. In verses 1:17 we have been given the fun stuff about Christianity but starting in verse 18 we get the stuff people don’t want to hear. But it is part of the message: It is the bad news that makes the good news really good.
Parts of town we don’t like to travel in: In KC used to drive into the inner city and preach at the rescue mission each month. Showed up for seminary in 1990. God provided a church 3 months later but in the mean time I wanted to preach somewhere. Called a rescue mission out of the phone book and started a relationship that continued for the next 8 years.
Those faces I would see each Saturday night, the dead sunken eyes, were very different from the ones I would look into the next morning at Church. If I could choose my world it would be the Sunday Morning world but the truth is that the other exists. It is not fun to admit but it is reality. There is a part of us like that: We like the us we dress up each Sunday morning but Paul is going to identify the deeper part of us that has fallen short of God’s glory.
(18) For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. (19) because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. (20) For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse. (21) For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened. (22) Professing to be wise, they became fools
• Paul here begins to answer some of the tough questions that people like to ask: Why should I go to church when there are hypocrites there? If somebody never hears the name of Jesus how can they be held accountable? What about the heathen in Africa?(little secret, heathen are here, people grow up with very little or no exposure to a healthy concept of God in America).
1) Paul is going to prove that no person will ever be able to stand before God with any defense against God’s judgment.(no OJ’s) PROOF that every body is guilty.
• Did you notice that verse 18 is present tense? We think of wrath as being the Book of Revelation. Some futuristic event. That will be the day of the fullness of God’s wrath
1) (THUMOS-(thermostat) to breath violent, expand our nostrils, our brand: hit walls, scream) God doesn’t kick stars around
2) Here the word is ORGE: Lit. ‘a swelling’ The swelling of God. Wrath is God’s settled response to sin and it is pictured by God swelling. Used of plants when sap increased until sudden blossom or fruit. God’s response to our sin is a swelling, it is a build up with a definite response.
Rom 2:5-6 Because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. Wrath is not a reaction but an emotion. GOD HATES SIN.
We struggle with dealing with sin in America today. The big word in our society today is TOLERANCE: The only agreed upon sin in America today is to call sin sin. We don’t really call people guilty about anything. People don’t accept guilt upon themselves anymore.
What used to be sinful became a sickness and now is acceptable. Any wrong is now due to environment or my genitics, I didn’t know any better. NOBODY WANTS TO ADMIT PERSONAL GUILT.
The bad thing about that is that it is the only way into the kingdom of heaven. We must confess our guilt!!! GOD HATES SIN – He must respond to it!!
THREE THINGS THAT REALLY DEMAND THE WRATH OF GOD
UNGODLINESS: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all UNGODLINESS lit meaning ‘an irreverence for God’. Taking God lightly
• God’s Word says certain things but in my case, I know what God says about the person I should marry but in my situation, I know what God says about being faithful to the church but in my set of circumstances. Taking God lightly, irreverence. God, I really think I have life figured out better than You, how much can You know being way up there?
1) God’s wrath is aimed at just that kind of mindset.
UNRIGHTEOUSNESS: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all UNGODLINESS and UNRIGHTEOUSNESS OF MEN,
• The natural progression of taking God lightly is to allow it to reflect in your lifestyle by letting sin freely have it’s way in certain areas of your behavior. Maybe not bad in comparison to everyone around you but when directly compared to God’s standard or right and wrong it becomes glaringly obvious.
1) We give God’s Word little attention
2) We live lives more like a lost world than a holy God
• It is not just those who are out there stealing, committing adultery, murder but you can take God lightly sitting here in this church service today: Just discount His truth, lower it’s value, put it aside and go back to a worldly lifestyle.
• AMERICAN HISTORY: Started to stop taking God lightly: Used to honor God(God we trust, one nation under God, Nativity scenes, Christmas music) but somewhere along the way we began to take God lightly and the natural progression is a moral freefall.
• Third step in the progression is
SUPPRESSION OF GOD’S TRUTH: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all UNGODLINESS and UNRIGHTEOUSNESS OF MEN, who SUPPRESS THE TRUTH in unrightousness.
• It is very difficult to live a lifestyle of moral impurity and to constantly look at a standard that calls your behavior into question. You must attack that which questions your behavior.
a. PASTOR ON SURVIVOR
• SUPPRESS: Idea of holding one down, putting all your weight upon the effort to restrict it’s free movement.
• In my lifetime I have witness an attack on the Bible full fold: taken out of places, questioned, use of separation of church and state, more subtle attacks to replace it’s proclamation with modern worship styles or to dumb it down to not offend seeker sensitive people. If it is gone it is gone.
God looks at that process defined by those three ideas and which we have witness in the last half of the 20th century in America demand an emotion response of God. It stores of wrath
Beginning in verse 19: Begin to see the REVELATION of GOD that should be seen by all people. Reasons why there is no excuse for the behavior described in verse 18.
(19) because that which is known about God is evident within them for God made it evident to them. God has made Himself evident to mankind. He has revealed Himself in may different ways so to take Him lightly, live lives that offend Him, and then to even suppress His written revelation to us is all the more horrible.
1) MOUNTAIN IN COLORADO: Look into the heaven and see more stars in an
area your hand can cover than you can count. God to downtown Tulsa and
look up and struggle to see even one. They are there in just as much
quanity as in Colorado but the manmade lights suppress your ability to see
them. God is evident but sinful man has a constant agenda to suppress that
truth.
2) Verses 19-20 answer the question of How can I be held accountable if
nobody ever told me about Jesus? What about the heathen tribes?
(20) Because since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
1) Paul is saying this before the invention of the telescope or the Microscope.
Before seeing the Grand Canyon or Niagra Falls. A redwood tree or
understanding the working of the human eye.
GOD HAS REVEALED HIMSELF TO US IN TWO WAYS
ON THE INSIDE: (19) because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.
• God has given to each of us a conscience: Athiests are not born they are developed, won to that cause. A child has a natural inclination to a belief in God. They can often be naturally directed towards an understanding of God’s love for them and plan for their life.
• GOD SHAPED VACUUM
ON THE OUTSIDE: (20) For since the CREATION OF THE WORLD…..have been CLEARLY SEEN, being UNDERSTOOD THROUGH WHAT HAS BEEN MADE, so that they are without excuse(without legal argument).
(Paul makes very important point that there is enough evidence in creation alone to hold every man and woman accountable for belief in God)
Takes a deliberate act of the will to observe the design we see in creation and not acknowledge a Designer. Three obvious things when seeing creation.
1. HIS INVISIBLE ATTRIBUTES
2. HIS ETERNAL POWER
3. HIS DIVINE NATURE
Conscience and Creation is enough evidence to condemn every man. The people who should be shouting the loudest are scientists and doctors who look into the telescopes and microscopes. They see the design and order and plan.
Ps 19:1-3 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day it utters speech and night unto night shows knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.
Job 12:7-9 But ask the beasts(Dr. Doolittle), and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee. Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knows not in all these that the hand of the Lord has wrought this?
1) ATOM: The actual material of an atom is about 1/trillionth of the volume. Meaning it is a lot of little orbits. If you compressed would make 1/trillions of original size; TAKE ME – squeeze all the space out(space between ears) would fit on head of a pin. 1 100 millionth of a cubic inch. Take that mass up to a cubic inch it would weigh about a billion pounds.
2) DROP OF WATER: Filled with molecules. Took each one and increased size up to a grain of sand then you could build a road a ft thick by ½ mile from NY to LA.
3) SUN: Temperature about 12,000 degrees. 93 million miles away. If any farther any cooler or hotter(50 degrees hotter or cooler then life impossible)
4) EARTH: Rotations, tilts, orbits: control seasons, times, years. 25,000 in circumference yet hangs in empty space. Flying through the air 1,000 a miles a hour as we spin and through space at 1,000 miles per minute. We don’t even recognize it because design is so perfect.
5) 580 million miles circle and we will be right back here in another 365 days. Without missing a beat. PERFECT ORDER AND DESIGN.
6) ATMOSPHERE: 21% oxygen. If about 40-45% then first time spark then whole earth explode.
7) WATER CYCLE: Every Minnesota farmer get 407,510 gallons of rainwater per acre per year and it is free of charge. Buy that much at Homeland. Average year.
MISSOURI: 38 inches average rain each year. 70,000 square miles. If took and made one lake: 250 miles long, 60 miles wide, 22 ft deep. FREE OF CHARGE.
8) HUMAN HEART: Size of fist, 12 ounces, in 12 hours do enough work to raise 65 tons off the ground one inch
9) FINGERS: Enough grip to carry heavy loads while sensitive enough to feel the softest strand of hair or breath.
10) FORENSIC EVIDENCE: Crime scene: footprint, fingerprint, hair and skin fragments, blood fragment and DNA and give you a compulation of who did the crime. SUCH DESIGN.
How can you put these things in your mind and ever deny a designer: Order – POWER – LOVE.
If you came to our house you would see various paintings on our walls. If I knew you were coming and took time to make some painting of my own and put them up beside Lynne’s which are already on the walls. I guarantee you you would know who painted which ones. YOU CAN LOOK AT THE CREATION AND KNOW THE CREATOR. INVISIBLE ATTRIBUTES - ETERNAL POWER - DIVINE NATURE
HERE IS THE GUILT: God chose to give man an evidence of Himself in creation alone that He is a God of order and love and power and yet man made the choice to reject it. Much less when the Bible itself is set before us or the story of God’s own Son was lived out before us. GOD SAYS YOU ARE GUILTY
(21) For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
(22) Professing to be wise, they became fools.
Adrian Rogers tells of a man who owns a trucking company in the south. They give a lie detector test to prospective employees on which one of the questions is, “DO YOU BELIEVE IN GOD’. He says that even when a man claims to be an atheist that when they answer that question NO the machine says they are lying.
LIBRARY: To research a topic. Find they have taken all books out of the library that deal with that specific topic. They have taken out their library regarding God. They are trying to reach accurate conclusion without God in their Library. FUTILE SPECULATIONS
One Athiest said: I know there are a lot of problems with evolution but God is not a factor that I consider and without that this is the next best thing I can come up with.
Futile in his thinking and his heart became darkened..professing to be wise they became fools.
BARNHOUSE: Preaching in London in WW2. Sudden blackouts. Had to get used to preaching in pitch darkness. One night someone got to the switch earlier than expected. Entire audience sitting bent over and all suddenly shocked by the lights. Only one fellow on front row didn’t react. Didn’t move a muscle because he was blind. Made no diff whether on or off.
JOHN 1: true light comes into the world
JOHN 3: Judgment is this that light has come into the world but men loved darkness because their deeds are evil.
To see takes more than just light: The message of Jesus Christ is light in America today but it takes more to spiritually see. It also takes sight. The darkness in our nation is from a lack of spiritual sight and the light is all around them.
PS 14:1 The fool has said in his HEART there is no God. You cannot look around with open eyes and say there is no designer but that comes from looking around with a closed heart.
God gave man the brain to smelt iron and make nails and a hammerhead
And the brains and the stregnth to bring down a tree and to fashion from that tree a handle for the handle.
Then God laid out his hand and allowed man to take the nails and the hammer and to nail Him to a cross so that God may demonstrate His love to the world.
Man has taken all that God has given and used it against God.-
What are you doing with the Revelation of God?
How are you helping people get their spiritual sights turned on?
Robert Arlington made a lot of money. Years ago in the 1800’s he gave over a half a million dollars to missions. He said, ‘I would rather make the floor my bed, a box my chair, and another box my table than to see anybody want for the knowledge of Jesus Christ’.
Book of Ecclesiastes makes a great point: 1:12-2:11 Much learning - Pleasure – Laughter – Much Wine - Building – Wealth – Personal power (2:11) Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun
Solomon’s Conclusion: 12:13 Fear God and keep His commandments
America today: always seeking satisfaction in having more
Took God lightly
Lived morally wrong lives YOU ARE GUILTY
Suppressed His truth
