The God Of Wrath

The Wrath of GOD

Introduction: If you take a look at a coin you can see what we call the heads and the tails. on one side you see the head of one of our founding fathers (depending on the coin) and on the other you see a different picture, maybe an eagle or the capital etc. Regardless, of the two different pictures it is the same coin. Like that coin, we can see that our God is a God of love and compassion, rich in mercy and full of loving kindness and great forgiveness, but if we dare to look upon the other side of him we will see a jealous God, that wont share you with idols, and we know that he is a God of justice, and he is a GOD OF WRATH.

The word teaches us that God will not be mocked and at first glance, it seems that God has overlooked his word, when we witness firsthand how he is so brazenly mocked and hated today but I will show you today that judgment always comes on those who rebel and when judgment comes, it comes in a way that may surprise you. I can only speak for myself but I assume that I am not the only one who feels the way I do; I am tired. I am frusterated with the promotion of sin arrogantly shoved down our throats and paraded around as a virtue. This is mocking God, and as I said, he will not be mocked. I pray for justice for all the saints who have had to endure the filth and corruption that has permeated through our culture and in the highest levels of leadership both in the governement and in the church. I want justice for all those good Christian men and women that have been slandered, alienated, and persecuted. I can sympathize with Asaph who saw the corrupt prosperity of the wicked and it angered him. You can almost hear him whispering "O God, can you see that these people hate you. They disobey your commands and mock you all day long and yet they live in great health and luxury." Asaph envied them, that is until God showed him their final destruction. Let's not forget who dressed in fine linen and lived in luxury every day. Sometimes God will allow certain people to ripen before he plucks them into the basket of hell. Asaph realizes this and it saddened him.

How can a loving God place anyone there? My question to you is why do you call him 'loving' you must have read in the gospel of his endless love, but you have only seen one side of the God coin. We know that John 3:16 is a revelation of the love of God. Jesus is God's love personified. Jesus dying on the cross for our sin is a revelation of the love of God. To see our children suffer, makes us suffer, to see them sad makes us sad, to see them tormented, torments us. There was one way for men to be saved, only one. One way to be saved from the corruption of sin and it was for Jehovah to give up his own son to be tortured and tormented as a sacrifice for your sins and mine, because of this we may all live again. That is a revelation of God's love. However the apostle writes in Romans 1:18 about a different revelation:

"the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven..." He is not speaking of grace here, is he? He is speaking of wrath.

He continues on to whom God's wrath is against: "...against all the godlessness and wickedness of men..."

I want to share with you four characteristics of the godless and wicked man who has earned God's wrath and then end our message with what God's judgment is. (which may surprise some of you) First note that:

The Godless man suppresses the truth

"The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness." v. 18

A Godly man loves the truth, endorses the truth, promotes the truth, and defends the truth. When we look around our nation and see the horrible condition of things, we see perversions of all kinds, we see thgings that used to make even wicked men blush, we witness malice everywhere, we see sin being not only practiced but vigorously promoted with no regard for any sense of decency. Just as the devout Christian is sickened by the lack of morality today, I can assure you as God's servant that there are at least 3 times as many people that are just as sickened by the little morality that remains. When violence and crime is our country's entertainment, America is undoubtedly the mirror image of the old Roman Empire. Mighty and strong and spread out all over the place but today Rome is just a tourist attraction, some remnants of the great architecture still remain but for the most part it is a small insignificant city that would be forgotten if it weren't for the vatican and it's mark on history.