We continue on in Romans looking at what I like to call the fairness of God. Because how do you know or how do we know God is fair in his judgment of sin, of all those who persist in rebelling against him? And what about people who've not had a chance to hear the gospel, possibly for generations? That question hit my brain Probably 15 years ago, I was in Nicaragua. I was sitting in a small, simple little boat, heading out to a remote, mosquito village on a sea inlet. There was no gospel work being done there. The village, at least from the perspective of hopping in a boat in Puerto Cabezas and heading out, the village felt isolated to me. as those of us in the boat were discussing a potential ministry there. I thought about the years that have passed. That's what hit my brain. We're going out in this moment in time, this opportunity, we're gonna share the gospel, we're gonna present it, but what about all the years that have gone by? What about the forgotten people? What about the generations that have passed? And that's what the impression I got was they were forgotten as we moved down this waterway to this place on the ocean. We were surveying the area with plans to reach them with the gospel, but my mind fixated on one thing. Generations of people that had already passed away to people from my viewpoint when I'm on the water that have been overlooked. Are they facing God's judgment, His wrath and punishment unfairly? That, I'm sure, was a question that possibly hit the early church as well, a question that Paul himself possibly considered, and the answer to which the Holy Spirit inspired him to write. Because here in these verses, lies the answer to my pondering. And this is where my research landed. I came back from that trip. That thought was on my mind. That was, it was, I was thinking about it. And it's easy, right? You have thoughts like that and then we tend to brush them aside and then just move on from there. I remember diving in and I remember this is the passage I read that answered my question, because the fairness of God is crystal clear in these verses. It ends in verse 20 saying, they are without excuse, they are responsible. And the fairness of God, though, begins in a very unique, yet perfect and necessary way. It begins by looking at God's justified wrath against sin, which shows the absolute rightness of God. We live in a time and a culture that questions the rightness of God. So much that we see, so much that we encounter, and I'm not talking about out in the world, I'm talking about in churches, amongst supposed believers, there's this sense of questioning the rightness of God, and I think it's fitting when we're going to have the answer about who is responsible, about the fairness of God. It's going to begin talking about the wrath of God. So verse 18a says this, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Now we hear about the wrath of God and sadly we tend to judge it in light of humanity. We judge it in light of sinful creatures who abuse and misuse anger when we think of of wrath We think of ourselves even if we're being honest and how we will be angry and unjustifiably so how we will misuse anger how anger has been misused even in the most Righteous seeming expression of anger, we stumble or are shocked by, how could God have wrath? But we have to understand that a holy God must judge unholiness. As R. A. Torrey writes, shallow views of sin and of God's holiness and of the glory of Jesus Christ and his claims upon us lie at the bottom of weak theories of the doom of the impenitent. When we see sin in all its hideousness and enormity, the holiness of God in all its perfection, and the glory of Jesus Christ in all its infinity, nothing but a doctrine that those who persist in the choice of sin, who love darkness rather than light, and who persist in the rejection of the Son of God, shall endure everlasting anguish, will satisfy the demands of our moral intuitions." So this morning, and remember where we've been, Paul started introducing his letter, and remember he started with the bang, right? He's going to capture their attention. He brings the gospel immediately. And then he's connected with them and he's walked through a gospel ministry. He's walked through this passion to share the gospel. He's walked through this obligation to share the gospel. He's told them that he's not ashamed of the gospel. He's explained why. And now, in this discussion of the gospel, as he moves to God's rightness, it must begin, it must point to God's wrath. It needs to. Now again, let me remind you, this wrath is not our type of anger, nor, and this is really important because this is where we have strayed as a church, and I would say in the United States and around the world, wherever I've traveled, there is this movement away. It's not our type of anger and it's not indicative of anything petty in God. I get that. I get pushback when we talk about judgment and wrath. People start looking at God and thinking he's petty or he's being mean or he's being ugly. And this has nothing to do with that. His wrath is a settled, determined indignation. It is not the momentary, emotional and often uncontrolled anger to which we as humans are prone. His wrath. is divine in nature. Notice that it is the wrath of God, which means that it is holy. His wrath is true. It is right. It is timed. It is infinite and incomprehensible. Because God's attributes are balanced in divine perfection. If he had no righteous anger and wrath, he would not be God. Just as surely as he would not be God without his gracious love. He perfectly hates just as he perfectly loves. Perfectly loving righteousness and perfectly hating evil. It is progressive in timing. It's revealed. And that word means revealed and continuing to be revealed. It is the implication that's nested in that Greek word. So we see His wrath revealed at times in nature. We see that expressed, and we've all seen, experienced, talked about, we know how that looks. We've seen His wrath revealed in His word. If you've read through Daniel, and we just went through that in our adult Bible fellowship and in our Sunday school curriculum, we've seen his judgment and his wrath against Israel for their disobedience. We see his wrath perfectly revealed at the cross. As one writer noted, when Jesus took to Himself the sin of the world and bore the full divine force of God's fury as its penalty, that's God's wrath on display. He allowed, and He hates sin so deeply, that he required its penalty. He allowed his perfect beloved son to be put to death as the only means by which fallen mankind might be redeemed. That is The Son of God taking our sin and He bore His wrath for us. That is an expression of His wrath and it's revealed. We see His wrath continually revealed. And the fact is, His wrath is stated as a coming judgment. We'll see that later on in Romans. We'll talk about how that's gonna come out. How does that look? How does that express itself? I was reading through some commentaries and a guy named Barnhouse recounts a true illustration of farming story from the Midwest. He would have been from a generation or two ago writing about this, but there was an unbelieving man in a farming community who decided to spurn the church by plowing the fields next to the church on Sunday. The man then wrote an op-ed to the newspaper, this would be at a different era in our country, wrote an op-ed and he challenged He says, I don't have any respect for God. I don't have any respect for the Lord's day. He says, but I have the highest yields per acre than anyone else. And he challenged believers to explain it. The editor, I guess showing some journalistic integrity, printed the letter and then gave a simple comment. He says, God does not settle all his accounts in the month of October. And the reality is that, right? We look at the world around us and as we acknowledge, I want us to understand, God's wrath is revealed, it's poured out, it's there, but not all of it's been seen and not all of it's been felt. The coming judgment will see the expression of His wrath. And then we look at His wrath and we realize it is heavenly in origin. The scriptures are very clear, it's from heaven. His wrath is rendered from heaven. How is that seen? Well, we know God created this world. He created a moral order and judgment comes from breaking his law on earth. That's a cause and effect very much here. But as we know what God created it, so from heaven, and then we've seen God's direct and personal intervention. As Jeffrey Wilson notes, God is no idle spectator of world events. He is dynamically active in human affairs. We do not worship a God who is not personal. We don't worship a God the God who is not engaged in this world that he has created. So regardless of cause or effect from God's created moral order or his direct intervention, his wrath originates in heaven. God's wrath is not coming from earth, it comes from heaven. And this wrath is universal in extent. It is against all sin of humanity. There's no dividing up of the world. Oh, he's more angry at that country. He's more angry at those people. He's more angry over here than over there. No, it's against all of our sins. It is a wrath because of human sin, because of our sin. It is an aversion to sin. His wrath can be called an aversion. As mentioned earlier, God's wrath is a settled wrath. This is not an emotional wrath. And I'm not looking for you to go back to the last time you got angry, but the last time you got angry, usually your passions rise, it's usually a reaction to something, and you're fired up and you're going to town on something. That's not God's wrath. A settled wrath is not an outburst or passionate reaction. The best human description would be if our court system was pure, which obviously gets a little tainted, but the wrath of the court is the idea. A clear dispassionate aversion to wrong, right? The court system is designed to execute judgment, and there's a determination to that end. To end wrong, to destroy it. And specifically, Paul explains that God's wrath is against, and he lists two things, ungodliness and unrighteousness. Those words sometimes seem to flow hand in hand. There is an overlap in definition, but there is a reason Paul used two different words there. Ungodliness speaks to a lack of reverence, devotion, and worship of the true God. An ungodly person doesn't worship God, doesn't reverence God. And what it does is it leads to false worship. So when He says His wrath is against people, and again, remember, does not point out any pettiness in God, but God demands our worship. We were created to glorify Him. We were created to worship Him. Ungodliness is those that will not worship God. Ungodliness will inevitably lead to unrighteousness. Now this speaks to no reverence for human right. This is the wickedness and the evil that's manifested. We manifest against one another in the sphere of this world. And humans will abuse other humans because they are ungodly. Because we act in ungodliness, because we have enmity to God, we will have enmity to His creation, to people. And God makes clear that He hates sin, but I want us to realize He does not hate people. It's a sin that those people naturally practice that he hates. And I want us to get this, and don't forget, we started out, is God fair? Is He fair in His judgment? Are we culpable? And it begins this answer with the rightness of God, and the rightness of God is centered in His wrath. Holy wrath. Because sin brings His justified and righteous wrath. Paul, in this short phrase here, leaves no room for any conjecturing about it. So many conversations, so many debates. As I listen to them, people are conjecturing about what Paul is talking about. This segment from 18 to 32, it dives into our world perfectly. The third message in this run through 32 is going to deal with the perversion of this world. It's going to be very pointed. It's going to be blunt. Paul is not messing around, so to speak. His statements on God's wrath are declarative, positive, and final. Throughout this whole segment that we'll be in, Paul is going to be clear. He doesn't stutter. And though the wrath of God is not a popular thought, or even one correctly embraced by the religious, or even the church, the reality of being under God's wrath was Paul's first step before he offered them the way of escape from it. This world needs to know that it is under judgment, that the wrath of God is there. As one writer notes, a person cannot appreciate the wonder of God's grace until he knows about the perfect demands of God's law. And he cannot appreciate the fullness of God's love for him until he knows something about the fierceness of God's anger against his sinful failure to perfectly obey that law. John 3.36 states very clearly, he who believes in the son has eternal life. But he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. revealed and constantly being revealed. As MacArthur notes, a disease has to be recognized and identified before seeking a cure means anything. In the same way, and for the same reason, Scripture reveals the bad news before the good news. God's righteous judgment against sin is proclaimed before His gracious forgiveness of sin is offered. A person has no reason to seek salvation from sin if he does not know he is condemned by it. Our world ignores the condemnation that sin brings. So are we correctly understanding God's righteous wrath? Have you recognized and agreed that God could not be holy and then not be angry at evil? Do we recognize and understand that holiness cannot tolerate unholiness? We want God to sweep it under the rug. We want God to make an exception for us. We want God to bend the rules. While He's God, why can't He? Why doesn't He? Because He's God. Because He is holy. And because unholiness cannot be tolerated. Habakkuk 1.13, the first portion of this, says of God, Thine eyes are too pure to approve evil, and thou canst not look on wickedness with favor. I think God can do anything. He can, but he's holy, and he can't break his holiness in tolerating unholiness. You see, we build our life from our standard, where we can bend the rules because we like them bent for us. God cannot because he's holy. And then I put as a second question, are we correctly presenting God's righteous wrath? Or are you sadly thinking you need to explain it away? I've been doing some reading about culture, life, psychology, a little bit of a mixed bag there. And what I'm seeing, sadly, from supposed Christians or Christians isn't explaining a way of sin and its effect. And in that same process, as they alter that, they start altering the effect of the cross. And that the fact that forgiveness of sins comes through the cross, the complete forgiveness, not something we've added, not something we've tainted, not something we've changed. But are we as believers correctly presenting God's righteous wrath or are we pathetically explaining it away? The fact is, as Herman Hoyt notes, until it is clear that men are irrevocable or irrecoverably lost, there is no sound reason for discussing the way of salvation. In fact, no man is approachable with the doctrine of saving grace until he's convinced that he is lost. Very personal there, that no possibility of recovery within himself or his environment. You see how the scriptures zeroes in on the person. We live in a society that wants to look at the system and change the system. because they want to ignore the sin of the person. And scripture is very clear, it is the person that needs to change. Paul has made clear the rightness of God in all his actions, especially his wrath. He dove into the tough subject. Because God's wrath is perfectly justified, it is absolutely necessary from a truly holy and loving God. But then how do you still grapple with the fairness of God in relation to people who seem to not have a chance? I'm still bumping my head against that question, right? I'm reading this verse, and I have no doubt that the wrath of God is right, that God is right in what He does, but how do I answer For what I would consider, from my perspective, not God's, but my perspective, well, these people don't have a chance. Is that still fair? Well, Paul follows the rightness of God, which is critical, in his wrath against sin, with verses about the responsibility of man regarding all sin. Look at verses 18b, the end of it, through 20. So the wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. And then it says, who, speaking of humanity, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness? Because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, That's going all the way back to the beginning. His invisible attributes, both His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. Because No matter how you look at it, God is right, just, and fair. Humans, due to their sinful disposition, are inclined to follow sin and resist God. That is our natural bent. And they are then held responsible for that. That's what we don't like, right? We want to make our own call. We want to make our own decisions. Don't tell me what to do. But then we do not like when we're held responsible. Scripture is very clear. We are responsible for the suppressed truth. It says, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. A phrase that implies that they're constantly attempting to suppress the truth by steadfastly holding to their sin. Suppression, that word that's used in Greek, has two meanings. that cover a wide range of emotions and thought. Suppressed means kind of primarily to reject God and His truth, is what he's saying. Suppressing the truth. This world has rejected God. They suppress this truth, refusing to engage with it at all, and for that stand culpable. But also suppressed means to hold truth at a distance. To know, but not apply. I look at that as a stiff arm. The world, and that's what Scripture is telling us here, they are aware of truth. There is the abject rejection of truth altogether, and there's some that know and hold it back. And though Paul is emphasizing the unbeliever here, by the use of this word, he's pulled us as believers into the conviction as well. How many of you hold the truth at a distance without allowing it to affect your everyday life? How many of you have put a stiff arm up in some ways to God and His influence? I know the truth, but it will not affect my life. I will create a barrier around me. I will not let this change me, at least into the everyday details. And again, I want to be clear, Paul's emphasis here is on the unbeliever who does that, that this idea that truth is attainable, that it's there, that God has made it evident, and they refuse to let it engage their life. I read a lot of scientific things and read a lot about scientists. That's my background in plants, and so I have an interest in that. And so many scientists are like this. They won't engage with truth that they know because it will influence how they interact and how things change. It's unbelievable. It's mind-boggling what they've written down that they will admit to because they will stiff arm away the truth. They won't let it into the space it should be in. And so Paul, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is letting us know the wickedness, the unrighteousness of such a disposition. Now, I just brought up unbelieving scientists, but I want to circle back around one more time how many of us are doing the same thing as wicked people are doing. That we have truth. but we stiff arm it. That's not gonna affect my hobbies, my habits, my life, what I do, how I think, what I do with my money, what I do with my time, what I do on earth, because I will hold this truth and I'll hold it away from me. Paul wants you to understand, even though he's talking about unbelievers and the ultimate destruction in eternity, that we apply the same principle to us and it's wicked. It's a wicked, wicked, evil disposition. But the responsibility is not just suppressed truth. Humanity is responsible because of ignored evidence. It says, because that which is known about God is evident within them, don't miss that, for God made it evident to them. One is internal evidence and one is external evidence. First, the reality of God is evident within us. God created humans with an eternal void that only He can fill, a longing that drives us to long for Him. Everyone that rejects God, that rejects truth, is rejecting something that is inside of them. Ecclesiastes 3.11 makes it perfectly clear. It says, He's made everything beautiful in its time. That text talks about all the things that happen for a reason. Then it goes on, He has also set eternity in their heart. It's the verse that says it almost without, there's no doubt about it. He's placed eternity in us, yet, so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. In other words, but you can't answer it without God. We have eternity in us, a void that cannot be filled with this life and its purposes, and we cannot figure it out without God because it is a, and you've heard people say this, a God-sized hole. And it's been said so many times that oftentimes we start feeling it's catchy and itchy and it's a little bit cheesy. It's not, it's biblical. It's how you're made as a human. Whenever you look at someone, even the most rabid, nasty, anti-God person, you know that eternity is set in their heart and soul. That they will not answer that question. They might numb it, they might seem to fill it, they might find a thousand ways to get around it, but there's a hole that only God can fill. Because He created us that way. How fair is God? Well, that's a lot of fairness. But even beyond that, God made evidence obvious around us, spreading throughout His whole creation. Many of those key evidences are articulated in some foundation apologetic arguments. Now, I'm going to get into some of the weird words and you think, oh no, this is into psychology here, but it's helpful because God has listed and we've kind of packaged in a way that you can articulate this thing called a cosmological argument, teleological argument, and a moral argument. These are all proofs that we see This is what people use to prove God without ever even having to open the Bible. They can prove God's existence and evidence. It's there. It's all around us. Which, by the way, God just told us would be there. The cosmological argument recognizes a couple things. One, that everything that had a beginning had a cause. The universe had a beginning, so therefore the universe had a cause. And you know what? We talked about this in Genesis, right? You need to have someone outside of the universe, time-space-matter, to create time-space matter. That's not just a spiritual conjecturing. That's not a spiritual point. That's not a religious mindset. That's scientific. Science tells us that something can't create itself. And so we have to have something else out of it. We went through that. So the universe needs something outside of it to cause that universe. God with his eternal power and in his divinity is the only cause that makes any sense. both spiritually and scientifically. And you say, oh, Kenny, there's a lot of scientists that ignore God. Right, but even Darwinists, that would be the hardcore evolutionists, atheists that are out there, some that they hate Christianity so much that they think we should all be in prison because we're the bane of this world's existence. They hate anything religious. They cannot, cannot scientifically prove their point and they know it. And they write books where they articulate knowing it and then pretend they're searching for the answer when it's staring them in the face. Then there's the teleological argument, which is dealing with design. It says every design had a designer. The universe is a highly complex design, so therefore the universe had a designer. Most people at some point realize that. Actually, macroevolution, which is taught in our schools all across our land, is idiocy at its highest level. You cannot scientifically prove macroevolution. You cannot. Actually, every time you look at it, it proves otherwise. And you might be sitting there, whoa, Kenny, I don't know, are you that good of a scientist? I don't have to be. Stupid things are easy to point out. And they're stupid, and they know it. They cannot prove it. Not micro, the macro side of things. And so, we know there's design. We dive into it, and then someone would have to be, right, powerful enough to pull this creation thing off, like eternal power. They'd have to be smart enough, right, with the right kind of nature, maybe a divine nature, right, to make that happen. And then there's a moral argument. These are things articulated in a way that we can then kind of work through. In the moral argument, we recognize that every law has a lawgiver. It is apparent in this world that there is a moral law. I think we all, no matter who you are, recognize that. So therefore, there is a moral law giver. There's an absolute to which our conscience ultimately must be tethered, and that one is above the constraints of our own particular culture and society. That's critical. We are so enamored with our time on earth right now. enamored with how smart we are, enamored with what we're accomplishing. We forget all the generations before us because we think we're the smartest and the best. But the constraints of our moral law is tethered to someone beyond us. It'd have to be, and it'd have to be eternal and divine. These are invisible attributes. His evidences are clearly seen. What are we ignoring? I've hinted at him. His eternal power. His never failing omnipotence that is evident, obvious in his awesome creation that he brought forth and that he sustains. Evidence in his divine nature. Seen in His graciousness and kindness, for example, how He cares for His creation, that He sends rain, that He allows seasons, that He allows crops to grow, that we can enjoy this food and enjoy life. that is evident in his eternal power and divine nature. Those are just some simple illustrations there. I say that because this is the point that we're driving to. We just talked about the wrath of God, the rightness of God. We're looking at the responsibility of man. And what we're seeing is God has made himself evident within you and without. God has not hidden himself behind smoke or mirrors. He's not been obscure or selective. It's not just the only, oh, you have to be super smart and very perceptive to see God. No, He says to us very clearly that He is clearly seen. And any person, any person who sincerely seeks Him will find Him, no matter how little spiritual light they may have. Jeremiah 29, 13 says this, you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. The facts of our world point to a creator, to God, and as MacArthur notes, except to a mind willfully closed to the obvious, it is inconceivable that such power, intricacy, and harmony could have developed by any means but that of a master designer who rules the universe. I read, it's back from the 70s, this guy was a brilliant scientist. He was atheist and he went to be agnostic. He's not a believer. at all, still is not, sadly. But he writes about, he's a scientist, we're driven by reason, he says, and we're climbing the last mountain of ignorance, coming to the peak of it, where we're gonna know all the answers, and he says, we're met by a group of theologians who have been there for centuries. And this is a guy that doesn't believe at all, that writes in a book that's, I didn't know this was well known, about the fact that it seems so obvious that there's a God. He writes in his book that he says, scientists, we struggle with this idea of God. We don't want God in this, but it's so obvious. Sadly, so many, I say Darwinist scientists, will not believe in a master designer because they cannot allow a divine foot in the door. By the way, that's a straight quote from them. We cannot let God or anything divine in because what does it do? Shatters their faith in humanity. They build a religion on science and it crumbles like a house of cards because you can't build it on that. Yet the sad fact is, as one commentator notes, men are judged and sent to hell not because they don't live up to the light evidenced in the universe. but because ultimately that rejection leads them to reject Jesus Christ. Every time I read that agnostic, the guy that articulates the obvious godness in creation, you know, high up started this amazing work that he did before my lifetime. I'm sure spurned by the communities in, but his rejection ultimately that led to his eternal judgment was not that he missed that evidence, it's because missing that evidence led him to miss Jesus Christ. And so we see, I hope, without doubt, that we are responsible. We have the evidence. We are without excuse in facing a justifiable punishment, a justifiable wrath, a necessary wrath against sin. And as believers, we must acknowledge and process, as Douglas Moo notes, that people are without excuse. That verdict stands over the people we meet every day. As you rub shoulders with people, we are so consumed in our world, right? We've pushed truth aside. We don't want it to influence our life because it might make things awkward. It might change my friendships. It might change family dynamics. It might change my life. Heaven forbid that this would change my life. But what we have to understand is everyone we bump into that doesn't know Jesus Christ has a verdict against them already. Not coming, it is already there. The wrath of God abides over them. So we know that stands over the people of our day, just as Paul knew the people in his day, the people he rubbed shoulders with in the first century, were without Christ, and had a verdict of wrath over them. And our urgency in communicating the gospel should be as great as Paul's. What does the fairness of God drive us to? It should be evangelism. Not once in a while, not to check a box as a lifestyle change, as something that permeates everything we do. I put here, so how will real responsibility of mankind shape how you process eternity? If you're sitting here and you don't know Christ as your savior, and you're just, you're very, I call it nominal Christian, American Christian. You're sitting here because if you're American, you should be Christian because you're not a Muslim or whatever it could be that you throw out there. As you're sitting there, understand the real responsibility. How are you gonna process that for all eternity? And how will that real responsibility shape our interaction in evangelism as believers with the world around us? And let me just give a suggestion. It should alter your life. Because I venture this, we have been suppressing the truth in the sense of stiff-arming it in whatever reason we have, whatever nuanced thought we have. How many times are you reasoning with yourself and justifying your behavior and what you're going to do because you're you and you do you? Garbage. What's gonna change in your life? This is truth. They stand responsible. Everyone you bump into is not just, well, they're not a believer, they don't vote the way I do, they don't act the way they do, they don't eat the dress, whatever it is. No, you're staring at people that have the evidence of eternity in their heart, that they're trying to fill with something else, whether it's a false religion or something else. They're ignoring the evidence that's around them, resisting this, chasing their propaganda, chasing their agenda. But what we have to see is that they're responsible. that they're accountable, and that we have an opportunity that God has given us. Years ago, I was working through a training curriculum by New Tribes Missions. It was on how to bring the gospel to people, let's say a tribe in the middle of a jungle. It's this general idea of how do you walk into a place where you don't speak their language? Of course, what is the first thing you learn their language? They're kind of, that's an assumed obvious, right? But how do you engage with sharing truth with people that don't have a Christian or Western framework? And they shared a true testimony of a specific work. I've forgotten some of the details, what tribe, what place, all that stuff, but I never forgot the point that was made with this true testimony. As a person in one of those remote villages, unreached up to that point, And it poignantly shows us God's absolute fairness in light of our responsibility and his immense grace. A man is in a remote undiscovered region. This is how, these are the details that come to my mind, I remembered. And he's looking up and he saw the evidence of God and acknowledged it. He didn't know the gospel or the depths of God's redemptive plan for him, but he knew from what he saw and recognized that there was a God, a singular true God. And then he waited. He survived disease, war, ambitious, seemingly, as it's recounted, supernaturally surviving, when others around him and even close to him did not. He recounted about a plague going through, a disease that ran through, and he lost family members. But he didn't get sick. He survived. He was always acknowledging the God he saw. He knew the religion of his tribe was, he wouldn't know how to articulate it this way, that was pagan, anti-God. He knew it wasn't right. He knew they didn't worship the God that he saw, and he waited, and he survived. And then the missionaries arrived and obviously you recognize time has to unfold, right? Languages have to be learned. They have to then communicate. They're communicating the gospel. And as he's hearing the message of the gospel and knows God's specific plans for his redemption, he believes and he articulates something to him. He says, I knew that the gospel had been sent to him by the true God he'd seen for years. He believed and in looking back on his life could see how God had spared him and prepared him for his great salvation. A man that saw and acknowledged the evidence in front of him for years. A man who grasped his responsibility to that God and waited for that God's truth. He knew more was there. And he realized, as he looked back, how God had protected him for years as God orchestrated his very particular and personal salvation. Because you will find God when you search for God. As Hebrews 11, six says, and without faith it is impossible to please him, for he who draws near to God must believe that he is. and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him. And that man knew that truth. He looked up, living in a world with no societal indication of a true God, and the evidence in the universe told him there was one. He knew that there was a God. And then, ultimately, without knowing a single verse of the Bible, recognized and lived out the reality that God is a rewarder of those who seek Him. I put as a couple closing questions, but are you seeking Him? How come the world doesn't see? How come this person I engage with doesn't see? How come they seem to be so hard-hearted? Well, guess what? You're gonna have to believe that He is. You're gonna have to know Him. You're gonna have to see God. You're gonna have to acknowledge the reality that stands in front of you. I put it here, if you acknowledge the rightness of God, the reality of His justified wrath against our sin. Why does Paul begin with that? Because it's critical. He says in Romans, let every God be right or true and every man a liar. God is right. That's not God being petty. That's God being God. Have you recognized the responsibility of man and are you acting in light of it? There was a guy, Bertrand Russell, and someone says, well, if you die and end up in judgment, you say there's no God, no eternity, but if you end up in judgment, what would you say to God if that happened? He says, if there is a God, he says, I would tell God not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence. What's horrific is that man never said that to God. He knows there's a God. He's aware of it, but he doesn't get to say not enough evidence, God. And then I put here, and how has this, the rightness of God and the responsibility of man, the rightness of God in his wrath against sin and the responsibility of humanity for all of sin, how has that as believers changed our witness and engagement with our world around us. And maybe better worded is this, how will it change your witness and your engagement with the world around us? Don't lose the framework of where Paul is. He started by sharing the gospel. He shared his passion of preaching the gospel to people he doesn't know, to Romans, to a church he's not personally familiar with except for a few people. He's articulated that he's not ashamed of this at all, he's proud of it, he's confident in it, and articulated that the need for that. And then he shares about the rightness of God, all in the context of witness. All these verses from now till chapter 3 verse 20 are dealing with the sinfulness of man, the fact that we are responsible, that we are culpable. And as believers, that's not an aha, told you so moment to the world around us, but instead it's supposed to drive our witness as it drove Paul's. He is praying to go to Rome to preach. And yet God will give us opportunities with Rome over and over again here in Culpeper, Orange, Madison, wherever you're from, Spotsylvania, whatever you engage, a lot of you work up in DC, work with a lot of people that are under his wrath. And what does that do to us as believers? Do we have the heart that's articulated on God's word right here? Do we have the passion to share the gospel? Is that a priority in our lives? Over maybe our advancement, our finances, over everything we want to do? How has the reality of God's rightness and the responsibility of man, as believers, changed our witness, or how will it change our witness and our engagement with the world around us?