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will you turn with me to Romans
chapter 1 and we're going to read from verse 16 towards the
end of this first chapter of the book of Romans this morning
Romans 1 from verse 16 I am not ashamed of the gospel
because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who
believes first for the Jew and then for the Gentile For in the
gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness
that is by faith from first to last. Just as it is written,
the righteous will live by faith. The wrath of God is being revealed
from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress
the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about
God is plain to them. because God has made it plain
to them. For since the creation of the
world, God's invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine
nature have been clearly seen being understood from what has
been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew
God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him,
but their thinking became futile. and their foolish hearts were
darkened. Although they claimed to be wise,
they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God
for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals
and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over
in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for
the degrading of their bodies with one another. they exchanged
the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served created
things rather than the Creator who is forever praised and then
in verse 32 although they know God's righteous decree but those
who do such things deserve death they not only continue to do
these very things but also approve of those who practice them. May God indeed bless to our hearts
this very solemn and very soul-searching passage of his holy word this
morning. Now as you recall we are beginning
a series of expository sermons through the first part at least
of Paul's letter to the Romans. This book that in so many ways
as we have noticed has influenced profoundly the history of the
Christian Church and indeed the history of all mankind. Surely one of the most important
and significant and influential letters that has ever been written
in the world's whole history. Now we've come this morning to
a passage that surely must be one of the grimmest passages
in the whole Bible if not in the whole of literature itself. And nobody really in his right
mind enjoys reading a passage such as the one we read together
a few moments ago. Yet it is profoundly important
for us if we are ever to understand and grasp that other thing that
Paul has been speaking of and which we've been looking at since
we began this series in Romans, the glory of what he calls the
Gospel of God. This great message that he is
bearing all through the Roman Empire and longs to bring indeed
to the imperial city of Rome itself. You see only as we begin
to grasp the meaning of this great section from verse 18 to
the end of the first chapter can we begin to marvel as we
should at the greatness and glory of the things that God has done
for us in the gospel of his Son. And indeed the whole theme from
verse 18 through to almost the end of chapter 3 is as important
to grasp the gospel as it is for us to understand those great
verses 16 and 17 on which you remember we spent two Sundays
together. if you like I can put it this
way if a doctor is seeing someone in his surgery who is very sick
indeed what he needs that patient in order to become well again
is really two things he needs the doctor to make a thorough
and accurate diagnosis And secondly, what the sick patient needs is
to be able to accept that diagnosis that the doctor has made. I think
it was Dr. Lloyd-Jones, himself a medical
doctor, as well as a great and anointed preacher of God's word,
who said that the doctor who fails in diagnosis fails everywhere. But the second thing is equally
necessary. that the patient must be able
to receive that diagnosis and acknowledge that there is indeed
something very seriously wrong with him. Now this brings us
to the point of the whole subject before us this morning, the wrath
of God. What is the real diagnosis of
mankind's plight as God sees it in the gospel of his dear
son? And you will realize that immediately
several-ish answers have been given to that question. Some
men may say I need a savior because life is difficult and uncertain
and I need someone who will be my guide and friend all through
life. Someone else may say, well, the
diagnosis of my need is that I have an inner emptiness and
frustration and a restlessness that I realize that only God
himself can satisfy. And still a third person might
say, well, because of my sin I'm conscious that in my life
I need pardon and cleansing and deliverance from its power that
continually frustrates me. Now good in a sense as all these
answers are, they do not take us to the real biblical diagnosis
of man's plight. They do not tell us why the gospel
of God is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes
it. but Paul takes us you see to
the right diagnosis in verse 18 and in the rest of that chapter
and indeed in all of chapter 2 and most of chapter 3 as he
says to us in verse 18 the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. And congregation this
morning I have to tell you that biblically that is the nature
of man's ultimate plight. And Paul comes to it at the very
start of his message. to the church in Rome. You see it's not at all that
man needs simply to discover that he is a sinner because so
often when he discovers he's a sinner His only concern is
with what sin has done to him or to those around him that his
sin has affected. But Paul is saying to us, you
see, under this title of the wrath of God, that the real seriousness
of sin is not what it has done to me at all. or to others if
it comes to that. But what it is doing and has
done before the holy God of earth and heaven, it has called down
his active wrath and anger and displeasure upon the sinner from
a holy and a righteous God. Now you see that's basically
why it is such a serious matter to be a man or a woman without
Christ it's not ultimately a question of being less happy without Christ
or more happy with Christ but it's a question of this dimension
that there is no shelter anywhere in the entire universe from the
wrath of God unless you are sheltering under the righteousness of Christ. And that's why it's such a terrible
thing that men are ignorant today of the only saving message that
God has revealed and ever will reveal to mankind. Ignorant of the background in
which the gospel of good news is being preached, the background
of the wrath of God against mankind in all his sinfulness. Now that's
why we need to do two things, three things indeed this morning.
We need to look first at the fact of God's wrath and then
the revealing of God's wrath from heaven and finally at the
object of God's wrath. and I want to do that if I may
in that order that I've given to you now first of all you notice
that our passage and particularly in verse 18 declares the fact
of God's wrath for the wrath of God is being revealed from
heaven Now it's very easy for us to dismiss this whole concept
in the 20th century, the concept of the wrath of God, because
men don't much like the idea of it. And there have been many
attempts to explain it away. Psychologically, for instance,
it's been said that this whole concept of the wrath of God is
almost Victorian in its ethos. but those who hold to it are
suffering from an aftermath of that stern Victorian era you
remember with the picture of the father in the family with
his cane in his hand and almost vengefully inflicting punishment
on even the slightest deviation of his children in that home
And it's the kind of attitude that looks at Jonathan Edwards'
sermon, that great sermon he preached on sinners in the hands
of an angry God. And modern men laugh and ridicule
at the idea that there is an angry God who has sinners in
his very hand and is holding them literally over the pit of
hell. Psychologically, then there's
an attempt to dismiss the wrath of God. Ethnically, there has
been an attempt to dismiss it, as men have come to these scriptures
and said, why, this is Paul, the Jew, the ethnicist, writing
these Old Testament concepts of an angry God. But we are now
under the New Testament, the God of love. and historically
there have been attempts to deny the concept as we are told that
certain people in the church's history unfortunately talked
a great deal about an angry God who held sinners to account Luther
for example and John Calvin and John Knox and the Puritans and
theologically there have been many attempts to deny the wrath
of God saying it is unworthy of him And our problem, you know,
is that we see God's wrath as the equivalent to our own sinful
convictions and emotions. The outbreak of passion, the
spasm of uncontrolled rage and anger. And we think of God's
wrath after our own fallen emotions. And we say this is unworthy of
the God of Scripture. Now you see why so many men have
lost their way regarding the wrath of God is simply this,
why they found this epistle indeed so difficult, because they refuse
to see the connection between verses 16 and 17 with verse 18. Now there are three words in
that connection that bring out the fact and reality of God's
wrath and I want to point them out to you. And the first of
these words is the word for. Now in the New International
Version and I'm so often disappointed with this version, it leaves
out the connective words. In Greek the word gar or deoti
for or because, it's left out in this translation and you lose
the entire sequence between verses 16 and 17 and verse 18 that Paul
intended us to grasp and understand as an explanation of the wrath
of God. Why is there a need for the righteousness
of God to be revealed in the gospel? Because the wrath of
God is being revealed against all human sin. And when we fail to see that
connection, you see the true background to the gospel that
is good news is evacuated. You cannot truly understand the
gospel, you cannot grasp it. Until you see the answer to the
question, why did God have to send his son into the world to
pay the awful penalty for sin and to suffer so greatly? Because
the wrath of God! is against all human sin and
against the whole human race and it summarizes says Paul in
the succeeding verses the history of the whole human race men have
always been under the wrath of God and always will be in their
natural state the word for secondly the word
revealed the wrath of God is being revealed now you notice
that in verse 17 a righteousness from God is being revealed in
the gospel of God and then in verse 18 the wrath of God is
being revealed the identical words are being used something
else is being revealed as well as righteousness and what is
being revealed is this you see that if you are not sheltering
under the righteousness of Christ alone, the salvation, there is
nothing else in the whole universe that will shelter you from the
wrath of God. If you are not living by faith
in the righteousness of Christ in God's sight, no one else in
the entire universe will be able to live, Paul is saying, because
the wrath of God has been revealed against all the ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men wherever it is found. among Jews and Gentiles
alike it doesn't matter who it is because all are condemned
in his sight that every mouth may be stopped and all the world
become guilty before God Now you see, you can no more deny
the wrath of God than you can deny the gospel of God. If you deny the wrath of God
against sin, which has been revealed from heaven, you must be bound
to deny the righteousness of God that is also revealed from
heaven as the solution for the sinner's plight. The whole Christian
faith is a revealed religion. Not man's ideas and conceptions
and psyches and so forth. And it stands as a whole together. You reject one part of it, you
must reject all of it. and you cannot deny the fact
of God's wrath without also denying the fact of God's righteousness
offered freely in the gospel of his son. Now the third term
of course is the term wrath itself and it occurs all through scripture.
and we are to see it as a fixed, unchanging, controlled attitude
of holy anger against men's sins. He hates it. He is irrevocably
opposed to man's sin. all that belongs to the realm
of darkness and sin and Satan is abhorrent to the holy God
and his wrath means his view of sin and his hatred of it that
he who is just and altogether righteous must deal with sin
and bring upon it its punishment both in this life and in the
greater life to come Now that, you see, is the fact that is
before us. And you see how tremendous this
revelation of His wrath really is? It spans the whole of time,
all of human history. It takes into its ambit the whole
story of man, from the Garden of Eden through to the coming
Judgment Day. and it is God's verdict as I
said upon the whole world but unless we have learned what it
is to live in the righteousness of Christ there is nowhere else
in the universe that we can live in God's sight Now you see that's
what makes the gospel such a glorious message. It's the message that
man needs in all his ungodliness and unrighteousness. And the
fact of God's wrath is the only true background in which the
glory of God's gospel can be truly seen and understood. Now secondly, there is the revealing
of God's wrath in the middle, as you notice. Of verse 18, God's
wrath is being revealed, says the apostle. now we need to look
at this revelation of God's wrath from heaven by the way the fact
that it is revealed from heaven simply means that it is with
all God's divine authority but that wrath is coming down upon
men it is revealed from heaven the place where he rules and
has dominion over all his creatures and all their actions It is with
a holy, divine, awesome authority that his wrath is ministered
upon the sins of all mankind. Now consider for a moment how
many of us would have begun our preaching of the gospel with
such a theme as this. Would we not have said to men
today, we realize you're living very defeated lives. and I have
something in this message that will bring you victory or again
I've had a marvelous experience in my life through the gospel
of Christ and you can have it too or again this is something
so wonderful and marvelous it's going to appeal to you and so
forth now you notice this is not what the great apostle does
at all He's not talking about their happiness. He's not talking
about their state of mind and their condition of life. He's
not even talking about something that appeals to them at all. But he does this staggering and
amazing thing. He confronts the church in Rome
with the wrath of God as the very first element of his gospel
preaching. Now why does he do it? Well of
course because he's interested primarily in men's relationship
to God. Their standing in his sight,
their eternal destiny face to face with God. The gospel he
preached is invariably God-centered, not man-centered, as we often
see around us today. He starts with the wrath of God,
and he says to mankind, your whole plight consists in this,
that you are out of relationship with the God who created you
and made you for himself. And all your other problems stem
from that first great problem, and that first great plight. It's not what gets you down in
life. It's not your unhappiness. It's not the things you're worrying
about. And you know that distinguishes
incidentally the true church from all false cults around us. What do the cults project today
in the world? You come and join us and all
these benefits will be yours. You'll live such a fulfilling
life. if you become one of us there
are so many rewards if you adopt our view of the Christian gospel
and the Christian teaching but you see the true gospel starts
with God and holds men accountable face to face with him in their
relationship to him in terms of his wrath against their sins
and incidentally ten times in this one epistle the apostle
mentions the theme of wrath twice in chapter 2, again in chapter
3, in chapter 4, in chapter 5, in chapter 9 even in chapter
12 and in chapter 13 twice again ten times over the wrath of God
is mentioned in the book of Romans and this is all of the biblical
testimony of scripture that man's prime need is in that area and
that's the theme of all the great preachers of the gospel all through
the history of the church whether it's Augustine in the 4th century
John Calvin in the 16th century Whitfield in the 17th century
or 18th century and Jonathan Edwards in that same century
the business of the gospel is to bring people to face that
they are out of relationship with God to reconcile them to
Him the business of the gospel is not primarily to fill churches
it's not to have good statistics but to reconcile men to God to
save them from the wrath to come that's why I think Dr. Martyn
Lloyd-Jones in one of his volumes on Romans says I confess freely
I cannot understand a jocular evangelist Now where is God's wrath revealed? It's revealed from heaven, Paul
says, but where specifically is it revealed? He says it's
being revealed to men Well the Bible gives a number of answers,
look at them with me. It's revealed in man's conscience. You read this in Romans 2 verse
15, their conscience also bearing witness in their thoughts, meanwhile
accusing or else excusing one another. The fact that all men,
says Paul, have a sense of right or wrong is part of this revelation
of God's wrath that is resting upon them. You know how it is
in your own life, you cannot do something wrong without feeling
immediately, usually a sense of guilt. or misery, or shame,
or all three of them. Why? Because the activity of
conscience, beloved, is already a revelation of God's wrath upon
your ungodliness and unrighteousness. Secondly, His wrath is being
revealed in the whole state of creation. you remember God made
the world perfect at the first and it lost its perfection and
the whole of creation scripture teaches us has been plunged into
a state that is imperfect and incomplete where all nature is
rocked by violence in the realm of tornadoes and earthquakes
and hurricanes and all kinds of natural disorders and it has
become the seat of sickness and many of our sorrows and death
has been introduced into the natural world and Paul says later
in Romans the whole creation indeed is groaning and travailing
in pain together waiting for the manifestation of the children
of God the day when creation will be restored to its perfection
you see part of the punishment of man's sin has fallen upon
nature, and nature reveals the wrath of God. Nature is bearing
part of the penalty of your sin and mine. And God is saying,
as you look out on a fallen world, that's what your sin has done.
That is a revelation of my wrath against sin. That when man fell,
creation fell with him. Thirdly, it's shown in the history
of mankind. You see it particularly in biblical
history. That history almost blasts the
theories of historians and philosophers who want to say that we are on
the rise up in the process of evolution from something primitive
to something that is better. Because all human history bears
the message of God's unrelenting wrath resting upon the nations
and mankind in all their sinfulness. You see it in the punishment
of Adam and Eve. You see it in the history of
Cain and the first murder. You see it universally in God's
judgment in the flood of Noah destroying all mankind save a
handful of persons. You see it in his judgment upon
the tower of Babel. You see it upon Sodom and Gomorrah
as he rained fire and brimstone from heaven upon that sinful
city and those sinful cities. And you see it in the rise of
all the nations and their prospering for a season and then transgressing
God's law and going into deeper foulness of sin and God brings
them all down into humiliation. When they pass a certain point,
down they go. And in history, there is the
revelation of God's wrath against sin. Fourthly, it's being revealed
in the present time, in the condition of mankind. Look at verses 19
through 32. We're not going through them
this morning. The very section before us. Men rejecting the
knowledge of God. God giving them up to their own
desires. Men choosing sin rather than
righteousness. God giving them up to their pleasures
for a season. becoming more and more perverted,
God giving them up the third time into their perverted ways
so that they receive in themselves, he says, the just reward for
their conduct. And the wrath of God is being
revealed in men's conduct at the present time as God takes
his restraining hand off man's sin and lets them plunge into
it to their own destruction. it's an evidence of the wrath
of God upon sin he takes the brakes off and makes them reap
the awful consequences of their actions. In the present time,
in the final judgment, it will be fully revealed. That's what
makes the final judgment so awful as the book of Revelation teaches
us. Men in that day will call upon the mountains and the hills
and the rocks. to fall on them and cover them
from him that sits upon the throne and the wrath of the Lamb. But you know, the sixth place
in which the wrath of God is revealed, and the most awesome
place of all, is in a place that you would probably not have thought
of this morning. In the cross of Jesus, on Calvary's
hill, the wrath of the Holy God is revealed more clearly than
in any other place in the entire universe. Why? Because it's the picture of Christ
in outer darkness, drinking up the cup of God's wrath against
the sins of his people from the first of time to the last of
time, drinking it to the very dregs. and God turning his back
on his own son. So that Jesus cried with that
cry of dereliction, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? That's what hell is. He was experiencing
the wrath of God in undiminished measure. against the ungodliness
and unrighteousness of a covenant people. And I have to tell you
this morning, before you ever see the love of God in the cross
of Jesus, you need first to see the wrath of God in the cross
of Jesus. Because that is what is being
revealed there primarily. So you see His wrath revealed
in creation, in conscience, in history, in the present time,
in the final judgment, supremely in the cross of Christ. What
a terrible thing this is! The wrath of God against sin. because those who live and die
in their sins the scripture says their works will follow them
and the punishment that they will receive is to be shut out
of the presence of God in eternal suffering for all eternity and
Paul puts this at the beginning of his message Now it reminds
us that it should be at the beginning of our message as we present
the gospel and the great motive on which we appeal to men to
be reconciled to God. but you know it also says to
us but if that is the fate of the ungodly to have his wrath
resting upon them now and to all eternity what a wonderful
and glorious thing that alternative is that has been revealed from
heaven that a righteousness has been provided that allows me
to shelter from the wrath of God, both in this present time
and in all eternity. And it tells me, you see, that
the wrath of God belongs as really as the love of God. to the gospel
of God. And may Calvary's message burn
its way into our hearts this morning, that the cross of Jesus
has brought to us a love beyond human understanding, to meet
a wrath beyond human understanding. Now thirdly, and quickly as I
finish, because our time is gone, the object of God's wrath, what
is it? Well it's there at the end of
verse 18, the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. And it's
all through the rest of chapter 1 and into chapter 2 and right
up to verse 20 of chapter 3. What is the nature of man's sin
that calls down upon it with divine authority the awful wrath
of a holy God? It is ungodliness. the breaking
of the first four commandments. It is unrighteousness, the breaking
of the other six commandments. In other words, in summary, if
at any point we fail in a right relationship with God, first
of all, and if at any point in our lives we fail in a right
relationship with our fellow men, secondly, we are automatically
under the wrath of God because ungodliness is the biblical word
for summarizing our wrong relationship with God and unrighteousness
or wickedness summarizes our wrong relationships with other
people in other words the total nature and extent of human sin
is under God's wrath Now you can see in the rest of this chapter
how he works it out in all its horrifying and horrible details. Mankind, knowing God by the witness
of creation, deliberately turning aside from that revelation, choosing
to glory in the works of their own hands in all manner of idolatry. which is utterly inexcusable,
leading to lives of continued and awful perversion, and Paul
showing us how God is revealing in their very conduct his wrath
against it all. Now we'll look at it, God willing,
next Sunday morning, the universal reign of sin. But here let me
make three brief observations and finish. The first is this,
I want you to notice. The real essence of sin is ungodliness. You need to realize that. Because
you see, today man looks at sin in terms of the little peccadilloes
that he does. He cheats, he lies, he sleeps
with another woman, she sleeps with another man. And they think
of sin in terms of the second table of the law only, if they
think of it at all. But Paul says, beginning with
the first table of the law, the real essence of sin is ungodliness. Because man was made for relationship
with God. And because he has fallen out
of that relationship with God, he has fallen out of relationship
properly with his fellow men. You don't put the second before
the first. Unrighteousness then, and this
is the second thing, comes about only because of ungodliness.
and it's sinful and insulting to God to believe that any kind
of righteousness is possible apart from Him. That's where
all moral philosophy goes wrong today and where humanism goes
wrong today. It thinks it can establish righteousness
without fiddling us. But the two hang together and
the first must be put as first. Now the third thing is this,
that in evangelism we need to start with man's ungodliness
instead of starting with man's problems and needs. We become so subjective, interested
in ourselves and our problems and salvation as something that
has an answer that is man-centered. No, salvation is primarily something
that has an answer to the problem that is God-centered. We start
with God, our relationship with Him, and only when that is put
right does man's unrighteousness begin to put right, be put right
as well. Now in conclusion I must ask
you, are you in a right relationship with God this morning? Do you
know what it is in your own life to shelter under the righteousness
of Christ by faith? Remember what Paul said quoting
the words of Habakkuk the prophet He who by faith is righteous
shall live! And what he says in Romans 18
is if you're not under that righteousness You cannot live because the only other alternative
is to live under the wrath of God and to perish under his everlasting
displeasure in hell under the full torrent of divine and holy
wrath against your sin. I say to you young people in
the congregation who've been in the communicants class My
dear young friends, we are not dealing with theories and philosophies
and ideas in this pulpit and this congregation. We are dealing
with your life. And if you haven't seen the seriousness
of your sin and your need to have a righteousness, a right
standing with God, put down to your account something you can
never possess by nature and never produce by yourself. If you have
not seen that need and cast yourself upon the Lord Jesus Christ, you
are under the wrath of God this morning. And each one of you,
who may be here, who is outside of Christ, is in that appalling
and dangerous condition. Oh, my friends, I appeal to you.
Are you in right relationship to God this morning? Are you
sheltering under the righteousness of Christ? By faith, let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank
Thee for this solemn and soul-searching word from Thy Word, and we pray
that each of us may examine our condition and those of us who
by Thy grace have passed from that life of condemnation with
its awful consequences Here and now, and in eternity, may we
be thankful with a glorious thanksgiving for that deliverance through
the gospel of God that the Apostle proclaimed. And if there are
those here who are not under that righteousness, May they
realize ever more seriously the reality and fact of God's wrath,
revealed from heaven with divine authority upon it, against all
human ungodliness and unrighteousness, and be moved to flee unto Christ. For now is the day of salvation. Now is the appointed time, for
Jesus' sake. Amen.
The Wrath of God
Series Romans
| Sermon ID | 9911114201060 |
| Duration | 44:48 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | Romans 1:18-32 |
| Language | English |
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