Read
Rom 1:18
I’m a sinner
too, you know. Do you think I like standing up here and telling
other sinners about the wrath of God? I’m just as deserving of
the wrath of God as anybody in the room, and don’t I know it. But
the sounder you become in your thinking, the more you accept that
God’s wrath is more than reasonable, very much called for, and
that He’s even incredibly patient about it.
Like it or not,
the wrath of God has got to be talked about, because the wrath
of God is a reality in human life. It’s seen every day, somewhere
on the planet. More on that in a bit. First, to keep our continuity
in Romans: just last week in v 17 we saw how Paul says “the righteousness
of God is revealed” to all who believe. That’s what leads him to
the thought of v 18, that “the wrath of God is revealed” to all
“unrighteousness of men.” Paul is slick, I tell you. The guy knows
how to line things up. And he knows what he’s talking about.
God gives righteousness
– His own righteousness! – to those who trust Him.
But God gives wrath – His own wrath! – to those bent on pursuing unrighteousness.
And what is most
surprising in this section is how God reveals His wrath from heaven.
It’s not in the ways we would expect. Men think of God judging
in the world by catastrophic acts of judgment falling upon people.
Men talk about God striking them with lightning bolts, killing
them, causing plagues – and sure, those are evidence of His curse
upon the sinful world. But there are worse demonstration of God’s
wrath in the world.
We’re coming
into a section of Romans – the next 3 chapters of the letter –
from v 18 all the way to 3:20, Paul is talking about Mankind’s
Desperate Need of the Gospel. The word gospel means “good news”.
And it’s been said before: men can’t understand the good news coming
from God until they understand the bad news of where they’re at
now. And before Paul explains further how God’s righteousness is
given to sinners in the gospel, he shows why it is so urgently
necessary that we know the way to be right with God! Humanity lives
in the dark about that, and can never find the way to be right
with God, because we are so hell-bent on pursuing what’s wrong.
Read with me vv 18-32 and learn: the response of God’s righteousness
to unrighteousness.
That was an anatomy
of man’s native spiritual condition. And it explains a great deal
about what is happening among men, both on the global level with
nations living in idolatry, and what is happening in individual
lives, as corrupted sinners, corrupt more. And it’s not correct
to merely say that God judges men for their sin and idolatry; the
way they get sold out to sin and idolatry is in fact part of His
judgment. Him letting it happen is their judgment. So we’re going
to talk about:
1) The Reasonable
Reality of God’s Wrath in the World – v 18
2) The Reasonable Reasons for God’s Wrath in the World – vv 18-23
3) The Reasonable Results of God’s Wrath in the World – vv 24-32
1) The Reasonable
Reality of God’s Wrath in the World – v 18
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness
and unrighteousness
of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.”
First, what does Paul mean by the wrath of God? People dislike talking
about God as wrathful, but it’s because wrath, when we see it among
men, is so regularly sinful, out of line, and wrong. Passionate, explosive
and uncontrolled. But even the word Paul chooses helps us to see that’s
not in his mind at all: because he had a word in Greek for explosive
anger that bursts into a rage, and he did not pick that. He picked
the word for a settled, lasting anger. A determined anger. The wrath
of God is not ignoble of Him; rather, it is too noble for us – it’s
too perfect, too just – that is what bothers us. It is so appropriate,
we hate such perfection.
God’s response
to sin is personal and intense. And this personal, intense anger
is not revealed at some future time. Paul writes in the present
tense: it is being revealed. God is angry now, and it’s showing
now. On the stage of the world, now. It misunderstands Paul to
think he is saying that the wrath of God is coming someday; to
be manifest at the event of the judgment day. Now it’s true, that
will be a day of wrath like no wrath ever seen before. But what
Paul says here is that the wrath of God is currently, presently,
now being revealed from heaven, against ungodly acts and unrighteous
men. It’s going on all around us. The history of the world is the
history of a planet and a race under judgment.
Even with that,
we can have no problem with God being wrathful. He’s patient about
it, waiting longer to pour out wrath than any of us have a right
to expect. He delays it over and over and over. He is slow to anger,
reluctant with wrath. He lets men get away with a great deal before
He deals with them. One of the most admirable features of the wrath
of God is, it is not an instant response to a few incidences of
wickedness; it is His thoughtful response to persistent wickedness.
Does Paul mean
two different things by “ungodliness” and “unrighteousness of men”?
They might be synonyms (two words to say the same thing), but it
is more probable for Paul, as a Jew whose entire life and thought
had been constructed around the 10 Commandments, that “ungodliness”
meant disregard of what we owe to God and “unrighteousness” meant
dealing unjustly toward our fellow-man. Finding any big difference
between those words is not important. What is important is for
us to face that God’s wrath in this world is a completely reasonable
reality. He is entitled to display it. When God is displeased and
brings consequences for it, there is every reason that He should
be.
We have come
to a time in which the idea prevails among men that, God is too
kind to possibly have anger at anyone. You’ll encounter this as
you talk to men and try to convey the truth to them: many of them
have ruled out, as out of the question, that God would be angry
with anyone. He is above that! Don’t let them get by with that
unchallenged. It really bodes badly for their souls if that viewpoint
stays with them. Because nobody has ever been made ready to learn
about God’s grace if they won’t see that we live under His wrath.
Let’s see:
2) The Reasonable
Reasons for God’s Wrath in the World – vv 18-23
When I talk about the “reasonable reasons” for God’s wrath in the world,
it’s not just a play on words. Have you ever thought that someone was
being unreasonable, but when you got the whole story, and you learned
why he’s doing what he’s doing, you discovered that you were out of
line to even raise a question! He’s being more than reasonable! So
it is with the wrath of God. When we think we are good, the wrath of
God sounds like utter barbarity. When we admit that we are sinners,
the wrath of God can still seem quite over-blown and not appropriate.
When we perceive how very sinful we are, the wrath of God appears for
what it is – part of His goodness.
It’s not being
of a certain temperament that makes a person able to teach the
wrath of God; nor being a preacher – it’s not innately easier for
preachers to talk about! It’s not like there is a certain breed
of men who like to stand up on platforms before audiences and denounce
the world, and God picks them and makes them fire and brimstone
preachers. It’s seeing yourself as the sinner you are that makes
God’s reasons for wrath appear more than reasonable.
A young student
from Louisiana was conversing with his professor at the Bible college,
a college that had abandoned loyalty to Scripture – and nearly
no matter what point he would raise, when he would support his
point with a Scripture, the reply was, “That’s just your interpretation;
there are other ways of looking at that verse.” When he spoke of
the resurrection of Christ (that’s your interpretation). When he
spoke of the homosexual lifestyle being condemned by the Word of
God (that’s your interpretation). When he spoke of Christ being
a bonafide historical figure, who came in real time to our world
(that’s your interpretation).
So he finally
took the professor to Rom 1:18 – read it aloud – and asked “What’s
your interpretation of that?”
Paul did write some words that you simply can’t find alternate interpretations
for. This is one! And from v 18 on through to v 23, Paul lays out an
amazingly insightful analysis of how unbelief and sin progress – or
shall we say, regress – when men suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
Have you ever tried hard to ignore truths of the Bible that you knew
were good for you? Run from facts about God and yourself that you knew
you had to face up to? Paul’s next few words are a scary picture of
what happens when we do that.
Just as God has
built into His world the fact that, men who use the light He gives,
make more progress and get more light; so, if you resist the light
you have, you move increasingly into the darkness and your ability
to see from there is diminished, thus making your likelihood to
go further wrong from there, a certainty. And this isn’t just Paul
giving Jewish “trash talk” about mankind. He’s trying to show us:
“Look how badly men need the gospel!” If they don’t believe it,
life is all downhill from there!
This shows vividly
why people you know need the gospel. You are going to see this
principle of deterioration at work, in their lives, as they move
away from true knowledge of God and resist what they know of God,
it’s not like steps downward, it’s like a slide. Like in mountain
climbing: I’ve seen edges which, you can tell, the closer you stand
to that unsafe spot where you ought not to walk, that gradually
curving slope becomes an unmanageable angle (Terry & Gabe can
remember seeing a spot or two like this, climbing Mt. Elbert),
and the more certain your plunge to death is. You get out there
too far and a slide off is unavoidable. And you slide, and can’t
stop.
Have you ever
heard people who did some terrible evil say, “I don’t know how
it happened; I didn’t mean to. One thing led to another, and next
thing I knew, I was doing it” – whatever it was! And we are disgusted
with what excuse-making it sounds like and the refusal to face
up to responsibility in that description! And yet at the same time,
there is an element of truth to it. God lets men slip faster than
they counted on when they start to toy with sin. One thing does
lead to another. But we had better get to those reasonable reasons
for God’s wrath:
A) Unbelief,
Stage One: Suppressing the Truth – vv 18-20
“…who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” – v 18c
Why is God wrathful towards men? Because He has been kind enough to
reveal a great deal about Himself to men, and they hate it. They plug
their ears and run the other way and deliberately pursue the wrong.
Wrong deeds and even wrong ideas about God. Deliberately. Wrong ideas
of God do not arise innocently or merely by mistake. The knowledge
of the true God is accessible, but men close their minds to it. There
is a lot about God that men can easily know, and they stifle it. This
is what Paul means by, men “suppress the truth.”
There is an active,
continual striving against what we know is true, going on all over
the world in a majority of people. The majority of people who hear
the gospel do it – they stifle it and put it out of mind. And a
majority of people who never hear the gospel do it – why is God
wrathful with them? Because even what truth they do already know
of God, they stifle and put it out of mind. Think about that and
it will completely change your ideas once and for all about “God
has to give everyone the same chance to hear the gospel.” Nonsense.
Don’t be telling God what He has to do, to be fair! God has to
do no such thing! God tells you what you have to do; you forget
about telling God what He has to do.
The 1st 3 chapters
of Romans are incomprehensible if you believe God has to give everyone
an equal chance and does not make choices among men. He chose a
whole nation and gave them commandments, sacrifices, a temple,
a priesthood, prophets, a whole religious system to picture the
coming Savior, so that nation would be prepared to look for Him.
And He gave absolutely none of that to any other nation on earth,
leaving them fully in the dark and completely out of His choice.
To this day,
He fills some people’s lives with privileged knowledge of the gospel
of Christ, and millions of other people are never aware of it at
all. And anyone who objects to that should ponder this: God knows
that they would not receive the gospel. Why? The knowledge of Himself
He gave them already, they rejected. Can you still say He is obliged
to owe them more truth? By God’s way of justice, their rejection
of the truth He already gave them entitles Him to take that away
and show them less and less, not more.
When you think
of suppression, think of a cover-up. Think of a man who hiding
shady financial deals in his company which would expose him as
a fraud if it ever leaked out! – so he complicates the ledgers,
so nobody can ever find out. Suppression. Think of a little boy
who finds a baby kitten, and sneaks it into his room, and stuffs
it in his backpack, in a box, in the back of the closet, behind
the clothes, to muffle the meows, so nobody knows there’s a kitty
in his room. Suppressing the truth. Squashing it down so no one
will see or hear or find.
Men do this with
the knowledge of God, so that it doesn’t reach others, and they
even do it to themselves. We can truthfully say that men suppress
the truth about what is right and wrong, what they should or shouldn’t
do, but most of all, Paul says that men suppress the truth about
God.
And men are as
capable of this on a Pacific jungle island where the gospel has
never come as men are in a city where they walk past a church every
block and ignore the marquis that says “Jesus died for our sins”.
Be sure you grasp the ramifications of what Paul is saying. I am
going to say something vital for you to understand today, after
centuries of doctrinal disputes in the churches over this: a person
does not have to hear and reject the gospel to be lost! He just
has to be a sinner to be lost.
In America, many
have swallowed a view that God will make sure every man hears the
gospel in some form or another, before he dies, so he can make
his choice to accept or reject Jesus. It just shows how hard we’re
trying to prove something that, we’ll even make up some laughable
theory which is so obviously not so, just by mere observation!
You can find untold multitudes of people who lived and died and
never heard the first hint of the gospel, nothing resembling the
gospel. Why does God condemn them? Because being lost in sin does
not require hearing and rejecting the gospel. It just requires
being sinful and lost in sin.
Condemnation
is the result for anyone who sinfully rejects what he knows of
God, and continues in sin. God is not obliged, if He makes a plan
by which men may be saved, to share it with all men. He is not
obliged to share it with any man! We are obliged to not suppress
what truth He shows us, in unrighteousness.
Vv 19-20 are
very precise about exactly what unbelieving men suppress. To say
that men suppress the truth by acts of unrighteousness is just
a general way of putting it. Then Paul takes us by the hand and
shows us, we do it in all these ways – and you have seen men do
it:
* Men resolve to still pursue evil deeds, even though they have been
warned against them
* Men resolve to still stay in sin even though the way to be righteous
has been explained
* Men hinder others from hearing the remedy. Paul saw this: 1 Thes
2:15-16
* Men argue against what is true and call it a lie, and make up their
own rules
* Men squash the conviction in their own consciences
* Men create their own ideas of God even though who the true God is,
is clear
You see, for
men to suppress truth means, they must see it and be aware of it.
And men are seeing much truth about God. They see it and are getting
it. God is revealed in the world, and the world gets the message.
But they don’t like what they see, so they suppress it. I said,
“the truth about God” because that’s the first point that v 19
makes, after saying men suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
“What do you mean, Paul?” V 19: I mean “because that which is known
about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.”
Truth “about
God.” And it’s so hard to keep that which is known about God from
being seen, because it’s not just evident in sources somewhere
“out there”, but it’s “evident within them”! How do you hide from
yourself that which is evident within you? In their own souls,
they know a lot about it. Their own consciences cry out that there
are things we know about God. In vv 19-20, Paul puts together a
powerful 1-2 punch on this point, to all mankind, involving 2 “C’s”
– creation and conscience. Listen to these – vv 19-20:
“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 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.”
He says creation
makes obvious what kind of God there is; and that human conscience
sees what creation preachers. We don’t miss it. We all see it.
There are things that men instinctively know about God, because
He has made us in such a way that we can’t miss it.
I remember a
day in 1969, when I walked out of a bowling alley without paying,
and I thought I was so tough. I can walk in there, bowl, and walk
off without paying, and what do I care? No sooner was I outside
than I saw a bicycle parked on the sidewalk. I had walked to the
bowling alley and didn’t feel like walking home, so I hopped on
it and rode off up the street. What a tough guy I was. Two thefts
in the same minute! What a rush. What a feeling of power. I saw
a pack of cigarettes in the bike’s pouch, and I had never smoked,
but why not? I’ll try it. I lit one up. What a tough guy I am!
Riding on a stolen bike, after ripping off the bowling alley, smoking
a cigarette! What a punk, huh?
About a mile
from there, about halfway home, I was crossing through a big field
of dry, brown grass on that bike. I smoked that cigarette less
than 2 minutes before I decided, this stinks, why do people smoke?
So I dropped it into the dry grass of that field. And I tell you,
it was like a miracle – it seems like, before I got 50 feet on
that bike, I smelled smoke and looked back, and a big swath of
grass was on fire. I turned around and went back and began to stomp
on that grass fire, and it spread 3x faster than I could stomp.
And I was agitated and stomping fast! And in a moment of time,
I was aware: here I am, standing with a stolen bicycle in the middle
of a huge field, on fire.
And the thought
filled my conscience: “God did this. He’s out to get me, because
of my sins.” I didn’t go to church. I didn’t read the Bible. I
had no Christian friends. But I knew that the stuff I’d just done
was wrong and that God was angry and this was a message from God!
– “What are you going to do now, tough guy? You just started a
big fire, you punk.” And here come people running from the neighborhood
to put it out. I got out of there and committed another sin: I
lied to the first person who asked me if I started that fire –
“Me?! Not me! I found it and was trying to put it out.” And as
soon as I got far enough from there I ditched that bike and walked
home and felt sinful and under God’s anger all the rest of that
day. Until a little time passed, and it wore off, and I went back
to my habit of ignoring God and not paying attention to the truth
I knew. I did not let that experience sink in. I returned to sinful
theft and other evils and suppressed what I knew. Does God owe
such a creature the gospel?
There’s one simple
story for you, of an angry 16-year old boy, and how suppressing
the truth in unrighteousness works. You have your own stories,
if you will let yourself remember them. Some stories that only
your own conscience knows of to this day, stories of your sin and
guilt, and how before you ever admitted it, before you honored
served, thanked or praised god, you knew there was a God to whom
you had to give account!
What I told you
about this wicked, lost teen, I’ve seen in other lives and so have
you: men do believe within that there is a God of power above,
and they know that their evil deeds deserve the wrath of His power.
In moments of sudden peril, some will scream “God have mercy.”
Others, who would not acknowledge God, when tragedy strikes their
lives, the way they complain is an acknowledgement of God! I have
heard professed atheists give themselves away during tragedy, when
they spoke so hatefully about God, and “If there is a God, why
does He allow this?” Once it was so vehemently expressed I asked
him, “If there isn’t a God, who are you so angry at right now?”
His anger clearly was directed at a personality. He looked at me
like a man who’d been found out.
We innately know
there is a God and we innately know things about God. The word
“evident” in v 19 means, something easily seen. You do not have
to be an intellectual to see that God created! You have to work
very hard at pretending to be intellectual to deny it. You have
to put a lot of thought into purposefully seeking alternative explanations
to what’s obvious – “evident” – what Paul calls “suppressing the
truth” – to get to where you really think it’s a profound idea
that there is not a God or that He is not the explanation for the
universe which is. Talk about living in “denial!”
Men who deny
what they know about God. Telling themselves that what they know
to be true about God, is not true! Eccl 3 calls it God placing
“eternity in their heart.” Heb 2 calls it men “living in the fear
of death all their lives”. Because they know there is a God and
that death is the appointment.
But Paul doesn’t
stop at saying that God made Himself “evident within them”, He
goes on to speak explicitly of what men think about within themselves
– what information actually does get to the conscience – v 20:
it is His invisible attributes of eternal power and Divinity –
just, God-hood! Being God! God has made us in such a way as we
respond to the obvious evidences seen in creation. He made Himself
obvious in what’s around us.
I have sat on
the grass with fellow-believers, looking up at the skies, and joked
about how all that we see just happened to be, by chance, by accident.
Have you ever done that? It’s too funny. Johann Kepler said “the
undevout astronomer is a madman.” – he’s insane. Much learning
hath made thee mad. As a friend of mine has said, “You have to
go to college for a really long time to believe some of the things
men think up.” It takes major effort to stop believing that “the
heavens declare the glory of God”, Ps 19:1.
I come to my
seat in the church and find a sketch of stick figures, in 3 crayon
colors, and I know a child has drawn it for me. No one has ever
found such a drawing and asked himself first, “Could this be accidental?”
I come home and
find a beautiful painting of 19th-century art on the table, and
I know that Mrs. Whitney has designed another cover for one of
our books, in about 10 hours of skillful oil-color painting.
I leave home
for a vacation and return in one week, and find my house entirely
gone and the most magnificent palace in the world is built there
instead! – and I know that someone with astonishing, unnatural
power has been there! A miracle-worker has been present, to accomplish
such a feat in 7 days! These things are obvious!
But people you
know – I won’t talk hypothetically or generally, about the way
“mankind” is – let’s put it this way: people you know – lots of
them! – look at a vast universe in which there was once nothing
and now there are huge planets and vast stars, rotating in orderly
patterns, living creatures of thousands of species, majestic mountains,
rivers 1,000 miles or more in length and seas in which you could
lose a continent, a sun shining on it with enough force from 93,000,000
miles away to keep it warm and lit – and he says “I’m sure it was
all by accident” – to encounter that and decide that no personality
with intelligence or power was involved, makes the words “the fool
says there is no God” a massive understatement! What insanity could
call this accidental or evolutionary? It’s suppressing the truth.
And that’s just one truth suppressed.
V 20 says that
God’s eternal power and Divine nature are “clearly seen” – this
is why I say, men are “getting it.” As long as the creation has
been here, information about God which would otherwise have been
invisible and unknowable, is clearly seen. How would we know that
there was an Almighty, Divine Being with such immense power? We
could not know any such thing until He did something. But we know
because it is all “understood through what has been made.”
The final words
of v 20 are key to getting us back to Paul’s point about the wrath
of God: “so that they are without excuse.” Anytime people are doing
wrong, they seek an excuse. A justification giving some basis to
say, “But I didn’t know!” or “I wasn’t sure what to do with that.”
“How could I tell there was a God?” But the witness of creation
and the responsive witness of conscience allow for no excuses.
Creation is messenger and conscience is judge. Excuses are intolerable
in this case.
And when men
are not persuadable by the things that are made that there is a
God, they show their cards: they don’t want to believe. And no
amount of evidence would change their minds. A fact to be kept
in mind when we talk about how far God lets the gospel go, and
how far He does not let it go.
Bertrand Russell
– philosopher, logician, mathematician, prolific writer – is without
excuse when his intellect and scholarship make him cavalierly dismiss
“Argument from Design” in 3 paragraphs. The L.A. cabbie who hasn’t
read anything deeper than the Sunday comics in years is without
excuse too. The Papua New Guinea tribal warrior who’s illiterate
and doesn’t even know that writing exists and has never heard of
a book is without excuse too. Because all 3 men are suppressing
the truth in unrighteousness. Each of them has enough truth about
God to not deny that there’s a God; each of them has enough truth
about God to not bow to idols; each of them has enough truth about
God evident to not sell out to wicked behavior.
Some of us have
had a lot of exposure to God’s revelation. Some have very little.
But get the message of Rom 1: to suppress truth about God is a
trait common to man – some know a little and suppress it, some
know a lot and suppress a lot. But we all show our cards: we’re
members of a wicked race who hear what God says and see what God
does, and put mufflers on our ears to silence it. As Jesus implied,
that he who is unfaithful in a little matter is really quite like
the one who is unfaithful in much, Luke 16:10. It’s the same test,
only different in the size of the contents.
So if we ever
question, “Do the peoples of the world actually have enough knowledge
of God to be judged for not obeying what they know? To be considered
guilty of suppressing it?” They most certainly do, yes.
And now I can
only touch on what we will explore more next week:
B) Unbelief,
Stage Two: Perversion of Truth – v 21-23
So, man’s suppression of truth is deliberate. They all know God exists.
But knowing what they know, men will unrighteously suppress the truth
that they know. And what happens from there? They pervert the truth.
That is, they make up something about God in its place. Instead of
worshipping the God Who is, they worship something else. “Even though
they knew God”, v 21.
V 21a: “They
knew God.” But I thought that man could not “know God” until he’s
saved? Doesn’t Paul say elsewhere that man is ignorant of God and
without the knowledge of God? Yes, but in those places, Paul is
talking about a thorough knowledge and a very personal, intimate
knowledge of God. Here, by saying “they knew God” Paul obviously
only refers to the ways he just named: they know there is a God
and that He has eternal power. And knowing that, look at v 21,
which we will explain at more length next week:
V 21: “they did
not honor Him as God or give thanks” – men should be praising Him,
and do not. Men should be thanking Him, and do not. Much of men’s
disinterest in coming to church is simply, distaste for and dislike
of praising God and thanking God. They want the gifts and don’t
want to say “thanks.” They see the glory and casually ignore it.
It is untypical of men to live to give glory to God, even though
they know enough that they should.
V 21b: “but they
became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was
darkened” – KJV says in their “imaginations”, and that doesn’t
mean “imagination” as we use it, but speculations, reasonings,
the way we think through a subject. The more you hear men in Western
culture speak with admiration of religions that they knew were
barbaric, you see allegedly wise men succumbing to futile thinking.
Glorifying the practices of horrendous ancient religions and asking,
“Well, who are we to say their religion was wrong?” And as Doug
Wilson has said, “Those who say that witches should never have
been burned have no idea what a witch was or what a witch did.”
Ask me more later if you dare really want to know.
The result of
this is that men’s minds become more dark than they even were naturally
by sin to begin with. And the final word for today:
V 22: “professing
to be wise, they became fools.” This is a result. A first result,
before worse results are described starting in v 23.
Well, I can’t
say it’s been a pleasure. The first 5 messages in Romans were so
sweet, and this one has been a burden to deliver. But we learned
things that we must know.
So Paul’s whole aim here has been to show that all humanity is morally
bankrupt, and unable to get any favorable verdict at the bar of God,
and so we desperately need His mercy and pardon. God doles out wrath
patiently, in small doses and measures; but His mercy He pours out
without limits. Even though all of us know more than we live up to,
and the most ignorant of us could have discovered more about God in
His works than we did, and were only held back by enmity against God
reigning in our hearts.
But He saved
us. He has left others in their sins, I do not know why, but He
saved us.
I will say to
you, to bend the nail over on some of today’s points:
1st, What a Spot
we’re in
All of you – church-goers, kids whose parents have preached Jesus all
your life –see what a spot you’re in? As we read here that the whole
human race is without excuse for resisting God and ignoring the truth
they know. How much do you know? We will face the utmost in wrath if
we do not give ourselves to Christ, because you have suppressed the
most truth ever shown!
2nd, What a God
we Serve
Keep yourself aware of the great, Divine, eternal power of God. Guard
your soul by staying aware of Who it is you are dealing with. We often
hear God addressed in casual terms today, ways that we would not dare
address a boss at work, a parent at home, or a mayor of a city; we
hear music that so sentimentalizes God and speaks mushily of Christ
that it obscures Who He is. We must keep our own creatureliness and
His supremacy before us. Worship is good for us in this way.
3rd, What a Great
Gospel we Have
One more reason why we must tell men the gospel: people we know and
love will decline in sin without it. Many will go from bad to worse.
But the better
reason above that is, that God is not honored and thanked as He
ought to be when they stay as they are. And I want God to have
glory from their lives.
The gospel reveals
how Christ took God’s wrath so that our sin may be pardoned and
His wrath completely used up – satisfied. And this is why I picked
the verse at your bulletin heading. Remember who you are:
"We wait
for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, that is
Jesus,
who delivers us from the wrath to come." 1 Thess 1:10
Praise God for
Him.
