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=A Forgotten Doctrine:
The
Wrath of God
Romans 1:18-20
Paul
writes in Romans 11:22 "Behold the goodness and Severity of God. We have take a look a the goodness of
God.. how God provides,
he is gracious and he is patient.
But the scriptures tell us to behold the goodness and severity of
God, so today my sermon is about the wrath of God. I had planned on
preaching another sermon on a different aspect of the goodness of God…that's
before I read Romans 11:22, after deciding to preach on the wrath of God,
I decided to leave the sign the way it was, afraid. Afraid no one would show up to hear a
sermon about the wrath of God. It
is a doctrine and attribute of God we would rather forget about.
The
reasons for this apparent neglect are not hard to find. Most of us would rather hear about
love and grace. I know I would rather preach about God’s grace.
After all, to speak of the wrath of God makes us
appear narrow-minded and judgmental.
And
somehow we have come to believe that the attribute of anger and wrath are
unworthy of God…that somehow these are blemishes on the character
of God…that to speak of the wrath of God is inconsistent with the
love and grace of God. Even the
church has believed this way. Thanks
to the enlightenment movement of the 19th century and its influence
of church in Europe and eventually schools like Princeton, Harvard and
Yale Divinity Schools many today believe in a celestial Santa Claus,
where God much like Santa Claus is an indulgent benevolent. Sin creates no problem…God loves
those that break his commandments and much as those who keep them….God
because he is a God of love will save all men…and to do otherwise
would not be loving. To believe in
the wrath of God is to be Victorian, old fashioned, Puritan and certainly
not enlightened in your thinking.
And
so many Christians feel as if they
have to apologize for this doctrine. If you brought a friend this
morning, you may feel you need to say a word of apology after the sermon is
over. Please don’t! Or you
are glad you didn't bring a friend.
Let me say there is no need to apologize for God’s Word.
J.
I. Packer in his book knowing God writes: "The fact is: that the subject
of divine wrath has become taboo in modern society, and Christians by and
large have accepted the taboo and conditioned themselves never to raise
the matter" (Knowing God, p. 149). True though these words may be, two facts
stare us in the face:
1. The Bible says more about wrath than
about love.
2. Jesus spoke more about hell than about
heaven.
We may speculate as to the
reasons behind those two facts, but no amount of reasoning can change the
truth. So since God has made no
secret of his wrath, neither should we.
I. The Meaning of God’s Wrath
Let
me begin by talking about what we mean and don't mean when we speak of
wrath as an attribute of God. As
humans we think of wrath sometimes as uncontrolled anger. This is not what we mean when we apply
the term to God. Some when they
think of God's wrath even think of element of cruelty, after all the Old
Testament is filled with stories of God wiping out men, women, and
children in his anger.
Jonathan
Edwards famous sermon "Sinners in the hands
of an angry God." Depicts natural
man held in the hand of God over the pit of Hell. But, God's wrath is not cruel. Let me give you a number of definitions:
1. God’s wrath is
his settled hostility toward sin in all its various manifestations. To say it is "settled" hostility
means that God’s holiness cannot and will not coexist with sin in
any form whatsoever. 2. God’s wrath is his holy hatred of all that
is unholy. 3. It is his righteous
indignation at everything that is unrighteous.
Please
note these distinctions. God’s wrath is not …
Uncontrollable
rage.
Vindictive
bitterness…it is not cruel
God
losing his temper.
In
fact, the Bible says in more than one place that God is "slow to
anger" (Nehemiah 9:17; Psalm 103:8). God never
"loses his temper" the way we do. Wrath is God’s "natural" response to sin in the
universe. He cannot overlook it, he cannot wink at it, he cannot pretend it is not there.
·
Wrath is what
happens when holiness meets sin!
·
Wrath is what
happens when justice meets rebellion!
·
Wrath is what
happens when righteousness meets unrighteousness!
·
Wrath is what
happens when perfect good meets evil!
Would kind of God would not react adversely to sin
evil? Either a God who was not holy…and therefore just didn't care…or
a God who was less than Almighty and couldn't do anything about evil…or
both. In either case you are left
with no God. As
long as God is God, he cannot overlook sin. As long as God is God, he
cannot stand by indifferently while his creation is destroyed. As long as
God is God, he cannot dismiss lightly those who trample his holy will. As
long as God is God, he cannot wink when men mock his name.
Let
me give you three Biblical considerations concerning the wrath of God.
1.
God's wrath is always judicial…it is a wrath from a
righteous judge administering justice.
It is not cruel, for cruelty is immoral, those who experience the
wrath of God experience exactly what they deserve.
2.
God's wrath in the Bible is something men choose for themselves
(Jn 3;18).
The essence of God's wrath is to give men what they choose.
3.
We often speak of God's wrath as being futuristic "the day
of wrath" in Rom. 5:9 or 2:5, but there is a present reality to the
wrath of God.
We find it most clearly
expressed in Romans 1:18-32.
Romans
1:18: "The
wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness
and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness."
First
we should recognize that God reveals His wrath…and he is revealing
it constantly…he makes it known to us…it is not hidden. Second,
this passage pronounces God’s judgment on the whole human race, but
it comes in response to man’s rejection. The truth is, we’ve got the problem—not God. Men
rebel and then God responds with his
wrath.
There
is a simple progression here:
A. Men by nature suppress the truth about
God.
B. That suppression leads to ungodliness.
C. Ungodliness leads on to wickedness.
D. That wickedness leads to every kind of
evil and violence.
The upshot is that Paul is teaching that
moral perversion comes from perversion in faith. Or to say it another way, apostasy in doctrine leads
eventually to apostasy in lifestyle. What you believe is how you live. And
once you decide to turn your back on God, the end result is a river of
wickedness flowing out of your life. Men reject the truth about God, then they turn away from God, then
they turn to immorality.
In Verses 21-23 we see the
downward progression as men come under God’s wrath. There are Five
Stages:
Stage 1:
Indifference to God
"For
although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks
to him" (21a). Truth demands a response, and the
truth about God demands that we the creatures glorify him as the great
Creator. When we don’t, we fail in the great purpose for which
we were created.
Stage 2: Moral
blindness
"But their
thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although
they claimed to be wise, they became fools" (21b-22). If the first step might be
summed up in the word "neglect," the second step might be
called "speculation." As men become indifferent to known truth,
they begin to actively search for alternative explanations. Paul draws a vivid
picture of the result: "Their thinking became futile." This
refers to the mental processes of those who turned away from God. Their
thinking—that is, their ability to look at the world around them
and to draw accurate conclusions about it—became futile.
It’s a strange picture
of men who, having rejected the truth, desperately search for anything to
replace it.
They move from idea to idea, from hypothesis to hypothesis, from theory
to theory, frantically looking for a unifying world view.
Stage 3:
Loss of God
"And
exchanged the glory of the immortal God" (23a). Note
the progression: Neglect leads
to speculation which leads to moral blindness which now climaxes
with a total loss of God.
Although possessing great intelligence,
they are moral and spiritual pygmies.
Stage 4:
Idolatry
"For images
made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles" (23b). What has happened? Because man is incurably religious, if he
will not worship God, he will find (or make) something to worship.
We
now reach the final stage. Note the
progression within this verse. When man turns away from God, he
creates an "image" to worship. First there are images that look human, then the images themselves begin to degrade into
images of birds, then four-footed animals and finally images of snakes
and snails and bugs. Interesting. When man turns from God, he begins by
worshiping himself, but he doesn’t stay there. The course is always
downward.
Don’t
miss the point. When you turn away
from God, you always turn to something else. No man lives in a vacuum.
You either worship God or replace him with a god of your own
making!
Stage 5: God Gave
Them Up
God’s
three-fold response may be seen in verses 24, 26, and 28:
Verse 24 —
"God gave them over."
Verse 26 — "God gave
them over."
Verse 28 — "He gave
them over."
The
word in Greek is paredoken.
The King James Version translates it as "God
gave them up." Barclay renders it "God abandoned them." J.
B. Phillips says, "They gave up God. So God gave them up." It is a very strong word, meaning that
act of God whereby he hands over the human race for judgment because of
their sins. In this passage Paul is telling us what happens when men
turn away from God. "When men lose God, they always lose
themselves." It’s as if God has said, "All
right. If you want to turn away from me, I’ll let you go. I
won’t try to stop you. But you’ll have to face the
consequences of your own actions."
#1: Sexual
immorality 24-25
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 worshiped and served created things rather
than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
#2: Widespread
Homosexuality 26-27
Because of this,
God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural
relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned
natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.
Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves
the due penalty for their perversion. The
homosexual lobby groups are some of the strongest today. This past week (August 25, 2000) the Bangor Daily News ran an article about how the
homosexual lobby groups were pressuring large corporate sponsors of the
Boy Scouts, to withdraw their corporatate
sponsorship because the Boy Scouts will not let gay men have leadership
roles within the Boy Scouts.
#3: Total moral
depravity 28-32
Furthermore,
since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he
gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what
ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of
wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder,
strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters,
insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they
disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous
decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only
continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice
them. I would put the practice of Abortion in
the category…they do what ought not to be.
The Final Step
Verse
32 brings before us the final step in God’s judgment: Public
praise for evildoers. Ponder
this verse carefully and ask what it really means: "Although they know God’s
righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not
only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who
practice them." We have now reached the bottom, and it is
not a nice place to be. The bottom
is where you are when evil becomes good and good becomes evil. The
bottom is where you are when the wrongdoers are publicly praised while
defenders of morality are reviled. The bottom is where you are when truth
is on the scaffold and wrong is on the throne. I do not think it unfair to say that we have essentially reached
this point in America. The wrongdoers have nearly
taken control of three key areas of modern society—education,
medicine, and the media. Now they seek legal status for their iniquity. Schools no longer allow the teaching of
Judeo Christian values, no prayer, but the flag of humanism is allowed to
fly high and proudly. Abortion is legal, partial birth abortions are
legal, and euthanasia is at our doorstep and is the next logical
step. And homosexuality is now consider not only normal, but their rights to practice
the lifestyle is defended by the courts. No one knows the difference
between right and wrong because the values of society have been turned
upside down.
Let us understand something at this point. When God
wants to judge a community or a nation, he simply lets sin take its
natural course. If we insist on destroying ourselves, God says, "OK,
go ahead and destroy yourselves. I won’t
stop you." He simply lets us go our merry way. The true judgment on the human race is
that man has turned away from God and does not realize it.
What is the judgment of God
when men turn away from him? God "gives them up" to their own
devices. He
lets them follow their own desires. God "abandons" the human race by letting men reap what
they sow.
Let
me end with a word of hope. It’s
wrapped up in an important word you need to know: Propitiation. It’s a rare word, yet it’s
used six times in the New Testament to describe the work of Christ on the
cross. To propitiate means two things: 1. It means to have our sins
atoned for…the penalty due against us because of our sin has been
paid. But Secondly it means to turn
away the wrath go God.
The
New Testament picks up this idea of propitiation in 1 John 2:2, "He is
the propitiation for our sins, and not only for
ours but also for the sins of the whole world." By
the offering of himself, for our sin, Jesus turned away God’s wrath
forever.
Let
me give you three truths to summarize the effects of propitiation:
1. Because Jesus Christ died, God’s
justice is now satisfied.
2. Because Jesus Christ died, God’s
wrath has now been turned away. The price for sin has been paid.
3. Because Jesus Christ died, God’s
mercy is now freely available to anyone who wants it.
Justice satisfied …
the price paid … mercy available. What an awesome thought. God’s wrath is real, but so is
his mercy. He satisfied his own wrath by offering his own Son on the
cross. "Amazing love, how can it be, that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?"
Two Final
Thoughts
1. Because Christ
bore the full weight of God’s wrath, we now enjoy the full blessing
of God’s mercy.
If you are a Christian and
you are living with a guilt complex because you think God hates you, how
little you understand of the cross of Christ. The table of the Lord is
God’s final proof that he is not angry at you. He loves you and is
merciful towards you. His wrath has been turned away.
2. For those who
reject Christ, there is nowhere else to turn.
By that I simply mean the
gift of Christ is so great, his sacrifice so magnificent, his death so
awesome in its benefits, that if you decide to go someplace else, what
you will find is there is no place else to go. If you turn from the cross
and go back into the world, or if you think you can do it on your own and
save yourself, if you turn from Jesus Christ, you will discover there is
no place else to go. There is no other name under heaven given among men
whereby we must be saved.
William Cowper
Some
220 years ago there was a man in England by the name of William
Cowper. A man of nervous
disposition, he often struggled with bouts of severe depression. At
one point in his life he became extremely depressed and fearful that he
was under the wrath of God. "I flung myself into a chair by the
window and there saw the Bible on the table by the chair. I opened it up
and my eyes fell on Romans 3:25, which says of
Christ, ‘Whom God has made a propitiation through faith in his
blood.’" These are his words: "Then and there, I realized
what Christ’s blood had accomplished and I realized the effects of
his atonement for me. I realized God was willing to justify me and then
and there I trusted Jesus Christ and a great burden was
lifted from my soul."
Looking
back on that day, William Cowper wrote a hymn that is still in our
hymnbook today.
There is a
fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel’s
veins.
And sinners plunged beneath that
flood
Lose all their guilty stain.
I
wonder if you have ever been plunged beneath the flood of the blood of
Jesus Christ? God’s Son has made
propitiation. He has turned away the wrath of God. He shed his blood and what was a place of judgment is now a mercy
seat for people like you and like me. I urge you right now in the
name of Jesus Christ, to run to the cross. Cling to the bloody cross of Calvary and there you will find
that your sins are forgiven and you will find the forgiveness that you
seek. God help you to run to the cross and cling to Jesus today.
Our heavenly father, in these moments
grant by your Holy Spirit to draw seekers to the Savior. Grant by your
Holy Spirit the blessing now that someone would come to Jesus Christ and
find the forgiveness they need. We pray in his name, Amen.
Calvary Memorial Church
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