The Wrath of God | Romans
The Gospel of God : Part 2
Pastor Charles Price
Romans 1:18-32
I want to read to you from Romans 1. I am going to begin reading at Romans 1:18.
This is one of the most sober passages in the whole of Scripture. If you don’t have your own Bible, I recommend you use one from the pews there and that you keep it open as we look at what Paul has to say here.
Romans 1:18-32
“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 worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator – who is forever praised. Amen
“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.
“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.”
When you go to visit your doctor, the first and most important task that they have is to make an accurate diagnosis of your presenting symptoms. If the diagnosis is wrong, then the remedy is going to be wrong.
And we probably don’t need to argue about the presenting symptoms of our society and of our world, for they are exposed to us in our news bulletins every night and splashed across our newspapers.
But the question is: what is the underlying disease? What is actually wrong with our world? And is there a remedy?
In his letter to the Romans, Paul presents a diagnosis of the human condition in the first two and a half chapters before then offering, in the rest of the book, a comprehensive remedy.
And last week we looked at Romans 1:17, which was our key verse, that says,
“For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last.”
But today our key verse is the next verse, Romans 1:18, where Paul writes,
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.”
Now notice that both are being revealed. The righteousness of God is revealed, and that is in the past tense - it has been revealed to us.
But now he says the wrath of God is being revealed. As I will make clear a little bit later, that is in the present tense – it is being revealed.
But both the righteousness of God and the wrath of God can only be known by the revelation of the Spirit of God.
Now I want to talk today about the wrath of God. This is an important issue, not least because it is a very difficult issue.
For many of us it gives God a bad name. Often as Christians we feel that the wrath of God is something about which we either keep extremely silent or we need to make an apology and explain how it’s not really wrath, but something much nicer than that. It’s just unfortunate that wrath is a bad word. And maybe some hackles here this morning are already being aroused by the fact that I am introducing this theme.
We fear that wrath is not consistent with God’s love or with His kindness.
I looked up in my Oxford Dictionary a definition of wrath. It defines it as extreme anger.
So I looked it up in Webster’s to see if Webster could make it a little softer, but they don’t; they make it even harder. They define wrath as strong, vengeful anger or indignation.
There is no way to soften this word. It means what it means.
But is this a blotch on the character of God or is in some way this a part of His love, is this a part of His holiness?
And I want this morning that we very humbly try to understand what Paul writes here. I say very humbly because it’s not pleasant and we need, in humility, to seek to understand what is being said.
He talks about two things. He talks about the provocation of God’s wrath. On what grounds is God’s wrath provoked?
And I want you to look carefully at Paul’s argument because in Romans 1:18-19 he says,
“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.”
Now notice the issue is not in itself the wickedness of the people but that they suppress the truth by their wickedness. It is the suppression of truth that is the real issue.
In Romans 1:21 he says,
“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.”
Here’s the problem: they knew God (we’ll see why he says that in a moment) but they did not act accordingly and give thanks to Him, which is the natural response to recognizing God.
Romans 1:25 says,
“They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.”
In other words, they traded in the truth for a lie. They exchanged the truth.
Romans 1:28 says,
“Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over.”
They had a knowledge of God but they did not retain it.
So the issue that Paul addresses is not intellectual – it’s not a question of ignorance. It is volitional. It is a question of their will turning away from God.
But that begs the very big question: if he says, as he does several times, that people suppress the truth although they know God, they don’t respond to Him, they exchange the truth for a lie, they don’t retain knowledge of God; the question it begs is how is it that God has revealed Himself so clearly that Paul says people are without excuse (in Romans 1:20)?
Well there are two ways that he speaks about – one here in Romans 1 and then we will look into Romans 2 at something he says there.
First of all, he says God has revealed Himself in creation. Now that’s in Romans 1:20. For he says,
“For since the creation of the world God 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.”
This is what we may call a natural revelation of God that is available in creation to anyone who will open their eyes and then believe what they see and then follow it through to its logical cause where he says they will find God.
Now of course we respond by saying, “Come on, that is naïve in the extreme; to say simplistically that creation reveals the Creator is naïve.”
But actually it is profoundly important. It is the most simple and the most logical explanation for the universe that we are a part of, and the most logical argument for our existence.
There have been arguments presented throughout history for the existence of God that rely not on the Bible or God’s revelation but upon what is naturally available to any thinking and reasoning person.
I will very briefly give you four of them because they are all implicit in what Paul is saying here.
There is first what we call the cosmological argument. And the cosmological argument says that every effect must have a cause. See, rest is a natural state; motion is an unnatural state. There is something behind motion; there doesn’t have to be something behind rest.
You know this pulpit here is stationary right now. That is entirely natural. None of us are thinking about it because it is the most natural thing in the world.
But if suddenly this pulpit began to move across the stage, you would all stop listening to me and say, “What in the world is making that happen? Is there a piece of string somebody is pulling? Are there some wheels on it somehow? Is there some kind of magnetic pull that is pulling it along?”
Because to be stationary like this is totally natural; it doesn’t need any explanation. But to be moving, we would all want to know what is the reason for it?
If suddenly tomatoes began pelting me we would look up into the balcony and see who is throwing them, because tomatoes don’t spontaneously start hitting people – somebody is behind them.
And in the way that pulpits don’t move across the stage without having a cause behind it, and tomatoes don’t come flying through the air without a cause, Paul’s argument is very simple: wake up and be sensible! There is a reason behind everything you see. That’s not foolish, that’s not stupidity; that’s intelligence.
Then there is the teleological argument. And that’s an argument from design because the world reveals intelligence, order, harmony, purpose. And that implies that it exists for a purpose and it exists for an intelligent, not a random, existence, but for intelligent purpose.
And therefore there is a being adequate to the production of such a world that lies behind it.
It would be a very remarkable thing if a hurricane blew through a junkyard and stirred it all up, and when the hurricane had passed by and all the junk had settled, it left behind a Boeing 747 jumbo jet that was capable of flying. Wouldn’t that be rather remarkable?
Well that’s about the level of the intricacy and marvel of the world we live in if this is purely fluke.
And if there is no intelligent design, it is fluke.
There is the ontological argument, which is an argument that is based on the fact that we can only mentally conceive of things which actually exist. Now we can think of fictitious things, but even those fictitious things are based on human experience of some kind.
So we can think of a mermaid, which is entirely fictitious, but a mermaid is half a fish and half a woman – we just combine them.
We can think of Martians but we always give them something identifiable that we know. They will have a big eyeball or they will have feathers or will have fingers or whatever.
And when it comes to God we are able to conceive of something that we have never actually seen or experienced. We can conceive the idea of absolute perfection, of absolute power, even though we have never seen it.
And this is presented as evidence of the fact that deep within our gut we know something like this exists. Otherwise we would not be able to conceive of it.
Then there is fourthly the moral argument that says that we have an innate sense of right and wrong (we are going to talk about that a little bit later in Romans 2), that we have a conscience and this innate sense that certain things are right and certain things are wrong.
The issue then that Paul is writing about here is not do we have a revelation of God, but do we suppress the logic of that revelation? Do we refuse to give thanks, he says, to God? Do we exchange the truth for a lie? (Romans 1:25).
They failed to retain the knowledge of God (in Romans 1:28). But though we might suppress it and refuse it and exchange it and not retain it, it is there, is his argument.
Abraham Lincoln, I confess is my favorite American president, and he once wrote this:
“I never gaze at the stars without feeling that I am looking into the face of God. I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the sky and say, ‘There is no God’.”
You might say that is naïve, that is simplistic, that is kindergarten thinking, that is unsophisticated, that is unscientific. You would of course be wrong, though you might think that. The fact remains creation reveals a Creator.
And so Paul writes in Romans 1:19,
“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.”
Now notice Paul doesn’t say everybody knows Christ that way – they don’t. Or everybody has heard the gospel – that’s not true.
But everybody has had a revelation of God and the issue is do I follow the trail that opens up to me? And do I ask the question, who is that God? Is He personal? Is He knowable? Can I connect with Him? If so, how? That is the trail we have to go through.
Now if we are indifferent, we won’t follow the trail. If we are intellectually lazy we won’t follow the trail.
But there is a revelation of God at the starting gate, which, if followed, leads along a path to knowing God.
But they didn’t follow through and so he says in Romans 1:21,
“Although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him.”
That’s not following it through. And this is what happened:
“And 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.”
Very simply, when we don’t respond to Him thankfully, in which we are acknowledging Him and our dependence on Him, our thinking becomes foolish, our hearts become darkened, we claim to be becoming wise.
In actual fact we are becoming fools and our folly rapidly descends, he says, into Romans 1:23 where they are exchanging the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal men, birds, animals and reptiles. And inevitably we sink into idolatry.
It was G.K. Chesterton who said,
“When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.”
Do you know you can go to any city in the world at any time in its history, whether it is primitive or sophisticated, and you may not see great industry in every place and you may not see great centers of learning in every place and you may not see the accumulation of wealth in every place, but you will see the evidence of worship.
You will see the temple or the shrine or the mosque or the church or the idols. And if we have crushed those with our sense of sophistication or our political correctness, we will replace them with sporting stars, rock stars, film stars, heroes, and we will create a celebrity culture because we have to have somebody bigger than ourselves, and we will worship.
You see the fingerprint of God is all around and in our lives. If we suppress that truth about God if we refuse to give thanks to Him, it leads, says Paul, to spiritual, moral and behavioral bankruptcy.
And if that is unchecked it becomes, in Romans 1:29, wicked, greedy and depraved.
So Paul’s charge is not they didn’t know anything about God, but that they failed to acknowledge and follow through what they knew. That’s his charge.
Now if God has revealed Himself in creation, He has also revealed Himself in conscience. Creation is out there, it’s objective to us. Conscience is in here; it is subjective.
In Romans 2:14 he says,
“When Gentiles who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they don’t have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.”
He says look at people who have no revelation of God in any objective way, they have never been given the law of God; they actually have it written in their hearts. There is a sense of right, there is a sense of wrong, there is a sense of good, there is a sense of bad that is imbedded in the heart.
It can become damaged of course. It can become distorted. But it is intrinsic to us. It is what we call natural law, a law that is known by nature and it is universal.
That’s why children know injustice very early; they recognize it. Children have an acute sense of fairness and of fair play. They know kindness when they see it. They know right and they know wrong.
And we have this inbuilt knowledge that is evidence of the moral character of God that is within us. And though sometimes evil does seem to dominate in our world, this natural law will bring it back to something better.
So the killing fields of Pol Pot in Cambodia could not survive. The exploitation of colonialism could have its fling for about a century and then collapse. The oppression of Communism survived 60 or 70 years. North Korea cannot survive in its present oppression – morally it cannot survive – the natural law will correct itself in due course.
We are seeing that in Syria. We have seen it in Libya and other parts of the world.
And we are aware of this natural moral law. The requirements of the law are written on our hearts.
So Paul’s charge is this: that people have turned a blind eye to creation and they have turned a deaf ear to conscience. And as a consequence they are under the wrath of God.
What do I mean by that?
If that’s the provocation of God’s wrath, let me talk secondly about the expression of God’s wrath.
And I pointed out earlier that he speaks in the present tense, in Romans 1:18,
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men.”
How is God’s wrath expressed? Does He zap us? Does He destroy us? No, it is much more subtle and more devastating in its consequences than that.
There is a phrase that reoccurs three times in these verses where Paul says that “God gave them over”.
In Romans 1:24:
“Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.”
Romans 1:26:
“God gave them over to shameful lusts.”
Romans 1:28:
“He gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.”
Do you know how God expresses His wrath? He gives us over to the logical end of our own choices. God’s judgement on us is He lets us go our own way.
He speaks of three areas specifically in these verses. He talks about what he calls sexual impurity, first of all, in Romans 1:24.
“Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.”
Now this is a general statement, and sexual impurity can take on many forms. But he specifically mentions lesbianism in Romans 1:26,
“Women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.”
And male homosexuality in Romans 1:27:
“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.”
There is a lot of documentary evidence that homosexuality was rampant in Rome at this stage in their history. And in Roman society men freely engaged in sex with other males. Bi-sexuality was trendy and affirmed. And many married men – especially wealthy married men – often kept male concubines. There is a lot of documentary evidence for that at this time.
There is less record of lesbianism, though it was there and Paul refers to it here.
Paul is not speaking hypothetically or theoretically; he is actually speaking about real situations in Rome where this letter is going.
It is interesting; whenever homosexuality is mentioned in the New Testament it is in documents that are either address to Rome or Greece. That’s where it was prominent.
Jesus never talked about it because it seems amongst the Jews it was not at all widespread or encouraged. It wasn’t a social issue as it was in Rome, which he addressed.
However it would be a mistake to see this as a treatise on the homosexuality. He is simply citing as an example amongst others of what he is talking about generally when he speaks of sexual impurity, which he describes as degrading their bodies with one another.
And what is God’s judgement on sexual immorality? He will let you go. His wrath is He will hand you over. He doesn’t send thunder bolts to destroy us. He hands you over.
You know if there is somebody here this morning and you are engaged in an illegitimate sexual relationship, God is not going to strike you down. He won’t make your car crash on the way to a secret rendezvous. You may crash purely coincidentally but He won’t make it happen. You may get there safely and come home safely. And He will let you go – He will let you go.
There is a case in 1 Corinthians 5 of a man who was engaged in a sexual relationship with his father’s wife – clearly not his mother, but his step-mother. And this man had been warned about this and Paul tells them to hand this man over to Satan – same phrase.
God gives us over – hand him over into the territory which he describes as satanic, that he has chosen. Let him live his sexually immoral life, Paul says.
And in Romans 1:27 here back in Romans 1 he talks then about them receiving in themselves the due penalty for their perversions.
God’s wrath is that He will let you do it and you will pay the price and so will other people.
Let me point out carefully to you Paul’s argument about how this comes about. He uses the word exchange several times in this passage.
In Romans 1:23 he says,
“They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images.”
Romans 1:25:
“They exchanged the truth of God for a lie.”
In Romans 1:27:
“Women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.
Romans 1:27:
“Men abandoned” (same meaning – exchanged) “natural relations with women for men.”
Romans 1:28:
“Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God they exchanged it.”
Notice that the exchange of the glory of God for images, the exchange of the truth of God for a lie becomes the exchange of sexual morality for sexuality immorality.
Here’s the logic: if we are created to be in God’s image – and we talked about this last time – then we only know what humanity is to be like if we know what God is like because we were made in His moral likeness. That is logical; if we are in His image, we know what we are to be like if we know what God is like.
But if we do not know what God is to be like, we therefore do not know what humanity – if we don’t know what God is like, we don’t know what humanity is to be like and we exchange what is natural behavior for what is unnatural, and then we consider the unnatural normal.
Stuart Briscoe, writing about this passage has said this, he says,
“Confusion about deity leads to confusion about humanity. And confusion about humanity leads to confusion about identity. And confusion about identity gives rise to confusion about sexuality.”
In other words if you get deity wrong, you will get humanity wrong. If you get humanity wrong, you will get your identity wrong. Get your identity wrong, you will probably get your sexuality wrong.
And the sexual breakdown of our day, as of the Roman Empire, is an inevitable consequence of spiritual breakdown, that exchange of the truth of God for the only alternative, which whatever flavor it is, is a lie. Exchange the truth of God for a lie, he says.
And we are left ignorant and confused about our identity, about our function, and therefore about our sexuality. And we begin to affirm and promote that which is a violation of truth.
And so he says at the end of Romans 1:32,
“They not only continue to do these very things themselves but they also approve of those who practice them.”
God’s wrath is expressed in letting us go down this road of our choosing. And the sexual distortions of our world, according to this passage in Romans 1, if I understand it properly, are simply evidence we are living under the wrath of God.
Not that we deserve the wrath of God – this is itself the expression of His wrath, with all the enormous pain and brokenness that goes with it.
If that’s sexual impurity, the other two very quickly – he talks about material idolatry. It says in Romans 1:25,
“They worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.”
Because if the Creator is not the center of our lives, we cannot be left with a vacuum because nature abhors a vacuum, and so we put into the vacuum, created by the neglect of the Creator, created things.
And this is called idolatry. It may not be initially obvious but in due course it will become so because he speaks in Romans 1:23 of creating images made to look like mortal man, birds, animals, and reptiles.
And when people’s center of their lives moves from the Creator to created things, to material things, when people’s goals in life become the accumulation of things, when we measure our value by our possession of things, when we attach virtue to the possession of things, when we get up on Monday morning and are driven by the race for things, we are living under the wrath of God is the message of Paul here.
Notice,
“They worshiped” (Romans 1:25) “and served created things.”
What you worship you serve. What you serve you worship.
What motivates you? What gets you out of bed? What gives you your meaning?
He says created things replace the Creator.
This is very difficult for us because this is normality in our culture. We are too sophisticated to call this idol worship, but idolatry is replacing the Creator with the created.
In light of this passage I think it is probably true to say historically that when materialism is god, sex becomes the goddess. And history shows that when nations and peoples are materially prosperous, they usually become spiritually indifferent and then they become morally bankrupt. And the moral bankruptcy then destroys the material prosperity.
And it’s a cycle. It was true of the Roman Empire. It has been true of other civilizations through history and it is true of the Western world. And it will decline. It will implode. Because our prosperity has created an indifference, which has created a moral bankruptcy, which in itself is destroying our prosperity.
And the third thing – sexual immorality, material idolatry; the third thing is personal indulgence. Particularly he talks about intellectual arrogance because in Romans 1:21, though they claimed to be wise, having rejected the truth and replaced it with lies,
“Although they claimed to be wise they became fools.”
Because they didn’t follow the clues through that creation and conscience had implanted within them, they only had a human perspective to fall back on.
And according to the human perspective, they became wise. In actual fact, in the big picture, they became fools because in the absence of God in our thinking and perspective, Romans 1:21 says,
“Their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools.”
You know wisdom in the Bible has little to do with intelligence and foolishness has little to do with lack of intelligence or IQ.
Wisdom or folly have to do with disposition. And our disposition, our attitude to life, has to do with what we do with God.
The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, the book of Proverbs tells us.
And this is Paul’s argument and this is his diagnosis of our world. On the basis of the exchange of truth that God has given to us in creation and in our conscience, we have failed to take that revelation – partial though it is at that point – and begin to follow it through logically.
And so our minds become darkened instead of enlightened, we become foolish instead of wise and we are given over to our willful corrupted behavior sexually, materialistically, and egotistically.
And he sums it up in Romans 1:28 with,
“God gave them over to a depraved mind.”
And I won’t read Romans 1:29-32 but you read that sometime and there are 22 different things there that he gives as symptoms of this depraved mind.
Without any exaggeration or any mock sensationalism – I am not into any of that – we can hold this up as a mirror to our society. Paul could have been writing to us and said exactly the same things.
We are living under the wrath of God. He has given us over as a society. But what is true of a society in only true when it is true of individuals.
And if you choose to be here with a nice smile on your face on a Sunday morning but go back home to live in sin, you are kidding yourself that you are getting away with it.
You know the first time you sin willfully, deliberately, you can’t sleep at night. Your conscience is screaming at you. The next time you will get a little bit of sleep; it will shout at you – your conscience will shout at you. The next time your conscience will talk to you. The next time your conscience will whisper to you and you will think, “I am getting away with this. God doesn’t seem to mind. He is not causing me to wrap my car around a tree.”
No He is letting you go. He will let you go unless and until we come to a point of recognizing the truth about that, confessing it and repenting of it.
But there is one last thing, because if there is the present expression of the wrath of God in that it is being revealed (His wrath in the present tense), there is of course an ultimate expression to God’s wrath, and we will talk about this later in Romans 2.
But he says in Romans 2:5:
“You are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgement will be revealed.”
You see, it’s not as if, “well look I’m in this sin and actually I am enjoying it. Yeah, I know there are a few negatives, but it is too good to let go.”
Don’t think that’s the end of the story. There is a coming a day of God’s wrath. There is a coming a day of judgement. Romans 2:2 speaks of God’s judgement against those who do such things as based on truth.
Romans 2:5:
“You are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath.”
Romans 2:6:
“God will give to each person according to what he has done.”
Romans 2:16:
“This will take place on the day when God will judge men’s secrets” (notice – secrets).
There is coming a judgement day we will either stand before God covered with the righteousness of Jesus Christ or we will stand alone under the wrath of God.
You know the problem with sin is not that it distorts my life, it’s not that it messes me up, it’s not that it makes me a slave, it’s not that it leaves me with scars. All of that is true. The problem with sin is it provokes the wrath of God.
If it just messed me up and was a problem to me, well then you can try and overcome it. You can get some counselling. You can try to resolve it. But none of those addresses the key issue. Sin provokes the wrath of God and no counselling deals with the wrath of God.
And that’s why we have the cross of Christ because we will not understand the cross of Christ until we understand the wrath of God. The cross of Christ addresses smack on the wrath of God, and we will see that in a couple weeks’ time, how and why.
Because all the wrath of God on sin is channeled to Jesus Christ so that if I am in Christ, I am sheltered and I am safe because now the wrath of God is being channeled into Christ, all His righteousness can be channeled into me.
Now this is just a diagnosis that Paul has been giving here in the verses we have looked at. And we have to get the diagnosis right if we are going to begin to find the solution.
And we will talk about solutions but don’t wait until then if God the Holy Spirit is convicting you this morning. There is an old chorus we used to sing – some of you will know it and many of you won’t know it:
There’s a way back to God
From the dark paths of sin
There’s a door that is open
And you may go in
At Calvary’s cross is where you begin
When you come as a sinner to Jesus
Let’s pray together. I don’t know what has gone on in your own heart in these last 45 minutes or so. I don’t know what has been provoked. I don’t know what indignation may have been aroused, what anger may have been aroused. I don’t know what conviction may have been brought.
But some of us need to talk to God and say, “God, I am sliding down a road and You have handed me over. It’s getting easier and I justify it more and more” and you need to stop and confess and repent and trust.
Will you do that?
Lord, I pray for every one of us in this building. We are very conscious of our sins, our failures. But I want to pray for those who have given up the battle against sin. They have adopted their sin. It has become their friend, become their pet, and they love it. I pray Lord Jesus You will wake us up to see it as it is, to see its consequences, to see that sin is and can only be destructive. And bring us to the cross of Jesus that we might know forgiveness and cleansing and renewal.
I want to read to you from Romans 1. I am going to begin reading at Romans 1:18.
This is one of the most sober passages in the whole of Scripture. If you don’t have your own Bible, I recommend you use one from the pews there and that you keep it open as we look at what Paul has to say here.
Romans 1:18-32
“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 worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator – who is forever praised. Amen
“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.
“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.”
When you go to visit your doctor, the first and most important task that they have is to make an accurate diagnosis of your presenting symptoms. If the diagnosis is wrong, then the remedy is going to be wrong.
And we probably don’t need to argue about the presenting symptoms of our society and of our world, for they are exposed to us in our news bulletins every night and splashed across our newspapers.
But the question is: what is the underlying disease? What is actually wrong with our world? And is there a remedy?
In his letter to the Romans, Paul presents a diagnosis of the human condition in the first two and a half chapters before then offering, in the rest of the book, a comprehensive remedy.
And last week we looked at Romans 1:17, which was our key verse, that says,
“For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last.”
But today our key verse is the next verse, Romans 1:18, where Paul writes,
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.”
Now notice that both are being revealed. The righteousness of God is revealed, and that is in the past tense - it has been revealed to us.
But now he says the wrath of God is being revealed. As I will make clear a little bit later, that is in the present tense – it is being revealed.
But both the righteousness of God and the wrath of God can only be known by the revelation of the Spirit of God.
Now I want to talk today about the wrath of God. This is an important issue, not least because it is a very difficult issue.
For many of us it gives God a bad name. Often as Christians we feel that the wrath of God is something about which we either keep extremely silent or we need to make an apology and explain how it’s not really wrath, but something much nicer than that. It’s just unfortunate that wrath is a bad word. And maybe some hackles here this morning are already being aroused by the fact that I am introducing this theme.
We fear that wrath is not consistent with God’s love or with His kindness.
I looked up in my Oxford Dictionary a definition of wrath. It defines it as extreme anger.
So I looked it up in Webster’s to see if Webster could make it a little softer, but they don’t; they make it even harder. They define wrath as strong, vengeful anger or indignation.
There is no way to soften this word. It means what it means.
But is this a blotch on the character of God or is in some way this a part of His love, is this a part of His holiness?
And I want this morning that we very humbly try to understand what Paul writes here. I say very humbly because it’s not pleasant and we need, in humility, to seek to understand what is being said.
He talks about two things. He talks about the provocation of God’s wrath. On what grounds is God’s wrath provoked?
And I want you to look carefully at Paul’s argument because in Romans 1:18-19 he says,
“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.”
Now notice the issue is not in itself the wickedness of the people but that they suppress the truth by their wickedness. It is the suppression of truth that is the real issue.
In Romans 1:21 he says,
“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.”
Here’s the problem: they knew God (we’ll see why he says that in a moment) but they did not act accordingly and give thanks to Him, which is the natural response to recognizing God.
Romans 1:25 says,
“They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.”
In other words, they traded in the truth for a lie. They exchanged the truth.
Romans 1:28 says,
“Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over.”
They had a knowledge of God but they did not retain it.
So the issue that Paul addresses is not intellectual – it’s not a question of ignorance. It is volitional. It is a question of their will turning away from God.
But that begs the very big question: if he says, as he does several times, that people suppress the truth although they know God, they don’t respond to Him, they exchange the truth for a lie, they don’t retain knowledge of God; the question it begs is how is it that God has revealed Himself so clearly that Paul says people are without excuse (in Romans 1:20)?
Well there are two ways that he speaks about – one here in Romans 1 and then we will look into Romans 2 at something he says there.
First of all, he says God has revealed Himself in creation. Now that’s in Romans 1:20. For he says,
“For since the creation of the world God 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.”
This is what we may call a natural revelation of God that is available in creation to anyone who will open their eyes and then believe what they see and then follow it through to its logical cause where he says they will find God.
Now of course we respond by saying, “Come on, that is naïve in the extreme; to say simplistically that creation reveals the Creator is naïve.”
But actually it is profoundly important. It is the most simple and the most logical explanation for the universe that we are a part of, and the most logical argument for our existence.
There have been arguments presented throughout history for the existence of God that rely not on the Bible or God’s revelation but upon what is naturally available to any thinking and reasoning person.
I will very briefly give you four of them because they are all implicit in what Paul is saying here.
There is first what we call the cosmological argument. And the cosmological argument says that every effect must have a cause. See, rest is a natural state; motion is an unnatural state. There is something behind motion; there doesn’t have to be something behind rest.
You know this pulpit here is stationary right now. That is entirely natural. None of us are thinking about it because it is the most natural thing in the world.
But if suddenly this pulpit began to move across the stage, you would all stop listening to me and say, “What in the world is making that happen? Is there a piece of string somebody is pulling? Are there some wheels on it somehow? Is there some kind of magnetic pull that is pulling it along?”
Because to be stationary like this is totally natural; it doesn’t need any explanation. But to be moving, we would all want to know what is the reason for it?
If suddenly tomatoes began pelting me we would look up into the balcony and see who is throwing them, because tomatoes don’t spontaneously start hitting people – somebody is behind them.
And in the way that pulpits don’t move across the stage without having a cause behind it, and tomatoes don’t come flying through the air without a cause, Paul’s argument is very simple: wake up and be sensible! There is a reason behind everything you see. That’s not foolish, that’s not stupidity; that’s intelligence.
Then there is the teleological argument. And that’s an argument from design because the world reveals intelligence, order, harmony, purpose. And that implies that it exists for a purpose and it exists for an intelligent, not a random, existence, but for intelligent purpose.
And therefore there is a being adequate to the production of such a world that lies behind it.
It would be a very remarkable thing if a hurricane blew through a junkyard and stirred it all up, and when the hurricane had passed by and all the junk had settled, it left behind a Boeing 747 jumbo jet that was capable of flying. Wouldn’t that be rather remarkable?
Well that’s about the level of the intricacy and marvel of the world we live in if this is purely fluke.
And if there is no intelligent design, it is fluke.
There is the ontological argument, which is an argument that is based on the fact that we can only mentally conceive of things which actually exist. Now we can think of fictitious things, but even those fictitious things are based on human experience of some kind.
So we can think of a mermaid, which is entirely fictitious, but a mermaid is half a fish and half a woman – we just combine them.
We can think of Martians but we always give them something identifiable that we know. They will have a big eyeball or they will have feathers or will have fingers or whatever.
And when it comes to God we are able to conceive of something that we have never actually seen or experienced. We can conceive the idea of absolute perfection, of absolute power, even though we have never seen it.
And this is presented as evidence of the fact that deep within our gut we know something like this exists. Otherwise we would not be able to conceive of it.
Then there is fourthly the moral argument that says that we have an innate sense of right and wrong (we are going to talk about that a little bit later in Romans 2), that we have a conscience and this innate sense that certain things are right and certain things are wrong.
The issue then that Paul is writing about here is not do we have a revelation of God, but do we suppress the logic of that revelation? Do we refuse to give thanks, he says, to God? Do we exchange the truth for a lie? (Romans 1:25).
They failed to retain the knowledge of God (in Romans 1:28). But though we might suppress it and refuse it and exchange it and not retain it, it is there, is his argument.
Abraham Lincoln, I confess is my favorite American president, and he once wrote this:
“I never gaze at the stars without feeling that I am looking into the face of God. I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the sky and say, ‘There is no God’.”
You might say that is naïve, that is simplistic, that is kindergarten thinking, that is unsophisticated, that is unscientific. You would of course be wrong, though you might think that. The fact remains creation reveals a Creator.
And so Paul writes in Romans 1:19,
“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.”
Now notice Paul doesn’t say everybody knows Christ that way – they don’t. Or everybody has heard the gospel – that’s not true.
But everybody has had a revelation of God and the issue is do I follow the trail that opens up to me? And do I ask the question, who is that God? Is He personal? Is He knowable? Can I connect with Him? If so, how? That is the trail we have to go through.
Now if we are indifferent, we won’t follow the trail. If we are intellectually lazy we won’t follow the trail.
But there is a revelation of God at the starting gate, which, if followed, leads along a path to knowing God.
But they didn’t follow through and so he says in Romans 1:21,
“Although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him.”
That’s not following it through. And this is what happened:
“And 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.”
Very simply, when we don’t respond to Him thankfully, in which we are acknowledging Him and our dependence on Him, our thinking becomes foolish, our hearts become darkened, we claim to be becoming wise.
In actual fact we are becoming fools and our folly rapidly descends, he says, into Romans 1:23 where they are exchanging the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal men, birds, animals and reptiles. And inevitably we sink into idolatry.
It was G.K. Chesterton who said,
“When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.”
Do you know you can go to any city in the world at any time in its history, whether it is primitive or sophisticated, and you may not see great industry in every place and you may not see great centers of learning in every place and you may not see the accumulation of wealth in every place, but you will see the evidence of worship.
You will see the temple or the shrine or the mosque or the church or the idols. And if we have crushed those with our sense of sophistication or our political correctness, we will replace them with sporting stars, rock stars, film stars, heroes, and we will create a celebrity culture because we have to have somebody bigger than ourselves, and we will worship.
You see the fingerprint of God is all around and in our lives. If we suppress that truth about God if we refuse to give thanks to Him, it leads, says Paul, to spiritual, moral and behavioral bankruptcy.
And if that is unchecked it becomes, in Romans 1:29, wicked, greedy and depraved.
So Paul’s charge is not they didn’t know anything about God, but that they failed to acknowledge and follow through what they knew. That’s his charge.
Now if God has revealed Himself in creation, He has also revealed Himself in conscience. Creation is out there, it’s objective to us. Conscience is in here; it is subjective.
In Romans 2:14 he says,
“When Gentiles who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they don’t have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.”
He says look at people who have no revelation of God in any objective way, they have never been given the law of God; they actually have it written in their hearts. There is a sense of right, there is a sense of wrong, there is a sense of good, there is a sense of bad that is imbedded in the heart.
It can become damaged of course. It can become distorted. But it is intrinsic to us. It is what we call natural law, a law that is known by nature and it is universal.
That’s why children know injustice very early; they recognize it. Children have an acute sense of fairness and of fair play. They know kindness when they see it. They know right and they know wrong.
And we have this inbuilt knowledge that is evidence of the moral character of God that is within us. And though sometimes evil does seem to dominate in our world, this natural law will bring it back to something better.
So the killing fields of Pol Pot in Cambodia could not survive. The exploitation of colonialism could have its fling for about a century and then collapse. The oppression of Communism survived 60 or 70 years. North Korea cannot survive in its present oppression – morally it cannot survive – the natural law will correct itself in due course.
We are seeing that in Syria. We have seen it in Libya and other parts of the world.
And we are aware of this natural moral law. The requirements of the law are written on our hearts.
So Paul’s charge is this: that people have turned a blind eye to creation and they have turned a deaf ear to conscience. And as a consequence they are under the wrath of God.
What do I mean by that?
If that’s the provocation of God’s wrath, let me talk secondly about the expression of God’s wrath.
And I pointed out earlier that he speaks in the present tense, in Romans 1:18,
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men.”
How is God’s wrath expressed? Does He zap us? Does He destroy us? No, it is much more subtle and more devastating in its consequences than that.
There is a phrase that reoccurs three times in these verses where Paul says that “God gave them over”.
In Romans 1:24:
“Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.”
Romans 1:26:
“God gave them over to shameful lusts.”
Romans 1:28:
“He gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.”
Do you know how God expresses His wrath? He gives us over to the logical end of our own choices. God’s judgement on us is He lets us go our own way.
He speaks of three areas specifically in these verses. He talks about what he calls sexual impurity, first of all, in Romans 1:24.
“Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.”
Now this is a general statement, and sexual impurity can take on many forms. But he specifically mentions lesbianism in Romans 1:26,
“Women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.”
And male homosexuality in Romans 1:27:
“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.”
There is a lot of documentary evidence that homosexuality was rampant in Rome at this stage in their history. And in Roman society men freely engaged in sex with other males. Bi-sexuality was trendy and affirmed. And many married men – especially wealthy married men – often kept male concubines. There is a lot of documentary evidence for that at this time.
There is less record of lesbianism, though it was there and Paul refers to it here.
Paul is not speaking hypothetically or theoretically; he is actually speaking about real situations in Rome where this letter is going.
It is interesting; whenever homosexuality is mentioned in the New Testament it is in documents that are either address to Rome or Greece. That’s where it was prominent.
Jesus never talked about it because it seems amongst the Jews it was not at all widespread or encouraged. It wasn’t a social issue as it was in Rome, which he addressed.
However it would be a mistake to see this as a treatise on the homosexuality. He is simply citing as an example amongst others of what he is talking about generally when he speaks of sexual impurity, which he describes as degrading their bodies with one another.
And what is God’s judgement on sexual immorality? He will let you go. His wrath is He will hand you over. He doesn’t send thunder bolts to destroy us. He hands you over.
You know if there is somebody here this morning and you are engaged in an illegitimate sexual relationship, God is not going to strike you down. He won’t make your car crash on the way to a secret rendezvous. You may crash purely coincidentally but He won’t make it happen. You may get there safely and come home safely. And He will let you go – He will let you go.
There is a case in 1 Corinthians 5 of a man who was engaged in a sexual relationship with his father’s wife – clearly not his mother, but his step-mother. And this man had been warned about this and Paul tells them to hand this man over to Satan – same phrase.
God gives us over – hand him over into the territory which he describes as satanic, that he has chosen. Let him live his sexually immoral life, Paul says.
And in Romans 1:27 here back in Romans 1 he talks then about them receiving in themselves the due penalty for their perversions.
God’s wrath is that He will let you do it and you will pay the price and so will other people.
Let me point out carefully to you Paul’s argument about how this comes about. He uses the word exchange several times in this passage.
In Romans 1:23 he says,
“They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images.”
Romans 1:25:
“They exchanged the truth of God for a lie.”
In Romans 1:27:
“Women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.
Romans 1:27:
“Men abandoned” (same meaning – exchanged) “natural relations with women for men.”
Romans 1:28:
“Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God they exchanged it.”
Notice that the exchange of the glory of God for images, the exchange of the truth of God for a lie becomes the exchange of sexual morality for sexuality immorality.
Here’s the logic: if we are created to be in God’s image – and we talked about this last time – then we only know what humanity is to be like if we know what God is like because we were made in His moral likeness. That is logical; if we are in His image, we know what we are to be like if we know what God is like.
But if we do not know what God is to be like, we therefore do not know what humanity – if we don’t know what God is like, we don’t know what humanity is to be like and we exchange what is natural behavior for what is unnatural, and then we consider the unnatural normal.
Stuart Briscoe, writing about this passage has said this, he says,
“Confusion about deity leads to confusion about humanity. And confusion about humanity leads to confusion about identity. And confusion about identity gives rise to confusion about sexuality.”
In other words if you get deity wrong, you will get humanity wrong. If you get humanity wrong, you will get your identity wrong. Get your identity wrong, you will probably get your sexuality wrong.
And the sexual breakdown of our day, as of the Roman Empire, is an inevitable consequence of spiritual breakdown, that exchange of the truth of God for the only alternative, which whatever flavor it is, is a lie. Exchange the truth of God for a lie, he says.
And we are left ignorant and confused about our identity, about our function, and therefore about our sexuality. And we begin to affirm and promote that which is a violation of truth.
And so he says at the end of Romans 1:32,
“They not only continue to do these very things themselves but they also approve of those who practice them.”
God’s wrath is expressed in letting us go down this road of our choosing. And the sexual distortions of our world, according to this passage in Romans 1, if I understand it properly, are simply evidence we are living under the wrath of God.
Not that we deserve the wrath of God – this is itself the expression of His wrath, with all the enormous pain and brokenness that goes with it.
If that’s sexual impurity, the other two very quickly – he talks about material idolatry. It says in Romans 1:25,
“They worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.”
Because if the Creator is not the center of our lives, we cannot be left with a vacuum because nature abhors a vacuum, and so we put into the vacuum, created by the neglect of the Creator, created things.
And this is called idolatry. It may not be initially obvious but in due course it will become so because he speaks in Romans 1:23 of creating images made to look like mortal man, birds, animals, and reptiles.
And when people’s center of their lives moves from the Creator to created things, to material things, when people’s goals in life become the accumulation of things, when we measure our value by our possession of things, when we attach virtue to the possession of things, when we get up on Monday morning and are driven by the race for things, we are living under the wrath of God is the message of Paul here.
Notice,
“They worshiped” (Romans 1:25) “and served created things.”
What you worship you serve. What you serve you worship.
What motivates you? What gets you out of bed? What gives you your meaning?
He says created things replace the Creator.
This is very difficult for us because this is normality in our culture. We are too sophisticated to call this idol worship, but idolatry is replacing the Creator with the created.
In light of this passage I think it is probably true to say historically that when materialism is god, sex becomes the goddess. And history shows that when nations and peoples are materially prosperous, they usually become spiritually indifferent and then they become morally bankrupt. And the moral bankruptcy then destroys the material prosperity.
And it’s a cycle. It was true of the Roman Empire. It has been true of other civilizations through history and it is true of the Western world. And it will decline. It will implode. Because our prosperity has created an indifference, which has created a moral bankruptcy, which in itself is destroying our prosperity.
And the third thing – sexual immorality, material idolatry; the third thing is personal indulgence. Particularly he talks about intellectual arrogance because in Romans 1:21, though they claimed to be wise, having rejected the truth and replaced it with lies,
“Although they claimed to be wise they became fools.”
Because they didn’t follow the clues through that creation and conscience had implanted within them, they only had a human perspective to fall back on.
And according to the human perspective, they became wise. In actual fact, in the big picture, they became fools because in the absence of God in our thinking and perspective, Romans 1:21 says,
“Their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools.”
You know wisdom in the Bible has little to do with intelligence and foolishness has little to do with lack of intelligence or IQ.
Wisdom or folly have to do with disposition. And our disposition, our attitude to life, has to do with what we do with God.
The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, the book of Proverbs tells us.
And this is Paul’s argument and this is his diagnosis of our world. On the basis of the exchange of truth that God has given to us in creation and in our conscience, we have failed to take that revelation – partial though it is at that point – and begin to follow it through logically.
And so our minds become darkened instead of enlightened, we become foolish instead of wise and we are given over to our willful corrupted behavior sexually, materialistically, and egotistically.
And he sums it up in Romans 1:28 with,
“God gave them over to a depraved mind.”
And I won’t read Romans 1:29-32 but you read that sometime and there are 22 different things there that he gives as symptoms of this depraved mind.
Without any exaggeration or any mock sensationalism – I am not into any of that – we can hold this up as a mirror to our society. Paul could have been writing to us and said exactly the same things.
We are living under the wrath of God. He has given us over as a society. But what is true of a society in only true when it is true of individuals.
And if you choose to be here with a nice smile on your face on a Sunday morning but go back home to live in sin, you are kidding yourself that you are getting away with it.
You know the first time you sin willfully, deliberately, you can’t sleep at night. Your conscience is screaming at you. The next time you will get a little bit of sleep; it will shout at you – your conscience will shout at you. The next time your conscience will talk to you. The next time your conscience will whisper to you and you will think, “I am getting away with this. God doesn’t seem to mind. He is not causing me to wrap my car around a tree.”
No He is letting you go. He will let you go unless and until we come to a point of recognizing the truth about that, confessing it and repenting of it.
But there is one last thing, because if there is the present expression of the wrath of God in that it is being revealed (His wrath in the present tense), there is of course an ultimate expression to God’s wrath, and we will talk about this later in Romans 2.
But he says in Romans 2:5:
“You are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgement will be revealed.”
You see, it’s not as if, “well look I’m in this sin and actually I am enjoying it. Yeah, I know there are a few negatives, but it is too good to let go.”
Don’t think that’s the end of the story. There is a coming a day of God’s wrath. There is a coming a day of judgement. Romans 2:2 speaks of God’s judgement against those who do such things as based on truth.
Romans 2:5:
“You are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath.”
Romans 2:6:
“God will give to each person according to what he has done.”
Romans 2:16:
“This will take place on the day when God will judge men’s secrets” (notice – secrets).
There is coming a judgement day we will either stand before God covered with the righteousness of Jesus Christ or we will stand alone under the wrath of God.
You know the problem with sin is not that it distorts my life, it’s not that it messes me up, it’s not that it makes me a slave, it’s not that it leaves me with scars. All of that is true. The problem with sin is it provokes the wrath of God.
If it just messed me up and was a problem to me, well then you can try and overcome it. You can get some counselling. You can try to resolve it. But none of those addresses the key issue. Sin provokes the wrath of God and no counselling deals with the wrath of God.
And that’s why we have the cross of Christ because we will not understand the cross of Christ until we understand the wrath of God. The cross of Christ addresses smack on the wrath of God, and we will see that in a couple weeks’ time, how and why.
Because all the wrath of God on sin is channeled to Jesus Christ so that if I am in Christ, I am sheltered and I am safe because now the wrath of God is being channeled into Christ, all His righteousness can be channeled into me.
Now this is just a diagnosis that Paul has been giving here in the verses we have looked at. And we have to get the diagnosis right if we are going to begin to find the solution.
And we will talk about solutions but don’t wait until then if God the Holy Spirit is convicting you this morning. There is an old chorus we used to sing – some of you will know it and many of you won’t know it:
There’s a way back to God
From the dark paths of sin
There’s a door that is open
And you may go in
At Calvary’s cross is where you begin
When you come as a sinner to Jesus
Let’s pray together. I don’t know what has gone on in your own heart in these last 45 minutes or so. I don’t know what has been provoked. I don’t know what indignation may have been aroused, what anger may have been aroused. I don’t know what conviction may have been brought.
But some of us need to talk to God and say, “God, I am sliding down a road and You have handed me over. It’s getting easier and I justify it more and more” and you need to stop and confess and repent and trust.
Will you do that?
Lord, I pray for every one of us in this building. We are very conscious of our sins, our failures. But I want to pray for those who have given up the battle against sin. They have adopted their sin. It has become their friend, become their pet, and they love it. I pray Lord Jesus You will wake us up to see it as it is, to see its consequences, to see that sin is and can only be destructive. And bring us to the cross of Jesus that we might know forgiveness and cleansing and renewal.