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Romans 1:18-23, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 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. 21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.
Many pulpits ignore or deny the wrath of God. We do not intend to ignore or deny it. One day Robert Murray Machine of Scotland asked his good friend Andrew Bonar what he preached about the previous Sunday. “The wicked shall be turned into hell.” M’Cheyne asked his friend, “Did you preach it with tenderness?” Poor lost sinners who die in their sin will experience the wrath of God forever, and forever is a long time. There may be people right here who will experience God’s wrath and we certainly meet people every day who will die without Christ. I mean to preach this with bold tenderness.
In Romans 1-3 Paul is God’s prosecuting attorney bringing a three-chapter indictment against the human race, all seven billion of us. Paul works out God’s case against both Gentile and Jew beginning with Romans 3:18. Then he brings his case against all humanity to a conclusion in 3:20, where every mouth is closed, the entire human race is guilty before God and under the wrath of God and in desperate need of the only remedy, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Puritan Thomas Watson wrote, “Till sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet.” We’re going to make three simple statements about God’s wrath from verse 18: God’s wrath is real, God’s wrath is revealed, and God’s wrath is right or just.
GOD’S WRATH IS REAL “For the wrath of God…”
The first thing you must accept is that God is indeed a God of wrath. Many people don’t want to hear this. “My God is a God of love.” The fact is, the Bible says more about the wrath of God than about the love and tenderness of God. God’s wrath is God’s holy revulsion against all sin and evil everywhere. God is a holy God and does not tolerate or overlook sin. Romans will refer to God’s wrath ten times. But it appears throughout the Bible, Old Testament and New. Psalm 2 ends with, “His wrath may soon be kindled. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.” Nahum warned Israel about God’s wrath.
Nahum 1:2, A jealous and avenging God is the LORD; The LORD is avenging and wrathful. The LORD takes vengeance on His adversaries, And He reserves wrath for His enemies.
Romans 2:5 warns the unrepentant sinner he is “treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath,” indicating that with every day that goes by the unbeliever is more accountable to God for his sin. Romans 9:23 says God is “willing to demonstrate His wrath.” God is not embarrassed about his wrath. God’s wrath isn’t an emotional loss of control but a steady and unrelenting opposition against sin.
John the Baptist exhorted his hearers to “Flee the wrath to come.” In Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian reads in a book that he is living in the City of Destruction and that he needs to flee the wrath to come. Ephesians 2:6 says we were all children of wrath. Revelation 6:16-17 speaks of the wrath of the Lamb and the coming “great day of His wrath,” and Revelation 19:15 tells us that Christ’s coming will be with “the fierce wrath of God the Almighty.”
Let’s face it, God’s wrath is real. Denying God’s wrath is to deny a great portion of Scripture and to believe a lie. God is implacably and vigorously opposed to every evil. And know this, God’s wrath is not just on sin, but on the sinner who sins. Almost the entire Christian world today has bought into the notion that God loves everyone unconditionally, that He accepts everyone. No, God’s wrath remains on every sinner who refuses to repent. Remember from last week that the biggest crisis every person faces is not inflation or the great reset or monkey pox. The greatest crisis every person outside of Christ faces is the wrath of God. God’s wrath is real.
GOD’S WRATH IS REVEALED “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.”
Look at that word “revealed.” Just as the gospel continuously reveals God’s righteousness (Romans 1:17), verse 18 says God is continually revealing His wrath on this earth from His sovereign throne in heaven. He is no idle spectator. God is showing us His wrath against all ungodliness and unrighteousness that men commit. That little word “all” in this context means literally “all.” Ungodliness speaks of all our offenses against the first table of the Law, our spiritual wickedness toward God. Unrighteousness speaks of the second table of the Law, all our evil imaginations, thoughts, words, and actions against other people. Somebody said, “Men’s enmity with his fellow man originates with his being at enmity with God.” If those weekend city thugs didn’t hate God, they wouldn’t be murdering their fellow human beings.
How is God’s wrath revealed? All history reveals God’s wrath. The moment Adam sinned he died spiritually and then physically. That was God’s wrath. The flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, and those plagues on Egypt revealed God’s wrath, as well as countless times He brought judgment on Israel and the nations. His wrath is revealed in the thumping of our guilty conscience when we do something wrong.
God’s wrath is built into moral evil to produce misery. Think of all the heartache sin has caused in marriages, families, drugs and addictions, hatred and murder, the unraveling of the moral fabric of our nation, and the lies and corruption. As we’ll see later, these are all evidences of God’s wrath being revealed all the time on a world of sin and rebellion against Him as He removes the restraints on the depravity of the human heart. The punishment of sin is more sin. People think they are free when they shake off God’s standards and march celebrating their moral perversions, but they are really experiencing God’s wrath as He turns them over to their own lusts and selfish desires. All you have to do is scroll through the daily news headlines to see God’s wrath revealed as He turns us over to our own lusts and selfish desires.
This revealing of God’s wrath is present tense, right now. But let’s not forget that there is an eternal revealing and experiencing of God’s wrath in the lake of fire. But the greatest and most shocking revealing of God’s wrath was at the cross, when the Son of God took the sinner’s place, enduring the hot, avenging wrath of the Almighty to the point that He cried out with a loud voice, a shriek that must have echoed through the universe, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me?” The Father was crushing His own Son with His wrath so we could be rescued from that wrath. As we’ll see in Romans 5:9, “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.” What a precious and sweet promise that is.
GOD’S WRATH IS RIGHT “Against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness…”
Now we’re going to see why God is right in inflicting sinners with His wrath. Let’s look at five reasons God’s wrath is right in Paul’s tightly knit argument that leaves every human being without excuse.
First, as we’ve already seen, God is holy and cannot tolerate the least bit of sin. God’s wrath is revealed against every speck of evil. Nothing gets swept under the rug. No coverup will exonerate the sinner. Ungodliness is the opposite of the fear of God. That rebellion and resentment toward God in the natural man’s heart leading to unrighteousness is the working out of ungodliness in deeds. The order is important. Without godliness based on God’s character and expressed through His law, what is the authority or standard for right and wrong? Who says stealing or adultery or murder or lying is wrong? Two unmarried people engaging in fornication can’t be wrong, can it? When the fear of God is lost in the national conscience, the wrath of God increases, and morality slides deeper and deeper into the slime of moral perversion. Without the fear of God, selfishness rules supreme. We want to make up our own rules, choose our own gender, murder that baby if he or she is an inconvenience.
Second, in our depravity and enmity against God, men suppress the truth about God by our unrighteousness. We don’t naturally like God! We try to get Him out of the way, so we suppress His truth. Like suppressing a beachball, we push down on all the evidence of God by our sin. We argue ourselves out of convictions. We don’t want God in our thinking. Sinners don’t like God or what He says so we suppress His truth. We don’t like God so we push Who He is and what He says away so we can do whatever we want. Someone walks into a church and hears a sermon on God’s wrath and leaves vowing never to return. He’s suppressing God’s truth. Sinners don’t like hearing about God’s sovereignty, God’s omniscience, God’s holiness, God’s immutability. Paul Little tells about presenting the gospel to a student and after a thorough presentation asked the student, “Do you understand?” “Yes.” “Are you prepared to repent and put your faith in Christ?” “No.” “Why not?” “Because it would mess up the way I’m living.” Let’s be clear though. We all suppress the truth of God.
Third, God’s wrath is right because God has clearly revealed Himself to mankind in the conscience and the created universe.
Romans 1:19-20 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 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.
This is amazing. Everyone in all the world and in all history has clear evidence of God. “Within them” in verse 19 may be translated “among” them. It could refer to the God-given conscience. Notice verse 20, from the very beginning, from Genesis 1-2, since the creation of the world or universe, the vast universe, God has made Himself known. How important is creation and Genesis 1-2! Calvin says our whole body is a “workshop graced with God’s outnumbered works.” From our head to our toes, we see the dazzling theater of God’s creation. God made sure every cell in your body contains that unique DNA sequence. When that stalker viciously murdered Eliza Fletcher out jogging at 4 am in Memphis last week, he left behind some blood on his sandal, which allowed the officials to hunt him down. Clear evidence of God’s handiwork in that DNA! What about your lachrymal glands? They are skillfully designed and located to keep your eyeballs lubricated and clean with your tears, including little ducts so your dirty tears can drain into your nose, and you can blow out the dirt! God designed windshield wipers with fluid long before General Motors.
What is clearly seen in the universe? God’s almighty eternal power and divine nature, especially His incredible wisdom. There is no way this universe and all it contains and how it functions is possible without an eternally powerful God. The universe didn’t create itself. God Almighty spoke and there it was, an entire universe created ex nihilo, out of nothing. And every human being on this planet is responsible to see this. God says the evidence of His existence is “clearly seen.” Mankind has almost totally suppressed this knowledge of God by turning what God says holds us responsible into an impersonal billions of years of so-called evolution. Satan has launched his smart missiles like Darwin and untold others against this doctrine of creation.
Back in 1997 I went over to USI to listen to a world-renowned evolutionist, Stephen Jay Gould. What did he say? Among other nonsense, he had a graphic showing that based on the evolutionary theory we could have ended up in any of many possible outcomes of evolution. He said we just got here by pure chance, we need to get rid of the notion that there is some kind of higher purpose in it all, and that the universe has no overriding purpose and neither do we. Gould’s conclusion was that we have to face reality and come up with our own purpose. How wrong he was!
No, God says He has created everything to reveal His own glorious attributes. His creation is for a purpose – that we might know and glorify Him as our Creator. Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote, “Even the man who tells you that he does not believe in God, and who boasts in the fact that he is an atheist, even he has got a sense of God.” R. C. Sproul said men are atheists for one reason: they hate God.
I tried to be an atheist once. I remember trying to convince myself that this whole idea of God was someone’s big joke. But inside I was worried. What if I was wrong? And why was I so determined to suppress what I knew and to explain God out of existence. It was merely the depraved cogitations of a young man desiring to do his own thing and not wanting God to tell him what to do. So, I fought against God. But thank God, He won!
Creation clearly sets forth God’s invisible attributes and holds human beings without excuse to know Him. When you look at a painting and the artist is absent, what does that painting tell you? You’d be a fool if you said those colors arranged themselves on that canvas over an untold number of years purely by chance. And “fool” is exactly what God calls man who suppresses the plain evidence of Himself seen in His creation.
Fourth, God’s wrath is right because we refuse to honor and thank the God who created us.
Romans 1:21, For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Get this: “Even though they knew God.” Instead of glorifying God and thanking God for all His blessings and all His goodness, we take it all for granted as if we deserved it. We see that beautiful sun shining down on us with all its light and warmth, providing the earth what it needs to grow. Do people see God and worship Him and thank Him for it? We see the rain coming down to nurture earth’s vegetation. We constantly breathe the perfect mix of oxygen. We sit down to eat food designed just right for our bodies and dig in without giving thanks, like the dogs and the hogs.
God has never left himself without a witness and His witness is clearly seen by everyone. All around them from the very beginning, all men everywhere could see God’s glorious majesty in every aspect of creation. Men are without excuse for refusing to honor and thank God. Instead of seeing God the Creator, they rely on their own rational speculations which lead them into the futility of godlessness. And the more they suppress the plain knowledge of God, the darker and more foolish their hearts become. Psalm 14:1, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” The fool says, “I don’t want God telling me what to do!” We are hearing this folly every day and it is getting more foolish by the day. It is the evidence of God’s wrath being revealed, turning us over to our own insanity.
Fifth, God’s wrath is right because God-denying fools turn into idolaters.
Romans 1:22-23, Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.
This world’s brilliant men have so suppressed the truth of God that God says they turn into philosophical and religious fools. When men turn from God and His Truth, they have no basis for discerning truth and error. Even professing Christians who think they are wise reject Genesis 1-2 and turn to theistic evolution. BioLogos, a Christian advocacy group, is an example of this. They claim to believe the Bible, that God created everything including humans, but that the millions of years of evolution is the best scientific explanation for the diversity and similarity of all life on earth.
Where does this folly lead? Suppressing and rejecting God, they replace the truth of the glorious, incorruptible God with the demonic worship of manmade religions and idolatry in all its manifestations. You can read the history of the human race in these two verses. How ridiculous. How sad. Look at this incredible exchange: They exchanged the glory of God’s glorious incorruptible being for worshipping images of men,” birds, beasts, and bugs,” as Warren Wiersbe put it in his commentary.
SO WHAT?
This is a sobering portion of God’s holy Word, and there’s more. Next time we’ll see how God’s wrath turns us over to all kinds of evil and moral perversion. God’s wrath is real and is directed against all sin throughout history and finally into eternity in the lake of fire. God plainly reveals Himself in man’s conscience and creation. But men don’t want to acknowledge the God who holds them accountable, so they suppress His truth, reject His knowledge, and replace the living God with the lies of idols. The big problem of man is this: You can reject God, but you can’t avoid God. Every person needs the gospel of Jesus Christ that reveals God’s righteousness for anyone who repents and trusts in Christ alone for their salvation!