The Wrath of God Revealed

And you know, verses 16 and 17 of Romans are such special verses and I really have enjoyed studying them and teaching them. But we're going to move on from them today. But it's good to come, I'm going to go back and review those verses because I think they're so important. Alright, so verses, starting in verse 18 we kind of start what's considered the meat, if you will, of the book of Romans.

And it starts off kind of on a somber note. The wrath of God is revealed. So what does that mean? What does that mean? That's the question for today. But before we get to that question, let's look at the outline. So the outline, starting in verse 18, 18 through 320, is going to talk about the condemnation, God's condemnation of man. And there's actually, it's divided into three parts, and the names somewhat vary depending upon, like these are the names from my Bible, the Jewish world condemned, and the whole world condemned. And within that Gentile world condemned, today we're going to look at just the first part of that. We're going to only stop at verse 20, talking about what's the reason? Why is God just a bad dude? Does He just have a bad day and say, I'm going to condemn mankind?

Is there a reason why He's done that? Is that a just thing? Is God fair in doing that? So all those kind of questions are going to be answered. Romans is just so tremendous because Paul is going to logically take us through and show us God's case. His reasons for what he does. But it's interesting is before he actually gets into that, he presents his wonderful plan for man's salvation.

I want to review that again. That's verses 16 and 17. But you can't, you know, the more I look at it, you can't really Understand his wonderful plan for our salvation unless you consider. He's a holy God If you don't if that doesn't come into the equation you miss you miss something So hopefully I can present that properly so here here are the verses from last week I Just want to kind of note here. I'm not going to read it reread them again, but just note the fours Paul Paul likes the word for It kind of introduces a thought process. He's going to say that we see four times in these five verses.

And also I want to point out to you that he's going to talk about his righteousness being revealed. His righteousness is revealed in the gospel. And you may not, as I mentioned last week, that may not be obvious to you initially, but it is revealed in the gospel, his very righteousness of God, his holiness, his righteousness. But also what's revealed in verse 18, and that's why I highlighted it, parallel to that is His wrath. And you think, wow, how can that be? But if we don't have a holy God, if God is not holy, and sin offends Him by His very definition, is contrary to His holiness, then that's not a complete picture of God. So you have to understand His holiness and His righteousness to truly understand His salvation. Okay, so let's let's go back and we'll review From verse 16.

We'll just kind of move over the part about being ashamed just just focusing on For it is for the gospel. God's good news is the power of God unto salvation So this is a wonderful statement And the word unto is this idea it points in the direction as ice. It's it shows the direction of God's power Merriman says the direction of God's power is in the salvation of men, which includes, this is the whole package of salvation, past, present, and future. We think about the initial part when we believe our justification was justified before a holy God, but it takes in the whole picture, justification, sanctification, and glorification. Kind of, you know, big words, but it's really the total package of God's redemption of man, past, present, and future.

The gospel is God's words Plural there's more than just one given to Paul through a revelation of Jesus Christ You know Paul is one of the unique people you know John the Apostle and Paul were caught up to the third heaven and they interface with With the Lord Jesus with God, and he gave them this message this gospel message as I pointed out last week It's almost to our minds Why isn't it more complex?

Why isn't it? Why doesn't have something that I really got a? you know, try to figure out. It's a very simple message. And I think the simplicity shows God's care and love for us because it's simple, because He loves us so much. He hasn't made it complicated.

And there's power. As in all the scriptures, there's power in God's Word. But this specifically says the Gospel has the power of God unto salvation and the direction of salvation. And I like this verse I mentioned last week. Macaulay pointed it out to me when I was listening to him in Acts.

I believe it's talking about the gospel. So in this context it says an angel speaking here. An angel sent to Joppa. It says an angel said send to Joppa and have Simon And Peter, the apostle, will speak words, which I believe are the gospel, to you by which you will be saved, you and your household. So those words have power. And the apostle Paul realized that, and so did the apostle Peter. So let's go on.

So there's a condition, if you will. The gospel is the power of God for salvation, I just don't, if I just read those words to you, which I will shortly here, read the gospel message, will everybody just be saved when I read those words? No, you have to interact with those words. You have to believe them.

That's what the caveat is. To everyone who believes. So this tells us who can receive this power of God for salvation. It's to everyone, none excluded, But you must believe God's Word about His Son. That's the key part. You must believe. There's different words. It's the same Greek word, believe, trust. It's the same idea. You must believe what God has said about His Son.

Anyone who believes the Gospel is going to be included in salvation. So the $64 question is, and you guys all know it, what is the message of the Gospel? You know, it's interesting. they'll beat around the bush on the gospel. The gospel can be almost anything.

I mean, it's hard, it's sad to say. The gospel is only really one thing, but people will make it into a bunch of other stuff, which it's really not. It's a simple message about the word Jesus. So let's go back. I did this last week, but I thought it was worth, again, repeating. So what's the origin and message of the gospel?

First of all, as I mentioned before, the gospel, this is Paul speaking, Which was preached by me is not according to man Paul didn't get together with the other apostles and say hey What's a really dynamite message that I really bring people it will get those people and you know He didn't do that not at all In the next verse it says for I neither received it speaking of the gospel from man. No was I taught it He didn't learn it He received it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. I Believe that's you know he was caught up to the third heaven. He had plenty of time He was with the Lord for three years, so he had plenty of time to get this message, so here is the core message If you turn your Bibles to first Corinthians 15 look at verses 3 & 4 It will tell you that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures that he was buried and that was raised on the third day and That is the gospel. That is the core message of the gospel.

It's not hard. It's not complex. It simply talks about a wonderful thing that God did on behalf of man. So a couple comments, and these are from Constable, I believe, or maybe Weiss, I forgot. I'll see shortly here. Also called the good news. It's a good news of salvation, energized by the Holy Spirit. We're going to see that later. The Holy Spirit is involved. In man, after Christ left, he's going to remind people what Christ said. He's also going to be convincing or convicting them in this process of salvation.

Then we says here, it is the gospel, a sweet and loving message of mercy and grace, which the Holy Spirit in sovereign grace makes operative in the hearts of sinners. So that's the gospel message. That's where it came from. It came from a revelation to Paul. And he wrote it down in 1 Corinthians 15. And if you think about it, the rest of scripture, in a way, explains that gospel message in more detail. What does it mean that Christ died for our sins? What does that mean to me? Did He just die for some of my sins?

And the rest of scripture expands that. Okay. So let's listen. The second verse from last week is verse 17. What I wanted to do here is let me just read for it for in it the gospel the righteousness of God is Revealed and we have some more to say and we're going to see that also the wrath of God is is Revealed as well, but for right now. Let's just think about the righteousness of God so This is what this is this comes from This comes from Roger Anyway, let's just look at the chart first.

So this is going to contrast. What does man think of righteousness? Man thinks of his righteousness, but what does God think of his right? What is true righteousness from God? So here's man thinks of Man believes, most men are pretty confident in themselves.

I'm a pretty good person. If I do something good, if I help somebody, if I befriend somebody, that's pretty good. And that's just kind of a lesser form of God's righteousness. But that's not true. Another thought is, well, what I do, my righteousness, I'm certainly better than so-and-so next door, or the person down the street.

Well, actually that has nothing in the world to do with God's righteousness. Man's righteousness is totally different than God's righteousness. God's righteousness is absolute. He is absolutely righteous and holy and just. There's not one ounce, one percent, there's no percent, zero percent. He's totally righteous and just. So let's look at God's righteousness. And God's righteousness, this will kind of compare it to man. From God's righteous point of view, all men are guilty.

None are righteous. He doesn't count anything we do. The best deed we can ever do in our flesh cannot count one bit in terms of God. There's no degrees of righteousness. You don't get credit. You don't get a passing grade. If you get a passing grade of 90 or 95 or 99.9, it's got to be 100%. When it comes to salvation, It's all of God and nothing of man.

Just look at the gospel message. Where is man in that? What do we do? It says Christ died for our sins. God is acting. Christ died for our sins. He was buried and was raised on the third day, according to the scriptures. Man was not part of that. His sins were, but not man himself. You cannot mix human works with God's salvation.

You don't start off, well, God, I got a little bit of good stuff here, and then I'm going to add your salvation, and then I get the full package. No, you get credit for nothing. You get zero. You contribute absolutely nothing. And that's probably the biggest hindrance, the biggest hindrance to your coming to know the Lord, is that you think you have something to offer Him. From the Bible, this is not Roger talking, this is the Bible talking. You can bring nothing. And when you see you can bring nothing, that's a wonderful day.

It was for me. I said, wow, I'm a sinner. I didn't realize that. I thought I was a pretty good guy. You know, I did all these wonderful things. I went to college. I got all kinds of degrees. I love people. I was thought of well. Oh, Roger, you're the best student in the class I've ever had. You're so kind and generous. Not really. No, I had nothing to offer.

When you see that, and eventually we're gonna see in Romans here, this is several months down the road, we're all under sin. When we come to realize that, that's the most wonderful day of our life. Anyway, I'm preaching to the crowd. I'm preaching to the choir. Anyway, okay. All right, and then the other part of this is just so great.

These two verses are just dynamite. The other part, if you're a student of history, but the righteous man or the just man shall live by faith, If you've read something about Martin Luther, not Martin Luther King, Martin Luther from Germany, the monk, this was a verse that changed his life. The last part, but the just shall live by faith. That turned that man around and it affected the whole of Christianity from that point forward.

Okay, just several comments. I have three comments, two from the same person about that. There's no other way. And this is the other side of the coin. We talked about salvation, our desperate need for that. We have to realize we can offer nothing. But what God offers is that we will have His very righteousness. And you say, that's impossible. I can't have that kind of righteousness. And you're absolutely right. You cannot have that kind of righteousness.

It's only Christ in you that can have that kind of righteousness. So Merriman says here, there's no other way to the righteousness of God than by faith in the gospel. And that's what makes it so offending, if you will, to man. It only takes my faith to gain the righteousness of God.

That can't be. That just can't be. But it is. And then Macaulay says, And he has this as his definition, kind of for the whole book of Romans, or his key idea. Salvation is totally dependent upon a righteousness procured by faith alone. The same idea kind of reworded.

Then lastly, Merriman again, righteousness comes by faith in what God has provided in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So if you get nothing else, if I stop right here, and we pack up and go home, You can have God's righteousness. You can have the righteousness of our God, a holy God, by simple faith and trust in what Christ did on the cross. His death, burial, and resurrection on the cross.

That's an incredible thing. It's actually so simple that it offends man. And we see that in scripture. It's offensive to man. But that's the message that God desires that all men know. So now, We're going to move on here. So let's look at some thoughts for the verses to come here. So we see, we just saw that in verse 16 there was implied this wonderful need for the salvation for men. But God isn't, through Paul, isn't satisfied with that. He wants to prove that. He's going to spend chapter 118 through 320 proving to you and me man needs a salvation. He's in desperate need of a salvation. And he wants us to understand his wrath.

What does it mean, the wrath of God? The wrath of God is the one thing that all men, and it's also the one thing that all men deserve. Man is, man's righteousness is condemned because God is holy. We have a holy God. You must realize that you are before a holy God and see your need for salvation.

So now we're going to move on and we're going to look at Paul's focus. Why does he focus on this, the wrath of God? So let's start in verse 18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. So for is this idea of, you know, as I mentioned, it's a little Highlights, let me explain something. Let me tell you about something now.

Let me tell you about something here The wrath of God is revealed speaking it speaks of his holiness Reveals the same word he used about his righteousness back in 17 is to uncover to unveil Wrath here is this word or orgy and I kind of found a little bit difference of opinion about this and I think, based upon the verse I'm going to share, I think that it's what Trench says here via Oist. It's not punishment directly of sin, but it's God's attitude towards sin. This is how, if you will, this is how God feels. This is how God feels about our sin.

He's not happy about our sin. He's more than not happy. Malloy renders it. It is. His wrath is his settled anger out from his righteousness. And it has to be that way. If God is holy, he cannot have any sin be part of that. And his opinion and his feeling and his desire is that sin be dealt with. And he has dealt with sin on our behalf. So his attitude, his wrath expresses his attitude, I believe. It's it's a holy and righteous wrath not like man's And I think this really kind of captures the the essence if you will.

It's a wonder another wonderful verse about salvation He who believes in the Son the Lord Jesus Christ Has eternal life. That's his possession and isn't that marvelous? But he who does not obey or believe the Son will not see life but the wrath of God abides on him and Well, if you think about it, that wrath abides on Him, that unbeliever, but it hasn't been carried out, right? The results have not happened.

So that kind of helps me understand the idea of wrath. It's God's feeling or His opinion or His... This is what He's... what bothers him. It's that there is sin that has to be dealt with. And he wants man to agree with his solution for the sin problem. So let's go on.

So it says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. And this is the word Apoor. It basically means the idea of proceeding from one object to another. So this uncovering or revealing of God's wrath is proceeding from heaven. So if you think about it, it must be righteous. It can't be unholy. God has revealed His wrath as well as His righteousness from heaven in the gospel.

So now here's the focus of that. It's against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. So against here is the idea to press upon, epi, and it's all, none excluded, All ungodliness. Ungodliness is a vertical relationship between man and God. It's a lack of reverence toward God, a vertical relationship. It's to live as if there is no God, you could say. That's ungodliness. Then unrighteousness is kind of a man-to-man, it's a horizontal thing. It's man's righteousness, which is unrighteous before God. It can't be righteous because man's righteousness is not holy.

And it's of men, so it's produced by men. And I like this kind of summary. If you are not right in your relationship to God, you will not be right in your relationship to men. So just to kind of summarize, he says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. But they do something. This explains their condition, but they're doing something now. Who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. So this is what God, this is the issue that God has with man. He's suppressing it. He's holding it down. He's repressing it. He's restraining it. He's hindering it. And He's doing that, present tense, He's doing that all the time. This is a continuous action of all those unrighteous men mentioned.

So a key question, he's suppressing the truth. So in this context, what is the truth, right? So in this context, the truth is not the gospel. Because all men, until somebody tells them, they haven't heard the message of the gospel. But what it is, in the context of these verses, is his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature. And we're gonna see that that's being, man has that information. And this is what's so interesting. These verses are so interesting. Man has, any man and any woman that walks in the earth has this information. The next verses are gonna tell us, you have this information from God. What will you do with that information?

Will you suppress it? Will you hold it down? Will you say, I don't wanna hear it? Don't tell me about that. I don't wanna hear that. People do that, right? I do it sometimes. Don't tell me that bad news. Anyway, we're going to see. That's what Paul's going to tell us. People do that. They suppress the truth. And they suppress it in righteousness. And actually, it kind of comes with where they are, right?

Because Romans 3.10 says, As it is written, there is none righteous, not even one. There's not even one righteous person. So let's go on here.

I want a few more thoughts on suppressing the truth. Isn't this pretty topical, right? The news is full of suppression of truth, right? All the time. People claiming that, you know, it goes both ways. Everybody's complaining about suppressing the truth. Well, this is the worst suppression of truth there is. You may think some things are bad out there, suppression of the truth, but this is the worst one. Because this prevents a man or woman from coming to know the Lord.

And this is from our brother Hal. Because the unregenerate man is energized by his Adamic nature. So as we say, it all goes back to Adam, right? It all goes back to him. If he hadn't done that, if Adam and Eve hadn't done that, we'd be cool, right? We'd all be good. No, probably not. Because the next couple after Adam and Eve probably would have done the same thing.

Anyway, so because of our unregenerate nature from Adam, the sin nature, That's that's the sin nature only does sin right it only commits sin so because we have because every person has a sin nature from Adam That's just what they do both internally and externally Therefore man can only suppress the truth, so that's a natural Reaction of a fallen man who has a sin nature to the truth. He said he wants to suppress it He doesn't wander it around. He doesn't like the truth and So the question is, how is it possible for a man, so can a man suppress the gospel? Well, can he suppress the gospel?

Well, there's some verses that help us with that. And the Lord Jesus said, if I'm lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself. So, he was lifted up from the earth, he went on the cross, so that, his very act of doing that will draw men to himself.

And then probably the key part of this is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. in John 16 when the Lord left he said he The comforter of the Holy Spirit when he comes will convict and I like the word convince. He's in the convincing business You've seen door-to-door salesmen there.

They're out there to convince you right? They want to convince you of whatever they got in the bag The Holy Spirit wants to convince you people can convince or convict you of the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment concerning sin because They do not believe me. So that's the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and that's why the gospel, one of the reasons the gospel is so powerful, because the Holy Spirit is going to convince you that you need to believe the gospel, the good news.

So let's go on to verse 19. Because that which is known about God is evident within them. So because it links back to suppress the truth. So this is because, and this is why I was telling you, they have the truth. Men and women have the truth. And this tells us why. Why are they doing this? That which is knowable about God. So the core idea is the things known of God. They know that. It's Gnosko. So it's emphatic, it has a definite article. The knowing of God is, and that's A-M-E, the state in which is, is evident to them. I kind of drag it out here a little bit. The things of God continuously exist in that state. Now we have, it modifies this is evident in them. So let's just kind of get ahead of myself here. Let's just kind of go back and read this.

Because that which is known about God is evident within them because God, for God made it evident to them. So this is, this information about himself is evident within every man and woman or you could say it's manifest within them. So the idea is that it's apparent or clear their thinking, in their minds, because He's acted.

It's the opposite of secret. It's not a secret about Him. It's something they can get a hold of. The idea is to remove the lid, take the lid off, to expose it in them, in their heart and in their mind of man. The truth about God is clear and plain. Then He adds the last part. We saw it's in them. This truth is apparent and clear in them. And God made it manifest to them. It's both in them and to them.

Kind of a double whammy here, if you will. It's emphatic. God himself makes the knowledge of himself clear to man. All right. So I have another little summary chart, which I liked. So this kind of reviews, this kind of summarizes 19. that man has, that he wants to suppress. Let's just kind of rethink that or review that.

The truth of God is available 24-7. It's made emphatically clear, but man will hold it down or suppress it. So no man can say there's no God because God's made it evident to them. He can't say, I can't know a God So if you think about this, from God's perspective, God's viewpoint, there's no atheist, there's no agnostic. They may claim that, but they're not, because God's already put it in them. It's already there. And there's a story, hopefully I'll get this right. I need Bonnie to help me here. She's cringing already.

Okay, we have Helen Keller and Ann Sullivan. Ann Sullivan is the caretaker, if you will, and she's teaching Yes, what? Helen Keller. Helen Keller is both blind, you guys know the story already I'm sure, she's both blind and deaf. She can't hear, she can't see. Ann Sullivan is a Christian, I believe, and she wants to tell her about God. She tells her about God, and what do you think, you guys already know, what do you think Helen Keller's response to that is? She couldn't hear, and she couldn't see. He says, I thought there was somebody like that. How did she know that? Boy, that's one of the cool things. Anyway. Okay.

Sinful man holds down or suppresses this knowledge of God in unrighteousness because that's the very state of his being. He's a fallen man, he has a sin nature, and that's what the sin nature wants to do. So man's choice God's blessing by faith at rest God's wrath and unbelief Okay, so the last verse here this kind of sums up some of the ideas And this has a cool statement the invisible becomes visible How the invisible is visible something like that For the, what I did is, this is probably, Roy probably will, you Greek guys will probably get it after me here.

I took the interlinear version and I rearranged the words. When you're gonna say, well Roger, that's the reason for the interlinear version. It's word for word according to the Greek and now you rearranged it. Why you do that? Well, cause I wanted to have subject verb, I wanted to be able to point out some things here. So I rearranged the interlinear.

Which maybe is heresy, I don't know. We'll see. Anyway, here we go. For the invisible things of him are clearly seen. Boy, it sounds like an oxymoron. The invisible things of him are clearly seen. So this is a subject. Invisible things here is a not with see. It's not to see. It's the idea you cannot see with the physical eyes.

Of him concerning God are clearly seen. To perceive clearly, understand, Present active indicative passive so we says what a paradox Invisible things are visible and that's and that's kind of the God wants to show us God is the spirit right? You can't see God. We saw the Lord Jesus Christ. He was a visible manifestation of God in the flesh But God is invisible. We can't sit. Can you see an attribute? Can I see love? I can see the expression of love, but I can't, I see love, I see concern, I can see the expression of concern.

So the attributes that he's going to mention here, but first I wanted to talk about the time period or where they came from. Since the creation of the universe being understood by the means of the things that are made. So the things that are clearly seen are seen by the things that are made, by creation. This tells us we can understand about God from His creation. His creation is marvelous. I'm just thinking about the marvelous things. Take any animal. Take DNA. Man hasn't still figured out DNA. They've made some progress. There are just so many incredible things from God's creation.

And He wants to speak to us through creation. These verses disclose What's called natural revelation from God's creation? Natural relation describes what everyone knows about God because of what God has revealed Concerning himself in nature. I would like to say in creation The constable says We have we have the We have revealed about himself in Scripture special revelation. So the Bible we have is gives a special revelation about what God has done. Creation gives us what's called natural revelation from nature or from creation.

Both His everlasting power and divinity. So these are the two things. So what we see here is that God desires to show us, this verse is telling us, He desires to show us through His creation two invisible attributes. His power which is eternal and everlasting and His divine nature of being.

So that we, and by doing that, by doing that in every man and every woman, we are without excuse. We can't come to God and say, you never told me about yourself. He did tell us about himself. Within his creation, he said these two things about his power and his divine nature. And this word without excuse is the idea with no apology, without defense. Every man of the human race is without defense. And this is a key point. However, natural revelation, this revelation from God's creation, does not give sufficient information to experience salvation.

That's why we need to hear the gospel. That's why I mentioned the gospel first. We need to hear the gospel. You can't go out, some people say, I'll go out and I'll have a time, my church is Mount Evans, my church is whatever, I'm out in the mountains, I'm interfacing with God. You are, in a sense, you are, you get to see these attributes of God, but that's not going to tell you about His Son. Only scripture will tell us about His Son.

Okay, to end up, This is kind of the verse, you guys already know what it is, you already memorized it. The verse that shows about His glory and His creation. I'll read you the first four verses. The heavens are declaring the glory of God and the firmament is showing and proclaiming His handiwork. This is the amplified version. Day after day pours out speech. I love that pours out speech night after night shows forth knowledge There is no speech nor spoken word from the stars their voice is not heard Yet their voice is evidence goes out through all the earth They're saying to the ends of the world of the heavens. God has made a tent for the Sun and it goes on there's more there's more to this so that's This shows us what God has put within his creation.

It's a marvelous thing, but what man outside of Christ needs to do is to trust what Christ did on the cross, his death and burial and resurrection. So let's pray. We thank you, Father. We thank you for our time today and your marvelous word. Thank you for your truth that talks to us about your holiness and your righteousness and your wrath and what you've done in the hearts and lives of every man and woman To put that information about you there, Father, we pray that would lead to their wanting to know you personally. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen.