The Wrath of God Revealed
Download MP3If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Romans chapter 1, as we continue our study in the book of Romans. Romans chapter 1. I've been receiving a lot of texts this week. Last week if you remember, as we're going through the power of God into salvation for everyone who believes and I went through all of these conversion stories, how people heard the Gospel for the first time in all these unusual ways. We talked about getting saved at Carmen concerts, watching Kirk Cameron videos, you know, different things like that, that you know, the Lord actually worked.
Joel Brooks:Well, people sent me additional ones. I did not know that, we had someone here get saved through a puppet show. Someone through the power team came to their church and it was through the ripping up of phone books saying, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me and power of God, they got saved. Somebody was listening to casting crowns in their car. Lord met them, and then somebody was saved through a magic show.
Joel Brooks:It was an evangelist magician or illusionist. And, and and somehow came to know Jesus, which that one is suspect because we all know that magic, it's based on on deceit. It's the, it's the devil's tricks. But even Jesus worked through there and the power of the gospel went forth and saved people. And so it was just neat getting all these texts from different people saying how they had come to met Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Alright. Well, we continue our study in the book of Romans. We're gonna begin reading. It's a longer section in verse 18. We'll read to the end of the chapter.
Joel Brooks:For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness, suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.
Joel Brooks:They became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, and birds, and animals, and creeping things. Therefore, God gave them up, the lust of their hearts, to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie. And they worship and serve the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
Joel Brooks:For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women, and were consumed with passion for one another. Men committing shameless acts with men, and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
Joel Brooks:They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil and covetousness, malice. They're full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die. They not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them.
Joel Brooks:This is the word of the Lord.
Connor Coskery:Thanks be to God.
Joel Brooks:If you would pray with me. Father, we pray that your spirit, he would come into this place, and he would honor the very reading of your word. And that he would make your word authoritative in our lives, changing our minds and our hearts, that we might more resemble Jesus. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But, Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. So in addition to getting all these texts from people about, how they got saved, I also received a lot of emails and texts this week from a number of you, saying that you were praying for me as I prepared. I mean, I got my first text, late Sunday night. And it said, Hey, I'm I'm this is from an elder.
Joel Brooks:Just read the text. Praying for you this week. I was like, Oh, that's nice. I wake up to a number of more texts. Hey, man.
Joel Brooks:Just read the text. Praying for you. Praying for you. I began to get worried. And, and you know, the more I mean, this never happens, but all of a sudden, I find all these people are like, wouldn't wanna be you this week.
Joel Brooks:You know, just but we are gonna deal with this. The the hard part of this text is not what it says. The hard part actually for me is the length, not in what it means. It's trying for us to work through this, because we're gonna have to leave a lot of things unsaid. But Paul is pretty clear in this section.
Joel Brooks:And what Paul's gonna do here is, he's going to explain why it is we need saving. Unless we're aware of our sin, we're not gonna see our need for salvation. 12 years ago, Lauren and I, we got a arborist to come and to look at one of the trees next to our house. It was a blackjack oak there. It was huge and we were scared of it falling on our house, our neighbor's house.
Joel Brooks:And so we brought this arborist in. And he came and he looked at that tree and he goes, that tree's fine. But this one right by your house is gonna take it down. Well, we didn't want you to look at that one. We wanted you to look at this one.
Joel Brooks:He's like, that one's fine. But this one here, you need to, you need to do something with. But that was, you know, one of the largest trees in Crestwood. It had this beautiful tire swing that came down. All the neighborhood kids played on it.
Joel Brooks:And, it really didn't look sick at all. But he said, it's gonna die. We ignored that advice. And it took out our house and did about a $100,000 worth of damage. We should have listened, because he knew what he was talking about.
Joel Brooks:He said, it might look well on the outside, but it's actually rotten on the inside. And sure enough, when it fell over, we got to see that the roots were rotten, the inside was rotten. And that's what Paul is gonna do to us. He's gonna approach our lives and be like, well we don't want you to look at this part. We'd rather you look over here.
Joel Brooks:And he's like, no. You got a problem inside. I know you might look good on the outside, but inside sin has rotten you to the core. The good news is, you can be saved. But you first have to realize that there is something inside that needs to be dealt with.
Joel Brooks:So Paul comes to us like that arborist. And what he's gonna do for us in the next couple of chapters is unpack for us Genesis chapters 1 through 4. Really, this is Paul's commentary, if you will, on those first few chapters of the Bible. Last week, Paul talked to us about how the righteousness of God is revealed. This week, he talks to us about how the wrath of God is revealed.
Joel Brooks:God's not just a God of love. He is also a God of wrath. I would argue because he is a God of love, he must also be a God of wrath, for he must hate the things that threaten what he loves. And so, wrath does come forth from God. He will judge things.
Joel Brooks:So he begins this section by saying that God's wrath is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness. The best way to understand those terms, ungodliness and unrighteousness is, ungodliness describes our vertical relationship. It's the sins we have committed against God. And then we have unrighteousness and it describes our horizontal relationships. It's the sins we have committed against other people.
Joel Brooks:Basically, Paul is saying we're in violation of the 2 greatest commandments. We have not loved the Lord God with all of our heart, soul, and strength. And we have also not loved our neighbor as ourselves. We've been ungodly. We have been unrighteous.
Joel Brooks:Therefore, the wrath of God will be revealed against us. And then Paul, like he's gonna do for the rest of this letter, he immediately anticipates your objections. A lot of this letter is he anticipates your questions and he answers them. And so here he anticipates this objection. Well Paul, how can how can God judge everyone?
Joel Brooks:What about, what about those who didn't know that that was right or wrong? What about those who don't even believe there's a God or have not even heard that there is a God? How could a righteous God, judge somebody who's never even heard about him? And I would agree with you that if people had not known about God, if people didn't know about God, or did not know what was right or wrong, that God's judgment upon them would be unrighteous. It would be unfair.
Joel Brooks:But Paul is going to go argue that we indeed are without excuse. God's judgment does come on us in a righteous way. We have no excuse. So he argues that everyone, that these people here, that he's talking about in Romans 1, he says that they do indeed know the truth. They just suppress it.
Joel Brooks:Now remember when you were little, and if you had siblings. I had an older brother, older sister. They would come to me to tell me, you know, mom wanted me to do something or dad wanted me to do something. And when I was little, sometimes I would put my fingers in my ear. And I'd do that, nah nah, I can't hear you.
Joel Brooks:Can't hear you. Can't hear you. And if you ever do that, I can't hear you, can't hear you. Because you thought, if I don't hear it, I'm not responsible. And so, I just needed to drown.
Joel Brooks:I needed to suppress it. And of course, you know, you did that as a child. But you grow out of that, until you get a car. And then, you know, when you're driving with a car and you hear that sound. My car is making a funny sound.
Joel Brooks:And then, you know, if you're married or spouse is like, why is the car making that clinking sound? And so what you do is you just turn up the radio. I mean, that's all you have to do. And if the clinking sound gets louder, will you just keep on turning out the radio? I don't hear anything, honey.
Joel Brooks:Like, it's fine. You suppress the truth. You don't wanna acknowledge the truth because if you acknowledge that you hear the sound, you know it's gonna cost you. It's gonna it's gonna take up your time. It's gonna take up your resources.
Joel Brooks:You're gonna have to deal with it, if you acknowledge it. And Paul says, that's us with our creator. We know there is a God. Deep down every single person knows this, and it can be unsettling, can't it? Because we know if God exists, then that means He's the center of things and that we are not.
Joel Brooks:If He exists, it means He's our creator. And it means that our entire lives must be lived to Him. He can make any demand of us. In other words, if we acknowledge his existence, it's going to cost us. It's gonna cost us something.
Joel Brooks:And the easiest thing for us to do is ignore it and turn up the volume of our culture, and we just keep on driving. Drown out his voice. So we know there's a God. Every person does. Now, Paul's gonna list some evidences as to why God exists.
Joel Brooks:His first here in Romans 1 is simply going to be creation itself. Verse 19, for what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and his divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made, so they are without excuse. Paul says, you want to know that there's a God? Just look around.
Joel Brooks:Everything declares that there is a God. Something cannot come from nothing. All this came from somewhere. To deny that takes this it it takes an act of suppression. The more we study his creation, the more we actually come to know about God.
Joel Brooks:The more we learn of his wisdom. The more we learn of his goodness. About a year and a half ago, when we were going through Genesis, I walked through a lot of these things as we went through Genesis 1. But God has so fine tuned the universe for our existence. It's astonishing.
Joel Brooks:If the earth's gravity, magnetic field, rotation, crust thickness, oxygen to nitrogen ratio, core temperature, distance from the sun, water vapor. If those things were off by even the slightest of slightest of slightest margins, like gravity being off by 1,000,000,000th of a gram, we couldn't exist. It takes tremendous faith to actually not believe in a creator. And that's why Paul says, it's obvious to deny God's power and his goodness. That's obviously being displayed takes a willful act of suppression.
Joel Brooks:In other words, Paul's saying this, it isn't a logical or mental problem that keeps you from believing in God. It's a heart problem. Because the evidence is that obvious. Atheism is primarily a product of the heart, not the mind. I have personally never met an atheist that didn't already want there not to be a God.
Joel Brooks:Because they knew if there was a God, they would have to radically reorient it their entire lives. Try, if you're ever talking with somebody who says they don't believe in God, say well if I could absolutely prove to you that, let's say Jesus was Lord, would you right now willfully give your entire, surrender your entire life to them, to him? And when there's hesitation, you say, well this sounds like it's more of a heart problem than a mental problem. To acknowledge we have a creator is to acknowledge we are not our own. We're no longer the center of our life.
Joel Brooks:That we don't get to decide what is right or what is wrong. And that's the rub for many of us. We want to be able to decide on our own terms, what is right and what is wrong. We don't want there to be a God, because we want to be our own God. That's what happened back in the garden in Genesis with Adam and Eve.
Joel Brooks:They disobeyed God. They wanted to be their own god, and it's been happening ever since. God created Adam and Eve and gave them just one stinking command. 1. You have the entire world is yours.
Joel Brooks:You can eat of everything. Enjoy everything. All I ask is this one tree here, don't eat of its fruit. Adam and Eve's response was, well, who says you get determine what's right or wrong? And they eat of the fruit.
Joel Brooks:They wanted to be their own gods. And when they did this, sin entered into this world and all of humanity fell with them. Claiming to be wise, Adam and Eve became fools. And the rest of humanity followed in their footsteps. Now throughout this text in Romans 1, Paul's gonna keep using the word they, they, they.
Joel Brooks:But I'm gonna go spoiler alert. He's gonna flip the table on us a little bit later. The they is us. It's really us. He just wants to kinda rope you into it like, yeah.
Joel Brooks:Them. Them. He's like, It's you. It's you. All of us have decided to be our own gods.
Joel Brooks:And it sets off this chain reaction of depravity in us. We begin spiraling down. Notice in verse 23, there's this downward progression. He says, we exchange the glory of the immortal God for now it's images resembling mortal man, and then it's birds and animals and creeping things. There's this downward progression.
Joel Brooks:It's like, we keep getting lower and lower and lower, till we're just crawling on the ground. Almost sounds like the curse that God gave to Satan, which is to crawl on his belly. We get lower and lower. In verse 25, Paul says that, mankind exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator. It's really important to understand the implications of this verse.
Joel Brooks:Notice that when mankind refused to worship, the God that was clearly seen in creation, when they refused to worship him, they didn't stop worshiping. They just moved on to worshiping something else. But not worshiping is not an option. You either worship God, or you worship a creative thing, but you will worship. I've heard, many people say, God created us in order to worship.
Joel Brooks:And I actually disagree with that. He didn't create us in order to worship, as if it's an option. God created us worshiping. Mankind will always be worshiping. The technical word for this is we're telic.
Joel Brooks:We're, we're telic, we're telic beings, which means that we have to live for something. We can't just exist, but we always have to have a reason to exist. And this has been true of mankind in every culture at every time. Humans have always placed their hope in something or someone. There's always something that we think, if I have that, I'm somebody.
Joel Brooks:If I don't have that, I'm nobody. If I have this, my life has purpose. If I don't, my life has no meaning. This is called worship. The thing that you absolutely cannot live without, that's the thing you worship.
Joel Brooks:That's that's an idol. Idolatry. And typically, you know, our big idols that we have are money, sex, power, but it really could be a bunch of different things. We can worship anything. Some of us try to, you know, worship whatever romantic relationship we're in.
Joel Brooks:We find our significance in another person. I mean, all you have to do is turn on the radio, and every love song is about how that person saved you. How being with them is like being in heaven. How you found meaning through the, through the relationship with them. Like, those are all qualities we give to God.
Joel Brooks:And now we're ascribing to another person. Perhaps it's us trying to find our significance through having children. Unless I have a child, my life has no purpose. But anything that we think, unless I have this, my life has no meaning. That's idolatry.
Joel Brooks:That's worship. But the idea that you can reject God and then just not worship is not an option. You must put your hope in something. The question is, will you worship what is true? Were you gonna trade it for a lie?
Joel Brooks:Are you gonna worship the creator? Or are you gonna worship the creation? And this leads us into this next section. Paul begins to address what exactly does God's wrath look like? What does his judgment look like upon those who have exchanged the truth for a lie?
Joel Brooks:And he says, well, when we refuse to acknowledge God, and we want to be our own God, God's judgment is that he gives us what we want. 3 times in this section from, you know, 24 down. Three times, you're going to read the words, God gave them up. God gave them up. God gave them up.
Joel Brooks:God gave them up. God's judgment is that he hands us over to our desires. When we tell God, hey. I don't want you ruling my life. I don't want you in my life telling me what to do.
Joel Brooks:God's judgment to us is to say, okay. You don't want me in your life? Okay. And God backs away. And that is judgment coming to us.
Joel Brooks:Now, at first, I might feel like, really? I mean, all I have to do is just say, get out of my life and you're gone. That that's freedom. It's not freedom. It's death.
Joel Brooks:It might at first feel like freedom, but it is death. Getting what your sinful heart wants. Following your sinful desires is slavery, not freedom, and its result is death. Kind of a cheesy way of thinking about this. It'd be like if the earth said it was sick of the sun.
Joel Brooks:Like, you know, why do you have to be the center of everything? Why do you have to be the glorious one? I'd kinda like, you know, my own turn at this. And so, could you just leave? And judgment would be if the sun left.
Joel Brooks:If the sun left, the earth would spiral off on its own. It would grow cold. It would disintegrate. It would die. That's us.
Joel Brooks:When we say, God, we're sick of you being the center of it all. We'd like to go out on our own. God says, that's what you want? Okay. And he walks away.
Joel Brooks:So God's judgment for our sin is to allow us to keep sinning. His judgment for our sin is to allow us to keep sinning. God sees that we desire something more than Him. He says, why don't you completely give in to that desire? Have at it and see where it takes you.
Joel Brooks:Now Paul's gonna go on to discuss a whole variety of different sins here. But really, every one of the sins that he lists, you need to understand that first and foremost, comes from the sin of rejecting God's rulership. You reject God's rule over your life, his authority over your life, and you want self rule. And when you do that, at that point, judgment comes and all sorts of depravity is unleashed. Wanting self rule is is is what pops the cork, if you will.
Joel Brooks:It pops the cork and out of it now all sorts of evil and desires flow forth. And these desires you can no longer control. They begin to control you. That's part of God's judgment. So you're both judged for those sins, and then those sins are also a part of God's judgment.
Joel Brooks:It's both. Now, the first sins that Paul deals with here, they're they're sexual in nature. In verse 24, we read, therefore, God gave them up, and the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. In other words, God says, you want sex outside of marriage? You can have it.
Joel Brooks:Give in to every lust and see where that takes you. And then the next sin that God, talks about is homosexuality. Verse 26. This is the next God giving them up. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions.
Joel Brooks:For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women, and were consumed with passion for one another. Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. Now, this is actually the longest and the clearest teaching that we have in the New Testament, against homosexuality. Now, in our day, this has become somewhat controversial.
Joel Brooks:And, and many have tried to, try to water down this text, or tried to explain away this text. But Paul, Paul is clearly saying that this is a sin. I've heard it tried to be explainable. Paul's just addressing a certain type of homosexuality. It's it's really about those in that relationship, but not in a committed relationship.
Joel Brooks:But there's no indication whatsoever that Paul's talking about that. He clearly states that homosexuality is a sin. To argue otherwise is to suppress the truth. The question is not whether this is a sin. It's why does Paul single this out?
Joel Brooks:That's that's the better question in this text. I mean, he's gonna go on to list a bunch of other sins. But why does he take time to single this one out? Now, I I think throughout church history, there have been some periods where people have mistakenly thought that he singles this sin out because it's the worst of the sins. And that is not true.
Joel Brooks:It is a sin, but it is not the sin. Not at all. I think Paul brings up sexual sins first. Remember, 1st he talks about heterosexual sin. First, he deals with that before he goes to homosexual sin.
Joel Brooks:But I think he brings up sexual sins first, because this is what most naturally flows out of his argument about how God has revealed himself in nature. I mean, one of the ways that God has revealed himself in nature is by creating us male and female. And God even tells us in Genesis that his creating us male and female is a reflection of him. It's part of His divine nature, which Paul's talking about in Romans 1. So in in Genesis 1, he says, that we are created in God's image.
Joel Brooks:Male and female, he created us in his image. So he brings out homosexuality because it clearly goes against God's design. It fails to recognize that he created us male and female. Now, some might argue that living a homosexual lifestyle is actually yielding to God's design. Something that, I've heard often over the years.
Joel Brooks:That, you know, after all, some people are born with these desires. Certainly, it seems like they were designed this way. However, we were all born with sinful desires. Once again, Paul is saying that back in Genesis, that cork was popped. All sorts of evil desires were unleashed on us, as a result of the fall.
Joel Brooks:And some were born with strong desires for violence, or for cruelty, or for lust, or for greed. We're all born with these evil desires, which is why Jesus says we must be born again. We're all born with them. So so Jesus comes and he says, we must be born again. We must become a new person.
Joel Brooks:We must be given a new heart with new desires. And these new desires become greater than our old sinful desires. It's not that those old sinful desires ever fully go away. They are still there. We still wage war against them.
Joel Brooks:But once we have this new heart and we're born again, we now have a new stronger desire than that desire to do sin. It's a new stronger desire to please God. That only comes from being born again and being given this new heart. So Paul clearly does state here, homosexuality is a sin, but don't make the mistake of thinking it is the sin. It's a sin, not the sin.
Joel Brooks:The sin is us rejecting God's rule of us. Us saying, I determine what's right or wrong. And when we do that, the cork is popped. When we do this, all these other sins flow out. And I would argue that each of these sins flow to us in different ways that are not necessarily of our choosing.
Joel Brooks:Our rebellion against God manifests itself in all different ways. For some of us, it is unleashing greed. For others, it's unleashing cruelty. For some of us, it's homosexual desire. Paul's gonna go on here to give us quite a list of all the sins that have flowed out of our rebellion.
Joel Brooks:But can I just say first and foremost, we we need to have empathy with those who struggle with different sins than us? Because Cause many of those desires they didn't choose are a result of the fall. It's both, we are judged both for our sin and then our judgment is these sins, are these sins. We need to have empathy with those who are struggling with other things other than personal sins that we struggle with. So we might not struggle with a particular sexual sin.
Joel Brooks:But I promise you, when you look at the list that Paul gives down here at the end, you could check most of the boxes. Every one of those sins you're looking at and you're like, yep. Yep. That's me. Yep.
Joel Brooks:That's me. Yep. That's me. Alright. So where's the hope for us?
Joel Brooks:Well, there is none. Alright? There's none. Not in chapter 1. Alright?
Joel Brooks:It's actually the hard part about going through Romans, like, you read through this and you're like, and we just end. Alright? So go home people, God's wrath is upon you and let's leave. It's it's the hard part as a preacher, but Paul literally in this text, he ends, and there is no hope for you. He's building a case.
Joel Brooks:That's what he wants you to feel. But I'm not Paul, alright? And I can't end here with no hope. Plus that whole letter would have been, you know, read at one sitting. So, we're we're not gonna end in judgment.
Joel Brooks:I'm gonna have to jump ahead a little. So Paul, he he begins this section by saying that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven, and then he goes on to list all the ways that the wrath of God is revealed. But as Christians, we understand first and foremost, where the wrath of God has been revealed. The wrath of God was revealed on the cross. There is our hope.
Joel Brooks:Yes. Every one of us fully deserve God's eternal wrath poured on us because we have rejected his rule over our lives. However, God's eternal wrath was not poured on us. It was poured on his son, Jesus. Jesus took all of our sins, and then he was judged for them.
Joel Brooks:And in return, he gave us his righteousness. You remember on the cross what Jesus cried out? Cried out part of Psalm 22. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Do you hear what he's arguing?
Joel Brooks:It's Romans 1. What he's saying? He's Romans 1. What is God's judgment being poured out on him? God leaves.
Joel Brooks:God, where are you? God's judgment is like, you don't want me? I leave. But Jesus wanted his father. But he was taking on our sins.
Joel Brooks:And therefore, God's presence, he no longer feels God's presence. The wrath of God poured on Jesus was that God left Jesus alone. So he's being treated as we deserve. But he's being treated as we deserve, so that we might never ever be left alone. God will never ever let go of our hand.
Joel Brooks:And that's where we come to celebrate this table here, in which we do remember the gospel. We remember that beautiful exchange we talked about last week, in which Jesus gets our unrighteousness, and we are clothed with his righteousness. Jesus is forsaken by his father, so that we might never be forsaken. We're declared righteous, then the wrath of God falls on him. Let me pray for us.
Joel Brooks:And then, if our servers would come forward. Jesus, I pray that during this time of communion, we would indeed commune with you. Lord, I thank you for this the people in front of me that I see right here, your body. And Christ, as we take of this bread, we remember that You gave Your body to create this body, to create the church. And we are forever grateful.
Joel Brooks:And I pray that in this moment, you would be honored in the way that we take this bread and wine, and we remember the gospel in which we are saved by. It's in the strong name of Jesus we pray. Amen.
