Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Have ever been angry?

What brought those feelings up in you.

Was it a situation you saw, or something you experienced.

What was your response.

In scripture we are encouraged in our angry not to Sin.

Anger is an emotion that God has placed in our lives.

But how can we be angry and not sin?

We are encouraged strongly not to go to bed or respond in an inappropriate way in our anger.

In other words, deal with your anger.

I remember a fellow Bible College student of mine described anger.

It was a story of himself.

One day, while out in the garden of his parents he came upon the part of the garden with Melons or some other plant of that size and shape.

Having a stick in his hand, and being a young boy, he thrust that stick into the plant’s fruit.

Pop was the sound.

He then enjoyed the sound so immensely that he began to go through the garden and one by one popped each of the fruits.

He was young and didn’t realize the full impact of the crop that was being decimated in the wake of his enjoyment of the sound.

But His father new the impact, and while the young boy was gleefully making destruction, his father appeared on the scene.

Well could all image the anger the father had towards the actions of his son.

The Father also knew that punishment would come, but not while he was angry.

My friend then told me, every time the father brought up the subject, his anger arose and the punishment was diverted.

Needless to say, my college friend never got punished for that action, but his deed was never forgotten.

This morning’s passage is on the response of God towards his creation in their actions.

It’s a subject that is not often talked about because of what could be said, or that we are not willing to confront the real issue covered in Scripture.

We can’t imagine God’s response or we feel like he would be like the father in my friend and couldn’t possible respond in anger, a righteous anger.

My bible added a subtext title for this part of scripture and labelled it God’s wrath on the unrighteous.

Who are the unrighteous and what is the wrath.

pause

Two things we must focus in on when we read these verses.

The First is grappling with the wrath of God and the second who are the unrighteous

You see, Last week we ended off with the passage often quoted in Romans.

Paul was not ashamed of the Gospel of God.

He was clear in what the Gospel was, what it did for us, and who it is about.

The righteous shall live by faith.

In today’s passage, there is a turning of what the Gospel is not.

God’s view of the ungodly and His response to the ungodly.

One person wrote,

Ungodliness means anything in us that fails to glorify God and to worship Him and to make Him supreme in our own lives, and in the lives of others.-

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones

So with that in mind, turn with me to the second part of this chapter and let’s read it together.

Let’s take a moment to pray.

Father God, these are words that we need to hear this morning, They are words that show your character and holiness in the presence of our hearts, mind, and action.

Lord open our hearts to your words written down for us to understand.

Examine our hearts this day as we take a few moments to see your love in action for those who choose to live by their own futility of thought.

Lord help us to be wise, not in our own eyes, but to have the very eyes of God in our lives.

And as we spend time in these scriptures this morning, may you convict us of our own unrighteousness so that we can truly be described as righteous people living by faith.

Amen

The Wrath of God

In today’s world, it is difficult to talk bout the Wrath of God.

It seems cruel, hard, harsh, afterall do we not serve a God of Love.

We love to talk about the God of love, His compassion for all and everything that He has created, but Paul’s words wring out loud this morning and we cannot miss it.

I read this in researching this verses,

The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Volume 29: Romans (Chapter Two: First, the Bad News)

The moment we embark on a study of the Roman epistle we are confronted with the statement that the wrath of God is part of the righteousness of God—a concept so unnerving to many and distasteful to others that innumerable attempts have been made to avoid the subject.

Even a cursory glance at Paul’s argument, however, will show that any attempt to avoid what he had to say about the wrath of God at the beginning of his presentation of the gospel would be disastrous.

The answer to the problem of the “wrath of God” is to be found in understanding it, not avoiding it.

Paul states,

so to understand this wrath, we need to know what is also important is the link between Paul’s words found in vs 17 and his now new thought in 18.

The two are tied together.

Linked.

First, you need to fully understand the cost of payment Christ has done for us, we must truly understand what we have been saved from.

RC Sproul puts it this way,

People today are not particularly concerned about the gospel because they do not know anything about the law of God, and they are not at all familiar with their hit the revelation of his wrath.

If people were sensitive to the manifestation of God's anger towards them, they would be so moved by enlightened self-interest that they would flee as fast as they could to hear the gospel, but their necks have become so hardened, their hearts so calcifies, that they have No Fear of God.- RC Sproul “Romans”

Let me put in terms that apply to me,

If I were to head out on the highway, and saw the speed sign at 120 kmh.

If I travel 122KMH.

Am I breaking the law?

Yes.

I then pass a police cruiser with radar on my car, it reads that I am going 122Kmh

Does he stop me, pull me over, and do I receive the penalty of my trespass?

Probably not,

Am I still guilty, yes.

Should I pay the penalty, I should.

But I have been given grace that moment.

When we say that God’s unconditional love covers all, we can, and in some cases look at the sin in our lives like that of the speeding.

Grace will cover it.

God will overlook it.

It’s not that Bad.

We begin to loose sight of God’s wrath because of his Holiness.

How fast can I go, before I am guilty of speeding?

How fast can I go before I break the law?

How Fast can I go before I get stopped?

How fast can I go before I get a ticket and not a warning?

Now if you are thinking through this logically, and your answer has changed for each question, you have either tried this and have been caught or you miss the point.

Speeding is going over the posted sign, period.

You have broken the Law.

Paul will show us later in his letter that

You see,

we fall short of the glory of God and will experience the wrath of God, unless we come to experience the power of salvation,

The wage or payment of the sin in our life, is the cost of the wrath of God.

An eternity without the power of God.

The beauty is that the Free Gift of God, paid in full by Christ’s work on the cross, has taken the wrath of God off of us.

When we turn to him.

A second point about this verse is the way these verses speak to time.

So often we look at these verses and look at this verse in an eschatological event.

An event that will happen in the future and not that of the present.

One thing you must understand that Paul is bringing to the forefront a present working of righteousness and unrighteousness and God’s response to both in the present.

Paul uses the same greek word in both verses to describe a public revealing of things that were once hidden, but now are not.

Both Righteousness and unrighteousness is being revealed and God is the one that is doing the revealing.