God’s Wrath Revealed
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Last week:
We began the book of Romans, as Paul introduced himself as a bond-servant of Christ.
Paul declared to the Romans that it was his desire to come to Rome and preach the gospel.
Today, we are going to see the second half of Chapter 1 here, a part of scripture that is well known into giving us insight into our world today.
Today, we will answer several questions that people may have:
Why God’s wrath?
How have we gotten where we are as a society?
18 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.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.
25 For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
The Wrath of God revealed
To me, the contents of the rest of this chapter are not what bothers me. What bothers me is the seemingly stark contrast in themes presented.
First, you go from the gospel, and the righteous living by faith, to now, we are all of a sudden talking about the wrath of God.
This is the part that concerns me, in my own human intuition, a man trying to understand the book of Romans, not just as the topics presented, but in the context of the whole thing. To change topics so drastically certainly has my head spinning.
So the question is… What does this mean in the context of the Gospel? What does this mean in the context of the righteous shall live by faith?
To understand this fully, we need to look at the previous verses in Romans 1:16- 17
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.”
The gospel reveals the righteousness of God.
We talked about this last week, but that righteousness is found in faith, not our works. That is what v.17 is saying, without any question. Righteousness does not come from the law, it doesn’t come from your works, it comes from faith in Jesus Christ!! That is what the Gospel reveals to us.
However, the Wrath of God is also revealed to us. How?
Here it says from Heaven!!
This is where the throne of God is. This is what is described in Revelation 4, where it is described in Rev 4:2-3
2 Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne was standing in heaven, and One sitting on the throne.
3 And He who was sitting was like a jasper stone and a sardius in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, like an emerald in appearance.
This is the same throne which John says in Revelation 5:1
1 I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a book written inside and on the back, sealed up with seven seals.
This is heaven, this is what Paul is referring to here in Romans. This is where the wrath of God is revealed from. From His throne, from where He sits with the scroll in His hand, where all praise and honor and glory belong. So marvelous, so magnificient, so powerful!!
But what does this have to do with the gospel? What does this have to do with the righteousness of God that is by faith? Well… EVERYTHING!!!
Why? Because God’s wrath is revealed against all:
ungodliness= ασαβεια, which the word means without reverence for. Without having a reverence for God
Unrighteousness= In context here, a person who has not believed, or a person without faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
This is what the author in Hebrews speaks about in Hebrews 11:6
6 And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.
The unrighteous won’t do this. They have no faith, they don’t believe that He is and rewards those who seek Him.
It is the ungodliness and unrighteousness of those who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
This isn’t everybody we are talking about, but those who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. How does one do this?
First, you question the truth.
Look at Genesis 3:1, where the serpent questions what truth is.
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”
This has been since the beginning, and even goes into today. If you can get people to question the truth, then this causes the next thing…
Then, they confuse the truth
Look at what Eve says in response to the serpent, she confuses the truth in Genesis 3:2-3
2 The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat;
3 but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’ ”
Eve was confused, because God said not to eat of the fruit in 2:16-17, he never mentioned anything about touching. She was confused, which in turn takes us to the final thing…
To not believe the truth
Eve didn’t believe the truth anymore, she rather believed the lie in Genesis 3:4-6
4 The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die!
5 “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.
She did exactly what we see in Romans 1:25
Romans 1:25 (NASB95)
25 [She] exchanged the truth of God for a lie…
We now see a culture that continues to question truth, to confuse it, and no longer believe it
Remember when Jesus was before Pilate, in John 18 as Pilate is questioning Jesus…
37 Therefore Pilate said to Him, “So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”
38 Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?” And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews and said to them, “I find no guilt in Him.
And so is the question that still lingers today, what is truth??
As long as you can get people to question the truth, to confuse it and no longer believe it, then the truth is easily suppressed
The word for this is “Katecho” (Ka- te’h- O) which means to hinder, restrain, prevent, keep from
In light of what we have already known, that the righteousness of God is revelaed from faith to faith, then the truth being suppressed in unrighteousness, simply put, is unbelief. And that is exactly what we see through the rest of this chapter, a slippery slope that leads to questioning:
What is Truth??
I always go to my favorite scripture, John 14:6
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.
We ourselves get a warning found in Hebrews 3:12-19
12 Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.
13 But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
14 For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end,
15 while it is said, “Today if you hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked Me.”
16 For who provoked Him when they had heard? Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses?
17 And with whom was He angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?
18 And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient?
19 So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief.
We need to be careful ourselves, that we do not suppress the truth in unrighteousness, or, in our unbelief.
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.
What is known about God is evident, because God made it evident.
This is what we know as the general revelation of God.
God has made Himself known to all mankind. We read in Psalms 19:1
1 The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.
We can see the beauty and power of God as we look to the stars, as we look to the universe.
We see the reality of God when we look at nature, when we see the sunrise, when we see it set, when we see the order and intricate detail of all things. It shouts and declares that God is there, that He exists.
God has not hidden Himself, He is in plain sight and is evident within them and to them.
This is why we can be confident that even as the world today has roughly 2 billion people that have never heard the name of Jesus, that people know God. Why? Because He has made it known to them and within them.
What Paul says here is that they are without excuse. No man, no person has an excuse to say, “God, you never told me you existed.” It is clearly evident to them.
How long has it been evident to them? Since creation!!
Some say that God is a made up social construct to help people cope with life and meaning. But we know that creation itself exposes this idea. God is known through:
Invisible Attributes
Things we can’t see, but are there.
One example is love. John declares in 1 John 4:8
1 John 4:8 (NASB95)
8 …God is love.
Then John continues in 1 John 4:16
16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
We know God because we do love. We could not love one another unless God existed. The fact that we love is plain evidence that God exists.
Eternal Power
His omnipotence (He is all powerful),
his omnipresence (He is everywhere),
His omniscience (He is all knowing),
His Omnisapience (Understands what is best)
Then there is God’s Infinity. Heath Lambert explains it like this:
God’s infinity has to do with his freedom from any limitations to be God.
This means that God is infinite. It speaks to the fact that even though God is Omnipresent, or He is everywhere, He is infinitely everywhere. Which means, just as God is there in Israel, with them in their problems and protecting her, He is also perfectly and intently here with you, tending to your problems and protecting you. He is perfectly there as He is perfectly here. Not half way here and mostly there, no, completely here and completely there.
Divine nature
God is not like us… He is divine. He sits on the throne.
We read in John 4:24
24 “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
God is Spirit, and His divine nature is beyond the natural realm.
It is believed that there are 10 dimensions. Only 4 of them are knowable, or observable, which are Length, Height, Width and Time. The other 6 dimensions are unknown by us. But God transcends all of those dimensions.
“Being understood through what was made, so they are without excuse”
I sat in a biology class my first year of college. The first thing my professor said at the very start… “All science supports evolution. There is no scientific evidence for any other theory. Every other belief is founded on emotional and unscientific sentiment. Evolution is the only theory based on scientific fact”
But let me be honest, the more I study science, the more I am amazed at the wonders of God. Why?? Because it all demonstrates the nature of God, the beauty of Him and His handiwork.
In this same biology class, I remember being quite confused as a 19 year old student who was being told by his professor that no evidence pointed to God. In fact, I remember going through this time of great doubt as we were learning about DNA and how that was the key to all life. In fact, I was really concerned when I found out these facts about DNA:
96% similarity to a chimpanzee
90% similarity to a cat
85% to a mouse
80% to a cow
61% to a fruit fly
And 60% TO A BANANA!!??
All of this was very concerning to me, and convincing in devastating ways. I remember one night, as I struggled through this, I asked the Lord to reveal himself to me, to give me wisdom to see, because this was super convincing things, and my faith was slipping. The next morning, I remember I woke up with a thought, one that changed it all. It was as if the Lord whispered in my ear “ Micah, if you have 60% similar DNA to a banana, does that tell you that you evolved from a banana, or that you and a banana have the same creator??”
That was it !! It was clear, no questions asked, the answer I had prayed for. Like v. 19 says “God made it evident to them” and “they are without excuse”
But why, if clear, did this professor say all that?? Lets look on
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.
It says they became futile in their speculations:
I think it can be healthy to wrestle with certain questions or doubts in our lives. When we read the Psalms, we see David do this a lot. But the problem is when people become futile, or the word means useless or empty, in their speculations. And that is where people have gone wrong:
There is a massive push toward deconstruction, especially of the Christian faith. Some of the deconstruction is warranted, trying to decipher between God’s Word and the precepts of man. That can be good. But where things have gone wrong is where people have become useless or empty in their speculations, their deconstruction, and come up with vain and worthless reasons, and their heart was darkened.
At this point, one can no longer compare themselves to David or the Psalms. David’s speculation and doubts always lead him to the Lord and to be wiser. People in this deconstruction culture have rather become darkened and fools.
We see that professing to be wise, they became fools.
We read 3 verses in Proverbs 18 that speaks to this:
2 A fool does not delight in understanding, But only in revealing his own mind.
7 A fool’s mouth is his ruin, And his lips are the snare of his soul.
12 Before destruction the heart of man is haughty, But humility goes before honor.
Many people think what they speak is wisdom, when all too often it is foolishness.
Its like taking advice from a movie star or celebrity
Its like looking for an opinion from an athlete
I’m partially convinced that we are where we are because these people have become the philosophers of the day. Just look at these peoples social media.
Christiano Rinaldo, a soccer star- has nearly 1 billion people who follow him with 917 million followers. Selena Gomez is next with 688 million, Justin Bieber with 596 million and Taylor Swift with 550 million.
The most followed pastor in America… Joel Osteen, with 60 million social media followers. That is a tenth of these other celebrities.
What is sad is that this is where our young people get their beliefs and philosophies from, are athletes and celebrities that are people who are ungodly and unrighteous, who think they are wise, but they are absolute fools.
Exchanged incorruptible with corruptible
They made all these things more than God Himself
Its taking man’s opinions, man’s thoughts, and putting those in place of God’s thoughts.
This is why I adamant about Biblical counseling and to never send anyone to what we call Christian counselors, or psychologists.
Why? Because people will go to a person who has exchanged the incorruptible truth and power of the gospel for corruptible philosophies.
Where do these philosophies come from? Guys like Carl Rogers, Ivan Pavlov, Sigmund Freud… All men who not only never claimed to know the Lord, but men who were very anti-God and viewed religious systems as harmful. Yet, these men and their teachings and ideas have not only been widely accepted by Christians and churches, but they are utilized by pastors and Christian counselors just as much as the world while their Bibles sit on the shelves. The incorruptible has been exchanged for the corruptible.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.
THEREFORE
Because of these things
“God gave them over”
Our God is not a tyrant King, He is a Shepherd King. He is a gentleman, and He hasn’t forced anybody, but rather, he just says, “OK, if that is where you want to go” And look at the fruit of it??
Bodies dishonored
Many of us wear the scars of life on our heart, in our souls. But we also see very clearly the physical ramifications for giving over to our lust and passions
Disease
Mental health
Drugs
We see a generation that is actually mutilating themselves with surgeries and drugs, effectively making them sterile. God has given them over
25 For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
“They worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator”
People have stopped trusting God, and started trusting other things:
Medicine
Diets
Excercise
Politicians
Nature
James says in James 1:17
17 Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.
The Lord has made great things for us to enjoy, but people have started to trust in what He gave rather than Him. Its a shame
26 For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural,
27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.
Notice here, he says “FOR THIS REASON…”
Here is what we see, a progression, from those who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, to “Therefore” God gave them over to impurity, and now “For this reason”, God gave them over to degrading passions.
It isn’t as if God just all of a sudden lost it and had no patience, there is a progression that happens when there is unrighteousness, or, disbelief in God.
Look at what happens, He gives them over to degrading passions. Which is clearly described here as homosexuality.
This here answers the cultural pushback of the LGBTQ… that homosexuality is a degrading passion. There is no getting around it here in our scripture.
Paul would give more insight to the Corinthians, where he says in 1 Corinthians 6:18
18 Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body.
Sexual sin is the sin that sins against your own body. It is degrading. That is why Paul finishes up by saying to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?
20 For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.
Your body is a temple, a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. It is not meant to be used to satisfy degrading passions, but to glorify God.
28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper,
God gave them over to a depraved mind.
This is why our culture today is in trouble, because it has been given over to a depraved mind.
This is what we talk about in Hebrews 3:13
Hebrews 3:13 (NASB95)
13 … so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
Unbelief has led to sin, sin has led to a hardened heart.
When my own nephew “came out”, he not only declared to his family that he was gay, but he renounced his faith.
A former coworker of mine, wanted to smoke pot and get high, he became an atheist
A former worship leader we had, he wanted to live with his girlfriend, now he says he believes in God, just not that “Jesus Stuff.”
Here is what we see, when people are depraved in their minds and start to no longer acknowledge God, He gives them over to that. That is why they turn to things that aren’t proper. In fact, look at this list that follows…
29 being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips,
30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,
31 without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful;
This sounds very familiar to today, doesn’t it?
In fact this isn’t very unlike to what Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:1-5
1 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.
2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,
3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,
4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
5 holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.
This is the world, and even though it is disheartening to see this happening in our world today, it isn’t even the worst of it. Look here at our last verse:
32 and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.
It is one thing for the world to deny God, to turn away from Him. The world is going to do what the world is going to do.
But what really breaks my heart is when the church and Christians give their hearty approval of these things.
When we see a church fly a rainbow flag, when we see Christian athletes support abortion, when worship services are filled with worldly entertainment, when we see a pastor tearfully apologize for his homophobic teachings, they declare to the world that they give hearty approval to things that has been revealed from heaven God’s wrath.
Why do they support these things? Because of their unbelief. It is the hardness of their hearts.
Paul says they know the ordinances of God, so they aren’t approving of these things out of ignorance. They are hard in their hearts, that is why we need to be careful, lest we allow our disbelief, our unrighteousness, become a pitfall in our own lives.
