The Wrath of God

Tomorrow I am preaching on Romans 1:18 - 32, the Wrath of God. Not exactly a touchy-feely subject, but certainly Biblical. Below is one of the handouts I'll give to the congregation. One of the great benefits of expository preaching that it that forces the pastor to engage the entire Bible and not cherry-pick passages and topics, nor avoid them. 

I think I may also share the article by Joe Carter on hell, it's titled How Dismissing the Doctrine of Hell Leads Us to Hate Our Neighbors, you can find it here:

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/how-dismissing-the-doctrine-of-hell-causes-us-to-hate-our-neighbors/

Here's my handout in its current form - how would you answer the lead questions?

Bethlehem Congregational Church – February 17, 2019

Romans 1:18 – 32

Pastor Bob Withers

The Wrath of God

How am I suppressing the truth?

How am I exchanging the glory of God?

How am I exchanging the truth?

Am I living a thankful like?

Am I honoring God?

How do we, as Bethlehem Church, answer these questions?

·         Just as the righteousness of God is “revealed” (Romans 1:17), so the wrath of God is “revealed” (Romans 1:8). This means that unless God gives us eyes to see that we will not see His works and His ways – we will not “see” either His righteousness or His wrath.

·         We are being taught to suppress the truth and to deny our inborn sense of right and wrong, of good and evil. Our children and grandchildren are being taught this. We are being transformed from being human to being lab rats whose behavior and thinking is controlled. What are we doing about it?

·         We deny the Creator as He is revealed in creation. We cannot read His message in nature, in the mountains, the plants, the animals, in the heavens. We are denying one of the most basic aspects of what it means to be human – the common sense that if something has a design that it has a Designer.

·         When we do not honor God nor give Him thanks, when we exchange the glory of God for self-created glory, worshiping ourselves – then God gives us up to what we want.

·         God made us in His image, yet we are not only rejecting His image, we are doing all we can to destroy and repudiate His image in our society by an aggressive agenda that will stop at nothing until we speak, think, and act as dehumanized people – perhaps the current zombie craze is indicative of what is really happening around us…and in us?

·         We are now exceeding what Paul visualized in this passage with forcing destructive thinking and behavior on our children, with destroying what is good and beautiful and true – we are living in a wicked generation that God has “given over” – how are we going to live? Who are we going to worship?

Why are we uncomfortable with the idea of the wrath of God? There are two ways to be uncomfortable, a healthy way and an unhealthy way. The healthy way is when we worship God and believe what He says about Himself. God teaches us that He is holy, righteous, and just (Exodus  34:5 – 7). This means, among other things, that He judges sinners, those who suppress the truth and are in rebellion against Him. This includes those who trust in their own righteousness and well as those who make no pretense to righteousness. We ought to be uncomfortable about God’s wrath because His judgment is beyond our comprehension and we ought to be motivated to tell others about Jesus Christ so that they too will come out of darkness and spiritual death into God’s light and life in His Son Jesus Christ.

The unhealthy way to be uncomfortable about God’s wrath is when we have substituted what God reveals about Himself with an image of God that we want to have – this is typically the image of Santa Claus or a Divine Sugar Daddy who winks at our sin and unrighteousness and says, “That’s ok, I understand…but please don’t do that again.” Then when we continue in lives of sin and disobedience he says, “Oh now, didn’t I ask you to please don’t do that again? You naughty boys and girls, whatever shall I do with you? I’ll have to put you in time-out and take away your ice cream for a few hours.”

Sin is so dreadful, so hideous, so eternally lethal that Jesus Christ came to die for us, suffer for us, taking our sin upon Himself, taking our sinful selves upon Himself – becoming our sin-bearer and also becoming the object of the wrath of God in our place. This is how destructive and evil sin is – Jesus Christ became sin for us that we might be forgiven and given new life in Him (2 Cor. 5:17 – 21).

When we avoid talking and thinking about the wrath of God we avoid the stark reality of the Cross of Jesus Christ, for we minimize our need for the Christ of the Cross and we minimize the death of Jesus, the Lamb of God.