Sunday Sermon: The Wrath of God Revealed (Romans 1:18-19)

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Pastor Gabriel Hughes continues our series in Romans by looking at the wrath of God as mentioned in Romans 1:18-19, and in what ways God has revealed or will reveal His wrath. Visit providencecasagrande.com for more info about our church.

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You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.
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Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an
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Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday. Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series.
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Here is Pastor Gabe. Let's all stand together for the reading of God's Word.
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This is Romans chapter 1. I'm going to be reading from verses 18 to 23 to keep things in context.
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This is Paul writing to the church in Rome. Hear the word of the Lord. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
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For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
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For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.
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So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor
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Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
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Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal
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God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
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You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly Father, as we come into our text today, we will be studying here about the wrath of God, understanding what that is, how it has been revealed to us, and how mankind's is without excuse in understanding some of those deep and intricate things of God.
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Even when it comes to understanding your eternal power and your divine nature, even these things have been clearly perceived.
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In all that has been made, it's been seen ever since the creation of the world. Even though man and his wickedness and his sinfulness have been separated from God, and part of that separation means that God is even more invisible to us than He would have been before, yet there's still no excuse within man to say, we didn't know.
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We didn't know God was there. We didn't know there was a right and a wrong that we had to go by.
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For all these things have been made plain through the natural revelation that you've given in the created world.
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Lord, we know of the judgment of God. And we know as Christians, through supernatural revelation, through the giving of your word that has been provided for us, through these prophets and apostles that have written it down for us, we know of the righteousness that you require.
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But the very thing that you require is the thing that you have given. Through Jesus Christ, our
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Savior, a righteous sacrifice has been made. And the righteousness that we've been clothed in for those who believe in and follow
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Him. And so as we read of things concerning judgment and God's anger today, may we be reminded of the anger that has been satisfied through the precious blood of Jesus.
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It's in His great name that we pray, and all God's people said, Amen. Back in 2009, the
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Evangelical Lutheran Church of America was debating the acceptance of openly practicing homosexuals and accepting them into the pastoral ministry of the church.
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Accepting gay clergy, essentially, was what the ELCA was voting on. And the ELCA was meeting at that time in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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Strangely enough, on the very day that they were going to be voting on this, at the very hour in which this vote was going to be taking place, in the very city in which this was occurring, a tornado formed and hit the very building where this gathering was happening.
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A tornado in Minneapolis, Minnesota. When there was not even forecasted for there to have been severe weather that day, what in the world was going on?
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Well, the next day, John Piper, who was a pastor there in Minnesota, in Minneapolis, offered some possible insights into this occurrence in a post that he titled,
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The Tornado, the Lutherans, and Homosexuality. The post caused a lot of controversy.
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There were a number of people that responded to it with nodding approval and others with outright anger.
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In his post, Piper writes, I saw the fast -moving, misshapen, unusually wide funnel forming over downtown
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Minneapolis from seven corners. I said to Kevin, one of his co -ministers, this looks serious.
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It was serious in more ways than one. A friend who drove down to see the damage wrote,
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On a day when no severe weather was predicted or expected, a tornado forms, baffling weather experts, most saying they've never seen anything like it.
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It happens right in the city, Minneapolis. The tornado happens on a
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Wednesday during the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America's National Convention in the Minneapolis Convention Center.
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The convention is using Central Lutheran across the street as its church.
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The church has set up tents around its building for this purpose. According to the ELCA's printed convention schedule, at 2 p .m.
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on Wednesday, August 19th, the fifth session of the convention was to begin. Then the main item on the session, quote, consideration, proposed social statement on human sexuality, unquote.
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The issue is whether practicing homosexuality is a behavior that should disqualify a person from the pastoral ministry.
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The eyewitnesses of the damage continues. This curious tornado touches down just south of downtown and follows 35 west straight towards the city center.
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It crosses I -94. It is now downtown. The time, 2 p .m.
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The first buildings on the downtown side of I -94 are the Minneapolis Convention Center and Central Lutheran Church.
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The tornado severely damages the convention center roof, shreds the tents, breaks off the steeple of Central Lutheran, splits what's left of the steeple in two, and then dissipates.
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Piper continues, the tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and to all of us.
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Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction.
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Reaffirm the great Lutheran heritage of allegiance to the truth and authority of Scripture. Turn back from distorting the grace of God into sensuality.
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Rejoice in the pardon of the cross of Christ and its power to transform left and right -wing sinners.
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That's one of those events that comes out of nowhere and seems out of the ordinary for even an environment such as that in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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When you see that happen on that very day at that very hour when those things are being voted on to that very building where that is going to occur, that just has to make you step back and go, this is more than a coincidence.
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And why would a person not stop in fear and go, we're doing something wrong here?
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Does God in His wrath and in His judgment still operate in such ways? The Scripture tells us, as we have read here in Romans 118, that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven.
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Against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
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Now there are some things that we can read from Scripture that directly tie into God's wrath that we can know this is definitely the judgment of God because Scripture tells us.
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There are other things that happen in our everyday lives that may need a little bit more assessment, may need more review, may need some proper discernment to recognize whether or not this was an accident or whether this was something that truly was
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God's judgment that we must pay attention to and we must stand and tremble.
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As we look at this this morning, we want to understand what God's wrath is.
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And then we want to see how God's wrath is revealed. It's revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.
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And those who by their unrighteousness have suppressed the truth. They desired their sin.
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They loved their sin more than they loved righteousness. So they would rather not even acknowledge such a thing may happen as a judgment against sin.
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They will look for every permission possible to continue to do the thing that they love in their flesh or in this world rather than submit to God.
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Now this statement that we have here in Romans 1 -18, this is going to carry us forth through about the middle part of chapter 3.
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What Paul is showing here is that God's judgment is just.
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And it is just against both Gentile and Jew. So we're going to see how
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God's judgment is just against the Gentile through the rest of chapter 1. But even God's judgment against a
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Jew is just as we will see revealed in chapter 2. And then in chapter 3,
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Paul is going to sum it all up and say all have sinned. Jew or Gentile, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
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But are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus to be received by faith.
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Now Paul will even come back to this beyond these first three chapters. As he will demonstrate in Romans 9, and I'll come back to here in a moment in the sermon, how
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God desires to demonstrate the full range of His glory. He shows His glory in His wrath and He shows
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His glory through mercy to those whom He will rescue out from under His wrath so that God in all things may be glorified.
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Understand this my friends, God will in one way or another be glorified in you.
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Will it be in destroying you in His judgment? Or will it be saving you by His mercy?
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And in both things, God will be glorified. So let us consider again what we read here in Romans 118 regarding the wrath of God.
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The wrath of God revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.
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Now what do we mean by that expression, wrath of God? The word wrath comes from the same
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Greek word that could be translated anger. In Abbott Smith's Greek lexicon, it defines wrath as, quote, that reaction of the divine nature against sin, which in anthropomorphic language is called anger.
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So sometimes this word wrath might be translated anger. For example, in James 1 .20 where it says, the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
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The word there for anger, same Greek word that we see here for wrath. So it may be that for a man it may be translated in this way, but the way that James uses it there in James 1 .20,
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does that sound like a just anger to you? That wouldn't be just anger at all, right?
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The anger of man, the wrath of man, doesn't produce the righteousness of God. You see very plainly that it's set in contrast to God's righteousness.
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But God always being righteous when He is angry, is it always just?
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Yes, of course. It is always a righteous anger. When God feels indignation towards sin, as it says in Psalms, I believe it's
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Psalm 11 .5, God is a righteous judge who feels indignation every day.
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God's anger is against those who sin. God's anger is against the unrighteousness that exists within mankind.
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And understand that unrighteousness is not just some abstract bad thing that exists out there.
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Unrighteousness comes from a sinful man's heart. Had a conversation with some students earlier this week in which that very thing came up.
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Where we were talking about who does God send to hell? They said, well God judges sin. And I said, right, but God doesn't send sin to hell, does
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He? And they sat there and pondered that and they're like, oh, I guess He doesn't.
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When we read about whom God sends to hell, He sends sinners to hell, not sin to hell.
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So sin and unrighteousness is not just some thing that's out there and then we just kind of walk into it like we caught a virus this past week, right?
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I guess I walked into some sin and that caused, I'm looking forward to that day when God sends all this sin to hell.
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Well, sin comes from the wicked heart of man. The unrighteous things we do come from within.
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Jesus Himself said that. That it's from the heart of man come evil thoughts and all manner of wickedness and unrighteousness.
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And the wrath of God is revealed not against this abstract wicked thing that exists in the world.
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It's revealed against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men and who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, desire not to follow
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God, to worship Him or do that which is pleasing in His sight, but in our nature in rebellion against God.
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And if left in that state, we would all come into judgment because we've all done this.
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We are all by our nature ungodly and unrighteous.
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But coming back to the concept of wrath, of this being the anger of God that is revealed against these things.
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There are different kinds of wrath that we see talked about in Scripture.
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All of it underneath the anger of God and His reaction toward sin.
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But there may be different ways in which this wrath might be manifest. So I've narrowed down seven.
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I don't know that this is necessarily an exhaustive list. Might be able to add to it. I got past five and I was like, where am
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I going to cap this off? And I decided, well, talking about God, seven is a good number. So I ended it with seven.
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But what are different kinds of wrath that we might see displayed by God? Number one, whenever we talk about this, whenever we discuss the wrath of God, the first place that someone's mind might go.
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And I'm talking whether believer or unbeliever. The first thing we might think about regarding wrath is this supernatural wrath, right?
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You talk about the wrath of God, you just mentioned that. God's wrath. And what might somebody think about? The plagues of Egypt.
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That's the wrath of God. Unleashing frogs and flies and boils and hail from heaven and darkness and the death of the firstborn, the blood of the
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Nile, all of these different things. That might be what somebody ponders when they think of God's wrath.
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You don't see that in our world today. They might also say, you may excuse it. Or maybe those were just mythological studies or stories rather in Hebrew history.
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It's not something that God really does today. But this is one of those ways in which
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God demonstrates His wrath through the Hebrew Scriptures, through the Old Testament. We see
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God demonstrate His wrath in supernatural means. Another way in which
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He demonstrates His wrath is through the sons of Korah, the supernatural wrath anyway.
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The sons of Korah in Numbers 16. Remember, they grumbled against God.
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They complained about their circumstance, decided, we know just as well as Moses does. Why don't the people follow us?
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And so God told the sons of Korah to come out to their tents to light their censers. He would demonstrate who it was specifically that He had chosen, and who it was who was rebelling against Him.
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And He caused the ground beneath them to open up and to swallow them up immediately in a moment. And they perished, were dragged down to Sheol, were dragged down to hell.
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That was God's supernatural wrath displayed in a moment. We also see God's supernatural wrath displayed at the cross.
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As Jesus was dying, God caused darkness to come over the land.
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There was an earthquake, and that earthquake would even tear the curtain in the temple in two to show that through the sacrifice of Christ, God was no longer separated from man in the sense that there was this holy of holy places that only the high priest could go once a year.
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But God would now dwell with man in the hearts of every person who had followed Christ. And even showed this through a demonstration of His wrath.
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When His Son took God's wrath, the Father's wrath upon Himself as He died there on the cross.
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And so they're taking the wrath of God on Himself. We see even a demonstration of supernatural wrath at the cross.
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A second kind of wrath that we see in Scripture, and it might be the second kind of wrath that somebody thinks about whenever you talk about God's wrath, that would be eternal wrath.
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Or perhaps we might also think of this as God's sentencing wrath. The very judgment that He would make upon a person when they come and stand before God for judgment.
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God's eternal wrath Jesus talks about in Matthew 25, 46 where He says, the unrighteous will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into eternal life.
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In Mark 9, 48, He talks about this place of God's eternal wrath as being a location where the worm never dies and the fire is not quenched.
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Hebrews 6, verses 1 and 2 actually tell us that eternal judgment is an elementary doctrine of Christ.
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An elementary doctrine. So when you're talking about Christianity 101, what do
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I need to know about the faith? What do I need to know about being a follower of Jesus? Well, one of the things that you need to know is that there is an eternal judgment that is coming.
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And the only way you can be saved from that judgment is by faith in Christ. And I've shared this with you before.
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I can't remember which sermon it was. It was somewhere when we were in 2 Timothy, I believe. But hell is not a place where God is absent.
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You've heard that said before about hell, right? Hell is eternal separation from God. Not necessarily.
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God's wrath is being poured out forever on those who are in hell, so He is very much present even with those who are perishing.
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But not in a way that they could ever hope to be saved from or delivered out of.
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It is God's anger and His judgment being poured out on the unrighteous forever. And even for all eternity, they would not desire that God would save them, nor would they turn their hearts to Him to worship
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Him. This is their eternal state. Jesus describes this as a place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
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Those who are weeping and in great sorrow for all eternity, and those who gnash their teeth in fierce anger for all eternity.
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But never with a heart of repentance. Even in the account that Jesus gives of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 15, even there, or 16 rather, even there you don't see the rich man in hell repenting.
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The rich man in that fiery place of torment, he's not going, oh, why didn't I do better?
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He's just asking to be relieved. That's it. But his heart never recognizes his own wickedness or to turn from that sin or acknowledge
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God and desire to worship Him even in that awful place. So for all eternity, those that perish under the eternal wrath of God remain in that state of misery and eternal anger toward God.
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A third kind of way that God shows or demonstrates
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His wrath is what we might call eschatological wrath. This is the wrath that will be poured out at the return of Christ.
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2 Thessalonians 1, 7 and 9 says, that the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know
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God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the
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Lord and from the glory of His might. When Jesus returns, He will most certainly return to save those who are in His name.
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As we read about in 1 Thessalonians 4, that those who are alive who are left will be caught up with Him in the air and so we will forever be with the
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Lord. The dead in Christ will rise first. We read about that concerning the return of Christ.
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But at the same time, those who rebelled against Christ will perish in His judgment.
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You understand that when we pray as John prays at the end of Revelation, when we pray,
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Lord Jesus, come quickly. You understand that when we pray that prayer, we're not just asking that He would come and save us.
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Although I certainly pray for that and ask for that. But we're also in that same prayer saying,
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God, may Your just wrath be poured out on the wickedness and unrighteousness in the earth.
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Because both things will come with Christ's second coming. He will deliver His own, but He will also pour out
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His judgment. This is talked about not just in the New Testament, but in the Old as well.
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In Joel 2 .11 it says, The Lord utters His voice before His army, for His camp is exceedingly great.
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He who executes His word is powerful, for the day of the Lord is great and very awesome, and who can endure it?
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So eschatological wrath being another way that God demonstrates His wrath. A fourth kind of wrath is cataclysmic wrath.
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A cataclysm is a large -scale violent event in the natural world. So even through natural disasters,
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God is demonstrating and showing His wrath. Such as the tornado that happened in Minneapolis, which
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I just mentioned to you. Or we might even consider the fires that are happening in LA. This is turning out to be, or could turn out to be, one of the costliest natural disasters in American history.
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And it is devastating. I don't know if you've seen the pictures, but there's nothing left.
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It's not like a house catches fire and you just see the burned -out windows. It is burning stuff to the ground.
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There is nothing left where those fires hit. As Alan prayed for us this morning, may this be a situation or a scenario that happens that causes people's hearts to turn to the
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Lord. And indeed, Scripture tells us that through natural disasters and cataclysms,
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God shows Himself by striking fear into the hearts of people.
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Consider what is said in Psalm 107, beginning in verse 23. Some went down to the sea and ships, doing business on great waters.
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They saw the deeds of the Lord, His wondrous works in the deep. For He commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea.
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They mounted up to heaven, they went down to the depths. Their courage melted away in their evil plight.
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They reeled and staggered like drunken men, and were at their wit's end.
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Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them from their distress. He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.
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And they were glad that the waters were quiet, and He brought them to their desired haven. Let them thank the
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Lord for His steadfast love, for His wondrous works to the children of man. Let them extol
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Him in the congregation of the people, and praise Him in the assembly of the elders. God uses a great and monstrous storm on the sea to remind man,
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You're mortal, and I'm God. And through the cataclysm of His wrath, reminding them of His righteousness, and their unrighteousness, that they would turn to God, and praise
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Him for His steadfast love, and His wondrous works to the children of man.
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Something that I have prayed for, even watching these fires as they devastate L .A.
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And surely there are many Christians in the midst of this city who are being afflicted by these fires as well.
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There certainly are. So I'm not saying that God's wrath is being poured out on Christians unjustly to some extent.
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That is not my statement at all. But you look at providentially how these things came about.
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Just last Sunday, it was the Golden Globe Awards. And of course, the
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Golden Globes are celebrating and honoring all manner of wickedness that has been demonstrated in the shows and movies that these people are celebrating.
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I mean, it is a worshiping of themselves. The host of the awards, whose name I don't remember now, but it's not important, at one point during the awards ceremony, jokingly showed a tally of the people who were being thanked on stage by those who were receiving awards.
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And at the top of the list was Mom. Mom had 11 thank yous so far in the awards ceremony.
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But then the host threw up the name God. Zero mentions.
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Now she did that as a joke. And we probably wouldn't have wanted God thanked in the midst of that anyway, considering all of the filth that they were honoring with those awards that they were giving out.
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But to laugh about it, and to blaspheme his name, unironically, and then it was just two days later that the first fires started in L .A.
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And I would hope that, as I said, I had prayed about that earlier this week. The thing that I had prayed was I hoped that in the providence of God, some dots would be connected.
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There would be people that would recognize, we were just mocking God on the biggest stage in L .A.
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just two days ago, and now our city is on fire. God forgive us.
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And it would strike the hearts of the people with some measure of humility, as God demonstrates his wrath even through these cataclysmic ways.
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And not just through natural disasters, but you might also fit in this category through wars and other catastrophes.
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After all, God brought the Assyrian army against Israel to punish them. So even through war,
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God brings punishment upon a people through these cataclysmic demonstrations.
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A fifth kind of wrath that we see from God as given to us in Scripture is simply a consequential wrath.
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We talked about this last week with regards to natural revelation, with general revelation. What anybody can observe about God in just the way the world works, we all understand the concept of consequences for our bad behavior.
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Galatians 6 -8 says, Do not be deceived, God is not mocked.
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For whatever one sows, that will he also reap.
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For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the
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Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. So if we do as unto the
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Lord in His Spirit, with just a few verses earlier in Galatians 5,
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Paul contrasting the works of the flesh with the fruit of the Spirit. If we live by the
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Spirit, we will reap spiritual things. But if we live by the flesh, we will reap the destruction of the flesh.
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When a person breaks the law, and they receive judgment for breaking the law, that is consequential wrath.
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That is consequences for our behavior. Or maybe you do something that does not involve breaking the law in any particular way.
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Just some destructive behavior. Maybe the law is not going to come against you for that, but you will nonetheless face consequences for your actions.
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You think of all the rampant fornication and adultery that happens in our culture. And sexually transmitted diseases that get passed around as a result of that.
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That's consequential wrath. These are the consequences for your behavior. And so that's another way that we see
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God's wrath demonstrated, even in all that has been made. A sixth kind of wrath is what
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I've termed here abiding wrath. I didn't know what else to call that. But that seemed like a good expression because of what is said in John 3 .36.
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He who has the Son has life. But he who does not obey the
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Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.
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And this is the wrath of God, the judgment of God, that exists upon each and every person because in our natural disposition we rebel against God.
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So a person from conception, from birth even, is under this kind of wrath of God.
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Now we read of course later about how God in His love, in His divine forbearance, had passed over former sins.
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Or in Romans 5 .8, God shows His love for us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
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But God through His Son is providing a way for us to be delivered out from under His wrath.
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And He shows His love to us in that way. And that through giving
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His Son, Jesus, to take God's wrath on our behalf, that we might see the love of God displayed.
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Love of God is not understood by us, friends, unless we understand
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God's wrath. And that's part of the reason why Paul begins this presentation of the
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Gospel by talking about the wrath of God. Because remember, where did we start? Romans 1 .16.
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I am not ashamed of the Gospel. It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the
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Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.
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As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. Now where might you expect Paul to go immediately after saying that?
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Let me tell you all about this good news. Let me tell you all about this good Savior who has died for me.
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Shares His testimony and how Jesus had done such great things for Him. How Jesus shows
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His love for Him every day. That might be how you and I often share our testimonies. But Paul goes first to the wrath of God.
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After mentioning the Gospel, he goes straight to the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of all men.
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He goes right into making the argument that everyone is under God's judgment.
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No one is conceived, born into a state of not being under God's wrath.
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Everyone is under the judgment of God. And it is only by His mercy and His grace as demonstrated through Jesus Christ that we're not abiding under that wrath any longer.
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So God's abiding wrath is the very thing that's demonstrated in the curse that's been put upon all of creation.
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Romans 8 .20, later on, we read about how God had subjected all things to futility.
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This is the curse that is upon all of creation because of the rebellion of man against God.
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Psalm 34 .16 says, And this is
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God's abiding wrath that resides on every person and is taken away only through Jesus Christ.
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And seventh, finally, a final kind of wrath is
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God's forsaking wrath. John MacArthur did a sermon on specifically this kind of wrath.
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It's called, the name of the sermon is When God Abandons a Nation. I commend that sermon to you.
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It was delivered about 20 years ago. But you'd be amazed listening to it today how much it describes the world that we're still in and not much has changed.
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In fact, things have only gotten worse. But John talks there about forsaking wrath.
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He termed it the wrath of God's abandonment. And he began by reading from Judges 16 when
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Samson is in the arms of a prostitute named Delilah. And Delilah, who is under the influence of some
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Philistines who are going to pay her money to get Samson's weakness out of him, is trying to coax
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Samson to give up what it is that must be done to you to make you as weak as any man.
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You know the great strength of Samson that's talked about. It's legendary as far as the stories in Scripture go.
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Probably second only to David and Goliath. Samson, with his great strength, was able to fend off armies, defeating even thousands, through one man.
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Just one strong man, the superman of the Bible, Samson was able to do this. Delilah's going, what do we need to do to make you weak?
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And she coaxes him and coaxes him and coaxes him. You'd think at some point he would get a clue. Samson is not thinking with his head.
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He's thinking with something else. And he decides to give this up to Delilah and says, if you cut my hair,
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I will be as weak as any man. And so he goes to sleep in her lap.
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She calls a Philistine barber in, who cuts off all the locks of his hair. And she says to him, as she has said at other times, the
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Philistines are upon you, Samson. And he jumps up and what Judges 16 records, is that Samson did not realize that the
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Spirit of God had left him. In Samson's continued rebellion against God, finally it had come to the point where God abandoned
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Samson and let him face the consequences of his own actions.
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And there are other places in Scripture that we see this talked about. God abandoning a people.
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In fact, as MacArthur argues, what we read about through the rest of Romans 1, is what we would see in a nation that God has abandoned.
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We would see exactly these kinds of passions and these kinds of sins that will be described for us here in the remainder of this chapter.
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So when we read the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, we should be able to observe the effects of the wrath of God even in the world around us.
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And when you see a people living as wickedly as the people around us do, then you can see demonstrated that God's presence is not with them.
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God has abandoned that people and given them up to their own passions, their own devices, to face judgment.
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In fact, 2 Thessalonians 2 says, God sends them a strong delusion so that they may do what is false and have pleasure in unrighteousness and come into judgment because of the unrighteousness that they loved.
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God leads them to their pleasures so that they will be judged for their wickedness and further demonstrating exactly what
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Paul is arguing here, that God is just in the judgments that He brings against wicked men.
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And so seven kinds of wrath we have considered here, seven ways in which God demonstrates His wrath, a supernatural wrath,
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His eternal wrath, an eschatological or end times wrath, there's a cataclysmic wrath, consequential wrath, an abiding wrath, and His forsaking wrath or the wrath of His abandonment.
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Also, considering that, His abandoning wrath just pierces me all the more the words of David in Psalm 51 where he says,
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Take not your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and renew a right spirit within me.
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Many times I have prayed to God, God, don't let me lose my conviction because the moment
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I know I've become comfortable with my sin is the moment
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I should know that His spirit is no longer with me. I want to feel guilty about my sin so that I will turn from it and not fall into the judgment of God.
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And such warnings and reminders are given to us all over Scripture that we would not become like those who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
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My brothers and sisters, we know the truth. We have heard it. We preach about it every week.
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We are committed to it as a church. It's in our Sunday school classes, in our small groups, in the things that we teach the kids.
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It's in our songs. It's in our catechisms. It's in our confession of faith. The truth of Christ has been proclaimed to us.
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And let us not desire sin more than we love
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Christ so that we would be willing in our wickedness to suppress truth for the sake of the sin that we love so much.
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I want to hate my sin as much as God hates my sin.
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And I feel like such a hypocrite in those moments when I do give in to that sin because I feel like I didn't love
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Jesus enough. I loved my sin more than Christ and that's why
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I turned to this. That's why I desired it in my flesh. But praise
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God that 1 John 2 -1 tells us,
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Brothers, I have told you these things so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate before the
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Father. Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. And calling
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Christ our advocate means He is speaking favorably of us before God.
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Even when we have not done anything worthy of that favor, yet He has demonstrated
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His love for us in this way. And He, as our advocate, presents us before God as His child clothed in the righteousness of Christ.
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So may we flee far from that temptation to want to put the truth aside for a little while so I can indulge the passions of my flesh as we behold the wrath of God and what a fearful thing it is to fall into the hands of the living
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God. So that we would flee far from sin into the arms of Christ and desire to live in the righteousness that He has clothed us in.
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For as verse 19 says, what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them.
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My friends, we are of a privileged people that have been able to see
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God beyond just what He's naturally revealed about Himself in the world. We have the
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Holy Spirit of God that we may also know what He has supernaturally revealed.
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As 1 Corinthians 2 .14 tells us, the natural man cannot perceive spiritual things because they're spiritually discerned.
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But we have the Spirit of Christ that we may be able to discern these spiritual truths.
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And so, verse 20, His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made so that they are without excuse.
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And that, my friends, is where we're going to come back to next week, exploring that verse and on through verse 23 about how although they knew
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God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him but in the futileness of their thinking, because they suppressed the truth in unrighteousness, their foolish hearts were darkened.
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As we wrap up, in light of these things that we've read, in light of understanding God's wrath and His judgment,
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His anger against sin, let us consider three reflections. Three reflections for you here.
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I'm going to give them to you up front. First of all, God's wrath is real. Number two,
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God is slow to anger. And number three, God shows mercy.
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So first of all, God's wrath is real. Now I say this with no amount of boasting in myself, but this is a sermon that you will rarely hear in any of today's churches.
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And that's sad. When the church has been placed as the watchman on the wall warning people about the judgment of God that is coming, and too many pastors are standing in their pulpits,
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I don't want to say that today. It's a downer. I even opened this morning telling you the next several sermons are not going to be terribly cheery sermons.
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These are not subjects that we enjoy speaking of. I spent a lot of years in charismatic circles, in charismatic churches.
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They did talk a lot about the judgment of God. I actually did hear about it a lot, but it was about what's going to happen to those people.
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And whenever it came to talking about prophecy, whatever you prophesy to somebody, it's always got to be positive.
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It's always got to be uplifting. We're not going to someone and telling them, God's judgment is upon you. You don't know that about the heart of a person, so you need to say something encouraging and uplifting and share the love of Christ.
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I don't see that kind of pattern with any prophet in the Old Testament, do you? Were any of these prophets prophet of positive and encouraging?
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God's wrath is a real thing. And the church has been given the message of the
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Gospel to go out into the world and warn them of the judgment of God that is to come. So that they will hear and understand the good news of the
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Savior who will deliver us from God's wrath. And we can know that deliverance now.
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It's the here and now, or the already and the not yet aspect of His deliverance.
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We are already delivered from God's wrath and we will be delivered when we enter into His eternal kingdom.
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That entrance is Christ. For those who believe in God, 1
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Thessalonians 5, 9 -10 says, God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our
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Lord Jesus Christ who died for us. We have nothing to fear of the wrath of God, but only those who are in Christ.
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Everyone else remains under God's judgment. And we must not develop this flippant attitude of thinking, man,
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I hope my neighbor figures this out before this thing comes to an end. It may be incumbent upon you to be the one to warn a neighbor of the judgment that is to come.
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Can you imagine people in LA as the fires are sweeping across this massive city?
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Does anybody see the fire coming down the street and go, my neighbor's on his own? Do you think even unbelievers were going down the street saying, get out!
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The fire is coming! And so the church must warn the world of the judgment of God that will soon be here and will come upon any person in a moment.
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A friend of mine, Matt Schaeffer, he's actually a representative in the state of Texas, said,
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Christians, God is for us, but that doesn't mean that He's indifferent to our sin. So even though the wrath of God is not abiding upon the
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Christian, we still have to recognize there's a call to us to live righteously. Hebrews 12, 5 -6 says,
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Have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the
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Lord, nor be weary when reproved by Him. For the Lord disciplines the one He loves and chastises every son whom
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He receives. So let us not think lightly of God's wrath so that we would continue on in sin, but receive when
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God corrects us and turn from that sin and desire to live in the righteous way that we've been set in by Christ.
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So first of all, we need to acknowledge, we need to recognize that God's wrath is real.
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Secondly, let us reflect upon and know that God is slow to anger. And praise
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God that He is slow to anger. In Exodus 34, 6, when God presents Himself before Moses, this is the very first thing that God says of Himself as He passes before Moses.
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The Lord passed before Him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord, a
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God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
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But He also goes on to say that He will by no means clear the guilty. So just because God is slow to anger, that's no excuse for a person to go,
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Well, I can continue in my sin. God's obviously not there. He's not seeing me do anything.
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Or He's just a God of grace and love. He's going to forgive me no matter what. God is slow to anger.
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As we'll read later in Romans 2, 4 -5, Do you presume on the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?
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But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when
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God's righteous judgment will be revealed. Don't flirt with that danger.
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Return from your sin now to Christ. And the reason why God's judgment is not poured out on this wicked world now is because we have that opportunity as a church to warn others and lead them to the saving knowledge of Christ.
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A third reflection. God shows mercy. So indeed,
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God's wrath is real. God is slow to anger, but will by no means clear the guilty.
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And praise God, He shows mercy. God is a righteous judge. And it's because He is righteous that He has this wrath and this anger toward the unrighteousness of men.
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But it's in His mercy that He has saved us out of the judgment that we all deserve.
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As we read just a few months ago in Titus 3, 4 -7, But when the goodness and lovingkindness of God our
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Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy.
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By the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit whom
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He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
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Later on in Romans 9, I mentioned this to you at the beginning of the sermon, but with regards to God showing the full range of His glory, not just in those whom
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He will judge, but in also those whom He will save. Romans 9, 22 -44 says,
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What if God, desiring to show His wrath and to make known His power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy, which
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He has prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom He has called not from the
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Jews only, but also from the Gentiles? And in Jude 22 -23 we read, this instruction,
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Have mercy on those who doubt. Save others by snatching them from the fire.
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To others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.
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God has shown mercy to us. And so likewise, we must show mercy to one another.
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And where we have opportunity snatching some out of the fire through the sharing of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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When Jesus died on the cross for our sins, there on Mount Calvary, He took the wrath of God upon Himself.
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Drinking down to the dregs, His Psalms describes the cup of God's wrath.
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And for all who believe in Him, God's wrath no longer abides on us.
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His love, His mercy and grace are abiding on every believer.
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It is a peace and a comfort that we can all know every day of our lives.
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So no matter what kind of catastrophe may happen, no matter what may come our way, we have nothing to fear or dread because we know of the salvation and the deliverance that we've been given in Jesus Christ.
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Jesus rose from the dead so that even death itself, which is a judgment against sin, has been conquered on our behalf so that all who believe in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.
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My friends, what a great and relieving thing it is to know that you are not under God's wrath today, but in His love.
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And so as said in Romans 8 .1, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
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And let us bring the good news of that no condemnation to a condemned and perishing world.
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You've been listening to the preaching of Pastor Gabriel Hughes, a presentation of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.
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For more information about our church, visit our website at ProvidenceCasaGrande .com On behalf of our church family, my name is
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Becky, thanking you for listening. Join us again Monday for more Bible study, when we understand the text.