“God:  My Way or the Highway”

Sermon by Pastor Dennis R. Gleason -- November 14, 2004

Romans 1:18-20  “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the  truth in unrighteousness, because that which is know about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 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 they are without excuse.”

The story is told of Comedian W. C. Fields that when he was at the end of his life a friend came to see him one day. Fields was not known to be a religious man at all and it was quite a surprise to his friend when he discovered him reading the Bible.

When asked what he was doing Fields answered, “Loop holes!” Looking for loop holes.”

Those of us who have laughed at his comedy chuckle when we hear the words “loop holes” because that is so characteristic of the roles he played. However, when we consider the man we understand his search.

Every man has as part of his eternal being a consciousness of God. Augustine taught that every man has a God shaped blank inside that cries out to be filled. We fill it with God or with self. If we submit ourselves to God and His Son Jesus Christ we will receive the blessings of God’s grace. If we do not submit ourselves to God and His Son Jesus Christ we will ultimately experience the wrath of God because of our sin.

Some people have a problem with the idea that God, who is love for the sinner, has a hatred for sin. God is perfect in His love. But he is also perfect in his holiness and justice. Habbakuk speaks to us of this truth when he writes of God: “You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look upon iniquity.” (Hab. 1:3).

The truth of the Word of God is that God hates sin and will ultimately show his wrath against those who do not know him or accept the gospel of His Son Jesus Christ. The Bible uses two different words to express the concept of wrath in the Greek language. The first word is the word “thumos” which means a panting rage and comes from the root word meaning “to breathe violently”. It is not the word used here. The word used in our text is the word “orga” and it signifies an indignation that has risen gradually and become more settled. It was originally used of plants and fruits which swelled with juice until they burst.

Our text tells us that the wrath of God is revealed. The human race has always had an indwelling sense of the justice of God and the need for propitiation of this justice. It is not a new revelation that God hates sin, but the coming of Christ to die is the revelation of God’s wrath to the highest degree.

You can imagine how God feels about sin when the requirement for the removal of God’s wrath toward sin was the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary.

The story is told of godly farmers in a western community who were shocked one summer Sunday morning. They drove up to their little church in the country, and saw the man who owned forty acres across from the church was in the midst of plowing, and that he had apparently been turning furrows since early morning. As their worship service continued, they could hear the rise and fall of the noise of the tractor as it approached and then went on to the other side of the field. The farmer who worked the land just across from the church worked on his other fields during the week, and always came back to the forty acres across from the church on Sunday morning. On through the spring, summer and into the fall he plowed, disked, harrowed, dragged, fertilized, planted and cultivated the field on Sunday mornings. The time of harvest came and after he had cut, stacked and husked the corn and put it in the crib, he wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper pointing out that he had done all of this on Sunday and yet had the highest yield per acre of any farm in the county. He asked the editor of the paper how Christians would explain this. The editor printed his letter and then followed it with this statement “God does not settle his accounts in the month of October.”

The gospel of Jesus Christ contains the terrible warning that God hates sin and that he is going to deal with it fully in those who refuse the gift of His Son, whom He has sent forth to be the sacrifice for the remission of man’s sin.

The Apostle Paul, who writes this letter, had this to say to say on Mars Hill in Athens, God “has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he has ordained; of whom he has given assurance unto all men, in that he has raised him from the dead.” Acts 17:30, 31).  God has appointed a day when he will judge the world.

How do we know that righteousness will ultimately triumph? The revelation of the wrath of God at the cross of Jesus Christ is sufficient guarantee that the Lord God will finish what he has started. For those who receive the gospel warning and come to Jesus there will be delivery and safety. For those who refuse the mercy of God there is great danger.

In the eighth chapter of the Book of Revelation, the messenger of God, proceeds to the altar, takes a censer filled with fire from the altar, and pours it out upon the earth, from which come cataclysmic judgments.

Now, the appointed work done at the altar is sacrifice for sins: There is the place of the blood that is offered for sin. But at the end of time, it is seen that the day of grace is ended and the Day of Judgment has arrived. Men, who have refused the blood of the altar, must have the fire from the altar. It is plain from Scripture that if men will not have Jesus as their Savior they will have Jesus Christ as their judge. Both grace and wrath proceed from the cross of Jesus Christ. Both righteousness and wrath are revealed in the gospel.

Last week I suggested that the righteousness of God is revealed from one man’s faith to the faith of another person. We can tell other people about Jesus and the grace God offers to those who submit themselves to Jesus and the cross on which he died. But the wrath of God is from heaven. It is entirely God’s providence.

The wrath of God has been stored up since the first sin ever committed by Adam and Eve. As more men sinned, more and more of God’s wrath was stored up against sin. God’s patience stands as a dam lying across the valley of His judgment. All of man’s sin awaits the day when His patience will come to an end.

At the cross of Jesus, He took upon himself the wrath of God for everyone who accepts his death as the payment for the penalty of their sin. Accept His love and the gift of grace Jesus offers and you will never experience the wrath of God. Jesus took it on your behalf. Refuse to do so and the wrath of God will ultimately fall upon you. That is the message of the gospel.

Think about how men responded to the coming of Jesus Christ into our world. How was he received? When the Word was made flesh and dwelt among people like us, hatred of God was manifested against Him from the time Herod attempted to kill him...

Our text tells us “that which is known about God is evident within them (man); for God made it evident to them. 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 we know about God has been revealed to us. First of all, in nature, it has been clearly seen by mankind from the very beginning until now that God exists and that His power and divine nature are evident. Look at the world in which we live, at the universe that surrounds us with countless stars and all that the universe contains large and small. When you do that the fact of God is clear. Man is without excuse if when he views all of nature he comes to the conclusion that there is no God.  That is a matter of the heart and of the will that is unsubmissive to God.

The touchstone of all judgment will be the attitude of all men toward the truth of God. God has gone beyond what he has shown us about himself in what we call nature. He has given us His Word…we call it the Bible. In this book he reveals Himself to us and we find that He is love. We find that he loves us with an everlasting, unconditional love. We find that he has reached out to us and offered us love, mercy and grace as a gift. All we have to do is receive the gift and we will be blessed.

Man’s apostasy from God is not the result of ignorance, but the act of a determined will. When Adam sinned against God, it was a declaration of his independence of God. Man will be one of two things. He will be submitted utterly to God or he will be utterly independent of God. The knowledge that God has given every man concerning His eternal power and Godhead condemns men entirely. And because of His patience, God awaits the Day of Judgment. It is coming. One day the patience of God will end and judgment will come.

Until that day God patiently waits. God gave men the brains to smelt iron and to make a hammer head and nails. God grew a tree and gave man the strength to cut it down and brains to fashion out of it a handle from its wood. And when the man has the hammer and the nails, God put out His hand and let man drive the nails through it and place Him on a cross. In that act is the supreme demonstration that men are without excuse. This is the revelation of His love.

The remaining verses of this first chapter in Romans paint a gloomy picture of what happens when man refuses the grace of God and fails to accept forgiveness and the life He offers.

What Paul is telling us is basically this:  The fact of God is clear to all men in creation. In the creation of God his Godhead and His eternal power are clearly visible. But even though men knew God they chose not to honor Him as God or even give Him thanks. Instead men became futile in their speculations and their foolish hearts became darkened. Men became fools. This is God’s estimate of the human race.

Notice if you will this fact: the men who had abandoned the spiritual, invisible God had to have something upon which their senses could take hold. The slope of the descent from God grew steeper. They abandoned spiritual worship. And so they created images to worship. In the beginning they were images of men and then of animals and birds and creepy, crawly creatures.

And God gave them up. God has said something to the effect of this:  I have opened a door and am standing here to receive you. If you will not come my way, you cannot come. The choice lies before people like us:  God and Heaven or yourself and ultimate bestiality. There is not possible alternative.

Time today does not permit us to go deeper into this but notice the descent of man to utter depravity:
God gave them up…in the lusts of their hearts to impurity. (vs 24)
God gave them up…to degrading passions – the unnatural affection of both men and women (vs 26)
God gave them up…to a depraved mind  - that manifests itself in 21 different varieties of sinfulness.

Three times Paul tells us that man has been abandoned by God. As God took his hands off the human race, it has descended deeper and deeper into the mire of sinfulness. God will ultimately give mankind what it wants. He will be the Lord and Savior of those who will accept the gift he has given. He will ultimately abandon those who refuse him. If you doubt this go back to the cross in the moment when His Son Jesus took upon himself the guilt and sin of all mankind. Did not God turn from Jesus when He became sin for us? “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” are the words he said in that moment.

The slope of the descent from God grew steeper because the problem of mankind is a heart problem.
Jeremiah tells us “the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, who can know it?”  The truth is this:  Man abandoned God and so God abandoned man. He gave men up to what they want….life without God. But it has come with a very high price tag. The price tag is utter depravity. The world that refuses to honor God is getting worse and worse in its depravity.  The practical result of this abandonment was that mankind was delivered to himself and to all these things which are shameful.

The hope in all of this is the fact that only the believer who accepts Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord is never abandoned by God. He is welcomed openly into the arms of Jesus.

--Dennis Gleason