Well, tonight we turn in our Bibles to Romans chapter 1, Romans chapter 1, as we continue our study through Romans, you'll notice the weight of that psalm, the cry out that the Lord is angry, His wrath is burning, and did He answer that prayer of His saints so many years ago? Did He come and did He save us? Has He taken away our sin and shame? Well, I have to preface this tonight by saying that we come to one of the most difficult sections of Scripture, and I can't make an apology for it in the sense that I can't apologize for what is said here, but I do know that there's been the problem of preaching that has been so oppressive that it forgets the aim. And so I want you to know that I've not forgotten the goal here in preaching the wrath of God, preaching the problem of sin, The goal is to show how wonderful the riches of Christ's grace is. And so yes, it's going to be a bit uncomfortable. Yes, it's going to prick. It should. You shouldn't feel good when you hear something like this. But that's what turns our face to the Lord, doesn't it? In this psalm, to ask to come and save us and take away our sin and shame. And what does He do? He shows us His Son. So that will become so glorious in chapter 3 when we see just how awful the situation here is in chapter 1, okay? So let's consider Romans 1 tonight beginning at 16 and I'll read through verse 23. 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. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. 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. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, They did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. May the Lord bless the hearing of His Word. Well, I was reading over Martin Lloyd-Jones on Romans 1 and he said something that really struck me as I was preparing for this sermon and thinking through this sermon. He said something that was immensely helpful tonight as we begin the section here on the wrath of God. And he asked the question, why is Paul ready to preach the Gospel in Rome or anywhere else? He does not say it because he knows many of them are living defeated lives. And that he has something to tell them that will give them victory. He does say, I want to come. He doesn't say, I want to come because I have this marvelous experience to tell you about. He doesn't talk about their happiness or experience, but this staggering, amazing thing, the wrath of God. It struck me because I was listening to a church advertisement the other day of a church pitching itself to get people to come in. And it said in the advertisement, we just want you to come here to live life to the fullest. We're here to make you have the most exciting adventure you'll ever have. And we want people just to be here for the ride we're on. And I thought to myself, well, that's just how we pitch things today. We're offering to people the opportunity to break bad habits and bad moods and these sort of things. But did you notice here, as we go through Romans already, chapter 1, that none of the authors biblically did this. None of the authors in the Scriptures when they were making a case for Christ or they were presenting the Gospel or they were showing things as Scripture has defined it, they never did the kind of things that we're doing today. And this has had a drastic effect on things being authentic. We're not authentic today. We're not really affecting people today the way that we should. I can't get away from when Isaiah came into... Remember in Isaiah 6, he had a glimpse of the glory of God and he saw just a glimpse of the robe and the temple, the train of that glorious train. And the first thing that Isaiah was confronted with, the first thing that Isaiah said was, woe is me. I'm breaking apart. I'm disintegrating by the presence of God. And so he was really showing us something about God and His holiness. The Scriptures are. And you'll know that was an amazing passage of the Lord touching His lips and demonstrating how a sinner is justified. It's another passage another time. the biblical writers never take us to symptoms. They never begin with symptoms. They never start with those kind of things. They get to the heart of the matter and that's where it starts tonight. It starts tonight with the holiness of God. It starts with the attribute of God's justice. And that's where Paul begins right out of the gates in Romans, right out of the thesis statement, doesn't he? He immediately jumps to the problem of the human race. and it is the wrath of God against sin. And I say this tonight, I emphasize this, we have to be reminded of this, we have to taste this, if you will, and as the Scriptures have revealed it, for Romans 1, 15, 16, and 17 to make any sense to us. Tonight, the main point of the text, the main point of what we're considering in the sermon, is to lay out for us, to lay afresh for us, how bad the problem is for human beings. That we would be overwhelmed by how good God has been in His grace. Paul understood that the greatest problem facing man was not a bad attitude. The greatest problem facing us is our problem in how we stand in relation to a holy and a just and a pure God. Paul knew that what needed to be impressed upon sinners was the need to be in a right standing, a right relationship with him. So you'll remember in verse 15 that he begins this epistle to them with the intention that we considered last time that his intention was, I want to be there because I want to come and I want to preach the Gospel to you. I want to herald the good news to you. And then he explained why he wanted to do that because in the Gospel, The righteousness of God is revealed. Remember that? The righteousness of God is revealed. Now, we considered already in the Heidelberg that we have the problem. We've thrown away any original righteousness that we have. And so we have this great problem. And here, Romans 1 is announcing right out at the beginning that there's this righteousness that has been revealed and made available that God once announced to the ends of the earth. It's the righteousness that comes by faith. And Paul will develop this, and by the time we get to Romans 10, it's going to be really exciting because he will have fully developed it to the point where he said, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Now that was the goal here. That was the thesis of the book. And remember, this was no small issue with our Lord. When He was giving the Sermon on the Mount, people had looked at that as just a set of ethical standards and a set of moral standards. And Jesus made a very powerful statement right at the beginning of that sermon when He said, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you're not going to make it. In other words, see these guys who you think are so pure and so holy and so righteous who've memorized 613 commandments and say that they keep them all, I tell you, you need something far beyond that. Do you know how shocking that must have been to the people of that day? So in Romans 1, Paul says the Lord has been overwhelming in His goodness. He's announced to you good news and that He has made this righteousness available to you by faith as you embrace the Christ. You have this righteousness we're going to look at imputed to you. Now, what's the issue? What if I just stayed with that the whole time tonight? What if I just stayed with that and I told everyone tonight that's all I talked about all the time and I said, you know, dear Romans, I'm in the Roman church and I said, you guys are all doing so well. You know, you're doing so well. God loves you. He sent His Son to die for you. He's giving you everything. What are they going to say? great, good. It's kind of like going down to the beach to evangelize and evangelizing to an alcoholic and saying, hey, Jesus loves you. Jesus has a wonderful plan for your life. Wonderful. Would you mind buying me a six-pack? It has no effect. You've given no urgency. You haven't made any sort of case for a need for this righteousness, right? Well, that makes sense. You have to grasp how much I need a righteousness and an urgency of it for people to go after and desire it and ask, like they did in Acts, how can we be saved? Do you realize you ever thought about the fact we have very few people asking that today? I've always thought, if in Acts you had people brought to such despair that they're crying out, what do we do? That means the preaching had a real big effect on the conscience, didn't it? You ever think that the absence of that question today says that our preaching is lacking in something? Well, that's what Paul's doing here. It goes like this. I want to come and I want to preach this wonderful good news to you. It's God's power to save. It's a righteousness He's made available to you. And the way it's received by faith, for, because the wrath of God is revealed from heaven, everyone has a really big problem. This awful, this terrifying wrath of God rests upon humanity. Now Jesus said this in John chapter 3, that whoever does not believe the Son presently, the wrath of God abides on him. John 3.36 So you see how he starts. For the Gospel to have meaning, for the greatness of grace to be comprehended, you've got to understand how bad things are. And that's why we spend the time going through this. And then you're lifted right up on out of the roof to see how good he's been. But look at verse 18. Let's look at this tonight. Paul breaks into one of, if not the most definitive statements of man's problem. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodlessness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. The Old Testament, you'll know, gives over 600 passages to deal with this and Jesus was no lighter on it, by the way. They say, and I've never tallied it up, I've heard the statement made that He spoke three times more of His wrath than His love. But here you'll notice that the interesting statement of this particular passage is the little word, is. The wrath of God is revealed. And Paul is saying, here to have us think about, this is not something that's just future. We often think that wrath is going to really show itself on Judgment Day. And that's true. It's not going to be a good day. The Lord talks about coming in flaming fire and vengeance, and it's going to be terrible. But there is a point coming when it's fully revealed, but Paul is saying something really interesting here. Right at the beginning, he's saying it is revealed presently. This wrath is already coming out presently against all ungodlessness and unrighteousness. So ungodlessness here is a direct attack against the Lord. This is Psalm 2. Shooting the lip against the Lord and against His anointed. And then unrighteousness, which has everything to do with casting aside His law. Breaking His law. And what Paul is saying is that right now there is a manifestation of God's wrath against the ungodlessness and the unrighteousness of men. You say, well, that's scary. It's very scary. And that's why the Apostle is saying it. He wants us to feel this. He wants us to know this. He wants us to understand sin is not a game. Sin has very serious consequences. And this is serious. I know everything's light today and we can be light. We can be happy and joyful. We should as Christians. But there are times we need to be very serious, don't we? And this is a very serious issue. the word here for wrath is important. There are a few different words for wrath in the Bible. You have sometimes wrath used meaning the heat of violence. You have wrath used that speaks of God's unleashed fury. But the majority of words, especially the word used in Romans 1 here, is describing His most intense, hottest wrath, which has the sense of growing ripe over a period of time. And that's important. Paul uses that, that this wrath has grown ripe over a period of time and it's being presently revealed. Now, this is important because what Paul is not saying is that God is just flying off the handle and exercising unleashing wrath in fury or outbreak with no rhyme or reason. Romans 1 is saying that God is exercising His wrath that has grown ripe upon those who continue and continue and continue to behave in a certain way. The full development of ungodlessness and unrighteousness. Now He's showing us this. It brings about a whole kind of urgency, doesn't it? And that's what He's driving for us to see. What is this? Well, many have answered this and they've said, well, look around us. Look at all the natural disasters that are happening. Look at the tornadoes and look at the world. Look at the chaotic nature of things. Does God judge in that way? You can't read Revelation without reading the trumpets and the bowls and these sort of judgments and realize that yes, God is exercising wrath upon the earth in this way. Jesus spoke of the fact that there would be famines, that there would be pestilences, that there would be earthquakes in various places. These things are all the beginnings of birth pains. So while we can't interpret them as to who they're against or why, we can understand that they are manifestations of the ultimate judgment day to come. They are like birth pains. But that's not what Romans 1 is describing tonight. Romans 1 is not talking about events like Sodom and Gomorrah or the flood or natural disaster. Romans 1 is defining for us the wrath of God. How it's being revealed. It's a wrath that is growing ripe. It's a wrath that has grown ripe. Now if you contrast this at the beginning of chapter 2. He says something really remarkable in chapter 2 where he says that God has been kind, that God has been forbearing with the intent that what? Well, Paul will say the goodness of God leads us to repentance. Romans 1 is looking into the Gentile world. It's looking at all the Gentiles and he's describing something specific that has happened. If you look down to verse 24, you'll have these therefores that are put together. You're going to have a few of them there. And those therefores are speaking of God specifically giving people or handing people over to their sins. Three times. He gave them over to uncleanness. We're going to unpack this. He gave them over to vile passions. He gave them over to a debased mind. So you see what he's describing here. It's a full development of sin that has happened. And what did the Lord do? He gave them over in it. He let them go in it. Now you have many verses that describe this process. You can't help but think of James 1 in this way when he talks about sin and he talks about desire and that when sin gives birth, when it's fully grown is the language that James 1 uses. it brings forth death. You'll remember 1 John 5. If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin that does not lead to death, he will ask and he will give life for him who is committing a sin not leading to death. There is a sin leading to death. I do not say that he should pray about that. 1 John, I believe, outlines what that is at the beginning where it describes a path that people can be on. And it talks about people who say that they say they have fellowship. There's the beginning while they walk in darkness. And then they go further. They say they have no sin. And then it goes further. They say they've never sinned. There's progression. There's progression. Sin is going somewhere. And Paul will speak of this in chapter 4 of the letter to the Ephesians where he says that the Gentiles are past feeling. It means that the conscience has been so seared they don't feel the sin anymore. So, there's a process. There's a place sin is going. So here we are in Romans 1 and the Apostle is saying that this wrath is presently revealed as He lifts the restraint and judgment is seen in the lifting of that restraint where they go. They fully take the course they chose. So notice that development there. They continue to harden their hearts against the Lord, against the Lord, and at some point, this belongs to God. God says, that's it. I'm done. Sobering passage. Sobering passage. Often Darcy and I will watch the news and we just have to turn it off. Have you ever noticed and feel how violent it's getting? Have you felt the level of sin and the things that are happening? The other night I heard the story of a man who murdered his wife and I'm not going to go into the details. It's just so horrible. The things that he did to his wife. And the escalation of this, the perversity growing so much more, growing ripe, the cycle that we've been talking about. And we've seen this. We see these things. And we're seeing the escalation in society with crimes that are some of the most perverse things. And maybe it's just because we have the news in our living room, and years ago we didn't see it, but whatever the case, I'm seeing things run their course. My natural question is, in times of this, at least the world's natural question is, why does God allow stuff like this to go on? That's the question we always get in any disaster or any sort of perversity. Why does this good God let this stuff go on? The question's all backward. The question's all backward. It should be, why was God so long-suffering for so long in restraining this wickedness? He's been amazing. You ever think that the escalation of evil in a given society means and is defining for us the end of Psalm 3? That God is answering the prayers of His righteous? We look at it and we say, It's just so awful. Amen, it's awful. Why is it awful? Is God saying, I'm done. It's a thought, isn't it? When you see the escalation. He's turning people over. And we sit as God's people and we're distressed about it. It is distressing. It's absolutely distressing. And we feel the manifestation of that sin come to horrendous ends in people's lives. And I hate seeing it. I know you heard this in the Sunday school class. I emphasized it in the sermon this morning. It is brutal. And it's a pain as God's people we just long to be out of. We long to be out of it. But Paul is explaining it for us and he's saying there is, there is, there is a present manifestation of the wrath of God due to sin. And now you understand why the Gospel is so urgent, you see. Have we made our message urgent today? God exercises His wrath and now He starts to explain why in verse 18. They suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Suppress means they hold it down. They push it down. It's blatant disregard of the law and he explains how it's occurring. There's a suppression of what? Two things. General revelation, and he's going to say in chapter 2, conscience. So he says in verse 19, notice it there, because what may be made known of God is manifest. It's evident. For God has shown it to them. So there's certain things that are clearly seen. that no one on this earth can deny. And he says what it is in verse 20. He says, For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. So in other words, creation all around us screams there's a God. Look up. You can't look at all this and deny that. You can't. You may want to tell me it banged together, but I'm going to respond with Psalm 14. The fool in his heart says there's no God. Creation doesn't just tell us empty things. It tells us certain things about God, Romans 1 says. What does creation tell us about God? I look out, and I guess I'm still thinking where I sat in Linden, but there was a beautiful Mount Baker, and the glory of that mountain sat there. And I look out at Mount Baker, And I see God's power. And I see His eternal power in Godhead. I see that there is a God by the things that are made. It is glorious. Well, God says hardened man in his sin does what? Well, He proposes all kinds of things that this was banged together and He says all these sort of things. But the real truth is that they are pushing down, they are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness And they're holding that down, refusing to accept the very clear things that are declared even in creation. So that's Psalm 19. The heavens declare the glory of God. The earth declares His handiwork. Day unto day utter speech. Night unto night reveals knowledge. It's there. It's all around us. Darcy and I would often go to the beautiful places in California, Yosemite and Half Dome. And just magnificent stuff there. She hiked that thing. There were magnificent trees. We would go look at these trees. We would stand at these trees. There would be all sorts of people gathered even at Sequoia to look at General Sherman. We would be amazed at the tree. Two people are standing there to look at the tree. Two of us are admiring the tree. One says what? Wow! Look at the almighty power of God who could make that thing. And then somebody else stands there and they grab the camera and they travel all over the world to look at this tree and they touch the tree and then they start kissing the tree and then they start bowing down to the tree. Now you say, I've never seen that. I have. In Humboldt County, I remember a woman named Butterfly. She was all over the news. And she moved up into the tree to protest the logging movement and she married the tree. They had a ceremony. And she lived in that tree two years, married to the tree. Now I say, what a nut. But you know what? This happened to Israel. See, Paul says that they did not honor God, nor did they give thanks to Him. What did they do in their thinking? Their foolish hearts were darkening. And notice verse 22. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Now I look at Butterfly and I say she's crazy, but then I go a little deeper into this and I look back to Exodus 22 and here they're at the foot of Sinai and they're looking at the glorious Mount Sinai. That was a glorious mountain, by the way. God can't be seen. They say, well, we want a God just like all the other gods in Egypt. Now, what we don't understand about Exodus 32 is that when they fashioned the golden calf and that when it came out, they held it up. And you know what they said? O Israel, this is your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. They didn't create in their minds an alternative God. They exchanged the glory of God for the image of what? Isis. The bull, the fertility bull of Egypt. And they worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is forever blessed. So this is much deeper, isn't it? I love Psalm 95. Well, come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker. Right? No, I got that wrong. Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving. Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms. You know, Hebrews takes that and it quotes what we never like to quote. It's the end of that song. Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of what? Unbelief. In departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily while it's called a day, lest any of you be, notice Romans 1, hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end, while it is said, today if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts. Psalm 95. As in the rebellion, for who having heard rebelled, indeed was it not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses? Now with whom He was angry for 40 years, was it not with those who sinned whose corpses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest? To those who did not obey. Now listen, so we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief. And that's what Romans 1 is showing us. It's showing us the full course of unbelief where it takes us that if we were let go, we would take this theater of God's glory that we live in and we would all start worshiping and bowing down to it and we would deny the glory of the Creator. And that's what Romans 1 is showing us tonight. Creation itself is enough to render everyone inexcusable before this holy God. This revelation has enough bearing on the conscience to render that, says the Apostle. And he says in verse 21, because they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but it futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened. So that's what happened. This is why it's so bad. This is the course of mankind. This is what we've seen where man has gone. Now, in closing, do you understand why? Doesn't this put a lot of punch behind Romans 1, 16 and 17 now? There's a wrath revealed presently in creation. I mean, through the creation, there's a wrath revealed right now that they all suppress the creation. And then when we back up to Romans 1, but there's another revelation. It's a special revelation. God didn't leave us in the darkness we chose. God didn't let us just pummel into it and stay there. God loved. And now that love has some real impact to me. That love was God revealed. He manifested. He revealed His love in the Gospel. the good news. And what did He declare? There's a righteousness made available to you by faith. And that's how wonderful He's been. That's how wonderful He is. I want to preach that. I just want to come and I want to preach that because that is God's answer to the misery you chose and I chose. God delighted to give that in contrast to the revelation of His wrath. There's two revelations here, isn't there? Revelation of His Gospel in His Word, which He's given to you to save you tonight. And He says, anyone who believes in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ will be saved. Well, we've got a lot more to say in Romans. I guess I just end this day by saying praise God. It's been so good to you. Go home tonight and before you go to bed, thank Him. Thank Him for His care in your life. That He's loved you to pull you out of this as a believer. And that He's left us here to testify to His grace. That others might be pulled out. Thank Him for His wondrous love that shields us, that protects us. And as He has promised in Psalm 3, He will make everything right. Let's pray to Him. Oh Lord, our God, we thank You tonight for Your kindness to us in the Gospel. The situation here in Romans 1 is awful. And we hear it. We receive it because You've said it. Our flesh rages against it. But the Spirit that You've given to us testifies and bears witness that all this is true. And so help us, Lord, to see this in ourselves and to always be so thankful that You care for us, that You've loved us by announcing from the hilltops a way of escape through the blood and the righteousness of Your Son. May our devotion and our love and our worship be given to You. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.