Read for us.
Jonathan, thank you very much for that reading.
It's not very cheerful, is it?
Read for us.
at the front here and some pens. Anybody want one? If you haven't got one, you can stick
up your hand and Kirstie will pass one to you. And if there are any questions about
this morning's talk or indeed any of our talks through Romans, then I'd be delighted if you
would come and chat about it afterwards. This is a very difficult section in this book.
So, one I'd like to be able to say, well, let's just jump to something else, but we continue
through with it and we'll see what God has to say. So we're going to pray and we're going
to ask for his help as we look at this together. Our Father God, we do thank you for your word.
We thank you for all that it contains. But we do recognise that when we read through your
word, there are some parts that are really quite difficult. It's hard to take in. And
therefore we ask for your help to understand it and how this applies to our life and to
society today. May we first allow it to challenge us and shape us before we begin to think of
applying it to other people. So we pray for us all as we look at your word in Jesus' name. Amen.
Well, what I am about to say to you, you may find very shocking. And it's this. God is angry.
In fact, God is very angry. And if we are observant enough, there are signs of his anger all around
us, even in our own lives. What do you say? You can't say that. What kind of Bible are you
reading? The God that I know is a God of love. He's a kind and he's a compassionate God.
He doesn't get mad and he doesn't get annoyed. He's a caring and gentle God. How on earth could
you say that God is angry? Well, look at verse 18. The wrath, that's the anger, the anger of
God is being revealed. In other words, God's anger is present among us. When we were away
on holiday, we went to visit Dachau. It was the first concentration camp built during the
Second World War. In fact, it became the prototype, the model for every other concentration camp that
the Nazis built. And as I stood there in this huge open courtyard, I tried to imagine what
had happened. And as I thought, I felt sad and I was very upset. But I also felt very angry.
I was angry at those who had committed such awful crimes, many of whom had escaped prosecution.
I was angry at those who had lived in the surrounding neighbourhood and had done nothing to prevent it.
Listen to this letter sent home by a Lieutenant Bill Cowling, an American soldier who was part of the
liberation task force of the camp towards the end of the war. This is what he wrote home to his family.
As we approached the camp, the first thing we came to was a railroad track leading out of the camp with a lot of
open box cars on it. As we crossed the tracks, we looked back into the cars and the most horrible sight I
have ever seen met my eyes. The cars were loaded with dead bodies. Most of them were naked. All of them were skin and bones.
Many of them had bullet holes in the back of their heads. It made us sick in our stomachs. And so mad we could do nothing but clench our fists.
You see, sometimes it is right to be angry. Anger can be a right response. In fact, to be unmoved at such
terrible atrocities such as Dachau would be cold and hard-hearted. Anger is a sign that you do care. And that you are loving. And that you don't want these things to happen again.
Now the problem with my anger, and I suggest the problem with your anger too, is that it's uncontrolled. Our anger is temper-like. It can be an outburst that can be as terrible as the act to which you are angry at. In other words, your anger makes you as guilty as the person who committed the crime.
But when we look at God's anger, it is uncontrolled. It is fair. And it is his just response to sin. God is not hot-headed. He never loses it. He doesn't throw a hissy fit.
Rather, it is his personal hostility to evil and his act of involvement to punish sin. That's the definition of God's anger. His personal hostility to evil and his act of involvement to punish sin.
So we need to ask the question, what is God angry at? Why is God angry? Well, look at verse 18 again. It says that the anger of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men.
God is angry at the atrocities that are being revealed from heaven against all the gods. God is angry at the murder and assault of that 12-year-old girl, Michaela Davis, in Dublin last week.
And he's also very angry at the atrocities that are being revealed from heaven against all the gods.
God is angry at the atrocities that are being revealed from heaven against all the gods.
He's also angry at the atrocities that are being revealed from heaven against all the gods.
God is not just angry with Hitler. He's also angry with me. With all of us. But there's a deeper reason behind all this wickedness as to why God is angry.
And it's unpacked for us in these following verses. First of all, we've all rejected God. Look at verse 18, the end of verse 18. It says there that we have suppressed the truth by our wickedness.
Since what may be said. Since what may be known about God is plain to us. Because God has made it plain to us.
You see, we've all been given knowledge about God. We may never have read our Bible or been given a Bible. We may never have been to church.
But the fact of God's existence surrounds us, everybody, every day. Look at verse 20.
He says,
That God exists.
I am here. In fact, when we look at the universe and see the way in which it holds together in such an orderly and harmonious way, reminds us that there is a creator.
Somebody is controlling this planet. And we're all dependent on our creator gods.
There is too much.
There is too much order for it just to be chanted.
But what have we done with this knowledge?
Well, we're told in verse 18, the end of verse 18, we have suppressed.
We have pushed down the truth about God.
We have rejected God.
We have ignored his advertising campaign and we pretend that he's not there.
Verse 21.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him.
Now, I'm sure a few of you of children like us were always reminding our children to say thank you.
Say thank you.
Did you get something? Say thank you.
And not to say thank you is not just rude.
It's ignoring the person who has given you something.
It's blocking them out, isn't it, if you don't say thank you.
It's treating them as if they don't even exist.
And that's what we've done with God.
By not giving thanks to him continually for all that we have, we're rejecting him.
We're saying, I don't need you, God.
I'm quite self-sufficient.
I can live life all on my own.
We're blocking them out.
So we have rejected God.
But it's not just rejection.
The second thing is we have replaced God.
Look at verse 22.
For although we claim to be wise, we've become fools.
And exchange the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
You see, it's not just rejecting God.
There's a second step in the process.
It's replacing God with something else altogether.
It's our way of getting rid of God.
For example, you know that I'm married to Kirsty.
Well, I hope you do.
And that we belong to each other.
Now imagine if I lived my life as if Kirsty wasn't there.
Every day I was at home.
Just ignored her.
She probably thinks that anyway.
Which isn't true.
Pretends.
That I never referred to her.
Never talked to her.
It would be awful.
It would be a terrible relationship.
It would be a complete rejection of who she is.
But imagine if I went and lived with somebody else.
It's more than rejection, isn't it?
It's a completely removing and replacing Kirsty with somebody else.
It's awful.
And that's what we've done with God.
We've taken God out of the equation.
We've not just ignored him.
We've substituted him with something else.
Verse 25.
It says there that we've exchanged the truth of God for a lie.
And we have worshipped and served created things rather than our creator.
Who is forever praised.
Amen.
Now in other cultures, images and idols can be very common.
And the people to whom Paul was writing within that culture, there was lots of temples with idols and images all around them.
And if we were to go to somewhere like Thailand today, you would find all kinds of images there and statues.
Now just because we mightn't have a little carved out wooden idol in our house or some kind of shrine in our back garden where we have incense going and we put our vegetables at it and all this sort of thing, it doesn't mean to say that we don't have idols.
An idol, the Bible says, is anything that replaces God.
Listen to this from Os Guinness.
Os Guinness comes from the great dynasty of that family who created the black pint.
Some of them were brewers, others were missionaries and bankers.
He came from the line of the missionaries.
And this is what he says.
When we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing.
We worship anything.
We do not just eliminate God.
We erect God's substitutes in his place.
The biblical writers call these counterfeits idols.
An idol is something within creation that is inflated to function as a substitute for God.
I'll read that again.
I think it's on the screen.
An idol is something within creation that is inflated to function as a substitute for God.
All sorts of things are potential idols.
An idol can be a physical object.
It could be a property like your house.
A person.
An activity.
A role.
An institution.
A hope.
An image.
An idea.
A pleasure.
A hero.
Anything that can substitute for God.
Now can you see how we have all taken something within God's good creation and we've inflated it to function as a substitute for God.
In other words, it becomes the very centre of our lives.
And that's the only thing that we want.
And if we haven't got it, our life falls apart.
So we've not only rejected God, we have replaced God altogether.
Now the consequences of doing this are disastrous.
And that's why God is angry.
God's not just angry because he's treated as second best and he's sitting there in a bit of a huff thinking,
oh they don't love me the same as other things.
That is part of it.
But he's angry because when he is treated as second best, we destroy ourselves and each other and the world in which we live.
Now I'm not a scientist, but I know that the sun is at the centre of the universe.
All the other planets, including Earth, they all are around the sun.
Now if one of those planets decided, hmm, I'd like to be at the centre of the universe and push the sun out,
then the whole universe would collapse, it would break down.
We would either melt or we would freeze to death.
And that's exactly what happens when we replace God and put someone or something else in his place.
The whole moral order of the world breaks down.
Instead of order, we have disorder.
Instead of beauty, we find brokenness.
And because we no longer have one God at the very centre,
who we all must worship and obey,
we've all got many gods, many idols,
that we are pushing into the centre
and they're all fighting for centre stage
and the world falls apart.
Look at the downward spiral we have in these verses.
It starts off by saying that although we knew God,
verse 18, we suppress the truth.
And from there, at the end of verse 21,
it says our thinking becomes futile.
In other words, we have no category for deciding what is right or wrong any longer.
What's right for you might be right for me.
And our hearts become darkened.
That means we become desensitised to what's wrong.
We become de-human.
We don't behave the way we are meant to behave.
And if we remove God out of the scene altogether,
well then we are the ones who are left to make up all the rules about how life should be.
And we decide what is right or wrong.
And we become the moral standard.
And everybody has to do what we say.
Frederick Nietzsche
is a very famous atheist and philosopher.
And he wrote what was one of his most famous well-known works.
It was called God is Dead.
The main obstacle in life, he claimed,
was that the person
was the person who believed in God.
Those kind of people shouldn't be.
Do you know who his most famous admirer was?
A man called Adolf Hitler.
From the philosophy of Nietzsche who said
God is dead,
came the living hell of places like Dachan.
Because if God is dead,
if you replace God,
you can do whatever you like.
And so it is in our lives.
Without God,
we are accountable to no one.
We can live and do as we like
because we have all made up our own gods.
And our own gods
are never ever going to get angry with us.
They are only going to approve of what we do
and tap us on the back and say,
well done, good boy, good girl.
Do whatever you like.
Verse 32.
For although they know God's righteous decree
that those who do such things deserve death,
they not only continue to do these very things,
but also approve of those who practice them.
God is angry
because we've pushed them out.
And when we push God out,
the whole moral order
breaks down.
Then society turns in on itself.
So how,
the next question,
how is God's anger
actually expressed?
Well, remember what we said at the beginning.
God's anger is not temper-like.
He doesn't lose his cool.
It is his controlled,
personal hostility to evil
and his active involvement
to punish sin.
Now, three times in this passage
we're told how we have behaved
and three times we are told
how God responds.
So what have we done?
Verse 23.
We're told that we have exchanged
the glory of the immortal God
for images.
We've put something else in place of God.
How does God respond?
Verse 24.
Therefore,
God gave them over
in the sinful hearts
of their,
gave them over
in their sinful desires
of their hearts.
What have we done?
Verse 25.
We've exchanged the truth of God
for a lie.
And we serve other things
instead of God.
How does God respond?
Verse 26.
Because of this,
God gave them over
to shameful lusts.
lusts.
Third,
what have we done?
Verse 28.
Furthermore,
since we did not think
it worthwhile
to retain the knowledge
of God,
how does he respond?
He gave them over
to a depraved mind
to do what they ought
not to do.
Now,
this act
of giving over,
it's repeated
three times
in those verses,
is God's act
of judgment
against our sin.
You see,
in a perfect world,
God is at the very
centre.
And God,
and our desire
is for God
and we want to
worship God
and obey God.
But when we
replace God,
we have desires
for other things
and other people
and we worship
and we serve
something else.
So when we
reject God,
he gives us
over
to those desires.
He lets
those desires
control us
and consume us.
He takes away
his hand of restraint
and he purposefully
allows those desires
to destroy us
and to break us.
It's as if God
is saying,
if this is how
you want to live,
if you want to live
in a world
where you don't have me
and you want to be
your own boss,
I'm not just going
to let you do it.
I'm going to give
you over to it.
I'm going to push
you into that
kind of lifestyle.
It's not just
cause and effect
whereby we do
something wrong
and this happens.
It's an act of
involvement on God's
part.
He says,
I give you over
to it.
And we see this
being worked out
in three ways.
Now I had great
difficulty working
through this
because it's very
hard.
But I want you
just to stay
with me on this
and to follow
right to the end
of this section
to see how it
all fits together.
There's three ways
in which God
gives us over
to these over
desires in our
lives that cause
all kinds of
problems.
Firstly,
sexual impurity.
Verse 24.
It says there,
therefore God
gave them over
in their sinful
hearts,
sinful desires
of their hearts,
to sexual impurity
for the degrading
of their bodies
with one another.
Now for whatever
people may say,
a string of
one-night stands
and affairs,
indulging in
pornography,
demanding sex
from your wife,
is not a sign
of sexual freedom,
it's a sign
of God's anger.
Doing what you
want with who
you want,
well it might
bring pleasure
for a moment,
but it ultimately
destroys us
and breaks us.
It's hurtful.
It kills trust
between people
and it degrades
people.
It's God's
act of judgment
against us.
It's not freedom.
It's a judgment.
Second,
we see it
expressed in
shameful lusts.
That's the phrase
in verse 26.
Let's read that.
Because of this,
God gave them
over to shameful
lusts.
Even their women
exchanged natural
relations for
unnatural ones.
In the same way,
the men also
abandoned natural
relations with
women and were
inflamed with
lust for one
another.
Men committed
indecent acts
with other men.
Now,
same-sex
relationships,
and we hear a lot
about this in the
news and in the
media,
are not a sign
that we have
finally grown up
and matured
as a nation.
It is a sign
of God's anger.
The practice
of lesbianism,
of homosexuality,
it's not natural.
It is a denial
of what we were
created to be
and what is
actually best
for us.
It breaks
God's good order
and his design
for us.
The family unit
was to be a man
and a woman
together with
children if God
should bless
them with
children.
So living
outside of
that is not
a sign of
maturity.
It's not a
sign that we've
grown up.
It's actually a
sign of God's
judgment against
us.
That's really
hard, isn't
it?
But there's
another section.
It talks about
being given over
to a depraved
mind.
judgment.
Now before we
jump to wrong
conclusions and
think that sexual
sin is the only
way that God
displays his
judgment, look
at verse 28.
Furthermore, since
they did not think
it worthwhile to
retain the
knowledge of God,
he gave them
over to a
depraved mind to
do what not
ought to be
done.
You see, some
of us reading
through this
passage here might
be taking the
moral high
ground.
We can be
sitting here
thinking ourselves
a little bit
kind of superior
and better than
other people.
And we're kind
of thinking to
ourselves, well,
you know what,
I'm not sexually
impure.
I've never had
an affair.
I don't indulge
in pornography.
I'm not a
homosexual.
Therefore, God's
not angry with
me.
God's only angry
with those kind
of people.
You know, that
kind of lifestyle.
He's only angry
but with me.
Not me.
But look at
verse 29.
He doesn't let
anybody off the
hook.
It says,
they have become
filled with
every kind
of wickedness,
evil, greed
and depravity.
They are full
of envy, murder,
strife, deceit
and malice.
They are
gossips,
slanderers,
god-haters,
insolent,
arrogant, boastful.
They invent
ways of doing
evil.
They disobey
their parents.
They are senseless,
faceless,
heartless,
ruthless.
Has anybody
here ever
disobeyed
their parents?
Has anybody
here ever
gossiped?
Has anybody
ever suffered
from envy?
Do you see
what he does
through this
passage?
He places
sexual impurity
alongside
gossiping.
God never
grades one
sin as more
serious than
other sins
and neither
should we.
God is angry
with us all
because whether
it's been
sexual impurity
or gossiping,
whether it's
been disobeying
our parents
or homosexuality,
he puts it
all in the
same camp.
Every kind
of moral
disorder,
every hint
of brokenness
in our lives,
it's not just
a sin.
but it's
God in his
just anger
giving us
over to
destructive
behaviour
because we
have pushed
him out.
now if we
stopped here
it would
leave us
all feeling
very down
and quite
depressed.
But as we
were reminded
last week,
this is all
about the
gospel.
And the
gospel means
good news.
Well,
where's the
good news
in all of
this?
It doesn't
sound very
good news,
it's pretty
awful stuff.
But the
good news
is that
God has
come to
rescue us
from his
anger.
This big
issue that
we've been
looking at,
this is why
the gospel
has come,
to rescue
us from
his anger,
to deliver
us from
it.
Look back
at verse
17 of
chapter 1.
It says
therefore,
in the
gospel,
in the
good news,
a righteousness
from God
is revealed.
Why?
Because,
verse 18,
and what you
should write
in there
before,
the,
is the
word for
or because.
That's the
right translation.
So read
verse 17,
for in the
gospel,
a righteousness
from God
is revealed
because,
verse 18,
the wrath
of God
is being
revealed.
The gospel
has come
to us
to rescue
us because
we are
all under
God's
anger.
And God
in his
love has
come to
do something
about us.
It's telling
us that
God has
provided a
way for
us who
have replaced
him to
be right
with him.
He comes
to deal
with the
problem of
living under
his anger.
And how
does he do
that?
Well,
let's have a
little sneak
preview.
We will get
to it in
time,
but chapter
5,
verse 8.
Chapter 5,
verse 8.
But God
demonstrates
his own
love for
us in
this.
While we
were still
sinners,
Christ
died for
us.
You see,
it's only
when we
look back
to the
cross where
Jesus died.
We have
substituted
God.
But Jesus
became the
ultimate
substitute for
us.
He replaced
us.
He took
all our
ungodliness.
He took
all our
wickedness
on himself.
So when
Jesus suffered,
when he died
on the cross,
he suffered
the full
blow of
God's
anger for
us.
On the
cross,
Jesus was
crushed beneath
the weight of
God's wrath.
And when we
look to Jesus
and we see
what happened
there,
we see God's
personal hostility
to evil and
his active
involvement to
punish sin
poured out
on Jesus.
When Jesus
died on the
cross,
he absorbed
God's
anger for
us.
And that's
the good
news.
That if we
put our
faith in
Jesus,
if we
entrust our
lives to
him,
we are
given over
into his
family.
We are
released from
his anger.
We are
treasured and
cared for as
his children.
We are
given his
spirit to
live a new
and a
different way.
We are
filled with
joy and
peace and
we are
satisfied and
fulfilled
and contented
because we
have everything
in life
from Christ.
We don't
need to go
searching for
other things
or to
replace God
because in
Christ we
have everything.
And as we
will go on
to see,
he transforms
our lives so
much that he
gives us a
new way to
live.
Where we
don't want to
live as a
depraved
person or
sexually impure.
sinful lusts or
shameful lusts.
He will
forgive it all
and he will
change our
lives around so
that we can
live a brand
new way under
his design and
under his
order.
The way he
intended life
to be.
God loves us
so much that
while we were
still sinners,
Christ died for
us.
He came to
rescue us from
his anger.
anger.
And the
truth that we
all need to
take home this
morning before
we start applying
it to anybody
else is we
all need the
gospel every
single day
because without
it we are
left open to
the awful
prospect of
God's anger.
Let's pray
together.
our father we
have been
working through
something that
has been really
hard.
It's been
difficult for us
to take in and
to try and get
our heads around
this.
And so we
keep praying that
you will help us
to work it into
our lives.
Help us to see
the seriousness of
rejecting you and
replacing you.
Help us to see
the ways in which
each day we can
replace God with
someone or
something.
Please help us to
put Christ back
at the very
centre of our
lives.
That we would
worship and
serve and obey
him and put
everything else in
its place.
And help us to
always be so
thankful for your
amazing love for
the Lord Jesus,
for his death and
dealing with God's
anger for us so
that we don't have
to face it.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, we're going
to sing our
final song together.
Oh, see the dawn.
if you could turn to the chorus for me Rob
thank you very much
this is
what we've been summing up this morning
this is the power of the cross
that Christ became
sin for us
he took the blade
he bore the