WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.799 We're in our Roman series, working our way through the book of Romans, and this is our 00:00:05.799 --> 00:00:08.640 fourth look at this book. 00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:12.800 And last week we slowed down a little bit and we looked at just two verses, verses 16 00:00:12.800 --> 00:00:19.640 and 17, and we saw that those two verses are the thesis statement of the whole book. 00:00:19.640 --> 00:00:21.519 It's Paul's main point. 00:00:21.519 --> 00:00:29.560 And his main point was that the great message, the gospel, is not primarily good advice. 00:00:29.559 --> 00:00:36.879 It's not a call from God to us for moral conformity first or for even religious commitment, but 00:00:36.879 --> 00:00:38.640 it's actually good news. 00:00:38.640 --> 00:00:44.960 It's a herald, a messenger, coming over the hill and making a pronouncement about something 00:00:44.960 --> 00:00:46.159 that's happened. 00:00:46.159 --> 00:00:47.840 And what happened is the gospel. 00:00:47.840 --> 00:00:54.480 It's Jesus Christ's death, life, death and resurrection for us, and that's the good news. 00:00:54.479 --> 00:01:00.599 Now this week we also look at news, but it's not good news. 00:01:00.599 --> 00:01:02.759 It's bad news. 00:01:02.759 --> 00:01:05.239 It's the wrath of God. 00:01:05.239 --> 00:01:10.599 And I was going to try to say the word wrath, like Scottish people say it, but then I practiced 00:01:10.599 --> 00:01:13.679 and it didn't work well, so I decided not to. 00:01:13.679 --> 00:01:16.799 There's a special way of saying wrath here, I know, but I'm just going to stick to my 00:01:16.799 --> 00:01:18.959 American version. 00:01:18.959 --> 00:01:22.959 The wrath of God is the bad news today. 00:01:22.959 --> 00:01:30.679 And this is every Puritan preacher's favorite subject, but seriously we have to focus on 00:01:30.679 --> 00:01:31.679 it. 00:01:31.679 --> 00:01:32.959 We need to focus on it because it's here. 00:01:32.959 --> 00:01:35.119 It's right there in the text. 00:01:35.119 --> 00:01:40.519 And it's one of the main points that Paul's making in this book. 00:01:40.519 --> 00:01:43.399 And also it's a fact. 00:01:43.399 --> 00:01:46.759 The wrath of God is a fact that has to be dealt with. 00:01:46.759 --> 00:01:52.079 And there's a lot of caricatures about what we think about when we think about God's wrath 00:01:52.079 --> 00:01:53.079 out there. 00:01:53.079 --> 00:01:59.239 And so we need to come to the Bible and see what Paul has to say about God's wrath here. 00:01:59.239 --> 00:02:02.439 And the point of the text is pretty simple actually. 00:02:02.439 --> 00:02:07.280 It's in line with last week's point because it follows directly on. 00:02:07.280 --> 00:02:11.719 And that's that if you want to talk about salvation, you got to talk about being saved 00:02:11.719 --> 00:02:13.800 from something. 00:02:13.800 --> 00:02:17.159 And that's something from which human beings are saved. 00:02:17.159 --> 00:02:20.139 Paul's telling us here is the wrath of God. 00:02:20.139 --> 00:02:23.719 So let's think about God's wrath for a little bit this morning together. 00:02:23.719 --> 00:02:25.919 And we're going to ask, what is it? 00:02:25.919 --> 00:02:26.919 It's definition. 00:02:26.919 --> 00:02:27.919 What's the wrath of God? 00:02:27.919 --> 00:02:30.639 And then we're going to ask, why is it? 00:02:30.639 --> 00:02:36.799 And Paul's answer to that question is because every single human being knows God and doesn't 00:02:36.799 --> 00:02:40.119 know God at the very same time. 00:02:40.119 --> 00:02:43.079 And then we're going to ask, where is it? 00:02:43.079 --> 00:02:49.639 And Paul's answer here in the very first verse is that the wrath of God is being revealed, 00:02:49.639 --> 00:02:51.519 that's in its right now. 00:02:51.519 --> 00:02:56.199 And so we need to figure out where is it being revealed exactly? 00:02:56.199 --> 00:02:58.159 What does he mean by that? 00:02:58.159 --> 00:02:59.159 So what is it? 00:02:59.159 --> 00:03:00.159 Why is it? 00:03:00.159 --> 00:03:01.159 And where is it? 00:03:01.159 --> 00:03:03.599 And let's first ask, what is God's wrath? 00:03:03.599 --> 00:03:04.599 It's definition. 00:03:04.599 --> 00:03:07.959 Now, it's tricky when you talk about God's wrath. 00:03:07.959 --> 00:03:12.139 Verse 18, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. 00:03:12.139 --> 00:03:18.399 It's tricky when you talk about it because God's wrath is not like our wrath. 00:03:18.400 --> 00:03:21.680 It's not like human wrath at all. 00:03:21.680 --> 00:03:31.759 There are all sorts of degrees of human wrath, but at its very worst, human wrath is a spontaneous 00:03:31.759 --> 00:03:32.879 rage. 00:03:32.879 --> 00:03:35.879 It's volcanic eruption. 00:03:35.879 --> 00:03:41.400 It's getting so full of anger that you brim over and explode. 00:03:41.400 --> 00:03:47.000 And it can be expressed in all sorts of ways, but we think of the word wrath when we talk 00:03:47.000 --> 00:03:55.000 about human wrath like a bull in a china shop type anger, just pouring over like lava from 00:03:55.000 --> 00:03:57.639 a volcano. 00:03:57.639 --> 00:04:02.960 And it could be expressed in all sorts of ways, but at its very worst, it's rage. 00:04:02.960 --> 00:04:04.920 It's deep rage. 00:04:04.920 --> 00:04:11.479 And well, but God, God's not like that. 00:04:11.479 --> 00:04:16.240 So one of the things that theologians will consistently remind us of is that we can't 00:04:16.240 --> 00:04:18.840 read our emotional life. 00:04:18.840 --> 00:04:21.759 Our emotional experience is back into God. 00:04:21.759 --> 00:04:23.759 We don't read it that way. 00:04:23.759 --> 00:04:29.759 We don't project our own attributes back into the very life of God that he's absolutely 00:04:29.759 --> 00:04:33.120 different from us, absolutely other from us. 00:04:33.120 --> 00:04:38.680 And one of the key things is that God's attributes, who he is, all his characteristics, they are 00:04:38.680 --> 00:04:42.280 all entirely one. 00:04:42.279 --> 00:04:47.279 So just as much as God is justice, he is love, and just as much as he is love, he is 00:04:47.279 --> 00:04:51.079 just, and just as much as he is both of those, he is glorious, and just as much as he is 00:04:51.079 --> 00:04:52.959 glorious, he is holy. 00:04:52.959 --> 00:04:58.959 And all of those things exist are God always at the very same time. 00:04:58.959 --> 00:05:06.199 And so the big difference in human wrath and God's wrath is that, well, we all know, we've 00:05:06.199 --> 00:05:07.639 experienced this. 00:05:07.639 --> 00:05:16.479 We, we can be wrathful, we can spill over like a volcano, and it's a zero sum game for 00:05:16.479 --> 00:05:22.319 us in that we can be completely wrathful without any love. 00:05:22.319 --> 00:05:25.240 But not so with God. 00:05:25.240 --> 00:05:32.120 When God expresses his wrath, he is just as much perfect love at the very same time. 00:05:32.120 --> 00:05:37.959 When he is being fully just and expressing anger and wrath, he is love. 00:05:37.959 --> 00:05:40.000 And when he is just, he is glorious. 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:41.120 And when he is glorious, he is holy. 00:05:41.120 --> 00:05:43.360 And when he is holy, he is love and just and glory. 00:05:43.360 --> 00:05:45.840 And at the same time, he is always one. 00:05:45.840 --> 00:05:49.360 He, he, he, he's just changeless. 00:05:49.360 --> 00:05:50.360 You see? 00:05:50.360 --> 00:05:53.879 And so when we express wrath, we might, we might. 00:05:53.879 --> 00:05:57.040 It could be just, but for us, it could be loveless. 00:05:57.040 --> 00:05:58.399 But never so for God. 00:05:58.399 --> 00:06:05.000 God is always both simultaneously completely loving and just in expressing wrath at the 00:06:05.000 --> 00:06:06.319 very same time. 00:06:06.319 --> 00:06:12.759 And so the word here that Paul uses is the, the common word throughout the Bible for wrath, 00:06:12.759 --> 00:06:16.000 and it's a little Greek word, orgy, orge. 00:06:16.000 --> 00:06:21.159 And it comes often, especially in the Old Testament, right alongside another word. 00:06:21.159 --> 00:06:23.759 And it's the word that we translate anger. 00:06:23.759 --> 00:06:28.719 And so often in the Old Testament, you'll see God's anger and God's wrath listed side 00:06:28.719 --> 00:06:33.519 by side and like in the Psalms in a kind of parallel sort of way. 00:06:33.519 --> 00:06:40.399 And one of the reasons for that, this is so important, although a small point, is that 00:06:40.399 --> 00:06:46.560 God's wrath is not one of God's attributes. 00:06:46.560 --> 00:06:49.680 God's wrath is not one of God's attributes. 00:06:49.680 --> 00:06:52.399 God is just. 00:06:52.399 --> 00:07:00.479 God is just, and the expression of God's justice towards unjust actions in this world is his 00:07:00.479 --> 00:07:01.959 wrath. 00:07:01.959 --> 00:07:05.519 And you see, so wrath simply means punishment. 00:07:05.519 --> 00:07:06.519 And that's what it means here. 00:07:06.519 --> 00:07:11.519 For the wrath of God, the literally, it's the punishment of God has been revealed. 00:07:11.519 --> 00:07:15.079 And so wrath and punishment are not an, they're not an attribute of God. 00:07:15.079 --> 00:07:21.000 They're the expression externally of God's justice, because he is just. 00:07:21.000 --> 00:07:22.680 That's what he is. 00:07:22.680 --> 00:07:30.600 And so wrath is very simply an expression of God's justice and punishment towards sin. 00:07:30.600 --> 00:07:35.199 And so anger is God's emotional response to injustice. 00:07:35.199 --> 00:07:41.879 And wrath is his punishment of injustice, his just response to injustice. 00:07:41.879 --> 00:07:42.879 That's God's wrath. 00:07:42.879 --> 00:07:47.439 Hopefully that is simple enough, although we're talking about God, so it's not simple 00:07:47.439 --> 00:07:48.439 at all. 00:07:48.439 --> 00:07:49.639 It's very difficult. 00:07:49.639 --> 00:07:50.639 But he's always just. 00:07:50.639 --> 00:07:53.680 He's always loved, and he's always good all at the very same time. 00:07:53.680 --> 00:07:55.199 It's completely unlike. 00:07:55.199 --> 00:07:57.800 It's completely unlike our wrath. 00:07:57.800 --> 00:08:03.639 And so we can't caricature it like it often gets caricatured in the popular world. 00:08:03.639 --> 00:08:09.919 And what that means, and I take this from kind of reading a whole Old Testament reading 00:08:09.919 --> 00:08:16.879 alongside Paul here, and that's that God's wrath is never revenge. 00:08:16.879 --> 00:08:19.279 God's wrath is never revenge. 00:08:19.279 --> 00:08:23.519 God's wrath is never spontaneous outrage. 00:08:23.519 --> 00:08:29.639 He doesn't have emotional outbursts, and he doesn't act out of revenge. 00:08:29.639 --> 00:08:30.799 It's never either. 00:08:30.799 --> 00:08:32.159 And you can look. 00:08:32.159 --> 00:08:37.079 One of the great ways to see this is that you can go to the Old Testament law code and 00:08:37.079 --> 00:08:45.639 look at how unique the Old Testament law code was among ancient Near Eastern law codes. 00:08:45.639 --> 00:08:51.240 And Old Testament scholars have repeatedly said this, that when you look at the way God 00:08:51.240 --> 00:08:55.879 set up Israel, Israelite society in the Old Testament, that it's unlike anything else 00:08:55.879 --> 00:08:58.319 that had ever existed. 00:08:58.319 --> 00:09:04.679 And that's because, for instance, in Leviticus 19, God gives all these laws, law after law 00:09:04.679 --> 00:09:12.000 after law, about how to structure the society and how to punish crime like any good society 00:09:12.000 --> 00:09:13.279 would have, right? 00:09:13.279 --> 00:09:20.600 And at the end of that, in Leviticus 19, 17, and 18, he says, now, in enacting these laws, 00:09:20.600 --> 00:09:25.759 do not hate your neighbor and never take revenge. 00:09:25.759 --> 00:09:30.159 In other words, he's saying, when you structure your society and you have all these laws that 00:09:30.159 --> 00:09:38.439 govern it, never act, even against criminals, out of revenge or hatred, but only justice. 00:09:38.440 --> 00:09:44.580 In other words, it should crime the punishment, as we, in a cliche way, always say, the punishment 00:09:44.580 --> 00:09:46.360 should fit the crime, right? 00:09:46.360 --> 00:09:47.360 That's justice. 00:09:47.360 --> 00:09:51.560 And that was unique in all of history to the Israelite community. 00:09:51.560 --> 00:09:55.080 No other ancient society works like that. 00:09:55.080 --> 00:09:59.760 And one of the most incredibly compassionate ways that this works out, that God, as an 00:09:59.760 --> 00:10:04.520 expression of his justice, not revenge, not hatred, for the sinner or the criminal, but 00:10:04.520 --> 00:10:07.320 simple justice, what is fitting, right? 00:10:07.320 --> 00:10:13.400 So one of the ways this was expressed in a really remarkable way is in the idea of the 00:10:13.400 --> 00:10:15.560 cities of refuge. 00:10:15.560 --> 00:10:22.760 So if you've read the Genesis to Deuteronomy, you'll remember the cities of refuge idea. 00:10:22.760 --> 00:10:31.120 God comes to Israel and he says, look, if you accidentally kill another person, we call 00:10:31.120 --> 00:10:34.360 that, I think, well in the States we call that manslaughter, I assume it's the same 00:10:34.360 --> 00:10:35.360 here. 00:10:35.360 --> 00:10:41.279 So if you accidentally kill another person, naturally, naturally, this was the law of 00:10:41.279 --> 00:10:42.919 the land in the ancient Near East. 00:10:42.919 --> 00:10:47.200 Naturally the spouse or whoever, the family member, is going to want to come and take 00:10:47.200 --> 00:10:54.080 revenge on you and kill you because even if it was an accident, in some type of farming 00:10:54.080 --> 00:10:56.560 accident or whatever, you accidentally killed them. 00:10:56.560 --> 00:11:00.240 And he says, but look, that's not justice. 00:11:00.240 --> 00:11:04.320 You do not deserve to have capital punishment committed against you. 00:11:04.320 --> 00:11:06.560 If you accidentally killed somebody. 00:11:06.560 --> 00:11:13.680 And so God said, set up these cities of refuge all over Israelite territory and if this happens 00:11:13.680 --> 00:11:18.520 to you, you can flee to one of these cities and the people there are required to protect 00:11:18.520 --> 00:11:25.000 you, not only so that an injustice won't be committed against you, but so that the people, 00:11:25.000 --> 00:11:31.360 the family of the victim who are so angry will not be given the opportunity to seek 00:11:31.360 --> 00:11:32.360 revenge. 00:11:32.360 --> 00:11:38.320 They'll be protected themselves from committing a further injustice and seeking a punishment 00:11:38.320 --> 00:11:40.120 that's not fitting against you. 00:11:40.120 --> 00:11:41.120 You see? 00:11:41.120 --> 00:11:47.399 Now, this might not sound as revolutionary to you now, but look, nothing like this has 00:11:47.399 --> 00:11:53.759 ever existed in the ancient world and it reflected God's own personality that God's wrath is 00:11:53.759 --> 00:12:00.600 never an exhibition, never an exhibition of revenge or hatred, of casting people down 00:12:00.600 --> 00:12:03.519 just for the sake of it or anything like that. 00:12:03.519 --> 00:12:12.680 It's a reflection of the fact that God is just, absolute justice, and that sinning against 00:12:12.680 --> 00:12:16.920 absolute justice means punishment is fitting. 00:12:16.920 --> 00:12:21.680 And we all know that intuitively that that's true, that that makes sense. 00:12:21.680 --> 00:12:28.360 Now, maybe you're thinking, hold on a minute, what about Romans 12? 00:12:28.360 --> 00:12:29.360 Maybe you're not. 00:12:29.360 --> 00:12:31.360 Maybe you're not thinking what you're thinking if you're not thinking it. 00:12:31.360 --> 00:12:40.800 And that's that in Romans 12, God says through Paul, never repay evil for evil, for vengeance 00:12:40.800 --> 00:12:44.240 is mine, declares the Lord. 00:12:44.240 --> 00:12:50.440 And he does say that, but the word that gets translated there, vengeance, comes from a root, 00:12:50.440 --> 00:12:55.039 the root word, it's a verb for justice. 00:12:55.039 --> 00:13:00.120 And if you open up a dictionary that's different possible ways to translate this word, they'll 00:13:00.120 --> 00:13:06.199 tell you very quickly that it simply means to satisfy justice. 00:13:06.199 --> 00:13:13.039 And so another way to say it is he says, never repay evil for evil, the satisfaction of justice 00:13:13.039 --> 00:13:14.279 is mine. 00:13:14.279 --> 00:13:19.599 In other words, you human being don't need to go out and try to make every unjust situation 00:13:19.599 --> 00:13:22.639 into a just situation through punishment. 00:13:22.639 --> 00:13:26.600 I will do that in the end of time, he says there in Romans 12. 00:13:26.600 --> 00:13:30.960 So it means the exact same thing that we've been saying about God's wrath, that it's never 00:13:30.960 --> 00:13:35.319 revenge, it's never outrageous, spontaneous rage. 00:13:35.319 --> 00:13:39.919 It's always according to justice where it's fitting. 00:13:39.919 --> 00:13:40.919 It's fitting. 00:13:40.919 --> 00:13:51.360 Now, just to close this first point, you know, God's, this idea of punishment, just punishment 00:13:51.360 --> 00:13:56.879 in the face of sin, you know, it makes so much sense. 00:13:56.879 --> 00:14:02.519 It makes so much sense to all of us because, well, our very society is rooted in this most 00:14:02.519 --> 00:14:07.840 basic idea as every society that's worked in all of history has been that we set up 00:14:07.840 --> 00:14:15.399 court systems and police systems because we know that punish, that crime demands just 00:14:15.399 --> 00:14:17.519 response. 00:14:17.519 --> 00:14:24.039 And the reason societies exist like this is because they reflect God's own person because 00:14:24.039 --> 00:14:27.600 he is absolute justice and they reflect in a really imperfect way. 00:14:27.600 --> 00:14:34.639 But look, we even know this to be true in our own personal lives. 00:14:34.639 --> 00:14:43.960 We know in our own personal lives that anytime somebody commits unjust acts against us or 00:14:43.960 --> 00:14:51.800 we commit an unjust act against somebody else, that sin never goes without some type of punishment. 00:14:51.800 --> 00:14:54.920 Never, never, never. 00:14:54.920 --> 00:15:00.759 Because even when you decide to forgive somebody instead of pursuing the full weight of your 00:15:00.759 --> 00:15:05.639 wrath against them or whatever it might be, or the law, if it's a criminal issue, even 00:15:05.639 --> 00:15:11.280 when you decide to simply forgive, it's not like the punishment just disappears. 00:15:11.280 --> 00:15:12.280 Where does it go? 00:15:12.280 --> 00:15:13.940 You swallow it. 00:15:13.940 --> 00:15:17.160 You're the one that has to take it in forgiveness. 00:15:17.160 --> 00:15:21.520 You swallow it and it goes deep down into your gut and you feel the pain of being sinned 00:15:21.520 --> 00:15:25.400 against and no justice, no retribution, nothing. 00:15:25.400 --> 00:15:29.840 You take it in your own being and you feel the weight of that punishment and it hurts 00:15:29.840 --> 00:15:32.760 and it's hard and that's part and parcel of forgiveness. 00:15:32.760 --> 00:15:35.400 I mean, this is just true, right? 00:15:35.400 --> 00:15:40.760 And so the first point is simply to say that we can't caricature God's wrath. 00:15:40.759 --> 00:15:49.480 God's wrath is righteous response to injustice, to sin because he is just, because he's just 00:15:49.480 --> 00:15:51.080 his fitting, right? 00:15:51.080 --> 00:15:56.720 So that's the definition of God's wrath in the Bible that Paul introduces here. 00:15:56.720 --> 00:16:01.600 But secondly, why God's wrath? 00:16:01.600 --> 00:16:09.000 And Paul's answer here in verse 18, 19 and 20 is because we know God, but at the very 00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:12.440 same time we don't know God. 00:16:12.440 --> 00:16:18.279 So he says, for what can be known about God is plain. 00:16:18.279 --> 00:16:22.519 His eternal power, his divine attributes have been clearly perceived ever since creation 00:16:22.519 --> 00:16:30.000 in the things that have been made and although we know God, we suppress the truth and unrighteousness. 00:16:30.000 --> 00:16:36.960 Now Paul here is describing how human beings know God and a lot of people have come to 00:16:36.960 --> 00:16:42.960 these couple of verses here, especially verse 19 and 20 and said that it says what can be 00:16:42.960 --> 00:16:43.960 known about God. 00:16:43.960 --> 00:16:49.440 In other words, what Paul is saying here is that the knowledge of God, the simple knowledge 00:16:49.440 --> 00:16:54.040 that he exists is at least possible. 00:16:54.040 --> 00:17:02.200 And from that, people have sought validation in constructing what we think of as traditional, 00:17:02.200 --> 00:17:06.200 rational arguments for the existence of God. 00:17:06.200 --> 00:17:09.840 And many of you have heard these arguments, you know these arguments, you're familiar 00:17:09.840 --> 00:17:10.840 with them. 00:17:10.840 --> 00:17:13.920 They might be new to some of you, but you've probably heard them down the grapevine in 00:17:13.920 --> 00:17:16.680 some form and they go way back. 00:17:16.680 --> 00:17:21.680 They go all the way back to Aristotle a couple hundred years before Jesus was born and they've 00:17:21.680 --> 00:17:26.000 been modified throughout history and people like Anselm and Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel 00:17:26.000 --> 00:17:30.160 Kant and other people in the modern world. 00:17:30.160 --> 00:17:33.200 And here, I mean, there's truth there. 00:17:33.200 --> 00:17:38.400 Paul is saying you can go out and look at the natural order, the created natural order, 00:17:38.400 --> 00:17:43.840 the movement of the heavens and actually say something about God. 00:17:43.840 --> 00:17:48.240 And you know, probably the two arguments that correspond to what Paul is saying here most 00:17:48.240 --> 00:17:54.920 closely is what we call the cosmological argument and the teleological argument. 00:17:54.920 --> 00:17:57.960 Now those are fancy words, but they're pretty simple ideas. 00:17:57.960 --> 00:18:05.480 The cosmological argument, which you've definitely heard at some point, is simply that, well, 00:18:05.480 --> 00:18:10.720 that everything that happens in the world has some type of cause behind it. 00:18:10.720 --> 00:18:13.039 Everything that happens in your life has some type of cause. 00:18:13.039 --> 00:18:18.259 Every effect has a cause and if you reach back far enough and you look for the cause 00:18:18.259 --> 00:18:22.519 behind the cause, behind the cause, behind the cause, eventually you have to ask, well, 00:18:22.519 --> 00:18:24.360 what caused the world? 00:18:24.359 --> 00:18:29.719 And the only thing you can possibly say is that there has to be some type of uncaused 00:18:29.719 --> 00:18:36.000 cause, some original first cause that wasn't himself caused, right? 00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:37.559 Makes sense? 00:18:37.559 --> 00:18:39.879 That every effect has a cause, but there has to be a first cause. 00:18:39.879 --> 00:18:43.079 There has to be somebody who started it all, right? 00:18:43.079 --> 00:18:47.199 And that somebody that started it all is God, right? 00:18:47.199 --> 00:18:49.439 That's the cosmological argument. 00:18:49.440 --> 00:18:55.000 Here there's the teleological argument, which works a little better probably, and it's also 00:18:55.000 --> 00:18:58.160 today known as the fine tuning argument. 00:18:58.160 --> 00:19:04.720 And that's similar that the Earth and the Sun are so far apart and the Earth and the 00:19:04.720 --> 00:19:11.240 Moon are so far apart and the gravitational pull is negative 9.8 meters per second. 00:19:11.240 --> 00:19:17.360 And if any of those things were off by one millionth of one millionth of a decimal point, 00:19:17.359 --> 00:19:20.679 then the Earth would have never been possible. 00:19:20.679 --> 00:19:24.919 And from what I'm told by scientists, apparently that's pretty much true. 00:19:24.919 --> 00:19:30.279 And the Sun would have just blown up and we would have never, would have existed. 00:19:30.279 --> 00:19:34.319 And you know, when you look at how fine tuned it all is, there must, the order, there must 00:19:34.319 --> 00:19:39.359 be a God standing behind it all, somebody standing behind it all, or how could it possibly 00:19:39.359 --> 00:19:40.359 be? 00:19:40.359 --> 00:19:41.359 What are the chances? 00:19:41.359 --> 00:19:45.039 They're, well, one in trillions, scientists say, and that's ridiculous. 00:19:45.039 --> 00:19:48.839 So probably there must have been. 00:19:48.839 --> 00:19:53.960 And you know, now, maybe these arguments are helpful to you. 00:19:53.960 --> 00:19:54.960 I don't know. 00:19:54.960 --> 00:19:57.200 You've probably heard of them before. 00:19:57.200 --> 00:19:58.759 Maybe they're not. 00:19:58.759 --> 00:20:02.879 For some people that they seem to be persuasive and for others they aren't. 00:20:02.879 --> 00:20:07.720 But I do think that you can say something like that based off, that Paul is giving us some 00:20:07.720 --> 00:20:13.119 validation here for looking out at the world and saying, yeah, I mean, the existence of 00:20:13.119 --> 00:20:16.399 God makes a lot of sense. 00:20:16.399 --> 00:20:19.079 But he's not just saying that. 00:20:19.079 --> 00:20:24.000 He's saying something, he's saying something more, more profound than that, because he doesn't, 00:20:24.000 --> 00:20:28.079 he's not just saying here that the knowledge of God is possible. 00:20:28.079 --> 00:20:34.719 He's saying here that every single human knows God, not just that they can know God if they 00:20:34.719 --> 00:20:36.079 think about it long enough. 00:20:36.079 --> 00:20:44.399 He's saying here that every single person knows God and has suppressed that truth and unrighteousness. 00:20:44.399 --> 00:20:48.720 And that's why theologians and others have consistently come and said that what Paul's 00:20:48.720 --> 00:20:56.079 talking about here is not just some rational ability to reason to God, to look out at nature 00:20:56.079 --> 00:21:00.399 and form a syllogism of some sort and say, yeah, God must exist. 00:21:00.399 --> 00:21:06.039 He's saying more that he's saying that all of you, all of you know God by nature. 00:21:06.039 --> 00:21:09.319 By the very fact of simply being human. 00:21:09.319 --> 00:21:13.920 And historically we've called this intuitive knowledge of God, that every single person 00:21:13.920 --> 00:21:18.480 has an intuitive knowledge of God. 00:21:18.480 --> 00:21:22.240 He says that they suppress the truth and unrighteousness. 00:21:22.240 --> 00:21:27.879 You can't suppress something that you don't have in the first place, that everybody has 00:21:27.879 --> 00:21:28.879 it. 00:21:28.880 --> 00:21:38.720 Now there are all sorts of stories, stories of belief that of people coming from atheism 00:21:38.720 --> 00:21:45.400 or agnosticism or something like that into a position of faith in Jesus that confirm 00:21:45.400 --> 00:21:52.360 this type of idea of intuitive God knowledge that all human beings possess. 00:21:52.359 --> 00:21:59.639 A.N. Wilson is one of the great examples, he is, many of you will be familiar with him, 00:21:59.639 --> 00:22:05.199 he is a journalist, English journalist, biographer, book writer. 00:22:05.199 --> 00:22:11.519 You'll see his books in the windows of places like Blackwells and Waterstones. 00:22:11.519 --> 00:22:18.279 And in 2009 A.N. Wilson came to faith in Jesus and he had been raised in a religious home 00:22:18.279 --> 00:22:23.200 but in his mid-thirties he had come out and said that he didn't believe that he was an 00:22:23.200 --> 00:22:28.279 atheist, that he was thoroughly convinced and he writes about his conversion to Christianity 00:22:28.279 --> 00:22:32.039 in 2009 in a newspaper called The New Statesman. 00:22:32.039 --> 00:22:38.039 And in it he says, in my thirties I had laughed off all the arguments for God's existence. 00:22:38.039 --> 00:22:44.000 David Hume and Emanuel Kant had made short work of the cosmological argument. 00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:52.480 But then, but then he said I realized that belief was not a matter of rational argument, 00:22:52.480 --> 00:22:58.680 that it involves the whole person and so I was drawn over and over again to the disconcerting 00:22:58.680 --> 00:23:04.240 recognition that so very many of the people that I had most admired and loved in life 00:23:04.240 --> 00:23:07.160 had been believers. 00:23:07.160 --> 00:23:14.040 And then secondly, I was drawn back in by my experience of beauty. 00:23:14.040 --> 00:23:20.519 He said I would listen to Bach and Mozart and that beauty impressed me to the reality 00:23:20.519 --> 00:23:28.400 that I did indeed always believe in the beautiful, capital B, some absolute sense of beauty. 00:23:28.400 --> 00:23:32.680 I couldn't get it beauty otherwise I didn't know where to go to say this is beautiful 00:23:32.680 --> 00:23:35.120 as we're saying. 00:23:35.119 --> 00:23:39.319 Carl Jung, another German philosopher in the 20th century, he says something similar. 00:23:39.319 --> 00:23:45.919 He says when he came to believe in God that he realized that arguing for God's existence 00:23:45.919 --> 00:23:50.439 was almost like arguing to somebody that a son said is beautiful. 00:23:50.439 --> 00:23:51.719 It just is. 00:23:51.719 --> 00:23:53.399 How do you do that? 00:23:53.399 --> 00:23:57.839 How do you convince somebody that what they're looking at is beautiful? 00:23:57.839 --> 00:24:04.399 Then thirdly, Wilson says then I was watching a whole cluster of friends and my own mother 00:24:04.400 --> 00:24:11.920 die over quite a short period of time and that convinced me of what I always knew that 00:24:11.920 --> 00:24:18.960 a purely materialist explanation for our mysterious human existence simply would not do. 00:24:18.960 --> 00:24:22.080 That I didn't even know how to think that there was injustice and evil and suffering 00:24:22.080 --> 00:24:28.040 in the world unless I first believed in some absolute good and I knew it all along, he 00:24:28.040 --> 00:24:29.560 says. 00:24:29.559 --> 00:24:35.519 Then finally he was writing a book on Nazi Germany a decade or so ago and he was going 00:24:35.519 --> 00:24:42.119 through Hitler's, he writes, insane atheistic ravings. 00:24:42.119 --> 00:24:49.279 Then alongside Hitler I read Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book on ethics and I asked myself 00:24:49.279 --> 00:24:58.159 what sort of a mad world is created by those who think that ethics is purely a human construct? 00:24:58.160 --> 00:25:02.640 I was convinced that it was only the Christians who made sense to me in their pronouncements 00:25:02.640 --> 00:25:06.200 about against Nazism based on absolute morality. 00:25:06.200 --> 00:25:13.840 So he says I realized that my conversion was middle-aged madness, my conversion to atheism. 00:25:13.840 --> 00:25:18.600 It was middle-aged madness, I was denying what I could never escape that I did at base, 00:25:18.600 --> 00:25:23.800 need to believe in God in order to be mad at God. 00:25:23.799 --> 00:25:29.240 Pius Lewis, if you've ever read his conversion story, he says almost the exact same thing. 00:25:29.240 --> 00:25:35.639 He says that he was really struggling with suffering in his life and evil. 00:25:35.639 --> 00:25:39.599 He said but what I realized was I needed to believe in absolute good in order to even 00:25:39.599 --> 00:25:42.839 shake my fist at God in the first place. 00:25:42.839 --> 00:25:48.559 That he intuitively knew the reality of the absolute, the supernatural the whole time. 00:25:48.559 --> 00:25:50.279 There's story after story like this. 00:25:50.279 --> 00:25:56.200 And so look, you never have to convince a child to believe in something that they can't 00:25:56.200 --> 00:25:58.319 see. 00:25:58.319 --> 00:26:02.559 Every single child comes into this world by nature believing in the fantastical, believing 00:26:02.559 --> 00:26:03.759 in the supernatural. 00:26:03.759 --> 00:26:04.759 Every single child does. 00:26:04.759 --> 00:26:05.759 You never have to convince a child. 00:26:05.759 --> 00:26:11.799 You see atheism, disbelief saying that supernatural does not exist is something that you have 00:26:11.799 --> 00:26:13.359 to learn. 00:26:13.359 --> 00:26:14.480 It's not intuitive. 00:26:14.480 --> 00:26:16.399 It's against our own nature. 00:26:16.399 --> 00:26:18.440 It's not natural at all. 00:26:18.440 --> 00:26:19.559 It's unnatural. 00:26:19.559 --> 00:26:23.599 And so that's why theologians historically have said that Paul here, he's talking about 00:26:23.599 --> 00:26:27.679 something more than just rational argument for God's existence. 00:26:27.679 --> 00:26:33.119 He's saying that all of us possess intuitive belief and it comes through the ideals of 00:26:33.119 --> 00:26:39.039 beauty, the mystery of human consciousness, the deep need for the supernatural, the deep 00:26:39.039 --> 00:26:46.079 need for spirituality and purpose and meaning in the hope of ultimate justice and for the 00:26:46.079 --> 00:26:53.679 story that we are all so attracted to, the story of the hero who redeems, which gets 00:26:53.679 --> 00:26:59.799 played over and over and over again in every great novel and film. 00:26:59.799 --> 00:27:06.279 It's the thing we can't stop wanting because it's true, because it's intuitive. 00:27:06.279 --> 00:27:10.159 We all believe by nature. 00:27:10.159 --> 00:27:14.359 And so why God's wrath? 00:27:14.359 --> 00:27:15.839 Why God's wrath? 00:27:15.839 --> 00:27:21.799 And the answer here is because we all know, but we don't want to know. 00:27:21.799 --> 00:27:26.839 He's saying we all know, but we suppress that knowledge and sin. 00:27:26.839 --> 00:27:30.519 We push it down as it pushes into our hearts. 00:27:30.519 --> 00:27:32.559 And who is the they? 00:27:32.559 --> 00:27:34.639 Look, this is so important to see. 00:27:34.639 --> 00:27:39.559 Who is the they that Paul is talking about here throughout this passage? 00:27:39.559 --> 00:27:43.240 The they, for what can be known about God is plain to them. 00:27:43.240 --> 00:27:44.599 Who's the them? 00:27:44.599 --> 00:27:48.480 And to know the answer to that, you have to reach back into verse 16 and 17. 00:27:48.480 --> 00:27:53.319 And there he says who the they is and the they is Jew and Gentile. 00:27:53.319 --> 00:27:57.480 In other words, in Paul's ancient category, who's a Jew and Gentile? 00:27:57.480 --> 00:27:58.919 Well, that's everybody. 00:27:58.919 --> 00:28:00.639 You're a Jew or a Gentile, one or the other. 00:28:00.639 --> 00:28:07.159 He's saying everybody knows God and everybody, you, me, has suppressed the truth. 00:28:07.159 --> 00:28:09.919 Not just atheists, but everybody. 00:28:09.919 --> 00:28:11.799 So there's a lot of different ways to do that. 00:28:11.799 --> 00:28:13.359 That's what he's talking about here. 00:28:13.359 --> 00:28:16.399 One of the ways is to say, I don't believe God exists. 00:28:16.399 --> 00:28:18.639 We call that atheism, but that's not the only way. 00:28:18.639 --> 00:28:24.399 I mean, he mentions other ways here in the passage in verse 22 and 23 that you start 00:28:24.399 --> 00:28:28.199 to worship things like creatures, birds and trees and rocks. 00:28:28.199 --> 00:28:33.959 I mean, that's a more ancient way of saying no to God, of suppressing the truth that you 00:28:33.959 --> 00:28:38.479 know and unrighteousness, but, you know, the more modern way, we don't do that way as much 00:28:38.479 --> 00:28:41.319 anymore, although it still exists. 00:28:41.319 --> 00:28:47.480 But there's a modern correspondence to that way, and that's worshiping, desiring above 00:28:47.480 --> 00:28:53.279 all else, our own accomplishments and making them into God. 00:28:53.279 --> 00:28:56.119 It's sex and money and power and beauty. 00:28:56.119 --> 00:29:01.200 That's the modern replacement for birds and trees and stones. 00:29:01.200 --> 00:29:04.720 It's everybody, all of us, is what Paul's saying here. 00:29:04.720 --> 00:29:11.759 And at the root of it, it's the desire to be autonomous, to be self-governing. 00:29:11.759 --> 00:29:18.799 In other words, it's not ever, it's not ever that anybody truly doesn't believe in the supernatural 00:29:18.799 --> 00:29:20.360 and what they can't see in some absolute. 00:29:20.360 --> 00:29:21.360 It's not that at all. 00:29:21.360 --> 00:29:25.360 It's that we want to have power, we want to have power over that. 00:29:25.360 --> 00:29:28.039 And that's exactly what you see in the root of sin. 00:29:28.039 --> 00:29:35.359 In Genesis 3, in Genesis 11, when Satan says, do you want to be like God? 00:29:35.359 --> 00:29:38.960 Not do you want to be under God's authority, but Eve said, I want to be like Him. 00:29:38.960 --> 00:29:40.279 I want to rise up to the heavens. 00:29:40.279 --> 00:29:46.279 I want to build a ziggurat, a tower like they did in Genesis 11 and replace God. 00:29:46.279 --> 00:29:49.839 It's a power play, as the postmodernists often say. 00:29:49.839 --> 00:29:54.039 It's a power play, and it's true of all of us. 00:29:54.039 --> 00:29:56.039 And that's what Paul's saying here. 00:29:56.039 --> 00:30:02.519 Finally, and briefly, where is it? 00:30:02.519 --> 00:30:05.119 Where is God's wrath? 00:30:05.119 --> 00:30:11.879 Now the key thing to see here is that in verse 18, it's more present tense than you can even 00:30:11.879 --> 00:30:14.000 see here in the ESV. 00:30:14.000 --> 00:30:17.000 The wrath of God is revealed from heaven. 00:30:17.000 --> 00:30:22.240 Well, it's even more than, it's the wrath of God literally is being revealed from heaven 00:30:22.240 --> 00:30:23.960 against all ungodliness. 00:30:23.960 --> 00:30:29.240 Which means that the wrath of God is being revealed right now. 00:30:29.240 --> 00:30:31.120 Right now. 00:30:31.120 --> 00:30:34.680 And so where is it being revealed? 00:30:34.680 --> 00:30:42.000 And the answer to that is, look, Paul's saying, you can look out at nature, look out at the 00:30:42.000 --> 00:30:47.079 created order, and you can see the attributes of God on display. 00:30:47.079 --> 00:30:53.360 And if you had truly the eyes to see, you could see God clearly in all of His works in 00:30:53.359 --> 00:30:57.039 the natural world, in the created order. 00:30:57.039 --> 00:30:59.879 You can see His power, you can see His divinity, all these things. 00:30:59.879 --> 00:31:05.159 But when you look out at the natural world, you don't just see God's attributes on display, 00:31:05.159 --> 00:31:07.039 you see more than that. 00:31:07.039 --> 00:31:09.479 You see something in addition to that. 00:31:09.479 --> 00:31:10.479 What do you see? 00:31:10.479 --> 00:31:17.879 Well, you see hurricanes and tornadoes and whirlpools and droughts and tsunamis, and 00:31:17.879 --> 00:31:21.279 you see water moccasins and coral snakes. 00:31:21.279 --> 00:31:24.000 Those are poisonous, by the way. 00:31:24.000 --> 00:31:27.480 You see the law of the jungle, right? 00:31:27.480 --> 00:31:28.879 Just watch a Disney movie. 00:31:28.879 --> 00:31:30.720 You see the law of the jungle. 00:31:30.720 --> 00:31:32.220 Just look all around you. 00:31:32.220 --> 00:31:38.619 You see broken competition, broken relationships, struggles at work. 00:31:38.619 --> 00:31:40.519 You see cancer. 00:31:40.519 --> 00:31:43.039 You see death. 00:31:43.039 --> 00:31:45.279 Where is the wrath of God revealed? 00:31:45.279 --> 00:31:48.000 Well, it's not just that you look out at nature and see the attributes of God. 00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:50.240 You look out at nature and see the wrath of God. 00:31:50.240 --> 00:31:51.240 It's all around us. 00:31:51.240 --> 00:31:52.599 If you don't see it, you're not alive. 00:31:52.599 --> 00:31:53.599 We all feel it. 00:31:53.599 --> 00:31:54.599 We experience it. 00:31:54.599 --> 00:31:55.599 We know it. 00:31:55.599 --> 00:32:01.279 It pushes against us all the time, every morning, when we get up and it's so hard. 00:32:01.279 --> 00:32:05.160 That is the wrath of God that is always being revealed. 00:32:05.160 --> 00:32:12.960 We know that because Genesis 3, this world that we live in, which has the law of the 00:32:12.960 --> 00:32:19.640 jungle at its heart in some ways, is based off the curse of Genesis 3. 00:32:19.640 --> 00:32:22.800 That curse had three or four elements to it. 00:32:22.800 --> 00:32:26.280 The first was that God cursed the ground, literally. 00:32:26.280 --> 00:32:28.880 He cursed the natural world. 00:32:28.880 --> 00:32:31.880 That's the punishment of God for sin revealed. 00:32:31.880 --> 00:32:33.120 He cursed the natural world. 00:32:33.120 --> 00:32:38.120 That means that everything we do in relationship to the world fights against us. 00:32:38.120 --> 00:32:39.120 It pushes back. 00:32:39.120 --> 00:32:43.600 It's not as bad as it could be, but it's not good. 00:32:43.600 --> 00:32:49.480 Then he cursed the relationship between husband and wife, that they would be at enmity. 00:32:49.480 --> 00:32:56.120 It's that they would struggle with power over one another in a bad way. 00:32:56.120 --> 00:32:57.920 Our relationships are broken. 00:32:57.920 --> 00:32:59.440 That's the wrath of God revealed. 00:32:59.440 --> 00:33:05.960 He says, childbearing the natural processes of bringing humans into this world, it's broken. 00:33:05.960 --> 00:33:07.920 It's the wrath of God revealed. 00:33:07.920 --> 00:33:12.920 He said that it all ends in banishment from His presence and death. 00:33:12.920 --> 00:33:15.839 That's the wrath of God revealed. 00:33:15.839 --> 00:33:22.759 Just listen to Herman Bovink on the wrath of God today, just as we begin to close. 00:33:22.759 --> 00:33:27.720 Sin for us today means separation from God in each of our lives. 00:33:27.720 --> 00:33:32.399 It means darkness and ignorance and error and deception and fear and disquietude and 00:33:32.399 --> 00:33:33.399 a sense of guilt. 00:33:33.399 --> 00:33:34.919 Have you ever felt any of these? 00:33:34.919 --> 00:33:36.879 Regret, misery, enslavement. 00:33:36.879 --> 00:33:41.919 It means even the dominion of Satan that God gave the territory of this world to Satan 00:33:41.920 --> 00:33:48.480 and his powers, John 12, 31 says, because of human sin, this is today the very wrath 00:33:48.480 --> 00:33:51.480 of God revealed. 00:33:51.480 --> 00:33:56.160 Now to close, the main point. 00:33:56.160 --> 00:34:08.119 The main point of the text is in one little preposition, the first word of verse 18, four. 00:34:08.119 --> 00:34:16.199 Paul has said this little word four six times already in the past five or six verses. 00:34:16.199 --> 00:34:24.480 And the reason he's doing that is because he started an argument back in 14 and 15. 00:34:24.480 --> 00:34:27.480 I'm eager to preach the gospel to you. 00:34:27.480 --> 00:34:30.079 Four, four, there it is. 00:34:30.079 --> 00:34:32.799 It's the power unto salvation. 00:34:32.799 --> 00:34:34.319 Well, what do you mean, Paul? 00:34:34.319 --> 00:34:36.440 Well, four, he says again. 00:34:36.440 --> 00:34:39.960 It's the righteousness of God revealed. 00:34:39.960 --> 00:34:43.280 And then you see somebody's asking why, but why? 00:34:43.280 --> 00:34:46.960 And now he's saying four, the wrath of God. 00:34:46.960 --> 00:34:54.000 You see, it's not in your English Bible, it's separated by a new column and a title, but 00:34:54.000 --> 00:34:55.840 it's all one argument. 00:34:55.840 --> 00:35:00.920 And what he's saying is when I say four, the wrath of God is revealed against ungodliness. 00:35:00.920 --> 00:35:09.320 What I'm saying to you is the reason, the answer, the explanation of verse 16 and 17, 00:35:09.320 --> 00:35:12.800 why the gospel has been revealed. 00:35:12.800 --> 00:35:19.880 In other words, there's no such thing as salvation unless you need to be saved from something. 00:35:19.880 --> 00:35:26.159 And his answer is four, the wrath of God is revealed to all of you. 00:35:26.159 --> 00:35:29.680 In other words, it brings us back to the same conclusion that we drew last week. 00:35:29.679 --> 00:35:35.199 Now before we draw it in the last just couple of minutes here, you need to know, you need 00:35:35.199 --> 00:35:43.119 to know, you need to know this, that there has never in all of history, never, not yet, 00:35:43.119 --> 00:35:51.799 in all of history, never has God expressed the full weight of his wrath in his holy justice 00:35:51.799 --> 00:35:56.440 against a single sinful human being. 00:35:56.440 --> 00:36:01.720 Not once, he's never done it, not yet. 00:36:01.720 --> 00:36:03.440 And we learned that from Romans 12. 00:36:03.440 --> 00:36:08.960 He says, I am storing the full weight of wrath. 00:36:08.960 --> 00:36:17.360 It has not been expressed yet until the final day, a day out in the future. 00:36:17.360 --> 00:36:23.360 In Genesis 2, God said, if you sin against me, if you rebel against me, you will, he 00:36:23.360 --> 00:36:26.800 repeats the verb, you will die, you will die. 00:36:26.800 --> 00:36:30.920 That's called in the theological world, the fullness of death. 00:36:30.920 --> 00:36:35.680 And when Adam and Eve did it, they didn't get the fullness of death. 00:36:35.680 --> 00:36:38.280 They got, all they got was curse. 00:36:38.280 --> 00:36:44.840 And every one of those curses was there to extend their life so that they could be permitted, 00:36:44.840 --> 00:36:47.720 so that it would be possible to be redeemed. 00:36:47.719 --> 00:36:53.439 See, in other words, Bob, again, he talks about the double character of God. 00:36:53.439 --> 00:36:57.279 God is not willy-nilly, that's not what he means, but that in every single expression 00:36:57.279 --> 00:37:03.759 of God's wrath in this world, it has always been simultaneously compassionate, prolonging 00:37:03.759 --> 00:37:08.879 the days of human life, not giving them full death that they deserved. 00:37:08.880 --> 00:37:18.840 God has never, never, meted out the full weight of justice, except for once, except for once. 00:37:18.840 --> 00:37:24.519 And that's why he's connecting verse 18 to verse 16 and 17. 00:37:24.519 --> 00:37:29.920 The wrath of God is revealed, not only to you. 00:37:29.920 --> 00:37:36.000 The wrath of God was revealed in its fullness only once, and that was put on the back of 00:37:36.000 --> 00:37:43.239 the Son of God himself, only once in all of history so far. 00:37:43.239 --> 00:37:47.880 He the Son of Man got the full weight of God's wrath so that you could get the full gift 00:37:47.880 --> 00:37:49.639 of his righteousness. 00:37:49.639 --> 00:37:53.639 That was the point of the Gospel in verse 16 and 17, it's the same point he's making 00:37:53.639 --> 00:37:56.239 right here, only once. 00:37:56.239 --> 00:38:05.280 Look, the point is this, he has been so kind, he has been so kind since the very beginning 00:38:05.280 --> 00:38:12.280 to withhold his justice so that we might have hope. 00:38:12.280 --> 00:38:16.240 And in the middle of history, he gave us an answer. 00:38:16.240 --> 00:38:21.040 And every single human being stands before the end of time, looking down the barrel at 00:38:21.040 --> 00:38:26.000 some future moment when God will extinguish the full weight of his wrath and what he's 00:38:26.000 --> 00:38:28.360 saying to all of you here. 00:38:28.360 --> 00:38:35.040 All of you who face that reality, all of you, and everyone does, is that all you have to 00:38:35.039 --> 00:38:43.519 do is believe in the Son of Man and that wrath will be pronounced satisfied for you. 00:38:43.519 --> 00:38:47.519 You won't face it, you won't face it. 00:38:47.519 --> 00:38:50.679 So you can believe and you can rest. 00:38:50.679 --> 00:38:55.320 And that's the point of Paul's passage here on the wrath of God. 00:38:55.320 --> 00:38:56.320 Let's pray. 00:38:56.320 --> 00:39:01.800 Father, we ask, Lord, that for some of us we would believe and rest for the first time 00:39:01.800 --> 00:39:09.760 that we know that our guilt is transferred in faith to the only man who's ever received 00:39:09.760 --> 00:39:13.480 the full weight of justice. 00:39:13.480 --> 00:39:16.960 And so we ask for this help to believe in Christ's name. 00:39:16.960 --> 00:39:33.039 Amen.