Knowing God - God is Wrathful

Romans 1:18-19

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They actually have a seat. Alex already introduced. This is Benji and Christine. And they're not only doing our Advent reading today, but today is their last Sunday here at Point. They've been in our residency program for this past year, and God has now called them to take a role as a ministry leader in Sulfur Springs, Texas. I don't know if you guys know where that is, but they're going to be serving teenagers in Sulfur Springs. And so we just thought it'd be a great opportunity for us to stop and to pray as we send them out from here. We're excited about the next step that they're going to be taking in their ministry and for their boys and also the one on the way. Maybe you can't tell that, but there's there's another in the oven. And so we're going to pray for blessing over them as they leave here at Point. And we know that this is the beauty and also the hardship of being a sending church, a sending people, because the gospel says we don't just stay together and stay comfortable, we go where God leads. We go where his spirit leads. And so we want to stop and just praise God for his faithfulness to them. And in this next chapter of ministry, that God will really allow them to bear much fruit for the kingdom of God, that they would see many people come to know Jesus and find life in them. So, Father, just thank you so much for Benji and Christine. And just right now, we just want to stop and say thank you that you've been faithful to them, you've led them to this point, and you will lead them forward. God, even as they read these passages from the Old Testament prophets, we're reminded that, God, you are the God who sees all the time, that you guide our steps, and that nothing catches you off guard, nothing surprises you. You orchestrate the days of our lives. And so you've planned for Benji and Christine to be here for this last season. And God, now we trust that as they move forward to Sulfur Springs to take the role of ministry there with teenagers, God, that you would really bless them. You would use them. You would allow the gospel of Jesus Christ to be declared through their lips and lives. We pray that you would just bless their marriage, bless their two boys and this baby coming. We also pray that you would just bless their marriage and in every way, God, that they'd be unified and their family would just be a light in that community. And we just pray that many disciples of Jesus will be made through them. Thank you so much again for their lives. And we send them in your power with your love, in your grace, God. Bless them in all that they do. And praise in your strong name, Jesus. Amen. Love you guys. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Well, church family, it's good to uh to be in December. I I love the Christmas season. Um thankful for the opportunity we have to celebrate uh the arrival of Christ. And uh I'm thankful that, as Alex made it mentioned, uh it's not just that he came once, but that he's coming again. And so I get excited about the thought that our Christ is going to return. And and to that end, uh, we're gonna continue in our Knowing God series today, but I thought it's so interesting how God orchestrates our teaching calendar and how he sets it up to where we can really embrace the beauty of who he is in it. And so today, the backdrop to the Christmas scene, we're actually talking about the attribute of God, that God is a God of wrath. And so I don't know if you guys have been tracking these things uh in like a little sheet or if you've got your worship guides, but uh this is the third time that I got to teach one of these really fun ones where we've taught justice and jealousy and now wrath. Okay? And uh and so before I get to that, let me just quickly remind you, because we we've had a couple moving parts this morning. On my left, you're right, there's a little black book down here if you're on the end, uh, and that's uh called our connection book, and it's just a simple way we keep up with who comes to point. Uh if you happen to be a guest today, or if you're a regular tender, either way, if you just write your name in that, that just helps us know who's with us, and uh we can follow up with you. Uh we don't want to spam you or track you down or stalk you or any of those things. If you're a guest, we just want to say thanks for being here. And in fact, if you are a guest uh on your way out today, if you wouldn't mind stopping the connection point, we actually have a small gift just to say thanks for being our guest. But we are glad that you're here, and even uh even if the topic is a weighty one, uh we hope you will feel encouraged and blessed by your time with us, okay? So I'm gonna ask you guys to do something we do every week, and that's to get your Bible out. And so we want to ask you, if you don't have a Bible, there's actually some under the chairs around you, maybe you can find one there. And we're gonna be in the New Testament, in the book of Romans, chapter one. Uh we're gonna read a few verses from there, a few verses from Romans 2, Romans 3, and uh I just want you to know if you are new here, we we really focus on teaching the Bible. Because you don't need to hear just my opinion or my thoughts, and you don't need more pop psychology. Uh, we need the living word of God. We need God's power to be uh to be taught to us through his truth that he's given us in his word. And so I invite you to do that. And if you're brand new to being a Christian or maybe not a Christian, maybe you're just exploring faith, uh, maybe somebody drug you along today. Um just know that we all have questions and we all have doubts and we all are in progress uh in process. And if you have any questions specifically you'd like to ask us about what we're teaching, I'd love to meet with you or talk with you immediately following our gathering today. Um but we we want you to know we're glad that you took a risk and even being here, okay? Uh it's just part of the process. Uh we understand that it can be unsettling, it could be even a little bit uncomfortable, but thank you for being here, okay? So, that being said, um what comes to mind, before we get to the text, what comes to mind when you think of the word wrath? Because my guess is that you probably have some mental images up here of moments where uh someone displayed wrath, and so that kind of pops in your mind. Maybe it was a parent when you were growing up. Uh-huh. Maybe it was uh maybe somebody used SOG being very angry about something. Maybe it was even you. Maybe we're not wrathful, right? Uh, but maybe it was you. Maybe you experienced a moment where you got really angry, indignant. I mean, that's really what the word wrath means, angry, indignation. Uh uh just really that stirs this emotion that comes. And so when you hear the word wrath, um there are these things that come to mind that when you start to say, Well, when I think of God, what do you picture? And that was one of the first questions we ask in this series, knowing God, because we said we got to know God rightly, which means we've got to know God based on what God's word says, not what we feel about God, what we just like about you know the God, the picture of God we've kind of created. But when we say, What do you what do you think about God? When you picture God and you picture wrath, do you see those things coming together? Or do you feel like there's no way? Um, I think our culture would say, hey, I don't really buy the idea that God is wrathful. That's probably because a lot of our teaching has lacked good, healthy biblical teaching on the wrath of God. We haven't really done a great job of instructing people in what the word actually says about God. Here's the challenge. Um, I understand why churches avoid it. I understand why teachers avoid it because it's not a fun topic. I mean, I will tell you today, I have two emotions going on in my heart. I'm excited because I actually, as I've studied the word wrath, as I've looked at God, uh, the God of wrath, there's an excitement in me uh that it actually helps me understand and appreciate the wrath of God. There's also an incredible sadness in me at the same time, and that sadness is because there are so many people who don't understand God's wrath and therefore are staying as objects of wrath, which we'll talk about today. And it's really, really important that we understand that God has made a way for us not to be that. But today some people, even maybe in this room, are still in that position. Um, and we'll we'll explain more about why. But here's the truth there's 600 verses in the Old Testament alone that speak to the wrath of God. 600 verses. Okay? Now I know there's a lot of verses in the Old Testament, but that's still a lot. And that's just the word wrath specifically. That's that doesn't include anger or uh a judgment. There's other, and by the way, most of the times when we see the word wrath in the Bible, it's connected to God as judge, which we'll also speak to more in a minute. But there are more references to God's wrath, anger, and fury in the Bible than there are references to his love and his tender kindness. Tenderness or compassion. Did you know that? I don't know if you realize that, but there's actually more in the Bible about God's anger and fury and wrath than his love. Now, does that mean that God is not loving? No, okay, so just don't unhitch here. Don't disconnect, all right? Don't shut down. But I'm just telling you, the Bible plainly tells us that God has a wrath. Uh, he operates in a wrath, and and we need to be real honest about that. We need to be very forward about that. We're not doing anybody any favors by not teaching the Bible and talking about the truth of who God is in his fullness. Okay? So many people believe we shouldn't talk about it, but we're gonna press in. I think maybe some of the closest things I've experienced in wrath being a good thing, even though it's far from perfect, is that as a dad, um, I've had moments where I was wrathful towards my kids' sin. Okay? Anybody in here identify with that? If you're not a parent, uh you may not get it yet. Maybe you had your parents wrathful to you. But I've had moments where my kids were being foolish, and I got wrathful towards that foolishness. Now, like I said, I don't do that perfectly because I'm sure at times um my annoyance, my embarrassment, uh, some other things can shape that wrath. But but I can understand what it's like to see my kid doing something that's destructive and say, hey, knock it off. Like, stop, you know? You know what I'm talking about, brother. That's right, that's a hearty amen over here. I mean, when I see my kids do that, I don't want them to keep being a fool. And that's a good thing, right? As a dad, it's a good thing. So, what I'm saying is that it does help me to realize there is a way to be wrathful in a right way. So let's read Romans chapter 1, because even though there are 600 verses in the Old Testament, don't think for one minute that God is only wrathful in the Old Testament. All right, because there is a misconception about that, that God is this wrathful God, but then in the New Testament, all of a sudden he becomes this nice, fluffy God who doesn't do anything mean. All right, here we go. Romans chapter 1, verse 18. For God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. Since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, that is his eternal power and his divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he is made. As a result, people are without excuse. For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. Instead their thinking became nonsense, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images, resembling resembling mortal man, birds, four footed animals, and reptiles. Therefore, this is a scary word right here, therefore God delivered them over in their cravings of their heart to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and they worshiped and served something created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen. Now, I read that passage, and it actually makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up because I think about the world in which we live today, and I believe we live in a Romans 1 world. I believe we live in a world where people are rejecting God, rejecting his truth, and they're making a case that seems right to them. But we know the Bible clearly paints to us, declares to us, that there is a way that seems right to us, but in the end leads to destruction, right? And so if we don't teach the truth, we're just letting people walk to their death. We're like, keep on going to a place of destruction. And so what I'm saying to us this morning is that we have to be honest, we have to be clear, we have to be direct about the fact that this is truth. And we see that in the very first verse there, God's wrath is being revealed, not was being revealed, is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. This is at the core of this issue, okay? Now, I want to make sure I'm clear up on the front here too. God's wrath is not a divine temper tantrum. Okay? That might sound funny to you because I've seen some little kids be pretty wrathful when they don't get what they want, right? I've seen kids be, you know, really like just an emotional flurry, or may again referring to moms or dads and parents. I know you guys don't struggle with this, but me, uh, if you get angry about something, there can be like a little bit of just an emotional out of controlledness, not really not really being reasonable. And so here's the thing: God is never out of control. He's not out of control, he's not just emotionally flying off the handle. So don't think for a minute when we talk about God's wrath, that we're saying, well, yeah, God's just throwing this cosmic temper tantrum. That's not the case, okay? And it is important that we understand that because God's wrath is different than our wrath. Now, that being said, God's wrath is his right and reasonable response to rebellion. God's wrath is his right and reasonable response to rebellion. You like all those R's in there? Alliteration? So here's the deal. First and foremost, we need to understand, as we've already tried to make the case this morning, God, he's right. He's always right. He's never wrong. He knows everything, right? We've already talked about that attribute. So God knows all things, he's all wise. We are not. That's really important for us to know. This not just that he's those things, but we're not those things. So when God makes a judgment, when he makes an assessment, he has all the information. He knows your heart, he knows my heart, he knows our thoughts, he knows our desires, our motives, whatever you, how you want to work. God knows those things. And so God is right. When he judges, when he shows wrath, when he is angry, when he is indignant, he's doing it from a position of knowing everything, omniscience. Okay? And so it's important because, again, sometimes we think, well, how could God have the right angle in this? Well, the Bible tells us again, he knows everything. And so he is right in his wrath, but also he's reasonable in his wrath. Well, what are you talking about, Nick? Well, he's reasonable because he sees the condition of the human heart and he knows our rebelliousness. He knows. He knows how from the time we're born, and some of you guys have been here before, we've talked about this, when you don't have to teach a baby to sin. Right? Now, I probably have taught my kids plenty of things not to do. Uh they've watched my life, and sadly there have been times where they've actually followed my example. But the truth is you don't have to teach a kid to sin because it's inherent in the human nature to say, no, mine, right? Uh to hit their brother or sister, to take something that's not theirs. Because we are, by nature, uh these sinners. And as much as I love my children, and when they were born, they were these cute little bundles of joy, and I was like, awesome, this is great. I love being a dad, but they're just little sinners. Like they're just they're just waiting, sin waiting to happen, right? And so that's the truth because that's that's where we start. Now, again, another sermon for another day about original sin, but you get the point. God knows that, he sees that, and it's reasonable. Now, for some of us in the room, part of the reason we struggle with God being wrathful towards sin is because we've kind of bought hook, line, and sinker. We've bought the lie that human beings really aren't all that bad. Or that our sin really isn't that serious. Like we actually have thought God kind of is okay with some sins. Like that he kind of winks at certain sins. That he's like, oh, well, you know, it's not, at least you're not killing anybody. Or at least you're not, you know. But here's the problem: the Bible doesn't paint it that way. It makes it very clear that all sins are serious and they cause God to have to react in his holiness, in his love, even, to punish that. He can't be indifferent. And we're going to come back to that in a second. But listen, Romans 1.28, just a little further down in the same chapter we started in a while ago, if you happen to have your Bible still open, you can see it there for yourself. It says that in Romans 1.28, and because they did not think it worthwhile to acknowledge God, that's scary. Think that's around in the world today still? Not worthwhile to acknowledge God? God delivered them over to a worthless mind to do what is morally wrong. They are filled with all unrighteousness, evil, greed, wickedness. They are full of envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, malice. They are gossips, slanderers, god haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedience to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful. I mean, Paul's like, he is led by the Spirit here, and he's going off, he's listing all these sins. Anybody in here struggle with any of those things? Guilty as charged, right here. Okay, guilty as charged. I have struggled with these things, and as a result, it says, he goes on to say, although they knew full well God's just sentence, that those who practice these things deserve to die, not only do they do them, but they even applaud others who practice them. What am I saying? What is God's word saying, more importantly? It's saying to us that in the human heart, again, these are just, this is just a list of some of the things that we struggle with in our human nature. We do these things, and therefore we deserve the just sentence, which he says is there is death. That's what he says. That's what we deserve from that. The Bible says it in another place. He says, for all in sin and fallen short of the glory of God, and goes on to say, for the wages of that sin, what we earn from that sin is death. Okay? And we have to start there because if not, we're actually not preaching the gospel to people. We're saying, add Jesus to your your already good American life. That's not the gospel. The gospel isn't just add Jesus to your plate and try to know that you can have your cake and eat it too. It's it's it's no, you are a sinner, you are broken. We need Jesus, we need saving, and he has come and he has offered us that. And so it's very, very important for me as a as a leader to speak the truth to you in love. And to speak the truth to myself. Listen, we see in this text that there is a just sentence, and that's who that we should be under the wrath of God. Um Romans 2, again, just a chapter over, he says this. Why I say it's right and reasonable. Romans 2 says, We know that God's judgment on those who do such things is based on the truth. It's not based on just subjectivity, it's objective. Truth. God is the standard, and he says it's based on that. He will, verse 6, he will repay each one according to his works. Now, this is very important, and I want to say this early in the sermon today. God is love, God is not wrath. God is love, God exercises wrath. If we did not sin, he would not have to demonstrate wrath. Are you with me? This is very important because many people got this is God is love. That's what the Bible clearly says. Not love is God, by the way. We've talked about that before. But God is love. But he also, because he is love, he exercises wrath towards the things that are killing us. The reason we can't wink at sin and we can't take it lightly is because it leads to death. And God knows that, and it would be unloving for him not to deal with it. You can't say God is kind and beautiful and good and loving, and then at the same time say he doesn't care about sin. It's actually incompatible. How unloving would it be for a cliff to be in front of you? You to be walking that way, you see the cliff, and you don't see the cliff, but you're walking that way, and your friend sees the cliff, and they just say, they just kind of sit back and let you go. It's not loving. Oh, I don't want to, I don't want to hurt their feelings. I don't want to think they're going the wrong way. Are you kidding me? Save their life. See, God in his love and his mercy and his kindness, his goodness, he says, I can't ignore your sin because it's killing you. It's destroying you. And here's the thing about sin: sin doesn't just mess with your life, it messes with the people's lives around you. It's cancerous. When you sin, you aren't just hurting yourself, you're hurting your friends, you're hurting your family, you're hurting people around you. See, God knows that. And God wants us to experience there's a lie from the pit of hell that says God is a cosmic killjoy. That he is in heaven and all he wants to do is to make our lives boring, to rob us of fun, to rob us of pleasure. I want you to understand something. God is the author of pleasure, he is the author of fun. He actually created the human being to enjoy it. The problem is when we try to terminate that on temporary things, okay, when we try to pursue things, we think we're gonna find life in these things that are created and it's not there. And God knows that. God knows that if you run after those idols, after those things, we might not call them idols, but if you run after those pleasures and after those things of this world, and you say, Well, if I get that, then I'll be happy. And by the way, if we're all honest, we get it, and we're like, okay, we need more, and we need more, and we need more. It's never enough. See, God knows that what's enough is Him. That He is who we are created for. That what we were created to do was worship Him, not worship stuff, not worship money or relationships, all those things they fall. Short. And God from the very beginning, he knew that if we would trust him, if we would follow him, we would find that there is joy in his presence, that his goodness, that we were we were actually made to worship him. Now, I think it's important for us to understand that God's wrath is being displayed in the world today. And so I want to talk about that for just a minute. I don't want this to be the thrust of the sermon, but we've got to be really honest, okay? That God's wrath is being revealed, like Romans 1.18 says, it's being revealed, and we see that in the world. So there's three ways that we can practically see God's wrath being revealed in the world today. These are kind of umbrellas. First one, most obvious, let's go right to it, death. Did you know that death is not natural? It was not intended to be a part of the human experience. When you see what God created in the Garden of Eden, what you will find there is that God gave them a tree of life. And when they ate from that tree, they could live forever. But when they rebelled against God, death entered the world. It entered the scene. There had to be consequences. They couldn't live forever in the state of rebellion. And so we see that everyone dies. This afternoon at 2 o'clock. I'll be doing a funeral for a man who's been coming to this church for a while. And we know that death is inevitable. No matter how long you live, you're going to die. Now, some die at an early age, some die in an older age. But death is the reality for all of us. And it is a sign that the world's not okay. And we shouldn't be okay with death, right? We should grieve it. We should be upset about it. God is upset about it. That's why he did something about it. But death is definitely a part of the human experience that reminds us that wrath is here. The second thing that we see in humanity and the world today is we see suffering. Now, death is kind of the ultimate part of that, but but we see suffering. We see futility, if you will. There's a man, some of you guys know Matt and Tracy Altman, here part of our church here. And they uh they're not here today because they're with his dad, his dad and mom. And his dad, Bud, is a great man who loves God. And he has lived a very upright life of integrity. Not a perfect man by any means, but a great, great guy, worked a lot of years. He recently retired. And right after he retires, guess what? Finds out he has cancer. It's in stage three. They don't know how much longer he'll live. They've done surgery. Matt and Tracy up there, they're kind of talking through the plans and what the possibilities are of treating it. That does not seem right, does it? You see, suffering in this life is no respecter of persons because suffering is a part of the reminder that this world is broken, that God's wrath is upon, that there is a curse on this world. Now, different sermon for a different day about how do we know who gets wrath and doesn't get wrath, we're gonna, we can't go into all that. We just know that the world is broken and that suffering is a part of the human experience, regardless of who you are. We've all experienced pain and heartache and suffering and sadness. We've all experienced that. Suffering is a reminder that God has, as Romans 8 even says, God has subjected the world to futility. I'm gonna come back to that in a minute, but I think it's important to remember that God does allow suffering in our world. He does allow it. And he also wants to resolve it. The third thing we see about how God's wrath is being revealed in the world today is through sinfulness, through sin. In this passage, I only read one instance of it, but there's at least three in chapter one alone where it says that God gave them over to their own desires. Man, when I read that, that scares me. I feel like America, I'm so thankful for our freedoms. I'm so thankful that we can worship today openly. But I'm telling you, I think that we are experiencing some of the passive wrath of God, and that we want what we want, and we want God to just leave us alone. And it says that God gave them over, and I'm like, oh Lord, like, please wake us up from our slumber. Because when you get what you think you want, it leads to destruction. And I see that around us today. I see how that there's this wrath that's being revealed, and that people are enslaved to sin. Romans 6 verse 20 tells us that when you were slaves to sin, you were free from the allegiance to righteousness. So what fruit was produced then from the things you are now ashamed of? For the end of those things is death. So God's wrath is actually being revealed through the fact that people are sinners and they can't stop sinning. To say it that way. Did you know that before you come to the person and work of Jesus, that you cannot say no to sin. You are powerless. You are under the influence of the evil one. That's what the Bible would tell us. Yes, you can try to be a moral, upright person. That's different. Your sin nature is ruling in your life. And so we see how sinfulness actually reveals the fallen world and the wrath of God. Now, I said there are three things that we can see in the modern day or in our day, as we kind of are in this between time since Jesus came till the time he returns. But there's a fourth thing that's in this passage in Romans as Paul is trying to build a case to say, listen, God's wrath is going to be poured out towards sin, and we better be ready, and there is a way to actually avoid God's wrath. And one of the things that he says is that there is judgment coming. There is judgment coming. Now again, I understand this is not very popular. I understand it's not very relevant and it doesn't feel good, but we have to teach the Bible, and he says to us in the Bible, verse 5 of chapter 2, he says, But because of your hardness and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of judgment. When God's righteous judgment is revealed. Now, I need us to be honest about the fact that we would rather block the idea of hell just out of the out of the picture. But the Bible doesn't do that. Um there was a man, probably if you if you took any English lit classes, you probably had to read a sermon by a guy named Jonathan Edwards. Anybody know uh Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God? Ever to read that? Uh it's an interesting sermon uh where Jonathan Edwards was was speaking to the people of his day. He would write his sermons and literally he would read it. It was it was not very uh um like polished and and and uh there wasn't a lot of energy and excitement. He literally just leaned over this his little pulpit with his little letter and he read it, his sermon, and it was called Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. And in that sermon, he gives this picture of God having people dangling them over the fires of hell. And I'm sure for our culture today, I mean, that is very offensive to say that God would actually be doing that. But Jonathan, led by God's God's Spirit, really felt the need to awaken people from the slumber that we're in, the indifference to the fact that God actually is wrathful towards sin. And by the way, God used that sermon to bring an awakening in his little town in New England and that whole region, began to have an awakening. It was awesome because people realized that they had gotten lax and really soft towards the reality of God's wrath towards sin and how serious God's God takes sin. Um about a few years back, maybe some of you guys remember this, there was a book that came out called uh Heaven Is for Real. And uh there were people went to the movie theaters, they made a movie out of it. I I'm not anti the book, I'm not anti that. I mean, I don't know the kids' experience, and I can't really say that this was biblical or not. But the truth of the matter is our culture really likes those kind of things. But I actually think we probably need a book that's called Hell is for Real. Because the truth is that we have been given instruction that hell is actually real. In fact, Jesus talked more about hell than heaven. He actually talked about it because he knew what was going to happen to those who resisted him, who rejected him, even his own contemporary people that were around him, religious leaders who were rejecting him. God's wrath is being stored up for the day of judgment. On that day, um, it's gonna be a very different scene than it was in that little manger in Bethlehem. Um, can I be honest with you again? We've already gone this far, right? Um we like to airbrush Jesus. And we like to airbrush kind of our view of him and how he interacts with humanity. Um so we'd kind of like to take the picture that we get in Revelation and we'd like to sort of just block that one out. But have you guys ever read the end of the book, the end of the Bible? Uh when he comes back, it's not this cute little cuddly baby wrapped in the swaddling clothes and lying in a manger that we sing these Christmas songs about. He's actually a righteous judge. He's riding a big white horse, he's got a big tattoo on his thigh. Yes, he has a tattoo. And he has a big sword coming out of his mouth. And it says that he's coming to judge the earth. In fact, even in the Old Testament prophets, it says that he will trample, like that there will be literally like blood splattered everywhere as he's trampling his enemies. I just can't be okay with that. And knowing my my neighbors, my friends, my family, people who don't know Jesus, like they're objects of wrath. I just can't be okay with that. I can't just celebrate my little Christmas scene and have my little manger scene and then think about the fact that Jesus is coming back one day as a righteous judge and just be indifferent to them and their lostness. God is wrathful towards sin, he takes it serious. I need some encouragement this morning. And I think we have some. For a believer, all of these wrathful acts are actually altered. For a believer, this is really important, for people who have actually placed their trust in Jesus, these wrathful acts have actually been altered. What do I mean? Here's what I mean. I just said that believers still die, believers still suffer, and believers still struggle with sin. Amen? You still have to deal with death, you still have to deal with suffering, and you still have to deal with your flesh that wants to do evil things. But here's the beauty. Are you with me? Be encouraged. Death, which is our ultimate enemy, is not the end for us as believers. Because in Christ, death is a door to eternity with God. Death is a door to a new life. When I preached the funeral this afternoon of Pete, who's been coming to our church for a while now, I don't have to stand in front of them and go, man, we don't know really where Pete is today. He's with Jesus, and he's better off than we are. Because it's a door to real life. Life without all the suffering and hardship and difficulty of this life. I'm not saying we should all commit suicide. I'm not saying that sounds weird. Like, we're not saying, how does it get to Jesus? But Paul even wrestled with this. He's like, I want to be in God's presence. Because death is a door to Jesus. Not only that, but suffering. I mean, most people who suffer, they just sit and they sulk, they just find themselves in a ball in the floor, like, what is wrong with me? Why is my suffering? What is the deal with this suffering? The Bible says for the believer that suffering actually produces maturity. It actually grows us in Christ's likeness. So we don't look at suffering anymore as purposeless. We actually see it as a way to get closer to Jesus. Closer to God. It's been redeemed, it's been altered. Yes, we still suffer, but now we get to suffer and we get to look up and see Jesus, our source, our savior, our life. And draw closer to him and look more like him in the process. Praise God for that. And the third thing is sin. You and I don't have to say yes to sin anymore. You don't have to be angry. You don't have to be addicted. You don't have to be, uh you don't have to be a liar. You don't have to put on any fronts in front of people. You don't have to go to church and act like you got it all together when you don't. Okay? Because in Christ, our sin is not our master. Christ is our master. We have the Holy Spirit inside of us so we can live victorious life. You are more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus. It's been altered. So, yes, you have a sin nature. Yes, it's a battle. Yes, it's not over today. But it will be eventually one day done away with. And that's good news. You see why the gospel is good news in light of the backdrop of this wrathful God who takes sin serious? I think, I think part of the reason why we're losing a generation in the church is because we're not being honest with them. I think we just tried to like help them live little entitled lives where the world revolves around them. The world does not revolve around you. I love you, millennials. The world does not revolve around you. I love you, Gen Xers, or Ys, or whatever. The world does not revolve around you. This is not about your self-esteem. This is about you and I need rescued by a Savior, Jesus Christ. And he is very, very serious about our rebellion. So much so that in the Bible, this is where people get attention. They get attention. They say, Well, how can God be loving and wrathful? Like, isn't he just wrathful in the Old Testament? I already kind of referred that earlier. In the New Testament, he's now nice, nice and kind and loving and he's just okay with sin. Absolutely not true. Don Carson this week, I was listening to him. He was talking about how in the Bible we feel this ratcheting up of love and wrath through the entire Bible. And by the way, in the Old Testament, there are tons of passages about God's grace and his patience. He is slow to anger, abounding in love. Psalm 103, one of my favorite Psalms in the whole entire Bible, says that he removes our sin as far as the east is from the west. He loves us. He shows all these great passages of him showing patience with the people of Israel despite their stiff neck, despite the rebellion. So you can't say it. Or Hosea, for crying out loud, a minor prophet, where he tells his prophet to go marry a prostitute. She runs back to prostitution and he says, go buy her back. And he says, This is how I am with you, crazy people. I love you, even though you keep going back to spiritual adultery. What I'm saying to you today is that you can't say the Old Testament is full of just God's wrath and judgment. He's also full of grace and love and compassion there. They had the law. They knew what was expected of them, and yet they rejected, they resisted. And what I'm saying to you, when you get to the New Testament, we see God continue to show his love, his grace, his mercy, his kindness, his goodness, and his wrath. Romans 5, 9. Much more than, since we have now been declared righteous by his blood, we will be saved through him from wrath. Through who? Through Jesus. You see, as it's ratcheting up in the Old Testament, the place where love and wrath of God meet and make the most sense and yet don't make sense at all is the cross. If you want to know what love looks like, look at the cross. If you want to know what wrath looks like, look at the cross. Are you with me? Because at the cross, we see Jesus Christ, the perfect, spotless, sinless Lamb, the one who did not do anything wrong. We see him go to a cross and die. Why? For us. To be, as Romans 3 says, the propitiation for our sin, to take on the wrath of God, so that we then can now become sons and daughters of God. And rather than being under God's wrath, we're now adopted into his family. That's grace. This is why you gut the gospel if you don't talk about sin and the punishment for it. And so in our lives, we get to see the beauty of God's grace. It shines. In the backdrop for Christmas, the thought that Jesus comes on the scene, this really means nothing to us. Unless we understand what was going to happen if he didn't come. Christmas really means nothing to us if we don't. We could celebrate Christmas. Hey, I'm so glad Jesus came. Now let's do our Santa Claus thing. That's not the point. He came because we needed rescued from God's wrath. From God's wrath. That should be on us, but it was put on Jesus. And listen, here's the deal. God's desire is for people to come to repentance and to avoid his wrath. I already said this. God is love, God is not wrath. God is love, he is merciful, he is kind. He is not wrath, he shows wrath, displays wrath. But we need to realize the condition of humanity apart from God. John 3, verse 36. The one who believes in the Son, I just want you guys to hear God's word because I need you to read this and hear this. Not just coming from some preacher up here on the stage, alright? John 3, 36. The one who believes in the Son has eternal life, but the one who refuses to believe in the Son will not see life. Instead, the wrath of God remains on him. That's what the Bible tells us. But notice what he said in chapter 2, verse 4 of Romans. Or do you despise the riches of his kindness, restraint, and patience, not recognizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? Do you understand that God's wrath is actually merciful? What would happen again if God didn't have any consequences for our sin? What if there were no consequences for your sin? What if there was no punishment coming for your sin? Oh, free-for-all, right? Straight to destruction. But God does put consequences in there, and they're loving consequences. You're disciplining me because it's like I'm inconvenient to you right now. You're angry at me. Frustrating you. Listen, God, he loves us and so he deals with sin. He does not ignore it. But here's the thing Romans 5, verse 6 through 11. Jump ahead a few chapters. Romans 5, verse 6 through 11 says this. For while we were still helpless, at the appointed moment, Christ died for the ungodly. That's us. In case you didn't know that. You're like, ah, oh, that's the people out there, right? No. All that list of things I gave earlier, if you had any of those issues in your life, that's ungodly. Christ died for the ungodly. For rarely will someone die for a just person, though for a good person, perhaps someone might even dare to die. But God proves his own love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, since we have now been declared righteous by his blood, we will be saved from his wrath. Through him, from this wrath. Through Jesus. It is interesting. I told you that Jesus in his day, even while he was on the scene, he was making assessments about God's wrath coming. And it's interesting to me that a lot of his assertions and assessments are towards religious people. I want to make sure you're crystal clear on this today. Okay? Going to church and being a good Christian, whatever you think that might be, is not how you avoid the wrath of God. Okay? Sometimes people have this misconception that if I'm just do the good things and I do the right things, if I'm trying to be a good, moral, upstanding person, that that's how I will avoid the wrath of God. The only way to avoid the wrath of God is through the person of Jesus. Because no one in this room, no one else on this planet, no one who's ever lived or ever will live can ever be good enough. We will always fall short, like Romans 3.23 says for us. For all have sinned have fallen short of the glory of God. So understanding God's wrath today makes us wiser and it increases our worship. It makes us wiser. How does it make us wiser? Well, now we actually understand reality. We perceive that wrath is a part of the human experience because God is trying to get our attention. He's mercifully trying to say, turn. Don't keep walking down a path to destruction. It makes us wiser. It helps us to love what he loves and hate what he hates. Hate what he hates that's actually destroying us, by the way. This will produce real wisdom when we begin to understand how serious God takes sin. Also will help us remember that in our pain, in our hardship, we actually have the opportunity to grow. We actually have the opportunity to become more like Christ. It reminds us of what God is trying to do in the middle of all that. And here's the beautiful thing: God is very kind and he comforts and he is very merciful to us in it, because he knows we have a limited perspective. But God is so gracious to give us comfort. In fact, he even sent the Holy Spirit to be a comforter to us in the process. And I would even say this we should be really afraid if we are indifferent to or even like okay with the fact that God is wrathful towards sin. Like we're just like, it doesn't really bother us. It should unsettle us. We should take it serious. But then it should produce worship in us because we understand just how amazing it is that God provided a way by pouring his wrath out on Jesus. And hopefully, that is the motivation that propels us to worship, obey, trust, follow Him. Are you in Christ today? Have you put your trust in Christ today? I plead with you. The Bible is very clear again that you're in only one of two camps as a human being. You're either a child of wrath or you're a child of God. It's only two options. You're either a child of wrath or a child of God. And what I'm saying to you this morning is that I want every single one of you, in fact, God wants every single one of you to be his child and to move from being a child of wrath to being a child of God. That's the decision you have to make. And the Bible says, be very, very careful because when you start to resist him and resist him, resist him, God will give you what you want. And you will find it leads to destruction. You will find it leads to pain. And I pray that none of you will harden your heart to that point. I pray that none of you, by the Holy Spirit's power, would not get to the point where you literally say, God, forget you. I don't want you to bother me anymore. I'm done with you. He made you, he loves you, he cares about you, he is pursuing you in this moment. He wants to save you. If you have received Christ as Lord, if you're a believer, if you're a child of God, we can walk with hope. We can embrace suffering. Not say be okay with all of it, but we can find rest in God. And we can say no to sin, like we said earlier. But we also have a job to do. You and I have a job to do. And that's to lovingly warn people about the wrath that's coming. To lovingly warn people that God's wrath is going to be poured out one day. I know it's not, again, a very popular message. It's not a very popular way of talking about God. But I think it sets a beautiful backdrop for the Christmas scene, like we said. To know that God is very much on the offense towards sin. But he also is very much in the pursuit of saving people, redeeming people from his wrath. Will you receive that today? If you haven't already, and if you have, let's rejoice. Let's do what that song said earlier. Rejoice, rejoice, because Christ has come. He has come. He has rescued us. Let me pray. God, thank you so much that you can lead us to talk about hard things that we don't like, but we need to hear. Because if left to ourselves, God, we're fools. Left to ourselves, we're selfish and we're prideful. We think, God, that we know the right way. I know, God, that I need you to rescue me from myself. And I thank you that you have rescued me, that because by your saving power, God, that you did bring me to a place of seeing that I needed you, Jesus, to save me, that I couldn't save myself. Thank you for that. I praise you today for that truth. I also, God, pray for every person in this room who has never received the gift. And it is a gift, the gift of your rescue, your salvation. I pray, God, that today that you would even right now remind them that you are pursuing them. That's why there's even this opportunity of being here. I just pray that you would help them to receive by faith. They would humble themselves and not bow up, not be prideful, but to behumble themselves because God, you are good. You love us. You are good. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Praise us in your name, Jesus. Amen.