Okay, let's turn back in our
Bibles with me, if you will, to John chapter 3, verse 36. Verse 35 says that all things
are in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that the Father
loveth the Son. And verse 36 says, he that believeth
on the Son hath everlasting life. It is his as a possession and
we've spoken much about that previously. He that believeth
not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth
on him. The wrath of God is one of the
character characters of our God that most preachers that are
sensitive to it and are aware of the fact that their peak is
speaking to people who will someday soon
meet God. And you cannot help but be moved
by the fact that so many, many are leaving this world without
any knowledge of the true and living God. And so many people
are leaving this world, as the scriptures say, dying with a
lie in their right hand. There is a generation that's
pure in their own eyes and have never been cleansed from their
filthiness. What a cool model. What's our warrant for coming
to the Lord Jesus Christ at this time and any other time? He says
come, it's a command. He says believe, it's a command. Believing on the Son, as we've
seen through John's Gospel, is believing on the name of the
Son of God. To have everlasting life is to
believe on the name of the Son of God. And one of the names
of the Son of God is the character of God. It's believing on God
as God reveals Himself. And God is. That's how he revealed
himself to Noah, didn't he? I am. I am that I am. So in this verse, as I said earlier,
these verses we have in verse 35, the glory of the absolute
sovereignty of God. The Father loves the Son and
He loves everyone in union with the Son and He's given all things
into His hands and the children of God are perfectly safe and
secure. That's why the faith that God
gives is a belief on the Son, a belief into the Son, it's a
belief in the name of the Son of God and the promise of God
is that you have everlasting life. And he that believeth not
The son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. This is a verse, as many other
verses in scripture, cover all of humanity. Everyone of Adam's
children that has ever been on this earth and everyone that
is and everyone that will be until the Lord comes back. God
is. God is. He's eternally the same. God
is and his character as revealed in the scripture is unchanged.
By your opinions you can think what you like about him. It's
extraordinary isn't it that people say, well I'd like to think of
God as this. Nonsense. God is as he is and your thoughts
of him and your opinion of him makes no change to who he is. I want us to, as we think about
the wrath of God, I want us to turn to Romans chapter 1, which
is a remarkably clear description of the wrath of God. There is
a lot in John's Gospel about us, but I want us to get something
of this picture. God says to us that amongst all
of Adam's children is no such thing as an atheist. And people
would want to be sort of intellectually superior and say, well, I'm an
agnostic. No, you're not. I love what Spurgeon said. He
was having a walk with someone in a park one morning and they
told him, they said, I'm an agnostic. And he said, well, that's a nice
Greek word, isn't it? Gnosis, gnostic means knowledge, you
see, and to put an A in front of it is to create the negative. an agnostic of someone that doesn't
know, and Spurgeon turned to him and said, I actually prefer
the Latin. That's a Greek word, I prefer
the Latin. The Latin is ignoramus. There are, according to the scriptures,
there are no atheists, and we'll look at that in a minute. Paul
writes in these remarkable chapters at the beginning of Romans and
the rest of them are as remarkable as that. The conclusion of the matter
he deals with the people of this world, the Gentiles, and he deals
with the Greeks. And then the conclusion is that
in verse 9 he says, For we have before proved, in these verses,
these chapters, we have proved, both Jews and Gentiles, that
they are all under sin. What is it to be under sin? to have dominion over you. But
to go back to Romans 1 we'll see the guilt and the responsibility
of man before the God who is. Let's begin in verse 18. But
I want us to remember the earlier verses here and I particularly
want us to take note of the fact that Paul says in verse 16, I'm
not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Christ's gospel has an
origin from Christ. For it is the power of God under
salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to
the Greek. For therein is the righteousness revealed. Isn't that extraordinary?
I've been involved in mission things and I've seen many, many
mission letters and things. I've never heard of a mission
in the last 20 odd years going out into the world to declare
the righteousness of God. Every one of them is going to
declare the love of God. Will you join with me in declaring
the love of God? We are declaring the righteousness
of God. God is righteous. all of his activities, and it's
the righteousness, and it's revealed from faith, from God's faithfulness
to our faith, it's revealed from faith to faith, and it's written,
the just shall live by faith, the just shall live by faith.
And then he says, four, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven,
against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold
the truth in unrighteousness. That word hold is to suppress
the truth in unrighteousness. Unrighteous activities involve
themselves in suppressing the truth. The truth is there all
the time. is plain before their eyes. Let's read on in verse
19. Because, this is why this is
an unrighteous activity, suppressing the truth. Because that which
may be known of God is manifest in them, or manifest to them.
God has made it revealed, for God has shown it to them. So do you believe the person
who calls himself an atheist, or do you believe God? What that which may be known
of God is manifested, for God has shown it to them, for the
invisible things of him from the creation of the world are
clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,
even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. There is no excuse. God says
there's no excuse. God says he's manifested himself
in creation. They know of his eternal power. Everyone knows that this exists
because God made it. And no one made God, and he's
the sovereign ruler over these things. Isn't that remarkable?
We see the most amazing things in nature. We see an amazing
sunrise or a sunset or a remarkable storm, and we are just in awe
of it. The cows in the field couldn't
care less about it, but we are in awe of it again and again
and again. We see these remarkable things and say, God, although
I drove back from Colborough a few weeks ago and there was
this amazing, Sometimes the rainbows in the morning are just more
remarkable than the rainbows in the evening, because everything
is sort of clear and there isn't the normal light. And this rainbow,
I took pictures of it. It was just extraordinarily spectacular
against this dark, dark background. And God's people say, God did
it. Isn't God amazing? The Gospel reveals the righteousness
of God and creation says that there is a God. In Romans chapter
2, we won't have time to look at it, but all of humanity know that God is
by creation and they know that God is righteous by conscience.
In verse 14, for when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by
nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the
law, are a law unto themselves, which show that the work of the
law are written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing
witness. And this is exactly how they
think, isn't it? And their thoughts in the meantime accusing or else
excusing one another. Every one of Adam's children
is aware of the fact that they fall short of even their own
standards. And it plagues them enormously.
And by the grace of God, He cleanses the consciences of His people.
But there are so many people in this world that live with
a conscience that is so troubling to them that all of their lives
are troubled. I love the command of God to
all of His children. You forget the things that are
behind. That's past. You can't do anything to change
what's past. God sovereignly did all those things. And you
look ahead. You fix your eyes on the Lord Jesus Christ. So different is the journey of
God's children in this world. God is revealed and God has made
himself manifest. God has revealed his righteousness
and the moral absolutes. We know that lying and stealing
and cheating And all of those things, we know
that they are wrong. We know that murder is wrong.
So we have a moral conscience, and our moral conscience proves
that God is righteous. There is a right and wrong in
this world. Even there is honor amongst thieves
and others, but people do know. The point is, of course, that
people are without excuse. Romans 1.20 says. They're known
so that they are without excuse. And then listen to what he goes
on to say in verse 21. Because that when they knew God,
they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became
vain in their imagination, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise. Look at all the knowledge I've
acquired. Look at all the information I
have available for everyone else. Professing themselves to be wise.
I'm wiser than God. I can make judgments upon God.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. and changed
the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to
corruptible man and to birds and to four-footed beasts and
creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to the uncleanness
through lusts of their own hearts to dishonour their own bodies
between themselves, who changed the truth of God into a lie. He's speaking about religion,
brothers and sisters. into a lie and worshipped and served the
creature more than the Creator who is blessed forever. One of the people are horrified to think
that God is anything but love for everyone. People these days,
if you go and look up the things that people write when someone
has parted from this world, that everyone has gone to a happy
place. Everyone has gone to be reunited with other people. Incredibly
intelligent people are saying that all the time, aren't they?
That he's looking down from us from heaven, he's smiling, he's
up there with all of his mates, he's having a barbecue, he's
gone fishing, he's playing rugby, he's doing all these things.
Where does all that come from? They changed the truth of God into
a lie. is talking about man's religion. Why do they think that
God loves everyone and Jesus died for everyone? It comes from
the pulpits. There are so many justifications
for God's wrath in the scriptures, but here in Romans chapter 10
is an echo of what The Lord said in John chapter 3 verses 19 and
20, you read along with me, we studied these verses some little
time ago. And this is the condemnation. This
is the judgment of God. That light is come into the world
and men loved darkness. So the issue is love, isn't it?
They loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were
evil. For everyone that doeth evil
hates light. It's not just an idle passion,
is it? They hate the light of who God
is. They hate the light of who God
is as revealed in the Lord Jesus Christ. They change the glory
of God. They change the truth of who
God is into a lie. For everyone that doeth evil
hates the light, neither cometh the light, lest his deeds should
be reproved. We have so many misunderstandings
about the wrath of God. One of them of course is that
we like to divide up the character of God into its various parts
to examine it. And theologians and others, and
we do it as well. We love to look at the power
of God. We love to look at the sovereignty of God. We love to
look at the love of God. We love to look at the grace
of God. We love to look at the faithfulness
of God. We love to look at the justice of God. all of those
glorious attributes, but all of the attributes are not in
part with God. He's not part justice and part
merciful. He's not part sovereign and part
unsovereign. He's not part love and part hatred. God is absolute. He's 100% in
all of his attributes. He's not half and half in anything.
His love is a reflection we have according to Psalm 51
is that we think that God's altogether like us. And so we want to humanize
God. God is other. God is separate. God is holy. God is in heaven
and we're on earth and we need to keep our mouths quiet when
we're talking about him. God's wrath is not like our wrath. God's wrath never comes from
an impure motive. It never comes from a vindictive
motive. God's wrath is not in conflict
with His love. The Father loves the Son. The
scriptures speak of the wrath of the Lamb. In Revelation 16
they'll be calling for the mountains to fall and to hide them from
the wrath of the Lamb. The early church preached on
Psalm 2 again and again and again and you know it well, but it's
good to be reminded of what it says about the Lord Jesus Christ.
It speaks of his absolute and utter sovereignty over all things. Why did the heathen rage and
the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves
and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord. There is a
conspiracy against the Lord and against his anointed. Always
the conspiracy is against the anointed one. Saying, let us
break their bands asunder. Let's not have a God who's absolutely
sovereign over us. And let's cast away their cords
from us. Listen to what God says. He that sitteth in the heavens
shall laugh. the Lord shall have them in derision. And then he shall speak unto
them in his wrath, and vex them in his sure displeasure. And
then he'll say, yet have I set my king on my holy hill of Zion,
and I will declare the decree of the Lord, and said unto me,
thou art my son, this day I have forgotten me. Ask of me, and
I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance. Did he
ask? John 17 says he did. Did he get what he asked for?
Exactly. Always does. And the othermost
parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a
rod of iron. Thou shalt dash them in pieces
like a potter's vessel. Be wise now, therefore, O ye
kings. Be instructed, ye judges of the
earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. John 3.36 is a call to believe
again. There'll come a great day when All things are wrapped up and
there will be a declaration that God is faithful and God is true
in Revelation 19. And when these people see this
great judgment of God, what do the saints of God do? Here we
find it very difficult, I find it very difficult to rejoice
in the wrath of God only because of my flesh. But there'll come a day, that
great day in those resurrection bodies, they'll be saying when
God casts people, when the Lamb casts people into hell, they'll
be saying, Alleluia. And listen to what they say.
They're not rejoicing over what's happened to these people, they're
rejoicing over the character of God. And that's where we must
rest if the Lord would allow us. So, hallelujah. Salvation
and glory and honor and power under the Lord our God, for true
and righteous are his judgments. For he has judged the great whore
which did corrupt the earth with her fornication and has avenged
the blood of his servants. And again, they say, hallelujah. They're praising God. And her
smoke rose up forever and ever. And they worshipped God that
sat on the throne saying, Amen, Alleluia, Alleluia. God's wrath is essential
to his holiness and to his justice. People say God hates the sin,
but loves the sinner. That's nowhere in the scriptures.
I promise you there's not a single word of that in the scriptures.
You can read about it in Psalm 7 and so many other places in
the scriptures. Why do men so misunderstand and
find hateful the thought that God has wrath? And let me remind
you what our text says, the wrath of God on unbelievers, they don't
see life. They don't see the kingdom of
God, they don't enter the kingdom of God. The wrath of God abideth
on him. There's a notion around, isn't
there, amongst some theologians I've stopped and others, that
there is this thing of annihilationism, that somehow God will cause people
to be punished for a little while and then he'll empty hell. The word abideth there is in
the continuous tense, and it means to remain, to not depart, to not become another or different. And that word is used many, many
times in the scriptures and John loves using that word and nearly
every reference to that word in all of his Gospels is a reference
to the fact that the Spirit descended and abided on the Lord Jesus
Christ. It came and it remained upon
him. He says to the unbelievers in John chapter 5, you believe
not because the word does not abide in you. But he keeps using
it in reference to the union of God's people with himself
in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a union word, it's a communion
word in John's gospel. In John 6 it says if you eat
his flesh and you drink his blood you dwelleth in him. It's the
word used to dwell. Believers are like the branches
that abide in the vine. We are in union with him. Men misunderstand and hate the
wrath of God because they hate God being God. I hate God being
absolutely sovereign. I hate God being the master. We will not have this man to
rule over us. hate his character as revealed
in the scriptures. And men are only made to see
themselves as sinners. That's the other problem isn't
it? Sinners. Unrepentant sinners. Unborn again
sinners. The only way you can see yourself
as a sinner to be born again. When the Spirit
comes in John 16, the Spirit comes and he convicts us of the
world of sin. And what's the sin he convicts the world of?
Unbelief. Unbelief is the great sin. And
that's what John the Baptist is telling us here. See, man
by nature, has no notion of what happened in the garden. Man by
nature has no notion whatsoever of the fall. He has no notion
whatsoever of the enticement of Satan which was so appealing
and caused our first parents to fall and us in them. You should
be like gods. You will know good and evil.
You will have free will. You will be able to decide. wrong on the fall, wrong on it
all. We fell into spiritual death
in the garden and only life from above can cause us to see what
happened in the garden, can cause us to see the deceptiveness of
what Satan had done and what we had imbibed and what our flesh
is like. We have no notion, natural man
has no notion of course of what and who the Lord Jesus Christ
is in his incarnation. They have no knowledge and no
care about what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane when the
weight of all of the sins of God's people was begun to be
put upon the Lord Jesus Christ. The natural man has no notion
of what happened at the cross. We have to be born again, we
have to have the Spirit indwelling us to see what the extraordinary
transaction of the cross was, that it was a transaction between
God the Father and God the Son, as recorded by God the Holy Spirit.
And God the Son was offering himself to his Father. He wasn't
offering himself to the world. Satan tells lies again and again
and again. He's saying, peace, peace to
everyone. God loves you and Jesus died
for you. Satan lies about the character
of God. He lied to our unfallen parents
in the garden about the character of God. God is unfaithful. God
is withholding good from you. God says you'll die when you
eat and you won't die. But also the natural man has
no knowledge of what's going on in this world. Let's turn
back to Romans chapter 1 just briefly and close in. No wonder the natural man, deceived
by Satan and blinded in this world, and loving darkness rather
than the light, and won't come to the light. No wonder natural
man in this world has no knowledge of what God's doing in this world
right now. This is the most serious thing
that can happen to someone in this world. They changed, verse
25, they changed the truth of God into a lie and worship and
serve the creature more than the creator who is blessed forever.
Amen. For this cause, everywhere in
the scriptures there is the wrath of God revealed from heaven against
all the ungodliness of men. There is always a because, there's
always a reason, there's always a just cause. For this cause
God gave them up. God gave them up. God gave them
up to vile affections. or even their women did change
the natural use into that which is against nature, and likewise
also the men, leaving the natural use of women burned in their
lust one toward another. Men with men working that which
is unseemly and receiving in themselves that recompense. which
was me, which was right, which was correct. And even as they
did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them
over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient,
to do those things which are not right. See, the wrath of
God is being revealed from heaven now, brothers and sisters. The
wrath of God is revealed in God giving people over. The wrath
of God is being revealed in those who change the truth of God into
a lie. You see, homosexuality is a shocking
sin, and there are plenty of other shocking sins. Homosexuality,
according to these verses, is the judgment of God against man
for their religion. It represents human religion. changed the truth of God into
a lie and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.
We're going to have next week in Sydney a great big march aren't
we? And the thing that is remarkable isn't it, such is the blindness
of men, is that the big banner that goes over all these is the
rainbow which is the sign of the covenant of God that he has
judged this world in righteousness in the past and he saved those
who were in Christ and he saved Noah and just eight people and
destroyed the rest of the world. And God has made a covenant.
That rainbow is around the throne and it's a picture of God's promise
to not judge the world in that way any longer. And yet the big
banner they have for themselves now is pride. You just go and
read what the scriptures say about pride. God hates the pride
of men. He justifiably hates it, and
yet here they are. But as I said earlier, this is
a picture. This is a picture of God's judgment
in this day and this age against human religion. See, homosexuality, is evil in so many ways, but
at its core it has the act of procreation, the act of creating
life, but no life is produced, no life can be produced. It's a picture of the false gospel
that promises freedom and promises light and cannot deliver life. Life is from God. Believe not in the sun and you
shall not see life. No one is saved by a false gospel. No one is saved by someone who
changes the truth of God into a lie. No one is saved No one
is saved except by the supernatural activities of God the Holy Spirit,
giving life where there was none before. It's a new creation,
a creation from God. We are not to be homophobic.
We are not to see this sin except in terms that the scriptures
describe it, and it's a picture of God giving people over. It's
a picture of the on false religion. It's a picture of the judgment
of God on those that he gave over. What a shocking thing to
think of, that God allows people to go their own way, to think
their own thoughts, to make their own decisions, to be a ruler
of their lives, and be left to be left. Such is the state of
those who don't see themselves to be sinners. and don't see
the glory of God in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 28, it says they didn't
like to retain God in their knowledge. They had knowledge of him. And
yet they rejected it and turned away from it. They didn't like to retain that
God in their knowledge. And God gave them over to a reprobate
mind. A reprobate mind. And listen
to this description. I want to ask you a question before
I read Does this describe you or does
it describe someone else? Being filled, verse 29 in Romans
chapter one, being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication,
wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, debate,
deceit, malignity, whisperers. proud boasters, inventors of
evil things disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant
breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful, who knowing
the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are
worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in
them that do them. The chapter divisions in the
Bible were not there in the original. Just listen to what he goes on
to say. If you think that is a description of other people
and not a description of you and your natural state, listen
to what God says. Therefore thou art inexcusable,
O man, whosoever thou art that judgest. For wherein thou judgest
another, Thou condemnest thyself, for thou that judgest doest the
same things. You mightn't do them outwardly,
but he's describing the heart of man. God alone can shine light in
darkness. God alone can separate the darkness
from the light. God alone can cause us to see
that we're sinners. One of the glorious things about
that verse is that it causes all of God's children who see
themselves to be sinners to be absolutely and utterly dependent
upon the sovereign grace of God. It's not me making myself better.
It's not me working myself into some better state and getting
progressively more sanctified. I need the grace of God. I need
the Lord Jesus Christ to bear all of my sins in his own body
on the tree, and I need for the wrath of God to be poured out
on him. perfectly and completely until God's justice is satisfied. There is no more sin in the children
of God. That's why they have everlasting
life. Because all of the sins of all of God's children was
put on the Lord Jesus Christ and God poured out His wrath
on them. Just as He poured out His wrath
on Noah's ark and all of the children that were in the ark
were saved and they floated above the wrath of God and landed on
a high place. Everything about it pictures
the Lord Jesus Christ. To know what we are causes us
to see that the wrath of God is a just and righteous wrath.
And if you have any doubt about the wrath of God, you think about
what happened on Calvary's tree when the Lord Jesus Christ was
made sin and was made a curse for us. And the holiness of God
and the justice of God punished his son and he cried out from
Calvary's tree, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He
couldn't even call him his father. And darkness covered that land.
And at the depth of his despair, and at the very height of his
faithfulness, he was forsaken by God the Father. And his wrath
was poured out on him. And it was poured out on us,
brothers and sisters, everyone that was in him. The wrath of
God was poured out on us. which is why we have a reverential
awe for the character of God and the justice of God and the
holiness of God. And God cannot be honest, cannot
be holy, cannot be faithful, cannot be just to ever punish
those sins again, which is why, to go back to Romans 1, the great
truth of God is revealed in he who is the truth and it's revealed
in he who died on Calvary's tree. And the great lie of this world
is that the Lord Jesus Christ died for all the sins of all
of humanity and he made an offer and he made an attempt to try
and save everyone. If you will pretty please let
him do it. That is the lie, that is the
lie. Our God, To go back to the previous
verse, the father loveth the son and has given all things into
his hand. Our God, our God has given all
of his people into the hand of the Lord Jesus Christ. We're
in his arms. The wrath of God has fallen on
us and it can never ever fall again and God retain his character
and his faithfulness. What a glorious gospel. To know
what we are, to know what we are, to know that we're inexcusable
in our judging, to know his love, to know this
person. that believes that the name of
the Son and the character of the Son hath everlasting life. May God grant you the faith to
believe. May we look to that broken body
and that shed blood and see the glory of God revealed in the
face of Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
we pray that you'd cause in Adam and to know what we are
in your dear and precious Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, our
Heavenly Father, we pray that you would cause him to be glorified
amongst us and cause us to lift him up in this world, Heavenly
Father, and cause us to just simply, our
Father, have the faith of a child. A faith that just believes what
you say, a faith that is utterly dependent upon you for all things. Oh, our Father, you alone can
make His blood precious to us and that broken body to be very
life for us, our Father. We pray that you will bless us
for the sake of your dear son and bless us in him, Heavenly
Father. We pray in Jesus' name and for
his glory. Amen.