Romans 1, verse 18. For the wrath of God is revealed
from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who
hold the truth in unrighteousness. Because that which may be known
of God is manifest in them. For God hath showed it unto 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. Because that when they knew God,
they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became
vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise,
they became fools and changed the glory of the uncorruptible
God into an image made like to corruptible man and to birds
and four-footed beasts and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave
them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts,
to dishonour their own bodies between themselves, who changed
the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the
creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them
up unto vile affections. For even their women did change
the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise
also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their
lust one toward another, men with men working that which is
unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error
which was meat. 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. being filled
with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness,
full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whisperers,
backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, 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. 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. But we are sure that the judgment
of God is according to truth against them which commit such
things. And thinkest thou this, O man,
that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that
thou shalt escape the judgment of God? Or despisest thou the
riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing
that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? But after
thy hardness and impenitent heart, treasurest up unto thyself wrath
against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment
of God, who will render to every man according to his deeds, to
them who by patient continuance and well-doing seek for glory
and honor and immortality, eternal life. but unto them that are
contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness,
indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul
of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile. But glory, honour and peace to
every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to
the Gentile. For there is no respect of persons
with God. Amen. May God bless to us this
reading from his word. During the ministry of the Lord
Jesus Christ, our Saviour once warned his listeners to be careful
about judging others. In Matthew 7, verse 1, it's part
of his Sermon on the Mount, so-called, we hear the Saviour saying, And
so the Lord was very clear about this practice of judging one
another. And that is not to deny that
scripture does teach us that there are legitimate occasions
when judgment must be made and properly reached decisions must
be enforced. There is a place in our society,
in the structure of our society, there is a place for judgment
of wrongdoers. In our churches, there is a place
for judgment for those who would go against the practices of the
Lord's people and bring the name of our Savior into disrepute. The Lord tells us that we have
a responsibility to try the spirits. to think about what it is that
we are hearing from pulpits, to examine the messages that
we hear in sermons that are preached and look at the lives and the
conduct and the witness of those who stand up and say, we are
preachers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There has to be discernment
and there has to be a degree of judgment in such matters.
But the warning that the Lord is giving is a warning against
hypocrisy. And we see that in the context
of the Matthew 7 passage. Because there is a tendency in
us all to criticise and condemn others, while we do the very
same thing or similar things. and justify our actions by one
reason or another. And if there is one thing that
God hates, it's hypocrisy. These situations where people judge
one another, these occasions when we find ourselves looking
at someone else's lives and criticizing what we see going on in them,
is so much interwoven with our thinking process, with our lifestyles,
with our so-called morality, that it is invariably what we
are doing all the time. We are looking around constantly
and we are making valued judgments about the way people speak, the
way people dress, the things people do, the way that they
act. And there is a consequence of
doing that. Because what the Lord is teaching
us and what Paul is stating here is that to do that takes too
much upon ourselves. That if we criticize others,
we are reproving ourself. because we're guilty of the very
same things. Now it might be a matter of degrees,
it might be a matter of frequency, it might be a matter of who sees
what, when and where, but the reality is that we are all prone
to the fleshy desires of our nature and we are all guilty
before a holy God. We take too much to ourselves. It's as if we say, we know better. We know better and you shouldn't
be doing that. We know more and you are misbehaving. We are living properly and you
are being naughty. It says that we know the truth
that we know the circumstances, that we know the heart, and we
are in a position to pass judgment upon what someone else is doing. When the reality is that we invariably
don't know the truth, don't know the circumstances, and don't
know the heart or the motivation of the person that we are criticizing
or judging. You see, judgment is God's business. And judgment is a solemn and
a weighty responsibility. To sit in judgment of fellow
sinners and to bring in a sentence of guilt upon a fellow sinner
is a solemn position to be in. And this is the sense of Paul's
teaching here. This is what he is talking about
here in the opening verses of chapter two. He has just given
us this catalogue of improper behaviour. These people who have
been turned over by God to a reprobate mind to do those things which
are not convenient. and to pursue all these different
kinds of activity. But then he comes with this warning. He says that it is inexcusable
to judge. 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 judge another, it implies
that you know the law and that person is breaching the law. Now that could be the Ten Commandments,
or it might be another kind of law. It might be the law of the
Gentiles that has been established out of natural understanding,
or it might be the law of the Jews, which is that which was
revealed in the Scripture. But what it says is that you
know that law, and you have the right to pass judgment on another. You know what's right, You know
what's true, you know what's best, and that person isn't measuring
up to the mark. Okay. You condemn yourself in doing
that because you do the very same thing. and haven't you just
testified that you know better than that person? So you are
in an even more precarious position because having said that you
know better than the person who is acting improperly, you are
guilty of doing the same things. So whether it's a Jew, with the
law of Moses, or whether it's a Gentile with the law of nature,
because they were never given the Ten Commandments, they were
never given the law of Moses, the law of Moses, the Ten Commandments,
the various rules and patterns of living, hygiene laws, the
food laws, the sacrificial laws, these were all given to the Jews.
They were given to the Jews with an explicit purpose of speaking
about the Lord Jesus Christ that was to come, to both condemn
man in his sin and speak of one who was yet to come, the Lord
Jesus. It doesn't matter which legal
standard we measure ourselves against. And I want to, if I
may, just have a little bit of insight here and endeavour to
bring this up to a more modern viewpoint. Because we're speaking
here, as Paul was speaking, about the law of the Jews and the natural
law of the Gentiles. But we are equally today surrounded
by a variety of patterns of life, patterns of morality that we
say are either right or wrong. Not because we are coming at
it from any absolute knowledge of what God says or what God
wills or wants, but because these have become the social norms
of the society in which we live. So we find ourselves shaking
our heads at something that is done. or wagging our finger at
something and taking a position that looks down on some activity. Religious people are the prime
culprits in doing that. There is so much religion around
about us these days. And we see that there is this
moral movement and that moral movement. There is this effort
to change this in society, change that in society. And there is
a movement within churches, a movement in the sense that there is this
idea that we might call it, just let me use a phrase here, neo-Nomianism. And that is to say that there
is a way in which the law of God can be interpreted in a new
way. And what that says is that as
long as we've got Christ, as long as we're believers, then
we go back and the law of God which is given, which is the
absolute law of God, it is softened. It's altered. It's made to be
more gentle. that yes, we believe in the Lord
Jesus Christ and therefore we are saved. And then we try to
do the best that we can and we'll make this law, this absolute,
this rigid, this perfect law of God. We'll mould it and we'll
mash it and we'll meld it and we'll put it in a way that we
can live up to its standard. And so we look at the law of
God and we think that we can increase our holiness, that we
can increase our blessedness, that we can increase the pleasure
that God takes in us because we are obedient to the law of
God when all these other people round about us are not. And that makes us hypocrites.
Because what we always need to remember is that regardless of
the sins that are being committed out there, and they are gross,
and they are in line with this catalogue that the apostle has
given us there, is that God looks upon every single one of us as
a sinner. And that's what we are. We're
sinners by nature. We're sinners through Adam. We're
sinners by practice. We're sinners by word. We're
sinners by thought. We're sinners by deed. And all
that we are makes us fall short of the standard of God's holiness. And therefore we need to be careful. We need to be careful when we
judge one another. We need to be careful when we
set ourselves up as being better than one another. When the reality
is that we should be looking at anyone and everyone else and
saying simply, there but for the grace of God go I. So let us endeavour to be softer
in our attitudes when we see things going on around about
us, kinder in the way in which we interpret the world around
about us. Oh, it's very easy for us to
look at someone and say, what a way of life, what a terrible
situation, what a terrible thing to do. And yet the very same
seeds that have found fruition in the actions of that individual
are in my heart also. And it's only the grace of God
that keeps us from going down that line. Therefore, we should
be careful about who we judge and how we judge. There's a little
phrase that says, when you point the finger, the finger points
at you. Every time we point a finger
there are three coming back at me and we need to be careful
about how it is that we take these censorious attitudes and
criticise and judge one another. Every sinner Every sinner knows
that the judgment of God is true. The Apostle Paul says that. He says, we are sure that the
judgment of God is according to truth. I think that we probably don't
realize just the extent to which The people of this world are
aware that there is going to be a day of accountability. I think that it is a basic sensibility in the hearts and
minds of individuals that there is going to be a day of accountability. because it doesn't matter who
you are or where you are. There's always a standard that
you have for your life. There are very few, if any, who
are so completely irresolute that they just indulge themselves
in everything and anything. There's always something that
they say, yes, but I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do that,
I wouldn't go there, I wouldn't do that, because they're always
saying that there is some standard against which they measure their
lives. Even the worst things that happen,
even the most evil people, they have a standard against which
they measure themselves. And what gives that standard
is this sense that there is an accountability. There will be
a day of reckoning. There will be a judgment. And
yet there is a blindness which has afflicted the natural man. And it is as if they are feeling
around trying to find a way out of this situation. and not able
to do it because for all the natural religion, for all the
law that they have received, for all the pattern of life that
they have been given, they find a rule within their heart, they
find a desire within their nature to go and satisfy their own lusts. There is a judgment coming. And
Paul calls it the righteous judgment of God. Righteous because it
is certain and absolute, complete and comprehensive. It sees everything
that has been done. and the motivation for doing
it. It sees the consequences of every
action and all that has flowed from that action. It knows and
it discerns and it meticulously sieves. This is the righteous
judgment of God. The actions, the words, the thoughts,
the motives of all men and women are before the gaze of the Holy
God, and they are being measured against the standard of His holiness. Nothing is hidden, nothing is
missed, nothing is overlooked. Every sin is open before the
gaze of Almighty God. And that goes for all those people
out there all those people in here. That goes for us all. There is no sin that has ever
been committed that isn't opened before the holy seeing eye of
God. And no one will escape the judgment
of God. There is a reckoning coming and
man understands judgment. He knows that sin, he knows that
disobedience, he knows that wrongdoing demands a payment, a retribution. He knows that wickedness cries
out for justice. And whether that sense, that
awareness is drawn from their knowledge of breaking Moses'
law, Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt
not commit adultery, thou shalt not bear false witness, honour
thy father and thy mother. Whether he knows that he has
acted in a way that is contrary to these things, or whether it's
the pangs of guilt by the natural God-given conscience that every
man has, either way, that law creates dread. And it's this accountability,
this dread that the apostle is speaking
about here when he points out that there will be no escaping
the judgment of God. Yet, there is a holding back
of judgment. You see, judgment doesn't follow
immediately upon the action of sin. It might have done, like touching
something that's hot. We know about that and immediately
we recoil from it. But sin doesn't work like that. You see, what happens in the
sinful man's view is that he sins and then he says, I got
away with that. I got off with that. I've been
clever, I've been smart, I've been able to do something that
I wanted. And because the day of accountability,
the day of judgment has not yet dawned, man imagines that it's
not coming. It ought to make a man realize
that God is being good and God is withholding judgment. It ought
to make a man say, I deserve judgment, but I have experienced
the forbearance of God. I have experienced something
of the long suffering of God. I know that condemnation is overdue,
but still God is patient. Why is that? Why is that? Why is God still being patient? Does that not provide a window
of opportunity? Does it not give a space for
hope? Is there not in that an opening
for repentance? Is that how men think? They should, but they don't. Rather, they say, I've got a
way with that. Maybe there isn't a God after
all. Maybe I don't have to worry about this judgment. Maybe this
retribution isn't going to come on me after all. Maybe I can
do this and get away with it. And they deny the witness of
God. You see, this is the consequence
of natural inclinations in the heart of the individual. He is always an enemy of God,
always raising his fist at God. And the hardness of man's heart
and the impenitence of their nature, it piles up, wrath upon
wrath upon wrath upon wrath. And there is such a vast pile of wrath waiting to fall
upon the men and women of this world, that they ought to tremble
in the anticipation of what is coming to meet them. Verse six
says, God will render to every man according to his deeds. That is a fearsome phrase. That is an awesome verse. Every man, every woman in this
world is going to have, according to their deeds, the retribution
of God levied against them. Oh, what a dark, and foreboding
storm of judgment that will be. It's almost inconceivable to
try and imagine what that is going to be like on the day of
judgment. Sometimes in the past couple
of weeks I've seen the glowering skies as I've been out and about
in the town of the thunderstorms that are coming towards us and
you see the sky getting heavy and you see it getting dark and
you see the clouds beginning to billow and you think to yourself,
I need to get out of the road of this. I need to get inside. I need to get protection. I need
to get away because this is not going to be a good place to be
very shortly. And we look at nature, we look
at the things around about us and we say, this is a warning
to me. I need to take cover. This is
going to be dangerous. and yet the hardness of man's
heart prevents him even from seeing that. Listen to what the
word of God says with respect to this judgment that is coming
upon men and women in this world. Verses eight and nine of Romans
chapter two speaks of indignation, wrath, tribulation, and anguish. And this is all with respect
to God's anger. And I'm not sure that there could
be four more terrifying words used by the Apostle Paul as he
sets forth this picture of the coming judgment of God. If you hear this warning of the
word of God and do nothing about it, you are a fool. You're smart
enough to get out of the rain when the thunderstorm comes.
And yet you're not smart enough to realise that this indignation,
wrath, tribulation and anguish is coming down the road to meet
you. And you're careless and heedless
about it. Your own heart condemns you,
even before God does. And it means nothing to you.
You suppress it. You say, well, maybe I'll get
away. Maybe I'll be able to hide. Maybe I'll be able to outrun
it. And you plan to go on as before, regardless. These four
words that are used by Paul are interesting. Indignation. Indignation means separation
because you are unworthy of God's presence. See the little phrase
in there, in, that means the opposite, and dig, D-I-G-N, that
stands for dignity or worthiness. There is no worthiness in a sinner
that he should stand before God. Indignation means that God looks
at you and he says, get him away. Get him out of my sight, get
him away from me. There is no worthiness in that
person that he should stand in my presence. Wrath speaks of
anger with a sense of it being poured out with a holy fury. And so indignation and wrath
tells us that God looks at a sinner and he says, get him away from
me, and then he brings down his wrath upon the soul of that individual. And he pours it out in fury.
Such is his detestation of sin. Tribulation speaks of great and excessive
suffering Get this? By rubbing. By rubbing. And the idea there, some of you
men, I've seen you've got threshers. I noticed that up in Shora they
have a threshing bee every now and again and these guys bring
their steam threshers and they switch them on and make them
work and they crank up make all that noise and you see the pieces
of metal threshing out the corn. Rubbing it on sharp points is
what tribulation means. Rubbing it like a thresher rubs
grain and bashing it until it is smashed to pieces. That's
what tribulation means. And anguish. People use the word
anguish and I think they probably use it in many respects properly. They speak about the anguish
of bereavement. They speak about the anguish
of mental trauma. They speak about the anguish
of depression. They speak about anguish when
the world seems to be pressing them down and everything seems
dark and there's no light to be had and no sense of peace
or ease. That's what anguish means and
it's a good picture and although we use it perhaps to describe
some of the deeper and more troublesome aspects of our human suffering,
It carries also these sentences with respect to the anguish which
will be felt under the judgment of God and in hell. It speaks
of mental and physical crushing and it speaks of confinement
in a small place. Now I confess that I recoil from
thinking about hell. I confess that I find it difficult
to even conceive of what that place is going to be like. And
I know that we sometimes speak with admiration about those fire
and brimstone preachers that could get up and shake their
fist and call down the very fear of God into the hearts of men
with their language and their metaphors and their pictures. I find it hard to do that. Maybe there's a place for it.
You'll have an opinion on that. I don't delight in these graphic
descriptions of what eternal punishment is going to be like. But nevertheless, these words
speak to us of God's judgment that is coming upon sinners in
this world. indignation, wrath, tribulation
and anguish. What takes us to a place like
that? Men can blame their circumstances. They can say they didn't have
the chances in life that others had. They might claim that they
are merely the passive recipients of a fallen nature and they can't
help themselves. They might even trace it back
all the way to Adam and say it was his fault. Blame bad company, an abusive
parent, demons and devils. But Paul makes it clear that
this punishment flows simply from rejecting Christ. He says
in verse eight, chapter two, verse eight, to them that are
contentious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness. Scripture tells us that the Lord
Jesus Christ is our righteousness. If you obey unrighteousness,
then you're not obeying righteousness, you're obeying unrighteousness. You are setting yourself up as
anti-Christ. If you will not obey the truth,
the Lord Jesus Christ says, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
If you will not obey the truth, it's your willfulness that will
take you to that place of separation, that place of tribulation, that
place of wrath, that place of indignation, that place of anguish. Sinner. Won't you flee from the
wrath that is to come? Won't you flee from the wrath
that is to come? Why will you die? One of the Old Testament prophets,
Ezekiel, in the 33rd chapter and the 11th verse, recounts
the word of the Lord as he spoke to the prophet. And he said,
say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure
in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his
way and live. Turn ye, turn ye from your evil
ways, for why will ye die, O house of Israel? Well, it's lovely to see that
there's another strand to Paul's message here as well. What was
Paul talking about when he was writing to these believers at
Rome, this church at Rome? He was saying to them that I
long to come to Rome to preach the gospel to you. I long to
bring this message to you. And there is another strand here
in Paul's message, because in the darkness, of his description
and his picture of the wrath of God and the judgment of God
and all that is coming to meet the sinner in this world. In
the darkness of that picture, there is a light. In the building storm of judgment,
there is a hiding place. There is a cleft in the rock.
There is a place of protection. On the very eve, on the very
cusp of everlasting destruction, there is a door of salvation
opened to sinners. Sinners like you and sinners
like me. And you can be a Jew with your
Moses law. You can be a Gentile with your
natural law. You can be a Muslim with your
Sharia law. You can be a Hindu with whichever
kind of law they have. You can be a Protestant, you
can be a Catholic. I don't care about your history.
I don't care about your heritage. I don't care about your beginning.
I don't care about your background. It's unimportant. What matters
is your response to the Lord Jesus Christ. What matters is
how you will respond to the gospel when it is preached. God is no
respecter of persons. Paul was no respecter of persons. The gospel is no respecter of
persons. The gospel is a message, whether
you're Jew, Gentile, Muslim, Hindu, or whatever it is you
are, it's the same gospel to all men. What will you do with
the Lord Jesus Christ? To all who work good, who by
patient continuance and well-doing seek for glory and honour and
immortality, eternal life is bestowed to all who work good. Well, Paul has been quite clear
that it's impossible for there to be any good under any legal
system. Every time we fall foul of that
perfect standard or imperfect standard, it doesn't matter,
we're always going to fall foul of it. For it to work good, it
has to be a good work before God. It has to be God who declares
it to be good. Not your neighbour, not your
friend, not your wife, not your husband, not your minister, not
your priest. It has to be God that says, that's
a good work. And the only work that God recognises
as good is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the only
thing, that's the only thing he looks for, is their faith
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 2.10 says that for those
who have faith, there is glory, honour and peace with God. Not indignation and wrath, tribulation
and anguish, but glory, honour and peace with God. No separation,
just peace. Just reconciliation. The opposite of all of these
terrible things that the separation from God will bring is found
in those who have faith in Christ. Glory. Glory with Christ before
God in heaven, honour. We said that indignation meant
there was no worthiness to stand before God. Here is a people
who are worthy to stand in the presence of God and to be at
peace with him. And it's God's promise to all
those who seek the kingdom of God. How do we seek the kingdom
of God? We come to Jesus Christ in faith. We come to Jesus Christ repenting
of those things that have condemned us in our heart and in our mind.
And we look to that finished work of his as being sufficient
for every demand of the holiness of God. And that's Paul's message. That's Paul's gospel. That's
what he wants to take to Rome. That's what he wants to take
to Jew and Gentile. That's what he wants to take
to the world. That there is peace with God
to be found through Jesus Christ and only through Jesus Christ. There is redemption. There is
forgiveness. There is reconciliation. And
the law of Moses can't save you, and the law of nature can't save
you, and the law of your church won't save you, and the principles
and practices of your society won't save you. Every single
one will find you guilty and find you contemptible before
God. But there is salvation in Jesus
Christ. And that's a message worth preaching. It was worth preaching to Paul.
He found Christ on the Damascus road and he knew where true life,
everlasting life, where glory, honour and peace with God was
to be found. And he was a changed man. And
he wanted to take that message to the world. He wanted to fulfil
that calling. of taking the gospel to the ends
of the earth. Go ye into all the world and
preach the gospel, because it's a message that is worth preaching,
a message to take to the nations, a message to preach from Jerusalem
to Rome to Great Falls. Sinners, condemned and convicted
by law of any kind and every kind, find forgiveness, find
liberty in the Lord Jesus Christ. Your works must always condemn
you. Be careful how you judge one
another. Your works will always condemn you. But the blood of
Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin. And that's worth
holding on to. And that's worth believing. Amen.