Turn back with me, please, to
Romans chapter 1. We'll be looking at verses 16
through 18. I titled my message, A Two-Fold
Revelation. There are two great truths revealed
from heaven to men. Do you know what they are? Two great truths that God Almighty
from the very beginning of time has revealed to men. The first one is His wrath. God swore in His wrath that the
unbelieving rebels in Israel should not enter into the land
of promise. What was their problem? Same
as ours. Same as ours. They heard the
gospel, but what they heard was not mixed with faith in them
that heard it. Hebrews chapter 4. And God swore in His wrath, you're
not going in. You're not going in. Paul said
to the Ephesians, you know that no whoremonger, no unclean person,
no covetous man who is an idolater hath any inheritance in the kingdom
of Christ and of God. Ephesians 5, 6. Let no man deceive
you with vain words, for because of these things cometh the wrath
of God upon the children of disobedience. So here's the first thing God
reveals from heaven. The wrath of God. The wrath of
God. And secondly, the grace of God
in Christ Jesus. The Bible said, Jesus Christ
treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and the wrath of Almighty
God alone. Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul
was on his way to Rome. God was pleased to call out some
folks there and establish a church there. And Paul knew what Rome
was all about. He knew what it was. Some of
you have studied history, and you know what Rome's all about.
They've got specials and documentaries about Rome and the lifestyle
and their discovering all about it. Paul knew what it was all
about. He knew they were ungodly, idolatrous,
and immoral. His purpose in going was to preach
the gospel and to be faithful to his calling, which he makes
very clear in verses 1 through 5. God called him to preach the
gospel, to preach the gospel. And preach he did throughout
what was then the known world. He thought this was the whole
world where he went. And I guess in that day and time,
it must have seemed like it. Having established his calling
in these first verses of the epistle, he now says in verse
15, so as much as in me is, everything I can muster, everything that
I can put together in my mind and heart and studies, in my
energy, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel
to you that are at Rome also. That's why I'm coming. That's
why I'm coming. I tell you, in our day, preachers
would have scheduled a rally. They'd have called ahead, wrote
ahead. They would have scheduled a rally. They'd have got as many
participating religions as they could to participate in it. They'd
have scheduled a protest. And they'd have passed out all
kinds of handbills showing the danger of alcohol, drugs, and
loose living. But not Paul. Not Paul. Romans 1, 16, he said,
for I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power
of God unto salvation to everyone that believe it. And that goes
for the Jews, and that goes for the Greeks. to the Jew first,
also to the Greeks. Paul was one of those fanatic
preachers. He was a fanatic. That's why
I've been called fanatic before. Brother Mahan told me one time,
he said, people call me fanatic. He said, they need to listen
to themselves. But Paul was. He was a fanatic. He was one
of those fanatic preachers who believed that gospel preaching
was God's ordained means through which the spirit of the living
God would give faith to chosen sinners. He believed that. He
preached that. He made no bones about that. He did not believe that faith
was a product of human ability and reasoning. That's why religion
pleads with you. Those who know God don't plead
with the sinner. They plead with God. Oh, God,
open the hearts of these sinners. Open the ears of those who are
gathered here to hear. I can plead with you through
the gospel that I preach, but I don't plead when I'm at the
house. I don't call folks up and plead with them about what
I preach. I plead with God. Give me the message. Give me
the illustrations. Give me the gifts. Give me whatever
it takes to reach their ears, and then bless it with Your Spirit. He states very clearly in Ephesians
2, verses 7 and 8, what he believed. Paul said that in the ages to
come, God might show the exceeding riches of His grace and His kindness
toward us through Christ Jesus. Now listen to this. By grace
are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it
is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Paul
didn't believe that faith was a product of human reasoning
and human ability. He believed it was the gift of
God. And that when God gave that gift,
he gave it through the preaching of the gospel. He was convinced
of it. He states plainly in 1 Corinthians
1, verse 21, that it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching
to save them that believe. They're not an eight-year-old
in here that can't understand that verse. And in our text, he tells us
that the gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation. Now listen to how many Everyone
that believe it. Everyone. Later on, chapter 10, the Holy
Ghost will inspire him to ask this question, how shall you
hear without a preacher? Paul was, I guess, what we label
today a fanatic. He called both himself and his
fellow preachers ministers by whom you believed even as the
Lord gave to every man. Paul did not believe that some
would hear the gospel while others would be saved some other way.
Had he believed such a thing, he would not have subjected himself
to such suffering and humiliation as he did. My friend, let me
tell you something. There's people today in our age
that preach the gospel and suffer for it big time. Big time. I mean, go into jungles where
there's diseases and things that they have no immunity to and
go in there and contract those diseases and suffer for them. A man I knew years ago, hadn't
seen him in quite a while, Walter Groover. God sent him down to
Yucatan Peninsula to preach the gospel out in those jungles.
And he contracted an amoeba germ, and it started to eat his intestines
up. And they told him he was going
to die. But over the years, they developed
some medicine and things, and they finally got it stopped.
He'd been down there, I don't know, I guess 50 years down there
in Yucatan, Mexico. His son, Cody, is still a missionary
down there. The Lord has been pleased to
raise up 40 some native churches around in the Yucatan, out in
those jungles. No man is ready to preach the
gospel to others who is not convinced that this gospel is the power
of God unto salvation to everyone that believes it. Why? Why? Why must these things be
so? Why? Paul gives you the answer
in the very next verse. Listen to this, verse 17. For
therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to
faith. As it's written, the just shall
live by faith. There are, as I said earlier,
two revelations from heaven to man. And the first, by order
of experience, is the wrath of God. He tells us in verse 18,
for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness
and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. Now, if it were up to you this
morning, if it were up to you, I just want you to think about
it. to preach the gospel to those that are gathered here today,
where would you start? Where would you start? If it
were up to you to preach the gospel somewhere in this present
evil world, where would you begin? Most of what this world calls
ministers begin with the love of God. That's where they start.
They talk about the kindness of God toward humanity. And then
they move on to other things, something missing. They begin
to talk to you about something maybe missing in your life, something
you need added in, something in the mixture, something in
your recipe. You need a little extra spice,
a little extra salt. You need a little something in
there. You're missing something. But Paul never mentions the love
of God in this epistle to the Romans until he gets to the fifth
chapter, and then he just barely touches on it and moves on. So where does Paul begin his
message? Well, the beginning of the gospel,
according to Mark chapter 1, verses 1 and 3, is a voice crying
in the wilderness, make the path straight for this coming redeemer.
And the first thing this voice was told to cry, according to
Isaiah, all flesh is grass. That's where you start. That's
where you start. All the glory of man is like
the flower of the grass, and the grass withers, and the flower
fadeth, because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it. My
generation has no interest in the gospel of God's sovereign
grace in Christ because they're ignorant of and deny God's testimony
concerning the condition of man. Totally ignorant of it. Totally
ignorant of it. They view mankind as evolving. It's evolving. I've been watching
a lot of documentaries lately, and every time I want to watch
something. I don't care if you're watching
about elephants or mountains or what it is you're watching
about, they all go to evolution. My generation has a view of this
world as evolving, getting better and better, maturing, expanding
his length of days and expanding his knowledge into space and
medicine and social behavior. But God reveals something vastly
different from heaven. How has God revealed His wrath
to men? Paul said the wrath of God is
revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness
of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. How did God
reveal His wrath? Well, He began in the Garden.
That's where He began, back in the Garden of Eden. Romans 5.12
says, By one man sin entered into the world, and death by
sin. And so death passed upon all
men, for that all have sinned. He tells us in Romans 5.16, judgment
was by one man to condemnation. He tells us in Romans 5.17, by
one man's offense, death reigned. He tells us by the offense of
one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation then in verse
18. And he gets down to verse 19, and he said, by one man's
disobedience, many were made sinners. And then he tells us at the end
of the chapter in verse 21, he said, sin reigns unto death.
That's the wrath of God. That's the wrath of God. And then secondly, God revealed
His wrath in the destruction of the antediluvian world. That
world, it was before the days of Noah, God wiped them out.
Only eight men got on that ark and survived that flood. Everybody
else in the world died under the wrath of God. God said every
man, Noah included, his family included, every man, every imagination,
of the thoughts of man's heart is only evil continuously, but
it says Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. He found grace. And through Noah his house found
grace. And eight souls went on that
ark and God preserved them. God preserved them. The wrath of God. Peter said
his generation was ignorant of God's destruction of the first
world. They totally ignored it. The world that then was being
overflowed with water perished, and that the heavens and the
earth, which are now by the same word are kept in store reserved
under fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly
men. And as God revealed His wrath
from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men, saving
only eight souls, so He shall save in our day all that He purposed
to save by grace. And then He's going to destroy
whatever's left with fire. Those God is pleased to quicken
in Christ were at one time, now listen, by nature, children of
wrath. even as others. The wrath of
God is revealed from heaven. My whole generation's ignorant
of that. They're going about like nothing's
happening. They're going about like judgment's way down the
road somewhere. Judgment was back yonder in the
garden. You're just waiting on sentencing
now. Man talks about freedom of will
and freedom of nature and freedom of this and freedom of decision.
He's not free. He's bound in sin. He's held
in chains of darkness. And this world, he said, is reserved
unto judgment and perdition upon godly men. The wrath of God was revealed
from heaven upon the cities of the plains. Only Lot and his two daughters
escaped that judgment. You know what he said about old
Locke? Locke had never made a wise decision
in his life. You know what he said about old
Locke? He talked like those sodomites, talked just like them. His behavior was awful. But you
know what God said? He said, that righteous man, Ain't that something? Wrath of God was revealed on
those cities of the plains, and the wrath of God was revealed
from heaven upon the unbelieving Jews at the destruction of Jerusalem
in 70 A.D., slaughtered wholesale in the streets. God, only sparing
a few, according to Romans chapter 11, a remnant according to His
election of grace. God's wrath is revealed in men
who have the light of conscience, but ignore it and do what they
will. Romans 2.14, when the Gentiles, it says, which have not the law,
do by nature the things contained in the law. Those having not
a law are a law unto themselves, which show the work of the law
written in their hearts, the conscience also bearing witness.
And their thoughts, the meanwhile, accusing or excusing one another. And God's wrath is revealed from
heaven in man's rejection of the light of creation. There's
not a man in the remotest tribe in deepest, darkest Africa who
does not have the light of creation and the light of conscience.
And therefore, Paul goes on in Romans chapter 1 to say they're
without excuse. without excuse. God, by the Word of His power,
created all things and in so doing established Himself as
the authority over it and the ruler of it. And all those who
would ignore this fact or argue with God, Paul said this, he
said, If God does everything according to His will, and no
man can overcome His will, and God does exactly what He will,
then how, why does He yet find fault? Paul said, whoa! He said, oh man, who art thou
that replies against God? Shall the thing formed say to
its maker, why hast thou made me thus? You forgot your place. You're
a created being. He's God. heathen tribes isolated from
the rest of the world, evil nations forbidding the gospel to be preached
within. They are but examples of men
who ignored the light of conscience and creation, whom God left in
their ignorance and rebellion to act worse than a bunch of
beasts. But nowhere is the wrath of God
revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness
of men, as it is on the cross of Christ." Romans 8, verse 3,
he said, for what the law could not do, in that it was weak through
the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh and for sin. Now listen, condemned sin in
the flesh. You want to see the condemnation
of sin? Look at the cross. Look at the
cross. Every man, woman, boy, and girl
that God chose in Christ was represented in Christ as He suffered
and died on that cursed tree. He was not bearing His sins on
that tree. He was bearing our sins and His
own body on the tree. You want to know what God thinks
about your best deed, your best thought, Your self-righteousness,
you want to know what God thinks about those things? Look at the
cross. Look at the cross of Christ.
See the wrath of God consuming His own Son on the cross. We're not left to our wicked
imaginations to speculate on how God will view our life and
our deeds and our good intentions or our sins, our religious sacrifices
and commitments or any of these things. All you need to do is
look to the cross. There's a world of lost sinners
represented in this one who hangs there between heaven and earth.
He's not dying for himself. He's dying for his elect. If the wrath of God is not revealed
from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness, then somebody
tell me why Christ died on the cross. I've got relatives who tell me
all the time, I just don't believe in the wrath
of God. You just don't believe, period. I can't make men believe it,
I can't make it real to you, but I can and have shown you
in the Word of God both your sin and the wrath of God revealed
from heaven against it. God demands righteousness, perfect,
unbroken, continual righteousness. Cursed is whosoever continueth
not in all things written in the book of the law to do. He's
cursed. He's cursed of God. If he continues,
not. From Romans 1.18 through Romans
3.18, Paul proves that both Jews and Gentiles are all under sin.
All under the curse. All guilty before God. And not
even the oracles. Here's the oracles. Not even
the oracles of God made any difference. Read it for yourself. What advantage
then had the Jew? Much in every way. They had the
oracles of God. We read in here about a priesthood.
They had the priesthood. We read in here about sacrifices. They had the sacrifices. They
had the oracles of God. They had the prophets. Even Christ
was born a Jew. Did it profit Him anything? He
said, What then? Are we better than they? Are
we better than those old Gentile heathens? He said, no, and no
wise, because I have before proved that both Jew and Gentile are
all under sin. And then he applies this knowledge
in Romans 3, verse 20. And he said, therefore, by the
deeds of the law, There shall no flesh be justified in his
sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin." Take your
good deeds to the law. Here's what you'll find. Guilty. Guilty. Those who look to it
learn only of their sin. Romans 3.21 But now, The righteousness of God without
the law is manifested. Where? Where is it manifested? It was witnessed by the law and
the prophets. Even the righteousness of God,
which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all that believe,
for there's no difference. That is, no difference between
the Jew or the Gentile. This righteousness therein in
the preaching of the gospel, it's in the gospel of Jesus Christ,
the grace of God in Christ. Therein is this righteousness
revealed. 4, verse 22, Romans 3, 22. All have sinned and come short
of the glory of God. I cannot, as a preacher, take
from man's traditional understanding and build on it any more than
Paul could take that foundation of traditional understanding
of those Jewish doctrines and build on them. The Pharisees
and the Sadducees came out to John, and John saw them coming
in their big broad phylacteries and robes and all this paraphernalia
on, and they were coming out there whistling and popping their
gum. They were saved. They just, well, to win the people's
affection, I have to be baptized. We'll just go out here and get
baptized. And here they come down the path. And John screamed
at them as far back as he could see them. And he said, oh, he
said, generation of vipers. Who had warned thee to flee from
the what? Wrath of God. They didn't know
anything at all about the wrath of God or the righteousness of
God in Christ. But they were coming to be baptized.
Coming to be baptized. John said, it's time now, and
the axe is laid unto the root of the trees. That's the only
way to preach the gospel. Have to cut the tree down. Got
to cut the tree down. Until God slays the sinner, He
will not raise him up from the dead. He's not going to do it.
And the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness. It's revealed the clearest on
the cross. On the cross. Alright? Here's the second thing God reveals
from heaven. The righteousness of God. And
it too began to be revealed in the garden in the slaying of
a lamb and taking its covering and covering our naked parents.
It too was seen in the union of Noah and his house in a vessel
of God's design which bore the wrath of God without and preserved
within all that found grace in his eyes. It was revealed in the destruction
of the cities and the plains, in God's deliverance of Lot and
his two daughters. But nowhere is that righteousness
revealed as it is in the incarnate Son of God, who is our representative,
took on Him the form of a servant and become obedient unto death,
even the death of the cross. Paul told the Galatians, he said,
let me see if I can quote this. He said, in the fullness of time,
God sent forth his son, listen now, made of a woman, made under the law to redeem
them that were under the law. He's our representative. If there's
any hope of salvation, if there's any hope of righteousness, if
there's any hope of wisdom, if there's any hope of anything,
it's in Him. It's in Him. He took on Him the form of a
servant and become obedient unto death, even the death of the
cross. The gospel of Jesus Christ is
the power of God unto salvation for therein, that is, within
its doctrines, within its teaching, within the person and work of
Jesus Christ, who is the gospel. The righteousness of God is revealed,
and it's revealed from faith to faith. I understand more about
it now than I did way back then, don't you? You cannot be saved apart from
the gospel because there's none other name given among men whereby
we must be saved. Faith cannot be built any other
way, for other foundation can no man lay than that which is
laid, Jesus Christ the Lord. There's no other basis of hope,
for Christ in you is the hope of glory. And there's nowhere
else you can discover the righteousness of God For therein is the righteousness
of God revealed. Oh, preacher, I was just in my
closet one night, and I got this warm feeling, and God opened
my mind and just poured it out, and I understood perfectly. You're
a liar. You're a liar. I don't know of
a scripture more plain than this one here in Romans chapter 1
that tells us that in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed. And this righteousness of God
is by faith of Jesus Christ. His faithfulness, not yours. His faithfulness. And it's unto
all and upon all them that believe. For all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God. Now watch this. Romans 3 verse
24. This builds to something. being justified freely by His
grace through the redemption that's
in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth to be a propitiation through
faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission
of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God. When
did God set forth His Son as the propitiation for sin? back
yonder in Israel, back yonder under that priesthood. And those
who understood what it was all about, they looked to that blood,
had confidence in that blood that pointed forward to the blood
of Christ, and God saved them. God saved them. He's not talking
about the past sins of an individual. That's ridiculous. None of your
sins was past when Christ died. He's talking about in ages past. He's talking about Old Testament
saints being saved by faith. They looked to the Christ who
would come. We look to the Christ who came. God sent forth his redemption
in Christ from the slain lamb in the garden until Christ appeared
on this earth, and it was a propitiation through faith to every Old Testament
saint who understood it. And he says to declare at this
time, right now, his righteousness, that God might be just and justifier
of him that believeth in Jesus. The gospel of Jesus Christ is
sent to chosen sinners, sinners brought to see and confess their
sins to God, hopeless, helpless, lost sinners. Sinners under the
wrath of God. I tell you, when I see men and
they're just scratching their head, One of these days, one
of these days, my friend, if God ever opens your mind and
heart to see the wrath of God abiding on you, you won't talk
about someday. You want something done right
now. Right now. You get desperate. I've never
met a man under conviction who wasn't desperate. He's desperate.
I've got to hear. I've got to hear. I've got to
find me somebody who knows something about these things. And every sinner who knows he's
a sinner, every one of them, to every sinner who knows he's
a sinner, God sends the revelation of His righteousness in Christ,
every one of them. And all who don't, He will not. He will not. You remember that
old blind man over there in the book of John, and our Lord told
those Jews some things, and they said, now
wait a minute, they said, are you saying that we're blind?
No, He said, if you was blind, you wouldn't have any sin. If
you were blind, you wouldn't have any sin. And that's the
way it is. That's the way it is. People
who think they know, people still holding on to that old traditional
understanding and these old traditional things, they don't have the light
of God in Christ, and they're not going to bow to it until
God arrests them with His Spirit and His Gospel. And when He does
and opens that mind to see and that heart to see, it'll happen,
won't it? And that's how it'll happen.