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. Last time we ended with verse
17, where the apostle Paul quoted a verse from the book of Habakkuk
and then in his letters he used that verse here in Romans and
in Galatians and also in Hebrews, the just shall live by faith. We know that Paul's intention
here was to write upon the subject of justification. And God's method
of justification is revealed in the Gospels. It should be
obvious to everyone that there is only two ways a person might
be justified. Now, the word justification is
a legal term. We talk about a judge in the
courthouse, don't we? Justification. And it's different
from pardon. We've heard a lot recently about
pardon. Pardon is, of course, forgiving
the guilty, but he's still on the books, we might say, guilty. You know, in Psalm 25 and verse
number 11, David in his prayer said, pardon minor iniquity,
O Lord, for it is great. Pardon. But justification is
a law term, as I said, in God as the judge. In Romans 8, we
read, it is God who justifies. That justification is a method
by which God declares a person not guilty. A person pardoned
is recognized as being guilty, and that's the reason he needs
a pardon. He's guilty. Well, believers,
we are both justified and pardoned. You cannot be only pardoned and
not justified I'm talking about a child of God, nor can you be
only justified and not pardoned. But they tell us two different
things, two completely different things about how God receives
sinners. His intention here is to write
on justification, as I said in Romans, in this letter of Romans.
And to do that, he's going to show how that all the world is
guilty before God. He'll come to that if you look
in chapter three, in Romans chapter three, in verse 20, when he says,
therefore, by the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be
justified in his sight. And it doesn't matter which law,
by the deeds of which law, He begins, as we see tonight, with
the Gentiles who did not have the written law of God. The Jews,
they had the written law of God. The Gentiles didn't, but he's
making the point that both Jews and Gentiles are guilty before
God and no matter which law, written or natural, the natural
law, no matter which law a person lives under, it's impossible
for that person, by obedience to that law, to be declared just
before God. I want you to look back with
me in the book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy chapter 25, and I
believe that we see here in this verse of scripture, a very clear
definition of what justification is. Deuteronomy chapter 25 and verse
one. If there be a controversy between
men and they come under judgment, that's what we're talking about,
justification. A law coming before the law,
court of law. And they come into judgment that
the judges may judge them. We have a judge. He's going to
render a verdict. Then they shall justify the righteous
and condemn the wicked. Now think about that. He shall
justify the righteous. A man comes and he's got a case
against another man and the judge hears the evidence and he justifies
this one man. Now, that doesn't make that man
righteous, does it? The reason he's justified is
because he is righteous. The judge just declares him to
be righteous in this matter. The same thing about condemning
the guilty. When the judge says, you're guilty,
I find you guilty, doesn't make the man guilty. When he came
into the court, he was already guilty. The judge just heard
the case, the evidence, looked at the evidence and made a declaration. This man's guilty. Well, justification
is God declaring a man to be righteous. It doesn't make us
righteous in ourselves, but we are declared before God to be
righteous, just as if we had never sinned. Martin Luther,
I mentioned him, I believe, in the last message. He's probably
better known or of anything as the doctrine of justification
by faith. But he made the point that the
difference between a falling church and a lively church is
this doctrine of justification. How is a man declared just before
God? By faith. By faith. By faith in Christ. That's the
message, isn't it? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved. And part of that salvation is
being justified before God. Before God, just as if we had
never sinned. Now these verses we're looking
at tonight, the apostle is showing how that the whole world is guilty
before God, no matter If they had the written law of Moses
or they didn't have the written law, they just had the natural
law of God, man doesn't live up to the law. He can't. Why? Because he is a fallen creature. He's a fallen creature. And it's
pointed out, if you could begin right now, let's say a person
could, this is supposition, but if you could begin right now
to obey God's law perfectly from here to the rest of your life,
what about this past? What about the past? What you
gonna do about that? Well, we know that man is guilty
before God, the whole world. In fact, Paul says that every
mouth may be stopped. and the whole world become guilty
before God. Verse 18, for the wrath of God
is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness
of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. The apostle
in verse 17 had declared that the righteousness of God is revealed
in the gospel But now, he states that the wrath of God is revealed
from heaven. Two revelations from God. His grace in Christ upon all
that believe, and His wrath and judgment upon all unbelievers. You know, there are those who
apologize. I'm talking about men who call
themselves preachers and who stand in pulpits, but many of
them apologize If they ever have to speak on the wrath of God,
they're just ashamed. Seems like they're ashamed of
God. They love to talk about the love
of God. And I do. I do. But it seems like some
are just ashamed that we have to also remind people and declare
the truth that God is a God who hates iniquity. The wrath of
God. The wrath of God. Paul tells
us that the wrath of God here in this verse is revealed from
heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. You know the Lord Jesus Christ
thinking about a man being ashamed or speaking about the wrath of
God, the hatred of God. The Lord Jesus Christ is described
or declared in Hebrews chapter one, and no one loves sinners
more than he did. But the scripture says he loved
righteousness and hated iniquity. You can't really love righteousness
and not hate iniquity. You just have to hate iniquity
if you love the truth, if you love righteousness. You know,
it's interesting, the Apostle Paul wrote so many of the letters
that we have in the New Testament, and yet you never find the word
hell in any of his letters. You never find the word hell.
You do find he wrote about the wrath of God and the wrath to
come, and he declared that we are all, by nature, children
of wrath. even as others. That's what he
told the believers in the church at Ephesus. Yes, even God's chosen
people, God's elect people, by nature, we're deserving of the
wrath of God. But God, I like the way after
he states that there in Ephesians chapter two, declaring that all
of us are children of wrath, even as others, deserving of
the wrath of God. There's no difference for all
have sinned and come short of the glory of God. But then he
writes, but God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love
wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, quickened
us together with Christ, for by grace are you saved. The Lord Jesus spoke more about
hell than any other person in the scripture. He spoke more
about hell than any of the apostles or any of the prophets. And God's
wrath, Paul says, is revealed from heaven. We know God's wrath
is revealed in the scriptures. We know it's revealed in the
scriptures, the flood. The history of the flood, what
is that? But a demonstration of God's
wrath upon unbelievers, upon the wicked. What about Sodom and Gomorrah?
When God rained fire down out of heaven, brimstone and fire
and destroyed those two cities and those smaller cities around
them. What does that picture but the
wrath of God? What about Lot's wife when she
looked back? God turned her into a pillar
of salt. What do we see? We see the wrath
of God against, as he says here, ungodliness and the unrighteousness. What is the difference between
ungodliness and unrighteousness? You say, is there a difference?
Yes, yes. Ungodliness is sin against God. If you look at the Ten Commandments,
the law that God gave, the covenant that God gave to the nation of
Israel, and you open them up, you have two tablets. And on
one tablet, you have the four commands that are written about
God, about God's holy day, reverencing God. And then on the other tablet,
you have six commandments which we would call the unrighteousness
of men, that men sin against others. The first is sin against
God, taking his name in vain, making an idol to represent God,
not recognizing God as the only true and living God. But we come
disobedient to parents, and you'll find that in this list Paul gives
further down in the book. in this chapter rather here in
Romans. Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother. Thou shalt
not lie. Who are we lying to? To other
people. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Who are we committing adultery with? Others. In other words,
the whole law is fulfilled, our Lord said, in love. And these two commandments, thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, all thy soul,
and all thy being, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
And if we love our neighbor as ourself, we won't lie to him,
we won't steal from him, we won't kill him. No, all the law is
fulfilled in love, isn't it? The Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior,
he kept that law. He obeyed that law perfectly. Every command that God gave,
he obeyed. And that's the righteousness
which Paul says is revealed in the gospel. It's his obedience. And we know that is the obedience,
the righteousness that is imputed or charged to the account of
every one who believes, who trusts in him. And that allows God to
declare that person just. So the wrath of God is revealed
from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. The second point I have tonight,
verses 19 and 20, Because that which may be known of God is
manifest in them, for God has 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. So first we have God's wrath
revealed from heaven, and you cannot wonder Cannot help but
wonder, when God sends a tornado, when God sends a hurricane, what
is that? What's happening? Isn't God's
wrath being revealed in nature? Well, sure it is. You say, well,
innocent people suffer even in those things. God's people suffer
even in those things. That's true. But, you know, we're
in a world that is under the judgment of God, under the curse
of God. But isn't all of these disasters,
as we refer to them, and they're sad, they're awful. Our hearts
go out to people who experience those things. I remember when
Hurricane Harvey inundated this city, right? Someone
sent me a picture, I remember, and it looked like an airplane
out at Hobby Airport. The water was up to the cockpit. You know, you can't believe everything
you see on the internet. You just can't. But that's kind of off the subject.
But we see, in fact, that is off the subject. We do see God's
wrath revealed from heaven, don't we? And all of these things are
just telling us judgment's coming. God's promised it. God's declared
it. And God cannot lie. Judgment's
coming. And we see these judgments along.
But my second point is God's witness in creation. I want you
to look in Acts with me just a moment. In Acts chapter 14. Now Paul is preaching here, he
and Barnabas are on one of their, excuse me, they are on their
first missionary journey in Acts chapter 14, and they've come
to this place, and he's preaching, but look, in verse 17. Now these people
he's preaching to, we're not going to read all of it, but
they were They worshipped idols, they worshipped gods, you know,
that they had manufactured. And when Paul here exercised
the gift of an apostle and healed a man who was lame, they wanted
to sacrifice unto Paul and to Barnabas, thinking that the gods
have come down. But notice what Paul tells them. Now these are pagans. And I've
been reading John Payton's book again, autobiography of his work
in the New Hebrides. And if any missionary ever went
among pagans, cannibals, it almost makes me sick to read the fact
that they would kill people and then eat those people. I mean, and they fought all the
time. I mean, wars and wars. I've come to the place now in
his biography when he's been run off the island again, or
for the first time, one of the islands where he had gone to
evangelize. And they blame sickness. But
you know, he tells about this fact. These traders would trade
with the natives from the islands. They gathered sandalwood. And
they would come and they would give them just tobacco and gunpowder
and just trifling things, you know, for their products. But they intentionally put a
young man off on that island with measles. They'd never known
measles there on that island before. And their thinking was, One of them told John Patton,
we want to clear these pagans, these cannibals from the island.
And a third of the people there died with measles. And John Patton,
of course, being a missionary and trained as a medical missionary
also, I might say, helped so many of them. But yet, they,
in the end, tried to kill him. But you know, when he writes
25 years later, he's talking about the many people who were
worshiping God on that island. That's wonderful, isn't it? The
power of the gospel. The power. For I'm not ashamed
of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation unto
everyone that believeth. the power of God in preaching
the gospel. Even cannibals are saved and
worshiping the Lord. But here, when Paul is preaching
to these people who were idolaters, notice what he said in verse
17 concerning the true God. Nevertheless, he, that is God,
he left not himself without witness, He said in verse 16, who in times
past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. All these
various nations, except the nation of Israel. Israel had the word
of God, had the promises, had the fathers, the covenant promises. God suffered these other nations
to walk after their own ways. But Paul says, nevertheless,
even so, He never left himself without witness. He always, God
always was witnessing. How? Well, what does he say here? In that he did good. He did good
and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling
our hearts with food and gladness. Yes, even though they didn't
have the truth and didn't know the truth, God never left himself
without witness. He witnessed in his creation
to men. And here in these verses that
I read here in Romans 1, verses 19 and 20, he tells us two things
that all men know. All men, all men know these two
facts, these two truths about God. All men know by creation,
first of all, His power, His power. And secondly, His being,
His Godhead. I mean, a man could not be a
rational creature and live in God's world And I'd recognize
that this didn't just happen. This didn't just happen. There
had to be someone who designed and created all things. The universe didn't just come
into being of itself. How foolish, how very foolish. And you see the condition of
men today who would tell us that there was a big bang sometime
in the past, and that's how all of this came into being. We're
reading about people who believe that right here. Professing themselves
to be wise, they become fools. That is enough, Paul says. That is enough, the fact that
all men know they cannot live in God's world and not know His
power and His being, His existence, His Godhead. That's enough to
mean that all men are without excuse. All around a man, God's
creation testifies to the infinite designer. so that men are without
excuse, the thinking that God may be worshiped in some idol. Listen to Paul on Mars Hill.
Again, he was in the center of learning, Athens. And yet, he said, for as much
then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think
that the Godhead is likened to gold. I mean, how could anyone
believe that God is like an idol that has eyes but can't see and
hands when God created us, when we are the offspring of God?
How could anyone dare believe that some idol could be worthy
of worship? For as much then as we are the
offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead, the
being, the essence, the God is like unto gold or silver or stone,
graven by art of man's device. Man shouldn't think like that.
You know, when Charles Darwin returned to England after his
voyage. I assume he was looking for the
missing link or something, but he wrote his book on the origin
of the species. But when he returned to England,
he told the people there that he had found a tribe, he had
found a tribe in this world on Tierra del Fuego that did not
have any religion. It found this one tribe. Well,
of course, that was reported there in England, and missionaries
began to prepare to go to that place. And along with anthropologists,
they went to that place, learned their language, and then realized,
no, he was wrong. They did have a religion. Might
not be a religion that anyone would recognize, but man is a
religious being. He's going to have some religion. He's going to manufacture some
God to worship. I think it was Augustine, St.
Augustine, who made the comment first something along this line
that God has so created man. with the ability to know God,
that man will never be content until he comes to know his God,
until he comes to rest in God. These two truths about God, all
may know his power, his being, but without more revelation,
that's not enough. That's enough to condemn a person. That's enough to make a person
without excuse. But without the revelation from
heaven, that is God sending his son into this world and giving
us the word of God, the scriptures. A man could never come to know
God just by observing. Yes, there is a God. There has
to be. But the point Paul is making
is men do not live up to that revelation. They know there's
a God, but they don't live up to the revelation that they have.
I remember in Arthur Pink's book on the attributes of God, and
one of the attributes, I forget which one it was, but he gave
this illustration of a man in the darkest part of the world
walking along a beach, I mean, a very uninhabited place and
uneducated people, and he finds a pocket watch. Now people today,
young people today, this won't mean much to you, but to some
of us older people, we know what a pocket watch was and we know
how it worked back then. I guess it still does. But somehow
he took the back off of that watch and he looked in there
and he saw those little wheels, you know, how they were turning.
And he knew just by looking, by observation, there had to
be a creator. Someone had to make this. It
didn't just make itself. Yes, he could recognize that
from looking at the watch and its intricacies, but he could
not know anything about the man who created it, who made it.
He just could know there was someone who made it, but he couldn't
know anything about the man's character, what kind of a person
he was. Was he a kind person? Was he
a loving person? Was he an angry person? But the
Lord Jesus Christ came into this world to reveal God to us, didn't
he? So that he said, he that has
seen me has seen the Father. No man has seen God at any time. We see God in Christ, don't we?
He is the revelation of the Father. All right, the third part, man's
downward path in verse 21. 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. You know, the evolutionists,
they would tell us that man began at the very bottom. He began
at the very bottom and slowly he's climbing up the ladder. He's improving and eventually
he'll reach the top, but that's just the opposite from the truth. Man was created at the top and
sinned against God and fell to the bottom. But man has continued. Man at first knew God, enjoyed
fellowship with God, but it was his sin then that separated him
from God. And Paul says here that for when
they knew God, there was a time when everyone on the earth, every
individual, every human being knew the truth about God. Adam and Eve, they knew the truth
about God. Their son Abel, we know he was
taught how to worship God. And so he comes before God and
offers a lamb. And we read that in Hebrews 11,
by faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than
Cain. How did Abel learn to offer that
more excellent sacrifice? He learned it from his father,
from Adam. And then when eight generations
later, eight generations from Adam, we come to the generation
of Noah. And listen to what God says about
men and women in Noah's generation, the eighth generation from Adam.
God saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth. Now listen. And that every, every, Imagination
of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. You know, it's easy to read through
this passage of scripture and think upon it and think, well,
that that's somebody out there. That's somebody back there. No,
that's all of us. That's a description of all of
us by nature. Depraved nature. sinful nature. When Noah came out of the ark,
remember the first thing he did, he built an altar and offered
a sacrifice unto God, and God was pleased with that sacrifice. And at that point, at that particular
point, Noah and his wife and his three sons and their wives,
they all knew the truth about God. They all knew that God was
a just God, a God that would punish sin. They'd seen that,
they'd evidenced that, witnessed that rather. And yet it wasn't
long, if you read there in Genesis, it wasn't long before men got
together and said, let's build a tower, the Tower of Babel. And really when you think about
it, what Paul says here in that verse, verse 21, is an apt description of those
men who built that tower, who would build that tower. They glorified him not as God. Neither were they thankful, but
became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. They weren't thankful. Those
that came out of the flood, they were not thankful to God that
they had been spared or been delivered. They became vain in
their imagination, thinking that they could build a tire. And
what was that? It was unbelief, wasn't it? To
build a tire to escape from God. Their foolish heart was darkened. That's the condition of every
person who is born into this world. We have a heart that is
darkened by sin. Look in 2 Corinthians just a moment. I'll
close with this. I believe it's 2 Corinthians.
Yes. 2 Corinthians chapter four. And
Paul said, verse three, but if our gospel be hid, it is him
hid to them that lost. In whom the God of this world
hath blinded the minds of them which believe not. Lest the light
of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should
shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves,
but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus'
sake. For God, here's the difference,
isn't it? Here's the difference if you're
one of his children tonight, if you know God as your Lord
and as your Savior, here's the difference. God. For God, who commanded the light
to shine out of darkness, back there in Genesis chapter one,
let there be light, and light was. That same God has shined
in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ, the person of Jesus Christ. He's caused us, he's caused the
light, his light to shine into our darkened minds, darkened
hearts, enabling us to see the glory of God, God's glory in
Jesus Christ, how he might be just and justifier of them who
believe in Christ. I pray the Lord would bless his
word to us here this evening.