God's Wrath is Revealed (Romans 1:18-25)

WHAT MAKES CHRISTIANS DIFFERENT?

Christians Live as Wheat among Weeds

GOD’S WRATH IS REVEALED

Where?

What Now?

Passionate about proclaiming Christ’s forgiveness to all people, Living Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church comes together as a Christian family to equip and care for all—from young to old—with the Gospel of Jesus.

SERMON

God’s grace, mercy and peace are yours from God our Father through our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ.

Direct us now, O gracious Lord, to hear aright your Holy Word.

Assist your minister to preach, and let the Holy Spirit teach.

Let eternal life be found by all who hear the Gospel sound. Amen.

God does not always answer all of our “why” questions. Why did God take this loved one from me so soon? We don’t always have answers for that “why.” Why did God give me this disability or that disability or that suffering or that suffering? We don’t always know why. But we do know why God doesn’t just pluck out of this world all of the evil people. Why He doesn’t just come down and if everyone is a sinner, He comes down and grabs them and pulls them and gets them out of here so that His people don’t have to deal with evil or bad people or unbelievers. We know why. The Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat tells us why. God doesn’t just pluck out of this world all the unbelievers because in the parable, you would also pluck out the wheat along with the weeds. That is true. This is God’s Word. He tells us this is why there still are evil people around you. This is why you’re still living in a wicked world. There’s your answer. Because of you, God is concerned about you. He doesn’t want you to also get plucked up and taken off to hell where all the weeds are going.

But how exactly does that work? How is it that having evil people around me and being faced with the depravity of the human heart all the time, how does that keep me rooted in the good soil that is Christ? How does that keep me here, faithful to Him until Jesus comes again or until the end of my life? How does that work exactly? That’s where Paul comes in.

Paul takes this challenge on of in what way does evil and evil people help you. How does this help me stay rooted in Christ? He takes it on. He says that God’s wrath is revealed and it keeps us in Christ. So today our sermon theme, God’s wrath is revealed, will answer the question where and will answer the question what now?

The wrath of God—that’s a concept we probably don’t like to talk about. Maybe we try to quietly avoid this subject. We’ll talk about the love of God, but the wrath of God makes God seem so angry and things of that nature. It doesn’t reveal the best qualities of God we think. But just like the Gospel without the Law is like throwing hurdles in front of pigs, and the Law without the Gospel is like hurling pigs into hell’s BBQ (It smells great for us but it’s bad for them. They don’t smell anything good), we need both the Law and the Gospel to understand this wonderful text and this wonderful concept of God’s wrath being revealed.

The apostle Paul does not dance around the issue. He heads right into it, this concept of the wrath of God. But he says something that right away puts us on alert. He says “The wrath of God is being revealed…” IS revealed, not will be revealed, not has been or something that has happened in the past, but IS revealed. That means God’s wrath is revealed right now. It’s ongoing. His wrath has always been there since the fall. His wrath is being revealed.

Then how do we notice it, and to whom is it revealed? What does it look like? Apparently we might think of the wrath of God and we’re thinking lightning bolts, like “I don’t think I see lightning bolts happening.” So what exactly is this wrath of God that is being revealed? What does that look like and to whom is it revealed?

The apostle Paul says, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness…” So, the godlessness and the wickedness of people is where this wrath of God is being revealed. His wrath isn’t towards humanity itself, like God is just mad at the human race. It’s revealed against their godlessness and their wickedness. What is so godless and wicked about them? Paul says they suppress the truth. What truth? Paul says, “…since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” God’s invisible qualities are made visible as we see it in nature. His eternal power and divine nature is what we see in how God creates the world and how awesome it all is. We see that there is a God who is divine and far above us. We see a God who is powerful and sends storms and earthquakes and tornadoes and (we hope) a blizzard. A blizzard would be really nice right about now. We think that the innumerable laws of nature that God has keeping our universe together like gravity for instance. So God’s invisible qualities—He’s telling the world, “Here I am. I exist. And the world is suppressing me and that’s what makes them wicked and godless.”

Can I go a little bit deeper? God doesn’t just reveal Himself in the laws of nature, but He reveals His divineness, that He is actually a divine being that is powerful enough to change the laws of nature. Think of all the things that people attribute to luck or fate. “I should have died! But then this happened. Oh boy, I’m lucky!” Or is that a God who is divine. He’s here. He is far above us. He is powerful. He can take the laws of nature and bend them to His will. Maybe He is telling people He is here when something awesome happens to them that shouldn’t have happened because of the laws of nature. Or “I shouldn’t have been there that day, but there I was and there she was, on some enchanted evening, far across the room I saw her. And we got married and it’s awesome!” Do you think that was by chance, fate, lucky? Maybe a God who created this big universe, who is so big, could be involved in everyone’s life so that everyone would see there is a being who is active in this world that’s far above us, so far powerful over us, but is engaging with this world. Whether it’s through things that we can perceive, natural things, the beautiful creation that we have, or when awesome things happen that are beyond nature, that are supernatural. And how often don’t people suppress that. “I was just lucky.” “Fate happened.” That’s wickedness. That’s godlessness. God doesn’t have to do a single one of these things, yet so many of them are suppressed by the human race. God isn’t given the credit for bending the rules to show that He exists.

Paul says God is revealing Himself in the Creation. He’s saying “Here I am,” and people are suppressing that information, denying it’s coming from God, and how do you think He’s going to respond? People who suppress the truth are like the person who takes the battery out of their smoke detector so they feel better. They’re still in danger. The house isn’t safer. The world rejecting the evidence for God does not make the world safer.

But here is kind of the comforting truth. The world rejected the information God has been producing in nature and in their lives for over 2,000 years. So the fact that people are so immoral today should not really shock us. It even refrains our anxiety. Instead of being anxious about how the world is going so downhill, we now look at the world through these eyes and say “This is what happens.” There are people who are suppressing the knowledge of God and God is always, consistently trying to reveal to people that He exists, so that they would seek Him out, as Paul says, and find in His Word the truth.

So if this is a problem (this IS a problem), this is the wickedness and the godlessness that Paul is talking about, and he is saying the wrath of God is revealed on the human race because of that problem, because they aren’t acknowledging Him and aren’t giving Him glory. So what does that wrath of God look like? Paul mentions three things in our text for today. Our NIV (New International Version) doesn’t really do it justice. It’s hard for us to figure out who is doing the subject and who is doing the object of some of these verbs, so let me walk you through it.

There are three things that reveal the wrath of God, three ways God reveals the wrath of God, and they aren’t things that you would normally think of, but they are things that Paul says.

First of all, he says, “…their thinking became futile…” In the Greek, God is doing the action. He is making their thoughts futile. Human beings being irrational, is that a new thing? It’s been around since the beginning of the world. That is evidence that God’s wrath is revealed. There is no common sense. People are taking stupid pills every day and renewing the prescription. Make an idol out of a human being or an animal and worship that, it happens. The wrath of God: irrational thoughts of the human race. We are children of the enlightenment who like to think we have rational thoughts, but there are plenty of irrational thoughts to go around, not just in the world but in our lives as well.

The second thing is “…their foolish hearts were darkened.” This is the thing they are doing. If your brain isn’t thinking in a rational thought, what is going to happen? The seed of your emotions, your heart, this is going to be producing emotions that your brain can’t do a check on because you’re not thinking things through rationally, so their hearts are darkened (in Verse 21). Their thinking became futile, we mentioned that, and their foolish hearts were darkened. So it’s not just a thinking problem. It is a heart problem. If it feels true, it must be true. God’s wrath is revealed when He allows people to have irrational minds and hearts that are darkened, following after their emotions.

Then finally, the third one, their bodies are degrading. “…God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.” So what is going on in their hearts, what is going on in their minds, the sin has taken hold. This is God’s wrath saying “Just go.” That also bleeds over into their bodies. Their bodies with urges and desires and now their bodies are touched by sin, too. I think it’s safe to say he’s not just talking about what we would think he’s talking about or when he does talk about homosexuality in a couple verses, but ALL of those desires and urges of the body have now been touched by sin. Why is the alcoholic craving alcohol? There is a sin connection. There is a brain connection. There is the heart connection, but then there is also a body connection—the addiction. They crave it. Drugs are the same way. Sugar is the same way. What happens when you stop eating sugar? What does your body do? You abuse drugs, alcohol, even something like sugar. This is just God getting started. The wrath of God is revealed, allowing people to keep going in their irrational minds, keep going in their hearts, in their emotions, in their bodies, in their urges, and going in all terrible different directions. This is God just getting started.

The wrath of God is revealed now and will continue in heaven. Why else was Jesus talking about hell in terms of weeping and gnashing of teeth? What happens when you have a hell filled with people who don’t have a correction mechanism? They can never come to their senses because God isn’t there. So their brain will just keep being irrational. Their heart will still be pumping those emotions because there is nothing there to check it. There is no activity of God to stop it.

Now let’s bring it home. Do you ever wonder why you do stupid things? Why your heart pines for forbidden pleasures? Why you also are taking stupid pills and renewing the prescription? You speaking words that really hurt someone else, thinking about luck, horoscopes and forgetting a God who is with you every day? How often don’t you exchange your God for a god of your own making, a god of comfort, a god of approval? “I don’t want to be awkward, so I will suppress the truth about God.” “I want to fit in, so I’ll take what I know about God and shut up about it.” You and I are also deserving of God’s wrath as well as the rest of the human race.

Our sinful nature reveals itself in our thoughts, in our emotions, urges of our bodies. We deserve the same fate we wish the unbelieving weeds would get of being plucked out of this earth and thrown into the eternal hell fire. So that’s why they stay. That’s why the weeds stay—to remind us of what we deserve. That reminds us of what Paul says in a few chapters later. He says, “Therefore, since we now have been justified by His blood, Christ’s blood, it is now more certain that we will be saved from God’s wrath through Him.” God’s wrath is revealed in the world but it isn’t being poured out on you, because you know the wrath of God was meant for you but was diverted, intercepted by His Son, who took the full brunt of God’s wrath on the cross. God isn’t angry with you. He has not given up on you. He loves you! He sent His Son, Jesus, to die for you. All the wrath God has for all of your sin is put on Jesus, paid for in full. So we see it all around us. We see it in ourselves, God’s wrath, but we know it doesn’t touch us because we have Christ.

I was going through this text and I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed with the thought of Christ’s incarnation—taking on human flesh. Everywhere that sin has touched, Jesus goes and redeems it. He becomes a human being. Sin has affected my mind. He’s got a mind. He’s got a brain for me. It’s affected my heart, my emotions. He has emotions for me. It has affected my body, my urges. He has had one. Everywhere sin has touched, Jesus has gone to redeem it, to reclaim it for you and for me so that we can stand and say “That’s not me anymore. My Savior took the wrath that I deserve. He intercepted it so that I can stand here, as wheat among the weeds, redeemed by His blood, forgiven because of what He has done.”

So what now? God’s wrath is revealed. It’s not a statement that we use like a thermostat to tell the world, “Guess what, world. It’s going to get hotter!” No, God’s wrath is revealed so that we can see it through a mirror, see our own sin. We see that God is still active in this world. He is still revealing Himself. But His revelation is not a punishment for us. It is a discipline for us. It is a blessing for us. It’s not a curse. It reminds us we’ve been redeemed through Christ. We are wheat but we also get to share the good news.

There will always be weeds. There will always be weeds. But they don’t have to stay a weed. God’s powerful Word, God’s powerful work can change weeds to wheat, through His Word, through you and I using His Words, telling people the good news and the bad news, both Law and Gospel. There will always be weeds, but no one has to stay a weed. God is eternally powerful and can change weeds to wheat. He can change lives. He can change your world view. All this is through Christ.

The world isn’t going to change or get better by having better thinking or better emotions or better food. The world isn’t going to get better through that. It will always be decaying. And God’s wrath will always be revealed. The only solution to this world is Christ for you. And this is to His glory.

That’s why Paul finishes off this section, which in a certain way is kind of depressing, but on the other hand it is very freeing and clarifying in our own minds. We know exactly why God allows wheat like us to stay here and why He allows the weeds. We have the answer to a why that we may have been wondering about for a long time. But he finishes it off by saying, “…the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.” So many people think that the suffering in the world and the evilness of the world is a definite proof that there is no God. Paul says exactly the opposite. The evil that we see in this world is the wrath of God being revealed. God exists. His wrath exists. Why do people not learn their lessons? It’s because God is revealing His wrath. Why do others learn their lessons? It’s because God is still here, because He still exists, because God has revealed His wrath, poured out on Christ, for you.

So God isn’t hurt by the world’s rejection of Him. He doesn’t sulk in a corner and cry “Why doesn’t anyone love me?” He doesn’t throw up His hands and say “What has the world come to?” He continues to reveal Himself to the world. His mercies are new every morning. Those beautiful sunrises, beautiful sunsets, God revealing Himself in nature, God helping people when they don’t even acknowledge it and He’s still there helping people. He still is revealing His Word that saves people. He is revealing Himself in the world in both a natural way and supernatural way. He still goes on.

What makes Christians different? We live as wheat among the weeds. We are rooted in Christ. God doesn’t always answer all of our why questions, but the problem with the evil in the world is answered. So God, who has already revealed His wrath, could also reveal His Son and His salvation. His wrath is here as a reminder to us of what we deserve, as a reminder to us of what we are here to do, to share the good news, to supernaturally, through His Word and works, change weeds into wheat. God’s wrath is revealed. There’s no way out except through Him and through His work through us. Amen.