Sermon Tone Analysis

I Am Not Ashamed: The Wrath of God

Text: Romans 1:18-23

Theme: It’s not that people cannot know the truth about God.

The problem is that they actually stifle the truth they do know.

Date: 02/07/16 File name: Romans_2016_03.wpd

ID Number: 176

This morning we turn our attention to the Book of Romans.

Our topic is the wrath of God.

God’s wrath is against those who suppress the truth, whether Jew or Gentile.

God’s gospel (1:1) is for those who stand under his wrath, whether Jew or Gentile (3:23).

At the exact same time that his wrath is being revealed his righteousness is being revealed in the gospel.

It is his wrath, in fact, that makes his righteousness so sweet.

But without the preaching and teaching of the doctrine of his wrath, it is impossible to see the need of his righteousness.

I. THE REVELATION OF GOD’S RIGHTEOUSNESS

1. the Gospel is about the righteousness of God and this righteousness has been revealed in the person of Jesus who is the Christ

• “For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

(Romans 1:17, NIV)

• “He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace.

This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, 10 but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

(2 Timothy 1:9–10, NIV)

a. in other words, if God had not revealed this great truth, we simply wouldn’t know about it—we’d be like blind men stumbling in the dark

b. the Gospel teaches how unrighteous men—and that’s all of us—how unrighteous men can be made righteous

2. this righteousness of God is a righteousness not only revealed but reckoned to those who put their faith in Christ and his redemptive work on the cross

“However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness.”

(Romans 4:5, NIV)

a. do you see how simple is God’s plan of salvation?

1) we trust in God—that’s what faith is—it complete, absolute trust in God

a) we trust Him to do what He says He will do—to justify the ungodly

2) how does God justify us?—that’s the Gospel story

a) the Second Person of the Godhead—his name is Immanuel, that is God with us—was incarnated into human flesh and given the name Jesus

b) he lived a perfectly sinless life, and revealed the loving, merciful redemptive plan of the Father—

3) what is that plan?

a) that Jesus is the Prophet Isaiah’s Suffering Servant who would be Smitten of God, and afflicted and that he would be pierced through for our transgressions, and crushed for our iniquities so that by His scourging we are healed (Isa.

53)

4) this, of course, is the story of Jesus

a) Jesus would be crucified for the sins of the people of God, and he would raise from the dead, victorious over sin, and death, and the Evil One

b) and all who call upon his name in faith shall be saved (Rom.

10:13)

3) and by that faith in the risen Christ, God credits to us the righteousness of His son and reckons us as righteous!

" ... But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God."

(1 Corinthians 6:11, NIV)

A. GOD SUBSTITUTES CHRIST’S RIGHTEOUSNESS FOR OUR UNRIGHTEOUSNESS

1. this good news is what the Apostle Paul says has been revealed in the Gospel

2. everywhere we turn in the Scriptures we are reminded of the failure of human righteousness—it is no better than a pile of filthy, putrid rags good for nothing and worthy only to be burned

a. try as he might no man shall ever earn his way into heaven

1) the Jew who attempts to obey the Jewish moral and religious law cannot earn his way into heaven

2) the Hindu who baths in the sacred waters of the Ganges River cannot earn his way into heaven

3) the Muslim who obeys the Fiver Pillars of Islam and faces Mecca five times a day to pray cannot earn his way into heaven

4) the Buddhist who practices The Four Noble Truths cannot earn his way into heaven

5) the professing Christian who depends on penance and weekly recites the Apostle’s Creed cannot earn his way into heaven

3. the Apostle Paul was a man who had spent his early life zealously observing every jot and tittle of the Jewish law believing that was how one became righteous before God

a. in Philippians 3:4 the Apostle wrote of his life before coming to Christ: “If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more ... as for righteousness based on the law, [I was] ... faultless.”

1) now think of what this man just said: Before he came to Christ, Paul testifies that his trust was in his religious accomplishments, and if anyone could boast in how well they’d obeyed the Jewish civil, moral, and religious codes, he could

a) Paul did not make that seemingly prideful statement to brag

b) he understood the foolishness of boasting in anything but Jesus, and writes these things only for the sake of argument

2) but when he met the risen Christ, he immediately knew that his religious rectitude, and his moral certitude counted for nothing

3) he writes: “ ... we who serve God by his Spirit ... put no confidence in the flesh—” (Philippians 3:3, NIV)

b. a few verses later, Paul confessed to the Philippians,

“I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith” (Phil.

3:8–9)

ILLUS.

Like the Apostle Paul, Martin Luther zealously worked to be acceptable to God.

After his conversion, he confessed "If ever a monk were to get to heaven by this monkery it would be I ... I should have killed myself with vigils, prayers, recitings, and other work."

Yet, in spite of doing all those things, the peace with God Luther sought still eluded him—until the day, like the Apostle, he simply put his complete, absolute trust in God.

4. the good news of the Gospel is that unrighteous sinners can become righteous sons of God when they come to Christ by a simple act of faith

a. as the Apostle writes in Rom.

1:16 “ ... the gospel ... is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.”

(Romans 1:16, NIV)

1) God’s righteousness is a right standing He freely gives to those who trust in him

b. this righteousness is freely imputed to the sinner by God’s sovereign grace because Christ died on the cross as a substitute for sinners, and in doing so God imputed the guilt of our sins to Christ, and he, in our place, bore the punishment that we deserve

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21, NIV)

ILLUS.

The hymnists Keith Getty and Stuart Townend express the doctrine clearly in what has become one of the favorite hymns of Evangelicals.

The second stanza of In Christ Alone reads ... In Christ alone, Who took on flesh, Fullness of God in helpless babe!

This gift of love and righteousness, Scorned by the ones He came to save.

Till on that cross as Jesus died, The wrath of God was satisfied; For ev'ry sin on Him was laid—Here in the death of Christ I live.

4.

This Gospel Was Revealed in the Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus

II.

THE REVELATION OF GOD’S WRATH

ILLUS.

In his sermon on this text, Martyn Lloyd-Jones says that we will never understand the need from Romans 1:17 if we do not grasp the reality of Romans 1:18.

1. the word for in Romans 1:18 is used as a strong conjunction and connects for us the revelation of God’s righteousness and the revelation of God’s wrath

a. God needs to reveal the possibility of a real, and saving righteousness in His Son because of the real, and stinging wrath of God that is, even now, being revealed, and poured out in part

1) that wrath will be poured out fully at the end of days

“But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed.”

(Romans 2:5, NIV)

b.

Romans 1:18 reveals for us the urgency of communicating the Gospel

1) the message of the Gospel is “Believe and be saved”

2) saved from what?

3) from sin and death and judgement and wrath and hell!

2. before you came to Christ, you were under the wrath of God, and if, this morning, you’ve never committed your life to Christ, you’re under the wrath of God as I speak

• “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts.

Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.”

(Ephesians 2:1–3, NIV)

• “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.”

(John 3:36, NIV)

ILLUS.

Jonathan Edwards, in his sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, wrote, “The Wicked must not think, simply because they are not physically in Hell, that God (in Whose hand the Wicked now reside) is not—at this very moment—as angry with them as He is with those miserable creatures He is now tormenting in hell.”

a. regardless of how good you thought you were as the world counts goodness, you were dead in your transgressions and sins

b. regardless of how good you thought you were as the world counts goodness, you gratified the cravings of your flesh following its desires and thoughts

c. regardless of how good you thought you were as the world counts goodness, you were by nature deserving of wrath