A Day of Wrath

The book of Romans, as you will recall, begins in Romans chapter 1 with a very interesting
and a relatively simple definition of biblical reality.
That biblical reality says the Apostle Paul is this, "God is the Creator and we are the
creature."
And because God is the Creator and we are the creature, we therefore, O God, our religions,
we O God, our obedience, and God has the right to demand of your life and my life, the
total surrender and the total glory and the total honor that His name deserves because
of who He is.
And the root foundation of mankind's sin according to Romans chapter 1 is not so much
all the bad things we do as the fundamental refusal on the part of man to acknowledge
God as God.
Romans chapter 1 tells us in verse 21, "Although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give
thanks to Him.
Though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him.
There is something in human nature that rebels against the authority of God.
We don't want God telling us what to do and telling us how to live.
We want to live according to our own dictates and we want to be the Lord and the masters
of our own lives."
That is the foundation of Sidance's Paul, people reject the knowledge of God.
And when they do that and when they do that over a period of time deliberately, persistently
and knowingly, there comes a time since Paul and Romans chapter 1 when God gives them
over to their sin.
Three times in Romans chapter 1, you find the phrase, "God gave them up."
And what that means is that God removes the wall of protection that He puts around people
and He allows them to do all of the things that they want to do.
And the result is they plunge into sin from one degree to another until the bottom line
is a total perversion of value.
What is good becomes bad, what is bad becomes good, and people not only do bad things but
they enjoy doing bad things because they now think they are doing the right kind of thing.
I believe you cannot understand our culture.
We cannot understand the kind of magnification there is of evil unless you understand that
when God gives up a people, He gives them up to the evil that is in their heart.
Though they know God's decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not
only do them, but they approve those who practice them.
And the reason that God gives people up, He now goes on to point out in the scriptures
is that He wants to prepare them for a day of wrath or a day of judgment.
Romans 2 verse 2, we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who do such
things.
And Romans 2 verse 5, "By your heart and impenetraint in hearts, you are storing up wrath for yourself
on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed."
On the day of wrath, when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.
"Foundational to the biblical picture of reality is the notion that there is coming
a day when every man, woman, child, boy and girl that ever lived all over the world throughout
all period of time, is going to be arrayed before the throne of God."
Jesus, you will recall, talks about that when He says, "When the Son of Man comes in
his glory, and the Holy Angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne, and
before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another,
as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats."
The Apostle Paul talks about that later on in the book of Romans chapter 14 when he says,
"For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God as it is written, as I leave says
the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God, so each
of us," he says, "shall give account of himself to God."
And second Corinthians 5, 10, makes the same observation for we must all appear before
the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive good or evil according to what
he has done.
foundational to biblical reality is the concept of judgment.
And not only are those judgments of God upon the earth periodically when evil reaches
a certain measure of maturity, that judgment of God will be revealed in its most final
devastating reality in what the Bible calls the day of wrath.
The day when God is ruler of all creation, and the ruler of all the universe takes matters
into his own hands, and he dispenses judgment according to his own sense of righteousness
and to his own sense of conviction and throughout all of scripture.
It is the realization of that final day when we need to give account of who we are, that
ought to motivate our living and that ought to prepare us for that day when we will have
to give account of what we have done with all that God is, and all that God has given
us in Jesus Christ.
We must all appear before the judgment seat of Jesus Christ.
Now having established that foundation in Romans chapter 1 and in parts of Romans chapter
2, what Paul now does in Romans chapter 2 is he begins to outline for us some of the principles
that God will be using when he exercises judgment over all the nations.
And in the time that we have this morning, let's look at as many of these principles as
we can, principles that need to govern the way we live.
Principles that ought to help us to understand what it is that God is going to be looking
for in the day when he sits on his glorious throne.
And when you and I and everybody that ever lived will appear before that throne to give
account of who we are and what we have done with his grace in Jesus Christ.
And the very first principle that I'd like to point out in this particular passage is
that when God moves in judgment, that judgment is always a righteous judgment.
Listening into verse 2, we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who do such
things.
And again Romans 2 verse 5, "By your heart and impenetant heart you are storing up wrath
for yourself on the day of wrath.
When God's righteous judgment will be revealed, God's righteous judgment.
When God judges the earth and the inhabitants of the world, it is always a judgment that
is righteous according to the most ultimate definition of that word.
As God knows, not only the outward activities of mankind, but He knows the inner motivations
of the heart, the righteous judgment of God is going to be revealed."
Very important to understand that because a lot of people, when they see the activities
of God's judgment in the world, when they see disasters and multitudes of people dying,
when they experience pain and agony in their own life, then the overwhelming response
and the overwhelming reaction of the human race is, "Why me?
Where is God?
If there really were a God, then He wouldn't allow these kinds of things to happen.
And if He does allow those kinds of things to happen, then He must be a saddest and there
must be a streak in Him that enjoys pain and agony and suffering.
And if that's what God's like, then I want nothing to do with God."
You hear that argument all the time?
And what that argument fails to understand is this.
God deserves the total honor and the total obedience and the total praise and thanksgiving
of all of His creatures.
There isn't a one of us born upon the face of the earth that hasn't knowingly and deliberately
at some point or another defied God and that has gone his own way.
And Paul's whole purpose in these opening chapters in the book of Romans is to prove that since
we are old guilty before the face of God, God is righteous in all of His judgment.
God doesn't know anything to you.
God doesn't know anything to me because we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory
of God.
And therefore, the big question is not, why do these kinds of things happen?
The big question is, why doesn't God wipe off the whole population of the earth?
Immediately because of our sin and because of our rebellion.
God is righteous in all of His, because all of us have sinned and fallen short of the
glory of God.
If you don't understand that, then you'll never understand the gospel.
Because until you can agree with God that God is righteous in all of the judgments that
might have ever come into your life or in a my life.
We will never come to Jesus who bore the judgment so that we can be delivered from that
judgment and experience the righteousness and the blessings and the power of God.
And it's that truth that Paul is trying to establish in these opening chapters of the
Book of Romans, we are all guilty.
God is righteous in all of His judgments, but that judgment has been absorbed by Christ
so that in Christ we can be delivered and experience the blessings of God rather than the
curse of God.
God is righteous in His judgment.
Number two, God is totally impartial in His judgment.
Look down at verses 9, 10, and 11.
There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil.
The Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does
good, the Jew first and also the Greek, for God shows no partiality.
God shows no partiality.
I rather suspect that in many of our hearts there is the secret hope or the secret conviction
that God will treat us and our sins a little bit differently from the sins of others.
After all, that's how we operate in human relationships, do we not?
There are things in our own lives and there are things in the lives of our loved ones
that we would gladly overlook that we could never tolerate in one of our enemies or in
somebody with whom we have no closer emotional tie.
And my suspicion isn't it certainly Paul's suspicion in Romans chapter 2 that folks who
have a relationship with God secretly hope in their hearts that God will treat them differently
than He will treat other people who are really living badly because they are so far removed
from God.
You see, that's the context of Romans chapter 2.
Jews versus Gentiles.
Gentiles are people who had a relationship with God, they lived in covenant, they knew
the will of God.
They were a morally righteous people at least externally.
Gentiles are people that have no law, they have no revelation of the revealed will of God,
they just live according to the dictates of their own conscience and oftentimes that leads
them into a lot of garbage.
And the Jews were looking at themselves and they were saying, "Well, you know we've got
this special thing with God, I've got a church all of my life.
I read the scriptures, God's entered into covenant with Abraham and I bear in my body
the mark of the covenant in.
And surely God will make a special allowance for the things that I do that aren't quite
pleasing to him because after all, I am a covenant person."
And certainly God will not treat me and God will not judge me in the way that He treats
these bad people out there who are doing these really bad things.
They had this conviction that there must be a partiality with God that somehow the others
were all wrong and they were all right.
God also says that's not how it works when God comes to judge the world, whether on the
final day of wrath or whether in an intermediate day of wrath when his judgments are upon the
earth, God will judge without partiality.
God has no special favorite people.
God will not turn a blind eye to the sins of those who are closest to him, as a matter
of fact, as we'll see in a few moments, the closer you are to God, the more serious God
is about dealing with that sin.
Remember Moses in the Old Testament?
A man who was as mature in the things of God as anybody that you could find in the Old
Testament.
The man lost his temper just one time under situations that would have tried anybody
and would have tried anybody's patience.
And God spoke out against Moses and Moses was not allowed to come into the promised land
for which He had lived all of his life because God said Moses, you did not uphold my holiness
before the nation.
I would be surprised if there aren't some of us here this morning who secretly entertain
in our hearts the notion that somehow or another because of how we serve God in other areas
or what we've done for God in the past or what we hope to do for Him in the future.
That somehow or another that justifies certain things that we may be into in other areas
of our lives hoping that God will turn a blind eye and that He will weigh the obedience over
against the disobedience and that the disobedience will be defeated by the obedience.
There is before God no partiality and only in Jesus Christ can we ever be holy and perfect
before His name.
God's judgment is righteous.
God's judgment is impartial.
And then the third thing I'd like for us to notice in this passage interestingly enough
God's judgment is based on how you live.
Listen very carefully to verse six.
He will render to every man, every woman according to His works.
For those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality he will
give you eternal life.
But for those who are factious or rebellious and do not obey the truth but obey wickedness
there will be wrath and fury.
He will renders His Paul to every man, to every person, according to His works.
According to His works.
Now that ought to make warning bells go off at your wine.
After all doesn't Paul spend all of his time in the book of Romans proving that by the
works of the law no man should ever be justified.
Besides that heaven most of us going to church many many years to learn the reality that by
works nobody could earn the approval of God and that we are saved by grace and that our
hope is built on nothing less but the blood of Jesus Christ and His righteousness.
That being so then why does Paul of all people say that God is going to render to every
man according to His works.
The reason for that of course is that you cannot make a separation biblically between
the law of God and the one hand and the grace of God and the other.
A lot of people think that grace has nullified the law but Paul says consistently that is
not the case grace fulfills the law and the grace that God gives us in Jesus Christ is
a grace that transforms our lives so that by obedience to the will of God through faith
in Jesus we who once were a disobedient people now become an obedient people and for that
reason throughout all of the scriptures.
And we stand on that final day before the throne of God.
God isn't simply going to judges by some sort of vague intellectual faith kind of commitment
because the Bible says faith without works is dead.
If I really believe that I'm a sinner, if I really believe that it dishonors God not
to know Him and to walk with Him and to seek Him.
If I really believe that Jesus was hung on that cross to take away my sin and to deliver
me and to restore me, if I really believe that He arose from the dead and that He said
down to the right hand of God and that He is poured out His Holy Spirit to give me new
life, that my life is going to change.
And yes there will be many areas where I fail and those areas will need to be confessed
because we will never be any more righteous than we are by faith in Jesus because He alone
is the righteousness of God.
But as I abide in Him and He abides in me, my life is going to manifest from glory to
glory the fruit of the gospel.
And my life will begin to reflect the transformations of the gospel and the touchstone by which God
will then discern the reality of my faith on that last and final day.
Well, be by the fruit that my life has borne.
Jesus puts it this way, He says, "I tell you on the day of judgment men will render account
of every careless word of the other.
For by your words you will be justified and by your words you will be condemned."
I did a study on this topic one time in the Scriptures and I discovered that at least
a dozen or two dozen times in all of Scripture when the Bible talks about that final day of judgment.
It talks about judgment in the context of how it is that we live our lives.
Paul again, Romans 2, Trinthians 5, 10, we must all appear before the Judgment seat of Christ
so that each one may receive good or evil according to what He has done in the body.
It matters how you live.
You cannot live righteously apart from faith in Jesus.
All our own efforts are but straw and wood and hay and stubble.
We cannot fulfill the laws to be in, but Christ in use as the Bible is the hope of glory.
And when Christ lives in me, God takes a disobedient people and He makes a people that are progressively
and increasingly obedient so that on that final day there is a separation between the
weeds sold by the enemy and the wheat that has been sold by the gospel of grace and God
can hold us up before all nations as an example and a trophy of His redeeming grace.
God is righteous in His judgment.
God is impartial in His judgment.
God bases His judgment on the fruit of His grace in our lives.
And then number four, I want us to notice.
God's judgment is based on our knowledge of His will.
Verse 12, "All who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law.
All who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law."
If you look at that verse in the context, you'll discover that what Paul is talking about
is that age-old question.
What about the people that don't know what God wants?
It's one of the favorite questions that comes up if you ever try sharing the gospel with
unbelievers, if you've ever tried that and if you've ever pointed out to people that
the only way to be saved is through faith in Jesus.
And that outside of faith in Jesus there is no salvation possible than one of the first
obstacles that you will always encounter is the question, what about the poor heathen
in Africa?
Those souls that have died for hundreds of years and they've had no opportunity to know
the gospel.
Will God simply condemn them because they've never heard?
How can God be righteous in His judgment if He's never given them a chance?
That's always the question.
And that's the issue that Paul raises here and what he says is this, "All who have sinned
without the law will perish without the law and all who have sinned under the law will
be judged by the law."
And what he means by that is this, "God holds us responsible for what we know."
And he says there are two broad categories of people, the Jews and the Gentiles.
The Jews in this context are the religious people.
They would correspond with those of us that have been raised in a Christian environment.
We've gone to Sunday School.
We've read the Bible.
We've come to some kind of understanding of who God is.
And Paul says on the day of judgment you're going to be held accountable for everything
that you've ever learned about God and who God is and you will be judged on the basis
of whether you responded to that or whether you rejected it.
And the more you have known and the more you have rejected the more guilty you are because
you have deliberately walked away from that which God has given.
All those who are under the law will be judged by the law.
But he says there's another category of people, the Gentiles.
They don't know anything.
How can God hold them accountable?
And He goes on to say in this passage that God holds them accountable not for what they
don't know.
Not interestingly enough, but for what they do know.
Then He goes on to say that they're going to be judged by what they have done with
the light, now listen to this, with the light of their conscience.
Notice how He points it out.
When the Gentiles who have not the law, due by nature what the law requires, they are
a lot to themselves even though they do not have the law.
They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts.
They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts.
What that means is that even non-Christians have a common measure of grace that they experience
from the hand of God and enabling them in some very fundamental ways to know the difference
between right and wrong.
They don't have to be a Christian to know that it's wrong to steal.
You don't have to be a Christian to know that it's wrong to go to bed with your neighbor's
wife.
You don't have to be a Christian to know that it's wrong to betray a friend.
You don't have to be a Christian to know there's got to be some kind of a God somewhere
who made this whole world and however He is I ought to try to find Him and I ought to
try to be in a good relationship with Him.
God has planted that in the hearts of even the pagan and on that final day of judgment
when they stand before the throne of God they will be judged on the basis of the light
of their conscience before the face of God and what will happen on that day is that just
as every Jew living under the law will be found guilty for having broken the known and
revealed will of God.
Every Gentile apart from faith in Jesus Christ is going to discover that even though He
has known aspects of truth, even those aspects of truth He will have knowingly and deliberately
ignored and therefore He is guilty before the face of God and God is righteous in His
judgment.
That's Paul's argument at Romans 1, 2 and 3.
He develops all of these arguments to prove when push comes to shove that there is nobody
on that final day that can stand before the Lord God and say, "Lord God, I have been
everything that you have wanted me to be.
I have kept your law perfectly.
I am totally righteous and therefore I am not worthy of judgment but I am worthy of glory
and honor and blessing.
There isn't anybody that hasn't broken the law of God.
The Gentiles have broken the light of their conscience.
The Jews have broken the light of the revealed will of God were all guilty.
Nobody can make it himself or herself and we all need the grace of Jesus to be righteous
before the face of God.
My experience is that a lot of people, when they stand before the throne of God, hope
to plead that their good deeds will outbe their bad deeds.
And most everybody you meet knows fundamentally that they're not perfect, although most people
think they're a little more perfect than the neighbor.
The truth of the matter is when we stand before the judgment seat of God, God isn't going
to ask us how many of my laws have you kept.
The question is, is there even one that you've broken when you stand before the judge?
It doesn't help to argue all the righteous deeds that you've done and what a good citizen
you are and how glad this country ought to be that you're part of it.
I mean, you try that once.
I saw a man in the courtroom do that.
He argued his whole pedigree before the judge.
He ran her head light, five o'clock in the morning and the police got him.
And he was found guilty because he broke the law.
Paul's argument is, by works of the law, well no man, be justified.
Chances are you and I, we look at our own lives and we say, well, I know there are some things
aren't right.
You know, on the whole I'm not bad in this area and I'm not bad in that area.
And Paul says, there's got to come a time in your life and in my life where we understand
that even if I live to be a hundred thousand, I can never honor God the way that I need to
honor God.
I can never love God the way that I need to love God.
I am guilty.
I am under the judgment of God and the only way to avoid the judgment of God is to embrace
Jesus as the righteous and so God.
Because you see there's only one man that ever lived upon the face of the earth who kept
all of the revealed will of God every moment of every day and his name is Jesus who died
in the cross for you and for me and who lives today and sits at the right hand of God making
intercession for all of the saints of God.
And the righteousness that God is looking for in your life and in my life flows not out
of trying more hard or harder to be all of the things that we discover that we cannot
be.
It flows by embracing in faith the Son of God the Lord Jesus in whom I am righteous
before God.
And when He's your Lord and when He's my Lord and when He's your Savior and when He's
my Savior and we seek to walk in repentance and in His grace day by day then when that
awesome day of judgment is revealed and the judgments of God are unleashed before all
nations and everybody's secrets of hearts are laid bare for all the world to see.
And when men and women who have walked in unbelief, power and fear before the majesty
of God and are calling upon the mountains to fall upon them and the hills to cover them
in that day you and I can stand in confidence and in boldness before the throne of God.
And that judge seated on the throne is not only the judge of everybody that's ever lived
but He is my father, He is my father, He is my daddy.
And in that day I will hear the words well done good and faithful servant.
You've been faithful over little I will put you over much, enter into the joy of your
father.
May that be true for your life as well as mine, let us pray.
But an awesome thing it is Lord that we live before the face of God that there is no thought
we think, no word we speak, no activity we engage in but you're all knowing and all
searching eye has found it out.
But an awesome thing Lord to contemplate that is coming a day when every careless word
that we have spoken will be held for us to be accountable to you and what a fearsome
thing for men and women outside of Jesus Christ to contemplate the awesomeness of that
day of wrath and how glad we are this morning for the Lord Jesus.
That Lord He absorbed our judgment so that at Him we might be the righteousness of God.
And we pray Lord that for this coming week not only but as we prepare for the celebration
of communion next Sunday morning that Lord we might just richly drink from that grace
that we have in Jesus not resting nor giving you rest Lord until every part of our being
is consumed with your glory and your power and your majesty.
And Lord in a world of loose living and in a world of so much disobedience let us be
a people who find joy in walking in obedience before their God.
Because Father we love you we're glad for the revelation of your character in the person
of Jesus Christ.
We're glad Lord that your will is not a will that is intended to hurt or to harm or to
destroy but that your will is a means into life and liberty and into freedom.
Alpo's Lord is so shine that the darkness in our land will be driven back and the world
will acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
Thank you Lord for your word to apply it to our lives.
We ask it in Jesus name, Amen.