The Good News of God's Wrath (Romans 1:18-32)

Hi church family, this is Ben, one of the elders at Upide.

We had a little bit of a technical hiccup on Sunday, so I am re-recording the message from Sunday.

And uh you may notice that it sounds a little bit more quiet and sterile.

That's because I'm not doing it in the sanctuary full of people.

So that's why we're doing it this way.

Just a heads up on that.

We are going to be in Romans chapter 1, starting in verse 18 today.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

So if you have a Bible, please grab that and be ready to read that.

Just a disclaimer for this passage, if you have kids around as you're listening, this is not an especially kid-friendly passage, and I can't shy away from that in the teaching of God's word.

And so just a heads up, this is a little bit more PG 13 than what we normally do on a Sunday morning.

So I wanted to give you that kind of disclaimer.

So we're in Romans 1, starting in verse 18.

For God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, since what can be known about God is evident among them because God has shown it to them.

For his invisible attributes, that is his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through that which he has made.

As a result, people are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude.

Instead, their thinking became worthless, and their senseless hearts were darkened.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles.

Therefore, God delivered them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves.

They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator who is praised forever.

Amen.

For this reason God delivered them over to disgraceful passions.

Their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.

The men in the same way also left natural relations with women and were inflamed in their lust for one another.

Men committed shameless acts with men and committed in their own persons the appropriate penalty of their error.

And because they didn't think it worthwhile to acknowledge God, God delivered them over to a corrupt mind, so that they do not do what is right.

They are filled with all unrighteousness, evil, greed, and wickedness.

They are full of envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, and malice.

They are gossips, slanderers, god haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, senseless, untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful.

Although they know God's just sentence, that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but even applaud others who practice them.

All right, let's pray.

Lord, I thank you so much for today, and I ask that you would be glorified as we study your word.

I ask that you would fill me with your spirit to teach your word, and that you would fill the hearers with your spirit to discern and divide and discern what it is you want to say.

Please be glorified in your name.

Amen.

Okay.

So, by a show of hands, how many of you think that I am God?

Okay, nobody raised their hands.

That is a good sign.

We're already doing great.

How many of you think I'm the Holy Spirit?

Anybody?

Nobody.

Good.

That is a good sign and makes me feel really good about our church.

I am not God.

I am not the Holy Spirit.

I am empowered by the Holy Spirit to teach his word, and I prayerfully speak via the Holy Spirit as I interpret his word, but I am not God.

And the Holy Spirit, as believers, lives inside you as well.

So therefore, please take what we talk about today and sift it through the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, not just the proof texts, but larger chunks and quantities of scripture to get the whole counsel of it in order to check up against that.

And the reason why I say that is because this passage is about God's wrath.

It's titled The Good News of God's Wrath.

Now, we all have a flesh nature and a sin nature, and God's wrath really creates friction against that sin nature.

So that is why I just want to make extra sure today that we're gonna take these things to the Lord and in prayer, because odds are good I'm going to offend everybody today, in one way or the other, unintentional as it may be.

Fair enough?

Okay.

So we're studying the book of Romans, and this is the big question to start with.

Why does Paul talk to believers about wrath?

See, we see in chapter 1, verse 7, he says to all who are in Rome loved by God, called as saints.

His audience is predominantly believers.

So, if that's the case, why is he starting his letter by saying, Hi, this is who I am, this is who you are, I thank God for you, I want to visit you, the gospel's the power of salvation, straight into God's wrath.

Kind of conventional thinking would lead us to believe that Christians don't need to hear this, right?

So, why would Paul, through the Holy Spirit, lead off this letter with the wrath of God when speaking to believers?

That's what we want to talk about today, and hopefully we're gonna pull some application from that.

So, but in order to do that, I need to lay some groundwork here, just to start off with, because the Roman Church is complicated.

It is not like the 21st century evangelical American church that we may see today.

And here's why.

We can see from the text that it is made up of both Jewish converts and Gentile converts, both believers, Jews and Gentiles, Jews who have turned from Judaism and confessed Jesus as the Messiah and the fulfillment of that Judaism, and Gentiles who have renounced their entire way of life to follow Jesus.

That is complicated.

And here's the best way I could think of to give you a picture of what that looks like.

Imagine if you are addressing a church that is made up of people that one group are converted Amish people, and the other group just got saved out of a out of the Burning Man Festival, if you know what that is.

It is a festival known for many things, including hedonism.

So if you can imagine that, that is the Roman church here.

Now, this is the Roman church, right?

So it cannot be homogenous.

They actually have to figure things out and deal with this friction.

They can't pick up and walk down the street to Rome Baptist or to Calvary Rome or to the first Rome Church of Christ.

This is the church.

So their option is to figure out how to work through these things or to not be a part of the church, which is a non-option in the body of Christ.

So imagine with that imagery on a Sunday morning, you have one group walking in who is on the Jewish side in our paradigm here who would say, I just want you to know I want to make sure nobody is stumbled today, so my ankles are covered.

Nobody is gonna be stumbled by my exposed ankle.

And then you see the Jewish group, I mean the Gentile group come in out of Burning Man saying, Hey, look who wore clothes today.

Isn't this great?

That's the kind of church they had to deal with and to navigate there.

And that conflict and that friction is gonna play through this entire letter.

See, this letter is not just a bunch of things chopped up into chunks in chapters and sermon anecdotes.

It's an entire letter to be read at once and absorbed.

So all of these points flow into the other.

So that's what we're dealing with, just to give a little bit of background, and that will come into play later.

So the first big issue we need to see is the vertical issue of God's wrath.

Now we see here in the text, God's wrath is revealed from where?

From heaven.

Against what?

All ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

So it is revealed from heaven against all the unrighteousness and godlessness of people who suppress the truth.

Why?

Why is God's wrath being revealed here?

Because there is a broken covenantal relation between the creator and his creation.

And that's what we're going to see here, and that is why I'm pulling back into verse here 16 because I have to have some good verses in here, right?

Uh he says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it's the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

The spoiler alert for today is that the gospel is how this vertical relationship and broken covenant is repaired.

And that is the good news and the power of salvation to everyone who believes.

So we can cling to that and hope to that as we go through this passage.

But here God's wrath is revealed against the godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

Okay?

And continuing forward in verse 19, since what can be known about God is evident among them because God has shown it to them.

For his invisible attributes, that is his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world.

As a result, people are without excuse.

So pausing there for a moment, we see in verse 20 his invisible attributes, which are his eternal power and divine nature, his deity here, are clearly seen, and we are therefore without excuse.

Continuing in verse 21.

Though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude.

Instead, their thinking became worthless, their senseless hearts were darkened.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles.

And we'll pause there.

So this is the first issue, the broken covenant relationship between the creator and the creation.

Now, why am I framing it that way?

Because that's what's happening here.

It is the creation rebelling against the one who made them and denying him.

And there is a quote about this that is super important here of what this looks like is that I read, and it says, in rejecting him, uh not because we reject him as the Messiah, but because we reject him as creator.

That's a big deal.

In rejecting him as creator, we're not just saying, I don't need you to save me.

We're saying, I deny that you made me.

I am self-sufficient and self-existent.

And so we begin to ascribe to ourselves things that are only true of the invisible God.

So what's what it's easy to look back through the cross at this passage and go, oh yeah, this is talking about people who didn't accept Jesus.

We haven't even gotten to that point yet.

Here, we're getting to the point we're already at the beginning, at the very beginning, when all of humanity says, I deny that you made me.

That's pretty intense.

And what happens as a result is as it said in that quote, we begin to ascribe to ourselves things that are only true of the invisible God.

It's the rejection of the creator there.

Now that's what's funny is that at the beginning, when I said, How many of you by a show of hands think that I'm God?

That was a ludicrous question.

And everybody was like, You're out of your mind.

Only a crazy person would say that.

However, in our hearts, in our sin nature, we all believe that we are God.

We all believe that we should be in control, that we should call our own shots, that we should do as we see fit.

That's what we see play out in this passage.

This is the core of unrighteousness and godlessness.

And we see that all the way back in the beginning in Genesis 3, when the serpent tempts the first humans, and he says to Eve, In the day you eat of this fruit, you will what?

Be like God.

All the way back, the very, very first temptation we see in Scripture is him promising Eve, you're gonna be like God if you do this.

And so there's a rebellion there in saying, I want to be self-determinate, and I want to do what I want.

And the core of the human condition is God can't tell me what to do.

We're gonna see what that looks like in a moment.

But another way that I see this played out really, really well is in Ephesians 2, verses 1 through 5.

Ephesians 2:1–5

And that says, You were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously lived according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient.

We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath, as the others were also.

The good news is that this passage doesn't stop there.

It continues.

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, made us alive with Christ, even though we were dead in trespasses.

You are saved by grace.

Isn't that beautiful?

And I'm hoping we will continue to keep coming up for air and getting sips of air of the gospel as we talk through this passage as a whole and going through God's wrath here, is that this passage in Ephesians really pictures this really well, depicts it for us that we were dead in our sins and trespasses, right?

That we were disobedient, we lived according to our fleshly desires, we did what we wanted, and as a result, we're children under wrath.

That's exactly what this passage in Romans is talking about.

And but God, who was rich and in mercy, what did he do?

He made us alive with Christ, even though we were dead.

You are saved by grace.

So we can see here that we are all confined under God's wrath as a result of our rejection of him as God.

How do we reject him as God?

By refusing to do what he tells us to, by deviating from his plan for life, and by rejecting his commands.

So, with that core of the human condition, God can't tell me what to do.

We're going to pivot here to what that looks like as a result and how that affects the horizontal.

But a good way to pivot that is another passage in Ephesians, Ephesians 4, 17 through 19.

Therefore I say and testify in the Lord, you should no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thoughts.

They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, and because of the hardness of their hearts.

They became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more.

And that is going to dovetail nicely with our passage here is that as Paul is warning the Ephesian Church not to walk in this way, he talks about futility of thoughts, right?

Darkened in understanding, ignorant, hard hearts, and calloused, which sounds a whole lot here to like people their thinking becoming sit worthless and their senseless hearts becoming darkened in verse 21 of Romans 1.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and here in the Ephesians passage, it's that they are ignorant, futile in their thoughts, and that the result, what do they do?

Gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more.

And that's what we're gonna see in the rest of this passage here in Romans 1, is that giving over to impurity with a desire for more and more.

This is what it looks like when we insist on doing what we want.

And that is a good picture of God's wrath depicted here.

Now, see, we think about God's wrath, and what do we think about?

Okay, we have lightning from heaven, right?

No, that's like Thor and Zeus.

That's not God, right?

Okay, how about fire and brimstone?

Okay, yes, that did happen in scripture a few times, most notably with Sodom and Gomorrah.

But what does it say here that God's wrath looks like?

Which, by the way, the wrath of God in verse 18 is revealed.

That is a present, passive, indicative, which all that is to say, he's not talking about a time in the past specifically, he's not talking about an apocalyptic event in the future, is being revealed, simply stated, at the time of writing.

It's it's a it's a fact of current life.

So, what does that look like?

God gave them over in verse 24.

He delivered them over.

Now that word delivered means delivered.

That's it.

It just means he gave them over to their self-determination.

He gave them over to what they were demanding to do as a result of their rejection of him as the creator and their demand to be their own God.

So he gave them over to this.

And now we're gonna see three giving over here, and I want to make sure that we hit each one of these points and we'll discuss them.

Okay.

Starting in verse 24, therefore God delivered them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves.

Stop there for a moment.

What did he deliver them over?

The desires of their hearts to sexual impurity.

So in the desires of their hearts, what they demanded and what he gave them was the sexual impurity they were demanding in their desires.

So that and the result here is that their bodies are degraded among themselves.

Pause there for a moment.

It is easy for us to gallop ahead to the next passage that talks about unnatural sexual relations, lump them together, and say this is talking about just that.

No, this comes before that.

Here we see the wrath of God as a result of rejecting his rule includes being delivered over in the desire of one's hearts to sexual impurity.

I need you to understand this.

All humans have a broken sexual ethic that must be sanctified.

All human beings.

We like to think of others and the things that they struggle with and the things that are disgusting to us because they're the ones who do it.

All of us need deliverance from our broken sexual understanding.

That starts with lust.

All the way back when the Gospels, when Jesus says that lust is like committing adultery.

And it continues forward.

We all have a broken sexual ethic that must be sanctified by the work of the Holy Spirit as we surrender to Jesus.

Now, why do I say that?

Because our this is how the world works is that we seek to find fulfillment, acceptance, intimacy, satisfaction in our sexual experiences.

And those are things that do not satisfy in that way.

But that is what we seek in those.

We seek to fill things that only God can fill in our souls with physical experiences, and the results is degraded bodies.

Now, why do I say that that's what's happening?

Because he continues in this context of sexual impurity to include exchanging the truth of God for a lie and worshiping and serving what's been created instead of the creator whose praise forever.

Amen.

In our broken sexual ethic, what we are doing is worshiping a created being rather than the creator.

And that is the first giving over in desires of heart to sexual impurity so that their bodies are degraded.

Now, something interesting here in verse 25.

This is the first time the word amen appears in the New Testament.

Paul uses it a lot.

Now, it's interesting because we like to think, uh, we use the word amen in a really weird way.

So we use it basically as if we're hanging up the phone with God when we're praying, right?

And yet, in the Old Testament, we see the word amen as agreeing to the terms of a covenant.

Like in Deuteronomy, when they are reading the terms of the law, and the people respond, Amen, Amen, Amen down the line.

And so in the New Testament, especially with through Paul's writings, he is almost always attributing the word amen after wonderful, praiseworthy things about God that are indisputable.

Isn't that interesting?

Is that he's saying God is the creator who is praised forever.

Amen.

Basically, it should be a worshipful response.

So, and we kind of use it either to hang up when we're done praying or to transition from one church uh chunk to the next, one sunk, one section of the service.

To the next, or to try to get everybody to say it at the same time as a form of crowd control.

Now, here's what I'm not saying.

I'm not saying if you amen wrong, you're in trouble.

I'm not saying that you're accidentally going to sin or do something wrong.

What I am saying is it's worth thinking about what am I amening?

What did I just say, yes, so be it, is what the word amen means, when somebody else is praying or when I am praying.

And so it's not worth freaking out about.

It's not worth building a weird structure and ritual about, but it is worth going, huh, I wonder what I'm amening.

Anyway, back to the text here.

First giving over to sexual impurity as a result of the desires of their heart, and the result being their bodies being degraded among themselves.

Number two, in verse 26, for this reason God delivered them over to disgraceful passions.

The women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.

The men in the same way also left natural relations with women and were inflamed in their lust for one another.

Men committed shameless acts with men and committed in their own persons the appropriate penalty of their error.

So point number two here, what are they being dis uh delivered over to in God's wrath?

Their disgraceful passions.

Passion burning is what that word means.

It's a burning and it's disgraceful.

As we insist on being our own God, we will chase after things that are burning disgraceful passions.

And here's an example of what he says here.

Women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.

The men left natural relations with women and were inflamed in their lust for one another.

Men committed shameless acts with men.

And as a result, they received in their own persons the appropriate penalty of their error.

Now, I am an elder of this church, but I'm not the only elder of this church.

And so as we have adapted our bylaws, we wrote those out, we worked through a statement of faith together and all that.

What I want to do is I just want to read you an excerpt of our statement of faith so you know where Abide Calvary stands on this issue.

That way you don't go, here's Ben's opinion, here's this.

So this is the stance of Abide Calvary.

Statement of faith point 14.

We believe in the creation and God is the creator.

We believe that God created man and he created the male and female.

As such, he created them different so as to complement and complete each other.

God instituted monogamous marriage between male and female as the foundation of the family and the basic structure of human society.

For this reason, homosexuality and all other sexual preferences or orientations are unnatural, sinful, and unacceptable to God.

An excerpt of point 15, the first part of it, we believe marriage is exclusively the legal union of one genetic male and one genetic female, sanctioned by the state and evidenced by a marriage ceremony.

We also believe that legitimate biblical sexual relations are exercised solely within marriage.

This is the stance of abide Calvary.

I don't think that's controversial.

Because looking at this text, it is very clear what's happening here and what God's standard is and how this is a deviation from God's design.

We see from the very, very beginning in Genesis how even before sin enters the world, anything God institutes male and female monogamous relationship.

He says, For this reason, man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

He makes this gnomic standard in the midst of a narrative to say this is how it is.

And here we see what happens when that is broken.

So I don't feel the need to apologize for that, and I don't think that's controversial.

So in summary, the stance of Abide Calvary is that anything outside of monogamous marriage between a male and a female is outside the biblical witness and is sin.

Just so we're clear on that.

And that's once again, I don't think this should be controversial.

So in that second point of God delivering them over, we see disgraceful passions manifesting in unnatural sexual relations, and the result being the appropriate penalty of the error, their error.

First one, sexual impurity as a result of the desires of their hearts, and the result being bodies being degraded.

Here, disgraceful passions manifesting in unnatural sexual relations, and the consequence being the appropriate penalty of their error.

Now we have a third one here, starting in verse 28.

Because they didn't think it worthwhile to acknowledge God, God delivered them over to what?

To a corrupt mind, so that they do not do what is right.

They are filled with all unrighteousness, evil, greed, wickedness.

They are full of envy, murders, quarrels, deceit, and malice.

They're gossips, slanderers, god haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, senseless, untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful.

That's a lot of uns in there.

So here, this third point.

What is God delivering them over as they insist on being their own God to a corrupt mind?

First one with sexual impurity as a result of the desires of their hearts.

The second one, disgraceful passions.

The third one here, corrupt mind.

So we see the whole embodiment of corruption as a result of rejecting the Creator's plan and doing what we want instead.

We make terrible gods, and yet we insist upon that, apart from the salvation of Jesus and the sanctification of the Holy Spirit.

So here, this corrupt mind, what does this look like?

Not doing what's right and being full of all unrighteousness, evil, greed, and wickedness.

And then we have a list here of all these different things to where these three things, these three givings over combined, all kind of embody the Ten Commandments as a result of things that are being broken.

Now, this is a lot of different things that look as if they are one, and I'll get to that in a second because they're not.

That's an interesting interpretation.

That's that's usually where we have a pitfall in this passage.

So I'll get to that in a moment here.

But understand here that the wrath of God in this passage, as a result of sin, as a result of insisting upon being our own self-determined God, is all of these things, uh, disgraceful passions, desires of the heart in sexual immorality, and a corrupt mind.

So we need to pause for a second and do a little bit of work here.

Why is Paul bringing this up?

See, Paul is brilliant.

We know that through the whole context of scripture, we know that because he was a Pharisee of Pharisees, his training was unsurpassed, and it's not like when he got saved and can and uh committed to following Christ that God dumped him out like water in the sand and made him a new person.

He is a brilliant person, and here he is writing by the power of the Holy Spirit to this church in Rome.

Now, why is he doing this?

Well, you remember when I said how there was a mixture of people in the Church of Rome, you have uh Jews who have confessed Christ as the Messiah and Gentiles who have renounced their way of life.

There's a lot of controversy between these two.

And so, as Paul is reading through the or writing through these things and they're reading them, it is very easy for the Jews on this side of the room to be side-eyeing the Gentiles over there, like, what is wrong with you?

You're gross.

Why do you act this way?

You are disgusting, you are the problem.

So, in the as that's happening, the Gentiles are looking at this and going, This is all that we have known all of our life, what you're describing, and you're telling me that all of this is sinful and unnatural and not uh compatible with the design of the creator.

And so when Paul brings this up, he is triggering the Gentiles in their understanding of how life works, and he is triggering the Jews' self-righteousness.

This is really important because right now the Jews are feeling really good about themselves because they don't believe that this applies to them.

They're not idolaters, right?

I mean, let's forget about Mount Sinai and let's forget about uh the judges and let's forget about the kings and let's for yeah, but but besides that, they don't worship idols, right?

And they don't do these things.

The nice thing about this is that this whole letter just continues to flow forward, and they're about to get theirs in chapter two.

But right here, they are filled with self-righteousness as a result of looking at this laundry list of predominantly Gentile sins.

Here's what I need you to understand.

This is a truth that I need you to internalize because this is how this passage goes sideways for so many times that we read it.

Those three giving over examples describe co-equal examples of man's depravity.

They do not describe one subset of humanity's sin.

Now, what this means is that these three giving over describe and embody and encompass humans and the sin of humanity.

It is not saying that the extremity of rejecting God is a certain subset of especially sinful, particularly depraved people.

Now, why do I say that?

There is no super sin.

This is not scriptural to think that there is a super sin that makes God even more angry with us than other sins.

Now, why do I say that?

Because the initial sin that confined all of humanity under God's wrath was the eating of fruit.

It is clearly not the action, but rather the heart condition.

And so every sin from telling a lie to the lust of one's heart to anything that we see in this laundry list here is a result of rejecting God's directions.

And that is what breaks our covenant with Him.

This is not describing a particular group that has ruined our values and our way of life.

I will get to that in a moment.

See, everybody wants God's wrath against some kind of sin.

We just don't want it against our own sin.

I'm gonna say that again.

Everybody wants God's wrath against some kind of sin.

We just don't want it against our own sin.

Now we need to do a little bit of work here.

I want to explain to you how the world works.

How the world can hijack our sin nature in order to get what it wants.

Okay, let me give you a picture.

You ready?

You have a problem.

There is an imminent threat to yourself, your family, and your way of life.

That imminent threat are those people over there.

They want to tear down everything sacred to you.

They want to destroy what is good and right, and they want to harm your family.

This is an imminent threat and a crisis to everything that you know.

But don't worry, because I can take care of you.

I can deal with them because I have the resources, I have the power, and I'm a big strong person who can protect you and deal with that problem over there.

And cut.

So that is how the world works.

It is depicting an imminent threat that is not your fault, but is rather the problem of another person you will probably never interact with in your day-to-day life, and saying they are the source of all of the problems, and I can take care of you if you will just agree to follow me instead.

So, this is how the politician you love and the politician you hate operate.

This is how the news channel you follow and the news channel that you hate operate.

This is how the CDC and the doctor you would rather follow operate.

This is how insurance sales works, this is how all retail sales tends to work, and if I can say it, this is how the YouTube pastor who is growing his church by breeding discontent works.

What's happening is attacking the other, and that is called self-righteousness.

We have been told that that is righteous anger.

It is the wrath of man that does not produce the righteousness of God.

This here is a hard truth.

Okay, everyone take a deep breath.

Hard truth about this.

The sins of the other do not pose the greatest threat to you, your family, your church, your community.

Your sin poses the greatest threat to you, your family, your church, your community.

So let me just explain this to you in such a way.

The sins of the homosexual are not as damaging and threatening to your family unit as your porn addiction is.

The statistics of pornography use among churchgoers is appalling, and we never talk about it.

And that is an industry, a multi-billion dollar industry that you would not believe.

How much funding it goes straight to abortions, how much it thrives on trafficking and other atrocities, and yet we tolerate it in our own homes, and you never hear about it from the pulpit.

How many times have you heard the dangers of the perversity of the sins of the other, and yet that is not one mentioned?

Also, the bitterness in our hearts, the malcontent in our hearts is the greatest threat to our family unit.

The lack of love, the self-righteousness, all of these different things, being unmerciful, being unloving, untrustworthy.

This is the biggest threat to you, to your family, to your church, to your community.

And here is the problem.

When we think somebody else's sin, please hear this, when we think somebody else's sin is the danger, we will run to a created being to police that and save us.

When we understand that our own sin is the danger, we will run to the creator to save us.

And this is crucial.

When we are self-righteous, we will not run to the creator.

We will run to a created being to provide the proper protection for us.

When we understand that our sin is the problem, we will run to the creator, which is the power of salvation to those who believe according to the book of Romans.

The solution here is not to fix the horizontal.

The solution here is not to legislate all sin out of the way.

Although I am not against legislation and going for that, that is totally fine.

But it is not the ultimate solution to the problem.

The solution is the fixing of the vertical, the broken covenant between God and humans by the gospel, the power of salvation.

I say this with love, but you need to understand that when Jesus returns, he is not coming to restore 1950s Americana.

He is restoring his kingdom, building his kingdom.

Okay, everyone take a breath.

We're doing okay so far?

Good.

Verse 32, I want to touch on here, because here we see these people, they know God's just sentence that those who practice such things deserve to die, but they not only do them, but they even applaud others who practice them.

Now, I know that we are holy people and we love the Lord.

We would certainly never applaud evil actions, would we?

On the people that we champion, on the people we follow, on the people that we want to have deliver us from our problems.

Certainly, we would not applaud the works of the flesh in Ephesians 5.19 through 26, as opposed to the fruit of the Spirit, right?

That's for other people, right?

Okay, I'm gonna move on really quick from that.

Here's what I want to say as we turn the corner here.

Because we got heavy there, didn't we?

The beauty of the gospel in the midst of God's wrath.

The good news of God's wrath is the gospel.

First Corinthians 6, 9 through 11 paints this picture so well.

It says, Don't you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God's kingdom?

Don't be deceived.

No sexually immoral person, idolaters, adulterers, or males who have sex with males, no thieves, greedy people, drunkards, verbally abusive people, or swindlers will enter God's kingdom.

And such, some of you used to be like this, 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.

Isn't that beautiful?

The beauty of the gospel is that sin does not allow entrance into the kingdom of God with sin.

It is not tolerated in the kingdom of God.

However, we were all like this, and we were washed, sanctified, justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

That is the beauty of this.

There is no entrance into the kingdom of God with sin living within us.

And the freedom from sin comes not from within us and not from within another created being, but by the gospel of Jesus and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.

This is why the gospel is the power of salvation to all who believe, and this is why the wrath of man is revealed against all mankind as they have rejected him and insisted on being their own God and worshiping created things.

He gives them over to their sin.

He gives us over to our sin.

And he saves us from our state.

He pulls us from that pit.

That's an intense thing to say, and so here's what I mean by that.

Two big words compassion three big words.

Compassion without compromise.

Compassion without compromise.

These three things need to be held together, and you cannot have one without the other.

Compassion will allow us to be merciful to the sinner, as Jesus says, neither do I condemn you.

Without compromise, allows us to hold the line of what God calls sin and not approve of it, as He said, Go and sin no more.

These two things cannot exist without each other in a healthy body.

If you have compassion without compromise, you have licentiousness.

If you tolerate sin and compromise on what God says is sin, we have licentiousness.

And that would be like telling people come to Jesus, you don't need to come to Jesus.

It makes no sense.

And on the other side, the having that without compromise, without compassion, is self righteousness.

And what that says is I'm already fixed, and God just needed to tweak something in my life, but you're pretty messed up and he may not save you.

You need compassion without.

Compromise.

Here's a big thought.

There are 10,080 minutes in a week.

Now I know we spend some of that time sleeping, but I'm not going to argue over how much time because that will just lead to bitterness among each of us, especially if you have young children.

So we'll just go with 10,000 eighty minutes in a week.

If we spend 10,075 minutes of our week bitterly and contentiously proclaiming an earthly kingdom with grievance and expect that that five-minute gospel presentation is going to be effective, we are delusional.

Here's what I want to say about that, as I realize that is a strong statement.

The gospel is the power of salvation, and nothing we can and cannot say or do can diminish that.

We do not want to build a legalism that says you have to preach it the right way or it's not going to happen.

However, we don't need to make it harder on people.

Now here's what here's a good image of that.

Due to the extracurricular activities of my children, I have spent more time in Muay Thai gyms than I ever thought I would.

They smell fantastic, these Muay Thai gyms.

They do not smell fantastic at all.

Now imagine somebody who has just done an intensive, intense workout and they are parched.

They are so immensely thirsty and they are dying for some water.

And you have a bottle of water.

And yet, before you hand them that bottle water, you take a dripping, sweaty gym sock and put the water bottle in there and try to hand that to them.

Now the water is in a bottle, it's still uh isolated, it's still safe.

However, that's just gross.

Why would you do that?

Why would we think that people would want that?

And that is the problem, is when we spend 10,075 minutes of our week just with grievance in our heart, campaigning and championing an earthly kingdom.

What makes us think that we are extending the fragrance of Christ and not the stank of the world?

The gospel can still work in that way, but it shouldn't have to, is what I'm saying.

Imagine the Jay the Jews preaching the gospel to the Gentile side and saying, Yes, you can be saved, but first you have to join this group and you have to do these things.

In addition to the gospel, and also we hate you.

And think everything you do is the problem and the breaking of our society.

How effective do you think that's going to be?

Now look at the other side.

The Gentiles say, Hey, we want you to come to Jesus, but you don't need to change anything about your life and you can enter the kingdom.

They'd be like, Don't I already have it then?

If I don't need to change anything in my life?

If I don't need to call him Lord, then what's the difference?

Why would I want that?

So here is the issue with what we are currently doing when we spend 10,075 minutes in our week bitterly and contentiously proclaiming an earthly kingdom.

Instead, we of doing what Jesus called us to do: making disciples, preaching the gospel.

Instead, we grow our churches by isolating into like-minded tribes.

Something that the Roman church did not have the luxury of doing.

And let me say this, even though it's a hard punch to say, more than one notable church has vastly grown their church, not by the gospel and not by reaching the lost, but by galvanizing the discontent of the last couple of years and getting all kinds of bitter people together in one building.

That is not what he calls us to.

And when that happens, we find commonality in what we are against rather than in the gospel and what he has saved us.

I love how in 2 Corinthians, if anyone's in Christ, he is a new creation.

False stock.

Old things are gone, new things are here.

That means we're on level playing ground.

And we will diminish the power of the gospel in our own minds if we forget that we are equal partakers of this wrath and saved only by the grace of God via the blood of Christ.

And that is the good news, is that we have that.

We have that salvation.

Can we not proclaim that, the other 10,000 seventy-five minutes in our words and actions?

Can we not extend the fragrance of Christ?

I think we can.

And if we insist on thinking that this passage is specifically directing and addressing a specific sin or a class of people, well then you're going to have a hard time with the next couple chapters of Romans.

And I'm not even teaching those.

So when you come back, you can hear that as well.

Here's the good news.

Jesus is the power of salvation, faith in Jesus, repentance, following him is the power of salvation for all who believe.

If you do not know him, if you do not follow him, you cannot outsin him.

There is nothing that is too far for you to come to him.

And we prior to his salvation were just as dirty.

We are all works in progress.

Let us proclaim the glory of what he has done and what he is doing by his sanctification.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, I thank you so much for the blood that you have shed, that you might make us clean.

God, I thank you for the salvation you offer us through the blood of your Son.

I thank you that though we insisted upon your wrath, and you have delivered us to that, you have also conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of your love by the power and the blood of Jesus.

I thank you for the sanctification you offer us through the Holy Spirit.

Lord, free us from self-righteousness.

Rid us of licentiousness.

May we hate our own sin just as much as we are disgusted by the sins of others, and may we turn to you as the solution.

And I thank you, Jesus, that you are patient with us.

You do not cast us off, you do not turn us away, and you do not walk away.

I thank you for your patience in that.

Let us be people who proclaim you in a way that brings the aroma of Christ in everything.

I ask, Lord, for anybody who hears us who does not confess you, that they would be intrigued to know you.

They would be intrigued to know what life is like in wholeness with you, not in the breaking and the stumbling of being given over to our own devices, but by what it looks like to follow you in freedom of service.

Be glorified in your name.

Amen.