Romans – Love & Wrath

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason Burns and Access Church in Lakeland, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

We are in part two of a series called Romans, and it's all about the book of Romans.

If you're new to our church, we every summer we like to take a book of the Bible and we really dig deeply into that book.

So for 10 weeks, we are going to be in the book of Romans.

We started last week with week number one, Romans 1, verse 16 and 17.

Romans 1:16

Paul says, I am unashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The gospel is this interesting word.

It literally just means good news.

Paul's saying that we have this good news, and the good news, the gospel is literally Jesus.

That he came, lived, died for us, rose again for us.

That is the gospel.

That's all there is to it.

It is by his love and by his grace and through faith that we see receive salvation.

That is the good news of the gospel.

If you add anything else to it, it convolutes it and messes it up.

The gospel is the message of Jesus.

It was this beautiful kickoff.

And then today is Mother's Day.

And so we are just in part two of the series on Romans.

You need to know this about our church.

Like, we don't do like a flowery mom message and then like a beat the dads up on Father's Day message.

That's not how we roll.

We're just going to keep going in the series, and um, it's just funny how God seems to work.

I don't know why this is the way it is.

But here we are on Mother's Day.

At the end of Romans chapter 1, in all of Romans chapter 2, there's this interesting topic that we're gonna preach a Mother's Day message on.

Romans 1 · chapter mention Romans 2 · chapter mention

Warm and fuzzy message on the wrath of God, everybody.

So buckle in.

Um honestly, this is a tough message.

This is a strong message.

Um, and as I was preparing it, I thought there's really two pathways we can go, and I wanted to let you choose.

Uh we can go really strong with a message like this, or we can go really soft to make it feel good.

So we're gonna do a quick vote.

Who wants the message to be soft?

Just really flowery, okay, perfect.

Anybody want to go strong, go hard in the paint today?

Okay, this is on you, everybody.

You voted for this.

Earlier this week, I said to Ryan, our executive pastor, I was like, bro, this is one of those e this is those messages where I'm gonna get a lot of angry emails on it.

And he goes, Man, it's what God's word says, so preach it with boldness.

So if you do have an email today, please send it to Ryan at access.tv.

It's gonna be strong.

Every year at the end of the school year, my family takes a vacation right after school gets out.

So, regardless of what you think, I'm going on vacation, everybody.

That's what's gonna happen.

All right.

Here's the truth.

When it comes to a topic like the wrath of God, you have two choices.

I'm gonna be really honest and come out swinging here.

You have two choices.

Option one is you can emotionally react.

You can say, well, that doesn't feel good.

That's not what I think, that's not how I feel, you can emotionally react, or you can do what I actually believe is mature following of Jesus, which is to bring your opinion to the Word of God.

Now leave this up here for just a moment because I wonder if the American church were to process this properly through the lens of, let's just say, our politics, for just a moment.

I wonder how different the church, the American evangelical church of Jesus would be perceived if we would just think through this lens.

You see, for so many people, what we've done is we've created a culture where people come to a church and they say, Does this church line up with the way that I want to vote?

Does this church line up with my political affiliations?

Does this church line up with how I feel?

Instead of going to God's word and saying, God, I have opinions, but none of my opinions matter.

I'm living subjected to your opinion.

Your word has the final word in my life.

This is a tough topic.

I'm gonna be honest.

We're gonna talk about the wrath of God.

Wrath means extreme anger.

And that doesn't feel super good.

I understand it, but you have two choices in my prayer even from the beginning, is that you will say, God, speak to me through this, and may I leave different because of what you say.

A few weeks ago, I was playing football in the front yard with my boys, like I like to do.

And it's always so fun, and I'm I'm the dad who doesn't let my kids win.

Like I'm going to win until you beat me.

And when you beat me, I'm gonna celebrate you.

But this is the reason I work out, this is the reason I try to stay fit and take care of myself.

It's because I don't want my kids to win until they can.

So a few weeks ago, I'm out in the front yard playing football with my boys, and usually I play quarterback, but I decided to play offense and defense, and my son Joey was quarterbacking, throwing the ball, and Gavin and I were playing against each other.

Well, I was on offense, I was totally schooling him, just working this kid like I do.

And I was on offense, and Joey threw the ball to me.

I went deep and he just underthrew it a little bit, and the moment it left his hand, I knew it wasn't going to be close to me, and I knew that Gavin would get an easy interception or at least knock the ball down.

And Gavin jumped up, and when he jumped up, he mistimed it and he missed the ball.

At this point, I've given up.

I thought I had no chance to catch it, but he missed the ball.

So in one nanosecond, I only had a moment to react, and I reacted, but I didn't get my hands in place in time, and the ball hit me right in my ring finger, full on.

Nose of the ball, tip of my finger.

I thought I shattered my finger.

It was it was in so much pain.

I came inside, I iced it, I don't think I broke it, or maybe I did, because for weeks my finger has been swollen.

And for weeks, my finger that is supposed to do this won't do that.

My finger has been swollen.

It's been so bad that I haven't been able to get my wedding ring on or off properly in weeks.

I force it on because the wrath of God is bad, but the wrath of an Italian wife might be worse, everybody.

And uh the first time I got it on, it was so tight, I had to use vegetable oil to get it off later that day.

And all this time, like for two months, I've had a finger that's not operating the way that I know it should, it's not operating the way that I think it should because of something that happened.

Have you ever had a moment in your life when God didn't operate the way you expected that he should?

You've ever had a moment in your life where something happened and you thought, God, that's not how you should respond.

That's not what you should do in this moment.

If you've ever felt that or experienced that, this message is for you.

Romans 1, verse 18.

Romans 1:18

We ended with verse 17 last week.

Here's how Romans 1 18 picks up.

Paul says this.

He says, the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people.

The people who suppress the truth by their wickedness.

Since what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them, God wants you to know who he is.

For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and his divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

God wants you to have no excuse to know who he is.

In fact, it is God's desire that all of us know him, the fullness of who he is, the fullness of his character, the fullness of his nature.

God's intention was that you and I would actually know him.

Now he starts in verse 18 by coming out with this really interesting phrase.

He says, the wrath of God is evident.

I don't like that.

Wrath means extreme anger, but here's what I want to start with today.

God's wrath is a part of his character.

And a lot of us don't like this because what we like is we like the soft, flowery picture of God.

We like the love, oh, he's love.

We reduce God into just this kind harpist who doesn't do anything.

But the truth is, wrath is as much a part of his character as his love, and as joy, as his peace.

Wrath is an important part of God's character, and I want to explain this today.

Here's the problem.

We can't understand the infinite understanding of God with our finite minds.

I would say it to you like this.

The reason is you cannot put God's characteristics into human understanding.

We all have had moments of wrath.

We have all had moments of anger, haven't we?

And here's what human wrath is.

Human wrath is an emotional response that is irrational, uncontrolled, and cruel.

Okay, can we have a moment of confession?

Has anyone this week had a moment of wrath come out of them?

Has anyone been cut off in traffic?

Has anyone driven on I-4?

Has anyone gone to Chuck E.

Cheese?

Has anyone had like we all we all have moments of human wrath.

God's wrath is different, though.

Here's God's wrath.

It's a righteous opposition to evil and to those who choose it.

God's wrath is actually about protection.

God's wrath is actually his love and his concern for you.

I I could maybe try to explain it like this.

My brother Mike went to New York City a couple couple days ago.

And he said he loved it.

And when he got back, I said, Did you have a good time?

He said, Yes.

And I said to him, I said, could you ever have imagined yourself living there for a season of your life?

And he said, Maybe when I was single or maybe when I was newly married with no kids.

But he goes, My kids aren't even old enough for me to take them there yet because Will, he's kind of wild man, he'll just run out into New York City traffic.

That is the wrath of my brother.

That this is the reason that I don't let my kids juggle knives or play with chainsaws.

That this is this is the reason that I was always extremely careful around them having when we had a pool, I just wanted them to be extremely careful and I always had to be there.

There were times where maybe I seemed mean, there were times when maybe I felt misunderstood, but I knew that I saw it from a different perspective than them and I cared about taking care of them.

Here's what you need to understand.

We think of love and wrath as opposites, but they're not.

The opposite of wrath is not love, it is neutrality.

It is not caring.

It is saying play in the street, I don't care.

Juggle knives, I don't really care.

Play with chainsaws, no one really cares.

It is neutrality, it is passivity.

Best example I can try to give of this is when I was in high school, uh, there was a church on the other side of my town.

It wasn't the church I went to, but a pastor on staff at that church was arrested for molesting and abusing some boys in his church.

Now, my family knew this guy.

I wouldn't say we were close to him, but we knew him.

And so he went through the whole process.

He was out on bail, and he called my dad, and he says, I'm having to get my life in order quickly.

I have to move out of this place.

I gotta figure some stuff out.

But no one in my church will even talk to me.

Is there any chance that Jason can come over and help me pack up and move?

If you're the father in that situation, what would you do?

My dad said, There is no way in the world that I would even consider that.

Why?

Because he loves me.

It doesn't matter my opinion in that moment, it doesn't matter if I thought I was strong enough to fend off any sort of attack.

He just knew that his wrath was on full display by him saying, Because I love you, I'm going to protect you.

Because I love you, I want the best for you.

This is the best that I can get at explaining what the wrath of God looks like.

The problem is we struggle to understand God.

So here's the question: how do we better understand him?

Let me give you a quick crash course in theology of how we can understand God better.

There's really two ways.

The first way is speculation.

Speculation is just us guessing who God is.

Pay attention when people talk about God to how often they say things like, I think.

If someone says I think, they're not backing it up scripturally.

Then it's just their speculation.

When people say, I think, I think, I think, I think this about God, God must be this way.

No, no, no.

It should always line up with his word.

Speculation is us guessing, but God wants us to have revelation.

Revelation is God revealing to us who he is.

Again, here's a crash course in systematic theology 101.

There's two ways that God reveals himself.

There's what we call general revelation.

General revelation is common and available to everybody.

And then there's special revelation, which is only available to some.

Kind of explain these to you.

I believe there's two ways that God generally reveals himself.

One is internal and one is external.

We'll start with external.

One of the ways that God reveals himself is through his creation.

We believe that the creation reveals the creator, that God's design reveals like there was a designer behind all of it.

And this is funny.

Have you ever been out in nature, out on a lake, sitting at the beach, sitting by a mountain, looking at the stars?

Have you ever felt closer to God as a result of it?

Have you ever had what felt like a spiritual experience?

It's funny because even people who wouldn't identify as a Christian have these moments where they say, like, I just felt at one with the universe.

Like they're not using our language, but they're saying there's just something in me that just feels so connected to something or someone when I'm out here.

I don't know what it is, I just feel closer to God.

I just feel at peace when I'm in nature.

The design reveals the designer.

In the same way that a painting reveals something about the painter, in the same way that a building reveals something about the architect, God's design reveals a lot about God.

That his creation is creative and it's beautiful and it's intricate and it's meticulous.

God's creation reveals something beautiful about who he is.

This is the external way that he generally reveals.

But there's also an internal way, and it's available to everyone.

It's that when God made us, he wired into you a conscience.

This is the reason that people who wouldn't even identify as Christians would say things like, Well, this is wrong and this is right.

It's funny because this is actually one of the great hypocrisies of people who are not followers of Jesus.

So what do you mean by that?

If you're not a Christian, whose law and whose order are you appealing to?

It's not the law of man.

It reveals that there has to be someone who is above, who says that certain things are wrong and certain things are right, that they stand in contrast to each other.

So every person has an ability to connect with God through nature, through seeing his creation, and also through their inner conscience.

But then there is what we would call special revelation.

It's available to some.

This is what how we connect with God through the Bible, through his word.

It's how we connect with God through prayer, through hearing him speak.

This is how we hear from God through prophecy and through all different ways that God wants to reveal himself.

God's desire is that we would know him.

His desire is that we would know the fullness of who he is.

If you were to look through Scripture, one of the number one attributes associated with God is actually his holiness.

Now it doesn't take a hard journey to get from holiness to wholeness.

Holiness is about integrity.

The root of integrity is the word integris, which means whole.

To understand God's holiness, you have to understand the wholeness or the fullness of who he is.

You have to understand that he is full of love and he's full of wrath.

These aren't contradicting.

The opposite of love and wrath are not each other.

These are literally two sides of the same coin.

To understand God's love, you have to understand that he wants to protect you from some things that will hurt you.

That he wants to care about you so much that he sets boundaries and limitations so you don't go stumbling into your future.

It's that because he loves you, he wants the best for you, so therefore he's going to set some guidelines in your life.

To protect you from you, to protect you from the consequences of your sin.

His desire is to protect you.

Now the wrath of God is such an interesting topic.

You can literally read about it 600 times in the Bible.

If you start in the Old Testament, if you've ever read the Old Testament, and maybe you thought, why is God so angry in the Old Testament?

And maybe you've even thought to yourself, well, why do bad things happen to good people?

Why would a good God allow that?

Romans chapter 1 and 2 explains it beautifully.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

There's two kinds of wrath that we see on display in Romans chapter 1 and 2.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

In Romans 1, it's passive wrath.

In Romans 2, it's active wrath.

We'll start with Romans chapter 2.

Romans 2 · chapter mention

Let's talk about what the active wrath looks like.

Romans 2, verse 5 says this.

Romans 2:5

Paul says, 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.

Essentially, here's what's happening.

Every time you sin, every time you break God's rules, God's law, it's like there is a ledger of your sin that it's constantly being added to.

Every sin, every mistake, every act of disobedience, all of it's being stored against you.

And if you don't receive the forgiveness of God that's available to you through what Jesus did on the cross, the book of Revelation says there will be a day when you stand before God, before the great white throne of judgment, and you give an account for all of your sin.

Everything being stored up against you.

The scriptural picture we have of this is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

When he says, Father, not my will but yours, but if it be your will, would you take this cup from me?

The cup kind of is representative of all of the wrath of God for all of the sins of the world that he was carrying.

It's like, if you can take this from me, please do, because it is so much.

But if not, not my will, not my desire, but yours.

Active wrath.

But there's another one that I think is sneaky.

There's another one that I, in my humble opinion, has a way of hurting Christians.

It's what I call passive wrath.

Here it is in Romans 1, 21 through 25.

It says, For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal human beings and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore, God gave them over in their sinful desires of their hearts.

This phrase gave them over is so important.

He gave them over to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.

They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator who is forever praised.

Amen.

Paul steps into something and he says, here's what God will do sometimes.

He'll give you over to your own desires.

Essentially, what God is saying is if you're going to do this your way, you are going to walk through the consequences of the decisions that you make.

And he says that what they did was they exchanged the created for the creator.

Best I can explain it to you is this.

Christians who say things like, I know what God's word says, but my opinion is this.

You and I, we're the created.

God is creator.

Only one gets the final word.

And then he brings up sexual immorality.

This is the part I'm gonna step all up on your toes for just a moment.

And the reason I think he brings this up is there is no other place in our life where we tend to compromise more than the area of our sex, sexuality, and sex lives.

What we tend to do is say, God, I know you think this, but my opinion is this.

And God, I know what you think, but love is love, and my opinion matters, and everybody should get to do what they want to do, and it's it's not really harming anybody.

And what we do is we substitute the created for the creator in terms of whose opinion matters most.

Literally, the next six or seven verses after we just read are a sucker punch to every person in that was reading in the city of Rome.

I believe every American should read it and should ask the question what do I do if my opinion doesn't line up with the word of God?

React emotionally or bring it to the word of God?

Here's what he says.

He says, because the created placed their opinions over the creator, something happened.

And people started trading the natural for the unnatural.

Women left the natural order of being married to and having sex with men, and they traded it for the unnatural pleasures and passions of being with another woman.

Men did the same thing.

They left the natural and they pursued the unnatural of sexual relationships with other men.

I've seen this verse used and twisted so many different ways.

People will say, Well, God wants us to pursue what is natural, and I feel like God created me this way.

This is my natural, authentic, true self.

Do you know what this word means?

Natural and unnatural refer to what we call in theology as natural law.

Natural law doesn't mean how you feel like you were born, it's how you were intended before the fall of man in the Garden of Eden.

So, what happens in the Garden of Eden?

Well, we see that God tends to be more binary, right and wrong, good and bad, light and darkness.

It says that God created them in his image.

Male and female.

What does culture say?

Gender is not binary, it is a spectrum.

He put into them characteristics and abilities that are masculine and feminine.

What does culture say?

No, no, no.

Gender is fluid.

He made them to be married and a spouse, one man and one woman.

What does culture say?

Follow your heart.

Love is love.

And literally, what God's intention for you and me is to understand that he has a way that is right.

And his wrath will be poured out.

Why?

Because he loves you and because he doesn't want you to suffer the consequences of the decisions that you're possibly making.

In Scripture, there are ten different categories of human sexual expressions that are all classified as sin.

And there's one that's classified as worship.

Every time I talk about this, I get some pervert husband who's like, Pastor Jason, you're the best thing ever.

Keep preaching that.

I love you.

I'm gonna go home and worship with my wife right now.

And I'm like, punch you in your throat.

Don't tell me that.

Here's what it means: the natural way, which means the way God intended it when He created nature and life and everything, was that sex would be reserved for one man and for one woman who are married to each other in the context of their marriage.

Period.

Now, before I go any farther, let me give you a warning.

Please do not clap for me in this moment if you agree with me.

Here's my reason.

It's really easy to cheer for the sins you don't struggle with.

One man, one woman in the context and the confines, which is the safety of marriage.

In marriage, it is worship.

But then there's a list of ten other sexual categories.

Fornication, sex before marriage, adultery, sex once you're married outside of your marriage, rape, incest, bestiality, all kinds of others, including, this is important, including homosexuality.

And if you want me to be soft and kind, what I'll say is it's just not God's best.

If you want me to be honest and direct, it is sin and it breaks the heart of God.

You need to get this.

One of the categories in this list is an ancient Greek word pornea.

Porneia is kind of a catch-all word.

It's like if there was a junk drawer, it's the word which we would literally transliterate over and over to get to the word pornography.

It's the reason that in the book of Job 31.1, Job says, I made the covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully on a woman who is not my wife.

Every single one of us, if we're not careful, we will do and worship things that bring us pleasure.

And in doing so, what we do is we subject the Creator to the created.

It says to God, my opinion, my happiness, my desires matter more than you.

And in doing so, you will experience the wrath of God.

Whether it's active or passive, you will experience it.

Not because I think God is some cosmic killjoy wanting you not to have fun, but because God knows what is best for you.

So here's the question you have to answer.

It's the most important question you can answer.

Here it is, ready?

Two things.

Who is God?

And who am I?

Who's the creator?

Who's the created?

Whose voice gets prominence?

Whose voice is the final say?

Whose word is the final word for me in my life?

Who is God and who am I?

Here's what you need to understand.

If you think you are God, if you place yourself at the seat of all decisions, you will always struggle because all of your emotions and all of your feelings, they have limits to them.

But when you understand that God is a God who is full of love and wrath, that they are equal and opposite sides of the same coin that reveal his heart for humanity, you get it differently.

You understand him differently.

In fact, if you're like, I don't really get this, I can show it to you like this.

Love and wrath were both shown at the cross.

At the cross of Jesus, his love was poured out as his blood was shed for humanity.

Oh, what love! Oh, what a savior to lay his life down like that.

But also the wrath of God.

All the sins of the world, all past sins, all current sins, and all future sins were poured out on Jesus in this moment.

So what do we do?

Ask questions a moment ago.

These are some of the great philosophical questions of the day.

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Let me be very clear for a moment.

This isn't a good people versus bad people message.

As far as I can tell, and what the book of Romans shows us is that there was only ever one good person and his name was Jesus.

Everyone else falls on the other side of the line.

All bad.

So what do we do?

We need to approach the book of Romans and understand this.

Chapters 1 and 2 are written like a prosecuting attorney.

And he's making a case.

If the gospel is truly good news, for you to understand how good the good news is, you have to start by understanding how bad it is when you put yourself in the seat of God.

Because you can't do it on your own and you are leading yourself on the pathway to hell.

It's not God's intention.

Chapters 1 and 2.

If that's all you had, it would feel so damning.

It would feel so hopeless.

But then in Romans chapter 3, a little bit of light comes breaking through.

Romans 3 · chapter mention

Like light hitting a prism.

The story of creation and God's story is like light hitting the prism of the cross.

And everything comes out the other side so much more beautiful.

Romans chapter 3, verse 23 says this.

Romans 3:23

For all have sinned.

All you mean all of us, our city, our world, we've all sinned.

And the result is we fall short of the glory of God.

Cannot measure up, unworthy to even be in his presence.

His holiness is so perfect and so profound that if you approached his throne with the sin in your life, you would die in his presence.

We fall short of the glory of God.

Then he says this, and all are justified freely by his grace through the dimension, through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

This word justified is a fun word.

It's like a legal word.

It's like if you felt like you were guilty of something that you didn't do, and a jury voted and said you are not guilty.

Now it doesn't matter.

Because now in the eyes of the law, in the eyes of society, and in the eyes of the court, you are seen differently.

Justified means a new title has been given to you.

No longer guilty.

He says this, it goes on.

It says, God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement.

Atonement literally just means to get out of the way so that you and God can be close together, to remove all the unnecessary clutter and junk so that you can be close to God again.

God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement for closeness through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith.

We'll pick up there next week.

He did this to demonstrate his righteousness because in his forbearance, he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished.

You want to know how much God loves you?

You want to get it.

You need to understand that he's not just a happy-go-lucky fairy who just blesses everything he does and said, It's okay because I love you.

It's not that.

Sin cannot exist in his presence.

Therefore, he is love and he's wrath.

Because he's wrath, because he embodies this picture of wrath, it says to you, and you should leave today understanding he cares so much for me that he doesn't want my sins to be held against me, and he doesn't want me to walk in the consequences of my own decisions.

So what if today we looked at the book of Romans through a different lens?

And what if today we understood that for there to be the gospel and the good news, there also had to be a dark season in our life when we so desperately needed God.

Maybe that's where you are today.

Maybe you came in today walking in darkness.

Maybe you, if you hear me talking today about who is in charge, who has the final say in your life, maybe you would be honest and say, Jason, I came in today feeling like I've I've replaced God as the ultimate authority in my life, and today's the day I make the decision.

I turn my heart back to God, I receive his grace and his forgiveness.

And what if as a result, before we get into all the good news, before the book of Romans turns into this beautiful orchestra of the love and the grace and the doctrine that make God so incredibly special?

What if we addressed our own depravity today?

And we said, God, I walked in one way, but I'm walking out a different way.

I walked in in darkness, subjected to my own opinions and the consequences thereof.

But I'm leaving today, making a great exchange.

You be in charge, you be the Lord of my life.

Would you bow your head and close your eyes all across this room?

God, give us courage.

In a culture that's screaming the opposite message, give us courage to stand up for truth.

God, what is truth?

It's not our opinions, truth is what your word declares.

So, God, today we make this decision.

Your word is the final word.

Thank you that your heart is to reveal yourself to us.

May we know you more.

And as a result, may we realize today that you are full of love and full of wrath.

And your wrath doesn't push us away, it literally draws us in.