WHAT MAKES GOD ANGRY?
Romans 1:18-23
God
gets angry. If you don’t believe that,
then take a look at sweet, gentle Jesus as He comes to the
God
gets angry. This is the first thing that
we see in our opening passage.
“For the wrath of God is
revealed...” (Romans 1:18).
The
Scriptures have quite a lot to say about the wrath of God.
“The
Lord shall never be willing to forgive him, but rather the anger of the Lord
and His jealousy will burn against that man, and every curse which is written
in this book will rest on him, and the Lord will blot out his name from under
heaven.” (Deuteronomy 29:20).
A jealous and avenging God is the Lord;
The Lord is avenging and wrathful.
The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries,
And He reserves wrath for His enemies.
The Lord is slow to anger and great in power,
And the Lord will by no means leave the guilty
unpunished.
In whirlwind and storm is His way,
And clouds are the dust beneath His feet. (Nahum 1:2-3).
It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the
living God. (Hebrews 10:31).
These
passages portray the wrath of God. Many
people today like to describe God in terms of sweetness and light as if He
accepts everyone and takes in everybody.
What they neglect is the Biblical teaching of the wrath of God.
That
teaching is brought to us in Romans 1.
In verse 17 the righteousness of God is revealed. In verse 18 the wrath of God is
revealed. In both cases, the present
tense is used. It describes that which
is presently being revealed.
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1:17 |
Righteousness
of God is revealed. |
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1:18 |
Wrath of God is
revealed. |
Paul
does not start his epistle by saying, “Smile, God has a wonderful plan for your
life.” Instead, he begins by speaking of
the wrath of God.
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Wrath revealed |
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Against men... |
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Who hold truth in
unrighteousness |
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The word “wrath” is found
12 times in Romans (out of 36 times in the entire New Testament). It is from the root meaning “to swell.” |
Now
let me ask you a question. How is the
wrath of God revealed? Notice the
tense. It is present. It is being revealed right now. Paul says that “the wrath of God is
continually being revealed.” He is not
speaking of a future event. He is
speaking about God’s wrath in the present time.
In
what ways are God’s wrath being currently
revealed? It is revealed in wars and
rumors of wars. It is revealed in
earthquakes and floods and natural disasters.
It is revealed in famines and diseases.
But that is not all. It is also
revealed in the hearts of men who turn away from God when their hearts are
hardened and when they enter a spiraling course into the depths of sin. It is revealed when men deny the truth of God
and attempt to suppress it. It is in the
release of the individual over to the lusts of his heart (as seen in the three
times where “God gave them over” in verse 24, 26 and 28).
The
wrath of God is being revealed in the context of historical judgments (verses
24 & following). God's judgment
against sin is to allow more sin to take place.
1. Men know God.
2. Men suppress the truth (1:18).
3. There is an antithesis between the truth of God and the
falsity of man. Man is completely and
totally depraved.
There
comes a time when the Lord pulls out all restraints and allows men to go as far
as their lusts will let them.
But
this does not happen to the believer.
The Child of God is not under God's wrath (Romans 5:9). God will never release the believer to his
lusts as He does the unbeliever. The
believer will always be disciplined instead.
And that is one of the evidences that he IS a child of God. Only children are disciplined.
What
is it that brings about such wrath? What
is it that really makes God angry? I
want to suggest several things.
GOD GETS ANGRY WHEN MEN
SUPPRESS THE TRUTH
For
the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because
that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident
to them. (Romans 1:18-19).
Notice
that it is men themselves who suppress the truth. Men are not saying, “I want to come to God,
but I can't because I haven't been predestined.” They are actively involved in covering up the
truth.
There
is a principle here. Light is light in
direct proportion to how much you have seen the darkness. The opposite is also true. Darkness is darkness in direct proportion to
how much you have seen the light.
This
text was not written to throw rocks at other people. It was written for US. Paul does what Amos did. He started out by preaching against the
pagans. And everyone agreed.
Paul
does the same thing here. His purpose is
not to say that the world is bad but that we are good. It is to show that ALL are bad. All need a savior. Homosexuality will be shown for its
sinfulness. But it is not the only sin
which is listed. And they are ALL bad.
Question: What is the greatest expression of the
wrath of God? The answer may surprise
you. It isn't in what God is doing to
homosexuals and sinners. It is the
CROSS. It was there that God's
righteousness condemned Christ. God’s
wrath was poured out upon His own Son.
Here
is the point. The love of God is not a
refuge from the wrath of God... unless you go through the Cross.
God
is righteous. His righteousness condemns
us. But when you come to the Cross, that
same righteousness of God saves you because it is credited to you.
GOD GETS ANGRY WHEN HIS
EVIDENT TRUTHS ARE IGNORED
For
since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and
divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been
made, so that they are without excuse. (Romans 1:20).
One
of the most common questions I am asked as a Christian is, “What about the
heathen who has never heard the gospel?
How can God judge a man who has never heard about God in the first
place?”
After
all, it does not seem very fair that God would judge a man for disobeying God
if God has not even gone so far as to reveal Himself to men. It would seem that such a man could stand
before God’s seat of judgment and appeal his case, saying, “It is not fair that
You judge me for rejecting you since I never had an
opportunity to know anything about You.”
This
verse provides the answer. The man who
has never heard about God already has an understanding of the existence of
God. The fact of God’s existence can be
understood through the existence of the visible creation.
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Being understood through
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His invisible attributes... |
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His eternal power and divine nature |
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There
is a play on words here. The invisible
(“unseen”) has been clearly seen. How do
you see the unseen? By the marks it
leaves in the visible realm.
Do
you remember the story of Robinson Crusoe?
He was a sailor who was shipwrecked upon a deserted island. He spent years also, searching the horizon
for a ship, but none came. And then one
day, Robinson Crusoe was walking along the beach, and he saw something in the
sand. It was a footprint. A human footprint. He could see the toes and the heel and he
could see that it did not match his own footprints. What was his conclusion? What did he decide upon seeing this
footprint? He concluded that there was
someone else on the island.
What
would you have thought if he had said to himself, “My goodness! Look at the way in which the wind and the
waves have sculptured the sand on this beach so that it resembles a human
footprint! It must have taken natural
selection billions and billions of years to have such a design come about by
mere chance!”
Sound
a little silly? Of course it does! But this is exactly what men have done with
regard to the revelation of God in His creation. We have in creation not a single footprint
but an entire universe of footprints.
The entire universe is a giant billboard which points to the fact of
God’s existence.
Furthermore,
Paul says that this evidence is “clearly seen.” It isn’t as though the evidence were not
there. It isn’t even as though man’s
eyes were blinded so that he could not see the evidence. He HAS seen the evidence and he has seen in
clearly. And then, rejecting the
evidence, he has chosen to ignore it and has sought to find some other “scientific”
rational for the universe. Man willfully
refuses to see that which God has shown him. This involves a self-blindness.
The
excuse that, “I’ve never heard” is no excuse because man innately has a
knowledge that God exists. That
knowledge is available to anyone who will seek.
God is “a rewarder of those who seek Him”
(Hebrews 11:6). But that is not
all. Knowledge of God is not merely available, it is already a present possession. Man knows that God is. He cannot help but to know it. And this knowledge renders Him without
excuse.
The
phrase “without excuse” is translated from the Greek word anapologetos. It is from the same root as the word
translated "defense" in 1 Peter 3:15 (“make a DEFENSE to everyone
who asks you to give an account of the hope that is in you”). The point is that there is no defense that
can be made for man’s actions. They
cannot be explained away.
Many
unbelievers want to dictate the terms upon which God is to present His
credentials. God is regulated to One holding His evidence in His hands, waiting to be
judged. But you don't judge God! HE is the judge. And you are the defendant. And to make matters worse, you are a
defendant without a defense. You are
without excuse. You can never say that
God did not make Himself known to you because the very world in which you live
is a silent testimony to the power and the “Godness”
of God.
The
universe proclaims the existence of God.
It doesn’t merely indicate a faint possibility of the existence of
God. It shouts out through the expanse
of the creation that God is there! Verse
19 says that God has made this obvious to man (“God made it evident to
them”). And because God has made Himself obvious to man, man is without excuse.
GOD BECOMES ANGRY WHEN HE
IS NOT HONORED AS GOD
For
even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but
they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
(Romans 1:21).
Every
once in a while, I have some unbeliever say to me, “I believe in God; I believe
that somewhere there is a Supreme Being.”
When they say this, it usually seems to come with an expectation that I
will congratulate them on their “belief.”
But this verse tells us that it is not enough to be aware of God’s
existence. God also demands honor and
thankfulness.
Have
you ever done a service for someone and had them ignore it? It might have been something as simple as
opening a door for a lady or picking up a book that had been dropped or it
might have been the acknowledgment of a gift.
We are in the habit of thanking people for the smallest things. But God gives EVERYTHING. We read in James 1:17 that “every good
thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the
Father of lights.”
However,
once the knowledge of God is rejected, the result is mere “foolish
speculation.” This speculation
extends to...
Man’s origins
Man’s
salvation
Man’s destiny
and the end of the world
The character
of God
When
man rejects the revelation which God has given of Himself, he will believe
anything and everything, no matter how silly.
GOD BECOMES ANGRY WHEN HIS
GLORY IS GIVEN AWAY
Professing
to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for
an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four‑footed
animals and crawling creatures. (Romans 1:22-23).
The
giving away of God’s glory was no accident.
It was accomplished under the guise of professed wisdom. Men “professed themselves to be wise.” They even called themselves
“Professors.” But their “wisdom” was
really foolishness of the worst sort.
Notice the downward spiral of man’s descent.
Having
departed from the worship of God, man seeks another image which to
worship. The gods of paganism were
fashioned after the images of created beings.
The Greeks worshiped gods after a human form. The Egyptians and Babylonians worshiped gods
which were represented by lower forms of life.
Both of these forms were to be found in
1.
The Greek and Roman gods were fashioned after the
likeness of men. This could be a
reference to that type of worship. But
it could also be a veiled reference to the emperor-worship which was only now
beginning in
2. Birds.
The symbol of the
3. Four-footed Animals.
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This progression begins with God and ends with man bowing down to a
snake. |
When the Israelites had come out of
4. Crawling Creatures.
The Egyptians worshiped all sorts of animals of both
the higher as well as the lower orders.
They held all sorts of insects and crawling creatures to be sacred
symbols of their gods.
An
understanding of this progression will teach us several things about the way
man is.
• It
explains the existence of Idolatry.
Why does idolatry exist? It exists because man realizes that God
exists. And when he turns away from
worshiping the true God, then he feels compelled to make up a replacement and
to worship that replacement. Idolatry
therefore becomes a psychological necessity for one who has rejected God.
• It
teaches us that man did not originate as an idolater.
He did not begin with animism and work his way up
through polytheism to monotheism. The
opposite is true. Man began with the
knowledge of God. But the knowledge of
God was so uncomfortable to man in his sin and rebellion that man turned away
from God and sought a more comfortable god of his own making.
How many times have you heard someone say, “I can’t
believe that God would do a thing like that! MY god certainly is not like that!” Such a person is beginning the same downward
spiral into idolatry.
• It
teaches that idolatry is not an indication of man’s search for God.
It is just the opposite. Idolatry is the evidence of man’s rejection
of the truth. Idolatry makes God
angry. And not just
the kind of idolatry which makes a statue of a man or a bird or a cow or a
creepy crawly. All idolatry makes
God angry. Even the
sophisticated and subtle kinds.
After all, there are many things that WE do that God
also calls idolatry. Paul says in
Colossians 3:5 that greed amounts to idolatry.
Why? Because it
involves putting something besides God as first place in your life.
Is
God first place in your life? Does He
hold the pre-eminent position in all that you do and in all that you are? If not, then you are engaged in idolatry. And that makes God mad. The good news is that you need not experience
the wrath and the anger of God. He has
prepared a way of escape. That way is
through repentance and faith in His Son.
God sent His Son to be the answer to His anger.
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