A WOMAN drove on to a football pitch and left her car in the goalmouth during a match after discovering that one of the spectators had parked across her drive.
She drove on to the six-yard box, got out, slammed the door, and walked to the touchline. When spectators in Beverley, East Riding,asked what she was doing, she said: "You park on my patch and I'11 park on your pitch."
The referee, said: "I turned around to see this car being driven into the goalmouth. The goalie was standing there with the most bemused expression. Out got this attractive young woman. Even from 75 yards I could see she was very annoyed."
I guess we can probably sympathise with her. Was she right to be angry? Perhaps.
That's quite a banal situation. But how do you feel about this?
This is by Meg Guillebaud, a missionary working in Rwanda, where there were terrible massacres in 1994(?)
"Wilberforce took me to see the mass grave of 93 people, including his wife, Nora, and three of their children. She had apparently taken her four children to the nearst Roman Catholic convent for safety. There the killers came, rounded everyone up, separated out the small children, who included his youngest daughter, Celine, aged eight, and then killed all the adults and older children" (Meg Guillebaud, Rwanda (the land God forgot?), p.226)
How do you feel about that? Terribly sad?
Do you feel indignant about it? Angry that men could be so cruel?
There are times we get angry and we know that we shouldn't - it's because of our pride, or we haven't got our way; but there are other times when we are right to be angry.
Today, in part 2 of our series in Romans, we're looking at a very serious subject - God's anger.
Or to use the Bible's word for it: God's wrath.
Last week we saw how God's Righteousness is revealed in the Gospel, and straight away, Paul goes on to explain that God's wrath is also being revealed.
We saw that the Gospel showed us a way of being right with God that was by faith - not something we can earn, but something that God can give us, thanks to Jesus' death on the cross.
And now Paul is going to show us why we need that: far from seeking God, and being close to righteousness, mankind has abandoned and suppressed God and is far from Righteousness.
I wonder if you're optimistic about human nature - our ability to improve ourselves and overcome all obstacles to a peaceful life?
I hope that as we learn from God together today, we're going to get a good Biblical pessimism about human nature, and a realism about God's nature, that will lead us, to the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ - where we find the only means to being right with God.
Let's turn to Romans chapter 1, v18-32.
verse 18 tells us about the Revelation of the wrath of God.
verses 19-32 tell us about the Reason for the wrath of God, and then the Reality of the wrath of God
So first of all, the Revelation of the wrath of God: God tells us that wrath is one of his characteristics.
Have a look at verse 18: "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness..."
This is the revelation of the wrath of God. we are told that God is angry.
Anger is something he feels, wrath is something he expresses towards mankind (including you and me), and if we bother to look, we can see his wrath in the state the world is in.
God is angry. the Revelation of the wrath of God.
Now you might be thinking: "Isn't this a rather primitive idea? The kind of thing cavemen thought: 'better keep the gods happy with a sacrifice or they'll be angry with us'?"
Well it would be if God's anger was the anger of a stroppy child. Or a stroppy adult. The problem with our anger is that we lose our self-control, and with it any wisdom we might have had.
God doesn't. In verse 17 we were reminded of the Righteousness of God - that is, he does what is right. And that's the case when he is angry: his wrath is the right kind of wrath - and we have to trust him about that.
2000 years before this, when God showed His Righteousness to Abraham, and judged the city of Sodom, Abraham wondered about God's wrath: he questioned the Lord: (Genesis 18:24-25) "What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? 25 Far be it from you to do such a thing -- to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?"
"Will not the judge of all the earth do right?"
And to cut a long story short, the answer was: yes.
We must trust God to do right as he expresses his anger.
You might be wondering: how does this square with God's love?
I don't know if you heard Robin Oake on the news this week - his son, Stephen, was the policeman killed by the Algerian asylum seeker. Robin Oake, a disciple of Jesus, said:
"I am praying hard for the fellow who stabbed Steve. I am trying hard to forgive him, as I am sure Steve would. I am hoping he will find solace from God in the same way as I and Steve have. I do not want any recriminations against him at all."
He's been an incredible witness to Christ, and he's doing what Jesus has asked of each of us - to leave the judgement to him.
It is part of the the love of God towards Stephen Oake and his family, that God, in his Righteousness, is morally offended at Stephen's murder, and it is part of his love that there will be, in the courts of heaven , justice for him, and God will punish the man who killed him.
Hopefully justice will be done here on earth as well. And so Robin Oake will not have to take or feel any vengeance himself - because of the love of God.
As Paul writes later in Romans: Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. (Romans 12:19)
So we start this passage with the revelation of the wrath of God: God does express anger.
And straight away, the passage tells us why: Why is God angry?
What is the Reason for the wrath of God?
God is angry because we've rejected him, and tried to replace him with other things.
God is angry because men and women can know something of him and respond to him according to what we can know; but we have done our best to suppress the truth about God, to deny him and give our worship (our energy, our time, our honour and value) to things that clearly are not God.
Have a look again at v.18: "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men 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."
Paul is talking about all people here: not just a few real baddies, not just the Gentiles, all of us.
There are certain things about God that we could work out just by looking around us at his creation: v.20, "his eternal power and divine nature" - God is big, powerful and goes on much longer than we do - but, ridiculously, we shut our eyes to that.
At that time, the trendy worship experience was idolatry: worshipping a series of gods who were represented by small statues of people, birds, animals and reptiles. But it's obvious that God can't be like that - look at his eternal power and divine nature!
- v.21 "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."
Why is God angry? It's summed up in v.25: "They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator -- who is for ever praised. Amen."
And that's not just how things looked in AD 57, we're the same today - hell-bent on denying God.
We deny God intellectually - in refusing him any influence in the world. David Attenborough's Mammals series on TV shows us the glories of God's creation, this week with the wonders of the Desmond and the Great Blue Whale.
And who is worshipped? The scientist, who on a fragment of evidence and a lot of supposition declares that the Desmond's ancestors did this and that's why it's developed to do that.
What truth is suppressed? That there is a powerful, divine mind behind the complexity of what we observe, who has been and still is involved in its creation, development, and life.
Intellectually we deny God, and Morally we deny him by suppressing the truth about what is right and wrong.
How are we to fight AIDS? "Safe Sex" - do what you like with whom you like, but wear a condom? God's message in the bible has always been: keep Sex special: keep it for marriage, or keep yourself for God.
But our world wants to exchange the truth of God for a lie.
And we do it too.
We often exchange the truth of God for a lie.
Whenever one of us faces the temptation to sin, and we say: "it won't matter, God will forgive me"; or "it's only a little sin, I won't do it again"; or "it'll make me feel so much better" - whatever excuse we make, we're telling ourselves a lie to suppress the truth which is that God wants me and you to honour him.
Whenever we think that something we can buy will make life so much better - It should be obvious to us that the Lord Jesus Christ is where we should set our desire, our hope, our ambition, all that we are. But by nature we want to worship and serve created things rather than the Creator.
And that is the Reason for the wrath of God.
We're told then that God is angry, we're told why, but how does God express his wrath?
What is the reality of the wrath of God? If it's being revealed - how?
God is going to express his wrath in the future on the day of judgement; but here we find out that he also expresses it today: by giving us over to our sinful natures.
He lets the godless attitude of our minds bear its fullest fruit in immoral behaviour.
In his righteous offence at our rejection of him, he lets mankind experience life without him.
And its not funny. It's not sensual. It's disgusting, and it's dangerous.
Have a look at v.24: Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
and v.26: Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.
And again in v.28: Furthermore, since they did not think it worth while to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.
Each time the reason is the same: rejecting God for our own sinful ways.
Each time the penalty is the same: God doesn't restrain mankind, he gives us over to our own ways.
In the garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, that was an expression of mankind's desire to choose for ourselves what is right and wrong - and here we're told, as there, that God's anger is expressed by letting us see what a mess that gets us into.
Let's stop for a moment, and have a reality check: does what Paul writes here in any way fit with our experience of what the world is like?
It does, doesn't it? These verses describe the world we live in - the antagonistic attitudes of verses 28-32 are widespread today.
And so is the sexual immorality of verses 24-27, and it's approved of.
But here God condemns it - Men doing sexual things with men, and women with women is called a perversion. It is, v.27, to exchange natural relations for unnatural relations, that is, it is to reject what is in accord with God's created order.
There is a good and loving design in God's scheme for sexual relations. Sex is special - it's there so that we can 'go forth and multiply', it is a privilege that we're to take seriously and responsibly. God wants us to keep it within marriage, of a man and woman.
And when we go against that created order, v.26-27 homosexually, or v.24-25 heterosexually with sex outside of marriage or deviant sexual practices; we are in the wrong with God, and there are consequences: disease, broken lives, damaged children, thousands upon thousands of aborted babies.
No wonder God is angry - and the reality of his wrath is that he leaves us in it.
But before we get on our high horses - just have a look at the first verse of chapter 2.
What does it say? (You'll never know if you don't look.) [pause]
The point of this, the reality of God's anger, is that we can see that God is angry.
Just like we can look around us at the creation and see that God is eternal and powerful, we can look around us at the godlessness and wickedness that we are a part of and see that God is angry: (18) "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven..."
And we've got to see that, because it tells us that we're not OK.
We're not safe.
We're not 'just a little bit away from God, and a few good deeds will balance that out.'
It won't 'be all right in the end.'
God isn't going to just accept everyone into heaven.
We're not 'in the right with God', we're in a dreadful mess with God, we're terribly offensive to him, and we need outside help to Rescue us from this problem, The reality of God's anger.
So: three points from this passage: The Revelation of God's wrath - he is angry
The Reason for God's wrath - our rejection of him, our suppression of the truth about him
The Reality of God's wrath - he gives us over to the consequences.
But all of this is in the context of the Cross of Jesus Christ.
Paul writes this because he glories in the Gospel - he wants us to understand that there is another R: Rescue from God's wrath.
Remember v.16: "I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation, (the rescue) of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile."
You see there are two ways we can react to God's wrath being revealed:: we can simply deny it. "It's not true - God is not like that" - we take ourselves off the hook - but all we're doing then is (18) suppressing the truth, once again..
The other reaction is to accept the truth, and call on God for his Rescue.
You see, if wrath is an important Bible concept about God, so is the word: "Propitiation"
"Propitiation" - it means: to turn aside God's wrath.
And that's just what we need, isn't it?
Suppose someone was spraying a water canon at you - you're getting blasted around, soaked - and then someone stands in the way: they deflect the water and take it on themself - the water canon is propitiated - from you, anyway.
And when we get to the end of chapter three, we'll find that that is exactly what Jesus the Son of God did on the cross. He stood in the way of the wrath of God that is directed at you and me, he turned it aside, he brought us propitiation from God's wrath.
The point of this passage is to show us that we need Rescue, from outside.
And the message of the Gospel is that that is what we have in Jesus Christ.
So to end, two questions:
Ask yourself
1. Have I accepted my need for rescue from God's wrath, and asked for that in Jesus? (the eXplore course can help you think more about this, and ask questions, and see how to accept Jesus)
If I have - question 2: am I, or perhaps, why am I still living in ways that worship created things rather than the creator?