The Wrath of God
Pastor KC Liu / Romans 1:17-25 / Jan 31, 2016
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18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. 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. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. 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. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. |
Good morning! How are you all doing? This morning we have come to a difficult subject in Romans. It is a subject that I have never preached on, and would have continued to avoid if we were not preaching through chapter by chapter throughout the entire book. The subject is on the Wrath of God. Why did I avoid the topic? Because I would much rather preach on the Love of God, the Compassion of God, or the Mission of God, rather than his wrath and anger.
I felt that talking about it would turn seekers away from God rather than towards God. What I failed to understand was that without understanding the Wrath of God, we cannot fully understand nor appreciate the great love of God. Without understanding the justice of God, we will never understand the mercy of God. These characteristics of God do not contradict one another, like I previously thought. Rather, they compliment each other, like a needle and a thread. One without the other cannot function properly.
You see, Paul’s Gospel, which vividly describes the Wrath of God, is like the sharp prick of a needle. When you go to the ER, the doctor will use a needle to pierce your skin in order to get the medicine into your body. An ancient puritan once said that “it is the needle of God’s law that brings with it the thread of God’s Gospel into your heart.” Likewise, the prick of the wrath of God will bring in the love of God to your soul.
We need to deal with serious, disturbing subjects in the first two chapters of Romans. By the time we get through it, it will be as if we came out from under a thundercloud and the sun shines in chapters three, four, and five. If we don’t go through chapters one and two, we won't be in a position to appreciate how wonderful the Gospel really is. So we might call this the good news of God’s anger.
Whenever we use human words to describe God, we must realize that in God, things are on a whole new different level. Take the word 'love' for example. Can we use the word 'love' straight out of a pop song, say Adele or Taylor Swift’s songs, and say, “That’s the sort of love that God has”? No, it would be a grave mistake to think that because love depends on the character of the one who is loving. The 'love' described in pop songs often describe a lustful kind of love, or a 'I love you like I love pizza' kind of love. Or 'I love you until I can’t stand you so please get out of my sight' kind of love. We can’t just take the word love from our culture and apply it to God, and say “That’s what the love of God is like.” The love of God is a deeper love than anything you’ve ever known on earth. It is a holier love, a purer love than anything else you have ever known. There is no comparison. Therefore, to speak of the love of God is a difficult thing. We’ve got to ask, “What is God like? What is his nature?”, then we can know what his love is like.
In the same way, when we speak of the word 'wrath', we think of the wrath of men - it is usually a dangerous and a bad thing. When used to describe people, it is almost always negative. Therefore, when we say “the wrath of God”, we’ve got to ask, “What is God like?” We know that God is love. God is mercy. Then based on this, we can understand what his wrath will be like. Otherwise we would think about the wrath of God is the same as the wrath of man, which is not biblical. Now let’s take a look at what it really is.
First, the Wrath of God is a personal reaction of a loving God. God is personally invested in your life. Our loving God has emotions for you and for others, and he reacts to what is done to his creation. He reacts as the righteous judge, demanding justice in all things.
One of the marks of a real person is that you have reactions to things that happen. You may feel glad about something, or you may feel sad about something. You may feel excited or you may feel bored. You may feel happy or you may feel angry.
Let’s say that you and some friends are outside the street playing catch. And all of a sudden a drunk driver is driving 50 miles an hour, and hits your friend. He is clearly hurt, bleeding and unconscious. The driver stops and realizes what happened. Then he takes off to flee the scene instead of getting out to help or call 911. Tell me, would you have a strong reaction to that? Of course you would. You would feel angry and mad over the injustice.
In the same way, God gets angry over injustice. He doesn’t get angry over a believer’s weakness or mistakes. Like giving in to temptation, or losing our temper with the kids. God has great compassion for believers and forgives. But if people do evil acts of injustice and hurt others, His wrath will come upon them.
And this is exactly what is being described, starting at verse 18. "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness". When God looks down on earth, what does he see? He sees mostly godlessness and wickedness. These are two particular things that God reacts against. Wickedness is everywhere. He sees a world that has been torn apart with war and violence. He sees a world in which people do not acknowledge him as God, do not thank him for what he is or for what He does. People spend their time in a selfish way, fighting each other, gossiping about each other, killing each other. That’s the definition of wickedness, it is evil actions against fellow brothers and sisters.
Do we think that God has no reaction to this? Of course he does. And Paul says that God revealed his anger from heaven. He doesn’t hide his anger. He doesn’t sugarcoat his righteous reaction. Heaven unveils his wrath. The “Wrath of God” is the reaction of a Holy God to sinful people who ruin everything God makes. A just God could not remain indifferent to the sin and the evil of mankind. A just God cannot stand by and just watch the Nazis or ISIS kill without punishing them. A just God will not stand by and watch the drunk diver’s hit-and-run, and not judge that. His wrath will be revealed at the right time.
Let’s take a deeper look at the other word “godlessness”. It simply means that a person lives as if God does not exist. Even a wealthy and respectable person can live in godlessness. This is actually a very common thing. For example, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, the two richest people in the world, are atheists. Although they donate billions to charity, apostle Paul would say they live in godlessness. I probably don’t have the guts to call them out like that, since they are probably very nice people. But Paul isn’t afraid to call it what it is. They are their own gods. Business people treat them like gods. A person may have committed no crime and have no evil behaviors, but may still be terribly ungodly.
So this ad made by atheists says “Third richest person in the world. Pledged to give 99% of his wealth to charity. Buffet is “good” without God.” Are you? Can that be true? Can Buffet be Good without God? If “good” is defined by our pop culture then its true. Just do some good deeds, and that will make you “good”. But if “good” is defined by God as “righteousness”, then the Bible says “No one is good, not one.” We have all sinned and fallen short of God’s standard of being “good”.
"The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of 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. " In other words, because of our own selfish desires, we suppress the truth that we know. When Paul says suppress, it means literally ‘hold down in chains’. It means to intentionally turn away from truth, and suffocate truth until it's dead. I can really relate to this. At the age of 15, when people shared with me the Gospel and the Bible, I listened, but I couldn’t surrender my life to God. Why? Partly because I didn’t know if God was real. But honestly, it was that I didn't want to surrender my life to God; I wanted to be in control of my own life. It wasn’t that I knew for a fact that God is not real. No… how in the world can I know for certain God is not real? I can’t.
So the driving force of my unbelief was that I didn’t want to stop telling dirty jokes. All my best friends and I forged our friendships out of telling dirty jokes and laughing our heads off all day long. So if I had to stop doing that, I'd rather not believe in God. You see, I suppressed the truth for three years because of my own self-centeredness and dirty thinking.
For other people, they might be suppressing the truth so that they can chase freely after money, sex, and power, without guilt or restraint from God. Everyone has their own reasons. But one thing is for sure, we all have the choice to suppress the truth. Then that begs the question, “how can we know truth?”
The answer is given in verse 20. " For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." Paul says that just by looking at the beautiful creation around us, we can know two things. First, it is God’s eternal power. Just look at our magnificent Sun; it carries unlimited power to provide light and heat for us since the beginning of creation. Look at the power of the vast oceans, the power of the storms with their thunder and lightning, the power that holds the stars in their course in the universe. The Creator who made that must be powerful. No one has any excuse for not believing in a powerful God.
The second thing that is obvious from what God has made is this: His divine nature, or His deity. The fact that he is different from humanity. God is so different, so much greater, so much higher, so much more wonderful than we are. Paul says anyone who uses their reasoning, who thinks at all about the world in which we live, must come to those two truths. Paul argues that there is no excuse for being an atheist. Everyone ought to believe in a powerful Creator. That doesn’t mean everyone will know the doctrines of the Christian faith, since that has to be taught through scripture. But! At the very least, we all should believe in a higher power, just by looking at the miracle of life.
"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. " Even though man knows there’s a creator God, even though God set eternity in their hearts, their thinking became futile. Remember when we studied Ecclesiastes - futile means meaningless. And why are things meaningless? Because they are temporary, here one second and gone the next, like breath in the air. So their thinking only concerns their pleasure for the moment, and this always leads to darkness.
Archeology has now revealed that the earliest traces of human religion show that at the beginning man worshiped one Supreme God, and degraded to worshiping idols, ancestors, down to worshiping spirits, then worshiping animals. Therefore, all idolatry, all other religions, all animism, all idol worship, had come after that knowledge of the one God. In China, the earliest religion recorded was the worship of Heaven. So the Emperor built the Temple of Heaven and worshiped the one Supreme God. They even believed that the Chinese Emperor was the son of Heaven. Of course we know there is only one Son of Heaven, and his name is Jesus Christ! Amen! Then the Chinese religion got darker and darker, evolving into a folk religion where they worshiped almost anything. They even worshiped demons and evil spirits as you can see here.
So can we see now why God would be angry? It is because men gave up god for idolatry. "Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles."
Men have given God up and substituted him with human worship, such as bowing to Roman Caesars or Chinese Emperors, whom they called Sons of God. How about us? We can worship celebrities! How? If we always say what they say, eat what they eat, dress like they dress, move like they move. Chances are we have made them an idol in our lives. Their posters are probably on your wall or computer screen! Be careful when we make idols out of celebrities!
Men also gave God up in exchange for animals. When the Israelites made the golden calf and worshiped it, the Wrath of God came upon them and destroyed 3000 men! That’s insane! Out of the 7 billion people on this earth, the majority of people still bow down to animals. It’s not just in the Bible times, it’s here and now. Go to a Hindu or Buddhist Temple in Orange County and you will see people worshiping animals. So what happened as a result of idolatry? What did God do? Did God send fire from heaven? No. The answer is in the next verse.
"Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. " You see, when men give God up for idolatry, God gives men up for immortality! This is a little counter-intuitive: immorality is the effect of his anger, not the cause. Immorality is the result of his anger, not the thing that made him angry.
Imagine that you are 15 years old, and trying to get your drivers' license. You go to driving school to learn to drive. You step into a car with your driving instructor. The cool thing about his car is that he has a brake pedal in his passenger seat. His passenger brake overrides your acceleration pedal. Whenever he senses danger that you are about to crash into something, he steps on the brake for you. He steps in when you are incapable of reacting to the dangers around you. That’s like God’s protection in your life. He steps on the passenger brake when your life is in danger. But when people give God up for idols, they are saying, “I don’t want God in my life. God, get out of my car. I am in full control of my own life!”
God gives people free will, therefore God will step out of our car. But sooner or later, we will crash our life, because humans are incapable of stepping on the brakes on immorality. Our mortal bodies will degrade as a result. When men and women chose to be promiscuous, having sex with multiple partners, sooner or later they will contract STD's. When people choose to be in homosexual relationships, which Paul clearly preaches against, they will eventually contract AID's, their bodies will degrade, and they will die a painful death. Here is a father weeping over the near-death of his son with AID's. It’s very sad. I wish it doesn’t happen but it does everyday. This is the kind of thing that happens to mankind when man gives up on God.
But what if an entire nation gives up on God and worships idols? The false gods in America don't look like animals and reptiles. No, Americans are too respectable to bow down to animals. The false trinity that we bow down to in America is the uncontrollable desire for money, sex and power. When courthouses all across America take down the Ten Commandments, when schools ban public prayer, when the government won’t allow the display of the nativity scene out on public parks during Christmas, what happens? Mainstream America is saying, “God, get out of my car.”
Paul says God will give up the nation to its immorality and lustful desires. It’s already done in our country. Our nation told God to get out of its courts, schools, and public squares. So God took his foot off the brake in our country, and now the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage all over America. This is just the beginning of the degrading process. Paul says that this immorality is not the cause of God’s wrath. It is the result of God’s wrath. America will crash if she doesn’t put on her brakes. It’s pretty sad isn’t it? Is there no more hope for America? Is it too late for America to turn back to God?
If Apostle Paul was here, what would he say to us? “Run for your lives! The wrath of God is coming down on America! Move to Asia!” No, he would not say that. Paul would say to all of us here, “I am so eager to preach the gospel to you who are in America. "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes!” Paul says that the preaching of the gospel is the answer! It will bring revival to America. Get people back to God, and help them get right with God. Then and only then, can their bodies and minds be restored to truth. Only then will America turn from worshiping the false trinity to worshiping Christ.
All talks of social and political reform are useless and temporary. At the root of it all, the problem of our nation is first and foremost a broken relationship with God. It’s not social nor political. Only God can save our nation.
We live in a critical hour in American history where the Wrath of God is being revealed. Will we accept our God-given mandate and pray for revival? Will we accept our mandate to share the Good News of God’s love? What we cannot do is just sit here and do nothing. We are called to be light of the world, and salt of the earth. In light of this, I invite our church to do something. I want us to take an action step. Is there an opportunity for us to pray and share the gospel?
Yes there is! There are many different things you can do. But I will highlight one thing that we can all do together. Here is a 5-minute video of The Call. Please watch this.
It’s an entire day of prayer and outreach, from 10am to 10pm. We are partnering with two other churches in Irvine, and we are trying to get a bus to go there on 4/9. That means that I only have 10 spots for EM, and 10 spots for 1.5G. Please let me know if you are interested so I can reserve a spot for you. First come first serve.
I felt that talking about it would turn seekers away from God rather than towards God. What I failed to understand was that without understanding the Wrath of God, we cannot fully understand nor appreciate the great love of God. Without understanding the justice of God, we will never understand the mercy of God. These characteristics of God do not contradict one another, like I previously thought. Rather, they compliment each other, like a needle and a thread. One without the other cannot function properly.
You see, Paul’s Gospel, which vividly describes the Wrath of God, is like the sharp prick of a needle. When you go to the ER, the doctor will use a needle to pierce your skin in order to get the medicine into your body. An ancient puritan once said that “it is the needle of God’s law that brings with it the thread of God’s Gospel into your heart.” Likewise, the prick of the wrath of God will bring in the love of God to your soul.
We need to deal with serious, disturbing subjects in the first two chapters of Romans. By the time we get through it, it will be as if we came out from under a thundercloud and the sun shines in chapters three, four, and five. If we don’t go through chapters one and two, we won't be in a position to appreciate how wonderful the Gospel really is. So we might call this the good news of God’s anger.
Whenever we use human words to describe God, we must realize that in God, things are on a whole new different level. Take the word 'love' for example. Can we use the word 'love' straight out of a pop song, say Adele or Taylor Swift’s songs, and say, “That’s the sort of love that God has”? No, it would be a grave mistake to think that because love depends on the character of the one who is loving. The 'love' described in pop songs often describe a lustful kind of love, or a 'I love you like I love pizza' kind of love. Or 'I love you until I can’t stand you so please get out of my sight' kind of love. We can’t just take the word love from our culture and apply it to God, and say “That’s what the love of God is like.” The love of God is a deeper love than anything you’ve ever known on earth. It is a holier love, a purer love than anything else you have ever known. There is no comparison. Therefore, to speak of the love of God is a difficult thing. We’ve got to ask, “What is God like? What is his nature?”, then we can know what his love is like.
In the same way, when we speak of the word 'wrath', we think of the wrath of men - it is usually a dangerous and a bad thing. When used to describe people, it is almost always negative. Therefore, when we say “the wrath of God”, we’ve got to ask, “What is God like?” We know that God is love. God is mercy. Then based on this, we can understand what his wrath will be like. Otherwise we would think about the wrath of God is the same as the wrath of man, which is not biblical. Now let’s take a look at what it really is.
First, the Wrath of God is a personal reaction of a loving God. God is personally invested in your life. Our loving God has emotions for you and for others, and he reacts to what is done to his creation. He reacts as the righteous judge, demanding justice in all things.
One of the marks of a real person is that you have reactions to things that happen. You may feel glad about something, or you may feel sad about something. You may feel excited or you may feel bored. You may feel happy or you may feel angry.
Let’s say that you and some friends are outside the street playing catch. And all of a sudden a drunk driver is driving 50 miles an hour, and hits your friend. He is clearly hurt, bleeding and unconscious. The driver stops and realizes what happened. Then he takes off to flee the scene instead of getting out to help or call 911. Tell me, would you have a strong reaction to that? Of course you would. You would feel angry and mad over the injustice.
In the same way, God gets angry over injustice. He doesn’t get angry over a believer’s weakness or mistakes. Like giving in to temptation, or losing our temper with the kids. God has great compassion for believers and forgives. But if people do evil acts of injustice and hurt others, His wrath will come upon them.
And this is exactly what is being described, starting at verse 18. "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness". When God looks down on earth, what does he see? He sees mostly godlessness and wickedness. These are two particular things that God reacts against. Wickedness is everywhere. He sees a world that has been torn apart with war and violence. He sees a world in which people do not acknowledge him as God, do not thank him for what he is or for what He does. People spend their time in a selfish way, fighting each other, gossiping about each other, killing each other. That’s the definition of wickedness, it is evil actions against fellow brothers and sisters.
Do we think that God has no reaction to this? Of course he does. And Paul says that God revealed his anger from heaven. He doesn’t hide his anger. He doesn’t sugarcoat his righteous reaction. Heaven unveils his wrath. The “Wrath of God” is the reaction of a Holy God to sinful people who ruin everything God makes. A just God could not remain indifferent to the sin and the evil of mankind. A just God cannot stand by and just watch the Nazis or ISIS kill without punishing them. A just God will not stand by and watch the drunk diver’s hit-and-run, and not judge that. His wrath will be revealed at the right time.
Let’s take a deeper look at the other word “godlessness”. It simply means that a person lives as if God does not exist. Even a wealthy and respectable person can live in godlessness. This is actually a very common thing. For example, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, the two richest people in the world, are atheists. Although they donate billions to charity, apostle Paul would say they live in godlessness. I probably don’t have the guts to call them out like that, since they are probably very nice people. But Paul isn’t afraid to call it what it is. They are their own gods. Business people treat them like gods. A person may have committed no crime and have no evil behaviors, but may still be terribly ungodly.
So this ad made by atheists says “Third richest person in the world. Pledged to give 99% of his wealth to charity. Buffet is “good” without God.” Are you? Can that be true? Can Buffet be Good without God? If “good” is defined by our pop culture then its true. Just do some good deeds, and that will make you “good”. But if “good” is defined by God as “righteousness”, then the Bible says “No one is good, not one.” We have all sinned and fallen short of God’s standard of being “good”.
"The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of 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. " In other words, because of our own selfish desires, we suppress the truth that we know. When Paul says suppress, it means literally ‘hold down in chains’. It means to intentionally turn away from truth, and suffocate truth until it's dead. I can really relate to this. At the age of 15, when people shared with me the Gospel and the Bible, I listened, but I couldn’t surrender my life to God. Why? Partly because I didn’t know if God was real. But honestly, it was that I didn't want to surrender my life to God; I wanted to be in control of my own life. It wasn’t that I knew for a fact that God is not real. No… how in the world can I know for certain God is not real? I can’t.
So the driving force of my unbelief was that I didn’t want to stop telling dirty jokes. All my best friends and I forged our friendships out of telling dirty jokes and laughing our heads off all day long. So if I had to stop doing that, I'd rather not believe in God. You see, I suppressed the truth for three years because of my own self-centeredness and dirty thinking.
For other people, they might be suppressing the truth so that they can chase freely after money, sex, and power, without guilt or restraint from God. Everyone has their own reasons. But one thing is for sure, we all have the choice to suppress the truth. Then that begs the question, “how can we know truth?”
The answer is given in verse 20. " For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." Paul says that just by looking at the beautiful creation around us, we can know two things. First, it is God’s eternal power. Just look at our magnificent Sun; it carries unlimited power to provide light and heat for us since the beginning of creation. Look at the power of the vast oceans, the power of the storms with their thunder and lightning, the power that holds the stars in their course in the universe. The Creator who made that must be powerful. No one has any excuse for not believing in a powerful God.
The second thing that is obvious from what God has made is this: His divine nature, or His deity. The fact that he is different from humanity. God is so different, so much greater, so much higher, so much more wonderful than we are. Paul says anyone who uses their reasoning, who thinks at all about the world in which we live, must come to those two truths. Paul argues that there is no excuse for being an atheist. Everyone ought to believe in a powerful Creator. That doesn’t mean everyone will know the doctrines of the Christian faith, since that has to be taught through scripture. But! At the very least, we all should believe in a higher power, just by looking at the miracle of life.
"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. " Even though man knows there’s a creator God, even though God set eternity in their hearts, their thinking became futile. Remember when we studied Ecclesiastes - futile means meaningless. And why are things meaningless? Because they are temporary, here one second and gone the next, like breath in the air. So their thinking only concerns their pleasure for the moment, and this always leads to darkness.
Archeology has now revealed that the earliest traces of human religion show that at the beginning man worshiped one Supreme God, and degraded to worshiping idols, ancestors, down to worshiping spirits, then worshiping animals. Therefore, all idolatry, all other religions, all animism, all idol worship, had come after that knowledge of the one God. In China, the earliest religion recorded was the worship of Heaven. So the Emperor built the Temple of Heaven and worshiped the one Supreme God. They even believed that the Chinese Emperor was the son of Heaven. Of course we know there is only one Son of Heaven, and his name is Jesus Christ! Amen! Then the Chinese religion got darker and darker, evolving into a folk religion where they worshiped almost anything. They even worshiped demons and evil spirits as you can see here.
So can we see now why God would be angry? It is because men gave up god for idolatry. "Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles."
Men have given God up and substituted him with human worship, such as bowing to Roman Caesars or Chinese Emperors, whom they called Sons of God. How about us? We can worship celebrities! How? If we always say what they say, eat what they eat, dress like they dress, move like they move. Chances are we have made them an idol in our lives. Their posters are probably on your wall or computer screen! Be careful when we make idols out of celebrities!
Men also gave God up in exchange for animals. When the Israelites made the golden calf and worshiped it, the Wrath of God came upon them and destroyed 3000 men! That’s insane! Out of the 7 billion people on this earth, the majority of people still bow down to animals. It’s not just in the Bible times, it’s here and now. Go to a Hindu or Buddhist Temple in Orange County and you will see people worshiping animals. So what happened as a result of idolatry? What did God do? Did God send fire from heaven? No. The answer is in the next verse.
"Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. " You see, when men give God up for idolatry, God gives men up for immortality! This is a little counter-intuitive: immorality is the effect of his anger, not the cause. Immorality is the result of his anger, not the thing that made him angry.
Imagine that you are 15 years old, and trying to get your drivers' license. You go to driving school to learn to drive. You step into a car with your driving instructor. The cool thing about his car is that he has a brake pedal in his passenger seat. His passenger brake overrides your acceleration pedal. Whenever he senses danger that you are about to crash into something, he steps on the brake for you. He steps in when you are incapable of reacting to the dangers around you. That’s like God’s protection in your life. He steps on the passenger brake when your life is in danger. But when people give God up for idols, they are saying, “I don’t want God in my life. God, get out of my car. I am in full control of my own life!”
God gives people free will, therefore God will step out of our car. But sooner or later, we will crash our life, because humans are incapable of stepping on the brakes on immorality. Our mortal bodies will degrade as a result. When men and women chose to be promiscuous, having sex with multiple partners, sooner or later they will contract STD's. When people choose to be in homosexual relationships, which Paul clearly preaches against, they will eventually contract AID's, their bodies will degrade, and they will die a painful death. Here is a father weeping over the near-death of his son with AID's. It’s very sad. I wish it doesn’t happen but it does everyday. This is the kind of thing that happens to mankind when man gives up on God.
But what if an entire nation gives up on God and worships idols? The false gods in America don't look like animals and reptiles. No, Americans are too respectable to bow down to animals. The false trinity that we bow down to in America is the uncontrollable desire for money, sex and power. When courthouses all across America take down the Ten Commandments, when schools ban public prayer, when the government won’t allow the display of the nativity scene out on public parks during Christmas, what happens? Mainstream America is saying, “God, get out of my car.”
Paul says God will give up the nation to its immorality and lustful desires. It’s already done in our country. Our nation told God to get out of its courts, schools, and public squares. So God took his foot off the brake in our country, and now the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage all over America. This is just the beginning of the degrading process. Paul says that this immorality is not the cause of God’s wrath. It is the result of God’s wrath. America will crash if she doesn’t put on her brakes. It’s pretty sad isn’t it? Is there no more hope for America? Is it too late for America to turn back to God?
If Apostle Paul was here, what would he say to us? “Run for your lives! The wrath of God is coming down on America! Move to Asia!” No, he would not say that. Paul would say to all of us here, “I am so eager to preach the gospel to you who are in America. "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes!” Paul says that the preaching of the gospel is the answer! It will bring revival to America. Get people back to God, and help them get right with God. Then and only then, can their bodies and minds be restored to truth. Only then will America turn from worshiping the false trinity to worshiping Christ.
All talks of social and political reform are useless and temporary. At the root of it all, the problem of our nation is first and foremost a broken relationship with God. It’s not social nor political. Only God can save our nation.
We live in a critical hour in American history where the Wrath of God is being revealed. Will we accept our God-given mandate and pray for revival? Will we accept our mandate to share the Good News of God’s love? What we cannot do is just sit here and do nothing. We are called to be light of the world, and salt of the earth. In light of this, I invite our church to do something. I want us to take an action step. Is there an opportunity for us to pray and share the gospel?
Yes there is! There are many different things you can do. But I will highlight one thing that we can all do together. Here is a 5-minute video of The Call. Please watch this.
It’s an entire day of prayer and outreach, from 10am to 10pm. We are partnering with two other churches in Irvine, and we are trying to get a bus to go there on 4/9. That means that I only have 10 spots for EM, and 10 spots for 1.5G. Please let me know if you are interested so I can reserve a spot for you. First come first serve.
