Today, we continue our series on the Attributes of God. While our LORD has many attributes, we will focus on seven. Last week we studied "The Holiness of God." Now, we will teach on "Wrath of God." God's Holiness and His Wrath are very closely connected. Most of the world is in revolt against God and is rushing headlong toward hell without brakes. Everywhere you turn the God of the Bible is held in utter contempt by men and women in the pulpit, the pew and the world. This teaching on "The Wrath of God" is essential to the preaching of the Gospel. People who are unsaved need to hear this truth. If you are unsaved, listen closely to this message. Your eternal destiny is at stake.
Introduction
Romans 1: 18 reads: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness." Our subject today is, THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GOD'S LOVE AND GOD'S WRATH. It is so sad that multitudes who call themselves Christians have done their best to take the sword of justice and the sword of judgment out of the hands of a Sovereign God. If a "preacher" today does reference the wrath of God, they will do it in an apologetic way. I have heard one "pastor" say, "I want to apologize to you today for bringing a message on 'The Wrath of God.'"
I have known pastors that when a soul came under Holy Spirit conviction that they would try and comfort the person under conviction. You may hear them say, "God loves you just the way you are." "God accepts you just as you are, there is no need to change." "It's important to focus on the love of God." "God's not mad at you, He is mad about you." Let me be clear, such pastors or preachers are enemies to the souls of men. One of the best friends you will ever have is the preacher or teacher who will be true to your soul and present the claims of God, who is not only a God of love but a God of wrath. God's love and His wrath are woven together and are not inconsistent.
As you hear this message, listen to the truths of God's Word and be open to the working of the Holy Spirit in your heart.
Section 1: The Bible and God's Wrath
Many turn away from the subject of God's wrath because they cannot in their darkened, depraved minds reconcile His wrath with His love. They think to speak of God as a God of wrath would put a negative mark on His divine character. They believe you have to uphold the love of God by denying the wrath of God, not knowing that the two go together. WHEN YOU DENY THE WRATH OF GOD, YOU DENY THE LOVE OF GOD. You cannot deny one without the other.
Deuteronomy 32: 39-41 states: "See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with Me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of My hand. For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live for ever. If I whet (sharpen) my glittering sword, and mine hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to mine enemies and will reward then that hate me." Did you notice that God said, "I will whet (sharpen) my glittering sword"? The God of the Bible is a God of wrath, and a God of vengeance.
Psalm 7: 11-13 reads: "God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day. If He turn not, He will whet His sword; He hath bent His bow and made it ready. He hath also prepared for him the instruments of death; he ordaineth his arrows against the persecutors." We see here that "God is angry with the wicked every day. If he turn not, he will whet his sword." God has a sword, and it is ready for execution against the enemies of God. Listening friend, you cannot take the sword of judgment out of the hands of the Sovereign LORD. Don't try it!
If you use a concordance or online Bible search engine, you will find that there are more Scriptures in the Bible which set forth the anger and fury and wrath of God than there are that set forth His love and tenderness. Why is this so? It is because God is holy; God hates sin, and because He hates sin His anger burns against the sinner who will not repent and take his place as a lost sinner at the feet of God. It is either turn or burn! God will not compromise with any sinner. God hates sin, and He will punish sin. "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." (Hebrews 10:31) Many say that God loves the sinner but hates his sins. Friend, you cannot separate the sinner and his sins unless he repents. Consider this, if God loves the sinner but hates the sin, why doesn't God throw the sin into hell instead of the sinner? Many church pastors are lost themselves and that is why they won't tell you the truth. They are more concerned with:
1. Building buildings.
2. Building church membership rolls.
3. Building their bank accounts.
My expression is that they are driving a little yellow school bus headed to hell with their congregation sitting inside playing games, going on field trip and kow towing to the world and the god of this world, Satan. People no longer tremble under the fearfulness and the awfulness of the judgment of God against sin. Everywhere you turn, you will hear things like this: "Oh, God is such a loving God, God is such a good God, He wouldn't punish sin in me." Friend, if you think this you better think again. Unless you repent and have faith in the blood sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, you will find out how much God hates sin.
The average person's concept of God of the Bible is that He is a lowly Nazarene; some little effeminate, sissy being who wouldn't harm a flea. That is true for the preacher in the pulpit, the attendee in the pew, and the person outside the walls of the church. The only God some know is a god of their own imagination or a creation of their own depraved nature. And God says that they think that He is like they are. Psalm 50: 21 states: "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself."
The wrath of God is as much a Divine perfection as His faithfulness, mercy or power. You don't need to defend Him, nor try and ease the offensiveness of the Gospel to the unsaved. There is no blemish to the character of the God of the Bible, and He has to be a God of wrath if He is to be a God of love. If God is holy (and He is), He has to be a God of vengeance and a God of judgment. If someone is indifferent toward sin, or who covers up sin, or makes light of sin, is a moral leper. He is a God of holiness, and He must hate sin.
How can a person delight only in that which is pure and holy, and at the same time not loathe and hate that which is impure and vile? If you love righteousness, you must hate sin. So, the very nature of God makes Hell a reality. Also, the holiness of God makes heaven a reality, the mercy of God fills heaven with its inhabitants. Similarly, the wrath of God makes Hell a reality, and the judgment of God fills Hell with its inhabitants.
Section 2: What is the Wrath of God?
What do we mean by the wrath of God? The wrath of God means God's eternal detestation of all unrighteousness, whether it is found in you or someone else. The wrath of God means God's displeasure and indignation of Divine equity against evil. The wrath of God is the holiness of God stirred into activity against sin. The holiness of God means that God literally hates sin and will punish sin in everyone who will not repent. The wrath of God is the moving cause of that last sentence which He passes upon every evildoer, or Christ rejecter.
Why does God hate sin so much? It is because sin is rebelling against His authority. We have said before, man will accept God anywhere except on the throne; and sin is man revolting against the authority of a Sovereign God. Isaiah 45: 23 states: "Unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear." A similar statement is found in Philippians 2: 10-11: "That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow...every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
Friend, you will bow to the Lord Jesus Christ, or YOU WILL GO TO HELL. The Philippian jailer asked, "What must I do to be saved?" (Acts 16: 29-30) He was told, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Notice the words "Lord Jesus Christ." There is no salvation without the Lord Jesus Christ! He will be your Lord, or you will face the wrath of God and GO TO HELL. Salvation is not trotting down the aisle, making a decision for Christ, and shaking the preacher's hand, or even being baptized. They are not salvation. Salvation isn't crying a few tears and thinking you have placated God. No! Every sinner who gets saved comes to realize that God is a God of judgment; he is arrested by God and brought into the courtroom of God. He faces the judgment upon him. He comes to know through the work of the Holy Spirit that he is a lost sinner rightfully headed to a devil's hell. He comes to sense the wrath of God upon sin and know he is lost. He sees that he is under a sentence of death. He faces the fact that he is in the hands of an angry God. IT IS THEN AND ONLY THEN THAT HE COMES TO FEEL AND TO KNOW THE MERCY OF GOD IN THE DEATH OF CHRIST FOR SINNERS. THEN, WHEN GOD PARDONS A SINNER LIKE THAT, HE NEVER GETS OVER IT. HE NEVER DOES!
This is a major problem with modern churches and preachers who never teach on the wrath of God. People don't get saved. There are no genuine revivals. No one gets saved. Why, you ask? Because the church leaders have never become new creations themselves. They make a profession, a decision, or they join the church. Too many people think they are saved but they are not. Worse yet, their "pastors" won't tell them the truth. I believe that the majority of church members are not saved. I attended a church board meeting, and the church leaders were asked to give a word of testimony about when they were saved. I believe there were eight people present:
1. 5 said when they joined the church.
2. 2 said that they went forward at an altar call.
3. Only one person gave a clear testimony of being saved by the blood redemption of the Lord Jesus Christ.
God has revealed His wrath on several occasions:
1. The wrath of God was revealed when God flooded the earth.
2. The wrath of God was revealed when He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone.
3. The wrath of God is revealed in the Sacrifice, "Without shedding of blood (there) is no remission (of sin). (Hebrews 9: 22)
4. The wrath of God was revealed at the cross at Calvary in the suffering and death of our Lord as a substitute for the sinner.
If you want to see both the love of God and the wrath of God, you look at Golgotha's Hill. There you see Christ crucified and dying in the place of sinners. You hear our Lord's cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" That wrath will one day fall on the unrepentant sinner if he never repents. But in the midst of wrath, you see the Love of God. That love is so deep that it sent the Son of God to the cross to die for the sins of His children. What love to send your Son to die for lost depraved sinners. Yet, that is exactly what God did. You cannot know the love of God until you know the wrath of God.
Section 3: The Wrath of God as a Divine Perfection
Psalm 95: 11 reads: "Unto whom I sware in my wrath." In God's Word, we find two occasions where God swears:
1. Genesis 22: 16-17: "By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I will bless thee."
2. Deuteronomy 1: 34-35: "And the LORD heard the voice of your words, and was wroth, and sware, saying, Surely there shall not one of these men of this evil generation see that good land, which I sware to give unto your fathers."
There He swore in His wrath--He swore in threatening denouncement. In the first one He swore in His mercy to His children; in the second place He swore to terrify the wicked. You can see that you cannot separate wrath from the God of the Bible. Once God swore by His Holiness in Psalm 89: 35, and then in Psalm 95: 11 He swore by His wrath. Therefore, we see that the LORD God puts "My Holiness" and "My Wrath" on the same basis, He will swear by them both.
In Colossians 2: 9 we read, "In Him (Christ) dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." In other words, all Divine Perfections are found in Christ; therefore, we read in Revelation 2: 6: "The wrath of the Lamb." Listen again, "the wrath of the Lamb." The Lamb loves and has wrath. I want you to get this: THE INDIVIDUAL WHO DOES NOT KNOW THE WRATH OF CHRIST DOES NOT KNOW THE LOVE OF CHRIST. The Lord Jesus Christ is not a little sissy, lowly Nazarene. He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords! He is the God-Man. The same Divine Christ that healed and cleansed the harlot, the leper and His friend Lazarus, was the same One that cried out against the Pharisees that they were hypocrites. Our Lord offers rest to those that will come to Him but at the same time proclaims that you must repent or perish. That is our Christ! Do you know Him?
When we come to know the wrath of God against sin, then we come to detest sin. Our hatred of sin is in proportion to our understanding of the wrath of God and God's hatred and abhorrence of sin. There is a tendency to regard sin lightly or make an excuse for it. But as we come to understand and know the wrath of God, we will hate sin and repent and turn away from it. The reason sinners never cry out against sin and mourn over it and bewail their sinful, wretched, wicked hearts is that they have never experienced or felt the keen edge of the sword of justice and the sword of wrath of a sin-avenging God in their depraved hearts.
Do you know, have you experienced the wrath of God?
Section 4: What We Need Today
First, in my humble opinion, I believe with the deepest conviction and that conviction is growing every day, that what is most needed today is a proclamation of the following Bible truths which are the least acceptable to the unsaved religionists of today:
1. We need to set forth the character of God, that is HIS ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY, HIS HOLINESS, HIS JUSTICE, AND HIS UNCHANGING VERACITY.
2. We need preaching on the condition of the natural man, that is HIS TOTAL DEPRAVITY, HIS SPIRITUAL DEADNESS, HIS ABSOLUTE HOSTILITY TO GOD.
3. WE NEED TO WARN SINNERS OF THE DANGER THEY ARE IN.
4. WE NEED TO SET FORTH THE NATURE OF PUNISHMENT (HELL) THAT AWAITS THE LOST.
5. WE NEED TO PREACH HOLY SPIRIT CONVICTION AND BLOOD REDEMPTION.
These are the truths that need to be thundered from pulpits today. Instead, many churches and pastors preach an easy believeism, or decisionism, or anything else that is not offensive to the unsaved. As a result of the weak preaching, sinners are not alarmed about their condition; so called saints have no compassion for the lost. Just don't offend them. Our churches have been lulled to sleep. Sinners are going to hell without warning.
Second, we should meditate and think upon the wrath of God, a true fear of God is produced in our souls. Hebrews 12: 28-29 states: "Let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire." Friend, you won't serve God unless you have a due reverence for His awful Majesty and a godly fear in our hearts for Him and for His righteous anger.
Third, as we meditate upon the wrath of God, and come to know and to feel the keen edge of the sword of the wrath of God as our hearts are laid bare, we are made to praise Him for delivering us from the wrath to come. Friend, His wrath is coming. ARE YOU READY? ARE YOU SURE? DO YOU KNOW THE CHRIST OF CALVARY? DOES HE KNOW YOU?
Conclusion
My listening friend, I beg you not to ignore this message. His wrath hangs over every lost soul. It is only by His grace that you do not split hell open in the next 3 seconds. Are you sheltered from His wrath? I know that God has delivered me from the wrath of the Lamb by sheltering me under His blood. Do you have an assurance of your salvation? You can. He will never turn anyone away that comes to Him in repentance and in faith.
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