The Wrath of God

God seemed to overlook the sin of men in the centuries before the cross. It looked maybe as if sin was tolerated, but it was just piling up. You know, the dam broke one day and it broke at Calvary. It broke on Christ and drowned Him in all the sea of sin. It will break again, and it will drown all those men who are not in Christ. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. If you scroll through various Christian websites, you'll come across numerous articles about the loving, compassionate side of God's character. However, look for descriptions of God's wrath, His hatred and judgment of sin, and odds are you won't find very much. With that in mind, John MacArthur is going to break the silence on today's Grace to You and take you into one of the Bible's key passages about the wrath of God. John calls this study, Wicked World, Angry God. And when you see just how lost in sin mankind really is, as today's lesson will show you, you'll appreciate God's loving plan of salvation in a new and profound way.

So here's John with today's message. I wonder in all of the times that you have presented the gospel to somebody, how many times did you introduce it by saying, By the way, did you know that the wrath of God is revealed against your ungodliness? From Paul's perspective, fear becomes the first pressure applied to evil men.

Let them know about the wrath of God. Now admittedly, the wrath of God is a hard subject and I am not here to tell you that it's an easy one. I find it myself very difficult to begin in speaking to people about Christ at this point.

And yet it is the beginning of the gospel and to proper preparation for the announcement of grace. How can people understand anything about love if they don't understand God's hate? How can they understand anything about His grace if they don't know about His law? How can they understand forgiveness if they don't understand the penalty of sin? Men cannot understand, they cannot seek grace and salvation unless they are affected with the dread of the wrath of God that is upon them.

Unless men sense they are in grave danger, there's no pressure applied to them to change. Now sometimes when you talk about God being a God of wrath, certain people get disturbed and they don't understand how God can be a God of anger and God can be a God of wrath and God can be a God of fury, a God of terror. But that's because they don't understand God. God is a God of wrath, people. He's a God of anger. Now does that sound like a poor choice of starting points for the gospel?

Think about it. The bad news has to come before the good news, doesn't it? It's kind of like going to the doctor and having the doctor say to you, I have bad news. You have a fatal illness that has killed many people. But I have good news. A cure has been found and I have it right here. See, the good news means nothing without the bad news, right?

You have to diagnose the disease before the cure means anything. The bad news is, God hates. The good news is, God loves. But you have to start with His hate.

First the diagnosis, then the cure. Now look again at verse 18. It says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. Why is that for there?

What is that there for? Well it connects us with the previous passage. The previous passage says justification is by faith alone.

Why? Because the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. In other words, what that verse says is that all men hold the truth unrighteously and are under the wrath of God. Therefore they have no capacity to justify themselves. So justification has to be by faith because all men left to their own efforts are under the wrath. You see? Justification is by faith.

It has to be. It can't be by works because by works all men are under wrath. Paul says it another way. He says, For all have sinned and what? Come short of the glory of God.

Frankly, folks, sentence has already been passed. The whole human race is damned to hell. We are all children of wrath under the judgment of God.

So we start with this classic statement. And just to give you focus, the passage on the condemnation of the human race starts in chapter 1 verse 18 and goes all the way to chapter 3 verse 20. But let's begin by just looking at the concept of wrath in verse 18 and this gives us an absolutely comprehensive perspective on it. Six features of the wrath are presented here. First, the quality of wrath, the quality, the essence of it. What kind of wrath is it? Well it is the wrath of God. It is divine wrath and that is a very important beginning. It is divine wrath.

It isn't like anything else that we know in this world. It isn't like your wrath or my wrath. It isn't like when we get angry. It isn't like when we get mad. We get angry and we get mad when we are offended.

And frankly, we have pride in the way. Our passion, our anger and our wrath is not like this. This is the wrath of God.

And like every other attribute of God, it is as perfect as His holy person. His wrath is righteous wrath. It is the right kind of wrath.

It is holy wrath. The passion that we call anger in this world, the thing that we call wrath in this human world is always reflective of the evil heart of man. But we must not impose that on God. One writer said, we cannot think with full consistency of God in terms of the highest human ideals of personality and yet attribute to Him the irrational passion of anger. In other words, this writer was saying God could never be angry because we know anger is a bad thing. But he is simply trying to say that God's like us and He's not. Don't push our concept of anger on God. God is angry in a holy way, in a perfect way. God's anger is not some capricious irrational rage.

Thomas Watson says, Is God so infinitely holy? Then see how unlike to God sin is. Sin is an unclean thing.

It is called an abomination. God has no mixture of evil in Him. Sin has no mixture of good. It is the spirit and quintessence of evil. It turns good into evil. It has deflowered the virgin soul, made it red with guilt and black with filth. It is called the accursed being, no wonder therefore that God hates sin.

He's right. So the quality of wrath is that it is the wrath of God and that is different than any other kind. Secondly, the time of wrath. Look what it says, for the wrath of God is revealed...is revealed. What does He mean is revealed? Literally is being constantly revealed. When is the time of God's wrath? It's constantly being revealed. God's wrath is constantly being manifest.

The verb apokalupto from which we get apokalupsis or apocalypse means to uncover, to bring to light, to make manifest, to make known. God's wrath is always being made known. It's visible to all of human history. It was revealed in the Garden, wasn't it? When Adam and Eve sinned and immediately the sentence of death was passed, the earth was cursed and they were thrown out of paradise.

And the world had a great beginning lesson on the fact that God hates sin. It was revealed in the flood when God drowned the whole human race except for eight faithful souls. It was revealed in the drowning of Pharaoh's army. It was revealed in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire from heaven. It was revealed in the curse of the law on every transgressor.

It was revealed in the institution of the sacrificial system and all of the services of the Mosaic law. In fact, the whole creation groans and travails in pain under the judgment of God waiting for redemption. You know that even the laws of men made against evil doers reveal the wrath of God for all laws are based upon the mind of God.

No one can plead ignorance because the wrath of God has been revealed throughout human history. And above all, I believe the greatest demonstration of the wrath of God ever given was given on Calvary's cross. God hates so deeply sin that He actually allowed His own Son to be put to death, the greatest manifestation of the wrath of God. He poured out His fury on His beloved Son.

He would not hold it back, even from His own Son. That's how He hated sin. The quality of wrath, it's God's wrath.

That's different than any other kind. The time, constantly being revealed, the source. Where's the source of this wrath? Look what it says, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. Heaven is the source. The wrath of God comes from heaven. Earth is dominated by heaven. Wrath is dynamically, effectively operative in the world of men. It comes from the throne of God. Now there are basically two ways that heaven reveals the wrath of God.

Think with me on these. The first is what I call moral order, and the second we'll call personal action. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven, first of all, through moral order.

In other words, when God made the world, the physical and the moral world, He built into it certain laws. If you climb a tall building and jump off, you go down. It doesn't matter what you want to do, you go down. It doesn't matter what you think you're going to do, you still go down. Law of gravity. There are laws.

You go in a car at 80 miles an hour, run into a concrete wall, and a law immediately takes effect. Now the wrath is revealed from heaven then, first of all, in the moral order. I mean, you do things that are immoral and you pay a price. You pay a price because the world is made on moral law.

You live a dissolute life, degenerate evil life, and there will be consequences. And it's from heaven because heaven made the rules. But secondly, and it goes beyond that, the wrath of God is not simply confined to moral order. There is also personal activity on God's part. God is not just a cosmic force who made a law and just let it run its course. God gets involved. It is not just automatic judgment by an anonymous cosmic computer. God is involved and the Bible shows a very intense personal reaction to sin within the heart of the divine being. Yes, there's moral order, but yes, there's a real personal involvement.

Let me just give you an illustration. I've got a lot of Scriptures I could show you, but let me just give you a quick one in Psalm 7-11. It says in verse 11, God judges the righteous and God is angry. God is angry. The Bible does say that God is angry. There's not just a moral order, God is angry. And He's not angry now and then, He's angry with the wicked how often? Every day.

You say, really? Well, yeah, He's angry every day. God is angry every day. God gets angry.

There is moral law, moral order, but there's also personal act as God expresses the wrath of a holy nature. It comes from heaven because heaven has established the moral order and it is from the throne of God that that wrath comes. Fourth, the nature of wrath. What is the nature of wrath? What kind of wrath is this? Well, very simply stated, the wrath of God, that's its quality, is revealed, that's its time, constantly revealed. From heaven, that's its source against ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. That's its nature. It is wrath against sin.

You knew that. It's not an uncontrolled, irrational fury. God is not like a criminal who takes His vengeance out on the nearest person.

It is discriminated. It is carefully pointed at the unrighteousness and ungodliness of men, asabian adikia. What do these words mean, ungodliness and unrighteousness? The first word, although they really overlap and you could call them synonyms in the purest sense, He's simply just using two words to show us that God is angry about sin.

But there are some shades of meaning that I think are interesting. The first word refers to ungodliness, and that focuses on the relationship to God . God is angry because men are not rightly related to Him. They are ungodly, you see.

Not godly. Men are ungodly. In Jude it says, God is going to come and execute judgment on all and convict all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed.

Three ungodlies in a row. And then it says, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him. Four in one verse, ungodly. Not rightly related to God. It refers to impiety toward God. It refers to a lack of reverence, a lack of devotion, a lack of worship, and it leads to idolatry.

It views sin as a failure to reverence God. The second word, unrighteousness, while it encompasses the first concept as well, leans toward the result of the first word. When you are not rightly related to God and don't reverence God properly, then your transactions with everyone else around you aren't right either. And so ungodliness leads to unrighteousness. All sin, you see, first attacks God's majesty and then His law. And the reason, and I really believe this, the reason men treat men the way they do is because they treat God the way they do. Ungodliness leads to unrighteousness.

People say, oh what's happening? All the murders and all the crimes and all the horrible things that are going on. Why is man so inhumane to man?

It's because he is so unrelated to God. All human relationships and all human transactions are corrupted. So God's wrath is set against sin. Thomas Watson says, sin is to the soul as rust is to gold, as stain is to beauty. Sin in the Scripture is called a menstruous cloth.

It's called a plague sore. Joshua's filthy garments were a hieroglyphic of sin. And you know as well as I how God hates sin. In fact, do you know that that's the only thing God hates? That's right. Did you know that? And no man will ever enter His presence with sin.

Fifthly, the extent of wrath. And this is a very brief point. You say, well, I'm a pretty good guy. I mean, who are you talking to, MacArthur? It's not me. I belong to the...we're all of the goats.

I give to the charity. I mean, I'm basically a good person. Well, okay. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against...what's the next word? All. All? All.

For all of sin come short of the glory of God. Oh, some people are better than others, but nobody makes it. I used to use the illustration of everybody going down to the beach and trying to jump to Catalina. Well, we'll give you a running start. Only 26 miles. Run as fast as you want, as long as you want. And jump. Some of us would get out about six feet. Some of us might be stupendous, broad jumpers and jump 26 feet. Let nobody get there. Sure people are different.

Some appear better than others. It's too far to jump. And so all ungodliness and unrighteousness...nobody escapes.

No one. This only needs to be a brief point because Scripture is so clear. You can't escape. Finally, we've seen the quality of wrath, the time of wrath, the source of wrath, the nature of wrath, the extent of wrath and now the cause of wrath. Say, how can God hold all these poor people responsible? I mean, I was born into a sinful family. What do I know?

Oh, you'd be surprised what you know. End of verse 18. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the...what?...the truth in unrighteousness. The real problem and the cause of wrath is that men hold the truth in unrighteousness. Literally we would read it this way, men who are constantly attempting to suppress the truth by their sin. Sin just is in the heart of man so strongly that it assaults the truth.

People say, what about the heat and what about this and what about that? Listen, the truth is there, as he will point out in the next passage, but men suppress it. Sin always assaults the truth. The fundamental truth of God and His Word is assaulted. There's always an attempt to suppress it, to bury it, to obliterate it. It is the essence of sin, however, that the attempt is always futile and men live with guilt in spite of their attempt. The knowledge of God is all over.

And if the knowledge of God...listen...that I believe is available to every human being on the earth, I don't care how obscure that individual is or how remote, I believe the knowledge of God is available and if it does its legitimate work and man allows it to do that legitimate work, it will keep a man from the excesses of sin and lead that man to God. But men suppress it. They love darkness rather than what?

Light because what? Their deeds are evil. The fool is always saying, there is no God. And why does he say that? Because he doesn't want there to be a God because if there's a God, he's in trouble. It says in Psalm 14, the fool says in his heart there's no God.

Why? They are corrupt. They have done abominable works.

There is none that doeth good. And sure they don't want there to be a God to call them to accountability. Man tries to postulate that there is no God and if he doesn't do that, he says, well, I'll invent a God who can tolerate my sin. And he clearly avoids the true voice of God. If you're not a Christian, the wrath of God waits for you.

Dr. Barnhouse had an apt illustration and I'll close with this. He said, the wrath of God is like the great water impounded behind a dam. He said, I can remember the first time I ever saw Hoover Dam, one of the greatest of all dams on earth. It has been thrown across the waters of the Colorado River and these waters have backed up for miles and penetrated into every little cove and valley. And thus it has been with the wrath of God. The first time there was ever a sin committed, the wrath of God was stored up against that sin. And as men lived upon the earth and as their hearts grew more wicked and the outbreak of their sin more violent, the store of wrath grew greater and greater, held back by the patience of God which lies across the valley of His judgment like a great dam across the river. And in His eternal foreknowledge, God the Father foresaw all of the sin that would be committed after the time of Christ, your sin and my sin, and He stored His wrath against it behind the dam of His patience. And the wrath of God against sin that even today has not yet been committed is also stored up waiting for the day when His patience shall burst into its holy end. For thousands of years that dam is held and God has held back His wrath. Occasionally throughout human history He stooped to dip His hand into the pent-up flood and pour a few drops of wrath on some especially vicious outbreak of rebellion.

But for the most part, God seemed to overlook the sin of man in the centuries before the cross. It looked maybe as if sin was tolerated, but it was just piling up. You know the dam broke one day and it broke at Calvary. It broke on Christ and drowned Him in all the sea of sin.

It'll break again and it'll drown all those men who are not in Christ. Christ took the judgment for those who believe. For those who do not believe, they will take their own judgment. And the wrath of God awaits them because they hold the truth no matter what they claim, but they hold it and suppress it because of their sin. Now listen, that is where the gospel begins. But remember, there is good news and the good news is Christ has taken the full fury of God's wrath if you'll accept His gracious substitution for you.

That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary with the sobering truth about sin and God's amazing provision for His people to avoid the judgment that we all deserve. John calls his study Wicked World, Angry God. You know, wrath is just one of God's many attributes that have kept Bible scholars meditating and writing for centuries. With that in mind, John, what would you say is the value in undertaking a focused study of all of the attributes of God? Well, I think it's important for us to know everything we can know about God for one dominating primary reason, and that is so that we can glorify Him as God. In other words, a limited knowledge of God, a limited understanding of God's nature, of His character, of His attributes leads to a limited appreciation of God. Therefore, it leads to a limited perspective on what is required, on what honors God, what glorifies God. And there's no value in having a limited view of God.

You are cheated seriously out of the full glory of God, and therefore a full expression of worship of God if you have only a limited or minimal understanding of His nature. God wants to be fully on display. He wants His wrath known. He wants His anger known, His righteousness known, His judgment known. He wants it to be known that He hates sin, and that He will forever punish the impenitent, unbelieving sinner, because all of this is germane and essential to His absolute holiness and righteousness. And it's against that backdrop that He wants us to understand His love and mercy, forgiveness and grace. Grace becomes all the more awesome and all the more magnificent and all the more wonderful. And the cross becomes all the more clear when we understand God's attitude toward sin and why, therefore, He had to punish Christ to satisfy His judgment in order to dispense grace to those who believe. Full understanding of God's attributes as revealed in Scripture leads to full appreciation and the full experience of worshipping Him and giving Him glory.

That's right, John. And friend, there is nothing more important than knowing the God of the Bible. And to help you more fully understand all that God has revealed about Himself in His Word, the MacArthur Study Bible can be a big help. To order yours, contact us today. Call 800-55-GRACE weekdays from 730 to 4 Pacific Time, or visit our website anytime at gty.org. The MacArthur Study Bible is available in the English Standard, New King James, and New American Standard versions, as well as in several non-English translations.

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That's gty.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Be back tomorrow as John looks at the reasons for God's wrath and how they apply to you. It's another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace To You.