Reasons for the Wrath of God, Part 4

When you start with revelation, and you fall from there to rejection, and you fall from there to rationalization, you fall from there to religion, the next step is reprobation. You just have a reprobate mind.

That means a mind that's utterly unable to discern what is right and wrong, and you fall into the gross, vile filth that characterizes our world. And that's what God is angry about. And that's why He has a right to be angry. Welcome to Grace To You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Some people seem to avoid the topic of God's judgment and anger over sin when they share the gospel. The thinking is that people will be turned off by that message, that they'll see God and this thing called Christianity in a negative light. So what are you supposed to tell people about God's anger when you give the gospel? The fact is, as John MacArthur shows you today on Grace To You, if a person doesn't understand the bad news that their sin deserves God's wrath, there's no way that person will genuinely appreciate or desire the good news.

How do you get into the hard truth? Find out now as John MacArthur continues his study, Wicked World, Angry God. In other words, God is angry with men and God demands that they face the consequence of their sin. And the reason He has a right to be angry flows out of what Paul says at the end of verse 18.

Men hold the truth but they abandon it. Verse 19 says, That which may be known of God is manifest in them but they leave that. And verse 21 says, When they knew God, they glorified Him not as God. And verse 23 says, And they changed the glory of the truly incorruptible God into their idols. This is the descent of man.

So man is inexcusable. There's a good illustration of this, I think, in 2 Kings 17 and you can see that even Israel did this. Israel followed this flow. In 2 Kings 17, just listen for a minute, 15, it says about them this. Verse 14 says, They did not believe in the Lord their God.

So that was the first thing. God had revealed Himself to them but they rejected. They did not believe in the Lord their God. They rejected His statutes and His covenant that He made with their fathers, His testimonies which He testified against them. They followed vanity.

There they go. As soon as they reject God, they slide into emptiness and they became vain. Sounds exactly like Romans 1.

This is what Israel did. And they went after the nations who were round about them concerning whom the Lord had charged them that they should not do like them. And they left all the commandments of the Lord their God and made them what? Melted images, two calves and an idol and worshiped all the stars in the heaven and served Baal. It's incredible.

Incredible. God got so angry, He removed everybody but the tribe of Judah only, says verse 18. What did they do? They didn't want to believe in God. So they descended from there into emptiness and from emptiness into idolatry and from idolatry into moral perversion. The end of verse 17, they sold themselves to do evil and into judgment. I'll say it again, people.

I want you to remember it. Man is not religious because he is ascending to try to find God. He is religious because he is running blasphemously away from God into the pit of idolatry. All false religion is idolatry.

And A.W. Tozer was right when he said, quote, Idolatry begins in the mind when we pervert or exchange the idea of God for something other than what He really is. The liberals and others who try to tell us that man started in idolatry, started in primitive animism or totemism, worshiping animals and totems and things, that he's moving upward. That just can't be verified historically.

It cannot be verified whatsoever historically. They say man started in animism. He started worshiping animals and then he moved up to polydemonism.

He started worshiping many demons and then he worked his way up to polytheism and he worshiped many gods and then he worked his way up to monotheism, one god, and that's how he got where he was going. That's what the liberals tell us. The Encyclopedia Britannica takes this view and this is what...you want to hear a confusing paragraph?

Listen to this. In an age when the study of religion was practically confined to Judaism and Christianity, idolatry was regarded as a degeneration from an uncorrupt primeval faith. That's what they say the Christians and the Jews believed. But the comparative and historical investigation of religion has shown it to be rather a stage in an upward movement. In other words, they're saying the Jews and the Christians believed that man started out with a primeval faith and descended into idolatry.

But history tells us that he started there and he's working his way up. Then in the very next paragraph it says this, Well that paragraph contradicts the other paragraph. And then the next paragraph makes it worse.

You know what that is? Blah, blah, blah. They say it is evident that man has really ascended but all these people, they quote, say there was no idolatry in the past and the proof is by their own statement that man descended. For 170 years after the founding of Rome, there were no idols, there were no images.

You see, that's the way it goes. Man starts out with faith and descends from that. Scripture affirms this. It says, for example, before the Flood there was no such thing as idolatry at all. The world was not drowned because there was idolatry, it was drowned because there was unrighteousness. There was no idolatry.

It says in Genesis 4 26, men in that age, quote, called upon the name of the Lord. They worshiped God. Man didn't grow up out of idolatry to know the true God, he descended into that.

Very important. So the world's idolatry, the world's religion is a falling, not a rising. Therefore, Paul says, man is guilty, man deserves judgment.

And the ultimate insanity of man is that he rejects God and then invents a non-God made in his own image on his own terms, worships that non-God and then calls himself wise. In the Apocrypha it says, an experienced woodcutter will cut down a tree that's easy to handle. Skillfully he strips off all its bark and then with pleasing workmanship he makes a useful article that serves life's needs. But he takes a cast-off piece, one that is good for nothing, a stick crooked and full of knots, carves it with care and causes it to resemble a man.

Or he makes it to look like some worthless animal giving it a coat of red paint and with paint covering every blemish. And then he makes for it a suitable niche, sets it in the wall and fastens it with iron, takes care that it doesn't fall because he knows that it can't help itself for it's only an image and in need of help. Then he prays to it about his marriage and his children. And for health he appeals to a thing that is weak. For life he prays to a thing that is dead. For aid he entreats an object that is thoroughly inexperienced and he asks strength of a thing whose hands have no strength. That was the writing of the ancients at the time. They all thought it was really foolish and yet they were trapped in the rejection of God with little other alternatives. In Isaiah 44, thus saith the Lord, verse 6, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, I am first and I am the last and apart from me there's no God.

That's pretty clear, isn't it? No God. And who as I shall call and shall declare it and set in order for me since I appointed the ancient people and the things that are coming and shall come, let them show unto them.

In other words, who's going to call the shots in history? Who's going to do the creating but me? Fear not, neither be afraid, have I not told thee from that time and declared it? Ye are even my witness, is there a God beside me? Yea, there is no God.

I know not any. God says I don't know any. They that make a carved image are all of them vanity and their delectable things shall not profit and they are their own witnesses. They see not nor know that they may be ashamed. Who hath formed a God or melted and cast an image that is profitable for nothing? Behold, all his fellows shall be ashamed and the workmen, they are of men. Let them all be gathered together, let them stand up, yet they shall fear and shall be ashamed together. In other words, it's so stupid that if they all brought their gods in and stuck them in a pile, they'd sort of feel silly. And he goes on to say how they make it and they cut down trees and they work with the fire and the metal and they carve it and they do all this. And when they get all done, they got something they can't see, can't hear, doesn't understand a thing, can't think.

And then he says to his people, get your head together. Why would you worship that stuff? Well, you see, when man rejects God and worships himself, he invariably has to make a god of his own creation. And I would hasten to add that basically, and I want you to note this in your mind, all idolatry is self-worship. All of it is. In one sense. In another sense, it's Satan worship or demon worship.

We'll see that in a minute. But in one sense, it's self-worship because ultimately man winds up worshiping himself because he invents deities like himself. In verse 8 of chapter 2 of Isaiah, it says they worship the work of their own hands that which their own fingers have made.

They're actually worshiping the creation that they have created which in effect is worshiping themselves. So man is idolatrous and his idolatry ultimately, even though he will not admit it, is the worship of self. He rejects the true God. He affirms in his own mind that he is wise. Therefore, he will call the shots. He will determine what is true and in the residual feeling that there must be a God, he creates one out of his own mind that is the product of his own thinking and he worships that God and in effect worships himself. This, believe me, is the ultimate damnable heresy of which Paul wrote to Timothy.

But look now at verse 23. The essence of it is that he changes the glory or exchange is a better way to say that. He exchanges the glory of the incorruptible God for an idol. I mean, it's incredible that the incorruptible, eternal, divine nature of God would be exchanged for a stick or a stone or some kind of a crafted image.

But that's what they do. And may I hasten to add that when men do this, in effect, they wind up worshiping the devil himself. Just to show you that, 1 Corinthians 10 is a key verse.

It says in 10 verse 20...1 Corinthians 10, 20, just listen to this. The things which the Gentiles sacrifice...get this now. In other words, the world of religion does its sacrificial stuff and he talks in verse 19 about the idols that they worship. The idol is nothing, he says, and so forth. But the idols to which the Gentiles sacrifice, the things they sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons.

Did you get that? Why? Because if you want to worship a stick, a demon will impersonate the God you think is in the stick and do enough stuff to keep you working on the stick. You know, I ask myself that question so many times. How can people worship a rock?

How can they do that? Pretty soon you say, this rock never does anything. I mean, I pray to the rock and nothing happens. And maybe he's been worshiping the same rock that 20 generations have been worshiping and you wonder how they can all get hung on this rock. Basically, if you worship the God you think is in the rock, I believe a demon will impersonate the God you think is in the rock and do enough supernatural stuff and enough phenomena will happen to keep people stuck on that rock.

I believe if people want to worship the stars and astrology, that Satan will make enough of that stuff come to pass within his power to keep people hooked on that stuff. So first of all, it is self-worship and secondly, it is Satan worship. Any religion but a true one. And the only true one is the worship of God through Christ. Any other thing. People say, oh, you shouldn't say anything about other religions.

You shouldn't do that. Listen, that's the pit. That's blasphemy. There's only one way to God and that's through the Lord Jesus Christ. There's only one God. Anything else is self-worship and Satan worship all thrown into one ball. And the world of religious people are worshiping themselves and they know that, I think, but they're worshiping the devil and probably don't know that. Now let's look at the idols they make.

We'll start at the end and move back. Creeping things. You know people through the centuries have worshipped bugs? That's right, bugs. Beetles. You go in Egypt and everywhere you go they tell you they worship these little beetles. Scarab beetles. They were really big on those beetles.

The creeping things could be bugs and beetles and snakes. Anything from a snake to a fly. You say, do people worship flies? Of course Beelzebub means the Lord of the Flies. That's right, they worship flies. The Philistines worship flies. The Assyrians worship snakes. In the temple of Actium the Greeks used to sacrifice an ox to the god of the flies. Pliny tells us that at Rome sacrifices were offered to flies that flew around the temple of Hercules. The Assyrians undoubtedly offered sacrifices to flies and it is said that no fly ever dared enter Solomon's temple.

I question that. Snakes figure in many, many religions as gods. And then man not only worships that kind of stuff, but he worships four-footed beasts. Even the Jews worshiped a golden calf, did they not? Not only did they do that in Exodus 32 at Sinai, but they set up a couple of golden calves in 1 Kings 12 at Dan and Bethel and worshipped them again. The Egyptians worshipped bulls.

I'll never forget when I was in Egypt. They took us out and we got on horses and rode to the pyramids. And these little Arab boys would pull the horses along. They only knew two English words, you know, dollars and Lone Ranger. Oh yeah, they knew John Wayne too.

Lone Ranger, John Wayne and dollars. And we would ride out there and we took another little horse ride and we went out to this burial ground, absolutely exquisite. They've uncovered it in the sand out there. And we went in and there were these massive sarcophagus arrangements with huge caskets that had been uncovered in the ground and they told us that in these were buried sacred bulls, huge bulls. And they would lower them through the ground and then pile the sand and there were these chambers with all this painting on the walls and all the riches, everything. Fortunes were literally stashed in those places where they buried the Egyptian bulls.

Then it says in verse 23, moving up again, birds. The Romans worshipped the eagle. They made an idol out of eagles. Herod the Great had a golden eagle erected over the gate of Jerusalem and infuriated the Jews. The soldiers of Rome had eagles on their standards and the Jews recognized them as idols, forbidden by the divine law and tried to tear them down and caused all kinds of problems. Indians have worshipped birds and they put them on their totems as thunderbirds. The men who built the pyramids worshipped, among other things, some kinds of birds. They worshipped insects. They worshipped animals. So man has put the most preposterous things in the place of God. And then ultimately, it says in verse 23, the first thing, he has exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image made like corruptible man. Man is sort of the highest level, the most sophisticated level of worship. They worshipped Caesar.

They put his face on all the coins. The gods of the Greeks and the gods of the Romans were pretty much man-like created gods. The gods of Mesopotamia, by the way, numbered some 1500. They had gods of war, gods of fertility, gods of learning, gods of hunting, gods of heaven, earth, fire, air, water, and on and on and on. Very often they were in the form of some imagined man or man-like creature. And throughout the centuries, men have prostrated themselves before forms of other men. In Psalm 115 verse 4, their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands, they have mouths but they speak not, eyes have they but they see not, they have ears but they hear not, noses have they but they smell not, they have hands but they handle not, feet have they, they walk not, neither speak they through their throat. They who make them are like them.

They don't know any more than those dumb idols. That's what the psalmist says. The chief gods very often were in human form. Man is idolatrous.

You say, well John, how does this relate to today? In America we have some of this, I suppose, probably some weird people out somewhere worshiping just about everything there is. But we have other gods, somewhat more sophisticated I suppose today. We worship science. We worship secularism, humanism, nationalism, naturalism, ecology. We worship money, pleasure, sex, romance, entertainment, sports, education, prestige, power, rock singers, movie stars, great athletes. Man is idolatrous.

And these are only part of his worship. Somewhere down the line he's got a belief in a god and he'll create some god of his own reasoning. So the end result, and I think you get the picture, is religion.

Man descends. Man is religious, yes, by nature. But when he wipes God out of his life, all he's left with is himself. And so he will push himself to be God, whether it's some god he manufactures in his religious mind or whether it's some element of secular world that he worships, he invariably will postulate a god and then his fantasy is that he will worship that god of his own creation.

The truth of it is he is worshiping the god of this world who is none other than Satan himself. That is why God's wrath is revealed, people. That is why God is wrathful against sin, because it reflects the descent of man. And by the way, there's one more step.

That's right, one more final step. I could call it reprobation...reprobation. You find from verse 24 to 32, the middle of verse 28, God gave them over to a reprobate mind. Neither man's philosophy nor man's religion can retard his vile sinfulness. So he will descend into uncleanness, into the lust of his own heart. He will dishonor his own body.

That's what he'll do. Verse 26, he'll go to vile affections. He'll become women who exchange the natural use for that which is against nature, men the same, lesbians, homosexuals. Verse 29, he'll be filled with unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, or malignity, whispers, backbiters, and on and on. You see, when you start with Revelation and you fall from there to rejection and you fall from there to rationalization, you fall from there to religion, the next step is reprobation. You just have a reprobate mind. That means a mind that's utterly unable to discern what is right and wrong and you fall into the gross, vile filth that characterizes our world. And that's what God is angry about.

And that's why He has a right to be angry. It is not God's nature, and you need to hear this, it is not God's nature to delight in punishment. As I live, as surely as I live, and He lives, as surely as I live, said the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the what? Of the wicked.

No pleasure. But that the wicked turn from His way and live. And He says, turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die? That's the heart of God. He is angry because His holiness reacts. That is not His desire. God delights to show mercy.

God is not willing that any should perish. Jesus says, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not. When He drew near the city, it says He wept. He wept. He said, would that even today you knew the things that make for peace, but now are they hid from your eyes? For the day shall come upon you when your enemies will cast a bank about you, surround you, hem you in on every side, dash you to the ground.

You and your children within you, they will not leave one stone on another because you didn't know the time of your visitation. And He wept. In the heart of God there are tears mingled with His wrath because He calls for men to respond to His grace. But the gospel begins with His wrath.

He's angry because men are guilty. Many years ago, a man named J. H. Clinch wrote some words that are, I think, provocative. They forced us to think about the choice, either to glorify God or to refuse and follow the descent. He wrote this, And still from Him we turn away and fill our hearts with worthless things. The fires of greed melt the clay and forth the idle springs.

Ambitions flame and passions heat. By wondrous alchemy transmute earth's dross to raise some gilded brute to fill Jehovah's seat. That's right. Men make gods to take God's place. That's why God's angry. Don't kid yourself that man is good, that he's on the way up. He's on the way down. Evil men grow worse and worse, not better and better. The world's not getting better and men are not getting better.

They're getting worse because that's the way it goes. From revelation to rejection to rationalization to religion to reprobation. But it need not be so. Christ reaches out to every one of us and is not willing that we should perish. You can call on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved right now. If you don't worship the true God, you are guilty and you will spend forever in hell paying for your guilt.

That's your choice. Even though you're very religious, that doesn't get you closer to God. That's the furthest away you can get if it isn't the true God through his son Christ.

That's Grace to You with John MacArthur, pastor, author, chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary in the Los Angeles area, and the title of his current study, Wicked World, Angry God. John, it seems the more we come to understand just how wicked mankind is at heart, the more God's wrath makes sense. The idea that somehow his anger isn't fair or deserved, that couldn't be further from the truth. Well, of course, to say about God that he isn't fair on any front is to impugn his character.

To impugn his character would be a form of blaspheming him. We know that the Scripture reveals that God is just, that he is righteous, that he is equitable, that he is good. All those things are revealed in Scripture about his nature, that he is transcendent and unaffected by sin. It does not affect him. It didn't affect Jesus Christ. He went through the world holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. So to accuse God of any sin is a form of blaspheming his name.

We don't want to do that. We understand that God has a right to be angry because he is absolutely holy. We may not understand all of that fully. Of course, we don't in this life, but we affirm the glory of God. We've been examining the wrath of God from Romans 1 called Wicked World, Angry God.

Not a popular subject, by the way. The series has shed light on this aspect of God's character that most people would rather keep hidden. We brought it into the open because God deserves to be glorified for his anger as much as for his love. Wicked World, Angry God is available on six MP3 files free at gty.org. God is not trying to hide his anger. He wants to reveal it because it is understanding his anger that drives sinners to his grace.

That's right. Thank you, John. And friend, if you have benefited from John's study and you want to share it with a friend or a family member, remember it's available on a six CD album, if that works. And also, you can download the sermons from this series free of charge in MP3 and transcript format when you visit our website.

So contact us today. To order the six CD album, call 855-GRACE or visit our website, gty.org. The CDs are reasonably priced, shipping is free, and to download the messages from Wicked World, Angry God free of charge, visit gty.org. And while you're online, look for John's commentaries on the book of Romans. These are volumes that will take you verse by verse through this amazing book and give you a deep understanding of one of Paul's most profound letters.

The Romans' commentaries are $19 each and shipping is free. To order, go to gty.org. Even if you don't place an order now, let me encourage you to ask to start receiving John's monthly letter. It gives you information about what's going on here at Grace to You, as well as an offer for a book or other resource free of charge. To start receiving John's letter, email us at letters at gty.org, and don't forget to include your mailing address. Or you can call us at 800-55-GRACE. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Be sure to watch Grace to You television this Sunday, and be here next week as John unpacks what Scripture says about being part of a local church. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.