The Other Side of God

Tell people, woo them in by telling them that they'll get this and they'll get that.

Give them the incentive program. That's one of the strategies of the enemy, by the way, who seeks to silence the gospel before it ever becomes good news. Unless you understand God's holy justice, you will never need a pardon. Until you understand His righteousness, you will never see your unrighteousness. And so for the gospel to penetrate the heart of that one that God is gifting with faith, that gospel message is first, you are a sinner, but come to Jesus Christ and He will pardon you. I want to state a difficult truth as we get started with this Bible lesson. God is angry with sinners.

Now, I realize that's not an easy concept, but it's true. But here's the good news. As Christians, we know that God has offered a solution in the gospel. God offers us pardon from sin. But friend, you can't fully appreciate God's gift of salvation without fully understanding His wrath towards sinners. You see, what you're saved from when you come to Jesus is the wrath of God.

Today on Wisdom for the Heart, Stephen Davey begins a series from Romans called The Banquet Table of Consequences. Today's lesson from Romans 18 is called The Other Side of God. Sometimes the truth of Scripture is a candle burning warmth and comfort.

Other times it is a blowtorch that cuts through steel. Sometimes the word tosses a little firecracker of truth into your heart and it rattles the windows and it jolts you awake. Other times the truth of Scripture is more like an armored tank that crashes and rumbles right into the living room of your life. What the Apostle Paul will deliver over the next 64 verses from chapter 1 verse 18 through the middle of chapter 3 is the terrifying, deafening roar of God's wrath and the danger facing all of humanity. For in these verses we are brought face to face with the fury of God. We'll not only see the depraved nature of condemned mankind, which we'd really rather not review, but we will discover another side of God Himself that we would probably rather not discuss. In this passage we will face the truth about an angry God. We will uncover the reality that while God is a God who loves, He is also a God who hates. That while He is a God of mercy, He is also a God of justice.

While He is not only the God who created an eternal heaven, He is the God who created an eternal hell. And the Apostle Paul, by way of inspiration, takes us into a courtroom scene, as it were, and over the next few chapters he will bring before the bench of God's holiness four different categories of people, thus summarizing all of humanity. Category number one will be the unbeliever who has never heard the gospel but who still stands condemned. Category number two is the moral man who's heard of religion and believes that he is somehow impressive to God, but he will also stand condemned. Category number three is the Jew who believes that he has been born into the kingdom and surely he is all right and he will also stand condemned. And the fourth category is the summary of all that is left over, the Gentile worlds who think that somehow they are good enough to get in and stand before a holy God, but who will stand condemned. And the divine gavel of God's justice will come crashing to the bench and in all four cases the holy jury of God's character will announce, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. There is none righteous, not even one, Paul will say as he summarizes, for all have sinned and all have fallen short of the glory of God. Romans chapter 3 verses 10 and 23. So all of humanity is condemned and defenseless before his wrath and his righteous anger and his terrible fury. Is it any wonder that the wrath of God, this furious God would be a rather unpopular topic today and this attribute a rather unpopular one at that you've heard a lot of sermons. I'm sure that God really loves you.

Have you ever heard a sermon? God is really mad at you. How would that go for a bumper sticker?

I can see them on cars everywhere. You know, we don't think about God being mad. We don't think about God being furious. We don't think of God being angry.

And I believe that that is part of Satan's strategy against the gospel of Christ's church. He knows full well that if people ever found out, they might just cry out for God's mercy and pardon. What I find interesting, ladies and gentlemen, is that this very attribute of anger is the beginning of Paul's formal teaching in this letter. He is ended his introduction. He has concluded his personal remarks of deep affection and love for the believers in Rome. He has declared his passion for the gospel, but now he begins in verse 18 with the body of his letter, this doctrinal treatise. And he begins this treatise by writing these terrifying words in Romans 1 18 for the wrath of God is revealed. You think what a terrible way to start. Why not start with the grace of God?

Paul is going to turn everybody off here. This isn't the way to begin evangelizing anybody. It'd be better to start with something like God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. It'll tell people who them in by telling them that they'll get this and they'll get that.

Give them the incentive program. That's one of the strategies of the enemy, by the way, who seeks to silence the truth of the gospel, which is first bad news before it ever becomes good news. Unless you understand God's holy justice, you will never need a pardon until you understand his righteousness. You will never see your unrighteousness. And so for the gospel to penetrate the heart of that one that God is gifting with faith, that gospel message is first. You are a sinner condemned to an everlasting hell because of the penalty of your sin.

But come to Jesus Christ and he will pardon you. You go back in church history, modern church history, and you hear the voice of a guy named Harry Emerson Fosdick, who was one of the leading voices of liberal theology in the twenties and thirties. It was that movement that he sort of served as a one of the chief spokesman over that we call modernism.

And that gave birth to the counter movement we called fundamentalism, those who believed in the fundamentals of the faith. Harry Emerson Fosdick influenced and still influences to this day his theology and his philosophy of ministry. He pastored a huge church. And that's part of the unfortunate thing, because anybody who pastors a huge church is believable.

And whatever they spout off is believed by many. He wrote best selling books. He influenced seminaries and pastors all across the country with his liberal slant. I came across one article in this week's study that he published or had published through Harper's Magazine and it is dated July of 1928.

Listen to this. He, by the way, was known for his oratorical ability. He had mastery over the English language and was so followed. He said this, preachers who pick out texts from the Bible and then proceed to give their historic settings, their logical meaning in the context, their place in the theology of the biblical writer with a few practical reflections appended are grossly misusing the Bible. Nobody who speaks to the public so assumes that the felt interests of the people are located in the meaning of words spoken two thousand years ago. In other words, what was written two thousand years ago could have absolutely no bearing on anybody's needs today.

But Fosdick was heard and followed by thousands. He was, in fact, the inventor of what could be called today in modern church history in our generation seeker driven churches. In those churches, the desire is to relate to the needs of even the unbeliever and then woo them in and then give them diluted doses of gospel truth. The needs of the audience supersede the character of God, so to speak. Well, in the same article, Fosdick wrote words that sort of spelled out a frightening prophecy for church ministry that has become commonplace today, even among quote unquote evangelical churches. He wrote, Who seriously supposes that one in a hundred of the congregation cares to start with what Moses, Isaiah, Paul, or John meant in each of those verses?

So the preacher should not end but should start with thinking about the audience's vital or felt needs and then let the whole sermon be organized around a constructive endeavor to meet those needs. All this is good sense and good psychology. Those who follow Harry Emerson Fosdick's methods and pseudo-theology are greater in number today than ever before. In fact, it's hardly ever questioned today. Entire growth, church growth methods are popularized today that are nothing more than the repackaging of Harry Emerson Fosdick's liberal theology. One influential pollster named George Barna, who also is believed as if he were gospel. He wrote in his book entitled Marketing the Church, which by the way is a title alone that ought to send everybody running away from it.

Instead, unfortunately, pastors ran toward it. Marketing the church, he said these words that have convinced thousands of pastors in our day to believe it is gospel truth. It isn't, by the way, as I read this, difficult to hear the echoing of Harry Emerson Fosdick in his quote. He says this, it is critical that we keep in mind a fundamental principle of Christian communication. The audience, not the message, is sovereign. If our advertising of the gospel is going to stop people in the midst of hectic schedules and cause them to think about what we're saying, our message must be adapted to the needs of the audience. When we produce communication, however, that is based on the take it or leave it proposition we call dogma, which is the root word of doctrine, rather than on a sensitivity to people's felt needs, people will invariably reject our message. Now that philosophy has spawned a myriad of ministry techniques and strategies that have basically inundated the evangelical church today. The audience is sovereign. Meet the needs of the audience, first and foremost, rather than deliver the dogma of God's character and attributes.

Barney goes on in that same book to state this. The apostle Paul was one of the all-time great tacticians. He studied strategies and tactics that would enable him to attract the most prospects and realize the greatest number of conversions. Now, I'm not going to write a bestseller, but I want at least the people in this audience to know nothing could be further from the truth.

The Bible, in fact, says exactly the opposite. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, and you'll notice his strategy and how he studied. He said, when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom.

In other words, I didn't have a strategy up my sleeve. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of man's wisdom, implied man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. In other words, Paul said, when I came to you, the most important thing was not you. The most important thing was Christ. The most important thing was not relating to the audience. The important thing was that the audience relate to Jesus Christ. And he, in fact, even comes close to being somewhat cold by saying, the most important thing was not that I knew a lot about you, but that you knew a lot about Jesus Christ.

The audience is not sovereign. Christ is sovereign. And in Him, by the way, all needs are met.

We just don't know enough about Him to satisfy our needs. And so Paul says, I delivered here in 1 Corinthians 2, 1 to 5, the truth of Christ crucified. That is the truth of Christ who bore the penalty of all of God's wrath. The truth that Christ paid the penalty of hell on behalf of sinful humanity.

The truth is, ladies and gentlemen, preaching about the fury and the wrath and the holiness of God does not hinder evangelism. It enables it. It undergirds it. It gives it strength. And so the fury of God today, however, would be an unwanted attribute. Why?

Let me give you two reasons. Number one, it's unwanted, first of all, by the nature of man, which is unaccountable to biblical direction. In other words, people want to behave in a way they want to behave. So the talk of judgment means that you imply the existence of a what? Of a judge. So it's better to not believe in a God who is a judge, otherwise he might do what a judge normally does, and that is render a what? A verdict, a judgment. So it shouldn't take us by surprise that God's wrath and holiness is abandoned.

However, it shouldn't also surprise us that as God's holiness and wrath are abandoned, so are moral and physical restraints in a society that abandons the standard of truth. And so mankind basically and human nature is given full reign to do whatever it wants to do. In 1950, 170 teenagers were arrested for committing a serious crime in all of America. 1,600 are today serving in adult jails. During the next 24 hours, more than 35,000 Americans will contract a sexually transmitted disease.

That's 13 million this year. And teenagers will contract syphilis at the rate of 623 teenagers every day. We are experiencing, I believe, and I'm sure you know it to be true, the degeneration of our society predicted by the apostle Paul, and we will track right down that chapter as every nation can that puts God away and refuses to talk of his holy standard and his wrath and judgment. The wrath of God is an unwanted attribute, though, and we vote in favor of darkness so that we can behave any way we want to behave. Secondly, the wrath and fury of God towards sin is unwanted by the religion of man, which is independent of biblical doctrine. In other words, follow me carefully, the nature of man doesn't want to hear about the wrath of God so he can behave any way he wants to behave. So here also the religion of man doesn't want to hear about the wrath of God because it wants to believe anything it wants to believe.

Give it mediums, give it astrology, give it relativism, give it inward journeys, give it yin-yang or crystals, yoga, or astral travel. Man simply wants the ability to concoct a religion. He is a religious being, and so he wants to make it up. In fact, some decide there is no religion and that becomes their religion. Let us believe whatever we want to believe to fill that spiritual void that they have. You go all the way back in church history to the time of the last awakening. People pray for revival today.

I pray for revival today. And yet I fear we do not have the doctrinal underpinnings in our society that would bring revival with a series of messages. You go back a hundred years or so and kids were taught how to read out of the Bible. They knew some of the attributes of God by heart. They memorized confessions and creeds.

I think we have to start at the beginning in our day to reteach those things. But if you go back to the 18th century, that's when the last awakening occurred. And it occurred on the heels of leaders like Jonathan Edwards who preached his famous sermon that was published the world over. The sermon was entitled, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

And he preached this to a New England congregation. And I quote him, the pit is prepared. The fire is made ready. The furnace is now hot, ready to receive the unbeliever. The flames do now rage and glow. The glittering sword is sharp and held over them.

And the pit has opened her mouth under them. Oh, sinner, consider the fearful danger you are in. When Jonathan Edwards preached that sermon, men wept and women fainted as they called out for God's mercy and pardon. They were brought face to face with this other side of God.

It caused them to cry out for God to meet their greatest need, their need for him. And when they did, they repented and all of life began to revolve around him and not them, wherein lies most of our problems. But man's nature resists this truth of accountability to God's wrath because he wants to behave any way he wants to behave. Man's religion resists accountability to God's word because he wants to believe anything he wants to believe. Thus man's behavior and man's beliefs must reject God's wrath and God's word. For mankind can tolerate anything but a righteous standard of holiness and the implications that such a standard bring to human life.

So we slowly remove God from the picture in our culture that is occurring at even a more rapid pace than we could have ever have imagined. A recent news release from the American Family Association came across my email mailbox and I checked it out to make sure it was true. Sometimes things come across that aren't exactly true.

They didn't happen. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court recent decision making school initiated prayers on public address systems before high school football games unconstitutional. Many Christians responded in a variety of ways.

This was picked up by Agape Press. At this particular event one high school principal in eastern Tennessee chose not to pray over the P.A. system but instead used the opportunity to remind the football fans that night why it is important that they should pray. Mr. Jody McLeod, the principal of Roane County High School in Kingston, Tennessee, stepped up to the microphone as the football season began and spoke these words to nearly two thousand people.

It was picked up by Agape Press and released, quote, It has always been the custom at Roane County High School football games to say a prayer and play the national anthem to honor both God and our country. Due to a recent ruling by the Supreme Court I am told that saying a prayer is now a violation of federal case law. As I understand federal case law at this point I can use this public facility to approve of sexual perversion and call it an alternative lifestyle and if someone is offended that's okay.

I'm sure by now everybody is listening to this guy. I can use it to condone sexual promiscuity by dispensing condoms and calling it safe sex. If someone is offended that's okay. I can even use this facility to present the merits of killing an unborn baby as a viable means of birth control among teenage girls. If someone is offended it's okay. I can designate a school day as Earth Day and involve students in activities to religiously worship and praise the goddess Mother Earth and call it ecology.

I can use literature, videos, and presentations in the classroom to depict people with traditional Christian convictions as simple-minded and ignorant and call it enlightenment. However if anyone uses this facility to honor God and ask him to bless this game with safety and good sportsmanship federal case law is violated. Apparently we are to be tolerant now of everything and anyone except God and his commandments. Nevertheless as a school principal I frequently ask staff and students to abide by rules with which they do not necessarily agree. For me to do otherwise would be inconsistent. For this reason I shall render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and refrain from praying over the P.A.

system. However if you feel inspired to honor praise and thank God and ask him in the name of Jesus to bless this event please feel free to do so. While the fury of God is an unwanted attribute of his it is however an undeniable attribute. Secondly Paul goes on in verse 18 of Romans 1 by saying for the wrath of God is revealed.

An ongoing tense is constantly being revealed from heaven. For now you need to know the difference between God's anger and man's anger God's wrath and man's wrath. Whenever you talk about God being angry immediately you probably attach human thought and emotion to that and there's danger to that because we would caricature God in ways that he should not be so characterized. There are two primary words in the New Testament for wrath or anger.

One is the Greek word thumbs which gives us the transliterated English word thermos or a thermometer. It is rarely used in relation to God. In fact Paul never uses it probably because it is a word that best characterizes the anger of man and it is used predominantly for men. The word thumbs refers to a red hot uncontrolled anger a flash point sort of a blowing of the lid a loss of control over emotion. Thummas is the word we actually would probably use when we refer to road rage right that feeling you get every morning on I-40. This thummas the word literally means to rush along fiercely which is exactly what you do on I-40.

That doesn't sound like God though because God doesn't act out of some heat of violence. It could be translated panting rage. The point of thummas is that it usually refers to someone who is reacting with rage who does something that they probably regret. They did something, they said something, they responded in a way that they have to go back later and probably apologize for right.

It is often uncontrolled and disastrous and you don't always outrun the consequences of thummas. The word however used for the anger of God is the Greek word orge. It refers to settled conviction. This is an attribute that means this is who he is. One man John Murray wrote this is holy revulsion of God's being against that which is the contradiction of his holiness. It is an abiding hatred of evil that is never out of bounds because it is always controlled by those other attributes of righteousness and holiness. Now the Old Testament records for us this aspect of God's character in a number of verses in Psalm 90 verse 11 who understands the power of your anger and your fury according to the fear that is due you. Psalm 76 7 you even you are to be feared and who may stand in your presence when once you are angry you cause judgment to be heard from heaven.

The earth feared and was still when God arose to judgment. Psalm 2 is probably the classic text why are the nations in an uproar and the peoples devising a vain thing. The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed saying let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us. In other words let's do whatever we can do to rip off the boundaries of God's holiness. Let's take away the fetters that are restricting the behavior and the beliefs that we want to have and we want to do. So let's dig our heels in against God.

Let us tear the fetters apart. Well verse 4 he who sits in the heavens laughs the Lord scoffs at them then he will speak to them and his anger and terrify them in his fury. Now therefore oh kings show discernment take warning verse 10 says oh judges of the earth worship the Lord with reverence and rejoice with trembling do homage to the sun that he not become angry and you perish in the way for his wrath may soon be kindled.

Have you taken the warning to heart my friend or is this morning just one more warning that you'll not heed. What of the New Testament John writes in his gospel he who believes in the sun is eternal life but he who does not obey the sun will not see life but the wrath of God abides on him. Chapter 3 verse 36 Paul writes in Ephesians 5 3 but immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you as as proper among saints and there must be no filthiness and silly talk or course jesting which are not fitting but rather the giving of thanks that is the submission to God for this you know with certainty that no immoral or impure person or covetous man who is an idolater has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ that is no unforgiven person has an inheritance there that no one deceive you with empty words for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience again to the Colossians he repeats himself therefore consider the members of your earthly body is dead to immorality impurity passion evil desire and greed which amounts to idolatry for it is because of that idolatry these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience. Colossians 3 5 and 6 you say but but I don't see God's wrath in fact it seems to me that evil men flourish seems to me that evil kingdoms grow it seems to me that evil and corrupt men and women seem to have their way and the wrath of God is some distant faint impotent threat it will not come whether you can see it or not whether you can feel it or not whether you experience it or not the fury of God has come it is now present and it is coming with unleashed terror in the final days because God is merciful and his wrath seems distant and far away it's easy to forget but we must never forget and thankfully God gives us the solution in the person of Jesus Christ who came and died for us I'm glad you joined us today here on wisdom for the heart wisdom for the heart is a ministry of wisdom international another resource that we offer is a monthly magazine entitled heart to heart our wisdom partners have already received a couple of issues of this new resource and it's filled with articles daily devotionals and information about featured resources if you haven't yet seen this magazine we'd love to send the next three issues to you as our gift our number is eight six six forty eight Bible that's eight six six four eight two four two five three call and ask for your complimentary three months of heart to heart magazine and we'll send the next issue to you in the mail if you'd like to communicate with our Bible teacher Stephen Davey you can send an email to info at wisdom online dot org we'd be very glad to hear from you thanks so much for joining us today we'll be back at this same time tomorrow so join us for our next Bible lesson here on wisdom for the heart