Gift of Grace #2 - The Universe Speaks
Description
Dr. Kurt Bjorklund explores Romans 1:18-23 to reveal how understanding God's justified wrath against our self-directed living is essential to appreciating His amazing grace. Discover why coming to Jesus isn't just about making life better—it's about recognizing our desperate need for salvation from the consequences of suppressing truth and exchanging God's glory for lesser things.
Summary and Application
When we think about Christianity, many of us have heard it presented as a way to make our lives better. Come to Jesus, and things will improve. But what if that's not the complete picture? In his recent message on Romans 1:18-23, Kurt challenges us to reconsider how we understand both God's wrath and His grace—and why we desperately need both.
The Problem with "Life Improvement" Christianity
Kurt opens with a vivid illustration about wearing a bike helmet. If someone tells you to wear a helmet all the time because it will make your life better, you'll quickly discover the discomfort, the inconvenience, and the strange looks from others. But if they tell you it could save your life one day, you'll endure any discomfort without question.
The same principle applies to faith. "Here's what happens when it comes to Christian faith for many in our day," Kurt explains, "and that is they have heard the basic presentation of the message of Jesus Christ as something along the lines of 'come to Jesus and he will make your life better.'" When life inevitably brings difficulty, this shallow foundation crumbles.
The reality is more profound: "Coming to Jesus doesn't mean that everything in your life works out the way you think it would mean, or it should. What it means is that when you come to Jesus, your perspective, your hope, your ability to handle difficulty will be improved when you follow the principles of the Word of God."
What Is God's Wrath?
Romans 1:18 declares that "the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness or wickedness of people." This isn't the angry outburst we might associate with human rage. Kurt clarifies that the Greek word used here means "a justified displeasure with what somebody is doing."
Surprisingly, God's wrath isn't primarily about future judgment or lightning bolts from heaven. According to Romans 1:24-28, God's wrath is often experienced when "God gave them over"—repeated three times in the passage. Kurt explains: "God basically saying, 'You want to go your own way, you want to make everything in your life about you, about how you want to live. Go ahead, go ahead.' In other words, the consequence of sin is more sin."
This understanding challenges our cultural preference for a "benign kind of generic loving presence" instead of the God revealed in Scripture. As J.I. Packer noted, "One of the most striking things about the Bible is the vigor with which both testaments emphasize the reality and the terror of God's wrath."
Why Is God's Wrath Revealed?
Kurt identifies four key reasons from Romans 1:18-23:
1. Because of Errant Ways (v. 18) God's wrath is revealed against "godlessness and wickedness"—our actions against God and against others. This isn't anger at people themselves but at "the choices that take people away from what is good and right."
2. Because of Suppression of Truth (vv. 19-20) "Since what may be known about God is made plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power, his divine nature, have been clearly seen." The universe speaks of God's glory through creation's power and beauty. When we ignore this revelation, we suppress truth that should be obvious.
3. Because of Failing to Give Glory or Thanks (vv. 21-22) When we fail to acknowledge God's gifts, "their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened." Like guests who eat a lavish meal without thanking the host, we become entitled and self-centered.
4. Because We Exchange God's Glory for Things (v. 23) We create God in our own image rather than worship Him as He truly is. A.W. Tozer warned, "There is always a danger that the Christ we're following is not the true Christ, but one we have conjured up in our own imagination and made in our own image."
The Gift of Grace Shines Brighter
Understanding God's wrath doesn't diminish His grace—it magnifies it. Romans 5:8-9 declares: "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: That while we were sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more will we be saved from God's wrath through Him?"
Kurt concludes: "The thing that we savor if we're followers of Jesus, isn't that we have perfectly aligned our lives with God, but that having deserved wrath, God has saved us from the wrath of God through what Jesus Christ has done. And that is the gift of grace."
Questions for Reflection
Where in your life are you suppressing truth you know about God? Are there areas where you're choosing comfort or convenience over obedience, starting a momentum away from God rather than toward Him?
How does understanding God's justified wrath change your appreciation for His grace? When you consider what you've been saved from, not just what you've been saved for, how does it affect your worship and daily choices?
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John Stott
"Nothing keeps people away from Christ more than their inability to see their need of him and their unwillingness to admit it."
A.W. Pink
"A study of a concordance will show that there are more references in Scripture to the anger, fury and wrath of God than there are to his love and tenderness."
J.I. Packer
"One of the most striking things about the Bible is the vigor with which both testaments emphasize the reality and the terror of God's wrath."
John Calvin
"We are blind to God's revelation, but not so blind that we can plead ignorance."
A.W. Tozer
"There is always a danger that the Christ we're following is not the true Christ, but one we have conjured up in our own imagination and made in our own image."
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Good morning. It's great to be together in Wexford, The Chapel, Bridgeville, Butler, the Strip District Online. Let's pray together.
God, as we come together today, I ask that you would speak into each of our hearts and lives, wherever we're coming from, wherever we've been. And I ask that my words would reflect your word in content and in tone and in emphasis. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.
So when it comes to helmets and bike riding, there are generally two kinds of people: those who wear helmets and those who don't. I won't ask you which kind you are, but in general, people fall into the safety bucket or the "ah, nothing bad's going to happen" bucket.
But what if somebody came to you and said, "Listen, you need to wear a helmet not just when you're on a bicycle, but all the time because it will make your life better." And you said, "Okay, cool," and you put on a bike helmet and you started wearing it around all the time. What would happen? Well, sooner or later, you'd sit down on your sofa at home, maybe to watch something or just hang out, and you'd lean back and the helmet would be there and you'd be like, "This is not making my life better. This is uncomfortable." Or you would go out on a hot day and your head would itch and you'd just say, "This is not making my life better." You go to the grocery store, you have the helmet on, and you're walking around and people are looking at you saying, "What's this person doing with a helmet on?" You say, "This is not making my life better."
But if you were told by that same person, "Listen, wear this helmet, because I don't know when, I don't know how, but there will come a day when either something will fall on you, you will fall, and this helmet will save your life"—you, if you believe them, would wear the helmet and you would not be bothered by a little bit of extra heat. You would not be bothered by the discomfort of leaning back on your sofa. You would not worry about how people looked at you.
But here's what happens when it comes to Christian faith for many in our day, and that is they have heard the basic presentation of the message of Jesus Christ as something along the lines of "come to Jesus and he will make your life better." And so people say, "Well, okay, I'll try Jesus. I've tried other stuff, I'll try Jesus for a while." And they adopt the idea of Jesus Christ in their life. And then what happens is things aren't necessarily better all the time. And so they say, "Well, what good is it?"
But if somebody comes to Jesus Christ with the idea that this is absolutely necessary, not just something for improvement, for making my life better, then whatever happens after the fact, you say, "You know what? This is not just something to make my life better. This is absolutely necessary for my future, for my well-being."
Now I do believe that coming to Jesus makes our lives better, but I believe that it's not always better in the way that we most want it to be better. And what I mean by that is coming to Jesus doesn't mean that everything in your life works out the way you think it would mean, or it should. What it means is that when you come to Jesus, your perspective, your hope, your ability to handle difficulty will be improved when you follow the principles of the Word of God. What happens is most of the time the way that works out in practice is better. But if you come to Jesus purely to make your life better, it's like wearing the bike helmet to make your life better. And what happens again when that's the case is we don't fully understand our need.
Now I understand how when I say this is the predominant presentation of Christianity in our day, to come to Jesus and he'll make your life better, I understand why that is. Because in history some people have seen the presentation of Christianity, of Jesus as being offensive because it's this angry God throwing sinners into a pit and all of this. And so it's like, let's emphasize the love of God rather than anything else. But here's something John Stott wrote years ago. He said, "Nothing keeps people away from Christ more than their inability to see their need of him and their unwillingness to admit it."
As you heard, we are in a series that we're calling the Gift of Grace. We're working our way through the book of Romans and today we're at chapter one, verse 18 through 23. And this section begins with this dogmatic claim that the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness. And the wrath of God is something that again, we typically don't like to think about. We like to say, "No, I prefer to think about the love of God." But I would go so far as to say that if we don't understand and appreciate the wrath of God, then we won't understand and appreciate the love of God. In fact, for the love to make sense, we need to understand the wrath of God.
And for every person in our culture who sees God as an angry overbearing wrathful being, there are a lot more people who see God as a benign kind of generic loving presence, not to be considered worthy of our reverence. And in order to correct that, we actually need to recover what the Bible teaches about the wrath of God. And Romans 1 is one of those places where it becomes abundantly clear.
Now, if you were here last weekend, we talked a little bit about these chapters one through three. And we said that chapter one, verse 18 through the end of the chapter was the person who was the hut builder in our little analogy, or the hedonist. And when you hear the word hedonist, the tendency is to say, "Well, a hedonist is somebody who is so all about themselves that it is just a pleasure seeker." But hedonism is really nothing more than just being self-directed, saying everything in my life should line up to add to my comfort, my pleasure, my joy. And if that's how we define hedonism, it's maybe a lot closer to where we live than maybe we want it to be.
And so what we're going to do today is just simply ask two questions and answer them. The first one is this: What is the wrath of God in Romans 1 and beyond? And then secondly, why is the wrath of God revealed?
What Is the Wrath of God?
So the first question: What is the wrath of God? And we see in verse 18 of Romans 1 it says the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness or wickedness of people. And so it says here the wrath of God. And there are actually in the original language—the original language of the New Testament is Greek translated to English—there are 24 different words used for wrath, anger, fury, annoyance, kind of this whole range of meanings. And so the word that's chosen here is significant. It is not the word that is often associated, probably the most prominent word for anger, which can mean an eruption like a spontaneous fury. It's not a deep-seated hate or resentment. It isn't a word that means simply annoyance. It's a word that in a lot of ways means a justified displeasure with what somebody is doing.
And so here the wrath of God is not wrath like you and I experience anger or rage at somebody else. That's an unrighteous anger. It's a kind of anger that is a justified displeasure with the actions or the situations that are in front of us. And the anger of God, as I said, is not probably the predominant view of our day. But in a lot of ways one of the objections that you'll hear to faith is, "Well, I can't believe in a God who..." And then people will fill in their blank with like, "...is one who would punish people in the Old Testament." Or "I don't believe in the God of the Old Testament. I like the God of the New Testament, the God of love, rather than the God of anger" or something along these lines.
But what you'll find is that this concept of wrath is not just an Old Testament concept. It's squarely rooted in the New Testament. Here's a couple things that people have said. A.W. Pink writing a generation ago said this: "A study of a concordance will show that there are more references in Scripture to the anger, fury and wrath of God than there are to his love and tenderness."
Now, I didn't take time—a concordance, by the way, is just a book that gives you all the references to something. You can obviously do that online. But sometimes a concordance might give you some more nuance of that. I didn't take the time to look it up. But if what he says is true, that's striking. And the fact that it's in the New Testament means you can't just simply say, "Well, the Old Testament God was the God who got angry. The New Testament God is all love." Because here in Romans 1, what does he say? The wrath of God is being revealed. It isn't just past. This is something that's now.
J.I. Packer said this: "One of the most striking things about the Bible is the vigor with which both testaments emphasize the reality and the terror of God's wrath."
Now, when you hear wrath of God, probably what we envision, at least in part, partly culturally conditioned, maybe some other ways, is we think about maybe a future time when God will judge. Or we think about God striking people or lightning bolts or something like this. And not to get ahead of where we are in the text, but Romans 1, verses 24 through 32, in many ways answer how God's wrath is revealed or what God's wrath is. And the key, I believe, is in the little phrase it's repeated in verse 24, 26, and 28, where it says, "And God gave them over." We'll talk some about this next week. But God giving them over is God basically saying, "You want to go your own way, you want to make everything in your life about you, about how you want to live. Go ahead, go ahead." In other words, the consequence of sin is more sin. That's what Romans 1 teaches. A lot of times we think, "Well, God's wrath means God's gonna smite you." But the wrath of God according to Romans 1 is that God says, "I'm gonna give you over to what it is you really want."
And so the wrath of God being revealed from heaven is God's justified displeasure with our self-directed living. And God basically saying, "Go ahead." And it's experienced in the here and now as well as in the future. But it isn't just a future thing.
Why Is the Wrath of God Revealed?
So that leads us to a second question, and that is, why is the wrath of God revealed? And we see this in verses 18 through 23. Here's what we read: "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people."
Because of Errant Ways
So this first reason here is because of errant ways. And he uses the phrase godlessness and wickedness—might be different in some different translations. And godlessness basically means that it's something against God, that our errant ways are—God has revealed his ways, his principles, his standards in the word of God. And when we're living a self-directed life, we say, "Well, I'll choose the ones I like, but the ones I don't like, I'll put those aside." And wickedness is a word that means our actions toward people. So if godlessness means our actions toward God, wickedness means our actions toward people. So it's a way of living in a way that is not in accord with what's best for others. And so here God says, "I basically have my wrath revealed against your turning away from me and turning against people around you."
Now notice that the wrath here is not on the person as much as on the action. And here's why this is an important distinction. Because if you have anger that's justified, it doesn't mean that you never get angry with a person, but it means you're angry at the choices that take people away from what is good and right. So if you have a child, let's say, and your child goes to the playground and a drug dealer comes and wants to sell them drugs and sells them drugs and gets them hooked on a drug when they're young, at the playground, when you were just like, "I was just right there," you would rightly have a justifiable anger at a culture that's so broken that that happens, at the person who sold them drugs, maybe at your child for not having listened to and heeded your instruction. But that is the kind of thing that is being talked about here, that it is God's anger at the godlessness and wickedness of people who basically say, "I'm going to live my life for my own ends."
Because of the Suppression of the Truth
And then we see a second reason that the wrath of God is revealed. It's because of the suppression of the truth. Again, verse 18, after he says that his wrath is revealed against the godlessness and wickedness of people, it says, "who suppress the truth by their wickedness." Same word, wickedness. So they suppress the truth by the way that they treat one another. And then it says this: "Since what may be known about God is made plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power, his divine nature, have been clearly seen being understood from what has been made so that people are without excuse."
So here he simply says that there's a suppression of the truth that makes God's wrath become revealed. And it is part of what leads to our godlessness, our wickedness, so to speak. And notice he talks here about invisible qualities. He talks about God's eternal power, he talks about his divine nature. And since there's dashes here that kind of lead up to this, I think you could say that the invisible qualities that he's saying are what make God plain, are his eternal power and his divine nature, so to speak. And he says this is what is suppressed.
So a man writing years ago named James Reed wrote this. He said it was about the power of God. He says, "At any given time there are an average of 1,800 storms in operation around the world. The energy needed to generate those storms amounts to an incredible figure of 1,300,000,000 horsepower. By comparison, a large earth-moving machine has 420 horsepower and requires 100 gallons of fuel a day. To operate just one of those storms producing a rain of 4 inches over an area of 10,000 square miles would require energy equivalent to the burning of 640 million tons of coal. To evaporate enough water for such rain and to cool those vapors and collect them in clouds would take another 800 million horsepower to refrigerate working night and day for 100 days. Agricultural studies have determined that the average farmer in Minnesota gets over 407,000 gallons of rainwater per acre per year, free of charge, of course. The state of Missouri has some 70,000 square miles and averages 38 inches of rain a year. The amount of water is equal to a lake 250 miles long, 60 miles wide and 22 feet deep."
Now he goes on and cites all kinds of other things, but his point is clear. Just think about the way God works in creation and in nature, and his power is clear.
And then he talks about the divine nature. And I believe what he's talking about here is he's saying, this is where you come to a point where you say, "Oh, I sense God." You ever held a baby? I mean, you hold a baby, the miracle of birth. It's hard not to say there is something beyond us that has given life and allows this to happen. If you stood and looked at the stars on a clear night and considered the vastness of the universe, you see, the universe speaks because it's telling us of the glory of God. And to ignore that, according to Romans 1, is to suppress the truth. It's to say, "Ah, you know, I don't see it."
Now, theologians have called this general revelation. So special revelation is God giving his revealed word through the prophets to people for all time. General revelation is saying, apart from the Bible, this is what you can know about God, that he has eternal power and there is divine nature, there are divine attributes. And what's fascinating here is that the conclusion that he says is that because of this, that we are without excuse. Verse 20. He says this: "So that people are without excuse."
So I mentioned that one of the great objections to faith is, "Well, the Old Testament God is angry. So I just want the New Testament God." And it kind of makes God like not one, but here's another one. And that is people will say, "Well, if it's true that somebody has to believe in Jesus and acknowledge their sin"—special revelation—"in order to have a saving relationship with the God of the universe, then how is it fair for God to hold people accountable who have never heard?" Have you ever had somebody make that objection? You know, what about the person who's never heard this message? How is that fair?
Well, what Romans 1 seems to teach is that there is enough revelation for somebody to respond to God in such a way that nobody is without excuse. In fact, John Calvin put it this way, and I quote Calvin intentionally here, because he would be one of the proponents of this idea of God choosing people from before the foundation of the earth. Here's what he says: "We are blind to God's revelation, but not so blind that we can plead ignorance." In other words, God says, if you haven't responded to the truth that you have, then you cannot claim to be without or claim an excuse because you haven't had enough.
Because of Failing to Give Glory or Thanks to God
So God's wrath is revealed because of our errant ways, because of suppressed truth. And then a third reason we see here is because of failing to give glory or thanks to God. Verse 21 and 22 say it this way: "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him nor gave thanks to Him. But their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. And although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal human beings and birds and animals."
So here he says that one of the problems is the inability to give God glory, to give God thanks. And he says as a result of this, you became futile in your thinking and darkened in your heart. Futile in your thinking, meaning as you don't acknowledge God, your thinking gets warped and your heart gets dark in such a way that you no longer want to acknowledge God.
It's a little bit like this. Imagine, you know, we just came through the holidays. Imagine that you or somebody in your family, acquaintances made a beautiful spread of food and put it out, worked on it for days. And what happened was, people came in, they ate the food, they laughed, and nobody even said, "Thank you, good meal." They just simply—some of you are like, "That happened to me." There's a little bit of like God is saying, "Here's what happens." And that is you don't acknowledge the gifts that I have given you. My eternal power, my divine nature. You don't recognize it. And in it, then your thinking gets darkened, your heart gets darkened, you get entitled. You start to think, "This food should just appear. I'm not receiving anything benevolent from anybody. I am the center." And that's how our thinking gets darkened.
Because We Exchange God's Glory for Things
And then he adds one more reason that the wrath of God is revealed. This is verse 23. Again, "He exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal human beings, birds, animals and reptiles."
So we exchange God or the glory of God for things. And in many ways this is idolatry, where we start to say, "Yeah, maybe there's a good God, but what I really want..." And then we fill in the blank with something that's created more than God. And it's like God says, "You want that? Go ahead. You can have that as your ultimate thing." But that ultimate thing, the thing that you're making ultimate that isn't ultimate, will ultimately be unsatisfying.
A.W. Tozer once wrote it like this. He said, "There is always a danger that the Christ we're following is not the true Christ, but one we have conjured up in our own imagination and made in our own image."
There's always a danger that the Christ that we claim to follow is an invention made in our own image, basically because that is more palatable. Have you heard people kind of use the phrase, "Well, the God that I believe in or the God that I worship," and then they'll fill that in with kind of their own version of God? Well, that version of God often is remarkably like them. Have you ever noticed that? It's like that version of God shares all their political views, all of their ideas about how everything works in the world. It's like, "Well, God is like this. It's how I conceive God." Well, it isn't God at that point. It is you that you have made into an image that's like God. That's the exchange of the glory of God for an image.
The Gift of Grace
Now you may hear all of this and say, "I thought this was about the gift of grace. It sounds like we're talking about the wrath of God. Where is the gift of grace in this?"
Well, here's what is true. In order to appreciate the love or the grace of God, we do have to understand why that grace is so spectacular. Remember the helmet illustration? If you just say grace, it's awesome, love, it's awesome. But you don't understand that God's wrath is justified and deserved. What will happen is you will simply say, "I can take it or leave it." But if you understand that there are times that you suppress the truth, that your heart is darkened, that you don't give God glory and thanks, that you exchange the glory of God for something that's more tactile in your own life, then you will begin to say that grace is spectacular.
Application: So What?
So let me just give you a few ideas about the "so what" today. All right, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. So what?
Don't Soft-Pedal Hard Truth
First I would say don't soft-pedal hard truth. And what I mean by this is don't simply be a person who says, "Well, I prefer to think of God," or "I just emphasize the love of God." The wrath of God is in the text of the New Testament. It cannot be avoided. And it is essential to understanding who God really is. So don't be a person who soft-pedals the hard truth.
Don't Suppress the Truth That You Know
Secondly, and I would say this, and that is don't suppress the truth that you know. And here's why this is important. And I've noticed this in years of being around church. And I realize church and following Christ aren't always synonymous. But one of the things I've noticed is that when people take a step into church, like just say, "You know what, I'm going to make worship a priority in my weekly life," whether that's attending in person, online, "I'm going to partake in a group, I'm going to serve, I'm going to develop some personal spiritual disciplines," that what happens is the momentum starts to become toward the things of God and you see corresponding changes in their lives. But likewise when people say, "You know what, I can take or leave any of those spiritual practices," what happens is the momentum starts to become away from the things of God.
And when we suppress the truth, what we're doing is we're saying, "God, I'll buy you in the parts that I like, but I'm going to ignore the parts I don't like." That's a suppression that puts us on this spiral of basically saying, "Well, I don't really need to follow all of the ways of God."
Don't Be Smug in Your Position
And then third, I would just say, don't be smug in your position. It would be easy and not entirely off to say, "Well, aren't verses 18 through 32 of Romans 1 about the people who don't believe in Jesus? So this is describing people in the world," and that's possible to read this way. But if you read through the list of things that's coming in verses 24 through 28, it is not a description of people purely outside the church. And so if you are inside the church, even if you have the grace of God that has covered you, it doesn't mean that you can simply say, "Well, therefore I have no worry about the wrath of God." Yes, you can say, "I don't have to worry about eternal damnation if I've believed in Jesus Christ." But if the wrath of God is in part God saying, "Go ahead," the consequence of sin is more sin. Then when you suppress the truth, the wrath of God shows up in you having the natural consequences of the sin choices that you have made, the hedonistic, self-focused choices that you make instead of aligning your life with the things of God.
So don't be so smug as to say, "This just describes others" instead of being able to ask the question, "Where has my heart been darkened? Where do I suppress the truth? Where don't I give glory to God? Where have I exchanged the glory of God for something that is temporal?"
Practice Giving Thanks
So don't soft-pedal hard truth, don't suppress the truth that you know, don't be smug in your own position. And then I would just say, practice giving thanks, giving glory to God, being grateful. You know, you do this very simply. Whenever you just simply say, "God, I acknowledge you. I acknowledge that rain is a gift, that stars are the beauty of your creation, calling us to consider who you are. That the gift of relationship, that the gift of wonderful food, of a walk with a friend, is a beautiful thing that you have given as testimony to your goodness." And when we take that in, what we're doing is we're turning toward the God of the universe and starting that momentum cycle toward him rather than away from Him.
Conclusion
I mentioned that you may say, "Well, okay, this is good, but I'd like more grace, less wrath." And I hope that what you've heard today hasn't led you away from grace, but has led you toward it by saying, "I desperately need and want to celebrate the grace of God." In fact, one of the ways that Romans talks about this in just a few chapters is in chapter 5, verse 8 and 9. Here's what it says, verse 8: "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: That while we were sinners, Christ died for us." Verse 9: "Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more will we be saved from God's wrath through Him?"
You see, the thing that we savor if we're followers of Jesus, isn't that we have perfectly aligned our lives with God, but that having deserved wrath, God has saved us from the wrath of God through what Jesus Christ has done. And that is the gift of grace. That when we get it, when we savor it, when we celebrate it, it causes us to say, "I don't want to suppress the truth. I want to give God glory. I don't want to exchange the glory of God for something less. But I want to make much of God in my life."
I don't know how you come here today. Some of you may be that even talking about the wrath of God is uncomfortable. And maybe you've never been around a church that's talked about this. And you've always thought of God as kind of this generic benevolent being who just says, "Everything's good and I love you." I hope that what you hear today is that the gift of grace is needed because God is rightly indignant about our suppression of truth. And that you hear that Jesus Christ is available for you as a gift of grace so that you can be saved from God's wrath.
And if you're here and you say, "You know, I've been around church, I've known about God's wrath, I've thought about it some, I don't think about it a lot, but I thought about it some," I hope that as you walk away today that what you'll walk away with is just a sense of saying, "The gift of grace is even better than I normally give it credit for." And you have a new sense of worship and resolve to say, "I don't want to suppress the truth because it goes against the goodness of God in my life."
Let's pray together.
God, we ask today that you would help us to grapple with this concept in such a way that it moves us toward Jesus. And we pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI technology and has been edited for clarity and readability. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, there may be minor errors or omissions. For the most accurate representation of the sermon, please refer to the original audio or video recording.
