Is God’s Judgment Necessary?
Sermon Notes
Hey everybody my name’s Louis, I’m the lead pastor here at City Awakening, it’s great to gather with you both onsite and online. At this time we can dismiss the children to children’s church, and if you didn’t get to check your child in please see our children’s ministry leaders in the back and they’d be more than happy to assist you with that...Today we’re continuing our teaching series on a book of the bible called Romans, and it’s a series about renewing your mind, for the transformation of your life. What we’re talking about specifically today is the topic of human depravity, and the necessity of God’s judgment. It’s a topic both skeptics and Christians don’t enjoy talking about. We’d much rather talk about God’s forgiveness, instead of human sinfulness. We’d rather talk about God’s grace and love, instead of God’s wrath and judgment.
But we can’t appreciate God’s forgiveness, without talking about human sinfulness. We can’t appreciate God’s love and grace, without talking about God’s wrath and judgment. So we have to talk about human depravity and God’s judgment even though we don’t like it. As we study today’s text I think what you’ll find, is you actually agree with the necessity of God’s judgment. You don’t like it, but you actually agree with the necessity of God’s judgment a lot more than you may realize. So let’s turn to Romans 1 and get into it. You’ll find Romans in the last quarter of the bible, and we’ll be in Romans 1:24-2:29. I titled today’s message Is God’s Judgment Necessary, and the big idea is the sinful depravity of humanity, makes God’s judgment necessary...The sinful depravity of humanity, makes God’s judgment necessary...
Here’s your context. Romans is written by the Apostle Paul who was a highly educated, highly respected man, but also an enemy of Christianity. In 35 A.D. he has an interaction with Jesus that changed his life, he became a Christian, and 20 yrs later he writes Romans to teach Christians living in Rome about Jesus and the gospel that transformed his life. In our study last week of vs 18-25, Paul taught us that people who suppress the truth regarding God’s existence, are without excuse when it comes to God’s wrath and judgment on their lives. He says we can’t claim ignorance when it comes to God’s existence, because we’ve been given general revelation, clues, fingerprints of God’s existence throughout creation. We covered several of those clues last week, so we’re covering human depravity and God’s judgment this week. We’re addressing the questions: What is human depravity, and why is God’s judgment necessary? Let’s check it out.
The Word:
Romans 1:24 states, “Therefore God delivered them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. 26 For this reason God delivered them over to disgraceful passions.” Paul’s talking about people who reject God, and he uses the phrase delivered them over three times in ch 1. So what’s God delivering them over to? He says in verses 24, 26, and 28 that God is delivering them over to distorted desires of their hearts, passions, and minds. It’s the 1st wave of God’s wrath, which is called his passive wrath. It’s where God allows us to pursue whatever desires we want. The 2nd wave of God’s wrath is called his active wrath. It’s where God allows those who continually reject him, to live in eternal separation from him in hell. In the words of C.S. Lewis, “There’s only two kinds of people in the end. Those who say to God ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says in the end ‘Thy will be done.’ All who are in Hell choose it.”
But the 1st wave of God’s passive wrath, is where God allows us to pursue whatever desires we want on earth. If we don’t want to live for him, he allows us to live for something else. If we don’t want to live with him, he allows us to feel the struggles of life without him. We’re all feeling the struggling effects of the 1st wave, of life without God right now. I mean at some point we’ve all pursued our desires over God’s desires, our ways over God’s ways, and it’s led to many struggles in our lives. We struggle with discontentment, trying to fill an eternal joy void in our hearts only God was meant to fill. We struggle with self-centeredness, which causes marital, family, relational issues. When we try making ourselves or something else the center and sustainer of our lives instead of God, it always leads to struggles in our lives, relationships, and world. We’ll feel the struggling effects of the 1st wave of God’s wrath. Paul’s about to give us a few examples of ways people are pursuing their desires over God’s desires. It isn’t a complete list, it’s just a few examples of ways people are pursuing their desires over God’s desires.
Vs. 26, “For this reason God delivered them over to disgraceful passions. Their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 The men in the same way also left natural relations with women and were inflamed in their lust for one another...28 And God delivered them over to a corrupt mind, so they do what isn’t right. 29 They are filled with all unrighteousness, evil, greed, and wickedness. They are full of envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 senseless, untrustworthy, unloving,, and unmerciful.” Again this isn’t a complete list, it’s just a few ways people are pursuing their desires over God’s desires. Paul’s saying if our heart isn’t filled with God, it’ll be filled with something else. If our heart isn’t filled with God, it’ll be filled with all kinds of unrighteous desires, and God will let us feel the struggles that come with those unrighteous desires. But the reality is we’re all guilty of doing this! We’re all guilty of not just one sin, but many sins on that list. It’s what theologians call the doctrine of total depravity. Total depravity is the belief that every part, of every human being, has been affected by sin. It happened back in Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve, when the first humans sinned. In Genesis 1 God created humans and said it was “very good,” but in Genesis 3 they sinned and that’s when things became “very bad.” Their sin didn’t just affect themselves, it affected all creation. It’s like putting a drop of poison into a clean purified bottle of water. The poison doesn’t affect some of the water, it affects all the water. When sin first entered the world it was like a drop of poison that affected all creation, including our human nature. Humans are now born with a sin nature, which is why we don’t ever have to teach a child how to sin. Every parent knows when they have a child they get a BOGO...They get a child, with a sin nature...They get the joy of a beautiful child, with tantrums and rebellion. They don’t have to teach their child how to sin, they have to teacher their child how to resist sin. It’s because they’re born with a sin nature.
Total depravity is the belief that every part, of every human being, has been affected by sin. That includes our hearts, passions, and minds like I said earlier. Our hearts and emotions aren’t always good. Our passions and desires aren’t always good. Our minds and thoughts aren’t always good. It's because our hearts, passions, minds have been affected by sin. People in our culture love saying, “Just follow your heart. Just follow your passions. Just follow whatever you want to believe in your mind.” But time will always prove that our hearts, passions, minds will sometimes misguide us, and take use down paths that aren’t good for us. It’s because they’ve been affected by sin. The reason I said sometimes misguides us instead of always, is because God still pours grace on us even in our depravity to prevent us from always sinning all the time. It’s called common grace, which is where God pours grace on all humanity so we can enjoy the beauties of his creation, and to prevent humanity from becoming completely unhinged with sin. It’s why even an atheist has moments where they do good in the world. It’s because God’s common grace is being given to them in that moment. Without God’s common grace, humanity would become completely unhinged with sin. So our hearts, passions, minds are seeing life through a sinfully distorted lens because of total depravity, and we need God to bring things back into focus again. Paul’s building a case for our need for God’s grace, because we’ve all stumbled in sinful disgrace.
Ch. 2:1, “Therefore, every one of you, who judges is without excuse. For when you judge another, you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, do the same things.” He’s talking about religious people, self-righteous people, who think they’re better than everybody else. He’s saying “Do you really think your heart’s any better? Do you really think you’re more righteous because you read the Bible, know God’s laws, and go to church? But you do the same things everybody else is doing!” It’s a humbling text for those of us who are Christians, because deep down inside we know he’s right! Deep down inside we know we’re hypocrites of grace. We’ve received so much grace from Christ, but we abuse that grace often. We shouldn’t ever get insulted if people call us hypocrites, because the truth is we are hypocrites. We all have our moments where we fail to practice what we believe, which shows even Christians need God’s grace. A skeptic needs God’s grace for eternal salvation, but a Christian needs God’s grace for everyday transformation.
Vs. 6, “He will repay each one according to his works:, 7 eternal life to those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality; 8 but wrath and anger to those who are self-seeking and disobey the truth while obeying unrighteousness.” There’s eternal life for those who repent of their sins and pursue God’s desires over their own desires. But wrath and anger for those who don’t repent and keep pursuing unrighteous desires over God’s desires. In vs 13 Paul later says it isn’t those who hear God’s laws that’ll be justified, it’s those who do God’s laws that’ll be justified. When he says this he isn’t saying we’re justified, saved, receive eternal life by perfectly following God’s laws, because in chapter 3 he says nobody will be justified like that since we’ve all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. Instead he’s saying it isn’t enough to just hear God’s laws like some religious and nominal Christians think, we need to actually do God’s laws. The only way that can happen in our total depravity, is by relying on God’s grace. We need to turn to God for forgiveness, rely on God for help in doing his laws, and repent to God whenever we stumble again. We need to rely daily, on God’s saving and sustaining grace.
Vs. 15, “The Gentiles show that the work of the law is written on their hearts. Their consciences confirm this.”This is the moral law fingerprint I mentioned last week. It’s that God has written a moral law inside every human heart. It doesn’t matter where you go, what culture you study, how indigenous the tribe is, every culture has a moral law, a moral standard to live by. Paul’s saying even if people didn’t get the moral law from the bible, they’ll still be judged by God based on the moral law in their conscience. So those who know God’s moral laws in the bible, will be judged based on those moral laws. Those who don’t know God’s moral laws in the bible, will be judged based on what they knew was right and wrong in their moral conscience. John Piper states, “When God gives his final judgment, the question isn’t, ‘How much of the law did you hear and know?’ The question is, ‘How did you respond in your heart and action, to the law you did know?’” The point is skeptics can’t escape this either, because they haven’t lived up to the moral law and standard in their own conscience. Nobody can escape this, because we’ve all sinned against God’s moral law in the bible or in our conscience. We’ve all sinned, we’re all in need of God’s grace. In the rest of ch 2 Paul asks some questions to help the religious people examine their hearts. But at this point we’re aware of what total depravity is, which can help us better understand why God’s judgment is necessary. I’ll give you three reasons it’s necessary.
The 1st is because our sinful depravity makes it necessary. If we never sinned, then God’s judgment wouldn’t be necessary. But because we’ve sinned, it makes God’s judgment necessary. The 2nd reason it's necessary is because God is loving. I know some people think a loving God should let everybody go to heaven, but a God that ignores injustice isn’t a loving God! I mean if a judge said to Hitler, “Well because I’m a loving judge, I’ll just ignore all the injustice you did.” You’d consider that an unloving judge, because a loving judge can’t ignore injustice. So just like it’s necessary for a loving judge to hold a criminal accountable for a crime, it’s necessary for a loving God to hold people accountable for sin. The 3rd reason it’s necessary is because God is righteous. Our sinful depravity causes us to sometimes judge people unfairly, which causes us to sometimes punish other people and those we love too harshly. But God is righteous, and so he’ll always judge and punish people fairly. Paul says in Romans 2:11, “There’s no favoritism with God,” meaning he’ll judge and punish everybody fairly. I know some of you’ve been wronged, you’ve been deeply wounded by somebody, and it feels like they got away with it. But they didn’t, because God saw what they did, and they’ll either experience his passive wrath in this life or his active wrath in the next life. He’ll judge them fairly, because he’s righteous. The point is just like it’s necessary to have moral laws, righteous judgments, and righteous punishments for the good of society, it’s also necessary for God to have moral laws, righteous judgments, and righteous punishments for the good of creation. So his judgment is necessary, because our sinful depravity makes it necessary. His final judgement and eternal hell is necessary, because a loving and righteous God can’t ignore our sinful depravity, he can’t allow it to keep happening forever.
The big idea is the sinful depravity of humanity, makes God’s judgment necessary. Paul’s point is you can’t turn your sinful depravity around, without turning to Jesus. You can keep trying to be your own god, keep trying to save and transform your heart, but you can’t turn your sin natured heart around, without turning to Jesus for the salvation and transformation of your heart. Jesus is our God who came to save us from the darkness of the sinful depravity we’re in. He loves us so much he couldn’t just sit back and watch our sins take us into eternal hell, but he also couldn’t just ignore our sins. So he came to bring his love and righteous judgement together on the cross, by dying the death we deserved to die for our sins. 1st John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
So do you want to be forgiven of your sins?...Do you want to push back the darkness of the sinful depravity in your life and relationships?...Do you want to push back the darkness of the sinful depravity in our city and world?...If you want to push back the darkness of the sinful depravity in your life and relationships, then rely on Jesus for salvation today, and rely on Jesus for transformation daily...If you want to push back the darkness of the sinful depravity in our world, then let’s rely on Jesus to help us fulfill our vision as a church. It’s to reach people and reach the world with the gospel, and here’s one of the ways you can do that. Check out this video!