Bible Lesson 163

The Wrath of God

“Among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.” Ephesians 2:3

“EVERYONE OF US WAS BORN UNDER THE WRATH OF GOD, AND WE REMAIN UNDER THE WRATH OF GOD, UNLESS AND UNTIL, GOD EXTENDS HIS AMAZING GRACE TOWARD US.” Brobob

“We cannot magnify God’s love by minimizing His holy wrath against sin. Some of the most tender pleadings in Scripture are Jesus’ warnings to unrepentant unbelievers in danger of being caught up in the eternal wrath of God. It is only in this context that the real wonder of God’s love can be understood and appreciated.” I believe that it was A.W. Pink that said of God’s wrath: “No man will ever know the love of God until he has dealt with God’s wrath against sin.”

We always advertise or speak of the Gospel of Grace as the good news, and that is correct; but it is only half of the Gospel. There is good news and bad news and we never quite get to the bad news, instead we linger over the good news which is the fact that Christ died to save His people, He went to the cross and died in the place of those who would obey Him. The bad news is that everyone, who will not obey Him, will end up in that horrible place called hell, for eternity. By a large margin, most people in America today do not really believe that there is a place where they will spend eternity, in torment and pain.

That is a sad fact, but it is true and that is the reason that Jesus Christ, the Savior, said in Matthew 7:13-14, where we find God in the flesh saying, in His Sermon on the Mount, “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” God in the flesh, Jesus Christ, is warning us, and in fact commanding us to go in at the right gate. Enter is in the imperative, which means it is a command, not an invitation. Jesus in those two verses of scripture, is teaching us that there are two gates that leads to two ways with two destinations and two different eternities. Those who go in at the narrow gate and walk the narrow way will end up in heaven for eternity, while those who chose that easy way, with the wide gate will end up in hell for eternity.

We who are blessed to be born and live under grace, have perverted grace and all that is attached to grace. That is why God’s wrath will be brought to bear upon those who insist upon doing Christianity ?their way’. You may ask well, what have we done to bring God’s Judgment upon ourselves? The answer is, that we have for the most part left God completely out of Salvation. The church, Preachers, Pastors, Teachers, and Evangelists, Ministers of all flavors, have dropped the requirements of Salvation set down by God and have gone into the business of saving people for all kinds of reasons. I know people who have been allowed to think that they are saved because they love gospel music, belong to a church, have some kind of fuzzy feeling that they call an experience, or even because they have a perfect attendance pin. The church falls for all kinds of religious tricks, one of them is someone who has a magnetic personality and is easy to get along with,are easy to love and so we pronounce them church members and tell them they are saved. None of that is a sign of true salvation! Jesus Christ told us that salvation comes to those who fall in love with Christ to the degree that they obey Him and love Him more than they love themselves or anyone else on the earth (John 14:21-24). He went on to say that we must love Him more than we love things, and we must love Him enough to die to ourselves and live only in and through Him. (Luke 14:26-33).

Jesus went on to tell us that there is a cost to being His, and anyone who has really been saved and born again, has experienced that price. Jesus Christ was always open to tell us that being a Christian would not be easy, and we should know that by how the world treated Jesus Himself. A true Christian will never hate those that are not saved, it is always the other way around. The Christian life that shows the grace and mercy and love of the Savior is something that the lost world cannot abide. They did not crucify Jesus Christ because He fed the hungry, or healed the sick, or gave sight to the blind. They nailed Him to a cruel cross because his life style, called their sorry lives into question. It works the same way when anyone in a lost family is born again. The members of his/her family will always turn against them because the devil and his minions cannot tolerate the love and grace of the Christian life. Christians believe the Bible and the Bible tells us that Jesus preached in Matthew 10:24-39, and said, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.

He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me, and he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it. You see, dear friends, with Christ there is no middle ground at all, so you must understand that you cannot negotiate the salvation act with God. God has set it in place and nothing in heaven or on earth can change anything about it. We come to Jesus at the drawing of the Father, activated by the Holy Spirit and we know when we come that we are not worthy of what it took to save us because we are sinners with black hearts and a nature that is depraved. We come to God through His Son with nothing in our hand, casting ourselves upon Jesus and His cross, his death, burial and resurrection, as our one and only hope of salvation from God’s wrath. God’s wrath will be very severe, because it will separate so many into eternal torment, because they ignored His great love while they were alive.

I would imagine that many of you have seen a lot of anger displayed by men here on the earth, and many have seen that anger build up and build up until it explodes into wrath which destroys people and things. Think about that and multiply it by millions of times, and you will not reach what will happen in the Judgment, when God’s wrath is poured out upon the earth. God in Judgment, will be Jesus Christ in His resurrected body. Jesus Christ is coming back and the next time He comes it will not be as the suffering servant that was crucified for our salvation. NO indeed, the Lamb of God is coming this time, in His wrath (Revelation 6:16-17). Is He going to pour out His wrath on the lost world, and all of it’s people? It will be so terrible and disastrous that people will cry out to the rocks and mountains “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!”

The end of the world will manifest disasters and punishments that we cannot even imagine, and then come the eternal punishments of hell and it’s fire that is never quenched. For those of you who are unsaved, and I know that there are many church members that are unsaved; however, regardless of who you are and what you have been led to believe, if you have not been radically changed by salvation, then you can pretty much say you have not been saved. Salvation always produces good fruit (Matthew 7:15-20). I have good news for you, if you can stand before God and admit that you are a sinner without any help of hope, without God’s Mercy and His Grace?.then God says that He will save you. That is not a promise from me but that is the Word of God?your heart must be right, and God knows your heart, so if you come on His terms, holding nothing back, then He will save you. Don’t wait until tomorrow or next week or some Sunday. Kneel at the cross and cast yourself on the Jesus and His death for the forgiveness of your sin, TODAY, is the day, tomorrow may be too late.

“Because there is wrath, beware lest He take thee away with His stroke: then a great ransom cannot deliver thee.” Job 36:18. We live, and I mean those in America and in every other country of the world, in a secular world, and every day it becomes more secular (worldly rather than Christianity). Many are secular and really do not know it because they have been led there by ministers of the gospel, who have neither the knowledge of the Bible or the spiritual guts to preach the truths of God. (2nd Timothy 3:1-5; 2nd Timothy 4:1-5). Most people in our day are, I’m sorry to say, Biblically illiterate. I read this morning in the Newspaper here in my hometown, that one of the Baptist churches in this city was taking up a study of the Apocrypha: now that is strange since the Apocrypha is not part of the Bible, and I guarantee you that most of the students in that class are not grounded in the Word of God. That’s the problem in many of our churches here in America, and that is that we have people who want to be seen and have a lot of zeal, but without knowledge (Romans 10:2). We are guilty of not keeping the main thing, the main thing. We go off on flights of fancy and chase rabbits when there is a lion about to eat us up.

Why do you think that we are so ineffective at doing what God gave us to do, which was that we were to go and teach?..teaching them to obey everything that God has commanded us to do (Matthew 28:19-20). What can a person who does not really know the truth of God teach anyone? How can a person who does not obey all Christ has commanded us to do, teach someone else to obey? Christians and the Churches must confront the various belief systems in our communities. What would those beliefs be in your community? Let me attempt to help you, people who are unconcerned about their eternal security can have one or more of many ideas or beliefs about their eternal souls, some believe that death is the end of life and consciousness, then there are others who believe that everyone goes to Heaven?and if you don’t think that abounds, go to a few funerals. Some believe that there will be a second chance after they die, and others believe that hell just destroys the body and then it’s over. Of course none of those beliefs are backed up by any Scripture, at least not in context. Why would people believe that sort of thing?

It is because they have never been taught the truth and the truth is that unbelievers suffer eternal torment in hell and it’s flames. It is sad to say but preachers, pastors and all kind of ministers of the gospel, find it impossible to tell men/women that unless they are saved, called to an intimate relationship with God through faith in His Son Jesus Christ, that they will go to hell, be separated from God and His Grace and Mercy, to spend eternity in the flames that are never quenched and the worm that never turns (Luke 16:19-31; Mark 9:43-48; Isaiah 66:22-24). Does anyone deserve to spend eternity in hell fire? If God had not warned us about hell and told us how horrific it would be, if He had not said more about judgment and accountability and hell than He did about heaven, then He would not send people to hell, but God reveals His wrath from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men?..because what may be known of God is shown to them in His creation and in His gospel (Romans 1:16-20). I am reminded of a neighbor of mine who has since died; but before he died, I tried to talk to him about God and the need for men to turn to God; but his answer to me was that I could not prove to him that there was a God.

I asked him to close his eyes for a few moments and then asked him to open his eyes. I asked him after he opened his eyes, what he could see. He looked around him and said he saw the lake, the skies, the sun and the trees, grass and flowers. Then I asked him if he had created any of them. He replied no, of course not. Then I assured him that I had not created any of it either, so it had to be God. Sadly, I never got the assurance of his salvation. He could have been saved, because we are saved by what we do and not by what we say (Matthew 7:21-23). We have earned God’s wrath because we have violated His Word, His Will, and His Way. We are a people who no longer go to God’s word with the idea that we are going to hear from God and obey what we hear. The word is our bread and our food, and we as His children cannot go to His Word to pick and chose what we find there. We read the Word of God and see His wrath against sin, as it destroys those who violate His Will. Think about the universal flood, when God destroyed all of civilization because in the Word, we find that it was because “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

Mankind had begun to think that he was god, and had invented sins that he reveled in, as he disobeyed what he knew God would have him do. God is not a vengeful God who sits in heaven ready to destroy man when he fails; but God has a line that we dare not cross as we live here. Man proved to God and to us as we look back at the Ark that Noah built on instructions from God. Noah had found grace in the eyes of the Lord, because he was a just man, perfect in his generations (Genesis 6:9), and he preached righteousness for one hundred and twenty years as he built this great ark, to carry the righteous over the flood to reestablish mankind in the world. One hundred and twenty years of preaching, and not one convert??for only Noah and his wife and his three sons and their wives would go on that Ark, along with enough animals to begin the animal kingdom again. Noah lived in a time when it had never rained, the earth was watered by springs and the dew and condensation, so when he told the people that God was going to destroy the earth in a flood, they did not consider what God had said. The same thing is going on in our world today?.we have the word of God that warns us that there is a coming judgment, but we do not believe what we read.

God has provided The Ark for us to escape the coming judgment (this time by fire), and it is Jesus Christ and His person and work on the cross. The time is getting short, I believe before the Lord will come back to judge the quick and the dead; so if you are ever going to make preparations for a beautiful eternity in heaven, you need to seek the Lord and His forgiveness of your sin today! Other wise you will find that you have an eternity in hell which is a place of dark loneliness , where you will suffer unimaginable torment, while you will be conscious that you did not have to come here?you simply ignored God and now you will find that there are no back doors in hell. You will wake up in hell the moment your heart beats it’s last beat, and you will know how simple you have been and how you have wasted a life that could have been productive; but you chose to live on the edge and experiment with every drug and sin that came down the pike. You will know that God has a wrath and that you would not read and study the Bible and listen to people who loved you, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come.(Matthew 3:7).

Remember, our God is a God of love; but His perfection requires Him to be a judge that has the attribute of wrath, which He has promised to unrepentant sinners. God is Gracious and Merciful; but requires godly repentance for past sins. Today is your day?..run to the cross, because it is the only place where you can flee God’s wrath to come. In the words of T. Brooks by grace ye are saved!” (Ephesians 2:5).

All the links of the golden chain of salvation are made up of free grace!

The people of God are . . .

freely loved, Deuteronomy 7:6-8;
freely chosen, John 15:16-19, Ephesians 1:4;
freely accepted, Ephesians 1:6;
freely adopted, Ephesians 1:5, Galatians 4:5-6;
freely reconciled, 2 Corinthians 5:18-20;
freely justified, Romans 3:24;
freely saved, Ephesians 2:5, 8.
Free grace is the foundation of all spiritual and eternal mercies. Free grace is the solid bottom and foundation of all a Christian’s comfort in this world. Were we to measure the love of God to us by . . .
our fruitfulness,
our holiness,
our humbleness,
our spiritualness,
our heavenly-mindedness, or
our gracious behavior towards Him
?how would our hope and our confidence be
every moment staggered?if not vanquished!
But all is of grace?of free grace! O sirs! it is free grace . . .
Which will strengthen you in all your duties, which will sweeten all your mercies, which will support you under all your changes, which will arm you against all temptations! “For by grace are ye saved!” Ephesians 2:8 So flee from the wrath to come! Think on these things?.