God revealed Himself

Romans 1:18-23

God revealed Himself.

Romans 1:18-23, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, ¹⁹ because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, ²¹ because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²² Professing to be wise, they became fools, ²³ and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.

We are living in a day in Christianity when there is a rising trend in what is called “universalism.” That is the belief that ultimately everybody is going to be saved.

God is kind, gracious, and too good to cast people into an eternal hell. Ultimately everybody is going to end up in heaven. We should not be concerned about judgment. We should not be concerned about hell. So, what comes out of this ideology that we do not have to worry about Evangelism.

The people cannot be responsible for what they do not know. This is not the view of our Lord. This is not what view of the Word of God. This is not the view of the apostle Paul. So, this should not be your view as well.

Matthew 9:37-38, Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. ³⁸ Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”

The harvest of which our Lord spoke was a judgment harvest. He saw humanity as this mass of people about to be cut and judged, and the need for labourers to enter that harvest to warn them was on His mind. The Lord spoke more about hell than anybody else in the Bible.

Jess spoke more about hell than everybody else put together in

the New Testament. The men of God who have lived through the history of the church are men who have understood that God is a God of judgment, that the wrath of God is indeed revealed against ungodliness. The main body of Romans starts at Verse 18.

Gospel begins with the wrath of God revealed on all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

Ephesians 2:3, men are “children of wrath.”

They are born unto wrath. Wrath is their nature and their inevitable end. Wrath is their destiny. They are heirs of wrath. They are inheritors of wrath. As the love of God makes every bitter thing sweet, so the curse of God makes every sweet thing bitter.

Does man deserve this? After all, we are helpless with our birth. Why should we be born having nothing to say about it and then spend forever in hell?

• We did not ask to be born.
• We did not ask to be born to sinful parents.

• We did not ask to be born into a sinful world.
• We did not ask to be placed in a predicament of judgment.

How can we be held responsible? Paul answers these questions through the Holy Spirit. V 18, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

Answer why God is justified in being angry over the sin of man in verses 19-23. We can see from the history of the world some me have recognized God’s right to be angry. In the history of Israel, Israel is paying no attention to God.

Suddenly Israel is confronted with their perennial enemy, the Philistines, and they are worried.

1 Samuel 4:3, And when the people had come into the camp, the elders of Israel said, “Why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord from Shiloh to us, that when it comes among us it may save us from the hand of our enemies.”

At that point in their history, God is symbolized in the ark of the covenant, which is up in Shiloh. God, as it were, in His presence dwelt on the ark of the covenant between the wings and the cherubim. When they wanted to be assured of the presence of God, they had to have the ark of the covenant. They became religious and got the ark of the covenant.

To the pagans this was just an idol, just the Israelite idol.

1 Samuel 4:4-6, So the people sent to Shiloh, that they might bring from there the ark of the covenant of the Lord of hosts, who dwells between the cherubim. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were there with the ark of the covenant of God. ⁵ And when the ark of the covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel shouted so loudly that the earth shook. ⁶ Now when the Philistines heard the noise of the shout, they said, “What does the sound of this great shout in the camp of the Hebrews mean?” Then they understood that the ark of the Lord had come into the camp.

The God of Israel has arrived.

1 Samuel 4:7-8, So the Philistines were afraid, for they said, “God has come into the camp!” And they said, “Woe to us! For such a thing has never happened before. 8 Woe to us! Who will deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods? These are the

gods who struck the Egyptians with all the plagues in the wilderness. That little box is a powerful thing.

Why would they say that? Because they remembered a little bit about Egyptian history, and they remembered about the entire Egyptian army being drowned, and they remembered prior to that all the plagues.

1 Samuel 4:9-11, Be strong and conduct yourselves like men, you Philistines, that you do not become servants of the Hebrews, as they have been to you. Conduct yourselves like men, and fight!” ¹⁰ So the Philistines fought, and Israel was defeated, and every man fled to his tent. There was a very great slaughter, and there fell of Israel thirty thousand foot soldiers. ¹¹ Also the ark of God was captured; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, died. That is not the way the story was supposed to end.

The Israelites were supposed to win. They have God. But God is not a genie. God does not operate like that. Thirty thousand footmen of Israel were killed. The ark of God was stolen and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were killed. Devastation.

If we think that is a problem for the Jews, then we have not begun to imagine what kind of problem it is for the people who have God on their hands. Eli the high priest was so upset about his sons dying he fell off his little stool and broke his neck and died. So now the high priest is dead.

Now the Philistines have God.

What happened to them?

1 Samuel 5:1-9, Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. ² When the Philistines took the ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon and set it by Dagon. ³ And when the people of Ashdod arose early in the morning, there was Dagon, fallen on its face to the earth before the ark of the Lord. So they took Dagon and set it in its place again. ⁴ And when they arose early the next morning, there was Dagon, fallen on its face to the ground before the ark of the Lord. The head of Dagon and both the palms of its hands were broken off on the threshold; only Dagon’s torso was left of it. ⁵ Therefore neither the priests of Dagon nor any who come into Dagon’s house tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day. 6 But the hand of the Lord was heavy on the people of Ashdod, and He ravaged them and struck them with tumors, both Ashdod and its territory. 7 And when the men

of Ashdod saw how it was, they said, “The ark of the God of Israel must not remain with us, for His hand is harsh toward us and Dagon our god.” ⁸ Therefore they sent and gathered to themselves all the lords of the Philistines, and said, “What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel?” And they answered, “Let the ark of the God of Israel be carried away to Gath.” So they carried the ark of the God of Israel away. ⁹ So it was, after they had carried it away, that the hand of the Lord was against the city with a very great destruction; and He struck the men of the city, both small and great, and tumours broke out on them.

They wanted to send it to Gath, Goliath from this town. That is the next town along the line in the Philistine area. They took it to Gath, and they had the same problem.

1 Samuel 5:10-12, Therefore they sent the ark of God to Ekron. So it was, as the ark of God came to Ekron, that the Ekronites cried out, saying, “They have brought the ark of the God of Israel to us, to kill us and our people!” ¹¹ So they sent and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines, and said, “Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and let it go back to its own place, so that it does not kill us and our people.” For there was a deadly destruction throughout all the city; the hand of God was very heavy there. 12 And the men who did not die were stricken with the tumours, and the cry of the city went up to heaven.

They were passing it all over the place, and everybody was in the same punishment. They were all either dying from the plague or getting the tumors. Now this is judgment.

What is the pagan response going to be?

1 Samuel 6:1-4, Now the ark of the Lord was in the country of the Philistines seven months. ² And the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners, saying, “What shall we do with the ark of the Lord? Tell us how we should send it to its place.” ³ So they said, “If you send away the ark of the God of Israel, do not send it empty; but by all means return it to Him with a trespass offering. Then you will be healed, and it will be known to you why His hand is not removed from you.” ⁴ Then they said, “What is the trespass offering which we shall return to Him?”

Why trespass offering for? Sin. These uneducated, unschooled pagans knew that they somehow were getting exactly what they deserved, for they had violated this God. Even they recognized that God had a right to judge them, and so they sent back what they understood to be a trespass offering.

So even pagans understood that God had a right to judge them. They said, “We acknowledge the sin. We have dishonoured You, and we deserve exactly what we receive.”

When Achan stole the goods out of Jericho and buried them in his tent, Joshua confronted him and asked him to confess his sin. Achan did confess his sin, and then and only then did God judged him. Took his life, and all his family who were implicated in the crime. But before judgment fell, there was a confession that it was deserved.

God never judges unless judgment is deserved. He is a God of absolute justice. If God judges and God pours out wrath, then there is every confidence in my heart to know that that is exactly what is right and proper in that situation.

How can a man be held responsible for his sin?

How could those pagans be held responsible?

How could those Philistines be responsible? They did not have the Old Testament law. How could God possibly slaughter them with plagues and inflict them with tumors?

How could God drown the entire Egyptian army? How could God slay all the firstborn of the land of Egypt? How could God wipe out whole cities of the Canaanites?

How could God bury Sodom and Gomorrah? What if no one ever told them about the truth?

How can He hold them responsible?

How can so much wrath be deserved? The answer comes beginning in verse 19. Revelation. V 19, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.

How? V 20, For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. The reason for the wrath of God is revelation.

Men were given the truth of God. The Philistines, they knew the truth of God. The Canaanites, they knew the truth of God. The Egyptians, they knew the truth of God. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities of the plains, they knew the truth of God.

All men know the truth of God.

God has inlaid the evidence of the fundamental truth in the very nature of man so that no where is he without a witness.

Ephesians 2:12, that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. Unregenerate man is without God in the world, but he is forsaken by God, not that he is ignorant of God. He is without God not because he does not know of God, but because he will not receive God, and therefore God forsakes him.

Now this section refers primarily to the Gentiles because it assumes only “natural revelation.” It is not talking about the Scripture, which was applicable to Israel. Israel, of course, not only rejected natural revelation, but special revelation. Not only did Israel reject creation as the evidence of God, but they even rejected the Scriptures.

We see primarily the Gentile world.

Paul says that they could know God even though God has manifested Himself to them because they have suppressed the truth. So, man cannot plead ignorance. Entirely apart from special revelation through the Scripture, which so many have never heard admittedly, God has made Himself known and continues to do so by means of His creation.

God would never send someone to hell who did not have an opportunity to know Him. God is a God of justice. It was not the pen of Moses that initiated the knowledge of the Creator. Most of the mankind, though they had never heard the name of Moses to say nothing of his book, know the God of Moses, nonetheless.

Nature is the teacher, and the soul is the pupil. One flower, one shell, one feather, will they speak to you of a Creator? Creation manifests God. Even for those who appear unable to perceive that creation there is the manifestation of God within them.

The great story of Helen Keller, the deaf, mute, and blind woman with Anne Sullivan.

Obviously, we cannot know everything about God even through special revelation. But what is knowable is revealed. What may be known of God, what is knowable, what is apprehend able to the senses of man can be known apart from Scripture.

God therefore has never left Himself without a witness. His existence and perfections have ever been so manifested that His rational creatures are bound to acknowledge and worship Him as the true and only God. So, what is knowable about God, His divine power and divine nature, has been revealed to all men so they are without excuse. Not only is it revealed to them as an external reality, but in them as captured perception. They see it, and they know it to be Him.

Acts 14:15-17, and saying, “Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men with the same nature as you, and preach to you that you should turn from these useless things to the living God, who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and all things that are in them, ¹⁶ who in bygone generations allowed all nations to walk in their own ways. ¹⁷ Nevertheless He did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good, gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.”

The very goodness of life speaks of the goodness of God, the food, the rain, the seasons, the joy of living all speak of a beneficent, loving, and gracious Creator.

Acts 17:22-28, Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; ²³ for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: ²⁴ God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. ²⁵ Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. ²⁶ And He has made from one [j]blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, ²⁷ so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; ²⁸ for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’

Their understanding of the true God, though they did not know His name. They ignorantly worship Him.

God exists and you have got an unknown God statue just to cover Him, but you do not know who He is. God controls the nations, their boundaries. He controls time, destiny, and everything.

John 1:9, That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.

Does that mean all men are saved? No. What it does mean is that all men are illumined with the knowledge of God. Christ is the Light that is lighting all men. No one has an excuse.

Does everybody in the world has an opportunity? Yes! Somehow in some way God is a God of goodness and grace. God is a God of love and equity and justice, and God does not pour out wrath on people who never had a choice, who never had an opportunity.

They all have the knowledge of God around them. He is shown it to them, and in them they have internally perceived it to be Him.

Christ is the Light that is lighting all men.

How did this revelation come? V 20, For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

God is invisible. The things about God that are invisible, the essence of His nature, the reality of His existence, His qualities, and attributes. His eternal power simply means never failing omnipotence. His omnipotence, His tremendous power is available to men.

His divine nature, that is that He is wise, that He is good, that He is loving, all the elements of God’s nature are visible. God is a God of beauty by looking at this world. God is a God of goodness because there’s goodness in life.

God is a God of love because there’s love. God is wise because of the intricacy of the design of His creation.

Through the creation of the world these things are not muddy, but they are clearly seen, being easily understood by the things that are made. In ancient times before the microscope and the telescope, men were able to reflect on the vastness of the universe. They were able to understand the fixed order of heavenly bodies. They could pick up a flower and see how marvelously the petals were arranged. They could look at how the leaves attached themselves to the stem. They saw the cycle of the water as it evaporated into the clouds and was carried over the land and deposited.

They understood the mystery of human birth. They saw it. They saw a growth. They knew the glory of a sunrise and the majesty of a sunset. They knew the rolling and the roaring of the seas, and the rushing of the rivers, and the trickle of a brook, and the flight of a bird, and the caterpillar that came out a butterfly.

Psalms 19:1-6, The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork. ² Day unto day utters speech, And night unto night reveals knowledge. ³ There is no speech nor language Where their voice is not heard. ⁴ Their line has gone out through all the earth, And their words to the end of the world. In them He has set a tabernacle for the sun, 5 Which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, And rejoices like a strong man to run its race. 6 Its rising is from

one end of heaven, And its circuit to the other end; And there is nothing hidden from its heat.

Psalm 94:9, He who planted the ear, shall He not hear? He who formed the eye, shall He not see? If we can hear, then whoever made us must understand hearing. If we can see, He must see. If we can think, He must think.

They understood God. They understood about His nature from what they saw in their world.

Psalm 143:5-6, I remember the days of old; I meditate on all Your works; I muse on the work of Your hands. ⁶ I spread out my hands to You; My soul longs for You like a thirsty land. Even in the non-sophisticated world then by our standards, they sat in awe of the creation. Look at Job. The staggering statements of that book about the creative power of God and the revelation of His nature.

Do you know that some birds navigate by the stars when they migrate?

Scientists tracked a tireless bird's nonstop migration from Alaska to New Zealand. That bird, a male bar-tailed godwit, set a new record for nonstop avian migration when it flew 7,500 miles over the Pacific Ocean without taking a single pitstop.

Do you know that if you raise birds, these kinds of birds, from eggs inside a building they have never been out of the building? If you show them an artificial sky and this has been done in scientific experiment representing a place their species have never been, they will immediately orient themselves to the proper place to which to migrate. How they know that?

There is a special fish called the archerfish. It gets its food like all other fish. It just swims around, and opens its mouth, and takes its food. But they have the amazing ability to jet stream the water with great accuracy and knock insects out of the air.

Researchers have conducted experiment with 8, 16 and 24 inches this archerfish has an amazing ability to control the jet stream of water to perfect accuracy. Did you know that there is a little thing called the bombardier beetle who produces chemicals which mix perfectly and at the right moment explode in the face of his enemy, but the explosion never occurs prematurely and never blows him up?

Think about the hydrological cycle of water. Water is lifted against gravity from the sea thousands of feet into the air, and

there it is suspended, just suspended, collected in clouds, and then the clouds are floated over the land and they are dropped. Now we cannot invent a machine to do that, so God has one and it is the sun, and it does it all and it is only 93 million miles away.

No wonder the Psalmist says, “Power belongs to God.” No wonder David says, “The greatness of his power.” No wonder Nahum says, “The Lord is great in power.” Isaiah says, “The Lord God is everlasting strength.”

Psalms 65:6, Who established the mountains by His strength, Being clothed with power; Scientists have always tried to say it is all evolution and it is all explained by certain circumstances, and so forth apart from God, but they are really running out of the ability to say that.

They are fast losing their case.

What cause produced this effect? Who or what put the matter or energy into the universe? Science cannot answer. When you study science, the conclusion is God created the world.

With the 500-meter-wide telescope at South West of China, astronomers can investigate space for 4 billion light years. If you do not understand that try 25 sextillion miles. Do you know how much space that alone would make, as far as they can see?

If someone had been examining this large of volume at the rate of one million billion cubic miles a day since the universe began, he would be just a little shy of halfway done. The universe that we see with that telescope is a small piece of actual space.

Can you imagine the power? “It may be surprising to people in a temperate climate to hear that there are on the average of 1,800 storms in operation at any time. The energy expended in these storms amounts to the almost inconceivable figure of 1,300,000,000 horsepower. A large Caterpillar machine has 420 horsepower requiring 100 gallons of fuel a day. How much fuel does God have to operate storms with a horsepower of one 1,300,000,000 everyday?”

The University of Alberta in Canada. “A rain of 4 inches over an area of 10,000 square miles would require the burning of 640 million tons of coal to evaporate enough water for such a rain. And to cool again the vapors thus

produced and collect them in clouds would take another 800 million horsepower of refrigeration working night and day for 100 days.” Agricultural specialists, for example, have found the average farmer, free of charge, gets 407,510 gallons of water per acre per year. That is what the Lord gives him, nearly half a million gallons of water a year for his farm, no charge.

Where does God get all the power to be moving this stuff around? The U.S. Natural Museum says insect species now number 10 million. Do you realize there are 2,500 kinds of ants? One colony alone can have 100 million ants.

The earth is 25,000 miles in circumference. It weighs 6 septillion 588 sextillion tons, and hangs in empty space, and spins at 1,600 miles an hour with perfect precision so that time is kept to the split second, and at the same time careens through space around the sun in an orbit of 580 million miles at 1,000 miles a minute.

Did you know that the head of a comet may be from 10,000 to 1 million miles long and the tail as long as 100 million miles and travel at 350 miles per second?

Consider the human heart. It is the size of your fist, weighs less than half a pound 250- 350 grams. Your heart pumps 1800 gallons (6,500 to 7,500 Liters) of blood a day. Your heart does enough work in 12 hours to lift 65 tons 1 inch off the ground.

Consider the sun. The sun burns up 4 million tons of matter a second. If you could convert the energy the sun gives off to horsepower, you would wind up with 500 million million billion horsepower. If that is too big to handle, that is the same as one and a half million million billion Corvettes.

Think of the distance from the sun. The distance from the earth to the sun is 93 million miles. It takes the light from the sun traveling at 186,000 miles a second, 8 and a half minutes to get here. The speed of light is 186,000 miles a second, and if you take that speed of 186,000 miles a second going 60 seconds a minute, 60 minutes an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, that light travels over 6 trillion miles in one year. Yet, if you were to go across our galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy, where our star system is, going at 186,000 per second, 6 trillion miles a year, it would take you 125,000 years to get across our galaxy, and ours is one of millions.

Now consider how small we are.

Atoms are not visible. We know they exist, but to this day no one has ever seen an atom. They are so small it takes 3 atoms to make up 1 water molecule, and if you were to take every water molecule in 1 drop of water and blow them up so each molecule was the size of a grain of sand, you would have enough grains of sand to make a road 1 foot thick, half mile wide, and the road for 7,000 miles.

God is visible in His creation.

• You can see the eternal power.
• You can see the divine nature of God.
• You can look at creation, and so can a Canaanite, or a Philistine, or an Egyptian, or anybody living in any period of history up until today, and he is going to see that God is.
• There must be a cause for all this effect.
• There must be a designer for all this design.

When somebody tells you it just happened, that makes no more sense than saying take your watch apart, put all the pieces in your pocket, and see how long you must shake your pants before you hear a tick. It is ridiculous. Design speaks of a designer.

So, you know God is. If you know God is, you know God is powerful, and you know God is divine.

That is why the end of verse 20 says men are “without excuse.” Everybody living on the face of this earth has experienced God, His wisdom, His power, His generosity in every moment of their existence, though they have not recognized Him He has been there.

• He has bounded their lives.
• He has been sustaining them.
• He has been enriching them.
• He has been giving Himself to them.

General revelation is the foundation of all condemnation. Men have the opportunity because God is evident everywhere. “Give me Scotland or I die.” John Knox, on his knees for lost souls in the little country of Scotland pleaded with God.

Hudson Taylor as a young man looked across the thousands of miles to the unreached multitudes of China and cried out to God, “I feel that I cannot go on living unless I do something for the lost in China.” Henry Martyn after landing in India said, “Here I am in the midst of heathen, midnight and savage oppression. Now my dear Lord let me burn out for Thee.”

Adoniram Judson, the great missionary to Burma, spent long exhausting years in translating the Bible. In the midst of it he was dragged away to prison, and while he was in prison his dear wife died. And after his relief, he was stricken with disease and breathed out this prayer. “Lord, let me finish my work. Spare me long enough to put the saving Word into the hands of this people.”

James Chalmers for those without the Saviour that it is said of him, “In Christ’s service he endured hardness, hunger, shipwreck, exhausting toil, and did it all joyfully. He risked his life a thousand times and was finally clubbed to death, beheaded, and eaten by men whose friend he was and whom he sought to enlighten.”

Robert Arthington could not go overseas to reach the lost, but through sacrifice he enabled others to go. He lived in a single room and cooked his own meager meals and gave 500,000 of his dollars to foreign missions. He wrote, “Gladly would I make the floor my bed, a box my chair, and another box my table rather than that men should perish for want of the knowledge of Christ.”

They understood what it means to die without God and Christ. They understood that men were inevitably headed to judgment.

They understood that men were under the wrath of God. Unless you understand that, you do not understand the greatest impetus that you have for concern and compassion.