Today's Word Radio

Brett Meador: The Lord has a heart for humanity, loves you, but man, there's a point where his wrath will be seen because of his righteous indignation. And by the way, that's why the Old Testament is full of stories of wrath and judgment.

Kurt: Pastor Brett Mether says you won't sense God's mercy until you first acknowledge his righteous judgment.

Brett Meador: Paul's going to show us the true God, and he is loving. And mercy and grace is amazing part of the story, but that's not going to help you unless you know the first part.

Kurt: On the occasion we're told there's good news and there's bad news, most likely there's a correlation. And that's not unlike Paul's letter to the Romans, revealing all who sin are subject to God's wrath. Yet the good news of the gospel assures God loves us despite our unworthiness. Pastor Brett Mether will open today's word, assuring God's power to save everyone who believes. And we're so glad you've joined us here as we continue our study of the New Testament. And this next book is very significant, and that's the book of Romans. Pastor Brett, thanks for being here.

Brett Meador: Oh, it's always good to be with you, Kurt.

Kurt: Brett, the book of Romans written by the Apostle Paul is really one of the most foundational texts in all of Christianity. Can you help set up what we're about to learn in Romans?

Brett Meador: Oh, I'd be glad to. I'm really excited about this book because Romans really is the book that answers just about every question a Christian could have about their faith. You know, it's the Christian handbook or the sort of the owner's manual of how to be a Christian. It answers who is God, who am I, why the world is broken, can I really be forgiven? You know, how can I even have peace with God? And Paul answers all those questions very powerfully. But with that, Romans, you know, giving us all that information, Paul writes, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.

It is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes. So, Kurt, the gospel, I think as it's given to us in the book of Romans, it's not just good advice. It's that power that transforms lives. So, as we study Romans together, I really hope our listeners won't just gain more Bible knowledge. I pray that they'll fall deeply in love with Jesus, grow in their confidence in the grace of God. I'd encourage everyone that's listening to buckle up and get ready because it's a great spiritual journey we're about to go on.

Kurt: That's excellent, and I'm excited, too. And as Pastor Brett just mentioned, let's buckle up, which also happens to be the title of this first message in the book of Romans. And here's Pastor Brett Mether to get things started.

Brett Meador: Why don't you turn to Romans chapter one. I just going to I'm going to start with these words for you with the book of Romans. Buckle up. The reason I say buckle up, well, we live in a mamby-pamby, snowflake, wimpy, woke, special interest, blah blah blah society. And I'm just going to say it's always interesting when I teach the Bible, I get everybody mad. I have all these people mad and they, you know, rant and they you're a liberal. Someone would say, Brett, you're a conservative. And I always just say, nope, nope, nope. I'm a Bible lover.

I love the Bible. I believe the Bible. It's God's word. One person actually could Brett, you're just too into the Bible. And I said, guilty as charged. I love the Bible. It is God's word. I believe it to be every word is inspired by God, and it's all to be taken literally unless it's specified that you don't take that literally. Like there's some beautiful figurative things in the Bible, and there's some really key areas that kind of give us the sort of the ping and says, this is something you you should take figuratively. But I've never been sad to take the Bible literally.

And And I think as the years have gone by, I'm just so thankful. The Bible's really good stuff, and it's to be read. Paul told Timothy, who was a pastor of a church in Ephesus, Paul said to Timothy, Timothy, give attendance to missionary work. Nope. Give attendance to having a good children's ministry program. Nope. What What was it that Paul said if there's one thing you really give attendance to? What was it? He says, the reading of scripture. Paul would say about his ministry to the Ephesian elders, he said, I have not shunned to declare unto you the whole council of God.

So, we're all about going through the Bible. But there's a reason I think a lot of churches don't like that idea because you have to cover stuff like Romans chapter one. In fact, Romans chapter one through eight, prickly as it gets. But if you're going to be mad, you might Well, I wouldn't recommend this, but if you want to be mad, you should be mad at the Bible. Cuz even here in chapter one of Romans, there's going to be stuff that people are going to be mad about. But that's never stopped us. Why? Because I believe the Bible.

Cuz the Bible's the word of God living and powerful has been proven over millennia to be accurate, right? And God's word. And God's the one who made us and created the world. He knows what's right for humanity. And so, this is this is really important. I'm not trying to be offensive, but I'm just going to say Jesus said the gospel is offensive. And the Bible is offensive to some people. It even offends me. The only difference, I don't get offended. I choose to submit to it. I'm not I'm definitely not perfect. I make mistakes. I sin like everybody else.

But when it comes to worldview, I say I believe the Bible. And my goal is to follow the Bible, to teach the Bible, to preach the Bible. Jesus said this in John 12:48, he that receiveth me and receiveth not my words hath one that judgeth him. The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. The reason why I would just recommend that you submit to the word of God as truly the word of God and believe it is because according to God, Jesus, if you reject me and receive not my words, then what's the deal?

Then you have one that's going to judge you on the same day shall it judge him in the last day. What is that? The word is going to judge you. You'll be judged according to the word. Many people don't even know what the word says, but that doesn't get you off the hook. This will be the indictment. If you reject God and reject his word like Jesus says here, then guess what? You will stand before God, and this will be the indictment against us. That's the bad news. And there's a bunch of good news that I'm going to tell you.

But you know what's funny about Romans? Romans doesn't spend a lot of time in the first few chapters talking about the good news. It's just really the bad news. It's brutal. That 's why I say buckle up because it's hard, man. Romans chapter one through eight, it's kind of heavy. But what Paul's I think doing is painting that black backdrop to make the diamond of the gospel sparkle that much brighter. The diamond sparkles its brightest with a black backdrop. And I liken that to the gospel. The gospel is better than diamonds. And when you put it on the black backdrop of our sin and the doom of sin and death and hell and destruction and evil and all the wickedness, man, when you realize we're all doomed, we're all on the hook for our sin.

You won't appreciate the beauty of the diamond until you understand the backdrop. What you should be concerned about is the true God. And Paul's going to show us the true God, and he is loving. And mercy and grace is amazing part of the story, but that's not going to help you unless you know the first part. So, what I want to do is start in Romans chapter one was sort of a kind of an intense verse, but this will really get us thinking about God and what Paul's wanting us to understand about God in the first section of Romans.

It might be an unlikely verse. There's other verses we might love more, but this one is one that's part of the reality, and we need to take a look. It's Romans chapter one verse 18. Let's start there. Romans 1:18. It says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. Again, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. Now, what is this all about? This here in Romans 1:18. First of all, let's talk about the word wrath.

Again, some churches will never talk about the wrath of God. Have you ever heard somebody say, I kind of like, you know, the New Testament God. I don't really know that I like the Old Testament God. And then you got pastors saying we need to unhitch ourselves from the Old Testament. Why do they say stuff like that? It's because they don't see the stories of the Old Testament. They want to separate those out and say, well, that's the God of the Old Testament and what he did to those Jews. And then the New Testament's new and improved and better.

And we like the improved God of the New Testament. Can I just say that is the wrong way to think. Does God ever change? The Bible says that over, I the Lord never change. He's the same today, yesterday and forever. And the God of the Old Testament is still the God of the New Testament. It's like when you, you know, read the Old Testament, you start to kind of realize, wow, there's a lot of wrath in the Old Testament. And we get a little freaked out. And I'll admit the the word wrath is kind of interesting.

If you look it up in the Greek word, you want to know what the Greek word for wrath is in the Bible? The Greeks would pronounce that orge. But that word really is this and if you look it up in a Greek dictionary, it's passionate anger, violent emotion, indignation, anger exhibited in punishment. Now, there's a thing where some people think all wrath is evil, wrath is sinful, or anger is wrong. Well, it it is most of the time with us. But there is such a thing of righteous anger, righteous wrath. And that's the epitome of who God is.

God has a righteous indignation, a righteous anger. And he will express his anger exhibited in punishment. That's why this word is used here. It says in our text here for the wrath of God, it's coming. And by the way, if you become more skilled in the Bible and you actually read it cover to cover, there's something you learn about every time you see the wrath of God, you realize it's always linked to the love of God. God doesn't just do things full of wrath just to be punitive. He expresses his wrath in more of a protective and even loving way.

That takes a little time going through the Bible to really understand that. But man, the whole Testament But it has to do with the Lord loving people. So, why would he ever be wrathful to people? Well, let's just talk about Satan for a second. Satan wants to drag as many people to hell as possible. The Lord tells us in his word, the Lord would that none should perish. But Satan's trying to lure people into and so the wrath of God's going to be on Satan because he loves people. In the same way, if you're a person who rejects God and tries to pull as many people away into your godless worldview, there's a point and I'll show you where that there's a point that comes where God says, I'm going to give you over to your own worldview, but you're also going to feel my wrath because you're dragging people I love away from my love.

And so, vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. Yesterday Dave for yesterday we had my grandson Bo his birthday. One of the things was fun. We had tons of parents, moms and dads and little kids running around. It was just a blast, but I was there flipping some burgers and but I was just watching the moms. They're all calm and just sit around and just sipping ice tea and the kids are running around playing everything right up until one of their children would start moving towards something dangerous. Then there was a whole different thing that came over those mothers.

Man, their face suddenly stern. Suddenly they're looking like they're in the Olympics doing the 100 meter, and they're bolting to the child that's walking toward the fire pit, you know, or wanting to touch the the hot stove or you know, like there's a whole different thing. And And like it's game on, and you could say, you know, I really don't like your attitude, mom. You're just a little too kind of serious. No, it's because of the gravity of the moment. And then 10 minutes later she's back to sipping tea and talking to her friends. I was watching that.

That happened several times, and I thought, you know, that's the Lord. The Lord has a heart for for humanity, loves you, but man, there's a point where his wrath will be seen because of his righteous indignation. And that's a strong word. And by the way, that's why the Old Testament is full of stories of wrath and judgment. But if you forensically go back and look at those, you realize that all of those were God protecting Israel from horrible, horrible situations and evil evil things. God's wrath is very real. The Bible doesn't pull any punches when it comes to wrath and judgment.

God is the same yesterday, today and forever. Numbers 23 verse 19, God is not a man that he should lie, or the son of man that he should change his mind. And then he asks sort of these two rhetorical questions, has he said and he will not do it or has he spoken and will not fulfill it? In other words, you know, Moses in writing this under inspiration of the Spirit is basically asking, are you kidding? If God says something, don't you know he's going to do it? That's what he's saying here. And the rhetorical question demands, of course, God's going to keep his word.

So, do we still have an Old Testament God that we serve? Yes. Same. Same God. So, that 's why I say buckle up cuz Romans is going to tap into that, especially the first part. And who's going to receive this wrath? Well, that's why this verse is fairly important to understand. There's two people and then a description about those two people in this verse. He says the wrath will be revealed from heaven against ungodliness, number one, and unrighteousness of men, number two. Now, this is interesting for you Bible people. You should note the difference between the two.

The first one when it says here ungodliness, that's our sin against God. But the unrighteousness of man speaks of our sin against other people. And as you go through the Bible, you bump into this notion that there's kind of the two things. You can sin against God, and then you can also sin against man. One example of this are the Ten Commandments. Remember the tables of stone that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai? Two tables. Was it five and five? That makes sense, right? Five on one side, five on the other. Is that what happened?

There were four on the first table and six on the second table of stones. You say whatever. What's the deal? Well, that there's a reason. And it has to do with this notion that Paul's pointing out, and it goes to the Ten Commandments, which is this. The first four commandments of the Ten Commandments are sins against God. How we sin against God. The last six commandments are are sinning against one another, against people. And God makes a distinction on the Ten Commandments, and then sort of all throughout the Bible you bump into that. God sees it as sin against God, sinning against man.

That's what Paul is talking about here when he says his wrath will be upon ungodliness, sin against God, unrighteousness of men, sinning against man. And then of those people his wrath is going to be particularly on those who And this is the word here, those who hold the truth in unrighteousness. That's King James. It's a little difficult to understand, but if you look at the word hold in the newer translation of an NIV or an ESV, the word suppress. Is that right? Those who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, what does that mean? Well, the word hold, the Greek word from the original text of the Bible is katecho, which means to hold fast, keep secure, firm possession, to hold back, detain, retain, to restrain, to hinder.

The reason that's important is those last couple particularly are the context that Paul is employing here. He's saying wrath is coming to those that sin against God and sin against each other, but especially those that hold back and restrain, suppress, keep from going the truth. Question. Is there anybody out there today that's trying to hold back the truth from people? Man, is that that's a description of our culture and I say those people beating themselves to death trying to keep the truth from you. Then they use everything from pulpits to podcasts, from news agencies to politicians.

Like we're so adept today at misinformation. And what's funny is the more we get gullible at one thing, the more gullible we come about the next thing. The Bible is the truth. Everything else, if it goes against the Bible, I'm just going to say, no. Some of you might be mad at me because I don't believe the climate change narrative out there. I don't. Uh, we're not really seeing that. But Brett, that's science. I believe it's science. Here's the thing. I'm just going to say this, I believe in science, too. I believe in the scientific method.

I love science. But the Bible says the last days would be what is called science falsely so called. It's It doesn't include the scientific method and stuff like that. But Brett, why wouldn't you believe in climate change? The world's going to go down and we're going to lose our seasons and stuff like that. I'll tell you why I don't believe that cuz the Bible says that there will be winter, spring, summer and fall all the way until the Second Coming of Christ. We're not going to lose the world between now and the Coming of Christ.

Now, if you want to talk about climate change, remember when it used to be uh if you're old enough to remember the ice age is coming again, global cooling in the '70s. That was all they were talking about. It's going to freeze again. Then they shifted to the global warming. I thought that's better. I like that better than freezing. But global warming and then they realized, oh wait, it's cooling, it's warming, it's cooling. So, they said, oh let's call it climate change. I call it weather and seasons and and and even cycles and and hundreds of year cycles.

There's cycles we've we've been able to see. But I don't believe the so-called science because there's always a huge agenda attached to it and draconian rules attached to it that people want you to do and they're using this to make sure And it just smells funny. Let alone the Bible says, nope, seasons will be in the world until the Second Coming of Christ. So, for me for me, I'm thrilled. I can rest. I don't stress out. Now, Brett, then do you just trash the earth? Mother earth, do you trash it? No. I believe the Bible.

The Bible says we're to be good stewards of the earth. I believe in stewardship of the earth. So, yeah, you know, it's all about the Bible. But what's happened is once people start believing things like climate change, there's people suppressing truth. And there's a narrative and a programming they're trying to do. The Lord says, my wrath is reserved for people that are holding back what is true. The more we buy into one lie, the easier it is to fall into the next and the next. And pretty soon our whole worldview is centered on something that's just a big lie.

And the people that know the truth, you hate them. You hate the people that know the truth and you think they're arrogant, prideful, even though they are the ones who's right. And you're going to camp out on this. Guess what? I'm not trying to sugarcoat this cuz Paul's not going to He said, those that are suppressing the truth and holding back what is true and in in an ungodly way, which we've seen, God's wrath is reserved for those. That's that's a scary thing. Now, with this verse that we've read here, he's going to pour out his wrath.

It's going to tell us the nature of God that I think is important. And I want to just go over three simple things about Romans about God's nature. First of all, number one, this is what we're going to learn, God is in the business of judging. People don't like judging. Don't judge. And they quote, you know, sanctimoniously Matthew chapter one, judge not lest you be judged. That's what Jesus said. But in the same chapter he explained how you are supposed to judge. So, which one is it? Are you judging or not judging? Read Matthew seven, the whole thing.

Because if you're judging just to condemn people, then no, you should not be judging people. But if you're judging to discern what's good and what's bad, what's helpful, what's not, Jesus even talks about judge them according to their fruit. Some trees bear good fruit, some bad. The way you check it out, you judge. And if it's bad fruit, don't waver on that. Like so, judging is a part of the thing. And by the way, it's a godly characteristic. In fact, it's part of his job description. He's called the righteous judge. I like that he's called the righteous judge cuz well, do we have any unrighteous judges today?

Uh, we've got a lot of corruption in the court system. That's why I look forward to where the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, he's called the righteous judge and uh the Lord is the one who's going to do that. People don't like that, but I just want you to know someday, especially if you if you reject God and you reject the Lord, you will stand before that judge and his judgments are 100% right. The whole world, the Bible says that when he's the judge, they're going to say, righteous and true are your judgments. Everyone's going to say that, even you, even if you're the one getting busted.

So, God's wrath is going to be poured out upon the a Christ rejecting sinful world and and he's the judge just like he judged in the days of Noah. It's funny to me that when I walk into a nursery with the Noah theme I'm going to Okay, so mom and dad, you you chose a story in the Bible where there's two giraffes, a little boat and a rainbow. I get it. But do you realize that's a story about God destroying everyone on the earth? Everyone dies except for Noah and and his family. Uh, seven souls were saved out of billions.

That's the same God. Do you understand? The rainbow's wonderful. We love it because of what? What does it mean? God promises to what? Never destroy the earth again? With a flood. Okay, I hope you remember the flood part cuz he's going to destroy the earth again, but this time with fire. Which one do you want, flood or fire? I like that's a tough but good news, you and I can be saved from the destruction coming. But God's going to be the judge who's going to judge, who's going to go through the fire of trouble and who's going to be saved.

And God, his heart is love and goodness and kindness. He would that none should perish. But at the same time if you have a hard heart against God, you're going to stand before the judge. Who's going to stand before the judge? Well, let's let's just read on. I'm going to give you some high points of this uh Romans chapter one. Look at verse 19. It says, because that which may be known of God is manifest. The word manifest means made known. So, it'll be made known in them. Who? The ungodly in the previous verse who were holding against the truth.

God says, I'm going to make known through them what I'm going to do. For God hath showed it to them. Uh, look at this verse 20. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. Who's going to be without excuse? The people standing before the judge. And the people that held against the truth and were ungodly and lived unrighteously toward men, God says, you're going to be without excuse. Well, well, what if I didn't know?

What if I didn't know? What if nobody told me? The Lord says, you are without excuse because it says verse 20, even the invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen. In other words, nobody's going to have an excuse cuz you have creation staring in the face all the time. When you go outside, if you were mind to say, wow, look at what God has created, then it's done its work and you're on the right track there. But if you go outside, look at the trees, the stars, the sun and moon go, wow, what an amazing coincidence that there was a big explosion and they're just uh all that chaos just through billions of years of accidental circumstances, everything just kind of came together uh miraculously.

And now we have beautiful trees and the wow uh and God doesn't exist. God says, you, my friend, are out of excuses. That's not an excuse.

Kurt: Pastor Brett Mether reflecting in today's word the divine nature and eternal power of the righteous God of the Bible. And there's much more to come from this introductory study of Romans next time. If you've missed any portion of this message, you'll find all of Pastor Brett's studies online at todayswordradio.com. That's todayswordradio.com. Also want to mention that if you'd like to share your story of how God has changed your life through these daily messages, you can email us at info@todayswordradio.com. That's info@todayswordradio.com. Well, next time Pastor Brett will continue in Romans, sharing how if you repent of your sins and believe in your heart the Lord Jesus Christ that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Today's word with Pastor Brett Mether is an outreach of Athey Creek Church in Westland, Oregon.