Reasons for the
Wrath of God
Part 1
by
John MacArthur, Jr.
All Rights Reserved
(A copy of this message on cassette tape may be obtained by calling
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Romans 1:19-20 Tape
GC 45-10
Turn with me in your Bible to the 1st chapter of Paul’s epistle
to the Romans. Tonight we’re going to examine, verses 19 through 23. Now this is
such a tremendous section of Scripture with so much import and impact that we
want to think carefully and closely along with the Spirit of God as He writes
through the Apostle Paul. I really believe that this passage answers many, many
questions that are constant questions asked by folks about the meaning of the
Gospel and the nature of God and the destiny of man.
Let me read to you verses 19 through 23 and you follow along as I read. We ought
to begin I guess at verse 18, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in
unrighteousness, Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for
God hath shown it unto them. 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; Because,
when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but
became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of
the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, and birds, and
four‑footed beasts, and creeping things.”
Some years ago the head of the department of evangelism for one of the largest
denominations in America said this, “We don’t need to evangelize the people of
the world, who have never heard the message of salvation. We only need to
announce to them that they’re already saved.” End quote. Today 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’s going to be saved,
that God is too kind and too gracious and too good to cast people into an
eternal hell, so ultimately everybody is going to wind up in heaven. We
shouldn’t be concerned about judgment, we shouldn’t be concerned about hell, God
is too good to send people there, forever. And the upshot of it is that we don’t
have to worry about evangelism either. We don’t have to get too upset about
spreading the Gospel around to the ends of the earth; after all they can’t be
responsible for what they don’t know. So just leave them alone and they’ll make
it.
Now this is not the view of the Apostle Paul. This is not the view of our Lord.
In Matthew 9:36 our Lord said, “The harvest is great, and the laborers are few.
Pray, the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his
harvest.” And 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
laborers to enter that harvest to warn them was on His mind. The Lord spoke more
about hell than anybody else in all of the Bible. In fact He spoke more about
hell than everybody else put together in the New Testament. The Apostle Paul
said, “Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.” In other words it is
because of the terror of God’s judgment that we move to evangelize. 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. John Knox, on his knees for lost souls in the little country of
Scotland pleaded with God and said, “Give me Scotland or I die.” 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.” So
concerned was James Chalmers for those without the Savior that it is said of
him, quote, “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 couldn’t 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 five hundred thousand of his
dollars to foreign missions. And 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.” You see 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. And unless you
understand that you do not understand the greatest impetus that you have for
concern and compassion.
And so the Gospel begins at verse 18, that’s where the main body of Romans
starts and it begins with the wrath of God, revealed on all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men. And as Paul says in Ephesians 2:3, “Men are children of
wrath.” And in other words they are born unto wrath, wrath is their nature if
you will, wrath is their inevitable end, wrath is their destiny. They are heirs
of wrath, they are inheritors of wrath. God’s smile has turned to a frown. And
as the Psalmist said, “Who knows the power of God’s wrath?” Thomas Watson, that
great Puritan wrote, “As the love of God makes every bitter thing sweet so the
curse of God makes every sweet thing bitter.” Now Paul says man then is under
wrath, severe wrath.
Now the question that comes up in this passage is this, does man deserve this?
After all we couldn’t help being born. Why should we be born having nothing to
say about it and then spend forever in hell? We didn’t ask to be born, we didn’t
ask to be born to sinful parents, we didn’t ask to be born into a sinful world,
we didn’t ask to be placed in a predicament of judgment. How can we be held
responsible? And that is precisely the question that Paul answers in this text.
The wrath of God is revealed on all men, because of their ungodliness and
unrighteousness. That’s verse 18. And verses 19 to 23 tell us why, why God is
justified in being angry over the sin of man.
Now some men through the history of the world have recognized God’s right to be
angry. That is right. Some who are even pagan have understood that God had a
right to be angry with them. Let me give you an illustration, turn in your Bible
to First Samuel chapter 4, First Samuel chapter 4. Now at this particular time
in the history of Israel, Israel is paying no attention to God, none whatsoever.
Oh there’s a little bit of religious tokenism but there’s no genuineness. But
all of a sudden Israel is confronted with their perennial enemy the Philistines,
and they are worried. And so somebody says, look, we don’t want to fight the
Philistines on our own, somebody go get God. That’s pretty good thinking
actually. And at that point in their history God is symbolized in the Ark of the
Covenant, which is up in Shiloh. And God as it were in His presence dwelt on the
Ark of the Covenant between the wings and the cherubim. And so when they wanted
to be assured of the presence of God they had to have the Ark of the Covenant,
so they said, go get God. And so they got very religious, they ran up and got
God, the little box.
Now to the pagans this was just an idol, just the Israelite idol. And so they
came down and they’ve got God, they’ve got the little box. Verse 5 of First
Samuel 4, “And when the ark of the covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all
Israel shouted with a great shout, so that the earth rang again.” God is here!
Talk about the arrival of the cavalry, in the battle with the Indians wouldn’t
be anything compared to this. God is here. The day is won. And of course the
shouting was deafening, in verse 6, “When the Philistines heard the noise of the
shout, they said, what meaneth the noise of this great shout in the camp of the
Hebrews? And they understood that the ark of the Lord was come into the camp.”
The God of Israel has arrived, they’ve gotten their God, “And the Philistines
were afraid; and they said, God is come into the camp. And they said, Woe unto
us! For there had not been such a thing heretofore. Woe unto us! Who shall
deliver us out of the hand of these mighty gods?” That little box is a powerful
thing. Why’d they say that? Because they remembered a little bit about Egyptian
history, and they remembered about the entire Egyptian army being drown, and
they remembered prior to that all the plagues. And then one of them stood up and
gave the old pep talk speech in verse 9, “Be strong, and acquit yourselves like
men, O ye Philistines, that you be not servants unto the Hebrews, as they have
been to you; acquit yourselves like men, and fight.” Now let’s get our act
together and get out there and win this battle. And you know what happened? The
Israelites were in a euphoria, they thought the day was won. Verse 10 says, “The
Philistines fought, and Israel was smitten.”
Now wait a minute, that’s not the way the script was supposed to read. The
Israelites were supposed to win, they have God. But God is not a utilitarian
genie, you don’t just rub your little lamp and say, now God go do Your thing,
I’m in trouble, haven’t paid any attention to You for a long time but I need You
now. God doesn’t 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, the sons of the high priest are dead, thirty thousand
footmen die, and they take the ark.
Now if you think that’s a problem for the Jews you haven’t begun to imagine what
kind of problem it is for the people who have God on their hands. Now the
Philistines have God. Now if you want to know what happened come over to chapter
5 verse 1. Eli the high priest who was big and fat and old 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. And now the Philistines have got the ark of God on
their hands, and they’re running around with the presence of God. And so they
decided this is the Israelite God, we’ll put Him with our god, and so they took
Him in verse 2 it says, “And put him in the house of Dagon.” Dagon was a
Philistine god that was half fish and half man, the fish god. And so they just
took the ark and put it in with Dagon. It was in the town of Ashdod, they rose
up early in the morning, went back and Dagon was fallen on his face bowing
toward the ark of the Lord. And they were pretty puzzled by that they must have
thought there was some localized earthquake or something that knocked him over
and so they set him up again. The next day they came back, verse 4, this time he
was fallen on his face again only this time his head and both the palms of his
hands were cut off, and only his stump was left. And God was saying, I don’t
tolerate any competition. Well now they knew they were in trouble. To run
through the text, all of a sudden the hand of the Lord was heavy on them, verse
6, and He destroyed them, and smote them with internal tumors.
There are all kinds of translations of this verse; some of your Bibles might say
hemorrhoids, that’s probably the worst translation. Some Bibles say emerod and
it sounds like a perfume. Tumors and tumors internally, in the inner part or
secret part as the end of verse 9 says. All of a sudden the people got tumors.
And then the text says the ones that didn’t get tumors were attacked by mice
carrying a deadly plague, and thousands upon thousands of the people died and
the ones that didn’t die from the plague of the mice received the tumors. So the
people in Ashdod said, let’s get rid of this thing. And they said, what are we
going to do with it? They said; well let’s take it to Gath. Which wasn’t a big
favor for the people in Gath, that’s the next town along the line in the
Philistine area, and there was a famous man from Gath you might remember, his
name was Goliath. They took it to Gath and the Gathites had the same problem.
And then they said, take it to Ekron and the Ekronites cried out and said, don’t
bring that thing here. And they were passing it all over the place, and
everybody was in the same boat, they were all either dying from the plague or
getting the tumors. Now this is judgment.
Now what is the pagan response going to be? Are they going to say, what kind of
a God are You? Well this isn’t fair. No. No, in, in chapter 6 they got all of
their diviners and priests together and they said, what are we going to do? In
verse 3 they said, “If you send away the ark of the God of Israel, send it not
empty;” now listen to this, “but by all means return him a (what?) trespass
offering.” Ask you a simple question, to what does a trespass offering admit?
Sin. These uneducated, unschooled pagans knew that they somehow in some way 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 dishonored 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 said, you better confess your sin and he did, he confessed
his sin and then and only then did God smite him and take his life and all his
family who were implicated in the crime. But before judgment fell there was a
confession that it was deserved.
Now listen to me, God never judges unless judgment is deserved. He’s a God of
absolute justice. And 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.
Now let’s go back to Romans chapter 1. How can a man be held responsible for his
sin? How could those pagans be held responsible? How could those Philistines be
responsible? I mean they didn’t have the Old Testament law. How could God
possibly slaughter them with plagues and inflict them with tumors, and how could
God drown the entire Egyptian army, and how could God slay all of the firstborn
of the land of Egypt? And how could God wipe out whole cities of the Canaanites,
and how could God bury Sodom and Gomorrah? I mean how can God judge people, I
mean 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, and there are four reasons for the wrath of God, four reasons and they
have a fifth result and we’ll talk about that in the next section. But there are
four reasons, I call them revelation, rejection, rationalization and religion.
Let’s begin with revelation, verse 19 and 20. The reason God can reveal His
wrath against them is “Because that which may be known of God is manifest in
them; for God hath shown it unto them.” How? “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
(what?) excuse.” Now here’s first point, the first reason for the wrath of God
is revelation. Men were given the truth of God. 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.
The great theologian Augustus Strong wrote, “God has inlayed the evidence of the
fundamental truth in the very nature of man so that no where is he without a
witness.” Now there is a verse in Ephesians 2:12 that says that unregenerate man
is without God in the world, but the signification of that phrase is that he is
forsaken by God, not that he is ignorant of God. He is without God not because
he doesn’t 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 what
we call natural revelation, it’s not talking about the Scripture, which was
applicable to Israel and 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. But here we see primarily the Gentile
world, and what he says is that they could know God because God has manifested
Himself unto them. But back in verse 18 as we saw last time they have suppressed
the truth. The word hold meaning suppress. 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. Men on their own initiative I grant you could not know
God but verse 19 says, “God has shown himself unto them.” God would never send
someone to hell who didn’t have an opportunity to know Him. God is a God of
justice; God is a God of equity.
Tertullian the great early church father has much to say about this conviction
that God can be revealed in creation. He says, “It was not the pen of Moses that
initiated the knowledge of the Creator. The vast majority of mankind though they
had never heard the name of Moses, to say nothing of his Book know the God of
Moses nonetheless. And nature (he said) is the teacher, and the soul is the
pupil. One flower of a hedge by itself, I think and I do not say a flower of the
meadow, one shell of any sea you like and I do not say a pearl from the Red Sea,
one feather of a Murre fowl to say nothing of a peacock, will they speak to you
of a Creator? If I offer you a rose will you scorn its Maker?” In other words
creation manifests God. And 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. Absolutely no
capacity to communicate, until Anne Sullivan spent hours upon hours, days upon
days and months upon months to unlock communication, and when Anne attempted to
tell Helen Keller about God her response was, “I already know about Him, I just
didn’t know His name.”
Let’s look at the verse again, verse 19, “Because that which may be known of God
is manifest in them.” Now that which may be known of God is basically gnosos and
it means what is knowable about God. Obviously we can’t 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 apprehendable to the senses of man
can be known, ‑ mark this, apart from Scripture. That’s what it’s saying.
And verse 20 tells us the content of what may be known. It says, “His eternal
power and Godhead.” And it says, “It is revealed,” look at verse 19, “in them;
and God has shown it unto them.” In them, in their midst, in them, in their
minds. By the way any revelation has to ultimately reach the mind or we don’t
comprehend it, right? So God has revealed Himself to us.
The commentator Hodge has written, “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.” End quote.
So what is knowable about God, now mark it, His divine power and divine nature
has been revealed to all men so they’re without excuse. And not only ... now
watch this, not only is it revealed unto them as an external reality but in them
as an apprehended perception. They see it and they know it to be Him.
Turn with me to Acts for a moment, the 14th chapter. Acts 14:16, and here Paul
is speaking and talking about God and how God reveals Himself, and in verse 15
he talks about “the living God, who made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all
things that are in them;” And then he says, “Who in time past allowed all
nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless, he left not himself without
witness, (how?) in that he did good,” did He make a good earth? Yes. He “gave us
rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons,” and He “filled our hearts with food and
with gladness.” In other words the very goodness of life speaks of the goodness
of God, the food and the rain and the seasons, and the joy of ‘living all speak
of a beneficent, loving, gracious Creator.
Now go to the 17th chapter of Acts, and Paul preaching to the philosophers on
Mars’ Hill in Athens, verse 23, says you have here an unknown God, which by the
way was reflective of their understanding of the true God though they didn’t
know His name. You ignorantly worship Him, so I’m going to tell you about Him,
you know He exists and you’ve got an unknown God statue just to cover Him but
you don’t know who He is, but I’ll tell you who He is, “He’s the God who made
the world” verse 24, “and all things in it, he’s the Lord of heaven and earth,
he dwells not in temples made with hands, He is not worshiped with men’s hands,
as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all
things.” They were always accustomed to bringing food and sticking it at the
feet of their idols, he said you don’t have to feed this God. “He is made of one
blood all nations of (you have) men to dwell on the face of the earth, he has
determined the times before a pointed, and the bounds P of their habitation.” In
other words He controls the nations, their boundaries, He controls time, He
controls destiny, He controls everything.
“That they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might feel after him,” in other
words if men would just feel after Him, if they would just see that He is and
reach out for Him, “they would find him, because he is not (what? He’s not) far
from every one of us. For in him we live, and move, and have our being.” He is
right there and He has manifested Himself in an undeniable way. Listen to this
remarkable passage of Scripture, John’s gospel, chapter 1, verse 9, listen to
what it says, just listen, Christ is that Light, that is lighting all men. Did
you hear that? 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, that is the meaning of verse 20.
You say, well wait a minute, you mean everybody in the world has an opportunity?
Yes. Somehow in some way, listen to me, 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’s shown it unto them and in them they have
internally perceived it to be Him. And Christ is the Light that is lighting all
men. You say, well how did this revelation come? Well look back at verse 20. The
invisible things of Him. That is His attributes, God is invisible. The things
about God that are invisible, the essence of His nature, the reality of His
existence, His qualities and attributes. Namely His eternal power and His divine
nature. You say, what do those mean? Well eternal power simply means never
failing omnipotence, His omnipotence; His tremendous power is available to men,
and His divine nature, that is that He is wise, that He is good, that He is
loving, all of the elements of God’s nature are visible. I can tell you God is a
God of beauty by looking at this world, can’t you? I can tell you God is a God
of goodness, because there’s goodness in life, I can tell you He’s a God of love
because there’s love. I can tell you all about His nature; He’s a God who is
wise because of the intricacy of the design of His creation. You can know His
divine nature and you can know His eternal power. That’s what he’s saying.
Through the creation of the world these things are not muddy but they’re what?
Clearly seen, being easily understood by the things that are made. You say, well
in the time that the Bible was written people didn’t have science, I mean could
they see things? Oh they could probably see some things clear ... clearer than
we can see them. We’ve just about blotted out nature with concrete. 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. And they saw a growth, they knew the glory of a sunrise and the
majesty of a sunset, they knew the, 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. And they looked up and saw what
the Psalmist saw in chapter 19 when he said, “The heavens declare (what?) the
glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork.” They knew what the
Psalmist had in mind also in the 94th Psalm and the 9th verse, “He who planted
the ear, shall he not hear? He who formed the eye, shall he not see?” In other
words ‑ they said, if, 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 and you can
carry it all the way out. Sure they understood God. They understood about His
nature from what they saw in their world. In Psalm 143:5 says the Psalmist, “I
remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy
hands.” I sit here and I contemplate what You’ve done, he says. Even in the
nonsophisticated world then, by our standards they sat in awe of the creation.
Look at Job, you just read through Job and see the staggering statements of that
Book about the creative power of God and the revelation of His nature. But just
think about some things, let me just tell you how you can see God in creation.
Do you know that some birds navigate by the stars, when they migrate? And do you
know that if you raise birds, these kinds of birds, from eggs inside a building,
they’ve never been out of the building, and 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. Now you tell me how they know that. There is a
special fish that I’ve enjoyed reading about 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 fire drops of water with great
accuracy and knock insects out of the air. And 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 which just absolutely staggers my mind. 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’re dropped.
Now we can’t invent a machine to do that, so God has one and it’s the sun and it
does it all an it’s only ninety‑three million miles away. No wonder the Psalmist
says, “Power belongs to God.” No wonder he says, “The greatness of his power.”
No wonder Nahum says, “The Lord is great in power.” And Isaiah says, “The Lord
God is everlasting strength.” And no wonder the Psalmist in chapter 65 says,
“Who by his power establishes the mountains.” You know ah, scientists have
always tried to say it’s all evolution and it’s all explained by certain
circumstances and so forth apart from God, but they’re really running out of the
ability to say that, they’re fast losing their case.
Robert Jastro, for example who is an astrophysicist and currently the director
of NASA’s Goddard Institute for space study says this, “Now we see how the
astronomical evidence supports the Biblical view of the origin of the world. The
essential elements in the astronomical and Biblical accounts of Genesis are the
same. Consider the enormousness of the problem; science has proved that the
universe exploded into being at a certain moment.” By the way that’s exactly
what Genesis says, He created it. That’s what science has found out. “It wasn’t
evolution at all,” says Jastro. “It asks what cause produced this effect, who or
what put the matter or energy into the universe? And science cannot answer.” He
goes on, “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason
the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is
about to conquer the highest peak and as he pulls himself over the final rock he
is greeted by a band of theologians who’ve been there for centuries.” Great
statement. In other words, when you study science the conclusion is God created
the world. And today with the two hundred inch telescope at Mount Palomar
astronomers can look into space for four billion light years. If you don’t
understand that try twenty‑five sextillion miles. Do you know how much space
that alone would make, as far as they can s e? Seven times ten to the
sixty-seventh power cubic inches of space. If someone had been examining this
large of volume at the rate of one million billion cubic miles a day since the
universe began, held be just a little shy of halfway done. And the universe that
we see with that telescope is a small piece of actual space. Can you imagine the
power? Then some pea brain comes along and says, well a once there was a one
celled thing, said to itself, let’s be two. And away they went.
A press bulletin from the University of Alberta in Canada said, “It may be
surprising to people in a temperate climate to hear, that there are on the
average of eighteen hundred storms in operation at any time, and the energy
expended in these storms amounts to the almost inconceivable figure of (one
billion two ... ah,) one billion three hundred million horsepower. A large
caterpillar machine has four hundred and twenty horsepower requiring a hundred
gallons of fuel a day. How much fuel does God have to operate storms with a
horsepower of one billion three hundred million everyday?”
A Canadian physicist wrote, “A rain of four inches over an area of ten thousand
square miles would require the burning of six hundred and forty 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 eight hundred
million horsepower of refrigeration working night and day for a hundred days.”
Agricultural specialist for example have found the average farmer in Minnesota,
free of charge, Mandez, gets four hundred and seven thousand five hundred and
ten gallons of water per acre per year. That’s 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? Missouri has
seventy thousand square miles, and thirty‑eight inches average rainfall. That
amount of water is equal to a lake twenty‑two feet deep, two hundred and fifty
miles long and sixty miles wide. And God moves that water around just in that
one state alone.
The U.S. Natural Museum says insect species now number ten million. And I know
and they were all at your last picnic, right? Do you realize there are two
thousand five hundred kinds of ants? And one colony alone can have one hundred
million ants. Do you know there are five billion birds in America? Some can fly
five hundred miles across the Gulf of Mexico. Did you know that mallards can fly
sixty miles an hours, eagles a hundred miles an hour and a falcon can dive at a
hundred and eighty? I know you didn’t know that cod fish can lay nine million
eggs, but they can.
The earth is twenty‑five thousand miles in circumference, it weighs six
septillion five hundred and eighty‑eight sextillion tons, and hangs in empty
space, and spins at a thousand 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 five hundred and eighty million miles at a thousand miles
a minute.
Did you know that the head of a comet may be from ten thousand to one million
miles long and the tail as long as a hundred million miles and travel at three
hundred and fifty miles per second?
Now where is the force for all of this? Halley ’s Comet by the way has traveled
without stopping for gas for seventy‑six years. It travels a hundred thousand
miles a day, has a tail thirty‑seven million miles long, and it’ll be back in
1986, absolutely predictable.
Consider the human heart, it’s the size of your fist, weights less than half a
pound. Your heart pumps eighteen hundred of gallons of blood a day. Your heart
does enough work in twelve hours to lift sixty‑five tons one inch off the
ground. Consider the sun, the sun burns up four million tons of matter a second,
if you could convert the energy the sun gives off to horsepower you’d wind up
with five hundred million million billion horsepower. If that’s too big to
handle that’s 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
ninety‑three million miles, as I said, it’s takes the light from the sun
traveling at a hundred and eighty‑six thousand miles a second, eight and a half
minutes to get here. The speed of light is a hundred and eighty‑six thousand
miles a second and if you take that speed of a hundred and eighty‑six thousand
miles a second going sixty seconds a minute, sixty minutes an hour, twenty‑four
hours a day, three hundred and sixty‑five days a year that light travels over
six trillion miles in one year. And yet if you were to go across our galaxy, the
Milky Way galaxy where our star system is, going at a hundred and eighty‑six
thousand per second, six trillion miles a year it would take you a hundred and
twenty‑five thousand years to get across our galaxy, and ours is one of
millions. Now if you’re screaming mercy I’ll quit.
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’re so small it takes three atoms to
make up one water molecule, and if you were to take every water molecule in one
drop of water and blow them up so each molecule was the size of a grain of sand
you’d have enough grains of sand to make a road one foot thick, half mile wide
and the road would go from Los Angeles to New York. But did you know the atom is
mostly empty space? The actual material, and this fascinates me, in an atom
takes up one trillionth of the atom’s volume. And what you really have is a lot
of little orbits. Everything is mostly empty space, for example, if the average
person had all the space squeezed out of him, how much volume do you think he’d
occupy? Take a person who is six feet tall and all the actual mass that’s in
him, when all the space is squeezed out he would fit on the head of a pin for he
would occupy one, one hundred millionth of a cubic inch. So don’t argue when
somebody says you’re nothing. But you want to hear something amazing? That one,
one hundred millionth of a cubic inch would be so heavy that a full cubic inch
of that would weigh a billion or more pounds. Incredible.
Listen, if God says He’s visible in His creation then He’s 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’s going to see
that God is, there has to be a cause for all this effect. There has to be a
designer for all this design. I mean when somebody tells me 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 have to shake your pants before you hear a
tick. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Design speaks of a designer. And so you know
God is, and if you know God is you know God is powerful, and you know God is
divine. And that’s 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’s been there, He has bounded their lives, He’s been sustaining
them, He’s been enriching them, He’s been giving Himself to them, and in their
senses they have perceived Him. So that they are without excuse. And as the Old
Testament says, “A wayfaring man, though he be a fool, need not err.” Yes
general revelation is the foundation of all condemnation.
General revelation is the foundation of all condemnation. Men have the
opportunity, because God is evident everywhere.
That’s only the first of four points, but my time is gone, and the best is yet
to come. Let’s pray together.
While your heads are bowed just a footnote. As a college student I picked up a
little book, it was a story of a boy named Sammy Morris, who was born in Africa.
Sought adventure, left his tribe and went to a port city, became a stowaway on a
ship. Didn’t know where the ship was going, he didn’t even know where any ships
went. He was from a totally isolated tribal people. This, at least a hundred and
fifty years ago, that ship brought him to America. He got off that ship shocked
even at the America of those days, and from there he was introduced to some
people, through a series of circumstances they began to present to him God and
the story of Christ. And after they had managed to communicate with him and give
him the message he informed them that he already knew about God and God’s Son
and that God’s Son had died for him, and that he was a sinner. And they said,
who told you that? He said, no one told me that, I knew that in my heart. Never
met a missionary, but he followed the light that God gave him, the light that
lighteth every man that cometh into the world and God gave him the full light of
the Gospel. And then he learned the name of God and the name of God’s Son who
saved him.
Listen, if God judges He judges justly with equity because man is without
excuse. Much more so are you without excuse who know the Gospel and the name of
God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. “How shall you escape, if you neglect so great
a salvation.” For the wrath of God is revealed against all who hold the truth
and suppress it in unrighteousness. The Bible says that the way to God is
through Christ, and He offers you that opportunity.
If you’re with us tonight and you do not know Christ open your heart, confess
Him as Lord, believe the Gospel, the Good News that He came into the world and
lived and died and rose again, for your sin, and enter into God’s life, and step
out of the wrath of God.
Father I pray right now for any who are in our midst who do not know Christ, may
this be the night of their redemption and salvation. For those of us who are
Christians thank You for confirming again in our hearts the truth of Your power
and divine nature so evident to us in the created world. Oh God, may we with
boldness stand for You in a world of skeptics who know but suppress for the love
of their sin the truth. Father, break through the hearts of some tonight, we
pray in Christ’s name. Amen.
Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur's Collection" by:
Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
Box 119
Columbus, New Jersey, USA, 08022
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www.gospelgems.com
Email: tony@biblebb.com
Online since 1986