Join us as we discern the role of idols in our lives and what it means to live under God’s judgment while embracing the kingdom of Christ. Despite humanity’s struggle with worship and idolatry, there’s an overarching theme of redemption and transformation. From addictions to spiritual awakenings, this episode addresses the real, often painful, steps toward acknowledging divine wrath as a channel for spiritual growth and enlightenment, emphasizing the undeniable presence of God in our lives.
So what do we do with all this message in Romans chapter 1 about the wrath of God and human beings and all of us, that is, being in a state of suppression, and therefore we feel empty and therefore we go after alternatives to God? the idols that we have, and therefore God gives us over to those idols, which is the actual description of his wrath. God’s wrath is revealed, verse 18 of chapter 1, but how is it revealed? God gave them over. Well, I mean, you know me, you know that I preach the gospel, but what is this? This sounds terrifying, doesn’t it? What if you are not a Christian and you are listening to this program almost by accident? You came across it and you ask yourself, well, how do I get out from under this wrath? Or what if you are a Christian and you find yourself in a situation where you feel that a lot of your life has been under God’s wrath? Well, first of all, remember that wrath is motivated by love. It is God’s strange action to bring attention to the brokenness we are in so that we turn to God. The fact is… You can talk to God even though you feel or may feel or believe that you are under his wrath. There are so many Christians who are so afraid that if they’re under God’s wrath, or maybe not Christians, other people too, they can’t say a thing to God. They can simply wait for the judgment to destroy them or send them to hell or something. But I have something to tell you about this. In Psalm 90, Moses, yes, this is a psalm written by Moses, is talking to God while under his wrath. Listen to this. Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting you are God. You turn man to destruction and say, Return, O children of men. For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night. You carry them away like a flood. They are like a sleep. In the morning they are like grass which grows up. In the morning it flourishes and grows up. In the evening it is cut down and withers. For we have been consumed by your anger, and by your wrath we are terrified. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance, for all our days have passed away in your wrath. We finish our years like a sigh. The days of our lives are seventy years, and if by reason of strength they are eighty years, yet their boast is only labor and sorrow. For it is soon cut off and we fly away. Who knows the power of your anger? For as the fear of you, so is your wrath. So teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.’ Return, O Lord, how long? And have compassion on your servants. O satisfy us early with your mercy, that we may rejoice and be glad all your days. Make us glad according to the days in which you have afflicted us, the years in which we have seen evil. Let your work appear to your servants, and your glory to their children. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands for us. Yes, establish the work of our hands. Now, have you ever noticed this psalm before, or given thought to it? Here is Moses… accepting the fact that the reason we die so soon, 70 or 80 or 90 years or so, is because we’re under God’s wrath. And yet he says, now, Lord, help us to recognize that we’re under your wrath and number our days so that we may, teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Well, now, this is quite a revelation. What this means is if you are a non-Christian and you know that your humanity is under God’s judgment, you are not saved, you can say, Oh God, have mercy upon me. Relieve me from your wrath because I know that you took that wrath According to what the Christians tell me, in Jesus Christ, you put your wrath upon yourself in the person of your Son. And so, I receive in my spirit your mercy. Now, what about Christians? The fact is, Christians know that they are under two spheres of existence, two hemispheres as it were. One, the kingdom of Adam, where we are under the power of sin and death, and two, the kingdom of Christ, whereby faith, we are freed from judgment and sin and death, we are freed from its judgment, and we are counted as in the righteousness and life of Jesus Christ. So, you have to pull two things together, and you do this by faith every day, you just don’t realize you’re doing it. Our humanity, the fallen, broken humanity, is under the wrath of God. in the sense that it cannot, God has determined that it cannot go into the kingdom of heaven because it is broken, it is sinful, and it would ruin the universe if it were allowed to live forever. And we agree with that. We say, Father, I agree by faith in Jesus that my humanity is under judgment and shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. But by faith in Jesus, I thank you so much that I am not accounted in my humanity, my natural humanity. I’m accounted in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And therefore, I thank you that I am freed from the judgments that you have to make in regard to my human nature. Now, this is something that you may not be acquainted with. It is not preached clearly. It is not preached because it is not even understood yet in the book of Romans by many people. The fact is that when we are in a mess, whether it’s a mess caused by other people or a mess caused by ourself, We can acknowledge, O Lord God, I thank you that your judgment is upon my sinful nature, my human nature, but it is not counted against me because I have faith in Jesus Christ, and therefore what is going on in my sinful nature is an alarm bell or a message from your Spirit to put faith in Jesus and to trust in him. That is what we do. Now, I’m jumping ahead, of course, of the story because Paul has not come to the gospel, explaining the gospel yet. He’s still describing the condition of humanity. But look, we talked yesterday about the reality of our tendency to, not tendency, but our natural drive to worship. God created us in his image. That image is a loving desire for him all the time, a devotion to him, a joy in him, and a worship of him. We human beings were born to worship, yet most human beings do not worship God. So what is going on? Well, because of their sin and guilt, that is humanity’s sin and guilt coming from Adam, we are in a state of fear and guilt and shame in relation to God. We dare not worship him. We’ve run away from him. The only time we do worship him is when we hear the good news of Jesus Christ that we are freed from God’s judgment and have now the freedom and joy and right to worship him. But before that, we are suppressing him because of all the guilt and shame and fear. Now, when you suppress him, there’s the void, the emptiness described in verse 21, because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile, that is, empty in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened, that is, perverted emotions. And so what we have without God is a broken mind, a dark mind, a mind that has become silly and futile and empty, void. The great dread that modern human beings have is meaninglessness. We don’t know why we’re here. We don’t know what we’re doing. We keep going on the merry-go-round of silliness in order to avoid the emptiness that we really do feel. And so when we are in this state of emptiness, we have two options. Turn to God by faith in Jesus, hearing the good news, or repeat the same and avoid God at all costs, and having avoided God and having a dark mind, then search out alternatives to God so that we can worship something, for goodness sake, and feel something, And that’s where addictions come in, addictions to drugs, alcohol, food issues, sex issues, gambling, whatever it may be, work even is an addiction. In fact, human nature is addictive because it is empty. And addiction is an escape from the pain of emptiness. And therefore, we find these idols. Now, God gives us over to these idols, as I said yesterday. not because he hates us, not because he’s abandoning us, but because in his loving wrath, he has to reach us while we are resisting him. How does he reach us while we are resisting him? By giving us more of the idols we have chosen instead of him. Well, what does that do? It brings us to a state of nothingness. It brings us to the void. It brings us to the end of ourselves, to the end of our resources. And that is purposeful by God, as painful as it is to us, because when we come to the end of our resources, we call out, Oh, God, help me, even though we thought we didn’t believe in God. God is on our lips suddenly when we thought we were atheists. That’s how it is. Because there is, as I’ve said before, no such thing as an atheist. Deep, deep down, that man or woman is in a suppressed state, suppressing God, and knows full well that God exists. And so finally, we rip off the veil, we rip off the covers, we rip off the layers of dishonesty and fraudulence, and we call upon our God. This is our God not abandoning us by giving us over to our idols, but engaging with us. And so when you find yourself in an impossible situation, when you find that you’ve rebelled against him, you’ve been like the prodigal son wandering off and not wanting the father’s house and just spending all your money on wild living, and you are at the end of yourself, Don’t think you cannot talk to God. You can. And you say, O Lord God, I know this sounds so weird, but I thank you for your wrath. I thank you that you gave me over to my idols, and they have ruined me. But Lord God in that ruin, I know that I have found you as I speak this moment. I trust in you in Jesus Christ. I thought Jesus was redundant, was silly, was unnecessary, was just a fairy tale. But now I realize, dear God, that now that I have nothing in my spirit, even though I may have everything in the world, I have nothing in my spirit. I thank you, Father, that Jesus is my life. And so, you see, God brings us to our nothingness because what he is doing is handing us over to the idols that we thought had life in them when they have nothing but death. And thus, in this void of nothingness, we find our soul in Jesus Christ. Well, thank you for listening. Colin Cook here. And my program is called How It Happens, which you can hear on your smartphone any time of the day or night. Simply download a free app, soundcloud.com or podbean.com and key in How It Happens with Colin Cook when you get there. This is listener-supported radio. It needs your help every day. It’s now in its 27th or 8th year. I’ll let you know more accurately later. You can make a donation online at faithquestradio.com. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. See you next time. Cheerio and God bless.
