1. Please pray with me, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our Redeemer. Amen. The message from God’s Word, as we continue our sermon series, Defending the Christian Faith, is taken from Romans 1:16-20, it’s entitled, “Not Denial, but the Good News,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. Two men watched TV in an airport as they awaited a flight. A commercial for a charity showed a needy child scooping water from a pool. One of the men said commercials like this wouldn’t be necessary . . . if God were doing his job. This surprised the other man. “I didn’t think,” he responded, “that you believed in God.” That set the first man off. How could he believe in a God who could fix all problems with nothing but a word yet doesn’t do so? “God doesn’t fix the problems,” the man concluded, “so I don’t believe in him.”
3. Former Lutheran Hour Speaker Rev. Ken Klaus had been waiting for the same airplane. He overheard this conversation. In the boarding line, he spoke with the man who had said he didn’t believe in God. Rev. Klaus said, “It occurs to me, it’s not so much you don’t believe in God. It’s that you don’t like the god you believe in. You think of him as being apathetic, cruel, and unpredictable.” Rev. Klaus went on to suggest that the man look at Jesus again. This incident indicates that atheists can believe in God more than they themselves think. As the psalms say, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork,” and it is, after all, the fool who “says in his heart, ‘There is no God’ ” (Ps 19:1; 14:1). Nor should it come as a surprise that, lacking a sense of sin, atheists would even pass judgment on God. Yet our text says: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” (Rom 1:18). God’s wrath is revealed in his Law. The genuine answer for God’s wrath never is in denying God.
4. Rev. Klaus pointed the man in the airport to Jesus. For Christ really is the answer for God’s wrath. The Good News about Jesus is, “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. . . . For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith’ ” (Romans 1:16–17). You see, the answer to God’s wrath lies not in denial, but in the Gospel of righteousness because of Christ. The Gospel of Jesus Christ forms the answer, both for the atheist and for the “new atheist.”
5. First, with respect to atheism, the text says that, “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. . . . For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse” (Romans 1:18–20). But, sinners still want to make excuses. Take, for example, the present-day atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel who said, “I want atheism to be true. . . . It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.” Think about it: God can see right through your excuses and hold you accountable. He can come at you in his wrath for your unrighteousness and ungodliness. Taking refuge in excuses can be tempting, but it might seem even better to have no God to whom excuses must be made!
6. But, what can be known about God remains plain enough that even some atheists end up acknowledging him. Antony Flew was a distinguished modern English philosopher. For most of his life, he advocated atheism through philosophical arguments. Finally, he reversed himself and published a book in 2007 called, “There Is a God.” In the book, Flew considered three questions: How did laws of nature come to be? How did life emerge, and how did it reproduce? How did the universe come into existence? The more Flew had reflected on these things, the more he found them inexplicable without God.
7. None of this would have come as news to St. Paul, who wrote that ever since the world was created, the things that have been made have shown God’s eternal power. Did all the noneternal things in the world just come out of nowhere? Or, behind them all, isn’t there an Eternal Cause—namely, God? And wouldn’t this Eternal Cause have the power to set in place the laws of nature? Wouldn’t this Eternal One be able to bring about life—not merely on a one-time basis, either, but life that reproduces?
8. Antony Flew became a theist. He started believing that there is a God. He knew about Christianity. Still, he never confessed faith in Christ as his Savior. In his book, “There Is a God,” Flew wrote, “I think that the Christian religion is the one religion that most clearly deserves to be honored and respected,” but he immediately added, “whether or not its claim to be a divine revelation is true.” Antony Flew’s story reminds us that simply believing in God doesn’t necessarily equate with Christian faith. Lots of people believe that there is a God, but they don’t trust Jesus to save them.
9. Jesus is the Savior “who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess 1:10). His is the only name “under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Salvation is most certainly needed, for people do not have the option of passing judgment on God. He judges us. From heaven, God’s anger is brought out into the open against all the ways that people fail to worship God but engage in wickedness instead. If we think we’re not so bad, his Law says we have another thing coming. Starting with our text in Romans 1, and well into Romans chapter 3, Paul kept pointing out that the Law stops every mouth: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (3:23–24).
10. God gave Jesus as the complete covering for sin, the bloody atoning sacrifice that is received only by faith. God was showing that he himself is righteous, hating sin and sinners. But amazingly he pronounces righteous and saves anyone with faith in Jesus. Such faith comes through the Gospel, which packs God’s power to save. In the Gospel, God’s righteousness is revealed. The Good News of Jesus announces that God’s warfare against sinners is ended, so why should anyone try to deny God? Our Lutheran Confessions say, “Without God’s sure Word about His will, a person has no power to claim, especially when terrified by sin, that God ceases to be angry” (Ap IV 262). But the Gospel Word is sure. It provides something solid for faith to believe: that on account of Christ, God has ceased to be angry. And the Gospel of Christ reaches out to create faith. It reaches out to everyone—Jew and Greek, atheist and “new atheist.”
11. The “new atheists” made their biggest splash some years ago. Their writings may have seemed at first to have been arguments against Islam. It turns out that they were opposing all religion, including Christianity. So you might ask, “What’s new?” They have portrayed belief in God as a “delusion or poison.” People used to regard atheism as odd. Opinion polls sometimes rated atheists as not so personally trustworthy. The “new atheists” have set out to change this around, making people who say they believe in God out to be dangerous. The “new atheists” don’t deny God’s existence in new ways. They deny God’s goodness. The “new atheists” have joined a growing crowd of pundits who want to limit the influence of believers in public life.
12. They claim that religion amounts to blind faith. They also contend that religion hinders science. These are basically rational claims that also pull at some emotional strings. “New atheists” go on to warn that religions amount to the leading sponsor for violence all over the world. All religions and all believers get lumped together in this. Religions, according to the “new atheists,” are intolerant at their core, and that very characteristic makes religions unworthy of being tolerated.
13. Yes, “new atheists” want people to believe themselves to be more ethical than God, specifically the God of the Bible. They picture him as a nasty and mean tyrant. Remember, the “new atheists” put more into accusing God’s goodness than his existence. Whether or not they want to admit it, the fact remains from our text in Romans 1 that they can know about God’s eternal power from the things that have been made. They deny God’s goodness, finding it agreeable to portray human beings as victims of God. Whatever their denials, though, “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Rom 1:18). This is God’s Law, which they need to hear.
14. They also need the Gospel. Luther said something like, “For even in heaven, you can’t find God outside of Christ” (WA 40/3:56). When people have been getting an earful from the “new atheists,” they need to hear that because of Jesus, God is not cruel and unpredictable. What they need is, “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6). They need to see God in the Christ who died for them and rose again. It also helps if people can see the kindness and love of God reflected in the lives of God’s people.
15. Sinners need an answer to God’s wrath. It lies in the Good News of righteousness because of Christ. Like everyone else, atheists “old” and “new” need the Gospel. The Gospel, not the Law, is, “the power of God for salvation. . . . For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith’ ” (Romans 1:16–17). The Gospel says that God doesn’t want to leave anyone with His anger toward their sins. Because God loved the world, He gave his one and only Son as the sacrifice for sin, so that whoever trusts in this saving Son would not suffer the wrath of God for all eternity but instead be joined in eternal life with the One who died and rose again. This goes for you too! Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, until life everlasting. Amen.
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