I find it myself very difficult to begin in speaking to people about Christ at this point. Now admittedly, the wrath of God is a hard subject, and I am not here to tell you that itвЂ™s an easy one. We are in such a hurry to win friends and influence people that sometimes we bypass the starting point.ДЇrom PaulвЂ™s perspective, fear becomes the first pressure applied to evil men. But we really very rarely talk about judgment.ДЄnd I wonder in all of the times that you have presented the gospel to somebody how many times did you introduce it by saying, вЂњBy the way, did you know that the wrath of God is revealed against your ungodliness?вЂќ I suppose Dale Carnegie has even affected our gospel presentations. And we offer people all of those things and ask them if they wouldnвЂ™t like to have all of those things. We talk about love, and we talk about happiness, and we talk about abundant living, and we talk about forgiveness, and we talk about joy, we talk about peace. Most of our contemporary evangelism purposely avoids that theme. Frankly thatвЂ™s diametrically opposed to most of our evangelistic technique. The gospel message begins with a statement about the wrath of God. вЂњFor the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.вЂќ And it all begins in verse 18 with this statement. And now as he moves to verse 18, he begins to unfold in great detail the substance of that theme, to help the Christian reader to understand the significance and the meaning of the fullness of the gospel of Christ. We saw that that was in condensed form the thesis or the theme of the entire epistle to the Romans. For in it is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.вЂќ And he says he is вЂњnot ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

He called it вЂњthe gospel of GodвЂќ in verse 1 because God is its source, and вЂњthe gospel of ChristвЂќ in verse 16 because Christ is its culmination. He says, вЂњI am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.вЂќ And that really is his theme. Now the apostle Paul has announced his theme in verses 16 and 17 as we saw last week. And I believe as we examine this very critical verse, we find the key that unlocks the gospel, the starting point of evangelism.

LetвЂ™s look together this evening at the first chapter of Romans.

The wrath of the gods