“Rejecting Reality”
(Romans 1:18-23)
Series: Not Guilty!
Rev. Todd A. Linn, PhD
First Baptist Church Henderson, KY
(2-15-09) (AM)
In a moment we’ll be turning to the book of Romans and resuming our study of this great book, but before we do I want to take a moment to draw your attention to the blue cards there in the pews. Let me ask those of you on the ends to pass those along so that each person has one card. We’re beginning this evening what I think is our 21st Semester of FAITH training and ministry here at First Baptist.
Many of you are familiar with FAITH, but some of you newer folks are not. FAITH is a ministry that equips every person with a way to easily share the Gospel with others. If you’d like to lead someone to Jesus Christ—a friend, a family member, a co-worker—and you want to know what to say or which Bible verses to use, then FAITH training will teach you how.
Our adults will have two classes taking place at 5 o’clock beginning tonight. These classes will run for 12 weeks. One class is available as an option for all who have been previously FAITH trained and one class is for first time participants. I will be teaching that class and I’m really looking forward to it! So from 5-6 on Sunday evenings we’ll be learning how to share our faith using a simple outline. The outline is built around the word “FAITH.” Each of the letters stands for something we say during the presentation. For example, those of you who have been FAITH trained, we say, “F is for forgiveness; everyone has sinned and need God’s forgiveness” and then we quote Romans 3:23.”
So we learn a simple outline and then we practice what we learn on visits to folks in our community. We’re all on 3-person teams, each team equipped with a leader who has already been FAITH trained. By the way, just the fellowship time together is such a blessing! Now our young people are learning the FAITH outline and visiting folks on Sunday evenings. Adults, on the other hand are taking FAITH classes Sundays at 5 and then visiting later on Wednesdays, either before or after our Wednesday supper. Some adults will visit before at 3:30. Others, like me, will visit at 5:45. Now this means that we’ll have a choice during the mid-week meeting. Some people—like me—will be out visiting folks and others will stay behind and participate in the prayer meeting with various people sharing a testimony or short, Bible study. The visitation time is about an hour and a half so we’ll all be back by 7:15.
Many of you have already signed-up for FAITH in your Sunday school classes, but others of you have not had a chance to sign-up. Some of you may not presently be in a class and others of you may be teaching preschoolers and so you’re not sure who would be on your team. Well, we want everyone who wants to participate to be involved in this next semester so let me invite you to take one of these blue cards and just fill it out and then, before we leave this morning, I’ll ask all of you to bring it up front so I can pray for you.
- Take God’s Word and open to Romans, chapter 1.
If you’re visiting we like to preach through books of the Bible and a couple weeks ago we began a study in the book of Romans, a study entitled, “Not Guilty.” And we have looked at the first 17 verses of chapter one. We said that verses 16 and 17 are the key verses to unlocking the meaning of the entire book. Paul is talking to us about the gospel. He is writing in AD 57 to several small house churches scattered throughout Rome and he is teaching about the significance of Christ’s death. Why did Jesus come and die for us? Why do we need to be saved?
Now note the contrast here in the verses we are about to read. We left off at those two great verses, 16 and 17, where Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation…in it the righteousness of God is revealed and it’s entirely by faith.” Then we have this contrast in verse 18, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness.” So what we have beginning in verse 18 and going through chapter 3, verse 20 is Paul’s explaining why we need the gospel. In fact, here’s a helpful way to think of this: Paul has explained first the “What” of the Gospel and now he explains the “Why” of the gospel. Why do we need it?
- Stand in honor of the reading of the Word.
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.
20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,
21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
22 Professing to be wise, they became fools,
23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man — and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.
- Pray.
Introduction:
I want you to picture a man driving a car down the road and he begins to hear the engine knocking. By the way, that is not a good sound, is it? He hears the engine making sounds and the sounds are getting louder and louder. But rather than pulling over and popping the hood and trying to find out what’s going on with the car, he turns his radio on and turns his radio up to drown out the sounds of the knocking engine. About this time he notices a little light on the panel that reads, “Check Engine.” But again, rather than pulling over to check the engine, he reaches up underneath and unplugs something so that the little light goes off. Then he thinks to himself, “Now, I don’t see a little light to check my engine and I don’t hear my engine. I just hear wonderful music. All is well!”
Now you and I know that it’s just a matter of time, before that guy is in huge trouble. The engine in his car has been trying to tell him, “I am here! I demand your attention!” But he’s just suppressed that information and covered it up and carried on.
Do you know what Paul is teaching in this passage? He’s saying that every man and every woman in all of creation throughout history is like the man in the car. But it’s not the engine, it is God who is knocking. God is making Himself known to us through the noise and the sights of creation. God is saying, “I am here! I demand your attention!” but rather than turning to God, mankind naturally suppress the truth about God. He covers it up and carries on and he says to himself, “All is well.”
I want to take the few minutes we have together this morning and talk about this matter of rejecting God. In this passage, which goes from verse 18 to the end of the chapter, Paul is talking about why all people everywhere need the gospel and we all need the gospel because we are sinners. We are sinners engaged in a rebellion, an insurgency, against God. First:
I. Rejecting God is a Conscious Decision (18)
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
Paul mentions the “wrath of God.” We must remove any human ideas of wrath here. For most of us, when we think of wrath we think of somebody losing control, a sort of red-hot anger, like a thermometer reaching its boiling point. This is not God’s wrath. The wrath of God is a perfect kind of anger absolutely free from sin or malice.
The closest we can come to understanding God’s wrath is to think of our term “righteous indignation.” For example, you see a young criminal in the city beat up an elderly woman, tugging at her purse and hitting her over the head, how do you feel? You feel angry. There is an injustice there. It isn’t right. You feel badly for that elderly woman and you feel anger towards the young criminal. That’s close to understanding God’s wrath. I say close because we even at our best, we’re still humans thinking with fallen, sinful minds so we can never perfectly understand God’s wrath as God displays wrath. But His wrath is not like a red-hot thermometer that changes really quickly. God’s wrath is a settled, perfect anger towards sin.
So Paul says that God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in their unrighteousness. That is, God has revealed something of Himself in the beauty of creation, but mankind, rather than receiving that truth, suppresses that truth about God.
The idea is that he “holds down the truth.” He suppresses it. He tries to cover it up like the guy in the car who didn’t want to deal with the sounds of his knocking engine. So this suppression of the truth, this holding down of the truth, is something that he does in spite of the evidence. He hears the knocking, but he turns a deaf ear to it, rejecting it as something that does not require his attention. He has consciously chosen to ignore the evidence. He has suppressed the truth about God. Now let’s follow Paul as he builds this argument. Number two:
II. Rejecting God ignores His Revelation (19-20)
19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.
20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,
Here is what Paul is saying in these verses: God has revealed something of Himself in the beauty of His creation. He has revealed His power and His divine nature. And one would think that this might cause man to turn to this one true God, but rather than man’s turning to God, he rejects God. He rejects God’s revelation.
Now that word “revelation” is a word that simply means God reveals Himself to us. God reveals Himself to us in two ways. Theologians speak of “general revelation” and “special revelation.” This means that God reveals Himself to us in a general way in creation and in our conscience. And then God reveals Himself to us in a special way, in a particular way, in His Word, the Bible. Paul is writing here about “general revelation,” sometimes also called, “natural revelation,” because it is God’s revealing Himself to us in nature.
So Paul is saying in verse 19 that there are some things we can know about this God. What may be known of God is manifest in them (better, among them), for God has shown it to them. How? For since the creation of the world God’s invisible attributes (literally invisible things) are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, specifically God’s “eternal power” and “Godhead” or, “divine nature,” so that they are without excuse.
Here’s Paul’s point. If you and I would look at the beauty of this world we would logically infer that God created this world. It’s the argument from design. This world has a natural beauty and order that points to a Divine Creator, one who created the world with beauty and order.
In fact the phrase there in verse 20, “the things that are made” is the Greek word “poema,” from which we get our English word “poem” or, “poetry.” When you read a poem there is a beauty to it, an order to it, a perfect design to it. It really is an art. And creation is God’s work of art. Creation points to a divine creator.
This is what the psalmist is saying in Psalm 19:1 where he writes, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”
Mankind knows that God exists because of the beauty of His creation. We see the hand of God in the beauty of a sunrise and a sunset. We see the hand of God in the beauty of a full moon at night. We see God’s hand in the majestic eagle that soars across the sky. We see God’s hand in the Big Dipper and the Milky Way Galaxy. We see God’s hand in the creation of mankind, in His gifting people with the ability to sing, or paint, or play musical instruments, or build automobiles, or discover vaccines. All creation testifies that God exists. God has not left Himself without a witness. He is there. You can see His handiwork in all His creation.
Now this is something that’s pretty clear to most of us because we are believers in the God of the Bible. But we are believers only because God drew us to His side and got the saving message of the Gospel to us. The Bible says in John 6:44 that no one comes to Jesus unless the Father “draws him.” God drew us to Himself and saw to it that someone shared the saving message of the Gospel with us.
See natural revelation or general revelation is not enough revelation about God to save us. We can’t get saved by merely looking at creation. We need the Gospel. When we look at creation we may know something of the power of God and the divine nature of God, but we don’t know of the eternal plan of God. We don’t know about the cross, about forgiveness, about Jesus. We need special revelation, that revelation about God that is found only in the Bible.
And besides, apart from the grace of God, when we look at creation, left in our natural state, it is not our natural response to worship God. Before you knew the one true God of the Bible, you did not worship the one true God of the Bible. You didn’t know who He was. You had to learn who He was and who He is.
But Paul’s point here is that man is left without excuse. God reveals Himself to mankind in His creation, but mankind suppresses the truth about God. You see evidence of this “holding down” the truth about God in those who believe in Darwinian Evolution. Richard Dawkins, perhaps the most widely known Darwinian Evolutionist wrote a book called, The Blind Watchmaker. In it he writes, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”—Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, W. W. Norton/New York, NY, 1987, p. 1
When Dawkins admits that things “give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose,” but that he does not believe it is God who designed those things, then he is suppressing the truth about God.
Now what is the result of this rejecting God’s revelation? Number three:
III. Rejecting God leads to Moral Degeneration (21-23)
Now what Paul says from verse 21 to the end of the chapter is that mankind rejects God and this rejection leads to moral degeneration. Specifically, man exchanges the glory of God for cheap, substitutes. The two main substitutes are idolatry and sexual immorality. We’ll only get as far as idolatry here. Next time, we take a look at how man exchanges the glory of God for sexual immorality, namely homosexuality. But note here how rejecting God leads to idolatry.
21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
You see, Paul says here in verse 21 that all people everywhere “know God.” That is, they know God exists because of His creation, but rather than worshiping God, rather than thanking God, rather than glorifying God, they become “futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts are darkened.” They don’t allow the light of God, the truth about God, to fill their hearts and minds and so they remain in darkness.
22 Professing to be wise, they became fools,
That’s a remarkable statement. You can be highly intelligent and be a fool. I believe in education. I believe in getting as much as you can. But many teachers and leaders in our academic institutions do not worship God. They profess to be wise, but they have become fools. We can learn from them, but we will not get our theology from them.
23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man — and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.
If we don’t worship God, we will worship something or we will worship someone. We are an incurably religious people, made in the image of God, but that image has been marred by sin. So we do not naturally worship the one true God of the Bible. Our default mode is to exchange the glory of God for substitutes. Rather than finding life in the glory of God we settle for cheap, temporary, inadequate substitutes.
That’s the gracious way to deal with sin. We must recognize that idolatry, whether it’s the worship of images made of birds or man or whether it’s the worship of concepts such as popularity, or fame or beauty, or athletic prowess, or whether it is the living in sexual impurity that all of this is evidence that man has “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator (v.25).” We have settled for cheap, temporary, inadequate substitutes for the glory of God and God doesn’t want us to harm ourselves.
The Gospel reminds us God created us for Himself. He alone is worthy of all glory. We find life in Him alone.
- Stand for prayer.
Invitation…
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