Last week we looked at the wrath
of God specifically in Romans 1 verse 18, which reads, for
the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness
and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress
the truth. So we'll stop there for a minute
before we continue, but we will be dealing with verses 19 and
20 and 21 through 23 this evening. When we think about the wrath
of God, let us be reminded that the wrath of God is good, it
is righteous, it is just. The wrath of God is necessary
because men are evil. The wrath of God there in verse
18, if we see that four, remember that it is because the gospel
is the power of God, it is necessary gospel for the wrath of God is
being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness
of men. One thing that I don't think
I said last week that I want to make sure that we understand
is that we should not look at these conjunctions of terms like
ungodliness and unrighteousness as two separate things. They
are indeed one in the same. So we're not thinking, well,
what is ungodliness and what is unrighteousness? When James
is very, um, John, excuse me, is very clear that all sin is
godlessness and that all godlessness is wickedness and that all of
that is unrighteousness and is all worthy of the wrath of God.
We remembered that the wrath of God is particular. It is going
to be poured out on individual people. It's not something that
he just arbitrarily throws down and hopes that people get hit
by it. He specifically hates wickedness. He specifically,
specifically hates because of his holiness and his righteousness
and his justice, all sin and will pour recompense out for
every sin that has ever been committed. Let's think about
that for a second. Every sin, For every person that
ever lives in the universe, God will pour His justice and His
wrath upon each and every sin. If those sins are attached to
the sinner and guilt, then the sinner will receive just wrath. If the sins are attached to Christ
on the cross, then the sinner escapes the wrath of God because
the good news is that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation
to be received by faith. So tonight, when we continue
in this, let us look for just a minute at the object of God's
wrath, the object of God's wrath, and ask ourselves, is there good
reason for the wrath of God now off? Because we know that there
is good reason for the wrath of God. But consider the audience
in which Paul is speaking. Remember the fact that he does
not find any shame in the gospel of Christ. As a matter of fact,
it is the banner of his pride. It is something that he was willing
to be shamed over, to become nothing, to become a fool even
for the cause of Christ and for the message of the cross. So
that when we look at the reasons for God's wrath, we need to ask
ourselves, are we part of the reason God is wrathful? God is
vengeful. Are we part of the humanity that
is spoken of here? And I say a resounding yes. But
we have escaped this wrath because of the gospel of Jesus. And when
Paul is speaking to these Roman Christians, one thing is certain
that is ringing in their ears is that they are nowhere capable
of being as righteous in their minds as Jews. there's not a
possibility in their hearts that they could ever be as pious as
Jewish people. Because after all, the Jews obeyed,
per se, the law their entire lives, but yet they never really
did obey the law at all. And so for Paul to say that the
wrath of God is being revealed against all unrighteousness and
all ungodliness, of men who by their unrighteousness suppress
the truth, there's two things at play here. The question is,
well, what about those people who don't know the gospel, who
haven't heard the truth of Jesus Christ? Surely they're off the
hook, not according to what Paul outlines here, and not according
to Romans chapter 2, which we'll be in in a few weeks. Paul establishes
the guilt of all men, the Hellenist, and the Hebrew, and the heathen. Every human being, every class
of society, every person that breathes air is guilty before
God and worthy of his judgment. And so here in this context,
we see that the reason that they're guilty is because they suppress
the truth. through acts of unrighteousness.
They suppress the truth. Let's continue to read in this
down through verse 23 so we'll have the context in our ears. Verse 18, For the wrath of God
is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and the unrighteousness
of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. Four, what
can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown
it to them. Four, His invisible attributes,
namely, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly
perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that
have been made. So they, who are they? The men
of the world and women of the world. or without excuse for verse 21. Although they knew God, they
did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became
futile in their thinking. The word futile, meaning worthless,
wasteful, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be
wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the
immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals
and creeping things." See, what's happening here is that Paul is
showing the doctrine of sin. He's showing the doctrine of
depravity. He's showing here that all men
are deserving of God's judgment. He is answering the age old question,
as I just mentioned, well, what about those who don't hear the
gospel? The Bible says they are guilty. Some people say, well,
what about those who just don't believe in the God of the Bible?
Maybe they believe in God, but they've called him something
else like Allah or the God of Jehovah's Witnesses or the God
of Buddha, Buddhism or the spirits of any Eastern mysticism, if
I could say that accurately. Well. The question is, is God
those spirits? Is the God of the Bible the God
of those false religions? Is the God of the Bible the God
that has revealed himself in those ways? No. He is the God
of heaven. He is the one true God. There
is none but him. There is no one like him. And
he is deserving of all honor and glory and praise. He is holy
and just. He created the world and everything
in it. He owns everything and every person. and everything
that He does is absolutely righteous, everything that He decrees is
absolutely perfect, and there is no one who will ever live
in the cosmos in the entirety of all eternity who could ever
question the authenticity of the righteousness of God in all
that He does. when we try to pit ourselves
against God's sovereignty, when we try to say that God's got
to be a fair God in order to be righteous. Beloved, if God
was fair, none of us would be standing here today listening
to the Word of God through the ears of grace. We would be standing,
awaiting impending judgment. For it is fair that God in His
righteousness destroy all wickedness eternally and perpetually. But
here, this unbelief that we see, see, it's really what's happening,
isn't it? God is not only punishing the wickedness of men and punishing
the sin of men and the unrighteousness of men and the ungodliness of
men, but He's doing so justly because they know better, you
see. They know better. Belief is replaced
with wickedness. That's what's happening here.
These men of the world, men, women, children, all people,
receive the wrath of God because of their ungodliness, because
of their unrighteousness, and we suppress the truth of what
is plain to us through the acts of unrighteousness. Now, what
does that mean? Well, the Bible continues to teach us this. First,
let's ask the question, who are these people? Are these the wickedest
people in the world? Are these the people that actually
deserve all kind of condemnation? Are these those people who do
bad and particularly heinous things? No, these are your everyday
liar, your everyday gossip, your everyday assumer, your everyday
false witness, your everyday heart of fear, your everyday
doubter. Your everyday person that lives
for the glory of them, the person that loves their flower garden
more than they do the gospel of Jesus, the person that loves
their grandchildren or children more than they do the word of
God. And the list goes on until we all would find ourselves on
that list. Every person that has ever lived is in the list
here. Every person that ever will live
is in the list here. These people, are deserving of
wrath. But in contrast, Paul has said
that the power of God is salvation through Jesus Christ, to be received
by faith, so that there are then, out of these people who are deserving
of wrath, a particular people who are saved apart from His
wrath, who do not suffer the wrath of God because in His kindness,
mercy, patience, grace, and love, He saves them because He can,
not because He's going to let their sins go, not because His
wrath is going to just be set aside, not because He's not going
to pour out His justice on all the unrighteousness, but because
He poured out His justice on the righteous one. He poured
out His justice on Jesus Christ. And so therefore, by faith, we
escape the wrath of God that is due to us. Beloved, that is
a reason for rejoicing. That is why Paul says that the
outcome of salvation for the local assembly is to the praise
of His glorious grace. That is why we see throughout
the entirety of the New Testament, time and time again with the
instruction of the church, that we will and must forgive one
another. That if there is any offense,
any assumption, any error, any sin that we commit toward each
other that cannot be forgiven, the unforgiving party is persona
non grata and kicked out of the fellowship of the church because
he or she refuses to surrender to the gospel of Jesus Christ
by faith. You see? These are things that expressly
help us understand how we are to relate to one another, because
it shows us how we have been related to God, and how God then,
in Christ Jesus, has related to us. These people then, just
like we used to be, as Paul would say in Ephesians chapter 2, who
we once were but are now not, are those people who are ungodly
and unrighteous. Well, what did they do? There's
a list over there after a while, starting in verse 29, and they
began to do all sorts of things. I don't know how many sins are
listed there, but I bet you it's 15 or 20 or so. I think I might
have heard Trey say 21 today, or whatever. sins that he lists
particularly. But there are more than that,
because there's unbelief here, there's a debased mind, there's
a wicked heart, there's stupid and futile thinking, there's
darkness and all sorts of things that are happening here. And
what we'll see next week is what God does before judgment, as
a precursor to judgment, when He seals unbelievers for destruction. Some people have always fought
the notion that God would one day draw a line in the sand of
time and forbid one to come to faith. But friends, it's all
throughout the Scripture where God sealed and hardened the heart
of individuals who continued to resist the grace of God, who
continued to walk in a manner of unbelief, though they knew
full well that God was God. Some come to mind such as Pharaoh.
Pharaoh was raised up that God might show His eternal power
against him. And there are many opportunities that we can see
in scripture where God sealed some for destruction. Isaiah
chapter 6, he almost sealed the entire nation. In John chapter
12, the fulfillment of that, as we see Jesus mentioning about
the Jews and the high priest and the Hellenists of that day.
But what did they do? What other than the sins that
they see there, what have they done? Isn't that really what
happens when we talk to the people of the world today and we talk
about sin? You know what usually comes up?
Well, I'm a pretty good person. It's interesting to say that
we all, that most people say, well, I'm a pretty good person.
Pretty good person is a pretty bad problem. Because if we're
pretty good, that means we're pretty evil. If it's almost right,
it's what? Wrong. If it's almost clean,
it's what? Dirty. I mean, how much of a
roach would you want on your plate at the restaurant? The
leg, the eye, the antenna? None. No roach. I wouldn't want
it if they flicked it off. If the neighbor had a roach on
his plate, I wouldn't want to eat what was sitting on mine for
fear that it might be contaminated. Roach footprints that are microscopic
can carry all sorts of pathogens. I don't want them in my mouth,
not knowingly. I don't want them in my body.
than how in the world if a roach is dirty, just in his existence
on where he walks, how is an almost perfect person not wicked? How is an almost right man not
evil? Let's not kid ourselves. Do not think that we are able
to stand in any position where we're just about right, where
we're a pretty good person. And I hear that a lot. I hear
people say that I'm a pretty good person. And I'll ask them
what they mean by that, and they'll come back to me, well, I go to
church, and I tithe, and I was baptized. They always think about
that after about four or five minutes. I was baptized. I was
surely washed clean then. Well, I don't know about you,
but the Scripture doesn't teach that the waters of baptism cleanses
us. It's just a picture of what Christ
has done through the Holy Spirit as He's baptized us into Himself,
because He is the one who is clean. He is the one who has
taken the wrath of God. And some people that think that
they're pretty good people have forgotten that though they do
not believe in Jesus Christ, no matter how much they follow
the law of God, they are still pretty bad people. And so even
in this context, though there are some specific things that
are taking place in humanity, beloved, all of us are listed
here. All of us have fallen short of
the glory of God. All humanity is guilty before
God. And the primary reason that we're
guilty, above all things, is because we practice open rebellion,
open unbelief. People would say, well, I don't
believe in God because I don't have any proof of God, to which
I like to argue and people think that it's a little crude. Yes,
you do. You do believe in God. Don't tell me that you don't
believe that there is a God. Well, how can you know what I
believe? Because I know what you see. I know what you look
at. I know what you think. I know what lies in the heart
of you because the Scripture teaches us what's in the heart
of man. Jesus says in the end of John 2, John's Gospel, it
says that Jesus didn't have to have anybody tell Him what was
in man. He knew what was in the heart of man. Beloved, Jesus
knows everything that ever goes through our hearts. Jesus knows
every thought that we think, every sin that we consider, every
temptation that comes our way and how we juggle. and work in
our own minds sometimes how we might approach this thing that
it might be almost right. Jesus knows our insecurities.
He knows the wickedness, the depths of our wickedness. He
knows our laziness. He knows everything about us.
He knows that when we accuse each other of sin, that we are
more than guilty than the one we point to. More guilty even. He knows every bit of it. Nothing
can escape the eyes of God. The Reformers used the phrase,
Quorum Deo, which means in the face of God. We walk, beloved,
in the face of God. And God not only sees what is
visible to Him, but He sees what is invisible to us. He knows
the depths of our heart, and He knows the depths of our depravity.
He knows the depths of our wickedness, and He knows what we really do
know. And he knows that all men really
do know that he is God and that he does exist and that no one
is without excuse. Don't believe me. Believe the
word of God. He goes on to say, how are they
continually in open rebellion? How has this happened? How can
they block out the obvious? Well, can you not say to yourself,
I'm not going to believe that? I don't believe that. I don't
believe that. There's no way in the world that
I'm going to think that's true. I've heard that time and time
again when people have come to me and, uh, been told, you know,
so-and-so is running around. And then all of a sudden I go,
no, I can't believe that. That's not going to happen. My
husband wouldn't run around on me. Well, honey, you better believe
it because it's happening. He was caught. Somebody would hear
you hear the news, so-and-so, so-and-so murdered somebody.
You ever heard that? I've heard that. So-and-so took
a life. So-and-so did this. So-and-so
did that. So-and-so took their own life. Have you ever heard that? And
you think, no, not that person. It's just recently that a friend
of ours has taken his life. And it was so unbelievable to
my father when he got the address to the call, he went past the
house. And when they radioed him, where are you going? He
says, well, I'm going to find this address. And they said, well,
that's it. He goes, no, that's not possible. I don't believe that.
Just because we don't believe something doesn't make it not
true. Just because we want to block out and say, I don't believe
there's a God. We know that there is one. All of humanity knows
that there is a God. All of humanity knows that God
exists. And all of them are without excuse. How do they suppress
the truth? Look what it says there. They
suppress the truth by their unrighteousness. What is it that people hate about
God anyway? They hate that God is supreme
and sovereign over them. They hate that God is holy and
perfect. And they hate that God decrees
perfection and then brings consequence which is holy and just when we
aren't perfect. They even hate the grace of God
that establishes life for them. You see, it wasn't necessarily
the punishment and the wrath of God that hardened Pharaoh's
heart. As a matter of fact, it was explicitly the grace of God.
For every time God would bring punishment, every time God would
bring a plague to Pharaoh, what happened to Pharaoh? Pharaoh
repented. Pharaoh relented. Pharaoh gave
up. And so the more that God punished
him, the more that God brought fire and plagues and sorrow and
pain, Pharaoh would say, I quit, I give up, you can leave. But
when God took away the suffering, it wasn't long before Pharaoh
changed his mind. See, it is the grace of God that
hardens the heart of the depraved man. It is the grace of God that
does not that man hates most of all, because it takes man
off the throne of being God. It takes us in our humanity.
Let's just be honest and be personal. It takes control away from us.
We as human beings want the control of our life. We want to be the
masters of our own destiny. We want to choose the way in
which we should go. We want to say that we understand and have
wisdom beyond all control. We want to say that we're smarter
than most people, that we have everything together, that we
can handle it, take it, focus on it, and grab it by the heels
and go. We think we can pull ourselves
up by our bootstraps and establish our way with such fire and fervor
that nothing can stop us. As a matter of fact, as Americans,
we're taught every single day that the world is at our fingertips.
It's just a brass ring we need to reach out and take, and we
can have it for ourselves. Beloved, the only place in the
entire Scripture that anything is offered to any human being
like that is when Jesus Christ, after His baptism, is in the
wilderness, and he's being tempted by the devil, and the devil offered
him everything. So the American dream, by definition,
the American esteem, the personal self-will, is the seduction of
Satan. And when it comes down to the
grace of God whereby we would stand before God, who is holy,
and He tells us we can't do that which our flesh desires most
of all, we don't like Him because He does that. And then we don't
like Him in our sin because He tells us that the only way we
can escape such things is if we have faith that in His mercy
He saved us from His own wrath. How dare you say that we are
even in danger of your wrath? And it seems absurd as believers,
but we've been given eyes to see. We've been given a mind
to understand, ears to hear, and a heart to believe and cherish
these things. We're not baffled by it. We're
baffled at the antithesis. How could any human being not
see? That's exactly what Paul's saying.
They can see. but they hate God. So then they
do wicked things. They know they should not, but
they do them anyway, because the more wicked they live, the
more sinful that they think, the more sinful that their minds
are, the more sinful their actions and sinful that their lusts are,
what happens is they begin to just press away the obvious.
They push aside the very nature of God's revelation in a general
way. And though they know that there
is a God, they do not care because they love their darkness more
than the light. Because when we come to the light,
beloved, everything that we are and all of its dirtiness is visible. It's very visible. when we go
to look in certain places of our home and we're cleaning.
Have you ever looked behind a piece of furniture that didn't cover
up a corner but you never go back there and you're playing
with a flashlight or you're looking at it or sunlight's coming in
a certain way and you go, look at the dust in the corner of
that room. The light shines in the darkness and we see the dirt.
And you go, oh no, I gotta clean that. And then you clean that
and you realize every part, every dark place in the house has got
dust in it. Well, if light can show the dust of our daily duties,
how much dirt can it show in the wickedness of our soul? So
here, men suppress the truth of God through their acts of
unrighteousness. They do more and more things
to dishonor Him on purpose so that it is open rebellion against
God. It's not accidental. It's not
rebellion out of ignorance. No person who willfully sins
in this world sins in ignorance. That's a lie. They sin purposely
because they hate God. You might say, well, is there
any place else in scripture that teaches that? There's a lot in
the Psalms that teach that. Listen to a few of them. Psalm
14, 1, the fool says in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt. They do abominable deeds. There
is none who does good. Sound familiar? It'll be quoted
again in a couple of chapters. In Psalm 53, the word of God
says the fool says in his heart, there is no God. Wait a minute.
Didn't we just hear that? Yep, we did. But it repeats it
again. In Psalm 73, the question is
asked, how can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most
High? And it tells us in Romans chapter 2, as we'll see in just
a few weeks, that the work of the law of God is written on
the hearts of humanity. And while our conscious also
bears witness and our conflicting thoughts accuse or even accuse
them. In this context, we see that though we may even in our
inner being After we suppress the truth, after someone suppresses
the truth over and over again, they may be able to say with
all confidence, there is no God, but the Bible says it is because
they suppress the truth that is obvious to them. And friends,
we see the writer of Hebrews teaching something even more
grossly. and grave than that. This is talking about unbelievers
who have never professed to believe in the first place. But what
does it say about those who come in some semblance to the faith
and walk in certain godliness and then turn away and then say
there is no God? Scripture says that there is
no repentance left for them. There is nothing but judgment
that awaits. See, this unbelief is purposeful.
Therefore, we or they as we were guilty before God. You might
say, well, how is this so? What in the world would reveal
God? How has He been revealed? Well,
verse 19 tells us how He's been revealed. It says, for what can
be known about God is plain to them. Now, let's stop for a moment.
Now, we all know as Christians, we all know as the church, that
we cannot come to faith except how? Through the Word. Faith
comes through hearing, hearing through the words of Christ.
But friends, knowing that God exists is not saving faith. Believing
that God is, is not saving faith. Knowing God in Jesus Christ is
saving faith. Believing on the work of Christ
is saving faith. All men know that there is a
God. They suppress that truth by wickedness. Because the scripture says God
is shown plainly Himself. The knowledge of God is plain
to see. So that no one can argue, there is no God and I know it. What they do is they see plainly
that there is a God and they know it and they say, I do not
believe and I'm going to do wicked things so that I cannot think
about the fact that there is a God. I can push myself into
a place of darkness and see what they think they're doing. Now,
listen to this. What they think they're doing is actually getting
one over on God. They think they're actually thumbing
their nose up at God and saying, so I'll show you I don't have
to believe in you. But what's actually happening, as we'll
see next week, is God is turning them over to darkness. So the
more they push away the light with wickedness, the more the
world hides and says we don't believe and they do sinful things
and live sinful ways and live in sinful unbelief, what's happening
is the Holy Spirit, God the Holy Spirit, is turning them over
to reprobation. He's darkening their hearts and
making their minds stupid and worthless. So then after a while
they stop even being able to see generally what God has shown
them about Himself. And so therefore, his wrath is
justified. You might say, well, that's not fair. Yes, it is fair. It's not fair that God would
give any grace at all. It's not fair that God would
even give an ounce, an ounce of providence to unbelievers.
It's not fair that God was patient with you or with me to give us
time to come to faith. It's not fair. It's not fair
that we hold the oracles of God here in our hands, copy after
copy, a bookshelf back there full of them, and yet the entirety
of the world as a whole starves for truth, but yet they still
know that God is, and they still suppress the truth of righteousness
through wickedness. So God is justified in His wrath.
But what, pray tell, does God tell these people about Himself?
What is it that God has revealed? It says there, for His invisible
attributes. God has shown that which is invisible?
Yes. What are the invisible attributes?
The eternal power and the divine nature. It says it's clearly
been perceived. That means it's seen and understood. Perception means that you see
it, you understand it, you comprehend it. There it is. There's a God.
Why? How in the world can someone
see that God's eternal power and his divine nature? It says
there, ever since the creation of the world and the things that
have been made. Beloved, the world looks at the
world in the context of humanity, looks at the creation and there
in all. and trillions and trillions of
dollars just in my lifetime has been spent on exploring the inexplorable,
diving into the mystery of the ineffable to get the answer that
is obvious. Is there life out there? What's
the meaning of life? What's the core of existence?
Where did we all come from? What's the meaning of this cosmos? They look and they know that
it is God, and instead they seek to find something else. They seek to find an alien race.
They seek to find some mysterious, supernatural, demonic whatever. There are more people who hunt
after spirits to prove things than after the truth of God. His invisible attributes. have
been shown from the beginning. Adam saw them, Eve saw them,
Cain saw them, Abel saw them, Seth and so on to Noah and so
on to Abraham and all the prophets and all the way up. We've seen
them. We know that there is a God because
we can see the work of his hands. So therefore, all people, because
they know God exists, are without excuse. The without excuse, they
cannot stand before God and no one will. People don't get this
in your mind that people will stand before God and be shocked
one day. Oh, he does exist. No, they will stand there and
they will know, man, I was a fool. I was a fool. I knew it existed. And I suppressed the truth through
the acts of wickedness, the acts of unrighteousness. See, this
belief is plain to them. And the verse verse 21 says that
they knew God. So this is not just something
to perceive that they're not quite getting. It is perceived.
And they knew God, they knew God in a real way, that he was
divinely powerful, that he was eternal and that he was and that
his nature was God. But yet. What did they do? Look out through all of history.
Look at the first people, Adam and Eve, who walked with Jesus
Christ in the cool of the day on the day they were made. The
oracles of God given to them through the command of the Creator,
you can take and subdue the entirety of the entire world. Everything
in it is yours. Every beast, every bird, every
fish, every bug, every leaf. Do not eat from these two trees
in the center of the garden. And that's all they could consume
themselves with. Wonder why we can't eat from
these trees. And when the temptation came,
it was clear. They wanted to be like God. They
wanted to know good and evil. And the lie of the devil was,
you surely will not die. You will not die. And see, the
devil actually told the truth there, because they did not die
that minute, but they died spiritually, and all humanity died spiritually.
Beloved, they knew God and walked with God, and they did not honor
Him as God. Her father, Adam, and our mother,
Eve, rebelled against God in the same way we have, in the
same way every one of our children have. And they did not honor
Him, and no human being has ever honored Him, and Paul is arguing
that up right now. When you think about how we testify
to the world about the gospel of Christ, a lot of times people
think we have to find the evidence We have to come up with some
argument that's evidentiary or logical or rational to prove
the existence of God. We must come to the archaeology
of Scripture, which is very interesting, to prove that the Bible is true.
And people continue to stack the Bible up underneath evidence
and stack God up underneath evidence and logics and the rationality
of men. And, friends, the Scripture is very clear. We're without
excuse. God has made Himself known. And
the only way someone will come out of that is if we teach that
to them. The only way God will ever save
someone out of blindness is if we teach them the truth of Christ.
If we show them in the word of God that we are without excuse.
If we show them then in chapter three that it is by faith through
the grace of God that you can have eternal life. Because the
righteousness of God is manifested apart from the law. And see,
that's the other aspect of what happens when we continue to try
to suppress the truth and righteousness. We violate the law more and more.
It builds and stacks upon us more and more wrath. But friends,
even those who know God historically like Adam and Eve or like Israel. still suppress the truth through
unrighteousness. Now, think about this for a second.
What unrighteousness? Let's just use this question
of a New Testament Jew. What unrighteousness did Paul
live in? Unbelief. the unrighteousness of his obedience,
the unrighteousness of his good works, the unrighteousness of
his piety, the unrighteousness of his prayers, the unrighteousness
of his Bible study, the unrighteousness of his reading of the law and
teaching it. That's the unrighteousness. That's
the darkness that Jesus is talking about with Nicodemus in John
chapter 3. That is the wickedness of the depravity of man. That
is what we are also saved from. Not just our disobedience and
our evil, but the evil of our self-righteousness. The evil
of our own idea that we can walk right before the Lord. They did
not honor Him as God. They did not give Him thanks.
Does that sound familiar? Remember the ten lepers that
Jesus healed? You remember that story? And none of them thanked
Him. But how many? One. It's almost like today's
culture. Everybody wants God in a time
of need. Everybody cries for people to pray and consider them
in their prayers. Everybody's thankful that they were saved
from the car accident or saved from the rape or saved from the
cancer. But then once their life is back
in their hands, they suppress the truth with works of unrighteousness
and unbelief. They don't thank God for who
he is. And in some sense, we all feel that way before we're
born again. We believe that we are entitled to life, to liberty,
and to the pursuit of happiness. After all, isn't it written in
our governmental documents? Isn't that the preamble to our
Constitution? That we have a right to those things? Well, friends,
even all of the citizenry of our nation did not have the right
to those things at its construct. The Indian did not have a right
to those things. They slaughtered them. The African did not have
a right to those things. They slaughtered them. Women
did not have a right to those things. They didn't slaughter
them, but they enslaved them. You could not, even in our world,
find those things. We have no right to these things.
We don't have a right to righteousness. But the Bible says that he who
knew no sin became sin, that we might be the righteousness
of God. The Bible teaches us in John 1, that no one received
Him. He came to His own and His own
did not receive Him. And you know this text. We've been in
it for 13 weeks now. But all who did receive Him,
who believed in His name, He gave the right, the right, the
right to become the children of God, not of the will or blood
or the decision, not of the will of the mind, but by the will
of God. And friends, there are a faction of people in our world
today who claim the banner of Christ, who claim the banner
of Baptist, who claim the banner of evangelical and gospel lovers,
but yet they refuse the grace of God through Jesus Christ and
they stand on the corner of their own glorious kingdom and call
it ministry. And they say that they are the
effectual cause of their salvation and their regeneration because
they chose rightly to believe in God. What a wicked statement
that is the precursor to everyone who is condemned before God this
day. Though they knew Him, they did
not thank Him. Friends, people who think that
their salvation is their own doing are spitting in the face
of Christ, who is the grace of God, by saying, we're not thanking
you, you should be thanking me. Let's keep going. They did not
give thanks to him and thus honor him, but they
became worthless in their thinking, worthless, and their foolish
hearts were darkened. I hear this for a second. I know
I feel worthless in my thinking most days. It's just because
of my brain. Imagine arguing against the grace
of God. Imagine arguing against the evidence
of God. Imagine arguing against the Word
of God so passionately and vehemently, with much zeal. And I think,
who does that? Get out in the community. Share
your faith. Tell people you're with a group
called Grace Truth. And you will hear, you will hear,
if you share the Gospel, You will hear the arguments against
God. You will hear them, you will
see them. Beloved, narrow is the gate that leads to righteousness
and few will find it. By historical example, a majority
of all the people who fellowship with the church are lost. Even
in Jesus day, lost. And in our day, we have purveyed
before us continually, year after year, season after season, generation
after generation, a false gospel, which is no gospel. And I believe
that part of this is because people have resisted and hated
the grace of God and that God has caused their minds to be
worthless. So that when they come up with
these things, I mean, some of you just this week have asked
me, where do people get this stuff? They get this stuff through
the worthlessness of their thinking. That God turns them over to,
as we'll see next week, because they suppress the truth. Not only are the minds of those
who resist. And hate God and rebel against
him become futile, but it says they're foolish hearts were darkened,
claiming to be wise, they became fools. They became fools. I remember growing up, I was
always told, just call nobody a fool. But God calls those fools who
reject the gospel of grace. God calls fools those who resist
the authority of Scripture. God calls fools those who say
there is no God. And how do we know who they are?
Are these just confused individuals who are working out their salvation?
Who are coming to gather information? I've seen people who have stood
passionately and said there is no God come to faith in Jesus
Christ. By the power of the Word, not
through the power of argument. By the power of the Spirit, not
through the power of relationship. No one's ever been saved because
they were my friend. As a matter of fact, it's the exact opposite.
Many people in my life have felt saved because they were my friend,
only to become apostate when I was no longer near them. Their hearts became darkened.
They claimed to be wise, but they became fools. What is the
evidence of that? Well, what they do is to take
the glory of God, which is due him, which is clearly perceived
in every aspect. And they know that he is God
and they refuse to worship him. They take that which is glorious
and they replace it with that which is garbage. What is the
garbage where the garbage is that they train exchange the
glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man
and birds and animals and creeping things? Well, let's let's just
put it to the historical test. They worship the serpent in the
garden. They worshipped the mind and knowledge in the garden,
which is the image of man. On Mount Sinai, after being saved
miraculously through the power of God, and Moses went up on
the mountain to receive the word of God, seeing the tempest of
God's presence, they burned and melted all of their gold and
they built the image of a calf and they worshipped it. And all throughout history, people
worshipped it. People worship science. People worship nature
and call themselves scientific. People worship themselves and
the human body. Psychology calls it narcissism.
People worship human will and philosophy. People worship because
they do not want to give God the glory that is His. They've
exchanged it And because of that, God will give them something
in exchange. So as we close our time tonight,
I want you to really see this. And what do you feel here? I'll
tell you what I feel. I feel extremely burdened. I feel extremely burdened. I
feel a little bit roughed up, like I've fallen down some stairs
in a spiritual way, in an emotional way, when I study this. And because
of that, I'm burdened to be able to proclaim the gospel even more. But I'm also rejoicing in the
bruising because I deserve to be among this number, but I'm
not. You deserve to be among that
number, but you're not if you have believed on Jesus because
God has been gracious to us. God is gracious to us. Friends,
we need to keep that always before us, that it is God's everlasting,
eternal favor that truly is the agent of our salvation. And that
even in the greatest faith, it is nothing but the work of God.
Pray for those around us. Pray for those among us. For us to believe that everybody
is secure in faith just because they're here with us would be
foolish. would be foolish. Pray that God
would save our Children. Pray that God would save our
grandchildren, our neighbors, the people we really hate at
work, those those people that we just don't like to get along
with. Maybe that's each other. Whatever
it may be, we need to pray that God would open their eyes and
that God would continually remind us that by his mercy and because
he loves us, he's opened hours. Let's pray. Oh, Lord, it's overwhelming,
honestly, Father. You know my heart. You know how difficult it is
to contemplate the fact that so many people in this world
just reject You. So, Lord, we pray tonight that
You would bring in the sheep. And in order for You to bring
in the sheep, Father, You've said we have to go out and proclaim
the gospel. So you send us out that they might come in. Lord,
do so powerfully. Let us start at home. Let us
start in here. Father, we pray for those who
are not with us tonight, Lord, whatever reason. Whatever calls
would keep them from us. from assembling together and
hearing Your Word, Lord, I pray that You would give them the
grace to overcome it, that You would give them the burden to
know that the greatest thing that they
could do is to be in Your Word, to be with Your people. And Father, I just pray, Lord,
that the children who sit here day in, day out, and they hear
the words your scripture, they hear the truth of your gospel.
Lord, I pray that by your power that you'd save them, that you
bring them to life, that they would believe and they would
be counted among us as a saint. Father, we pray these things
in the saving name of Jesus. Amen.