Our scripture reading today is from Romans chapter 2. It's in the heart of Paul's indictment of mankind as sinners who have no logical or illogical physical or spiritual reason for God to ever give them one moment notice that is not filled with his wrathful condemnation that is the indictment against man there is nothing good about you you are less than nothing when he cut the covenant with Israel he told them when you build an altar to make sacrifices on For me, you wanted to offer a sacrifice to me. You build that altar out of dirt. You just pile up dirt and burn it on the dirt. Or, pick up rocks and make a pile of rocks, but you don't touch it with a tool, because if you touch it, you will profane it. If you touch the dirt, you will profane it. If you touch the rocks, you will profane them. That means that dirt is better than you. Paul is making that point in the first three chapters of Romans. We're going to read an excerpt from chapter 2, beginning in verse 1. You are without excuse, O man, everyone who passes judgment. For in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself. For you who judge practice the same things. And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things. But do you presume this, oh man, who passes judgment on those who practice such things and does the same? Do you presume that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness, unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God who will repay each according to his works to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality eternal life but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath, and anger. There will be affliction and turmoil for every soul of man who works out evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek. but glory and honor and peace to everyone who works good to the Jew first and also to the Greek for there is no partiality with God for all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law and those who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law For it is not the hearers of the law who are just before God, but the doers of the law will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, naturally do the things of the law, These, not having the law, are a law to themselves, in that they demonstrate the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them. On the day when according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Jesus Christ. I would like you to notice that Paul ties the gospel with the judgment of God in Jesus Christ. More to come on that. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this Lord's Day to be able to gather here. Thank you, Lord, for this dry and temperate place to meet. Thank you for the ability that you've given us to be here. We thank you for the faithfulness that you have shown to us this week to allow us another week to serve you and to come and learn of you and to gather with your people together for the fellowship of the saints. Lord, we pray that you will have your way in every heart here this day, that you will encourage and admonish and exhort and evangelize as you alone only truly know needs to be done. We pray that the Word of God will take center stage in this place. We will all stand in awe of the great God that has revealed himself to us in the pages of this book. Be honored by our time here, we pray, in Jesus' name. Beloved, if you have your copy of the scripture, open it with me to Romans chapter one. Paul's letter to the Romans in chapter one. I'd like for you to meet me in verse 18. And we're going to read from verse 18 to the end of this chapter. And then we're going to pray for two reasons. One, we need the Holy Spirit's involvement anytime we open the word of God because we have not the capacity to truly understand it on our own naturally. And two, we're going to pray that the Lord will help me to preach this entire passage in one sermon. I hear the snickers. I wanted to tell Brother Chad when he realized that I left my notes, I can wing this, but there's no telling how long we'll be here. Hopefully the notes will keep us moving. We're going to take not a bird's eye view of this. We're going to take a space station view of this by normal standards here. But I think that we will get the point across very well in what we're trying to understand. Beginning in verse 18, we're going to read through verse 32. You'll notice there are some changes in what you see standing in the pulpit this morning, and there's probably going to be another one here in a moment. I'm hoping that the lack of moustache will cause you to not notice. Now, my wife told me that if I do this, I can't do this. But this is far more comfortable than this, because you're blurry like this. They are... Brand new prescription from the shelf in Walmart next to the vitamins. I know some of you feel my pain. Romans 1 verse 18, Paul says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness because that which is known about God is evident within them for God made it evident to them for since the creation of the world his invisible attributes both his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. professing to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the likeness of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures Therefore God gave them over in their lusts of their hearts to impurity So that their bodies would be dishonored among them for they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and Worshipped and served the creature Rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions. For their females exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural. And in the same way also, the males abandoned the natural function of the female and burned in their desire toward one another. males with males committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. Just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to an unfit mind to do those things which are not proper. Having been filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, violent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding. untrustworthy unloving unmerciful and although they know the righteous requirement of God that those who practice such things are worthy of death they not only do the same but also give hearty approval to those who practice them. Pray with me. Father, as we turn to your word this day, we come to the great benefit and blessing that you have given to us and your truth. And we come to this knowing that we are in desperate need of your Holy Spirit to give us insight into this book. We dare not read our own thoughts and our own ideas into it, for you know what you are doing. You know what you are saying. You need no man to put words in your mouth. You have spoken clearly once for all. I pray that as we open at this day that you will give us a glimpse of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, that we will see with greater clarity the true height and depth and width of the glory of God in this portrayal, this clearly defined picture of who it is, who exactly it is that you have sent the Savior to save, that we will see who we are. And in seeing who we are in the face of your holiness, that we will see your holy glory and your holy gospel with greater clarity and with greater thanks than ever we have before. I pray that we will leave here this day able and ready and desirous to go and tell the world that we serve a great God that would save the likes of me. Be honored by this time. Bless your people. I pray it in Jesus's name. Amen. You'll remember that we are setting the foundation for the teaching of God's sovereign grace. I'm pretty sure that most of you don't take much advice in your house on what you should do when your neighbors or your family come over. Because it's your house. You kind of will do what you want to do in your house. Because it's your house and you're in charge. You don't need the government or anyone else stepping into your life, into your bank account and taking your hard-earned money and spending it any way that they would like to. You don't want anyone stepping into your life and saying, well, you've got some stuff that I don't have. I'll help myself to your stuff and we'll just share. It'll be, you've got enough. I'll take some of yours. I know you don't want to give it to me, but I'll take it. and I'll be in charge of it. There's not a person in this room that would allow that to happen. You might allow somebody to put a gun to your wife's head and say, I'm taking everything you got or I'm taking her. Hopefully you wouldn't have to think real long about that. When we speak of the grace of God, when we speak of the unmerited favor of God, when we speak of the power of God to accomplish the work of salvation, the power of God to accomplish the work of ministry in every believer that has been called out of darkness into light in order to be a minister for Christ, a servant to the world, a servant on behalf of Christ, When we speak of the sovereign grace of God in all of its aspects, it's God's grace. It's not someone else's. He doesn't share it with someone. It all belongs to Him. And He dispenses it when He wants to, and only when He wants to. And He lavishes it in ways that we can't even begin to understand or describe. we're setting the foundation here for the teaching on God's sovereign grace. We're looking thoroughly at the doctrinal reality of what has been called total depravity. This is the foundation that we set. If you don't like total depravity, that's okay. We're setting This foundation thoroughly looking at this doctrinal reality of radical corruption, if you like that better, this radically corrupt heart that you and I were born with, that creates what Dr. MacArthur called absolute inability. A man that is totally unable to do anything good. This is a necessary reality to face. The good news of the gospel has at its core the reality of man's desperate sinful condition. That's at the core of the gospel. you get down to the ground level of the gospel, what is, let's just get down to the bare minimum. The bare minimum, the base, the foundation of the gospel is man's desperate, sinful condition. This situation for man is desperate because It has man and mankind, men in general, individual people and people as a whole. It has man set on an unalterable course, headed inexorably to face the wrath of God. Every mother's child is born with a single destination. And that is a desperate situation, because it is humanly unalterable, and there is no way to change that course, and that course is headed straight for the wrath of God. That is what Paul says in verse 16 of the next chapter, in Romans chapter 2. When according to my gospel, Paul's a gospel preacher, And he says, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus. There's some things in your life you really hope nobody finds out. There's coming a day that every one of those things, for every person that is outside of Jesus Christ, every one of those things is going to be aired for all of the universe to see, so that when God declares judgment on unrepentant sinners and casts them into hell, we will not merely have to take God's word for it. He will provide the proof in a courtroom setting. and man is born headed for that moment of the wrath of god without any personal human capacity to alter it at all that is what the bible teaches with absolute clarity that is what we've been looking at we've We've begun looking at the poisonous introduction of radical corruption. We saw how it came into the world and how it came through Adam and Eve and through Cain. We've seen the perpetual infection of it as it moves to chapter 6 in Genesis and we see the flood. Mankind just descends into depravity and God saves one family. How? Because Noah earned it. Nope, that's not what it says. It says Noah found favor. The grace of God was showered on Noah because God chose Noah to start over with. And it wasn't a handful of generations after Noah steps off the ark. Noah's still around telling stories about what happened before and what happened during and what has happened after the flood. And they still decide to rebel against God in every way they possibly can. They only had two rules that they really knew they needed to follow, the dominion mandate to spread out and subdue the earth. They said, let's build a city for our name. Worry about that Yahweh guy. Let's build one. Let's build a city for our name. We'll name it after Nimrod, our great leader, Nimrod, this great hunter of men. And we'll build an altar our own way. We'll build it out of hewn stones. We will build it. We're not going to profane it. We'll build what suits us. Almost immediately after. The infection of depravity, the infection of sin stayed from one generation to the next to the next. We looked at a lot of Old Testament passages that just portray this picture of the unalterable and inexorable course that man is headed on toward the wrath of God. And we need to know that. Because the church has been left on this planet to proclaim the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ. But there is no good news without the bad news. It's just okay news. And when people are not willing to discuss the sinful heart of man and the The wrath of God that is coming upon every... mother's child outside of Jesus Christ. If a man is not willing to talk about sin and to portray sinners as who they are, if a man is not willing to do that, but he still wants to be a, quote, gospel minister, he has to find other ways to pique people's interest in the gospel. So they begin to say, you know, the gospel is so good that it'll take a mediocre life and turn it into a great life. It'll take a bad life and turn it into a good life. Jesus will come along and will fix all of the problems. We had four little girls sitting here just a few minutes ago. You say, preacher, they weren't all little. They're all to me, because they're all mine. This one thing I know, my troubled soul, that Jesus calms the storm. That does not mean that Jesus fixes all of my problems. Jesus is in the storm with me. A storm may still be raging. Without the bad news, there is no good news. So there must be a concocted good news, a pseudo good news. Therefore you have a counterfeit or placebo gospel, but not a true gospel. There was no good news without the bad news. The gospel begins with guilt and despair. That is how the gospel message begins. If you doubt that, just read through Romans and you'll see that when Paul gets over the greetings in the first 16 verses, 17 verses of chapter one, he really gets done in verse 15 and he says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for everyone who believes, first for the Jew and then to the Gentile. For in it, in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the righteous will live by faith. The righteous come into the kingdom by faith and the righteous live in the kingdom by faith. And then he launches in, beginning in verse 18, he launches into describing mankind as who they are. He starts with reality, which is bad news. And from that bad news, he moves to the good news. Because until you understand where you are before God, you couldn't care less about the cross of Christ. Or the manger. The gospel begins with guilt and despair, but it leads to glory and delight in the Savior. It is the best news ever, and it needs to be proclaimed again and again. And you may say, that's right, preacher, sinners need to hear it. That's true. But the gospel needs to be proclaimed over and over and over. Because the gospel brings life to the sinner. The gospel brings the eternal life of God into the heart of the sinner. There is no other way for someone to come into the kingdom but through the gospel of Jesus Christ. And it brings joy to the sinner. It brings life to the sinner, and it brings joy to the believer, as we think about what this God has done for me. And as we're going through these verses in Romans chapter 1, looking at the radically depraved heart of man, this describes every mother's child, this describes every culture, this describes every epoch in time, everyone in the history, since history began, fits into this passage. It's later in my notes, but there was a Chinese missionary that came to China and was preaching through Romans. And one of the people that he was ministering to said, this message that you're giving is not your message. Because this message could only have been written by someone who has known the history of my people. All he did was come and read what we're about to look at in Romans chapter one. He said, no one can know that on their own. Somebody, you can't have lived long enough to have made that up. This book knows what it's talking about because this is exactly the history of our people. Man had never heard the gospel, never heard of Jesus Christ, never heard of the Bible. As he heard this read before him and realized that this is the description of every Every person, every people group, every nation, ever. And it tells us a humanly hopeless story. I lean heavily on the human part. Humanly it is impossible. But what hope do we have? Stay tuned. I'm going to tell you the hope that we have. We're going to try to do it today. I want to look at now, we've looked at the poisonous introduction of radical corruption, the perpetual infection, but for us here in this day and age, what is the present implication of total depravity? What is the present implication of radical corruption? What does it mean for us today? Because we can look at the Bible and say, well, you know, that was them. That was back then, right? That was those people. That's not me, right? Well, it's not you that technically is being written about, but it describes you, exactly what you are, exactly what I am. The present implication of total depravity is that radical corruption impacts the totality of religiosity, it impacts the totality of personality, and it impacts the totality of creation. We're gonna look at all of those. One at a time. We're gonna look at the impact of total depravity on the totality of religiosity. I'm trying to give some help to those that look at total depravity and say, well, it's not total because it's not as bad as it could be. That's not the point. You're not as bad as you could be. Adolf Hitler could have been worse. As wretched and wicked as he was, he could have been worse. But he could not have been more Polluted and more overcome and more under the mastery of sin than he was he could not have been more separated from God than he was And Depravity among men impacts the totality of religiosity You can't find a people group in history that didn't worship something That tells you a little bit about how man is created. We are created to worship something and Let's dive in here in Romans chapter 1, beginning, we'll look at verses 18 to 23 first. What Paul has written here is the expression of God's wrath toward total depravity, the expression of God's wrath toward radical corruption, the expression of God's wrath toward man's human inability, absolutely unable to do anything good for himself. Look at verse 18. He says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed. And we need the righteousness of God to be revealed, because what we only know prior to that is what begins in verse 18. It's the wrath of God. He says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. The wrath of God. You can stop right there. What is the wrath of God? The wrath of God is something that you only want to hear about. It is not something that you ever want to experience. So let's get a little bit of a description of it so that we can hear about it and that may be enough for us. It comes from the word orge. It is the word orge, this word for wrath. It speaks of an intense, habitual, unabated, consuming, passionate, Anger. A consuming anger. It speaks of a deep, seething resentment. Referring to God's constant and controlled indignation towards sin. The wrath of God. And it says that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against men. says it is revealed this this word revealed is is one that you will be uh... familiar with it's the word apocalypses it's it's the word did that is the greek word that is the title of john's last writing the apostle john wrote the revelation it is the word apocalypses it's it is a revealing it's not a concealing its opening up is revealed the the wrath of god is not hidden the wrath of god is not a secret it's everywhere And it's in a present tense verb that means it is ongoing. It's not that he revealed it one time and that was sufficient. He is revealing it over and over and over. And he reveals it every time you step outside. He reveals it every time you open your eyes. It is the wrath of God is revealed. It is being revealed all of the time. It is happening. The wrath of God, what is its object? All ungodliness. All ungodliness. All ungodliness would be the disregard of who he is. Just disregard who he is. And we're going to see that evidenced once we get to verse 24, or actually in verse 22. The evidence of this. They're ungodly. They are nothing like God. I know in Word of Faith circles today, they tell you that you're a little God. Friends, you're nothing like God. You were created in His image, and that image is marred to its core. So much so that even as a believer, the Holy Spirit is working on you all the time, molding you into the image of Christ, transforming you by his power for that day when you finally rid yourself of yourself and stand perfectly glorified in heaven. There is nothing about you that is like God. All the ungodliness, all of the things that are nothing like God in men, and not only ungodliness, but Unrighteousness. Things that are not right. Wicked things. It's a word with an alpha privative. It's adike, which is dike being the word for righteous or right. It's being not right. It means to be the opposite of righteous. God has set the standard. What God does is what is right and righteousness is what God would do and is what God expects. It's the character of God and men live in opposition to righteousness. This is all ungodliness and all unrighteousness of men. Not just unrighteousness and ungodliness in a generic idea, it's the unrighteousness and ungodliness of men. It is the natural course of humanity that is experiencing the wrath of God. It is being revealed against men because of their unrighteousness and ungodliness. And then, He describes men as those who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. The truth comes in, they just pile up more unrighteousness. The truth comes in, they pile up more unrighteousness. You think that's bad, we'll do more. Just what we saw it in Sodom when Lot comes out and says, men, don't do this wicked thing. They said, come here, boy, we'll treat you more wicked than them. We don't want to hear the truth. We'll just pile more unrighteousness on top of the truth and cast it away so that we can have our control, our unrighteousness. We suppress the truth in unrighteousness. It refers to sinful, ungodly, unrighteous religious expression and practice. He's about to explain that in the next verses. They suppress the truth and unrighteousness by their religious exercise. Man has already, he goes on to make the case in the first verse of chapter two, you are without excuse, oh man, everyone who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself, because you practice the same things. You know it's wrong, that means that when you do it, you're doubly wrong. That's an inconvenient truth. Man proves his knowledge of and responsibility to God by contriving religion. We know that there's some responsibility, so we've got to concoct a religion. That's why I tell you, you see it all over the world, all throughout history, there's something that people worship. And you say, well, preacher, I look around the country today and I don't see people worshiping false gods. Yeah, you do. You saw some yesterday. All over this country. Dozens of thousands of people. 80, 100, 120,000 people all climbed into a Coliseum to watch a game played. And their whole life revolves around it. Where's this coach gonna go? What's that player gonna do? What's this stat gonna be? And you watch and they keep flashing these statistics at you. Stuff that doesn't even, you don't even need to know what this stuff means, but they keep throwing it at you. Now if you watch a football game, it's okay. I watch some too. But there are people that won't darken the door of a church when it's football season. Ever, because professional football's on Sunday. I'm not missing the game. You've just picked one side. I don't mean to tell you that if life happens and you can't be in church, I don't mean that you've put your kid's health above the Lord. That's ridiculous. I don't mean that sometimes your job causes you to have to be somewhere else. That's not you worshiping your job over the Savior. I don't mean that. But there is something in your life that matters more than anything else, and that needs to be the God of heaven through His Son, Jesus Christ, or it is an expression of unrighteousness and ungodliness. You say, well, why do they do that? Why do they contrive these these religious trappings. Why do they contrive religion? I mean, you go around the world, they come up with some wild stuff, man, praying to dead people and going through rituals. I don't even begin to understand how a chicken's foot comes into something that can be considered a religious prayer. I don't even understand that. But left to himself, man cannot come up with anything better, I'll tell you that. Look at verse 19. Why do they do this? Verse 19, because the knowledge of God is evident within them, because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them. They're without excuse because they know that there's a God. I've made this point to you multiple times in the last several weeks. When we have a vacation Bible school, when we have our kids club, we don't have to bring kids in and convince them that there's a God. Ever. You don't ever have to convince a kid that there's a God. It takes many years of schooling to convince them that there is no God. But you don't have to convince them that there is a God. They're born with that already programmed in there. And what they do with that proves whether they are with the unrighteousness and ungodliness of men, because they take that compulsion and they try to respond to it in their own way. They put their own human spin on it. They come up with all of these religious ideas. All men, all people, all people serve or worship something or someone. But God put that desire to serve and worship something higher. That's why you get into some of these 12-step programs and they tell you to appeal to a higher power. Because they know one thing, that man on his own can't beat whatever this is. This in your life you can't beat. You need the help of a higher power. But they don't want to offend too many people because there are so many different ideas of what a higher power is. But the reason that they can appeal to people to pursue a higher power is because God has put in their heart the reality and the evidence that He is there, and He put it there for Himself. He put that there for Himself in communion with His creation and for our good. Mr. Minister, Shorter Catechism, first question. What is the chief end of man? The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. To glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Not to glorify some unknown deity, it's to glorify the God of heaven. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven. To glorify the God of the scripture, because it's how we know about heaven. It's how we know about all of these things. It's to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Not to glorify God and appease Him forever. Not to glorify God and get Him off our back forever. to glorify him and to enjoy him forever. How are we going to, why would we enjoy God? Because it's been put into us. It's there. Verse 20, how do we know it's there? For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, what attributes? Invisible. What does that mean? I mean, you can't see him. They are there. And we know that they're there. Jesus uses the same type of language and same idea when he's speaking to Nicodemus in chapter three. He said, unless a man is born again from above, he cannot see the kingdom of heaven. And he said, I mean, I can't go, I'm hopeless. I can't go back in my mother's womb like this. He said, don't marvel that I tell you that you must be born again because you see the wind blow. Actually, you ever seen the wind blow? Anybody, have you seen the wind blow? We say that, oh look, I see the wind's blowing. What you see is the evidence that the wind is blowing. You don't actually see the wind, you see what's happening. And Jesus says, you don't know where it comes from and you don't know where it went, but you see that it's been here. And it's the same with the Holy Spirit of God. The invisible attributes of God, we know that He is there because we see the evidence of it. What did the psalmist say? The heavens declare the glory of God and the earth shows his handiwork. Friends, this didn't pop out of some infinitesimal small speck that exploded one time back in God knows how long ago. This was spoken into existence. The Bible says that he holds it in the palm of his hand. How did that, why do atoms stay together? We get down to the, How do these two little strange objects spinning around this deal in the middle, how does that stay together? What holds that together? God does. End of discussion. Now what are you going to do about it? Well, well, you know, I don't know if I can handle that, preacher, because, you know, if that's true, I'm really in trouble when I die. That's right. And it is true. And you are really in trouble when you die, if you die outside of Christ. That's what you need to hear. You don't need somebody to come along and say, well, well, maybe that was just the ancient way of looking at it. They were primitive. They really didn't have microscopes and telescopes. And you know what a microscope and a telescope has done for man? it's given man more reason to praise the creator that's all they've done and man has taken that in this this impossibly wicked state in which man lives and man has taken that and tried to use it to create evidence against god because i can't explain it therefore god couldn't have done it that's the wrong answer because you can explain it i couldn't care less if you can explain in fact if you can explain it is probably wrong how did it get here well i think oh stop stop We're off on the wrong foot already. I couldn't care less what you think. Because I know what I think. And I'm not coming up with my own answers, I don't need you to come up with answers. Because your life's a wreck just like mine. And nobody's ever beaten death, that means nobody's figured this out. What does God have to say about it? That's the question that needs to be asked. Since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, both his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse. It has been clearly seen in creation and it leaves man without excuse. Oh, but they taught us evolution in school. I know what they taught you, but if you would have turned your brain on for a millisecond, you would have realized how dumb that actually is. It's not smart to back up and say, well, you know, let's appease the scientists. No, no. The scientist needs to get himself under this book. Because all a scientist can ever do is look at what God has already done. Can't explain it. He can marvel at it. When Lazarus came out of that tomb, there were a lot of people wanting to know how he got out of that tomb. How did that work, Lazarus? I have no idea, but I'm here. God did it. If you want to be intellectually honest, if God did not speak this universe into existence, it wouldn't be here. There was no truly intellectual way around it. Verse 21, for even though they knew God, Now, this is speaking in this past tense. They knew that there was a God. They knew about God. They have known it's something that has been in their past. They've always known. They've carried this knowledge. Even though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks. They refused to glorify him as he is, even though they know who he is. And look at this description. Although they knew God, they didn't glorify him as God or give him thanks. So if you won't recognize God and you're not willing to give him thanks, this is the outcome. They become futile in their thoughts and their foolish heart was darkened. Futile thoughts, darkened hearts. Friends, this is compounded corruption. Their thoughts turned into foolishness, and as their minds became foolish, a spiritual darkness came over a foolish heart and pushed them even further down away from any human ability to overcome this depravity. They proved it time and time again and doubled down on it. And you're starting to say, well, man, you're starting to talk like this is a hopeless thing. How do we go to people with the gospel if this is the condition that they're in? Now we're getting somewhere. I hope you're thinking that. Verse 22. Professing to be wise, they became fools. What you need to know from this is that the more man elevates himself, the lower he goes before the Creator. That's what it says in verse 25. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen. The Creator is the one that deserves the worship. The Creator is the one that gave you the desire to worship. And the Creator is the one that man is pushing aside, professing to be wise. Oh, we found the way. We found the way. We don't need that book. We don't need that idea of God. We found the way. We found it on our own. This man over here figured it out. This brilliant man figured it out. We're going to follow him. There's no man over there, Troy. I'm just pointing. That's the man that figured it out. He's sitting right there. That's the guy. You want to talk to him after church if you want to know who figured it out, he's right there. No. We don't want what God has to say. We'll take what he has to say. Man begins to elevate himself. We have found the way. As he elevates himself, he becomes a fool and continues to be outside of God. Verse 23, professing to be wise, they became fools. How do we know that? Because of what they do. How do we know what God is like? Because of what he does. How do we know what man is like? Because of what he does. They became fools And what they did was exchange the glory of the incorruptible God. And I tell you, there's nothing like God, there's nothing in your life that you've ever heard of, thought about, read about, dreamt up, imagined, felt, touched, tasted, nothing. You've never experienced anything that was incorruptible. You say, oh, I got some of them things in my pantry, the non-perishable food items, they're incorruptible. Nah, they just last longer than stuff that's sitting out on the counter. My wife told me that Walmart sold a 65-inch tall box of macaroni on Black Friday. And I said, who in the world is eating that in one sitting? 25-inch box, maybe. 65-inch box. And I said, well, I mean, it's a non-perishable food item. Macaroni lasts forever in the box. But even macaroni is not going to last forever. That's a very poor illustration, but you know, I'm broken. They exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God. Friends, that's another way to say the glory and the holiness of God. God's otherness, it speaks to him being above and outside of his creation because everything is decaying, everything is breaking down, but God is up there in an incorruptible state. He is eternal. No beginning, no end, no change in between. The incorruptible God. They exchange the glory of the incorruptible God that they know His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature. This incorruptible God they exchange for an image in the likeness of corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Man creates religion his own way. They know that there's this incorruptible God, but we would rather something different. You don't have to teach them to do that. This is the direction that they're going to go on their own. In the likeness of corruptible man and birds, four-footed animals, and crawling creatures. This speaks of two things. Idolatry, and this covers everybody. Idolatry, they create an idol to worship. They bow down before an idol. You see it in religions all over the world. I heard that there are Muslims now traveling to Guadalupe to see the, what do they call it, the apparition of Mary in Guadalupe. There are Muslims going there to bow before that altar. People from all over the globe coming to bow before an altar that's created in the likeness of corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and crawling things. You see it all over the earth. You've seen it forever. If you go to Hawaii, you see a totem pole. Somebody went to a lot of effort to make that. They made an idol. It speaks to idolatry and cultism. because they're following a man. When there is a religious movement that is following a man, we talked about the Branch Davidians in Sunday school this morning, or at some point earlier today. They were following a man named David Koresh. Some of you remember Jim Jones, drank the Kool-Aid. Roman Catholic Church follows the Pope. You can groan. Roman Catholicism is a cult just like the Branch Davidians because the Bible doesn't matter, what this man says matters. Even though he disagrees with the man before him that spoke for God, that said one thing and now he says another, but we would rather follow him than to follow this book. That's religion everywhere. That's not something that is exclusive to any group of people. You find churches that have men that have fallen out of Men that have fallen out of the criteria that needs to be met for a man to be in leadership and they don't want to get rid of the man because they quote, love him too much. He does not meet the qualification. He has disqualified himself. He must be put aside. Well, we would rather keep him to get rid of him. Well, you just begun a cult because now you're following him rather than following this. And friends, let's be honest. Sometimes it is very hard to follow this. You've got to make some hard decisions. All of this book is easy to understand. It's just sometimes hard to swallow. But without this book, we're left to our own ends. Without this book, we wind up following corruptible man. We wind up building images in the likeness of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Why do we do the things the way that we do in this church? Because that's what we find in this book. Okay, he has set his course here. The expression of God's wrath toward total depravity. Wrath of God has been revealed because man has done this. Let's look at the execution of it. He's explained it. He's expressing what God is going to do. God is pouring out His wrath on the earth. What does it look like? What does it look like when He executes His wrath toward total depravity? Look at the beginning of verse 24. You'll see the beginning of verse 24, verse 26, and verse 28, we see the execution, the carrying out of God's wrath toward total depravity. And it's not exactly what you think. Because what you think of when you think of God's wrath, you think of Solomon Gomorrah. He calls fire and brimstone out of heaven and annihilates an entire valley of people. He does that occasionally. But he does something far more devastating than that here in Romans chapter 1. because they have exchanged the glory of God, the glory of the incorruptible God, that they are without excuse for not believing in because His invisible attributes, His divine power and His eternal power and divine nature, and the ungodliness of men pushing the truth aside, because all of that has happened, therefore, verse 24, God gave them over. Verse 26, for this reason God gave them over to. Then verse 28, and just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to an unfit mind. The execution of God's wrath is that he just steps back and lets man have a little more freedom. A lot of people think man needs to have a free will. This is what happens when man has a free will. This is all that ever happens when man exercises a free will. This is the only thing that can happen because his will is not free. His will is not willing to bow its knee to God. It is already enslaved to sin. And he will choose according to the greatest inclination of the moment, which in his natural born state of radical corruption, his desires only evil continually. and they reject God and then God just returns serve. He gives them over to futility, gives them over and eventually gives them up. That's not futility, that's finality. Why does he do that? Because of the radical corruption of man's heart that pushes God aside to do what it wants to do. Well, if the execution of it is him backing away, what becomes of that? Well, he backs away for a reason. He backs away and gives them over to some things in order for them to experience his judgment and the consequences of their own sin at the same time. He doesn't actually have to step into your life to do anything to you. All he has to do is back up and let you do what you're going to do. And judgment has fallen. Back in verse 24, let's see some examples of God's wrath toward total depravity. Therefore he gave them over in the lust of their heart to impurity. What did he give them over to? He gave them over to impurity in the lust of their heart. These epithumia, this yearning desire for impurity, he gave them over to that so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. How do they dishonor their bodies? In a lot of ways. Your immediate thought is this sexually explicit culture in which we live in that is one of the ways absolutely That's one of the ways but they give their bodies over to all sorts of things. You see these guys on Christmas walking around Korea Flagellating themselves with and and and cutting themselves up. It's one that still has himself crucified They do all manner of of things that that dishonor their bodies He's giving them over to impurity so that their bodies would be dishonored among them they're doing it to one another why For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. They refused to worship him, so he gave them over to the worship of anything they choose. Gave them their free will. Go do what you want. Friends, you need God to step in in your life and stop you from doing what you want more often than you'd like to admit. And praise him that he does. Or where would we be? We'd be right here in Romans chapter one. Verse 26, again, for this reason, because they worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator, for this reason, God gave them over. To what? To dishonorable passions. He gave them over in the lust of their hearts to impurity and allowed the impurity to stir up the lust in their heart. And the next step of this abandonment is this giving up. He says, He gave them over to dishonorable passions. Well, preacher, what are dishonorable passions? Homosexuality. Not a lifestyle choice. It's an abominable sin before God. And it's a proof of God's judgment on a culture and on an individual. And it needs to be repented of and it needs to be run away from, as we'll see in a moment. They exchange the natural function for that which is unnatural. The same way the males abandon natural functions of the female, burn in their desires toward one another. Males with males committing indecent acts. Boy, that's a tame way to put it. And receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. They will receive exactly what they have earned. The wages of sin is death. but the gift of God's eternal life in Christ Jesus. You don't want what you've earned. These people receive what they've earned, and it comes in a myriad of ways. Venereal disease. Preacher, you're saying AIDS is part of it? Yeah, but Paul wasn't necessarily just talking about AIDS. These people have been going through this since man has been recording history. They're receiving themselves the due penalty. What happened in Sodom? God's wrath toward total depravity, verse 28. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God. You know what that means? They just pushed the idea of God aside altogether. They don't even talk about God anymore. Don't talk about religion. We don't need a God. We're going to live the way we want to live. We're not against God. We just don't have use for him. We're not against God. The idea of God. Yeah, there's probably some power out there, but it's irrelevant. We're living for right now. We're living for me. I'm my God. I'm living for me. I don't even need to talk about God. That's an antiquated idea for antiquated people, and it's how unsophisticated people used to deal with life, but we know better than that now. Does that sound familiar? Because that's what's coming out of academia. As they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to an unfit mind. How many of you have a translation that say a reprobate mind? A reprobate mind means a mind that does not work. Unfit, depraved, reprobate, a mind that's born broken has now been completely and absolutely turned into something useless. Unfit mind. Why? To do those things which are not proper. Do you see in our society people that have no morality whatsoever anymore? When I was a kid, there was a cultural morality. There was just certain things you didn't talk about in public. Now, they don't talk about it. They just do it in public. Unfettered. There's no rules. Wear what you want to wear. Say what you want to say. Act the way you want to act. We don't need God. How does a culture get to that point? Because they've told God to take a back seat, and he has. Yeah. Yeah. We see God's wrath toward total depravity expressed, executed. We see the examples of it that Paul is giving. This is what it looks like. So what's going to be man's response? He gives us that here as well. Man's response is indifference. We see the indifference of total depravity toward God's wrath. God's wrath toward radical corruption is met with indifference of radical corruption toward God's wrath. Look at verse 29. Having been filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, and evil, That describes what we just read in the previous three steps. Gave them over, gave them over, gave them over to an unfit mind. After all this has happened, the description here in verse 29 is, having been filled with all manner of unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, and evil. They've been filled with that. What does that produce? They are now full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, violent, arrogant. I passed up part of the clause I was supposed to stop at, because I got carried away. They've been filled with all manner of unrighteousness. Now we see it come out in envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. We see this as evidence of it coming out, and then we hear what they are. This is what people are. This is what we find in the world. People that are these things. They are gossips. You ever met anybody that you can't trust a single word they say about somebody? You ever met somebody like that? You say, man, I'm thinking nine of them right now. I know. Because they've gone down this progression of rejecting God and God allowing them to have what they want, and they wind up with an unfit mind And as we're going to see, although they may not make a life practice of all of these things, they're perfectly okay for you to do it because they wanna do it when they feel like it. We'll see that in a moment, that's the indifference part. They are gossips, they are slanderers. Haters of God. Don't even wanna talk about God, don't wanna hear about Christ, don't wanna hear about the truth of the Bible. They're violent, arrogant, boastful. Inventors of evil. There's not enough bad to be done in the world. They're inventing new ways to do it Disobedient to parents that is an interesting one to have right here Well, yeah, I just I just disobeyed my yeah. Yeah, I'm not nobody's perfect. I've disobeyed my parents You're talking about people that are divorcing their parents today. I want to have anything to do with what my parents have to say We had a Thanksgiving service here last week. We had several kids. I just want to thank God for my parents. I That's great. That's what you should do. Because without them, you wouldn't be you. But what we have is a culture that disobedient parents don't matter. I want to have a sex change, so I go talk to my teacher at school, and they'll put me in talks with the right people. My parents don't ever have to know, because I don't care what my parents think. That would shock the socks off every parent in this room. That's happening all over this country. You're a girl trapped in a boy's body. No, you're not you've got perverted ideas about how God made you quit thinking like that Can't say that in Canada today Preacher says that in Canada. He's going to jail So if I do move from here won't be to Canada I Say that the Lord may just make me eat those words, but I'm not planning to go to Canada Let's finish this verse. They are without understanding. They are untrustworthy. They are unloving. They are unmerciful. Friends, this is a description of what Paul said back in verse 18, the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. This is, in a word, wretchedness. It is bottom-level gutter-dweller description. In verse 32, he said, well, who would want to live like that? Hmm. That's a good question. Depraved people want to live like that. And what we're going to see in verse 32 is indifference. Indifference to two things. Indifference to the level of depravity that I experience and indifference to the level of depravity that they experience. Because if they're further down the line, I'm better here than I would be there. And I let them go off the rails so that anything that I want to do on this side of that is okay. yes we need to have homosexual marriage we need to make uh... that this this sexual perversion of of change a little boys to girls a little girls to boys and then having these operations and and and the change of hormones and the most manly man on the planet in nineteen seventy six things he's a woman today i want my wheelies box back man We live in a depraved world, and one of the most sophisticated places that's ever existed. This is still the same. This is not first century AD stuff in Greco-Roman culture. This is in Apollosus. You can't go to the store without this perversion in your face. And they're indifferent to it, although they know the righteous requirement of God. That's why they flaunt it, they want to get a rise out of you. I was at Lowe's yesterday and two obviously, openly, grotesquely practicing lesbian women walked in. One of them dressed like a guy, I don't know what she was dressed like. Holes in the ears, saggy pants. And all they wanted was for somebody to give them a jeering glance. It disgusts me, and I don't mind telling them it's disgusting to me. I don't care. It's disgusting to me because it dishonors the God that made you, and you need to repent of that sin and turn to him. And I don't apologize for it, and I'm not flaunting Jesus to you, but you're flaunting that wretched, wicked rebellion to me. It's a tough spot to be in. When someone wants to repent, friends, you go with them with a box of Kleenex and an arm on their shoulder. when they want to flaunt it what they need to hear is you know the righteous requirement of god you're trying to get me to say something so that you can respond to it and put me on the defense although they know that were righteous requirement of god what is the righteous requirement of god that those who practice such things are worthy of death they know that it's such a dishonoring thing to god to live in absolute rebellion they know that's the case And they know that it means that they should die. Although they know all of those things, here's the indifference. They not only do the same, but give hearty approval to those who practice it. Those that make a lifestyle of it, we applaud them. Say, preacher, we don't do that. Watch the Academy Awards. Watch MTV Awards, whatever they are, I don't know. I'm an old guy, I don't care. Watch the award ceremonies that the world gives. Country music awards, whatever they are. I guess they still have that stuff. Go watch what they parade. Nobody wants to see a homosexual witch in the Wizard of Oz. Nobody wants to see that. Nobody paid to see it the first time, but they made another one. We're going to keep doing it because we give hearty approval to those that make a practice of it so that we can live our life. And if everybody's that way, then I'm okay. Cultural morality is out the window. Any external compulsion is out the window. The internal compulsion has been quenched. I'm free to live any way that I want, but friends, hell is coming and the world needs to know it. Let me leave you with this. This refusal, this wretchedness and this refusal. I thought about it and said, Lord, where am I going to end this today? Ultimately, I know where I'm going to end this series on total depravity, but where am I going to end today? Turn to Psalm 107. We're almost done. I hate to tell you that because you kind of start checking out, but you want to stay here for this. Psalm 107. It's Brother Andre's favorite psalm. You ask him about Psalm 107, he'd love to talk about this. Title of it is God Saves in Times of Trouble. Look at verse 10. There were those who inhabited darkness and the shadow of death, prisoners in affliction and irons. Because they had rebelled against the words of God and spurned the counsel of the Most High, so He subdued their heart with labor, they stumbled and there was none to help. That's what we just read in Romans chapter 1. They're in a dark country, they're in affliction and change, they're chained to their lust, they're chained to their unrighteousness, they're filled with all manner of ungodliness and wretchedness. He subdued their heart with labor. They stumbled and there was none to help. You need to remember that, none to help. That's the point that you've got to come to when you hear the gospel before the gospel matters at all to you. There is none to help you the way that you were born. And they came to that conclusion and said, you know what? We might as well live it up today, baby, because tomorrow's not guaranteed to us. Is that what verse 13 says? No, then they cried out to Yahweh in their trouble. And he said, uh-uh, away from me, you worker of iniquity. Is that not what yours says? What does it say? He saved them. Notice there's no qualifier there. They cried out to God. He saved them. Not you know what we need to get back to where we were so we can get closer to God They didn't say that there's none to help There's no way out and they cried out to God and he saved them out of their distresses He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death. He broke their bands apart Verse 15 is why the gospel needs to be proclaimed to believers Because that's where all of us were He broke our bands apart. He breaks apart the bonds of all that come to him and plead with him on his terms. Cry out to God. Verse 15 says, let them give thanks to Yahweh for his loving kindness and for his wondrous deeds to the sons of men. For he has shattered the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron. There is a God that saves sinners in the heavens. And we need that God because we're all Romans 1 sinners by birth. But those that come to Him on His terms and cry out to Him, He saves them. People go to hell for one reason. Because they will not believe God and cry out to Him on His terms. That's why people go to hell. Because we're all sinners. And we all need a great Savior. And there is one in heaven that will save you today if you will cry out to Him. And if He has saved you because you did cry out to Him, you have reason to thank and praise Him today. So stand, and we're going to pray. I appreciate your attention today. I pray that it's been profitable for you. Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You that You are willing to save what we need to hear, even whom we don't want to hear it. the dark news of the reality of sin and man is not pretty it is not popular never has been but we would never have any idea that that was true of us had you not given us your word and pointed us to the Savior that will save those that come to him in spite of how deep the sin may run, in spite of how far down this road of sin, this broad road we may have run, there is always salvation available for those that will repent, for those that will put their faith and trust in you and cry out to you on your terms, you save us and bring us into your kingdom and put us on the straight and narrow way, and you guide us there, protect us there. and you daily provide for us more than we ever could earn. And we praise you for it. We will bless your people for being here today. I pray it in Jesus's name, amen.