Psalm 14, to the choir master of David. The fool says in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt. They do abominable deeds. There is none who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside. Together they become corrupt. There is none who does good, not even one. Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread? and do not call upon the Lord? There they are in great terror, for God is with the generation of the righteous. You would shame the plans of the poor, but the Lord is his refuge. Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion when the Lord restores the fortunes of his people. Let Jacob rejoice. Let Israel be glad. This morning's sermon, we're going to take a look at Romans 1, verses 16 through the end of the chapter. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first, and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. The creation of the world as invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and forfeited animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness and the lust of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them up to vile passions for even their women exchanged natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lust and for one another, men with men, committing what is shameful and receiving in themselves the penalty of the rare, which was due. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting, being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, and maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness. They are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, and veners of evil things. disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful, who knowing the righteous judgments of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same, but also approve of those who practice them. We thank you, Lord, for thy word, and we pray that you apply it to our hearts. Give us wisdom in your son's name. Amen. We're going to take a look at especially verses 18 through 25. And Paul starts his discussion here as he gets into the meat of the Book of Romans. And I know Pastor Lee preached on this a few years ago. So hopefully some of it is things we can recall from memory. But he starts his gospel presentation with the gospel, verses 16-17. That is the good news, kind of a truncated presentation of the gospel. But we're mostly concerned this morning with verses 18-25 and what the problem with man is. The sermon is titled, God Doesn't Believe in Atheists. And we see that from these verses in 18 through 25 of Romans 1. And this largely arose because of a conversation I had at work with a gentleman who claimed to be an atheist. And he said, I'm an atheist. And I said, well, no, you're not. And it did take him aback, as it usually does. And he kind of stumbled around for a minute, and he said, well, you know, I reject the Christian idea of God. That was kind of my paraphrase. OK, he might not be an atheist, but he does reject the Christian idea of God. And he just doesn't like the New Testament at all. He thought the Old Testament was all right, but the New Testament is awful. He didn't like that whatsoever. So he just rejects Christ. this section of Romans gives us a synopsis of what the problem is why don't people believe and and how does this end for them now a famous atheist and he's so famous I cannot remember his name or a professed atheist I like to use professed and if anybody knows I mean I thought it was Bertrand Russell but I could find No example of him saying this, but this atheist, professed atheist said, you know, if God would just come down here and perform a miracle in front of me, you know, kind of like a circus act, you know, then I would believe. Now Bertrand Russell did say, and I do think he's the author of that quote. I just, maybe I didn't Google the right words to have it pop up. He also went on to say that unless you assume a God, the question of life's purpose is meaningless. So here is a professed atheist just announcing to the world that this is all purposeless, that since he doesn't believe in God, that it's all a bunch of hooey. But the goal of life is to be nice to each other, and he does have some conception of some eternity of the soul. It's just really weird. It's just really jumbled. And it plays into exactly what we're going to be reading. talking through here Romans 18 through 25 where just people just don't make sense once they say they reject God it just becomes a jumble so why is it that people don't believe in what what's the problem and we read in in verses 19 through 20 that God has made himself known in them and out in the world out in the universe It is an internal and an external witness. It's not God's fault in any way that they don't believe. He's made it clear to them. He's manifested the knowledge of Him in them. What does Genesis 126 teach us? From the very beginning of Scripture, it tells us God created man in our image, in His image. God said, let us create man. in our image. What is God speaking of there? He's speaking of the triune God. That's a conversation within the Godhead. God has created us in His image so we have an innate understanding that God exists. We know this. Everyone knows this. Gertrude Russell knows this. Nietzsche, who said God is dead. He knows this. Or he knew this, I should say. Nietzsche is dead. God is alive. They know this. In fact, Romans 2 verse 15 even tells us that there's in some way that the law is written on everyone's hearts, even the heathen. Not in a way that saves them, of course, but as a witness. They're conscious, bearing witness that God is God and He exists. He has a law, morality. And what is more is creation bears witness. Even of the Trinity, the Belgic Confession tells us this in Article 2. We know him by two means. First, by creation, preservation, and the government of the universe, which is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are so as has so many characters leading us to see clearly his invisible attributes, even his eternal power and Godhead, as the Apostle Paul says, all which things are sufficient to convince men and leave them without excuse. Creation bears witness of God. The heavens declare the glory of God, the psalmist says. It's evident in the birth of a baby, in the birth of a giraffe. Study that sometime. That's amazing how giraffes are birthed. Just the arrangement of the universe, the sun going up and down every day, or however you want to describe that. I mean, it's obvious that God exists. Everything goes as it goes before. Everything happens like it was designed to happen. So, because of their ignorance, and verse 18 also talks of their unthankfulness, the result of this is that God's wrath is upon them. God's wrath is certainly something that takes place in eternity, but just as eternal life begins when we trust in Christ. The wrath of God bears upon the wicked in this life as well. And God's wrath is upon them. They cannot complain against Him. The canons of Dort, Articles 4 and 5. If I can find the next, I forgot to bring up my book. formed three forms of unity that were all marked out. But the canons teach in the first set of doctrine, Article 4, the wrath of God abides upon those who believe not the gospel, this gospel, but such as receive it and embrace Christ as Savior by true and living faith are by him delivered from the wrath of God and from destruction and have the gift of eternal life conferred upon them. Article 1 teaches that all, as all men have sinned in Adam lie under the curse and are deserving of eternal death. God would have done no injustice by leaving them all to perish, and delivering them over to condemnation on account of sin, according to the words of the apostles, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God." There was an illustration I heard earlier this week, or read earlier this week, concerning a governor going down a death row in a prison. just the idea that there'd be a hundred men there or folks there just to make it easy to understand and that governor walks down death row and he pardons Bob and he pardons Fred and that's it. Has he shown injustice to the other 98? Well, I mean, they would think so. But objectively, would that be unjust of the governor to not pardon all 100? It's a wonderful act of mercy and grace that he pardons the two. The other 98 are going to get their just punishment, like the thieves on the cross said to one another. The thief that trusted in Christ, that's pretty much what he said to the other thief, wasn't it? We deserve this. He does not. And so this wrath that's upon them is not something they can blame God for. And in fact, ultimately, when they come to perdition, if they've not trusted in Christ, they will acknowledge Christ as Lord. Philippians 2 tells us that. They will bow down, every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. They won't do this in a way that saves them. They'll just be acknowledging the truth. They'll probably go on ashing their teeth forever against the Lord from that point on after acknowledging his existence, which they already knew, but rejected. And then they will, after they acknowledge this, they will be cast into hell. This is a very serious matter, this wrath of God, the situation of every one of us that has not trusted in Christ. And we can see As I said, the wrath of God is on the heathen in this life. It's not just something future. There are tangible signs of their rejection of God, and they have no excuse. Once again, we have to remember that. It tells us that because although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools. Just as in the time of Noah, Genesis 6, it says, every imagination of the hearts of men was evil continually. And this is the situation even today. This has not changed. We have not improved. You know, when you think about the crazy things people will believe, I mean, even when I professed atheism, you know, years ago, I thought Darwinism was stupid. I mean, it just makes no sense. It's just really goofy. And and we have We had one scientist, I think it was Arthur Clarke Who talked about you know the world came from? a theory called spermogenesis it was the aliens the aliens came down and Planted the seed on the earth and we came from the alien seed Which begs the question does it not? Where did the aliens come from? It answers nothing. Spontaneous generation. The idea that life just emerged out of the goo and the slime. This is what my friend at work was speaking of. Yeah, we just emerged from the slime. That's where we came from. What? That's crazy. I mean, paganism. Which manifests itself in many forms through climate change hysteria. We're back to believing stuff about the weather that the medieval people believed. The LGBTQFAX whatever movement doesn't even know what a woman is anymore. Unless you're a biologist. Apparently they all became biologists when the high court decreed that it wasn't a constitutional right to murder a child, that it might be okay in the different states to murder a child, but it wasn't a federal constitutional right. They all became biologists then, but we don't even know which restroom to walk into anymore. We are so deranged and crazy. And we see that Paul is calling these folks fools and foolish, and that's a serious accusation. Remember what Jesus said about this very thing. He says, whoever says, you fools, in danger of hellfire, that's from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5. But Paul is showing here that, yeah, people can be fools. Psalm 14 starts off with, the fool says in his heart, there is no God. There is a point where people are fools. Scripture clearly teaches that. What's crazy is that when people reject the true worship of Christ, of the Triune God, they don't just go off on their own and do nothing. They worship. They worship harder than we ever dreamed of. They turned to idols to idolatry. It's the natural regression of the heathen. Professing to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and forfeit animals and creeping things. I mean, they'll work all day creating an altar or an image. Isaiah mocks them in the passage where he talks about they used part of the wood for For creating a fire to cook their food, and then they use the rest of the wood to make an idol. They become fools. And they worship, even if it's worshiping themselves, an idea. Psalm 14 shows us this pattern as well, and we read that earlier. And we'll just briefly take a look at Psalm 14, because you can pretty much see most of this Psalm repeated in the Book of Romans, where there's Chapter 1 here, that might very well be what Paul is thinking about when he calls these folks fools. And then Chapter 3 has most of the rest of Psalm 14 quoted in it. But Psalm 14 we read, for the chief musician, the Psalm of David, the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt. They've done abominable works. There is none who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned. aside, they have together become corrupt. There is none who does good, no, not one. Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call on the Lord? There they are in great fear, for God is with the generation of the righteous. You shame the counsel of the poor, but the Lord is his refuge. Oh, that the salvation of Israel would come unto Zion, when the Lord brings back the captivity of his people. Let Jacob rejoice, and Israel be glad. We have the same story in the Old Testament as in the New. People are foolish. They're corrupt. They're sinful. They turn from God. And what's more, reading different folks about this passage, this might be about the Jews in Israel at that time who are corrupt and eating up the poor and just turning to idols. Or this might be the heathen. I don't see why we can't say it's both. There certainly were corrupt men in Israel who were turning aside from God and worshiping idols and trying to destroy God's people, just as the heathen. There's always a battle between the wicked and the heathen and God's people. And it will be a great day when when the Lord brings back the captivity of His people. Instead of being slaves to sin, we are slaves to Christ. As Bob Dylan said, you've got to serve somebody. You serve Christ or you serve Satan. So, the end result of their wickedness, The end result of their wickedness is their destruction and perdition, their destruction and hell being cast there. So I suppose this isn't completely the end result of their wickedness. This is while they're still on this earth, what is going on with those who have turned from the Lord, who have rejected His clear evidences internally and externally. What is it they engage in? What is it they do? How is it that we know they are fools? Well, we read that God gives them what they want. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness and the lust of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves. He gives them over and you can read about, we read verse 26 and 27, that ultimate application of that. you know, sodomy and such, God gives them over. That's what they want. Everybody gets what they want. Everybody chooses what they want. In Christ, you choose righteousness, and we still sin, we know, but generally we are free to choose righteousness. In Adam, we choose wickedness, death, and sin. God gives them over to what they want. They're doing what they want. They can't complain. So we see the problem is not wisdom in a worldly fashion or intellectual arguments. They're not going to be swayed by a cosmological argument for the existence of God or the moral argument or any other argument for God that's really not going to help a whole lot. It might get them to believe in a god, but that just brings them so far. The problem, as this passage teaches, is sin. They reject the truth in unrighteousness. They suppress it, actually, is what it says. And then they reject it. But the truth is in them. The law of God's written on their hearts. They know God exists. And so it's not a matter of being convinced of this. They know it. But they love their sin. They revel in their sin. They have parades for sin. They're prideful of their sin. Evidence or clever arguments can't really win the sinner to Christ. And this is kind of where my discussion with this gentleman, the professor and atheist, ended because work happened as it does at work. And I didn't get a chance to apply the gospel to him. But the answer is the gospel. That is what people need. Evidence and clever arguments are, there may be a, time and a place to briefly engage in in such things with someone but so many times that it gets to the point that they throw up their hands and they know that their arguments are goofy and they'll say you know well can God make a if God is so great can you make a burrito too hot to eat as I had one person asked me one time or can God make a rock Too big for him to lift. No, now you're speaking nonsense. No, don't speak nonsense. God can't do that. It makes no sense. But I know from personal experience, I used to love all these different arguments and study them. And a lot of the folks I would read and listen to pastors, theologians, people that taught apologetics, you know, defending the faith, they would say, you know, hey, you know, if you're going to understand where this person is coming from with this belief, you've got to study this book. If you've got to, if you want to understand what the Jehovah's Witnesses teaches, you have to read all their stuff. You've got to immerse yourself in these things. And man, that just, it was like a burden weighing me down. I was learning everything except Christ. reading goofy literature about things that don't matter as much. And then I saw and read this debate where the theologian just applied scripture and the gospel to a professing atheist. And it was the most wonderful thing I'd ever seen in my life. And I realized, man, that's right. That's the way you do it. We don't have a common ground to meet the heathen on, the unbeliever. They believe one thing. They have a theology. Everybody's got a theology. And it informs all the evidence that comes into their life. There was a study done recently that said One thing, and all those who are in favor of it, that this study rejected, just no, no, no, no, no. We don't believe that study. There's some studies over here. You're going to believe based upon your theological convictions. So the point of the matter is the unbeliever needs the gospel. He needs his convictions uprooted and turned around And we must not give them any ground. There's not neutrality. The only real common thing we have is that we're created in God's image, and that's where we work from. You know God exists. He created you in His image. Therefore, repent and believe the gospel. See, the great lie is In this world, it's not that people can determine their gender, or all 57 of them or whatever. It's not that Epstein didn't kill himself, nor that Elvis is alive or anything else. It's that men have a reason to reject Christ and reject God. There's no evidence out there for them. And that is a lie from the pit of hell. This is based upon their sin and their depravity. And Heidelberg, day three, does a great job of exposing this, questions seven and eight. From where then does this depraved nature of man come from the fall and disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in paradise, whereby our nature became so corrupt that we are all conceived and born in sin? But are we so depraved that we are completely incapable of any good and prone to all evil? Yes. unless we are born again by the Spirit of God. Because our hearts are an idol factory, Calvin said. He was just paraphrasing Ezekiel 14. If you get a chance to read that, do it. It's awesome. Idols don't have to be great images of animals or gods or people. Idols can be microscopes, telescopes, isotopes, popes, or anything else. Apart from Christ, even family can be an idol. Our great and only hope is this gospel that Paul laid forth in verses 16 and 17. He is not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation. For everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed, from faith to faith. As it is written, the just shall live by faith. Christ and His righteousness are what we need. This gospel is so powerful. Paul is putting this forth at the beginning of his great theological epistle. It is so powerful. It is greater than the Greek mind and philosophers that he always makes reference to. It was more powerful than the Roman emperors that he was, in a way, directly addressing here. This is the seat of power of the world in Rome. And Paul was writing this from Corinth. And yet we know that in a few years he would be in the Emperor's palace chained to guards proclaiming boldly and with power this gospel that turned Rome upside down for Christ. Making it a beacon of light for generations. The power of the gospel is unparalleled through the power of the Holy Spirit. Then we see when we read in Psalms 14 verse 7 that the power of God's people worshipping Him is something we need to take away from this. Oh, that the salvation of Israel would come out of Zion when the Lord brings back the captivity of His people. Let Jacob rejoice in Israel. Be glad. It is here, every Sunday, that we repeatedly celebrate Christ's victory over sin, death, evil, and the corruption and evil of this world. Every Sunday, on the Lord's Day, we come forth and declare Christ's awesome power. We declare the day of the Lord. And it's interesting that It doesn't say in Scripture that the gates of heaven will withstand Satan's advances. No, it says that the gates of hell will be broken down. They cannot withstand the power of the Gospel. And that starts with our worship of Him as a family of God, God's covenant people. And we see also that the bold witness of how powerful our bold witness is. And we see Paul in this truncated gospel presentation there in Romans 16, but I think it might very well be birthed out of what we see when he was preaching to the philosophers at Athens. And I'll start at verse 29. Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that divine natures like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man's devising, truly these times of ignorance got overlooked. But now commands all men everywhere to repent, because he has appointed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising him from the dead. And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, while others said, we will hear you again on this matter. So Paul departed from among them. However, some men joined with him and believed. Among them, Dionysus the Arapagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them." Our bold witness of the gospel shakes people to their core. One way or the other, it's the great sifter of souls through the power of the Holy Spirit. And we have to know that it's not, once again, it's not about us. It's not about us. It's not clever arguments that are going to win anybody. It's the power of the Gospel. I mean, Paul was pointing right to their sin. Their ignorance, calling a bunch of philosophers ignorant. That's pretty bold. Their sin was their ignorance of God. Paul was talking about Romans 1, 18-25. We know God exists. The unknown God that they said they were worshiping, they know. Paul made that clear to them. You know this God. But our witness, lest we be confused, and get discouraged because people aren't responding to our arguments and words. It's about Christ. And if we are faithful and boldly bringing forth His gospel, and we pray the Holy Spirit does His work, God will do what He will. He will save those whom He will. He means to say, and we can rest that we were blessed to be able to partake in His work. So let's remember the gospel is about God and the wicked have no excuse for rejecting Him. Let's pray. We thank You, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You are awesome and give us everything all the time. People are without excuse. We were without excuse before Your Holy Spirit turned us to You. I pray that You would give people new hearts that don't love You and who know You exist but reject You in unrighteousness. Turn their stony heart to bless You. and help us to be bold witnesses, both on Sundays when we proclaim your greatness and your glory, and then as we go throughout the week, not worrying about what to say, Lord, but just sharing the simple, powerful gospel of Christ. I pray this in your Son's precious and holy name. Amen.