So Romans chapter 1 verse number 21 says, Let us pray. Father, we thank you and praise you, God, for what you do. We pray that you watch over us. Bless this message. Lord, bless the rest of this service. Lord, give me the wisdom, Lord, to know how to present this to everybody, and help us, Lord, to see the significance of this. Lord, we thank you for all this, and we ask it in your son Jesus' name. Amen. All right, Romans chapter 1, verse 21, it is the transition point where we've gone from talking about all this other stuff about, you know, how that God's revealed himself. There's no reason for anybody to not know who he is. and all the doctrinal things that preceded that, to now, this is what the rest of the chapter is going to be about. The rest of the chapter is, because they did not glorify God as God, and neither were they thankful, which we'll talk about next week. I feel like it's the perfect message for Thanksgiving, so. But we'll talk about not glorifying God today, and not being thankful next week. And it says those two things, because they were not thankful to Him, and they did not give Him the glory, That's why everything else that happens on this list happens to people. And so the real answer he's giving to you is the reason why people can go into such sins that you can't imagine them doing things like that, or how a society can become so evil or wicked. Because remember, the point of Romans chapter number one is he's asking the question, why are the Gentiles this way? So that he then can contrast that in chapter two with, well, you Jews have the law. Why are you also doing a lot of the same things? So then by the time you get to chapter 3, he can bring the big point, which is, because all men by nature are sinners. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There's none good, no not one. So when you understand that context, you know where he's going with it, but here he's closing out this chapter before he starts to rebuke the people who have the law, who have the word of God, and don't do right, by showing you just how wicked people can become when they don't give God the glory. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to use this as a little bit of an overview of what verses come next so that we then can come back and study them in really great detail, far more than you probably want to because when we get to the list of sins, we're going to talk about them one by one. So that's why this chapter is going to take a very, very long time to get through. But we're going to come back and go through everything in detail. Today, though, I want to look at the bigger picture of the rest of the chapter and compare that to the Scripture and other parts of the Bible as well. So we've seen now that the reason why everything that follows this happens is because, as we read in verse 21, because that when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God. So they knew who He was. That's what the verses before this were about. The verses, verse 20 and so forth, were about the fact that creation preaches to you who God is. It teaches you His power. It teaches you the things about God that you cannot see. It helps you to understand what the Godhead, like the concept of God is. Creation preaches all that to you so that no man can say truly they don't know who God is or what God is or any of that kind of stuff. They may not know the details of Christianity, but to know like the general concepts, all of that's out there in creation being preached to them. And so he said, once they knew that, they still say, well, I don't really believe there's a God. Once they knew that, they said, well, I don't really see Him as the God who created all things. They took away His glory in some way, and then you see what comes from that as we move forward. So that's why today we're actually going to do something we haven't done a lot in Romans 1, and that's we're going to read a lot of Romans chapter 1, instead of just taking thought by thought. So verse number 22, He says, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. So the first thing that preceded, or the next thing that happened to somebody who said that I know there's a God, like I can see the fingerprints and the evidence and all that stuff in the universe around me, I just don't know that I really believe that He's God. I don't know that I believe that He's who He says He is or any of these things. They didn't give Him the glory. As He says, while trying to profess themselves to be wise, they became fools. And I'm not going to go deep into each of these points because, again, we're going to come back and revisit each of these one by one in the coming weeks. So there's no point in me, you know, getting too deep into them in this message. But the point he's making is the simple idea that if the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, then the beginning of foolishness is to not fear Him, is to not give Him the glory or regard Him as God. And so you see that, like, I mean, when societies reject God and they try to go away from him, they profess themselves to be wise. Like, honestly, right now we live in an age where technology is as great as it has been ever. You have men who are very learned, great in philosophy and all this stuff, but Separating from technology and looking more to the side of philosophy and things, what you'll notice is the more we pretend like we understand how the mind works, how everything works, how emotions work, the more we pretend that we understand the universe around us in that way, the more foolish we tend to get. The more we turn away from God, the more foolish men become. So that the things that are being, even scientifically you see that, like since we've already been talking about that, I can use that maybe more as the example, is the more men refuse to admit there is a God, the more outlandish and ridiculous their theories of how we got here without God become. So that you have people who just completely skirt past the question of how does the universe exist and say, well, you just have to accept that it exists. But we live here because aliens put us here because obviously evolution couldn't work in any model or any version of it you present. So aliens put us here. Or you have people who come to it and say, well, Infinite time doesn't work because that's not how mutations work and it's not really possible That everything could be getting right over and over again to mutate from a single-celled organism to the complex organisms We are because most organisms would not have ever had a second chance to mutate the next step They would have died out on the first mutation And so it's not possible for them to have bred and spread and all of this. The fact that things like gender and things that exist, you know, the sex of having male and female, it's not possible for that to have mutated on its own. Science proves that. There are so many things like that that when they begin to realize that infinite time is not ever going to answer the question, they go to comic books and come back and say, ah, well, we think it's infinite possibility. It's not just infinite time, it's also infinite possibility in that there's multiple universes all stacked one upon the other and you just happen to be in the one where everything got right. There's other ones where it didn't happen though. There's other ones where those animals don't exist because they didn't manage to make it past the first mutation. And it sounds good to someone who doesn't stop and think about it. It's like, oh yeah, they thought about this and they got something to say. But it's like when they also tell you that the answer to how the universe got here is you had an infinitely dense ball of mass, it was spinning, it exploded, it expanded, it became a universe. It doesn't answer any question whatsoever as far as why things reaccumulated and began spinning. and creating gravity and making planets. It doesn't answer any of those questions. It doesn't answer how anything could have moved faster than the speed of light to have done that, which violates all the laws of physics. It doesn't answer the questions of where the ball of mass came from in the first place. It is literally just a very smart person doing what has been done throughout all of history, where they make up some nonsensical answer like, oh, there's a giant man named Atlas, and he holds the Earth on his back. That's how it's hanging in space. Or there's a turtle, and you know, it's on its back, and it's on the back of the elephants. I've given that one many times, I'm not going to run through that. But it's just men using much more educated words to say the same nonsense. Because the answer when you ask, well, where did the ball of mass come from? Well, the last universe collapsed and imploded on itself and became an infinitely dense ball of mass, and that's what exploded to make this universe. So where did the last universe come from? Oh, that's a good question. Well, it also came from an infinitely dense ball of mass. Well, then where did that come from? Well, the universe before that imploded. So where is the beginning of this? Like, where do you get back to the beginning? There is no beginning in that kind of nonsense. It's just a sequence of nonsense is what it is. So when you want to see what I mean, or what he means when he says, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. This is what he's talking about. He's showing you that when men say, OK, I don't believe there's a God and I'm just going to press on in my pursuit of being wise without God as a focal point, as the lens that I view things through. then you have to start going through a whole lot of stuff to try to explain why all this exists without God. You have to start going down some pretty crazy trails to where, OK, either I believe multiple universes, which again we took from comic books. They've been writing about that for decades. You have to believe in simulation, that now apparently the Matrix is scientific fact, if you know that movie. so that we all just live in a big simulation, but then we have to answer who created the simulation, where does that come from? You understand, no matter what answer they give, it doesn't work. And this matters. It's very relevant to what we're talking about because here's the issue. They hear you say that I believe there is a God, and they interpret that as meaning that some statue that somebody carved and set on a shelf created the universe. And that's not what we're saying. Nobody in Christianity who is a Bible believer, like, yes, you go over here and you have people praying to a statue of Mary and begging her to go ask Jesus, to go ask the Father to go do something for them, then yes, they probably look to that statue as if it created the universe around them. But I'm talking about Bible-believing Christians. None of us sat down and say, God created the universe, and we're thinking of a plaque that we saw on a wall somewhere of somebody drawing their idea of what they think Jesus looked like. We're not talking about a God who can be made by men. We're not talking about the Greek gods. We're not talking about the idols of Hinduism. We're not talking about any of this stuff. We're talking about the idea of a Godhead, a God who is real and that He is all-powerful. He is all-knowing. He is all-present. He exists outside of eternity. He does not bound by the limits of time. He is not bound by the restrictions of men. The laws of nature do not command Him. They bow to His command because He is the one who instituted them in the first place. And I'll tell you, even some of the smartest men in the world who are smart by the world's standards at least, who go and debate and they hate God and they reject God, they themselves will admit that that's actually their problem. Like, I hate to always bring Dawkins into it, but he's one of the few I've actually listened to quite a bit to hear what he had to say about it. That Dawkins over in England, that's his big thing. Is whenever he starts talking about why I don't believe in God, I go, where did God come from? Where is God's beginning? It's like, you've missed the whole concept. If you want to explain a universe without God, how matter can create itself, you have to be able to give a beginning. But we're not talking about matter. We're not talking about rocks. We're not talking about trees. We're talking about someone who, by the nature of the word God, means they are bigger than all of that. They are not bound by physical things. They're not bound by those laws. They exist outside of time and space. And they created all of those things. So it's you trying to take the creator and stick him inside the rules that he has created for you. And that doesn't work. And he will admit that, like, if I believed in a God who was, you know, eternal and all this, then I could see what you're talking about. But he doesn't believe that that's what we mean. And so that's where his problem comes in for men like him, is he thinks that Christians are talking about a God who is a statue who's set on a shelf that they go and pray to, like the Hindus and everybody else. Now, he will admit that the reason why he only attacks Christianity and he doesn't spend time on Islam or any of the rest is because he knows that you'd have to be quite dumb to buy into any of those, because they're very clearly worshipping a statue that was made by men. But he struggles to get the concept that, yes, there's people out there who imitate the worship of the real, true, and living God. But that has nothing to do with us. That's imitation, and very poor imitation, as they make their statues and things to worship them. And I'll show you this biblically in just a moment. But it's very poor imitation for all of that. What we worship is not something that can be crafted by the hands of men. He's not someone who has a beginning or an end. He is the beginning and the end. He is the one who spoke everything into creation. By the sound of his voice, it all exists. And the reason why men like Dalkin and others cannot just wrap their mind around that and say, OK, I get what you're saying. That makes more sense than what I'm preaching. is because in their mind they've already said, I refuse no matter what. If he revealed himself to me and I could see him with my own eyes, I do not care. I will not believe that there is a God who is so powerful he spoke into existence. And as a Bible believer, you have no problem with what I just said. Somebody who's not a Bible believer says, well, of course men would believe if they saw it with their own eyes. Well, Jesus walked on the earth and did things that's impossible for any man to do so that the miracles were so great that God said that the world could not contain them if you had to write them all down. He said that Sodom and Gomorrah would have repented if they just had a portion of the miracles that others had seen. And God walked in the presence of people who believed in God and they still said, we don't believe that's God. And if you want to see even better as a Bible believer, it's easier for you to see it because of the fact that when you look at the millennial reign of Christ, they'll have a thousand years of God himself setting on the throne. They've seen it with their own eyes. They've come and worshiped him. They know exactly who he is. He has ruled over them as a king for a thousand years. And the first time the devil is set free and they have a chance to follow anybody else, they'll line up behind the devil who's already lost to God multiple times just on the hope that just maybe just maybe this guy who says he's God, not quite who he says he is. So you understand that it's the nature of certain people by choice. Not because God didn't give them the ability, but because they've made that choice in their heart that they will not see Him as God and they will not give Him the glory. And because of that they go down this path, professing themselves to be wise, they become fools. And I've got much deeper than I wanted to. Verse 23. says to us, "...and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the image made like to corruptible man and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lust of their own hearts to dishonor their own bodies between themselves, who changed the truth of God into a lie and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen." So what he's getting to is people who criticize you and say, you know, you're foolish, you believe fairy tales, all this stuff for believing in God and we are intellectually superior to you. believe that crossing their fingers can somehow affect whether there's gonna be a storm coming our way tomorrow or not. They believe that wishing you good luck can make a difference in your life. They believe that if you walk under a ladder, and I don't know what the superstitions are in this part of the world, so if these are all American, just bear with it, apply yours in their place. But they believe that if you walk under a ladder, you've got bad luck now, a black cat crosses your path, you've got bad luck now, you broke a mirror, that's seven years of bad luck. I mean, they think you're foolish because you believe that there is an all-powerful being who answers all the questions, checks all the boxes, makes perfect sense as creator, but they're smarter than you because they don't believe in a creator, but they believe a black cat has the power to bring bad luck into their life, and that if they see it, they just might as well go home and call it a day. They believe that they can stand and cross their fingers because there's supposed to be a big storm coming this way, and that storm's not going to come anymore. Like it has some impact on the weather somehow. You understand, like all this nonsense they believe, but it goes beyond that. To where, like you look at the Greeks, for example, in history, just to look back at what we've seen already to have occurred, is that because they rejected the belief in God, they put an altar to an unknown God because they knew that logically there has to be a God bigger than theirs. because their mythology didn't really answer all the questions. So they knew there had to be an answer above that. He says, we don't know what it is, but we'll just build on to it and move on with their lives. And so they did not give him the glory. They acknowledged his existence, but did not give him the glory. And the Bible tells you a lot of this stuff about the Greeks. But because of that, what they proceeded to do was move forward and worship man. He says to the Greek, their belly is their god. They worship themselves, their feelings, their desires, their wants become their religion. So the Greek philosophy was if your body wants it, it's an appetite just like when you're hungry and you should feed it. So it didn't matter how perverse, how vile, how wicked, whatever it was, if you want it, you need it, you must give it to it just like if you're hungry and you want to eat something. And that's the direction they went. And you notice that worship of men is where, like, people want to brag about the art that's left behind by the Greeks and how beautiful and how well-sculpted the thing is. Well, it's because over time, when they began to worship the belly, they also began to worship man. And so they carved statues of their gods and began to worship them. And many statues left behind are statues of the Greek gods, who were then repurposed and used by the Catholic Church to make their images of Peter and James and John and all the different apostles and stuff. But you understand that many of those, like when you go over here in Ghent, and you see the restaurant there next to the castle, and it has the big statue of the man, I'm not going to say the name for the Lord's sake, I don't have to translate it, but I'll say it, it's Poseidon or Triton, I don't remember which mythology they borrowed from. But you understand, like, that's a Greek god. It's either a Greek god or a Roman god, depending on which name they stuck on it. Like, it's not just a beautiful statue somebody carved. That was something that they worshipped because they worshipped the body, and so they tried to carve this perfect specimen of human beauty. And so that's why they put so much time into this, because they began to worship it. And they became their worship, because when you do not glorify God, you will glorify something else. The Greeks began to glorify the body, so that literally the human body was what they made their idols out of. They weren't just statues for them, they were idols carved in the images of gods that they made up. And not only that, they began to worship their body so much that their whole philosophy of life became, if you want it, your body needs it, give it to it. If it's perverse and sexual, if it's a great sin, if it's punching someone in the face, it doesn't matter. If you have a lust or desire to do it, your body needs it. So by not doing it, you are depriving your body of basic necessities. Because they didn't worship God, so they worship themselves. You understand that? Here we don't, in this country, they don't worship God, or it depends, maybe they worship their version of God wherein Mary's the queen of heaven, and so they build their statues for that, and you go in some of the most ornately beautiful buildings you've ever seen in your life that are essentially just cemeteries, because they literally have people buried under the floor many times, but they have these cemeteries of spiritual death. When people come here thinking, OK, I believe there's a God, but they don't know the God of the Bible. And so because they don't glorify God the way they ought to, they fall to the lie of someone else who's presenting what they think is God. And they don't come worshiping Jesus. They come bowing down and kissing the feet of statues of saints and Mary and everybody else saying, go talk to Jesus for me and ask him to help meet my needs. So you have that form of it. But you have the other form of it here, wherein So many people who profess to be wise say, I believe in evolution, I believe that we came here over billions of years through chance and possibility, and I believe in the god of chaos, more or less, whether they want to call it that or not. And they can say, well, it's not a religion for me. But they sure build the statues everywhere around to promote it to. You can't go to the zoo without plaques telling you how that millions and billions of years ago, man evolved from ape. And they're indoctrinating your children with it like it's a religion. I mean, it sounds a lot like a religion to me. By faith, you have to believe this, because I told you it happened. And here, let me get your tax money and use it to pay for it, to put statues everywhere promoting it, to put plaques everywhere promoting it. We'll teach it in the school system. We'll do everything else, because that's what it is. It is a religion. They have their religious textbooks that they preach and teach from, that they use to then inform the classes. You understand, it's just a state-provided religion is all it is. But men who don't worship God will worship something else. In this case, they worship the idea of science, believing that no scientist could ever be corrupted, and that they will give you only the truth, and therefore they can take whatever they say at face value and never have to check behind them to see if it's true or not. But then they tell you that anything the pastor says must be a lie, so don't believe him in anything, especially if he's just quoting the Bible to you. So a scientist who's getting paid to literally find answers that promote somebody's agenda would never lie to you. But a pastor who's preaching the Bible, you can't trust that guy. You understand, it's the motivation changes when you don't believe there's a God because you don't actually care about the truth. You give your devotion to something else because you were made with a natural desire to be devoted to God within you. It's natural within men that we would have that because that's what we were created for. God didn't create men to live in sin and wickedness. God didn't create men to live in selfishness and all these things. God created men and put them in the garden. gave them everything they needed to have a fulfilling life so that he could have a place where he would meet with them and have a relationship with them because the one thing that they needed that wasn't in that garden was God. And so every day in the cool of the day, he would come and meet with them because they still needed him too. And you understand, that's how God made you. As much as you need anything else in this life, you need a fellowship with God. And men who do not glorify God as God will replace it with something else. They'll make an idol and say, OK, this is now my God. Or they'll worship their ideas and say, these are now my gods. But they will always worship something else. Now saying that, that's what he's showing us is happening to them in Romans chapter number one. Let's go back to Psalm chapter, and we'll come back to Romans one, so you may wanna hold your place, but Psalm chapter 106. Psalm chapter number 106, and we'll read verse 20 and verse 21. So we're gonna turn quite a little bit at this point in the message, and that we got like the general concept of what he's saying for the next few verses. Psalm chapter number 106, I say hold your place in Romans one if you can. Go back with me to Psalm chapter 106 and verse number 20. It says, Thus they change their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass. They forget God their Savior, which had done great things in Egypt. God's going to show you something very interesting in this verse and the next one I'm getting ready to give you. As He said for Israel that when they came out of Egypt and they were left alone for just a little while while Moses was up on the mountain talking to God, they went and they built the golden calf and they set it there. And He says they changed their glory into this calf. So whatever they replaced with the calf was the glory of Israel. And he says they changed their glory. They replaced it with this calf. Why? Because they forgot God. Then if you go over to Jeremiah chapter 2 and verse number 11. Jeremiah chapter 2 And verse number 11 says, hath a nation changed their gods that are yet no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit. So I'm at Israel again, how they went to idols. This is, you know, before with the golden calf, now it's with all the other idols that came. And he says, have you ever seen a nation that worships idols that they made with their own hands? The Philistines worshipped Dagon. They went and got a tree and carved it to look like a fish god, and then covered it in silver, gold, whatever they wanted to cover it in, and worshipped it knowing very well that they carved it down themselves with their own hands, and covered it themselves. It had no power to get out of the forest, it had no power to get into the temple, and when they put the Ark of the Covenant in there with it, it had no power to stand up. It fell down and broke. Twice it fell down. So you understand that They know very well that this is a statue that they've made, but he said the Philistines wouldn't even betray Dagon when they made it with their own hands. Yet Israel, who has a real, true, and living God, someone who's not made up by men, someone who's not a fairy tale, someone who's not just the ideas and philosophies of an individual, but someone who exists outside of time and eternity, someone who is all-powerful, all-knowing, He is their God. And they gave him up and traded him for Baal and Malek and Dagon and all these other false gods who you can go find the guy who carved him and go look at the statue and see exactly what it is. And he says, have you ever heard of a country doing that? Like you don't see countries just throwing away their idols to go get other idols. Now you do see Christianity moving and making a difference. You see Islam moving and making a difference in the sense that they go in there and they murder you if you don't follow them, but that's not what he saw. That's war. That's not evangelism. Catholic churches had their fair share of that kind of bloodshed too, but that's also not what we're talking about. I'm talking about Christianity when the Bible has been preached. You've seen countries lay their idols down and go worship God. But in terms of idolatrous countries laying down their idols and going picking up other idols, he says, you don't really see that. That's not something that happens because their devotion is so great to it. And yet Israel, who has the real thing, they laid him down, they gave up their glory. So the point he's making in both these passages, you pay attention, is that the glory of Israel is their God. Like, that's what makes them valuable, that's what makes them special, that's what makes them important, because that's what glory is. Glory is that part of something that makes you enjoy it. It's the part of something that makes it valuable to you. It's the part of something that makes you find beauty in this. So, for example, the glory of a precious jewel is its shine. It's that beautiful color and shine that it produces. The Bible says the glory of a young man is his strength. That's what gives him value to make him special. It's his strength. Now, I understand there's other things that make you valuable, but that's an example the Bible's giving. But you see that the glory of children is their father, and it goes the other way around. A father glories in his children. It's part of his value as a father. It's part of the beauty of his life is to have these children. So when we talk about the glory of something, we're talking about the part of that thing that gives you enjoyment, the part of that thing that is beautiful to you, the part of that thing that is valuable to you. And God says the thing that made Israel special in any way that anybody could ever enjoy them, find them beautiful or valuable, was God. And the moment they forgot him, they lost all that and became just like all the other nations. They became vile and wicked and disgusting like all the rest. They went into the ways of the Canaanites and did everything the Canaanites did. The people who God kicked out of the land. They went and copied them completely. And He's warning us that when we give up our glory by not glorifying God, by not making God the glory of our life so that He's the one who adds beauty and value and purpose and meaning and all of this to us, when we don't see Him for who He really is and let Him be God of our life, we do the same thing. We follow after the ways of the others and we'll replace God with something of no value, with idols that are trash, they're worthless. We will take and put up our education as the most important thing in life. We'll put our job as the most important thing in life. We'll put some other religion as the most important. We'll put our opinions. We'll put our family. We'll put whatever is the most important thing. Once God is no longer on that throne, something else will always take His place. And then if you go to Proverbs 20 and verse number... I just quoted Proverbs 20. I don't have to go there. If you go with me to Isaiah 40 and verse number 18. Isaiah 40 and verse number 18. It says, to whom then will ye liken God, or what likeness will ye compare unto Him? The rest of it is about how the workman goes and he cuts down the tree and he makes stuff and all of this. And the question is, knowing this, that the first repercussion of not giving God the glory is your mind is going to grow, your heart is going to, because wisdom and foolishness are matters of the heart. Your heart is going to grow more and more foolish and more and more corrupt if you do not regard God the way you're supposed to and give Him the glory. So knowing this very well and knowing that the next natural step of that is that you are going to by casting off Jesus and saying, I don't want to be bound to him anymore. I don't want to be one of these people who blindly devote my life to God. By casting him off, you will always, not maybe, not sometimes, always go down a path of foolishness wherein you have to twist the truth to make it fit your version of the universe, and you will eventually re-devote yourself. It's always, it's part of the always. It may take some time, but it's there. You will re-devote yourself to something else. You will dedicate your life to something else that will become your God. Maybe it's your family, maybe it's your philosophies, maybe it's your job, maybe it's a whole new religion full of idols. Doesn't matter. You will fully devote yourself to some ideology or philosophy when you take God off of the throne. Knowing that, the question is asked of you, who is like unto God? Or who would you compare him to? Like, knowing that's the consequence. You don't glorify God, you're going to put yourself as a slave in submission to something else. Something else will be your God. Maybe you'll be a full, devout missionary of evolution to teach it to everybody you know. Maybe you'll become the strongest humanist that you'll ever find. Maybe you'll go and join the New Age movement and drop acid and pray to devils, hoping that you can unlock the secrets of the universe. I don't know what you'll do. Because everybody will go their own path in all of this. But when you reject God and you go down this path, you will do one of those things. You will devote yourself wholly to something. So ask yourself the question, which one of those would you liken unto God? I mean, New Age movement, you're going to compare that to God? You're going to compare being devout evolutionist, you're going to devote your whole life to teaching this thing that you can't even prove from your own textbooks? You're going to devote your life to that because that's likened to God? You're going to devote yourself to humanism and your own philosophies because that's like unto God? You're going to devote yourself to something. Which one of those would you compare to God that's worth going down that road? Because he says you're going to do it. And that's why then he proceeds to talk about idols in the following verses. And then he even adds to that in Isaiah 44 verse 9 and 10, since we're in Isaiah we can read it. Isaiah 44 verse 9 and verse 10. It says that they that make a graven image are all of them vanity, and their delectable things shall not profit. And they are their own witnesses. They see not, nor know, that they may be ashamed. So he says, when you go down this path, you are going to make an image. You know that that image is worthless, and you've traded the glory of God for a corruptible image to worship the creature more than the creator. That's what you're always going to do. You're going to worship something that is created, some idea of philosophy a man made up, a statue somebody carved, a religion somebody made. It's man-made. You're going to trade that for the real, true, and living God. That's what's always going to happen when somebody doesn't give God the glory. That's why you see people who get out of church, they reject God and they go down that path. They'll get into alcohol, drugs, they'll get into something. They'll get into some cult and go full-blown into that and dedicate their life to it fully. They'll say, God was oppressing me because God wanted me to read the Bible and have peace and listen to him, but then they'll join a cult like the Jehovah's Witnesses who really oppress you and brainwash you and take over your life. You understand, when you trade Christ, you're not trading bondage for liberty, you're trading liberty for bondage. You're taking the God who promised to make you free who said he whoever Christ makes shall be free indeed whoever he makes free You're trading him for someone whose whole sole purpose is to put you in bondage to them And that's the route that you'll go down when you do this Then if we go back to Romans chapter number Romans chapter number one We're gonna keep reading this time. We're gonna drop down to verse number 28 it says and even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge and God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient." He says, once you go down this path, and we're going to talk about the sin and stuff if we get there, but he says, once you go down this path that you don't glorify God, you're going to let foolishness creep into your heart, you're going to start devoting yourself and your worship to things which are not God's, created things made by men, you're going to devote yourself to those. So you have God who is a creator, or created things, and you're going to go down that path, you're going to follow created things if you reject the creator, because there's only two choices. And so once you go down that path where you start devoting yourself to those things which are created of men, at some point God says when you don't want Him in your mind and you don't want to have a relationship with Him, He's not going to continue to bother you. And I don't believe that God shuts the door from His side and says, okay, I'm done, I'm never going to talk to you again. But He does let you shut it from your side to where it's okay. If you want to shut it, I'm not going to keep bothering you. I'm not going to keep standing at the door knocking. I will leave you over to a... Reprobate means something that if you were to put it to the refiner and to put it to the fire, it would only be dross. There's nothing valuable. There's no glory in it. It's all vanity. So when he says, I'll leave you to a reprobate mine, I mean, if you think about it, the first time the word reprobate's ever used in the Bible, that's what it's saying. He says, because Israel was, it's in Jeremiah 6, because Israel was put to the fire, they were brought to the boil, they were tested, there was nothing left of value to them, they were nothing but the dross. God says, I'll cast you as reprobate silver, meaning you're not silver, you're just a bunch of dross with some silver mixed into it, maybe. But there was nothing refinable, like if I put the fire to you, you're just gonna melt away. And so that's what reprobate means. He's saying, I've tried. I tried knocking at your door. I tried talking to you. I tried dealing with you. But there's nothing valuable there. There's nothing. There's nothing to work with, so to speak. And so he says, I'm going to turn you over to that mind, and you'll go do whatever you want to. Because when you don't want God, that's what happens. He'll turn you over to that mind and you'll do whatever you want to. And again, that's why I emphasize I don't believe he closes the door from his side. I believe it's from your side. Because I do believe because he says to to rebuke sharply those who are reprobate in the faith in Titus chapter one or two. He says to rebuke them sharply that they may be found sound in the faith. So someone who's went that direction to where they're worthless and there's nothing valuable. There is a possibility but it requires a great change from their side. So I emphasize that when we talk about the reprobate mind. But he says that's the next step, is you'll be turned over to this mind to where God's not going to bother you. And he compares it in other passages in the Bible as being something likened unto the animals, that they just do what feels good to them, they do whatever they want, because God's not dealing with them anymore. And so understanding that, that's the path. And if you want to see what this looks like, I'll give you the example in Revelation. Revelation chapter 16. Revelation chapter number 16, and we'll read a few verses here, but we'll start in verse 8. It says, And the fourth angel poured out the vial upon the son, and the power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues. And they repented not to give him glory. So it says that God, at this point, you're in the last three and a half years of tribulation. They've been through three and a half years of trouble, and things are getting bad. And honestly, based off of what I believe and see of the timeline, you're probably not at the beginning of that last three and a half years. You're probably into it a little bit at this point. God's pouring out this vial, and the sun is going to let out a great heat. So it's part of the process when we see it dying in other verses. You know, it's turning black and it's dying and it's not giving out its light as it's described in the trumpets and so forth. But as this is happening, it's going to let out this great heat so that men on the earth are scorched by this. People are dying because of this heat in some places. And it says, instead of repenting at that moment and giving God the glory, they're going to blaspheme God. Think about it for a moment for the foolishness of that. Men who don't want to believe in God, Or somehow when the trials come in their life, they'll ask, how did God let this happen to me? Or when something really makes them mad, they'll curse God. They'll take His name in vain, and they'll curse Him for it. Or when something really surprises them, they'll say, oh my God, and take His name in vain that way. So if you say that, just know you're taking His name in vain when you do that. But understand this, that they will do these things. They will bring God's name into all kinds of conversations, but they'll do anything but give Him glory. And so these men who don't believe in God, who don't want to give Him the glory, blame Him and blaspheme Him and curse Him because of the fact that He let the sun hurt them, because He let the sun get so hot that it scorched them. But keep reading, it doesn't stop there. In verse number 10, verse number 11, It says, And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast, and his kingdom was full of darkness, and they gnawed their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds. So then he pours out another judgment on them, and this time they're in darkness and they're in pain, and it says they're biting their tongues because they're in such great pain that they're just, you know, they're biting down on it to try to ignore the pain somewhere else in their body. And what do they do? They refuse to repent and give God the glory and they blaspheme God. And you find this over and over again in the chapter. I also wrote down verse number 21 where it talks about them blaspheming God and not giving Him the glory when He sends down the hail from heaven on them. And so what you're seeing is in that three and a half years, God is going to be pouring out wrath and judgment on these men who have chosen to follow the Antichrist. They've chosen to pick a man who said, look at me, I'm God. They've chosen to devote themselves wholly to Him so that they've received His mark in their hand or in their forehead. And they've worshipped Him as their God. They're so devoted to Him, that they refuse to give the God of Heaven the glory, and yet when something goes bad in their life, they don't say, oh, the Antichrist did this. Curse him for this. They don't blaspheme him. They blaspheme the God of Heaven. They blame the God of Heaven for their problems. Why? Because deep down inside their hearts they know who is actually in control of things. They know who actually has power to change something. So in their foreheads it's the Antichrist that they're saying has power, but in their hearts they know the truth. They just refuse to repent and acknowledge that it's the God of Heaven. They refuse to give Him that glory. If you go back to chapter number 11, you'll see, though, how it ends. And I know it sounds backwards to go backwards to see the end, but Revelation tells you the same events multiple times, and that's why. So Revelation chapter 11 in verse number 13 says, And the same hour there was a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell. And in the earthquake were slain men 7,000, and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven. This is the second wave. So actually I have to give back that this is not actually the end. The next earthquake is the end. You see that it's only when God starts to pour out His wrath at a certain point where men are confronted and forced to have to acknowledge God that men start to repent and give Him the glory. As long as there's any other option, these men are refusing to do that. Now, saying that, we see what happens when you go down this path that you don't give God the glory. Let's go back to Romans chapter number 1 and verse number 26 and 27, the verses we skipped over a minute ago. Romans chapter 1 verse number 26 and 27, For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections, for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their own lust one toward another, men with men, working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves the recompense of their error, which was meat. So he says not only will you go down this path of foolish heart where you devote yourself to some other worship and you refuse to recognize God to the point that He just gives you up to whatever you want to do when you don't give Him the glory. He says the other side of this is not only will you devote yourself to idols, you will devote yourself to sin. He says, when you don't give God the glory, you're going to open up your heart and life to sin, to go into whatever kind of sin you can imagine. And the example given here is homosexuality. The example given, he talks about men burning in their lust against men and women against women, and giving themselves up to vile affection. So he says the reason why you can have a society that can embrace homosexuality, that can, I don't want to date my message by bringing the example of the Olympics, but you know, they can have drag queens setting up pretending to be Jesus and the disciples and all that other kind of nonsense, and people praise them, and I guess most everybody here didn't watch anything about the Olympics opening ceremony, so. Y'all looking at me like I'm crazy on that. You'll figure it out later and you'll be even more disgusted then. The reason why society can embrace homosexuality and all those things the way that it does, when your own nature tells you that this is not right, is because once you go down that path, People who have already went down the path will embrace those lifestyles, and they will bully and manipulate and force you that you have to embrace it as well. And they will do that and do that and do that until eventually it takes hold. So that's how this affects a society, but we're talking about the individual more so. And that's how men can go into these things of abandoning God's design for them to go completely against it is because they've already abandoned God. They did not glorify Him, and so by abandoning Him, they can abandon His design for their lives. and go into things that are not what God designed for them. And then finally the last verses 29 to 32 is a list of sins that he gives. All these sins are things that he says, when you don't want to glorify God, you will glorify sin. You will find sin to be the value and beauty of your life. And just like you'll give yourself to some kind of idol, you'll give yourself to some kind of sin as well. And so he gives a list of sins. Like I said, we'll talk about them more in the coming months. But he ends it with this statement. who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do they do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them." So he says, once you go down this path, you'll know that what you're doing, these sins have great consequences, that not only you'll have to answer to God, there's going to be punishment for this, but you won't care, because you'll enjoy the sin more than you'll ever care about any potential punishment, and you'll enjoy those who also enjoy the sin. that you'll reject God and you'll replace it with that. You'll replace it with the pleasure that is in sin for a season when you reject God and reject His glory. And he explains what that looks like. Ecclesiastes 8 verse 11 says that because the Because the sentence against evil is not executed swiftly, not done quickly, men will, in their hearts, say that there is no punishment, that God is not going to punish that sin. And so that's why, because people don't see God punishing immediately, they don't regard Him as being a God they have to be afraid of, and they say, I can go do whatever I want to. Psalm 10, verse 11-13 speaks to something similar. When it says that God's forgotten, God's asleep, He doesn't hear, He's not going to judge any of these things because He's not listening. And God's talking to you about people who have given themselves to sin, that that's their attitude, is that they know there's a God. They know that if He was paying attention, He'd be very upset with them. They just don't believe He's paying any attention. They don't believe that He cares enough to pay attention or to do anything about it. And so they believe they're free to go do whatever sin they want, not realizing that God's keeping a record and He'll deal with it at the judgment. He'll deal with it when He's supposed to. It's not that He's not executing judgment, it's that He's waiting for the day of trial. You understand that? When men reject God, the path they go down always. is they'll give into the foolishness of their heart that's necessary to jump through whatever hoops they need to to explain a universe without God. They'll devote themselves fully to worship of something created, not to the Creator. And then, with that, they will reject God so much that He leaves them to whatever wicked imaginations they come up with. And as a result, they'll give themselves over to sin and go against the very nature of how God's designed them and give in to every sin, every appetite of the belly, so that they know that there's punishment, but they just don't care. That's what the rest of the chapter is telling us happens when somebody does not give God the glory. Well, we thank you and praise you, God, for what you do. Pray that you watch over us, help us to serve you. Thank you, Lord, for your blessings and goodness today. Thank you, Lord, for this opportunity we've had to come to be in your house. I just pray, God, you speak to the heart of everyone here and that, God, you'd use the thoughts of this message, Lord, to help us to give you glory that you so rightly deserve. We ask it in your son Jesus' name.