All right, well, good morning. Welcome to another Adult Sunday School Hour here at Hancock Reformed Baptist Church. Wonderful to see everybody here again on another beautiful Lord's Day. And as always, we're going to get right down to business today because we've got a lot to cover. But before we do, let's go to the Lord and ask His blessing on our time. Let's pray. Father, Who is in heaven? Hallowed be your great name. We do come to you this morning and. And we just stop, and it's very difficult to stop on the hamster wheel of life that we're running on, it feels like sometimes, but to stop and recognize, Lord, that you are on the throne, that you are who you are, the great and glorious creator and ruler of all things, and that all things exist for you and for your glory. And Father, we just come before you and bow before you, before your throne and honor you and acknowledge you and thank you and praise you. We do come together today on this Lord's Day as your people to worship you, to set this day apart that we might honor you and glorify you and remember the resurrection of your beloved son from the dead, the first fruits of the new creation. ahead of a new humanity, of a new world that is coming. Father, help us today in our weakness, in our sinfulness, in our really just how easily distracted we are to lose sight of things ultimate. Help us today, Father, to stop and to acknowledge that You are God, and there is none like You, and that we were made for You, and that though this world is so pressing and so present and so demanding of our attention, Lord, it is passing away. And everything that we see is passing away. This present evil age is passing away before our very eyes. And there is a new world to come that will last forever, that is eternal. and that we'll be freed from all the horrid, vile effects of sin in this world, the corruptions and miseries that we know. Help us, Father, to see that gleaming light, to know that Christ is coming. He is risen and He is coming again, and there is a glorious kingdom that is the ultimate and true and really only kingdom. Help us to see things rightly today. Fill us with awe and worship. Prepare our hearts for the worship hour. Guide our thoughts in this Sunday school hour. Teach us and instruct us by your spirit. And we ask it for your glory in Jesus' name. Amen. Sometimes it's good to stop. Stop. and pray. And that's what prayer really does, doesn't it? It stops this hamster wheel and forces us to just get along with God, fix our minds upon the things that really matter, and then go and live for all these things, for what really matters. So let's continue our study this morning on Paul's epistle to the Romans. And last Sunday we looked at the two great evils. And so before I do that and reorient us again, let's read our passage as we've been doing. I think it's helpful to do that. So let's read in our Bibles Romans chapter 1, and we'll just read verses 18 to 32. Romans chapter 1, verses 18 to 32. And I want to read verses 18 to 32 every time because I want this to build. There's a flow, a logic here. And he's working it out in each subsequent thought all the way, really all the way through chapter, all the way through to chapter eight, chapter nine. And so, you know, I want to kind of keep these big chunks in our minds so we can kind of continually follow Paul's arguments. Romans 1, verse 18 to 32. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Those are the two great evils. Ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. That's what we looked at last week. Who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power, and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made so that they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. And for this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions, for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. And though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but they give approval to those who practice them. We're going to spend a lot of time on this passage. I know some of you like that. Some of you struggle with that. It's maybe a little too detailed, and I can understand that. But this is one of the most worldview-defining passages in Scripture. It is, I think, next to Genesis chapters 1 through 3, probably one of the most foundational passages in the Bible in terms of the biblical Christian worldview. There's so much in it, and so I want to really pull out everything that's here. So as I said last week, we looked at there in verse 18, the two great evils, which is ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. And today, we want to consider how those two great evils are manifested primarily in the world. What evidence does God have that men are fundamentally ungodly and unrighteous? How does that show itself? Well, Paul's going to walk through this evidence, really in verses 19 all the way to the end of the chapter, verse 32, and show many reasons, many pieces of evidence why Man is ungodly, and we remember that means pertains to man's religious orientation. He is ungodly. He is religiously corrupt regarding what he worships, and he is unrighteous. That pertains to his moral character. He is morally corrupt. How does man's religious corruption and his moral corruption evidence itself? What is the first main piece of evidence that we have as to why God is wrathful and is wrathful against fallen humanity. Well, the first piece of evidence is stated in the last part of verse 18 and then through verse 20. And this is the primary way these two great evils of ungodliness and unrighteousness are manifested. Paul says, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. It literally reads, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. The truth by unrighteousness suppressing. So the truth is out front here. It's the leading idea. The ungodliness and unrighteousness of men is primarily evidenced through their relationship to the truth. And there is the definite article here in the Greek, so it's not just referring to truth in general, but to the, capital T-H-E, the truth, all caps, the greatest truth, the supreme truth. This is the Greek word here, aletheia, which in Greek culture was synonymous with reality. Reality. The wrath of God is against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. You could say the reality by their unrighteousness suppressing. And that reality is the reality of God himself, which is what Paul says if you look at verse 19. He says, for what can be known about God It's the truth about God. It's the reality of God Himself. All truth begins with God. You could say that God is ultimate reality. And to deny His existence and live as if He is not the only uncreated Creator, Lawgiver, and Judge, the Fountain of Life, apart from whom there is no life, the sumum bonum, the greatest good, the highest end, the great and glorious king worthy of all honor, the one who gives to us every second of our existence, life, breath, and everything, the reason for which all things exist, to deny or suppress the very reality and existence of the God that truly is, this God. is the greatest evidence of the evil nature, the ungodliness, the religious corruption, the unrighteousness, the moral corruption of the human race. As Paul summarizes in chapter 3, when he gets to the end and he's starting to sum up the case against humanity, he says, no one seeks for God. There is no fear of God before their eyes. They live as if God does not exist. They take the life and the breath and the everything that He gives them and they deny His very existence. And I say they, we were all there too, right? If you are in Christ today and you were born again today, there was a time when you were not, right? There was a time when we were right there with them and we were without hope and without God in the world. And so why do men do this? Why does fallen humanity suppress the reality of God? Well, it is because, again, that is the supreme evidence of the fundamental evil. of humanity, of mankind's ungodliness, his religious perversion and corruption, and his moral perversion and corruption, his unrighteousness. Those two great evils are manifested, and you can see it. You can see it when you look around at the world today on the Lord's Day, and you see men living their lives as if He is not. Right? You can see it. And it seems so normal to us, right? It's just the normalcy of life in a fallen, evil world. What looks normal to us is really the bedrock of evil. It's the foundation of all that is wrong. So the Lord Jesus put it this way, right? Again, men suppress the truth about God. They live as if God does not exist. The reality by their unrighteousness suppressing. And Christ put it this way in John chapter 3. Again, why do men do this? Well, He said, this is the judgment. The light has come into the world and people loved, loved the darkness rather than the light. Why? Because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his works should be exposed. Just like Adam and Eve hid themselves in shame from God when they had sinned, so fallen mankind in his ungodly and unrighteous state suppress the truth about God. He hates the light. Mankind hates that light about God. He will not come to the light, but seeks to smother the light out of existence because he loves the darkness. Right? Because the light The reality of the living God who is the righteous lawgiver and judge of all the earth exposes our evil. And so man seeks to live in this delusional darkness by smothering the light, the reality of God and of Christ. And this is what is meant by, again, Paul saying, in their unrighteousness they suppress the truth. They hold it down and they seek to prevent it from being heard. They plug their ears to it. They blindfold their eyes to it. And they try to never speak of it, right? Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil. That's fallen man regarding the truth of God, which we'll consider in a moment, is undeniable and inescapable. And so John puts it this way, as he talks to Christians in 1 John 2, he tells them, do not love the world or the things in the world. For all that is in the world, the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world that John's referring to lies under the power of the evil one who is said to be the god of this world. And you have to remember, the god of this world is called the father of lies. He is a liar and the truth is not in him. And so it should be no surprise to us that his world and all of his servants who are under his power are liars also. They're truth, again, they're truth suppressors. So everything in the world is designed by fallen men who are, again, under the power of Satan, the father of lies. Everything that is in the world is designed to suppress the reality of God. Whether they intentionally do that or unconsciously do that, that is its ultimate purpose and end. Everything is designed with these three things that John speaks about. The lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the pride of life. Meaning everything is designed as if the flesh is all that there is. Everything is designed for the flesh. As if the flesh is all there is. As if what we see with our eyes is all there is. As if our lives exist in and of ourselves and for ourselves. Again, the pride of life. Everything exists for us. There is no invisible God who created all things and who gives us life, breath, and everything. There's only us. And all creation exists for us and for our pleasures. What I see is all that there is. What I feel is all that there is. What I can touch is all that there is. The visible, physical universe is all that there is, and it exists for me. The pride of life, as if we exist of self. Did any of us originate ourselves? Did you create yourself? Is there anything that you can look at in this universe that you can say originated itself? And yet we live as if that's true, as if this all exists for us, and as if all we see is all there is. Let us build bigger barns to store up more treasure. Let us eat, drink, and be merry for years to come. Men live as if there is not one to whom they must give an account of themselves, who can say to them at any moment, tonight, your soul is required of you. One who made us and who made everything. and who owns everything, who rules everything. They live as if they do not have an invisible immortal soul, as if there is no invisible God behind the visible creation who created all these things for his glory. So this is point A, evidence A, exhibit A, as to why God's wrath is against men. And the evidences and manifests mankind's ungodliness and unrighteousness. Paul's saying here, we look around us and we see a world filled with men who live as if God does not exist. As if there is no God. As if all they see with their eyes is all there is. As if they themselves is all there is. As if they don't know that there's a God. And Paul's saying in fact here that they most certainly do know that there is a God. But they've created a world whereby they willfully suppress the truth about God and live as if He's not there. So this is kind of the exhibit A. You look at the world and you see a world that lives as if there is no God. And we'll consider why that's so bad in just a second, but let me just stop there and just say the Bible's approach to unbelief and to atheism and things like that. If someone were to ask the Apostle Paul, and say, if God exists, then why are there atheists? And Paul would say, there are no atheists. Not truly. Not truly. He would say, they are liars. They are suppressors of the truth. They claim to be atheists. They claim to be atheists, but they are not actually atheists. They're truth suppressors. And they do that because they're unrighteous. If you want to listen to a good series on this, listen to R.C. Sproul's The Psychology of Atheism. And he basically looks at these well-known atheists from the 20th century, men like Sigmund Freud, and Nietzsche, and Marx, and Jean-Paul Sartre, and some of these great atheists that sort of made themselves known as atheists, professed their atheism, and promulgated it, and sought to teach other people their atheism. Sproul goes into, basically all of these men were making an argument back in those days that Men created God out of a psychological need. Because of his primitive kind of fear of his world and of the storms and the uncertainty and the instability and his smallness that he felt when he looked up at the heavens, he had this deep-seated psychological need. And he created God like a crutch, like a help to help him feel more secure. That's essentially what Freud argues. That's what all these atheists argued. And Sproul flips the tables on them and he basically says when you look at their writings and their life's work and the things that they said, it's actually the other way around. Atheists created atheism because they're afraid of the reality of God. You know, John Paul Sartre, for example, wrote a lot of plays. And Sproul goes into a lot of this really, I mean, just really well. He dissects a lot of their thoughts and shows the psychology of atheism. John Paul Sartre, for example, was, you know, one of his big philosophies was In order for men to be persons, to have that personhood and that individuality that makes us persons, we have to have privacy. We have to have that privacy. We have to decide who sees what. Who knows what in here? We have that control. We have that sovereignty, that autonomy. And if we don't have that, then we're not persons, according to Sartre. And so, Sartre was terrified of the reality of the omniscience and omnipresence of God, of a being who, from our catechism that I teach our children says, does God know all things? Yes, nothing can be hidden from God. The Bible teaches that God is omniscient and omnipresent. And that there is nothing that can be hidden from Him. He knows our words before we speak them. He knows our thoughts. He knows our inclinations. He knows why we do what we do. He knows everything. Nothing can be hidden from the omniscient, omnipresent, eternal, supreme God. Sartre hated that idea. He despised that idea. He could not stand that idea. He could not stand a world with that God peering into his soul unceasingly. And he felt as if it stripped him of his personhood. And one of his plays actually has, as the closing scene, two of the main characters in the play. I can't remember the name of it or anything like that, but the play ends with these two men just sitting in chairs in a room by themselves, staring into one another's souls. Just staring at each other. And the curtain closes with these two men just staring into one another, and the idea is what would life be like if there was a being who could just stare into the depths of your being constantly, and you could hide nothing from him? And so John Paul Sartre, again, the psychology of atheism, why are atheists atheists? Because they hate the reality of God. And they suppress When they really stop and think, they know there's a God. And the reason why they suppress the truth, again, Paul says, by their unrighteousness, they suppress the truth. The darkness, as Christ said, hates the light and does not come to the light because its deeds are evil. And Jean-Paul Sartre and men like that know they're evil. And they don't want a God that can see into their soul. And so the psychology of atheism is that they are terrified of the reality of God, and they erect a world around them that suppresses the reality of Him. So listen to that if you really want to get into that. It's really good. But, you know, what about the question that's often raised about the destiny of those who have never heard about God? Well, Paul would say there is no such person. Everyone has heard. What about the innocent native? Someone would say. There is no such thing. According to the Bible. All have heard. And so let's go into this then. What we want to talk about next is what Paul goes into here. In verses 19 to 20. Let's read that very quickly. It says, For what can be known about God is plain to them. because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made, so that they are without excuse. That's the Bible's position on the matter. Paul talks about, first, the clarity of the truth that they suppress. Again, what can be known about God is plain to them, the clarity of it. He will then state why it is so clear. Because God has shown it to them. God himself has shown it to them, to everyone. Thirdly, what exactly is so clear? Paul does not leave that up to our speculation. He says namely the invisible attributes of God, namely His eternal power and divine nature. That's exactly what is so clear. And then fourthly, Paul says the means through which it is clear, through the things that have been made. And then he tells us, I might have these flipped, and then he tells us how long it has been clear, ever since the creation of the world. So let's walk through this very quickly. This really is the bedrock of biblical apologetics. And I don't want to get into apologetics, but let me just say at the outset that Paul ends with the statement, so they are without excuse. And that word excuse is apologetos. You can hear apologetics in that, right? They're without defense. They have no case. They have no excuse. They have no defense, no apology that they can make for their suppression of the undeniable, and you'll hear me use this a lot, the undeniable and inescapable reality of God embedded in His creation. They often put the Christian against the ropes in our world and tell us that we're the ones that have to give apology. We're the ones that need to stand up and defend our faith. And I'm grateful for men that do. There's a really good place for that. But it's actually them that need to give defense. And Paul flips it around. He says, they are without apologetos. They have no argument. That's how clear it is. So let's get into that very quickly and we'll kind of think through this a little bit. And so again, as we delve into this, we're seeing why this suppression of the truth is so bad. And again, why God's wrath is against us. As we've already said, the truth that they suppress, as Paul makes clear in verse 19, is the truth about God, for what can be known about God. Now, why is it so unrighteous, again, for men to deny or suppress the truth or the very reality of God? Many say there just isn't enough evidence. If God would just show himself to me or provide me with sufficient evidence, then I'd believe in him. But Paul tells us in verse 19, what can be known about God is plain to them. And we shouldn't miss the statement, what can be known about God? Though God is infinite, and he is ultimately incomprehensible by finite beings, yet he is knowable. There are truths about him that can be known. What can be known about God? You hear the agnostics say, You know, there may be a God out there, but I just can't know Him. He's too transcendent. He's too far beyond my grasp. No, no, no, no, no. There is truth that can be known about God. God is infinite and transcendent, yes, but He is knowable. He is knowable. Right? And so what can be known about God? Again, the person that says there just isn't enough evidence for me to believe in him, right? If he could just show himself or make it more clear, I'd believe. Paul says, what can be known is plain to them. That word, plain, is the Greek word, phaineros, which means apparent, manifest, evident, known, or plainly recognized. They all kind of just are the same way of saying, different ways of saying the same thing. I think the best translation is, it is evident to them. What can be known about God is evident to them. It's crystal clear. It's plainly recognized. The KJV, NKJV, and NASB all even say it's manifest or evident within them. That in could also be within. Or, I'm sorry, that word to, it's evident to them or plain to them, could also be evident within them. There isn't just knowledge out there that is clear, but they're just incapable of knowing it. The knowledge is out there and they know it. It's evident to them or in them. They perceive it. That's the point here. They perceive it and comprehend it. It's not just out there, yet it's not graspable by men. The point here is that the knowledge of God, what can be known about Him, is evident, perceived, comprehended by them. And so Paul then goes on and says, okay, well, why is it so clear? And the second part of verse 19 tells us, because God has shown it to them. God himself has shown it to them. I mean, if you're looking for a statement, You know, for us who are Christians, have a biblical worldview, can there be any greater statement of the why it is so clear than that? God has shown it to them. Can God falter or fail to do what he's sought to do? If God wants to make something clear, do we think he doesn't know how to do that? He knows how to make himself known and clear, and he has done that, Paul says. Right, so in verse 20 then, Paul further works this out by stating exactly what is so clear about God. how long it has been clear, I got these backwards here, the means through which it is clear, and then finally, why that this leaves them without apology, without defense, indefensible. So first, what exactly is so clear? Paul says, for his invisible attributes, Namely, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived. His invisible attributes. We know God is invisible, right? Men act as if they want or demand or require God to somehow make himself visible so that they can believe in him. In fact, naturalism, the philosophy that is at the root of modern science, states that if I cannot see it, taste it, touch it, smell it, put it under a microscope, and test it in my laboratory, then it cannot exist. Naturalism, that's what governs modern scientific inquiry. It didn't always govern it. But God is invisible. Our catechism says that God is a spirit, and he does not have a body like men, and that comes straight out of John chapter four, where Jesus is speaking with a Samaritan woman, and he says, God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. God can manifest himself through theophanies, as he did in the Old Testament. That's special revelation. We'll talk about that, general and special revelation in a minute. But God himself in his nature is invisible. Colossians 1.15 says he is the image of the invisible God. 1 Timothy 1.17 says, To the king of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. 1 Timothy 6.15-16 says, He who is the blessed and only sovereign, the king of ages and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. God cannot be seen by physical eyes. He is an invisible infinite spirit according to scripture. So of course men cannot see the invisible God with their physical eyes. But the fact again that God is invisible is not an excuse. For men living as if He does not exist because God again Himself has manifested His invisible attributes in an undeniable and inescapable way. So what exactly of His invisible attributes has He manifested and made clear? Well, Paul goes on. He makes it very clear, very specific. He leaves us no wiggle room to get out of this, right? He doesn't leave it up to our speculation so that we can say, well, He's made something about Himself clear, but I don't know what. Paul tells us, he says, namely his eternal power and divine nature. So eternal power is this Greek, idios dunamis. Idios is from the root word I, which is A-E-I, I, which means always. Idios means everlasting. It points to a, you could say, a power that is beyond anything that we see in this universe. An always power that precedes the beginning of this space-time-matter universe that has always been. an idios dunamis, an eternal power, an everlasting power, an always power. When men look at this universe, they see that. The second thing Paul says is his divine nature has been clearly perceived. That's the Greek, Thyates, which means divinity or divine nature as it's translated. And it's really pointing, I think, to a higher nature that transcends or is outside or above the nature of the things that we see in the visible universe. We look at the universe and we see the invisible attributes of God, his eternal power, his time-transcending, everlasting, always power, and his divine nature, that there is something at the back of all that I see that is not of the same nature as what I see. There's a divine nature at the back of it. All right, so these invisible attributes of God, Paul says, are evident within them. They look at themselves in the universe and they are led inescapably and undeniably to the necessity, to the inescapable reality of a God of eternal power and divine nature who has always existed. This is the Bible's approach to apologetics, and we'll talk about it more here in a second. But secondly, Paul says, how long... I've got them all out of order here, but how long this knowledge has been clear? Was it veiled in the beginning and then began to be revealed a couple thousand years later? Was it clear in the beginning? But then when man fell into sin, was it somehow veiled so that none could see it any longer? And Paul tells us it has been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world. So from the time that God created the universe until now, this knowledge of God has been clear. There has never been a time when men have not clearly perceived the eternal power and divine nature of God. Thirdly then, through what means has God made this clear? Do men have to go to some great pilgrimage to the ends of the earth to find it? Or to the depth of the sea to find it? Is it some secret hidden knowledge that only a few special Gnostics are able to attain to and find? Do men have to climb to the top of the highest mountain to gain this knowledge? Did men have to invent some deep space telescope to probe the outer reaches of the universe to find it and discover it? And Paul says, this knowledge of God has been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. In other words, in every single thing God has created, God has so inscribed the knowledge of himself that there is nowhere, there's nowhere that men can look where they are not confronted with the reality of God. Man can look at the stars above or at the picture of some deep space telescope. I'm thinking of a news article that came out recently. Some of you may have seen it. These pictures. from this deep space telescope with what you see are out there are all these different red and blue and purple and white lights, you know, and elliptical and shapes and circular shapes. And you know what they are? They're galaxies filled with billions of stars and planets. And there's literally like hundreds of them in just this little screenshot. It's staggering to think about that. To think that this Earth is just part of one galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy, which is comprised of billions of stars. And just our solar system has all the planets. Think about what's going on on Jupiter right now. Think about what's going on on Saturn right now. It's staggering. And that's just a speck. of sand in relation to the universe, which is comprised of probably billions of galaxies, of billions of stars and planets. Stars that are 50 times the size of Earth. Men look at these things at the furthest extent of their capabilities and they're led to the inescapable reality of a God of eternal power and divine nature. Men can look around him at the earth, at the mountains, the trees, the birds, the insects, the oceans, the sea creatures, and everything testifies to the reality of God. The necessity of God. Of a God of eternal power and divine nature who transcends all that we see. Who is not of the stuff that we see. Who does not exist like the stuff that we see. Man can look under a microscope at a cell. or at DNA, which is really like a giant story, a book. It's written. It literally is the instruction manual for everything that you are. You can look at a cell under a microscope. And it's like a giant factory, or a tiny factory. You take that thing and you blow it up to the size of a football field and it would be like one of those car plants with automatic robot arms and parts on conveyor belts and everything, turning protein into energy and all these different things. It's staggering. And when men look at these things, they can look at the human eye and how it's, the human eye. Have you ever, it's just that you can study for a lifetime. They can look at the platypus, which is a strange little thing that's unlike anything else that exists, that could not possibly have evolved that way, with the bill of a duck and the fur of a rooster and the tail of a beaver and the feet of a duck and it lays eggs like a turtle. It has milk. It's poisonous. It's very strange, but when men look at all of these things, they should see inscribed in them the reality of God himself, and it is inescapable and undeniable. It's evident within them, again, because God has shown it to them in the things that have been made. There's many passages I want to look at, but we're out of time. If you want to study some of these, look at Psalm 19, 1-3. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There's no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. They hear it. They hear it. And they know they hear it. And they suppress the reality of it because they're wicked. That's the Bible's position. And we could wrangle with them all day about the illogical, irrational absurdity of Big Bang cosmology. And I'm not an expert. I'm not an apologist. I don't know all the ins and outs of it. I know the basics. We can wrangle with him about evolution and the impossibility of it. It's Darwin's black box. Just read that book, Irreducible Complexity. Just read that book. Darwin knew that if he could see into what he called the black box, which is down to the cellular level, he could prove or disprove his theory right then and there. But he couldn't back then. Well, now we can. And it disproves his theory. Just read Darwin's Black Box. I mean, we can wrangle with men about this, but the truth of the matter is that they are unrighteous truth suppressors, and no amount of showing them the truth that they already see will change their hearts and minds. We'll talk about the effects of the fall and what it did to man's mind and his heart. His foolish heart was darkened. His mind was given over to a state of futility when we get to that. But for now, I just want to say apologetics is great. It's good. It's got a place. I'm glad there are men that can do it. But the gospel does not come to men and say, hey, you know, I've got this evidence for creationism. I've got evidence for this. I've got evidence for this. Let's talk about the evidence, because they're just going to say, nah, they've got their evidence too. The gospel comes to them and it says, you're a liar. You see the truth. You know the truth. It's everywhere, it's screaming in your face, God, God, God, God, God. Everything is screaming that to you and you know that. And you don't want that to be true. And you don't want that to be true because you're an unrighteous being. The darkness hates the light. And so the gospel comes and it says, away with that, repent. Away with that, you're a liar, and the truth is not in you. God commands you to repent, and it's through that, right, that authoritative gospel that God changes. It is the power of God unto salvation. Evidence ceases to be important at that point. They know, right? So, again, men are truth suppressors. This is the fundamental way that the two great evils of ungodliness and unrighteousness are manifested in the world. And we'll go from here to look at the origins of this evil at the fall and sort of how it has worked itself out through human history, through these great judgments of God upon the human race as we go through the rest of the chapter. Sorry, I don't have time for discussion. We've got to stop. We'll answer questions next week or email me if you have any. Let's pray. Father in heaven, thank you. You are great and glorious. Thank you that you are long-suffering and patient with us in our years of unbelief and stubborn refusal to obey you and to worship you and to love you and to thank you as you deserve to be loved and thanked. Father, we just ask that you bless us now as we go. Help us to live for your glory. And please be with us in this hour. Help us to worship You, the great Creator and Lawgiver and Judge and Sovereign King and God of infinite love who has saved our souls from Your judgment and justice through Jesus Christ. Please help us, Lord, to rejoice today. We ask it in Jesus' name, Amen.