So before I start the sermon this morning, one of the things that as elders we've been talking about is how much we want to encourage people at the time of interaction after the sermon to participate. So as I go through this and preach through this passage, we want to greatly encourage you to take notes and be prepared at the end to offer additional teaching and to any questions that you might have about the teaching. And so I just wanted to give you that exhortation before we started. As we look at this passage, this passage answers some questions that we might have. One of the questions that I've heard a lot in the church is, how can we say Jesus is the only way to salvation when there's people in the depths of Africa that have never heard his name? How can we say that that's true and also that God is just? This passage wipes away the argument that a Muslim who has never heard of the Son of God Somehow, God is unfair to treat him by sending him to hell. It wipes away the argument that it's unfair for God to condemn people who have never heard about Jesus Christ. And it explains what John 3, 16-18 says when it says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. We frequently stop there and don't read the verses after that. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. Who believes in him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This passage also tells us why we see death everywhere. Driving to church this morning, we saw a dead animal on the side of the road. This passage explains roadkill. This passage explains why, when you get older, your bones creak. But before we get into the passage itself, we need to look at the context of the passage. That's why I had Jim Reed back starting before. This letter starts with Paul explaining who he is, explaining that he was an apostle of Jesus Christ. And then he states why he wants to see them, so that he can spread and proclaim the gospel boldly among them, and that he can have fruit among them and be encouraged by them. And then it ends with him saying, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. For it is the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith. So Paul just put it in context that he's disclosed what the righteousness of God is. And now he's going to turn and explain what the unrighteousness of man is. In this passage, after the verses that I'm going to preach on, it goes into more detail about what man's true unrighteousness looks like. But in here, we get an idea of what man's unrighteousness is like. So as we start in verse 18 and verse 19, for the wrath of God is revealed against heaven, against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of man who suppress the truth and unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. But we see the wrath of God. And in this culture, in this day and age, the church doesn't talk much about the wrath of God. The church loves to talk about how God is love, and God is love. But that doesn't deny the fact that God is also a wrathful God. So how is it revealed in the world? How is it revealed in the world, the wrath of God? Every time that you drive by a dead animal on the road, you should remember that God is the God of wrath. All death in this world is because of sin. All death in this world is because of penalty. Because of feedback, all death in this world, all death in this world is because of penalty of sin. Right? Whenever we see death, we should remember that God is a God who judges. God judged the world by bringing death into the world. In the Garden of Eden, there was no death, but because of sin, death was brought into the world. And so whenever we see death, it is a picture of God's wrath. When we think of funerals, we think about mourning, but we should also think that this is a wonderful time to witness to other people because they have been confronted with the fact that they will die. And that death reveals the wrath of God. And every time anybody who's over the age of 25 and looks back and says, I remember when I used to do whatever it was, but that you can't do it instead of grumbling and complaining and saying, oh, it's terrible to grow old. What instead we should say is God has put corruption in this world so we can recognize there will be punishment for sin. Corruption has entered the world through sin, and we see it in our own bodies as we grow older. God is good. He reveals His wrath to us. We live, anywhere you look, you see the ravages of sin. Everywhere you look, you see the destruction that has been caused by sin. God isn't hiding the fact that He punishes sin. No, the world declares that He punishes sin. Everything we see declares that He punishes sin. But He does it not just to say, oh, I'm a wrathful God. You should tremble in fear. He says it so that he's revealed who he is to us, so we come to him and we seek him and we desire to know him. But what does he reveal it against? He doesn't reveal it against all behavior. This verse is very clear. He reveals it against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. So what does ungodliness and unrighteousness mean? The Greek word for ungodliness is asabea, which literally means not worshipful. not pious, not adoring God. The reason that God poured out His wrath on the world and will pour it out is because we do not worship God as we should. We do not show the love towards God that He has shown towards us. We don't recognize our place in the world. Our place in the world is to glorify God. That's why He created us. Our place is to give honor and thanks to God because He created us. And the unrighteousness is adikia, which means immorality. Right. Wrongfulness is what it really means. Not right. Not right. So God has defined what the right things are to do, and we don't do them. That's what unrighteousness is. That's what he reveals his wrath against. Right. This is the opposite of the word where it says the just shall live by faith, that we're just. This is the opposite of this. This is not just. So the just live by faith, and men, normal men who lack faith, live by righteousness in their own eyes, which is always wrongness. But his wrath is reserved for those who do not live justly, and do not live according to faith, and act unjustly towards those around them. So why are they ungodly, and why are they unrighteous? Why are we ungodly? Why are we unrighteous? We shouldn't just assign it to others, because we fall into the same camp. Right. It's because they suppress the truth and unrighteousness. Now, a lot of times we can think and we can look and say, oh, yeah, the unbeliever, he suppresses the truth and unrighteousness. But I want to ask you the question this morning, what truth are you suppressing and unrighteousness today? Right. It's easy to read the Scripture and say, well, I can't really understand that passage. Do you understand why you can't understand passages of Scripture? It's not because God did not make his word clear. It is not because God did not desire to reveal himself in his word. That's the purpose of the revelation. Now, this isn't to say that there's never a passage that you need to meditate on. But whenever you say, I can't understand this passage, the first question should always be, what sin am I harboring so that I can't understand this passage? What sin do I love so much so I'm suppressing the truth in unrighteousness? What sin do I have in my heart that I say, I don't want to know what this passage says? And my response is going to be, I don't really understand the passage. That's what our first question should be. Because God wrote the Bible so that he could be understood, not so that he could hide himself from us. His purpose was for it to be the revelation of who he was. What He reveals, He reveals clearly. Yes, in Deuteronomy 29.29 it says, The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of the law. He's not saying there, I've heard that verse used to say, well, some things are just mystery with God. That's not what that verse says. That says the things that are not in God's word are mystery. The things that are in God's word are not mysteries. They are revelation so that we obey them and do the things that he commands us. But one other thing, right, the one other reason that we suppress the truth is because we don't want to obey. And right. Hebrews 526, I think it says that through obedience, we learn to discern good and evil. We didn't need to do more than read the word. We suppress the truth by not putting it into obedience because we don't want the trouble that it causes to obey. When we were in Romania, we were teaching a very harsh message. And the seminary professor that was driving us around, he kept telling us to make the message harsher and harsher and harsher, that we had a short time and we just needed to beat them up as hard as we could while we were there. And surprisingly enough, I was OK with that. And in the end, one of the verses that we kept going to as we preach this message, And I especially kept going to it is in 2 Corinthians 5, 8, where Paul writes, we need to walk by faith and not by sight. And so why would I keep going back to that verse? Because we're telling them hard things that we could show from Scripture, and they're saying we cannot do that in our society, right? We cannot. Yes, the Bible may say wives should be keepers at home, but we can't do that, right? Titus 2 says that older women should teach the younger women to be keepers at home, lest the word of the Lord is blasphemed. And we said that to them and they got very angry. Openly stated that they were very angry. And the only answer we could give is God said it was better to do it that way. You need to do it that way. You need to walk by faith and not by sight. If it looks and you look forward and say, well, if you do this, we can figure out how we'll do our budget. We can figure out where money will come from to feed our family. We're not walking by faith anymore. We're walking by sight. And this isn't some weird faith thing that you just pray and you don't work. No, this is obedience. that you obey and trust that God will bless those if you follow His commandments. But that's not just a message the Romanian church needs to hear. That's a message that hope needs to hear. That's a message that I need to hear. Right? This is a message that we all need to hear. What part of Scripture do you read and do you say, well, yeah, God says that, but that's really hard to do, so I'm not going to do it today. What parts of Scripture do you say, well, I just can't understand that because that would make me look too weird to the world if I did that. That's what Paul means when he says walk by faith and not by sight. That's what we need to be doing. And so he says what? What may be known of God is manifest in them. So what does it mean to be manifest in them? There's a couple ways that this is translated. The word there literally is in. And so I think one thing it is pointing to is the fact that we are the image bearers of God from Genesis. We can see God in ourselves. We can see how the animals respond to us in the world, that they have a fear and dread on them because of us. We represent God in the world. And so we can see who God is. We can see that there's a God just from our place in the world. Now, we're a very distorted image of God. That's why we're supposed to be conformed to the image of Christ as we work out our salvation with fear and trembling. As we become mature in the Lord, we become more and more a picture of Christ. And what's the picture of Christ? Of course, he says, not my will, but thy will be done. That's the picture that we're supposed to be going to, so that everybody can see not our will, but they can see God's will. They can see us walking in obedience to God. But in everybody else's face, there's the image of God, too. So we are surrounded in this room by images of God. How can we say God doesn't exist? God revealed Himself in us. Now, this doesn't mean that the general revelation is enough to understand the Godhead or to understand the Trinity. It doesn't mean that it's enough to understand all the words of God. God did give us more than general revelation. He gave us special revelation. But there is enough revelation around us for each of us to stand guilty before God. Each of us knows what the righteousness of God is because it's revealed in creation. Each of us stands guilty before God even if we never hear the name of Jesus Christ. Because the world testifies to the righteousness of God. The world testifies to the justness of God. So we should thank God that we have a special revelation. But we should thank somebody that doesn't have his special revelation, somebody that doesn't have the Bible. They're equally guilty because God has revealed himself in the world. They all know what righteousness is, but they all reject it just as we do, unless our heart is changed by the Holy Spirit. So when we think about this and think of an application for this, this should change how we do apologetics. Maybe not change, but this should be a serious consideration for how we do apologetics, how we explain the gospel to people. We do not need to talk people into the existence of God. They all know who God is. Every single professed atheist is guaranteed to be a liar. That's what it means to be an atheist, because they know who God is, but they lie and say there is no God. They are nothing more than a liar. We do not need to convince them of the existence of God. They are convinced of that already. What we need to do is convince them of their unrighteousness is why they are saying that they're an atheist. It's their unrighteousness that makes them reject the true God. It's their unrighteousness, right? That's what we need to convince them of. That their unrighteousness is what separated them from God. It's their unrighteousness that makes them reject the righteousness of God. It's their love of sin. Now, it doesn't mean that we don't point out the irrationality of their position. It doesn't mean that we don't say to the person who says that there is no God, but says that there is evil, that that's an absurd position. Because how can you say there's no God without saying, and still say that there's evil, right? And so, but the problem, the core problem is not what the atheist knows. The core problem is that he loves his unrighteousness and that he wants to replace the true God with a false God. And the other thing that we learn from this verse or these verses is God is not hiding himself from man. Right? In Genesis 3, 8, And they heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord. the Lord God among the trees of the garden. That's still the pattern today. It's not God hiding himself from them. It's them hiding themselves from God. They're the ones that are suppressing the truth in their unrighteousness. God has been very deliberate to make sure that everybody had a revelation of who he was. And God could have hidden himself, right? We had no right to say, God, you must reveal yourself. But God is sovereign and he chose to make everything point towards him. Psalm 8, verses 1-4 says, O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth, who have set Your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength, because of Your enemies that You may silence the enemy and the avenger. When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the Son of man that You visit him? God could have left us in darkness. He didn't need to reveal Himself to us. But from the foundation of the world, His plan was always to reveal Himself through creation. So what should our response be to that? Our response should be to be thankful for God that He chose to reveal Himself to us and not leave us dead in our sin and trespasses. He had every right to do it, but He desired for us to know who He was. As we go on, the next two verses, Romans 1, 20 and 21. For since the creation of the world, His 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. This is the same thing, right? Everything declares the glory of God. He didn't create the heaven and earth to hide Himself. The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament show us His handiwork. Day unto day utter a speech and night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Everything is calling out who God is. It's that we stuff our ears so that we don't hear. And this verse also says His invisible attributes are clearly seen. So what are His invisible attributes and how are they clearly seen? Now, I just listed some. These clearly aren't all of His invisible attributes. He's infinite. But how does creation point to God's love? We plant a seed in the ground and we say, oh, it's natural that it comes up and produces a tomato plant or whatever. And we get the tomatoes off of it and we eat. We need to remember that that is a testimony of God's love for us. The fact that the earth brings forth food is not something that happens randomly. It's a testimony that God cares for us, that God loves us. Paul and Lystra said, nevertheless, he did not leave himself without witness and that he did good, gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our heart with food and gladness. If you recognize when we give thanks every time that we eat a meal, do you actually give thanks? Do you actually say, God did not need to provide this food? That farmer that put the wheat seed in the ground, it didn't have to come up. That's a testimony of God's love for us. It's throughout the world that we see His provision for us, His care for us. What other attributes? We see His justice. Go to the aunt you sluggard. In Proverbs 6.6, we see that God is just. A man who does not work will not produce food. God is just. Every sin has a punishment in itself. There's eternal punishment, but the drunkard who wakes up the next morning with a headache, he testifies to the justness of God. Adultery results in destructions throughout marriages. Divorce, right? They've done studies that they've talked to people who said, oh, yes, I'll only be happy if I get divorced. And then they go and talk to them two years later and they find out that they are so miserable afterwards. That is by far and away the norm. Divorce leads to misery, not to peace. Right. Dishonesty. Somebody who's dishonest, what they start to think is everybody around them is dishonest. And so then they're they're they're torn by the sense that they can't trust anyone. That's a form of God's justice. In the way the world works, we see the justness of God. How about His mercy? We see His mercy in that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. Every time you sin and He doesn't immediately kill you, you have a testimony that He's a merciful God. Right, Job's friends, when they're talking to Job, they act like every single offense towards God that God punishes immediately. That is not the picture of God that we see. The picture of God we see is a God who shows us mercy time after time after time. We read His Word, we don't obey it, and He still shows us mercy. If He responded to every offense the moment that they were offended, the world would have been destroyed the moment Adam bit into the apple. That's the truth. The whole world testifies to the mercy of God. He withholds the judgment that every person deserves. He withholds it. He doesn't give us the judgment that should be given for the fact that we transgressed against the creator of the universe. But he does it because he's merciful. And we see jealousy, the attribute of jealousy. How do you see the attribute of jealousy in creation? You see the attribute of jealousy throughout history. Augustine wrote a book called The City of God, and he went through all of history up to that point. And he went nation after nation after nation. He said his primary theory is that the history of the world is about the Tower of Babel being repeated again and again and again and again. And how is the Tower of Babel repeated again and again and again? It's not when a nation is weak that it gets destroyed. It's when it's strong. When we look at the Soviet Union, we look back and look at the collapse of the Soviet bloc. We look back and we say, oh look, they weren't feeding their people very well. They weren't doing this and they weren't doing that. That's why they collapsed. But if you go back the year before they collapsed, what was happening? What was happening is Ronald Reagan made a couple of years before, Ronald Reagan made a speech that said USSR is so much more powerful than we are. We have to triple our budget for arms. It wasn't because the USSR was weak that they collapsed. It was because they were strong. They were strong and they said there is no God. That is the way to destruction. That is the pattern of history. When you are strong without God, God destroys you as a nation. That's the whole pattern of history. Augustine, until the fall of Rome, he went through time after time after time and said, look, it was always at their strength that they were collapsed. Even Saddam Hussein, why did we invade Iraq? It wasn't because we said, oh, they're weak, they're about to collapse. It was because we said, he's so strong that he can destroy us. God destroys those who set themselves up as strong when they projected him. That's the pattern of history. We see the jealousy of God throughout all of history. And that should make us concerned, right? That should make us very concerned as a nation when we're called the world's only superpower and we're a nation that rejects God. God doesn't let that last long. As Andrew read this morning in Psalm 34 about trusting in armies, or Psalm 20, verse 7 says, some trust in chariots and some in horses. But we will remember the name of the Lord our God. God punishes nations who forget the name of the Lord our God. History is about glorifying God, and God is a jealous God. So what other things do we see? We see that these things are understood by the things that are made. These traits are understood. These aren't that God tried to hide these things. Everybody can understand what God is like, but they suppress the truth and unrighteousness. Right now, as a nation, we're creating this big market for atheist literature. Christopher Hitchens wrote God is Not Great. Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation. The God Delusion. Richard Dawkins. All these were bestsellers in America. There's this big push towards atheism in America. Here's what Richard Dawkins said. We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. I want you to think about that statement. This is a statement from a materialist. He says there is nothing that transcends. Right. And he says we're going to die. That makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they were they are never going to be born. So here he is, somebody who's a materialist and says there's nothing that transcends. But yet these people who were never born, somehow they transcend. These people are absolute fools. That's what you see in these writings. But another example is A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. That was probably the first one that started. Stephen Hawking, when you read this book, what you find out is one thing. Stephen Hawking is furious that he's in a wheelchair, so there must not be any God. So he makes up this whole convoluted explanation that's impossible to follow. And the other thing that's even more important than it's impossible to follow is it is absolutely impossible to prove. Because there is no evidence for it anywhere. And people read this and say, this is brilliant science. It has nothing to do with science. It has to do with an angry man who's in a wheelchair, yelling and screaming about God. But each one of those is a liar, because each one of them is seeing the plain evidence of God before their face. And they say, I don't understand who God is. They each do. They're just liars. So what do these books look like? Typically, they say something like, there can't be a God because there's evil in the world. Like Hawkins being so angry about being confined to a wheelchair, he said, God was evil to me because I'm in a wheelchair. But they forget that if there is no God, there could be no evil. It's the fact that God is the standard that gives us evil. Without God, there's no evil, so how can you complain? He puts a position out there that is absurd in and of itself. If there's no purpose in this world, how can evil exist? And they all say something comes from nothing. They look at all the things that surround them and say either it comes from nothing or somehow it came out of chaos. It's an intellectually absurd position. That is not a position by wise people. That's a position of fools. And the other thing is they're all badly written. They're written by people who aren't good writers. The sad thing is there's a lot of Christian books that are written by people who aren't good writers either. And we have a responsibility because we have to answer to a God. All they are doing is trying to generate money. So a badly written book, a well-written book, who cares? But when we proclaim the glory of God, we need to write well. But all of them are badly written, just like that quote from Richard Dawkins. But the people buy up these books en masse anyway. Why do they do that? Because they love their unrighteousness. And it helps them to deceive themselves and helps them to think that their position is actually rational. As Christians, we need to be prepared to answer those type of books because there'll be more and more of them. They've been very successful. There's a whole line of authors that is going to be chewing out more and more of these books. There's a huge market for them. Right. The atheists have created a new term for themselves. They call themselves brights. They saw how well it worked for the sodomites to stop calling themselves sodomites or homosexuals and start calling themselves gay. So the brights are trying to do the same thing. We need to show how dim they really are. So what answers can we give to those books? We need to answer that their book is a religious position. First of all, they're barring from Christianity to make their statements. They say they look around the world and they see these certain things. But if you say there is no God, then you have no reason to say tomorrow will be like today. Even if you're a Muslim, you have no reason to say tomorrow will be like today, because Islam basically says God hasn't revealed himself very fully. But we know, we have a promise that God is a God of order. The reason that they make the statements they do is because they start with Christian foundations, not because they start with atheism. If they start with atheism, there is no science with atheism. Why? Because you have no idea what's going to happen tomorrow. Because you have nobody that's guaranteeing that tomorrow will be like today. What else do we see? They're not looking at the evidence and saying there is no God. They are looking at their desire for sin and saying, therefore, there is no God. When somebody says they're an atheist, we should ask them what their sin is. We should point them to their sin because that's why they're an atheist. They're not an atheist because God hasn't told them that He exists. God has revealed it to them. They just don't like the revelation. Even the argument, how do you argue with an atheist? Because the basic argument of an atheist is they say they'll use logic. Well, if nothing transcends, then how can you use logic? Because logic is transcendent. Because God, once again, is a God of order. We always need to remember it's their sin that pushes them to that position, not any intellectual belief. So what else do we see from this passage? We see that it's revealed, has shown it to them, his invisible attributes, and even his eternal power in Godhead. So what does this mean? One thing is, as we look around the world around us, we see a great deal of complexity. When you look at the theory of evolution, the theory of evolution says, essentially, out of chaos comes a great deal of order. But everything that we see in the world today, what we see is out of order comes chaos. Right. That's the second law of thermodynamics, that everything that chaos increases, entropy increases. And so whenever we see the complexity and the beauty and the order of the world around us, they point towards creation. They point that God is a God who can speak and the world comes into existence. That's what we see. Nobody believes evolution until they've lied to themselves so much. The basis of evolution is not, I've looked at the world and decided this is what it is. What they do is they say, there cannot be a God, so what's choice number two? That's the basic position of every evolutionist. But what do we see in Job? Now prepare yourself like a man. I will question you and you shall answer me. Would you indeed annul my judgment? Would you condemn me that you may be justified? Have you an arm like God? Or can you thunder with a voice like His? Then adorn yourself with majesty and splendor and array yourself with glory and beauty. Disperse the rage of your wrath. Look on everyone who is proud and humble him. Hide them in the dust together, bind their faces in hidden darkness. Then I will also confess to you that your own right hand can save you. Every person alive recognizes their weakness in this world. All of them recognize that God is sovereign over the whole world. That's his eternal power. What does the Godhead mean? This is not the idea that from the creation you can understand the Trinity. That is not what Paul is writing here. The word Godhead, the Greek word Godhead, really it's kind of the profession of being of God is what it literally would translate to. It's kind of as Godness as a profession. You can tell that there is a God and you can tell what his nature is, but that doesn't mean that we can understand the Trinity. It doesn't mean that we can understand without special revelation how Jesus came to die for us. But everyone understands that there will be accountability. Everybody understands that God is a just God. Isaiah 45, 5-9 says, I am the Lord and there is no other. There is no God beside me. I will gird you though you have not known me. That they may know from the rising of the sun to its setting that there is none beside me. I am the Lord and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create calamity. I, the Lord, do all these things. Rain down, you heavens from above, and let the skies pour down. Righteousness, let the earth open. Let them bring forth salvation. And let righteousness spring up together. I, the Lord, have created it. Woe to him who strives with his maker. Let the potsherds strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him who formed it, what are you making? Or shall your handiwork say, he has no hands? We have a God that the world testifies that He has hands. He does things. He is a just God. There will be a day. We need salvation from His wrath. And so they are all without excuse. No one has an excuse for not glorifying God as God. They cannot say that nobody's preached in the deepest deepest, darkest parts of Africa, God says there's light everywhere and that everyone is guilty before him. Everyone does not have an excuse. It's a false statement to say those who have never heard the gospel that we should just not talk about them. That's not what God says. I've heard people say, well, you have these questions about what about people who haven't heard the gospel, but you've heard the gospel, so you need to worry about yourself. That isn't what God says. God says everybody's been condemned. We know everybody's been condemned. God has told us that everybody has been condemned already. That Jesus came to bring salvation because everybody was condemned already. Jesus didn't condemn the world. It was already condemned. When Christians take this tack, they end up by blaspheming God. And so what's the definition of blaspheming of God? Blaspheming God is to assign an attribute to God that is not his, or to take away an attribute of God that is his. When we say we can't tell if somebody in Africa will be saved or not, what we're essentially saying is that God is not a just God. That God hasn't shown his wrath from heaven. But God is a just God. They're guilty because God has revealed himself to them. They're saying that God is unrighteous. Right. Because he would just he can't just pour out his wrath on people who don't know. But God is a God who has revealed himself. And we also think we assign this attribute that somebody who's unsaved, somebody who's who hasn't heard the gospel and who will go to hell, that somehow their own unrighteousness, that they're able to go into heaven and dwell with God. But we find that God will only dwell with those who have clean hands and a pure heart. That's what God is like and that purity only comes through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we all find that we all fall short of the glory of God and we all know it and that we can't stand before God and explain ourselves any more than Job could. But do you say with Job that I know my Redeemer lives and not that he will walk the earth, but that he has walked the earth because that's the only way to go to heaven. But then we see what the pattern is when they first say that they don't know who God is. Right. Then they start to do a few things. They actually knew who God was, but their response is not to glorify him as God. They didn't recognize their debt to him, so they don't give thanks to him. And then their thoughts become futile. And finally, their foolish hearts are darkened. So let's think of what it means that they knew God. They knew who he was, but they didn't act on it. Right? The just shall live by faith. When we think of that verse, a lot of times we think, you know, the Calvin, that by faith alone, or excuse me, the Luther, that by faith alone that we're saved, which is part of that. And in Galatians, when that same verse is quoted, he's talking about justification. But the writer of Hebrews, when he quotes the verse, he's talking about sanctification. He's not talking about that we're just justified by faith. But he's saying that those who are justified then live by faith. They make their decisions by faith. We need to be living by faith. Do you know God, but don't act like it? If that's true, then you're the same as everybody else in the world. We need to have the same approach to the Bible when it commands us to do hard things, right? We need to have the same approach that we were pushing in Romania. We need to have this approach that says, if it's a hard thing, you still have to step out in faith and do it. When God shows you something in his word, where you say, yes, it seems like he's saying, is your response to do to say, but society doesn't like it or whatever is your response to say, even though I think that this will be bad for me, I think this will be bad for my family. Do you say God has said it is good? So therefore, it is good, regardless of what our own personal opinions are. And we can think of some of these things, right? Family devotions, training of children, witnessing to our neighbors, maintaining our ethics at work. That's an easy one. You say, well, everybody around me is lying, so I'll just lie like them and somehow I'll be blessed and things will work out to the best. God says, no, I'll punish you for that and it will be negative. And by faith that we have to say, yeah, it's easier for me to spin the truth instead of just saying the truth. But that's walking by faith and not by sight. But those examples are just examples that I thought of last night. What is God working on you today? What area has God brought you under conviction, but you're saying, no, I can't do that? That's where you need to put faith into practice. That's how the just live by faith. If God convicts you of something, do you say, therefore, I will do it? Do we say we know God, but don't act like we know God? Those who say they know God act like they know God. Those who truly do, and they actually walk out their faith. They actually do those things that God has commanded. Do you reserve your thoughts for God for Sunday and maybe Wednesday evening? Or is He central to your thoughts throughout the week, day by day? That's what it means to glorify God as God, right? That's what we're called to do. Glorify God as God. That's the purpose of the world, is to glorify God. He didn't create this world to make you happy. He created this world to glorify Himself. And whenever we do what seems right in our own eyes, instead of what God has commanded, we're stealing His glory. We're not glorifying Him as God. In Deuteronomy 6-7 it says, You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up. That's supposed to be the pattern of our life. We're supposed to be talking about God constantly. We're supposed to be thinking about who God is constantly. That's how you glorify Him as God. Does it mean that you don't come Sunday morning and worship? Of course you come Sunday morning and worship. But what do you do Tuesday morning? What do you do Wednesday afternoon? What do you do Friday morning? Do you walk as if you know God? Do you actually glorify God in your day-to-day walk in this world? Our life needs to be a pattern of thinking God's thoughts after Him. We should not be seeking our own way. We shouldn't be trying to be wise in our own eyes. We need to be wise in God's way. We need to be trying to think of a situation how God thinks of it and respond how God says we should respond. It's His world and He created it for His purposes. So how do you walk through this life? Do you seek your own pleasure? Or in every situation do you say, what would God have me do here? Paul says we're supposed to take every thought captive. Our minds are supposed to be renewed in the ways of God, but then we're supposed to walk them out in practice. Is that what your life looks like? Day by day, are you going through your life glorifying God? In the other aspects of glorifying God, true worship. True worship is falling down before Him. When you come to the worship service, when you do family worship, do you actually fall down before God? Do you humble yourself before God? Do you acknowledge Him as God? Is your house a house of worship? This isn't just happening in church, right? This is what should be happening in our lives every day. Do you truly glorify God as God? How about trusting God? You say, yeah, God said that, but it won't work in this society. You walk by faith and not by sight. Do you follow those commands of God that you can only see what the result will be? Or do you follow all of the commands of God? And then their next response was they were not thankful. They were commanded to praise God without ceasing. Grumbling and complaining is contrary to being a child of God. Every situation God puts you in, He puts you in for His glory. Grumbling and complaining does not glorify Him. As Jason was talking about, you can look at the things and say, oh, how terrible it flew over to Romania, flew straight back, and your response can be to grumble or complain, or it can be like Jason's response. God has a purpose for this. God will be glorified in this. What's your attitude when troubles come your way? We need to also recognize the infinite mercy that God shows us, that every time we sin, he doesn't smoke us into a cinder like we deserve. He shows us mercy day by day. Is your heart thankful that every time you sin, that God forgives us our sins? That's what it looks to be thankful. He doesn't have the right to provide us with food and clothing or a responsibility to provide us with food and clothing. That's out of his goodness. That's out of his mercy. Every time you sit down to eat, are you truly thankful to God that He chose to provide you that moment? What's your attitude towards God? Do you look around and say, look at the abundance other people have and look how little I have? That's to deny, that's not to glorify God. We're all given so much. Is your response to be thankful for what you've been given or is your response to look at other people and say, God, how could you have given them more than me? Are you thankful for this country? We went to Romania where we were sitting across the dinner table from a man whose father was killed because, it's a longer story, but his father was basically killed by the communist regime. Are you thankful for the blessings that God has given us in this country? The freedom to worship God? the freedom to do those things that are right in God's eyes, because we do have far more freedom than most places in the world. Are you thankful to God for that? In the end, you recognize that He is the potter and you are the clay. And He has the right to do anything to you that He desires. He is the potter. And anything that He does to you, anything that gives you pleasure, anything that gives you joy, any revelation that He gives you should be responded with praise because He did not have that obligation to you. Do you praise Him that way? I know I don't. I know I should. But is that what your heart is filled with? Praise towards God for what He has done. Are you like the unbeliever who doesn't give thanks to God? Both believers and unbelievers know who God is. But their practice looks a lot different. It only matters if it's put into practice. Like the demons know who God is and tremble. Knowing God isn't enough. The world testifies who God is. Do you actually put your faith into practice? Do you glorify God? Is that what you seek in your life? Are you thankful towards God? Is your faith a faith of practice? And then we see what God's response is, right? We fail to glorify him, we fail to have praise towards him, so we become futile in our thoughts and our foolish hearts are darkened. If we don't give God the praise and adoration that he deserves, that is due him, if we don't acknowledge his ways, we become futile in our imaginations. The root of the Greek word that's translated futile, it means continually searching and not finding anything. That's what our lives become like. When we read scripture even, if we refuse to obey, if we refuse to glorify God, we can read scripture and try to look for how we should behave and we're just going to be futile. We'll keep searching and not find anything. We need to assign God's working to the things that we see in this world. Right. We're in an age where we're mediums and palm readers and horoscopes. These are all becoming popular. God says they're all an abomination because they all have to do with searching for vain things. They don't have any answers. But in our culture, we're more and more going to that. How many daily papers don't have a horoscope in them? God called an abomination. But lots of people in our culture have had their thoughts, they're futile in their thoughts. And so what do they do? They read the horoscope thinking there's answers there. We should mourn over those people. We should tell them the gospel. And it's the same thing of saying, you know, well, that person was really lucky, right? Whenever you say that, you're also saying there is no God. You're also not glorifying God as God. You're saying God isn't sovereign. Think about the lottery. When I grew up, there was no lottery in this country. And now almost every state has a lottery. And what's the lottery about? The lottery is about this belief in luck in our society. As a society, we've rejected God. As a nation, we've rejected God, and he'll turn us over to our vain imaginations, which is why all the atheist books are so popular. And their foolish heart was darkened. If you reject the true light of Jesus Christ, the true revelation and creation, and start to seek the revelation of man, Right. The church said the Bible started by saying the Bible has errors in it. The church says that the Bible is insufficient. Now, there's been somewhat of a revival over the last 20 years that that's been turned around. But their hearts were darkened. God started to remove his light from the society. I teach a Bible study at a assisted living center where most of the people are 90 years old. And after 80 years, 90 years in church, most of them don't know basic doctrines. Our society is very dark. What are you doing about it? This is very sad that our churches aren't spreading the light of God. But we need to make sure it's not happening to us. We need to make sure it's not happening to our children. Are you reading the Bible every day in your home? It is the light. Are you, parents, are you reading the Bible to your children? That's how you get the darkness out, because the Word of God is the light by which we're supposed to guide our paths. If you want your children's foolish hearts to not be darkened, read the Word of God. We must also know, put it into practice, we must seek to walk spotless before God also. We will fall short, but God will forgive us for falling short. But we must strive to glorify God in how we walk. And if we walk in God's ways, we will shine the light of the gospel to those around us. Last two verses. 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 four-footed animals and creeping things. Professing to be wise, they became fools. When darkness has overcome their heart, they don't say, Lord, forgive me. What they instead say is, look how smart I am. They keep thinking how wise they are. That's why people write these books. They think how smart they are. They think that they figured out the world. But the truth is they're fools. Right. They start reading books. And they read these books and instead of being able to realize how basically irrational these books are, how they make no sense at all, instead they think they're brilliant because they've read these books. Look at Da Vinci Code, how it swept our society. Da Vinci Code had factual errors wrong all over the place. It was a made up story. And if you confront him on it, he says it's a novel. But if you don't confront him on it, he says this is truth. And people don't care. They read it and they believe it. They call themselves bright when they're truly full of darkness. They are truly fools. They are truly unwise. Proverbs 14, 16 says, a wise man fears and departs from evil, but a fool rages and is self-confident. The wise are so proud that they write badly written books and people put them on a bestseller list. These are easily defeated arguments, but they're only defeated if your goal is to glorify God. They have basic logic flaws, but the same thing. If we're futile in our imaginations, how can we defeat them? We need to point out their foolishness. The tongue of the wise uses knowledge rightly, but the mouth of the fool pours forth foolishness. And the last thing, they changed the glory of God. God had revealed their glory to them. They understood who God was. But instead of seeing a God who's omnipotent, Instead, they want a God that's easily controlled, so they start to make him in the form of an animal, a piece of clay, a silver medallion. They seek after man's wisdom and exalt man's wisdom above God's. And as more of the elites reject the wisdom of God, we'll see more and more idolatry in this country. As a nation, we don't worship God. We don't try to glorify God. We try to see how much money we can have, how much power we can have, how much prestige, the pleasure we can chase after. We actually assign these things as having value to our children. We desire to build a treasure on earth instead of treasure in heaven. We're traveling through this country. I was shocked in Europe, too. I was shocked at how many people had had tattoos. Tattoos of snakes curling up their arms. This is the society we live in, a very vain, a very dark society. a society that worships evil things, a very pagan society. We go into the workplace and earn money, and then we go and buy some food with it, and we go and pay for electricity to warm ourselves. And then we turn around and say, oh, if I only had more money, I would be delivered from all my problems. This is the same thing that Isaiah talks about, Forester that goes out and cuts down a tree comes back and takes a piece of it and carves it into a wooden idol and falls down before it and takes the rest to cook food and to heat themselves. We're not that much different. Where is your safety? Where is your security? Is it in God? Are we falling down just like the people who fall down before wood? Only we fall down before a number of what's in our bank account and say if only it was more I would be saved. Katrina, when it hit, as a nation, this is what we do. When Katrina hit, we spent $450,000 per person that was affected by Katrina. $450,000? That's like two houses per person. When the 9-11 happened, we paid $3.1 million to each one of the victims. Anybody that was hurt or killed, $3.1 million. Why do we do this as a society? Because we say salvation is in money. Why do we say salvation is in money? Because the church is failing to proclaim there is only one Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. People will always desire to worship something. Are you proclaiming to those around you who they should worship? Are you proclaiming the wisdom of glorifying an eternal and immutable God? The growth of idolatry in our society is because of failure of the church to proclaim the truth. We are the holders of the gospel. Are you proclaiming the gospel where you are? Are you shining the light of God to those around you? Okay, quickly some applications. First application is we need to be proclaiming the gospel. God did reveal himself through general revelation. But are you pointing to the people around you the foolishness of their ways? Right? We're a society that looks for salvation from money, from government, from humanity, right? Oh, if only the UN had all the power in the world, everything would be fine. No, none of those are savings. Do you look towards yourself and say, I will save myself by my own strength? No, that's foolishness. That's futile thought. Are you pointing out to them their unrighteousness is what makes them lie to themselves and say there is no God? Not in the sense of casting pearls before swine. When Jesus said that, he's talking about, do you confront an unbeliever and try to get them to turn from a sin? That's not what you do to an unbeliever. That's what you do to believers. You try to confront them in their sin and get them to turn away from it so that they do a better job of glorifying God. The unbeliever, what you need to say is, you are a sinner who is bound for hell. You need a savior for all your sins. Getting a drunkard to stop drinking does nothing for them. They still go to hell. The gospel is what the unbeliever needs. Application number two, the question we constantly need to be asking ourselves, are we deceiving ourselves in our own unrighteousness? Maybe we should ask ourselves the question in the case of justification. Do we look and we say, yeah, we know God, but do we not glorify him as God? Are we not thankful towards God? If that's the case, then we need to repent and come before God and ask to be saved. But even those who believe are constantly suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. We read God's word and say, that won't work for me. In sanctification, God has revealed what we're supposed to do. God has given us his law so we can walk according to it. Do you say that God's word is unclear? You say, oh, I want to examine it more. Or do you say God has said, therefore, I will do? What parts of scripture are you reading today where you say, eh, yeah, he kind of says that, but he can't really mean that. Yes, he does mean it. That's what it means to glorify God as God. And the last, no, actually, second last application. All true wisdom is from God. Right. There's lots of false wisdom out in the world. Jeremiah 8, 9 says the wise men are ashamed. They are dismayed and have taken Behold, they have rejected the word of the Lord. So what wisdom do they have? And that's true of all the wise people in the world today. That's true of Plato, Aristotle. That's true of Hitchens. That's true of all these people who think they're so wise. The truth is they are fools. That wisdom will always lead to death. In a world that's filled with people professing that kind of wisdom, we need to be able to discern that anyone that rejects God is not going to have an accurate understanding of the world. Right? Understanding who God is, is the basis of all understanding. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. It doesn't mean that they can't understand some specialized area, but we have to recognize that they are unwise in the ways of the world. Don't expect their teaching to be brilliant if they've rejected God. We need to discern how they got to the conclusion they got. Did they start with saying, God exists, God is real, let every man be a liar? and then figure out how they got their conclusions from God, or are they just thinking of the ways of the world, expected to be foolishness? Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. Or Proverbs 3, 1-7 says, My son, do not forget my law, but let your heart keep my commandments. For length of days and long life and peace they will add to you, Let not mercy and truth forsake you. Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart. And so find favor and high esteem in the sight of God and men. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and depart from evil. Don't be caught up with the wisdom of this world. Look for wisdom that's based on the Word of God. That's the only wisdom that will last through eternity. And then the last one. What's your life about? Is it about glorifying God? That's what you were created. Is your life filled with thankfulness towards God? Or is your life about chasing the things of this world? Is your life filled with vain thoughts? Is your life filled with chasing after amusement? Amusement literally means to not think, to not muse. The heart of amusement is vain thoughts. Is that the pattern of your life, that it's about amusement? This is a precursor to having a darkened heart. Where are your affections today? Are your affections towards God or the things of this world? Are you storing up treasure for yourself that rust and moths cannot destroy? Are you storing up treasure on this earth? Let me close in prayer. Oh, Lord God, let us be a people who proclaim your glory. Let us be a people who rejoice in your ways. Let us be a people who recognize your ways are so much better than our ways. All your ways are pleasant ways, and all your paths are peace, Lord. Let us be a people that do the things that are pleasing in your sight. Let us be a people who praise you day in and day out, who do not hide those praises when we're with the unbelievers, but praise you continually, rejoice in you continually, are thankful for you for what you have done. Lord, let us be a people that are pleasing in your sight. In Jesus Christ's name we pray. Amen.