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Reading Romans 1:24-25, and understanding how Paul illustrates that there are 5 things in this passage everyone knows about God through general revelation. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
In Romans 1 verses 18 through 20, the Apostle Paul says, we know of God's existence and the things that have been made, but it's more than that. In fact, in this section of Romans, there are five things everyone knows about God when we understand the text.
This is when we understand the text, studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Thank you for subscribing. And if this has ministered to you, please let others know about our program.
Here once again is Pastor Gabe Hughes.
Thank you, Becky. We're back in Romans chapter one and starting off with our reading today, I'll begin in verse 18 and read through verse 25. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men 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 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 lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.
Amen. So I mentioned to you that in this section, well, really the section that goes from verse 18 through verse 32, there are five things that are highlighted here that every person knows through general revelation.
Five things that everyone knows about God. And I'm going to, we're gonna summarize the two that we've looked at thus far and then add in three more today. So number one, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.
We can, through general revelation, look around and see God's wrath being poured out on sinful man. The very fact that we die is evidence of this because death is a consequence of the fall. Because mankind sinned against God, God cursed creation, death came into the picture.
This is the argument or the doctrine of original sin. As you come to understand this more through the scripture, like you don't really understand original sin through general revelation. You don't have an understanding of original sin.
That you come to through a reading of the scripture. So we get to the doctrine of original sin when we get to chapter five, Romans chapter five. But in the meantime, we see the effects of that sin, the wrath of God that has been poured out against sinful man.
So we know God's wrath. God's wrath is not something that you have to go to the pages of scripture in order to see. You see it in the world all around us. We understand the specifics of God's wrath. We understand what he's been doing throughout history from beginning to end.
Even what he's got coming in the future and the judgment that will come upon mankind. What we see in the world around us is enough to know that a great judgment is coming. It should be enough for a man or a woman to know that there are consequences for their sin.
And there is a great law giver who is going to judge all because of their sin. We make laws, we make laws all the time. It's how we govern society. And so it serves to understand just through the very conscience that we have that we can weigh a right and a wrong.
This is bearing witness to the fact that there is an ultimate law giver who is ultimately going to judge every person by his law. And that even comes up again when you get to the end of this particular section.
Verse 32, they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die. And yet they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. That's another proof or evidence that we understand about God through general revelation.
We'll get to that. That one's number five. So we're still at number one. The wrath of God revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. That is something we know even through general revelation.
The next thing we know is something I talked about a little bit more broadly yesterday but that's seeing God's invisible attributes namely his eternal power and divine nature clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made.
So man is without excuse. Now it is certainly part of the curse that God would be more difficult to see. He is invisible. He is holy and separated from us because we sinned because we're unholy. So there is a separation between us and God.
As it says in John one, no one has ever seen God, the father the only God who is at the father's side. He has made him known. So we can know of God. We don't know God is triune until we know Christ. Cause it is Christ who shows us the father.
The father shows the son, Jesus gives us the Holy spirit. That is how we know God is triune. It's through a relationship with Christ. We cannot see God and we don't intimately know God because he is invisible.
And again, that's part of the curse that God would be harder for us to see but we can still know his invisible attributes. Namely Paul narrows it down to his eternal power and his divine nature clearly perceived since the creation of the world in all that has been made.
Mankind is not going to be able to say, well we didn't know you were there. We didn't see you. We see in everything that has been made even God's eternal power and his divine nature. That's one and two.
So here's the third thing. What's the third thing that Paul is saying that we know through general revelation. The third thing is this. We know what is natural and what is unnatural. Look at the section we're reading today, verses 24 and 25.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity. Remember that they suppress the truth with unrighteousness. That was verse 18. By their unrighteousness, they suppress the truth. And although they knew God, verse 21, 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.
Every time we sin, it is an act of ingratitude toward God. It is saying to God, what you have given me is not enough. I have to have this other thing in order to be satisfied. It's exactly what Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden.
They literally had everything. The whole world had been given to them except you may not eat of this particular tree. Now they actually had possession of that tree too. It's not like the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was off limits to Adam and Eve in the sense that they did not possess that.
It was part of creation. It was part of that which God had said, have dominion and rule over it. But ruling over the tree of the knowledge of good and evil meant that they could control their own appetites and not eat from it.
Because Adam was entrusted with tending the garden, that meant he was even going to have to care for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Just he could not eat from that tree, could eat from every other tree, but couldn't eat from that one.
And he wasn't satisfied. He wasn't thankful to God. So in an act of rebellion, because what God had given to him wasn't good enough and he wasn't grateful for the Lord. He wasn't satisfied in God for all good things.
He had to have this other tree in order to feel fulfilled. Every act of sin is an act of ingratitude against God. We are telling God, you're just not good enough. I have to have this other thing in order to be satisfied.
So because they did not honor God, they did not give thanks to him. They became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. And you see that they begin trading things here. They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man.
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 for a lie. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie.
They would rather believe God doesn't exist. He isn't judge. He isn't looking out for me. He doesn't know what I'm doing. He's not going to judge what it is that I have done. Peter talks about this in 2 Peter 3, that scoffers will come in the last days, saying, where is this God who was promised?
Jesus himself even said, beware that you don't become like that wicked servant who says my master is delayed. And in Malachi 2 .17, we read, you have wearied the Lord with your words. But you say, how have we wearied him?
By saying everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord and he delights in them or by asking, where is the God of justice? When they exchange the truth about God for a lie, they worship and serve the created thing rather than the creator.
So for this reason, verse 26, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. They went after the lust of their flesh rather than the heavenly promise that God offers through Christ. God gives his very son, the greatest treasure we could ever be given, the son of God he gives to us.
And yet the people even reject that and they go after the lust of their hearts to impurity. They go from the promise of holiness and righteousness in God, fellowship with God. Instead, I'd rather have the lust of my flesh to dishonoring their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie, worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever, amen.
Therefore God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. We know what is natural and what is unnatural, but it's out of the lust of a person's flesh that they would exchange natural things which are good and wonderful that God has given us and they would go after unnatural things which are not as great.
I mean, you just look at, you know exactly what unnatural depravity is going on in the world around us right now. You would have to be living under a rock not to know. You've got men burning with passion for other men.
Homosexuality is rampant. Gay marriage became legal in the United States back in 2015. In my most recent book, 2019 Year in Review, one of the first chapters might be the first chapter where I talk about all of the countries in the world and a couple of more that were added in 2019, but every country in the world right now that recognizes homosexual marriage as legal.
This is spreading worldwide. I heard Tim Challies talk about this recently and one of the things he said is that this movement cannot sustain itself. Eventually it's gonna collapse on itself. And he was adding in the whole transgender movement on top of that as well.
They just legalized gay marriage and what comes like immediately on the heels of the legalization of gay marriage is transgender rights. So a man being able to become a woman and being recognized as a woman, a man pretending to be a woman, playing in sports, doing women's sports and just winning everything because men naturally are stronger than women.
It's just the way nature is. It's the way God made us. Of course they're gonna win at women's sports, rendering women's sports completely pointless. I mean, and once sex doesn't matter and when a man can play a woman's sports and dominate it, why are women playing sports?
And that's where the culture's headed. That's where all of that will go. And yeah, again, like Albert Moeller has said, Tim Challies has said, all of this eventually is just gonna collapse in on itself.
You know, if you knew nothing about humanity, if you knew nothing about sexuality, all you'd have to do is look at two people and you get kind of a clue. If you knew nothing about how people mate and procreate, you look at a man, you look at a woman, you go, look, these two people are different.
I bet you, you put that together. That's how that's supposed to take place. And then you procreate and you create other human beings. And then a couple of months go by and you get a confirmation that that's exactly how that was supposed to happen.
Yep, there you go. Okay, she's pregnant now. So that must be how that's supposed to happen. I mean, it's nature. We know this. You don't have to take a sex ed class to know how men and women are supposed to go together, how God had created us for this.
And our culture is currently denying that which was established from the beginning of creation. Folks, Genesis one is still true. The culture has not invalidated the book of Genesis in any way. We see established every single day, confirmation that what we read at the beginning of the Bible is the truth.
When I wrote my book, 40 of the most popular Bible verses and what they really mean. The very first verse, the very first chapter is Genesis 1 .1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
And I mentioned in that chapter, that is the most offensive verse in the Bible. Because if you believe that verse, you can believe the rest of the Bible. But if you don't believe that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, you're not gonna believe any of the rest of it either.
You're gonna reject even that God created them, male and female. You know, you have our society, our culture today is rejecting Genesis one. When they are rejecting that God made them male and female.
But again, this is nature and it's obvious and we know it just from general revelation. So people get ignorant and suppress the truth with their unrighteousness because they love their sin. And because they did not honor God or give thanks to him.
They weren't grateful for how God made us. God gave them up to the loss of their hearts, to impurity, to dishonoring their bodies among themselves. Because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie.
They exchanged the truth about how God made us for a lie. And worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator. Humanism, serving and worshiping themselves. You know, placing mankind as the greatest, highest, most achievable thing.
My will, my desires, that's the greatest thing. Or what do we learn from church catechism? From the history of the church. We learned that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
But humanism, secular humanism in particular, will state that the chief end of man is to glorify man and enjoy himself for as long as he can. That's it. Mankind is a worshiper. He's going to worship something.
If he's not worshiping God, he's worshiping himself. Even a person who worships idols is worshiping themselves because they're worshiping the thing that they themselves made. So God giving them up to the loss of their hearts, to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.
We know, we inherently know just by looking at creation, what is natural and what is unnatural, but it's by a person's unrighteousness that they suppress the truth. And God, as a consequence for that, because again, God's wrath revealed from heaven as a consequence for their rejecting God and rejecting his created order, he's going to give them up to the loss of their flesh to do what is unnatural rather than what is natural.
Their foolish hearts are darkened and they fall into even deeper darkness. So that's the third thing that we inherently know from general revelation. Number one, the wrath of God revealed from heaven.
Number two, God's invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature. Number three, what is natural and what is unnatural. Number four, I'm going to skip all the way to verse 32. 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. So the number four thing that we know from general revelation is that God's word is true. Yeah, believe it or not, we know even through general revelation that God has spoken and his word is true.
We don't know what he has spoken, but because all of these things had to come into existence somehow, there has to be a divine supreme creator who created all things. And we find out from Genesis one that he created all things by the word of his mouth.
He just spoke it into existence and it came to be. That same word that spoke everything into existence is the very word that governs us even now. And so we know that God has spoken and that his word is the supreme authority.
Though a person may not know what God has said, if they don't read scripture, if they haven't heard the gospel, they nevertheless believe that God has said something and what he has said is true. So they know God's righteous decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die.
And again, this goes back to, I mentioned this earlier, we are moral beings, we establish laws, we create order, and that's all by the providential hand of God that that happens, that takes place. But this is a revelation to the fact that God himself creates order and establishes laws.
If we establish laws, it's because we've been made in the image of the one who is the ultimate law giver. So we can know because we are governed by laws, or we govern with laws, that we are ultimately governed by laws.
So we know that God has given a righteous decree, this is good and this is bad. They know that those who practice what is unnatural deserve to die. Like when we start going against nature, there are serious consequences for that, namely death.
Again, we see that in general revelation, people die. We instinctively know that those who do evil things deserve condemnation. And yet people will continue to do the evil thing, even though they know that there are consequences for this.
And they will even applaud those who do the evil thing, probably so they'll feel justified in what it is that they're doing. Hey, if more people are doing this evil, then I'll feel like that I'm doing something right and I'm not doing something wrong.
It's the cognitive dissonance thing. But it's also God turning them over to a depraved heart. So we know that God has spoken and what God says is true. And anyone who goes against what God says deserves condemnation.
We even understand that through general revelation. Last thing we understand. So number five, we know that there is a right and a wrong. And we see that throughout this entire section, Romans 1, 18 through 32.
We know that there's a right and we know that there's a wrong. I think I've said that earlier, but I didn't separate it out into its own category. So we know that God's wrath is revealed against the unrighteousness of man.
We know, that's number one. Number two, we know God's eternal power and divine nature. Number three, we know what is natural and unnatural. Number four, we know that God has spoken and whoever goes against what God has said deserves to die.
From general revelation, we understand that. Think it even goes with God's wrath being revealed from heaven. Number five, we know that there is a right and there is a wrong. God has given us a conscience and it's through that conscience that we establish right and wrong.
Now, the conscience has fallen. It's depraved because we're under the curse of sin. So certain things we might get right when it comes to discerning right and wrong, but a lot of those things we're gonna get wrong because we're gonna try to justify ourselves and go after the thing that our flesh wants.
Once again, all of our sin is bound up in ingratitude toward God. What we deserve for our rebellion against God, all of us have sinned against God. We've all rebelled. We've all gone after the passions of our flesh.
And what we deserve for this is our own destruction. We deserve to die. We deserve the judgment of God. That's what we deserve for our sin and we know that. And it's part of the, again, part of the general revelation, part of what we see here in verse 32.
But God being merciful and gracious toward us didn't leave us dead in our sins, but sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins so that all who believe in him will have their sins washed away and we will have eternal life.
Now, as we've gone over this and we're gonna come back to this again next week as we continue in Romans 1, it's real easy for us to look at the sins that are being described here. And we look at it in light of things that are even going on in our own culture.
And it's easy for us to look at this and think like the Pharisee in Jesus' parable in Luke chapter 18, the Pharisee and the tax collector. Do you remember this? The Pharisee and the tax collector go up to the temple.
The Pharisee says, God, I thank you that I'm not like other men. You know, the homosexuals, the adulterers, unjust, cheaters, liars, I'm not like them. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all I get.
Jesus says, but the tax collector standing far off would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but he beat his chest saying, God be merciful to me, a sinner. In verse 14, Jesus says, I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.
For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. So as we're going through this in Romans chapter one, let it not lead us to justifying ourselves in that way, looking at other sinners and then saying of ourselves, well, thank goodness I'm not like them.
Rather, we were all like them. As Paul says in Ephesians chapter two, all of us were dead in our trespasses and sins like the rest of this world, but God was merciful toward us. Someone preached the gospel to us and by the move of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, we believed it.
And in Christ, in faith in Christ, we are justified. Not because we're better people than all the rest of these wicked sinners in this world, but because we have the righteousness of Christ by the mercy of God.
So this should charge us all the more to be filled with gratitude toward God. Be thankful for him daily that he rescued us out of this sin and the wrath of God that is coming against all the unrighteousness of men.
Thank God that he rescued us out of that. But then we also in our gratitude toward God would fulfill that great commission that he gave to all of his disciples and take the gospel to others so they would not perish under the wrath of God that is coming against all the sin of man.
Let's conclude with prayer. Our heavenly father, we thank you for our word today. And I pray that we would, through what we have read, come to greater gratitude for what it is you have done for us, rescuing us out of our sin, giving us your righteousness.
It's because of the righteousness of Christ that we would loathe the sin and the wickedness that we see going on in this world, but our hearts also break for those walking in that sin because they know they're walking to their own destruction if they do not repent.
Give us courage to preach the gospel that others may hear and believe it and so be saved. May your spirit work through these people, move through these people that they may listen to the gospel of Christ and come to salvation.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
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