Sunday Sermon: Without Excuse (Romans 1:20-23)

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Pastor Gabriel Hughes preaches on Romans 1:20-23 about how the revelation of God is clearly perceived in all that has been made, so that mankind is without excuse. Visit providencecasagrande.com for more info about our church!

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You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.
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Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an
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Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday. Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series.
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Here is Pastor Gabe. If you would open your Bible please to Romans chapter 1.
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As we continue our series in the book of Romans, picking up where we left off last week,
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Romans chapter 1. Understand there is an inauguration tomorrow, new president, new administration that is coming in.
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And I believe we should mark the occasion by gathering together as the saints, singing praises unto
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God, praying, reading God's word, and doing as He says. Which is what we should be doing every
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Sunday. And we'll also be partaking of the Lord's table this morning as well, toward the close of our service.
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Now we have, as good Baptists have been standing and sitting all through the service,
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I won't make you stand again. But in honor of the word of the King, if you would please meditate with me upon Romans 1.
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I'll begin reading in verse 18 and go through verse 23 to keep these things in context. Hear the word of the
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Lord. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
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For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them.
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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.
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So they are without excuse. For although they knew
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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.
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Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal
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God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
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Let us pray. Heavenly Father, as we come into our text today,
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I pray that You illuminate to us all the more those things that we as followers of Jesus Christ should see.
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All of mankind is without excuse. The evidence, the plain evidence of God's existence, and even that You created all things, even that You are eternal and divine, can be clearly perceived in all that has been made.
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Mankind is without excuse. But as we have come to know the truth through the preaching of the gospel, and Your Holy Spirit has illuminated to us spiritual things, we have even less excuse than anyone else.
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And so may it be stirred in our hearts that we be convicted of our sin and desire to live in the righteousness of Christ that we've been clothed in.
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But also that we might be empowered by Your Spirit, not just to live holy lives, but to go into the world and call to repentance those who are perishing, that they may come to the knowledge of our
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Savior and believe in Jesus and trust in Him, worship Him, so that all who know
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Him will not perish under the judgment of God that is coming, but all who know
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Christ will be saved and live with Him forever in His glorious and imperishable kingdom.
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We pray with the Apostle John, whose words we've even sung about in just the previous song, we pray with him, come quickly
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Lord Jesus, may your judgment be done in the earth, and may your people be delivered unto eternal life.
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It's in Jesus' name we pray and all God's people said, Amen. In Acts 17, beginning in verse 22, the
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Apostle Paul comes to Athens to preach to the Athenians.
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It is said of these people in Athens that they love to see new things.
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They want to hear a new word. And so as the Apostle Paul has been reasoning and arguing in the marketplace about Jesus Christ, about the one who had been risen from the dead, they're curious about these things.
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They thought they had heard every new philosophy on the block. But here this new guy is coming with a new word.
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So what can we do? How can we hear more about this? I know, let's bring him up to the
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Areopagus. The Areopagus, also known as Mars Hill, was the place where all of the gods of the
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Greeks had been erected. Various statues that were standing there. And the new philosophers would come in and they would present their philosophies there in the midst of the gods.
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As though standing in court by those gods to determine if what this philosopher was saying was true.
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So they bring the Apostle Paul up there to that place. That he might be judged by their gods.
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At least that's what was in the minds of the men of Athens. And when the Apostle Paul arrives there, he's looking at the statues.
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He's looking at these various figures that represent these gods that are worshipped by the
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Greeks. And he identifies that there's one bare pedestal that is sitting there that does not have a god standing upon it.
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You have the god of the sea, you have the god of the sun, you have the god of the rain, you have the goddess of love.
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And yet here is this bare place with an inscription upon it. That inscription says, to the unknown god.
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The definite article is used there. Not to an unknown god, but to the unknown god.
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As if the Greeks are recognizing, well we're trying to appease all of these gods in case there's one we missed.
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Here's an altar to him. And as the Apostle Paul begins his sermon, the famous sermon that was preached there at Mars Hill.
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He says, Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.
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For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription.
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To the unknown god. What therefore you worship as unknown,
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I proclaim to you as known. The god who made the world and everything in it, being lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he saved by human hands, as though he needed anything.
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Since he himself gives to all mankind, life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind, to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods in the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek
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God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him, yet he is actually not far from each one of us.
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For in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring.
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Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and the imagination of man.
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The times of ignorance God has overlooked. But now he commands all people everywhere to repent.
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For he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness.
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By a man whom he has appointed. And of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.
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Now what's interesting about this sermon that the apostle Paul preached at the Areopagus is that the name of Christ himself is not mentioned.
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Now it's not that the Athenians did not know who he was talking about, because he had been reasoning and arguing for the
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Christ as the Messiah to whom they must turn to and believe in in order to be saved.
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And that was the very reason why they brought him up there to the Areopagus, because they wanted to hear more about this carpenter of Nazareth who had risen from the dead.
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But rather than proclaiming the name of Christ himself in that particular sermon, he does still indeed tell them to repent.
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God commands all people everywhere to repent. Because he's going to judge the world in righteousness by that man you're asking me about.
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The one who had risen from the dead. The one to whom God has given all authority.
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And it is by him that the world will be judged. Paul did not explain to the people what judgment was or what righteousness was.
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They already knew what these things were. He called them to repentance.
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To turn to the one whom God had raised from the dead for it was through him that he would judge the world.
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And as we look at this passage in Romans 1 again today, I want us to consider again what God has revealed about himself, so that we may know that all mankind is without excuse.
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Further, we will consider why sinful man has rebelled against the righteousness of God.
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And finally, we will reflect upon what we must do in response to the knowledge that we've been given of God as followers of Jesus Christ.
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Title of my sermon this morning is, Without Excuse. We recognize that mankind is without excuse.
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He who knows of the existence of God and even as said to us here in Romans 1, even what a righteous
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God requires of us, but they suppress the truth with their unrighteousness.
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Let's pick up where we left off last week, reading again about the wrath of God that is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
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That's verse 18. And here in chapters 1 through 3, we're about to see a whole list of sins that mankind is guilty of.
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In chapter 1 in particular, we see the sins of a people that God has taken His hand off of and turned over to be consumed by their passions.
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You don't have to look far in our culture to find wicked, depraved sins that we deserve judgment for.
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There are sins that are being embraced by this culture as normal that would make even
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Sodom and Gomorrah blush. In fact, this nation revels in such wickedness, flaunting it unashamed in television, movies, and music.
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There's a film out right now in which an older woman, a massively successful executive, played by one of the most famous actresses of our time, commits adultery with a handsome young intern.
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And that is portrayed in this film as something worth desiring. Something that you would want to cheer on as you watched it.
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People pay money to be entertained by such a fantasy because in their hearts, they want that too.
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And say they will go to the theater or they will subscribe to the streaming services that give them the entertainment to satisfy their heart's desires.
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And this is not just common to states that are shaded a certain blue, as we might categorize them.
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Where I first pastored in rural, conservative Kansas, even there, adultery was rampant.
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You could convince me that there was a spirit of adultery afflicting the hearts of the people that were in the very place where I was appointed to pastor.
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It was so prevalent that even one of the elders of the church that I was pastor of was deceived and gave in to this temptation, destroying his marriage and his family and himself.
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It is imperative that we heed the warning of 1 Corinthians 6 .18, flee from sexual immorality.
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For as Colossians 3 .6 says, on account of this, the wrath of God is coming.
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The world is perishing around us in unrighteousness.
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And God will pour out His judgment upon it. And all who delight in the unrighteousness of our culture will perish right along with it.
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And you may even think to yourself, that what if I just desire it but I don't indulge in it?
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Well, Colossians 3 .5 tells us that it's against even the desire for this sin that the wrath of God is coming against.
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We must not be as Lot's wife, when Sodom and Gomorrah was perishing in fire and sulfur from heaven, who as she was fleeing by the grace of God being delivered from this judgment, yet she stopped and looked back, her heart still longing for the things that this city was being judged for.
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God will destroy even those who delight in the unrighteousness that our culture is indulging in.
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Today happens to be Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, the Sunday before January 22nd, which is the anniversary of Roe vs.
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Wade, that decision that was handed down in our nation in 1973 that made abortion on demand legal in our country.
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And since then, over 60 million unborn children have been murdered in the womb.
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A nation cannot be guilty of such atrocities and expect to escape the judgment of God.
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He will bring His judgment down even upon this nation. Now, I have prayed for President Biden, and I pray for President Trump.
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As the presidency changes hands and a new administration comes in tomorrow, I pray that President Trump would recognize
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America's guilt and the blood on its hands, and he and other governors, members of Congress, and so on, would call this nation to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.
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But even if he doesn't, the church must, and with bold men in our pulpits, may they call out sin and preach the gospel, for it is only through the gospel that we can be saved.
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The only way we can escape the wrath of God that we all deserve for our sin is by faith in Jesus, who died on the cross for our sins, taking the wrath of God upon Himself that we all deserve, so that by faith in Him we would not perish.
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Instead, we would be clothed in His righteousness, instead of perishing in our unrighteousness, and in Him we have everlasting life.
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The wrath of God has been revealed from heaven. So that man is without excuse.
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For as I said to you a couple of weeks ago, this verse, this statement here in verse 18, is something that carries on through chapters 2 and halfway into chapter 3, that we may recognize and see that God is just in His judgments.
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That mankind is guilty and deserving of the judgment of God. And yet man will suppress the truth of that, out of love for his unrighteousness.
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Like I said, there are many other sins that we're going to see as we continue in chapter 1. Next week when we go on to the next section that we read about in verse 24,
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God gave them up to the lusts of their hearts, to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.
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But right here in verse 18, in this particular section we're looking at between last week and this week, there's only one sin that's mentioned here.
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All the other sins that we're going to see in chapter 1 are going to flow out of this one sin that's mentioned in verse 18.
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And the one sin that's mentioned here is the suppression of truth.
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We're also told why rebellious man suppresses the truth. Because he loves his unrighteousness.
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Verse 19 says, For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
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His existence is not so hidden that man would come to that day and stand before God and go,
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I didn't even know you were there. For as verse 20 says, His invisible attributes, namely
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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.
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For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him.
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That's an important point we'll come back to. But they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
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Verses 20 -21 tell us that every man is fully capable of recognizing that God is real, and more than that, that He is eternally powerful.
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What is the word that we use for that? He is omnipotent. He is all -powerful and always has been and always will be.
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From before there was time to when even time ends, God will continue on in His eternal power, in His omnipotence.
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We can know of an eternal God, an eternally powerful
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God, just in an observation of the things that have been made. And more than this, we know not just that He is eternally powerful, but that He is divine in His nature, specifically that He is righteous, that He is right and above us, and we are evil and wicked compared to God.
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As we've been going through Exodus in our Sunday school class, when Moses and Aaron first confront Pharaoh and tell him to let
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God's people go so that they may worship Yahweh, Pharaoh replies in Exodus 5 -2, Who is
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Yahweh that I should listen to His voice to let Israel go? I don't know
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Yahweh, and also I will not let Israel go. But it is after the seventh plague, the plague of fiery hailstones, that Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron, and he said to them,
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Exodus 9 -27, I have sinned. Yahweh is the righteous one, and I and my people are the wicked ones.
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When Pharaoh saw the wrath of God, he recognized that God was righteous, and He was not, and His people were not.
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But of course that realization was fleeting, because once the hailstones were taken away, what happened with Pharaoh?
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He hardened his heart again against God. Like, ah, things are back to normal now, and Pharaoh continued to exalt himself as God against the
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God of the universe. He suppressed the truth with his unrighteousness.
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We read this last week in Psalm 107, considering God's calamitous wrath, how
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His wrath may be seen even in acts of nature. When the people see it, verse 28 says,
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They cried to Yahweh in their trouble, and He brought them out of their distresses. He caused the storm to stand still, so that its waves were hushed.
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Then they were glad, because the waves were quiet. So He led them to their desired haven.
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Let them give thanks to the Lord for His lovingkindness. Even through natural disasters, we can observe and see that God is righteous.
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And we are not. That we are deserving of His judgment, so that the people will turn to God and give thanks to Him.
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When Jesus was with His disciples in a boat on the Sea of Galilee, a windstorm came up so that the wind and the waves were so fierce, the disciples thought that the boat would capsize.
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Where was Jesus? Asleep! I've used this verse to tell my wife, a man's ability to sleep through anything is a
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Christ -like quality. She was not so amused by that, unfortunately.
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Jesus is asleep, at peace. And so should the disciples have been at peace.
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We have the God of the universe in our boat with us. But they shake
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Him awake and say, Save us, Lord, we are perishing! And Jesus said to them,
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Why are you so cowardly, you men of little faith?
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And then He got up and rebuked the wind and the sea, and it became perfectly calm.
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What was the disciples' reaction after that? Oh, thank the
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Lord. Now I can take a nap with Jesus in this boat. Was that their reaction?
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Mark 4 .41 says, They became very afraid, and they looked at one another and said,
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Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey
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Him? They were afraid of the fierceness of the storm, but when they saw the power of Christ as greater than the storm, then they became afraid of Him.
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It was the famed psychologist Sigmund Freud who said that man invents the notion of God.
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He invents religion because he wants to believe that there is someone or something greater than the storm that scares him.
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If this God is on my side, Freud postulated, then I don't have any reason to be afraid of the storm.
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So we invent God, that we won't be afraid of the things that scare us.
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But what Freud failed to understand is that God is even more fearsome than the storms that scare us.
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The disciples didn't sit back and relax in the boat and say, Ah, thank you, Jesus. You took care of that storm for us.
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They went from being afraid of the storm to fearing God. Man doesn't want a
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God who is so righteous and so much more powerful than the things that make us afraid.
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That's not what we're looking for in our sinful, wicked hearts. Rebellious men and women want a
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God that will let them do what they want. That's the kind of God that man invents.
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So they suppress the truth about God. In Freud's explanation for why people turn to religion, he was actually suppressing the truth also, because Freud did not want to acknowledge a holy
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God exists, and Freud must submit to Him. All throughout this culture, we see people suppressing the truth about God.
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Our public education system, from the federal level on down, is built to be secular and agnostic.
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You don't go into classrooms to listen to a teacher tell you that God gave us math, and through math we can observe and behold the ordered creation that God has made and the rules and the laws that govern it.
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If you don't believe in such rules and such laws, you can't do math. Math is governed by objective truth, and it isn't possible to solve a mathematical equation, to know that 2 plus 2 equals 4, unless you believe that there is objective truth.
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And you've probably seen articles of absurd things of teachers out there that are trying to say, 2 plus 2 doesn't always equal 4.
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Sometimes it can equal 5. They suppress the truth with their unrighteousness.
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Public education is now opposed to even saying that there are two sexes, male and female, and that these things about yourself are immutable.
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You will always be male. You will always be female. In some schools in some states, if a teacher refuses to call students by their preferred pronouns, they could be fired for preaching the truth.
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It is a far cry from where our nation was even a decade ago. This past week
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I read a story about a weatherman who was fired from his job. And it is believed that he was fired, although the television station didn't say it, but the people that watched him on TV believed that he was fired because he prayed on the air.
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There was a tornado that was bearing down on a town, and as he was covering this tornado, and himself filled with grief for the people who were in the path of this storm, he stopped his reporting and prayed that God would protect them.
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Because he had a reputation of calling on the name of the Lord on the air, he was fired from his job.
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People don't want these reminders of even a holy
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God who has power over the storm. Because if God exists that has power over the storm, which we can't control, then
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He has power over us and controls us as well. They want to suppress the truth.
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They want to pretend He's not there. They will call Him a fairy tale. They will use all other manner to make fun of Christians who believe in Him because they want to suppress the truth.
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They suppress the truth with unrighteousness because they would rather have their sin. I would rather have the desires of my flesh than have
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God who created all things. And that is the revelation of the wickedness of man's heart.
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Again, Romans 1 .18 tells us that the wrath of God has been revealed. It has been revealed from heaven.
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The very fact that our world is in chaos, that this material space is wasting away in a perpetual state of decay, that itself is a revelation of the wrath of God.
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That He has subjected all things to a curse because of mankind's sin against Him.
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It's not necessarily that bad things happen to you because I just sinned yesterday and so now I'm sick because of my sin yesterday.
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That may not be the reason that you are sick. The reason why you're sick is because the world has been subjected to futility.
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And we understand that things are in this state, the way that they are in, because in a garden, in paradise, man rebelled against God.
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Even paradise wasn't good enough. I need this other thing that God tells me I can't have. And even
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Adam himself suppressed the truth to eat a piece of fruit. Martin Lloyd -Jones said, it is a tragic fallacy that in our world today we believe that we can improve the environment.
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If we improve a man's environment, then we can improve the man. This is almost the subject of every political discourse that you hear out there.
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If we make the situation better for people, if we give them more money, if we give them more benefits, more rights, more privileges, it will fix people.
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But that is a tragic fallacy, Lloyd -Jones said, because it overlooks the fact that it was in paradise that man fell.
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He had everything, even the presence of God himself to walk with in the cool of the day, and man in his rebellious heart was not satisfied.
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The fall of Adam was inevitable because Adam was man and not God. And desiring to have the one thing he was told that he could not have, he suppressed the truth of what
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God said to him, what God had promised him, to have his unrighteousness.
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Psalm 94 says this, O Lord, God of vengeance, O God of vengeance, shine forth.
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Rise up, O judge of the earth. Repay to the proud what they deserve.
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O Lord, how long shall the wicked exult? They pour out arrogant words.
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The evildoers boast. They crush your people, O Lord, and afflict your heritage. They kill the widow and the sojourner, and they murder the fatherless, and they say,
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The Lord does not see. The God of Jacob does not perceive. They revel in their unrighteousness because they believe that God does not see it, nor will
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He judge them for it. And this goes on in the psalms echoed in various places.
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Psalm 73, 11, How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High? Psalm 10, 11,
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God is forgotten. He has hidden His face. He will never see it. Psalm 59, 7,
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There they are, bellowing with their mouths, with swords in their lips, for who they think will hear us.
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And Psalm 64, 5, They hold fast to their evil purpose. They talk of laying snares, secretly thinking,
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Who can see me? Ecclesiastes 8, 11 says,
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Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil.
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And we see evidence of this in our culture. Corrupt governments who do not punish sin so that evil is able to thrive, and the wicked do not think that there will be any consequences for their sin.
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But do not be deceived. Judgment will come.
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We have evidence of judgment that has been laid out for us in the Scriptures, in the ways that God has judged
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Sodom and Gomorrah, the way that He judged Egypt, the way that He judged His own people when they disobeyed
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God and worshiped idols instead of the one true God. As said in 2
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Peter 3, 8 -10, Do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the
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Lord, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill
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His promise. A promise of judgment as well as a promise of deliverance, as some count slowness.
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But He is patient toward you, not wishing that any would perish, but that all should reach repentance.
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Verse 10 says, But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.
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Verse 11 goes on to say, Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be, living lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt away as they burn?
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But according to His promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.
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Now to say that righteousness dwells in His perfect kingdom means that He will remove all unrighteousness and those who do it.
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And I'll come back to that point, I'll come back to that thought here again in a moment. As we continue with our text, again verse 19,
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What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
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Mankind is without excuse, and we see it over and over again here in our text. Wicked, rebellious men know that there is a
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God. They know there is an eternally righteous God. But they suppress the truth, and they do so because they love their sin more than they love
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God. Taking a cue from the Apostle Paul, as we read in Acts 17 in the very beginning, it is not necessary to have to prove, even to a rebellious people, that God exists.
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They know God exists. The reason that they don't want to acknowledge God exists is because they love their sin.
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But every once in a while, you may need to expose the contradiction that exists in their thinking so that they will be convicted of their sin, and their hearts will be prepped to hear the gospel.
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This is exactly what Paul did at the Areopagus. He showed them, you are a religious people.
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Look at these statues that you worship. And more than this, they already know the true Creator of all things is real.
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They had an altar to Him. To the unknown God. But that was also a testament to their wanting to suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
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This story is true. I witnessed this happen between two students, or three students rather.
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There was a student that was up at the whiteboard. This was before class was to begin, and it was in their science classroom.
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And he was up at the board, and he had written a series of H's and T's up on the board.
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There was one line that just had random H's and T's. And then there was a second line that had six
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H's and six T's. Six H's in a row, six T's in a row. And what the
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H's represented were coin flips. An H was heads, the T was tails.
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And he was making this argument to his fellow classmates. Which of these two sequences represents order?
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And some of the students raised their hands. I don't know why, the kid wasn't a teacher. But they're like, the second one, with six
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H's and six T's, that one represents order. And he said, wrong. They're both random.
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You only think this represents order because you think that this is harder to acquire by random coin flips than the first sequence.
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But they're both chaos. And the argument that he was trying to make, as this student was an atheist, is that order does not give evidence of God's existence.
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That was the argument that he was attempting to make. There was a student that was sitting on the front row, and he raised his hand, and he said, do you have a coin?
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And the atheist kid said, well, sure. Reaches into his pocket, pulls out a quarter, flips it to the kid on the front row. And he said,
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I want to test your theory and come up with an ordered sequence of heads and tails.
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And the atheist kid said, okay, I'd like to see you do it. And so the student on the front row set the quarter on the table, and he just sat there and stared at it.
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To the point where it became awkward and uncomfortable in the class. What in the world is he doing? And finally, the atheist kid asked him, what are you waiting for?
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And the student said, well, I'm waiting for this coin to start flipping itself either heads or tails. Because according to your illustration that you're putting up there, this thing should all just kind of happen by itself, right?
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No outside force exerted upon it. Nothing that would indicate that there is an intelligent designer that actually designed this coin or designed the table that it's sitting upon.
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Or that would even exact a force upon it that would make it come up heads or tails. And the student standing there at the board became a little uncomfortable with how the illustration was going.
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And the student sitting at the table said, see, there's actually no example whatsoever that you can give to demonstrate that there is not an intelligent cause that put all of this stuff in order.
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Every illustration that you use will by its nature actually argue for design, not against it.
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You're using a coin that was designed. And through this simple illustration, the student showed you actually know that there is a designer behind all of this.
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This is something that I've referred to as the implied creator paradox. For every illustration that can be used of things happening by accident will actually be a testament to things happening by cause or purpose.
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And you can't provide an example that didn't come from somewhere. The very fact that you are giving an example means your example comes from an intelligent cause.
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Yourself, even though you are a fool who is darkening God's counsel with words without knowledge.
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It is not incumbent upon the Christian to have to prove that God exists. It's actually incumbent upon the atheist to prove that he doesn't.
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Because the evidence of a designer is everywhere as the
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Scriptures testify. So it is not necessary to have to prove to someone that God exists.
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And once you've proven God exists, then you can give them the gospel. It may be enough that you show them the contradiction, which is exactly what the
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Apostle Paul does at the Areopagus. He reveals to them, you know the
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God that I testify to exists. Here's the altar you made to Him. But you've suppressed the truth in unrighteousness.
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The times of ignorance God has overlooked. But now He's commanding all people everywhere to repent.
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For He has fixed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness.
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And of this He has given evidence to all by raising Him, that man through whom
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He will judge the world from the dead. As Voddie Bauckham has said in his courses that he teaches on apologetics, he says apologetics are great.
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Making arguments about the existence of God, all good, but get to the gospel. Because proof of God's existence won't save anybody.
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They know God exists. They suppress the truth with unrighteousness. Get to the message that does save.
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You must repent and turn to Christ and live. And this is the message that has been spoken to us.
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Every one of us have come to a knowledge of the Savior through the gospel that was preached to us.
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But there are those who continue to claim to be wise and in so doing they actually become fools.
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They exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
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So we can summarize what we have read here in verses 18 to 23 with these three truths.
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Number one, sin is the desire. Their desire is not
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God. Their desire is their unrighteousness. They want the sin and so they suppress the truth about God.
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Instead of worshiping God and honoring God and giving thanks to Him, they become futile in their thinking.
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Desiring the sin that will eventually lead to their judgment. Instead of desiring
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God and His righteousness. So first of all, sin is the desire. Secondly, sin is the result of ingratitude.
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Look again at verse 23. They exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
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Why? Because as said in 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.
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Sin is the result of ingratitude. All sin flows from a heart that is ungrateful to God.
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And when you have sinned, it is as if in your heart you have said, God, what you have for me is not good enough.
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I need this other thing in order to be satisfied. And so you turn to that thing, expecting that it's going to give you the part of yourself that you think that you're lacking.
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And I will finally be satisfied if I have this thing, only to come out on the other side feeling more empty than you were before you indulged in that fleshly temptation that you had.
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Sin flows from a heart that is not grateful to God. That is not satisfied with what God has given to us.
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And so we indulge in the passions of our flesh or we go after the temptations of the world or we are fooled and deceived by the schemes of Satan because we weren't satisfied in Christ.
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Sin is the result of an ungrateful heart. It's one of the reasons why the Apostle Paul in Philippians 4 says, when you make your request before God, give thanks.
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Let it be with a heart of thanksgiving that your request be made known to God. Even when we are troubled.
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Even when we are filled with despair. We feel like we're losing our grip.
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We wonder where God is in the midst of a difficult situation. Even then, we lift up thanksgiving to God.
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For David prays from such a place in Psalm 13, but that psalm ends with him saying, but I will give thanks to the
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Lord because He has dealt bountifully with me.
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Third thing. First of all, sin is the desire. Second, sin is the result of ingratitude. And third, sin makes you stupid.
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Sin makes you do stupid things. Again, verse 23, they exchange the glory of the immortal
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God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
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What in the world? Now oftentimes when we talk about idolatry, we like to think, well that was a primitive people in a primitive culture in a primitive time.
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There are people in like the lost jungles of Africa or South America that worship stone idols and wood gods.
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But we're above all that. We don't do that, do we? You ever been down to five below? You can buy a little
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Ganesh statue or a Buddha statue for under five bucks. They're bountiful.
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They're plentiful all over the place. You can go to Walmart or Fry's and you can buy a candle to death.
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And a prayer to death is on the back of that candle. Weird idolatry such as this is not something that is only common to primitive people.
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It is very common in our culture today. But more than this are the things that our greedy hearts long after.
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Thinking that I need this thing in order to be satisfied. And that becomes our God. It doesn't matter if you reason in your mind,
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I've given 99 % of myself to God. Can't I go after this one little, you know, 1 % of myself for this one little thing?
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I don't even know how you would quantify such things. But to say that I'm not complete until I have this makes that your
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God. No matter how much of yourself you think that you give to God. Sin makes you do stupid stuff.
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So sin is the desire. Sin is the result of ingratitude. Sin makes you stupid.
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So what should be our response as Christians in light of the
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Gospel that we've been told and the things that we've even read about here in the Scriptures that we've looked at today? So here should be our response.
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Number one, God is our judge. Number two, God is our righteousness.
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And number three, God is our Savior. Let's look at the first.
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God is our judge. Indeed, we are friends of God through Jesus Christ.
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As we sing about in the Old Hymn, what a friend we have in Jesus. All our sins and griefs to bear.
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What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.
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Jesus said to His own disciples, no longer do I call you servants, but I call you friends.
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For a master doesn't make known to his servants what his plans and intentions are. But as God has made these things known to His disciples and has included us in this plan of salvation, so we have become through Jesus Christ friends of God.
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But my friends, God is still your judge. He still sits enthroned over the universe.
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You can't just run up to Him and feather His hair. And think we can be playful and frolic in the grass together.
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You might be friends with the President, but you can't just walk up into the White House and just go and hang out and sit and play cards with Joe Biden or Donald Trump.
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You try to cross that boundary line, you're going to find yourself tackled by Secret Service.
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And our God is much greater than the President of the United States. We only come into His presence through Jesus Christ.
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And even then, it would terrify us to stand there, as it did with the Apostle John in the book of Revelation falling down on his face, unable to look at the gloriousness of Christ in front of him.
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We must recognize God is our judge so that there will be fear in our hearts that we may understand we cannot keep anything hidden from God.
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We cannot suppress the truth with unrighteousness. Everything, even the desires of our hearts, are laid bare before Him.
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And so let us with honesty and fear and reverence come before God, confessing our sins and even making our hearts' desires known to Him.
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As said in 1 Peter 5, humble yourselves, casting your anxieties on Him because He cares for you.
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Having a heart that's too proud to take your cares before God, that's not, I can take care of this on my own.
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That's being prideful. We must humble ourselves and cast our anxieties upon Him.
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Knowing, first of all, God is our judge. Secondly, God is our righteousness.
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How are we forgiven our unrighteousness? How are we made worthy that we may stand before a holy and righteous
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God? How are we worthy to even lift up the songs that we've sung today or the prayers that we might pray to Him?
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It's because we've been clothed in the righteousness of Christ that's been given to us. Again, as I said in the very beginning,
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Christ died on the cross for our sins. He took the wrath of God upon Himself. And what
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He gives to us is His righteousness. 2 Corinthians 5 .21
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For our sake He became sin who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
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We become His righteousness. I was just teaching students about this earlier this week and giving them a big theological term for it.
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I said this is called double imputation. Our sins imputed upon Christ when
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He died on the cross. His righteousness imputed to us so that when God looks at us,
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He doesn't see the unrighteousness for which we deserve judgment. He sees the righteousness of His Son.
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The very thing that God demands of us, righteousness, is the very thing
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He gives to us. Righteousness. And so now clothed in the righteousness of Christ, we must live in that righteousness.
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Turn from sin and live in the holiness that God has called us to.
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I read to you again. 2 Peter 3 .11 Since all these things, since the judgment of God is coming, all this is going to be dissolved.
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What sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved and the heavenly bodies will melt away as they burn.
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Until that day comes, may we desire holiness and live in it because of the righteousness of God that has been given to us.
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God is our judge. God is our righteousness. And finally, God is our
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Savior. And knowing that God has saved us from Himself, knowing that God has given us
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His Son, so that through Him we would be delivered from the judgment of God. My friends, we must do as the
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Apostle Paul did there at the Areopagus and warn the world of the judgment that is coming.
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For a day will come in which He will judge the world in righteousness. And of this
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He has given evidence to all through whom He's going to judge the world by raising
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Him from the dead. The righteousness of God on display through the person and work of Jesus Christ who saves us.
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And now being saved, let us worship God as our holy and righteous judge.
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Let us worship Him in living lives of holiness until that day.
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And let us worship Him because He is our Savior who is worthy of our worship.
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You've been listening to the preaching of Pastor Gabriel Hughes, a presentation of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.
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For more information about our church, visit our website at providencecasagrande .com. On behalf of our church family, my name is
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Becky, thanking you for listening. Join us again Monday for more Bible study, when we understand the text.