September 24, 2020 Show with Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington on “A New Series on the Book of Romans” (Part 3)

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation, to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions, and now here's your host,

Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensirenradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 24th day of September, 2020, and I'm thrilled to have back one of my favorite returning guests,

Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington, pastor of Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Fawn Grove, Pennsylvania, author, conference speaker, vice president of the

Board of Directors for the Reformed Forum, and articles editor for the

Confessional Presbyterian Journal, and today he is entering into Part 3 of our new series on the

Book of Romans, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

Jeffrey C. Waddington. Oh, well, thank you for having me back on. You know, typically

I get run out of town on the rail, so it's nice to find a place where I'm welcome back.

Seriously, it's my privilege to be with you, Chris, to work through this fine part of God's Word.

Amen. And for our listeners who have not yet heard you, tell our listeners about the

Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Fawn Grove, Pennsylvania. Sure. We are a congregation of the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church here on the Mason -Dixon line, just on the border with Maryland.

The church has been around, I think, for about 84 years, and has been a part of the

OPC since 1964. It's a fine group of saints, to which

I have the privilege to minister God's Word, God's comfort and love, and to live with and amongst these people.

It's a beautiful part. As you know, it's a beautiful part of God's country. It's rural.

It's not an urban church. It's a country church, in that sense, with a beautiful...

God has blessed us with a beautiful facility and the house, as well.

So I'm pleased to serve here. I've been... I've served as David's supply, which means

I filled the pulpit without being the pastor from last September. But then in February, the congregation voted to call me as their pastor.

And then June 12, as you know, you were here. I was installed as the pastor. And just this past Saturday, I had my first in -person

Presbyterian meeting up around Williamsport. So I think

I've run the course of all the things I will normally be doing, except for attending

GA as pastor. I've done all the normal things, visiting people, and so on and so forth.

Almost all, but just one other thing, I haven't done a funeral yet. I'm not in any rush,

Lord, to do a funeral, or a baptism for that matter.

But anyways, so many things I'm looking forward to in the years ahead serving here.

And again, a privilege to be on this program that I know is so important to many people, not only locally in Pennsylvania, but in Florida, and indeed around the world.

Well, I do appreciate that very much. And for anyone who is interested in finding more about Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Fawn Grove, Pennsylvania, go to faithopc .net.

Now, also tell us about the Reformed Forum, for which you are

Vice President of the Board of Directors. I think I could be wrong, but when I speak to people who are

Reformed, and I happen to mention you for some reason or another, the

Reformed Forum seems to be the place where most of my friends and brethren from different Reformed circles, whether they be

Presbyterian or Reformed Baptist, most of them will say, ah yes, from the Reformed Forum. That seems to be the place where most of my friends and acquaintances are familiar with you.

Yes, the Reformed Forum basically grew out of kitchen table conversations with seminary students, fellow seminary students at Westminster Seminary, and it dawned on us that others might enjoy listening in on these conversations, and so that's how the

Reformed Forum came into existence back in 2008, so 12 years, just a little younger than Iron Sharpens Iron.

And since then, the Lord has blessed the outreach with, if you go to the website, you can see video and audio podcasts, read articles, there are links to other important Reformed literature, and our newest endeavor is called the

Reformed Academy, where we are producing courses. You don't get a degree, we don't have a charter from the

Commonwealth to offer degrees, but the quality of the coursework, I would suggest, is as good as you would find in any

Reformed seminary. We now have, let's see, three or four courses up, and we'll be adding to those on a regular basis, so they're fully, you know, that's an eight -part course, each segment is 40, 45 minutes.

Then we have other courses on the Shorter Catechism, and on the

Introduction to Covenant Theology, those are in smaller segments of about five to seven minutes length, five to eight minutes length, so we are trying to produce content that is easily digestible.

We're often, Reformed folk are often accused of putting a person in front of a fire hydrant and unloosing the cap and telling people to catch it, catch all the water that comes crashing out.

So we're working, trying to portion the food so that it's easily digestible by students from all around the world.

The Reformed Academy currently has 1 ,500, that was the last count, 1 ,500 students enrolled, and we've just introduced what we call cohorts.

These are groups that people join, and they actually are able to have an hour -long interaction with the professor or the instructor of the course, and the one

I sat in on a course the other night, one of these cohorts, and the conversation was really good, and there's two of them for the one course, and there's seven or eight students who've signed up, each one to participate in that.

So we're trying to respond to what we are seeing are needs to help the church to do its job.

We're not looking to replace the church, we're looking to serve the church, to help the church to do its job, to present every person mature in the

Lord Jesus Christ, which is your goal, I'm sure, as well, Chris, on Iron Sharpens Iron.

Ultimately, that's the goal, is to present our hearers or viewers as mature believers, and to introduce those who don't know the

Lord Jesus Christ, to introduce them to the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

In fact, you just reminded me, by some things that you were saying, you reminded me on how we came to meet.

I remember getting, I believe it was an email from you, saying to me,

I have listened to your program since you first launched in 2005, and I know that you've just moved into Pennsylvania, let's have lunch.

And that's how we first met, that was back in 2015. Yeah, that's right, that's exactly a good memory.

And enjoyed the fellowship, been to one of your pastor's luncheons, which are a great encouragement.

We have another one, by the way, we don't know for certain the date, we think it's going to be

Thursday the 29th of October, that's a tentative date. We are going to feature as our guest speaker,

Dr. Ted Tripp, who is the author of the globally renowned and much beloved book,

Shepherding a Child's Heart. And we're going to be doing our theme on,

God willing, on Parenting a Generation Influenced by the

Woke Movement in the Wake of the Pandemic. So that will be our theme,

God willing, and it will be held here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, if anybody listening wants to attend that, it is for men and ministry only.

So, and I include in that invitation deacons and parachurch leaders, so any kind of a leadership position that you have in your church.

I was going to say, I can attend as to the value of those luncheons and gatherings, that they are an encouragement to the brothers in their various avenues of ministry.

So I salute you in doing that, brother. Yes, and all credit goes first and foremost to God, obviously, but secondly to my beloved precious late wife,

Julie. It was her idea to have these luncheons, and we have been having them, other than the four -year hiatus,

I went off the air after her death, we have been having them all the way from the early 90s to 2011, and then we relaunched them in 2015 when

I relaunched the radio program and moved to Pennsylvania. So we have been having them, and they are continued in the memory and in tribute to my precious late wife.

Oh, I forgot to mention your website for Reform Forum. If anybody wants to learn more about Reform Forum, go to reformforum .org,

reformforum .org, and last but not least, tell our listeners about the Confessional Presbyterian Journal.

Sure, that is a theological journal committed to historic, conservative

Bible -believing Presbyterianism, although we do have

Reformed Baptist brethren who contribute articles from time to time. But that's once a year, so it's an annual publication.

One of the things the journals like to brag about is they're included in the Atlas search engine, which is one of the standard international search engines for academic research, so that the journal goes beyond its actual subscription base and is used by students in Bible schools and colleges and seminaries, and undoubtedly anybody that uses it has access to the

Atlas search engine. I've been reading it since it started.

I've been involved in it for four, five, six years now.

I have one further thing I'm involved with, which is the Bonson Project, to bring all of the materials that are available for purchase to make them available for free on a website, actually a couple of different venues.

And of course, why don't you tell our listeners who are unfamiliar with the late Greg Bonson. By the way, am

I appropriately using the adjective, the late, when he's been in heaven for quite a long time now?

Well, I use the expression, but yes, he's with the Lord. Dr. Greg Bonson was a minister in the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church who was also a professor and a pastor, well -known for debates with atheists and other non -Christian, unbelieving folk, and he passed away in 1995, sadly for us here who are continuing.

He was a pastor and his birthday just passed a couple of weeks ago. So there's something called the

Bonson Project. You should be able to Google it. I think it's in, find the website. I think it's bonsonproject .com

or .org. I don't have that in front of me. And there's a fundraising effort to bring that material and make it available for free.

Right now, it's all available. You have to pay for it. And the negotiations are being made to make that material available around the world, wherever there's an internet connection.

Dr. Bonson's material will be available. He's probably best known in this day for his big book on Dr.

Van Til called Van Til's Apologetic Readings and Analysis, which is now published in the

New York Times. Van Til, I think, came out in 98 or 99, so it's been out a few years, but it's a standard textbook for Van Til apologetics and theology in general.

So that's something I'm involved with, just recently became involved with, so I'd want to encourage folks to look at that as well, especially if you're interested in apologetics, which

I know many of your listeners are, because you have apologists like Tony Costa, right?

Yes, and Dr. James R. White. Yes, James White. Dr. White actually, specifically, very frequently in his public events, whether they be debates or sermons, he frequently pays tribute to Dr.

Bonson as being an apologetic hero of his, upon whom he bases much of his approach to apologetics.

Yes, it's amazing the facility of thought and expression that Dr.

Bonson had. It blows my mind, and I think most everybody, probably the best known debate that he had was with Gordon Stein back in 1985.

The Atheist. Yes, the Atheist. I think he was a high school textbook editor, among other things.

He was a professor. I was confusing him with someone else, but he was a professor at the time.

I don't know if he's still alive at this point, but Dr. Bonson had heart issues, if I remember correctly, and died, not while we might say before his time, but not in God's view.

It was before his time, maybe, as we look at it, but as you reminded me, he's with the

Lord. He's in Heaven. And yet, we still benefit from the teaching that he offered, and hopefully we will for many years to come.

And if you could repeat any kind of information where people can learn more about the Bonson Project? Yes, I believe that is the bonsonproject .org

or .com. I apologize for not having that at my fingertips. I do plan on, by the way, at the request of Bill Shishko and others involved in the

Bonson Project, I intend to do, God willing, even a week -long tribute on this show featuring different guests for the

Bonson Project and in tribute to Dr. Bonson, because obviously I know that this cause involves fundraising, desperately needed, urgently needed fundraising because of the fact that you're trying to purchase the rights to Dr.

Bonson's... By the way, I just found out that the Bonson Project website is bonsonproject .com,

and there is no the in the URL, even though there is a name.

I never knew Dr. Bonson. I was just coming into the Reformed faith in 1995 when he passed away, and it's hard to believe he'd be 72 if he were still with us.

Every time somebody mentions him, I get so furious at myself, because I had the rare privilege of interviewing

Dr. Bonson in the study of Steve Schlissel in Brooklyn, New York, when

Dr. Bonson was preaching there for a special...I believe it was a weekend of services, if I'm not mistaken, but I remember clearly him preaching on the

Ascension of Christ, because it was a rare thing, and still is a rare thing, that I ever hear a sermon on the

Ascension of Christ. And Steve Schlissel said, I know that you're going to be a talk show host one day, so I want you to go into my study after we have lunch, and I want you to have some private time with Dr.

Bonson with the portable recorder and interview him. So I did that, and I lost the tape.

Just like I lost my keys today, and I would lose my brain, I still don't know where my keys are, and thankfully

I had a second set. But anyway, I am getting to be more and more forgetful as the days go by.

Don't they join the club, brother, that's all I can say. And going back to the

Confessional Presbyterian, for those of our listeners who want to find out more about that, cpjournal .com,

cp for Confessional Presbyterian, journal .com, cpjournal .com.

Well now we are entering into our third discussion on the book of Romans, and if I'm not mistaken, we are picking up in the first chapter of Romans in verse 18.

That's correct. We're looking, remember that we're working through Paul's letter to the church, and Paul's letter is a form of introduction of himself to that church.

He was not involved in the planting of that church. And so he wrote this letter after having been in apostolic ministry for probably 20 plus years by this point.

And we've looked at the first 17 verses, which are sort of an introduction.

We are now delving into the meat of the letter, and I'm going to do what we've done before,

Chris. I'm going to read the text, and then we can come circle back around and talk about it. So this is the word of God from the pen of the

Apostle Paul. 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 in exchange for the glory of the immortal

God, for images resembling mortal men and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the

Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason

God gave them up to dishonorable passions, for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.

They were full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They were gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Though they know that God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

And that is the section that we will look at today, or at least the beginning of the section we will look at today.

And I would say, I would remind folk that in order for the brilliance and the beauty of the gospel to shine forth,

Paul, I think rightly, of course, because he's a divinely inspired apostle, paints the dark background which will highlight the brilliance of that gospel in much the way that a jeweler will often put diamonds and rings and bracelets and jewelry on the back cloth of black velvet to highlight their beauty.

So Paul is doing that by making reference to the sinfulness of man and God's just wrath and anger against that sinfulness.

In fact, you just hit the nail on the head, and I have a feeling you'll agree with me.

The very largest, most significant problem with the modern evangelical church today, modern preaching, modern publishing, is that what you just described is completely absent from the communication of the alleged communication of the gospel from modern pulpits and modern publishing houses.

They only want to give the pretty, beautiful side of, at least what they think is a side of the gospel and of Jesus Christ, and yet they don't even seem to realize that they're diminishing the beauty of the gospel and the awesomeness and the amazingness, if that's a word, the amazing quality of the gospel.

They are ripping the gospel of those things by only trying to give the lighter side and by removing the black, the dark, gloomy, horrifying backdrop that you just mentioned.

Well, it's unbiblical to do that, right? I mean, that's the fact of the matter.

People will often refer to what we're talking about, and you may have heard this, Chris, they'll call it worm theology, you know, that we're just a little wretched worm.

Well, think about John Newton's hymn, Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

What is a wretch? A wretch is a sinner. You know, you can't have good news unless there's a bad news that is in the background, right?

And you can't... Now, you know, we might get into, you know, we might quibble with people about how they do this, but the fact of the matter is the sinfulness of man has to be front and center in order to account for why

God would send His Son in the first place. In other words, the

Son of God taking to Himself a true body and a reasonable soul is in answer to the sin problem.

He didn't come because we are finite creatures. Being finite is not a sin.

There is nothing wrong with being finite. In fact, part of the problem, if you go back to the

Garden of Eden, is the failure of Adam and Eve to remember that they were finite creatures.

They fell for the snow job that the serpent, Satan speaking to them, to a serpent saying that God doesn't want you to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because He knows that when you do, you will be like Him, knowing good and evil.

So, yeah, you can't get around... If you're going to actually preach the full, or the whole counsel of God, or a full -org presentation of the person and work of Jesus Christ, you need to explain why is it that He came in the first place, right?

And those of us who have come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ in the way that the scriptures lay down, where we are, and even as believers along the path for a long period of time,

I think we could argue, I think it could be argued that the saint who has been a believer for many years is more aware and more sensitive to his or her sin, ongoing sin, that is, than the new believer.

Or certainly the unbeliever has no awareness of what sin is as being, again, a rebellion against God.

So, if that's a truncated gospel, if it's even a gospel at all,

Paul, of course, in Galatians says, if anyone brings to you a gospel other than the one that I have revealed to you and taught you, let him, even if it were an angel from heaven, right?

Even if it's me, Paul says, coming to you, and I disavow what I taught you previously, let it be anathema, right?

And so, this is not wanting to be morose or be the dead horse, it's simply pointing out the fact that right here, right at the very front, you might say that Paul is front -loading the problem of sin.

And it's not limited to this portion. As you know, Chris, he goes on in chapter 2 and a good portion of chapter 3 to spell out the details, right?

He doesn't just limit it to these verses, these 14 or 15 verses, at the end of chapter 1.

Well, this is where we have to pick up where you left off, because we have to go to our first station break right now.

If anybody wants to join us, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnson. If you just tuned to Send, our guest today for the full two hours, with a little less than an hour and 15 minutes to go, or actually about an hour and 15 minutes to go, is

Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington, pastor of Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Foreign Grove, Pennsylvania, and the vice president of the board of directors for the

Reformed Forum. We are entering into the third part of our new series on the

Book of Romans. If you have a question for Dr. Waddington, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And please, as always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter. And if you could pick up where you left off there, brother, before the break.

Oh, absolutely. So we were talking about how the

Apostle Paul front -loads the problem of which the descending of the sun is the answer.

The problem, of course, begins in Genesis chapter 3, and goes all the way through the rest of the

Bible. And that, of course, addresses the disobedience of our first parents, and the results that came about because of that.

And that's in the background, as is, of course, the whole of the Old Testament. But no doubt, in this portion of Romans, he has the creation account in the back or in the forefront of his mind,

I think would probably be more accurate. And Paul tells us here in these verses that God reveals his wrath against ungodliness.

And what we'll discover as we go further into the letter is that this ungodliness is universal.

It's that all men, except for the Lord Jesus Christ, are born in sin, are held accountable for the sin of Adam, and then, of course, manifest the fallen nature that they have inherited as they grow up, as they are able to do, to think, and to speak, and to act.

They will reveal their sinful nature. And you see here that Paul tells us that God is...and

there will be many people who are uncomfortable with this, because they don't like the idea of a

God of wrath, and yet this is exactly what the Scriptures reveal. And it's not merely the

Old Testament God is wrathful and the New Testament God is loving. That's bogus.

Because the Old Testament God was loving, and the New Testament God is wrathful.

So that kind of dichotomy, which you sometimes hear, is just not what is taught in God's Word, and it's not what

Paul is teaching here. He's simply straightforwardly saying the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven, that's where God resides, against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

So the disobedience of all men, apart from faith in Christ, brings about the revelation of the wrath or anger of God.

Now, God's wrath, of course, is not like our wrath, which rises up and spills out and causes us to sputter and turn red in the face and hot in the nostrils.

God's wrath is settled. Settled rejection.

It is a settled antipathy to sin.

God doesn't have what I like to refer to as hissy fits.

We do. God does not. We need to remember that God is immutable.

He is unchangeable. So by definition, the wrath of God is in a, if I may use this language, is in a steady state.

He is always opposed to sin. God is never in favor of sin.

He uses the sinfulness of man in the unfolding of his decree in history, but he is never in favor of it.

And so therefore, and as we understand sin to be, as the

West Pacific Shorter Catechism has it, any want of conformity to the law of God, any lack of conformity to the law of God is sin.

If there were no God, there'd be no sin. Now, we may, you know, think that there might be distasteful behavior, but there would not be sin.

Years ago, a psychologist or a psychiatrist by the name of Jose Carl Menninger wrote a book called

Whatever Became of Sin, and, well, actually it fell out of fashion, but it still exists, and God is ever the implacable foe of sin.

Now what Paul goes on to say is that the nature of sin is such that we, in our sinfulness, apart from the grace of God, but we, in our sinfulness, suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

It says there, The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

Who? These men who are ungodly and unrighteous suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

Now, you can't suppress something if you don't know about it. So that tells us that knowledge of God is inbuilt into human nature.

It's not something that we have to have a long chain of reasoning about.

We are knowledgeable of God by virtue of the fact that we are created in His image, we live in His world, and we are surrounded by His revelation both in nature and in Scripture.

And when we think about the revelation of God in nature, remember that that also includes our human nature.

Yes, I've just said that humans have a nature.

That is, we are human beings made in the image of God.

Now, that image has been tarnished and tattered and twisted out of shape, but we are still in the image of God, even after the

Fall. Now, we have lost a portion of, we've lost an aspect of that image, the most important aspect, actually, which would be knowledge, holiness, and righteousness.

Notice what Paul says here in verse 19, basically saying what I've just, the implication

I've drawn from what he said in verse 18, for what can be known about God is plain to them, that it is men, because God has shown it to them.

Okay, so both, we know who God is by virtue of the fact that we are created in His image, living in His world, and it's surrounded by His revelation.

So there's no place that we can go to hide from God, nor is there any place we can go in all of creation where we can hide from our knowledge of Him.

Dr. Cornelius Van Til used to use the illustration of a child playing with a beach ball in a pool and trying to push the ball down below the water level, and the ball popping up and smacking the child in the face.

And so that's what the knowledge of God is like. We men, the sinful men, may suppress it, or try to suppress it, actually.

There's no such thing as a successful sinful suppression of the truth. There is an attempt to suppress the truth, but God has made it to be such that we cannot actually successfully suppress the truth that He has revealed about Himself in His creation.

There's no way to. We try to suppress it, and we might suppress it in one area, and it'll appear in another area, kind of like a tube of toothpaste.

You squeeze it out from the end of the tube, and so the end of the tube is flat, and you may curl it up as you use it up, but there's still toothpaste in the tube.

You're just moving it from one part of the tube to another, and sin is often like that.

For what can be known about God is plain to them, for God has shown it to them.

So that has a practical effect upon our defense of the faith and upon our evangelism.

We don't have to prove that God exists. I don't necessarily have any problem with arguments that prove

God's existence, but they're not necessary. They may offer refinement and nuancing, but we already, as made in God's image, we already possess that knowledge, and that's what we're trying to suppress.

That knowledge, we not only have the capability of knowing

God, which many Christians even affirm, but we actually have knowledge of God.

In fact, we have to go to our midway break right now. It's a longer than normal break, folks, so please be patient with us.

Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show so that they can air their own public service announcements and other local things to Lake City, Florida, which is required of them by the

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Trump & Zion Radio. As you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with a little less than an hour to go is

Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington, Pastor of Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Fawn Grove, Pennsylvania and also the

Vice President of the Board of Directors for the Reformed Forum. We are entering, or we have entered

I should say, into our third program as Dr.

Waddington seeks to exegete the Book of Romans. And before we return to that discussion,

I just have a couple of announcements to make, very important ones. Tomorrow, a mutual friend of Dr.

Waddington and mine, Pastor Bill Shishko, who pastors

The Haven, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Bohemia, Long Island, New York.

They may be returning to Deer Park, Long Island, but I know that they are, at least temporarily, meeting at the building of the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Bohemia, which was actually a church plant that Pastor Bill was very much involved in quite a while ago.

A church plant sent out by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Franklin Square, Long Island.

And Pastor Mike Plogman pastors the OPC in Bohemia, but Bill Shishko is pastoring

The Haven OPC congregation, now meeting in Bohemia at the

OPC church building. Pastor Bill is going to be joined by Jennifer Michelle Greenberg, and their theme is

Help Domestic Abuse in My Church. And we will be giving away free copies of Jennifer Greenberg's book,

Not Taken for Granted, I believe is the title. And I hope that all of you, or as many of you as possible, tune in to what should be a fascinating program.

I'm sorry, the title of the book is Not Forsaken, not what I just mentioned before,

Not Taken for Granted. Not Forsaken is the title of the book by Jennifer Michelle Greenberg that we are giving away to a limited number of listeners who send in questions during this program, especially tell your family, friends, and loved ones who are themselves victims of spousal abuse or domestic violence, or they have a loved one who is or was.

So that's tomorrow, the 25th of September, 4 to 6 p .m.

Eastern Time. And also, folks, I want you to please take heed to my plea to you for financial assistance.

We've lost our two largest financial supporters in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, in wake of the hysteria connected to the coronavirus pandemic, and we need your help to rebuild and to make up for that huge loss financially, if we are going to remain on the air.

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We are in a very terrible situation financially right now. Go to ironsherpensirenradio .com,

click Support, then click Click to Donate Now. Also, you can advertise with us as long as whatever it is you're promoting is compatible with what we believe.

You don't have to believe identically with what I believe, but you need to be promoting something that is at the very least compatible with what we believe.

Send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line.

Also, folks, if you are not a member of a local Bible -believing church and you need help finding one,

I do have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the planet

Earth that may include a church or two or more right near you that you may be totally unaware of.

So please send me an email if you are in that condition of being without a church home. Send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. I just got an email moments ago from someone who listens to this show in Montgomery, Alabama, who needs a church, and I am going to be sending you an email very soon after this program with at least one recommendation.

So thank you for reaching out to us. But no matter where you live on the planet Earth, I may be able to help you.

Send that email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com. chrisarnsen at gmail .com and put I Need a Church in the subject line.

That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington.

That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. chrisarnsen at gmail .com. As I've already mentioned, we are conducting our third program on the

Book of Romans. Dr. Waddington intends to be our guest once or twice a month to provide exegesis for us on this glorious book of the

Bible that has been used mightily of God over the centuries to bring countless millions to salvation and to bring reformation to the

Church as well as it is a primary book that influenced Martin Luther to repent of and abandon the heresies he had embraced of the

Church of Rome as an Augustinian monk, which led to the

Protestant Reformation and which led to millions of churches globally over the centuries carrying on the true gospel with him.

So, if you have a question on the Book of Romans or any theological question for Dr. Waddington, send in an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

So, if you want to pick up right where you left off before the break. Sure. So, we were talking about the fact that God has made himself known to all mankind.

There are no exceptions to that. And so, you may ask, the question may pop into your head, well, what has he made known about himself?

And Paul goes on in verse 20 to tell us that 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.

That is, the men who are living unrighteously in an ungodly manner are without excuse because they know what they're doing.

So, the invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature, Charles Hart said that basically sums up his whole being and character are revealed through creation.

And that includes us as human beings. And very often in the study of theology, that form of revelation is referred to as either natural revelation because it's revealed through nature, or general revelation because it's revealed to all humankind.

Or sometimes the term will be used, natural law.

The only problem, of course, with the expression natural law is that you have to make sure that it's properly defined.

There are as many definitions of natural law as there are definers, if I may put it that way.

So, God has revealed himself so that there is no one on this planet who is not subject to that revelation, has not received it.

All of us know God. That doesn't mean that everyone will admit to that. It doesn't mean that everyone is equally psychologically aware or cognizant of every aspect of this revelation, but that it is out there.

It has been made. It is revealed. So, Paul says there at the conclusion of verse 20 that they are without excuse.

So natural revelation, some people ask the question, does it save? The answer is no. You may have heard some say that, well,

God only holds people accountable for the light that they have. If they live up to that light, then

God will grade on a curve. So there is apparently in the mind of some a divine bell curve.

But in fact, Paul says they are without excuse. So the knowledge of God that he reveals through creation is a knowledge that causes us to be held accountable, but not enough to save us.

And so there is the need for what is known as special revelation.

That is, the special revelation has been set down in writing in the scriptures.

So that for our purposes, special revelation is the Bible. Given over a period of 1 ,800 years,

I suppose, including the Old and the New Testament about that, give or take, that revelation is what reveals

God's triune nature. It reveals the plan of salvation.

It reveals the one who has come to save. In the Old Testament, it anticipates the coming of a

Messiah, a Savior. And in the New Testament, it recounts the coming of the

Savior and then explains the implications of the coming of the

Savior for the salvation of the lost. So Paul here makes it clear that God has revealed himself.

The problem is not with the revelation. It's with the person receiving or perceiving the revelation.

And notice that Paul doesn't say that his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly inferred.

It's clearly perceived. It is not necessary, although it is often very helpful, to provide an argument or a chain of reasoning.

But the fact is we're all born with a knowledge of God built in, and that's what we suppress.

That's what Paul tells us. We fight against it. We kick against it. And yet we are not successful in suppressing the truth because if not in this life, in the life to come, we will be held accountable.

And most assuredly, at the end of the age, when our Lord comes back and there's a general judgment, we will be called to account for if we have not, by God's grace, heard the gospel and responded by receiving the

Lord Jesus Christ, repenting and believing on him, receiving and resting upon Jesus as he is offered to us in the gospel.

Now the suppression of the truth, the suppression of this knowledge that all men have, takes a particular form.

And Paul tells us what that form is, what that suppression of the truth is in verse 21, for although they knew

God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.

So we might say that one major aspect of sin is ingratitude.

Impiety, you know, that we are impious or impious, some would say.

We know God, we know that he is the creator, we know that he is the preserver, we know that he is the governor of all things, and yet we choose not to honor him as God or what he is due, give thanks to him.

So you see, that's where it starts. It starts with our failure to worship God as God.

The things that we are going to look at that follow in the train of a failure to worship

God as God are the results of the failure. Okay, they are the results of the failure to honor

God as God. So that Paul says they became futile in their thinking and in their foolish hearts were darkened.

So these are the results of the fall of our first parents. This is the result of the sin of Adam.

This is the result of what the sin and the misery that Adam has introduced into the world because of his disobedience way back in Genesis 3.

This is what Paul is thinking about as he is writing to the

Christians at Rome, claiming in the beginning, so their hearts are darkened, their thinking becomes futile.

And understand that in the Bible, the heart and the mind, or we might say the will and the intellect, are not two different, absolutely different things.

They are intertwined. The heart actually is the center of our being.

It is who we are. So we might say the spirit, the heart, the thinking, these are all words that are describing the thinking and willing and acting of a sinful human being.

It's not as if we had three little Oompa Loompas inside our heads and hearts.

Speak for yourself. Okay. Those of you who are wondering what is an

Oompa Loompa, you need to watch either Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory or the second version, which my daughters tell me they prefer, the one with Johnny Depp.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, that's the second movie. Anyhow, we don't.

We are human beings. We are either bent in on ourselves or we are outward looking toward God.

We are either sinful or we are redeemed.

In process, of course, but redeemed nonetheless. So the fallen man does not honor

God and does not worship him as God.

And in consequence of that, our thinking in our state of nature, if I could put it that way, becomes futile and our foolish hearts are darkened.

And this is a judicial punishment pronounced upon us by God.

In the day you eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will surely die, God said to Adam.

In the day you eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the Hebrew literally is dyingly die.

You will surely die. And continuing in verse 22,

Paul says, 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.

So you see there, the apostle Paul explains that we talk about the sweet exchange between the believer and Christ.

This is not a sweet exchange. This is a profoundly wicked exchange, that sinful man exchanges the glory of the immortal

God, which is revealed to us through nature. This is knowledge that we possess by virtue of being made in God's image.

We exchange that for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things, what we typically refer to as idolatry.

John Calvin pointed out that we are, following the apostle

Paul, in a passage such as this one, that we are prone to idolatry because we're made in God's image.

In other words, idolatry is the result of the sinful twisting of the divine image in man.

In other words, it's not surprising that this happens because man is meant, man is created to worship.

The problem is he refuses to worship God and instead chooses to worship idols in the form of man, birds, animals, and creeping things.

We see that from the history of the human race, don't we? Various parts of the world where various forms of idolatry take hold.

We often note, as I often do when I'm preaching, that idolatry does not require that our idols be metal or stone.

They may very well be mental. We often think of the idols that Paul here describes as animals, creeping things, mortal man.

But idols can be power, a hungering and a thirsting after power, prestige, money, sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

But you get the point. An idol is anything that takes the place of God in the heart of sinful man.

Anything that is created, that is given the status of God, is an idol.

And of course we've seen in the history of the human race, we've seen that take various forms.

And Paul continues now to discuss some of the consequences of failing to worship and honor

God as we ought. So what Paul is now talking about are further devolution, if you will, that are the result of a failure to recognize

God as God, and a failure to worship Him, and to be thankful to Him for our existence, for the fact that He upholds us in existence, that He brought us into being in the first place, that He is

God, He is the Creator, He is the one to whom we owe personal, perpetual, and perfect obedience.

Paul goes on in verse 24 to say, Therefore God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity.

So we see where this is going. Paul's going to use as an example of the degradation of human sin.

He's going to use as an example human sexuality. And he talks about the lusts of their hearts to impurity.

God gives us up. He gave us up to these things, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped the creature rather than the

Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. So there Paul tells us point blank that his discussion of sexual perversion is the fallout, is the result of a failure to worship

God and to exchange the truth about God for a lie, and becoming engrossed in idolatry, whether that idolatry are crass forms, or whether that idolatry is in more sophisticated forms.

Idolatry that is sophisticated and idolatry that is crass are both equally idolatry.

Paul goes on and he says, For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.

Okay, so now he's going to get into the description of what's going on, the dishonorable passions.

And this means that the Apostle Paul is going to be at odds with the world in which we live.

And Paul is going to say there are certain things that are wrong in and of themselves. And the first example he gives, for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature.

So we're talking about lesbianism, female homosexuality. Paul is saying that this is contrary to nature.

That is, contrary to God's intended purpose for human sexuality.

And men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another.

Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

One of the things we want to note about this is that homosexuality is not just a cause for God's judgment.

It's not just something that brings upon us God's judgment, but is in fact a form of God's judgment already.

The prevalence of homosexuality in our day, around the world, but in particular as Americans, we think about it here.

This is, sad to say, I have to say, is a form of divine judgment on this land.

And that's what Paul is saying here. This is not the only form that sin takes.

I don't want us to be drawing that wrong conclusion, but it is a clear example or illustration of how rejection of God, embracing of idolatry, works itself out in our practical day -to -day lives.

Okay, so it works itself out in this example in forms of deviant human sexuality.

That's clear. Now, there may be, there are going to be no doubt people who say, well, that's wrong, but that's just Paul's opinion.

Well, no, it's not just Paul's opinion. It's stated elsewhere in God's Word. And it's not just Paul's, you know, fevered imagination.

He's building off of revelation previously given by God in the

Old Testament that makes it clear. And we go on here.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

And that, of course, is thinking back to what he's just said about deviant human sexuality.

But it also points forward to what is typically referred to as a catalog of vices.

These were typical ways of talking that you'll see in the ancient literature, what

Paul's about to do. It's why we call it a catalog of vices. He's going to list how sin and misery work itself out among human beings in this world.

And this was a way of communicating that that also occurred among philosophers in the ancient

Greco -Roman world as well. So it's a way of speaking that we see.

So Paul is adopting or adapting a common way of decrying the problem with human beings.

So it's recognized even by unbelievers. So these kinds of things are unrecognized. He says, after telling us that they, since they did not see fit to acknowledge

God, God gave them up. This is the third time, verse 24, 26, and 28.

Paul says that God gave them up. That is, he allowed the consequences of their behavior to come into full blossom.

And he says they were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.

They are full of envy, murderous strife, deceitfulness, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, and vetters of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

So those are character descriptions of people as we are left to ourselves.

In fact, we have to go to our final break, but I will read a question to you from a listener.

In fact, if you could, I'm echoing back to me. I don't know if you could turn off whatever you have that's playing my own voice there.

We have a listener. We have a listener,

Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island. And Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, says that the hermeneutics that most evangelical and liberal churches use to give legitimacy to the ordination of women, in my experience with the folks that I know in either feminist -driven evangelical churches or liberal churches, is that they eventually will cave in and embrace homosexuality and other things.

Have you found this in your own experience? And we're going to have you answer that when we come back from our final break after these final words from our sponsors.

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That's solid -ground -books .com And Jeff Waddington, as you may remember, we received a listener question before the break from Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County who wants to know if the hermeneutic used to legitimize the ordination of women will always lead to the acceptance of homosexuality and other depravity.

Well, I believe the answer is that if one were consistent, the answer is yes.

Now whether a given person will follow that train all the way to the end is another matter.

God in His grace does allow us to be happily inconsistent.

Yes, in fact you are a former leader in the Salvation Army which has women in leadership.

Has that denomination ever reached the extreme of having a soft view of homosexuality or embracing it in any way?

Not as an organization. Although there have been times where a given leader within the denomination looked like she might waffle.

But I had this issue come up when I was doing a Bible study that we had hoped would lead to a church plant.

Several of the folk who were attending were opposed to homosexuality, but they approved of female ordination.

When we got to this portion of Romans, I said, you realize that the same logic that allows for the playing with God's word with regard to female ordination is the same logic that allows for us to play with God's word when it comes to other things that are condemned.

For instance, homosexuality. I'm not sure they were very happy with me when

I pointed that out, but I had to. God's word is clear. Again, the problem isn't with the word of God, it's with us in receiving it.

And of course we do know of denominations, even though we would vociferously and adamantly oppose their view of the ordination of women and their egalitarian understanding of leadership.

At the same time, there are some denominations, they're probably a minority, but there are some that come from the

Holiness Pentecostal movement, the Wesleyan Holiness movement, that still to this day have women in leadership and yet in every other way are conservative.

That's correct. That's why I said when I answered the question, it's not that it always will happen.

In other words, everybody is not going to follow the train where we would expect their logic to lead.

But if they were consistent, they would do that. And that's why

I called it a happy inconsistency, because it's actually an inconsistency that prevents them from going off the cliff.

Well, now I'd like you to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners in regard to what we have had you exegete today.

Okay, well, I never want to conclude consideration of God's word without reference to the

Lord Jesus Christ, who indeed has come. God sent, the

Father sent the Son who came into the world and took to himself a true body and a reasonable soul for our salvation.

So that there is a definitive answer that has been given to the sin problem, and that is the

Lord Jesus Christ. And I would say to those who are listening who are not believers already, that you consider this seriousness of sin.

And that you would run to Christ, grab ahold of the hem of his garment and don't let go.

And trust in him, look to him. And for those of us who are believers, it's kind of the same thing.

Look to Christ. Continue to trust in Christ. Continue to grow in your love for him and for his word.

Continue to grow in your desire to please him. To walk in the path of new obedience.

That's what the Westminster Divines call the obedience of the believer that's not perfect, yet is going in the right direction.

It's new obedience. So that the end of the discussion is not the terrible description that Paul gives of sin and how it works itself out in the life of individual sinners, but also in the life of the human race.

And you notice that Paul closes this chapter by noting that human beings, men, know

God and they also know his will and expectations for them.

And knowing this, knowing that they deserve death. That's what he says. He says, we know that we deserve death because of our sinfulness, yet we join with others and encourage one another to break

God's law. And of course we see that in the world, don't we?

It's very discouraging to see that, horrifying even. But I would not want to close our time together without concluding on the word of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Come unto me all you who are heavy laden and I will give you rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

The description of sin that Paul gives here is neither easy nor light.

Well, thank you so much, Dr. Waddington, for always proving to be a very capable guest and a fascinating guest.

And a guest that I can have confidence is sharing the word of God with truth to our listeners.

And I look forward to our next time to continue in your Exegesis of Romans, the

Book of Romans. And we'll still be in Chapter 1 at this point.

And I want to remind our listeners of the various ways you can find out about Dr.

Waddington's ministry. You can go, first of all, to the church website, faithopc .net.

faithopc .net, that is the website for Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Fawn Grove, Pennsylvania.

You can also go to reformedforum .org, reformedforum .org. You can go to cpjournal .com,

and that stands for Confessional Presbyterian, cpjournal .com. And last but not least, find out more about the

Bonson Project that Dr. Waddington is helping to spearhead, a very important project to make the works of the late

Greg Bonson, a great hero to many, make his works available for free to the general public, which right now many of his writings are still only available through purchase.

So the Bonson Project website is bonsonproject .com,

and Bonson is spelled B -A -H -N -S -E -N, project .com. Thank you so much,

Dr. Waddington, and remember folks, we are going to have Bill Shishko of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, known as The Haven in Bohemia, Long Island.

He's going to be joined by author Jennifer Greenberg tomorrow to discuss, Help! There is

Domestic Violence in My Church. And get your questions ready for both Pastor Bill Shishko and Jennifer Greenberg.

And as I always like to remind you at the end of this program, I hope that you all never forget for the rest of your lives, and that you always remember, that Jesus Christ is a far greater