2/26/23 Truth Revealed - Part 1
Truth Revealed – Part 1
Romans 1:18-23
The video clip you just saw was from the movie “The Bucket List” starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. The two men are flying in an airplane over the North Pole and as the Morgan Freeman character stares out his window, he comments about the beauty of the stars in the night sky, then he references God’s amazing creativity.
The Nicholson character hears this comment and proceeds to engage him in a conversation about God and creation.
The viewpoints of the two men are polar opposites.
One sees the view out the window as “indescribably beautiful”, the other as “desolation”
One believes in a creator behind the creation, the other does not.“
One claims to have faith, the other claims to envy people with faith but can’t seem to “get his head around” the idea of it.
One believes in a reality beyond our 5 senses, the other does not.
One has beliefs, the other “resists all beliefs.”
One man was humble, the other man was proud.
Have you ever experienced a conversation similar to this one?
Perhaps you were the Morgan Freeman character attempting to convince someone of a creator behind the world in which we live.
Or maybe you were the Jack Nicholson character before placing your faith in Christ.
Maybe you’ve had many conversations like this with a family member or a friend. You think to yourself “why can’t they see God’s obvious fingerprint on the world around us?”
Today’s passage deals with the subject of creation. Specifically, how God has clearly and plainly revealed himself to all mankind through the world in which we live.
God reveals himself and His existence to man in 2 distinct ways.
The first (which we will be looking at today) is through His creation – the universe in which we live. This includes all that can be observed, from enormous things in space down to the smallest atom, and everything in between. From “Telescope to Microscope.”
This is called God’s General Revelation.
Next week, we will be looking at what’s referred to as God’s Special Revelation – Not sure what that might be? Come back next week to find out!
In verse 18 of today’s passage (Romans 1:18) Paul begins by talking about ‘wicked’ and ‘godless’ people being the object of God’s wrath.
Pastor Andy, this doesn’t really sound like a very uplifting verse to begin a sermon! I agree, it’s not. It’s not exactly fun to think about God’s anger with people who refuse to acknowledge Him as creator of the cosmos.
It would be much more pleasant to talk exclusively about God’s love for His creation and his abundant mercy and grace. God’s wrath toward unrepentant sinners stems from His Holiness and Righteousness. These are attributes of God just like His Love and Mercy. It would be a disservice to the Word of God to only talk about specific attributes of God that we like and ignore the others.
But, you might ask, doesn’t God love everyone? Regardless of whether or not they believe in Him? In the big picture, yes, God loves mankind, but he is also angered by the sins committed by mankind.
These attributes of God are not mutually exclusive – they can both exist at the same time.
Think about it – Do you have children? Then you know how you can unconditionally love them, and at the same time, be angry with them because of their disobedient behavior.
What exactly about this situation in our passage for today causes God to display His anger and wrath?
Verse 18 speaks of people “Suppressing the Truth.” People who deny the existence of God, despite obvious signs of a creator all around us, are committing the sins of pride, disrespect, and ingratitude to its ultimate level. By denying the very existence of God these people are choosing to put something other than God on His own throne – and worshipping whatever that may be.
Say you were wrapping an expensive birthday present for one of your children. At the birthday party, you made a point of handing your present directly to your child so there would be no doubt that the gift was coming from you. You even wrote your initials on the outside of the package in case they forgot who gave it to them.
The time came for the presents to be opened. Your child begins to unwrap your present and opens it up. But when they look at the beautiful, expensive gift, they immediately turn to the family dog and say “Thank you so much, Sir Barksalot! You knew exactly what I wanted for my birthday. I will aways remember this beautiful gift and your unbelievable generosity….I Love You my adorable furry little friend!!”
How would this make you feel? Angry, right?
Not only did your child neglect to give you credit for the beautiful gift but they chose to acknowledge Sir Barksalot! A DOG. A dog got the credit for all your time and money invested in the present.
This would be absurd, right? This would make us angry.
But this is indeed the mindset of so many people in our world today regarding the world and its origins.
Rather than thanking God and giving Him credit for the beautiful world in which we live, many people choose to give all the credit to blind chance and processes that are completely incapable of producing life itself.
Time, random mutation, and natural selection (We are told by many scientists) is what produced all of the things we see around us, the cosmos and everything in it – including us.
To quote the famous astrophysicist Carl Sagan “We are all….stardust.”
This is as absurd as the dog, Mr. Barksalot, driving himself to the store, picking out a gift, paying for the gift, driving himself back home, wrapping the gift, and writing someone else’s initials on it.
The intellectual elites of modern academia have demonstrated their foolishness, pride, and susceptibility to deception as many scientists have been deceived by Satan’s clever lies.
Verse 22 (Romans 1:22) of our passage says: “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools. They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.”
People were, and still are, worshipping the creation rather than the creator!
As it was in biblical times, we still worship idols – It’s just that our modern idols today have gotten a bit more sophisticated.
Maybe we don’t idolize a bull made of gold, but we do idolize a bull market that puts gold in our bank account!
Maybe we don’t idolize the sun, stars, and moon, but plenty of people idolize their horoscope and signs of the zodiac.
Maybe we don’t idolize warriors in metal armor, but we do idolize professional athletes.
In the church, maybe we don’t idolize Pharisaical laws, but we sometimes do idolize our traditions.
1 Corinthians 3:18-19a “Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become “fools” so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of the world is foolishness in God’s sight….”
Want to see a real Pride Parade? Go to the nearest public university and watch the faculty walk down the halls between classes. These philosophical “farmers” of academia plant impressionable young seeds into the soil of humanistic and naturalistic ideology. In four short years, many of these seeds have grown into mature plants that have taken on no spiritual value.
As Jesus says in Matthew 13, they become tares among the wheat – destined for destruction.
In the godless paradigm of naturalism, man views himself as the highest form of life in the known universe – the apex of time, mutation, and natural selection. The cosmic summit of a blind, unguided, natural process of evolutionary development.
The logical conclusion of naturalism, therefore, is that highly intellectual members of our society (i.e. scientists, professors, etc.) become elevated to a position of authority. Sadly, many people today look to these individuals as ‘gods’ simply because they have obtained advanced degrees, given lectures, or written books.
Let me remind all of you that having the title of Dr. or possessing a bunch of advanced degrees, has absolutely no bearing upon one’s actual wisdom. There are plenty of highly educated people that are completely ignorant of God’s truth because they refuse to humble themselves under His authority.
Remember the bucket list conversation? After the non-believer says that he just can’t get his head around the idea of faith, do you remember what the man with faith tells him?.... “Maybe your head is in the way.”
Folks, there are millions of highly educated people in this world who have no time for spiritual matters because their own head is in the way.
They have become so prideful and educated in the ways of worldly philosophy that they no longer have enough wisdom to recognize and appreciate the simple & obvious fact that there exists a creator behind the creation.
Atheistic intellectuals have educated themselves into ignorance.
They have mastered the way of the world to the point that their world offers no way for the master.
The bible simply calls them “fools.”
Psalm 14:1 says “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God…’”
Sadly, Atheism is the fastest growing worldview in the West, and it is a lie straight from Hell! If Satan can deceive you into believing that God does not exist, then you have no moral authority to which you must answer.
God is out of the equation. You are now free to think and do whatever your heart desires – without any temporal or spiritual consequences.
This is the mantra of our world. Do what feels right to you. Live your truth. You do you. This all sounds appealing to our fallen nature, but like every single one of Satan’s promises, it ends in tragedy.
When we put ourselves on God’s rightful throne it results in earthly problems such as depression, anxiety, suicide, broken homes, broken hearts, addictions, abandonment, abuse, etc. AND even more tragically, it results in eternal separation from God!
Our country is reaping what it has sown over the last few generations. We have removed God from our public institutions and from our homes. We are seeing the cultural results of a society that has suppressed the truth.
The church needs to become more vigilant in pointing the way back to Jesus. We need to have a passion for the lost and a passion for living in obedience to our savior.
We need more apologists, Christians who can clearly articulate logical reasons for the legitimacy of Christianity as a worldview to a world that wants to ‘cancel’ Christians…especially, biblical Christians!
In short, we need Revival within these walls. We need some Asbury. We need people on fire for Christ and filled with love for each other! Only then will society take notice and awakening occur.
Psalm 19:1 says “The Heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.”
Verse 20 (Romans 1:20) of our passage for today reads “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – His eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”
If you underline verses in your bible, underline this verse!
This verse tells us that God has made himself known to His creation through the creation itself. God’s power and divinity are obvious when we look at the world around us.To the rational mind, the cosmos preaches a creator.
Like a watch points to a watch-maker, the intricate & precise laws of the universe point to a law-giver – God.
Our conscience (God’s law written on our hearts) points to a moral absolute, which in turn points to a transcendent being from which morality is derived – God.
We see purpose in the world around us, which points to an intelligent mind that authored and directs that purpose – God.
The irreducible complexity of a single cell with all of its fine-tuned mechanisms needing each other to be fully formed and present to function points to a master designer – God.
The complicated language embedded in the DNA of all living things points to an intelligent communicator – God.
Richard Dawkins, the world’s foremost expert on evolution, was asked by Ben Stein in the documentary “No Intelligence Allowed” about how he thought life on earth began - how life arrived from non-life , to which Dawkins replied, “perhaps by aliens.”
Aliens - that’s all they’ve got. Make no mistake, Darwinian evolution, despite its many problems, is still on the table in secular academia simply because without God, it’s the only game in town. Evolution cannot explain the origin of DNA. Evolution cannot explain the irreducible complexity of the cell. Evolution cannot explain the lack of transitional species in the fossil record, or the sudden appearance of fossils in what’s called the Cambrian Explosion.
Consider these amazing facts that point to an intelligent designer of the cosmos:
If gravity were just slightly stronger, the universe would not exist. If the Earth were just slightly closer to the sun, humans could not survive. If the chemicals in the air were just slightly altered, we would all die. If the thin ozone layer above us in the atmosphere didn’t exist, neither would we.
There are so many arguments for the existence of God that it would literally take more faith to believe that God does not exist than to believe in his existence.
One of our congregants shared a post from Lee Strobel on social media this past week in which Mr. Strobel said: “To continue in Atheism, I’d need to believe nothing produces everything, non-life produces life, randomness produces fine-tuning, chaos produces information, unconsciousness produces consciousness, and non-reason produces reason. I just didn’t have that much faith.”
The point here is that God has made himself known in a general way to everyone – even people who lack certain senses.
Does everyone remember the name Helen Keller? She was born without sight, hearing, or speech. With Anne Sullivan’s assistance, Helen learned to communicate through touch and eventually learned to talk. When Ms. Sullivan tried to tell Helen about God, the girl’s response was that she already knew him – she just didn’t know his name!”
In conclusion, our passage today describes God’s revealing of himself to mankind through nature and the world around us. In theological terms, this is referred to as God’s General Revelation.
Acts 14:17 echoes God’s General Revelation when it says: Yet He has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; He provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.”
Let this verse encourage you today…
Yes, God hates sin. His righteous anger burns against those who attempt to suppress the truth of His existence. God has given us the gift of nature all around us to remind us of His eternal power and divine nature.
This world is indeed “Indescribably Beautiful” because it was created by an indescribably wonderful creator – a creator who has made Himself known to us. A creator that sacrificed for us. A creator who wants to have a relationship with us.
If you haven’t already, turn to Jesus Christ today and begin experiencing the world through the lens of God’s revealed truth! Let’s Pray.