Spiritual Ignorance Is No Excuse – Romans 1:18-32
Spiritual Ignorance Is No Excuse – Romans 1:18-32
September 17, 2006
by Pastor Lee Hemen
Bob Deffinbaugh, from Dallas Theological Seminary, writes that: “We know that these verses in Romans chapter 1 are… on condemnation. Paul is seeking to establish the fact that all men justly deserve the consequences of the eternal wrath of God. The thrust of these verses, however, is not primarily that God will judge the heathen because of his rejection of the truth, but rather that God is judging the heathen for his rebellion and rejection.” I believe it is both. When you reject the truth of God, as clearly manifested and seen in His creation, you reject the gospel. You are without excuse. Diffinbaugh goes on to write that “The wrath of God, then, is not merely future; it is also present. Men face the consequences for their sins in eternity but also in the present.” I agree. However, that being said, God does punish men for their choices, allows them to continue in their choices, and gives them over to their choices. That can be a form of judgment here and now, yet there will also be a final judgment for the choices a person makes in this life. We reap what we sow and spiritual ignorance is no excuse. Let’s discover what Paul teaches us…
READ: Romans 1:18-32
I remember well that when I made the choice to be disobedient to my mother, I was also being disobedient to my Dad as well. Punishment fit the crime and was usually swift and final. I well remember one time when Ed shot me with a slingshot using a marble as the projectile. He was certainly apologetic, to me, and my Dad after I went running home bleeding profusely screaming bloody murder all the way. I do not think he realized just how much damage a marble could do to even my thick head. After my brother abundantly humbled himself to Dad, our father related, “You knew what you were doing before you did it. You made the choice, now you will face the consequences of your actions.” My only thought was, “Give him a beating!” Yet, my father turned to me and related, “Why did you provoke such an ugly response form your brother?” You see, my brother made the choice to bean me, but I also made the choice to “poke the bear” so-to-speak. My self-proclaimed innocence was no excuse. For Paul, spiritual ignorance is not excuse either. In fact he writes us about…
I. The Basis of God’s Wrath Against Deliberate Spiritual Ignorance (vv. 18-23)!
1. People deliberately suppress the knowledge of God! They think by doing so, then God does not exist. Yet we discover that God has made Himself known plainly to all mankind! Ever since the beginning of creation, God’s eternal power and divine nature has been revealed! Holiness is known, it is revealed and we all know what we should do. Therefore, the ungodly are without excuse! You cannot help but see in the simplest cell or in the grandeur of the heavens the glory of God’s presence: “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 men are without excuse.” The ungodly are simply idolatrous, “For although they [know] God, they neither [glorify] him as God nor [give] thanks to him.” In doing so, their very thought processes have become futile and unreasoned: “they claimed to be wise” yet are foolish because they “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles!” It is ego-centric in spirituality. How sad that thinking people would worship animals or put their faith in fetishes, statues, or relics. Yet we find this not only in so-called organized Christianity, we find it rampant in thinking circles where people are wearing crystals, placing dream catchers in their cars, or joining in prayer circles where they walk through a mystical maze while repeating a prayer over and over. We therefore find four condemning facts about the wisdom of the world: 1) It does not glorify or thank God, 2) It is futile in its reasoning, 3) It is foolish at its core because it leaves out any reference to the divine, and 4) It leads to the worship of self and creation. It is a basis of God’s wrath against deliberate spiritual ignorance.
EXAMPLE: There are those who want to warn America about the dangers of fundamentalist Christianity. Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, equates conservative Christianity with terrorism. He believes that if it was replaced by simple human “reason,” everything would be okay. Atheists often portray Christians as intolerant of other belief systems. However, consider the actions of reasoned atheists like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Pol Pot, who are synonymous with genocide, gulags, and gas ovens. Harris responds by saying that these are “profoundly idiosyncratic men, not champions of reason.” He claims they were not behaving in a rational manner. (Duh!) However, history will help at this point. The German scholar and biologist Ernst Haeckel pushed the implications of Darwin’s theories. He believed that moral law was subject to biology, just like Richard Dawkins does today. “Thousands, indeed millions of cells are sacrificed in order for a species to survive,” Haeckel argued. If this is true of biology, then it is equally true for society. (Do you understand the implications?) Haeckel’s use of Darwin’s theories had a huge impact. It united trends in Germany and Europe of racism, imperialism, romanticism, nationalism, homosexuality, and anti-semitism. In 1906, he founded the Monist League. The Monist man was one with nature and animals. Man was no special creation as the “image of God.” He had no soul, only a superior degree of development. The Monist League brought together eugenicists, biologists, theologians, literary figures, politicians and sociologists. Survival of the fittest became its chief virtue. Modern humanism, Communism, and Nazism all found support for their view of God and humanity in Haeckel’s teachings. Man is the center of the universe. The world has reaped what this foolish ungodly degenerate man sowed. However it is nothing new, because we find that it is a basis of God’s wrath against deliberate spiritual ignorance.
Man’s response to natural revelation is three-fold. First of all there is the initial act of rejection. Men simply refuse to accept God as He has revealed Himself. Then, whenever we reject the correct explanation of the facts we must necessarily counter with an alternative. And finally, when we reject God’s truth, make excuses for our sin, we then have a propensity to go whole hog, so to speak, and exchange God’s blessing for our own selfish perversions. What makes us feel good. Much of the church growth movement endorses this spiritual ego-centricity. However, we discover here…
II. The Results of God’s Wrath Against Deliberate Spiritual Ignorance (1:24-32)!
1. God hands ungodly people over to their own shameful ways! They degraded their own bodies and lusted after others. Sound familiar? It should. When one heads in this degrading direction, you have to find an excuse, any excuse, and of course you cannot blame yourself, so you end up “exchanging the truth of God for a lie.” Each person decides their own evil delusion. God honors that decision. He gives the ungodly over to their sinful desires “of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.” It is a conscious choice not a biological attribute. The ungodly have to justify their actions, so they begin to believe a lie! Homosexuality, unnatural desires, and ungodly attributes become commonplace and accepted by a society or individual who has degraded God’s glory, His image, in their bodies. It is no longer worthwhile, in their depraved thinking, to retain the knowledge of God. Depravity is deliberately turning from God to ungodliness and thinking it is a good thing. Notice the outcome of such thinking: “They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” WOW! And what is perhaps the saddest indictment of all is the fact that: “Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” The wages of sin, certainly is death. Death of the individual, death of right thinking, death of the sacred, death of the holy, death of the individual to think clearly. God’s wrath rests on those who deliberately exchange His truth for a self-deluded lie! Paul tells us the results of God’s wrath against deliberate spiritual ignorance.
EXAMPLE: In today’s society you are considered degenerate if you think homosexuality is depraved. Lying is seen as a virtue and defined down as “misspeaking.” Envy and malice are characteristics the corporate world regularly practices. We hear and see the insolent, arrogant and boastful of the entertainment and sports world. If you disagree with their perverted worldview, you are branded as unenlightened, politically incorrect, and worse – full of hate. To stand for what is godly is often branded as “Nazism,” yet we have seen where this teaching comes from. History is deliberately distorted to fit the paradigm of the moment. Sadly, much of what is taking place in the American church today reflects this ungodly idiocy. Whenever we reject one explanation of the facts we must necessarily counter with an alternative. This is precisely the situation with the ungodly in our day. In Purpose Driven seminars pastors and leaders are encouraged to lie to their congregations, or to get rid of any opposition and brand it as divisive, ungodly, or out of step. The gospel is presented in theatrics, darkened rooms, or in concert-style motif as to not offend the hearer in any way shape or form. Worship of God has been reduced to the moment. We have become idol worshippers by choice, only interested in what makes us happy for the day. We can learn a mantra or prayer that will increase our emotional holiness, instead of our way of behaving by living holy. It is deliberate spiritual ignorance and God’s wrath is being revealed against it.
Conclusion:
We have learned the basis of God’s wrath against deliberate spiritual ignorance and the results of God’s wrath against deliberate spiritual ignorance. We choose to be ego-centric or God-centered. One way leads to eternal death and God’s wrath, and the other to eternal life and peace. Which will you choose?
September 17, 2006
by Pastor Lee Hemen
Bob Deffinbaugh, from Dallas Theological Seminary, writes that: “We know that these verses in Romans chapter 1 are… on condemnation. Paul is seeking to establish the fact that all men justly deserve the consequences of the eternal wrath of God. The thrust of these verses, however, is not primarily that God will judge the heathen because of his rejection of the truth, but rather that God is judging the heathen for his rebellion and rejection.” I believe it is both. When you reject the truth of God, as clearly manifested and seen in His creation, you reject the gospel. You are without excuse. Diffinbaugh goes on to write that “The wrath of God, then, is not merely future; it is also present. Men face the consequences for their sins in eternity but also in the present.” I agree. However, that being said, God does punish men for their choices, allows them to continue in their choices, and gives them over to their choices. That can be a form of judgment here and now, yet there will also be a final judgment for the choices a person makes in this life. We reap what we sow and spiritual ignorance is no excuse. Let’s discover what Paul teaches us…
READ: Romans 1:18-32
I remember well that when I made the choice to be disobedient to my mother, I was also being disobedient to my Dad as well. Punishment fit the crime and was usually swift and final. I well remember one time when Ed shot me with a slingshot using a marble as the projectile. He was certainly apologetic, to me, and my Dad after I went running home bleeding profusely screaming bloody murder all the way. I do not think he realized just how much damage a marble could do to even my thick head. After my brother abundantly humbled himself to Dad, our father related, “You knew what you were doing before you did it. You made the choice, now you will face the consequences of your actions.” My only thought was, “Give him a beating!” Yet, my father turned to me and related, “Why did you provoke such an ugly response form your brother?” You see, my brother made the choice to bean me, but I also made the choice to “poke the bear” so-to-speak. My self-proclaimed innocence was no excuse. For Paul, spiritual ignorance is not excuse either. In fact he writes us about…
I. The Basis of God’s Wrath Against Deliberate Spiritual Ignorance (vv. 18-23)!
1. People deliberately suppress the knowledge of God! They think by doing so, then God does not exist. Yet we discover that God has made Himself known plainly to all mankind! Ever since the beginning of creation, God’s eternal power and divine nature has been revealed! Holiness is known, it is revealed and we all know what we should do. Therefore, the ungodly are without excuse! You cannot help but see in the simplest cell or in the grandeur of the heavens the glory of God’s presence: “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 men are without excuse.” The ungodly are simply idolatrous, “For although they [know] God, they neither [glorify] him as God nor [give] thanks to him.” In doing so, their very thought processes have become futile and unreasoned: “they claimed to be wise” yet are foolish because they “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles!” It is ego-centric in spirituality. How sad that thinking people would worship animals or put their faith in fetishes, statues, or relics. Yet we find this not only in so-called organized Christianity, we find it rampant in thinking circles where people are wearing crystals, placing dream catchers in their cars, or joining in prayer circles where they walk through a mystical maze while repeating a prayer over and over. We therefore find four condemning facts about the wisdom of the world: 1) It does not glorify or thank God, 2) It is futile in its reasoning, 3) It is foolish at its core because it leaves out any reference to the divine, and 4) It leads to the worship of self and creation. It is a basis of God’s wrath against deliberate spiritual ignorance.
EXAMPLE: There are those who want to warn America about the dangers of fundamentalist Christianity. Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, equates conservative Christianity with terrorism. He believes that if it was replaced by simple human “reason,” everything would be okay. Atheists often portray Christians as intolerant of other belief systems. However, consider the actions of reasoned atheists like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Pol Pot, who are synonymous with genocide, gulags, and gas ovens. Harris responds by saying that these are “profoundly idiosyncratic men, not champions of reason.” He claims they were not behaving in a rational manner. (Duh!) However, history will help at this point. The German scholar and biologist Ernst Haeckel pushed the implications of Darwin’s theories. He believed that moral law was subject to biology, just like Richard Dawkins does today. “Thousands, indeed millions of cells are sacrificed in order for a species to survive,” Haeckel argued. If this is true of biology, then it is equally true for society. (Do you understand the implications?) Haeckel’s use of Darwin’s theories had a huge impact. It united trends in Germany and Europe of racism, imperialism, romanticism, nationalism, homosexuality, and anti-semitism. In 1906, he founded the Monist League. The Monist man was one with nature and animals. Man was no special creation as the “image of God.” He had no soul, only a superior degree of development. The Monist League brought together eugenicists, biologists, theologians, literary figures, politicians and sociologists. Survival of the fittest became its chief virtue. Modern humanism, Communism, and Nazism all found support for their view of God and humanity in Haeckel’s teachings. Man is the center of the universe. The world has reaped what this foolish ungodly degenerate man sowed. However it is nothing new, because we find that it is a basis of God’s wrath against deliberate spiritual ignorance.
Man’s response to natural revelation is three-fold. First of all there is the initial act of rejection. Men simply refuse to accept God as He has revealed Himself. Then, whenever we reject the correct explanation of the facts we must necessarily counter with an alternative. And finally, when we reject God’s truth, make excuses for our sin, we then have a propensity to go whole hog, so to speak, and exchange God’s blessing for our own selfish perversions. What makes us feel good. Much of the church growth movement endorses this spiritual ego-centricity. However, we discover here…
II. The Results of God’s Wrath Against Deliberate Spiritual Ignorance (1:24-32)!
1. God hands ungodly people over to their own shameful ways! They degraded their own bodies and lusted after others. Sound familiar? It should. When one heads in this degrading direction, you have to find an excuse, any excuse, and of course you cannot blame yourself, so you end up “exchanging the truth of God for a lie.” Each person decides their own evil delusion. God honors that decision. He gives the ungodly over to their sinful desires “of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.” It is a conscious choice not a biological attribute. The ungodly have to justify their actions, so they begin to believe a lie! Homosexuality, unnatural desires, and ungodly attributes become commonplace and accepted by a society or individual who has degraded God’s glory, His image, in their bodies. It is no longer worthwhile, in their depraved thinking, to retain the knowledge of God. Depravity is deliberately turning from God to ungodliness and thinking it is a good thing. Notice the outcome of such thinking: “They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” WOW! And what is perhaps the saddest indictment of all is the fact that: “Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” The wages of sin, certainly is death. Death of the individual, death of right thinking, death of the sacred, death of the holy, death of the individual to think clearly. God’s wrath rests on those who deliberately exchange His truth for a self-deluded lie! Paul tells us the results of God’s wrath against deliberate spiritual ignorance.
EXAMPLE: In today’s society you are considered degenerate if you think homosexuality is depraved. Lying is seen as a virtue and defined down as “misspeaking.” Envy and malice are characteristics the corporate world regularly practices. We hear and see the insolent, arrogant and boastful of the entertainment and sports world. If you disagree with their perverted worldview, you are branded as unenlightened, politically incorrect, and worse – full of hate. To stand for what is godly is often branded as “Nazism,” yet we have seen where this teaching comes from. History is deliberately distorted to fit the paradigm of the moment. Sadly, much of what is taking place in the American church today reflects this ungodly idiocy. Whenever we reject one explanation of the facts we must necessarily counter with an alternative. This is precisely the situation with the ungodly in our day. In Purpose Driven seminars pastors and leaders are encouraged to lie to their congregations, or to get rid of any opposition and brand it as divisive, ungodly, or out of step. The gospel is presented in theatrics, darkened rooms, or in concert-style motif as to not offend the hearer in any way shape or form. Worship of God has been reduced to the moment. We have become idol worshippers by choice, only interested in what makes us happy for the day. We can learn a mantra or prayer that will increase our emotional holiness, instead of our way of behaving by living holy. It is deliberate spiritual ignorance and God’s wrath is being revealed against it.
Conclusion:
We have learned the basis of God’s wrath against deliberate spiritual ignorance and the results of God’s wrath against deliberate spiritual ignorance. We choose to be ego-centric or God-centered. One way leads to eternal death and God’s wrath, and the other to eternal life and peace. Which will you choose?
Comments