A Predictable Path

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How many of you did some cooking this week? not very many it looks like are you just afraid of what question’s going to come next right how many of you made anybody sick this week yourself well not from yeah not from eating uh the the the cooking I know it’s a lot of us ate until we were sick but I did some cooking this week too so did charla for our um for our thanksgiving Our whole family’s been passing sickness around and we ended up not getting to go be with our extended family. So we had Thanksgiving at the house.

And in addition to the normal Thanksgiving foods, I made some crawfish and some crabs that Benjamin and I wanted to eat. My wife wanted no part of it. But she and I were both in there cooking and we are very different kinds of cooks.

I’ve probably told you this before. She likes to measure and use recipes and follow instructions. I don’t want to do any of that.

I just throw stuff in the pot and see what happens. And usually, you know, usually it works out. Usually, yeah.

There are some things, though, that I will not follow that approach with, and the crawfish and crabs are high on that list. Anything seafood, really. Because I have experienced food poisoning. right I have experienced stomach bugs and I don’t I don’t I see where that road leads and so when I cook seafood I am going to make sure I follow the instructions because I don’t want to go down that path that is I know where that leads and it’s nowhere fun so there was enough sickness going around our house so I made sure to follow the the directions and cook that stuff exactly as long as the directions told me to cook them.

We wonder sometimes what will happen if we don’t follow the directions. And as we’ve spent the last several weeks talking about what the Bible says about worship, there’s some instructions that God has given, some instructions that were meant specifically for Israel, some things that we’ve been able to learn from ourselves. And I’ve tried to get across to you the idea that worship is the way we live our lives.

Yes, what we do here together on Sunday mornings is part of that. Yes, music is part of that, but it’s not the sum total of that. Worship is about living our lives in submission to God, to glorify Him.

It’s something we are supposed to live out in every aspect of our lives. But you may think, well, what? Or what?

Okay, the Bible says do this, or what? You ever had a child look at you and say, or what, when you told them what to do? once.

Yeah, I like that answer, once. I might have had that attitude, once. Yeah, you’re going to clean your room, or what?

I found out. When God’s Word tells us what it means to worship, and that we ought to, and why we ought to, there’s something in our human flesh that may wonder, or what? But if we don’t worship God, it leads to a very predictable place.

It is not in doubt, it is not in question what is going to happen. It’s like undercooking the seafood, right? We know where that road is going to lead.

And so as we’re spending a few weeks talking about worship before we get to Christmas, I know for some of you it’s been Christmas season since Halloween was over. Some of y’all had your trees up right after Halloween, right? And had the Christmas music on.

Not all of you. But as we approach that time, before we finish up this series on worship in the next couple weeks. We need to talk about what happens if we decide not to do what the Bible says.

What happens? Where does the road lead when we decide not to worship God? And the Apostle Paul talks about that in Romans chapter 1, talks about what happens to a group of people when they decide, no, I’m not going to worship him.

Where does that path lead? It’s pretty predictable. It’s something that we see all throughout history and all throughout Scripture, and Paul explains in Romans chapter 1, how it happens.

So I hear some of you turning already. If you haven’t started, if you’ll turn with me to Romans chapter 1, it’ll be on the screen if you don’t have your Bible or can’t find it. And if you’re able to stand without too much difficulty, if you join me standing as we read from God’s Word together, we’re going to start in verse 18 and read through the end of the chapter as we see what Paul says about what happens when we don’t worship God.

He says, starting in verse 18, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

Because although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, and birds, and four-footed animals, and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up to uncleanness in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for a lie, for the lie, excuse me, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the, excuse me, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

Amen. For this reason God gave them up to vile passions, for even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men leaving the natural use of the women burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do things which are not fitting, being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness. They are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful, who knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same, but also approve of those who practice them. And you may be seated.

That’s quite a mouthful he said there, right? He has a lot to say about what society looks like. Now, I want to be clear, this is a passage that is often treated as though its main focus is to address the subject of homosexual behavior.

That is certainly part of what he’s talking about. But the whole purpose of what he’s talking about here really is a society that has chosen to reject God. Now, he does address the issue of same-sex behavior, and that’s why there are certain tolerant countries in this world where you can be arrested for preaching this passage.

I don’t know if it’s still the case, but I know at one point you could land in trouble in Canada. They may try to do that here. I don’t know.

There’s things in the works in the Senate. We’ll see how that plays out. I do know that if the United States or any other country wants to declare war on the word of God, good luck to them.

You know, the word of God outlasted Rome. It outlasted the Soviet Union. I don’t like anybody’s chances if they say, well, we’re going to shut down God’s word.

If I were a betting man, my money’s on God. However, because it mentions that, we think, well, that’s the whole purpose of it. He uses that as an example of the way society goes.

But the whole point of this is about what happens to a society, and I think we could bring it down to the individual level, what happens to us as people when we say, no, I’m not going to worship God. The purpose here is not to single out one sin and say, well, that’s who he’s talking about. He’s talking about all of us if we neglect to worship God.

He’s talking about all of us if we reject God in favor of something else. And that’s one example. One example from the passage.

But there’s this path. If we say, what happens if I don’t? You know, the Bible says we’re to worship God with our whole lives.

That’s what we were created for. What happens if we don’t? There’s this predictable path that we see all throughout Scripture.

We see it happened to Israel over and over again. It happened in the Roman Empire. happened in the pagan world.

It’s happening today, ladies and gentlemen. There are things that go on in our world. How many of you turn on the news and say, I don’t understand the world I’m living in?

Has it ever happened to you? Sometimes you walk out the front door and say, I don’t understand the world I’m living in. I understand, I don’t like it.

I understand it’s Romans chapter 1 playing out right in front of us. We are living in a Romans chapter 1 world. This is what happens when we choose not to worship God.

There’s a few steps here on this path. What happens to the person? What happens to the individual?

The first thing that goes on here is disclosure, where God reveals himself and his glory to humans. Now, God, it may surprise some of you to know God does not intend for himself or his will to be a complete mystery to us. We have this idea that in order to understand God or understand his will, we have to go through all these, we have to jump through all these hoops, and we have to stand on one leg and turn around clockwise while we have so many pounds of rocks in our pockets and we have to go through all these things to understand God’s will and maybe we’ll get a glimpse of it.

God has taken the initiative for us to know Him. That’s what the Bible is all about. That’s what Jesus Christ’s coming was all about, was so that we could know Him.

It was not God’s intention to remain a mystery. God is not sitting there in heaven saying, you figure it out. God wants us to know him, and he wants us to understand his will.

So he took the steps. He’s done the work of making himself known to mankind. You and I are incapable of finding him on our own.

If God had intended to remain a mystery, we wouldn’t know anything about him. Because the smartest among us are not wise enough to figure out God. But what we know of him is because he has chosen to reveal it to us.

And in this passage, it talks about a couple of forms of what we call general revelation. That’s just where he’s made himself visible to the whole world. And he’s done that in a couple of ways.

He’s done that through creation. Verse 20 says, I’m sorry, verse 20. Verse 20 says, Since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.

So we can look at what was made and see that there’s a creator. We can see that there’s a maker. This is one of the arguments for the existence of God.

But we can look around and see what’s around us. And the Bible says in the book of Psalms that the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork. And so we look around at the glory of creation and we can get a glimpse of what he’s like.

That’s why sometimes we’re just in awe when we see the stars or when we drive through the mountains. The more I’ve looked through a microscope and the more I’ve looked through a telescope, the more in awe I am of who God is. It’s seeing the complexity of creation.

And Paul says it’s been on display from the beginning. And there are certain things that we can deduce from creation about who God is. Number one, the Bible teaches that he’s a God of order, and we can see order within the seeming chaos of creation.

Everything just seems to work together. And it’s far more complex than we at first realize. So he’s revealed himself through creation so that we could see his handiwork, so that we could know something about Him.

He’s revealed Himself through conscience. Verse 19 says, Because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. There’s a way in which God has manifest His Word in our hearts.

Later on in the book of Romans, in the next chapter as a matter of fact, it says, They show the work of the law written on their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness. The law of God is engraved on the human heart. That’s why even in civilizations where they have not yet heard the name of Jesus Christ and do not have access to scriptures or did not, even before those things were available to them, universally societies have recognized there’s something wrong with murder.

There’s something wrong with theft. There’s something wrong with adultery. Now, different civilizations have defined these things in different ways, but we all know at some point there’s a line there you don’t cross.

Societies that have nothing else in common. The explanation for that is what the Bible says, that the law of God is engraved on our hearts. There’s this conscience that he’s put in us so that we would know something of his will, of right and wrong.

Now the problem is that what we do know, we ignore. That’s typically been true of humanity. There are a couple other ways that he’s revealed who he is to us.

The scriptures. Most of what we know about who he is and what he wants comes from what he’s told us in here. What he’s spoken through the prophets and the apostles.

And he’s also spoken through his Son so that we would know him. The book of Hebrews says, God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by his Son. Colossians calls him the image of the invisible God.

I believe it’s John, I may be wrong in that, but says, No man has seen God, meaning the Father, at any time, but the only begotten of the Father has declared him. what we could not see previously, what we could not know previously of the Father, Jesus Christ has shown us in human flesh. So we take what He’s revealed in creation, we take what He’s revealed through our consciences, we take ultimately what He’s revealed in the Scriptures and in the person of His Son, and there’s quite a bit that we can know about God.

We can’t know everything about God. As a matter of fact, we’re probably just barely scratching the surface of who He is, but the things we need to know, we can know, And it’s not because we went and figured it out, it’s because he took the time and the effort to reveal it to us. And the result of this is that we’re able to know who he is, we’re able to know what he wants, at least what we need to know of those things, so that there’s no way to feign ignorance.

He says there in verse 20 that we are without excuse. We know some things. Now the problem there is, as I said, in every civilization where they’ve ever had access to these things, every civilization where they’ve been able to look at creation and know there’s a creator, in every civilization when they’ve been able to hear the voice of conscience and know that there’s a right and wrong, as humans we traditionally have ignored what we knew of God’s truth and instead embraced another way.

The problem here arises not with the fact that God has revealed himself to us, but the second step on this road is denial, where humanity rejects God to pursue its own desires. Verse 21 tells us, because they knew God, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but they became futile. They became empty, meaningless in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

See, when God reveals Himself to us, the right response is to worship God, to seek to glorify Him for who He is and what He’s done. That’s the right response. That’s the response that would make sense, to want to glorify God with our whole lives.

That’s what we were created to do. But in our natural state, we take what we do know about God and we rebel against it. And we refuse to worship Him.

And it’s been going on since the beginning. It’s been going on since the Garden of Eden. As we reject Him, though, we become alienated from His truth.

We become alienated from Him. We become incapable of correct spiritual discernment. We become progressively more and more incapable of knowing what He wants.

That’s why it says in verses 22 and 23, Professing to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. So instead of pursuing God’s truth, mankind has this track record of pursuing instead what seems right, what feels right to us in the moment. And that ends up being wrong.

All the time, it ends up being wrong. You look at the book of Judges where it says over and over, every man did what was right in his own eyes, it was never right in God’s eyes. And the inevitable result of this, of saying, no, I’m going to worship what I want instead, the inevitable result, what always happens in every person, in every society, is idolatry.

It’s taken on various forms throughout human history. We think of idols and we think of statues, little statues that people worship. But sometimes the idols are a little less tangible.

Sometimes the idol is in here, inside of us. Some have worshipped their own philosophy, some have embraced idols, but the common denominator, what they all have in common, has been man’s eagerness to worship a God of his own design. When it comes right down to it, our sinful nature, our flesh, would rather worship a God of our own design than submit to the God who designed us, because he has expectations of us.

When I think of this, I think of a quote that I heard on the radio a while back that I use a lot now. That’s that every society is a theocracy. It’s just a question of who the theo is going to be.

We hear theocracy, we think of Iran, we think of Afghanistan, we think we live in a democracy, technically we live in a republic, there are democratic elements to it, but we think theocracy is so far from our thinking, but no, every society is a theocracy. Every society is oriented around worshiping something that calls the shots. It’s just a question of who the Theo is going to be.

Theo being the Greek word for God. Every society worships something. Every society orders itself according to what it worships.

It’s just a question of what we’re worshiping. We may refuse to worship God, but we will always worship something. It may be money.

It may not be little statues that you keep in your house and offer things to. It may be money. It may be a job or a title.

It may be a celebrity. It may be yourself. But we’re all going to worship something, whether we worship God or not.

And that leads to the third step on this road, which is decadence, where humanity becomes enslaved by its own desires. There’s this illusion of freedom where we think, well, we can do whatever we want to do, but eventually we become slaves to those desires, and we’re no longer free. We’re just doing what those desires lead us to do.

We see this in verses 24 through 27, and he uses the example of sexual immorality. In verses 26 through 27, he points out homosexual activity, but earlier on before that, in verse 24, I think it encompasses all sexual immorality, whether it’s homosexual or heterosexual. He says that they dishonor their bodies among themselves. He’s not specifying who with what?

He’s just saying that the pagan world dishonors their bodies among themselves. And so he points to this problem of sexual immorality, things that are outside of God’s design for marriage. And again, it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking homosexuality.

It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking heterosexual couples being involved outside of marriage. It doesn’t matter, pornography, whatever it is that does not fit God’s design. He holds this up as an example and you say, why does he go there?

Because it was shocking. Because it’s a way of saying to them, if you live in a mindset where there is no God, and you live in a mindset where anything goes, then don’t be surprised when anything goes. But it’s symptomatic of the real problem.

They have refused to submit to God. They’ve arrived at a situation where anything goes. By the way, it happens in our society as well.

And it’s not limited just to sexual immorality. We look at all the chaos that permeates through our society. And at the root of it is that by and large our society has rejected God and has been rejecting God for more than a generation now.

And it’s because when we don’t submit to God, we submit to a God of our own design, which ultimately leaves us enslaved to our own desires. Now there’s an easily misstatement here. Because people do focus in on the homosexuality aspect of it, I think we miss what may be key to understanding this whole passage.

in verse 25, because I skip over it from time to time. I’ve seen it in there before and I still skip over it half the time when I’m reading it. It says in verse 25, they exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator.

A lot of times when I remember this passage, I think of it, they exchanged the truth of God for a lie. No, he says the lie, which tells me he has something very specific in mind that he’s talking about. And you think about the history that Paul would have been familiar with and that they would have been familiar with.

There’s a very clear example of a lie that humanity fell for when it refused to worship God. And it’s back in Genesis chapter 3. What is the lie that he’s talking about?

Genesis chapter 3 says, The serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, Has God indeed said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.

Which, by the way, that’s not accurate. That’s not what God said. So part of the problem here is that Adam and Eve don’t seem to be clear on what God actually said.

So it becomes hard to stand on the authority of God’s word when you don’t know what God’s word says. There’s an argument there for us to familiarize ourselves with what God’s word says. But here’s the lie.

Then the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die, for God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. The lie that was told in the garden and the lie that Paul is saying that mankind has fallen for over and over and over throughout our history, the lie is that you don’t have to worship God, you can be God. Now to be clear and to be fair, most people in the world are not thinking, wait, I can become God.

Most people are not thinking, I can transform into a supernatural being. Most people are not thinking along those lines. But the lie you can become God can apply to you can become God in your own life.

You can function as God. You can call the shots. You don’t need God because you can fill that role in your life, you can be in charge.

You can decide what’s right and wrong. You can decide what you’re going to do. And Satan promises this freedom.

He will promise you this freedom all day, every day. But he never discloses the truth. He never reveals the fine print.

And that’s that apart from God, we end up enslaved to our own desires and whatever impulse grabs us at the moment. So there seems to be this situation in here where we tend to imitate what we worship. And he talks about their behavior at the end of this chapter when he gives this long list, malicious and full of envy, murder, strife, deceit.

You remember the list that just keeps going on there at the end. He describes this in a society like that where everybody’s eager to lie to each other. Everybody’s violent.

Everybody’s wicked. It’s barely a step up from the animal world. And the root of it is in they no longer worship God.

And in many cases, they made gods out of the animals. And instead of worshiping God and being imitators of God, meaning we strive for what God loves, we strive for truth, we strive for faithfulness, we strive for generosity, we strive for grace, we strive for all these things that define the character of God, we imitate the gods of our own design. And then we end up with that kind of society.

We end up with that kind of mindset where we end up enslaved to those desires. Again, he promises freedom. But Paul makes it clear here and throughout the book of Romans that apart from God, we just end up enslaved to sin.

And where this ultimately leads is destruction, where God lets humanity reap the consequences of rejecting him. Now, we know that God is going to judge man for behaviors like this, but part of the judgment is letting us wallow in the sin and reap the consequences. We know that there are, or hopefully you know, there are natural consequences and there are given consequences.

I’m trying to remember the terminology we use with the kids. There’s always going to be a consequence to everything we do. Sometimes there may be an earned consequence, a given consequence, that you disobey and we’re going to ground you, or we’re going to take away this privilege, or whatever.

There’s also a natural consequence. There have been times I’ve told my older two kids, if this is what you want to do, I’m going to let you deal with what happens next. Nothing I’m adding, but hey, you want to refuse to eat dinner to prove a point?

You can go to bed hungry. You would let me go to bed hungry? It’s your choice.

It’s a natural consequence. I’m not going to make you be hungry. So you understand there are consequences that God gives us, and there are consequences that God allows for us that are just natural consequences.

And there will come a day that we answer to God for whether we’ve worshipped Him or not, we answer to God for whether we’ve worshiped him or embraced idolatry and we will all have to give an answer to that but also here in the world there are natural consequences to where this leads and God says okay that’s why it says he gave them over to a debased mind God gave them up God gave them over there’s a point where God says okay if that’s what you want to do it doesn’t mean God’s okay with it, but it means God’s already been clear about his expectations. God’s already been clear about the consequences, and he’s done talking about it. And I think part of the judgment when we refuse to honor God, when we refuse to worship God with our lives, is what’s spelled out in verses 28 through 32.

Now, we look at all these things. We see the sexual immorality, the wickedness, the covetousness, maliciousness, envy, murder, strife, deceit, and so and we see all this, and is that stuff God does or is that stuff we do, that man does? Y’all awake?

It’s not a trick question. Are those things that God does or are those things that man does? Those are things man does, and yet God says, if that’s what you want, I’m going to let you have it.

The judgment of God sometimes is letting us have what we’ve chosen. Sometimes the fact that God doesn’t come in and clean up the mess after us and just lets us have what’s the natural consequence, sometimes that’s part of the judgment of God. And it leads to our destruction.

It doesn’t mean that we cease to exist. That’s not what I mean by destruction. But I mean there’s nothing good or constructive that comes out of these choices. And God just lets us wallow in the sin and reap the consequences as a society, as a nation.

And ultimately what Paul has described here is that our willingness to worship self and our desires instead of God leads us down a road we don’t want to see the end of. No matter how much we may deserve it, we don’t want to see the end of that road. Do you want to live in a society that is ruled by murder and deceit and all of the things that he describes there in verses 28 through 32?

I don’t think even people that reject God want to live in that world. But Paul’s clear that that’s where the decision to reject God ends. What happens when we refuse to worship God?

What happens when we choose not to glorify Him the way He deserves? What happens is we find something else to worship and we follow it all the way to destruction. And this is the direction humanity is headed.

You may say, well, he sounds like a doomsday prophet up there. This is nothing new. This is the direction humanity has been headed for thousands of years.

As a species, we’re not always so nice. As a matter of fact, I read somewhere this week on Facebook where some ministry had posted something and a lady got on there. I don’t know why she was even on their page.

But she said, oh, religion, no thank you. Religion has been the source of all the blood and all the conflict throughout the history of the world. No thank you.

I thought, I can name in the 20th century alone a bunch of people who were not religious and killed lots and lots of people. Stalin, Mao, tens of millions I don’t even know. Pol Pot killed a third of his country.

Hitler. I can think of lots of people. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know what our church’s death count is.

Actually, I do. It’s zero. That was a joke.

For those watching online, our death count is zero. As far as I know, I think you get all the churches in America together. I don’t think we come even close to one of those guys.

People have misused religion to create conflict and bloodshed, but I think when you look at all the non-religious reasons to go to war, I think what we have is not a religion problem. We have a humanity problem that we as a species are not always as good as we are, especially when we get together in groups and decide to do the wrong thing, what I’m telling you is this is where we’ve been headed for thousands of years. This is part of the nature of who we are apart from God.

And the only thing, the only thing that pulls us back from the brin