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Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music]
You know, it's been wonderful how the Lord has allowed us, uh, in California to build a partnership with you folks down here. I'm, uh, I'm so very, very grateful first of all to, uh, Clary and Edna Pearson, who head up Grace to You New Zealand and distribute our tapes and books down here and, uh, work so diligently and so faithfully to make that ministry all that it can be. And they are quite remarkable people, and I certainly want to express my gratitude to them. Uh, you see them over at the book table, so you, uh, perhaps know who they are, but they're here to serve you in any way possible. And the Lord has, has just blessed me personally to have them as friends and co-laborers in the ministry here. And through the years, by the providence of God, uh, we've sent many of our staff down here, and you've sent many of your people up there, and it's been a real joy to have them at the M's seminary and at the M's college. And we hope in the future to be able to sustain that partnership and have you come that way and some of our people come this way and do whatever we can to be of some benefit and some encouragement, some help and instruction, uh, to those of you here who have a tremendous task of reaching your nation with the gospel of Christ.
What a privilege it is to work with students. You know, there, uh, when I think about all the ministries that I, I do, um, none is full of more hope than working with young people. They can be trying at times, admittedly, but, uh, what a tremendous privilege. We have about, uh, 1,000 students now at the Master's College in the undergraduate program, studying all kinds of things geared to being, uh, examples and and being, uh, messengers for Christ in every field of endeavor, whether they, they go into a pre-med program, pre-law, history, education, business, or, or biblical studies, or missions, or whatever it is. And it's just a tremendous thing to see God bringing people through that program there from all over the world. We, we have about 35 nations at the Master's College.
Um, we've had some quite remarkable people come through there. I think of one student, his name was Zho. He was from, uh, Uganda and had been trained in the university there in a pre-med program. And the government had picked him out of the students because he was, he was such a promising student to be a medical doctor that they shipped him off to medical school. They don't have any medical schools, and, um, they shipped him to Moscow, uh, to do his medical training in Moscow. And he didn't speak a word of Russian, so he had to go there and in a matter of a few weeks, really absorb the Russian language. He was a very bright guy, and then take his entire medical training in Russian. At the same time, uh, he was indoctrinated with communism because communism was still the reigning ideology in the university setting, and they tried to convert him to communism. It happened that he was a Christian, so it was quite an interesting experience. He graduated, um, from his medical school in Moscow and went back to be a surgeon in the main hospital, uh, in his country. And, uh, he felt, uh, unprepared to go back and do that because he said, "I can fix people's bodies, but," this is what he told me later, "but I really couldn't fix their soul. I really didn't have the skill to work on the, the souls of my patients."
And, and so on his way from Moscow, somebody told him about the Master's College, and he came to us all the way after medical school. He came, and we designed a special two-year program for him to, uh, sort of imbibe everything of the scripture that we could give him in two years. And he, he worked as a, as a maintenance guy, uh, cleaning up places and mowing the lawn for two years, uh, to learn the Bible, and then went off and now is a surgeon in the main hospital down there, and God is using him in a wonderful way.
The Lord brings us people from all over the place. We had, uh, four students this last year from Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is no place basically. It's, it's off the planet. Uh, Kazakhstan is 15 time zones from where I live, going east. It's on the back side of Tibet. Uh, it's, it's just a little south of Siberia. It was once a part of the Russian USSR, uh, but when the breakup came, it got its identity back. It is basically a people, nomadic people. Kazaks are, they look like Mongolians, and they are people who live and and thrive off the horse. They ride around in freezing cold weather, you know, dressed up with all that Mongolian stuff. And it's amazing how the gospel has penetrated into that place. I went there, uh, and, uh, it was quite an amazing experience. Um, I mean, I'd never been there. Nobody had ever been there. It was just one of those places where if you ever go there, you never come back, you know. So it's no, no tourism, you know, nobody goes there. It's hard, very hard to get there. Uh, but anyway, after a long, long, long flight across, uh, Siberia, you finally get to this place, and they had the first pastor's conference ever for that part of the world. And that meant they were coming from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkistan, and I don't know, Kyrgyzstan. There's a whole bunch of those things.
And, uh, they, they, they planned for 850. What happened was the Russian government, you know, Stalin and his, uh, in his regime wanted to get the Christians, of course, out of Russia. So he shipped Christians to Kazakhstan in exile, and of course, they just went down there and planted churches. So, um, there is a strong Christian presence in that part of the world in the midst of, of Islam and whatever tribal religions exist. So, anyway, this is the first conference of church leaders ever in history in that part of the world, and they planned for 800, and 1650 came. I don't know how they all came from all different ways. I don't know how they all got there. Uh, bus transportation. Someone went on a train, some traveled 22 hours on a bus to get there. And, uh, they all showed up, uh, in this, in this place, and, and there's a church there that had just been built in the last two years that seats, 1600 people, packed to the walls. It shows you how the church in, it's in Almaty, which is the main city in Kazakhstan, is growing.
And I went there, and I had the privilege of staying with a widow lady in her humble house. And they didn't have enough food for the people because food is a serious issue back there. It's so cold back there that about all that grows is potatoes. And, uh, so, you know, basically they fed these people all week. Um, you know, they had a big pot, you know, like the kind you boil a missionary in, you know, really big kind. And they, they had about three of these huge big pots, and they just kept trying to find more potatoes. And the more people that showed up, the more potatoes they threw in to make the potato soup. And, uh, and I guess they found some meat here and there and threw that in too. And, uh, we, we just had an absolutely incredible deal.
Well, anyway, I met four kids when I was there, and by the providence of God, they ended up last year at the Master's College, all the way from Kazakhstan. They had been taught English by one of our people on our college staff who went there to do some missionary work, and went back there, met them, led them to Christ, taught them English, and they came to our college for a year and just revolutionized their life. They went back to serve the Lord in their own country now, foundationally trained in the things of God. But what precious, precious young people, three girls and a guy, just a tremendous, tremendous experience.
Well, just to close the story there, um, this dear lady that I stayed with, you know, had so very little, but she gave, you know, she gave me everything she had. And I know she had found some horse meat somewhere, and I, you know, just went ahead and ate it and praised the Lord. Uh, and the, the, the delicacy there is horse milk, you know, and if you're, and if the real delicacy is fermented horse milk. That's their sort of beer, you know, but I, I didn't get into that. The, the problem is nobody has a refrigerator. So, if it wasn't a cold climate, you know, everybody would drink fermented, uh, horse milk if they didn't drink it fast enough. But anyway, we had a great time.
And, uh, so, uh, they said they want me to teach all about the church. They want to know all about the church, everything about the church. So they say, "We want you to do a a series, teach all us, all of us all about the church." So, so six days, 9 in the morning till 9 at night, all about the church. It's just a marathon. Absolute marathon with a translator, you know. So you say a sentence, stop. Say a sentence, stop. Say a sentence, stop. Really, it's very difficult to do that. It's wearing and it's boring and it sucks the life out of you, and you just hope the guy's saying the right stuff, you know. So, but I know my translator, he's, he's the best, and that was fine. But it was a real grind.
So, about Wednesday, I start getting notes. These people in, in the former Soviet Union pass notes. They don't have telephones for the most part. And the whole of their communication comes on the Lord's Day or any other time of the week when they get together, and they, that the prayer requests and the issues of life all get passed to the front during all the services, and then they're all over the place. And when the preachers are done preaching, and they usually have three for each service, in this case it was me and me and me, um, then the pastor reads all these notes and informs everybody of all the needs and all the issues and all the prayer requests. And so notes started coming forward which I couldn't read, of course. And so afterwards, I, I, um, took these notes and I took them to the guy and I said, "Look," I said, "what are the notes saying?" And they were a little embarrassed. And, uh, I said, "No, what are they, what are they saying?" Well, he said, um, through the translator, he said, "Well, they, they, they just really want to know when you're going to get to the good part."
I thought, "This is 15 time zones away. I'm all the way over here eating horse meat in freezing cold, and I'm here three days and I haven't gotten to the good part yet. This is serious." So, uh, I said, "What's the good part?" They said, "Oh, they want to hear about the future of the church. They want to know about heaven." What an amazing thing. What an amazing thing. I was telling them all about the church here. They wanted to know the future. There's nothing here to hold them. Totally different perspective. Totally different perspective. "When are you going to get to the good part?" So I told him, I said, "Look, Friday from dawn till sunset, we're going, we're going through eschatology and right on into heaven." No, they're all, "But here we are, you know, and we're still," that's a good perspective, you know. We, we've lost it in the comfortable Western world.
I, I dare say that if I suggested to you that I had the inside track and that the Lord was going to send one of his angels here tonight in, in just about 15 minutes, and all of you who were want, who wanted to could go to heaven immediately with that angel, how many of you would instantaneously and unhesitatingly sign up? Yeah. Thanks, both of you. You know what that would, that would paralyze us, wouldn't it? I got to make a few phone calls first. You know, I got a lot of appointments here, and we've lost the perspective, and we get so bound up in the church here, we forget the church there. But it was a refreshing time to be with those people. And, and Friday when I went through this, or Saturday, I went by blitz from the whole, the whole eschatological thing. Just, just took them through the whole thing. In fact, I took them on a jet tour through the whole book of Revelation, and, and I mean, it was absolutely off the charts. It was so exhilarating. I mean, they were just, you know, eating every bit of it up and, and raring to go. It's when you're in that kind of a situation, it's different life.
But anyway, you take those four kids out of that thing and bring them to Southern California, you talk about culture shock. They walk in a, in a supermarket and stand there and cry like a baby. They can't comprehend it. It's just absolutely mind-boggling. I mean, for you guys that have been there, the first place the kids took them when they arrived was In-N-Out Burger, which is a real, you know, sort of a high-tech, glaring, blaring, brassy hamburger joint, you know, and they never even heard of a hamburger. So, it was amazing. But the Lord has allowed us to train some young people from all over the world.
Tonight, I want to, I'm trying to cover some things in the morning session and then embellish them a little bit in our evening session. And this morning we talked about the priority of worship. Uh, we talked about the fact that the church is to be God-ward in its focus. That the church is to bring heaven down. The church is to have literally an overwhelming God-ward sense when we meet together for the worship of God, the exaltation of Christ, and the pursuit of holiness. This is frankly the antithesis of our society. Our society is self-centered, exalts its own wishes, its own will, and, uh, madly pursues its own fulfillment through its iniquities. So the society is really very opposite. That's why we said the church should be nothing like anything people have ever experienced.
And as we think about the culture, some people have been saying to me, "Well, how can the church, worshiping, exalting Christ, pursuing holiness, be relevant to the culture?" You, you need to understand the culture. I think the culture is not just misinformed. The culture is much more seriously blighted than that. The culture is not just misinformed. It's not just ignorant. It's just, it's not just untaught. It is wicked. It is wicked. And we have to understand something else about the culture. And this is what I want to address tonight. The culture may well be, in fact, I'm fairly confident it is in my own country, it may well be already experiencing the judgment of God, which casts a very serious shadow over the whole deal.
To show you that, um, I, I want to, I want to take you to Romans chapter 1 and try to kind of unfold this passage a little bit. Romans 1. Now, uh, as we look at this passage, I'm just going to kind of put it before you 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." Stop at that point. That's a very familiar verse. I don't know everything there is to know about your country. I particularly don't know much about the history of the native peoples of this country, but obviously, uh, their heritage would not be Christian, although, uh, there was a time when missionaries came. But, but the rest of this country is populated primarily by those who've been influenced by the English-speaking world, uh, particularly England, the UK, from which, I think, the early people came here and had a strong Christian influence, a, a strong Christian presence, and consequently, your country is not unlike America, where there was a native, still is a native population that comes out of a purely pagan background. Uh, but all of the people who have migrated there in years past, for the most part, have come out of distinctively Western and therefore Christian influences.
Now, as we think about our country, and I have to speak about ours, you can make application to your own. It would have to be true of us that we have over the years, and more accelerated in recent years, we have done a pretty good job of suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. Whatever great Christian heritage was part and parcel of the fabric of early America has systematically been dismantled, and most aggressively in the last 25 or 30 years, to the degree now where the entire sort of Judeo-Christian ethic has been shattered to bits. Now, this puts us, I think, in direct touch with, with the message of Romans 1:18. There is a, there is a kind of wrath that comes from God against people who have suppressed the truth, and that is that of which we're going to look in this passage.
Before we do that, however, I want to talk about a, a very important aspect of God's wrath. Notice in verse 18, it says, "For the wrath of God is revealed." Now, at this point, if you've read and studied Romans 1, you, you may have been a little bit hard-pressed to grasp what exactly this passage is talking about. And the key to interpreting it is to understand what element of the wrath of God is at issue here. Let me just give you five options.
The first option would be, uh, eternal wrath, which would be hell. Eternal wrath is the Apostle Paul talking about eternal wrath. That's, that's one component of God's wrath. That wrath which is eternal punishment in hell. Secondly, there is another kind of wrath, and that we will call eschatological wrath. That's the wrath of God that is defined in Matthew 24, 25, unfolds in Revelation 6-19, in the period of time just prior to the coming of Christ, when one cataclysm comes after another. You have seven seals that are opened, and out of those seven seals, of course, come finally seven trumpet judgments, and out of that final trumpet judgment, seven bowl judgments, accelerating the holocaust of divine wrath being poured out on the earth, which is culminated in the return of Jesus Christ. So you have the possibility of ultimate wrath, the possibility of eschatological wrath, neither of which is in view here. Neither of which is in view here.
A third element of God's wrath would be what would probably be best called cataclysmic wrath. Cataclysmic wrath. The kind of wrath that God expressed when he drowned the whole earth in Genesis 6. Or the kind of wrath that was expressed when God scattered all the nations and changed their language in Genesis 11. Or the kind of wrath that God expressed on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in the 19th chapter of Genesis. Or the kind of wrath that was expressed against Chorazin, Bethsaida, and the city of Capernaum because of what was done in them by Christ and their unbelief resulted in their judgment. And of course, as Jesus predicted, those cities have never been rebuilt. It could be the kind of wrath that God even expressed toward a, a place like Pompeii when, in about 73 AD, Vesuvius blew its top and asphyxiated that the entire city of Pompeii and buried them 40 feet deep in ashes, so deep that there was not even an awareness that there ever was a civilization there until less than a hundred years ago. Cataclysmic judgment. It is conceivable that even in our own time, great sweeping holocausts of nature that bury people, that destroy people, could fit into the cataclysms of God's wrath that come in His timing. But that's not what's in view in Romans 1 either.
There is a fourth kind of wrath that we could simply call, um, and this may not be the best definition. I'll have to think of a better word, but we could call it consequential wrath. Consequential wrath, that is to say, there are some things in the world, uh, into which there are built serious consequences. Uh, if you jump off a building, there's a serious consequence. Gravity goes into effect, and you kill yourself. If you drink alcoholic beverages year after year, there is a built-in problem called sclerosis of the liver. To say nothing of all of the other problems. If you smoke heavily for years and years, there, there may be a physical effect upon your body in, um, some kind of carcinoma that comes as a result of that. If you decide you're going to live a dissolute and sexually promiscuous life, you may well contract some serious venereal disease. And if you want to live as a homosexual, you may have to face the reality of AIDS. You say, "Is that the wrath of God?" Of course, that's built into the fabric of human life. It's, it's a consequence of sin, built into the natural sequence or the natural consequence. You choose certain kinds of behavior, you have certain built-in effects. I think that's what Paul had in mind in 1 Corinthians 6. You remember he was talking about sexual sin, and he said, "There are all kinds of sins, but this sin is a sin against the body." Remember that? And what he meant was it has tremendous implications in terms of venereal disease, which, by the way, in ancient times was the source of many terrible deaths and terrible plagues. But that's not what he's talking about either. He's not talking about eternal wrath, eschatological wrath, cataclysmic wrath. And he's not even talking about consequential wrath.
What kind of wrath is he talking about here? What kind of wrath? Well, let me back up a little bit. One of the most tragic scenes in the Bible is the story of the strongest man who ever lived, the only real Superman, Samson. A fascinating character. But this is what it says about him in Judges 16. "When Delilah saw that he had told her all that was in his heart, she sent and called the lords of the Philistines, saying, 'Come up once more, for he has told me all that is in his heart.'" I mean, Delilah was a wretched, rotten deceiver, wasn't she? She got him in there. She never ever broke her Philistine ties. And of course, the Philistines hated Samson because he had killed so many of them. And so when she got him into the right situation and got him to tell how it was that he was strong, of course, by then he had so totally compromised his life. It wasn't the first time he'd done that with women, but it was the last. And, uh, so he is now vulnerable. The Philistines came up to her and sought, she sought the money. So they brought it to her, paid her off for this betrayal. She made him sleep on her knees. Uh, Judges 16:19, called for a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his hair. Then she began to to afflict him, you know, to tickle him or whatever, poke him, and his strength left him. And she said, "The Philistines are upon you, Samson." And he awoke from his sleep and said, "I will go out as at other times and shake myself free." He jumps up and says, "I'll take care of those guys." And then this most dramatic statement is made in the 20th verse of Judges 16. "But he did not know that the Lord had departed from him." He didn't know that the Lord had departed from him. And the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes, which was a very common way to treat an enemy in those days, brought him down to Gaza, bound him with bronze chains, and he was a grinder in the prison like a mule. He didn't know that the Lord had departed from him. He was abandoned by God because of his sin. He was turned over to the natural sequence of his sins.
Let's further examine this idea of being abandoned by God. In Judges 10, earlier in that same book, verses 13 and 14, the Bible says, and God is speaking, "You have forsaken me and served other gods. Therefore, I will deliver you no more. Go and cry out to the gods which you have chosen. Let them deliver you in the time of your distress." That's the same thing again. God says, "I'm done. Abandoned by God." Not just a man, but a people. Listen to Proverbs 1, where you have the same thing. Proverbs 1:24: "Because I called and you refused, I stretched out my hand and no one paid attention, and you neglected all my counsel and didn't want my reproof. I will even laugh at your calamity. I will mock when your dread comes, when your dread comes like a storm and your calamity comes on like a whirlwind. When distress and anguish come on you, then they will call on me, but I will not answer. They will seek me diligently. They will not find me because they hated knowledge and didn't choose the fear of the Lord. They wouldn't accept my counsel. They spurned all my reproof." And then this: "So they shall eat of the fruit of their own way and be satisfied with their own devices." Same thing. You're going to call, I'm not going to listen. I'm going to turn you over to the consequence of your own sin. I'm going to turn you over to more and more iniquity.
In Hosea 4:17, you have another indication of the same thing, being abandoned by God. It says, "Ephraim is joined to idols." Do you remember the rest? "What? Let him alone." You would think it would say, "Ephraim is joined to idols. Go get him." But it doesn't. Ephraim, being another name for Israel. "Ephraim is joined to idols. Let him alone." God is saying, "I'm done." It's like Genesis 6:5: "My Spirit will not always strive with man." There is a time when God just backs out. God comes to a point where he lets a nation go to the consequence of their own sinful choices. That is to be abandoned by God. And you see the same thing in the New Testament with regard to the Pharisees. Jesus said to the disciples in Matthew 15:14, "Leave them alone. They are blind guides of the blind."
Now, this is a frightening thing, but it is the fifth and most important aspect of the wrath of God for us to understand this passage. It is the wrath of abandonment. It is God's wrath expressed, to put it simply, when He removes any restraining grace. He just removes restraint and turns people over to the direction they have chosen so that iniquity becomes accelerated. I believe that this is true of much of Western culture, that God has just abandoned it. I don't think we're sitting on the brink about to be in the judgment of God. I don't think we're anticipating the judgment of God. I don't think the judgment of God is coming. I think we are in it.
You say, "Is this a, is this something brand new?" No, this is something very, very old. Romans 1 is repeated again and again and again and again throughout all of history. Paul in Acts 14:16 said this, "In the generations gone by, God permitted all the nations to go their own way." This is the cycle of history. The nations rise and they fall. They rise and they fall. They rise and they fall. Like nations of old, coming and going. And like those nations, I believe we live in a society today. It's almost a global village because the influences can crisscross so fast, it's hard to make any national borders, uh, work to prevent one's corruption from becoming another's corruption. And so we have today much of Western society victimized by the same iniquities and evidencing the same abandonment by God. No scripture more directly confronts this abandonment or its consequences than Romans chapter 1. I just gave you those others to give you sort of a biblical context. But here in Romans 1 is the most graphic and the most comprehensive description of being abandoned by God. And I believe that it best explains the moral chaos that we are experiencing in our society today. And you'll see that before we're done. I'm not going to have to convince you of this by just talking loud. You're going to say, "Oh, wow. This is really right," when you see the passage unfold. God's wrath is already at work in our culture. We are not waiting for it. We are experiencing it now. Experiencing it now.
Now in verse 18, it says, "For the wrath of God is revealed." And then it goes on to say, "Why? Because of those who suppress the truth and because in verse 19, 'what is known about God is in them.'" And then he goes on continuing to talk about that. But go to verse 24. Verse 24 is the consequence. "Therefore, therefore," takes you all the way back to the beginning. "For the wrath of God is revealed. Therefore, God gave them over." Now, here we find an expression that tells us what this wrath is. It is God giving them over. You see it in verse 24. Then in verse 26, "God gave them over." Then in verse 28, in the middle of the verse, "God gave them over." That is the Greek verb *paradidomi*. At three times it is used, it, it is a judicial sense. It is, uh, when a criminal is turned over for punishment. And each of these phrases expresses the fact that God has acted judicially in His wrath to turn sinners over. It is a judicial term indicating that a criminal is being officially handed over for judgment. God then is turning sinners over, literally abandoning them, removing restraint, turning them over to the uninterrupted cause and effect of their choices. They are deprived of any restraining grace. And sin becomes both the cause and the effect. It becomes both the reason and the result of their choices. So it's wrath that leads to more sin and more sin and more sin. Whenever the restraining grace is removed, the escalating of iniquity is increased, and men become more and more guilty and culpable and deeper into their iniquities.
Now, notice the progression here because this is what makes the case. Notice when God does this to a nation, what the progression looks like. Verse 24: First thing that happens, "God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies might be dishonored among them." Typically, the first indicator in a society that God has abandoned that society is a preoccupation with sexual sin. And we have all been infected by the sexual revolution, haven't we, in Western society? And what he is saying here is that the society immediately becomes engrossed in moral and sexual iniquity. The values of marriage and fidelity and faithfulness begin to disappear in a sea of sexual promiscuity. It starts in the heart. It starts in the lust and shows up in the body being dishonored. The wicked heart followed by the expression of that wickedness in the body. So when God, when God acts in judgment, this kind of judgment of abandonment against society, a society, the first step is He gives them over to sexual iniquity. And when you see the rise of sexual promiscuity, when you see the young generation today with absolutely no commitment to fidelity whatsoever, seeing sex as a plaything, you are seeing the effect of God stepping back.
Look at the second step. This is even more remarkable. Verse 26. Step two: "God gave them over not just to passion, but to degrading passions. For their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural. And in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman, of the woman, and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error." And by the way, there is the consequential judgment too of AIDS and other things like that. But what sin is this? Homosexuality. Here it is in Romans 1. It couldn't be more explicit. When God steps back and exercises the wrath of abandonment, the first thing that happens is a culture sinks into sexual sin. The second step, it sinks into homosexuality. Certainly in our culture, in America, homosexuality is absolutely rampant. It is now advocated, taught, and protected in the public school systems. At the elementary school level, in the city schools of Los Angeles, there are guardians to protect little children from being harassed because they are homosexual. Though they are hired and paid by the education system, the state, the president, from the president on down, they advocate that homosexuality is nothing but an alternative lifestyle. And our courts continue to rule in favor of that alternate lifestyle. It's not just that we know it's there, it's out of the closet. That was some years back. It's not just that we know it's there and we tolerate it. We now have made it an equal lifestyle with everything else that has the right to have every privilege that anybody has in our society. In fact, we want to give them more privileges because we think they've been abused too long. When a culture reaches that point, it's pretty evident that we're here in Romans 1. And I can't say statistically and so forth. I can only say from the broad brush that in the time I have been here in your society, I have been exposed to the aggressive movement of homosexuality. I've seen it in the newspapers. I know you've had parades with the homosexual sections of the city of Auckland. I saw homosexual ads in your newspaper and so forth. And when the society tolerates that, when the society no longer marks that out as deviant behavior, it is evident that God has stepped back and turned that society over.
By the way, in discussing homosexuality in verses 26 and 27, Paul starts with the women. And that's quite remarkable, I think, because originally, when I first heard about homosexuality before it was to the degree it is today and did some study into it, it was sort of like one in 10 homosexuals was a woman. It was somewhat uncommon for a woman to be a homosexual. And I think it's safe to say that women, when it comes to morality, are really the last to go because of their mothering instincts, because of their protective instincts with their children. And Paul is saying it reaches the portions when God has set His wrath in motion that the women come first. They're leading the parade. And I'll promise you right now that the strongest, most aggressive, and virulent advocates of homosexuality in America over the last 15 years have been the women's liberationists. In fact, that whole movement was spawned by lesbians. When God steps back, that's step two.
Step three is in verse 28. As you go down the sequence here, middle of the verse, "God gave them over to a depraved mind." That's the last step. That's the bottom. You might be surprised that there's a step lower than homosexuality, but there is a depraved mind. You know what that, you know what the word depraved is? It's that word *adokimos*, it means tested and found useless. A useless mind, disqualified for its intended purpose, can't think. What happens finally is that the reasoning faculty of the culture becomes so corrupt that the, that the culture can't fix anything. The, the people who are supposed to be the minds are useless. Sexual sin is rampant. Homosexuality is rampant. And the minds of those who should know what to do are gone. So what do you have in our country? What do we have in America? The educators advocating homosexuality at all levels. The courts ruling in favor of homosexuals. The judges who are supposed to uphold law and preserve the public morality ruling continually in favor of the homosexuals and sexual freedom, wanting to impose no inhibitions on anybody in the name of freedom. You keep waiting for somebody, maybe a president, maybe a senator or a congressman or or a judge or somebody somewhere or some educator to to stand up and say, "This is insane. We're killing people. We're destroying our society. We're wrecking homes. We're destroying children." But no one ever does. Never does. The mind is gone. And when the mind is gone, there's no hope because you can't think. Can't think. You can't reason. Can't reason. You can't come to reality. And so what happens is they do all kinds of things which are not fitting. Then all hell breaks loose. And then you've got unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, you know, just everything in the LA Times every day. Slanders, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil. I'm telling you, some of the evil that's being invented, if you turn on some of the talk shows in America, you can't even believe the stuff you're seeing that they're inventing. And, uh, then down in verse 32, just one quick comment. Not only do these people do these things down deep, knowing they're worthy of death, knowing their their sin, but they not only do it, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them. What you've got is the culture applauding the perverts. Now, that describes the wrath of abandonment right there. There it is. When God pours out His wrath in this way, He does it by turning them over. And when He lets go and steps back, sexual promiscuity, homosexuality, and a depraved mind. And when you get to the depraved mind part, it's over. It's over. Can't sort it out. You can't get it back. I see that in America. I feel that everywhere in the country. If anybody tries to stand up and call a halt to it, they're just about blasted off the map. And the system itself, the people at the top, the leaders of the system, and the leaders in the education realm, in the courts, all of them have been educated in the university system which has propagated this stuff. All of them are, are, um, are mental, moral midgets. They can, and they can't, they can't reason. Why? Because they're swept up in this stuff. Their minds are useless. Their own lives destroyed morally, mentally, emotionally, physically. It's a horrible thing. And now what we've got is a culture running amok. Culture running absolutely crazy all over the place. People committing all kinds of crimes at, at a pace that we can't even begin to keep up with. And you can turn on your television and watch the studio audience applaud the perverts. Now, that's the wrath. That's the wrath.
The question is, um, why does God abandon a society? Why does He do that? Let's go back to verse 18. Because in verses 18 to 23, we have the why. And this is, this is pretty profound stuff here. Why does God abandon a society? Well, I was going to say to you, one little footnote. Um, when, when we talk about the mind being corrupt in America, the whole, the whole of morality is so inverted and perverted that it's, it's staggering. Um, I guess it's been about two years ago, maybe a year and a half ago, MTV, I don't, you don't, I don't know if you have MTV. It's, it's the worst. It's the trashy cutting edge of, uh, rock music. It's the Madonna and all those people in their videos, and it's on like 24 hours a day, educating a whole generation of young people in that trash. But MTV wants to purport itself as on the cutting edge of culture. And so recently, or within the last two years, they did a, um, they did a study of sin on MTV. That, that stands for Music TV. Uh, they did a study of sin, and they did a two-hour presentation on sin, which I was so shocked they were going to do it. I, uh, I saw the replay of it on the public broadcast system. It was absolutely unbelievable. What they did was they, they, they started with the medieval list of the seven deadly sins. You've heard of the seven deadly sins. The seven deadly sins is a medieval list that was put together by some monks, uh, to, it's a pretty good list, really. What it is is the seven sort of seven primary motivations that are behind all sin. Lust, envy, laziness, covetousness, pride, anger, greed. I think I got them all. And they said that all the sins that there are sort of come out of those seven motivational sins. So that's been sort of part of, of our culture for a long time to recognize, recognize those as sin. So MTV decided to do the man-on-the-street thing and go out and interview all kinds of people. And they interviewed, uh, you know, great theologians like Queen Latifah and rapper Ice Tea and Aerosmith rock group and on and on and on and on, all these, and they interviewed movie stars and all of this. And the end result of the thing was really unbelievable. They asked a question like, um, they asked one of the Aerosmith singers, was a rock group, they said, "Is lust a sin?" And he said, "A sin, man? That's what I got in the band for, man. It's lusting for those little girls in the front row." Are you kidding me? They asked Queen Latifah if pride was a sin, and, and she said, "Pride's not a sin, pride's necessary." They asked, uh, Ice Tea, this guy who has these angry rap songs, if anger was a sin, and he said, he said, "No, anger, anger is necessary, man." He said, "When we, when we did that record called 'Cop Killer,' we were angry." And they literally exalted every one of those sins for two hours. And at the end of the whole program, they said this: "The only real sin to be avoided is the Victorian idea that says somewhere there's a God whom we have to worry about offending." That's the only real sin. Literally upside down and inside out. And that's where the culture is going at a mad race. I was in Moscow, and I was in, I was in Kiev in an oblique hotel in the middle of nowhere, and I was in over in, uh, in Minsk in an even more obscure place in Belarus, and MTVs everywhere, propagating all this all over the globe. It's a frightening thing. In fact, with all the national borders coming down and with communication crisscrossing everything, I'm almost to the point where I have to believe the Lord's going to come pretty soon because He's going to have to abandon the whole world because they're all going to be in the same bag.
Well, anyway, let's talk about why He does it. By the way, Schiller, the German historian, said, "The history of the world is the judgment of the world." And he was echoing Acts 14. The history of the world is the judgment of the world. Nations rise and nations fall. Why did God say He would do this? Verse 18: "Because they suppress the truth in unrighteousness." Literally, who are constantly attempting to suppress the truth by their ungodliness. Listen, God is real. God is alive. God is sovereign, and He has divinely authored a spiritual, moral, and ethical standard that must be obeyed, or there will be consequences. And one of them is this one, the wrath of abandonment. And when people know that standard, are exposed to that standard, and ignore, reject, and suppress that standard and determine that they are free to do whatever they want to do, and they don't care one bit what God thinks of it, they are in a situation where God will turn them over to the consequences of their own choices.
Now, the sequence that flows out of verse 18 is fourfold. I'm going to give you four points. Point number one, here's the first reason why God's wrath falls in this category. One: Revelation. Revelation. That is to say, men have been given the truth. This is, this is really an important issue. You say, "Well, now, wait a minute. How do we know the truth? I mean, how do we know the truth?" Well, verse 19 tells you, "Because that which is known about God is evident where?" Where? "Within them." Within them. It says within them. "For God made it evident to them." Now, stop there for a moment. Every human being coming into the world has the evidence of God in him. In him. How is it there? How is that evidence in him? Well, first of all, this is just so very, very basic. First of all, he says, "For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made." So these, without excuse. All right. First, the first way that man inside knows God is through creation. You say, "Well, how does that work?" Very simply, very simply, God has inlaid the evidence of Himself in existence in the human heart through the simple process of human reason. Human reason looks at the universe, the world, and all that exists. And the natural response to such a look is to ask the question, "Who made this?" Right? That's just reasonable. That's just rational. That's basic human reason. Basic human reason operates off of a cause and effect continuum. That, that's the building block of human reason. I don't want to get too philosophical here, but everything in our life that functions rationally functions off cause and effect. All of it does. It's all a cause and effect continuum. As soon as you abandon that, you are irrational. Any scientific study, any empirical study, any objective study is an analysis of cause and effect. And cause and effect ultimately leads you back to the epitome of that dilemma, and that is, who is the first cause? Nobody ever saw a watch and thought it exploded into existence. Nobody ever saw an automobile and thought it was some, some accidental collocation of atoms in a junkyard. Everybody assumes that somebody made those things.
That's rational, isn't it? That's rational. And ration r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r rationalism takes you back ultimately to the massive question of who made the whole thing. That's just human reason and it's built into every single person. The mind itself pushes you back in the rational process to the existence of God. It's not obscure.
That's why all across the history of the world, all across all the nations and peoples that have lived, they have always believed somebody is in charge. They've always identified, even if they made up their own gods, a supernatural source. It's not obscure. It's normal to believe in God. It's just rational. In fact, it's idiocy not to.
Evolution is irrational. It is idiotic. It is stupid. It is contrary to everything in the human realm of reason. It's nonsense. You say, "Well, why in the world do people believe it?" Because they do not want a God to whom they are accountable. Plain and simple. It's not intellectual. It's moral.
Well, let me talk about that for a minute, but I'm going to talk about something else for a minute that's not here. here and then I'll come back to this. There's a second there's a second path built into the fabric of man whereby he can know God apart from reason and that is the law of God written in his heart. Look at Romans 2. We have to go over there to get this but in Romans 2:14 it says the the ethnos the pagans the Gentiles the pagans who do not have the law that is they don't have the written law the Mosaic law the scripture but they do instinctively the things of the law. Isn't that interesting? Yeah.
I'll shock you a little bit by saying one of the most one of the most law-abiding cultures in the world is the Arabic culture of Islam in the Middle East. And their their code of morality forbids murder, cheating, stealing, lying, fornication, adultery. It's an amazingly biblical list of sins in Islam. And they run a real tight ship. I mean, I don't think I'd be a thief over there because if they catch you, they chop your hands off. Now, where did they get that moral code? They don't believe the Bible. Where did it come from? It's built into the fabric of human life. God has put the knowledge of right and wrong in the human heart. There is a law instinctively so that they not having the law, verse 14, are a law to themselves in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts. Okay?
And then they have a conscience. And the conscience bears witness to the law. This is just a a little fine point that you need to keep in mind. The conscience is not the word of God. The conscience is not the law of God. It is just the little device that sends you the signals when you violate whatever the law in you is. Conscience is not the law of God. It's just a device. It's like pain. If your body's sick, pain notifies you. And if you're violating moral law, your conscience notifies you. It either accuses you or excuses you. It rings. And what happens? Shame, guilt, fear, doubt, anxiety, depression, all that stuff comes when conscience starts yelling at you about iniquity. And that happens to unregenerate people, right? They occupy most of the slots in the mental institutions where the people are who have guilt and shame and fear and doubt and anxiety and depression. So God has given a law and it's built into the fabric.
Now where should that lead you? If you have that great sense of law, it should lead you reasonably to a lawgiver, right? And to a judge. So through reason, cause and effect, through the law of God and conscience in both cases inside man, there's there's enough to drive you to God so that you are without what? Without excuse. Without excuse. The very fabric of reason, the very fabric of moral law is there. It is normal to believe in God then. It is absolutely normal to believe there is a creator God with immense power. And you can learn a lot about him, can't you? His attributes are clearly seen. You know, he's a God of beauty. He's a God of order. He's a God of wisdom. He's a God of power. Uh he's a God of the of the big and he's a God of the infinitely small. I mean, so much can be known about God. And you look at life and you say, "He's a God of tenderness. He's a God of compassion. He's a God of love." Where else would that all come from? Right? You can learn so much about him. And then when you turn to the moral side, you know that he sets standards. There is a right. There's a wrong. There's a law. There's a lawgiver. There's accountability. Even Romans 1:32 says they know even they do these things. They know that practicing such things they are worthy of death and they still do them. What tells them they're worthy of death? Conscience. Of course, the culture wants to destroy conscience and it wants to reprogram the law, doesn't it? That's what MTV is trying to do. the the the culture wants to reprogram the law and the psychologists want to silence your conscience by telling you you shouldn't listen to your conscience. You're really a wonderful person. But nonetheless, the point here, go back to Romans 1. The point here is that that which may be known of God is written in man, both from reason and from moral law.
Let's go back to the point of Romans 1, which is the idea of reason taking you to a creator. Whenever um whenever in the book of acts you watch the apostles evangelizing. Whenever they evangelized Jews, they always started their evangelism with the Old Testament. Understandable, right? Because the Jews believed it. So they would start with the Old Testament and they would go to Christ. But whenever they evangelized pagans, do you know where they started? With creation. They always started with creation. Uh look at Acts 14. This is quite consistent and quite remarkable. Acts 14 verse 7 uh verse 15 to 17. Paul and Barnabas here in Iconium Derby Lististra. And uh they uh did some healing and preaching and the people went nuts and thought they were gods and all this. Paul and Barnabas had to tear their clothes and run out of the crowd. Verse 15, they said, "Uh, we are also men of the same nature as you." Now, he's talking to pagans. And we preach the gospel to you, and we want you to turn from these vain idols to whom? The living God. Who is the living God? Well, he's the Orthodox, evangelical, biblical, fundamental God. Oh, no, no, no. The living God is the one who did what? Who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. Oh, you see, there wasn't anybody teaching evolution then. Everybody still had enough brains to realize there had to be a cause. And that cause had to have personality to create personality. He had to have personhood to create personhood. [Music] Oh, the ultimate cause, the ultimate God. That's where they always started with the pagans. You always start with the one who made the heaven and the earth.
Do you remember Jonah? Jonah was an evangelist, wasn't he? He was a lousy one. He got on a boat and the storm came and they were all afraid they were going to drown. A bunch of pagan sailors. And so they're all discussing, "What are we going to do? What are we going to do? What are we going to do? And finally, they drew lots. And you remember the lot fell to Jonah and they said to Jonah, "What's going on?" He said, "Well," he said, "Uh, it's all happening because of my God." And they said, "Who's your God?" He didn't say, "My God is the orthodox fundamental God of Israel." That kind of oblique definition wouldn't help them. So, what did Jonah say to them? "My God is the God who made the earth and the sea." Oh, that God. Wow. He said, "Throw me in and it'll stop." They threw him in and it stopped. And you know what? I think those people turned to the true God that day and you'll meet him in heaven. There was a revival on that boat and he had to be underwater in the mouth of a fish to cause it to happen. That shows you how effective he was. If God could just get him out of the way, he could get to work going. So the whole point was that any rational person would be interested in knowing who the creator was.
Go to Acts 17 and we're moving from the common man to the elite here. Verse 23. Paul's on the Aropagus on Mars Hill in Athens where all the brain trust of the Greek world mingled. And he said, "Uh, look." He said, "I've been walking around up here and I see all these deals and and I found an altar with an inscription to an unknown God and I'd like to tell you who he is." I'll tell you who he is. Verse 24. He's the Lord who made the world and all things in it. He's the Lord of heaven and earth. And he doesn't dwell in temples made with hands. And he's not served by human hands. And he himself gives to all life and breath and all things. And he made from one every nation of mankind. In other words, he just goes on describing the creator, right? The first cause. Evangelism to the pagan always begins with the first cause.
Let me say something that I think you need maybe to think about. The most devastating philosophy ever developed to hinder evangelism in a pagan world is the theory of evolution because it eliminates the compelling need to answer this question. You talk about one of Satan's It took Satan a long time to come up with it. Not till Charles Darwin. It took him a long time to come up with it. But boy, when he came up with it, he literally has obliterated a whole world of people who don't want that question answered. It doesn't need to be answered. That's why evolution, which by the way is the foundation of our culture. It's the foundation of our science. It's the foundation of our psychology. It's the foundation of our entire society. It's the foundation of our morality. If there's no God, then there's no morality, right? There's nobody to answer to. So you do whatever you want. The primary revelation of God comes through common sense reasoning of cause and effect. And when you destroy that, you have cut people off from having to have answered the most urgent and compelling question in the universe and that is who made this? Our society is not asking that. It's not asking that. But you know what? They're going to be accountable because they have suppressed the truth. Their reason and their conscience should lead them to God. And they refuse to let it happen. And again, I say it is not intellectual, friends. It is moral. They love darkness rather than light. Not because they can't conceive of light, but because their deeds are what? Are evil. And Paul says in verse 19 further about this verse 20 about this revelation since the creation of the world since the whole thing started his invisible attributes his eternal powers divine nature are clearly seen. I mean you just look at the world around you.
How can these people and I think of so many Have you ever heard of the bombader beetle? You ever heard of it's a weird little beetle. It's got two sacks of poison in it and uh it fires those two sacks out of two different places in its mouth and when they mix they blow up in the face of their little insect enemies. Now, how did that evolve without blowing up the experimental model? I mean, you look at the leaves on a stem of a flower, the cycle of water, the mystery of growth, human birth, the glory of sunrise and a sunset, the roaring and rolling of the sea, the rush of the river, the trickle of the brook, the cry of the baby, the flight of the bird, the cat. How do you just say, "Well, ain't ooze something. Once there was primal ooze." How do birds learn to navigate by the stars? Tell me that. How you know, ever heard of an archer fish? It's a funny little fish. It fires a stream of water, knocks insects out of the air. It doesn't eat them. It just does it for the fun of it. Has nothing to do with the survival of the fittest. You read about a might and a might lives in the ear of a moth. But if there's a might in both ears, the thing can't fly and it crashes and dies. So there's never more than one. If there's a might in one ear, there won't be one in another. Now, how does the second might know? You think about water being lifted against gravity thousands of feet into the air, suspended there till carried inland where needed and then deposited again. There's no earthly agency powerful enough to do that. There's only one thing in the whole of our solar system powerful enough to do that and that's the sun and it's 93 million miles away. What a system. What a system. And do you ever study the science of isostasy? the perfect balance of the earth, the weight of the mountains and the weight of the water and perfect compos uh uh perfect compensation so that we don't go through space like this and and all our life going says the psalmist in Psalm 62:11 says power belongs to God. I'll buy that. And we keep digging deep into God's power source and we have found power that's beyond description. In fact, we're almost frightened by it. By his power, he established the mountains. Man, Robert Jastro is an astrophysicist and director of NASA's Goddard Institute. And he wrote this. This is interesting. He said, "Now we see how the astronomical evidence supports the biblical view of the origin of the world." Isn't that interesting? You ever hear the big bang thing? Now they know it just exploded into existence scientifically. They can tra it back and it says he now we know the scientific evidence or astronomical evidence supports the biblical view of the origin of the world. The essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same. Consider the enormousness of the problem. Science has proved that the universe exploded into being in a moment. It asks what caused produced this? Who or what put the matter or energy into the universe? and science cannot answer. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance. He is about to conquer the highest peak. And as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who've been there for centuries. It's taken him an awful long time to come to the conclusion that was right in the beginning. Right.
I always think about the fact that there was a scientific discovery of classification. In other words, um classification is a big deal in science. And in 1904, Herbert Spencer came up with the ultimate classification for which he received all kinds of scientific prizes and scientific awards. And and he said there are five everything in existence can fit into five categories. time, force, action, space, and matter. And the scientific world just hailed that. I mean, that was absolutely astonishing. And so forth. Time, force, action, space, and matter. Everything in existence fits into one of those. And I remember reading that and thinking to myself, that's Genesis 1:1. In the beginning, time, God, force created action, the heavens, space, and the earth matter. Nice going, Herbert. I mean, it's there's so many things to think about with regard to science. Um, do you know that codfish lay 9 million eggs? That that is amazing. No wonder there's so many fish and chips down here. Do you know that the that the a tail of a comet can be a million miles long? I mean, just that kind of stuff. You just go from one to the other just and these people mill around in this stuff all the time who are scientists and they keep coming to this conclusion that nobody did any of this. It's idiotic. That's how compelling their iniquity is. You understand that?
Now if any culture in the world has suppressed the truth we have in evolutionary theory we've crushed it and I really believe that God because of revelation first point has abandoned us second point rejection and this just follows you know he the revelation 19 and 20 verse 21 even though they knew God. Reason took them there. Moral law took him there. They refused to honor him as God. They refused to thank him for what he had done. So they became feutal in their speculations, their ideologies, concepts, theories, philosophies and their foolish heart was darkened. So first revelation, God revealed the truth. Two, rejection. Men turn from it. Men turn from the truth. They don't they they will not honor God. They'll suck out of uh life all the joy, the beauty, the laughter, the pain, the tears, the thrills, the pleasure, the talent, the sex, the children, the families, everything. They'll just suck it dry and they'll never thank God for anything. They'll deny even exists. And what are they left with? Empty human speculations. Empty human speculations. Just a bunch of stupid, foolish human ideas. and their foolish heart is darkened. It goes black. The lights go out. Rejection. Isaiah 47:10. Isaiah said, "You felt secure in your wickedness and said, "No one sees me. There's no God up there. Your wisdom and your knowledge have deluded you. For you have said in your heart, I am and there is no one besides me." That's an evolutionary statement, isn't it? I am and there's no one to answer to. They become empty, useless self gods and into the vacuum of their emptiness is sucked to the darkness and the light goes out.
There's a third point we need to hurry a little bit. I'll make the next ones briefer. Third point is rationalization. They go from revelation to rejection to rationalization. This is really really obvious. They the lights out. They're dark hearts. They got their stupid speculations, but they rationalize and insist they're doing fine. God gives the revelation. They reject the revelation. And then they insist they're doing fine. Look at verse 22. Professing to be what? What? They give each other PhDs for their stupidity. That's right. They give them They give each other professorships for their stupidity. Professing to be wise, they have become fools. The Greek word is morino. morons. Proud morons. You know what they remind me of? They remind me of a guy in a mental institution I read about who was lying in bed and he kept saying, "I'm Napoleon. I'm Napoleon. I'm Napoleon." And the guy in the next bed was sick of it. So he finally said to him, "Look, who told you you're Napoleon?" He said, "God did." To which the first man replied, "Oh no, I didn't. Now look who's nuts. It reminds me of a woman who took a a duck to see the psychiatrist. A duck on a string. She walked in the office and the guy took a look and said, "How can I help you?" She said, "It's not me. You've got to help my husband. He thinks he's a duck. Who's really nuts? See that? There's no perception of reality. The light's out. You're talking about intellectuals. You're talking about university professors. You're talking about the elite in the world of science. And the light is out, folks, morally. And and they're calling all the shots. They have rejected the truth of God. They're proud morons who think their husband is a duck.
That leads you to the fourth cause of God's wrath. First is revelation. God revealed the truth. Second is rejection. Men turn from the truth. Third is rationalization. They think they're wise. The fourth is religion. Now they got to put something in the vacuum. So verse 23 says they exchange the glory of the incorruptible God and they make idols, birds, for-footed animals, crawling creatures. They wind up worshiping the creature, right? Isn't that what it says? Uh down in verse 25, we skipped over it. They serve and worship the creature rather than the creator. Yeah, it's the same thing. Verse 28, they didn't see fit to acknowledge God any longer. So in the place of God they put some gods of their own making. You know Voltater said God made man in his own image and man has returned the favor. Um he creates a god that's like him. He creates a god that suits him. Listen men uh men do not ascend from the muck of paganism and ignorance to the truth of God. They descend from the truth of God to the muck of religion. Religion is not man at his highest. It is man in the muck. It is man at the pits. It is man at the lowest. He falls from the truth of God to the slime of false religion. Religion is not man at his highest. It is man at his lowest. The ultimate insanity is to invent a god. Is that not nuts? For you to invent a god? That's crazy. Then that god would have to be inferior to you. Who needs it? It's the ultimate insanity to create non- goods. And the idols tend to come in earthy forms and animal forms. Whether you're talking about the primitive statues of the animistic cultures or whatever you're talking about, the silly Greek half horse half man kind of goofy things or whether you're talking today about the mother earth cult. The big cult today is echo feminism, the worship of mother earth. And you know, they're really big on the animals. You know, save the spotted owl. And in Malibu, which is a sort of a movie colony, wealthy people, they just gave dolphins equal citizenship with people. This is true, you know, and the the the concept I've heard from these wacky people is a a rock is a rat is a dog is a boy. I mean that the the idea is, you know, we're just all along the evolutionary chain somewhere and uh and we got to this is all there is and we got to worship this and the only creator is mother earth. Mother Earth doesn't have any morality so she's fairly safe. They worship whether it's the Roman eagle in Jesus' time or the spotted owl in all our time or the golden bulls of Egypt in Old Testament time or the or the whale and the dolphin of today. From the worship of a stick to the worship of mother earth, whether you're an Aboriginal or an environmentalist, it's the same junk. In fact, I love to get with environmentalists and just remind them that if you think we're messing up the earth, wait till you see what Jesus does to it. This look, this is a disposable planet. So, step on the grass and shoot a deer and smile. This is a disposable planet. You know, this baby is here and gone and it's going to burn up and there's going to be an eternal new heaven and a new earth. This is meant to be used up. It's disposable. Okay? I don't mean you have to be, you know, ridiculously irresponsible, but hey, use it. It's here for that purpose. It is never intended to last forever. But when you've got no God, all you've got that somehow is bigger than you is this. And so you turn it into your deity. And then your whole life is geared to save the earth. Hey, this baby's going up in smoke sooner or later. Some of it down here is sooner. You got those mountains going even now. [Music] Anyway, whether it's Islam or eco feminism, it's it's insanity.
Isn't it amazing that reason and moral law leads us to God and men just can't deal with that because they love their iniquity. So they invent the stupid kind of religions that they invent and they bow down and worship the gods of their own making with no authority and no revelation, just their own imagination. Is it any wonder then that God has abandoned us? We abandon him, right? You say, "Oh, this is a very encouraging message, John. Um, no, you're telling us we're living in a culture that's under the judgment of God. I really believe that. You say, "Well, what's our responsibility?" May I make a suggestion to you? Um, this is not a good time for weak men preaching weak messages in a weak ministry. This is not a good time for softselling the message. This is not a good time for playing games. This is not a time to lower the standards of holiness or to somehow mitigate the the message of the gospel. This is no time to befriend the culture. Okay? Strong men, strong messages, strong churches, strong ministries for a desperate time. Not the time to court the culture, folks. Time to confront the culture.
I want to close in uh Psalm 81. This is the last passage. So, Psalm 81. very important psalm because it so perfectly parallels Romans 1. Psalm 81:11. But my people did not listen to my voice and Israel did not obey me. Now here you have the same thing, right? When they knew God, they glorified him not as God. Verse 12, what does verse 12 say? So I what? Gave him over. same exact expression. Listen, this isn't just true of us. This was even true of Israel. So, I gave him over. I gave him over to what? To the stubbornness of their own heart to walk in their own devices. I just let them go. Is that the end? Look at verse 13. Here's the heart of God toward a culture under the wrath of abandonment. Here's the heart of God. Oh that my people would listen to me that Israel would walk in my ways. Beloved, that is the message to the culture. Oh that my people would listen to me that Israel would walk in my ways. What we have to call this culture back to is God's word and God's ways. Right? And if they do that, verse 14, it's not too late, folks. I would quickly subdue their enemies. I would turn my hand against their adversaries, which is part of the judgment. Those who hate the Lord would pretend obedience to him. I mean, it would be so good for the people who love the Lord that even people who don't love the Lord would pretend they did so they could cash in on the blessings. But look, verse 16. I love this. I would feed you with the finest of the wheat and with honey from the rock, I would satisfy you. That's the heart of God, folks. Is there still hope? Sure. I don't know God's timetable, but there's only one path, and that is to to to look at verse 13. Oh, that my people would listen to me and that Israel would walk in my ways. The only hope for any society is that they hear the voice of God. So, what is the church going to be? The voice of God. And we have to make it clear and distinctive that this is the word of God and these are the ways of God. and call out people from this judged culture and God will feed them with the finest of the wheat and with honey from the rock satisfy them.
I was over in South Africa uh I think about a year and a half ago and uh you know I went out some of those parks where they have all these wild game and chase around lions and leopards and elephants and all that. It's a fabulous experience. But I tell you what fascinated me the most were the ants. Any of you have been to Africa? I mean, they got ants that you just can't believe. I mean, just these huge ants and they live in these um these colonies that are as high as 30, 35 feet high. I mean, you'll see a tree that's kind of spread like this, and the whole thing will be one massive ant colony with millions of of these ants in it. And then they dig down into these subterranean tunnels and they go all over everywhere. They say in asking about all that, they said that each of those deals has a queen ant. And then they have all these little ants with various assignments, which is amazing. But there are the there are the foraging ants whose job it is to go out and get the food and bring it back primarily for the queen and then for everybody else. And they go out uh to do this. And of course, the longer the thing is there, the further they have to go, right? Because they they strip stuff that's nearby. But no matter how far they go, they're connected by some some impulse, some electrical impulse with the queen. And studies indicate that if the queen is disturbed, they become all disoriented and start bumping into each other. And if the queen dies, they all kill each other. And I thought, what a graphic illustration of what happens in human society when people are cut off from God. total chaos and death. And it's not necessary because the king isn't dead. It's just stupid. That's the state of the world. And I guess what I'm trying to say is the church has to understand we are in a desperate time and a desperate culture. And we have to come to that culture with a clear word. Amen. Okay. You said that because you want me to quit. Let's pray. Father, thank you for again tonight your word which speaks so clearly to our hearts. We thank you for these dear friends and their their faithfulness and their eagerness to hear the word. Now Lord, help us to understand these principles and to live them as you would see fit in Christ's name. [Music] Amen. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music]