Reasons for the
Wrath of God
Part 4
by
John MacArthur, Jr.
All Rights Reserved
(A copy of this message on cassette tape may be obtained by calling
1-800-55-GRACE)
Romans 1:23 Tape
GC 45-13
Our study tonight takes us back to the first chapter of Romans ... Romans
chapter 1. In recent months we have begun a study of this marvelous epistle of
Paul to the church at Rome in which he presents the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And we’re looking now at verses 19 through 23. Tonight we’re going to
sum up our examination of these verses.
Let me read the text to you beginning in verse 18. And here Paul really begins
the main body of his letter.
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness: Because that
which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shown it unto them.
For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen,
being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and
Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because, when they knew God, they
glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their
imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves 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 beasts, and creeping
things.”
Now, we’ve titled this section Reasons for the Wrath of God. God’s wrath
revealed in verse 18 and the rationale for it in verses 19 through 23. We’ve
been giving you four points, or four reasons for the wrath of God. And the last
one that we’re going to be looking at tonight is religion. And we’ll get to that
in a moment.
You might be interested to note that the Hindus, for example, have some 330
million gods. Which amounts to about eight per family. Four hundred and fifty
million Hindus have 75 million cows to worship. In Thailand there are 20
thousand Buddhist temples, one for each baptized Christian. And, in fact, a two
inch long discolored tooth is reverenced by 400 million Buddhists as the most
sacred object on the earth. And they claim that it is a tooth rescued from the
funeral pyre of Buddha in 543 B.C., his tooth. They have set it in a golden
lotus blossom in a temple called ‑ The Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, Ceylon.
They’ve surrounded it with rubies. They surround it with myriads of flowers. And
people come from many countries to worship it bringing gifts of gold, silver and
jewels. The Buddhists believe their Buddhas are really living gods. In fact, in
Foochow, China, one of fifteen wooden Buddhas on a temple shelf accidentally
fell over on a man and killed him. His family demanded a court trial accusing
the Buddha of murder. He was found guilty and so were the fourteen other Buddhas
on the shelf and they beheaded all of them. They really believe those are real
beings, their gods.
Some of the relics of apostate Christianity differ little from this. For
example, the Roman church claims to have the hair of the Virgin Mary. And they
have several locks of it, one in a church in Naples, another in a church in
Rome. They also say that in the Cathedral Perugia is her wedding ring. They have
her holy girdle at the church in Prato. Drops of the virgin’s milk are kept in
the church of San Guadioso e Patrizio at Naples and St. Mary of the People at
Rome. The holy basin used at the Last Supper is supposedly kept in the cathedral
of St. Lorenzo in Genoa. The lance which pierced Jesus’ side and Veronica’s veil
with Christ’s features imprinted and the head of St. Andrew are all kept in the
four massive piers which support
St. Peter’s dome in Rome.
Christ’s burial sheet is supposed to be the Shroud at Turin and it doesn’t seem
to bother anybody that it says He was wrapped in one sheet cloth and His head
was wrapped in a napkin, separate from that which sat in the place by itself.
The rectangular marble stone with Christ’s footprints is kept in the church of
St. Sebastian in Rome. And they have three shoulder blades, four legs, five
arms, fifty index fingers, all belonging to John the Baptist. And all fifty of
those index fingers are the actual fingers that pointed and said ‑ Behold the
Lamb of God.
We live in a very religious world. Lots of religions. Even in our own society,
young people flock into cults. They identify with religious groups. At least 2.6
billion people in the world have an un ... or rather have an identifiable
religious affiliation. That’s over half the population. They say 1.7 billion
people in the world have an unidentified religion. The pollsters, then, and the
people who count people determine that if they don’t know what your religion is
they assume you have one, they just say your religion is unidentified.
Man is religious. Now, is all of this religion man really seeking God? Is that
what it is? Is it man struggling through his primitive confusion and the chaos
of his world, struggling pass the traditions and the errors of his past
forefathers? Is man really struggling trying to find his way through all of this
stuff to get to the true God? Is this man on the way up? Is this man ascending
through animism and polydemonism and polytheism finally to monotheism or one God
and finally to the true God? Is man really on the road up? Should we pat men on
the back and say ‑ We commend you for your pursuit of God? We honor you for
seeking. Is man then to be pitied because he’s working so hard and he just can’t
seem to come up with the truth? It’s not readily available to him for one reason
or another. Is he just trying to get God in focus and he’s doing everything he
can to focus the lens but God’s just out of focus and he’s given it his best
shot? Liberal theologians would want us to believe that.
And if God then sends that man to hell, whose trying so hard to get the thing in
focus, isn’t God unfair? After all, man is religious; he’s given it his best
shot.
Well, liberals would also tell us there’s no hell. But this isn’t what Paul
tells us in Romans 1. Paul tells us that man does not ascend to religion, he
descends to religion. And that’s the message of Romans 1:19 to 23. Man is to be
pitied, not because of a lack of opportunity, not because there’s no way he can
get his focus clear, not because God is unfair, but man is to be pitied because
he refuses the truth. And having refused the truth at the highest level he
descends to the pit of religion. Man did not ascend out of the muck of paganism
to discover God; he left the knowledge of God and went down into the muck of
paganism. Religion is not man’s ascent, religion is man’s descent.
Now this is a critical passage because you have to see the justice of God all
bound up in this. And that’s why it begins in verse ...18, by saying the wrath
of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of
men. In other words, God is angry with men. And God demands that they face the
consequence of their sin. And the reason he has a right to be angry flows out of
what Paul says at the end of verse IS ‑ Men hold the truth but they abandon it.
Verse 19 says ‑ “That which may be known of God is manifest in them.” But they
leave that. And verse 21 says “When they knew God they glorified
Him not as God.” And verse 23 says ‑ “And they changed the glory of the truly
incorruptible God into their idols.” This is the descent of man.
Now, we’ve been saying all along that as Paul opens the gospel he starts with
the bad news. You have to have the bad news before the good news. First the
danger, then the deliverer. First the judgment then the way of escape. First the
condemnation and then the forgiveness. First the guilt and then the grace. The
whole message of forgiveness, the whole message of redeeming grace, the whole
message of the love of God, the whole message of the death of Christ on the
cross on your behalf and mine is based upon the fact that we understand that man
is truly honestly guilty before God of abandoning the truth of God. And Paul
makes this his message by the way, beginning in chapter 1 verse 18 and running
all the way to chapter 3 verse 20. A good portion of chapter 1, all of chapter
2, and a good portion of chapter 3 all deal with the fact that man is guilty
before God, he is a sinner.
So, God’s indignant hatred of sin is continuously being revealed from heaven
against ungodly men because they have the truth but they descend from it into
the pit of religion. Which, by the way, is the ultimate blasphemy because it
substitutes a false god for the true God.
One writer said ‑ “God’s righteous anger never rises and never abates, it is
always at flood tide in the presence of sin because He is unchangeably and
inflexibly holy.”
And so God is continually revealing His wrath against sin. In fact, in Psalm 7
and verse 11 is this interesting statement ‑ “God is angry every day.” God is
angry every day. Continually against sin.
You say ‑ Well, does God have a right to be angry? Of course. Indifference to
sin would be a moral blemish. He who does not hate sin is a moral leper, said
Arthur Pink ... and he’s right. How could one who delights only in what is pure
and lovely not loathe what is impure and ugly? How could He who is infinitely
holy disregard sin that violates that utter holiness? How could He who loves
that which righteousness manifests not hate and act severely toward
unrighteousness? And how could He who is the sum of all excellency look with
satisfaction upon virtue and vice equally? He couldn’t and He can’t because He’s
holy and just and good, He hates sin. And He has a right to react because man is
guilty. Man has turned his back on available knowledge of God, and we’ve been
seeing that as we’ve been flowing through these verses. The wrath of God is
simply the proper reaction of holiness to unholiness. And Paul wants us to know
that before we can understand the grace of God we have to understand the wrath
of God. Before we can understand the meaning of the death of Christ, and before
we can understand how loving God is and how forgiving He is and how gracious He
is, and how merciful He is, we have to understand how guilty and undeserving we
are. His wrath, by the way, is no less a divine perfection than His love or His
holiness. It’s just as much an element of His perfection as anything else. It is
a divine perfection.
In Psalm 95:11 for example, it says: “Unto whom I swear in My wrath.” God says
certain things in His wrath; He swears in His wrath that He’ll do certain
things.
Now there are two occasions of God’s swearing in the Old Testament. Two times
when God swears to do something. One is when He makes a promise, and that would
be such as Genesis 22:16 or any other time God says He swears and makes a
promise, it means He’ll bring it to pass. The other time that God swears is in
denouncing and calling for judgment such as Deuteronomy 1:34 and you can look
those up as examples.
We know that God swears in mercy to His children. And sometimes He swears to
terrify the wicked. God will as surely bring wrath on the wicked as He will
bring His mercy on the just. He swears to do both and we must understand that.
God is perfectly angry as He is perfectly loving because men are guilty.
Now, there are four reasons why God’s anger is justified. Reason number one,
let’s look back and be reminded, is revelation. And what I mean by that is men
have been given the truth, verse 19: “That which may be known of God is manifest
in them; for God hath shown it unto them.” How did He do that? Verse 20:
“Through the invisible things of Him being displayed in the creation of the
world.” They are understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power
and Godhead, you can know of His supernatural nature and His great power by just
looking at creation.
I read this week the statement of a scientist, he said The phenomena of nature
reveal the two qualities of force and intelligence working in perfect harmony.
You have to see force and you have to see a tremendous intelligence. And that is
what Paul is saying ‑ You can see His eternal power and you can see His Godhead,
His infinite supernatural intelligence and wisdom just by looking at the world
around you.
Now, God is manifest in creation so that man is without excuse. And we’ve been
trying to show you that if man would live up to the light that he sees in
creation God would reveal the rest of the truths to him. But man turns his back
at that point. If he would follow the light that God gives, God, I believe,
would give him more light. And God would give him the message of Christ. The
Lord wants every man to know Christ. That’s why it says in John 1:9 that Christ
is the light that comes into the world and lights every man. God wants men to
know Christ and wherever He finds an eager willing heart He’ll bring the message
of Christ someway to that heart. But men don’t even live up to the light they
have.
And that takes us to the second point rejection. In verse 21 we learn that men
have turned away from the truth because when they knew God they glorified Him
not as God, neither were thankful but became vain in their imaginations and
their foolish heart was darkened. Now when they knew God they turned their back
on God. And there’s a very simple reason why, it’s indicated to us in John 3:20,
1 believe. They didn’t come to the light because they were afraid their deeds
would be ... what? ... exposed. Men see God and they see the truth of God and
they run because they don’t want to be exposed. That’s the basis of it. They are
not willing to come to the light lest their deeds should be reproved, lest they
should be unmasked, lest the rock under which they hide should be lifted up and
everyone know the truth. And so they reject God.
Daniel’s indictment, by the way, of Belshazzar in chapter 5 of Daniel verse 23
is true of many people. It says this, and I think it’s a great statement: “The
Lord in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not
glorified.” The Lord in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways,
hast thou not glorified.... you reject a very God who is your life. And when man
does this, when he rejects revelation and he turns his back on God, he greases
the slide and he slides further away from God. And he falls, it says in verse
21, into vain imaginations or vain reasonings. And we talked about that last
time, meaning human philosophy.
Now I want to make something very clear. I’m not totally against all human
logic; I’m not against all human reasoning. Every once in a while man has
intersected with the truth, no question about it. But when I talk about
philosophy I’m talking about it the way Paul does in Colossians 2:8. I’m talking
about the vain reasonings that he talks about here. And what we mean is useless
philosophy, empty reasoning, that is devoid of God. When God reveals Himself and
man rejects then man slides down from God into his own philosophy, his own
reasoning, his own imagination, his own speculations of science falsely
so‑called. And man’s perception of truth becomes hopeless and clouded, confused
and uncertain. His heart is plunged then at the end of verse 21, into total
darkness. The light is out. He starts with light, and you can see this, you can
see this. The way you can see this is by watching a little child. They respond
to the message.
This noon we had lunch with a couple from Florida. And the man said that he had
gone home to his family when he was saved and he got them all together and he
has seven brothers and sisters. And he stood up and told all of them about Jesus
Christ and they tore him to ribbons and they mocked him and they laughed at him
and he said they’re all into the Harvard thing and the MIT thing up in Boston.
And they all fancy themselves as intellectuals. And he got all done with the
whole thing and he had two little sisters, and they stood up with tears after
his whole presentation. And they said to the rest of the family ‑ Can’t you see
that what he’s telling us about Jesus is really true? Where’d they get that? You
never met an eight‑year‑old ethical. They don’t have any problem with that. That
which may be known of God is visible to them. There’s a heart of belief. That’s
why Jesus said ‑ Except you become as a little ... what?... child, you don’t
enter the Kingdom. And then when they get older and they get sophisticated and
they have to call their own shots they turn their back on God.
And so, they become dark. First of all it’s vain empty reason and into the
vacuum of vanity‑ and emptiness plunges darkness and the lights go out. And
that’s why when the Apostle Paul set about to minister; the definition of his
ministry is thus: I was sent to the Gentiles, Acts 26:18, to open their eyes and
turn them from darkness to ... what? ... to light. Why? Cause they’re in
darkness. Their evil heart is darkened. Their foolish heart is darkened. And we
said last time that is both intellectual darkness and moral darkness. And we see
that throughout Scripture, that darkness can refer to the intellect or to the
morality of an individual.
So, man descends from knowing God, rejecting God, failing to glorify and thank
God, he then is left with his own human reasoning and it plunges him into utter
blackness and he is totally unable to discern what is right, what is wrong, what
is true, what is a lie, he’s lost. And by the way, he is descended so far from
God, of course, into his pit of darkness that there’s no ability in him to
restrain evil. That’s why as countries and nations and people move away from God
they move into immorality and amorality because there are no restraints in human
philosophy ultimately.
And that leads us to the third step ‑ rationalization. Remember that from last
time, verse 22? Professing themselves to be wise they became fools. Men have
heard the truth, rejected the truth and now they affirm that their darkness is
the truth. And they stand up and say ‑ We know the truth. And that tells me that
they’ve lost touch with reality. They have totally lost touch with reality. They
no longer know what truth is. Like Pilate said to Jesus- What is truth? Who
knows what that is? That is the character of lost man, he’s utterly unable to
ascertain what is true.... doesn’t know.
In II Timothy 3:13 you get the picture here. “Evil men and seducers,” listen,
“shall become worse and worse,” listen to this, “deceiving and being deceived.”
That is characteristic of human philosophy, they deceive others because they are
totally and utterly self‑deceived, they do not know the truth.
In Titus 3:3: “We ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived.”
It is characteristic of unregenerate man that he’s deceived... doesn’t know the
truth, can’t know it ‑ he’s in absolute blackness. But you know what he’ll do
inevitably? He’ll stand there and rationalize that he knows the truth and he’ll
spew out all of these supposed answers.
An interesting statement made by Isaiah the prophet in chapter 47 verse 10, he
says: “Thy wisdom and thy knowledge hath perverted thee and thou hast said in
thy heart, I am and none else beside me.” Isn’t that interesting? You’re so
perverted by what you think you know that you’ve decided nobody knows anything
but you ... you’ve got all the answers. What an illusion. That was the illusion
by which Lucifer fell incidentally ... thought he had all the answers. He
thought wisdom resided with him. He looked at himself and saw the majesty and
the beauty of his person as created by God and it went to his head, he thought
he would be superior to God. What an illusion.
So, God has the right to judge man because man rejects Him in the darkness of
his twisted and perverted mind. And then stupidly affirms that he’s wise. His
fantasy carrying him into that deception. But you know something? Even in the
midst of his human philosophy and in the midst of his befuddled mind, in the
blackness of his heart he has a residual knowledge that there must be God. Have
you ever noticed that? It’s true. Even though he wants to be a philosopher, he
wants to have it all reside with him, ultimately he is a religious being and he
can’t deny that. And so we come to the fourth in the four reasons for God’s
wrath ‑ the fourth step in the descent of man religion. From revelation to
rejection to rationalization to religion in verse 23 ... because he cries out
for a God. He’s got to have a God. There’s the pulling of the supernatural
dimension on his nature. He must worship. He has to bow someplace. Just as he
breathes air, he must worship somewhere.... and he will. Even in the midst of
his philosophy he’s got to have some God. And if he will not have the true God
he will invent a god that he can live with.
And verse 23 tells us. So, “He changes the glory of the incorruptible God into
an idol, or an image like corruptible man and birds and four footed beasts and
creeping things.”
Voltaire once said ‑ “God made man in His own image and man returned the favor.”
And that’s true. He falls all the way to the pit and he does the worst thing
that a human being can do ‑ he gets religious ... the worst blasphemy against
God...religion apart from the true God.
Want me to show you how I know that? Go back to Exodus chapter 20 ... Exodus
chapter 20. Now here God lays down the rules...the standards. This is the
Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. Verse 1:
“And God spoke all these words, saying,” here comes God’s priority standards, “I
am the Lord thy God, who have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the
house of bondage.” Here comes rule number one “Thou shalt have no other ...
what? ... gods before Me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any carved image, or any
likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath,
or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to
them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the
iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation
of them that hate Me.”
Rule number one ‑ no other gods. Rule number two ‑ no idols of any shape or
form. That is the highest standard. It is summed up in the statement of our
Lord; “This is the great commandment, Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
soul, mind and strength.” In other words, utterly committed to the true God, no
place for any other god. When men get religious apart from the true God they
have violated God’s standard at its very beginning point. It is the most
blasphemous thing they can do.
A man purchased a statue of Christ and put it on his desk. A few days later his
wife moved it into the living room. A few days later it appeared in the dining
room prompting a little child to say ‑ Just where are you going to put God? And
maybe that’s the question that God wants every man to ask ‑ where are you going
to put God? He demands first place. This command says there’s only one place
where God will be put and that is first and there will be no other gods and
there will be no idols or images of any kind. And this is precisely what man has
violated, he has broken God’s commandments at the very start ... blaspheming
God.
So, man is inexcusable. There’s a good illustration of this, I think, in II
Kings 17 and you can see that even Israel did this. Israel followed this flow.
In II Kings 17, just listen for a minute, 15, it says about them this: Verse 14
says: “They did not believe in the Lord their God.” So, that was the first
thing. God had revealed Himself to them but they rejected. They did not believe
in the Lord their God. “They rejected His statutes, and His covenant that He
made with their fathers, His testimonies which He testified against them; they
followed vanity.” There they go, as soon as they reject God they slide into
emptiness. “And they became vain.” Sounds exactly like Romans 1. This is what
Israel did. “And they went after the nations who were round about them,
concerning whom the Lord had charged them, that they should do ... not do like
them. And they left all the commandments of the Lord their God and made them ...
what? ... melted images, two calves and an idol and worshipped all the stars in
the heaven and served Baal.” It’s incredible ... incredible. And God got so
angry He removed everybody but the tribe of Judah only, says verse 18.
What did they do?. They didn’t want to believe in God. So, they descended from
there into emptiness and from emptiness into idolatry. And from idolatry into
moral perversion. At the end of verse 17 ‑ they sold themselves to do evil and
into judgment.
Look with me for a moment at Daniel chapter 5 and let’s see this same truth
illustrated for a moment. This is most fascinating. Daniel 5:17 ... Belshazzar
the king made a big feast, you know, and this is the handwriting on the wall
chapter. Verse 17: “Daniel answered and said to the king, Let thy gifts be to
thyself, and give thy rewards to another; yet I will read the writing unto the
king, and make known to him the interpretation.” I don’t want a thing from you
but I’ll tell you what it says anyway. “O thou king, the most high God gave
Nebuchadnezzar thy father a kingdom and majesty and glory and honor: And for the
majesty that he gave him, all people, nations, and languages, trembled and
feared before him: whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept alive; and
whom he would he set up; and whom he would he put down.” In other words, he says
‑ you should have looked backwards and seen Nebuchadnezzar your father and how
it was with him, God gave him all these things ... Absolute sovereignty, verse
19, utter sovereignty. Verse 20: “When his heart was lifted up, and his mind
hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne and they took his glory
from him: And he was driven from the sons of men: and his heart was I made like
the beasts and his dwelling was with the wild asses; and they fed him with grass
like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven,.” In other words, he
became a raving maniac. “Until he knew that the most high God ruled in the
kingdom of men, and that he appointed it over whomsoever he will. And thou his
son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart,” now listen to this line,
“though thou knewest all this.” Now there’s the first principle again.
Belshazzar sinned against knowledge, all men do. It should have been clear to
him from what he saw in the case of Nebuchadnezzar. His sin was not in
ignorance. His pride and his boasting and his rejection of God was without
excuse because he should have seen it.
The end of verse 22 indicts him ‑ “You knew all this.” He sinned against light.
And in the midst of light he blasphemed God. Verse 23, “But thou hast lifted up
thyself against the Lord of heaven; and they have brought the vessels of his
house before thee and thou, and thy lords, and thy wives, thy concubines, have
drunk wine from them; and praised the gods of silver and gold, and bronze and
iron, wood and stone,” and so forth. What did they do? They went into the temple
and took the sacred vessels and they got drunk off of them and used them to make
toasts to idols.
So, he started by sinning against knowledge and secondly he blasphemed God.
And thirdly, he was idolatrous. He worshipped the gods of bronze and iron and
silver and gold and wood and stone which don’t see and don’t hear and don’t
know. “And the God,” here we are at our verse, “in whose hand thy breath is, and
whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified.”
And then, of course, he became a vile, reprobate man. The implication all in
that verse ‑ the wives, concubines, drunkenness. The result is in verse 24;
“Then was the part of the hand sent from him; and the writing was written. And
this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.” And what
does it mean? “MENE God hath numbered the kingdom, and finished it. TEKEL; Thou
art weighed in the balances, and found wanting. PERES; Thy kingdom is divided.”
In other words, it’s all over for you, fella. Verse 30, “In that night was
Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain. And Darius the Mede took the
kingdom, being threescore and two years old.” It was the end.
Now what do you have here? A man knew the truth, turned his back on the truth.
Blasphemed God, but because man is religious by nature he made gods of his own,
worshipped them, descended in a reprobate, evil, vile living patterns and
experienced the wrath of God. That’s the same flow that you see in Romans 1. Now
let’s go back to Romans 1. Basically the same thing.
Whether you’re looking at Israel and their descent, whether you’re looking at
Belshazzar and his, this is the chronicle of how it is with men. I’ll say it
again, people, and I want you to remember it, man is not religious because he is
ascending to try to find God, he is religious because he is running
blasphemously away from God into the pit of idolatry. All false religion is
idolatry. And, A. W. Tozer was right when he said, quote “Idolatry begins in the
mind when we pervert or exchange the idea of God for something other than what
He really is.”
Now I want to say something about this that I think is important in the light of
liberalism and contemporary theology. The descent of man into idolatry is
definitely a descent ... history shows that. The liberals and others who try to
tell us that man started in idolatry, started in primitive animism or totemism,
worshipping animals and totems and things, that he’s moving upward. That just
can’t be verified historically; it cannot be verified whatsoever historically.
They say man started in animism, started worshipping animals, and then he moved
up to polydemonism, he started worshipping many demons, and then he worked his
way up to polytheism and he worshipped many gods and then he worked his way up
to monotheism, one God, and that’s how he got where he was going. That’s what
the liberals tell us. And that’s why they don’t believe Moses wrote the
Pentateuch and they don It believe Moses really knew the ten commandments in his
era because they believed at the time that Moses lived man was still mussing
around in animism and totemism and polydemonism therefore the Pentateuch is a
forgery ... actually written way later and foisted on us as if it were old. That
is typical liberal theology.
The Encyclopedia Britannica takes this view, and I checked it this week, and
this is what.... you want to hear a confusing paragraph? Listen to this: “In an
age when the study of religion was practically confined to Judaism and
Christianity, idolatry was regarded as a degeneration from an uncorrupt primeval
faith.” That’s what they say the Christians and the Jews believed. “But the
comparative and historical investigation of religion has shown it to be rather a
stage in an upward movement.” In other words, they’re saying the Jews and the
Christians believed that man started out with a primeval faith and descended
into idolatry.
But history tells us that he started there and he’s working his way up. Then the
very next paragraph, it says this: “According to Varro the Romans had no animal
or human image of a god for 170 years after the founding of Rome. Herodotus says
that the Persians had no temples or idols before Artaxerxes I. Lucian bears
similar testimony for Greece and as to idols for Egypt, as well. Eusebius sums
up the whole theory of antiquity when he says, “The oldest people had no idols
at all.”
Well, that paragraph contradicts the other paragraph. And then the next
paragraph makes it worse: “Images of the gods indeed presuppose a definiteness
of conception, and powers of discrimination that could only be the result of
history and reflection.”
You know what that is? Blah‑blah‑blah. They say it is evident that man is really
ascended but all these people they quote say there was no idolatry in the past.
And the proof is by their own statement that man descended for 170 years after
the founding of Rome, there were no idols, there were no images. You see, that’s
the way it goes. Man starts out with faith and descends from that.
Scripture affirms this. It says, for example, before the flood there was no such
thing as idolatry at all. The world was not drowned because there was idolatry;
it was drowned because there was unrighteousness. There was no idolatry’. It
says in Genesis 4:26: Men in that age quote “Called upon the name of the Lord.”
They worshipped God. Man didn’t grow up out of idolatry to know the true God, he
descended into that.... very important.
So, the world’s idolatry ... the world’s religion is a falling not a rising,
therefore, Paul says, “Man is guilty, man deserves judgment.” And the ultimate
insanity of man is that he rejects God and then invents a non‑god, made in his
own image on his own terms, worships that non‑god and then calls himself wise.
Even the Latin poet Horace laughed at the stupidity of idolatry, he wrote this:
“I was a fig tree’s trunk, a useless log. The workmen wavered, ‘Shall I make a
stool or a god?’ They chose to make a god and thus a god I am.” Ridiculous.
In the apocrypha it says: “An experienced woodcutter will cut down a tree that’s
easy to handle. Skillfully he strips off all its bark. And then, with pleasing
workmanship, he makes a useful article that serves life’s needs. But he takes a
castoff piece, one that is good for nothing, a stick crooked and full of knots,
carves it with care and causes it to resemble a man. Or he makes it to look like
some worthless animal, giving it a coat of red paint, and with paint covering
every blemish. And then he makes for it a suitable niche, sets it in the wall,
and fastens it with iron. Takes care that it doesn’t fall because he knows that
it can’t help itself, for it’s only an image and in need of help. And then he
prays to it about his marriage and his children. And for health he appeals to a
thing that is weak. For life he prays to a thing that is dead. For aid he
entreats an object that is thoroughly inexperienced and he asks strength of a
thing whose hands have no strength.”
Now, that was the writing of the ancients at the time. They all thought it was
really foolish and yet they were trapped in the rejection of God with little
other alternatives.
In Isaiah 44, just a couple of thoughts here, try to edit a few things so we
don’t get too deep in this; “Thus saith the Lord,” verse 6, “the King of Israel,
and his redeemer the Lord of hosts; I am first and I am the last; and apart from
Me there is no God.” That’s pretty clear isn’t it? No God. “And who, as I, shall
call, and shall declare it, and set in order for Me, since I appointed the
ancient people? And the things that are coming and shall come, let them show
unto them.”
In other words, whose going to call the shots in history, whose going to do the
creating but Me. “Fear not, neither be afraid: have I not told thee from that
time, and declared it? Ye are even My witness. Is there a God beside Me? Yea,
there is no God: I know not any.” God says ‑ I don’t know any.
“They that make a carved image are all of them vanity; and their delectable
things shall not profit; and they are their own witnesses; they see not, nor
know; that they may be ashamed. Who hath formed a god, or melted and cast an
image that is profitable for nothing? Behold, all his fellows shall be ashamed:
and the workmen, they are of men: let them all be gathered together, let them
stand up; yet they shall fear, and shall be ashamed together.”
In other words, it’s so stupid that if they all brought their gods in and stuck
them in a pile they’d sort of feel silly. And He goes on to say how they make it
and they cut down trees and they work with the fire and the metal and they carve
it and they do all this and when they get all done, they’ve got something that
can’t see, can’t hear, doesn’t understand a thing, can’t think., And then He
says to His people; ‑ Get your head together, why would you worship that stuff?
Well, you see, when man rejects God, and worships himself, he invariably has to
make a god of his own creation. And I would hasten to add that basically, and I
want you to note this in your mind, all idolatry is self‑worship ... all of it
is. In one sense, in another sense it’s Satan worship, or demon worship, we’ll
see that in a minute, but in one sense it’s self worship because ultimately man
winds up worshipping himself because he invents deities like himself.
In verse 8 of chapter 2 of Isaiah it says: “They worshipped the work of their
own hands, that which their own fingers have made.” They’re actually worshipping
the creation that they have created which in effect is worshipping themselves.
By the way, the epitome of that comes with antichrist who sits in the temple of
God, telling himself that he is ... what?...God, II Thessalonians 2:3 and 4.
Antichrist sits in the temple of God telling himself that he is God.
So, man is idolatrous. And his idolatry ultimately, even though he will not
admit it, is the worship of self. He rejects the true God, he affirms in his own
mind that he is wise, therefore he will call the shots, he will determine what
is true and in the residual feeling that there must be a God, he creates one out
of his own mind that is the product of his own thinking and he worships that god
and in effect worships himself. This, believe me, is the ultimate damnable
heresy of which Paul wrote to Timothy.
But look now at verse 23. The essence of it is that he changes the glory or
exchange is a better way to say that, he exchanges the glory of the
incorruptible God for a... an idol. I mean, it’s incredible that the
incorruptible, eternal, divine nature of God would be exchanged for a stick or a
stone or a...some kind of a crafted image. But that’s what they do.
And may I hasten to add that when men do this, in effect, they wind up
worshipping the devil himself. Just to show you that, I Corinthians 10 is a key
verse, it says in 10 verse 20 ... I Corinthians 10:20, just listen to this: “The
things which the Gentiles sacrifice,” get this now, in other words, the world of
religion does its sacrificial stuff and he talks in verse 19 about the idols
that they worship, the idol is nothing, he says, and so forth. But the idols to
which the Gentiles sacrifice, the things they sacrifice, “They sacrifice to
demons.” Did you get that? Why? Because, if you want to worship a stick, a demon
will impersonate the god you think is in the stick and do enough stuff to keep
you working on the stick. You know, I asked myself that question so many times ‑
How can people worship a rock? How can they do that? Pretty soon you say this
rock never does anything. I mean, I pray to the rock and nothing happens. And
maybe he’s been worshipping the same rock that twenty generations have been
worshipping and you wonder how they can all get hung on this rock. Basically if
you worship the god you think is in the rock, I believe a demon will impersonate
the god you think is in the rock and do enough supernatural stuff and enough
phenomena will happen to keep people stuck on that rock. I believe if people
want to worship the stars in Astrology, that Satan will make enough of that
stuff come to pass within his power to keep people hooked on that stuff.
So, first of all it is self worship, and secondly, it is Satan worship. Any
religion but a true one, and the only true one is the worship of God through
Christ, any other thing ‑ people say ‑ Oh, you shouldn’t say anything about
false other religions, you shouldn’t do that. Listen, that’s the pit that’s
blasphemy.
There’s only one way to God and that’s through the Lord Jesus Christ.
There’s only one God, anything else is self worship and Satan worship all thrown
into one ball. And the world of religious people are worshipping themselves and
they know that, I think, but they’re worshipping the devil and probably don’t
know that.
Now let’s look at the idols they make, we’ll start at the end and move back.
Creeping things...do you know people through the centuries have worshipped bugs?
That’s right, bugs ... beetles. You go in Egypt and everywhere you go they tell
you they worship these little beetles, scarab beetles. They were really big on
those beetles. In fact, I brought home a couple of little beetles as
illustrations of their worship. The creeping things could be bugs, and beetles,
and snakes, anything from a snake to a fly.
You say ‑ Do people worship flies? Of course, Beelzebub means the lord of the
flies. That’s right, they worship flies. The Philistines worship flies. The
Assyrians worship snakes.
In the temple of Actium the Greeks used to sacrifice an ox to the god of the
flies. Pliny tells us that at Rome sacrifices were offered to flies that flew
around the temple of Hercules. The Syrians undoubtedly offered sacrifices to
flies. And it is said that no fly ever dared enter Solomon’s temple. I question
that.
Today, Hindus won’t kill flies because they’re afraid they might violate some
deity that’s working on someone who for one life has to be a fly.
Snakes figure in many, many religions as gods.
And then men not only worships that kind of stuff but he worships four‑footed
beasts. Now, even the Jews worshipped the golden calf, did they not? Not only
did they do that in Exodus 32 at Sinai, but they set up a couple of golden
calves in I Kings 12 at Dan and Bethel and worshipped them again.
The Egyptians worshipped bulls. I’ll never forget when I was in Egypt. They took
us out and we got on horses and rode to the pyramids. And these little Arab boys
would pull the horses along. And they only knew two English words, you know ‑
dollars and Lone Ranger. Oh yeah, they knew John Wayne, too...Lone Ranger, John
Wayne and dollars. And we would ride out there and we took another little horse
ride and we went out to this burial ground, absolutely exquisite, they’ve
uncovered it in the sand out there. And we went in and there were these massive
sarcophagus arrangements with huge caskets that have been uncovered in the
ground. And they told us that in these were buried sacred bulls, huge bulls. And
they would lower them through the ground and then pile the sand and there were
these chambers with all this painting on the walls and all the riches,
everything, fortunes were literally stashed in those places where they buried
the Egyptian bulls.
The Greeks worship Diana of the Ephesians. And when you think of Diana you
probably think of some svelte girl in a white gown. Diana of the Ephesians was a
black beast, an ugly gross black beast that had all of the hangings under it
like fourteen cows would have, altogether on one beast, to suckle the world,
gross thing. That’s Diana.
Throughout history they have worshipped sacred cows, and mice, and rats, and
elephants. Did you know that in Egypt there was Sabek the crocodile god? There
was Anubis who was half man with a head of a jackal. The two chief Egyptian
deities were Osiris and Isis, and they were the sun and the moon, they
worshipped the sun and the moon. By the way, Paul doesn’t cover every possible
thing, they worshipped the stars, the sun, the moon, they’ve worshipped
everything there is ... rocks, trees, everything. This is just a sample.
The Egyptians worshipped the stork. They worshipped the ape. They worshipped the
cat. They worshipped the hawk. And they worshipped at least 20,000 other
animals.
Thebes worshipped a ram. Memphis worshipped an ox called Apis...Bubastis a cat,
Momemphis a cow, the Mendesians a he‑goat, the Hermopolitans worshipped a fish
and the Paprimas of that time, which is an Egyptian area, worshipped a
hippopotamus. The Lycopolitans worshipped a wolf. And it goes on and on and on,
snakes ... some of them even worshipped crocodile eggs.
Then it says in verse 23, moving up again, birds. The Romans worshipped the
eagle; they made an idol out of eagles. Herod the Great had a golden eagle
erected over the gate of Jerusalem and infuriated the Jews. The soldiers of Rome
had eagles on their standards. And the Jews recognized them as idols forbidden
by the divine law and tried to tear them down and caused all kinds of problems.
Indians have worshipped birds and they put them on their totems as thunderbirds.
The men who built the Pyramids worshipped, among other things, some kinds of
birds, they worshipped insects, they worshipped animals. It just goes on and on,
I could just keep going.
Cultured men of Rome, for example, made their plans by studying the entrails of
sheep or the flight of the birds, much like astrology.
So, man has put the most preposterous things in the place of God. And then
ultimately, it says in verse 23, the first thing he has exchanged the glory of
the incorruptible God for an image made like corruptible man. Man is sort of the
highest level, the most sophisticated level of worship. They worship Caesar;
they put his face on all the coins. The gods of the Greeks and the gods of the
Romans were pretty much man‑like created gods. The gods of Mesopotamia, by the
way, numbered some 1500. They had gods of war, gods of fertility, gods of
learning, gods of hunting, gods of heaven, earth, fire, air, water and on and on
and on. And very often they were in the form of some imagined man or man‑like
creature.
And throughout the centuries men have prostrated themselves before forms of
other men. People today even, in the Roman Church, still prostrate themselves
before idols of dead men. They may not say it’s worship, but that’s the way it
comes out for many of them.
In Psalm 115 verse 4, “Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands,
they have mouths but they speak not; eyes have they but they see not, they have
ears but they hear not, noses have they, but they smell not: They have hands,
but they handle not: feet have they, they walk not: neither speak they through
their throat. They who make them are like them.” They don’t know anymore than
those dumb idols. That’s what the Psalmist says.
The chief gods very often were in human form. Man is idolatrous. You say ‑Well,
John, how does this relate to today? In America we don’t have.... we have some
of this, I suppose. Probably some weird people out somewhere worshipping just
about everything there is. But we have other gods, somewhat more sophisticated,
I suppose, today. We worship science. We worship communism, secularism,
humanism, nationalism, naturalism, ecology. We worship money, pleasure, sex,
romance, entertainment, sports, education, prestige, power, rock singers, movie
stars, great athletes. Man is idolatrous.
Now these are only part of his worship. Somewhere down the line he’s got a
belief in a God and he’ll create some god of his own reasoning.
So, the end result, and I think you get the picture, is religion. Man descends.
I think it’s been uniquely illustrated in a recent phenomena that I told you
last week, I mentioned to you, called Dungeons & Dragons. Dungeons and Dragons
is a new game. Three million Americans currently play this new game. And I
thought I’d just read to you some of what it says and what it’s all about.
Dungeons and Dragons is a fantasy game. Instead of the historical background of
the war games popular in the late 1950’s, Dungeons and Dragons games are fought
in the minds of the players as the dungeon master sets the stage in a fantasy
world. New games are being created more sophisticated and more cruel than the
original Dungeons and Dragons, these are called Fantasy Role Playing games, and
among the most well‑known are RuneQuest, Chivalry and Sorcery, Arduin Grimoire,
Tunnels and Trolls, and it goes on and on and on.
Here’s the game. One person gets to be the dungeon master and he plays the role
of the quote ‑ “supreme god” in the world. He creates a world for his players.
His tools are maps, dice, miniature figures, rule books, and so forth. And a
game can last for several years. And the players will play through those years
for hours and hours and hours.
What is the ultimate fantasy of man? The ultimate fantasy of man is that man
should be God. This speaks of that fantasy. When a game starts, each player is
given a created personality, by which he enters into the game. You’ve got to be
somebody. He can stay in the game as long as he’s not killed, and he has to kill
other people to stay in the game. If the game continues for a long time, most
players identify themselves with the character they are playing and the game now
becomes a real event in which the player begins to have a hard time separating
reality from fantasy.
When the characters are created, the dice will govern what they will be. In the
Dungeons and Dragons manuals each character will have six basic abilities:
strength, intelligence, wisdom, constitution, dexterity and charisma. The manual
guidelines determine if the character will be good or evil. And in order to
survive the events in the game, each character is equipped with special weapons
like magical weapons, potions, spells, magical trinkets, holy water, garlic, and
stuff that comes out of witchcraft.
The object of the game is to maneuver these characters through an ongoing maze
of dungeons filled with monsters, magic, ambushes and adventures in search of
treasures, so forth. And what you really wind up doing, and through all of this
maze is killing each other and so forth, everybody is trying to become the
dungeon master...everybody wants to be God.
I can’t read you all of the things. It’s just.... shocking. According to the
Dungeon and Dragon instruction manual, “Wisdom is the prime requisite.
Miraculous spells can be cast.” And it goes on and on. It...there have also been
some interesting incidents where homosexuality, sodomy, rape and other perverse
acts of sexuality are played out in the game, of course. And where people have
actually carried this so strongly into life that they are living their
fantasies.
One young boy said that, “Ninety percent of the time he was who he was in the
game, and ten percent of the time he was who he really was.”
A dungeon master has powers never obtainable on earth and has become a god in
his own fantasy world. By the way, in 1980 they sold twenty million dollars
worth of the game and they expect to sell sixty million dollars worth in this
year.
And, by the way, when you get killed in the game you can get resurrected if you
find the right magical source.
Now the upshot of all of this, just to give you some reaction to it, is that the
game teaches witchcraft, and it teaches demon worship. It teaches how to
resurrect the dead, casting spells; it uses a phrase to con.... I can’t remember
the exact thing, but it has a term elementals in it and one writer said ‑ “The
only other place held ever found that phrase was in witchcraft.” But the whole
idea is that it gets people into the occult and it gives them the fantasy that
they can become God. That’s man’s ultimate fantasy, as well as promoting
homosexuality, incest, rape, and some of the things in there are so vile and
wretched and in the sequel games even far worse.
Now why would a game like this attract three million people who are currently
playing it? Why? Because that’s man’s ultimate fantasy, he wants to be God. He
wants to call the shots. He wants to control everybody around him. He wants to
determines people.... people’s destiny. He wants to determine who dies and who
lives. That’s what you do in this game.
Man is religious ... yes ... by nature. But when he wipes God out of his life
all he’s left with is himself. And so he will push himself to be God, whether
it’s the supreme dungeon master god, or whether it’s some god he manufactures in
his religious mind, or whether it’s some element of secular world that he
worships, he invariably will postulate a god and then his fantasy is that he
will worship that god of his own creation. The truth of it is he is worshipping
the god of this world who is none other than Satan himself.
That is why God’s wrath is revealed, people. That is why God is wrathful against
sin. Because it reflects the descent of man.
And, by the way, there’s one more step. That’s right, one more final step. I
could call it ‑ reprobation ... reprobation. You find from verse 24 to 32, the
middle of verse 28; “God gave them over to a reprobate mind.”
Neither man’s philosophy nor man’s religion can retard his vile sinfulness. So,
he will descend into uncleanness, into the lust of his own heart. He will
dishonor his own body. That’s what he’ll do.
Verse 26, he’ll go to vile affections. He’ll become women who exchange the
natural use for that which is against nature...men the same, lesbians,
homosexuals.
Verse 29, he’ll be filled with unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness,
covetousness, maliciousness, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity or
malignity, whisperers, backbiters, and on and on and on.
You see, when you start with revelation and you fall from there to rejection and
you fall from there to rationalization, you fall from there to religion ‑ the
next step is reprobation. You just have a reprobate mind. That means a mind
that’s utterly unable to discern what is right and wrong. And you fall into the
gross, vile, filth that characterizes our world. And that’s what God is angry
about. And that’s why He has a right to be angry.
Now listen to this as I close, and I’m going to get into verse 24 and 32 when I
get back. It is not God’s nature, and you need to hear this, it is not God’s
nature to delight in punishment. As I live, as surely as I live, and He lives,
as surely as I live, said the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the
... what? ... of the wicked. No pleasure. “But that the wicked turn from his way
and live.” And He says, “Turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will
you die?” That’s the heart of God. He is angry because His holiness reacts, that
is not His desire. God delights to show mercy. God is not willing that any
should perish. Jesus says, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I would have
gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and
you would not.” When He drew near the city, it says, He wept.... He wept. He
said, “Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace but now are
they hid from your eyes. For the day shall come upon you when your enemies will
cast a bank about you, surround you, hem you in on every side, dash you to the
ground, you and your children within you, they will not leave one stone on
another because you’ didn’t know the time of your visitation.” And He wept. In
the heart of God there are tears mingled with His wrath because He calls for men
to respond to His grace. But the Gospel begins with His wrath, He’s angry
because men are guilty.
Bow your head with me, and listen to this: Many years ago a man named J. H.
Clinch wrote some words that, I think, are provocative. They force us to think
about the choice; either to glorify God or to refuse and follow the descent. He
wrote this:
And still from Him we turn away, And fill our hearts with worthless things;
The fires of greed melt the clay, And forth the idol springs!
Ambition’s flame, and passion’s heat, By wondrous alchemy transmute earth’s
dross to raise some gilded brute fill Jehovah’s seat.
That’s right. Men make gods to take God’s place. That’s why God’s angry. Don’t
kid yourself that man is good, that he’s on the way up. He’s on the way down ...
evil men grow worse and worse, not better and better. The world’s not getting
better and men are not getting better. They’re getting worse, because that’s the
way it goes ... from revelation to rejection to rationalization to religion to
reprobation.
But it need not be so. Christ reaches out to every one of us and is not willing
that we should perish. You can call on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved, right
now, right where you sit. If you don’t worship the true God you are guilty and
you will spend forever in hell paying for your guilt. That’s your choice. Even
though you are very religious, that doesn’t get you closer to God, that’s the
furthest away you can get, if it isn’t the true God, through His Son Christ.
Father, thank You tonight for Your Word. And though we’ve tried to cover a lot
and skipped around a little bit and hurried through some things, we pray that
the message has been clear. Help us to see that You’re right in being angry
because men have rejected what You’ve done. They didn’t know the time of their
visitation ... they didn’t know. Because they wouldn’t know, they didn’t want
You. It wasn’t that they were victims, it was that they refused. And it is
today, people are not lost because there’s no opportunity, they’re lost because
they don’t want opportunity. They rejected. Whether they’re in our culture or
any other. And if they’d only accept and accept the light You give, You’d give
them all the light of Christ. We pray that that might happen in the hearts of
some even tonight, for Christ’s sake. Amen.
Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur's Collection" by:
Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
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