How many of you know what brainwashing is??
Brainwashing is the attempt to change the thoughts and beliefs of another person against their will. This is done by controlling the results of certain actions or by drugs.
Do you think God wants to brainwash people?
Let’s answer this by reviewing three major events that happened in human history. Remember how God related to Adam and Eve right after He created them? God walked beside Adam and Eve! It was God’s desire to be with the people He created. But Adam and Eve sinned against God by disobeying what God said. Did Adam and Eve really needed to touch that tree and eat the fruit??
There are two important truths we need to note from this story; God provided everything Adam and Eve needed and God allowed them to choose either God’s way or something else. God gave the gift of life and paradise but God also allowed Adam and Eve to choose God’s way or the highway away from God!
Because of their sin, God could not walk beside Adam and Eve any longer and life became harder for them for they could no longer live in God’s paradise one earth! Was it God’s fault or Adam and Eve’s? Didn’t Adam and Eve a have a choice?
Now, God could have forced them to go back to paradise, but He didn’t. God could have brainwashed Adam and Eve but He didn’t! What did God do instead? God called prophets to reveal who He is and promised that there will be a way back to God if people so choose.
God chose a people, the Israelites, to reveal God’s Holiness and how people are to live by faith! Guess what? God provided everything for the Israelites but also allowed them to choose God’s way or something else. God gave the gift of His Word but allowed the Israelites to choose God’s way or the highway away from God!
Does God brainwash people? I don’t think so! You see, God doesn’t have to brainwash people; God has the power to make people do whatever He wants; but He doesn’t! God loves His creation that He gives them gifts but allows them to choose! God loves people and agape love can not be controlling!
And of course, God gives a final gift to people He loves. God sent Jesus Christ to the world and He was to be called Emmanuel. What does Emmanuel mean??
Emmanuel means God with us! And this is the final and ultimate gift from God because it is an eternal gift of a relationship with the Almighty God!
Please open your Bibles briefly to Acts 28:23-28……….
God loves people. God gave the ultimate gift, His Name is Jesus Christ, but God allows every person in the world to choose His way or the highway away from God! God does not brainwash or force people to follow Him. But as we will read today, people have the freedom to choose but there will be consequences for not following God. Please open your Bibles now to the Letter to the Romans. I’ve asked Daniel Pryor to read for us this morning Romans 1:16-32………
God tells us there is a Gospel; there is good news because as we had noted, God loves people! And again we read in Romans 1:16-17……
And so again, God gives a gift, which is the Gospel of Christ, but allows people to choose to either live by faith with this gospel or live away from God.
Romans1:18-21 tells us how people start their life away from God:
v18 – 20: they suppress the truth by denying the existence of God.
v21: they neither glorified God or gave Him thanks
And in verses 21-32, we read the results of this decision to live away from God:
v21b: thinking became futile and foolish hearts darkened
v22: claim to be wise, they became fools
v24: degrading of their bodies with one another
v26: shameful lusts; women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones
v27: men commit indecent acts with other men, receiving the due penalty for their perversion
v29: filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, and gossips
v30: slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents (let us note that children can learn how to sin very early in life!)
v31: they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless
v32: although they know it is wrong, they continue with sins and also approve of those who practice them
These truths of God were of course for the Romans 2000 years ago! What happened to the Roman Empire??
Because it was so great, there has been much study of the Fall of the Roman Empire. In 1984, German professor Alexander Demandt published a collection of 210 theories on why Rome fell, and new theories have emerged since then. Don’t you find it interesting that the Great Roman Empire fell completely in 475 AD! It was a slow decline of over 325 years! The Roman Empire started declining right after God’s letter to the Romans! God allowed the Roman Empire to burn itself. But God saved some didn’t He? And many of the descendants of those saved from the Roman Empire are now either in Europe or where?? Descendants of those who followed God and the Gospel from Ancient Rome now live in America!!
Can the Word of God to the Romans 2000 years ago apply to us today? Are those things listed in Romans 1:18-32 happening right here where we are today in America??
According to the book THE DAY AMERICA TOLD THE TRUTH, originally written in 1991, Americans are making up their own rules and laws. Morality has been on a decline since the 1950s. Religion plays almost no role in shaping most lives, the study found. While nine out of every ten people say they believe in God, only one in five had ever talked to a minister, priest, or rabbi about a personal problem. Four in every five said they believe in an afterlife. Almost half believe they’re headed to heaven, while only 4 percent expect to spend time in hell. The results of the survey conducted by the book reveal that only 13 percent of the population still believes in all the Ten Commandments. Nine out of ten lie regularly. Nearly one-third of married Americans have had an affair. One-fifth of the nation’s children have lost their virginity by age 13. One in seven Americans carries a handgun or has one in a vehicle. One in five women says she has been raped by a date. For $10 million, 7 percent of the American people will kill a stranger, 23 percent would be willing to become a prostitute, and 25 percent would be willing to abandon their family.
Unless God and His people intervene, what do you think will happen to America?
These truths of God from Romans 1:16-32 are applicable to us in America today! God provides the right way to live but God’s wrath is on those who refuse to live God’s way! God’s wrath exists because He is a Holy God who can not associate with sin!
What do we need to think about and do today?
Each one of us must
1. Personally understand and believe the Gospel.
There is God’s Way which is good, perfect, and right. (show chart) There is also the highway which leads farther and farther away from God and eventually to eternal judgment! If you don’t have one of these charts in your Bible, please take one as a reminder of God’s Way. Take a couple of extra ones to give to your friends. Until one dies, God’s offer of a Way back to God is available. There is a way to get out of the highway completely away from God. The only Way back to God is by believing and receiving Jesus Christ!
Are you sure you are on Christ’s side? Please be warned! You and I have a choice! If you are not on the side of Christ, God’s wrath is still on you! Believe in Jesus Christ as your only Savior and God today and be delivered from the judgment of God!
Now, If we are already Christians, the next question we need to ask ourselves is:
2. Are we still living the old way of sin?
Romans 1:18-32 is on the highway away from God. If we are Christians, we do not belong on that highway! If we truly belong to a Holy God who can not associate with sin, why do we? There is no reason for a Christian to be associated with sin. And if Christians do associate with sin, there will be consequences, because God hates sin!
Review your life. If any of those things in Romans 1:18-32 is happening in your life, you need to do 3 things:
a. reaffirm your belief in your Creator God
b. worship God and give thanks to Him always
c. put on the full armor of God
How important is this?
You see, God is calling you and me for such a time as this in America! A change in America will not happen, revival in America will not happen, unless we Christians do our part!
Let me repeat the three things we must do……….
In closing, we need to ask ourselves, “How do we help those who are still living under God’s wrath?”
3. We are to help people understand the consequences of sin and how to go back to God.
Pray for people, envision where people will spend eternity, and ask God for ways to bring God and the Gospel in all our conversations!
One last thing: Since we are all at different maturity levels in our Christianity, some of you might be saying, “I heard this all before.” Here’s a challenge for all of us: We make choices on a daily basis! When we make a choice everyday in our lives, are we making decisions for God or against God? If we choose to think or do something that is not of God (check it with the list in Romans 1), there will be consequences personally and to those close to us! Our Holy God will not be part of any sin we do. None of us will be perfect and God will forgive us and cleanse us when we confess our sins but God’s way is to be our target!
God’s Way, not sin, is to be our target everyday!
