Plain to See
(Romans 1:19-22)
1. One cold, snowy Minnesota night, I got lost on the way home. The snow was blowing so fast and piling up so high, I couldn't see any street signs. With no map in my car and a dead cell phone, I thought I might be stranded so I pulled over to the side of the road.
Then breaking through the flurries, I saw the headlights of a plow truck in my rearview mirror. Thanking my lucky stars, I turned in and followed the truck, hopeful that it would lead me back somewhere I recognized.
I followed that truck for what felt like hours. He turned left, I'd turn left. He'd swing to the right, and I was right on his tail. After a while, I saw brake lights from the plow, followed by four-way flashers. The plow had stopped, and I saw the driver get out and approach my car. I rolled down the window to talk to him.
"Why are you following me, kid?" the plow driver asked.
"Well sir, my dad told me if I was ever lost in a snowstorm, I should wait for a plow truck and then follow it."
"Well," said the plow driver. "I just finished clearing the Walmart parking lot. Want to follow me over to Best Buy??"
2. Some people say that the evidence of God’s existence is hard to see. It’s all around.
3. Last week, we saw that God was angry and that this world is cursed. But we can learn more about God than that, as we shall see today.
MAIN IDEA: We cannot be excused from responding to the light we all have. This includes the obvious realization that there is a might Creator.
I. Even Apart from Scripture, Mankind Is Held Accountable to Believe in God and to Understand Some of His Invisible ATTRIBUTES (19-20)
A. Nature tells us about God, perhaps a MIDRASH on Psalm 19:1-5
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.
“In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy.”
Art museums – artworks tell us something about the artists (Van Gogh)
B. Besides God’s wrath, natural revelation means all are accountable to UNDERSTAND:
1. God’s eternal POWER
2. God’s divine NATURE
C. PERCEPTIBLE because of the things made (Intelligent Design)
DNA is found in every cell of our bodies (in at least some stage of its development) and has a beautiful appearance, having the shape of a spiral staircase. The steps (or rungs) are like letters in our alphabet and, ascending or descending the staircase, the letters taken together spell words which have meanings. Altogether, there are around three billion letters in human DNA, which amounts to a lot of information—about a thousand books the size of the Bible. For example, it contains the information needed to grow a baby from a fertilized egg—how to build the heart, lungs, brain and so on. As adults, we need DNA too, as it stores the software that controls much of what goes on inside us.
The sequence of DNA ‘letters’ is like a language, where different combinations of letters have different meanings. Whereas the English alphabet has twenty-six letters, the DNA alphabet has just four: A, C, T and G. Using these four letters, the DNA specifies which amino acid is to be placed in which position along the chain [creation.com]
II. Mankind Prefers to EXCHANGE God for Idols of Various Sorts (21-22)
A. The nations, including ISRAEL, had this track record.
Psalm 106:19-21, “They made a calf in Horeb and worshiped a metal image. They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass. They forgot God, their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt…”
Exodus 20:4-5a, “You shall not make for yourself a 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. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God…”
B. Whatever people view as the first cause (the uncaused cause) is GOD.
1. Most gods of stone are not really gods, but intermediaries…
2. Visiting Jason and Brittany in Minneapolis… Buddhist temple…
3. Although they worship many deities, their gods are not immortal and eternal. Their real gods are earth, wind, fire, and water.
4. Paganism is experiencing a great revival; in Greek & Roman religion, the sky mated with the earth, Titans. Two Titans mated and produced the gods. So the sky and the earth are eternal, and thus really god in their view.
5. “The most fundamental decision we all face over the course of your lives is what we will recognize as ultimate reality, the uncaused source and cause of our existence.” Nancy Pearcy
C. Either God or something we EXCHANGE for God will be top priority in our lives.
1. Jeremiah 2:13, “for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”
2. Even wonderful things – like family, community service, ministry, health – can be exchanged for God as top priority.
3. Jesus put it this way: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” [Matthew 6:24].
4. Habakkuk 1:11b, “…whose own might is their god…”
5. Ephesians 5:5, “For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.”
6. It is easy to worship the blessings God gives us, not the One Who gave us these blessings.
D. Rejecting God takes energy and a pretext, which is touted as WISDOM (22).
1. Psalm 14:1, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”
2. Behind much of this are the big sins of pride and control.
3. One main reason people turn away is for moral reasons. It might be they want to do something wrong; by abandoning the faith, they are no longer hypocrites in doing it.
4. Rather than adjust their morals based upon their beliefs, they adjust their beliefs to endorse or tolerate their morals.
5. Or they may want their immoral friends to be labelled as “okay.’
Alan Levinovitz wrote a book about fad diets. He compares some people who are drawn to them with the way some people are about religion. A blogger summarizes, “In his view, the trouble starts when one diet becomes popular and the people who are truly benefiting from it start to blur with the people who’ve simply jumped on the bandwagon.”
6. We don’t want to accept is the fact that the elect, genuine believers, are the chosen FEW.
7. Eventually, we will realize true believers are not a third or fourth of our population; perhaps a tenth. For many, their faith is based upon upbringing, peer group, or the desire to live a decent life. It is not about being right with God/pleasing Him.
8. Once Christianity no longer supports their desired lifestyle, they abandon it for a way of thinking they find more useful for what they want for their lives.
