“I WILL PRAISE YOU, FOR I AM FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE; MARVELOUS ARE YOU WORKS, AND THAT MY SOUL KNOWS VERY WELL.”
ROMANS 1:18-23
“FOR THE WRATH OF GOD IS REVEALED FROM HEAVEN AGAINST ALL UNGODLINESS AND UNRIGHTEOUSNESS OF MEN, WHO SUPPRESS THE TRUTH IN UNRIGHTEOUSNESS, 19 BECAUSE THAT WHICH IS KNOWN ABOUT GOD IS EVIDENT WITHIN THEM, FOR GOD MADE IT EVIDENT TO THEM. 20 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 THAT THEY ARE WITHOUT EXCUSE. 21 FOR EVEN THOUGH THEY KNEW GOD, THEY DID NOT HONOR HIM AS GOD, OR GIVE THANKS, BUT THEY BECAME FUTILE IN THEIR SPECULATIONS, AND THEIR FOOLISH HEART WAS DARKENED. 22 PROFESSING TO BE WISE, THEY BECAME FOOLS, 23 AND EXCHANGED THE GLORY OF THE INCORRUPTIBLE GOD FOR AN IMAGE IN THE FORM OF CORRUPTIBLE MAN AND OF BIRDS AND FOUR-FOOTED ANIMALS AND CRAWLING CREATURES.”
In both the Old Testament, and the New Testament, we are given these confirmations that God has placed within every man, evidence of Himself.
There are those who say there is no God. They call themselves “Atheists”. “Theos” is the Greek word for God. A “theist” is someone who believes in a God. If you put the “A” in front of it, it means the person believes there is no God.
Those people are deceiving themselves. The Bible says that what may be known about God has been placed in them, so if they have chosen not to believe in Him, then that means they have deliberately denied what they naturally know to be true.
That is what it means in verse 18 when it says they “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” That means they know the truth inside, but they hold it down in their thinking, so they can go ahead and live the way they want, without having to be accountable to a holy God. They think.
But the Bible makes it clear that in the end they will be held accountable to God. When they stand before Him, He will say, “I revealed myself to you, so that you might believe and have sweet fellowship with Me...but preferring your own human wisdom over Mine, you denied Me and went your own way.”
They will be without excuse.
See how foolish unbelief is? Verse 23 says they traded the glory of the incorruptible God, to go and worship His creation. Notice the downward trend. First, they worshipped images of man...then birds...then four-footed animals running along the ground...then “creeping things” (bugs).
They’d rather worship bugs than God! No wonder the Bible calls them fools!
I heard someone say once: “When man doesn’t believe in God, he doesn’t believe in ‘nothing’...he believes in ANYTHING!” How true.
People in our culture don’t usually bow down to statues of bugs, but they still worship idols. Money, sports heroes, their own job, sex, drugs, some people even worship their religion. Anything that takes God’s place on the throne of the heart is an idol...no matter how good it looks.
“The dearest idol I have known, whatever that idol be,
help me to tear it from Thy throne; and worship only Thee!”
