In this sermon, the preacher discusses the concept of God's judgment and wrath. He uses an illustration of a group of golfers discussing religion and one of them challenging God to strike him dead. The preacher explains that God's mercy is shown in not immediately striking the man dead, but rather leaving him to his own devices. He emphasizes that God's judgment is manifested in giving people over to their sins and allowing them to go their own way. The preacher also mentions the importance of prayer for a family member who is in the hospital expecting a premature delivery.

I came to put my water up here, and I saw that Brother Mark had left me some motor oil over here on the side. I don't know what he was trying to tell me. Well, once again, as we come to the end of this time, I want to thank the Lord so much for the privilege of being here and of opening the Word and sitting under the Word, and also all the labors of all those who have ministered to us. I thought of the words of Winston Churchill. I think he said this in relation to the Royal Air Force. He said, Never have so many owed so much to so few. That's the way I feel about that dining hall. Never have so many owed so much to so few. We thank the Lord for all your labors for us. I wanted to share with everyone that our daughter-in-law, Leslie, is in the hospital right now, about ready to deliver that first child, Lord willing. She's just about a month early from her expected due date, so we would very much appreciate your prayers. Maybe I could have somebody pray for us right now, pray for her, for her safety and that baby's safety. We got some calls in the night. I think actually Conrad and Grace took the brunt of it. They got several calls. We had left their number. But, Baker, would you pray for Leslie and Ian and the baby and also pray for us here in this final session? Let's open our Bibles again to Romans chapter 1. And we'll begin reading at verse 18. I read through this the first night in the New American Standard. I thought I'd read through it this morning in the Authorized. Beginning at verse 18, and we'll just read once more through to the end of the chapter to get the flow here. Romans 1 verse 18, 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 has showed 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 that when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, speculations, reasonings. 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 to corruptible man and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lust of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves, who changed the truth of God into a lie and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affection. For even their women did change the natural use of that which is against nature, and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working that which is unseemly and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meek. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient, being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whispers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful, who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. We looked last night at the condemnation of the man without the Bible, the man who has never been given any of God's special revelation. He has never heard the Ten Commandments. He has never heard any of the things in Scripture. And we saw that that man is nevertheless condemned. Why is he condemned? Well, he is condemned because he has inescapable knowledge of God, and he suppresses and holds down that knowledge. Where does he get that knowledge? Well, he gets it first of all from the external creation, and then secondly, he gets it from within. And the Bible never presents the idea that we go out here and we look at the heavens and we study the heavens and try to reason all this out, and we get to the tenth point, we get to God finally, as the tenth point of a ten-point proof. That isn't the way it is. God is the foundation underlying all proving and all thinking and all life. In Him we live and move and exist. And so this thing of the testimony of God, it's not just this world out here and I start out on my own as if I could do something for myself and arrive at some kind of knowledge starting out by myself without God. That isn't the way it is. We have the testimony within, and we have to found everything, even our reason we saw. Even our reason is part of the image of God in man. And the laws of logic, the idea that A is not non-A, those things like this circle cannot be a square, those kinds of things are things that we know, but you can't prove them. If you set out to prove them, you have to use them to prove them. And if you set out to disprove them, you have to use them to disprove them. And so that's something that is given as part of God's image on our heart. It's inescapable. And to the degree that an atheist has any degree of order and rationality and morality in his life, to that degree he's bearing witness all the time to the knowledge of God. That's inescapable. And so man is made in the image of God. He still bears something of the image of God. And in order to escape that knowledge of God, he would have to become non-man. People try really hard to do that, but they never can quite make it. And when you get to the end of Romans chapter 1, still, after all that has been said, still Paul says, they know, they know the ordinance of God, the judgment of God, that those who commit such things are worthy of death. You may deal with people sometimes who almost you would think they're an animal. You almost feel like they don't have any conscience left, but nevertheless you can still press the truth upon them, knowing from the Word of God that somehow in there there's some point of contact somewhere. And the Holy Spirit is able to do that. When God forsakes a soul and lets them go, it's not the idea that He doesn't have enough power to yet save them. It's the idea that He just gives them over. Well, all men know God inescapably. If someone says, I don't believe there is a God, you don't have to waste time arguing on that. You can say, yes, you know that there's a God, and you can explain to Him why it is that He knows, and how it is that He knows, and press upon Him the things that He already knows in order to get Him to face those things once again. Well, in this final message this morning, I'd like for us to look more closely at verse 18. That's what I want us to study this morning. But we'll do that by looking first at verse 21 all the way to the end of the chapter. And what we're going to do is try to gather up some principles from verse 21 to the end of the chapter, and then come back to verse 18 and see how those things fit in. Verse 18 is like a summary of all the rest of the chapter. And if we understand verse 18 correctly, we'll understand everything that follows. Paul says in verse 18 that the wrath of God is revealed. It is revealed. Not it will be revealed, but it is revealed right now. And so there is a revelation of God's wrath in the world right now. And we're going to be looking more at that. This question, how is the wrath of God revealed? And then secondly, he says it's revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. And we want to look at these terms, ungodliness and unrighteousness. And ask the question, what does Paul mean by ungodliness and unrighteousness? And to answer those questions, we'll follow the flow here from verse 21 on down to 32 and try to gather some basic principles and then come back to verse 18. So in a way, you can think of this section beginning at verse 21 and going to the end of the chapter as a history of the world. If you look at various cultures, if you look at the Greek culture, or you look at European culture, or you look at even what's happening in America, what you see is people starting out with more knowledge of God, more light, more truth, and then gradually degenerating, being given over and going downhill. And that's happened as an overall history of the world. In fact, it's true even of the so-called primitive religions. Verse 21 says, Even though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God. So you go way back to the earliest days, men started out with a knowledge of God, more knowledge of God, and they went downhill from there. Now, it's been popular for years for anthropologists to say that the primitive religions and these primitive tribes, they start out with animism, that is, spirits are in everything, and stones and trees and what have you, and then they go to pantheism, and then to polytheism, and then finally they came to monotheism, the idea of one God. Well, they're not saying that anymore because when you go out to those tribes, invariably, you find out that they have a knowledge of the one true God above all the other gods. That's an amazing thing. And that's what Romans 1 is saying. They knew God. They started out with a knowledge of God. In fact, they all have stories about how something went wrong, and they got away from that one God. It's an interesting thing. I was listening to some messages by Dave Sitton, who's a missionary to New Guinea. He said none of those tribes have any story about how to get back to God. They all have stories about what happened. Something went wrong, but they don't have any way or method of coming back. How could you? So, in one way, this is a history of the world, this section that starts at verse 21 and goes to the end of the chapter. In another way, it's a history of each individual person. Every child starts out with less hardness and more sensitivity and relative innocence, and gradually goes down. So, in the individual life, you have the same thing. The same progression that happens in history, starting out higher and going down, you have that in the individual life. You start out with less hardness, greater sensitivity, and gradually it goes downward. Relative innocence and downhill from there on. In my own life, I can remember the point, now I wasn't a Christian, but I can remember the point when I started to tell lies. Isn't that amazing? And I can remember, I was at grade school, some kid told me, he said, this is the worst bad word that there is. And he told me that word and I said it over and over. You know, it's amazing, I wasn't a Christian, but I remember sitting there by my dad watching TV that night and I physically felt sick. What is that? There's something being lost. Isn't it sad to think of? That's for the individual. And going down, and it wasn't long before it didn't bother me, there's that downward path of the individual and of history as a whole. Now there's a pattern here. Notice what it says, verse 21, even though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God. That's the first thing that happens. Men have some knowledge of God, but they refuse to submit to Him and let Him be God in their life. They refuse to glorify Him as God. And they determine that they're going to go their own way and do their own thing. And so that's the starting point. Refusal to bow the knee to God and let Him be God and let Him be the center. Men want to be autonomous. They want to be a law to themselves. You shall be as God. All we like sheep have gone astray, we've turned everyone to His own way. And so it starts out by refusal to glorify God as God. I want to be God in my own life. Now what's the next step? Neither we're thankful. The next thing that comes in is starting to be unthankful and angry and trying to find some kind of an excuse for my rebellion. So all types of ingratitude. Instead of being thankful for the countless blessings that God has showered upon me, even in rain and sunshine and all those things, men will latch on to one supposed wrong that God has done them and get bitter over it and unthankful and blame God for that. That gives them an excuse for their rebellion. I had a friend in high school that I witnessed to, and his mother was an outspoken, unbeliever, atheistic type person. And what was the problem? Well, she had a friend, a girlfriend in high school, who had died in a car accident. That's a good reason to say there is no God. Well, question, how many times did she thank God for that friend when she had her? See, you blame God for His supposed wrongs to you and latch on to that. Men will never let a thousand good things lead them to worship God, but they'll latch on to one bad thing to curse God. Years ago, I used to lay carpet and I was working there, and some carpenters were trying to put up some cabinets in the kitchen. And they were having a hard time of it, and the things weren't fitting, and every other word was cursing God. And then all of a sudden, that whole row of cabinets just slipped right into place. What do you think they said? Praise the Lord. Well, they said that sure was lucky. Isn't that it? If you're unthankful and angry about God, angry against God about something, that is a dangerous thing because that's the first step down to apostasy. It's a sure sign of an evil heart of unbelief. What's the next step? Well, these empty reasonings. They did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations. Empty reasoning, vain speculations. And their foolish heart was darkened. All the while, professing to be wise, they become fools. Now, you see that again on a historical level. You see that in Greek culture. Right on down through. But you see it in the individual life. Here's somebody. They're determined. They're not going to bow the knee to God. They're going to run their own life. They're going to do their own thing, and they're bitter about this or that thing that God's done them wrong. And then they start doing a lot of thinking. And you can be sure that those thoughts are the thoughts of a fool. Now, beloved, we work with a lot of college students. There are students walking around all over those campuses that have rebelled against God, and they said, I'm going to do my own thing. And after all, look what happened to so-and-so. You know, look what God did. Why didn't God let me have this or that? And they're mad at God, and then they're going to do it. They're going to reason out all their worldview. Professing themselves to be wise, they become fools. And they're walking around. All that stuff I said last night of those stupid, contradictory, foolish-type statements, that's a result of men reasoning who are in rebellion against God. What's the next step? Well, idolatry, verse 23. They exchange the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. You start out wanting to run your own life. You can be certain that in a little while, you'll be bowing down to some idol. That's what happened. That's the progression. I remember when I was in college, there was a guy, he had this picture of a Corvette on his wall. And I made some comment about it. He says, someday, I'm going to have that car. He was literally living his life around the idea of having a car. Someday, I'm going to have that car. And it can be that. It can be a life of sin. It can be a job. But some kind of idolatry. And along with idolatry, false religion. What is the explanation of all these false religions? Well, the explanation is, men have God's natural revelation come to them, and they put it through a twisted grid, and out comes a false religion. That evil eye that perverts everything. Nothing wrong with the revelation. But what's wrong is the heart of man. Now, what happens next when men turn away from God? Well, verse 24, God gave them over in the lust of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies might be dishonored among themselves. Immorality. And then what happens next? Well, verse 26, for this reason God gave them over to degrading passions, for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and so on. Perversion, homosexuality, that type of thing. What happens next? Well, verse 28, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, a rejected, depraved mind, and on down. Now look at this, beloved. These steps don't just happen. Verse 24, God gave them over. The authorize says, God gave them up. Same idea. But verse 24, God gave them over. Verse 26, God gave them over. And verse 28, God gave them over, are all the exact identical phrase in the Greek. They're the very same thing. In other words, this is part of the judgment of God. This is part of what Paul says back in verse 18 when he says, The wrath of God is revealed from heaven right now against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. The wrath of God is manifested in the fact that God gives men over to their sins and lets them go. Part of God's judgment against sin is that He gives men over to more sin, more hardness, more blindness. He leaves men alone and lets them go their own way. Brother Michael Durham, a lot of you know him, he had an illustration that I thought was very good on this. He talks about a group of golfers going out. Here's four or five men out golfing and it's a beautiful day. They're out there golfing and one of them, you know they're talking about God and laughing about these fools that follow religion and so on and talk about Christ. One of them takes his golf club and he just holds it up to heaven. He says, God, if you're up there, strike me dead right now. Strike me dead. And then he puts his club down. The birds are singing. The breeze is blowing. It's a beautiful day. You say, what mercy of God that He didn't strike him dead. No, that's a judgment of God. That's a wrath of God. God just left him alone. You see, if a bolt of lightning had come down and fired that guy right there, there would have at least been hope that some of those men might have been afraid and repented. But as it is, all of them were hardened more in their unbelief and sin and they went away laughing and said, there isn't any God. Is that wrath or mercy? That's wrath. He gave them over. It's a fearful thing. This process here in verse 24, 26, and 28, we need to warn men about it. Maybe you're not a Christian here today and you have in your mind, there isn't any such thing as the wrath of God. Well, let me ask you a question. Does it bother you that you're not a Christian? No, it doesn't bother me. Well, do your sins bother you? Well, not like they used to. Well, let me ask you this. Are you doing things now that you used to think were wrong? And if you're honest, you have to say yes. And that's the wrath of God upon you. God's letting you go. Romans 1, 24 down to verse 32 is this terrible downward spiral. There's these old wells in India that have steps around the outside on the inside of the well. And however deep the water goes, you just go around like that going down to the water. And that's what these verses are from verse 24 on. You're going down, down, down just spiraling downward. You get blinder and blinder. You get harder and harder. You get more and more deceived. And things that you would have sworn you'll never do, you've been doing that for a long time and you're headed to the next thing. That's one of the most terrible things about sin. John Bunyan, that phrase that terrified him so much, man knows the beginning of sin, but no man ever knew the end of sin. Beloved, Adolf Hitler was once a little boy playing with toys. He didn't start out on that road. He didn't plan to start out. He didn't plan to be what he became. And nobody ever does. I remember B.B. Caldwell had that sermon, The Lights Going Out on the Road to Hell, preaching about this chapter. Here's a man going down on the road to hell. And the lights start getting dimmer and dimmer on his car as he continues on the road to hell. And by the time he gets to the bridge out sign, his lights are completely out. He doesn't even see it. And he goes right off the end. When I first went to college, there was a blond-haired kid that was in the room next to me. And he was just the most innocent high school kid. First year of college, I remember he came in. He says, look, this is a picture of my sister. Isn't she pretty? And she was a pretty homely looking girl. But just to think of that, that's the kind of kid he was. By the time he got out of college, he was robbing hard liquor stores. It's amazing. God hardens and blinds men as a judgment for their sin. If you are fooling around with some sin, you need to fear and tremble. Because it's not the idea. I'm going to quit at this point. You have no guarantee of that whatsoever. All it takes is for God to just take His hand off and let you go. You have no idea. None of us has any idea of what we're capable of doing apart from the grace of God. What grace it is when God preserves us and holds us back. I was talking to a brother. He was sharing a little bit of his testimony. He told me of a time when he was to the point he and a friend had decided they couldn't get a ticket. And they had decided that they were going to rob somebody in order to get money to get a ticket. And a man came up to him right there and offered him tickets. You realize what could have happened? They could have murdered somebody that night and his whole life could have been down from then on. God came in in grace and mercy and said, I'm not going to let that happen. And just like that. Why is it that we're here today? What grace has brought us here today? What could God in righteous judgment have done, have let us do that He didn't let us do? Man knows the beginning of sin. No man knows the end of sin. It might start out little like this. You know the beginning. You know the first things. But nobody has ever known the last things. God hardens and blinds men as a judgment for their sins. Pharaoh is an example and you know of a lot of others in Scripture. Well, that's one part of this section. But there's something else very important to understand from these verses. Paul talks in verse 18 about ungodliness and unrighteousness. Now, ungodliness is particularly vertical type sins. Sins directed toward God. Unrighteousness has to do with sins on this level. Sins directed toward my fellow men. Now, look at what we've just looked down through here, this progression in verse 21 to 23. Look at this. They did not glorify Him as God. They were not thankful to Him as God. They had all these vain speculations about God. And then they started worshiping false gods. Now, what does that fit into? Is that horizontal or is that vertical? That's vertical. Ungodliness is the primary thing. It's the root cause. It's the bad thing. It's the beginning of things. Ungodliness. It's the first and basic truth about man. He's ungodly. But then, look at these verses that follow. Verse 24, God gave them over to immorality, sexual impurity. And then verse 26, God gives them over to perversion. And then verse 28, God gives them over to all this malice and anger and all these things. All of that stuff is on this level. Horizontal. Unrighteousness. So the first half of this section, from verse 19 down to verse 23, deals with ungodliness. And the second half, from verse 24 to verse 32, deals with unrighteousness. Now, what is God saying to us here? I'm going to use an invisible blackboard. Mark, right here. Ungodliness. Yes. And then we'll have an arrow going over. Unrighteousness. Now, what's that saying? Ungodliness precedes and inevitably leads to unrighteousness. Or another way of saying it, idolatry leads to immorality. Or another way of saying it, sin towards God is the root. Sin towards man is the fruit. That's another way of saying it. Now, let me try to bring this out a little clearer by asking you some questions. First of all, what is the first and greatest commandment? On this side, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. So what is the greatest sin and the root sin? Not loving God. You go to a funeral, and they're talking about this fellow, and they say, he was an unbeliever, but he was a good man. He was a doctor, and he gave money to the poor, and he did this and that. Well, question. Did he worship God? Did he pray to God? Did he ever thank God for anything? You see, if not, he's an ungodly wretch. He's wicked and deserves to go to hell because he's broken the big things. Brother Mark mentioned that passage where the handwriting appeared on the wall. Let me just read it to you. This is Belshazzar. Daniel is speaking to him. He says, Even though you knew all this, you have not humbled your heart, but you have exalted yourself against the Lord of heaven, and they have brought the vessels of His house before you and your nobles, your wives, and your concubines have been drinking wine from them, and you have praised the gods of silver and gold, bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see, hear, or understand, but the God in whose hand are your life, breath, and your ways, you have not glorified. This is a heathen king, beloved. God doesn't say, Look at all the atrocities that you've done and all the people that you've massacred. This heathen king is being judged because he hasn't glorified the God in whose hand are his life, breath, and his ways. And that's the very thing that so-called good doctor did at that funeral, you see. He did not glorify the God who was keeping him alive every day. Same type of sin, except in most cases, here in America, people have done it with all kinds of truth and light and knowledge around them, and they haven't glorified God. Well, that comes first. The first tablet of the law, you remember, things related to God. You shall have no other gods before me, and no graven images, and so on. But the second great commandment, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, that's the last part of Romans 1, see. Unrighteousness. That has to do with the second table of the law, the Ten Commandments. Alright, next question I want to ask you. Can righteousness exist without godliness? And the answer is, not for very long. I remember my friends in high school, actually, as I look back now, they were a pretty good bunch of kids. They were church-going kids, and they had been taught basic morality and that type of thing. Well, when I was 16, the Lord saved me, and I was truly converted. That wasn't the case with the rest of them. And you know what happened when they went to college. Down they went. Why? Because they didn't have godliness. And if you don't have the first part, righteousness can't exist very long without godliness. Down you go. God begins to give over. You turn away from God, it won't be long before you've got real moral problems. God gives you over. Ungodliness leads to unrighteousness. This past year I've read a little bit more of the lives of some of these so-called great atheists, and it is so bad you can't even talk about it. The so-called liberal theologians. Guys like Paul Tillich. He was a famous liberal theologian. After he died, his wife came out publicly. She said, yeah, he had a lot of problems with mistresses. You know, things like that. None of that ever gets talked about. Same way with those Greek intellectuals. You know, when you read about Socrates and Plato and all those guys, they don't tell you about the pedophilia and all that stuff that went on in Greek culture. It was horrible. That is a result. If you don't have godliness, you won't very long have righteousness. It might exist for a little while as a memory, but it's soon to go. You see, humanism starts out saying, we're going to be free from God. We're going to be free from all that old outmoded morality of the Bible and all that stuff, and we're going to build a wonderful society. And you see, as soon as you cut loose from God, God gives you over. And you know, the next thing you're doing, you're having genocide and euthanasia and abortion and infanticide and all the other stuff. And in a little while, because when man cuts away from God, he suddenly becomes zero. He becomes a piece of meat, a product of evolution. He becomes a computer made of meat. And in just a little while, when you cut loose from God, you start treating people, and we read that stuff, full of malice and envy and murder and debate and deceit and all that. It's not one big happy family in hell. It's a bunch of people hating each other. You cut loose from God, you start hating each other. And girls, if you want a young man to treat you like a piece of meat, you get somebody that doesn't love God. But if the man loves God, then he'll treat you as one who's made in the image of God. Third question in relation to this. Now remember, ungodliness, ero, unrighteousness. We're trying to bring out the meaning of it. You see the progression here of how God did it here in Romans 1. It's not by chance. They refused to glorify Him as God. They did all these things against God, and God starts giving them over to all this sin. Isn't it clear? It's as clear as can be. Alright, here's the third question. If you want to deal with the problems of the world, and even the problems of your own life, what do you concentrate on? Unrighteousness? Or the real problem back here, ungodliness. Can you see why the world is never going to succeed in solving any of its problems? Dealing with the branches and not the root. If you want to try to cure unrighteousness, the only possible answer is get right with God. So here's the United Nations over here trying to deal with the problems, or legislation trying to deal with the problems. It can't do anything. Take these people out of the slums, fix them up some nice low-income housing, put them in there. You know what will happen? Unless something different than normal happens, what they'll do is they'll turn that into a slum in a little while. Because you took them out of the slums, but you didn't take the slums out of them. You're dealing over here with the branches and not with the root. Drug rehabilitation programs. I've known two men that spent their lifetime in secular drug rehabilitation type things. Neither one of them were Christian. And the question was asked, how many cures, how many success stories have you had? And in their case, both of them, said that's easy. We haven't had any. Zero. Because you're dealing over here with something that isn't the real root of the problem. Beloved, the same thing is true in the Christian life. The root is our relationship with God. How am I going to get victory over this sin? Oh, really train your attention on it like the brother was saying. Fight that thing. Concentrate on it. You think that's going to do it? What's the real problem? The problem is somewhere over here in communion with God, and believing God, and fellowship with God. You get in touch with Him. Temptations lose their power when He is nigh. Concentrate on Him and get right with Him. Psalm 25, 15, My eyes are continually toward the Lord, for He will pluck my feet out of the net. Well, what you need to do is be looking at the ground all the time. No, He says put your attention on the Lord, and He'll pluck your feet out of the net. That's what we're talking about here. Well, can you see why Paul is not ashamed of the Gospel? The Gospel is the only thing in the world that can deal with the root problem, and get us back right with God. How in the world are we ever going to get right with God? Well, the only way you can get right with God is to have something given to you. Righteousness from above. Right standing in the eyes of His law. And from that then flows all life to us. He that is righteous by faith shall live. He'll live. Well, amen. I believe this is all I have this morning.