Truth Imprisoned

It says things like, let all malice and bitterness be put away. It says things like, love your neighbor as yourself.

It says things like, forgive seventy times seven. These are not just wonderful little thoughts that if you'd like to apply them to your life, things will get a little better. These are spiritual laws and when you violate them, you bear in your body the consequences.

If you want to keep that grudge, keep it, but watch what will happen to you. And discover the physical and emotional consequences to things like envy and pride and bitterness and even stinginess. The truth is, suffering follows sin. What if the world is engaged in a massive cover-up? Not about politics or scandals, but about the truth of God. Scripture tells us that humanity actively suppresses God's truth, ignoring His holiness and rejecting His wrath.

Why do people prefer a God who never judges? What happens when society removes absolute truth? In this message, you'll uncover why mankind resists God's authority and the devastating consequences of denying His existence. Stay tuned for a message that exposes the reality of truth imprisoned.

Here's Steven Davie to teach you right now. Man is busily in the process of continually recreating God in his own image. He crafts a comfortable deity who is easier to face and certainly easier to ignore.

He fashions a facilitating God who pats him on the head every so often and says, boys will be boys. No wonder the organized church is wandering all around the theological and moral landscape today, struggling to vote against homosexual ordination, struggling to come up with a position on abortion and fornication and gambling and on and on and on. My friends, if you no longer have an absolute standard of righteousness, when that is thrown out, everything else can come in.

If you no longer have that standard of holy righteousness, you will not be able to know what is wrong because you no longer know what is right. In fact, what a person believes about spiritual things doesn't even require reasoning or justification or some sort of objective truth. All that matters is that you believe it.

Your sincerity counts, not your reasons. So while religion and spirituality are bigger than ever, although they are more confusing and diverse than ever, it is, according to one secular source, a type of religion now to be praised. And I quote this secular source, because it is religious expression that now downplays doctrine and dogma and revels in direct experience of the divine.

In other words, a way with objective truth up with subjective truth. Whatever is true for you is true. So they revel in this direct experience of the divine, whether that experience of the divine is called the Holy Spirit or cosmic consciousness or the true self, it doesn't matter.

It's practical and personal. It is more about stress reduction than salvation. It is more about therapy than theology. It is about feeling good, not being good. Most people still say they believe in God, but they are mixing and matching religious beliefs and practices that now resonate with their own life experience. And that author thought it was an improvement, and I just got that out of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and I'm so glad I got something out of it that I could use to justify all the money I spent on it. Another author, however, raises the warning in his book, The New Absolutes.

He says this. We have reached the point where we permit almost everything and stand for almost nothing except the dogmatic belief that every person is right in their own eyes. Our beliefs are now more a matter of feelings than anything. Most importantly, our beliefs are our beliefs, and that, we think, makes them worthy and beyond dispute.

Well put. So what are we left with? We're left with the behavior and beliefs that have become to a person his newest sacred idols. Man is as guilty of idolatry as he has been in the past. He has now created gods in his own image. He has now created a religious system with his own beliefs, which are now the idols before which he worships, and he would rather worship his self-made, self-styled, self-vindicating, self-satisfying, self-promoting, self-serving God than the one true and living God to whom he must one day give an account.

He would rather have his own. No wonder his own are impotent to hold him accountable to some form of standard or holy living. While the wrath of God we discussed at length in the past is an unwanted attribute, it is an undeniable attribute. Listen, as Isaiah writes in chapter 13, Behold, the day of the Lord is coming, cruel with fury and burning anger, to make the land a desolation, and he will exterminate its sinners from it.

For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not flash forth their light, the sun will be dark when it rises and the moon will not shed its light. Thus I, God says, will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity. I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud and abase the haughtiness of the ruthless. I will make mortal man scarcer than pure gold. Therefore, I will make the heavens tremble and the earth will be shaken from its place at the fury of the Lord of hosts in the day of his burning anger.

There is this other side of God that we would rather do away with. Now, Isaiah is communicating the truth about wrath of God, which is yet to come. Paul, in Romans chapter 1, verse 18, announces that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven, if you go back to that text. The tense could be translated to read, for the wrath of God is continually, presently, in an ongoing way, being revealed against mankind from heaven. Now, what does he mean, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven?

Well, in order to answer that question, I need to answer another one. What are the categorical types of revelation from God to begin with? Well, there are two. The first is what we call general revelation. It is general revelation because it's the kind of revelation that everybody has access to. And there are two forms of general revelation.

You want to write this down, you'll need it for the test. The first is creation and the second is conscience. And all of humanity has access to creation and all of humanity has an inborn conscience that they choose not to listen to. But general revelation basically, in effect, brings an awareness that there is a supreme being, that there is a creator, that there is a designer. We'll come back for greater detail in another study in the future, but for now, notice how Paul expounds on this form of general revelation.

Look at verse 19. That which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them. 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 what?

They're without excuse. In other words, creation naturally leads mankind to form an opinion that there must be a creator. The beautiful and complex design of our universe leads a person with an open heart to believe in a designer. Listen to David as he sings about the creation, pointing open hearts toward the truth of God's existence in Psalm 19. The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of his Christians. Day after day, they pour forth speech. Night after night, they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In other words, no matter how remote that tribe of Indians may be, no matter where you travel, around the globe or out into outer space, there is this loud, persistent declaration of creation which points you to say there must be a creator. Creation points to a creator.

Design points to a designer. I read recently in the town hall in Copenhagen stands the world's most complicated clock. It took 40 years to build at a cost of about a million dollars.

In today's market, that'd be about a hundred million dollars. It has 10 faces, 15,000 parts, and is accurate to two-fifths of a second every 300 years. The clock computes the time of day, the days of the week, the months and years, and the movements of the planets for 2,500 years. Some parts of this clock will not move until 25 centuries have passed. The more you know about this clock would lead you to say those designers were very intelligent people.

These were the ones who were awake in algebra. The more sophisticated and intricate the design of anything would lead you to assume the brilliance and intelligence of the designer behind it. And so the author of scripture says just look, look around you. This incredibly massive universe must speak of a massive God. This infinitely complex universe must speak of an incredibly complex God. Even Charles Darwin once admitted the complexity of design within the human eye is enough to cause him to consider a creator. See, such an incredible creation implies the existence of an incredible creator. And that's what David said. All the heavens declare that God is unbelievably glorious. One Puritan wrote, God has left large footprints all around his universe. That argument is used by King David and hereby the Apostle Paul. He basically says this, God exists and everybody knows it. Now the point is what they do with it.

And we'll see in a moment what they do with it. So the first kind of general revelation is creation. Now the second kind of general revelation is human conscience. You might notice again in verse 19 as Paul says, because that which is known about God is evident within them.

You could take your pencil right into the margin, that's conscience. For God made it evident to them, that's creation. So revelation available to all of humanity is creation without and conscience within. Now look over at chapter 2 verse 14, would you? Chapter 2 verse 14 where Paul speaks in a little more detail on this subject of conscience. He writes, for when Gentiles who do not have the law, that is they do not have the Ten Commandments, but they do instinctively the things of the law.

These people, that is, not having the law are a law to themselves in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them. So in other words, when a man lies and steals and fornicates and cheats and murders, he knows without ever having read the book of Exodus that says you shouldn't do those things, that he did something wrong. And so he seeks to excuse them. Well, he will never seek to excuse telling the truth. Now you need to understand why I told the truth I was pressured and because of that I decided to tell what actually, no, they don't do that.

You are pressured to explain the lie, right? Where did this sense of right and wrong come from? Where did this gnawing, turning in the stomach come from that goes all the way back to when you were little? God has written the law on our hearts, he says, and conscience is the voice that teaches the remote, tribal man and the sophisticated urbanite. You just did something wrong. Now the other form of revelation from God, in addition to general revelation, is special revelation. That happens to be the explicit communication of God to man.

You probably happen to have a copy of it on your lap. It's called the Bible. God's breath in words, his inspired special revelation called inspired scripture.

Now listen to this carefully. While general revelation allows mankind to be aware of there must be some God out there. Special revelation allows a man to worship God by introducing God to him. What that means is general revelation through creation and conscience is not sufficient to save a person. It is sufficient, according to Romans one, to render every person guilty and without what?

Without excuse. Paul will go on to say in verse 21 that in spite of general revelation, in spite of the fact that there is this wonderful creation, man still chooses to worship the creation rather than the creator. They still kneel down before a stump or a rock or the moon or a river or they're man-made gods rather than say there's got to be an infinite being out there and I want to know who he is.

No. He says that everyone is guilty because they have general revelation and they ignore it and they suppress and silence the voice of their conscience. So mankind then suppresses the truth of general revelation and what it reveals about this wonderful creator. They assault the truth as we'll see. They deny the truth. They resist the truth. And so men and women, whether or not they had a Bible, will be without excuse one day before God because they had creation and they had conscience and they denied them both. They were a law unto themselves and their own law found them guilty and sinful. But I also believe, ladies and gentlemen, that anybody anywhere in the world who sees creation and says there must be a creator, who hears conscience and says I am troubled by my guilt, I am convinced from Jeremiah's own promise that those who seek me will find me when they search for me with all their heart.

John MacArthur writes, no matter how little spiritual light a person may have, God guarantees that any person who sincerely seeks him will find him. And this is part of the mystery between divine election and mankind as a free moral agent. Now Paul makes it clearer, if you would like another passage, turn to Romans chapter 10, that we must have special revelation in addition to general revelation in order to be saved. And I make this point because the church at large today is denying this very foundational truth. They're saying that somebody out there in the remote wilderness who's never heard of Jesus Christ can be saved.

That isn't true. Paul says in Romans 1 they are without excuse because they deny creation and its creator and they suppress the truth of conscience. Now listen to what Paul says which gives us by the way the motive for missions. Romans 10, 13, whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. How then shall they call upon him in whom they've not believed? And how shall they believe in him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a messenger, a preacher? Look down at verse 17, so faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. In other words, faith comes on the heels of objective biblical truth and our passion for world missions emanates from our desire to serve as God's special agents in distributing all around the world this special revelation called God's word so that those who only know about God will know who he is and what the name of his son, our Savior is. Okay that takes care of our review. Now with that as our introduction let's go back to the original question we started with and the original question was will we ever get out of verse 18? No that was not the original question. We talked about how God reveals himself but Paul says in verse 18 that the wrath of God is constantly being revealed.

What does that mean? And how does God demonstrate and reveal his wrath to all of humanity? Let me very quickly give you a five-fold demonstration of God's wrath. Here's five ways he demonstrates his wrath. The first way God's holy anger is enacted or revealed is through civil punishment of sin or crime. In other words his anger is demonstrated when civil courts punish offenders. Romans 13 by the way will inform us that civil government is appointed by God to wield the sword.

Their role by God whether they believe in him or not is to wield the sword and bring justice to any community and woe is that community that instead of bringing justice and condemning and punishing crime instead rewards sin and punishes good, right? Which is the direction in which our culture is headed. Secondly, God punishes sinners and that wrath is revealed in this built-in tendency of moral evil to produce misery. Charles Hodge put it that way, I couldn't come up with a better way to say it. The tendency of moral evil to produce misery. It's a fascinating thought we don't have time to explore but suffice it to say that sinners do not find lasting ongoing continual satisfaction from sin.

When they pillow their head at night they're guilty and they're troubled and they're miserable. That's part of God's wrath. He has built it in so that those who sin without repentance are in misery because of it. Third, God demonstrates his displeasure through the voice of conscience.

We've talked about that. Fourth, God's wrath against sinners is found in the consequences of breaking God's laws. God the creator has established laws by which we're to abide and through which we find satisfaction and enjoyment. There are several fronts of his laws. One would be his physical laws. You break those physical laws and you will suffer consequences. Take for instance the law of gravity. If you break the law of gravity you will suffer the consequence in some fashion like the proverbial man who decided to fly by jumping from the roof of an office building 50 stories high.

He was heard announcing as he passed the open window on the 20th floor level, so far so good. Well eventually the law and the consequence of breaking the law will catch up to the way he's feeling. William Barkley wrote, you break the law of agriculture and your harvest fails. You break the laws of architecture and your building collapses.

You break the laws of health and your body suffers. The wrath of God is revealed when we break these certain laws and we pay the consequences because of them. There are also consequences to violating God's moral laws. Not only does he have physical laws, but he has moral laws.

One of those would be venereal diseases which are proliferating. Hundreds of thousands of people this year will contract a venereal disease and the world doesn't want to accept the message that God is in a sense through this wrath attempting to communicate a message. That he has designed a law and the law is one man and one woman and any time you go beyond that you run the risk of bearing one of these consequences.

The world doesn't understand it. In fact I remember writing down in my own memory this quote by an actress a few years ago who said, she was so frustrated, she said, it is infuriating to me that something so beautiful as too consenting adults results in disease. She has denied what God has built into his moral law. There are consequences to disobeying another form of law and this is spiritual law with physical law and moral law and spiritual law. The Bible says a lot of things that would fall into this category. Things like do not let the sun go down on your wrath.

What does that mean? Don't go to bed what? Don't go to bed angry. It says things like let all malice and bitterness be put away. It says things like love your neighbor as yourself.

It says things like forgive 70 times seven. These are not just wonderful little thoughts that if you'd like to apply them to your life things will get a little better. These are spiritual laws and when you violate them you bear in your body the consequences.

If you want to keep that grudge keep it but watch what will happen to you. Read the book of Proverbs and discover the physical and emotional consequences to things like envy and pride and bitterness and even stinginess. The truth is suffering follows sin. Finally God's wrath is revealed against sinful humanity through death. For the wages of sin is what? Is death. Therefore just as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin and so death spread to all men because all men have sinned Romans 5, 12 and 13. People say I'm not that bad I really haven't sinned.

We'll prove it if we'll wait just long enough because you're going to die. You will occupy a coffin thus proving that God's wrath is indeed a reality. So the constant ongoing demonstration of God's wrath can be observed in everything from disease to despair to death. Sometimes those things are agents of his will to godly people.

Most often they are agents of his wrath to disobedient people. Now God wants us to know through Paul's writings that his fury is not without focus. You look back at verse 18 of Romans 1 and he says it's directed against two things, ungodliness and unrighteousness.

Now I want you to follow this carefully. There are two different Greek words which have then two different meanings. The Greek word for ungodliness, asebia, normally refers to impiety toward God, that is rebellion against God. An ungodly person is at rebellion with God. But God's wrath is also revealed against unrighteousness, atakeia, that normally refers to mankind's rebellion against one another.

Now what our community has mixed up is that one is the source of the other. Ungodliness produces unrighteousness. In other words the lack of respect for God reveals itself in a lack of respect for other people. When we do not treat God right, we do not treat each other right. So the effects of ungodliness are seen in unrighteousness.

Let me illustrate it this way. The problem in our world is not racism. That isn't the problem.

That's the symptom. The problem is the rebellious heart of man against God. And because he is not rightly related with God, all these unrighteous things take place. And our world system is constantly insisting on people sitting down and coming up with ways to treat each other better when they haven't addressed the fundamental issue and that is how to treat God.

And until they discover how to treat God, they will never know how to treat each other. I think of one story very quickly. The story of a little girl named Helen Keller. She didn't have the ability to see, hear or speak. You've probably heard her story.

I can't imagine personally the horror of growing up in a dark, silent world as if put in a tight box or maybe locked away in a closet. And this is how she lived. But as you probably have heard, a woman by the name of Anne Mansfield Sullivan came into her life and began to persistently communicate with Helen Keller by pressing into her hand letters. She would form words with those letters and then she would get the object and put it into her hand. And she did that over and over and it would be interrupted at times when with Helen Keller's infuriated tantrums and frustration and anger out of her confusion. But Anne persisted. Finally, that one day came when there was a well with running water and Anne stuck Helen Keller's hand under that and while the water was gushing over her hand, she pressed in the word for water.

And it connected. After two years, this that she was feeling in her hand and these letters meant objective reality. And that created this avalanche of learning. Helen Keller, somebody told me after this second service, they'd read her biography just this past week and she'd learned six, seven languages.

But this began it. And so after much education by Anne, they finally had the alphabet down and many, many words. And then at that point, this is what you haven't heard, Anne Sullivan went and got a preacher. And that preacher came and through Anne dictated to Helen Keller the gospel of Jesus Christ. Her biographies revealed to us that while they were in the process of getting that gospel message to her that suddenly she broke into a smile and pressed back into Anne's hand the words, Oh, I've known about him for a long time. I just didn't know his name. What excuse do we have? Have you known about him?

You know his name? Have you believed? Seeing God's truth doesn't change the reality of it. It only deepens judgment, but God offers grace to those who seek him.

That was Stephen Davey and this is Wisdom for the Heart. Today's message is called Truth Imprisoned. We've created a tool that makes exploring the Bible easier and more meaningful. With this resource, you can search Stephen's teachings and get instant answers to your Bible related questions. Just visit our website, type in your question and receive a response drawn directly from Stephen's trusted teachings.

Unlike general internet searches, which may lead to unreliable information, our tool guarantees biblically sound answers every time. Whether you have deep theological questions or need practical advice, this tool is designed to meet your needs in seconds. Now, if you still prefer, you can email us your questions, but our tool offers instant answers without the wait.

It's simple to use. Just visit wisdomonline.org forward slash ask or click the blue icon on any page. Visit wisdomonline.org forward slash ask now. We appreciate you joining us for this time in God's word. Join us next time on Wisdom for the Hearts.