Trading Away the Truth

God's Word teaches us that all people, Christians and non-Christians alike, are religious by nature. We read in verse 25 the middle part that he worships and serves the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Man is incurably religious and so this tells us that man experiences a number of consequences by virtue of choosing the speculations he has concocted rather than the scripture which God has inspired.

mankind then loses or rejects a personal, loving, forgiving Lord. Since all people are religious by nature, they will either embrace the truth of God's Word and worship the Creator or they will reject God's truth and substitute God's truth for something else. Are people free to find their own truth? Is truth absolute or is it relative? Has God delivered unchanging truth about himself or is it acceptable for us to decide on our own what God is like and what he wants from us?

Relativism is certainly becoming increasingly common in our society. You likely know people who believe that what's true for you is not true for them. This is wisdom for the heart and in this message Stephen Davey gives us an absolute answer to all these questions. John Stott wrote some interesting words and he challenged me and I want to give them to you. He said this, If we come to the Bible with our minds made up expecting to hear from it only an echo of our own thoughts and never the thunderclap of God's then indeed he will not speak to us and we shall only be confirmed in our own prejudices. However we must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb us, to undermine our complacency and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior. This morning as we return to chapter 1 of the book of Romans we have already heard the thunderclap of God's truth and we have already discovered that mankind would rather not hear it at all. They would rather not hear from God and so they devise religions and systems and distractions to keep them from hearing the rumbling of God's truth in creation and in their conscience.

They have denied the authority and existence of a personal sovereign God. They don't want to believe in him because if they do they can't behave any way they want and they can't believe anything they want to believe. But in spite of their persistent denials of his voice the thunderclap of God's Spirit has still spoken through the Apostle Paul and we have taken a look carefully at chapter 1 thus far. And already he has told us beginning in verse 18 that the wrath of God has been revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Because that which is known about God Paul writes is evident within them for God made it evident to them forever since the creation of the world.

His invisible attributes that is his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God Paul writes they did not honor him as God or give thanks but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened professing themselves to be wise. They became morons. The Greek word is more on it. They became fools and exchanged in the process 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. Therefore verse 24 says that is on the basis of everything man has done in rejecting this creator God and denying him his honor and his due. Therefore on that basis we have read those chilling words God gave them over some translations read God gave them up.

Peredidomy is the Greek word used for those translations for God gave them over and we studied about seven weeks ago and that's how long it's been since we've been out of the book of Romans isn't it great to be back in the book of Romans. It talks about God's passive role and that God sort of lets man float away in his own ungodly rebellion knowing that a waterfall is ahead and man rushes over it and he is destroyed. But it is not only passive it is God's active role in that God literally fashions the boat and boards rebellious man on it and sends him down the river and he crashes over the waterfall and is destroyed. So this is a rather shocking word that reflects the character of God's holy judgment that will come and three times you read that phrase in verse 24 it appears God gave them over he gave them up and in fact he said you don't want a holy righteous God you want to ignore God then God will ignore you.

You want to reject God then God will reject you. He says here in verse 24 the price is paid no one escapes unharmed because of their rebellion. He says their bodies are dishonored among them the latter part of that verse.

In other words mankind and becomes users and abusers of one another. They simply treat each other as objects of selfish desire selfish longing and yet nothing satisfies intimacy is lost as men and women simply go from one high to the next from one toy to the next from one partner to the next from one spiritual experiment to the next never satisfied never fully contented. They fulfill the prophecy of Solomon who said the eyes of man are never satisfied. The second instance is in verse 26 for this reason God gave them over to degrading passions and he will go on and describe homosexuality and lesbianism and he will conclude in the last part of verse 27 what we'll look at only for today will reserve further discussion for the near future. He says they receive in their own persons the due penalty of their error that is they pay the price for rejecting relationships as God has designed them again in verse 28 and just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer.

God gave them over to a depraved mind to do those things which are not proper being filled with all unrighteousness and wickedness and greed and evil. So man then pays a price he pays the price of a life filled with spiritual wandering unhindered wickedness uninhibited perversion unable to relate to one another destroying themselves and each other. We began this particular series I quoted Robert Louis Stevenson who said every man shall one day be seated at a banquet table of consequences and it is true for what you have in the latter part of Romans chapter 1 is simply a description of what that banquet table looks like what is loaded upon it. And all the evil and vice and sin and its accompanying pain and disillusionment mankind has said God we want you to leave us alone and God does leave man alone and man pays the bitter price.

Now let's pick up where we left off a few weeks ago with some further commentary on why man reached the state of the digression that we will see laid out for us in the rest of this chapter and we'll get about halfway through your study notes for today. Romans chapter 1 verse 25 gives us further commentary on the nature of rebellious man it says for they exchanged the truth of God for a lie you could render that phrase they they traded they swapped out the truth for the lie. Definite article there indicates that this is reference to the lie what would the lie be I think you'd have to go all the way back to the garden where Satan first whispered the lie into the ear of Eve and said if you eat that fruit you will not die.

And God had said if you eat of the fruit of that tree you will surely what you will surely die. So the lie then is an attack on the word of God and the veracity the accuracy of his word and the enemy the underworld is still doing that to this day. The fundamental attack is still the authority the veracity the accuracy of God's word. It isn't so much that we do not know what God has said it's that we do not like what God has said. Some of the lies that come off of that original lie are these let's go through several of them quickly that one lie would be that truth is relative.

If there is no such thing as absolute truth obviously God's truth being the main target there then God's truth is merely one of many truths. I got in the mail yesterday a journal that I subscribe to and it gave the timeline of the educational system in America going all the way back to the days of the colonies. And it was interesting to read an illustration of how far we have come in our digression as a culture. This was passed in Massachusetts in 1647 1647 they passed an act called the old deluder act. It became the basis for publicly funded schools.

Here's what it says. The chief project of that old deluder Satan is to keep men from the knowledge of the scriptures. It is therefore ordered that every township of 50 households shall appoint one within their town to teach all of the children the scriptures. Can you imagine Massachusetts today coming anywhere near this or any state ordering all their public schools to teach children so they will be saved from the deluder and the delusion of the old deluder Satan. There is no absolute truth it is that absolute truth which introduces us to this one who brings delusion. A progressive step downward from that point is this additional lie. Salvation is universal and all religions are equal. That's religious relativism. One university student parroted the politically correct mantra of our culture in our day when he said it is okay for you to believe that you're right. But it's not okay for you to believe that I'm wrong. That's relativism. And it has basically been baptized into a religious system which today around the world says anybody can be right and the worst thing you could ever do is say by virtue of what I believe is right you must be wrong. If you want to believe in one true and living God great that's good for you that's true for you.

But if a Hindu wants to believe in 300 million gods then let him be that's true for him. One author I was reading was sitting next to a woman on an airplane. She was wearing a necklace with a cross around it and he leaned over and he said isn't our savior wonderful. And she said oh no she rolled her eyes and she said I don't I don't think of the cross like you do. And she showed him that beneath that cross was the Jewish star of David and beneath that was a trinket that symbolized the Hindu god Om.

She'd sort of covered all of her bases. She explained this to him I've discovered that people find God in different ways. Christianity is but one path to the divine and she went on to talk about how she preferred spirituality to religion. You talk to people on the street at work in school and that is basically the thought of our generation and our culture. There are more ways to this supreme being and we would really rather not talk about religion but we would prefer to talk about spirituality.

And by the way what do they really mean when they say that. What they mean is we're not following a creedal system. We have no objective system of truth. No outside of ourselves system of right and wrong. We're just going to concoct it.

We're going to make it up. We're going to put the pieces together and it's going to make us feel better and we're going to call it spiritual. So if I go to the lake and have a spiritual experience then that's good for me. If I go into the woods or if I hear some music or if I see something and that is a spiritual experience for me and I can call it that. Well the Bible says that the unbeliever is spiritually dead.

That is their spirit isn't alive that's quickened at conversion. Which means that an unbeliever by the way cannot have a spiritual experience. An emotional one.

A warm and fuzzy one. But not an experience of the spirit. You look at the internet sampling of spirituality and you find something for everyone. Web pages like spirituality for today.

Medical intuition. Jesuit spirituality. Native American spirituality. Transgender spirituality. Spirit tools for a new age. Where they discuss things like pyramids and wands and daggers and pendulums.

Sounds like best selling books for kids. Spirituality and health. The inner self magazine.

Psychotherapy and spirituality. A man by the name of Andrew Walker I think summed it up very well. For the unbelievers position when he said this. We are no longer swayed by one religion only.

Many kinds are for sale and compete for our attention. We the consumer are completely free. That is the lie of the old deluder. Who says reject God and have freedom.

The Bible says reject God and be enslaved forever. I came across an illustration a few days ago of pluralism. Texas oil heiress Genevieve Vaughn and her husband visited Egypt. And they came across a few years ago a statue of Sekhmet. Which was the Egyptian goddess of fertility.

They had been struggling to have a baby and she made a vow before that idol. She said later I said if the fertility goddess of Sekhmet could help me conceive I would build a temple in her honor. So in the mid 1990s the temple was completed. Built in Nevada by an all female construction crew. The temple encloses statues of goddesses. And in the center the idol of Sekhmet. There is also a full time priestess who leads weekly rituals for visitors.

Many who drive in for major holidays. Now by the way I want you to understand. I expect people to do that.

And so should you. That is the way of the world as they follow their wandering souls about. If those people are right though and there are many paths to God. Then Jesus Christ himself was deceived. For he said I am the way. I am the truth.

And I am the life. No one in the original construction it means no not even one. Comes to the father but by me. He was deceived.

Wasn't he? And the apostles who preached in his name were deceived. As they said in Acts 4 12 there is salvation and no one else.

For there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. They were deceived. There are either many ways. Or as we see in his word one way.

Where are people coming up with this stuff then. Paul already answered that in verse 21 of Romans chapter 1. For even though they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks. They knew intuitively by virtue of creation they saw and conscience within that a creator existed. But they did not honor him. They did not thank him for creation. But they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened.

Another lie is this. That judgment is nonexistent. Obviously if truth isn't absolute it is relative and you can't be judged for anything you believe because you're not wrong for anything you believe. So judgment is something done away with. Have you noticed when you talk to most people though that most people believe in a literal heaven.

But those same people do not believe in a literal hell. Which is a rather convenient religion to hold to. Paul preached to the Athenians. The Roman conquerors of Greece said of Athens that in Athens it was easier to find a God than a man.

There were statues everywhere. Do you remember how Paul introduced them to the unknown God. They had a statue and on it was inscripted to the unknown God.

They were afraid they'd leave one out. And so Paul shows up and before the philosophers in that community he preaches a sermon introducing them to the unknown God. Giving him a name. Jesus Christ. When he ends his sermon he delivers this stunning conclusion. He says God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent. Because he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness. I will say further comments on the subject of hell for this summer series.

I will purposefully turn off the air conditioners for full effect. Another lie is that man evolved as well that God is uninvolved. No other lie ladies and gentlemen in the past generation and the prior two have so influenced the thinking of our culture.

No other view I believe has perhaps done as much damage in assaulting the character of God. And the authority of God's word than evolution. Man by the name of Stephen Jay Gould wrote in his book entitled Wonderful Life which is ironic. Said this there is nothing predestined about our current preeminence among large terrestrial fauna. We are the product of a whole series of contingent events in the history of our planet.

Any one of which could have been reversed to give rise to a different outcome. We are in short like every other creature that ever walked or slithered across the earth. We are an accident.

We were lucky. What does God say? In John 1 the word of God says in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God all things came into being through him. And apart from him nothing came into being that came into being.

Whenever the Bible repeats itself it wants to make sure we get it. Nothing came into being apart from him that came into being. What does the Bible say? Hebrews 1 God after he spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways. In these last days has spoken to us in his son whom he appointed heir of all things through whom he made the world.

Genesis 5 this is the book of the generations of Adam in the day when God created man. He made him in the likeness of God he created them male and female and he blessed them and named them Adam in the day when they were created. You hear it created created created. You say well maybe God did create the world but he just sort of started it out he put the stuff in the puddle and it evolved from there. Or maybe he brought about the bang and then he walked away and left it to evolve over billions of years.

Doesn't that seem to be what the record of what we see would indicate that this is an old universe. Once again scripture does not allow for it in Mark chapter 10 verse 6 Jesus Christ said but from the beginning of creation God made them male and female. In other words ladies and gentlemen when creation occurred those first six days as we're told in Genesis at that time he created male and female. It wasn't that he created something and hundreds of millions of years later a man and a woman came to the scene.

No it was at that point in time. Let's look brief rather briefly at the record of God's word go back to Genesis chapter 2 and let's find out what God said in verse 7. Genesis chapter 2 verse 7 then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground.

Now by the way I've heard some really wild speculations but I got to tell you I would never come up with this one. This is really bizarre that God gathered some dirt and created man and then he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being. By the way the record of scripture tells us that God created this plethora of animals and we'll talk about it next Lord's Day because we won't get to it today. But with man he bent over him as it were and he breathed into him this eternal soul this immortal spirit. Look down to verse 21 okay he forms man from the dirt in a moment of time now he takes a little longer a few more minutes. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept and then he took one of his ribs. I would never come up with this and closed up the flesh at that place and the Lord God fashioned same word translated in the prior verse formed. This one literally means sculptured he sculptured a woman from the rib which he had taken from the man and brought her to the man and the man said this is now bone of my bones. No ladies and gentlemen I think that's what Adam said a little later after he caught his breath.

The first thing I think he said was Shazam or something like that. Probably not in the Hebrew there but if you read between the lines. What you have in the record of scripture that is a fully developed man and a fully developed woman at a point in time where by looking at them you would think now that took about 30 years to get that way. No this happened in a moment of time. Genesis chapter 1 also records that the trees were created already bearing fruit ready to eat.

The stars were already created from the perspective of earth with their light beams reaching earth even though millions and millions of light years away God supernaturally took their reflection and brought it to earth immediately. You have a fully mature system created in a moment of time. When Adam by the way woke up woke up from his sleep he wasn't introduced to a little baby girl. He was introduced to a grown woman and if he had asked Eve the unforgivable question how old are you she could have said about 30 seconds.

And if she had responded by saying how old are you he could have said oh a few hours. Thus making Eve the first woman married to a much older man. What might appear to have taken years to develop would have taken a matter of seconds. Time is nothing to God.

One of the affront of things of evolution is that it reduces God to have to operate in time and space so that we can figure him out. You remember how Jesus Christ though shattered that? You remember in the garden when Judas and the mob was coming to arrest Jesus and they came approaching them and Peter decided to act with boldness and courage a little less with accuracy and he pulled out that sword. You remember it proving he was a fisherman not a swordsman and he came down with that sword and that high priest servant ducked or moved away and it caught him on the ear and it sliced his ear off.

I imagine people wondered what in the world they were going to do next. Jesus however went over and he picked up the ear and he walked over to the high priest servant and you remember he stitched it on with about half a dozen stitches and then he told him come back in about two weeks and I'll take the stitches out. You remember that story?

What did he do? He walked over and he put the ear back on. No time for healing. No stitches.

I don't even think there was a headache. Nothing. It just happened like that. Proving he is not bound by time. So you can calculate all you want. You can say well this proves that. But the word of God says that he created a universe already in full operation. So evolution rejects clear scripture. It restricts God's power. And thirdly it forfeits true worship. Think of how many times in the Psalms how many songs you'd have to cut out of your Bible.

If you took out the Psalms where David is praising God for the Creator that God is in fact your Bible would be reduced dramatically if you took out all of the passages that relate it to God as Creator. Now according to Paul mankind in Romans chapter 1 if you'll go back there chooses to swap the truth of God's word for his own speculations. We read in verse 25 the middle parts and he worships and serves the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Man is incurably religious.

Man has to worship something if not himself. And so this tells us that man experiences a number of consequences by virtue of choosing the speculations he has concocted rather than the scripture which God has inspired. mankind then loses or rejects a personal loving forgiving Lord. You reject God my friend and you reject the Savior. You reject the Savior and you reject the forgiveness of sin that he offers. You reject the forgiveness of sin and you are then left in your sin to wander in darkness burdened with your sin you lose peace of mind and you lose true freedom. Choose yourself and your speculations and you live enslaved.

Choose Christ and you become free unto him. That's certainly our commitment here at Wisdom for the Heart. Stephen's commitment is to faithfully and accurately teach God's Word so that you can apply it properly to your life. If you're a regular listener we're glad to have you in the Wisdom family. If not I hope you continue to tune in at this same time each weekday for these daily Bible lessons. You can learn more about our ministry at our website which is wisdomonline.org. Thanks for joining us today. We look forward to having you with us tomorrow on Wisdom for the Heart. God bless you.