Our call to worship this morning comes from Psalm 100, verses 4 and 5. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name. For the Lord is good, his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations. We come now before the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come before you this day to worship you. and may we hear Your voice, that we may praise You, honor You, glorify Your name, that we may join together as one united, universal, apostolic body of Christ. Help our hearts and our minds to be joined together as we worship You this day. Lord, when You call us to a time of worship, we pray, Lord, greet us and welcome us into worship. We pray that by Your grace, Your grace would be multiplied in us. We pray Your mercy would overwhelm us and Your words of peace would assure us of the great love You have for us this day and every day. In Jesus' name, we do pray. And at this time, we join our hearts and our voices together to offer our prayer to You, our Heavenly Father. Our first scripture reading today will be Genesis chapter 6. verses 1-8, so if you'd please turn in your Bible to follow along. Genesis chapter 6, verses 1-8. And now, beloved of the Lord, hear the words of our Lord. When man began to multiply in the face of the land that daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. And the Lord said, my spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh. His days shall be 120 years. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward when the sons of God came into the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creepy things and birds of the heavens, for I'm sorry that I've made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Thus says the word of our Lord. If you'd open your Bibles to the book of Romans, we will be reading Romans chapter 1, verses 18 through 23. Romans chapter 1, verses 18 through 23. Come now before the Lord to hear his holy, inerrant, and inspired word. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived. ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made, so they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creepy things. Thus says the word of the Lord. Beloved of our Lord Jesus Christ, hopefully I can get through this message. I was just getting over a cold, but it seems to be coming back a little bit. But as a reminder, before we begin our look at our passage this morning, let me remind you of Paul's introduction to this great letter to the Romans. This great letter, which Paul writes concerning the Gospel of God. The Gospel of God promised through His prophets in Holy Scriptures. The Gospel of God concerning His Son, who descended from David, born of flesh, declared to be the Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by His resurrection from the dead. This great letter. the gospel of God concerning Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Let me remind you of the importance of what Paul wrote in chapter 1, verse 5. It is only through Christ we have received grace and apostleship. And to what end? In verse 5, to bring about the obedience of faith. obedience of faith and just to be certain we remember remember only by God's grace through saving faith we are justified and made obedient to the righteousness of God Paul repeats this great proclamation at the very end of this letter to the Romans Romans 1626 as Paul concludes this letter he writes we have to remember Now that the letters complete now that the gospel of God has been fully disclosed The gospel of God having first been disclosed through his prophets according to the plans and purposes decreed by God Once again to this end in Romans 16 26 To bring about the obedience of faith To this end the obedience of faith, which is to exercise faith, which is to believe, to heartily trust and believe the Gospel of God, worked in me by the Holy Spirit. Paul went on to conclude his introduction, just the introduction portion, by writing the great themes of this great epistle to the Romans, verse 16 and 17. For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. The Gospel, the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, Everyone who exercises true faith. That's what it means to believe. For in the gospel of God, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. True faith, saving faith. Faith, the conduit, the instrument by which God reveals not only His righteousness, but that our righteousness must come from God. Christ imputed righteousness. Covering our unrighteousness has to come from God. This was the very dilemma Martin Luther struggled with. He was in despair, miserable, angry with God. As he contemplated, how can I, a sinner, be declared righteous in the court of God? How can a righteous, holy God demand I be righteous? especially what God proclaims as we see in our passage, I cannot. In our passage today, God tells us we cannot make ourselves clean and righteous. Martin Luther knew that. He had certainly tried. All sinners need to know this. This is the revelation we all need as sinners found in our passage today. How can I, a sinner, be declared righteous in the court of God? And now beginning with our passage, as Paul writes to explain why it is we so desperately need the righteousness that comes from God. Our passage today declares the totality of the fallen condition of mankind, of all of mankind, throughout all of history. And it will continue until the end of time. That is prior to the return of Christ and the rebirth of creation, the new heavens, the new earth. Everything we need to know about the fallen state of humanity at any point in time, Summed up and proclaimed right here in this passage And there will only be one point from our passage today and that is all fallen mankind conceived in sin born in sin all Suppressed the truth with their unrighteousness Suppressing the truth It's not that we don't have the truth, but that we take what is true and suppress that truth in our unrighteous fallen nature Let's now look at this hopelessness, the hopelessness of our fallen humanity found in our passage today. Follow along with me in your Bible, verse 18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. The wrath of God. This is a very unpopular topic in today's modern liberal churches. Those churches who suppress the truth. Many professing Christians say they accept all of God's revelation. Yet they discard completely the wrath of God. Or mingle it, what is found in our passage today with unrighteousness. Yet, let me remind you here today, we're not to argue with the world concerning God's revelation. We're simply to proclaim it, announce it, warn the world concerning God's revelation. And here, in our passage today, we are to proclaim the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. And why is it so important to know about the wrath of God. Well, primarily, it's because you really cannot know the gospel without understanding the wrath of God. Well, as someone might ask, how has the wrath of God been revealed? To begin with, we must first note the wrath of God has been revealed from heaven. That is, with all the authority of God, God Himself has revealed His wrath and has made it abundantly plain and clear. There's no mystery concerning the wrath of God that must be revealed or waiting to be revealed. Further, Paul writes, and this is very important, we need to be sure to pick up on this. The wrath of God has been revealed. and is still being revealed, continually and ongoingly revealed from heaven. The wrath of God has been revealed in Scripture, and the wrath of God is ongoingly, continually revealed. I'll give you two examples. First, the wrath of God revealed in Scripture. This particular account found in Scripture appears to be the greatest demonstration of God's wrath, foreshadowing the end of time, the final judgment to come. I'm speaking of the account of the flood in Genesis. In Genesis 6, we're told the followers of God began to mingle with the ungodly. The sons of the godly found the daughters of the ungodly attractive and married them. They turned their backs on God. They joined the ungodly and became the ungodly as well. This led to a deteriorating morality and great wickedness. And God proclaims in Genesis 6-5, the passage we read this morning, the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. A great apostasy. A great turning away from God. Turning from godliness leads directly to severe moral decay wickedness God allowed this severe wickedness to continue to decay all of humanity Save Noah and his family To the point that God brought about the judgment of the flood After the flood God continued to reveal His wrath all throughout His historical narrative, the Old Testament. Looking back once again to our passage today, verse 18, notice that Paul has seemingly, purposefully written this word order in our passage today. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness. men Paul puts the word order as ungodliness first and then unrighteousness And we do find in our studies of scripture in history ungodliness leads to unrighteousness So goes the church so goes the world This is well attested throughout the the church age of When the visible church suppresses the truth of the gospel with unrighteousness, so follows the increasing wickedness of the culture, the world. However, thus far throughout the church age, each time, each time the visible church seems to be going off the rails, that is the visible church turning their back on God's revealed truth. denying doctrine, denying biblical truth, at least up through today, I don't know about tomorrow, when this has happened, when the church has gone off the rails, so to speak, God's great love, His benevolence, His mercy, His providence has unleashed revival, reformation, putting off the great and final apostasy that Paul writes of in 2 Thessalonians 2. There are many ways and many different times that God's wrath has been and is ongoingly being revealed from heaven. But the second one I will point out today is that the wrath of God against all ungodliness and unrighteousness is being revealed in our conscience. The fact is that all of mankind has a sense of right and wrong implanted by God. And further, all of mankind has a sense that evil should be punished. Well, that is until they are the one guilty of being evil. Then they don't think it's right to be punished. But anybody else, let's do it. But the point is that everybody has the sense of right and wrong, that evil should be punished, therefore It is revealed in our conscience, a conscience with the power to make life miserable. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven. God's just wrath. The great problem of fallen humanity, fallen mankind suppresses truth with their unrighteousness, suppresses the truth of what is truly evil in God's eyes with their own unrighteous definition of evil. An unrighteous definition of evil that exonerates oneself from wrath or simply the unrighteous suppression of the truth of God by attributing God to be a pure love with no possibility of wrath. Fallen mankind suppresses the truth in their fallen, unrighteous condition. Lost. What we lost is what God created man for. Lost is the ability to rightly know God and to heartily love Him. Lost. Spiritually dead. Paul continues to write verse 19 and 20. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world, and the things that have been made, so they are without excuse. It is absolutely clear, absolutely clear, in creation, in nature, in our very being, what can be known about God. We see it. We very much so understand there is a great and complex design in the world, in the universe, in ourselves. So complex, mankind cannot even comprehend the very width and breadth of it all, the entire scope of creation. Why? Because we suppress the truth with our unrighteousness. Instead of turning to God, fallen man dreams up, follows their own theories. Theory of a big bang. Theory of evolution. Theory after theory. And then looking ahead past our passage today, just a bit, Paul goes on to write in verse 25, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie. and worshiped and served the Creator rather than the creation. And how do you think Paul knew all this? All the things he writes here in our passage. It's because he is a first-hand expert witness to this very thing, this very truth. Paul was a first-hand witness to Scripture's teaching on total depravity, radical corruption, made perfectly clear in the scripture, Paul had memorized. And Paul was absolutely an expert witness concerning his own suppression of the truth. Remember, Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, set apart from birth Paul was gifted by God from birth with the capacity for great intelligence, wisdom, gifted with an ability to memorize great volumes. Quite possibly, Paul memorized the entire Jewish Old Testament. Having been taught at the feet of Gamaliel, trained up to be a Pharisee, Paul had a strong compassion, commitment to Jewish doctrine, tradition, God's statutes, ordinances, God's law. But Paul's understanding was according to Jewish scholars and teaching. Paul had a very zealous heart for a Jewish teaching of that day, so much so that he was dedicated to persecuting Christians. Paul knew scripture, had memorized scripture, knew the prophetic teachings of all the prophets concerning the Messiah. Yet Paul was convinced the emerging Christians were in error and took it upon himself as his duty to put a stop to the spreading of their teaching. It wasn't that Paul did not have the truth of God's special revelation, he had it memorized. God had gifted Paul and placed him at the feet of Gamaliel, preparing him for his true calling. There was one thing missing. And at the time, appointed by God on the road to Damascus to persecute Christians, Jesus met Paul. And the Holy Spirit worked true faith into Paul to Paul's heart and the righteous truth of God's Gospel, the righteous truth Paul had memorized, started to become clear. And as Paul wrote Galatians over the course of three years, Jesus made clear the righteous truth of the Gospel. Jesus made clear. The Holy Spirit worked within his heart the hearty trust of all that God has revealed in His Word making Paul the more zealous for the true Gospel of God. And now in this letter to the Romans in our passage, Paul understood. He understood the corrupt nature of fallen man, the corrupt nature of the Jews, his very own corrupt nature. A nature that suppresses the righteous truth of God's revelation. It's not that we're without the truth. is that we suppress the truth. Paul knew something was needed. The need for a changed nature. A changed nature was required to our fallen, corrupt nature before a sinner could believe the truth of God's gospel. Paul goes on to write, once again in our passage, verse 21, for although they knew God, They did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking. They knew. We all know God. But they, we, become futile in our own thinking as we become vain or empty of the righteous truth of God. In our thinking, How? By suppressing the truth with our unrighteousness. And not only that, when we suppress the truth with our fallen unrighteous nature, it not only empties us of the righteous truth of God, but also, end of verse 21, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Here we understand a perpetual spiraling down into a bottomless pit of ungodliness, leading to further depths of unrighteousness, moral decay, which increases our guilt and increases God's wrath. Brothers and sisters in Christ, we should never be surprised by the very depths of the moral decay of society we see today. But what we should be alerted to is something we touched on earlier. As the moral decay of society spirals further and further downward, we need to pay attention to what is going on in the church. Inquiring and observing, is the visible church going off the rails? And just maybe in addition to praying for society as a whole, We need to fix our unceasing prayers upon the church, praying for God's revival and reformation, especially when we know what God has revealed concerning the days before the flood and throughout history, knowing that as evil increases in society, in the world, the direct cause of an increasing societal decay Point us awaken us to a problematic church We need to be on our knees is unceasing prayer instead of argument We need to be a lighthouse of hope proclaiming the true gospel message Because that is exclusively exclusively Where the power of God for salvation is to be found? Everyone who believes it's not an argument You do not want to fall into the trap of arguments why why verse 22 Claiming to be wise they became fools While someone remains in their complete fallen condition they fully believe they are wise Being wise they are unteachable Something needs to be added. Saving faith. A change of nature. The power of the Gospel is needed. What is needed is the Holy Spirit to plant the kernel of true faith in the heart. Giving life. New life. Rebirth. Regeneration. And why? For all who Christ with His precious blood has fully satisfied for their sin and redeemed from the power of the devil. For all blessed by God's saving grace in order for the obedience of true faith, saving faith, that is to believe when that happens. When the Holy Spirit works that kernel of faith in our heart, then when we hear God's gospel with a circumcised heart, having the kernel of true faith, when the Holy Spirit works in our heart God's righteous truth. Jesus teaches about this in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5.3 Have you ever thought why does he say blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God? Why are the poor in spirit blessed? Because they have been humbled by the righteous truth of God. Matthew 5.4 Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted Why are those who are mourned blessed? Because they recognize they are dead without hope in the world. Matthew 5, 5. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Why are the meek blessed? Because they have been humbled, made teachable. Matthew 5, 6. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Why are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness blessed? Because their eyes have been opened and they have a love for God. They have been made obedient in their heart, soul, mind, and their will by true saving faith. But for those who remain unrighteous, those who only believe they are righteous, verse 23, and exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creepy things. You see, Paul, Paul fully understood. He fully understood what he was writing because he wrote about himself. He had been fully educated and trained as a Pharisee. Paul believed he was a righteous man. a righteous man who understood the truth of who God is and who the coming Messiah was to be. When Paul's eyes were opened on the road to Damascus, when Jesus met him face to face, when Paul heard the voice of Jesus, when the Holy Spirit worked within his heart new life, a new nature, Paul understood all along, that is, prior to God saving grace through saving faith, all along, all he could do, all anyone can do, is to suppress the truth in their unfallen and righteous nature. We're at the end of our passage for today, but let me conclude with this. Paul does not keep us in this hopelessness. In Romans 10, Paul writes this. So let me conclude with this. If you want to follow along, it's Romans 10, beginning of verse 8. Romans 10, verse 8. The Word is near you in your mouth and in your heart. That is the Word of faith that we proclaim. Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. where the scripture says everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. There is no distinction between Jew and Greek. For the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. We come now before the Lord in prayer. Almighty God, graciously grant that Your Word which we have heard may be inscribed inwardly on our hearts. Make us to be obedient to faith, to believe, and to heartily trust You, our Lord and our Savior. To believe and to heartily trust Your truth, Your Word, Your Word we have heard here today. Encourage us according to our mutual faith to walk in truth, to proclaim your truth, and compel us to pray unceasing for the body of Christ. Cause us to bear the fruit of the Spirit and to live in holiness, diligently following your commandments. Create in us that which is pleasing to your love. Make us to love you with all our heart all our soul and with all our mind and with all our strength to love our neighbor as ourself. We ask you, Lord, shine your light upon us that we may reflect and radiate your light, your love to the world. Use us to lead those who are lost, wandering, and confused into the way of truth so they may love you. Continue to bless us and protect us as we sojourn in this fallen world All this we pray for the honor and praise of your name Through Jesus Christ our Lord in the power of the Holy Spirit Amen