Romans 1 and verse number 21. It says, "...because when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were they thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened." Let us pray. Father, we thank You and praise You, God, for all that You do. We pray that You watch over us, help us to serve You. I pray, God, that You would help us, Lord, just to be faithful. And I pray, God, that You would just speak to us through this message, Lord, and stir our hearts. We ask it in Your Son, Jesus' name. Amen. Now we saw last week that not giving God the glory is the catalyst, the thing that creates everything else in the rest of this chapter. So when he talks about the next part about them glorifying the creature more than the Creator and how that men will be drawn into idolatry when they don't glorify God, That's the first step we saw. We saw also that men will be given over to a reprobate mind so that God doesn't deal with them about the things that they're doing. We see also that when men go down this path that they will find themselves going into sins which we can hardly imagine sometimes. And we saw that this is the starting point for that. And that's why it's the transition point in the chapter now. Where up until now we've been looking at some other things, now we're looking at what happens. How does a society become so spiritually bankrupt and corrupt like they often are? How does sin, like what we see in the list below, how does it become so rampant and accepted so that society proclaims that to be normal while a family, a home, serving God, living a moral, decent life, somehow become the strange thing. How does that happen? And it begins, according to God, with not giving God the glory. That people who, their conscious, the universe around them, all these things we've been talking about for weeks now, when those things declared to them clearly that there is a God, They preach to them the power of God, they preach to them who God is as a person, all of that kind of stuff, and that person walks away from that and refuses to give God the glory, that's the point in the heart that leads to this depravity in a society, by first leading to it in the individual, then into the homes, then into society. So that's how you get this, because again, The comparisons going on from chapter 1 to 2 to 3 is, why are the Gentiles so wicked? Why are the Jews so wicked? Why is everybody so wicked? So chapter 1 is now answering the question, how do you have the culture like what was prominent in their day? I mean, he's writing to the church at Rome. And so I think many people make the mistake of we'll read what comes after this and we'll think, oh, see, this is the description of the last times and how wicked and evil men will be. But no, this is the description of what Rome was like when they were living. This is what it was like in their day. He's writing to them about their culture and their society, where they lived. Now, it's interesting that there's a lot of parallels between that and what he says about the last times and what it'll be like in the last days. But understand that he's not writing them about something that had never happened on the earth. He's writing to them about the day and age they lived in in their society and asking them to consider how could Rome be so evil? How could it be so wicked that for entertainment, Men would be paraded into a coliseum and forced to fight to the death. How could it be so wicked that the family in the home would be just about abolished? And grown men, it would be typical for them to have a young man to take their lust out on. I'll say it that way for the sake of all the children in the room. How could something like that happen in a place that's supposed to be so enlightened and so educated as Rome? And so that's what chapter one is dealing with. And you find the beginning point is they did not give God the glory. They did not glorify him and recognize him as the God that he is, but put him on a level equal to many idols and other things, to their own philosophies or their own ideologies. But while that's pretty straightforward and most anybody would understand that, that rejecting God is the moment when a society or an individual starts to go this direction, what most of us would fail to ever understand is that being unthankful is right up there on the list just below giving God the glory. He says they did not give God the glory and that's what began this process. But one step removed, one thing right below that on the list is they were not thankful to God. They did not appreciate the things that God had done for them. They did not see that it was God who had allowed them to exist on this earth, who had allowed them to reach such great lofty heights, to build the empire they had built, to have all the things that they had. They said, we did that in our own strength. And so it was easy for them to ignore God because they didn't give Him the glory and they did not thank Him for what He had done. They did not appreciate any of that. And so that's why I think this is a great follow-up to this morning's message when we talk about testing God, or tempting God, by looking at this and understanding that when we fail to be thankful, When you and I do not appreciate what God is doing and has done in our lives, we start to go down a path that you cannot imagine where it will end at. Because, again, the point of Romans 1 and 2, comparing them together, is He builds up this whole thing of how could the Roman Empire be like this? How could the city of Rome and all these people do the wicked things that they do, and then immediately begin chapter 2 by saying, you do some of these same things. You Jews who have the Word of God, who have every reason to know the truth, who have been taught from the time you were born about the God of heaven and what His Word says, you also do a lot of this same stuff. So who are you to judge them? That's how chapter 2 begins. And he proceeds to spend the rest of the chapter talking to them about how they could become so evil and so morally bankrupt just like the Romans did. So the whole point of this passage is for you and I as believers to realize, okay, there's a reason why the world is so wicked. There's a reason why if we're not careful, we can become just as wicked. And the answer in chapter 3 is because all men by nature are sinners. And if we don't get our heart right with God, and that's not just in regards to salvation, but in terms of how you live after you're saved, you run a risk of going down the same path of all these evil things we're getting ready to talk about. That doesn't mean you'll do everything on this list. That doesn't mean anybody's done everything on this list. That's not the point of the list. The point of the list is to give examples of all these grave sins and show you how people who don't have the Word of God readily available to them could do it, and how much more tragic is it that people that have the Word of God readily available to them could also do it. But the answer is because people are sinners by nature. And so for you, you run a risk of not giving God the glory. You have the ability to do that in your life. To take for granted the things that God does and not be thankful, but also to not give Him the glory. to not see who He really is and appreciate Him for the God that He is many times. But where I feel you're far more likely to fail between those two things as an individual, as a Christian, is by not being thankful. by taking for granted all that God has done. You see, you're so used to waking up every morning with a heart that's beating and blood pumping through your veins that you forget to be thankful to God that you have that. That's why I appreciate that several of the praises given in the time were people thanking God just to still be here this year. because of things that they have been through in the past year. But you understand, you appreciate that only because you saw the risk of losing it. The rest of us, if you're healthy, you're well, you don't see that. The teenagers don't think about what happens tomorrow if my knee goes out, if my back's gone, if I can't walk, because you think you're invincible. You think nothing can ever happen to you. A lot of men who've worked, most of us now apparently have knee problems in this church. So we begin to realize that we're not invincible and that we can't just do whatever we want to. But the thing is, many have made it half of a lifetime without ever realizing that. And the people in this room who are thankful to be alive this year, as opposed to anything else that they could have put on the list, are the people who came the closest to having to face the reality that you're not promised tomorrow. That God said, boast not thyself tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. Everybody had something they were thankful for. Some were because of work, some were because of family, some were because of life itself. But that's my point, is so many times we're just used to the idea that you get married, you have kids, you have a family, that we forget that that's not promised. God designed that into humankind, that we have the ability to reproduce. It's within us. But that doesn't mean that every couple, just because you get married, suddenly you're going to start having children and you're going to have a full home and all of that. There's plenty of people in this world who cannot do that. And there's people in this world who have had to fight hard just to be able to do that. And so we take that for granted. There's plenty of people who cannot get up tomorrow and go to work because they don't have the physical ability or they just don't have the job to go to. And yet everybody in this room tomorrow, for the most part, is going to be going to work or you're going to be supporting your spouse while they go to work. Or you're a child and you're just enjoying your time off from school and you're thankful that you have a few more weeks before you have to get up early and go somewhere. But the point is, everybody, we take for granted how truly blessed we are to have that. In fact, one of the great tragedies, I think, in a country like this is that we are so blessed that most of us don't really appreciate how blessed we are. And sadly, it's easy for me to pick on the people who grew up here, the ones who are Belgian and Belgian-ish. You know from across the border taking advantage of the country and all of that It's easy for me to pick on them because of course they grew up here their whole life They've they've not necessarily had the opportunity to taste poverty or any of that kind of stuff That doesn't mean they've not had hardship. They've lost family. They've lost loved ones. They've been through some hard things I'm just talking about like poverty most of them have never faced anything that even smells like poverty in this life because you can't find it in Belgium and The homeless person in Belgium living on the street is better off to do than most people living in a third world country. I mean you understand Belgium is a very blessed country when it comes to your ability to live. But the sad thing is some of you come from some of those countries wherein people don't have that, but you've been here long enough, you've already started to lose the taste for what it used to be like. You've stopped appreciating just how far God has brought you from. And I won't speak to everybody, but I can speak to my wife's family as Romanians. I know for sure that it's easy to get spoiled to the country here and the blessings you have to have a car to be able to get to church and forget about the days where you had to walk for hours to get to church. to always have food on the table and forget about the days where you were digging for scraps or sneaking in the neighbor's tree to borrow some cherries and heavy on the word borrow there. But many people forget what that's like. Just coming back from visiting Lebanon, it's easy to forget what it's like to live in a country where you live in Brussels, so you do have to maybe be a little bit careful not to get robbed, but in general, it's pretty safe here. You don't have to worry about a bomb dropping and shutting down the airport, or your family being severely hurt in some way. If you've come to get, then you wouldn't have to worry about any of that. You could just leave your door unlocked at night, leave the windows open, let the children play in the street. You'd be fine. It's peaceful here. You just chose Brussels. But the thing is, it's easy to forget that until something comes along to remind you that it wasn't always that way. I mean, I come from the country where people are so proud and arrogant that they think they come from the land of opportunity, Maybe it's because I come from what used to be or maybe still is the seventh poorest city in the entire country. I have never had as much opportunity as available to me as what I have living here. Like in the US, I could never have got a job that would pay what I could get here, never have the benefits I would have here. I would never have had the comfort or standard of living that I can have here. And I make a very small salary compared to the average person. I mean, people cleaning toilets here probably make more than I do. And I still live better than I ever could have in the United States. where I was from. I won't speak for the entire country. It's a very big country. But it's easy for me to forget that and take that for granted sometimes. It's easy for me not to appreciate just how truly good we have it in terms of safety, provision, health, benefits, all this stuff. I mean, you get a vacation guaranteed to you. I've never like at this point, I still don't have that because church doesn't allow me to take vacations. They persecute me if I take a day off, if I take I'm supposed to take off on Monday. And if I take off on Monday, then something blows up and I have to spend the whole day on the phone. Last time my mom was here on Monday, I spent the whole day on the phone dealing with the person coming in the church trying to make trouble. So I'm not allowed to have one. But you get a whole month. And where I'm from, you have to work five years to get a week, 10 years to get to. You understand that. It's truly amazing what you have here. The kings of the past did not live with the comforts that you have today. There's no king who got to set it home with an air conditioner or a fan blowing on him. He had to have one of his servants come and do that for him because he didn't just get to plug a fan in the wall and set. He didn't get to sit on his phone and read the news and play or play games or any of that kind of stuff. The greatest, most wealthiest men in the world at the time this Bible was being written had no comfort compared to the lowest comforts you have in this life. Just being able to go to take a shower, have running water, have a refrigerator with all your stuff in it, not having to spend half a day just figuring out what you're going to eat today. I mean, you understand that the comfort you have, kings in the past never knew anything like that. You live in a day and an age and in a country where the blessings are beyond measurement for you in terms of just physical comforts. We're not even talking about spiritual things. We're not even getting into things like in terms of the peace that God gives you. We're not talking about anything in comparison to the fact that you can go home as a Christian and lay your head down tonight, that even when those other things come at risk and they're at jeopardy, that maybe tomorrow you don't have safety. Maybe tomorrow you don't have food. Maybe tomorrow you don't have your health. Maybe you don't have your job tomorrow. All that stuff can disappear. I understand that. But you understand as a Christian, like I'm talking about blessings that lost people can have up to this point, but just by living here in such a comfortable place. But as a Christian, you can go home and lay your head down tonight knowing that no matter any of that, regardless of the fact that you cannot boast thyself of tomorrow, you can lay down in peace and sleep in peace tonight. You can have joy in the greatest hardship that could ever be faced. You can lose the person you care most about upon the face of this earth tomorrow. And deep down in your heart, there can be a peace that passeth all understanding. There can be joy even when standing beside the gravesite. And there is hope that this world does not even begin to understand. Why do you think people play the lottery and all this stuff is because by spending that one euro and buying that ticket for one moment, they get to manufacture something that feels a little bit like hope. that just maybe I can hit this and all my dreams will come true. And they're here paying for it like it's some kind of drug, just trying to get a cheap imitation of something that God offers you freely if you put your trust in Him. And we don't appreciate that. We don't genuinely and truly appreciate most anything I've named today. And I'm not picking on you. I'm talking about all of us. I'm talking about myself included when I say that. that God has been good to you beyond any measurement that you could possibly apply. He will far exceed any of them. And yet we don't really appreciate it. We don't go home tonight with a great overwhelming sense of gratitude and thankfulness. And we're here at the point where every one of us is far closer at risk than we think we are to going down a path like this where we stop appreciating what God has done and we start taking Him for granted. And little by little we start testing God and tempting Him and letting sin come into our life exactly like what's explained throughout the rest of this chapter. So you cannot begin to imagine how dangerous it is to not be thankful. Because God says, I know in your mind, in my mind too, it's hard maybe to process how it goes from unthankful to, you know, all these things that's going to be named. You know, murder, debate, deceit, malignant, whispers, back biters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, impeccable, unmerciful. Like, how do you go from, I just don't really appreciate everything God's doing, to that? Murder was on that list just now. It's a pretty outstanding list that He just gave us, but according to God, not giving Him the glory and not being thankful is where that begins. And it's especially true because you and I know very well who He is, and yet we still don't give Him the glory that He so rightly deserves. So today, saying that, I want to encourage you in this to understand that God warns, and this is where I say there are comparisons between this and things He says about the last days. God warns in 2 Timothy chapter 3, 2 Timothy chapter number 3, verse 1 and 2, what it's going to be like in the last days. He warns us about it, and you'll notice it's very similar to what I just read to you. 2 Timothy chapter 3 verse 1 and verse 2. It says, This know also that in the last days perilous times shall come. So it's going to be very dangerous is what he's saying. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, and unholy. That's just part of the list. You can keep going. But God's telling you that it's not just going to be like that was what the Roman Empire was like and then it passes away. No. As time goes on, it's going to get worse. We're going to see this thing coming back more and more. The men have less time for God. They care less about Him. They become lovers of themselves. They're unthankful. They're unmerciful. All these things that God tells us to be, they cease to be that. So God warned you that this is a problem for the day and age you're living in. that you have to be careful about this because it's going to come back in a very big way that we'll see it get worse and worse as time goes on. And God gives us a few stories. We referenced Deuteronomy 6 this morning when we talked about the fact that He told Israel that they're going to be coming into a land that they have not worked for, they have not done really anything for this. They went in and they fought and that's it. But even God gave them victory over their enemies. They barely had to fight when you actually look at how many people they defeated versus how many of them were defeated. It was unlike any war you could ever read about. And you see them coming into this land, and God's warning them to make sure you teach these things to your children. Make sure you're instructing them and preparing them and getting the next generation ready, because if not, they're going to forget God. And this is what we're beginning to see where these two ideas come together, is Deuteronomy 6 is showing you how the idea that not glorifying God and not being thankful will lead you into these kind of sins. Because He's telling them that the moment you get into this land of comfort, this land where you have food and shelter, and you don't have to live in the wilderness in a tent anymore, and you don't have to go through any more hardships, you're going to start to forget God. Because the reason you remembered God, the reason you remembered to pray this day for my daily bread, is because you didn't have bread. You didn't have something to ask for. I'm not talking about them, I'm not talking about the head man, I'm talking about you. The reason why you remember to ask God to meet a need today is because you didn't have it. But when every day you get up and the cabinets are full, they're stocked and you don't have to worry about that and there's money in the bank and you don't have to worry about that, little by little you start to forget God and you don't give Him the glory and you don't appreciate Him and little by little you start to live for yourself and become a lover of self and all these things that He's warning about. So the path is actually more clear than we think it is. that comfort destroys us. God wants you to learn how to be content with much or with little. God commands you to learn how to be content with much or with little, whether you abound or abase. He said, either one, you are to be content in whatsoever state you're in. But the thing is, if you can't learn how to be content, then what will happen is that when God blesses you and answers all your prayers, you'll get to where you don't appreciate that. God will give you things that you could have never gotten in your own strength and we'll sit here and we'll take it for granted and we'll not appreciate it. We may half-heartedly say thank you for it because, you know, the preacher said I have to say thank you for something. We may half-heartedly appreciate it, but truly deep down inside you don't appreciate it because you don't have to fight for it anymore. You don't have to ask for it anymore. You already have it. And that's why, if I'm being honest, there's probably nobody in this room who has genuinely had to get down on their hands and knees in the past year and say, Lord, give me this day my daily bread. There's nobody who's had to beg God to give them food to eat because you've not went a day where there wasn't food in the cabinets or you had money to buy it or something. Now, I may be wrong about you. There may be somebody in this room who has struggled that much, and I just don't know what's going on in your life enough. But in general, nobody has reached that point. You may have had times where you didn't have money to buy all the extra comforts and all the extra clothes and all the extra stuff you wanted, but to actually have to get down and beg God to give me food tomorrow because I don't know where it's coming from, most people in this room have not experienced that in maybe as much as a decade. Some have never experienced it in their whole life. I've had that in the past, some when I was young, but I haven't experienced that in probably more than a decade of my life. I've not experienced having a moment where I'm not sure if there's going to be food to feed my children, if I'm going to be able to provide for my wife. I've not experienced that in so long. I've got to where I take for granted just how blessed I am that I don't have to worry about that. Because I guarantee some of you have family who still worry about that every day. I guarantee some of you still have friends and people you care about that they still worry about that every day. Every day they wake up not knowing where the next meal is going to come from. Every day they wake up not knowing if they're going to be able to continue to have a shelter over their family. And I'm not trying to make you feel bad because you have something they don't. I'm trying to remind you to appreciate that God has given you such great blessings in this life. Because I don't want you to think that the measurement of God's blessing is material gain. 1 Timothy 6 tells us that if a preacher starts preaching that nonsense to you, you shut him off and get away from him. That he's not a man of God if he's going to get up and tell you that the proof of godliness is gain. I'm not telling you that. I'm telling you whatever God has given you to appreciate that. If God's given you material blessing, appreciate that. If God's given you safety, appreciate that. If all you have tonight is the ability to lay your head down on a stone under a tent in the middle of a desert and you don't even know where your next meal is coming from, you have to learn how to be thankful to God or else you are going to go down into this path that's laid out before. It's a lot easier for you to learn how to be thankful than it is to go down that path, but most people will never do it because they've never had enough poverty to have to be thankful. And that's why this is so dangerous to us. And he's warning like Israel knew the poverty before they felt the wealth. But and some of you come from places where you have, but your children have never known the poverty. They've never known what it's like to live in the hunger or without everything they want. I mean, you've got kids, you grew up not even having a TV in the house, some of you, because your family couldn't afford something like that. And you've got kids with TVs in their bedrooms, phones in their pockets, game systems in every corner, and you don't, you wonder how they get spoiled. Like, you think about that. They've never had to be without, they've never had to be told no, they've never had to suffer in any meaningful way to build any character. Honestly, sometimes the worst thing we do for our children is trying to make sure they have more than we had. I'm not telling you, some of you, they need to have more than what you had because you didn't have the basic necessities of life. I'm not telling you to starve them to death just because you had to starve when you were a child. Lori thinks that if she had to suffer, then they should have to suffer. If she has to pick potatoes till her fingers bleed, they should have to go pick potatoes till their fingers bleed. That's not how it works. It doesn't have to be fair. That's not how life is. In fact, the first curse word in our house is fair. But I'm going to tell you, it doesn't have to be fair, but you don't need to spoil them. Because you may not run the risk of forgetting God like Israel did. That first generation didn't forget Him, it was their children. Because the children grew up never having tasted the wilderness. They grew up never knowing what it was like to have to trust God to meet the needs. And I'm not asking you just for yourself to think about this. You may be able to make it a lifetime on what little thankfulness you have or how great thankfulness you have. But are you going to be able to raise children who can thank God on the current path you're on right now? who when you're gone and you're not here to drag them kicking and screaming and make them appreciate what God has done, are they going to do it on their own? You have to think about the path that you're laying out before them. It's not just your path. It's your family's path. It's the next generation and the generation after that. As you understand, sometimes it took the third generation before people truly saw the fruit of what their decisions did. You saw people who did not treat God's house properly and did not give it the priority to reserve. They were fine the rest of their life. Their children didn't hate God. They just didn't really have anything for Him. It was the grandchild who come along and nailed the door shut and said, nobody's going to go worship God anymore. The consequences of your actions will not be seen in this generation. but the wisdom and prudence to see that you have to teach your children how to be thankful, you can have in this generation. You can make that decision now, or else you'll go the route that Israel did in Deuteronomy 6. And I would give you this from Luke 17. We talked about this passage a couple years ago, I guess, for Thanksgiving. Luke 17, 11 through 19. You have there the ten lepers who come to Jesus, who honestly you can see from the beginning of their story that they're probably not fully interested in what God wants them to do, because the law already told them what to do, to go to the priest and get cleansed. But when He heals them and He tells them to go to the priest and do everything right according to the Word of God the way they were supposed to have done it in the first place, those men walk off. Nine of them go away seeing that they're healed, knowing that Jesus has healed them. They don't even need to go to the priest. They walk away not caring. They never go back. It's only the one. And Jesus looks at him and says, where are the nine? And he says, the only one of that whole group that was willing to give God the glory for what he had done, the only one who was thankful enough to glorify God was that one Samaritan who just happened to be mixed into the group. You live in a world where the vast majority of people do not appreciate what God is doing or going to do, and I cannot change everybody. But you have to look at yourself and ask, are you the nine or are you the one? Are you the one who's going to thank God for everything He's doing? Are you going to continue along like the rest of the world is as part of the nine? Who God has met your needs, He saved your soul, He rescued you from hell, He's given you peace and blessings beyond anything you can imagine, but instead of turning back and giving Him the glory and thanking Him, you've walked on having got what you wanted and not needing Him anymore. That's the question you have to ask for you and for your children. And I have a whole list of verses I'm not going to get into about being thankful in every situation. I'll just give you 1 Thessalonians 5.18 where we read it even I think last week on Sunday morning, that in everything we're to give thanks to God for this is the will of God concerning you. Now, I would also throw out there, you can look it up yourself, Ephesians 5.20, that we're to give thanks always for all things unto God. Colossians 3.15-17 says almost the same thing. Ephesians 5.3-4 says, but rather give, tells us in everything, but to rather give thanks unto God. So, there's a list of verses. We could keep going more beyond that. But I just want you to consider this, that God says it is His will for you. Like, you don't have to go home and pray, is it the will of God? Is this something God really wants me to do? You can sit here right now in this room and know that God wants you to give thanks no matter what situation you're going through. You're sick, you're suffering, you've lost your job, you're facing death, your health has failed you, whatever it is, good or bad, no matter what, God says that you should be here thanking Him. So as we get ready to close out this service, I'm not asking you if it's God's will for you to come to the altar and pray. We didn't have a prayer time in the service like we normally would, where we take five minutes out and gather at the altar and pray. We didn't do that in the service. But we're going to take some time now. And so as Laurie's going to come and play softly at the piano, I'm not going to sing a song of invitation. I'm going to ask you, did you thank God enough? I know I limited you to one thing, and I'm not criticizing you that you didn't give a list. I'm asking you to ask God, did you thank Him enough today? Because you know it's His will to thank Him. are the things that you didn't thank Him for that you should. And if the answer to that is yes, and you know that it is, then as she plays softly on the piano, I'm going to ask everybody to stand. I'm going to close in a word of prayer. And then as she plays, I'm going to ask you to come to the altar and spend some time in prayer, just thanking God for those things that maybe we haven't been as thankful for as we should. Well, we thank You and praise You, God, for what You do. Thank You, Lord, for Your blessings and Your goodness. I pray, God, You'd help us, Lord, as we gather here to spend this time thanking You that, Lord, You'd speak to the hearts of each person. We ask it in Your Son Jesus' name. Amen.