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| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) Songs are from the CanRC/FRCA Book of Praise Psalm 47 Psalm 51:1,4,6 (after the law of God) Psalm 106:,5,8 Hymn 80:1-3 Hymn 80:4-6 Scripture reading: Ephesians 4:17-24 Text: Romans 1:21-23 |
Beloved congregation of Christ,
What’s the most foolish thing you’ve ever seen? I sometimes watch these videos on YouTube of people arguing with the police after getting pulled over. They never win. They almost always end up being arrested. And yet people keep doing it. There’s a saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Somehow that one person believes they’re the genius who is finally going to win an argument with the police.
That kind of foolishness has a long history. We see it already in the third chapter of the Bible with Adam and Eve. They had everything going for them. They had a beautiful relationship with God. They had a beautiful relationship with one another. They had a beautiful place to live. But they threw it all away when they listened to Satan and ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That was foolish.
What followed was even more foolishness. Glen Scrivener points out how Adam and Eve started doing some seriously stupid things. They played a ridiculous game of trying to hide from God – God who knows everything. They put on ridiculous clothing, covering their nakedness with flimsy fig leaves. They made ridiculous excuses to try and cover their guilt. After foolishly committing sin, they added more and more foolishness.
It’s all too easy to look at this and pridefully shake your head. However, if we’re honest with ourselves, we know how Adam and Eve’s story is ours. The same is true for our text from Romans this morning. We might read this and think it refers to someone else. It refers to the world, it refers to unbelievers, but it doesn’t refer to me. But God’s Word calls us to be honest. We have to face reality. This refers to us more often than we might care to admit. The foolishness that’s revealed here is part of my story and yours. In this sermon we’re going to see how unbelief is foolish because it:
- Dishonours God
- Disregards gratitude
- Deifies creatures
Our passage for this morning continues the thought from the preceding verses. In Romans 1:19, we read that God has revealed himself to everyone. There is revelation out there and it reaches every heart. But this knowledge of God is suppressed by unbelievers. All of that is met with God’s wrath, his righteous judgment on sin.
Verse 21 continues to describe the situation. It says they knew God. Don’t overlook that. All people know God at some level in some way. Even someone who says they don’t believe in God knows God deep down in their heart. They try to pretend they don’t, but they do. They know he’s there. They know a little bit of what he’s like. As it says in verse 32, they know God’s righteous decree that those who sin deserve death.
But the Bible also speaks of a far more meaningful way of knowing God. That’s knowing God in a relationship of fellowship. Jesus spoke about that in John 17:3, “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” This is knowing God in the sense of loving and trusting him. This isn’t just knowing about God, but experiencing him in all his goodness. This happens through Jesus Christ, through faith in him. This is how Christians know God.
Now for those in our passage, this knowledge of God didn’t lead where it was supposed to. Human beings were created to glorify God, to honour him. You can think here of the famous first question and answer of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, “What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” One of the proof-texts for that is from 1 Cor. 10:31, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” That’s what we were created to do. That’s why God put us here on this earth. Not for our glory, but for his.
That raises the important question of what it means to honour God. That word in verse 21 can also be translated as “glorify.” It refers to making much of God. It speaks of being impressed with him and trying to get others to be impressed with him too. When you honour or glorify God, you enhance his reputation by lifting up his name, exalting him.
All of this is what God deserves. He deserves it because he is so awesome and majestic. Human beings ought to give this all to him because he is our Creator. Human beings ought to give this glory to God all the time and in every place.
But what do we see happening? Exactly what Paul describes in verse 21. People don’t honour and glorify God. They don’t acknowledge him, they don’t exalt him, they’re not impressed with him. When it comes to God, so many people are just “meh.”
Because of that their thinking becomes futile and their foolish hearts are darkened. This doesn’t mean they stop thinking. What it means is that their thinking becomes irrational and pointless. It doesn’t have solid ground under it. Let me give you an example.
When I was in university, I met a fellow student named Jason. Jason wasn’t a Christian, far from it. But he and I would have great discussions before and after class. In one of those discussions, he tried to tell me that morality was something agreed upon by human beings. Morality is just an agreement that society makes about how people are going to live together. So I asked him whether he thought there were moral absolutes, whether there were some things that were always wrong everywhere. He said no. So I asked him about child abuse and if he thought there could be a society where that would be considered moral and we couldn’t say anything about that. That stopped him in his tracks. He wasn’t willing to go that far. But he didn’t have any ground under his feet to support saying that child abuse is always wrong. On that point, his thinking was futile and groundless. That’s where you end up when you don’t honour and glorify God.
That serves as a warning for us. If we profess to be Christians, we profess to know God in a far more meaningful way. But do we always honour him as God? Do we always glorify him? Are we always as impressed with God as we should be? How many times doesn’t it happen that you read or hear a story from the Bible about God’s great deeds and it leaves you cold? You’re not impressed. You’re hard to impress. So am I. When that happens, that puts us on the track of being futile in our thinking and having our foolish hearts darkened. Though we wouldn’t call ourselves unbelievers, we’re acting in the way of foolish unbelief.
Or what if we have an opportunity to tell someone we’re a Christian and we don’t take it because we’re afraid or ashamed. We have an opportunity to honour God by speaking about his work of grace in our lives, but we don’t. Let’s say tomorrow someone at work asks you what you got up to on Sunday and you don’t even mention going to church to worship God. Although you knew God, you did not honour him as God. That’s acting in the way of foolish unbelief as well.
Loved ones, let’s recognize ourselves in this before we look at others. Let’s be humble and confess that we don’t always honour and glorify God like we should. Let’s repent of that, hate it and turn away from it. And seek forgiveness for it through the grace of God in Jesus our Saviour. Christ always honoured God perfectly in his life of obedience and he did that for us. In our place he always glorified God, just like Adam should have, just like you and I should. And on the cross, he paid for every time we’ve failed to honour and glorify God. Our heavenly Father will forgive us through Christ and regard us as we are in him. Then in the power of the Holy Spirit, let’s renew our intention to live as we were created to, for God’s glory. Let’s take seriously what Paul writes in Ephesians 4, that we must no longer walk in those foolish ways. Instead, put off the old self which doesn’t honour God, and put on the new self which does in Christ.
Still here in verse 21, notice how unbelief also disregards gratitude. Although these unbelievers knew God, they didn’t give thanks to him. Let’s dissect the problem here.
All people know there is a God. By his eternal power and divine nature, he created the world and everything in it. But he didn’t then walk away from it. No, he continues to uphold what he’s created. He is hands-on in his management of the universe. When the sun shines, it’s because of God. When the rain falls, it’s because of God. When the earth produces food for us, it’s because of God. He is the fountain of all good things. Every good thing we receive and experience in this world is because of God. People don’t need the Bible to tell them this. It’s woven into the fabric of nature, into the warp and woof of who we are as human beings.
Yet knowing all this, people refuse to give thanks to God. This is foolish. It’s sensible that when someone gives you good things, you give thanks to them. You acknowledge their goodness to you and you give them credit for it. But unbelief produces entitlement. It produces the idea that we deserve everything we have. We’re owed it. And there’s no need for giving thanks when you’re entitled to what you’re getting.
And again, this leads to futile thinking and foolish darkened hearts. If you want an example of that, take the North American holiday of Thanksgiving. Everybody celebrates Thanksgiving in the US and Canada. It’s a huge holiday, the last big one before Christmas. But on it very few people are actually giving thanks to the Giver. So you get this ridiculous thing of Thanksgiving with no thanks. All because people don’t take God seriously as the giver of all good things.
But again, let’s not cast stones over the ocean or anywhere closer. Let’s consider whether we might be those who know God and yet fail to give thanks to him. Someone once said, “What if tomorrow you only had in your possession what you were thankful for today?”
Let’s look at Jesus for concrete instruction here. He’s our Lord and Master. He’s our Saviour from all our sinful ingratitude, but he’s also the example we want to follow here. In Mark 8, before Christ miraculously fed the 4000-plus people, he did something noteworthy. It’s easy to skip over it. It’s in verse 6. In Mark 8:6, he first told the people to sit on the ground. Then he prayed and gave thanks to God. Christ prayed before eating.
Is that your practice too? Is it your consistent practice to give thanks to God who gives you your food every day? Or are you acting like unbelievers do? Loved ones, it’s foolish unbelief to disregard gratitude whether it comes to your food or anything else. For good reason our Heidelberg Catechism teaches us that prayer is the most important part of our thankfulness.
Let me speak to our kids here for a moment. When you’re at school during the week, I’m sure there’s prayer before you have your lunch. But then it’s Saturday and you’re at home and let’s say your mom and dad have gone out. They told you to just grab your own lunch, make something for yourself. So you do. But before you eat, remember to pray and give thanks to God. It doesn’t have to be a long prayer, but just tell God that you know he has given you this food and thank him for it. You know God, but when you don’t say thank you to him for your food and everything else, you’re acting foolishly. God gives us everything and so we should thank him.
Let’s now look at verses 22 and 23. These verses show us the foolishness of unbelief as it deifies creatures. To deify something means to turn it into a god. You take something from creation and put it on the same level as the Creator.
Paul says that unbelievers have exchanged or traded the glory of the immortal God for something else. What he means is that instead of giving glory to God, they have given glory somewhere else. Instead of being impressed with God, they’re impressed with a replacement.
The God who is being replaced here is immortal. That means he can never die. God’s immortality is one of his attributes. It’s the same as saying that God is eternal. As the Westminster Confession says, he is “without beginning of days or end of life.” There has never been a time when God didn’t exist and there will never be a time when God doesn’t exist. In fact, he even stands over time, he transcends it. Time is part of creation, but God isn’t. The Creator also created time. He uniquely stands over everything and that’s another reason why it makes sense to worship him alone.
That’s also why it makes no sense to worship what he’s created. That’s what sinful human beings doing, according to verse 23. If you look closer, you’ll see how humanity has sunk even lower. They’re not just worshipping creatures, whether other humans or animals, they’re worshipping images resembling them. Pictures are being worshipped. Pictures of mortal creatures. Pictures of humans and animals who are going to die. What sense does that make?
In its original context, Paul was referring to the way the Greeks and Romans worshipped their idols. They had images. Sometimes they were of animals, sometimes of human beings. For example, the Roman ruler Julius Caesar deified himself in 42 BC. He decided that he was a god. He had pictures of himself made for worship. The Romans eventually did this with every emperor. Emperors were mortal men, but they were turned into gods, and people worshipped images of them. And the Holy Spirit says this is an example of claiming to be wise and yet being so foolish. You exchange a truly glorious and unique God for something common and creaturely. God created all things and will forever be, but you want to worship something he created that’s someday going to die. That is foolish.
Does this still happen today? Could it happen with us? It could and I’ll give you two examples of how. Although it happens in some countries, we have to think here not in terms of humans worshipping animals. We have to think of mortal man, humanity.
The first example has to do with becoming obsessed with appearance. While health and fitness are valuable, they can easily become ultimate in our lives. We make them ultimate because they serve our self-image. It becomes all about glorifying yourself instead of glorifying God. You’ve taken a mortal creature, yourself, and made it the center and purpose of your life. If we go down that track, it’s foolish.
The second example has to do with pornography. Here we’re definitely in the realm of “images resembling mortal” people. And here we’re definitely also in the realm of worship. It’s idolatrous by nature. You’re using images to find gratification, instead of turning to the true God. These images portray human beings who die, and yet they’re lifted up and worshipped. Not only that, but these images come to you in digital bits that are even more transitory than we are as human beings. It’s all like dust, here and gone, and yet people get obsessed with it and addicted to it. The immortal God who can truly save and satisfy gets traded for foolishness. I ask you: does it make any sense?
We sang from Psalm 106 before the sermon. I chose that because Paul is alluding to verse 20 of Psalm 106 here in Romans 1:23. It’s speaking about the Israelites during the time of the Exodus. They made the golden calf at Mount Sinai. Then Psalm 106:20 says in the ESV, “They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass.” When you see it said like that, you say, “How silly! How ridiculous!” Similarly, in Isaiah 44, God points out how foolish it is to chop down a tree and then worship it. You use part of the tree to bake your bread and then you worship the other part of the tree. It’s as if God is saying, “Can’t you see how stupid and foolish you’re acting?” We might not create a golden calf or make an idol out of wood, but idolatry still tempts us today in different ways. Whether it’s our self-image or pornography or whatever else, God wants us to see that when we deify his creation, we’re not only acting sinfully, we’re also acting foolishly. That just puts us in a downward spiral of futility and emptiness.
Loved ones, this morning is a wake-up call to see that and act on it in our lives. We ask God to help us see where it’s taking place in our lives. We want to be self-aware, so we can confess our sin to God. We then hate this deification of creatures. We seek God’s forgiveness through the gospel of grace. Then prayerfully relying on the Holy Spirit’s help, we must fight against it. Don’t be someone who claims to be wise and yet has become a fool.
It’s easy to look around us in the world and find plenty of examples of foolishness. But let’s be humble and start with ourselves. We too are prone to dishonour God, to disregard gratitude, and to deify creatures. Now being aware of that, let’s fight this foolish unbelief and aim instead to glorify God alone, give him the thanks, and find our satisfaction only in him. AMEN.
PRAYER
O immortal and true God in heaven,
We confess that you should be honoured and glorified by us and all human beings. We confess that you deserve all thanks all the time for every good and perfect gift. O glorious God, you ought to be worshipped alone. We ought to find all our satisfaction in you only. Father, with sad hearts we confess how often we have failed in these things. We have been foolish and we acknowledge it for the sin that it is. We ask for your forgiveness through what Christ has done for us on the cross. Please look upon us in him. And please help us with your Holy Spirit so that we move forward in honouring you, thanking you, and worshipping you only. Please help us to hate the foolish unbelief we’ve been hearing about this morning and fight it. Lord God, we believe, help our unbelief.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Dr. Wes Bredenhof, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
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