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THE KING’S BUSINESS
di. God; and back of all idolatry there are similar immoral beings (1 Cor. 10:20, 21; 1 Timothy 4:1; Revelation 9:20; 16:14. With the growth of idolatry there is always the loss of restraint on all animal passions, and the violation of all the commandments of the second table. This is the genesis and evolution of paganism. Fourth. God punishes sin with sin (Pharoah is an illustration; Romans 9:17; Exodus 8:15, 19, 32; 9:12). If men do not care to retain their knowledge of God, He punishes them by the withdrawal of the . power of chastity and morality. One sometimes wonders if the efforts of reform ers to rid the world of moral ills is not an attempt to change the punitive justice of God. God punishes sin with sin. This is a manifestation of His wrath against sin. There is something jn God to be afraid of (Hebrews 10:26-31; 12:29; Luke 12:4-5). We need to preach 'the wrath of God in this day. Fifth. Natural religions cannot trans form human nature into godlikeness, but only into brutes. Natural religions are immoral. Sixth. The difficulty with atheism and infidelity is moral, not intellectual. At the root of unbelief lies immorality and sin. It is a thing of the heart more than of the head, of morality rather than intellectuality. Seventh. In view of all this; We. can understand why Paul was not ashamed of the gospel, for it alone was the power that God was using to transform mankind, and to rescue fallen humanity from divine judgment against sin. While the gospel was not removing the tide of immorality which was in the world, it was lifting men out of that tide, and j making pure and strong those that believed in the gospel. The brazen serpent raised by Moses in the wilderness for the smitten Israelites was not more lightly esteemed than the gospel today, but Moses’ remedy was the only remedy; so the gospel, is the only cure for the sins of men.. Hence we need not be ashamed of it. Eighth. Do we have in this first chapter
to the wrath of God because they are sin ners by nature, and destitute of the right eousness of God. This righteousness can ^ be obtained now only through faith in Jesus Christ, and, of course, it naturally follows that, so far as divine revelation goes, those without Christ are lost (Acts 4:12; John 14:6; Romans 10:14-17). ■ The verses in this chapter, so far con sidered, present to us a summing up of paganism, and show us that the natural religion of the Gentiles was not able to make bad men good. Hence the need of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Lessons from Romans 1 : 18 - 32 . There are certain lessons we may learn from a consideration of the contents of these verses. First. That God gives a sufficient knowledge of Himself to men to enable them to know Him sufficiently to obey Him. If men will persist in sinning against God, God fcis given.them sufficient light so .that their sin shall not be excused. Second. Whatever knowledge of God we have, if not obeyed, leads to sin and ruin. It is an awful thing for a man to fail or refuse to live up to the light he has received. Man never does as well as he knows, nor will he do always what he knows is right. Man always knows better than he does. A man’s aim should be to live up,to the light he has. Third. Man’s religious evolution is not upward, but downward. These verses teach us that men had sufficient light to lead them to God and a deeper knowledge of Him, but they had refused to retain that light. Consequently their knowledge of the one true God was degraded into the sin of idolatry and polytheism. We do not gain our knowledge of the true God by an evolutionary process; that is, from the lower to the higher. The opposite seems to have been the case. Men begun with the knowledge of the true God, with monothe ism, but gradually degraded their belief into polytheism. This is not evolution, but devolution. This would seem to'indicate that all idolatry springs from man’s dislike
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