Unbelief is inexcusable. Even people who have never touched a Bible are condemned for dismissing God’s clear revelation in nature. From his expositional series in the book of Romans, today R.C. Sproul warns of God’s wrath and points us to the only refuge from our guilt. Get R.C. Sproul’s commentary on the book of Romans for your donation of any amount: Learn more about the gospel, the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ: Meet Today’s Teacher: R.C. Sproul (1939–2017) was known for his ability to winsomely and clearly communicate deep, practical truths from God’s Word. He was founder of Ligonier Ministries, first minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew’s Chapel, first president of Reformation Bible College, and executive editor of Tabletalk magazine. Meet the Host: Nathan W. Bingham is vice president of ministry engagement for Ligonier Ministries, executive producer and host of Renewing Your Mind, host of the Ask Ligonier podcast, and a graduate of Presbyterian Theological College in Melbourne, Australia. Nathan joined Ligonier in 2012 and lives in Central Florida with his wife and four children. Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts
Paul says that everyone in this world stands without an excuse. There's no excuse of ignorance before God, not when He Himself has given you the information, so that any plea of ignorance will be an empty plea and will have no effect with God.
The Book of Romans makes a powerful statement about the state of lost sinners. They are culpable for their sin, whether they want to admit it or not. Welcome to the Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham. Today, R.C. Sproul continues his short sermon series in the opening portion of the Book of Romans.
You can, of course, have Dr. Sproul as your guide through the entire epistle when you request his line-by-line commentary with your donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org before midnight tonight. In today's sermon, R.C. Sproul explains that each of us needs to find a solution for our sin because the wrath of God is revealed against our unrighteousness. Here's Dr. Sproul.
Paul introduces this epistle by mentioning the main theme of the revelation of that righteousness that is available to us in the gospel.
And so after that introduction and the setting forth of the theme of the epistle, I think that we would naturally assume and expect that he would then plunge immediately into an explanation of the content of the gospel and an explanation of this doctrine of justification by faith alone that is so central to the epistle.
but he no sooner mentions this wonderful revelation of the righteousness that is by faith that he switches and now introduces another revelation, the revelation of the wrath of God. And there's a method to his madness.
I'm sure the reason why the apostle introduces the wrath of God at this point is that no one can really fully appreciate the good news as good news except against the backdrop of our guilt before God. what the apostle says here before he develops the theme of the gospel is that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men.
Now think for a second how perfectly appropriate it is that a holy and righteous God would be moved to anger against evil. A good judge who has no distaste for evil would not be a good judge at all. But notice that God is angry with two distinctive things that are mentioned, ungodliness or irreverence, impiety would be another word. The Latin is impietos here, and unrighteousness.
Now, those two terms, ungodliness and unrighteousness, are wide and vast generic terms. that cover a multitude of sins. But Paul's not talking about a multitude of sins at the moment. He has in view one particular sin. There's one sin that provokes God's anger. And what I want us to grasp here, dear friends, is that this sin is a universal sin. It is a sin committed by every human being.
Now, Paul doesn't leave us to guess about the nature of this sin. After he says that this wrath is directed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness? There it is. The single sin that provokes God's wrath against the whole human race is the sin of suppressing truth.
What Paul is saying is that we're taking the truth of God, and by nature we take that truth of God, and we press it down. We force it into our subconscious, as it were, to get it out of our mind. Well, again, we're still speaking generally, aren't we? That the specific sin is the suppression of truth. Now we have to ask, what truth is being suppressed?
And again, Paul doesn't leave us to wander in the dark about that question as he declares exactly what truth it is where he goes on to say in verse 19, "'Because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.'" Ah, so the truth that every human being suppresses is the truth of God, the truth that God reveals of Himself in nature and to the whole human race.
We're not talking now about suppressing the truth of God that we learned through the Bible. We do that too. but he's speaking here of a truth that is known of God outside of the Bible, apart from the Bible, a knowledge of God that God makes manifest. Again, God is angry because what may be known of Him is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. I It means to show plainly.
That is, the knowledge that God gives of Himself is not obscure. It's not buried with hidden clues that only an intellectual elite group of people are able to discover after a painful and tedious search and sifting through the evidence. No. It's the truth that God gives of Himself that's manifest. It's clear. It's plain. So plain that everybody gets it.
For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes have are clearly seen. God doesn't just give a world and say, guess where it came from. But what Paul is saying is that in that world, every second, God is manifesting Himself through the things that are made. so that His testimony to His own nature is plainly evident every second.
Since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen. Let me just comment on that. The great philosopher of the eighteenth century, perhaps the greatest agnostic of all time, Immanuel Kant, revolutionized the world of philosophy by giving a systematic and comprehensive critique of the traditional and classic arguments for the existence of God.
And without going into the details of that critique of pure reason, Kant argued this way, that you cannot move from the visible things of this world and reason back to the invisible God. God is in a realm that is not known through theoretical reason or empirical investigation. Basically, Kant was saying you can't get there from here.
Now, if Kant is right, then manifestly the Apostle Paul is wrong. And if Paul is right, then Kant was wrong, and it's time that the Christian church stop rolling over and play dead at the feet of Immanuel Kant and show the error of Kant's reasoning. Because here the affirmation is so clearly set forth by Paul that the invisible God, even though He cannot be seen because He's invisible,
is clearly seen. Now that sounds contradictory. He's not seen directly, but He's seen through the things that are made, because God who is invisible reveals His invisible character through that which you can see with your eyes. Even He reveals His eternal power and Godhead So what is part of the content here of that general revelation?
We're speaking of the revelation that God gives generally, that is, to the whole world. And it's also a revelation whose content is general. It doesn't give us all the specific details about the character and nature of God, but it certainly gives us knowledge of God in general. And what's included in that content? Well, so far we've seen His eternal presence.
So God's self-existent eternal being is revealed in every leaf, every page, every raindrop, every inch of the cosmos since the beginning of time. This temporal world that we see is the vehicle of divine revelation to manifestly and clearly reveal that it is the result of an eternal being. and a God who is not only eternal, but He's eternally powerful.
It's His eternal power that is revealed and His godness. But then he goes on to fully explain the reason, the rationale for God's manifestation and revelation of His wrath, so that they are without excuse. That is, they are given no basis for an apologia, says the Greek, no basis for a response or a reply or an answer to God's indictment.
Now let me ask you, what do you suppose is the answer that Paul is anticipating corrupt and fallen human beings will try to give to God on the day of judgment? Oh, God, I didn't know. I didn't know You were there. Oh, if only You would have made Your revelation clear to me.
If only I could have known You, then I would have dedicated my whole life to You, and I would have been Your obedient servant. But how can You expect me to follow You when You're hidden, You're invisible? And I didn't know the gun was loaded. And I'm very, very sorry, my friend. The plea… that people will be tempted to make is a plea of an excuse.
Paul says that everyone in this world stands without an excuse. There is no excuse of ignorance before God, not when He Himself has given you the information, so that any plea of ignorance will be an empty plea and will have no effect with God. And again, why? Because although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, neither were they grateful.
The most fundamental foundational sin in our fallen corrupt nature is the sin of idolatry, the sin of refusing to honor God as He is. We want to strip Him of His attributes, turn Him into a God made in our image, a God we can live with, a God that we can be comfortable with.
The little old lady, after every time I preach this, will raise her hand and say, but my God is a God of love, not a God of wrath. Then your God, who's incapable of wrath, is not the God who is. because the God of love who is revealed in Scripture is also the God who is angry with sin, who is the God of justice and righteousness, who is the God of holiness.
And you can't just take those attributes of God that you are comfortable with and embrace them while rejecting the rest. When you do that, you join the throng of humanity that suppresses the truth of God and refuse to honor Him as God. or to be thankful.
The refusal to honor God, the refusal to worship God, and hearts that are not filled with joy and gratitude for what He gives is what defines our fallenness, dear friends. How few people there are in this world who delight in the worship of God. The natural man is at enmity with God, and Paul tells us elsewhere that that we by nature do not want to have God in our thinking.
And when He presents Himself to our minds, we immediately suppress it, push it away. They did not glorify Him as God, neither were they thankful, but what? They became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. You know,
If at the very beginning of your pursuit of knowledge, at the very earliest stage of knowledge, the first thing you do is categorically deny what you know to be true, the reality of God.
that frankly, the more brilliant you are after that starting point, the more consistent, the more logical you are in your thinking the rest of the way, the further away you'll go from God, because you've built your house on a lie so that your thinking becomes an exercise in futility. And the foolish heart is darkened. Again, when Paul speaks of hearts that are darkened, he uses the word foolish.
And to the Jew, the judgment of foolish is not an intellectual judgment. It's a moral judgment. That's why Jesus said, be careful. You don't call people fools. Don't say thou fool. because it's the fool who says in his heart, there is no God. And there, the fool is not just being stupid, although it is stupid, but he's being wicked because he's denying what he knows to be true.
Here's the indictment for the whole world. Knowing God, they refuse to honor Him as God. It's not that they fail to know God. and therefore don't honor Him and don't thank Him. But while they know God, they will not honor Him, and they will not be grateful. That is the mass of perdition in which we find ourselves as fallen human beings. It's against that background that the gospel comes.
Notice what follows. After the foolish heart is darkened, professing to be wise, they became fools." You know, it really gets to me when I hear this ongoing debate every day on television, every day in the newspaper about the intelligent design versus science. Intelligent design, that's not science. Well, the word science means knowledge.
And if you know that God is the author of all things, then you know. that the affirmation of the existence of God is the purest scientific thought there is, and to deny it or to exclude it is not to be scientific, but to be foolish. Therefore, God gave them up to uncleanness.
in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, and he's going to elaborate on that, and we'll look at that next week, God willing, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. Beloved, the word here, exchanged, is a critical term here in the text. It's the Greek word metalosso,
And I read this text. I can't help but read it through the eyes of modern psychiatry, depth psychiatry, that talks candidly about terms of repression and suppression. And what you learn, and let me ask you this, what kind of ideas do we tend as human beings to suppress or repress, to push down out of our conscious minds?
It's not pleasant thoughts, scary thoughts, frightening thoughts, bad memories. That's why when you go to see the psychiatrist and you have this nameless anxiety and dread, you don't know why you're so phobic. You're afraid, but you don't know what you're afraid of. And so he begins to probe you with analytical questions and checks your background, your childhood.
Well, how did you get along with your mother? you say, my mother? I had a wonderful relationship with my mother. I love my mother. And the psychiatrist says, wait a minute, your words are saying one thing, but your gestures are telling me something else. He'll ask about your dreams. He begins to probe your subconscious because he knows that when you make this repression
You don't destroy the memory. You exchange it. You exchange it for something you can live with, something that will not bring terror to your mind. And beloved, dear friends, there is nothing in this universe more terrifying to a sinner than God. I know what Freud said. Trying to explain the universality of religion, Freud said, why is it that people are so incurably religious?
He said, ah, we've invented God to deal with the things in nature that are frightening. By inventing God, we personalize nature. We sacralize nature. See, that's where Freud missed the point. If people are going to invent religion to protect them from the fear of nature, Why would they invent a God who's more terrifying than nature itself? Because He's holy.
Now, fallen creatures, when they make idols, do not make holy ones. But we prefer the unholy, the profane, the secular, the God we can control. And so the apostle brings us to that place where we have no excuse, where ignorance cannot be claimed, because God has so manifest Himself to every creature in this world that every last one of us knows that God exists.
and deserves our honor and our thanks, and is not to be traded in or swapped for the creature. Again, let me finish with this, where Paul says, they exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, comma, the Creator, comma, who is blessed forever.
Even when Paul is talking about the wrath of God and the universal sin of fallen humanity, he cannot help but break into doxology, speaking about the Creator who is most blessed even forever.
Beloved, Paul will carry on in the rest of chapter 1 and end of chapter 2 and tell us about the dreadful consequences to a race of people who live by refusing to acknowledge what they know to be true about the character of God. When you do that, you get a futile mind. You get a blackened heart. and you get a life of radical corruption.
You become so exposed to God's displeasure that your only hope in heaven and earth will be the gospel of His dear Son. Remember, this is preparatory. This is the groundwork. Thank God that Paul doesn't stop here in his letter to the Romans. If the Bible stopped here, we would be without hope in this world lost forever in our guilt and in our sin.
Finally, when I do talk to people about their intellectual questions about the existence of God, I'll be as patient as I know how, try to answer every question they have intellectually, and then some. But at some point in the discussion, I will finally say, wait a minute, my final question for you is this, what do you do with your guilt. I don't have to argue with people that they're guilty.
They know it. And so I say, what do you do with it? Deny it? Blame somebody else? The only refuge from guilt is forgiveness. It's the gospel.
If you're listening today and you've never wrestled with the question of what you'll do with your guilt, I pray that you'll ponder that question today and request R.C. Sproul's free booklet, What is the Gospel? at renewingyourmind.org slash gospel so that you can learn the only true remedy for true guilt.
This is the Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind, and each week we feature the preaching ministry of R.C. Sproul.
These sermons eventually became Dr. Sproul's line-by-line commentary on Romans, and we'd love to send you the hardcover edition of that commentary when you make a donation of any amount in support of Renewing Your Mind at renewingyourmind.org or by using the link in the podcast show notes.
You'll only hear the early sermons from his Roman series, so study the entirety of the book when you request R.C. Sproul's expositional commentary today at renewingyourmind.org. But respond now, because this offer ends at midnight. So how do we deal with our guilt before God and God's wrath? Or better put, how did God provide a way to save guilty sinners?
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