[0:00] And I'm sure that every one of you would say yes, and I doubt that the DVD changed your mind on that, that when you came into the class, you said yes, Genesis records real history.
[0:13] But what I trust the DVD has done for you is to gird up that faith and that belief that this is indeed the very true history of how our universe was begun and what happened to the human race and the flood and how all of these things in the opening chapters of our Bible are true.
[0:38] To arm you against all the lies that are being told to us today in the name of science and to show you that, no, we can come to the Bible and listen to what God says, who, by the way, was the only one there when it happened.
[0:55] And hearing what he says, then we can go to our world. We can look through our telescopes, through our microscopes. We can look at the landscape and we can understand that the things that are seen fit into God's narrative of what happened.
[1:14] So we've kind of come now just to so what? Why is this issue so important? Why is it important for us to really believe that the early chapters of Genesis record space-time history, that it's true history?
[1:33] It's not just a myth. There was a real man named Adam. There was a real fall. There was a real creation in six days. There was all that these things, this global flood, it really happened.
[1:46] So I'd like you just to weigh in a bit on this as we begin. Why is this such a big deal that we hang on to Genesis being real history, namely the creation account and the early history of the human race?
[2:06] What are some of the ramifications of this truth that reach to you? Mark? I think it establishes that the God we worship is a miracle-working God.
[2:20] That He is a God of wonders and not just some ethereal, unknowable force out there that may or may not exist, depending on how I feel about it.
[2:34] Isn't that something? The first thing we're told about God is how supernatural He is. This is a wonder-working God.
[2:45] And that should affect our worship today, shouldn't it? That's how practical it is. Good. What else? Why is this critical, Dennis? Well, as we saw in the memory verse, Paul treated Adam as a historical figure.
[2:59] It doesn't mean he compared to Christ. So he believed it was history. He believed it was history. And if we say it wasn't history, then what, Dennis?
[3:10] If we say that Adam was not a historical figure, but just a name given to the human race that evolved out of the apes, and then there was this one guy that Dennis is just speaking symbolically of man, which is what the word Adam means, man.
[3:30] So what happens to Romans 5 if we say that Adam was not a historical figure? Well, then perhaps Christ was not a historical figure.
[3:42] Okay. Where does it stop, right? If Paul is convinced that Adam was a historical figure, and through his sin, his disobedience, we all have become sinners, then how do we know for sure that Jesus Christ is a historical figure through whose obedience the many of us are being made righteous?
[4:06] Well, you put a question mark over Adam, you must put it over Jesus as well. They're handled the same as one man, as the other man. All right?
[4:17] What other ramifications? Billy? One would be our hope. In case you didn't know that Adam was real. And then Christ would question one.
[4:29] One would be our hope. So there you're the hope being a certain expectation of good. That the hope of eternal life. Well, it would wither and die, wouldn't it?
[4:40] Now it's an iffy thing. If Jesus really lived and if his obedience was really true and actually is put to the account of his people, well, then maybe we'll be saved, but we really don't know.
[4:52] We've destroyed our hope, our certain confidence in eternal life. Good. Someone else. Becky. I want to say, And therefore, we are accountable to him.
[5:31] We're his. We are not our own creatures to do as we please. No. He is the potter. I am the clay. So he has the potter's rights. To do whatever he wants with us.
[5:43] To command whatever he wants with us. And as we see him as the potter, the maker, we see that that's where our responsibility to him has its roots.
[5:54] That's why every one of us are going to be judged by him one day. Because he made us. And we are accountable to him. So we unravel the whole accountability of man to his maker if we dismiss Genesis and the creation of man.
[6:11] Good. What else happens, Steve? As it defines our relationship with God, Genesis explains our entire reality.
[6:24] From the days of the week to marriage and our relationship with the creation and the world. Work. And that it's the foundation of virtually everything.
[6:37] We're going to see that when we come to the fourth commandment. Why are there seven days in a week? Anybody know? Doesn't have anything to do with the planets, the sun, the moon, the star.
[6:48] None of that lines up with seven days. It's because God took seven days, six to create and one to rest. It goes back to that. The work week.
[7:00] The Sabbath. Rest. It grows out of creation. As our brother just said, marriage, human sexuality. All of these things that are being questioned today, you go right back to the beginning.
[7:14] You see the answer. Why is there sin? Why is there evil in the world today? It explains that. Why is there this canyon that we go and spend lots of money to get there and stay there and watch and look at it and gawk at it?
[7:30] Why is that canyon there? Well, we see that God's word gives us a framework in which to understand that which we see. It doesn't answer every question, but it gives us the big framework into which all reality is put and is explained.
[7:49] Otherwise, we're living in a world that we don't know. How did we get here? Why are we here? Where are we going? And that really is the nihilism that much of our world lives in.
[8:03] Just a meaninglessness. All right. Anything else? Why so important? Steve mentioned the word foundations.
[8:15] Does anybody know what the word Genesis means? The beginnings. The beginnings. The beginnings. Okay. So here we have the beginnings. And we have the foundations.
[8:26] It's the foundation of the whole Christian religion. The rest of the Bible rests upon the history of Genesis. I mean, the whole thing is the truth of God in its foundational form.
[8:41] And everything rests upon that foundation. Jesus spoke of the importance of foundations. You know it from a physical building. That the structure is no stronger than the foundation on which it rests.
[8:55] And Jesus said that. So be sure you're building on truth and upon the rock of what I say. And be sure you're taking that as life truth and obeying it.
[9:07] Because if you're building on sand, you'll be washed away by the storms and the judgment that's coming. So foundations are critically important. Indeed, the whole entire gospel of Jesus Christ is God's answer to the great problem of the fall that took place in Genesis 3.
[9:25] So how do we understand the gospel? We can't understand it unless we understand Genesis 3. As real space-time history of a real man and a woman who really rebelled against their maker.
[9:37] And that he was our representative head. And when he sinned, we sinned. When he fell, we fell. And so in Adam all die. Why does everybody die? Romans 5.
[9:50] Because by sin, death entered the world. So you see how it's the foundation for our whole understanding. It's our foundation for understanding eschatology.
[10:02] What's going to happen in the future. Well, God made a universe. And it was perfect. It was very good. It was his pleasure.
[10:14] It reflected his glory. And then sin came and corrupted it. And marred it. And God is not going to let Satan have the last word.
[10:27] He is going to do something in the end. He's going to restore what he's made. The universe is to be remade. A new heavens.
[10:39] A new earth. With a new human race. A new humanity. Which, by the way, is already beginning here and now. As we're born again by the Spirit. We become a part of that new creation.
[10:51] Any man be in Christ. He is new creation. It's part of that new created order. And God is saving people from their sins. And they become the new people of God.
[11:04] That will one day, when Jesus returns, Step into a world that is remade. In which the curse. And all that that means. In the way of sin.
[11:15] And death. And things that cause us fear. Things that cause us to weep. And sorrow. All those things are gone. And we're back into a perfect environment.
[11:27] And you see, we end up in Revelation, don't we? Where we find Adam and Eve in Genesis. As you read the last two chapters of Revelation.
[11:39] You see, it's built upon the foundation. So, the whole. It's not a stretch to say the whole of the Bible. The whole Christian religion rests upon the true historical account of Genesis.
[11:56] Genesis. And yes, some of you said, all the way through the Bible, We find references back to these people and events. We just had it in a memory verse this morning. Romans 5.19. The one man.
[12:08] And he's singled out in that passage as Adam. So, many, many texts. Dozens of texts could be cited.
[12:19] In which the Bible writers treat those early chapters of Genesis as real history. So that if we can't trust the opening chapters of the Bible to be telling us historical facts.
[12:30] Then we're lost. We're in this relativity that the world is in today. We really don't know what truth is. You have yours, I have mine. But there is no one objective truth.
[12:41] So, in the battle for the Bible, we must hold to its opening chapters as real history. To let go here is to let go of it all. What can we say?
[12:53] When the very first revelation of God to man is that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Consider God's own placement of that revelation to us.
[13:06] It's the first words out of his mouth to us. As if to say, man, if you get nothing else, get this. I am God. That means you're not.
[13:18] I am God. Who created all things in the universe. That means I'm not a part of the universe. That means I existed before the universe.
[13:30] That means I'm eternal. I've always been. And then in a moment, I chose to create all that exists. I'm not like the pantheist. A part of the God is all.
[13:41] And all is God. No. I exist outside of creation. I'm eternal. So we're his creatures. We're dependent on him. He has creator's rights over us.
[13:53] All of this hits us right up front in Genesis 1. And the fact that God is creator and ruler over all he has made is emphasized throughout the Old Testament prophets.
[14:06] It's just standard truth to Old Testament Judaism that God is the creator of the heavens and the earth. More on that, Lord willing, in the weeks ahead.
[14:18] But I quoted it from Psalm 121. Where does our help come from? Our help comes from the Lord. Well, who's he? The maker of heaven and earth. It's just like you can't speak about God without realizing this is the one who made us and everything that is.
[14:34] And then when the gospel moved outside of the realm of Israel, the people of God, and went to the pagan nations that did not have the Old Testament prophets and writings about God and didn't have Genesis 1.1, what did Paul do when he came to town?
[14:54] So when he comes to Athens and he sees all these idols and temples to this unknown God, what does he do?
[15:06] Turn to Acts 17. Turn to Acts 17. His heart was stirred in him.
[15:20] He's greatly distressed to see what's going on. The men are exchanging the worship of the one glorious true God and bowing down before images.
[15:31] And he's stirred. And so when he finally gets a hearing with the Areopagus, what does he say to these philosophers that don't have Old Testament scriptures?
[15:44] Look at chapter 17 of Acts and verse 23. He says, As I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription to an unknown God.
[16:00] Now what you worship as something unknown, I'm going to proclaim to you. So I'm going to tell you about the God that is, the one true one. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.
[16:18] He's not served by human hands as if he needed anything because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. And from one man, he made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth.
[16:30] And he determined the time set for them and the exact places where they should live. Where does Paul go? He goes right back to the beginning. He goes to Genesis 1.1.
[16:41] He starts where God starts. God is the maker. Therefore, he's the Lord. He's the ruler, the master of all that exists.
[16:52] And the whole human race has come from the one man, Adam. It didn't just spring up from monkeys here and there turning into men. And you have many different beginnings of the human race.
[17:06] No, from one man, Adam, that he made came all the peoples of the earth. And by the time we get to the end, he tells them and he sent his son and he raised him from the dead.
[17:22] And that's a testimony to you that he's going to judge you one day. He does have creator rights over you. So he goes right back to the beginning. The same thing could be seen in Acts chapter 14 when Paul gets to Lystra and they're worshiping Zeus.
[17:35] And Paul and Barnabas, they think they're Zeus and Hermes. And Paul preaches and he goes right back to creation and begins where God begins. So we see the importance of foundations and our whole Bible, the whole structure of the Bible, the whole structure of the gospel itself is built upon Genesis history.
[17:57] Turn to Romans chapter 1 and we're going to spend the remainder of our time this morning here. I think we would have to agree that the most systematic treatment of the gospel found anywhere in the New Testament is the book of Romans.
[18:12] Where Paul just very systematically works right through the gospel of Jesus Christ that saves sinners. And after telling us about this gospel in Romans 1, 16 and 17 that he's not ashamed of the gospel because it's the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.
[18:31] First for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel, a righteousness from God is revealed. A righteousness that is by faith from first to last just as it is written.
[18:42] The righteous will live by faith. So he introduces the gospel. That's his theme. And the very next thing, where does he start now after introducing the gospel? Well, he launches into three chapters to explain why the gospel is needed.
[19:00] Why every man needs to be saved. Why do we need a saving gospel? Because we're all lost. We're what? We're lost. What does that mean? How did we get lost?
[19:11] How did we get under God's wrath? And so Romans 1, 18. He starts here and he goes all the way toward the end of chapter 3 and showing us why the gospel.
[19:26] And the why is because the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven. There's a real God with real wrath against sinners. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.
[19:48] What is man's great crime for which God's wrath rests upon him? He suppresses the truth. A tongue suppressor pushes down the tongue so the doc can look back in the back of the mouth.
[20:02] A truth suppressor pushes down the truth. Seeks to push it out of their consciousness and not deal with it and not let it have its way with them. We're all truth suppressors.
[20:16] Well, what is it that we have suppressed? What is the truth that we have suppressed that is so important that God himself has put his wrath upon us and will damn us because we have rejected that truth?
[20:36] What truth is it that Paul takes up? The truth of the truth of the true God? Can we be even more specific? What truth about God?
[20:48] As you look on down in the next couple of verses, what is the truth about God that they had suppressed? That he's a creator. He starts with creation again.
[20:59] And he says, that's where you all have suppressed the truth. And that's why God's wrath is upon us. That's why we need the gospel.
[21:10] That's why we need a savior. We're lost and under God's wrath because of what we've done with his revealed truth. So notice how he explains what we have suppressed in our wickedness.
[21:26] Verse 19 and 20. Since what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made so that men are without excuse.
[21:51] I've been listening to a series of sermons. A hundred and seventy five or so from a pastor out in SeaTac, Washington, Dr. Robert Martin.
[22:02] He died this past year of cancer and he's with the Lord now. But I've been blessed as I've been mowing or working in the garden to just work right through the book of Romans.
[22:17] And I found his comments on this portion very helpful. Dr. Martin pointed out that this knowledge that man has suppressed is not potential knowledge of the creation.
[22:35] That God had enough evidence in the world that if man wanted to, that he could see that God was created. It's not potential knowledge. It's actual knowledge. They really knew God through the revelation of creation.
[22:50] And that's what's that's what's emphasized here. Every man has received light from creation. And that light from creation is enough to condemn him as a truth suppressor.
[23:02] I told you this about me. You didn't want it. You suppressed it in your wickedness. My wrath is justly resting upon you. You're without excuse.
[23:14] So notice verse 21 says they actually knew God from it. Now not in the sense that a believer knows God. But they knew God. They had the knowledge of God being creator demonstrated before them in the creation.
[23:30] Indeed it's part of our very makeup of man is this God consciousness. This conscience that God has put in us. He talks about that in chapter 2. Even though that conscience may be ignored and twisted and perverted in darkness.
[23:42] God has still put it there. And that consciousness of God. The reality of God. Is not unrelated to the creation in which we live. We're bumping into as it were God wherever we turn.
[23:54] Not that God is his creation. But we're bumping into his creation. That is forever saying the hand that made me is divine. He is God. He is God. He made me. So we can't live in this world without this knowledge of God.
[24:09] By which man knew God. Now this knowledge is clearly seen. Paul says.
[24:20] It's not obscure. It's not hidden. It's clear. It's plain. It's recognized. And it's plain because God has made it plain. You see that in verse 19?
[24:31] The reason. This revelation of God is very clear. It's very plain. Because God has made it plain to him. And how has God made himself to be clearly seen by men?
[24:43] Well by what has been made. Verse 20. So we know about the creator. From his works of creation. We know about the maker.
[24:54] By the things that we. That he has made. So verse 20 tells us. For since the creation of the world. God's invisible qualities.
[25:05] His eternal power and divine nature. Have been clearly seen. Being understood from what has been made. So that men are without excuse. It was clearly known.
[25:16] Because clearly revealed. What was clearly revealed? His invisible qualities. Isn't that a. A statement that we might think of as an oxymoron.
[25:30] Look at it. His invisible qualities have been clearly seen. Invisible things are not seen. Usually are they. But this is a statement that God's invisible qualities.
[25:45] Are clearly seen. Isn't that strange? How can the invisible be clearly seen? Well he tells us. God's invisible qualities. Are clearly seen by the things that are made.
[25:57] So we see this visible creation. This mountain. And we say. Wow. What must the God be. Who made a mountain like this. His power.
[26:09] Is. Clearly. Known. By. The things. That he has made. So God's invisible attribute of power. It's. It's sensed.
[26:20] It's understood. Being understood. We. We see it. We. We sense it. We understand it in our minds. Being understood. By the things.
[26:31] That are made. Calvin in his. Institutes. Has a beautiful. Treatment of this. In book one. In which he says. God has been pleased.
[26:42] So to manifest his perfections. In the whole structure of the universe. To daily place himself. In our view. That we cannot open our eyes.
[26:52] Without being compelled. To behold him. You can't live a day in this world. And see what he's made. Without. Being compelled. To see him.
[27:03] To behold him. We see. And know God. By his works. Now. Not all of his attributes. Are clearly seen in the creation. We don't see his mercy. We don't see the.
[27:16] The manifestation of. Of. Of many of his attributes. In. In the creation. But. We see a whole lot of them. What ones?
[27:26] Paul mentions three. We see his power. That's the most conspicuous. Isn't it? How can you miss God's power? If you. Look at his creation. But it's. Eternal power. Oh.
[27:38] We learn something of God's eternity. From the creation. Because. He. Existed. Before the creation. So. So he's not a.
[27:48] Part of time. Time starts with creation. But he created. All things. So he exists outside of time. He's eternal. And so we can know. By looking at the creation.
[27:59] That there is a creator. And he lives outside of time. Of time. Outside of this. So we. We learn his invisible. Attribute of. Power. His eternality. And then we learn.
[28:10] His divine nature. His deity. The fact that he's God. You look at the creation. And you say. He's God. That made this. The unrivaled.
[28:21] Highest being. In the universe. In need of nothing. Totally self-sufficient. The I am. That I am. Now. That's what he mentions. But we could go on and on.
[28:32] Don't. Don't we see something. Of God's wisdom. And intelligence. As we look at creation. Something of his design. We know all that.
[28:42] In this world. We know that. That in this world. Effects. Have causes. If we see an effect. We know there's a cause for that. That thing isn't just.
[28:53] There. By itself. The illustration was given. Of a Christian man. Who had an intricate globe. Of the starry heavens. In his. His study. And his atheist friend.
[29:03] Came over one day. And he was admiring it. And he had inquired. Who made this? And the Christian said. No one. It just randomly. Showed up here one day. And the man was undone.
[29:14] Because he. He instinctively knows. That. That effects have causes. That someone who made. This intricately designed. One globe of the universe.
[29:26] Had a maker. Precisely. If that's true of the globe. What's true of the reality? And that's where we live. It's constantly. Bombarding.
[29:38] Mankind. With God's being. When we were hiking. In the mountains of Whistler Canada. We came upon a scene. That stopped us. Along the trail.
[29:49] There were some rocks. And we'd seen a lot of rocks. But. They weren't rocks like these. They were different sizes. And shapes. But they were.
[29:59] Perfectly balanced. Into stacks. Maybe two or three. Rocks. Some of them. Six to ten. Rocks. That were. Stacked up. And I didn't say to Joseph. Isn't it amazing.
[30:10] How these rocks. Arrange themselves. In this way. No. It was clear. It was obvious. That someone with. Intelligence. And design. And the power. To lift the rocks. And to stack them. In this formation.
[30:20] Had been here. Before us. How did I know that? I knew it by what I saw. Effects. Have causes. And when we see design. In.
[30:31] The creation. We know that there is a designer. And he is. The one who has made all things. And he's over us. And if that's true. Of ten rocks. It's even more true.
[30:43] As we saw in the DVD. Of the three billion. Letters in your DNA. Those are. In every. Single cell. Of your body. That can replicate. Itself.
[30:54] You got that. That string. Three billion letters. Remember the four dimensions. Of the DNA. First. All the letters. And these are interacting. With each other. In different ways.
[31:04] All the arrows. That's the second dimension. And. And if you change. The shape. Of that DNA strand. You change. Its function. The third. Dimension.
[31:16] And the fourth dimension. That. That. That it's constantly. Changing. According to the environment. So that if. Some. Unwelcome. Free radical.
[31:26] Gets in there. It. It. It. It. It. It. and to send processes into action to destroy it. If it's true of ten rocks that you can tell by looking at it that a designer has been here, what do we do before the DNA strand?
[31:45] We can't just say, well, it just showed up one day. And it couldn't have developed over the millions of years because it all had to be functioning from the get-go for it to work.
[31:59] So it's that kind of thing that helps counter some of the lies that we hear in the name of science. Creation clearly reveals an intelligent designer.
[32:14] There's not a plant or flower below, but makes thy glories known, we sing. So his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.
[32:27] Now this revelation that God made of himself in creation is not just something that he made to our fathers in the past. You notice verse 20 says, since the creation.
[32:39] That's a temporal phrase. It talks about time. When has God been making this revelation of himself? Well, ever since the creation. It's ongoing revelation.
[32:50] He's still showing himself to man in this way. He's still giving this revelation to man of creation. It still speaks about its glorious creator.
[33:05] Day and night, in all languages, and in all places where men dwell. That's Psalm 19, isn't it? The heavens declare the glory of God.
[33:18] The skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day, they pour forth speech. Night after night, they display knowledge. There's no speech or language where his voice is not heard.
[33:30] His voice goes out into all the earth. His words to the ends of the world. In the heavens, he has pitched a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run its course.
[33:43] It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other. Nothing is hidden from its heat. You see, that's God's great missionary. The sun. Wherever it goes, it's saying, the hand that made me is divine.
[33:58] Day and night, it's talking. And it's speaking in all the languages of the world and in every place where man is. Since the creation of the world, this revelation of God is ongoing.
[34:11] And that's why Dr. Martin, Dr. Robert Martin, could say in his series that every pagan knows God. In one sense, they all know God.
[34:23] Because verse 21 says, they knew God. Although they knew God. And how did they know? From the creation. From what God was showing them.
[34:34] They possessed the knowledge of the true God. But what did they do with that knowledge? They suppressed it. Verse 25 says, they exchanged it for a lie. I don't like it. So I'll trade it off for a lie that I like better.
[34:47] I don't like the fact that I'm under this creator. And I realize that he's got creator rights over me. If he made me, I've got to do it. I don't like that. So I'll exchange it for a lie that just says, we came from monkey.
[34:58] And God didn't have anything to do with it. So I don't have anything to do with him. We exchanged it for a lie. Verse 28 says, we didn't think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God.
[35:11] So we discarded it like a bad card in a deck of hands. When we're playing cards, we don't like that card. We discard. We didn't think it worth hanging on to. So we had it.
[35:22] But we suppressed it. We exchanged it. We did not retain it. We chucked it. It's not that they were ignorant of God. None complete ignorance in the day of judgment.
[35:33] But I didn't know. I didn't know about you, God. None complete. They knew him and they rejected the revelation of himself in creation. It's one thing to have a revelation that if they wanted, they could have known God.
[35:52] But it's far worse to have actually known him and to have rejected him. That is indefensible. And that's why Paul says, they are without excuse.
[36:04] They have no leg to stand on in the day of judgment. Did you live in my world? That's it. It's over. You see how important the creation account is.
[36:18] Men will be judged on the basis of the historicity of the opening chapters of Genesis. It's true history. And you didn't believe. You set me aside.
[36:30] You suppressed it in your wickedness. You see. You didn't want me over you. And so you're without excuse. And that's where the whole of this section of Romans is headed when you come to the end of chapter 3 and verses 19 and 20.
[36:44] The roundup of humanity. All found to be sinners with every mouth silenced and the whole world guilty before God. That's what Paul is doing.
[36:55] He's rounding up sinners. Jews, Gentiles, people who had the Bible, people who didn't. But they all had the revelation of Scripture. The revelation of creation. They all had the revelation of conscience, chapter 2.
[37:09] Some had the revelation of Scriptures, the Jews. But all are without excuse because they all had the revelation of God. Every mouth silenced. So this sufficient and clear revelation of God carries with it moral obligations.
[37:27] You see, Robert Martin made a statement that really rang true with me as I thought about it. That all of God's revelation comes in the nature of law.
[37:45] In other words, it has obligations attached to it. There's no such thing as truth about God that there is no therefore you need to this or that.
[37:57] All that God tells us about himself comes with an obligation. So God has told us about himself that he's the creator. He's made us in all things.
[38:08] What are the obligations that come along with that? We've talked about it. But what are the specifics that he gives in verse 21? What do we owe to this God then if he indeed has created all things?
[38:20] Glory. Glory. Obedience. Pardon? Thanks. Those are the two that are spelled out.
[38:31] We talked about obedience. The potter's right over the clay. But verse 21 speaks about those two things. Glorifying him and giving thanks to him. Although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him.
[38:46] So that's what the revelation comes with. It comes with an attachment. Now because I am your God, you're to glorify me. You're to give thanks to me. You now know how that food got on your plate today.
[38:59] Oh, but I hunted it. I this, I that. Yes, but I made it. So you now know who to give thanks to. So you can't have the knowledge of God as creator without suddenly being under the obligation then to give him thanks for all things.
[39:13] And to glorify him. And to give him the praise and the glory, the honor that is due to him because he's God. So obligation. Glorify and thank God.
[39:26] What's the obligation in verse 25? Worship and serve God.
[39:37] So you know him as God. Then the obligation is to worship him as God and to serve him. Again, here's where we go to the obedience. You're to serve me, not yourself.
[39:48] Because I made you. So we see these obligations that come with this clear revelation. God has revealed himself clearly to all men. That means all men are under obligation to glorify him as God, to give thanks to him, to worship him, and to serve him.
[40:10] To acknowledge him as the creator and to give him the glory that's due to the creator. To have no other gods. Besides him. That's what we all owe to this one God who made all things.
[40:25] Then there is no other God then. If one God made all things. So we're to have no other gods. We're to receive him as our God. And give him what he deserves as God.
[40:37] Our glory. Our worship. Our love. Our service. Our praise. Our fear. Our obedience. Our trust. So all truth about God comes with moral obligation.
[40:49] You know, even the goodness of God is meant to lead you to repentance. Isn't that something? Here's another truth about God. God's good. And we daily taste his goodness.
[41:00] We live in his world. We eat his food. We breathe his air. And the goodness of God doesn't come without obligation. That is meant to lead you to repentance.
[41:12] To quit going your own way and to come and to offer yourself up to God. I'm yours. You're so good. Can you see how ungrateful man is then?
[41:23] When he doesn't offer himself up to God. When he doesn't repent. He just takes the goodness of God. And he denies all the obligations. Well, that's where Paul's going with this, you see.
[41:35] All truth comes with moral obligation. I think rather than going on, I'm going to break here and we'll take that up next week. But think about that as you live in God's world today.
[41:49] I want to give you another quote of Calvin next week, but I'll give it to you early here. He says, The greater part of mankind walk blindfold in this glorious theater in which God makes himself known.
[42:04] All the beauties, the things that God has made are a glorious theater. Displaying his glory.
[42:15] And most men walk blindfold in this theater. Now you're going to walk another week, God willing, this week in this theater. I want to call you to notice it. Notice what God has made.
[42:28] Don't miss yourself as being fearfully and wonderfully made. And then remember the obligations for those who have this knowledge of God. Don't be like the sinner who's blind to all that we see.
[42:43] We see God behind the creation. Then give him your worship, your service, your glad praise, your glory, and thanksgiving.
[42:55] Well, we're dismissed.