God's Revelation: The Call to Humility and Salvation

The Apostle here in this general statement is speaking of the whole world. He's speaking of Gentiles as well as of Jews. It is a kind of universal charge. Now then again he divides up this charge into two sections. He's got two reasons for talking about the inexcusable of sin. The first is this: that mankind cannot plead ignorance in these matters. [00:03:13]

Mankind cannot plead ignorance in these matters because it has this knowledge of God and it has to hold it down and restrain it in order to be in its position in sin and in the whole blindness of sin. Very well, but the Apostle not only tells us that men had this knowledge and still has this knowledge, but he tells us in detail how men has this knowledge. [00:06:21]

There is a sense of God universally in mankind. It doesn't matter where you go, it doesn't matter how primitive the tribe may be that you come across in the most remote parts of the world, you will never find a human being but that he's got within him a sense of a Supreme Being, a sense of God. It's universal in the whole of human nature. [00:09:48]

There is in mankind universally this sense of right and wrong, this feeling that sin deserves to be judged and that sin will be judged, and that this moral governor of the universe is righteous and just. They know that, but knowing the Judgment of God, that's something that is in it, in the whole of human nature, in the whole of mankind. [00:12:40]

God has also given us this knowledge externally as well as internally. This is the second form, and here it is again explicitly in verse 20: for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead, so that they are without excuse. [00:13:36]

In creation as we see it, there are manifestations of the handiwork of God, the Finger of God. God has revealed himself in that way in the sun and the moon and the stars, in the animals, in the design, in the order, in the arrangement, in the seasons. All these are just manifestations of God and of the fact of God. [00:15:25]

There is enough in creation and Providence and history to establish the fact that God is the Creator and that God is the moral governor of this universe. And that is why the Apostle says that the whole of mankind is without excuse. There, without going any further, there is enough to establish God the Creator and God, I say, the moral governor of the entire universe. [00:27:56]

The fundamental cause of all this is just pride, and pride of intellect. Here it is in verse 22: professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. But here it is, you see, professing themselves to be wise, men of intellect, men of understanding. How contemporary this gospel is, this passage which we are looking at together. [00:36:01]

The average man today feels that somehow or another the hallmark of learning, to be really a 20th-century man, is not to believe in God. Pride, pride of intellect, or of course it's always been the trouble. It was the whole cause of the fall of Adam and Eve, wasn't it? It was this fatal desire to be as Gods. [00:36:56]

The result of all this, as you see, is that man lands himself in his own utter futility. I've already been referring to this futility, these vain reasonings, these monstrous and ridiculous philosophies. These people say they don't believe in God, they can't believe in God because of their minds and reasons. What do they believe then? [00:41:05]

Their foolish heart was darkened, and that again is a very important statement. You see the sequence: you start with pride, and because of your pride, you put Revelation on one side, and you put your ideas forward. And you know what it leads to? It leads to this: your heart becomes darkened. What's the heart? [00:43:26]

The darkness is appalling. It's the darkness of death. Their foolish heart was darkened, and there's only one hope. It's this gospel, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ shining into that dark heart and causing the philosophies and the vain speculations to be dissipated and disappear. [00:47:37]