Once there was a land where people saw God, almost everywhere they looked, when they looked at the sun and the moon and the stars they saw God, when they looked at the mountains and at the trees and at the flowers, they saw God, when they looked at the events of history, they saw God's hand, when good things happened to them, they saw God's hand, and they gave thanks to God.
          These people believed that they ought to worship God, they gathered in places of prayer to worship Him, they sent their children to schools where God was prayed to, and where God's word was taught. Then at some point, the people of this land got a little less interested, and a little less grateful. Where they had once praised and honored the Creator, they stopped praising. They started paying more attention to what they called the laws of nature. And even as they prospered, they stopped giving thanks to God altogether. They started talking about how if you really work hard, you earn your way. And as they stopped thanking, praising, and acknowledging God it started a deadly chain reaction.

           They started thinking up theories, that there was no God at all, and that it all just happened. As they cooked up these evil thoughts, it became more than just a theory, it became false teaching in their schools. No longer would anybody pray to this God under the official schools of that land. No longer would they speak of the Creator in the schools of that land.          
          As the deadly Chain Reaction continued, they not only neglected the Creator, but they also decided that they had the right to do whatever felt good. They thought it a very strange thing that an activity as fun as sex ought to be limited to married people. What not singles? Why shouldn't they be able to enjoy such a  fun activity? Especially if you weren't enjoying the person you were currently married to? Why should you have to be stuck with such a person? So there was a sexual revolution in which divorce became far more common, promiscuity and sex outside of marriage became a lot more common. Then the chain reaction continued. Males no longer wanted to be males and females no longer wanted to be females, men wanted to have sex with men and women wanted sex with women.           
        It used to be considered abnormal and wrong to be involved in same sex activity, but then it all changed and it became normal and a right, it even became evil and racist to consider it wrong. Then this horrible chain reaction continued. The people of that land were people who became more and more divided.           
          They took each other to court over nearly everything and sued people at the drop of a hat. They lied a lot, you couldn't trust anybody's word. Even when you had a written contract, you really couldn't count on it all that much. Children became more and more rebellious against parents, parents were even willing to destroy their own children, government officials became more and more corrupt. One social problem after another arose, violence increased and people started to hate God.          
            They had parades, in honor of their sexual perversion. They exalted the positions of leadership, some of the most corrupt and vile among them, and considered it to be just normal and good.  
         
           Now, if I were simply to tell this story as something that follows the latest headlines and developments in our own nation, it would be a very accurate characterization of the recent history of the United States of America. I didn't come up with this sequence of events by watching today’s news, or looking at news on the internet. I just read it in Romans Chapter 1.                     
          The scary thing about the sequence I've just described, is that Romans 1:18-32 says these are the symptoms of a nation that is under the wrath of God. That's what it says, if you see these things happening, it is evidence of God's wrath. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 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. For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to him. But their thinking became futile, and their foolish hearts were darkened.           
          Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man, and birds and animals and reptiles.   
        
          Therefore, God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity. For the degrading of their bodies with one  another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator who is forever praised Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lust. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.           
          In the same way, the men also abandoned natural relations with women, and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, He gave them over to a depraved mind to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful. They invent ways of doing evil, they disobey their parents. They are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree  that those who do such things deserve death. They not only continue to do these various things, but also approve of those who practice them. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven.

 What is God's wrath?           
          Well, when we think of wrath or anger, we tend to think of it as an undesirable trait. We're not very fond of people who fly off the handle, who lose their temper, who go around in a chronically grumpy mood, and are just sour all the time. Could that be what the wrath of God is, is that He's a grumpy God, who just goes off at a moment's notice, well, the Bible says God is slow to anger. The Bible shows that God is not someone who is just set off, or is easily triggered, or is irrational in his rages. The wrath of God is God’s holy reaction to everything that is out of line with the way it is supposed to be. The wrath of God is God's anger at what destroys His creation, and all the creatures that He made good. God doesn't get angry just at this or that, God gets angry at sin. It's the only thing that makes him angry. It is the thing that always makes him angry. That's what God's wrath is.

          God is light. There is no darkness in Him at all. His eyes are too pure to look upon sin. Those are the statements straight from the Bible. That's exactly why he gets angry when there's something wrong. The Bible sometimes speaks of God as being a jealous God. What would you think of a husband who didn't mind if his wife was sleeping around with eight different  people? Would you say boy, that's an admirable husband, what a fine man, slow to anger. So  wise? Or what would you think of a judge? When he has somebody come into his courtroom that has committed multiple crimes? And yet the judge says, No problem, you know, I'm a mellow, take it easy, kind of guy so you are free to go. What kind of judge would that be? A good judge is opposed to what is wrong. A good spouse is jealous because of the one they love.           
A good God gets angry at what pulls people away from Him, and what makes them harm others and destroy themselves. 

So what provokes God's wrath?           
          Sin does every time. How is God's wrath revealed? Well, there are a number of different ways. In the latter part of Romans it mentions one way God’s wrath is revealed. It says that the government is a minister of God's wrath or an agent of God's wrath against all those who do wrong. So one way God's wrath is revealed, is when people get punished for committing crimes, you do the crime, you do the time. That's one way that punishment is revealed, but not the only way.               
          Another thing that the Bible talks about, as well as the apostle Paul and all the other Bible writers is the wrath to come, a future wrath, a future unleashing of God's anger against all that is wrong, all that has never been repented of, in which He punishes wrongdoing, with hell and eternal punishment for those who will not repent and continually remain opposed to him. There is the wrath to come. And then there's the kind of wrath that's described here. The wrath of God is being revealed, it’s being revealed by God when He says, have it your way. You want to sin? You want to be on your own without me? Have at it. Three times that dreadful statement is repeated,
God gave them over. God gave them over. God gave them over.
          He did not send lightning from heaven to blast them away. His wrath is revealed simply by saying you want a life, and a society without me. Here it is. How do you like it? Paul, and the Word of God says, that this is God's wrath being revealed. When you get to this point, you're already experiencing the wrath. It's not that you're just storing up wrath for the future, you are experiencing it already, because you're being handed over to this mess that life becomes without God. It comes in stages. Lets take a closer look at these stages from Romans 1. 

Godlessness          
          The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave Him thanks, this is the root of it all. Let’s look at those words in the right order: godlessness and wickedness. But  godlessness is first. Wickedness is actually just unrighteousness. Because remember, Romans is teaching how God reveals His righteousness, and how He gives His righteousness through Christ. So why do you need that righteousness? Well, because you're unrighteous, and that provokes the wrath of God. That unrighteousness comes from the godlessness of thinking you can do without God. 

Notice the core sin.          
          It's not some sensational crime or sordid affair. They didn't glorify Him. They didn't thank him. That's where it all started. They knew him and still they took him for granted, and then ignored him. They wanted their own way of life without Him even when they knew He was there. They didn't want to worship Him. They didn't want to thank Him. They just wanted his goodies without Him. That is godlessness.             
         
          Nowadays, there are what are called the New Atheists, guys who write books and say, there is no God and I have 14 proofs that there is no God. The universe looks designed, but I'll give you 400 pages explaining why it really isn't. They will go on and on telling you how there is no God. GK Chesterton said you can't be too careful about what books you read.  When he wasn't a believer, he read books by Atheists and their arguments rang so hollow that he couldn't believe a word they said.           
          But what I want to say here is, it's not a problem of intellectual atheism. It’s the problem of practical atheism that is most widespread, and most serious. Professors who write huge books about why you shouldn't believe in God, that's one kind of atheism. But the person who says, I believe in God, and then acts and behaves with attitudes as though God does not exist, well that is practical atheism. And that is very deadly.  
          
          That is what's going on here. When you know that God is real and there truly is a Creator yet you don't worship Him, you don't thank Him. You just figure he's one more factor to consider out there so I'm going to do my thing. That is the core sin of godlessness. And it is the thing that sets in motion every other evil deed. After that the mind begins to follow what the heart has already chosen. If you don't want God you'll be able to find plenty of smart people who will figure out all kinds of ways to explain Him away for you. If that's what you want, that's what you'll get.           
          You'll get the fat books that deny what you can see with your own two eyes. Go ahead and have at it. You want that? says God, then your thinking will become futile and your foolish heart will be darkened. They claimed to be wise and became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.           
          We look at those verses and say, Yeah, you know, Paul's talking about those knuckleheaded Greeks and Romans, who would worship this or that strange god or goddess or some of these other pagans, you know some even worship alligators? They worship the sun, moon and stars? How ignorant can you be? We are enlightened and we worship molecules and the big bang. We say this is the ultimate reality. So who's the knucklehead here? Well, we all are. You see people will always invent something to worship, and it will always be something unworthy of God.        
         
          But the saddest part of all this is we are made in God's image. So why do we worship things that are less than we? Are not atoms and molecules less than we are? We still have the atheist trying to explain it all away. They claim your love, your conscience, your sense of right and wrong, and your yearning for God, it’s all driven by molecules. Whenever you make an idol, it's something less than you are.          
           The Bible says you know they made worthless gods, and they became worthless. That's what happens. People come up with a theory about what they want God to be. Then they start believing people came from slime, crawled out of the ocean millions of years ago. Then these same people started treating everyone else like slime.

Theories have consequences.           
          Therefore, God gave them over to the sinful desires of their hearts and to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator, who is forever praised Amen. When you read the Bible, you'll find that when people worship false gods, they really liked the gods who had orgies as part of their worship. People love gods of sex and prosperity the most, they always have and always will.           
          You want to pack a church full, preach a prosperity gospel, and then throw in a  little bit of sexual licentiousness on the side, and you have got a great homebrew, for a  successful religion. It has always worked. You'll have the pews packed with people who are doing whatever they want sexually. You will also have plenty of people who are chasing the almighty dollar and willing to show up for hours in church on Sunday just to hear that it's all fine, that their sin does not matter. Well, it's not fine. That's the short version. It's a rebellion against the creator's design. 

What is the Creator's design for sex?          
          Well, let's ask the Creator Himself, Jesus said at the beginning, the Creator  made them male and female and said, For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.           
          So, what's the Creator say? He says, male and female. He says, for life. Is there anything unclear about that? But again, you can still find the 500 page volumes. In fact, if they get really carried away they will write 1000 page volumes that will explain away every sentence that is as clear as crystal about God's intent for sex and for marriage. 
          
          People have said, Well, Jesus never said anything about homosexuality. Oh, what did I just read? In the beginning, the Creator made them male and female, and said that male and female are meant to be one flesh. Then there's another stage where normal male/female desire is denied. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lust. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way, the men also abandoned natural relations with women, and were inflamed with lust for one another.           
          Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due  penalty for their perversion. These are now the most unpopular verses in the Bible.     
    
          These are the verses of the Bible that can get you fined or imprisoned in some countries, and of course, it’s getting closer and closer to that happening in our own country. Because this revelation from God is flatly denied. God doesn't change his standards, based on a memo from the US Supreme Court.

God doesn't take that long to say what He wants to say. 
          Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, He gave  them over to a depraved mind to do what ought not to be done. And then Paul goes on for just a quick list of 21 things that seem not to be very nice. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They're full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. Just a moment, I don't like that list. He stuck greed right in there with murder. What's that about? And then there's these other sins. Insolent, arrogant, boastful. Just because I go around pounding my chest and try to make myself look good you're saying I'm as bad as a murderer or that I hate God or I am a homosexual. Oh, come on?  They disobey their parents. Is that bad? They're senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. So 21 things. Yet we have our pet sins, we can say, I know that 17 of those things are really bad. But those four there, they are mine, not so fast I cant give those up. Well, God has a different take on all that.  

The final stage is when you have the parades, and you start applauding evil.           
          Although they know God's righteous decree, that those who do such things deserve death. They not only continue to do these various things, but also approve of those who practice them. God reveals His reality from heaven, in all the splendors that He's made, and all the wonders of human personality that He has put in us, by creating us in His image, he has revealed Himself.           
          He has also revealed what He thinks of sin, wrath. Put those two things together,  and we see there is a great, holy, splendid and marvelous God, and He hates sin. Our conscience tells us something is wrong. The creation tells us someone is there.  And we are not on the same page as He is. Therefore we are in trouble. Yes, we know these  things, in fact everybody knows them, and the ones who write the huge books, even they know it. They're just trying to talk themselves out of what they know, but they still know it and they continue to do the things God hates and they approve of those who do the things God hates.  
         
          One of the greatest tragedies of our time, which I still find absolutely hard to understand, except in light of these verses, is what did happen. In terms of the gay liberation movement. I am old enough to remember when a certain disease was called Grid, Gay Related Immune Deficiency, which later became known as AIDS all because that earlier label was not considered a very nice one. In the early days, people were dying by the 1000s, young male homosexuals. And it was right in the midst of all that death that transgenderism and homosexuality gained a lot of ground, and it gained and gained in approval. This is a fact. The more people were perishing, the more widely it became promoted, and praised. How can anyone explain this? I can't. I have no explanation for it except this one. We're in a society that approves of these actions and approves of those who partake of these actions.  
         
          If you are an investor, some of your most lucrative investments will be in casinos, the entertainment industry, and in strip clubs. You will find that corporations like General Motors are some of the largest purveyors of pornography. They make cars, but they also are a holding company for other kinds of enterprises. Don't even turn on cable TV, turn it off. I mean, consider the things that some Christians watch on cable. They not only approve of such things, they feed themselves on it every day. While fat cats get richer.          
          These are not sordid things that the evil merchants of organized crime are doing. This is what the powerful corporations of our country are doing with the support of their investors and their devoted Christian viewers. So we are reduced to a situation in which we don't even have to pretend anymore, hypocrisy is not necessary for many people in our culture. You only need to pretend there is a standard when all standards are decimated. You just continue to applaud the wickedness.            
          So in the section we've been looking at, you've got these rebels without restraint. It's just one thing after another after another, that he talks about people who got their moralism, without morality,  they got their standards, and they are constantly breaking them. And then the people who have the word of God, in particular, the Jewish people, at that time, you know, had God's word, they had the Old Testament. They had religion without a relationship. 

So what shall we conclude then? Are we any better?           
          Not at all, there is no one who does good, not even one. So if you listen to a sermon like this, and enjoy it, then you missed the boat somewhere. Because the point he makes at the end of this whole section is there is no one righteous, not even one, there is no one who does good, No one who seeks after God, they have together become worthless. And he goes on and on and on, with quotes from the Old Testament about the condition of humanity, in regards to his rebellion against God.           
          So there are three kinds of sinners, the ones who just let her fly, the hypocrites who got their high moral standards, which they're constantly violating. And then those who have certain forms of religion, but it's really not transforming them or saving them.            
          What do we see from the horrid election campaign season we recently went through, all of the slander and the kinds of true charges that have been made. How should we consider the condition of a nation that blindly selects such candidates as their two finest. It’s said, boy we need to clean up the politics, we need to drain the swamp.     
          Well, be careful what swamp you drain, you might find yourself looking straight into the eyes of an alligator. Because the fact of the matter is, politics is just a symptom.
          
          It's the symptom of a society that is feeling the effects of God's wrath. Or you might say, well, you know what? Things started heading south when they forced God out of the schools. Let's get Him back in the schools. Let's make sure they allow prayer back in the schools, maybe a Bible reading or two here and there that should do a lot of  good. You think it might? Probably not.           
          Remember the core problem is godlessness and wickedness, the practical atheism of people who don't thank God or glorify Him and they live their whole lives glorifying themselves. When I look at this situation, all the various things, maybe we could improve the education system, maybe we could pray for revival in the churches.         
          We could seek to improve conditions in our own cities, so there's less gun violence and strife, and all of these things are worth doing, just as band aids are worth putting on a scratch.
           
          But if your problem is godlessness, and your biggest problem is God's wrath is against you, do you really want to face the wrath of God on the day of judgment and sport only a ban aid. So they started thinking up theories, that there was no God at all, and that it all just happened. As they cooked up these evil thoughts, it became more than just a theory, it became false teaching in their schools. No longer would anybody pray to this God under the official schools of that land. No longer would they speak of the Creator in the schools of that land. As the deadly Chain Reaction continued, they not only neglected the Creator, but they also decided that they had the right to do whatever felt good. They thought it a very strange thing that an activity as fun as sex ought to be limited to married people. What not singles? Why shouldn't they be able to enjoy one of the most enjoyable activities of life? Especially if you weren't enjoying the person you were currently married to? Why should you have to be stuck with such a person?
          So there was a sexual revolution in which divorce became far more common, promiscuity and sex outside of marriage became a lot more common. Then the chain reaction continued. Males no longer wanted to be males and females no longer wanted to be females, men wanted to have sex with men and women wanted sex with women. It used to be considered abnormal and wrong to be involved in same sex activity, but then it all changed and it became normal and a right, it even became evil and racist to consider it wrong. Then this horrible chain reaction continued. The people of that land were people who became more and more divided.
          They took each other to court over nearly everything and sued people at the drop of a hat. They lied a lot, you couldn't trust anybody's word. Even when you had a written contract, you really couldn't count on it all that much. Children became more and more rebellious against parents, parents were even willing to destroy their own children, government officials became more and more corrupt. One social problem after another arose, violence increased and people started to hate God.

          They had parades, in honor of their sexual perversion. They exalted the positions of leadership, some of the most corrupt and vile among them, and considered it to be just normal and good. Now, if I were simply to tell this story as something that follows the latest headlines and developments in our own nation, it would be a very accurate characterization of the recent history of the United States of America. I didn't come up with this sequence of events by watching today’s news, or looking at news on the internet. I just read it in Romans Chapter 1.
          The scary thing about the sequence I've just described, is that Romans 1:18-32 says these are the symptoms of a nation that is under the wrath of God. That's what it says, if you see these things happening, it is evidence of God's wrath. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 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. For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to him. But their thinking became futile, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

          Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man, and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore, God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity. For the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator who is forever praised Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lust. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way, the men also abandoned natural relations with women, and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
          Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, He gave them over to a depraved mind to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful. They invent ways of doing evil, they disobey their parents. They are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death. They not only continue to do these various things, but also approve of those who practice them. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven. What is God's wrath?

          Well, when we think of wrath or anger, we tend to think of it as an undesirable trait. We're not very fond of people who fly off the handle, who lose their temper, who go around in a chronically grumpy mood, and are just sour all the time. Could that be what the wrath of God is, is that He's a grumpy God, who just goes off at a moment's notice, well, the Bible says God is slow to anger.
          The Bible shows that God is not someone who is just set off, or is easily triggered, or is irrational in his rages. The wrath of God is God’s holy reaction to everything that is out of line with the way it is supposed to be. The wrath of God is God's anger at what destroys His creation, and all the creatures that He made good. God doesn't get angry just at this or that, God gets angry at sin. It's the only thing that makes him angry. It is the thing that always makes him angry. That's what God's wrath is. God is light. There is no darkness in Him at all. His eyes are too pure to look upon sin. Those are the statements straight from the Bible. That's exactly why he gets angry when there's something wrong.
          The Bible sometimes speaks of God as being a jealous God. What would you think of a husband who didn't mind if his wife was sleeping around with eight different people? Would you say boy, that's an admirable husband, what a fine man, slow to anger. So wise? Or what would you think of a judge? When he has somebody come into his courtroom that has committed multiple crimes? And yet the judge says, No problem, you know, I'm a mellow, take it easy, kind of guy so you are free to go. What kind of judge would that be? A good judge is opposed to what is wrong. A good spouse is jealous because of the one they love. A good God gets angry at what pulls people away from Him, and what makes them harm others and destroy themselves. So what provokes God's wrath? Sin does every time. How is God's wrath revealed?

          Well, there are a number of different ways. In the latter part of Romans it mentions one way God’s wrath is revealed. It says that the government is a minister of God's wrath or an agent of God's wrath against all those who do wrong. So one way God's wrath is revealed, is when people get punished for committing crimes, you do the crime, you do the time. That's one way that punishment is revealed, but not the only way. Another thing that the Bible talks about, as well as the apostle Paul and all the other Bible writers is the wrath to come, a future wrath, a future unleashing of God's anger against all that is wrong, all that has never been repented of, in which He punishes wrongdoing, with hell and eternal punishment for those who will not repent and continually remain opposed to him. There is the wrath to come. And then there's the kind of wrath that's described here. The wrath of God is being revealed, it’s being revealed by God when He says, have it your way. You want to sin? You want to be on your own without me? Have at it. Three times that dreadful statement is repeated, God gave them over. God gave them over. God gave them over.

          He did not send lightning from heaven to blast them away. His wrath is revealed simply by saying you want a life, and a society without me. Here it is. How do you like it? Paul, and the Word of God says, that this is God's wrath being revealed. When you get to this point, you're already experiencing the wrath. It's not that you're just storing up wrath for the future, you are experiencing it already, because you're being handed over to this mess that life becomes without God. It comes in stages. Lets take a closer look at these stages from Romans 1. Godlessness The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave Him thanks, this is the root of it all. Let’s look at those words in the right order: godlessness and wickedness. But godlessness is first. Wickedness is actually just unrighteousness. Because remember, Romans is teaching how God reveals His righteousness, and how He gives His righteousness through Christ. So why do you need that righteousness? Well, because you're unrighteous, and that provokes the wrath of God. That unrighteousness comes from the godlessness of thinking you can do without God.

Notice the core sin.
          It's not some sensational crime or sordid affair. They didn't glorify Him. They didn't thank him. That's where it all started. They knew him and still they took him for granted, and then ignored him. They wanted their own way of life without Him even when they knew He was there. They didn't want to worship Him. They didn't want to thank Him. They just wanted his goodies without Him. That is godlessness. Nowadays, there are what are called the New Atheists, guys who write books and say, there is no God and I have 14 proofs that there is no God. The universe looks designed, but I'll give you 400 pages explaining why it really isn't. They will go on and on telling you how there is no God.
          GK Chesterton said you can't be too careful about what books you read. When he wasn't a believer, he read books by Atheists and their arguments rang so hollow that he couldn't believe a word they said. But what I want to say here is, it's not a problem of intellectual atheism. It’s the problem of practical atheism that is most widespread, and most serious. Professors who write huge books about why you shouldn't believe in God, that's one kind of atheism. But the person who says, I believe in God, and then acts and behaves with attitudes as though God does not exist, well that is practical atheism. And that is very deadly. That is what's going on here.

           When you know that God is real and there truly is a Creator yet you don't worship Him, you don't thank Him. You just figure he's one more factor to consider out there so I'm going to do my thing. That is the core sin of godlessness. And it is the thing that sets in motion every other evil deed. After that the mind begins to follow what the heart has already chosen. If you don't want God you'll be able to find plenty of smart people who will figure out all kinds of ways to explain Him away for you. If that's what you want, that's what you'll get. You'll get the fat books that deny what you can see with your own two eyes. Go ahead and have at it. You want that? says God, then your thinking will become futile and your foolish heart will be darkened.
          They claimed to be wise and became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. We look at those verses and say, Yeah, you know, Paul's talking about those knuckleheaded Greeks and Romans, who would worship this or that strange god or goddess or some of these other pagans, you know some even worship alligators? They worship the sun, moon and stars? How ignorant can you be? We are enlightened and we worship molecules and the big bang. We say this is the ultimate reality.
          So who's the knucklehead here? Well, we all are. You see people will always invent something to worship, and it will always be something unworthy of God. But the saddest part of all this is we are made in God's image. So why do we worship things that are less than we? Are not atoms and molecules less than we are? We still have the atheist trying to explain it all away. They claim your love, your conscience, your sense of right and wrong, and your yearning for God, it’s all driven by molecules. Whenever you make an idol, it's something less than you are. The Bible says you know they made worthless gods, and they became worthless. That's what happens.
          People come up with a theory about what they want God to be. Then they start believing people came from slime, crawled out of the ocean millions of years ago. Then these same people started treating everyone else like slime.

Theories have consequences.
           Therefore, God gave them over to the sinful desires of their hearts and to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator, who is forever praised Amen. When you read the Bible, you'll find that when people worship false gods, they really liked the gods who had orgies as part of their worship. People love gods of sex and prosperity the most, they always have and always will. You want to pack a church full, preach a prosperity gospel, and then throw in a little bit of sexual licentiousness on the side, and you have got a great homebrew, for a successful religion. It has always worked. You'll have the pews packed with people who are doing whatever they want sexually. You will also have plenty of people who are chasing the almighty dollar and willing to show up for hours in church on Sunday just to hear that it's all fine, that their sin does not matter. Well, it's not fine. That's the short version. It's a rebellion against the creator's design.

What is the Creator's design for sex?
          Well, let's ask the Creator Himself, Jesus said at the beginning, the Creator made them male and female and said, For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate. So, what's the Creator say? He says, male and female. He says, for life. Is there anything unclear about that? But again, you can still find the 500 page volumes. In fact, if they get really carried away they will write 1000 page volumes that will explain away every sentence that is as clear as crystal about God's intent for sex and for marriage. People have said, Well, Jesus never said anything about homosexuality. Oh, what did I just read? In the beginning, the Creator made them male and female, and said that male and female are meant to be one flesh. Then there's another stage where normal male/female desire is denied.
           Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lust. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way, the men also abandoned natural relations with women, and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. These are now the most unpopular verses in the Bible. These are the verses of the Bible that can get you fined or imprisoned in some countries, and of course, it’s getting closer and closer to that happening in our own country. Because this revelation from God is flatly denied. God doesn't change his standards, based on a memo from the US Supreme Court.

          God doesn't take that long to say what He wants to say. . Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, He gave them over to a depraved mind to do what ought not to be done. And then Paul goes on for just a quick list of 21 things that seem not to be very nice. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They're full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. Just a moment, I don't like that list. He stuck greed right in there with murder. What's that about? And then there's these other sins. Insolent, arrogant, boastful. Just because I go around pounding my chest and try to make myself look good you're saying I'm as bad as a murderer or that I hate God or I am a homosexual. Oh, come on? They disobey their parents. Is that bad? They're senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. So 21 things. Yet we have our pet sins, we can say, I know that 17 of those things are really bad. But those four there, they are mine, not so fast I cant give those up.
          Well, God has a different take on all that. The final stage is when you have the parades, and you start applauding evil. Although they know God's righteous decree, that those who do such things deserve death. They not only continue to do these various things, but also approve of those who practice them. God reveals His reality from heaven, in all the splendors that He's made, and all the wonders of human personality that He has put in us, by creating us in His image, he has revealed Himself. He has also revealed what He thinks of sin, wrath. Put those two things together, and we see there is a great, holy, splendid and marvelous God, and He hates sin. Our conscience tells us something is wrong. The creation tells us someone is there. And we are not on the same page as He is. Therefore we are in trouble. Yes, we know these things, in fact everybody knows them, and the ones who write the huge books, even they know it. They're just trying to talk themselves out of what they know, but they still know it and they continue to do the things God hates and they approve of those who do the things God hates. One of the greatest tragedies of our time, which I still find absolutely hard to understand, except in light of these verses, is what did happen.

          In terms of the gay liberation movement. I am old enough to remember when a certain disease was called Grid, Gay Related Immune Deficiency, It later became known as AIDS all because that earlier label was not considered a very nice one. In the early days, people were dying by the 1000s, young male homosexuals. And it was right in the midst of all that death that transgenderism and homosexuality gained a lot of ground, and it gained and gained in approval. This is a fact. The more people were perishing, the more widely it became promoted, and praised. How can anyone explain this? I can't. I have no explanation for it except this one. We're in a society that approves of these actions and approves of those who partake of these actions. If you are an investor, some of your most lucrative investments will be in casinos, the entertainment industry, and in strip clubs. You will find that corporations like General Motors are some of the largest purveyors of pornography.
            They make cars, but they also are a holding company for other kinds of enterprises. Don't even turn on cable TV, turn it off. I mean, consider the things that some Christians watch on cable. They not only approve of such things, they feed themselves on it every day. While fat cats get richer. These are not sordid things that the evil merchants of organized crime are doing. This is what the powerful corporations of our country are doing with the support of their investors and their devoted Christian viewers. So we are reduced to a situation in which we don't even have to pretend anymore, hypocrisy is not necessary for many people in our culture. You only need to pretend there is a standard when all standards are decimated. You just continue to applaud the wickedness.

           So in the section we've been looking at, you've got these rebels without restraint. It's just one thing after another after another, that he talks about people who got their moralism, without morality, they got their standards, and they are constantly breaking them. And then the people who have the word of God, in particular, the Jewish people, at that time, you know, had God's word, they had the Old Testament. They had religion without a relationship. So what shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all, there is no one who does good, not even one. So if you listen to a sermon like this, and enjoy it, then you missed the boat somewhere. Because the point he makes at the end of this whole section is there is no one righteous, not even one, there is no one who does good, No one who seeks after God, they have together become worthless. And he goes on and on and on, with quotes from the Old Testament about the condition of humanity, in regards to his rebellion against God.
          So there are three kinds of sinners, the ones who just let her fly, the hypocrites who got their high moral standards, which they're constantly violating. And then those who have certain forms of religion, but it's really not transforming them or saving them. What do we see from the horrid election campaign season we recently went through, all of the slander and the kinds of true charges that have been made. How should we consider the condition of a nation that blindly selects such candidates as their two finest. It’s said, boy we need to clean up the politics, we need to drain the swamp. Well, be careful what swamp you drain, you might find yourself looking straight into the eyes of an alligator. Because the fact of the matter is, politics is just a symptom. It's the symptom of a society that is feeling the effects of God's wrath. Or you might say, well, you know what? Things started heading south when they forced God out of the schools. Let's get Him back in the schools. Let's make sure they allow prayer back in the schools, maybe a Bible reading or two here and there that should do a lot of good. You think it might? Probably not.

          Remember the core problem is godlessness and wickedness, the practical atheism of people who don't thank God or glorify Him and they live their whole lives glorifying themselves. When I look at this situation, all the various things, maybe we could improve the education system, maybe we could pray for revival in the churches. We could seek to improve conditions in our own cities, so there's less gun violence and strife, and all of these things are worth doing, just as band aids are worth putting on a scratch. But if your problem is godlessness, and your biggest problem is God's wrath is against you, do you really want to face the wrath of God on the day of judgment and sport only a band aid? If you have a gunshot wound and you are bleeding profusely, Do you ask for a band aid? If you have been discovered to have serious cancer, Do you say, Doc, please give me a band aid on my pinky and give it a kiss please and I'll feel so much better and my booboo will be healed.

Terrible problems, demand mighty solutions.
          And that is why the Apostle Paul says, I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. Not this, that or the other thing, we need the power of God for salvation, so that we will have His righteousness instead of our unrighteousness. We must be reconciled to God, instead of stewing in godlessness, we need to recognize God. We are under God’s wrath? We must ask ourselves, what can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus? What can make me whole again, Nothing but the blood of Jesus. It’s like the bumper sticker; If Jesus is the answer, what's the question? The question is, how shall we be delivered from God's revealed wrath?
          The answer is God Himself, revealing His righteousness in Christ to everyone who believes, so that His righteousness is credited to us apart from anything we've done, and we receive that gift by faith. And then His righteousness is poured into us by the Holy Spirit, although we are not completely changed right away but we begin to change, to be more like our Creator. We need more than a band aid. We need the Son of God Himself. If our problem is the wrath of God, nothing can save us but the love of God. If our problem is our sin, nothing can save us except what takes away our sin, Nothing but the blood of Jesus? If you have a gunshot wound and you are bleeding profusely, Do you ask for a band aid? If you have been discovered to have serious cancer, Do you say, Doc, please give me a band aid on my pinky and give it a kiss please and I'll feel so much better and my owie will be healed.  
         
          Terrible problems, demand mighty solutions. And that is why the Apostle Paul says, I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. Not this, that or the other thing, we need the power of God for salvation, so that we will have His righteousness instead of our unrighteousness.           
           We must be reconciled to God, instead of stewing in godlessness, we need to recognize God. We are under God’s wrath? We must ask ourselves, what can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus? What can make me whole again, Nothing but the blood of Jesus.          
          It’s like the bumper sticker; If Jesus is the answer, what's the question? The question is, how shall we be delivered from God's revealed wrath? The answer is by God Himself, revealing His righteousness in Christ to everyone who believes, so that His righteousness is credited to us apart from anything we've done, and we receive that gift by faith. And then His righteousness is poured into us by the Holy Spirit, although we are not completely changed right away but we  begin to change, to be more like our Creator. We need more than a band aid. We need the Son of God Himself. If our problem is the wrath of God, nothing can save us but the love of God.         
 If our problem is our sin, nothing can save us except what takes away our sin, Nothing but the blood of Jesus