Death of Truth

The book of Romans describes what life with Jesus can look like.

I was reading through the New Testament book of Romans in my daily devotions. You might say that Romans is a book that is loaded with before, during, and after photos of our conversion. It pictures our transition from an ungodly lifestyle to a godly lifestyle.

The book is vividly descriptive about what life without Jesus Christ looks like. But Romans is equally descriptive about what life can look like if we would turn away from sin, trust in Christ’s righteousness, receive water baptism, confess Christ as Lord, and live in the power of the Holy Spirit. I would say that most of us have been Christians for so long that we have forgotten what life before Jesus Christ was really like! We have forgotten what it means to be without hope and without God, powerless, lost, dead in our sin, separated, in darkness, or in complete despair.

Last Saturday night I had trouble putting the finishing touches on my sermon. Yes, I know. You could tell, right? The problem was that all week long I had been following the dramatic story of the nine miners trapped hundreds of feet below the earth’s surface. After accidentally breaching the wall of an old mine, they became trapped and drenched by millions of gallons of cold water. On Thursday rescue workers drilled an airshaft down to the tiny compartment where they thought the miners might be trapped. They weren’t even sure they would be there.

But they were right on target! And we all remember hearing about how the miners enthusiastically pounded on the shaft to let rescue workers know that they were still alive. But then as the weekend approached there was great uncertainty. Drill bits broke. Delays set in. The miners had stopped banging on the airshaft. Doctors believed hypothermia had overtaken the miners. Experts grew increasingly concerned. The country grew quiet and held its breath for bad news.

But then on Saturday the rescuers broke through the roof of the mine and dropped a cell phone to the miners. All nine miners were alive and eager to be saved! I stayed up until all nine miners were brought up out of the mine one at a time, black, dirty, exhausted, soaked, and then put on a stretcher. Every newscaster on the television was shouting, "It’s a miracle! It’s a miracle!" On Fox News, Geraldo could be seen kissing the workers and bear-hugging the miners. The governor of Pennsylvania was beating his fists in the air. Hardened veteran miners were busting up into tears. Workers triumphantly chanted, "Nine for nine!" As a watched I was shaking. My eyes teared up. Their condition had been so perilous and their rescue so dramatic that I couldn’t concentrate on anything else, let alone go to sleep later that night. And no, I didn’t get as excited about the sixty or so beached whales at Cape Cod!

One reason their story was so dramatic was because all of us could somehow identify with their perilous circumstances. Their batteries were running out. The water was rising. They were trapped in utter darkness. They had no warmth. They were cold. Hypothermia was setting in. They had only one corn beef sandwich to share between them. They were hopeless. They couldn’t do one thing to save themselves. They were more or less dead, but still alive. Time was running out fast. There was fear.

One miner was asked, "Will you ever go back down into a mine again?" He immediately replied, "No. Never. Absolutely not. Not under any circumstance. Not unless one of my fellow miners got trapped down there. Then I would go down to rescue him, absolutely." His circumstance had been so horrific that he vowed to never go down there again. On the other hand, his circumstance was so horrific that he vowed that he would go down there in a second if it meant saving someone from the same peril that he once endured.

Can you remember what your life was like before you knew Christ?

Some of us are decades removed from our transition to a Christ-centered life. How easily we forget the drama of our conversion. Eternity was weighing in the balance. We were dead in sin. We were in darkness. We were without hope and without God. Powerless. Condemned. But God did a miracle. He intervened. He identified with us in our most severe predicament. He sent his Son down to earth to rescue us so that we might be reunited in fellowship with the Father above.

Will we ever go back to life as we knew it before Christ? No. Never. Absolutely not. But what about those who are still trapped in darkness? What about those who do not yet know Christ? What about those who are still dead, without hope, without power, without God, lost, separated, and out of fellowship? Will we go back for them? Will we reach out to them just as God reached out to us by sending his Son, Jesus Christ? The answer is absolutely! Yes! In a heartbeat! No question about it! That is the only reasonable answer isn’t it? Isn’t it?

Most often, as we get farther from our conversion we become increasingly out of touch with the perilous condition of those separated from Christ. The result is that we get apathetic about our ministry and especially about our outreach. We stop seeing the gospel of Jesus Christ as the salvation of the world, but instead yawn and divest ourselves from the church’s ministry. In our apathy, everything else becomes more important than reaching people with the good news of Christ, including the lawn, home repairs, overtime, television, and the dirty kitchen floor.

This is why it is important to refresh our memory, to flip back through the pages of our transition from ungodliness into godliness. Romans helps us do this. This morning I want to talk about the mindset of ungodly people. What is their thought process? Why do they think the way they do? Next week I want to talk about the lifestyle of ungodly people. Hollywood glamorizes the ungodly lifestyle.

Hollywood convinces us to believe the lie and deceives us about how unglamorous ungodliness really is. With ungodliness there is tremendous pain. There is untold consequence. A lot of people talk about bearing the cross of discipleship, but we're going to talk about carrying the cross of ungodliness. There is no comparison. And the goal is not to beat up on anyone. It's not to gloat over the predicament of ungodly people or to pat ourselves on the back for being Christians. The goal is to provide understanding and motivate us to rise up and become unapologetically proactive in our outreach to ungodly people!

Atheism.

So let’s begin this morning in Romans 1 by talking about the mindset of the ungodly. An atheist looks at creation and concludes that God doesn't exist. Atheists believe that creation happened by chance through one big cosmic explosion. For them, there isn’t any intelligent design in the universe. There isn’t any evidence pointing to a higher power, a creator, an author, or an artist.

Their belief is that the world has slowly evolved over billions of years into its present form and is now self-sustaining. Charles Darwin is their prophet. Darwin’s life work, The Origin of the Species, is their sacred book, their dogma, and their creed. Atheists believe that we humans are really just a bunch of hairless, banana-eating apes. And every chance they get, they print articles in Time Magazine and disseminate textbooks to our children illustrating just how we evolved. And whenever ancient bone discoveries are made, they begin salivating as they prematurely declare, "Look, we have conclusive proof. No God but evolution! So atheists do not believe that God exists. What we see is what we get.

Agnostics.

An agnostic is someone who insists that even if God does exist, he, or she, or it, or whatever God may be, cannot be known! They believe that no one has the authority to declare anything about God with certainty. Agnostics believe that every truth about God is relative to a person’s religious heritage, including Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, Satanists, Environmentalists, Jews, or Christians. Agnostics believe that we can’t know if one is right and one is wrong. We must accept all as true. There is no scientific proof for God’s existence. We cannot put him under a microscope. There is nothing we can point to and say, "There, that is what God is like. That is who he is." We cannot know and shouldn’t pretend to! When we think about the mindset of ungodly people, we often think that they're atheists! They do not believe that God exists! I must prove that God exists, and then they will convert.

With this presumption we immediately try to prove the obvious to agnostics. We say, "If you were walking through a forest and found a dictionary laying in the bushes would you conclude that some tree evolved all by itself into a dictionary complete with page numbers and photos? Or would you assume that an intelligent being designed it and put it there?"

Or we might say, "Suppose you are driving down the road and a 747 jetliner flies overhead. Would you first conclude that a huge explosion went off in a junkyard somewhere and against all odds a 747 magically flew out? Or would you assume that it was created by an intelligent designer?"

And then we wrap up our argument, "A single strand of DNA is much more complex than any encyclopedia volume. And the chances of even a frog evolving out of a cosmic big bang is infinitely more implausible than a 747 flying out of a junkyard explosion."

Have you ever noticed that we don’t get very far making such arguments, as logical as they may be? First of all, very few if any people can be argued into the kingdom of God. Arguments always involve the ego. And what the ego starts, pride finishes. Second of all, statistically there are very few genuine atheists who look at creation and absolutely conclude that no God exists!

In all my years of doing evangelism I have only met one or two people who claimed to be atheists. And they weren’t really sure. In my opinion atheism doesn’t accurately depict the mindset of the ungodly. Nor does agnosticism accurately depict the mindset of the ungodly. With agnostics, we try to build a case that Godis knowable. We say, "If God went through all this trouble to create such a complex world, shouldn’t we also assume that he would go to great lengths to communicate with his creation? To know us and to be known by us?"

We try to prove that the Bible is God’s special revelation and hisword to man. We try to prove that miracles are possible, that something divine and other-wordly has transpired in our lives that points to a personal God. We try to prove Jesus’ identity, his death, his resurrection, and his ascension. We point out that God didn’t want to be unknown, so he sent his only Son to clear up the confusion and darkness. Statistically there are far more agnostics in the world than atheists. But still, neither agnosticism nor atheism accurately characterizes the ungodly mind.

"I don't", "I can't", versus "I won't."

As we read and study Romans the Bible makes a stunning declaration about the ungodly mindset. The ungodly mindset isn’t characterized by "I don’t", which is atheism. The ungodly mindset isn’t characterized by "I can’t", which is agnosticism. Rather, the ungodly mindset is characterized by "I won’t .I won’t believe. I refuse to believe."

Listen to Romans 1:18-20 (NIV) describe why the ungodly mindset won’t believe in God. "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."

Let’s just pause here for a moment and absorb this powerful assertion. We are being told that the fact of God’s existence is obvious. The reality of his existence has been made plain. It can be clearly seen in creation, and not only seen, but also understood from what has been made. In fact, God’s existence is so obvious that we are told, "...men are without excuse."

Most self-professed atheists are intellectually dishonest. Through the miracle of the internet, I once found myself exchanging messages with a professor from Temple University. He was from India and was deeply involved in science and mathematics. I was humbled by his intelligence. He challenged me as I have never been challenged before. He found out that I was a Christian and our conversations moved to religion. He didn’t believe in God’s existence. I did. He tried to disprove God’s existence. I challenged him to objectively apply his intellect and expertise in the field of statistics to our debate. I introduced him to the statistical improbabilities that even one cell might evolve by chance through evolution-like processes. He considered the argument, couldn’t respond, conceded, but then he stubbornly insisted, "God doesn’t exist. I still don’t think that God exists." Actually at that point I think he stopped thinking.

Romans 1:21-23 (NIV) continues with an explanation of what I have just described. "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."

Notice again. It's not that the ungodly don’t believe or can’t believe. It is that they won’t believe. They refuse to believe. They hide behind a veneer of wisdom and intelligence while they become fools. The burden of proof for the existence of God has never been on those who believe. The burden of proof for the non-existence of God has always been on those foolish few who look at creation and say, "Ah… duh… ah… evolution… ah… a big bang… ah… primordial soup… ah… caused it… ah… ah... duh…"

Psalm 19:1-6 (NIV) says, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their 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 his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat."

The existence of God is as obvious in creation as the sun is obvious in the sky. We are without excuse, every last one of us. The essence of foolishness is to look at creation and deny the obvious existence of God. The essence of wisdom is to look at creation and see the obvious work of God.

When we consider Romans 1 and Psalm 19 it is obvious that the ungodly mindset is characterized by what we might call the death of truth. The truth that is being put to death, that is being suppressed, is that God does exist. You may remember just last month how a federal appeals court judge declared the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional because it contained the phrase, "One nation, under God..." That whole suit was brought to court by an atheist on behalf of his daughter. His desire was to suppress the acknowledgement, the truth, of God’s existence. The atheist later defended his suit by saying, "What if the pledge read, 'One nation under Jesus, or under Buddha...?' "

Next week, I want to return to this topic and use Romans 1 to explore why the ungodly suppress the truth about God's existence. With God out of the way, they feel free to pursue whatever lifestyle they choose. They become a law unto themselves. They become autonomous and self-governing. They can more easily justify their inner impulses and outward behaviors. They can assuage their guilt, shame, and their conscience. They feel a sense of release from responsibility, consequence, condemnation, and more. They are afraid of how a belief in the existence of God might force them to change.

Most importantly, we will discuss why the ungodly mindset puts the ungodly in such serious peril. And why it is so urgent that we compassionately, unapologetically, intentionally, and immediately reach out to them before they perish.