Rom. 1:19,20 To Be An Atheist Is To Lie To Yourself

SPEAKER 01 : 0:04

So we continue to explore what this suppression is all about that Paul talks about in Romans chapter 1, verse 18. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Now, remember what we’ve talked about already, that the wrath of God is not some hatred towards humanity. It is not some vicious anger that is determined to wipe out the human race. It is the love of God expressed in resistance to our self-destructive nature. God’s wrath is his love determined to change our trajectory because we are in a death spiral. And this is all part of the good news of the gospel. If God did not have a wrath against destruction and sin and cruelty and what have you, then we would have the most fearful scepter in front of our eyes. That is that we would have a creator of the universe that does not care about good or evil and couldn’t Give a damn as to whether we harm each other or not. All is the same to him. Well, that’s not the truth of the gospel, is it? It is the wrath of God motivated by love that leads him to take the judgment of the world upon himself instead of allowing us to take it so that he can redeem us. It’s all part of the good news of the gospel once you understand it. You see, mankind in suppressing God is suppressing the author of life, the source of life, the source of joy and hope. We are suppressing, it’s as if we are shutting the light out of our hearts and leaving us in a great, dark, empty tomb. Now then, this verses 19 and 20 are tremendously revealing in regard to, yes, you’ve got it, atheism. I started to mention this yesterday and we’ll go on more with it. Because, he says, what may be known of God is manifest to them. That is a definitive statement and in the light of modern thinking it’s explosive. Now, people say that that’s simply not true. Science cannot demonstrate whether there is a God or not. We don’t know whether there is a God. It’s a matter of belief that there is God. not according to Scripture. It is a matter of intuitive, inward sense that there is a Creator. Because what may be known of God is manifest to them, verse 19 says, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes have been clearly seen, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. Okay, so his eternal attributes, invisible attributes, are clearly seen. What are these invisible attributes? Well, according to the latter part of the verse, his eternal power and Godhead. That is that God is omnipotent, all-powerful, and his Godhead would indicate his personality, his personhood. God is all-powerful and personal. Now, many people would like to think that God is all-powerful, he’s an all-powerful force in the universe, but he’s not personal. They don’t want that. They can allow that there is some force that is creating everything, but don’t give me the idea that he has a personhood and that he can speak and think and love and care. No, no, I don’t want that. And then there are those who believe that God is personal, but not all-powerful. And those are the pagan religions where they believe God is like the Hindu gods, God of this and God of that, God of the table that provides our food, God of the mountains that brings down water from the snow caps, and what have you. But don’t give me an all-powerful God, an all-personal God,

SPEAKER 02 : 4:41

You remember Pharaoh?

SPEAKER 01 : 4:44

Yes, he believed in the gods, but they were individual, they were personal, they were various gods of different nations. But Moses was coming along with the idea that God is the creator of all things. And so humanity wants to either allow an all-powerful God but no personality, or a personal God with no infinite power. We don’t want an all-powerful and personal God. Why do we not? because then we are accountable to him, then we have something to do with him. God created man in his own image, male and female, and therefore there is a direct relationship between human beings who have personality and can think and feel and love and care, and God who can think and feel and love and care. Because what may be known of God, therefore, is manifest to them, it says in verse 19, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. Now, I’m not trying to make people feel guilty. You’ve got enough guilt of your own to be able to know that. We don’t need someone else to make us feel that way. What I’m trying to do is to enlighten our minds and help us to understand that belief in God is intrinsic. Knowledge of God is internal. There is, as I have said before, no such thing as an atheist. A person who says, I don’t believe, is lying to himself. Now, we don’t need to judge and condemn and slam people with this kind of teaching, but we do need to be aware of it. Don’t be afraid of atheism. Don’t think that atheism somehow has a one-up on you because they have science and you don’t. You have faith and they have science. The issue is this. No scientific data can ever prove that God exists or does not exist. But inwardly we know, because we see intelligent design, not only intelligent design, but beautifully caring design in nature. We see God nurturing the world through the creative acts that he has done. We see a world that is not simply thrown into the cosmos accidentally and is just twirling around and doing nothing purposeful. We see a very purposeful creation. Read Psalm 103, Psalm 104. Now, when a person says, I am an atheist, he is exercising, and I’m not trying to condemn here, willful unbelief. Willful unbelief. But what does it say here? What it starts with is that man is in a state of suppression. We are suppressing God because there is a knowledge of God that we are not in harmony with. When Adam sinned, you remember my talking about this the other day, he fled from God. He took the fruit which God had told him would be harmful to him. And yet when he was persuaded that it might make him wise, persuaded by Satan, and that it was good for food and delightful to the eyes and all the rest of it, he took that fruit. And so he had gone through a process of reversing The truth, inversion of the truth. God, who was generous and was saying, here’s all the world for you, you can eat of any of the trees of the garden, but not this fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Satan inverted that, saying, has God said you shall not eat of any of the trees of the garden? Eve was good enough to be able to say, no, we may eat of all the trees of the garden except this one. But you notice the work of Satan. It was to reinvent God’s words to make them seem mean and then to deny his word. You shall not die if you eat of this fruit. So Satan reversed the consequences. God was saying, eat of all the fruit and you shall live, but don’t eat of this and you shall die. Satan says, no, you will not die, you will live, and you will be blessed, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil. The inversion of good and evil is at the core of the suppression of God, because we come to believe that God is frightening and evil and restrictive and mean. We therefore flee from him, just as Adam and Eve did when they heard God coming towards them, and they pretended to have a righteousness. They put up defenses, in other words, against God. In other words, they saw God as dangerous. How tragic! God is safety, God is beauty, God is light, God is warmth and comfort and joy. And Satan had successfully caused an inversion in Adam and Eve’s mind. That inversion is what we struggle with in our humanity every day, up to the very present. And because we think of God as evil and evil as good, that inversion I just talked about, therefore we suppress God because he appears to be frightening and he reminds us of our guilt and our shame and our fear. Now that suppression of God is made clear, as Paul describes here, in that God can clearly be seen in creation, yet he is denied. Therefore, Unbelief. Atheism is a willful unbelief. We are all engaged in one form of willful unbelief or not. So you don’t get into an argument with an atheist. and try to prove your position in God by some scientific means or philosophical means or evidence, empirical evidence. You rather ask the penetrating question, oh, you do not believe.

SPEAKER 02 : 11:36

What hurt you? The atheist says, what are you talking about, what hurt me?

SPEAKER 01 : 11:43

Well, it is impossible to to not, it is impossible for you to not believe without having been hurt, either by abuse as a child, or by abuse from the church, or by some experience in your life that has led you to resist something and someone so loving. We would never resist a loving God if it were not for the fact or for the idea that we have turned him into an unloving God and someone to be frightened of and someone who judges us and punishes us and does not want anything to do with comforting us. And so, you see, we are looking, when we hear a person say that he’s an atheist, we are not looking at a scientific position, but a moral position. A man or woman has taken a moral position against God because he has been perceived of or experienced as evil. That is, God has been perceived of or experienced as evil, when in fact he is good. The whole purpose of Satan is to change identities with God. God is good, but Satan is jealous of that goodness and wants us to perceive that God is bad so that Satan can be perceived as good and receive the worship. So remember why we are Christians. We are Christians because God has revealed his true character in Jesus Christ, and it is not that he is bad, but that he is good and has saved us. Thank you for listening today. I appreciated Colin Cook here and how it happens. If you would like to hear this program any time of the day or night, you can do so by downloading a free app, soundcloud.com or pudbean.com and key in how it happens with Colin Cook when you get there. would you consider a donation? The funds are very low. This is a little ministry that stretches itself to bring the message to you, this message by radio, which is now in its 27th or 8th year. I’ll work that out and let you know. So send your donation to FaithQuest, P.O. Box 366, Littleton, Colorado, 80160, or make your donation online at faithquestradio.com. Thanks so much. See you next time. Cheerio and God bless.