Sermons

God's Wrath on Idolatry

{ "description": "In this sermon, Elder Sean Jim explores the sobering reality of God's wrath against idolatry and unrighteousness as revealed in Romans 1:18-25. He begins by illustrating how humanity often makes unwise exchanges, trading something valuable for something far less worthy—paralleling this with the spiritual exchange of worshiping the Creator for created things. Sean emphasizes that understanding God's wrath is essential to grasping the gospel's power and necessity. He explains that God's wrath is not only a just response to sin but also a vital aspect of His character, revealing the seriousness of our rebellion and our desperate need for salvation through Jesus Christ.\n\nSean unpacks Paul's message that all people suppress the truth about God despite clear evidence of His existence through creation (general revelation). This suppression leads to idolatry—exchanging the glory of God for images and created things—and results in moral and spiritual futility. The sermon highlights the role of the Holy Spirit in illuminating hearts to receive the gospel, underscoring that evangelism is about proclaiming Christ's saving work rather than merely persuading others of a moral worldview. Finally, Sean calls listeners to self-examination, urging them to identify and repent of idols in their lives and to embrace the gospel's transformative power, which replaces our sin and idolatry with Christ's righteousness.", "transcript": "Good morning. My name is Sean. I'm a member and one of the elders here.\n\nThis Friday commemorates what the internet refers to as Bitcoin Pizza Day. On May 22nd, 2010, the first ever recorded transaction with Bitcoin took place. A programmer, through an online forum, received two Papa John's pizzas in exchange for 10,000 Bitcoin. Ten thousand. Let me just tell you right now that 10,000 Bitcoin today is worth about $790 million. This might actually be one of the worst trade deals in the history of trade deals.\n\nNow, this is a bit of a silly example, but we're probably all guilty of the same thing to varying degrees. We make trades without thinking of the consequences. When I was eight, I traded away one of my favorite stuffed animals for some information about a video game cheat code with my brother. I learned that day a lesson about the accessibility of knowledge and the value of actually owning something.\n\nYou could think of Esau in Genesis 25 who traded away his birthright, his extra portion of inheritance, his standing in his household for stew. Or David, who in his lust took Bathsheba and received in exchange a dead child, fractured relationships, and a torn kingdom.\n\nWhat might you be trading right now without knowledge of its consequences? Maybe you're trading healthy patterns of sleep and rest for productivity without thinking of its long-term effects. Maybe you're giving extra hours at a job or career in exchange for watching your children grow, in exchange for being present as a parent. Maybe it's a hangover from poor decisions the night before, debt in exchange for financial irresponsibility.\n\nWhat about when the exchange is less tangible? When it involves our sin or our relationship with God? What happens when we trade the worship of God for that of idols? What are we blind to when we exchange the glory of God for that which is created? He tells us it's wrath—God's wrath revealed both now and in the future.\n\nTurn with me to Romans chapter 1. This morning we'll be looking at verses 18 to 25, and Lord willing, we will finish the chapter next week.\n\nLet me provide some context for where we are and where we're going. As Thomas pointed out last week, Paul is writing to a church that's comprised of both Jews and Gentiles, or non-Jews. And in this book as a whole, Paul is writing to expound a gospel of salvation through faith in Jesus that is unbound by ethnicity so that the obedient family of God can be a witness to all nations.\n\nWhether it's in first-century Rome or 21st-century Portland, God has purposed His church to be a light for His glory. And so we need to have a clear and comprehensive understanding of the gospel and how it affects all of our lives and our relationships.\n\nPaul in Romans 1:16 and 17 has just laid the foundational truth that he's going to unpack. Because the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, both Jew and Greek, because the gospel reveals the righteousness of God, we who live by faith in this gospel should not be ashamed of it.\n\nAnd in order to see the beauty and power of this gospel, in order to even see our need for it, we must first understand our sin, our standing before God, and that His just wrath hangs over us. And that brings us to our passage this morning.\n\nPaul in chapter 1 is focusing on sin and the unrighteousness of the pagan Gentile world before he turns to the Jews in chapter 2. And I think this is helpful for us to know, especially for next week when we address some of the context and contemporary cultural issues surrounding our passage, Paul is highlighting the totality of sin and its effects.\n\nWhile he might be addressing one party or another, if we are to believe that the inspired word of God is sufficient for everything that we need pertaining to life and godliness, if it's sufficient to bring us teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, then there are timeless truths in this text about sin, humanity, and God's wrath that we have to apply in our lives and in our churches today.\n\nWhy do we need the gospel? Why do we need salvation and righteousness that Jesus alone can provide us by faith? Because all of us are guilty. All of us have misplaced our worship. All of us have traded the divine for the ungodly, both in our hearts and with our actions. And it's only when we understand our sin, our foolishness, our unrighteous state that we can receive the gospel.\n\nIt's only when we see the folly of our first exchange, of the Creator for the created, that we can see the beauty of the greatest exchange, Christ's righteousness for our sin.\n\nHere's the main point that Paul is communicating in this passage: We need the gospel because God's wrath is revealed against our idolatry and our immorality. We need the gospel because God's wrath is revealed against our idolatry and our immorality.\n\nThis idea is going to span both this Sunday and next Sunday. Today we'll focus on that first part. We need the gospel because God's wrath is revealed against our idolatry.\n\nWe need to see our sin for what it truly is before we can receive the good news of the gospel. Look with me at Romans 1. I'll read the whole section to give us the full picture, starting in verse 18:\n\n“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made, so they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became foolish in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal men and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.”\n\nThis morning we'll look at verses 18 to 25 and we'll see how God's wrath is revealed against our idolatry, our misplaced worship in three sections: wrath revealed, truth suppressed, and worship exchanged.\n\nLet's begin by looking at God's wrath revealed. Look again at verse 18:\n\n“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.”\n\nA Pew Research study from 2019, after analyzing 50,000 sermons across different Christian traditions, reported that in Protestant evangelical churches, much like this one, fewer than 10% of the sermons mention words and phrases relating to sin and punishment. Contrast that with a 99% chance to hear the word love.\n\nIt's not just a modern phenomenon. Christians throughout history have long recognized a drought when it comes to speaking about hard truths in God's word.\n\nPaul makes it clear, even from the very beginning of his explanation of the gospel, God is a God of wrath and sin has severe consequences.\n\nIf we're to be faithful to know and understand the whole counsel of God's word, we must not shy away from uncomfortable truths like sin, hell, wrath, and judgment.\n\nLet me make three arguments for why understanding God's wrath and our sin is necessary.\n\nFirst, understanding God's wrath and our sin is necessary in order for us to become and live as Christians. It's part of the gospel message. In order for us to see our need for salvation in the gospel, we must understand God's wrath.\n\nPaul points out in Romans 1:17 that in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed. And then in the next verse, he says, the wrath of God is revealed. We call this a linguistic connection. He's linking these two ideas together with the idea of God revealing an aspect of himself.\n\nHe's making a point that the gospel message requires both wrath and righteousness, judgment and salvation.\n\nAt the core of the gospel is a legal demand. Romans 6:23 tells us that the wages of sin is death. Our debt of sin means that we're deserving the punishment of God, the wrath of God, the just anger of God against our unrighteousness.\n\nIn fact, the very term salvation or its synonym deliverance has a dramatic implication. We're saved from something. We are delivered from something.\n\nWhat are you saved from? We're saved from the wrath of God.\n\nRomans 5:9 says, “Since therefore you have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.”\n\nIn 1 Thessalonians 1:10, we're told that Jesus, who was raised from the dead, delivers us from the wrath to come.\n\nColossians 1:13 talks of deliverance from the domain of darkness, and I'll argue next week that our bondage to sin and darkness is in fact a present expression of God's wrath to us.\n\nYes, in the gospel we find freedom from sin, but the primary purpose of the atonement is to restore us to a right relationship with God. God cannot dwell with us while we're under just condemnation for our sin.\n\nUnless we see our sin for what it is, unless we understand His wrath, we can't receive the salvation that God offers. Instead, we'll receive a cheap gospel, cheap grace, and that will never result in the kind of obedience and holiness that He demands of His people.\n\nWe must understand God's wrath and our sin in order to see our true need for the gospel.\n\nSecond, understanding God's wrath is necessary because the wrath of God is part of His character. If we're to truly know God, it's to know God as He has revealed Himself to us.\n\nWe don't get to decide what God is like any more than we get to decide what other people are like. We have to approach God on His terms.\n\nTo say that God is in any way different than how He's revealed Himself is to reject God and set up for ourselves an idol. It is idolatry.\n\nScripture is very clear on the wrath of God on sin and idolatry.\n\nNahum 1:2 says, “The Lord is a jealous and avenging God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies. The Lord will by no means clear the guilty. Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire and the rocks are broken into pieces by him.”\n\nEzekiel 16 equates the idolatry of Israel to adultery and prostitution:\n\n“Thus says the Lord God, because your lust was poured out and your nakedness uncovered in your whorings with your lovers and with all your abominable idols, I will judge you as women who commit adultery and shed blood are judged, and bring upon you the blood of wrath, and jealousy. So I will satisfy my wrath on you and my jealousy shall depart from you.”\n\nUnless we think that this anger of God is limited to the Old Testament, Ephesians 2 says that by nature we are children of wrath.\n\nHere in Romans, God's wrath is revealed against all unrighteousness, all ungodliness.\n\n2 Thessalonians 1 speaks of Jesus who will return to inflict vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of God and from the glory of His might.\n\nRevelation 19 gives us another picture of Jesus who is going to finally and fully bring the wrath of God, the judgment of God on those who oppose Him:\n\n“And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which He is called is the Word of God. From His mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.”\n\nThe real and imminent presence of God's wrath is meant to show the severity of our sin so that we might turn and repent.\n\nEven after trusting in Jesus, God's wrath on our sin means to spur us on towards obedience.\n\nWe need to see the great cost that Jesus bore in our place, the atonement. The fact that Jesus took the penalty of my sin, your sin on the cross makes no sense unless we see the wrath of God.\n\nIf there's no wrath, if God can just overlook our sins, He's no longer an all-powerful, just God, and there's no more gospel.\n\nAnd we know this instinctively, like Noah even gave us an example for, whether it's a child tattling on misbehaving classmates or members of society protesting with indignation against every form of injustice, whether it's a teacher, a parent, the government, any authority we turn to, for them to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing will provoke outrage in our hearts.\n\nIt's an unjust thing for iniquity to go unpunished. And the punishment must match the crime in severity.\n\nSo why are we tempted to think differently about God?\n\nHow do you respond then to the character of God revealed in His wrath? Do you, as He commands us, submit to Christ alone to save us from His wrath? Or do you minimize or even redefine your sin in order to justify yourself before God?\n\nDo you compare yourselves to others? Do you judge others with a morality that's invented? Are you replacing or exchanging the truth of God for a lie and replacing Him with a created being who exists for your own purposes?\n\nGod's wrath is necessary because it's built into His justice and His very character.\n\nThird, understanding God's wrath is necessary for our comfort, for our reliance on God to right every wrong.\n\nYes, we need to see the seriousness of our sin in light of God's wrath, but God's wrath is a good and powerful thing.\n\nNotice the language that His wrath is revealed from heaven. God's wrath is divine. It is distinct. It is unstained from sin and it is not cruel. It is judicial.\n\nWe're meant to take comfort in this, especially when we can compare our own vengeance to that of God's.\n\nAll of our attempts to pursue justice, all of our attempts for vindication apart from God are polluted by our sin.\n\nBut God is not only all-powerful, He is the perfect judge. He will right every wrong.\n\nVengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.\n\nSo we can with confidence echo Psalm 10:\n\n“O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted. You will strengthen their heart. You will incline your ear to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.”\n\nWe can be sure that the perfectly just God of the universe is more aware than we are of the unrighteousness and pain that sin causes. And He will one day judge all sin and make all things right.\n\nSo trust in the character of God. His wrath, His divine retribution, is comfort for the anxious heart.\n\nThat if you have been mistreated, oppressed, scorned, or abused, God will bring justice to you.\n\nListen to Isaiah 35:\n\n“Be strong, fear not, behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God, He will come and save you.”\n\nFor those who have been wronged, the wrath of God against sin is an expression of His love and tender care for us.\n\nBut make no mistake, God's wrath is comprehensive. It is thorough. It is absolute.\n\nSo for God to right every wrong, even the wrongs done against you, is just punishment that will involve the wrongs that you commit.\n\nAccording to His holy law, no one escapes. His wrath is revealed against all unrighteousness, including yours.\n\nNo one is righteous, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.\n\nSo if we're to rely on God to punish sin and unrighteousness, we must find a way to deal with our own sin.\n\nGod is a God of wrath. His wrath will be revealed against our idolatry.\n\nAnd we're going to turn second to that which is expressed in our suppression of truth.\n\nLook again at verse 18:\n\n“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.”\n\n“For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made, so they are without excuse.”\n\nWhat does Paul mean here when he says that by our unrighteousness we suppress the truth?\n\nWell, there's a sense that in our sin and unrighteousness, our perspective on reality itself is distorted.\n\nIt might be that what we believe to be true isn't true, or it's not the whole truth.\n\nIs this not at the heart of what happened in the Garden of Eden and continues in our hearts today?\n\nWe question what God has said in His word. We reject what God has revealed in His character. We deny what He has commanded for us by His law.\n\nWe say and ask, “Did God really say?” And so our suppression of truth begins to look like what is described in Isaiah 5:\n\n“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and shrewd in their own sight.”\n\nI think it's passages like these that show us how important our doctrine really is, how even outside of commands and imperatives in Scripture, all of Scripture comes to bear on our lives.\n\nAnd so there are two doctrines that are at play here, and I think both have a big impact on how we think about evangelism in particular.\n\nFirst, the doctrine of illumination.\n\nBy nature, we are opposed to God. Our perspective of sin and truth itself is distorted. We need the Holy Spirit to turn the lights on in our hearts, to even allow us to understand and believe the truths of God's word.\n\nWithout the Spirit's work in us, we have a warped view of what is true and what is good in the eyes of God.\n\nAnd this is the core of what idolatry is. We reject God as the divine and absolute authority over life, and we set ourselves as God in His place.\n\nWe decide for ourselves what right and wrong is. We call evil good and good evil. We become fools in our claims to wisdom.\n\n1 Corinthians 1:18 says, “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.”\n\nAnd later in our passage, Paul warns that some of the effects of idolatry are futility of thinking, darkening of hearts.\n\nOur natural state, because we've rejected the truths of God, is foolishness.\n\nAnd Paul continues to argue in 1 Corinthians 2 that in order to understand that which is spiritual, in order to discern truths of God, we need the Spirit who is from God.\n\nWithout the Spirit interpreting that which is spiritual to us, we're worse than groping around in the darkness. We define that darkness as truth itself.\n\nHere's the point that I'm trying to make: Without the Holy Spirit, we're unable to understand the truths of God. It's foolishness to us. It's folly.\n\nHere at Trinity, we teach that regeneration or the new birth of the Holy Spirit precedes faith.\n\nWe hear the gospel and through the work of the Holy Spirit, He transforms our hearts and we respond in faith.\n\nIn our natural state, left to ourselves, we suppress the truth.\n\nFamily, I think this should change our perspective on evangelism.\n\nWhen we're talking with unbelievers, what's needed first is for the Holy Spirit to turn the lights on, to give eyes to see what truth is.\n\nThe Spirit needs to do the work of regeneration in someone's heart through the preaching of the gospel.\n\nWhat does this mean? It means evangelism is not convincing somebody of a Christian worldview. It's not convincing somebody of something that aligns with our politics or our values.\n\nIt's not correcting morals and behavior because that's worthless when somebody is condemned to hell.\n\nApart from Christ, we can do nothing. No amount of good works, no amount of correct philosophy or accurate theology, however important they are to the Christian, will save us.\n\nOnly the Holy Spirit, through the preaching of the gospel truth in the Word of God, can regenerate someone who's dead in their sin and allow them to see what truth is.\n\nGod's truth, God's Word, the gospel that Paul says is the power of God for salvation. That's what we need to put before unbelievers, not primarily a Christian ethic or worldview.\n\nThis means that in our evangelism, we're exercising faith in God. We're doing the opposite of suppressing the truth. We are encouraging the truth in our hearts when we trust that as Isaiah 55 says, the Word of God does not return empty. It accomplishes that which He purposes.\n\nWe're obeying Romans 10:17 as it says, “Faith comes from hearing and hearing through the Word of Christ.”\n\nRather than defining for ourselves what truth is, rather than trying to manufacture the Holy Spirit's work in a person's heart through argumentation or persuasion, we're believing what God says to be true about the power of His Word in the gospel.\n\nWe're living contrary to how the world lives in relation to the truth.\n\nSo as we're addressing specific sins or even cultural issues like we'll do next week, we must keep this in mind.\n\nJust because people have truth doesn't mean anything. It's foolishness to them. It is suppressed by a heart that does not honor God and turns away from Him.\n\nThe world doesn't need generic truth. It needs truth of the gospel and through faith in that gospel, the Spirit can begin the work of transforming hearts.\n\nIt can then sanctify, it can then mold that heart into conformity to God's Word.\n\nAnd then we can begin to agree on what God actually says good and evil are.\n\nSo as you evangelize your friends and family and neighbors and coworkers and children, pray that the Holy Spirit would illuminate truth to them, that He would open their hearts to receive the gospel and give them that gospel as truth.\n\nSecond, we'll see how the suppression of truth expresses itself in the doctrine of revelation.\n\nLet me reread verses 19 and 20:\n\n“For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made, so they are without excuse.”\n\nWhat's described here is commonly known as general revelation, the idea that God has revealed Himself in creation.\n\nThis is different from special revelation, which is the intervening work of God in history. When He reveals Himself to Abraham or Moses, when He speaks through the prophets, when He performs great acts like splitting the Red Sea or raising the dead, and when He comes in the person of Jesus Christ.\n\nAll of these are examples of His special revelation, the kind of things that can only be known about God when He reveals Himself to us.\n\nGeneral revelation is different. And what we see here are aspects of God's character, His nature, His power and His divinity that are known to all people simply through creation.\n\nWhat does this general revelation teach us?\n\nFirst, God does in fact exist. All of creation speaks to the fact that He made it.\n\nVerse 19 says that His invisible attributes have been clearly perceived and they are without excuse.\n\nPsalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, the sky above proclaims His handiwork.”\n\nActs 14 says, “God did not leave Himself without witness, but He did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your heart with food and gladness.”\n\nEven in Genesis 1, we see the clearest picture of God's general revelation in humanity itself. Mankind is an image, a reflection of God's character.\n\nSecond, general revelation is enough to know something of God's character and His moral law.\n\nHere in Romans 1:32, it talks of a person who has been given over to all kinds of idolatry and immorality that they still know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die.\n\nAgain in Romans 2:14-16, “For when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written in their hearts while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on the day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.”\n\nObviously, the extent to which a person's moral laws are in line with what God has decreed in His word will vary depending on the amount that they are rejecting and suppressing His truth, but what Paul is communicating is that there does exist a moral law. There is some standard of right and wrong regardless of if they're actively suppressing that truth in unrighteousness.\n\nAnd this is an example of God's common grace to all people. It allows for some structure in our society. It allows the prevention of wickedness of men from pursuing its most extreme forms.\n\nBut here is where general revelation has its limits. Simply acknowledging that God exists is not necessary for our salvation. It is necessary for our salvation. It is not sufficient for our salvation.\n\nAnd so we're left with these damning words: They are without excuse.\n\nBecause we're created with the purpose of worshipping God, because we're created to glorify and image His character and attributes to all creation, there's no such thing as ignorance as bliss.\n\nTo simply be in contact with God's creation and to fail to acknowledge Him, to fail to live according to His law will condemn us to hell.\n\nAnd without God's grace in special revelation, we're left there.\n\nWhat does this mean? Without the word of God about Jesus Christ, we cannot be saved.\n\nScripture and God's word is necessary in order for us to be saved.\n\nWe need special revelation. We need God to intervene.\n\nListen to Romans 10:13-15:\n\n“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on Him in whom they have never believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.”\n\nBut they have not all obeyed the gospel. So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.\n\nFamily, we need to understand this for the sake of our evangelism and missions.\n\nOur verbal proclamation of the gospel message of salvation through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ is necessary for people to be saved.\n\nLeft with only God's general revelation, people are under His judgment.\n\nAs He says in John 3, “Whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”\n\nThose people that live in parts of the world that don't have access to the name of Jesus, how are they to believe in Him unless someone preaches the good news to them?\n\nI'm going to be bold for a second. God's plan is not to reveal Himself to people in remote parts of the earth through dreams or visions. It's not to overlook their sin and give them free entrance into His kingdom.\n\nThey are without excuse.\n\nGod's plan is not for us to sit around and pray that He would descend through visions on an unsuspecting African tribe. He commands us to go.\n\nGod's plan is to use His people to carry His special revelation to the ends of the earth and call people to repentance.\n\nFour points of application for the Christian:\n\nFirst, pray and consider if God might be sending you to preach the gospel to those who have never heard. Start a conversation about it with another member of this church or with one of the elders. We would love to see members of this church giving their lives away for the gospel in this way.\n\nSecond, evangelize. Tell people around you right now about the gospel. Our hope is that as we see the power of God more clearly in the gospel, we would not be ashamed of it. Instead, that we would be the beautiful feet of those who carry the gospel, who obey it and preach the good news. People all around us are just as in need of the gospel as anywhere else.\n\nThird, praise and thank God for revealing Himself to you in Jesus Christ. Praise and thank God for the illumination of the Holy Spirit in your heart. Acknowledge the work of God in our salvation. Apart from Him, we're completely lost. We're unable to discern the truth. We are without excuse.\n\nWorship Him for giving you a new heart, causing you to be born again to a living hope, granting you faith and eyes to see and behold Christ, adopting you into His family, the church, and for the ongoing work of the Spirit in teaching you and shaping you into the image of Christ.\n\nFourth, fill your mind with Scripture and the truth of God. Pray that the Spirit would illuminate it to you. Sin is deceitful. It seeks to distort what is true and right in our eyes. It presents itself as appealing. It presents holiness as foreign. And as we live in this world, we constantly need the truth of God to direct our lives lest we fall into sin's deception.\n\nAnd for those of you who don't consider yourself a Christian, there's no claim to ignorance on the day of judgment. You're without excuse. And so you must decide who will take the penalty of sin.\n\nWill you drink the cup of God's wrath for eternity or will you by faith receive that Jesus bore your sins on the cross?\n\nThis brings us to Paul's final indictment against the Gentile world and us.\n\nIn our suppression of truth, in our sin nature, we have exchanged our worship of God for that of idols.\n\nLook at verse 21:\n\n“For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen.”\n\nHere we begin to see some indication that the wrath of God is being revealed in the present tense. It's not just referring to final judgment.\n\nIn our omission of proper worship, the expression of unrighteousness in our lives that begins to move us further and further away from God is an expression of His wrath.\n\nWe become futile in our thinking. We become fools who think that we're wise.\n\nAnd what's so striking here is that these terms are set in contrast with the many forms of revelation, of knowledge of God's word being plain, clearly perceived.\n\nGod gives us over to our depravity. In our rejection of Him, He allows us to be further and further blinded to the truth even though He has made it so clear to us.\n\nAnd what we begin to see is that at the root of any physical manifestation of sin, at the root of any sinful act, is a heart that has already set up an idol in its place.\n\nIt's a heart that rejects the command of God in Exodus 20, that you shall have no other gods before me.\n\nWhy must we understand our idolatrous hearts and exchanged worship? Because sin begins with our hearts, with our desires, with our object of worship, and then it expresses itself outwards.\n\nOur actions and behavior are not simply the result of decisions that we make, whether good or bad, they are the outworking of what is simmering beneath the surface.\n\nThis is why Jesus says in Matthew 12 that a tree is known by its fruit. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.\n\nJames chapter 3 tells us a spring cannot bring forth both fresh and salt water. A fig tree cannot bear olives.\n\nEach that manifests itself outwardly in resentment and bitterness towards others reveals a heart of envy, reveals a heart that has made an idol out of something that you don't have.\n\nAnxiety about the future, a lack of trust in God's provision, a lack of generosity or greed manifest themselves out of a love for money or what it can provide.\n\nOur immorality flows out of our idolatry. Likewise, our obedience, our holiness, our good works proceed from a heart that loves and worships God.\n\nWe were created as worshiping beings. We were created to worship something.\n\nI used to think that worship was some binary concept, that either we worship God or we don't.\n\nInstead, much like a river current, we never stop worshiping; we simply misdirect it.\n\nRather than acknowledging God, rather than ascribing to God what He's worth, rather than submitting to, obeying, revering, honoring, and thanking God, we replace the target of all of those things.\n\nAs Tim Keller puts it, we have created counterfeit gods that make empty promises that will never deliver, replacements for the Creator that consume our time, our imaginations, our resources, our energy.\n\nThese counterfeit gods in no way bring about the same level of joy and satisfaction that we were designed to have with the God of the universe.\n\nAnd this is the exchange that all of us have made in our hearts, this trade that results in God's wrath expressed.\n\nSo we must identify the idols, the objects of worship that we have exchanged the immortal God with, and we must replace them.\n\nHere are just some practical suggestions for introspection. I would encourage you to pray and continually ask that the Spirit of God would bring them to light in your heart. Ask that He would reveal hidden forms of idolatry to you.\n\nFirst, what occupies your imagination, your thought life? What do you find yourself daydreaming about in the quiet of your heart? Is your family an idol, your children, your spouse, maybe a desire for family? What about entertainment, work, your hobbies? What do you find yourself talking about most often?\n\nSecond, where do you spend your money? Jesus clearly says in Matthew 6, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Are you storing up treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal, or are you storing up treasures in heaven?\n\nThird, what frustrates you when you don't receive it? Specifically for us who belong to Christ, what can tempt you towards disappointment with God when He doesn't answer your prayers the ways that you want Him to? Are we in danger of making an idol out of life circumstances that God has not ordained for us and for our good? Or what has God graciously given to you that you would be unwilling to give up if He were to demand it from you?\n\nLastly, what triggers your uncontrolled emotions? Anger, anxiety, despair, guilt, bitterness. These emotions that we suppress and regulate tend to overflow when we're under pressure. And they often display deeper parts of our hearts.\n\nAgain, I found Tim Keller to be very helpful. He writes, “When you pull your emotions up by the roots, you will often find your idols clinging to them.”\n\nWhether we want to admit it or not, all of us are guilty of idolatry in one form or another.\n\nYou don't have to be a Christian for very long to learn that when we try to root out our idols or patterns of sin, something grows in its place. It may be