When God Abandons a Nation (Romans 1:18-32)

And we're going to look at a portion of Scripture somewhat familiar to anyone who is a Bible student. Romans chapter 1, beginning at verse 18 and ending in this chapter. I'm going to read just the first verse to set the stage for the unfolding of this profound truth. Romans 1:18, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." This section is about the wrath of God. It is true that it is not a popular topic, it is certainly not a popular topic in the world and not even a popular topic in the church.

But an absolutely critical and central issue for any understanding of the gospel, the wrath of God. Now, there are several different aspects of God's wrath. There is what we could call eternal wrath because it is the punishment that God brings upon unbelieving sinners forever in hell... that is eternal wrath. And the Bible talks about that often. There is also eschatological wrath, that is, the wrath of God unleashed at the end of the world described by some of the Old Testament prophets, described by Jesus Christ himself in the Olivet Discourse, and clearly laid out for us in the book of Revelation. .

Eschatological wrath, that aspect of God's wrath that is released at the end of the world. There is also what we could call cataclysmic anger, like a tsunami, a volcano, a hurricane, an earthquake, a plane that crashes into the Twin Towers and causes thousands of deaths... cataclysms happen in this world. And they are a reflection of God's judgment. There is also what could be called consequential anger. Consequent anger is the sowing and harvesting of anger; you live a certain kind of life and set in motion certain forces that will produce judgment. But there is another type of anger and that is the anger that is presented in this passage and it is the anger of abandonment.

It is the anger of abandonment. It is that anger exhibited by God

when

He turns His back on a society. One of the most tragic scenes in the pages of Scripture would provide a good example of this. It's a scene involving the strongest man who ever lived, the mighty Samson. He is the original and real Superman. According to Judges 16 verses 18 to 21 we read this: "When Delilah saw that he had told her everything that was in her heart, she sent and called the princes of the Philistines, saying, Come up once more, for he has told me everything." .that was in her heart.

Then the princes of the Philistines came to her and brought the money in their hands and she made him sleep on his knees and looked for a man and made him shave the seven locks of her hair. and his strength left him and he said, "The Philistines are upon you, Samson." And he woke up from his dream and said, "I will go out like the other times and I will free myself this: "But he did not know that the Lord was gone." apart from him. And then the Philistines seized him and put out his eyes and took him to Gaza and bound him with chains of bronze and he was a grinder in prison, a mule's work." Because of his sin, the Lord abandoned him.

The judgment of the To the children of Israel, God said in Judges 10: "You have abandoned me and served other gods, therefore I will no longer deliver you. Go and cry to the gods you have chosen to deliver you in the time of your trouble." God is saying I am done with you. In Proverbs chapter 1 verses 24 to 31 we find a similar sentiment. "Because I called and you refused, I extended My hand and no one heeded and they neglected all My advice and did not want My rebuke, I will even laugh at their calamity. I will mock

when

your fear comes, when your fear comes like a storm and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and distress come upon you, then you will call upon me but I will not answer.

They will search for me diligently but they will not find me. Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord. They did not want to accept My advice, they despised all My rebuke. Therefore they will eat of the fruit of their way and be satisfied with their own plans." In Hosea 4:17 it is recorded that God said: "Ephraim is bound to idols, let him." There comes a time when God God

abandons

men and he comes to a point where he lets a people go, he lets them suffer the consequences of their own sinful choices.

They don't accept his advice, they despise all his rebuke, as Proverbs says, and they eat the fruit of their own choices and they have. They must be satisfied with the devices they have chosen. Of the Pharisees Jesus said, "Leave them, they are blind leaders of the blind," Matthew 15:14, the most terrifying words: "Leave them." It's terrifying to think about. It is terrifying to think that you could be abandoned by God, that the opportunity for salvation has passed, that the day of grace has ended. The passages I read to you relate to an individual. in the case of Samson, but for the most part, they relate to a group like the Pharisees or to a

nation

, like Israel.

And I think it's very relevant to talk about this because tonight I'm going to try to show you from this passage that it is quite convincing that God has abandoned our

nation

. God has abandoned America to the effects of his sinful decisions. Oh, this is not the first nation this has happened to, this is the story of history. Acts 14:16, the apostle Paul said, "In past generations, He...God...allowed all nations to go their own way." This is the story of history. All nations in history follow their own path. So, like ancient nations, like past nations, we follow the same cycle of having the truth, rejecting the truth, and being abandoned by God.

C.S. Lewis was writing in his book, The Problem of Grief, and he wrote this: "The lost enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and therefore they enslave themselves." God will abandon sinners to their own decisions and the consequences of those decisions. And what exactly is this act of abandonment on the part of God? It is the elimination of restrictive grace. It is when God lets himself go and surrenders a society to its own sinful freedoms and the results of those freedoms. No Scripture more directly confronts this abandonment and its consequences than Romans 1. Here is the most graphic and comprehensive discussion of what it means to be abandoned by God and it is the best passage I know to explain the moral chaos and confusion we experience in our own lives. nation at this very moment.

The wrath of God is already at work in our culture. We are not waiting for it, we are currently living it. Go to verse 24 and here is the section that defines what it means to be abandoned by God. Verse 24: "God handed them over." Verse 26: "God handed them over." Verse 28, halfway through the verse, "God handed them over." Three times the statement appears: "God gave them up." This term paradidomi in Greek may have a judicial meaning. It can be used for a judgment passed on a criminal who was later handed over for punishment. Each of these phrases expresses the fact that the wrath of God has acted judicially to sentence sinners.

It is God officially giving them away. It is God letting them go to the uninterrupted cause and effect that their sinful decisions produce. When this judgment falls, restrictive grace is deprived and sin runs rampant throughout society. Sin is both the cause of this and the effect and the next cause and the next effect as it goes on and on and on. Sin is the reason and sin is the result. Sin is the cause and sin is the consequence. Now I want you to notice the wrath of abandonment in its progression. This will help you understand why I say that we are experiencing this not only in the United States but in the world, and particularly in the Western world today.

Look at verse 24: "When the wrath of abandonment comes into play, this wrath that is defined for us as God giving them up follows three steps. It follows three sequential steps. Therefore, you notice it, and that, of course, connects it to The above passage has as its main statement: "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven." And then there are a series of statements about why the wrath of God is revealed, because the truth suppresses us, because it is what is revealed. what God knows is rejected, etc., etc. and then in verse 24 you come back to what that wrath is: "Therefore God gave them up, "And first God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts." to impurity, so that their bodies may be dishonored among themselves." The first indication in a society of the wrath of abandonment is sexual immorality... sexual immorality.

When a society becomes pornographic, when the general character of a society can be seen as Immoral, this anger is effective when man is abandoned by God, when a society is abandoned by God, it operates only by the passions of its own impure heart. It operates on the desires of the heart, leading to impurity The heart. is miserable, the heart is immoral and the body follows. So you can see that in verse 24. First, the desires dominate the heart, which leads to impurity and the bodies follow in the most dishonorable ways. The heart is evil and. unrestrained and the body follows and you have a pornographic culture.

We can go back quite easily in our own country to the sexual revolution connected with the hippie movement, connected with the beginning of the Playboy empire and since then this society has become more and more pornographic until that even the Internet is dominated by millions and millions of immoral pornographic websites to feed the insatiable desires that dominate our culture. This leads to the destruction and destruction of the marriage. This leads to horrendous and horrendous child abuse, pedophilia, all types of child abuse, all types of child pornography that continues to run at a wild pace because the restraining grace has been removed.

And sex proliferates, marriage becomes less of an option as people engage in immoral behavior easily and constantly without commitment. That's just the first step. So you look at a society and wonder: is it driven by sexual immorality? Is the heart full of lust leading to impurity and the body following dishonorable behavior? The answer for our own world and our own society is yes. And it would be very difficult to imagine a nation in this media-saturated Western world that we live in, it would be difficult to understand a nation going down this path without dragging with it everyone exposed to its culture through the media.

Therefore, it is not just a national issue, it is a global issue. But that is only the first step. The second step is in verse 26. "For this reason God gave them over... here is the second step... to degrading passions." Now we are not just talking about passions, we have added degrading things to them. We are going down. There is greater debauchery here. Degrading passions can be defined as gross affections, vile desires, perversion, or even inversion. And here it is to find. "His women exchanged the natural function for the unnatural one." Plain and simple, lesbianism, homosexuality. And the Holy Spirit first in this passage refers to the degradation of women because they are usually the last affected in the decline of morality because they have a maternal instinct and a protective instinct over their own children but when the anger of abandonment is in force Even women fall into degrading passions.

And in our culture, the lesbian movement has been vocal, relentless, passionate, fierce, and even violent. Proof that absolutely all virtue disappears when motherhood, the highest and most normal human virtuous relationship, is abandoned and the people who practice it are elevated to cultural icons. All virtue disappears when homosexuality invades the female gender. And verse 27 adds: "In the same way, men also abandoned the natural function of women and burned with desire for one another... men with men, committing indecent acts and receiving the punishment on their own persons." because of your mistake." And there is a small slip of consequent anger.

What is the penalty due for your mistake? That they contract a venereal disease, AIDS. That will also increase in this anger of abandonment. There will also be the consequent wrath of sinful decisions that will lead to deadly illnesses. Homosexuality is the second step. So look at a society. When you see a society that is pornographic, that is involved in sexual immorality, fornication, adultery as a way of life, as a dominant way of life, that not only exists but is approved and exalted in every way in the media, Know that the wrath of abandonment is at work.

And then when a society also glorifies homosexuality, lesbianism, and male homosexuality, or sodomy, you know it's sinking even further. But there is a third step and the third step is in verse 28. "And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God... here is the third step... God gave them over to a depraved mind." First the heart rots and the body follows, and then the mind leaves. What is a depraved mind? Well, the word literally means tried and found useless, unqualified for its intended purpose, a non-functioning mind. Reasoning is so corrupted that it is paralyzed. The faculty, the intellectual faculty, can no longer function.

The moral law of God written on the heart has been literally trampled and replaced by cultural immorality. Consciousness cannot function. And so, verse 28 says, they do things that are not appropriate or moral. Then immorality goesin all directions and now you cannot find your way back because the mind is very corrupt. People don't think well. People's brains don't follow the paths they should. They advocate all things wretched and despise all things virtuous. And what emerges from this pornographic, homosexual and depraved culture? All evil…verse 29, “All unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, wickedness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossips, slanderers, haters of God, Insolent, arrogant, boastful inventors of evil.” They even invent new ways of evil. "Disobedience to parents." Do you wonder how the hell that got there?

That was a capital offense in the Old Testament. Disobeying your parents, they lose their life. "And that is only a partial list. It is as if someone opened the sewer of sin and let it run through society. Written on the heart, Romans 2, it is written on the pages of Scripture, and they also know that the Those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but they also give harsh approval to those who practice them. They know the consequences. They do it anyway and give strong approval to others who do it.

They do. I always think about President Clinton who got caught up in his scandalous immorality, his approval ratings went up. Of course they rose because the rest of the sinners feel comfortable with a leader like them. This is any day at the newspaper, any day at the cable news network. This is life in the world in all its sinful forms, without conscience, without reason, without restrictions, a society becomes like lustful and immoral beasts that become wild. It gets to the level of Jerry Springer, where he is so strange and so corrupt that we laugh at the unconventional corruption.

You look at the society of this country and ask yourself: is this a pornographic, homosexual and depraved society that manifests all these characteristics or not? The answer is unequivocally clear. The media, television, the music industry, radio, magazines present the people who are the purveyors of this filth as heroes and cultural icons... film people, television people, music people, etc These things are even defended throughout this country. In educational institutions, particularly universities, they are literally hotbeds for the defense of all this type of iniquity. This is what happens when God

abandons

a society. I look at our society and say, "This is it." And that then brings us to the question of the text...why does God do it?

Why does God abandon a society? Let's go back to verse 18. Now we know what it looks like when He does it, but why does He do it? "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of men who suppress the truth with unrighteousness." The wrath of God is already operating in our culture. And God has abandoned our society on a large scale and left our society to follow the path it chooses without restrictions. But God has abandoned our society because our society has first abandoned God. There is no surer or sadder evidence of a corrupt and evil society than when that society does not tolerate anger against sin.

Our society will not tolerate anger against sin. Our society feeds on sin and does not want anyone to deny its iniquities. And so, here we are under the wrath of God's abandonment. It is not like before. The restrictive grace has been withdrawn and this society becomes more immoral, more homosexual and more depraved every day. And because? I'm going to show you a sequence that begins in verse 18 and that has led us to this. The main reason is summed up in a single statement. "We suppress the truth." Any society that suppresses the truth, literally in the original, that constantly tries to suppress the truth and suppresses it with injustice, or better, with its impiety.

We crush the truth, we silence those who speak the truth, clinging to our sin. We see the light, we hate the light, we run into darkness, despising the light, condemning the light. Suppressing the truth must imply that we have the truth. God exists and has made his existence known to us. He has divinely created our minds to function on a cause and effect basis and to return to the fact that the effect, the world, must have a cause, that is, the Creator. And we could understand that a God existed only by reason. Also in Romans 2, He has divinely placed within us a law written in our hearts that is a moral ethical standard that must be obeyed or activates a conscience that is a warning device in every human being that threatens that human being with loss of well-being. being and fear and danger if violated.

Then there is the revelation of God in the Scriptures. In the Western world we have had the Word of God for centuries. In the United States we have had it for centuries. But this nation and the world have suppressed the truth with injustice, they have crushed it under the preferences for sin. Now let me analyze these verses, from verse 18 to verse 23, giving you four specific sequential reasons for God's wrath. Number one, revelation. Number one, revelation. Men have been given the truth. Verse 18 says, "We suppress the truth." Verse 19 then describes the source of that: "What is known about God is evident in them, because God made it evident to them through reason and the moral law written on the heart, because since the creation of the world their invisible attributes "His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse." They have no excuse because it is very obvious that a creation has to have a Creator, a design has to have a designer.

God has embedded the evidence of spiritual and moral truth and of his very existence, his greatness, and his power into the very fabric of man's being. We talk about our five senses, but more things work in us than just five physical senses. We have two spiritual senses. Reason is one and morality is another. These are so strong within us that they would lead us to God as Creator, a powerful Creator, they would lead us to God as lawgiver and therefore judge if we would simply follow what is implanted in our hearts. In fact, he is so ingrained in us, the end of verse 20, that all of us are without excuse.

You cannot claim ignorance and in our country and in the West we also have the Bible, the churches and the Christian institutions, all the universities, the Ivy League universities originally founded were all founded as Christian institutions to train pastors. Throughout the history of this nation we have had the truth. God has made himself known through general revelation, in creation, perceived by reason, and in the law written on the heart, perceived by conscience. What can be known of God. God is knowable. Christ is the light that illuminates all men. "Everyone has some knowledge of God evident...I love this important statement...evident in them...or within them." In the mind, in the soul, in reason, in conscience, in the structure of what it is to be human.

Then you add to that the special revelation of the Scriptures and we have heard the truth since the beginning of this nation's existence... we have heard the truth. The truth is always attacked, it is always attacked. We live in a modern world. Evolution has waged a massive assault on truth by denying that there need be a cause for effect in the universe. What kind of idiocy is that? Every time the Gentiles were evangelized in the book of Acts, every time the Gentiles needed to hear about God, the preachers told them about the God who created everything, Acts 14, Acts 17.

They took them back to creation because they all They knew there had to be a creator, he had to be powerful, he had to be a designer. He had to be moral because there was morality in the heart that showed in the laws that men made and in the structures of relationships. This God was also a God who had personality because personality cannot arise from non-personality. And so, in evangelizing the Gentiles, you began with the Creator as Paul did on Mars Hill. When evangelizing the Jews, you began with the Old Testament. For the Gentiles it was the general revelation of God, for the Jews it was the special revelation of God.

And now our society has managed to eliminate the need for a Creator with the theory of evolution and belittle the authenticity of the Scriptures. And even in the church today there is a mad rush to eliminate the Scriptures because people don't want to hear them. But the truth is there. It is in the conscience, it is in the reason that leads you to God and it is in the revelation of the Scriptures. Sinners are without excuse because what is known about God is evident within them because God made it evident to them by creating them the way he did.

And so, looking at the creation you clearly see the invisible attributes of it, the eternal power of it, the divine nature of it and you have no excuse. Revelation, that's the first thing. God has revealed himself to man. Men have received the truth. In this country, even biblical truth. Second word in this progression, rejection. Men have turned away from the truth. Verse 21: "Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became vain in their speculations and his foolish heart was darkened." And although man finds God in reason, he rejects it.

He finds God in the moral law and in conscience, he rejects it. He is exposed to God's truth in the Scriptures, he rejects it. He suppresses the truth under his iniquities because he loves darkness more than light. And he throws himself down believing that he can live his life however he wants without any consequences. And leaving itself, therefore, under the most severe divine judgment. And so we look at a society today, particularly here in America and in the Western world, so amazingly influenced by the gospel, and we see a people who do not honor God. Go back to verse 21.

They do not honor him as God, they do not give thanks to him.” That is, they do not thank Him for being the source of everything they have. Man's problem is not that he cannot find God. Man's problem is not that he cannot recognize God. Man's problem is not that he cannot find the truth, or recognize the truth, but that he cannot...and let's go back to John 3...they love darkness more than light because his works are evil. . They don't want to honor God. Honoring God would make them accountable to Him and His law, and therefore, under His judgment, man would prefer to live without God.

I was thinking this a couple of years ago and thought that man likes to live with five dominant lies. These are very comfortable for the sinner. One, life is random... life is random. products of evolutionary chance, without purpose, without creator, without responsibility. We basically live in a universe where the final formula is that no one multiplied by nothing equals everything. Nobody is in charge, nobody put us here. We are not responsible to anyone. A stone is a rat, it is a dog, it is a child... it was the mantra of an organization. No one made us, we are not right and that is why we are free in this random world to do whatever we want.

The second dominant lie, the truth is relative. There are no absolutes, there are no standards, you simply have to flow around public opinion, but you can change public opinion, as we well know. Ethics can be changed if you have enough influence, enough power, and enough perseverance, but there is no absolute truth. We are all free to own our own truth and demand the freedom to live our lives according to our own truth, which is of our own invention. A third dominant lie is that people are basically good, oh if they turn bad, someone abused them. Someone else is to blame, they lack self-esteem, they have psychological problems based on environmental failures.

But the people are basically good. Basically I'm good, I'm a good person... you hear them say that all the time. A fourth lie that dominates our culture is that everyone can change their own life, take control, take charge, become the person they want to be. You have the power to be whatever you want to be. That is the biggest lie that exists. You can be anything you want to be. People tell their children, "You can be anything you want to be." Let me tell you, if you are slow, you will die slow. If you are stupid, you will die stupid.

If you can't carry a tune in a bucket, you will die without carrying a tune in a bucket. There are certain things you can never change. You can't do whatever you want, that's ridiculous. But that fits this guy's mantra of freedom mania in a sin-saturated culture. And the fifth and dominant lie is that the goal of life is self-satisfaction. The goal of life is self-satisfaction. What you are really looking for is to feel good about yourself, to be satisfied with who you are. You hear people say, "This is who I am, take it or leave it and I'm happy to be who I am.

This is me and I'm just out there." And you want to say, "Well, we wish you weren't, just go somewhere else." It's this blatant kind of shameless self-delusion. Life is random, truth is relative, people are basically good, everyone can change their own life if they wish, and the goal of life is self-satisfaction. The truth is quite the opposite. The truth is quite the opposite.God is sovereign and nothing is random. The Bible is the absolute truth. All people are basically sinners. Only Christ can change your life. And selfless submission to Jesus Christ is the goal of life.

They have completely misunderstood it. So why would they honor a God they deny? What would they thank Him for? They think they have achieved everything on their own. You can look at the beauty of this world with all the good things that God has put in it by His common grace and you cannot thank Him for a sunset, for love, for children, for a baby, for a good meal, for a vacation. , to rest, to sleep, for a comfortable chair. They cannot thank Him because then they would be acknowledging that He is the source. It is like Isaiah, wrote of his own time: "You felt secure in your wickedness and said that no one sees me.

Your wisdom and your knowledge have deceived you because you have said in your heart: I am, and there is no one besides Me. me." That is the modern American mantra... I am the invictus(?), I am the captain of my soul, of empty and useless egocentrism. And in this empty egocentrism a deeper darkness is absorbed. GoLet's go back to verse 21, "For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him," and here we are collectively talking about a society. "But they became empty in their speculations," useless, empty, human, useless ideas. And like I said, that void is swallowed up by darkness and the end of verse 21 says, "His foolish heart was darkened." They wouldn't know and now they couldn't know.

Darkness dominated. The light went out. Intellectual darkness and moral darkness become spiritual darkness...deadly darkness. Anger came because of revelation and it comes again and again to societies throughout all of human history because they do not recognize God who has revealed himself and so you have revelation followed by rejection. And when rejection comes, the light goes out, darkness comes. And a third step follows, rationalization... rationalization. If this weren't so sad it would be funny, verse 22, “Professing to be wise, they became fools.” The idiocy of verse 21 is exacerbated in verse 22. Their darkness is so deep that they cannot evaluate their true condition.

That is why they profess to be wise. It reminds me of the lady who went to the psychiatrist, she had a duck on a leash. And the doctor said, "How can I help you, ma'am?" She said: "It's not me, my husband, he's the one, he thinks he's a duck." This would call into question your perception of reality, wouldn't it? It's as if the guy lying in the psychiatric hospital bed kept saying, "I'm Napoleon, I'm Napoleon, I'm Napoleon." And the guy in the next bed said, "No, you're not... no, you're not." "How do you know?" "I am god." You say this is ridiculous.

This is no more ridiculous, no more absurd, no more strange than getting a PhD. when you are a fool, congratulating yourself on your wisdom, knowledge, insight and achievements, when your heart is black and completely excluded from true knowledge. Professing to be wise, they are proud to stand up and declare how truly wise they are. And it always reminds me of the emperor's new clothes. The story of the emperor who was convinced that he was wearing his most beautiful clothes when he was completely naked and he came out to display the glory of his new clothes and everyone laughed.

Fools, morino (?) where do we get an idiot from. We have a society of proud idiots who flaunt themselves as if they were important, as if they were wise, they are on endless talk shows, non-stop talking nonsense. That leads to a fourth element: the downward spiral from revelation to rejection to rationalization. They tell themselves they are wise when the truth is that they are idiots. But the fourth cause of God's wrath is the worst. Revelation, rejected, rationalized darkness and the fourth, religion…religion. This is very interesting. Verse 23: "They exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for images in the form of corruptible man, birds, four-footed animals, and creeping things." How ridiculous.

Religion... men create their own gods to accommodate their own useless ideas. One might think that religion is man at his finest. Let me tell you that religion is man at his lowest point. False religion is man deep down... deep down. It is man who has strayed from the truth of God and the further he advances, the more he descends into false satanic religion. Religion is not man in his fullest expression. He is the man at the lowest level of him. This is the straw that breaks the camel's back. As verse 25 indicates, we did not read it before because I wanted to save it until now, they changed the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature before the creator who is blessed forever, amen.

They continued to worship, they developed religion but they worshiped something of their own creation, or a creation of God, an animal, a fish, a star, a constellation or an idol instead of the Creator. Verse 28 says it again: "They were no longer pleased to recognize God." It doesn't mean that they are not religious, ah, the whole world is religion, fanatically religious. You see, man does not ascend from the mire of paganism and ignorance to the truth of God. That's not how it works. Man is not evolving, he is not ascending to God. He is descending. He falls from the truth of God into the mire of religion, false religion, satanic counterfeit.

Religion is not man at his best, but man at his worst. Religion is not man at his highest point, it is man at his lowest point. He is not the man who ascends, he is the man who descends. It is not that man finds God, it is that man finds Satan and is happy with him. The ultimate madness... the ultimate madness is to reject God and create a non-God that does not exist and worship Him. How crazy is that? A false God, a false Jesus, and you do that and you call yourself wise and learned and you pontificate about your religion and you have all kinds of complexities in your satanic system, all kinds of people walking around with titles and robes and authority and influence.

And power. This is stupid. Idols come in all kinds of forms, from primitive statues of the lowest cultures to the highest gods of self, sex and Mother Nature, from the Roman eagle to the spotted owl, the golden bulls of Egypt and the dolphin gods. of environmentalists. , from the cult of a stick to the cult of the land, from the aboriginals to the environmentalists, from the pantheistic cult of the world to ecofeminism, from ecofeminism to Islam and all other religions. It doesn't surprise me that terrorism is associated with religion, it's man at his lowest point. Is it any wonder that as a society we are struggling with our ethics?

Is it any wonder we are struggling with our morals? We have rejected God. He gave us revelation, we reject it. We rationalize it and call ourselves an advanced culture educated by an elite and invent religion as if it were an indicator of how high we have ascended when the fact is that we are descending at breakneck speed. We have abandoned God and God has returned the favor. And so, we are under his wrath. That begs the question... is there any hope? Is there any hope for this country, for any society in this condition? Well, I'll take you to a scripture that gives us hope.

Open your Bible to the Psalms, and I want you to look at this, Psalm 81... Psalm 81 because this cycle is a constantly visible cycle in history, continuing all the time. It has happened before in Israel. It is happening even now in Israel. Many generations of the Jewish people, God's chosen people for a future redemption, many generations have gone through this cycle, rejecting the true God, rationalizing his condition, inventing a complex religion, descending. Is there any hope for them in the future? Is there any hope for the Western world? For any nation in the world? For us? Well, all I can say is that there is a word of hope in Psalm 81.

Let's look at verse 11. "But my people did not listen to my voice and Israel did not obey me, so... and here is the same language. ...I gave them over to the stubbornness of their hearts to walk on their own devices." That's Romans 1. This happened to Israel. As I said, the history of the world is the judgment of the world. God has allowed all nations to go their own way, Acts 14. Nothing new. I handed them over. But in verse 13, here is a plaintive cry from the heart of God. "Oh, that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways.

I would quickly subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their adversaries. Those who hate the Lord would pretend to obey him." In other words, it would be so good to be under the protection of the Lord that people would even pretend to be believers. And the time of his punishment would be forever, punishing his enemies. And I love verse 16: "And I would feed you with the best of the wheat and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you." This is a plaintive cry from God saying, "Oh, that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways.

I would stop abandoning them, giving them over to their own sinful decisions, to defend them and protect them." and punishing their enemies and I would feed them with the best of the wheat and with honey from the rock I would satisfy them." The key, listen to me. Walk in My ways. The only hope for this or any other society is to listen to the Word of the Lord and obey it... listen to the Word of the Lord and obey it. And I would suggest that this is not a good time for weak men to preach weak messages in weak churches.

This is a time for a strong, bold and powerful biblical ministry that calls to the people. people to hear the Word of the Lord and respond. This is the only hope for any people and for any individual. Our Father, the Word comes to us with such clarity and power. Thank you for letting us know. Thank you for the grace of confronting us with the truth. Help us, Lord, to be proclaimers of Your Word, the Word of the gospel that saves. It is not too late, until Jesus comes, we can continue preaching this Word, to the ends of the earth, in this nation and in all nations. , may Your people proclaim nothing but Your Word so that those who are under this wrath, this present wrath, may be saved and escape the final and eternal wrath.

May there be a great revival of Your Word and may people hear and obey it, for Your glory we ask these things. Amen.