Gooding, David: 1 - The Magnitude of the Gospel

Men knew there was a God. They could see that everything they possessed came from God. And the Bible says that they began to find it in their hearts an unpleasant thing, began to bore this feeling that they were dependent on God, and everything they had was due to God. Knowing God, therefore, they didn't glorify him as God, the one who is supremely powerful, on whom they are dependent. And they stopped giving thanks. They didn't like to see that they were dependent completely on him. See, if we are dependent on God, we're not only responsible to be grateful for him, but that means that we are responsible to him for our actions. And instinctively, our conscience tells us, and the word of God informs us, that one day we shall be held responsible and made to give account to him for our actions. And there is that in the human heart that resents being thus dependent on God. So what did men do? They glorified him not as God, but they stopped giving thanks, and then it says they became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless heart was darkened. It began to have an effect on their mind and emotions and on their moral judgment. Then says verse twenty two, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. It beha- began to have an effect on their intellect and their IQ. And they stopped glorifying God as God, and they made him in the image of men, and then they went down further and made him in the image of, uh, animals, and then in the image of things. You say that's an old old story, that is, we don't have mus- we don't have idols around like that nowadays. We don't do that kind of thing. All the idols we got are in the museums. Well, I wonder if that's so. Just think a minute. Those of us who are younger, I may include myself in that age bracket, somewhat wistfully and with some nostalgia, um, are faced constantly with a barrage of statement and teaching at school, at university, at work, that you cannot any longer believe there is a God. You must grow up, they say, out of those infancy stories and infantile ideas. Science has proved there is no God. You have to grow up intellectually. You have to get the old gray matter working. You can't any longer put your head in the sand. You must think, young man, they say. You must think, young woman, and if only you dare to think, it'll be proved to you that there is no God. And there are multitudes nowadays who think that it is precisely because they've grown clever, their IQ is higher than other people, that they've now found intellectual reasons for not believing in God, and there are even some folks who imagine it is quite unscientific to believe in God. Please observe that that is complete. If there should be an atheist here who doesn't believe in God, do please, friend, let me point out that your atheism does not spring from your being very intellectual. There is no scientific proof known to man that can prove there is no God. You do not believe that there is no God on the ground of scientific evidence, or in the end, on the ground of any evidence whatever. If you refuse to believe there is a God, you believe it for emotional reason, and your scientific reasons are only excuses after the event. The Bible here says that God has left us without, uh, without excuse. He has given us evidence enough that he does exist. From the creation of the world, the universe around us, there has been evidence that we can see that points unmistakably to the existence of a creator. Some wise young man will probably say, but surely you can't prove the existence of God from the existence of the creation around us. Oh no? Well, there is a sense, I suppose, in which you can't prove it, as you could prove a mathematical sum. But let me remind you, faced with the evidence of this vast universe around us, if you come to the conclusion that there is no God, you are flying in the face of every analogy you know. There is no other sphere in the whole experience of life where you could be faced with such evidence of intricate design, where you would dare or even think to turn around and say, no, design though there is, there is no designer behind it. In every other department of life, you argue from design to designer. How comes it that in one department, on which all the others depend, you fly in the face of every known analogy, demand that there should be the most exceedingly intricate and fantastically complicated design, harmoniously working together that just happened by a freak of time. Oh friends, if you take that leap of faith and demand there is no God in spite of that evidence, the Bible says God will hold you responsible. Men are without excuse, the Bible says. And my dear young Christian, don't you ever be ashamed of it, will you? Don't you let anybody browbeat you into giving up the evidence. The heavens declare the glory of God, and nature around us declares his handiwork. It is not IQ that leads men, when they face those that evidence, to conclude there is no God. It is what God would call moral perversion. They don't want the implications that they would have to have faced if they admitted there was a God. They knew him as God, the evidence was there, but they didn't want to be everlastingly dependent on God and having to be grateful to him and having to be accounted to him, so they reduced it. And then the Bible says that, uh, they did a very interesting thing. They didn't, first of all, boot God out of the window of their thinking altogether. They inch by inch whittled him down. First of all, they made him in the image of man. That race of inventors isn't dead yet. And I suppose it's the most popular philosophy still in vogue to make God in the image of man. Man-centered theology is around us everywhere. When ma- men come to God's holy word, and instead of submitting their mind to it and using their mind to understand it, presume to judge it, as though they were the judges, they're reducing God's word to their judgment bar, forming God in their own. It wouldn't happen. Why they are judging God's corn by their vision. They are reducing their. He is the scientist and believer in atheists, which is more of a servant than to kill people. Scientific He made things to go on normally as they go on now. Have he not a big scene? Make him go somehow else? No, said some man, because of his little guard down to him firmly. And then they used the, uh, they they they they went further. In terms of God is the incorruptible God for the likeness of the image not only of a corruptible man, but then to animals. They worship birds, and they worship beasts. And some of the carnivores that ever happened has come on the human race right as he's out on it. They worship the bull. In the ancient world, if you ever go on holidays to Crete or around the ancient world, or you read your books telling us about the ancient world and its old holy mythology, or if you should go to India and see some of the temples there to this very present day, you'll know what I must purport to describe very carefully. Men kept within themselves powerful psychological urges. You've got to live for something, haven't you? And if you've decided that God doesn't exist, then you'll live for something else. Man began to find great psychological urges inside him, and one of them was sex. To bow down and worship, and they worship the bull as the biggest emblem of sex that they could get. And I fear our modern world. I see something. Our modern world, having lost its place in the reality of a creator, finding that they must have something to live for, to be their God. Many are confined to making a God of sex. They'll find it in every magazine, on every advertisement, in every newspaper, on every organ, and nearly on every program, radio or television. That's a dark story. And now finally see, when man went this way, God did something. When man didn't any longer choose to retain God in his knowledge, we read that God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto unclean. Paul, of course, is here talking of the ancient world, and anyone who knows what went on in the ancient world will not find Paul's language at all too severe. Just by merely its immorality, it got sick. But would you notice one very somber thing? If I read this part of scripture right, it tells me this, that behind a good deal of this ancient immorality was this fact that God had said, all right, you have it your own way, go. God gave them up to it. God gave them up to a perverted moral judgment. This, it seems to me, has a very serious voice, if not to modern Ireland, certainly to modern England. The increasing laxity of moral standards, a permissive society, can in part be accounted for by man's own self-will. He wants it that way. But in part, I fear you will account for it this way, that men have decided to throw God out, to throw his Bible out, to throw his gospel out. And England that once knew the glorious light and saving effect of God's gospel, turning over to his evolutionary myth, have not only become darkened in their mind, but I fear that God may be himself giving them up. And if parents find their youngsters living as they should not live, parents might ask themselves whether some of it doesn't spring from the fact that they have forgotten God, and God in his judgment has withdrawn his restraints. That then is a very dark picture. It says that our troubles spring, to summarize it, not from lack of IQ, our troubles spring in our heart's attitude to God, not willing to be dependent on him, and therefore adopting all sorts of means, emotional and intellectual, somehow to belittle him, to whittle him down, and in the end to get rid of him. And God in his turn, as a judgment, withdraws his restraint to let people see where the end of that path is. Well, now, having faced that, we must face and be warned of two false attempts to run away from this diagnosis. Now, if we went to the doctor tomorrow and he diagnosed cancer, I suppose all of our reactions would be, I hope he's wrong. We might even go to the herb man to see if he could do something without having to have an operation, or go off to homeopath, good man, or some other body. Do anything rather than face it. And in chapter two of this epistle, Paul warns us of two false attempts to avoid facing the implications of these serious things God is saying. The first false attempt is on the part of the man who tries to get out of it by agreeing with God that all the rest are bad. This is the man that judges his fellow man. And God bluntly says to him, wherefore thou art without excuse, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest, for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself. For thou that judgest dost practice the same things, and we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against them that practice such things. And reckonest thou this, O man, who judgest them that practice such things and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God? Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? It seems to me that Paul is saying something like this. When God tells us of these terribly evil, dark, and almost unmentionable sins that man's atheism has led him to. I suppose the natural reaction on us is to say, yes, terrible things, wicked people to do that. I would never do anything like that myself. Ah. That's just where the danger comes in. The feeling that you'd never do anything like that yourself. And that would lead you on, wouldn't it, to suppose that you don't need to be saved just like those other terrible folks do. You wouldn't get caught up in immorality and murder, would you? And drug taking. Does that mean that you're not ill, spiritually ill too? Well, look, says God. Don't you think that by agreeing with me that those other things and those other people are wrong, that somehow you're going to put yourself in the right? For you who judge them, you do the same things. So it's not fair. I don't do that. Never murdered any. Never run off with anybody's wife. Oh, wait a minute. Remember how when our Lord Jesus was here on earth, he was surrounded by a lot of people, we call them Pharisees, who didn't like the Lord. I tell you why they didn't like him. They had been reading the Bible, studied it very ferociously, they did, and they found in the Bible that you mustn't murder. And you know, they'd never stuck a knife, not in anybody's ribs ever. And because they hadn't stuck a knife in anybody's ribs ever, they said, look, we're pretty good, we are. We admit we are. Jolly decent. Won't be long now before we should be right into God's heaven. And then the Lord Jesus came along, and he said, oh, but my friend, you who condemn that ruffian down the road because he's murdered, have you never murdered? You never murdered? What about that feeling you had the other day about that old aunt? I wish he were out the way. Nuisance. I've got to stay in. See after her. Wish you, wish she were. What did you wish she was? Dead? Oh, you'd never put her under the ground yourself, would you? But... I don't know but what if you'd been a pagan savage leaped under the ground, would you have objected? He that hates somebody in his heart, says Christ, shows that in his heart there is the same seed that when it is brought forth full flower would end in matter. I don't like somebody, and I'm bitter towards them, or I bully them. I'm ungrateful to somebody. I break another's heart with my foolishness and sin. And her back bows, and her hair goes white, and she goes down to a premature grave. You haven't murdered? Oh, look, says God, it's right that you should condemn those wicked people for doing wicked things, but remember this, whoever you are that judges, you do the same things. In principle, in thought. You don't have to commit actually to commit adultery, said our Lord, didn't he? But to entertain and toy with and nurse the idea, that in God's sight is almost equivalent to doing the deed. And there are other people in this bracket who try to get out of that, huh, by saying, ah, well, you know, our consciences as merely, uh, the ideas our parents put into our head when we were children. They say you've got a conscience about stealing. Well, dear me, that's because your parents taught you up not to take dad's book or, or not to run off with mother's car or, or this, that, and the other, and you got a smack if you did. And now you're grown up, subconsciously there's the fear of your parents and there's rules and regulations they lay down inside you, and if you do one of these things that they used to forbid you to do, you get a bad conscience. And that's all it is, it's the stuff your mother and father put into your brain. We hit though. At the end of that first paragraph in chapter two, God says, no, no. Even folks who never had a law from the Bible. Perhaps even those whose parents never laid down any laws too. They have a law written on their heart. God has written it there. And you'll s- notice it's there by watching what they do, verses fifteen and sixteen: Their conscience bears witness with this law, and their thoughts one with another, accusing or else excusing them. There isn't a man on earth, but what if you had time to examine him and watch him closely, you would find him doing what Paul here describes, excusing or accusing. Somebody comes in and says to you, Paul, do you hear Mrs. Smith? He's run off with another man. And then they add, oh, but I don't blame it to you, her husband was a, you know, you would think the way her husband treated, never gave her enough money, used to come home blind drunk. Oh, what's happening? They're excusing Mrs. Smith. What does that mean? Well, it means that, first of all, in their heart of hearts, they know it's a wrong thing that she's done. Because if it isn't, if it wasn't a wrong thing to do, why bother to excuse her? Yeah. The very fact that when we do wrong things, then we try to find all sorts of excuses why we had to or why we were made to, and that wasn't altogether my fault, why bother? How we bother to excuse ourselves or other peoples because our conscience tells us it is wrong. And you'll not find a tribe so primitive, but what if you stamp on their foot or do something else that they think wrong, they'll accuse you and chop your head off in the process, or else they'll excuse themselves for doing this, that, or tawa. So says God, in every heart there is a law that he himself has put. And when we break that law, our consciences rise up either to accuse us or to excuse us, and we can never get away from it. But we have to be careful, lest we pervert that conscience and turn it towards condemning other people without realizing that in principle we do the same evil things ourselves. You know, let me say it as a preacher. So easy for me as a preacher to get up and tell my Christian brethren and sisters that, uh, we ought to love one another, and to think just because I've preached a sermon on it, I've done it. Well, of course I haven't done it, have I? It's easy to get up and preach the gospel and warn people that they're going to hell because they sin, and then to forget to hate sin myself in my daily life. But as I think on that, that brings me to the next false move. For in that second paragraph of chapter two we come across another warning within God's hospital. God has been diagnosing our terribly bad spiritual disease. And, you know, it's not a nice feeling, and the danger is we'll try and run away from it. Oh, I'm not as bad as that. So, first of all, we agree with God that those other people are wicked, and we think, um, he'll look over us. He won't do anything of the sort, for he is no respecter of persons. He wants us to face our sin. Repent of it. Right? The next false move on our part is to turn religious. And to think that we can run away from our sin and our evil spiritual state by being religious. The Jews thought that. They looked in horror on these evil, wicked pagan Gentiles with all their idols and what have you. And they thought because God had given them a religion, it's a God-given religion, that so long as they went through their religious ceremonies, of course, they were all right. And some of them carried it to absurd lengths. Some of them still do. I well remember a young medical student in the northeast of England, a Jew, who met me on one or two occasions to study the Old Testament with him. I remember one of his classic remarks. He says, you know, there's no hope for you. I said, how's that? He said, you're a Gentile. Oh, he said, is that so? Poor do that. He said, I'm all right, he said, we Jews are all right. I said, how's that? And then he says, oh, we're Rothas, I know that. I'm a Rata, he said, I know that. I'm a rotter. But you see, the Bible says, who is like unto thee, O Israel, save of the Lord? Mm. Although he was a rotter, he said, just because he was a religious Jew and punctiliously went through all the ceremonies, he felt he was all right. You say that's foolish. And yet, you know, it's an attitude of heart, you'll observe. You'll observe it sometimes here in Ireland, won't you? The people think they have solved the whole problem if they go to church on a Sunday. Or they put something in the collection. And so that we don't indulge in throwing stones at other people and thinking we ourselves are secure. It could happen, couldn't it? To people brought up in Christian homes that they should think it's enough to attend the meeting. And so long as they attend the r- round of meetings, all is well. Oh no, it isn't well. In fact, if we were to get that into our heads that merely by being religious, going to meetings, singing hymns, even by going through ceremonies of what have you like, that the ceremony itself would somehow save us, and it's all right, if we were to go and get into that mistake, we might, uh, result in some of the most enauseating behavior you could possibly imagine. The Jews, so this chapter two and the second paragraph said, they got a reputation around the world that positively stank. And the Gentiles blasphemed the name of God for them. They said, those Jews, look at them. On a Saturday, go out to the temple and read the Bible and sing hymns, but you want to meet them on, on, on Monday in the marketplace and see what their business deals are like. We mustn't fall into that same kind of trap, may we? But it is a trap that I could equal easily fall into of imagining that my religious ceremonies are enough. They're not enough, says God. The only thing that is enough to meet this human state is a salvation that will save a man and change a man. And a salvation that doesn't save a man and change a man and make him saintly where before he was sinful is not only inadequate, it is a positive delusion. So then, no doubt that we are most of us Christians, some of us, most of us Christians for many years. It wouldn't do us any harm at this elementary stage, would it, to bear our breasts before God and say, God, I have repented of sin, I have received the Savior, I have known your grace in my heart, but tell me, God, am I letting your salvation really work with me? Is it really making me more and more and more holy and more like Christ? Or has it lost its power with me and made me just a meeting goer and a hymn singer that, uh, is leaving me very much this year as I was ten years ago. This is a down to earth letter, isn't it? It demands, says the Holy Apostle, that religion, if I might call it so, represented here by circumcision, it demands that the only real thing is the thing that works. Says Paul, you know, you can call yourself circumcised if you're Jew, if you like, and boast in your circumcision. But real true circumcision, that is real true religion, is not something that is outward, it's something that's inward. And if a non-Jew, says Paul, who isn't circumcised and hasn't gone through all your ceremonies, lives a life that's pleasing to God. That's the thing. Whereas if you, as a Jew, with all your ceremonies, yet show in your life an unregenerate heart, an unspiritual mind, well, all your religion is useless. Yet we needn't be discouraged, need we? There is a salvation, says Paul. And if we're prepared to be courageous and face God's diagnosis, then God's diagnosis will allow him next to present his salvation. And it's time for us to stop our study, and we're going to stop. I'm just going to take two minutes to show how next week's study, if the Lord will, is going to hook on. The diagnosis has been that the trouble all started in man's heart and attitude to God. How will it be put right? Well, it won't be put right by working hard, says Paul, and keeping God's law. Of course not. The law, as I said before, perhaps in this hall, the law is like a doctor's thermometer. When you're ill, where comes a learned looking doctor and gets the whatnot out of his thing and shakes it down, puts it in your mouth or under your armpit or somewhere, and then he gravely puts it out and looks solemn and wise and pronounces. The old thermometers are shown him how ill we are, but we doesn't ask us to swallow a thermometer to get better. No. The law comes alongside and says, look what an ugly harvest your sin has produced. Can't you see you're a sinner? But he can't help to save us. Something else will have to be brought in, and that something else is this. We shall have to come and get that hard attitude towards God absolutely changed. And from resenting being dependent on God, we shall have to be brought where that is all we can do, just hang helplessly, all together and completely dependent on God. And when God has brought us to the place where we're prepared to trust God implicitly, and only God, then God is prepared to say that we're right. Oh, there'll be many more things to clear up. But basically, if only we can get our heart attitude right with God, then God is going to say, very good, now we've started. In my sight, you are right. That is, your attitude to me is right. You've been put right, and I'm prepared to regard you as right. And now being right, we can start and go on from here and work out from your heart to all your life and all its a- actions and all its thoughts. So that's been rather largely grim, hasn't it? But pray God we shall find the courage to face it and perhaps think over it, and own in our hearts before God the rightness of the diagnosis, so that we should be ready the more eagerly, the more clearly to hear, to understand, and to follow God's great scheme of making us right.