#17 Piper - Displays of God remove the excuse for failed worship - Romans 1:19-22

#17 – Displays of God remove the excuse for failed worship.

 

Romans 1:18–21

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

 

So, today Piper deals with the age old question: What about those who have never heard?  I  am so thankful for this sermon.

 

The objection is this: “You say, Paul, that the wrath of God is being revealed in history against humankind because the truth of God is suppressed by the human heart. Well, what about those who don’t have the truth of God? Don’t they have a legitimate excuse to protest God’s anger? How can it be right for God to be angry at people, and punish people for suppressing a truth that they never had?” That’s the objection that Paul is answering here, in verses 19–21.

 

So let me start first with his conclusion and work backward with you through the other three steps, and then we will turn around and move the other direction with a very

 

Step four: The conclusion—All men are without excuse and deserve the wrath of God.
Step three: This is because they do not glorify God as God or give him thanks.
Step two: This failure of fitting worship is not because of innocent ignorance of God, but in spite of sufficient knowledge about God.

 

Step one:

How did he do that? This is explained in the middle of verse 20 in the words, “being understood through what has been made.” God’s eternal power and divine nature—what can be known of God—have always, from the beginning of the creation of man, been “understood through what has been made.” When verse 19b says “God made [his power and deity] evident to mankind,” it means that God did something to make himself known. Knowledge of God did not just happen coincidentally. God makes provision for it.

 

What does he do to make himself evident? He made the world. He created—like a potter, or a sculptor or a poet, except he created out of nothing. In verse 20, when it says that God is “understood through what has been made,” the words “what has been made” stand for one Greek word (which you will all recognize), the word poiema. It’s the word from which we get “poem.” The universe and everything in it is God’s work of art. What’s the point of this word? The point is that in a poem there is manifest design and intention and wisdom and power. The wind might create a letter in the sand, but not a poem. That’s the point. God acted. God planned. God designed. God crafted. He created and made. And in doing that, Paul says in verse 19, God made himself evident to all mankind. The universe is a poem about God.

 

Now this too is extremely relevant for our day. Just as we saw that verse 18 was politically relevant, this text is scientifically relevant. Naturalistic evolution is treated as a given in our culture—the belief that the universe, and human life in particular, evolved by the sheer forces of matter, time and chance. Given enough time and some matter to work with, chance has brought about what we see in the universe and in the human species today. God as creator and designer is simply ruled out and thought to be an unnecessary hypothesis.

 

But increasingly in our day this assumption of naturalistic evolution is being shown to be a philosophical prejudice rather than a scientific conclusion from evidence.

 

Most recently of all William Dembski has written The Design Inference (Cambridge University Press). He points out that many well-known scientists must constantly suppress the suspicion that there is design (poiema) in the universe. For example, he quotes Richard Dawkins, an “arch-Darwinian” who says, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” And he quotes Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA, who says, “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved” (ibid. p. 21).

 

In other words, to use the words of the apostle Paul, the manifest truth of God’s poiema—God’s “designed things”—must be constantly suppressed, lest scientists be brought face to face with their Maker and have to glorify him as God and give him thanks as dependent creatures.

 

Most recently of all William Dembski has written The Design Inference (Cambridge University Press). He points out that many well-known scientists must constantly suppress the suspicion that there is design (poiema) in the universe. For example, he quotes Richard Dawkins, an “arch-Darwinian” who says, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” And he quotes Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA, who says, “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved” (ibid. p. 21).

 

In other words, to use the words of the apostle Paul, the manifest truth of God’s poiema—God’s “designed things”—must be constantly suppressed, lest scientists be brought face to face with their Maker and have to glorify him as God and give him thanks as dependent creatures.

 

How amazingly true the at we suppress God’s poem with resistance to obedience and submission and humility.