Romans 1 – God Revealed in Creation – His Existence is PLAINLY Seen

In the Chronicles of Narnia, CS Lewis wrote an allegory for Christianity. The world of Narnia had a good King, Aslan the lion. He lived in across the sea. Sometimes he would come and visit his people. The dwarves of Narnia, however, refused to believe in his existence. No amount of convincing or evidence would change their minds. They said, “the dwarves are for the dwarves.”

Finally, Aslan himself comes. Yet still they refuse to believe he is real though he stands right in front of them. They are unable to perceive reality. Their hearts have been hardened. They say that Aslan is a trick and everyone else who says they see him is deceiving them.

Aslan said, “They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief.” They remain for eternity trapped in the prison of their own minds instead of perceiving and experiencing the goodness of their King right in front of them.

Of course, Lewis wrote this to illustrate the same reality that happens in our world. God’s existence is plain, but people harden their hearts and deny it, locking themselves out from His blessings.

Romans 1:18-23 – 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, in 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 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.

I. Wrath of God –

Romans 1:18 – For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

The first few chapters of Romans are essentially a systematic theological exposition of the gospel.

It starts with an introduction of the “righteousness of God” in verses 16-17.

Starting in verse 18, Paul gives lengthy evidence of the sinfulness of man, establishing clearly our guilt, and therefore the necessity for Jesus to come. Isn’t the gospel good news? Why does he spend chapters on the doom and gloom of our sin and guilt?

As the saying goes, “You cannot preach a person into heaven until you first preach them into hell.” That means a person must realize that he is lost and needs help before he will be willing to take it. No man will be willing to ask for directions until he admits he is lost, and admitting one is lost is not easy.

Paul tells us that the “wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness.”

Wrath of God

God’s wrath is not arbitrary. It is not a sudden uncontrolled outpouring of anger. It is rooted in his holiness. It is the holy response of a righteous God against sin.

We sometimes dimly reflect that when we feel righteous anger towards an injustice that we see. When we see corrupt official stealing from the poor to live a life of luxury, this makes us angry. When we see children being exploited and sold as slaves, this makes us angry. When we see horrific things like the Holocaust, this makes us angry. That is but a tiny taste of God’s wrath. Our consciences have been dulled and desensitized. God’s is perfectly tuned. I would be even angrier if someone maliciously harmed one of my children. The entire world was created by God and belongs to Him, so it is perfect that God is angry when people hurt His own creation.

God’s wrath is revealed. The word “revealed” here shows something continuous. His wrath is shown when sin reaps its consequences in the natural order. Also, He intervenes with individuals as with King Herod, who boasted and was eaten by worms, with nations such as Egypt when He sent the ten plagues for enslaving His people, Israel when He exiled them for idolatry, Sodom and Gomorrah, for their homosexuality, and even the whole world in the case of the flood.

Another type of wrath, and a very frightening one, is when He stops intervening and just lets people go and do their own thing. We will see from verse 24 how God gives sinful people over to their own devices.

When God intervenes in your life, be thankful that He is not just letting you go.

Key Gospel Truth: God is holy and sin makes Him angry.

In this passage, God’s wrath is highlighted against people who suppress the truth. Let’s go forward to see what Paul means by that.

II. The Revelation of God in Creation

Romans 1:19-20 – 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, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

God reveals Himself in creation. He hasn’t hidden some secret code or sign somewhere for us to find. It is not a scavenger hunt or a riddle. It is plain for all to see. For thousands of years, people have looked at this world and concluded “There must be a God.”

Let’s put aside for just a moment what we know of God from the Bible and consider this question. What does nature tell us about God? What can you learn about God from creation?

In sixty seconds write down as many as you can.

Earlier this week, I spent some time doing this activity. Here is what I can discern from creation. You probably have some on your list that I do not. We will look at it in two categories as that is how Paul divides it.

We will start with just what we can and experience with our own senses.

Eternal Power:

God is Powerful – A Being of unimaginable power must have created the universe. The stars in the sky. The sun and the moon. The raw power of the hurricane (typhoon) and the sea. I have seen hurricane force winds snapping trees like twigs. No weak god could have made this world.

God is Big – The universe is vast. Even this earth is huge. I once drove for 10000 miles and saw mountains, rivers, meadows, vast plains. I saw trees so big that it would need 20 of us to circle arm in arm. No little god could have created this world.

Divine nature:

Creativity – You can only create something that exists in your mind first. You can’t create something either that you can’t comprehend or don’t’ have the power to make. The amazing variety of this world shows us how creative God is.

Many of us like to eat. Let’s start there.

Fruits and vegetables –

There are so many types of growing things to eat. I thought there were a lot already and then I moved to China. We didn’t even know the names of the things we were eating. We started calling them “Chinese vegetable 22” or “Chinese vegetable 34.” You have sour and sweet and everything in between.

Animals –

You have flying animals, swimming animals, burrowing animals, furry animals, feathered animals, huge animals, microscopic animals. When we went to Brazil last year, they served us animals on a platter to eat that I had never heard of before.

Even within one type of animal, there is so much variety. Many have asked us what kind of dog we have. I don’t really know. It’s a dog. But there are around 500 breeds just of dogs and each of these can be combined in practically infinite ways. There are around:

• 3,000 species of fruit
• 2,000 species of vegetables
• 370,000 flowering species
• 7-10 million animal species

We see clouds and plants and animals and grasslands and mountains. But each of these has variety within itself. There is not just one type of cloud. There are so many you can study a chapter on it in your science book. There is not just one kind of tree. You have trees of different heights with different bark and different colors and different kinds of leaves and seeds. Each of these has a different purpose in their ecosystem.

Seasons – I asked my kids why God created the seasons. Again, they show us God’s variety. We look forward to certain times of year. Things change, shift, and move without growing stale or boring. But there is also a rhythm to it. If there were a thousand different seasons, you could never make a plan. You would never know what to expect. You would feel unsettled like life is chaotic and disorganized. But with four, we can also look forward to some change while we know what to expect and can live an orderly life.

Just a note that variety will not end once we reach heaven. Revelation tells us that the Tree of Life has different fruit in different seasons.

Colors, Textures, Sounds, Temperature

There is variety everywhere you look. God is creative.

It also shows us that God is beautiful. If His creation is this beautiful and it all came out of the mind of God, how beautiful and magnificent He must be.

God is Orderly –

But this variety does not equate to chaos. The weather and the seasons flow in predictable patterns.

Laws of nature are consistent. Gravity is constant. Your weight and size don’t shift. Birds and airplanes can maintain their flight because the laws governing thrust and lift do not change.

God is Faithful –

Which day of your life have you woken up and the sun did not rise? Which day did you try to breathe and couldn’t because oxygen was gone? We receive our food to the door with Mei Tuan delivery and sometimes forget that God sent the rain and the sun to cause those things to grow. God is not capricious and arbitrary. He is so faithful that we even begin to take it for granted.

God is Personal or Sociable? –

The animals communicate with each other. He gave them voices. He also gives us words and speech to communicate. He gave us a mind to contemplate His existence and a tongue to praise Him. Only a personal God would conceive of creating something personal. Because we are personal, it indicates that He is a relational and personal God.

God is Intelligent –

All of this together shows us that God is intelligent. A child can put a few Legos together to create something, but it takes a person with an intelligence and capability far greater to create a Lego city masterpiece. The splendor of the universe shows us that God is highly intelligent far beyond what we can conceive.

God is Moral –

You can often hear people arguing. They make claims like “That is my seat; I was there first,” or, “You should have told me if you were going to be late,” or “Don’t lie to me.” People say things like this all the time. They are appealing to some kind of standard of behavior, a moral. The other side doesn’t deny that a standard is there though he likely tries to wiggle out of it. This shows us that people are moral beings. In Romans 2, Paul goes deeper into that. For now, we can note that there is a natural moral law, a code written inside of us. That code had to come from somewhere. It shows us that God is a moral God and our sense of right and wrong is ultimately from Him.

Now so far, I have only gotten into the things in this world that every person, even the ancient man thousands of years ago, has been able to experience with their own senses. That is why from ancient times, every civilization believed in a god of some form.

Modern man would like to say that we have advanced beyond God and that the more you study, the less you need God.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The more you study and the deeper you look, the more obvious it is that we have a Creator.

Now we can see that the universe is far larger than people in the past ever realized. Likely 200-300 billion stars just in the Milky Way alone with potentially a trillion galaxies and tens of sextillions of stars.

The universe is incomprehensibly big. Why so big? I think God made it that big to show us just how big He is.

Our solar system shows careful and intelligent design. The sun’s distance from the earth is 93,000,000 miles. A bit farther and the earth would be too cold and a bit closer and the earth would be too hot.

The air we breathe has just the right composition. The magnetic field protects us from harmful rays.

On a grand scale, the earth is perfect for human life.

When you zoom in, you find the same thing.

Now evolutionists say that all of this has come about by chance. There is no designer. It just happened. Even on the surface, this is not logical. Let’s try it out.

Activity –

Give both a bag of legos. One is blindfolded and has to shake the legos to create something. One can open their eyes and build something. Give 1 minute. Whoever builds the best thing gets 20 yuan.

Someone with intelligence can design and create something while random chance cannot. A big bang would destroy not create.

Irreducible complexity – Mousetrap

This is the idea that some biological systems require all of their main parts to be present and working at the same time in order to function. Take the mousetrap. It needs the base, spring, hammer catch, and holding bar. If any one single element is missing, it will not function. It needs all five elements complete in order to work. Many things in nature are like the mousetrap. They could not have evolved slowly because they would have died out and gone extinct unless they were fully formed and functional from the beginning.

Giraffe –

A giraffe’s long neck creates some big challenges. How do you pump blood 6 meters up to the brain?

A giraffe has several design features which all work in tandem to accomplish this.

It has a large powerful heart that generates high blood pressure and strong arteries that can withstand that pressure.

That is well and good, but there is a danger. If the giraffe bends down its head to drink, you would expect blood to rush into its brain and kill it.

The arteries and veins have special valves to control blood flow. And there is a net of veins near the brain to absorb pressure changes.

“How many giraffes blew their brains to pieces when bending down—how many passed out as they lifted their heads, becoming food for the lions—until the special features somehow evolved? It’s obvious that the very first giraffes had to have these special features right from the beginning. If not, they wouldn’t have survived to pass them on to their offspring!” – Ken Ham

Evolution cannot adequately explain how a series of small changes could result in a giraffe today. Without all of these systems fully complete and functional, the giraffe would have died out before having time to evolve what it needed. This is an example of irreducible complexity. A giraffe had to have been created fully formed and complete to function or it never would have survived.

There are MANY animals like this with systems that are dependent on each other. They had to have been created fully formed.

DNA / RNA / Protein

When Darwin proposed evolution, DNA had not yet been discovered. DNA is like a digital code, a language with a vast storehouse of information. It is the blueprint for every living organism. It is extremely complex and points to an intelligent designer.

DNA stores instructions. RNA carries them to the cell’s protein-making machinery, where proteins are assembled. These proteins are the tiny molecular machines that perform the countless tasks necessary for life.

A protein strand may contain around 150 amino acids arranged in a precise sequence. There are 20 different amino acids and the order matters. For the protein to work properly the sequence of 150 individual items has to be correct. While a protein may still work with a very small number of the items out of order, generally if you swap the location of these building blocks, the protein will be useless.

The odds of randomly assembling even one working protein from the pool of amino acids is roughly 1 in 10 (raised to the 195) give or take a few zeroes.

100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

To give an idea of how large that number is, it is 10 (115) larger than the number of total atoms estimated to be in the universe.

100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Borel’s Law says that odds less than 1 in 10^50 are effectively impossible.

What is the point of all of this math?

It is mathematically impossible for even one protein to come arise by random chance. How much more impossible is it that the universe came about by chance? There is a Creator. This has always been plainly seen and the more we find out about the universe and cells and DNA, the more obvious it becomes.

The Heavens Declare the Glory of God.

III. The Foolishness of Man

Romans 1:20-23 – 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 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.

A. They don’t honor or thank God
B. They became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened
C. They worshiped created things instead of the Creator

These verses show that mankind spiraled farther and farther away from God. First came a lack of gratitude and respect. Then as they failed to appreciate God, their thinking became progressively more foolish. The next step is that they lifted themselves up in pride. Claiming to be wise, they began substituting other things for God and worshiping those things.

When you examine some ancient civilizations, you can see that progression as people became father and farther from God. In ancient China, the people worshipped Shang Di, the Emperor of Heaven. He was viewed as the Supreme Being, the Creator who ruled from heaven over all. The emperor would offer a sacrifice (an unblemished bull) once per year to Shang Di on behalf of the nation. Over time, this practice slowly faded and China turned to many deities and idol worship.

Persia was another ancient civilization that started off worshiping one Almighty God.

Why did people turn away from worshiping God to idols?

• Spiritually deceived – The enemy actively sought to deceive people and turn them from worship of the true God.
• Business – Idols are a big business. There was financial incentive to create images for people to purchase.
• Control – This is probably the biggest reason. An idol is created by man. It cannot judge a person. It cannot hold a person accountable. It cannot rebuke. It cannot discipline. The idol has no standards of its own. People can assign any standard they want to the idol, meaning that those who worship idols can do whatever they want with no restrictions. Many temples became havens of despicable practices, such as cult prostitution. A person could go to the temple to “worship” their god and that act of worship would consist of having sex with a temple prostitute. That idea was appealing to people who wanted to be “spiritual” all while indulging their flesh.

Solomon said there is nothing new under the sun. Idolatry puts man at the top of the natural world with nothing over him. What modern day philosophy does the same? Evolution. Evolution is modern idolatry. It says that man is the highest thing in the known universe.

And what do you see happening when people embrace this philosophy? Sexual sins like never seen before. Cyber prostitution in the form of pornography is rampant. People are more prone to do these things when they deny the existence of an all-seeing, holy God who will hold us to account one day.

Takeaways

#1 – Stand firm in your faith and testify of God.

Be ready to tell the world why you believe in God. We should be as Paul and say, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God.” If you agree with this statement read it together with me like you mean it!

#2 – Recognize God and Give Thanks to God

Make a habit of recognizing God in your daily life. When you see a beautiful flower, stunning cloud, or impressive tree stop for a moment and thank God for the beauty of His creation. When you smell a fresh pine or cinnamon or vanilla, stop and say, “Thank you” God for the variety of smells. When you partake of a delicious meal, thank God for taste buds and for the sun and rain and gardener who made your meal possible. When you hear a lovely note on an instrument, stop and recognize that God created music. If you have an activity and it doesn’t rain, say “Thank you, Lord.” If it does rain, recognize that God is sovereign over that as well and don’t complain.

Last year my children were in a Christian basketball league. They had eleven games across spring. Spring is Guangzhou’s rainy season that the courts were outdoors. Every week, my family prayed for good weather and to be able to play the games. The forecast often pointed to rain and it rained often. But somehow it only rained 2 of the 11 weeks, and those were short showers. In the end, the kids were able to complete all of their games without any rescheduling.

Do we recognize that this is from God? Do we thank Him and honor Him for that or just put it down to coincidence?

We need to open our eyes to what God is doing. He is working not only through creation, but through people, prayer, and circumstances. Let us often consider this question and ask it to each other, “What do you see God doing in your life?”

Discussion Questions

A. Take your list and share what you wrote with the group. Pick one thing on the list and explain how nature teaches you this about God.

B. Honoring and thanking – How can you do this in your daily life?