Thursday, December 31, 2020

Romans 1:19-32 comments: Paul explains the religious history of mankind

 


Romans 1:19 ¶  Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. 20  For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 21  Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22  Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23  And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. 24  Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: 25  Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. 26  For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27  And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. 28  And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29  Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30  Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31  Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32  Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

 

Here is the religious history of mankind, what is important, not the endless wars, kings, queens, and dynasties, building projects, art, and literature that interests us. This is what concerns God.

God is revealed in creation, even without a Bible.

 

Psalm 19:1  «To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.» The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

 

In today’s world of non-scientific science theory there are many seemingly intelligent people who live in a world of delusion. They will see;

In Genesis 1:3 God calls light into being.

Regarding light, scientists presume the existence of the basic particle of light, a photon. The universe is bathed in that light. For every estimated proton around the nucleus of an atom they say there are a billion photons.[1] Of course, photons might not even exist except as theoretical entities to explain things that can be seen by mathematical constructs. But, even guessing at this, they deny the truth of what the Bible already said.

In fact, God’s existence is verifiable, among other ways, by logic alone. Here are some comments I made previously.

“There are things outside of our personal experience with God, a personal experience that no unbeliever can understand or accept unless God Himself touches their hearts.

Let’s take something as complex as life. The astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle was born in Yorkshire, England on June 24, 1915. He was conferred a master's degree from Cambridge in 1939 and then was elected Fellow, St. John's College, Cambridge in the same year. He worked his way to become a Professor of Astrophysics and Natural Philosophy in 1958. He was a leading contributor in the discovery of how the elements from lithium to iron are synthesized inside stars.

Professor N. Chandra Wickramasinghe was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on January 20, 1939, studied astrophysics at Cambridge, and was a student of Hoyle's. He received a Ph.D. in 1963 taught at Cambridge. He later became a Professor of Applied Mathematics and Astronomy at the University College, Cardiff, Wales. He is an expert in the use of infrared astronomy to study interstellar matter.

These are no lightweights although Wickramasinghe has gone a little bonkers in the last few years. But, they both came to the logical atheist conclusion that life came from outer space. Why? Because it was impossible for it to have happened by random chance on earth, not in 15 billion years or a hundred billion years. Let me read you a quote published recently by Dr. Wick…

‘Improbability of Life

The blueprint for all life from bacteria to plants to animals was discovered in the 1950s by Watson and Crick to reside in DNA – in particular in the precise arrangements of the nucleotides A,G,T,C that effectively code for proteins that in turn control cell function. In a series of books and articles published in collaboration with the late Sir Fred Hoyle, I have argued that highly specific arrangements needed for the operation of living cells cannot be understood as arising from random processes. For the simplest bacterium (Mycoplasma genitalium) the probability that its few hundred genes will be discovered by random shuffling of their amino acid components gives a figure of 1 in 10 to the 1000th power or smaller. Hoyle and I have compared such horrendous improbabilities to the odds against a ‘tornado blowing through a junk yard leading to self-assembly of BOEING 707 airplane.’[2]

 

1 in 10 to the 1000th? These types of scientists estimate there is only 10 to the 80th power number of atoms in the universe. Saying that life came about by random processes is like me saying that I’m getting handsomer, wealthier, and smarter as I get older. You would just look at me and go, what? I’m joking, right? But, scientists who believe in spontaneous generation, I mean abiogenesis, or life by accident are serious.

So, proof that God exists, step one. Life could not have happened on earth by chance. It’s not mathematically conceivable, not by any stretch of your Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Dr. Who imagination. But, what about it coming from somewhere else? That’s called panspermia and that’s what Dr. Wick believes in.

Well, NASA scientists Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, in their book, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe, explained that it is also highly unlikely that life came from someplace else as this planet, located where it is, is the best and most likely place for life to exist and, in fact, probably could not exist anywhere else.

So, proof that God exists, step two. Life could not have happened anywhere but on earth. But, it couldn’t happen here by chance. So, something else, or someone else rather, must be happening.

Who could it be?

You know if they could have proven that life could have come together by random events on earth like Miller-Urey’s experiment tried to do and failed in the 1950s it would be astounding. But, you’d have to have nothing and then have something suddenly come into existence for it to simulate God without God. After all, Miller-Urey made something happen with the equipment and chemicals they introduced making themselves in the place of God. But, they did not create life and established conditions that evolutionists do not believe were present in their fantasy of early earth anyway. So, it worked as a publicity stunt but was not good science.

Then, there was Dr. Wimmer in the latter part of the twentieth century that supposedly made a virus out of synthetic DNA. Now he admitted in an interview that he did not create life as a virus isn’t alive, it can’t reproduce itself and needs a host, and he used synthetic DNA.

None of these experiments or any other created life or proved that it could be created by random processes without an intelligent mind involved.

So, now you have the gorilla in the living room. You have something as complex as life and you shouldn’t have it if there were no one to inject intelligence into it. Life isn’t possible without God.

You have the atheist or the doubter demanding, “How do you know God exists?” and you have your own testimony, if you have one, and you have this incontrovertible fact, “Because without God life could not exist.”

You see, we are not just alive. We are aware that we are alive. Science has a huge problem with conscious self-awareness. Step three to proving that God exists. I am.

It has been said repeatedly that consciousness is the window through which we understand. Science has failed to pinpoint the actual brain processes that are behind our awareness. Some neuroscientists and philosophers of science express a deep pessimism that we will ever find an explanation for consciousness. But we know. Every car mechanic or customer service rep, a farmer or bank teller can know what a neuroscientist does not know. We know where consciousness comes from, that function of our spirit.

Zechariah 12:1 ¶  The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him.

Scientists say that a good theory, a theory that must supplant other theories, doesn’t have to answer every question. But it must answer more questions than its competitors. The belief in God answers far more questions than theoretical science can even come up with.

God is the greatest of all self-aware beings.

Exodus 3:14  And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

He made us. He formed our bodies, our souls, and our spirits. In these verses are all three; body, spirit, and soul.

Genesis 2:7  And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

1Thessalonians 5:23  And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He uses our spirit to see us from the inside.

Proverbs 20:27  The spirit of man is the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly.

We are made self-aware and our soul is the seat of our self-identity and will and our spirit makes us aware of it, of God, and of all things. It is our understanding, our skills, our drives, our emotions, our yearnings.

It is sad that the atheist or doubter will question your testimony as to whether or not you are a credible witness for God’s existence. That was how I came to Christ, the mechanism He used, the testimony of others. I vacillated between atheism, happy to believe in any religion at all, and really, God just being irrelevant to my life or thinking. But, over time I saw the truth of Christianity in the lives of people around me.

No, it wasn’t because of someone screaming Bible verses at me on a street corner. It wasn’t from someone handing me a gospel tract. It was the testimony of Christians, filled with faith and goodness, relying completely on God for their very survival, trusting in Christ’s righteousness and not their own for eternal life. Their faith was real, and it took time but God impressed on me that reality until I accepted it myself and received Christ on March 19, 1986. It was a Wednesday evening I believe.

The question of whether or not God exists has been a subject of deep philosophical debate for thousands of years. But, even outside of our experience we know.

Psalm 19:1  The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

The proof of God’s existence is all around us. Without God’s existence no reality makes sense for very long.

Ask yourself, if there was no God, then why is there something rather than nothing? Why is something as complex as life here in this space of earth?  If God doesn’t exist why do I know that I am? Where did that come from, o’ wise one? How can we have this conversation?

The universe is finely tuned, so finely tuned that something as rare and fragile as life can live in it. Things like the ratio of the strength of electromagnetism to the strength of gravity for a pair of protons, nuclear efficiency of fusion from hydrogen to helium, the density parameter, the cosmological constant, and a bunch of other intelligent sounding stuff make many scientists insist that the universe is just so and because of that you, me, and that little chipmunk you saw on your deck this morning can exist.

Other scientists invent all sorts of nonsensical things to counteract this belief. They will resurrect the multidimensions of the occult of the late 1800s which impacted theoretical physics then and say there is a multiverse, many universes where things are different and anything is possible. I might even be handsomer, wealthier, and smarter on one of them, in their imagination only of course.

But, the universe is fine-tuned. Now, how does something get tuned? Have you ever seen a radio tune itself? Never mind. In today’s world I suppose that is possible. But, at some point a person was involved; an engineer or someone to tune that radio. How do you think the universe was tuned so close and exact? Who did it? Who maintains it? We all know that if you leave your car in the driveway without maintaining it for thirty years the tires will rot and it will become undriveable. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that all things fall apart. Oh, and there is this;

Colossians 1:17  And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

In a couple of my Sunday School classes I present some scientific studies that express alarm at the harmful mutations produced in each generation of people. One of them was entitled, “Contamination of the Genome by Very Slightly Deleterious Mutations: Why Have We Not Died 100 Times Over?” But, we’re here, our biology is preserved, life goes on and the planet is not yet cold and dead.

Again, I say ask yourself, if there was no God, then why is there something rather than nothing? Why is something as complex as life here in this space of earth?  If God doesn’t exist why do I know that I am? Why is the universe so finely tuned as to permit us to exist?

You know, our government has spent millions of dollars searching for extraterrestrials, life on other planets, even microbial. They will continue to do so but will probably never find it. The scientific community has a hunger, a lust, to overthrow God. They are searching for microbes and water on Mars.

In the Rosetta Mission they recently learned that water in space can be vastly different than water on earth so they feel confident in at least admitting that our water didn’t come from comets. Recent research on earth has shown that water alone will not be the cause of life if other conditions aren’t right. But, they will keep searching, hoping to be able to drive the nail in the coffin for belief in the God of the Bible.

There are two other things that scream the truth of the existence of God. One is the very desperate desire to prove beyond all doubt that He does not. Let me read you part of the short religious history of man that God has provided in Romans.

Romans 1:19 ¶  Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. 20  For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 21  Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

 

And in another context an ancient warning;

 

Isaiah 66:4  I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them; because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear: but they did evil before mine eyes, and chose that in which I delighted not.

 

Remember what King David thought of atheists in about 1000 BC.

 

Psalm 14:1  « To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. » The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.

 

Finally, evolutionary biologists admit an astounding thing. Belief in God, according to some of them, is hard-wired into the human brain. A neuroscientist and the author of several books, Andrew Newberg, wrote a book entitled Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. He is called a neurotheologist, studying how religious belief and prayer affect the brain.

 

On page 129 he wrote, ‘…evolution has adopted this machinery, and has favored the religious capabilities of the religious brain because religious belief and behaviors turn out to be good for us in profound and pragmatic ways.’

 

As evolutionists often do he refers to evolution as he does in other places with natural selection almost as a god in itself rather than just a process or a mechanism by which new species of dog, cat, or deer are produced by environmental stresses or opportunities or human cross-breeding efforts (There are more than two dozen scientific definitions of species.) The fact is that all of the genetic information necessary for a creature to adapt to its environment are present within the creature’s DNA and no dog ever became a cat and no alligator ever became a trout. But, Newberg, like other of his ilk, refer to evolution as a sort of inert god who unfeelingly adopts and favors in the passage I quoted. In a preceding page he refers to natural selection as not tolerating something. So, it is almost humorous to see how these kinds of scientists use language, at the least, very interesting.

 

Susan Mazur, a science writer and journalist who doesn’t appear to be a fundamental Baptist (said in a tongue-in-cheek manner), wrote in her book The Altenberg 16: An Expose’ of the Evolution Industry that, “Evolutionary science is as much about posturing, salesmanship, stonewalling and bullying as it is about actual scientific theory.” (v)

 

In any event, this is not a sermon about comparative religions so we’ll leave the religion of evolution alone for now.

 

So, to summarize, if you want to look outside of your own experience for proof that God exists I suggest starting with life. There are many other topics we could talk about that prove or at least suggest His existence but let’s stick with the ones I’ve brought up.

 

One, there is something rather than nothing and since space dust did not create itself then something or someone did. Two, life could not have begun here on earth and probably not on some distant planet by chance. Some intelligent being had to create it. Three, self-awareness and consciousness imply a reality greater than the physical universe. Four, we are apparently “hard-wired” to believe in God. It is part of our make-up.

 

We believe in God because He has communed with our spirit so that we can. We experience Him in our prayer and in the answers to it, the way the Bible speaks to us, in the truth found in it, the way He molds and changes us by our reading and hearing it read, by the reality arounds us that is confirmed in the Bible, and by His miraculous intervention in our lives.’

 

            So, we can throw the modern religion of atheistic determinism, that there is no God and that everything exists by random events in the same basket as the ancient idolaters who worshipped gods of wood and stone.

Daniel 11:38a  But in his estate shall he honour the God of forces…

But, for verse 23 let’s go back to the beginning of mankind’s history after the Flood. Man degraded their own vision of God’s glory and began to worship representations of creating beings.  

Genesis 3:6 ¶  And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

There were things that were pleasant to the eyes to mankind that he grew to worship in place of God.

Exodus 20:4  Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: 5  Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; 6  And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

 

Exodus 32:8  They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

 

Numbers 33:52   Then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their pictures, and destroy all their molten images, and quite pluck down all their high places:

 

You had gods like the Philistine Dagon, which some authorities link to the Assyrian art of a merman; half man, half fish. The Egyptians were known for gods that were manifested by animals, according to some authorities, like Thoth’s dog-headed baboon, or Isis, Hethor, or Nut’s cow. The giving of the tablets of the Ten Commandments in Exodus may be the beginning of the alphabet that we use, the precursor to it. God created the writing that contrasted with the pictograms of hieroglyphics and cuneiform writing that dominated the ancient world. From China, Sumeria, and Egypt to the civilizations of the ancient Americas pictures were used to convey ideas and history and as representations of things worshipped. The basic units of writing, the letters, become symbols for ideas rather than pictures representing things to be worshipped as idols. ‘A’, instead of a symbol for a bull or an ox, is Aleph in Hebrew and Alpha in Greek, and ‘A’ for modern purposes. A good study for this is Marc A. Ouaknin’s Mysteries of the Alphabet. This could be part of God drawing a people out of a world of idolatrous pictures or creatures to be adored and turning their writing into ideas to be expressed by symbols.

What came along with this idolatry was a peculiar form of worship involving sexual acts. Returning to comments I originally made in Exodus.

Exodus 32:1 ¶  And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. 2  And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me. 3  And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. 4  And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. 5  And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to the LORD. 6  And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.

 

These people who have spent so long in Egypt with the worship of heathen gods want Aaron to make gods for them to worship. That is what they have known for hundreds of years and they are quick to abandon the singular devotion to the magnificent God who created them and called them out of Egypt with such mighty signs. This is a problem for Christians as we are often not willing to wait for God to do something in our lives and rather quickly began looking backwards into the things that we leaned on before we came to Christ.

As far as they were concerned, Moses might have died on the mountain. Aaron is either a creature of public opinion, maybe afraid of the masses, or he also doubts whether Moses will return. So, he calls for their earrings.

Earrings had a special significance, which I pointed out in Genesis. Jewelry played a part in ancient worship. Earrings were not merely ornamentation for both men and women but were, scholars tell us, sometimes amulets and charms to protect the openings of the face and head from entry by evil spirits. They were clearly part of the idol worship of the ancient world, the spiritual system that developed after the Flood.  If you have difficulty seeing that side of facial jewelry just look at the hundreds of occult earrings on a website like Etsy.com. Some verses of note regarding men and women wearing earrings and of a possible link to their occultic practices are;

Genesis 35:4  And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem.

Judges 8:24  And Gideon said unto them, I would desire a request of you, that ye would give me every man the earrings of his prey. (For they had golden earrings, because they were Ishmaelites.) 25  And they answered, We will willingly give them. And they spread a garment, and did cast therein every man the earrings of his prey.

In the passage in Genesis, chapter 35, and here in Exodus we have a very clear indication that something linked earrings to the spirit world.

Verse 4 is an astounding statement that makes Aaron worthy of death. Of course, if you think about it, we do very much the same thing when we say, “good luck!” or, “oh, how lucky you were.” When we, even absent-mindedly, attribute our good fortune or our trouble to something or someone other than God we do blaspheme His name and diminish the glory due Him.

Malachi 2:2  If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the LORD of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart.

Aaron made a molten calf. The calf/bull was a commonly worshipped as a god in the Ancient Near East and in Egypt. While Moses was receiving what may have been the introduction of the alphabet over pictographic writing the Hebrews were falling down to worship the object symbolized by the pictographic rendering of a calf, a young bull. Aleph, the first letter of Hebrew, is derived from the pictographic representation of the young bull. Alpha, the Greek letter, was derived from Aleph. With the ‘alpha-bet’ God removed the pictures that were worshipped to letters that represented thoughts and ideas only rather than sacred objects representing thoughts and ideas.

This is a return to Egypt in a religious sense. The ensuing nudity and orgy was in keeping with the sexual aspects of Ancient Near Eastern religion. See verse 25 in this chapter coming up.

Exodus 32:25  And when Moses saw that the people were naked; (for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies:)

 

To explain further, in ancient Greece and Rome orgia was a sacred word denoting worship in the mystery cults such as that devoted to Dionysus. It included dancing, singing, and drinking as well as promiscuous sexual behavior. You cannot underestimate the sexual perversion of ancient religion after the Flood. The ancient Egyptians practiced every kind of perversion in their religion.”

In ancient Near Eastern religion the sex act was important to the worship of heathen gods. Temples were attended by heterosexual and homosexual prostitutes. Throughout the Bible this was condemned and amazingly this behavior was brought into God’s temple, making it a house of prostitution like the pagan world around them.

Deuteronomy 23:17  There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel.18  Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the LORD thy God for any vow: for even both these are abomination unto the LORD thy God. [dog in this context is slang for a homosexual temple prostitute or sodomite]

 

God gave mankind over to this perversion because of the wickedness of their hearts.

With regard to idolatry please note the warning Moses gave in Deuteronomy, chapter 4.

Deuteronomy 4:1 ¶  Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments, which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the LORD God of your fathers giveth you. 2  Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you. 3  Your eyes have seen what the LORD did because of Baalpeor: for all the men that followed Baalpeor, the LORD thy God hath destroyed them from among you. 4  But ye that did cleave unto the LORD your God are alive every one of you this day. 5  Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the LORD my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it. 6  Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. 7  For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for? 8  And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day? 9  Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ sons; 10  Specially the day that thou stoodest before the LORD thy God in Horeb, when the LORD said unto me, Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children. 11  And ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness. 12  And the LORD spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye heard a voice. 13  And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone. 14  And the LORD commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go over to possess it. 15  Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the LORD spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire: 16  Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female, 17  The likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air, 18  The likeness of any thing that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth: 19 And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the LORD thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven. 20  But the LORD hath taken you, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, even out of Egypt, to be unto him a people of inheritance, as ye are this day.

 

You remember discussing Baalpeor, don’t you? The entire incident suggested the degradation of the Israelites downward into the prevalent religious impulses of the day.

See my comments on Numbers, chapter 25;

 

Numbers 25:1 ¶  And Israel abode in Shittim, and the people began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab. 2  And they called the people unto the sacrifices of their gods: and the people did eat, and bowed down to their gods. 3  And Israel joined himself unto Baalpeor: and the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel. 4  And the LORD said unto Moses, Take all the heads of the people, and hang them up before the LORD against the sun, that the fierce anger of the LORD may be turned away from Israel. 5  And Moses said unto the judges of Israel, Slay ye every one his men that were joined unto Baalpeor.

 

The Israelites begin consorting with Moabite women. This also included the worship of their gods.

Here is what Balaam was able to accomplish against Israel. He would not curse them. He could not. But he could lay a stumblingblock in their path to service to God, a sexual stumblingblock as we have already learned about the sexual content of ancient religion. First, the point at from where this began would be when Balaam was with Balak who was demanding a curse but getting a blessing.

Numbers 23:28  And Balak brought Balaam unto the top of Peor, that looketh toward Jeshimon.

 

Numbers 31:16  Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD.

 

Revelation 2:14  But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.

 

Baalpeor  means obviously ‘god of Peor’ or ‘lord of Peor’, a physical location we have seen in the text. The context indicates the sexual nature of the worship of this local god which, unfortunately, like all of the hypersexualized worship of the Canaanites we’ve already looked at was a stumblingblock to this race of former slaves of Egypt. This is not a case of, “oh, them local girls sure are pretty,” considering what you and I have learned about religious customs in Canaan so far. God orders Moses to execute every one who fell to this very sensual worship of this local Canaanite god.

Once the Israelites began enjoying physical relations with the Canaanite women spiritual decline was inevitable.

1Kings 11:1  But king Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites;

 

Nehemiah 13:26  Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things? yet among many nations was there no king like him, who was beloved of his God, and God made him king over all Israel: nevertheless even him did outlandish women cause to sin.

 

Put it in a modern perspective. You tried to raise your son or daughter right. You permitted them to go away to school. They announce to you at some point that they have fallen in love with a local girl or boy where they are. Marriage follows and then children, hopefully in that order. But you notice that the children seem to be raised with a different standard than the one you set for your child. Your grandchildren act very differently than your child did growing up, usually with less impulse-control and perhaps even acting a bit disrespectfully. You realize that if your child’s spouse was raised in a more liberal environment with less order than your child this will be reflected in your grandchildren’s behavior. We cannot underestimate the power of a child raised with a lower standard has on even a young person who you think is firm and solid in their beliefs and standards. It can be very disheartening. While you raised your child to be respectful of other’s property and a good guest in someone else’s home your grandchild acts like a Vandal sacking Rome when they visit. Maybe you notice that the family does not attend church faithfully or even, in some cases, bear any resemblance to a Christian family.

Numbers 25:6 ¶  And, behold, one of the children of Israel came and brought unto his brethren a Midianitish woman in the sight of Moses, and in the sight of all the congregation of the children of Israel, who were weeping before the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. 7  And when Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose up from among the congregation, and took a javelin in his hand; 8  And he went after the man of Israel into the tent, and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her belly. So the plague was stayed from the children of Israel. 9  And those that died in the plague were twenty and four thousand. 10  And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 11  Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, hath turned my wrath away from the children of Israel, while he was zealous for my sake among them, that I consumed not the children of Israel in my jealousy. 12  Wherefore say, Behold, I give unto him my covenant of peace: 13  And he shall have it, and his seed after him, even the covenant of an everlasting priesthood; because he was zealous for his God, and made an atonement for the children of Israel. 14  Now the name of the Israelite that was slain, even that was slain with the Midianitish woman, was Zimri, the son of Salu, a prince of a chief house among the Simeonites. 15  And the name of the Midianitish woman that was slain was Cozbi, the daughter of Zur; he was head over a people, and of a chief house in Midian.

 

After the command given by Moses, Phinehas, Aaron’s grandson, obeyed and killed both an Israelite and the daughter of a Midianite prince who were engaged in sexual relations.

Regarding verse 9 notice this curious verse in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians.

 

1Corinthians 10:8  Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.

 

Bibles typically say 1Corinthians 10:8 is referring to this passage in Numbers 25. The Modernist heresy in modern Christians then says, “those numbers aren’t the same! They should be exactly alike!” But, Paul is not wrong. The number he mentions is contained in the number given in Numbers. Paul is writing a letter and we have seen approximations before, conversational illustrations referring or alluding to the Old Testament writings. He does not have to be reading from the Scriptures when he writes this from memory as part of his argument. However, some commentators get around this by saying that 1Corinthians 10:8 is referring to a different event. That is fine as long as you don’t need a long, convoluted argument juggling numbers from different passages to get where you want to be.

Numbers 25:16 ¶  And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 17  Vex the Midianites, and smite them: 18  For they vex you with their wiles, wherewith they have beguiled you in the matter of Peor, and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of a prince of Midian, their sister, which was slain in the day of the plague for Peor’s sake.

 

To underscore that there was something religious in Zimri and Cozbi’s sexual dalliance notice what is written. This incident relates to the worship of the local god or lord of Peor which clearly is a reflection and confirmation of the sexual nature of Canaanite religion and the dangers, the very spiritual dangers that the Israelites faced.”

Not only sexual deviance in the pursuit of religion was caused by this idolatry but many other character traits of humanity resulted.

Jeremiah 17:9  The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

Jeremiah 10:23  O LORD, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.

            Now, back to Romans, chapter 1.

28  And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29  Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30  Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31  Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32  Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

We don’t usually think of man’s specific flaws as being delusions sent by God, permitted by God, because of our wicked, rebellious hearts. But, not only all sorts of sexual sins but defects of character are part of the delusions God permitted us to have. What we get is the desires of our hearts to prove our sinfulness. Think of these things in their religious context in regard to God and to God’s people.

Unrighteousness is a general term for all wickedness from which the Christian is promised deliverance on condition although you are still capable of those things.

1John 1:9  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Fornication is associated with adultery and the sexual sins with which it is associated.

Galatians 5:19  Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,

And it is God’s will that we Christians abstain from all such sexual immorality, obsessions, and perversions.

Wickedness is a word linked with evil in Genesis 6:5, sin in 39:9, sexual immorality in Leviticus 18:17, and pagan sexual religious practices in Jeremiah 3:2. It is a word steeped in the rebellion of mankind after the Flood. It is used to refer to the nations surrounding Israel. See Deuteronomy 9:4 and Ezekiel 5:6.

1Corinthians 5:8  Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

 

Ephesians 6:12  For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

 

1John 5:19  And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.

 

Covetousness, desiring something that is not yours particularly in relation to sexual matters and even to God, is fornication and is a form of idolatry.

Ephesians 5:3  But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints;

 

Colossians 3:5  Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:

 

On a personal level;

 

Exodus 20:17  Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.

 

Romans 13:9  For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

 

This is regarded as a type of theft.

 

1Thessalonians 4:3  For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication:4  That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour;5  Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God:6  That no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified.

 

Israel craved the things of the nations around them and this covetousness was regarded as not only idolatry but a spiritual fornication.

Jeremiah 3:20  Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith the LORD.

 

You can see more of that comparison by reading Hosea and Ezekiel.

 

Maliciousness is at the very heart of evil. Malice is what we get the word maliciousness from. Peter warned Christians, as did Paul.

1Peter 2:1  Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings,…16  As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God.

 

Ephesians 4:31  Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:

 

Colossians 3:8  But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.

 

Titus 3:3  For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.

 

Envy, which is also a form of jealousy, is a very common and desperately wicked character trait.

Proverbs 27:4  Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?

 

We hate and despise someone for their position or good fortune, the blessings God has bestowed on them, their place in God’s plan. It is one reason the first century Jews wanted Christ killed.

Matthew 27:18  For he knew that for envy they had delivered him.

 

Mark 15:10  For he knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy.

 

We know what a heart filled with murder is. We know the commandment from God and how Jesus’ defined it.

Exodus 20:13  Thou shalt not kill.

 

Matthew 19:18  He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness,

 

We can see by cross-referencing that thou shalt not kill was not a reference to self-defense or defending one’s home or land from attack.  

Murder requires malignant hate, a thirst and lust to extinguish the life of another who has done nothing to merit such contempt. The murderer kills because of the wickedness of his heart, a wickedness that God has permitted to reveal the depths of that person’s depravity. Christ Himself was murdered, being innocent.

Debate comes from a Greek word meaning strife and contention and it is defined as such in Isaiah.

Isaiah 58:4a  Behold, ye fast for strife and debate…

 

At the time of the King James translation it was linked to contention and controversy, to disputing. We see these endless, pointless arguments in politics that underscore this evil.

Debate goes hand-in-hand with deceit, linked with vanity, wickedness, cursing, mischief, fraud, guile, violence, and falsehood in several verses. Just some examples;

Job 27:4  My lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit.

 

Psalm 10:7  His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and fraud: under his tongue is mischief and vanity.

 

Psalm 119:118  Thou hast trodden down all them that err from thy statutes: for their deceit is falsehood.

 

Malignity is very similar to maliciousness but used only here reflects more of an evil disposition of the heart, an extremely sinful attitude, and a very bad character.

Whisperers secretly backstab, sew strife, and spread rumors to deliberately impugn another’s reputation or cause discord. They are tellers of false tales as the men who spoke lies about Christ at the show trials He suffered.

Proverbs16:28  A froward man soweth strife: and a whisperer separateth chief friends.

 

Backbiters are evil, malicious speakers, persons who defame others. We see them all the time in politics, even church politics, where a weak-minded but dominating individual tries to underhandedly tear down other people. In Early Modern English they were also known as slanderers.

Haters of God would neither obey His commandments, submit themselves to Him, or receive Christ, and their hatred of Christ extends to the Father because Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.

Romans 8:7  Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.

 

Psalm 81:15  The haters of the LORD should have submitted themselves unto him: but their time should have endured for ever.

 

John 7:7  The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil.

 

John 15:23  He that hateth me hateth my Father also.

 

Exodus 20:5  Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

 

Hate in the Bible reveals contempt, to despise someone, to hold them in low regard. One example is;

Matthew 6:24  No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

 

Despiteful hearts and mouths are filled with contempt and bitterness, tearing down, not building up.

Ezekiel 25:15  Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because the Philistines have dealt by revenge, and have taken vengeance with a despiteful heart, to destroy it for the old hatred;

 

Ezekiel 36:5  Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Surely in the fire of my jealousy have I spoken against the residue of the heathen, and against all Idumea, which have appointed my land into their possession with the joy of all their heart, with despiteful minds, to cast it out for a prey.

 

The proud stand against God and His standards for humanity.

 

Psalm 12:3  The LORD shall cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things: 4  Who have said, With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us?

 

Psalm 119:21  Thou hast rebuked the proud that are cursed, which do err from thy commandments.

 

James and Peter both noted that God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. Humanism and its child, atheism, exalting a wicked mankind, are examples of pride that contends against God.

Boasters in this context are not those who boast of God.

 

Psalm 34:1 ¶  «A Psalm of David, when he changed his behaviour before Abimelech; who drove him away, and he departed.» I will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth. 2  My soul shall make her boast in the LORD: the humble shall hear thereof, and be glad. 3  O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together.

 

Boasters in this context in Romans are those that boast of their lusts, their riches, themselves, and their false gods.

Psalm 10:3  For the wicked boasteth of his heart’s desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom the LORD abhorreth.

 

Psalm 49:6  They that trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches;

 

Psalm 94:4  How long shall they utter and speak hard things? and all the workers of iniquity boast themselves?

 

Psalm 97:7  Confounded be all they that serve graven images, that boast themselves of idols: worship him, all ye gods.

 

Inventors of evil things cannot be defined properly by us without the context of evil as an act of malice or hatred. We see that an animal intent on doing violence is called an evil beast in Genesis 37. We see that trouble and suffering in a day is evil from Matthew 6:34. Wicked people are always inciting strife and controversy contriving or inventing evil situations, with malice and hatred toward God as their ultimate, if even unconscious, purpose.

Honoring one’s parents is a fundamental of the Laws of God. Being disobedient to parents is a rejection of God’s moral law and a sign of fallen mankind. Under the Law given to Moses this attitude merited death.

Deuteronomy 21:18 ¶  If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: 19  Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; 20  And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. 21  And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

 

The Law given to Moses said;

 

Exodus 20:12  Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

 

Deuteronomy 5:16  Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

 

And Paul said to Christians;

 

Ephesians 6:1 ¶  Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. 2  Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) 3  That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.

 

Those who are without understanding have not submitted themselves to God’s word as the Holy Spirit gives those who do understanding. Jeremiah defined those without understanding.

Jeremiah 5:20 ¶  Declare this in the house of Jacob, and publish it in Judah, saying, 21  Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see  not; which have ears, and hear not: 22  Fear ye not me? saith the LORD: will ye not tremble at my presence, which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it: and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they roar, yet can they not pass over it? 23  But this people hath a revolting and a rebellious heart; they are revolted and gone. 24  Neither say they in their heart, Let us now fear the LORD our God, that giveth  rain, both the former and the latter, in his season: he reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest.

 

    25 ¶  Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins have withholden good things from you. 26  For among my people are found wicked men: they lay wait, as he that setteth snares; they set a trap, they catch men. 27  As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit: therefore they are become great, and waxen rich. 28  They are waxen fat, they shine: yea, they overpass the deeds of the wicked: they judge not the cause, the cause of the fatherless, yet they prosper; and the right of the needy do they not judge. 29  Shall I not visit for these things? saith the LORD: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this? 30  A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land; 31  The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?

 

Covenantbreakers, mentioned as such only here, cannot be trusted to keep an agreement, a contract, or a truce. They are faithless persons. The trucebreakers of 2Timothy 3:3 who cannot be trusted to keep an agreement either and the implacable coming up who cannot be enticed to enter into any agreement or compromise are similar.

Those without natural affection, as Strong notes, are unsociable, unloving, and inhuman. They have no regard for the members of their own family, as they should, as typically is expected of a parent or child. They are cold to those natural affections.

The implacable mind or spirit is unwilling and, as a result, incapable of mercy or justice by God’s standard or of having peace with God. He cannot be persuaded into a covenant with God. His case seems hopeless.

The unmerciful seems easy to understand. Jesus had noted one of the characteristics of those who would see and inherit the Kingdom of Heaven and God.

Matthew 5:7  Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

 

And James made the following very clear, that mercy is superior to judgment;

 

James 2:13  For he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment.

 

Mercy is first defined in Genesis 19 in regard to sparing a person’s life.

 

Genesis 19:19  Behold now, thy servant hath found grace in thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou hast shewed unto me in saving my life; and I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me, and I die:

 

            The unmerciful will show no mercy although God is willing to grant him or her unlimited mercy.

 And although it is in God’s nature to be merciful and His mercy is long-lasting as per dozens of verses 

in the Psalms, the people whose lives are characterized by these character flaws listed here in Romans, 

chapter one, merit death. You see, they not only do these things but have pleasure in others who do 

them as well. There is no shame in their hearts or conscience holding them back and they are at one 

with others as wicked as themselves. Next, Paul turns this condemnation of mankind around on the 

reader himself.



[1] Lee Smolin, The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, and Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006), 75.

 

[2] Chandra Wickramasinghe & Robert Bauval, Cosmic Womb: The Seeding of Planet Earth (Rochester, Vermont:Bear & Co., 2017), Kindle ed., chap. 1

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