In the sermon 'They Became Fools,' Pastor Steve Hopkins explores Romans 1:22-25, emphasizing two key revelations: the righteousness of God and the wrath of God. The sermon outlines how the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel and imputed to believers through faith in Jesus Christ, providing them with a right standing before God. Conversely, the wrath of God is revealed against those who suppress the truth of God, which is evident through nature, leaving them without excuse. Pastor Hopkins highlights the universal knowledge of God, evident through creation, and discusses the concept of 'judicial abandonment,' where God gives individuals over to their sinful desires as a form of judgment. The sermon stresses the moral, not intellectual, nature of unbelief and underscores the necessity of faith in Christ for salvation. The just live by faith, and those in Christ are free from the wrath of God, as Jesus has already borne it on the cross.

Welcome back to Burnet Bible Church. Join us this week as Pastor Hopkins continues his sermon series through the Book of Romans. Well, good morning again. Let's turn on our Bibles, if you would, with me to the Book of Romans. We'll be picking up with chapter 1 and verse 22, working our way through 25 with a short review to begin with.

So if you would stand with me, begin with verse 22 and going through verse 25. In going through verse 25. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts To dishonor their own bodies between themselves Who changed the truth of God into a lie and Worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator who is blessed forever amen let's pray father once again gracious Lord we ask you to Send the Holy Spirit to open our understanding Even as we open your word Your holy word you might open up our understanding to receive the truth of that word For we do ask it in the name of your son our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Let's be seated. So we've been looking at two things over the past few weeks that the Apostle Paul has been teaching, that he's been communicating to the beloved of God in Rome, to the Christians who are living in Rome, and he's been telling them two things that have been revealed. The righteousness of God and the wrath of God. The righteousness of God and the wrath of God. In the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed.

This is what he's been teaching us. In the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed. Not a righteousness that is of men, for man has no righteousness and is unable to attain that perfect righteousness which is required by God to enter into his presence, but in the gospel is revealed a righteousness God Himself has provided a righteousness that is alone acceptable to God the perfect righteousness of his son Jesus Christ The righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel and it is a righteousness that is imputed. You remember we talked about this. It is imputed or declared to the account of ungodly sinners like you and like me.

And it is imputed by faith. The moment that an ungodly sinner puts his faith, his trust in the person and the work of God's Son, the righteousness of God's Son is imputed to Him or declared to His account. And in the sight of God, He is righteous before God. The just in God's sight live by faith. The just shall live by faith, faith in Jesus.

Those who are justified in the sight of God live by faith in God's Son. Only those who trust in the person and work of Jesus Christ alone for their acceptance with God are declared just in the sight of God. They alone have a right standing, a righteous standing, a secure standing before God. And God provided it. God provided it through the obedience and death of his son, and it proves of none other.

This is the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel of God. And Paul has been telling this to the beloved of God at Rome. But there's another revelation that is revealed that we've looked at. The wrath of God is also revealed, something that American churches don't talk about much anymore and have not for decades and decades. But the Apostle Paul speaks of it.

He says the wrath of God is also revealed, and that apart from the revelation of Scripture. So there is a revelation that is of God, and it is of His wrath, that is revealed to men apart from the Scriptures. You don't have to have the Scriptures to understand this. Even those who have never been exposed to the gospel of God Stand guilty before God. Those who have never even heard the words of scripture, never even heard the name of Jesus Christ, stand guilty before God and without excuse before Him and thus under divine wrath.

Why? We've looked at it for a couple of weeks because Paul says all men know God. Everybody knows God. Everyone who comes into the world knows God. Not savingly, not relationally, but cognitively.

All men know God, because God has manifested Himself clearly to every person who comes into the world through nature, through the created order. In the creation order, all about them, as I said last week, the created order all about them, all around them, all under them, above them, and yes even in them. They know God, they know God. All men know that there is an eternal, almighty, all-wise creator of all things, because every man has a witness of the things that God has made. Everyone sees that witness.

Everyone is exposed to that revelation in nature. As I said in our last session, God has not concealed Himself, but revealed Himself. God has not concealed himself, but he has revealed himself, and not in an obscure way, not in a hidden way, but visibly, our text says, and clearly, through the created order, through the things that He made, so that men are without excuse." We talked about the question that's always thrown up there, well, what about the person that's off in the tribe in Africa or Peru or the jungles and they never heard the gospel? Are they going to heaven? I was listening to a sermon by R.C.

Sproul, he was going through that, and he said, yeah, they go straight to heaven. Yeah, they don't need Jesus. He was being facetious. They don't need Jesus, they don't need the gospel, they go straight to heaven. Yeah.

Of course, as I've said in the last couple of weeks, if that were so, the greatest evangelistic effort that you could possibly make, that the Church of Jesus Christ could possibly make, would be to take the gospel of Jesus Christ into no part of the world and deliver the gospel to no one in all the world because if you can keep them from hearing the gospel, they'll be innocent and therefore they'll just go straight to heaven when they die. Wrong. The apostle Paul says, They're without excuse. You know God. The creation screams at you 24 hours a day, God, God, God, but you suppress that in your wickedness and your unrighteousness.

The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against those who suppress the truth they know about the God they know. Because the truth they know about God, that God clearly manifested to them through nature, they willfully suppress. And it provokes God's wrath. It provokes God's wrath. It provokes His righteous anger.

It provokes His just fury. He's just in being furious with all men who suppress the truth they know about the God they know who has visibly and clearly revealed Himself to them through creation. They suppress the knowledge, the truth they know about Him in their unrighteousness, in their wickedness, even His eternal power and Godhead. Yes, you know something can't come from Nothing. Men are able to reason that.

This all didn't just poof come into existence by itself, but men suppress the knowledge that they have of Him. The evolution suppresses the knowledge that He has of God in creation. He has to keep saying, there is no God, there is no God, there is no God. Why? Because He knows there's a God.

I Don't have to say there is no wall. There is no wall. There is no wall If there's no wall there, right even his eternal power and Godhead even his attributes He's eternal. He's always been he's all wise. He couldn't have made what he made.

He's all powerful, he couldn't have made and sustained what he's sustaining. Everybody knows this God. He has shown Himself, manifested Himself clearly and visibly, even His eternal power and Godhead by the things that He's made. Apart from the revelation of Scripture, which all men are not exposed to, all men are under the just sentence of divine wrath. Why?

Because they know God through the created order of everything around them, through all that God has made, yet they refuse to honor Him as God or even give him thanks. When you're witnessing, bring in Romans 1. When you're out there in the world and you're on the job or wherever you are and you've got an opportunity to bring the gospel to somebody, give them Romans 1. Help them to understand that they are culpable, that they stand under the just sentence of God's wrath. Help them to understand that everybody who comes into the world is under that just sentence of God's wrath.

Help them to know the wrath of God. Help them to understand that the wrath of God is abiding upon them and that there is a righteousness that God has provided in His Son, Jesus Christ, which alone is acceptable to God. A righteousness that comes by faith, not by any of their works, not by any of the things that they could achieve, but by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that righteousness is imputed to them the moment they believe. Help them to understand and pray to God that He will open up their hearts so they can understand.

So they can understand. But men, all men are not exposed to the revelation of scripture, but they're all exposed to the created order and everything that God has made around them, yet they refuse to honor God as God. They refuse to worship Him as God or even give Him thanks. And it's proof positive that mankind's issue is not intellectual but moral. It is a moral issue.

It is not an intellectual issue. It's not as the agnostic tries to claim, well, if I just had more evidence, if God had just given me more evidence, then I would believe he's doubly in trouble on the day of judgment. At least the atheist is just saying, you know, I don't believe in God, I've seen it all, you know, whatever, I don't believe in God. The agnostic, on the other hand, is blaming God. He's blaming God.

He says, it's your fault. You didn't show me enough evidence. If you'd have shown me enough evidence, if you'd have clearly revealed yourself to me, then I would have believed. Paul is saying, no, you're without excuse. You are without excuse.

It is a moral issue, not a lack of evidence or an intellectual issue, and a clear manifestation of the utterly depraved and corrupt nature of man. That though they know God, they refuse to even acknowledge Him as God, or to reverence Him as God, or to honor Him as God, or even to look up to heaven and say, Thank you. They're not grateful. And so the progress of sin continues. Being willingly and willfully hardened against God and desiring to shut him out of their conscience, Just get him out of their thoughts by suppressing the knowledge that he has given him, the truth about him that he's clearly manifested to them.

Men become vain in their imaginations. Something happens in their thinking. The scripture says they become futile in their thinking. They become vain in their imaginations. And sense is now turned to nonsense.

What was once sense is now turned to nonsense. What was once sense is now turned to nonsense. That's where they all go. They go from reason and just things that a five-year-old can understand and explain to you. Something can't come from nothing.

Let me bring my five-year-old up here. Can you just tell this professor of biology at the university, can you just please tell them that something can't come from nothing. Can you give me one instance of anything in the world, an example of something that has come from nothing? They become futile in their thinking. A five-year-old has more sense than they have.

They go from sense to nonsense, and that's the history of the world. That is the history of the world. John Chapter 1 and verse 9 speaks of God lighting every man that comes into the world. He said he lights every man that comes into the world. Do you know that?

It's not talking about lighting them with the knowledge of salvation through Christ. It's not talking about lighting them with the knowledge and understanding of the gospel. What light is it talking about? God lights every man that comes into the world. That's a natural revelation.

Every man that comes into the world has some sense and some reasoning abilities in all. There is a type of light that God creates man with, And he lights every man that comes into the world with that light of reason, but here what the Apostle is describing is lights that have gone out The switch has been flipped and the lights are out. And you pick up with verse 22 and we see darkness, darkness growing, growing deeper and deeper. Not only now are they suppressing the knowledge that they have of God and their wickedness and their unrighteousness, not only now have they become vain in their imaginations and futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts darken, now they stand up and profess themselves to be wise. The lights have gone out.

In their self-deception, they actually think themselves to be wise. You ever talk to, I'm picking on the evolutionists, you know, today you ever talk to evolutionists? They think they're really wise and they think you're really dumb. They think the God, you know, what the scripture says about God, they think, oh, they think it's all just silly. They become futile in their thinking.

Their foolish hearts have become darkened. A five-year-old can't reason with them anymore about things that are factual and real. They think themselves to be wise and they not only think themselves to be wise, look at the text, they profess themselves to be wise. In other words, they tell other people that they're wise. No, I'm wise.

I'm wise. You know, they really present themselves as being so knowledgeable. I'm a scientist. What does the word science mean? It Means knowledge.

You reject the knowledge of God, your thinking becomes futile and vain. And you run into all kinds of crazy things. They profess that they're wise. They tell everyone else that They're wise. How many professors at the local university profess themselves to be wise?

And yet God calls them fools. And you know, those whom God calls fools are fools and they are not wise. They became fools, Paul writes, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. And again, that's the history of the unbelieving world. And in every age, it's a different form of futile thinking, but it's always the same thing.

That's the history of the unbelieving world. All those whom God calls fools, running in one pack together, think about it, All running in one pack together, away from God. The university professor who teaches evolution, who teaches the myth of evolution, running along in the same pack with the pagan tribesmen living in the deepest, darkest jungle of the uncivilized world, running in the same pack together. Professors and half-naked heathens running together in the same pack together and in the same direction. What direction?

The direction of exchanging the glory of God for creature worship. Remember God calls these men fools. We're not supposed to, right? Don't say, Rock, are thou fooled, any man, whatever, unless you, but God calls them fools. God calls them fools.

Says you're a fool. You're fools. And on the day of judgment, they're going to know they're fools when their knees are knocking together. And the God who created the heavens and the earth and revealed himself so visibly and clearly to them requires an account of their life. They exchange the glory of God for creature worship.

They exchange—they don't become atheists. Paul's already revealed to us there's no such thing as an atheist. No, they just trade gods. They trade incorruptible, imperishable God who made all things for multiple gods. It's always the way it is, right?

The one true and living God has clearly revealed himself to them in nature for nature itself, for created things, for polytheism, for multiple gods. The tribesman in Africa or Peru makes images of beasts and creeping things and worships them, makes totem poles and the university professor venerates trees. Preaches environmentalism, which is nothing less than earth worship, right? God tells us how we're supposed to care for the earth and be good stewards of the earth. Environmentalists take that and they worship the earth.

They take everything goes to an extreme. You either worship the one true and living God or you worship something He's created. Psalm 24, 1 says, the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the earth and they that dwell therein. Isaiah 6, 3 says, the whole earth is full of his glory. Just heard that in Handel's Messiah.

It's full of his glory. Nature reveals to man the glory and majesty of the uncorruptible God, but nature is not God. And look where all this starts. Look where it all began. We go back.

It all started with a refusal to acknowledge things they knew were true about God. What do you think about people who refuse to acknowledge things they know are true? That's where this begins. This futile thinking, this professing to be wise when you're a fool, begins with a refusal to acknowledge things men knew were true about God. It all began with the holding down or suppression of the truth they knew about, the God they knew.

And it ends with them exchanging the truth they know about the God they know and refusing to acknowledge for lies. That's the exchange. Truth for lies. The one true and living God for polytheism, for creature worship. They exchange the truth for lies.

They swap The truth for fiction. They swap the truth for fiction. And they end up worshiping and serving created things rather than the creator who is blessed forever. And God gives them up. Look at that.

Look at the first time he says this. He says it three times. God gave them up. Wherefore God also gave them up. Verse 24.

God gave them up. God gives them up. There is no greater punishment for sin on earth than for a man to be handed over to his sins. No greater punishment that a man can receive on earth than to be handed over to what he wants. His depravity to the corruption of his nature.

No greater punishment than to have every divine restraint removed so that a man can do whatever he desires to do. There's no greater punishment. There's nothing worse that can happen to you than to be given what you want, what your flesh wants, to have all divine restraint removed so you can do whatever you want to do, than to be abandoned by God to one's lusts. No greater punishment than to be abandoned by God to one's lusts. Again verse 24 tells us God also gave them up.

They gave up, they gave up The truth they knew about the God they knew, and God gives them up. It is an act of God. It's an act of God. Three times again Paul uses this phrase, God gave them up. God gave them up.

God gave them over. Theologians refer to this act of God as judicial abandonment, to be abandoned by God. Notice the word judicial. Why do they use the word judicial? Because yes, it is an act of God.

Yes, God is giving them up. Yes, he is abandoning them, but it is a judicial, an act of God's justice. It is an act of God's punishment whereby he judicially hardens a hard heart that that person has hardened against him. He punishes sin by letting men go further on in their sin and removing all of the restraint. It is an act of the judge of all the universe.

John Gill writes back in the 1700s, God leaves them, quote, to the pollution of their nature by withdrawing his providential restraints from them and by giving them up to judicial hardness. That's what you want. That's what I'm going to give you. And that's what he does. They are given up.

The leash is cut loose. You ever have a dog just wants to get away Tries to break his chain tries to chew away at his leash. The leash is cut And now you can run free no restraint and it never turns out. Well, the leash is cut and look where they run Look where they run. It's always the same.

Look where they run. To dishonor their bodies between themselves. Which we'll get into more fully next week, but it's always the same. The leash gets cut, God gives them up, they gave up their knowledge of God, they gave up the truth they knew about God, They didn't want God in their thinking, and God gives them up. And the leash is cut, and they run in the way of sexual immorality to dishonor their bodies between themselves.

You want to go? Go. Remember when Moses was on the mount receiving the Ten Commandments from God? What were the people doing down below? Making a golden calf Okay exchanging God for gods And engaging in sexual immorality Sat down to eat they rose up to play and we all know it was talking about there.

Because God deals with it. People were down below making a golden calf and engaging in sexual immorality, the two always hold hands together. Idolatry, sexual immorality, they always walk hand in hand. Paul says God gave them up To uncleanness that sexual impurity To the lusts of their own hearts to follow the wicked passions of their own hearts Cut loose from any restraint verse 24 to vile affections Verse 26 to a reprobate mind Verse 28, which we'll get to next week. Can you imagine anything worse than being given up by God to go your own way without any divine restraint.

I can't. Being left to the pollution of your nature And given over to judicial hardness, I can't. As we close, Paul has been talking about two revelations that every person on earth needs to consider. The revelation of the righteousness of God and the revelation of the wrath of God revealed from under heaven against men who suppress the truth they know about God. All men come into the world exposed to the wrath of God.

Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 3 says, we are by nature children of wrath. Did you know that? We are by nature children of wrath. We are born with a corrupted nature that is under the sentence of divine judgment and under God's wrath the day we're born. By nature, we are children of wrath.

That's our nature. We're corrupt to the core when we're born. We sin because we're sinners because we are corrupted. We're not sinners because we sin. Again, as Sproul has so often said, but we sin because we're sinners because we have a corrupted nature.

And we are by nature children of wrath. God as a just judge in his wrath must come down upon the heads of those who are in sin, who live in sin, who walk in sin, who commit sin. In 1 Thessalonians chapter 1 verse 10 tells us there is a wrath that is to come, and there's only one escape from the wrath to come. Again, pastors and preachers in modern America, we don't talk about the wrath of God. People want to hear about the love of God.

The God who is all love and a God who does not hate sin and judge sin and is angry against sin is not the God of scripture. He's not a God who can save you. There is a wrath that is to come. John 3.36 speaks of those upon whom the wrath of God abideth. You don't believe on my son?

The wrath of God abides on you. That's upon whom the wrath of God continues to be poured out and will be poured out eternally. John says that the eternal lot of the unbeliever, he shall not see life, that is eternal life, but the wrath of God abiding on him. He won't experience life eternal, but he will experience the wrath of God abiding upon him. The good news is that in that same passage John says, He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.

He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life. That's what Paul was saying back in verse 17 of Romans 1, when he said, the just shall live by faith. The just shall live by faith. The just shall live eternally by faith. The justified in God's sight have life eternal through faith in God's Son, and the wrath of God is not abiding upon them.

If you're in Christ today, if you're in union with Him by faith in His person, in His work alone, trusting In the person and the work of Jesus Christ alone the wrath of God is not abiding upon you and will not abide upon you For all eternity why because the wrath of God that was due you was already poured out upon his own son on the cross He already endured it There's no double jeopardy in God's kingdom. Christ paid for the sins of His people. He suffered, He bled, He died. He suffered, He bled, He died. Without the shedding of blood there was no remission of sin.

But for three hours he hung on that cross and he suffered. The wrath of God was poured out upon him. He was crushed under the weight of the wrath of God and he died fulfilling all of the scriptural requirement for the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, of everyone who believes on His name. He that believeth on the Son has everlasting life. The just shall live by faith.

The justified in God's sight have life eternal through faith in His Son, and the wrath of God is not abiding on them." Which brings us back to the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel. As we go forward in the book of Romans, we're going to see that the righteousness of God, which is Christ's righteousness, It's not speaking there of the moral character of God or even the holiness and separate category that God is in, but it's speaking of the righteousness of Christ, which you've heard me talk about before, which consists of two things. So you know that on the day you put your trust in the person and the work of Jesus Christ, His righteousness, Jesus' righteousness, the righteousness of God is imputed to you. It is declared to your account. Your sin debt is declared to His account, paid for retrospectively at the cross, okay?

When Jesus suffered and died for your sins on the cross, and His righteousness is imputed to you. Well, what is His righteousness? It consists of two things. You've heard me talk about this before. The righteousness of Christ that is imputed to you, both of which you've got to have to stand before God in the day of judgment, are these.

His active obedience and His passive obedience. You've seen me tell how I explain it to our children before. The active obedience of Christ, okay, and keeping His law perfectly, the passive obedience of Christ in dying for our sins. This is what is imputed to or declared to the account of those whose trust is in Jesus Christ alone for their salvation. His righteousness is imputed to you.

You've got to have a perfect righteousness, but you ain't got it, neither do I. But Jesus did, and you have it through Him and are clothed in His righteousness on the day you first believe and trust Him alone for your salvation. Your sin debt is paid for in his passive obedience in dying for your sins on the cross. Your empty account of righteousness is filled as his righteousness is declared to your account and all of His obedience in the sight of God is yours. Every all of His obedience.

All your sin debt is wiped away as far as the east is from the west. Put away from the sight of God from memory as far as the east is from the west. It's all put away. It's all paid for. You're absolved of all sin.

Your faith is in the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone. And you have a righteousness. You have a perfect keeping of the law that is declared to your account. You're looked upon in God's sight as though you had been just as obedient as Jesus had been all the days of his earthly life. How about that?

Who would exchange this God for, and the gospel of Christ for other gods, well, those to whom the Spirit of God has not worked upon and raised from death to life and given eyes to see and ears to hear. By his life, Jesus satisfied the requirement of God's people for a perfect righteousness. In his death, he satisfied God's justice through our sins. Amen. Praise His holy name.

Jesus was treated on the cross like we deserve to be treated for all eternity In the words of John Gill coming up commenting on Isaiah 53 our sins were laid upon him And the judgment of God the wrath of God came upon him for them. The sin debt is exterminated. It is put away completely in the blood of his cross. If Jesus didn't suffer the wrath of God, do you for your sins? The wrath of God that's abiding on you right now will continue to abide on you and reign down upon you for all eternity in a place called hell.

That's the bad news. We heard the good news, that's the bad news. It'll be for all eternity. Why? Because not a single sin that you have committed, not even one of them will you ever be able to atone for by any amount of suffering on your part.

God only accepts the suffering of his son. He only accepts the suffering of his son. The only sacrifice acceptable to God is the sacrifice of his son who never sinned and who suffered and bled and died in the place of sinners. So we're back where we began. In the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed.

Not a righteousness that is of man, for man has none. Not a righteousness that a man can attain because he can't attain a perfect righteousness. But the righteousness that is required by God to enter His presence. In the gospel revealed, a righteousness God Himself has provided, a righteousness alone acceptable to God, the perfect righteousness of His Son, Jesus Christ, and a righteousness that is imputed or declared to the account of ungodly sinners like you and me by faith the moment we put our trust in the person and the work of God's Son. Amen?

Amen? The just in God's sight shall live by faith, Faith in Jesus. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we do thank you for your word.

We thank you for the truth of your word. We thank you for your spirit, God, who takes the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, and wields it, O God, upon our hearts and our minds and changes us thereby. We thank you, God, for that work of your Spirit. We thank you for your Holy Word. God, we ask that you would continue to bring these things back to our memory in the coming days, Lord, between now and the next time we meet together, we pray, Lord, that you would continue to change us, thereby renew our minds, O God, conform us more to the image of Jesus, help us to grow in the grace and knowledge of Him who suffered and died for our sins and is risen from the dead and interceding for us now at your right hand.

For it's in His holy name we pray all these things. Amen.