The devil's false sophistication

Let's go to the word of the Lord in the Epistle to the Romans, Chapter 1, I told you for those who visit us or those who were not here on Sunday, about 2 Sundays ago, from... we talked about what we were going to be making a series of sermons on the epistle, or based on the Epistle to the Romans.

I started, you may remember, with Chapter 8 as just a little meditation. The Lord led me to four sermons based on Chapter 8 and I decided, look why continue in the Epistle to the Romans which has so much profound teaching. Some have said that it is the crown of the epistles and of the theological books of the church. It is a document, a treatise that is tremendously deep and rich in doctrinal teaching, and there is much here that we can take advantage of, so we are moving in that direction.

Let's go to verse 18 of Chapter 1, I'm just going to take some concepts from here as long as the Lord gives me time this morning. Romans 1:18. I want to challenge the audiovisual brothers in the future, hopefully we can put them, when we can, I know it's going to take a while to do that, but maybe we can put the texts here so that some brothers who are still coming there at that point of bringing your Bibles every Sunday you can read the word up here, right?

But, Romans 1:18, says “....for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all impiety and unrighteousness of men who hold back the truth in unrighteousness, because what of God is known is manifest to them.”

In other words, it is clear to them, it is apparent and obvious to them.

“....for God himself revealed it to him, because his invisible things, his eternal power and deity, have been made clearly visible since the creation of the world, being understood by means of the things made. So they have no excuses, because having known God, they did not glorify him as God or give him thanks, but were vain in their reasoning. And his foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the image of corruptible man, birds, four-legged creatures, and reptiles. Therefore God also gave them up to filth in the lusts of their hearts so that they dishonored their own bodies among themselves, since they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, honoring and worshiping creatures before the creator, who He is blessed forever, amen. For this reason God gave them up to shameful passions, since even their women exchanged the natural use for that which is against nature and in the same way also the men leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lasciviousness with each other, committing shameful deeds, men with men and receiving in themselves the retribution of life for their loss.”

And it is necessary for me to read this part to balance what we just read, allow me. I know it's a little heavy and unpleasant reading to some extent, but that's where we are and we're going to go into other areas later, but that's where we are now.

It says, “...and since they did not approve of reckoning with God, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do unbecoming things, being filled with all unrighteousness –look here for a big list of sins that not only include the sin of homosexuality that we have pointed out but a total series, very encompassing of different types of sins-

“.... injustice, fornication, perversity, greed, wickedness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malignity, gossip, detractors, haters of God, insulting, arrogant, haughty, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, - that's kind of strange there in the midst of all those crimes, right? - disobedient to parents, young pay attention, foolish, disloyal, without natural affection, implacable, without mercy..." – these are all the works of the flesh that Paul also recounts in Galatians Chapter 5, in a different way.

“...who, having understood the judgment of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, not only do them but also take pleasure in those who practice them.”

Word of God. Like I say, brethren, it's heavy reading for a Sunday when you just want me to tell you that Christ loves you and a nice lunch awaits you at the end of the service, but we don't come to church just to be cooed and made to feel good. Amen.

We come to apply the sound word of God, sound doctrine, bleach, that strong soap that cleanses us and that upon hearing it produces a catharsis, a cleansing by meditating on these things, we can exorcise and remove from us in a way those tendencies that we all have, and that we all share in one way or another.

But it's the word of the Lord and I think one should stop where the word of God stops and go through the word of the Lord, not run from it or give... make shortcuts or give Turning to other places, as so many Christians and so many pastors sometimes do, in the desire not to scandalize, not to confront, we avoid places that are unpleasant and what we do then is that we rob our congregations of the possibility of being healed by the word of God and be instructed by the word of the Lord.

I believe that the truth of God has to be announced in a spirit of grace, of love, but also of justice and truth, with fear and trembling, looking at oneself, lest one also fall in what one is not proclaiming.

But humility and meekness and the recognition of our own sin, does not exclude announcing the truth of God. We think there are two things, like... oh, if you don't have perfect things then why... No, we preach the word of the Lord and it first passes through us, washes us and then washes the people of God who listen to it, and then wash those who are out there too, who do not know the word of the Lord.

That is my ethos, that is my ethics as a pastor and as a preacher of the word of the Lord, so that you know why we preach about these things. We don't have an agenda about these things, but when the word of the Lord calls us to preach it, as in this case, we preach it and then move on to other things as well, right?

The Apostle Paul in verse 16 and 17, as we saw the last time I preached, just made a very beautiful statement. He says "... I am not ashamed of the Gospel because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes." And then he talks about how in the Gospel the justice of God is revealed by faith and for faith.

That's like the thesis of the whole letter, those two verses. That is the summary of what he wants to make clear. Now, in verse 18 onwards he goes into an elaboration of that statement and everything that follows is going to be, in one way or another, a development of that initial thought that he just stated: the power of the Gospel that reveals the will. of God and the grace of God. The importance of the Gospel because it reveals what God is.

Unlike what the man tries to do, which is what he begins to develop here. Paul's goal in these next verses and Chapters will be to show that every man, every woman, every human being, whether Jewish, Greek, intellectual, ignorant, pagan, or religious, is under God's condemnation. All, because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. That is his goal, as a lawyer he is going to speak before the jury and the judge and he wants to prove that every man, all of us including the one who preaches to them, is in one sense or another under the wrath of God. We are rebellious, we have abandoned our God and everything he preaches falls first to the Jew who believes he is a big deal because he has the commandments, and he has monotheism, and he has the law and everything separates him from worshiping the true God and that's why they feel very proud, very big, but who lives a completely vain and superficial life, and religious and self-justifying.

And he says, first to the Jew and also to the Greek. The Greek, in a sense a symbol of those who are far from God, in a totally secular, rational, pagan culture, far away as the Jew saw all the Gentiles, completely without possible redemption.

And Paul wants to prove that, so he begins by talking about the perversion into which humanity has fallen. And it's interesting how he maps this out and what we have here, brethren, in a sense is like an X-ray of sin. It's like, in a sense, a trajectory, it's a study by a man who is enlightened by God's vision of how sin develops in humanity.

It is a macro cosmic vision, a global vision and a bird's eye view from on high, of how sin ends up manifesting itself in the heart of each man and in its entirety in humanity. Where do they come from...? It is like a revelation of what are the radical origins of sin, what are the fundamental sources from where sin comes from in man and that explain the corruption of humanity.

And it's interesting how Paul puts it here, because he says, "...for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven." This is interesting, brothers, because today one looks, for example, at all the corruption that exists in the 21st century, all the evil, all the perversion so terrible that it seems that it is taking over humanity more and more, and one thinks that it is only man acting in a sense by himself, sovereignly by man, getting into all that impurity and practicing all those sins by himself of his own free will.

But here what Paul is saying is something radical, is that a lot of that perversion and a lot of that corruption in which the humanity of the century in which Paul speaks is entangled, but how interesting that this could be applied absolutely to the 21st century too, two thousand years later. But Paul when he speaks here is thinking of all that he, as a well-travelled Jew, sees in the pagan world. And what he says is that this perversion that can be observed in the world that does not know God in part, in a good part, is because God himself has given man over to it, has allowed man to fall into it, the God's wrath.

Note that in this case the wrath of God is interesting as it manifests itself. It does not manifest itself with fire and brimstone as one day it will manifest itself. It does not manifest itself with the destruction of the wicked and the eternal damnation of humanity, but rather it manifests itself in a cold and systemic way. It manifests itself in an action that God takes to say, because I don't care about you. There you, let's see what you do if I take my hands off you and your social and cultural systems. We are going to see if I leave you, to your own reasoning where you are going to arrive. You don't want me, you are saying that you are capable of governing yourself and determining your own destiny and your own system, that's fine. Do what you want, I turn you over then to the forces that you yourselves are going to unleash, and we will see where you can get with your own reasoning and your own minds. The wrath of God is manifested. You see? It is revealed from heaven.

The Lord has made a juridical decision from his throne and gives a decree and says amen, so be it. You have this attitude, well let's see, I let you go, I leave you to your own devices. "...It is revealed from heaven against all impiety and injustice of men who stop the truth with injustice."

What is it that makes God feel that anger, that indignation rather? I think a better word would be God's indignation. It is the indignation of a sovereign who feels that his royalty and dignity are being offended and underestimated. It is the indignation of a father who sees his children rebelling against him and like the prodigal son saying, give me the inheritance that belongs to me because I want to go somewhere...

And it's interesting, now I say that that is the dynamic precisely that Christ draws in the parable of the prodigal son. The son comes before the father and rebels against the authority of the father. I'm reading a lovely book actually, which is by Henry Nowen about a meditation on Rembrandt's painting of the prodigal son. Beautiful meditation, very interesting. I recommend the book. I don't have the name right now but it's Henry Nowen and it's a meditation on the prodigal son and this Rembrandt portrait, it has a picture of the portrait on there. Maybe the next time I speak I'll remind them.

The fact is that the prodigal son comes before his father and tells him, give me what belongs to me. An act of rebellion is an insult against the father and is a rejection of the protection of the parental home. And he prefers to leave, according to his own destiny. He does not wait for the time when the father dies and then he is released from the father's authority, but he renounces and rejects the father's authority, offends and rebels against his rule and says prematurely, give me my manhood and give me my own government. And the father abandons him, hands him over and says, okay, son, do you want that? No problem, take your money, and split it up. The son leaves, he says, to a distant place, as humanity has gone. Humanity has turned away from God.

You see, brothers, the main struggle of the father in all the centuries and centuries that humanity has on planet earth, is disobedience and rebellion. That is why God hates rebellion. That is why the Bible says that rebellion against God is like witchcraft, it is like the occult. God reveals the rebellious heart. God hates, he hates disobedience, the haughty heart, says the Bible, God looks down on him. God despises him, he says, and he loves the humble heart, but the haughty one looks from afar. Because there is something... the essence of the drama of the fall of man on earth and of all the sin that exists in the cosmos is due to rebellion.

The first major rebellion was the rebellion of Luzbel, that angel that God created who rebelled against his creator and arrogated an independence that did not belong to him and God too... what did he do with the angels who rebelled against him? He says he delivered them to prisons of darkness. He took away his grace and from the moment that God removed his gaze and his eyes from those beautiful angels, they became what every man becomes if the grace of God is not abounding in him: a pervert, a corruption, a caricature of The humanity.

The man who gets into sin, who distances himself from the coverage, from the protection of God, dries up like a bush that has been uprooted from the earth, because what keeps us as privileged human beings is the image of God, imago dei, the image of God in you and me, the divine imprint on us.

If God did not withhold that from us, brothers, we would be demons. But because God in his mercy does not withdraw his grace from us, even when we rebel against him, we are still recognizable as human beings. But, that is why it is so important to be attached to the grace of God.

As the psalmist David says, like a child weaned from its mother. Brothers, we are in a time when we have to walk like the little boys in the malls, who are afraid that their mother is going to lose them, that they hold on to the mother's skirt, and the mother has to be pushing him because she doesn't let walk We have to be stuck like this, because it is only that grace of God transmitted to us at this time that can keep us from the evil that exists in humanity. Because when we walk away we are lost.

That young man in the parable left in that faraway place and what happened. His money ran out quickly, he lost all his dignity, all his resources, he lived wasted and what happened? In the end he was eating from the carob beans that the pigs ate. What was that? Total depravity, is reduced to an animal state.

That is the spiritual trajectory of every being that separates from the authority of the Father. Every act of rebellion ends in total perversion, the loss of the image of God, the growing muddying of the human being. Only when God through his magical pipeline is continuously administering his grace and the blessings of his word to us can we remain clean and be made in the image of Christ Jesus.

But that young man, when he moves away from his father's guardianship, falls into the worst, being like an animal. And what is the largest illustration of the animal? The pig. The pig that enjoys itself in the mud. The pig is the image of everything dirty, everything vile, right? And there it ends until he comes to and returns to the authority of the father. And then what happens? That his beauty is restored to him, his dignity is restored to him, the ring of authority of the house, the clothes, and his position as a son, he returns again and that is the trajectory. Every man, every woman who persists in living according to their own will ends up in the opposite: wanting to be tall, they become small; wanting to be noble, he makes himself low; wanting to be worthy he becomes totally perverse. But when he humbles himself then he is raised up again.

Never try to live your life according to your own designs. The more you lower yourself before the Heavenly Father, the more God will lift you up. The more you humble yourself before the Lord, the more blessed you will be. The more obedient you are, the more worthy you will be. The more you seek the approval and the will of the Father, the more glory will come into your life.

But here, Paul tells us something else, very different, he says that God as well as men rebel against him, look, he says, "...the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all impiety and injustice...." The word in the original Greek is 'asebia' and 'adiquiai'. They are two words that indicate lack of something. That prefix 'a' that is also used in Spanish, means devoid of. For example, asebia, the Greek word for piety is 'eusebia'. Simon, for example, in the Bible at the beginning of the Gospel was a Eusebian man. In fact, if someone is called Eusebio here, it means pious, that's free there, I'm not going to charge them anything for that.

Asebia, the wrath of God is revealed against two things, you see? Why is God angry? What is the origin of this perversion of man? Before God's wrath is revealed against man, man's rebellion comes, God's rejection comes. That word asebia, which in English translates to 'godlessness' means, is more of an attitude. Asebia refers to an attitude of rejection of God, arrogance against God, rebellion, resistance against God. It is an attitude of self-absorption and of turning against God, it is something internal to the mind and heart.

And it is so, brothers, what happens, the first thing that man does is that in his heart he rebels against God, in his heart he says I do not want God, I am not interested, I prefer my own ways , I prefer my own definitions, I prefer things that give me pleasure and that seem to me much more noble and much higher, more sophisticated, more complex than what that simple Gospel offers me, that healthy word. The man always goes after the garlic and the onions and the spiciness of Egypt. He doesn't want God's manna.

I believe that when God gave manna to man in the desert He was saying something. It's, look, when I give food, I don't add Tabasco, I don't add salt, I don't add garlic. My food is simple, healthy, but it gives life, it is bread from heaven. That is why the pleasures of holiness are not as attractive as the pleasures of corruption. And that is why men fall in love and become addicted to the pleasures of corruption, because it must be admitted that they are tastier and spicier than the pleasures of holiness.

God's healthy sexuality is not as attractive and pleasurable sexuality as the healthy and dignified sexuality of a married life. You understand? Married life has its beauty, but it does not have that flavor that what it does is that it gives you stomach ache after you enjoy it. That hangover that remains after the night of drunkenness and that burns your brain and your strength, is not pleasure....

When God gives you pleasure it is a soft pleasure, dignified beautiful that leaves a good taste in your mouth, builds you up, lifts you up, strengthens you, but what the devil gives is something that burns you, destroys you, and eats you up inside and sucks up the blessing that he apparently gives you dio, remember that always. You take a dose of drugs and you sit there in the clouds, and you see angels and you see aliens and you see everything, but when it goes down, what remains is an addiction that brings you more and more into the image of the devil, and it goes sucking life and destroys your marriage, destroys your mind, destroys your emotions, destroys your spirit, destroys your human relationships, takes away the vitality of man or woman, takes away the image of God. The devil tells you, look, I'm going to give you an experience that you're going to fly through the stratosphere, but when you fall you hit the ground, you know? And what's left is a fried egg on the hot surface you fell on.

And we have to be smart, brothers. We have to decide, do I want the pleasures of Egypt or the soft but beneficial and blessed pleasures of God's people, the manna of God? What I want? The pots of Egypt or the manna of God. We have to decide that at some point each one of us has to decide, the manna of God or the pots of Egypt. That is what God is saying to his people at this time.

The wrath of God is manifested because men prefer to rebel against God, they prefer the pleasures and experiences that their own mind provides. I've stayed, I can't get out of this point.

Brothers, what happened to Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden? What is the drama that unfolds there? God tells them, look, I am going to give you everything you want in this garden, and that is an image that God tells us, look, son, daughter, I have for you everything you want in the world. Enjoy all things, but respect my limits that I put on you. And God told them, there is a tree there, there is an essence, there is a substance, there is an experience that I do not want you to have yet, because you are not ready to have it, it is the lucidity that this substance will give you, that if you You try it, it will open you up, it will give you a different perception of who you are and of reality.

Notice that God wasn't telling you that that was a lie, he was simply saying, that's not for you right now. And there is something, brothers, that the intellectual man, the rational man adores in the 20th century, in the 21st century, I believe that since the Renaissance this has become a subject of all the documents that one reads in literature, in art, philosophy, in science. There is something when man moves away from God, you see, there is a perception of the world and of reality that only occurs when one loses innocence and moves away from God's grace. So, when you let go of your own reasoning and say no to God, there is a very great intellectual capacity that comes into your life. There is a very powerful analytical, critical capacity that modern man has, rebellious against God, you cannot take that back from him, it is true. When you study in those great universities, when you read the treatises of people generally who have completely distanced themselves from God, there is a type of reasoning that I don't see very much in the people of God, even in intellectuals, even in such a person. big as a Francis Shafer, for example, that we evangelicals adore. When you read his writings they don't have the complexity or sophistication of many secular writers who rebel against God. He is a very highly developed man, but he does not have the sophistication that one sees in the great universities, the great centers of knowledge of humanity. Because it is that rebellion against God gives man a certain perception. When you stop using God as the standard of reference about all your conclusions and your analyses, it allows you to see reality in a very different way and gives man's appetite for pride a great gratification.

The man, then, falls in love with the complexity of his reasoning and is getting more and more entangled in it every day. When the man in the Garden of Eden ate from that tree of good and evil, of the knowledge of good and evil, of the knowledge of good and evil, he was illegitimately endowed with lucidity and understanding, a critical capacity that he couldn't drive. And then, he could no longer see God in the same way that the child sees his father, that everything his father says to him, the child says, yes and love. And if his dad tells him that he can lift a tank with one hand, the kid says, wow! Daddy, how strong you are. The child does not question the parent, the child sees through the parent's eyes. And that gives the child great protection, but it also gives him great simplicity. The child is not very complex in his way of seeing things.

And God wanted that innocence in man. God wants, brothers, the wisdom of God is a simple wisdom, it is a wisdom that does not destroy. It is not a very sophisticated wisdom, nor very... and that would have to be worked on even more, because there is a wisdom that God gives later that is very sophisticated, but it comes only after one has humbled oneself and one has surrendered one's will to the Lord, then God gives it to you in a legitimate way.

I believe that one day God would have said to Adam and Eve, you can eat from that tree now, and when you obeyed me, now eat it. But Satan came who had already tasted that lucidity and had rebelled against God and told Adam and Eve, now eat, eat. What happens is that God is an envious old man who doesn't want you to eat it because if you eat it you'll be just like him.

You see, it was a struggle for knowledge, critical ability, the ability even to criticize God and to criticize themselves and to see themselves with a lucidity that they couldn't see before. That's why when they eat from the tree they realize they're naked and they start looking at themselves critically, they start looking at their body and saying, uh, but you're a little too chubby, too skinny, Adam... I don't remember you like that. . And Eva, wait, what... do you understand? They begin to see themselves in a critical way and so they cover up. Before they were like innocent children, they saw each other but did not see each other. They did not have that penetrating, cutting capacity to discern, to divide, to criticize. That is what the sophisticated man has today in the 21st century because he has turned away from God.

Now, when God visits your life, he heals that malicious wisdom that men have and begins to purify your gaze, your mind, your reasoning, your thoughts.

Look at what the Apostle James says in verse 13 of Chapter 3, he says “... who is wise and understanding among you? Show by good conduct your works in wise meekness...”

In verse 17 it says, “...but the wisdom that is from above...”

No, no, let's go back, verse 14, it says "... but if you have bitter jealousy and contention in your hearts, do not boast or lie against the truth because this wisdom, see, this knowledge is not what descends from on high but it is earthly, animal, devilish....”

You see overtones of the same corruption that Paul is establishing in verses 16 and 17 of Romans. There is a wisdom, and if you continue reading, as we are going to do, in Romans, in that same passage, that as you can see I got stuck at the very beginning, you are going to discover that many of what Paul originally mentions the fall of man, where it first manifests itself is in the heart and mind.

God gave them up to the vanity of their reasoning, it says "... God gave them up to a reprobate mind." And that's why in Romans 12, Paul talks about being transformed by what? of the renewal of your understanding and your mind.

If you really want God to make a transformation in your life you have to start asking the Holy Spirit to start working on the patterns of your thought, your way of seeing yourself, of analyzing yourself yourself, to analyze human reality, to analyze human relationships, to analyze your marriage, your sexuality, your concept of justice, what is beautiful, what is dignified, what is kind. You have to change all your definitions.

The renewal of man, the transformation of man begins in the renewal of the mind. Because? Because the mind without God is corrupt. When you enter the Kingdom of God a gradual transformation has to take place. And you have to start changing all the thought schemes, all the ways of thinking, of reasoning and start thinking in a way that is against the culture.

“Do not conform to this century....” In other words you have to start questioning everything that you previously considered wise and dignified and good and beautiful and fair. That is why many intellectuals enter the church, many educated people enter the church and believe that what they are going to do is that they are going to create the church in their own image and likeness, and a church is required, and leaders Let them say no, you entered the church, the church is going to change you, not you the church.

What is happening in the 20th century, the 21st century is that many churches are allowing themselves to be conformed to the image of the world and people enter the church and say, I am going to stay if you you stop preaching this, you stop preaching that, if you change your definitions, if you don't bother me with this or that. And God says, it is not so. He who enters the Kingdom of God enters with his head very low.

And we must ask humanity, society, each individual that enters to prepare to receive the transforming work of God in their mind and in their sensitivity. The church has to stand clear and say, everyone who enters into God's realm has to be prepared to experience a metamorphosis, a change of form, a change of being, a change of nature. It is a long-term process that is going to happen.

But all of us have to go through the process of our mind being renewed, changed, because what man experiences outside of God is the perversion of the mind, the perversion of his thoughts, his way of criticizing , to analyze. And God has to heal that. Go?

So the demonic, diabolical, earthly, animal wisdom, all these terms are in Paul's analysis, it is a wisdom that leads to bitter jealousy, to contention in the heart, all that .... to perversion, misconduct, rebellion against the values of the Kingdom of God.

Now look at what it says here, it says "...for where there is jealousy and contention there is disturbance and every wicked work."

Now look at what it says "...but the wisdom that is from above...", is the wisdom of God, the understanding of God, the way of seeing the world and seeing the world. man who comes from God.

“... the wisdom that is from above is firstly pure, -contrary to the perversion that Paul diagnoses in Chapter 1-... then peaceful, kind, benign, full of mercy and good fruits, without uncertainty or hypocrisy, and the fruit of justice is sown in peace for those who make peace.

You see, brothers, the only thing that the wisdom of man can produce is contention, division, war, conflict, separation, because that is the critical capacity of man: it separates, divides, makes detailed judgments and separates all. And man without God, human, carnal, earthly, diabolical wisdom, what it does is create contention. That's why he later goes in, where wars come from. It is not of the things that are within you, etc.

But when the wisdom of God begins to take power in you and take control of your life, you begin to reason and analyze and relate to others in a way that leads to peace in your home. Before there was contention in your marriage, now there is peace, when you let God renew your mind. Before there was war with your children, now there is blessing and harmony. Before you couldn't even stand yourself, you stank yourself, as they say out there in good Caribbean, but now you are happy because you know that God lives within you. And your emotions, your traumas, your self-hatred, your bad conscience, your anxiety, God calms it little by little and gives you a peaceful attitude.

The wisdom of God is gentle, it is simple, it is blessed, it is gentle, it leads to peace, it leads to joy. It is not as spicy, it is not as tasty, it is not as spectacular as the wisdom of the devil, but it gives life, it gives justice, it is what it says, the fruit of justice is sown in peace for those who make peace.

Do you understand, my brother? All these things are there in the mind of the Apostle Paul when he is speaking... there are depths of thought that it is difficult to go too far. But I think it's good that we understand that level of analysis. Then the wrath of God is manifested because men have chosen to rebel against God and go after their own reasoning, their own pleasures, their own desires and build their own destiny.

Then God says, well ok, okay, do it like this and there you go. You want to reject me with your asebia, your impiety. Amen. You want to reject me with your conduct and behavior, your adiquia, your injustice. It's OK, go ahead.

And there is another very important thing, and with this I will finish. It says here, "....against all impiety and injustice of men who hold back the truth with injustice."

This is another indictment, another terrible accusation against humanity. He says that they unfairly detain the truth. The word stop could rather be translated suppress, resist, actively contradict. Withholding is too passive for what Paul means in the original Greek. The idea is men are bent on resisting God's justice and contradicting it.

You see, brothers, it is not that God has been angry with a humanity that has sincerely said, well, that does not seem to me, I do not see the reasoning there, and that they are honestly looking for the truth and that they just haven't found it. No, God has intuited that what is in their hearts is rather willful rebelliousness, it is a willful rebellion. It is a rebellion that entrenches the feet and as the mule gets in, it puts its hooves in the ground and says, from here you are not going to move me.

And look how interesting, they unfairly suppress the truth. In other words, they oppose the truth of God with completely contrary behavior and want to neutralize the truth of God with completely rebellious behavior. And that is what God intuits in humanity.

Don't tell me the 21st century and don't tell me that here in Massachusetts they don't know what God's truth is because in their hearts they know. The legislators that are stuck there in the Estate House when they vote against the truth of God, they know it, brothers, listen to me. What happens is that they have decided that they love their position more than the truth of God.

And there are many Christian men and women, that's why sometimes I would like to be politically correct, but I can't, there are many Christians today, who know what the word says but love... there are many pastors, God forgive me if I am being... who know they must preach God's truth, but they love to see seats full of people better than preach God's truth. And there are many churches, that applause is definitely for the Lord, it's not for me.

Brethren, there is a lot of church that is making deals with the devil and subtle deals with fallen humanity out there. Humanity is telling you, we will enter your churches if you do not preach this type of Gospel and some very subtle transactions are taking place in the air. So the church at this time is little by little giving up ground, Christians are giving up ground and the devil is gaining more and more ground. The church is not announcing the truth, it is not proclaiming for men to be healed and confronted, so what is happening is that men out there are abandoned, more and more to their own reasoning.

But there are many people out there who know... when I hear about all these legal decisions, it is something that I have observed so much, brothers, that it already hurts me, it breaks my heart because today in day I see humanity that has already decided to run amok because of sin. In these western countries people have said, don't bother us anymore with those vain doctrines of the Bible, we want to get dirty, we want to do what we want to do and we are going to do it. Don't bother us anymore. Everything else is simply an ornament, it is an excuse, it is a screen, but what is inside is the rebellion of man, the heart of man has rebelled and has decided, I do not love you anymore, give me my inheritance, I am leaving for my country.

And that is why the Apostle Paul wrote... that is, brothers, a document that for two thousand years has been denouncing humanity, saying do not believe that you deceive the heart of the sovereign God. He knows that your problem is that you have rejected him and you don't want what he offers. And for that, he is indignant against you and has abandoned you to your reasonings, and has abandoned you to the consequences. And what are those consequences? Perversion, addiction, destruction, loss of peace, joy and human dignity.

Give me two minutes to end on a positive note. After all of that has been given, we can go back to verse 16 of Chapter 1, go back there with me. Romans 1:16 and 17, says:

"For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek because in the Gospel justice of God is revealed by faith and for faith.

Look how interesting, in verse 18 “the wrath of God is revealed”, and in verse 17 “the justice of God is revealed through the Gospel”.

Why isn't Paul ashamed of the Gospel? Because he knows, brothers, the Gospel is the only thing that can protect man from that filth and that corruption. The Gospel is that fold that protects the sheep so that the wolf does not enter. The Gospel is that sound doctrine that by holding you to it, keeps you on the path of truth, holiness, love, peace, joy, salvation, hope, harmony.

That is why Paul says, how am I going to be ashamed of something that protects humanity from everything that comes when it distances itself from God? It is through the Gospel that we understand the will of the father, the character of God, his dignity, his love, his peace, his grace, his meekness, his patience, his justice. There, it is through the Gospel that we can understand what is pure, what is good, what is fair, unlike man who only has his own reasoning to give him a definition of what is good and what is fair, and it leads to the perversion we are seeing today.

That is why I love the Gospel, brothers. And that's why I ask the Lord, Father, grab me and don't let me go because I'm going to grab you tooth and nail. And put me in a safe harbor because today more than ever brothers we have to understand that it is only in the sacred territory of the Gospel where man can find refuge for his needs and where he can truly find protection from the storm and from the attacks of a demon that he wants only to kill, steal and destroy.

So brothers, tell the Gospel, it enters me more and more every day. Father, we want to do your will, we want to please you, we want to keep ourselves, Lord, within your legitimacy, we want to remain, God, within the safe fold. We are not interested in garlic, the pots of Egypt, Lord, we want what you want to give us. Send your grace on this town, Lord. Help us to walk humbly, Father, not to walk with pride, not to walk with pretensions, not to walk with spiritual pride.

Lord, help us to reason in a wise, peaceful, spiritual, legitimate way, Lord. Sound doctrine is what we want. We want to be simple-hearted people, Father, we abandon the false sophistication of the devil, Lord, we reject the arrogance of man and embrace the humility of the son who humbles himself before the father.

Bless this church, Father, help it to walk, help us to walk in simplicity. Father, thank you because you have rescued us, you have rescued us from the hole, from the miry mud. None of us deserve to even look into your eyes or even say Father, Father, because we have offended you. We are not better than anyone but you have raised us to heavenly places with Christ Jesus for your mercy and goodness. So continue with us, Lord, continue with this church, continue to heal it, and continue to create a people that is pleasing in your sight.