The Wrath Of God

So very much to me, You're more than able.

Ain't no problem that's too high for.

A strong and mighty God. Yes, you are able. You're more than able.

I can always count on you.

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Happy Wednesday to everybody. Most of all of you were on the prayer call, but as people hop on here, I see Lola hopped on. Good to see you this morning. And as other folks hop on this morning, I want to share with you. I am blessed to be with you today. Andre, hopping on. I am excited about this Bible study as I'm excited just about every single Wednesday because it's time to. To hear from the Lord, to dive in his word, to. To see the Word sometimes corporately, the. The big picture of what he wants to speak to us, but also those individual messages and even those whispers he speaks to us when we're simply communing with him through the Word. I am currently in Hot Springs, Arkansas, this morning, and I am using my iPad for this because there's no WI Fi. Beautiful, beautiful hotel I'm staying at. No WI Fi. Called the front desk, and they're like, oh, yeah, we'll have maintenance check it out. So, yeah, I'm hoping that the data is good for today. I think it will be. I believe it will. But my notes. I got some notes over here, Some notes in front of me. But before I start, I want to share a little God story with. With you guys. I. I had a moment, and Raj, just want to thank you for everything, for always making sure this runs smoothly. I don't know what I'd do without you. And I see the mane in the background, brother. I see now. Now you gotta actually, like, comb it to do something with it, right? Yeah, it's. It's in that. It's in that uncomfortable middle stage right now where I'm kind of throwing it out.

It's in that, like, how long am I gonna deal with this? Am I just gonna cut it off? But gonna. We're gonna stay the course.

Yeah. Amen. What a blessing it is to have hair, to have to do something with. Amen to that.

Sorry, John.

So, Donald, do you have something? Oh, yes. I. I forgot to mention this on the prayer call, but I have a praise report which is, as of today, I am fully funded for my stem cell treatment. Amen. Amen. So good for you. Praise God. Yes, Praise God. So is that scheduled yet or no? Yeah, I'm scheduled in April. Awesome. Yeah, awesome. I will. I will. I will be in Mexico the entire month. Awesome, man. That's good news. That's very good news. Yes, happy to hear that. Now when you start feeling better as well, make sure you share, share that on here as well. Okay? You got it. Okay. So before we dive back into Romans today, I do want to share this little God story because I had a moment with my son Ezra, my five year old on Sunday just he and I went to church on Sunday. My daughter and son in law, they went away for her birthday for a few days. So Lucy and I were watching the, the grandkiddos, three year old, two year old and one year old. So it was a little, little hectic over the weekend and it was just a little much to get everybody to church. So Lucy stayed home with the little ones. I took Ezzy and we went to breakfast first, went to first watch and it was just that father son bonding time. And after church I was talking to him now he has his little chores that he does. He has his checklist for every morning that that's on the fridge and he checks everything off after he prays, brushes his teeth, he, you know, drinks some water. Everything that he does. But then you know what, what I'm gonna start to incorporate is like, like jobs for him, like more chores where he could earn some money. So when he wants to buy something. Yeah so some money to purchase and he doesn mommy and daddy where he understands work, he understands value, he understands that things cost money. So I, we're driving home and I told him, you know, the first job I'm going to give him is he's going to be in charge of blowing the leaves off of the front porch and path and then off of the back patio we have a, a leaf blower. I've brought him out there before where you know, the thing's bigger than him but he's blowing the leaves. And I told him that's the first job he's responsible for. So even when I'm away, when I'm out of town, he sees leaves out there, even a couple. He used to go out to the garage, get the leaf blower and you know, tell mommy what you're doing. Going to get the leaf blower, going to blow these leaves. And I told him every Saturday if he does a good job with this and the other jobs I'm going to give him, I'm going to give him $10, he's going to earn $10. And I talk to him about tithing because what I realized that as much as we, we pour into Ezzy and as much as he has his kids Bible and watches everything there is to watch about God. That's for kids. Nothing really talks about tithing for, you know, there's no, like, little Bible lessons for 5 year olds about tithing. So I talked to him about tithing, the concept of it, what the Bible says about it, and how God ultimately owns everything. And so when he gets $10 every week, that's not really his money, it's God's money and God's entrusting him to steward it. But what we do is we give 10% back to God and explain to him that's just kind of a starting point, but we give 10% to God. So he says, okay, Daddy, so if I give get $10, what's 10% of $10? Right? He's good at. He's good at math right now, but we haven't really gotten into percentages and multiplication. I said, well, 10% of $10 would be $1. He said, so I keep $9 and I give God one. I said, yeah. He said, well, how do I give God money? So I shared with him how we give it to our church. I share with him Troy Brewers Ministry, where they help kids that are certainly not as fortunate as him, and explained that a little bit. And he looked at me, he said, daddy, he said, why would I keep nine and only give God one? I feel like God should get nine and I should keep one. And I was just like, oh, my gosh. It was just one of those moments with your kids where I started to tear up a little bit. I was like, amen, son, amen. And that's the type of thing where it's like, yeah, I'm giving you this $10 every week. So every other day when you ask for some new toy, you can learn to, like, pay for it yourself. But when your kid says something like that, it's like, okay, what do you want? I'll buy you anything right now. Right? It's like, you. You get it. I just want to reward you for thinking like that, for your heart to be like that. But it was so genuine and so pure. It just didn't make sense to him why he would keep more than what he would give God just didn't make sense. And I was like, oh, man. Just the faith of a child and just that innocence. And just in our minds, of course, as adults, we have bills and responsibilities, but just that, that. That pure innocence of a child's like, that doesn't make sense. Why would I keep more than what I give God? And so I just want to share that with you that I had this moment. And it's not like boastful or gloating or anything, but it just warmed my heart so, so much. I want to share it with you guys. And that's what I love, sharing God stories. I. I want to hear all your God stories. I want to hear how your kids, how you guys are growing in your faith. But I just wanted to share that with you guys because you're my family, if you're my family, or as his family. So wanted to share that this morning. We're gonna jump back into Romans this morning. And I introduced the book of Romans last week, started chapter one. We got through the first 17 verses. And as I mentioned last week, Romans has been called the manifesto of the Christian life. And it's being noted as being the most theologic and systematic teachings and doctrines in all the New Testament. And I made note of how frequently some words are used in the book of Romans. The word God is used 153 times, Law 78 times, Righteousness 66 times, Faith 62 times, and Gospel 12 times. Wrath is also used 12 times. Right. The only other book that has wrath mentioned more than Romans is the book of revelation, and that's 13 times. But proportionately, Romans would be the most, because it's a shorter book. But when you put all those words that are really frequently used together, it kind of lays out what the book of Romans is about. And it's about us being made righteous before God with faith. It's not by our works, has nothing to do with the law of Moses. It's by us trusting in Christ. And that is the Gospel. That is the good news. I made mention that Paul wrote this book of Romans. He wrote to the Roman church. It was really in Acts chapter 20, when he was wintering for three months in Corinth. So that could be found time wise chronologically in Acts chapter 20. But it was only about three years before he ultimately did make his way to Rome. He had longed to make his way to Rome. The, the church was flourishing. It was prospering. It's one of the few churches we read about in Scripture that, that Paul didn't start where he didn't. He didn't find those churches or start those churches on one of his missionary journeys. And he always longed to be there. But we read in chapter one that there was always some sort of hindrance. God ultimately gave him the desires of his heart and got him to Rome. But it wasn't on like a fourth missionary journey. Unless you consider his fourth missionary journey to be his trip to Rome as a prisoner. He was on a grain ship that first got shipwrecked, ultimately made his way to Rome, where he was there pretty much under house arrest while he was under Rome, but he was preaching the gospel. People will come to visit him. That's where he wrote his prison epistles. And ultimately the Book of Acts ends with him there in Rome. And what's not mentioned is he did, according to historical accounts, make his way to see Caesar. That was his appeal. He appealed to Caesar. When he was on trial for all those years, he went before Felix and Festus and finally said, okay, I'm a Roman citizen. I have the right to appeal to Caesar. And he did. So he made his way to Rome. And God does answer our prayers oftentimes, but it doesn't look the way we thought he would answer them, right? We just have to trust God. And oftentimes we'll find that the way God did answer that prayer, it's better than what we had in our tiny little finite minds, right? God. God turns out, has a greater mind and a greater plan than any any of us could even imagine for ourselves. I mentioned last week also that Martin Luther, the catalyst for the Protestant Reformation, that he was an Augustinian monk, and he was really, before he started the Reformation, he was really hung up on the righteousness of God. His outlook on the righteousness of God is that God is righteous. And nobody can approach that level of righteousness. So in God's righteousness, he's going to judge the world, right? We, we are. We are owed his wrath because God is so righteous and we're ever so unrighteous. And then he came to read and study the Book of Romans for himself. And he came across the. The verses we left off at last week, verses 16 and 17, that read, for I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes. For the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the just shall live by faith. So it was in studying this that he came to understand that the righteousness of God is actually the righteousness whereby God converts the sinner, converts the unrighteous. He imputes his righteousness to us. We don't earn it. We don't work to get it. We receive it through, through faith. It's through our faith in Jesus Christ that we are deemed righteous. And it's really just made Right before God. And that's a pretty big aha moment to see God where you're fearful of him because he's so good, he's so vast. He's creator of everything and he's so righteous that I, I'm just so unrighteous and I'm not worthy. You're. He's absolutely right. We're not worthy. But through faith in Jesus Christ, we're deemed righteous. It's phenomenal. It's the only religion on planet earth where you don't have to work to try to get closer to God. It's faith. It's where God actually sent his Son to come to us and rescue us. I mentioned that just about every major biblical doctrine in scripture is found in the book of Romans, and it can be broken into four sections, first being the wrath of God, which we're going to pick up today, starting in verse 18. And that goes from Romans 1:18 all the way to 3:20. So it's like, okay, the, the bad news, the, the wrath of God, us being so unrighteous. And why does Paul take so much time, you know, three chapters, almost three full chapters to talk about the wrath of God and how unrighteous we are. It's because for us to really grasp and comprehend and take heed and acknowledge and know it, like know that we know it. The good news. In order for us to really know the good news, we have to first know the bad news, right? So if you go to the doctor, you get some, some diagnosis, some, some terminal diagnosis, say, okay, that's the, the bad news. But you need to know the bad news. And then the, the doctor, I'm sure will be more than happy to say, but there's a remedy. This is what we're going to do about it. But you can't really appreciate the remedy until you know how grim the, the bad news is first. Now, this passage we're going to read, it's. And we're going to read from verses 18 through 32 through the rest of the chapter, and it's, it's a commentary on the culture of the day. And when we read it, it's going to sound like we're reading from the headlines today. It really is. There's nothing new under the sun, especially when it comes to the heart of man and our human condition. We currently live in a culture where there's an obsession with the planet, with the environment. We live in a very godless culture. And this is all symptomatic of a world that has denied the existence of God and disobeyed him. Even though God has revealed himself to this unrighteous world. We're going to read about how God has revealed himself, right? Even to those who haven't heard the name of Jesus Christ, how God has revealed himself through his creation, right? And what has man done to a God who created us in his image? We quickly turn and say, okay, how do we create God in our image now? Right? How do we conform him? How do we turn him into what we want him to be? And I can attest to what we're going to read about, because before I knew the name Jesus, I've shared many times. I didn't know the gospel or hear the gospel until I met Lucy. But I remember as a little kid, I believed in God, right? That I don't know if I called him God, I don't know what I said, but I would be up at night talking and speaking to somebody, whoever was in control, because I just knew there had to be somebody out. There had to be something out there. There had to be purpose for all this. There had to be a creator in all this. And Paul writes in Romans that, yeah, God did reveal himself to humanity. So the thing is, we. Our natural inclination as fallen man, we are born with a sinful nature, is to suppress truth. So that truth that I knew, it was just in me, that I knew there had to be something or someone responsible for all this, right? And then as you grow and crap happens to you in life and you start to suppress the truth, you start to develop a grim outlook on life. And. And this is why it's so important for. For us to share and reveal the gospel to folks because they need to know what the truth is. But when it comes to, you know, that that person on the island that's never heard the name Jesus before, you know, are. You know, are. Are they accountable? Right? Well, they're accountable to what they know. And if they know the truth inherently, because just simply by looking at creation, they're accountable to that truth. And we can't say that anybody is off the hook when it comes to. All right, if somebody lives on a remote island, never hears the gospel, you know, where do they go? Right? Well, we're going to read in this chapter and the next couple chapters that we're accountable to what we know, right? The truth that we know, we're accountable to that. So if. If you hold the stance that, you know, somebody is just born in a remote island that hasn't been evangelized, they've never heard the name of Jesus. It's like they're not accountable because they've never heard the name Jesus. Well, if that's the case and they just get kind of like a free ticket to heaven because they haven't heard the gospel yet, then probably the worst thing we could do is reach that person and share the gospel. And now they, they have a choice to accept it or deny it. Right? If everybody just kind of gets a free ticket, a free path to heaven, then why would we evangelize somebody who doesn't know the name of Jesus? Surely they're off the hook, right? Well, no, nobody's off the hook because we, we are accountable to the, the truth that we know. And we're going to read here that, that God has revealed himself through his creation, through his handiwork. Now, forgive me, I got notes here, notes in front of me, notes all over the place. Because I'm of the WI FI issues. I gotta do this from my iPad today. So picking up in, in verse 18 of chapter 1 of Romans, it says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Right? So the wrath of God. I said that the, the book is broken into sections and from this verse here all the way to chapter three, verse 20, we're going to be dealing with the wrath of God. And it is extensive. This is the bad news. This isn't the most uplifting passages of scripture, but it's what we need to know. Because if we truly grasp this over the next couple of weeks, the, the wrath of God and our unrighteousness, then we could truly understand and, and appreciate the, the good news. And that is that no, no, we're saved and we're deemed righteous through our faith. Paul's going to lay out here, and it starts here in this verse, that, that there's, there's three types of people when we're talking about the, the unrighteous, right? There's actually three categories. I mean, breaks it down into the unrighteous, which we're going to get into today, the self righteous and then the over righteous. So the, the, the big idea is that he's going to establish this universal guilt. And the three ways that humans try to justify righteousness apart from God is through one unrighteousness, just paganism, just not believing that God is real through self righteousness. Right? This would be more of the moralist where they compare themselves to other people. It's like I'm good because I'm better than that person. And then the overly righteous, that would be the legalist, that would be the Pharisees, right? It's your works that, that, that makes you good. And at the end of the day, we, we kind of live in a world. And if you ask anybody on the street, you'll, you'll find out that this is the case. We live in a world that, that says basically man is good. Right? If you ask somebody, just a stranger, hey, if you died today, where would you go and why? Most people are going to say, I'm going to go to heaven because I'm good. And most people would classify themselves as good because they're comparing themselves to somebody else. You could be a horrible human being and you're going to find somewhere deep inside that, that goodness. Well, I'm good. You know, my, my heart's in the right place. My actions may not always reflect that, but, you know, I'm a. But what God says, the Bible is clear about is that we're not good. Our hearts are wicked. And you know, when we evangelize the people, that's not really the, you know, you got to be spirit led as to how you share this with people and don't just say, no, you're not good, you're wicked, you're evil, you're a horrible person.

Right?

God will lead us as to how to evangelize to that person. But most people for, for the most part, they, they believe, hey, I'm good, therefore I'm going to heaven. Where we know heaven isn't full of good people. Heaven is full of people who put their faith in Jesus Christ. It's full of people who realized the, the depths of their depravity, who realized their own unrighteousness, who understood that righteousness can only come through faith in Jesus Christ. So heaven isn't full of good people. It's full of people who realize their own depravity and cried out to a God who will then impute his righteousness on us. And how amazing is that? That we serve a God that deems us right. You know, it's like we could usually find the good in ourselves, but when we actually look at our hearts and if we are really honest with ourselves, nobody knows how, how much junk is in our hearts more than ourselves. Nobody knows how much we've let ourselves down more than ourselves. Nobody's known the bad decisions we've made more than ourselves. It's just that those things tend to be overlooked and we just deem Ourselves as good. My mother was one of those people and I would say, yep, she's a good person. Like she had morals, she had values. She, she raised me as much as you could raise somebody with the right morals and values without mentioning God at all. Like she did it right. Her love was undeniable, very sacrificial in her love. Not just to, to me and her, my sister, but to, to everybody. She was just that kind, kind woman. So she 100 deemed herself as a good person but she had a wicked heart like we all do, even our kids, you know, and, and watching our grandkids this past weekend, a three year old, a two year old, a one year old. Now our three year old, Lala, she's a little lady, right? She, she's, she's a girly girl. Zayla, the two year old, she's a bull in a china shop. She, she wants to play rough. She's very quick to hit if somebody messes with her. And she's a biter, right? It's crazy. Nobody taught her to hit, nobody taught her to bite. But she's got a wicked little heart like we all do, you know, as cute as she is, she got a wicked little heart but she's met her match. Because our, our one year old noble, our little guy, well he, he's the male version of Zayla. So Zayla wants to mess with everybody but when it comes to, we call him Bodhi. When it comes to Bodhi, she'll just go up and like if Bodhi messes with her, she'll be like, give me a hug, right? She doesn't want to mess with boys. She met her match. But even Bodie is a one year old now. Maybe it's been taught to her through Zelie. He's been watching her bite and hit and that's where he got it from. But at the end of the day you don't have to teach a kid to do wrong, right? We're naturally inclined to do wrong. We have to be taught what is right. So when Paul breaks down the unrighteous, the self righteous and the over righteous, the stance of the unrighteous, which we'll read through the rest of this passage today is I don't need God, right? It's like I believe my own truth that you know, it, it's really a godless atheistic point of view. But even if you believe God, it's just I, I don't need him, right? I could do my own thing. And then next week when we start chapter two, we're going to get into the self righteous. And the self righteous would have the stance that I'm good enough. Right? And if you say you're good enough, then my question would be by whose standards? We're all pretty much good enough by our own standards. If we create their own standard. And even if we're a scumbag, we're going to, we're going to lower the standard and say I'm still a good person. But then probably two weeks from now, the back half of chapter two flowing into chapter three, it's the over righteous. It's those who said, no, I've earned this right. They're overly righteous, they've done the works, they've earned this righteousness. They could say, they could look at their track record. They have a whole resume of the things that they've done right. But oftentimes their hearts are far from God. So over the next few weeks we're going to read and talk about how mankind is without excuse because God is intentional about reaching all three. And it's not really groups of people. At the end of the day, they're all unrighteous. They're all unrighteous. It's just that different ways that they're going about their righteousness to deem themselves as righteous. Paul was, was very explicit here and we'll get into it for the rest of this passage and well, I'll just read it now. So verse 20 says, for since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead. So that they are without excuse because that they are without excuse because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and four footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness. Make note of that because there's going to be three times here in these next few verses where it says that God gave them up or God gave them over. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness in the lusts of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator. How oftentimes do we see that right? We're worshiping creation rather than the Creator, the Creator who is blessed forever amen for this reason God gave them up. There's that second time that God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged a natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lust for one another. Now when, when people today, like in the LGBQT abcd, you know, Mafia will tell you, you know that the word homosexual in scripture, it doesn't mean what it means today. Well, well this is pretty clear apart from the, the word, the Greek word for homosexual when it says that even women exchange the natural use for what is against nature, right? So the natural, the natural use of a woman is to bear a child. Likewise also men leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lust for one another. Men with men committing what is shameful and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error, which was due. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind. So there's that third time God gave them up. Gave them up now gave them over to a debased mind. And we'll talk about what debased mind means to do those things which are not fitting, being. And tell me this isn't what we see in today's culture being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil mindedness. They are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud boasters, inventors of evil things. That's wild to me. You just don't like act out evil things. You're, you're inventing. You're so evil that you're doing evil things that have never even been done before. Inventors of evil things disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful, who, knowing the righteous judgment of God that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same, but also approve of those who practice them. Now, for all honest worth with ourselves, everything that we just read there, that was all of us before we came to Christ, and it sounds harsh, but being filled with all unrighteousness, all those things we were filled with the sexual immorality, the wickedness, the covetousness, the hate that we had in our hearts. Because the sexual immorality, it's not just, hey, I'm sleeping around with different women, I'm lusting after that woman, right? Or if I have hate in my heart towards Somebody, what does Jesus say? That's the same as murder. So we all had these things in our heart and from time to time some of these things may rise up again. But we have the Holy Spirit now we're equipped with the Holy Spirit who lives in us to, to ward off any of these fleshly vices that may try to rear their ugly heads. Now Paul, it lays it out pretty clearly. And, and as I said, this is the, the, the, the state of man, the human condition, right? Which man always wants to define their own condition. They always want to define their own righteousness, define what truth is. But God is saying, no, I'm going to defined, define the human condition. And you need to know that you're not righteous. And when we truly understand and grasp this unrighteousness that, that we walk with, that's when the good news really becomes good news. It really becomes good news. And chapter three, verse 20, it is the good news, therefore, by the deeds of. 21, 3, 21. But now the righteousness of God, apart from the laws revealed being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe. So that's the good news, right? We're unrighteous. God is righteous. But don't be like Martin Luther before he studied the book of Romans. Be like, oh my gosh, I'm just so depraved and God's so righteous, I can't come near him. I can't come close to him. I'm not worthy to know that we have faith in him. We put our faith in him, and that, that righteousness is imputed to us. And it's remarkable. It doesn't matter what you've done in your past, it doesn't matter how just how sinful your actions or thoughts or words have been in the past. God will deem you right, right before him. He will justify you. Right, Justify, didn't do it. You're justified by your faith. Now keep in mind, as I mentioned, that there's nothing new under the sun. And the, the hearts of man 2000 years ago were the same as the hearts of man today. Now Paul is writing this letter to the Romans and the, the emperor at the time was Nero. Now Nero was somebody who definitely fell into this category and it could have been, you know, Paul, what was, what had Nero in mind when he wrote some of this, especially after, especially with what he wrote about men committing what is shameful and receiving in themselves a penalty of their error, which was due after one of. One of Nero's wife's wives died, he took a young boy, castrated him and. And made him his husband, basically.

Right?

This is the. Rome is the center of the world. Caesar, the emperor, the. The most powerful person on planet Earth at the time, and he. He's living with a young boy, castrates him, and was living with this young boy as his husband. So Paul could have had that in mind when he wrote this. But it's very clear what, what this passage says about homosexuality and homosexuality when we talk about God defining truth and man suppressing truth. Now, now we live in a culture where God's truth is deemed as. As hate speech. Right. If you speak out against homosexuality, it's deemed hate speech. I'm sorry, Leslie, my screen's a little smaller and I could barely see those hands. I don't know how long you've had it up, but I'll call on you now.

Oh, no, sorry. You're having a good flow there. And I don't interrupt, but my question was more just back from chapter one when you were saying, like, God abandoned them. God abandoned them. God abandoned them. I was wondering if there are people that got abandoned today. So, I mean, I know that he's talking about past, you know, like Sodom and Gomorrah. Like, I'm saying that separately, but just, you know, I don't know if you guys have felt like you've been trying to, you know, reach somebody and pour into them, and it feels like everything you do, you're hitting a brick wall. And you know how much that kind of hurts when you're really trying to save somebody, like someone who seems too far gone, which I know isn't true, but I just wonder if, you know, there are people that did abandon God and he abandoned them in return. So how do we know if that has happened today?

Good question. Now I'll ask you and everybody else. Now, do you think when God turns people over to their own wicked desires, do you believe that's God completely giving up on them, or do you believe that's God walking them down a path where it's just going to be more darkness, more unfulfillment to ultimately come to the revelation to turn to God?

Yeah, I find it hard to believe that people truly abandons people. I think it's more kind of what you were saying, where he kind of lifts his protection over them and so they're the, the, the. They're free to engage in the darkness, like, and enjoy it, and he's not going to Stop any badness from happening. I guess so. I mean, maybe that's where the lesson is, is that his removal of protection and then, you know, like, the gospel is always going to be available if it's around. Like, they'll always have had that in their past because you were there in their past, you know, that voice in their mind. So. But, I mean, I don't know. Like, that's where. Like, at what point are you, like, wow, I've said enough, I guess, and I need to step back.

Yeah. I. My. My personal story with this is when I given up on my mother and her getting saved. She was sick. She had been hospitalized with pneumonia a couple different times. And it was just like, I don't think this woman's gonna be around too much longer, and she dies. She's gonna go to hell. And I actually got. Got angry. And I remember I was sitting next to Lucy and I was. I was mad. I was kind of like cursing out my mother, right? Like. Like, if this is how you want to do. Because she was so rebellious and so rejecting God in any conversation. I tried to start about God. And I was like, if she just wants to die in her sin and be in hell for all of eternity, by all means, like, I've done what I could do. And then, you know, after my fleshly outburst, actually prayed about it, and I prayed to God. I said, God, whatever it takes for you to get her attention right now, please do it. I don't care what it looks like, just please wake her up and allow for her to see that you're real. And it was literally just a couple days after that that she suffered from a brain bleed. It was a something venous malformation. You know, Leslie, you'll know the.

With a. AV malformation. Arterial venous malformation.

Yes, yes. And I got a call from my sister crying. Mom went to the ER because she was just feeling a little. She was kind of out of it. Right. So they said it was a slow brain bleed, and then it, like, fully ruptured. So she went to the er and for my mother, she. After she got discharged from the hospital with the pneumonia, there was a home nurse that came to visit her a couple days a week. And on that last visit, that very last visit, the nurse called my sister, said, your mother seems a little bit out of it. I don't know what's going on. You may want to take her to the doctor. My sister drives to my mother, takes her to the doctor, and the doctor's like, yeah, you should probably just take her to the er, just make sure everything's good. While she was sitting in the er, it's when it fully ruptured, and, yeah, it fully ruptured. And that hospital wasn't the neurological. They didn't have the specialties there. So they got her on the helicopter. She's there in the ER when this happens. They got her on the helicopter, rush her to the neuro hospital. And my sister calls me. She says, mom has a brain bleed. She's on a helicopter right now to Overlook Hospital. They don't know if she's going to make it. I was like, oh, my God. I rushed to the hospital. I get there. When I get there, I see that the medics that came in the helicopter leaving the ICU or whatever that word was, that they put her in immediately. And I was just like, oh, my gosh, what's gonna happen? And then we're there through the night, praying. This is like midnight by the time I get there. I call a couple of my pastor friends. They come, we're praying, we're laying hands on her. And she was just like a vegetable. Like, she couldn't talk. And what they said was, we have to determine exactly where the brain is bleeding. So before we just cut her skull open. And when the surgeon got there, he said, do you want us to go through with the surgery? Because there's a good chance she doesn't make it through, and if she does, she. She might be a vegetable, right? He didn't say the word vegetable, but that's what he was saying. Now, my mother had always said to me and my sister, if there's ever an opportunity to pull the plug, pull the plug. I don't ever want to be in that state. Don't let me suffer. Don't let me live that way. Before I die, just kill me. My mother said. So I looked at my sister. My sister got that look in her eye. It's like, okay, this is going to be it. And I look at my wife, Lucy, and I was like. I told the doctor, I said, this may not mean anything to you. Sorry. I said, this may not mean anything to you, but my mother doesn't know. Jesus. I said, do what you have to do, but she can't die right now, because if she dies, she's going to hell. I said, please save her life and give her a chance. So he did it, did the surgery. You know, it was a few hours long. We're all in the. The waiting room waiting for him to come in. He comes in, he pulls me, my sister aside. He said, your mother made it through the surgery, but she's not going to even open her eyes for. For a number of days, maybe weeks. This is a long haul. You've been here all night. Go home, get some rest. Yeah, this is going to be a long road for you guys. Go home. A couple hours later, hospital calls. My mother's eyes were open. They were open and she was like cognitive. Now I have pictures on my phone. You know, half her skull is removed. She's got tubes, you know, everything on planet Earth keeping her alive. We go back to the hospital and she's talking to us, like kind of asking what happened, but she was cognitive. And then I forget what day of the week it was, but we were there almost every waking hour after that. But when Sunday came, we went to church. We're praying for the whole church, praying for her. After church, we go back to the hospital and my mother says, you know, I've listened to you all the times you've talked about Jesus, and I want Jesus. I just never thought I was worthy of Jesus. And in that moment, we laid hands on her, we pray for her, and she received Jesus. And in that state, with half her skull missing, all these tubes keeping her alive, she was at more peace in that moment than she had ever been in her life in that moment. So I'm not saying by any means, I'm. I'm God, but when I kind of like just when I. I gave up on her, it's like, just do your own thing, right? God still worked on her behalf. The fact that that whole nurse happened to be there on that last day and just said, something's a little off. You should take her to the doctor. And that doctor was like, you should take us to the er. And she's sitting in an ER when her brain that it ruptured, that literally like they described as like your brain explodes, that avm. And then to get her to the, the specialty hospital to save her life, her eyes are open. Hours after the surgery, she's cognitive. And she had that aha moment. So I think when God turns us over to this uncleanness, our lust God saying, go ahead, you think you know better than me? You think you know better than me? Wait till you see what happens. Kind of like the prodigal waking up in the pig pen one day and it's like, what the heck am I doing with my life? And you have that aha moment. So I, I believe God. You know, scripture says that it's not his will that any man perish, but that all come to salvation. And I believe even in moments like that, when he gives us up to. To our wicked desires, he is still trying to steer our path. He knows how, how. How much of a hard nut we are to crack, right? And he knows how to bring us to our knees. And I can't remember the exact verse or chapter in Exodus right now, and I can't remember the Psalm that references it, but when the people of God, when they were. They were grumbling and they were like, yeah, like, we got this manna and it's sustaining us. But, you know, look at, we. We had those three square meals a day. We knew what we're going to eat. We got to eat pheasant at least over there, right? We had some other stuff to eat. We had some options. And what did God do? The next morning, there was pheasants everywhere. So they went, grabbed all the pheasants, and God gave them the desires to their heart. But what happened when they ate the pheasants? Those that ate it got struck with sickness and died. So it was God showing them. It's like, you think you know better than me. I'm giving you this manna, and in your natural eye, you can't see how miraculous it is. And I'm giving you just enough to sustain you throughout the day. And, And I'm. I'm building your trust and reliance upon me to every single day trust that there's going to be more mana for you to eat. And here you are in your flesh, in. In that. That finite mind that doesn't comprehend, doesn't understand, doesn't grasp who I am. You want pheasant? Well, here's the pheasant. And then he. He showed a. Prove the lesson by, by striking them with an illness like, you want this so bad? Go ahead, get it. And there's not a single person, I mean, the. I read it on a podcast we did not too long ago, where statistics show, like, the mental health of America is as good now as it's ever been statistically. But that's just because we've redefined what, like, mental illness is. You know, like homosexuals, the statistics are they're like, four times more likely to commit suicide than heterosexuals, right? So that lifestyle and homosexuality comes up so much because that's a sin that the world has taken and has first tolerated, then affirmed and then endorsed, now celebrated, right? Because at the end of the day, this applies to all sin, but homosexuality is the sin that's now celebrated and deemed as not sin. Anybody, even if you're an unbeliever, could see that guy cheating on his wife be like, oh, that's a scumbag, he's doing something wrong. Anybody else who's like, see somebody's violence, like, oh, that's a bad person, or like hits their kids or something like that, you could see that sin. And for the most part the culture says that's still bad. But the culture doesn't say that homosexuality is bad. Culture is saying that. Now if you say that's bad or say it's wicked, say it's sinful, that, that's now hate speech. But the, the fact of the matter is, is God defines the, the truth. Man suppresses the truth, right? Decides what, what his or her own truth is and then lives by that. So all that to say and Sean, I'm going to call on you in a second. The word give them up to a base mind. You're, your translation may say like a reprobate mind. The Greek word is a documos, right? So the ah, the prefix ah means like to not have it. But documos would mean proven to, proven to be, proven to have value, to have worth. Like the, the soldiers in the day, they will be documents. Like they, they prove their worth, they prove who they are as a soldier. So, and even the coins at the time, if it was like an old decrepit coin that they said this is too old, it has no more value to it, that would be a document, it's lost its value, right? So to turn somebody over to a debased mind, to a depraved mind, it means that mind has no more value. It's literally like spiritual insanity where your mind just suppresses the truth so much that it's of no value anymore. That's literally what the, the Greek terminology is. So to be turned over to that type of mind, it's like, okay, as much as God, and you don't realize it until you come to a relationship with the Lord. How throughout your life I could look back and see all the times where, where God was trying to poke and prod at my heart, or God, the Holy Spirit was trying to woo me, trying to, for lack of better term, seduce me, right? I could see it now, but at the time it's like, no. So God sees my hardness of heart and he turns me over to it. And I, I always say, as much as like a 14 year drug addiction, as awful as it was, if I didn't go down the Road that I went down, where I truly rejected God, truly rebelled, only believed in him to blame him for my back injury and then subsequent addiction. If I didn't go down that road and I just kind of lived a comfortable life and I was just kind of doing my own thing, I don't know if I would have ever cried out to him at that point. So I don't think that God ever abandons us. I believe that when he gives us up to our own lustful thoughts, our own wicked desires, he's saying, okay, try that path even more. And in God's mercy, for every person that walks down that wicked path and doesn't die, then that's just God's mercy. Every second we were alive after we sin, that's God's mercy, right? God's mercy is unbelievable because the wages of sin is death. And mercy would not even be a thing if God executed that wrath. And he judged us every time we sinned. But he's so, so merciful that for years we could reject him, rebel, we could hate him, hate others, just live the most sinful of lives. But for his mercy, we're still here. We're still alive and breathing, still have an opportunity to repent. So that's what I believe. Turning somebody over or giving them up, that's. That's God's heart behind it. Sean.

I see Paul's usage of those words, turning him over, turn them over, give them up. Just used repetitive like, like that. And it reminded me, I heard. I heard someone reference 1st Corinthians 5:5 for the first time less than a year ago, where it says, hand this man over to Satan. And, and, and I was, I was like, there's no way that's in the Bible. There's no way that we're supposed to pray someone into the hands of the, the devil. And I had to look it up myself, and I saw the context of that scripture. Corinth was a pretty jacked up church. There was some really bad stuff going on over there. And in this particular instance, a man was sleeping with his father's wife. It's like the most disgusting type of incest you can imagine. And Paul said, I'm gonna just read it here. Hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord. Like, that's the entire objective. Like you, like you put it, I mean, the entire objective of God handing us over to what it is that our flesh desires is so that we can see how empty it is how, how broken it will make us. The fact that, that, that a homosexual is four times more likely to commit suicide than a heterosexual is, is heartbreaking. God doesn't want that. We don't want that. We want to reveal the gospel to everybody who's chosen a path of rebellion against God so that they can see that that path is leading to their, to their destruction right now. Not just in hell, but certainly that. But it's leading them to a broken life right now. And getting to that place like Paul talks about in Romans 7, what a wretched man I am. You have to get to that place before you recognize how much you need Christ. And that's, that's where we want to lead people to, is, hey, recognize how broken you are. Like you said, man, I love what you said at the beginning, Heaven's not full of good people. It's full of people who recognize their wretched state.

Amen. Amen. Proverbs 13:15 says, the way of the unfaithful is hard. So anybody who's living a life apart from, from Christ, that life is gonna be hard, right? And you know, in a perfect world, everybody would see, like, man making money. You know, I, I sleeping around with these women. I'm fulfilling the desires of my flesh. But every, every person, if they're being filled and they get their, their joy or their satisfaction from anything apart from Jesus, they're going to ultimately conclude that that way is hard. And it may take some time to understand that, but, but we get caught up in that cycle because, like, as a drug addict, right, the reason you become addicted is because you, you get that high. Then when you start to come down, you get, get that high. You just continuously, you know, I, I know I'm going to come down from this, but right now I know I'm going to get my fix, right? Until it gets to the point where you're just always low. And now you're trying to get high just to, try to get to like, the baseline. Just try to get some sort of normal functioning, some sort of fulfillment. Then if you're doing it long enough, you get to the place where you're just depressed and in darkness and suicidal every single day. And it gets to the point, like it did for me, where you're not even getting high anymore. The only high I got was when I, I took those pills or snorted those pills. And even though it's like, I know I don't get that high like I used to, but maybe this will be the time, maybe this will be the time. So it's like that. That euphoria you experience as soon as you do it, which is kind of like the hopes of that being the time you get high. And that's really the high that you get. The. The. The anticipation of it coming, then it doesn't come. So you do more and more and more, and thank God I didn't overdose, because you just keep doing more and more to try to get that high. But whether it's drugs, alcohol, women, striving after money. Right, Whatever it is, you realize that you're just going to be left emptier and emptier and emptier. Are we at 8 o' clock already? Wow. Okay. Well, I apologize for rambling as long as I did. I've been known to do it a time or two before in the past. Does anybody have any concluding thoughts on this, on this passage? And does anybody else read this passage? We just went over from verse 18 to 32, the end of the chapter, where it's like, yeah, this is today. This must have been written last week. It's like today's headlines of our culture today. But there's nothing new under the sun. The. The state of the heart of man has always been the same since the. The fall of Akron. We're born into the sinful state. Leslie.

Oh, no, that wasn't rambling. That was actually really powerful. So thank you, Christian. And actually, your story, I think, helps me kind of take a new look or a new lens on people. I see, because I see we have our frequent flyers, you know, and they'll come in, and sometimes, you know, we get a little, like, gosh, we see this person come in drunk every week, and then they. They just keep doing the same thing over and over. And it's like, what are we doing here? And it gets, you know, disheartening, I guess. And so just having that new lens of, like, well, I'm helping them have another chance of salvation, you know, by helping them get in their right mind and right body. And it was actually funny. Last week on this call, I was at work, and I was like, I got really, really busy, but I was just laughing to myself because I had a patient come in, 29 years old, drunk on this call. And I had to leave because his heart was almost stopping. So I had to literally go, while we're on this call, go restart his heart. And I woke him up, and because he was kind of like, going down, his, like, heart rate was dropping, blood pressure dropping because of alcohol, and he's an alcoholic and so I kind of got him feeling better, and he's like, oh, my gosh, what was that? And I'm like, well, that was death trying to take you. And I stopped it by restarting your heart. And he's like, oh, my gosh. What? Why? Why did that happen? And I'm like, well, you were drinking too much. Maybe that's the problem. And I was trying to, like, impose on him. Like, I think you should change your life unless you want death to take you again, because alcohol is really trying to take you right now. And he started crying, and he's like, oh, my gosh, I have a little girl, you know, I need to. I need to clean myself up. And I'm like, well, I sincerely hope that happens, and we'll help take care of you so that you have that chance, you know? I'm like, where have you gone? And I just see so many people, they've gone to treatment before. He's like, no, I've been to treatment, but I really want to do it now. I hear that all the time, though. Like, oh, I want to get better. Yes, send me to treatment. And so, again, it just. It gets a little. You kind of hope maybe there's that one time, you know, that what you speak to them will finally break the cycle. But you never know when that time is. So I sincerely hope and pray for that guy. That was the moment because he felt it. He was still conscious, you know, feeling that terrible feeling. And I was like, that was death. That was death at your door. That was death on your heart. So, no, I just. Thank you for. For all that today.

Yeah. Amen. And, yeah, may that gentleman. May that have been his aha moment. You know, where that is. That is the last time.

The.

The bondage and stronghold of addiction. It's like, I can't even describe it. Like, I. I would have described myself as a decent human being even when I was an addict, right? But I. I turn into a very hateful human being. And the bondage of that stronghold is so strong. It's like, you'll do anything. You'll hurt anybody to get that. And it's. It's a sickness. It's horrible. And not like. I know it's labeled as, like, a sickness, a disease, like the medical community, but it's just, like, sick. I'm saying it's just, like, sick. It's. It's horrible what it is. But ultimately, I think if you're trying to lead somebody to the Lord, you're trying. You're trying. It's taking a lot of time, effort, energy. I think the Holy Spirit will, will, will speak to you as to, you know, how to minister to that person. And I think that there, there's some that, like Sean said, he read that passage, you just kind of have to turn them over to, you know, okay, well, you do your thing. I'm gonna kind of be hands off. I think God will, will speak to you in specific situations on that. And. But at the end of the day, I, I don't think God ever gives up on that person now. It always feels good. It's more fulfilling. You have more zeal when you're sharing the gospel. If you're always sewing on good ground. If, you know you're ministering to somebody, they get it. You know, people are, are crying out to the Lord, they're getting saved. It's like, yeah, let's do this every second of every day. And then you have those seasons where you're ministering to people, and it's like, they don't get it. They don't get it. I, you know, I can't stand this. This is frustrating. This is hard. But I think the Lord will lead us because as we are all his vessels and we're. We're all on mission as sons and daughters of the Lord, we're all on mission. And if that mission is that one person for you, God's going to speak to you and share, share that with you. If your mission is okay, kind of put that person on the back burner. Because there's 15 other people over here that need to hear the gospel. God's going to reveal that to you as well. So I think that's just your own personal prayer and discernment. But at the end of the day, you know, Sean mentioned it via text a couple weeks ago. You know, it could be so frustrating, so discouraging when people are just like, no, don't want to get on Bible studies. I want to hear about Jesus. And it can be, but we're on. We're on mission. Our hands are to the plow. God's going to equip us for all we need. His grace is sufficient for what we need. Let us not turn into those. Just start standing like those rumbling unbelievers where it's like, oh, this ain't working out right. We, we're just to be faithful to God and he's gonna handle the results. Sean, close this out, man.

That just makes me think of Galatians 6, 9. Let's not become weary and doing good for at the proper time, we'll reap a harvest if we do not give up. And speaking to that frustration, we had our first couples group Monday night, and it was. It was so good. It was. It was great. We had four people, one of them four couples, and one of them joined us on Zoom, and everyone had a. Just a great, great time. We had people ranging from one year of marriage, my wife and I, to 38 years of marriage and just. Yeah, God's. God's blessing. And I feel like sometimes that resistance that we feel prior to that is just either the devil kind of trying to keep something great from happening or God finding out really how much or allowing us to express how much we really want something for his glory.

Amen. Amen. Well, normally I had to call on the Gross family so we could hear from prophet and prophetess Zach and Lauren. I have somebody coming to the hotel for a meeting here in just a few minutes, so I have to run. So if you have any thoughts or prophetic words or just insight, Zach, Lauren, or anybody else, hold that thought till next week and we could resume then. Absolutely. You're free to call me and you can fill me with all that knowledge as well. And then we could talk about it next week as well. But if you want to bless me with whatever your thoughts are, certainly give me a call. I'm down for it. Just not anytime today because I have a very busy day today. With that said, I love you all. You guys light up my day every Wednesday. I appreciate you all. Blessings in the hand of God upon you and your families. Protection, covering. And have a blessed day, guys. See you. Love you. Thanks, Christian.

See y' all later.