Decisions (1)
Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 2 viewsNotes
Transcript
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness,
19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
These first couple of verses talk about people who just don’t want to reach out to God, or to walk with God, or care anything about God. Verse 21 says that they know about God, but they refuse to thank Him for all that He has done.
People around us may not know a lot about God, or know every little detail about God, truthfully I don’t know everything about God. But, these people that Paul is talking about know where God is, know where to find Him, and refuse to go to Him. To think about that, blows my mind.
Let’s pretend for a second that we have a math problem that we don’t know the answer to, and the only way to pass a test we will take in 3 months we have to know the answer. You may not know the answer to this question, you may not know how to work out the math problem, but how many of us know a math teacher? how many of us know what google is? so you have the tools at your disposal to find the answer, the correct answer. But what happens if you refuse to go learn from your teacher or the internet and 3 months go by and you didn’t even try to study for the test. What will happen during the test?
YOU WILL FAIL.
That’s what Paul is saying. God has given everyone on earth the ability to know or find out about God, but the majority of people refuse to search for Him. And when you give up on looking for God, or doing what God wants for your life, verse 24 says God will give you over to your sinful desires, go home and read that verse, because people would rather walk in the opposite direction from God rather than walk with God.
That my friends, is the hardest truth for us to swallow because that mean that not everyone on this earth will walk with Jesus while they are on earth or even worse, it means that not everyone who dies will get the opportunity to go to heaven because they refused to seek Jesus.
So I want to take today as an opportunity to share with you what it means to be a follower of Jesus. How, Pastor Luis, can I unlock the door to heaven and be with God for the rest of eternity. What does it take for God to help me, change me, forgive and make me new?
The answer is simple:
2 the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures
3 regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David,
4 and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.
5 Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake.
6 And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.
See back in those days they had a Bible, but it wasn’t like ours. They only had one part of the Bible, they only had the Old Testament and not the New Testament and Paul says in verse 2:
2 the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures
do you want to know the harsh truth, the harsh truth is that you and I have sinned against God, and my sin, your sin, separates you from God. It does, it pulls you far away from God and that makes your life miserable, but it also breaks God’s heart. God doesn’t want you to be separate from Him, why because God loves you above all other things He ever created. He loves you so much more than He loves the birds, the trees, the oceans or any other creature on earth.
Since He loves you so much God came up with a plan that would help you get back Him. Paul calls this plan the “Gospel He promised beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures”
The Bible in Romans also tells us that because we have sinned we have to pay the price for sin and the price for your sin, for my sin, is death. God does not want that so He sent His Jesus to die in your place, He sent His son Jesus to take away your sin. So Jesus dies for your sin, and three days after He dies, Jesus comes back to life to prove 2 things:
If Jesus can defeat death, then Jesus is God.
If Jesus can defeat death, then He can also take away your sin.
His death, burial and resurrection is enough to take away your sin and to restore your relationship with God. And I want all of you in here to know that God planned this more than 2,000 years ago. There was no plan B, this was God’s plan from the beginning and He did everything He could to make sure you had the ability to come back to Him.
So now what? If Jesus paid it all like we sung today, then does that mean I’m good? Not quite, Jesus did everything He could so that you could be saved, but there is one thing you have to do. Many of you may recognize these bible verses:
9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.
You have to believe this. you have to believe that the Gospel, the message I just shared with you is true. If that is something you would like to do today, talk to me.