The Idol of Independence: Romans 1:18-25

Well, good morning, King's Corner. It is good to be with you on this Lord's Day morning. Let me pray for us and we will go ahead and dive right in.

"Father, we need you. As we explore Romans and the gospel’s power, help us see its centrality to our lives. We’re tempted to see it as just an entry point, not what sustains us. Center us in your truth, clear our minds, and let your Word work in us. Guide us now, Holy Spirit, as we consider your words, for we know and we confess that they are the words of life. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen.

All right, well, this is the second week of our dive into the book of Romans in our series, “The Power of the Gospel.” Nothing surpasses its transformative power in our lives. Over the next 9–10 weeks, we’ll walk through Romans, hitting key points in Paul’s argument to see how the gospel shapes our identity as Christians—from what we chase to how we find freedom. And as we go through this book of the Bible together, I'm hoping that we will start to discover that the gospel is our identity as Christians.

And so last week Ryan did a really good job of getting us started in the Book of Romans when he simply asked the question, “is there a real power to change my life?” And what we discover is that real transformation happens by faith in Christ and not by our own efforts. The passage we looked at last week was Romans 1:16 through 17 in which we saw that Paul said he is not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of salvation for everyone who believes. we saw Paul’s unashamed stance on the gospel—it’s God’s power for salvation to all who believe, by faith in Christ, not our efforts. And because of that, we also saw that the gospel isn't just the starting point for evangelism. Said another way, we never move past the gospel. An old pastor of mine used to say, and you might have heard me repeat this, “the gospel is not just the diving board, it is the pool in which we swim.” That is to say, that the gospel is not just the basics and then we move on to something more advanced. There is nothing better than the gospel. There is nothing above the gospel. There is nothing that we need more than the gospel. There is no way that God can show his power and love in our lives more effectively than the gospel. The gospel is both the entryway into our faith as the provision for our salvation, but it is also the engine that drives our sanctification. It is the love of God made manifest in power. The gospel is the power of salvation to everyone who believes.

So if you remember nothing about this sermon or about anything else that we talk about as we go through the book of Romans remember this: “We may find new ways to be obedient, we may find new ways to apply the gospel, we may find new ways to appreciate the gospel, we may find new ways to share the gospel, but we will never ever move past the gospel. We cannot.” And I think the more we come to appreciate the gospel, the less we will want to move beyond it.

So now, knowing all of that and having it in our background, let's continue where Ryan left off and look at verses 18 through 25 of the first chapter of Romans. And it says this:

“For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made. As a result, people are without excuse. For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became worthless, and their senseless hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles. Therefore God delivered them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.” - Romans 1:18-25

This is the word of the Lord. [May he write it on our hearts.] Amen.

So ultimately, I think it's easy for us to see ourselves in this passage. Or at least it should be. If it isn't, hopefully it will be by the time we're done. But this is our heart outside of Christ. As sinful human beings, our problem is that we ignore the obvious about God and try and find another way - any other way - to make sense of the world and keep our perceived control on our lives and our circumstances. And that happens through several different means, whether success or pleasure, or wealth, or experiences, or misaligned priorities. And ultimately as Christians, we would say that all of these things, theologically speaking, are idols. That is, they are things that we functionally worship because we prioritize them above God and obedience to him. And so this passage says that we tend to ignore the obvious things about God. And we seek out these other things. And the question that we might ask ourselves in light of that is why do we keep chasing what never satisfies us? As human beings, what is it about us that keeps us chasing after things that ultimately do not fix the problem, cannot fix the problem, and may promise comfort and resolution to all of life’s ills, but just end up leaving us empty and hoping and searching for more. And as we look at this text together what we will end up seeing is true satisfaction only comes by worshiping the Creator instead of the created things.

This passage illustrates humanity's rejection of God, not just by accident, but by a conscious choice. As sinful human beings it is our nature to pursue independence from God. Independence from his authority and rule. And ultimately, this leads us to create idols that promise to solve our problems, but ultimately fail. This passage serves as a warning to us about the danger of supposed self-sufficiency that ultimately comes at the expense of acknowledgment of our true dependency on our Creator and God. And so my hope in this is that looking at this passage will help us confront our own desire for autonomy where it exists in our hearts and help us to confront even maybe an unconscious belief that fulfillment can be found outside of God's will and design for our lives. And ultimately, this passage points us to Jesus as the ultimate solution to human rebellion. Jesus, more so than any other human who has ever lived, as one who had absolutely perfect communion with the Father, understood humanity's need for dependence on God. Because it is through that restored covenantal relationship in the gospel, that we find our identity and worth in him.

So let's take a deeper look at this passage together and unpack it in that light. Let's start in verses 18 through 20:

“For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made. As a result, people are without excuse.” (vv.18-20)

Now there's a couple different key concepts here that we need to take a look at. The first of the reality of God's judgment. This passage starts with an acknowledgment that God's wrath, his righteous judgment, is meted out against godless and unrighteous people. And so let's just stop and ask ourselves who are these godless and unrighteous people? Well it is true, that Paul here is talking about the whole world. Paul, is the Apostle to the Gentiles, probably has in mind the pattern of human behavior that he’s seen in a sinful world outside of Covenant Israel, but I'd say it's also true and he says explicitly elsewhere that not all Israel is Israel. In other words just because somebody is ethnically Jewish doesn't mean that they are righteous. What we need to realize here is that we are all born in unrighteousness. Nobody searches for God nobody seeks for God. Paul will say later in verse 3 that “There is no one who seeks God all have turned away all have become worthless there is no one who does what is good not even one.” This, fundamentally, is the human condition. We are born in sin. We exist in sin. We exist outside of covenant relationship with our Creator. And because of that we are unrighteous. And so Paul says that that unrighteousness that godlessness is actually the reason for the wrath of God. And the text says that in that unrighteousness in that state of being outside of covenant relationship with God, we use that unrighteousness to suppress the truth. Now how does that strike you? Sting a little bit? It ought to. That’s each and every one of us. Now, you know what we do when we hear that right? We suppress the truth. We say, “Well, yeah, but not me. I don’t do that. I’m completely objective.” Right? When our wrongdoing is exposed, there’s usually only three reactions. We either hide, we get defensive, or we confess. Adam and Eve initially hid, didn’t they. They hid from God as he was walking in the cool of the garden because they knew what they had done was wrong, and they didn’t want to be confronted by the God they had disobeyed. So they hid. Then they got defensive, didn’t they? When God speaks to Adam and said what’s this thing that you’ve done, he says, essentially, “It’s not my fault, it’s that woman you gave me.” When God confronted the woman, what did she say? “It wasn’t my fault, it was that snake you put in the garden.” We hide, we deflect, we deny, we obfuscate.

The other option - the righteous option is confession. 1 John 1:8 and 9 says

“If we say, “We have no sin,” we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” - 1 John 1:8-9

So according to 1 John, the way of righteousness is to confess sin. But humanity, in our natural sinfulness, doesn’t do that. Instead, we hide, and when that doesn’t work, we get defensive. And this passage in Romans tells us that we don’t just deny or hide from the truth, we actively suppress it. In other words, in our inner person, we know the truth.

You guys are probably familiar with that scene from the movie “A Few Good Men” where Cruise says he wants the truth and Nicholson responds with that iconic line, “You can’t handle the truth!” I think a lot of times we are tempted to think that if people know the truth they might not be able to handle it. But reality is that the issue isn’t our ability to handle the truth, it’s that in our natural sinful state, we don’t want the truth. Why? Because it exposes us and our true beliefs. There’s no atheists in foxholes, the saying goes. Even those who deny God’s existence know the truth. And if they don’t, it’s because they’ve lied to themselves and convinced themselves that they actually believe what they are peddling. We actively suppress the truth in our unrighteousness.

And so what exactly is the truth that we suppress? Well, human nature is to suppress truth in general, but specifically here Paul is talking about what we might call in theological terms “general revelation.” That is, the revelation that God has given to all of humanity about himself through what he has created. Not everyone knows about Jesus. There are still people living in this world that have never heard the name of Jesus. That’s why we do missions. That’s why we evangelize the lost. John Piper has said that “missions exists because worship doesn’t.” In other words, we evangelize and live on mission so that people will hear and be confronted with the truth, and in being engaged with the truth of the gospel, the Spirit enlivens the hearer in faith. And so we hold out hope, because Scripture tells us this will happen, that when this person whom we are evangelizing is faced with this truth about themselves, that instead of hiding, instead of deflecting, they agree with Scripture’s assessment of their condition and they confess and say, “Yeah, that’s me.” And when that happens, that person is made righteous and the world is filled with the worship of one more person made in the image of God. So that’s what we hope and pray happens, but there are still people who do not know Jesus. And so that message of Jesus and the gospels, over against “general revelation,” is what we might call “special revelation.” It is something special - something beyond - what is readily available to everyone in creation. And people reject special revelation too. I mean, my goodness, the Pharisees had Jesus himself and they weren't convinced. And if you didn’t know this, that is the unpardonable sin. Jesus said everything will be forgiven but he who blasphemes the Holy Spirit can never be forgiven. And that’s what the Pharisees were doing - they were blaspheming God by saying that the works that Jesus did were not by the power of God, but by the power of Satan. Talk about suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. They suppressed the truth in their unrighteousness and denied the reality of the only thing that could save them from their unrighteousness. And that’s why they can’t be forgiven - that’s what makes their sin unpardonable. It isn’t that it was too sinful or evil for God to forgive. It’s that Jesus is the fullest possible revelation of God - Jesus said to his disciples, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” John 14:6 “Jesus said to them, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” And so if nobody escapes their unrighteousness by having communion with God in Christ, what hope is there for the Pharisees that rejected Jesus? Nothing. There’s nothing left for them. That’s why they can’t be forgiven. They have rejected their only means of forgiveness because they suppressed the truth in unrighteousness.

Now, that’s special revelation, but remember, Paul here is talking about general revelation - or that truth which is shown to everyone - all humanity as inhabitants of planet Earth. What has he shown humanity? Well, it says he has shown them what can be known about God… His invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made. As a result, people are without excuse. In other words, look around you. Look at the mountains. Look at the stars. Look at the solar system. Look at the biodiversity of life on this planet. Look at the complexity of life, right down to the complexity of an individual cell, or for that matter an individual strand of DNA. It’s mind-blowing. It screams design. It screams intent. It screams power. All of this came from somewhere. And whatever or whoever made all this stuff is seriously intelligent and seriously wise, imaginative, and powerful, and strong. God’s invisible divine attributes. They can be clearly observed in creation. And we know this to be true. We all do. So we don’t have any excuses. And our suppression of the truth is counted against us as unrighteousness because deep down we all know better. Paul is not saying here that some folks just missed the message. He’s saying we got the memo and we decided to tear it up.

So I think it begs the question - why? Why are we this way? Why do we instinctively reject the God that created us? Why, when faced with all the evidence to the contrary, do we look at what God has made and conclude that it would be better, wiser, more effective or better suit our ends to reject the truth and to reject the God that created us? Well, the text we are looking at says it’s because of our unrighteousness. It is not merely sinful of us to reject God, but we reject God because of our sinfulness. We are broken and have deviated from God’s good design. We are broken because we have followed the pattern of Satan. And I’m going to return again to Genesis 3 because I want us to see the implications here. In Genesis 3 as you may know, we are told the story of how Adam and Eve fell into sin after being tempted by Satan and sin. And James 1, verse 14 makes clear that it is our own evil desires that entice us and draw us away from God, but in Genesis three Satan was the catalyst that introduced and encouraged this departure from righteousness. And it follows the same pattern as his own fall into unrighteousness.

So let’s look at Satan’s fall into sin. And for sake of time we aren’t going to say everything there is to say here, but I do want to take a look at two passages specifically, because I think they begin to show us the root of our problem. Satan’s fall from heaven is described symbolically in Isaiah 14:12-14 and Ezekiel 28:12-18. And these passages in their context were specifically referring to the kings of Babylon and Tyre, the church throughout its history has recognized that these passages are also referencing the spiritual power behind these earthly powers. And when we look at passages like this in conjunction with Jesus’ statements about how he witnessed Satan being cast from heaven, we can get maybe not a complete, but a sufficient, understanding of the circumstances surrounding his fall. Let’s look at Ezekiel 28:12-18 first, and I have underlined some key points for us to take note of. And it says this:

“You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every kind of precious stone covered you: carnelian, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, lapis lazuli, turquoise and emerald. Your mountings and settings were crafted in gold; they were prepared on the day you were created. You were an anointed guardian cherub, for I had appointed you. You were on the holy mountain of God; you walked among the fiery stones. From the day you were created you were blameless in your ways until wickedness was found in you. Through the abundance of your trade, you were filled with violence, and you sinned. So I expelled you in disgrace from the mountain of God, and banished you, guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones. Your heart became proud because of your beauty; for the sake of your splendor you corrupted your wisdom. So I threw you down to the ground; I made you a spectacle before kings. You profaned your sanctuaries by the magnitude of your iniquities in your dishonest trade. So I made fire come from within you, and it consumed you. I reduced you to ashes on the ground in the sight of everyone watching you.” - Ezekiel 28:12-18

Now, let’s look at how Isaiah 14:12-14 summarizes things:

“Shining morning star, how you have fallen from the heavens! You destroyer of nations, you have been cut down to the ground. You said to yourself, “I will ascend to the heavens; I will set up my throne above the stars of God. I will sit on the mount of the gods’ assembly, in the remotest parts of the North. I will ascend above the highest clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” - Isaiah 14:12-14

So taking all of that into consideration we are left with a picture of Satan pre- and post-fall and I just want us to take note of those items I underlined. We see that Satan was created by God with beauty and perfection. He was an anointed cherub or angel who was in the presence of God and from the day he was created, he was blameless in his ways until wickedness was found in him. What was that wickedness? Where did it come from? Well, it says he became proud. And it was for the sake of his own splendor, that he corrupted his wisdom. And in Isaiah it says that he said to himself that he would make himself like the Most High - that is God. So we have a creature, who was created in beauty and perfection, but who was found to be wicked when he decided he wanted to become like God.

Does that sound familiar? It’s the same pattern in Genesis 3 with Adam and Eve in the garden. Humanity was created in perfection. We had everything we ever needed. Until we see that the fruit of this one tree that God said we shouldn’t eat. So in Genesis 3:1-5 Satan asks Eve,

“Did God really say, ‘You can’t eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden. But about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, ‘You must not eat it or touch it, or you will die.’ ” “No! You will certainly not die,” the serpent said to the woman. “In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” - Genesis 3:1-5

You will be like God. That’s the root of our problems. That’s why we are the way we are. That’s why Satan fell from heaven and it’s why humanity was plunged into sin. We are prideful and arrogant, and we desire to be like God, rather than submitting to him as Master, Lord, and Creator. And so when we look at this larger passage in Romans and it talks about our idolatry, please understand this. We have one primary idol that drives all our other idolatry. That idol is us. It is our hubris and our pride and ultimately our desire to be our own God that leads to all the other idols we chase in our lives. And so Paul in Romans 1 is saying, “You know who God is and you as a created thing know your rightful place in relation to him as the Creator, but your unrighteousness is exposed because you suppress that truth. You decide you want to be God. And so you are without excuse.”

And Romans 1:21 and 22 confirm that, don’t they?

For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became worthless, and their senseless hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools. (vv. 21-22)

So the problem is not that humanity does not know God. The problem is that we do know enough about God to recognize him but we don’t want to know God in that way. We don’t want to glorify him. We don’t want to show him gratitude. We want to be our own gods. And in that, this passage says that our thinking becomes worthless - our judgment is clouded and our senseless hearts are darkened. We claim to be wise, but we are foolish. Rather than accepting what is right in front of our face - that God is God and we are not - the human predicament is that we instead get drawn away by our own pride, wanting to be our own gods and do our own thing. We want the sovereignty. We want the control. We want to be the rulers of our own lives and existence. But that’s foolishness, because that whole line of reasoning is predicated on a clouded judgment of who and what we are. The part we don’t see, because of our senseless, clouded judgment, is that we can never be like God. He is incomparable. He is the Creator, we are the created things. But we so buy into our own greatness and our own desire for self-determination, that we take that truth and we suppress it in our unrighteousness. It’s depressing, isn’t it? It is.

So what does humanity end up doing? Well, we want to self-determine. We want to solve our own problems. We aren’t so much motivated to fix our sin that separated us from communion with God, but we want to fix the aftereffects of sin, don’t we? We want to fix the pain, the brokenness, we want to make sure that we are secure, provided for, connected, flourishing, etc. etc. etc. We don’t want God, we want his benefits. And now, claiming to have become wise in our rejection of God, verse 22 says we have become fools.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools (v.22)

You want to know why that is? All the stuff we want - the love, the security, the provision, the connection - all of it…we already had it. We had everything we needed in the garden. But like fools, we rejected that and said, “Nah, we’re going to try to be God and do it ourselves.” And so when that breaks everything and we are left scrambling trying to fix everything that we have broken and picking up the pieces in a fallen, sinful world. The obvious solution is to return to God and to let him fix it. He’s the Creator. He designed it all and it was good. But we don’t do that. We know God exists, we know his power, ability and goodness, but we suppress that truth. We are being foolish because our unrighteous pride and arrogance has made us fools. So we don’t return to God, we don’t humble ourselves under his rule, and instead we scurry about our lives trying desperately to fix our own predicament. We don’t want God, we want his benefits. So, naturally, we try to replicate those benefits.

Verse 23 says we

and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles. (v.23)

So in our attempts to fix our own brokenness, we, having wanted to be like God, and wanting to self-determine - realize that doesn’t work and rather than returning to God and submitting to him, we create our own gods and submit ourselves to them instead. Do you guys see the irony in this? We have rejected our Creator in favor of self-autonomy, but then when that doesn’t work out, we end up tacitly admitting our own inability to be self-autonomous. Our natural response is to make something up to worship because we foolishly believe that if we worship these things they will fix our problems. John Calvin, the reformer, famously said that heart and mind is a “perpetual forge of idols.” That is to say, we are all idol factories. We generate one after the other. We are good at it. We have suppressed the truth that the real root of our problems is our desire for independence from God. And even when we become “independent” we never really get away from the fact that we were not designed to be gods. We were designed to serve and love God and to be loved by him. But we didn’t want that. So in an effort to fix what we’ve broken, we create idols to worship, assuming that they will provide all the benefits of communion with God without having to submit to his rule. And so this verse says that we create all different kinds of idols - ones resembling men, birds, four-footed animals, reptiles etc.

Now, you might be tempted to think, that’s not me, I don’t worship the Egyptian bird-man Horus, or a golden calf. I am not out here worshiping the fish-god Dagon. We have a tendency, given our modern, enlightenment sensibilities, to think that we have somehow grown beyond the primitive worship of animals and such. Well, a couple things on that point. That kind of explicit worship is not prevalent here in the states no, but take a trip around the world and look at the practices of many world religions. Look at false gods being worshiped today such as elephant-man Ganesha of the Hindu religion. This kind of thing still happens, don’t kid yourself otherwise. That’s the first thing. The second thing is that because these created deities are not tied to the objective truth, but rather to the needs and the desires of the individuals who created them, they are necessarily culturally informed. In other words, all these idols and false gods in Scripture, and in the world today, arise out of a need to solve a problem of a person or people. And so they take on the shape of the culture that creates them. Now the United States hasn’t been around that long historically speaking. But you might ask yourself why it is that, as a culture, we don’t worship false idols like these? And in the sense that we don’t by and large, as a culture, chase after deities modeled after birds, and animals, and reptiles etc., I think it can be said that we have been blessed that our founding as a country was closely tied to and influenced by the Christian faith. Our cultural history is not one of chasing after what we might consider “primitive” animalistic false gods. But - and this is key - that doesn’t make us a Christian nation, it doesn’t mean that our culture is Christian, and it certainly doesn’t mean that we are immune from idolatry.

Far from it. Our idols just take different shapes - we crave connection, so we idolize sex and spend all of our waking hours on social media. We crave security, so we idolize wealth. We crave identity, so we idolize our careers and our public image. We crave escape from brokenness, so we idolize substances that alter our minds with the promise of a momentary escape from the futility of our lived conditions. We crave control, so we idolize power and politics. Idolatry at its core, is worshiping anything as God, or practically speaking, valuing anything above God. And by that measure, our culture is full of idols.

Is it any wonder what the 10 commandments starts with a prohibition on idols? Exodus 20:3-4:

“Do not have other gods besides me. Do not make an idol for yourself, whether in the shape of anything in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth. Do not bow in worship to them, and do not serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, bringing the consequences of the fathers’ iniquity on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing faithful love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commands.” - Exodus 20:3-4

God has warned us about the dangers of idolatry. But we want independence. That independence from God breaks the world and causes problems. We want to fix those problems, but we don’t want God so we create gods of our own. And those gods are never able to fulfill us the way that God does.

Paul gives us the result. Romans 1, verses 24-25.

“Therefore God delivered them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.” (vv. 24-25)

Eventually, God gives us what we want. We want to suppress the truth to avoid submitting to the Creator, and so eventually, he lets us experience the consequences of our own wicked idolatry. In attempting to fix our need for connection through sex, for instance, we idolize it and it has dire consequences. It breaks our psyche even further than it already is. It degrades our bodies. Disease runs rampant. We are more broken than when we started because in our pride, arrogance and foolishness, we have strayed from the good design of God and have bought into the lie that we can do better as our own gods. And so we end up exchanging the truth of God for a lie, and worship and serve what has been created instead of the Creator.

This is the human condition. This is our condition. Left to our own devices we are proud, foolish, idol factories. So what is the solution? Well, I said earlier that there are generally three responses when we are confronted by our own sinfulness. Number one is we can try to hide it. Here’s the problem with that approach - we can’t hide from God. He knows all and sees all and nothing is hidden from his sight or understanding. A passage like this one in Romans that we have been looking at today makes that clear. This passage nails us. It shines a spotlight on the problem of our condition and exposes it in no uncertain terms. We can’t hide from it.

Ok, well if we can’t hide, the second option is we could deny the wrongdoing or try to deflect. But again, this passage doesn’t leave that option open to us. It’s too pinpoint accurate and if you are anything like me, when Paul describes the state of the human heart and the process of how we attempt to fix our own problems, it’s like looking in a mirror. To deny this reality would be to deny myself. And if that’s true of us, then denying it doesn’t fix the problem. It just ends up compounding the brokenness.

So that leaves us a third option. And that is, acknowledge that the root of our problem is that we have desired separation from God. We have desired independence. We have desired autonomy and self-sufficiency. We have desired God’s good gifts, without the submission to his rule and without the communion of relationship with him that makes those things possible. And so when we have broken things, rather than acknowledging this, we've suppressed the truth - denied reality, and doubled down on our rebellion, leading us to chase after all these other things that we have convinced ourselves will satisfy our needs, but in the end leave us more hungry, thirsty and broken than before. The third option is to acknowledge that and break away from that destructive pattern. And that means owning the reality of our sinful desires and decisions, and returning to God in humility. We confess our sins and when we do, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all of our unrighteousness. And he does that through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

For the brokenness to be restored, we must turn our natural inclinations for worship as created beings, away from created things, and toward our Creator. And our Creator is Jesus. As we approach him humbly, acknowledging our sinfulness - not hiding from or deflecting it - and trusting in faith that he will fix it because he has done everything necessary to fix it through his life, death, and resurrection, not only are we made new and restored, but we become the firstfruits of his restoration of all things where all the brokenness will be put to rights. This is the power of the Gospel. Jesus changing for you and in you and around you what you, by your own effort, could not change. This is why Paul isn’t ashamed of the gospel - because it truly is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. Let’s pray.

Lord Jesus - help us to see the hopelessness of our situation outside of you. You told us in your word that if we abide in you we will bear much fruit and that without you we can do nothing. Help us to remember that this morning and as we go from here this week. Give us a desire to know you better, to enjoy you more, and to find our fulfillment and satisfaction in you. Keep us, Lord, by your mighty power in the gospel. We ask it in Christ’s name and for his name’s sake. Amen.