From Idolatry to Depravity

God’s wrath has been revealed throughout History when Idolatry had become depravity

Romans 1:18–20 NIV84

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 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 men are without excuse.

Poor Choices and Bad consequences

Romans 1:22–23 NIV84

Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Today's Best Illustrations, Volumes 1-4 (Unknowing Idolators)

I believe a very large majority of churchgoers are merely unthinking, slumbering worshipers of an unknown God.

Charles Spugeon(mid 1800’s)

Today's Best Illustrations, Volumes 1-4 Wrong Image

When men stop worshipping God, they promptly start worshipping man, with disastrous results.

George Orwell(Mid 1900s)

Today's Best Illustrations, Volumes 1-4 The Loss of Morality

By losing morality, we’ve destroyed essence

Ravi Zacharias(2000)

What happens when God gives us what we deserve?

Romans 1:24–25 NIV84

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Today's Best Illustrations, Volumes 1-4 God’s Richter Scale

I think we are now living in the very decade when God may thunder his awesome “paradidomai” (I abandon, or I give [them] up) (Romans 1:24 ff.) over America’s professed greatness. Our massacre of a million fetuses a year; our deliberate flight from the monogamous family; our normalizing of fornication and of homosexuality and other sexual perversions; our programming of self-indulgence above social and familial concerns—all represent a quantum leap in moral deterioration, a leap more awesome than even the supposed qualitative gulf between conventional weapons and nuclear missiles. Our nation has all but tripped the worst ratings on God’s Richter scale of fully deserved moral judgement.

Romans 1:26–27 NIV84

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

When our focus moves from God to the images this world suggests, instead of being Spirit filled people become filled with depravity.

Romans 1:28–32 NIV84

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

1. No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin. 2. Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented. 3. Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.