[0:00:02] Brenton Grimm: This is Further, a weekly show for the People of Harmony Bible Church, where we seek to revisit and expand on Sunday sermons with the goal of growing deeper in biblical truth that transforms our lives. The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech. Night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words. No sound is heard from them, yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.
[0:00:41] Brenton Grimm: Welcome back to further. I'm Brenton Grimm and today I'm joined by Clay Baker and Matt Mitchell. Clay is our Burlington campus pastor and Matt is the campus pastor in Fort Madison. If you missed their sermons from this past Sunday, you can find them on Apple podcast spotify or our website. Welcome guys.
[0:01:00] Matt Mitchell: Hello.
[0:01:01] Clay Baker: Hey, thanks for having us.
[0:01:02] Brenton Grimm: Absolutely. So this last Sunday, we were in Romans 118 through 23 and and talked about the way God has revealed Himself through creation. Psalm 19 tells us that the mere existence of God's creation, though it doesn't use speech, communicates truth about the only true and living God. And Paul tells us in Romans that this knowledge is enough to leave us without an excuse for not honoring or giving thanks to Him.
[0:01:33] Brenton Grimm: So I'm going to start here. Matt, what is the scope of knowledge that's available to people through general revelation?
[0:01:42] Matt Mitchell: Yeah. Thanks, Brenton. The scope of knowledge of God made available to all people, according to our passage from this week that Pastor Clay preached at Danville and Burlington, and I had the privilege of doing that in Fort Madison, it comes down to God's two attributes that our text talks about his eternal power and his divine nature. And so verses 19 through 20, it says that God's plainly shown them to us, to all people, and they can be clearly perceived.
[0:02:10] Matt Mitchell: And it's all things that have been made. And so if you think back to Genesis, chapter one, everything God creates in the creation account the seas, the land, everything in them, plants, animals, mountains, people, man and woman. And from that we can tell that undoubtedly this points to that there's a benevolent Creator who is very powerful and he's set apart from the rest of his creation.
[0:02:39] Brenton Grimm: So in your sermon, you brought up two terms. There's one general revelation and then the second one was special revelation. What's the difference between those and what do you mean by that?
[0:02:50] Matt Mitchell: Yeah, so general revelation is just available to all people. It is the general way that God can be seen in all of creation. It's exactly what I just described. All things have been made. You look out at the universe and that's just this general way that God has revealed Himself. And then special revelation is specific ways that God intervenes and breaks into the timespace universe and shows Himself in a special way. So think about the Old Testament dreams, visions, prophets.
[0:03:26] Matt Mitchell: Like a great example right in front of me I have my Bible. So that's an example of special revelation. And then the most important example of that is Jesus Christ, the word made flesh. So that's the two difference between those two.
[0:03:42] Brenton Grimm: Yeah, and that's part of our mission as Christians, right, is to get the special revelation to people that don't have it.
[0:03:49] Matt Mitchell: Yes, absolutely. Get the special revelation into the places where they only have the general great clay.
[0:03:57] Brenton Grimm: Maybe I'll address this one to you. We talk a lot about God's wrath and this is really where it's going to start. But how do we reconcile God's love? I mean, we see Him as love itself. How do we reconcile that with wrath being poured out on? And maybe I'll get a little specific on people who some may consider innocent.
[0:04:28] Clay Baker: Yeah, well, I just think it's really helpful for us not to compartmentalize these things as it pertains to God. So it's easy for us in our finite human understandings to think about love and have ideas about what love is. And then we can also think about justice or wrath and what that is, what that means. But we perhaps have a tendency to separate those things or think about them separately when we need to remember that God is both loving and he is just at the same time.
[0:05:04] Clay Baker: And these aren't things that are separate within God. It is true of God in his entirety that he is love and he is justice. And as I mentioned in my sermon, god's wrath is an essential part of justice. If you're going to I think we all want justice to be done. We all want wrongs to be made right. We've felt that we've experienced that in our lives. When anybody has hurt us or wronged us, we instinctively want that to be made right.
[0:05:39] Clay Baker: And I think that's good. And I think that's from the Lord in a way that we are reflecting of Him as his image bearers. One thing we'll learn, though, in Romans later on is that it's God's to avenge. He's the one that institutes justice and pours out wrath, not us. But that's for another conversation. But I think getting back to the question, we instinctively want and hold on to God as a loving God.
[0:06:13] Clay Baker: I think we can also instinctively, though, grasp onto God as a just God. And so we need to understand that wrath is a part of that. He's both loving and he's just, and those things are both true. And as I mentioned in the sermon, those things really come together in the cross. That's how we can make sense of both of them. That's how it can be okay and right and good for God to be wrathful, because we see that his wrath was poured out on His Son Jesus, and he did that in love, in love for us. And so we'll see that at the end of Romans, chapter three.
[0:06:51] Clay Baker: But it's that God's pouring out of wrath upon His Son Jesus on the cross that allows Him to be both just. This is verse 26 of Romans three, both just and the justifier, the one who makes us right with Him in Christ. And in that way we see both his wrath and his love.
[0:07:15] Brenton Grimm: Yeah, that's good.
[0:07:17] Clay Baker: I think I think, though I maybe didn't answer. I know that was a long I was long winded there. But you had a part about what about people that are innocent or thought of as innocent.
[0:07:26] Brenton Grimm: Yeah. So this would relate back to people that maybe don't have access to the Gospel. I know that's a common objection to even the Christian faith is all these people are just going to hell because they've never heard. How is that fair?
[0:07:40] Clay Baker: Yeah, it's really heart wrenching. And I hope, though, that we see it clearly and that the Lord enables us to see the truth from His Word and then we think about it. Rightly. And so I think it is right and good to be heartbroken over those who don't have access to the Gospel, to be saddened by the thought that they are under the wrath of God. The wrath of God remains on them, as Jesus said in John, chapter three.
[0:08:14] Clay Baker: But we need to hold fast, hold firm to the truths of God's Word and then respond to those truths that we read about in our passage that really everyone does know there really is no innocent person. Everyone does have some knowledge of God, enough knowledge to reject Him, even if that's not enough knowledge to be saved. But then our right response or reaction to that is then to feel all the more urgency to proclaim the gospel.
[0:08:44] Clay Baker: And so instead of then disparaging God or wrongly accusing Him of being unjust or unloving, we remember again just how loving he is that he solved the problem, the sin problem for us by pouring out his wrath on his very own Son, which he didn't have to do. And so we remember that and we hold fast to that. And we're thankful for his grace that he's revealed Himself specially to us who believe through His Word, to the preaching of His Word through Christ. And then we want to be compelled by that, compelled by our love, hopefully for the lost personally or through the Church and through the support of others, by whatever means we can get the Gospel to those who need to hear it.
[0:09:30] Brenton Grimm: Yeah, and I think that when that objection comes up, it's usually not giving weight to God's holiness. I don't think that we always recognize how much weight that actually bears on us, how holy God is. And I think that we find ourselves in this question of fairness in America a lot, saying this isn't fair. But again, like we've heard a lot, the fair thing would be for all of us to go to hell. And so it's by God's grace that any are saved.
[0:10:12] Matt Mitchell: Yeah. If I could just speak to that too, man's sinfulness. We have to see our own sinfulness. And if we don't, then we walk around kind of with a moral snobbery, like, why would we're so good and these people that have never heard are so good, why would God condemn them? But if there was these morally upright, good people that have fulfilled the law, god wouldn't condemn them. But that's not what's true. And Romans one, two and first part of three, you're going to show us that Isaiah 53, all of us, like sheep, have gone astray, right?
[0:10:46] Brenton Grimm: Absolutely.
[0:10:48] Matt Mitchell: That's why this has been so important to me, because I ask questions like that too from time to time and have to be reminded of what God's word says about my own state.
[0:10:57] Brenton Grimm: Yeah. And Clay, like you were saying, that gives the church an imperative to go and to get the Gospel into the places where it's not.
[0:11:09] Clay Baker: That's right.
[0:11:10] Brenton Grimm: Yeah. That needs to be one thing that comes out of this, I think, is seeing the need and fulfilling that. I think I'll pose both of you this one. What does Paul mean by who? By their unrighteousness, suppressed the truth? Is this a conscious decision that people make?
[0:11:33] Matt Mitchell: Clay’s pointing to me that I answer this first.
[0:11:36] Clay Baker: You had the good stuff that you can see the illustration in your sermon about suppression. The fire pit lid.
[0:11:43] Matt Mitchell: That's right. The word is to hold something down, to smother something. And so it's like, my friend's got a fire pit, he sticks this lid over the top of it and it just quenches the fire entirely. Or somebody put a cap on the top of a candle or something. And so through people's unrighteousness, they're holding down, they're suppressing the truth that they have. And so, yeah, it's kind of a yes and no, depending on how you look at it, but for sure a yes. Our text says that mankind has made this terrible exchange, god's glory for images.
[0:12:18] Matt Mitchell: And then we'll see in verses 24 to 25 that kind of bridge the two weeks here that says mankind has exchanged the truth about God for a lie. And then just the no part of that will get answered in Romans five, where, because of Adam's sin, we've all been born into sin. So we're just bent on our unrighteousness and apart from God. That's what we'll always choose.
[0:12:42] Clay Baker: Yeah. And people may not be thinking of it in these terms or the terms you presented Brenton, as in their disobedience or in their sin, that they are actively, consciously suppressing the truth of God. But I think we can all relate to actually suppressing the truth if we think about our own sin. When I sin, how easy it is for me, or how quickly I go to some kind of defense or self justification or rationalization of that, when really I think that is at least part of what Paul's talking about in suppressing the truth.
[0:13:16] Clay Baker: We all go our own way, and it's at some point or another and over and over again, and it's not God's way. And we all make excuses for that, justify ourselves for it, try to rationalize our behavior. And I do believe that that is at least part of what's in view there when Paul's saying that we all suppress the truth.
[0:13:36] Brenton Grimm: Yeah, and I like how you brought that back to us, even as Christians. And I think that's kind of a disclaimer I wanted to put on this episode here is that we are not trying to look out on society and say, these people are suppressing truth and sinful. No, we take responsibility for this, too. This is all of us without Christ. And so I wanted to make that clear there.
[0:14:01] Clay Baker: Absolutely.
[0:14:05] Brenton Grimm: You talked about it earlier. Eternal power and divine nature. That's something that was referred to by Paul here. Can you give us a definition of that?
[0:14:15] Matt Mitchell: yeah, so eternal power, I actually think that's a better, more simple definition than the one you'd find, like in a theology textbook that would say God's omnipotent, which just means he's all powerful, he's unlimited in his power, he's able to do anything. And I think about somebody who's an earthly ruler and has some power, like a president who has four years of a term, but that's finite. There's an end date, but the Lord has this eternal power and this eternal reign that will never end and has always existed.
[0:14:48] Matt Mitchell: And then divine nature, that can kind of wrap up all the characteristics of God. But really it just comes down to God is not like us. He is holy, he's set apart. He's totally different than his creation.
[0:15:04] Brenton Grimm: Yeah, that's good. Thank you. All right, Clay, given Paul's assertion that everyone knows God and yet still rejects him, how should this change our approach to atheists who claim unbelief in God?
[0:15:23] Clay Baker: Yeah, so an atheist actively consciously believes that there is no God. And I think what Romans One does for us is it helps us understand what's really going on there. So the atheist has concluded there is no God, but that doesn't mean that they don't have some awareness of God and haven't consciously suppressed Him in his truth. And in fact, I would argue that they've probably done quite a bit more to suppress that truth.
[0:15:56] Clay Baker: I think as I was going over the sermon and delivering the sermon, I really do think an awareness of God, that there is a God and that he's powerful and that he's God and I'm not. That's what we're talking about. This eternal power and divine nature that we're all aware of, I think that comes pretty naturally, pretty intuitively for most of us. Kind of like that childlike faith that Jesus talks about.
[0:16:24] Clay Baker: I think we can all relate to that. But somewhere along the way, and probably starting somewhere in adulthood or as somebody gets older, they get exposed to other ideas or they pursue other lines of thinking and they have to actively, I think, convince themselves that there is no God. And I just think that would be harder because it's not just nature, but nature is a big one. But if you think about physics or math, they're just kind of a structure of things and there's an order behind everything.
[0:17:02] Clay Baker: If you think about music and how music just makes sense and you don't even understand it, if you think about relationships of love that you have and how that just feels right and good, there's just these universal things that are the backdrop of our existence. And they all cry out to a power, a God who knows way more than I do, knows everything and is way more powerful than I am and is there? I'm sad for the atheist, and I think what I learned from Romans One is they've actually done a lot of mental gymnastics, so to speak, to convince themselves that there is no God.
[0:17:42] Brenton Grimm: That's interesting. Matt, you had the example of the fire pit, but I was reading the commentary this week and the example that he used was a spring. So you're trying to push down a spring, but that thing is always pushing back up at you. And so that reminds me of what you're talking about here, that it's almost hard and you have to do some mental gymnastics to get around the obvious. Okay, this one I'm going to kind of pose to both of you.
[0:18:11] Brenton Grimm: You both talked about idolatry in this, and I think it's very relevant to the passage. Clay, you brought up specific things like achievement, entertainment, and image. Could you guys give some of your thoughts on how we might identify and start to root those out in our lives?
[0:18:33] Clay Baker: Yeah, one way to look at it positively as it kind of gets back to Brad Bigney's definition. I mentioned Bigny's book gospel treason in my sermon. He defines an idol as anything or anyone that captures our hearts, minds or affections more than God. So the positive perspective being like, what are you worshiping? What is your mind? What is your heart going after that isn't God? But from a negative perspective to get at the same thing, identifying the heart idol at work, you can think of it in terms of sin, namely, like, what are you willing to sin to get?
[0:19:15] Clay Baker: What do you sin for? Or when you don't get something, what causes you to sin? So do you sin to get it, or do you sin when you don't get it? That's another way to identify a heart idol. And and just practically, I've heard Chris Carr mentioned this in a sermon before. Our emotions can be really good indicators of heart idols. He's used the analogy before about a thermometer. Like, our emotions are a thermometer of where our heart is.
[0:19:47] Clay Baker: They tell us the temperature. And so it's just a good practice for me, for me to ask myself in a moment, what am I feeling right now? Identify the emotion for me. One example might be anger. What am I feeling right now? I'm feeling angry. Interesting. Why? And then ask myself, why am I feeling angry? That's another way of saying, why am I sinning in this moment? And as I ask myself those simple but deep questions, that's the beginning of rooting out the heart issue.
[0:20:25] Brenton Grimm: Yeah. Some of it is the practice of taking our emotions captive. We're not allowing our emotions to rule us.
[0:20:34] Clay Baker: Yeah. I mean, emotions are not necessarily bad things. Emotions are part of being human, and they can be a helpful gauge or thermometer of what's going on in our heart, but exactly. We don't want to be slaves to our emotions or in bondage to them, but we want to apply the gospel to them and let Christ rule and reign in our hearts.
[0:20:57] Brenton Grimm: Absolutely.
[0:20:58] Matt Mitchell: Yeah. And if I were to add to that, I would just say I really agree with exactly what Clay just said. And I think our tendency is to be moving too fast and not taking the space and the time to allow the Holy Spirit to reveal to us those idols in our life. And so, just like I said, walking through, what are the emotions, what's driving me, what am I wanting? And creating enough space for the Holy Spirit actually to lead us to the answer and back to God's word and how God would desire for us to be walking in obedience and praise the Lord that he gives us. Grace.
[0:21:41] Matt Mitchell: And he wants us to understand what those things are so that we can Uproot them and he can have prominence as number one again, where only he deserves.
[0:21:49] Brenton Grimm: Yeah. So just being intentional and vigilant against our idols and paying attention to what is captivating our hearts.
[0:21:58] Matt Mitchell: Yeah, absolutely.
[0:22:00] Brenton Grimm: All right, we're going to wrap up on this one, and I want both of your thoughts on it, but thinking practically. Verse 21 says that these people did not honor God. They did not give thanks to Him as they should. What does that look like as a Christian? To honor God and give thanks to Him?
[0:22:26] Matt Mitchell: Yeah.
[0:22:26] Matt Mitchell: I'll dive in and say that verse 22 has really stood out to me from this past week of preaching and then just application for my own life and how I think our congregation has kind of been responding. Even during the sermon, people knew they resonated with this, claiming to be wise. They became fools. And both Pastor Clay and myself mentioned Adam and Eve and how where everybody goes wrong and always has.
[0:22:53] Matt Mitchell: And if it was us in the garden, we would have done the same exact thing. We claim to be wise in our own eyes, we have that pride that we know better than God and that immediately turns us into a fool. So that's the negative side of it. But the positive would be poor in spirit, like we learned about all through Sermon on the Mount, to be humble and just to to recognize that's what the text is just, you know, screaming out to us is that there is an immortal God, and we have exchanged him for a bunch of cheap knock offs. And how prideful is that?
[0:23:32] Matt Mitchell: So just getting to that humble place that, oh my word, God, you're there. And life is about you. It's not about me. You're definitely taking a baby step in the right direction of pleasing the Lord.
[0:23:45] Clay Baker: Yeah. Brenton, as you asked that question, how do, how do we honor God in our lives? I thought of Romans twelve one. And so this is, this is a real important pivot point, or the pivotal point, pardon the pun, in the letter where Paul shifts from unfolding all the, this glorious doctrine related to the gospel and then he starts getting really practical for most of the rest of his letter. But Romans Twelve One says, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, wholly and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
[0:24:25] Clay Baker: And it's this idea that our bodies, and not just our physical bodies, but it's all of us, we are a living or we are to be a living sacrifice. And so I know something that's true of me when I think of living for the Lord or honoring Him, I can so often get surface level or behavioral or compartmentalized to thinking about what my life looks like on a Sunday morning or having certain things that I do for God in my service or in my devotions.
[0:25:06] Clay Baker: And what Romans Twelve One reminds me of is that all of myself is to be a living sacrifice to God. So my mind, my body, my soul, my heart, everything about who I am belongs to Him and should be for Him. And this is in all parts of my life, not just Sunday morning, but every day during the work day, during the after work hours. I belong to him. My life is for Him, should be a living sacrifice that is honoring and pleasing to Him.
[0:25:39] Clay Baker: And Paul puts a lot of meat on those bones in chapters 1213 and on so we can get into some more specifics and what that looks like. But I think that's been a really helpful thing for me to understand and remember that God wants all of me and he wants all of me all the time.
[0:25:58] Brenton Grimm: Yeah. We are not our own. We belong to God. That's great. All right, well, thank you Clay and Matt, for being here. I appreciate you coming here and I also appreciate your sermons from this weekend. Guys, I hope this episode has been helpful to you again. I'll ask you if you do know someone that would benefit from the show, please share it with them. You can do it. You can share it by going to furtherpodcast.com
[0:26:30] Brenton Grimm: and that would be appreciated. We'll talk to you next time.
[0:26:33] Clay Baker: Thanks Brenton.
[0:26:34] Brenton Grimm: Thank you.