Romans chapter 1, we'll be reading from verse 18-23. Romans chapter 1, verse 18-23. And I'm reading out of the ESV. "The wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness oppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.

For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made, so they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things." Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You again for this morning. We thank You, Lord God, for the Chung family. We thank You for the many families, Lord, who are having children.

We thank You, Lord God, for blessing our church, Lord, with many graces. We ask, Lord, that with all the blessings that You give us, that it would return to You in praise and adoration, knowing that every good gift comes from You. Help us, Lord God, to recognize who You are in the midst of all that You've given.

So for that end, we pray that You would open our ears, that You would soften our hearts. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. You know, as we've been talking about in the book of Romans, that Paul has been introducing the Gospel to the Romans here, and we talked about how in chapter 1 and all the way up to chapter 3, verse 20, his main point is that we recognize why we need Christ.

And without recognizing what it is that we have received, what it is that we have been saved from, we can say it's grace, but we don't recognize it as amazing grace. You know, we worship a God, we worship Him, but it's not coming out from an over, an abundance of thankfulness, what God has given.

You know, I remember, I know Jeremy is sitting here, but I remember when Jeremy was a little kid, you know, when he was about 2 1/2 to 3 years old, back when we used to live in Corona, we used to have a swimming pool in our backyard, and his two older cousins, they already knew how to swim, so they would jump in the water and go back and forth, and Jeremy didn't know how to swim at that time.

Well, right around that time, you know, this one particular day, and I forget which day it was, but this one particular day, my father had a heart attack a week before, so he was in the hospital for a period, and then we actually picked him up, and on the way back home, we stopped at our house.

And so my dad was resting in our backyard, you know, like just resting before we sent him back home. And so we were all inside, and all of a sudden, we hear this splash in the swimming pool, so we run out to see our dad, you know, we're all kind of freaking out, because he just had a heart attack, and we see our dad in the pool, you know, fetching Jeremy out of the water.

And so basically what happened was, you know, his cousins were swimming, and they went inside, and Jeremy wanted to imitate them, so he got on the slide, and he slid into the pool, and he was face down. So the only adult that was outside was my dad, so he just jumped into the pool.

And again, you know, he just had a heart attack. He was in the hospital for five days. So he was soaking wet, and he came out, and I remember when my dad pulled him out of the water, that we were expecting Jeremy to be like, you know, choking and crying, and pulled him out of the water, and he just walked out, and said, "Thanks, Grandpa," and then he just walked in.

So obviously, we were watching that, and we were like, "That kid has no idea just what happened." You know, this grandfather, I mean, after five days of being in the hospital, he ran in, he sprained his legs, you know, sprained his ankle, fetching him out of the water, basically saved his life.

You know, but he's just like, "Oh, thanks, Grandpa," and then he just walked in, tiled off, and went out and played with his cousins. Again, you know why I share this story, because sometimes we receive salvation in a flippant way, and we just kind of, "Thanks, God, thanks for saving me," you know, "We praise you," and then we go home like nothing happened.

If we don't recognize what it is that we have in Christ, what it is that we have been saved from, our response would be just as flippant. "Thanks, God," and you say, "Oh, we talk about His grace, we talk about salvation and going to Heaven, but it doesn't make any effect on us because we don't recognize exactly what it is that we have been saved from." And again, you know, when my children are younger, you know, one of the things that I used to do to discipline them is that if they did something, I would ask them, "What do you think you deserve for this, for what you just did?" You know, every once in a while, they'll say something, you know, horrendous, and I'll say, "Oh, maybe I shouldn't eat for three days," or something like that, and I'll say, "You know, that's too harsh." You know?

But when they say something like that, I know that they understand the gravity of what they did. Maybe they hit their sister, or they lied about something, and so they are broken for what they did, so they know they deserve the punishment. And so that's all I wanted to hear, is that I wanted to hear that they know the gravity of what they did.

So again, every once in a while, they'll say something, and then I would kind of have to show grace, and say, "No, no, no, we're not going to go that far, but you understand what you did." But then every once in a while, they'll do something, and then I'll say, "What do you think you deserve?" And then they'll give me something flippant, like, you know, instead of having two candy, let me just have one, or something like that, or, "Oh, I won't eat ice cream after dinner." You know, that would be the punishment.

And then I know that they don't fully recognize what they did. Then I have to sit down and explain to them, "Do you know why that is so hurtful? Do you know what happens? Do you know the consequence of this behavior?" And then they would adjust, "Okay, then maybe I won't eat for two days," or something.

You know, then they would adjust their punishment, right? But that's how I know that they recognize exactly what they did. So whatever punishment is coming their way, to make sure that it's not just punishment, they're kind of like, they don't really fully get it, you know? But, so that whatever punishment it is that comes their way, that they fully understand why that was coming.

See, in our Christian faith, when we talk about the judgment of God, the scripture says the reason why the righteousness of God is being revealed, is because the wrath of God is being revealed. And when we don't recognize the wrath of God, and why we are deserving of this wrath, then even the righteousness of God that is revealed, we're not going to fully comprehend it.

In order to be able to recognize His righteousness being revealed, and I'm not talking about mentally, I'm talking about spiritually, emotionally. To truly be able to recognize and see that, we need to first recognize that you and I, every single one of us, we're deserving of this wrath that is being revealed.

Again, we talked about how when we think about wrath, we normally think of thunder. We think of some sort of a mass, you know, war going on, a mass death or shooting. So, it's only when we see things like 9/11, I know, you know, just a few days ago, we commemorated the, what is it, 14th year of 9/11, and some of you guys may have been old enough to recognize and be able to fully be impacted by everything that was going on that day.

Watching videos of people screaming in horror, and watching again the buildings falling down, it just kind of reminded me of all the emotions that were going on that day. But when we think of the wrath of God, typically we think of that kind of stuff. But on a day-to-day basis, we don't really think about that.

We think of, you know, it's a great day, and we don't want to ruin it by thinking about the wrath of God. But the scripture says that the righteousness of God is being revealed because the wrath of God is being revealed. And we talked about that last week, how the most tangible evidence of the wrath of God is the death, the universal death of mankind, which God did not intend.

And every single day, I know it's a morbid way to think about life, every single day we're getting closer and closer to what is inevitable. And we try so hard to hold on to our youth, but only for a while. You know, some of you young guys are boasting about your energy on the court, and you make fun of these older guys, you know, saying, "I can't keep up." Sooner or later, you're going to be there too, you know.

Sooner than later, you know, you're going to be there too, you know. That's inevitable. We said that the wrath of God is being revealed. The wrath of God is being revealed in the futility of life. You know, no matter how hard we try, we think like, if we do this, then everything is going to go our way.

And you'll see, in life, ask anybody who's lived 30, 40 plus years, if life turned out exactly the way they wanted. Every single person will say, "Only if I did this, only if I did that." Futility of life, no matter how hard we work. And every single person thinks that it's them.

It's not just them. Every human being in this world thinks the same thing. And then third, and finally, we talked about, which we're going to get into next week, about what the ultimate judgment of God is when He finally just lets you go. And you know, the sad thing is, a lot of times when God lets you go, a lot of times, they don't even recognize it.

Because you resist God, you kind of like, picked and chose, like, "This I'm going to follow, this I don't agree with, this I'm going to do, this I'm not going to do." And you don't realize that you don't have 30% of God or 80% of God. You have none of God.

You don't pick 70% of God and 30% choose to not. He said, "Either you will follow me, either you are with me, or you are against me." There is nothing in between. And so when God chooses to turn you over during this life, you know, we talked about that last week, where your heart gets hardened to the point where the grace of God is no longer affecting you at all.

And you kind of, just kind of coast along in the Christian culture, and that's about it. And then the final result of this handing over happens after we die, where God's grace is withdrawn, and His presence is no longer active, at least not in His grace. And all of this stuff is being revealed.

And the reason why it's being revealed in that way is what he's getting to in verse 9, or 19. He says, "Because the truth of God is being suppressed by unrighteousness." And he says, "For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them." God has made it plain to them.

"For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and His divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world, and the things that have been made, so they are without excuse." You know, most of you who went to secular universities, you probably read that the secular universities tend to lean left.

They tend to be more atheistic. And so if you've gone to secular university, you almost kind of come out thinking that science and Christianity somehow doesn't mix. That if you pursue science, if you have questions and you pursue it too hard, somehow you're going to end up questioning, "Do I really believe this?" And "Can it be?" So you kind of keep the scientific aspect of it very vague.

You leave it up to the professionals. I'm just going to stick to theology. But that's not what the scripture says. Scripture actually says, "He left His imprint on His creation." So according to scripture, the more you study science without bias, the more you take a deep look at His creation, that you're going to see a greater imprint of God, not the opposite.

Let me give you an example. Okay, I have an article here. How many of you have ever seen the show "This Old House"? Okay, a few of you. And you guys are all a little bit older than other people. All right, so "This Old House" is a show basically-- it's a home improvement show.

And at the end of the show, the host would come out, and they would bring a little product from 100 years ago, 150 years ago, and they'd say, "What do you think this is used for?" And every single one of them would take a guess. "Oh, that's this, and that's this." So I brought something from my house to get you to take a guess.

What do you think this is made of? All right, let's keep going. Just take a guess. Somebody in the first service said CD holder. I could see it. One end of a CD holder, maybe. Okay, so you guys are confused. What did you say it was? Jack stand, what is that?

Okay, that's good. All right, so that's exactly what this is. Usually the show doesn't go like that. They all get it wrong. Thanks for helping with the illustration. Anyway, basically what this is, if you've ever had a flat tire, you know how you put it under the car and then you raise the car up, but they don't use this anymore because so many cars would fall out, and it's not stable.

If it's not on solid ground, if you don't hook it on the right thing, it kind of slips out, right? So it's kind of dangerous, so they stopped making this. So those of you who've only been driving for the last 10 years, you probably haven't seen this in your car, right?

So basically what this is, you put it under the car and they would jack it up, and then one by one, you would raise your car. That's what this is. This is one end of it. I have no idea why I had this in my garage, but I looked for something that I thought maybe you would have a hard time figuring out.

But the point of my story is that when they have that, and they bring these products out, they would guess. It was made for this, it was made for that. I've never seen, in all the years that I've been watching this show, I've never seen somebody come out and say, "I think it's just part of nature." I think in billions of years, the metal particles just kind of flew together and created this.

So nobody actually made this, it just happened. Now if I told you that that's what this was, there's no purpose, I just found this, I went digging, I just found it, and it's just part of nature. It just happened. And after billions of years, it just kind of somehow figured out, got together.

Now this is just a piece of metal. This is just a piece of metal. It doesn't think, there's less complicated thing to bring this together than a little tip of your finger has more details and more complex than this. Yet, the world tells us that everything around us, the universe, the human being, the eyeball, the fingertips, all of this happened by chance.

You would never accept if I said this was just by chance. It just showed up. It had no purpose. Nobody made it. It just happened. And yet, all the great supposed great minds have concluded that that's the case. And so many Christians hear this and it's like, "Can I be a Christian and believe this and not believe this?" Well, the scripture makes it very clear that God left his imprint on creation.

There's a man named William Dembski. He wrote a book called "Design Inference" and was published by Cambridge University Press. And in it, he describes this and how supposedly these great minds of the world in our generation, how they are suppressing the truth that many other scientists claim. Richard Dawkins, I know many of you probably heard his name before.

He's an atheist who goes around and debates other Christians. And basically says, "If you're a Christian, you're stupid." Basically, that's what he says. And this is one of the quotes that he has. He says, Richard Dawkins claims that, "Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." And the reason why he quotes it and says there's an appearance of design is because you may naturally look at, and the more you study it, it seems like there has to be some kind of design.

But what he's arguing is, you've got to throw that away. You may naturally think that way, but you've got to suppress that because God doesn't exist. He quotes another man, Francis Crick, who is a co-discoverer of DNA. And he says this, "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." In other words, you may study in biology and how the body works and all that stuff and naturally conclude there must be a design, but you must suppress this.

Because God doesn't exist. Because he already concluded God doesn't exist. So even though all these things must point to some kind of intelligent design, you have to get that out of your system. In fact, many, many scholars, many physicists, engineers, scientists, and I'm going to read you some of the quotes that he quotes.

Tony Rothem, a physicist, says this, "When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it." Paul Davies, a British astrophysicist, says, "The laws of physics seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design.

The universe must have a purpose." Vera Kistiakowsky, and I'm butchering his name, he's an MIT physicist, he says, "The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine." Arthur Shalau, professor of physicist at Stanford University, he was a Nobel Prize winner of physics in 1981, and he says this, "It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how.

The only possible answers are religious. I find a need for God in the universe and in my own life." And then finally, Werner Von Braun, pioneer of rocket engineering, says, "I find it as difficult to understand scientists who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science." In other words, he's saying that these two things are not in contradiction.

And that's exactly what the scripture says. That God deliberately left His imprint on His creation. Just like if we were to look at this and we wanted to find out what this is. You say, "Well, we find out it's a car jack. And if we wanted to find the creator of this, we can find something.

He must know something about cars. He may have been hired by an automobile industry. Maybe he has some kind of engineering background because in order to know if this is going to work, obviously plastic is not going to do. So he needs to have some knowledge of material science." So based upon just this one little thing, we can deduce certain things about the creator.

Looking at the complexities of the universe, the scripture says that what may be known about God, His invisible attributes, His power, His divine nature, have been clearly seen because God deliberately left an imprint of Himself in creation. Psalm 119, 1-6, it says, "The heaven declares the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork.

Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words whose voice is not heard. Their measuring line goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them He has set a tent for the sun." Again and again, scripture declares that God left His imprint.

Now why did He do that? Now obviously, you can't be saved by looking at the world and say, "Oh, you know, it seems like God does exist." Nobody can be saved by general revelation. But Paul describes in Acts 17 what the purpose of this general revelation is. Acts 17, 24-28, it says, "The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is He served by human hands as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all mankind like the breath and everything.

And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and boundaries of their dwelling." And here, this is the point, verse 27, after he says all of this, "God is the creator of all of this, of mankind, of nations," verse 27, "that they should seek God in the hope that they might feel their way toward Him and find Him.

Yet He is actually not far from each one of us, for in Him we live and move and have our being." He said the reason why He left His imprint upon His creation is so that they may recognize, that you and I would recognize, there must be a designer.

And this designer must be a powerful designer. That maybe He's a creative designer. And He left all of this so that we may find ourselves. Again, the general revelation is not the gospel. But He said the general revelation would lead us to look for Him. If there is a designer, who is He?

Can I have a relationship with Him? And I remember when I was saved, when I made the sinner's prayer, that was a thought that I had. I always said that I believed because I was raised in a Christian home. But He was not a personal God. Until I saw a group of Christians who were praying like God really listened.

And then I started asking myself, "Does that God really listen? Is He somebody I can personally know?" And that's when I made, first time I prayed, I mean I prayed all my life, before meals, at Sunday school. The first time in my life I prayed, "God, if You're really there, I want to know You." And that's what caused my eyes to be opened.

And the scripture says, God left His imprint for that purpose. So that we would recognize that there is this powerful being, this divine being, that we would search our way with Him. And then He concludes by saying, "Yet He actually is not far from you. For in Him we live and move and have our being." If you are genuinely interested in God, you don't have to go far to see.

We can give credit to the scientists and say, "You know what? The reason why we woke up this morning is because the scientists figured out how to keep this earth rotating at the exact same speed for thousands and thousands of years. And the reason why we didn't burn out in the night is because they somehow figured out how to keep the earth at the exact distance.

Not too far, not too close. And constant all the time. So either we can wake up and say, "I woke up because human beings figured out how to live. We figured out how to keep the oxygen here. We figured out how to eat. We figured out how to live.

And that's why we were produced. We figured out how to make babies. And that's why we have babies." Or you can recognize that the only reason why you and I live and breathe and wake up and go to sleep is because there is a God who created all of this.

And so that's what Paul says, that if you are willing, He is not far. He is near. And God deliberately made it that way. But here's the punchline. Even though he left all of this in print, the scripture says, "For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking." And because they became futile in their thinking, they became darkened in their heart, claiming to be wise.

Sounds a lot like today, doesn't it? Claiming to be wise. You know, they say, "Ah, you Christians, you don't know anything." And then when you sit down and actually try to have an intelligent conversation, they can't go beyond the prejudice. They claim to be wise, but they became fools.

They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man. Before we say, "Oh, okay, that's why the Gentiles are judged. That's why they were judged." We may look at that and say, "Well, thank God we're not like them." Let's take a step back and look into what they struggled with.

He said, "They exchanged the glory of God for foolishness of idols." Idolatry. You know, I always question, why did the nation of Israel struggle with idolatry? Did you ever see pictures of the idols that Israel struggled with? They are ugly. You know what I mean? If it was a Lamborghini, I was like, "Okay, I can see.

I see why." You know what I mean? It was something, but they're ugly. It seems like some third grade art project that failed some contest, and that's the thing that they chose to be the idol. And Israel constantly walking by, "Oh, maybe I'll worship that." When I first started reading, it didn't make any sense to me, because here are these people that God called "apple of my eye." He delivered them.

They saw the miracle of the 10 plagues. They saw God open up the Red Sea and swallowing up their enemies, gave them supernatural food and water, protected them from their enemies, walked into Jericho without a single man being lost. They saw all the miracles of God. God coming in His Shekinah glory.

And yet, every time they were presented by these idols, they said, "Oh, maybe we'll worship that." What was it about these idols that was so attractive that they would do something so foolish? It is foolish, and that's exactly what the Scripture says. They became darkened in their heart and futile, dumb in their thinking.

But why was it so attractive? What was the first idol that Israel wrestled with? Do you remember? Golden calf, right? The golden calf. As soon as they come out, Moses goes up to the mountain and he receives the 10 commandments, and the people start stirring up, saying, "Why is he taking so long?" Right?

So they became antsy, like, "He left us out in the desert. Oh no, who's going to protect us?" And so Aaron has a great idea, so let's get all the gold and melt it and make it into a golden calf. And then he presents it to them, and then when he presents it to them, he says, "Here's your Yahweh that you've been waiting from the sky.

Here He is." So it wasn't straight up idolatry, it was kind of syncretism. They were kind of mixing some of the Egyptian background. But the reason why, why this golden calf? Right? All of a sudden this golden calf appears. Not only appears at that time, do you remember that golden calf?

All throughout Israel's history it became a stumbling block. Do you remember when the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom splits in half after Solomon? Because of David's sin, the kingdom splits in two. So Rohoboam takes the south, and Jeroboam goes up north, and he takes ten of the tribes with him.

But he doesn't want the Israelites in that side to come to Jerusalem to worship, because he's afraid if they come to Jerusalem that he's going to lose his people. So he sets up this golden calf worship in Dan and Bethel, and he said, "You don't have to go there, you can worship this calf here." And he presents it again, "Here's your Yahweh, worship it." And all throughout Israel's history they were stumbling over this worship of this golden calf.

Now, I know a calf is not the ugliest of the animals, you know what I mean? Maybe they chose the best looking animal, I don't know. Right? But when you look back in history, the worship of a bull or a calf in Egypt was one of their popular idols.

And the reason why is because it represented fertility. Now you have to think, at that time, calves and animals represented riches. So it's like today, it's basically worshiping money. So if they worshiped this idol, they were thinking that somehow the blessing of whatever is going to come through this animal.

So if you were to think of it today, it's kind of like chasing after money. Right? Because in their mind, if they worship Yahweh, and then He leads us out to the desert, and we're not seeing the milk and honey flowing, maybe if He's not going to do it, maybe this calf is going to do it.

And we'll worship it. And they never fully, completely got rid of it. Even in times of revival, they would do this and they would kind of keep that. So we can kind of see, you know, we talk about idols, "Oh, we don't do that. We don't have any golden calves or anything set up in our backyard.

We're too sophisticated." Right? You don't have any ashtray. I mean, if you are, you're in big trouble. Right? You know, Christians, non-Christians will make fun of you. But you know what an idol, idol basically is replacing God with something else. Just like he says, instead of worshiping the Creator, you worship the creation in the image of us.

So whatever will suit us, we go after. So you don't have to have an idol. You don't have to have a physical product. Whatever is in your heart that you worship becomes your idol. You have the calf worship and then the two other worship when they go into the promised land that they struggle with.

You have the ball worship, and you know that. Right? The ball worship keeps coming up. And you know what ball worship was? It was a god of, you can guess, fertility. Right? Again, god of fertility. And so they were easily, if they came and then God didn't provide for them what they wanted, they basically dropped him and went to ball worship.

Look at the Canaanites. Look how well they're doing. And maybe the reason why they're flowing with milk and honey is because they're worshiping this ball. So that's why they were so tempted. We'll go worship that. Now again, today we're a lot more sophisticated than that. We don't go and say, "I'm going to worship a ball.

We're going to set up a shrine for money." We don't set up a piggy bank. And then every time we walk in, we rub the belly. And maybe some people do, but we don't do it that way. Right? All that idolatry happens in our heart. Right? Where that becomes our priority and that's what we're pursuing.

And that becomes our idol. So we can easily see why ball worship was so tempting to them. There's another idol that was very prominent. Anybody remember any Bible scholars? Such with the A? Asherah Pole. Again, hideous. If you ever type in Asherah Pole in Google, it is a hideous, hideous looking thing.

Why was that so popular? Why did Israel keep falling into that temptation? Well, Asherah was a female version of ball and it was known as a goddess of love and war. And so whenever they had political conflict or they felt like maybe one family to another in order to be a conqueror, to dominate, they would worship this goddess.

And another added benefit for the pagan worship was because she was a goddess of love, and again equated with fertility, they would have mandatory prostitution at Asherah's temple. So oftentimes, whatever worship that they have for Asherah would end in some kind of orgy, some kind of sexual immorality. And you see that all throughout Israel's history.

And then by the time you get to the time of Christ, that was one of the primary things that Paul had to deal with when the gospel began to go out to the Gentile world. Sexual immorality because they kept on going back to the temple. Even though they were worshiping Yahweh, they would keep going back to the sexual immoral behavior through whatever idol that they were worshiping.

Now every single, I don't think there's a single person in this room, I don't think, and I can pretty much bet that you don't have Asherah poles and you don't have Baal, you don't have Golden Calf set up somewhere. But I would be equally confident that that idolatry, what they represented, is prevalent in our hearts.

It is prevalent in all of our hearts. We naturally are idolaters. I know that may be difficult for some of you to swallow. We naturally give credit to the creation rather than the creator. So we feel more confident. We celebrate when we get a little raise and we say, "Thank God for His blessing." And we feel more confident at peace over that, over our own salvation.

Let me give you an example. We think about the things that we celebrate. You know, we celebrate the Great Wall. And thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people come to celebrate this wall. And it's a big joke because I've been to the wall so many times and that's not Great Wall, it's just a wall.

You know? Because we've been there so many times. But you know, people come and say, "It's this Great Wall. It spans over 5,000 miles. You know, it took 500 years, three or four dynasties. It's the only structure you can see from space. And basically it's just a tiny line.

That's the only structure." And they celebrate. This is awesome. And then to completely miss the mountains that it is built on. And you celebrate this tiny piece of line. It's the stone that the people put together. And you climb up the mountain to see this and then completely miss the mountain.

That was created by God. Think about the tallest buildings. You know, you go to New York and at one point Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world. And people pay hundreds of dollars just to go on the elevator and go on the top and say, "This is tall." And they celebrate.

People pay hundreds of dollars. And yet when they're up there, they look up at the sky and there's no end in God's creation. And completely miss that whole thing. You go to the Hoover Dam and you celebrate this Great Wall to prevent this tons and tons of water that it holds back.

And instead of celebrating this creation, this magnitude of water that just sits behind this tiny little wall, we come back amazed by the wall that the men created. We naturally give credit to creation rather than the Creator. We completely miss the point. We are idolaters at heart. We naturally, even when we talk about church growth, we can say, "God bless us, God bless us." But then when you see the books being written, it's all about what men did and who did it.

What strategies did they use? How is the church organized? How does discipleship look? What's the teaching like? And we give credit to man instead of the Creator. So our confidence comes from man-made things. If we're not careful, we're guilty of the exact same thing. That we are overjoyed by the promises of men, but when we read the promises of God, it does nothing.

See, the Scripture says, "This is why the wrath of God is coming." Why is God so offended by this? And why is this such a great sin? Because it is thievery. It's robbery. What if somebody just came and, you know, like Picasso drew this painting, it's worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and somebody comes and says, "Nah, it's not Picasso." You know?

That's His. He created that. And if you don't give Him the credit, you're robbing Him of His glory. If we don't recognize that our very breath is from Him. You know, we wake up, and again, even as Christians, we think, "God's shown me some kind of miracle." We're waiting for God to walk on waters.

We're waiting for God to stop the rain. And we're waiting for some miraculous things to happen. But remember what Jesus said to Thomas? When he was resurrected, He said, "I'm not going to believe it until I see Him." So Jesus shows up, allows Thomas to touch his scars, and He recognizes this is Jesus.

He falls to the ground, and He worships Him, "My Lord and my God." Remember what Jesus says? Jesus doesn't say, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." Remember what He says? "You believe because you saw. Blessed are those who do not see, and yet they believe." For years, I had no idea what He was talking about.

Of course He would believe, because He saw. Of course we would believe if we saw. If you would just reveal yourself. If you would just show yourself. If you would just speak, and let me know. Make it clear. And yet, the Scripture says that God has made it plain.

That it is not because God is playing hide and seek with us. That He is hidden somewhere, and He's waiting for us to come out, figure it out, and then, "Oh, there He is!" He said He has made it plain, but we have become so saturated with the thinking of this world, that we completely miss Him.

We're standing at the Great Wall, looking at the vast mountain, and saying, "God, where are You?" Wake up in the morning with breath in our nostrils again. "God, where are You?" We're able to sleep. You see little children being born. It's amazing. Anybody who's seen their child being born, it's amazing that they don't die.

I don't know about you, those of you parents, especially the young parents, when they hand you your child for the first time, and you bring that child home, it's amazing. Like, they're going to, you know what I mean? I can't even handle a little puppy. You know what I mean?

I'm afraid that I'm not going to feed it. You know, I'm going to forget to feed it. I'm going to forget to bring it. I mean, you bring a baby alive, and God gives me this life? And we experience all of that, and we say, "Where are You, God?" Because we completely miss it.

We have a tendency to miss God. And that's why the Scripture says, because mankind refused to give credit where credit is due. And instead of worshiping Him and giving Him glory, we exchanged the glory of God for mankind. We chose to celebrate idols. We choose to celebrate money. We choose to celebrate safety.

We choose to celebrate the promises given to us by this world, and trivialize the things that God has given. We celebrate the trivial things while trivializing our mighty God. And that's why the Scripture says, "The wrath of God is being revealed." Until we recognize that we are these people, there will be no repentance.

That it is a danger for us to read these Scriptures and say, "Oh, I'm glad. That's why they needed Jesus." And then we're going to talk about the Jews, and that's why they needed Jesus. But thank God, I'm okay. The moment that we forget what it is that we have been saved from, we are also in danger to drift away.

I want to invite you guys this morning to take some time again to pray, and to ask yourself, "What are the idols in your heart?" Do you celebrate the promises that your boss gives you, or your friends give you? And you're so filled with thankfulness of somebody remembering your birthday.

And yet when it comes to the gift of salvation of Jesus Christ, it's kind of like, "Thank you. Thank you." We say, "Thank you," but we don't worship Him. We're bored with Him, because we don't recognize what it is that we have in Christ. We don't recognize who He is, and we don't recognize what it is that we have in Christ.

Is that us? Let's take some time to come before the Lord in prayer, that God would truly open our eyes. That He would open our eyes and soften our hearts. That He would save us from feudal thinking. He would save us from darkened hearts. That we may worship Him in spirit and in truth.

As we ask our worship team to come up, take some time to, again, to pray. And to see if you've climbed big hills to completely miss Him. That you've been coming to church every single Sunday. And you've been looking for human comfort, rather than God's. You've been looking for human connection, human organization, human talent, human energy.

But you haven't been looking for God. Let's take this time to come before the Lord. And if we've been missing the point, to come before God and say, "Lord, open my eyes." "That I may see the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ." "That I may worship You in spirit and in truth." So let's take some time to pray as our worship team leads us.