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Romans 1:20
NKJV
For since the
creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that
are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,
NLT
For ever since
the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything
God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and
divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.
I was asked recently the question
that I’m sure a lot of folks ask at some point or another. “If someone has
never heard about Jesus and what He did, will they go to heaven?”
The
universal character of this revelation and the clarity of it, leave man without excuse for rejecting it. “Men cannot charge God with hiding
himself from them and thus excuse their irreligion and their immorality.”
(Lenski)
The hard truth here is yes,
even if you’ve never heard about Jesus and what He did for us…if you don’t have
a relationship with Jesus…you will go to hell. Wait, what? Doesn’t the world
tell us that God is love and wasn’t there a Super Bowl commercial that said “Jesus
washed feet” (implying that Jesus didn’t judge, which is a whole other thing…Jesus
did say “go and sin no more” after He washed feet).
But back to verse 20. It says
that ever since the world was created, people have seen His creation; and all
of this creation points us to the glory of God. Isaiah 55:12
tells us that the mountains and the hills would sing, and the trees would clap.
Everything in creation recognizes the glory of God, from the colors of the
flowers and birds; to the middle of the ocean when we can feel so small. All
this points us to the God. When Jesus made His triumphant entry into Jerusalem,
the people began to rejoice, except for the pharisees. When they rebuked Him
and the disciples, Jesus said in Luke 19:40, “I
tell, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out” We
should look at what is visible around us in nature, what God has made, and be able
to arrive at some obvious conclusions about what is not visible. We can add
things up and should understand from nature that God has eternal power and a
divine nature. David said something similar in . What kind of power would it take to make the world and
all that is in it? To do a thing like that would require "eternal
power," or endless power. This should lead us to the conclusion that such
a Creator must also be divine and not merely human. He must be God, in other
words. Human beings should look at creation and decide there must be a God who
made it, a God we must answer to on some level. Again, the whole creation sings of the
glory of God.
Except us. We the people
have found so many excuses to ignore or deny the glory of God. And the very creation
of God has told us that we have no excuse. Those folks who are unrighteous before God don’t want to know
about Him, so they try to suppress the truth about God. To some extent, this is
true of all of us, since we all sin (). Paul has shown that God has plainly shown what
is knowable about Him to everyone (). How has He done that? This verse answers that
it is obvious from what He has made.
We live during a time that some will argue that
reaching such a conclusion by looking at nature is not a given. After all, the
current theory (that is now taught as fact) about the origins of our universe
may lead someone to decide that just the opposite is true: There is no God. God
does not accept that argument. This passage is especially important
when viewed in context with Jesus' comments in . God gives every single person enough knowledge that they should seek Him. Those who
respond by seeking God will
always find Him.
If human beings do not "work out" the
basic nature of God from what is seen in creation, and seek Him from there,
they are simply "without excuse." They are willfully ignoring the
obvious. God insists that He has made it plain to human reasoning and that to
decide otherwise is to suppress the truth we know by nature.
(credit to
bibleref.net for some of this)
All Creation Cries / hard
truth,
Pastor Cory
