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We are taking a look in our study at the great revelation that God has given, which is the revelation of his existence. And we've looked at that and we have stated that God is real. And the question is, but why is he so unpopular? Why are there so many? Why myriads do not believe in God?

We'll continue with that, and we're looking at the choices that man has made that has led to his foolishness and that has led to his darkness, spiritual darkness, and to his demise. The third choice that man makes, as revealed in Romans chapter one and verse 23, is that man exchanged, man made a horrible exchange, they exchanged the glory, the greatness, all of the beauty and wonder and magnificence and awesomeness of God. They've exchanged the glory of the uncorruptible God and replaced it with man made images and idols.

Verse 23. Man changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, to birds, four footed beasts and creeping things. Man now has replaced that which is infinitely glorious and wonderfully powerful, wise, and now is able to worship and follow and give credit to dead, inhumane, inhuman images that man makes of what God has created. Man replaces it with man made images and idols. And that's the tragedy of man's condition.

We see people that are extremely sincere in worshiping man made idols, male or female. Man made idols of four footed beasts and of birds and creeping things. That's how dark the soul of man has become. That's how foolish the heart has become, and that's the choice that man makes. But God says, what you sow, you will reap.

What are the consequences of that choice? The consequences are in verse 24. God gives man up three times. In Romans chapter one, it says that God gives man up. God gives man up. And then God turns man over to certain practices. God gives man up and turns him over to act in all sorts of moral impurity. Verse 24 therefore, because man changed the glory of the uncorruptible God, made images, worships them. God also gave them up to uncleanness, handed them over to master sin, to uncleanness, through the loss of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves, all kinds of moral impurity, debauchery that has resulted because man has rejected God and has not glorified him as God, has not depended upon him, has not acknowledged man's dependence upon him. Man is without excuse.

But you know, it's not just neutral. You can't just say, well, okay. I choose not to believe there are serious eternal consequences to those choices, and God tells us what those are. So God gives man up to uncleanness, to be ruled by master sin through the lust of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies. They do damage and corrupt their own bodies because of a darkened heart and engage in all kinds of terrible sins. That's verse 24.

There's another choice that man makes. The choice man exchanges the truth of God for a lie and chose to worship and serve the creature rather than the creator. Verse 25. It continues to tell us who changed the truth of God into a lie.

The choices that man has made, and we're all guilty of it. We were born that way. Man taking God's truth, not just suppressing it, not just pushing it away, not just rejecting it, but then he takes that truth and replaces it, changes the truth of God and accepts a lie as truth. One of the principles of the word of God is that the very nature of deception is that we do not know that we are deceived. People are deceived and don't know that they are.

That's the nature of deception. And here man makes a choice, changes the truth of God into a lie, and worships and serves the creature more than the creator, shifts his worship, shifts his idolatry to manmade things, worshiping the creature more than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. That's the choice. The consequence.

Verses 26 and 27. For this cause, God gave them up unto vile, shameful affections. This is a consequence. It's a consequence for rejecting God. For this cause, God gave them up unto vile, shameful affections. For even their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also men leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another. Men with men working that which is unseemly and receiving in themselves that recompense of their errors, which was meat. That's how far man deteriorated.

There's a natural relationship between a man and a woman. We were created that way. But in man's sinfulness, in man's spiritual darkness, a male changes the natural use of the woman and then begins to have that relationship with other men. And then women do the same thing, women with women.

And this is where this all started. And it's a judgment. It's a consequence of man's rejection of God and his truth. The fifth choice that we see here is men did not like to retain God in their knowledge, the beginning of verse 28. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, they didn't even want to think about God. They say, I don't want to think about you. And so it is that man suppresses the truth, exchanges the truth for a lie, rejects the very thought of the existence of God. Man chose to do that. He sowed that. And what did he reap?

The consequences are that once again we read, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, a reprobate, rejected base mind, a mind that is empty of any judgment of right and wrong, any moral judgment, to do those things which are not convenient, that are not right. And then we have a list of many, many sins that are an example of how this works itself out in humanity. Being filled. These are terms that are all inclusive, filled with all unrighteousness, not having a little bit, not having some, being filled with all unrighteousness, all kinds of sinful practice.

And then it lists a bunch of them. Fornication, immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, debate or anger and strife, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud boasters, inventors of evil things, not only they came up with new ways to express their sinfulness, evil things, disobedient to parents without understanding, covenant breakers without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful. And then man gets to the place where verse 32, who, knowing the judgment of God. So there are certain things that at least at the beginning, man knew the existence of God, suppressed it and rejected it. Man knew the truth, rejected it.

And then here, knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death. Man has an awareness from God's word that there's judgment coming. Not only knowing that judgment, they push that away as well. And it says that they which commit such things are worthy of death. The wages of sin is death, spiritual separation from God. They don't just engage in doing these things, but have pleasure in them that do them. Man gets to the place where he enjoys seeing others engage in evil, debauchery, in evil, reprobate, rejected, base behavior. And here we see certainly not a good sign of a good evolution in man.

It's a total de evolution, a complete decline of humankind. And how man got to the place where they reject God and are able to conclude there is no God, there is no truth, there is no judgment, nothing. And they come up with their own vain philosophies. The question is, how did the world get this bad? Where did all this begin?

And for that we have to go to Genesis chapters three through eleven. I'll just mention what happened in those chapters where we see what happened with man and the things that man engaged in right from the very beginning. We begin with Genesis chapter three. Man was placed in the garden of Eden by God. God, in his kindness and graciousness, gave man a perfect environment to live in.

And then needing someone to be a companion to him and someone that man could share his life with and have a helpmate and have a oneness with another human being created his wife, Eve, and God, having placed them in the garden of Eden, said to man, look, you're going to take care of the garden, you're going to name the animals. I'm going to give you control over all creation. I have planted this abundant garden that will have all provisions that you need. You can eat of any tree. The one thing that you must not do is eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because, and God warns them, if he sows that he will reap spiritual death.

For the day that you eat of it, you will surely die. And in Genesis chapter three, Satan comes to tempt Eve to deny the word of God, to cause her to question the word of God, to cause her to disobey God and deceives her. And then Eve gives of that fruit to Adam. And he, consciously aware of what he was doing, partook of that fruit. And we bear the consequences of that act to this day because that was the beginning of sin in man.

Man became a sinner and he as the head of the human race was only able to create and to see his progeny be sinners. We're born sinners, sinners by birth because we bear that nature that Adam gave to us. And so the Bible declares, all sinned. When. When Adam sinned, we all sinned.

And we continue to come short in practice today. In our actions, we come short of the glory of God, 6000 years of humanity born in sin. Because of this one act of man, Adam sowed, he reaped and we reap the consequences to this day. Man chose to disobey God. Sin was introduced into the human race.

And what happened? One of the first things that we see, God created the family, the family unit, marriage. And what we begin to see right from Genesis chapter three is a power struggle that was introduced to marriage and all man could produce was sinners. The interesting thing is that if you fast forward, God's plan is to restore a right relationship between man and woman. And it takes God's provision in his grace to be able to create a unity and a oneness and no power struggle in marriage.

That's how marriage fell apart right from the beginning. In Genesis chapter three. What else happened to then? In Genesis chapter four, we see that there was a tragic disruption to the family.

Adam and Eve had two sons. Abel was a righteous man. He was a man of faith. He believed in God. He believed and obeyed God. He did what God wanted him to do.

Then there was his brother, Cain. Cain hated Abel for his relationship with God. Cain comes to God and offers God a sacrifice. What does he offer? He offers the work of his own hands. When what God said from the beginning is, you must come to me by faith, not by your own efforts. And thus began all of this attempt at trying to come to God in our own effort, by our own works. God says it's not by works of righteousness which we have done, but by his mercy that he saved us. And so there we have a picture of what the consequences were of man's sin.

God created not only marriage, but the family unit. And here we have a tragic disruption in the family unit. What ends up happening is that Cain decides to do away with his brother and he kills him. Brothers fighting against each other, family disruption.

Why? Because of man's original sin. That's partly how things have gotten so bad. What happened next? Then we see in Genesis chapter six, things regressed so badly that the whole human race became corrupt.

And God, having seen that, he says God's justice demanded that he deal with the human race and provide an example of his hatred for sin and his judgment upon sinners. And God chooses a righteous man, a man of faith, Noah. And he tells him that he's going to destroy the earth. And he tells him to build an ark because he's going to destroy the earth through a flood, a universal flood. So Noah builds this ark.

And the Bible says that it took him 120 years to build that ark. And while he was building that ark, he was a preacher of righteousness. He came to tell the world that they can be saved, that God is going to judge the world. But if they're going to be saved, they're going to have to follow God's prescription for salvation and come into the ark to be saved from this flood. A picture of the fact that there's only one way that God provides for salvation.

Ultimately, it's the death and resurrection of his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Even though man devises all sorts of plans to be made right with God, it's only God's way that gives us eternal life, forgiveness of sins, and a right relationship with God. So what happened? For 120 years, he faithfully built that ark and at the same time told the whole world that God was going to bring judgment and that they could be saved by entering into the ark. What kind of success did Noah have?

Out of all the people living in that day, eight people entered the ark. They were saved by faith. Noah, his wife, his three sons and their three wives. That's how bad things got in the world right from the beginning. Back in Genesis chapter six, seven and eight, we find an account of the flood.

What we see is that God didn't intend to fix anything with the flood. He knew this judgment would not fix anything, would not make man righteous and enter into a right relationship with him. It was a visual expression, a vivid expression of God's holiness and God's judgment. And knowing that the flood would not fix anything, there's a statement in Genesis chapter eight after the flood that says that God said he's never again going to bring judgment through a flood. There are other judgments that he will bring, not through a flood.

And then he says, for the imagination of man's heart is evil. From his youth, God declares there the truth of original sin in man and that, you know what? Things are going to get worse again. But remember, we have a judgment day coming. We have an accountability before God.

And the heart of man is evil. And in Genesis six, it says, the heart of man is evil continually without ceasing, without interruption from his youth, from the beginning of his life. And that's what happened in Genesis six, seven and eight. Then in Genesis chapter eleven, what happened there is what we've been studying in Romans chapter one, God created, in chapter ten, human government. What did man do with that?

He corrupted all of that. And man came to the conclusion in Romans chapter eleven that they would do exactly what Satan did, as described in the word of God in Isaiah chapter 14, what Satan did when he was the most beautiful, wisest creature ever made. He wanted to be like God. He wanted to ascend to the heights of God, and he wanted to be like the most high, and he wanted to be worshiped and given credit for the creation of man, for the creation of this world. And that's what man did.

In Genesis chapter eleven, they suppressed the truth in unrighteousness. They exchanged the glory of God for creeping things, for man made idols and images. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie. And that's what they came up with in Genesis, chapter eleven. It's the tower of Babel.

They decided to come together. They decided to build a tower that reached heaven. We're going to reach heaven in our own strength, in our own merit, and we are going to dominate this world that way. That's how things got that bad, as we read in Romans, chapter one, that's how bad man became, and that's how things went from bad to worse. That's what happened.

And that's what we read in Romans, chapter one, and what we've been considering. That's how it all happened.