Houston, We Have a Problem

With Katie Greer. The fact that we all have feelings of guilt, point to the fact that you and are stamped with the image of some divine lawgiver who has implanted into our hearts.

His sense of right and truth and love. And even if we stop believing in God it be when you can't shake this idea that you're going to be held accountable. One day down when it comes the gospel, you have to get lost before you get saved today.

Pastor Jane Greer shows that the Bible makes it clear that we have all turned away from God and our hearts are correct.

I did not stop pursuing if you're lost, just look to the cross where God shows you his holiness.

Your unrighteousness and his willingness to come after you. Anyway, if you've missed any part of the previous messages you can catch them online@katiegreer.com right now, here's Pastor Katie with a message titled Houston we have a problem. Romans chapter 1 if you got your Bible with you this weekend and hope that you do Roman shopper wanted to remember the introduction to the book of Romans. I gave you a couple of weeks ago I told you that during the first hundred or so years of Harvard Law school that they would have first year Harvard law students work their way through the book of Romans, not for religious reasons because they thought it was such a good example of how to effectively build an argument pole in the book of Romans.

The hot starch with experiences and observations that almost all of us have it, and then he shows how his theory which in the book of Romans is the gospel how his theory best explains all the evidence along the way he anticipates objections sometimes before you even know how to articulate them anticipates them he raises them in the not only does he answer them also shows you how those very objections actually work to strengthen his case and we can yours and so what were going to see today is going to see the apostle Paul begin to lay out his case for why the gospel is the only answer to humanity's problems starting in Romans 118. He's going to start to unpack for us why it's the only answer to the questions that were asking for. The only solution to the dilemma that we face and why he is so eager answer driven to get it to literally everybody in the world. So here's the question that is going to drive the next few messages. Romans 133 and four okay, here's the question why can only the gospel, Texas metal ball is trying to answer why can only the gospel fix us. Why can't just a little a little religion do the trick. Why can't God just renew Israel's commission to teach everybody the law.

Why can't God to send out the profits of the robotic to try harder right me. Why can't God below the proverbial whistle and playwright, either by gotten off course by back in the pool by Allstate same direction to do a reset here outcome a little religion little resolution can do the trick. Speaking of God's laws. What about those people who never heard God's commands in the Bible, you can't blame somebody for not obeying something they'd never even known about right right mimic sentiments of money.

If another Evan Usher suddenly comes up to you and your and one of our services and capturing children since I'm sorry we do not allow to pays in the summa church and you have to leave. If you have it to pay you rightly say, well, that seems arbitrary and unfair.

There was no sign out front that said this is a two-page Freezone-like I'm being asked to held accountable for something I didn't even know about. By the way, this is totally made up example, if you have to pay your more than welcome near the summa church we had nothing but respect for you if you got brave enough to wear that thing here so come anyway. We will be arbitrary. What is the gospel like that for me to see it is God holding people accountable for something they never even had a chance to hear people have this idea that Christians believe that when you die.

Suddenly, God is gonna appear at your bedside. Or maybe you'll stand in front of the judgment seat of God acknowledgment like you believe in Jesus and people. To my way lately Jesus suit is that it's too late now.

You should ask while you were alive and as he cast them tumbling down to the pit of hell.

Though I Jesus is God the father mumbles tough cookies and Latin errors of the like that. If that's the way the final judgment is going to go. Is that really what's happening with that even be fair to why does Paul believe the gospel is the only hope for every person, including those who've never heard of it. And one more thing on the way I thought as I told you last week. Paul is answering why he thinks that this gospel, not only is the answer to our souls why he thinks this gospel is going to fundamentally rewrite the human narrative in a way that produces a new humanity that's going to bring the disparate cultures back together. Paul's world was divided just like ours is an Paul is trying to show what this gospel has the capacity to bring together all these groups of people that are now sideloading enemies of one another. He's gonna say this gospel is the solution to humanity's problems. That's where Paul turns in Romans 118. He's gotta demonstrate that everybody everywhere, both religious and irreligious alike need the gospel. He's gotta get lost in other words, before he can get a safe here we go. Romans 118 for God's wrath. Paul says, is now revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people two things there that Paul tells us God's wrath is revealed against godlessness that refers to a corruption in our relationship with God means we have the wrong attitudes about God, godlessness, unrighteousness would be a corruption in our horizontal relationships. That word refers to how we have bad attitudes and bad relationships of people around us instead of being people of humility and love and truthfulness.

We are proud and self-centered and deceiving because of those two things Paul says we have keep going by their unrighteousness. We suppress the truth suppress the truth. The word suppressed means that we push it down.

These attitudes of ungodliness and wickedness, unrighteousness make us suppress or push down that your suppression you realize is not the same thing as ignorance, suppression means the truth is in there, but you Yourself from acknowledging it is like a beach ball that you trying to hold below the water that you hold it down for a while but eventually it's going, you're gonna pop on your hands and is gonna pop to the surface. Paul says the knowledge of God is like that.

Tim Keller says that what Paul is saying here about the knowledge of God is that when it comes to the knowledge of God. We know we all know we all know but sometimes we don't know because we don't want to know this am confusing to you.

Near the end of World War II. The first town with a concentration camp that the Allied forces liberated was a town called or drew Germany. The Nazis when they found out the Allied troops were coming try to get rid of any evidence of this concentration camp, but they were able to do it fast enough and so when the American GIs got there they encountered for the first time ever.

One of these concentration camps, it will become so infamous.

There were just piles of dead bodies stacked everywhere was just revolting first time they witness something like that. A few hours after they got their general patent got there and say says when he got there was so overwhelming he just promptly vomited. He went and got the mayor in the mayor's wife of this town brought them out to see the scene. He said I know you had to have known that this was happening. They said no we did know was happening. He ordered the mayor and the mayor's wife and all able-bodied people in the town to dig graves for every single body to give them a burial will after they dug graves and they conducted a funeral for the deceased. Gen. Patton found out that the mayor and his wife and hung themselves before their death. They love the little notes that little note that read, we didn't know we did know but we knew we know we know Cisco when it comes the knowledge of God. We know but sometimes we don't know because we don't want to know the truth is to uncomfortable the truth would demand too much change so subconsciously.

We choose not to know really come back to that idea but for now let's just keep looking, working our way through the text verse 19 because what may be known of God. Paul says, is manifest. It's made known in them, because God is shown. It to them by the way endeavors in the new King James because that's how I memorized it and so when I got into teaching it. It was just so much easier for me to go back to what memorize so in your translation there is the CSV is in the NKJV right there cages case is confusing to places that Paul says God made the truth of God known everybody. Once he made known to them. The other is. He made it known in them, for he says since the creation of the world God's invisible attributes have been clearly seen by everybody, being understood by the things that are made, which is everybody, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that everybody all of us are without excuse.

God has made himself known to every person who's ever walked the face of the earth in at least these two categories of waves to us creation. Scripture says declares to us the reality, the power and the glory of God. Throughout history, philosophers have broken this down in a number of ways. One of them. They refer to as the cosmological argument. I'm a nerd out on you little bit using technical terms for some of you your one that you can have this year to be supersmart need to know some of these terms, you jotted down the cosmological argument. This one goes all the way back to Aristotle.

He was the first one actually articulated. It's the question of why there is something rather than nothing, and because there is something where the original something come from the world began 14 billion years ago the Big Bang where the materials that cause the Big Bang come from.

You can't keep going backwards in an infinite regress into nothingness.

Eventually, something has to come from somewhere, because nothingness can just explode into everything. This in his book God delusion, the atheist Richard Dawkins admits that this is a huge problem for his worldview.

He says and I quote Darwin's theory, Darwin's theory of evolution works for biology but not for cosmology or ultimate origins cosmology he says is still waiting on its Darwin. In other words, Richard Dawkins thinks that while they have explained how life took shape on earth. He admits they still have no idea where life itself for the materials that produce life where those things come from.

We need a theory we need a theory. Dawkins says as to why anything exists because it is self evident that nothing times. Nobody can equal everything, but don't worry Dawkins goes on in the book he says one day will find it, which is a textbook example of a blind hopeful leap of faith. That's the cosmological argument you look around. Got some game somewhere and sort it all come from a can of come from nothing cosmological argument. Then there's what philosophers call the teleological argument again nerdy but just jotted there in the margin.

Telus is a word in Greek. That means, that means purpose.

There appears to be a purpose in creation that we see not only do we have the question of why there something rather than nothing. Creation appears to be very finely tuned for a purpose know, the more we learn about this the more amazing it becomes side to say that life on earth depends on multiple factors that are so precise that if there off, even by here life as we know it could not exist, that they refer to as the Goldilocks principle on things are just right for life on earth right it's not too hot, not too cold the evening is just right for life or human life to exist. For example, you ample of time. For example, the makeup of our atmosphere. Oxygen drop by 6%. We would all suffocate the road by 4%, our planet would erupt into a giant fireball and we would all die if the CO2 level were just a little bit higher .0 500s of a percent higher then the world will become an oven.

If it were .02% lower we would have no atmosphere at all and we would all die about this when the water molecule is the only molecule who solid form ice is less dense than its liquid form, which means that when it freezes. Instead of getting heavier in seeking it gets lighter and floats if ice did not flow. They say would sink to the bottom of the ocean. All ocean would eventually freeze from the bottom up and we would all die. That's right for the distance of the earth from the sun. If we were to percent closer to the sun, our planet would be too hot for water to exist and sit with me we would all die. That's right and there's a tilt of the earth which is set at an ideal 23 1/2� which we have learned is perfect for temperatures and tides and such. You probably never thought much about it but if it was not tilted.

Temperatures would be extreme and we would all die there you go you know with the humans part would die cockroaches to be fine. But how humans witness a wealth there's one more for fun.

We learned that of Jupiter were not the size and in the orbit that it is in astronomers predict that there would be approximately 10,000 times a number of asteroid strikes here on earth and we would all die. Jupiter is like the Luke Mayo planets in other words, setting pics on the asteroid so that the earth can get open on the three-pointer of life okay without Jupiter, our planet would get pummeled with asteroids and life as we know it cannot exist then we put down our telescopes and we bought her microscopes and we find the same complexity in the cell and the atomic structure. Even the most basic DNA strands are incredibly complex enough so that Francis Collins, who is the head of the human genome, says he says this in a quote. How could a cosmic accident ever result in something of the digital elegance of a DNA strand. He says, is like think of an explosion enemy factory could inadvertently produce the collected works of Shakespeare and by the way just so you know these are not the conclusions of of of seminary grads turn amateur scientists bill late Stephen Hawking will prints comfortable would be one of the top five scientist in the world right now. The late Stephen Hawking said this, 40, died Kaiser the laws of science as we know them at present contain many precise ratios like size electric charge electron. The ratio of the masses of the proton and electron the remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life. One scientist said the greatest miracle of all time without any close second is the existence of life on our planet lease it will maybe were just lucky right meaning in a universe as big as ours. Our planet was bound to exist somewhere and so we just happen to be on it yet. Scientists say that the odds of a planet like Earth existing at all or so heart stopping only astronomical that the notion that it all just happened defies common sense once it is like tossing a coin every second.

Mathematically, like tossing a coin every second and having it come up heads over 10 billion years in a row to get you can speculate that this part of the galaxy was just really really really lucky, but is that the best and the easiest explanation for what we see know it takes an anti-God bias to arrive at that conclusion. It usually people have some other problem with the idea of an all glorious and all ruling God that leads them to look at the evidence that way we know we know but we don't know because we don't want to know. He has shown it to us. Paul says, and he has revealed it and there's a voice that spoke to us from creation was also the voice that spoke to us from within. There are things in our hearts that tell us that we are more than just accidental biology, such as our longings for love and meaning and eternity, the atheist philosopher Albert Camus said that we long for love without party.

We want love to last forever, but in the universe without God and is an atheist. That's what is universal. As he says he's of the universe without God ill. We only have the conscious certainty of death without hope to move called this the absurdity of life. He said that life was long one long tragic absurd comedy as we seek for things from life that life simply cannot provide for being brave, he said. Being brave is acknowledging that and plotting forward into the absurdity and the darkness anyway with courage.

CS Lewis had a different answer.

In light of this CS Lewis said I baby feels under well there such a thing as food.

The duckling wants to swim well there is such a thing as water mental sexual desire. Well, there such a thing as sex. If I find myself a desire with no experience in this world can satisfy most probable explanation is that I was made for another world there is a question which one of those do you prefer that our longings for meaning and for justice and eternity. And for love without partying that that's just a cruel accidental hoax or that they are whispers that we are created for another world that has all those things. By the way, by the way, this is called the argument from desire. If you're taking notes and you can't write it down. Back in 2009, the famous British journalist and biographer, Etienne Wilson, who was an atheist, made dislike of big huge headline when he suddenly announces these non-Christian now get you in on the philosophical worldview probably didn't even register this but this was a big deal and Monet and Wilson what he said as he said it would been taught the Western world to assume that Christians are stupid.

He said believe he asked me after think about it for a long time.

It is atheism that is a dry, lifeless greed that is totally irrational to irrational atheism says a word is a collection of chemicals atheism has no answer whatsoever to the question of how this animated sack of accidental chemicals could be capable of love or heroism or poetry. Another dimension of this voice from within is what philosophers call the moral argument the moral argument very fact that we have moral feelings suggest the presence of a divine lawgiver this week I was on a road trip and at a park in the parking garage and every like we parked in the parking garage = read about your car for on the wall for you see that said make sure you keep your parking ticket with you. I got the car shut the door.

I walked on the fingers of yellow strip right in the middle apartment make sure you departed it with you.

I promise you.

By the time I left the parking that I had seen some version of that little yellow message at least 40 times. Make sure you keep your parking ticket with you. That's a really good indication that somebody somewhere is going to ask me to see that parking ticket there. What feelings of guilt and moral obligation point to a divine lawgiver that is stamped that in our heart that said, it is one day you know I'm can ask you for a parking ticket.

I put in your heart. This sense of responsibility.

This sense of right and wrong, and one day you to meet the divine lawgiver near to give an account feelings of guilt and moral obligation. Anthropologist Telus are common to all people in all cultures everywhere. Not something unique to people in the Western world or Christian culture for Jewish culture there, and all people everywhere is that the flipside of that is another common all people everywhere at all times. There is no evidence they are present in any form in the animal kingdom. We all know that cats, for example, seem to derive pleasure from playing with mice before they even writes cruel you never find attached sniveling under the bed year later just a whole are terribly what I did on such a group hug and a subnet. That's not just because cats are exceptionally evil. They are, but that's not the reason it's just in their nature. If a lion was also the Family of a lion malls a human you ever find out what line in the woods later racked with guilt. They know what I done. They don't feel guilty for acting according to their nature. There is no great white shark named Bruce out there saying I am not a mindless eating machine fingerprint number one that's Disney fantasy that is not reality. Yet even though it's not present in any form animal kingdom. We humans have that done. The fact that we have all have feelings of guilt, point to the fact that you and are stamped with the image of some divine lawgiver who has implanted into our hearts. His sense of right and truth and love. And even if we stop believing in God.

You can't shake this idea that you can be held accountable.

One day at one of my favorite illustrations of this is a book by one of the most depressing existential postmodern authors out there regarding Franz Kafka by the way, spoiler alert, but the totally blow this book, but it's been around for 100 years and if you admit now you from my relater so call the trial and into this book you get this guy who suddenly gets arrested for a crime and they will tell him he's been arrested for so he goes from trial to trial, and in between the trials. He's trying to figure out what he did to you. Please rehearsing thing from his life. A major mantra for this and I get into this writer and this every year you the final scene in the book and the warden who's got them in prison is about to unveil to him what he is done. The main get arrested and right before he tells him the Lord pulls out a knife and stabbed him and kills him easy with his book never became super popular okay, but Franz Kafka in his his journals later said that what he was trying to reveal was a picture of his own life that even after he quit believing in God he couldn't shake the sense of moral accountability and responsibility in the sense that he was guilty and have to stop believing in God he just did know he was who he was supposed to report to see it points to the fact one day you and I are going to report to a divine lawgiver who is stamped his image and his requirements on our hearts what may be known about God is evident to us from creation is evident in us from our consciences. But but we suppress the truth we push that beach ball down we know but we didn't know because we didn't want to know, for although Paul says they knew God, they did not glorify him as God nor did they show gratitude. We didn't want to embrace the truth about a glorious all-powerful holy ruling God. We don't want that to be true. Why, because we wanted to make the rules we wanted.

We wanted to take God's glory for ourselves. We wanted to use our lives to direct attention toward us not toward him. We wanted to use the resources of our lives to serve our agenda not is so we became plagiarized, plagiarized as a people who take credit for what somebody else is done.

We claim God's work for ourselves. We didn't want to acknowledge all of our talents, our brains brainpower every bit of energy we have.

That was all different God ministry in their emergency personnel gladly join us today as you're getting into the swing of the new year.

We've got a helpful resource. We would love to get your hands in the Senate life 2020 day planar blanket like shingles for themselves whether that's a financial goal or healthful, whatever it may be needing any thoughts or listeners as a kind of looking ahead and making these plan well I must renew this Elizabeth but like I'm a big goal guy like I didn't write down goals for the next 10 minutes, a microphone, but I don't think this is just one personality type and he gets something in her that that the more we consider what is happening in the hours and the minutes and in our days.

How you spend your time is how you spend your life.

What this this planner is something that is a tool for that. It's got to sit some really apropos versus an and I think you kind of clarifying quotes that will help you think through life's priorities. We would love to to give you put a tool like this. We really do. It is an imitation, honestly, to have people engage and connect with the ministry Summit life is able to do what it does because of people who believe in the power. The word that is preached here and want to see it extended farther. So if you reach out to suggest JD grid.com would love to give you this is a gift and thankfulness for your investing prayer investing in what is happening this ministry. Summit life expended by listeners like we are so grateful you can request the planner when you make a single gift of $25 or more. When you commit to making a monthly gift as a gospel partner discount 866-34-TRUTH 552 20 866-34-TRUTH 552 20 or you can give interclass the planar online@jdgreer.com planners only available for a few more days to make sure you get in touch soon I was and am just now inviting you to join us again on Senate life with Katie Greer program was produced and sponsored by Katie Greer minutes