If your church never talks about the holiness of God or the danger of Hell, you are in the wrong place. We need the whole counsel of Scripture, not just the parts that make us comfortable.
All of these efforts to legalize sin are simply collective groups of people trapped in lies and deception, trying to make their sin normal; and in so doing, suppressing the truth of God that is both in them, built into their reasoning faculties, further revealed, of course, in Scripture to our culture so that they can live in sin freely.
Telling the Truth in a a Post Truth World — John MacArthur // October 16, 2019
Only folly says that all of this is some great accident. So reason takes you back to God. Personality takes you back to a God who is a personality. Relationships take you back to God who is relational. All of these are the reflection of God. So man, in suppressing the truth, winds up not only suppressing the revelation that God has written, but suppressing the very revelation that’s written in His own reason.
Verse 21: “Even though they knew God,”—historically speaking, it’s impossible not to come to an ultimate cause; you have to go against what is obvious and true—“they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became empty in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man, birds, four-footed animals, and crawling creatures.” Do you know why? You know why they turned from the true God historically through all of human history to bugs and animals? Because they don’t have any moral requirements. So you’re trying to get rid of God because you want to get rid of the Lawgiver, because you don’t like the notion that His law speaks against your unrighteousness.
All of these efforts to legalize sin are simply collective groups of people trapped in lies and deception, trying to make their sin normal; and in so doing, suppressing the truth of God that is both in them, built into their reasoning faculties, further revealed, of course, in Scripture to our culture so that they can live in sin freely. “They say they’re wise.” You can get a Ph.D. in this kind of folly, but you’re still a fool. “So they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image.” They make their own gods so that they can make their own gods into their own image, and those gods don’t require something of them that violates their principles.
And by the way, this, perhaps, needs to be explained a little bit further. The wrath of God: there’s all kinds of ways to look at that. There is God’s eternal wrath; that’s hell—right?—forever. There’s God’s eschatological wrath; that’s the wrath of God unleashed on the world at the return of Jesus Christ and all the preliminary judgments described in Revelation chapters 6 through 19. There is—I guess what you’d call sowing and reaping wrath; whatever you sow, you reap. There’s consequential wrath; you behave in a certain way and there’s built into that kind of behavior consequences. There is cataclysmic wrath. We had a fire on Friday, some people died. There’s tidal waves sometimes, and people die. There’s hurricanes, and people die. There are cataclysmic expressions of divine wrath as well.
This is not that. This is not eternal wrath, eschatological wrath, sowing and reaping wrath. This is not, sort of, cataclysmic wrath. This is the wrath of abandonment. How do I know that? Look at verse 24. Here’s the explanation of the wrath: “Therefore God gave them over.” Look at verse 26: “Therefore God gave them over.” Look at verse 28: “And just as they didn’t see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over.” That is this kind of wrath.This is what happens all the time. This is like Acts 14:17, “God has allowed all the nations to go their own way.” This is the cycle that goes on in all of human history. People know God; they want to violate the laws of God, they want to live in sin, so they suppress the knowledge of God so that they can live in unrighteousness. They deny God, they create their own gods that they can accommodate to their lifestyle.
Stand flat-footed and speak the truth on the issue of homosexuality. Don't just look someone in the eye when God says they are in jeopardy of an eternity in hell and merely wink and nod at their sin because you're afraid of being called names. Speak the truth. —Voddie Baucham