A Shocking Exchange

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Well can I add my welcome to all new students. And can I also say "Congratulations!" Making it to University in the first place is no mean feat. So congratulations on getting through the endless rewrites of your personal statement, all the revision, the exam stress, the tearful farewells and the now obligatory shopping trip to IKEA with your parents. University is brilliant. It has so much to offer! It'll stretch your mind, teach you lots about yourself, not to mention the subject you're studying, and could give you friends for life.

BUT it could also tempt you into making a shocking exchange. An exchange a little like the one I'm about to offer you now. I've got a £20 note here and I'm willing to offer you it in exchange for 50p. This is a genuine offer. It's a real £20 note. And it's yours to keep for just 50p. So who wants to take me up on that offer?

>> Make Exchange!

Now why would I do that? I'm a Scotsman - So I hate throwing away money. I work for a church too - So I don't have money to burn. That's a ridiculous swap isn't it?!

AND yet it's just the kind of exchange we find in our Bible passage for tonight. AND it's just the kind of shocking exchange we find going on in culture. Did you see it when _____________ read it for us earlier on?

• Verse 23 - they: "...exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images..."
• Verse 25: " ... they exchanged the truth about God for a lie..."

The world around us is constantly making this exchange - Trading in the most important person, the most valuable relationship, the greatest treasure on the planet for... just something else. Exchanging the worship of the glorious, true and living God... for worship of ourselves. Performing the moral and spiritual equivalent of swapping a £20 note for just 50p.

AND our world invites us in to make exactly the same dubious deal. And as many of you plunge head long into the great joys and opportunities of University life, I want to lovingly warn - no urge you - not to end up making this shocking exchange for yourself. For I want to encourage you that hanging onto God is worth more than anything the world has to offer and that God should be the foundation of your life - at anytime! Not least as you start at University. AND Romans 1 does this beautifully as it tells us firstly that...

(1.) We All Have Sneaking Suspicion About God

We all have a sneaking suspicion. Have a look at verse 18 with me: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress 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."

One of the tricky things about Freshers week is getting to know people. I mean you meet loads of folks, but it's often hard to get beyond the standard 4 Freshers questions of "What's Your Name?" "Where Do You Come From?" "What A Levels Did You Get?" "What Are You Studying?" Every conversation seems to begin like that as if it's some strange tribal ritual. So that after a week or so of, you can still feel like you're only just scratching the surface.

BUT pop round to their room or get an invite round to someone's house and they start to open up. As you start to examine someone's bookshelves OR have a nosey around someone's CD or DVD collection you OR as you see the kind of posters they have on their wall - you get to know a lot more about them and you start to bond with them.

Visit someone's room or house and you will find out a lot more about them. AND the Apostle Paul is saying here in Romans 1 that if you live in God's world - you should notice marks of his ownership and personality everywhere.

Did you get that? Paul is saying that since the beginning of the world the reality of God has been on public display. God's "invisible qualities" have been available for everyone to see. As God has revealed himself to us in His creation. So even though we can't see God and I can't present him to you this evening - the universe we can see tells us a lot about our Creator.

For instance - take the size of the universe. In 1990 the Hubble telescope was sent up into space and sent back these amazing pictures that show that the universe is way bigger than we ever thought it was. They discovered that the universe is 92 billion light years across – which is about 10 trillion kilometres. But not only that they discovered that in that great expanse of space there are over 350 billion galaxies out there. So why would God create all these galaxies that generations of people never saw or even knew existed? Do you think maybe it was to make us say, "Wow! God is unfathomably big!"

Now let's flip it. From the ridiculously big to the infinitesimally small and think with me about the detail of creation. Like do you know about the bombardier beetle? It keeps 2 different chemicals in tubes in its tail - AND when it feels threatened it sends these chemicals to a chamber where an enzyme is added causing an explosion that fires a 212-degree jet out of its backside at its enemies, while also propelling itself several yards away. Random chance or intelligent design would never have produced the bombardier beetle! AND neither would it have produced the uniqueness of every one of the billions of snowflakes that fall every year. Or your own heart which generates enough pressure as it pumps blood throughout your body that it could squirt blood over 30 feet. I've never personally tried that, but I wouldn't recommend it!

BUT the intricacy of creation is just as breathtaking as the splendour of it. Every star is an announcement. Each leaf a reminder. The glaciers are megaphones, the seasons are chapters, the clouds are banners: all shouting out to us - GOD IS THERE! The more we look, the more we see that all things in creation act as continual reminders - like pop up boxes on the Internet jumping out at you reminding you of - v.20: "God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature".

AND as we look at the breathtaking majesty of the Grand Canyon or the hardiness of Penguins skittering around in Antarctica - whether in the flesh or on a Richard Attenborough documentary, we are supposed to stand in awe and worship. We are supposed to see the finger prints of God... AND SEEK OUT OUR CREATOR.

That's what Paul says in Acts 17v.27: "God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us." AND that's the command of the Bible time and time again. Seek the Lord
"with all your heart" / "with all your soul".

Which might get you thinking that this confirms what many folks say - that God is hiding so we have to play a ridiculous celestial game of hide and seek to find him. BUT this is like playing hide & seek with my kids in the garden.

I don't know if you've ever played hide and seek with small kids - But its nuts! It goes like this: I sit at the kitchen table & count to 10 while they rush out into the garden to hide. When I get to 10 I run out into the garden to look. Lucy will have hidden behind the wheely bin because it's the only place you can get right in behind in our entire garden - so it's the only decent place to hide. Jamie will be standing behind a bush with at least one if not 2 limbs still sticking out from behind the bush. While Kate will be standing in the middle of the garden trying to keep very still because she thinks if she doesn't move then I won't be able to see her! Hide & seek is so easy when you play it with kids.

AND God has not made it hard to find him - Creation is like the limbs sticking out from a bush, like a sign post to our creator. Our consciences are like the wheelie bin, that begs to be looked behind because we know that something must be there! While Jesus himself stands in the middle of the garden of history, making everything much more obvious!

We all have a sneaking suspicion that God is there. So... why doesn't everyone believe? Well that's the second thing Pauls says here...

(2.) We Suppress The Truth

Let's have another look at verses 18-20: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them."

I don't know if you've ever done that little experiment where you've been in the pool or at the beach and you've got hold of a ball [BALL!] and tried to hold it underwater. But it pops right back up. It won't stay down. AND that's what makes it such a great challenge as those unwilling to admit defeat so easily then try to lie on the ball hoping their body weight might keep it down, or stand on the ball thinking that if they push it really deep it might stay down. But it won't! AND in my experience that's the point where they then give up and decide to try the same routine with someone's head!

AND Paul is saying that's what folks do with the truth about God. God is revealing himself - he sends us messages about himself, but we suppress the truth. Even though we know God is there, we try to tuck that knowledge deep down under the surface. Why?

Is it because the evidence for God in the universe is not intellectually credible? No that's not it! The probability of the universe we see coming about by blind chance is tiny – you've probably heard quotes about that. Here's just one. Paul Davies is a non-Christian professor of Physics here in the UK. And he writes that the probability of the universe existing as it is, is "the same as aiming at a target one inch wide on the other side of the observable universe, and hitting it."

Intellectual credibility is merely an excuse, not the answer to why folks don't believe. Did you see the actual answer there in verse 18? People want to live without reference to God (that's the "ungodliness" bit), so as to do their own thing (which is the "unrighteousness" bit), so rather than seek God as they should, they suppress whatever knowledge of God that's available to them.

Which is why the great atheistic debaters like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking get such a following. It's not because the signs of God's existence and activity in this world are not clear enough. It's that they are utterly inconvenient if folks want to live as they please. As Auldous Huxley the influential 20th Century thinker put it: "I had reason for not wanting the world to have a meaning. Consequently I assumed it had none." The person many called the founder of modern agnosticism based his view of the world on actually running away from the truth. Do you see? Folks don't suppress the truth for intellectual reasons, but moral ones.

We are not prepared to let God control how we live. AND Paul says that it's not that we can't believe, it's that we won't believe. We suppress the truth. AND in the next few verses he shows us how that works out in practice - Verse 21: "For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him..."

Paul says we don't glorify God. Which essentially means that we can't stand God being the centre of our lives. God's glory literally means his heaviness - his weightiness - his significance - and we make him lightweight. We make him insignificant. That is what the Bible calls sin. You see sin is not just doing bad things. It is closing our eyes to the signposts of God's existence in creation, it's ignoring our consciences and rejecting the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and making excuses not to believe.

Everyone has some knowledge of God, but has ignored it.

It's not that they can't find the truth about God, but they suppress the truth about God. It's not that they are honest seekers after God, but deliberate hiders from God. Let me ask you: Are you hiding from God this evening?

Well if we suppress the truth, we will also...

(3.) We Receive God's Judgement

We suppress the truth and therefore we... Receive God's wrath. Which was maybe the main thing you've heard every time I've read out verse 18 - "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth."

Did you get that? God is angry! Now as soon as I mention the wrath of God you're probably going: "No! No! No! God can't be angry! Maybe he did get a bit of a rage on back in the Old Testament, but surely he's mellowed out a bit and cleaned up his act? He's hired some Public Relations consultants to spin his image in a more positive light." It's a bit troubling to think about God as angry, isn't it?

But God's anger is not like ours. This isn't God seeing red. He doesn't lose his temper or fly off the handle like we do!

God's anger is the settled, controlled, totally fair, right anger against sin and the consequences of sin. For a righteous God is right to be angry against all that is wrong. It's the kind of anger you and I feel about headlines you see in the papers about TV presenters taking advantage of their position to abuse young girls or the atrocities of ISIS. It's right to be angry about what's wrong in this world - Because we know the hurt & the pain that lies behind those stories.

And God's anger is a part of what makes his gospel such good news. Yes, that's right - God's anger is good news! When it comes to sin he doesn't sit back in a rocking chair and pretend nothing has happened, like a kindly grandfather dolling out Werther's Originals. No! It is good that we have a God that gets angry. It shows that he cares about what he's made. If you care about something it matters. If you don't care it doesn't matter. The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. AND God's anger is not a contradiction of his love it's an expression of it. God loves his children, so he hates what destroys them. It means that he loves you and hates what you become when you turn away from him. So the question is not "How could a loving God be angry?" but rather "How could a loving God feel anything less?"

Yet God's anger is not quite what we'd expect! Look more closely at verse 18 yet again: "...the wrath of God (that settled, right anger) is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth..."

Sure as Romans chapter 2 verse 5 tells us that - there will be a day of judgement. As the Lord Jesus returns to wrap up history and pronounce his final verdict on our lives and his judgment on all who ever lived. BUT until that time "the wrath of God is being revealed..." - As we can experience a foretaste of God's just anger right now!

Yet we look around and it's hard to see, isn't it? It's a bit like those signs on the Motorway that tell you roadworks are going on. Yet as you drive by coned off lanes you can't see a single bit of work going on at all! If God is revealing his anger today we would expect some action. Like lots of CGI special effects as laser beams rain down from heaven. We put a foot out of line - kazzam! God zaps us! And all that's left is a smouldering pair of shoes.

But Paul speaks about something very different. God displays his anger by... giving us what we want. We suppress the truth about God and receive His wrath as he gives us what we want. That's Paul's constant refrain in the verses that follow:

• We suppress the truth of God's glory & do our own thing: "Therefore - verse 24 - God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonouring of their bodies among themselves.
• We trade in God's truth for a lie and - verse 26: "For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another..."
• We hit the delete button on our knowledge of God and - Verse 28: "...God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done."

Astonishingly God's anger in the present... let's us do what we want. We insist on ignoring him, living as we want. God has given people over to the consequences of ignoring him, as a foretaste of his judgement. As he says: "Ok, have it your way. Live in that kind of world."

AND so behind the facade of the party scene on campus in extreme cases we've got STDs and unwanted pregnancies and alcohol addiction and liver disease - but we've also got the constant undermining of self-image and self-esteem that sees folks going along with all kinds of things they maybe don't want to do, because it's the way to fit and make friends. And every year we have the irony of thousands of students trading in their new found freedom in order to just follow the crowd.

AND Romans 1 warns us that what the world around us invites us into is under God's judgement and asks us: Why would you want to throw yourself into that? As verse 29 goes on to describe more of what a world that ignores God looks like - AND it's a snap shot of humanity in decline. Of human society going down the plughole. And this shouldn't surprise us - As sin is anti-God then because of that it's anti-social. If we don't love God, the result will be that we won't love people made in his image. AND we mustn't be surprised when this world is unjust and unloving as this is what happens when we turn our back on the God who is love and justice himself.

So when we do switch on the news or open up a paper and see wars or famine or poverty. OR when a friend is honest and shares the pain and hurt of a broken relationship or a bad night out or the anxiety and shock of an unwanted pregnancy. OR we feel the effects of our or others sin. We shouldn't think: Oh isn't the world a terrible place? No we should think... isn't God angry? Isn't God patiently letting us see the consequences of our own actions? The pain & suffering of our world is like a billboard advertising the consequences of life without God.

So why do I mention all this? Not out of smugness I hope... as if this was all about them out there & not us. AND not out of grumpy old age either, as if everything was better when "I were a lad."

Well I guess in a culture that normalises sin and makes living to please God look odd - we need to have confidence that this is reality. That this is the reality of Freshers week. The reality of campus living. This is the reality of our world. That those who graffiti over the truth about God are given over to the consequences of their action and experience a first taste of God's judgement now and a final judgement to come.

For these words are written out of hope, not despair. They are written because - well... how could you see this and keep quiet? They are written because the writer has good news even for this situation. We listen to this ugly truth so that we can receive the beautiful one - Of the good news of God's generous rescue in Jesus. Read the rest of Romans and you'll discover that!

So if you've just pitched up in Newcastle as a believer - stand firm. It's worth it and there are many who need you to do that so that they can see the danger of they are in. AND we want to support help and support you in doing that - not least by encouraging you to join us at Focus on Tuesday nights so we keep bringing you back to the truth about God in the Bible so that you will be able to discern it from the lies of the world around us.

AND if you've pitch up here as someone who doesn't believe then can I encourage you to check out the claims of Christ for yourself. The best way to do that is through one of our Christianity Explored courses. We've got one starting for students on Sunday 19th October, but if you can't make that then do talk to myself or one of the team and we'd be delighted to give you that opportunity at another time.

Well, let me finish by with another offer to you. I have a 50p here - would anybody like to exchange it for a £20 note? Anyone? No of course you wouldn't! So don't make an even more shocking exchange and trade in a relationship with the God of all heaven and earth for anything else. His finger prints are clearly seen throughout the created order - so don't suppress the truth and receive God's judgement. 

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