The story of God’s redemption reveals an arch of His Sovereign grace. When sin goes unaddressed in a culture it will inevitably define that people in opposition to their Creator. Nevertheless, the mercy of our God will keep reveling supernatural grace!
Preliminaries:
- The Noahic Covenant represents a repeat of God’s blessing from Genesis 1
– Mankind was made to reproduce and fill the earth, reflect the glory of God, rule over God’s creation, and live in relationship with the Creator - Babel is the 3rd judgment from God. In the Kingdom of Man…
#1 – The secular becomes sacred
#2 – Self-governance invites false gods
#3 – Confusion leads to a failure of reconciliation = tribalism
Observations: Symptoms and Attributes of the Kingdom of Man:
- No Fear of God – The Parade of Human Pride
- Legislated Lawlessness – The Reversal of God’s Commands
- Technological Enslavement – The Deception of Modernity
- Political Sacredness – The Secular Religion
- Self-sorting Tribalism – The Origin of Marxism
- An Earthly Utopia – A State Funded Salvation
- Diametric Division – The Inability to Reconcile
Conclusions:
- Where the Glory of Man advances, God will bring initial judgment
- God’s initial judgment leaves room for grace
- We are presently under God’s initial judgment
- You are presently adopted into a new citizenship in the New Covenant
Application:
- Fear God
- Fight the temptation to fall into our modern political deception
- Follow His design for citizenship in uniting the secular and the sacred
Romans 1:21-28
“For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.”
Isaiah 42:8
“I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols.”
Hebrews 12:4-7
“In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says, “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.” Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children.”
Romans 1:18
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness.”
Romans 1:29-32
“They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.”
Romans 2:5-6
“But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. God “will repay each person according to what they have done.”
Philippians 2:9-11
“Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Galatians 3:28
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Ephesians 1:22-23
“And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”
1 Peter 2:9-10
“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”