Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Romans. Tonight is study 36 of Romans, chapter 1, and we are continuing to read Romans 1:18-20:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

In our last study, we were looking at the last part of verse 18 which says, “…who hold the truth in unrighteousness,” and that would mean they hold it in an evil way, an unrighteous and sinful way.

And “the truth” is the Lord Jesus Christ and the Word of God, the Bible, and I think there is a major application of this verse for those that would take the name of God and call themselves Christians and interact with the Word of God, the Bible. We have truth in the Bible and, yet, we have hundreds of millions of people (around two billion) that are professed Christians and most of them are part of the churches and congregations, but God has finished His relationship with them. God has nothing to do with the churches, but they continue on, just like Muslims continue their religion of Islam, and as Buddhists continue on in their religion. These professed Christians continue in their religion of “Christianity” as found in the corporate churches. But God is not with the Muslims, the Buddhists or the professed Christians within the churches and congregations and, yet, they all think they have the truth. And, yet, in actuality, they suppress the truth. It is the tendency of the natural-minded individuals that are fallen human beings to hold back “the truth,” whether it comes through the natural realm with the witness of creation, and even when it comes through themselves through the Law written upon the heart, or whether it comes through the Bible.

And the Bible is the greatest revelation of truth. It is the most detailed, with the greatest amount of divine revelation, with many specifics that teach us about God and the Gospel of the kingdom of God. And that allows for a greater suppression, as we see in “Christianity” within the corporate church, as they “hold the truth in unrighteousness.”

The word “hold” is also found in Romans 7:5-6:

For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.

The word “held” appears in the middle of verse 6: “…being dead wherein we were held.” That is, in our sinful condition, we were dead in trespasses and sins, and, certainly, the holding of us in that condition could not be changed or moved in any way, except by the miraculous power of God through His Word, the Bible, as faith came as we heard the Word of God, And if it just so happened that we were truly saved and God had chosen us before the world was, He would bless His Word to us at some point during the day of salvation, and we were freed from the death by which we were held. And, yet, we can all look back or look around (in the world), and we can see the power of that kind of “grip” that is upon a sinner, “being dead wherein we were held.” And that is the word found here in Romans 1:18.

It is also the word found in 2Thessalonians 2, and this is the chapter where we read of the “son of perdition” or the “man of sin” that had taken his seat in the temple, and we know that was Satan at the time of the end. And in this context, it says in 2Thessalonians 2:6:

And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.

The word “withholdeth” is the word we are looking at, #2722 in Strong’s Greek Concordance. And the word translated as “will let” is also the same word used in Romans 1:18, but it is italicized as the translators were trying to help us understand what is being said. The masculine pronoun “he” is referring to the Holy Spirit. There was a “mystery of iniquity” that did already work, and it was a mystery how man could be so sinful, according to the Biblical language: “…the thoughts of his heart were only evil continually,” as we read early on in Genesis 6:5. Or, we read in Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” So we are talking about the most wicked and deceitful thing possible. And it is not referring to our physical heart that pumps blood, but it is our “heart, mind and soul,” the spirit within us that had fallen into sin. It is desperately wicked. Who man is in the world apart from God is a desperately wicked individual, and deceitful above anything you can name.

And, yet, when we look at history or we look at our own families, which is getting harder and harder to do because of the time we are living in, but just a few decades ago when it was still the church age things were different. Yes – there was sin in the world and man’s spiritual condition was the same then as it is now, but we can look back and there was seeming goodness. There was politeness. The language was not as crude and vile and ruthless as it is today. In other words, when we look back, we see almost a contradiction, and this is one of the reasons why mankind thought they were advancing in their abilities in technical achievements, medical advancements and all these things that were happening in the 20th century, and they thought they were going to come to a point when man would become better and better and one day live in peace with their fellow man. They could fool themselves in that way because God the Holy Spirit was “holding back” their true condition. He was suppressing or holding down the actual true nature of the sinner, for the most part, although there would be wars.

All we have to do is look back to World War II and what happened in Germany in the concentration camps. We are horrified, and we wonder how man could do that to his fellow man. And, yet, the real question would be, “Why were things like that not happening every day, everywhere, in all the world since the Garden of Eden?” That is what we would expect from a desperately wicked and deceitful heart to produce – death camps and cruelty that is very observable. But that is the “mystery of iniquity,” and it might be there for a short period of time when some terrible killer did something that was unspeakably wicked, but for the most part, there was a sort of peace in the neighborhood, man with his fellow man, to a large degree, and that was only because of the working of Holy Spirit.

You know, sometimes we look back and see the style of clothing. Men wore suits and women wore long dresses. You could look at the literature or some descriptive area of history, and you wonder when you see what is going on today: “What has happened to the human race?” And what has happened is simply that God has lifted His hand of restraint off man’s heart, and the true heart condition (the desperate wickedness) is coming to the surface and showing itself. So really what is going on is that it is not Satan who is making people do all these things, but it is the horrible evil that lies within each sinner that has that dead heart of stone, and now it is just being seen for what it is, and it will just get worse, and worse, and worse. That is how awful sin is and how awful man’s rebellion against God is, and this tells us a lot about this word “hold.” Again, it said, “For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.” And we know we are living in that time when He, the Holy Spirit, has taken Himself out of the way, and we have the world that we have today. We have all this constant, constant evil chaos, and it is worldwide, nation with nation, in every city, village, and town. It is in neighborhood after neighborhood, with neighbor against neighbor, and it is everywhere across the face of the earth, and it touches every human being today because God’s hand of restraint has been lifted. His restraint was not just on one individual, but it was mankind in general, and that has been taken out of the way.

So that helps us understand Romans 1:18 regarding this word: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.” This is not God the Holy Spirit suppressing evil, which was a good and wonderful thing that we can thank God for as He allowed man to exist in this world in his rebel condition for thousands of years as God necessarily held back what was within man to allow some semblance of “civilization” to take place in order for His program to work out with its necessary duration of time. We can see, based on the trajectory we are presently on, that this type of situation where the restraining hand of God has been taken off the hearts of man could not go on for thousands of years. It is just getting more and more degenerate, ugly and destructive, and soon it will get to the point where there could not be “everyday life” in this world. So God held it back, in a good way.

But, here in our verse, it is man that is doing the suppressing or “holding back,” and he is not holding back the evil in himself. No – that is not the picture. It is not as though man is trying to hold down the murder, stealing, lying, cheating, adultery and all manner of wickedness that is within him. No – that is not where his force or strength is being used to hold back and to fight against wickedness and try to stay it off and keep it at bay. And that tells us much about man concerning the direction in which he suppresses, but he is holding the truth in unrighteousness. He is trying his best to keep back the truth that there is a God.

If anyone doubts that, all he has to do is pick up one of the scientific books today, and that is what it is all about. There are a lot of brilliant intellectuals that write volumes of information, and it is all based upon and built upon a foundation of one underlying principle: “We must deny there is a God. We must deny the existence of God someway, somehow. Therefore, let us put our minds together and reason and develop a theory that will disprove the existence of God.” And some men have devoted their lives to this, and with their whole being they are trying to think, “How could it be that there is a universe with all these living things upon it? How is it possible apart from God?” You see, they are starting out with the proposition or idea we read in Psalm 14, and this is the beginning point for most scientists. Of course, by God’s grace there have been some scientists in the past and, perhaps, some scientists still today that do not have this starting point, but they are a very small minority. Most scientists have the position stated in Psalm 14:1:

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.

It is “the fool,” and it is the wisdom of the world. God looks at it, and the first thing that pops into the infinite mind of God is this: “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” Of course God says man is a fool because God is the ever-existent One, the great I AM, and the everlasting God from eternity past to eternity future. He inhabits the whole spectrum of existence, and He is “being” Himself, and it is from Him that we move and live and have our being, as we are told in Acts 17. So here are creatures made in the very image of God, and God has designed them and made them, and they are trying to come to “a right conclusion, a proper conclusion, and a truthful conclusion,” as they would tell you: “We want to know the truth. We want to teach people the truth about where we came from.” So they put their minds to work and they think and think and think, and then we get the “stories of men” from puny little finite creatures, in the scheme of things, compared to the Almighty. These small beings with their tiny, tiny little minds think they are brilliant because they have an IQ of 150 or 175 or whatever it is. But what is God’s IQ? It is infinite, and then we realize just how tiny the capacity for thought man has, no matter how brilliant he is. He is a tiny, little finite creature, and you could put a billion tiny, little finite creature minds together and it would still be nothing in comparison to the infinite, brilliant mind of the God of the Bible. But they think it amounts to a great deal, and they start thinking and thinking and thinking: “Oh, here is how it was! There was a Big Bang, you see, and from that explosion billions of years ago, there came forth ‘something’ and then there were long periods of time and evolution to produce the world and the universe and the earth.” And then over long periods of time, and given enough time, they theorize, anything and everything is possible, even the detailed, complex designs that we see all around us: the design of the trees, the cats, the dogs, the insects, the snake crawling in the grass, and then the human beings.

Yes, sure. They are brilliant men from their perspective, but from God’s perspective, they are nothing but fools that have said in their hearts, “There is no God,” and they have denied the truth to start with, and then they come up with the most ridiculous, foolish theory imaginable: that all this complex creation started from an explosion of “some substance” that they do not, and cannot, define. They do not know where it came from, and their theory collapses because they have not really come up with a theory of origin. If you have a theory of origin, then you have to say where the substance came from that exploded, and then you can start your theory of origin. They cannot do that, and nobody questions them. It is the biggest “slight-of hand” the world has ever seen. It is the biggest lie. It all began back then, but nobody questions where it came from because it is the will of natural, rebellious man to deny God, and to want there to be no God, and to say in his heart, “There is no God.” So there is agreement. It is a consensus of the unsaved that this is how it happened, but they cannot prove any of it.

On the other hand, we have the Bible and the God of the Bible who says He was there. And not only was He there, but He said, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Then He tells us of Himself and how He is that Almighty and all powerful Being that spoke and brought the world into existence. That is how He could start things. That is the true story of creation and the origin of life in this world, and anyone that wants to know the truth will go to the Bible, and they will also look at the testimony of the creation itself because the creation is testifying and declaring of a God, as we read these things in Psalm 19:1-6:

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.

“Day unto day uttereth speech,” and, “There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.” The testimony of the heavens is the testimony of the created thing, the creation itself, that there is a God. There is a God, and all human beings see this testimony. They are hearing this testimony, in a way, as they go about their daily lives and as they look around them. If they go the seashore in the summer, they can look out at the endless ocean, or they can see the seagulls on the beach that are trying to snatch away their sandwiches. It is the testimony of the creation that this beautiful world and its creatures that we see everywhere all came forth from the mind of God. There is a Creator, and that truth is suppressed. It is held back by sinful man.