By nature, young people, we are all part of one human race that it pleased our covenant God to bring into being. At the Tower of Babel, He did divide that one human race into different nations, tongues and tribes, so that today there are many different nations, tongues and tribes all over this earth. But what is important to understand and hold on to is the fact that from a spiritual point of view it pleased God to make the whole human race become divided into only two different kinds of people. It is not important whether our skin is white or black, red or yellow. The important thing is not what language we speak. It is not even serious who our physical fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers are. Where on this earth you live likewise is not the important question.
What is important is not where we have been born, but with what kind of life we now live. The whole human race, because of God’s sovereign election, is divided into only two kinds of people. We are believers or unbelievers. We are citizens of the kingdom of heaven or of the kingdom of darkness. We are children of God or children of the devil. We have been left in the spiritual death wherewith we came into this world, or we are those who by God’s grace were born again with heavenly life. And all this counts!
Bearing all this in mind we find Paul writing to the Romans an awesome truth. He writes about those not born again, those who, although physically alive, are spiritually dead and have not been born again with a new spiritual life. Of them he states in the first chapter, and in its last verses, that they are “Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.”
It is that last element here that we should hold on to and consider seriously. The important and awesome question is whether we find pleasures in all these sins which Paul mentions; but also and especially whether we have pleasure in that seed of the serpent, of which God spoke when Adam and Eve committed that first sin. The Greek word that Paul uses here means to “think well” of these sinners. To have pleasure in them is to think well of them.
We should stand in awe before what Paul writes, because we live in a far more evil day than he did when he wrote these words. There were some very evil days in the past. Because of them God sent that flood in order to save one family. Get that, young people, ONE FAMILY was saved in the ark! Sometime later He stopped a host of unbelievers under Satan’s power from building the tower of Babel, so that a few righteous souls might not be wiped out by these children of darkness, who were seeking to make one world, and to wipe out those who loved God. In Genesis 6:5 we read, “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart were only evil continually.” Note those three words: every, only and continually. Then too in verses 11 and 12 we read, “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.”
Now if that was true in that day, how much more it is true today! For today we have so many inventions and tools which they did not have before the flood, and were not there when the Tower of Babel was being built. Remember, young people, that with all our amazing inventions and achievements sin is far more bold and widespread.
You were not born yet and able to see how much less men sinned then, and how much more fully, and in many new ways, man can and does sin today. You were not here, or were too young to notice it, but there was a time, which we of the older generation remember and experienced, when the Sabbath was not so fully corrupted the way it is today. Not too many years ago it was almost unthinkable in our country to see a grocery store, a shoe store, or even a gasoline station open on Sunday! But today it is almost unbelievable to expect to see a store in a mall closed and having a sign declaring that the Sabbath must be used to serve the almighty and holy God Who gives us life, and upon Whose earth we are living. There was a time, not too long ago, when colleges and high schools would not have basketball or football games on Sunday. How different it is today!
We of the older generation remember when there was hardly an automobile available for all the going here and there on the Sabbath for worldly pleasure and amusements. There were no airplanes to speed you across the land for satisfying pleasures of the flesh rather than to enjoy spiritual matters in God’s house. And what about the radios and television sets that today can bring the world and its haters of God so very close to you! Today we can hear and even see—and sad to say some church members will even resort to it on Sunday—those who hate God, and we can find pleasure in these sinners and their works!
There was a time when you could not steal as easily as now. The sinful pleasures and delights of the world are so much more abundant, because we can do so many things more in a day than they could in times past. Even as a tree grows and brings forth more fruit, so the human race grows in sinfulness and produces more and more sin. One can only wonder that God does not come, as He did with that flood and with the confusion of man’s speech. We certainly are rushing to the end of time, and the measure of iniquity is filling up rapidly today.
But the point that should be made here, and is so very, very important, is this: Do you have pleasure in these sins wherein the world abounds? Are you one of those who has pleasure in them who sin in so many ways and with so many things? Do you find pleasure rather than disgust in these unbelievers who walk so boldly and openly in sin?
Get once again that statement of Paul that those people have pleasure in them that commit these sins. That pleasure manifests itself in performing these same sins in the soul! And God sees them in the soul as well as being performed by the body. And now today we are so very, very close to the days of the antichrist, as Satan is preparing the way more fully for that chief tool of the devilish acts whereby he is trying to keep the Kingdom of Heaven from being realized in its perfection. That is why the apostle John wrote almost 2,000 years ago, “Little children, it is the last hour: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even as now there are many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last hour.” I John 2:18
The big question is whether, when the unbelievers, who even when they do not openly break the second table of God’s law, break the first table openly and very boldly, you enjoy companionship with these godless people and find pleasure in them in their deviltry. You may have to work with them in a store, factory or other place where it takes a group to work together. But when they take God’s name in vain, does it bother you? Do you continue to have a lot of respect for them, even though they do this so often? Do you remain silent because you want to keep their friendship? Are you more concerned about them than about God and His glory? The question is not merely whether you let them know how much you hate those Gee, Gosh, and Golly words which they use, and whether they do not seem so bad as when they use the name of God. What about that word luck which is so widely and often used by the world? Do you put God aside and His sovereignty and grace, and have the idol Luck as the one who decides what is going to happen to you? Listen, the only time we may use that word luck is when we condemn its use as the sin of idolatry.
Then, too, remember, as already pointed out, that the word here translated as pleasure literally means “think well.” Do you think well of the unbelievers in their speech and conduct? We must not think well of those committing all those sins which Paul lists in Romans 1:29-32. Let us strive more and more to walk in a way that reveals pleasure in God’s law and in serving Him with our whole being. Watch your tongue and walk in a way that reveals that you think well of God and of His holy law.
Yes, I knew a man who found so much pleasure in the world’s Sabbath breakers playing baseball on the Sabbath that he—in those days when there were no television sets, not even black and white ones—had his radio on, even upon a Sabbath day, while eating his evening meal, and shut it down—mind you, not off but with less volume—while he read the Bible and prayed!! Did he think well of God and of His Christ when he did that? Did he really find pleasure in reading the Word of God? And how awful for us today if we are so full of it and concerned about the sports of mankind on Sunday as well as on the rest of the days of the week! We can so easily place this man or this team above Christ! This team’s victory means more to us than salvation. And what Christ did for us is of less significance to us.
But, young people, do not brush aside that first table of God’s law. We must maintain all of it in order to keep any one of the commandments in the second table. Not wanting physical misery, the world will try to make men keep from murder, theft, lying and adultery. But if we have an idol in place of God, we will feel free to take His name in vain, and desecrate the Sabbath. We will find pleasure in those who hate Him and will think well of them.
However, we cannot go eastward and westward at the same time. We cannot be going up a hill and down it at the same time. Neither can we walk in love toward God and at the same time find pleasure and think well of those who hate Him.
Let us be very careful then as to what we say, but also as to what we want to hear being said. Let us be careful, not only as far as what we will not do on the Sabbath day, but also as to what we will and want to do on that holy day. Let our God, through Paul, warn us to flee from sin and sinners with our hearts and minds as well as with our hands and feet.
May our covenant God work powerfully in you and make you find pleasure in that which pleases Him.