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NOTES

I've Got Issues
“I’ve Got Worship Issues”
Carl Nichols


Romans 1:18–23
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,19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

21 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. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.


Romans 1 shows a description of a society struggling to agree on moral authority and shared truth.

v. 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.

“Wrath of God”
This is God allowing people to experience the consequences of rejecting him.

“Suppress the Truth”
When truth is silenced, disorder is unleashed.

Wrath shows up not only in disasters, but in relational collapse, institutional distrust, family breakdown, addiction, anxiety epidemics, and social fragmentation.

Sometimes God’s judgment is not lightning from heaven—it is heaven stepping back and letting human systems strain under the weight of human autonomy.

v. 19
Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.

Ignorance is not the problem, resistance is.

We didn’t lose our sense of right and wrong; we lost agreement about where it comes from.

v. 20
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen…so that people are without excuse.

Creation shows us God is a God of order, not chaos.

We trust God’s order in physics, but reject his order in morality.

v. 21a
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him…

Ingratitude is the front door to idolatry.

v. 21b
…but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

When God is removed, clarity is removed and confusion sits on the throne.

v. 22
Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools.

Pride masquerades as progress.

When we stop listening to God, we don’t become neutral; we become confident in the wrong things.

v. 23
…they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

Every generation worships something.

Idols always look modern in their own time.

Idols always use the illusion of progress.

Summary…

Revelation → Suppression → Exchange → Disorder

Creation reveals God.
People suppress truth.
Worship shifts.
Confusion spreads.

The chaos we see is not random, it begins when worship leaves the Creator and attaches itself to something created.

Lawlessness is not where the story starts, it is where the story lands.

When God is no longer honored, something else has to become ultimate.

When no higher authority remains, human feelings becomes the final authority.