Dr. Kevin DeYoung | Honor and Thanks

Sunday Morning, March 8, 2026
Given by Dr. Kevin DeYoung | Senior Pastor, Christ Covenant Church

Honor and Thanks
Romans 1:21-23

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Let's pray one more time. 

Gracious heavenly Father, we do ask for your help, not merely out of habit or custom, but because we do need your help. I need your help if I am to preach faithfully and humbly with an eye to the truth and the glory of Christ. And we certainly need your help if we are to hear not only understanding words and sentences but having them sink deep into our hearts. So we pray for the work of the Spirit to be among us through your Word, in Jesus' name, Amen. 

Romans chapter 1, verses 21 through 23. Romans chapter 1, verses 21 through 23. Follow along as I read. 

21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

At the end of last week's message, we came to the sobering conclusion. See it there in your Bibles in verse 20. “So, they are without excuse.” The “they” refers most particularly to the Gentiles. This section 18 through 32 in chapter 1 is thinking about the non-Jewish world, though there are a lot of echoes, as we'll see, to the Old Testament. So, the Jews could also be guilty of these things, but mainly, he's thinking about the Gentile world apart from Christ. And then chapter 2, he's going to turn his attention to the Jews. They, that is the nations of the world, all peoples, know something about God. That was his argument. The light of nature shows that there is a God. He is invisible. He is eternal. He is powerful. He possesses a nature unlike ours by means of this general revelation. They're not saving. Not the special revelation in Christ and in his Word, but the general revelation, which is communicated to us through the things that have been made, and God taking that implants within us a seed of divinity. That's the language that the theologian John Calvin uses. That is, we have something innate and acquired through the observation of the world, a feeling of transcendence. An awareness that there is a mighty God and that this God is to be feared and to be worshipped because of this universal reality, everyone, everywhere. 

Ecclesiastes says, eternity written on our hearts, and the God of eternity written in the heavens. Because of all of that, all people are without excuse. They have an awareness. The analogy we used last week is an infant and its mother. That child may not be able to understand all of the words that you speak to him or her, would not be able to articulate and give an explanation or a description of its mother, and yet it can tell in the arms who is the mother. And if I try to say, look at the baby, it knows I'm not, and you're not. And so, we have this innate awareness of God. 

That was the argument from last week. And the conclusion there without excuse assumed a premise, and that premise is going to be explained in greater detail here in verses 21, 22, and 23. Namely, this missing premise. Everyone has, by general revelation an awareness of God, they are without excuse. What's the missing argument in the middle? It's that they do not worship God with this knowledge as they ought. 

Now we saw a hint of that at the end of verse 18 that says, “by their unrighteousness, they suppress the truth.” We saw that last week. This awareness of God. Sinful men and women take, and they try to drown out and press down that awareness of God. Drowning with distractions, with disobedience, by their unrighteousness. Now in 21, 22, and 23, Paul is going to give us more of a description. What does that suppression look like? What is this middle argument? They have a knowledge, they're without excuse. The missing argument in the middle is they do not do with that knowledge what ought to be done. And that's what these verses are about. 

The outline is simple. One thing every human being knows. Two things that unregenerate human beings do not do. And then three things that happen as a result. Very nice that it's right there in the text. One, two, three. 

So first, one thing that every human being knows, and this is quite surprising and we need to explain what it means and what it doesn't mean. Because look at verse 21, “For although they knew God.” That's the one thing that is true of every human being. They know God. Now, if you have some Bible verses in your head, you may immediately struggle a bit. Now, okay, now how does that square? Because aren't there a lot of verses in the New Testament that say that people don't know God? And indeed, there are. Paul's going to argue in Romans 3, 10 through 18, “there's no one who seeks after God.” “There's no one who understands.” Galatians 4: 8, the very same apostle Paul says, “formerly, when you did not know God.” 1 John 4: 7, “whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.” The implication is if you don't love and you are not born from above, then you do not know God. So yes, there are passages in the New Testament that clearly say that apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, men and women do not know God. 

So, what are we left to do? The Bible does not contradict itself. The Apostle Paul is not forgetting in Galatians and Romans what he wrote in one place or the other. But we understand human language has flexibility in its meaning, and so Paul must have in mind that there is some kind of knowledge that every human being has of God. And then there is a kind of knowledge that one only acquires by the gift of the Holy Spirit. So. this knowledge in verse 21, “they knew God.” Let's say what it is not. 

It is not a redemptive knowledge. It is not knowing as intimacy with God or fellowship with God. It is not communion knowing. It is not covenant knowing. So absolutely on one level, in one sense of that word, the unbeliever does not know God. And yet, says plainly in verse 21, there must be another sense in which everyone does know God. So, this knowing in verse 21 is not knowing as the full reception of truth or the faithful believing, embracing, and cherishing of the truth, but knowing as an awareness, an impression, a perception. An awareness, an impression, a perception. They know God. There is something deep down in every human psyche. That means that there is some point of contact with the non-believer. 

Perhaps this is a description even of you this morning, if you didn't even realize it, that you know God. Think of your conscience. Paul will have much more to say about that in the chapters ahead about the conscience accuses us or defends us. You have that innate sense. Some call it a faculty within you that approves what is right and disapproves what is wrong. All of us, every one of us, has had the experience of feeling bad about having done something wrong. Where does that come from? 

Or can speak about the peoples throughout history, all around the world, who are incurably religious. We said this last week. In every culture, at every time, and in every place, people are almost always religious, and often they have some kinds of sacrifices. There's some sort of sense that they must prove something or pay something to this God. Even in places that are officially atheistic, what do you find? You often find the worship of ancestors. You find animism or spiritism or the worship of the state or a political party. People are incurably religious. The law is written on our hearts. We can see in the world around us the appearance of design. 

I remember reading one of these new atheists, and they've been on their own sort of intellectual journey. Some of them now say, well, Christianity as a cultural construct is still a good. I don't want to do away with that entirely, but I remember reading some of them, and they would say that the creation, of course, they don't use that, they would say the world has the appearance of design. To which one might say, it appears that way for a reason. It might, in fact, have a design. 

Perhaps some of you know the story of Whitaker Chambers, one-time Communist Party member, spy for the Soviets during the Cold War, famously became conservative, was led to reject atheism. In this famous passage in his autobiography, he says he was led to reject atheism by studying the miracle of his infant daughter's ear. He said he watched his daughter eating in her highchair and quote, “and involuntary, and unwanted," those are his words, thought, entered his mind. Quote, “Those intricate, perfect ears could have been,” quote, “created only by immense design.” A perfect example, really, of what John Calvin said about this sense of divinity, an “involuntary, unwanted thought,” Whitaker-Chambers said. He didn't want this thought. It was not the result of syllogistic reasoning. Perhaps some people can come to see the truth and be prepared for the truth. They still need to be born again by the Spirit of God. But for him, it was this unwanted thought. He didn't want to see it. And yet there with his infant daughter, just looking upon her ear, he knew in that moment there must be a God. And he had suppressed it, something that he knew to be true, but he wanted to forget. That's what Paul says about the human mind and heart bound to sin. There are things we know that we so steal ourselves to forget until he finally acknowledged it to be true. So, I said last week, are you willing to concede that this book might know you better than you know yourself. Tells you things about yourself, about the inner working of your head and heart. This book understands what's going on in our world and in your neighbors and in this country and around the world better than any newscast, better than any pundit, better than any other commentary. This book understands. We, apart from the Spirit of God, suppress the truth in unrighteousness. So, we know something. So fundamentally, the human problem in the world is not ultimately a knowledge problem. Yes, they need to know of Jesus Christ because general revelation, they have suppressed it. So, there is something they must hear and know. Paul's already said that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. That is necessary because the knowledge they already have has been suppressed. That is to say, it is not, first of all, a knowledge problem. It's a knowledge problem because it is, first of all, a moral problem. It is a spiritual problem. They have some awareness, some knowledge, and yet they want to forget it. They don't want to acknowledge it.

When we have birthdays in our house, which happens a lot. We're in a little bit of a reprieve here until my wife has her birthday, which is the one that, you know, moms often gets the least attention, sadly. And then we come into the summer months, and it's just birthday, birthday, birthday. And my dear wife tries to make all of those feel special. There's a banner that goes across the windows that says, “Happy Birthday.” And so that usually goes up when the child is sleeping at night, and then the presents are there in the morning, a few of them at least. It's hard to...the factor of nine makes it very costly, but there's some presents there, and there's going to be maybe a special breakfast that's in the oven or purchased at the store. No shame in that. The child probably comes to expect this. And it really should be no confusion about where these things have come from. There is a sign that says, “Happy Birthday.” There are wrapped presents neatly on the table. There is a card, and everyone can see that the card is written in the penmanship, not of the father, I love them, but of the mother. So, if they see this, it's right before their eyes. They all know. We would say, surely, it is a serious failing if they were to wander around the house all day, say, where did the presents come from? Who put up by some chance, some cosmic accident, the happy birthday sign is there. The one who put it there would feel very put out. 

And so, the suppression of this knowledge, people say, why doesn't God show himself? If only God would make it clearer. Have you considered that perhaps the problem is not with what God has revealed, but with our eyes to behold it? If our kids walked around the house all day, if only I knew where these gifts came from. Why is this such a mystery to me? We'd say, you ought to know. You have chosen to forget. The one thing every human being knows, although they knew God.

Here's two things, however, that they do not do. Number one, just following along with verse 21, “they did not honor him as God.” This is the fatal flaw. This is where everything goes wrong. They did not glorify him. We glorify God, not by adding to God something that he lacks, but by ascribing to God who he is, and giving him the worship that he deserves. We are not adding anything to him. He is not in any deficiency if we do not honor him as God. And yet, if you were in some medieval kingdom and the king would deign to leave his castle and would come riding on his horse through your village, it would be the duty of every loyal, kindred heart to come and to see him parade through your village. What an honor that he would be there and that you ought to bend and bow and give homage to this king, and to do anything less would be to fail to recognize who he is. If he rode through your town and you did not bother to come out or to bend or to bow or to sing his praises, either you did not really know who he was, or you knew who he was and you did not care to honor him because you did not think he was worth your time and effort. We would say surely that is a great failing. And everything else about your citizenship would flow from that first mistake that you did not honor the king as your king. And so, the world apart from God, though they knew God, they did not honor him as God. They didn't give him the glory that he deserved. We'll see more of what that looks like in the results to come. 

But notice the second thing because this is perhaps surprising. We get that first one. Yes, they did not honor him as God, number two, or “give thanks.” Isn't that striking? We might think Paul would say, what's at the heart, what's the very core of human failure to God? You might think that Paul would say, you know what they did in their unrighteousness? They cursed him. They hated him. They reviled him. No. He says, you want to know at the very heart and the core of their unrighteousness, they did not thank him. Isn't that one of the reasons why Satan, we don't know a lot about Satan's rebellion, we know he was one of the angels. And we know that in a prideful rebellion, he took with him some of the angels and their fallen angels, and they rebelled. He did not accept the station that he had been given. He was not grateful to God as a created being. And so, he rebelled. Adam and Eve, at least part of their sin in the garden was their ingratitude. In eating that fruit, it was to believe the lie of the serpent and question the goodness of God, that God was hiding something from them. That all of the trees that he had given them to eat was not enough if he didn't give them this particular tree. It was the sin of an ungrateful heart. 

Now, this is not to make light of the many struggles that many of you have. We have sadnesses in our church all the time. We have members who die, loved ones who die, elders and deacons who die, parents, sometimes even children. There are great sadnesses in life, and yet you're here this morning, and there's a sun in the sky. You did nothing to hang the sun there, nothing to hang the stars. You will, if I'm not mistaken, all of you have food to eat. You will have occasion sometime in this week, I think most of you, to laugh. You will have friends around you, perhaps children, or the gifts of marriage or grandchildren. You will enjoy to play sports or to watch a sporting event on TV. You will, despite the caking of green pollen, enjoy the beauty of spring, see the trees blooming. You did nothing. All of the nice people that collected the leaves in your yard, they didn't save them somewhere, and now they have to bring them out and staple them back to the trees. Praise God. The trees blossom, and they bloom. 

We've enjoyed already this morning the gifts of music. Some of you have eyes to enjoy the gifts of art or human accomplishment or we think of what God has done with science and medicine. All of that surrounds you every day. To whom do you give thanks? To whom does the unbeliever give thanks for all of these things? To what do you attribute these blessings? It's written in the stars. Well, who hung the stars? You say, what good luck we have had. It's our good genes. It's a mechanistic determinism, blind chance, or this is what we often feel in our hearts, my wisdom, my goodness, my hard work, but it is not so. 

Imagine, to think again of your mother, for all that she's done for you. I just want you to remember, because I don't know what sermon we're doing on Mother's Day, but it's probably not going to be about mothers. It's probably about sin and unrighteousness or whatever Paul is talking about. So, here's your Mother's Day part. Just enjoy it. Listen to it again. If your mom clothes that she cleaned, and the tables that she set, and the vacuum that she did, and the homework that she helped you with, and all the forms that she filled out, let alone the birth that she gave, and taking care of you, and feeding you, and loving you, and hugging you, and putting the Band-Aid on there. If all of that in your whole life, you never said thank you, say, what a rotten child. It's true. 

And then you think about our Creator. He does a lot more than your mom. And he made us, and he sustains us, and he enriches us. That's why Paul says, you want to know where they went wrong? Even before they cursed God. No, no, no. Go before that. They had life and breath and the sun and the moon and the stars and the trees and the grass and human relationship, beauty and all of that and they did not give thanks to God. 

You want to know seven words that can transform your life? I know it sounds like a BuzzFeed article or something, but you want to know seven words that can transform your life, your life with God, and your life with each other? I'll give you seven words. If you would just put these seven words into regular rotation in your relationship with God and your relationship with other people, they really could totally transform your life. Here they are. I'm sorry. I love you. Thank you. You just put those seven words - I'm sorry. I love you. Thank you - into your regular vocabulary with God and with the people in your life, and you are well on your way to knowing what it is by the power of the Spirit to act like a Christian. 

See, the root sin here is this idolatry. This is the medicine, this is the depraved soil from which all other sins grow. The failure to honor God as God and the failure of an ungrateful heart. The particular infractions of God's law blossom from this root failure. Before Paul talks about all the laws that they've broken, you didn't do this rule, you didn't keep this commandment, he says, here's where it starts. Yes, keep the commandments, but here's where it starts. You don't know God as God. You have not recognized who he is. You have not treated him as God, and you have not, in humble, heartfelt affection, said to him, for all of your gifts, thank you. 

Now what happens? Although they knew God, that's what everyone knows, two things the unregenerate heart does not do. They do not honor God as God, and they do not give thanks to Him. Three things that happen as a result, these three things are overlapping categories. There's some distinction, but Paul is more or less saying the same thing in different language. The first thing that happens is they became futile in their thinking, their thinking. So, the intellect is not exempt from the effects of the fall. Here's news for you, and it's for me too. You are not as logical and as objective as you think. You've heard me say before, we are not so much rational as we are rationalizing. We find reasons to defend the things that we already feel, and we already want to believe. It's very hard to change our minds. You're not as logical, you're not as objective as you think. 

We do not think rightly. Their thinking became futile. This word for futile here is used only this place, this verb, in the New Testament. But the root word appears in the Greek translation, the Septuagint, in several places in the Old Testament. Here's a couple of them, Jeremiah 2 verse 5, “Your fathers went after worthlessness.” He's talking about the Jews and their idolatry. “Your fathers went after worthlessness and became worthless.” 2 Kings 17: 15, “They went after false idols and they became false.” Do you see what's happening there? They went after futility, and they became futile. It's the principle. We become what we worship. They worshiped futile things, vain things, empty things, and so their thinking became vain and empty and futile. What do we worship? Whatever or whomever we bow before, we worship. Their thinking became futile. 

Second, their foolish hearts were darkened. Now, thoughts and hearts are often speaking in the Bible of the innermost parts, so it's not always a fine distinction, but it's telling here that the mind, and now the heart, not just futile, but you see this step, now it's darkened. Luther says, ingratitude leads to vanity, which leads to blindness. The most brilliant esoteric Greek philosophers were often quite at home with rank, superstition, and immorality. Jesus tells us why this is so, John 3, “Everyone who does wicked things hates the light.” You have all sorts of reasons why you hate the light, and we ought to do apologetics, and sometimes people really do have mental hurdles that need to be cleared and need to have a reason for the hope that we have, as 1 Peter tells us. But this is also what takes place. There's light, and it often happens before you come mentally to why you don't like the light, why the light must not be really light. Your hearts are darkened because people love to do wicked things. And when they love to do wicked things, they don't want the light. And because of that, they find ways in their futile thinking and their darkened hearts to walk away from the light. And you see the result of all of this, the third step. 

Claiming to be wise, they became fools. Claiming to be wise, that's the sort of language that the impressive philosophers would use. Appeal to wisdom, appeal to human reason. Well, they claim that, Paul says, but they become fools. Jesus says very hard things about it. Don't say raka to your brother. Don't call someone a fool. What is a fool? A fool says in his heart there is no God. A fool is a moral category. This is not an intellectual category. There are very smart people, PhDs, straight A students, ace the SAT. There are very smart people who are spiritually dumb. And there are simple, uneducated people who are very spiritually wise. This folly is a spiritual folly. 

Notice in verse 23, this is the first of three exchanges. We have one in verse 25, we have the next one in verse 26. Here's the first of three foolish exchanges that Paul talks about. “They exchanged the glory of the immortal God.” So that's what they knew. That's what they had an awareness of through general revelation was a glorious, immortal, eternal God. And they claiming to be wise, but really being fools, exchanged all of that. And instead of worshiping that God, they took images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. This was the sin not just of the Gentiles but of the Jews in the Old Testament. Psalm 106, they made a calf in Horeb. This is the golden calf. They worshiped a metal image. They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass. They forgot God their Savior who had done great things. Jeremiah 2: 11, “has a nation changed its gods even though they are no gods. But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit.” This was the perennial temptation, not just of the Gentile, but of every human heart. And it makes sense because this was the first sin in the garden.

I don't think Paul is talking only about the first sin in the garden, but we are meant, obviously, to see that as an analogy. You see there in verse 23, the language of “birds and animals and creeping things,” this threefold formula appears in Genesis 1 verse 20 and 24. Or even more noticeable, now you can see in English the word “image,” “icon,” in the Greek. Think of Genesis 1:26, “Let us make man in our own image and in our likeness.” Now this is a perfectly fine translation, but if you could see the Greek, that word translated “resembling,” is the exact same Greek word that's used in the Greek translation of Genesis 1:26 for “likeness.” Now why doesn't it translate as “likeness,” because we don't have a word that works that way. The glory of the immortal God for image is “likeness” is seeing mortal man. That's what it is, but we use “resembling,” but it's the same word right there. He has the word “image” and “likeness.” So, we are put in the conceptual universe of Genesis chapter 1 because the ongoing sin and exchange in the world is the same foolish exchange that Adam and Eve made in the garden. 

And here, it's described in verse 23 as “making the invisible God visible.” It's one of the reasons why wisely in the Reformed tradition has always warned against religious iconography, statues, painting, not that we can't appreciate art of certain kinds, but anything that depicts God, that is used as an avenue or a channel of worship. Some traditions try to distinguish, well, it's not worship, but it's veneration. The reformers always said, well, don't look at the words, look at what they do. We have in our heart a desire to make the invisible God visible before us. Now, it's visible in creation, the heavens are telling, made visible in the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, made visible in a way with the sacraments. Those are the pictures he gives to us. You say, well, praise God that we're not like this. We don't chase after these sorts of animals and mortal man, creeping things. Well, are there some people who would give anything their whole life to hold a statue of a man? We call it the Oscars. You say, yeah, go after those Hollywood people. Or the Heisman. Anything that we are willing to bow before and we say to, in our hearts, to a pop star or a politician - I ascribe to you glory. I adore you. I want to be like you. I want to tell everyone about you, and in my heart, the height of all excellence would be if I could only get a glimpse of you. - Sounds like worship.

What distinguished God from his creatures? It was his majesty, his glory, his eternity, his immateriality, his invisibility, his infinity, his spirituality. That's what distinguished God as God. And so, in this folly, they worship God as material, finite, physical, visible, and temporal. And do you notice what's happening? They have literally gone from the highest of heavens, the God who dwells in unapproachable light, the worship that lifts us into the heavens, and do you see the progression, really the degression in verse 23, man, who God created a little lower than the angels, and then birds who fly in the sky, and then animals, and then finally creeping things. This is literally what false worship does. It takes us from the highest of heavens to creeping, crawling things on the ground. False worship, idolatry, is a falling away, a damnable exchange. Some scholars would try to argue, well, in the history of religions, people started as this kind of heathenism or paganism, and then they evolved into monotheism. No, no, no, that's not what Paul tells us. Everyone knows that there is a God, but in their exchange, there is a denigration from truth to lie, from integrity to unrighteousness. 

You see what's happening to us? We are made in the image of God. And when you sin, you are being degraded. People like to think to themselves, well, okay, maybe God isn't happy, but there's really, you know, it's harmless. There are no harmless sins. You may think, well, so what? God's a big God, he can deal with it. True, he can deal with it, and he will deal with it. But you are not so big, and turning your back on God makes you smaller. All false worship degrades the image of God. 

Now, this is the argument coming, I think we'll be there in two weeks. You become what you worship. If you worship animals, you become like animals. That's the argument. That's what Paul's going to say, God gives them over, because next it's going to be he gives you over to the lusts and to the passions and you're inflamed sexually so that you feel like your whole life is to satisfy sexual urges. Well, that's being deprived of your reason, deprived of self-control, living life like an animal in heat that has to simply satisfy bodily urges. Here's the lie our world tells us, unfettered self-expression is what makes you human. That's the lie. Here's the truth. Being ruled by your lusts and passions makes you like an animal. It's not freedom. It's bondage. It's not finding yourself, it's losing yourself. 

Salvation in the book of Romans is about a lot of things. We're going to see it's about forgiveness. We've already seen it's about righteousness. It's about atonement. It's about propitiation. It's about justification. But it's also about this, it is about the image of God being restored. Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God. And only in worshipping Christ can you have the divine image restored in you. Only through the God-man can you be fully human once again. Now, that's not all there is to say, but that's part of what this salvation is, is you becoming truly human as you were meant to be. Not degrading yourself, losing the image, and the image of creeping things and animals until you're little better than an animal. It is to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ and then to be transformed by the beauty, and the kindness, and the mercy, and the loveliness of that glory. So that as we are transformed one degree of glory to the next, we will honor him as God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we will say to him, thank you. 

Let's pray. Gracious heavenly Father, we thank you for your Word. We pray that you would instruct us in it. Correct us. May it be the instrument of salvation and our sanctification. In Christ we pray, Amen.