Romans 1:28
28 And [kai] even as [kathos] they did [dokimazo] not [ou] like [dokimazo] to retain [echo] God [theos] in [en] their knowledge [epignosis],
God [theos] gave [paradidomi] them [autos] over [paradidomi] to [eis] a reprobate [adokimos] mind [nous], to do [poieo] those things which are [katheko] not [me] convenient [katheko]; KJV-Interlinear
28 And
since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased
mind to do what ought not to be done.
ESV
When the Bible says one, two, three, then the fool
will inevitably say, the Bible does not say one, two, three. Because the fool lacks knowledge, because the
fool refuses to learn knowledge, and therefore the fool presumes knowledge that
is inaccurate and just plain wrong.
And by rejecting Gods word, which is the doorway
through which you have to pass, in order to understand what is and what isn’t,
then you become a victim of your own decisions.
Lacking truth, means lacking discernment, means
lacking orientation to life, and that all leads to worse and worse decisions
and circumstances for yourself.
And when you do this for long enough, then God will
in fact give you up to your own bad choices.
One to of the best examples of this is Pharaoh.
When Moses came to him and demanded that the people
be let go, Pharaoh refused six times. In
every case, the Bible tells us that it was Pharaoh who hardened his own heart.
As we have learned from our study in Ephesians, the
hardening of the heart is a callousing over of the soul. Do this for long enough and the soul becomes
blackened out, so to speak. Once a soul
is blackened out, then light can no longer enter. What remains is death for the individual.
But in Pharaohs case, the next four plagues ended
with God hardening Pharaohs heart.
Pharaoh should have been dead after the sixth plague, but God kept him
alive for the remainder of the plagues, just to teach us all a very important
lesson. Continued rejection of truth,
leads you into a no mans land that you cannot return from on your own.
God is always there, but for some people, there is
a line across which they cannot return.
Not because of Gods decision or action, but because of their own
hardness of soul and defiance against truth.
Often times the lies of ones beliefs are more
important than the living truth of life. And that is a very sad thing. It takes a very stubborn attitude to get
yourself in to that situation, but then it is all of your own doing, never Gods
doing.
If you were ever walking out in the desert, all
alone, hungry and thirsty and poor, and then entered into a phenomenal banquet
with every imaginable food and beverage, and then walked into a Christmas party
with every imaginable gift for you, and then walked into a treasure of enormous
wealth, and decided to walk away from it all, then that is the perfect example of
the fool.
A fool finds excuses to reject Gods provision and
blessings, so that they will end up with nothing and less, all the while
believing that they can do better on their own.
Pursuing a self-appointed arrogance or
righteousness of personal standards, is the quintessence of sin and evil.
And that is the real risk that everyone takes when
they refuse to obey Gods command to learn Bible doctrine, daily.
The word for convenient, ‘katheko,’ means to reach
to or to accomplish. And it is stated
clearly here, that whatever you are doing in order to accomplish your own
purpose, is not accomplishable. You
cannot achieve your purpose by means of any worldly means.
