Consequences as Judgment

Transcript

GR 2206
Consequences as Judgment
05/12/2019
Romans 1:28-31
Gil Rugh

We are in Romans chapter 1, Romans and the first chapter. The major section of the book of Romans after introductory material to cover the overall first 17 verses. But the point of the book of Romans is going to demonstrate the power of the gospel of God to bring about salvation for all human beings. So we noted that in verse 16, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for everyone (or to everyone) who believes,” and so he’s establishing the universal need for the gospel and you begin with the fact that we are all sinners. What he does in verses 18 thru verse 32 of chapter 1, the rest of chapter 1, is demonstrate that all humanity, particularly talking about non-Jews, because he’s talking about the general creation. Natural revelation available to all people as a result of the creating work of God demonstrates that all people are sinners in their rejection of God as He has revealed Himself.

Then in chapter 2, he’ll deal with the Jews specifically because they have the special revelation of God, His word, but they are just as lost and just as condemned as the Gentiles are. And the conclusion he wants to come to, to remind you, over in chapter 3, verse 9, pick up in the middle of that verse, “We have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin.” So that’s the foundation that needs to be established, and it’s true in anything, if you don’t establish a correct foundation you will be in trouble as you proceed.

And if we don’t have a clear view of the issue of sin . . . and let me just say something to clarify here. We sometimes say that people are lost because they do not believe the gospel. There’s an element of truth in that, but we have to be careful, because Romans 1 is demonstrating people are lost if they never hear the gospel, so the foundational issue is people are lost because they are sinners. The only hope for them to be rescued from their lostness, to be redeemed, to experience salvation is to believe in Christ. So it’s true they are lost because they don’t believe in Christ. But you want to be careful because if you have that incorrect there are some people who will say then people who never hear the gospel are not lost, because they cannot reject what they don’t hear. If you come across a saying people go to hell because they don’t believe the gospel, well then, people who don’t hear the gospel and don’t have a chance to believe it aren’t lost. No, they are lost, all of us, because we are sinners. Now the only hope and provision for our lostness is the gospel which God provided through the death and resurrection of His Son. So we don’t want to get overly technical but sometimes people will get into the discussion are people lost if they never hear the gospel. Yes, because they’ve been exposed to the revelation of creation, no matter where they are and what their condition. Everyone has responded negatively to that revelation, so we are lost and going to hell because we are sinners.

That’s why we carry the gospel to the lost. If they were only lost because they reject the gospel we could say, well, let’s not take the gospel to them then they won’t reject it and that’ll be okay. No, we need to carry the gospel to them because they are already lost and only by receiving the gospel by faith can they be rescued from their lostness. So Paul is establishing the lostness of all human beings. Everyone Jew and Gentile alike is exposed to natural creation and that revelation in creation, but he’s particularly focused on the non-Jews here because he’ll pick up in chapter 2. The Jews would agree of course the Gentiles are lost, pagan sinners. But he’s going to then deal with the fact that you Jews who have the special revelation of God are also lost because you reject the revelation of God as well.

We’ve been moving through chapter 1, we see the basic issue is that men have rejected the revelation God has given. Verse 19, He revealed Himself in creation, verse 20, it says, “they are without excuse.” God has made Himself known, its manifest, there’s no excuse for ignorance on this matter, it’s a willful suppressing, it’s what is so obvious. So verse 21 says, “even though they knew God.” Not talking about a salvation knowledge, but they had the revelation of God that God had made manifest. So they knew there was a true and living God who had revealed something of His character in His creation but they have rejected that. They didn’t bow before Him. They didn’t become unreligious, if you will, or abandon religion. They just created their own, they worship the creation rather than the Creator and that can take various forms, everything but the worship of the true and living God. Everything but honoring Him and recognizing Him as God is a form of idolatry. Man exalts his own ideas, his own beliefs, his own convictions. The matter of placing himself in the place of God and putting his convictions, his beliefs, above what the living God has revealed. So they became fools, they exchanged the glory of God. The result is God placed them under judgment, sentence has been passed

We talk about the future dimension of God’s wrath, which is an eternal hell, but there is this present dimension of the wrath of God going on continuously as God turns people over to their own sin and the manifestation of that. And we’ve been through some of this. Part of it is the rejection of His plan in creation of a man and a woman and everyone says that is part of the general revelation of God. It’s manifest to everyone but it is being clearly rejected and suppressed. And the result: God turns them over and here they manifest their rejection. You see, the foundation for all sin is in the rejection of the revelation God has given and the replacing of the only true God with someone or something else of your own creation. And so all sin comes out of this. The judgment of God is you are condemned to the enslavement of your sin, and it will consume you, become more and more manifest, overwhelming, and we see displays of it. We display various displays of it today as it becomes more open and more broad as we are moving toward that climatic time (which we studied about in the book of Revelation) after the rapture of the church which will lead to the second coming of Christ to earth.

We looked through the unnatural passions that begin to overtake men. You cannot reject God and not experience the consequences, so at the foundational issue, this is where we’ll come through the rest of this chapter and into chapter two, is the refusal to bow before God. We’ve been talking in Ecclesiastes, the fear of God. We talked about it in our study earlier today, the fear of the Lord, that’s the beginning of wisdom, knowledge. When you’ve rejected God you’re out here without any true foundation, no objective standard outside of yourself. And for rejecting Him you’ve been condemned and sentenced to be controlled and corrupted and enslaved to your selfish sin.

“God gave them over,” God gave them over, and we come down to verse 28. Incidentally, in this you can see the foundational sin is the rejection of God. We sometimes think, well, at least they’re religious and we sometimes join forces. We talk about evangelicals at times because we have certain agreement in certain convictions, in moral, or political areas, but you understand false worship is the foundational sin that’s the issue out of which everything else comes. We want to be careful and recognize that. So for the third time we’re told in verse 28 in chapter 1, “And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over.” And He said that in verse 24, “Therefore God gave them over.” He said it again, in verse 26, “God gave them over.” Now we have it again, God gave them over, each time reminding us the basis of this sentence is there rejection of God. They “exchanged,” in verse 23, “the glory of the incorruptible God.” Therefore God gave them over. Verse 25, “they exchanged the truth of God for a lie.”

Therefore God gave them over, and then the homosexual desire, the rejection of God’s creation plan for man as male and female, the expression of the sexual desires within the marriage relationship. They receive “in their own persons the due penalty of their error,” at the end of verse 27, “and just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God.” They did not see fit, you’re going to see a form of this word a little further down. It’s a word that has the idea you put something to the test to evaluate it, to make up your mind. You know, you could test the metal to see if it’s genuine, is it gold or is it something imitation, and put it to the test. In effect, they have put God to the test and decided they would not acknowledge Him. Literally not to have God in their knowledge; they are excluding God.

Now we find out they’re religious, they worship, we saw that earlier in chapter 1, but they have excluded the true and living God. We say, well, they worship God. No, they don’t unless they worship Him through Jesus Christ, based on the gospel of God, provided through the death and resurrection of Christ. Otherwise they have decided to create their own religion, their own worship. So they have decided not to have God in their knowledge. We want to be careful on this, anything else is a rejection of the true and living God. People say, well, you have your views, someone else has theirs. Yes, but God makes Himself known and they’ve rejected Him. They ought to have some understanding just of what was revealed in creation as we have seen. They have decided not to have God in their knowledge. This is in line, up in verse 21, “even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks.” You see, this emphasis, they knew God, back in verse 19, “because that which is known about God is evident within them,” or among them. That which is known, is evident, manifest, they knew God.

How through the revelation of creation . . . I mean to use the example of the corruption of male and female as God created them to be that we’ve already looked at. Does it get any more obvious than that, the creative plan of God where He made them male and female? We have an open denial and rejection of that. We have laws that have been passed that supposedly make okay the very relationships condemned here. So throughout all God’s creation, and that’s what we’re talking about, which is obvious to everyone, general revelation. Man reflects, “No, I’m not going to have God in my knowledge,” but once you exclude Him where do you go? Everything else is false. Now I use the example: here, I want you to look everywhere for my watch but you can’t look up here. Will you ever find it? No, when you’ve rejected the true and living God where do you go? Everything else is an act of rebellion against Him, so God again pronounces sentence, God gave them over. God gave them over, verse 28, they didn’t see fit to have God acknowledged any longer.

He revealed Himself, they rejected that, suppressed what He revealed. They don’t want it out and come up with their own ideas. Again, the sentence is God gave them over to a depraved mind. Now this is where I said we’ll come to this word “they did not see fit,” now this is a form of the same word. It’s a word that means to put to the test, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, a mind that failed His test. They put God to the test and decided not to acknowledge Him, have Him in their knowledge. God turned them over to a depraved mind, a mind that does not past His test, if you will. Depraved, failing the test, disqualified, so it means useless, reprobate, depraved. God in His sentencing sentenced them to the control and domination of their depraved mind, the mind that is unacceptable to Him, that has not passed His test, that has been disqualified. This is important because we see where the issue is. It is in the mind of man, the heart of man, it’s within, man has made a decision to reject God.

Now God in His sentence of judgment sentences them to be controlled by that depraved mind that wants to exclude Him, reject Him and His truth. So the result: they do the things which are not proper, there are consequences. So we see this pattern that is repeated. You see the connection between the mind and the actions. Come over to Romans 8, we continue as it develops more fully the gospel, in Romans chapter 8 look at verse 7. Verse 6, “the mind set on the flesh is death,” you see it’s an internal thing. That’s why all these sins, specific sins that we’re talking about, have their basis in the decision of the mind to reject God. And the judgment of God that sentences them to the control and enslavement to the sin that they have chosen in rejecting God. So “the mind set on the flesh is death.” Verse 7, “because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God, for it doesn’t subject itself to the law of God,” it’s not able to subject itself. So those who are in the flesh cannot please God so you need that transformation that places you in the Spirit. We’ll get to that, but this foundational issue, this is where man is in his sin. This is why only the power of the gospel can rescue him and redeem him.

Now note the order here. Now just follow three steps, you can do it, three parts. They did not see fit to acknowledge God, that’s the foundational issue, they did not see fit to acknowledge God, to have God in knowledge. Second step, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to a mind that has failed the test, that is disqualified, that is reprobate, not able to please Him. He’s not causing them to sin but the sentence is what their own sin has brought upon them in God’s judgment. The third step is to do the things which are not proper, and we’re going to see a whole list of those things, I think 21 of them. Those are the things which are not proper. Now we’re emphasizing this so we see where it starts.

They refused to have God in their knowledge, that’s the foundational issue. Until that is resolved, they are under the control of a reprobate mind, which manifests itself in all kinds of sin. They are under the judgment of God. You see what’s going on in the world around us, in our own country. The more open, evident manifestation of the wrath of God as sin becomes more and more open, more and more blatant, more and more encouraged and promoted as normal and acceptable. So we can have a man who is a presidential candidate supposedly married to another man, say God made me this way. If you don’t agree with it, your problem is with my God. Do we get any more blatant than that? I’m not picking him out as a worse sinner. It’s just a manifestation of where we are even at the highest levels. So the conduct is a result of God’s judgment which is a result of man’s rejection of Him.

If we start at point three, people are doing the things which are not proper, we need to clean up our society, we haven’t dealt with the issue. This is a manifestation of God’s judgment, the sin we see everywhere, and God’s judgment is on them because of their rejection of Him. Refusal to have Him acknowledged, that’s why we need the power of the gospel to intervene in here, because it’s the heart which is deceitful and desperately wicked above all things. So cleaning up the outside of the tomb doesn’t clean up the inside as Jesus’ picture was with the Jews of the day, whitewashed tombs. If we’re not careful and understand the foundational issues, we can get involved in trying to whitewash tombs; well, if you didn’t do this God would be much more pleased. God is not pleased with people who have rejected Him.

He wasn’t more pleased with the Jews, we’ll get that in chapter two, even though they would have considered homosexuality as a sin certainly outside the bounds of what they would ever do. They’re just as lost! So these things that are being established here are foundational. So he goes on, they are doing the things which are not proper. These things come from a mind that has failed the test that is disapproved as a result of having rejected God. God’s sentence is now you are enslaved, controlled, and dominated by your sin and it will manifest itself in all kind of ugly and ultimate self-destructing ways, that’s the sentence. You cannot undo the sentence, the only rescue is in Jesus Christ. The purpose of this is not to say clean up your life. We can’t do it. The problem comes from the mind that has been rejected.

Come back to Mark chapter 7. I quoted from Jeremiah chapter 17, the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. This was Jesus’ instruction during His time on earth in Mark chapter 7. And He’s dealing with the issue of external things cannot deal with your problem; you’re not defiled by what you eat and those kind of external things. Defilement comes from the inside out, not from the outside in, that’s His point. Verse 20, “ ‘That which proceeds out of the man, is that which defiles the man.’ ” You’d think we would have this clear by now, but I was reading in a book this week and it’s a recent book. The man was talking about certain conduct and we don’t want to do that because that will defile us.

Well, there’s a defiling about sin but the real problem is you have to deal with the inside, because Jesus said what? Verse 21, “ ‘From within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within.’ ” That’s why we read in Romans chapter 8, “that the mind set on the flesh is death.” What you have to do is be made new and have the Spirit, not try to, well, I’m not going to slander anymore, and I’m going to quit coveting, and I’ll stop being immoral and . . . But wait a minute, you’re just trying to whitewash a tomb.

You have to get back the mind, the heart; the inner person is the issue. We won’t go back there but Jeremiah chapter 13, verse 23 puts it this way, “Can the Ethiopian change His skin?” Ethiopia, the skin was black, could he change his skin, the color, “or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good who are accustomed to do evil.” In other words, it’s impossible to change what you are and that’s if the Ethiopian could change his skin and the leopard could change his spots “then you also can do good who are accustomed to do evil.” The point is, it’s not possible, it’s not possible, these external things just manifest what we are internally.

Come back to Romans 1, so we have a list of 21 vices or sins that show the consequences, which manifest the consequences of man’s rejection of God, of rejecting God and replacing Him with something else. In our day, we talk about secular humanism and those kinds of things, but just a form of idolatry. We reject God, we have ideas and things of our own creation that explain reality. We’re not going to go through a breakdown, they break down these lists, but we’re just going to go through the item. Because what he is just doing is giving a sampling and there are a number of these kinds of lists in the New Testament. I went through and had over 15 of them that I did here again this past week just to look and see. And sometimes we just read it in Mark chapter 7 where Jesus said, “out of the heart” and then He lists all these things.

At different times God brings these things out. Everything in the lists is not exactly the same because what He’s saying is the evil that comes out of the heart that has rejected Him, it can take all kinds of forms. And we want to be careful that we don’t become like the Jews, proud that we don’t do the sins that the Gentiles do, the non-Jews. But being religious and being more moral than maybe some other people doesn’t make us less sinful in the sight of God, so let’s just run down through this list and you’ll see the emphases. Verse 29 picks up, “being filled with.” The one Greek commentator said on this word, it means be filled to the brim, and the perfect tense, this is having been filled with, and this is what fills them to this day. You know, this is what is in there and it just keeps bubbling out.

How many of us who are a little older say, “Boy, I would have never thought that sin could become so open, so openly accepted and openly promoted.” It’s just filling their -- it’s almost like just waiting for the opportunity to be able to demonstrate itself. We don’t find the world generally (let’s just limit it to our country) aghast that these things are going on. We find people supporting it, encouraging it, finding reasons to say it’s good. They’re “filled with all unrighteousness.” Obviously this form of righteousness will be used a number of times in the New Testament. Back in verse 18, “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness.” It gets connected often with ungodliness. Why? Because unrighteousness . . . God who is righteous and provides righteousness is rejected, so in the rejection, the rejection of God, we reject righteousness. They go hand in hand, it’s the opposite, unrighteousness would be the opposite of righteousness.

Wickedness, it’s a word for depravity, iniquity, evil purposes, desires and it carries the idea of a desire to corrupt and do harm. The word related for this word, poneria is used in 1 John for the devil. He is the evil one and that’s this word. I could translate it the wicked one but it’s the evil one, 1 John 2: 13 and 14, 3:12, 5:18 and 19, 1 John 5:18 and 19. The whole world lies in the evil one, that’s this word you see. We’re like the devil because we’re the devil’s children and we do the desires of our father, the devil, as Jesus said of unregenerate people, the religious people of His day, but it’s characteristic.

The next word is greed, greed, the desire to have more, the relentless produce, we call it materialism and Colossians chapter 3 verse 5 says greed is idolatry, so you see idolatry is just not for those darkened parts of the land where maybe they create an idol and worship. It’s what you set up in your mind as your controller, the one you strive to please. Please, more, more, you’re really worshipping someone other than God. We live in a materialistic society, well, that’s not surprising because we live in a fallen world.

Malice, another word for evil, kakoetheia, it sort of has that sound, something bad about it. This is the most general word in the Greek language for evil, so it has a broad significance. This is a person who’s destitute of every quality, which would make him good. You know, you see the corruption of sin is pervasiveness, we would say we are rotten to the core. That’s what God’s evaluation is, that’s the result of His judgment, that to sin now consumes us. You just cannot reject God and not have consequences. The consequences are the judgments He pours out that now . . . You know, it’s like you go to a doctor and he says you have cancer, it can be cured, but you reject that doctor and it continues to what? To judgment. Well, here’s what will happen, here’s the consequence of your rejection. I mean, this is what sin does. Even we as believers we begin to look around and we see people, well, they’re not so bad, I know good people, I think their intentions are good. But you know, whitewashed tombs are no better on the inside, so they’re full of malice.

Now we repeat “full of” again. a little different word but it means something that’s been stuffed full, full to overflowing, now stuffed full. The point is these are just not isolated little areas. Well, if we could deal with this, I think they’d be all right, if we could just deal with this, correct with this. You see what God wants to say? This is what fills a person, they’re filled to overflowing, they’re stuffed full. This is the condition of fallen man under the judgment of God for the rejection of Him. Envy, it resents what others have, you know, I not only am greedy I resent what other people have that I don’t have, and often out of envy come all kind of other sins.

Murder is next. Oh, here is really a bad one. You know, we tend to think envy, greed, well, it’s just the world we live in. Murder, that is serious and it is a serious sin. It’s the sin that requires capital punishment and the Noahic Covenant for governmental carrying out of the rule within God’s creation. Murder and it’s openly practiced, we always say it just breaks out everywhere, but you know we’ve already devalued life. I mentioned this morning abortion, 61 million babies aborted since the law was passed that that was legal in our own country, 61 million. We think what a terrible thing it was 6 million Jews were killed in Nazi Germany. We’ve killed 61 million babies since the early 1970s when it became approved as acceptable practice. We think nothing of it and then it’s manifest in other ways in the world as well. It becomes part of our selfishness and we want to be in charge. What do we say? It’s the woman’s body, God’s not in the picture here, He has nothing to say about it. When our courts made a decision this would be acceptable practice and approved it they didn’t say we have consulted God. We reject God, we set ourselves up to overrule Him. Murder, and you see a breakout in the world, it gets worse and worse.

Strife, this is the contention, you know, if you’re envious and greedy and all there’s going to be conflict because you know you’ve got to get to the top. You’ve got to have this, the desire, everything in the heart that’s corrupt. There’s going to be strife, there’s going to be deceit. A person has a twisted mind as one murderer put it, can’t act in a straightforward way, stoops to devious and underhanded methods to get his own way, never does anything except with some kind of ulterior motive. It describes the crafty cunning of the plotting intriguer who is found in every community, every society. Look at our government, who can figure out who’s honest and who’s not, who’s high functioning for this and who’s not. Everybody saying the opposite things and claiming its true, and you think are there ulterior motives here. Are we more concerned about this or this? Yes. There are ulterior motives? Yes. Are people acting with deceit? Yes, though they shouldn’t do that. No, they shouldn’t. You know why they do it, they’re under the judgment of God for rejecting Him. Malice, they’re doing what they choose, evil character.

So we’re only halfway through Paul’s list, the point is the gospel’s the only hope. Which of these are you going to fix, how do you fix it? Well, there ought to be honesty in government. I will use that as an example because it’s visible for all of us. Integrity, good motives that — well, that’d be desirable and men are accountable for not doing that, even unbelievers will give an account for God. Rulers are placed in position for certain things. Justice is going to be meted out on all those who misuse their positions, but the fact is we can’t fix it just with external things.

Now we’re talking about sins here. Maybe it’s a good point for me to make another theological point. Sometimes we say God loves the sinner and hates the sin, but you have to be careful about that again theologically. You can’t separate the sin from the sinner. What are these sins a manifestation of, a heart and mind that has rejected God and suppressing the truth concerning Him, so sin has . . . It’s not like sin is something just floating in the air and God hates it. What did Jesus say? It’s out of the heart of man these things come; it’s a reprobate mind, a mind set on the flesh as we saw in Romans 8. So the Bible tells us God hates the sinner because that’s where the sin comes from.

When Adam and Eve sinned, God didn’t punish the sin, He punished the one who did the sin. Well, we want to be careful; now it’s also true God loves the sinner. For God so loved the world that while we were yet sinners, we’ll get to in Romans 5. God demonstrates His love that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. So you say, well, can both be true? Yes, it is, He hates us in our sin, but in love He provides a Savior for us, and calls us to salvation. We can’t pick and choose, well, what part of God’s character do I want to choose to believe. So many in the world, you can talk about God generally, His love and, well, you can get by with that, but you talk about His wrath, His judgment -- they’re just as much His character. God hates the sinner.

We won’t turn there right now, but Psalm 5 verses 5 and 6, Psalm 11 verse 5, just a couple of verses there that tell you God hates the sinner. You can’t separate sin from the sinner and the world does that. He’s not a bad person, it’s just he killed them, and now we have hate crimes. So if someone kills me for my money but didn’t hate me is that any worse or less worse? Capital punishment was meted out for striking at the image of God and murdering someone. So we create all these nebulous ideas and you can’t separate sin from the sinner. So that’s all I want to be sure we’re clear on. And there’s oh God wouldn’t pour out His wrath on people, He loves people but He hates sin. Well, where’s sin come from? I mean, sin is the action of people who have rejected God in rebellion against God. Even as believers when we sin we are rebelling against God. It’s only God’s gracious provision that assures us the continuing forgiveness, but sin is an act of rebellion against God.

All right, let’s look on, verse 29, We are “filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; gossips, slanderers.” Pick up the gossip under slanderers, because I think they are connected here, a gossip, slanderer. Now make the distinction, gossiping is what goes on behind people’s back, slandering is done more openly. Gossips is one of those words, you know, when you want to say all that whispering goes on. (Sounds of whispering) Well, that’s the Greek word; it starts out psi or the first three letters, as we would have it in English, so you have that sound, gossips, this word. It’s you try to undermine people’s reputation, you misrepresent them. You know, gossip, when we talk about it, that’s not good. Passing on something about someone behind their back and, you know, there is a secretiveness to it.

Slanderer, the next one, commentators commenting on the difference in these words. What gossips do secretly, slanderers do openly, pass it on in a more open, flagrant way. Now we have the internet, you can say whatever you want about whomever you want, put it out there. Second Corinthians 12:20 puts these two words together, gossips, slanderer. Now you have to be careful. This can become a problem among believers in the churches. We want to be careful, this is not acceptable, this is listed as a characteristic of ones who are in rebellion against God. It doesn’t become less sin if I as a Christian gossip, as I’m functioning now out of character, resisting the Spirit, refusing to submit to His control in this area. A sin is not less sin when it’s done by a person who has been redeemed.

Paul had to rebuke Peter remember in Galatians 2 because he didn’t function consistently, and so he had to be rebuked, corrected, and we do that as believers. These people are haters of God. Now you see how these sins are mixed together, because we like to categorize them as better. We put gossip and slander and the next word is haters of God. Oh, but to hate God! But that’s where they are, that’s sort of foundational, back to where we were. But this is part of what they do, they’ve suppressed the truth concerning Him, they’ve rejected the revelation of Him. They really hate God. This is consistent with suppressing the truth, exchanging the glory of the incorruptible God for one of their own creation, exchanging the truth of God for a lie. And people get very antagonistic when you bring the truth of the living God to bear on them.

The next word, you know, we sometimes talk about hubris. This is, you know, pride, arrogance, that’s this word just carried over from Greek, hubris and here’s what one Greek commentator said. It’s best understood here as signifying the man who in his confidence in his own superior power, wealth, status, strength, intellectual or other abilities greets fellow men with insolent contemptuousness. Let’s see this arrogance, you know, self-importance, self-esteem, we see this in our government. Even the world has a hard time, you know; they don’t like certain sins manifest in people. Their sins are all right but sins manifest in others, they won’t respect the proper place that, you know, they don’t fit into the system because they think I am more important than you are. I have better ideas than you do. You’re old school, you’re done with, you’re out of here. I am important, that kind of pride, arrogance. Paul says this characterized him before he was saved. He used this word in 1 Timothy chapter 1, verse 13 when he gives his testimony of what he was like before his conversion, I was a violent aggressor that’s this word, insolent, a violent aggressor. You’ll run over anybody else because you are so important.

Arrogant, well this is the word that’s used when James writes. God resists the proud arrogant people, God stands against them. Boastful, a person who wants to claim, impress others. You know, we have to be careful, we can all stretch the truth, we want to make ourselves important. These last three words: insolent, arrogant, boastful, all have this idea of the unbeliever trying to exalt himself. We try to make it a positive quality in our world, and somehow even evangelicals got involved in this. Self esteem, we want our kids to grow up with self-esteem when the emphasis of scripture is humility, but we want you to be . . . we call it confidence but it’s really arrogance.

It doesn’t mean we deny abilities God has given us, and if you do your best and you do better than someone else a proper attitude would be thank God for the grace He’s given you. A good mind that maybe has more abilities than someone else has with their mind. But someone else has more abilities maybe than you do in another area. But we’ve had to pump our kids up. You’re the most important, so they get to be of an age where they display their arrogance, they don’t have to listen to anyone, and then you find teenagers and others killing someone, because they disrespected me. What do you mean disrespected you? We know what it means, he views himself as so important. We try to make something that God says is sin something that we want to promote, so we had self-esteem courses.

Then we had theologians say Christ died for you because you were so valuable. It wasn’t because of grace, it wasn’t because of mercy, it was because He would know you were valuable. Now what about this is God’s love for us demonstrated when we were sinners Christ died for us? You’re telling me sinners are valuable in that sense. Christ didn’t die for me because I was so valuable. He died for me because God is a God of grace and love and mercy. Now I was fit for hell as every other sinner. He didn’t die for me because there was value in me.

They are inventors of evil, there’s no end to it, inventors of evil. I mean, they’re always coming up with new ideas and expressing their depravity.

Disobedient to parents, some of these you see as far as God’s concerned. We pull these out, and say let’s make the worse sins, list the worse sins, then let’s list the next level of sins and then let’s list the sins that, well, we would like not to have them practiced. They’re not, God just mixes them all together because sin is a manifestation of what? A heart and mind that is in rebellion against Him. So disobedient to parents and we talked a little bit about this, this morning. This sin is also listed by Paul in a list he gives in 2 Timothy, chapter 3 verse 2, because it strikes at the heart of God’s foundational creation as we looked at earlier in our study today. Of what? The family as a foundational relationship for society, a man, a woman, joined in marriage having children, and an order established. The man subject to God, the woman subject to the man, and the children subject to the parents, both the father and the mother. But there is a breakdown of the basic structure that God has established, it shouldn’t happen. Even as we talked this morning a wife shouldn’t be in rebellion against her husband, reject his leadership. We what? We have children’s power, we have children, they have rights, they have authority. We’re not talking about abusing children, we’re just talking about an authority. Children shouldn’t have a say. They’re disobedient to parents. It just breaks out everywhere, they don’t have to obey anyone, then they go to school. They don’t have to obey their parents, why do they have to obey the teacher. Then they go someplace else, if I don’t have to obey my teacher, I don’t have to obey my parents, I don’t have to obey you.

I remember my dad told me when I was a kid, a little kid, some things stick with you. He said to me if a policeman ever tells you to stop, you stop. If you turn and run away, he’ll shoot you in the back and it will be your fault. Why? Because you didn’t obey. Nowadays poor policemen have to hope they’re stronger, wrestle them to the ground, and do everything. I’m not advocating, I’m just explaining, do with it what you will.

This is a rejection of what God has said is to be done. Disobedience to the parents is just as sinful as any of the other things are, its not acceptable. We as parents ought to be enforcing that. If we allow our little children to be in rebellion against us and no consequences, am I enforcing scripture or am I saying your sin is okay in this house? Wow, I wouldn’t let a murderer in this house, I wouldn’t want them being sexually immoral in this house, but I don’t discipline when they disobey. Well, certain sins are okay. We want to be consistent.

They are without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful. We’re out of time, but that word unloving is not used as a regular word. But it refers . . . it’s a special Greek word for family relationships, family love, and this refers to there’s not the natural, normal family love, the love between a husband and a wife, it breaks down, a love between parent and child. Remember when we read Proverbs if you don’t discipline your children you don’t love them, and the love of children for their parents in respecting them and obeying them. The breakdown, and of course, the inconvenience, so we go to abortion and I have some material on that from Roman times. The father had the power of life and death. A newborn baby could be presented and laid at the feet of the father. If he picked it up it was to be spared, if he didn’t it was to be carried out, killed, maybe placed out in a public way. A slave trader might pick up some of those babies and raise them so they could sell them as slaves and make money. They could put them outside and let the ravenous dogs. You say, oh, that’s a disgrace, but disgrace goes on all the time in our country.

Now they want to talk about letting a parent decide whether the child ought to live after they’re born. Where does it stop? The natural family love as a tie, a love that binds a family is just gone. Now listen to this, one Greek commentator, I don’t even think he’s a believer from my reading of him, but he said, “Never was the life of the child so precarious as at this time, children were considered a misfortune.” You know what happens when they get in the way. We’re not as concerned about family, we’re more concerned about success, about what we can acquire, how we can enjoy things. Children are a bother and they take away from our wealth because they drain the resources and they’re just an inconvenience. Nothing is new.

Well, we have to stop there, so I’ll save verse 32, “Although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but give hearty approval to those who practice them.” Reflect on that verse, think about our country, think about decisions that have been made at high levels that encourage certain behaviors. They not only accept it or tolerate it, they are encouraged and normalized, but we’ve stopped there. All this is what? The only hope is the gospel, that’s why you need the power of the gospel. We as believers can sometimes lose sight of the terrible condition that we were in before we got saved, we were just like them Paul says. Paul told Titus, remind them they were just like them, because pretty soon we see them in the sense, oh, they’re such vile sinners, I don’t know how God puts up with it. Of course, I never was like that. But when God looked at my heart He saw the same thing until His grace intervened and redeemed so we praise Him for that grace.

Let us pray together. Thank you, Lord, for Your word, it’s clarity. And Lord, it is an ugly picture, it is pitiful, but we are responsible for the awful consequences of rejecting You the living God, of trying to put ourselves in Your place, putting our words above Your words. Lord, we are testimonies of Your grace, we will be for eternity. A reminder that sinners deserving of hell can be rescued, cleansed, and forgiven because of the depths of Your love, mercy, and grace in providing Your Son to be our Savior. Thank you for the power of the gospel which is a power for salvation to everyone who believes. We give you praise in Christ’s name. Amen.
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