The Dark Descent In Wickedness

Transcript

GR 2204
04/14/2019
The Dark Descent in Wickedness
Romans 1:18-25
Gil Rugh

We’ve started our study of the Book of Romans, so if you’ll turn to chapter 1, we’ll proceed. We move into really what we would call the body of the letter. The first 17 verses form something of the introduction to the book. It gives you a concise presentation of what he’s going to unfold in the rest of the book as he talks about gospel, verses 16 and 17. Verse 15 can be included where he’s “eager to preach the gospel” and he’s “not ashamed of the gospel.” The world has not changed and we’re going to see that as we move into the rest of chapter 1. It is an intimidating place to be sharing the gospel, but Paul says I’m ready to come to Rome, I’m “not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written” in Habakkuk 2:4, “THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH,” so that’s in a concise statement in verses 16 and 17, what the Book of Romans is about, the gospel, the power of God for salvation. It brings the righteousness of God to man through faith, so then he’s going to begin to develop now the details of that. Why do we need the power of God for a salvation? Why is that so important?

The righteousness of God; I’m not a perfect person, but I’m not among the most unrighteous either. Faith, I try to do my best in my work; some of these things now have to be unfolded. And so the first major section of the book, after the introduction, there is what we’ve called, “Condemnation,” and that’ll take us from chapter 1 verse 18 over to, chapter 3 verse 20, so it’s not a nice clean chapter break. But then with chapter 3 verse 21 he’ll talk about justification, which has to do with God’s righteousness, so you see he’s going to be very methodical under the direction of the Spirit. It’s of great importance we have clarity on the gospel, not just the brief understanding Christ died for our sins, He was buried, He was raised the third day and there are eyewitnesses. I mean there’s nothing wrong with that, but we have to have a deeper understanding of what this is about, where do you start? You start with condemnation and that’s as far as we’ll go with that outline because it’s going to take us a while to work through condemnation and then get to justification. Then we can move on through the rest of Book of Romans.

The condemnation is basically demonstrating why salvation is needed, and why the salvation that is needed can only come about by God’s intervention, and it can only be applied to a life when we believe. So, we’re going to start with a negative, the foundation. If you don’t have this straight, you won’t have a correct gospel. If you don’t understand, why do people need salvation? You know we all have our religions. We live in a country that is becoming more secular, but basically religion is, serves a basic purpose of trying to get you into a relationship with God in one way or another. Any religion in the world is involved in some way and you connecting with the quote, “god” that they honor and serve. We start with condemnation. It’s a very unpopular subject because sin is not popular, and the Spirit directs Paul to unfold this in detail.

You know it’s hard. People don’t see themselves as sinners, and they’re offended when you talk about sin to them, it’s hard to go on, but this is what God reveals. This is His good news. It is given to those who are in a desperate, needy condition and these opening verses are powerful. They reveal something about the condition of man, and we are dealing with people who are not in complete ignorance. They are in active rebellion against God and that’s what he’s unfolding in this opening section as he talks about our sinful condition. When he is done with this section and we get over to chapter 3 verses 19 and 20, he’ll say I have demonstrated that the whole world is guilty before God. We’ve all been demonstrated to be sinners. There will be no exceptions. Now that’s what he is doing in this first major section.

It begins, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them for God made it evident to them. This is all unfolding the gospel here you’ll note the connection. In verse 17 he talks about, for in it. In the gospel, that he is “not ashamed.” In verse 16 “it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” In this gospel, “the righteousness of God is revealed,” made known, and it’s a righteousness that we can receive “by faith.” Now verse 18 says “for the wrath of God is revealed” so in verse 17 “the righteousness of God was revealed.” Now in verse 18 he wants to explain to us that “the wrath of God is revealed” and it has to deal with the “ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” And we need the righteousness of God that has been revealed, because we are going to be shown to be ungodly, and unrighteous so the importance of understanding how do we acquire the righteousness of God? How can it be applied and credited to me? Well we start out understanding first of all, our condition.

The wrath of God…..right away we are with many people today in our own country where we live, you know they don’t like to think of God as a God of wrath. They don’t like to think of Him as an angry God, orge, He’s an angry God. He’s a God of wrath, a God who will bring devastating judgment. If you want to talk about the love of God, they say, “oh you know my God is a God of love.” I too, I agree with that. You know they talk about sin and God being angry and pouring out His wrath. Well no, I don’t think God would be like that, but we start our finding out what God tells us He is like. You know men can create in their minds whatever they want but that doesn’t make it real and that’s what he is explaining here. The wrath of God revealed, this is not unusual. Come to John 3, you know the most familiar verse in the bible is probably John 3:16. “For God so loved the world,” and there we are. God’s love for the world, that’s the God that I like to think about. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, in order that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

Understand, the love of God has been demonstrated with the giving of His Son, and that happened so that we wouldn’t have to perish. So, you come down to verse 36, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life. He who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” So yes, we can talk about the love of God, but we need to believe what God has said in the provision He has made in His Son. So, we are the objects of His wrath. It’s not that wrath didn’t exist, because the great demonstration of God’s love is that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Why is that so important? We were under the wrath of God. We won’t go through other verses right now, but we’ll see that as we move along through Romans.

Come back to chapter 1, “the wrath of God is revealed.” Now think about it, would He be a God to be honored if He didn’t think that certain sins are still viewed as sins, and gross, and unacceptable, the abuse of children and things like that. It gets harder to narrow it down because those things that everybody agreed were in the concept of sinful and wrong, you know they keep shrinking that. But even today we think well, there are certain things that are so disastrous, so terrible I would expect if a God is holy, He would deal with those things, so that’s what he is doing. “The wrath of God is revealed,” it’s made known, it is uncovered, it’s revealed “against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,” and it’s revealed from heaven because it’s the wrath of God. And where does God reside so to speak, where is God’s presence manifested in its fullness? It’s in heaven, so “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven.” God from heaven has made something known. He has revealed His wrath and it is directed against “all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.”

Now again, so far so good so to speak, because people can read this, and hear this, and say yeah, but that doesn’t include me, and that’s why we have to demonstrate that we are all ungodly, unrighteous people. It makes an interesting and important note here, the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, “who suppress the truth in their unrighteousness,” in their holding on to their unrighteousness; they suppress the truth that God has revealed. This becomes important and becomes an issue in apologetics. People are not in ignorance in that sense, they know about God, they are suppressing the truth, they do not want it to be made known, so God has revealed His wrath against men who suppress the truth. Well what do they know? That’s where he’s going, so we’re not dealing with people, who are innocent. We believers have to come to grips with this as well as the unbelievers. Even though we have a doctrine of sin, sometimes we say well, they’ve never heard. Confusion on this has led some evangelicals to say people who never hear the gospel are not lost, because your lost if you reject the gospel.

Well that is a partial truth, but it is not completely correct. Your lost if you don’t believe in the gospel because the only way to be saved is to believe the gospel, but you were lost if you never hear the gospel and that’s the point that he is making here. They suppress the truth in their unrighteousness. How does this come, because that which is known about God is evident within them or among them, for God made it evident to them, so they know truth. They are not ignorant of truth, they just do not want the truth to be made known, so they hold it down, literally, they suppress it. There is active opposition not passive indifference. This is what God says about humanity. That which is known about God “is evident among them.” It says “within” them, a preposition here, “among” probably better carries the idea, because the next statement says God made it evident to them, but they don’t want it so what they had made known to them they suppress. They hold it down, they won’t acknowledge it, they deny it, they reject it, so this is what we’re dealing with right at the beginning. There is truth made know from God, but men do not like that truth because they are unrighteous, so they suppress it, don’t want it out.

We see that all around you know as a Christian. You can have your beliefs, but you can’t say it and you have to be careful and you know you can’t talk about that. We had a popular restaurant chain being excluded from a couple of airports. Why, because people in that speak truth, they believe the bible. We don’t want those people. Well, you’re serving chicken sandwiches, it’s not a preaching venue. It doesn’t matter. Those people have to be suppressed, and if they have a business that’s successful, and we allow it there, that may give the idea that we are open to have their ideas made known. And, so, they want to suppress the truth, there’s not room for it. If you’re in a public school room, can you talk about God, and what the bible says? No, no there’s no room for that. That can’t be talked about so they’re suppressing the truth and it’s just minor examples, it’s going on everywhere and every way.

How do they know God? How has God made Himself known? You’re aware of this, He’s made Himself known in the creation. “For since the creation of the world,” so this has been ongoing since God created the world. “Since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been, clearly seen.” How so? It being understood through what has been made, it’s evident everywhere, the creation is a revelation of the invisible God. We see the evidences of His presence. We see the evidences of His power in the creation He has made, though no man has seen God at any time, but the creation gives the evidence of He is there, He is sovereign He is all-powerful. He is a God to be feared a God to be worshiped, the creation makes Him known, His invisible attributes. Again, things you don’t see because He’s not physical, but you see the evidences of who He is. Now His character His power, the knowledge He has, it’s demonstrated in a creation that functions.

Now wait a minute, wait a minute! We can’t talk about God as the Creator, we have to exclude that. We’ll wait a minute, you know what God says, “we’re without excuse,” because this is the way available to everyone in the world. Wherever they are in the world, they are exposed to the creation. God says they’re without excuse so what we have here is truth being made known. Now be careful, it’s not enough truth to save a person, because the truth of the gospel is not evident in the creation, but the truth concerning the reality of the living God. His awesome eternal power, He is the omnipotent, omniscient God, because you know He has power, He has the knowledge to bring everything into existence and enable it to function. Think of your human body and everything in it and then all that goes on in the world, and the universes and everything. Well that reveals Him. Well, that ought to cause you to bow before Him and acknowledge you are the God who has created all things. You are the God who has to be worshiped and served. You are a God to be feared with the power that you would have.

They’re without excuse because they reject the amount of revelation given to them. That shows them justly condemned, they’re without excuse. He’s not obligated to give them full revelation. You know we do that with our, if I can say it, use an analogy but I don’t want to get in trouble over the analogy. But with your children, you give them maybe a certain amount of money. Maybe they did the dishes and so on and you say, well I want you to learn to handle money. Well you don’t necessarily give them a hundred dollars. You may give them a dollar and they waste it. You know that’s not worth anything, I don’t know, I reject it. Well you don’t have to give them two dollars. There is enough revelation God has done to show that man rejects what you would give him. That’s enough to condemn them, so every person is in this position, so they are without excuse.

Come back to Psalms, you know we’re going to come back here, Psalm 8. Psalm 8 starts out, “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth.” Well You’ve “displayed Your splendor above the heavens!” Verse 3, “when I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained; what is man that you take thought of him or the son of man that You care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than God, You crown him with glory and majesty! You’ve put him over the rest of Your creation. Then it ends, O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!” It’s evident everywhere the psalmist says. You’re an awesome God, how majestic is Your name, the creation displays Your majesty, the wonder of your Person. It’s in all the earth!

Come over to Psalm 19, “the heavens are telling of the glory of God; their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.” You see what the creation does, and everybody sees it, and everybody knows it. The problem is everybody rejects it, and this goes on day after day, night after night. “Day to day pours forth speech.” It’s just like its talking. It is like the creation is talking because it’s making something known. The awesome God has brought this into existence, the majestic God, His character His being. Night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words where their voice is not heard. It’s not actually talking but there’s not a place, where this is not going on in the darkest most remote part of the world, where maybe the most primitive people live. They are exposed to the wonder of this creation, day and night, endlessly, every day of their life. Their line has gone throughout all the earth, their utterances to the end of the world. You see that what God so to speak is saying, I am here, I am the awesome all-powerful God, and so on, all about His being.

That goes to the end of the world and the creation, the sun, the rising of the sun and so on that’s what we call general revelation. General revelation is the revelation that is available to everyone everywhere, so it’s universal it’s the creation. Everyone everywhere is aware of it, and all aspects of the creation, the wonder of the heavens, the wonder of the earth, the plants, the human body which he’ll get to in some detail in Romans 1. It’s all available and it is ongoing, so that’s why we call it general revelation. It is general in that it is available everywhere to everyone, no exceptions, and as Romans is going to be demonstrating, it’s already been alluded to, they suppress this revelation, one way or another. They don’t want the truth as the truth. Now there’re specific revelations, specific revelation is what you need for salvation. That’s where God intervenes to make Himself known even more clearly, more specifically in His word, so verse 7 picks up with special revelation. We have the creation general revelation in the first six verses, then He says “the law of the LORD is perfect, restoring the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the LORD, the fear of the LORD, the judgments of the LORD, they are more desirable than gold,” verse 10. Verse 11 “moreover, by them Your servant is warned;” in keeping them there is great reward and you bow in light of that revelation.

But this is true, you can’t be saved by just the general revelation but it’s enough to condemn you. You rejected it. You said no! As an example, you want to give someone a thousand dollars, they say no, I won’t take it. I don’t consider it worthwhile, it’s worthless to me. I’m going to throw it in the fire, burn it up. That’s enough to show you reject what I would have given you. It’s the point the revelation of creation is abundantly clear, we live in a world in a society you know.

It’s rejected at our universities; it’s rejected generally in all of our public schools. You can’t talk about creation. Why? Because creation is a revelation of God, you can’t talk about it as a creation. You can talk about a big explosion, you can talk about all kind of make believe things but you can’t talk about creation, so we reject that we’re going to suppress it, we don’t want it to be known. We reject it, we reject it personally and then we do what we can to suppress its being made known or understood anywhere. So let’s take them at the youngest age and tell them this has nothing to do with what you might have learned in Sunday school, those are just ideas that men made up, because we know now, through science, that we’ve created our own God to be worshiped, men and their ideas and that’s where he’s going.

So come back to Romans chapter 1, they’re “without excuse.” You ought to have that underlined or however you mark your bible, I have a mark like “the wrath of God is revealed,” and then I underline they “suppress the truth,” because here’s what happens to the revelation, it gets suppressed so they want to bury it, hold it down, they don’t want it to get known. Well everybody knows that I know but we can explain it away. That’s part of what is going on here so they’re without excuse. You ought to mark that. We’re not dealing with innocent people. That’s why we have to be careful; we start out by saying, “well if the unbeliever knew this” and we can explain to them the creation. I’m not against explaining creation and showing it’s the hand of God, but I’ve been to universities as a graduate student and that’s not necessarily the problem, they just don’t want to hear it. They reject it and they reject you.

“They’re without excuse.” Why? “Even though they knew God,” now here’s where we are, and this is God talking about humanity now in light of the revelation that’s been given, they knew God. How’d they know God? Well God revealed Himself from heaven, the creation is a revelation of this God. I mean you think about His attributes, some of you have studied His attributes, you see them manifested in the creation. They knew God so now that you are building; “they suppress the truth” at the end of verse 18. “They’re without excuse,” they knew God. This is a condition of humanity. They “did not honor Him as God or give thanks.” They “became futile in their speculations. Their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools,” so you see what happens here. No, it’s not bowing before God, but the revelation has been given. Oh God, you are a great and awesome God. You have created a world in which I can live. You created me to be able to function in this world to enjoy food to have life. They didn’t give thanks, they didn’t give Him any recognition, any honor due Him. They “knew God they did not honor Him as God or give thanks.”

You know where you go, you go to empty worthless speculations, reasoning. You know what that means, the light gets turned off. Think about it, here is truth. Now where is the world today? You can talk about all kinds of explanations, reasoning’s about how the world come into existence, science has come up with these things, but one thing you cannot talk about is, God is the Creator. God is the One who created it all, who sustains it all, brought it into existence; nope that’s excluded. So once you take the truth, here is truth Jesus said, “Your word is truth,” now I want you to go on a search for truth but you cannot look here. It doesn’t matter where you go, you’re destined to futility, to worthlessness, to frustration. There is nothing, you’ve excluded the truth and then you send people on a search for truth, so you know what it is, darkness descends over because they no longer are able even to grasp and understand. “Their foolish heart was darkened” and you know where this take place, on the inside, that inner person as we’ve talked about, their heart, their mind, their soul. Their darkened now on the inside and it’s like you closed your eyes and we turned off all the lights in this building without windows and you don’t see anything, so they’ve rejected the light that was given. The result is they’re living in darkness. Now it’s not that they didn’t know the truth, they’re suppressing the truth. The truth is being held down. That’s why the beginning point is not to try to convince them. They’re rejecting what you are trying to convince them of. That’s why we bring them the gospel, which is the power of God for salvation.

We think, well, they need a more thorough scientific explanation. No, they reject it. I’ve talked to men who are in the science world, and realm. Some I’d be more closely associated to, you know, you live in that environment. Pretty soon it changes your thinking, and now they’re explaining it the way the world explains it. So we have people who claim to be a theistic evolutionist. Well, God may have started it, but everything else science says is the way it happened, which just makes God irrelevant. You just tack Him on. It does start out, this is what God says, this is your condition, their foolish heart was darkened, but they profess to be wise, but they became fools. You know they thought their explanation was the better explanation. God says the revelation I’ve given is so clear there is no excuse for you not to see it. The real problem is you suppress it. You do not want to bow before God. You know it’s like the devil; he had a more full revelation, obviously, serving in the presence of God. He just chose to reject it and he continues to fight against it to this day, so they, professing to be wise, they became fools and now we have the spiral continuing to go down.

“They exchanged,” and this word exchanged, it will be used in verse 23, it will be used in verse 25, it’ll be used in verse 26. You have to replace it with something. I’ve rejected the truth. What do you believe? Nothing, well everybody believes something. There was a well-known scientist who died recently, and toward the end of his life, he came up with the idea that when you go back as far as you can go, there was just nothing. Well everybody’s aghast at that. You just can’t say there was nothing, because then you have to say something came out of nothing. That gets you perilously close to maybe it took a god to bring something into existence out of nothing but that’s where we are, so “professing to be wise they became fools.” How do you explain what was the evidence of their foolishness? “They exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man,” so this is where we go, and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. And we see pagan religions that worship this kind of animal or this kind of statue or in some of the religions of the world they’ve got these gods that are fanciful creations. In some places they worship certain animals whether it’s cows or rats or snakes and at the heart of it, man is worshiping himself, his own ideas, his own creations whatever they are, that’s what it is.

Where do these things come from? From those who professing to be wise, who had really become fools, they exchanged the glory of an incorruptible God and created their own god to be worshiped. That’s the pattern that goes on worshiping the creation, not the Creator. They have exchanged His glory for something, maybe something God made, He made the animals but He didn’t make the animals to be worshiped. You know anything will be acceptable as long as it’s not the true and living God. That’s what sin does to us. It so corrupts us, I will worship anything but I will not worship the true and living God. It’s amazing there is judgment for this and the judgment is laid out here, God gave them over. You’ll see the therefore. God as active here, He was active in initiating the revelation. God revealed Himself and His righteousness. He revealed His wrath. He revealed Himself in the creation, we’ll talk about God revealing.

Now we’re told that God is active in impacting the lives that have rejected Him. They have had “their foolish heart darkened.” They in their spiritual darkness thinking they’re wise but they’re really fools. Paul, remember develops this in 1 Corinthians, the opening chapters. They think the wisdom of God is foolishness but they’re the real fools. “God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity,” now you note here, there are ethical and moral consequences to rejecting God. Important to understand what is going on in the world. We look around at our own country and say, “What is happening?” There are consequences for rejecting the God who is to be worshiped, who is to be honored; we are excluding Him, we are rejecting any evidence of Him manifesting Himself. He’s not the Creator, we have replaced God with this explanation and it gets worse. God gave them over, this is an act of God, He’s not causing them to sin but His judgment is they will descend into further wickedness. There they’ll be consumed by their own lusts and desires. God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity.

Wait a minute. I thought we were talking about something, your attitude toward creation, your attitude toward the God who created things. When you reject God, you’re in rebellion against Him, your soul is darkened. Your darkened on the inside, the very center of your being. That’s why Jeremiah could write “he heart is deceitful and desperately wicked above all things,” because a heart closed to God, closed to His truth and so it becomes a source of what? “Out of the heart Jesus said” in Mark 7 “proceed all these evil kinds of practices.” There are ethical, moral consequences for rejecting God. It’s just not two things here, well science, we want to keep God out of science. Once you reject God this is where you are and this is what the world of mankind has done, so this is dealing with man as he is, “they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for their own creation and for God’s creation, we’ll worship the creation rather than the Creator.”

“God gave them over,” verse 24 “in the lusts of their hearts.” See where it comes from. Remember up at the end of verse 21, “their foolish heart was darkened.” Now, out of the blackness of the darkness of the heart that has rejected God, come all the desires and actions that are a manifestation of the rejection of God. They gave their hearts to impurity so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. See where it comes down to, to actually what we do with these physical bodies, we dishonor them. How do we dishonor our bodies? By using them contrary to the will and purpose of the Creator? Well we have rejected Him. You know as Jeremiah said, if they rejected God’s word, what kind of wisdom do they have? The wisdom they have is foolishness. You get a form of this word as transliterated over into English as morons, they’re foolish, have no sense, that’s where the constant problem is.

Some reading I was doing about working and the book this man has come out with, it was a president of a seminary that’s called evangelical, and the reviewer of the book says, “I think this man is the leader in evangelicalism.” You know what is it? Were bringing things together, we want to bring the wisdom of the world together with what we believe as Christians, but there is no doing it. You understand this is where we get into trouble. Maybe you’re still in the class on neo-evangelicism. This has begun to erode the foundation of evangelicalism. We will be accepted on the intellectual level by the unbelieving intellectuals and then think of the impact we will have. We don’t understand Romans 1; it’s not a matter of intellect and being intelligent, smart. This is a spiritual issue. God is not welcome here. What don’t you understand about that? That’s what they’re telling us, your God is not welcome here and as long as you continue to bring Him into the discussion, we view you as someone to be rejected. Well I thought we were inclusive here. The university does, it brings in a diversity of ideas. No, it’s like the chicken place. They reject it because these people--you are excluding people. We are inclusive, then why can’t we be inclusive, you won’t include us. Well, we only include people that think like us, so it’s a limited exclusion but you understand every unbeliever in the world is in agreement on this. That’s why you can’t win. You think, well we’ll win here, we’ll win with this, or that’s where conservative politics sometimes draws Christians in bed with people who are nowhere near where we are biblically.

I don’t understand. The problem is they reject our God who is the living and true God. They reject the truth concerning Him and it brings them down to the dishonoring of their very physical bodies, because they reject Him. They reject anything He has said about what He created them for and how they are to function as those created by Him. They “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.” I mean they exchange the truth of God for a lie. Where does it come from? What did Jesus tell the religious people of His day? “You are of your father the devil,” John 8, “and you do the will of your father. He’s a liar and the father of lies,” so you lie, so you understand the whole world is against us as God’s children because the whole world is against the God that we love and serve. What did Jesus say? “if they hated Me they’ll hate you, this is the dividing line. Now I’m not saying we go out to our neighbor and say you know we’re putting up a fence. Why? Because you’re an unbeliever and I’m a believer and I don’t want anything to do with you. No, obviously, that’s not biblical but the understanding and awareness of where we are and what we’re dealing with, believers keep sliding this way.

I get so frustrated reading more recent commentaries. When I was in school, they would quote the German theologians as examples of those corrupting the Scripture and undermining it. Now it seems like you can’t get an evangelical commentary that is not filled with the quotes of the German theologians showing how we’ve picked out things we’ve learned from them. Well I think why? Why is Karl Barth becoming someone that we all ought to honor as the greatest theologian of his age and quote his commentary? When I was in school, they were showing you how neo-orthodoxy was a corruption of Christianity promoted by unbelievers and somehow now you try to join together with the unbeliever and I want to be intellectually acceptable. One of the leaders in an evangelical seminary said, “I recommend men go to Harvard to get their degrees and then you can come back with a doctorate of theology degree, recognized by the world, but you know what you come back with, the world stuffed into your head and even believers get confused.

That’s why Paul’s laying it out here under the direction of the Spirit, so we don’t get confused. You know, why does the world say bad things about us? Why are we having other people attacking us? Other churches don’t. I don’t know, I don’t tell you who to vote for; all we do is look at truth. There’s the problem, you know it’s not acceptable so verse 24, “God gave them over.” This is an active judgment of God. They are condemned to be consumed by their sin, their bodies are dishonored, impurity. They exchange the truth of God for a lie, so you end up “worshiping the creature not the Creator,” and that takes various forms that when you reject God, all other worship is that. That’s why that can all be lumped together as one, because that is all the worship ultimately of the devil, because everything but the worship of the true and living God is false worship, so it won’t be so difficult for the antichrist to bring everybody together in a world worship system because they all agree. The only people that can’t be included are Christians and Jews, the Jews because even if they’re unbelievers, they’re Jews and God chose that nation, so they have to go along with everybody who’s a believer in Jesus Christ, but all the rest of the regions of the world, nothing really keeps them apart. They’re worshiping the creature rather than the Creator; they have joined together whatever manifestation of the religion they have created. It is all a rejection of the worship of the living God, and a worship of the creation rather than the Creator, which becomes a worship of the devil, because the world is divided between the children of God and the children of the devil. “For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions” and we’re not going to get all of this covered but I want to make the connection for you here down this far.

“God gave them over to degrading passions. Their bodies were dishonored among them,” verse 24. You know this all goes back to a rejection of God and the revelation He has given. It’s not just a revelation of His creation in the heavens, or the world around us, we are part of that creation and you know what is being rejected, what He has created. The purpose He’s created it for, I refuse to acknowledge He created this body. I refuse that He created humanity so now we manifest that rejection by what? By rejecting what He said He created us for, He created us male and female. He’s going to use the word to distinguish a man from a woman in this passage. That’s rejected, and it’s manifested and rejected, why, He created us, created a man and a woman to be joined together in marriage it’s all rejected now.

I mean turn on the TV nobody’s ashamed or embarrassed now to say they’re living together. That’s just what we do and pretty soon it becomes acceptable for believers, but you understand, that’s a rejection of the God who Himself is the One who created marriage and ordained it between a man and a woman. We have a new presidential candidate, listened to a part of a talk he gave. He supposedly is married to a male companion in a homosexual marriage as we have them now. He said this relationship has brought me closer to God. Well you know what it does? You hear this enough and we’re exposed to it enough, pretty soon it softens us. By the time, Paul works through all this theology and we get to chapter 12 he says, “Do not be conformed to this world,” because that’s the pressure. The world trying to shape us, keep the pressure on so we begin to adjust, so we fit in the world and we can be more accepted, but the world’s not becoming like us, we’re becoming like the world.

And the corruption continues so what he says here, “they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, they exchanged God’s glory, they exchanged God’s truth. God gave them over” in verse 24 “to the lusts of their hearts,” and he gets more specific. God gave them over “to degrading passions,” and now you have the various forms of homosexual relationships. The woman exchanged the natural function; this carries us back to the creation. You know when God created, He created man as male and female. What are we doing today? Denying that which is so evident to everyone everywhere throughout the world, down through the histories of civilization there has been the recognition of the difference between a man and a woman. Why? It’s evident to everyone, even the savages that don’t wear clothes, that’s a female that’s a male, it’s the creation of God.

It takes super intellectual people and the educated part of the world to decide, you don’t know what the difference is. What is that? That is suppressing the truth that is so evident to everyone everywhere. What we see going on around us is just a more blatant open demonstration of this perhaps than the world has ever seen. I don’t know that there’s ever been a major civilization that condoned and promoted homosexual style marriages. Now our point here is this is what he is saying, “those who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,” verse 18. Why? Verse 19, “because that which is known about God is evident among them.” God made it evident since the creation of the world when He made man as male and female, and they’re made in His image, and now. Don’t know. I understand in school you’re not supposed to use gender specific references, you don’t refer to boys and girls, you refer to students. I have some booklets that were given out to teachers back in the 1980s telling them, instructing teachers on how they should begin to condition students for the accepting of same sex kind of relationships. It’s going on, build it into them, get their mind closed if possible to truth, to God, so important that we understand. We’re going to stop here, we’ll pick up with it, that what is going on around us is an open demonstration; we are created by God in His image. This was the epitome of God’s creation male and female. Now we reject any….what is that?

That’s why Romans 1 is talking about, these, verse 20 “have been clearly seen” verse 20 said, “by His attributes” by what has been made. What is the epitome of God’s creation in Genesis? Man as male and female and now that’s suppressed. What excuse is there? Now they don’t put on a birth certificate whether it’s a boy or a girl, male or female, because we won’t know until they decide and then you can be a grown man and decide I’m going to be something else or a grown woman and I’m going to be something else or I’m both. You know it comes down to the root problem, it helps us as Christians to understand what the root problem is. Well then, we really ought to go on a crusade. No, because this isn’t their problem, this is a manifestation of their problem. The problem is what? It’s the rejection of God; that’s why we go to the gospel.

This is the only help, to reason with them and show, “look here’s a picture of a naked male and a naked female, you can’t tell me you can’t tell the difference.” Well what you are is what you are on the inside as I read recently. That physical thing, well you see they reject what God has done so that’s why we take the power of the gospel. We minimize the seriousness of the condition when we reduce it to…. Well, if we could explain to them and show them scientifically that the chromosome pattern is different. It’s not the problem. The problem is the heart that’s rejecting God and they’re rejecting everything that’s related to God, and everything that demonstrates the character of God and the manifestation of His attributes, so what we come and say, well you know that’s not really the issue. You know what the issue is? You’re a sinner and then we explain the gospel because everything else is chasing that proverbial red herring. It goes nowhere because the real problem is not this. This is just the manifestation of the problem. They have rejected God and now it explodes, impacting every area.

You go home, read Romans 1 in this light then and see the connections again, make sure it’s in your mind. Then we won’t get off track and think the problem is,we’re not scholarly enough, we need more scholarly institutions. One person, he wrote a book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind I’ve referenced it a number of times. He said the real problem is, we need a Christian institution that is a Christian Harvard, and they will be accepted by the world on their level as true scholars. You know what that does? That denies the truth of Romans 1, which is the very foundation of the gospel. The problem is not how the world views us. They won’t accept our view because it’s truth from the God of heaven, who has revealed Himself. It had nothing to do with scholarship, so that kind of goal begins to progressively corrupt, because we’ve denied the gospel that we claim to believe. The real problem is, Christians haven’t been scholarly enough so the world, in there scholarship, looks down on Christians as just uneducated bible thumpers. Well, the truth of the matter is understanding the bible is not dependent on getting a doctor’s degree from Harvard or any other place. It’s a matter first of having a relationship with the living God, having Him bring the light of the glory of the gospel into the inner dark recesses of the human heart, making us new. Now we, by God’s grace and the ministry of the Spirit, understand truth. All right, we’ll leave it there and pick up, not next week but the following week.

Let’s pray together: Thank You Lord for the revelation of Your word, Lord thank You that it was given to us average, ordinary people. Lord we were just as lost, just as mindless, just as irrational and unreasonable as any other unbeliever. We were just like them. Lord may our consideration again of the gospel remind us of these truths, and the wonder of Your salvation. Salvation can only be accomplished by Your power that’s how terrible our condition was, how terrible the condition of every unbeliever is. They are without hope in the world but we have the message of life, the truth of the gospel, which is Your power for salvation to everyone who believes. May we not give an inch on this great truth. May we stand firm, may we be faithful. Thank You for the evening, bless us as we go our separate ways in Christ’s name. Amen.