Have it Your Way
Romans 1:18-32
The last two weeks we have looked at Romans 1:16-17.
These two verses are the theme of the book of Romans. God has revealed righteousness and given us His righteousness, if we are believers.
Vs. 16-17
- This is a righteousness from God! You cannot manufacture this righteousness.
- God is just, but He is also the justifier.
- God justifies you, a miserable, failed, messed up sinner.
- The Gospel is the power of God!
- So God has revealed to us righteousness through the power of the Gospel!
But, God has also revealed unrighteousness to us
- In Romans 1:18, God is going to speak to us about unrighteousness.
- The wrath of God is also revealed; it’s the revelation, or apocalypse, of God.
- The next 3 chapters will speak to us about the unrighteousness of man; then we will see the righteousness of God.
- God has revealed what unrighteousness is; it has been unveiled to man.
- The Holy Spirit comes and reveals to us that we are sinners.
John 16:8
And when He [the Holy Spirit] has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.
- You see, the righteousness of God has to be unveiled to the human mind. The unrighteousness of man is also an apocalypse to man, unveiled to us by God.
- Not through IQ, not through intellect.
Vs. 18
- This revelation of righteousness is the theme for the next 15 verses.
- In verse 19 we read “because” and in verse 21 we read “because.”
- These are the reasons that the wrath of God is revealed.
- The wrath of God is revealed!
- God is revealing His wrath even now! But this is not some “temper tantrum” of God.
- Does this mean God’s going to smoke us?
- This is not a temper tantrum of God against sin, but rather a purposeful discipline of His created beings who have rebelled against Him.
- He is about to tell us that this unrighteousness is of our own doing, our own making.
- Hell? We have created our very own hell on earth by “suppressing the truth” that we know to be true.
- Ex. Why is that we hear so much about our need to get over our conscience and get over our “guilt complex,” and still people aren’t able to get over these issues? Psychologists and talk show hosts rail about this and yet people are more depressed than ever. It is because we are guilty!!
- Jesus got angry with “hardness of heart.” Remember He asked the man with the withered hand about healing on the Sabbath, and no one would answer Him.
- God does get angry! Jesus got angry! Jesus had a righteous anger against hardness of heart.
- Ex. If someone is molesting my child, I better be angry. I get angry over such unrighteousness. That is from God!
- God gets angry over sin because He is a God of love. He knows that sin destroys love in our lives.
- Wrath is revealed because God knows sin destroys your life!!
- The wrath of God has a purpose. He is angry because sin destroys your life!
- How is this wrath revealed?
Romans 1:24
Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves…
Romans 1:26
For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature.
Romans 1:28
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting.
- Three times God is letting them have it their way!! God is giving them up to themselves. He gives them what they want!
- This was not Burger King’s idea. This is God’s idea.
- Man is holding down the truth in unrighteousness: suppressing the truth.
- From the classical Greek, “hold down,” means like a helmsman with his hand on the rudder of the ship who is fighting to keep the boat going in a direction opposite the current. Man actually fights to have his way against the current of God’s righteousness, fighting to have it his way.
Vs. 19-20
- No one is genuinely an atheist because the divine attributes of God and the power of God have been revealed to man.
Psalms 19:1-4
The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.
2 Day unto day utters speech,
And night unto night reveals knowledge.
3 There is no speech nor language
Where their voice is not heard.
4 Their line has gone out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of the world.
In them He has set a tabernacle for the sun…
- From the telescope to the microscope there is a design, and there cannot be a design without a Designer.
- One astronomer said, “If you took the distance from the earth to the sun, some 93 million miles, and made it the width of a piece of paper, and then took the distance from earth to Alpha Centuri, the next closest star would be 31 feet of those papers stacked up. If you then measured the distance from the earth to the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy, the stacks of paper would be 310 feet high. If you would measure to the end of the universe, or what they say is the edge, it would be 31 million miles high.” How did it get there? The Big Bang! I get a Big Bang out of that!
- Just happened? Just look at the balance of orbits, magnetic fields, the oxygen on the earth, the perfect distance of the earth to the sun and moon. One foot in any direction and we would either freeze to death or get cooked. It is amazing!!
- It is undeniable. Look at the mountains!
- Evolution is confused! The Second Law of Thermodynamics says everything is breaking down, becoming less complex, not more complex. Evolution teaches that we are moving toward the more complex and yet the entire universe can be scientifically studied, and we can see that we are all moving to the less complex.
- These scientists are smart people, but they become fools, holding the rudder, suppressing the truth, fighting against God!
- God is revealing Himself everywhere! It is obvious!
- Ex. Wildersmith, one of the 12 most brilliant men in the world, a godly man, tells the story of talking to Carl Sagan, who was getting all this money from the government. Sagan was working on the SETI projects, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, with Radar Telescopes and for an effort to pick up signals from space and what would constitute outside intelligence. So,would there would have to be a pattern, an order in a message being received? It can’t be random.
Wildersmith said, “Carl, put down your Radar Telescope, come into my lab, and look through the Electron Microscope and I will show you a digital code on the helix of the DNA that is ordered, that proves there is outside intelligence.” Wildersmith said Sagan refused to look through the microscope.
- Peter calls such people “willingly ignorant.”
- Paul here says that they “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” The smartest people on the earth become fools.
- God has given us a testimony through creation…the things of God are clearly seen!! The Greek word is poemia, meaning the poem of God.
- But the idea of a Supreme Being, a God, is intimidating to man because, if there is a God, then that implies we must be accountable to God and we don’t like that.
- If God does exist, He must be eternal and all powerful, and the unbeliever doesn’t like that very much.
- If we could just have God for 4 years and then vote Him out of office, we wouldn’t mind Him so much.
- So, sin is always sin. Truth is always truth. Righteousness is always righteousness, and people don’t like any of that!
- The heart of the problem is the problem of the heart!
- I find great consolation that God doesn’t change His mind and that He is “unchanging,” because if He does change His mind, guess who he would change His mind about? It would be me! I would get to heaven, and he would say, “look, I really had strong feelings about you in the beginning, but, I’ve changed my mind, go to hell.”
- He knows my stupidity, my ignorance and He still loves me!!
Vs. 21-22
- Secondly, they will not glorify God.
- Ex. The very people who suppress the truth, change when their daughter is dying of cancer. They will come into the office and ask me to pray!
- They know that He is there! First, they are vain in their imaginations, and secondly, they just can’t glorify God.
- But reflect on the arguments they come up with! “If God can do anything, can He create a rock He can’t pick up?” What are they thinking? They are looking for loop holes. Foolish hearts are darkened.
- They quench the testimony of God and they become fools!
- Harry Rimer said, “A philosopher is like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there. But that isn’t the problem. The problem is that he finds it.”
- These people profess themselves to be wise, but they become fools. The Greek word is Moron! Really, it is.
- These people cloister together, and nothing of any value happens! They just become morons!
- Ex. We hear reports of studies that show children who have two mommies are just as healthy as children with a mother and father. Morons!
- Ex. We see reports that if we would just get over our phobias about sin, we would be more free and healthy. Morons!
- I’m glad I know the truth! I’m glad I know The Truth!
- The moral slide is ignorance that leads to idolatry.
Vs. 23
· “Man gods”! Looking up to men! Idolizing men!
· Man is a born worshipper, and we will worship something.
o They worship at the feet of rock stars, athletes, and trees! I love the outdoors, but I have never even thought of worshipping a tree or an animal.
o And the Discovery Channel tells us these trees have been here for 340 million years! Give me a break!
· Idolatry is not some guy on an island with a bone in his nose worshipping some god.
· No. Idolatry can be your car, your career, your sex drive, anything you bow a knee to instead of God.
· What is the driving passion of your life? That’s your god!
· Because of that we have three paragraphs that convey a clear message.
· Verse 24, verse 26, and verse 28: “God gave them over.”
Vs. 24
- This mean filth, uncleanness, it is demonic!
- God gives them over to the demonic
Vs. 25
- What is the lie? Remember Satan coming to Eve? “You can be like God.” This is the lie, that you can be God.
- If we are teaching our kids that they are here because of the Big Bang, what banged? Chemicals? Where did the chemicals come from?
- If you give up any God or any objective truth, what are you left with? YOU! SELF!
- Self becomes god. You came from monkeys; you are god and you can decide what’s right!
- Ex. Evolution is like saying “I drove my van and parked it, and my wife drove her van and parked it next to mine, and we went away on a long trip and came back and suddenly there were all these little vans all over the place. Never leave those vans alone in the driveway.
- The Bible says we are in a fallen state, not an exalted state. The Bible says we are a “little lower than the angels” and anyone who would rather be a little above a monkey, than a little lower than angels, is a moron!
Vs. 26-27
- Turning against God’s testimony of design, God’s divine order of things.
Genesis 2:24-25
Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
- This is God’s design, no shame.
- Do you want a life of no shame? Obey God!
- But these men and women were both completely given over to something that God calls shameful.
- Leviticus 18 and 20 calls homosexuality an “abomination.”
- Our passage calls it “shameful.”
- This is the only time this word “burned” is used. It means “burned out” incinerated by it.
- The Bible is very clear, but so is adultery! It is an abomination! So is rebellion to parents! So, don’t point the finger too quick.
- This is where America is going! This is shameful to God!
- Homosexuality is a sin, just like adultery, just like murder, just like rebellion. It’s no different; it sends people to hell!
- John Chrysostom said in the 4th century: “there is nothing more noxious or demented before God than this.”
- Augustine, who had a homosexual relationship before he was converted, said, “I contaminated the spring of male friendship with the dirt of lust.”
- Homosexuality is against nature and contrary to divine and human custom.
- Thomas Aquinas in the 12th century said, “The vice of homosexuality is against nature and a slap in the face of God.”
- This was written long before we had an English translation of the Bible. This is from the original languages.
- Family Research Council’s study of the obituaries of over 5000 homosexual men found:
o The average age of homosexual men dying of AIDS is 39.
o The average age of homosexual men dying of all causes is 41.
o 1% of homosexuals live to be 65 or older.
o 3% live of homosexuals live past 55.
o Gay publications and studies say that the homosexual lifestyle choice may cut 2 to 3 decades off of one’s life.
o Homosexual men have a 3 to 4 times the chance of having drug and alcohol abuse problems.
o 14 times more chance of syphilis.
o 23 times more chance of contracting a venereal disease.
o 1000 times more chance of contracting AIDS.
o Lesbian women have a 19 times greater chance of getting syphilis than a heterosexual woman.
o San Francisco, one of the most openly gay cities in America, compared to the national average, has twice the rate of infectious Hepatitis A, 3 times the rate of Hepatitis B, and 22 times the rate of venereal disease.
o Among gay men, the rate of murder is 50 times higher than the general population and 60 times higher in suicide.
- The point is the lifestyle is not “gay” it is destructive!
- We are called to love this hurting community with the love of God!
Vs. 28-32
- They applaud those who does these things because it affirms them.
- The Holy Spirit is convicting them.
- They suppress the truth in their hearts!
- From the microscope to the telescope God is revealing His truth and Himself!
- So, God gives them what they want! They really can have it their way!
- We are drawn to those fleshly desires, all of us.
- The remarkable thing is that if we will turn to the living God, He will reveal His power and peace in our lives.
1 Corinthians 1:18-19
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written:
"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise
And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent."
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