Last Sunday we began Roaming Through Romans - Paul writing to the Romulans - Paul writing to the church in Rome - writing about what it means to live by faith in the reality of where we live our lives today.

Coming to 1:18 - this morning we’re beginning the first major section of Paul’s letter - a section of Paul’s letter that we’re going to be looking at for the next few Sundays.  In this section Paul is going to bring us face-to-face with our need for God.  Put simply - apart from God we’re in serious serious trouble.

While some people may question the relevancy of the gospel today - science and technology and culture enlightening us with much greater wisdom and understanding than what’s in the Bible - or the faith of our Christian forefathers - while the relevancy of the gospel may be questioned - the reality is that the gospel is relevant - crucial for our lives.  Because our bottom line need that transcends all of life - in all that we search for - long for - are desperate for - at the heart level - the essential deepest need of our lives can only be met by God.  

That’s Paul’s teaching - here in these first 5 chapters of Romans - Paul writing about how the gospel.  God’s answer to our deepest need.  How the gospel is relevant to our lives.  What it means for us to live by faith - to live the reality of the Gospel in our lives - as we live in the real world of where we live our lives. 

Looking at the screen - take a deep breath and let’s read verses 18 to 23 together.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.  For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.  For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.  So they are without excuse.  For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

That’s a lot to take in.  Isn’t it?  Let’s unpack what Paul is writing here.

Verses 18 to 23 focus on Man’s Choice.  How  humanity - how we -  choose to respond to God.

Paul writes in verse 18:  For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

Have you ever heard someone say something like:  “I believe that God is a loving God.  But, I just can’t believe in a God who would send people to Hell.”  Heard that?  Or:  “How could a loving God condemn people who’ve never heard of Him?”

It’s smorgasbord God.  Like we get to pick and choose what God should be like based on what we want Him to be like.  We like the idea of a loving God.  But God being a God of wrath - Hell fire and brimstone - punishing sin - that kinda makes us uncomfortable.

We need to be clear on the why and what of God’s wrath. 

The Greek word for wrath is “orge” which also describes God’s anger.  Meaning that God’s anger and wrath go together.  Along with His love.

Step off a 30 story building and we become... one with the sidewalk.  There are ways things happen.  God created - designed His creation that way.  If God hadn’t created creation with “we can count on this happening” consistent laws of how creation operates we’d have no idea if with our next step and we’d be falling up.  We live in an orderly world ordered by the orderly God Who acts in an orderly - purposeful - way.

It’s a big time reason why we can trust God.  God is always consistent.  Not capricious.  Whimsically saying one thing and doing something completely different.  What He says He will do He will do.  How could we ever trust a God Who says one thing - like “believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved”  - and then we find out later He was just joking with us.

God is always acting consistent with Who He is.  Both in wrath and in love.

Meaning that God’s wrath is not God being passive aggressive and going all skitzo and loosing His temper - flying off the handle whenever we break one of His laws or because God is having a grumpy day.  Because God is a God of order.

And God is the God who is love.  So when God is angry He acts with wrath.  And even though God’s wrath is to be feared - God’s wrath is also controlled by - ordered - by His love.  So His wrath is tempered - measured - totally just.  Totally in character with His love especially when anything has potential to harm those He loves.

God sets limits - boundaries - to protect those He loves.  God knows the consequences of our stepping off a 30 story building even though we may be only thinking about enjoying the view on the way down and wondering why God puts up a railing or disciplines us before we come close to it. 

God who is just enforces those limits - even disciplining us - because violating those boundaries threatens those He loves.

Paul writes that God’s wrath revealed - meaning He - because He loves us - demonstrates His anger against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.  Against what threatens those He loves.

Ungodliness is a lack of reverence for God.  Instead of honoring God we choose to have contempt for God - a disrespecting of God.

Righteousness describes living rightly with God.  The relationship God puts us into when we come to Him by faith.  Unrighteousness rejects that relationship.

God in the Old Testament lays out His law which is a real time description of the holiness and moral and ethical purity of Who He is and what it means to live in a relationship with Him.  To live without failing to live up to God’s standard of holiness and moral and ethical purity.

In the New Testament that description is given to us in the flesh and blood of Jesus - Who through His work on the cross invites us into a restored relationship with God - because all of us have already failed to live holy and pure - God who invites us into a restored relationship with Him - the abundant life - the fullness of life that Jesus came to give us.

We’re together?

Ungodliness and unrighteousness is to reject God Himself - His deity - His authority - His very character.  To reject everything that God lovingly offers us in a relationship with Him. 

“who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth”  Do you hear choice in that?

To suppress has the idea of pushing down on the lid - like on a pot -  while what’s inside is pushing to get out.  Mankind suppressing the truth of who God is - what it means to live rightly with God.

God has created us to have a relationship with Him - a deep - meaningful relationship with our Creator.  Its in our spiritual DNA - at the core of who we are.  Which is why people - wherever and whenever - people have always instinctively sought out their Creator.  But it’s also true that people choose so suppress that desire - choose to ignore what deep down we know to be true. 

Are we together?

God - because He loves us and knows that our deepest need is only fulfilled in relationship with Him - God is angry - understandably and justifiably demonstrates His anger by pouring out His wrath against all ungodliness and unrighteousness that men do as they live choosing to suppress the truth of Who God is and what it means to have a relationship with Him.

Let’s not blame God for being angry when we’re the one’s rejecting His love.  We - mankind - have made a choice - to suppress the truth - to our own detriment.  And God is justifiably angry.

Reading on - verse 20 - Paul describes the choice we’ve made.

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 

There are limits to what we can process about Who God is.  God is God and we’re not.  What can be known about God’s invisible attributes God clearly makes visible.  Clearly seen.  Plainly understood.

Go outside at night and look up.  It’s full of stars.  That’s God’s eternal power on display.  The more our telescopes peer into space - the deeper our ships travel into space - the more of that display we see.

God the creator who by His eternal power calls all that is into existence out of nothing - sets it out there to help us grab onto that He’s there and Who He is.

Psalm 19 is familiar to us:  “The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.  Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.  Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”  (Psalm 19:1,2,4)

Last week I wandered into our back yard and took this picture (roses).

These are not in our back yard (orchids).  Absolutely stunning.  But, same idea.  One example of millions of examples we’re surrounded with every day.

That’s design.  Not random chance.  God choosing to create such minute detail with such variety - and the more we peer into that detail and minutia - what we see on display is God’s character - His consistency - His order - His holiness - His divine nature.

John Calvin wrote:  “By saying that God has made it manifest, he means, that man was created to be a spectator of this formed world, and that eyes were given to him, that he might, by looking on so beautiful a picture, be led up to the Author himself.” (1)

What can be known means that there are things about God that we just can’t process.  But God is knowable.  He makes Himself to be knowable.

Meaning there’s no excuse for us saying that there is no God.  No excuse for us to deny that He is our sovereign creator who is the God of order and design and purpose who lovingly desires for us to know Him.

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

Do you hear choice in that?  The knew God.  But, they chose not to honor God or give thanks to Him.

Any day that we can get up - walk and breath independently - is an act of God.  Right?  Life doesn’t happen unless God wills it to happen.  Genesis 1 tells us that God created.  We don’t have to know a whole lot of theology to process that.  None of us are here if God hasn’t created. 

Living with the understanding that everything that we are and have is because of God - His grace - His love - His mercy.  We need to honor God - God having first place - preeminence over every part of our lives.  And to give thanks to Him.

Science covers the broad field of human knowledge with facts held together by rules.  Scientists discover and test those facts by the scientific method - an orderly system of solving problems.  Seeking to understand the facts in evidence.  They couldn’t do that - by the way - if God hadn’t created an orderly system.  Yes?

What’s sad - is when those facts - tested by the scientific method - point to God - seemingly the vast majority of scientists will reject that answer. Its a presupposition taken by faith.  God cannot be the answer.

We may be generalizing here.  But, science - rejecting God - science has come up with all kinds of theories about origins and evolution and man that are contrary to what the Bible teaches - or at least they’ve arrived at a god rejecting distortion of the truth.

Really sad is that somehow Christians have gotten the idea that all that god rejecting science is of greater accuracy and truth than what God has clearly and plainly shown us in His creation and pointed to in His Bible.

Man choosing to set ourselves up as our own gods - our own authority about what is - what life is all about - trusting first our great knowledge and understanding of what is.  Paul writes the result is our becoming futile - useless - in our thinking and our foolish hearts are darkened - no illumination.  We can have great knowledge of lots of things.  But no true understanding of what all that means.

That may rock our egos a bit.  Reject God and all of our learning and scientific discovery and exploration and experimentation - all of what humanity may pride itself in - all of that becomes pointless - futile.  Paul writes that in boasting in our own wisdom we’ve become fools.

The Greek word for fool is “moros” which is where we get our word… “moron.”  Someone who is mentally sluggish to the point of being worthless in heart and character.  The Greeks even said that someone who was “moros” should be avoided because they’re fools. 

Paul writes - verse 23 - that the choice we make to reject God is really an exchange - a choice to exchange the immortal God our creator for the foolishness of mortal of man - the creation.

Let’s be clear on what Paul means by “exchanged.”

To exchange doesn’t mean equality.  Exchanging one thing of equal value for another of same thing.  We’ve got a toaster oven that’s defective.  So we take it back to Walmart and exchange it for another adorable blue toaster that hopefully won’t make charcoal out of our toast.

The kind of exchange Paul is writing about is we have one of these in perfect working order that we exchange for one of those that’s only good for making briquettes.  Exchanging what is of immense - priceless - value for something very different - which in and of itself has zippo value.  That’s foolishness.

In Isaiah 44 - God speaks through Isaiah - God speaking to His people:  How foolish are those who manufacture idols.  These prized objects are really worthless… Who but a fool would make his own god—an idol that cannot help him one bit?   He cuts down cedars; he selects the cypress and the oak; he plants the pine in the forest to be nourished by the rain.  Then he uses part of the wood to make a fire.  With it he warms himself and bakes his bread.

Then… he takes the rest of it and makes himself a god to worship!  He makes an idol and bows down in front of it!  He burns part of the tree to roast his meat and to keep himself warm.  He says, “Ah, that fire feels good.”

Then he takes what’s left and makes his god; a carved idol!  He falls down in front of it, worshiping and praying to it.  “Rescue me!” he says.  “You are my god.”

Such stupidity and ignorance!  Their eyes are closed, and they cannot see.  Their minds are shut, and they cannot think.  The person who made the idol never stops to reflect, “Why, it’s just a block of wood!  I burned half of it for heat and used it to bake my bread and roast my meat.  How can the rest of it be a god?  Should I bow down to worship a piece of wood?” 

The poor, deluded fool feeds on ashes.  He trust something that can’t help him at all.  Yet he cannot bring himself to ask, “Is this idol that I’m holding in my hand a lie?”  (Isaiah 44:9-20  TNLT)

Let’s be honest.  Our so called wisdom is a foolishness that leads us to exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling man - then birds - then animals - the creeping things.  To exchange the Creator for the creation.

We need to worship something.  Its in our spiritual DNA.  If we’re not going to worship the true God we’re going to find a substitute.  The consequence of rejecting God - the consequence of ungodliness and unrighteousness - always leads to idolatry.  All of man’s religion and philosophy and mysticism and so called spirituality is a result of rejecting God not our own great enlightenment. 

Let’s be careful.

We can shake our heads at the superstition and people bowing in front of stone idols and statues in other parts of the world.  But we’ve got our own cultural idolatry here with our worship of wealth and power and fame and pleasure and things technological.  Our knowledge and scientific understanding.  Mother nature and our obsession with ecology and evolution. 

God’s anger - God’s wrath - against our ungodliness and unrighteousness is because our choices lead us away from Him into the delusional self-destructive foolishness of worshipping creation rather than our Creator.

Verses 24 to 32 focus on God’s Response.  What is God’s response to our choice to dishonor Him?  Take a deep breath and let’s read these verses together.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because the exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!  Amen.   For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.  For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.  And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.  They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.  They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.  They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.  Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Repetition is the key to… learning.  Scripture repeats what God doesn’t want us to miss.  Three times the phrase is repeated... “God gave them up.”  We need to make sure we’re understanding what that means.

“God gave them up” or some translations render it “God gave them over” - “gave them up” has the idea of someone handing over someone to someone else.

Judas giving up Jesus to the Sanhedrin.  The Sanhedrin gives up Jesus to Pilate.   Pilate gives up Jesus to His enemies and to the soldiers for scourging and crucifixion.  And finally, Jesus gave up His spirit to death.  (Mark 14:10; 15:1,15; Luke 23:25; John 19:30)

Giving up means choice.  Not resignation or frustration.  But purposeful - willful - choice.  God purposefully gives us up - hands us over.

God is not saying, “I give up.  Have it your way.”  God doesn’t work for Burger King.  God is saying, “Ok.  Have it your way.  You need to learn the consequences of your choice.  I’m giving you up to the consequences of your choice.”

Paul writes:  God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity 

The Greek word translated “impurity” was used to describe something that became useless in the service of a god.  Like a surgeon dropping a scalpel on the operating room floor.  Now its unsterile - impure - useless to the surgeon.

We may not be worshiping a little wooden statute.  But trust something other than God - our own whit, wisdom, and work - when we start serving our jobs, our relationships, our stature, our bank accounts rather than honoring God first in all of that.  Or we’re trusting drugs and alcohol and sex and shopping and pornography and sports and recreation and food and on and on and on - to meet our heart needs - rather than God - all that takes us away from the amazing purpose for which we’ve been created.

We’re created in God’s image.  We’re given life to glorify Him.  To be devoted to Him - to worship Him - to serve Him - so that our lives bring glory to Him alone.  At the heart level if what we’re serving physically, spiritually, morally - if that’s not the God - we’ve contaminated ourselves. 

Dishonored means degraded or disgraced.  Degrade God - and in our infinite self-serving foolishness - we’re degrading ourselves.  No wonder so many people today are lusting - insatiably desiring - and never finding purpose and meaning and fullness in their lives.

Chuck Swindoll writes this:  “God’s purpose for turning people over to their impurity is redemptive.  Rather than enabling the drug addict by providing a hot shower and a soft bed, the Lord leaves him in the gutter to lie in a pool of his own filth until he decides he wants better.  He cannot possibly fulfill his purpose as a human being until he wants to leave the impurity of his addiction behind.” (2)

That’s tough love.  As ugly as it gets - God gives us up to our own lusts so that we will learn to choose to desire Him.

Then Paul writes, “God gave them up to dishonorable passions.”  The description here in verse 26 and 27 is of homosexual relations.

David Roper - pastored at PBC - is directing Idaho Mountain Ministries - David Roper writes about these verses:

“These are very difficult verses.  Let me say first that we need to have compassion for those who are in the homosexual community.  When we see gay parades and marches, it ought not make us angry, it ought to break our hearts, because we know the pain and loneliness inside their hearts.  But what we need to know from this passage is that Gay is not good.  Homosexuality is a sin.  Period.  We need not be confused about that.  We constantly debate:  Is it right, or is it wrong?  Is homosexuality sin or is it a sickness?  Is it something genetic, or is it something environmental?  Paul takes out all that confusion and says it is sin.  It is not the worst sin in the world, but it is one of the most undignified things you can do to your body.” (3)   

The word “error” at the end of verse 27 has the idea of wandering away from what is natural - wandering into perversion - what is unnatural.  There are consequences for that error.  An insatiable longing for love - for completion - for acceptance - for being like everyone else. 

Let’s be careful.

Taking what Paul one step farther - but totally in sync with what Paul is getting at - homosexuality is an evidence of a whole lot else that’s messed up at the core of a society.  There’s a whole lot messed up in heterosexual relationships as well.

Our society is broken when it comes to how we do sexuality in our relationships and dating and marriage and in what it means to be a mother or father - or sacrificial commitment to our spouse - the permanence and sanctity of marriage.  What should be natural - meaning a sacrificial love - has been exchanged for a passion that is self-serving and ultimately self-destructive to self and society.  What God also calls sin.

God has given us up to all that so that we will learn that the fulfillment we seek can only be found through repentance and turning to God.

Paul goes on - verse 28 - And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.    

Paul gives us a list.  What Paul is showing us here is society run amok.  Looking at that list - it is amazingly descriptive of our society today.  Isn’t it?  The more things change the more… they stay the same. 

Verse 32 - not only does man know that these things are wrong but we do them and encourage others to do them with us.  To practice them - meaning repetition - getting better at depravity.  Working hard to sin better.  Sin loves company.

Stay with me:  “did not see fit” and “debased” in Greek - both come from the same root word of “dokimos” which has the idea of testing - like testing or approving metal or people.  Is the metal really gold or something else?  What really is the true character of so and so?

Humanity puts God to the test - judges Him - and chooses - “does not see fit” to acknowledge Him as our God.  So, God puts humanity to the test to see what we’re really made of.  Answer:  the debased mind of man.  The word in Greek is “adokimos” - which means rejected after testing.

Which is what this list is all about.  Man - given up by God - man left to himself - proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that man by himself is in serious serious trouble.

Paul’s list isn’t a pretty picture.  But it is honest.

Processing all that…

John Stott made the following observation:

“What keeps people away from Christ more than anything else is their inability to see their own need for Him or their unwillingness to admit it.  Jesus himself put it this way:  ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but the sinners’ (Mark 2:17).  We only go to a doctor when we admit that we are ill and we can’t cure ourselves.  In the same way, we only go to Christ when we admit we are guilty sinners and we realize that we can’t save ourselves.” (4) 

Someone has said someplace:  “A man’s greatest need is to know what is his greatest need.”

God giving us up to the consequences of our choice is God showing us in gruesome detail our need for Him.

Ultimately there is only one bottom line choice in life.  We either choose self or we choose God.  Every day - in every situation - we make that choice.  Live by faith in myself or live by faith in God.  Paul is showing us where the reality of that choice meets the pavement of where we do life.

There is only one Creator God.  God who has created and set in motion the universe - gave order to His creation.  God who is infinite - all powerful - holy - morally and ethically pure - loving.  God who sets boundaries.

God who has displayed His eternal power and divine nature all around us in His creation.  God who creates us for relationship with Him.  A relationship with Him through Jesus that is abundant life today and leads to eternal life with Him forever.

There is Satan - who is very real and very much our adversary - Satan desires to be like God.  But he can’t create.  He can only imitate -  and distort and pervert.  Satan’s desire is to deceive us and to lead us into rebellion and rejection - to choose to dishonor God.  Deluding us into thinking that somehow in dishonoring God we’re actually being wise instead of being foolish.

Satan who seeks to lure us into trusting ourselves.  Satan’s world of foolishness and lies - deception - delusion - all in opposition to God’s truth.  A self-destructive illusion that binds us in sin and self-destructive behavior that is degrading today and ultimately leads to eternal death.

Whatever philosophy we may espouse.  Whatever morality.  Whatever wisdom or knowledge.  Whatever our world view.  How we treat issues like abortion and euthanasia and poverty and wealth and sexuality and every element of life.  The source of all of it is based on either a choice of faith in self or God.

We need to get this.  There are only two choices in life.  Every moment of our lives we’re either choosing to turn towards God or not.  Ultimately life or death - forever.  Death - not because God just loves being wrathful.  But death - wrath - because God loves us and desires for us to choose Him - what is infinitely better for us.

That’s the relevancy of the Gospel.  That God - because He loves us - God gives us that choice.  That’s the power of the Gospel.  Because when we choose God - no matter what choices we’ve made in the past - God because He loves us - chooses by His grace to bring us into a relationship with Him and to lead us in that relationship through life now and into life with Him forever.

_________________________

1. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, translated and edited by John Owen (Whiteish, MT:  Kessinger, 2006) - cited by Chuck Swindoll, Insights on Romans - Zondervan, 2010

2. Chuck Swindoll, Insights on Romans - Zondervan, 2010, page 47

3. David Roper, The Descent of Man (Cole Community Church, Boise ID, 09.27.1987) cited by Gary Vanderet, Man’s Descent and God’s Wrath, 03.14.1999

4. John Stott, Romans - Intervarsity Press, 1994 - cited by Gary Vanderet, Man’s Descent and God’s Wrath, 03.14.1999

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®  (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.  Used by permission.  All rights reserved.