AS IF HE WERE NOT Romans 1:18-32

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1 February 1, 2015 Providence AS IF HE WERE NOT Romans 1:18-32 INTRODUCTION: Do you ever play dare games with your friends? You pick an action that may have significant consequences and dare someone to do it to prove a point or to win a bet or to show no fear. As kids, the consequences were real I dare you to jump off that top bunk (broken arm) to hit that hornets nest with a rock (multiple stings) to skip class and go to the mall (run into a teacher and get after-school detention). But the stakes get higher in adulthood. Adults still dare to drink and drive, assuming they will never get caught or do any harm. Adults dare to cheat on their taxes, assuming that audits are rare. Adults dare to indulge in dicy and immoral behavior, assuming that no one will ever know. The topic Paul presents to us this morning is the most serious of all daring to believe that we can get away with ignoring and rejecting God and daring to live however we please and believer whatever we want and worship whatever captures our passion. THESIS: When Christ is at the center of your life, all things hold together and flourish, but when He is pushed aside, all things fall apart and disintegrate. So as we get started unpacking this text today, keep in mind no one dares God and gets away with it! I. DOWNPLAYING GOD S CAPACITY FOR WRATH DOES NOT ELIMINATE THE CONSEQUENCES OF IT. Rom. 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. --Two immediate questions come to mind in reading this passage: Can a loving, gracious God be a God of wrath? What would stir His wrath, or anger? A. THE WRATH OF GOD IS REVEALED, NOT IMAGINED --For many, God is an innocuous, bland, indifferent being who can be insulted, mocked and even denied without consequence we can do whatever we like and He cannot and will not do anything about it! ILLUS. Several years ago I had an uncomfortable encounter in a parking lot with a man who was mad at me for not preaching that all Christians should ignore income tax laws as an act of civil disobedience. He insisted that the US Government had no right to tax him or anyone else, and that Christians should stand up against them by not paying taxes. The vehemence of his argument and the depth of his beliefs did not change the facts if you refuse to pay your taxes, the same government you don t believe in will throw you in jail! Your beliefs will not change the consequences if your beliefs run in an opposite direction from the truth! --God cannot be untrue to Himself He cannot be loving at the expense of His justice patient at the expense of His wrath. --A naïve expectation among many is that God cannot ever be angry, cannot ever act with justice, cannot ever stand against those who defy His authority and defame His holiness. --The Scriptures are very clear that God s wrath is real, and has been consistently revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

2 2 Heb. 10:27, 31 but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries 31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God 12:29 for our God is a consuming fire. --Rejecting and dishonoring God does have eternal repercussions and His wrath must pour out on those who deny Him. --OR the more immediate reality is that we are accountable to Him now His wrath is eternal but can also be felt immediately. B. GOD S WRATH IS AWAKENED BY SUPPRESSING TRUTH, BY UNBELIEF --The focus of Paul in this section is that God will not overlook unbelief and cannot ignore those who insist on suppressing the truth about Him. --Yes, His wrath is revealed against the ungodly, but His wrath is also against those who suppress the truth, who make it their aim to destroy faith in others by feeding them deception and calling God s truth a lie. Matt. 5:19 Therefore whoever relaxes [breaks or annuls] one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. --Jesus Himself warned of those who would bring God s wrath by suppressing the truth God s teachings and commandments and noted that their fall would be great! II. DISCOUNTING GOD S HONOR DOES NOT NULLIFY OUR ACCOUNTABILITY TO HIM. --So Paul goes on to say that the people who reject the truth about God, or deny His existence, do so in the face of compelling evidence from heaven. Romans 1:19-20 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. --Everyone in the world can see that God is and denying the evidence demonstrates a rebellious heart, not an uninformed mind that cannot figure out if He is or is not. A. ALL CREATION REVEALS THE ETERNAL POWER AND DIVINE NATURE OF GOD --His invisible attributes His eternal power His divine nature Paul says these things are clearly seen, perceived from the time the world was created. --This does not mean that everything to be known about God can be seen in creation, but the basics are evident to anyone who is not prejudiced against recognizing them. Note: Paul points out in Roman 10:17 that the kind of belief in God that results in saving faith comes only through the word of Christ. But with the basic revelations of creation, there is no excuse for pretending that God either does not exist or cannot be known being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse (1:20). Intelligent design argues for God s existence as does any honest consideration of the order of the earth and all its extraordinary intricacies, or in the order and vastness of the universe from the micro world of smallest organisms to the macro world of the distant galaxies of the universe, all Creation declares the glory and power of God!

3 3 --The atheist who denies God s existence or the unrighteous who suppress the truth about God or the ungodly who reject holy and purity as required by God all are without excuse since who He is and what He is can be clearly seen through Creation. B. HUMAN BEINGS DISHONOR THEIR MAKER BY WORSHIPING CREATION INSTEAD OF THE CREATOR Romans 1:21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. --Do you find it fascinating that the sin that tops the list, the one that precedes all the individual sins listed later, is that They did not honor Him as God They did not give thanks --The result was tragic as their humanity was devastated by the impact of their futile speculations and their darkened, foolish hearts. --Idolatry captured their hearts and minds, controlled their affections and their actions as they made a fatal exchange. Romans 1:22-23, 25 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. --What a horrible trade, a reprehensible exchange to give up the God of glory and truth for the vanity of human images and lies! ILLUS. Pretending and professing to be wise, people have substituted vain imaginations and foolish speculations for the eternal truths of God. But for all their claims that theirs is an improvement over God, the evidence tells an entirely different story in this world and the world to come will tell an even more dramatic and devastating and deadly story! World history is not a story of improved people who have become more civil, but whose barbaric instincts are unchanged. They have improved the outward environment in much of the world, regarding comfort and convenience, but the human heart remains as selfish as ever and as bent on self-destructive behavior as ever. We are suffering our murders, our immorality, our violence, our dishonesty, our mean-ness, and our isolation in the west in nicer surroundings. But we are still subject to the same evils that have always plagued the human race since the beginning. --By trying to make our own peace and contentment, we have fallen further into turmoil and disarray because we have made created things our hope. We have built our worlds around what is in the world instead of the One who made the world! And our idolatry has brought our misery! III. REJECTING GOD S DOMINION DOES NOT END WELL, RESULTING IN MORAL AND SPIRITUAL DISINTEGRATION. --This section of Romans has often focused on the consequences of giving up on God by highlighting the impact unbelief has on sexual morals, especially as it pertains to homosexuality in 1:26-27.

4 4 --But if we are not careful, we will miss the point of the entire section by becoming absorbed in the homosexuality theme which is at best a sub-topic essential to understand and true in every way, but is a consequence of the main idea that although people knew God, they did not honor Him as God. ILLUS. The collapse of all the world s great civilizations followed a pattern we must not ignore. A downward spiral in several areas preceded their fall: economics abandoned restraint, education tried became purely academic and ignored values, family life disintegrated with easy divorce and child-centered focus, religion without standards of righteousness or curbs on selfish excesses; and pleasure-seeking prevailed over common sense and reason. Kingdoms of earth come and go. But the kingdom of heaven will endure forever because it is built on eternal principles of a righteous and holy God, sustained by the mighty power and gracious love of an all-wise God. When He is left out and His presence and purposes are forsaken, it is only a matter of time before corruption and collapse will come! --God must have dominion for us to survive, and for mere survival to turn into joyful satisfaction. --When we live AS IF HE WERE NOT A. GOD GAVE THEM OVER TO THE NATURAL DEPRAVITY OF THEIR CHOICES. --In three verses, Paul uses this same phrase, God gave them up, gave them over. --In these three verses, Paul says that God delivers, gives over (παραδίδωµι) such as person to the control of someone, or something else effectively giving up His own interests into the hands of another. --Having been the one who has dominion over all things, God now gives the offending party what he wants you want me to have nothing to do with your life, I am hereby giving you over, delivering you, just as you desire. ILLUS. Parents have to do this sometimes! A rebellious child insists on having his way, rejecting the ways and expectations of his parents. I have seen the pain in the eyes of the parents as they have finally had to give the child what he wants. Thinking he was getting freedom, the child soon realizes that all the protections, all the provisions, all the unbearable restraints of home all those things get tossed aside. No more umbrella of being watched over, no more promises of security, no more expressions of love to smother him like the prodigal son, he is on his own to face life on his own terms and deal with the harshness of it all! So God tells the unbelieving, rebellious, defiant hearted one: I will do as you say I will give you over to your lusts to your dishonorable passions to your debased way of thinking. 1. The Lust of Their Hearts Rom. 1:24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, --Abandoning God s protective plan for both purity and protection, those who willfully defy God s instructions about how we handle the body in holiness will find themselves held captive by their declarations and practices of defiling what was created to be the living temple of the Holy Spirit. 2. Dishonorable Passions ( degrading, shameful lusts ) Rom. 1:26-27 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave

5 5 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. --Many efforts have been made to deny the sinfulness of homosexuality, to identify it as just a harmless alternative to heterosexuality but anyone reading these verses cannot be under the impression that Paul views it that way at all. --Describing men with men and women with women, Paul says that these are dishonorable passions, shameless acts, contrary to nature, and deserving of due penalty for their error. Note: But if homosexuality is not the focus here, why does Paul give the detail of 2 verses to it, and lumps the rest of the consequences (about 20 or so of them) into 3 verses? A legitimate question but one with a very satisfying answer. The entire section is speaking to the unimaginable inversion of propriety how can people exchange the truth of God for the lies of the world? This perverse twisting of things so that people worship not the all-powerful Creator of all things, but the far inferior created things He made! Therefore, to illustrate his point, he then points out one of many consequences of abandoning God s ways sexual perversion, especially of the bizarre twisting of sensual desire from the created order of husband with wife, to an upside down world of men with men, and women with women. In other words, Paul uses a dramatic illustration in the physical world of a dishonorable exchange of sexual purity for perversion with the devastating exchange in the spiritual world of a futile and corrupt rejection of God and His eternal truth that will bring many an awful consequence. --So does God get it right or does fallen humanity get it right? Who will you believe? What will you trust? --Does anything go? Can we make up our own values, our own morals, define our own truth or will God speak first and last with ultimate authority to these things in faith and in practice, will He get the last word or will we? ILLUS. In many ways, the way one views what Paul says here is a test of commitment to biblical authority and trustworthiness. If his words can be dismissed as hate speech, or the product of a more unsophisticated era, or more to the point, just plain mistaken. Then the door opens wide for us to reject any other sin we want to commit, even if it has been identified clearly in Scripture. The implications are significant and already clearly at work. People feel justified in their rejection of God s Word and the freedom to replace it with their own ideas: 1) that Jesus is the only way to be saved; 2) sex outside of marriage is sin; 3) taking the life of an unborn human being is wrong; 4) divorce destroys what God Himself has joined together; and you know well the many other kinds of issues and values that are re-defined and revised to suit the preferences and passions of those who knew God but did not honor Him as God, or give thanks (1:21). 3. A Debased Mind Rom. 1:28 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 then lists over 20 examples of what a debased, depraved, worthless mind can be guilty of things that are so plainly against what God has said that everyone can understand why those who practice them are worthy of death. Romans 1:29-31 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30

6 6 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. --The way your mind has deceived you is the product of the debasing, degraded character of your point of view that leaves God and His wisdom out of the picture just look at how awful life becomes when filled with such destructive things! B. GOD S JUDGMENT OF SUCH SIN DOES NOT DETER BUT EMBOLDENS ITS PRACTICE AND PROMOTION. Romans 1:32 Though they know God s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. ILLUS. When Paul wrote to the Gentile believers among the Romans, these practices were wellestablished in a corrupt and immoral culture. But the danger to the church is that it needed to resist this evil and learn to bow down in humble submission and grateful worship to the Creator. Even this week, the news reports that a church once known to be evangelical has now chosen no longer to acknowledge what Paul teaches here and embrace what the Scriptures call the dishonorable/degrading passions, shameful lusts of homosexuality. By opening the doors of the church to embrace same-sex marriage as well as allowing practicing homosexuals to serve in church offices and leadership roles, they now no longer resist the sin but by their endorsement give approval to those who practice such things! When any part of Scripture is overturned, it is only a matter of time and opportunity before creatures exchange worship of the Creator and bow down to the whims and passions of their own creaturehood. CONCLUSION: If you were expecting a sermon on homosexuality, this has not been it! That is because this passage is not about homosexuality, but about unbelief and lives intent on dishonoring God. Clearly one of the consequences of refusing to honor God as Lord of all things will be perversions of God s design but as you see in 1:26-31, there is an entire list (and not very exhaustive at that!) of the results in this world of flying defiantly in the face of God. Paul is warning the Romans, Jew and Gentile alike, that anyone who dares to defy God will bring upon himself a world of hurt! The consequences are often postponed and as a result, people are lulled into a false sense of security, lured into a trap that imprisons them to their own choices. So what can be done? What shall we do? 1. Ask the Lord to show you any area of belief or behavior in your life that exchanges your plan for His? --Then ask forgiveness, turn from it and run to the wise and loving arms of your Creator to honor and thank Him for His perfect care for you! 2. Open your eyes to see the eternal power and divine nature that are clearly revealed in Creation then look beyond, look into the eyes of Jesus Christ to see the grace and mercy of your Creator offering you life the way He created it to be. --Believe Him, trust Him and exchange your broken life and world for the new one He offers you in His name! 3. Never do these things yourself and never give hearty approval to those who practice them. --Instead, take your stand with Christ and by His grace, enter into the fullness of His life! THESIS: When Christ is pushed aside, all things fall apart and disintegrate, but when He is at the center of your life, all things hold together and flourish for His glory and your good!

7 7 February 1, 2015 Providence Baptist Church David Horner, 2015 Sermon outlines are copyrighted in the event of future publication. They may be used for preaching and teaching purposes but may not be published or sold.