SPEAKER_01: Our reading this morning is from Romans chapter one, verse eighteen to thirty-two.
SPEAKER_01: So do take a minute to open that up there.
SPEAKER_01: Romans chapter one, verses eighteen to thirty-two.
SPEAKER_01: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
SPEAKER_01: For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: So they are without excuse.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed for ever.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, and malice.
SPEAKER_01: They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.
SPEAKER_01: They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
SPEAKER_01: Though they know God's righteousness decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them.
SPEAKER_01: And so reads God's word.
SPEAKER_02: Good morning to you.
SPEAKER_02: Let me add my welcome to Peter's.
SPEAKER_02: My name is Mark.
SPEAKER_02: I'm one of the pastors here at City Church.
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to you if you're new or visiting.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for being with us this morning.
SPEAKER_02: If you if you can, it'd be really helpful to have uh to have Romans 1 uh open in front of you.
SPEAKER_02: You can pull it up on your phone, uh, or if you've got one of these old school things, uh, you can look that up as well.
SPEAKER_02: If you're using your phone, you're wondering what version we're reading from, or reading from the English Standard Version, you can Google that and follow along uh with us.
SPEAKER_02: Uh you might have listened to the reading and thought, oh goodness me, what a Sunday to pick to visit City Church.
SPEAKER_02: The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness.
SPEAKER_02: I wonder if you've ever uh been to a jeweler's.
SPEAKER_02: If you go to a jeweler's and uh you asked to look at some jewelry, uh if you ask to look at uh at a diamond, maybe you're getting it set in uh a ring or something like that for a loved one uh or somebody you hope will love you.
SPEAKER_02: Uh one of the things that the jeweler does is uh before he gets out the diamonds and the jewelry is he he lays down uh this very black velvet cloth uh on the countertop, and then he sets each of the diamonds on this black cloth.
SPEAKER_02: Have you ever wondered why he does that?
SPEAKER_02: Well, he does that because against the black cloth, the brilliance of the diamonds shines more brightly.
SPEAKER_02: You get to see the beauty of the jewels because they are set against the blackness of the cloth.
SPEAKER_02: And that's essentially what Paul is doing now uh from chapter 1, verse 18 through really to uh to three, verse 20.
SPEAKER_02: So, next few weeks, heads up, gonna be a lot of black cloth, okay?
SPEAKER_02: And then we're gonna see some diamonds uh once he gets to the close of chapter three.
SPEAKER_02: We saw last week uh in verse 15, Paul saying to the to the Roman Christians, I'm eager, I'm eager to come and preach the gospel, I'm eager to get the gospel out to both Jew and Gentile.
SPEAKER_02: Uh and we see we saw some of uh his reasons for his eagerness.
SPEAKER_02: He's eager to get the gospel out because, verse 16, because it's the power of God for salvation.
SPEAKER_02: He's eager to get the gospel out because in it the righteousness of God, the moral purity and goodness of God is put on display for the world.
SPEAKER_02: But not only that, but that in the gospel, the righteousness of God is gifted to sinful human beings.
SPEAKER_02: And so he cannot wait to get the gospel out.
SPEAKER_02: He's eager to preach, but then in verse verse 18, we get another four.
SPEAKER_02: So we're kind of running through the argument.
SPEAKER_02: Why is he eager?
SPEAKER_02: Why is he eager to get the gospel out?
SPEAKER_02: Well, because it's the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes, because in it the righteousness of God is revealed, gifted to sinful human beings.
SPEAKER_02: And now he says, and you need to know that another reason why I'm eager to get the gospel out is because the wrath of God is being revealed.
SPEAKER_02: The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.
SPEAKER_02: The gospel is necessary because wrath is real.
SPEAKER_02: You sit here maybe and you think, really?
SPEAKER_02: In 2024?
SPEAKER_02: You're talking about the wrath of God?
SPEAKER_02: Haven't we moved on from beyond that?
SPEAKER_02: Can't we get past this idea of, isn't this a very Old Testament idea?
SPEAKER_02: People often think that, don't they?
SPEAKER_02: They, Old Testament God, boo, New Testament God, he's great.
SPEAKER_02: He cuddles lambs and welcomes babies and uh and things like that.
SPEAKER_02: Whereas Old Testament, he's uh he's a bit more grumpy.
SPEAKER_02: And can we be a bit more New Testament-y?
SPEAKER_02: Why do we still talk about the wrath of God?
SPEAKER_02: Well, I think we talk about it because it's quite important.
SPEAKER_02: Let me build that case just for a moment.
SPEAKER_02: First of all, what is the wrath of God?
SPEAKER_02: The wrath of God is not some uh some temper tantrum, uh, like God is some divine toddler who just uh starts stamping his feet and goes off in a blind rage.
SPEAKER_02: No, no, God's wrath is his settled opposition to unrighteousness and injustice and sin.
SPEAKER_02: He is opposed to the harm that we do to ourselves and to one another.
SPEAKER_02: He is opposed uh to uh to our ungodliness, our rejection of him.
SPEAKER_02: And actually, if you think about it, we we want a God like that.
SPEAKER_02: We want a God who who isn't indifferent to the harm that has befallen you.
SPEAKER_02: We want a God who doesn't look at the suffering and sin that has been committed against you in your life and says to the perpetrator, to the person who has hurt you, yeah, it doesn't matter, it's fine, don't worry about it.
SPEAKER_02: Just come come on in to my heaven, come on in to eternal life and grace and peace.
SPEAKER_02: You think, well, where's the justice in that?
SPEAKER_02: You see, we actually want a God whose whose wrath is aroused as a consequence of his love.
SPEAKER_02: So, for example, if somebody came along and uh and did physical violence against my family, and uh my response to that was so, would you then conclude that I loved my family?
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: It's as a consequence of my love that my anger would be provoked.
SPEAKER_02: It's because I love my family that when I see them harmed, one of the responses that I have is wrath, is anger.
SPEAKER_02: It is as a consequence of God's love that He stands in settled opposition to the harm that we do to one another.
SPEAKER_02: The problem that we have, I mean, we all like the idea of, yeah, if I've been harmed, I don't want that guy to get off.
SPEAKER_02: The problem that we have is when we point the finger, we've got several ones pointing back at us, don't we?
SPEAKER_02: The problem that we each have is that we're not just victim, we're also perpetrator.
SPEAKER_02: That actually in each of us we find that we are opposed to God, that we do things that harm other people, and it is against that that the wrath of God is revealed.
SPEAKER_02: That God stands in settled opposition to us.
SPEAKER_02: And so Paul, from here to chapter 3, verse 20, wants to show us one thing: that all of humanity needs the message of Jesus, because all of humanity stands condemned, stands in opposition to God, and his wrath is being revealed.
SPEAKER_02: Perhaps when you hear about wrath being revealed, you think of apocalyptic movies, Dante's Peak, and you know, uh, all of those sorts of visions of sulfur and brimstone raining down from heaven, thunderbolts smiting people.
SPEAKER_02: That it's some sort of end of days, Arnold Schwarzenegger-esque thing that we're that we're looking for.
SPEAKER_02: But that's not what Paul says here.
SPEAKER_02: Paul says in uh in the very first verse that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness.
SPEAKER_02: It's not the wrath of God will one day, it's one day coming, and so you need to uh respond now you say, No, it is.
SPEAKER_02: It is being revealed.
SPEAKER_02: You can see it, it's happening.
SPEAKER_02: It's not just a future event.
SPEAKER_02: There are senses of it here.
SPEAKER_02: Let me illustrate that for you.
SPEAKER_02: Imagine uh, imagine a huge uh tarpaulin, a tarp, a big plastic sheet was strung over all of humanity, suspended over all of the human race, and into it God was pouring his wrath, like rain that pours into a tarpaulin.
SPEAKER_02: You see that beginning to bulge down and way down with the weight of the water, with the weight of the wrath being poured into it.
SPEAKER_02: You know that one day there is going to be a deluge.
SPEAKER_02: Well, what God has done is, in a sense, He is He's poked some holes in the underside of the tarp.
SPEAKER_02: And so it's dripping through now, and you can see it, and it's supposed to be a warning to us.
SPEAKER_02: Oh gosh, right, there is something going on here that means I need to respond before the dam breaks, as it were.
SPEAKER_02: The wrath of God is being revealed.
SPEAKER_02: We can see it now.
SPEAKER_02: But why?
SPEAKER_02: Why is wrath, is God's wrath standing in active opposition?
SPEAKER_02: What has happened?
SPEAKER_02: And that's gonna be our first question.
SPEAKER_02: Our first question is why is God's wrath being revealed?
SPEAKER_02: And then our second question is, what does it look like?
SPEAKER_02: So two questions uh this morning.
SPEAKER_02: Why is wrath being revealed?
SPEAKER_02: And what does God's wrath look like?
SPEAKER_02: First, why is God's wrath being revealed?
SPEAKER_02: Well, he tells us, uh, we're still in verse 18.
SPEAKER_02: Uh there's lots to go through.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not going to go verse by verse, don't worry, we'll be here until lunchtime.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, but we're still in verse 18.
SPEAKER_02: The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against what?
SPEAKER_02: Against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who, by their unrighteousness, do what?
SPEAKER_02: They suppress the truth.
SPEAKER_02: Now, these dual terms of ungodliness and unrighteousness have kind of two dimensions.
SPEAKER_02: Ungodliness is maybe kind of a vertical dimension, our relationship with God, and unrighteousness is more horizontal, perhaps our relationship with one another.
SPEAKER_02: And what Paul is saying here is we have destroyed and distorted our relationship with God, ungodliness, and we have harmed and distorted and destroyed our relationships with one another, unrighteousness.
SPEAKER_02: Now you say, well, how have I destroyed my vertical relationship with God?
SPEAKER_02: I didn't even know that I was in a relationship with God to begin with.
SPEAKER_02: But then Paul says that that's not quite the case.
SPEAKER_02: It's not quite the case that there are people who are in a relationship with God and some people who aren't in a relationship with God.
SPEAKER_02: It's much more that all of humanity is relating to God.
SPEAKER_02: Just some of us are relating to God positively, and some of us are relating to God negatively.
SPEAKER_02: Because Paul says that actually what we do as human beings is we suppress the truth about God.
SPEAKER_02: It's not that we have no idea, it's much more that actually we refuse to acknowledge what can be seen and experienced.
SPEAKER_02: Let's unpack that further.
SPEAKER_02: It may well be that Paul is saying that it's possible to look at a sunrise, it's possible to look at the cosmos, and to logically deduce that there must be a creator that is standing behind it all.
SPEAKER_02: That indeed is true, and that indeed is possible.
SPEAKER_02: And yet that's not normally what happens.
SPEAKER_02: That's not normally how uh how people think, that's not normally how people experience a kind of uh a sense of the transcendent.
SPEAKER_02: So there must be something more going on.
SPEAKER_02: And I think it's helpful to think about it this way.
SPEAKER_02: Imagine you're in the swimming pool, and uh in the swimming pool with you is a it's a beach ball.
SPEAKER_02: And what you're doing in the water is you're trying to get that beach ball fully submerged.
SPEAKER_02: You're you're pushing it down, you're trying to get it under the water so that it cannot be seen from the surface.
SPEAKER_02: But if you've spent any time playing with a beach ball in the swimming pool, it's a slippery old thing, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02: And so one of the things that you realize is that rather unexpectedly, it pops up again.
SPEAKER_02: You get splashed in the face, and then you go and you try and shove it back down again.
SPEAKER_02: And then it gets away and it pops up.
SPEAKER_02: Our suppression of the truth is kind of like that.
SPEAKER_02: Many of us spend our lives trying to submerge the truth about God, that He must be there, that there must be more to life, or the fear of death, the longing for something more satisfying, the longing for something more permanent, and we we push it down and we ignore it and we go on with our lives until suddenly suffering comes.
SPEAKER_02: We lose a loved one, or we just catch ourselves sitting one evening after we have exhausted ourselves pursuing success and pleasure and wealth and comfort, and just in a flash of a thought that was uninvited, you think, is this really what my life is about?
SPEAKER_02: Is this is this kind of it?
SPEAKER_02: At that moment, the beach ball has popped to the surface.
SPEAKER_02: That thing that you have been pushing down, that truth that you have been supp suppressing has popped up.
SPEAKER_02: You might not have invited it, but you know that it's there.
SPEAKER_02: And so the question really that Paul kind of has is well, are you gonna continue to do that?
SPEAKER_02: Are you gonna continue to, when you get those moments of, is this really what my life is?
SPEAKER_02: Is for?
SPEAKER_02: Is this really it?
SPEAKER_02: Where am I going?
SPEAKER_02: Just gonna, uh, never mind, I've got to concentrate on this exam, I've got to concentrate on this, never mind, I'm gonna dull my senses with even more sacks and escape and money and everything else.
SPEAKER_02: So many people do, we shove it down again, but that's Paul's point.
SPEAKER_02: We know that it's there.
SPEAKER_02: We know that the beach ball is under the surface, and we know that there is a truth that we are suppressing.
SPEAKER_02: And so, what Paul is saying is on the last day, you cannot stand there before God and go, Ah, I had no idea.
SPEAKER_02: Because these senses, these glimpses of God's fingerprints across our lives, his power, his majesty, they're there.
SPEAKER_02: Now, what Paul is saying here is that they cannot save you, but they can condemn you.
SPEAKER_02: They can remove your excuse, so you cannot stand before God and say, ah, I don't know.
SPEAKER_02: Not true.
SPEAKER_02: The proper response is to go, hold on, there's something in me, this is C.S.
SPEAKER_02: Lewis saying, if I feel in myself a desire that nothing on this world can satisfy, I must therefore conclude that I was made for another world.
SPEAKER_02: And we then go and we think, well, okay, well, what is that other world?
SPEAKER_02: What is that other that I am made for?
SPEAKER_02: And so we search then for him in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_02: But the wrath of God is revealed because we are people who suppress the truth.
SPEAKER_02: Not only that, secondly, in this point, is we don't just suppress the truth, but we substitute the truth about God for a lie, for false gods.
SPEAKER_02: So we do two things: we suppress and we substitute.
SPEAKER_02: See, again, it's not the case that there are some people in humanity who are religious, some people in humanity who are worshippers, and then there are some who are not.
SPEAKER_02: Some people who worship God, and some people who worship Allah, and then there are those who worship nothing.
SPEAKER_02: That's not a biblical understanding of human beings.
SPEAKER_02: No, a biblical view of humanity is that we're all worshipers.
SPEAKER_02: We're all made for that vertical relationship with God, and we reject it, but then we replace it with something else to meet those needs, to give us value.
SPEAKER_02: And so Paul says in verse 22, claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of a mortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
SPEAKER_02: See, because we because we feel the beach ball popping up to the surface, those those yearnings for significance, those desires for transcendence that God has built into us, we can't we can't shake them.
SPEAKER_02: And that void must be filled with something.
SPEAKER_02: But instead of embracing the truth, we embrace the lie.
SPEAKER_02: We worship our intellect, we worship our reason, we derive value from our successes, we pursue comfort, we crave the transcendent otherness that sex brings us, or the control that money gives us.
SPEAKER_02: We're all filling the worship void with something created, with a false God, with an idol.
SPEAKER_02: We look at the world around us and try to make sense of it, but we refuse to allow ourselves to conclude that there is a God.
SPEAKER_02: In our pride, we refuse to think that he is the one who made the world and who has a claim over us, and so we become fools, as Paul says.
SPEAKER_02: Our minds become darkened.
SPEAKER_02: That's the thing about uh atheists who claim uh who build their lives on their rationality.
SPEAKER_02: Paul's saying here is actually your rationality doesn't work right.
SPEAKER_02: Your rationality is supposed to cut against or cut along a uh a measure, a yardstick that keeps it, uh that keeps it in line.
SPEAKER_02: But if you take the guide away, you know, like if you're if you're planning a piece of wood, it goes along something that is perfectly straight in order to kind of cut the line.
SPEAKER_02: But if you take the guide away, then you're gonna be cutting all over the place.
SPEAKER_02: What's happened to the uh to the person who is rational, who worships their rationality, is that they're trying to cut a straight line but with no guide, do you see?
SPEAKER_02: Or we look at the suffering in the world and we conclude that there mustn't be a God, because we cannot fathom a reason why God could allow suffering and evil.
SPEAKER_02: Because we cannot think of a reason we conclude that there mustn't be one.
SPEAKER_02: And yet, how many people who uh who wouldn't call themselves Christians and who do not believe in the existence of God still find themselves outraged at the suffering in the world?
SPEAKER_02: My question there is where do you get your outrage from?
SPEAKER_02: Because you don't get it from the blind indifference of the Universe.
SPEAKER_02: You're stealing it from me and from my worldview.
SPEAKER_02: Or people look at the cosmos.
SPEAKER_02: There was a great article just this last week or so on the BBC News website.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you saw this, but uh NASA scientists have discovered a uh a ring of galaxies uh that is like one and a half billion light years wide.
SPEAKER_02: This ring, this perfectly circular ring of galaxies somewhere in the cosmos.
SPEAKER_02: And the reason why that's kind of flummoxing them is because that's not the way the galaxy should, the universe should be, if if the Big Bang is correct, because if you're all exploding out from a center, it should actually be the same thickness, if you can think of the thickness of the universe, but it should all be the same thickness all the way along.
SPEAKER_02: But the problem is they discovered this big old bulge in the middle.
SPEAKER_02: And the NASA scientists said, and I quote, what this shows us is that there must be another factor at work that we have not yet discovered.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, I think that's rather true.
SPEAKER_02: It's as though we are in a dream.
SPEAKER_02: You ever have that experience of your dreaming and you're kind of you're kind of just in those those kind of upper layers of sleep, if you can think about it that way.
SPEAKER_02: And you know, you can hear the rain on the window outside, but in the dream it's a waterfall, or you can hear the distant sirens of an ambulance, but in the dream it's a quartet playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons or something like that.
SPEAKER_02: We substitute the truth about God for anything, anything else to keep us asleep, refusing to see the world for how it truly is.
SPEAKER_02: And so God pokes holes in the tarpaulin of his wrath, that is straining under the weight of his opposition to sin in order to rouse us, in order to bring us to our senses and say, Will you not awaken?
SPEAKER_02: Will you not see the world as it truly is?
SPEAKER_02: And realize that it's not a quartet that's playing, but an ambulance, that it is not it is not a waterfall, but the rain is beating down.
SPEAKER_02: Will you not awaken?
SPEAKER_02: The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who in their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
SPEAKER_02: How then, secondly, is this wrath revealed?
SPEAKER_02: So, what is revealed against our substituting and our suppression of the truth.
SPEAKER_02: How is it revealed?
SPEAKER_02: Three times Paul repeats a phrase in this passage.
SPEAKER_02: It comes first in verse 24, and then again in 26, and then again in 28.
SPEAKER_02: Have a look at it with me if you've got the Bible open in front of you.
SPEAKER_02: It says, Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their hearts.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 26, for this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 26.
SPEAKER_02: Or sorry, 28.
SPEAKER_02: And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind.
SPEAKER_02: Oscar Wilde said that when the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
SPEAKER_02: The wrath of God does not come to us in fire and brimstone, in avenging angels and thunderbolts from heaven.
SPEAKER_02: No, the wrath of God comes when he lets us have exactly what we want.
SPEAKER_02: We don't want him.
SPEAKER_02: We stand in opposition to him.
SPEAKER_02: We don't worship him.
SPEAKER_02: Even though worshiping him would mean freedom and life.
SPEAKER_02: Rather, we want other things.
SPEAKER_02: Not just that we want other things.
SPEAKER_02: We have to have them.
SPEAKER_02: At that point, we find that we're actually no longer free, but captive to these idols.
SPEAKER_02: They grab hold of our heart.
SPEAKER_02: And God in his judgment says, okay, you want that?
SPEAKER_02: You want to experience the captivity that that idol will give you rather than the freedom that I am offering you?
SPEAKER_02: If that's what it will take to bring you to your senses, then okay.
SPEAKER_02: Some of you, I'm sure, who have, some of you, I'm sure, have parented a child where you're thinking uh of them kind of you get to a place where you think actually they need, they won't be told, they actually need to go and make their own mistakes in order to find out.
SPEAKER_02: It's kind of like that.
SPEAKER_02: God gives them over.
SPEAKER_02: God gives them what they want.
SPEAKER_02: And hey, when God gives you what you want, the deepest desire of your heart, in those initial ways, it feels great.
SPEAKER_02: It feels so freeing to walk away from all of this religious stuff.
SPEAKER_02: Imagine how wonderful it would feel to finally have your heart's desire.
SPEAKER_02: But then after a time you realize that you don't have it.
SPEAKER_02: It has you.
SPEAKER_02: Like the person who is driven always to succeed, always working, always striving.
SPEAKER_02: The stress gnaws at them, but they they have no choice, do you see?
SPEAKER_02: The competition's too great, the stakes are too high.
SPEAKER_02: They have to have what they have set their hearts on.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, it might affect their spiritual health.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, it might affect their marriage, their connection to community, but all will go in service to this God.
SPEAKER_02: Dear friend, beware when God gives you the idol of your heart.
SPEAKER_02: For Paul, this giving up is seen most clearly in the world through how we choose to use our bodies.
SPEAKER_02: It's like this that if our vertical relationship is distorted, our relationship with God is disordered, then we'll uh we'll live into disordered relationships with one another.
SPEAKER_02: We see this connection clearly in verses 24 and 25.
SPEAKER_02: Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies amongst themselves.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: People were captivated by an overdesire for, uh sorry, people are captivated by an overdesire for sex outside of the bonds of marriage.
SPEAKER_02: This is what he's talking about in verse 24.
SPEAKER_02: All sex outside of the bonds of marriage.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Because they worshiped the creature.
SPEAKER_02: They worshiped the moment.
SPEAKER_02: They worshiped experience and physical connection rather than the creator.
SPEAKER_02: They worship the material more than the immaterial, they worship transient pleasure more than eternal joy.
SPEAKER_02: From here it is unavoidable to see that Paul focuses in on homosexuality.
SPEAKER_02: This is arguably one of the most controversial passages in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm actually not going to dwell too much on uh on kind of a full explanation of uh of sexuality.
SPEAKER_02: It's actually something that we dealt with in our him and her sermon series, so you can go back and you can listen to that there.
SPEAKER_02: But let me ask the question: why does Paul focus on homosexuality here?
SPEAKER_02: Does he think that it is the worst sin?
SPEAKER_02: No, I don't think so.
SPEAKER_02: It's because for Paul, homosexual sex is an example common in the ancient world of people using their bodies in a way that God did not intend.
SPEAKER_02: It's an example of how disordered worship leads to disordered actions.
SPEAKER_02: And it's not the case that Paul wasn't aware of more settled, monogamous uh homosexual relationships.
SPEAKER_02: It's not just that as a Jew he finds it all a little bit icky.
SPEAKER_02: Actually, in the in the Greek world, sexual intimacy between two men was seen as the most virtuous way that two men could relate.
SPEAKER_02: It was more noble sex than sex with a woman.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: And I'm going to say something sexist, which I don't believe, I'm only describing it.
SPEAKER_02: Because it was sex between two equals.
SPEAKER_02: Well, okay, but actually, to have sex between two men, that's more virtuous.
SPEAKER_02: That's what the Greeks thought.
SPEAKER_02: That there was a better way to express yourself sexually than having sex with a woman.
SPEAKER_02: And that thinking over time had begun to uh to infect Roman culture.
SPEAKER_02: And Paul writing to Rome is saying, no.
SPEAKER_02: He's saying this is a disorder desire and a sign of God's judgment because of our distorted worship.
SPEAKER_02: But there's something else going on.
SPEAKER_02: Stay with me.
SPEAKER_02: Please don't shut down.
SPEAKER_02: There's something else going on which I think is very important.
SPEAKER_02: Homosexuality doesn't just illustrate Paul's point, but it also is an especially Gentile sin.
SPEAKER_02: The Jews in the Old Testament they had the law which already prohibited it.
SPEAKER_02: And so it's it's something that non-Jews tended to indulge in.
SPEAKER_02: It tended to be a particular Gentile sin.
SPEAKER_02: The Jews long frowned upon it.
SPEAKER_02: So what's Paul doing here?
SPEAKER_02: Is Paul playing to the Jewish gallery?
SPEAKER_02: Is he kind of saying to the to the Jews in the church, just wait, see, what do you see, guys?
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna give it, gonna give the Gentiles a whack.
SPEAKER_02: Just you just you wait.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: Men exchange relationships, and the Jews are like, Yes, Paul, give it to them.
SPEAKER_02: Is that what's going on?
SPEAKER_02: No, I don't think so.
SPEAKER_02: I think what Paul is doing here is he is using this example precisely to arouse to arouse, excuse the pun, Jewish self-righteousness, so that in the very next chapter he can bring the hammer down on their own moral superiority.
SPEAKER_02: Do you see?
SPEAKER_02: That he's writing talking about homosexuality, and you can imagine the Jewish Christians over here going, yeah, yeah, look at you, I can't believe that you did that.
SPEAKER_02: How awful of you.
SPEAKER_02: And then he turns it.
SPEAKER_02: At the very start of chapter two, he says, Well, you do the very things that you disapprove of.
SPEAKER_02: You judge these guys, but you you have the oracles of God.
SPEAKER_02: The laws told you what you shouldn't do, and yet you do do it.
SPEAKER_02: He's arousing their moral superiority so that he can correct their thinking as well.
SPEAKER_02: And so he talks about homosexuality, but then he goes on to speak about other things like envy, greed, anger, malice.
SPEAKER_02: So homosexuality in this passage is not the sin, it's our sin.
SPEAKER_02: He's mentioning it so that the religious types are sneering and revulsion, and then he says, Well, sins in your sex life too.
SPEAKER_02: Or what about your gossiping?
SPEAKER_02: What about your pride?
SPEAKER_02: You know those things that religious, I don't know if you've realized this, but religious people are given to a little bit of gossip and pride.
SPEAKER_02: And so he begins, or he concludes that chapter, by saying, Oh, hold on, before you get on your high horse morally, have a look at yourself.
SPEAKER_02: You see, for Paul, the ground before the cross is completely flat.
SPEAKER_02: We all stand on the same level.
SPEAKER_02: My lust and your lust might express itself in different ways, but it condemns us both.
SPEAKER_02: So, how should we respond to all of this as we as we close out?
SPEAKER_02: Three ways to respond.
SPEAKER_02: First, we ought to respond to God with thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_02: You see, if idols take our hearts captive, then freedom is found in worship and thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_02: Paul says this on out.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 21 for although they knew God, they did not honor him or give thanks to him.
SPEAKER_02: But they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.
SPEAKER_02: Claiming to be wise, they became fools.
SPEAKER_02: They claimed to be wise, they became proud.
SPEAKER_02: Do you know what proud people don't do?
SPEAKER_02: Say thank you.
SPEAKER_02: One of the responses to this passage is an increased gratitude for what God has done.
SPEAKER_02: Turning aside from our pride and rendering him the thanks that is his due.
SPEAKER_02: The lie that we all believe is that if we were ever to turn to God, ever to acknowledge him or to depend on him, that that would enslave us.
SPEAKER_02: No, Paul says that the idols enslave, they offer peace, but they always demand a sacrifice.
SPEAKER_02: Freedom is found in praise and thanksgiving to the God who is there.
SPEAKER_02: The second way to respond, we cannot, we must not shake our heads in moral superiority at anyone.
SPEAKER_02: Romans 1, Romans 1 is a mirror to us all.
SPEAKER_02: It shows us all our sin.
SPEAKER_02: It is not that we get to go and look at the homosexual person, the same gender attracted person, and look down sneering at them, because then we fall into the trap the Paul has laid for us.
SPEAKER_02: That in our moral superiority we condemn ourselves because of our pride.
SPEAKER_02: Disordered worship leads always to disordered thinking in each of us, disordered affections, disordered desires in all of us.
SPEAKER_02: We don't think the way we ought, we don't feel the way we ought, we don't do the things that we ought to do, we don't say the things that we should do.
SPEAKER_02: We must beware religious superiority, which is just as much a distortion of what God intended as overt sinfulness.
SPEAKER_02: And thirdly, and finally, it's the reason why we need verses 16 and 17.
SPEAKER_02: It's the reason why Paul's eager to get the gospel out.
SPEAKER_02: And so the third response is if you have not received the righteousness that God offers.
SPEAKER_02: This is why the gospel is necessary.
SPEAKER_02: Paul, in a sense, has laid out the black cloth of humanity's sinfulness.
SPEAKER_02: Now, how should you respond?
SPEAKER_02: Embrace the diamond of the gospel that he offers you.
SPEAKER_02: Through his son, through his death and resurrection.
SPEAKER_02: Have your sin forgiven and walk in unison of life, set free from the idols of your heart to the worship and praise of his glorious name.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.