SPEAKER_00: So we're continuing our study through the book of Romans.
SPEAKER_00: This letter is Paul's theological masterpiece.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this morning I woke up early, had my little devotion.
SPEAKER_00: I checked my email.
SPEAKER_00: I went and walked my dog just like last Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: I put on the song The Blessing.
SPEAKER_00: I love the worship song, The Blessing.
SPEAKER_00: Last week I sang it for you.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, may his favor be upon you in a thousand generations.
SPEAKER_00: And your children, their children, their children, children, children.
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, he's for you, and he's for you.
SPEAKER_00: Remember what I said last week is I said as I was preaching on God's wrath, is I didn't wake up thinking about God's wrath.
SPEAKER_00: I actually never really think about God's wrath, and I don't because I live in the blessing of Jesus' sufficiency that absorbed all of God's wrath.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus is so sufficient, I don't really have to think about that all that much.
SPEAKER_00: And this week I'm preaching on our sinfulness.
SPEAKER_00: And yet I didn't wake up depressed.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't even wake up condemned, even while I know I'm fully depraved.
SPEAKER_00: Now, why is that?
SPEAKER_00: Is that because I'm not a sinner?
SPEAKER_00: Or is it because Jesus is so good and so sufficient that even while I'm a sinner, God fully loves me in his one way, love and grace to me.
SPEAKER_00: My point is that we're gonna dive into the depth of our depravity as to increase our joy in God's love to us.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's where Paul's taking us in the book of Romans.
SPEAKER_00: It's a letter.
SPEAKER_00: He wrote it one time to a church.
SPEAKER_00: We're breaking it up in little chunks.
SPEAKER_00: So we got to keep in mind the end of it.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 8:1.
SPEAKER_00: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: No guilt trips with God.
SPEAKER_00: Now we might do guilt trips, but God doesn't do them.
SPEAKER_00: But we can't get there without a diagnosis.
SPEAKER_00: So Romans 1, 21 through 23, 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_00: 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_00: The point is this point number one, we reject God by exchanging the creator for the creation.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says the root of our problem is not not believing in God.
SPEAKER_00: We know God, we just don't want to thank him.
SPEAKER_00: We know God, we just don't want to worship him.
SPEAKER_00: We love to give our hearts to other things for the very things we should be going to God for.
SPEAKER_00: Martin Luther in the 1500s, he said this sin is the heart curved in upon itself, taking the worship that belongs to God and redirecting it to self and creation.
SPEAKER_00: See, we call that idolatry, to give our hearts to something other than the very best thing that our hearts were created for.
SPEAKER_00: That's why John Piper says this.
SPEAKER_00: This is a thesis of all of John Piper's work.
SPEAKER_00: He, God, is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him, which means your pursuit for joy in life, your pursuit of your joy and God's pursuit to be glorified are the same pursuit.
SPEAKER_00: God's most glorified when you're most satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: And you'll be most satisfied as he's being most glorified in you.
SPEAKER_00: John Calvin said in the 1500s, and this is our problem, man's nature, me and you, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.
SPEAKER_00: So Rebecca Peppert expands on that idea and says, This whatever controls us is our Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The person who seeks power is controlled by power, the person who seeks acceptance is controlled by acceptance.
SPEAKER_00: We do not control ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We are controlled by the Lord of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: About a year ago, we reviewed Tim Keller's idol framework from the book Counterfeit Gods.
SPEAKER_00: Here's how he thinks about idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: He says, an idol is anything we look to for what only God can ultimately give: identity, security, worth, control, comfort, hope.
SPEAKER_00: So what that means is that success, family, approval, work, all really good things, when they become idols, when our heart tries to pull out of them acceptance, identity, security, hope, they function as saviors in our life.
SPEAKER_00: They become a functional savior.
SPEAKER_00: Our heart craves them.
SPEAKER_00: So if we want to recognize the idols in our heart, Keller says, ask these questions.
SPEAKER_00: What do I feel I must have?
SPEAKER_00: What if lost makes life feel meaningless?
SPEAKER_00: What functional savior am I trusting?
SPEAKER_00: So this means that the things we love that we think will set us free.
SPEAKER_00: For me, next Saturday at 3 p.m., my idolatry will begin.
SPEAKER_00: Some of yours started last night.
SPEAKER_00: Most of ours will begin next Saturday.
SPEAKER_00: I need this victory.
SPEAKER_00: I need to be better than you.
SPEAKER_00: And then I will feel good about myself.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not even on the team.
SPEAKER_00: They don't even know I exist.
SPEAKER_00: That very thing begins to enslave us because it ultimately doesn't deliver.
SPEAKER_00: My idol won a national championship two years in a row, and two is not enough.
SPEAKER_00: Didn't know that at the beginning of that.
SPEAKER_00: I need a third, and I need a fourth, and I need a fifth, and an Alabama fans, you all know you have a whole bunch.
SPEAKER_00: You still need more.
SPEAKER_00: Our idols enslave us.
SPEAKER_00: We end up serving them because we have to have them to be happy.
SPEAKER_00: The solution is to replace our functional saviors, those false saviors, with the true savior.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus really does give us the acceptance we ultimately want, the identity, the worth, the forgiveness, the righteousness, the identity we chase.
SPEAKER_00: Which brings us back to Piper's statement: He's most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.
SPEAKER_00: That your pursuit for satisfaction can be met.
SPEAKER_00: It just has to be in the true Savior.
SPEAKER_00: But we have to have the diagnosis first.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 24.
SPEAKER_00: 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 forever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Point number two is this God gives us over to the emptiness and consequences of our bad choices.
SPEAKER_00: This phrase, God gave them over, Paul's definitely making a point because he says it three times in verse 24, 26, and 28.
SPEAKER_00: This is not indifference.
SPEAKER_00: This is not hate.
SPEAKER_00: This is God saying, okay, you can have what you want.
SPEAKER_00: He's handing them over to the consequences of their own choices.
SPEAKER_00: In 1777, Jean-Baptiste Gourez painted these two paintings.
SPEAKER_00: The Father's Curse is the painting on the left.
SPEAKER_00: It's called the Father's Curse, the Ungrateful Son, is the painting on the left in 1777.
SPEAKER_00: And you see the son's reaching, but he's being pulled away by the world, and the father's on the far left reaching out to him, but the father's not physically restraining him, the father is letting him go.
SPEAKER_00: And then Gres paints the painting on the right the next year in 1778, and that one's entitled The Father's Curse, The Son Punished.
SPEAKER_00: He painted these as one moral story.
SPEAKER_00: If you see in that second painting, the son returns, but his dad died.
SPEAKER_00: So the first painting, the son's allowed to walk away.
SPEAKER_00: The second painting shows the consequences.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not that the father directly cursed the son, it's such that there's consequences to our choices.
SPEAKER_00: In the second painting, the son's return, but the dad has died.
SPEAKER_00: And what this is, is it's speaking that independence, the independence the son wanted, that he thought would bring him freedom.
SPEAKER_00: He returns home and it brought devastation.
SPEAKER_00: The painting shows us that one of the sadnesses in our lives is not God forcing us away, it's just God letting us have what we want.
SPEAKER_00: And then we thought it would bring joy and freedom, but it brings disappointment and enslavement.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 26.
SPEAKER_00: For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions, for their women exchanged natural relations with those that are contrary to nature, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another.
SPEAKER_00: Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
SPEAKER_00: Point number three is this idolatry takes our sight, the ability to see what's right and wrong and good, takes our sight and enslaves us.
SPEAKER_00: God wants to give us sight and free us.
SPEAKER_00: Idolatry creates a downward movement, a spiral that we see in Romans 1.
SPEAKER_00: There's a revelation, God revealing himself to us, but we reject it.
SPEAKER_00: We went our own way, there's rejection, and then we form idolatry, which creates moral corruption, which creates consequences.
SPEAKER_00: That word nature refers back to the book of Genesis, a created order, male and female, made for one another.
SPEAKER_00: Homosexuality comes from worshiping the creature rather than authority creator.
SPEAKER_00: Now the verses speak to the behavior, not an inclination, which means that even if one believes in biological determined inclinations like homosexuality, even if you believe that, Paul says it doesn't excuse the behavior or make it right.
SPEAKER_00: Because creation sets the order, the creator sets the order, not our preferences.
SPEAKER_00: That's not easy, but it's true.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul's point here in these first three chapters of Romans is that we are all sinners.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, if you think you're not that bad, and even after reading those verses, you think, well, I'm I am not like those people.
SPEAKER_00: Paul comes after the rest of us in verses 28 through 32.
SPEAKER_00: See if you hear yourself in these verses.
SPEAKER_00: And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to be a debased mind, to do what ought not to be done.
SPEAKER_00: They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.
SPEAKER_00: They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.
SPEAKER_00: They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody, are we good?
SPEAKER_00: Right, we're all we're all grouped up.
SPEAKER_00: He's grouped us all up.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 32.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: Last year I spent the spring going from doctor to test to doctor.
SPEAKER_00: At first I had high cholesterol, so they sent me to a cardiologist.
SPEAKER_00: I get to the cardiologist, and I'm all patched up now.
SPEAKER_00: I found a little hole in my heart.
SPEAKER_00: I'm fine, I'm not gonna keel over.
SPEAKER_00: But for months, I went to the doctor and then he gave me a heart monitor and then a heart echo and then a TTE and then a TTE with a bubble test and then an MRI, test after test after test.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: To diagnose me.
SPEAKER_00: I had to be diagnosed in order to have the rescue.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's diagnosing us, which can be brutal to get a diagnosis, even though it's true.
SPEAKER_00: This movement in Romans is brutally honest, but radically gracious.
SPEAKER_00: In Romans 1, and these aren't fixed, there's some overlapping here from chapter to chapter, but in Romans 1, we rebel against God, Romans 2, and sort of the end of one, even religious people are guilty.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 3, none of us are righteous.
SPEAKER_00: And then towards the end of 3, a verse starts and it says, but now.
SPEAKER_00: Like all the ways they're doing it wrong, and this is right.
SPEAKER_00: And everything you say is true.
SPEAKER_00: Like you, like everything is true.
SPEAKER_00: It's just a brutal, honest diagnosis on your 10-year-old.
SPEAKER_00: And then you sort of get to the end of it, and you're like, but now.
SPEAKER_00: And the kid's like, finally, like, finally, some good news.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Paul's doing.
SPEAKER_00: Paul is not diagnosing us to condemn us.
SPEAKER_00: Paul tells us the truth about ourselves to get us to Romans 3 and 4 and beyond.
SPEAKER_00: Paul tells us the truth about our depravity as to increase our joy in God's love to us, which, by the way, is amazing because God knows all this Romans 1 and 2 about us, and he still fully loves us.
SPEAKER_00: Like one way pursuing love toward us.
SPEAKER_00: See, sin is fundamentally an exchange.
SPEAKER_00: God offers himself to me, and I just want something else.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel is God's gracious invitation for us to come home from the exchange.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 1 says this God's judgment, in God's judgment, God allows us to experience the consequence of our sin.
SPEAKER_00: We've all been there.
SPEAKER_00: But now there's also good news.
SPEAKER_00: In God's grace, an astonishing grace, God never stops pursuing and loving you.
SPEAKER_00: And he interrupts our trajectory, all of our self-justification projects to woo us back to himself.
SPEAKER_00: When our girls were little, when this happened, I feel like maybe they were like six, three, and one or seven, whatever, and whatever.
SPEAKER_00: They were little, they were all lined up in the back, like in seats and buckles, and somebody on that stage.
SPEAKER_00: And when we got into the car, I can remember it was only like a five-minute drive home.
SPEAKER_00: We got in the car, and you know, we get the little ones buckled, and I just said to all three of them, please keep your shoes on.
SPEAKER_00: And young parents, you know what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_00: Just put because putting on like six shoes, you're just like, and this maybe the six or the older one, it's like, it's fine.
SPEAKER_00: She can handle her own shoes.
SPEAKER_00: But the little ones, just please, hey, five minutes, and they love taking their shoes off in the car.
SPEAKER_00: I don't, I don't know why.
SPEAKER_00: They loved it.
SPEAKER_00: Shoes would come off, and then you can't find the shoes, and where are the shoes?
SPEAKER_00: It's another five minutes when the shoes back on.
SPEAKER_00: And I was just like, please, girls, please.
SPEAKER_00: Like, it's the end of the day.
SPEAKER_00: We're going home.
SPEAKER_00: Just keep your shoes on.
SPEAKER_00: I could not have been clearer.
SPEAKER_00: We get home, spend five minutes.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know which little cute sinner started it, but all six shoes, all six shoes are off.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, you're just a young, just young dad realizing I can't control anything, even these little people.
SPEAKER_00: And I am just furious.
SPEAKER_00: Like, just so mad.
SPEAKER_00: Like, I could not have been clearer.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, find your shoes.
SPEAKER_00: Get in the house.
SPEAKER_00: And sure enough, the oldest girl can't find one of her shoes.
unknown: What?
SPEAKER_00: I'm not, what do you mean you can't find your shoe?
SPEAKER_00: It's been five minutes.
SPEAKER_00: It was five minutes.
SPEAKER_00: You can't find your shoe.
SPEAKER_00: Get back out to that car and you find your shoe.
SPEAKER_00: And she's starting to cry, and she's back out there, and she's like, she can't find this shoe.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I'll show her.
SPEAKER_00: I'll find this shoe.
SPEAKER_00: I can't find this shoe.
SPEAKER_00: This shoe, this shoe is gone.
SPEAKER_00: This shoe, I we found it like two years later, like under a it's like under a shelf in the garage.
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't have been clearer about my expectation to keep your shoes on.
SPEAKER_00: And these cute, wonderful little children of mine that are sinners, I don't know who looked at each other in that back seat to decide, like, hey, who cares?
SPEAKER_00: Who cares what dad says?
SPEAKER_00: I am gonna take my shoes off.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know which one started it.
SPEAKER_00: I have ideas, but I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But you know, when I sent my my oldest out there and I was so upset, I was just, I was just furious.
SPEAKER_00: Now, me furious is just like quiet but stern.
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of my thing.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I still couldn't have loved her anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Because that's just like a that's just a father's love.
SPEAKER_00: Like, even in the consequences of your sin, even when you just totally willingly do exact opposite of I couldn't have been any clearer, like I couldn't have loved her anymore or any less.
SPEAKER_00: Because the love for me is one way.
SPEAKER_00: The love to God to you, even in the diagnosis of your sin and depravity, still a one-way love to you.
SPEAKER_00: We don't get that a lot in Romans 1.
SPEAKER_00: We need the rest of the book that God loves us like a perfect papa.
SPEAKER_00: And I close with this Romans 5, 6 through 8.
SPEAKER_00: For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
SPEAKER_00: For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die.
SPEAKER_00: But God shows his love for us, for you and me, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
SPEAKER_00: Do you have any questions about the sermon or any prayer that we read, Pastor down front afterwards?
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we're so thankful that you know us in the full diagnosis of our depravity, even all that which is under the surface, our motives and thoughts we're not even aware of today, and you still love us, that Jesus is so sufficient, that the blood of Jesus is enough for all the forgiveness I need, all the righteousness I need, all the eternity I need, all of my security.
SPEAKER_00: We're so thankful that it's a one way love that we just stand in the flow of.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to receive all the more.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to see our sin that we might have increased joy in the gospel and the work of Jesus for us.
SPEAKER_00: In His name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.