Title: It’s Best Use
Text: Romans 1:18-25
FCF: Since God made everything good – even sin – our job is less to “avoid bad” than it is to seek the good, and glorify God with it.
Intro:
Why, do you suppose, that an all-powerful and all-loving God would let there be sin?
If he is both all powerful and all good, you’re allowed to wonder how it is that a good and powerful God could allow bad things to be.
Now, I know it’s easy to say, ‘free-will!’ and all, and you are right – it is a sign of God’s love that he lets us choose – but I still wonder, why does God create a situation where bad things exist?
In other words, why did he put the tree in the garden in the first place? He surely knew what happens when you put two young’ns in a room and said, “Do anything you want – just don’t do this!” I suspect Rachel and Jonathan have taught me all about the Garden that I’ll ever need to know.
But there is an answer, you know. And actually, the answer to the question: “Why would God create bad things?” is simple in the end. God doesn’t create evil things – he only creates good things that can be used in evil ways.
Take the Tree in the garden. It wasn’t “The Tree of Evil,” or “The Tree of Sin.” That Tree had a name – “The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” Who wouldn’t that? Who wouldn’t want to know right from wrong? Who wouldn’t want to be able to choose what’s better and what’s best?
Satan – the Father of Lies himself – was not lying when he told Eve, “You could be like God. If you eat, you will know what’s good and what’s bad.” And I can assure you, Adam didn’t eat ‘cause he was starving or because nothing else ‘schmecked. He ate it because he wanted to be like God.
The problem was not the Tree was evil. The Tree was good. It’s just that God had told them: “Guys, trust me on this. You need to wait. That tree is going to be great for you – you’re just not quite ready.”
But let’s face it. Adam and Eve and you and me: We don’t always trust God. We don’t honor his Word as superior to our own. We think we’re so wise, but in the end, we too become fools. We look at what made and we want it. We end up wanting it more than God; we end up wanting what he has made more than we even want him. And so, like Adam and Eve, we choose the created rather than the Creator. We turn to our own desires, our own lusts, and our entire world is darkened.
This morning, I want to clear up a few things about how sin works, and there is no better place to do it, then here in Romans. In 15 chapters, Paul is going to make a simple case – one you’ve probably heard before. He’s going to tell you that we’ve all sinned. We deserve God’s wrath, and hence deserve to die. But, God, who is rich in mercy forgives us, and even found a way to save us. Lifelong ministries are made out of explaining that argument, and since kick off is at 6:00 today, I’m even going to try to give all of that argument.
In theology classes, we always have a hard time discussing sin, because in the end you find out this fact – there is no such thing as sin. It’s like trying to describe darkness. There is no substance behind darkness. Darkness is nothing but the absence or lack of light. Sin is nothing but the absence or lack of God’s glory. We only know how that we don’t like sin, because we know how much better it is when we see God’s full radiant glory. And I for one want that.
But, I do want to try to give you an understanding of this. When it comes to sin, it isn’t God’s fault. He didn’t somehow set us up for failure. No, Sin comes about because of our failure to find no fault with God.
I want to stress to you this simple point: God didn’t make sin, God doesn’t set us up to sin, but by his nature God cannot abide sin, because it takes away from his loving perfection. Our purpose in life, as we’ll see, is to see that God made everything – and I mean everything – perfect. Even sin starts with a God-glorifying passion. The only question we have to answer is, will we choose to glorify God, or anything else.
You’ll remember last week we introduced our series on the Seven Deadly sins by learning that Greek word: Amartia. To miss the mark. Like an archer shooting for a narrow target, anything that isn’t the bullseye, is a miss. That’s all that sin is – anything less than perfect.
Maybe by way of an illustration, I could pull something out of the headlines.
If you’ve been able to find anything else in the newspapers other than Paris Hilton over the last few months, you’d see that Iran and, well, the rest of the world are in a little argument over enriched uranium. Neither one argues that the substance is useless. It’s just that Iranians say they only want to use it for nuclear power, and well, everybody else is afraid they want to use it for a nuclear bomb. The uranium itself is “good” thing – but it can be used in some pretty bad ways. The question is, what do you want the good thing for? Do you want its power for the sake of its power, or do you want it for the sake of your own power? A power plant or a bomb? It can be used both ways.
It starts with the realization that God made lots of good things. That should be obvious. Look with me back at vs. 18-20.
It’s plain that God is powerful. Everybody knows that. Even the atheist who his strident in his denial of God must still come to grips with the fact that he is basing his belief on “anything but God.” He knows there is power – he knows there is a creation – he’s simply doing his best to ascribe it to anything other than God.
But this passage is not directed towards atheists. It’s directed squarely at people who know God. If you’re wondering why God would judge people for not giving him glory, understand that the only people under judgment are those that actually knew who God was. See how he continues:
It’s just that, it’s painfully obvious to everyone that God is powerful. And that he should be honored – and thanked – as such.
Sex in general makes a good illustration for sin, because it makes the point so plain. Let’s face it, sex is pleasurable. God intended it that way. We all now God made it good! We can thank God for that. But we can also pursue the pleasure that we end up ignoring the purpose for which God gave it. Countless breakups and hookups later, it would be a fair question to ask if the pleasure alone is worth the pain that would attend it.
You might ask yourself, why does a married man look at pornography? The answer, of course, is that he thinks he is unsatisfied with his wife. By playing the field, even in his mind, he is saying to his wife, “I love the sensations you give my body more than I love you.”
Talk about dishonoring her! And yet, look at what a poor choice he has made. Not one of those glossy photographs will ever be there for him when he gets fired, spend a lifetime with him building a home and family, or love him. Trust me, when life gets to you – and it will – ask yourself, who would rather having waiting for you? A two dimensional Pamela Anderson pic, or your wife? There is something even less exciting than watching paint dry – it’s watching an image that never changes, never does anything but stare.
I’ve been married 8 ½ years. Now that I have found one woman to share it with, I have security and joy. I no longer fear the inevitable pain of the inevitable breaking up. But if I hadn’t known that, wouldn’t it have made sense to asked God never to make love so enjoyable?
You could also imagine that greatest of American values: Freedom – the right to be left alone. But have you ever thought about this? That the very individuality that makes America so great, when worshipped for its own sake, becomes isolation? Loneliness? It dissolves the connection that says, here, let me help you.
What makes America great is not freedom in isolation but freedom in community. And you can’t achieve that if all you worship is freedom.
It was C.S. Lewis who once said, “If you seek truth, you might find happiness, but if you only seek happiness, you are sure to find neither happiness nor truth.”
The question is simple. Why do you want God? Do you want what he gives you, or do you want him? Will you let him be God, or do you just want Santa Claus? As Mark Twain once said, saying, “God made us in his image, and we spend our lives trying to return the favor.”
Would you look with me at verses 22 – 25?
The end result of choosing not to honor God is sin. When we try to be in charge, we just mess it up. When we choose to want the thing more than the God who gave it to us, we end up making a bad deal.
God doesn’t make bad things. You want a really simple way of proving that to yourself. I want you to imagine your favorite national park. Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Yosemite – just think about it for a second. Or, you know what – you could even just imagine a forest or a park – something basic, something natural. Now, I want you to mentally place that pinnacle of man’s achievement into it: a strip mall, right in the middle. What are you would you rather be looking at? God does great work.
But what do we so often do with that? We look to its use and forget its purpose. Oh, look at that at amazing geyser. Maybe we should divert the water to a Jacuzzi! Would you believe that in the early 1900s, California seriously suggested damming Yosemite Valley because it had the potential to be a great reservoir?
Anything that is useful has a good use and a better use. Anything that is truly great can be used for only simple good. But in doing so, you will change it.
And that’s where I want to end this morning, is one that concept of exchange. We’ve talked about redemption before, today we’re seemingly talking about its exact opposite. We don’t even have a word for “willfully choosing something for less than the best” because we know it’s so silly.
When we choose not to honor God, we change his glory for a lie. We make a bad exchange. But that’s what sin is – it’s just a bad deal.
But understand this. That word ‘exchanged’ that we see over and over again in this passage? The word is ἤλλαξαν – transformed! It’s used only other place in Scripture – but this time it isn’t man who is doing the changing: It’s God.
He’s going change something too. Only he isn’t change something good for something bad. We read it earlier in the Responsive Reading. Brothers, I tell you a mystery. We shall not die, but we shall be changed. The trumpet shall sound, and that which was sown corruptible – bad – will be raised incorruptible, and we shall all be changed.
That promise is for you and me this morning. What way do you want to go?
Behind any sin you can imagine is a way of glorifying God or dishonoring him. If we’re willing to use any pleasure, any action, as a means of glorifying our God, we’ve honored him. Anything less, is sin.
So, the question, this morning I have for you is not, “Why did God create sin?” I’d rather ask you this: “How can we use whatever God did create, to honor him?”
Would you pray with me?
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Pulpit Outline
The Tree was Good
We don’t always trust God. We don’t honor his Word as superior to our own. We think we’re so wise, but in the end, we too become fools. We look at what made and we want it. We end up wanting it more than God; we end up wanting what he has made more than we even want him. And so, like Adam and Eve, we choose the created rather than the Creator. We turn to our own desires, our own lusts, and our entire world is darkened.
What is Sin?
o Sin is the absence of God’s Glory / Dark is the absence of God’s light
God didn’t make sin, God doesn’t set us up to sin, but by his nature God cannot abide sin, because it takes away from his loving perfection. Our purpose in life, as we’ll see, is to see that God made everything – and I mean everything – perfect. Even sin starts with a God-glorifying passion. The only question we have to answer is, will we choose to glorify God, or anything else.
o Amartia: Missing the Mark
o Illustration: Enriched Uranium
Rom 1:18-20 – They knew God It’s plain (The atheist)
Rom 1:21 – They didn’t honor him as God
o Pornography (Man says, I love the sensations more than you)
o Freedom
Rom 1:22-25 – They got a bum deal.
o Yosemite as a reservoir
o Changed – Used only 2x
Behind any sin you can imagine is a way of glorifying God or dishonoring him. If we’re willing to use any pleasure, any action, as a means of glorifying our God, we’ve honored him. Anything less, is sin.
So, the question, this morning I have for you is not, “Why did God create sin?” I’d rather ask you this: “How can we use whatever God did create, to honor him?”
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This morning, we read what is possibly the single most important statement God ever gave us about sin.
Well, this morning, I want to tell you something else about sin. Sin is bad, not because of anything inherently in it, but because it reveals more about us than it does of God. And if that’s true, then sin isn’t something we should be working to fight in our own power, so much as just to question it.
I’m not saying we should we should try to sin, I’m just suggesting that if God begins with something good, the question we need to be asking ourselves, is, have
I want start by telling you that wasting your time trying to figure out ‘why’ sin is so bad really is to miss the point. Look with me at Rom 1:18-20 again.
Without excuse. We already know who and what God is. We see it in his creation. Its plain, its obvious – we’re without excuse. I know people always want to ask, “Well, what about those aborigines who’ve never heard about Jesus. Are you saying they’re all going to hell?” No. I seriously doubt God is sending anyone to hell because they can’t put the letters J-E-S-U-S together and say “Son of God.”
But we all know who God is. Even the atheist who puts everything he has into believing that something doesn’t exist, knows this truth. There is a God. He makes good things, and he’s in charge. It says it plainly right here – His power may be invisible, but the obvious implication of that power isn’t.
You think you’re in charge? Why don’t you start small and just trying making your own little moon. Something to reflect the glory of my sun. See how far you get. You think you’re in charge? Wise up. You’re man, I’m God. I win.
Now, that brings up another implication. God isn’t focused on the people who don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong, so much as he on those who do know right from wrong – and remember we did eat from that tree – those who do know right and wrong, but do nothing about it.
Worse yet, they know what’s right, and they suppress it. They know there’s a God, but try to live like there isn’t. We all know that our God wants us to love one another. But when I lip off to my wife, when I steal the guy’s parking place – what am saying with my behavior about how much power I think God really has?
Those are things are obvious, and they’re simple. We are to honor God with everything we do.
Verse 21 says it so clear: “For though they knew God, they honored him not as God.” They didn’t even do simple things like thank him. We could honor God by saying things like, “I’m really glad you gave me my wife.” But if you’re going to say that, you probably need to think twice about cheating on her.
Or, do you ever say to God, “This is such a beautiful day?” You should – because God makes great days – even in the middle of winter. But there’s a cost to that. We’re supposed to redeeming the time because the days are evil. Have you ever thought about thanking God for a day by spending it with those he loves?
God doesn’t make bad things. You want a really simple way of proving that to yourself. I want you to imagine your favorite national park. Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Yosemite – just think about it for a second. Or, you know what – you could even just imagine a forest or a park – something basic, something natural. Now, I want you to mentally place that pinnacle of man’s achievement into it: a strip mall, right in the middle. What are you would you rather be looking at? God does great work.
The end result of choosing not to honor God is sin. When we try to be in charge, we just mess it up. When we choose to want the thing more than the God who gave it to us, we end up making a bad deal.
Why would anyone in their right mind choose a creature over the creator? Why would anyone choose a lie over the truth? Why would you settle for the image of a man, when you could have the glory of God himself?
But see what we’ve done by rephrasing the question in the right way. We’re no longer asking why God “made sin,” we’re asking, why did we mess it up? The difference in the way the question was asked leads us to something we can answer.
You see, by phrasing it this way, we realize God only makes good things. But, they can be used in bad ways.
Or, let’s think about something else that’s really good. In America, we are the land of the free. We grew up knowing that Individuality was good and communism was bad. We were taught to think for ourselves, just like everyone else. And, frankly, I think that’s a good thing. We are self-reliant, self-actuated, and self-sufficient. We are individuals.
But you know what? Individualism has a very obvious downside. It separates us from one another. If I don’t need you, and you don’t need me, why are we together? But if we aren’t together, wouldn’t we get pretty lonely? I’ve heard it said that God gave us a back we scratch so that we never forget we need each other.
Individuality is great – but misued it become isolation. Idiosyncratic. Lonely. God intended for us to be with one another.
You see, when we misuse and exchange what God has made good, we end up making it bad. Personally, I like autonomy. But I like my individuality because it reminds me that God has made me special – not because God has somehow made me “better.” It’s all in whether we choose to honor God enough to say, “I’ll use the gifts you’ve given me the way you intended, or the way I want.”
I want to leave you with one word this morning. Changed. That word ‘exchanged’ is only used twice in scripture. Once of men, once of God. And what we tend to change makes all the difference. We’ve focused on the exchange we are so tempted to make –exchanging a Creator for a creature, truth for a lie. But God uses it in another way. If you’ve ever been to a funeral, you’ve heard the pastor say, “Brothers, I tell you a mystery. We will not die, but we will be changed. Our corrupt, perishable bodies will be changed for perfect ones.” That’s the exchange he wants to make. Will you let him?
Please pray with me.
*** ??? *** Now, I only want to say this very, very briefly. But this passage goes on to mention sexual sin as an example. Understand something there – it isn’t a judgment against non-believers. It’s a judgment against those who do know better, and choose to act that way in spite of it. It’s a judgment not against any individual, but all who know God, but choose not to honor him as God. It’s also just an example. Something that in Paul’s day would have been obvious to his audience. *** ??? ***
Long Branch Baptist Church
Halfway, Virginia; est. 1786
Sunday, February 4th, 2007
Enter to Worship
Prelude David Witt
Meditation
Invocation Michael Hollinger
*Opening Hymn CH#87
“Fairest Lord Jesus”
Welcome & Announcements
Morning Prayer [See Insert]
*Hymn CH#3
“Holy, Holy, Holy”
*Responsive Lesson [See Right]
*Hymn CH#56
“To God Be the Glory”
Offertory Mr. Witt
*Doxology
Praise God from whom all blessings flow / Praise Him all creatures here below
Praise him above, ye heavenly host / Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
*Scripture Romans 1:18 – 25
Sermon
“It’s Best Use”
Invitation Hymn CH#506
“I’d Rather Have Jesus”
*Benediction
*Congregational Response CH#186
In my life, Lord / Be glorified, Be glorified
In my life, Lord / Be glorified, today.
* Congregation, please stand.
Depart To Serve
Responsive Lesson
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me.
Do not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God?
You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good,
He used your evil to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.
Now, if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say?
Is God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? By no means! For then how else could God judge the world? But if through my lie God’s truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner?
So, why not do evil that good may come?
For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written:
“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.”
“Your words have been hard against me, says the Lord.
But you say, ‘How have we spoken against you?’
You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God. What is the profit of our keeping the charge of the Lord of hosts?’
But what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?
Behold! I tell you a mystery.
We shall not sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. What was sown corruptible will be raised incorruptible. The trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.
Ex 20:2-6;Ge 50:19-20;Ro 3:5-11;Mal 3:13-14;Lk 9:25;1 Co 15:51-53
