Lynne and I often like to go to the running trail near our house. She will sometimes take our two little dogs and walk them while I run. These dogs are two small dachshunds who think they are German shepherds. They constantly pull against the leash to try and go the ways they want to. The one with the smaller IQ is named Cinnamon and she seems to have a desire to be someone’s lunch. We will often sit on a bench after exercising while holding the dogs on their leashes. Sometimes people will pass by with much much bigger dogs and guess what Cinnamon does. She barks and growls and strains with everything she has against the leash. All I would have to do is release that leash and let her have her way. The result would not be pretty.
Francis Shaffer, a great writer of the 70’s, says that the statement ‘God gave them over’ could be rendered ‘God let go of the leash’.
Today we will see what life looks like when God gives a people over to their sin.
The bible teaches that human history is not evolution but devolution: man initially walked with God and sin caused a fall and that man will become progressively more wicked until a final rebellion. MAN IS NOT FALLING UP BUT HAS FALLEN DOWN.
Last December I went to the Philippines on a mission trip. I was about to preach at a small church in Iligan City and some of the people were asking me questions thru the pastor who was interpreting. They all seemed to be focused on the same subject which I would not know until the pastor told me. The shooting at Sandy Hook elementary had just happened where many children and teachers were murdered. The pastor looked at me and said, ‘They want to know why these types of things always happen in America?’ How would you answer? I told them that many people in America had turned away from God.
This is what a culture begins to look like when God let’s go of the leash.
(21) For even thou 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. (22) Professing to be wise they became fools,
(23) and EXCHANGED the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four footed animals and crawling creatures. (24) Therefore….
The primary message in these verses is that man made an exchange. He made a decision regarding God in his life.
Exchanged giving God His rightful honor and glory for exalting himself instead of God.
They stopped the glory of God and started seeking something to replace Him with. When man stops worshipping God he will often begin worshipping what he is most familiar with: himself . We settle for a false glory. When man reinvents God he tries to exchange Him for more comfortable options. Options to which we are not accountable to for our choices and behaviors.
Starting in verse 24 we see a phrase repeat three times: ‘God gave them over’. God let go of the leash and let us have our own way and our culture is being eaten alive by the consequences of our choices without God. It begins with one particular problem.
IDOLATRY: (25) For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, Who is blessed forever. Amen
ADRIAN ROGERS: An idol is anything you love more, fear more, value more or serve more than you do Almighty God.
Someone has said that the god of the last half of the 20th century is MATERIALISM. I can’t think of another generation that has spent more of their resources and time to accumulate more stuff than we do today. It is the reason many people go to school or choose the kind of work they do. To get bigger and better and nicer. Bigger houses and closets, attics and even storage rentals to keep all the gods they worship.
The good thing about living in our culture is that we know better than to worship idols or false gods, or do we? Those things were done by uncivilized peoples of the past or in remote areas today, or are they?
The gods that are being worshipped in today’s culture have a striking resemblance to the gods that have been worshipped before.
Mesopotamia(ancient Babylon & Syria) 2 main gods worshipped were Istar & Nebo. Istar was the god of nature or earth. Nebo was the god of education, culture, & the mind. The god of the human intellect.
Egypt - 2 main gods Osiris & Nim / gods of sexuality Today same gods are prevalent.
Canaanite gods are Baal / Molech /& Gad - these were the gods of prosperity
Greece & Rome worshipped the gods Zeus, Hermes & Diana. These were primarily the gods of sport & activity.
Olympics in Atlanta, during the opening ceremonies they called upon the gods of Ancient Greece to bring the spirit of sport to Atlanta.
How do we know that God is dealing with us for our sins. Is it when we see ourselves weak militarily? Is it when our economy falls apart? Is it when tornados, earthquakes and floods ravage us?
What does Paul say is the evidence of God’s wrath upon a society?
Verse 24, 26, & 28 God gave them over to……
Donald Grey Barnhouse called this the most terrible passage in all the Bible. Barclay renders it “God abandoned them.” J. B. Phillips says, “They gave up God. So God gave them up.”
It is a very strong word, meaning that God whereby hands over the human race for judgment because of their sins. Paul is telling us what happens when men turn away from God. “When men lose God, they always lose themselves.” They lose who they were meant to be. God lets mankind begin to reap what he has chosen to sow. This is not the first time or last.
Psa 81:11-16 "But My people would not heed My voice, And Israel would have none of Me. {12} So I gave them over to their own stubborn heart, To walk in their own counsels.
{13} "Oh, that My people would listen to Me, That Israel would walk in My ways! {14} I would soon subdue their enemies, And turn My hand against their adversaries. {16} I would have fed them also with the finest of wheat; And with honey from the rock I would have satisfied you."
This passage describes the downward progress of the human race as it steadily moves away from God.(There is no upward path away from God but all directions go downward)
Because God is a perfect gentleman. He respects the freedom of the human will If a man or a woman decides to live without him He will allow that to happen.
Mankind begins to see what life really looks like without God. What the heart of man really looks like when God lets go. The hope is that like the PRODIGAL SON who squandered all his potential that people will one day come to their senses and turn back towards God.
The worst thing you can do to a group of prisoners in a prison is to put all the guards on a bus and drive away. To leave them to themselves. Some prisoners might tell you how much they hate the guards and wish them to leave but that freedom would be the worst possible hell.
There is an eerie similarity to the behaviors and attitudes we are now seeing in our nation. America has not always been this way.
There is amazing statistical evidence show the beginning of such a sinful freefall began at the point we began to suppress God’s Word as a national effort. AMAZING COINCIDENCE?
GOD GIVES US OVER TO THREE THINGS
TO IMPURITY (24) Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.
When a sinner gets what he wants he never wants what he gets. God gave them over to the consequences of their sin.
God gave them over in this lust of their hearts and the insistence to have their own way.
IMPURITY: Real sick word, same word used to describe the contents of a grave. A decaying foul lifestyle. Like a dying limb on a body that serves no purpose. It also was used in their day to describe what we might call, ‘Contamination’. Like the tools of a surgeon become no longer usable so we become that way before God.
Verse 25: Exchange the truth of God for THE LIE.
What a choice. I would rather have the lie because in the lie I have more fun, do what I want. The foolishness of such a decision.
TO DEGRADING PASSIONS (26) For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions;
I was watching a track meet on television two months ago. The meet was being held in Moscow Russia and the American commentators were making less of an issue of the running and more about a recent ruling by the Russian Parliament. The ruling simply stated that it would be illegal in Russia to try and teach homosexuality to children. American runners were quoted about how they supported the gay lifestyle. A female Russian pole vaulter simply said, ‘We in Russia simply believe that boys go with girls and men go with women’. I thought as I watched and listened about how once Christian America now compared even to a nation build on atheism.
Paul says that our impurity will eventually move into a new category of sin. At one level we take that which God has given to us for good and abuse it such as sexual sin in this context. Things such as adultery, sleeping around, prostitution. Abusing the normal use of what God has given. But the next step is not only to ABUSE what God has given but to actually ABANDON the natural use of it. Sin by its very nature will press farther and farther without the grace and mercy of God to retrain it.
for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men, committing indecent acts and receiving in their own person the due penalty of their error.
We see something here that has become all too familiar in our day.
Same-sex marriages are quickly becoming legal all over our nation.
Personalities such as Ellen DeGeneres and others are now celebrated. Every time I see an image of Ellen dancing around with an audience full of women I have this tendency to try and look for a GOLDEN CALF.
The words used here for women and men are not the normal words one might use. It literally says, ‘males & females’. Like you would speak of dogs or other animals’. Devolution: man becoming more and more like animals and less like God.
Lowest description of a human being. Paul uses the term here a ‘degrading passion’.
Paul is writing this letter from Corinth, a city that lay in the shadow of the temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, beauty, and sexual pleasure. Her temple prostitutes were highly valued as priestesses and were honored guests at public festivals
The word ‘corinthianize’ actually came to mean “to practice immorality.”.
Paul is writing this and probably looking outside his front door in Corinth to be reminded of these things. Like sitting on a balcony in San Francisco and watching a Gay Pride parade. Asking himself, ‘Is this what God intended? Is this how God designed us?’
The Roman world in Paul’s time didn’t condemn homosexuality. 14 of the last 15 Roman Emperors were practicing homosexuals. So were many of the military leaders. In fact the closest culture you will find to modern America is the Rome Paul wrote to. The only difference is that they were ahead of us regarding this issue.
The first-century A.D. catechism manual, the Didache, makes clear what Romans will have to give up once they entered the Church. It begins with, “There are two ways: one of life and one of death—and there is a great difference between the two ways.” The converts are then confronted with a list of commands. Some of which would have been quite familiar and reasonable to Romans, such as, “You will not murder” and, “You will not commit adultery” (for Romans, abortion wasn’t murder, and a husband having sex with slaves or prostitutes was not considered adulterous). But then followed strange commands (at least to the Romans), “You will not corrupt boys”; “You will not have illicit sex”; “You will not murder offspring by means of abortion [and] you will not kill one having been born.” “You will not make potions” (a prohibition against widespread practices in the Empire which included potions that stopped conception or caused abortion. The Roman elevation of pleasure above procreation led to the desire for contraceptive potions, abortifacients, and infanticide.
Gay marriage was normal there and Emperors like Nero were married in homosexual weddings. He was the bride by the way.
Emperor Elagabalus (ruled 218-222) married and then divorced five women. But he considered his male chariot driver to be his “husband,” and he also married one Zoticus, an athlete. Elabalus loved to dress up 'as a queen'.
Same sex unions were finally outlawed in 5th century Rome when Christianity finally took hold. We are not facing something new but very old. Predates Christian influence.
There is a movement today in churches called the ‘More Light’. This reinterprets the Bible in order to justify admitting practicing homosexuals as members of the church. “We don’t know whether homosexuality is right or wrong.”
We now exist in a generation that has gone thru an intense agenda of propaganda meant to create an acceptance for this lifestyle.
This was done by design for last 25 yrs.
In 1989 there was a clearly stated 6 point program put together called the Gay Agenda.
Step 1—talk about gays and gayness as loudly and as often as possible.
People will become tired of the issue and give us anything we want to shut us up.
Step 2- Portray gays as victims, not as aggressive challengers.
Use words to build compassion for those “trapped” in this lifestyle.
Step 3-Give homosexual protectors a just cause.
Exploit the innate sense of fairness that Americans have for the disenfranchised.
Step 4- Make gays look good. Use media and television to portray homosexuals as the most normal, stable, hippest, happiest people in America.
Step 5- Make the victimizers look bad. Portray people of faith as homophobes/bigots.
Muddy the moral waters with liberal churches saying homosexual behavior is fine.
Step 6- Get funds from corporate America.
Of these six points, because of my calling, my concern is with step #5.
I am not on a national crusade against any moral issue but I am called to respond to any biblical attack upon the church.
The misapplication of God’s Word is my concern today.
There was a show on this week called ‘Breaking Amish’. I have never watched it before but caught just a scene from it on the way to looking for something else. I think the show is about when Amish young people reach a certain age. They leave and experience the world for a short period and then decide to stay in the world or return to the Amish community. This young man was sitting at a table with a gay man who was trying to teach him about design.
Soon as I turned the show on the Amish young man was saying something about the Bible speaking against homosexuality. The gay man responded, ‘Not the Christian Bible, it doesn’t say it is wrong, I know that as a godly man’. The Amish young man seemed confused and had no response to give. That is like most in the church today, they know but don’t know how to defend what they know.
What does the Bible say about this issue? It is addressed in 8 areas: twice in the Law of Moses, once before, once in the prophets and five times in the New Testament.
Leviticus chapters 18 and 20 where Moses spoke from God saying, ‘You shall not do what is done in the land of Egypt where you lived, nor are you to do what is done in the land of Canaan where I am bringing you’(18:3)
18:22 ‘You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female: it is an abomination’. This was part of a long list of sexual sins and perversions prohibited by God.
20:13 repeats the same concern and calls it ‘a detestable act’.
The argument against is that this was in the Law and not for any other people but the Israelites to whom God gave this Law. Even if that were true the answer is, ‘Did God see something wrong, significantly wrong, with this behavior at some time in history? If so, has God not changed His mind on it? Does the New Testament reflect that change?
Genesis 18-19: Sin of Sodom and Gomorrah. Without retelling the tragic events there is the obvious concern of a whole city caught up in this lifestyle to the point of attacking the two angels who came as guests at Lot’s home. The modern argument is that the sin of Sodom was the ‘lack of hospitality’ towards the angels.
They get this from Ezekiel 16:49 "Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy. God destroyed them for not helping the poor?
But 16:50 states, ‘Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before Me. Therefore I removed them when I saw it’.
The lack of concern was part of who they were but they then became ‘prideful/arrogant’ and began committing ‘abominations’.
Plus Genesis 18:20 say the angels said to Abraham, before anything had happened in Sodom, ‘The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave’. Not sins but a particular sin termed ‘exceedingly grave’.
Before the Law, in the Law and by Ezekiel the prophet. What about the NT?
Jude speaks about what happened in Sodom: Jude compares the angels who fell and didn’t follow through with what God made them for to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah: ‘they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh’..
Jude 6-7 Doesn’t sound like being inhospitable to strangers.
1 Tim. 1:10 call this practice ‘contrary to sound judgment’
ROMANS 1:26-27: ‘degrading passions’…’abandoning the natural function’…’committing indecent acts’
Sometimes we forget the larger context of these verses: That man has rejected the revelation of God. The design within through his conscience and sense of God, the design of creation and finally now the very design of ourselves. The most obvious thing about us is that a man and a woman are physically designed for one another. That is how children are born.
1 Corinthians 6:9-11 includes this sin in a list of sins of those who will not inherit the kingdom of God. It is a list that mentions things, all of which there is forgiveness for. That is why verse 11 says, ‘Such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were sanctificed, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ’.
This is a good reminder that homosexuality is not some unpardonable sin but is like others in that we have to recognize our rebellion from God and seek His forgiveness. They need to be reached out to and treated like any other people caught up in other types of sin.
But the context of Romans 1 is also that this is an evidence of God having given a people over to themselves.
This is the beginning of a long list that follows.
Look at the end result: receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. The end result of moral depravity is to receive the physical consequences. Statistics show that people in alternative lifestyles have greater instances of physical and mental diseases, shorter lifespans(20-25 yrs), shorter relationships(2 yrs), suicides. You can’t go against God’s design in any area of life and not face consequences.
Easten Psychological Association Convention: statistics from an article by Dr. Paul Cameron in Omega magazine. It was a study of almost 10,000 obituaries from gay and straights news.
Gay men are: 116 times more likely to be murdered, 24 times more likely to commit suicide. 18 times more likely to die in car accidents, 22 times more likely to die of heart attacks.
Lesbians are 487 times more likely to dies of murder, suicide or accident than straight women.
Dr. Thomas Schmidt in his book Straight and Narrow?
Homosexual men who experience anything like lifelong fidelity becomes, statistically meaningless. Promiscuity among homosexual men is not a stereotype it is virtually their only experience. Lifelong faithfulness is almost non-existent. Homosexuals in general are three times as likely to be problem drinkers. 47% of male homosexuals have a history of alcohol abuse and 51% have a history of drug abuse. “Mental disorders occur with much higher frequency among homosexuals.” 40% of homosexual men have a history of major depression, compared with only 3% for men in general. 37% of female homosexuals have a history of depression. Homosexuals are three times as likely to contemplate suicide. Homosexual men have an attempted suicide rate 6 times that of heterosexual men, and homosexual women attempt suicide twice as often.
Sexually transmitted diseases are rampant among the homosexual population. 75% of homosexual men carry one or more sexually transmitted diseases.
Perhaps the most shocking and frightening statistic is that, leaving aside those who die from AIDS, the life expectancy for a homosexual male is about 45 years of age, compared to a life expectancy of around 70 for men in general. If you include those who die of AIDS, which now infects 30% of homosexual men, the life expectancy drops to 39 years of age.
You would think that statistics like this and many others would be a deterrent to such a militant attitude.
In our day the ones who talk of tolerance the most have become the most intolerant.
New Mexico photographer who refused to do photo’s for same sex wedding;
NEW MEXICO official said, ‘Required by law to do that which goes against their religious belief’
Oregon: ‘Bakery closes to pressure from gay/lesbian pressure. Phone calls, protests, death threats to family ‘hoped his children would die’, calls to boycott suppliers. ‘Sweet Cakes’ refused to bake wedding cake for same sex wedding.
Statement of Commissioner: ‘Everybody is entitled to their own beliefs but that doesn’t mean that folks have the right to discriminate’
First Amendment?
Also said, ‘State is willing to rehabilitate and reeducate Christian business owners’
Indianapolis cookie store attacked for not wanting to make cookies for a national Gay/Lesbian Coming out day.
Colorado attorney general against ‘Masterpiece Cake Shop’ because Denver bakery refused to back a cake for a gay wedding.
Facing possible jail time.
T-shirt company in Lexington Kentucky under federal investigation for not making t-shirts for a gay rights organization.
TO A DEPRAVED MIND (28) And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper,……
‘Whenever men turn away from God, terrible things begin to happen in society. Long-held standards disappear. Things once considered incredible now become commonplace. Evil no longer seems evil. The basic distinctions between male and female are obliterated. No one knows the difference between right and wrong’.
A reprobate mind, worthless mind, useless: Same word used of a patch of ground that was sterile, unable to grow anything at all.
Used of an ABANDONED BUILDING: LIT. ‘Not see reflection’
Originally made in God’s image but now nothing in us in which God sees His reflection
Look at the description Paul gives. He piles up one word after another to show that man’s wickedness has no boundaries. Not just doing but ‘being filled with’.
(29) being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips(secret slanderer-used for murmers of a snake charmer, gossip came to be known as a snake bite)
(30) slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil(amazing how creative sinners can be, new levels they can discover),
disobedient to parents, (31) without understanding, untrustworthy(how much is anybodies word worth today), unloving(word used of a mother who exposed her child to death) Used of a father who would abandon his family, unmerciful
Words sound like I just read the nightly TV lineup, or you get the feeling you just watched the nightly news. We live in a society that has become reprobate. It is all around us but the question is ‘IS ANY OF IT IN US?’
(32) and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.
Paul finishes by saying they give hearty approval, applause to those who behave this way. “I would do that or live that way but I fully support them doing it’. TODAY: They watch them on TV, laugh at them on the sitcoms, go to their movies, listen to their music. They even find pleasure in their sin. We have fallen to the level that we actually use their sin for our entertainment. And we don’t think that God should care the slightest bit about it. SURPRISE!
I want to close by showing you one last verse. It is an additional reference to what happened in Sodom which is given by Peter in 2 Peter 2:6-8. ‘And if God condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made an example to those who would LIVE UNGODLY LIVES thereafter; and if He rescued Lot, OPPRESSED BY THE SENSUAL CONDUCT OF UNPRINCIPLED MEN for by what he saw and hear that righteous man, while living among them, FELT HIS RIGHTEOUS SOUL TORMENTED DAY AFTER DAY by THEIR LAWLESS DEEDS.
Lot ended up in Sodom because his and Abraham’s herdsmen could not get along. Abraham gave Lot a choice of where to live and Abraham would go the other way. Lot saw the well water plains eastward toward Sodom and went that direction. Now he is trapped there. His wife likes it enough to look back and his daughters have married. Genesis 20 has him sitting at the gates in the evening looking back westward towards Abraham’s direction when the angels approach that evening.
I think there are many today whose ‘righteous souls are tormented’ with all that is going on. Like Lot they now can’t escape it. They can’t walk away. Family members are so entrenched. The husband or wife is caught up with some many things that don’t matter and are so entrenched in this fallen culture. The kids are being bombarded from all directions with the spirit of this age. They just sit and wait to be rescued, looking in the direction where hope lies.
Hope lies in keeping our eyes upon God, His Word and the hope of the return of Christ someday. The last decision we should make is to ‘give hearty approval to those who practice such things’.
Peter continued and I will close with verse 9 of chapter 2.
‘The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the Day of Judgment’.
The last two verses of the Bible are found in the book of Revelation chapter 22, ‘He Who testifies these things says, “I am coming quickly”. Amen, COME LORD JESUS.
