THE GREAT EXCHANGE
ROMANS 1:23-32
• This morning we looked at the wrath of God. The swelling of God at work in the world. Present tense today. Wrath is not for someday but is being stored up each and every day.
• We saw the reasons: Man’s UNGODLINESS(taking God lightly), his UNRIGHTEOUSNESS(impure behavior), and man’s SUPPRESSING of God’s truth.
• We also looked at why man is so guilty: He has rejected God’s revelation of Himself;
1) Revelation within: Conscience
2) Revelation without: Creation
Able to see three things about God
1) His invisible attributes
2) His eternal power
3) His divine nature
• Tonight we will how the wrath of God is being worked out in our world today. Wrath is God’s settled response to sin.
1) Human history is not as many think: The evolutionary idea that man began as something very unhuman and has progressed through stages such as worshipping many gods to the point of becoming monotheistic.
2) Bible teaches that human history is devolution: man initially walked with God and sin caused a fall and man become progressively more wicked until a final rebellion. MAN IS NOT FALLING UP BUT HAS FALLEN DOWN.
• America is an accurate representation of the passage we will look at tonight. If we were wise we would not be so interested in the origin of the species but more concerned with the destination of our species. Where are we all going. Man’s rejection of God’s revelation of Himself will demand a response from God.
(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…..
• How does God response to such behavior. To attitudes which reject Him.
• The primary message in these verses is that man made an exchange. He made a decision regarding God in his life.
1) Exchanged giving God His rightful honor and glory for exalting himself and even worshipping animals instead of God.
2) Exchanged lit means ‘to stop one thing and start another’. They stopped the glory of God and started seeking something to replace Him with.
Imagine a father who might murder his son and then go and by a ventriloquist dummy and spend the rest of his life introducing the dummy to everybody as his son. What kind of exchange would that be. That is the choice man made with God. It makes no sense, it is a foolish decision but man makes it because his will says ‘if I can get God out the equation I can call my own shots, set my own agenda and be responsible to no one’.
• They settle for a false glory. When man cannot explain God then he reinvent’s God. Mother nature – Great Spirit – the force – man upstairs. Ways to try to explain what we see going on in that there is something/someone greater than ourselves to admit but we don’t want to acknowledge the God Who has already revealed Himself to us. Try to exchange Him for more comfortable options.
IDOLATRY: exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image… (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.
• Strange for us to think of idolatry as being something in the modern world but consider this:
• There are actually people who worship crawling creatures: In a museum in Egypt there is a monument to the scarob beetle.
• The philistines actually worshiped flies. Hindus today won’t swat a fly lest it be an ancestor of their paying for wrongs.
• Today you find that there are 330 million gods of the hindus, 8 gods for every person.
• In Thailand there are 20,000 buddist temples. In one there is a 2 inch tooth supposedly saved from Budda’s funeral.
• In China a buddist statue actual fell on a man and the family sued the budhas in the temple and it was found guilty and it and 14 other statues were actually beheaded. IDOLATRY is rampant in our world.
• The Roman Catholic Church has relics: Mary’s hair, Mary’s wedding ring, Mary’s holy girdle, the last supper basin, the burial cloth of Jesus, the lance which stuck in His side, actually footprints of Jesus, and John the Baptist: 3 shoulder blades, 4 legs, 5 arms, and 50 index fingers that supposed pointed and said ‘Thou are the lamb of 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.
High school: Red Malibu with loud sidepipes. I spent much of my life in that car. Loved to hear the sound of those sidepipes going down 61st Street. I told people about my car, I invited people to ride in my car. I spent money on my car.
It became an idol because things I should have been doing in my relationship with God I was doing for that car. I had made an exchange.
Many people do that with different thing in this life. They give to it what rightfully belongs to God alone.
PROFESSING TO BE WISE WE BECOME FOOLS!
• ADRIAN ROGERS: And idol is anything you love more, fear more, value more or serve more than you do Almighty God. Fill in the blank.
Interesting note when you look at verse 23: Think about the history of the car. When first developed car models were named after men: Ford, Lincoln, Edsel, Chrysler, Desoto……..Birds: T-Bird, Ford Falcon, Firebird……Four footed animals: cougars, mustangs, pintos, rabbits, greyhound bus…..Crawling things: Cobra’s, Vipers,
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?
Sodom: Ezekiel Rich with much bread and soft living
What does Paul say is the evidence of God’s wrath upon a society?
1) Verse 24, 26, & 28 God gave them over to……THREE THINGS
2) Remember that when you see an eerie similarity to the behaviors and attitudes of our nation today that America has not always been this way. Statistics 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.
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.
1. God gave them over to the consequences of their sin. When a sinner
gets what he wants he never wants what he gets. God gave them
over in this lust of their hearts, this insistence to have their own way, to
the ends of those ways.
2. IMPURITY: Real sick word, same word used to describe the contents
of a grave. A decaying foul lifestyle. Ever see the red light districts of a
major city. Drug addicts, bag ladies, beggers, gangs, stealing, poverty.
Like a dying limb on a body that serves no purpose but only brings
pain.
3. 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. Truth demands
standing away from the world but the lie is seemingly the easiest life
TO DEGRADING PASSIONS (26) For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; 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.
1. We see something here that has become all too familiar in our day.
States like Hawaii and Vermont considering same-sex marriages.
Well known personalities such as Ellen Degenerate, Rosie
O’Donnell and others treated as exalted for taking a stand. TV shows
such as Will & Grace getting big ratings and awards for their series.
2. A society that turns it’s back on God will find that this behavior always
increases. We call it an alternative lifestyle while God calls it
degrading passions.
a. 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.
b. Many denominations have stopped calling this lifestyle a sin.
Homosexuals are being ordained or considered to be. There are
homosexual churches in many or our larger cities.
c. They attack the Bible passages which speak against homosexuality.
The state that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was not
homosexuality but a lack of hospitality.
1) Interesting that the Bible continues to condemn homosexual
behavior but using the term sodomites.
2) JUDE: States the problem was Sexual perversion
3) Paul here calls it degrading passion
4) LEVITICUS: Calls for a penalty of death for this activity
God can forgive this and any other sin but to defend it as not being a sin is to remain guilty for it.
PAUL SAYS IT IS A SIGN OF GOD’S WRATH.
3. Look at the end result: receiving in their own persons the due penalty
of their error.
a. The end result of moral depravity is to treat the human body in a way it was not designed and to receive the physical consequences.
Diseases are rampant from such actions. ALEXANDER THE
GREAT/ NAPOLEON died of the consequences of moral depravity.
b. Life expectancy of the average homosexual is in his 30’s. Without aids it only moves into the 40’s.
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,……
1. A reprobate mind, worthless mind, useless: Same word used of a
patch of ground that was sterile, unable to grow anything at all.
a. Used of an ABANDONED BUILDING: Abandoned buildings never
stay abandoned but become occupied with bugs, rats, or almost
anything.
2. God gave them over to #1 The lusts of their hearts, #2 The Degrading
Immorality, and #3 A Worthless Mind. Look at the description Paul
gives. He piles up one word after another to show that man’s
wickedness has no boundaries.
(29) being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit(fish bait-draws u in), malice; they are gossips(secret slanderer-used for murmers of a snake charmer, gossip came to be known as a snake bite) Gossip says things behind your back they wouldn’t say to your face while a flatterer says things to your face they wouldn’t say behind your back. , (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) PROCHOICE: Choice comes before baby is conceived, afterwards your choice is either a live baby or a dead baby) 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. Live in a society that is reprobate.
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.
Knowing God says it is wrong they give hearty approval, applause to those who behave that way.
PAUL MIGHT SAY TODAY: They watch them on TV, laugh at them on the sitcoms, go to their movies, listen to their music. Find pleasure in their sin.
CLINTON: In all his behavior problems every night on the news they gave the numbers for his approval polls.
We have fallen to the level that we not only know the sin is out there but we actually use it to entertain ourselves.
WHEN YOU SEE THINGS REACH THAT LEVEL THEN KNOW THAT THE SWELLING OF GOD’S WRATH IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE UPON US.
Are there any things that once shocked you that now don’t even raise your eyebrows.
We need to pray each day that God will keep our hearts pure and keep us still able to be shocked by sin. Disgusted with it.
