The Only Sin

The Only Sin

Romans 1:18-32

http://gbcdecatur.org/sermons/OnlySin.html

The only sin today is to call sin "sin." If you do, you are labeled as intolerant. A man may be sick but he’s not sinful, he may be weak but he’s not wicked, he may be ill but he’s not evil, and even if he were to tell people that what they’re doing is wrong, they would say that they have some excuse. It would be environment, it would be genetics, it would be, ignorance, but nobody wants to be blamed.

Well, we’re going to learn something today about the wrath of God, the judgment of God.

Verse 18: "For the wrath of God is revealed." The wrath of God. Now we hear about the love of God and God is love--infinite, boundless, measureless love, God is love. But this God of love is also a God of wrath and when you love righteousness, you hate sin. The doctor who loves health hates microbes and germs and, when you love children, you hate child abuse. So, you see you cannot have a God of love without also having a God of wrath. And if you just take the love of God, you only have half of the story. He’s not a half baked God.

Now God is love, but when you take half of the truth and try to make half of the truth all of the truth, then that half of the truth becomes an untruth because you’ve distorted it and it’s not balanced.

So verse 18 says, "The wrath of God," God’s burning anger against sin," and the end of v. 20 says, "so that they are without excuse." There’s one thing that God will not accept for sin and that is an alibi or an excuse--he will accept a confession and he will forgive, but there is no excuse, man is inexcusable in his sin.

3 steps to sin in our text:

Step number one, man’s willful self-determination.

v. 21 They want to get rid of the thought of God.

Step number two, man’s wicked self-deception.

v. 18 ’hold the truth in unrighteousness’

vv. 22-25

He blinds himself, and thus he deceives himself.

Step number three, man’s woeful self-destruction.

Self-determination leads to self-deception leads to self-destruction. And the rest of this chapter tells about that destruction. What is that destruction? Well, it comes in several stages.

First of all, people who turn from God almost always become sexually perverted.

Verses 26 through 27: "For this cause..." Well, let’s go back to verse 25: "They changed the truth of God unto a lie and worshipped and served the creature more than the creator who is blessed forever and for this cause God gave them up to vile affections." Now what is he talking about when he says vile affection?

v. 26-28 "For even their women exchanged their natural use into that which against nature and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men, working that which is unseemly and receiving in themselves that recompenses of their error which was mete," or fitting, "and even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind."

Now what God is talking about here is the sin of sodomy and the sin of moral perversion. Notice how God calls this sin. Actually he begins up in verse 24. He calls it uncleanness, he calls it lust, he calls it dishonor in verse 24. In verse 26 he calls it vile affections. In verse 26 he said it is against nature. In verse 27 he says it is unseemly. Over in the Old Testament in Leviticus chapter 18 verse 22 the Bible says, "Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind. It is an abomination." I’ve been amazed as I’ve read those who want to practice this perversion. Some of the fancy footwork they’ve done to try to explain away the plain meaning of God’s word. As a matter of fact, the explosion of sexual perversion that we’ve seen today is one of the great signs that we’re living in the last days and that we’re ripe for judgment. Our Lord said in Luke chapter 17 that the last days were going to be like the days of Noah and the days of Lot. [Verses 26 through 30.]

Jesus says, "As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the son of man, they did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage until the day that Noah entered into the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all. Then again likewise, also, as it was in the days of Lot, they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded, but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed. "