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| > Sermon Archive > Sermons by Author > Dr. Wes Bredenhof > When God gives people up to what they want | Previous Next Print |
| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) Songs are from the CanRC/FRCA Book of Praise Psalm 30:1,2 Psalm 102:1,6 (after the law of God) Psalm 95:4-5 Hymn 70 Psalm 124 Scripture readings: Exodus 8:1-15; 9:1-12 Text: Romans 1:24-32 |
Beloved congregation of Christ,
Today we’re looking at one of the most controversial passages in the book of Romans. It’s controversial because of the direction our culture has taken in the last 50 years. As society moves away from biblical norms, the biblical norms are increasingly controversial.
We can note three general approaches to this passage.
There are those who believe it’s dangerous and should be outlawed. Some would argue that a passage like this shouldn’t be read in public, whether in church or anywhere else. The potential for harm is too great.
Then there are those who believe this passage has been misinterpreted for 2000 years. They argue that Paul wasn’t speaking against what we think he’s speaking against. For 2000 years, the Christian church has got it wrong. But now in the last 50 or so years, we have finally come to the correct understanding of what this is really about. And it just so happens that it lines up with the direction our culture has taken.
The third approach is the one that has been taken by everyone in the Christian church up until recently. The passage means what it says. We take it at face value. So it is counter-cultural. It was counter-cultural when Paul wrote it and it is still today. We need to take it seriously.
We’re going to take that third approach. This is the Word of God and it speaks hard words to the world in which we live. And we shouldn’t be apologizing for that. This passage reveals the truth of what happens when God gives people up to what they want. We’re going to see that it results in:
1. Perverted passions
2. Proliferated vices
What Paul is doing in this part of Romans is exposing the plight of the human condition apart from God. When people are in unbelief, this is what it looks like and this is where it leads. Everything being described here is part of the problem the gospel addresses. The problem is human sinfulness and rebellion against God. The answer is the righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.
The previous verses show how unbelief leads to foolishness. People know about God, yet they don’t honour him, don’t give thanks to him, and instead worship his creation or images of his creation. This results in futile thinking and darkened hearts. C.S. Lewis described himself before he became a Christian as living in a whirl of contradictions. For example, he maintained that God didn’t exist. But at the same time he was angry with him for creating the world. That’s futile thinking and a darkened heart.
The root of all this comes back in our passage. In verse 25, we’re told of how people exchanged the truth about God for a lie. The truth is that there is only one God and he is the one who created us. This one true God has an exclusive right to our worship. But idols are the lie people prefer. Many idols of many sorts. People are then worshipping the creation rather than God, the Creator. It’s absurd if you stop and think about it. A Creator is obviously going to be greater and therefore more worthy of worship than his creation. But sin blinds people to that truth and entraps them in a lie.
Similarly, if we skip ahead to verse 28, Paul says that “they did not see fit to acknowledge God.” The Bible teaches us in Proverbs 3:6 that it is wise to acknowledge God in all our ways. On the flip side, to not acknowledge God in all our ways is foolishness. It’s foolishness because we know in our hearts that there is a God, but we refuse to face up to that reality, acknowledge it, and live accordingly. When that happens, it’s not only foolish, but also sinful and wicked.
God is patient with the wickedness of humanity. For example, think of the world before the Flood in the days of Noah. God gave hundreds of years for people to repent. He’s far more patient than we are. Yet at a certain point his patience runs out and he delivers judgment on sin. That can happen in different ways.
One of the ways it happens is that God gives people up to what they want. We call this judicial hardening. There’s a classic example of this in what we read from Exodus. When God sent the plagues upon Egypt, at first we read of Pharaoh hardening his own heart. That happens through the first five plagues. When we get to the sixth plague, the boils, then we read something different. It’s in Exodus 9:12, “But the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh…” God said, “Okay, you don’t want to repent, you want to continue on your way. You will continue in your way of rebellion. I’ll ensure that you get what you want.”
Romans 1 describes the same thing happening on a much broader scale. I want you to notice that we find the expression “God gave them up” three times in our passage. It’s in verse 24, in verse 26, and in verse 28. “Them” here refers broadly to the world of unbelief. When people reject God repeatedly, eventually he lets them have their way and the result is that people go from bad to worse.
Verses 24 to 27 describe this in terms of perverted passions. This is referring to what happens in the area of sexuality. People have sexual lusts in their hearts which make them impure. Notice already here that it’s not just about what people do externally, it’s about what lives in their hearts in the first place. It starts with sinful impure lusts. But it doesn’t stop there. It spills over into “the dishonouring of their bodies among themselves.” That’s in verse 24.
The thought continues in verses 26 and 27. Here what goes on in the heart is described as “dishonorable passions.” What does that look like? First, we need to briefly remind ourselves of the way God created the world and humanity. There is an order in nature. That order includes male and female, designed for one another. When God created human beings, he created Adam and Eve and he brought them together in marriage so they might be “one flesh.” He created their bodies as a natural fit for one another. In the natural order of things, sex belongs exclusively between one man and one woman in marriage. That’s the way God intended it.
But people have rebelled against God and his created order. They have turned against what is proper and natural and desecrated it. So we see what it says verse 26 about women. They exchanged natural sexual relations with men for relations with one another. Women engaged in homosexual behaviour with each other. This is contrary to nature.
Men did likewise with one another. They turned away from natural relations with women and instead burned with lust for one another. They committed shameful homosexual acts with one another. These are acts which are an abomination before God and therefore they receive the penalty due for their error. They fall under God’s judgment. God’s judgment begins to be experienced in this life, but it comes to ultimate expression in the hereafter.
Now let’s just pause here for a moment and consider a couple of ways in which people try to reinterpret these words. I want to do this because you’ll often find people online who say things like, “The church always taught me that the Bible was against homosexuality, but then I did my own research and I found that there was a different way to interpret all those passages.” There are different ways, but that doesn’t mean they’re right. The Bible can’t mean whatever you want it to mean, or whatever makes the culture more comfortable.
So some say this passage isn’t really about homosexuality, but about pedophilia or pederasty. But there’s nothing here to suggest that. The passage doesn’t say anything about adults or children. It’s about men and women. Moreover, the language of this passage speaks about mutual engagement in these passions and behaviours.
Others say this passage is condemning heterosexual people who engage in homosexual lusts and behaviours. They are going against their own nature. But this assumes that homosexuality is otherwise a natural practice which meets with God’s approval. But when Paul writes that what’s going on here is “contrary to nature,” he’s not referring to the sexual orientation of individuals. He’s referring to the way God created humanity. Natural means men and women together sexually, but not women and women, and not men and men. So this argument fails too.
There are other arguments. We don’t have time to go into them, but I can assure you they’re all just as flimsy. They’re all just efforts to make the Bible conveniently fit where society is going, to try and make God approve of our culture. It’s actually an abuse of the Bible and a slap in God’s face.
The Bible is clear here and elsewhere that homosexuality is sinful. It will always be. Our culture says otherwise, but we need to continue standing with God’s Word.
Now it does happen that there are Christians who experience same-sex attraction. They’re not acting on it, but that attraction is sometimes there and attraction to the opposite sex just isn’t. There are four things to say about this. First, there is grace and mercy in Christ for this, just as well as for anything else. Second, it’s something to be resisted with prayer, not indulged and certainly not celebrated. Third, Christians should never find their identity in their sexuality. If you experience same-sex attraction, don’t identify yourself as a Gay Christian or a Lesbian Christian. You’re just a Christian. No one should be identifying themselves by their particular struggles with sin, whether sexual or otherwise. Find your identity in Christ, not in your feelings or attractions. Finally, for all of us, let’s be gentle and kind with one another. Let’s be careful in how we speak about homosexuality, recognizing that there can be those among us who struggle with it. They should never get the idea that we hate them or that we won’t accept them because of their particular struggle. We all have our own struggles with sin, and we need to humbly recognize that and let it guide how we speak and act with one another.
We also have to be humble and loving with those who aren’t Christians and who identify as LGBTQ. We should do our best to treat them with kindness and respect, while still maintaining biblical principles. Treat them as fellow image-bearers. Don’t look at them through the lens of their self-identification, but through the lens of who they truly are before their Creator, human beings created in his image. When we do all this, we may still be accused of hating, but at least we can have a clear conscience before God.
In verses 28-31, we read of how God giving up people to what they want results in a proliferation of vices. Their debased or depraved minds are set on “what ought not to be done.” Then we find a long list of ways that this comes to expression.
Most of these vices are self-explanatory. It starts with several broad categories: unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, and malice. Then it becomes more specific. The list is mostly about sins committed by human beings against one another, but we also find hatred of God in verse 30. Some of the sins listed are heart-sins, like envy and pride, while others are external in nature, like murder and strife. Some of the external sins here are sins with the mouth: gossip, slander, deceit. The list is extensive and it reflects the wide-ranging evil that happens when God judicially hardens hearts. People continue to sink lower and lower, becoming more and more depraved, falling more and more under God’s righteous judgment. Sin breeds more sin.
Then verse 32 describes rock bottom. Unbelievers know God’s righteous decree. Just as they know there is a God, they know there is a God who is a judge. At the end, he will issue a just judgment on their sin. For their sin they deserve eternal death. As the Holy Spirit will say later in Romans 6, “the wages of sin is death.” That’s not news. Everyone knows it at some level of their being.
There are two crazy things that happen despite that. First, people continue to do these things. Second, even worse, they approve of others doing these things. Let’s spend a moment thinking about how this might concretely apply to us.
In the next chapter, Paul is going to drive home to his readers that this isn’t just about other people. You want to stand in judgment over the world of unbelief. But listen to what he says in verse 1 of chapter 2, “For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.” Ouch.
We can see it in others, but what about us? As Christians, we know God’s righteous decree even better. We know how the Bible teaches that all sin deserves death. And yet are we prideful at times? Are we gossips? Do we engage in envy, strife, or deceit? If we’re honest and humble, we know these things are there in our lives. They shouldn’t be, but they are. That should grieve us and drive us to repentance. Realizing that should bring us time and again to look to Christ for forgiveness.
But the worse thing according to verse 32 is giving approval to those who practice such things. That could happen with any of the vices on the list in verses 29 to 31. And it could also happen with the great vice mentioned in verses 26 and 27. Giving approval to those who practice homosexuality.
I’m going to paint a scenario for you. It’s not hypothetical, because I’ve seen it happen both in Canada and here in Australia. You have a group of people in the church. One of their friends begins to identity as a homosexual. They proudly put it on social media. You’ll see pictures of them with their boyfriend or girlfriend of the same sex. And some of the people from the church will then click “like” or “love” on these pictures. If there’s a same-sex marriage or engagement, they may even say “Congratulations” or “So happy for you!” Approval is being given to those who practice abominations in the sight of God. You say you’re a Christian, but yet you’re applauding desires and behaviours that are clearly contrary to God’s will.
When that happens there’s a disconnect between what you know and what you’re doing. You know that those who do such things are under God’s wrath, but yet you approve. It’s absurd. And it’s also wrong and sinful.
What should you do instead? For starters, don’t click “like” or “love.” Don’t congratulate someone in a same-sex relationship; don’t make it appear as if you approve or agree. If you’re a Christian, be consistent with what the Bible teaches. But going on from there, it would depend on how close a relationship you have with this other person. If you’ve been really close to them, you could speak with them lovingly and tell them why you won’t approve. You could still reaffirm your care and love for them, but it has to be clear why you won’t go along with applauding sin. You won’t go along, because you’re a follower of Christ. Loved ones, we have to be humble, honest, and loving. But exactly because we love God and our neighbour, we can never condone sin. If we do, we’re in the same boat as the people described in verse 32 and we need to repent.
In some places there has actually been talk of banning passages like Romans 1. Some call it “hate speech.” But is it hate to speak the truth people need to hear in order to be saved? Would it be hate speech to warn someone walking towards a cliff? If the danger is really there, it would be the most loving thing you could do to warn them. In his love, God shows us the problem of human sinfulness in all its horror. He does that because he wants all human beings to say, “How can I be saved from the wrath I deserve?” His answer comes further in Romans: turn to Jesus Christ with repentance and faith. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. AMEN.
PRAYER
O just and holy God,
We thank you for speaking the truth to us in love. Thank you for showing us what sin looks like and what it can lead to. We pray for the help of your Holy Spirit so that we’d be alert to sin in our own hearts and lives and fight against it. We pray for those around us who are without Christ. We pray that you would use us to humbly, honestly, and lovingly speak the truth to them. Give us courage to speak about sin, but also about grace and forgiveness in Christ. We pray for anyone among us who struggles with same-sex attraction. We pray that you would give them a rich measure of the Holy Spirit so they can resist those feelings. Help them to always find their identity in Christ and have joy and peace in him.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Dr. Wes Bredenhof, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
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