Results of condemnation fo fallen man. Part I
Romans 1:24-27 · Mike Doyle · Jan 22, 2023
Romans (2022-25), No. 08
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926193011873

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well, I've got an interesting subject this week. And it's been, you know, when you have three weeks on and three weeks off, sometimes you start a little early and you start looking at the verses and you start to learn stuff that you never knew before. And I think in these verses we'll see a couple of things that are new. So I started out with a question today. What's the criteria that God uses to distinguish man's behavior? It's a great question. And Roger went over the answers the last three weeks.

It's just two things. He deals with ungodliness and unrighteousness. Those are the two issues. Ungodliness is a direct disregard of God, which to the Jew would connect itself with the first table of the law, the first four commandments, while unrighteousness refers to wickedness of conduct in itself and towards other men.

The sin against the being of God, simply put, is ungodliness. It's not to be like God. Think about that. In Romans chapter 1, God's righteousness is revealed from heaven for what? All ungodliness. If you're not like God, then you're in trouble. If I'm not like God, then I'm in trouble. Well, we think that, boy, that's a really high standard. But I think it gets pretty clear as we go along.

Unrighteousness is the sin against God's will. Man is not only a moral sinner, but he's also a religious sinner. The unrighteous lives as if there were no will of God to be revealed. Unrighteousness has to do with our relationship with our morality. Ungodliness has to do with religion, our relationship with the sovereign God.

Maybe I'll put it another way. When the triune God decided to create, what did He say? He said, let's create this thing called man, and let's build him, create him just like us. in our image and our likeness. Well, why would He do that? Ever thought about that? Why would He do it? I think He did it because He desired these creatures to be with Him, and understand Him, and interact with Him for all eternity.

So that's where the God-likeness comes in. He built us like, and made us, created us like Him. And that's where the righteousness comes from. When you think about God as holy and He's righteous, it means that He's, for lack of a better way to put it, He's over here by Himself. He's totally holy and He's totally righteous. He's totally right in everything. Nothing can be added to Him. He wants us to be with Him totally right. totally righteous with him. Why? Because then we can have interaction, we can have relationship, we can spend time with him.

So if that's the premise that he started with, and the really important part, then when Roger teaches that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven for two things, ungodliness and unrighteousness. Those are the two issues. What we're going to find out is that there really, in Romans chapter 1 and into 2, there's really a description of three kinds of these unrighteous, ungodly folks. One of them is just, for lack of a better way to describe it, he's just a common sinner. He's a barbarian. He's ignorant. He's just showed up somewhere in the jungles of somewhere He's unrighteous and he's ungodly. And then there are those, the second group, which we'll talk about next week and the week after, who disapproved of the openly bad humanity. They look at these barbarians and they consider themselves better than them.

They have their own set of rules. You know, people that study anthropology love to talk about, well, this society had these rules and that society and that kind of thing. And they divide human beings up by race, civilization, environment, education, culture.

And then you have the third group, which is the super religious. And we're going to find out in chapter two that those are the Jews. Those who disapprove of others evil thinking themselves a whole lot better because of their religion and their religion they got from God So they're the best of the best the possession of the divine oracles These of course were Paul's days. They were the Jews and you know I live in a neighborhood of ascetic Jews they still think that way and They walk around our neighborhood, they're so proud. And they have the clothes that are different, they're separate. And they really are proud people in and of themselves.

So as we go forward now, one of the things that we're going to deal with is what's God's reaction to men. So in verse 24, great word, it not only refers to everything that's gone before what Roger taught, but as we go into the future. God gave them, all three of them, over to the lusts or the desires of their hearts, unto uncleanness, so that their bodies were dishonored among themselves. As we said, men are ungodly and they're unrighteous because though knowing God, they knew, they didn't glorify Him as God and they weren't thankful.

So I don't care what a man will say about himself, but there's no question because of God's Word that every human being that's ever been on this planet knew who God was and they knew He was powerful and they knew He was the Creator, and they needed to just glorify Him as God, and they needed to be thankful. And what did they do? Instead of that, they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man, birds, four-footed animals, crawling creatures. You ever notice that? We go birds here, four-footed animals, and then crawling things down here. That's always the direction a man is this way. It isn't this way.

So you have a situation now where Paul estimates of the philosophers and the religious leaders of the human race from the beginning of the race. He knew of how the people from the Euphrates Valley and the Nile, the Egyptians, how they bragged on their society. He also knew about the Greeks and about the Romans, how they, and we know today, we took this trip this fall to to Rome, it was really enlightening to see how it would appear on the surface that man was really progressing. But if you walk down the, what do they call that thing, the promenade or whatever, and all these statues are naked people.

Oh, this is cool. Didn't they sell clothes in Rome? And it's the same thing with the Greeks. They, as the Word of God will tell us, what were they thinking? It's because they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the image and the form of a corruptible man, and birds and four-footed. They did that. They began to worship the creature rather than the God who created them.

There were those in our times who see no generic difference between these ethnic sages and prophets of God while Paul declares the former to be. What does Paul call all of these really bright guys from the time of, I don't know, pick somebody back in Pharaoh's days? He calls them all fools. Every one of them was a fool. because they didn't recognize who God was.

And so here it comes. God gave them over. What did He give them over to? It says He gave them over to the desires of the lust of their hearts and to uncleanness, so that their bodies were dishonored among themselves. So, this is a If you refuse to retain God in your thinking and in your knowledge, and you willfully turn away from Him, God has accordingly given you up to uncleanness, which you prefer. That's what you want. And God is very gracious. He said, You want You instead of Me? You get You. But you also get you with me out of the picture. And when you get that, that's a mess. So there's no escape can be found in the claim that man is simply a weak sinner. That doesn't cut it before God. He's been proven a willful sinner. He did it on purpose. He's not without distinct evidence of God. Maybe say it this way.

Everybody here is going to be at the Great White Throne Judgment, right? We all get to watch. And here comes this massive humanity that are going to be judged by the Lord Jesus Christ, and they're going to go to hell. Are they going to show up with an attitude that, oh, gee, just give me one more chance?

Or I really didn't want to go to hell. No, they're going to show up, this is what they're going to be like, and they're going to look at the Lord Jesus in all of His glory, and they're going to say, I didn't want you then, and I don't want you now. Where is the door to hell?

Because I want to continue to do my own will. And the result of that is I'm a slave of Satan, and that's where I'm comfortable, and that's where I want to go. We can't imagine that. But the natural man, who's a sinful man, that's how he thinks. And he goes on, as we go on here, we will see more and more of the inward reasonings of a man's mind like that, because bent on following his own will, it drags him into foolishness in their hearts. willfully, without understanding, were colored by the darkness they chose. You choose darkness, it's a whole new world. Moreover, the very reasonings that led them to such darkness, they professed to be wise, but in fact they were fools. A profession which more thoroughly declared them fools, it was their development or evolution, you will find, they became fools.

If you look back at Psalm 81, the psalmist writes, But my people did not listen to my voice, and Israel did not obey me. So I gave them over to stubbornness in their heart, to walk in their own devices. Are there any more stubborn people on the planet than the Jewish people? No, they're very stubborn. Gave them over.

What does it mean that God gives them over? Like Jim talked about it, it's in three verses here, 24, 26, and 28. This is a step still farther down in evil and the giving to the creature the honor that belongs only to God. If you say, God, I don't want you. I want me. He'll say, OK, you get you. The soul that abandons the truth of God and all of its forms is an insult to God. You think about what God has done. He created us, He created everything to help us, and He created us so that we could be in fellowship with Him for all eternity, and we say we don't want that? That's an insult. So, God gives them over.

The soul that abandons the truth of God and all His forms of an insult, whatever appearance they may say, for the present. It's an insult. If somebody insults you, you're not very happy about it. Not to be dependent and not to be obedient is counterfeit to the relationship that the creature has with the Creator. It's still further down. It's exactly what Satan did.

I wondered when Satan finally got the message about how wonderful he was. Did they have mirrors? Did he look at himself? How did he know he was the most magnificent creature that God had created? He was a liar from the beginning, and he never told the truth ever, even about himself. There's just absolutely no truth in him.

In Hosea 4.17, Hosea says, Ephraim is joined to idols.

Let them alone. Gee, that sounds so foreign to us. Well, we've got to go help them or we've got to persuade them now. Ephraim says, just leave them alone. I'm sorry, Hosea says, just leave him alone. A man will reap the bitter fruit of his refusal of the place of dependence upon God.

Jim and I were having a little talk before we started this morning, and the issue of, Jim said, you know, the Lord says to us, the Lord Jesus said, if you come unto me, I will give you rest for your souls. Well, that tells us two things. One, you don't have any rest if you're not in Christ. And if you come to Him, you can get rest, which you can't get any place else. Rest is only available in Christ. Rest of soul. So, then, when man rejects what God offers, He can say, I can't help myself. You know what? That's when he's speaking the truth. He can't help himself. Now watch what happens here. God gives them over to what?

He says, to the lusts or the desires of their hearts. You ever notice that I can have a physical desire or a physical lust in the flesh? And that can be controlled. But flesh has a natural desire which may or may not be yielded to. I don't have to yield to gluttony or something like that. But the lust of the heart is different. It's different from the flesh. It continues after the flesh is dissolved.

When God gives you over or gives a human being over to the lust of his the lust of his desires of his heart, even when the tormented body of the damned, the desires of the flesh cannot be conscious or controlling, the lust of the heart will exist forever.

Put it this way, those that are going to go to hell are going to go with these desires in their heart. And those desires will never go away, but they won't be able to fulfill them. God said, you want you, you get you. I'm going to give you over to you because you have these desires. And the desires start with the human body.

Of all dishonoring among themselves their bodies. Why there? Why wouldn't He say, well, I'm going to give you over because you desire to eat too much. Oh, well, that's dishonoring the human body or sexual sin. That's dishonoring to the human body. When one turns from the proper object for the creation, what does he turn to? Notice that after his refusal of God, man accomplishes his own personal corruption. He sins against himself. He dishonors his own body.

Few who think of this as a gross and absolute sin. I agree with that. There's very few people that think about dishonoring your own body as a big-time sin. But it is. And few still think So concerning ignore God, I begin to abuse my body. But the latter, ignoring of God, is a very source of evil in the form or the sphere of my first responsibility to God. Would you say that? Would you agree that the first responsibility to God is to honor your body, to take care of it, to keep it the way it ought to be? The proper care of my body is a particular personal trust given to me by God?

I would think so. At 80 years old you think so. Maybe at 22 you don't think so much, but at 80 you do. And I'm going to have to give an account. Every man's going to have to give an account. How'd you do? I've always thought for, I shouldn't say always, but for the last maybe 20 years, that the whole reason a man and a woman, each right, stays in shape, takes care of themselves, is because what are we here to do? We're here to serve the Lord. And if your body isn't functioning, you're not serving. We have to be able to do it.

And so one of the responsibilities that God gives us is to take care of our bodies. So such a one as they who changed the truth of God into the lie and worshipped and served the created rather than the Creator, who is blessed unto the ages. Amen. I was listening to Chester McCauley about this, and he made a real issue about the word the, because the New American Standard and a few others say a lie. He said, no, it is a specific lie. It is the lie. So what is the lie?

Second Thessalonians 2.11 said, And for this reason God sent them strong delusions, that they should believe the lie. It's a belief. What is the lie? It is the belief that man can worship other things rather or along with the one and only God. That's the lie. Well, that doesn't seem like a big deal to us. It is to God. Because it's an insult to Him. He's the Creator. Think of it. They worship and serve the created thing rather than the Creator. Who made the thing that they worship? And He made them. And they turn away from it and worship what God has created rather than God Himself who is the Creator.

In William Newell's book on Revelation, Interesting, there's an appendix. I'm going to read it to you. There's no scriptural record of idolatry before the flood. Did you know that? No scriptural reference to idolatry before the flood. The solemn presence of the cherubim at the gate of Eden probably continued long. Sin was increasing.

But the Spirit was striving with man, Genesis 6.3. Then, 120 years passed, man was given up, and the deluge, judgment came, the flood. After the deluge came Nimrod, the son of Cush, hence Bar Cush, who became Bacchus, and Satan invented a plan of idols to obscure God. by demons, 1 Corinthians 10.

God permitted this as a judgment on the race that did not desire knowledge of him. Amazing what God does in terms of giving man what he thinks he wants or thinks he desires. On account of this, God gave them over to shameful passions. For their females changed the natural use into that contrary to nature." This is another part where I began to learn some things that I didn't know before. If you look at the New American Standard, on account of this, God gave them over New American Standards says, for this reason God gave them over to degrading passions, for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural.

Is this Word talking about the natural desires of man? And we do have natural desires, don't we? We all do. Is this verse talking about that? Answer, no it's not. There are natural and normal appetites of the body, and God is not speaking of these or even of the abuse of these.

I can say that adultery is an abuse of a natural desire. So is fornication, the practice of engaging in sexual activity. But here, when he's describing the state of unnatural appetites, in which all normal instincts are left behind. And it's significant that as originally a woman is first talked about in this kind of sin.

So what's happening here? When God turns us over to ourselves, there are things in us like, not in our flesh, but in our hearts that are not natural, and they begin to control us. Question, if man's heart is turned from the proper object to the creature, what happens in his mind, in his action? In his heart, he had turned from the proper object to the creature. In his mind, he became a fool. In his acts, he showed both the need of the object outside of himself and the efforts of one who sought to supply it by worshipping different forms of animal life.

We've got a picture here of man created originally in the image of God and made in His likeness, presented as a man in the world, which are not merely ignorant barbarians, not civilized nations or civilized races, or they're not uneducated. Intellectually, they have the abilities to grow, and develop, but the problem with them is that they don't manifest what God originally intended by creating man in His own image. Verse 27, in the same way, Also, men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire towards one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. Here, men are seen visited with a like worldly judicial punishment, being given up. in which they forget not only the holy relationship of marriage, but even the burning of ordinary lusts and plunge into nameless horrors and unusual lusts and bondage all males and females receiving in themselves the due compensation of their errors. What I found interesting in their desires, one for another, Maybe I'm the only one that asks myself questions like this.

You know, you're reading a paper that a 75-year-old man gets arrested for child pornography. Now, if you know anything about male body, you know, your desires as you get older dissipate because your body can't perform. That's okay. That's natural. But here's a 75-year-old guy who can't do anything about it, but he is so wrapped up in child pornography that he spends all of his time doing that.

That's the lust of the heart as opposed to the lust of the flesh. I think that that's one of the reasons why I've always had trouble understanding why would someone, if God created us male and female and we are supposed to have desires for one another, how could a homosexual relationship start? How could it go? What fosters it? What creates it? What keeps it going?

I think it goes back to these verses. That when I turn away or a person turns away from God, it isn't that my natural desires get stronger, it's that they change and God gives me over to the desires of my heart and I start to desire things that a person who wasn't turned over wouldn't do. Does that make sense? It answered for me why people do some of the craziness that they do. I'm going to read about an article next week to you about how in our society, like the Lord Jesus wrote letters to the churches in Revelation, and the churches, I think it was Pergamos, He said, first you tolerate it, then you allow it to happen, and then you endorse it.

And that was His complaint. false teaching. You just allowed it. It wasn't a big deal. And pretty soon, you're involved in it and you're teaching error. And then you endorse it, which means you defend it. Well, look in our society today how we defend aberrant behavior.

It's amazing. Tony Dungy wants to go. this week and walk in the parade for life. Well, the abortion people are incensed by that. Imagine in a society of men who are, well, I guess you can imagine in a society of men who have been turned over by God to their own personal desires, that they would come and crucify you because you wanted babies to live. Imagine that. It's really hard for us to understand it, but they're serious. I mean, they want to run Tony Dungy out of town because he supports life, life of the unborn.

So when you look at wherefore God also gave him up to uncleanness. If you compare themselves among themselves and in themselves, among themselves brings out, as Godet remarks, the depth of the blight, and it's visible to the eyes of all. In themselves, Meyer says, the law of history, in virtue of which the forsaking of God is followed among men, by a parallel growth of immorality. It is not a purely natural order of things.

The power of God is active in the execution of this principle. Now there's a whole new thought. When God turns you over to your heart desires, that's a new principle and God is active in that. Now that doesn't preclude the fact that God hasn't sent his son to save those who will be saved. He does. But it's also a principle with God that if you abandon him and don't honor him as God, there's a new set of principles that come into play.

I want to give you some final thoughts from William Newell. He talks about, after quoting verse 27, he says, man will reap the bitter fruits of his refusal of the place of dependence upon God. And you know what? We as believers, growing believers, one of the things that God has to teach us is how does this dependence thing work? Our self-dependence is so strong that God has to teach us to be dependent on Him. And that's the way we should be. That's the way we've been created to be.

Man's evil more and more showing itself in ways which at one time the very thought of would have been horrible and detestable to him. At one time, the idea of killing unborn babies would have been detestable. But let man go for a while and let God turn him over and then it becomes okay. Not only that, we're going to go out and protest about it.

If I were a historian, or you were a historian, would you write about your own moral history? the golden age of the Grecian literature and that of the Roman letters. In both of them we find remarkable minds, but their works must be edited for decent readers. I'm one of those guys that went to prep school with the Jesuits, and we had to study some of the Greek writings. And they had to edit them because they were so pornographic.

They're awful. And all you have to do is, like in Rome, go around and look at the artwork. I mean, it is just disgusting. Nobody has any clothes on. No printer, even in this corrupt age, would dare to publish a book with literal description of the orgies of the classical days. Boy, is that true. I know that you probably haven't taken the time, and I don't recommend you do, to study the Greek and Roman writings, but they're awful in terms of sexual perversion.

Man may dare to think he is merely neutral or uninterested concerning God, but this very attitude is an accusation of falsehood against God. For it is the testimony of God, if the testimony of God is proved. Neutrality is an utter impossibility. Neutrality is a deliberate, though it may be silent, rejection of the truth of God. Dealing with it is like dealing with a lie. A man may speak of neutrality with utmost pride and complacency, but if he does not worship the Creator, then he does in some way or other worship the creature, and that creature probably is himself. And then I put a couple of paragraphs down here that, again, that Mule talked about. Years ago, when I was teaching this before, this question hit me. It said, could we say that this is the real path to homosexuality? I would say, yeah, it is.

Romans 1, 26 and 27. In this graphic but most severe sketch of humiliating picture which the classics fill up in so different a tone, the weaker vessel becomes first. The apostle does not stoop to characterize them, though the greatest and highest sages of earth, the monarchs, the conquerors, the poets, the philosophers were not as men and women, but as females and males characterized by ways below the brute given up by God, even now and during the just rewards of their deeds. So God has repeated here, and we'll do the third one next week, this phrase, God gave them over. And these verses are really convicting. The awful arrangement of humanity in chapters 1, 2, and 3, together with the particular account of their apostasy and lost condition, how terrible it is. This is not a description of the final great throne judgment of the damned and lost. This is right now. The Son of Man came to seek and to save those which are lost. That's where we live right now.

Such were some of you, Paul says. To Paul the Corinthians, after an enumeration of these, telling them that people that do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God, effeminate and abusers of themselves with men, the very kind of sinners described in our chapter here, and that they had been delivered over.

But God has sent his Son to seek and save those who were lost. He doesn't want to give them over. He wants to save them. So we need to distinguish this part of the salvation of God's plan through Christ. from the day in Revelation where the great white throne judgment will take place in Revelation 20. The lusts indeed will remain and probably intensify. Like Revelation says, let that that is filthy, let him be made filthy forevermore. but the ability to indulge lust will be eternally removed. So what's interesting is that if you take verses like this and you kind of take them apart, the debauchery, the wilfulness, the propensity for sin is so the work of Christ on the cross as Savior to die. That's why he had to die. He had to separate from that entire creation wherein dwells righteousness. So let's close.

Father, how we thank you. How we thank you. How gracious you are to us and for us that you sent your Son to save us and to rescue us from this kind of of turning over to ourselves, how awful a thought that is. But we rejoice in the grace that you have sent our way and that you have saved us by grace alone. We pray in your Son's precious name. Amen.