Filled with All Unrighteousness

So today's verses are really, really, I must say, they were a struggle. Because not only from the 21 things that we'll go through today in terms of sins, but when you think about the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the righteousness of God. That's the great thesis of God's communication to us.

The person of Christ and God's righteousness. The Lord Jesus revealed, has been revealed as our Deliverer. He is the Son of God and He claims obedience by faith. The other, still on the principle of faith, revealed as the ground on which man could have part in purpose blessing through grace. The revelation of God's righteousness is designed specifically for us to get in on the deal, rather than put it, I don't know a better way to put it. What God has proposed is that all of who God is in His righteousness will be part of that, if you believe Him. So, Paul turns to what made the righteousness of God necessary to us, and that's why I've had Jim read verse 18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness."

It's interesting. The most important people ever have been in the world, whether they're governments or whatever they are, starting back in the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Romans, Israel, or the leading Jews in the captive of Babylon, a thing of this world, while God was hidden behind the veil. Now what I mean by that is the wrath of God had not been revealed until Christ and His cross. He stayed behind the veil.

So, we have a situation in our relationship with God, is that God is who He is and He doesn't change. And He says, look, because of your sin, I want you to understand that you This verse tells us, as human beings, we are totally incompatible with God's nature and His relationship to evil. He has no relationship to evil, none, because He's righteous unto Himself and He's holy.

So God's wrath is revealed against everything that's inconsistent with His nature. from wrath in heaven against all ungodliness, all of it, not just a little bit of it, all of it. And where the truth was known, and men might seem to be nearer to God like the Jews thought they were, if held in unrighteousness, wrath was against those who held it also." In other words, you study the Old Testament and you find that some of these supposed Jewish leaders really were unrighteous people. And God's wrath is going to be revealed against them. Where the truth was known, and it was known, men, like I said, might seem to be nearer to God. Wrath against all ungodliness is revealed from heaven. Jew, Gentile, men of every condition came under the judgment. And that's where we are for the last 2,000 years, the revelation of who God really is. It was hidden pretty much until before then. Do you ever think about this? God's nature can't even admit to evil. It can't even go there.

There may be dispensational ways, there may be governments, there may be God was patient, but once the wrath is revealed from heaven, which it has been, all evil now is found out. So, Paul then shows them what ground this judgment went against all men, every single man.

And as we get into some of these 21 things, I know what you're going to think. You're going to think, well, maybe I'm guilty of fourteen of them, or I'm better than the rest of those guys, maybe only seven. But no, every one of us is guilty of all of it, and hopefully I can explain why. And as we go through, next week I'll go into Romans chapter 2 and talk about demoralizing human beings, and then Roger will pick up and start talking about not only the moralizers, but the Jews.

The Jews thought they were better than everybody else. But the problem is, if they knew God, and they didn't honor Him of God, and they all knew from the creation, but they wouldn't retain God in their knowledge. He wasn't part of what they wanted to think about. And all that knowledge was given to them all the way up through Noah at the end of chapter 1.

So, in Romans 1.19.20, it says, Because that which is known of God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them." I can remember thinking, well, that's okay, that's not a big deal. It's a big deal with God, because if He goes through the trouble to reveal Himself, He expects a response. For since the creation of the world, His invisible, God's invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through that which was made, so that they are without excuse.

You have to accept God's word about that. They are without excuse. And then in verse 21, for even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, and they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish hearts were darkened. They turned the glory of an incorruptible God into images like birds Beasts and reptiles, and we talked all about that last week. So how did God respond? Well, He says three times in these verses, and we'll get the third time today, God gave them up. Is that scary to think about that, that God gave you up? And when He did, what did we find out last week?

That they degraded themselves. in vileness. The first thing they did is not honor their own body. They degraded into idolatry right away. And they did all of that knowing that God was going to judge them. So every single human being that's born has a tendency built into him because he comes from Adam, to be unrighteous and godless.

And as you grow and mature, at no time can you stand before God and say, well, I really didn't know. God says, yeah, you did know. I showed you. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to And I quoted the New King James, and just as they did not approve to have God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a disapproved mind, or a mind that just didn't work like it's supposed to. To practice things which are not befitting His creatures. Or the New American Standard says to do things which are not proper. God gave them over.

And simply put, what God said, you have a choice. You can choose me or you can choose you. And if you choose you, this is what you're going to get. And that's what we're going to look at today. This is what you get when you choose you. This is the third time in four verses, five verses, that God says God gave them over. And this time, it's a settled state. And He gave them over to a reprobate mind.

They can't think straight. There's really an irony, too, if you're looking at the manner of speech in the Greek language. that it should be brought out as well as in the English would allow. I'll quote a couple of commenters. I thought they did a good job.

Elthar translates this, because they reprobated the knowledge of God, God gave them over to a reprobate mind. Honeybear reads, as they thought fit to cast out knowledge of God, God gave them over to an outcast mind. William Newell says we might render it this way, to a mind disapproved of God since they didn't approve of knowing God in the first place. Now this next couple of slides and things I'm going to go through starting here I got it all from, thanks to Roger, from Kenneth Wiest.

I thought he did a magnificent job right here. If you don't, we've talked about this word dokimas before. Remember how that, and parasmas? Both of them mean to test. Parasmas means I'm going to test you so that you'll fail. Dokimas means I'm going to test you to approve you. So when we look at, in this word, did not see fit, that they did not see fit to acknowledge God, they're testing God. To put to the test for the purpose of approving and finding out that the person tested meets the specifications prescribed for one's approval or not.

We do that with people we meet. We get to know them a little bit. We're testing them and they're testing us. Are they going to meet our approval? Are we going to meet their approval? What did the human race do? The whole race. They put God to the test for approving Him. Should He meet the specifications which they laid down for a God who would be to their liking in finding that He did not meet those specifications? So what did mankind do? It refused to approve Him as the God to be worshipped and to have Him in its knowledge. When I saw that in Wiest, I thought, how dare they? Who do they think they are?

That's what you get when you get one of those minds we're talking about. A couple of word explanations here. Knowledge is the word epinosis. Full and precise knowledge. Robertson says that they had a dim memory that was a characterization. A reprobate mind is a... if you take a Greek word and you put an A in front of it, It makes it a negative word. So, a-document noun, the human race put God on trial, and because it rejected Him after the trial, God gives the race a trial-less mind, incapable of discharging the function of a mind with respect to the things of salvation. That's really cool how he phrased that. And then he quotes Denny, he said, as they did not think it fit after the trial made to keep God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a mind which cannot stand trial. The one thing answers to another. They pronounced I want to make sure I'm in the right... Yeah, bottom paragraph.

They pronounced the true God as Adakimos and would have none of Him. And He, in turn, gave them up to an Adakimos mind. It's like you don't mess with God because He'll give you your medicine right back. A mind which is no mind, and cannot discharge functions of one. A mind in which the divine distinctions of right and wrong are confused and lost, so that God's condemnation cannot but fall on it at last."

That's what he gave him up to. Now you notice, God isn't acting proactive here in the sense of, well, you did this and so I'm going to hammer you here, here and here. He just says, oh, is that what you want? That's what you get. And here's what you get, because I'm going to give you up to what you want. It's really kind of scary when you think about God says, OK, you can have what you want.

Oh, I probably didn't want to have that once I got into it. And when he talks about convenient, he talks about something not fitting or proper. Roberson says, here's how he put it, I thought this was good, like an old abandoned building, the home of bats and snakes. left to do the things which are not fitting, like the nightclubs of modern cities, the dives and dens of the underworld, without God, in darkness of unrestrained animal impulses."

That was the technical term of the Stoics. That's what God gave them over to. Verse 29 says, "...being filled with all unrighteousness, all greed, all evil, without natural affections. On and on it goes. And it's interesting if you say, well, gee, how would you describe the life that one was given over to? You'd say, to live lives, to think thoughts, to be such creatures as are not befitting the universe blessed by God. And most particularly, not befitting man, who was the creator, who created them in God's image. A quote from William Newell. Man as a responsible man has failed. It could not be any other way, and man is under the judgment of God. If he bore the judgment on himself, it would mean the end of the entire race of mankind. And they would be in misery forever.

So, let's get into the 21 things. Kind of interesting. Verse 29 says, And being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice. And then he says they are gossips. being filled is a perfect tense, which means it's a completed action in the past with abiding results that go on into the future. They're filled, full, and they're always going to be full of this. It won't be less. It won't be 50%.

So the list of evils that are followed, we must keep in mind that man-filled himself, such as might well make a heart recoil and whore." As I got about to this point, I got to thinking, well, we don't think of ourselves that way, do we? Do we look at unsaved mankind in the way that God is going to say to them, here's who you really are, We don't look at them that way. And one of the reasons we don't comes up in the next verses, and it's because, well, I have a moral code, and I follow that moral code, so I'm better than the guys here, these 21 things. Or if I'm a Jew, I'm a lot better than the rest of humanity, because I have the law.

I want you to notice three things as we go through this. There are nine phases of development of the human sin. And it talks about not only the human sin, but the kind of people that it makes. The fearful human conspiracy or agreement of wickedness of man against God.

They're not fooling around. They mean it. So man is not a natural, self-controlled man, as he would have us all know. Don't we all think that we're natural and self-controlled? And we boast of being, we have our act together, when in fact we really are a slave to sin. And notice the list.

It strikes particularly at the thoughts and the passions of the heart. Remember last week we talked about the difference between having a desire in the flesh as opposed to a desire in your heart? A desire in your flesh can be controlled, but if you have a desire in your heart, it can never be controlled. One of the things that we talked about was the fact that People will go to hell with the desires of whatever desire was top of their list. And they'll always have this desire, inordinate desire, through all eternity. And they won't ever be able to fulfill it. Because it won't go away. Because it's in their heart. So, it's interesting that wickedness in man is in his heart. That's really where it is.

So the evil displays itself openly in time. But God here discovers and exposes man's inner being, that which he is full of, the thoughts and the desires of his mind and his heart. So I got to thinking, did God reveal His wrath? In a sense he did, but not like he's done it here. If you take a look at the Old Testament, well, the cross which delivers a believer from the wrath to come, God used the law to prove man's enmity against him. That's really what he was doing.

The law worked personal wrath. It caused the offense to abound. Anybody who has any sense at all knows that if you try to keep a law, Sin will overpower you. It developed emotions of sins. It brought in death. It found out that the law strengthens sin. It deprived the sinner of all power. The law didn't give you the power to overcome sin. And finally, it slew him. And it condemned him. And it cursed all who had to do with it. As many as are the works of the law, they're under the curse. And all this, not because of any defect in the law, but because of man's total inability to keep it.

Israel's distinctive calling was to earthly blessing. Had they been obedient, what would they have gotten? They'd have been wealthy, powerful, lots of fame, prosperity, and they would have been the tokens of God's approval in all of their ways on the earth. By their disobedience, their idolatry, and especially their rejection of the Savior, they have come under inflictions of God's wrath. And that wrath has been manifested against them in all heavy temporal judgments which have overtaken them.

So we're dealing now, we're talking now about God and how He deals with a nation, not individuals. They're back in their country now. I'm recommending you spend a lot of time studying the Jewish situation today. But they can't find any peace. What are they doing over there now, fighting with the Palestinians and killing each other every day? So what happens to a Jew today?

As an individual, he's in common with all men, all of us. He's amenable to eternal judgment, and if not saved by grace through faith, the judgment will result in eternal ruin for him. But they had complete inner knowledge of the ways of God. And they persisted in the practices despite the witnesses and their conscience. And they are in fellowship with evil, just like all of other evildoers are.

So, I want you to go back to verse 28, back up one. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind. Ask yourself this. From God's perspective, is God worth knowing? God recognizes man as capable of knowing Him. But they didn't want to. So God says, alright, I'm going to turn you over to your depraved mind.

Is the word here talking about the abuse that we're about to talk about, abuse of natural desires of men? Or is it something more than that? Do you have a natural desire to eat? Do you have a natural desire to be loved? Do you have a natural desire to create children and a family? Those are all natural.

The problem is that what we're going to talk about is not natural, and they're not a natural appetites. God is not speaking of natural appetites here, and even the abuse of these. He's describing the state of unnatural appetites in which all normal instincts are left behind, And it's as significant that, as originally, women took the lead here also. That's what Newell says. Well, women lead in this too. He wouldn't make it politically today.

But it's interesting that in the middle of all of that, God can send a Savior and the Holy Spirit and save you out of that. On Tuesday, we've been studying the first four chapters of Revelation. We're in the part where the Lord Jesus is writing these letters to the seven churches. And in the process, we're listening to Chester McCauley. McCauley says, well, God has two things here. One is that He's talking to the churches on a corporate level.

And he's warning them that he'll, in essence, turn them over if they don't turn around. And they have a certain period in which God is not going to judge. He's going to wait for them to turn. And they never do. And from his perspective, they've all All seven churches have been turned over. But the individual is different. Each individual today, God will pursue you to the very last nanosecond. The very last. But what happens after that nanosecond? It's over. You know, God is slow to judge. But when the judgment comes, He's very swift.

So I thought that was applicable to what we're talking about here. So. So here we go, being filled. Keep in mind, as we go through these things, we're not. It's like you three over here don't have a little bit and you four over there have you're filled. This is everybody. The first four go together, being filled with all unrighteousness, characterized by a distaste for the truth. Unrighteousness. Filled with unrighteousness.

We can go back to verse 18 and talk about that. The next one is that you're filled with all wickedness, which means sinister, vile, It's a name given to Satan, the evil one, the kind of evil that solicits others. All greed, the root, the desire for more, more than one's due, the act of overreaching by selfish tricks.

In other words, one of the interesting things about greed was Well, when I first got married, I had a 1,200 square foot house. But after a while, that wasn't big enough. I had to get a bigger one. And what I learned being in the real estate business, no matter how big the house is you buy, when you first move in, you've got lots of space, but you're going to fill it up. And by the time you get ready to move again, you're going to have to sell stuff. Oh, I've got to buy a bigger barn. I've got to buy bigger.

I've got to have more. It's an insatiable desire for more. Bigger and better. The desire to be richer and have nicer things. You could put it this way. It's like having an invisible rubber bag that just keeps expanding. You can't fill it up because every time you jam something it expands more. all evil, desires to injure anyone who would inconvenience me.

I'm coming down here today, right? Donna says to me, why are you going so fast? You're passing this guy. I said, well, he's inconveniencing me. I want to get on the freeway and he's going too slow. And yesterday a guy calls me and we're talking and he's talking about having dinner in a restaurant. And something they served he didn't like. And he told the waiter he wasn't going to pay for it. And before it was over, everybody that worked at the restaurant was around his table. And his whole point was, I'm not going to pay for it because you inconvenienced me. Because that's evil. And you can't do that to me. And Donna said, coming down here this morning, you know, the richer you get, the more inconvenienced you seem to be.

Yeah, that's true. Perfect tense, filled at times past, remaining full. Even in the middle of this, God's grace is there and the Spirit of God is working through His Word to save those who would be saved. Got a few more. Full of envy. This is a neat one. hate that rises from the heart directed towards one who is above us, or maybe one who is what we are not, who possesses what we don't have or can't have, or one's path we cannot choose to follow. If you go read Matthew 27, 18, Pilate saw anew with pure envy The Jews regarded Jesus because they knew they couldn't be Him. They couldn't possess what He had. And everybody was turning and following Him, and they couldn't have that. The next one is full of murder. The Greek word here means slaughter.

I've said this a lot, and people look at me like, Boy, that's a dumb thing to admit. But if you make me angry because of something you did, I don't want to harm you just a little bit. I want to make sure you're not seen around here anymore. You know, I make this admission that I actually have murdered people in my mind my whole life until I became a believer.

Especially if you're in a business where you're competing, anybody who's in your way, you want them dead. You want them out of your way. So here's the Lord saying, oh yeah, you're full of murder. Full of it. And then a cute one called strife. It's discord, discourse, contention. It means to beat down.

1 Corinthians 3, Paul says to the Corinthians, and you are still fleshly, for since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly? Are you not walking like mere men? So, can I say, well, okay. I cause strife, but I would never murder anybody. Or, I've got a lot of envy, but I'd never murder anybody. Does that make me better? When God's Word tells me I'm full of these things? That's a little scary when you think about it. Now, deceit... This is really interesting. You ever get a phone call One of those robocalls.

And they say, push button six and you'll get a free vacation. Or whatever they're selling. What this word deceit means, it means fish bait. And in the middle of the fish bait, guess what's in there? A hook. So we're full of this little hook. Anybody who says, well, I'm going to give you free stuff, look for the hook. We all know that. I mean, we're always looking for the hook. I don't look for the hook. I just hang up on them. But advertising all has a hook, doesn't it? It's a hook. And there are people that spend their lives trying to hook you.

How about malice? It means bad character, taking all things in an evil sense. We all know people like that. The human heart loves to hear a failure, build them up to tear them down. You read, open up, get on the web this morning, look at the news, somebody's getting built up, and the first thought always hit my mind, well, about three weeks I'll be back at this page, and they'll be trying to destroy this person.

That's in the human They are gossips. And this word for gossip in Greek has a hissing sound to it, which means it's a snake. Isn't that interesting? It's snake-like. I know people that talk loud, and I can hear the whisper. Slanders, openly backbiters. And here's an interesting one. Haters of God. One word to feel and to show hatred. Haters of God is a single word in Greek. Haters of God. The real God. Insolent. I'd just love to insult you openly and harm you personally.

Now, I will say, that if you grow up like I did, I was in dorms a lot and then I was in the military, you're with a lot of men. In close confinement, there is this thing called banter. You know what banter is? It's kidding back and forth. That's not what this is. This is, I'm insulting you to openly hurt you. I want you to feel bad because of what I'm saying. Or arrogant. I want to shine above everybody else. I want you to notice me. Or boastful or braggarts. Or inventors of evil. I really like this one. Men came up with ideas that even God didn't come up with.

Look at Jeremiah 19.5. Man is better at thinking up evil than God is. That's what the verse says. Kind of an interesting picture so far, huh?

We're not done. Now these next five words all start with an A, which means disobedient to parents. The word obedience has an A in front of it. Disobedient to parents. We don't have any of that in our society, do we? I was disobedient to my parents and their parents were disobedient to their parents and back it went. Disobedient to parents is one of those interesting things where you just, I just don't want to listen.

We were at dinner with my colleagues on Friday night and my son John was sitting next to JD and they were talking about, we got into a conversation about stuff that John did when he was a teenager. Stuff that I've never heard about. Like wreck the car and how did you wreck it? And I always thought he slid off the road. He said, no dad, I was doing donuts and I'm pulling the handbrake.

Anyway, disobedience. Without understanding, without any moral understanding. Totally senseless. And this one is something every one of us run into every day, untrustworthy. We won't be bound by covenants. In other words, the reason we have contracts is because of this. You and I are going to sign a contract because I don't trust you and you don't trust me. So we're going to put it down and we're going to sign it. That's why we have contracts, because we're untrustworthy and we're unloving, without kindred feelings, without natural or family affections. And we're unmerciful. We have a wonderful, merciful God who has to deal with unmerciful men. He's so gracious to us and merciful. Now the last verse.

I put three translations here because I think it helps explain it. And we'll close with this. knew the ordinance of God that those who practice such things are worthy of death. So you just don't think them, you do them. They not only do the same, but they also give hearty approval to those who practice them. They applaud. All right. The New Living Translation says, they know God's justice requires that those who do such things deserve to die. Yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them too. Weymouth translation. In short, though knowing full well the sentence which God pronounces against actions such as theirs, as things which deserve death, they not only practice them, but even encourage and applaud others to do them.

My closing remark about this is just look what God has saved us from. By recreating us in Christ and giving us a resurrected life of the Lord Jesus Christ, this is who we were, not who we are. If you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ, this is who you are. This is who you are. So as we go forward now and talk about next week about cultured men. And Roger will talk about the Jews. Remember, this is where you start with man and God and his relationship. So let's close.

Father, how we love You and we thank You. You're so gracious to us and so merciful. We thank You for Your Savior. We thank You that You have called us to live with You in righteousness, in Your presence for all eternity. We pray in Your Son's precious name, Amen.