Expound: Romans 1:24-2:29 - Part B

We all have preferences and we all have proclivities for a number of different things. When we follow those propensities, proclivities and preferences is when we get into trouble.

On a daily basis we have to be saying no to certain things and yes to other things. But first, we want to let you know how you can stay updated on the latest from Skip and this ministry and get encouragement and important announcements on social media. Just follow Skip on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

That's at Skip Heitig. At Skip, H-E-I-T-Z-I-G. Now, we're in Romans Chapter 2 as we dive into our study with Skip Heitig. And yet, one morning, Cory and Betsy Ten Boom as sisters were having their little devotional Bible study together in prayer time.

And they happened to be reading that day 1 Thessalonians Chapter 5, verse 16, 17 and 18. Rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. Betsy closed her Bible, looked right into the eyes of her sister Cory and said, Cory, we need to stop right now and thank God.

Cory said, I won't do it. I refuse to thank God. I'm in a concentration camp, have you noticed? This place that we're sleeping in is flea infested. What, thank God for the fleas? That's what she said, thank God for the fleas.

Yet, what they noticed, unlike the other concentration camps, is they had a certain freedom in Ravensbruck to have prayer meetings and Bible studies. And they didn't know why. Until months later, they discovered the reason is the guards refused to come into their barracks because of the fleas, which awarded them a certain freedom for prayer and Bible study. What, thank God for the fleas?

Uh-huh. Nor were they thankful, but became futile or empty in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools. The word fools is a very interesting word in Greek, moros.

You know what that sounds like? It's exactly where the word comes from, morons. Professing themselves to be wise, they became morons.

And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things. It's ludicrous. It's even hilarious, were it not so eternally sad, how people look around at this universe and they don't get it. And they say, yeah, it's amazing how everything just so happened to be the way it is.

It's just one of those fortuitous occurrences of accidental circumstance. Really, you're telling me it just so happened that the temperature of the sun is 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit and that the earth is 93 million miles away from the sun, giving us the temperatures that we enjoy on the earth? If the earth was as close as Venus, we would all burn up.

If we were as far away as Mars, we would all die of, we'd freeze to death. You're telling me that just so happened? You're telling me it just so happened that the earth spins on its axis 365 and a third times as it makes its journey around the sun?

Why? Why not 30 times? If it was 30 times, our seasons would be 10 times longer than they are and life couldn't be sustained on this planet. The alternate freezing and burning would be too much, but it just so happened.

And what's really wild, it just so happened that the earth is tilted on its axis 23 degrees, which gives us those four seasons that we do enjoy. And it just so happened that the earth landmass to water mass is what it is. You know, they tell us that if the oceans were just an eighth larger, just an eighth more larger than they are. We would have four times the amount of rainfall on the earth and the earth would flood. If the oceans were half as much as they are, we would all on earth be in a drought.

You couldn't grow anything. But, yeah, it's amazing how it just so happened. It didn't just so happen. It was just so designed by God.

You have to be a moron to say it just so happened. At least according to Paul, professing to be wise, they became morons. They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man. Now, notice the progressive degeneration. They began making idols of human beings, men, and then birds, and then quadrupeds, four-footed beasts, and then creepy things, insects.

It didn't get any lower than that. If you go to India, I've been there five times. In their pantheon of gods, they have 33 million gods. I don't know how you keep track of that many gods. Now, they're not really gods or goddesses. They're fake.

They're made up. There's only one true living God. But if you go there and you see, even to this day, the grotesque forms of worship that people engage in in front of trees and statues and on the streets of these weird-looking gods and goddesses, you see this come to fulfillment. Therefore, verse 24, we better get going.

Oh, that was ketchup. Therefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness in the lust of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. Now, contrary to what people in universities, even high schools, general education will teach you, which is man started low and then gradually we ascend generation after generation, right? We start low, primitive man, and then now we're getting so sophisticated. That's what we think.

That's part of the lie. We actually started much higher and we fell. Mankind started who they knew God, but they didn't glorify him as God, and each successive step with each generation seems to betray that truth that we go from high to low. We go from familiarity with God to vanity, from vanity to idolatry, and from idolatry to immorality.

Notice this. For this reason, God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise, also, the men leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lust for one another, men with men, committing what is shameful and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error, which was due. An errant theology will lead to an errant sexuality, because when you get God wrong, you get humanity wrong. When you get humanity wrong, you get everything humanity does wrong. So it all begins with having the proper orientation Godward toward God.

When you get that wrong, that's where the degeneration process takes place. Now, I want you to notice something in verse 26. It says, For this reason, God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. The word nature is the word phusin in the Greek. We get the word physis from that, which means the created order or the natural order of things.

Now, watch what he does with the natural order in the very next verse. Likewise, also, the men leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lust for one another, men with men, committing what is shameful, receiving in themselves the penalty of their error, which was due. The Greek language is much more precise than the English language. It doesn't say men and women. It says, literally, male and female. And the Greek language is unmistakable.

The biological male and the biological female. So to give you a literal rendering of verse 27, likewise, also, the males leaving the natural use of the females, it's unmistakable what he's talking about, burned in their lust for one another, males with males, committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error, which was due. Now, Paul wrote the book of Romans from the city of Corinth. You know anything about Corinth?

Not a great place, a morally degenerate place. Just above the city of Corinth was the hill of Aphrodite, where a thousand priestesses left their temple in the evening and came down into the city to ply their trade. These prostitute priestesses would sell their bodies to men and would entice these men to worship the goddess of love, Aphrodite by the act of sex. So, when Paul writes to the Corinthians, so he wrote Romans from Corinth, listen to how he describes the Corinthians. Verse, I'm reading out of 1 Corinthians 6. I'll just read it to you. You don't have to turn there.

Don't have enough time. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. This was your background, Corinthians.

Such were some of you. But you were washed. You were sanctified.

You were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. So, we can never use a practice, a personal preference, or a personal proclivity as the will of God. That's my desire, that's what I wish, or that's the way I was born. Because if you tell me you do what you do because you were born that way, I'm going to say you're leaving the glory of God and exchanging it for the lie. We all have preferences and we all have proclivities for a number of different things. When we follow those propensities, proclivities, and preferences is when we get into trouble.

On a daily basis, we have to be saying no to certain things and yes to other things. So, back to Romans chapter 1, and even as they, verse 28, did not like to retain God in their thinking or their knowledge, God gave them over, there's that phrase again, God gave them over to a debased mind to do those things which are not fitting, being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness. They are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, listen to this list, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, sounds like I just read a modern newspaper from cover to cover.

Or news source, do they even have newspapers anymore? Digital news feeds, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful. But don't lose sight of this phrase, and God gave them over. Most of the time when we hear the word wrath, God's wrath, we have in our little minds like thunderbolts, like God's angry, that's the wrath of God. We fail to realize that part of the wrath of God is for him to give people what they say they want. Oh really, you want this?

Okay. Like in the Old Testament, they kept leaving the worship of Yahweh and Israel started syncretistically, that is bringing in with their worship system of Yahweh other gods and goddesses and kind of mixing it all together. And they built idols and they built altars and they worshiped in groves and God said stop that, don't do that, and kept giving them chance after chance after chance, eventually he said really, you want idolatry all that much? I'm going to make you go into captivity into the land of idolatry. You'll go to idolatry central, which is Babylon itself. And when they were in idol central, they cried out to God, God please deliver us, and after 70 years he did bring them back.

So part of the judgment of God is where he lets go. C.S. Lewis said you could take all of mankind and divide them into two groups.

You know, we did that last week, right? We said the Jews have two groups, the Greeks have two groups. C.S. Lewis says I can divide all of humanity into two groups. Group number one, those who say to God, thy will be done. Group number two, those to whom God, those that God says, your will be done. So you've got group number one that says God, your will be done.

Group number two, God says to them, your will be done. You can have what you say you want. And so when people say they want that long enough, God says okay, you can have it. And that marks the beginning of God's wrath that he has stored up by giving them what they say they want. That moral degeneration is a judicial act of God.

Let's finish out at least this chapter. Who knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but also approve of those who practice them. If you were to go 2,000 years ago to the Roman Colosseum, you would have thousands of people not killing anybody themselves, not throwing spears through people themselves. They wouldn't think of doing it. They wouldn't go home and throw a spear through each other. But they would happily go to the Colosseum and watch violence displayed in front of them. They would enjoy it vicariously. And they would applaud.

They would approve those who do such things. Yay! The guy got killed. The gladiator got gored by that bull. Awesome.

The lion tore him apart. Vicious, violent, cruel, horrible. Approving of those who do those things. Now, today, you can sit in your living room and you can stream a series on Netflix and you can see vice and sexuality and murder and applaud for the characters. Approving of them. You can say you approve because you pay for it.

You're paying the monthly fee to get that series downloaded. So we have to be very careful. So I would never do that, but I will applaud those who do that. Not only do the same, but also approve of those who practice them. Now, having gone through Chapter 1, painting that horrible picture of the pagan world, you would have a group of people listening to Paul and go, Paul, I agree with everything that you said, and point their finger at those pagans saying, those are bad people and they deserve God's judgment.

So while they point the finger, there are three fingers pointing back at them. And so Paul now addresses the moralists, those who have a higher standard than the pagan world in Chapter 2, verse 1. Therefore, you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another, you condemn yourself, for you who judge practice the same things. But we know the judgment of God is according to truth against those who practice such things. We are really good at pointing out other people's faults, while we ourselves have those faults.

I'm convinced that most of the postings on social media, the responses that people give, if they don't like a person, they'll say something and they'll point out why that person's wrong and hypocritical. But if you were to examine the personal life of the one who posted that, you would find the same thing. Remember what Jesus taught in the Gospel of Luke? He said, two men went up to the temple to pray, a Pharisee and a tax collector.

And the Pharisee prayed thus with himself. He said, God, I thank you that I'm not like other men. I'm not an adulterer. I'm not an extortioner.

And I'm not like that tax collector. He's praying this out loud to himself. He said, I fast twice a week.

I give tithes of all that I possess. So he's really talking himself up. He does not see his own sinfulness, his own problems.

He thinks he's great by what he does. And Jesus said, but the tax collector wouldn't even lift his eyes toward heaven. He stood afar off and he beat his breast and he said, oh, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Jesus said that man went away justified. This man is justifying himself, pointing the finger at people like that tax collector. The tax collector, Jesus said, is justified. So, yes, we can point fingers at people's behavior, but we can never pinpoint what's going on in their hearts.

Only God can. So one was pointing the finger at the tax collector. God was, Jesus was pinpointing the fact that in his heart, because he believed and he knew that he wasn't right before God and cast himself on God's mercy, he went away justified. So you who condemn another, don't you know you condemn yourself? We are hard on others and soft on ourselves when it comes to judgment, right?

You know that's just sort of a basic weakness we all have. We are quick to respond, that's wrong. And yet others, you know, we'll get in Christian circles. It seems it's okay to gossip and lie and slander.

But just don't smoke cigarettes or drink that beer. Wait a minute, that's incongruous, that's hypocritical, right? And this is what the self-confident moralist hopes, hopes that God will be soft on him, softer than he is on others because he's hard on others. He's hoping that God grades on a curve because he doesn't on earth.

You can take a situation and tweak it just a little bit, just change a couple of the details and here's an example. David committed adultery, didn't see that as sin at first until Nathan came to him and told him a story. He said, Nathan, there's this rich guy and, you know, he had all these sheep and he could have taken any one of them and killed one for supper. But there was a poor guy who had only one little ewe lamb, he loved that ewe lamb, it was the family pet.

They took it to bed at night, groomed it, washed it. And the rich guy thought, I'm not going to go on my flock and get a lamb for supper for my guests. I'm going to take that poor man's ewe lamb and kill it. And we'll have dinner. And so Nathan's telling this to David and David gets all red in the face and angry and he goes, that man will die. Nathan said, really? Well, you ought to know you are the man.

You're that guy. You have all these wives. You have all this wealth. God said he would have given you more if you'd only asked for it, but you took one man's wife and you slept with her. Then David broke down and said, I've sinned against God.

Now he saw it. That's Skip Heitzig with a message from the series Expound Romans. Right now, we want to share about a resource that will nourish your soul with God's amazing truths. Joy in the midst of hardship is a hallmark of the Christian life.

But is it really possible? Here's Lenya Heitzig. Sometimes what starts out as a happy trail turns into a really daunting road and we have to figure out how to navigate. A lot of times God's purpose in allowing trials is to give us opportunities to grow to the point where we genuinely experience joy in the midst of trials. Learn how to face trials with courage, wisdom, and yes, joy with Lenya's booklet, Happy Trials. And when you give twenty dollars or more today to help keep this Bible teaching ministry on the air, we'll send you a special bundle of three booklets by Lenya. Happy Trials, Don't Tempt Me, and Speak No Evil. Get your bundle of three booklets for a gift of twenty dollars or more by calling 800-922-1888. Or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer.

That's connectwithskip.com slash offer. Tune in tomorrow as Skip Heitzig shares insight with you about God's goodness and loving patience. Hey, when you see God being patient with somebody else, don't mistake that.

God isn't being lenient with that person. He's being patient with that person. He was patient with you. He gave you a break. You now believe in Jesus. There was a time you weren't following Him. You were blowing it big time. You're falling in your face.

You're doing all sorts of nasty stuff. And now you're a believer. Hallelujah. Make a connection. Make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection. Connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.