With all the religion in the world, do those in those religions ever question what they believe and demand proofs?
I don't think they do. I think true Christians do. They want to see, this is the reason for my faith. This is why I believe.
These things are irrefutable, the prophecies alone. But other religions just sort of take it in as, well, we've been told this and we're going to do this. That brings no honor to God. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Mechanicsville, Virginia. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Romans, so please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Let's join Pastor Rick in Romans chapter one for a brand new message called The Ugly Planet. Romans chapter one verses 24 and 25.
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 worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. The Ugly Planet, that's the title for this message.
It goes along with what we started last week with the damage report. How bad is the damage that sin has inflicted on the human race? And of course we cannot measure it, but God knows, but we can see a lot of its work. We live in a world, and this has been the case since sin has entered, a world on fire, determined to impel itself on the sword of God. I mean, it's just the behavior of some human beings, it's mind-boggling. So, original sin has inflicted much damage on humanity, and this due to the meddling of the devil. Depravity has left man with this ugly planet. When God created the world, and He created the humans, He said it was good, He liked it. But sin then followed, and now things are not the way they were made to be.
This can have a happier ending, it's up to the individual. This section in Romans showcases the handiwork of Satan, of evil. The mastermind behind the evil in the world is the devil, and he always finds those who are willing to be useful to him. Unbelief is behind it all, and unbelief is more than a theological subject, it is a reality that damns souls. It picks a fight with God. To the Jews, Isaiah the prophet, addressing unbelief in the people who were called to be the people of God, he says in the 65th chapter, a people who provoked me to anger continually to my face, who sacrifice in gardens and burn incense on altars of brick. They're picking a fight with God to his face, because they don't believe. They don't believe what God has revealed, when they have every reason to believe what God has said. Unbelief is the number one tool of the greatest human hater that has ever been, and that is Satan.
Many people don't believe in God and they don't believe in Satan, and Satan just loves it. God does not. Jesus was addressing religious leaders who did whatever the devil wanted them to do, and they would have argued that we're not doing it, but the scripture was against them. He said, you are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.
Where does this stuff come from? We just pointed it out to us. The wrath of God shows us that the great truth of God's judgment is very real, and we start, well, we didn't start, but Paul, when he started the section on teaching, in verse 6 of Romans chapter 1, and then he gets to verse 18 and says the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. There is a such thing as the wrath of God, and there is a such thing as the unbelief of man. A world on fire, determined to impel itself on the sword of God. We Christians are supposed to help people not do that, and it takes more than just learning your Bible, it takes more than just going to church and having communion and serving in the church.
There are many parts to this, and each one of them is vital. This is why it is so disappointing to see loony bin Christians who behave outside of scripture and insist that this is okay. Yeah, well, they're turning off people.
Rational people look at irrational behavior regardless of who it's coming from and are repelled by it. So the damage report continues in this section where Paul is going to list the depravity found in those who are provoking God. Now there are other lists in the New Testament for both those against God, but there are also lists for those who call themselves Christians. Paul will itemize here and there, hey, don't do this because Christians are doing it. After reading the Gospels, why would any Christian have to be told to forgive? I mean, once you read what Christ has done for you, do you not want to give some of that to others?
But yet it has to be done. The same thing with other sins. Why does Paul have to tell Christians not to lie?
Because Christians lie. This is a very real fight we're involved in, but we should have the upper hand. And we do get the upper hand. When you see someone convert and come to Christ and then persevere in the faith, there's the upper hand. And Satan, he can't stand that. And so he does all he can do to seduce us away from the simple things of our faith. Well, the Bible says this is the real deal and you better be listening.
Now let's look at the details. God is in these details. Verse 24, therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness in the lust of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves. What good can God possibly do for the one who insists on opposing him? And yet this is practiced as though it was one of the Ten Commandments. People who are just totally disinterested in God, even opposed him, still expect to somehow be blessed in life with all the religion in the world. Do those in those religions ever question what they believe and demand proofs?
I don't think they do. I think true Christians do. We want to see this is the reason for my faith. This is why I believe.
These things are irrefutable, the prophecies alone. But other religions just sort of take it in as well we've been told this and we're going to do this. That brings no honor to God. In Isaiah the prophet said come God speaking through him, come let us reason.
Use the brains I created you to apply, to avail yourselves of. Three times in this little section that we have before us, verses 24 through 32, we are told that God gave up on those who turned on him. Now when you have a short section like this and you have something repeated, God is emphatic. He's emphasizing. Don't miss this. Here in verse 24, God gave them up to uncleanness.
Fine, you want to make your bed lie in it. And then he's accused somehow miraculously or magically God is vilified for treating human beings as though they have a brain, as though they can reason. Emphasizing God's deliberate response to humanity's wicked ways is in that statement.
God gave them up. He is not indifferent to the stubborn life, to the stubborn life of sin. So I'm going to read a couple of them because they're all over the scripture and as we go through this section you'll hear it repeated.
It's baked into the passages that we have before us but I'm going to go to other sections to reinforce what the Holy Spirit is saying to man. In Psalm 81, God says, But My people would not heed My voice, and Israel would have none of Me. So I gave them over to their own stubborn heart, to walk in their own counsels. Then I again, Isaiah, So I will choose their delusions, God speaking, and bring their fears on them.
Because when I called, no one answered. When I spoke, they did not hear. But they did evil before My eyes and chose that which I do not delight. Then Jeremiah rings in, Here, O earth, behold, I will certainly bring calamity on this people, the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not heeded My words nor My law, but rejected it. These are the things that make the planet ugly.
It is an ugly planet because of sin. Then finally we come to the New Testament and we have this New Testament dynamo, Stephen, pointing to this Old Testament truth that it was still alive and functioning in New Testament times. And to this day, Acts chapter 7, he points back to the days of Moses. He says, They made a calf in those days, offered sacrifices to the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands. Then God turned and gave them up to worship the host of heaven. Well, this, of course, they killed Stephen for saying these things, the very group that Jesus said, You are of your father the devil.
They would have none of that. You are not allowed to point out evil. There are those that are offended when I say, Hamas incarnate Satan. You are not allowed to say that. And that is more Satan.
That is Satan on top of Satan. And it happens, and we need to be mindful of it and not back down from it. Satan wants to choke us out.
We don't have to let him do that. God allows people to sin, and God allows people to repent. Don't go laying on God that he's unfair somehow because life is unfair. Life is unfair because it's cursed because man entered into sin. But it's not going to stay that way.
The choice is up to the individual. And allowing people to believe what they want to believe somehow makes God wrong. And yet if he forced them to believe, they'd charge them with that. Jesus said, You know, we came, we sang a dirge for you and you did not mourn. We sang a melody for you and you did not dance.
We can't win with you people. Well, that doesn't mean that we should be impatient or give up. It just means we should be mindful of the damage that has been done. He says here in verse 24, In the lust of their hearts. Verse 26 will tell us this is an inordinate lust.
This is not just, boy, I really want something. This is just lust that is out of control. Sin always runs deeper than the flesh. It's illustrated for us in Levitical laws. The Levites were the ones that were supposed to identify someone that had leprosy and make their decision based on whatever their findings were. There was a whole protocol put in place, Leviticus 13. Leviticus 14 is the solution to the leper. But the leprosy also is a metaphor used as metaphor for sin. And there in Leviticus 13 tells us that the leprosy runs deeper than the skin.
Yeah, it gets inside. Sin gets deep in to our existence and makes fools out of all of us if we allow it. Well, the antidote of course is Christ. And it says here to dishonor their bodies among themselves.
And so he's beginning to lay out the details behind his statements. In the lust of their hearts to dishonor their bodies amongst themselves. They're plunging deeper into darkness. In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus talks about a man that was delivered from a demon, which the world conveniently thinks does not exist. Listen, there is evil that takes place on this planet you cannot attribute to just bad people. And again, this is the third time I'm referencing them, but Hamas, you cannot say that's just a bunch of people at war. There's something spiritually vile there going on.
And you would have to be blind, drunk, crippled, and crazy all at the same time to miss that. It's super evil. And the person that wants to defend them is just as guilty.
Nobody wants to hear this. Anyway, this man was delivered from a demon. And then Jesus warns through this parable, he says, you better watch out. Being delivered from evil is not enough. Well, the demon is cast out and he looks for a place to dwell.
He can't find one in the parable. And so he comes back to the man that he was thrown out. And that's where Jesus continues. He says, then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself. And they enter and dwell there.
And the last state of that man is worse than the first. Okay, that's the point I'm making that this lust is, that they're plunging deeper into darkness. But then Jesus adds this, so shall it also be with this wicked generation.
He's saying, behind the parable is a truth that's stronger than the parable. It is a fact that there's a real hell and it wants you. It hates you, but it will use you and kill you.
First chance it gets. That's what happened to Judas Iscariot. Mercy shown to our own lust is cruelty to ourselves. We, you know, we have to deal with it. Certain things about ourselves, certain, you know, maybe getting bonded to something.
We've got to deal with that, but we cannot excuse it. Verse 25, continuing with about those who are given up, God is saying, you know, that's it, I'm done with you. You want the evil?
Then to have it. So verse 25 now, who exchange the truth of God for the lie and worship and serve the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. Well those opposed to the God of creation swap oftentimes, especially in Western civilization, science-less science. Instead of believing God, we're just going to follow that which is not science. We're going to call it science. Has no proof, nothing to support it. It's a theory.
It's a theory that has been destroyed by science. Yet they continue nonetheless. Proverbs chapter one, they would have none of my counsel and despise my every rebuke. Therefore, they shall eat the fruit of their own way and be filled to the full with their own fancies. Paul's going to talk about how full of evil the world can be and the people of it. When Antichrist comes along, he's going to do some lying signs and wonders and the ones that are going to be foolish enough to believe him are the ones that don't want to believe God. Paul writes about that.
He says that he does these lying wonders with unrighteous deception among those who perish because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved. I don't know how many becausees you've picked up already. If we were to do a word, I forgot what they call it. You put all these words in and the dominant words come up to the front. How many of what I've already said has because. There's a reason for these things. Life is not random. So, as I advance again through this study, listen to the warnings that God gives because they are invitations. God's not just saying well I'm warning you but there's no, you're stuck anyway.
He's saying I'm warning you because the warning is designed to alert you to change your behavior. And this Satan that hates humanity, he does nonetheless enlist people to saturate the planet with lies and thus the ugly planet it becomes spiritually destabilized, morally diseased. And we hear people complain about it without a solution. We hear a complaint about it but they're part of the problem. Some boast that truth can't be known.
Is that true? I mean think about it. There's those relative to one's understanding. Tell that to a victim of a grotesque crime. There are ways that truth demands that you accept it. Pain is one of them.
And there are many forms of pain. The longer you put off receiving Christ, the easier it becomes to reject Christ. And you might not even know it. You've just gotten good at waiting for the right moment, for the right sermon or whatever else.
And in the meantime there's a very real Satan seducing you and your heart is hardening and you don't even know it until it's too late. Why should someone in this country get to hear the gospel preached to them hundreds of times just for them to reject it when you have other people who've never heard the gospel? They don't get a chance to hear the gospel.
Truth is a great separator and we are to bring the truth. Truth will establish friendship with God and falsities will separate from God. And the church is supposed to overcome lies with truth. This is what makes it so damaging when churches behave goofy. We're supposed to be bringing truth and some churches are just so preoccupied with trying to get their attendance up.
That's not the truth. Unless, you know, certainly you want to see more people come in and listen to the scripture but not at the cost of watering down the word. 1 Timothy 3.15, the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
Do you know how high of an assignment that is? How much has God entrusted his people with? Church is a big deal and Satan wants to change that. He says here, in worship and serve the creature. Creature worship violates the first commandment. Thou shall have no other gods before me. Well, to get a God in the presence of the true God, you've got to make one up.
You have to create one. So you have a created being creating a God which cannot possibly, by definition, be a part of a thing and be greater than a thing itself sort of a thing. The foundational ingredient of all paganism and heathenism is false religion, is creature worship, is being focused on man-made things. And they enslave people. They appeal to their sensuality and their false sense of spirituality and they damn souls.
And so he says here, and worship and serve the creature rather than the creator. Man is smugly gypping himself. Many, those who just, you know, I choose to believe that, you know, this random event happened and with all of the sophistication that is involved in life and creation, I choose to dismiss all that. Well, you're being gypped. You're falling for something.
You're being cheated. It's sort of like I sold the family cow for these magic beans. And the magic beans are not magical at all.
The fairy tale ends right there. And God tells man to not worship the stars that created things. Not to worship animals, the eagles and the bears and all this other stuff.
And yet man does not, many don't want to hear it. Deuteronomy 4. I would rather this, I would rather what I'm about to read from Deuteronomy than bowing down to an eagle or a deer that I, that I'm going to eat or something. Deuteronomy 4 and take heed, well let me pause. Now some would say oh that's, that's just an insult to other people's religion.
Yeah, that's right. Because if you're going to believe things that have no basis in truth, then what is the alternative? A compliment? Encouragement? Especially in the face of a God who is saying I'm going to deal with this. There is a wrath that I'm going to let loose on this kind of behavior.
I would be your enemy if I urged you, oh just keep doing it. That's your folk religion? Oh how nice.
What else do you have? Well I'd rather this, God speaking through Moses, take heed, listen up, lest you lift your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven, you feel driven to worship them and serve them, which Yahweh your God has given to all the peoples under the whole heaven as a heritage. I've given these things to you. They're a blessing to you.
Not to worship, they didn't make you, they have no power. This stuff creeps into Christians. You find Christians, you know, I'll just pick one, you know, we don't believe in luck. There's no super force of luck, the God of luck out there operating. We believe that, you know, there are laws of physics, you know, I can drop a penny on the floor and it lands on its edge.
That's very rare, but it's physics, it's not magic. Well anyway, who is blessed forever, amen. So here he begins to lay out in his damage report things that are wrong and then he has this outburst of praise because he knows his God is right and for all people. God is not diminished by man's stupidity. God is worthy of limited, limitless adoration.
You cannot over worship God. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.
We're currently going through the book of Romans. If you're in need of hearing this message again or want to listen to others like it, head over to crossreferenceradio.com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast too so you'll never miss another edition. Just go to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. On our website you'll be able to learn a little more about the ministry of Cross Reference Radio, so make a note of it, crossreferenceradio.com. That's all we have time for today, but thanks so much for listening. Pastor Rick will be back next time in the book of Romans here on Cross Reference Radio.
