The Ugly Planet (Part B)

Basically, wickedness is the hatred for God's way.

That's wickedness. It hates the God of the Bible. I find this is the only God, the God of the Bible is the only one that backs himself up in a sense of proof. Where's the proof for Islam? Its insistence. How about Mormonism?

How about Jehovah's Witnesses? Charles Russell just comes along and says, do this. To hear more information about Cross Reference Radio. Specifically, how you can get a free copy of this teaching. The Ugly Planet is the title of Pastor Rick's message.

He'll be continuing his teaching in Romans Chapter 1. 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. It's 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? The 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 god. Part of the thing can't be greater than the thing itself, sort of a thing. A foundational ingredient of all paganism and heathenism is false religion, is creature worship, is being focused on man-made things. And these, 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'm going to eat or something. Deuteronomy 4, and take heed, well let me pause. Now some would say, well 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's 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? Why 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, 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 limitless adoration. You cannot over worship God.

You're not going, well, I've worshiped him so much, I'm having a toxic reaction. I mean, you can be overly religious. That's not the same thing. Religion is what you do with what God has done. And your religion can go foul. But if you adhere to what the scriptures teach, because the scriptures teach, do not be overly religious. But that doesn't mean I can praise God too much in the sense of its value. Yes, if I walked around doing it as a so-called mantra, then you've got a problem. But that's not what God wants.

In fact, he warns against that. Don't be bringing before me vain repetitions. So, verse 20, remember, all we Christians, we're dumb. We don't know what we worship. We're just walking around, you know, religion is the opiate of the masses. Consider the people who came up with that line. Well, what is unbelief?

If religion is an opiate, what is disbelief? Well, coming back to this, verse 26, for this reason God gave them up to vile passions, for even their women exchanged the natural use of what is against nature. Where he says for this reason, he's saying that God's not random. Ezekiel 18, 14, 23. Everything I've done, I've done with a cause. We contrast this going against God with Psalm 91.

There's a because there also. And for this reason of Romans 1, 26 is a because. Psalm 91, 14, because he has set his love upon me, therefore I will deliver him. I will set him on high because he has known my name. That's what God wants.

He wants a relationship. He wants to bless those that have a relationship. And if having a relationship with God, reaching out to save souls gets you killed, you will be delivered. At death, you will be so welcomed, so enjoyed in heaven, it's totally worth it, ergo the word worship.

God gave them up, it says here in verse 26, this is the second one, we'll get the third in verse 28. God's not going to hold people at gunpoint to accept him. He controls the boundaries of rejection and he controls the boundaries of acceptance, repentance. He makes a way for man to come to him. And you know, if not, you are. Can a man take fire to his heart and not be burned to his bosom and not be burned, it goes to Proverbs from the book of Proverbs. If you believe in magic, but if you believe in reality, you're going to set yourself on fire. How many times does God give a person a chance to come to him?

A lifetime. He says here, for this reason God gave them up to vile passions, the super-sized lust that I referred to earlier. Homosexuality is where he's going with this and more. By the way, gender is permanent. The Bible does not care about what the world's value system is. The Bible doesn't say, oh, you like that instead?

Okay, let's change then. It's sort of like the bad guy that thinks the cops are just going to go away. You ever see that? It's like they're going to just give up on the guy. No, they're not. If anything, they're going to call reinforcements. But you're going to jail.

At least you're going to be arrested. And so by the people, do they really expect the Bible to say, okay, man, what can I edit on your behalf? We read earlier about the prophet Isaiah saying the people did not want to come under his authority. They did not want to be accountable to God.

So people try taking out their hatred of God on the people who agree with God. You agree with God that homosexuality is a sin? Yep, and so is murdering and stealing and lying. There are a lot of other ones too.

But because you're homocentric, you can't see anything else. That's why you're now a militant. Many of them are. Certainly not all, but it's all a sin. He says here, Paul does, for even their women exchange the natural use for what is against nature.

Nature, not mother nature, but the creation. The vile passions. Verse 27, 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. How many churches you think would never read that out loud today?

This is clear as a bell. There's nothing in that verse that you would say, well, what does that mean? God's commentary on this particular sin, the sin of homosexuality, and they're not sponsoring it. We're to love, of course, but they get to appoint the militant homosexuals.

They don't care that you love them. They just want to force you to accept and celebrate what they do. But the reality is this, we're not going to sweep it under the rug and create a trip hazard for you to go to hell.

We're going to be right up front. Genesis 19 is a whole section on this particular sin. Sodom and Gomorrah was not destroyed because they had a lot of scammers telemarketing people or something. We know what the sin was. Then you get to Judges 19 and 20, and not only do you find that sin out of control, but you find those who weren't committing that sin dying to allow the others to commit that sin. So the likewise here in verse 27 indicates, it connects it to verse 26, this is the subject, homosexuality, and this is not a sickness, but a sin against God. Now, lost souls want Christians to disagree with God and classify this particular sin as a sickness, and they have some other sins they've also added to the mix. Well, because of its ability to imprison people, there are similarities between bondage to homosexuality and sickness, but it's still a sin, and a sin is far worse than any sickness could ever be. A sickness will not send you to hell.

See, that's the difference. A sin can. So no one who was in hell because I got sick and I ended up here.

That's not going to be how it ever goes. It will be sin. You missed the mark that God set, and now you have no excuse if you have no savior. Well, Satan is always trying to downplay sin, and he gets away with it. That's why we live in this goofy society where you've got college kids insisting you can't define what a male and female is.

It's so crazy. You have to say there's demonic activity there, because no one is that dumb without a devil, and of course the devil that they insist does not exist. They would like me to take them to task, and I would like to take them to, but I'd like to take them to heaven. That's what I'm out for. And so those siding with such sins as homosexuality, what if you have somebody, the arguer, you know, Paul warned Titus, he said watch out for those who just stir up strife and contentions and endless arguments. What does that look like? Well, here's one.

I've never come across this, but here's how it works, the mechanics of it. What if I said to you the Bible teaches that serial killing is acceptable? And then you say, okay, where do you get that from? This is the twisting of the scripture. Well, Samson killed a thousand men at one time. Well, that ain't serial killing.

That was war, number one. But that's the end of the conversation, because nobody that dumb can hit you. But this is what you run into, people who are very, you know, they're good at arguing. Being wrong doesn't matter. They feel that they dominate the conversation if you cannot instantly answer such examples as I just gave you.

What if you couldn't answer them? What if you said, yeah, well, he did kill a lot of guys at one time, and it's a serial of deaths. I guess the Bible does. I mean, of course it doesn't. What about the rest of the Bible anyway?

Anyway, Sodom's citizens, the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah, they would have totally approved of renaming Sodomy the gay life. But God is saying, look, I'm not trying to hurt you. I'm trying to help you. And if it hurts because you're against me, it's going to hurt a lot more after this life. And that's why I have my church, the pillar and ground of truth, to throw you the lifeline that so many others before you and like you have taken and are saved and in heaven. Right now, as I'm speaking, there's an innumerable amount of people in heaven that were involved in every sin under the sun. But they're saved, and now they're safe.

And this is available to everyone who lives. He says, in receiving in themselves the penalty of the error which was due. Sin is a killer. The wages of sin is death. The voice of God's condemnation cannot be silenced. You can't just say, you know what, I'm going to kill all the Christians and stop all the Bibles and then I'll be free from the condemnation of God.

It ain't going to happen. Once it's out there, it's out there forever. It's in their head and they know it. And it is unnecessary to play roulette with one's soul. To somehow suppose that you're going to get lucky at death. That's going to work out. You're a success in this life, well clearly you're going to be a success in the next life, right? What do you base that on? And while you're going ahead and making up stories, let me make up some stories.

Rather than that, I'd rather just tell you the truth. Hearing people say, I have a good idea, let's pretend that what God has condemned is really something he enjoys. That is the voice of the devil in your head if you behave that way or think that way. Verse 28, And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind to do those things which are not fitting. So here's the third time that God says, I'm giving up on this group. And we don't know when God does that, but we know he does do it.

Therefore, the severity of the entire matter is heightened. There's a play on words in the Greek, and remember the New Testament was originally written in the Greek language. And the play on words really is, they gave up God so God gave them up.

I'd say that was fair. Christ is distasteful to those under the sway of Satan. But those who are under the power of the Holy Spirit love everything about God. You know, I love the word of God.

It's just life that gives me a problem. But I love God's word. And I know the Christians just love the scriptures because it's the voice of God. In it is life. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God, and the faith that Paul is talking about in that Romans 10th chapter is saving faith.

The faith that saves me from the wrath of God. God gave them over to a debased mind. He doesn't, again, you're not going to take hostages. If you want to believe these things, he's going to allow it to run its course.

It's just going to get worse for you. He allows people to choose their alliances. But the consequences, they cannot choose.

That belongs to him. They're at war with God. Romans chapter 8, Paul will get to this.

He says, because, there's another because, right? The carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be. A mind that is at war with God.

What do you expect to gain from that? He continues to do those things which are not fitting. Well basically, wickedness is the hatred for God's way.

That's wickedness. It hates the God of the Bible. I find this is the only God, the God of the Bible is the only one that backs himself up in a sense of proof. Where's the proof for Islam?

Its insistence. How about Mormonism? How about Jehovah's Witnesses? Charles Russell just comes along and says, do this.

Too bad his name wasn't Simon. That would really make for good preaching. And so it is with the other, Confucianism, I mean all the others. What's the basis?

Where did you get this from? Is there an unbroken witness that I can see? Do I have to just accept it?

Or do you have facts? We talk about, look at the chip. The chip is here, the cashless society.

John the Apostle called that from the Isle of Patmos 2000 years ago. The time is coming, you can't buy and you can't sell unless you have his mark. It's going to be in your head or your hand, but that's what's coming. And here we are. You would think, you would think, an unbeliever would look at that and say, is there more?

You would think that would serve as an alarm and then dig and find out, huh, there's a whole lot more. I better change teams. I better repent.

Verse 29, being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness, they are whisperers. Man, this is the damage report that we started last week. Now we're saying, here's what has uglified earth. You know, people who think they're going to save the planet, that's pretty ambitious, is it not?

Here I am to save the day. It's just, and they glue themselves. Some of them have glued themselves to the streets so cars can't, you will know them by their fruit. Fruits. Fruits and nuts.

And they're no longer just in California. But anyway, he's going to list 23 trespasses. It's not an exhaustive list. Here's what he'll say when he writes the letter to the Hebrews. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. He says being filled, see this is depravity. This is not filled with the Holy Spirit. This is being filled by Satan who saturates the mind with his ways. Depravity thrives in environments without the Holy Spirit.

It just grows and we're seeing microcosms of this on the earth, little patches of the earth, evil ones wanting to come out, you know. But Satan wants to hide that, edit that, suppress the truth and righteousness and that's why he loves so much mainstream media. The journalists and the editors are as vile as they can be. You know, 9-11 was avoidable if the news just told the truth about who these people are.

But they suppressed it and lulled everybody into thinking, oh, it's okay, don't worry about it, you just want to know how to fly a plane, not land it, sure. 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.