In this sermon, Pastor Steve Hopkins emphasizes the importance of family worship, urging fathers and husbands to lead their families in studying the Word of God daily. He highlights the biblical mandate for men to provide spiritual nourishment through scripture. The sermon continues with a study of Romans 1:24-26, discussing the theme of God giving people up to 'vile affections' as a consequence of exchanging the truth of God for lies and idolatry. Hopkins explains 'judicial abandonment' as God allowing individuals to pursue their sinful desires without restraint, which he considers a severe form of divine judgment. He discusses the suppression of truth about God, the natural revelation of God's attributes, and the inherent knowledge all men have of God's existence. The sermon critiques modern society's departure from God's natural order, particularly in the context of sexual immorality, and stresses that homosexuality is a sin that represents the radical corruption of human nature. However, Hopkins concludes with a message of hope and redemption, referencing 1 Corinthians 6:11 to affirm that those who repent can be washed, sanctified, and justified through Jesus Christ.

Welcome back to Barnet Bible Church. Join us this week as Pastor Hopkins continues his sermon series through the Book of Romans. Good morning once again. Good morning. If you would turn with me in your Bibles to the Gospel of Romans.

Yes, it is full of the gospel. Romans chapter 1, we're going to be picking up with chapter 1 verses 24 through 26, Lord willing, this morning. Before we do, I sent out a little warning this week that I was going to do a little pre-message on family worship. And you know that for, well, the church has been around since 1996. Probably around 2002, 2003 is when we really started having our eyes open to the fact that fathers and husbands need to be leading their families in the study of the Word of God.

Before that, you know, it was kind of sporadic. If it felt like it, we did it. If we didn't feel like it, we didn't do it. It's Christians in the modern era, right? We do what we feel like doing, rather than what the Word of God commands us to be doing.

The Word of God commands that fathers are to raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, in the instruction and admonition of the Lord, which is an impossible thing to do without opening the scriptures with our children, with our families, Deuteronomy 6, verse 7, when you rise up, when you lie down, when you walk in the way, we're continually bringing the word of God to our families. It's so, so very important. I don't know how you can raise your family without opening the scriptures with them daily. And so you know you may say well Mr. Hoppins is harps on that, harps on that, harps on that.

It's the most important thing that you can possibly be doing in your household. It really is. You know we are told that a man is considered to be worse than an infidel if he doesn't provide for his family. Are we to think that that provision is only physical food when the Word of God clearly tells us that man lives not by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. And what about husbands?

Husbands before they're married. I've talked to many of the young men, you know, before they get married. I say, you know, if the next morning after you're married you're not opening up the scripture with your wife, You're not obedient to the Word of God. And I have to just be clear with this. You know, you're not being obedient to the Word of God.

What does God's Word tell us? It tells us in Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 25, the example of Christ in 25 through 27, that we are to wash as Christ washed His bride, the church, in the word so ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. I love my wife, really. Jesus says if you love your wife, you'll wash her in the word. That's what he tells with this church.

So I want to just encourage men today, love your wives. Love your wives. Love your wives. Love your children. Be obedient to the word of God.

If it's something that's new to you, you know, I tell men, you don't have to do an hour like we do, or an hour and a half sometimes. Do five minutes, start with something. Start with something. Open the word of God. And what typically happens when you open the word of God with your family every day is that that time grows.

Why? Because your love for that will grow. Your desire to be opening the Word with your family will grow. And pray before you open the Word with them and before you worship God with them. Pray.

Ask God, As we read in Romans in the last few weeks, the Apostle Paul was saying he wanted to come to the Romans, to the beloved of God at Rome. Why? So that he could impart to them, just maybe I can impart something spiritual to them. A spiritual gift. He wasn't talking about tongues or whatever.

He's talking about something that would be of spiritual benefit to them. You know, I pray that, and inevitably, God will put something in my mind, and it will help someone that's in the household. Sometimes me, someone else is in the household. But it will help them. And then, not only open the Word with them, but you know, the worship of God in the church and The worship of God in the church and the worship of God in the home, they really go hand in hand.

They used to say, you know, the home is the first church, so to speak. So you worship God in your families and you worship God in the church. Well, how do we do that in the church? We do the things that God prescribes. We don't make it up as we go along.

We open the Word of God. We teach the Word of God. We sing the praises of God. We pray together. Do those things in your family with your wife and with your children.

If you're not, repent and change, have a change of heart and a heart change of mind, and begin to do those things. I was convicted years ago, Joel Beeke said, I've actually heard that there are men that don't pray with their wives daily. And I was thinking, you know, I pray with my wife and children in family worship time, but I haven't been praying with her individually, just her, she and I together. I was very convicted by that and that really, you know, caused me to have a time of real repentance where I just said, you know what, that is a very necessary thing and it is a very intimate time with my wife because I pray and she wants to pray, she prays, and maybe there's things that I didn't know were in her heart, didn't really even realize were there, you know, that she was concerned about and those things came out. So with that, let's rise and let's stand for the reading of the Word of God.

So let's read together, verses 24, 25, and 26. Wherefore, God also gave them up to unclean this through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves, who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections, for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men, working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meat." Let's pray.

Father, Lord, we want to humble ourselves and come before you again, Lord, and ask that you would do a work in the heart and the life of your people. Lord, we ask that you would cause us to grow as we read your word and study your word and the grace and knowledge of Christ. We pray that you would send your spirit, oh God, and do a work among us, Lord, that no man can do. For the glory and the honor of the name of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray these things. Amen.

Let's be seated. So wow, we've been several weeks in Romans, and one of the things that I have stressed over the years, no matter what book we're in, no matter what chapter we're in, no matter where we are going through the Word of God, is that churches that refuse to study the Word of God verse by verse starve their people. They starve their people. How do they starve their people? Because the ministers choose topically what they're going to speak on.

This is something that's important to me. This is something that I think would be important to someone in the congregation. And they starve the congregation of the full counsel of the Word of God by not going through the Bible verse by verse, thereby making it impossible for them to escape the subjects that they would rather not deal with. So very, very important that we continue to go through the Bible verse by verse, passage by passage, and explain the Word of God with the help of the Holy Spirit for the good of God's people. So what have we learned in our last couple of sessions?

I always like to do a review. Where have we gone in the last two sessions together? Number one, all men know God. Don't let anyone ever tell you that all men don't know God. All men know God, not savingly, not relationally.

Saving knowledge of God comes only through the revelation of the gospel and the work of the Holy Spirit. But all men know God cognitively through the created order, through nature, through the things that God has made. For that which may be known of God, we read, God who is invisible, are visibly and clearly seen by all men, being understood by the things that God has made. I stumbled onto Psalm chapter 19 and verse 1 this morning, the heavens declare the glory of God. The heavens declare the glory of God in the firmament that is the sky above His handiwork.

There is no place on the face of the earth where God's handiwork, where His glory, is not being visibly and clearly presented and manifested to every man who has ever come in to the world. Yes, even his, we read, his invisible attributes, his omnipotence. Men know that God is almighty. His eternality, he must be forever. Nothing comes from, Something can't come from nothing.

All of this being evidenced and being understood by the created order so that all men are without excuse. All men are without excuse. So that even the tribesmen living in the deepest, darkest jungle of Africa or Peru, who never heard the name of Jesus, stands condemned on the day of judgment because he had the external witness of the created order all about him, screaming God 24 hours a day, which should have brought him to his knees before the Creator of all the earth in worship. Second, what have we learned? Men suppress this truth that they know about God.

Everyone knows God, but the wicked in their unrighteousness suppress, they hold down the truth that they know about God, that God has made clearly evident to them through the creation of the world and the things that He has made. They hold that down, they suppress the truth that they know about God, and they do it in their unrighteousness. And the wrath of God, we read, is revealed from heaven against all ungodly and unrighteous men who, though they know God, suppress the truth that they know about God that is being made clear to them from God through the created order and their unrighteousness. It is a thing that angers God. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all such.

And eventually that wrath will be manifested in a place called hell, except they repent and believe on the name of his son. But this thing of suppressing the knowledge of God, what do we learn about that? All men suppress Unless they're regenerated, unless they're come to saving faith, unless they've been born again, unless they've been brought to the saving knowledge of Christ, they suppress the knowledge that they have of God. No one comes to God and is saved through natural revelation, only through the divine revelation of Scripture. Okay?

But they suppress the knowledge that they have of God in their own righteousness, and they hold it down. They have to continually say in their hearts, there is no God, there is no God, there is no God. Like I said last week, you know, like me sitting here saying, there is no wall, there is no wall, There is no wall. Why would I say that over and over again? If there is no wall Because they have to try to convince themselves they have to continue to to prop up their Suppression of the truth that they know about God, but it's a testament to the utterly corrupted nature of man, that they deny what they know to be true about the God they know, because though all men know God through nature, through the things that He has made, they refuse to glorify Him as God and be grateful.

They never once even look up and say, thank you God. Thank you God. And so what happens is the slide into darkness, as we read last week, intensifies. They become vain in their imaginations. They become futile in their thinking.

Their reasoning becomes more and more warped and crooked as they continue to suppress the truth that they know about the God who has revealed Himself to them through the created order. They go further from God. They continue to run further from God, and Paul calls them fools. They have foolish hearts, and their foolish hearts are darkened. And as the darkness and self-deception grows deeper, Last week we read they actually begin to think themselves to be super wise.

In their self-deception, they actually begin to think that they're really wise people. And they not only think themselves to be wise, They tell everyone else that they're wise also. They profess themselves to be wise, like your professor at the local university. And yet God calls them fools. Paul writes, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.

And I said in our last session, that's the history of the world. All those whom God calls fools running in one pack together. The university professor who professes along with the pagan tribesmen living in the deepest darkest jungle of the uncivilized world run in the same pack together and In the same direction away from God They're all running in that same pack away from God one thinks he's a great intellectual and thinks that that tribesman over there is just a, you know, doesn't know how to read, write, anything, and yet they're running in the same pack together away from God, exchanging the glory of God for creature worship. Instead of worshiping the God they know, who has revealed Himself clearly to them through the things He created, they worship the things He created. Both the university professor and the tribesman living in the deepest, darkest jungle of Peru or Africa.

They're on the same page. They're running in the same pack. They've exchanged the glory of God for creature worship. Instead of worshiping God who created all things, they worship the things that God created. They don't become atheists, remember?

Paul's already revealed to us there's no such thing as an atheist. No, they just trade gods. They exchange the knowledge of the one true and living God who has clearly revealed Himself to them in nature, for nature itself. You see that? They exchange the knowledge of the one true and living God who has clearly revealed Himself to them in nature for nature itself.

They rather worship nature. Isn't that interesting that you see all these, they always call themselves naturalists. You know, we just, nature, we're all about nature and they study nature, but they never come to the saving knowledge of Christ. They all end up worshiping created things. They all end up polytheists.

They all end up worshiping multiple gods. The tribesman in Africa or Peru making images of beasts and creeping things and he worships them and the university professor venerating trees and preaching environmentalism and worshiping the earth They're on the same page nature Reveals to man the glory and majesty of the uncorruptible God Isaiah 6 3 says the whole earth is full of His glory. But men refuse to acknowledge the truth they know about God. They suppress the truth that they know about Him, about the God they know, And they end up exchanging the truth they know about the God they know for lies. You don't want the truth?

Okay. Well, here's a lie. Here's a lie for you to believe. They exchange the truth for lies. They swap the truth for fiction.

And they end up worshiping and serving the created things rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen? And God says, this is very important, God says there's consequences for that. You know that? God says there's consequences.

There are consequences for this kind of behavior. In our last session we read the words, God also gave them up. Why the word also? God also gave them up. Oh, there's a consequence for suppressing the truth that you know about God.

You gave up the knowledge of God that God clearly manifested to you in the Creator, and we're all about you, and God gives you up also. He also gives you up. And there's no greater divine judicial sentence for sin on earth than for a man to be handed over to his sins, to be given up to his lusts, his heart's lusts. There is none. Than to have divine restraint removed from a man so that a man can do whatever he desires to do.

There's no greater punishment than to be abandoned by God to one's lusts. They gave up the truth they knew about the God they knew, and God gives them up. It's an act of God. You see it? It's an act of God.

It's a judicial act of God. It's a judgment of God upon sinners who suppress the truth they know about God. Three times, remember we saw this last week, Paul uses this phrase, speaking by the Spirit, God gave them up, verse 24. God gave them up, verse 26. God gave them over, 28.

It is judicial abandonment. That's the theological terminology. It is judicial abandonment. I quoted Baptist theologian John Gill from back in the 1700s, God leaves men, quote, to the pollution of their nature by withdrawing his providential restraints from them and by giving them up to judicial hardness. They're given up.

Remember last week I said the leash is cut The dog can now run Okay He can go wherever he wants to go And he can do whatever he wants to do The Masters severs the rope he's cut the leash He he breaks the chain He removes every restraint and he lets him run. There's nothing worse that could happen to you than for God to let you do that. Let you run the course of your lusts. And where does man run? It's always the same, to dishonor their bodies between themselves.

To dishonor their bodies between themselves. They're given up to uncleanness, that is to sexual impurity, to pursue the wicked passions of their hearts without restraint. Verse 24. They're given up to vile affections. Please hang with me on this.

So important. And to, verse 28, a reprobate mind. This should strike fear to the heart of any man who is engaging in the secret sin of pornography. Because it isn't secret. And maybe God has cut your leash and is letting you run.

I asked the question in our last session, can you imagine anything worse than being given up by God to go your own way without any divine restraint? I can't. Having your leash cut, being left to the pollution of your nature, given over to judicial hardness as a judgment for willful sin, being punished for past sin by being handed over to further sin, being given up to uncleanness, to sexual impurity, can't imagine any situation more grave. Amen. For this cause, God gave them up unto vile affections, to depraved passions.

The cause, look there's a cause here, like I said there's consequences, consequences, There's a cause. The cause is they're having exchanged the glory of God for idolatry, for a lie, and the consequences, God gave them up to depraved passions. You understand what's being communicated here. When someone is given up to deprave passions like those the apostle mentions here in our text this morning, when a man or a woman is given up unto vile affections, look at where it goes because he's going to be talking about the worst of the worst of where this can go, where it goes, okay? But look at the passage here.

It's not being given over to sexual orientation. It's not being given up to an alternative lifestyle. It is a judicial act of God. It is the judgment of God. It's being handed over to one's sins as a judicial act of punishment for previous sin.

It is consequence for this cause. God gave them up in devial affections. The late R.C. Sproul comments on this passage, and I tried my hardest to look at this and just say, well, let me reword this somehow and kind of say, no, this is, you just got to hear it. Quote, when the Apostle Paul describes the radical corruption of the human race, he sees the sin of homosexual behavior as the sin most representative of the radical nature of our fall It is seen here not simply as a sin or even as a serious sin or a gross sin but as the clearest expression of the depths of our perversity Wow when the Apostle and we'll go through the catalog next week, but when the Apostle catalogs the sins of the corrupt nature of man, He begins with that sin committed by both men and women that is, Sproles words again, most representative of the radical nature of our fall.

And quote, the clearest expression of our perversity. Homosexuality. That's what he starts with. But notice this, Paul doesn't begin with the men here, does he? Look at your text.

Look where the apostle begins, for even their women. Even their women. He starts with that, even their women. He could have started with the men, but he begins with the women. It's like he's saying, you know that the corruption of human nature is a desperately dark thing when even the tenderest among them, when even their women exchange the natural use for that which is against nature For even their women even their women change the natural use into that which is against nature against nature Contrary to God's natural created order Homosexual relations are contrary to God's natural created order.

And again, it involves a change or more properly, an exchange. You see that? An exchange. He keeps talking about exchanges. You exchange the truth for a lie, you exchange the true living God for false gods, all these exchanges and here's the exchange again.

Paul goes from talking about men suppressing the truth they know about God, that God has clearly and visibly manifested to them from the creation of the world, from nature, to talking about exchanging the natural use of the woman with a man and the man with a woman. See? Mankind suppresses the truth that God shows them about himself from nature and they end up perverting nature, acting against nature. And he continues, likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lust one toward another men with men working that which is unseemly, that which is shameful, indecent, perverse, unnatural. When I preach on the streets of Burnet in the open air on Wednesdays.

I often dwell on the unnatural aspect of homosexual behavior. And you know what? I can preach against abortion now, and it doesn't rile people. I can preach you against almost any sin, but you don't, this is there, you don't touch this one. You don't talk, speak against homosexuality.

I've had four police cars and shop managers out there and everything else. You will not speak against homosexuality. I've had, you know, two lesbians sitting in a car, police coming in all over the place. Sir, it's against the law to offend people. I said, officer, that offends me.

Not trying to be a smart aleck, just trying to show the absurdity of that. So far, constitutional rights have been protected on the streets, at least in Burnett County. Praise God, they get their supervisors in there after they've got state troopers and everybody else in there. Okay, yes, yeah, he still has constitutional rights to freedom of speech. Just because they don't like what he's saying doesn't mean that we can arrest him or shut him down or move him to another corner.

And they've tried it all. Could you just move to another corner? I said no, because if I move to another corner, then someone's gonna complain there and you're gonna come tell me to move to another corner. That's not the America I know and will defend. But when I preach on the streets, I typically will touch on this unnatural aspect of homosexual behavior, this leaving the natural use of the woman and vice versa, that it's a thing that is against nature, that is contrary to God's natural creation order.

And I typically say, God says it's unnatural. And you know, again, these people that hate God, they consider themselves to be naturalists, nature lovers, studyers of nature. You know, we love nature. And it makes them steaming mad because they worship their pets. They worship their dogs and their cats.

I say, you need to look at your pets. They can teach you something about this. Your pets can teach you. You can learn from your pets. Your pets, by observing your pets, They will teach you that this is a sin specific to fallen man that is manifested in the corrupt nature of mankind.

And they go ballistic. Don't speak against that and don't tell us to look at our pets to teach us about the perversity of man. It's not even witnessed in nature. Paul continues, in receiving in themselves that recompense, that's a penalty, reward for their error, for their sin, which was meat, or that was due them. God gives men and women their due when they engage in, when they commit acts like these.

He gives them their due. And it falls out in many different ways, but He gives them their due. And as we close, I want us to understand something very important. Yes, we know that God destroyed entire cities with fire from heaven for this abominable sin, a sin that God calls an abomination, which the law of God expressly condemns. Man shall not lie with man as with woman.

It is abomination. The old Hebrew law said, they shall be executed. Their blood shall be upon their own heads. God hates this sin. Okay?

He hates this sin. But I want us to look at 1 Corinthians chapter six and verse 11 as we close, because we need to understand something very important, and that is that this is not the sin that is unpardonable. This is not the unpardonable sin. What does he say here? And such were some of you.

There may be some that don't like that, you know, but that's what God's Word says. 1 Corinthians 6 verse 11. Well, you look at this catalog here. The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God, beginning back in verse 9. Don't be to see fornicators, adulterers, idolaters, I mean, adulterers, nor effeminate.

By the way, if your Bible doesn't say effeminate right there, separate from abusers of themselves of mankind, I would get a different Bible, different translation. Because the modern translations are taking out that that part of this verse why and they're combining it with abusers of themselves of mankind they've combined the two together to where all it says is homosexuals rather than guess what homosexual attraction is also a sin it's pretty important I hate it when they tamper with scripture. Nor effeminate, okay, nor abusers of them, soft men is what that word means by the way, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, that's homosexuals, nor thieves or covetous or drunkards nor revilers or extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were past tense, some of you. Such were some of you.

And we know, We know people, I speak to people all the time, yeah I know someone who was caught up in that grave sin, but you are washed. You are washed. You are sanctified. You are justified. That is declared just in the sight of God in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.

So you used to be something that you no longer are. That's what the Apostle Paul is saying. You used to engage in these things, but now you're washed by the blood of Christ. Now you're cleansed. Now you're sanctified.

Now you're justified in the sight of God. This is good news to share with somebody who's engaging in homosexual behavior. Don't let them tell you that it's something they were born with. The Bible declares it as a behavior. It's a behavior.

It's a sin. It's not something you're born with, okay? You may have been exposed to it at a young age and someone perverted your thinking early on or some did something to you. It's happened with a lot of people, you know. But the good news is this, to share with those who engage in or defend the sin of sodomy, God not only delivers from the power of sin to condemn, but also from the power of sin to enslave.

Yes, He will wash you and He will cleanse you from this sin, but guess what else? He frees from sin's slavery. God frees us from the slavery to sin. He sets the captives free. Charles Wesley's old hymn says it well.

He breaks the power of reigning sin. He sets the prisoners free. Everybody know it? His blood can make the phallus clean. His blood availed for me.

For me. For me. The evidence, of course, that God has pardoned a sinner is that they're no longer what they once were. In the new birth, God provides a new heart. Can saved men fall into gross sins?

Yes, but saved men cannot live in gross sin. It is an impossibility. They cannot practice sin. They have a loving Father who will come for them and He will chasten them. It says, I chasten the son of my love, the son of the daughter I love.

They have an indwelling Spirit who will convict them of sin and not let them be comfortable in their sin. Who wields the sword, that Spirit who wields the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, continually upon their hearts and their lives. And then finally, those God justifies, we read a few weeks ago, He also sanctifies, He makes them more holy over time. Incrementally, those who are delivered from sin's power to condemn them are also delivered from sins power to Rule them and have dominion over them and little by little they are conformed more and more to the image of His Son. They begin to look less and less like themselves and more and more like Christ.

They've been changed. Old things are passed away. All things are becoming, have become new, and are becoming new. And it's a work of God by His Spirit. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for the treasure of your holy word. It is a treasure of inestimable value. Help us, O God, to treat it as such, not only on the Lord's day, but throughout the week in our families, as we worship together your holy name. And God, we ask that you would cause us to apply your word to our lives and that you would change us by the truth. For we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus, amen.