Please open your Bibles to Romans chapter one and find verse 24, Romans 1, 24. This is the inerrant, the all sufficient, sweeter than honey word of God. Romans 1, 24. Therefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness in the lusts 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. Let's pray.
Oh Lord, we thank you for your word. I pray that you would teach us your ways, that you would show us the way the world really is, that you would reveal to us the truth about our lives and as we look around us to see how to understand all these things that are happening among us and to us and in the world. Lord, I pray that you would help us to see what a joy, what a goodness it is to be tethered to you. Amen. Please be seated.
Reading this passage of scripture, what comes to mind to me first is what is the worst thing that can happen to you? And the Bible makes it very clear that the worst thing that can happen to you is that if you've been given up to your own desires, This is so contrary, isn't it, to what we hear all around us. But these verses here illustrate a progression. And then finally, which we'll get to next week, the ultimate manifestation of exchanging the truth of God and the glory of God for lies. The greatest tragedy is to be given over to your own ways.
And that's why I've titled this sermon out of the words of this text, he gave them up. He gave them up, he gave them over. This really is a first step in a trajectory that finally ends in a very dramatic illustration that we'll deal with next week, and that is homosexuality. But this really has been the story of the trajectory of our own nation. God gives a nation over to its own lusts, and as a result of a sexual revolution, you end up with a homosexual revolution.
And this is the story of the trajectory of our nation. And so in these verses we see this progression that plays out. It happens in individuals and it also happens in nations. And In the 1960s, God gave our nation over to heterosexual revolutions. And now he's giving our nation over to a homosexual revolution.
And all of this is depicted right here in this passage of scripture. And there you are in this passage. You're given over to your own desires. You get what you always wanted. God lets you play it out to the end.
And there you are without guidance. There you are without a wise hand. There you are without protection. There you are without being tethered to God and his good ways. All his ways are pleasant ways.
All his paths are peace, says Solomon in Proverbs 3. There you are without the truth of God to guide you. You become a slave of your own passions and you're cast adrift without a rudder, without an anchor, without a tether to the good things of God. That's really the tragedy of these words that are here in front of us. Here's a picture to illustrate it.
I've always been terrified of the pictures of astronauts going outside the capsule to repair the fuselage. And they'll go out there for hours, you know, six, seven hours at a time. And outside of their, you know, protective enclosure, you know, the temperature is either 250 degrees Fahrenheit or minus 250, depending on whether the sun is shining or not. And they go out and they fix oxygen leaks, they fix torn solar panels, You know, they go out and replace, you know, power controllers on the side of those spaceships. And these astronauts, they use anchors, they use tethers to hold them in.
And if they become disconnected, they'll start spinning through space. Now, they do give them a backpack that blows substance out to move them, but it doesn't last very long. And if they lose touch, If they lose their tether, you know, they'll go spinning into space and maybe even crash through the Earth's atmosphere and be burned to death. So, it's always dangerous and I'm looking at them outside the spaceship and I think, hang on to that tether. You know, I remember a few years ago our family went to the North Carolina State Fair.
And they had this remarkable demonstration of motorcycle jumpers. And there they were flying through the air. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about, and ride up maybe 150 feet in the air, the rider lets go of his motorcycle, and he's flying, I'm thinking, this was a bad idea. He's untethered. And I Think this is the picture that the Apostle is painting of being being given over of being let go being let go to go do whatever you want to do, where God actually, God Almighty gives people what they want and they get it.
I think, I believe that there are two sides to this. The primary side that the apostle is speaking over is the permanent giving over of the unbeliever to the end of everlasting torment. But there's another part of that, and that is that even those who have been given over, God is still holding out his hand. The tether, so many of us have grabbed the tether at the last minute, praise the Lord for that. But there's also a temporary discipline of the Lord where God allows believers to taste the consequences of their actions, and they turn back.
We do that, we have sin patterns, we continue them, we realize they're just beating us up. We need to stop doing that as Christians. And this is the discipline of the Lord, the Lord disciplines those He loves. He will let you have a taste of a few things so that you'll see how bitter it is. And that's why, you know, the troubles that we've been given in this world, the Bible says have been given to us by God.
This is, The wrath of God is revealed from heaven. It is now. The troubles you see in the world are expressions of the wrath of God being revealed now. The wrath of God is not only something that comes at the end. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.
Well, we talked about that in some detail last week. But here we have a picture of what it looks like in a person or a nation when they've been given over. Somebody once said, sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay and cost you more than you want to pay. And that's the danger of getting what you desire. And frankly, hell is actually the place where the restraints of God's wrath are completely pulled back.
On the other hand, the cry of the believers is this, Lord, don't let me go. Lord, don't let me get untethered. Philip Dodridge, an English Puritan wrote in a poem, dwell in me, walk with me, let my body be the temple of the Holy Spirit, take me from one degree of faith, love, zeal, and holiness to the next until I appear perfect before you through Jesus Christ, my Lord. Lord, don't let me go. That's really what I want us to hear today in the midst of these terrifying words.
You know, if you're one of those people who has been saying, Lord, don't let me go. Because you love the Lord, praise the Lord. I really hope this is a time of rejoicing to consider that God put that in your heart and you don't wanna be let go from him. But maybe some of you have been let go and God's letting you run. This would be a good time to turn back and grab the tether again.
So I wanna focus this sermon on six words or phrases. You have them there in your outline. They're taken directly out of the text. The first is the word therefore, where Paul is explaining why he's saying what he's saying. The second is God gave them up.
That's actually one Greek word, God gave them up, and this is what God does to exercise his wrath, he gives people up to exercise his wrath, and then he gives them up to uncleanness, that's the first stage of the giving up, and then the lusts of their hearts, that's the second stage of giving up. The third stage of giving up is they dishonor their bodies among themselves. And the fourth stage is they exchange the truth of God for the lie. We'll continue on next week with the following stages of God giving up because it's progressive, I believe, in this passage. So let's look at the first word, therefore.
Therefore. Paul is explaining why he's not ashamed of the gospel. He's explaining why it's the power of God. He's explaining why he's eager to go preach the gospel. He can't wait to get there because the gospel is the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes.
And so he's using this word therefore, and it's very important that everybody understands how to read their Bibles. Okay children, here we go, we're gonna have a hermeneutics lesson. Are you ready? Therefore, the word therefore appears all over the Bible and it's actually there for a reason. And so I wanna give you a basic principle for which to interpret the Bible.
The word therefore means that what's coming is the result of what he already said. He already said something and therefore there's an implication of it. There's something that happens because of what he said before. There's a logical conclusion and an effect when you see the word therefore, it's really an important word. I'll just give you an example.
You have, many of you have parents who want you to taste the goodness of the Lord, Therefore, they brought you to church. That's why they brought you to church. They wanted you to see the beauty of the Lord in the singing and the word of God and in the preaching and the fellowship, the fellowship meal, all these wonderful things that God has given to us in the church. So in this context, Paul is explaining why he's not ashamed of the gospel. And he's not ashamed because of ungodliness, the ungodliness of men.
This is rejecting God, not paying attention to God. And then unrighteousness of men, unrighteous deeds toward man, and then toward yourself. So Paul is explaining why he's not ashamed, and it's because the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. And he's been talking at length already about what happens to people, and already in verse 21, he said, people don't glorify God. Verse 21, they're not thankful.
They have worthless thoughts. Their foolish hearts are darkened. They claim to be wise, but they're fools, and they exchange the glory of God for images. So he's just continuing on what he has already started. That's why he says, therefore, and he's saying that everyone is without excuse.
So Paul is answering this question and he's not ashamed of the gospel because the wrath of God is being revealed. He's not ashamed of the gospel because people are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. He's not ashamed of the gospel because the wrath of God is being revealed. He's not ashamed of the gospel because people are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. He's not ashamed of the gospel because the reality of God has been revealed and everybody knows there's a God by what has been made.
So he's just continuing to explain this and he there are I don't know if you notice there are three exchanges and there are three results in this passage. The first exchange is they exchange worthless things for God, that's in verse 23. The second exchange is in verse 25. They exchange the truth of God for the lie, and then the third exchange, which we'll get to next week, has to do with homosexuality. Men and women exchange the natural use, which is against nature.
So that's the progression of the apostles' thinking here. I was reading Martin Lloyd-Jones on this. He said that the world as it is today is the greatest proof possible for the wrath of God against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. This is a way to see the world. This is a worldview.
This is, the things that you see in the world are because of what we're reading right here. So The first word is therefore. The second word is God gave them up. Again, that's one word in the Greek language. This is now telling about how God exercises His wrath.
Verse 24, therefore God also gave them up. We'll stop right there, because I'm gonna work through all the other words in this sentence. God gave them up, God gave them over. What is this? This is a judicial abandonment of a person.
It's a line drawn and a letting go, just like the letting go of that motorcycle, just like the letting go of a tether in a spacewalk. And the word that the apostle uses here is used three times in this section, gave them up, paradidami, verse 24, verse 26, and verse 28. And the word is used of criminal law proceedings where a person is delivered up. This is the same word for Judas giving Jesus up to Pilate. There he is, you can have him.
It's the same word used in Acts 28 when Paul was delivered up as a prisoner. Here, you take him and put him in prison. It's the same idea used of Samson in Judges 16, 20, where we read this, he did not know that the Lord had departed from him. In other words, God let him alone in his own lusts. It's the same idea in Judges chapter 10 where God declares he's not gonna protect his people anymore because of their evil.
He said, you have forsaken me and served other gods, therefore I will deliver you no more. Go and cry out to the God you've chosen. Let them deliver you in your time of distress. In Hosea 4.17, we read that God let him alone because Ephraim joined in idolatry. In Psalm 81, we read that people were given up to their stubbornness, Psalm 81, 11, 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 councils.
That's the most terrifying thing that can happen to you, to walk in your own counsels. Don't listen to your own heart. Listen to God. God gives them up. And to what?
To a slave owner, to someone who will enslave them. So when you're given over, you are possessed by a tyrannical master called your own passions. A very demanding master will tell you what to do instead of God leading you in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Well, There are many, many manifestations of this in the Word of God, and God gives them up. You can find this in Acts 7, 42, in Acts 14, 14, where God gives people up to walk in their own ways.
In Proverbs 1, verse 24, please open your Bibles to Proverbs 1, you'll see how Solomon very vividly describes this. This is such a tragic exchange, it really is the worst thing that can happen to you is to be given up to your own desires and your own passions. Proverbs 1 verse 24. You know This is the introductory chapter in Proverbs, and it really sets the stage for everything that Solomon is going to write here. Verse 24, because I have called and you refused, I have stretched out my hand and no one regarded.
Because you disdained all my counsel and would have none of my rebuke, I will laugh at your calamity. I will mock when your terror comes. When your terror comes like a storm and your destruction comes like a whirlwind when distress and anguish come upon you and here is the great terror of it all, then they will call on me but I will not answer. They will seek me diligently and but they will not find me. This is the danger and the tragedy of the tether being broken, of the anchor being loose, what's holding you being released.
You taste the fruit of your own passions and the consequences of your own actions. You know, God's word is a restraining force. The word of God, the law of God constrains evil. That's why the law of God is so good. You know, Paul said that the law was good if you lose, use it properly.
And it's, it's used properly when it's used to constrain your evil. You know, every parent knows this. Children, you know, do your parents restrain you? Do your parents do things to constrain your evil? They certainly ought to.
But if they give you over, if they don't stand in the way of your passions, if they let you roll your eyes, if they let you talk back, if they let you run away, if they let you yell at your siblings, then they're not constraining your evil. If they let you go, it's a curse to you. And that's why Solomon said, he who spares his rod hates his son. But he who loves him disciplines him promptly. It's really important that parents stand in the way of the passions of their children because they're not all good.
Just like ours are not all good and God gives us laws to govern them and to constrain our evil to slow us down. But there's something about this that I don't think we ought to miss, and that is when a person as a person is still alive in the world as far as we're concerned, we should never consider this as a final act because the discipline of the Lord is redemptive. The punishment is punitive, but it's also redemptive. And God often uses pain to turn us around. And In 1 Peter 3.20, you know, Trent was preaching, it was in the patience of God that he waited.
And, you know, in the book of Revelation, remember when we were back there, Jezebel was given time to repent. And so God disciplines in order to heal. He hurts in order to heal. And so you have God's mercy on those who've been given over. Even if he gives you over in this world, he can take you back.
There's a beautiful section in Romans 6 verse 17 that talks about that. But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, slaves, slaves of sin given over to sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. The doctrine delivered you out of your enslavement, out of being given over to your passions. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. Well, that goes back to the apostle's statement, the righteousness of God is revealed from heaven.
I found it very interesting looking through various appearances of this whole idea of being delivered up. Jesus Christ was delivered up. Jesus Christ was delivered up for those who had been delivered up in their sin. In Romans 8 32, He who did not spare his own son but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things who shall bring a charge against God's elect. If you've been delivered up, you have to know one really important thing.
Jesus Christ was delivered up for you so that you might be redeemed and saved. In Romans 4 24, we read that Jesus Christ was delivered up for our offenses. We were delivered up in our offenses. He was delivered up for our offenses. It shall be imputed to us who believe in Him, who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up because of our offenses and was raised because of our justification.
So we who were delivered over to our passions, God sent his son to be delivered up to save us out of our passions. That's the gospel. You can be given up for a time. And often that's so that you hit bottom. Now some of you are praying for people that they'll just finally hit bottom because you did.
And your soul was saved. Because you just couldn't take it anymore. The wrath of God was too hard, and you realize you are running against the wind, that God is opposed to the proud, and he gives grace to the humble. One of the commentators in Romans, Frederick Gaudet, he said, when a man has reached a certain degree of corruption, he can only be cured by the very excess of his own corruption. So he gave them up.
He gave them up to what? And here's the progression. Uncleanness, lust, dishonor the body, exchanging the truth of God for a lie, and then finally homosexuality, which we'll deal with later. So let's work through these. Given up to what?
To uncleanness. This is the first stage of being given up. This word uncleanness is a broad term. It's a term that refers to various categories of moral impurity. It's the opposite of holiness and purity.
This is the heterosexual revolution. This is the sexual revolution that we've seen running really hard in our land, Really since the turn of the 20th century, but particularly in the last half of the 20th century, particularly in the 1950s and 60s with the rise of the sexual revolution, I had a front row seat of that revolution. It really, It actually really was a revolution. It was a turning point. You could see it as clear as day.
The culture changed. When the Beatles came to America, the culture changed in 1965. Well, uncleanness, it begins in the normal operations of the heart of uncleanness, an inclination to uncleanness. It begins right there. And then, and then it captures the heart.
And that's why there are so many places in scripture where we're told to deal with any uncleanness in our hearts. In 2 Corinthians 6, 17, the apostle is saying, come out from everything that's unclean. Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean and I will receive you. I will be a father to you and you shall be my sons and daughters says the Lord God Almighty.
Paul tells another church, the Thessalonian church in 1 Thessalonians 4, 7, He says God did not call us to uncleanness. In 2 Corinthians 12, 21, Paul is actually, he's sorrowing for people who are coming to the meetings of the Corinthian church, but they've not repented of their uncleanness. That's why from time to time, your pastors call you to turn away from every form of uncleanness, because we know that can happen, just like it did in that Corinthian church. He said, many who have sinned before and have not repented of the uncleanness, fornication, and lewdness which they have practiced. In Matthew 23 verse 27, Jesus kinda gives a little different view of uncleanness.
Because he's talking to the scribes and the Pharisees. These are the most morally upright people in the culture. You can be morally upright on the outside and be unclean on the inside. And he's saying that they're like whitewashed tombs, they look beautiful on the outside, but then he says, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. You know, a person can come to church and look really good and be unclean, have not turned away from uncleanness.
The Apostle Paul tells the Ephesian church that a person's conscience can be seared so they don't feel the sting of sin, they don't feel unclean, but they are because they've dabbled in it so much they can't even see straight in terms of these things. He says, who being past feeling have given themselves over to lewdness to work all uncleanness with greediness. Paul also tells the Ephesian church not even to name things that are unclean, but fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you. And I would just say, and let it not even be in your movies, let it not be in any of your songs, let it not be anywhere in your life. Let it not be named.
You don't even wanna know its name. That's pretty radical. But that's how God blesses and hapifies his church with his good ways. To the Colossian Church, Paul says, put uncleanness to death. Just put it to death.
So, this is the first step in the trajectory toward what the apostle is gonna make the, sort of the quintessential expression of rejecting God, and that is homosexuality, which we're not there yet. But the next word is lusts of their hearts. This is another stage of God giving up. God gives them up to lusts of the heart, hunger, longing. In Titus 2 11, we learn that we often take action on our lusts, but he says, no, deny them.
He says that God teaches us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, We should live soberly, righteously and godly in the present age. First Timothy 6 and nine talks about one of the most common lusts, love for money, lust for money. Those who desire to be rich will fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and harmful lusts. The desire to be rich is a lust and it actually tumbles you into other lusts. So be careful of love of money.
Paul tells the church in Ephesus in Ephesians 4.22 to put off their former lusts. You have residual lusts that you're waging war against. Wage war, what are they? What are some of the old lusts that are still part of your life that you need to get rid of, to renounce and repent of and turn away from? Remember, this is a trajectory.
Uncleanness trips you into another level. Lusts trip you into another. And so we're here to wage war. He says, put off concerning your former conduct the old man which grows corrupt to the deceitful lusts and put on the new man. In 1 Peter 4, two, the apostle is urging his readers actually to plan your life around getting rid of lust.
In other words, you think about where you're gonna go and what you're gonna see and what you're gonna listen to, plan your life to steer away from lust. He says that you no longer should live the rest of this time in the lusts of men, but for the will of God. For we have spent enough of our past lifetime doing the will of the Gentiles when we walk in the lewdness in lusts. So he's saying plan your life ahead. You wanna have a strategic plan?
Put that in your strategic plan. Plan to run away from all lust. And of course the Apostle Paul tells the Galatian church in Galatians 5 16 to be filled with the Spirit so that you don't carry out the lusts of the flesh and he identifies what it looks like. James says that lust can be for the things that you don't have, a desire for what you do not have. Well everybody doesn't have something And all of us have things in our minds that we desire.
He says, you lust and you do not have. You murder and you covet, you cannot obtain, you fight in war. You do not have because you do not ask. But you lust and you do not have. And then you go about it the wrong way is what he's saying.
Paul tells the Philippian church of people whose God is their belly, whose glory is their shame. So lust, that's the second step in the trajectory of being given over. When God gives you over, he gives you over to uncleanness, then he gives you over to lusts, and then he gives you over to the next, to the third stage, to dishonor their bodies among themselves. There can be an impact on the body, the way that we treat our body. We are physical beings.
We do things with our bodies every day. And we always have to ask, am I dishonoring my body? Am I bringing shame or disgrace or lack of respect or insult to degrade my body. I'm really just in using those words, that's what it means to dishonor is to bring shame on your body. God gave us our bodies for a purpose.
We use our bodies to worship God. We use our bodies to speak to one another. We use our bodies to work so that we can provide. We use our bodies for so many things. But the body can be used in extremes as well.
You know, God gave us a body so that we would eat and be nourished, but not to be gluttonous. God gave us bodies to rest, but not to laziness. God gave us bodies to keep them in good shape but not to worship them in an excessive body building, prideful, Greek God pursuit. God gave us our bodies, the body is actually good. Nancy Piercy wrote a book a couple years ago called Love Thy Body.
And the reason she wrote that book is because in the transgender and homosexual revolution, people hate their body. They hate the body they were born in. But God wants you to love the body. If you're a female, you should glory that God made you a female. If you're a male, you should glory that God made you a male.
Love your body. But he's here talking about dishonoring bodies. It says, among themselves. This is like popular culture. It's like YouTube influencers.
You know, everybody in the culture is doing it. You know, somebody told me to do it. Everybody else is doing it. They do it among themselves there in the text. There's a social agreement.
It's popular. It's common. You're not doing anything that's different than what everybody else is doing. And this is why, you know, God tells his people, you know, do not learn the ways of the Gentiles, don't walk in their ways. They do things among themselves.
When we say I can do with my body whatever I want, when we say you can't tell me who to love, You can't tell me what to wear. Well, God tells you what to wear. You can't wear whatever you want. The Bible tells you how to dress. The Bible tells you how to take care of your body.
And then the next, they exchange the truth of God for the lie. That's the fourth stage of giving up. What did they exchange? What was the truth about God? The lie is that God is not good enough.
That was the lie in the garden. Eve thought God was not good enough. She wanted something different, something better, something cooler than God. She wanted advice outside of God. This is the, to exchange the truth of God for the lie is to say that God is not the most satisfying.
To exchange the truth of God for a lie is to say that God's word is not the most life-giving. That's to exchange the truth of God for the lie. The fifth and the sixth results will wait for next week, but notice the last phrase in verse 25. It seems so strange. Paul says, and God who is blessed forever, amen.
He breaks out in praise after all this horrific disclosure of the wrath of God on mankind. He gives praise to God. And I think he can't contain himself because he knows the gospel is the power of God to salvation, to deliver from all uncleanness, to deliver from lusts, to deliver from dishonor of bodies, to deliver from exchanging the gold that's the kingdom of heaven for the dross that's the kingdom of darkness. I think he's just giving thanks in the stream of his consciousness. And so he says, God who is blessed forever.
You know, he'll say this again in Romans nine, verse five, he'll say, Christ came who is overall The eternally blessed God, amen. He's praising God for God because God is so good, because God is a deliverer from passions. He delivers it from ourselves to make us like Him. Well, this is such a wonderful message here that the apostle is bringing right here at the very end of this verse. And what he's really saying is that God is able to rescue you.
You're spinning through space, he can rescue you. You can be tethered again. I was reading Jude 1.24 this morning. "'Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory to God our Savior who alone is wise be glory and majesty Dominion and power both now and forever amen that's a lot like what Paul is saying there you know they 11 8 God tells his people that he cannot give them over forever. He says, how can I give you up O Ephraim?
How can I hand you over Israel? How can I make you like Admah? My heart churns within me, my sympathy is stirred. I will not execute the fierceness of my anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim.
I will not come with terror. So God even holds out his hand to those whom he has given over in this world. We don't know who's given over forever to perdition. We shouldn't concern ourselves about that at all because we don't know. Here's what we do know.
God can save anybody. That's what we know for sure. So we shouldn't presume on anybody but recognize that God is so kind. That's why Paul is saying all these things because the gospel is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, and whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And If you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, you will be saved.
Praise the Lord. That's why Paul is so excited to get to Rome. He can't wait to preach the gospel there. He is eager and He's not ashamed. Would you pray with me?
Father, we thank you for showing us the realities of this world, even uncovering the thoughts and intents of our own hearts. Pray, Lord, that you would give us understanding for how to walk all these things out. Lord, deliver us from uncleanness, deliver us from lusts and all these passions that would overtake us. Lord, I pray that you would make for yourself here a holy church with holy affections for all of these things amen