The sermon discusses the consequences of not wanting God in one's mind and the pollution that occurs when the knowledge of God is not retained. It explores the manifestations of this pollution through a list of sins and emphasizes the importance of filling the mind with the things of God. The sermon highlights the contrast between those who approve of sinful behaviors and the believers who seek righteousness and wisdom.

Please open your Bibles to Romans chapter one, find verse 28, Romans 1, 28. We'll read to the end of the chapter. Romans 1, 28 through 32, this is the inerrant, all sufficient, sweeter than honey word of God. 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, being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and evil-mindedness. They are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful.

Who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do they do the same, but also approve of those who practice them. Would you pray with me? Father, we pray that you would open up our eyes. Lord, we just read words of those who's, it is not well with their souls. We pray, oh Lord, that you would use these words to make all souls well here in this room today to give us a sense of truth and reality about the world.

And Lord that you would also work within us such a desire to have our minds filled with God, Amen. Please be seated. So these verses describe what happens when you don't want God in your mind. You do not like to retain God in your knowledge, as it says literally in the text. And the tragedy of it is that your mind is actually filled with impurities.

So here we are, we're finishing this chapter, chapter one of Romans with the final words in the chapter that explain really the traumatic results of life on this earth when it is not well with your soul. And the apostle has been spinning this out. This is part of a long section that doesn't end until chapter 321, where the apostle is continuing to explain why it is that we need the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so he continues to give us a picture of autonomous man, man who wants to go his own way, man who wants to find himself. And he's exchanged God's ways for the ways of the world and for his own ways.

And so this passage of scripture continues to explain what happens to you when you've been given over to yourself, and that is that in being given over to yourself, you're being given over to the wrath of God. And so he's been explaining this in various ways. In verse 28, we find the third occurrence of God giving over. If you remember correctly from our studies here in Romans 1, three times in this first chapter, God says that he gave them over. In verse 28, or I'm sorry, in verse 24, God gave them over to uncleanness.

In verse 26, God gave them over to vile passions, and now in verse 28, God gave them over to a debased mind, and what this describes is the progression of the downfall of a culture, and it begins, first of all, with uncleanness, a sexual revolution. It progresses and advances to a homosexual revolution in verse 26, giving over to vile passions and homosexuality. And then finally, you're given over to a mental devolution. This has to do with your mind. You end up with a debased mind, and we'll hear more of what that means.

And it really reminds us of what the apostle has been trying to convince us of through this chapter. In verse 21, they became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools. And then verse 25, they exchanged the truth of God for the lie. All of this has to do with the mind, what is happening to the mind.

First of all, uncleanness, homosexuality, and then the devolution, the debasing of the mind. So that's Paul's logic. And the treason is costly. The mental sickness is the result of it, and it's described here in many ways. And then, not only does one have their own minds debased, they want to gather others to do the same things and to approve one to another these things.

Here, the apostle gives us the longest list of sins in the Bible in one place. There are 21 of them, some say there are 23. There are probably 21 sins that are listed here. And all of these sins are really part of Paul's logic. He's explaining why he's not ashamed of the gospel.

He says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it delivers you from the wrath of God. It delivers you from the uncleanness. It delivers you from the homosexuality. It delivers you from a debased mind. God wants to deliver you.

God desires to deliver, so he sent His Son to die on the cross so that we might be justified by faith and escape the wrath of God. That's what He's saying here. And He's explaining the world the way it really is, Not the way that it's explained in the movies. And so, he's using this language to help us to understand how important, how beautiful, how life-giving the gospel is. So that's his whole logic.

And of course, the answer is to turn to Jesus Christ, to repent of your sins, to be forgiven, to follow Jesus Christ, to be justified in the sight of God and to receive the righteousness of God by faith. And that's his whole argument. From now until the end of the book. So we'll continue to get this logic, but particularly here in this section, the apostle wants us to understand the real world the way it is. And So far he has been explaining various reasons he's not ashamed of the gospel.

In the first seven verses, he really is talking very personally about the power of the gospel in his own life. That he's now not a servant of the devil, he's a servant of God. And all the things that he's been separated to the gospel of God and he's received grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, He's not ashamed of the gospel because of what happened to his own life. And then he goes on in verses eight through 17 and he talks about really how it's changed his whole life, the way that he relates with the church. He used to be a persecutor of the church.

Now he loves the church of Jesus Christ, and he talks about his obligations to the church of Jesus Christ. And he's thankful for the people in verse eight. He's prayerfully scheming to do the people of God good when he comes together with them in verses nine and 10. He's bent on imparting spiritual blessing and receiving spiritual blessing from the believers there and He's determined to obtain fruit. He's large-hearted toward everybody in the church, the weakest to the strongest, and he's determined to preach the gospel.

He's not ashamed of the gospel because what's happened to him. In that section, he uses I, me, mine over and over again. This gospel has changed my life. So that brings us up to where we are in this passage of scripture, and where you have these 21 terrifying results that come from exchanging the glory of God for a lie. So when we get to verse 28, Paul is shifting his exposure of homosexuality and the debasing of bodies from bodies to minds.

That's the subject, what you do with your mind. And so Paul is continuing to pile up these reasons. He's not ashamed. So as you can see, if you have an outline in front of you, I've divided these verses into three divisions. First of all, the pollution of not wanting God in your mind.

Second, the manifestations of that pollution, those 21 sins, and then thirdly, the approval cycle of the pollutions. So that's where we're going here. So let's begin with verse 28, the pollution of not wanting God in the mind. This is the greatest pollution. And even as they did not retain God in their knowledge.

God gave them over to a debased mind to do the things which are not fitting. So there is something that people do not like. They don't like the knowledge of God. So they would rather fill their minds with other things. He's talking about retaining, which means to actually have the mind possessed by Jesus Christ, the mind filled with Jesus Christ.

And so he's identifying the heart of the wicked. Job 21, 14 speaks of it. He speaks of those who say to God, depart from us, for we do not desire the knowledge of your ways. He says, What profit do we have if we pray to him? Debased, that's the conclusion.

The word means flawed, not approved. It's a word that's often used of metals. Metals that are not reliable. They're mixed with unprofitable, weak metals. They're useless.

The mind is compared with weak and mixed metal. One commentator explains it this way, the term is commonly used of metals that are rejected by refiners because of impurities. The impure metals were discarded, therefore they include the ideas of worthlessness and uselessness. In relation to God, the rejecting mind becomes a rejected mind and becomes spiritually depraved and worthless and useless. Jeremiah talks about this in Jeremiah 6.30.

They called them rejected silver because the Lord has rejected them. And do you see this other descriptor, not fitting, the things that are not fitting there in verse 28, From a Greek dictionary, perverted by a wrong basic attitude, the Gentile is possessed by destructive passions and overthrown by all kinds of vices. Thus, he thus loses all vestiges of the humanity, which even the healthy pagan respects. In Jeremiah 9, six, through deceit they refuse to know me, says the Lord. Jeremiah 4, 22, for my people are foolish, they have not known me, they are silly children, "'they have no understanding, they are wise to do evil, "'but to do good they have no knowledge.

All of this has to do with what you're feeding your mind. Feeding your mind on the things that the pagans will serve up to you is all part of this. You eat junk food, you have junk mind. That's the idea. So be very careful that the world that we live in is constantly serving up junk food for the junk mind.

This is a person who doesn't want God in his mind. And so these words, and even though they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, in other words, They want to do with their mind things that don't retain the knowledge of God. They're suppressing the truth. They don't want to retain it. They want other things in their minds, and they are not fitting.

And so this is what happens to people who do not retain the knowledge of God in their minds. People do not want to retain the knowledge of God in their music, They would like something else, in their entertainments, in their business, in their marriage, in their church, in their computer searching, not to retain God, but to retain something else. This is the great condemnation and the hardship that falls upon men who do not want to know God and to fill their minds with God. The mind is so crowded with things un-God. There are so many sounds that are ungod.

There are so many words that are not of God. Words from the movies but not from the Word of God. The mind filled with songs not of God. This is the ceasing of the contemplation of God. Donald Gray Barnhouse says, it's a terrible thing to follow one's own judgment apart from the word of God.

It's a terrible thing to follow the human conscience apart from the word of God. I think that's what he's talking about. And They do not think it worthwhile to acknowledge God. That's how another version renders this verse. But you know, in reading this and meditating on it over the last weeks, I just couldn't get it out of my mind, the great contrast of how the believer lives in a different world.

The believer lives in a world where his mind is being filled up with the knowledge of the will of God. And it's so wonderful. And the believer seeks the knowledge of the holy. In Proverbs 1 verse 10, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of the wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. That's where you get the goodness of God.

The believer wants to fulfill Paul's prayer that he prayed for that local church in Ephesus. He prayed that they would be filled up with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and insight, that they might know the height and the depth and the width and the length of the love of God. The believer desires the wisdom of God, and God offers it. And in James 1, we're told, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him, praise the Lord. God invites his children to fill their minds with the wisdom of God.

In Isaiah 48, 17, we're told that it's God who teaches us what's best. This is what the Lord says. Your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, I am the Lord your God who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way in which you should go. Isn't that good? What a good God.

I was recently in the home of my son-in-law, and one morning he opened up the Bible, and he opened up to Psalm 32, verses eight and nine, and I was thinking about this sermon that I was gonna give in the coming days. And this is what we read. This is what he read to us, to his children. Psalm 32 eight, I will instruct you and teach you in the way in which you should go. I will guide you with my eye.

Do not be like the horse or like the mule, which have no understanding, which must be harnessed with bit and bridle, and this really dropped me, else they will not come near you. To come near to God, to come near to God, to want To come near to God, to want to come near to God, to be filled up with the knowledge of His will, to be filled with the blessed, sweeter than honey, converting the soul word of God. You know, David says the opposite of what the wicked say in Psalm 139, 17. How precious are your thoughts to me. Fill your mind with the thoughts of God.

Don't ungod your life through your entertainments. Don't ungod your life through your music. Don't ungod your life through whatever. In 1 Chronicles 28 verse nine, David is urging his son Solomon, he's appealing to him, he says, as for you my son Solomon, know the God of your father and serve him with a loyal heart, and with a willing mind, a willing mind. For The Lord searches all hearts and understands all the intent of the thoughts, and then He says this.

If you seek Him, He will be found by you. That's a promise of Almighty God for every person. But if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever. Well, that's what's being spoken of here in Romans 1, 28 through 32. It's so important that we feed our minds, not on the junk food for junk minds, to ungod ourselves by the things of this world.

If you want God, seek him. Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. And what happens? He becomes like a tree planted by rivers of water, which brings forth fruit in his season. What a blessing it is.

But then In Psalm 1, we learn the ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. So the Apostle Paul is speaking of this mind that wants to be ungoded. But true believers, they want God to fill their minds. And they don't stand under the judgment. But they are kept in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on him, says Isaiah 26 three.

They have the mind of Jesus Christ. So, you know, in looking at this passage and the wrong use of the mind, the debased mind, I just couldn't stop thinking about the blessing it is to have God in the mind and how good He is. And I wanted to remind us all, is what you're watching help you to retain the knowledge of God in your mind? Is what you're listening to help you retain the knowledge of God in your mind? And be honest about that.

And do you wanna spend your life filling your mind with things that are ungoded? Evaluate the silliness, there's so much silliness in the world and the songs and the entertainments, you just have to ask yourself, how much ungoding would it take? We're so affected by the songs that we sing. And I was thinking about this the other day because I remembered how many times it was in our house when I would be driving to work and I would start humming or singing a song in my mind and I'd say, where did that come from? And I realized, oh, my daughter was humming that when she was fixing breakfast when I was getting ready for work.

She was humming it, and somehow it got into my subconscious mind and then emerged into the consciousness of my mind, and then I was singing the same song. It was a beautiful song. It was a life-giving song. It's so, we have such an effect on one another and the things that we sing and the things that we listen to are so important. But what Paul is saying here is that our minds can be mixed, they can be polluted, they can be debased.

Not pure metal, but A bunch of junk metal from a bunch of junk mind work. That's what he's saying here. And frankly, we've been going through this study of the book, The Family at Church, And the purpose, the reason we're doing this is because we really so desire the culture of this church to be fully Goded, not un-Goded. And so that the individuals, the single people, the families that come to this church, they come self-conscious, they know what they're doing. They're coming to drink in the goodness of God and to drink it in in every possible way they can, to squeeze every ounce of good out of local church experience and the ordinary means of grace, to come into, to just exalt God in the singing, to recognize the glory of God in every word of scripture that's read.

The Bible, we're told, we're commanded by God to read scripture publicly in the church and to take the Lord's Supper and to engage in the ordinances. We're doing all of those things today, everything. We're doing it. We're just piling on the glory of God into the congregation. So we want parents particularly to be really thoughtful and careful and diligent.

And don't just drag your kids to church and throw them in here. You know, be tour guides of joy. Recognize the everlasting blessing there is in God. And maybe don't be like the way you've always just kinda showed up at church, but come ready to be ministered to and to minister and be thoughtful and careful and dutiful about it. We're just, hey, by the way, we're urging this congregation to do that more than ever.

Hey, we think many of the people in the congregation do that, but here's what we wanna say. Excel still more, more of God, more holiness, more intentionality about the worship of God. You know, it reminds me about a little over a decade ago, I published a book called A Weed in the Church, How a Culture of Age Segregation is Harming the Next Generation. And then I released a film called Divided. Caused a lot of controversy, caused me a lot of trouble, but I remember one time, you know, the lead singer of Casting Crowns was just ranting against this book and against this film, just raging against it.

He said, what kind of bubble do these guys live in? Well, I thought everybody lives in a bubble. I don't really like your bubble that much, you know. I like a bubble that's fully Goded. I like a bubble where the generations gather together.

That's the kind of bubble I think is biblical, you know. So, you know, what kind of bubble are you living in? The Apostle Paul is identifying the tragedy of autonomy, to think that you can just fill your mind with whatever you want to fill it with. And so, so Paul, he moves from this basic principle that people don't want to retain God in their knowledge, he moves from there. In the next verse in verse 29 to verse 31, he moves to the manifestations of the mind pollution in the world.

And there are 21 sins. And it's interesting how people have divided this up. You can divide this up according to the violations of the first table of the law, the first four commandments, and the second table of the law. Here we find ourselves in the second table of the law. These are social manifestations of the sin.

Sin always comes out in some way. They don't always come out fully. They don't always come out as publicly because we have ways to be very nice even though we have evil in our hearts. But this is of course the longest list of sins in the Bible. These sins are the wrath of God.

They are the penalty. When a person turns away from God, then God lets them have their own way, and it runs, it runs its full course in time. And so these are the consequences of ignoring God, not wanting to entertain God in your mind. And so, the first, they come in sets as well. The first five have to do with being filled with something, being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness.

You know, these five terms, of course they all have their opposite as well. The believer, not unrighteousness but righteousness. The believer, not sexual immorality but filled with sexual purity. Not wickedness but goodness, not covetousness, but generosity, not maliciousness. But the believer is filled with innocence.

And full of envy, you want more than you have murder. The believer's a reconciler, not a killer. Strife, contentions. The believer, though, is a peacemaker. Deceit, in other words, somebody who puts on a front to deceive, the believer is transparent.

Believer is the person they represent themself as. Evil-mindedness, this is the craftiness. On the other hand, the believer is good-hearted. They are whisperers, backbiters, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving. And then somebody might say, well, I'm not doing all those things.

Well, just wait until chapter two because the apostle will address those who have everything going well on the outside and are very religious and they do all the right things. We'll deal with that next week because sin runs deeper than just what shows up on the outside and he's gonna make that clear. You know, one illustration of that is the Pharisees. They were like whitewashed tombs. They were full of dead men's bones, even though they just were looking so good, so obedient, so orderly, so nice on the outside.

Well, we'll get to that next week. And then, Well, you know, if you don't want God in your mind, then you want to be with people who also don't want God in their mind so that you'll feel good about yourself, so you'll feel good about what you're doing. You just need to find a few people to do things that aren't good so that you can feel good about what you're doing. And so in verse 32, who knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same, but also approve of those who practice them. So approving of those who practice them.

And we can approve of things in different ways. Spending our time taking in their ideas, watching their images. There's a way that we can approve, we can celebrate the celebrities. We can approve in different ways. We can approve by our own behavior.

But with every nod, we exchange the truth of God for a lie. And it says here that they knew the judgment of God, in other words, they knew the law of God, we also know that they can never get away from it because they're always suppressing the truth of God. There's always a suppressing problem. You can try to put it out of your mind, but it'll pop up. It's like that whack-a-mole game.

It's gonna keep coming up, and you're gonna have to keep whacking it down. And so they knew the righteous judgment of God. In other words, God has put His law in the hearts of every person. Everybody knows what's right and wrong. Our consciences can become defiled for sure, but says that they know the righteous judgment of God, that's the first phrase, and that those who practice such things are deserving of death, they know there's a penalty, and then not only do the same, but also approve of those who practice them.

Now, I think this teaches us again, and this should actually be incredibly encouraging, because what we're being told here is the truth is that people know that they're doing something wrong. They know it. And we were told earlier that every person actually knows there's a God. They might deny it, but they're lying. And when you talk to somebody, maybe you might categorize them as the worst person you know here's what you know.

They know. They really do know. And maybe you can help them figure out that they really, really do know instead of trying to suppress it all the time. Remember earlier in the chapter, God manifested the truth of his presence to every person on the planet. And he revealed to them his invisible attributes which are clearly seen.

And we talked quite a bit about that. His invisible attributes of provision, of light, of all the things in the natural world that bear witness to His invisible attributes. God manifests the glory of His attributes in the world through the sun, through the stars, through so many different ways, hundreds and thousands of ways. And then his eternal power, he exercises his power in such a way to make man understand that he is not the greatest power. Man is not the higher power.

There is a higher power through the things of nature. And he has communicated his Godhead. So he, and he gives a conscience so that it is revealed in them, in their conscience, and to them through the natural world. So everyone is without excuse. And so the apostle is repeating that again here at the end of Romans one.

And you know, all of these sins, I mean, you can try to stop them through legislation, you can stop them through domination, but the only way to truly stop their spread is through justification, through salvation by grace alone. I was reading this last week, Psalm 73, 28. It is good for me to draw near to God. I have put my trust in the Lord. Last night I was reading before we went to bed to Deborah, blessed are the undefiled in the way who walk in the law of the Lord.

Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek Him with the whole heart. I will delight myself in your statutes. I will not forget your word. You know, it's such a delight to walk in the wisdom of God, to fill the mind with the truth of God, to have less and less junk in your mind. You know, I put so much junk in my mind in my youth, and I'm so sorry that I did.

And it keeps coming up. It keeps coming up 50, 60 years later. So many of you are young, Don't have a junk mind because you listened and watched so much junk. Because you can't always escape all of it. But it's good to escape it young.

The younger the better. You know, we're gonna baptize a bunch of young people today. God's gonna rescue them from a lot of stuff, from a lot of junk. A lot of adults here have a lot of junk that they've been trying to escape, and some of these children won't have that same problem the same way. That's a real blessing.

It really is. The younger you come to the Lord, the better off you'll be. Nobody ever said, oh, I wish I had just waited to come to the Lord. They always say, oh, I just wish I had done it earlier. Because God is so good, He fills the mind with good things.

He blesses you with His word and with His truth. So in the midst of all of this junk, all of this horrible stuff that's listed here. I wanted just to remind us how sweet the words of God are, how good it is to fill your mind with the things of God, and how important it is that we don't ungod ourselves in any way by what we see or what we hear, what we meditate on, because God is so good. Well, I wanna end with doing something here. I recently, well, it was several years ago, I realized that there was a commentator that I was reading.

He took passages of scripture and he inverted them. R.C. Sproul was famous for doing this. He took biblical texts and he turned them on their head to make them say the opposite, like for example, the Aaronic blessing in Numbers 6, 24. The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you.

He would turn it over, he'd turn it around and say, the Lord curse you and abandon you. May the Lord keep you in darkness and give you only judgment without grace. He would turn texts over like that. And Kent Hughes does this with this passage in Romans. I think it's this one.

It might be a different one. But I ended up, I rewrote this section, turning it around. And I just wanna read it to you. And why would I do this? The way I'm gonna read it, it explains just the blessedness of God.

And that's really all I wanted to say today, is that God is so good, we oughta fill our minds with Him all the time. So If you go to verse 18, where it says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. How about this? For the favor of God is revealed from heaven toward all who pursue godliness, who love righteousness, who seek the truth in righteousness. Because what may be known of God is manifest to them, for God has shown it to them.

For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because they knew God, they glorified him as God, they were thankful and became fruitful in their thoughts, and their wise hearts were enlightened. Professing to be in need of wisdom, they became wise and were clothed with the glory of the incorruptible God, and became like incorruptible man, Jesus, not birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore, God cleansed them in the good desires of their hearts to respect their bodies among themselves who embraced the truth of God and rejected the lie, and worshiped and served the creator who is blessed forever, amen. For this reason, God gave them life-giving passions, for even their women embraced the natural use according to their nature. Likewise, the men embrace the natural use of the women, nourish their love for them, men with women committing what is beautiful in the eyes of God, and receiving in themselves the blessings of their faithfulness which was due.

Therefore God cleansed them in the good desires of their hearts to respect their bodies among themselves who embraced the truth of God and rejected the lie and worshiped and served the creator who is blessed forever. And even as they loved to retain God in their knowledge, God gave renewed minds to do the things which are fitting, being filled up with all righteousness, sexual purity, uprightness, generosity, benevolence, contentedness, honesty, blamelessness. They are transparent. They are those who bless. They are lovers of God.

They are gentle, lowly, unpretentious, inventors of good things, obedient to parents, discriminating, reliable, pursuing love, forgiving, full of mercy, who knowing the righteous judgment of God that those who practice such things are deserving of life, not only do the same, but also approve of those who practice them. Well, that's the bubble of the Church of Jesus Christ. And that's the bubble that we're trying to continue to move toward, toward the ways of God, which are always so good. So, you know, in this world, we all live in a world given over to the viruses of the polluted mind who approve of the pollution wouldn't you rather be filled up with the fullness of God in your mind and have the mind of Jesus Christ, which is what Paul said. He said, we have the mind of Christ.

Praise the Lord for such good gifts. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for how penetrating and revealing your word is, how it tells the truth about the world the way it really is and all the ways that we might escape the pollutions of the world. Oh God, I thank you for the goodness of your house and what a blessing it is to live under the shadow of your wings. I pray, oh Lord, that you would sanctify this church and all these things, amen.