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  The God who Breathes Life (Genesis 2:7)

INTRODUCTION:

As we were celebrating some birthdays this morning, I asked myself, how often we celebrate that of our new birth. You know, the Holy Spirit is responsible for both.

So, preparing for today’s message, I’ve been asking myself the age old question: What is the meaning of life. Before we can answer that, though, we really have to ask ourselves some other questions.

What exactly is life?
What makes something alive versus dead?
When and how does life begin?
How much of it do we truly grasp?
 - answer: mysterious

DEAD ENGINE

Is life kind of like that of a machine? Because many will suggest life is nothing more than chemistry and electrical charges.

When our car or lawnmower won’t run, we says it’s _____ dead. Right. So, when it runs, it obviously has some sense of life, doesn’t it?

Is that what our life is like? How different are we really from a machine that runs on electrical charges? What gets us going — what makes us alive? Is it like pulling the string on a mower, turning an ignition switch, pushing a power button? 

With AI, how many people wonder if we aren’t truly all that different from a machine. At what point will we begin to suggest that AI is no longer artificial. So many sci-fi movies. Anyone remember Short Circuit’s Johnny 5?

Our topic is very relevant.

LIFE IN DIFFERENT SIZES

First, there are varying degrees, or better, different senses of life.
- animation and movement
- biological
- spiritual

NICENE

One of the older Christian creeds — The Nicene Creed — says this about the Holy Spirit:
And we believe in the Holy Spirit,
  the Lord, the giver of life.
 He proceeds from the Father and the Son,
 and with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.

Whatever life is, it is a gift that comes through the Holy Spirit who is the Giver of Life.

So, it’s no surprise that our understanding of life, especially due to the Fall, is a bit blurred. Life is as mysterious as the Spirit who gives life. 

SERIES: 

The Holy Spirit and Discipleship
We’re not going to get very far with the idea of discipleship this morning. Today, we’re looking at something more foundational — something that must proceed any discipleship — and that is life — or more specifically, receiving NEW LIFE. Before anything else, that is our first need — it’s everyone’s greatest need.

So, we’ll begin this morning with THE GOD WHO BREATHES LIFE.

READ: Genesis 2:4-7 and John 7:37-39

TRINITARIAN ASPIRATIONS

When considering this theme for our FDC, I thought I had narrowed it down quite a bit from going with the larger theme of the TRINITY. I mean, I believe I cut my material by a third — or so I thought. 

But we can’t really have a discussion on the other members of the Godhead without their reference to the Holy Spirit.

Here, we don’t overly focus our discussions on the Holy Spirit. It’s not that we neglect Him. But often times, He sort of hides in the background unseen. 

But He isn’t unseen in Scripture. In fact, the Spirit shows up in the second verse of Genesis 1. 

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

That’s the opening 3 verses of the Bible. And if you’ve been a believer for any duration, you’re likely familiar that all three persons of the Trinity come on the scene rather immediately. God, the Father creating. God the Spirit hovering. God the Son as the Word by which everything comes into being. 

WHO IS US?

Later in chapter 1, God will say, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” The first-person plural conveys more than one person. So, the seeds for the Trinity are right here in the opening verses of Scripture. 

Of course, by itself, our finite minds would never come to that conclusion, especially since the rest of the Old Testament hammers home the point that God is One.

But here’s the thing about interpretation. By itself, Genesis 1:2 only tells us so much, in the sense that the interpreter has no other context. But Scripture doesn’t find its meaning by one’s own interpretation, but in the divine Author’s intent. 

As such, we must allow God Himself not only interpret for us but to teach us how to interpret the whole of Scripture — even where immediate direct explanation isn’t provided. 

We know that “us” in Genesis 1:26 is plural — Let us make man in our image — refers to the entire Godhead. But at a minimum, Genesis 1:2 provides a second referent — another person — besides the referent of God in verse 1. 

In other words, when taken with verse 26, we can recognize verse 2 as another divine person — the divinity of the Spirit — before we even move onto chapter 2. 

AGENT OF CREATION

The Holy Spirit is revealed as the Agent of Creation.
We see that in Psalm 33:6
 By the Word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host. 

The word is רוּחַ (RUACH) — most often translated as spirit, wind, or breath. (A couple other Hebrew terms convey the same idea.)

OVERFLOW OF HIMSELF

Out of an overflow of who God is — namely life itself — God creates and gives Himself to His creation and His creatures — filling it all with His very breath. By the breath — the ruach — the Spirit of his mouth, God made all the hosts of heaven.

As we turn the page to Genesis 2, the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

LIFELESS CLAY?

How does man become a living creature? It’s not merely his being formed, as intimate as that picture is. At that point, mankind is simply a clay sculpture.
No. It’s only in the Lord breathing His very breath — His Spirit — into mans nostrils that the man becomes a living creature. What happens at that moment is God breathes Himself into the man.

God animates the clay — the Adamah — that’s where Adam’s name comes from. He’s a clay figurine. Apart from God’s breath — God’s Spirit within him — Adam’s no more than a lump of clay. 

God animates the clay with His breath — His Spirit. And the lifeless clay comes alive. 

ALL OF CREATION

But it’s not just true of mankind. We’re told all living creatures are alive because they have the breath of life within them.
(That’s made clear in the flood, after the Fall — when God cleanses the earth, and everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. 

Ecclesiastes 3:19-21 — because of the Fall, the same fate — that of death — happens to all — both man and beast. They both have the same breath — the One Spirit. 

Psalm 104. When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When you send forth your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.

God’s Spirit animates, not just man, but all of creation.
Now, not all of creation is alive in the biological sense as the living creatures. But all of creation is animated by the Spirit in the sense that creation moves — just as the wind moves the atmosphere and trees and the waters. 

This is a God who moves solar systems and galaxies. 

UNSEEN YET SEEN

But here’s the thing. You can’t see Him. You can’t see the Spirit — only His work. But His work is evidenced everywhere — in everything that moves — because He is the Divine Mover.

SIN’S INCOMPATIBILITY WITH LIFE

But with sin — God’s Spirit no longer abides in man — not in any lasting sense. Man who was created to dwell with God by His Spirit forever, now dies and returns to the dust from which he was made.

Sin is incompatible with life. How? Because sin, in one sense, is rejecting the very Spirit of life, the breath of life, given to reside within.

We don’t have life in ourselves but depend entirely on the Spirit. When Adam and Eve turned away from God in the Garden, they turned away from life itself. On the day you eat, you shall surely die. 

INSANITY OF PRIDE

All because of this prideful creature called man desired to be autonomous. Just think of how absurd and insane sin is. Out of his desire for autonomy this creature who is utterly dependent for his every breath longs to sever himself from the only source of life there is. 

SEEING THE UNSEEABLE

[It might be helpful to pause and recognize that Scripture uses several images to portray the Spirit who is unseen. A few important ones: wind, breath, fire, water, fountains, anointing oil, dove and eagle.]

NEED FOR NEW CREATION

With the Flood, most of life on earth would come to an end. But not all. Where the flood waters swept away every living creature with the breath of life, Noah and those with him on the ark were spared.

Noah had found favor in the Lord’s eyes. Noah’s name means “rest.” When Noah was born, it was said of him, this one shall bring us rest.

Noah and the ark would come to rest atop the mountains of Ararat, as the flood waters gradually subsided.

And Noah would send out a dove, which found no place for her foot, for the waters were still over the face of the whole earth. (You should hear echoes of Genesis 1 and picture the Spirit hovering over the waters of the deep.)

(We know the literary link of the dove and the Spirit from Jesus’ baptism.)

7 days later — an olive branch.
Another 7 days, the dove does not return.
Creation 2.0 has begun. But it’s not long before sin reveals itself again. So much for any Sabbath rest Noah.

REDEMPTION CONTINUES

The story of redemption continues through Abraham and Israel with God calling a people to Himself.

The Exodus is described in terms very reminiscent of Creation and the Flood. 

The waters are parted by a strong east wind / Spirit.
Israel is brought through the waters like Noah.

Exodus 19:4 — the Lord’s recounting of the event
You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles wings and brought you to myself.

Deuteronomy 32:10-11 describes the Lord encircling Israel — caring for him as the apple of his eye — Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters / hovers over its young, spreading out its wings…

Same word as in Genesis 1:2.

Just as the Spirit hovered over creation, here the Lord hovered over His people, who are as His offspring. His outstretched wings overshadowed them. He shades them under the protection of His wings. It’s a picture of the Spirit overshadowing this new creation.

It’s not enough for God to create — nor to give life. Why? Only God has life in Himself. As such, He must sustain and protect the life He has filled His people with if they are to thrive, much less survive.

DEFINING LIFE

Which brings us back to what exactly is life?
Is it movement? Intentional self-movement?

Scientists describe biological life as that which is marked by metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction.

Philosophers define life as the aspect of existence that processes, acts, reacts, evaluates, and evolves.
Not very exciting is it. (And that’s why we have poets.) Life is certainly more than the scientist or philosopher conveys it to be.

MEANING

The popular question: what is the meaning of life? Has been answered many ways. But most often, it is answered by those who don’t even know the origin of life. It’s helpful to know where life comes from and why one has it if we are to answer such a question.

But when humanity denies the source of life, it’s no surprise that we have so much confusion as to who we are, much less the meaning of life. Why was I born this way? Was I born in the wrong body? These types of questions arise out of a denial of life’s origin. But get the origin right, these questions quickly go away.

BREATH OF ALL MANKIND

Remember, there are different senses of life. At a minimum, there’s animation, biological, and spiritual. Each of these are dependent on the Holy Spirit.

In that sense, all of creation and all persons participate to some degree in the Holy Spirit. This includes unregenerate persons. Those who aren’t believers are dependent upon the Holy Spirit for their every breath. He is the source of all life. There is no life at all apart from the Spirit. 

Hence, Paul has no problem speaking to unbelievers in such a way. Acts 17 at the Areopagus — The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to ALL MANKIND life and breath and everything.

Paul goes on to say that God is actually not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being. 

And it makes perfect sense, that God the Holy Spirit, who is omnipresent, fills creation, including unbelievers. 

REDEMPTIVE FOCUS

But usually, when we’re speaking of being filled with the Holy Spirit, Scripture doesn’t have biological life in mind, but spiritual life. Only believers — only the regenerate have the Holy Spirit in a redemptive sense.

SPIRITUAL LIFE

So just as the Spirit is the source of life and generation of biological life in creation, He is also the source of spiritual life and its preservation. 

SPIRITUALLY DEAD

While the Exodus was meant to portray new life and new creation (baptism through the Red Sea) — by the time we get to the prophets, it’s clear that the people of Israel are dead — not biologically dead — but dead in the sense that matters— they are spiritually dead. 

THE LIFE THAT MATTERS

[And why does spiritual death matter more than biological death? Because we are spiritual creatures. We have a body and a soul / spirit. What makes up our lives is not so much the physical. The physical, more than anything else, is so we can, as finite physical creatures, comprehend something of the spiritual. But the material — the physical — is all going to perish. It benefits us very little to seek to preserve that which can’t be preserved. But it matters eternally seeking to preserve that which remains forever. 

Bodily training is of some value. But godliness is of value in every way. For it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. Yet how much of our focus is on that which will perish.]

DEAD WORSHIP

Anyway, Israel failed to attend to that which held the infinitely greater value — their spiritual life. Even possessing the oracles of God and His instruction — they held little regard for the God who was their life. Instead, they wanted to be like the nations and worship false gods — statues in which there wasn’t any breath — statues that were less alive than they were. And as the psalmist wrote, those who worship them become like them. 

They exchanged the fountain of living water and worshiped that which was dead and became dead themselves.

DRY BONES

Just how dead was the house of Israel? They were like dry bones. But God’s plan of redemption is to breathe life into that which is dead.

Ezekiel 37. You know this account — the valley of dry bones.

The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones. Bones … many bones, and they covered the surface of the valley — literally, the face of the valley. 

CAN THEY LIVE

And the Lord said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live? 

Ezekiel’s response: O Lord God, you know.
If life comes from God and only from God, unless He gives these bones life, no way can they live. But the God who breathes life into clay can certainly breath life into dead dry bones.

So the Lord commands Ezekiel to prophesy over the bones. Say to the, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.

NOT WITHOUT BREATH

What makes the bones come alive? It’s not with the sinews and flesh and skin. But the breath — the ruach — the Spirit.

Ezekiel prophesies, and the bones rattle and come together, with sinews and flesh and skin, but so long as there’s no breath in them, they remain dead. Just as in Genesis 2, forming the body isn’t sufficient. They need to be filled with life — with the One who is life — with the Spirit Himself.

Then the Lord said to me,”Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.

And the bones lived.

What do the bones represent? We’re told they represent the whole house of Israel, whose bones are dried up, all hope is lost.

I mean, being dead is about as hopeless as it gets… But God. Isn’t that Ephesians 2. But God.

MY SPIRIT

So, again, the Lord instructs Ezekiel to prophesy. Say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves… and I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live. 

GREATER SON OF MAN

Isn’t it interesting that Ezekiel’s title is Son of man. 93 times Ezekiel is referred to as the Son of man. Of course, this is Jesus’ most used title for himself — over 80 times in the gospels he refers to himself as the Son of man. (Daniel 7, I know. But don’t discount the allusions to Ezekiel. Ears to hear — 12:2.)

It is when the true Son of Man comes prophesying — speaking the Word of the Lord to the dead — that they will come alive. 

O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.

John 5:25. And when the dead hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. 

THE SON GIVES LIFE

Jesus says, just as the Father gives life (John 5:21), so the Son of God gives life to whom he will. How can the Son give anyone life? Because he has life in himself. (John 5:26) For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.

Just as Ezekiel, as the shadow of the son of man prophesied to the breath to fill the dead corpses, Jesus, the True Son of Man speaks to the Spirit — come four winds — a picture of the Spirit’s omnipresence. Jesus sends the Spirit to fill us who were dead.

ALIVE TO GOD

Of course, Ezekiel 37 goes with Ezekiel 36.
(36:25) I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanesses, and from your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put MY SPIRIT within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

The Spirit doesn’t simply make alive biologically speaking but spiritually. The deadness is expressed in the people’s heart of stone — our heart of stone. We were dead and unfeeling as regards God! (That’s what we’ve been covering in Romans 1. Although they knew God…)

AWAKENED TO GOD

The Spirit awakens us not so much physically but to God Himself.

This is the new birth that was promised throughout the prophets. We just looked at one. And this is the new birth Jesus is referring to when Nicodemus comes to under the cover of darkness in John 3 — and he tells Nicodemus, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus doesn’t know what to do with this. How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb?

Truly, I say to you, Jesus says, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

WHERE THE WIND BLOWS

Do not marvel that I said to you, “You must be born again.” The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

Nicodemus is lost. How can these things be? He is Israel’s teacher — emphatically, he is the teacher of Israel, and he doesn’t understand the teaching about the New Birth and the Spirit’s role in it. 

CANNOT SEE THE KINGDOM

But that’s part of the point. Nicodemus too needs to be born again, or literally, born from above if he is to see — understand — comprehend the kingdom of God. 

All of his vast education mattered not. He could memorize the Scriptures, but apart from being born of the Spirit, the things of the kingdom of God were but a fog. 

SKEPTICAL TEACHERS

Every now and then, I’ll read some of the skeptical scholars. It’s amazing how many unbelieving professors there are that teach theology — that teach the Bible. They aren’t believers, and yet they study the Scriptures far more than your average believer does. 

I’ll come across something they have written on this or that passage of Scripture, and they’ll interpret it. And at one level, they understand the passage. They know the meaning of words. They know their Greek and Hebrew. They trace out the historic background. And for the most part, what they have to share is what you’ll find in the notes of the average Study Bible. 

WHAT ARE THEY MISSING

But like Nicodemus, they are missing it. They are missing the spiritual emphasis. They’re missing the glory and the beauty. Their unbelief leaves them blind to seeing the truth of the text. Why? Because they haven’t been born from above. They can’t see the kingdom of God for what it truly is. Because they have no taste for it. And because they have no taste for it, they will not enter it.

It’s not accidental that the temple curtain was torn from top to bottom. Just as our new birth must take place from above — so to our redemption. The two go hand in hand. There are no resources here below. No physician, no education, no health regiment, no workout plan, no diet, no science, no machine, no magic drug, nothing that can make you spiritually alive but the God who is Spirit. 

Because every one of us, since the Fall, have been born dead in our trespasses and sins — and we walked in that deadness. 

We were all dry bones — dead and hopeless. How dead? Dead to the point we didn’t even realize we were dead.

It’s no surprise that there’s so much confusion as to the meaning of life. You can’t see it, you can’t grasp it, unless you are born from above. 

One must have life before they can grasp the meaning of it. 

But we can’t make ourselves alive. It must come from above.

THE SPIRIT AND CHRIST

So, where does our new birth and new life come from? The God who became man, taking on the very likeness of our flesh, relied on the same Spirit all humanity was to rely on. 

When Jesus came, he came in the sense of Genesis 1:2. Remember what the angel Gabriel says to Mary? The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. The Holy Spirit would hover over Mary like a dove. And she would conceive and bear a Son who would be filled with the Holy Spirit. 

Jesus would know life as we were to know it — filled with the same breath of life, the same Holy Spirit, the first Adam was filled with. And on the cross, Jesus would breathe his last and give up that Spirit in order to restore life and the Spirit to us.

A NEW NOAH

When Jesus begins his ministry and is baptized through the waters, it’s no surprise that he comes as one who is filled with the Spirit, upon whom the Spirit rests like a dove. He comes as the one promised in Isaiah 11:2, upon whom the Spirit will rest and thus able to give rest to his people. In other words, a new Noah has come on the scene. Jesus comes and gives us the rest that Noah’s name pointed to.

RIVERS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

Jesus comes as the one who will pour out the Spirit without measure. 

That’s why we read from Ezekiel 47 at the beginning of service. This is what’s Jesus is referring to in John 7. 

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Now, this he said about the Spirit with whom those who believed in him were to receive. For as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

The wording can go two ways. The question is, out of whose heart will flow this river of living water? Most of our translations seem to suggest it’s the believer. But it is very likely that Jesus is the antecedent in the third person, because he is referring to what the Old Testament Scriptures have long pointed. Ezekiel 47 is just one.

THE TRUE TEMPLE FROM WITH WATERS FLOW

This helps us to understand better how we are to handle those final chapters in Ezekiel. Rather than expecting a physical brick and mortar temple to be erected in Jerusalem in the last days, Jesus inaugurates the last days with his coming. He comes as the temple. And it is out of him, the true temple that these living waters flow, giving new life to all creation.

Jesus is the temple from which the rivers of living water will flow in the giving of the Spirit to everyone who believes. 

COME FIND REST

Let me ask. Have you believed? Have you been born from above?

The Spirit in you may be unseen, but His work in you should not be. It should be evident.

If you haven’t received this new birth, then receive Jesus’ words and respond today. 

Come to me, and I will give you rest. The New Noah upon whom the Spirit rested, from whom life itself flows, invites you to come to Him and receive rest. 

Because as long as you are seeking rest anywhere other than in Christ, from whom the Spirit flows, you won’t find rest. You will only wear yourself out. Why? Because you’re searching for life and seeking to sustain and preserve life apart from the One who offers you the life itself from His very Spirit. 

Instead, simply receive the gift that Jesus holds out with outstretched arms. Just as he told the woman at the well, he has living water. What is this living water? It’s the Spirit. 

WATER AND SPIRIT

Remember Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 

There’s actually no definite article in front of Spirit. It would be better translated, unless one is born of water and spirit, or even, unless one is born of water and breath. 

Jesus is likely using two words to address the same thing, in order to cover the Old Testaments different ways of conveying the giving of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is represented by both water and breath — living water and the breath of life. Being born of water and spirit here are one and the same thing. 

And when Jesus dies on the cross, and they pierce his side, what does John say flows from Jesus’ side? Not just blood, but water. Living water falls upon the thirst ground as a picture of the Spirit Jesus is about to pour out. 

Likewise, after the resurrection, Jesus breathes on his disciples saying what? Receive the Holy Spirit. This also points to the Spirit Jesus will pour out from on high after his ascension at Pentecost — and to every believer who comes after.

Have you receive the Spirit? Those who have receive the Spirit in this age, receive new life now. You have new life now. 

HOPE

But we also have the hope, the sure hope, that when we breathe our last on this present earth, just as Jesus breathed his last — see, following our Lord, means following our Lord. These present bodies will die and rot in the ground. But not our spirit. 

And one day, those bodies will be raised anew and filled forever with the everlasting presence of the eternal God — forever filled with the Holy Spirit.

Matt Smart

   Judgment According to Truth (Romans 2:1-2) 

INTRODUCTION

Who am I to judge. It’s not my place to judge. 

These are common phrases. We all know them. Some of us have used them. 

But most of the time, these phrases come bearing judgment disguised in my own personal opinion. Of course that opinion stands against the other person’s decision and action. But we somehow think we’ve softened the idea of judgment by portraying it as a preference rather than a judgment.

Aren’t we crafty!

In our society, tolerance and acceptance are the new standard of righteousness. And the greatest sin of all — according to public opinion — you guessed it — judgment of another. 

And yet, that itself is a judgment. We pass judgment on those who would judge another. 

This is actually a portrait of Paul’s very argument he opens with in chapter 2. O the irony!

The list of vices, the dishonorable passions, the lusts of the fallen human heart is not our problem. They are a problem. They are God’s judgment upon a fallen humanity for exchanging God — for giving Him up for lesser things — infinitely lesser things, because everything else piled together is infinitely less than God.)

But our greatest problem is our stance toward God Himself. What we think of God and our finding Him unworthy of our honor, unworthy of our thanksgiving, unworthy even of our acknowledgment. 

So, in chapter 2, Paul addresses the individual who has listened to Paul’s case against humanity in the second half of chapter 1, and somehow missed Paul’s point — that Paul must be referring to others — but certainly not me!

The person who seems to be in agreement with Paul, that humanity is filled with those who are depraved, debased, and dishonorable. But thank God, I’m nothing like that!

Well, chapter 2 is for those who somehow think in chapter 1, Paul wasn’t referring to them.

READ: Romans 2:1-5

LOVING CHAPTER 1

I imagine Paul has in mind, someone having just read the first chapter of his letter to the Romans, and before turning to chapter 2, they find themselves in hearty agreement with him. 

Perhaps Paul’s letter is being read out loud to the congregation in Rome, and you have that person on the front row with his loud “Amens.”

The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. AMEN!

For God’s invisible attributes… have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world… So they are without excuse. AMEN!

For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him. AMEN!

They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images. AMEN!

They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator. AMEN!

They  did not see fit to acknowledge God. AMEN!

They were filled with … full of … they are … AMEN!

They not only practice such things but give approval to those who practice them. AMEN!

And the reader pauses between chapters. And the guy is like: This Paul fellow is good! These people are rightly condemned! They know God’s righteous decree, so they are justly deserving of the condemnation that’s coming. Amen Paul!

We’re loving the second half of chapter 1. Can’t wait to hear chapter 2!

MISSING THE POINT

Many seem to hear the second half of chapter 1 and commend Paul. They feel as if they have passed the test — that Paul’s indictment against humanity somehow excludes them.

“Wait a minute,” says Paul. You obviously missed something. You see, the second half of Romans 1 encompasses all of us — including me — and including you. You, my friend, are guilty too.

I’m not sure where we got off. What you failed to grasp. Is it that you’re heterosexual? So, you think you can cross off verses 26 and 27 of chapter 1 as if they don’t apply to you?

[As we covered two weeks ago, those verses are about all of us — because they aren’t so much about sexuality as they are about the dishonorable and disordered affections that are grounded in an excessive love of self — of sameness — of self-worship.]

You’re claiming to know God and His ways, doesn’t excuse you. Because you don’t live out what you know to be true, any more than those in chapter 1 fail to live out what they know to be true.

You wield God’s law as a mallet to whack others into line when your ways are every bit as crooked — and worse — you somehow think they’re not — because your assessment of yourself is based on a distorted standard. 

Which takes us to No Excuse 2.0.

NO EXCUSE 2.0

Therefore, you have no excuse o man, everyone of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.

Notice the therefore at the beginning of verse 1. Therefore, given the argument of the second half of chapter 1 that you find yourself supposedly in agreement with, you have no excuse. 

1:20. Just as everyone is without excuse for suppressing the truth God has made plain to them — here is Paul’s “No Excuse 2.0.” 

You prove that you know God’s righteous decree every time you pass judgment on another and hold them to standards you yourself fail to live by — standards of ought which reveal that you know the eternal law of God — with or without Scripture. You apply God’s righteous decree to others while failing to apply it to yourself.

APPROVING AND DISAPPROVING

You see what Paul did? In 2 verses, he covered everyone’s stance toward sin. The last verse of chapter 1 deals with those who approve of other people’s sins. And the first verse of chapter 2 deals with those who disapprove of other people's sins. 

If you approve of their sins, you are condemned with those in verse 32. If you disapprove of their sin, you condemn yourself. 

Do you approve of other people’s sin? Oh no, I don’t approve of their sin.
So, you disapprove of their sin. Yes. That’s me. I disapprove of their sin. Then you are self-condemned. 

Well, then, I’ll just be indifferent — I’ll ignore the whole world. Let them live how they want.
Well, that’s a type of approval. 

But the bottom line is, we all actually find ourselves on both sides of these two verses. Sometimes we do approve of the wrongdoing of others. And sometimes, we disapprove of the wrongdoing of others. 

Everyone falls on both sides of this. And that’s part of the point.

DRIVING THE POINT

We could simply look at how most of us respond to other people’s driving, and how we ourselves drive. 

Some car flies past us. O he’s going way too fast. He’s going to cause an accident.
Or you get behind someone driving too slow for your taste, and you become impatient. 

But let me ask. Are you ever the slower car? On a two lane road, do you ever find someone tailgating you? Does your speedometer ever crack the posted speed limit? It’s not a suggested speed. It’s not how fast you’re supposed to drive even. It’s the fastest you are permitted to drive. 

Listen loved ones. I’m guilty. My speed will often be a couple, if not a few miles over the limit. And I consider myself I fairly safe — law-abiding driver. But do you know what that means? What I’m really saying is, “Well, I don’t break the law to the degree she breaks does!” So, is that supposed to make me somehow innocent of breaking the law?

COMPARATIVE RIGHTEOUSNESS

Paul’s point is, in our passing judgment on others, we condemn ourselves because we are guilty of the same sort of things. And yet, we somehow have this standard of comparative righteousness, as if my righteousness, at least externally, appears to be a little more righteous than another’s, then I’m supposedly innocent. 

But that’s not how justice works. 

The judge doesn’t take up your case and then weigh it based on the other defendant he’s heard so far that day and those he anticipates hearing after you and say — Well, based on Tommy’s heinous crime, I’m going to declare you innocent. What sort of justice is that?

ACCORDING TO TRUTH

VERSE 2. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Literally, God’s judgment is according to truth.

God doesn’t judge the world on a curve. He judges rightly. He judges righteously. God judges according to truth.

Yet, in our mind, if we lined every person who ever lived according to their own personal righteousness, we would tend to set ourselves as the standard needed to be right before God.

Well, I’m not as bad as Hitler. But I’m no Billy Graham either.

Lord, I think we should draw the line here — somewhere just below where I stand. This group I’m in goes to heaven. The rest, do to them as You see fit. 

That is how most of the world understands righteousness. Sadly, that’s how most of the church understands righteousness. 

But the standard isn’t your neighbor, and it certainly isn’t you. The standard is Christ. Jesus’ righteousness is the only standard sufficient to save oneself.

NOAH, DANIEL, JOB

Picture in Ezekiel 14: The Lord pronounces unstoppable judgment on the house of Israel and Jerusalem. 

Son of man, when a land sins against me by acting faithlessly, and I stretch out my hand against it and break its supply of bread and send famine upon it, and cut off from it man and beast, even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness, declares the Lord. 

… even if these three men were in it, as I live, declares the Lord God, they would deliver neither sons nor daughters. They alone would be delivered, but the land would be desolate.

Four times the Lord makes this pronouncement:
… even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live, declares the Lord God, they would deliver neither son nor daughter. They would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness.

INSUFFICIENT RIGHTEOUSNESS

Now, what the text is not saying is that these men were sinless. Noah got drunk. Job accused God of being unjust toward him. Daniel confessed his sins along with the sins of his people. These men weren’t sinless. They were men of faith — faith which, like Abraham’s, was credited to them as righteousness.

But their righteousness was insufficient to save anyone else. Their righteousness, even their collective righteousness was insufficient to save their own people — not even their own sons and daughters.

So, what would make you think your righteousness, that’s supposedly a bit more righteous than the person next to you, would suffice to save yourself. 

There is but One, whose righteousness is sufficient to save, not only Himself from the grave, but to save and gather together all the children of God. And that’s the Son of God, Jesus Christ. 

Only one person, due to His own righteousness, stands innocent of Paul’s charges against humanity — and that’s the Lord Jesus Christ — who was counted guilty — condemned even — not for any sin of His own — but for the some total of humanity’s sin.

LET’S GO TO THE MOVIES

Here’s the thing. We watch the movies and read the stories. What does the bad guy generally thing regarding his own morality and righteousness? Most often, he thinks he’s in the right. He doesn’t believe he’s actually done anything wrong. Any harm he causes to another, he feels they somehow deserved it, and that he was justified in his actions. 

Well, that’s not just the movies. That’s real life. I’m fairly confident that Hitler didn’t see himself as evil. And we can use plenty of examples today, but I’ll refrain. You can speculate.

The point is, that’s how disordered our own faculties are. We tend to think our evil actions are good — at least good for us. That’s what eating the fruit has led to. We seek to determine good and evil for ourselves, according to our own standard. 

Because we have rejected the God who is TRUTH as our standard of righteousness, we privately feel our actions are not all that bad — that they are justified. Otherwise, we wouldn’t do them.

The one who murders feels justified in doing so. Likewise, the adulterer. Proverbs 30:20. This is the way of the adulteress: she eats and wipes her mouth and says, “I have done nothing wrong.”

We tend to have one standard for ourselves and another standard for others — Proverbs 20:10 —We use differing weights and measures.

PRAISING GOD FOR SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS

And we even praise God for our own comparative righteousness. 

Luke 18:11. Lord, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even this tax collector.

As Paul writes to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 10:12): When we measure ourselves by one another and compare ourselves with one another, we are without understanding.

And even then, we fail to assess ourselves rightly. Just as the Pharisee thought he was the one who was justified, when it was actually the penitent broken tax collector.

Because here’s the thing. We don’t even live up to the standards we set for others. How much less God’s standard.

ALIGNED WITH GOD’S JUDGMENT

It’s right to disapprove of what God disapproves of. But disapproving along with God doesn’t make one right with God. So, long as we practice the very things God disapproves of, we are under the same judgment.

And humanity proves more often than many would like to admit, just how often we all disapprove of the things God disapproves of. 

AHAB’S RELEASE OF BEN-HADAD

Samuel read for us the account of Ahab releasing Ben-Hadad and making a covenant with him — an enemy of God’s people whom the Lord had given into Ahab’s hands for destruction. 

One of the prophets secretly confronted Ahab, disguising himself with a wound and a bandage. He cried out to King Ahab. Your servant went out in the midst of the battle, and behold, a soldier turned and brought a man to me and said, “Guard this man with your life.” But your servant was busy here and there, and the man was gone.

Ahab, like many of us, had a quick response. So, shall your judgment be. You yourself have decided it. So, the prophet hurried and removed the bandage and Ahab recognized him. And the prophet, announced the Lord’s judgment upon Ahab — the very same judgment Ahab had pronounced against the prophet for his story. 

In judging others, we condemn ourselves, for we practice the very same things.

DAVID REBUKED

Well, the most well known example is perhaps that of King David after he takes Uriah’s wife for his own and has Uriah killed in battle. Nathan presents David with the account of a rich man and a poor man. And a traveler came to the rich man. But the rich man was unwilling to depart with any of his own for the guest who had come, and instead, the rich man took the poor man’s sole ewe lamb and prepared that for the traveler.

The account is enough to make any of us furious at such injustice. And that was exactly David’s response. David’s anger was kindled against the rich man, and pronounced his own judgment against him. The man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.

And Nathan’s response to David. “You are the man!”

Loved ones. If the man after God’s own heart was blind to his own sin — willfully blind because he suppressed the truth of just how abhorrent his actions were before the Lord — what makes you think that you see your own sin so fully and clearly?

But here’s the thing. Once David was convicted, he immediately repented. I have sinned.

And Nathan follows up with these words: The Lord has put away your sin.

Loved ones, if we but repent, those words are for us. The Lord has put away your sin. But so long as you think Paul’s case against all of humanity doesn’t apply to you — so long as you see in yourself nothing of which to repent — your sin remains yours to cover.

JUDAH AND TAMAR

My family is working through Genesis. And just this week, we saw how Judah was ready to have his daughter in law, Tamar, burned for her sexual immorality because she was pregnant but her husbands, Judah’s sons, were dead. And everyone knows you don’t get pregnant by accident. So, there must have been some promiscuity on Tamar’s part.

As Tamar was being brought out to be burned, she sent word to her father-in-law. “By the man to whom these items belong, I am pregnant.” What were the items? They were Judah’s own signet, cord, and staff — the pledge that Judah himself gave her to sleep with her.

We don’t have time to cover the eye-opening transformation this had on Judah, who had sold his own brother into slavery in Egypt, but listen to Judah’s words here. She is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah.

She is more righteous than I. That, loved ones, is judgment according to truth. But how often we fail to come to that conclusion. But this is the turning point in Judah’s life. Before, he saw himself as justified in his sin. But this is the Judah who will now go on to offer himself in exchange for his brother Benjamin, the younger brother of the one he sold into slavery.

NOT ACCORDING TO TRUTH

The problem with our own judgment is that it is not according to truth. Our vision is impaired by our own sin.

This is why Jesus himself warns against judging others. 

Matthew 7:1-5. Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” when there is a log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

This is likely one of the most misinterpreted and misapplied passages in Scripture. Jesus is not giving a blanket statement against judging. He’s pressing the fact that in our fallen nature we fail to judge according to truth. And until our sin is confronted and dealt with, we are unfit to judge rightly.

But that this is an all out prohibition against judging is not what’s being expressed. 

JUDGING ANGELS AND OTHER MATTERS

Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life! (1 Corinthians 6:3)

Jesus is addressing hypocritical judging. We see that in the passage itself. Jesus is warning against passing sentence on someone when you harbor those same sins inside yourself. 

They are in need of the same mercy you need. The reason we expose sin for what it is, is so that it can be nailed to the cross — so they might know repentance — so they might be restored. 

We don’t expose sin for another’s condemnation. We’re not equipped to pronounce such judgments. Because only God can see the heart. And only God knows the end game for each individual.

Leviticus 19:15. In righteousness you shall judge your neighbor. Jesus didn’t come to contradict Scripture but fulfill it. Jesus never teaches anything that is out of line with the rest of God’s Word. Rather, he communicates the fullness of what was always intended.

What Jesus is saying, is that before you can judge rightly to help your brother, you first have to judge yourself rightly. You first have to be able to rightly assess your own sin, before you can help your brother with his. 

BEAM OF TIMBER

But notice the contrast. The word “log” or “plank” is that of a beam of timber that supports the house, such as a joist or rafter. The comparison is that of a great beam of timber verses a splinter.

First take the beam of timber out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the splinter that is in your brother's eye (Luke 6:42).

I'm often blind to my sin, not because it's not right before my eyes, but because I don’t want to see it. I'd rather suppress the truth and think more highly of myself than I ought. 

Notice that the point of Jesus' parable is not to ignore my brother's splinter. It'd be foolish to think my brother enjoys having a painful splinter in his eye. But he's been just as blind to his splinter as I have been to the beam of timber in my own eye. Love insists that I care for my brother in the best way possible. The question is, "How?" 

Jesus' parable is clear. I must first recognize just how much my own sin impairs my vision, making it difficult if not impossible for me to be of any assistance to my brother in helping him with his own. 

Only in seeing just how great my sin within is — how it far surpasses any outward sin I could ever see concerning my brother — am I then able to gently, lovingly, and with humility help my brother with his splinter by pointing him to the same care I so desperately need — a great Physician who heals our impaired vision by being nailed to the very beam of timber that once blinded me from seeing God rightly for who He is — that blinded me from seeing His perfect goodness and love.

TABLE OF JUDGMENT

It’s imperative that we learn to assess ourselves rightly — to judge ourselves by God’s standard. 

At the communion table, Paul addresses this very issue with the church in Corinth. (1 Corinthians 11:31.)
If we judge ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned with the world.

The Lord’s Supper …

The only way we’ll be able to judge rightly — to judge ourselves according to truth — is in seeing our sin nailed to the beam of timber that once impaired our vision — seeing the grotesqueness of sin for what it is — seeing the necessity of our sin being judged, and not just judged but fully judged — and that the penalty — how horrific — the fullness of what death is — a full and utter separation from the lovingkindness of the Father and all His goodness. 

That’s what the Son of God endured for your sin. 

Jesus’ payment on the cross isn’t a license for us to continue in sin, for how can we continue in that which caused our Lord so much pain and grief.

MIRROR

So, here’s a challenge. Any time you notice another person’s sin, imagine there’s a mirror pointing right back to you. And before saying a word to them, ask yourself how might your sin be like theirs … 

Peter’s sin and restoration — went on to write powerfully and with humility. He was able to judge according to truth because he was confronted with his own sin — and was welcomed and embraced by the nail scarred hands he had once betrayed and abandoned. 

That didn’t mean Peter walked in perfection. But he walked differently. He walked according to truth. 

Go and do likewise.

  God Gave Them Up: Unfit Mind (Romans 1:28-32)

INTRODUCTION:

Ecclesiastes 1:7. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.

The Great Lakes — fascinating system.

Rain, when it falls, the water descends until it reaches the lowest point. Dams may restrain the water from descending further — for a time. But as the water builds, it either overflows the dam, or it is released to continue its downward descent — until it reaches that next gracious restraint and overflows yet again.

We’re continuing to walk through what might be referred to as Paul’s exposition of the Fall of Mankind. And the question we might ask ourselves: Is there an end? Is there a bottom, a lowest point to man’s depravity?

Is there a point at which man has reached or could reach in the depths of his sin, in which he will go no further?

In other words, is there an end to fallen man’s corruptness?

I have a utility trailer I use for work. And I’m often fighting against rust. If the rust is left unaddressed, eventually, it will eat through the metal in its entirety, until the whole trailer, the entire vehicle is useless — unfit for anything good.

Our corruptness isn’t rust. It’s sin. And it needs to be addressed before it permanently destroys us. But before the remedy, we have to come face to face with the problem. That’s what we’re looking at as we wrap up Romans 1 this morning.

READ (Romans 1:18-32)

DOWNWARD EXCHANGE

Paul has been walking us through the downward trajectory of the exchange of God — highlighted by a threefold series of exchanges. We’ve noted the 3-fold exchange over the past few weeks. Now, we’re going to look at how this 3-fold exchange is presented as a downward trajectory.

FIRST

First (v23) we have the exchange of glory. Manind exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for that of the corrupted glory of copies of images. Rather than content to be the glorious image of God, mankind fashioned their own images in which to portray God — images fashioned after themselves. 

SECOND

Second (v25) is the exchange of truth and worship. They exchanged of truth of the One who is the foundational reality of everything else. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie — and in turn, they worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.

ONE STEP FURTHER

But Paul takes his argument one step further. This great exchange wasn’t some unconscious decision on the part of God’s image-bearers. This wasn’t some accidental oversight in which man was confused as to just who God is. And it wasn’t some mere temptation that drew us away from God to worship something else.

The climax of this exchange — or rather, the anti-climax — is that mankind actually tested God — examined all that could be known about God — and did not like what they found. So, they determined God to be unfit to even have in their knowledge. 

ΔΟΚΙΜΆΖΩ

The Greek word is δοκιμάζω — which means to approve of something after testing. It’s the idea of examining something to reveal its true worth, as when one assays metals — often through fire — to judge its quality and value. Is the gold or silver pure? 

MARKET PLACE

In the market place, merchants and moneychangers would examine or test coins to see whether or not they were genuine, as well as their value. And then they’d either accept them as payment or not — they approve of their value or not. 

CANDIDATES

Similar to our election process, the candidates for the Roman senate would be tested, examined, scrutinized as to whether they were fit for public office or not. (Consider our process. We have candidates who are so obviously unfit, and yet, we give them our stamp of approval. But that’s verse 32.)

SCRUTINIZED GOD

Well, in a similar fashion, God has been scrutinized and examined and found unworthy of even our acknowledgment. Fallen man disapproves of God, and hence, bans God from his very knowledge. It’s this disapproval of God that has led to the exchange of worship, and thus the exchange of glory.

DISAPPROVING GOD

Our first parents looked at the fruit. But in considering the fruit, they also considered God. Didn’t God say.

Well, I don’t approve of God’s decree. Likewise, I don’t approve of the God behind the decree. So, they ate.

CONSTANT SUPPRESSION

Of course, it takes a constant suppression of the truth because one cannot rid God completely from their worldview, try as they may. That’s why, no sooner did Adam and Eve eat, they hid. They could only suppress the truth for a time — just long enough to give into their true desire. But the reality of God is always there. So, they sewed together fig leaves — in an attempt to hide their obvious guilt.

INTENTIONALLY ATHEISTIC

Apart from Christ, this is all of our condition. While there is no genuine atheist in that everyone actually knows — all of humanity is intentionally atheistic in their worldviews as regards the God who is — in that they don’t approve of having God in their knowledge. 

This is why idols and false gods are simply another way of hiding from God. They can’t displace the reality of God. So, they fashion false gods according to their own liking. 

NO PRACTICAL DIFFERENCE

But there’s no practical difference between professing to be an atheist or an agnostic and that of worshiping idols. Because to believe and trust in false gods is to believe and trust in gods who are not. The reality of one’s condition is the same. They are without hope and without God in their own little world or worldview which they seek to craft for themselves.

DOWNWARD CORRUPTION

This downward exchange of God leads to a downward corruption. Paul’s 3-fold exchange of God is followed by a 3-fold God giving humanity up to their exchange. And just as Paul lays out this exchange in a downward trajectory, we are to see God giving them up in a similar downward trajectory. 

UNREGULATED DESIRE

First, God gave them up to unregulated desire — in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.

DISHONORABLE DESIRES

Second, God gives them up to dishonorable desires — passions in which there is an obvious corruption of the natural order. This is most obviously displayed in same-sex relationships. But homosexuality is not the lowest bar of corruption. 

DEBASED MIND

Third, God gives them up to a debased mind. Their very mental faculties are corrupt — approving that which is clearly evil as good.

The word is the same root at the beginning of verse 28, where man tested God and did not approve of Him, So God gave man over to an unapproving mind. Or to follow more closely to the ESV, since mankind didn’t see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to an unfit mind to do what ought not to be done.

EXCHANGE AND ITS CONSEQUENCE

So, to follow the exchange and the consequences:
They did not honor God, so God gave them over to dishonor.
They exchange the worship of God; God gave them over to unholy worship.
They exchanged the truth about God; God gave them over to false practices.
(Same-sex unions are a fiction — impossible. They are an exchange of reality — obvious reality.)

Finally, they did not find God fit; God gave them over to an unfit mind. An unfit mind is the fruit of seeing God as unfit. To disapprove of God necessarily entails a disapproval of all who God is and stands for. 

In other words, image-bearers who were created to reflect God, instead are given over to do what ought not to be done. 

FUNDAMENTAL SIN

It’s important for us to recognize, before we look at Paul’s list of sins — 21 vices in verses 29, 30, and 31 — that the fundamental sin is not lust or sexual immorality, nor is it homosexuality, nor is it this list of 21 vices found in the following verses. 

The fundamental sin is a failure to worship God in truth by honoring Him and giving thanks to Him. Every other sin is a consequence of this one! All other sin is an outworking of mankind’s idolatry, which in judgment, God gave them over to.

The fundamental reality in all the universe is who God is, and what is expected of mankind in knowing who He is. 

Because they did not think God was fit to be known, God gave them up to an unfit mind so that they now do those things which are unfitting.

VICE LIST

This list of 21 vices is by no means meant to be exhaustive. There are approximately 30 such lists in the New Testament, none of them identical. They are meant to capture — not so much the specifics of each individual sin or sinful tendency — but the comprehensive nature of sin in that the who person is unwell — the whole person is unfit to do any good whatsoever. 

Where they found God to be unfit — they are unfit to image Him.

This list serves as a general wide-ranging depiction of an unfit mind that is so unfit that it finds the Creator — from whom they enjoy their every good — as unfit. What could be more astonishing!

But listen loved ones. Outside of Christ, that was me. That was all of us! It’s not that society is as bad as it could be, nor that every vice describes every individual.
Yet, to the extent one finds God unfit in their mind, their mind is thus unfit. As such they will either approve of the evil or the evildoer. 

THREE DIVISIONS

This list is divided into three groups, in a sense, to match the ever-deepening corruption. They have been filled; they are full of; and they are.

Remember. This is God’s judgment on a people who have found Him unfit. In finding God unfit, they are filled with the opposite of godliness.

HAVE BEEN FILLED

First group. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil covetousness, malice. 

Where mankind was created upright. A rejection of God leaves a vacuum of ungodliness. No corruption is off the table here. But the passive nature of the verb suggests that they aren’t filling themselves with these things. There being filled with this 4-fold representation of ungodliness is a consequence of disapproving of God.

These are the opposite of good. And that’s the point. That’s what abandoning God for the fruit has led to — and must inevitably lead to. To abandon God is to abandon that which is good — the greatest good.
As such, sin is an ever-increasing decline.

FULL OF

The second group is the result of that vacuum of ungodliness — that which they are full of. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They aren’t just wicked but full of wickedness. 

In one sense, absent of knowing God, there’s an emptiness within fallen man in which nothing else can fill. And yet, here, Paul is stating that mankind is actually full of something — full of those things that in actuality are empty.

Think of envy. Envy is absent of love, joy, gratitude. Murder is absent of life. Strife is absent peace. Deceit is absent of truth. Maliciousness is absent grace, kindness, goodness. 

Rather than full of life, they are full of that which is empty and dead. 

ENVY

Envy, for example, finds no joy in another person’s privileges or pleasures. Where another’s hoppiness should cheer us, mankind’s debased mind brings them misery instead. Envy cannot bear to witness God’s favor toward another. 

(Consider the Jews of Paul’s day. That hated the idea that the gentiles could be included in God’s plan of salvation. As such, the vast majority of them rejected the gospel precisely because of their envy — that God might wish to do good to them too.) 

But listen loved ones. That’s us. Our fallen nature has the same tendency. Just consider how you respond in here (in the heart) when you here of someone else’s goodness — especially if that someone else is someone you don’t particularly care for.

THEY ARE

The last group, the longest of the three, goes from being filled with, to being full of, to simply they are. Each of these last 12 are in the accusative case. They are these things. 

This last group could probably be further subdivided into 4 smaller groups — 2, 4, 2, 4.

SPEECH THAT TEARS DOWN

They are gossips and slanderers. Both deal with speech, but not just any speech. Speech designed to ruin another’s reputation — designed to tear down.

Do you see how these fall in with the previous 5. People gossip and slander because they are full of envy. They gossip and slander seeking to destroy another person, even if only reputationally — hence they are full of murder. 

They gossip and slander because they are at strife with one another. 

Gossip and slander is a form of deceit. Even if true on the surface, the reason one shares such is to give a more negative impression of reality to one’s disfavor. (Isn’t that what the serpent did in his deceit. He sought to use truth deceptively. Think of how he quoted Scripture in Jesus’ wilderness temptation.)

And gossip and slander are most simply a form of maliciousness — an attempt to bring evil upon another.

[And if I inspect — examine my own heart — I’m greatly convicted. Because loved ones, I’m guilty of all of these. O nothing like 15 years ago, when I began to follow Christ. But O how far I still have to go. What about you?]

SINS OF PRIDE

The next four focus particularly on pride. They are haters of God, insolent, haughty, and boastful. These display pride of the most corrupt kind — beginning with their hatred of God.

Followed by insolent or ὑβριστής or our English term, hubris, meaning excessive pride and self-confidence.

Next we have haughty or ὑπερήφανος — which literally means a hyper-showing or shining forth of oneself. This is one who has to be in the spotlight. Hey, notice me! 

And I’m not talking about the child craving daddy’s attention. No this is the person who needs to be the center of attention at the cost of everyone else. Don’t pay attention to them but to me. (O how social media feeds this disordered craving of fallen man.)

The last of this subset is boastful. This is the one who brags he can do or has done many things which he hasn’t or can’t — at least not to the proficiency of which he boasts. 

You see. Each of these sins of pride can only come about when one sets aside God. Because when one acknowledges the immensity of God and that any gifting we have comes from Him, the idea of any sort of boasting just seems absolutely silly.  

But in their pride, they found God unfit and have sought to fill His place. How absurd.

WATER-FALLS

Water actually serves as a beautiful illustration of humility. Waters descend lower and lower and lower. 

Well, I don’t want to be like such a stream. I want to be like the mountain, not the stream that descends to the bottom of it. 

But what happens to that stream when it reaches the bottom? The glorious brilliance of the sun shines on the waters as they gather with the rest of the waters. And that water is exalted high above the mountains in clouds of witnesses to God’s glorious design.

SET ASIDE ALL AUTHORITY

The last two subsets could be presented as they are — partly for a rhetorical flourish — the first two being a pair of noun adjective, noun adjective — and the last four ending with a flourish of assonance — each beginning with the same sound.

That said, we shouldn’t think that rhetoric is the extent of Paul’s purpose. 

We have the setting aside of all authority — no bounds to one’s wickedness. They are inventors of evil and disobedient to parents. The most basic authority structures in life are set aside, so much so that they look for ways to do that which is evil.

Isn’t that what took place in the garden. It wasn’t enough to know good. They wanted to know evil too. Hence, they rejected the authority of the God who fashioned them. 

Inventors of evil. Is there a point beyond which fallen man will not go? Does such exist? Only by God’s gracious restraint society’s not more corrupt. 

But here’s the thing. The judgment is not that God is restraining man’s corruptness but has given man over to their corruptness.

ABSENT

And the final four — no, not basketball. They are foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 

Each of these begin with what’s called an alpha-privative — which, sort of like our prefix “un” means they are not the quality of the root word. For example, one who is unhappy is not happy. 

Likewise, the alpha privative negates or expresses an absence of the root. Rather than understanding, they are absent understanding — or as the ESV translates it, they are foolish. 

The NIV, captures the feel of the Greek words — instead of the same prefix, simply adds the same suffix.
Senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 

Or we could say, they are absent understanding, absent of trust, absent affection, and absent of mercy. 

The theme again is that of emptiness. A rejection of God, leaves one empty of godly qualities.

VERSE 32

Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

THEY KNOW 

Now, Paul began this section, back in verses 18-21 stating how man suppresses the truth about God that is plainly displayed for all humanity to easily comprehend — that everyone knows that God is — and that His very attributes are clearly displayed. And yet, as we come to verse 28, the case Paul has made up to this point is that mankind examined God and found Him unfit.

Well, here Paul wraps up this portion of his case by stating, not only does everyone know God, but they know what God expects from them. They know God’s righteous decrees and found those decrees unfitting.

WITHOUT SPECIAL REVELATION

Paul isn’t referring here to special revelation, as if everyone has a copy of the Ten Commandments. No. Paul is saying that everyone without exception — whether they have been graced with special revelation or not — everyone knows God’s decrees, and they know the judgment for going against those decrees — death. Everyone knows they deserve death for the way they have lived out their lives. They know. 

As we’ll see later in chapter 2, the law of God had been written upon every human heart. Because of the fall and our sin, that law is severely marred, but it’s nonetheless there. 

This is why, everyone is without excuse. It’s not simply that they look at creation and deny God the honor and gratitude He deserves. They know how they are to live as image-bearers and instead have chosen to live contrary to the One whom they were fashioned after. 

HEARTY APPROVAL

And just when you think mankind couldn’t sink any lower, Paul hammers home the extent of our depravity with these words — they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

He uses the same root word that he kicked off verse 28 with. They did not approve of God, they approve of those who are in blatant rebellion against Him.

Because they did not think God was fit to be known, God gave them up to an unfit mind to do that which is unfitting. (But get this.) Not only do they do that which is unfitting, they deem those who do such things as fit. Where they didn’t approve of God, they approve of those who are godless to the core. 

(Same root word)

This is the decline of a society — where disorder and ungodliness is the norm.

O the pride it takes to know God’s righteous decree and the penalty for breaking such and yet proceed anyway. This is the epitome of pride — the very depths of our depravity … almost. But we can go a step lower still. And that is giving hearty approval to those who are in rebellion against God, doing these very things they know ought not to be done.

CHEERFUL ADVOCATES

O you have those who want to put on airs as if they are righteous, so they almost seem not to fall into this list of vices. And yet, these who are too timid to sin so boldly themselves, are the ones who cheer on those who do. 

O the advocates for such corruption, such as murder. I would never kill my own baby. But I support those women who do. I mean it’s their right. Listen, the one who approves and offers support of sin, is no more innocent before God than one who committed the act.

At Pentecost, Peter, addressing the Jews in Jerusalem, does not hesitate to say, “this Jesus whom you crucified.” Now, let me ask, were they the ones who crucified Jesus? Not directly. But they gave their hearty approval to those who did. As such, they were guilty. And they recognized that they were guilty. When they heard this, they were cut to the heart. 

Paul, likewise, recognized his guilt in approving of wrongdoing. Acts 20:20. When the blood of Stephen was being shed, Paul said, I myself stood by approvingly watching over the garments of those who killed him. Paul saw himself as sharing in the guilt of shedding Stephen’s blood. How? In his approval of their sin in shedding it. 

Not only do we commit such sinful acts — we sanction evil and evildoers. 

THE GOAL

The goal of revealing and exposing our human condition with such force, rather than tiptoeing around the issue, is to humble us. 

It’s not simply that we were naïve or deceived. We were not okay, nor those who made or make a few mistakes here and there. We know through and through. Yet we suppress, and blatantly rebel. And unless we come to admit just how horrendous our fallen nature is, we’ll never come to Christ as our Savior. 

HOW LOW CAN YOU GO

O when we think of just how far we have fallen, the depths of our rebellion, I often wonder, just how low our depravity can truly reach. 

You want to know the answer? Not as low as the Son of God condescended to rescue us from it.

A CRY FOR HELP

This second half of Romans 1, cries out for help, cries out for a way out of this downward spiral, cries out for good news. Why? Because the picture doesn’t get any bleaker than this. It’s seemingly hopeless — for those who have made such a grave exchange — which is the entire human race. 

O to be clothed in such unrighteousness — such an unfit mind and unfit lifestyle. 

In Paul’s words from Romans 7, who will deliver us from this body of death?

We need a covering — an atonement.

We need repentance. Romans 1:18-32 is Scripture’s plea for man to repent. These verses display the horrific portrait of mankind without God — as if there were no God. (Of course, things are not even close to as bad as they could be. And that loved ones is sheer grace — the merciful restraint of a loving God.)

STARTING POINT FOR THE GOSPEL

In the midst of this horrific downgrade, there’s actually some good news in this case Paul lays out against all humanity — and that’s the starting point of the gospel.

The fact that everyone knows means you don’t have to convince anyone of something they already know to be true. O they suppress the truth to be sure. But everyone is well aware of their condition and dreadful predicament. 

This means that we can speak about the salvation Jesus offers, knowing that everyone is aware of their guilt before their Creator. This is why we can share the gospel with any and everyone regardless of cultural background. Romans 1:18-32 is the inroads, the common point of connection.

O we won’t persuade anyone with our crafty arguments. It takes something far more powerful — supernatural — than that. It will take nothing less than the Spirit of God to open the eyes of those who are willfully blind. 

Still, it’s good news that we don’t have to search for a starting place to share the gospel. It’s already there. You don’t first have to get to know someone, or their lifestyle, or worldview, or culture. Everyone has this starting point.

TRIUNE COST

Well, because we have a three-fold “God gave them up.” We should probably consider the three-fold Triune remedy for our condition. 

The first week we looked at the Father giving up His Son for us all. 

Last week we looked at the Son giving himself up for us. 

This week let’s close with the Spirit. 

The death of Jesus as recorded in John 19. 

After this, Jesus knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his Spirit.

THREEFOLD SEVERING

When I think of what it cost for God to save us from this horrific exchange we had made…

Ecclesiastes 4:12 speaks of how two are better than one, though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him — a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

O the strength in unity. And we see in the tower of Babel, and in Psalm 2, and at the cross, and here in our passage in Romans 1, and throughout Scripture that all of humanity has arrayed themselves together against God — against the Triune God. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. And yet to save us, that is exactly what had to take place — nothing less than the severing of the inseparable Trinity. (Of course, we’re looking at this through the incarnation. But that doesn’t discount what took place.)

The Father gave up his only Son. The Son gave up himself. And the Son gave up his Spirit.

But not only did Jesus give up His Spirit in order to save us, in order to cover our sin. He gives us His very Spirit, pouring it out on us so that our corrupt hearts and minds might be renewed from the inside out. 

RENEWAL

Because the only cure for an unfit mind is a renewed mind. Romans 12 is a reversal of Romans 1:28.

Romans 12:2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. 

While everyone knows, the suppression of true has corrupted that knowledge. We can no longer trust our feelings or our hearts or our unfit minds. They need to be renewed in order to approve that which is approvable and disapprove of that which is unbefitting of image-bearers.

Where we once found God unfit to even acknowledge, with a new Spirit breathed into us, we can now fulfill Proverbs 3:5-6. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

Paul’s prayer, as recorded in Philippians 1:9-10. That your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.

So, at the end of Paul’s letter to the Philippians, as Damian read for us:
Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Only the work of the Spirit in renewing our unfit minds can overcome his deep-seated depravity found in all of us. And little by little, the Spirit of the Lord does just that. (Exodus 23).

  God Gave Them Up: Dishonorable Passions (Romans 1:26-27)

CAUTIONS

A few cautions as we begin our study of these 2 verses. Paul very clearly, very plainly, very graphically brings up the sin of homosexuality. 

We can be tempted to think that Paul is singling out a minority group as if their sin is more detestable than every other sin — or that it is more detestable than our own.

We may be tempted to think these verses have nothing to do with us because we don’t wrestle with this particular sin. While it’s likely that few in this room, if any, wrestle with this sin in particularly, these verses are very much about you and me. And to fail to recognize this as part of our diagnosis, we will fail to get the healing we need. 

These 2 verses, on the surface, deal directly with that of homosexuality — same-sex relationships. But homosexuality is not the point of these 2 verses. Rather, they serve as a portrait, a parable, a real-life example of the disorder that takes place when mankind exchanges the truth about God for a lie — when people exchange the glory of God for the worship of the creature.

In other words, just like the whole of verses 18-32, Paul’s focus is on this great exchange — mankind exchanging God for infinitely lesser things, and God giving mankind over to that exchange.

Verses 26 and 27 serve as the clearest, physical, visible example that things are not as they should be — that mankind’s entire nature is corrupt — that our passions and affections are gravely disordered and dishonorable — that this Great Exchange is the most shameful of all exchanges — and that shame and all it produces — or rather, what it fails to produce — is the penalty for our wandering, our going astray.

READ: Romans 1:24-32

THREE-FOLD PATTERN

We’re walking through Paul’s argument of the Great Exchange. 

There’s a 3-fold exchange of God, where mankind has exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images (verse 23), exchanged the truth about God for a lie and the worship of God for the worship of the creature (that’s verse 25), and the last exchange is the first half of verse 28, mankind finding God unfit to even have in their knowledge — so the exchange of knowing God to not even wanting God in their knowledge. 

Three times — each time following mankind’s exchange of God — Paul uses the phrase, “God gave them up.” (That’s verses 24, 26, and 28.)

What did God give mankind up to? To the dishonoring of their bodies — to dishonorable passions that go against nature — and to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

God giving mankind over to their sin is a 3-fold act of — as we looked at last week — temporal judgment. In other words, God giving mankind over to their sin, while it is judgment, it isn’t final judgment. We’d do well to remember that as we walk through these couple of verses. 

Because the point of God giving mankind over to their sin is so that sin might be shown to be what it is — sin. That in looking at the chaos and the disorder of our world — especially as concerns humanity — that we would notice that something just isn’t right. And that something that isn’t right is because we have exchanged the central reality, the core reality, the foundational reality of who God is for that of a lie. 

DISHONORABLE PASSIONS FOR THOSE WHO DISHONOR

Note, verse 26, these passions themselves are dishonorable. Back up in verse 21, although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to Him. 

They refused to honor and give thanks to God. So, God gave them over to dishonor. 

It’s important to recognize that God is mankind’s greatest honor. We are fashioned in His likeness. There’s no greater honor than reflecting the God who fashioned us to be His image-bearers. 

Part of the issue with homosexuality, which we’ll see, is that it fails to image God at all. Rather, it’s a perversion of everything God is. 

(Fruitful, creator, outward and others-centered, communion and union, selfless, …)

To serve and worship God was to be our greatest passion. But we exchanged God as our passion, therefore our passions in general are dishonorable — and the most obvious of these is same-sex passions.

CONRARY TO NATURE

These passions are just dishonorable; they are contrary to nature. Their women exchange natural relations with those that are contrary to nature, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women.

There’s an obvious misuse of God’s design — an obvious misuse of the physical. 

While heterosexual sin is still sin, it’s not against nature — it’s not against the physical nature of God’s design. It doesn’t excuse the one. But serves to show the extreme disorder involved in exchanging the foundational reality of who God is.

Where people have exchange God, they exchange that which is natural for what is contrary to nature. The one exchange leads to the other. The exchange of God is first; and that exchange naturally leads to the exchange of all other reality which mirrors mankind’s exchange of God. 

Likewise. Notice. This is both a male and a female problem! Men abandoned, left, laid aside, the natural use of the woman, and instead were inflamed with passion for one another. 

And what does such and exchange produce? It produces shame. That, at least in part, is the due penalty for their error.

WANDERING FROM REALITY

We have wandered and strayed from reality itself. That’s the last word in verse 27 that the ESV renders “error.” It’s the Greek word πλάνος or the verb form πλανάω. It’s where we get our English word planet.

Seems strange that the word planet would come from a word that means wander or stray. But to ancient astronomers, the planets, unlike the fixed stars, wandered. They were “wandering stars.”

The rest of the celestial spheres were doing and moving together. But these stood at as seeming to go against the order of everything else. So, they called them “wandering stars.”

You navigate by the North Star, you have a sure fixed point you can count on. But you navigate by the planets, even if the direction seems somewhat close, you travel any amount of distance, you’re ship will miss its mark. 

WHAT PAUL IS REFERRING TO

First, we have to deal with the tendency among certain groups that claim to be Christians who seek to distort the clear meaning of the text. 

There is an exchange of that which is natural for that which is unnatural. You have those who will advocate that if someone is born with an attraction for the same sex, than their attraction is natural. So, it must be that Paul is referring to heterosexuals involving themselves in homosexual relationships. That’s one distortion of the text.

Another distortion is that Paul is referring to relationships between men and boys. But that’s no where in the text either. 

OUR UNNATURAL NATURE

The argument is that if God made me this way, it certainly can’t be wrong. These desires are natural to my makeup, my chemistry. It’s my nature. Surely God wouldn’t condemn me living according to my nature, would He? 

Well, let’s see. It’s my nature to be impatient, to be selfish, greedy, lie, lust, be lazy, vindictive, envious, idolatrous, … you name it. Surely God must be fine with any of those tendencies. They are all simply apart of my fallen nature. 

Well, then, why did God send Jesus to die on a bloody gruesome cross if He’s perfectly okay with us living according to our fallen nature. 

Listen loved ones, that’s what homosexuality is — it’s living according to one’s fallen nature — but not according to nature — not according to God’s design for nature. It might be a part of one’s nature, but it’s a distorted nature. 

And yes. It is a nature — a distorted nature — that God has given mankind over to.

Our nature — due to the Fall — is corrupt. Our nature is the problem. Because it’s not the nature God intended — it’s not the nature God designed humanity with. 

SOVEREIGNTY

But what about God being sovereign? How is God sovereign over this, if it’s against His will?

God’s will, like ours, is multifaceted. The difference is, our wills are corrupted by sin, while God’s will is not. Our will is limited in knowledge, but God’s will has the whole of eternity in view. 

To try and keep it somewhat simple — there are things I will, I desire, I want. But I’m not equally active in my pursuit or bringing forth those desires. 

We had hamburgers the other night at some friends. The burgers were great, and they were huge. My will was to eat a second one, because of how good it was. But I also knew that my stomach wouldn’t feel so good if I did. So, I allowed — permitted — the burger to sit there for a few minutes until my craving — my appetite — matched my desire not to over eat.

There’s an asymmetry in God giving people over to their sin. Yet, God’s permissive will is no less an act of sovereignty. God knows exactly where giving humanity over to their sins will lead. God knew before the first bite of the fruit of the tree. And yet, God sovereignly allowed Adam and Eve to eat. God knew where giving them over to their sin would lead … It would lead to the cross.

INSANITY

I sometimes wonder if Paul would be shocked by what he’d see in our culture. The whole LGBTQIA+ — I’m not even sure what some of those letters are supposed to stand for — seems, in one sense to be new. But I’m reminded in Ecclesiastes that there is nothing new under the sun. It may be more extreme. It may be that technology allows for a certain type of defacing and deforming of one’s body that wasn’t possible before. But the root issue is not new. Not even close. I don’t think Paul would be all that surprised. 

GRAPHIC

What Paul offers in these two verses is the most graphic portrait of disorder — a disordered nature — disordered desire — disordered affections — disordered behaviors — disordered practices — a disorder that not only leads to death but in its very essence promotes death. 

The sin of homosexuality — in all its forms — is the exact opposite of fruitfulness. 

Rather than a return to the Garden — this is straying further from creation order — which is simply a picture of straying even further from God.

Just as one trying to navigate by the planets — those wandering stars — will take you further and further off course — the further one strays from God’s design, the further one strays from the designer. 

HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM

Hence, the problem with those who distort God’s Word and seek to suggest there’s no problem in these behaviors, affections, and desires.

There absolutely is. And those who suggest otherwise are part of the problem. They are assisting the lost one their trajectory to hell. And that isn’t love! 

Paul’s point is not to single out a minority group — pointing a finger at them — as if they are the worst of the worst. Not even close! 

Rather, this minority group serves as the most graphic parable that something is wrong with ALL of humanity — not simply this group.

The very existence of such unnatural desires and behaviors serves as evidence of God’s wrath — God’s judgment upon sin — handing mankind over to the consequences of idolatry — any and all idolatry — the exchange of God!

In other words, the moral chaos and disordered desires are the visible evidence of God’s wrath — that is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. That’s verse 18. 

WRATH REVEALED, NOT HIDDEN

It’s not that the wrath of God is hidden, and we can’t see it. We simply assume God must be angry, or if we read our Bibles, we discover — wow, God really seems to be angry. Not at all. Verse 18 begins, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. It’s revealed. It’s not hidden.

Well, how is God’s wrath revealed? It’s revealed in the chaos and the disorder. Things aren’t as they ought to be. 

You look around at the chaos and the brokenness — you should recognize God is angry. 

O but people don’t like the idea of an angry God. 

You want to know what’s worse than God expressing His outrage over the world’s sin? I’ll tell you what’s worse. A God who is indifferent towards sin. That’s far worse.

How hypocritical we are as a society. We become outrages when people show a lack of outrage over those things we are outraged over. But when it comes to God’s righteous wrath — we find it unbefitting of God? How ridiculous. 

(O how often we pretend to be more righteous than God.)

You look around at the chaos and the brokenness — you should recognize God’s wrath. And the most obvious chaos and brokenness is seen in same-sex relationships!

God is not indifferent to sin — not homosexual sin, not heterosexual sin, not any sin. And to see that, all you need to do is look at the cross. That’s where God expressed the fullness of His outrage over sin. 

DUE PENALTY OF DEATH

As much as society may seek to normalize disorder — and worse, celebrate it — we all know there is something gravely disordered in same-sex relationships. I use the term gravely deliberately — because they are relationships that lead to death. 

A society of same-sex couples becomes extinct in a single generation. They can produce nothing except death. Everything about the relationship leads to death. They fail to produce any good — any fruitfulness — only death. 

In fact, death is somewhat an antonym of produce. All they produce is the opposite of produce — receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error — literally, they receive the anti-wages fitting for their waywardness. They aren’t even wages. They are the opposite of wages. 

Is Paul referring to AIDS? Or other STDs. While AIDS came much later, many will suggest that the consequences Paul has in mind are physical diseases, such as STDs. While certainly possible, I believe part of what’s missing is the certainty of death of a bloodline, death of a generation. 

(Sort of like the consequence of Jephtha’s vow. His lineage stopped with his daughter — his only child. That was it. A death in which the effects are felt before it even takes place.)

OBVIOUS INCOMPATIBILITY

Of course, there are advocates who claim it’s not fair that same-sex couples can’t produce their own offspring. See just how disordered we are! But it’s just another way of pointing a finger at God — blaming Him for His design. But that’s what we do.

You don’t have to be a homosexual to see the incompatibility of your sin with God’s design. All sin is incompatible with God’s design. The point of homosexuality is that it’s obvious to everyone! And yes, I mean everyone. 

We know plumbing doesn’t work with two male ends or two female ends. 

We know two bulls aren’t going to produce a calf. We know to mares won’t produce a foal. The truth stands right before our eyes, but we deny it. We suppress it.

And Paul’s point is that as obvious as the exchange made in same-sex relationships is a disorder of God’s design — so too the exchange of God. 

ALIGNED WITH GOD’S DESIGN

Being aligned with God’s design is never the wrong place to find oneself. 

Sin may still be present, but it’s never due to aligning oneself with God’s design. 

TALK ABOUT SEX

In one sense, these verses aren’t about sex. But in another sense, they are. The question is: what is sex about. God made us male and female. Why? 

God created us to be compatible for each other. Or to be more specific. God created us for union. That’s the reason why the disorder of homosexuality is the most graphic obvious example — because it most clearly reveals the disorder of what you and I were made for. We were made for union … communion … intimacy with another who is like us … but who is very much unlike us.

SELF-LOVE

You see. Homosexuality reveals mankind’s disordered love of self. It’s a picture of the love of self. 

There is no one who does not love themselves. We tend not to love ourselves well. But that’s not the issue. The issue is we have an excessive love for ourselves, that has taken place of loving the One for whom we were created — and for loving those fashioned in God’s likeness. 

That’s what’s on display with homosexuality — the perverseness of self-love.

That’s also the opposite of what we were created to portray.  Mankind was made in God’s image to portray God. 

But homosexuality is an inward act — it’s self-focused — seeking sameness rather than being others-centered. 

And that’s not at all like our Triune God who is inherently others-focused.
(1 Corinthians 13.)

UNION AND COMMUNION

When God made mankind, He made us male and female. He made us similar — yet different. He made us compatible.

The likenesses are beautiful in that they allow for communion — or we might say — communication — where we can comprehend (to some degree) one another in order to enjoy relationship. 

Yet, how vast the differences that allow us to come together for union — to become one — in such an intimate sense. That’s what marriage represents. 

That’s why a believer can never acknowledge the idea of a homosexual marriage. Because marriage, at its core, is that of union. And two males can’t make a union. Two females can’t make a union. 

YUCK FACTOR

There’s no such thing as a same-sex union. And the attempts to make such a union is disgusting. Even as much as Hollywood attempts to make society think otherwise — the average human mind will always think: yuck. And rightly so. It’s against nature. And trying to fit pieces together that aren’t designed to fit together — is far from beautiful — it’s sickening. 

SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL

Why do I make a big deal of this? Because God’s design is beautiful. And everything contrary to God’s design is not. And the marriage union is one of the most beautiful physical acts of all of God’s design — if not the most beautiful. 

Why? Because the union, when according to God’s design, points to the most glorious union that mankind is invited to participate in — and that is union with God Himself. 

DESIGNED TO BE DESIRABLE — INTENSELY DESIRABLE

The marriage union is something husbands and wives should take great delight in. And when such union takes place according to God’s design — God Himself delights in husbands and wives enjoying one another. 

This union is meant to be desirable. God intended it to be desirable — intensely desireable. Because it points to something even more desirable. 

This is why sexual sin is so powerful and so tough to break. Sex is meant to be desirable for a purpose. But when it’s disordered, those strong passions are used for ill rather than good — those disordered passions quickly draw their victims further from God rather than longing for Him. 

INCOMPLETE SATISFACTION

Why? Because all sexual satisfaction is incomplete — and deliberately so. Because it’s meant to lead us to a greater consummation than the physical. 

This is why there will be no marriage in heaven. We’ll no longer need the portrait because we’ll know the reality.

We will no longer need the physical to comprehend the spiritual — we will no longer need the union of husband and wives to comprehend the consummation of our union with Christ — Christ in us. O we have a foretaste of Christ in us now. The Spirit indwells us now. But it’s only a foretaste. 

SONG

I had Caleb read from Song of Solomon for us: 1) because I don’t think we have done so in the 3 years I’ve been here. 2) Because the last thing we should get from this passage is that there is something bad about sex. That God has to turn away, and we have to hide from God. 

Remember. Sex is God’s idea. And it’s meant to be beautiful. And the Song of Solomon portrays it exactly as that. 

Now, if you push the metaphors as if they are meant for an artist to draw, you’ll completely miss the picture. 

The entire Song is filled with Garden imagery, and temple imagery, and vignettes of Israel’s history and the promised land. The whole song, we might say, is decorated with Eden. Why? Because that’s where God was to dwell with His people. But this Song points, not so much back towards Eden, as much as it points to Eden fulfilled — Eden transcended. 

And it’s here, saturated with Eden, the Bridegroom and the Bride are anticipating one another and intoxicated with one another. 

LOVELY BUT BLACKENED

Now, at the beginning of this Song (1:5), the Bride is aware she is lovely … but also far from perfect in beauty. (1:5) I am very dark, but lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon. Do not gaze at me because I am dark, because the sun has looked upon me. My mother’s sons were angry with me; they made me keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept.

Furthermore, she sees herself as one among many. (2:1). I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys.

EYES OF LOVE

But her Groom sees her as perfect. O no. Not a mere lily of the valleys. But… a lily among brambles. So is my love among the young women. 

Put her next to all the beautiful virgins, this one, His chosen Bride, is a lily among brambles. She’s perfect. O most beautiful among women.

It’s not that love is at all blind. Love looks with different eyes. This one is the one he wants. She is the Bride he desires to have. 

And she has saved herself for him.

GARDEN LOCKED TO BE UNLOCKED

4:12 A garden locked is my sister, my bride, a spring locked, a fountain sealed.

This Bride has been kept pure, exclusive, guarded for her Groom. 

But the Garden isn’t to remain locked forever. O the anticipation of consummation. Verse 16. Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind! Blow upon my garden, let its spices flow. Let my beloved come to his garden and eat its choicest fruits.

From a garden locked, to entering into the garden and sowing seed. The garden is meant to be His — to be her beloved’s. And in sowing the seeds of love, it is to produce fruit. 

But same-sex relationships, they can’t portray that. There’s either no Garden or no Sower. And there can be no fruit — much less the choicest of fruits. 

APPLICATION FOR ALL

Now, time for application — or an application. The point is not for the church to make war on homosexuality. Our goal is not to convert homosexuals and make them heterosexual. 

Homosexuality is the fruit — or rather, the non-fruit — of a greater root disorder. All efforts to address, to change, to correct, to transform the behaviors and practices without addressing the root — 1) brings no glory to the God they continue to reject, and 2) leaves them dead in their sin. 

What needs to be addressed is the same thing that needs to be addressed in every single one of us. That’s why I said, this passage is as much about you, even if you don’t struggle with this particular sin. Because the roots of sin are the same in everybody. 

What are those roots taking in? What are those roots grasping hold of? What are they growing toward? What are they feasting on?

In other words, what is your food? (John 6). Adam and Eve ate, took in, the wrong food, and in doing so, they relinquished the tree of life. That was the exchange. 

John 6 — unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood … 

Unless your rooted and grounded in the love of Christ, your life will be as fruitless as the same-sex couple.  

GAVE HIMSELF UP FOR ME

Last week we looked at how the God who handed over mankind to their sins, handed over His own Son for their sins. 

That’s what the Father did.

But what about the Son?

Galatians 2:20. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

HE SEES ME PERFECTLY

In Christ, we are the Bride of the Song of Solomon. Maybe I’ll end by letting her speak on our behalf. 

Despite all of my blackness, my being unlovely in and of myself due to my sin, He chose me and gave Himself up for me. 

There was nothing more lovely in me, that caused Jesus to choose me. He simply loved me because He loved me.

If there be any beauty in me, it’s because he has bestowed it upon me. If there be anything special about me, it is Him — what I am in His eyes — what I am in His taking me into His arms and taking me to Himself. 

All my flaws, it’s not that they aren’t still there at the present moment. And yet, He sees none of them, because He has covered them with His own blood. He has cleansed me and made me pure.

It’s this love …

Why is homosexuality the disorder Paul focuses on in the middle of these three great exchanges? Because they capture more than any other distortion, the perversion of God’s ultimate design for marriage and what marriage ultimately points to — Union with God Himself — Christ and His Bride, the Church. 

Every disordered affection draws us away from the greatest of all loves — the love of God in Christ. 

Amazing love how can it be that thou my God shouldst die for me.

  God Gave Them Up: Judgment in Hope

READ (Romans 1:24-32)

REVIEW:

Before we look directly at these specific verses, it’s important to remind ourselves of what’s come before. In other words, how did we get here, and what’s Paul’s purpose for even bringing it up. 

First: how we got here. Verse 18. In his unrighteousness, mankind has suppressed the truth about God, denying what he plainly knows to be true about God. Why does mankind plainly know? Because God has made it plain to him. God has made the truth plain to every person who has ever walked this planet. But instead of honoring God as God and giving thanks for every blessing we enjoy, instead we sought to be wiser than God, exchanging the glory of the eternal God who is glorious in and of Himself, for the glory of things that perish — a glory that fades — a glory that is infinitely less glorious. And Paul makes clear that God is not indifferent to this exchange of glory, but that God is angry. God is wrathful toward this great exchange.

Second: Paul raises this dreadful predicament that the whole of the human race finds themselves in — not for our condemnation — but for our salvation. Despite this great exchange — despite our committing spiritual and physical suicide in exchanging the Author of life for a copy of a copy of a corrupted copy — there is hope. There shouldn’t be hope. We don’t deserve to have hope. And yet, in His great mercy, God has provided a way to restore us, reconcile us, save us from our own dishonorable suicidal tendencies. And that is the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

GOD GAVE THEM UP

We see throughout Scripture this idea of “God gave them up.” 

In the wilderness, the people complained about the menu and demanded that they have meat to eat. God gives the people over to what they demanded. Quail filled the camp. And those who craved the quail gorged themselves on that which they worshiped — only to choke on their idolatry. 

They rejected the daily bread of the Lord. They hungered for something else. And it brought death.

Judges 2, as Silas read for us, when the people of Israel chased after the gods of the nations, God gave them over to be plundered by those nations. And if you revere their gods, then you’ll be left for those gods to deliver you. And we all know a false god can deliver absolutely no one. We know it. And yet, mankind still chases after them.

1 Samuel 8, the people demanded a king like the nations, rejecting God as their King. So, what does God do? He gives them over to their desire. 

Let me ask. Were the people better for it? No. Even knowing the consequences of asking for a king — even being warned that the king would take their sons and daughters to serve in his army and to serve in his household, even being warned that the king would take the best of their fields and vineyards and give them to his officers, even being warned that one day the people would cry out because of the king they had chosen for themselves — the people still demanded that they have a king. So, God gave them their hearts desire. 

Asking for a fallible human king to rule over you is a significant downgrade from the King of the Universe! It certainly wasn’t to the nation’s glory. 

Throughout history, human rulers have been an object of worship — often exalted to the status of a god. 

It’s amazing the worship mankind has given to human rulers much like themselves. But worship the God who rules the universe? O that we cannot do! 

In our fallen state, we prefer to worship anything other than God Almighty. 

Fall down before a block of wood (like we looked at last week in Isaiah 44) or fall before a sculpture fashioned of ordinary clay — the very dust of the earth — there’s very little difference — when compared the eternal Living God. 

And yet, that’s what we do! We worship fallen image-bearers — a copy of a copy of a corrupted copy. Call them celebrities or idols — they are nothing but false gods set up in the true God’s place.

The prophets, from Moses to Malachai, all warned about idolatry. Nevertheless, the people wanted to be like the nations and worship like the nations. So, God gave them over to the nations and to their abominable worship. What did they lose? They lost God. They lost the pearl of great price. 

WHO GAVE UP WHO?

I want you to notice something. In each of these, the people first gave up God, before God gave them up. 

They did not simply forget God; they exchanged Him. They gave up God for the worship of other things. They found God unfit (next week) and sought something more preferable. 

HAND OVER

The word means to give someone or something over to someone or something. (The idea is somewhat synonymous with exchange.) You buy something at the store, you hand over the cash that was once yours, and you give it to the clerk. That’s the basic idea of this word. 

Sadly, it’s most often used in a negative sense, such as handing Jesus over to be put to death. 

The people asked Pilate to release Barabbas — an insurrectionist — over the King of the Jews — in exchange for the King Himself. Barabbas is released. And Jesus is handed over to be crucified.

Several times it’s translated as betrayed. When the disciples are named, you read the final name: and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him — handed him over — gave him up. 

Mankind exchange God — therefore God exchanged them. Mankind gave up God. Therefore God gave them over to something infinitely less than Himself.

JUDICIAL HANDING OVER

For God to give the people up — it’s a judicial act. God giving the people over to their desire is an act of judgment. To remind ourselves of verse 18, it’s the wrath of God revealed. 

We look at the world and see the mess the world is in — and the disordered affections of God’s image bearers — and we are to recognize that this is a portrait of God’s judgment. 

We see the dishonorable behaviors — we are to see judgment. Mankind was created for a far more glorious purpose. But we exchanged that purpose — our God-given purpose — for disordered worship. That is part of the judgment.

EXCHANGED THE TRUTH

They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.

THE GARDEN AGAIN?

If you haven’t noticed by now, I visit the first three chapters of Genesis often. Many like to dismiss the early chapters of Genesis because it seems to them so unbelievable — the Tower of Babel, the Flood, a talking Serpent, a six-day Creation. But here’s the thing. These opening chapters of Genesis is the context for the rest of — not only Scripture — but all of history. You can’t understand the human condition and the predicament all of mankind finds himself in apart from these opening chapters.

Where did this first exchange of truth take place? It took place in the Garden when the woman believed the Serpent’s word over the Word of God. Hold on to that, because that’s going to matter for the rest of our text. And Adam, in turn, believed the voice of his wife over the voice of God. 

EXCHANGING TRUTH: AN ALTERNATIVE WORD

So, first, in the Garden, they exchanged that which they perfectly knew to be true, and chose to believe something else. Why? Because that something else seemed more desirable. 

God’s clear Word said: The day you eat of this tree you shall surely die — because for you, it is the fruit of death. Well, I don’t like the sound of that. 

So, another comes in and offers an alternative word. You won’t surely die. Rather, eating this fruit will grant you something you don’t have right now. It will make you like God. Well, that word certainly sounds preferable. I’ll chose to believe that one.

That’s what temptation does. It offers you something you don’t currently possess, and it says, this is preferable. And you can have it! Don’t deny yourself.

WITHHELD OR WITHHELD NOT

While the tree in the midst of the Garden was forbidden, it wasn’t withheld. It was left in the midst of the Garden for mankind’s good and glorious use.

How is that?

To refrain from eating was life. So long as they refrained, this tree served as a glorious witness of God’s goodness — that He had given the man and the woman absolutely everything else. It was also a glorious testimony of their honor and gratitude towards God — that He was even more to be valued than His gifts. And it was a testimony of who is God and who isn’t. 

O the tree represented something glorious indeed! And in that sense, the tree was good. It was good for mankind. The fruit wasn’t to be eaten by man. It wasn’t good for that use. But the tree, like everything else God created, was good.

What was not good, was to misuse the tree. To eat from this tree was death. It tarnished, distorted, corrupted everything good they had known. They went from worshiping and serving the Creator — O what a glorious privilege — to worshiping and serving the creature — O how demeaning.

PRESIENTIAL TO ANT HILL

Can you imagine someone in the service of the president — let’s say, secret service. Their job is to defend the president with their lives if necessary. 

And you really don’t like the president, so you type out your resignation letter because you would rather serve and defend an ant hill, or even a worm. 

You exchange the prestige and honor of serving the highest human official of the land to go and serve and defend a worm, and that’s it. You spend your days guarding a worm — defending it, making sure nothing bad happens to it. 

DEGRADING DOWNGRADE

Sounds silly, I know. But what I want you to recognize is just how degrading such an exchange is. 

The exchange that took place in the Garden is infinitely more degrading to God’s image-bearers than that. 

What’s worse, is the disgust you’ve shown to the president doesn’t begin to compare to the infinite disgust you and I have shown to the Creator. How appalling. But listen loved ones, outside of Christ, this is every single one of us. This is our condition.

POLARIZING

I almost decided to change the illustration to some foreign king instead, because our current president is without a doubt the most polarizing president in our nation’s history. 

You have those who love him with unrestrained loyalty regardless of what he says or does. 

And you have those who abhor him with the greatest hatred ever directed towards a human being — again, regardless of anything he says or does. 

CORRECTIVE LENSES

Loved ones. As those who know God in Christ, we should fall into neither of these groups. This is a fallible individual — a fallible image bearer.

Human rulers are but fallible individuals appointed to serve God’s purposes whether they acknowledge Him or not. All earthly rulers either willingly or unwillingly serve the good purposes of the Sovereign Lord of the universe — who works all things together for the good of those who love God! 

But these same human rulers serve as a judgment for all who hate God — regardless of whether they adore or hate the human ruler. The polarization is part of the judgment.

A POLARIZED PORTRAIT

But the polarization of the current president of the United States doesn’t begin to compare to the polarization of mankind toward God. Those who know God in Christ, adore Him. Whatever He says or does is always right; it’s perfect, it’s good.

But those outside of Christ, they aren’t indifferent, though they may like to suggest they are. No. They hate this God with a passion even greater than the hatred they express toward the fallen individual God has currently appointed to the highest office of the land. And that’s not an exaggeration. 

PAUL’S RESPONSE: WORSHIP

And so, seemingly out of nowhere, Paul breaks into doxology. Why? Because this was Paul too. Just the thought of God being dishonored in such an appalling way, Paul breaks into worship. O Lord God, You are deserving of so much more! You are the eternally blessed One. And then he calls on the reader to respond. Amen. That’s the purpose of the amen. The word simply means truly. 

So, when Paul finishes his brief doxology: the Creator, who is blessed forever. He’s expecting you to echo, Truly He is! 

Let me ask. Do you? Now, I’m not one who’s big on the verbal Amen’s throughout a message. But loved ones, I hope your heart, even if silently, echoes Paul’s “amen” every time you’re confronted with such glorious truths about our great God.

JUDICIAL REVIEW

It’s important that we recognize that part of the judgment is God giving man up to his desires. And that what took place in the Garden has taken place in the heart of every single fallen individual. 

On the day you eat you shall surely die. On the day you exchange the truth about me for a lie — on the day you give me up for your lusts — I’m going to give you over to that lust that longs for the fruit you think I’m withholding. 

In other words, part of the judgment is giving us over to our supposed autonomy that seeks to determine good and evil for ourselves. But that autonomy, giving us over to follow our lustful hearts, is worse than any chains of restraint could ever be. 

Our society has more supposed freedoms, more opportunities, more abundance, more time to enjoy it all, than ever. And the depression rate and suicide rate have only skyrocketed. Not only that, how many of those seek to take others with them. It’s heart breaking. 

But that’s what you get when desire is disordered and unrestrained. Because none of those desires that mankind has exchanged God for can ever satisfy. 

The more you have, the emptier you realize all of it is. It’s absolutely depressing. Your desires can’t fill the void.

God giving you up to your desires is the greatest of all judgments — second only to hell itself — which is the fullness of God giving you up. 

For those who desire not to know God, not to commune with Him — He will give them their hearts desire for eternity. But that also means, the absence of all of His goodness. It’s a terrifying picture.

TO DISHONORING THEIR BODIES

So, what did God hand them over to? God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.

Simply put, God gave them up to their desires and allowed those desires to go unchecked — mankind created in God’s image, defiling that image beyond recognition. Rather than these physical creatures knowing the greatest honor ever bestowed upon a creature, they dishonor even their own bodies. 

The judgment is this: those who failed to honor God (verse 21), ultimately end up dishonoring themselves. 

Why? Because of the horrific exchange they have made.

CHILD’S PLAY AND TOY ABUSE

You give a child a gift. Perhaps a rough and tough Tonka truck. But the child begins using the toy truck as a bomb. He takes it to the top of the stairs and tosses it down on the rest of his toys. 

You might warn the child. If you play with it like that, you’re going to break it. But to no avail. The child refuses to listen. 

You may decide: okay. I’m going to let Tommy play with it as he wishes. I’ll give him over to his desire to misuse the toy. And when it breaks, that’ll be the consequence of not listening. That will be the consequence of his misuse. The will be the consequence of him exchanging the truth of what he holds in his hands. A broken toy.

MORE PROFOUND

But is that what Paul’s saying? I actually think Paul is saying something far more profound. And it’s important that we grasp it.

Paul is saying that the handing the child over to the misuse of the toy is the judgment!Regardless of whether the toy breaks or not!

Let’s say, rather than a bomb thrown down from the top of the steps, Tommy exchanged that Tonka truck for his stuffed teddy bear and began cuddling with it at night. That won’t necessarily harm the Tonka truck — not physically. But it’s obviously not what the truck was designed for. 

The act is foolish. It’s shameful. It’s dishonorable. That’s what the text is saying.

The difference is that we’re not 5-year-old Tommy. And we’re not talking about a plastic toy. We’re talking about that which can’t be valued — our very bodies — in which we are to glorify God.

Our bodies were given for one use and one use only — they were given to us for the glory of God. Any other use is misuse. 

Any other use is dishonorable. Because it’s to use your body for something significantly less — indeed, infinitely less — than that which they were designed and given to you for. 

IMPURITY

And those additional uses is where we get the idea of impurity. God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity. 

Impurity. That’s Paul’s word. What does it mean to be impure? It means unclean. 

To cleanse something, you remove the dirt — that which doesn’t belong. 

For something to be clean, it means to have no impurities — nothing which doesn’t belong. Impurity means it has something added to it that does not belong. 

Pure gold is quite valuable. But filled with impurities, its value is quickly diminished. Pure unleavened bread — no additives. The people of Israel were to be a pure race — not to be mixed with the people’s of the land. Not because ethnicity was the issue. But because of the culture and the worship those other nations would bring.

Long for the pure spiritual milk of God’s Word. Not some add-mixture.

JUDGMENT IN HOPE

The judgment is God giving mankind up to impurity and dishonor … not necessarily the consequences that follow — although the consequences abound.

While giving man over to his lustful heart’s desire is an act of judgment, it isn’t final judgment. Romans 11:32, God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all. 

You see, God gave up man to this temporal judgment, not for man’s ultimate condemnation — but in hope.

Romans 8:20. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself would be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 

[God gave man over to his heart’s desire which can never satisfy, so that man might know intimately the consequence of sin. Man already knew the judicial consequence — but he didn’t know intimately the pain and emptiness of his sin.]

CLEANSING

God gave mankind over to his sin. But the goal wasn’t to leave mankind forever in such dishonor and uncleanness.

God had a plan for our cleansing. 

John 15:2 — He prunes — literally, he cleans.

All those who belong to Christ are cleaned by Him. He prunes or cleans away all that which is infected and unclean due to sin. Everything impurity — everything that doesn’t belong.

Jesus does that by taking all those impurities upon himself and being pruned — cut-off — in our place.

Jesus will have to enter our uncleanness. That’s, in part, why he was baptized by John in the filthy Jordan River. It wasn’t because Jesus had any sins in which to repent. John himself acknowledge that fact. Rather, Jesus came to wash the people’s sins unto himself. (Symbolic? Yes.) 

THE SECOND GREAT EXCHANGE

The first great exchange was the most horrific appalling exchange ever. Mankind exchanging the glory of God for a copy of a copy of a corrupted copy — Mankind exchanging the truth about God for a lie — Mankind handing over Creator as unworthy of their worship in order to worship the creature instead. 

It’s impossible to exaggerate the magnitude of this exchange. It seems utterly impossible for there to be a greater exchange. There certainly could never be a more horrendous exchange. But thanks be to God, it wasn’t the last great exchange! 

The God who handed mankind over to their sin, will hand over His own Son for their sin. Romans 8:32. He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all.

It’s the exact same word as that of God’s judicial judgment that Paul uses 3 times in Romans 1.
Therefore, God gave them up.
For this reason, God gave them up.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up.

The most glorious exchange to cover the most horrific exchange. 

In mankind’s exchange of God, we desired God to be not — we desired God to be dead — we desired God to be … crucified. 

God gave His one and only Son over to our desire — and he was crucified. And on that cross hung the one thing that will restore any of us to the truth about just who God is —
the king we demanded for ourselves … versus the King who bore our crown of thorns

BARABBAS

It’s really the account of Barabbas. We are the insurrectionists set free in exchange for the One who had done nothing wrong. The One who honored and served His Father was handed over to be crucified, while you and I who rebelled are set free.

   Claiming to Be Wise: The Great Exchange, part 4 (Romans 1:21-23) 

INTRODUCTION

We’re continuing to look at what is often referred to as General Revelation or Natural Theology — or we might say, that which can be known about God without a Bible.

Specifically today, we’re looking at the misuse of the faculties God has so graciously given us — particularly our hearts and our minds.

As we follow Paul’s argument, my hope is that 1) we are convicted by the Spirit of where we fall short in our worship of God, 2) that we discover why it is we fall short in our worship, and 3) the redemption we have in Christ restores us to proper worship.

Because, part of the reason for Paul putting forth such a thorough indictment of which none of us our excused is to magnify Christ
- through the horrible depths of the circumstance from which He saves us,
- the impossibility of our saving — or even excusing — ourselves,
- and the unbreakable verdict that stands against us — a verdict that God alone can break.
- Despite the right of God to be angry, instead, in Christ, He has shown us incomprehensible mercy and love. 

FOUR POINTS

Looking at four main points today:
1) Worthless Thinking (mind)
2) Darkened Hearts (heart)
3) Foolish Philosophy (mind)
4) Corrupted Glory (heart)

READ: (Romans 1:18-23)

WORTHLESS THINKING

Second half of verse 21. They became futile in their thinking.

Futile means empty, worthless, unprofitable, 

Thinking, to nuance it, deals with that of reasoning and debate — διαλογισμός — you can hear the word dialogue. 

DOGS AND DIALOGUE

God created man with the incredible gift of reasoning, understanding, being able to hold conversations or dialogues. 

Two dogs may bark at each other. And perhaps we could call it a form of communication on some level. But they aren’t dialoguing with each other. They aren’t holding a conversation. They aren’t reasoning with one another. 

They may see another dog or a person walking down the street, and they go crazy informing the whole world. But they aren’t asking each other why this same person walks by every weekday around such and such a time. 

They aren’t trying to figure out why they’re wearing what they’re wearing, or the difference in the gait of one’s stride, or the demeanor on their face.

They don’t wonder: I bet this is part of her daily workout — notice those running shoes. He must be walking from the bus stop; he’s got his backpack on. I wonder if she visits her friend up the street each day. Nope. None of that.  

Our neighbor goes for evening walks and wears his high-visibility vest. The dogs aren’t thinking safety but shiny.

BARK TO GODS GLORY

They are just being a dog — and they do their dog thing to the glory of God. 

When I’m doing work at a customer’s house for my day job, I still find it fascinating how a dog, due to my presence, can bark nonstop for hours on end without ceasing, never letting up. Ruff, Ruff, Ruff. But it does it. And it does it to the glory of God. Dogs bark to the glory of God. That’s how God created them.

Loved ones, we should be equally amazed at how we find it so difficult to do the same in our worship, knowing God is present — to say without ceasing, at least in our hearts, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come! Far from not ceasing, we struggle to even to pray with any intensity for a full 5 minutes a day — much less live in unceasing worship.

Isn’t that the first half of verse 21. For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him. In other words, mankind has failed to rightly worship God as God — to notice, to sense, to reason that God is present, and bow in worship.

The four-legged beast has no problem doing what God created it to do. But mankind, who was granted such higher gifts, he is the one creature that fails to do what God created him to do — to use these great mental faculties to know Him and worship Him.

MIND RENDERED WORTHLESS

As such, this great gift of the mind which was given that man might know his Creator has been rendered worthless. 

Overstatement? Doesn’t man use his mind for great things? I mean, we’ve discovered nuclear energy and invented the nuclear bomb! Well good for us. Think of man’s greatest achievements of the mind. None of them pale in comparison to what the mind was given for: knowing God. 

PUNY ACHIEVEMENTS

Take all those achievements away, along with all the supposed good that has come from them. None of them — not one of them — nor all of them combined — carry the value of rightly knowing the One we were created for. They are all profitless. 

You know what God thinks of mankind’s achievements? We could look at the tower of Babel, and how such was so unimpressive in God’s sight, that Scripture records God having to come down to see it. That’s Scripture’s way of mocking man who thinks so highly of himself. 

DROP FROM A BUCKET

Or Isaiah 40:15. This is the Lord speaking. Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales… All the nations are as nothing before the Lord; they are accounted by Him as less than nothing and emptiness.

Why does God speak this way about the people He created? Because mankind had become futile in his thinking. Mankind, whom God had given dominion over the whole of creation, used his gift of reasoning to exalt himself.

MISPLACED FOCUS

Consider some of the trivial things you have wasted your time pondering over. 

Worry, anxiety, fear: you know what worry ultimately is? It’s to think too little of the God who is sovereign over all. What ever you’re worried over is bigger — at least in your mind — than God Himself.

Lust, sinful desires, covetousness: all stem from those desires looming larger than the God who should be our heart’s desire.

What’s the correction? Knowing the One whom the wind and waves obey — knowing the One who is the pearl of great price and have our affections stirred for Him.

Compared to God, everything else is trivial — especially one’s own self-exaltation. But that’s what we get — a life of trivialities — when we fail to use our God-given gifts for God-given purposes. 

When our reasoning seeks to remove God from the equation, it is worthless.

DARKENED HEARTS

They became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

We move from the mind to the heart — from failing to use our mental faculties for that which they were created, to what becomes of our foolish hearts — or more literally, our hearts without understanding were darkened.

AFFECTIONS

Now, the heart can be thought of in two ways. Sometimes heart is comprehensive for all of man’s faculties, as such, the whole of man’s being has become darkened. And that is certainly true. 

But sometimes the heart has a more narrow focus such as man’s affections and moral judgments, both of which are intrinsically connected. One’s moral judgments often follow his affections and desires. Hence the reason the whole follow your heart is so dangerous. Our affections are corrupted. So, a morality based our on our affections will naturally be corrupted as well.

FILLING THE VOID

Exiling God as the object of man’s affection and worship means that something else — or many something elses — will have to fill the void. And what a huge void that is. Indeed, the void is infinite. You remove the infinite One, you have an infinite hole to fill. Which is why nothing else can suffice. Every other object of worship will leave the worshiper empty.

So, why does Paul use this language of darkness? Their foolish hearts were darkened. 

Well, we’re looking at the issue of worship and (verse 23) that of glory. 

LIGHT SOURCE 

Mankind has no light in himself. Indeed, I think it’s theologically correct to say that creation has no light in itself. 

Even the sun only has light because the Creator has filled it with light. Even so, God did design the sun to give off light. And the moon, while it seems to give off light, is even said to give off light in Genesis 1, it gives off that light through reflection. 

During a full moon, it gives off enough light that on a cloudless night in the country, you can take a late night walk and see just fine. (Or at least we can when our eyes are younger. I need all the light there is.)

God designed the sun and moon as a portrait of how man is to reflect his Creator. 

Because we fail to use our mental faculties to contemplate the glory of God, our hearts are without understanding. (That’s the word foolish: without understanding.) 

Apart from the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, we have no light which to reflect. Instead, we are darkness.

TAKING IN LIGHT

When Jesus says, “You are the light of the world,” he’s not speaking of mankind in general, but to those who know Him, and hence, reflect Him in that knowledge.

You are the light of the world applies only to those who have the light of the knowledge of the glory of God restored so that they may reflect the true Light of the World, Jesus Christ. 

Matthew 6:22. Jesus says, The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness.

The eye takes in light. That’s how it sees. But what the heart’s eye was created to gaze upon is nothing less than the glory of God revealed in God’s creation. Rejecting true glory leaves one in darkness, not light. 

NEED FOR ENLIGHTENMENT

We need the eyes of our hearts enlightened (Ephesians 1:18), in order that we may gaze upon true glory, so that we may see true light, and thus shine as lights in the world that reflect the light of the knowledge of Christ.

That’s 2 Corinthians 4:6. For the God who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God — where? — in the face of Jesus Christ.

In fact, that’s why a verse earlier Paul writes to the Corinthians: For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. In other words, Paul recognized himself as one who was to reflect Christ, in order to promote Christ. Paul wasn’t seeking to highlight or exalt himself but Jesus. 

Which takes us to our next point: Highlighting ourselves to be wise.

FOOLISH PHILOSOPHY

Verse 22. Claiming to be wise, they became fools.

It’s not accidental that the word Paul uses — claiming to be — comes from the word — light — φῶς. It’s where we get our words — photography — photosynthesis — photons. They each deal with light. 

Rather than simply reading the verse as claiming to be wise, think of it as highlighting themselves to be wise. Because that’s the point — self-promotion — self-exaltation. 

The problem is the boast — the highlighting of oneself. Boasting in oneself often makes one other than he claims to be. The one who boasts in his humility is proud. One who boasts in his wisdom is a fool.

There’s but one thing worth boasting in — one thing we are to boast in, and that is the Lord God. Sadly, He is the one thing mankind is set on rejecting, because to acknowledge God means that we are not — we aren’t God; we aren’t sovereign.

WISE

The word wise — you’re likely familiar with it — σοφός — it’s where we get the words like: sophisticated, philosophy, sophistry, and sophists. 

ADJECTIVE

It’s an adjective, and used as an adjective, Scripture uses it both positively and negatively. At the end of Paul’s letter to the Romans, he will write, I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil. 

Or in his closing doxology: to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.

SUBSTANTIVELY

But when used substantively or nominally — that means when an adjective is used as a noun — in Scripture it’s often used negatively. 

On the lips of our Lord Jesus: (Matthew 11:25) Father, I thank you that you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them instead to little children. Wise referring to the wise of this world — which means they are not wise in God’s eyes. 

Or in the passage from 1 Corinthians 1 that Samuel read: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

SOURCE OF WISDOM

Just as man does not have light in himself, neither does he have wisdom in himself. Therefore, just as man rejected his source of light and became darkness. Here, Paul is saying, mankind rejected his source of wisdom and became fools. 

When we misuse the faculties God has so graciously given to us, those faculties produce the opposite of what they were designed for — they become profitless. 

Highlighting themselves to be wise they became fools. Fools comes from the Greek word that gives us our English word moron. Claiming to be wise they became morons. I mean, what’s more foolish than exchanging the glory of God! (But we’re not quite there yet.)

In claiming to be wise, we’re exalting ourselves, highlighting ourselves as the object of worship. 

SOPHISTS AND SOPHISTRY

I mentioned the Greek word for wise is where we get our word sophists and philosophers. They can often be interchanged. Philosopher is a lover of wisdom, just as philosophy is the love of wisdom. But again, this is in the worldly sense, not the godly sense. 

Yet, even the world catches on to the vanity of multiplying words. Because where sophist was once a term for a professional teacher or orator, it became known for those whose reasoning was superficial and unsound. They used sophistry — clever arguments that merely seemed true on the surface, but was really nothing more than nonsense. 

Most of us know someone who likes to use sophistry. You can ask him about any subject, and he’ll have an answer for you. And on the surface, it sounds … sound. (Malarky and Balderdash.) 

EXPOSING PHILOSOPHY

Understand this. That is what all worldly philosophy is. It sounds wise, it appears to be sound, but it’s just layer upon layer of superficial arguments. And what makes them superficial? They have no true depth. And why do they have no true depth? Because they have no foundation. They’ve rejected the source of wisdom itself. 

Worldly philosophy seems clever … just like the serpent!

Listen loved ones. The Enlightenment, which sought to displace God as the fountain head of wisdom by setting up human reasoning as the foundation of wisdom, brought a whole new level of darkness to much of Christendom. 

As if the creature can subject the Creator to its so-called rational critiques. 

The Enlightenment was anything but. The only true enlightenment comes through God Himself, revealed in Christ by the Holy Spirit. 

In claiming to be wise — man exalts himself as the object of worship. Look at me! I’m the one with the knowledge of good and evil. 

Which takes us to the culmination of the great exchange, and that is the exchange of glory.

CORRUPTED GLORY

Verse 23. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

This is the great downgrade. The immortal for the mortal, the imperishable for the perishable, the incorruptible for the corruptible. Each of those words capture the ESV’s rendering of immortal and mortal. The one doesn’t change but remains in perfection, that’s God. 

While the list that follows — man, birds, animals, and creeping things — they aren’t in perfection, but worse, due to the Fall, they fall further and further from perfection. They die, their bodies perish, and everything about them becomes more and more corrupt.

MADE OTHER

The word — exchange — means to be made other. It usually refers to another of something similar, such as Jesus told another parable. 

But that’s part of the point. To seek to make God — or rather, the glory of God — something other, even in the slightest sense — is to fashion a god who is not — and a glory that is infinitely less. 

PERFECT-LESS

To take the perfect God and understand Him other than He is, is to distort His very perfections. You can’t make perfection better. You can only make it less than. 

When I’m working on decks — either making repairs or staining them — a cut is either perfect, or it’s not. The color match is either perfect, or it’s not. But here’s the thing with the work I do. There’s a margin of error that is acceptable. So while I might use the term perfect, it’s always hyperbole, because it’s never perfect; it’s only close. (And hyperbole’s okay, so long as you and everyone else knows it’s hyperbole.)

But when you take the equation 2+2, the answer is either perfect, or it’s wrong. There’s no close. You can’t turn in your math exam with 3 or 5 and think the teacher is going to count it as correct. (Perhaps Harvard might. O that’s right, they’re making it where it’s not so easy for everyone to get an A.)

And yes, we can get a lot closer to 4 than 3 or 5. But 4.01 is still wrong, regardless of how many zeroes are placed before the one. 

For God to be other than He is, would be for Him not to be God. And for us to understand Him other than He is would be for us to worship something other than God. 

God is perfect, and he is immutable. He does not change, because perfection cannot be changed without it becoming something less.

BROKEN COPIERS

But what exactly did fallen man exchange the glory of God for? I’m going to give you a bit more literal of a translation than the ESV reads. 

They changed (or exchanged) the glory of the incorruptible God into a likeness of an image of corruptible man. 

The likeness, of an image, of man who was to image God but became corrupt in his entire being. In other words, they traded the greatest glory of all — the glory of God, for a copy of a copy of a corrupted copy. 

MONOPOLY MONEY

You got a hundred-dollar bill. I know, you can’t buy but so much with it due to inflation. But you can go down to Walmart and buy a hundred-dollars’ worth of whatever. 

But take a hundred-dollar bill out of your Monopoly game. Take that to Walmart and see what you can buy. Absolutely nothing. It’s worthless. 

It’s not even a copy of a real hundred-dollar bill. It’s not even a copy of a copy. It’s a copy of a copy of a fabricated copy that the game designer came up with out of his own noggin — his own idea of what it should look like.

That’s what fallen man has done with the glory of the immutable holy God.

MONA LISA - NONE-A-LISA

Take a famous piece of artwork. People pay millions for the original of some of these. But the further away you get from the original, they lose their value. 

What is perhaps the most famous artwork, the Mona Lisa, if it could be valued, many speculate that it would be upwards of a billion dollars. 

Now suppose I had my six-year-old do her best impression of da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, and then, rather than selling you her original, I sold you a copy of a copy of her distorted impression of it. 

How much are you going to give me? Any takers? Let me know. Because if the price is right, I’ll tell you exactly what I’m going to assign Charlotte this week. Maybe her artwork can find a home at the Louvre. 

Do you see why God said, all the nations together are worthless? Not even a drop in a bucket, less than dust on the scales! Because mankind has exchange the incalculable glory he was to reflect, for the likeness of an image of the corrupted image of God.

DEGRESSION CONTINUES

But the degression continues, from a copy of a copy of what has become a corrupted copy, to man worshiping even the beasts — from the most exalted — the eagle that sores the highest of heights — to the four-footed beasts of the field — to creeping things such as a slithering snake.

In taking the fruit, in exalting oneself as wise, mankind had become like the serpent whose voice he heeded. 

This downgrade that Paul so carefully lays out captures the effects of the Fall.

LIKE BEASTS

In the Fall, mankind became less than man. In listening to the snake over and above God’s voice, mankind fancied God no better than a beast. As such, man has become like the beast. 

O it’s true that man was created in the image of God. But throughout the whole of Scripture, nearly every book of the Bible takes pains to show how fallen man has become like the beast — and more specifically, like the snake. 

The Book of Daniel illustrates this in a couple ways. One is the beastly kingdoms in chapter 7. But what about proud Nebuchadnezzar? (Daniel 4:16). Because of his pride, let him be given the mind of a beast.

All our faculties — our great gifts — have become deluded — where our conclusion of who God is, is no wiser than a beast could render God. Indeed, due to the Fall, we are all the more deluded.

Isaiah 1:3. The ox knows his master, the donkey its master’s crib, but God’s people don’t know Him.

That’s the exchange that has taken place.

HALF-BAKED GODS

See just how deluded humanity has become? As Damian read for us from Isaiah 44. 

A man goes out and cuts down a tree. He takes half and uses it as firewood, over which to bake bread. The other half he makes into a god and falls down and worships it. And yet, no one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, “Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and have eaten. And shall I make the rest into an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?” He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or even say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?”

To paraphrase puritan theologian Stephen Charnock: Mankind worshiped one end of a log of wood, while warming themselves with the other, as if that which was ordained for the kitchen were a fit representation for God in the temple. 

SOPHISTICATED IDOLS

But Josh, we don’t fall down before a block of wood. We don’t worship idols like they did in Isaiah’s day or even Paul’s day. 

Well, to borrow from Paul’s term for wisdom — perhaps we don’t fall down and worship before a block of wood. We are far more sophisticated in our idolatry for that. Our idolatry is just covered with more layers of the philosopher’s superficial reasoning; our idols are actually further down the line of a copy of a copy of a corrupted copy. Far from being less given over to idolatry, our culture is all in. 

IDOLS

Idols of today: state, science, skill, sex, success, security, self-improvement, salary, self-image … SELF. 

Whatever it is we worship — those are our idols if they are anything other than God — anything other than God as He has disclosed Himself.

PROBLEM OF IMAGES

Idolatry falls infinitely short of giving man any idea of what God is truly like.
Hence, the second commandment, no images. Why?
1) God had already fashioned the image of God — you!
2) The infinite cannot be contained in form. 

CONCLUSION

Why can a dog bark and bark and bark at the presence of another, but we barely even notice God’s presence. 

His fingerprints are everywhere. His footprints, His aroma, the taste of His goodness, the sound of His voice echoes, His light emits throughout all the world.

Yet man takes no notice of his Creator. Why? Because in his pride, fallen man has not taste for his Creator.

Only in gazing upon the Light of the World, is our heart’s sight is restored to see everything else rightly — in proper view.

Only in gazing upon the incorruptible One taking on the likeness of our corruptible flesh…
Only in the uncontainable One contained in human form …
is our reasoning, our affections, our wisdom, and our worship restored. 

Man sought to refashion God in his corrupt likeness. God sent Jesus, the exact imprint of God Himself, in the form of fallen man to restore us to His very likeness. 

John 1 — the light shines in the darkness … — the true light — became flesh — No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

   For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him (Romans 1:21)

PIANO MAN (AND GIRL)

I don’t know who spends more time on the piano in our house — if it’s Chase or Charlotte. For the longest time, Chase played over and over again the theme to How to Train Your Dragon. Well, now, Charlotte is playing the melody, and she’s really quite good. So at times, I’ll be in the other room, and Charlotte will be playing, and I like to tease Chase. So, I’ll say aloud, Chase, you’re sounding better. So, sometimes, Chase will try his best to sound like a six-year-old playing it to try to confuse me as to just who is sitting at the piano. 

But here’s the thing. Whether Charlotte or Chase, when I hear the music coming from the other room, I know somebody is playing it. I know the piano isn’t playing itself. More than that, I know the piano didn’t put itself in that location in our family room. More than that, I know the piano didn’t put itself together to be such a finely tuned instrument.

THE DIVINE ARTIST

We can’t hear some melodious instrument but conclude there is a musician who touches it, as well as some skillful hand that fashioned it for such a purpose, When we hear the piano from the other room, even though we might not see it, our thoughts are fixed, not so much on the piano itself but upon the skill of the artist who strikes it, the skill of the artist who designed it, the skill of the artist who composed the music. 

When I hear someone playing the piano, I don’t think of the block of wood, the metal wires for strings, the felt pads, and the ivory coated keys. I consider the performer, the composer, the designer, the artist.

In the same way, it should be impossible to gaze upon a sunset without contemplating the Artist who paints it — even the Artist who fashioned the materials with which to paint it — the sun, the clouds, the moisture in the atmosphere, and who knows what else goes into it. God knows. Our duty is to be in awe of Him — to praise and honor Him as the Great Artist.

BURSTING OR RESTRAINED WORSHIP

It’s not just that the sum total of creation provides us with enough knowledge of God to render man inexcusable for his unbelief — though that is certainly true. But there is enough knowledge of God in any single slice of creation to render man inexcusable for his lack of worship and thanksgiving to God. 

There is enough evidence of God in a single ray of sunlight, or the song of a bird, or the scent of a lily, or the sweetness of an apple, or the smoothness of a pebble. And every one of our senses should burst with worship and thanksgiving. But they don’t.

Why not? Because as much as fallen man enjoys the gifts of creation, he despises the Giver. Man’s thankless impious heart suppresses the truth about God in unrighteousness. 

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. 

AIRTIGHT

We’re in Romans 1… and we’re continuing Paul’s airtight case against fallen humanity, which reveals just how far we’ve fallen. But as a reminder, Paul lays out this case so that we might take hold of the only lifeline available — the lifeline that God Himself has thrown down in order to rescue us from this deep abyss of thanklessness we have found ourselves in.

     READ: Romans 1:18-23

As mentioned last week, there’s no such thing as a genuine atheist, someone who truly believes that God doesn’t exist. Why? Because, as Paul has made clear, everyone knows. 

FIRST IMPORTANCE

Everyone has all the evidence they need. More importantly, apart from special revelation, the evidence of general revelation is of first importance — which should lead to worship and thanksgiving. That should be the first response of every rational creature. 

Which is why our sin is so foul. Mankind blew off as little import that which was to be of highest importance — knowing his Creator. 

WHAT IT MEANS TO KNOW

For although they knew God… What does it mean to know? The word know carries varying degrees of knowledge. 

KNOWLEDGE CANCER

Just as in Scripture, we use the term to refer to varying degrees of knowing. 

Most of us know about cancer. We know the term. We might even know that it’s related to abnormal cell growth. We know that if left untreated, it will soon lead to death.

But we don’t know cancer the way a medical student knows cancer. They’ve studied it. They’ve inspected this cancer more closely.

What about the oncologist? He’s going to have personal knowledge of diagnosing, treating, and managing cancer for his patients. He knows the effects on the body that cancer will have if not dealt with quickly and decisively.

And then we have cancer patients. They have a different type of knowledge of the cancer than the physician. They have intimate personal knowledge of the disease on their own bodies.

ADAM KNEW EVE

Mankind was gifted with various degrees of knowing. Adam knew things about the beasts of the field. He even had the privilege of naming them. 

I know what that is. It’s a cow! I even picked out the name for it!

But Adam didn’t know the beasts in the way he knew Eve. Adam knew his wife in the most intimate sense — naked and unashamed. And even after the Fall, Genesis 4:1. Adam knew Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain.

So, there are various degrees of knowing. There’s knowing about something. And there’s a personal intimate knowledge. And then there’s degrees of knowledge between the two.

KNOWLEDGE OF EVIL

Adam knew about the tree. He knew the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil was off limits. He knew that on the day he was to eat of it, he would surely die. He knew that the way most know about cancer. It’s a deadly disease. You don’t want it. 

At the Serpent’s urging, Eve seemed to know the tree a bit more closely. She studied it, like a medical student. This tree is actually good for food, it’s a delight to the eyes, and it’s to be desired to make one wise like God. 

The woman’s knowledge became a bit more studied. She had a greater awareness of the fruit. But so long as she didn’t eat, that knowledge was outside her.

But then it became personal and intimate once she ate. And she gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 

Adam now knew this tree in an intimate sense. Indeed, Adam now had a personal knowledge of evil — something he had not known before.

And because of such, Adam would know death — varying degrees of death.

THEY KNEW GOD: TWO SENSES

So, when Paul writes, For although they knew God, he likely has two senses in mind. First, all of humanity, not only has a capacity for knowing God; they all were born with a knowledge of God. 

MAN’S DUTY IN KNOWING GOD

From his first awareness of himself to be a creature, man’s first solemn act should have been a particular respect toward his Creator — a particular honor, a particular gratitude, indeed, a particular awe-filled worship, that desired to know his Creator all the more.

But following the lead of our first parents, that wasn’t the case. Instead, we did not honor God as God or give thanks to Him. 

THEY KNEW GOD: COMMUNING IN THE GARDEN

Which takes us to the other sense of Paul’s phrase: for although they knew God. Our first parents did; they knew God. He walked with them in the cool of the day. (Genesis 3:8). Walking with God, and communing with God was supposed to be refreshing. Instead, we find the man and woman hiding among the trees of the garden, covered with fig leaves. 

Why were they hiding? Because rather than honoring God as God, they ate from the tree they were told not to eat from. Rather than being thankful for God granting them access to every other tree in the Garden — all of them but this one — they expressed their ingratitude by eating from that one forbidden tree.

CREATED TO KNOW

Such became the case with every one of us who have walked this creation. 

Where mankind was created to know God in the most personal and intimate, instead, mankind became intimate with the cancer of sin. 

And now, they find themselves hiding from their generous Creator. It’s a sad picture. But we’ve all done it. 

Why? Because in failing to honor God and give thanks to Him, we naturally will walk contrary to Him. 

Rather than gratitude for His boundless grace and goodness, we begrudge those things we feel He wrongly withholds.

Rather than honoring Him by acknowledging Him as the good and generous and righteous Creator that He is, we dishonor Him in our low opinion of Him — if we even acknowledge Him at all. 

As such, apart from Christ, we walk without any experiential intimate knowledge of the One who created us to know Him. And we do so, because we have no desire for Him. Hence, we don’t honor Him, and we don’t live in gratitude towards Him.

Let these words sink in, because they are the heart of the issue:

For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him. 

HOW WE HONOR GOD

So, how do we honor God? We honor God when we have worthy opinions of Him suitable to His nature. 

The word in verse 21 is  δοξάζω. It’s where we get our word doxology. It’s usually translated: glorify. It comes from a word that means: to think, to suppose, to be of good opinion, or to seem from a personal perspective. 

So, this word honor or glorifyproperly means to acknowledge God in His true character — valuing God for who He truly is. 

In other words, in honoring God, we are to conceive of God as who He is, a being of unbounded loveliness and perfection — of which we can never fully behold and take in with our finite faculties. 

That’s where glorifying God begins. That’s how we honor Him — accurate thoughts of God suitable to who He truly is.

Likewise, we dishonor God when we ascribe to Him such qualities that fall short of beauty and perfection, such as questioning His goodness, His justice, His character, His love, His kindness, His holiness, His power, etc.

GIVE THANKS TO HIM

What about giving thanks to God. Isn’t Paul overstating his case in saying that we fail to give thanks to God? 

Well, first, the occasional thanks is not what Paul has in mind. That tends, more often than not, to be mere lip service. 

Our lives are to overflow with thanksgiving toward God. But how often they don’t. 

And for the unbeliever, there is no genuine thanksgiving to God, but at most, the occasional thanksgiving to their idols, their version of God, which is not God.

Man tends to be thankful for getting what he wants, not so much for what God had already given.

GOOD GRACE

What does it mean to give thanks? It’s the word: εὐχαριστέω. You’re likely familiar with the term Eucharist, often used for the Lord’s Supper or communion. It means: good grace. 

It should come as no surprise that a life of gratitude towards God goes hand-in-hand with communing with God.

Properly, the word thanksmeans acknowledging the goodness of grace — particularly in reference to the God of every grace. 

Thanksgiving, then, would be acknowledging the goodness of God’s grace toward us. God’s grace in what? Everything. Every lovely thing you enjoy … and every hardship He has you endure, so long as your soul remains out of hell. Because as long as there’s breath in you lungs, the opportunity to repent remains. And for that, even the most vile of sinners should be thankful.

EVEN IN HELL

And even those who find themselves in hell due to their lack of honor and gratitude toward God — they still owe it to Him. They should still be ever thankful for the countless opportunities God had given them, every breath they received, for all the mercy and grace God showed them in their lives. 

Yet, they ignored the Giver. God is no less worthy of one’s honor and gratitude simply because he or she might find themselves under God’s just judgment.

VERDICT

The verdict, however, is that mankind is not thankful toward God. 

Honor and thanksgiving go together in what is properly called worship: valuing God for who He is and acknowledging the goodness of His grace toward us.

MORNING PRAYER

Considering this passage, I tried the other morning, in my prayer time, to play out, to live out the implication of Paul’s words here, seeking to be thankful and praise God for all He reveals in creation that my senses are immediately aware of. 

I thought of the not too distant jack hammer. Not necessarily the most pleasant sound in the morning. But I thanked God for the future home for someone that would stand on the lot being prepared. 

I heard the nearby clinking of plastic toys, and thanked God for the joy of Chloe and Charlotte playing so nicely together. Charlotte’s enthused voice: “Chloe, let’s pretend that … “

I heard the sound of an electric pencil sharpener coming from the other room, and thanked God for the gift of such inventions, as Christa sharpened one of her drawing pencils. And I thanked God for the skills He has blessed Christa with in her artwork. 

I thanked God for the lingering aroma of the recently brewed coffee, for the taste that still resided on my tongue, how it helps open the sinus cavities.

I thanked God for the softness of the pajama fabric upon my legs, the coolness of the breeze coming through the open window finding its mark on my bare forearms and neck. 

I thanked God for the remembrance of the warmth and softness of my wife’s lips from our good morning kiss, the softness of the carpet under my toes, the smooth texture of the pages beneath my finger tips — the indents of the pencil markings from notes taken as the Lord has revealed Himself to me in His Word.

GIFT OF GRACE

What a gift of grace! For not so long ago, o how I suppressed the truth! And yet now, I get to hold His Word in these sinful hands — this Word that revealed to me the cost He paid to redeem me — the cost He paid that I might know Him — rightly know Him.

Lord, how true it is that I have not loved you with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. And I have not, out of an overflow of that love from You and for You, loved my neighbor as myself. Quicken my heart. Direct it ever more towards You — to truly live in constant worship and thanksgiving of who You are — and all You have done.

For I am all too aware that when I rise from this spot, I will quickly move from worship and thanksgiving and get caught up in lesser things. O guard my heart, Lord.

WEDNESDAY EVENING PRAYER

I love our Wednesday evening prayer time as a church family. And one of the things I love is listening to how most of you pray. Not only are your prayers biblically grounded and Christ-centered, they are often filled with thanksgiving — even in some of the trials we’ve been praying over. 

But the same thing goes for our gathered prayers as a church family. We can quickly leave such gatherings and find ourselves in a completely different disposition, where thankfulness is barely even a part of the picture. 

You know how I know? I ride home with some of you. In fact, I’m one of you. And I’m just speculating here. But I’m guessing that some of you struggle with the same things I struggle with. 

There’s a war taking place for our affections. And when we let down our guard, we’ll soon find our affections for God in retreat, because we’re distracted by the onslaught of far lesser things. 

APPLICATION

For those of you who listen to my ramblings and maybe say to yourself, “Just tell us what to do.” Well, here’s the thing. The solution isn’t something you and I can rectify in ourselves. The condition runs all the way through our fallen condition. 

That prayer of mine — it was short lived. I wish it wasn’t. I wish I could say that as I went about my day, I remained in constant thanksgiving toward God — that He was at the forefront of my every thought. But that wasn’t the case – not nearly the case.

The Fall has had traumatic effects that we can’t overcome in ourselves. And the worst of it is, we don’t want to overcome them. We walk in step with the problem. 

What we need is something we can’t do ourselves. We need a New Spirit breathed into us. Just as God first breathed into Adam the breath of life, and the man became a living being — who knew God. 

So, we need God’s very Spirit breathed into us, that the whole of our being would be animated with worship toward the One who filled us with such life.

Because left to ourselves, we’ll walk in step with the masses who give no thanks or glory to God.

TEN LEPERS

Jesus presents us with the perfect illustration (from Luke 17) in the account of the Ten Lepers (which Silas read for us). Ten lepers were healed of the leprosy. But only one returned to give thanks. Only one returns to give glory to God, and he was a foreigner!

O I’m sure they all worshiped. But nine of them didn’t worship God!

That’s what’s corrupt within us. That’s a picture of our fallen flesh. We fail to honor God as God, and to give thanks in all circumstances.

Our lives should be marked by constant worship and thanksgiving to God — not part of it, but all of it — every waking moment. 

ALL OF LIFE WORSHIP — BUT OFTEN NOT OF GOD

Now, I need to stress this. Our lives actually are, for the most part, marked by constant worship — just not the worship of God. Not only is our love of things an act of worship. Our hatred of a thing also serves as an act of worship.

How is hatred an act of worship? In one’s hatred of something, they are assigning worth to something else. When we consider the Psalms, such as Psalm 139: Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? — and the many other accounts of the psalmist’s hatred — what he is doing is assigning worth to God. 

That’s what worship is — it comes from the term worth-ship. But that was a bit difficult to say in the English tongue, hence worship. 

And when we consider the Psalms in their fullest sense — on the lips of Jesus himself — as we should — we read these words on the lips of the One man who can say pray such words without the slightest inkling of sin. 

And by such prayers, the eternal Son honored his Father. Such prayers served as thanksgiving toward His Father.

So, yes. All of life is worship of something. Just as our thanksgiving is an act of worship, so too our grumbling. Our grumbling reveals what it is we worship that isn’t God. How? Our grumbling is assigning worth to the thing we didn’t get or that didn’t go according to our preference.

Do you see why Scripture stresses the importance of being thankful in all circumstances? Because it’s the difference between worshiping God and worshiping something else that you and I tend to revere and venerate more than Him.

WHY LEPROSY

It’s not accidental that it was leprosy — a skin disease — a disease of the flesh — that was healed, in this portrait of thanksgiving and the lack thereof.

You ever wonder about all those cleanliness laws in Leviticus. In part, they are intended as a physical portrait of a greater spiritual reality — our sinful flesh. 

In Numbers 5, the Lord commands Moses to put out of the camp everyone who is leprous or has a discharge and everyone who is unclean through contact with the dead. 

Why leprosy, discharges, and contact with the dead? In a sense, each of these point to the flesh. It is the flesh that dies (or is dead), it’s the flesh that oozes, bleeds, and becomes blemished. The flesh is physically unwell. Of course, leprosy is a very visible image of the disease of the flesh — the disease found in the covering of the flesh — our skin. But all of these physical characteristics serve as an illustration of a greater spiritual issue. 

As unclean sinners, we walk in the flesh, which at its core is defiled by the sinful human heart that fails to honor God as God or give thanks to Him. As such, in our sinful flesh, we are unable to draw near to God’s dwelling or even dwell in the camp among God’s people. We need a better covering — one that truly covers our sin — a covering made available by only through the perfect, spotless, pure, undefiled, Lamb of God — the Son of God, Jesus Christ — the One whose skin was marred, whose blood was discharged, and died in our place.

DISTORTED VIEW

But you won’t ever truly honor or give genuine thanks to this God so long as you have a distorted view of His character. 

You might worship your idol — bowing down and giving thanks to your ideal of God or whatever it is you worship. But your ideal of God is an infinite distortion of the one True God if it comes from any source other than God’s own self disclosure.

How has God disclosed Himself? He’s disclosed Himself in creation, and He’s disclosed Himself in His Word.

MINING CREATION

From the beginning, mankind should have been mining creation with the intention of knowing their Creator. 

Consider modern science. It’s not accidental that it began in Christianized Europe, and that it depended on the assumption that a rational Creator made an orderly universe. 

In other words, because God created the universe, they expected to find order, not chaos. In fact, one can’t do science, observe patterns and how things work, apart from expecting to find order and design. 

None of that’s accidental. Studying creation was intended to be an act of worship in discovering more about God. From the beginning, mankind was to mine creation as a means of knowing God’s nature and character. 

But due to the Fall, we’ll often distort the evidence God has given us in creation. Thankfully, He also gave us His Word.

MINING SCRIPTURE

Likewise, are to mine God’s special revelation of Himself so that we might know Him more intimately. Just as in creation, we’re to expect order rather than chaos — that everything is diligently and deliberately placed — none of it accidental — so too with Scripture. We’ll go much further in knowing Him — and specifically, in knowing Christ. 

When we approach Scripture with the expectation of finding order — that every word has been carefully placed by the Author in order that you might Know Him, we’ll go much further in knowing Him rightly, that we might honor Him and give Him thanks as we see His boundless grace and mercy toward us in Christ.

CONCLUSION

One leper returned to give thanks — only one. He returned to thank Jesus for healing his disease of the flesh. He gives thanks to none other than the spotless unblemished Lamb who took the disease of the flesh upon Himself in order to make the leper truly clean. 

We need the same done with our disease of the flesh. Scripture often uses the term “flesh” to refer to the whole of fallen man’s corrupt, self-focused nature — this disease that fails to honor God as God — this disease that fails to give thanks to Him — this disease of death that has come upon us for our lack of gratitude and worship.

Jesus, the one man unworthy of death, came in order to know death — something impossible for the self-existing eternal God to know. He would take on our finite likeness, clothe himself with the likeness of our sinful flesh — yet without any sin of his own. And Jesus would do so, in order that he could know death in our place … so that you and I might know life.

For this is eternal life — John 17:3 — to know the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom the Father sent. 

Although they knew God … Do you know Him?