God Gave Them Up
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Welcome back to Beyond everyone!
A few weeks ago I shared an illustration.
Imagine someone comes up to you and they say, “Hey, I’ve got great news! Someone paid off your $25,000 speeding fine!”
Most of us would be confused by this information, and it could even seem insinuating.
What if, before this, the person told you, “You were caught going 70mph in a blind children’s school zone, you have a $25,000 fine now.”
Then the good news would make sense! Without the bad news, the good news doesn’t make any sense.
Same is true for the gospel.
We studied 2 weeks ago the wrath of God. Today we continue.
We continue into a very controversial area in scripture for our day in age, that will be heavy to go through and tackle. But, we have to address it, because the Bible addresses it.
Here are the questions we are going to ask today:
Questions we Will Ask
Questions we Will Ask
What is the context of this passage? What is Paul trying to say to the Romans?
How does this carry over into our world today? What does it mean for us as the church in this conversation?
Any other questions you guys have
How we are Going to Go through this Passage Together
How we are Going to Go through this Passage Together
This week, we are going to go through Romans 1:24-32. 2 weeks from now when we pick back up, we are going to spend the evening answering questions, and giving you guys a Biblical study of these topics and how we can grow in Christlikeness with interactions/conversations. (Topical)
Definitely ask questions in small group tonight too!
Let’s get started!
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
Quick recap, based on last times meeting, what does Paul mean when he says wrath of God?
God’s righteous/divine anger.
The them here is men, we see that in Romans 1:18. Paul is talking about all men, and the therefore is there because what is happening is because of man exchanging/trading the truth of God for a lie. Worshiping creation instead of creator.
This passage showcases the first of three times Paul uses the phrase in this passage, “God gave them up.”
Sin in it of itself is a consequence. So God giving people up in sin, is a punishment. Remember, God is good and perfect. Wherever God is not, falls short and is evil.
So we see in the first case, God gives them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity.
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Again, because of this exchange, Paul states again, God gave them up. This time he says to dishonorable passions. So in the passage before it’s dishonoring their bodies, this time, Paul says dishonorable passions.
The meaning of natural relations here is sexual.
Let’s pause.
What is going on? Why would Paul shift to this? And why this is an example? Why not another?
So, we are going to walk through a break down of the context. The questions we are asking and answering, I would encourage you to use as well when looking for the meaning in any given text.
1st, does anyone remember who Paul is writing this letter to?
The Romans.
Rome at that time was the capital of the pagan world. The center of the Roman empire. The predominant religion here worshipped creation rather then creator.
One commentator writes about Rome:
“By contrast, the Greco-Roman society of Paul’s day tolerated homosexuality with considerable ease. Among some advocates it was viewed as superior to heterosexuality. Barclay notes that “fourteen out of the first fifteen Roman Emperors were homosexuals.”3111 Robert H. Mounce, Romans, vol. 27, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995), 82.”
This was a very common thing for the people of this world, the recipients of the letter would have clearly understood the example Paul was using.
But why exactly the example of men and women exchanging what is natural for that which is, as this verse says, contrary to nature. What is Paul getting at?
In verses 1:23 and 1:25 we see Paul use the word exchange for:
Exchanging the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, animals, and creeping things. (23)
Exchanging the truth about God for a lie (25)
Now we see exchange to describe what’s going on here with men and women, natural relations to unnatural ones.
If the Bible repeats something, it is really important.
Paul is showing with each use of the word exchange their is a natural consequence for rejecting God, this situation is part of it. This is part of what it looks like for God to give man up to his sin, consequences such as this.
Paul is focusing on a consequence of sin, this exchange of natural to unnatural as seen in this passage is part of God’s wrath being poured out.
It’s heavy to say that in today’s cultural climate but that is what Paul is conveying in this passage.
When God is taken out of the picture, the truth about who God is, we are left with a lie. We can’t understand the picture, because we’ve removed the glasses to see.
God the creator, created male and female, we see this in Genesis 1. When he is saying here contrary to nature for woman engaging this way and men as well, he is showing, guys this is not how God created or designed us.
Before we continue on I want to show a few things Paul is not saying in this text:
No where in this text does Paul say,
“Homosexuality is the greatest sin of all, worse than every other.” - If we read through the passage, that’s not here.
He also is not saying that this being contrary to nature is only in cases of “abuse” and it’s okay these engagements and interactions are okay otherwise.
To say both would be reading into the text of this passage.
The God giving man up into the lust of their hearts, to the dishonoring of their bodies of verse 24 is displayed here in verse 26 through the example of women and men exchanging nature for that which is contrary.
That was a lot. But it is very important we are not reading into the text.
Do understand this too, Paul is not saying here that every person in Rome engaged in this activity, he is simply showing a consequence of God giving man up to his sin and lusts.
We are going to finish this passage and then talk about how this connects with our own life.
So we’ve seen rejection of the worship of God
Rejection of God’s truth
and Rejection of God’s design in creation
He continues,
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 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.
Finally we see here, because of this rejection of God, He gives man up to a debased, evil, depraved mind.
Again we see here at the end man is suppressing the truth, man knows, man still does and man gives approval to others.
Paul went from I really want to see you guys to hey there is a really big problem with mankind.
Today?
Today?
So what does this all have to do with us? What can we learn from this passage?
There is a lot here. A lot that’s contested, and a lot that is taken out of context.
Until studying this I myself didn’t understand the full context. I want to give you guys three take-aways that will help us understand the world we live in.
All humanity has traded truth of God for lie.
Acceptance of Lie: Unnatural mind / heart: actions contrary to design.
Be careful, easy to distance oneself, even while just as guilty.
Romans 2 is going to breakdown why even the religious “everyday man” is just as guilty.
Next time, we are going to ask the question:
How as Christians are we to engage with individuals within the LGBT community? Do we bring up verses like this? Do we focus on building relationships? Should we engage?
These are the questions we will explore. Definitely feel free to bring your own questions for that night, and feel free to ask any to me or anyone else after Beyond too.
Let’s close in prayer.
