“Delivered to Sin!”
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READ TEXT - (Romans 1:24-32) - PRAY
“Therefore…” ALWAYS points back to what was just said: (1:18-23)
Three Reasons God’s Wrath is Revealed:
1. Humanity Unrighteously Suppresses God’s Truth - (1:18-19)
2. Humanity Ignores God’s Power and Divine Nature - (1:20-21)
3. Humanity Exchanges God’s Glory for Images - (1:22-23)
BECAUSE of these REASONS, there are THREE CONSEQUENCES to their CHOICES!
Like the previous paragraph (vv.18-23), in (vv.24-32), there are three sentences in Greek, all containing the phrase, ‘παρέδωκεν αὐτοὺς ὁ θεός’ (vv.24a, 26a, 28b), translated, “God delivered [handed] them over…”
NLT - “God abandoned them…”
Simply put, sometimes, as Mounce writes, “Divine judgment is God permitting people to go their own way!”
Stott: When we hear of God’s wrath, we usually think of ‘thunderbolts from heaven, and earthly cataclysms and flaming majesty’, instead of which his anger goes ‘quietly and invisibly’ to work in handing sinners over to themselves. As John Ziesler writes, it ‘operates not by God’s intervention but precisely by his not intervening, by letting men and women go their own way’. God abandons stubborn sinners to their wilful self-centeredness (26), and the resulting process of moral and spiritual degeneration is to be understood as a judicial act of God. This is the revelation of God’s wrath from heaven (18).
15 In return for their foolish and wicked thoughts, which led them astray to worship irrational serpents and worthless animals, thou didst send upon them a multitude of irrational creatures to punish them,
16 that they might learn that one is punished by the very things by which he sins.
The Psalmist Asaph writes,
11 “But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel did not obey me.
12 So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own plans.
I. FIRST, God Delivers Them Over to PERVERTED DESIRES! - (1:24–25)
I. FIRST, God Delivers Them Over to PERVERTED DESIRES! - (1:24–25)
Specifically, to “…the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity.”
As many can testify, when you are given over to sexual sin, it is a long dark path!
18 They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts.
19 They became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more.
There are at least three consequences:
FIRST, (v.24b) - “…their bodies were degraded among themselves.”
FIRST, (v.24b) - “…their bodies were degraded among themselves.”
ἀτιμάζω atimazō - ‘dishonor, treat shamefully or with disrespect’
Used in (2:26) - “…do you dishonor God by breaking the law?”
(James 2:6) - “Yet you have dishonored the poor…”
Grant Osborne - “It does not take much analysis of the moral state of the Roman Empire or of our world today to see the extent to which sexual license dishonors the body. Without moral standards, sex is degraded to animal behavior.”
SECOND, (v.25a) - “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie…”
SECOND, (v.25a) - “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie…”
In (v.23) they “exchanged” the glory of God for an image. Here they exchange “the truth of God for a [the] lie” (there is a definite article - “the lie”).
One author calls it the “ultimate lie,” namely, that God is NOT real—that a person can create his or her own truth/reality/God!
6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
THIRD, (v.25b) - “…and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator”
THIRD, (v.25b) - “…and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator”
What should be the OBVIOUS LIE is that when a person exchanges the truth for a lie, his or her worship becomes a lie as well!
MOUNCE - “God created humans for fellowship. To deny that intended purpose is to enter the darkness of paganism. Moral direction is lost. The rebel worships himself in the form of idolatrous images. Either the Lord is God or people assume that role.”
8 Do not make an idol for yourself in the shape of anything in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth.
9 Do not bow in worship to them, and do not serve them, because I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, bringing the consequences of the fathers’ iniquity on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me,
10 but showing faithful love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commands.
12 “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you except to fear the Lord your God by walking in all his ways, to love him, and to worship the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul?
II. SECOND, God Delivers Them Over to DISGRACEFUL PASSIONS! - (1:26-27)
II. SECOND, God Delivers Them Over to DISGRACEFUL PASSIONS! - (1:26-27)
TWO observations:
1. The BEHAVIORS - (vv.26-27a)
1. The BEHAVIORS - (vv.26-27a)
Being “delivered over” to perverted DESIRES (v.24a), leads to being “delivered over” to perverted SEXUAL PRACTICES!
SPECIFICALLY, to lesbian practices (v.26b), and male homosexual relationships (v.27)!
BOTH involve leaving “…natural sexual relations for unnatural ones” - (v.26b)!
The notion that the Bible is antiquated and that it’s authors could not possibly understand modern sexuality is SHEER NONSENSE!
The Bible is CLEAR on this subject:
4 Before they went to bed, the men of the city of Sodom, both young and old, the whole population, surrounded the house.
5 They called out to Lot and said, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Send them out to us so we can have sex with them!”
6 Lot went out to them at the entrance and shut the door behind him.
7 He said, “Don’t do this evil, my brothers.
6 and if he reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes and condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is coming to the ungodly;
7 Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns committed sexual immorality and perversions, and serve as an example by undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.
22 You are not to sleep with a man as with a woman; it is detestable.
13 If a man sleeps with a man as with a woman, they have both committed a detestable act. They must be put to death; their death is their own fault.
9 Don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God’s kingdom? Do not be deceived: No sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, or males who have sex with males,
10 for the sexually immoral and males who have sex with males, for slave traders, liars, perjurers, and for whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching
You cannot DISMISS Paul’s teaching in this matter!
2. The CONSEQUENCES - (v.27b)
2. The CONSEQUENCES - (v.27b)
“…received in their own persons the appropriate penalty of their error.”
27 and likewise also the males, abandoning the natural relations with the female, were inflamed in their desire toward one another, males with males committing the shameless deed, and receiving in themselves the penalty that was necessary for their error.
Someone might say, “Well, that seems harsh!” I would remind them that we are talking about “God’s wrath!” By definition, “wrath” is going to be harsh!
16 Don’t you yourselves know that you are God’s temple and that the Spirit of God lives in you?
17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is holy, and that is what you are.
7 Don’t be deceived: God is not mocked. For whatever a person sows he will also reap,
8 because the one who sows to his flesh will reap destruction from the flesh, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit.
There are more than twenty diseases (STD’s) that are the direct consequence of engaging in illicit sexual behavior!
III. God Hands Them Over to a CORRUPT MIND! - (1:28-32)
III. God Hands Them Over to a CORRUPT MIND! - (1:28-32)
1. The REASON - (v.28a)
1. The REASON - (v.28a)
“And because they did not think it worthwhile to acknowledge God…”
2. Their PUNISHMENT - (v.28b)
2. Their PUNISHMENT - (v.28b)
“…God delivered them over to a corrupt mind”
3. The RESULT - (1:28c)
3. The RESULT - (1:28c)
“…so that they do what is not right.”
A corrupt mind leads to corrupt conduct!
4. Their STATE: Filled with Every Imaginable Vice - (1:29–31)
4. Their STATE: Filled with Every Imaginable Vice - (1:29–31)
In considering how to cover the TWENTY-ONE different vices listed in these three verses, I have decided to follow the advice of T. R. Schreiner: “…it is best not to draw precise distinctions between the terms in the list because Paul is seeking to paint a picture of comprehensive wickedness.”
With that being said, there are some distinctive differences in the CASE used by Paul that gives us a group of four dative nouns, denoting content: (v.29a) - “They are filled with all unrighteousness, evil [πονηρίᾳ], greed, and wickedness…”
There are five genitive nouns, denoting being thoroughly characterized by: (v.29b) - “…They are full of envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, and malice.”
And a final group of twelve: (vv.29c-31) - “…They ARE gossips, slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, senseless, untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful.”
Q: SOMEONE may ask, “How is God delivering us over to our very worst behavior revealing His wrath?”
People who behave in such a manner seem to be causing trouble rather than being in trouble!
A: If you know someone who is given over to these sins—that is they make no effort to curb their behavior, how happy or joyful are they? How peaceful are they? Would you describe them as living a contented life? How well-respected are they?
Or would BITTER, MISERABLE, and LONELY be better descriptors of their life?
5. A Tragic SUMMARY - (v.32)
5. A Tragic SUMMARY - (v.32)
Just because a person “knows” something, doesn’t mean they will course correct!
AND IN FACT, sometimes it causes them to barrel ahead full steam!
SUCH IS THE DEPTH OF OUR SINFUL CONDITION!
CONCLUSION:
CONCLUSION:
Even though our study ends here, I don’t want to leave you on such bad news!
19 For just as through one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so also through the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
20 The law came along to multiply the trespass. But where sin multiplied, grace multiplied even more
21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace will reign through righteousness, resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
