Sermon Tone Analysis

*Abandoned by God, Part 1*

*Romans 1:24-25*

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     Let's look together at Romans chapter 1 and I want to read for you the setting for our message tonight, verses 24 through 32...Romans 1:24 to 32.

 

     Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness to the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves; who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever.

Amen.

For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections; for even their women did exchange the natural use for that which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was fitting.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not seemly.

Being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, insolent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: who knowing the judgment of God, that they who commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same but have pleasure in them that do them.

Now basically those verses are a catalog of the sinfulness of man.

Men are wicked.

They are vile.

They are evil.

They are creatures utterly filled with sinfulness.

They are characterized as ungodly and unrighteous.

Now we are not in this particular day and age surprised to hear this about men because we see it all around us.

We see the depravity of man made manifest to us.

We're not in a world of isolation.

We are in a tremendously integrated kind of world, a cosmopolitan kind of world, a media oriented kind of world that is shrunken to such a small size that we pretty well know everything that's going on everywhere and the sinfulness of man is common knowledge.

No matter how well a society begins, it always decends to the same pit of immoral behavior and subsequent judgment of God that is categorically presented to us in Romans chapter 1.  Like a baby, the beginnings may be lovely and beautiful but the end is ugly.

Everything starts well but the vileness of man's nature plunges him into the pit of sin under the condemnation of God with nothing but a prospect of eternal hell.

Man is not good and you need to mark that at the very beginning.

Man is evil.

His nature is bent on sin and given his prerogatives he will inevitably end up in the morass of immorality.

Why?

Why is it so?

Why has man always inevitably to sink to such a sad condition?

How is it that that infant life so lovely, so precious, so soft, so innocent will descend to the corrupted adulthood that inevitably awaits the human race?

Why?

I think the answer is right here.

You want to know why men are like they are?

Women are like they are?

Do you want to know why the fall of man is inevitably marked in every single life?

The answer is clearly here, it is because God gave them up.

Three times that is said in these verses.

And it basically means that man is abandoned by God.

God has abandoned man.

That's really the problem that man has.

You see, because of the Fall and the depravity of man, his innate sinfulness, as we shall see in a moment, because of this man has no...and I'll say it again...no capacity to restrain his sinfulness.

It is impossible for him to restrain his sinfulness.

He can't capture it.

He can't harness it.

He cannot do good.

He cannot keep from doing evil.

There is none, says Romans 3, that doeth good, no not one.

They do evil continually.

Even the religious among men, the seemingly self-righteous among men may be committing the most heinous sin of all which is self-righteousness.

Man cannot restrain evil and he will inevitably do what is wrong.

There's only one force in the entire universe that can restrain evil and that is God.

And the problem with man is that God is not restraining him.

God has abandoned him.

God has given him up, given him up, given him up.

And what that really means is that God no longer restrains man.

God has abandoned man.

That is the story of the human race.

It really all began in the garden.

Now this passage is the most tragic, the most fearful, the most sobering somber passage in all of the epistle to the Romans and because of this single thought that man has been abandoned by God.

Look at verse 24, "Wherefore God also gave them up."

Verse 26, "For this cause God gave them up."

Verse 28, "And as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them up...same verb...to a reprobate mind."

Now if you want to know why man is like he is, that's it.

And that really is the major answer that we're going to be looking at tonight.

Man is the way he is because he's abandoned by God.

And God is the only restraining influence there is in the universe to hold back evil.

And the more God lets go, the worse it gets.

And as you go through human history it says in 2 Timothy 3:13, "Evil men will grow worse and worse."

And it's almost as if God just continues to let go of man and man continues to go his own way.

And in the process he compounds sin upon sin upon sin which escalates his evil until ultimately you end up in the Tribulation and in the Tribulation period, according to 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, the final restraints are taken off and the one who hinders, who is the Holy Spirit, hinders no more and literally all hell breaks loose across the earth.

The pit opens up, says Revelation 9, and belches forth all of the bound demons.

You compound that with the last bit of restraint being taken off man with centuries of escalating sinfulness and you have the Tribulation.

Abandoned by God, that is man's problem.

I want you to just think that thought with me for a minute.

And I'd like to show you that it is not a new thought in Romans, it is elsewhere in the Bible.

And I'll give you a couple of illustrations.

In Psalm 81 verse 11 it says, "But My people would not hearken to My voice...now listen...and Israel would have none of Me so I gave them up."

To what?  "To their own hearts desires and they walked in their own counsels."

Israel would not hearken.

They would have none of Me so I gave them up.

What horrifying words.

In Hosea, the prophet marks the same tragic reality.

In chapter 4 verse 17, an unforgettable verse, it simply says this, "Ephraim--and that is a term designating the nation of Israel-- Ephraim is joined to idols."

And here comes the shocking line, "Let him alone."

Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone.

God gives up on the northern kingdom.

God gives up on his wayward people who will have none of Him.

Listen to this.

In Matthew 15:14 our Lord talks about the rulers of Israel, most specifically the Pharisees.

It says this, "Let them alone, they are blind leaders of the blind and if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch."

Let them alone...let them go.

The restraints are off.

That's man's problem.

God is not restraining him and he has no capacity to restrain himself.

In seventh chapter of Acts there is a masterful address, a sermon given by Stephen.

Part of it speaks to our point.

Listen in verse 37, "This is that Moses who said to the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren like me, him shall you hear, this is he that was in the church in the wilderness or the assembly in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him in Mount Sinai and with our fathers who received the living oracles to give unto us, whom our fathers would not obey but thrust him from them and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt."

In other words, they didn't want the leadership of Moses who represented God.  "They said, Aaron, make us gods to go before us for as for this Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we know not what has become of him.

And they made a calf in those days and offered sacrifice unto the idol and rejoiced in the works of their own hands."

Listen to this.  "Then God turned and gave them up to worship the host of heaven."

Gave them up, let them go.

That was the choice they made and He let them go.

Just one other scripture comes to mind, chapter 14 of Acts verse 16 says that God in time past allowed all nations to walk in their own ways.