Sermon Tone Analysis

*Abandoned by God, Part 2*

*Romans 1:26-32*

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     Let's share together in a word of prayer as we approach the Scripture tonight.

Our Father, as we open the pages of the sacred book, we pray that we might realize that You are speaking, that this is not a human message but a message from the living God.

May we hear it as if our Lord Jesus Christ were speaking or as if Your own voice was thundering from heaven as in days gone by.

Help us to understand what You're saying to perceive the truth and to respond as You would have us and we thank You, Father, in Christ's name.

Amen.

Romans chapter 1 is our text tonight.

And we are looking at this marvelous first chapter, particularly verses 24 through 32 under the title "Abandoned by God."

And we're following the chronicle of the fallenness of man as presented by the Apostle Paul in this powerful and insightful passage.

Paul's theme in Romans is the gospel, the good news, that's what gospel means, the good news.

But before the news can be good for us, we have to realize how bad things really are.

And so, Paul begins the good news with the bad news and the bad news is in verse 18, "The wrath of God is continually being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men."

The bad news is that God is angry with men.

And we have been asking the question why is God so angry, so angry that He condemns men to eternal hell.

Why is God so angry?

Well Paul shows us that there are really five reasons why God is angry and they are the five steps downward in the descent of man away from God.

The first one was revelation.

The end of verse 18 says that men hold the truth.

How?

Verse 19, "God has manifested it to them."

And how has He done that?

Verse 20, "From the creation of the world."

In other words, God reveals Himself to men.

That's where it all begins.

Men know God at first.

Revelation.

The second step is rejection.

Verse 21, "When they knew God they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful but became empty in their reasoning and their foolish heart was darkened."

The first point says they have the truth of God and this one says they reject the truth of God.

They will not glorify Him as God and they are not thankful for Him as the source of everything, but turn to their own empty reasoning and their own dark and foolish heart.

And then the third step in the decline of man is rationalization.

Verse 22, "They profess themselves to be wise and become the most supreme fools."

Man has revelation, he moved then to rejection and then rationalizes that in his empty darkened heart he is wise and becomes the biggest fool of all.

And that leads fourthly to religion.

Verse 23, "He then exchanges the glory of the true God, the incorruptible God, for an idol made like corruptible man and birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things."

Men have the truth, they refuse the truth, they think they know the truth anyway and then out of their own supposed wisdom create gods of their own making.

And that leads to a fifth step, reprobation.

And that begins in verse 24.

Religion is man at the bottom, man running as far away from God and the true knowledge of God as he can possible go.

And inventing a false system of religion, and as I've been saying to you, when you see religion around the world, that is not man at his highest, that is man at his lowest.

That is not man trying to find God, that is man having abandoned God and been abandoned by God now inventing a religion out of his own emptiness.

A false religion that he substitutes for the true one because he will not accept the truth.

Why?

John 3, "He loves sin too much."

And so, we finally come from religion to reprobation.

And that is the filthy pit of man's existence.

And you will notice verse 24 tells us how it is that man reaches this level.

It says, "Wherefore God gave them up."

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

And verse 28 says, "God gave them up to a reprobate mind."

Man starts with knowledge, revelation.

Moves to rejection, then to rationalization, then to religion and finally to reprobation...a reprobate mind.

And as we said to you last time, this is a judicial punishment on God's part.

The verb "God gave them up...gave them up...gave them up," as I pointed out last time is used in many many places in the New Testament to speak of turning someone over to a court, turning someone over to a judge, turning someone over to a sentencing, or turning someone over to a punishment or an executioner.

God literally gives men up.

He abandons them.

Now mark this.

This then becomes the fulfillment of verse 18.  How is the wrath of God continually being revealed?

The wrath of God is continually being revealed as God gives men up to the consequences of their own rejection.

He abandons them.

He lets them go.

And as we pointed out last time, the evil of our society is the wrath of God at work.

People say if we keep going the way we are, God is going to judge America.

And I submit to you that based on Romans 1, God is already judging America.

We don't have to wait for fire and brimstone, we're already being judged by the fact that God has abandoned this society to the exercise of its own sinning willfulness.

The evil of society then is the outworking of the wrath of God.

What is man's punishment then?

It is a compounding escalating snow-balling sinfulness with all of its attendant atrocities.

That is God's wrath at work.

Just let them go to the consequence of their own sinning.

Now we know the effect of sin.

We know what sin does to people.

It degrades men.

It debases the image of God.

It strips man of his glory.

It pulls off his coat of arms, as it were.

It robs him of his dignity.

It steals his peace.

And in place it gives him fear and torment and guilt.

It causes trembling, it convulses the conscience.

And some people kill themselves to find comfort from the torment.

Sin destroys relationships.

It rots a good name.

It wipes out a marriage.

It utterly devastates a family.

It debauches a city and a nation.

Thomas Watson said, "Sin puts gravel in our bread and wormwood in our cup."

Bernard said, "Sin is a death always dying."

And so man is turned over to the law of his own sinfulness and its compounded consequences.

And people really don't like it.

They run off to the psychiatrist, the psychologist, the analyst.

They run off to take a vacation to try to forget.

They travel.

They entertain themselves.

They drink.

They take drugs.

They seek alleviation of the consequences of sin every way possible.

But have you noticed how utterly impossible it is?

In fact, the highest suicide rate in America among any profession is that of psychiatrist who not only can't help people but can't help themselves.