Sermon Tone Analysis

Romans 1:24-32.

"Blinded Minds".

Safe Haven Community Church.

Sunday July 3rd, 2022.

Romans 1:24-32.

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 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.

26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.

For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 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.

28 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.

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

They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.

They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

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.

(ESV)

Oscar Wilde said "When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.".

Of course, he was commenting as an unbeliever of Christ on what unbelievers want most, in rebellion against God.

Thus far in our study of Romans we have been concentrating on human rebellion against God, and we have seen-indeed, Paul has explicitly told us-that the wrath of God "is being revealed from heaven" against men and women because of this rebellion.

Unbelieving humanity has: (1) suppressed the truth about God; (2) refused to glorify, or worship, God as God; and (3) declined to be thankful.

As a result, human beings have become "darkened" in their thinking.

They have become fools.

Nevertheless, up to this point we have not been told specifically of anything that God has actually done to unleash his wrath upon humanity.

Now this changes.

For the first time in the letter we are told-three times in succession-that God will abandon men and women to perversion.

The sentence says, "God gave them over."

It is found in verses 24, 26, and 28.

But here is the irony, hence the reference to Oscar Wilde.

Rebellious humanity's punishment is to be abandoned by God.

But, of course, this is precisely what rebellious humanity has been fighting for ever since Adam's first rebellion in the Garden of Eden.

People want to get rid of God, to push him out of their life.

In contemporary terms the unbeliever is saying, "God, I just want you to leave me alone.

Take a seat on that chair over there.

Shut up, and let me get on with my life as I want to live it."

And for a time, God does! (Boice, J. M. (1991-).

Romans: Justification by Faith (Vol. 1, pp. 177-178).

Baker Book House.)

When God abandons people to their own devices, His divine protection is partially withdrawn.

When that occurs, people not only become more vulnerable to the destructive deceptions of Satan but also suffer the destruction that their own sin works in and through them.

In Judges 10:13, the Lord said to Israel: "You have forsaken Me and served other gods, Therefore I will deliver you no more".

When God's Spirit came upon Azariah, He told Judah in 2 Chron.

15:2 "The Lord is with you when you are with Him.

And if you seek Him He will let you find Him; but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you".

Through "Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada the priest, God again said to Judah in 2 Chron.

24:20 "Why do you transgress the commandments of the Lord and do not prosper?

Because you have forsaken the Lord, He has also forsaken you".

God will allow people to experience the consequences of their sin so that they will see their error and look to him for mercy and for a better way (Morris, L. (1988).

The Epistle to the Romans (p.

88).

W.B. Eerdmans; Inter-Varsity Press.)

Romans 1:24-32 vividly portrays the consequences of a blinded mind to God and God's abandonment of the rebellious showing: 1) The Essence (Romans 1:24-25), 2) The Expression (Romans 1:26-27), and 3) The Extent (Romans 1:28-32) of human sinfulness.

Each of those progressively more sobering sections is introduced with the declaration "God gave them over."

A Blinded Mind to God is first:

1) The Essence of Human Sinfulness (Romans 1:24-25)

Romans 1:24-25.

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 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.

Therefore, refers back to the reasons Paul has just set forth in verses 18-23.

Although God revealed himself to humanity (vv.

19-20), people rejected God (v.

21) and then rationalized their rejection (v.

22; cf.

v. 18b) and created substitute gods of their own making (v.

23).

Because people abandoned God, God abandoned them-He gave them up/over.

It is that divine abandonment and its consequences that Paul develops in verses 24-32, the most sobering and fearful passage in the entire epistle.

Paradidōmi (gave ...up/over) is an intense verb.

In scripture, it is used in a judicial sense of people being committed to prison (Mark 1:14; Acts 8:3) or to judgment (Matt.

5:25; 10:17, 19, 21; 18:34) and of rebellious angels being delivered to pits of darkness (2 Pet.

2:4).

God's giving over rebellious humanity has a dual sense.

First, in an indirect sense God gave them up/over simply by withdrawing His restraining and protective hand, allowing the consequences of sin to take their inevitable, destructive course.

Sin degrades people, debases the image of God in which people are made, and strips them of dignity, peace of mind, and a clear conscience.

Sin destroys personal relationships, marriages, families, cities, and nations.

It also destroys churches.

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

A Body of Divinity [Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth, 1983 reprint], p. 136).

God often allows people to go deeper and deeper into sin in order to drive them to despair and to show them their need of Him.

Often, He punishes people in order to heal and restore (Isa.

19:22).

It was because the lusts of their hearts were for impurity that God abandons people to their sin.

Human lostness is not determined by the outward circumstances of their lives but by the inner condition of their hearts.

A person's sin begins within themselves.

"For out of the heart," Jesus said, "come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.

These are the things which defile a person.." (Matt.

15:19-20).

Jeremiah had proclaimed the same basic truth: "The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick" (Jer.

17:9; cf.

Prov.

4:23).

Used metaphorically in Scripture, "the heart" does not represent the emotions or feelings, as it generally does in modern usage, but rather the whole thinking process, including especially the will and human motivation.

In its broadest sense, the heart represents the basic nature of a person, their inner being and character.

Paul does not indict all human, including sexual, desire as unclean.

Rather it is only when such desire has control of someone, when it becomes the most important aspect of human life, that it is condemned (Dunn, J. D. G. (1988).

Romans 1-8 (Vol.

38A, p. 63).

Word, Incorporated.)

* In our day, the basic ungodliness of people is nowhere more clearly exposed than in the popular admonition to do one's own thing.

People's "own thing" is sin, which characterizes the whole natural being.

Self-will is the essence of all sin.

Although Satan was responsible for their being tempted to sin, it was the voluntary placing of their own wills above God's that caused Adam and Eve to commit the first sin.

People reject God because their preferences, their lusts, are for their own way rather than God's.

Lusts translates epithumia, which can refer to any desire but was most often used of carnal desire for that which was sinful or forbidden.

Speaking about believers as well as unbelievers, James declared that "each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust" (James 1:14).

Because even Christians are tempted to desire their own sin above God's holiness, Paul warned the Thessalonians about falling into the lustful passions that characterized pagan Gentiles (1 Thess.

4:5).

He reminded the Ephesians that "we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest" (Eph.

2:3).

Right now, God reveals His wrath, not by sending fire from heaven, but by abandoning (the unrepentant) to their lustful ways (Wiersbe, W. W. (1996).