Romans 1: 18-32
What happens when the lights are turned off
Recap last week.
Paul speaks of his eagerness to visit the Roman Christians, he tells them he is anxious to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. I think when Paul says gospel, he isn’t just talking about the four spiritual laws, but all the word of God in which the invitation to Christ is contained. It is this word which is good news and Paul says it is the POWER of God unto Salvation to the Jew first and also to the Greek (or Gentile folks)
Then he says the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, that’s our walk because the righteous shall live by faith.
So where do we get faith. Romans 10:17 says that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. We get faith from obeying Scripture. Simple but true, and a really restful way to live as we go from faith to faith.
Faith is more than just an attempt to believe, it’s a way of life. Faith in God gives us access to the way God thinks and to His viewpoints of life. Philippians 2:14 – 16 & Colossians 1:13 – 29
Romans 1 What Happens When God Abandons A Nation?
Verse 18 – 19
But when this truth is suppressed, it makes God angry. Now to suppress a truth, you have to know it is truth. He is talking about deliberate apostasy in the face of revealed truth. And while there is the upward climb of faith, he is now going to talk about the downward spiral of deliberate anti-faith. Psalm 53 “The fool. . .” God’s wrath is revealed from heaven . . The Bible teaches that he who lives in unbelief the wrath of God abides in him. .suppression of the truth. Psalm 97:6 says the heaven’s declare his glory and his righteousness. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God has set eternity in the hearts of men. No one who has ever lived can stand before God and claim he didn’t know there was a God, for He is evident in creation.
Verse 20:
His invisible attributes: which are – 1) His eternal power and – 2) His divine nature are clearly evident being understood by what has been made. You can’t look at anything in creation and say there is no God. Well according to Psalm 53, the fool can.
His invisible attributes are clear. Proverbs says go to nature and she will show you truth. His divine power and eternal nature have been clearly seen, being understood. . .they are without excuse. No obstetrician who delivers a baby can say that he doesn’t know if God exists. The moment he holds that baby in his hands, He is convicted for he is seeing the divine power and eternal nature right before him.
Verse 21:
There are two ways to handle truth – obey it or exchange it, and both are acts of the will. God created man to worship, and if he won’t worship truth then he will worship error. You can do nothing against truth, but exchange it for a lie.
Two things brought about their delusion, they did not honor God, and they did not give thanks. If you refuse either of these activities, then you must honor someone or something else, and if you don’t give thanks to God, then you make yourself master of life.
In my own life, I have discovered that when I honor God and give thanks, I suddenly become a bit wiser, I see things more spiritually, and less from my human frailties. It beats me being in charge.
They became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened.
If you block the sun, your world becomes dark. Simple as that. Turn out the lights and you’re in darkness. Ok, so turn on the light, but if you refuse and keep saying that darkness is good and so forth, you continue to dwell in darkness. You can even write books on how wonderful darkness is, and how false it is to believe in light, but then you’re just confirming the dark and worshipping blindness. Kind of like celebrating stupidity.
Verse 22 -23
Professing to be wise, they became fools. You ever read books by people that start cults. It’s the biggest bunch of gobletygook. I have always loved Scripture for its orderliness, it flows, it has a central them (Christ), God always acts consistently, it never guesses but states facts, it has a beginning a middle and an end and it all ties together. And yet it was written by numerous men, over a span of thousands of years, by people from all walks of life, with varying degrees of education and position, and yet it all says the SAME THING. Cults come and go, they change their minds, they change dates of prophecies, they change prophecies, they have no central theme, and they usually circle their founder and no one but he or she knows “truth.” But in Scripture we’re all invited to know God, from children to adults, rich to poor, king to peasant.
The first exchange: The glory of incorruptible God for images of corruptible animals and man. Remember; man will worship, God created him that way. In Exodus when God sent the plagues, he used insects that the Egyptians worshipped. Imagine bowing down in front of the image of a frog or a fly or a gnat. He trashed their gods and their idols, and still they refused to turn to him. They kept on exchanging. Even the Israelites in the wilderness exchanged worship of the incorruptible God for an image of a calf. How insulting to God! But the exchange began with murmuring. Remember they wanted water, they griped to Moses, and God sent water from the rock, they wanted food so He gave them manna, then they complained about how tired they were of it, he sent them quail. Enemies came and instead of calling on God they griped that He had brought them into the wilderness to kill them, as if there weren’t enough graves in Egypt. They moaned over the loss of leeks, garlic and onions, when God had given them freedom from their harsh taskmasters and said He would make them into a mighty nation. “They did not honor him as God, nor give him thanks.” Their stinky attitude led to an insurrection and God killed thousands of them to clear the nation of grumblers. All He wanted to do was bless them, but by their actions they called curses down upon themselves and blamed God for that.
Verse 24
The result: God gave them over to the lusts of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies might be dishonored among them. This is not just what happened to the pagan nations about them, it happened to Israel too. This has been the same downward spiral of every nation in history and is happening right before our eyes to our own nation! Time and again she rejected God and turned to idols. Built groves with carvings of male and female genitalia and worshipped them and did despicable acts among the groves. They became pornographic exactly like our own society. This was not just burning a stick of incense, this was big time immorality and it set them back as a nation each time, keeping them from all God had promised.
Verse 25:
Another exchange: truth for a lie. They actually believed what they were doing was good and the whole nation followed into sin.
This doesn’t just happen in nations, but first in individuals, then in the family, then in the community and then the nation. But the descent can become an ascent too. If individuals decide to seek and follow God, it can move uphill leaving behind sin and its pull.
The creatures they served were themselves. If you don’t serve God you will put yourself in His place. Remember, the sin of Satan was, “I will ascend to the throne of the Most High, I will be as god.” That’s our sin now.
Verse 26 – 27:
When truth is exchanged, confusion results. And the greatest strikes at the heart of God’s created intention: love between men and women for the purpose of marriage and raising up godly offspring. Homosexuality is like an epidemic. And speaking of wrath from heaven, look what God did to Sodom and Gomorrah!
Immorality is always accompanied by disease. VD is rampant now, and look at the AIDs problem. God never meant man to live in sin. It always hurts and often kills, and it hurts the innocent. Babies born with AID’s and in the early part of the century, babies were born blind and mentally deficient because of syphilis.
Nowhere is the verse, “The wages of sin is death,” more true than here.
Verse 28 – 32:
The descent isn’t finished yet. It gets worse. Reading this list is like reading the daily news. But when a Christian or just a moral person speaks out, they are labeled hate-mongers and censors and stiflers of First Amendment Rights.
Galatians 5 calls these the works of the flesh.
Verse 32 says, they know better. Deep within every heart is an ordinance of God. There is one emotion that all tribes since the beginning of time have in common, and that is GUILT. God has placed a conscience in everyone. It can be stifled and muted, but it’s there and it leaves them without excuse.
But because they know they are wrong, instead of repenting they try to get others to join them. Strength in numbers, I guess or misery loves company. That’s why in the very beginning of Jesus ministry the message was “Repent”! You don’t hear that very often today.
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