All right, it's good to see you this evening. We are back now. We've had a little bit of break over the last few weeks around the Christmas and New Year holiday, and we come back this evening to conclude our studies in Romans chapter one. So if you would turn there please with me, we'll wrap up this first chapter of Romans, Lord willing, this evening. So let's turn there. And we will read from verse 24. Under the Spirit's inspiration, Paul writes these words, Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. 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. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature, 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. 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. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They're gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them. May the Lord add his own blessing to this very solemn portion of his word. Let's pray. Now, our gracious Father, as we come to these concluding verses of Romans chapter one, we admit, O Lord, just how inadequate we are to grasp the depth of this passage, to begin to wrap our minds around it, to begin to explain and expound it. And so, Lord, we come tonight, dependent upon you, dependent upon the ministry of the Holy Spirit to lead and to guide us. Father, grant the words tonight for the preaching of your word. Grant, O Lord, that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts will be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. Sugar Sugar by the Archies. Whole Lotta Love, Led Zeppelin. Love to Love You Baby by Donna Summer. Some of you may recognize those if you are of a certain age or you like the oldies. Those songs were ballads of the sexual revolution. The sexual revolution was a major cultural shift in the 1960s and 70s to open up the understanding, to open up the approach to sexual morality. The sexual revolution was a rebellion against the button-down, straight-laced 50s. The post-war America saw a boom in evangelical Christianity. Many churches were planted. Churches grew in the 1950s. They were large and they were flourishing. And the restraints of traditional Christian morality were too much. We've got to throw these off. And of course, this was not just a rebellion against the 1950s. It was a rebellion against what was considered to be Victorian morality, or worse yet, puritanical restraints. But the irony of it is, the sexual revolution wasn't really a revolution. This supposed revolution of freedom was actually a revelation of God's wrath. That's Paul's argument here in the closing verses of Romans 1. And he makes his argument in this passage for that very fact. Now, to many people, to a secularist, to say that the sexual revolution, which we've seen, by the way, in the last two decades on steroids, to say that that was a revelation of God's wrath would be a very radical statement, and in fact, a very silly statement, something that could only be made by a narrow-minded fundamentalist. You know a fundamentalist, a person who is no fun at all and is really quite mental. But the apostle makes his argument here by walking us through this downward spiral, this degradation of depravity to prove to us that when people do not want to hold on to God, when people do not want to honor God, He delivers them over to dishonor. And he does that, Paul says, in three ways. And Paul uses this phrase, God gave them up, or God handed them over three times in this passage. And those are the passages I want us to look at this evening, those three occurrences. When we do not honor God, and he delivers us over to dishonor, he does that, as I said, in three ways. First of all, God gives people up to impurity. Verses 24 and 25. Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. Last Lord's Day morning after the message, one of the young men in the congregation came to me and he was talking about the passage I had preached from the end of Ephesians 3 and that passage begins in verse 14, for this reason, And he wanted to know what was the reason he was looking and reading the chapter and trying to make the logical connections because he said, well, Pastor, you always say if there's a therefore, you got to check to see what it's there for. What's the connection that's being made? And I must say that I stood there with the warm glow of a father. I just felt so proud of this young man because he was being a discerning reader of the text. Now, we need to be discerning readers this evening. And when we look at this, therefore, We need to ask what logical connection is Paul making? Well, Paul is trying to drive home this truth that God hands over people or he delivers people up to impurity because they have exchanged the creator for the creature. They have turned away from worshiping God and they have devoted themselves to idols. And therefore, he engages in this act of retributive justice. Now, this kind of thing occurs a number of times in the Old Testament. In Judges 2 and at verse 14, we read this, So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. Why? Well, the days of the judges, everyone did what was right in their own eyes, didn't they? And they were falling into idolatry over and over again, just as Paul has described here, giving up the creator for the creature. And so his anger was kindled against them, and what did he do? He gave them over to plunderers who plundered them, and he sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies so that they could no longer withstand their enemies. This descriptive judgment, this retributive judgment occurs as well in the Psalter in Psalm 81 verses 11 and 12. But my people did not listen to my voice. Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own counsel. And then one more passage in Psalm 106 verses 40 and 41, then the anger of the Lord was kindled against his people and he abhorred his heritage. He gave them into the hand of the nations so that those who hated them ruled over them. God gives people up. to their sin as an act of just judgment against them. Now, here in verses 24 and 25, the primary emphasis is upon impurity, immorality in general terms. And this judgment to immorality is because of their religious sin. As we said, we look back to verses 23 and 22 to see that great exchange that took place. This is not to say that God isn't judging immoral sins with giving people up to immorality. But what Paul is doing is he is going back and he's going to the root of immorality. The root of immorality is idolatry. Idolatry. So God gives them up. This is the judgment. And we see in verse 25 the reason for it. Because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie. And they worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who was blessed forever. He's repeating himself, isn't he? He's picking up that argument again from verse 23. They exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and beasts and animals and creeping things. And it's that exchange that giving up, abandoning what is valuable, what is eternal, what is glorious for what is temporary and debased that lies at the heart of the sin here that he is describing. When we devote ourselves to anything other than the Lord, our God, then we place ourselves in grave danger. in grave danger. It is true that the author of Hebrews writes that it's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God. And I believe there he's describing the final day of judgment primarily. It's a terrible thing to think about that day of judgment when God condemns the lost. But prior to that day, The worst thing that can happen to an individual is to be left to himself, to be left to his own ways, to his own devices, without the conviction of the Spirit, without the restraint of the Spirit, without God putting hedges about him to protect him, but rather saying, this is what you want. then this is what you shall have. And folks, when we see people indulging in all kinds of immorality, and Paul's being general here in verses 24 and 25, that immorality ranges everywhere from pornography to adultery and anything and everything in between. People often think, well, you know, I'm doing what I want to do. And yet, they're acting as a prisoner to their own lusts, and the hand of God is being taken away. And they're being allowed to go deeper and deeper into sin. This is how Paul describes the moral depravity, not only of his day, but of our day. Don't we see it all around us? The moral depravity, the sexual revolution of the 60s and the 70s almost looks mild in some ways, in some aspects, compared to what is being forced upon us everywhere we turn. This is a just judgment of God on a people, on a society, or on an individual who does not want to honor Him. He gives them up to immorality. But there's a second way in which God dishonors those who will not honor Him. We find this in verses 26 and 27. Here, Paul becomes more specific. He gives people up. He hands them over, not just to immorality in general, but to homosexuality. Verses 26 and 27 begin by dealing with the people whom God judges in this way. For this reason, Paul writes, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. Commentators have questioned why Paul begins with women. I don't know that there's a good, solid answer there, other than for the shock factor. It was known that men were sexual predators, that in the ancient world, in Rome and in Greece, men were often guilty of homosexuality, often kept boy slaves for their own lusts. This kind of depravity was widespread. But Paul begins with the shock factor that even women who do not honor God are given over to this sin. And then he goes into more detail in verse 27, where men with men do that which is dishonorable. We're told that they burn in their passions one for another. Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 will say it's better to marry than to burn. And there he talks about heterosexual desire. And within marriage, that is a good and healthy thing that should be enjoyed and appreciated. But Paul is talking here about a homosexual desire, certainly outside of marriage. And it works that which is unseemly." Now, what is the retribution for this? What is the reward for this? Well, Paul calls it a just or due penalty for their error. Now, let me ask you this. How is unnatural sexual deviation, a due penalty for idolatry. What could Paul mean there? Well, what he means is this. When you pervert creation, when you turn from the creator, and you begin to worship what he has made rather than the maker. When you exchange the divinely established order of things, then he gives you over to a disordered way of life. And that's the due penalty that he describes here. Homosexuality is in the first place anti-God. It is anti-God. Because God has created us in His own image. And Genesis 127 makes it very clear that being in the image of God means that He has made us male and female. And for that reason, as Moses comments, and as Jesus reiterates, a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife. And it is a man and a woman together in a monogamous relationship that makes a marriage and is the only proper and fitting place for sexual expression. And so to go against that order is to go against God. Homosexuality is not only anti-God, it is anti-family. It goes against the established order for procreation, for being fruitful and multiplying, replenishing the earth and filling it with the image bearers of God. The World Health Council has put out a video. I saw some clips of it, maybe some of you did. I think, in fact, it was passed around among some of us last week in the church. It's a lady giving a speech at one of their meetings. and declaring in no uncertain terms to the World Health Council, okay, we're not talking about the National Association of Evangelicals or the PCA General Assembly, we're talking about to a international, multinational, secular organization that homosexuality and transgenderism is a direct, philosophical, and principled attack on the family. and she was applauded for it, I was astounded. I was actually astounded at the positive response that came to her statements because they were uncompromising, they were forthright, they were spot on. And we need to recognize that and I hope and I trust and I pray that this is being recognized more and more as the craziness of what is happening in our culture throws itself up against the immovable reality of God's natural revelation. What ends up happening is people, rather than ultimately being able to alter God's natural revelation, simply destroy themselves. And God gives them up. But homosexuality is not only anti-God and anti-family, it is anti-self. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, I mean what Paul meant when he wrote in 1 Corinthians 6, 18, flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body. but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Now, it isn't very popular to speak as I'm speaking this evening. It's politically incorrect. It's not considered to be very sensitive or loving to use a text like this that is commonly called a clobber text. Do you know what a clobber text is? Well, there are a series of these in the Bible that are derisively referred to in that way by the pro-gay agenda. Clobber texts include Romans 1, 26 and 27, or Genesis 19, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, or the sexual passages, the sexual morality passages in like Leviticus 18, Leviticus 20, some of Paul's other comments in 1 Timothy, or the strange flesh passage that occurs at the end of the little book of Jude. They're called clobber passages because gay people feel that we as Christians take these texts and we use them to attack them. to clobber them, to demean them, to demean their person and to tell them that they're unloved and that they are unwelcome. Well, let's be clear about this, brothers and sisters. This is not a clobber passage. God doesn't give us this text so that we can demean other people, so that we can denigrate them, tell them that they are somehow worthless or unloved or that we are unconcerned about them in any way. This isn't a clobber text, rather it is a challenge text. It's a convicting text. It is meant by God to bring men and women face to face with the reality of His creation and the deviation of their sin so that they might know His truth. Rather than being a clobber passage, these texts that deal with homosexuality, are meant by God to be used as an instrument of the Holy Spirit to bring people under the conviction of their sin. Yes, indeed, we have exchanged the truth about God for a lie. Yes, we have worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator. And we need this creator to deliver us. Because rather than being a clobber passage, this challenging, convicting passage is meant to lead to conversion. We should be very compassionate to people who have fallen into this sin and seek to bring them to the knowledge of the truth, but we must be uncompromising about the nature of this sin, that it is heinous in the sight of God. There's far too much pressure upon us today. That pressure is being put on us from the culture at large, in some cases, even from the government. I was preaching several years ago in Canada, and I was preaching through 1 Thessalonians. I spent two or three months up there and worked through that book. And I came to chapter 4, where Paul says, this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that you abstain from fornication. And so as I was preaching that passage and defining the terms and explaining what Paul had in mind here, I said fornication is a term for sexual immorality that runs the gamut and it includes everything from extramarital sex to homosexuality. And I was asked later, the church broadcast its messages. Do you want us to broadcast that? Because it's actually against the law to say anything publicly against homosexuality. I said, broadcast it. I'm going back to America. Let them come get me. And ironically, the laptop on which the sermon was stored was stolen out of a church deacon's van right on the streets of Calgary. So I don't know if that was God's providence to keep me out of the pokey or what it was, but there was definitely pressure there. And I felt that on check in my spirit and in my mind. Well, wait a minute. What I'm about to do to allow them to put this on the radio is going to be considered a violation of the law. Am I willing to do that? Am I willing to face consequences if there are consequences for that? And Christians find themselves in situations like that all the time. And unfortunately, we are seeing more and more professing believers cave on this issue. Just a week, a week and a half ago, the 3rd of January, New Testament scholar Richard Hayes passed away. Now, Richard Hayes was a remarkable scholar in so many ways. I have his works at home, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul. I require my students to read that when I teach the New Testament's use of the old. And he's done remarkable work in so, so many ways. But the last book that Professor Hayes wrote, he co-authored with his son Christopher, and it came out just last September, called The Widening of God's Mercy, Sexuality in the Biblical Story. And in that book, Dr. Hayes argues that it's clear that the New Testament condemns homosexuality. He was simply too good of a scholar to deny that, right? He had to admit that the text says what the text says. But here's the sad thing. Under the pressure of the culture, Dr. Hayes last year changed his position. and now said that homosexuality was acceptable. Why? Not because the New Testament said it was okay. He could read the text. But it was okay because God had changed his mind. God had changed his mind. I mourn the death of Dr. Hayes. I was very sad when I saw it and sent the news to several friends. But I mourn even greater the compromise of God's clear teaching. Brothers and sisters, homosexuality is a judgment from God. God delivers people up to the sin when they exchange the truth about him for the lie. But there is a third way here in this text that God dishonors those who will not honor him. Paul has dealt with sexual immorality, but now he moves beyond that to speak more generically in verses 28 to the end of the chapter. God delivers people up to a depraved mind. What does the apostle mean here by a depraved mind? The term he uses means a mind that does not meet the test. A mind that is void of God's approval. The adjective here is quite interesting. It occurs later in Hebrews chapter 6 and verse 8 to describe barren ground that's only good for bringing forth thorns and thistles. This is the depraved mind, the mind that does not want to honor God. And what's interesting here is that Paul engages in some wordplay, that there's a pun in the text. It's difficult to bring that pun out in an English translation. If you don't mind, just listen to the words here. Paul says, because people did not want to acknowledge God, Ad-dakimason, they don't want to acknowledge him. Ad-dakimason, he gives them over to an ad-dakimon mind, a depraved, debased, immoral mind that is entrapped in an ungodly way of thinking. Now, you and I usually use puns for humor, right? We like puns, they're funny. Paul isn't trying to be funny here. Paul uses a pun because he wants to point out the poetic justice of this judgment. You don't want to acknowledge God in your mind? Well, then God is going to give you over to a mind that will not and cannot acknowledge Him. A mind that's like that barren soil. It can't produce good spiritual fruit. It can only bear thorns and thistles. Well, what kind of thorns and thistles? Well, beginning in verse 28, Paul gives us a list of 21 sins. Now, I will not go through and give you a detailed description or definition of all of these. You would like to go home sometime this evening. But let's just quickly look at them and survey them. This mind that is debased does what it ought not to do. People who are given over to this kind of mind are filled with all manner of unrighteousness, a very general term, evil, that which is not good. But then Paul gets into more specifics. There's covetousness, greed. There's malice, this ill will that people have toward others. They're full of envy. There's jealousy here. They hate other people, so they engage in murder and strife. They don't love the truth, so they engage in deceit and maliciousness. Here, a cognate of this word, malice. They're just hateful, mean folks. We would say down South, they're as ill as a hornet. They're just nasty. They're just nasty. They're full of maliciousness. They engage in all kinds of sins of the tongue. They're gossips and slanderers. There's religious sin here. Because they exchange the truth about God for a lie, they actually hate God. They're insolent and haughty and boastful. They're inventors of evil. They're disobedient to parents. And then he concludes this list here. with several ah words, if you will, words that begin with the alpha privative. We do this in English. If someone believes in God, they're a theist. If they don't believe in God, they're an ah, they're an atheist, right? If someone is sympathetic to another person. They have a lot of empathy or sympathy, a lot of pathos, but if they couldn't care less, they're apathetic, right? We use that little letter A to negate what comes after it. That's what Paul does here. He says, these people are not obedient to their parents. They are not wise. They're foolish. They're not believing and trustworthy. They are faithless. They are without care and concern. They are heartless. They are ruthless. And here we see the just recompense of their reward. They know what God's word says. but yet they sin knowingly and willfully against the truth. The law of God's written on their heart. They know the truth. And yet, as verse 18 says, they keep pushing it down. They know that what they do is a sin against Almighty God. They know it deserves His just condemnation. And yet they just keep pushing it down and pushing it down and pushing it down. And they not only suppress the truth in their own hearts when they see other people engaging in these kinds of sins. They applaud and cheer them on and take delight that they have companions on the road to hell. Let's pray. Father, as we come to this solemn passage tonight, as our hearts mourn over the darkness of this passage, we thank you that while you gave up men and women and continue to give up men and women to their sin, you are the God who has delivered up your son on the cross that we might be redeemed. Tonight, O Lord, we thank you that when Paul lists all kinds of sinners, the sexually immoral, the idolater, the adulterer, the homosexual, the thief, the drunkard, the reviler, he could say such were some of you. But you were washed and you were sanctified and you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus. We thank you, Father, that you do hold out hope in your gospel and that those who have been given over to their sin can be delivered by the power of the cross. And we pray, Father, that as we meditate over this very difficult and dark passage, that it will burden us to share the gospel with those around us, that we might offer them the hope of being not delivered up, but delivered from their sin. and the hope of entering into the assurance of life everlasting. We pray this in the Savior's name, amen.