Lesson 5 - Romans 1 Concl.

[Music] [Music] I know we've spent an inordinate amount of time in Chapter one of Romans but today we'll conclude it now in some ways today's lesson might be the most emotionally and culturally challenging of the several lessons we've had on this chapter because Paul never one to mince words deals head-on with sin and especially with sexual perversion and I believe that sexual perversion and sexual immorality is the single most serious and dominant issue of our time and this is because while terrorism is certainly a danger to life and limb sexual immorality is a danger to our souls and therefore to our eternal futures it's an issue that's not just divided the world and and and our nation it's divided and deeply damaged the church in an astounding turn away from God way from his Commandments some of the longest standing most recognized Christian denominations have recently split over the issue of sexual immorality now I want to begin by quoting a portion of a psalm that is quite poignant and pertinent to our lesson today it's Psalm 50 verses 16 through 23 but to the wicked God says what right do you have to proclaim my laws or take my covenant on your lips when you so hate to receive instruction and you fling my words behind you when you see a thief you join up with him you throw your lot in with adulterers you give your mouth free reign for evil and harness your tongue to deceit you sit and speak against your kids kinsmen you slander your own mother's son when you do such things should I stay silent oh you may have thought I was just like you but I will rebuke and indict you to your face consider this you who forget God or I will tear you to pieces with no one to save you whoever offers Thanksgiving as his sacrifice honors me and to him who goes the right way I will show the salvation of God what right this Psalm asks does anyone have to depend on God's covenants when we hate to receive God's instructions and instead we fleeing God's Word behind you it says let me say that in modern terms you say you've been saved in the name of Jesus Christ but you don't want to obey God's laws you don't want to comply with the truth of the Bible it is the person who does right that God says he will guide the salvation how do we know what right is if we shun God's Word if we turn our backs on his Torah we're right and wrong are clearly defined and as many as six hundred case examples of human activity in a sense what we are about to hear Paul say is a Jewish Midrash or a sermon if you would on this Psalm probably he had this passage in Scripture in mind when he penned this portion of the book of Romans so open your Bibles to Romans chapter 1 we're gonna look at verse 18 on to the end if you have a complete Jewish Bible its page 14 Oh to Romans chapter 1 starting at verse 14 now rather 18-page 1402 in a complete Jewish Bible what is revealed is God's anger from heaven against all the godlessness wickedness of people who in their wickedness keep suppressing the truth because what is known about God's God is plain to them since God has made it plain to them forever since the creation of the universe is invisible qualities both these eternal power and His divine nature have been clearly seen because they can be understood from what he's made therefore they have no excuse because although they know who God is they do not glorify him as God or thank him on the contrary they have become futile in their thinking their understand discerning hearts have become darkened claiming to be wise they've become fools in fact they've exchanged the glory of the immortal God for mere images like a mortal human being or like birds or animals and reptiles this is why God has given them up to the vileness of their heart's lusts to the shameful misuse of each other's bodies they have exchanged the truth of God for falsehood by worshipping and serving the created things rather than the Creator praised be forever ahmein this is why God has given them up to degrading passions so that their women exchanged natural sexual relations for the unnatural like why is the men giving up natural relations with the opposite sex they burn with passion for one another men committing shameful acts with other men and receiving in their own persons the penalty appropriate to their perversion in other words since they have not considered God worth knowing God's given them up to their worthless ways of thinking so that they do improper things they are filled with every kind of wickedness evil greed and vice stuffed with jealousy murder quarreling dishonesty and ill-will they're gossips slanderers haters of God they're insolent arrogant boastful they plant evil schemes they disobey their parents they're brainless faithless heartless and ruthless all they know well enough God's righteous decree that people who do such things deserve to die yet not only do they keep doing them they applaud others who do the same let me give you Paul's bottom line to this portion of Romans chapter one it is that the man who rebels against God and he deny is his dependence upon God and His commandments inevitably becomes subject to a process of moral degeneration often this moral degeneration is not something that the man realizes is happening to him and equally as often it is because his or her degenerative condition looks to be healthy and fully in tune with a self-satisfied local society and a government that believes that it's the source of moral truth in other words all looks fine and well to the degenerating man because everybody else is doing the same thing and it looks about the same way please also notice that Paul is not speaking only to Gentiles or only to Jews rather it is a general statement that replies to all humanity in general all right and yet since his letter specifically to the believers in Rome so apparently some of them may be caught up in this moral degeneration so he is not picking out any particular group to rail against this applies to everyone especially the believing community in light of the Gospel message and in another sense what we see is that in verse 18 when Paul speaks of God's anger against all the godlessness the wickedness of the people later towards the end of this chapter Paul defines what godlessness and wickedness look like and that people people have no one else to blame for their degenerative moral condition than themselves you know many decades ago I think some of you will remember there was a comedian named Flip Wilson who often used a famous line in his skits the devil made me do it and when there was always funny but it seems that many Christians indeed believe that their own bad behavior or their own wickedness even the wickedness of others is the result of Satan's activity in their lives you know Paul makes no such claim to that and neither does the Bible the devil may tempt but he does not have the power to coerce humans willingly do evil and so this entire section of Romans chapter 1 places the responsibility for godlessness and wickedness not upon Satan but directly upon the shoulders of each sinner although we lightly touched on it last time I want to repeat that from Paul's viewpoint no one can plead that they do not know that they are rebelling against God because what needs to be known about God that they might do right in his eyes is revealed in God's creation let me see that using a different term God's attributes are revealed in nature assuming we understand that nature is everything that is visible and tangible and that is the result of God's creative force there has been much debate over just what Paul means by this and whether such a thought is even reasonable I mean after all how can some isolated tribe in the middle of the Amazon jungle be expected to know God but without doubt this is not some new doctrine that Paul's come up with Judaism in general and his day believed this same way because it was a basic tenet of the Hebrew Bible some refer to this principle is the principle of natural law and I think it's an appropriate label a good example of this is found in Psalm 19 Psalm 19 one through five for the leader a psalm of David the heavens declare the glory of God the Dome of the sky speaks the work of his hands every day another speech every night it reveals knowledge without speech without a word without their voices being heard their line goes out throughout all the earth and their words to the end of the world so you see God has acted in a way that only he could in order to disclose himself and this disclosure of his is the creation in fact the creation the earth the sky the universe humanity nature so closely resembles God's attributes that it is possible to say that the creation is alike a shadow of God passing by are we not told in Genesis 1:27 that God made mankind in His image man is of God's creation so we are an image we are a shadow of him but you know the shadow itself is not the Creator and the shadow is merely the result of the existence and the presence of the creator a shadow can never generate itself it can't exist by itself a shadow has no life of itself whatever life it seems to have is actually contained in the creator of that shadow and because this is true God had to breathe life from himself into that human shadow Adam after he formed him therefore Paul can say with confidence that all humans all humans have an innate understanding not only of God's existence but of his basic attributes because they could they can all be seen in nature I mean how often I've looked into the night sky and stood awestruck at the infinite nature of it and at the variation and extent of that black ether and those millions of pinpoints of light even more often all several times during the day do you just gaze out my office window at the glorious blue of the water and the stunning greens of the plants and the trees and wonder how beautiful it is and yet can a creation ever be more beautiful and magnificent than its creator never and yet ironically when Humanity depends solely upon taking our cues from nature as concerns God we get bad results we're supposed to worship and glorify God instead we can wind up worshipping the created things worshiping nature instead of the Creator I mean it's essentially humans because of our evil inclinations that began in the Garden of Eden with the fall of Adam and Eve we're wired to reject a true knowledge of God instead turn to gods of our own making this is the human dilemma there's only one cure for it the gospel of Christ but then in verse 21 verse 21 explains that it is the refusal of humans to recognize God for who he is and to worship him as such that leads to them becoming futile in their thinking and having their hearts darkened I mean we need to be aware that when Paul speaks of knowing God from nature that means that in a very limited sense people can have an awareness of God but never establish a personal relationship with him just by looking at nature instead of seeking God and acknowledging God as God humanity tends instead to turn to idols items of our own creation in Greek thought to know God more meant to apprehend and to perceive him as he really is it's a desire for intellectual knowledge but in Hebrew thought to know God more means to actively acknowledge him by worshipping and glorifying him in a personal way thus we are we see the shining evidence of Paul's Hebrews thought patterns especially apparent and his explanation of what knowing God amounts to and how it ought to manifest itself among humans as praise and worship unto Him so those who think that knowing God is primarily an intellectual exercise have actually become futile in their thinking even though they are so enamored with what they believe are their wise thoughts but in fact they're fools the result of their foolishness is they've become self deceived and they begin to exchange the authentic for the fake in all their supposed wisdom they choose to give glory to other human beings or to birds or animals or reptiles and actually this is done using images idols of humans and birds and animals and reptiles now this idea of this naked exchanging the worshipping of the true God for worshipping fakes images of created things is a frequent Old Testament subject an example of Psalm 106 when the subject is the golden calf created by the Israelites during their exodus from Egypt in Psalm 106 19 and 20 it says in Horeb they fashioned to cast a calf they worshiped a cast metal image thus they exchanged their glory for the image of an ox that eats grass so to sum it up Paul is saying that a human who refuses to acknowledge the God of Israel as the true God and creator does so because they choose to do so they do it from their own wickedness they have utterly no excuse for it because despite what they might say or do they innately know of the true God and now all atheism was not known until barely three hundred years ago in fact while atheists we're up and down that they don't worship any God at all in fact well they celebrate themselves as the highest beings in existence the most superior of all living things and this belies the truth that they are simply worshipping themselves they don't want anyone else displaying any evidence of God because it pricks their conscience when they see it they prefer to stay safely ensconced in their make-believe self-made world the religion of atheism and yes it's a religion is a worship of self even more our so-called brilliant scientists who insists that the creation of the universe and life was just somehow spontaneous self-produced are in modern times the fulfillment of Paul's words about those who claim to be wise but they become fools now while Paul would never have imagined of people who don't believe in gods and in the spirit world because no such people existed in his day in fact an application couldn't be more spot-on but now we enter that portion of Romans chapter one that has been all but rejected by some denominations or pastors a large growing number of congregation members it's the portion that I believe is perhaps the most important dangers and be deviling of the modern era it's the portion that deals with homosexuality and other forms of sexual perversion and it severely denounces it but before we deal with that verse 24 says something important in controversial 1st verse 24 explains that the reason that at some point God will turn people over to their sins is this he does it because they have no excuse everything from verses 18 through 23 has set the stage for verse 24 now second we have to face what it means by God has given them up what does that mean God's given them up now some English versions say God's abandoned others say gods turned them over yet others say gods delivered them these all trends translate the Greek word peridot me and each one of these English translations fits pretty well with the literal meaning of this word so there's no need to quibble what's being said is that God abandoned people to their moral degeneration and wickedness as a result of their intentional rejection of him but what does abandoned or handover mean I mean does God just sort of let go and it just allows whatever's gonna happen to happen there was something rather passive action or is he more active in the process well when we look in the Old Testament and to where the same term hand it over God abandoned them - something like that when we find in the Old Testaments used that way often it's speaking of Israel when they're in rebellion and in those cases it's not simply that God suddenly merely turned his back on Israel and stopped blessing them but rather that he also gives them a nudge towards their enemies and their deserved punishment you know it's a little like the judge who convicts the crinimal criminal then he hands them over to the jailer for incarceration now what has God given these wicked people who reject him over - he says he turns them over - what does he turn them over - what's their earthly punishment is to be turned over to their morally depraved lusts of their heart that's what we're told now remember when the term heart is used in the Holy Scriptures it's referring to the seat of intellect to the human mind which during the entire biblical era was believed to occur in the heart organ what Paul is expressing here is a well understood Jewish principle from Second Temple Judaism it is that a man must serve either his creator or serve his own evil inclination that is a human will always choose either to serve and obey God or to serve and obey ourself there's no third way there's no middle ground Yeshua accepted and taught this same principle that both the Pharisees and the essence agreed upon matthew 6:24 no one can be a slave to two masters freee he will either hate the first and love the second or scorn the second and be loyal to the first you can't be a slave to both God and money the rabbi's taught that either your heart controls you or you control your heart that is your heart either brings you under subjection or you bring your heart under subjection with the idea being that when your heart your mind controls you then God cannot why did the rabbi's say that a righteous person must bring their hearts into subjection because in Holy Scripture God taught them in Jeremiah 17:9 the heart is more deceitful than anything else and it's mortally sick who can fathom it in the Jewish Midrash called Genesis Rabbah we read this commentary about a passage in Genesis chapter 8 verse 21 in the passage part of the passages and the Lord said to his heart well the rabbi's say the wicked stand in subjection to their hearts in other words meaning their passions their lusts thus it says in God's Word that The Fool has said in his heart in Psalm 14 Esau said in his heart in Genesis 27 41 Jeroboam said in his heart in first Kings 12 26 now Haman said in his heart in Esther 6 6 see but the righteous have their hearts under their control hence it's written now Hana she spoke at her heart for Samuel 113 and David said to his heart for samuel 27 1 but daniel proposed to his heart in Daniel 1 8 and the Lord said to his heart in Genesis 34 10 so we must never listen to our heart never let our heart control us rather we must bring our hearts our minds under subjection subjection to what to a regenerated mind that has been healed by God's Word by God's truth God's light the Bible warns against listening to our hearts time and time again and yet Christians especially love to talk about how they follow their hearts or their hearts telling them to do something and they think this is a really good thing the holy scripture says the exact opposite well the final words of first 24 speak of the shameful misuse of each other's bodies obviously this is speaking of sexual perversion but the next few verses make it clear that the particular sexual perversion that Paul is addressing at the moment is homosexuality now it's not my intention to make the bulk of this lesson about the details and evils of homosexuality the Bible itself ought to be sufficient enough to address it that non-believers enjoy an advocate for homosexuality and other sexually immoral outrages should not be surprising to us they have no relationship with God they have no moral compass no holy spirit to guide them but what about professed believers so what I want to do I want to address the ever-increasing bent of the Christian Church to accept homosexuality as good and an acceptable alternative lifestyle we have a number of church denominations and Jewish sects who now ordain gay ministers other denominations have decided to perform gay marriages I don't want to just throw that out there without specifics the conservative Jewish movement the reformed Jewish movement the Episcopal Church the Evangelical Lutheran Church the Presbyterian Church USA and the United Church of Christ have all made it church and synagogue law to accept homosexuality as normal and good they all ordained gay leadership and perform same-sex marriages the common refrain from these churches and synagogues is that either the Bible is silent they claim on the subject of homosexuality or that such a prohibition no longer applies because it was only meant for ancient times even if the prohibition is presented in the New Testament like here in Romans chapter 1 the other primary argument is oh this ought to be familiar because God's love God is love love trumps everything so if love is involved in sexual relations in any form including same-sex well then it's good and Jesus heartily approves of it and he would condemn anyone who would speak against it as unrepentant bigots here's a recent statement made by one of the lead of the Christian and LGBT movement Jimmy Creech who was a 30 year United Methodist pastor and while he certainly doesn't speak for all gay people claim Christianity he speaks for a pretty large group here's what he says how do I view God's position on homosexuality well I believe lesbian gay and bisexual people to be part of God's wondrous creation and he created them to be just who they are and completely loved and treasured by God I believe God does not intend for anyone to be alone but to live in companionship and I believe God expects healthy loving relationships to include sexual love now the Bible doesn't say this of course but either does it deny it now I believe this to be true not only because of the Bible's emphasis on the goodness of God's creation and the supreme value of love but because of the greater understanding of human nature that we now have available us available to us today I do not believe that God intends us to live in the small world of ancient biblical culture but rather in God's larger evolving world informed by science reason and experience now the other argument that passes for truth in our time is that this bent against homosexuality is only a modern one and that what the Bible meant to ancient people in this Romans passage and at least five other passages in the Old and New Testaments that are frequently used is saying this is anti-gay that they actually have nothing to do with a homosexual behavior to that end I'd like to quote to you a passage from a commentary on the book of Romans written by the early church father severe Ian of Gabala about 400 AD now this regards the specific passage of Romans 1:27 that reads like this and likewise the men giving up natural relations with the opposite sex burned with passion for one another men committing shameful acts with other men and receiving in their own persons the penalty appropriate to their perversion severe Ian says this Paul did not say this lightly but because he had heard there was a homosexual community in Rome in the greco-roman world of the New Testament homosexuality was not only common it was fully accepted even highly regarded we get the modern term lesbian from the notorious reputations of the homosexual women of the Isle of Lesbos so as severe Ian says Paul wasn't writing to the Romans because this thought just kind of popped into his mind as the center of the Roman Empire the city of Rome was ground zero for sexual immorality and especially homosexuality I mean Rome's Emperor's were noted for it Nero turned it into an art form using the bodies of young boys so Paul was addressing a specific problem the believers in Rome were facing man this was his protocol for all of his letters that we today call the epistles another early church father Chrysostom who lived at the same time as severe Ian says this that's taken from his famous homilies on Romans he says this is clear proof of the ultimate degree of corruption when both sexes sexes are abandoned notice how deliberate Paul measures his words for he does not say that they're enamored with one another but that they were consumed with lust the normal desire for sexual intercourse United the sex to one another but by taking this away and turning it into something else the devil divided the sexes from each other and forced what was one to become two in opposition to the laws of God the devil was bent on destroying the human race but Paul goes straight to the source of this sexual evil ungodliness which comes from twisted teaching and lawlessness which is its reward so the point is that first of all these comments from two early church fathers around 480 is proof that the claim that is only fairly recently that the church began to say that homosexuality is wrong and to suggest that the Bible doesn't the Bible doesn't speak in this is simply a lie but second I think that the last sentence that I read to you from Chrysostom nails it the real source of sexual evil is ungodliness which comes sadly from twisted teaching from the pulpit and from lawlessness now what concerns me as not only that entire denominations have given in to the LGBT movement but other denominations are teetering or at least finding ways to be very tolerant of gays and transgenders Pope Francis has recently issued an open apology to gays and transgenders for not inviting them into the Catholic Church a more fully embracing them and their sexual choices how could the leader of the Catholic Church declare such a thing by twisting God's Word and by being disobedient to God's laws this is what the Bible calls lawlessness what these passages in Romans chapter 1 tell us is that when people move far enough away from God I don't know exactly where that line is he will turn them over to their sin and he tells us that idolatry and sexual perversion go hand in glove so in verse 28 Paul more or less repeats the previous few verses using a little different terms to make his point and the point that jumps out is that those who do not find God worth knowing will be given up to their worthless ways of thinking and it is God's intention that the results going to be this long laundry list of wrong things of vices that we find in these final few verses of chapter one in a sense the punishment is that God is ceasing the restraining or the rather the restraint of that individual from committing all manner of sexual perversion and becoming even more wicked by doing this list of vices I'm gonna tell you that many Bible commentators have a very difficult time with this section enrollments because they don't like what it implies they worried this is gonna sound too harsh and it's gonna turn off seekers they worried that this is gonna put a in their armor about their thoughts that the New Testament God Jesus is supposed to be strictly a God of love and mercy this doesn't sound very compassionate or tolerant they worry that it sounds too judgmental to permanent folks it says what it says there is no candy coating this verse 32 states that all these vices listed make the center worthy of death understand from a Jewish perspective this not only means capital punishment it means eternal separation from God because under the law of Moses which Paul still upholds that is what it means the law is that if you committed a sin that can be atoned for that an animal sacrifice will do but if you commit a sin that cannot be atoned for by an animal sacrifice then there is no atonement for sin of any kind your eternal fate sealed you die an unrighteous death hell's your eternal home well now that you Shu is come and God Paul certainly understands that a person's sins can be forgiven by faith and trust in Yeshua but see that's not the point or the subject here now make no mistake there is not a hint in Paul's statement that a person could live the lifestyle of any of these vices that he lists and then simultaneously legitimately claim trust in Yeshua it's just not possible in fact what Paul has described is a person with a reprobate mind who was chosen not to know God and as a result God has given them over to sexual perversion as well as these other sins so this modern-day thought and some Christian circles that a person can enthusiastically live a homosexual lifestyle at the same time claiming Christianity is simply self-deception not very politically correct as that that's the truth folks the rest is just deception Matthew 7:21 through 23 you've heard this a hundred times not everyone that says to me Lord Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven only those who do what my father in heaven wants on that day many will say to me Lord Lord didn't we prophesy in your name didn't we expel demons in your name did we perform miracles in your name and I will tell them to their faces I never knew you get away from me you workers of lawlessness now verse 32 also makes a simple claim that we need to not overlook it is that people who do all these wrong things that Paul is spoken about know that they're doing wrong they don't have to be told that sexual perversion is wrong nature itself tells us that they don't have to be told slander dishonesty planning evil schemes is wrong knowing this is built into our DNA as humans created by a Creator God murderers don't murder because they don't know murder is wrong it's not a matter of education thieves don't steal because they think stealing's right adulterers don't practice adultery because they think it's good and homosexuals don't practice same-sex sexual relations because they believe it's God's will for them they do these things because they want to do them because they listen to their hearts and want to fulfill their fleshly desires they rationalize their wrong behavior because they have willfully exchanged truth for a lie it says Paul Paul ends this section of Romans by saying something else that has troubled theologians to no end he says that to applaud others who do these heinous deeds is no different than doing them yourself so in the case of sexual perversion if you're not gay you're not transgender but you applaud and cheer them on and they're destructive sins you are counted as alongside of them according to Paul I've read some pretty tortured attempts to make these few words out to be something else entirely but they're just not convincing while I must say you know this really is not an easy principle to understand why a person who only applauds and cheers others to do wrong is as guilty as the one who does the wrong there is no way other way to understand that this indeed is the saying of Paul this is what he means so as believers it only leaves us with one option we accept it we understand that it's true even if it's a difficult truth especially in modern Western society so our minds are uncomfortable with it but you know it's not up to us to put God's word on trial it's up to us to learn from it to believe it into a bayit next week will begin Romans chapter 2 [Music] you

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Keywords: torah, bible, christoian, study, christ, jesus, yeshua, yhwh, yahweh, god, lord, elohim, adonai, jehovah, romans, roman, new testament, old testament, holy spirit, church, apostles, synagogue

Id: 2nmA7KSJits

Length: 49min 24sec (2964 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 30 2018