God's Wrath

Ed Stetzer is the executive editor for Lifeway. That's the Southern Baptist Publishing Company, the branch of Southern Baptist Publishing. He's very involved with pastors, research, data. He's predicting that today, 400 church leaders are going to be resigning. Why? They're resigning because they got caught having an Ashley Madison account. Now, if you're like me, you didn't know what that was until this week. Ashley Madison is a website designed for married people to use to have a secret affair. Their tagline is, life is short, have an affair. Someone hacked the website. and revealed everybody who had an Ashley Madison account. Now, we need to recognize what's going on here and stand back and be amazed at how we will scheme for sin. We'd be amazed by how foolish we are in our pursuit of sin. So our first temptation is to think, these guys, they've got a real problem. They need to go get real help. We're right that these guys have a real problem, and we have the same problem. You see, it's very easy to think, look at this symptom of how bad they are without realizing the real problem they have is one that we share and it's a God problem. As we'll see from the text, the real problem is that we suppress the truth. We do not honor God or give thanks to God. We exchange his glory for a lesser glory. We exchange His truth for a lie. You see, there's numerous symptoms of sin, the real problem behind a man's adultery, a woman's gossip, a child's disobedience to their parents, all of our envy, all of our deceit, all of our sin. The base of it lies a rejection of God. That is what our text says to us today. So our message, the summary. Our biggest problem is our God problem. It's the problem we have with God. We know this as the God complex. We think if we were in charge, we would do better with our lives. If we We're simply given the power of God, we would be doing a better job caring for ourselves, giving us what we really deserve. The base of this is our refusal to worship God. Let me go ahead and get you to the prescription. The diagnosis of all sin is idolatry. The prescription is the gospel. The gospel is the power of God to save us from our sin. It's just that clear from scripture. The righteousness of God is revealed in his gospel because the wrath of God is revealed against our unrighteousness. We must believe that gospel and trust God to truly heal us and forgive us. We're in Romans, chapter one. Last week, we did the introduction, verses one through 17. This week, we're starting with Paul's first point. And this section runs from 118 through 320. If you flip over, you'll see the great, powerful word, the one word in scripture that changes everything, but, so everything he's building up until 320 is that we, We are deserving of His wrath, but now God. So we're gonna have a couple difficult weeks ahead of us, because we're gonna have to really come to terms with how sinful we are, so that when we get to the but, we're gonna boast in Christ. You see, Romans is considered kind of the high theological book of the New Testament, of the Bible. And we have to realize that in order to get to that height of the glory of God, we have to sink down and see the depth of our sin so that we can truly boast in what Christ has done. If we get sin wrong, we get everything else wrong. As I said in the first sermon on Romans, If we think too little of our sin, we think too little of Christ. If we think too little of Christ, we will neither honor him or thank him. If we don't honor him or thank him, we turn to idols. We must first understand how bad we are and that we don't just need help. We need to be made alive. The structure of Romans 1 is important. If you turn in your bulletin to page nine, you'll see the basic skeleton of the outline. I think of the text and therefore the sermon. You'll see that verses 18 through 23 make one point. There's no excuse. There's no one can say, I didn't know I was supposed to worship him. The second part shows us why we're actually all so bad. Why wickedness is running rampant. It's like God gave us what we asked for. He gave us over to our sin. As you hear the passage read, I wanna tune your ears to some repetition. Always look for repetition. When the author's repeating something, he wants you to hear it, see it, know it. Focus on the repetition. So there's three things that are repeated here. One, we exchanged. You'll hear that three times. We exchanged the glory of God for creation. We exchanged the truth for a lie. There's three times we exchanged natural for unnatural. Then three times, Verse 24, 26, and 28, he gave us over. I'm gonna begin in verse 16. Hear the word of the Lord. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and foolish hearts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the 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 a dishonorable passion. 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 are gossips, slanders, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, give approval to those who practice them. Will you pray with me? Father, we pray for your Holy Spirit now to give us the humility to hear these hard words, to see that without your grace, this is who we are. To see that that presence of sin that wants to suppress your truth and exchange your glory for other glories, our own, is still present, Lord. Still vying for power over us. Help us to trust your grace. Help us to see how these idols continually try to creep in to overcome our worship. Help us to trust Christ and as they focus on worshiping him. Lord, I pray for the churches today whose leaders are resigning. May they know how to respond with grace to restore these men. Lord, I thank you that your grace has protected this church and my family from my sin. Lord, this sin, this temptation is within all of us. May your grace abound where our sin abounds. May you help us trust you so that we might live for your glory. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. First thing we need to see in our text, our sin is inexcusable. We see there in verse 18, after he said the gospel, when God speaks, his righteousness is revealed. His wrath is also revealed. That's why we have to hear the message of righteousness. And his wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. Our sin, suppresses the truth. That this is one of the most important points Paul is going to make to begin with. We need to go back to see why that's so important. We suppress the truth and God is always trying to proclaim the truth. The truth sets us free, our sin enslaves us. His wrath is against all our unrighteousness because we suppress the truth. What is the truth that we're suppressing? It's simply this, God is worthy of your worship. To boil it down to the most simple statement, what we suppress is that God is worthy to be glorified and worshiped and served. We suppress that truth. Let's look at verse 19. what can be known about God has been made plain to us. God has shown us all we need to see in order to say you're worthy of worship. This is something he's made evident. It's been clearly perceived, except for we suppress it. See, God's the creator. He's left his fingerprint on all of creation, and he is glorious, and he's put his glorious fingerprint over all of creation, and if only we would say, God, let me see your truth, if only we would have eyes to see, we would see there's God and he's worthy of worship. Now let me go and tell you what it doesn't say. This text says that it's obvious that there's a God who's worthy of worship and we suppress that truth. This is what the text does not say. It does not say that if we logically deduce with our reason, we'll understand who God is. It's just something obvious. It literally says all you have to do is open your eyes and you should be able to see there's a God worthy of worship. It's not something we logically reason to. It also says that not everything about God is made available to everybody. This is extremely important. God's power and his divine nature are known. And that's enough for us to say, God, you're worthy of worship, but we suppress that. Creation does not reveal God's love and mercy. God designed creation to reveal to us, to show us he's worthy of worship, but you cannot look into your creation and get enough information about God to be saved. The only thing creation, revelation does, is leave us without excuse. You see, God declares his mercy in the gospel. God declares his forgiveness in the gospel, a message that requires the action of Jesus Christ in our words. It's not seen in creation. So it does not say there's enough information out there that if you're smart enough and you pursue it enough, genuinely, then you'll be saved. The text doesn't say that. In fact, the text will later say they have to hear the words of the gospel of Jesus Christ in order to be saved. Creation isn't enough to save us. It's only enough to condemn us. The wrath of God is against our unrighteousness. What is our unrighteousness again? We like to trick ourselves that we're a little better than we really are. We like to think of sin, if we can just compartmentalize it in a way that we can kind of control how sinful we think we are, we can feel better about ourselves. So usually we think of sin and unrighteousness as things we do against other people. When I'm trying to share the gospel with somebody or trying to disciple someone, the most difficult thing is to actually convince somebody they're a sinner. There's somebody better. I'm always better than somebody else, they say. You know, I'm not like that person. I'm not hurting other people. Everything I'm doing is kind and people like me. You have to realize everything Paul is talking about in terms of the unrighteousness, it's about what we don't give God. It's about our relationship with God. We do not honor Him. We don't give thanks to Him. If we really think about how righteous we are, we have to ask the question, how much of my life is dedicated to worshiping and glorifying God rather than myself? We like to think about sin in a way that makes us feel better because we think we're nice people to everybody else. No, sin, first and foremost, is how we relate to God. This is a terrifying chapter. because it tells us we're not living the way God designed us. He's worthy of worship. He designed us to worship. We're worshiping everything but God. And therefore, His wrath is rightfully upon us. This is terrifying. If you're not a Christian this morning, this should be terrifying. But God has revealed His righteousness. God has said, even though you have not worshiped me, I've sent my son to die for you, to wash you of all the sin that you have, to take away the account that stands before you. When Jesus Christ died, he was a perfectly righteous man, the only one that's ever existed and lived and died. So when God crushed him, The sin that he was crushed for was not his own but ours. When Christ died, he died so that we would not have our sin counted against us anymore and we would be forgiven. If you're not a Christian this morning, the wrath of God isn't on you unless you believe in Jesus Christ who takes the wrath of God off of you and satisfies it with his own death. Christian. we can still see in this, that this sin that he's saying is condemnable, it still resides. If we're honest with ourselves, we still suppress the truth. We continue to do this. And these are the typical times in which we suppress the truth. One, and most often, when we're tempted to sin, When we really want to engage in sin is when we are typically suppressing the truth because we want to say, all right, this is what God's Word says. This is what my heart wants. How often does your heart win that? This is God's truth. This is my sinful desires. We suppress the truth so that we can have our sinful desires. We also suppress the truth When we doubt God's goodness, this is all Genesis 3, Adam and Eve. Did God really say? Is it really all that clear? Yes, it's good and it's clear. But surely he wouldn't wanna hold something back from you. No, God wants to hold a lot back from you. It's your death and destruction. God's word is good. If we're not going to be a people who say, this is always right, this source that comes from outside of me is always right, and this is too often wrong, we need to quit calling ourselves Christians, because that's the heart and soul of what Christianity is. This is God's word. It must inform, constrain, and transform us. The most terrifying five words of this passage, so they are without excuse. Verse 20, God has made things obvious. He's God, we're not, we should be worshiping him. That's obvious, it's plain, so that we're without excuse. Now some people will say, is that really fair? The fact that we ask that question reveals how far we are removed from really worshiping God. Is God fair? You're suppressing the truth. Ask yourself, how much of your life has been committed to giving God all your heart, all your mind, all your strength? We have all fallen short. No one is righteous. This is the terrifying thing is when we die, we will stand before a holy and righteous God and our sin is going to be written everywhere. All the ways in which God revealed himself to us is going to be obvious. It's gonna be evident. So when we stand before a holy and righteous God with this filthy heart, what would that excuse? We will be speechless. We won't have the opportunity to say, God, is this fair? Because we'll know it's fair. We will not be able to open our mouth because it will be obvious. We'll stand silent, condemned, unless someone speaks for us. Unless someone comes in and says, Father, you are a just and holy God, but this one belongs to me. Jesus Christ was sent so that we don't have to stand with that excuse. So that when we are standing before the judgment seat of God, he comes and says, Father, I bought this one with my blood. I washed this one of their unrighteousness. I stood in their place in the cross under your wrath. It is satisfied. They're now mine. He gets to come in. She gets to come in as a child of the kingdom. This is why you must believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ. We will be speechless before the holy and just judge. It is only Christ who will be able to speak for us. Third, our sin is idolatry. Our sin is idolatry. As we see throughout the text, it's always coming back to what we've exchanged, what we've not given God, what we've refused to give God. Our sin is idolatry. I was speaking to a group of about 100 folks at a camp, mostly youth, a handful of youth leaders, and I asked a question, who's an idolater? And I was encouraged that all the folks who go to Jefferson Park they raise their hands. I was discouraged by the look of confusion on everyone's face. Of course I'm not. I don't have little tiny artifacts that I bow down to. I've not taken a knife and whittled something that I call God. You have a very small view of idolatry. We are all Idolaters. See, we're trained to think we're okay, we're good, we're not as bad as those people. No. Our hearts are full of idolatry because we don't honor God, we don't give thanks to God, we suppress His truth, we exchange His glory for things that are less glorious. We constantly boast of what we've done and we do not boast of Christ. That makes us idolaters. where we put our affections on anything other than God that makes us an idolater. You may ask, am I really an idolater? Let's list some typical idols. Money. Money is something that God gives us so that we can use it for his glory. It's called stewardship. God gives us gifts and our idolatry wants us to say, wow, look at the gift. I'm gonna glorify it. Look what I earned. Look how much I'm worth. That's idolatry. Whereas Christianity says, true worship says, God, you've given me this. I want to use it for your glory. So the measure is this, are you a cheerful giver? That's a biblical phrase. Are you a cheerful giver? Are you a delighting in what you think you've gained? Third, or second, so money, it's clearly an idol in all of scripture. The second way to ask yourself, am I an idolater? How do you use your words? Do you try to pretend you're cursing man while praising God? Are your words always seeking to make much of God and everything he's done, or is it complaining, murmuring, grumbling? Those words of murmuring and grumbling, they're used throughout the Old Testament for pagans. Sadly, they're Jews and Israelites who were practicing paganism because they would not trust God. How do we use our words? It shows where our hearts are. Time is like money. Time's more precious than money. How are we using it? This is gonna get a little personal. It was for me when I thought of it. How sacred is your mitan? How sacred is me time? Because if you're a Christian, you don't get me time. It's all God's time. God's time is the most sacred time, and it's supposed to be all the time. Our bodies. We've already talked about the mouth. How much are we giving ourselves over to impurity when God has made us and redeemed us for purity? Let's focus on that repeated, Phrase, we exchanged his glory. We exchanged his glory. We stopped looking up to praise him. We started looking everywhere else to see what things are glorious. And this makes sense. Again, God's glorious fingerprint is on all the things he created. So it's easy to realize, okay, well, I can see glory in these things. And you know what's glorious about the things he created for us, well, it's beneficial about the things that are created, is that they don't actually speak to have authority over you. That's why we're so prone to worship the things that God has made with glory, rather than one who is truly glorious, because if we recognize he's God, we have to recognize he speaks with authority. over us, and let's just be honest, we don't like to be told what to do. I only see one head nodding. We don't like to be told what to do. God has authority to say whatever he wants, and whatever he wants is right, and sadly, our sinful desires suppress it. We're talking about idolatry. We usually associate this with paganism. We didn't realize paganism, without Christ, we're actually all pagans. See, paganism is this. You see what you think is a God and you say, all right, God, I'll make a deal with you. If you do this for me, then I'll give you this sacrifice. I will do this for you if you bless my crops. I'll make this sacrifice if you'll give me whatever it is you want. You see, the end of paganism is me. God is there. The gods are there. They're there to serve my desires. And as long as I keep them happy, I get what I want. We call that the prosperity gospel. God is there to serve what I really want and all I gotta do is make sure he's happy. See, Christian worship is very different. God does everything for us so that we will glorify him. It's not that my desires be satisfied as the end goal. No, he does everything I really need, like take away my sin so that I become a true worshiper again. Here's the problem, church. We're too often practicing pagans in the name of Christ. We're too often saying, God, I'll give you this if you'll do this for me. No. A Christian says this, God, you've done everything I could, you've done more than I could possibly imagine. You took away my sin, you've given me righteousness, you've given me hope, you've given me a life. What do you want me to do for your glory? It's an open-ended question. Whatever you say, God, I am willing to do. You see, our purpose is too often to gratify our desires rather than to show gratitude for all God has done for us. We too often want to gratify our desires rather than to show gratitude for all God has done to us. We have to keep ourselves from idols. I wanna go back and we'll look at the key points here. God's wrath is revealed to all unrighteousness. Sin leaves us powerless, we're without excuse. The wrath of God is ours because of our actions. Now let's contrast that with the gospel. The wrath of God is revealed to all unrighteousness. The righteousness is revealed in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Sin leaves us powerless, without excuse. The gospel is the power of God to save us from sin. Third, wrath is ours by our actions. The gospel is ours by faith. We must believe we truly need saving so that God can save us. Let's move on to the second section, the effects of our sin. They're threefold, you can see that there in your outline. And we're following the text here. He gave us up, he gave us up, he gave us up to impurity, to what is unnatural, to what is dishonorable. He's given us up to what is impure. Verse 24 and 25, that's your hinge verse. If you really wanna wrestle with this, if this is really about idolatry, if that's really your biggest problem, verse 24 and 25. Just camp out there, memorize it, focus on it. It's loaded. One of the things I want you to see here is the causal language that Paul wraps his message with. Look at verse 24, therefore, verse 25, because, verse 26, for this reason. I think he's trying to make some connections. Therefore, what's the therefore? What's therefore? What is he referring back to? Exchanging the glory of immortal God. Therefore, because we exchanged his glory, he gave us up to our hearts. He gave us up to our lust. Verse 25, because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie. and worship and serve the creature rather than the creator. Our being given over to our lust is directly connected back, two different times here, to our exchanging God's glory, his truth, and his worship. We've given up on God. We've decided we're going to believe a lie, worship that which is not God. That is why he gives us up to our lust. That causal relationship is important. It is our longing for idols. It's our longing to worship that which doesn't have authority over us. Which causes us to be given over to our lust. This entire truth is frightening. Because God gives us up to what we really want. That's frightening. Oscar Wilde. made the observation, when the gods want to punish us, they give us what we want. Oscar Wilde's not a Christian. That's a right observation. The axiom here is this. His grace keeps us from being as sinful as we could be. If the 400 leaders resigning because of the accounts made you think, I would never do that, You are susceptible to all kinds of sin because you're boasting in what you think you've accomplished. It's by God's grace alone. We're not all in the worst kind of sin. It's his grace that keeps us from being as sinful as it could be. We have to realize here, because all of this causal language, the lust, the dishonorable passions, the things that ought not to be done, they're all connected back to us not worshiping God. Our God problem is our biggest problem. Now, notice what corrupts us. There's lust out there. That's not what it says. Where did the lust come from? Everybody use your finger. Right here. Our own lust. The lust of our hearts. The greatest source of danger for all of us. It's scary, it's right here. It's not something outside of you that's going to influence you to not worship God. What keeps us from worshiping God comes from inside of us. We like to think, oh, you know, I'm a good person, it's just I need to have the right influences, I need to have the right people around me and I'll be better, and there's truth to that. Good character is corrupted by bad company. That is true. But the most dangerous enemy is here. Listen to James 1.14. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. Matthew 15, 18. But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. If you're like me, you were trained to think, I'm good, I just need to protect myself from the bad influences. No, that which is wrong is actually inside. I need something from outside of me to come help. I don't need to dig deeper inside to find that goodness. No, the deeper I dig, the scarier it gets. I need help from outside. That's why God spoke. That's why God sent his son. The problem is inside. The help comes from outside. The help comes from God. Let's just pause here, because this is important. This should change the way we think of ourselves as disciples. I need heart work. I don't need behavioral modification. I need heart work. I don't need just a simple kind of, let me figure out the right things to say, let me figure out the right way to present myself. No, we all need heart work. We are affections changed by the word of God. Secondly, she changed the way we think of one another in our discipleship. If someone bothers you because of their words or actions, trying to fix those words and actions is not going to be productive. You have the most effective tool to help that brother or sister who offends you or bothers you and it's prayer because it's the word of God that will affect their heart to change that heart so that the actions change. That's what God wants us to do. Our discipleship questions need to stop being about how are you doing? What kind of desires are tempting you? Parents. We need to realize that the hard work we do to protect our children is not the most important work. We work hard to protect them from outside influences. The most dangerous influence on your child is the sin that resides within. If we're not actually addressing the sin that comes from within, we're building up Pharisees who think it's all about outside. we must teach them by repenting of our own sins with them. Notice it starts with believing a lie instead of the truth, very much like Adam. It goes from saying, we believe your truth, you're glorious, you're worthy of worship, to saying, no, I want a different kind of glory. Here's the hard truth about what happened in the garden with Adam. Adam had glory. Adam was made with a great glory. It was a derived glory from God. He was made with great glory and he lost it because he wanted a different kind of glory. He told God, you didn't create me properly. I want more, he said. We must recognize that our impurity starts with our idolatry. Our impurity starts with our idolatry. When we reject God, everything else starts falling off. That leads to all the impurity that corrupts all of our relationships, all of our life. And let's just be clear because of where we're at in our culture and really where we're at in our text, there's no greater temptation for idolatry to really affect us and our impurity than with our spouse. Marriage is sacred. God's design for marriage has always been under attack by the evil one in our own sin. The very first sin was attacking the very order of God in marriage. Unfaithfulness in marriage takes on various forms. Adultery, pornography, alcohol, drugs, love of a hobby, checking out for me time, We have to realize that the ultimate, ultimately unfaithfulness is always a God problem. Because when you're complaining about your spouse, when you're saying that they're not good enough, what you're actually saying is, God, you didn't fit me with the right person. God, you didn't design the right spouse for me. We reject God, we stop giving thanks to God because we think, God, he didn't do it right. If you're married, God has united you. It is meant to be good, and by his grace, it can be. We have to see that every marital problem is a God problem. Every marital problem is first and foremost a sin against God. This is why when David committed adultery with Bathsheba, he cried out, to you and you alone, O God. He sinned against Bathsheba's husband. But the weight of the sin that he committed against God, because he said, God, what you've done isn't good enough, he's overwhelmed with a sin against God. So let's trust God's goodness. Thank God regularly for your spouse. That's how you're going to keep yourself from idolatry. Thank God regularly from your spouse. Men, thank God for the wife he's given you. Women, thank God regularly for the husband he's given you. This is what will keep you from idolatry. God fit you together, you're designed for one another. You are more compatible with your spouse than you are with anyone else in the entire world. You wanna know why I know that? Because God fit you together and put you together. Marriage is designed to be a glorious union of love. We corrupt it with our lust and our idolatry. It's meant to be marked by honor and thankfulness. Let me be clear if something's not obvious. Your marriage is supposed to be an act of worship. How you love your spouse is supposed to be an act of worship. Here's the problem with what goes on in marriage. We start expecting from our spouse that which only God can do for us. We start thinking, my husband or my wife, if only they loved me enough, I'd be happier. No, they weren't designed to make you happy. God was. God designed you so you'd be happy in Him. The simple truth is this, marriage is most satisfying when it is seen as a commitment one keeps for Christ's name's sake. I wanna give you a few nuts and bolts on marriage while we're here. Men, I'm gonna make a bold claim. Your wife should be more beautiful after she marries you than when she was before. If she's not beautiful enough for you, probably your fault. Christ gave her to you. As Christ takes the bride and sanctifies her, we're supposed to be sanctifying our wives. Love her sacrificially so that she's sanctified. What draws you sexually to your wife should be her sanctification. Christians, a sanctified wife is a sexy wife. Women, I want to make a bold claim to you as well. Your husband needs your words even more than he needs your body. Now, that's not a reason to let yourself go. I don't want a new women's ministry called Let Go and Let God. But if you go through all the New Testament, the consistent pattern is wives be respectful. Wives be respectful. Wives, be respectful. I think it's telling you something about what your husband needs and is addressing the sinful inclination of wives. And I want you to notice too, it says, wives, be respectful as to the Lord. Not as you feel like it, not as he deserves, as to the Lord. Notice how our relationships are tied to worship. Your respect reveals how much you're worshiping God. Men, your desire for your wife's sanctification reveals how much you're worshiping God. If you're single, praise God he has kept you from marrying someone who is not good for you. If you're single, trust God and thank him, his goodness is good enough. If you're not married, let me give you The harder truth, marriage is not going to solve any of your real problems. If your real problems are idolatry, marriage doesn't solve those problems, it exposes them. Only the gospel solves our real problems. If you're divorced, if that one flesh relationship has been broken, What I challenge you to think about is that first and foremost, what led to that divorce was idolatry. Take the opportunity to say, God, my idolatry contributed to a broken relationship. First and foremost, what you should be doing is saying, God, how can I repent of my idols? Help me see the idols that led to a broken relationship so that I can become a better worshiper. That's what we as married folks should be doing regularly. The second way we've been given up is to what is unnatural. Notice here the giving up continues. And some people think this is escalation. as if homosexuality is a worse kind of impurity. I don't think that's the case because if you really think he's escalating from 24 to 26 to 28, that means envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness, gossip, slanders, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient appearance, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. That's escalation. That's us. That's everybody. Not everybody wrestles with same-sex attraction and exchanging that which is natural for what is unnatural. So we need to be careful here. This isn't the worst, grossest sin. Remember, that's idolatry. So let's just be very clear. Paul is talking about homosexuality. This is a hot topic, so let's just take a moment here. Very simple, God made man for a woman. He made woman for man. In our sin, we turn away from what he designed as good. And that expresses itself in adultery and homosexuality. We can actually go to 1 Corinthians 7 and see that all those things are listed together. What we also need to see here is that this is demonstrating, what Paul is doing here is he's showing us that not only have we turned away from God's design for relationships, We've turned away from the obvious ways our bodies were meant to make two people one flesh. That's what he's gaining with this argument. We're so foolish, we have denied the way the body has been designed by a man, and the body has been designed of a woman to come together as one flesh. We've given up what is natural for what is unnatural. So let's just go through some points. First, this is saying that homosexuality is sin. We're all without excuse. The righteousness of, the wrath of God is revealed against unrighteousness. It's listed here as unrighteous. It's listed here as a way idolatry is played out. It's simple and clear. There are people who are trying to twist scripture to say it's not a sin. Be scared of those people. It's in Romans 1, 18 through 320. Second, homosexuality is one of many ways we throw off God's design for marriage. It's not the ultimate sin. It's not the unforgivable sin. All he's doing here is showing we're so darkened, we even deny the way our physical bodies are supposed to function. Third, and I know I'm being redundant, Just like all other lusts and sinful passions, what lies at the heart of homosexuality is idolatry. For this reason. Because of our idolatry, for this reason. What lies at the heart of adultery? Idolatry. What lies at the heart of pornography? Idolatry. What lies at the heart of reading romantic novels? Idolatry. What is our biggest problem? Idolatry. I want to make it clear, I do not believe same-sex attraction is a choice. It's a sinful desire that comes from within. You don't desire to have temptations that come from within, they simply come from within. We have sinful desires. Having same-sex attraction is not a choice, and I have to say that because I'm gonna be honest, we lost the political debate because we had bad theology. To act on it, like every other sinful desire, is a choice. For someone to feel same-sex attraction is not a choice. And so, let me be clear, fixing their homosexuality is not our goal. Because it's not the real problem, is it? The real problem is idolatry. So they need the gospel. We don't go and try to convince people to not have homosexual or same-sex attraction. We don't go and convince people that this is wrong. We go and convince people they're sinners against God and that God sent his son to save them. That is our message. This is dangerous because we live in a world that says whatever you feel is good and you should fulfill it. There's no such thing as guilty pleasure anymore because if it's a pleasure, it's supposed to be good. So Christian, let's think about this for a moment. I want you to notice that we all share the most significant sin and that's idolatry. We do not separate homosexuality as if the most guilty or gross sin because we all share in the most guilty and the most gross sin and that's idolatry. Second, we have to recognize that it's sinful lust that still resides in our hearts. We need to be more concerned about the lust that's within our hearts rather than the homosexual movement that's in our culture. We need to be worried about being a church that's pure rather than fixing everything outside. And third, same-sex attraction is not merely physical, it's relational. Here's where we're gonna have to face a real big issue, church. If we as Christians are not seeking to befriend professing believers who say they wrestle with same-sex attraction, If we're saying no, that's a sin we don't want in our midst. No, that's too gross. If we're going to stiff form them and not build that kind of relationship to disciple them, to be true worshipers, we are pushing them right into the sin. If we think it's too sinful, we haven't really grasped how sinful we are. If we don't think the gospel is the power of God to save that kind of sin, we actually don't get the gospel. Are we willing to walk alongside and care for someone who wrestles with a sin that we don't, we may be confused about? We'll only do that if we realize it's all idolatry. If you suffer from same-sex attraction, it is not the unforgivable sin. The power of God to save you is Jesus Christ, his death on the cross, just like it is for everybody else in this room. The lustful desire for someone who has the same sex, the only real difference is that God does not have a design for you to fulfill that desire. But the desire to be drunk, Anybody who has a desire, you say no to. There's no proper way to be drunk. The desire to lie, no, you say no to it. You deny the sinful desire. The desire to have same-sex relations, you say no to it. It's just simple Christianity. It's simple discipleship. Do not let your identity be wrapped up in your sexual orientation, as our culture says. Your identity has to be wrapped up in who Christ is and what he says about you. Finally, given up to what is dishonorable. I've read these sins. Has God given you over to your gossip, slander, envy, and deceit? I think this is still true for Christians. This is obviously speaking of non-Christians. But one of the most terrifying things is when God gives us what we want and what we refuse to repent of. This is first and foremost about non-Christians. If you're not a Christian, look at this list. This is what condemns us. We will be without excuse unless Jesus Christ comes and speaks for us. My fear is that the church isn't supposed to look like the world, but we too often do. I see a description of the church too much in here. And what's interesting about this list is if we go to Ephesians and Colossians, these same sins, Paul tells us to put off. This is a consequence of our idolatry, deceit, murder, envy, boastful, disobeying parents. These are all things Paul is going to tell the church, Christians, put it off. It's still present, put it off. If you're not putting it off, it's there. We will either be full of gratification or gratitude. That's a simple summary of our message today. Gratification says I must satisfy my desire for what I want. Gratitude says I am satisfied with what I have. Here's the reality. Sinful pursuits are never satisfying or satisfied. Sinful pursuits are never satisfying or satisfied. The pursuit of righteousness in Christ is always satisfying. Blessed are those who pursue righteousness. They will be satisfied. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for Christ's righteousness. They will be satisfied. Sin never satisfies. Christian, will we turn from our worldly ways that seek to gratify our desires as if they're divine? Will we turn to Christ and thank Him for the work He has done for us, to honor Him? It comes down to a simple question. Will we honor Him? Will we give Him thanks? Will we honor Him? And will we give Him thanks because He is worthy? Will you pray with me? Father, we praise you that while these are hard words, they're weighty because they show us the full depth and weight of our sin. Help us to not ignore them. Help us to see the gospel as the truth that removes the sin, that freezes from the sin. Help us, Lord, to have hearts that are thankful. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.