Romans 1:18, 28–32Scripture
Well, this morning we have made it to the end of chapter 1, and I really enjoyed our time traveling through Romans.
And we're going to be looking today—I want to start with verse 18, because that verse, from verse 18 all the way through the end of the chapter, verse 32, everything that is said is descriptive of what is happening in verse 18. And we see, really, if you've been a part of—if you've been here on Sunday mornings and you've been a part of small groups—we have seen a certain downward spiral into such a debased way of living that there is no longer any hope. So we've moved into that hopeless state in these final verses, of which none of us want to be at, right now. I'll just go ahead and I'll say this: I'm going to do a little recap. I'm going to go back to verse 19, and I'm going to show you kind of what the apostle Paul is doing as he's laying out this downward descent into total and complete depravity, the type of depravity by which God has released us to such a fashion that we are filled with all manner of evil, to the degree that nothing else can come in, and he has given us up completely, and it is final. The words that he uses here for the destruction and unto death—that's where none of us want to be, to reject God in such a fashion that he turns us over to this degree, amen. Now, we can't know—I can't today for you—I can't give you a list or an outline of
Point 1Stay far away from the edge
What you can do to get all the way up to the edge of totally being turned over and there being no longer any hope for you for salvation, because that's real, and I can't give you that line. And many of us, when we read the Bible, what we tend to do is we tend to try to figure out how to get all the way up to the edge without falling over.
But you know how you can be safe? You know how you can guarantee that if you fall you won't fall over into that pit? You back away from the edge as far as humanly possible.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 2:18
I really think that's the heart of the apostle as he writes.
He's encouraging us to stay away from the edge and the point of no return. So let's read verse 18, and then I want to read verses 28 through 32.
And I'll encourage you, if you have missed several weeks of this series, I would encourage you to go back on our website and you can get caught up. I think it will help you maybe have an understanding of where the apostle is going. Now, I want to mention before we read verse 18 that he basically starts out this epistle by saying that the gospel—there is the gospel, and in the gospel is the power to save. Okay? In the gospel is the power to—or another way of saying it is the gospel has the power to save. So he's trying to help us understand the power of the gospel to save people that he lists from chapter 1 all the way through the middle of chapter 3. And listen, this is just chapter 1, and you feel heavy-hearted and you feel like, man, we're doomed. But he's trying to help us understand, without God you are doomed, because all of us have some depravity in us. All of us are a little depraved. Well, we're totally depraved, and if not for God we would be in some utter trouble. So we see the wrath of God. He talks about the gospel having the power of saving, then we move to verse 18. He says, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness." It says all ungodliness.
So the little stuff that you do that's ungodly that doesn't seem as bad as your neighbor's, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against even that "and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth." Now, if you had a pen that didn't mark through the other page of your Bible, I would encourage you to circle "suppress the truth," or underline it. I would put maybe a square around "suppress" and underline "the truth." I don't know, everybody has their own pattern there. But that word, suppressing the truth, is the current reality of the nation in which we live. Matter of fact, that truth of God is offensive to people. It's very offensive today. I mean, you don't have to hang out on my Facebook page very long to figure that out. It's offensive. It's offensive when we move the attention from men and put it on God. That's offensive. It's offensive when we realize that there is no one good but God alone.
It's amazing how we celebrate when Jesus says it, but if I say you're not good on Facebook, people lose their mind.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 5:34
That's what Paul's saying: there are none that are good. And if you want to trust in your goodness, see how far that gets you on Judgment Day. A matter of fact, I would even encourage you to say that for many—if you care about the lost, if you care about people, you would want to move people from this idea that they're good by themselves to understanding they're not good, so that they will trust in the only thing that will save them, and it ain't their self, and it isn't their good deeds, and it isn't their good heart, and it isn't their good thoughts. We got problems, ladies and gentlemen. And I know the world today says that we're good and we should speak positively of ourselves. Brook actually mentioned—I kind of rephrased it and posted it on Facebook because I thought it was fitting, particularly as we go through Romans. And by the way, I only post on Facebook to keep things in front of us for the sermon that I'm going to preach on Sunday. But Brook was actually given this list of these "I am" declarations, or some people say "I am" affirmations. "I am good.
I am—I am awesome. I am worthy." Will sound great. Those don't sound bad, right? And then Brook began to go—she went back and she went to Exodus, when Moses was talking to God and said, "Who are you?" And he says, "I am that I am."
And I feel like today it seems nice when we think a lot of negative things about ourselves to begin to speak and declare over ourself affirming words, but there is only one who is awesome, and there is only one who is good, and there is only one who is enough, and that, in his name, is God. And so when we begin to take what God calls himself and speak declarations over our own life that we are that's a problem. And the goal today is that this Scripture in Romans so convicts us of pagan ideologies that we step out of them and we stop using phrases that pagans use to describe our lives.
It's important, because if we don't, the wrath of God is revealed against idol worship, people who worship themselves.
Now, if we move all the way down to verse 28, it says this: "And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God"—because they're too busy, and my—this way I would rephrase it, I would throw in there a paraphrase, maybe parentheses: because we're too busy acknowledging ourself. Are you with me today? It's not going to get easier. But "and since they did not see fit to acknowledge God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done." Now, at this point God has given them up several times, quite specifically two times before this, in other verses which I'm going to talk about. He gave people up two times before this. This third time, he gives them up—he gives them up to a debased mind. There is finality in this, all right? Now, I don't know what the line is between the second time he gives them up and the third time he gives them up, but you don't want to get to the third time, because if you get to the third time you got massive problems, because he's giving you up to destruction, quite literally to death, and it's an eternal death.
It's an eternal death, and it's not okay. "God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness." They were filled. You should circle that word. You can't be filled with the Spirit if you're filled with all manner of unrighteousness. You cannot.
Matter of fact, that's why Jesus died. Jesus died that the Holy Spirit would come in you, and it ain't coming in you until all manner of unrighteousness is dealt with through the blood of Christ, because God's presence can't remain in what is unholy. So by believing in Jesus and accepting the blood gift that he gave on Calvary's cross, we now are made white as snow, as Jesse has sung today so beautifully, "Oh, the blood of Jesus that makes us white as snow." It cleanses us. Now we then, through propitiation, we receive the righteousness of Christ, because he's the only one who obeyed the law to every degree, and there is this exchange that happens through faith and belief that now we have his righteousness and we are made righteous in God's sight, and we're filled with what? The Holy Spirit.
"And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God gave them up to a debased mind to do whatever they ought. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness," and then he gives this list: "evil, covetousness"—covetousness, that's a hard word for me to say—"malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit." And in case you think I haven't pulled a pistol on anybody and killed them, if you've talked about somebody, you have, right? So it's like even Jesus does this in the New Testament. And so if you are—and I'm going to say this right now, I think this is important—some of you are going to be looking at the list and you're going, "I've done some of that. Does that mean I'm debased?" That's a great question. We should answer that question, don't you think? We're going to. So don't get too nervous. There might be evidence of some of this in your life. It doesn't mean that he's given you up and you're filled with that. It's one thing to gossip about somebody one time, and it's another thing to be filled with all manner of all of this. So we just got to be very careful about trying to relate to a list that doesn't apply to true believers, all right? "Malice, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil." Inventors of evil—I thought that was really fascinating. And then at the very end of this list, or towards the end, "disobedient to parents." And all the parents said, "Amen." "Foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless."
And then this is the most striking verse for me in the entire first chapter, because you really truly get a picture of the heart of mankind: "though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them."
That's debased. But let me tell you, those that are debased, they don't want to be debased alone, because when God turns you over, there is—your fellowship with him is broken, and the reality is every single person is created with the desire for community, and when God cuts you off and turns you over, you've got to find somebody to be communing with, because you feel this missing thing from God. So he turns you over to sin, and you begin to go after other people to take them down with you. This is next-level crazy. And before you think this doesn't apply to you personally, Paul is speaking in kind of a twofold part here. One, he's speaking about individuals, but he's also speaking about nations. So I think it's good to look at our life and go, "Where do we fall on this list?" I think that's a fair assessment.
Do I honor God as God? If I don't, he turns me over to the first degree. Do I suppress the knowledge of God? We all know who he is. Do I not honor—do I dishonor God as God? And then do I begin to suppress truth? Listen, I feel like we're to the end of this level in our nation. I would actually say there's a lot of debased people in our nation, but there is a massive—in four years there has been a massive suppression of truth, not only with individuals, not only in the life of the church, but in the life of our nation. The truth is no longer acceptable in the world in which we live. So we are so frustrated with truth that we have now adopted a new type of religion that says truth is relative to whatever I want. You know why? Because we worship ourself and we don't worship God, and so he turns them over.
He turns them over. He just keeps turning them over. And then people know that what they're doing is wrong. They suppress the truth to such a fashion that they no longer even care, and they choose daily to commit spiritual suicide, not caring even though they know that it will end in death. Now, when you get to this part, there is no hope for return, and this should be concerning. Listen, for us as believers in the church today—now, what I know about people on Sunday morning is there are people in all manners of these different levels in this fellowship. I know that, I'm aware of that, but I'm going to talk to the believers today, true believers today, and I want to say that this should strike in our hearts a passion to preach the gospel more than ever before, because the reality is we have people in our life that we love dearly that we do not want to get to this place, and we have a responsibility, and Paul is trying to charge the church to preach the gospel, because the gospel alone has the power to save, and he's trying to help us understand that if you don't take this serious, God will, in his wrath, turn people over to such a degree that there is no longer any hope for them. Please preach the gospel. So from the beginning of chapter 1 to the middle of chapter 3, he sandwiches all that we read over the next coming chapters. He sandwiches it with "there is hope in the gospel to save."
He is trying to encourage, to motivate, and to help the church do its mission. That's the goal. Now, I feel like it's important for me to kind of recap, and if you're taking notes, I really want you—I've been talking about these words, but I'm going to try to go down through here in the verses before we hit on 28–32, and I'm going to give a brief recap of how people respond to God although they know him. It says there is no man without excuse.
They don't even have to have a Bible. That all men know God—that's what it says. I believe the word, I just—I stand on that truth. I don't know how that works out. We've had questions in small groups: How does that work? How do we know God? What is that? I don't know. God's designed it that way.
He's just designed it that way. And the bad news is that God is angry with men, and so we've been asking the question, why is God so angry?
Why is he so angry that he condemns men to eternal hell? Why is God so angry? Well, Paul shows us that there are really five reasons, and I'm going to give this to you—this is a recap over the last several months. There are really five reasons why God is angry, and there are five steps downward into a descent that you move so
Point 2Five steps down: revelation to depravity
Far in rebellion against God there is no hope for return. First one—first word, and I'm going to give you the Scripture that I pull this from— the first word is revelation. God reveals himself to all men. At the end of verse 18 it says that men hold the truth. How?
Verse 19: God has manifested himself to all men. We don't know how that works, but it's a promise. If God says it, I believe it, amen, that he reveals himself to all men. And how is that done? He actually gives us a hint here of how he does that. Verse 20: "from the creation of the world." In other words, God reveals himself to men. That's where it all begins. Men know God at first because he's revealed himself.
Now, those who reject the revelation, they tip down towards God giving them over. So when God reveals himself, what is the proper response? We submit to him, we trust him. And then when someone rejects the revelation, they go to the next step. When people reject revelation, they go to step two of the downward spiral. It is rejection. God reveals, people reject. Verse 21: "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 their foolish hearts were darkened."
The first point says they have the truth of God, and then this verse 21, says they rejected the truth of God. They refused to glorify him as God. Now, let me tell you something: not the god you fashioned in your mind, but the one true God. Let me just back up and say it this way, because this is a problem today: not that Jesus you have fashioned in your mind that you worship around, but the Jesus of the Bible, every part of him, not just the part of him that's going to heal you, but the part of him that will rebuke you. Not just the part of him that says, "you're the rock on which I'll build my church," but the part of him that says, "Get behind me, Satan." All of him. The problem today is we have fashioned a Jesus to worship, and it is not even the true Jesus. So now our worship isn't even true, because we have rejected the biblical view of who God is, and we've created and fashioned our own. Listen, this happens in church. It happens in our worship.
The first point says they have the truth of God, and this one says they reject the truth of God. They will not glorify him as God, and they are not thankful for him as the source of everything, but they turn to their own empty reasoning and their own dark and foolish heart.
Then we move on to the third phase. We move to verse 22, and it says that we begin to rationalize our decision of rejection. How many of you have ever heard somebody try to rationalize the stupid things they do? All of us have been guilty of doing such things, because many of us are depraved. Because we're born in sin, we're born with the desire to sin, and we have the ability to try to rationalize anything that is ungodly and try to call it godly. Let me give you a perfect example, like gossip. I gossiped in small group by telling someone else's private business, and then I made it holy and rationalized what I did by making it a prayer request.
We are professional at rationalizing what is sinful and trying to make it look spiritual.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 23:24
And he said that this is foolish. Verse 22: "Claiming to be wise, they became fools." Man has revelation, he moves then to rejection, and then he rationalizes that in his empty, darkened heart he's actually wisest of them all, when in reality God knows him to be a fool.
This is crazy. This is the downward spiral. Then we get into verse 23, and we begin to see religion. So now we get the revelation of God, we suppress the truth and we don't acknowledge it, we reject him, and then we rationalize our rejection, and then we begin to form a religion around the way we see life in our foolishness. Religion. You know what religion is? It's worship, the worship of God.
That's religion. So, no, contrary to what you hear out there on social media or out there with friends, religion is not bad as long as it's centered on the one true God.
It's worshiping God. We should be religious. We turn religion into a dirty word. Religion isn't bad. Your religion is bad, because many of us, a lot of times, aren't worshiping the one true God. We are worshiping a god we have fashioned in our own mind because we've rejected the one true God, and we want to make it a movement. Verse 23 says this: "and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things."
So men have the truth, they refused the truth, they think they know the truth, and then out of their own supposed wisdom create gods of their own making, and I would propose to you many of those gods are themselves. Then we get to where we're at today, and I don't know where the line is—I'm not exactly sure about—let me just stop right here. It has been super interesting over the last, I don't know, five years, watching our nation and specifically watching the Christians in this nation, and we get to see, through the actions of believers or so-called believers, or the big-seat church, the—or, you know, evangelical church, we get to see the response of Christians in the face of soulless worship in our nation. Now, it was fascinating to me yesterday, because I woke up in the morning and I read an article about PayPal. How many of you've heard about the PayPal debacle, right? None of you. One person, two people, good, three. Oh wow, okay.
PayPal put out an announcement that they are going to unilaterally—those that have a PayPal account, if you say something that's disparaging, that's rude to a minority, or it's something that's not truthful, that they will dock you fifteen hundred bucks out of your account without asking. Now, we know in a world where we don't even know—you can't fact-check anything anymore, because even the fact-checking programs aren't really truthful, right? And so it just depends on who is running it as whether it's truthful or not. And so people began canceling to such a degree that people couldn't even—it shut down their server. People were canceling their accounts left and right, Christians online saying this is not right and making a stand, nothing about God, nothing about the truth, just "you aren't going to touch my money." All right, so my summary of this situation, because I consider this to be a massive issue, and I wrote real briefly yesterday in some dialogue with another pastor that I was communicating with, when we look at our nation and what our nation worships and what motivates our nation to actually have a voice, particularly in regard to Christians today, it is not the gospel, or it is not the concern of lost people, but rather it is the bottom dollar. We fashion churches based on the bottom dollar, we run households based on the bottom dollar, we make decisions as pastors based on the dollar. And I think we've got to be shrewd in our dealings, and I think we need to be wise and responsible, but if the bottom dollar motivates us to have a voice more than other things as Christians, that is what Paul calls for. I wrote this here, speaking to a friend of mine, here's what I've learned
Point 3Money motivates us more than souls
Watching all this PayPal mess today.
If you come after people's souls, they will turn them over and not even blink an eye, but if you threaten to touch a person's money, all of a sudden people find their backbone and take a stand.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 29:31
That's a problem, because the church has acquiesced to such a fashion, we have given up ground and we have turned over our souls, and we don't care, because we would rather be entertained.
There are people, for the sake of watching something entertaining, have invited pornography into their home by watching Game of Thrones, and the church does it. Matter of fact, I know of churches that have worship teams that have watch parties. You know why? Because we would rather risk our soul than to make a stand for Christ, and we do it for the sake of entertainment. We won't make a stand for anything in our home that is against God until they touch our money, and then we'll make a stand, and then we'll have a voice, and then it will be such a large voice that PayPal reverses their position, and what they sent out, within six hours. And here's the thing.
If money is what motivates you, money is your lord.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 31:11
If the only thing that motivates you to stand for God is money, then you don't worship God, you worship money. It's a problem. It's not just a problem in a pagan society in which we live. And news flash, this is not a Christian nation. It's not. I hate to burst your bubble today, but PayPal is the least of our problems. We can't even take our kids to watch a cartoon without homosexual activity being pushed upon all children. This is not a Christian nation. We have so celebrated sin that I'm realizing that this nation is in the last phase, and it's not good, because when we get to a reprobate mind, we're now not only—we sin, but we encourage others to sin, and we try to draw other people in. That's our nation.
Then there's no hope, because God turns us over. In other words, in regards to the nation, we're doomed. Let me just be honest. In regards to us personally, there's still hope. So we see the nation has moved into this reprobate—that's what some translations say; some translations say depraved mind. So we finally come from religion to reprobation, or depravity, and that is the filthy pit of man's existence. And you will notice verse 24 tells us how it is that man reaches this level. It says, "Wherefore God gave them up." Verse 26 says, "For this cause God gave them up." And verse 28 says, "God gave them up to a depraved mind." Man starts with knowledge, revelation, moves to rejection, then to rationalization, then to religion, and finally to a depraved mind.
This is a judicial punishment on God's part towards a nation. The verb "God gave them up, gave them up, gave them up"—he says multiple times, as I pointed out last week—is used many places in the New Testament to speak of turning someone over to a court, turning someone over to a judge, specifically turning someone over to be sentenced, or turning someone over to a punishment, or quite specifically an executioner. I mean, this is extreme language in the greek. God literally gives men over to that executioner to go to their death.
If nothing motivates you to value the gospel, this should motivate you to preach the gospel to all men.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 34:44
And men, let me tell you, the gospel has the power to save, but it doesn't mean it will save all men. Are you with me?
So we don't preach the gospel based on percentages. We preach the gospel because in it alone is the power to save.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 35:12
We preach it to our family, we preach it to our kids. Parents, you should be preaching the gospel to your kids. You cannot depend on this pastor on Sunday morning or the pastor downstairs on Sunday morning to put all of the preaching of the gospel into your kids. You best be preaching in the morning over cereal. You must be preaching on the way to school, because at school they're being indoctrinated with pagan ideology and pagan thoughts and unbiblical and ungodly ways of thinking, and your few minutes on Sunday that you give them over to the pastors will not redeem them.
I have people—listen to me right here—I'm not saying everybody should homeschool. Please know, let me say, please know, I'm not saying that. That's not my stance today, but also you need to be mindful, parents, of your responsibility because of what they hear at school. You need to be mindful of the time you spend with them at home. I'm not saying homeschool is for everyone, but I'm moving closer to that position. I'm moving closer. You're like, "Well sure you are, your kids are out of school. Of course you can take that position." Listen, I homeschooled my kids the last two years. It was hard work. There's options if you're interested. I can tell you, I'm not endorsing it, I'm not trying to convince you. I will just say this: ideology that says, "Well, I want my kids to be in school so they can be the light."
I want you to consider this. With that kind of statement, I want you to consider how long grown men, who had gone to school, who had learned, who had flunked out of school and didn't make the cut, that Jesus chose them, and he walked with these apostles for years before he empowered them and sent them out two by two. Yet you want to take your kid who hasn't heard the gospel and hope that there'll be a light in a world where they are swallowed up by darkness and sin. Listen, your kids—listen, it is not—I don't agree with that philosophy. Can your kids be a light? Yeah, but have they been trained up before you send them out? So are you saying, Shawn, that I shouldn't send my kids to school until I've fully discipled them? I'm not saying that. I'm saying don't think that the goal of this, or the point of sending them out, is that they would evangelize the world. Your role is not to send them as an evangelist.
Your role as a parent is to disciple them so they can stand strong in darkness.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 38:03
And sometimes we fashion ideas around our kids being in a public arena. We fashion these ideas that they'll be a light and evangelize the school so that we as parents don't have to do our role.
Well, how will they evangelize if you don't disciple? And listen, it is the role of the church to disciple, but you are the church. So Paul is trying to encourage us and spur us on and position us with such this heaviness of what man is capable of, so that we would go, "Oh my goodness, only the gospel helps this."
Point 4Sin is its own punishment
That's the goal of this. That's the goal. This then becomes the fulfillment of verse 18. How is the wrath of God continually being revealed? The wrath of God is continually being revealed as God gives men up to the consequences of their own rejection. So I went and did a recap, and I want to talk about this debased mind and try to lay this out swiftly. It says that God abandons men when they get to this level, or in other words, he lets them go.
And as we pointed out last week, the evil of our society is the wrath of God at work. So when you see evilness in our society, you need to know that's God's wrath being unrolled. People say, "If we keep going the way we are, God is going to judge America." And I would submit to you that, based on Romans 1, God is already judging America. People say that the wrath of God will fall in America if we do not remain a Christian nation. I would say we've already rejected God as a nation, and his wrath is already unfolding. We don't have to wait for fire and brimstone. We're already being judged by the fact that God has abandoned this society to the exercise of its own sinning willfulness. And let me tell you, in the face of that reality, in the face of that reality, the church should respond a certain way. If you think you're something you're not, the church will stay silent and not do what it's supposed to do. But if you realize that our nation is fallen and God's wrath is there, and that when a nation gets depraved it begins to invite others and indoctrinate other people into sin, as Christians we should say, "Wait a minute, there's war happening here." And if we don't go after people with the gospel, the depraved nation will suck everyone who hangs in the balance towards them. Do you see what Paul's doing? He is trying to motivate the church to preach the gospel wherever it goes. What is man's punishment, then? It is a compounding, escalating, snowballing sinfulness with all of its attendant atrocities. That's God's wrath at work. Just let them go to the consequence of their own sinning, and actually the continuation of sin and more sin is how he punishes them. How many of you know to be true that when we sin, we think it provides help, we think that it's good, we think that it helps us, but in the long run we realize that the repetitive nature of repeating sinful behaviors is destructive to our life, to our families, to our relationships, and it just leaves us dried up, empty of all nutrients, like a dried-up orange on the side of the road.
Sin itself is punishment enough, and he fully releases us to be filled with all manner of it.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 42:08
"God gave them up to uncleanness." This is important. So the word that he gave them up to, unrighteousness, literally translated, it means unclean. The essence of sin is that it is unclean. That is its nature, its essence. It is—this is the word akatharsia. I don't know if you know what that word means. It's literally translated "unclean." In many places it's sometimes "impure."
The literal translation, exact translation, is "the content of a grave." It came to mean rot or filth or decay or dirt. God gives men not to rot, to filth, to decay, and to dirt, to do what is defiling, that they might rot further.
Its moral meaning has to do literally, quite specifically, with sexual vice or sexual sin. That's why the homosexual was used as a description, quite specifically.
This rot or filth or decay or dirt literally is connected most often, and always in the Scripture, to sexual vice or sexual sin.
So where does this come from? Verse 24 says it comes from the lusts of the heart, and ultimately results in the dishonoring of the body.
So from deep within man comes this spewing out of uncleanness, like the drippings from a broken sewer contaminating everything in the room, because this is what is in man's heart.
He is abandoned by God, he's left to his own evil. In fact, 1 Thessalonians 4:5 says that man lives in the lust of sensuality. That is the mark of those who know not God. They are totally driven by their own lust, their own desires, and they're consumed by them. And so that is what God gives man over to.
In James 1:14 it says, "Every man 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." So in other words, man is drawn into sin by uncleanness of the heart through his lusts, and it draws him towards death. In Ephesians chapter 2, verse 3, it says—I know this is a lot of Scripture, but I think these parallel verses matter— "among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind." Notice that the desires of the flesh are connected to the effects of the mind. This is why God says for those who became a new creation and are made new, continue to renew your mind, which is in Christ Jesus, because God knows that our mind has been affected by the lust of the flesh that we used to participate in. So we renew our mind according to the new man. Are you with me, kind of, on this? Now, when a person lives guided by the mind and the lusts and the desires, they are literally a working out of the wrath of God, and that's how it is with man in the world. The essence of man's sinfulness is uncleanness that comes from his heart. Matthew 12, a few more Scriptures. Jesus says, "You brood of vipers"—this is one of those, you got to make sure you take all of Jesus' kind of statements, because—and by the way, this doesn't give you the right to call people snakes. Well, it wasn't beyond Jesus to make a whip and drive people out of there, so yeah, but he was perfect and righteous in every facet of the word, and you're unrighteous, so you really don't have no right. The only right you have is to be made clean by the blood of Jesus. That's it. That's the only right you got. "You brood of vipers, how can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks."
What else would we expect out of you but that which is evil? In other words, because your heart's evil, that's basic to man's fallenness. Matthew 15:19 says, "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person."
So there's the essence. God gives them up to the essence of their sinfulness. He just lets them go and lets it take its course, and it affects their bodies. Verse 24 says they dishonor their bodies between themselves. Dishonor means to degrade, to insult, to treat sinfully. It is the very opposite of honor. So if you dishonor God, he gives you up to dishonor. Listen to me now. If you submit yourself to lust, lustful sexual desires, he gives you up to that.
Do you become so debased that you're filled and you're sent to the executioner?
We don't know.
That's why you don't play games with God, and you don't play games with sin, amen.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 48:25
We just don't play games with that. It's destructive.
Paul, this is a loving father speaking to his children, saying, "Guys, this is bad. This is bad." I think we see this in society. Our society treats the body with shame in so many ways. So many ways, we across the world have a low view of human life. That's the reality. We don't value human life. We just don't. We don't value it anymore. It shapes much of our entertainment. You know what I've been convicted about this week? Listen. I want to say this real quick. I'm going to say this real quick. You don't have to be where I'm at, and my conviction doesn't have to be your conviction today. It may never be your conviction. I love UFC. I love it, but I'm convicted reading this today. I've been convicted reading this since the beginning. The reality is we don't value men, and it shapes our entertainment. I just—I love it when somebody's getting beat up and somehow or another there's no way they're going to win and they find a way to get an armbar. I just think that is the skill—it's skilled. I just love it. But why am I entertained by people smashing other people's face? And I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. Because we don't value mankind like God does. Let me say it like this, because we're all his children, right? Can you get with me on that? At least get with me on that. I'm not trying to be—I know you're like, "Man, he has literally become one of those old fogy pastors that just wants to sit in his closet and not even enjoy life. You're just—I can't even do this anymore.
You are boring and you're old and you just don't like life anymore." No, I don't—I don't think that's it. Maybe that's it, but we're all his children. Would you agree with that? How many of you would love to see your kids get in the ring and smash each other's face in?
There's just something about that. It's like, well, I—we will see people, fighters, that their moms or their wife will never come to a match because they just can't. They can't watch their husband get their face beat in. They just can't. I just can't. What? Why? Somewhere deep down in there. Like when I first started watching UFC, it turned my stomach. Now I cheer when someone gets busted.
Do you see the slip? Because we suppress the truth, and we—and listen, do the steps, do the steps about how man gets from—I actually did a study in high school, my senior year in high school. I did—I got an EKG, I got a couple different things that monitored the heart, and I showed UFC fights, back when it was rough, they would break arms and everything because they didn't stop, they just—until the arm was broke. And I would show these videos and people's heart rate would go crazy, and then I would show it to them six times, ten times, and we watched their heart regulate, and they're not affected by it anymore in just that quick amount of time. The reality is it is easy for the church to be so inundated with sin and the rejection of what he is. God has made mankind, and how man is to be honored, and how God is to be honored, and how man is to honor God, that we are desensitized from sin. The question is, well, if it entertains, isn't it okay? I don't know. Is it okay to watch Game of Thrones, although it's pornography, because it entertains?
And you know, let me tell you, there are people who do that and watch that, and they don't think that's that big a deal. They didn't get there overnight.
You don't think Game of Thrones is a big deal because it's nothing in comparison to the porn you watch all week, and you're comparing apples and oranges. Are you with me? But a person who's never seen this terrible, despicable sexual lust on display, where we objectify women to the degree that we make them a thing and an object, people that haven't participated in that, if they watch Game of Thrones, that would be abhorrent to them.
Abhorrent. Listen,
The slip doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't happen overnight. It's slow. It's gradual.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 53:33
And society plays a part in inviting men to do what they do. I am here to tell you the church should not acquiesce so quickly.
The reality is we find entertainment in things we shouldn't, we have no sense of man's glory, we step on anybody's neck to get whatever we can, we sexually abuse one another, we criminally abuse one another, we verbally abuse one another, we treat each other with disdain and ill will, and we dishonor our bodies in a myriad of ways that even if we're bored with the ways that we're doing it, we'll make up new ways, invent evils, to keep us entertained.
You see, sin has poisoned the very roots. That's what verse 24 is saying. Back in Isaiah 1, "the whole head is sick, the whole heart is faint." Ecclesiastes 9:3, the preacher says, "madness is in their hearts while they live." Thomas Watson said, "A river may have fair streams but vermin at the bottom. Thou carriest a hell about thee; thou canst do nothing but thou defilest it. The heart, like muddy ground, defiles the purest waters and runs through it." That's the quote. I wish you would speak normal so I could read it eloquently. Who says "thou" after every word?
But you get the point. Why is all this happening? Verse 25 says, "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." That's why. Two things, and then I'm done. This: men know the truth, but they reject it, suppress it, and don't care. Paul comes right back to his initial argument, and this is the knockout punch in verse 32: "Though they know the righteous decree of God, that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them."
Man, that's the next level. Our church may not be there, you may not be there, members in your family may not be there, but our nation is there.
Our nation is there, and because our nation is there, that's evidence that the people in our nation are there. In other words, you can get to a point where God releases you're filled, and there is no hope. Guys, if you're trying to figure out how close to the edge you can get and not fall over to no hope of return, but to your utter destruction, I would encourage you this morning, in your moment of silence here that we're about to enter into in a minute, to step back from the ledge. That's the goal. That's the goal of the apostle. That's the goal. I'm going to tell you an ant story, and then I'm done. There's this type of ants in Africa, and I don't remember the name or else I would say it, I'll look it up and maybe post it on my facebook, but there's a colony of ants. The way that they operate in Africa, there's worker ants, they have names of those specific type of ants. The worker ants go out and they do things and they're taking care of the queen. There's one queen for the whole colony, and they have done a study on this type of ant. What would happen is the worker ants would go out and they would do their work, you know, out there above the colony, above the anthill, just out and about, just gathering and getting things that they need. But if the queen were to die, or if the queen were to be molested, or if something would happen to the queen—they don't know how it happens—but all of a sudden all the workers begin to run around in crazed delusion, trying to eat one another.
And I thought, that's kind of like this. And for some of us, God is dead to us, and we're running around in crazed delusion trying to devour one another. They don't know what the communication is, they don't know what kind of system they have or what the queen radiates to make this happen, or when the signal is lost, they don't understand that, they can't make sense of that. You know, I'll tell you why: only God knows, because there's some things in creation we can't figure out because we're not God. And scientists have been trying to study this over and over again to figure out what kind of signal is being sent out by the queen to keep them in order, but when they are cut off from the queen, and the queen is dead, they lose their minds. That's what this story is. That you can move to such a place as a lost person who has suppressed the truth, who's rejected God, who's rationalized their sin, who's formed a religion around that sin, and they move to such a place that God becomes dead to them, and although God is in the room, they refuse to acknowledge him as such. That's the worst kind of rejection. It's one thing to not acknowledge God as God, it's another thing to not acknowledge him when he's in the room. That's a problem. Now, my wife said this, and I didn't agree with it, and so I thought about it. She goes, "I think this second non-acknowledgment in verse 32 is worse." And I'm like, it's the same thing. But it is different: to not acknowledge God as God but still acknowledge God, it's worse to not acknowledge him. If my wife comes in the room and I don't acknowledge her for a year, that won't go well for me, and it's the utter form of disrespect.
Why is it the utter form of disrespect? Because we were created communal beings, and we basically look at the Creator and know that he is in all places at all times, and we reject him, and we pretend like he ain't even in the room anymore.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 1:00:16
Many of us live our days like this,
Point 5You were washed: God saves sinners
Ladies and gentlemen. This is the worst kind of problem. I'll close with this. 1 Corinthians 6:9–11 says this: "Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed." That's the hope. You were what? Some of you were that. But here's the hope: "You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." That's the good news. In other words, God is in the business of saving sinners.
I hope today that you'll allow him to save you before the consequences of sin become irreversible and there's no longer any hope.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 1:01:37
That's my hope today.
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