Point 1Seek the truth for yourself
We are definitely entering into, in the next coming weeks and months, some of the most highly debated scriptures in the Bible, and so I want to do my best to try to maybe speak to some theological disagreements that happen, not for the sake of telling you exactly where I stand, but rather presenting the different arguments and then having you come to a full understanding yourself of where you stand. And I really think we have done the church an injustice to some degree, because we have spent so long telling people what to believe that we have disabled people from the ability of thinking critically and coming to a decision on their own. And so I'm not going to do it this week, because I have a specific thing I want to focus on, but in coming weeks I'm going to begin to present you different arguments around the Scripture, theological arguments really, that break down into two large groups. One is Wesleyan-Arminian and then the other is Calvinist, and those two different positions. Now I think that at the end of the day, on one issue in the Bible you may land on one side, and on another issue in the Bible you may land on another side, but the reality, what really my goal is to help present positions and then give you the resources to know how to seek truth yourself. I think that's what's most important. Know that some of these issues where denominations disagree theologically, they're not main issue things. They're really what I would call, hold on a second, non-essentials.
Sorry, I'm passing a kidney stone, so I'm not thinking straight. Having a hard time this morning, so just give me grace as I try to get through here. Non-essentials. And so those non-essentials, there will be conversation around things like baptism, like sanctification, like the work of the Holy Spirit, and different positions, but I think it's still important for us to work these things out and develop critical thinking skills and know how to go about seeking out what you believe to be the truth in regards to some of these subjects. Okay, Romans 1:24–27 says, "Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie." Now I think that is extremely pertinent for all people at all times. We have been guilty of exchanging the truth about God for a lie, some of us more innocent than others because we're not in the Bible so we don't know the truth, but even if you're living a lie and you're not in the Bible and you don't know the truth, it's still your fault. We have access to the truth of God in ways that many other people on the earth have never had access, and the fact that if you today then are living a lie is not because you're ignorant, it's because you choose to be ignorant, and there is a difference between the two of those, right? You're still to blame. So your inactivity of seeking truth when it's available on your bookshelf and it's building up dust on your bookshelf in your house, your ability to do that holds you accountable whether you do or not. It holds you accountable, and you've rejected truth because you simply won't seek it out. I think I posted sometime this week, I don't know, I've been posting a lot lately, but
I posted sometime this week that basically not reading the Bible is like putting your finger up to your mouth and shushing God.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 4:17
And many of us really hold this position and this attitude towards the things of God. We're kind of like, we don't really want you to speak into our life, I got plenty other things speaking in my life right now, God, just shut up. And so we kind of take that position passively in our life, because they "exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever." Notice here that the issue is worship, right? They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and they worshiped and served themselves rather than God. That sounds familiar in America, doesn't it? "For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women"; notice here it starts with women. I think this is strange, particularly when you hear the percentages of homosexuality, those practicing homosexuality on the earth today. When you hear the percentages, the women's is considerably lower than men who practice homosexuality today, and actually the percentage is kind of staggering. I was actually shocked by this. I'm kind of curious, I want to know if they made it up, because, you know, I'm still judging the world based on my teen years, not the percentages as they are today, those who are practicing homosexuals, or at least they are professing homosexuals, right? So when we talk about that, there's a lot of people, I think the numbers are higher actually than they say, because there's a lot of people who haven't professed to be a homosexual yet. All right: "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." Now let me stop right here and say this. I'm going to say this and then I'm going to jump out of this homosexual sin lifestyle, it seems, I'm not going to jump out of it, because I feel like although Paul is drawing specific attention to this, I want to jump out and talk about the root issue that's causing this, and then we'll come back and we'll deal with that, right? Because with every sin in life there is a root issue that is the cause of that sin, and I feel like it is important for us to understand what that root issue is. But before I get there, I want to stop here and I want to say this. This is really important.
In the text here, there are Christians and non-Christians alike, there are atheists and Christians in the church alike, who hold the position that what it's saying here in verses 26 through 27, that this is directly speaking, this is a position held in the church today, this is directly speaking to heterosexual men and women who naturally desire someone of the opposite sex but then are given over, okay, to desiring people of the same sex. So in other words, there are Christians today and homosexuals alike who will say that this does not say that it is bad to be together with someone of the same sex, and the reason for that is because that's a natural desire for me. I naturally desire men, I'm a man, I naturally desire men, so that's not unnatural. So this is only talking, this is a position that this is only talking about heterosexuals who then begin to desire the opposite of what they naturally desire. Ladies and gentlemen, I'll just stop right here and say there is no way that's what this means. No way. And I could spend today, I could spend eight hours today biblically dismantling that position, but people will believe what they believe, and a lot of us, we have substituted truth for a lie so we can continue in our sin. What's even crazier is we substitute
Point 2Sin disorders worship, belief, desire and behavior
Truth for a lie and then we say it's truth. It's insane, it's insane. So I want to do this. I want to give you four things that really lead up to this behavior that we are seeing in verses 26 and 27, this acting out, and it is extreme behavior, right? And Paul really uses the most extreme thing he can think of. Now you need to know, in Rome, I think what was it, Brook, 13 out of the 14 emperors in Rome were, am I correct so far?
For what? Yeah, of the first 15 emperors, 14 of them were homosexual.
So when Paul writes this letter to Rome, it's like he's punching the leadership in Rome in the eye, and this is bold.
This is bold. This is a massive issue. Now some of us today go, oh well, you know, it's never been this crazy. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, see, your TikTok and your Facebook and your Twitter make this seem like an issue that has never been an issue to this magnitude before. This has been an issue where entire cities were so depraved God sent brimstone from the sky and killed them all. This has been an issue. Our whole cities were taken over by this issue. This has been an issue. And just in case you didn't know, your American worldview is not what's happening in other parts of the world, and in other parts of the world this stuff don't happen. We have given this behavior a bed, and we've endorsed it and said it's okay, and it is not okay. So I want to talk about the root issue that leads to this one thing. It seems like it's just picking on one sin, but it is really a symbol of how far we will go from exchanging our worship of God to worshiping ourselves. It's a perfect example right there. There are four things I'm going to go through quickly. I feel like if you go to verse 21 and you go all the way through 32, you will see this, that four different things happen. All right, sin, first of all, disorders our worship. I mentioned it; you see it all the way from verse 21, even further back. Verse 25 says this: "They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is forever praised." What Romans 1 is showing us here is that because of disordered worship, we've exchanged God's pattern for our life for our preferences. Okay, there are two P's that we need to focus on. One, God has created a pattern for our lives, which we've exchanged for our preferences. This is huge. All of us, without exception, have exchanged God's pattern for our preferences in some way or another.
We have disordered worship in our hearts. We spurn the glory of God in our hearts, and it affects the way we think. How many of you know that sin has affected the way you think? It affects it just being in the presence of a world where sin is present.
It is amazing, the longer you're in sin, the more you begin to justify it, the more you think it's okay.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 12:34
Why? Because your mind has been turned over to think crazy things like that, and the very thing that's destroying your life, dismantling your life, creating divisions in your life, wreaking havoc in your life, you long for more, although you know it's destroying you.
Only a depraved mind does that. Only a depraved mind continues to long for something and participate in something habitually, because it just doesn't make any logical sense. If I'm eating something and it's killing me, I'm going to stop eating that. It's amazing how we deal with sin.
We have disordered worship in our hearts, we've spurned the glory of God in our hearts, and it affects the way we think, it affects the way we feel, it affects the way we behave. It's the whole point of Romans chapter 1 through chapter 3. That's why he says in Romans 3:23, kind of a crescendo of all this, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." All of us have.
We just choose to do wrong. A baby's cute until a baby isn't a baby anymore, and then something happens and they just start sinning.
That's, we have all sinned. We have been disordered to it. So sin disorders our worship, that's the first problem. Number two, sin disorders our belief. Sin has disordered all of our worship; what happens as a result of that is sin then disorders our belief. We talked about this last week: "Their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God." They exchanged the truth of God for a lie. It changed what they believed.
The longer you're in sin, the more it will change your belief.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 14:58
And don't think just because you're in church that you're covered. I know a lot of people sitting in church who have voted for this to continue in our world.
You know why? Because our beliefs have been changed, because our worship's been affected, and because God's pattern doesn't really matter to us anymore, really just our preference to us. Come on now, listen to me, it's important. Sin, number three, disorders our desires. Sin disorders our worship, sin disorders our belief, and sin disorders our desires. We talked about this last week, God kept saying, I'm going to give you over to your desires. I'm going to speed, I'm going to speed up, and I'm going to put these last two somewhat together. I think they kind of go together, so desires and behavior go together, that's the third and the fourth one, but there's such a mingling between desires and behavior, because at what point does desire become sinful and how does that desire then lead to a behavior, right? This is the trouble that we have in the church. I want to put these two together and we're going to run through a couple things, and I just want us then to step back and to think about it. Sin disorders desire. Romans 1:26 and 24 says this: "God gave them over to shameful lusts." "God gave them up in the sinful desires of their heart to sexual impurity." Did you catch that? He gave them over to their desires. How many of you think that's a little concerning, because your desires are not so great? That's concerning. That should concern us. Only two people have some troubling desires in here today. We have exchanged, in our day, we exchanged sexual responsibility for supposed rights.
All right, we have a responsibility when it comes to sexual things, and that responsibility is not just to ourself. Amen?
Let me get off homosexuals for a while and let me just talk about the fact that we have in the church close to 70 percent of men in the church, who are professing Christians, looking at pornography every day. Let's talk about that for a second. You don't just have a responsibility to yourself, you have a responsibility to the women who are objectified in that, who are someone else's daughter.
But we don't really want to talk about our responsibility as Christians. Let's not get all serious and let's not talk about our responsibility.
Don't make me be responsible for someone else, because the moment that I have to be responsible for someone else, then I can't do what I want,
Pastor Shawn Gray · 18:16
and see, that then is the problem, because we want to have rights over responsibility, and that's the problem. We want to be driven by our right to our desires, whatever that causes, whoever that hurts, we don't care, we just want. We want. And when it comes to desires, we have exchanged responsibility for those desires for the rights of our desires. We have equated desires that we have with rights we possess. What we've done is we have not exchanged our sexual responsibility, not only exchanged our sexual responsibility for supposed rights, but we do what we desire and we don't care who it hurts.
This is where sin takes you, your desires take you. What it does is it stops a Christian from being responsible.
So the first three: sin disorders our worship, sin disorders our belief, and sin disorders our desire. The final one is this, and I believe the third and the fourth one are so closely tied together it's hard to even separate them. The fourth one is sin disorders our behavior. We finally come from what I believe is called by many commentators religion to reprobation, and that is the filthy pit of man's existence, many commentators will say.
And you will notice in 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 then if you go to verse 28 it says, "God gave them up to a reprobate mind."
In other words, man starts with knowledge, revelation, then he moves to rejection, then rationalization, then to religion, and finally to reprobation.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 20:35
A reprobate mind. Notice he starts with revelation, he moves to rejection, he moves to rationalization, he then forms a religion that allows him to rationalize and reject the revelation that he has, that has been revealed to him, and he creates a movement and he calls it godly, and then God finally turns them over to a reprobate mind. How many horrible atrocities in the world have been done by the religious?
You know why? Because they had the truth, they rejected the truth, they rationalized that what they were living was true when it wasn't true, and they created a religion to do all sorts of atrocities in the name of God. Are you with me today? And then after that God's like, whoa. Now what we do is we see this movement from rejection and rationalization, creating a movement and calling it God, now trying to win people over to do the same thing they did, to approve of it and say it's godly. Now I don't have time to talk about this, I'm going to talk about this some next week, but there is a book written in the sixties that basically, you would think that it was actually going back and telling what the LGBTQIA LGBTQIA1 plus is, sorry, these keep adding stuff to it, I don't even know what there is. I think it's an A1 plus or an AI plus, I don't even know, i'll have to look it up, make sure. But this movement was, there was a man who wrote a book, and you would think that it was a current book of what the homosexual lifestyle, LGBTQ plus, did to indoctrinate and get so many people to be okay with homosexuality. I'm going to talk about this next week very specifically. It wasn't, it was kind of an idea of what needed to be done for people in America and then in the world to accept homosexuality. The first step was desensitization.
It goes into specifics about the type of media that's used to desensitize. How many, you know, this isn't just for homosexuality, this is for all things, this is for violence online, this is for all kinds of demonic activity we see and celebrate during October. This is, are you with me? Nudity, all kinds of improprieties, all kinds of cussing. Now there's nothing, right, at all, we would just be happy to see a rated R movie nowadays. It's all mature, and so we can't even see TV syndication on Hulu or Netflix or anything that's not mature, and so we've become so desensitized. This is kind of what we do. So the way they desensitize, they fill you with information. The second one is jamming. I don't have time to talk about that, but it is basically summarized, they're just jamming it down your throat and it's constantly always in front of you and blah. And then the last part is, so desensitization, jamming, and then conversion. Now what you would think of when you would think of conversion is that we're trying, that the LGBTQ plus, that what they're trying to do is convert people from being heterosexual to homosexual, but that's not their goal. Their goal is to get believers in the church to be okay with it, and then they give specific steps about how they accomplish that. It is amazing. Till now it's a very divisive issue in the church. The Methodist Church just split in half over this issue, literally, because it's an issue, because there's a lot of converts in the church to sin, and so now the church is creating movements. Are you with me? And the way that it started was they had true revelation, but then they rejected the revelation, and then they rationalized that their rejection was actually biblical, so then they formed a religion around it and they said it was okay, and then eventually God will turn them over to them through the depraved mind.
And let me tell you, when you get there, watch out. Watch out, because a depraved mind is so far gone there is no hope for repentance.
We should be concerned about that. Okay, so I'm gonna do this and then I'm going to go through this pretty quick. Sin disorders our worship, sin disorders our beliefs, sin disorders our desire, and I want to focus on this here for the rest of our time: sin disorders our behavior. It disorders our behavior.
God gave them up. God gave them up. God gave them up, in three verses, and as I pointed out last time, is used in many places in the New Testament to speak of turning someone over to court to be judged for final judgment, turning someone over to a punishment or an executioner, actually.
God literally gives men up. He abandons them. Listen, this is final. Gives them over to the executioner to be beheaded. That's what this term is used for.
Point 3God's wrath is giving people over
Now mark this. This then becomes the fulfillment, in my opinion, of verse 18, where we hear about the wrath of God. 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.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 27:20
He abandons them.
He lets them go. And as we pointed out, as I pointed out last week, the evil of our society is the wrath of God at work. One way, and one way, commentators say, that you can know that God is alive and active and still sharper than any two-edged sword in our world, that he is not just checked out, is that the world is being turned more and more over to sin, and that is his wrath at work. I'd rather see some good stuff and think that he's alive that way, but ladies and gentlemen, as we learned from Pastor Bruce, this is the good stuff, because who wants to go to heaven where all sorts of sin destroys lives?
Who wants to go to a heaven where tears fall because people are broken by sin? Who wants to go to heaven and be a slave to sin and not a slave to God? What kind of heaven is that? So God is beginning to unfold his wrath on mankind because he is preparing a place for us where sin does not reign. People say if we keep going the way we're going, God is going to judge America, and I would submit to you that based on Romans 1, God is already judging America. It won't happen one day, he's already doing it. 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 sinful willfulness. The evil of society, then, is the outer working of the wrath of God. Listen, it says in this section, not only will men, from verse 18 to the end, not only will men do wrong, but they will encourage other people to do wrong.
Think of our policies today. Think of the agenda today circling around murder.
Not only is it okay for me to murder my baby, but I want to make it okay for everyone else to, and then encourage them to, so it doesn't ruin their opportunity to go to college. Are you with me today? This is a trigger-inducing sermon and I apologize, but Paul wrote this a long time ago, but we need to begin to understand that it is not just an issue. And people like, listen, you should see what I see right now. You should see it, because that right there, what I said about abortion, that made people start stirring in their seat and scratching themselves in nervous ticks, but if it bothers you that it bothers God, then you're the one with the problem, not God. And I'm actually okay, because I'm going to stand true on God's word. I'm okay making you uncomfortable, because if you're uncomfortable and you don't come back, people can still get saved, still get healed, and God can still move, because contrary to what a lot of people believe today, you're not God. But if God doesn't come here today, then we have a problem, and so our sermons need to be more pushing around pleasing God and making him happy, proclaiming his word. Listen, and I understand the whole 90s movement was, let's pull pagan non-believers and ask them what will get them into church and let's do that. And I understand we did that and we really messed up, because we created a church that made pagans happy, not that made God happy, and the point of church is not to make pagans happy.
The point of church is to get God here.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 31:32
That's the point of church. It's not even to get you here.
There's an audience of one, right? That was interesting, that wasn't on my notes, but I got a kidney stone, so if I'm mean, blame it on that little rock flying through me like a bat out of hell, like it's bad. So God is, I believe, giving men up to the consequences of their rejection. He abandons them, he lets them go, and America is in trouble. What is man's punishment, then? It is compounding, it is escalating, it's snowballing sinfulness with all of its attendant atrocities. That is God's wrath at work. Listen, don't think that it's boom and then you'll notice it.
It slowly cooks you to death. It becomes hotter and hotter until all of a sudden you realize you're standing in the pits of hell and you ask the question, how did I get here?
Pastor Shawn Gray · 32:33
That's what sin does to you. It's slow.
I've said it before, the devil doesn't come to you and say black is white.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 32:44
He comes to you and says black is dark, and you're like, yup, dark is obscure, yup, obscure is light. Man, the devil's smart. And then the devil comes to you and says light is white, and somehow or another you would have never believed that black is white, but if he takes you a synonym at a time, he can move you to belief that what you're doing is good and it is right, there is no darkness in what you're doing, you're simply living in the light of God. And then you'll end up being in God's light, but it will be a wrathful light for all eternity, and it will be hot and it will not be fun. Now we know the effects of sin. We know what sin does to people. It degrades men, it debases the image of God. I wrote a bunch of these things down from some of my reading this week and you just gotta track with me here. It degrades men, it debases the image of God, it strips man of his glory, it pulls off his coat of arms, as it were, it robs him of his dignity, it steals his peace, and in its place it gives him fear and torment and guilt. It causes trembling, it convulses the conscience, and some people kill themselves to find comfort from the torment of sin. Sin destroys relationships, it rots a good name, it wipes out a marriage, it utterly devastates a family, it is a debauchery of a city and a nation. Thomas Watson said this: "Sin puts gravel in our bread and wormwood in our cup." Bernard said this, Bernard, some say Bernard, somebody, Bernard, I say Bernard because I think of a dog, but it is most people pronounce it Bernard, I don't know why. He says this: "Sin is a death always dying." And so man is turned over to the law of his own sinfulness and its compounded consequences, and people really don't like it. Honestly, they don't love it. People don't like it. They run off to psychiatrists, to psychologists, to analysts, they run off to take a vacation to try to forget. How many people are taking vacation now just to forget COVID, just forget the life they're living. They travel, they entertain themselves, they drink, they take drugs, they seek alleviation of the consequences of sin in every possible way, but it will never
Point 4Only Jesus saves from sin's consequences
Bury the consequences.
Only Jesus Christ saves. So you are either saved from the consequences or you are given over to the consequences.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 35:57
It is one or the other, and Jesus is your only hope. And I know in a world where we say, hey, there's many ways you can be saved, I came here today to say there's only one way to be saved, and his name is Jesus Christ, and I don't care what anybody says, that is the only way. Some people kill themselves to find comfort from the torment sin destroys. Lives, in fact, the highest suicide rate in America among any profession is that of psychiatrists, because they don't only have their problem, they have your problem now and fifty clients' problems, and man was not built to bear men's problems. God was built to bear men's problems, who not only can't help them, their other people, they can't even help themselves. Where does my help come from? Where else but the Lord? Period. That's where it comes from. And this is the judgment of God upon mankind, that there is no way out of the inevitable consequences of man's sinfulness. There's no alleviation, there's no freedom from the bondage, there's no limiting of the pain, there's no easing of the guilt.
Don't turn to sin to ease sin's guilt. You're compounding the problem.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 37:24
It is amazing to me that men will turn to sin to alleviate the guilt of the sin they have performed. You can't perform another sin to alleviate the guilt from another sin. It's crazy. Wouldn't you agree that's some debate, thinking we should have much need to be concerned today? Like my wife broke down in tears the other day, I literally thought she was, I like, you know, I'm not saying she's never cried, I'm just saying not very much, not like that. I thought Landon had died. I was making sure the kids were alive, texting him, you still alive up there? Like, I don't, you know, it's reading the Bible, brokenhearted, because we see this in people's lives, it breaks our heart.
There's no easing of the guilt because they're turned over to wrath, and so it is the divine act of judgment on them that they are doomed to compound their sinfulness. And listen, it actually says God turns them over to sin that sin might become their punishment. The very thing you long to do with your desires becomes the very thing he turns you over to that will destroy you. That's just crazy. This is crazy.
Now let me say at this point that there's some, what I believe to be, honey in the lion, in the carcass of a lion. I believe there's some honey in there, so let me give you that. God lets man go, this is my opinion, God lets man go so that man can run to the utter despair of extreme despondency and in the midst of that find that he has no resource without God, so that he might cry out to God, who will hear and who will answer. Now I'm going to pause here for a second and say be careful about tempting God in regards to this, because there is such a thing as an apostate. Now where does someone turned over become an apostate, where there is no hope of return? We don't know the answer to that, so if you want to test God, you're doing it with your eternal soul hanging in the balance. I say repent and turn towards God and turn away from sin, because if you don't, you run the risk of slowly being cooked alive and one day standing in hell and wondering how you got there. This is not something to play games with. But I will say this, because I believe there is, somewhere in there, a light, I think, biblically, that God sees people get to this place and he provides hope for us in his word, that when we cry out to God he will answer. Who comes unto him but the one of a broken and contrite heart, the one who is begging in his spirit, the one who is hungering and thirsting for righteousness, sick of his sin? And so Isaiah 19:22 says he smites in order that he might heal, or Psalm 119:71 says, "It is good for me that I was afflicted." Sometimes, ladies and gentlemen, that's what it takes.
Some of you are praying to get out of what, quite honestly, God has released you into, and your hope is not the removal of the thing he's released to get you to turn to him.
Your hope is him.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 41:38
But some people forget who we're praying to, because we're so fixated on what we want, and what we want becomes the altar we worship around rather than the one we're asking what we want from. That's good stuff. Good, John, yes, get it. It's good, because we worship more the thing we want than the God who gives it, and some of us will never get what we want, because what we want has become God, and if he gives you what you want, you'll worship around it like a bunch of crazy Israelites in the middle of the dark and fire, and you'll make a golden calf out of that thing. And some of you don't get what you want not because God doesn't want to bless you with it, but because you worship it. That's good stuff, man. That's good stuff. I should have a kidney stone more often. That's good, that's really good. Now Paul wants to get very specific, so then we move into the desire part, and he uses homosexuality to talk about this. So here we go, everybody pull up your suspenders and take a deep breath, this is going to get rough. It's going to get rough.
How does man defile and dishonor the body? Paul gives the example of homosexuality through vile affections, in other words illicit loves. And how far does this go?
What is the supreme illustration of this? How far does man's corruption go? What is the ultimate expression of a defiled heart in regards to sexuality?
It's a monstrous vice, and it says in verse 26, "For even their women did exchange the natural use for that which is against nature, and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working that which is not fitting, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was fitting." I like the word recompense, so I use that translation, recompense. It just makes me, man, I like it. This makes me want to chuckle every time, I don't know why. Recompense. Anyway, they do what is not fitting, but God lets them suffer what is fitting for such evil, and then what is not fitting becomes what is fitting for God. Notice here that what is not fitting for God is holy in God's hands.
That's how holy God is, God can take what is unholy and it become holy as he uses it to punish us. That's how holy he is, that unholy things in his hand become holy and used for holiness' sake. That's crazy, that's crazy. That's how unholy we are, that we can take what is holy and we can make it unholy. We can take religion, which is the worship of God, and we can move from revelation all the way to making a religion that's against God, because we're good at taking holy things and turning them and making them unholy.
The good news: one thing you can't make unholy is Jesus Christ.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 45:00
So when he touches you don't make him unholy, he makes you holy in his presence. He wins. That's good news. That's good news.
Now Paul wants to show us how sinful man is in a very concise way, so when he wants to demonstrate these vile affections that rise out of the human heart, he picks the worst, most disgraceful, disgusting, degrading passion there is, homosexuality, because it is not a perversion, it is an inversion.
It goes further than perversion. The words refer to an unnatural sexual relationship. Let's look at verse 26 and see the women first of all. The women do this. You might be interested to know that according to the latest statistics, 13 percent of all males are homosexual. These are professing. Thirteen. How many of you that shocks? Some of you, it shocked me a lot, right? That shocked me a lot.
Five percent of females are homosexual. Five. That's why I think it's interesting that Paul starts with the women. There seems to be some resistance, or more of a resistance on the part of women, although that may be breaking down in the statistics, and although that may be wildly increasing, it seems that women are resistant, and here's what some commentators believe, why: because of the nature of their creation as a responder to men. By design, women were created from men and they respond to men, okay? That's what one commentator believes, and because they are led rather than the leaders. This is okay biblically for us, but, you know, women's rights, you know, women's movements, like, I'm all for women having value. I'm not all for women having biblical male rights, and I'm not for men having biblical women's rights.
P.S., men can't have babies. It ain't a right, God didn't design it that way. All right, I think that's good enough there.
So women are not leaders. The Bible says very clear that men lead the home and they should love like Christ, and women should submit and love like Christ. They come along a little more slowly, in the end. That's what commentators believe the reason is, that is why Paul says this: "For even their women did this," because there is something especially shocking about women doing this. And when it says "they did exchange the natural use for that which is against nature," Paul uses a very well-established term for sexual intercourse, it's chresis, and that is exactly what he's talking about. They carry on a sexual activity contrary to the intention of the Creator.
It's against nature, it's against the God-given creation. I mean, frankly, folks, I think First Corinthians 11:14 says when a man has long hair it dishonors and disgraces himself. This is where that idea comes from, that man goes against the very way that God made them. Newsflash, animals don't have a problem with homosexuality, those that have a soul, and how they will do what you will with that, but that's concerning, right? That's concerning. Why do animals not do this but man does this? Because there's something more spiritual, spiritually sinister at work here than our nature. It's just important that we understand that it's against nature, it's against God's given creation. That's the same idea of the term used here in Corinthians, men have long hair, though it's a different context. It means that they do something that is utterly opposite the way God made them, and the word "even" is just a potent little word, the pure, more modest, responsive sex, even they come to such inversion. Do you know that animals don't do this, and in all of the studies of animals they never found homosexual animals? Hodge, the commentator of a century ago, said Paul first refers to the degradation of females among the heathen because they are always the last to be affected in the decay of morals, and their corruption is therefore proof that all virtue is completely lost. So in other words, in society, watch when the women begin to become immoral and you will see the utter decay of all that society. Now I want to give you just a little footnote and then I'm going to drop a bomb and then I'm going to leave you with some stats that might stagger you, and then I want to end this next week with more information. I'm just giving the root of the issue here.
If you look back at verse 27, if you want to get the full idea of homosexuality, verse 27 says, "They burned in their lust one toward another."
This is descriptive of another level of lust among homosexuals that is not known among heterosexuals. It's another level.
There is a burning that is beyond description, and really, I did some research that I can't even say things up here.
When we talk about the burning of homosexuals, I can't even say it. It's obscene, it's obscene what doctors deal with in regards to this. It's obscene.
It's a burning that enough is never enough. It's obscene what doctors find in homosexual men. It's obscene, and that's all I can say. It's all I can say. There is a burning that is beyond description, and I'm not going to get graphic, otherwise I might lose my job, but you really have to educate yourself, adults, to understand that there is a level of lust that is incomprehensible.
It is not uncommon, for example, for the average homosexual male, this is a stat, to have 300 sexual partners a year. It's obscene.
It's a burning that will not be quenched.
Helpern, actually, Helpern, who's a coroner, his last name's Helpern, anyway, who is the coroner for the City of New york, who's not a Christian but is a secular coroner, wrote a book after retiring, and I quote, he said this, and I quote, "I did 60,000 autopsies and I am not one to make a judgment on lifestyle, but I would warn anyone who chooses a homosexual lifestyle to get ready for the consequences that come." Sixty thousand autopsies. He said, "I can take one look at a corpse from five feet away and tell you if it was killed by a homosexual, because of the massive mutilations in those bodies through autopsy." It is a sexual desire that cannot be quenched, and God turns us over to that. There is a burning level of lust that is beyond anything that a heterosexual understands. Helpern says there are frequent murders and other crimes that are beyond description. It is not normal.
It's an inversion. It is the most abnormal relationship imaginable. And ladies and gentlemen, if you can make it through this week and next week specifically, don't not come because you know I'm talking about this again, but if you can make it through next week and think somewhere in your mind that this pleases God, we are not reading the same Bible and we are not looking at the same stats. What family member, parents who are trying to figure out how to love your child who's come out as being a homosexual, what parent wants to turn their child over to 300 other sexual partners this year?
I'm afraid the church is guilty of loving people to hell. That's what I'm afraid of, and it's a massive problem when the church doesn't even care. And I believe that we, the Christian church in America, flies ourselves under the banner of God and his truth, but we are a different religion. Many churches are a different religion.
We've moved from revelation to rejection to rationalizing sin to forming a religion around it, and it will be the fall of a nation, and the fall won't happen because of anything other than God turned us over to a reprobate mind.
And can I say this: there ain't nobody you can elect that can help us out of this.
Well, I'm a Democrat. I beg to differ. If we could get some of these policies... Well, no, you're wrong, and your hope should not be found in something less than Jesus Christ and his righteousness, and your hope isn't going to be found in this church or your small group, or your hope will not be found in you. Only God. Well, we love you.
Thankful for your word. We know that you are the one who applies this to our hearts, Lord. This is a chance. There are many of us here today that are heterosexual in nature, but we have other issues. We talked about root issues, that we have got our worship out of order, we have got our belief out of order, we have got our desires out of order, and many of us our behavior is out of order. And although Paul uses homosexuality as the utter display of moving into a totally depraved mind where there is no hope, some of us have begun to spiral into sin that is unpleasing to God. I pray that you challenge our hearts this morning with this word, in your name
Point 5Respond today and turn to Christ
We pray, amen. I want to do this real quickly. I want to give three minutes to respond here. Here's how we're going to do this, we're going to begin doing this each week. There are two different ways you can respond this morning, well, there's three different ways. One way is, I don't care. I served my time today, I came to church, but I really don't, I don't know how this benefits me, I don't know how this helps me, and I'm really, quite honestly, I'm not really sure I care, because I want to do what I want to do. That's one way to respond. Here's another way to respond: I didn't realize Jesus was my only hope, and I've been going to this, that, the other, trying to figure out how to find hope. I've been turning to sin to try to remedy the consequences of sin. I'm miserable, I'm broken, I'm hopeless. You say that Jesus is my hope and I need hope. Maybe you're someone who for the first time wants to turn your life over to Christ. I'd say that's a miracle. You don't need some special altar call. We're going to open it up, maybe you can come here, maybe you can kneel at your seat, maybe you can sit quietly, maybe whatever, you can respond however you want, your way, you want.
I just want you to know no one has to coach you through what your heart is already doing.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 59:37
If you long for this, call out to Christ, and if you do, he saves. He saves. No, you don't get to serve two masters. You don't get to love yourself and love God.
You don't get to worship yourself and worship God.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 1:00:09
You don't get to desire what you desire and not care about what God desires. If you come to him, you repent and you turn from your sins and you trust in him. It doesn't mean you will never make a mistake, but it means the old man is dead and the new man has come. You've been made into the new man. Then there's a third response. Third response is, I've been in the church a long time and I believe I've been practicing under another religion, one I fashioned for myself. I've denied the truth and I've created my own truth and I've said that it's godly, and it's not godly, and I feel convicted about it and I need to turn to the Lord this morning where I sit. Some of you realize your worship's out of order, or your beliefs out of order, or your desires out of order. Let me tell you, believers in Christ don't get these things out of order.
We can take a misstep, but God directs us back, so when we miss that, we feel bad about it.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 1:00:59
That's what's happening today. If you're a Christian, you feel bad about it and you want to get back in line with God, and you can meet God where you're at now.
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