- 19 hours ago
In this video, the Common Sense Bible Study crew review Romans 1:18-32, beginning to zero in on the meaning of righteousness, justice, faith, faithfulness, and sin as used in the Bible. This passage also highlights idolatry and homosexuality. We usually think of these as victimless sins of self-indulgence, but that's not what God says about it. From the beginning, his whole law has applied to all of mankind, and he will hold all people responsible for their disobedience.
From Jay Carper at Common Sense Bible Study (https://CommonSenseBibleStudy.com) and American Torah (https://www.AmericanTorah.com).
This content is free, but I accept contributions via Paypal at https://jaycarper.com/paypal.
Follow me on X: https://jaycarper.com/twitter
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Follow me on Whole Bible Community: https://jaycarper.com/ttn
From Jay Carper at Common Sense Bible Study (https://CommonSenseBibleStudy.com) and American Torah (https://www.AmericanTorah.com).
This content is free, but I accept contributions via Paypal at https://jaycarper.com/paypal.
Follow me on X: https://jaycarper.com/twitter
Follow me on Facebook: https://jaycarper.com/fbat
Follow me on Whole Bible Community: https://jaycarper.com/ttn
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LearningTranscript
00:00:00All right, welcome to Common Sense Bible Studies, a journey through the book of Romans.
00:00:08We are at Romans chapter 1, verse 18.
00:00:11This is our third week in Romans, and we're still in chapter 1.
00:00:14I'm actually going to back up to chapter 16, which we covered last week, and I'm going
00:00:19to read to the end of the chapter.
00:00:21For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone
00:00:25who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
00:00:28For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the
00:00:33righteous shall live by faith.
00:00:35For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness, and unrighteousness
00:00:41of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
00:00:44For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
00:00:48For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly
00:00:53perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made, so they
00:00:57are without excuse.
00:00:59For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they
00:01:04became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
00:01:08Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for
00:01:12images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
00:01:16Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring
00:01:20of their bodies among themselves.
00:01:22Because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature
00:01:26rather than the creator, who is blessed forever.
00:01:30Amen.
00:01:31For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.
00:01:34For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature, and
00:01:38the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for
00:01:42one another.
00:01:44Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty of their error.
00:01:49And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to
00:01:54do what ought not to be done.
00:01:56They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.
00:02:01They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.
00:02:04They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of
00:02:10evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
00:02:14Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to
00:02:18die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them.
00:02:23All right.
00:02:24There are some strong words there.
00:02:26But before we get into that, I want to go all the way back to verse 17.
00:02:31And I want to talk about this one again.
00:02:34Let me review some of what we've already gone through.
00:02:38So this is kind of how I've divided up the first few chapters.
00:02:43I may adjust that as we go, but that's kind of how we're taking it so far.
00:02:49And we've pretty much lined up along with this.
00:02:52We did verses 1 through 7 in about two hours, 8 through 17 in two hours.
00:02:56I'm pretty sure we'll be able to get through the rest of chapter 1 tonight.
00:02:59I'm not even sure it'll take two hours, but we'll see.
00:03:02Some of the words that we've had to define, apostle, one who is sent to act as an agent
00:03:08of another, the gospel, and this is the news of the establishment of the kingdom of God
00:03:13and the attendant restoration of man to full relationship with him.
00:03:17And that includes all of the implications of that.
00:03:20Forgiveness of sin, healing, salvation.
00:03:24You know, the Messiah who had to come and enable this restoration to happen.
00:03:30Then there's grace, which is favor bestowed apart from obligation.
00:03:36Whether it's earned or not, God doesn't owe us any grace or any favor, but he gives it anyways.
00:03:43And name is the sum of a person's character and reputation and not just the label that we
00:03:48apply to somebody.
00:03:50But I want to go back to verse 17 because there's another couple of words here.
00:03:54Well, at least one word that I want to define and another concept here that I want to get
00:03:59to, we kind of touched on this last week, but it says for in the, for in the gospel, the
00:04:04righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith or from faith for faith, as it is
00:04:09written, the righteous shall live by faith.
00:04:12So I want to talk about righteousness.
00:04:15What do you think righteousness is in your opinion?
00:04:18Anybody feel free to speak up.
00:04:20Doing the works of God based on the word of God.
00:04:22Yeah, essentially righteousness is the same as living according to God's will, doing what
00:04:29God wants, you know, obeying his commandments, repenting from sins, forgiving each other.
00:04:35All of these things are components of righteousness.
00:04:39But then what does it mean here that it is the righteousness of God?
00:04:45What does that mean?
00:04:46Scott, you have a thought?
00:04:47Oh, I was going to say right standing, but I like the definition that was giving, given
00:04:53earlier better.
00:04:54Yeah.
00:04:55But if it's the righteousness of God, does that mean it's righteousness that belongs to
00:04:59God or righteousness that is bestowed by God or according to God?
00:05:04That is God.
00:05:05What does this mean?
00:05:07When I look at some of the other translations here, they all say pretty much without exception,
00:05:14the righteousness, righteousness of God, and it seems that this is, that it means the righteousness
00:05:20that is an attribute of God, not a righteousness that he defines, but a righteousness that is
00:05:27actually his.
00:05:29So if righteousness is obedience to God or behaving in a right manner or a moral manner,
00:05:36what is the righteousness of God?
00:05:38How does God obey God?
00:05:41Well, it's his essence.
00:05:42His essence exudes right standing is a mess.
00:05:48Yeah.
00:05:48I think when you're saying essence, I think that that does get to the essence of the point.
00:05:55You know, I got to say that, you know, my, my sense of humor is, is very dry and slow.
00:06:00I'm trying to make this more interesting and, you know, try to be a little more lively, but
00:06:05it's a challenge.
00:06:07And when I try to be funny, I have to laugh at my own jokes.
00:06:11So you all know, I'm telling a joke.
00:06:13So righteousness of God, God is, he's consistent.
00:06:18He is who he is.
00:06:19And, you know, when God introduces himself to Moses, he says, I am that I am.
00:06:24I am who I, who, and what I am.
00:06:27There's nobody who can name me, nobody who can define me.
00:06:29And God also says that he never changes.
00:06:34So if God gives us a law or a standard of behavior, then the standard of behavior is
00:06:41really a part of who God is.
00:06:43There's no, it's not something external to him, not some arbitrary set of rules just
00:06:50to make sure that we're jumping through the hoops and, you know, doing what we're told.
00:06:53So the laws that God gives are defined by God's character.
00:06:58So the righteousness of God is God's behavior that aligns with his own character.
00:07:03And God is not capable of behaving outside of his own character.
00:07:09And we like to talk that, you know, we like to say that God can do anything, but there's
00:07:12that old trope that can God make a rock so big he can't lift it.
00:07:16So it's a silly argument.
00:07:18It's for children, because when we say that omnipotent, that God is all powerful, you
00:07:23know, God created the universe.
00:07:24And for all practical purposes, he can do anything that can logically be done, but that
00:07:30excludes things that cannot logically be done.
00:07:33He can't, he is often non-rational, but he's not irrational.
00:07:39So God is a God of order.
00:07:41We don't necessarily understand his order all the time, but his order is concrete, it
00:07:47is systematic, and it is consistent from before creation until after creation is gone.
00:07:53God will never change.
00:07:55So the righteousness of God is God being who he is.
00:08:00Does that make sense?
00:08:02Yeah, that makes sense to me, because if Yeshua is the righteousness of God, then that means
00:08:07he did what we could not do.
00:08:09He did the will of the Father, he followed the Father's plan perfectly, and accomplished
00:08:15the promises, and is still accomplishing the promises of the Father, his will, and his plan
00:08:22for his creation.
00:08:24So he's acting in accordance to his character and his will.
00:08:29And so it's perfectly being done according to the Father, and because Yeshua is God, he
00:08:35is the righteousness of God.
00:08:37So it all goes together, and again, it's something we can't do, right?
00:08:41That's why we're saved by grace.
00:08:44Yeah, and Yeshua being God and being the right hand of God in the world, he can't do anything
00:08:52that's outside of God's character.
00:08:54I mean, he said himself that he came only to speak what the Father gave him to speak.
00:08:58And God can't speak contrary to his own character.
00:09:03Has everybody heard of Marcion?
00:09:07Yes, Mr. New Testament, Old Testament jerk.
00:09:10Yeah, exactly.
00:09:12Marcion was this guy who lived in the second century, I think, maybe the third, but I think
00:09:16it was the second century.
00:09:17And he taught that there were two gods.
00:09:20There's the God of the Old Testament, and then there's the God of the New Testament.
00:09:24And Jesus came to do away with this God of the Old Testament, to replace him with a kinder,
00:09:31gentler God.
00:09:32And even though much of Christianity doesn't explicitly teach Marcionism, they don't teach
00:09:40that there are two different gods, in practice, that is what they're teaching.
00:09:45They're saying that God behaved one way in the Old Testament, and then he completely changed
00:09:49his character.
00:09:51And I actually encountered somebody on Twitter yesterday who was saying that God grew up,
00:09:55he matured, and he learned through the creation of man.
00:10:00I don't know what God you're worshiping, but God never changes.
00:10:05And if Jesus, if Yeshua, acted perfectly in accordance with God's will, and in accordance
00:10:11with his own character as God, then he could never teach or promote anything that is outside
00:10:18of God's character, which means he could never promote lawlessness.
00:10:22The law of Moses is an extension of God's very character, because God is incapable of giving
00:10:28anything else.
00:10:30And so Yeshua could never teach against the law of Moses, because then he'd be teaching
00:10:35against himself, and then he would be unrighteous.
00:10:39And this phrase, righteousness of God, that refutes all of Marcionism, all of the antinomianism
00:10:47of modern Christianity, or the phrase I invented earlier this year, metinomianism, which is the
00:10:54idea that the law of Moses was a, it's not really God's law, it's this temporary set of
00:11:01rules that God created just for this one particular circumstance, and doesn't apply anywhere else.
00:11:07And they're not the rules that God really wanted.
00:11:10They're just, they were designed to make Israel look different, or to teach us something, and
00:11:16then God threw them all out, because they're not really a part of his character.
00:11:18But that just completely throws out the idea of God's internal consistency.
00:11:25He may have one set of rules for this person, or he may have a higher standard for one person
00:11:31than another, but that is almost always because that person is actually closer to God.
00:11:36So God's rule, God has different rules for the high priest, and the high priest has to obey
00:11:42all the rules that the rest of Israel does.
00:11:44But then he has some extra rules on top of that, because he's the one who has to go into
00:11:48the holy of holies.
00:11:50And the closer you get to God, the more holy you need to live, the further away from death
00:11:57and corruption you need to be.
00:11:59And a lot of the things that God said the high priest is not allowed to do, those aren't
00:12:03even sins, you know, for example, he's not allowed to care for his wife.
00:12:09If his wife dies, he's not allowed to take care of her body.
00:12:13It's not a sin to take care of your wife's body and prepare her for burial, but the high
00:12:18priest is not allowed to do that, because coming into contact with death for somebody who is
00:12:23not a blood relative would introduce a level of spiritual corruption that would prevent him
00:12:30from entering the holy of holies and being in God's presence.
00:12:33Not because it's a sin to prepare your dead for burial, but because God can't be in the
00:12:39presence of that death.
00:12:41That's just explaining how there can be some differences in the way that God applies his
00:12:45rules to people.
00:12:46It's really just about how close you are to God, that he holds you to a higher standard.
00:12:51I want to move on.
00:12:52Yeah, go ahead.
00:12:53The same about teachers, there's more required of a teacher, thus, should they misappropriate
00:13:02their gift, if you will, in teaching, they're held to a higher standard.
00:13:08There's a consequence that's greater.
00:13:11Yeah, that's very true.
00:13:12And prophets are another one.
00:13:14You know, if I went outside and said, God told me that it's going to rain tomorrow and
00:13:19God didn't tell me that, well, that's a sin and I'm not allowed to do that.
00:13:24That's taking God's name in vain.
00:13:26But then if I say, all right, I'm a prophet, God talks to me and, you know, and then start
00:13:33telling people that God told me you're supposed to do this and this is going to happen and
00:13:36you're supposed to do that.
00:13:38Not only does everybody have to stop listening to me, they may have to take me out into the
00:13:44alleyway and stone me with a, you know, due process, with a court of law, witnesses, all
00:13:50that kind of thing.
00:13:51Not saying we get to go out and stone people who commit capital offenses in God's law.
00:13:57We're not allowed to do that on our own.
00:13:59So yeah, the closer you are to God and the closer that you claim to be to God, the higher
00:14:05those standards get.
00:14:07This phrase, faith for faith, I want to talk about that for a second.
00:14:10The righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.
00:14:16I think this phrase is important for understanding some of what Paul says later in this chapter.
00:14:21So I want to get your opinions about what you think that phrase means.
00:14:25Any ideas?
00:14:26I have an idea.
00:14:28Go ahead, Tim.
00:14:30In verse 17 in this particular translation, which kind of blows stuff up and whatnot, it
00:14:37reads, because the justice of the Almighty, because of the justice, because the justice
00:14:44of the Almighty in it, the good news is revealed from faithfulness to faithfulness, even as it
00:14:50has been getting written, but the righteous one shall by faithfulness will live.
00:14:55And the notation that the guy threw in there suggests that it is accommodated because it's
00:15:06a loving covenant combining the faithfulness of our Messiah, faithfulness of Yahweh, into
00:15:13accommodating his justice through demonstrating, et cetera, with Yeshua, and our faithfulness
00:15:20responding to his faithfulness.
00:15:22Yeah, I think there's the key.
00:15:24Our faithfulness responding to his faithfulness.
00:15:26Yeah.
00:15:27Okay.
00:15:28Yeah.
00:15:29One thing, one thing else you said there from that translation, it translated the word for
00:15:33righteousness, it translated as justice.
00:15:35And I think that's another good point is that in the Old Testament Hebrew, the word for
00:15:41righteousness is frequently translated as justice because it is essentially the same thing.
00:15:46Obedience to God's commandments are righteous and justice.
00:15:50God defines those words, not us.
00:15:53He defines love.
00:15:54He defines justice.
00:15:55He defines righteousness.
00:15:56And they all mean the same thing.
00:15:58They all mean obedience to his commandments.
00:16:02The Hebrew is Zedekah, correct?
00:16:05Yeah.
00:16:05For righteousness.
00:16:06Yeah.
00:16:06Zedik.
00:16:07Zedik for Hebrew.
00:16:08Yeah.
00:16:08So this idea that from faith to faith or from faithfulness to faithfulness through God's
00:16:16faithfulness that builds our faithfulness because he is faithful to his covenant that builds
00:16:21our trust in him, which builds our obedience to him.
00:16:24So it's a positive feedback loop.
00:16:28I think that's what he means by from faith for faith.
00:16:31And you can also read this as because if we trust God and then God proves faithful, then
00:16:38we trust him more.
00:16:39And I think you think of, I think it was a centurion who said, Lord, I believe help my unbelief when
00:16:47he wanted Yeshua to heal his servant.
00:16:50I'm getting the right story.
00:16:51And we all have that problem where we all, we all have a little bit of faith.
00:16:57I don't think there's anybody on earth who doesn't have a little bit of faith in God.
00:17:01But they, not everybody has enough faith to be faithful.
00:17:06And when we suppress our, our doubts, when we suppress our natural instinct to disobey and
00:17:13to be faithless and we act as if we believe, which is really an evidence of belief.
00:17:19If you've got enough belief to suppress the disbelief that you have and act on that, that
00:17:25part of you that is believing, you've got enough faith to continue.
00:17:29And that faith keeps building on itself because God proves himself faithful over time.
00:17:34Even if life doesn't work out the way that you want it to, you know, even if there's pain
00:17:38and loss along the way, God keeps reinforcing his character and his faithfulness.
00:17:44If you are looking for it, if you are willing to see it in the world around you, that'll make
00:17:48sense.
00:17:49All right, let's move on to the next.
00:17:55Oh yeah.
00:17:55So righteousness doing that, which is right in an alignment with God's will, also known
00:18:00as justice.
00:18:01I added that definition onto the end of the chart.
00:18:04So verse 18 for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness
00:18:10of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
00:18:14All these quotes are from the English standard version, which I should probably put down in
00:18:18the, on the bottom of the screen somewhere.
00:18:21I'll have to try to remember that before, but I, you know, I'm not stuck on the English
00:18:25standard.
00:18:26I think it's a really good translation, but the more in-depth I study things, the less
00:18:31happy I am with it.
00:18:32Sometimes I think I'm probably going to be moving to the NASB here pretty soon, but ESV
00:18:37is still a great translation.
00:18:38It's better than most, but there's no perfect translation.
00:18:42Anyways, the wrath of God, verse 18.
00:18:48The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.
00:18:54Young's literal, I find is sometimes informative.
00:18:57I mean, it's a little stilting, you know, like the translation that Timothy uses is called
00:19:01an amplified version.
00:19:02And I don't, I don't remember the exact version, but an amplified Bible just adds a lot of context,
00:19:08a lot of extra thoughts.
00:19:09It's kind of like combining a commentary and a translation all into one.
00:19:14There's necessarily a lot of commentary in an amplified Bible.
00:19:19Young's literal translation is the opposite where it tries to get as literal as it possibly
00:19:24can, which isn't really very helpful in English a lot of times, but sometimes it can cut out
00:19:31a lot of the confusion and fuzziness of English.
00:19:35In this case, let's see, revealed is the wrath of God from heaven.
00:19:42I find my notes.
00:19:43I know I've got something.
00:19:45Oh yeah.
00:19:45I wanted to look at Romans 4, 15.
00:19:48So Jay, would you say the wrath of God that we see daily?
00:19:54As shown in death, death is a result of sin.
00:19:59It's a result of the consequence of sin.
00:20:05Yeah, it is.
00:20:07And we're going to get to more of that later in the chapter.
00:20:09I'm not really sure that that's what it means here.
00:20:12I think usually the wrath of God refers to judgment.
00:20:15There are many times in the Old Testament where God is talking about he's going to pour
00:20:21out his wrath on Jerusalem or on Assyria or whoever is misbehaving at the time.
00:20:27And this usually means that they're going to experience famine or disease or defeat in
00:20:31war.
00:20:32That's what the wrath of God usually means.
00:20:35But I wanted to go to a verse where Paul is using a similar phrase.
00:20:42The law does not work wrath.
00:20:44Or the law for the law brings wrath.
00:20:47But where there is no law, there is no transgression.
00:20:49Wow.
00:20:49The Young's literal is very different on that.
00:20:51Verse 18.
00:20:52Yeah.
00:20:52For the law does work wrath.
00:20:54Yeah, if you go back to 17.
00:20:58In chapter 1?
00:21:01Yes.
00:21:02And the righteous one by faith shall live, for revealed is the wrath of God from heaven,
00:21:10Paul.
00:21:11So that tells me then that his wrath is death if the righteous one by faith is going to live.
00:21:19Yeah, that is the ultimate end of God's wrath.
00:21:21But in this case, it's saying, talking about the gospel and saying that the gospel is what
00:21:29teaches us about these things.
00:21:31And the gospel is really the information of the coming of God's kingdom.
00:21:36But the same text, the same prophecies that tell us about the establishment of the kingdom
00:21:43tell us about the destruction of the kingdoms of earth.
00:21:47And all of this is wrapped up in God's law.
00:21:49Now, if God's commands against something, if he says, this is something I don't want you
00:21:55to do, God is revealing his wrath before it comes.
00:22:00So when Paul goes out to preach the gospel, he's not just preaching the coming salvation,
00:22:06he's preaching the coming wrath simply by saying, here's what God wants us to do.
00:22:11Now, that means if you're doing something else, then you are earning God's wrath.
00:22:17And so the very act of preaching the gospel, whether or not you even talk about, you know,
00:22:21God's going to destroy the wicked, which he will, even if you don't say that part, you
00:22:26just say, God is, this is how God wants us to behave.
00:22:30This is his kingdom.
00:22:31He sets the standards.
00:22:33By definition, his wrath is against those things that are outside of God's desires for mankind.
00:22:43And of course, the end result of all of that is the judgment and the destruction, the war,
00:22:47all of those things that we're talking about also.
00:22:51Right, Scott, you got a comment?
00:22:52Yeah, so given today's society, would it be fair to say that things are so muddied that
00:23:04we have a hard time discerning the wrath of God versus the corruption that exists?
00:23:12Yeah, I think we do.
00:23:14You know, we just, we accept that bad things happen in the world, and they do.
00:23:19You know, the wrath of God has begun not just to be revealed through his instruction,
00:23:26but through the actual degradation of the world, of creation, through illness and hatred
00:23:32and war and all of these things that have been happening from the very beginning.
00:23:36Those are also the result of God's wrath.
00:23:39Because we have separated ourselves from God's perfect will, we are by definition in God's
00:23:45imperfect will, and we're going to suffer the consequences.
00:23:49Even if those consequences are entirely self-imposed, or self-inflicted.
00:23:55Yeah, so was COVID the wrath of God?
00:23:57Was it corruption for mankind?
00:24:00Was it a tool used by a government agency, or whatever your opinion is of that?
00:24:07I mean, that's the type of question that I'm positing, you know?
00:24:11And I would say yes.
00:24:13To all of them.
00:24:14Yes, to all that.
00:24:15Yeah, the existence of government corruption and abuse of power is the result of God's wrath.
00:24:22Because we sinned, you know, God set up the universe to operate in a certain way.
00:24:27And if we break things so that the universe can no longer operate in the way that God wants
00:24:32it to work, well, the result of that is God's wrath.
00:24:36God's righteousness is everything that is in alignment with his character.
00:24:41God's wrath is all that which is not in alignment with his character.
00:24:44And that means that all the sin, all of the abuse and the diseases, whether man-made or
00:24:53not, and all of the terrible things that we do in the name of diseases, all of those things
00:24:59are a result of the mechanisms that God put in place for this is what's going to happen
00:25:05when you step outside my will.
00:25:07There's nothing in the universe that God didn't know was going to happen.
00:25:12He knew that as soon as Adam sinned, that was going to set in motion this whole chain
00:25:16of terrible events for the human race.
00:25:19And he planned it that way.
00:25:21He's got his reasons for doing things.
00:25:23And, you know, we're not necessarily privy to all of that.
00:25:27He is the potter.
00:25:29We're not.
00:25:30And we are really getting ahead of ourselves tonight.
00:25:32So, Jay, how would you explain the passages that talk about storing up God's wrath because
00:25:40of corruption or because of the things going on, God's wrath is being stored up or coming
00:25:46to a fullness?
00:25:48I think that there is an ultimate wrath, that there is judgment.
00:25:53The bad things that happen in the world aren't necessarily God's judgment.
00:25:57They're just the mechanisms that God has put in place.
00:25:59This is how the world reacts when we do certain things.
00:26:03But there is a deliberate pouring out of God's wrath, a final judgment, so to speak, that
00:26:08when God divinely intervenes in the affairs of men, you know, for the most part, God is
00:26:14the watchmaker.
00:26:15He set up the universe to work in a certain way.
00:26:18If we live according to his rules, things work out great.
00:26:21If we don't, things go badly.
00:26:23But God does intervene in the world on a very regular basis.
00:26:26And when he does, that's when we can see that real wrath poured out or the real blessings
00:26:34poured out.
00:26:35But, you know, you're talking about the wrath that's stored up for the day of judgment,
00:26:39the great, terrible day of the Lord.
00:26:41That is coming.
00:26:42And, you know, it comes at different points for different people.
00:26:45You remember if when, you know, the Hebrews were in Egypt for, you know, 100 and 200 years,
00:26:52or something like that, and, you know, Abraham was in Canaan, and Isaac, Jacob, they were
00:26:57in Canaan, all that for a total of 400 years.
00:27:00And during that time, God was allowing the sins of the Canaanites to reach a level where
00:27:05he could, where they needed to be removed.
00:27:09There were things that God needed to happen to prepare the promised land for his people.
00:27:14And that meant he let those people do what they were going to do without judging them until
00:27:20if they got to the point where he needed them going.
00:27:24And then he released that judgment.
00:27:26Kevin, you got your hand up?
00:27:28One thing I noticed is that the wrath of God is not preached.
00:27:35Hell is not preached anymore.
00:27:37And if it is preached, that's all they preach, right?
00:27:41You get the Westboro Baptist whole thing.
00:27:45You know, people think that if you preach hell or preach wrath, then you're one of those.
00:27:53The gospel message is to turn people away from their sin.
00:28:00And how can you do that by just saying God loves you?
00:28:04The love is preached.
00:28:07And we have these churches that are filling up full capacity where it's really just a feeling
00:28:15of how they feel.
00:28:17They're going for the experience.
00:28:20And I believe that without teaching the wrath of God, people don't really understand the gospel.
00:28:29And so it is important to not be afraid and not to cower to preach that.
00:28:43But you can do it without.
00:28:45Well, I mean, if you really do have love in your heart, you're not going to preach it with
00:28:52anger and stuff like that.
00:28:54But with urgency and with passion, that's okay.
00:28:58Yeah.
00:28:58People with a guilty conscience aren't going to know the difference.
00:29:01And people make fun of hell.
00:29:03They make fun of hell.
00:29:04They don't think it exists.
00:29:05They just look at the top atheists out there, Richard Dawkins, and they just laugh at this
00:29:16stuff.
00:29:16And it's humorous to them.
00:29:20Bill Maurer, or whatever his name is, he's the same way.
00:29:24And this is, you know, when we take the Old Testament and the New Testament and we combine
00:29:29them, it's, that's what needs to be preached.
00:29:34And you have people just preaching one side of the gospel when, as we see here, there's
00:29:43more than just the love side.
00:29:47Yeah.
00:29:47It is totally true that God is love, but God is also wrath.
00:29:52And that's all through scripture and God never changes.
00:29:56And to be a just God, he would have to, you know, to be just, he would have to punish.
00:30:03I had briefly gone to Romans 4.15.
00:30:09For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, there is no transgression.
00:30:14It's really, for now, it's just this first phrase that I wanted to focus on.
00:30:18For the law brings wrath.
00:30:20Now, we've already pointed out how the law defines righteousness.
00:30:23And it's not that, you know, you can't, you can't obey the law and be righteous enough
00:30:30to earn your own salvation.
00:30:31I mean, one, one mistake cancels it all out.
00:30:36You know, we will never measure up to God's standards on our own, which is why we need a
00:30:40Messiah.
00:30:41We need that covenant mediator to bridge that gap.
00:30:44But that doesn't mean that, you know, even though our righteousness compared to God's
00:30:49is like trash, but that doesn't mean it's not nothing compared to what God wants for
00:30:55us.
00:30:55Our righteousness is important.
00:30:57Otherwise, why would he, why would he bother giving us rules if he didn't want us to follow
00:31:00them?
00:31:01But on the other hand, the law brings wrath.
00:31:04And the more, you know, about who God is and what he expects of you, you know, the more
00:31:11he expects.
00:31:13And we're going to get to how that's important here.
00:31:16Let me go back to chapter one.
00:31:19We've practically covered the whole book of Romans tonight already, but we need, I need
00:31:24to move on a little bit.
00:31:25So this next phrase here, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, Paul is going to make this
00:31:34statement through the rest of this chapter.
00:31:37He's going to say the same thing about five different times.
00:31:40Our unrighteousness suppresses truth.
00:31:42And what is the truth that it suppresses?
00:31:45It suppresses the truth that God's instructions reveal.
00:31:49God's law reveals his righteousness and reveals how he wants us to behave, our righteousness,
00:31:57or at least the righteousness that we should have.
00:31:59And when we deny that, when we deny what we know that God wants of us, we are suppressing
00:32:05the truth and we get more and more embroiled in a lie.
00:32:10You know, our entire culture is built on lies.
00:32:13We all know from the, you know, from the day we're born, we have some idea of what God
00:32:19wants from us.
00:32:20And we have to actively suppress that.
00:32:22But our culture makes it very easy.
00:32:24We are bombarded from day one with those lies that our culture has built.
00:32:31Television, music, our schools, our parents, everybody, our siblings, they're all telling
00:32:38us to disobey God's law.
00:32:41They're telling us that God's righteousness is actually unrighteousness.
00:32:44If I keep down that vein, we're going to end this chapter here real quick, because that's
00:32:51pretty much the whole rest of the chapter right there.
00:32:54So verse 19, what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to
00:32:59them.
00:33:00Now, Paul is talking about unrighteous people.
00:33:03In what way do you think?
00:33:04I just said that we all know from the day where we're born, we have some idea of what God
00:33:10expects of us.
00:33:12But do you really see that in the world?
00:33:15In your personal experiences, have you seen that people have some idea of right and wrong
00:33:22from the day they're born?
00:33:23Well, just like you said, you just made the point that about God's law, it seems like as
00:33:33we get older, we're caught up in this world and we just, we transgress more and more from
00:33:43the little children to like five years old to when they're teens, right?
00:33:47And then when they become in their twenties and we seem to just fall away and, you know,
00:33:55scripture talks about parents raising their children to board and, but yeah, we, we seem
00:34:03to have this understanding of what is right, but we tend to, you know, like a son who loves
00:34:15to lie, he likes to lie and I have to teach him not to lie, but he wasn't born that way.
00:34:24He was born in sin, but it's not like he, over time, he thought that was okay.
00:34:31Whereas before he, he didn't.
00:34:33So there's something to be said.
00:34:37Yeah.
00:34:38I think that, you know, all of us who have been parents or if you've seen kids growing
00:34:42up, even if you're not a parent yourself, we've all seen this battle.
00:34:48We're all born with an instinctive understanding of what's right and wrong, but also an instinctive
00:34:53desire to do what's wrong, to rebel against what's right.
00:34:57And we have to train it, you know, like Solomon saying that, uh, I don't really, it's not
00:35:04spare the rod, spoil the child is how most people quote it.
00:35:06That's not really what it says, but that's in essence.
00:35:09I mean, that's the point that if you don't discipline your children, they will go wrong.
00:35:16Sometimes if you discipline them, they still go wrong because everybody still has those
00:35:20choices to make for themselves.
00:35:21And we all have this desire to do what's wrong.
00:35:24But that very desire tells us that we know what's right.
00:35:28Because when you desire to do what's wrong, it's because it's wrong that you desire to do
00:35:34it. So that in itself says, you know, in your, in your conscience, when it's telling
00:35:40you, oh, I want to do this, I know I shouldn't do it, but I want to do that.
00:35:45Automatically, you already know what the right thing to do is.
00:35:48And Paul says that, uh, what can be known about God is plain because God has shown it
00:35:54to them.
00:35:55Well, how does God show his character to people who don't have the scriptures?
00:35:58I mean, how did Abraham know what God wanted?
00:36:02How, how does, I don't know, somebody in the interior of New Guinea who has never heard
00:36:09of the Bible or Abraham or Yeshua, how does he know what God wants from him?
00:36:16Well, in some respects, it's there in nature.
00:36:18We can see, we can learn a lot about God's character just from looking around us.
00:36:23In the next verse, it goes on to say, for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal
00:36:28power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and things
00:36:33that have been made.
00:36:34So they are without excuse.
00:36:37A thoughtful, honest person can look at the created universe around them and discern enough
00:36:43about God's character to say that there is a natural way that God has created me to be.
00:36:49that there is a creator and he expects me to behave in a particular way.
00:36:55And I can sense what that way is.
00:36:58I can see that God is a God of order.
00:37:00He is a God that puts everything in the right place.
00:37:06And he, and I don't measure up to that because we are all flawed.
00:37:13If you live around other people, they will make sure that, you know, your flaws before
00:37:19too long.
00:37:21And we're all always disappointed in ourselves at times too.
00:37:25So we all know that we're flawed.
00:37:26And if the creator of the universe is obviously so much more powerful, so much more perfect
00:37:33than I could ever be just because he created the universe.
00:37:36If I see myself as imperfect, how much more would he see himself, see me as imperfect?
00:37:42And so all of this, these ideas can be derived just from observing nature.
00:37:48You can arrive at the idea that there is sin, that God has a law that I don't measure up
00:37:57to the law.
00:37:58And that if I'm going to be, if I'm going to have a good relationship with my creator,
00:38:04if that's what he wants and he appears to, then I need him to intervene.
00:38:10He needs to bridge that gap because I can't do it.
00:38:14All that can be derived just from looking at the natural world around you.
00:38:18If you want to see it, if you don't want to see it, you won't, you can suppress that
00:38:24very easily.
00:38:25And that's what the world does from, from the very beginning.
00:38:28They tell you that you are ridiculous for believing in the supernatural for anything that
00:38:33you can't see, even though everybody believes in things they can't see.
00:38:36You are, you can be anything you want to be, no matter how perverse, no matter how ridiculous,
00:38:43because you believe it.
00:38:45But life experience tells us that that's ridiculous.
00:38:48We can't be anything we want to be.
00:38:50We can be who God created us to be.
00:38:53And that's the best we could ever be.
00:38:56Anything else is just, is fantasy.
00:38:59fantasy in just pure logic can get you there.
00:39:03Logic can't restore that relationship, but it can bring you to the point where you know
00:39:07that you need to be restored and that you can't do it on your own.
00:39:11Does all that make sense?
00:39:13Okay.
00:39:13There's a word in this verse, in verse, oh no, not this verse, the next one.
00:39:18Nope.
00:39:18It is in this one.
00:39:19Invisible.
00:39:19I just put my note on the wrong verse.
00:39:22The word for invisible is, it sounds a lot like heart, heart, or atos.
00:39:28This word, it's only used in Paul's letters.
00:39:33It's obviously Greek since all his letters were written in Greek, but it only appears in
00:39:38Paul's letters and in the book of Hebrews, which as we're reading through Romans, we're
00:39:44going to see a lot of phrases and a lot of specific words that only appear in Paul's
00:39:49letters and in Hebrews, which is one of the main arguments that people use to say that
00:39:53the book of Hebrews was written by Paul, even though the actual Hebrew vocabulary and grammar
00:39:59is very different from Paul's.
00:40:01It does seem to indicate that there's a strong influence.
00:40:04Whoever wrote Hebrews was very likely a student of Paul or a very close associate because they
00:40:12have so many words and phrases in common.
00:40:15So verse 21, for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks
00:40:23to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.
00:40:27We've already talked about how people can know God and refuse to honor him because we
00:40:33want to do what we want to do.
00:40:35And knowing that there's a God who has a law and expectation for us, if we're going to do
00:40:41what we want to do, we have to ignore that.
00:40:42So we have to refuse to honor him through obedience.
00:40:47This other part, they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.
00:40:52Who has some thoughts on what that means?
00:40:55I'm going to mute myself for a second.
00:40:57No thoughts?
00:40:59Well, put it this way.
00:41:00If you can see that just by looking at the universe and by reason that there is a God who has desires
00:41:08for how he wants you to behave, who wants to have a relationship with you, and that you
00:41:13can't get to on your own, and then you reject all that, you refuse it.
00:41:20If all of those things are obviously true from nature, or at least you can reason them out from
00:41:25nature, and then you reject that reason, everything else that you think from that point on is already
00:41:32based on a lie, on a fundamental falsehood.
00:41:35You know in your spirit and through your observation of the world that there is a God, and then you turn
00:41:42around and say, I'm going to live as if there isn't a God.
00:41:46You're going to reason as if there is no God who has no expectations of you.
00:41:50Everything that you reason, every thought you have from that point on is already wrong.
00:41:55I mean, the existence of a creator is one of the most fundamental ideas that mankind has ever had.
00:42:03And to reject it is, it's like taking the steering wheel out of your car, thinking it's going to get
00:42:09you somewhere.
00:42:10So claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images
00:42:15resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
00:42:19Why do we do that?
00:42:20Somebody tell me why you think, once we've rejected God, why we feel the need to replace
00:42:27him with small things.
00:42:31Well, we've been created to be his image bearer.
00:42:35So if we're not going to bear his image, we're going to bear another image, because that's
00:42:40what we've been created to do, is to show the glory of God.
00:42:45But when we reject that, we're going to try and show the glory of something else, but it's
00:42:49going to be lesser.
00:42:51It's not going to be the creator's glory.
00:42:53Yeah, that's a good point.
00:42:55And we were made to worship.
00:42:57So if we're not worshiping God, then who are we worshiping?
00:43:01I mean, we were made to worship and that could take many forms.
00:43:10And idols, different gods.
00:43:14So, yeah.
00:43:16So if we were made to worship the creator of the universe and we were made in his image
00:43:22and we have to replace that with something.
00:43:25I mean, our experience with the world kind of demands that there be some kind of God,
00:43:30something higher than us that we worship and try to please.
00:43:34Why do we pick the things that we do?
00:43:37Why do we pick stone and wood and birds and crocodiles or whatever the people worship?
00:43:44Why do they pick those things?
00:43:46There's a verse on that, right?
00:43:48About worshiping the creation, not the creators.
00:43:52There's this one right here.
00:43:53There are probably others.
00:43:55Yeah.
00:43:56If I find it later, I'll mention it.
00:44:00But, yeah, I mean, that's a good question.
00:44:04They, everyone worships something and some, some God or another.
00:44:11And, yeah.
00:44:13It seemed like when they made, like, animals or something to worship,
00:44:18that those things displayed a power and a strength or something that they wanted to,
00:44:26I guess, utilize or, like, it was something they didn't have.
00:44:30So they wanted to magnify it as something supernatural.
00:44:35Yeah.
00:44:36That's what it seemed like.
00:44:38I think there are two things there.
00:44:39The first one is that instead of trying to live up to God's standards, the real God,
00:44:44they create their own standards and say, oh, I'd, I'd kind of like to be, you know,
00:44:49like a bear or an eagle or, or, you know, whatever it is, or some imaginary creature
00:44:54that they've made up and they've made a stone into it or combining different creatures into one.
00:45:00You know, whatever it is, those are the things that we want to be like rather than what God
00:45:04wants us to be like.
00:45:05So we get to pick our own God that way.
00:45:08And related to that is these things are small.
00:45:12I mean, even if it's the stars or, or the moon or the sun,
00:45:16these things are all small compared to the creator.
00:45:19We're trying to bring God closer to us, something that we can understand
00:45:23and not just understand, but that we can be superior to.
00:45:28If you worship, you know, a bull God, we eat cows.
00:45:35We put them in fences and, you know, we put rings in their noses and we drive them around.
00:45:40That's us trying to control God.
00:45:42And, you know, even if it's, even if it's the sun, well, the sun gets hot, it's bright,
00:45:50gives us some good things.
00:45:52And, you know, maybe it can cause a drought or something, but it just goes around in the sky,
00:45:57comes up one side, goes down the other side and doesn't expect much.
00:46:04There's nothing really that you can derive from looking at the sun that the sun expects you to do.
00:46:08It doesn't demand anything of you.
00:46:11It doesn't demand that you become better than who you are.
00:46:16Whereas a creator God who creates everything in the universe and has a perfect standard that he wants his people to live up to,
00:46:23that's intimidating.
00:46:25That requires that God, that I submit myself to him and throw myself on his mercy,
00:46:32because I will never reach that point.
00:46:35I will never be perfect enough to live up to his standards.
00:46:38So I need him to do it.
00:46:39Whereas if I'm worshiping a mouse God, which people do for whatever reasons,
00:46:46that doesn't demand much of me.
00:46:48There's nothing about the mouse that demands that I become better than I am,
00:46:52or at least not much,
00:46:54nothing that I'm not taking from the real God in backfilling into one of his creations.
00:46:59So, I mean, in summary,
00:47:02I'm just saying that we worship smaller things because they're easier.
00:47:06They don't demand as much of us.
00:47:08Well, just like the golden cap, right?
00:47:11They want to make it more tangible for them to worship or.
00:47:15Yeah.
00:47:16And they wanted a mediator.
00:47:17They, they, they said, you know, Aaron says, Israel, here is your God.
00:47:23Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh.
00:47:24Well, they knew that wasn't Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh.
00:47:27I mean, they're not, they weren't idiots.
00:47:29They knew he wasn't a calf in that he wouldn't live in a, in a golden statue.
00:47:34So what they were looking for is a mediator, an apostle,
00:47:38an agent of God that they could pray to instead of the creator.
00:47:43They were looking for a replacement for Moses,
00:47:46but a replacement that didn't demand so much of them.
00:47:48Because Moses was channeling God's real words, a real prophet.
00:47:53Golden calf doesn't say anything.
00:47:55And if he's got, if the calf has a prophet of his own,
00:47:57the prophet's probably telling you what you want to hear instead of what God
00:48:00wants you to hear.
00:48:02It's always trying to bring God down to our level instead of letting God bring
00:48:06us up to his.
00:48:08All right, let's go on.
00:48:10Verses 24 and five.
00:48:12Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity,
00:48:16to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,
00:48:18because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worship and serve the
00:48:22creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.
00:48:25That's probably the verse that you were just thinking of,
00:48:27Kevin.
00:48:28And this is really just saying kind of the same thing.
00:48:32There are a few things here that I think I might want to address specifically.
00:48:37So let me scan through my notes here.
00:48:39Well, first off, it says that they exchanged the truth about God for a lie,
00:48:42which again, reiterates that they knew the truth.
00:48:46You can't exchange the truth if you don't already have it.
00:48:48So they're trading the truth about God for a lie because the lie is easier and
00:48:53nicer to me.
00:48:55The next verse has a phrase that I really want to look at.
00:48:58I want to go to Isaiah.
00:49:02Isaiah 50 verse 20.
00:49:06I got to turn some of my lights on.
00:49:09Isaiah 50, 20.
00:49:11Must have wrote that down wrong.
00:49:12Must be a different chapter.
00:49:14I'll probably have to find that later.
00:49:15Hey, Jay, does it seem like much of Romans 1 is speaking of the period leading up to
00:49:22the flood?
00:49:23It is certainly very similar.
00:49:26And it seems so much like our world today.
00:49:29That's what I'm thinking.
00:49:30Yeah.
00:49:30Paul could have been writing about modern America, which, you know, thinking of Yeshua's
00:49:36words about in the last days will be like the days of Noah.
00:49:40Got to give you some pause.
00:49:41In connection to these two verses on the screen, I wrote down a note to look up Isaiah
00:49:4650, 20 to 23, but there is no Isaiah 50, 20 to 23.
00:49:50So I'm not sure what I meant there.
00:49:51I'm sure I meant Isaiah 50 something, just not 50.
00:49:55So maybe I'll find that later.
00:49:59Let's see.
00:50:01In verse 26.
00:50:02We're getting into more in your face kind of stuff here in, you know, we're all grown
00:50:15up.
00:50:15So, I mean, I'm, we don't need to be explicit, but we're going to talk about some, I don't
00:50:21know, some grown up topics.
00:50:23One of the things, this first phrase here, dishonorable passions.
00:50:26I want to talk about that because I think it is really significant.
00:50:30Paulo was reading something to me yesterday from some, some doctor, I think.
00:50:36I don't remember exactly who it was, but he was talking about how pornography affects your
00:50:41brain and that it becomes a, something very similar to alcoholism.
00:50:47And the doctor was kind of actually calling it a, like a disease.
00:50:52And obviously this isn't, well, I'm not going to say obviously, you know, addictions to
00:50:59behaviors, they're not a disease in the same way that, you know, a pathogen, you get a virus
00:51:05or a bacteria or something like that.
00:51:07It's not the same as that, but it is something that changes how your physical body operates.
00:51:13It changes the chemicals in your brain.
00:51:17You know, when, if you're taking a drug of any kind, it's going to affect how your brain
00:51:21is operating.
00:51:22And usually people take drugs because those, they activate, you know, certain centers in
00:51:28your brain that make you feel good, you know, dopamine receptors or things like that.
00:51:33And sexual immorality does the same thing.
00:51:36It's not just pornography.
00:51:37It's any indulgence in sexual license, things that, you know, you're not supposed to do.
00:51:44And this probably goes well beyond that.
00:51:46You know, I don't, I don't know why people are kleptomaniacs or compulsive liars or things
00:51:52like that, but I suspect that it is a very similar thing that they get some kind of a
00:51:58rush, adrenaline or dopamine or something like that.
00:52:02They get some kind of physical or mental rush out of doing something that they know is wrong.
00:52:06But the more you do it, the worse it gets, just like leavening.
00:52:12If you put a little leaven in your dough, pretty soon it's, it's a fungus and it's growing all
00:52:18through the dough until it infects the whole thing.
00:52:22And that's why Yeshua described leaven as sin or sin as leaven, because you get a little bit
00:52:28of sin in there and it tends to multiply, especially if you encourage it.
00:52:32If you put your dough in a little, in a warmer environment, it's going to multiply faster.
00:52:40If you cool it down, if you put your dough in the refrigerator, you're going to stop the rise.
00:52:45Or if you heat it too much, you're going to, you know, you'll cook it, that kind of thing.
00:52:49Kind of taking the analogy too far now.
00:52:52But I want to go back to this phrase, dishonorable passions.
00:52:54It's, uh, pathe atemios, atemios, if I'm pronouncing that correctly.
00:53:01And it literally means shameful afflictions or shameful disease.
00:53:06It's not the word, the Greek word here for passions, uh, pathos isn't, it doesn't really
00:53:13mean a desire.
00:53:15It's not like it's a shameful desire, although it is, I mean, it is a shameful desire, but that's
00:53:20not the point here.
00:53:21The point is it is a, it is a shameful sickness.
00:53:25And just like any lifestyle oriented disorder, like diabetes or sicknesses of lifestyle, if
00:53:39you don't fix the problem that is causing the disease, it's going to get worse.
00:53:43If you're a diabetic and you have caused your diabetes by overindulging in sugar, if you
00:53:53continue to drink sodas every day, you're going to make the problem worse.
00:53:57You are eventually going to kill your pancreas and you're going to be insulin dependent or
00:54:02worse.
00:54:03And I think any kind of sins that, that impact your physical desires, and that's why sexual
00:54:12license is such a big deal.
00:54:14It is so seductive.
00:54:17And I mean, obviously that word fits well because of the topic, but it is, it's the kind of thing
00:54:25any, trying to regroup my, my thoughts here, any sin that feeds off of your physical desires
00:54:33is going to be harder to beat.
00:54:38For one, a lot of those physical desires are actual needs.
00:54:41We all have to eat.
00:54:43We have a physical need for affection from other people.
00:54:47And, you know, the sexual drive is a good thing.
00:54:50It's something that God built into us.
00:54:52It's natural.
00:54:52We're supposed to want to encourage that within the right framework, within the context of
00:54:59marriage.
00:54:59It's a very good thing, but indulging that outside of marriage with people that you're
00:55:05not supposed to, it feeds on itself and it builds until it's imposed on you.
00:55:11This word here for passions, the pathos, it implies something that is imposed on you or afflicted
00:55:18on you.
00:55:18But that's what you're doing when you know that you have the beginnings of a sickness
00:55:24and you don't address it.
00:55:26You let it continue to go on and on.
00:55:30It begins to control you instead of the other way around.
00:55:34It really does become an addiction because of the way that it affects your mind.
00:55:37And then, you know, Paul continues to talk of it in the same vein throughout the rest of
00:55:43this chapter.
00:55:44He talks about sexual sin as a thing that becomes a disease in itself.
00:55:50And of course, it can invite actual pathogens through STDs.
00:55:57And he mentions that too a little bit later.
00:56:00Does what I'm saying there make sense?
00:56:02I think this is something that we all instinctively get at some level.
00:56:07So the second half of this verse, the women exchanged natural relations for those that are
00:56:11contrary to nature.
00:56:13I'm not really sure why Paul started with women, maybe because he started with the idea
00:56:18of understanding God from nature.
00:56:22What are we created for?
00:56:24Obviously, men and women are created to fit together.
00:56:26We've got the parts that go together.
00:56:30And so exchanging natural relations for those that are contrary to nature, if we are created
00:56:35in such a way that we come together to produce children, and instead we come together in a way
00:56:40that cannot produce children, we are living contrary to nature.
00:56:46There's no specific commandment against lesbianism.
00:56:51There's no commandment that says a woman will not lie with a woman as she will with a man.
00:56:55But there is one that says a man will not lie with a man as he would with a woman.
00:57:02But Paul's argument here isn't really about the specific literal commandments.
00:57:07It's about what does nature tell you?
00:57:09And if God created you for a specific purpose, then deliberately living in a way that refuses
00:57:15to live according to that purpose is a sin by its very nature.
00:57:20If God created you to do this, and like Jonah, you run the other way and do this over here,
00:57:26well, you are disobeying God because God has created you to do this, not that.
00:57:31And that's how Paul applies this to women also.
00:57:35Am I making sense?
00:57:37Yep, you're making sense.
00:57:39Absolutely.
00:57:39All right.
00:57:41And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for
00:57:45one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due
00:57:50penalty for their error.
00:57:52The ESV puts passion in this verse, but this is actually a different word.
00:57:57Passion here is a rexis, which literally does mean intense desire.
00:58:03So before, when he was talking about a shameful passion, he was talking about a shameful affliction,
00:58:10the cumulative effect, how it becomes like a disease that overtakes you.
00:58:14Here, he's saying that they were consumed with their desire.
00:58:18And this is more about choice.
00:58:20They chose to indulge in the sin.
00:58:24And then the sin becomes a sickness that chooses you.
00:58:29The more you choose it, the more power you give it over yourselves.
00:58:32But of course, it's all, you know, it's all shameful.
00:58:36It's all contrary to the way that God created us to be.
00:58:40And in this case, of course, God did give a specific commandment that carries the death
00:58:45penalty.
00:58:46If a man has sexual relations with another man, God says he needs to die.
00:58:53And there's some, a little bit of controversy going on in the news lately.
00:58:58Uganda, well, there's a lot of controversy in the news around these topics.
00:59:01But Uganda recently enacted a law instituting the death penalty for, I think they called it
00:59:09aggravated homosexuality or something like that, which means it's against the law to be a
00:59:16homosexual.
00:59:17But the death penalty comes if you try to recruit people.
00:59:20If you're trying to convince other people that this is a good thing or you are abusing children or
00:59:27the vulnerable, mentally handicapped or something like that, then that carries the death penalty.
00:59:33And of course, the Western world is all up in arms.
00:59:35And there are banks now refusing to do business with the nation of Uganda because of it.
00:59:41But they are acting entirely in alignment with God's commandments.
00:59:46Uganda is right.
00:59:47This is what God wants for people, all people, not Jews, everybody.
00:59:53God's standards are universal because they are an aspect, an extension of his very character.
00:59:59And every nation should be trying to follow God's commandments.
01:00:02Even if they don't believe that he, that the God of Abraham is the true God, they will do
01:00:09better.
01:00:09They will have a more successful and a healthier nation if they follow his commandments regardless.
01:00:16It's just the way that God has set up the world to work.
01:00:18Is there anything else we need to talk about in that verse?
01:00:20Is there anything that anybody else wants to add on these topics?
01:00:26I mean, I know that they're kind of awkward to talk about, but like I said, we're all grownups
01:00:30here.
01:00:30So if there's something you want to, you want to say or questions you have, feel free.
01:00:36Jay, I often bring people back to Genesis chapter two, where man shall leave father and mother
01:00:45and cling to his wife, showing that, you know, marriage is between man and woman, not between
01:00:53man and man, woman and woman, and the two shall become one flesh, showing that also that bestiality
01:01:02is wrong.
01:01:03I mean, right there within those couple verses, we see homosexuality is wrong, bestiality is
01:01:11wrong, sex with children is wrong, that it's just man leaving mother and father and clinging to his
01:01:18wife and becoming one.
01:01:20I mean, that's all just within that, that one set of verses there.
01:01:25Yeah, those are all contrary to God's very, you know, original design and his design before the fall.
01:01:32All these, all the rules that God has about sexuality, those aren't the result of the fall.
01:01:38Those are God trying to restore us to what we're supposed to be.
01:01:41God's rules about relationships, about how men and women are to relate, how they're not to relate,
01:01:47and how we're not to relate to the rest of creation.
01:01:50All of that dates, all of that came before the fall.
01:01:54All right.
01:01:56And Paul is kind of going back to what he was saying earlier.
01:01:58Remember when, what was that?
01:02:01Romans 1, I want to say like Romans 119, I think.
01:02:06Um, oh yeah, in verse 21, they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.
01:02:14Because they refused to acknowledge God, everything else that they tried to think, all of their other
01:02:21reasoning is already flawed.
01:02:23Because they have decided to do what's wrong.
01:02:27And, you know, we were talking about, let me go back to previous one.
01:02:33You know, men committing shameless acts and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
01:02:36We didn't really talk about that last part.
01:02:38Part of the meaning there is pretty obvious that STDs are a pretty obvious consequence of sexual immorality.
01:02:48Now, in the modern world, we have antibiotics and treatments and condoms and all of these things to try to enable us
01:02:55to behave however we want without consequence.
01:02:59But as we've seen from, uh, just from nature, when you try to ignore God's standards, when you deliberately suppress what you know to be true,
01:03:11just from nature, the world around you, it warps all of the rest of your thinking.
01:03:18And you, you become infected by that spiritual disease.
01:03:24You know, the, the shameful pathos that Paul mentioned, this comes to own you and you get further and further afield.
01:03:33The more you suppress the truth, the more you indulge in whatever it is your flesh is telling you to do contrary to God's law,
01:03:42the more control it has over you.
01:03:44And I don't have statistics to back this up.
01:03:48I only have what, you know, anecdotal things that people who have experienced some pretty horrific things have related.
01:03:56But from what those people have told me, the worst child molesters prefer to use, to have male victims.
01:04:05The worst male child molesters prefer male victims.
01:04:08And it's because they started out with somebody abusing them or indulging in some little sin, like something that our culture tells them is just fine.
01:04:20Two grown men want to have a relationship with each other.
01:04:23Why is that anybody else's business?
01:04:26Scripture tells us that not only harms those, those people, it also infects the very land.
01:04:32I didn't look this one up ahead of time.
01:04:34I'm pretty sure it's in the middle of Leviticus where it's talking about all the sexual sins.
01:04:39It says, you will not do any of these things that the Canaanites did before you that caused God to kick them out of the land.
01:04:46And it's talking about sexual sins.
01:04:50And people think that this kind of thing is harmless.
01:04:54If two consenting adults want to do whatever they want to do in their own bedroom, why is it anybody else's business?
01:04:59It's other people's business for several reasons.
01:05:02One, it never ends there.
01:05:03They always want to push it on the rest of society.
01:05:07They always want to promote their lifestyle.
01:05:10One, because it gives them more people to indulge with.
01:05:14But mostly, it gives them permission.
01:05:17It makes them feel better about it because their consciences will always rebel against what they're doing until they don't have a conscience anymore at all.
01:05:25And this is another one of those due penalties for their error.
01:05:28They deny the truth and deny the truth until they can't even see the truth anymore.
01:05:33Everything they think is based on a lie.
01:05:36And they have to keep pushing and keep pushing.
01:05:40It always gets worse.
01:05:42And it infects the very land and all of their neighbors.
01:05:45A private sin like homosexuality.
01:05:49Even if two men want to say they're married and playhouse and they seem like normal heterosexual men outside the house, that homosexuality is still affecting their neighbors.
01:06:02It affects the entire nation.
01:06:05God said as it does.
01:06:06That's not my opinion.
01:06:08That's scripture.
01:06:09It is not a victimless crime.
01:06:11And especially people who want to bring it out into the public square.
01:06:15You know, we're not allowed to go snooping in people's bedrooms.
01:06:18God doesn't allow that.
01:06:20We're only allowed to punish crimes that are out in the open.
01:06:23But people who bring it out in the public square are trying to promote it.
01:06:27They are trying to lure the rest of the nation into their crimes, into their sins.
01:06:33There's a rise in what people who call themselves conservatives, gay conservatives.
01:06:39What are you trying to conserve?
01:06:41If you are openly gay, you are not a conservative, no matter what your beliefs are, no matter what your political stances are.
01:06:48Because if you are open about your homosexuality, then you are trying to get more people into your sin.
01:06:55You are trying to infect the nation, which means you are trying to undermine it, not conserve it.
01:07:00But being a conservative means trying to save something.
01:07:04If you are trying to destroy it, it doesn't matter who you vote for.
01:07:09If you are openly gay, you are not a conservative.
01:07:12So one more soapbox for me today.
01:07:16Let's see here.
01:07:17What else we got to talk about?
01:07:20Did I miss something?
01:07:22God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
01:07:25We've talked about that a couple of times.
01:07:26This is Paul reiterating the same idea that once you have decided that you are going to rebel against God and you continually indulge in whatever sin it is that God has forbidden and that you have decided to thumb your nose to God about, he's going to let you go that way.
01:07:44And it's not necessarily that God pushes you into it.
01:07:48It's that God has built us so that once we begin indulging in those sins, it becomes that infection, that shameful pathos.
01:08:00And it rules us just by nature.
01:08:03The world likes to tell us that we are hateful for standing up for.
01:08:33What God has said is true.
01:08:35God says that people who behave in this way should die.
01:08:40It doesn't matter what we think about it.
01:08:42That's what God said.
01:08:43So the world tells us that we're hateful for just repeating what God has told us.
01:08:48He's the creator.
01:08:49He makes the rules, not us.
01:08:51That's not hateful.
01:08:52That's just the truth.
01:08:54And telling people the truth is an act of love, not of hate.
01:08:56But those same people are full of all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice, all of these things.
01:09:05Sometimes it's right out in the open.
01:09:07They will tell you that love is love, even while they are persecuting people for speaking the truth, shutting down free speech.
01:09:16They're committing murder, destroying lives, burning down cities in the name of love.
01:09:21It doesn't make any sense at all, but that's the result.
01:09:26That is what Paul was talking about when he said that God gives them up to a debased mind.
01:09:32Most of them probably believe that they really are championing love and tolerance, when really they're just championing destruction and evil.
01:09:42And it's only going to get worse.
01:09:45All of these other sins in this passage, I mean, one sin breeds another.
01:09:50Once you've decided to reject God and go your own way, to worship yourself or some created object or something less, or to somehow believe that there is no God, which is really just putting yourself as God.
01:10:03There is no limit.
01:10:05There is no moral boundary anymore.
01:10:07Without God, there is no objective standard of right and wrong.
01:10:14If you get to make up your own rules, the rules are whatever you say they are, which means that you are going to keep going further and further down that hole.
01:10:24I would say oftentimes, this is why when you cut the Torah off and say it's abolished, from that point on, man is now deciding what love is, what is loving God and loving your neighbor.
01:10:35Because now you've cut off the righteousness of God, what he calls righteousness.
01:10:42Yeah, and once man decides, if we get to make the rules whatever we want, then we're defining, then we are righteousness, we are love.
01:10:52But no, we're just bringing wrath on ourselves instead.
01:10:56The creator, I mean, the creation never gets to set the rules.
01:10:59That's just a delusion.
01:11:02I think we've got only one more verse in this chapter.
01:11:07Though 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.
01:11:16I think that by nature, you know, homosexuality is death.
01:11:19It is part of a liberal death cult.
01:11:23I don't think it's going too far to say that, to call liberalism a death cult.
01:11:28And I don't mean, you know, our words get kind of mixed up.
01:11:32Words mean different things to different people.
01:11:34When I say liberalism, I don't mean classical liberalism like laissez-faire economics, personal liberty, at least within moral boundaries and public decency.
01:11:45I don't mean those things.
01:11:47The idea of always pushing the moral boundaries.
01:11:51And that's what modern liberalism has become.
01:11:54Constantly pushing the moral boundaries or what they call the Overton window.
01:11:59If somebody makes some outrageous statement today that they know is outrageous, but they push this horrible idea.
01:12:07Well, that means that an idea that's not quite as horrible is now a little more acceptable to people.
01:12:13And they keep doing this over and over and over.
01:12:16And they always say, oh, no, we're not we're not going to do that stuff over there.
01:12:19We just want this one little thing.
01:12:21We just want to get married and live our own private lives.
01:12:24Oh, no, we we just want to.
01:12:27We want you to bake our cake.
01:12:29No, we want you to celebrate it.
01:12:31No, we want you to indulge in this with us.
01:12:34Oh, no, you can't do your thing anymore.
01:12:36You have to do our thing or you're going to prison.
01:12:38That is the inevitable result.
01:12:40That's where these things go.
01:12:43And it's not just that people want us to.
01:12:46They want everybody to approve of what they're doing.
01:12:49It's not enough for us to say, oh, it's OK.
01:12:52You do you.
01:12:53We'll do us.
01:12:53And, you know, we'll leave each other alone.
01:12:56No, they want you to celebrate what they're doing.
01:12:58And they want you to do it, too, because by you following God's commandments, by you doing what's right.
01:13:05That condemns them.
01:13:07They see what they know to be right in somebody else's life.
01:13:12And it reminds them of God and God's law.
01:13:16That, yes, that's how God wants me to behave.
01:13:19But I want to do this.
01:13:20So quit reminding me.
01:13:21And it makes people angry and they will lash out.
01:13:25It always goes that way.
01:13:27There is once you let these things into society, it will always get worse.
01:13:33And that's why God instituted such harsh penalties for these things.
01:13:38Homosexuality deserves the death penalty.
01:13:41Because if you don't kill the disease at the very beginning, it will infect the whole nation.
01:13:47God will destroy that nation, just like he did the Canaanites.
01:13:51Is there anything else we need to talk about here?
01:13:53That is the end of chapter one.
01:13:55And I think that's enough for today.
01:13:57But if anybody has any questions or comments or anything else they wanted to bring up, anything related, of course.
01:14:04I did a lot more preaching tonight than I meant to.
01:14:06But most of us are already on the same page with most of this.
01:14:10I take a pretty hard line approach to God's law applies to all people, all over the world, all the time.
01:14:17But once you come to the conclusion that God's law is an extension of his own character, that the law he gave to Moses, he gave that law to Moses because that's how God wants the world to operate, because that's who God is.
01:14:31God never gives a commandment that is not in perfect alignment with his own character.
01:14:36Once you come to that conclusion, I don't see how you can decide anything else except that God's law is the perfect pattern for all nations to follow.
01:14:45So there's I mean, I guess what we're headed towards is an increased society of our society that's increasing in lawlessness.
01:15:00Right.
01:15:00Yeah.
01:15:01And so one point that when I look at it, especially among Christians, people who claim they follow Christ is there really is no law.
01:15:28And there's a debate between the law of God and the law of Christ.
01:15:33And so that's I mean, I don't know what we're going to get into that, but that's.
01:15:39That's a big thing, because if there is no law.
01:15:46Then.
01:15:48We could just do whatever we want and enter into the kingdom.
01:15:53And I just don't know how that reconciles with scripture.
01:15:56Yeah, we will get into that a little bit later in Romans, because Paul defines righteousness by the law.
01:16:06You know, the law tells us what sin is or rather he defines sin by the law.
01:16:10If the law tells us not to do something, then doing that is sin.
01:16:13If the law tells us to do something and we don't do that, then that's a sin.
01:16:18And by law, he obviously means the law of Moses, because in context, he even quotes some of the law saying that I wouldn't have known what it is to commit adultery if the law hadn't told me don't commit adultery.
01:16:28So he's quoting the law of Moses and to say that the law of Moses is different than the law of Christ is to say that Christ is different from God.
01:16:38Because the law of Moses, it's only called the law of Moses because it was given through Moses, not because Moses invented it.
01:16:44It's the law of God.
01:16:46Moses was a prophet that only spoke God's instructions, just like Yeshua.
01:16:50Yeshua or Jesus said himself, he only came to say what the father told him.
01:16:57And so the law of Christ must be the law of Moses.
01:17:00They must be the same or else we have two different gods.
01:17:04And then we're back to Marcionism again.
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