Nov. 13, 2016 Danger of Our Choices by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Well, I will begin with a quote from the 17th century Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs.

Listen to what he says. It is indeed a dreadful evil, one of the most hideous and fearful evils that could befall any man on the face of the earth, for God to give him up to his heart's desire.

A kindred truth is that spiritual judgments are more fearful than any outward judgments.

The verses before us this morning from the scripture constitute some of the strongest in the entire book of Romans.

And in the middle of the passage that we're going to work through this morning, we have verses 26 and 27, which in a controversial section of the scripture, are two of the most controversial and in our day, still, two of the most applicable.

There are consequences, you see. There are consequences to our choices. Now we as Reformed believers, we're not really big on this idea of choice, as though there's any efficacy or power to humans saying,

I'm going to go this way or that way. We believe in a sovereign God, who's the determinant factor in all things.

So with that overarching understanding, and not trying to step on any toes, there are consequences to the choice that we make.

And the scripture everywhere pushes us to choose rightly. The book of Proverbs, from which we began the reading this morning, the whole book of Proverbs is these generalizations, these observations by the wisest man who ever lived until the coming of Jesus Christ himself.

Wisdom, much of which is to warn us of the consequence of what? The choices we make.

The constant call of the Bible is to choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods of your fathers or the gods of the

Amorites in whose land you dwell. There's borrowing from Joshua in chapter 10, after his conquering of the land of Canaan.

And this speaks to the issues of our day, as the God of self -expression, self -gratification, has swelled into this monstrous parody of decency and orderliness, and has captured within its orb a legion of worshippers who serve its demands for more and more and more and more.

And as the proverb says, there are four things that never can say enough, and he goes on a relentless fire in the others, never has enough, never makes enough demands upon you, and the more you give it, the more it wants.

And so today, this idea that really can be wrapped under the one rubric of your own personal sovereignty,

I can do what I want, I can identify as I please, I am my own man,

I'm the master of my own fate, however you want to put it. The passage before us this morning in Romans gives us an explanation, if not a cure.

Now the cure for this sort of iniquity, the cure is coming later on in this epistle as we work through it.

And I simply want to tell you this morning, I'm going to be a little bit myopic, I'm going to stay right on what Paul is saying to us, what

Jesus Christ, the Word of God, is saying to us through this apostle here in these verses.

I'm not going to go much forward in the book of Romans, because God willing, we're going to have a few

Sundays ahead of us, and we'll keep going through the book of Romans, and we will come to the answer to these things.

And for right now, so that the Word of God will hit us with the force that it should hit us, we're going to stay right on these verses.

Very few references outside of just Romans 1 and verses 24 to 32.

We live in a culture, we live surrounded by a culture of death and sex.

And I would say we live in a culture, we live surrounded by a people, a society obsessed with this.

These two things, as the whole revolution, what

Al Mohler calls the sexual, the moral revolution, keeps pushing and grabbing for more and more and more and more, and every more is further and further and further from what the

Word of God would say. And as death becomes more and more and more, you're right.

And now with, in our state, we have, what do we call it here? Is it the right to die, or is it death with dignity?

I forget which state is calling it which. The dark cloud ever expanding, and I think a generation ago, people would have been aghast if you told them we would be here, where we are now, perhaps even 20 years ago.

I think wise, smart, godly people, astute observers would have said, no way, it couldn't go there.

And here we are, surrounded by this. And this is more than just people who agree that it's right, people who, as at the end of what

Ken just read to you, give approval to those who practice those things, it's more than that. We have laws with felony force that enforce these so -called rights of people to conduct themselves in complete discord with nature, with God's created order.

This word from the Apostle Paul was written in a similar cultural framework to our own.

Two thousand years ago, when Paul wrote to the Romans, and it was a Greco -Roman world, the

Grecian morality, that philosophy, that whole way of living and thinking was infused in everything.

And that's when Paul wrote then, very much like our day.

Sexual excesses, especially homosexuality, was rampant. One of the Corinthians greatest errors was that they were not dismayed by the egregious sexual misconduct in their ranks.

Paul, the Pharisee, the Jew of Jews, he confronted a Greco -Roman culture that condoned, that even applauded excesses, which to the

Jewish mind, so infused as it was with the law of God, just found abominable.

Here in verses 24 -32 is the expression of God's wrath upon those whose expression of themselves is an intentional and cognizant and willing repudiation of Him.

And all that He would have His people stand for, what the image of God that He put in man is, denied, rejected, repudiated.

And this is the result of it, that we have before us this morning. The expression of God's wrath.

Now this snub against God, this acknowledgment, because although they knew

God, we covered that last week, they knew God, you are responsible for God, He has shown Himself to you, whether you believe the scriptures or not, the heavens and the world around you is enough to bring you guilty before Him.

And so this sort of behavior, conduct, lifestyle, whatever you want to call it, this snub in the face of God is no less clear to God than perhaps last

Tuesday was the message that was sent. We think of Secretary Clinton, President Obama, the elite

Republicans, the pundits, all of them must have felt the rebuke that the election ultimately was.

But God, this one being rebuked, this one being snubbed, is not from an election, you're not voting for or against God.

He's no politician, He is no pundit, He is the great God and the choice so many have made to intentionally withhold from Him the honor that is due to Him has consequences.

There are consequences to our choices, to your choices.

In His wrath, in His wrath, God has given them their desires.

The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness. How is that wrath revealed?

What does that mean? Does that mean brimstone and fire are going to fall down from heaven and consume us?

No. His wrath is that those who behave in the manner that we discussed last week, intentionally, knowingly, rejecting the knowledge of God so clearly communicated to them,

His wrath is, I give you over. Now understand, it is not as some will tell you that God passively takes

His restraining hand off and thus they fall into deeper and deeper sin. No, that is not the sovereign

God that we worship. It is Him actively giving them to their desires.

Not in a flippant, you want it, you got it sort of way. In a grave way.

If we would say today, in a heavy way. Here to here by the active, sovereign, knowing hand of God, giving over.

This is the expression of His wrath. He gives them over to it. Those who refuse to give

Him the honor due His name will themselves suffer dishonor, a condition which because they've been allowed to give vent to their own unnatural and dishonorable longings, they bring on themselves.

There are two sections in the text that detail the sins that men engage in once this wrathful giving over occurs.

At the end, close to the end here, verses 29 to 31, we have this list of sins, very similar to many other lists we have in Scripture.

There have been many attempts to classify, to categorize these. He just read it to you,

Ken just read it to you. They're full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They're gossips, slanders, haters of God, and the rest.

I'm satisfied that we can just let those speak for themselves. It's a general description of what happens when

God gives men up to a debased or some version say a depraved mind.

From that depravity, from that giving over, simply going the way that they have seen fit to behave in the first place.

Now in the midst of this,

I said there's two sections that speak specifically about what this is, what behavior then becomes more and more manifest.

What are they being given over to? If verses 29 to 31 have this general description of sin, it's not meant to be a comprehensive list, it's a characterization.

In the midst of it, we have verses 26 and 27. What are these about?

What are these about? They are about homosexuality. This is what the

Apostle Paul has in mind. That's all there is to it. Let me read them again to you one more time.

Let the word of God ring true simply on the face of it. For this reason,

God gave them up to dishonorable passions. 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.

There have been many attempts in the last decade or so to twist and to pull this language apart by men who gyrate and dissemble, developing these fantastic theories of what this is actually saying, and when they're done with these theories and all these theological and exegetical and hermeneutical gymnastics, lo and behold, what does the

Scripture come out and prove? It proves that what these verses actually say is something like this. God approves of homosexuality, be it male or female, just so long as that's your

God -given nature. And they go on to say that therefore what

Paul is saying, what God is saying through Paul, is that if you are cut in a heterosexual way, if that's your

God -given nature, who would be sin for you to act this other way? But if you're cut this way, then it would be sin in God's sight should you quote -unquote pretend to be heterosexual.

It's fantastic, it makes your brains rattle. On the face of it, it cannot say that.

In the context, it can't say that. Let's be clear.

Verses 26 and 27 speak in the most condemnatory tones of this particular sin, homosexuality.

The incident in Genesis 19, the destruction of Sodom, is often raised in defense of the positive view, the quote -unquote positive view of what these could mean, that God condones these sort of things.

And they look at Genesis 19. They say that God destroyed the city because of their lack of hospitality, not the homosexual violence threatened against the angels.

And at one level we can agree with this. God did not destroy Sodom because of their sexual depravity.

That's not what the Scripture says. Behold, Ezekiel 16, this was the guilt of your sister

Sodom. She and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.

They were haughty and did an abomination before me, so I removed them when I saw it. The idea of not caring for the poor and the needy is often what we call synecdoche, where the part stands for the whole.

So God says, you didn't care for the poor and needy. And what's he saying? He says, overall, social injustice.

You were not concerned with the poor. You didn't look to your neighbor who was destitute and needed help.

Your hand was tight. It was closed. Your fist wouldn't open and help them out. Though I gave you this abundance of food,

I gave you riches. And because of your social injustice. So I can agree.

All we have to do is read the Scripture at its plain meaning, and we can agree that Sodom was not destroyed for that cause.

But the depravity of the city, the general spiritual malaise of that place was ultimately emblemized by the men of that city wanting to rape the visitors.

That was the emblem. That was the paradigm. That was the sin. That was the final expression of it that proved that God's condemnation, his indictment was completely justified.

If you're geared this way, if this, and I don't mean by that the violence,

I'm talking just simply this lifestyle, back to Romans 1, 26 and 27. If you are geared this way, if you have family or loved ones who are gay, as my wife and I do, and no, it's not our son.

We have family members whom we love dearly, who are committed to this sort of lifestyle.

I want to tell you that the message this morning, the message

I am preaching, is not a message of hate. There is no hatred in this place.

There is no hatred in the Scripture. And if I preached that way, I could be accused of not following what the

Scripture says. This is not a message of hate, or disgust, or rejection, or any such thing.

We have one goal this morning, to preach God's Word with clarity, with accuracy, and with love.

And to tell you very simply, this is what God's Word says. It's very easy for you to find someone who will say that Romans 1, 26 and 27 condones homosexuality.

They lie. They are lying. I will tell you the truth.

Whether you believe it or not is more your affair than it is mine. I pray you will, because by believing

God's Word, that is how salvation begins. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the

Word of God. And as best as I am able, without compromise, and with love,

I need to tell you what God's Word actually says. If you choose to remain as you are, so be it.

I would then only hope that by the time I'm done, you will see that the Bible offers no cover for you.

That in that sense, you're on your own. We begin with verses 24, 26, and 28.

All three of these are about God giving them over. They, they are the ones that Paul landed on back in verse 118.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

Those who, verse 21 says, knew God but refused to honor Him as God. Verse 22, they became fools and in their foolishness they changed

God's glory into images. Therefore, because of all these reasons, therefore,

God gave them over. Gave them over. Those three words translate, the

Greek, paradidomi, paradidomi, and this is God's judgment on sin, this giving over.

Now this word is interesting. It's often used of being arrested, as when the

Baptist was arrested in Matthew 4 .12, or when Jesus spoke of being handed over to the judge in Matthew 5 .25.

In Matthew 10 .4, it's the word used for Judas' betrayal of our

Lord. He, paradidomi here, him, he handed him over. And all these have this flavor of incarceration.

And that's what it sounds like, that God is giving over to incarceration or to imprisonment, which

He sort of is, isn't He? In chapter 6, verse 15, and the rest of it in this book of Romans, Paul correlates the life of sin to what?

To slavery. To being imprisoned in this penitentiary of death, if you will.

And it's like Wesley's great hymn, with that one lyric that comes to my mind, long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in nature's night.

So what do we have here? It's the ungodly rebels of the second Psalm, railing against the authority of the

Lord. They're all saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast their cords from us. And in the Psalm, God laughs at them.

He holds them in derision. In Romans, there's no laughter. There's this grave handing over of people to the consequences of their own choices.

So we have this thrice repeated giving over. Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.

For this reason, verse 26, God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women to exchange natural relations for those that are contrary to nature.

Verse 28, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

Last week, we spoke about the wrath of God revealed from heaven. This week, simply the result.

This descent into moral perversion of all kinds is the outcome of God's wrath.

Remember that God is sovereign in this. It is a giving over. He didn't say, well,

I would like you to sin. And therefore, I put you in a place where you will do this because I command you to this.

It's not that at all. But it is God giving them over. He's giving him the desires of their heart.

It is the result of his wrath. It's not the reason for it, but it is the result of his wrath.

God in his wrath turns them over to be incarcerated in the fulfillment of their own desires. But it is they who must own the choices that they themselves made.

Now, I want to take a moment, and I notice that some of the kids aren't here this morning. I don't often stop and preach to a particular segment of the congregation here, but I want to speak to children.

I don't know how many children we have in here. I don't even know if you're paying attention. So parents, get your children to raise their hand or something if they're children.

And they need to pay attention. I want you to hear this, kids. A lot of this has been over your head. A lot of this has been hard even for the adults around you, for your parents to understand.

These are tough verses, kids. These are really hard. This idea of God giving people over to do what's wrong.

And I want to say something to you. This is why your parents discipline you. This is why you get timeouts.

This is why you get spankings. This is why your parents are so concerned to show you what is right and wrong.

They don't just let you do what you want to do because you don't yet know what you really want to do or what you should do.

There are lots of people out there who think they know better than mom and dad what's best for you. Don't believe them.

They lie. Your mom and dad are the ones that God says are to teach you.

God says they are the ones you must listen to and obey. And mom and dad will not give you up the way

God does these people we're talking about this morning. And I want to tell you why. It's because they love you.

It's because God says that they are to teach you, to train you, to discipline you, to raise you in the fear and the admonition of the

Lord not to give you up. Giving up, giving people over to their bad choices is not for your parents to do for you.

That's something for God to decide because only God is sovereign in this and only God is wise enough for this.

So as I preach this, if you keep hearing what I'm saying, I don't want you ever to look at your mom or dad and say, will you give me up the way

Pastor Josh said God gave them up? The answer is never. May it never be.

That is not what your parents are here for. God gives them a different responsibility and holds that one just to himself.

So I want you kids to know this. Because your parents love you, they will not give you up. And because your parents love you and don't want to see you make these sort of choices, you see the consequences for them now.

I want to talk about what these ones giving up have done. They've taken the clearly communicated truth and they've set it aside, preferring instead a lie.

Verse 23 from last week, images preferred to the glory of God. Verse 25, a lie such as believing that these verses condone, even enthusiastically support particular sin.

That lie is taken and believed and preferred in favor of the truth.

Clearly communicated. Verse 26, another exchange, women exchanging natural relations for what is contrary to nature.

What do we have here? Here in these verses, in Paul's day, 2 ,000 years ago, in that Greco -Roman world, and we have to understand, can't just be in Rome.

This is much more pervasive. It's Isaiah 5, is it not? Isaiah 5 played out right before his eyes and I would argue before our eyes today.

Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood, who draw sin as with cart ropes, who say, let him, being

God, let him be quick, let him speed his work that we may see it. Let the counsel of the

Holy One of Israel draw near and let it come that we may know it. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

How accurate is that? How accurate is that as a description of our day and of Paul's day?

In chapter 1, verses 19 to 21 of Romans, we'll say that all this is done in the face of the certainty that God is and that his self -revelation in nature is adequate for men to know that Romans chapter 1, verses 26 and 27, describes something that is, in God's sight, abominable and that this divine perspective is adequately communicated in the created order.

Now, I think that was one of my longest sentences in all my preaching. Let me say it again. Verses 19 to 21 of Romans 1 tell us that what

God has done or what these people have done in the face of God, in the face of the certainty that God is, that his self -revelation in nature is adequate for men to know that these verses speak of a particular sin abominable in God's sight and this has been adequately communicated just in what is in the created order of nature itself.

And what are they on? Not just for this particular sin.

Those given over to it all, but this one is the one that is made prominent here. I liken it to a great slide.

One of those fun rides like at the water parks. You know, it's kind of a spiral thing. It just goes round and round and you have the water keeping going and you go faster and faster and faster, but this one is so much faster and so much steeper and so much longer and it just goes quicker and quicker and mile after mile and on either side of you there's crowds just cheering you on, giving approval, applauding as you go, and you're squealing with delight.

The high sides are all that keep you from tumbling off the side into oblivion and there is no way off.

This you suddenly notice as you're going down this slide. No way off. You got to keep your feet up because if your feet should catch, you're going to tumble head over heels and be hurt.

When I used to climb the mountains, they teach you and you practice this that if you ever fall, the first thing you do is you get your feet up because if one point of a crampon should catch, you're probably going to break your leg, but you're going to become simply a rock tumbling down.

You're not going to be able to stop. So here you are on this slide. No way to slow down.

You can't put your foot down as a brake because you'll simply break your foot, your leg, you'll tumble over. It'll be a disaster.

You're just stuck on this slide. Too far to jump off.

You're going too fast anyway. And the crowds on both sides ecstatic that you choose to express yourself.

They're cheering you on. They're egging you on. They're congratulating you at every stop. As this slide goes from the top, it's almost as if you turn around and go back down the stairs.

Truth. You turn towards the slide. The lie.

You jump on anyway. And now you can't get off. Do you remember when our president, soon -to -be former president, he publicly congratulated

Michael Sam for being the first openly gay man drafted by the NFL? Here's what he said.

From the playing field to the corporate boardroom, LGBT Americans prove every day that you should be judged by what you do and not who you are.

Now, part of that we could agree with. You judge a man by his works. By their fruits you shall know them.

But there's this prominence. There's this taking out of time for this one thing because of this one thing, because of this one choice.

Cheering the man as he's on the slide and going further and faster. Stay on the slide, he says.

You're such an example of bravery and what is right. He did much the same with the NBA player

Jason Collins. But, for example, the Raiders' Derek Carr, a heterosexual man, one who, by the way, is turning out to be a smoking good quarterback, and we

Raiders fans have been waiting for so long for another quarterback like him. But he worked just as hard as anybody to be able to compete at that level.

No time was taken out to condone what he did, but time was taken out to condone what

God detests, and particularly because he was in that camp. And that's pretty much our world today.

Tolerance, which is a much abused word, it long ago devolved into acceptance, and now it's gone to active promotion.

And if we don't do that, then we're hateful and all these other things that they must force us into, and I deny them all.

I'm not hateful. I don't believe anybody in this room is. I'm not intolerant, and I don't believe any of you are.

I deny it all. Just because we don't agree, because we hold to the Word of God, even preaching the

Word of God, doesn't make us any of those things. You don't have to be forced into that camp, nor do you have to feel defensive as you're talking to your neighbors in the coffee room at work.

We don't have to be locked into this. It's almost like that, what do we call it in rhetoric, a red herring, and we get sucked into that argument.

Nigger, I wouldn't even go there. There's a variety of opinions on what is meant by nature, as Paul uses it.

Is it something intrinsic to someone, such as by nature he's sort of a grump, or does it refer to nature as we usually think of it, the created order, and I think it's sort of both.

It means the qualities of humanhood that we have that are intrinsic to us as a certain mode of existence and behavior that is part of and consistent with the created order.

God's revelation of himself is in the created order. It's in nature. His invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made.

The heavens declare. The firmament shows his handiwork. It's a communication of God's nature impressed in everything that he's made.

We can borrow a little bit from 1 Corinthians 11, 14. Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is a disgrace for him?

I'm gonna be very anxious when our brother Conley gets to chapter 11 in our Bible study of 1

Corinthians. I don't say that in a sardonic way or hoping for him to stumble.

He's got some tough stuff ahead of him like this one. But the created order itself communicates certain things to you, that there's a schema, if you will, to the way things are made, and it says something about the way then we should live because this, the created order, says something about the

God who made it and therefore says something about the image of God given exclusively to mankind.

So verse 26, where lesbianism is contrary to nature. Verse 27, which with the likewise pulls men into its orbit, they say the same thing.

They say that homosexual conduct is wrong. Nature makes this a truth that is clearly perceived.

Men and women physically and emotionally by nature correspond to each other. Where the

Bible speaks of becoming one flesh, it's speaking of physical intimacy as a normal, intimate, private gift to be enjoyed by a man and a woman in the confines of marriage.

The scripture from Genesis onwards and most especially and most importantly, our

Lord Jesus Christ himself in Matthew 19 and elsewhere affirms exactly this.

The author of the Hebrews said the marriage bed should be honored by all and he's hearkening back to this.

To the church, let me say what I'm saying here would be in Canada, in the

United Kingdom, it would be felonious hate speech. By law, felonious hate speech.

And my personal opinion is, and I have very little acumen in politics and I very rarely even brush upon it here,

I've never told anyone that you gotta vote this way or that way or anything of the such or anything of that nature.

But my personal opinion is that had the election gone other than it did, it would soon have been hate speech here as well.

I happen to think that President -elect Trump is an ungodly and non -Christian man.

I think Secretary Clinton would have proven to be a virulently anti -God and actively anti -Christian leader.

Just my opinion. I think the murder rate that we now find so appalling, the one foisted against the unborn, those who cannot speak for themselves,

I think that after a couple of years, had it gone differently, in about 2018 we'd look back and we would see this as just a trickle compared to the floodgates that might have gotten opened.

God only knows. So you're hearing only speculative opinions by me.

I just see a few heads nodding in agreement. What is the message to the church?

We all know these things are wrong. I'm not trying to hammer or be polemic or hateful or in any way acerbic towards a certain slice of the population, any kind of a slice of the population.

My message is to the church. My message is to those who are in the Lord Jesus Christ by faith, by having repented for their sins and gone to Him for forgiveness, trusting the promise of the

Word that says there at the cross should you bow down before God at the feet of Jesus Christ and trust in His sacrifice and that alone.

That's the church. To the church, what do I say? Don't allow yourself to be pigeonholed here.

There's so much pressure on us today to leave this behind, to take words like this and elsewhere, not just on this one issue, as something other than what they mean.

And if you won't, well, now you're bigoted, you're hateful, you're this -a -phobe, you're that -a -phobe, and on and on and on it goes.

This is not hate speech. We're just not willing to allow God's plain meaning to be twisted.

Our God is not a marionette that will dance on all fours for anyone, and we don't have to allow the

Scripture to be so abused. And if we stand on God's Word, say, no, this is what it says.

It is so plain. They say, well, you must then be this and that and the other. It's almost to the proverb, do not answer a fool according to his folly lest you become like him.

In human terms, it's almost an argument you can't win. I don't know if it's even worth going after too much.

If you can win that argument, please tell us how you did it, because it would really be useful for us.

No, we don't have to allow people to say, well, therefore, you must be this, or to come up with these silly theories that this

Word says something or condones something that it clearly does not. It's the opposite. To our friends, to our neighbors, to our coworkers, to our loved ones who have opted for this manner of life, we don't deny that you may have been born with this predilection.

We all have certain tendencies. Verse 29 to 32 says that they're filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.

Let me finish these verses. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness, they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Despite the prominence, it's not the only sin that Paul is railing against, is it?

A list like this ends in another place. I think I mentioned this last week, and such were some of you.

We all have sins which we enjoyed that kept God away, or so we thought. Homosexuality, though, it gets this certain prominence, and that's true, we can't deny that.

Few other lifestyles receive all the effort to force our Holy Scripture to say something they don't, so we have to be forgiven having a little bit of defensiveness here.

And none on the list I just read are practiced openly and proudly. We don't have haters of parents pride day.

We don't have support your local extortioner day. Or any of the other.

And nor is there all the cheering for people who are committed to such a lifestyle. When I preach a message like this, please know that I didn't choose to preach this because I thought today would be a good day to condemn someone.

It came up in the sequential order of a series that we started a month ago. And this church is committed to verse -by -verse exposition.

You are not targeted. This is the fifth message since we started the book of Romans.

And this is simply where it is. And I'm not gonna skip it over because it might hurt somebody's feelings.

Many parts of this book of Romans are gonna hurt all of our feelings. I didn't target anyone.

Not you, not your loved ones, not your friends. It simply came up in the order.

And we are committed to preaching through books of the Bible in order. You're not targeted.

As best as I am able, I've told you the truth. If you say you don't accept it, at least understand that there is no hatred here.

If after I say amen in a moment, you're still committed to your choice, I say with all my heart, we hope that you will stay for the fellowship afterwards.

That you'll have lunch with us. That you will let us enjoy your company for a while. A friend of mine sent me this.

I was once at work discussing Christianity with a female co -worker and a gay male co -worker.

Afterwards, the lady approached me and said she was surprised I did not bring up his homosexuality. I told her that it wasn't his homosexuality that made him a sinner.

It was his nature. He was born a sinner. Everyone is born a sinner, gay and straight alike.

It is not the sin that keeps you from God, but that you've rejected the Savior, Jesus Christ. And that is the difference between Christians and non -Christians.

Christians act against their nature when they sin. Non -Christians act in their nature when they sin.

Christians' sins are forgiven. All others are not. I like the way he said that.

I like the boldness and the clarity with which he explained it to this co -worker.

I will say to you, though, and to your loved ones, should they be here in this place, that the end of the slide that you're on, which seems so fulfilling and so satisfying now, is something that all those people who are giving you approval, all those so -called

Bible experts who convince you that God just loves everyone and never shows any wrath, because we don't like wrath.

He never even really gets stern with anyone. The end of that slide is death.

For the wages of sin is death, any sin. But no other sin finds such glad approval and promotion than this one, with the possible exception of abortion.

The end of the ride you're on is eternal separation from God. It is hell.

I've told you the truth about Romans 1, verses 24 to 32. Here's another truth, and with this we will close.

There is no sin so great, there are no insults hurled at God that he cannot forgive.

He did mine. If you believe in Jesus Christ, he did yours.

The state of California in this last election has confirmed the death penalty.

With God, it was never at issue. We will all die, some to eternal punishment, some to eternal life.

I say to you now, whatever your lifestyle is, wherever it was described in chapter 1, verses 24 to 32, whichever section you might say in your heart of hearts, well,

I fall into this one. There is forgiveness in Jesus.

Turn to Jesus for a new nature. Turn to Jesus for the rebirth that is spoken of in chapter 3 in Jesus' talk with Nicodemus.

Look to Jesus. Go to him in faith. Fall down before him and repent of your sins and beg him for forgiveness.

And from him receive forgiveness and with that a reborn nature and then live in the assurance of eternal life.