The Witness of Romans 1 Part 1

Technological Setup and the Need for Feedback

Isn't that cool? We are technologically advanced here, that's all I can tell you. Well, okay, we're not, but. In fact, I do a lot of trout, I'm sorry. No, I did not, the helmet cam would look a little odd today.

Did you see my helmet cam? Oh, I posted it. I posted a video of my helmet cam from Wednesday, and going down Mingus Mountain and encountering a couple deer that decided that that looked like a good time to cross the road.

Why did the deer cross the road? To kill the bicycles, evidently, is the idea. But anyhow, yes, it's interesting what you can do there. Romans chapter one, Romans chapter one. I thought it would be appropriate to, before we go into Matthew chapter 25, to take a little time to once again, in essence, review.

I know that normally our sessions are either, you know, once every couple months, we get everybody together and we break into groups and we do things where you do some talking and studying and so on and so forth.

Other than that, it's just mainly me talking. Well, I'd like to try to get some feedback and some interaction today. We often talk about the fact that because of things that happen within our society, that we have opportunities, limited as they might be, in light of, shall we say, new cultural norms, the new normal, but we do have opportunities to interact with people in our society and to do so on a biblical basis.

Responding to Matthew Vines and the Need for a Positive Biblical Witness

Over the past couple of weeks on my webcast, I have been dealing rather extensively with a presentation that was made just a few weeks ago, I believe it was in March, at a church, a United Methodist Church in Wichita, Kansas, by a man by the name of Matthew Vines.

Mr. Vines looks to be about 21, 22 years of age. He has attended at least some schooling at Harvard, but is not currently doing that, but claims to have spent the past two years studying the biblical texts on the subject of homosexuality.

Ironically, the conclusions that he came to were pretty much exactly what you could read on most pro-homosexual websites that are promoting the concept of gay Christianity, and ironically, in those two years, has not seemingly encountered the other side of the pro-homosexual perspective.

Anyway, in that process, I have been, so far, I think I've done at least four full hours. His talk was an hour and five minutes long. I've done about four hours, so far, and still have 15 minutes of his presentation to cover, but we have had the opportunity of looking at some of the key texts in the New Testament on this particular subject, and I have pointed out that I think one of the areas where we as believers have, I will admit, fallen down somewhat in giving a response to our society is that we tend to do so only negatively and not positively, and what I mean by that is there is a rich, positive presentation in Scripture.

You may recall about a year ago, maybe, it's, we could ask the official keeper of the notes when we went through Matthew chapter 19, but when we went through Matthew chapter 19, and Jesus' teaching on marriage, and the fact that one man, one woman, God makes the gender roles, man and woman join together, that's what God blesses, the complementarianism of all of that, we pointed out the fact that the Scriptures present to us a very positive presentation of human sexuality and the purpose of God in marriage, and all of these things.

Unfortunately, most of the time when this is discussed in our society, that element is not allowed into the conversation, especially within the media. Instead, you have just a focus upon negative, negative, negative, and by doing that, you shift the attention from God's positive purpose to really where the world wants it to be, and that is upon, well, you're denying people rights, and you're limiting people's happiness, and you're forcing people to be alone, and all this kind of really rhetorical argumentation.

Now, most of you are not going to be in a situation where you're gonna have to be in the media responding to that kind of thing in a very, very, very short period of time. Most of your conversations are not gonna be quite as intense in that way.

That is, most of your conversations will have a little bit more time than the next commercial break, and so you don't necessarily have to be spending and investing time going, all right, how do I handle this, how do I respond to that, sort of practicing ahead of time.

But at the same time, there may be opportunities where you do have a similar situation in the sense of how many stops before the person you're sitting next to on the bus, or the light rail, if you happen to be in a very narrow part of Phoenix, that kind of a thing, or a little more extended situation, you're on the plane, and maybe it's not from here to Boston or in a long time where you can have in-depth conversations.

Maybe it's just a flight over to California or something. But different situations might arise where you have an opportunity. And it's not like, you know, there's a lot of really cheesy methodologies out there where you can start conversations with people, and I've never been really good at that.

I mean, if I'm gonna start conversations, because I really wanna start a conversation with somebody, it's not because I'm under some guilt trip. You know, since I'm on this plane, I need to talk to such and such a person.

You know, there have been times I've sat next to somebody, we've never said a single word, mainly because we were both asleep. Or, you know, when someone sits down, and before you can even say hi, plugs in and turns it up to where you can hear it yourself.

Yeah, you know, not really, you know, that's not my thing. But these opportunities might be there. And very frequently, it's just, man, if you just sit in there, maybe someone has picked up the USA Today from their hotel room, they still have it with them, and it's right on the front page.

It's part and parcel of where we are, that these opportunities about the nature of human life and nature of law itself comes up. And let's just put it this way, sometimes you actually have to make a choice whether you're just going to speak honestly, because the issues are right there.

You didn't have to bring it up. It was brought up by the other person. Now what are you gonna do? And I think it's important that we have a firm foundation and that we be prepared for the fact that just as we own the Bible, and hopefully study the Bible, on a regular basis, others do too.

And there are particular arguments that have become prevalent, not because everybody else is necessarily sitting around studying the Bible so as to be prepared to respond to you, but due to that thing that's around us all the time now, called the net, the internet, the web, or whatever terminology you wish to use, there are a lot of people who will take the time to throw out a Google question, how to respond to such and such.

They'll get an answer. I mean, have you ever tried that? It's amazing, just throw a question at Google and how many websites come back at you that are exactly what you were looking for. And they've probably never heard a response to it.

They've probably, if they've used it before, found Christians to be unprepared to really interact with it. Even Mr. Vines recognized that in reality, the central text from his perspective on this subject is in Romans chapter one.

Now his argumentation for that was fallacious. He basically said that we all recognize the Old Testament law is no longer binding upon us. He didn't show any real understanding of the nature of the Old Testament law, how deeply connected these New Testament texts are to the Old Testament law.

Romans 1:18-23 and the Universal Suppression of Truth

But still, even he recognized that Romans chapter one is really central. And he spent most of his time on it for the obvious reason he had to. We need to understand what this text is saying for so many reasons, not just because right now there is a huge, and will be for the next number of months through the election and probably for the foreseeable future after that.

No matter what the outcome of the election might be, the outcome of the election might slow down the discussion for a while or accelerate it. I don't know. But what is found in this text is so fundamental and foundational for so many other issues that I really think it should be a text that you know and you know well.

So well, A, I would highly recommend it to your memorization. B, you really should feel comfortable turning there, feeling like you do know what the text is saying, not having a confidence that you've heard every possible objection.

None of us can ever hear every possible objection. I have not heard every possible objection. I hear new things all the time. And you would say, that's been your job for like 30 years now. It's true, but man has a fertile imagination.

And it is amazing what man can come up with. You don't have to have that kind of confidence because I don't know almost anybody who could have that. Real confidence comes from knowing the text well enough that you can have confidence that you will be able to recognize where someone is in essence missing the boat, where they're not following the argument.

It's an old illustration, but it's a good illustration. It may be an illustration that interestingly enough in the future won't be overly relevant anymore, but it has been well said that, and I've had relatives that have worked in the banking industry, and they will tell me this is the case, that bank tellers are not trained to detect counterfeits by spending a lot of time with counterfeits.

They're trained to detect counterfeits by spending a lot of time with the real thing. If you know the real thing real well, then you recognize when someone is messed up in trying to imitate the real thing.

And there is a very appropriate application of that to Christian theology and biblical exegesis. The more familiar you are with the text, the more familiar you are with the biblical text as a whole or particular text in particular, the easier it is for you to recognize a fraudulent understanding when it comes along.

And so my goal would be, I would challenge you to want to be so comfortable with, especially Romans 1, that you could turn there and that you could give an answer because someone will say, why would you say something like that?

And they may be expecting you to go to particular texts, but even when you go to particular texts, if you can provide the context, if you can demonstrate that you're not just looking at a couple of verses, most people you're talking to, all they've read is a couple of verses.

They really don't have any overly great concern about the role of Romans 1 in the overarching scheme of Paul's epistle to the Romans. They're not gonna listen to however many sermons we've already had in the book of Romans and we're not halfway through the book of Romans in Sunday mornings.

They're not gonna take that kind of time. They don't want to see what the flow of the argument is and everything else. And rarely do you get to really have a whole lot of time to develop that. You have to know it, you need to be able to summarize it.

But the key is to be able to have the familiarity with the text that will allow you to speak to it. So generally the argument begins in chapter one, verse 18. There is a major section break there because Paul has basically introduced the concept of righteousness with God.

A righteousness is revealed from faith to faith as is written, the righteous shall live by faith. But he doesn't then interpret that text. He then launches into the demonstration of the necessary foundation for the discussion of the gospel and as the universal sinfulness of man.

And he begins by saying that the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and righteousness of men. The ones, the truth in unrighteousness suppressing. That's not good, smooth English rendering but it does give you an idea of what the original language is saying.

You have to choose to what level you're gonna go in discussing these things with someone. But it is, I think, important to recognize that Paul begins with a word that is extremely unpopular in our society.

And many people would tell you you should never use. Many people in seminary will tell you you should never use unless you can pronounce it like D .A. Carson and then it sounds okay. And there's only two people that are chuckling about that.

If you've ever heard D .A. Carson speak, he doesn't say the wrath of God, it's the wrath. The wrath of God. So if you can get away with a wrath thing then of course the person you're talking to may have absolutely no idea what you're saying or talking about at that point but they won't be offended by it either.

But the wrath of God is being revealed. This is present tense. It's not will be revealed. This isn't a promise of some future judgment. The wrath of God is being revealed. It is a biblical norm that man's ungodliness and unrighteousness brings the wrath of God.

Now we normally think of the wrath of God waiting. It's something that's gonna be revealed in the end times but it really changes how you look at this world and how you understand the events of this world if you recognize that the wrath of God is being revealed against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men.

We live in a day where we are taught to see everything as random. It's just there is no purpose, there is no order. Even if you're a religious person and you think there is, it's beyond our capacity. Well, maybe in the specifics but we are given principles in scripture and these principles reveal to us that God's wrath is being revealed from heaven and we need to recognize that when a society as a society turns its back and enshrines in its laws ungodliness and unrighteousness of necessity, the wrath of God not only comes against the nation that sins against the light but one might argue that the enshrinement of unrighteousness in the laws of a nation is in fact part of the wrath of God because there is a turning over.

That's what's gonna be, the terminology is gonna be used later on in this section is a turning over of those who have had the truth but suppress that truth. There is a turning over of them to their own less than their own ways.

I think a lot of us, especially those of us with a few more years under the belt are taken aback at the speed at which things that we said 20 years ago, ah, that won't happen in my lifetime. Now the question is, will it happen in the next five years?

And those of you who are younger, your norm is the change. For those of us who are a little bit older, that's not always been the way that it is. And that might say something to us. So the wrath of God is being revealed.

There is such a thing as ungodliness and unrighteousness and our society says that's the one thing we cannot even define for anybody else anymore but notice Paul does not make this a subjective issue.

Does not say God reveals wrath against ungodliness and unrighteousness that you define. God defines what these things are. But then there is a description. It could stop, the text can simply stop and say against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

And then move on to verse 19 because that which is known about God. It doesn't do that. There is a participial phrase in the original language. Starts with the definite article tone. And then there's a description.

The, and then the word is katakanton, suppressing. The suppressing, who? There's a description. The truth in unrighteousness. So there's a description of a, it's a plural. So all those, the ones who are suppressing the truth and unrighteousness.

Now, now someone might say, ah, so Paul is actually limiting those to whom the wrath of God is being revealed to some subset. And it's those who know the truth but they're suppressing the truth. Well, what would that require us to believe?

That there are people who naturally both know the truth and follow the truth. And as we're gonna see, while on a technical grammatical level, you could certainly make that argument. That's not gonna be Paul's conclusion.

In fact, that one of the reasons that people don't necessarily see this with the clarity they need to see this, is this argument is going to continue on until the middle of chapter three. And the middle of chapter three, Paul says, therefore we conclude that all Jew and Gentile are under the condemnation of sin.

And this has been God's purpose. It's to close every mouth. You really know, you know what, you know what one of the greatest blessings that God could ever grant this nation would be to shut our mouths.

There is so much self-righteous moralism in our land. We're not as bad as somebody else. And the condemnation that is going to come because of a rejection of God's law is mind boggling. There's a beautiful picture in Romans chapter three so that every mouth might be stilled, every tongue stilled, and it's referring to this, well, I'm not guilty, or I'm not as bad as this.

And you know people like that, it's constantly making up excuses. And the gospel, the good news is not presented until people confess with, in the presence of God, yes, I am a sinner. And yes, you are just to condemn my sin.

You are holy, I am not. I am your creature. I stand before you guilty. Once the mouth is closed, confession has been made, no more excuses are made, then the gospel is presented. How upside down does the church have it when we are constantly presenting the gospel to people who are still just yapping away about how good they are?

The gospel is not for the righteous. The gospel is not for people who think they're righteous. The gospel is not for people who are constantly making excuses. And Paul doesn't give the gospel until he has closed every mouth.

And so the ones who are suppressing the truth and righteousness are men, mankind. And he's gonna go on to explain this. He's not talking about some subgroup. I'm just talking about one group over here.

One group of idolaters. Because I've had many people, homosexuals will say, what this says here in Romans one has nothing to do with me. Because you see, it's talking about the people who suppress the truth and are righteous.

I'm not suppressing the truth. I'm not an idolater. I love God. So since I don't do that, then everything else has nothing to do with me. And you have to be aware of that kind of thinking. You have to know that there's folks who've been taught that.

Well, how do you respond to that? Well, the fact of the matter is that what Paul's talking about is he's talking about men and he says that men, he's not talking about, he's not using the term andros here.

He's using anthropos, anthropon, men, mankind as a whole. So ladies, you get to be included in all of this. Mankind as a whole is involved in this action of suppressing the truth, holding down the truth in unrighteousness.

It is a moral thing to promote and believe a lie. That's another great lie of our society is that what you think in your mind, epistemology, ooh, big word, epistemology is something we all deal with every single day, whether we use the term or not, how we know what we know, how we know what we know.

We all deal with it every day, whether we wanna talk about it or not. And from a biblical perspective, epistemology is a moral category. To seek to know God's creation outside of submission to God in the personal lordship of Jesus Christ is an act of rebellion.

You, nutcase radical. I think I can defend that from scripture. I think if you really believe what the Bible says about Jesus being the creator of all things, if you really believe this thing called divine decree, if you really believe that we are made in the image of man, that our highest calling is to think God's thoughts after him, that you can make a pretty sound argument.

And so men are described as suppressing the truth and righteousness because that which is known, not maybe known, a lot of people like to put it that way and make it a theory, a theoretical thing. But that which is known of God is manifest amongst them.

Phaneron, it's manifest amongst them, in them. Now that can, in them, can be taken in two different ways. Amongst them, in their societal relations, in the created world around them, or internally to them in their made-up nature, in the fact they are creatures and God has given us this thing called a conscience and so on and so forth.

But the revelation is not just out there someplace and we have to go searching after it, like we have to learn a bunch of philosophy and climb a big tall mountain and talk to a guru at the top or whatever else it might be.

For God made it manifest to them and using the exact same root in the original language as previously, that which is known about God is known to them. Now God is the one who actually, in the verbal form, he is the one making the revelation.

God revealed it to them. It is a part of his purpose to reveal certain aspects of his being via the creation. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, specifically his eternal power and his divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made through the created order, which would be ourselves and the world around us, so that the result, ice tall with the infinitives, so that they are unapologetus.

Listen to that term, unapologetus. What does that sound like to you? Apologetics. An apologia is a defense. You put the alpha privative at the beginning without a defense, without an excuse, without a reason.

So the clarity of the revelation in the created order is such that it renders those, who's those? The ones suppressing the truth and righteousness, those who have been made by God with eyes, ears, that sense of the divine within ourselves, they have no excuse.

They have no defense. Oh, they write lots of books trying to come up with one. It would be appropriately said that if we apply God's truth rightly, that we can demonstrate that any human defense is in fact a self-contradictory one.

I have never met a consistent denier of Christian truth. That's what apologetics is all about, I think. The atheist, the agnostic, the Muslim, whatever, you will find them to have to utilize double standards.

They will have to borrow from the Christian worldview at some point to make theirs work. They are without an apologetic. They are without an excuse. For even though they knew God, even though they knew him, they did not doxazzo or give thanks, eukaristeo.

So that's what the created order makes us accountable to. The created order doesn't reveal to us the Trinity and things like that. I know other people come up with that idea, but that's not what is being said here.

They are held accountable for glorifying as God and giving thanks. Now, if by our created nature of necessity, this is what we must do, then what happens when we don't do that? Cannot be a neutral point here.

So many in our society want to say, I just don't want to go there. I just don't feel like doing. I mean, I'm not necessarily opposing what you say. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. This is the great scandal of monotheism and especially Christian Trinitarian monotheism.

This is a great scandal in the ancient world. You Jews, you think your God created everything and ours is wrong? Who do you think you are? Because they recognize if that was true, if there is only one God, then I need to have dealings with that one God and not the gods of my peoples.

And it scandalized people. And today, nothing much has changed. We don't have necessarily the hideous idols on every corner, but we've still got much more idolatry in many ways. Self-worship. But the idea is, well, I don't have to take a stand on this.

I mean, isn't it the American way? Isn't there something in the constitution about this? I mean, this is violating the constitution somewhere because it's in essence saying, you either honor God and give thanks to him or you become futile in your reasoning.

It's the root term from which we get dialogues in the way you reason, the way you think, your speculations. You become futile, empty, and your heart becomes foolish and darkened. There isn't this middle point.

You're either in submission to your creator. How else could it be? If there is a creator who made you in a particular way, how else could it be? I mean, if God made you to be X and you refuse to be X, how can there be a neutral point where you're just not in rebellion against God's creative purpose for you?

How can that be? If we make something to function in a certain way, if we make an iPad to function as an iPad, and it chooses instead to be a fry pan rather than iPad, is it fulfilling its function? Of course not.

There can be no neutrality. We are made to do something, and if we don't do it, we're gonna have to do something else. And that's the point here. Rebellion against God has an impact upon the reasoning of the mind.

They become futile in their speculations, their foolish heart is darkened. They profess to be wise. They themselves claim wisdom. They are safoi, the wise ones. And oh boy, do we hear that all the time.

The elite, the insightful, but God says they became fools. And yeah, that's the same term, moronos, from which we get moron. They become fools. And of necessity, they exchange, notice the term, they exchange the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

Now, here's what I want you to think with me, even though I've spent far too much time getting here. Maybe I shouldn't push through this overly quickly, but when you hear that phrase, for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures, where have you heard that before?

Discussion of exchanging. But what do you start thinking of when you hear man, birds, four-footed animals, crawling creatures? Yes, sir. Greenpeace. What do you think of in scripture? Golden calf, second commandment.

Very good, keep going. What's Paul specifically and purposefully bring our attention to and bring up in our minds and our thinking? If you were, because remember, once he gets done with chapter one, what does Paul do?

He then transitions into saying to the Jew, you agreed with everything I said, yeah, those nasty pagans, but what about you? And then he's gonna finish up by saying, actually, I was talking about everybody.

All are understanding. But if you're a Jewish person and you're reading Romans 1 .23, what's one of the very first concepts that's gonna cross your mind when you hear Paul saying, go farther back, about Genesis one and two?

Garden, creation, what's created? Birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. And God says, it's good, this is the creation. This is the creation, he's particularly, I mean, if you look at the terminology he uses, there is, the current study, one of the big areas, it's not really new, but it's received further attention in the past decade or so is called intertextuality, the intimate connection, not necessarily by direct citation, but by illusion and use of similar terminology and phraseology between the Old and New Testaments.

And when you look at Paul's utilization of terminology here and go back to Genesis one and two, there's no question, he is purposefully echoing that language of the creation itself. And this is extremely important because what's being said is, this is an inversion, a twisting of the creator, creation relationship.

You have the creator, he has made the creation, now the creation in its rebellion against him becomes internally twisted so that what would naturally be given to the creator is turned away from him. And instead, now you look at your fellow creation, birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things, and you turn those into the objects of your worship.

Now, we see that in the ancient world. I mean, all you gotta do is, I doubt there is ever, I doubt there's anything on earth that has not at some point in time been worshiped by mankind. I doubt there's any kind of animal or bird.

I mean, people worship rocks. All you gotta do is go to Sedona, you'll see that. I mean, if you think, no, whatever, do that, really? I haven't been to Sedona recently, have you? Crystals and all sorts of neat, wild, fun stuff.

And so, there is a twisting of the relationship and involves an exchanging. And so, they exchange the glory of the incredible God for an image in the form of a corruptible man of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

And so, there is something absolutely unnatural about that which is created, worshiping as its creator something else that is created. That is the twisting, and it's unnatural. Upon reflection, it shows such obvious foolishness for that which is formed by the potter to deny that the potter exists is foolishness.

For you to pull a plate out of your cupboard and say, hey, says on your bottom, made in, well, where else? China. And for your plate to go back, there is no China. I have no creator. You go, you could get a job at ASU, teaching philosophy and many other things.

No, you go, that's ridiculous. It says right on the bottom, stamped on you. I don't see no stamp. That's foolishness. But the point is, that's what Paul's saying about us. That's what Paul's saying about us.

God Gave Them Over: The Transition to Sexual Sin

Now, that brings us then, and I guess I'm gonna have to continue this. I really didn't expect to do this this long. That brings us then to verses 24 through 25, and it's extremely important to understand the relationship of the previous conversation.

I'm gonna go back to verses 26 and 27 in a vacuum. Because see, what happens normally, especially today, might happen to you this week. Verses 26 and 27 are the big verses. They're the verses that, you know, if they're gonna get mentioned, they get any airtime in our society today, it's gonna be verses 26, 27.

Well, we all know verses 26, 27 don't exist in a vacuum. In some sense, an illustration of what's come before that. Can anyone really say they're honestly dealing with verses 26, 27 if they haven't at least started back at verse 18, taken a running start at this?

Probably not. And the transition of 24 and 25 determines the categories in which 26 and 27 then become understandable, and the three primary excuses, and that's the only way I can really describe them, is they are excuses that are offered by people today, fall apart once you allow this preceding portion we've just looked at to then form the interpretation of 24 through 25, which then becomes the context of 26, 27.

So you have a via. Therefore, because of this, God gave them over in the desires or lusts of their hearts to literally to uncleanness, to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.

There is a dishonoring of the body. What do you mean a dishonoring of the body? That is a utilization and use of the body that is dishonoring in light of the purpose for which it was created. Just as it is dishonoring to the creation to give to God and to the creation for the idolater to refuse to give to God what's due to him, that's dishonoring him, it's all dishonoring to the creation.

It's dishonoring to the creation to attribute to it that which it never claims for itself. So there is a dishonoring of their very bodies, the very things which they have been given by God, which gives them life, there is a unclean dishonoring of their bodies.

For they exchange the truth of God for a lie and worship and serve the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. So here is, and we're out of time, but this is where we'll pick up. Here is the key to recognize, you can't skip over this part, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.

There is something about the activity that Paul is going to describe, the activities that Paul is going to describe that involves dishonoring the body, dishonoring the intention and purpose for which it was created initially, and that this involves impurity.

But notice, it starts off, therefore God gave them over. In other words, there is some type of restraining activity that God extends and he lets go. He gives them over. It's not like he's standing behind them with a gun, forcing them to do something.

As we're going to see, they're doing what their hearts desire, but there are lusts of their hearts, desires of their hearts to which they are then given over. And that results in the dishonoring of their bodies.

And it's all based upon the fact that they have exchanged the truth of God for a lie. No neutrality. You either honor and hold the truth of God or you exchange it for a lie. There is no middle ground.

And that's what our society has fundamentally rejected, ethically, morally, epistemologically, and the results we're seeing around us in a grave way. So we'll pick up at that point. I did fully intend to finish all of that.

Ha, ha, ha. But we didn't. We'll pick it up next time.