WWUTT 1167 Unnatural Relations? (Romans 1:27)

When a person or culture is going after the passions of their flesh, God will give them up to do even more dishonorable passions.

They will even exchange natural relations for unnatural relations when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible teaching podcast. That we may be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the

Lord. Tell your friends about our ministry at www .utt .com. Here once again is

Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We continue our study of Romans 1, and we're looking at this very depravity -intensive section of the chapter where Paul is describing the fallenness of man against which the wrath of God is revealed from heaven.

I want to mention the same disclaimer that I gave yesterday. We're going to be talking about some things here that are rather mature in subject matter, and so you may want to listen to this first before your small children listen to it.

Maybe you want to explain something to your kids about what we're talking about today before they hear it from a podcast.

So we're going to start here in Romans 1, verse 24, and reading through verse 28.

Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the

Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. 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, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

What Paul is describing here is a culture, a society, that God has removed

His restraining grace from, that grace, that common grace that would otherwise prevent a group of people from falling into worse and worse sin, deeper and deeper depravity.

When John MacArthur taught on this particular section, he referred to this removal of God's restraining grace as the wrath of abandonment.

And the title of that sermon was—he did this about a decade or so ago, a little more than that—that the title of that sermon was,

When God Abandons a Nation. And it is a tremendous sermon, one of the greatest sermons,

I would say, that I've ever heard. If I was making a list of, like, top 100 best sermons that I've ever listened to, this would be on that list somewhere.

In fact, I did put it on the When We Understand the Text website. So if you go to www .utt .com

and you click on the Links tab, you will see there in the links a section that's entitled

Notable or Memorable Sermons or something like that. And that sermon from John MacArthur is in there.

You really need to listen to it. It is a tremendous exposition of Romans 1, especially verses 18 -32.

What Paul is laying out here is three signs that we can identify to recognize that God has removed his restraining grace from a group of people.

And that first sign that we looked at yesterday was sexual immorality. We see that in verses 24 and 25.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the

Creator. So God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, and they dishonored their bodies among themselves.

We're talking there about sexual immorality, sex outside of marriage, and giving in to all different kinds of perversions.

We talked about how pornographic the culture had become, how just addicted to sexual immorality our culture is.

Not just talking about sex here, we're talking about sexual immorality. God created sex and he made it to be good.

He gave a man his sexual organs and God created a woman with her sexual organs.

As we read about God creating man and woman in Genesis 1 and 2, he looks at his creation and it is very good.

He didn't create man and woman and then Satan snuck in there and started sticking parts on him that God didn't create.

He made a man and a woman to be united together as one flesh, a husband and a wife, and what

God has joined together let man not separate. The intimacy that they enjoy in this one flesh union is the gift of sex that God has given to a husband and a wife, but the culture has perverted this beautiful gift and is pursuing passions of flesh, sexual desire, looking at one another as objects of that satisfaction rather than valuing the person as they were made in the image of God.

The result here of this sexual immorality that has so ingratiated our culture is we have not only sexually transmitted diseases, we have not only a pornographic culture, we have all kinds of sexual abuse that comes about as a result of this, broken marriages and so on, but this even results in murder and murder on a massive scale unlike the world has seen regarding anything else.

Over one and a half billion unborn children have been aborted, murdered by the barbaric practice of abortion just in the last 40 years, just in the last generation.

Since 1980, over one and a half billion unborn children murdered by abortion in the name of their parents' sexual libido.

Because of the revolution, the sexual revolution that began back in the 1960s and has continued on in the height of its decadence all the way up to today and beyond, there are lives that have been lost as a result of this perversion.

All other kinds of consequences and effects, certainly, but that is without question the most tragic and the fallenness in a person's heart that would lead them to destruction and the judgment of God if they do not repent.

For the wrath of God is burning against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, as we have read here in Romans 1, verse 18.

And as Paul also says to the Colossians, in Colossians 3, verse 5, he says, put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and covetousness, which is idolatry.

On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. The wrath of God coming against all this sexual perversion.

And notice that most of what Paul described there in Colossians 3, verse 5, had to do with the mind, what we think with our thoughts.

Put to death what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, okay, sex outside of marriage, impurity, passion, evil desire and covetousness.

All of that has to do with the mind. So even the sexual immorality that Paul is mentioning there is not just what is manifested in action, but it's even what is dwelling within the heart and the mind of a depraved person, of a worldly person who is following the course of this world before they have a transformed heart in Christ.

So we cannot continue to follow in those thoughts or even justify those thoughts as being perfectly natural and normal.

It's okay for me to think this way. No, it says that even having those thoughts and loving those thoughts and continuing those thoughts is going to lead a person to their own destruction if they do not repent.

If Christ is in you, you are a new person. So no longer go after the passions of your flesh, desecrating the temple of the

Holy Spirit, which your body is, and God has given you his spirit if you are a follower of Christ.

So honor God with your body. We looked at 1 Corinthians 6 regarding that yesterday.

I'm currently teaching through the Sermon on the Mount. That's the sermon series that I'm going through in my church.

We're in Matthew 5, and pretty soon here I'm getting to verse 27, where Jesus said,

And you have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away, for it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.

And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away, for it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.

Whatever it takes for you to get that temptation out of your life, remove it. Let it be far from you.

Flee from sexual immorality. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double -minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep.

Describing the words of James in James 4, I tell you this because I care about you, because I love you, that you not continue in this sin and thus fall into the judgment of God.

We are told in 1 Corinthians 6, verses 9 and 10, the sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God, and that includes even taking your thoughts captive and making them to obey

Christ. So, I'm kind of repeating stuff that we looked at yesterday with the sexual immorality that is rampant in our culture.

We've got to get to the second thing here that we can identify to recognize that God has removed his restraining grace from a people, and that is dishonorable passions.

That's what we have here in verses 26 and 27. 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.

Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

What we're talking about here is, of course, homosexual sin. That a culture has continued so rampantly in their sexual immorality that God gives them over to a more debased mind, to now do things that are unnatural.

This culture has continued in this progression of chasing after the lust of the flesh, the sexual appetites.

It is spread like a virus throughout the population. More and more people are indulging in these passions of the flesh, and God removing his restraining grace even turns that culture over to enjoying those things that are unnatural for a person to do with their bodies, unnatural to do with another person's body.

And so you have women exchanging natural relations for those that are contrary to nature.

Now, the reason why Paul starts with women here and he talks about lesbianism before he talks about men burning with passion with other men.

The reason he starts with women is because women are usually the last to join the sexual revolution. It will be driven by the sexual appetites of a man, and there will certainly be women involved in that.

Men need the object of that sexual lust to fulfill that appetite, but it's fewer women are involved in it than men.

Pardon me for the crudeness of this illustration, but think of it as being like a strip club where you've got a bunch of men around watching one woman dancing around on a stage.

That's kind of the way the sexual revolution begins. You have men that are chasing after that sexual appetite, but not as many women are involved in it.

So it's the it's the sexual appetite of men that drives the culture this direction.

And when when men are no longer leading, when they're no longer defending, when they're no longer godly, then then they start chasing after the passions of their flesh and pushing a culture in this particular direction.

Eventually, the women follow along with it as well. Now, women are then the last to jump into the unnatural relations.

It begins with men, and then women will give in to lesbianism because women have a desire for motherhood.

There is a natural desire among women for motherhood. But the more women that fall into the sexual revolution and even they themselves go after the passions of their flesh and worship the created things rather than the creator, then you're going to see women given over to those lesbian appetites as well.

And when the culture becomes accepting of that sex union, that a woman and a woman become kind of iconic to the sexual revolution, well, that's when you know that's that's one of the telltale signs you can see that God has removed a restraining grace from a people and they are given over to these unnatural sexual appetites.

And we know it's unnatural. Even those persons that are involved in these unnatural sexual unions know that this is unnatural.

They suppress the truth with their unrighteousness. But you know that that a woman and a woman are not sexually compatible with one another, a man and a man, especially not.

There is no fruit of of that sexual union, whereas between a husband and a wife, the two of them have sex.

And a few months later, you're you even have a sign that, yes, see, that's exactly the way that was supposed to go, because now the woman's pregnant because of this union that happened between the man and the woman.

That is a natural function. That's exactly the way that God has created a man and a woman to be united to one another.

They are husband and wife. But there is nothing natural about the sexual union between a woman and a woman like you even look at the way that that homosexuality, lesbianism, gay men, you look at how these relationships kind of portray themselves in the culture.

There's always one that seems to be more masculine than the other. And you recognize that right off the bat. You're not looking at two gay men that are exactly alike.

One of them is more feminine, is more effeminate than the other one is. And between the two women, one of those women is more butch and the other woman is more effeminate.

So you see one that tends to have more masculine traits and one that has more feminine traits, whether you're talking about a lesbian relationship or a gay relationship.

And so even in this, you see echoes of the natural function that they gave up.

God has given them up to dishonorable passions, women exchanging natural relations for those that are contrary to nature.

I remember a few years back, Kirk Cameron getting in a little bit of trouble in an interview that he did.

I can't remember if it was with Larry King or with who was the guy that took over for Larry King for a little while.

Piers Morgan. I think it was on with Piers Morgan or something like that. And Kirk Cameron said that homosexuality is unnatural.

Boy, that just blew up on social media. What a bigot. What a horrible guy for Kirk Cameron to say such a thing.

He was just pointing out the facts, folks. And even those that are involved in these unnatural relationships know that they're unnatural.

But again, they suppress the truth with their unrighteousness. Remember, I quoted to you from Second Thessalonians, Chapter two yesterday.

God gave them over to a strong delusion so that they may believe what is false in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

This is a judgment of God. When we see the this same sex approval that has happened in our culture in the

United States of America in particular, it was back in 2015 was when gay marriage was legalized.

You know, the acronym that is used or the the what do you call it? An abbreviation? I don't think it's exactly an acronym because it doesn't spell out another word.

But anyway, this I'm going to call it an acronym nevertheless. But this acronym that we use to describe this particular people group who is is even formed themselves into a group of people who are therefore oppressed and needing of a of a specific special group of rights.

We refer to them as LGBTQ. What's the first letter at the beginning of that abbreviation

L, which stands for what lesbianism, because this is the sign that that culture has fully immersed itself in the sexually immoral revolution.

When the lesbian relationship becomes culturally acceptable, culturally embraced and even admired and put up on a pedestal.

When you look at the history of homosexuality being portrayed in film and in television, the first same sex kiss on TV was actually between two women.

It was a 1991 episode of L .A. Law. And the first gay kiss actually didn't come about until the show

Dawson's Creek. And it was in the year 2000. The two women that were portrayed in this lesbian relationship in this episode of L .A.

Law, it it helped to desensitize the culture or bring the culture to an acceptance of those kinds of relationships.

And once the culture was able to accept two women being in love with one another and being able to have some kind of a of a genuine sexual relationship with each other, once they could desensitize the culture into accepting that, then there was no problem with two men kissing.

It would have been a lot more difficult for the sexual revolution, for the LGBTQ agenda in particular, to get the whole culture to be accepting of this if they had started with the men rather than the women.

Once the culture embraced the women, then it was no problem for the rest of that to fall into place, to go along with their agenda.

And this was an agenda. It was all planned out. You can read about it in a book called After the

Ball by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen. And when you read that book now, it's exactly describing the way that our culture is now what they planned, how they plotted all of this and the cultural acceptance of this.

It worked. And they did so through things like bumper sticker rhetoric and and sympathizing with certain characters on TV and movies.

That was how they were able to get the culture to accept this. The culture was already primed for it with the sexual depravity that they were steeped in through the pornography that had so claimed the the culture's conscience over the last several decades.

Verse 27, the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another.

Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

You see the even the effects of these homosexual relationships in the culture that is around us.

You see the destruction of the family. That's part of the due penalty for their error.

But even in these homosexual relationships, you see a sodomy and the kind of destruction to a person's body that does.

There is rampant drug use in the homosexual community that just destroys people.

You have a lower life expectancy. There's higher suicide rates, venereal disease and AIDS that is so widespread.

And there is a massive amount of abuse. There is a higher amount of sexual abuse among the homosexual community than there is even among heterosexuals.

Pedophilia is higher among homosexuals. The number of sexual partners is way higher among homosexuals than it is among heterosexuals.

As a matter of fact, Andrew Sullivan, who himself is gay. And he wrote that article a few years ago when

Barack Obama was president and named Obama in Newsweek magazine is like the first gay president.

That was Andrew Sullivan that wrote that. But he wrote that that heterosexual married couples can learn from homosexual couples and being more open in their marriage.

So this is Andrew Sullivan, a gay man giving actual married couples advice that they need to be more open and let more partners into the marriage.

They could be learning from homosexuals on that particular point. And this man is one of the more conservative voices among homosexual writers.

Dr. Albert Mueller is even referred to Andrew Sullivan that way. And this is what they want.

They want the destruction of the family. It's not just about getting what we want as far as like the desires of our flesh.

And we just want gay marriage and then we'll all be happy. No, they want the family to be destroyed. And that's that's the end game of the

LGBTQ movement. The the absolute hatred of God, of that which he created to be good and natural.

And we're going to pervert it and even destroy the very unit of the family that God had ordained from the start of creation at the

Garden of Eden. That's where all of this is headed. And the church is rapidly becoming desensitized to this as well.

What you're seeing in in many even conservative churches that would still accept marriage as being defined is only between a man and a woman.

Even churches that still cherish marriage in that way are becoming desensitized toward these things and that they're accepting that homosexual tendencies is something that occurs naturally and there's nothing that we can do about it.

A person's always going to feel that way for the rest of their lives. And so it would be oppressive of us to tell them that they need to change their mind or change their hearts or not have those same sex desires and attractions anymore.

We can't be that way. We just have to love them as they are. But if that's going to be the attitude of the church toward these things, they're going they're they're dismissing the truth of Scripture, first of all, because as I quoted earlier from First Corinthians, chapter six, verses nine and ten, we read, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, revilers or swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Consider verse 11 and such were some of you, but you were washed.

You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our

God. So you used to be that way. But in Christ, you are not anymore.

And remember, again, Colossians three, five put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and covetousness, which is idolatry.

On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. The desire for it can't even be there for a person that even desires those things that God does not desire for them will lead them to their destruction if they do not repent.

I tell you, the church cannot bow to the the the cultural acceptance of these sins and behaviors, even even to a limited degree where the church is going.

Hey, as long as they're not engaging in homosexual sex, it's OK for them to have those desires just as long as they don't follow through with them, according to Colossians three, five.

No. And it will lead a person to the judgment of God if they don't understand that faith in Christ means even our hearts and our minds will be transformed.

Now, this is going to be harder for some people than it will be for others. I'm not saying that this should just automatically flip a switch and immediately a person is changed, but there should be a desire for that change, not a desire for the passions of the flesh.

And a throwing up of the hands is like, well, I guess it's just never going to change. So I'm going to accept it as normal. No, you are not loving a person.

When you are telling them that sinful desires are normal, the Bible says flee from sexual immorality, even those thoughts that would be impure or unnatural.

Submit your minds to Christ, be transformed in Christ, be washed and be like Christ.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for the conviction of your word, and I pray that we would come to this regularly and be reminded of the holiness that you have called us to.

But you have saved us by your grace for all of sin and fallen short of God's glory.

We deserve the wrath and judgment of God, but you graciously gave us your son.

Any one of us could fall into sin that is worthy of judgment, but it's by the grace of God that we've been rescued out of this.

And by faith in Jesus, we have been changed into a new person. No longer part of this world that is perishing and falling into judgment.

But we are now citizens of the kingdom of God by the grace of God. So let us show grace to one another and let us help each other.

Those who are walking in sin, we are patient with them, but we're not letting them continue in sin and giving no provision for the flesh, but crucifying those desires so that the life

I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the son of God. Who loved me and gave himself up for me, as Paul says in Galatians 2 20.

So let that be the desire of our heart to be as Christ, not to not, not to try to see what things we can love in this world and still call ourselves

Christians. Let's have nothing to do with that, but focus completely on Christ turning to you, crucifying the flesh, being alive in the spirit, be merciful to us.

Oh God, forgive us our sins and our transgressions, purify us and lead us in paths of righteousness.

For your name's sake, we pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. You can find a complete list of videos, books, devotionals, and other resources online at www .utt