Sunday Sermon: Dishonorable Passions (Romans 1:24-27)

You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an

Old Testament book on Thursday and our Q &A on Friday. Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series.

Here is Pastor Gabe. This is Romans 1, 24 -27.

Hear the word of the Lord. 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 worshiped 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.

You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly Father, we come to a pretty dark section of Scripture where the

Apostle Paul describes the kind of sins and the level of depravity that a culture will fall into.

A group of people that has rejected God and has refused to give thanks to the

Creator who made us, desiring instead to have the passions of their flesh, and so God removing a restraining hand from them, what have they been turned over into doing?

The things that we see described here in Romans 1, we can observe within our own culture, and we don't have to go far.

Even within our own community, we will see sins described here embraced and desired to be spoken of as normal, so that even someone who would say there is only male or female may do so at the expense of their job or their reputation.

We desire to know the truth of Your Word, and we would desire to know the gospel that penetrates the lies that have darkened sinners' hearts.

We once were sinners wandering around in darkness, and it was the light of the gospel that brought us to the truth and the knowledge of Jesus Christ our

Savior. So that through these words may we be clear about what sin is, so that we may also be clear about what the gospel is, so others may turn to the truth of Jesus Christ and so be saved.

Give us boldness and confidence in the truth that we read about today. It's in Jesus' name we pray,

Amen. Amen. In the days of King Ahaz, the Lord promised that judgment was going to come upon Judah at the hands of the

Assyrian army. Judah had done wickedly before God, even committing the same abominations that Sodom had been guilty of.

So God was going to turn them over to their enemies. But though Judah was told through the prophet

Isaiah, their hearts were so hard they could not hear the warning, and so turn from their sin and be saved.

They were so without reason that they came to the prophet of God, and instead of saying, inquire of Yahweh for us, they said, inquire of the mediums and the spiritists who whisper and mutter.

Isaiah 8, 19 -20 says, Should not a people inquire of their

God? Should they require of the dead on behalf of the living to the law and to the testimony?

If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn.

They will clamber in the dark, for they, as we read in Romans 1 -18, suppress the truth with unrighteousness.

The world hates the idea of a God who has clearly spoken.

They don't want a God who speaks clearly. They want a God like Ahaz and Judah wanted.

A God who whispers and mutters. And too many preachers, even in churches today, are willing to appease them.

God doesn't whisper about anything. He has spoken loud and clear about sin and the consequences of sin in His word, the

Bible. When we read Romans 1 -24 -32, we are reading about how a perversion of the truth leads to a perversion of life.

We must be clear about this so that we will clearly see the need for the gospel of Jesus Christ as we've been called to go and proclaim it, not just to our community and state and nation, but to the nations.

As we've heard from Romans 1 -16, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

This morning, as we look at verses 24 -25, we see where God gave them over to impurity.

Then we move on to verses 26 -27, where we read that God gave them over to dishonorable passions.

Next week, we'll consider verses 28 -32, where God gave them over to an unfit mind.

You see this pattern of God giving them over. But we're going to break this week at verse 27, and we're going to consider toward the end what are honorable passions that we as Christians must have in light of the revelation of God that's given to us here in His word.

So let's come back first of all to verse 24, if you will look with me, where we read, "...therefore

God gave them over, in the lusts of their hearts, to impurity."

Now the first word that we have here is what? Therefore. So that's a good place to do some recap,

I think. Remember the argument that Paul is making here, he's been saying, or he stated rather in Romans 1 -16 -17, that the righteous, or the justified, will live by faith.

A point he is going to come back to in chapter 3. There is no way of obtaining righteousness except by faith in Jesus Christ.

By contrast, he's showing how the unrighteous are condemned by their unbelief.

And unbelief not merely meaning, I don't even want to acknowledge that there's a God who exists, but unbelief can simply be,

I don't believe that God said that. I don't believe that what God said in His word applies to me, and so therefore

I can live in whatever way I want to live. So what he is doing from verse 18 to chapter 3, verse 20, is showing how all people, men or women,

Jew or Gentile, are under condemnation because they have violated the law.

And that's whether it's the law of nature, which we've considered here in chapter 1, or the law of supernatural revelation, which we get to in chapter 2.

Our purpose is to understand that all have sinned, even how all have sinned, so that we will recognize the only way to be rescued from that sin is in Christ alone.

But people, by their sinful nature, do not desire God nor His truth.

They suppress the truth with unrighteousness. They exchange the worship of the

Creator for the created. They exchange the truth about God for lies, or rather for the lie, as Paul puts it here.

God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity. Why? For as we read last week, they exchanged the glory of the immortal

God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. They rejected the truth about the

Creator, and they worshiped the created. Their desire was for the created instead of the one who made it.

Man is either going to worship the Creator of all things, or man will worship the created things.

Muslims claim to worship the Creator, but they worship a false version of the

Creator, which was created by Muhammad. It is central to their faith that Allah is not triune, nor does

He have a son. It is so critical to their religion that it is inscribed on their most sacred relics.

Mormons likewise claim to worship the Creator, but they worship the creation of Joseph Smith, a twisting of God, who is actually, in Joseph Smith's words, a man who became

God. And you must become a god like him, Smith said. Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox claim to worship the true

God. But then they bow before and worship created things, including relics and statues or portraits of Mary and other departed saints.

And then, of course, there are the many pagan religions out there, like Buddhism and Hindu, which worship their various false gods and depictions of them.

And these false gods often resemble what? They resemble created things, right?

They resemble animals or other forms of nature. And along with this comes all manner of perversion.

I got into an argument this week with someone who contacted me rebuking me for the way that I talk about Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

And I had said that no one reads the Bible and becomes Roman Catholic just reading the

Scripture. They have to be indoctrinated into that. There is no

Pope in the Bible. There's no papacy. No transubstantiation.

No examples of anyone praying to any departed saints except for Saul when he summoned

Samuel, and God killed him for that. You wouldn't think, after reading the

Bible, that you should have statues in your home to which you should pray, because you would see in the

Bible that God strictly forbids that practice. You would not think

Mary was completely sinless, or that she was bodily assumed into heaven, nor would you exalt her as the

Queen of Heaven, for the only place in the Bible that title is used is in Jeremiah, for a false goddess.

And this man who had contacted me did not give me his name. He told me that I needed to face the facts.

Catholicism was growing because people were reading the Bible and coming to the conclusion that Roman Catholicism was true.

I said to him, then why is it that six out of every ten professing

Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodoxy believe gay marriage is okay and that the church should be accepting of abortion?

Six out of every ten. Double the number of professing evangelicals. It's because they're flocking to religions that will justify them in their worldly passions.

I can have religion, and I can have my perversion too. Pope Francis has said that he would not judge even his priests for their sexual orientation.

Who am I to judge, he said. Not to just pick on Roman Catholicism.

We know this is prevalent within Protestantism as well. The whole world just witnessed it this week when an

Episcopalian bishop, Marianne Buddy, rebuked the president to his face in a prayer service where she defended the perversions of gay, lesbian, and transgender.

I mentioned the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America last week who now ordain gay, lesbian, and transgender clergy.

The United Methodists just elected to begin doing it last year. The Presbyterian Church USA before them.

The Anglican Communion remains tied up in this debate. There's also the United Church of Christ and the

Unitarian Universalists. All of these so far left that you could not even call them evangelical. Even among many evangelical churches, who would say that marriage is only between a man and a woman?

It seems they still find ways of acquiescing to the cultural narrative. The Southern Baptist Convention just recently had two consecutive presidents who, when they preached on this very section of Romans that we're looking at today, said that God whispers about sexual sin.

Of course, one president was plagiarizing the other president, but I digress. Is that the impression that you get from Romans 1 when we read it?

That God is whispering about sexual sin? We're not doing anyone any favors by whispering and muttering about what

God has said loud and clear in His Word. Years ago,

I was familiar with a church, I was personally acquainted with a church where the sound guy was caught with gay porn.

And the church never removed him from being the sound guy. He was put in counseling, which is hardly church discipline.

Both inside the church as well as outside, it seems, we can find examples of people exchanging the truth about God for the lie, because they want to satisfy their fleshly appetites.

Perverted worship leads to a perverted life, as Paul is laying out here.

And so God, in His wrath, turns the believer over, or the unbeliever over, to degrading passions.

Therefore, as we read again in verse 24, God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity and to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.

What we have in this verse is a general statement of God having given them over. Paul gets more specific about their lusts and their impurities and the dishonoring of their bodies in the verses that follow.

Verse 25 calls back to what we had read about last week and the previous weeks in verses 18 to 23.

Look at verse 25. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie.

Now, as you're reading it out of the English Standard Version, it's going to say, a lie. There's actually a definite article there.

So it should be, they exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the

Creator. So what is the lie? Joseph Benson, who was an old Methodist minister, yes, there was once upon a time when even the

Methodists had this right, he said the lie is false opinions about God.

They exchanged the truth about God for false opinions about God. And in whatever form that lie would happen to take.

After Paul says that they worshiped the creature rather than the Creator, he gives them a short doxology.

He says that the Creator is blessed forever. We're about to get into a list of degrading passions.

And this is not exactly the kind of passage that you think about going through in your devotions with the family at the dinner table.

We read in Ephesians 5 .12 that it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret.

And so to keep our minds fixed on the holiness of God, rather than taking us down into a pit of dwelling upon the unholiness of man,

Paul offers this brief four -word doxology. God is blessed forever.

And then punctuates it with, as I just heard, amen. May it be so.

May we seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and not be overwhelmed whether by solicity or by sorrow regarding the lists of passions that follow.

And so we get to the second portion here of this section that we're looking at today. We go from this general statement about the lusts of their hearts, and we get more specific about these dishonorable passions.

Look at verse 26. For this reason, again, because they worshiped and served the creature rather than the

Creator, God gave them over. So remember again, this is God's wrath that is manifested upon the unrighteous.

God gave them over to dishonorable passions. What are dishonorable passions?

We'll then look at the rest of verse 26 and on into verse 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.

Now, I want to make a point about the language that is used here. So let me read it again, but I'm going to read these two verses from the

Legacy Standard Bible. Listen to the way that the Legacy translates this. For their females exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural.

And in the same way, also the males abandoned the natural function of the female and burned in their desire toward one another, males with males committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

Now, what was the difference between those two passages? Rather than saying woman and man, as we read in the

ESV, the descriptors in the LSB were female and male. Now almost every single translation you read will say women and men, except two.

The Holman Christian Standard, before they made the revisions, that became the

Christian Standard Bible. And the Legacy Standard Bible. Those are the only two that will list this as male and female rather than as man and woman.

Even the King James Version says women and men. Now, as I noticed that, I checked with two other pastors who know

Greek better than I do. And so I asked them, are you seeing the same thing here that I am seeing?

And they both confirmed. The Greek words that are used here are not the words for woman and man.

They are the Greek words for female and male, respectively. This should bring to our attention the natural order that God made in the beginning.

Paul is hearkening back to the created order. Genesis 1 .27,

And God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him, male and female.

He created them. Different words than just saying man and woman. Brothers and sisters, there are two sexes.

Male and female. Males will always be male, and females will always be female.

Their genetics are immutable by God's design. Now, although there are only two sexes, how many genders are there?

Four. Now, before you drag me out to the parking lot and stone me, hear me out.

People do not have genders. People have sexes.

Words have genders. And all the English teachers in the congregation said,

Amen. In grammar, the four genders of a noun are masculine, feminine, common, and neuter.

Where in the world did this concept come from that people can have any one of a multitude of genders, or that gender is fluid?

This idea originated with a sexologist, whatever that is, named

John Money in the 1950s and 60s. He wrote over 500 papers and 40 books on the subject of sex and gender.

Money did not consider the idea that there are only two sexes to be absolute, so he hijacked the word gender, which led to the idea that though there may only be two sexes, even the

LGBTQ movement will be ready to acknowledge there's only two sexes, but there may be any number of different genders.

Terry Goldie, a professor of English at York University in Toronto, wrote a biography on John Money, and he said,

Quote, Money believed that if you were a biological male and believed yourself to be female, that was an idée fixe.

It was so important to you as a person that it could not be contradicted.

Unquote. Goldie said that Money did not search for biological evidence of transgender identity, but accepted a patient's conviction as fact, and, quote, that you should be given the right and the medical means to be whatever you wanted to be.

Unquote. Even the father of the transgender movement said from the beginning that there is no biological evidence for transgenderism, nor does there need to be, he said.

If a man believes he's a woman, then he's a woman. If he feels like he's neither and he wants to make up his own category, then that's true too.

With an insatiable desire for sin, they have suppressed the truth and perverted that which

God made from the beginning. Male and female. And lest anyone wants to say that Jesus never addressed this, oh yes he did.

First of all, Jesus is the Creator who made them male and female. And secondly, he said in Matthew 19 .4,

Have you not read? It's one of the most indicting questions that Jesus asked of the

Pharisees and the teachers of the law. Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?

Now unfortunately, even though I've made this distinction between gender and sex, our culture doesn't acknowledge that distinction anymore.

It's like an example that C .S. Lewis gave in Mere Christianity about how the term gentleman was once used to mean a landowner.

If you called somebody a gentleman, you were indicating that he owns land. How do we use that word now?

We use it as a compliment. If you call a man a gentleman, then you're saying he's a fine, upstanding individual.

If you say that man is not a gentleman, well then that's an insult. Rather than simply describing that man as what that word originally applied to.

He was either a landowner or he was not. And so the same thing has happened with the words sex and gender in our culture.

The President of the United States just said in his inaugural address on Monday that from now on, the government will recognize only two genders, male and female.

Now it's unfortunate that needed to be said, but I praise God that he said it. We have a

President willing to acknowledge a biological fact. And it was more necessary for him to say two genders because the

LGBTQ narrative is willing to acknowledge sex is binary, but gender is fluid. And there may be any number of genders.

And so in response to that nonsense that our culture has embraced, the President rightly said there is only male and female.

Look now at verse 26 where Paul says, "...their females exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural."

Now even though our President is willing to acknowledge that there's only male and female, unfortunately, he's just fine with gay marriage.

So that's not to say that the President is totally on board with the natural function that God has made.

For as Paul describes here of those who've been given over to their depraved passions, females exchange the natural function for that which is unnatural.

And it's fascinating that Paul mentions females first before he gets to the males. And by the way, that's the same order that these perversions fall into in the

LGBTQ acrostic, isn't it? We have lesbian that comes before gay.

Did they know when they devised that acrostic that they were going with what

Paul lays out as these perversions in Romans 1? Why does

Paul mention lesbianism before sodomy as an exchange of natural function? Women, it seems, have ingrained in themselves a natural desire for motherhood more so than men naturally desire fatherhood.

It's why we'll use the expression, the clock is ticking for a woman, but we won't necessarily say that about a man.

A woman has a limited window in her lifetime in which to bear children, whereas a man can become a father at almost any age.

My wife and I have counseled women who never had the opportunity to have children and have now gotten beyond that childbearing age and fall into depression because they really wanted children and it was just not

God's desire for them to have them. And so going through that, that angst that they feel in their heart that they missed out on something that God had made them for, in an unbelieving, godless culture, if the women have surrendered their natural function for that which is unnatural, that speaks to the totality of the corrupting influence in such a culture.

The desire for motherhood isn't even there. Instead, they exchange the natural function for that which is unnatural.

And the culture will even exalt those women who decide not to become mothers. They'll even exalt them as heroes.

John MacArthur says the following, quote, In our culture, the lesbian movement has been vocal and relentless and passionate and fierce and even violent.

Proof that absolutely all virtue is gone when motherhood, the highest normal human virtuous relationship, is abandoned and the people who do it are elevated as cultural icons.

All virtue is gone when homosexuality invades the female gender.

Unquote. Verse 27 again, And in the same way also males, when he used that word, males abandoned the natural function of the female and burned in their desire for one another.

Now to word it this way, to describe their lusts as burning with desire, it is to say that the desires that they have are a part of the wrath of God that they are under.

This has been worded in just such a way to express that even the desire itself is disordered.

If a man lusts for another man, if he has a romantic desire for another man, or likewise women with women, that is unnatural desire.

Do not be fooled into thinking desire isn't something bad until you give in to it.

Even the desire for sin is sin. Jesus said in Matthew 5 that if a man lusts for a woman, he's already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Colossians 3, 5 -6 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. Get that. The very desire for sexual sin,

God's wrath is coming against. We read here of God giving men over to burn in their desire toward one another, males with males committing indecent acts.

It's nothing that we need to describe. You know exactly what's being said here. The wording is like as it appears in the law.

You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female. It is an abomination.

Leviticus 18 .22 But here in Romans 1, this is spoken about as being contrary to nature.

One does not need special revelation to know that men having sexual relations with men is wrong.

My friends, listen to me. We inherently know a male and a male are sexually incompatible.

We know that. It's obvious. There is surely no farmer on the planet who is so ignorant that he purchases two males of any animal, expecting to get more offspring from that animal.

If your kid goes to college and signs up for the ag program, and he tries to mate a male sheep with another male sheep, that university will flunk him out of their ag program, no matter how progressive and bought into the sexual revolution that campus happens to be.

We know this so plainly that there is no reason for me to even continue to argue the point.

A man is an adult human male who will always be male. A woman is an adult human female who will always be female.

Sexual relations between man and woman are natural, and sexual relations between a man and a man or a woman and a woman are unnatural.

And our unbelieving culture is so given over to a depraved mind that you might get fired from your job for repeating the

Captain Obvious statement that I just said. Two days ago, there was a story in the news about a jeweler in Ohio who was fired for opposing same -sex marriage.

You've surely heard of the various lawsuits against photographers, florists, and cake makers because these

Christian business owners refused to participate in a same -sex wedding. Enoch Burke is an

Irish teacher who was just jailed for the third time this past fall because he taught his students that there's only male and female.

And this is not just something relegated to liberal nations or blue states. When I was still living in Texas in San Antonio, a professor was fired at St.

Phillips College for saying there are only two genders. He was fired teaching the same curriculum that he's taught for 20 years.

What changed? The truth hadn't changed. It was the culture's attitudes about that truth that changed.

Donald Trump is already facing lawsuits for the statement that he made on Monday that there are only male and female.

National Public Radio published a story in which they said Trump's declaration and accompanying executive order is going to make things complicated for international travelers who refuse to mark male or female on their passports and instead put an

X. It turns out that when people get stupid, it can be really difficult to undo the stupid.

People hate the truth when it keeps them from their sin.

And they will mock and hate you just because you desire the right thing instead of the wrong.

In 1 Peter 4, 4 -5 we read, In all of this they are surprised that you do not run with them in the same excesses of dissipation, maligning you.

But they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. And so the rest of verse 27 reads,

Receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. Let me read the whole verse again.

The males likewise giving up natural relations with females and are consumed with passion for one another.

Males committing shameless acts with males and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

The due penalty is the fact that they have been given up to these unnatural excesses.

There are very immediate consequences for those who indulge in such an unnatural lifestyle, including sexually transmitted diseases.

And that seems to be something that the culture doesn't even want to acknowledge.

How sexually transmitted diseases are more easily transmitted among those who are in homosexual relations than those who are in heterosexual.

Remember the whole monkey pox debacle that happened a few years ago. There was only one group of people that was getting monkey pox.

Gay men. But you didn't hear about that in the news. It was supposed to be this thing that we were afraid of that maybe any of us could catch.

They even tried rolling out a vaccine for it that all of us were going to have to get.

They were going to try to push that like they were pushing the COVID vaccine. But it was because all of this was circulating on social media and people were like, yeah fool me once, you're not going to fool me twice with that.

And people began to recognize this was only something that seemed to be spreading among gay men.

Another consequence for this unnatural lifestyle is deep depression. And I've counseled men who desired sexual relations with other men.

And found out all these different psychotropic drugs that they were on to try to numb the depression that they were in.

Because they yearned for this unnatural desire. And I tried to help them to see, can you not make the connection?

You desire something your body is not made for. And so your very psyche is in chaos.

But they would much rather have the sin. There was one Freudian psychologist decades ago,

I can't remember, Foucault was who this was in fact. He was a gay man himself. Died of AIDS because of his homosexuality.

And after his death, because he died of AIDS, that was brought on because of his homosexual relations.

His people tried to keep that suppressed. They didn't want it coming out that he died of AIDS because of his homosexual lifestyle.

It was actually years after he died that it finally came out that it was AIDS that killed him.

Foucault said that sex is worth dying for. And he was willing to have these unnatural relations even to his own destruction.

Was willing to die for it. And God gave him over to that degrading passion.

Another immediate consequence, substance abuse. This goes right along with the deep depression.

That they will try to find things to kind of mask or suppress this depression that they feel because of their rebellion against God and what

He has made to be good. There's also rampant emotional and physical abuse among the

LGBTQ community. It is more emotionally and physically abusive than the things that we hear about that happen even among those who are in heterosexual relationships.

And another immediate consequence for this unnatural lifestyle is a shorter life expectancy.

Those who live in homosexual relationships will die sooner than those who live in heterosexual relationships.

And those who exchange the natural function for that which is unnatural receive in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Then of course, in addition to these immediate consequences, there is the greater judgment in the life that is to come if they do not repent.

And that must be our concern. That must be our chief concern. Not just that we would make the homosexual heterosexual, but that we would introduce them to Christ and so they would be saved.

And so finally, number three, we must come to understand that God has given us over to righteousness.

God has given them over to the lusts of their hearts. He has given them over to be consumed by their passions, by dishonorable passions.

But we must understand that in Christ, we have been given over to righteousness. And there are three applications that I want to make here in light of this point.

Number one, we must be clear about sin.

As I said, we do not do anyone any favors by whispering or muttering about what God has said about sin and its consequences.

It must be clearly and upfront said, God has called this wicked. He wasn't whispering to Sodom and Gomorrah when

He poured out His judgment on them. There was no muttering done. The judgment was loud and clear.

Jude 7 repeats this, that it was because of their unnatural desire that they suffer the punishment of eternal fire.

And so we must likewise be clear that these unnatural relationships are not something that God is flippant about.

He is clear in the way that He will deal with these excesses, with these sins.

Just recently, Jimmy Carter passed away. It was one of the last major news stories that you probably heard about at the end of 2024.

The first president of the United States to live to the age of 100. He was heralded as somebody who was devoted to his

Christian faith. Jimmy Carter was just fine with abortion. Said that he was kind of wrestled with it and some other things, but who is he to tell somebody else that they can't decide what to do with their own body?

And Jimmy Carter was also one of the first presidents in American history to endorse gay marriage.

And in an interview about it, he said, if a person genuinely loves another person, whether it's a man loving a man or a woman loving a woman,

I don't see why God would be upset at that. Jesus would be okay with that.

And it's giving permission to people to continue in sins that God has promised

He will judge. The Bible is our standard.

This is where God has spoken. He has said so clearly. And we must be clear when we talk about sin.

God hates it. There was a man who came to me one time who was struggling not only with homosexuality, but even his own sexual identity.

And he knew what I had taught on the subject. The sermons that I had preached were even known in the community that I was preaching in at that particular time.

And so he came to me and he sat down with me and he said to me, Do I have to give up my homosexuality in order to become a

Christian, in order to follow Jesus? And I said to him, if you want to follow

Jesus, you will give it up. Because the Holy Spirit comes into your heart and you will no longer desire to walk in those things that were contrary to God before you fell in love with Him.

You come to Jesus and He will make you new.

And if I had been muttering or whispering about sin until that conversation, that man would have found an excuse to continue in that sin and still be able to say,

I love Jesus too. The two are incompatible. We're going to hear that from Paul as we continue in Romans.

How can we who have died to sin still live in it? We must consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God and Jesus Christ.

And so we must be clear about sin. That's number one. Second application, we must be clear about the gospel.

We've read some serious things about some serious sins here today as we've been combing through Romans 1.

We must also be clear, these sins are not so depraved that God can't save you from them.

Jesus died on the cross for sins such as these. You can be forgiven.

You can be cleansed. You can be made righteous in Christ.

Friend of mine in California, this was her testimony that she shared with me. I had sex with so many men and women,

I lost count. I took my clothes off, did heroin, stole, lied, and cheated.

I was an adulterer, an alcoholic, and an addict. Jesus Christ delivered me from that and dressed me in white.

You can throw all the paint at me you want. No one will stain my gown.

I am new. And just as we must be clear about sin, we must be clear about the gospel that cleanses us from all unrighteousness.

You might consider the sins that we've read about today to be absurd, and it's true.

They are absurd. Sin makes you stupid, as I said last week. The more you sin, the more foolish you become.

Paul even stated that here, claiming to be wise. They became fools.

And I've seen people throw their lives away for foolish passions. You've probably experienced the same as well.

Once upon a time in my life, I almost threw my life away for the passions of my flesh.

And it's only by the grace of God that I was not given over to my debased mind to do worse things than I was already doing.

I praise God that I came to my senses and repented of my sin, and my life returned to being fixed on Christ instead of the desires of my flesh, all by the power of the gospel.

As 1 John 1 -9 says, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and what?

Just to forgive us our sins. How is He just to forgive us our sins? Because Jesus died in our place.

Because the wrath of God that we deserved, He took upon Himself. Someone paid the price for us.

And because a sacrifice has been made on our behalf, God is just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all our unrighteousness.

That we may stand before Him, clothed in the righteousness of Christ, and live in His righteousness day by day.

And that brings me to the third application. We must be clear in our own lives.

We must be clear about sin. We must be clear about the gospel that saves us from our sin and the judgment of God.

And we must be clear about it even in our own lives. That we may live lives unto the righteousness of Christ that we have been given.

1 Corinthians 6 -9 -11 says, 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 effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.

And such were some of you. Which means you once were that, but now you are something else.

You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. And may there be people among us who are able to sit here and say,

I once was that, but I've been washed. And I don't walk in it anymore.

I have been clothed in Christ's righteousness. And so now living lives of holiness and growing in that holiness that we have been given by faith in Jesus.

And so in Christ, the testimony of a believer might sound like this.

Let me read for you again Romans 1 .24 -27, but I'm going to read it in a slightly different way.

I'm going to take some liberties with this text. But flip it to an application of how we as Christians should testify of the work of God in our lives.

Therefore, God gave them up in their hearts to self -control and purity.

That their bodies might be honored among them as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to the

Lord as our spiritual act of worship. For they kept and cherished the truth of God and worshiped and served not the creature, but the creator who is blessed forever and all

God's people said, Amen. You've been listening to the preaching of Pastor Gabriel Hughes, a presentation of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.

For more information about our church, visit our website at ProvidenceCasaGrande .com.

On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, thanking you for listening. Join us again