Natural for Unnatural | Romans 1:22-32

To recognize in our own heart. So we're going to walk back through the passage, we're going to pull it a few important points and Paul's building an argument here. He's kind of adding layer after layer to his argument about the realities, the spiritual realities of our lives. And so rather than kind of walking verse by verse, I'm going to look across the passage to kind of pull out some of the similar that he's making in this argument and that'll really help us see how the examples he gives really reinforce or in line with what he's saying. So the idea of the great exchange really is the heart of our passage and Paul gives numerous examples of how we turn from God's good order to things that are bursts out of our sin in our hearts and minds. So we're going to go back and look at the contrasting pairs that Paul uses. So last week we saw that people have treated Godliness and righteousness for ungodliness and unrighteousness. And that today, picking up in verse 22, we can see that we exchange between wisdom and foolishness. In 23 it is the glory of immortal God for mere images of created things. In 24 we see purity and honor given up for impurity and dishonor. Next comes exchange of truth for lies. Verse 26 and 27 show that what God created to be natural is traded out for what is unnatural. And finally, in verse 28, we see that acknowledgment of God is given over for a debased mind. So each one of these exchanges is meant to build upon and reinforce the others. They're not singular instances, each one to be addressed individually, but rather they're to be taken together to express the totality of the kind of exchange that's happened in our heart and lives. So it's all of our thinking, all of our being, all of our doing that has been affected by this great exchange. So as I was considering these things, I was looking at how this plays out in Paul's argument. My mind went to the great commandment in Matthew 22. So in that passage, Matthew 22 36, before they, Jesus is asked the question, what is the greatest commandment? And the questioner is trying to set Jesus up, trying to trap them and test them on his words. But he ends up giving Jesus the perfect chance to bring great clarity and focus to what it means to worship and follow God. So Matthew 22 36 before he teacher, which is the great commandment in the law. And he Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first, the great and first commandment. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. So in this passage, Jesus is pulling from a very well known old Testament passage in Deuteronomy. In that passage, the word might or strength is included in the list of ways that you should love the Lord. And these first and second commandments coming from Jesus really express the fullness of what God intended for Adam and Eve and for all of us. With all of our being. We are to love God and we're to love our neighbors. So when we consider this alongside all these other exchanges from Romans, we can perhaps visualize Paul's argument in a little different way. Each one of these exchanges takes us away from loving God with all our being and in every matter of life. Each of these exchange ruins our chances of loving God as we should, but also the possibility of loving others as we should. While we were created to love the Lord with heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbors ourselves, our desires have been given over to sin. And the end result is that we can't love any of the right things in any of the right ways. If we were without sin, we'd be able to choose purity and honor and truth and Godliness. But we are not without sin. We'd be worshiping the mortal glory of God as Creator and not the creature. So reflecting on the great commandments from Jesus actually helps us drought something else in Paul's argument in Romans One, the commands of Jesus. Here in Paul's point in today's passage, they're ultimately about how we love and follow God. They're about God honoring way of living and being that reflects God's intentions for humanities from the very beginning of creation. So in short, they're about God honoring desires that lead to God honoring worship and service. So we can dive back into Romans One to see this. Paul is pointing out something very significant regarding the human heart and what we're all created to do. So verses 24 and 25 are really important here. Therefore, God gave them up in the lust 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. So at the heart of this great exchange, this list of all these things, really is a matter of our human desire and what we choose to worship and serve. God gives us over to our impure desires and that leads us to worship and serve things besides Himself. So in this passage, Paul doesn't say that we give up worship for not worship, and he doesn't say we give up service for not service. And he doesn't single out desires as being inherently wrong. In this case, he's talking about desires that are wrong. But desire itself isn't the problem. And what we see here is by God's design, we are creatures. We're made to desire, we're made to worship, we're made to serve. It's not a question of will we or won't we have desires, or will we or won't we worship or serve? It's a question of who or what will we desire, worship, or serve? At the end of the day, we'll either desire, worship, and serve the Creator and what he has said is pure and Godly and righteous, natural, true and wise, or we will worship and desire and serve created things and what humans say might be righteous or natural or true. The bedrock reality of Paul's argument here today is that we are created by God to long for God, to desire God and to follow his ways alone. And that sin has caused our desires to turn to other things that we inevitably worship and serve. Paul is telling us that with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, with all we are, we're going to desire, worship, and serve one thing or another. So this passage really is about disordered worship, about what are we worshiping? What are we serving? What are we following? And that's really what this passage is about. But it does bring us to the trickier part of the passage. In our cultural moments, we get to verse 26. We see Paul choosing examples of homosexuality to serve as a case study for this bigger argument about our disordered worship. All right, so for this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions for the 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 themselves a due penalty for their error. So obviously, our current cultural moment makes these verses very scrutinized. There are books and books and books and blog posts and sermon series and just a mountain of resources out there coming from all sorts of directions at this passages. But what can get lost in the middle of all that scrutiny is that these verses aren't even the primary point of the passage they're pulled out of this particular example. It's pulled out as a case study, but it's pulled out of a much longer list that make the same point. Paul could have used some of those other examples and made the same point that he's trying to make here. But I want us to consider why God, speaking through Paul, might have chosen these relationships to clarify his argument about the exchanges that humans make. And to do that, we have to look at the language and the surrounding verses to see that Paul is really working hard to tie his thoughts here with these examples into a much larger reality, far beyond just sex. So in Romans One, Paul is talking about God as creator. He uses his language of Creator and us as creatures, as creative beings. And it's very intentional. It's to remind us of the creation account of Genesis one two, to remind us of God's authority as the creator. He points out God's invisible qualities that have been obvious since creation began to remind us that God's order and holiness and power are all around us even now. Paul talks about worship and glory and images of humans and creeping things to highlight our disordered worship. And the imagery of images of humans and of creeping things of creatures really is mirroring the serpent that creeps in the garden. So all this language, all these things that he's burying into this argument are really pointing back to that creation over and over. He's highlighting that things are not as they're meant to be. All those exchanges show that we're not as were meant to be. We don't live in a manner or exist in a reality where our desires and our worship and our service are naturally going to happen in the manner that God first intended. So for Paul and for his readers and for us, the point of this larger passage is to turn our eyes back to a Genesis one and a genesis two perspective before the Fall where Adam and Eve were in right relationship with God and with one another. And even beyond just that little image of Adam and Eve together in the garden. Paul wants us go back to the act of creation itself where God creates man and woman in his image. And to Paul, the very order of creation that we see in Genesis is really, really important. So we're going to look there now. Genesis 126 to 28. Then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the Earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on Earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them and God bless them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on Earth. Inherent in God's design for humanity from the beginning is this coupling of male and female that can together bear his image. The same but different pairing of Adam and Eve are meant to reveal to the world something about the nature of God and about the nature of the Trinity. There is a sameness and a difference in Adam and Eve that reflects God and bears his image in a way that someone by themselves or that two of the same cannot. Nt Wright has some helpful thoughts on this point that can give us a little deeper understanding of why Paul is using same sex relationships as his case study in this example. So Paul assumes that there is such a structure, that is, that creation is not random or arbitrary. Take in Genesis one is the primary theological statement. He sees humans created in God's image and given charge over nonhuman creation. Humans are commanded to be fruitful. They are to celebrate in their male plus female complementarity, the abundant life generating capacity of God's good world. And they're charged with bringing God's order to the world, acting as stewards of the garden and all that is in it. Males and females are very different, and they're designed to work together to make with God the music of creation. Something deep within the structure of the world responds to the coming together of like and unlike, something which cannot be reached by the mere joining together of like and like in bringing homosexuality to the forefront. At this point in his argument, paul is picking something that stands out as being different from the created order of things that God has established. And he doesn't do this because this is worse than other sins, but because of how plain it would have been for him and for his readers to recognize that it is something not aligned with God's created order. To us, that reality can be much harder to understand or accept. Our culture begs us to reconsider this one point. However, for Paul and for his readers and the Romans, this example would have registered immediately as something that made sense. God intends for us to see in this that his good gracious and loving hand are at work in the very order of creation. So we live in a time where this belief, this understanding of God's good design and natural order, is under immense pressure. Christians can be mislabeled or misunderstood or worse because of our view of this. And at the same time, we need to recognize the ways we have been and continue to be that can be hurtful or hateful or ungodly in how we relate to those who may live and believe differently in areas of sexuality. We need to remember that God's greater call on our lives is to love Him with all of our being and to love our neighbors. There's a lot more that can be and has been said. Dissecting those couple of verses if you have questions, if you want some deeper discussion, I encourage you to ask questions, encourage you to revisit the sermon series from last fall. If you look online, we've got eight sermon series that really fit well together, that go deep dive on this. And besides the sermons itself, there's blogs, there's articles, there's all sorts of other resources that can help you dig into this. So I've mentioned a couple of times already, but those two verses are actually not the primary or even the secondary point of this passage in Romans. It's really important. It obviously deserves our attention. But Paul's thoughts here, it really is just a quick case study of the larger point he's making. His example here. It's no way bigger or worse than other examples, but it's an important snapshot that really captures what Paul is talking about. Paul actually goes on to list quite a few other things that similarly reflect lives that have been given over to things that are unnatural, unrighteous, ungodly, dishonorably. So we're going to turn there now, matthew or Romans at 128 through 31. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness evil, covetousness, malice, their full envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. Their gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. It's a pretty brutal list that Paul lays out here, but you can see how much he wants to see the impact of these exchanges that have happened. We can look at murder and think of it as a similar case study. Paul doesn't do it. But murder, it's an unnatural act. It's an unrighteous it's an ungodly act because it takes away life rather than following the creation called to bring forth life and to be fruitful. And that it dishonors God and ourselves because it desecrates something in this image. Gossip is unrighteous and it's dishonorable in how it deceives and it slanders those who we were created to love. Haughtiness and spirit stands in direct contrast to the humility or meekness that we are meant to have as creatures serving the Creator and disobedience to parents is unnatural. It runs contrary to our nature as created beings meant to be under the authority of a creator. So you might read that list of all those examples. You might have a hard time identifying yourself in it. I don't, which says something about me, but I'm guessing that you all can see yourself in there somewhere. If you can, I'd encourage you to read the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus gives some clarity. Murder isn't just about bloodshed, it's about the hatred and a hurt. Adultery isn't just about the act. It's about where a heart is at. Sin is far too subtle and insidious to simply be confined to list of the most egregious behaviors. So when all the pieces of this passage are taken together, we might be tempted to despair. It's a long list, it's a hard passage. It feels heavy, right? There's just so many ways that sin runs in and through our lives. And Paul paints a picture of the totality of our Falness that can be overwhelming. We have desires that are out of order. We worship and serve security or family or health or careers or sexuality or reputation. So much more in subtle and profound ways. We serve our egos or our fears, or we serve our reputation with nonbelievers. So many ways this happens, and that to be honest. In these early chapters of Romans, paul is trying to paint a bleak picture of life and sin. And his point isn't to crush our spirits or to add layers of guilt or shame. But rather, Paul is pulling us in, gripping our hearts, and secretly asking the question, but what can be done? You see this list and you see the added weight and the layers of this argument, but what can be done? Thankfully, like Paul's readers, we know the answer right? And the question shouldn't be what can be done, but what has been done? The answer is, of course, the good news of the Gospel. We know that the best way to have a darkness retreat is to have the light of Christ shine brightly. Jesus Christ was sent by God to live a natural life. He was marked by righteousness, by Godliness, by truth, by purity and honor. Jesus made no exchange in his life from worshiping the glory of God to worshiping created things. He didn't make that exchange. He lived perfectly. And with his desires and his worship and his service, he was always holy, devoted to God. And because he lived this natural, God ordered life, he was contempt to die. Our unnatural, ungodly world couldn't tolerate a life lived in perfect love and devotion to God the Father. And as a result of worshiping the Creator, of being in fellowship with the Father, of serving and following the Father and not created things, jesus suffered an unnatural death on the cross at the hands of unnatural humans. And that's important. It was our disordered desires and our broken worship and our broken service that deserve that death in God's wrath that actually was the natural consequence for our sin. Yet Jesus takes on what naturally belonged to us. That was the wages of our sin, was death. Jesus takes that on. And in his death, jesus gives us something that is unnatural for us as sinners. Namely, he gives us forgiveness and new life in Him. The great exchange that we've seen in Romans so far is reversed with a far greater exchange on the cross, where Jesus takes what should have been ours, and an exchange puts us in his place to receive what is his as joint airs with Him and children of our loving Father. Paul's going to continue hard and heavy with the brokenness in her lives in the next couple of chapters. It doesn't end here. Paul continues building this argument about why we need a savior, and he's desperate for us to see how big a deal sin is because he wants us to see how incredibly beautiful Jesus is. The cross only makes sense if our sin is big enough to warrant God sending His Son to die. And the Gospel's only good news if our just condemnation for our sin seems so absolutely inevitable that Jesus intercession utterly takes our breath away as we close today, I've got a metaphor for us to consider. And anyone ever read those Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid, and you kind of goof around and you pick the bad choices just because you want to see how this plays out, let's take this to the end, right? I love those books. I read a lot of them. Too many of them maybe. But our culture tells us that each of our lives is an individual. Choose your own adventure book, right? We are told that not only are we free to choose what we want, but we're actually told that humans are actually the author of those choices presented in the story. And beyond that, we're told that humans are the arbiters of what the right or wrong choices might be. The world makes a claim that humans get to define, get to decide what is natural or pure or true. What Paul shows us in this passage is that God himself is the author of life. He's the author of our story. And as Creator, he alone has the authority to define what is pure, what is Godly, what is righteous and true. As Creator, he decides the manner and purpose of living that we should follow. We are not, in fact, in a choose your own adventure book. Instead, we're written into a much greater story, god's story that has very clear purpose and very clear intention and very clear order written into each and every one of our lives. When we accept God's authority as the author of our lives and as a Creator and decider of what is true, we're no longer left to fend to ourselves following sinful desires to worship and serve created things. We're given new life and new hearts that enable us to choose, worship and service that aligns with what God desires for us all as we close. I'm going to leave us with a couple of questions here to consider. And they're not the go do this this week sort of questions. They really are questions to go before the Lord with, to get in his word, to ask Him to reveal things in your heart and your mind, in your life. What aspects of your heart, soul, mind and strength reflect the disordered, desire and worship and service of the great exchange? Go slowly through this one kind of think through in my heart. Where have I not yet surrendered to God's good authority in my life, in my soul, in my mind, with my strength, and how I use the gifts God has given me? The good news. Have you trusted in the greater exchange of the Gospel that brings hope and new life with desires that lead to God honoring worship and service? Do you trust that what God calls true and natural in life is good and right? And if you're wrestling with that, that's a normal thing. But who can you get with? Who can help you wrestle through those questions that are lingering? And lastly, who can you encourage with the Gospel of Jesus this week by celebrating the exchange of his life for ours? Band can come up here. I guess the band, one man band. Josh can come back up and we're going to close now. We're going to have worship. We have people in the back to pray. They would love to pray with you. And we're going to celebrate Communion. Communion is a beautiful example of this greater exchange of Christ's life for ours, his blood, for ours, his body broken, for ours, us receiving what naturally was his as the perfect Son of God. So we're going to take communion. You don't need to be a member here. You don't need to be a member of any church. But we would ask that you have surrendered to Jesus. You have said yes to his authority in your life and that you serve in that way. Close in prayer here and then we're going to worship and close out. Heavenly Father. We're thankful for you. You are the great prize of our faith. There are other blessings that come. There are other things that happen when we walk with you. But you are the prize. Your gospel is that good. You are that loving and that merciful. And so we rejoice in the greater exchange of your Son for ours, the incredible love that you showed for us to come and receive what was rightfully ours. We rejoice in that. And Father, we confess that we've got areas of our desires and longings that are disordered, that are marked by sin. We've got ways that we worship, created things, we have ways that we serve things that are not pure and Godly and righteous. So we thank you for your forgiveness for your Son and we pray through Your Spirit that you would make us more like Jesus so that our desires, so that our worship, our service can be holy for you. We thank you for this time this morning. We thank you for Your word. We're thanking you for this family of believers to encourage and uplift one another. And we ask Saul in Jesus name, amen.