Judgement and the Trinity of God's Love - Romans: Book of Revolution

Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.

I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.

Today, embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.

Welcome to the Born for War podcast.

Alright, so turn in your Bibles to Romans 1, and we're going to pick up where we left off last week.

And last week was a challenging passage.

And let me just quickly go over this again.

And let me give you the big overarching rubric of what's happening here in Romans.

We're going to go into Romans 1, 2.

We're going to go through 2.

We're going to be heading toward 3 really fast now.

Things are going to speed up.

But Romans 1 and 2, especially, and part of 3, are, and this is important to understand, that Paul is trying to emphasize to us that you have no righteousness in yourself.

That left to your own devices, you're all up to no good.

Okay?

We're all unrighteous.

We all have this tendency in us to judge others, to think we're righteous, to compare ourselves, and to think that God grades on the curve.

Okay?

Well, what he's doing is he's breaking us down here to understand all of us in this room have this problem called sin, and it is experienced through our behavior, but it starts in our hearts.

So last week we looked at Romans 1.18 and we talked about this downward spiral of sin that all of us can go through unless we nip it in the bud, we repent, we start to follow the Lord.

But this is not just for the individual men and women.

This is also for society and for culture.

And we see that in America.

And I gave you some broad range of statistics.

If you were here last week, and if you're not, you can go back and listen to it.

But I gave you a broad range of statistics related to the research we have on the hookup culture, casual sex with lots of partners.

I talked about homosexuality, I talked about abortion, and I also talked about issues related to porn and pornography.

And how it actually, at the end, how it actually rewires your brain.

And then if you saw my blog on Thursday, I went into more detail about dopamine and the ditches that it digs into the frontal, prefrontal cortex of your brain.

And then I talked about oxytocin and then vasopressin.

I'll just give it a nutchine.

In a nutshell, what I said was that when you have sex with someone, there's two things that happen.

Dopamine is released because of the excitement of it and the arousal of it all.

But then also in a woman's chemical balance, there is oxytocin release.

And oxytocin is a bonding agent.

In men, it's vasopressin that is a bonding agent.

So when you start having casual sex with lots of people, and this is, we're gonna talk about this with the neuro, the neuro nurse that's gonna speak at the conference in 12 days.

If you keep doing that, you start really messing up your brain because you're going against the kingdom of God.

You're breaking the kingdom of God.

And some of you have issues even today in your life related to past behavior because your brain's messed up.

Well, guess what?

God can change that.

That's what the, that's what we're gonna be talking about.

God can rewire your brain for good.

But if you don't, if you don't know that, then we go through life with these deep ditches and scars in our brain, and we don't understand why we continue to have these issues and problems in our life.

So he starts off with in verse 18 that we suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

That's where it starts.

Then I said, let's draw an arrow down to verse 21.

If you suppress truth in your life, then you become futile in your thinking, verse 21.

Then I had you draw an arrow to verse 23, and I talked about image.

I said circle image.

Because what we do when we suppress truth, we become futile in our thinking.

We become confusing.

Think about it.

If you don't have a baseline of truth, then what do you have?

Well, you have your own druthers, you have your own thoughts, and that becomes confusing because guess what?

Without truth, it's really hard to make decisions.

Okay?

So when you come to a stop sign, if there's no stop sign, and it's four streets coming into a junction, and it's up to you, think about the confusion that you go through in your mind because you don't know if that other guy's gonna stop.

Nobody knows if anybody else is gonna stop, and you're having accidents left and right because there's no truth, and the truth was the stop sign.

Does that make sense?

So image leads to idolatry.

Verse 24, God then gives us over to the lusts of our hearts.

In other words, God gives us what we want.

Verse 26, to vile passions, even unnatural passions, and then verse 28, a debase mind.

So that's what we talked about last week.

So I'll just say this you know, we have a son, and he wasn't really super fired up about doing school with Liz, and um he was, and we homeschooled our kids for part of the time that we had them, and he was not doing his homework and stuff.

Now, this particular kid later became valedictorian of his school, TCA College Pathways, but there was a time in his life where it wasn't going out going so well.

And so Liz said, okay, fine.

I don't want your homework.

You don't have to do your job, but if you don't get this project done, you're not going on the hunting trip with that.

And then that was it.

It was just one discussion, that was it.

She left.

He didn't do his work, he didn't go on the hunting trip, and he changed very quickly.

You see, God, you see, Liz gave him over to his undisciplined mind.

God gave him, I mean, uh, well, God and Liz is kind of, they're pretty close to the same in our house.

But but Liz said what it was, she spoke truth to him, and so this son of ours gave himself what he wanted.

She said, Okay, that's what you want, that's what you get.

So God loves us so much that he wants you to love you.

And he wants you to love him, and he gives you freedom.

If you want to get dumber, you can get dumber.

If you want to get smarter, you can get smarter.

That's up to you.

And that's where he's going now as we pick it up in verse 28.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind to do those things which are not fitting.

And I shared last week that it means a confused mind.

It means you don't know how to think straight.

Being filled with all unrighteousness.

Now he's gonna give us 23 behaviors.

I'll call them the dirty 23.

Being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness, they're whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents.

I really like that one.

Undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful, who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things, and listen, and this is important, that Greek word practice, that's the best word, practice.

In other words, it's not that you commit, all of us have committed some of these things, but he's talking about they continually practice such things, are deserving of death.

Not only do they do the same, but this is important, I've underlined this, also approve of those who practice them.

Chapter 2, verse 1.

Therefore you are inexcusable, O man.

Whoever you are who judge, from whatever you judge another, you're condemning yourself.

For you who judge practice the same things.

Now it's important here to realize the context of Paul is that there were Jews.

There were moralistic Jews that were in Rome that had gotten saved.

They had the Bible.

They're dealing with Gentile Romans who never had a Bible.

They had the pantheon of the Roman gods.

They didn't know anything about anything.

And so what happened is these Jewish leaders were saying, you need to stop doing this and you need to stop doing that, because they were coming out of a total pagan background, you know?

They didn't know.

I mean, when I was a missionary in Japan, when we went when young people first came to know the Lord, they didn't know the Bible from man of the moon.

And so we had to start from ground zero there.

Whereas in America, we've had the Bible in most cases, you know, but they didn't have that.

And so these moralists were heaping condemnation on the people of Rome.

And here's what Paul's trying to do, and he's saying to us today, look, you don't have anything righteous in you.

Because if you're righteous and you can be righteous just by being good, then Jesus died for no reason.

It was futile for him to die on the cross for us.

There's nothing good within you.

So I think this dirty 23 is what I'm calling it.

These 23 behaviors, he's trying to hit on all of it and say, look, all of you have done this a little bit, and some of you are still practicing it, and you're, it's death for you.

It's death.

So I wrote in my Bible under after verse 32 those deserving of death, comma, not only do the same, but also approve of those things.

I put, dumb get dumber.

I mean, really.

Especially if you come to the road, you've now got some information, especially if you come to the conference we're gonna do, and then we're gonna do another conference in the fall.

I mean, it's just Friday night and Saturday morning, we're gonna equip you on a scientific perspective on sex.

Why is that important?

Because look, I can go into a if I was invited to a debate on a university campus, I would not debate from the Bible.

Why would I debate from the Bible when the antagonist that I'm up against doesn't believe the Bible?

Right?

But guess what?

I would argue from science.

This is not healthy.

This is not healthy living.

We have the statistics here from the CDC, we have the statistics here from the WHO, we have the statistics here, it's all over the place.

This kind of behavior leads eventually to death.

Hello?

And so when we keep doing these things, first of all, it's dumb, but then you're becoming dumber.

And so if we don't heed the voice of the Lord and start moving toward kingdom-healthy living, we're becoming dumber, we're becoming more unhealthy, and that's on you.

That's on you.

So a person comes forward and they're a diabetic and they want me to pray for a miracle, they'd be healed of diabetes.

Guess what?

I've healed people of diabetes.

I mean, God's healed them when I prayed for them.

That's great.

But if they go right back to the diet and the lifestyle they had, they're gonna be a diabetic within six months again.

That's dumb.

So healing is about getting smarter, gang.

It's about the kingdom way.

So I was listening to a sociologist in a podcast this week, really interesting listening to him, and he was saying, not a Christian.

He said, he said, there's something in the Bible, he didn't know where it was, he said, there's something in the Bible about reaping what you sow.

And he was just referencing that.

And then he said this, very interesting.

He says, there it's true in, from a sociological perspective, it's true in life that people who tend to make good decisions start to eventually have an exponential effect of more and more good.

In other words, so my son, who was here at the first service, is getting ready to go back to law school, he's leaving, he left in the first service, he's getting on a plane to go back to UNLV.

Well, the reason he's in law school and he's about to graduate from law school is because he learned a baseline of truth at the beginning of his life, probably when he was about 10 or 11, 12 years old, TCA college pathways when he was there, and it was hard.

That's a really, at least back then, I don't know if it is now, but it was a really hard school at that time.

He had great teachers, great professors there, and then college and so forth, right?

So that's true for all of us.

Either the dumb get dumber, and the smart get smarter.

And there's a there's a gradual multiplicational impact on that.

So, you young people in this room, and there's a lot of you in this room, you've got friends that sleep around, maybe you sleep around.

I mean, you you sleep around, or you see your friends that sleep around, or they're taking drugs or smoking pot, whatever it is, how's it going for them?

I mean, how's it going for them?

How are they really doing?

Because there is, I'll give you another statistic.

I didn't share this last week, but there's a direct correlation between casual sex and immorality on the college campus and suicide and depression.

Because you're breaking a kingdom law with oxytocin and vasopressin and dopamine in your brain.

So we have to rewire our brain.

And you're here because at the road we rewire our brain because you guys are gonna be smarter, richer, more healthy this time next year because of the decisions you're gonna make starting tonight with prayer.

Don't you want that?

I mean, that's what I want, man.

I want this to be, I want this to be a starting point in our lives here as a church family of saying, we're not gonna put up with this stuff anymore.

We're gonna start stepping out with a disciplined life and walk it out with joy in our hearts, and that's the kingdom of God revolution in our lives.

Well, then he says, and in in verse 1, he's saying, you're inexcusable because here's what our tendency is.

Our tendency is to judge others.

That's what the Jewish moralists were doing at that time, and we as evangelicals, we can fall into the same, the same trap.

It's it's it's kind of like we excuse ourselves, but we judge others, and usually what we judge others on is what's the weakness in our own life.

So, I mean, I I don't know if they I don't even know if they have circuses anymore.

I don't know if there's circuses or anything, but I remember there used to be a circus, and I remember this really vividly in Huntsville, Alabama, when I was a kid.

It was one of those traveling circuses, and we went there, and I was I was not much taller than I am right now, okay?

And um, so I always had these issues, you know.

I was I was short, always the shortest guy in the class, and all that.

But they had this mirror, and it said, I remember it said at the beginning, and I think you paid like 15 cents, you know, you thought you were short, you can be tall.

You thought you were fat, you can be thin.

And then it was some mirror, and the way that the way it was made is you walked up and it made you thinner and taller.

Do you guys anybody remember that?

Those things?

Okay, it made you thinner, right?

That's the way we are.

That's the way we are.

We look at ourselves and go, man, I'm okay.

It's all right, but look at them.

Look what they do.

And I tried to make this my point last week, and I want to make it again this week.

That why can't we be, as a church, the most loving, kind, forgiving, caring, inclusive church in the whole city for anybody struggling with any area of their life, not compromising truth, but sharing truth with so much love that someone wants to get saved, that someone wants to change and wants to be transformed.

Because that's where he's going.

Look at verse 2.

But we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who practice such things.

So again, that's the second time he said that.

Look back at verse 1, he said, practice these things.

Verse 2, practice such things.

And do you think this, oh man, you who judge those practicing, third time he said that such things, but you're doing the same that you're going to escape the judgment of God.

So we kind of think that God somehow grades on the curve.

Well, I'm not as bad as Larry over here, or I'm not as bad as Sally over here, and yet what God's doing in our lives is to say to us, quit judging.

Let me be the judge.

You, you look at you and work on you.

So at Wholehearted Men, that's on Tuesday morning, I'm I'm coming to the end of a series on lions, demons, and blood.

That's what it's called.

Lions, demons, and blood.

So these last few, I'm talking about habits.

Habits, because you're defined by your habits, really.

It's like if you have a habit of brushing your teeth, you don't have to think about brushing your teeth.

If you have a habit of taking a shower, you don't think about taking a shower.

So the better habits you have, the better life you live, the better results you have without even thinking about it.

Because there's the habits of your life.

So I talked about last week, habit number one is seek first the kingdom of God.

But habit number two was compete with yourself.

Compete with yourself.

Quit comparing yourself to others, quit judging others, judge yourself.

In other words, the advice, if someone came to you and said, Well, how can I have a happy life?

Or how can I have a peaceful life?

The advice that you would give them, why don't you go home and look in the mirror and give that to you?

Why don't you be the best you that you can be?

And quit worrying about what other people are doing.

So as a practice, as a pastor in my life, I never look at the websites of any other churches.

I don't know anything about any of the churches in this city.

Because I don't want to find myself comparing our women's program with their women's program or our men's program with their men's.

But that's what I would naturally do.

I'm a competitive person by nature, so I just drop that.

I dropped that eight years ago.

I just never, I don't know what's happening in the city except through my friends where we work together on stuff, because I always want to be excited and joyful and happy for them.

I just love what you guys are doing, you know, with this or that and that or this, versus competing with or comparing ourselves with, and yet you do that.

We do that.

We all do that.

And he's saying, quit judging others.

You're inexcusable in doing that.

So again, he's talking to the Roman Jewish moralists.

He's saying to evangelicals here in America, we do way too much judging and not enough loving.

And then what happens, and this is the part that's dangerous, especially with progressive Christianity, is they major only on loving but no truth.

Then others major on judging based on truth.

I say, let's be in the uncomfortable middle.

Let's walk in the uncomfortable middle, which is we believe God's word to be inerrant and infallible.

This is the baseline, truth, and we're loving.

And we're kind.

And we bless people.

Right?

Because we're gonna all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

We all are.

Everybody's gonna stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

I remember one time we were living in Briargate, we were sure we had just planted Mountain Springs Church, and and so my office was my living room, I think, uh back then.

And so Liz was homeschooling five of our kids, the other two hadn't been born yet, and she and there was this bus, this school bus that would pick up this child next door.

Yellow school bus, you know, little, but a small one, not the big kind, but a little one for this this uh young young person.

And Liz was in a hurry one day and she went around it.

Okay?

Well, she got a summons because the because the the driver wrote down her license plate number, so now we're in trouble, right?

So, you know, you're gonna get a ticket, you got a summons.

Like a$350 ticket.

She says, I I didn't I didn't even realize it.

And she said, I don't think he put out that flap thing that says stop.

And I said, Well, we'll find out.

So I got a camcorder and I went in the bushes of my next door neighbor.

They never knew this.

I love this kind of stuff, man.

It's like, I dig it, man.

Like, so, and I, and when he came up, man, boom, I had him on the recorder.

I did it three days in a row.

He never, he never did whatever it is, the little lever inside things, but throws out that flap that says, stop.

So guess what?

We prepared for judgment day.

Because we were gonna meet a judge, right?

And so we got there and they say, or, you know, they, what do you plead?

And everybody, you know, we were in line with everybody.

Everybody said, I plead guilty.

And then you write the check, go over there to the window and pay your money.

So we we plead innocent.

And he goes, What?

And he said, You need a lawyer.

And I said, I'm fine without a lawyer.

But anyway, they gave me a lawyer.

We get, I think I got 30 minutes.

So I went in his cubicle with her, and I said, Well, look, I've got this.

You can show it on the PowerPoint, whatever you guys have here.

But this guy just never does his job.

He doesn't open, say, Whoa, this is really good stuff, you know?

And we got off.

But we prepared.

We prepared.

So men and women, Jesus says, judge not that you be not judged.

For with that judgment you judge, you'll be judged.

And with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.

We're all gonna stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

Are you prepared?

Are you prepared today?

Have you given your heart to Christ?

Is the righteousness that you do not have that only God has been imparted into your heart through Jesus Christ?

You can.

Don't leave here if you have any doubts.

If you have doubts about that, settle it.

Settle it today.

Come forward, get prayer, get saved, and get baptized on Tuesday night.

Because all of us at some point had to do that.

Isaiah 64, 6 reads, but we're all like an unclean thing.

And all our righteousness are like filthy rags.

They will all fade away as a leaf.

Our iniquities are like the wind that have taken us all away.

So last night I was sitting in a hot tub with my family.

We were sitting in there, we were talking about mundane things like politics and education and things like that.

And the wind was blowing, it was rocking the trees, and the pine needles came down.

That's what that's what our righteousness is like to God.

It's like, whoo, just gone.

But the righteousness of our lives in Christ is to build health, starting from the heart out of the new person.

That is building on a foundation where the rich get richer, the healthy get healthier, the good get gooder.

Jeremiah 17, 9, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

Who can know it?

We are a people of self-deception.

We judge that which we're doing secretly that nobody knows about.

In Plato's Republic, we find the Greek philosopher saying, I quote, just as poets always like their own poems, let me just stop there and say, all of you authors that love your books.

I think my book's great.

My book on marriage is the best book on marriage.

Not not true, but that's our tendency, right?

Just as poets always like their own poems and parents love their own children, so those who have made their own fortunes are delighted with their wealth as the work of their own hands.

In the 17th century, Glanville wrote, While all complain of our ignorance and error, everyone exempts himself.

The German writer Goth, who wrote the great literary work Faust, once said, Man is a darkened being.

He knows little of the world and least about himself.

I know not myself, and God forbid that I should.

So you see what's happening here?

Paul is saying, he's setting us up to realize you can't do it.

You can't be good.

You can't be righteous.

You can't be a good parent.

You can't be a good husband.

You can't be a good mom.

You just don't have what it takes.

And he's saying that the that the baseline is truth.

So it's he he's kind of tearing us down to now begin a process of building us up.

Verse 4.

Or do you know or do you despise the riches of his goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance.

But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart, you're treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God who will render for each one according to his deeds.

So, church, I remember that message.

The first time I really, really heard the gospel.

It couldn't have been the first time.

I grew up in a pastor's family.

I grew up in the church.

I was baptized as an infant, I was confirmed later.

So I know that it wasn't the first time.

But the way it was explained to me when I was 18 years old was the goodness and the love of God, and I got it.

I knew that's what I need.

I need God's love.

It wasn't a message of how bad I was, it was a message of how good I could become if Christ came to live his life in my heart.

That's where Paul's taking us.

We're all bad.

We've all messed up.

But the goodness of God, I'm calling it the Trinity of God's love.

So look at verse 4.

The Trinity of God's love.

Do you despise the riches of his goodness, forbearance, and long suffering?

The goodness of God is found nine times in the New Testament.

It's speaking of God's moral goodness, it means his kindness.

Forbearance also comes from God, and it means toleration.

In classical Greek, it generally means to hold back or delaying the judgment of God.

It's not that God is tolerant of our sin, men and women.

And he's giving you a chance to repent.

And then he speaks of the long suffering that comes from God.

God's love is slow in avenging wrongs.

It is the idea of giving the easy side of the yoke, meaning that he takes the yoke for you.

So you are burdened with sin.

Some of you might be burdened with sexual sin.

Some of you might be burdened with pornography.

Some of you might be burdened with envy and gossip.

Some of you may be burdened with greed and ambition.

Jesus comes and he says, Hey, that's the heavy yoke.

Why don't you put that on me?

And I'll carry the heavy yoke and you take the easy yoke.

Because I want to carry your sin.

That's why I went to Calvary, was to carry that sin for you.

You may be up to no good, and you are up to no good, but I can make you good.

I can actually make you great.

I can help you start building on the goodness of God that has an exponential effect over time.

You can have a foundation of truth, but you can also have my love and my forbearance and my long-suffering and my kindness working in your life to make you that kind of a person.

Verse 5, but in accordance with your hardness and the impenitent heart, you are treasuring up for yourselves wrath in the day of wrath and revelation on the righteous judgment of God, who will render to each one according to his deeds eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality.

But to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish on every soul of man who does evil of the Jew first and also of the Greek.

But glory, honor, and peace to everyone who works for what is good to the Jew first, and also to the Greek, for there's no partiality with God.

So men and women, that's how we build it.

We're either building, what does he say?

We're either building toward indignation and wrath and tribulation and anguish, or we're building toward glory, honor, and peace.

I like glory, honor, and peace a whole lot more.

How about you?

And it starts to, and then the more we do it, the more we pray about it, the more we seek God on it, God comes and he breathes on it and it multiplies.

It starts multiplying in our lives.

Let's just take friendship.

I'm lonely, I don't have any friend.

Why don't you become a friend?

Why don't you start becoming a friend?

If you start becoming a friend, you'll start having friends.

You see, people don't like being around people, always talk about themselves.

People always talk about I did this and I did that.

I mean, you you want to scatter people fast, just talk about yourself all the time.

Okay, the kingdom way is forbearance, kindness, and love.

We start loving people as we love ourselves, and we start asking good questions.

We start being a kinder person.

And guess what?

You got a few friends.

And then you start having relationships, you start having blood-stained allies.

My goodness, what does that do to our lives?

Man, that just changes everything, right?

Start having some good relationships.

Okay?

You're involved in sex and you know it's immoral, and you know it's wrong.

And so you just keep doing that.

I'll tell you, just look around.

Look around at the people who are living that kind of life, and I'm talking about people who are depressed, they start getting suicidal, they're uh they're take having to take chemicals of some sort because their brains all messed up.

They got a depraved mind.

Well, if that's you, start working on stopping that.

Start thinking about I want to be smart, I want to be good, I want to be righteous, I want to live for the kingdom of God, I want to be a kingdom of God revolution, I want to be, I want to have noble causes in my life.

It doesn't happen overnight.

But if you start to do that, there'll be an exponential impact.

Doors will start to open for you.

Things will start to happen you never thought.

You start making money, you start having an impact, you start having peace when you get up in the morning and you have a clear conscience.

I mean, got a clear conscience, pretty good thing.

So the smart way is the kingdom way.

And that's what he's saying.

Quit judging others, judge yourself, and be the best you that you can be.

And when you see stuff in your life that's not right, then surrender that to the Lord.

Lord, I tend to exaggerate the truth.

I tend to lie, I tend to look at porn.

Give that to God, be surrendered to that, and then say, God, I need your righteousness, I need your power, I need your love in my life.

You change me.

Now, when I say you change me, it doesn't mean you just acquiesce and, well, God's not really changing me, so it must be okay.

But I'm talking about where we actually want to go after it, seeking first the kingdom of God in our lives.

Thank you for listening to the Foreign for War podcast.

We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.

To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steve Holtonline.org.

God bless.