The Sexual Revolution and a Debased Mind - 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.

Now, I know a lot of you like to ski.

I know a lot of you like to hunt, and you go up into the Rockies, you like to camp.

One of the reasons we love Colorado is because it's just so beautiful in the Rockies.

In the wintertime, if you're leaving to go to Breckenridge or to there are several angles you can take, but the main route that we take to say copper or aspen or Vale or Breckenridge is that we go up I-25 north, then we hit up 470 going west, kind of northwesterly, and then we hit I-70.

And then you come to the Eisenhower Tunnel.

And the Eisenhower tunnel is full of fumes.

It's congested usually.

I've been in some really slippery situations of going up through there where I've had to be super careful, and you're navigating that.

And it's not fun.

It's not a fun part of your journey.

And then just as you feel like you've kind of accomplished something by getting through the tunnel, then you hit that grade going down toward Dillon, and if you're not careful there, you can get in trouble.

And it can be very, very slippery.

And I feel like today, as we're in the book of Romans, that we're kind of hitting on a section that is sort of like the Eisenhower Tunnel.

Because when you get through the Eisenhower Tunnel and then you go down the I-70 going west and you make it down toward Dillon and stuff, it becomes beautiful, right?

I mean, it's just vistas of mountains, of snow-capped mountains all around you.

It's amazing.

But you have to go through the tunnel.

And I'm, you know, an exegetical preacher.

We go verse by verse.

We go through books of the Bible.

Some are easier and harder than others.

And I'm at one of those most difficult passages that I started with two weeks ago that I'm going to rehearse real quickly again as we move into another section.

It's not my favorite part of scripture.

And I would just say to you that are parents in this room that what I'm going to share is PG 13.

So I am going to talk about and I am going to use the word sex a lot.

So if that, if you feel like your kids shouldn't hear that, then I understand if you want to leave.

But this passage is a difficult one because it deals not just with the righteousness of God, but it also deals with the wrath of God.

And God's given us guardrails.

You know what I love about certain parts of the highways that wind through the mountains of Colorado is when I see guardrails.

And some of you know that there's some there's some mountain passes that you can go on that do not have guardrails, and that's kind of scary.

Well, God's given us guardrails.

God has given us kingdom of God guardrails.

God's purpose for every one of us in this room is what he says in Romans 14: the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

And so when we follow God's ways, we're healthier.

When we follow God's ways, we're mentally more astute.

When we follow God's ways, we're more joyful, we're more peaceful.

But it's also true that God allows us to go our own way.

And God will allow us to go off those guardrails.

And in Romans 1, and for the next 33 verses, it is God allowing us to go our own way.

So turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 1, verse 16, which we covered several weeks ago.

Romans 1:16

For I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is a power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.

For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith.

So here in verses 16 and 17, we talked about this before, that when you put your faith in Christ, when you put your heart, you give him your heart, and you surrender to him, there's a release of God's righteousness, not your righteousness, because you don't have it, but his righteousness is infused into your life.

And so, some in some supernatural, even mysterious way, God's righteousness is infused into you when you become a believer.

And you now have the righteousness of God that you did not have before.

Now, in verse 18, he switches gears.

And he says, For the wrath of God is revealed.

So in verse 17, the righteousness of God is revealed.

And by the way, it always starts with the righteousness of God being revealed.

Then verse 18, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

So we talked about the fact that that was that first step of suppressing truth in our lives.

We'll come back to that.

Because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.

For since the creation of the world as invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even as eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

Because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were they thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.

Therefore, God gave them up.

So in verses 16, excuse me, 18 to 23, it's very clear that God is speaking of this step-by-step regression.

And I think it's important to look back at Genesis 3.

God gave guardrails to Adam and Eve.

He made it very clear what the way of joy and the way of intimacy and relationship with Him was all about.

And said, there's guardrails.

You're not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Well, the serpent comes in, tempts them, and I think it's important that we understand that Adam and Eve, when they rebelled against God, were not cursed by God.

God doesn't curse people.

God cursed the ground and God cursed the serpent.

But God did not curse Adam and Eve.

And so the very first thing that God did is he cried out, he came asking, Adam, where are you?

Adam, where are you?

He cried out to him.

God's heart is always for our best.

God's heart is always for our goodness.

God's heart is always for us to walk in victory mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually in our lives.

When we see the prodigal son and we see the son breaking and going against the guardrails of God, going against his father's commands, the father's the first one to welcome him back into the family.

God's heart is so big.

And as we talk about sex here, as we talk about some of the rebellion that have been a part of the sexual revolution that all of us have been touched by, I think it's so important that we understand God always gives us a second chance.

God always gives us a third chance.

There's always an opportunity to come back to Him.

He's always reaching out to us with His grace.

In 2 Peter 3 9, we read the Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some would count slackness, but he is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that should all, all should come to repentance.

And so, if you have your pen, I'm gonna give you a little assignment here.

I, if you can guys can tell, if you can see my Bible, pretty marked up, and this is actually a new Bible.

So this is the one I'm using for Romans.

But if you have a pen with you and you're one who doesn't mind marking in your Bible, I want you to put this, I want you to do something with me.

But before you do that, look at verse 18.

And at verse 18, I want you to circle suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

Suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

Jesus said, Satan does not stand in truth, because there is no truth in him.

When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

So when we this when we see the censoring of free speech in media, when we see the censoring of free speech in government, that's always the first step toward a regression of toward a debased mind.

And so the beginning is suppression of truth.

And I shared this a couple weeks ago that it's the idea of a helmsman.

The Greek idea here is of a helmsman in a boat trying to guide the rudder of the boat against the current.

That's what suppression of the truth is.

You see, coming up within you, you know truth.

How many times have you heard things or seen things, and there's something in you that goes, uh, that's not exactly true.

And see where the enemy comes is you have that reaction, but if you have enough of the lies coming your way, you actually become complicit with suppressing the truth in your own heart.

It was Goebbels, the propaganda minister of Hitler, who said, People really don't buy into small lies.

They like big lies.

And one of the biggest lies is in the sexual area that the enemy has created in our lives.

And so look at verse 18.

I want you to circle, circle, suppress the truth and unrighteousness, then draw an arrow.

I want you to draw an arrow down to verse 21, futile in their thoughts, futile in their.

So I'm gonna call this the step-by-step regression into a debased mind or a confused mind.

So suppressing the truth leads to futility of thought.

So when I think in terms of futility of thought, the meaning here is the idea of anarchy in your mind.

It's duplicity, it's confusion.

It often leads to depression, it often leads to suicide in people's lives.

We we suppress truth, we know something's right, but we just don't want to hear it anymore.

Right?

And then when we do that, what happens is we're giving our mind over to the enemy, and our mind actually starts to have anarchy.

It starts to have futility and confusion of thought.

Step three, verses 22 and 23, image.

So circle image, draw an arrow from futile and their thoughts to image.

It's this idea of idols.

We start having idols in our life taking the place of God.

Well, then in verse from 23 to 24, I'm gonna call it the Rubicon, crossing the Rubicon of God giving us over.

Now, this is so important.

God has given us his word, and God has given us truth.

But God doesn't want robots.

He created you in the image of God with a free will.

Now I know some controlling parents, hyper-controlling parents that just run everything in their kids' lives.

It doesn't usually go well for them.

Kids will do anything as long as there's food on the table and a place to sleep.

But there's a point in their age where they're inside that rebellion that's been there where they feel overly controlled.

Man, they're busting loose.

They're getting out of that.

God rather wants to train us to use our own free will, to be able to develop convictions in our heart based on values that we believe are important for our child's life.

But if we're over-controlling, it doesn't become their convictions.

And so God's the same way with us as He He gives us His word, He gives us the promises of God, but He's not gonna stop or get in the way of the actions that we take eventually that are in rebellion to Him.

And so here He gives us an indication of this process and how it works from God's perspective, verse 24.

Therefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness in the lust of their hearts.

And I would draw an arrow from image to lust of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever, amen.

So step three is idolatry of people, and step four is God gives us over to uncleanness and the lust of the heart.

God gives a nation over to uncleanness and the lust of the culture.

And we've all been influenced by the sexual revolution.

Now, historically, when people speak of the sexual revolution, we think in terms of the 1960s as being the beginning.

But in reality, it began, of course, long before that actually began in the garden.

But the Sexual Revolution in America began really with the Kinsey reports.

The sexual revolution started with a pseudo-scientist named Alfred Kinsey in 1948 and 1953, a two-part cultural phenomena took place with the publication of the monumental works of Alfred Kinse on male and female sexuality.

Sexual behavior in the human male and sexual behavior in the human female.

One writer wrote, more than any other documents in history, they have shaped Western society's beliefs and understanding of what human sexuality is, end quote.

The New York Times hailed Kinsey as the quote, father of the sexual revolution.

According to an article in Esquire magazine, Kinsey was the patron saint of sex, whose books set in motion, quote, the first wave of the sexual revolution.

The Kinsey Report on Sexually on Sexuality inspired Hugh Hefner and his Playboy magazine.

Hefner wrote in his first issue, quote, we believe we are filling a publishing need only slightly less important than one just taken care of by the Kinse Report.

The Kinsey Report and books exploded upon the American culture.

Writing in Harper's magazine, Albert Deutsch exclaimed, quote, the Kinsey survey explodes traditional concepts of what is normal and abnormal, natural and unnatural in sex behavior.

Now, I'm not going to give you the statistics that he came up with that hit the scene.

I'll give you one, only one, and that is that 85% of men are involved in extramarital affairs.

In 1948.

Kinsey skewed the studies, lied about the findings, and at times simply made up the data that he published.

Now here's what's interesting.

I have four or five different commentaries that I use on the book of Romans.

One is by a pastor out of 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Donald Gray Barnhouse, four volumes set on Romans, and it was written in 1959, and on this particular passage, he quotes Kinsey like it's scientific fact.

Kinse admitted that he set out in his studies to destroy the biblical Judeo-Christian view of marriage and sexuality.

According to the Irish Times, Kinse believed in the rape of children.

Over 300 were molested in his studies, bestiality, sadomasochism, and along with his wife, regularly had relations with their clients and researchers.

Between 1938 and 1963, over 18,000 persons were interviewed for their sex histories.

What came to light later, though, was that they were not a random selection, but rather were chosen only after being interviewed.

Rather than a true sample of society, Kinsey and his team chose a large percentage of convicted sex offenders, prisoners, and prostitutes in their research.

But the damage was done.

Himself a pedophile, bisexual, and voyeurist, Kinsey's false reports and deceptive research has, according to doctors Judith Reisman, John Court, and Gordon Muir, been catalytic to quote, the rise of divorce, sexual promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases, illegitimate births, cohabitation, pornography, sadomasochism, rape, child molestation, sexual crimes of all types, family breakup, endemic violence, etc., this is what they wrote, could all be attributed to the scandalous research undertaken by Kinsey.

It was 20 years later before this was found out.

Suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.

And here we are today, with the highest divorce rates in the world.

And we're supposed to be a Christian nation.

The highest pornography rates in the world as a Christian nation.

We've all been impacted, men and women.

Deeply impacted.

According to statistics on STD transmission, half of all sexually active people will get an STD by the time they reach 25.

Especially women.

Jesus said the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but that I came to give you life and to give it to you abundantly.

God's plan is righteousness, peace, and joy.

God's plan is the best for all of us.

God's plan is for you to walk in health.

That's what this conference is about at the end of the month on God's sex and science.

It's how do we walk in health in the sexual area?

How do we walk in health over sexual mistakes that we've made?

All of us here have been impacted.

All of us here probably in some way, shape, or form, have had some kind of sexual hurt or pain or sin in our lives.

And God has compassion for you.

God has compassion for all of us.

And I want to be known as a church where whatever someone's done, or wherever they've been, or whoever they've slept with, they can come here and know that they're going to be loved.

That we can turn this life around toward the kingdom of God in their life.

Verse 26.

For this reason, God gave them up to vile passions, for even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature.

Likewise, also the men leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lust for one another.

Men with men committing what is shameful and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error, which was due.

Genesis 2, 24 and 25, we read, Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and not ashamed.

Step five is that God gives people over to vile, unnatural passions.

God's design is for one man and one woman to come together and be married and live a lifelong of passion.

Joyful love for each other.

It was Augustine in the fourth century who had a homosexual relationship before he was converted, who said, I contaminated the spring of male friendship with the dirt of lust.

Thomas Aquinas in the 12th century said, The vice of homosexuality is against nature.

Rosaria Butterfield, former lesbian and professor at Syracuse University, has said, and this is such a great quote, homosexuality is not the core of a rebellion against God.

Let me say it again.

Homosexuality is not the core of a rebellion against God.

A desire to be God is.

A desire to be the one who gives to declare good and evil.

Play judge rather than be judged.

A desire to use God's creation for our own gratification rather than with pleasure for his glory.

I've played God in my life.

I've played God in my life.

I've used creatures for my own glory and for my own gratification.

The American Psychological Association acknowledges, quote, higher rates of anxiety, mood, and substance abuse disorders and suicidal thoughts among people ages 15 to 54 with same-sex partners, and higher use of mental health services in men and women reporting same-sex partners.

One study showed that 40.2% of homosexual men consider suicide compared to 7.2% of the general population.

The Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity in Researching Hosexuality Rights consists of a strikingly greater incidence of a wider range of mental health disorders, specifically substance abuse, depression, and suicidal ideations, but also extending to pathological risk taking, high breakup rates of relationships, and sexual addiction.

Such a hurting community.

And I believe God wants to use this church to bring a revival of the Spirit of God into this community.

And some of us here are in different addictions.

Some of you are hooked to porn in this room.

Some of you in this room are involved in sexual promiscuity and you know it's wrong.

But you're struggling, battling to know how to get free.

You came to the right place.

Jesus loves you, Jesus cares about you.

And the first thing that Adam and Eve did was they covered, they covered themselves, they were ashamed.

But what did God do?

I didn't think just kick them out.

He came searching for them.

He came loving them.

And so do we at the road.

Despite knowing the AIDS risk, homosexuals repeatedly continue to indulge in unsafe sex practices, according to research.

More than one-third of homosexual men and women are substance abusers.

Homosexuals are more likely than heterosexuals to have mental health concerns such as eating disorders, personality disorders, paranoia, depression, and anxiety.

Lesbian women are 19% greater risk of getting syphilis than heterosexual women.

San Francisco, one of the most openly gay cities in America, compared to the national average, have twice the rate of infectious hepatitis A, three times the rate of hepatitis B, and 22 times the rate of venereal disease.

The British lifestyle magazine, gay magazine Attitude, recently discussed, quote, the worrying high rates of mental health and dependency problems among gay men.

Church, the gospel message is not let the gay become straight, but let the dead, and that's all of us, become alive in Christ.

Amen.

Bringing God's healing touch to you and to me and every person we meet.

As a body of Christ, we incarnate the goodness of the gospel.

We represent a life-giving Savior who doesn't rest with the 99 sheep out of a hundred.

He goes out and he searches and he rescues, saving the smallest and most insignificant member of his flock.

He isn't happy with saving most of the flock.

He works until every last one of his sheep experience the love, care, and mercy of his fold.

He'll ask us one day about the one.

And he'll want to know how we treated the one.

And on that day he will declare, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did it unto me.

LGBTQ people are the one.

Beautiful introduction to the book.

One person said to me recently, it's like it's a hidden people group.

It's a group of people that we bypass or we poke fun at or we make jokes about.

And I don't welcome that at the road.

At the road, we're for the one.

That we identify, and I was sharing with someone between services about a particular situation that this individual was involved in at a school board meeting, that where he felt really tested by a particular individual.

And I said, the thing that has helped me the most in dealing with people who come across sometimes obnoxious or arrogant or prideful on any particular area, but especially in the sexual area, is to ask myself, how did that person get to that place and what have they been through?

What was done to them that they had nothing to do with that has hurt them so deeply?

Wouldn't Christ do that?

I think about the woman caught in adultery, and everybody's ready to cast that stone, and the church has certainly done a good job at casting stones in the gay community.

And then Jesus says, you know, I forgive you.

I'm not going to cast a stone.

He says, go and sin no more.

Right?

So that's important too.

Is that we don't limit or devalue God's word, but that we come with an attitude of compassion and love.

We are called to be Christ.

And I believe there's a move of God happening.

We've got a number of people here at the road that have come out of a gay and lesbian lifestyle that are walking with Jesus, loving Jesus, excited about his word, fired up for the Lord, that God's going to use them in a mighty and powerful way, and he's going to use all of us as a part of being in that community.

I'm excited.

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.

Step six is God gives people over to a debased mind.

Debased in Hebrew has the meaning of deterioration of the mind, the weakening of the mind.

Men and women, the truth is the most powerful sex organ in your body is your brain.

The psychological impact upon us from casual sex is becoming more and more clear.

In the book Hooked, obstetricians and gynecologists Joe McAlaney and Frieda McKissick did groundbreaking research into the brain and sexual activity.

They found that sexual activity releases chemicals in the brain, creating emotional bonds between partners.

Breaking these bonds can cause deep depression and make it harder to bond with someone else in the future.

Chemicals released in the brain during sex can become addictive.

The brain is not only is not, and here's an interesting thing, the brain is not even fully developed until a person reaches their mid-20s.

So can you imagine the surgeries that are being done on kids right now?

Their mind is not even fully developed until the average of about 25 years old.

A few facts related to their study.

Number one, boys and girls who had sex were more likely to be depressed and suicidal.

Number two, those who had sex with multiple partners before marriage had difficulty bonding with one partner after marriage.

Number three, those who chose to only have sex with their marriage partner were more well adjusted, less depressed, and more able to adapt to life's struggles than those who had sex with multiple people.

Understanding the neuroatomy and the chemistry of the brain.

Okay, so I'm reading a lot.

I'm gonna read some more.

And I had a neurosurgeon, not a neurosurgeon, I had a neurologist talking to me in the first day and says, Man, this is great stuff.

And um he loved it, but he was already aware of it too.

The prefrontal cortex, right here, is important in control and judgment.

It is what separates us from the animal kingdom.

Our decision-making abilities are determined in the prefrontal cortex.

Now I'm gonna give you some scientific words.

The nucleus occupons plays a central role in the reward circuit.

Ventral tegmental area, VTA, dopamine-rich nucleus.

This is where dopamine is produced.

Dr.

Hilton writes when a stimulus from the cortex comes into the brain stem, the VTA causes dopamine to be released from the ends of the nerve cells, where it crosses the synaptic cleft, space between nerve cells, and binds to receptors on the pleasure cells in the nucleus occupants.

There are five primary chemicals released through sexual arousal and responsive.

The most significant being dopamine, the chemical of reward-driven behavior.

Every type of reward that has been studied increases the level of dopamine transmission in the brain.

Dopamine is clearly one of the most important messenger neurochemicals in the brain.

It is dopamine that causes us to take risks like leave home, take a job, have a child, choose a mate.

So dopamine, under God's guidance, releases is what enables you to do risky behavior.

And it's risky to get married.

Anyone got any amens on that?

It's risky to get married.

Well, dopamine is also released when we look at pornography.

Dopamine is also released in sexual arousal.

It has the same addictive qualities of cocaine, amphetamines, and meth.

Dopamine has been called the novel chemical drug.

Dopamine surges when a person is exposed to novel stimuli, particularly if it is sexual.

So any kind of sex releases dopamine.

Porn releases dopamine.

Research in the United States has shown that 66% of men and 41% of women consume pornography on a monthly basis.

An estimated 50% of all internet traffic is related to sex.

The Huffington Post reports that the average age that kids are being exposed to pornography is now 11 years old.

Folks in the family's research shows it as nine years old.

It's called the Coolidge effect.

The Coolidge effect.

The Coolidge effect is the idea that the novel drug in our brain is dopamine, and dopamine needs more and more novel experience to reach the same levels of release.

A person can see more novel bodies in 20 minutes with the click of a mouse than their parents saw in a lifetime.

So here's what happens: dopamine release, especially through sexual stimulation, I'm gonna specifically talk about pornography here because a high rate of you men struggle with that in this room, and a growing number of women struggle with it also, is that when you see the images and you look at it enough, the novel stimulus of dopamine, the coolidge effect, is that you need more and more stimulation.

It needs more novelty.

So you go deeper and deeper into porn, and what it does is it literally digs ditches in your prefrontal cortex in your brain.

So here's what happens: it rewires your brain.

And you're addicted to sex, you're addicted to porn.

Well, here's the studies that's interesting.

There's another chemical, especially in women, called oxytocin.

So what happens with women in the sexual contact that they have with a man is there's a it's a bonding agent.

So dopamine excites us, oxytocin bonds us together.

For men, it's vasopressin.

Vasopressin chemical release, bonding.

Oxytocin in women, bonding.

Dopamine release, excited.

So here's what happens: is that as we are involved in casual sex, we're involved in porn, what we're doing is we're breaking a kingdom law.

But you see, the kingdom law was set up that when you have sex with someone, you bond to that person.

Hopefully for the rest of your life.

God made it that way.

That you don't want anybody else, you want that person.

And so what happens in casual sex encounters is you're you're moving toward a depraved mind because you're breaking the laws of the kingdom for your brain, and it's ripping your brain apart, and you're moving to confusion and depravity.

We've all been touched by this.

That's the bad news, but there's good news, and the good news is you can rewire your brain through Christ.

That's what I was talking about.

You know, you're going through the Eisenhower tunnel, right?

And then you come out and you go down to Dylan, and then it's these vistas.

Well, we haven't, it's gonna be a while until we get to Romans 12.

But here's what Romans 12 says.

I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies, your bodies, as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Folks, the discipline of rewiring our brains can begin today.

By renewing our minds in Christ, letting Christ bring his righteousness into our lives.

And in so doing, beginning to have some accountability, some blood-stained allies, so we can begin to walk in freedom of the righteousness and peace and joy that comes from the kingdom of God way, not the way of the enemy.

And so that's what we're doing also at the end of this month.

We're having a conference, and the conference, I think everybody should be there.

We have Melissa Ogden, she's gonna be speaking, she's been on Fox News, numerous broadcasts.

How do we how do we renew our minds in the sexual area?

How do we walk in freedom?

Some of you have had abortions, some of you here have been a part of encouraging an abortion.

God wants to set you free from that guilt and that bondage that's associated with that.

He wants to bring you into new life and new freedom in Christ.

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.