We are coming to a text in God’s word that is full of controversy and resistance. But we should not be surprised by this because of what the apostle Paul declared earlier in Romans 1. In Romans 1:21 we learn that when we do not honor God and give him thanks then we will become futile in our thinking and our foolish hearts are darkened. In other words, what we are going to be taught in this text we are going to naturally resist. Unless we are open to being taught from God, we are going to reject Romans 1:24-32. The scriptures are under attack for anything that suggests we must follow a moral direction. This attack is only intensified if the scripture speaks to our sexual behavior. We do not want God to tell us anything about that because we want to do what we want to do. This goes back to Romans 1:18 where we are described as suppressing the truth by our wickedness. As Jesus said that the light has come into the world but the world loved the darkness rather than the light because their works are evil (cf. John 3:19). So I am going to plead with you as we begin our study of this text to listen to what God is telling us. Do not reject what you read because it does not sound right or because it makes us uncomfortable. God is trying to save us from disaster. God is trying to keep us from destruction. There are three things that God gives us over to when we do not give God honor or give God thanks. We will be able to consider two of them in this lesson. Lord willing, we will look at the third way God gives us up in the next lesson. Open your copies of God’s word to Romans 1:24-27 and we are going to see what God is teaching us the path we are on when we do not honor God or give him thanks.
Given Over To Impurity (Romans 1:24-25)
In Romans 1:24 we learn the first thing that God gives people over to when they exchange the glory of God for created things. In verse 24 Paul says that God gives people over in the desires of their hearts to impurity. Now here is the curious thing: this is what we claim to want. We want God to let go of us so that we can do whatever we want to do. We want God to stay quiet while we follow the desires of our hearts. We think that we want God to let us follow our passions and lusts. What I want us to see is that God will give us over to the desires of the heart. But I want us to notice the result. The result is not freedom. The result is not that you will become the you that you were always meant to be. No, the result is that as you follow the desires of your heart for impurity, you will participate in degrading your bodies. Our culture believed that we needed a sexual revolution and sexual freedom. Our culture fought against God’s moral direction for our bodies and the rest is a complete dishonoring of our bodies and the bodies of others.
Can we take a moment to step back and think about what God is trying to tell us? Promiscuity is degrading to you. Sexual impurity is selfish. You are just getting what you want out of it. Sexual activity that is not in marriage rips all meaning from this gift God has given to the world. There is no commitment or covenant to this other person. You are just trying to fulfill something for yourself. You are not concerned about the soul of the other person with whom you are bringing with you into impurity. You are just following your feelings, choosing to live like animals rather than doing the work of thinking about and caring for another person in a lifelong permanent marriage relationship.
Pornography is the same problem. Pornography has become a scourge on the world. Now we are degrading our bodies and the bodies of other people as sex objects so that we can get what we want. It is completely selfish thinking. Now studies are finding that pornography rewires your desires so that you cannot enjoy physical relationships with human beings any longer. It rewires the brain for compulsive behaviors, increased risk-taking, and emotional desensitization (https://www.defendyoungminds.com/post/truth-about-porns-effect-teen-brains-you-need-to-know). You can easily search online all the articles that show increases in anxiety, depression, emptiness, loneliness, problems with intimacy, physical impairments, and so much more from porn use. But you just want the screen because it is easy and quick. It has become a 15 billion dollar industry, larger than all the major sports industries combined. I don’t know how we could ever think that watching other people be naked would not qualify as impurity and sexual immorality. Pornography is a sin before God that degrades our bodies and destroys us.
Anyone who has been on the other side of these impure behaviors can attest to the major relationship damage that is caused from sexual immorality and adultery. Now here is the cultural justification for these impure behaviors: it is my body. It is my body and I can do what I want to do. No one can tell me what to do with my body because it belongs to me. Let me make two observations about this argument. First, this argument ignores the fact that your body belongs to God because God made you (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:18-20). It is not your body to what you want. Your body is God’s gift to you. Second, let’s say that it is your own body and you can do what you want. I just recently bought a car because my car was totaled. It is my car and I can do whatever I want to do with it, right? I can drive my car and maintain my car however I want. But there will be a due penalty for decisions I make. If I drive my car how I want, speeding everywhere, ignoring traffic laws, and the like, I am going to have some tickets and eventually end up being arrested and having a suspended license. What if I say that I really do not like having to change my oil. It is too much work and I don’t want to do it. It is my car. What if I say that gasoline is too expensive and I will just use water instead since it is free. It is my car. Yes, it is my car but my car is not going to run properly and I will end up destroying my car by ignoring the owner’s manual that came with my car. Friends, the same is true with your body. You can say that it is your body and you can follow your own desires. By doing this, you will pay the due penalty for such a lifestyle and degrade and destroy yourself. God is not keeping you from pleasure. The car company is not keeping you from pleasure by having an owner’s manual. Rather, God is showing you the path to pleasure and true joy, just as the car company is trying to help you extend the life of the car. In sexual sins, you are sinning against your own body (1 Corinthians 6:18). Solomon, in speaking about sexual activity outside of marriage, asks, “Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned?” (Proverbs 6:27). Sexual sins always cause self-destruction.
But what we are doing is exchanging the truth about God for a lie (Romans 1:25). We make sex and sensuality our gods, trying to find our life meaning and fulfillment in them. But it is a terrible trade. These two verses are a complete and unambiguous condemnation of all sexual activities and behaviors that are not in a marriage relationship between a husband and wife. We are missing our purpose: that our covenant marriage relationship represents how God is in relationship with us. So promiscuity and impurity defile this picture. But this is not the only thing God gives us over to when we fail to honor him and give him thanks. Look at verses 26-27.
Given Over To Dishonorable Passions (Romans 1:26-27)
Further, God gives us over our disgraceful passions and shameful lusts. Friends, this scripture is a clear condemnation of homosexual behavior. There are many attacks on the scriptures trying to adjust and change the various condemnations about homosexuality. But these two verses in Romans 1:26-27 are clear. I do not say this lightly or harshly for I have people that I care about who are practicing these things. But the description is clear and the conclusion that this is sin is unavoidable. In verse 26 Paul describes these dishonorable passions as women exchanging natural relations/natural use for those that are contrary to nature. In verse 27 Paul then describes men doing the same thing: abandoning natural relations/natural use with women, being consumed with passion for other men. The condemnation clearly describes exchanging what is a natural use for the body with what is contrary to nature. The foolishness of how our world looks at this can be seen in a recent advertisement by Royal Dutch Airlines. In the advertisement it shows three different sets of seatbelts. The first set have two buckles. The second set of seatbelts has two tongues. The third set of seatbelts has one buckle and one tongue. The ad then says, “It doesn’t matter who you click with.” Here is the problem: only one set of those seatbelts click together. Two of them don’t. If you got on their airplane and you did not have two belts that clicked together, you would not say that it does not matter who you click with. You would immediately conclude that these systems do not work together. They were not made to work together and they can never work together, no matter how much you want them to work together.
Now the argument presented against Romans 1:26-27 is that Paul is just condemning what is unnatural. But if it is natural to have homosexual desires, then Paul is condemning not doing what seems natural to you. Let me offer two responses. First, this is not talking about what is natural in your desires. The context is describing what is natural for the body parts that God made. Second, verses 26-27 are declaring what is natural: women and men together. Men with men and women with women are clearly declared not natural and are disgraceful passions. I will remind us of the new car analogy. You can say that it is your body and you can do what you want. But you are going to receive the due penalty for rejecting God’s explanation for how to use our bodies.
Reason For The Scripture
I want to remind us of the purpose of this scripture. This scripture is not here so that we would verse grenade people in the world. The purpose of this scripture is not so that we would act in a nasty or ugly way toward those who are participating in sexual sins. Friends, there is no sin that gives us the right to no longer act like followers of Christ. No one who is participating in sexual sin is going to listen to the gospel if we are saying malicious and ungodly things to them. Please notice the point of this section in Romans 1 because it is a terrifying warning. Paul is telling us that these behaviors are the outcome of not honoring God or giving him thanks. When we turn away from worshiping God, loving God, honoring God, and giving God thanks, we set ourselves down this road where we are exchanging the glory of the immortal God for empty idols. To state this more broadly, when we stop honoring God, we begin the process of destroying ourselves. We begin to degrade our bodies. We darken our hearts. We are filled with futile and empty thinking. We become consumed by our passions and desires so that we become enslaved to them. The gospel is the message that Jesus has come to set us free from the darkness, from our sins, and from Satan’s power. But failing to honor God means we are returning to the slavery. We are enslaving our minds, our hearts, and our bodies back to the futile and destructive ways of the world. God is trying to warn us to keep us from this enslavement and this destruction. The other terrifying warning is the way Paul words this section. Paul is not saying that when we see a culture participating in these sexual sins that judgment is coming (though this is certainly true). Rather, Paul is saying that a culture participating in these sexual sins is the result of God giving us over to our desires. These sins show that we have already let go of God and God is letting us go to our destruction.
The Problem With Our Heart’s Desires
It is important that we have a critical discussion at this point. The problem that we are facing right now is that we have certain feelings and desires that God is condemning. This becomes the disconnect. What are we supposed to do if we have these kinds of desires? Is everything hopeless if we are consumed by our passions for sexual activity? I want us to first recognize that all sin feels natural. All sin feels right. The question when are talking about sin is not if it seems right to us or feels natural to us. All of us have dispositions, bendings, and inclinations. Everyone has the problem that what we feel and desire cannot be acted upon. Whether we have dispositions to be angry, malicious, arrogant, unmerciful, unloving, or intense sexual desires for the same sex or opposite sex, everyone is being told by God that we are not to follow through on those desires. There is not a single person in this room nor is there a single person on earth that God is not telling to deny your passions and desires for sin to follow him. Jesus himself said those very words:
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24 NIV)
So are we forever doomed? We might hear a message like this and think that we cannot follow Jesus because we have these sinful desires. Is it hopeless? Should we quit if the desires of our heart have driven us to impure living like has been described in these four verses? Not at all! Here is hope. Listen to what the apostle Paul says:
But that is not the way you learned Christ! — assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4:20-24 ESV)
This is really good news! You are not doomed to carrying out these passions and desires. The spirit of your mind can be renewed. Your desires and way of thinking can be changed from the corrupted, deceitful desires into a new self that is created in the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. You are not doomed to your desires. God promised the same thing through the prophet Ezekiel:
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. (Ezekiel 36:26-27 ESV)
You are not hopeless lost in the way you feel. God has the power to change your desires. God has the power to destroy these feelings that seem to strong to overcome and empower you to have new desires that are holy and righteous. We will start to learn to desire God above anything in this life so that those sinful desires are put to death (cf. Romans 8:13). Rather than God giving you over to your desires that are destroying you and others, God will transform your heart and change those desires toward him so that you can have true life. We want to help you. We want to help you put to death the sinful deeds of the body. We want to help you draw near to God so that your desires can change. We are here to help you do this. You do not have to do this alone. If you want to meet with us, study with us, get direction from us, have accountability from us, or anything else, the shepherds are here to help you. You just need to let us know. This is not a message for you to leave. God is showing us the corruption that happens without the gospel. This is a message to warn you that you are destroying yourself because God has let you go to following the destroying passions of your heart. Do not run from God. Your hope is in God. God has the power to change you to be everything you want as his child and everything he wants in you. Stop degrading yourself as you try to find meaning, purpose, satisfaction, and pleasure in the emptiness of this world.