“God Gave Them Over” Romans 1:18-32

Introduction

From the beginning of time, God’s desire has been to have fellowship with us. He has sought a relationship with us wherein we acknowledge His glory and place in the universe, and He bestows upon us His grace, mercy and gifts.

Almost from the beginning of time, though, we have chosen to turn away from Him. Rather than seeking to know God better, we instead opted to go our own way. We were never content to be His children, but always wanted to do what we wanted. We turned a blind eye to Him, and went out away from Him. Rather than having a loving relationship with the God of the universe, we chose to rebel against Him and became His enemies.

Despite all this, God never gave up on His love for us. From the beginning of time, God had a plan of redemption. He knew we would sin, but He also knew that He would provide atonement for our sinfulness. From the beginning, God knew He would send His Son to die for us, to provide salvation to all who believe in the Son.

Central Truth: As we point to Easter Sunday, we are reminded that Christ died to forgive the sinful desires of our hearts.

The sinful desires of our hearts are seen in:

1. Our refusal to see nature pointing us to God (18-20)

Paul is writing this letter to the Romans in anticipation of coming to the city in the near future. He has never been there, and he wants the church there to know what he believes. He knows they have heard of him, but he wants to give them an understanding of the Gospel according to Paul.

As such, this letter begins with a declaration of Paul’s firm belief in the gospel and the power that is found in it. What follows after this short declaration is an in-depth declaration of what Paul understands to be the gospel—Christ crucified for the benefit of all sinners. This particular passage speaks to the most base of people—those who deny any acknowledgement of God. Paul describes such people as those who “suppress the truth by their wickedness.

Paul reminds us that God has revealed Himself in His creation. As such, there is no reason to not have at least an awareness of God. Paul reminds us that the nature we observe each day is a testimony of God’s power and divine nature. God has not hidden behind His creation; rather, He reveals Himself through it. Every star, every blade of grass, every babbling brook or sweeping vastness of a desert speaks to the grandeur and majesty of God. There is no reason to recognize that all we see has come about by a Creator, and that that Creator is worthy of worship and praise. The failure to recognize this truth betrays any excuse we may offer up to Him when the time of judgment comes.

1. God giving us over to our sinful desires (21-25)

The next passage shows that everyone who sees our world does have a knowledge of God. However, not everyone chooses to acknowledge Him, instead looking for something else to give credit to all we see in our world and universe. Paul says such people have a thinking that is futile, foolish and darkened.

The foolishness of such people is seen in the fact that they had an awareness of something worth worshiping, but they limited their worship to idols shaped to look like men or like animals. A look back at all the idols in the history of mankind shows this to be true. We are aware of idols that resemble a person or various animals. Paul claims this is a symptom of man’s foolishness.

Years ago, I was talking with a man in my church in Port O’Connor. He made the statement that he’d always pictured God as being just like us; that’s how he interpreted the idea of being created in the image of God. He cited passages in the Bible that speak of the hand of God and other body parts. I pointed out to him that God is spirit, and is to be worshiped in spirit and in truth. This is what Jesus told the woman at the well when she asked where she should worship God. Being created in God’s image means that we are created with a spirit and that spirit enables us to have fellowship with God.

Yet men, in their supposed wisdom, embraced my friend’s concept of God. He must be like us. Therefore, we will create Him in our image, or in the image of a calf made of gold, or an elephant carved out of marble, or an image of a man’s body with a bird’s head. Or maybe they turned to the stars to guide them and lead them through life.

The end result is that those whom God had given over to their sinful desires became worshipers of things rather than God. They failed to see God in His creation, but recognized that the creation was something to be worshiped, so they worship the created rather than the Creator.

When we look at an amazing piece of art or hear a song that touches us deeply, it is natural to admire the beauty of the work. But we are being foolish to recognize the artist who painted the picture or the composer who wrote the song. When people speak about the Mona Lisa, they also recognize the genius of Leonardo DaVinci. When they hear the Star Spangled Banner, they are reminded of the courage and patriotism of Francis Scott Key. We understand that the created thing is to be admired, but more importantly, the creator is to be applauded.

That falls on deaf ears when it comes to the Creator of the universe. We stand in awe at the world and all that is made around us, but we too often fail to recognize the God who made it. That’s why Paul said the wisdom turns to foolishness in these circumstances.

It seems inevitable that if we worship and adore that which is created, we will be attracted to it. The Bible says God gave them over to sexual impurity. When we turn our eyes away from God, we have a tendency to try to fill the void with other things, including sexual conquests. It doesn’t take long in our society today to see that sexual morality is practically non-existent. We, as a society, celebrate all things sexual and pride ourselves in our open-minded responses to relationships that are not endorsed by the Bible. To be sure, as God’s representatives in our world, it is our duty to extend the love of God to all we meet. But it is also incumbent upon us to speak His truth in a compassionate, loving way.

1. God giving us over to our shameful lust (26-27)

As God gave those who turned completely away from Him over to their sinful desires, so also He gave us over to our shameful lust. I won’t spend a lot of time on this passage, simply because I don’t think it really applies to any of us in this congregation. I have never been one to believe that the preacher’s calling is to preach on things that make the congregation feel good about themselves. I’m reminded of a story about Calvin Coolidge going to church one Sunday while his wife stayed at home with an illness. President Coolidge was known for being a man who spoke few words. When the president returned from church, his wife asked him what the preacher preached about. “Sin,” was his one-word reply. “What did he say about it?” she asked. “He was against it,” was the reply.

I believe the duty of the pastor is to remind his people what God expects of them, encouraging and challenging the congregation to live up to God’s wishes for us. If I thought it was necessary to dwell on these verses, I would. I just don’t think we need to. Suffice it to say, that God gave them over to shameful desires. These desires were shameful in the eyes of God, and that should also make them shameful in our eyes.

1. God giving us over to our depraved minds (28-32)

Finally, the Bible tells us that God gave us over to our depraved minds. Why? Because we did not consider it worthwhile to retain our knowledge of God. We see the inevitable downward slide of a society that first turns from God and focuses on the created rather than the Creator. As we do so, we begin to have a strong attraction to the created, and we express our love in ways that are inappropriate. We become depraved, and our depravity is expressed in the way we live in relationship to everyone around us.

Look at the list of things that reflect our depravity. Some of these things come pretty close to us. Look particularly at vs. 29-30. “They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful. They invent ways of doing evil. They disobey their parents.” The list continues, but we can get a very good idea to see that what God calls a depraved mind is pretty much the norm for most of the world around us.

One of the things I find most unsettling in this list of depravity is found in v. 32: “Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” That’s the part that saddens and frustrates me the most. This idea of neglecting God’s word and encouraging others to do the same is endemic in our nation’s culture. Watch TV; read a book; listen to music. Everywhere we are encouraged to break away from morality and embrace the new morality, which is no morality at all. If we challenge a person’s way of life, we are accused of bigotry and being narrow minded. Rather than being defensive about immoral lifestyles, we are placed on the defensive for speaking God’s word in a world that desperately needs to hear it.

Conclusion

The reality of these verses is a reminder that we all, at one point or another, have lived a life with a depraved heart, even if all we are really guilty of is gossiping and not always obeying our parents. We must come to the realization that even things like that which seem minor in our world is considered to be the product of a depraved heart in the eyes of God. We cannot blithely go about our lives thinking we’re not so bad when we try to rely on our own measure of good and bad.

God is the final judge, and He will use His measure, His standards. And that is why Christ had to come to die for us. He came to free us from our depravity. It was an act of mercy that Christ died, and it was an act of love that He died for us willingly.