Romans Chapter 1 Verse 24

• This is heavy.  As God considers His Word from heaven and even while Paul was penning this epistle, no doubt this portion of the scripture was one written in the ink of suffering.  This business of God giving them up…
• Now this doesn’t mean that God “threw in the towel” as we might perceive…we might think.  Remember, God neatly folded the towel and left it there in the tomb on the third day…signifying that He’d be back, He’s not through…and He’s not through with these folks either…He’s just lost custody.
• The word there in the Greek for “gave them up” is “paradedome” which has two root words, “para” and “dedome.”  “Para” meaning “by” and “dedome” meaning “given reward,” or “giving due wages.”  And so don’t think of this as God throwing His hands up in the air and proclaiming with frustration, “ah, I give up!”  That’s not the idea at all being presented here by Paul.  But rather it is that they have been ripped away from Him…as in a nasty and tragic custody battle with freewill and man’s sinful nature…the illegitimate and cruel parents of God’s lost children.
• And these folks, having chosen poorly, selecting sin and death over righteousness and life, God the Good Father, the Gentleman Kinsman Redeemer, the One who can accomplish absolutely anything save forcing Himself upon us…delivered to sin and death the wages due…those that refuse to choose Him because, as Paul just wrote, although they knew God…they rejected Him and became futile, foolish and dark…
• And so there God waits, in the courtroom of the custody battle, waiting for His lost ones to appear again so that He might have a chance to take them home…You know, its so interesting because as I was studying this and seeking out the Greek and searching the scriptures for the heart of God in this manner, I couldn’t help but remember my own father…
• I met him in a courtroom.  My biological parents called it quits when I was 2 years old…and it was a vicious and violent split…sin is so destructive…addiction to this world and the things of this world…so malicious…after only a few years of swearing before God as their witness that for better or for worse, they’d love each other…they had split and that split tore a gash in our family that unfortunately as a family, we never recovered from. 
• I was too young to remember it all…I was smaller than Lincoln, my little little…which makes it all the more confusing for me…and even as I grew older there were late night conversations that I had with my dad who had received the Lord later in life and really was a wonderful man and father to me in my adulthood…but in those conversations I remember just being so close and so open with him and he with me…and I remember saying, “dad, I love you and its amazing how alike we are…but there are some things, some decisions, some actions of your life…that I’ll never understand…and that’s ok…”  We were very close leading up to his death and I’m thankful for the years we had…
• But I was about 5 years old…my mom and my stepdad got my sister and I ready, got us into the car and we drove…I remember arriving at the courthouse and walking into a waiting room of sorts and there I sat, next to my stepfather.  I remember, (it’s so odd what you remember), I remember kicking my feet back and forth as they dangled from the chair…I was wearing white shoes…Nike of course…
• And then I saw a man across the room.  It was probably less than 20 feet away but in my mind’s eye it was a great distance.  And he was smiling at me…not like a polite smile, but like he was really really thrilled…it was almost a laughing type smile…about as big as it gets…and he just watched me…and I watched him.  Man its so odd how this is all still there, locked away inside of me…
• Then he motioned to me.  “Come over here,” he mouthed from across the room…not audibly, just with his lips and he made a beaconing movement with his hand…he did that a couple times as I watched him.  But I had been taught well.  I was always told, just like you maybe, even at a very young age, “Matt, never talk to strangers.”  And so I sat there a little confused and finally I pulled my stepdad’s shoulder down and he looked at me and, I’ll never forget this, I asked Jim, “who is that man?”
• And Jim looked at me, looked at the man across the waiting room, and he looked back at me…and he said, “Matt, that’s your father.”  My legs stopped kicking…I remember my heart pounding…what did he mean, “that’s my father?”  Jim’s my father.  I felt confused and I must have showed it because my dad stopped beaconing me over…and his smile turned into concern…it was an odd moment for me that day…I didn’t go over to him…
• I did however leave the courthouse that day with him.  As soon as the judge heard that it had been years since he had seen me…that my mom had kept my sister and I from him, threatened him and used us as weapons to keep him at a distance, the judge immediately ordered that my sister and I be delivered into his care for the afternoon…and that is the day that I met my father.  At a custody battle, in a cold and confusing courtroom…
• And that is not unlike the scene that Paul describes here with this phrase, “God gave them up.”  What else can He do?  I had no say in my parents’ battle over me but I have all the say in God’s battle for me…its called freewill.  It is the gift of God by which we are able to choose Him and know Him and really have a real relationship with Him but it is also the great eternal burden by which we have the power to condemn ourselves…and worship whatever we please.
• And the most interesting attribute of freewill in my opinion, is that we become just like that which we worship.  If we worship animals and creeping things…we become animals ourselves and we creep.  Creep about looking for our next meal, our next hunt, our next mate…driven by instinct and hunger.  If we worship money we become cold, calculated, prideful and greedy.  The list goes on and on, and so could I, y’all know that…
• But if we choose Jesus, the only One who is worthy to receive our worship…the only One who has such robust quality about Him, such light emanating from Him…that from the poorest to the richest, the educated and the common…all people heard Him gladly and the masses followed Him…surrounded Him constantly…they left everything wholeheartedly to follow Him because there was substance and reality within Him…if we, with our gift of freewill, choose to follow and worship Him then it is as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 3:18, we will not be lost to the brutal and merciless illegitimate parents of sin and death, but we will be “transformed into the same image from glory to glory by the inner working of the Spirit of the Lord.”
• That is a choice we each make, individually.  And Paul here is speaking of those that have chosen poorly…

Chapter 1 Verse 25

• This is crazy!  This is major!  Yes we can read this quickly and what we will catch is true…that in context of verses 18 – 24, Paul is saying here that many abandon the truth and bow down to false gods that are powerless in eternity…money, others, sex, animals, possessions…which are all things that dwell within creation.
• But if we apply the Holy Spirit spy glass man then what we see here is “the” issue.  The one single lie…because Paul here says, “the lie”…the “pseudos” in the Greek, the fake man…the one single falsehood that from the beginning has been hand-holding humans right out of the presence and protection…the custody…of our creator.
• Paul says that they have “changed” which is the word “metallasso”…where we get our word metasticize which is the action of cancer man…its only used twice in the scriptures, right here and in the next verse…and its meaning is grave.  That sin was let in…it wasn’t stopped at the door and what’s happened, slowly but surely, its spread, its hardened, its deceived, its led you to a point where you won’t listen to God’s Word…you just do what you do…you won’t listen to me or to another brother or sister in the Lord…you just do what you do…and you figure God knows you?  God has some sort of different, idolatrous grace for you?  You’ve changed man…
• Changed the real truth…into personal truth.  That’s the lie!  Boom!  Bang!  That’s the one!  That’s the one that got Eve in the garden man!  Satan told Eve, “psssshhh don’t listen to God, for He knows that in the day that you eat of it, you will be like Him…you will be like God…glory to man in the highest!  Take a bite.”  Satan kept his promise you see…in a sick and twisted and dark and destructive and disgusting way!
• Because when Eve was deceived and subsequently Adam ate also, together they chose to be their own authority…that is called idolatry man!  And idolatry to immorality is just a short step isn’t it?  If man is his own god, then he can do whatever he pleases and fulfill all of his fleshly desires without fear of judgment! 
• Now this is the sick and twisted wile of the devil, check this out…when you have exalted yourself, placed yourself in the position of eternal authority…we read this and say, worshipping the creature rather than the creator…that must be me…what Paul is saying here is that I am worshipping me…and that’s bad…man I’m not god!  But its even worse!
• Who, other than you and all of us humanoids was created?  You’re right, the angels…and what is Lucifer…a fallen angel.  And so look we may think or feel or perceive that in idolatry we are worshipping self but the truth is, the fact is, the banger is…we’re worshipping the creature…man SATAN!
• What!  I don’t worship Satan, Matt…I just do what I want!  Man you are blinded…you’ve gobbled up the pseudos man and your deceived…who was Eve serving when she ate the apple?  The one that gave the commandment you see…and who was that?  Satan!  Who was Adam obeying when he took from his wife and ate…wasn’t God…kinda himself…but WHO ON EARTH gave the commandment….you gotta see this!  It was SATAN!
• Why on earth am I so intolerant of sin?  Why on earth do we as a leadership team offer just as much correction as we do exhortation…because we love God and we love you…that’s why and in that idolatry, man…Satan is being obeyed.  He is receiving worship…do you not know that the Spirit within me cannot stand that?  The Spirit within me REJECTS and OBJECTS to that!
• Satan’s desire from the get has been to steal worship from God.  Isaiah 14 says of Satan, “For you have said in your heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will also sit on the mount of the congregation…I will be like the Most High.”  Satan took Jesus and he said to Him there in Matthew 4, “All of these things I will give You if You fall down and worship me!”  And many have bought this lie man.  For money, for financial security, for sexual gratification…for themselves…making themselves their own false god…their idol.
• But Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10 that we are not actually serving self, we are not actually worshipping self…we are worshipping the creature who created evil man…Paul writes, “is an idol anything?  Rather, the things offered by the gentiles, they offer directly to demons and not to God.”
• THAT is the lie man.  To not worship, to not serve, to not obey God…and to obey anything at all else…is not self service, is not harmless white little sins…its straight up worshipping the creature…its straight up evil man…but God cannot force you, that is the choice, the only choice really that’s even possible to make…serve Satan, or serve God, who is blessed forever Amen…
• And here we see the almost instantaneous connection between idolatry and immorality…

Romans Chapter 1 verses 26 – 27

• What is Paul speaking of here?   That’s right, homosexuality.  Type in “where does the Bible say…” in Google and it will auto-full for you…”gay is wrong.”  2.3M websites answer that question.  Type in “what does the Bible say about…” and it will auto-fill for you…”homosexuality.”  1.8M websites answer that question.  What I find amazing is that Paul answers it right here…two verses!  Why on earth do we need 4.1M websites…all we need is two verses!  Because just like homosexuality, just like pride, just like any sin…we seek to justify it…and in that search (and find by the way b/c in this world you will find good rational pleasurable justification for sin), who do we serve?  The enemy.

Romans Chapter 1 verse 28

• Notice Paul does not say that they didn’t want to let the knowledge of God in…but rather they didn’t want to retain God in their knowledge…in other words its there, its present, its all around…yet it is not unseen, it is not unperceived, it is just plain rejected…it’s the word “echo” in the Greek…they didn’t want to reflect God you see…which is what…to glorify Him…

Romans Chapter 1 Verses 29 – 30

• Your Bible might say, “sexual immorality” but understand in the Greek that is the same word for fornication or any type or form of sex outside of wedlock…it’s the word, “porneia…”
• And mind you these are all forms of idolatry and we have defined idolatry in Biblical terms and that definition is straight up worship going to the enemy…
• “Haters of God” is the word “theostugas” in the Greek…only used once in the entire Bible and it quite literally means those who turn from righteousness to wickedness…
• “Violent” in the Greek is “hybristes” where we get our word “bristles” and so this means simply unpleasant man…bristly…

Chapter 1 Verse 31

• And the devolution continues as folks grow undiscerning (blind man), untrustworthy (you gotta watch your back around them), unloving, unforgiving (grudges are held for days, even years), unmerciful (harsh)…man these aren’t characteristics of joyful, peaceful, strong folks…see what sin does to you man?

Chapter 1 Verse 32

• They know, they don’t care and they not only do these things but misery loves company, they take pleasure in others doing them too…this invokes the types of books we read, the shows on TV we watch, the music we listen to, the movies we go see…all of this sex and violence and sin…and we say, “I’d never do that, pass the popcorn” well maybe not but its in your heart…and by watching and viewing and listening and reading…are you not approving?  Paul here says the same consequences are upon you…you too will see the effects of sin cancer…undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, harshness, man…nobody wants that but for some reason, many choose it.
• There’s another choice you can make…a choice that can defeat and reverse all of this…even reverse the original fall man…in your own heart.  Jesus took all of this, all there ever was, is and ever will be and He condemned it to the grave…and then He rose from the grave, leaving my sin and your sin in the tomb.  He paid the price so that we might be free…and He calls us to Himself.