26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 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.
"The lost enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded and are therefore self-enslaved." CS Lewis
God's wrath of abandonment is at work in our culture today. He has let go and abandoned us to our own choices and the consequences of those choices.
In his sermon, When God Abandons a Nation, Pastor John MacArthur says that the wrath of abandonment follows three sequential steps.
First is sexual immorality (v24 from yesterday's passage). And it's obvious that our society today has pursued sexual passion far outside the realm of God's plan and has distorted it by pornography, sexual promiscuity, pedophilia, easy divorce, less marriage, adultery and on it goes. In our society, there is no doubt that the hearts of the people are filled with lust, leading to impurity, leading to dishonourable behaviour - our nation is driven by sexual immorality.
The next step is the degrading of natural passions into unnatural ones - homosexuality.
MacArthur adds an interesting point.... And the Holy Spirit first in this passage refers to the degradation of women because they are usually the last to be affected in the decay of morals because they have a mothering instinct and a protective instinct over their own children but when the wrath of abandonment is in force, even the women fall to the degrading passions.
The end of v27 and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
there is consequential wrath here as well. Venereal disease and AIDS (though there are some ways to get it that do not involve sin, that's definitely not the norm) - the direct result of sin.
There's no doubt that are society today has embraced the homosexual movement and wants us to consider it normal, natural, right.
And the third step is a depraved mind.
Reasoning is so corrupted that it is crippled. The faculty, the intellectual faculty can no longer function. The moral law of God written in the heart has been literally stomped and replaced with cultural immorality. The conscience cannot function. And so, says verse 28, they do the things which are not proper, not moral. So immorality goes in every direction and now you can't find your way back because the mind is so corrupt. People don't think right. People's brains don't follow the paths that they should. They advocate all the wretched things and depreciate all the virtuous things. And what flows out of this pornographic, homosexual, depraved culture? All evil.
29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
It's like somebody opened the sewer of sin and let it run through society.
They know it's wrong and they know the consequences, but not only do they do it anyway, they approve of anyone else who does it right along with them.
Does our society manifest these characteristics? The answer is unmistakably clear. Yes it does. Our nation is suffering the wrath of God's abandonment.
God has abandoned our society because our society has first abandoned God. There is no surer and no sadder evidence of a corrupted, wicked abandoned society than when that society will not tolerate anger against sin. Our society won't tolerate anger against sin.
Man likes to live with five dominant lies.
Life is random, truth is relative, people are basically good, everybody can change his own life if he chooses to, and the goal of life is self-satisfaction. The truth is opposite that. The truth is opposite that. God is sovereign and nothing is random. The Bible is absolute truth. All people are basically sinful. Only Christ can change your life. And selfless submission to Jesus Christ is the goal of life.
God has revealed Himself to us - in creation, within ourselves (our sense of morality and reason), and in scripture. But as a society, we have rejected God. We have rejected the truth and the light and replaced it with darkness. And the darkness has become so profound we can't even assess their own condition - we're blind to our own sin and can rationalize anything. We've even turned to man-made idols or false religion in order to accommodate our own useless ideas.
We have abandoned God and now God has abandoned us.
What a bleak, bleak picture.
Is there any hope for our nation?
Psalm 81:11-16
“But my people would not listen to me; Israel would not submit to me.
So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices.
“If my people would but listen to me, if Israel would follow my ways,
how quickly would I subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their foes!
Those who hate the Lord would cringe before him,
and their punishment would last forever.
But you would be fed with the finest of wheat;
with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”
Follow My ways.
The only hope for our nation or any other nation that has been abandoned by God is to hear the Word of the Lord and obey it. We need to boldly proclaim the gospel message so that as many people as possible can escape this wrath and, more importantly, the final and eternal wrath.
There is always hope for every individual. No matter what the state of our nation, we have our own personal choice. We can choose to believe God's Word, we can choose to accept His amazing gift of salvation, we can choose to reject the lie and the darkness, we can choose to accept the Truth and the Light, we can choose to hear the Word of the Lord and obey it from hearts thankful to the One who has saved us.
May we all choose well!
Tomorrow's scripture focus: Romans 2:1-4
1 comment:
Excellent post.
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