God's Wrath on Immorality

Transcript

My name is Sean. If we haven’t met before, I’d love to meet you. Please join me again in a word of prayer. O Lord, we pray that this morning you would illuminate your word to us by your Spirit. We ask that the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts would be pleasing to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer and the one who gives us a new identity in Christ. Amen. I watched a short animated show recently called Takopi’s Original Sin. It’s a bit of a harsh and unnerving depiction of family-induced trauma and the cycle of hurt that it causes. The show follows three children and their attempts to navigate life and consequence. At the center of this show is a truth that eerily resonates with our own reality. Broken homes birth broken children. Hurt people hurt people. Left to ourselves like a butterfly effect, we perpetuate sin and destruction and violence. We see this in the real world with examples like gang violence of retaliation and escalation until no side is left able to continue. We see examples in domestic abuse where people are more likely to recreate an environment that they’ve survived. We see examples of children who because of bullying or marginalization, untreated mental health or loneliness, take drastic steps of brutality and gun down their peers. But it’s not just out there in the world, is it? The problem exists in our hearts. You come home after a long day of work, of stress, and you snap at your family and your roommates. When someone wrongs us, our natural instinct, instead of turning the other cheek, instead of being quick to forgive, we want someone else to hurt. We want someone else to feel as bad as we do. The end result, we see it even from the beginning of humanity in Genesis 6. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And so he will judge. He will pour out his wrath on humanity. Only, his wrath doesn’t only look like that of destructive judgment. No, the reality of God’s wrath revealed throughout history and in the present is that he gives us over. He allows us to pursue the evil desires of our hearts so that we might see the severity of our sin and turn to him in repentance. The growth of civilization doesn’t solve humanity’s problem of sin. Rulers and kings and government, however good they are, cannot fix it. Technological advancement, science, philosophy, even religiosity or piety cannot correct what is deeply broken in humanity. Only God, who has created us and designed us, the one who has shaped and fashioned us in the womb, can fix us by giving us a new identity, a new heart, a new nature. We need the gospel because without it, without the intervention of God in human history to incline our hearts for good, we’re trapped in this never-ending loop. Turn with me to Romans chapter 1. This morning we’ll be finishing the chapter. My hope is that we will see that the present expression of God’s wrath is meant to lead us to repentance. All of us are guilty of creating an identity apart from God. All of us are guilty of setting ourselves up as the supreme authority and defining for ourselves what is good and evil, right and wrong. So we need the gospel. We need the gospel because in our idolatry we have exchanged the glory of the immortal God for something man-made. We need the gospel because in our sin nature as idolaters, what we express outwardly in our sinful behavior is an inward reality. We need the gospel because God’s wrath is revealed against our immorality, the sins that we commit out of a heart that does not honor God. What Paul is doing here is laying a foundation for the sin that is in all of us. All of us have suppressed and rejected the truth of God and in doing so we have set up a replacement God. One who not only will never condemn us for our actions but a God who in every way magnifies sin as what is the best for us. All of us in turn live out that identity in our own ways and we distort creation and we pursue evil. And so we step into the heart of Romans 1. We saw last week that God’s wrath is revealed against our idolatry and this week we see how God’s wrath actually expresses itself in the present. He gives us over to our sin. We need the gospel because God’s wrath is revealed against our immorality. We’ll look at this passage in two sections, first by exploring identity and then immorality. Romans chapter 1, I’ll read starting in verse 18 and we’ll spend our time in verses 24 to 32. So they are without excuse. Because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Identity. I think if we were to see and apply this text in our context, we first have to have a conversation about identity. We live in a culture that is hyper-individualized, where the pursuit of personal happiness and pleasure is elevated above all else, where the peak of human existence is defined by self-awareness, acceptance, autonomy, and self-fulfillment. So it’s no surprise that our world fails to see a need for God. This concept, which the church refers to as expressive individualism, pushes back against any system, whether it be tradition, religion, or society, that would in any way restrict individual freedom and happiness. It champions the idea that humans are inherently good, rejects external authority with a deep suspicion for anything that is institutional. At the core is an ethic of tolerance for everyone’s own personal journey towards self-expression. One of the most visible expressions is the transgender movement, which seeks to conform a physical body to a different gender identity. But here’s where expressive individualism fails in its alignment with God’s truth. Our innermost voice, the deepest parts of our being, what we might view as our most authentic self, is marred by sin and its deceit. It is idolatry, the very expression of sin and false worship for which God reveals His wrath on humanity. Instead of leaning into the truth that we were created to worship God and allowing Him to define our identity, our purpose, our gender, our lifestyle, we exchange His truth for a lie, and so we begin to shape our identity around the very sins that got us here in the first place, attaching them as labels to our being. So if we’re to correct our worship and escape this perpetual cycle of sin and destruction it brings, we must see that the identity we choose for ourselves is broken. The mantra of following your heart or being true to yourself is inherently flawed because of our sin nature. R.C. Sproul says, Like I mentioned last week, our immorality flows out of our idolatry. The very fact that we sin, that no one has to teach us to sin, and that as hard as we try, we cannot help but sin, it shows a deep depravity that exists in all people. Theologians refer to this doctrine as original sin, an inherited state from Adam because of the fall. We cannot fix our identity, our innermost being, through external transformation, no matter how hard we try. Instead, because this innermost identity defines who we are and how we act, because our works proceed from a heart that is either for God or against, we have to deal with this inner depravity before we can enact any outward change. Listen to David’s words in Psalm 51 after he sinned with Bathsheba. The psalm is not talking about the sin of David’s mom, it’s talking about David’s sin. And he sees himself as having a sin nature from the moment of conception. But look at verse 3. David is attributing the responsibility of sin to himself. He prays, Paul echoes this in Ephesians 2-3. By nature, we are children of wrath like the rest of mankind. Romans 5-12, in speaking of Adam, says that This is a deep doctrine. I would encourage you to spend more time in Romans 5, looking at how Adam and Christ are compared and contrasted as those who represent humanity to Christ. But what does this have to do with Romans 1? It means that in our suppression of truth, in our exchange of the worship of God, he reveals his wrath by giving us over to that sin nature. Our desire to pursue the deepest part of our being is really a desire to lean more and more into the way that we reject the truth of God in place of a lie, the way that we worship the creature rather than the creator. And the more that we do that, the further we stray away from God’s goodness, the darker our expressions of sin become. Three times in our passage, Paul repeats this phrase, Paul is outlining a progression where our attitudes and desires begin to be formed by our sin nature. We then express that sin nature in further patterns of sin, exchanging our natural created function for that which is unnatural. And then God gives us up to a debased or depraved mind, a mind that God rejects as worthless because it’s failed to acknowledge him as God. And so our lives are filled with every manner of unrighteousness. We not only do these unrighteous deeds, we give approval to those who practice sin. We celebrate and honor our own personal expression of sin against the holy God. To pursue our own identity apart from God is to follow this trajectory straight to hell. How is this an expression of God’s wrath? I think there’s two things at play here, one passive and one active. We often refer to an aspect of God’s character known as common grace, the kind of God’s grace that much like general revelation is shown to all people. We see it in his patience, that he doesn’t destroy the world in sin as he has every right to do. We see it in the fact that people are able to experience good things. We’re able to experience beauty and joy and happiness and peace, even for those who are far from God. We’re able to partake in the joys of creation. We’re able to form a society even while we’re dead in our sins. We see it in the fact that God gives people restraint to not act on the deepest impulses of their heart. You are not as bad as you could be. Sinful people can do good things. And all of this common grace, while in itself cannot save, is meant to lead us to repentance. Listen to Romans 2.4, Do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But as we continue in our sin and in our rebellion against God, as we continue to reject the law that he’s placed in our hearts in favor of our own desires, God begins to remove this common grace. He gives us over to our sin and our identity. But the second, more active expression of God’s wrath is indeed the core of our deepest problem. It is the difficult truth that apart from God’s intervention, we cannot save ourselves. We can never be moral enough, we can never be good enough, even on our best days, because in our sin and idolatry, we no longer belong to God. Because we have rejected God, God has rejected us. This idea of giving up is one of handing over, of delivering to. It’s the same word that’s used in Jesus’ betrayal, of passing a subject into the hands of another master. In our sin, God allows sin to become our master, to enslave us. Humanity, left to itself, begins to look less like children exchanging custody for the weekend. Instead, it looks like obedient slaves of sin, leading to death. And then we begin to look more and more like this God that we serve, until we ourselves perpetuate sin in others’ lives. We harm, we hurt, we destroy, we kill, we enslave. This is the cycle of sin and death that’s at play here. Death begets death begets death. When we’re hurt, we take revenge. When we’re slandered, we rage. We become like, as verse 30 says, inventors of evil. We find more and more creative ways to sin, more and more ways to tear down God as the only king, and set up ourselves as God in his place. And the scary thing is that God gives it to us because it’s what we desire. Jerry Bridges gives a helpful illustration of sin as cancerous. Sin is malignant, it is not benign. He says, When I want what other people don’t have, I treat them as less deserving, and then I take what’s not mine. Sin grows, it metastasizes, undetected, because of its deception until it’s terminal. And yet there’s hope in the gospel. This is why we gather together and celebrate, because we are not left alone in our sin. We are not left to the enslavement of sin and the worship of ourselves. While our state is one of being given over to sin and death, while our hearts are foolish and futile and full of evil desire, God did not spare his own son. He offers us grace in the gospel. Jesus was given up in our place. That’s the same word. Look in Romans 4.25, He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. Though in our sin we are under the wrath of God, and God has given us over to sin as slaves, it was his kindness and forbearance that he didn’t extinguish us on the spot. Instead, he waits, and his patience is meant to lead us to repentance. The depravity of our sin as it pulls us further and further away from God is meant to reveal our need for a Savior. The law, though we break it, is meant to give us knowledge of sin. And God, in giving us over to our sin and our immorality, is showing us that we need him. We need Jesus to be delivered up, given over in our place, so that we might become slaves of righteousness instead. Listen to Romans 6.17. Thanks be to God that you who once were slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed. And that’s the same word, committed. In the gospel, God delivered Christ over to sin in our place. We who were once under God’s wrath, given over and delivered up in the grip of sin, are now given over and delivered and committed to righteousness, transferred to his kingdom instead. We have a new master. Not dishonor, but honor. Not foolishness, but wisdom in the truth of God’s word. Not sin, but righteousness. Not the worship of idols or images or our own identity, but the worship of the immortal God instead. So we need to reject and put to death our old identity. We need to cast off the worship of ourself above all else and receive as binding and authoritative the declaration of God that we are saved by Christ alone, not by our works, not our own pursuits or pleasures or achievements. This is at the core of what it means to be a Christian. And it might look more dramatic for some people. For the person who’s taken on both societally and physically a different gender identity, the call to obey the gospel will seem much more costly for them. They’re going to have to embrace the way that God created them and reject the truth that they might feel. Not all of us are going to have to walk away from a same-sex relationship that’s dishonoring to God and ourselves. Not all of us are excommunicated from our family or community for our belief in Christ. But these dramatic costs are a visible expression of the type of transformation that occurs in all of our hearts. When we repent and believe the gospel, God gives us a new identity. We reject our truth for God’s truth. We walk away from patterns of sin that, while they might give us temporary fulfillment or satisfaction, are deeply abhorrent to God. All of us are called to put to death the pursuits of self, even the ones that are socially acceptable. Any identity that we’ve replaced for our pursuit of happiness, whether it’s ambition for success in a career or a desire for a nuclear family or our pride or ego or anything that comes with recognition or praise, all of it needs to be put to death at the foot of the cross. And contrary to anything that the world or our sinful identity would believe, we put our faith in the fact that Jesus accomplished all of this for us, and we did nothing to deserve it. And this is why, as Christians, we use the language of conversion, of transformation, of new birth, because in Christ we have a new identity. Family, those of you who hold fast to the truth of Christ as the only hope that we have, we need this reminder, especially as we turn to address very specific and severe sins. We live in a tension of the already and not yet. Yes, Christ’s victory is final and secure. Yes, we have been justified, made righteous by our faith. Our sins are paid for, atonement accomplished on the cross. But now a battle begins between the Spirit of God in us and our flesh. Sanctification starts, and we must choose by the Holy Spirit working in us whether to give ourselves over to righteousness, to fight the deceitfulness of sin, and not allow it to continue having dominion over us or to continue to give in to our sin nature. If we’ve put our faith in Christ, Paul says in Romans 6 that our old self was crucified with him so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For the one who has died has been set free from sin. Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Instead of sin being our master, we have been delivered from the domain of darkness. God embraces full custody over us as his adopted righteous children. This is the hope that we have in the gospel, and it’s only when we see the depth of our sin and our need for salvation. So please remember this, especially now as we turn to look at the various forms of immorality that are expressed in this passage. And I want to remind you that we are called to live out of a new identity in Christ, not as those who are enslaved to sin. We’ll spend most of our time on the issue of homosexuality before we look briefly at the rest of the passage. All right, homosexuality. If it isn’t clear already, here at Trinity we teach a traditional and historic view on sexuality. Sex is reserved for a marriage between one man and one woman. Any expression of sexuality that’s outside of those bounds is sin. That includes homosexual behavior, although we have sympathy for and desire the sanctification of any saint who struggles with or is tempted towards same-sex attraction. I just want to get that out of the way up front, and I want to give some direction now on where we’re going and what I’m hoping to accomplish. My goal is not to explain comprehensively the issue of homosexuality. I’m not even going to address everything that the Bible says on this issue. My goal is to help us think through this issue, answer some common objections, and then give pastoral application on how we should respond to this issue, both for our people, for those who struggle with same-sex attraction, and for the church as a whole. If you want to have more conversations about this, any of the elders will be happy to sit down with you. But for the sake of time, I am just going to focus on how this issue should be applied in our church and our context. I was telling some other people, this is going to be the longest sermon I’ve ever preached. There are plenty of books and other sermons out there. I just want this to start a helpful conversation about this for our church. Let’s begin by looking at verse 24. Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. And then skip over to verse 26. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. As Paul is tracing this downward spiral, he begins with general impurity, what he calls dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. He’s obviously talking in very general terms here, but the language is one of a sexual nature. He talks about lust, impurity, and specifically the dishonoring of the body. We read in 1 Corinthians 6, 18, Paul’s command to flee from sexual immorality. For every other sin that a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. I want to make two points here. First is the severity of sexual sin regardless of the form. We need to have a clear and biblical sexual ethic because sex is fundamental to the human experience and it’s one of the primary weapons that sin and Satan uses against God’s people. I don’t know the exact percentage, but I can tell you that the fall of many modern church leaders to moral failure is related to sexual misconduct. Sex is a very clear gift from God. It is central to the human experience. It is deeply personal and intimate, and it is not to be taken lightly. And I think that’s because Scripture shows and illustrates for us that sexual expression is a picture of the type of passionate love that God has for his people. Repeatedly, in the Old Testament, the idolatry of Israel and the pursuit of other gods is represented very vividly in various forms of sexual immorality. Listen to Ezekiel 16, how sick is your heart, declares the Lord God, because you did all these things, the deeds of a brazen prostitute, building your vaulted chamber at the head of every street and making your lofty place in every square, yet you were not like a prostitute because you scorned payment, adulterous wife who receives strangers instead of her husband. Men give gifts to all prostitutes, but you gave your gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from every side with your whorings, so you were different from other women in your whorings. No one solicited you to play the whore, and you gave payment while no payment was given to you. This type of language, this picture of idolatry, shouldn’t just make us uncomfortable. We should be shocked and appalled. All forms of sexual perversion are a grievous distortion of the picture of love and consummation of joy that God was designed to have with His people. The shame of our sexual misconduct is meant to shock us back to the reality that we are doing something horribly outside the realm of God’s design for sexuality and then to turn back to Him in repentance. We need to be on guard. We must not in any way, regardless of the form, downplay the severity of sin. We must not become comfortable with any form, any expression of sexual sin, whether that’s homosexuality, premarital sex, extramarital sex, pornography, whatever it is, regardless of how accepting the culture is of it. Culture cannot drive our ethics or our morality. Second point, in relation to desire. Look at the variety of language that Paul uses to communicate his point. Verse 24, we have the Greek word epithumia, a longing or urge for what is forbidden. That’s translated here as lust. We have the word kardia, or the heart, the center of our being that fuels our affections. Verse 26 uses the word pathos, which is defined as a powerful inner impulse operating apart from godly restraint, an emotion so dominant that it pushes the will toward morally corrupt actions. Verse 27 tells us men are consumed with, inflamed, they literally burn with passion for one another. This is the word orexis, the excitement of the mind, a self-centered craving or a strong inward appetite. Paul’s point here is comprehensive. Passion, lust, desire, inward impulses of the heart, however inflamed, however all-consuming they might feel, however they may even behave like an appetite for food or a strong craving, do not make things right. Just because you want something, just because your heart or your inner being or your identity is inflamed with passion for something does not mean that it’s morally acceptable in the eyes of God. Your desires are deceitful. Sin knows this and it uses this fact, especially in the area of sexuality. Your desires are screaming in your ear to abandon the truth of God for a lie. And this applies in the realm of homosexuality. You cannot argue that your desires are right in the eyes of God any more than you can argue from a sexual desire for a child or your neighbor’s wife or your sister or a dog. Passion cannot drive our ethics or our morality. It is incredibly deceitful and especially in our sexuality because we’ve learned to tie our sexual expression to the deepest parts of our identity. We must appeal to a higher authority than our sexual appetite to define our morality. Okay, let’s move on to some common objections. I’m going to go through these pretty quick because even many liberal and mainline churches agree about what Paul is saying on this issue. They just disagree on the inerrancy of Scripture and whether or not Paul was actually right. Again, if you want to discuss more, any of the pastors would be happy to. Let me make something very clear up front. I’ll repeat this again later. We addressed last week that the suppression of truth and the necessity of the Holy Spirit’s illumination in order for us to believe what’s true. Evangelism is not convincing the world or culture about a Christian sexual ethic. People need the gospel and they need the work of the Holy Spirit before they can understand and interpret spiritual truths. Objection we talk about should in any way be used to argue with or persuade our gay or lesbian friends about a certain aspect of their lifestyle. Instead, you must hold the gospel out to them. Our goal is that we know these truths for ourselves, that we can defend them with Scripture as we take a stand on cultural issues, and then as we make a declaration that we’re believing what God says to be good and right. First objection, cultural context. People like to say that Paul here is talking about pederasty or older men with young boys, and that’s a practice that is common in this time period throughout history. I think a defense of this is pretty clear. Paul references women in the same exact way. Pederasty might be included, but what Paul is addressing is certainly much wider than that. Second objection, Paul does not condemn consensual homosexual relations. This is the core argument of revisionist movement that make a claim that as long as a relationship is consensual and monogamous, a loving God cannot prohibit that. Again, as we saw earlier, a desire for something cannot be used as an argument for what is right in the eyes of God. And what’s clear here is that Paul appeals to the created order, what is natural. Genesis 2 institutes marriage between a man and a woman. Verses 26 and 27 refer to natural or instinctive relations. The word that he uses is actually one of function. Women gave up their natural use. Men gave up their natural use or function. It doesn’t take a biologist to know that men and women complement each other in ways sexually and in procreation that are natural and obvious. Lastly, third, sorry, we’re still on the second objection, the use of this word exchange. This is the third time that the word appears in this passage. First we see we exchange the glory of the immortal God for images. Verse 23, we exchange the truth of God for a lie and now we see that women are exchanging their natural use for one that is contrary to nature. In the same way that idolatry is the exchange of the divine for the created, of truth for a lie, homosexuality is an exchange of the one flesh union that God has designed for a man and a woman in marriage. It is a distortion of creation itself, an immoral outpouring of idolatry. Objection three, it’s not fair that God made me this way. The hard truth behind this is that life really isn’t fair. For any of us to experience an attraction that’s out of line with God’s holy standard is to experience the effects of sin and brokenness in our lives. All of us will feel it in different ways. But when I say that I have a propensity toward one sin or another and it’s because of a systemic problem or a family situation, I’m trying to absolve myself completely of the responsibility of my own sin. Sin has consequences. I think especially as a church, that should make us feel weight when it comes to the way that we raise our children or what kinds of things that we support in society. When we don’t live in line with scripture, when we spiral further and further into decay and destruction, when we distort creation itself, there are aspects of sin and identity that will have a much more severe cost and they will have a much more dramatic call to repentance. Let me give some tangible examples. When we’re saved, God can and will redeem aspects of our lives that are in accordance with his will for us. An identity that’s wrapped up in a successful career like medicine that has become an idol, even though it’s become the means for self-fulfillment and happiness, it can be redeemed by God for proper use. With a new identity in Christ, as a Christian, you can be a doctor for the glory of God. You cannot be a prostitute for the glory of God because it fundamentally goes against God’s law. Jesus tells the adulterer and the tax collector to go and sin no more. And this is where the passage gets personal. This is why the church, without the gospel message, can feel so condemning. Forms of sexuality that are fundamentally a distortion of God’s creation cannot be redeemed in a God-honoring way. A homosexual relationship, however consensual, however fulfilling, cannot be used for the glory of God because it is inherently unnatural and a distortion of the picture of marriage that’s meant to reflect God’s love for his people. Someone who has adopted a new gender identity that is different from their biological sex cannot continue to live in an identity that they have defined for themselves. Yes, God will save anyone who calls on him with genuine faith, but we cannot forget the necessity of repentance in our salvation. As we’re putting to death our old identity and our old selves, we must begin to live out that new identity in Christ and the ways that God has designed for us to live. I’m not advocating for a utopia or a full realized eschatological kingdom of God here on earth. I’m saying that the reason something like wisdom, literature, and proverbs exist is because even though we can’t control the salvation of our children, God does desire that we create an environment for the gospel to grow and flourish. This is why although dramatic conversion stories are powerful and they are a beautiful picture of the transforming work of God, we must pray and celebrate and praise God for saving children in our church who have never known a time where they didn’t believe the gospel. Sin has consequences and we will feel their effects the further and further we stray from God’s design and creation. So what do we do with this as a church? What do we do in a culture like Portland? I have four points of application. First, I want to say that the way that we live out our stance on homosexuality and same-sex attraction should not be the only countercultural thing about our church. We need to have a countercultural stance on our priorities, on family, on our money, on the way that we love one another and the world. The gospel needs to be countercultural, not because the Bible makes a statement on sexuality but because it reveals all of our sin, all of the ways that our identity is out of line with God’s truth. The gospel should be offensive to all sinners because it calls all of us to repent. Second, for those of you who struggle with same-sex attraction, especially members of this church, if you’ve repented of your sin, if you’ve placed your faith in Jesus alone for the forgiveness of sins, then there is now no condemnation for you who are in Christ Jesus. The shame that’s meant to point you to your need for Christ was carried by him on the cross. Your identity is no longer tied to your sin or your experience or your dishonor or your guilt or the ways that society or even the church has sinned against you. Your identity is in Christ. You are a new creation. This doesn’t mean that you won’t continue to struggle with the effects of sin in your life any more than the rest of us. This doesn’t mean that each day won’t be a fight against temptation and the flesh. We need each other, the church, to daily remind each other of the deceitfulness of sin and to exhort one another to repentance when we’re out of line with God’s word. But this also doesn’t mean that God can’t change your desires. Right now the world’s view on sexual orientation, in fact the view that was foundational to the 2015 Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage, was the belief that sexual orientation is fixed, it is immutable. Now I’m not advocating for a sort of conversion therapy where through strategy or hard work you convince yourself to be straight. I am instead appealing to the power of the gospel and the transforming and miraculous work of God that he can do and does do in all of us to align us with his revealed will. Listen to these powerful words from 1 Corinthians 6. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. And such were some of you. All of us in the gospel have been transformed. We have a new identity. We must remember the sinful nature and the identity that we’ve come from, but we must believe that in the gospel, through the washing and sanctifying and justifying work of Christ, that God can redeem any of us in our sin. He may not change your desires right now or ever. But I don’t think that disqualifies you from asking that from him, from pleading that he would do that for you. If you struggle with this, with same-sex attraction or any sexual sin and you’ve not brought it to light, I would encourage you to talk to someone, maybe one of the pastors or family or a trusted member of this church. We were not meant to fight our sin and temptation in a vacuum. We need the church to come alongside us and exhort us each day against sins deceitfulness. Third, the end goal of the Christian life, the true marker of self-fulfillment and identity is not in a heterosexual marriage with 2.4 children. This is a point that I think all of us need to consider and all of us need to repent of. I hope this is an encouragement to any of us who struggle with same-sex attraction or people who are single or are barren. Hear this comfort from God for his people in Isaiah 56. Let not the eunuch say, behold, I am a dry tree. For thus says the Lord to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant. I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. To those who hold fast the covenant of God by holding fast to Christ, he promises to give a monument and name better than sons and daughters, an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. Those without a legacy, those without physical offspring, God has granted for you acceptance, welcome into his family. He has granted for you to carry his own name, which is better than anything this world can offer. A spouse and children cannot be necessary for us to be fully human because Jesus himself had neither and he was the most human, the most fulfilled image of God that we need to reflect. All of us are called to do spiritual good to spiritual generations because that’s the fruit that will carry into eternity. Family, those of you with children and a healthy, vibrant family, I urge you do not burden your fellow saints with an idol of the life that you have. I think that this means being careful of how you talk to them, even the subtleties that may not be apparent to you. This means not making an exclusivity in the relationships that are limited to people who are like you. Single people in our congregation cannot thrive when marriage or children are a barrier to entering our circles or our personal relationships. Invite them into your homes, invite them to join you in raising the family of God to love and serve him. Trinity Church, as we engage with those who do not have family, we the church are the means of fulfilling Jesus’ promise in Luke 18, that there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not receive many times more in this life and in the age to come, eternal life. The best picture of the true family, the best expression of brotherly love and affection that we’re meant to experience on this earth is within the church body. The true family of God that’s united not by our blood, but by Christ’s blood. Fourth, how do we engage with the culture and those outside of our church? I’ll repeat this again, we must never confuse in our evangelism the preaching of the gospel and a Christian ethic. Yes, receiving the gospel has dramatic effects on our lives and on our worldview. But the gospel is the entrance to the kingdom of God, not being persuaded on a view of sexuality. This doesn’t mean that we affirm people’s life choices as we’ll see shortly. It means that we must extend hospitality and the love of Christ to people in a way that it was extended to us. We should be vulnerable with our sin. We must be quick to admit that we are sinners and not elevate one sin over another. We must clearly point out that, as we have seen, all of us have a sin nature. All of us have a bend toward idolatry that expresses itself in countless ways. All of us have a root of sin that needs to be addressed in the gospel. All of us have a heart of stone that is transformed into a heart of flesh. And only through the spirit of God, and application of his word, and the encouragement of his people, can we actually do the good works that are unstained from sin and are not selfish. And family, the issue of homosexuality is not even the deepest expression of our sinful nature, it’s merely a stop along the way. While Paul uses it as a dramatic example of one of the distortions of creation, in a way that we may be tempted to, he actually goes on to list countless other sins, and this list here is not exhaustive, let me read it again in verse 28. Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They are filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are filled with envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. This is not exhaustive, but I think there’s a clear level of comprehensiveness that’s intended. He addresses the way that we sin against one another, ranging from disobeying parents to murder. He addresses our speech, gossip, slander, deceit. He even points out our omission, the lack of godly characteristics in verse 31. He says, faithless or untrustworthy. He says, heartless or lacking in affection. He says, ruthless or unmerciful. I’m not gonna spend a lot more time on this, but I would encourage you this week to spend some time reflecting on this list and your own heart. I think most of the sins are pretty self-explanatory. All of us are guilty of sin. All of us need the gospel. And 1 John 1.10 says, if we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. And at the risk of preaching Romans 2 as well, the totality of God’s wrath and judgment of sin culminates in the condemnation of the self-righteous. If you’ve been watching and observing others in your reading of Romans 1, much like the Jewish Christians would have been, as they hear about specific sins in the pagan world. If at all you’ve thought to yourself, I’m not as bad as those people. If you’ve been watching others in some kind of third person documentary, suddenly the narrator turns the camera to you and says to you directly, therefore you have no excuse, oh man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself. Because you, the judge, practice the very same things. Just as all men have no excuse by the revelation of God in creation, so anyone who judges has no excuse. They will be judged by the same standard. Matthew 7.10, Jesus says, judge not that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged. And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Our judgment of others will only lead to our condemnation. In our judgment, in our self-righteousness, in our blindness to our own sin, he says that we are storing up wrath for ourselves on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. Remember the language of 1 Corinthians 6, that in a description of idolaters, adulterers, the greedy, the sexually immoral, and those who practice homosexuality, such were some of you. We should be the first to recognize our own sin and remember what we have been saved from as we hold the gospel out to people. We should be the first to affirm the dignity and value of every human being as created in the image of God. A propensity toward specific or certain sins does not make you less human. However severe the sin is, all of us need the gospel as much as one another. And then we turn last to the final indictment that Paul gives, the furthest expression of sin in verse 32. Though they know God’s righteous decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them. What are we declaring about the sins of others? Do we give approval to those who practice these sins? I think this shows itself in a few ways. The first is more subtle or acceptable. When we see others around us sinning in ways that we feel in our flesh should be justified, how do we respond? Anxiety, anger, envy, complaining, gossip, greed. Are we approving of these sins among one another because we hope that judgment will pass us by as well? And then the other way involves how we interact with the world and with the culture. Are we increasingly approving of the types of sin that the world begins to wrap around identity? And I’m not just talking about homosexuality. The world more and more ties tolerance and approval together. If you don’t approve, support, or even advocate for and encourage a particular lifestyle, you are now labeled as intolerant. How are you in danger of compromising the truth of God’s word for the approval of others? I wanna be clear. We can speak the truth in a way that is very much hateful, in a way that does not communicate the love, grace, and mercy that are found in the gospel. Somehow, though, I pray through the grace of God, we need to find a balance between approving the world’s sin, between staying silent, and spouting hate speech. Yes, the gospel is offensive because it demands a transformation of our hearts. Yes, in the gospel, we need to reject our innermost self and submit to the truth of God. Yes, the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. Yes, persecution is promise to those who follow Jesus. And yet, in 2 Corinthians 2, Paul says that we are the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. There is a way to communicate the gospel that calls people to repent and simultaneously holds out the grace and love of God. Whether or not people respond to it is not up to us. Our responsibility is to hold it out to them. How should we ultimately respond to the conviction of sin that God’s wrath is meant to bring us? Romans 2, 6 through 8, he will render to each one according to his works. To those who by patience and well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. All of us in this room are guilty of one sin or another, both in action and in heart, both in our idolatry and our immorality. All of us envy and slander when convenient. All of us are broken sexually. All of us find or define our identity in something other than what God has designed. We invent new ways of doing evil. We are self-seeking. We obey unrighteousness rather than the truth. And there is wrath and fury for all of us. The good news of the gospel, the reason that Paul writes this, and the reason we focus on sin is because Christ came to take the penalty for sin. Christ was the one who sought glory and honor and immortality. Christ was the one who deserves to be given eternal life according to his works. And yet he took on himself the wrath and fury of God on our behalf. He exchanges his life, his works, his obedience, his holiness, and his righteousness for our sin. And he takes the full weight of God’s wrath for you on the cross. As a display of God’s acceptance of his sacrifice, as a picture of the type of transformation that all of us receive upon conversion and into eternity, God raised Jesus from the dead as a declaration of his victory. Sin has no more dominion over you. Death is swallowed up in victory. In the gospel, Jesus defeats our greatest enemy, our slaver, sin and death itself, and then he gives us access to eternal life in God. If you’ve come to see your sin for what it truly is, as deserving of God’s wrath, then repent. Believe in the gospel that in Jesus alone we can be counted righteous. No one is too far out of the reach of the grace of God. Look at the evidence of God’s common grace around you. You don’t think you’re as bad as you could be? God is gracious to you, and in his kindness, forbearance, and patience, he is leading you to repentance. Repent of your self-righteousness. Repent of stealing the glory of God in the good that he does through you. Confess the inclinations of your heart that are hell-bent, and turn to Jesus to receive his goodness. And family, the good news of the gospel is that in Jesus Christ, God gives us a new identity. In Christ, our old self, our old man is put to death. The old has passed away, behold, the new has come. Instead of sin being our master, we’ve been delivered from the domain of darkness. God embraces full custody over us, and we’ve been set free from sin and death, and have become slaves of righteousness. Afflicted saints, you who suffer under the curse of sin in this world, draw near to Christ, and God will supply all that you need to continue fighting till the end. So where do you find your identity? Where do you look for fulfillment or for happiness? If your identity is in Christ, then if by the gospel, your sin nature has been replaced with a new heart, then live out of that identity. Live as people who are marked by a new allegiance to God. Live as people who by his word, display that identity in godliness, and holiness, and good works. Live as people who, by God’s grace, mortify, put to death their sin, and reject the temptations of the flesh that linger. And let’s hold out this saving truth to people everywhere, so that they might receive the same transforming life that God offers to us in the gospel, amen? Let’s pray. Take a moment and reflect on your heart, where your identity is out of line with the truth of God, where you are tempted and deceived by our sin nature. Think about the ways that you express your idolatry, self-sufficiency, autonomy, and individualism in your actions, the way that you treat others, in your sexuality, in your judgment, in your approval of sin. Confess those things now to the Lord. Lord, we pray that you would complete this work in our hearts. Convict us of sin. Transform our hearts by the powerful message of the gospel. Comfort us in our temptations and struggles, and supply everything we need to fight our sin, knowing that the victory is won in Christ’s death and resurrection, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.