They Know God’s Righteous Decree

We’re continuing with our series in the book of Romans. We come now to the end of Romans chapter 1. Next week for Easter, we’ll take one week off. I’ll be in Hebrews. This morning, the end of Romans chapter 1 – the last paragraph, verses 28 through 32:

“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 whole section, from chapter 1 verse 18 until chapter 3 verse 20, is about the universality of sin. No person, no people, no place is exempt from the problem of sin. That’s the argument that Paul is making with an unrelenting intensity. And chapter 1 in particular, verses 18 through 32, have been focused on the Gentile world. This church in Rome had both Jews and Gentiles, and what he’s going to do is shift in chapter 2. Look at verse 1 of chapter 2: “Therefore, you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges.” See, it’s a very tricky thing that Paul is doing. Lest anyone, the sort of insiders, the people that have known God for a long time – we might think of it in our context, lest the lifelong churchgoers would get too comfortable. and say, “Give it to them, Paul. That’s what the world is like out there, all of those bad people” – in chapter 2, he says, “Now hold on a minute. Before you judge them, you better think if you do any of the same things.” And he’s going to make the point, if you look in verse 12, “For all who have sinned without the law will perish without the law, and all who sinned under the law will be judged by the law.” So there is judgment both for those who sinned apart from the law of Moses and those who sinned under the law of Moses.

But here in chapter 1, this last paragraph, we’re coming to the conclusion, the climax of this focus on the world out there. This is, from their point of view as a Jew, the world of the pagans, the world outside of Israel, the world that did not know God. We might think, as church people, this is what the world is like out there, separated from Christ. This is what people are like – people who don’t know God. Now, careful, because here in chapter 1, we’ve already seen that Paul talks about knowing God and not knowing God – two different ways. There’s a way to know God, and everyone knows God. And then there’s a way that only some people really know God. He uses the word “knowledge” in those two different senses. So, he said back in verse 21, if you look, “for although they knew God” – that’s the point he was making. Because of creation, through general revelation, God has given to us all a seed of divinity – that’s what John Calvin called it – an awareness of God. Now, they did not know him savingly or covenantally or believingly, but he says absolutely, you can be sure of this fact: everyone you meet, they know God. They may say they don’t even believe God exists – the psalmist says, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” – because they have so suppressed that truth in unrighteousness. They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images of mortal man. You see that in verse 23, the first exchange. And then they exchanged the truth for a lie – verse 25, the second exchange. And they exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature, verse 26. So, Paul sees the expression of homosexuality as a final stage in God handing people over to their desires. This unnatural exchange.

The conclusion, then – look now at our text for this morning. Verse 28 is stated once again: “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God.” So, they knew God, but they did not acknowledge God. They did not – you could translate this “they did not approve of God.” They did not take him seriously. They refused to know what they knew. They knew something, and they refused to know it. That is the paradox of the human condition in sin. You know something. Paul’s going to talk later in chapter 2 about the conscience. You know something, and yet you, with every fiber of your being, you don’t want to know it. And then this exchange, this fatal exchange. With each one, God gave them over. So, three exchanges and three times Paul says, “God gave them over.” So, look at verse 24: “God gave them up to the lusts of their heart.” Verse 26, “God gave them up to dishonorable passions.” And now here in verse 28, “God gave them up to a debased mind.”

Now, think about this. Now, we don’t want to be over-precise, because these are overlapping categories, and the Bible can speak about heart, soul, mind, strength and mean roughly the same thing, the innermost part of a person. And yet, these are not identical terms. Think about the sequence, because it’s not insignificant, from verse 24 to 26 to 28. Paul says God has given them over first to the desires of the heart, then the passions of the body, and finally to the reasoning of the mind. From the heart to the body to the mind. Or you could put it like this: part of God’s judgment in the world is that he gives sinners over to what they want, what they feel, and what they think. We just got to reflect on this one more time, because this is really remarkable, because the world will tell you over and over again in commercials, in movies, in banners, in bumper stickers – they will tell you that the height of your human evolution and true freedom is you get to do what you want to do.

Paul is saying something really, really countercultural. If you’re here this morning, and you have believed this lie, and you say to yourself, “Finally, I can do what I want to do.” Paul says, “Careful, that may be God’s judgment.” You say, “No, I get to do what I feel.” May be God’s judgment. “I finally get to do whatever I think.” Careful, that may be God’s judgment. If you say to yourself, “I am finally doing what makes me happy” – people say that sometimes. “I don’t want this – you’re giving me these rules, this law, this religion. Look, I am finally doing what makes me happy.” And it may make you happy now, short term. Or you may say to yourself, “I have finally found the form and the kind of sexuality that works for me.” Or you may say, “I am living according to my truth.” I don’t deny that you may be living according to “my truth” or what makes me happy or the sexuality that works for me, but we have to deal fairly with what Paul says here. The devil likes to convince people that God’s judgment is really self-actualization. I’m doing what I want, what feels good, and what I think is right. The devil says that’s what it means to really be human. And God’s Word says that’s what it looks like, also, when God’s judgment is poured out, and he gives you over to what your heart wants to do, what your body thinks feels good, and what your mind tells you is right. Three times: he gave them up, he gave them up, he gave them up. And notice in this progression throughout chapter 1, the last step is the mind. You might think that the first step is the mind, and it’s true – it says earlier that they knew God, and they suppressed the truth in unrighteousness. So, we don’t want to be overexact about the sequence. But it is significant that the last step here is he gives them over to a debased mind. Now, there is an obvious word play in the Greek. They did not think knowledge of God, you might translate “worthwhile” – the word edokimasan. So, God gave them up to a mind that was adokimos. Now you can just hear that those have the same sound, and it’s very intentional. To put it in English, it might sound like this: since they didn’t think knowledge of God was worthwhile, God gave them a mind that was worthless. That’s the play on words. You didn’t think God was worthwhile, so God gave you a mind that is worthless. That’s what these two Greek words do.

There’s a reason when we sometime, Lord willing, get to Romans 12, that the “therefore in view of God’s mercy” – how does the transformation of your life happen, but the renewal of your mind? The last step in this judgment is to turn the mind over. You don’t even think right. You think you are supremely logical. As you’ve heard me say many times, we think we are very rational beings, when in fact we are very rationalizing beings. We know the fallen mind is absolutely brilliant at finding arguments and reasons for the things that we know we already want to do. We’re rationalizing creatures. God gives people over as a form of judgment to a mind that can’t even think. Do you ever have that experience? Think why can’t you see these things? Because blind people can’t see these things. They need their eyes opened. They need their mind enlightened. Their mind doesn’t work right. Now you say – perhaps you’re not a Christian, or you know people who are not Christians – and you say, “Well, but you Christians, you don’t – you all start somewhere. Everybody starts with some place.” And that’s true. The goal is to simply be honest about where we are starting. Some people start, and their first place with their sort of knowledge of the world is their own experience or the supposedly assured results of science, which when you get into science, you really realize science disagrees about all sorts of things. And we say as Christians, we start with God. We start with the revelation of God in his Son, the Word made flesh, and the revelation of God in the Bible, the inspired words of God. And we don’t do it perfectly. We see through a glass dimly. We’ll all get to heaven, and we’ll have some of those seminars where we’ll find out we really were all Presbyterians all along. We just didn’t know it. Probably the Presbyterians, we even got some things wrong. And we’ll see it. So, we don’t all see it, but we’re trying to be honest. We start somewhere. We start with God.

And the non-Christian starts somewhere. It’s not simply a clean, logical syllogism. As I think about how people deconstruct – maybe quietly this is what’s going on in your heart, or sadly, someone you know, child, grandchild, someone you love, friend in school, deconstructing – I think the objections to Christianity in our day, and probably this is relatively constant through time and history, and it’s more sophisticated than this, but I think there are three basic objections to Christianity. You can put them very simply like this: Christianity is dumb, Christianity is mean, Christianity doesn’t work for me. Those are the three basic arguments. I’m not trying to make light of them. They come in simple forms; they come in sophisticated forms. Christianity is dumb. This was really the edge of apologetics maybe a generation or two ago. Defending the miracles, creation, does that really fit with Darwin and evolution, science, history, can we trust the gospels, the Bible’s full of errors – those sort of objections. Christianity is intellectually bankrupt. Today, I think it’s more the argument Christianity is mean. Didn’t Christians support slavery? Isn’t Christianity anti-women? Is it homophobic? This doctrine of hell is cruel. Christians everywhere are too political. I don’t like Christianity – it’s mean. And then the other basic argument is some version of Christianity doesn’t work for me, or it didn’t work for me. And this can be sincerely held. We don’t want to make light of genuinely bad experiences people have had, but sometimes it’s perception more than reality. I had bad parents. I had bad friends. I had a bad church. I had a bad experience. Christianity doesn’t work for me. Christianity is dumb. Christianity is mean. Christianity doesn’t work for me.

Now, these objections – and trust me, this is coming back to Romans 1 – these objections, I think, also fall into three kinds of people that ask these questions or raise these points. Three different trajectories, you might say. One would be the person who has faith with doubts. This may be you, a Christian. Jude, the book of Jude, says, “Have mercy on those who doubt,” so the Bible understands that Christians sometimes have doubts. This may be you. Faith seeking understanding. So, you raise these questions about science or about is the Bible really good, and how do these miracles, and how do I make sense of this really bad church experience that I had? And there’s a certain way to ask that. And you’re really saying, “Help me hold on to Jesus. Help me. I want to believe. I do believe, but help my unbelief. I have doubts.”

There’s a second trajectory, which is the person who seems to be an honest seeker. Now we’ll come to chapter 3, and in one sense, no one seeks after God from a pure heart. But we’ve met people – you may be like this here – you’re saying, “I don’t have anything for or against Christianity. Jesus seems to be a good person. I’m open to – just tell me the facts. Give me the information, wherever the truth is. So, I have some questions. And there are people who genuinely have these intellectual obstacles, and they say I like the idea of becoming a Christian but can you help me with the story of creation, or can you help me with a biblical view of sexuality?

But then there’s a third category. This is what Romans 1 is thinking of, in particular. And the third trajectory are those people who already know where they’re going. They already know the destination. They’re simply looking for any route that will get them there. What I mean is the person who has, if they’re honest, has already decided in their heart, biblical sexuality, biblical morality, I don’t like it. It can’t be true. I can’t stay with it. Now, my mind is in overdrive, looking for a route that will allow me to get to the destination that I already know I want to reach. I’ve already reached – here’s what happens, your heart goes there first, and then your head starts looking for avenues to get there. Romans 1 would have you consider if your objections to the Bible, to Jesus, to Christianity, to traditional sexual ethics are truly the result of deep exploration, intellectual wrestling, reading the smartest, best minds on the topic, or if they are a representation of conclusions you already know you want in search of reasons that will allow you to sustain those conclusions.

I’ll give you an example. Aldous Huxley, one of the most famous intellectuals of the last century, famously died on November 22, 1963. Two other famous people died on that day. JFK was assassinated, and C.S. Lewis died, so there’s been books written about Aldous Huxley, JFK, C.S. Lewis all died on the same day. His most famous work is the dystopian novel you probably had to read in school, Brave New World. Here’s a different book from Huxley, Ends and Means. It’s a very candid paragraph. Here’s what Huxley wrote: “I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning and consequently assumed that it had none and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality, because it interfered with our sexual freedom.” This is remarkable candor. “The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning, the Christian meaning, they insisted of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt. We would deny that the world had meaning whatever.” Huxley says, in other words, to be very honest, me and my friends wanted to do what we wanted to do. We had a certain way that we wanted to live. And in order to get to that conclusion, we thought the best way to deal with that argument is simply a philosophy of meaninglessness. None of it matters. He eventually tried to combine faith and science with various strands of Eastern religion, meditation, strands of Hinduism, Buddhism. Why those? Because they’re less doctrinally – they’re not western, they’re not Christian. He experimented at the very end, was a firm believer in LSD and psychedelic drugs. A brilliant man, about as famous as a literary man can be, and one of the most tragic descriptions and accurate descriptions of Romans 1 I’ve ever encountered. Essentially admitting there was a way I wanted to live, and my mind found the right philosophy to justify the kind of life I wanted. That’s what he said. That’s what the fallen mind does. I have a conclusion. I have a destination. Now my mind will find the shortest route that gets me from here to there.

And Paul says that’s what God does in his judgment. He gives people up to a debased mind. They don’t even think correctly. And from this debased mind – they didn’t think God was worthwhile, so they had a worthless mind to do what ought not to be done, and now Paul gives this tremendous vice list, a list of sins. There are several vice lists in the New Testament – Mark 7, Romans 1 here, Romans 13, 1 Corinthians 6, Galatians 5, Colossians 3, 1 Timothy 1, Revelation 21. Almost every vice list in the New Testament has sexual immorality in it, and usually at the very beginning. Now, you notice here, sexual immorality is not listed here in this vice list, but that makes sense. Why? Because Paul just got done talking about sexual immorality. And in fact, the two sins – think about what are the two big sins that Paul has already talked about in Romans 1? Because these are the two quintessential sins in the Old Testament. Part of what Paul is doing is saying, I’m talking about Gentiles, but I’m pulling two quintessential sins – categories – from your own history, Jewish people. It’s the sin of idolatry and the sin of adultery or sexual immorality. Throughout the Bible, God wants to depict what is sin like. You usually get one of those two pictures. It’s like idolatry. It’s like adultery. So, at the head of almost every vice list in the New Testament is sexual immorality. And one of the concerns among others – last week’s sermon was about homosexuality, this week’s sermon is continuing – but one of the difficulties is I have yet to find anyone, in writing or in person, who adopts a revisionist view of LGBTQ (that is, saying that what Christians for 1950 years thought the Bible says, it actually says something else) – I’ve yet to find someone who has that revisionist view who doesn’t at the same time end up with a different view of the character of God, about the existence of hell, about his displeasure over sexual sin. In other words, it’s never so simple as I believe everything I’ve always done – exactly the same, exactly the same theology – I just have taken one thing that I used to think counted as a sin. I’ve just taken that out. I don’t think that’s a sin anymore. It never works that way. Suddenly the evil of fornication becomes something less concerning. Monogamy becomes something less mandatory. The view of God and his edges and his wrath – you have to start reading the Bible in a very different way.

All of the vice lists contain sexual immorality. Here we’ve already dealt with that, and Paul is going to give a list of 21 sins. It is a daunting list. The very first word – and we’re not going to talk about all of them – unrighteousness. That’s likely the banner category. Remember back in verse 18, we saw the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness? So, unrighteousness is the big category. We’ve already seen that. The wrath of God against unrighteousness. We’ve seen the example of idolatry and sexual immorality. Now he gives this category again, unrighteousness, and what follows are 20 different sins. So, if you add unrighteousness, it’s 21. If that’s the headline, then there’s 20 more. You can look at them roughly in three groups. There are four nouns qualified with the word “all.” So, they were filled with “all…” And then after that, there are five nouns. They are “full of.” We have five nouns there. And then 12 characteristics, beginning before verse 30, “they are” – we have 12 items there. The last four begin with the negation. In Greek, when you want to negate something you put an alpha at the beginning of it, so an atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in God. Agnosticism – gnosis is knowledge – agnosticism means someone who isn’t sure or doesn’t have knowledge. And helpfully, the ESV here in English gives a sense of that by translating verse 31 with those four words that have the same kind of resonance to them. Foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. And that carries over nicely the kind of rhythm that the words have. The grouping here is more rhetorical than it is theological. One translation says about those last four words, “they are without brains, honor, love or pity.”

Let me make a few points about this list. One, Paul is not saying that everyone in the Gentile world, nor should we think that everyone apart from Christ, is like everything in this list. We know there are the category of God-fearers in the book of Acts. Paul is going to say in the next chapter that people have a conscience within them. So, Paul is not saying that every Gentile out there just hit all 21 of these sins. Just like he doesn’t think that every Gentile in the ancient world was guilty of homosexuality. He’s talking about a big picture. This is the way that the world is like apart from God. The second thing to note about this list: mostly this is about the second table of the law. We talk about the Ten Commandments, the first table, have to do with – vertically – our relationship to God, and the second table, our relationship to our neighbors. With the exception of that phrase in verse 30, “haters of God,” everything else in this list focuses on social ills. Did you notice that? This is all human-to-human mistreatment. This is all neighbor to neighbor, family to family. The third thing to note about the list is how rather prosaic much of it is. Now, why is this important? Because we may focus on the really graphic sins here, and we may sort of excuse ourselves and think, well, boy, that’s – I don’t know, murder, evil, haters of God. But most of the list is pretty prosaic. Covetousness, envy, gossip, haughty, boastful, disobedient to parents. You know anybody like that? You have any of those temptations in your own life? This is really key, because we might think, as Paul was making this argument, that the crescendo would be “and after you mistreat people, then finally you dishonor God.” But it doesn’t say – that’s not the top of the mountain. Or if you say that’s the top of the mountain, everything else slides down, I guess you could say from that. No. He started with – where did this all go wrong? It’s not that it all went wrong because you didn’t love your neighbor as yourself, and then eventually you didn’t love God. It all went wrong earlier in chapter 1, because you did not honor God as God, and you did not give thanks. You didn’t worship him, and you didn’t say thank you. And now, because of this, it relates. So, the person who says, “Well you know, I don’t believe in God. I don’t have time for this Christianity thing. I’m still a very decent person.” Well, by God’s common restraining grace, there are decent people in the world. And we all have neighbors and friends – they don’t go to church, they’re not Christians, they can be kind, nice, decent people. But you get to the heart, you get to any human heart, and you get to a society that is completely devoid of the true knowledge of God, and you’re going to find these things in greater and greater abundance. The first step is dishonoring God. Everything in your life is downstream from whether you honor God and give thanks to God.

So, here’s just the fourth comment about this list. This list may seem over the top – I mean, by the time you get through it – haters of God, inventors of evil, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. It’s like, really, Paul? Is it really that bad? Well, how many of you are addicted to true crime podcasts? Not shaming you for your true crime podcast. I’m telling you, you know there’s a lot of bad things in the world. Murdaugh murders. Yep. Truth is stranger and more evil than fiction sometimes. If you’ve ever watched any documentary about a rock star, something like this. I have – you’ll be glad to know your pastor has not watched one second of any of these shows, but from what I can tell, they would be a good depiction of Romans 1: Love Island, Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, The Bachelorette, and there’s some big controversy with those two things there. I don’t know. I haven’t watched them. I don’t think you should. Now listen, it’s true. There’s a way to watch entertainment. We watch movies. We have TV. We got stuff. We got devices. Yep. There’s a way. There’s a way. Even the Bible. You say the Bible’s full of sin. It is true. There’s stories that have sin, but there’s great art, and it’s redemptive. Okay. It’s going to take a lot of convincing that Secret Lives of Mormon Wives has a powerful redemptive arc and that it’s great, lasting art. Here’s just what I want each of us to consider. I mean me too, and my own family, all of us. It’s one thing if the Bible tells us in words what Romans 1 looks like, to make it look ugly as it is and turn us away from it and hate it and turn to God in repentance and show us what God is doing in the world. It’s another thing when we spend our time to be entertained by Romans 1. Here’s a simple question – especially young people, with what you watch, but look, it’s all of us – just ask yourself this question. When I finish watching this show, can I say, “Thank you, Jesus”? Can you do that? That’s a simple question. Can I thank Jesus for how this has led me to what is pure and excellent and beautiful and true and has taught me things about myself and about God? I dare say a whole lot, most of what’s out there, is not going to pass this test. It’s saying Romans 1– I can go to church on Sunday, and that’s a bad paragraph, and then the rest of the week it’s a very entertaining paragraph.

Here’s the surprise in this passage. Verse 32. There are two remarkable surprises after that list. Here’s the first surprise in verse 32: “Though they know God’s righteous decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die” – a pause there. That’s a surprise. He’s saying they know. They know that the people that do these things deserve to die. Now, note what Paul is not saying. He’s not saying every single sin here is liable to the death penalty, or we should have a penal system where everyone – you gossip, you’re put to death. No, that that doesn’t pan out. What he is saying is everyone in the world knows that the totality of these things, the sort of person described in this final paragraph, is the sort of person who deserves to die. Paul says everyone knows that. The legal system, civil laws around the world, are going to punish murder. Many places don’t have capital punishment, but they have some sense that this person ought to be locked away. Think of all of the popular stories and how they work. I mean, the movies, the books, the stories that everybody likes, and they stick with you. They got some bad guy, and that bad guy or girl fits these characteristics, which is why you’re drawn along to say, “I can’t wait till they get what’s coming to them.” And you want to see – of course you want to see – the Emperor be thrown into the pit of things at the end of Return of the Jedi. You want to see something happen to Thanos or Voldemort or Sauron or Sarumon. You think about The Lion King. Scar. You know, he’s evil because he’s got a British accent in the cartoon. He’s just – Jeremy Irons – he’s just chills up your spine. What is he? He’s jealous. He’s covetous of his older brother, Mufasa, because he knows he’s weak. And he spreads slander about how he really died and puts that in Simba’s ears. And he’s an inventor of evil, and he makes plans, and he rules by deceit, and when he rules over the land, everything becomes dark and barren, because he’s foolish and faithless and heartless and ruthless. All of that, until you get to the end, like yes, get rid of Scar. He deserves to die. You have every great story – Aladdin, Jafar, he’s a bad guy – and when you watch that – Aladdin, just tell Jasmine the truth. Stop, stop, just don’t – stop lying. Even there, you know.

I read this recently: Russell Crowe, Gladiator movie, I didn’t see the second one. He got into conflict with the writers during – what was that, 25 years ago – with the character Maximus, because he said – I don’t think Russell Crowe is some great paragon of Christian virtue – but he said the writers wanted to make Maximus to have sexual escapades. And Russell Crowe was adamant that he not engage in immoral behavior, because he said it would gut the story of its moral core. Here’s somebody just with the law of God saying the audience wants – this is a story, you get past all the flashing swords and the blood and guts and the gladiators in the arena, it’s about a bad guy, Commodus, and the Maximus character, and he had enough understanding to say no, no, no. You want the audience to find the reason they they’re rooting for him and against Commodus, who’s weak and jealous and envious, an inventor of evil, and all these things in Romans 1, because they want this person. This is the hero, and this person deserves to die. Paul’s right. The Bible’s right. And the world knows it by a thousand different movies and books and stories. You know these things are deserving of death. And if you don’t know them from the stories that our world tells, just think about if any of these things happen to you. If someone gossips about you, spreads lies about you, devises ways to hurt you, is always jealous of you, scheming to take what you don’t have. Or you meet someone who is always bragging about themselves, full of herself. He’s unsympathetic toward other people. He never shows mercy. He’s always seeking vigilance and vengeance. How would you feel if your child flipped you the bird? You don’t need an advanced degree in moral psychology. When those things happen to you, you know they’re bad. When you see these in other people, you know they’re wrong. We hate them when they happen to us. We hate these things when we see them in other people. Paul is right. The Bible’s right. They knew, and they know, people know the things in this list, these 21 sins, they know are wrong.

And here’s the second surprise. Yet, they not only do them – okay, we’ve been talking about that, but here’s the surprise. The surprise, the very climax of this whole chapter, lands here, “but they give approval to those who practice it.” This seems backwards. You would think approval, bad; doing it, worse. But Paul says, in the crescendo of his argument, not only do they do them, but here’s how bad it is. The very worst part, the very tippy top of this mountain of iniquity, is that they approve those who do them. That’s surprising. Why does Paul end there? Why is the applauder of evil even one step worse than the doer of evil? Part of it may be that the applauder is not under the same pressure or temptation. You know, it’s one thing if somebody in the flow of passion commits some evil. That’s wrong. It’s another thing for the person standing by to say, “Atta boy, atta girl.” They call evil good. Here’s why it’s the crescendo. Because they know it is wrong – that’s the point Paul made, you know this is wrong. When it happens to you, you hate it. When you see it in other people, you hate it – but you go ahead and cheer it on anyways, knowing that these things deserve death, knowing that these things are liable to judgment. So, what kind of person are you when you cheer on others on the path toward judgment? If you did them, that’s bad. But it’s possible that you did them, and everyone knows you’re ruining your life, and you’re on your way to death and judgment as you deserve, as you did them. One step worse is that you also clap and cheer on and celebrate and applaud all those who are doing the very same things. It’s twisting the prayer that Jesus gives us in the Lord’s prayer. Instead of saying, “Our Father in heaven, lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from evil,” when we approve of these things, it’s saying, “Father of lies, lead them into temptation, and deliver them not from the evil one.” What could be worse? Damning not just ourselves, but others. Encouraging public opinion to approve of such things, cheering on the increase of evil. Here’s how John Murray puts it: “We are not only bent on damning ourselves, but we congratulate others in the doing of those things that we know have their issue in damnation.” We are not only bent on damning ourselves, but we congratulate others. Way to go. So happy for you. I’m so proud of you. I celebrate as you march on the same path toward condemnation.

It’s for good reason Martyn Lloyd Jones, in his sermon on this text, comes to the end, and he says, “Oh, praise God for verses 16 and 17, where we start.” Praise God for – where would we be without verses 16 and 17? Now, he’s working. We’re not even halfway through. We have all of chapter 2, we have half of chapter 3, before he comes back to the righteousness of God in 3:21. But Lloyd Jones says rightfully, where would we be at the end of a list like this and a bleak picture of humanity like this if we didn’t have the power of God in the gospel unto salvation and the righteousness of God that is revealed from faith to faith for those who grab hold of it with the faith of an empty hand? “Nothing in my hands I bring. Simply to thy cross I cling.” You see what Romans 1 is doing? It starts by showing us the world in its beauty shows us the existence and glory of God. And then by the time we get to the end of chapter 1, it showed us that the world under wrath also shows us the existence and the glory of God. The beauty of it and the outpouring of wrath shows that there’s a God, and he’s a great God, a mighty God. And when you look out in the world, why is the world the way that it is? Well, part of the answer is God and his judgment handing people over to the sin that they so crave and desire. And part of what Paul is doing is to show the reasonableness of God’s wrath. This is not flying off the handle, God had a bad God day, and he just lightning bolts like Zeus. The reasonableness of God’s wrath, which, later in chapter 12, “present your lives as a reasonable act of service to God” – here he’s showing this is reasonable, what God is doing. Their high-handed defiance.

This is Holy Week, and this is a week – like every week, but especially this week – would you take time to look at Jesus? Whether you’ve celebrated Holy Week your whole life or you’ve just wandered into church this morning, follow him from Palm Sunday with the Galilean pilgrims, worship him, to his conflict with religious leaders in the temple, to Maundy Thursday, washing his disciples’ feet, giving them a new commandment, teaching them about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, to the betrayal, his arrest, his sham trial, his flogging, his scourging, his crucifixion, silence Saturday, and finally, one week from now, the empty tomb. Get to know Jesus. Spend time with Jesus. Look at what you see in Jesus. This is Palm Sunday, and we read – Luke read from the passage in Luke 19, but it goes on in the next paragraph. We call it the triumphal entry, but it’s really the triumphal approach, because Luke 19 ends. Jesus looks out. He’s just approached Jerusalem. He hasn’t gotten there yet. And he looks out over Jerusalem. And you know how Palm Sunday ends? He’s weeping. He weeps, because he says, “If only you had known. If only you had known the one who came to offer peace. But you’re not going to know it. Most of you are not going to get it. And you’re going to – the crowds will cry out, ‘Crucify!’ And you’ll put me to death. If only you had known.” You know what’s sadder than your own tears? Jesus weeping over you for not getting, grabbing, believing what he has to offer. May the Spirit of Christ so work in our hearts that we could say with the crowds on Palm Sunday, blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Let’s pray.

Father in heaven, thank you for your Word. All of your promises are yes and amen in Christ. Thank you for the passages which show us our sin, that we might see in greater relief and brilliant colors the glory of our savior. And we give all praise and glory and honor to the powerful name of Jesus, who can save us from our sins. In his name we pray. Amen.