When God Gives Them Up

This transcript has been automatically generated

You will find that it has a long passage from the Bible, Romans 1, on the front, as I am going to call it, and my notes on the back. I have done this again this week rather unusually because I don’t normally like speaking to notes, but I have done it because the passage is of such great importance and in some ways at first sight rather complex that it may help you to have these notes so that if you feel I have made a complete mess of it during the talk, You can take them away and read them when you get home or on the train going back tonight. Let me start with an illustration. If you have only just joined us, we are thinking of the theme during this month of Tuesdays of idolatry. And many people think of that as something far away from us geographically and way back from us in the past historically.

When I was on holiday, I was sleeping in front of a television set and I woke up to see an extraordinary programme of idolatry. I think it was in Thailand. One tends to dismiss that and say, well, that’s not something we know anything about in the West. Or to think that idolatry is something that happened in this country many, many centuries ago, but now through, through education and all the rest of it, we said farewell forever. Well, no, we haven’t.

The New Testament tells us it’s much more subtle than that. Let me use an illustration. I hope there’s somebody else who’s had this experience as I have, that I’ve set out to get out of a big town by car, and being rather allergic to asking people the way constantly because they never know anyhow and I can’t follow their instructions, About 20 minutes later, I find myself looking at a town hall that looks remarkably similar to the one I saw 20 minutes ago. Now, I don’t know if you found that, that you go round and round in circles trying to get out and find it difficult because you don’t know the way. And the Bible says that it’s extraordinarily difficult to get away from idolatry, that we think we’ve got away from it and then we find ourselves as a society coming back to it almost inevitably.

So I thought that I would say something about the road to idolatry today and one passage of course stands out on that matter, this great passage from Romans 1:18 through to the end. Now I can only make comments really on this passage. I want the word of God to speak for itself. I don’t really want to stand in the way of that. I simply want to underline phrases for you and I’ve got some quite remarkable phrases to show you if you’ve never really seen them before.

Let’s start then where the road begins. Verse 18: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men. Now if you read that casually, you’re almost certain to misunderstand it. Indeed, I would be so bold to say that most people so far already in this service have misunderstood that verse. It seems to suggest that if we sin, God’s wrath is shone upon us, that God’s anger is visited on man’s wickedness in the sense of all our moral sins and all our unfaithfulness and hate and so on.

But actually Paul is not saying that at all. He’s not talking about what you think of as sins and wickedness. He’s talking about one great sin, if I might put it in capital letters, THE SIN of the Bible. He’s saying that our wickedness and ungodliness is seen supremely in this. What do we do?

End of verse 18, an extraordinary phrase: who by our corruptness suppress the truth. Now that’s an extraordinary phrase, isn’t it, for 20th century man? We like to think of ourselves in every area of life, technologically, scientifically, in every way, searching for truth. And indeed the frontiers of knowledge are always being pushed back all the time, aren’t they? So it’s natural to think of ourselves, even in religious matters, as those who want to know the truth and want to reach out and find out more and more.

But the word of God says the opposite. It says that it is the very essence of the corruption of human nature in society that we tend to want to suppress the truth, that when the light beams into our darkness we want to push it out again.

Now you of course may not agree with that but it certainly seems to be true that when the light comes into the world men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. A man said to me this morning that his boss, whom he would like to get to these services, has got the most brilliant list of excuses he’s ever heard. As long as there are armies, he says, he’s always got a new one. Got to go to the library, I’ve got to go and shop for something for his wife. Oh, there are much better ones than that.

I mean, they are fairly threadbare, aren’t they? But he’s really a genius at them. I mean, and yet what is there to be frightened about? 20 minutes in an armchair. I mean, there’s just some talking about an old book.

It couldn’t hurt anybody. The man seems to give the impression that if he comes in here there might be some crocodile ready to spring out on him and bite off his leg or something. But you see, that’s very natural. I know I was like that before I came a Christian. You know, I’d run like a mile when my Christian friends began to approach.

I found it very easy to say that I didn’t want to listen to that. I found it rather embarrassing to talk about Christ. Yes, in church, but not outside, not on the games field, not in the party, not amongst friends. So Paul here is saying something very shrewd. He is saying that the rottenness of our human hearts because of the fall of man is shown supremely in the fact that we don’t seek after truth, but when it comes to us, we suppress it.

Now he uses an even more startling phrase in verse 25, and this is his language and not mine. His authority, not mine. He says that God has given us up, verse 24, because they, that is mankind in general, exchanged— that’s a great city word, isn’t it?— exchanged the truth about God for a lie.

Well, I know nothing really about all the exchanges in the city, but there are many, aren’t there, known to you? And in them there are able people, practised, brilliant people who are able to make these constant exchanges in metal or corn or shipping or, or stocks and shares or whatever it may be, and to come out on the right side of the ledger.

We don’t imagine that we’d exchange something good for something bad. We look with pity at the savage in some dark continent who will take our coloured beads and give us his gold and silver. We imagine that he’s a fool, doesn’t know better. The Word of God says here that it’s natural to man to exchange— what does he take? He’s got— because God is shining his truth all the time in many different ways into our hearts, so that nobody is an atheist when they’re a child.

It is natural for us to believe that there is indeed an Almighty Power. But when that truth impinges upon us, we would rather give it away and exchange it and get back a lie in place. That’s why Mr. Moon is still in business. I see it.

He was giving out papers, wasn’t it, at Liverpool Street Station this morning, telling us how the Daily Mail had got it all wrong. And although most of them were dropped on the ground, there are plenty of people who would rather believe all that twaddle than listen to the truth, because it’s more convenient to do so, because of course the truth of God has a tremendous moral edge. Let’s go on with verse 25. It’s even more striking. He says that not only that, we would prefer to worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator.

And that so horrifies the apostle, as he thinks of the glorious Creator, he adds, who is blessed forever. It’s a wonderful statement, isn’t it? Paul can’t think of God without giving his sense of praise and blessing to God for what he is. And yet he says we would rather by nature, until we’ve been enlightened, drawn by the Holy Spirit, compelled by the love of God, we would rather before those influences work in our lives, serve and worship man and all that man produces.

And so my third little note here in where it begins: man’s natural religious worship is thus a sign not of his nobility but of his degradation. Yes, I like to hear you turning over the pages. It makes me think that you’re still with me. And so I put at the end of Part 1, Strong Medicine A: Paul’s View of Non-Christian Religion. I assure you that if Paul were to speak in a sixth form or a common room or a boardroom, the one thing that would stick in people’s gullets is Paul’s view of religion.

Paul doesn’t regard religion as the best side of man. Paul regards religion as just another manifestation of our sinfulness. It’s one of the reasons I tend to leave my dog collar off because I know if I wear it that people will mark me down in their minds, oh, he’s religious of course. I want to go up to them, if only I could, and say, look, I’m not religious. I was religious, but I came to believe in the Christian revelation, which is very different.

It’s not man seeking to please God, establishing his own righteousness, trying to go his religious way to God, build his ladder to heaven. It’s not that at all. It’s God coming down in mercy, offering forgiveness to those who are running away from him. Quite a different storey. See, Paul has no inhibitions.

If Paul was looking at religion, Hinduism for example, in the Indian continent today, he wouldn’t flatter them. He wouldn’t say, well, this is just another way of looking at it and there are many noble ideals in this. On the contrary, he would say that it was a horrible thing. It was just one more sign of man’s willingness to turn away from the glorious light and go into the murk and the mud.

Paul doesn’t praise man’s religion. He sees it usually as a sign of one more way of escaping the challenge of the love of God, another refuge of lies. That’s where it all begins. It begins with our unwillingness to face up to the truth and the light, our desire to go our own way, to construct mental images of God that are more pleasing. You know the man who says to you in the club, I like to think of God as this.

That’s an idol. What you like to think about God is of no interest and of no importance and of no saving power. What God has to say to us about God, that’s the only thing that matters. But we have to become very humble to listen to him because we’d rather listen to ourselves.

That’s where it begins. Now where does it end? Well, Paul is very simple here. He has a little phrase that he repeats 3 times. You go back to the classroom.

I dare say some of your kids have gone to school or nursery school for the first time this week and repetition will be the name of the game, won’t it? Well, Paul does that the same for us in this lunch hour. You can tell your children when you get home that we had some repetition work this morning because the great apostle was conscious that we are all very busy and our minds are very occupied. So he wants to hammer it home. He says it 3 times.

Verse 24: Therefore God gave them up. Verse 26: For this reason God gave them up.

Verse 28: How simple these words are, but how devastating. Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up. Since we said to God, your light is too bright for us, we don’t want to acknowledge you in our daily lives. Yeah, religion is for the wife, it’s not for business. We didn’t want to acknowledge God’s claim over every part of our lives.

Since we didn’t want to acknowledge God, he in the end, it says, gave us up. That is his punishment in the end, leaving us on our own.

Whenever I think of that, the image that comes into my mind is of the police in some appalling riot when perhaps the National Front and the Socialist Workers League are on the march together. It’s difficult to know which is worse, isn’t it? And there are the police with their arms out taking all the brickbats. Just imagine that their little bleep might go from headquarters. The chief constable, folks, he says, boys, he says, come back to the station.

Give it up.

You got beer back there at the station. Don’t bother yourselves anymore. And with one accord, they drop their hands, go back to the station. Go back home? Why should they be insulted?

Why should they be beaten around? Why should they become hospital cases, says the chief constable. Just imagine it. And so the 2 sides draw together and start to knock each other’s brains out. You see, that’s the, that’s the thought here.

It’s not in a sense as though God does anything except that he puts down his hands. He says, very well, if you want to live like that in your society, If you want to say according to your Gallup poll that Britain is no longer a Christian country and we don’t want that light anymore, very well then, I’ll let you live like that. I’ll withdraw my mercy and restraining hand. Do you want to live in a society like that? Do you believe what he says here?

Well, let’s look and see if it fits. Now there are 2 results according to the apostle of a society, 2 things that you will see, or symptoms of a society which, where God has in a measure withdrawn his restraining hand. I say in a measure because of course while his people pray God never fully gives a nation up. First, A, 2a, an incapacity to think straight about God, verse 21: For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. There’s the first result.

Of leaving God out. Our minds become— not of course in terms of all the things that your children do at school. I know some of you got very bright children who get 25 A-levels and all the rest of it at A and B level, and they put us all to shame, don’t they? Yes, they can do that, but what Paul is talking about here is not thinking about maths or history or computers. He’s thinking about God.

Can I think straight about God? And he says, no, no, you will never be able to think straight about God. The cleverest man, the university professor, when it comes to the things of God will show himself to be a complete buffoon.

All he will say will be nonsense. Haven’t you noticed that?

I mean, you notice it on television shows, don’t you? Some clever man is asked his opinion on religious things and comes out with the most astonishing rubbish, according to the standards of the New Testament at any rate.

Verse 28: Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind. Now the adjective base there is an interesting one. It means reprobate really, and it’s used, for example, of metal which has lost its strength, whatever it is, its tension. I don’t understand these things, but has become frayed. I suppose we talk of metal fatigue, base metal.

You can imagine Mr. Boeing deciding that he’s short of money, and so he decides to build a new airliner, and he says to his chief engineer, go and get all the metal that we’ve had to put on one side because it hasn’t stood the test. And we’ll make a couple of jumbo jets of that and we’ll sell them to the British. They’re in a very bad way in British Airways. Maybe they’ll buy them. And just imagine going into the air in that with every plate on the aircraft made of metal that simply can’t stand the strain.

You wouldn’t dream of paying anything to get on board that. Now that’s the thought here. You see, he says your minds are incapable of guiding your own destiny. Don’t trust the mind of man without the light of Christ. Don’t trust those who want to lead you politically or intellectually who are not Christians, because their minds can’t stand the strain of the complexity of human affairs.

They can’t possibly lead you in the right way. Well, they may be able to tinker with this and that. They can’t possibly tell you about God. After all, he’s all that matters in the end. Then look at verse 28.

There’s a second thing. God gave them up first to a base mind, so we get darkened minds, and secondly to improper conduct. And then he gives a terrible list in verse 29. Well, let’s look at it for a moment. They are filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, disobedient to parents, Faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Now Paul here is not describing your next-door neighbour, so don’t come and tell me that you’ve got a next-door neighbour who’s not a Christian who’s a very decent bloke. Nor is Paul actually describing you and me here, though if you’re a Christian you’ll probably be willing to admit that the seeds of most of these things lie deep down in every human heart. What he is saying is one thing specifically. He is saying that if God gives a society up, then these things will be those that begin to characterise that society. These are the germs, if you like, that the body will not be able to thrust out.

I mean, this is what we look for in our society. Have we got a strong enough resistance in our society to thrust out these horrible things. And what Paul is saying here is that if you do not look to God and acknowledge his Son and his truth, your society will not have the ability to thrust these things out. And therefore they will come in and, and there will be all these diseases amongst you in your communities. Obviously God is just.

If there is a nation or a society which has had very little light from God, very little Christian preaching, and they turn away from that, then presumably these symptoms will not be in such great, um, and obvious— will not be so obvious to everyone who looks around. But I take it that if there is a society in which the bright beams of the gospel of Christ and of his love has come for many centuries, if there is a society where there are churches everywhere dedicated to God’s Son, and if that society then turns its back upon God and prefers to suppress all that, pay no attention to it and not acknowledge it or give God thanks for it. And then if God is to give that society up, I take it that the manifestation of that will be a really terrible example of verses 29, 30, 31, 32. Wouldn’t you imagine that that would be what would happen?

So it doesn’t look too good for us, does it?

Strong medicine B, I meant to put there in my notes. Paul’s diagnosis of human depravity.

Well, it’s a very strong meat, isn’t it? Most people can’t take it. They prefer, don’t they, to use waffle.

But these words pin, pin, don’t they, the actual things that we’re to expect to see. And we even see it in our politics at the moment, don’t we? Strife, malignity, heartlessness, and so on. Finally, 3 searchlights to pierce the modern fog. One, the anger of God is not unrighteous, nor is it unloving.

That’s why in the typing I asked Janet to put verses 16 and 17 before this great paragraph, because, do you see, there he’s talking about another way in which the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel. We’ll come to that in a moment. And he says, the righteousness of God is revealed in his anger, verse 18. You see, it follows on, verse 17 and then 18, they follow on.

Now why do we feel that the anger of God is rather an indecent thought? Well, it’s because when we are angry, of course, there’s nearly always a good deal of self and pride in it, isn’t there? But sometimes there is a righteous anger. I feel there is a righteous anger. I, I know that my own anger is always partial and selfish.

But yesterday I happened to get a copy of the Hartford Mercury, and I see that Cerngate, British largest chain of sex shops, wants to set one up in Hartford, having successfully done so in Luton, and has written to the local paper, the Mercury, to see what people think. Received a frosty reception according to the Mercury this week. And we find that the MP, Mr. Byrne-Wells, we find that the mayor, Mrs. Jill Jill, We find that the chairman of the County Women’s Institute, Mrs. Betty Manson, and other strong opponents in the society, in the community, told the reporter that they were strongly against it, especially for the sake of the children. But there was one dissentient voice. When the rural dean was asked, he said he saw no moral objections if a sex shop operated.

I would wish anyone to discover and enjoy a relationship of love in which sexual satisfaction was given the importance it deserves.

Does he really think that Colgate are coming there in order to give people loving relationships? Is that really what he thinks that’s there for? Doesn’t that make you angry? Makes me angry.

It seems that there is no Christian standard that the church will not betray. Today. You see, the MP, the mayor, they speak against it.

Now of course when I say that I know that in my anger there is a measure of sinfulness and selfishness and passion and partiality.

I particularly dislike clergymen who betray that kind of thing.

But what about God? Is there not indignation in God? I’m sure there is.

Secondly, the anger of God is not just talk. Verse 18 talks about a revelation from heaven. Now that’s not God preaching a sermon, of course. He’s not telling us that there will be wrath on the day to come. How many pulpits have stormed about that and people have gone away feeling quite comfortable?

Well, they say that lies in the distant future. Now what the Word of God is saying here is that God reveals his wrath here and now in our society. And as we open our morning papers, we can see a manifestation of it whenever we see these things— disobedience to parents, for example, faithlessness, ruthlessness— when we see these things beginning to invade and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. And isn’t that a particularly horrible thing when parents have loved and given and done everything for their children? I can remember myself as a teenager, and I look back to it with sorrow It’s a part of our sickness, isn’t it, when we’re disobedient to our parents.

And Paul says here, there’ll be nothing you can do to stop that unless people turn back to God.

Thirdly, the anger of God is not the only manifestation of his righteousness. No, thank God that is so, because verses 16 and 17 tell us that in his righteousness he has prepared for us the gospel. And I’m most interested in that word in the second line of verse 16. That the gospel is not the wisdom or the love of God but the power of God. Faced, you see, with this tide of filth and hatred and disobedience and malignancy, faced with all these things which I cannot stop because I’m part of the problem, not the solution, and you’re part of the problem and not the solution.

Faced with this tide, I’m bound to look up and say, God, what is your solution? Faced with the problem. God says, my solution is the gospel because that’s where my power is to be found. And only when the church rediscovers the gospel and men acknowledge God and give thanks to him and put him back in the centre of their business and family life and their personal lives, stop running away, fall down before him and say, God, without you we’re absolutely helpless. And hopeless.

It’s only then, he says, that he will then raise his hand and hold back the evil, stop it. Let’s pray for that.

Our God, we come to you this morning in the name of Christ, and we pray that you will not give us up. We thank you that we’re a country which has enjoyed for so long the free freedom to present the truth. We ask that we may boldly stand for it, live it, and witness to it. And we ask that you will have mercy upon our society and not hand us over to these tides of evil. So we pray that this truth may be written in our hearts and minds, and that no mistakes that I may have made in the presentation of it this morning will be an excuse for people to turn away from the substantial truth of your word.

May we acknowledge it and therefore live by it. We ask it through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.