Abandoned by God, Part 1
Romans 1:24-25
Let's look together at Romans chapter 1 and I want to read for you the setting for our message tonight, verses 24 through 32...Romans 1:24 to 32.
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness to the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves; who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections; for even their women did exchange the natural use for that which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was fitting. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not seemly. Being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, insolent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: who knowing the judgment of God, that they who commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same but have pleasure in them that do them.
Now basically those verses are a catalog of the sinfulness of man. Men are wicked. They are vile. They are evil. They are creatures utterly filled with sinfulness. They are characterized as ungodly and unrighteous.
Now we are not in this particular day and age surprised to hear this about men because we see it all around us. We see the depravity of man made manifest to us. We're not in a world of isolation. We are in a tremendously integrated kind of world, a cosmopolitan kind of world, a media oriented kind of world that is shrunken to such a small size that we pretty well know everything that's going on everywhere and the sinfulness of man is common knowledge. No matter how well a society begins, it always decends to the same pit of immoral behavior and subsequent judgment of God that is categorically presented to us in Romans chapter 1. Like a baby, the beginnings may be lovely and beautiful but the end is ugly. Everything starts well but the vileness of man's nature plunges him into the pit of sin under the condemnation of God with nothing but a prospect of eternal hell.
Man is not good and you need to mark that at the very beginning. Man is evil. His nature is bent on sin and given his prerogatives he will inevitably end up in the morass of immorality.
Why? Why is it so? Why has man always inevitably to sink to such a sad condition? How is it that that infant life so lovely, so precious, so soft, so innocent will descend to the corrupted adulthood that inevitably awaits the human race? Why?
I think the answer is right here. You want to know why men are like they are? Women are like they are? Do you want to know why the fall of man is inevitably marked in every single life? The answer is clearly here, it is because God gave them up. Three times that is said in these verses. And it basically means that man is abandoned by God. God has abandoned man. That's really the problem that man has. You see, because of the Fall and the depravity of man, his innate sinfulness, as we shall see in a moment, because of this man has no...and I'll say it again...no capacity to restrain his sinfulness. It is impossible for him to restrain his sinfulness. He can't capture it. He can't harness it. He cannot do good. He cannot keep from doing evil. There is none, says Romans 3, that doeth good, no not one. They do evil continually. Even the religious among men, the seemingly self-righteous among men may be committing the most heinous sin of all which is self-righteousness. Man cannot restrain evil and he will inevitably do what is wrong. There's only one force in the entire universe that can restrain evil and that is God. And the problem with man is that God is not restraining him. God has abandoned him. God has given him up, given him up, given him up. And what that really means is that God no longer restrains man. God has abandoned man. That is the story of the human race. It really all began in the garden.
Now this passage is the most tragic, the most fearful, the most sobering somber passage in all of the epistle to the Romans and because of this single thought that man has been abandoned by God. Look at verse 24, "Wherefore God also gave them up." Verse 26, "For this cause God gave them up." Verse 28, "And as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them up...same verb...to a reprobate mind."
Now if you want to know why man is like he is, that's it. And that really is the major answer that we're going to be looking at tonight. Man is the way he is because he's abandoned by God. And God is the only restraining influence there is in the universe to hold back evil. And the more God lets go, the worse it gets. And as you go through human history it says in 2 Timothy 3:13, "Evil men will grow worse and worse." And it's almost as if God just continues to let go of man and man continues to go his own way. And in the process he compounds sin upon sin upon sin which escalates his evil until ultimately you end up in the Tribulation and in the Tribulation period, according to 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, the final restraints are taken off and the one who hinders, who is the Holy Spirit, hinders no more and literally all hell breaks loose across the earth. The pit opens up, says Revelation 9, and belches forth all of the bound demons. You compound that with the last bit of restraint being taken off man with centuries of escalating sinfulness and you have the Tribulation. Abandoned by God, that is man's problem.
I want you to just think that thought with me for a minute. And I'd like to show you that it is not a new thought in Romans, it is elsewhere in the Bible. And I'll give you a couple of illustrations. In Psalm 81 verse 11 it says, "But My people would not hearken to My voice...now listen...and Israel would have none of Me so I gave them up." To what? "To their own hearts desires and they walked in their own counsels." Israel would not hearken. They would have none of Me so I gave them up. What horrifying words.
In Hosea, the prophet marks the same tragic reality. In chapter 4 verse 17, an unforgettable verse, it simply says this, "Ephraim--and that is a term designating the nation of Israel-- Ephraim is joined to idols." And here comes the shocking line, "Let him alone." Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone. God gives up on the northern kingdom. God gives up on his wayward people who will have none of Him.
Listen to this. In Matthew 15:14 our Lord talks about the rulers of Israel, most specifically the Pharisees. It says this, "Let them alone, they are blind leaders of the blind and if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch." Let them alone...let them go. The restraints are off. That's man's problem. God is not restraining him and he has no capacity to restrain himself.
In seventh chapter of Acts there is a masterful address, a sermon given by Stephen. Part of it speaks to our point. Listen in verse 37, "This is that Moses who said to the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren like me, him shall you hear, this is he that was in the church in the wilderness or the assembly in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him in Mount Sinai and with our fathers who received the living oracles to give unto us, whom our fathers would not obey but thrust him from them and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt." In other words, they didn't want the leadership of Moses who represented God. "They said, Aaron, make us gods to go before us for as for this Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we know not what has become of him. And they made a calf in those days and offered sacrifice unto the idol and rejoiced in the works of their own hands." Listen to this. "Then God turned and gave them up to worship the host of heaven." Gave them up, let them go. That was the choice they made and He let them go.
Just one other scripture comes to mind, chapter 14 of Acts verse 16 says that God in time past allowed all nations to walk in their own ways. Oh my, what a statement. He let them walk in their own ways.
Now, beloved, I submit to you that whether you're talking about all nations or whether you're talking about Israel, there is a point in which God lets them go. God gives them up to the preflood, the antidiluvium society. God said back in Genesis, "My Spirit will not always strive with man." It doesn't go on forever.
Now we have to ask a question as we look at Romans 1. How did this ever happen? How did God ever get to the point where He gave people up, where He just turned them over, let them go? What is it that brings God to such a place where He gets so angry, so full of wrath that He lets people go, that He just takes off the restraint?
Well the answer to that is to go back to the full thought of our text, and you have to begin in verse 18. And there you see the descent of man presented in successive steps, leading to verse 24. And I want you to follow this. First of all, we can go back to verse 16 and remind ourselves that Paul has designs in the book of Romans of preaching the gospel. He's not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. He wants to unfold the gospel which is the standard of salvation for everyone that believes. And as he unfolds the doctrine of salvation, he begins with the principle of wrath. That's not typical of our approach when we come to someone who is not a Christian to start with the subject of wrath. And in defense of Paul these people to whom he writes are already Christians and he's simply delineating to them theologically all that is necessary for a full understanding of the gospel of Christ. So he begins with the fact in verse 18 that God is very angry. "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men."
So, God is angry. He is so angry that He gives men up. He lets them go. Takes off the restraints. Why? Why does He do this? Why does He let them go? Well there are basically successive steps, first of all, because of revelation. You remember back in verse 18 it says they hold the truth. And then in verse 19 it says they hold it because God has made it manifest. And then in verse 20 he says its manifest through the creation of the world so that men can see that God is powerful and God is supernatural so that men are without...what?...excuse. So they've had revelation. They've had the truth. It's not only given unto them in verse 19, but it is manifest in them. They've thought about it. They've conceived it. They've perceived it that God is, God is supernatural, God is eternally powerful and they are inexcusable. And so we start with revelation.
And then descend to rejection, verse 21. Because when they knew God they glorified Him not as God neither were thankful but became empty in their thinking and their foolish heart was darkened. In other words, they had the knowledge of God and they refused the knowledge of God. They rejected it. It was all theirs. They turned their back on it.
Rejection led to rationalization. Verse 22, "They then professed themselves to be wise and thus they became the biggest fools of all, for who is a greater fool than he who is a fool and thinks he's not?" And so man has revelation, followed by rejection, followed by rationalization in which his empty imaginations tell him that he is really wise.
And the fourth step in the successive fall of man is religion, verse 23. "He then changes the glory of the incorruptible God, the true God into an idol, an idol made in the image of men and birds and beasts and snakes and bugs." And he worships everything but the true God. And as we suggested to you some weeks back, religion is not man at his highest, religion is man at his lowest. For religion is idolatry and idolatry is man in the pits, for idolatry violates the first commandment, "Thou shalt have...what?...no other gods before Me." And he second, "Thou shalt make no graven images."
And so man starts at revelation, descends to rejection, descends to rationalization and descends finally to religion-- manmade Satan-inspired demonic religion that has absolutely no truth in it and no power to restrain sin.
Now watch what happened. At this juncture, God lets men go. Why? Because they have gone so far away away from Him. Ephraim is joined to idols, what's the rest of the verse? Let them alone. Because you will have none of Me, I give you up. You have forsaken Me and I forsake you. That's the story of man. The human race is not on an ascent to God, the human race is on a descent from God. They're running as fast as they can away from His presence and reality. And they have come to the pit of religion. And once you come to the pit of false religion, you have violated the first and foremost commandment and that is that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. You have made other gods, you have blasphemed the truth of God and you are at the worst possible level of human existence. And at that point, God says I gave them up.
And that leads to the results of verse 24. When God gives men up, they sink into reprobation that is almost beyond description. Because when the restraints are off they're...all hell breaks loose. Now I want you to think this thought with me because it's the key to the passage. Now listen carefully. The wrath of God is not only something future. There is a day of wrath, we'll get to that when we get into chapter 2 over about in verse 5. There is a day of wrath in the future, but the wrath of God is not just a future reality. The wrath of God is going on all the time. Verse 18 says, "For the wrath of God...the Greek says...is all the time being revealed from heaven."
Now listen. How is God's wrath being revealed? It is being revealed in His giving men up. For when He gives them up to their sinfulness, that in itself is the working of His wrath. He could restrain men but He is so angry with their apostasy that He lets them go and the consequences of their own sin is the outworking of His wrath. Men today who live their own life in sin are seeing the wrath of God unfolding through the result of their own sinfulness.
And you see it all over the place. The terrible disasters that come into people's lives because of their incessant sinfulness is the outworking of the present expression of the wrath of God. And you're going to see this as we go.
Now, it's our task tonight to look at man at his worst. Man at his very worst...man in the muck, in the mire of his filthy depraved heart, that's our assignment tonight. It's not necessarily a pleasant one but it shows us that when men abandon God, God abandons them and their own sin takes over and works its own effects.
In Judges 10:13 it says, "Yet ye have forsaken Me and served other gods." And that is always man at his lowest. He gets religious. "Wherefore I will deliver you no more." You abandon Me, I abandon you. Second Chronicles chapter 15, I want to show you two passages in 2 Chronicles, verse 1 says, "The Spirit of God came upon Azariah the son of Oded and he went out to meet Asa, the king...Azariah is a prophet...and said to him, Hear ye me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin, the Lord is with you while you are with Him and if you seek Him, He will be found by you but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you."
Second Chronicles 24 verse 20, "The Spirit of God came upon Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada to the priest who stood above the priest...above the people rather, and said to them, Thus saith God, Why transgress ye the commandments of the Lord that you cannot prosper because you have forsaken the Lord, He hath also forsaken you." What a verse. You forsook Him, He forsakes you. And when that happens it is a short step to the abandonment of the sinfulness that we see in these verses.
Now, I want you to divide the text into three parts. Each of the three is introduced by the statement, "God gave them up." The first marks...now think with me...the essence of sin. The second marks the expression of sin. And the third marks the extent of sin. Each begins with the same Greek verb paradidomi, or paradidomi, rather...which means to give up. It by the way is a very intense word. It means to turn someone over. And it's kind of interesting if you follow its use for just a minute. Look back at Matthew and I won't go all over the Bible but I'll just buzz through Matthew and show you a couple of places where it's used in Matthew. It's used in Matthew 4:12, "Now when Jesus heard that John was cast into prison," and there the idea is he's thrown into punishment, he's thrown into judgment. Matthew chapter 5:25, "Agree with thine adversary quickly while thou art in the way with him, lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge." And there paradidomi is used again of turning someone over to a judge for sentencing. In the first case, turn them over to a prison. The second case, turn them over for judgment.
If you follow along you'll see it also in the chapter we've been studying in the morning, chapter 10 of Matthew, verse 17, "Beware of men for they will deliver you up to the counsels." Again turning you over for some kind of sentencing...turning you over some judge. You find it also in verse 19, "When they deliver you up, again don't be anxious what you're going to say in your behalf." You find it in verse 21, "And your own brother will deliver you up to death." And again every time so far in Matthew it's used of putting someone in a position to be sentenced or putting them under judgment or putting them in prison.
And if you follow it into the eighteenth chapter of Matthew, verse 34, again you find in the parable of the Kingdom of heaven in which there were servants involved who owed the master, it says the Lord was angry and delivered him to the inquisitors till he should pay all that was due unto him. In other words, he turned him over because of non-payment of his debt to some who would punish him until he learned to pay. Again it speaks very specifically about a judicial setting and a judgment rendered by a judge or by some kind of authority.
In the twenty-sixth chapter of Matthew in the fifteenth verse, Judas Iscariot said to them, "What will you give me and I will deliver Jesus unto you?" And there again it means turning Jesus over to the Jewish authorities for punishment for execution or whatever. Chapter 27 of Matthew verse 2, "And when they had bound Him they led Him away and delivered Him to Pontius Pilate. I think you get the picture, don't you? Paradidomi is used in several different ways but it has a very unique usage in that it very often refers to turning someone over to a punishment, turning someone over to an imprisonment, turning someone over to a severe judgment. And that is precisely the term that is used here. God gave them up...God gave them up...God gave them up. And when He did, He gave them over to a punishment. He gave them over to an imprisonment. He gave them over to those who would inflict pain or to that which would inflict pain upon them.
C.S. Lewis writing in the PROBLEM OF PAIN says "The lost enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded and are therefore self-enslaved." God gives them up judicially. God gives them up punitively. God gives them over to the consequence of their own sinfulness.
Now, there is a sense, and this is a theological point that I want you to get in your mind, we're going to go two ways on it, there is a sense in which the phrase means "God let go." God just took His hands off, pulled the restraints back and just let them go in their sin and sin brings its own consequence. One of the problems, by the way, in our society is that we're working furiously to remove the consequence of sin. I always think about that when I think about all the medicines they've invented to stop venereal disease when venereal disease is God's way of stopping immorality. And as soon as you can deal with venereal disease you can free up everybody to do whatever they want. There's a sense in which God just lets men go, takes away His restraints, gives them their freedom and they go on in their sins and reap the results. So in a very real sense without revealing fire from heaven, without some cataclysmic event, God pours out His wrath on a day-to-day basis as He abandons men to the destructiveness of their own compounded sin. It's an amazing and awesome reality. God makes men's passions the very instrument of His wrath.
So, we have a world of sex perverts. We have a world of people who live in moral permissiveness. We have a world of liars and cheaters and thieves and robbers and gossipers and disobedient and loveless and brutal, proud boasters because God let them go. And there's no way to restrain that. People say, "Oh God in the future is going to judge America." God is judging America right now. Can't you see it? Can't you see a whole nation gone after perverted sinfulness and reaping the consequences of its own sin? God's judgment is at work right now. And our culture if it reflects anything reflects the utter meaninglessness, the utter despair and the loneliness and the lostness and the fragmentation and the absence of identity that results when man is cut off from God. One writer said, "What God...without God there are no abiding truths, there are no lasting principles, there are no norms and man is cast upon a sea of speculation and skepticism and attempted self-salvation."
Now, I think it's important to say this. Though sin is a result of God's wrath, God doesn't make men sin. He just abandons them to their own perversity. And we say that to protect the holiness of God. I had a man say to me one time, "God makes you sin." That's not true, God is of purer eyes than to behold evil, cannot look upon iniquity. God is always good and right and true. God does not sin and God tempts, says James, no man to sin. But God will abandon men to their own perversity as a part of His judgment. He loosens the restraints and man's depraved desire takes over. That's why our society is like it is. God just took off the restraint. And I've think we've seen it happen sort of progressively in our own country as it happens, I think, in a lot of societies that are founded on Christian principle. For a long time it seemed as though the restraints were there and things were different. In the last 50 years it just seems that God has just taken them off and we're reaping all the results.
If there's anything that I believe and I believe a lot of things, but if there's anything I believe, I believe that God is in the process of pouring out wrath on American society and society around the world, as we know it in Western culture, because we have abandoned Him, He has abandoned us. And as I said earlier, it's not that He's totally lifted the restraints, that's yet in the future. And when He does that, according to 2 Thessalonians 2:7, when the one who hinders stops hindering, that is when the restrainer, the Holy Spirit, doesn't restrain anything, then you will have chaos that is unimaginable. And the earth will turn into a slaughter house, men will even massacre one another.
A further thought is necessary and I told you there would be a kind of a two-fold thing as you think about the judicial act of God, it is not just a negative restraint withdrawal, it is not that just...God just pulls back. That is...that is too non- involved. There's a sense also in which in pulling back or letting the restraints go, God is acting in a positive overt move of judgment. It isn't that God just says, "Ah, that's enough of you," and turns around takes a walk. It is that God in taking off the restraints which is sort of a negative sin, He just takes them back, also is positively inflicting men with His wrath because He knows the consequence. He abandons us totally to our sinfulness. He removes the restraints but in a real sense that is a positive punitive act on His part.
Now let's follow that thought as we move through our text. Keep in mind, God lets men go and we find out what happens when He does.
I want to give you one footnote. It's important to say at this point that this is not a final forever act that damns all men without recourse. God lets men go to the consequence of their sin and all the while endeavors to reach them with the message of His salvation. You understand that? You see, the gospel begins with the fact that God let men go but it is these very men, the world of people like you and I, that He has abandoned to their sinfulness that He calls back later in Romans in the redemptive invitation of the gospel.
For example, the woman Jezebel seems to have been in Revelation 2 the very embodiment of gross vile sin. And yet God, it says, gave her time to repent...time to repent. First Peter 3:20 it says, "The patience of God waited for God was not willing that any should...what?...perish, but that all should come to repentance."
In 1 Corinthians chapter 6 you have a list that's almost identical to Romans chapter 1. It says, "Be not deceived, fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, homosexuals, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortioners, none of these shall inherit the Kingdom of God." It's almost an identical list to Romans 1. And then it says "And such were some of you but you are washed, you are sanctified, you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God." It's those kind of people that He want to redeem, do you see? So He has abandoned men, yes. But He calls man back to Himself. The abandonment is from that pristine knowledge where men knew God and ran from God and now God runs and calls them back. And very often as He lets them go deeper and deeper into the pit of their own sin, they eventually hit bottom and scream for mercy. And so in a real sense, as it says in Isaiah 19:22, God smites in order that He might heal. Divine mercy and grace and patience without response result in the outpouring of wrath. Man won't respond, God pours out His wrath. Impenitent sinners are swept away into their own sins and vile passions lead them toward hell. In the midst of it all God calls them to Himself.
Let's look at the first of the three and I don't know, we probably won't get passed this one. The essence of man's sinfulness, verse 24, "Wherefore God also gave them up, when He let them go they went directly to uncleanness." The word "wherefore" indicates the judgment of God's wrath finding its reason in the preceding verses. God gave them up because they had revelation, they turned it to rejection then rationalization and finally in their idolatry, false religion. And because of that God gave them up. And first we see the essence of their sin. He gave them up to uncleanness, akatharsia, impurity. And that is the essence of man's sinfulness that he is on the inside impure. It goes on to say through the lusts of their own...what?...hearts. It is an internal impurity. Man is given over to a rottenness on the inside.
That word, by the way, is used often by Paul. In fact, it's a common word that he uses to express the condition of man. He uses it in 2 Corinthians 12:21, Galatians 5:19, Ephesians 5:3, and 1 Thessalonians 4:7. Man is basically unclean. That's the essence. When I say essence, I mean the nature of man or the heart of man, the internal part. You see, the problem with man is that inside down deep he is a rotten vile sinner...uncleanness, impurity.
Now may I add this? That as I looked that word up and traced it through Paul's thinking, it primarily refers to perversion of the sexual area of life. But it encompasses a general essence of a God-rejecting heart. It becomes a sort of a totally unclean vile character which expresses itself primarily in the sexual area. That's why it says at the end of verse 24 that they wind up dishonoring their own bodies between themselves. The baseness, the vile nat