Sermon from September 29, 2002

"The skill of the divine potter is an infinite patience of improvisation. No sooner has one work gone awry than his fingers are pressing it into the form of another. There is never a moment for the clay, when the potter is not doing something with it. God is never standing back and watching us; his fingers are on us all the time," (Austin Farrer quoted in Susan Howatch, Absolute Truths, 482).

God loves what He has made, even if what He has made is flawed. He loves it and sets about to restore it, renew it, bring it into line with His original design. If we don't keep this in mind, when we read Romans 1:18-32, we will misread those rather bleak verses. It will help us to keep it in mind if we begin with verses 16-17.

I am not ashamed of the gospel, says the Apostle Paul, because it is the power of God. It does not merely talk about the power of God; it is God's power. It is only words, but it is not for nothing that the Bible compares those words to seeds. Small seeds, to be sure, but seeds that settle down in the invisible regions of the human heart and bring forth results that can fill a nation. And what result does this power of God produce?

It is the power of God for ... salvation. Verse 18 will tell us that the gospel is the power of God that saves us from the wrath of God. That hardly begins to tell the whole story, as if the rescue of a drowning child spoke of only a narrow escape and said nothing about the child's future. The gospel is the passport to a new life, a new heaven and a new earth. Anyone is eligible.

The gospel ... is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. The conviction that God's power for salvation made a universal offer brought Paul out of his Jewish shell and gave him universal sympathies. this universal offer asks one thing of us. 

It is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. The soil in which God hides these small and powerful seeds must be receptive. The name the Bible gives to receptive soil is faith. A person believes the gospel is true, and, believing that, he then depends on God for salvation for a lifetime.

A more pressing question asks why the Apostle Paul believed so deeply that the gospel ... is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes? Verse 17 explains. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed.

In the Bible God's righteousness does not just mean that God is right; it also means that God does what is right. He sees to it that right will triumph; good will conquer evil. He has the power to save humanity from the evil that dogs our every step. The Potter will remake his flawed vessels. How do we know that? God demonstrated His power and resolve to save mankind from all evil and to restore him to paradise, when He raised Jesus from the dead, and that rescue takes place wherever people believe the gospel.

But, here is the curious thing. When the divine Potter goes to work reshaping His creation, we experience it as painful, and we call it God's wrath or God's judgment. Verse 18: The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness. Human evil at its roots suppresses the truth about God, and God is angry about that. God loves truth. How He shows the anger of heaven in earthly terms will become frightfully clear a few verses later on. But first, we must understand the human suppression of God's truth that has roused God's anger.

Man suppresses the truth about God, says verse 19, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God made it plain to them. God makes sure that human beings know about Him. How does He do this? Verse 20 explains that since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.

Intuitively, most human beings have looked out on the complexity, power and beauty of the universe and concluded that whoever did this must have extraordinary powers. And the name they have given to this powerful being is God. Although they receive uncommonly good press, atheists contine to be a pathetically small percentage of human beings.

This natural belief in God is so pervasive that men are without excuse, and here in verse 21 the apostle indentifies the true wickedness that brings down the wrath of God on human life. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him. If the complexity, power and beauty of the universe awaken man to God's reality, they should also awaken in him awe at God's invisible qualities and gratitude for the unasked for riches or creation. This humanity chose not to do.

Instead, their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. The truth about God is the point of integration for human reason. When that center is lost, reason continues to function but in a disorderly manner. The truth about God is the light by which human reason works. When that light is lost, reason continues to function but in the dark.

And now, beginning with verse 22, the apostle describes for us what God's wrath looks like at street level. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools. They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. The reality of God was in their grasp, and they let it go; and what did they receive in exchage? Not even man, bird, animal or reptile, but images made to look like them.

Humanity does nothing more important than to think truly about God and respond with appropriate awe and gratitude. Failure to do so brings disorder into man's inner life, and it also brings upon mankind the wrath of God. And when He shows the anger of heaven in earthly terms, He does so in about the last way we might expect.

Verse 24: Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. We must not miss the crucial revelation here. God gave them over. That does not sound like God inflicted pain on His foolish creatures. It sounds like He showed them the door. "You do not want to honor me? You want your own way? I will not stand in your way. Go your own way. Live life on your terms."

Humanity in this unimpeded freedom pursues sexual freedom and discovers a degradation setting in with unexpected disease, inconvenience, remorse and defiance. But that's okay; one always buys liberty at a price, and this is a price worth paying.

Verse 25 picks up the idea of verse 23 and expands it. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator - who is forever praised. Amen. The Creator made us in such a way that we will worship and serve something. He meant for His invisible qualities and generosity to be the object of our awe and gratitude. Is it wise to give more honor to something made than to the one who made it? That terrible exchange brings disorder into man's life, and it also brings upon mankind the wrath of God. And when He shows the anger of heaven in earthly terms, He does so in about the last way we might expect.

Verses 26-27: Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

We must not miss the crucial revelation here. God gave them over. That does not sound like God inflicted  pain on His foolish creatures. It sounds like He showed them the door. "You do not want to honor me? You want your own way? I will not stand in your way. Go your own way. Life life on your terms."

Humanity in this unimpeded freedom pursues sexual freedom into homosexual expressions, and in our time with the terrible scourge of AIDS that has followed. Is this freedom? Is this what happens when divine restraints are removed from human willfulness? Is this a price worth paying? It is not a hate crime to hold these convictions, although it would be wrong to hold them with hate in our hearts.

Verse 28 offers a subtlety that we should not miss. Paul does not use the word exchanged here, as he did in verses 23-25. However, he does use the idea but gives it a powerful twist. Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. This time, the terrible exchange takes place within the human mind. They exchanged the knowledge of God for a depraved knowledge. Depraved knowledge never stays in its cage for long. It comes out in depraved behavior.

But again, we must not miss the crucial revelation here. For the third time, in a solemn repetition of the wrath of God He gave them over. That does not sound like God infliced pain on His foolish creatures. It sounds like He showed them the door. "You do not want me in your thoughts? You want your own way? I will not stand in your way. Go you own way. Live life on your terms."

Looking out on the world through Jewish and Christian eyes, this is what the apostle saw. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Not many people would contradict his grocery list of human nature gone bad.

However, the apostle is not piling up this list of evil in order to discharge his righteous indignation. He is making a crucial point. Thisis what happens to people, when they refuse God. As a result, they lose hold of the integrating center of their lives, and their desires, cut loose from their proper governance, have run amok with painful consequences for human happiness. Bad theology leads to bad living.

Furthermore, contrary to conventional thinking, disordered human sexuality in all its expressions, disordered minds and disordered human relationships in every garden variety of evil are not merely the cause of the wrath of God; they are the result of the wrath of God. Buyt they are not the result of God's inflicting punishment in the form of indulgence.

In other words, though refusing God, rebellious people are not free of God. "Striking free of God's immediate control, man has not escaped God's overall ordering of his creation," (Dunn, I, 75). Man will yield to the true knowledge of God, or he will yield to God's wrathful indulgence. Either way, we yield to God. And there is more.

Verse 32: Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death ... The evil that is the result of God's wrath is still liable to God's punishment in the classic sense. If God does not interrupt the downward spiral, there is worse to come. Most people know right from wrong, but their knowledge does not always turn into obedience to God. They not only continue to do these very things also approve of those who practice them.

I said last week that Romans presents us with the interpretation of reality as given in the Christian gospel. I believe it applies today as reliably as it did then. For a few minutes I want to return to the pastoral center of gravity in this text.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
First, we should go back to verse 23. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him. We put a premium on what The Declaration of Independence calls our "unalienable rights." We cherish them and rightly so. But as with all good things the devil can twist our rights. We can come to the point that we say we deserve those rights. Nothing could be further from the fundamental human response to the universe, which is thankfulness.

We don't deserve the sight of a butterfly. Most of what we have in this life came to us unbidden. I did not ask for my parents or name the day of my birth. I was no consulted about the physical and mental endowments I have. My education was provided for long before I received it. Christ is God's greatest unbidden gift. The Church is His gift. The Scriptures are His gift.

We take things for granted. We compare and are fussy about the very best. In our surfeit of material plenty, we fail to be stricken with wonder that we can put one foot in front of the other. It is from wonder that thanksgiving is born.

Humanity lost its way when it lost its wonder at the world God gave us. When it lost wonder, it failed to give thanks. When it failed to give thanks, it failed to glorify God as God and turned to folly. So, be ye thankful. That is the path to the renewal of our minds and the transformation of our character.

The second pastoral center of gravity begins with the true way in which Romans one mirrors well part of our culture. That part of our culture poses a question to the people of God. It is not a question we can answer with words. We can only answer it with our lives over the next decade.

Can we Christians be people of integrity in a world in which people are free to do anything they can get away with? The fire for Christians in North America is not persecution such as faces our brothers and sisters in China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan. I do not understand why it should be granted to us to believe in Christ but not to suffer for His sake.

The fire for Christians in North America is staying true to Christ in the face of unparalleled personal freedoms and an unprincipled pursuit of pleasure, which allure us to turn away from Christ and be lost in an orgy of self-indulgence. Can we be people of integrity in this culture? That is the pressing question that faces the Church in our generation and that waits the answer of our lives.

So, as your pastor, I say to you in Christ's name, be ye thankful. And how will you answer the pressing question of our time?