Dale Partridge - Romans 1_24-25： How God Deals with Atheists

00:00:00.000 In this episode of Real Christianity, I continue my teaching through the book of Romans,

00:00:04.040 but today we enter part one of a three-part series touching on the matter of homosexuality

00:00:09.700 and sexual immorality. And we're going to see shortly that there's a direct biblical

00:00:13.780 connection between atheism and sexual immorality. So stay tuned to hear the biblical breakdown of

00:00:19.320 this issue and how the church must respond. All that and more coming up right now.

00:00:30.000 Welcome to the show. We are finally doing audio and video. If you're watching this episode on

00:00:48.820 YouTube, welcome. We are finally getting these things back in video format. Last week, we talked

00:00:55.300 about Romans 1, verses 18 through 23, we learn the difference between general revelation and

00:01:01.820 special revelation. General revelation is sufficient to give humanity knowledge of God's

00:01:08.380 existence. It's sufficient to condemn humanity because they know that God exists, but it's not

00:01:14.720 sufficient to reveal the plan of salvation. This is why we need special revelation. Special revelation

00:01:22.720 is the act of God revealing himself through scripture, through Christ, revealing the way

00:01:30.580 of redemption, the plan of salvation. So we need general revelation and special revelation. General

00:01:36.960 revelation allows us to know that God exists in the things that are made. We learned that last

00:01:42.560 week. And then we know that special revelation is the gospel revealed in Jesus Christ. Now,

00:01:49.600 these distinctions are important because we learned that ultimately humanity has no excuse

00:01:55.340 for the rejection of God because God can be seen in his eternal attributes, even in the things

00:02:00.740 that are made. God himself really reveals himself through all these things in the sense,

00:02:08.560 the governing of the galaxy, through the seasons, through, you know, I said last week,

00:02:13.540 the evaporative water systems, the functionality of our body, all these things can be realized

00:02:18.820 from our brains to understand that there is a creator who is wise and eternal and all-powerful.

00:02:26.440 And as a result for this, there is no excuse for atheism. That's essentially what Romans

00:02:31.060 chapter 1, 18 through 23 tells us is that there is no excuse for atheism.

00:02:36.800 We also learned that while humanity rejects God, we know that humanity understands that there is

00:02:45.920 a God. And the reason we know that is because of the thousands of religions that exist. And also

00:02:51.620 just this act of worship that we see in everyday life. We see people that are worshiping from,

00:02:58.000 you know, New Age worship to religious worship through also the reality of we worship our idols,

00:03:05.420 we worship money, we worship materialism, we worship sex, we worship whatever it may be.

00:03:10.240 but we worship, we're a worshiping people. See, humanity is not unwilling to worship. We're just

00:03:16.000 unwilling to worship the one true God. That's really what we have to get our heads wrapped

00:03:20.700 around. And Paul says in Romans 1, 22 to 23, he says, claiming to be wise, they became fools 0.96

00:03:28.280 and they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible 0.87

00:03:33.800 mankind of birds, four-footed animals, and crawling creatures. All right. So the next 0.88

00:03:38.900 two verses are going to be the verses that we're focusing on, which is verses 24 and 25.

00:03:44.100 And he says, therefore, God gave them over in the lust of their hearts so that their bodies would

00:03:49.720 be dishonored among them for they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served

00:03:56.620 the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. Okay. So this passage

00:04:03.100 really speaks of God's consequences for their rejection of him and their false worship. They're

00:04:11.500 exchanging the worship for the creator to the creature, and this is speaking of the consequences

00:04:17.440 and the punishment as a result of those things. So we're going to learn of God's response

00:04:22.460 to rebellion. We're going to learn of what God does to those individuals who reject God

00:04:29.960 and worship idols as a result.

00:04:32.720 And we're gonna see in next week's episode

00:04:35.660 where I talk about the content,

00:04:38.560 when we get some context for this passage

00:04:41.620 and the following patches,

00:04:42.580 they're really linked together,

00:04:45.100 that the content of this passage

00:04:46.720 is really the catalyst for rampant sexual immorality.

00:04:52.520 So this passage we're gonna learn about today

00:04:55.380 will really be the catalyst

00:04:56.800 of why humanity is indulging in rampant sexual immorality. In other words, you can see the

00:05:03.240 connection between the rejection of God and a sexual or a lifestyle of sexual sin. Now, before

00:05:10.720 we begin, I just wanted to briefly mention a couple of things. As you guys know, we're a

00:05:14.380 ministry and there's a few things that we do as a ministry. One of them is I write books. And so

00:05:19.020 this book is brand new. It just came out in the last 30 days. It's called The Manliness of Christ.

00:05:23.840 and in a world that's absolutely bankrupt of biblical masculinity, this book will really

00:05:31.560 help men restore what it means to be a man. And we look at that because we know that Christ is

00:05:38.420 the ultimate man. If you hate masculinity, then you're going to hate Jesus because Jesus is the

00:05:44.180 most masculine man, man that ever lived the earth. You can pick up a copy of this little book. You

00:05:48.700 can see it if you're watching it on video. It's not that big. It's four by six. It's about 70 or

00:05:54.800 80 pages. You can read it in about an hour. And we also have an accompanying study guide that you

00:06:02.180 can use for individuals or small groups like a men's group. And you can pick up that as well for

00:06:08.280 just a couple extra bucks. You can buy both of those at our website at relearn.org forward slash

00:06:13.860 man. Again, that's relearn.org forward slash man. All right, let's start today with verse 24.

00:06:20.320 Let's read it one more time. It says, therefore, God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts

00:06:26.940 to impurity so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. Now, the word therefore

00:06:33.220 could be translated as a result. As a result of the rebellion and idolatry, God handed them over

00:06:40.300 to this lifestyle of self-serving, this lifestyle of sexual sin, as we're going to see.

00:06:47.740 Paul qualifies that desire, though.

00:06:49.220 He says that he handed them over to the lust of their hearts to impurity.

00:06:56.320 And so Paul is saying that because of their rejection of God and their desire for idolatry,

00:07:02.940 that the Lord handed over their hearts to be ruled not by the natural grace of the human

00:07:09.720 conscience and the conviction of the Holy Spirit, but to be ruled by their emotions, to be ruled

00:07:16.580 by their hearts. We know that the heart is deceitful among all other things. It cannot

00:07:21.700 be trusted. I always tell people when they say, follow your heart. I say, that's garbage. Don't

00:07:25.820 follow your heart. Follow the word of God. That is what we need to be focusing on. Now, this is not

00:07:30.900 saying that God is handing them over in the sense that he is causing them to be more sinful.

00:07:39.680 No, God simply withdrew his grace upon their life. And as a result, and this is a result of their

00:07:45.840 rejection of him and idolatry. So one of the most fearful consequences that God can ever inflict

00:07:52.240 upon a person is to leave them to themselves. And that's really to no longer intervene in their life

00:08:00.120 through the conviction of their conscience or through, you know, the, I would say the restraints

00:08:05.260 of common grace, but to leave them to who they are. I think about Jacob and Esau. Jacob, these

00:08:11.940 are, you know, twin brothers and God allows Esau to be Esau, but he does not allow Jacob to remain

00:08:18.740 as Jacob. So Esau, he allows him to permit him to go and do and seek his own desires.

00:08:24.320 and he pulls his presence away from Esau's life, but he doesn't allow Jacob to remain as Jacob.

00:08:31.020 Jacob is sanctified. Jacob is grown. Jacob is brought further into the truth, into the presence

00:08:37.380 of the Lord. God convicts him of sin. He disciplines him. He shows him that he loves him

00:08:41.980 through his righteous conviction of his heart. And so there's a distancing from Esau and a

00:08:47.260 bringing in close of Jacob. And we see that clearly in the scriptures. Now, we know that

00:08:55.700 we're not going to see this happen to Christians in the sense we're not going to see an abandonment

00:09:00.980 of God in our lives because Philippians 1.6 says, and I am sure of this, that he who began a good

00:09:07.860 work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Jesus himself actually talks

00:09:12.640 about this idea when he's in John chapter 10 verses 28. He's speaking to eternal security of

00:09:18.340 believers. You know, this idea that he's never going to forsake us. He's never going to leave

00:09:22.120 us. He's never going to allow us to perish. This is a really great passage of scripture for those

00:09:26.540 people who don't believe in the preservation of the saints, who don't believe that, or who believe

00:09:30.440 that you can lose your salvation or that you can walk away from God. This is not true because Jesus

00:09:35.300 says, so right here in verse 28 in chapter 10 of John, he says, I give them eternal life and they

00:09:41.320 will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. So, for those who have rejected God,

00:09:50.640 the existence of God, they're taking that atheistic route, they've traded over to idols,

00:09:57.020 God removes his sin-restraining grace from their life. And that being said, God does not ever pull

00:10:04.120 back completely from sinful humanity. If he did, society would cease to exist. Theologically

00:10:11.320 speaking, this is really getting into the idea of common grace. Basically, God, in his love for

00:10:17.980 the church, always made some type of degree of control and order among the lost as a way to

00:10:25.300 restrain evil in the world, to protect his church, and to continue his purposes in the world. Now,

00:10:31.560 For example, you guys may have seen William Golding's famous book, Lord of the Flies.

00:10:37.760 And this is a clear representation in demonstrating the savagery of human beings,

00:10:44.620 obviously shown through children in that specific narrative, without governance.

00:10:49.160 If you have no governance, if you have no restraint, we turn into absolute savages.

00:10:53.760 And that's kind of the same concept that we see in common grace.

00:10:58.040 Unfortunately, self-love is blinding and people think that humanity is genuinely good, and

00:11:06.540 this is a false way to think.

00:11:08.620 What we don't understand is that humanity is treacherously evil and that even the good

00:11:13.660 works that are permitted to occur are only happening because of God's restraint of their

00:11:19.000 sinful nature for the sake of his will and for the church in the world through common

00:11:24.520 grace.

00:11:24.840 Dr. Sam Storms once said, quote, common grace means God not only restrains the full manifestation of 0.99

00:11:31.420 the evil tendencies of the human heart, but also on a more positive note, enables the non-Christian 0.63

00:11:37.160 to perform deeds of relative good, end quote. So this handing over to the lusts of their hearts 1.00

00:11:45.780 to impurity isn't without purpose. Okay, the text says, it has a purpose clause. It says,

00:11:51.620 so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. Okay, he's saying that essentially,

00:12:00.440 I'm going to read this passage to you just one more time so you guys can grasp this.

00:12:03.640 Therefore, God gave them over in the lust of their hearts to impurity so that their bodies

00:12:09.340 would be dishonored among them. One theologian said, heathenism always leaves its stamp on the

00:12:17.700 body. In other words, spiritual sin always transmits to physical pain. Our sinful actions

00:12:24.920 are eventually always going to result in physical painful consequences on our emotions, on our

00:12:31.940 hearts, on our bodies. And there's a reason for the mountain of human misery related to sexual

00:12:37.660 misconduct. Okay, from disease and despair, from suffering and suicide, we know that the dishonoring

00:12:45.780 of the body through sexual immorality is a painful way to live. We know that. And as it pertains to

00:12:52.300 the forthcoming context of not just sexual immorality, but specifically homosexuality, 0.93

00:12:58.040 this act of God to, again, purposefully permit them to dishonor their bodies goes far beyond 0.81

00:13:05.800 just physical decimation. I want you guys to pay attention here. God's withdrawal from their lives

00:13:10.740 to this emotional governance, to this desire to follow their heart, to this removal of common

00:13:17.780 grace, to the removal of the conscience and the conviction of the conscience and the removal of

00:13:22.780 the dictation or direction of the Holy Spirit that leads to sexual immorality and specifically

00:13:29.300 homosexuality as we're going to see in the following verses. He's talking about this, 0.86

00:13:33.660 specifically how God's withdrawal is because of their disobedience and their rejection of him

00:13:39.600 and their idolatry. And as a result, he hands them over to the desires of their conscience.

00:13:45.320 He hands them over to the desires of their minds, and he allows them to dishonor their bodies

00:13:50.400 so that there's a purpose there, that their bodies would be dishonored among them. And in a sense,

00:13:56.420 this isn't just physical detriment. This isn't just physical pain that God's inflicting upon

00:14:01.560 them. In a sense, it's a curse of reproductive suicide and really the end of their entire family 0.81

00:14:08.760 heritage. That's what we have to realize when we talk about homosexuality. It's not just physical 0.97

00:14:14.920 pain, physical sin. It's actually really a reproductive suicide and the end of their 0.98

00:14:22.060 entire family line. In a very real way, God backs out of a person's life, eliminating

00:14:28.100 the conviction of sin and willingly allows them to pervert their own bodies and pervert their own

00:14:35.200 sexual acts. And what's happening here as it pertains to homosexuality is really the 0.83

00:14:41.440 removal of their complete perogeny. It allows the perogeny to perish. And for example, 0.94

00:14:47.220 if my great-great-grandfather decided to live a homosexual lifestyle, I wouldn't be here right 0.96

00:14:52.780 now. We need to understand the connection between living a homosexual lifestyle and not just the 0.86

00:14:57.600 physical element of it actually affecting us physically or our decision to sin, but it's 0.96

00:15:02.780 actually a decision to end your porogeny. It's to remove all of the future lineage that could come

00:15:12.620 through your reproductive acts. And so when we remove all of our kind of modern takes, 0.96

00:15:18.660 our political takes for just a moment, and we look at what happens when a person trades 0.91

00:15:23.740 the biblical design, the traditional design of heterosexuality for a homosexual lifestyle in 0.82

00:15:30.280 a very real way. They are eliminating their reproductive capabilities and abolishing their 1.00

00:15:34.920 entire family line. And so this is something that is happening here when God hands people 0.81

00:15:39.740 over to their own desires. And as a result of their own sinfulness, they result into a lifestyle

00:15:44.660 of sexual sin or homosexuality. It is not just a sin against them, but it's actually a sin decimating 0.97

00:15:52.920 the rest of their family line. So yes, God walking away will cause pain to the body.

00:16:00.340 That's absolutely sure. It's going to cause disease and emotion, emotional despair and

00:16:06.060 suffering and depression, all those things. But the most painful result is the multi-generational

00:16:11.620 destruction that devastates not only themselves, but the many generations that will never follow 0.73

00:16:18.820 as a result. So we have to see the sin of sexuality and the sin of homosexuality is going 0.94

00:16:24.120 much further than just the individual. I think of Psalm 34, 16, which states,

00:16:29.960 the face of the Lord is against those who do evil to cut off the memory of them from the earth.

00:16:35.940 Or Psalm 37, 28. Again, these are not direct references to this, but this is kind of the

00:16:40.860 general principle. Psalm 37, 28 that says, for the Lord loves justice. He will not forsake his

00:16:46.640 saints. They are preserved forever, but the children of the wicked shall be cut off. So again,

00:16:53.720 we often look at homosexuality as just the sinful, simple, sinful decision that affects only the

00:17:00.340 individuals that are partaking in it. But the Bible sees it as one of the consequences of God's 0.62

00:17:05.920 desertion from a person's life. Truly, it is an affliction of absence. Did you hear that for a

00:17:13.540 second. Sexual sin, sexual lifestyles, and specifically homosexual lifestyles, is really 0.99

00:17:19.340 a result of rejection of God, a worshiping of self or worshiping of idolatry, God pulling away 0.95

00:17:25.040 so that there would be a dishonoring of their bodies and not just their bodies, but it would

00:17:29.780 actually, as a result of their own sinful choices, this isn't God doing this, but it's God's pulling

00:17:34.760 away, they would be decimated in their entire spiritual or their entire physical lineage 0.99

00:17:40.000 because they sacrifice their reproductive capabilities when they go into a homosexual 0.92

00:17:44.500 lifestyle rather than a heterosexual lifestyle. So this is important, deep stuff here that we 0.85

00:17:50.000 can't pass over. So Paul again tells us that they will be left to the state for a particular reason,

00:17:57.000 which gets us into verse 25. It says, because, so this is the ground, because the cause,

00:18:03.540 the causal clause, because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served

00:18:11.380 the creature rather than creator who is blessed forever. Amen. Now, if we turn just for a second

00:18:18.540 over to Romans and we look at that passage, I'm going to read it in the ESV.

00:18:23.740 And we read the, because again, you want to have that context of the homosexual stuff that I just

00:18:27.400 spoke about. If you read 26 and 27, I'll read them for you real quick. It says,

00:18:32.400 for this reason, again, it's this line of causal clauses. So it was therefore, because, for this

00:18:39.180 reason. So we're getting this connection here. In verse 26, it says, for this reason, God gave them

00:18:43.680 up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are 0.99

00:18:51.980 contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed 0.96

00:18:59.080 with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves

00:19:06.060 the due penalty of their heir. Now, we're going to talk about that next episode, but that is the

00:19:12.180 context that this is all kind of connected to, and you need to understand this is what the Bible

00:19:16.780 teaches. Again, verse 25, but they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served

00:19:21.440 the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. He offers really three

00:19:27.360 reasons for God's exodus from a person's life. Number one is they exchange the truth of God

00:19:33.920 for a lie. And these people who have been handed over to sexual immorality and sexual impurity, 0.78

00:19:42.140 they've substituted the evidence of God that's so plainly seen in creation for fiction. Okay,

00:19:47.920 they gave what was due to God to idols. They gave their worship to the things that were made,

00:19:53.520 including themselves, including their own desires, including, you know, different carved

00:19:57.580 images and natural creation. And it was not only that they did not. So one thing I want to make

00:20:05.500 clear, because it says here in verse 25, it says they exchanged the truth of God for a lie. So

00:20:11.700 this means that it's not that they didn't know the truth. You can't exchange the truth if you

00:20:15.640 don't have it. No, they had the truth. They knew the truth and they exchanged it anyways. And this

00:20:22.560 is what the whole 18 through 23 is talking about. They know that God exists. The world yells and

00:20:28.020 screams that there's a creator, but they knew the truth of an eternal and all-powerful God,

00:20:33.300 and they rejected him anyway. And this is why we have no excuse for atheism, but namely,

00:20:38.280 they preferred lies. They preferred lies because serving lies permits them to maintain

00:20:44.360 their sinful lifestyle. And this is what we know because John chapter three, Jesus tells us exactly

00:20:51.660 why people don't come to Christ and they don't come to a theistic view of God where they love

00:20:57.600 God or respect God. They love their sin and why he says here in verses chapter three of John

00:21:03.520 verses 19 through 20. This is the judgment that the light has come into the world and men loved

00:21:08.840 darkness rather than light for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light

00:21:15.900 and does not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. Okay, as a result,

00:21:22.180 we get to point number two of that three-point list I was talking about. So they worshiped the

00:21:26.540 creature as point number two. The first thing is they exchanged the truth of God for a lie.

00:21:33.340 Number two is they worshiped the creature. Okay, humanity has within itself this intrinsic impulse

00:21:39.680 to worship. You can go all over the world and you're going to find churches and synagogues and

00:21:44.580 worship in temples and places because we have an intrinsic desire to worship. This is the reason

00:21:49.040 why there's thousands of religions in the world. We have an intrinsic desire to worship. The impulse

00:21:54.680 of worship is given to us to maintain our relationship with God, yet we have perverted it

00:22:00.240 in our sin, but that is why we have that intrinsic desire to worship. Now, people worship all types

00:22:06.180 of things. People worship money. People worship self. People worship their emotions. People

00:22:09.560 worship comfort, but people also worship other things. And Paul's saying that they've rejected

00:22:16.080 the truth of God. They've redirected their worship toward the creature, toward created things. Now,

00:22:20.140 I live here in Sedona, Arizona. If you don't know, this is the new age capital of the world.

00:22:24.780 And there are people here that are worshiping the moon and worshiping the sun and worshiping

00:22:28.500 the universe. And they're praying to the rocks and they're making sacrifices at temples. And

00:22:32.440 this is probably the closest thing you can get to international ministry

00:22:35.280 in the United States is here in Sedona, Arizona.

00:22:38.860 And now if you go over to India,

00:22:39.980 you're gonna see people actually bowing down

00:22:42.060 before things that were carved with human hands.

00:22:45.340 And so people do this stuff, right?

00:22:47.040 They absolutely hand over their worship to created things.

00:22:50.600 So ultimately people have fabricated a God for themselves,

00:22:56.040 a God that they want so that they can worship

00:22:58.240 without the responsibility of sin.

00:23:01.160 And that's just, that's what they wanna do.

00:23:03.680 They want to be able to live without, they want to be God themselves, they want to dictate what is

00:23:07.460 right and wrong. But in addition to this, Paul says they don't just worship, they actually served

00:23:14.020 the creatures. They didn't just worship the creature, they served it. And this is, you know,

00:23:19.300 this is interesting because they worked for these things, these creatures. Instead of the Creator,

00:23:27.080 they worked, they labored, they slaved for these things that were created, which makes no sense.

00:23:32.960 This is essentially full-blown delusion, and it tells us the damage that has been done to us in

00:23:40.040 sin. That's how delusional people have got because of sin. They will worship things that they've made

00:23:45.540 with their own hands. They will worship a rock. They will worship a sun. They will worship a moon.

00:23:50.040 They will worship the universe. All these things are created, yet we are worshiping them because

00:23:55.140 we are delusional and we love our sin. So we're truly, when we see this, we're truly unable to

00:24:01.180 come to Christ on our own. We do need that special revelation. Faith comes by hearing,

00:24:06.260 hearing by the word of Christ. We need the gospel. Sin has really utterly distorted and destroyed

00:24:12.080 and perverted the minds of the human in our hearts. And really, our souls are dead. We're

00:24:17.400 dead in trespasses and sins. We see that in Ephesians 2. Now, secondly, and more importantly,

00:24:22.120 the point Paul is making here is that God's will is that his creatures worship him and him alone.

00:24:28.200 We know that we have a jealous God, Exodus 34, 14, which reiterates the first commandment,

00:24:33.280 which is no other gods.

00:24:34.840 But he says, for you shall worship no other God, for the Lord whose name is jealous is

00:24:41.280 a jealous God.

00:24:42.260 So God is jealous.

00:24:43.580 He's unwilling to share his worship or share his glory with another person or with another

00:24:48.580 being or with anything.

00:24:50.200 So he alone is worthy of our worship and our servitude.

00:24:54.800 So which leads me really to the conclusion of this episode here.

00:24:58.200 So I'm going to offer you just a handful of points as we close out here.

00:25:01.540 Number one, humanity is not unwilling to worship.

00:25:07.520 We actually are willing to worship.

00:25:09.420 We're just not willing to worship the one true God.

00:25:12.840 That's really the lesson that we learn here.

00:25:15.300 The rejection of God is point number two.

00:25:17.920 The rejection of God will lead to an abandonment from God.

00:25:22.680 Not fully, but, you know, again, there's always some sort of restraint,

00:25:25.620 but God pulling away his light from your life as a lost person, and an onslaught as a result,

00:25:32.260 an onslaught of sinful desires will flood into your life, and you will have no more conscience,

00:25:38.620 your conscience will be seared, the conviction of common grace will move away, and an onslaught

00:25:45.100 of spiritual desires for wickedness will come upon your life. Number three, the manufacturing

00:25:51.580 of a version of God, whether, again, physically a carved shrine or an emotional definition of God

00:26:00.220 that you wanted to produce, is idolatry. Jesus says that we must worship God in spirit and in

00:26:05.780 truth. And so any perversion or production of a God that doesn't align with the God of the

00:26:10.500 scriptures is idolatry. And it's not going to lead to a presence of God. It's going to lead

00:26:16.660 to the withdrawing of God upon a person's life and handing them over to their sin.

00:26:22.940 Point number four, and I want to make this point clear, is that while I do believe that the Lord

00:26:27.300 will not permit this to occur in a full extent to a Christian to be completely abandoned because

00:26:32.780 he knows that he will preserve us and sanctify us for those who are his, I will say I do believe 0.65

00:26:38.040 the Lord permits Christians to experience a form of God's absence from their lives as a way for 0.91

00:26:44.740 the consequences of their sins to cause them to come back to the way of their master. And so I'll 1.00

00:26:52.520 give you an example of this. If someone is, a Christian is walking in rampant sin, God will 1.00

00:26:59.480 maybe pull back, allow them to experience the consequences of their sin so that they will

00:27:03.920 springboard back to him as a result of the conviction of the Holy Spirit. And so this

00:27:08.720 happens all the time with our children. We kind of walk back away from our children and let them

00:27:12.540 experienced the consequences of their foolishness, and then we know that we will hopefully see the

00:27:18.220 conviction and bring them back in. So again, a born-again believer is going to be guarded from

00:27:23.880 complete abandonment, but we are still capable of bringing upon ourselves significant and painful

00:27:29.080 consequences when we follow sin instead of following Christ. William Barclay once wrote,

00:27:36.020 there is a redemptive purpose that stands behind the wrath of God. By letting men and women go 1.00

00:27:42.080 their own way, God is not just punishing them, but it's also allowing them to see the emptiness

00:27:48.300 of life without him, end quote. So ultimately, guys, we have to be vigilant. We have to be

00:27:55.140 vigilant over our own lives. We have to be careful on the way that we walk. We have to be pursuing a

00:28:01.680 holy lifestyle that really is quick to repent of our sin. We should be hating sin. Romans 12.1

00:28:11.460 reminds us, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind

00:28:18.700 that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable, and perfect.

00:28:25.800 So this is our way. We are to walk in a way that we are constantly vigilant over our own life.

00:28:32.080 And also this gives us, again, an understanding of how the world is so lost. Why is the world so

00:28:37.340 lost. Why is the world allowing these sinners to get darker and darker and darker? Well, we know

00:28:43.300 that when people reject God, when people trade the worship that is due to the creator to the

00:28:49.160 creature, that God hands them over to a convictionless lifestyle that leads into sexual immorality, 0.91

00:28:57.420 that leads into a way of life that produces sexual lifestyle sins like homosexuality, 0.84

00:29:07.600 which is not just a present painful issue and decision of that individual, 0.66

00:29:13.360 but really a decimation of their entire family line.

00:29:16.640 This is kind of the spiritual, theological, anthropological issues

00:29:22.420 issues that are going on behind the scenes that the Lord permitted us to see partially

00:29:28.480 in this passage that we find here in Romans. So on that note, thank you guys for listening

00:29:36.000 to this episode of Real Christianity. I hope that you guys are enjoying these episodes,

00:29:41.440 especially that they are here available now on video. If you haven't subscribed to our podcast

00:29:48.140 on iTunes or Spotify. You can do that. Also, if you haven't subscribed to our YouTube channel,

00:29:54.160 you can find us. We're relearn.org. You are on YouTube, and we are constantly trying to create

00:29:59.920 biblical and theological tools to increase literacy in the church. We have a church that

00:30:05.660 really needs to understand sound doctrine, and that is a resource that we're continuing to offer

00:30:10.940 them. If you're watching this episode again on YouTube or Instagram or Facebook or Twitter,

00:30:15.280 Again, would you subscribe, follow, come on board there?

00:30:18.860 We'd love to have you on the journey.

00:30:21.800 In the next episode, I'm going to be teaching on Romans 1, verses 26-27, and addressing

00:30:28.420 the issues we talked about that are pertaining to homosexuality as it's presented in Scripture.

00:30:35.200 On that note, I'd like to close in prayer, and we will see you guys next week.

00:30:42.580 Father, we thank you, Lord, that you have given us wisdom,

00:30:44.800 that you've given us an understanding of your word.

00:30:46.760 And we thank you that you have protected us

00:30:48.880 and kept us close, Lord, for not abandoning us, Lord,

00:30:52.280 and keeping us consistent and convicted and sanctified.

00:30:56.120 Lord, we pray for those who don't know you

00:30:57.980 that they would see you in creation,

00:31:00.400 Lord, that you would bring conviction upon their spirit

00:31:02.220 and save them, Lord, that they would not turn

00:31:04.180 to the creature, but they would turn back to the creator.

00:31:07.320 Again, thank you, Lord, for Paul.

00:31:09.060 Thank you for the writings here in Romans.

00:31:11.200 It has been a blessing to us.

00:31:12.340 In Jesus' name, amen.

00:31:14.260 On that note, guys, thank you.

00:31:15.520 My name is Dale Partridge.

00:31:16.700 This is Real Christianity, and we will see you next week.

Dale Partridge - June 02, 2022

Romans 1_24-25： How God Deals with Atheists

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