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Things could not get worse

What Is Our Problem ?    Romans 1: 18-32

How would you describe the human situation? At my Secondary School on Friday mornings we had hymn singing. This always included the practice of the School Hymn. The school was built in 1960 and so fitting with the times we had a very optimistic hymn. I can't remember much of the hymn now, but I do know that it began "These things shall be a loftier race, then 'ere the world hath known, the light of science in their eyes". It was a hymn about all how wonderful the future would be because we were pupils of Tapton Comprehensive School and would make it a better place!

We carried on singing it for a few years then it seemed to get dropped. One Teacher, with a very sharp mind, said to us as a class "where are these loftier things then?". She was saying that this hymn was really a nonsense. Actually she was a Christian and saw that the hymn was a lie. For all the optimism of the 1960's the world was not a better place. What is the human situation? What are people really like? Are we fundamentally good with just a few bad apples and getting better and better?

The Book of Romans is a book that begins by asking this question. And it has a shocking answer. Whilst the Gospel is undoubtedly good news, indeed the best news that one could ever hear, Paul's description of this life changing message begins with two and half chapters of bad news piled on bad news. The human situation is bad, very, very bad indeed. After his introduction he begins in 1:18 with these words, "the wrath of God is being revealed by Heaven against all the Godlessness and wickedness of men".

You may wonder is that really an accurate description of mankind? Are we really so Godless and wicked? The story of Karl Barth, a Swiss theologian born about 1880 shows how one man was forced to change his views about human nature. He was bought up in a time of great optimism. People thought that mankind through science could conquer and improve everything. But then the First World War came. People saw afresh the depths of mankind's evil.

A few years after the end of the War Winston Churchill described the moral catastrophe of World War One in these words "the wounded died behind the lines; the dead mould into the soil.hospital ships were sunk.and all on board were left to their fate or killed as they swam.effort was made to starve whole nations into submission without regard to age or sex.poison gas in all its forms stifled or seared the soldiers. Liquid fire was projected upon their bodies." He concludes this rather sobering assessment with these words "when all was over torture and cannibalism, were the only two expedients of civilised scientific Christian states had been able to deny themselves, and they were of doubtful utility". (Quoted in Paul Johnson, Modern Times p.13-14).

Faced with that reality of evil, Barth, had to reassess the optimistic Christian teaching he had been brought up with and the view that mankind wasn't really that bad. He came to write a commentary on the Book of Romans. There he realised our fundamental relationship with God was one of ungodliness, for "we assume that he need something..we assume that we are able to arrange our relationships to Him as we arrange our other relationships.we dare to deck ourselves out as His companions, patrons, advisers etc.secretly we assume we are ourselves maters in the relationship. We are not concerned with God but our requirements.against such rebellion can only be revealed the wrath of God".

What he was saying is that we dare to imagine ourselves as equals with God or at least not far off. We imagine that in someway we have a claim on him and that he owes us something. Barth came to realise our relationship to God and His Gospel is not like a landing strip welcoming in an aircraft; no the Gospel lands like a bomb and makes a crater. It demolishes any thought of an idea that God owes us anything at all, it destroys our idols.

The anger of God is not a popular subject, but a thoroughly biblical one. It is there throughout the Old Testament and the rest of letters of the New Testament. It is also very much present in the teachings of Jesus. We read in Luke 12 :5 these words "fear him who after killing of the body has the power to throw you into hell". Why does this happen? It happens as a result of Gods anger at sin. If you remove the anger of God from the Bible you end up with a holely Bible; that is a book full of gaps.

You cannot have Christianity without the wrath of God because it is part of His character. He is good and morally prefect and the wrath of God is a right to reaction of evil. Gods anger is personal. It is not just a natural working out of moral laws in a sort of impersonal scientific way. No it is His anger at sin. Note how Paul describes it as the wrath of God.

When we talk about the anger of God we must remember too that this is not like human anger. It is not as if God is bad tempered and out to get his own back. No Gods anger is totally just and right. See is v18 and all that follows in this chapter is directed against "Godlessness and wickedness".

WITHOUT EXCUSE - v. 19-20

God is right to be angry because it is clear to anyone who looks that he exists. The vastness of Creation says that there must be an eternal and almighty power behind it. The fact that the Universe has a beginning, scientists call it The Big Bang, means that it must also have a beginner ie one to start in the first place. And so we see at the end of verse 20 that anyone who excuses his rebellion against God by saying "God does not exist" intellectually does not have a leg to stand on!

In practice that seems to be born out. Most people believe in some sort of God though it may not be the God of the Bible and they may not follow him. There are very few real atheists. The idea that people are without excuse may be a surprise or come as an offensive shock to you. We tend to think that when people have problems believing, the problem is primarily one of the mind, ie it is an intellectual problem. We think that if we reason well enough with them they will come to believe. No doubt people do have some real questions that make some people doubt. And indeed we may have had such questions in the past or may yet have to face in the future. However in the end the actual real problem is that we don't want to believe and acknowledge God as King and Lord of our lives. Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World and an agnostic said "I had reasons for not wanting the world to have a meaning. Consequently I assumed that it had one". In other words he did not come to the conclusion "there is no God" after lots of in depth thinking and research, rather he decided beforehand he would prefer if these was not a God or a meaning and started his reasoning from there. Most people might no be as blatant as Huxley, but we all have the same motive at work inside us, a desire to avoid God's rightful rule over our lives. We are without excuse for sin.

WITHOUT WISDOM v. 21-23

We all probably know the story of Jack and Beanstalk. Jack swapped a cow for a few useless beans, only they turned out to be magic beans. What however if the beans hadn't been magic? Then Jack really would have been a fool. The situation of the human race is that we have taken part in a great swap, a great exchange, only unlike Jack we have swapped something far more valuable - a relationship with God for something even more useless than even plain or magic beans. At least you can eat beans but sin leads to death.

Here Paul has been describing the human race in general and so we see what generally happens when people choose to stop worshipping God. He writes in verse 21 "their thinking became futile". That is their way of reasoning becomes one which is going nowhere and has no purpose. If we look in verse 23 we have an idea what this means in practice - "and exchange the glory of immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and retiles". Instead of worshipping an almighty, all powerful all glorious God who knows everything and is perfectly good the people instead worshipped man made images not even the real thing! It is a foolish and stupid exchange.

We may think that sort of idol worship may sound very distant, but an idol may be any controlling power that we give our loyalty to before God. A Missionary in the Far East was talking to a man about his faith. The man worshipped an idol in the form of a statue. One day the man came in to talk and put two items on the table one was a statue of his God and by that he wrote on a piece of paper he my god. He then placed a silver coin on the table and next to that he wrote Christian God.

This is the mistake that many in our western world have made. We have rejected a God who says "come to me all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest" Matthew 11 verse 28. Instead we have chosen a frantic chase after more and more little lumps of metal and fancy bits of water marked paper and A7 sized pieces of plastic. Our thinking has become futile.

WITHOUT PROTECTION v. 24-25

Everyone worships something and if today if it is not God or money it is probably sex. In v. 24 Paul writes "therefore God gave them over in the simple desires of their hearts to sexual; impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another". It was written nineteen hundred and forty years ago and yet is still very much today.

Again it is the same foolish swapping of God that is true for something that is false. If you look here in v. 24 (and again in v. 26 and 28) you will see this happening because God has allowed it. Paul writes "God gave them over". This does not mean that God has given them up for ever? rather it is if someone is pulling a heavy boat upstream and then lets the stream carry it away. It is the stream that carries the boat away not the man who lets go. Here what we have is the removal of God's restraint and protection. Is the cruel and unfair of God? Or is rather that he has allowed a man to go his own way, so maybe he when he sees the mess that sin causes he will turn back and seek God again?

WITHOUT SHAME - v. 27-28

It says in the proverbs that "Where there is no revelation people cast off restraint". When people reject God in the end anything goes. And so we read in verse 27 "in the same way the man also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with love for each other". Why is it that Paul mentions homosexuality at this point? Has he gone off on a bit of a tangent? Or perhaps it fits very well into his overall argument? When people give up worship of God, the ultimate object that often replaces God as the centre of worship is ourselves. Perhaps homosexuality here represents an extreme form of self worship.

On this subject we need to remember two things. Firstly the Word of God then is as much the Word of God now. God's righteousness is not a pot of clay moulded conveniently to fit the concerns of our age. People may struggle very deeply with their sexuality and can find such things deeply disturbing. They need our support. However our feelings and desires are not the basis of what is right and wrong. We see and hear that these problems have their root in the rejection of the revelation of God. Many people feel strange things, not just homosexual urges, but that does not make it in any way right.

Secondly we need to be careful ourselves. Paul makes it quite clear that we all stand under God's anger. We must not judge those who struggle with homosexuality as in any way worse. God's wrath is revealed against mankind as rebellion and that includes all whether nor not it is our problem. And so we look on in the passage we see that a world without God becomes a world without shame and without boundaries. Look on in verse 29 to 31 we see here how evil affects every part of who we are. When we turn our backs on God, the World becomes a bad, a very bad place. Look at what we have here, murder, God hating, depravity, people who event ways of doing evil, malice etc. It sounds pretty bad doesn't it but actually it's worse. For if we look closely it also includes greed, envy and boasting. We use these attitudes so much every day that we are even persuaded they are virtues. They are normal basis on which most of our consumer society is based. The advertising industry, in the UK which is worth about 10 billion pounds per year. Tucked alongside these is the very acceptable sin of gossip.

WITHOUT A CHANCE verse 31

Finally as a result of all this we are without a chance. I did some research for this Sermon and watched half an hour of Big Brother this week. It is full of some of the things in this passage. It is sort of programme that is easy to watch from a distance and think how bad, and I'm glad I don't do that. However when I talk about sin and the fall and Big Brother I am not just about sexual immorality (though it is very much there) but strife, envy, greed. malice, gossip and slander. All that agro is the basic fuel that keeps this television programme on the air year by year. We like to see it. Television only works if we keep watching it and so often on television our eyes approve what our mouths deny.

In a way that is a picture of all the things in this passage. It is easy to read and stand at a distance and say that's not me. However how many groups of people are described in this passage? Just one. Humanity is not divided into the really seriously bad there are normal people like me and you. No this is a description of all of us. As a result mankind faces a crisis. As we read the middle of verse 32 "those who do such things deserve death". We are without hope, without God and without a chance.

CONCLUSION

Do you realise how bad the human situation is? The starting point of mans relationship with God is one of unrighteousness and we are God's enemies. Do we realise that the wrath of God is being revealed against the sin of all human kind? I hope I have explained this all to you very clearly. If I have then having heard this you would either feel extremely gloomy or joyful. If not either I have failed or you have not understood.

The situation is bad but God has provided a way out. God has provided a way out. God has provided a way of being right with Him. We read in verse 17 "that a righteousness has been revealed from God that comes by faith". Just as we exchange the glory of God for idols now God offers us a second exchange. My Son takes your death and sin and in place gives you holiness and eternal life. How do we obtain that? We cannot do anything all we can do is simply trust in Christ as the one who saves us and acknowledge him as Lord.

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