Sermon 3-17-24

Pastor Ray Lorthioir

Trinity Lutheran Church

W. Hempstead, NY

The Fifth Sunday in Lent

Descent Into Paganism

In the past several weeks we’ve been setting the stage for the deeper dive into Romans 1:16-32 that we’re going to take today. We’ve seen Dr. Michael Heiser’s thesis that Yahweh divorced humanity when He broke us up into different language groups at the Tower of Babel and sent the new nations on their way into different corners of the earth. He put the new nations under the care of the high spiritual beings that Scripture calls the sons of God or just plain gods. The sons of God are created beings, just as we are. They should have led humanity into the worship and service of the one totally righteous Creator God. But they rebelled and led their respective nations astray. Verses 18-32 of Romans 1 will explain how the gods did this to the nations in the period of ancient history between the Tower of Babel and the coming of Jesus Christ.

Now, because Romans is the Word of God, we should be able to test it out. And that’s what I propose to do. My thesis is simple. If what we’re told in Romans 1:18-32 is true, then no matter when or where it occurs in human history — even in our time — the result can only be the same.

Let’s quickly revisit Romans 1:16-17, “16 I [Paul] am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 17 For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’”

Paul calls the Gospel — the news about Messiah Jesus — the power of Almighty God that’s been let loose in the world. The news itself has the power of salvation — the power to save all humanity from the righteous wrath of the all-righteous Creator God — a wrath that we all justly deserve for having rebelled against Him. The only requirement for salvation is that this news about Messiah Jesus be believed. Believed as The Truth — Yahweh’s Truth. Those who believe the news will not only be saved from Yahweh’s justly deserved wrath, they will also live righteously in this world by faith in the righteousness of Messiah Jesus. They will live by faith in Jesus, The Truth. And as Paul — a Jew — makes clear, Yahweh will draw both Jew and Gentile into faith in Messiah Jesus. And so, we will be prepared for righteous eternal life.

Now, Paul begins this section of Romans this way because he’s going to make clear what Yahweh’s power found in the righteousness of the Gospel is set against. So, here it comes. Romans 1:18-20, “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, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For 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, so that men are without excuse.”

What was the enormous, monumental Truth that was being suppressed in that time through human godlessness and wickedness? It’s very simple. This universe has an uncreated, eternal, infinite, self-existing Creator God to whom everyone and everything is responsible because He is Creator.

The Truth that this universe exists because Yahweh exists is actually very good news. It means that everything has meaning, purpose and a goal. However, for all those who want to be their own gods, this is terrible news. For it means that they will be judged by the righteous meanings, purposes and goals that they have utterly rejected in their rebellion. And because of Adam and Eve’s Original Sin in the Garden of Eden, there is not one human being who is not in precisely this kind of rebellion against Yahweh. This is the sad conclusion Lord Holy Spirit leads Paul to in Romans 3:23, “. . . all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” And “all” includes you and me.

Now, it’s precisely this wretched situation that the powerful good news of the Gospel in righteous Messiah Jesus was sent to address. So, here in verses 18-20 Paul establishes the main target of the Gospel — godlessness and wickedness. And how is human godlessness and wickedness primarily expressed? In the denial of the existence of the Creator God. 

Whether we like it or not, there’s a primary Truth under which we live. We exist only because uncreated, eternal, infinite and self-existing Yahweh exists. And how do we know Yahweh exists? We don’t even need the Bible to tell us. As Paul intimates in verses 18-20, the very universe itself shouts at us in unmistakable terms — DESIGN! Everything that exists is clearly designed to exist against all the odds of non-existence. And where there is design, there is an intelligent Designer.

And it’s precisely at this point that rebellion against our Designer and the lust to be our own gods asserts itself. In order to be our own gods, the Truth of a designed universe must be suppressed no matter how irrational this makes us and no matter how irrational it makes the universe itself.

So how did the sons of God lead the ancient nations astray? We can see the method in the ancient religions that still exist today. For instance, both Hinduism and Buddhism have the same basic belief. In both, the universe itself is as god — uncreated, eternal, infinite and self-existing. Hinduism definitely has all kinds of gods roaming their uncreated universe. Buddhism can have roving gods or not. But in both religions the purpose of all life is to be reunited and reabsorbed into the One — the uncreated, eternal, infinite, self-existing, and perhaps righteous universe.

No one who has ever believed in an uncreated universe can explain why such a universe should exist. They can only say, “it does.” And is that any different than Christians saying Yahweh exists because “He does?” Therefore, no matter which way we turn, something must be uncreated, eternal, infinite and self-existing.

But the key to deciding which is correct is found in the very apparent Design that surrounds us and is in us! Only intelligence can design. Only intelligence can create information. And biology has revealed that every last molecule of life’s DNA and RNA is Information with a capital “I”. And it’s incredibly complex information at that. However, because of modern paganism, the most intelligent people on earth in our universities and research centers deliberately and willfully suppress what their lying eyes are telling them — namely that this exquisitely  designed universe has a Designer. We are without excuse.

So, what happens to human beings and human society when the basic Truth of an uncreated Creator is shifted to an uncreated universe? The remaining verses of Romans 1:18-32 paint an incredible picture.

Romans 1:21-23, “21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.”

By virtue of the Design everywhere apparent, we know God. But if we deny our knowledge of God, then the first thing that happens to us as both individuals and societies is that we neither glorify God nor give thanks to Him. In other words, the religious life of human beings gets redirected. It doesn’t disappear. But, it gets redirected away from Yahweh.

The late Militant Atheist, Christopher Hitchens has a brother named Peter. They were both raised as atheists, but Peter became a Christian. Peter wrote a book called “The Rage Against God.” In it he notes that after World War I the churches in England were half empty. After World War II, they were three-quarters empty. The first war was particularly devastating in that it was waged by the Christian monarchs of Europe. The war ended the monarchies of Germany, central Europe’s former Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire. The godless regimes that eventually replaced the monarchies in Germany and Russia — the Nazis and Communists — fought each other in the even more devastating second war.

So, notice the despair that understandably engulfed Europe. It led to empty churches. But as in ancient times, giving glory and thanks to our Creator God didn’t disappear. It got redirected. In ancient times the gods redirected the worship of Yahweh toward themselves. Thus, idolatry arose — images of mortal humans, mixed with birds, animals and reptiles. At the bottom line, this was the worship of created things instead of the Creator Himself.

Has a similar thing happened to us? Ask yourself what is glorified in this present time. For what are we thankful and to whom? The atheist communist countries have given us the best answer. They glorify their leaders as gods. Lenin, Stalin, in North Korea the Kim family, in China, Mao and now Xi Jinping. They teach their people to be exceedingly thankful to the State — for the State supposedly gives them everything. We’re more subtle about it. But dependence on the state is where progressive leaders want to take us. So, naturally we would have to be thankful to the state. As for glory, consider how many media, sports and political stars there are. Ever seen all the glory that explodes on the field at the end of a Super Bowl? And think of all the glory given to those considered to be the fathers of “The Science.”

Now, as for futile thinking — our universities have become centers for lunacy. It’s taken about a hundred years, but it’s now happening with frightening speed. However, the seeds of futile thinking were already sown in the so-called enlightenment of the 1700’s. It was in the late 1600’s and then the 1700’s that philosophers first tried to do philosophy without a Creator God. At first, they were very encouraged by the results. But by the late 1800’s and into the early 1900’s it became clear that the enterprise had failed. In effect, Western philosophy died in the early 1900’s. And the hideous calamity of World War I was piled on the corpse. 

So, without God and in the aftermath of war, ancient words again came into play. Ecclesiastes 1:1-2, “1 The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem: 2 ‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’ says the Teacher. ‘Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.’” This is the beginning of Ecclesiastes. But as Solomon worked his way through the human situation, he eventually found meaning in the world because Yahweh exists.

However that didn’t happen at the beginning of the 20th century. An examination of 20th century art, music, literature and thought reveals despair — the despair of living without God in a meaningless universe that is totally indifferent and pitiless toward us. It’s all survival of the fittest. But ultimately, survival means nothing, because existence is totally by chance to begin with. This is the foolish futility of philosophy without a Creator God. It can only darken the human heart and soul. And it did.

So, because the ancients exchanged the glory of the Creator God for a glory of their own, we read the next step down in Romans 1:24-25, “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. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator — who is forever praised. Amen.”

Our bodies are the creation of the Creator God. In effect, they belong to their Creator. Our bodies are the glory of our Creator. The right handling of our bodies brings glory to our Creator. But, were we ever taught that? However, even if we had been taught that, would we be able to live without compromising our bodies?

The sinful nature stands in the way. Lust is a real thing and it’s powerful. It can strip both males and females of all sensibility. It can cause us to overstep every pledge we’ve ever made and cross every line we’ve ever committed to. We need great help from outside of ourselves to prevent such degradation — the destruction of God’s glory. But notice what Scripture tells us. If we deny Yahweh, He withdraws the great help we can expect from Him. He’ll let us fall off the cliff — so to speak — into whatever catastrophe awaits us.

In a recent podcast, sociologist Mary Eberstadt noted one strange result of the sexual revolution that’s now 60 years old. Social stigma has basically been removed from anything people want to do sexually — anything. Yet, there is a growing, significant social movement of people withdrawing from the sexual mating scene entirely. For sexual uncleanness is degrading. It destroys the nobility of honest love and honest commitment. And so mating has become emotionally and even legally dangerous. Who can you trust? This is what happens when we serve the created thing — human sexuality — instead of our Creator. On the other hand, if we glorify our Creator, then the nobility of what He has done in creation becomes apparent — that His glory is revealed in a man and woman rightly united in the true commitment of holy matrimony.

Romans 1:26-27, “26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27 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.”

When a society abandons Yahweh and plunges headlong into the worship of created things — including sexuality — Yahweh continues to withdraw His restraining assistance and lets it fall into increasing degradation. When everything is said and done, homosexuality is pure lust crossing over another line. It’s certainly not something Yahweh intended. After the creation of woman and before the fall into sin, we read in Genesis 2:24, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” Heterosexuality is Yahweh’s one and only plan.

Like the ancient world, we’ve already fallen these many steps down from Yahweh’s righteous intent for us. But, modern medicine has permitted us to go where the ancient world could not — transitioning a male into a pseudo-female or a female into a pseudo-male. On March 11th, the Answers in Genesis organization ran a podcast of experts who noted — There’s a worldview shift here away from “viewing God as the Creator. If God is the Creator, then He defines who He made us to be. We’re creatures made in His image. And we flourish best when we live in accord with God’s designs. So what we’re seeing here is a worldview shift where instead of God being the authority for truth, we’re making human feelings and human thoughts the authority. So, that turns humans in to self-creators who look at [themselves and] the world [as] . . . the raw material for creating yourself in your internal image of whatever you want to be based on how you feel right now.”

This becomes radically apparent in an interview Podcaster, David Rubin, did of a recent Hofstra graduate who is also becoming known in podcasting. She mentioned that she had taken a class where one of the other female students self-identified as a cat. She said it was most distracting when this self-deluded woman would start to meow and lick her hand in the middle of a class.

This is radically creating yourself in your own internal image. It’s radically becoming your own creator god. Thus, instead of glorifying God and thanking Him for making us male and female in His Image, we have worshipped ourselves to this bizarre point. Do you see what Scripture is telling us is happening and why it’s happening? It’s a variation of the trap the ancient pagan world was caught in when it followed the gods into denying Yahweh.

Now, there’s more to go before we reach the bottom of paganism. But we’re out of time. So, here’s a question. Based on what we’re actually seeing in our society, does Scripture accurately predict what will happen when a human society denies its Creator? And if we look at the decades that it has taken American society to get to this point, is it true  that we fell step by step in precisely the same order St. Paul outlined? Thus, Scripture proves itself to be accurate. And just wait until we get to verse 32.  You’ll see what’s predicted to be at the bottom of the manure pile. Unfortunately, it’s all already in the evening news.

So, given the slide into paganism, is there any way out? It’s impossible to say if a whole society can be lifted out of the pit into which it has fallen. However, there are signs among the young people that they are rebelling against the radical rebellion. It sounds like they may be open for change in a conservative direction. 

Regardless, two thousand years ago, Yahweh let loose His remedy for paganism — Messiah Jesus. Therefore, if anyone will confess their paganism as the sin it is, we’re promised on account of the atoning sacrifice Jesus made of Himself for us, that God, who is faithful and just, (1 John 1:9), “will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” That’s all unrighteousness — even the most degrading and perverse kinds that paganism can lead us into. That’s why Jesus could say to the resistant Pharisees in Matthew 21:31, “. . . ‘I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.’”

And when sinners are established in Christ’s righteousness by the forgiveness of their sins, Yahweh’s Holy Spirit can teach His righteous ways to former pagans — those who know nothing about righteousness and nothing about a Creator God. As we read in the New Testament, He did this for the new Christians/former pagans of the Roman Empire. Therefore, Lord Holy Spirit can teach modern new Christians/former pagans His ways as well. This is because Messiah Jesus has come and is risen from the dead. Amen.

All Bible quotes are from the NIV.